What Raising Minimum Wage to $15 would do to the United States

In our last class Friday, we talked about some of the functions of capitalism and in Dr. J’s opinion some of the problems with it. We also discussed how raising minimum wage to fifteen dollars an hour and the effect the American economy and how it would affect jobs in the United States. While I agree with Dr. Johnson that they may be a need to reform minimum wage as a concept and have set a standard to follow that rise and falls each year with the tides of inflation. Most individuals are not aware that a healthy rate of inflation for a country like the United States is three percent which is a sign of a health economic market with sustainable growth. Dr. Johnson also stated that this would help all people and that if you can only charge minimum wage should you really be in business. She said if you can only charge a wage that exploits people why should you stay in business. I currently am interning with Mayor Strickland’s office. I work in the Minority Business Development group and give my opinion on what would help business grow. We have discussed raising minimum wages to $15 and what we found is that it would cripple small business development. We found is that it would cause about forty percent of the jobs in the city to disappear. The largest cost small businesses have on them is employing workers and their overhead costs so if you double their cost of doing business they will not stay in business and these large corporations that can move jobs overseas will do so. She also said that most people working in the United States work for large corporations. I did not want to be disrespectful because it is her class not mine. However that is factually incorrect. In 2011, according to U.S. Census Bureau data, there were 5.68 million employer firms in the United States. Firms with fewer than 500 workers accounted for 99.7 percent of those businesses, and businesses with less than 20 workers made up 89.8 percent. By raising the businesses cost that make up 99.7% of businesses in the United States. A full roll out of this policy country wide would destroy business in the United States. I believe their should be a discussion on minimum wage and how we can help those who are on. I do not believe this not the right policy for it. In addition I do not believe that the situation for minimum wage workers are good however I believe the alternative of not having a job is much worse.