At the beginning of this year, the state of Missouri raised the federal minimum wage by 15 cents to $7.50 an hour.  While aimed at a singular portion of the population, a raise  is actually given to each individual over sometimes vast amounts of hours per worker. Such a raise and any like it in a system of a high number of employees and only so large of profit margins, makes these jobs both more scarce, but also difficult to hold. An additional unwanted side effect of such a raise would also be the quick jump of cost in some micro markets as business owners try to re-balance their margins, both before and after the change. However, this is not to say that minimum wage job gives enough for someone to actually live on, and that these employees don’t deserve a wage on which to live.

However, while service is a large and desired part of the economy, it is a growing area of the model both before and then accelerated by the recession. Many people find themselves out of both their old jobs and opportunities for even low wage employment much because of the recession and a large amount of uneducated and untrained individuals who already occupied and overflew the segment before the national setback.   However, many proponents of the raising of the bill fervently argue that even the federal minimum wage does not support the average workers needs. However, this is a result of both legislators and business owners alike, which leads to the second thought to be considered.

Those who are in the most immediate danger, right after the seeker of low wage jobs, is the immediate employers of such jobs, such as a general manager or smaller business owner. This is not to say that the employer in general has bad employees or doesn’t make a fair margin, but that many things now have to be reevaluated. First, whom he hires now become highly scrutinized and the amount of available time will be unable to change for most of people who can only work within the 24 hour and 7 day a week timetable, which is everyone. While such hours once served as an economic advantage for those already involved and capable of operating at such hours, it has now shown its drawbacks. Since the adamant consumerist society in which we propagate demanded fast food chains and groceries to be open at all hours, it has now become a hindrance to availability with the dawn and passing of a recession in which the country could not afford to buy from the companies for which lowly paid employees worked.

Still, while all this may be true for the change as it happens, some argue that this is the opportune time for a business man to raise the wage as it allows for improved moral, a more eager pool of workers, and those who come with a competitive edge, if not overqualified to occupy the scarce open space, all while not completely damaging the pocketbook. However, then it must then again be addressed as how much that now, highly selective, educated yet low wage employee gets to that point. The answer is, that there is no market really exists for the new graduates in a anemically reviving economy, because the main source of the wealth derives from the corporate companies that create these jobs, and which also, naturally have fewer opportunities to fill the jobs they have monopolized even at the higher end.

In a world moving only further into a technological era, such simple tasks that many minimum wage workers perform either are and will be filled by that of simple machines. Such an additional blow to the United States weak consumer dependent economy, will more than likely spell economic collapse for the lower class as it now operates. Not that it would be so dramatic to cause a national outcry, but rather a slow process that will continue to force both educated and uneducated workers to the brink having little to no solid options for employment when times get hard.
However, the United States has long been overseeing, and most of the time, outsourcing a large portion of American jobs. Such jobs are those that require expressed and specific knowledge of either working machinery and computers, in order to repair or create,  and those jobs that once paid benefits and insurance for employees of what version of the manufacturer model the US used to have. In truth, there may be a large issue with the level of compensation for the typically uneducated and unskilled worker, but more importantly, there is a large opportunity for employment in skilled labor jobs, technology and vocational style schooling fields of work.
While some areas of the US boast as high as $9.50 for basic minimum wage, it should be argued that all wages are relative to the economic climate that the workers are in both in terms of state and nationally, even though a minimum must be required and met, as some states still don’t even do this. However. the larger problem that confronts America is the rather large disinterest in retrieving the once profitable factory jobs for the middle class, demanding benefits from overly-wealthy and monopolizing corporations, and the complete disregard that the American people show in regards to vocational schooling and the opportunity that such jobs can bring both the highly ambitious and those in need of simple honest money. The jobs acquired through vocational schooling are both affordable and in demand as the international and domestic market continuously search and employ those who can fix, evaluate, and create new versions of the products that they have made. While such a job does not occur within a large area with many others to surround the employee, the needs is nevertheless large as such employees are always desired and more or less continuously and generously compensated by such employers for their specific skill.
Overall, while such a solution doesn’t completely dissolve the issues of the minimum wage pool, it does shrink a hyper inflated cog of the economy and allows for more realistic evaluation of what should be done, once all of the nation’s options are explored in reference to gaining employment for the masses.
By Ross Parks