Lucy Fellows 28/3/13 5th Hour Minimum Wage Position Paper In the Michigan the minimum wage is $7.

25 per hour, which will earn a person $15080 a year. The established poverty wage is $15130 in the United States. This does not sound like an issue because the idea of minimum wage was for the teenage working class, but most of the citizens earning minimum wage are well out of their teens. Increasing the minimum wage in Michigan will have a positive effect on the economy. Firstly, increasing the minimum wage will allow many citizens to go off of government benefits. With more money they would have the ability to purchase goods and services and that would act as an economic stimulus. Because more people are purchasing goods and services, they would be paying their share of taxes and allow for the federal deficit to decrease as well as taxes. Although, there are people against increasing the minimum wage, stating that doing so would force businesses to fire some of their workers if they cannot afford to pay them more, and smaller businesses to shut down. There are also studies that show that increasing the minimum wage will have no effect on lowering the poverty rate; however, if businesses had to fire some of their workers in order to stay in business, it is only a temporary change until they have acquired enough money to hire workers again and pay them the increased minimum wage. In turn, with businesses back to hiring workers, unemployed citizens will have to opportunity to search for jobs and eventually earn enough money to raise themselves out of poverty. Increasing the minimum wage will allow for economic growth. It would act as an economic stimulus, allow people to pay fewer taxes, open more opportunities for the unemployed, and decrease the federal

deficit. Because of this, fewer recessions would happen and soon there will be no debts to worry about.