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US Economy

Is raising the minimum wage a good idea?

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No
25% 88 votes Total: 347 votes
Yes
75% 259 votes

Sure, raising the minimum wage means that lower income families will have more, tangible cash in their hands. However, the most important thing to note about cash is that it, unto itself, has no intrinsic value. A dollar bill is a symbol, it merely represents a portion of the nation's wealth. The nation's wealth is measured in tangible gold. So, when you raise the minimum wage, all you are doing is increasing the flow of cash into the economy, you are not necessarily raising national wealth.

Therefore, as cash increases and wealth remains the same, the worth of the dollar decreases. This is best explained through a simple analogy:

Let's say that I have ten muffins, and that I hand you ten bottle caps and tell you that each bottle cap represents one muffin. So, when you hand me a bottle cap back, I'd give you a muffin in return.

Now say that I decide to give you 20 caps instead of ten, yet the number of muffins remains the same. You would then possess more physical caps, but their worth would be less because the number of muffins had not increased. So, instead of one cap equaling one muffin, one cap would now only be worth half of one muffin.

This scenario is analogous of the relationship between the American dollar and American gold reserves, where the bottle cap represents the dollar and the muffins represent US gold reserves.

The fact of the matter is that raising the influx of cash into the economy does nothing more than devalue the dollar.

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Below are the top articles rated and ranked by Helium members on:

Is raising the minimum wage a good idea?

No
  • 1 of 21

    by T. W. Fuller

    The much overlooked problem with raising the federal minimum wage is that it either succeeds in impeding business of ...read more

  • 2 of 21

    by Lorena Bowser

    Raising the minimum wage is like playing on the teeter-totter with a feather: you push off with both feet, enjoy the ...read more

Yes

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