Raising minimum wage is not a solution

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What part of minimum wage do you not understand? Minimum wage is designed for entry-level positions that often give young people an opportunity to gain employment experience, and are generally part-time work. Almost anyone can be immediately hired for jobs such as yard work, some child care, fast food and unskilled labor. Minimum wage was never meant to support a family.
As you get experience and become trained or educated in a profession, you can then expect to qualify for a 40-hour-per-week job, with a wage or salary to afford a house, car and family. These are jobs necessary to support a thriving society. Raising the minimum wage will not produce such positions. It will create additional financial problems for all, and will result in an overall loss of jobs.
Of course, union leaders are anxious for an increase in the minimum wage. As the entry level wage rises, specially trained positions also will expect to be paid at a higher level. The raise at the top becomes double or triple — equal to the value of their training or level of responsibility and equal to the training and/or education they have invested. Costs of everything will go up, making minimum wages even less able to provide supplemental income because of rising prices for everything. Fixed-income retirement for seniors will become a more serious problem by robbing their financial security.
Raising the minimum wage takes away opportunities for entry-level employment. I can no longer afford to hire my grass to be cut, so I cut it myself. And if the minimum wage is raised for McDonald’s, the cost of a hamburger goes up. When their costs are dramatically affected, many of those minimum-wage businesses will be forced to cut jobs or worse yet, cease to exist.
Ruth Johnson
Davenport


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