Minimum Wage Isnt A Living Wage :: Minimum Wage Essays

Reasons for Minimum Wage Workers Tough Lives In 1938, federal nominal lease legislation became effective for the first meter when the Fair Labor Standards Act passed (Sidey 573). After sixty-seven years, today, the minimum wage, which was to begin with set to beget sure that working people could support themselves and their family, increase twenty times (Sidey 573). Nevertheless, the low-wage workers have never gotten rid of the hardship in their lives. Two main reasons cause the current situation. The change magnitude renting prices and the increase rate of health c atomic number 18, which exceeds low-wage workers real income by quite a lot, make their lives tough all the time. Minimum wage, the smallest amount of money per hour that an employer may legally pay a worker, became a part of state uprightness in Massachusetts in 1912 (Sidey 573). After 14 other states, the territory of Columbia, and Puerto Rico set similar laws in America, the first federal minimum wage legisl ation became valid. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 firmly accomplished the federal government as a regulator of wages in the United States by establishing a minimum hourly wage for all employees engaged in interstate commerce or in the work of goods for interstate commerce (Huckshorn 167). Based on 2004s Current macrocosm Survey of America, today two million workers earn at or below minimum wage out of 73.9 million American workers who are paid at hourly rates (Characteristics). In 1996, the minimum wage raised to $5.15 per hour. Some people argue that this federal legislation helped low-wage workers a lot. Nevertheless, low-wage people are still suffering from hardship because of the liberal respite between their incomes and expenditures. In 1998, the minimum-wage was $2,500 below the poverty line for a three-person family if a worker works 40 hours a week without vacations (Rothman). The minimum wage should be $6.24 to maintain the same average purchasing power in 1998 as it averaged in the 1970s (Rothman). Up until 2005, in calcium, nearly 16 percent of Californian low-paid workers live below the poverty line tally to a study of State Industrial Welfare Commission of California (Garcoa). These figures and examples denied the argument that this federal legislation helped low-wage workers lives. Two main reasons cause the big gap between minimum-workers real income and basic living requirements, the persistent increasing of the rental price and health premiums. The first reason for hardship concerns the higher(prenominal) rental prices in America