Building Prosperity from the Bottom Up essays

Building Prosperity from the Bottom Up essays In the article, Building Prosperity from the Bottom Up, author Thomas Palley argues that increasing minimum wage would not only improve the standard of living for the lower class, but it would also help the middle class as well as improve productivity in businesses. First, he explains that contrary to traditional beliefs, modestly increasing minimum wage would have no effect on unemployment rate. Also, as Palley states, It [increasing minimum wage] is good for the working poor because it establishes a wage floor that inhibits excessive wage competition. In addition to this, Palley argues that increasing the minimum wage would provide an incentive for employees to work harder while practically destroying the need for pricy tax cuts that would hurt the governments state of wealth. Also, if the minimum wage were to be raised, big businesses would not be able to create much internal competition among the employees to drag the wages down. Apart from helping just the lower classes, this mi nimum-wage boost would contribute significantly to alleviating the effect of the wage squeeze on middle class families. I agree completely with the author on the subject of minimum wage. Although it has been argued that increasing minimum wage would cause inefficiency, there has been a significant amount of evidence contradicting this logic. Palley, strong in his arguments, makes a clear, un-arguable point about the benefits of raising minimum wage. Not only would middle-class families enjoy the benefits of it, but productivity would be increased among different markets, and the government would not suffer setbacks due to unnecessary tax cuts. I think that slowly increasing minimum wage would help the nations economy. The gap between unskilled and skilled workers would become smaller, and there would be less poverty-stricken people. Therefore, it is a good idea to slowly raise the minimum wage and set a fl...