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Should the federal minimum wage be raised? Seventeen states have set their minimum wages higher than the federal rate of $5.15 an hour. Congress is now debating a boost.


YES The wages we pay our workers are a reflection of what we value as a nation. Americans value hard work. We believe that people who work should be able to build a better life for their families. But today, too many Americans are working hard only to stay poor.

It's it's  

1. Contraction of it is.

2. Contraction of it has. See Usage Note at its.


it's it is or it has
it's be ~have
 been more than nine years since Congress last raised the minimum wage of $5.15 an hour. Today, a minimum-wage worker who works 40 hours a week makes about $10,700 a year. That's way below the poverty line for a family.

Prices for essentials such as gasoline gasoline or petrol, light, volatile mixture of hydrocarbons for use in the internal-combustion engine and as an organic solvent, obtained primarily by fractional distillation and "cracking" of petroleum, but also obtained from natural gas, by  and health care are rising dramatically, but these workers are falling farther behind. Minimum-wage employees earn so little that they can't afford adequate housing in most parts of the country, and must often rely on food banks and charities just to put food on the table.

I have introduced a bill in Congress to raise the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour in three steps over the next two years. The increase would benefit more than 15 million Americans, including the parents of more than 7 million children.

Minimum-wage workers do many of the most difficult, and most important, jobs in our society. They take care of children in day-care centers day-care center: see day nursery.  and the elderly in nursing homes. They clean office buildings, hotel rooms, and restaurants across the country.

These hard-working hard-working adjtrabajador(a)

hard-working hard adjtravailleur/euse, consciencieux/euse

hard-working hard
 men and women deserve fair pay for their work. In the wealthiest nation in the world, no one who works for a living should have to live in poverty.

Senator Edward Edward

killed his father at his mother’s instigation. [Br. Balladry: Edward in Benét, 302]

See : Patricide
 M. Kennedy

DEMOCRAT OF MASSACHUSETTS Massachusetts (măsəch`sĭts), most populous of the New England states of the NE United States.  

NO For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. That's a law of physics, but it applies to economics. Every increase in the minimum wage raises the overall costs of small-business owners, and they must react in order to stay in business.

If faced with a minimum-wage hike, most independent business owners say they would respond by cutting workers' hours, reducing the number of employees, and leaving jobs vacant.

This is because it's not always possible for small businesses to pass on increased costs to their customers by raising prices. As a result, raising the minimum wage often ends up hurting, rather than helping, the workers. That's bad news for teens looking to enter the job market.

But our objection A formal attestation or declaration of disapproval concerning a specific point of law or procedure during the course of a trial; a statement indicating disagreement with a judge's ruling.  is also philosophical. Small-business owners believe passionately that the free-market system, which includes the freedom to operate their businesses without undue government interference, is the best way to encourage economic growth and job creation.

When business owners have the freedom to make investment decisions, including investing in employees, they can decide when and how to add jobs, knowing that to hire good people, they must pay them what the market demands. (In some parts of the country, businesses are already paying more than the minimum wage because that's what the local markets demand.)

We've learned that in the end, a higher minimum wage leads to fewer job opportunities, and that's not good for anyone.

Todd Todd , Sir Alexander Robertus 1907-1997.

British chemist. He won a 1957 Nobel Prize for his study of nucleic acids and nucleotide structures.
 Stotttemyer

NATIONAL FEDERATION OF INDEPENDENT BUSINESS The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) is a lobbying organization with offices in Washington, D.C. USA, and in all 50 state capitals. NFIB claims a membership base in excess of 600,000.  
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Title Annotation:DEBATE
Publication:New York Times Upfront
Geographic Code:1USA
Date:Sep 18, 2006
Words:509
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