Recently, President Obama has proposed raising the country's minimum wage rate. The writer looks at the unfortunante group who will not recieve any benifit from the wage increase because certain rules make them exempt from receiving minimum wage.
Here are some examples of people who do not have to receive minimum wage:
- Disabled workers
- People who work for very small businesses
- Teenage trainees
- Tipped workers
- Home care aids
- delivery people
5 comments:
It seems a little bit silly that the people excluded from getting benefits seem to be the people who would need them most. In my opinion, it would make more sense to raise the minimum wage for these jobs as well. As a result, those jobs would become more attractive, and the demographics that typically fill those positions would enjoy increased economic activity.
In some states tipped workers receive the regular minimum wage in addition to tips, making these less desirable jobs more manageable to live on. I believe this should be a policy change across the nation.
The topic of minimum wage has been hotly debated. I believe a more effective measure of increasing income equality in the United States would be a "living wage" indexed for the cost of living for a particular geographical area. $24,000 will not go as far for minimum workers in New York City as it will in Delaware, Ohio.
Those workers should not be excluded from receiving a minimum wage. Thus a simple solution would be presenting an amendment to the minimum wage legislature. The bigger issue is that all minimum wage is equal across the states and does not reflect the difference in living standards between the regions. Martin makes a very good point that minimum wage should be indexed to the cost of living for a particular geographic area.
I can understand this not applying to teenage workers and people who work for very small businesses, but these other categories represents a significant portion of our labor population. It is sad that this would not apply to any of them
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