In today’s bleak economic times, people, politicians and businesses are trying to figure out a way to turn things around. Many different ideas have been proposed and even a few have been implemented. President Obama’s recent Stimulus Package was a novel idea. But it, like many other attempts, are seemingly ineffective. However, one idea has come up repeatedly in order to spark the economy once more. The idea is to increase the minimum wage, in order to give the poor and low-wage workers more spending power in the market, thus boosting the economy. This might sound like a good idea on the surface, but I’m here to tell you that it is not. While it is a counterintuitive idea; raising the minimum wage would simply be a counterproductive answer for the struggling American economy.

An increase in the minimum wage would result in a loss of many low-wage jobs. For example; if an employer can only afford to have 9 full-time employees at $7 an hour, but the minimum wage is increased hypothetically to $9 an hour, the employer can only afford 7 workers and 2 people will be out of a job. This is a very small scale hypothetical example, but it will hold true throughout the country.

Also, contrary to what some believe, raising the minimum wage is not an effective anti-poverty tool. The current minimum wage is not the primary problem for the poor, because most poor don’t work at minimum wage. In fact, according to one study, “Over 60% of those under the poverty