Kayla Lesch - 30 Days Blog

Living 30 Days on Minimum Wage Blog!

7.  In 2009, the federal minimum wage was raised to $7.25 per hour. Since then, the cost of living has greatly increased. Over 150 million families are living on minimum wage jobs, yet since 2009 inflation has caused everything from apples to energy to become more expensive. Sen. Ted Kennedy gave an inspiring speech in 2007 for raising minimum wage. Since then, many more congressmen have joined his argument such as Bernie Sanders. They argue that it has become impossible for families to live on $7.25/hour and want to raise the minimum wage to around $15/hour. I agree that for the short term, raising minimum wage is necessary to save families struggling to survive. However, in the long term I do not believe this one change would fix the system of poverty in our country. Opposing views to raising the minimum wage argue that because businesses would have to pay their employees more, they would not be able to hire as many people and many people would be fired. In addition, to compensate for the increased salaries business owners are paying their employees, they may choose to raise the prices of their products. This would once again cause the cost of living to increase which would lead to raising the minimum wage once again and it just continues in a circle. Something must be done about the minimum wage in this country, but I do not think that making one change would fix the entire system.

11. In the movie, the electric company asks Morgan and Alex for a deposit. Unfortunately, I am not surprised by this request. Because they were living in low income neighborhood, many of the people there probably cannot always afford to pay the monthly bill for electricity and the electric company must lose money to this. Although it is not these family’s faults for not being able to pay every month when they are also struggling to feed, clothe, educate themselves and stay healthy, the people working at the electric company also need to be payed so they can support their own families. Because the address where Morgan and Alex live had a history of not being able to pay for electricity, the company tells them they must pay a deposit so the company can ensure that they will still make money.