Brianna Derevjanik

Most people are familiar with the term minimum wage, and associate it with parttime jobs or base-level work. However, this is different from the calculated living wage
which is an estimate of the lowest wage a person can live off of, including food, housing
and other necessities. In most countries the gap between these two wages is one of the
larger contributors to poverty rates.
One of the main arguments for raising the minimum wage to the living wage is
that workers perform better under favorable conditions. They are more loyal to the
company if they are being treated well. Higher wages will attracted more skilled workers
and increase productivity, and the theory is that this will offset the cost of raising the
wages. On the other hand, this is more difficult for more spread out businesses that have a
large personnel and a small overhead profit. In some cases, it is still financially
unrealistic for companies to increase their wage so dramatically. In Britain this wage
increase is estimated to be from about $10.40 an hour to $14.10 an hour. Thats a large
increase if theres a large amount of employees.
My personal opinion is that minimum wage is too low, but I do not necessarily
think it should be raised to a flat living wage. One reason is that depending on where
you live, your age, gender, background and so on, your costs of living are extremely
different. Also, minimum wage is most commonly paid at part time jobs or very lowlevel jobs that you wouldnt expect to be the job held of people completely providing for
themselves. No matter what there will be pay gaps, and lower wages at basic jobs will
motivate people to get more education or work towards a high position on the career
ladder. That being said, I also think the minimum wage as it is, is too low, and that it is
possible to find a common ground between the two ideals that will be manageable for
businesses with smaller net income compared to their workforce.