Critical Thinking; Is The Minimum Wage Really Good For America?

     On Friday, November 4, 2016, M. Kristina's US GOVT 2305 Blog published an article titled “Increase USA Minimum Wage, Blog Stage Five." In this article, the author argues that increasing minimum wage is necessity for achieving “American dream.” In other words, giving more money to Americans can make them happy and successful in their lives. As the author said, the minimum wage should increase according to inflation. However, it is doubtful that increasing minimum wage can really help Americans to lead them successful lives.

     Of course, increasing wages should be good for individual person because individual income increases; there is no one who hates increased income. On the other hand, it can be a bad news for employers because they are the people who must give money to employees. Now, even the global economy is going through hard time and inflation is getting worse; then how the limited amount of money can be allocated to so many employers equally. Although large companies also hate the news, they can afford the increased wages. The growing companies that succeed economically is also able to do it. However, there are still many companies of which sales are not enough to give their employers the increased wage so that giving wages become a big burden of the companies’ employers. As a result, they might cut the jobs. Even though they try to give the increased wages to their employees, the companies can be in danger of becoming bankrupt. As a result, it would affect to the unemployment problem. If so, can we say that increasing minimum wage can make Americans happy?

     Although the author gave an example that few states are successful in improving economy by increasing minimum wage, it is unsure that the case of the states can be applied to another sates’ economical situation. Besides, the indicator of economic growth seems focus on the growth of industry as a whole rather than individual person. Therefore, it should be considered again that the states’ entire economical growth helped the individual’s economical growth too. Also, as the author said that most of the people who can get benefit from increased minimum wages are the young people under 25 years old, it seems to need more evidence that increasing minimum wage can really help whole American nations to succeed economically.

    What is the real meaning of the successful life? Is it making a lot of money? In light of self-realization, successful life means enjoying life with their dream job. Also, making more money is not a primary goal of the people who come to America in order to get jobs. One of the big reasons why they come to America is that there are more open and equal opportunity in getting jobs. Then increasing minimum wage can be a good news for them, but cannot be a crucial factor for achieving American dream. Furthermore, not many people in America lives as pursuing their personal goal. Even the people who earn a lot of money work without happiness. Thus, increased wages can fulfill individual’s personal desire through leisure activities, but it does not mean that they are living successful lives.

    In short, it is not bad to increase minimum wage, but it seems still doubtful that the wage can really become a practical key for realizing American dream. Before concluding simply that solving a visible problem can bring a good result, we should consider whether the solution can cause another side effects.

What US government should do; the Issue of Free Child Care

    Why do families in America need free child care? This is because there are so many dual-income families. The dual-income family is usual in almost every country. Of course, having both parents in workplace is inevitable choice among families in the United states as well. 

     Women’s participation in workplace is one reason why the dual-income family is increasing among families. Women are rare in workplace in the past, yet participation of women in public affairs is increasing now; they have been released from the stereotype that houseworks are women’s duty. Naturally, the number of housewives decreases. Accordingly, more men change their role in family from making living money to housekeeping. However, not many couples exchange their role each other; housewife to businesswoman and businessman to househusband. Instead, both of them want to achieve social success although they have young kids. Unavoidably, they decide to send their children to child care. 

   Economical reason is another reason why many both wives and husbands decide to work for affording living expenses. As the living expenses are more and more increasing, making money alone in family is not enough to supporting whole family. Both parents need to earn money together, so their children are left without parental care. As a result, children need to another caregiver instead of their parents, so parents send their kids to child care.

     Unfortunately, the cost of child care is pretty expensive. Thus, affording child care cost is becoming another burden of family, especially to low-income family. The dual-income family can make more money than the single-income family, but the dual-income family should pay child care cost. In short, they might spend a lot of money on child care.

     Then should government provide free child care? Yes, they should in order to relieve the burden of families, especially for low-income family. Furthermore, it can resolve the problem of wealth inequality by giving free child care to the family. However, providing free child care broadly in many states of America is not easy because of the reasons such as costs for practicing the policy and problem relating to labor. Also, even the families who do not need free child care can take advantage of the policy, then the purpose of it can be implemented ineffectively; the family who really need free child care cannot receive the benefit of it. As a result, more money is necessary to maintain the policy, and national budget also increases. However, national budget comes from taxes. After all, rising taxes can be burden of family. Thus, government should run the policy effectively without wasting money.

     Also, the issue of free child care focuses on expediency of adults. Nevertheless growth environment is important to growing children, the kids of dual-income families lacks of parental care, which is crucial environment for children. Besides, the quality of free child care is hard to be good. Children are the next generation to lead world in the future. Accordingly, raising young generation greatly is much more significant problem than solving economical problem. Therefore, government should provide the free child care policy for children not only for their parents.