A Living Wage Will Work

Paper Summary:

This persuasive paper deconstructs many of the arguments against a living wage (i.e. increased costs of goods, workforce shrinkage) and makes a case that a living wage is not only necessary for economic reasons, but for moral reasons as well. Arguments presented in favor of a living wage: lower employee turnover; socially healthy; morally appropriate; and possibly due to the growth in the service industry. The paper refutes that a living wage will increase overseas outsourcing, decrease total employment, and lead to more workers simply being replaced by technology.

From the Paper:

"A third argument against a living wage is that employers would simply replace workers with automation and new technology. This is something that has been happening since the beginning of Industrial Revolution, and something workers have been dealing with for just as long. Companies will always use technology to replace workers, no matter what wage they are required to pay from $5.15 to $8.00. Over the past hundred years thousands of jobs have disappeared due to technology, and somehow our economy has survived. Bank tellers, secretaries and full service gas station attendants have decreased in number considerably without any apparent mark on the unemployment rate so it can be assumed that these people went on to find other jobs. Also, technology can create new jobs for unskilled workers. Data entry, a task that requires little skill, hardly existed fifty years before the common use of computers."

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