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.