The United States has a real issue occurring between whether to have a minimum wage or to establish a living wage or does it keep both and just vary by workers. First, what is a living wage and how does it differ from a minimum wage. A living wage seeks to provide a minimum standard of living versus a minimum wage, which is the lowest wage permitted to be paid by an employer and enforced by the state and federal government. On top of that living wage standards do not help those who actually need it; ie the poor and low skilled workers. Typically a living wage ordinance names a group of workers that it will benefit, either contractors or like in the case of Detroit recipients of subsidies. It also names how much wages will go up to in a certain
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Pamela Villarreal in her article Minimum Wage Myths (2012) defines the living wage as one that “aims to provide a minimum standard of living, accounting for the cost of housing and basic needs for an individual, or even a family of three or four (Villarreal, 2012, p3).“ While Webster’s dictionary defines the minimum wage as, “a wage fixed by legal authority or by contract as the least that may be paid either to employed persons generally or to a particular category of employed persons (Merriam-Webster, 2017).” The major difference is that employees can live off of a living wage while they cannot live off of the minimum wage. Another difference is that minimum wage is mandated by the Fair Labor Standards Act while a living wage is implemented by a city or municipal region (Miller, 2015). So who does a living wage hurt and who does it benefit. One there is an argument that a living wage would only be applied to city contract workers while the minimum wage would still be applied to everyone else (National center of Policy Analysis, 2014). This would cause city workers to have a higher wage, but that money has to come from somewhere be it taxes or the minimum wage to decrease so that the state can support the living wage recipients. Two living wage mandates misrepresent the labor market causing it to appear as if there are fewer jobs and …show more content…
Most of the data used to justify living wage requirements is that of the poverty rates and the working poor phenomenon (PBS, 2006). The working poor is an individual who works 40 or more hours a week and still does not make enough money to support their family. This is a sad, but true fact of not having a living wage. However, the use of a living wage has very real long term impacts. Many suggest that jobs would be lost over time (National center of Policy Analysis, 2014). On the other hand, Jeff Chapman and Jeff Thompson (2006) discuss the true economic impacts like that in Los Angeles only 1% of workers lost their jobs over time or that the turnover rates in San Francisco actually fell by 57% after living wage ordinances were enacted. Also, it was found that the cost of living wage on the cities and local municipalities that enacted the living wage were much lower than expected (Chapman and Thompson, 2006). The rise in wages were actually less than inflation too. In fact the strain on the cities and counties with living wage ordinances were found to be far less. In all the oppositions argument studies have been done to show the opposite
Pamela Villarreal in her article Minimum Wage Myths (2012) defines the living wage as one that “aims to provide a minimum standard of living, accounting for the cost of housing and basic needs for an individual, or even a family of three or four (Villarreal, 2012, p3).“ While Webster’s dictionary defines the minimum wage as, “a wage fixed by legal authority or by contract as the least that may be paid either to employed persons generally or to a particular category of employed persons (Merriam-Webster, 2017).” The major difference is that employees can live off of a living wage while they cannot live off of the minimum wage. Another difference is that minimum wage is mandated by the Fair Labor Standards Act while a living wage is implemented by a city or municipal region (Miller, 2015). So who does a living wage hurt and who does it benefit. One there is an argument that a living wage would only be applied to city contract workers while the minimum wage would still be applied to everyone else (National center of Policy Analysis, 2014). This would cause city workers to have a higher wage, but that money has to come from somewhere be it taxes or the minimum wage to decrease so that the state can support the living wage recipients. Two living wage mandates misrepresent the labor market causing it to appear as if there are fewer jobs and …show more content…
Most of the data used to justify living wage requirements is that of the poverty rates and the working poor phenomenon (PBS, 2006). The working poor is an individual who works 40 or more hours a week and still does not make enough money to support their family. This is a sad, but true fact of not having a living wage. However, the use of a living wage has very real long term impacts. Many suggest that jobs would be lost over time (National center of Policy Analysis, 2014). On the other hand, Jeff Chapman and Jeff Thompson (2006) discuss the true economic impacts like that in Los Angeles only 1% of workers lost their jobs over time or that the turnover rates in San Francisco actually fell by 57% after living wage ordinances were enacted. Also, it was found that the cost of living wage on the cities and local municipalities that enacted the living wage were much lower than expected (Chapman and Thompson, 2006). The rise in wages were actually less than inflation too. In fact the strain on the cities and counties with living wage ordinances were found to be far less. In all the oppositions argument studies have been done to show the opposite