One of the notions that is up for debate in the current state of affairs is the case of Minimum wage. It is a topic that continues to divide people on both sides of the political compass, some arguing that an increase in minimum wage is warranted as the increase in living expenses that has come over the past few decades have not been accompanied by an increase in minimum wage to support the people who are living in these said conditions, while others argue that increasing minimum wage will inevitably have the opposite affect and adversely affect people as it will lead to more problems for the class of people it’s trying to help. Since an individual’s rights are inherently his own, by the virtue of them owning themselves, until they fall under the social contract of a government, it is evident to see how an increase in minimum wage will indeed lead to an adverse affect. To further understand this inference, it is important to clarify why that is the case.
Minimum wage is the lowest wage permitted by law or by a special agreement. This would dictate that an employer would be required to pay a minimum amount to an employee as per the social compact of the government. Current detractors of said contract advocate that the minimum amount is set too low and should be increased to almost double its current amount, as they hope this will help eliminate much of the qualms and adversity much of the less affluent people face.
However, this form of argumentation seems to consider one side of the problem while dismissing the other. It makes an illusion to consider the adversity of the employee while completely ignoring the issues of the employer. An individual in our society would be best defined by their right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, while interacting with these rights as rationally as possible. If rational thinking is including into the fray, it is evident to see why the argument of the detractors seem dogmatic at best. One would assume that a simple increase in wages would help propel the poorer class to a higher standard of living, but this level of thinking fails to include the plight of the employer as mentioned before. The reason they can hire so many employees in the first place is because of the minimum wage that is in place. An increase to this wage, to almost double it’s current amount, would cause a severe increase to labor costs that the employers would have to deal with. This would leave them with multiple dilemmas, including whether or not they should decrease the work hours of employees to retain the same amount of personnel, whether or not they should replace employees with more automated methods to cut labor costs etc. This would only cause harm to the group of people it is help, as not only their living conditions (the thing that they proposed to help in the first place) not change, but their jobs will be on the line and the jobs will be even harder to get for newer employees as the employers would have to consider level of skill of the applicants more stringently because of the increase in labor costs.
Therefore, if one does agree with premises set forth in the argument presented, it is very obvious that we should collectively work toward keeping the minimum wage as it is but try to encourage fluidity between jobs and advocate for an individual’s rationality when it comes to allocating monetary resources.