The Morality and Politics of Justice
Should the Federal Minimum Wage Be Increased?
"The Minimum Wage Box" Political Cartoon Final Product (Drawing+Photoshop)
By: Kaden Lloyd
By: Kaden Lloyd
Reflection
For this project we were asked to choose an issue or controversial topic that is currently happening. I decided to choose whether or not the Federal Minimum Wage should be increased or not. I chose this topic because we were asked to research both sides of the issue and create a summary about them them. I didn't really know much about this topic at all and didn't have a set opinion because of my lack of knowledge. So I went in with a very open mind and learned a lot from both sides. Once we got our research and our summaries written, we were asked to write about our opinion on the issues after hearing arguments from the both sides. In the final part, we had the freedom to express our opinion in a way we thought was best. I decided to create a political cartoon and write a mini OpEd/artist statement. In this, I wrote my stance I why I believed it followed with evidence from my research. Every source I used was cited and connected to my final project. Finally, I gathered up all my research summaries, titled them, and neatly stapled them to black construction paper, to make them look classy, you know, profesional. As a class, we exhibited our final projects at Durango Joe’s while having productive conversations about our topic with the guests that visited. I found ti to be actually very interesting and fun to talk about it. I was really confident and overall had a good time.
While writing my piece, I definitely had a few bumps in the road but because I was able to fix them, my writing skills definitely improved. Not only that, but I was able to make my writing pieces a lot stronger and something to be proud of. When I first started my writing, my research wasn't the best it could've been so my arguments were a bit weak and I felt like I repeated myself throughout. It wasn't until after I finished writing both summaries for both arguments that I went back and revised my work. A lof of the errors I made were simple fixes, such as forgetting to indent and space out quotes or cite some evidence. There things were very easy to fix and I did them first. I replaced weak sources and evidence with stronger and more appealing articles that showed to be more reliable. For example, I used a quote from a website called Minimum Wage Mythbusters, which is obviously not the most professional cite, but I found same information on a different site called the Economic Policy Institute. I would say that sounds much more reliable and trustworthy than Minimum Wage Mythbusters. Once I fixed most of my grammatical and source issues, I wanted to improve my content. Give it some life. For my pro argument, I wrote a moral argument and added a more personal depth to my piece. I wanted people to feel connected and be able to relate rather than them just reading facts on facts. There always needs to be a human element when trying to connect with people. Without it, there is nothing for them to connect with it. Alos, I feel as if I'm better and being able to write something from my heart rather than something I found learned off the internet. If I really put my heart and soul into a writing piece I can create something that not only I enjoy but other people can enjoy too. So when I wrote this part, I got really into it and actually started to discover how I felt about the topic. This is a perfect example of how writing is not only an outlet to express your ideas, but also a way to create new ones. As I was writing, I just kept adding on and coming up with more arguments that I just thought up. This made my piece much stronger and it really helped me to really understand my topic. In other words, I didn't quite understand or enjoy my topic too much, but the second I started writing from the heart, I dove into a pool of thought and opinions. I hope that this can be seen in my final piece.
Like I said, When I went into this project, I didn't know much at all about it and had zero opinion on anything. The only background knowledge I had was that California was increasing their minimum wage to $15 by 2020. I didn't even know if this was good news or bad news. That shows about how much I knew. Anyways, as I did my research for the pro arguments, I found that they were convincing both logistically and morally. I found that increasing the minimum wage would not highly impact the economy negatively and that it is the right thing to do for low wage families who are trying to survive. The argument talking about low wage families definitely impacted me more than the economy argument even though they are both pretty important. This was the first stage in the development of my final opinion. As I kept researching, my perspective began to shift towards the pro side for sure. I found it easier to write about because I agreed with it more. When I started to research the con side, I found it difficult to relate to the arguments because they didn't quite make sense. Both sides said the opposite thing. The pro side said that it would benefit the economy and low wage workers but the con side that it would not benefit the economy or low wage workers. I was very torn on which one was correct. So I did more research. I found out that Seattle had increased their minimum wage about a year ago and nothing but good things have happened. Also, the current minimum wage currently does not seem to be working too well if it has caused protests all over the nation. In order for there to be real change, there needs to be a REAL change. Therefore, I finally came to the conclusion the the Federal Minimum Wage should be increased...But there should be some boundaries.
When talking about the minimum wage, there can be some complexity to the issue that I didn't quite see before. For example, the most complex argument I found was that the increase of the federal minimum wage was increased, then small local business would have to lay off workers, or simply go out of business. This was definitely the strongest argument I heard from the con side but soon discovered a solution the we have already implemented to the increase. In order to prevent this, there needs to be a very subtle but steadily increasing minimum wage. By doing this, small business can plan and adapt to the change rather than rushing into a $12 minimum wage in a month. This needs to be a yearly thing. And that is exactly what we are doing. By setting a certain increase to a specific date, we are preventing collateral damage in the economy. So the best thing for people to do, is simply just be patient and let the minimum wage take its course up the latter.
While writing my piece, I definitely had a few bumps in the road but because I was able to fix them, my writing skills definitely improved. Not only that, but I was able to make my writing pieces a lot stronger and something to be proud of. When I first started my writing, my research wasn't the best it could've been so my arguments were a bit weak and I felt like I repeated myself throughout. It wasn't until after I finished writing both summaries for both arguments that I went back and revised my work. A lof of the errors I made were simple fixes, such as forgetting to indent and space out quotes or cite some evidence. There things were very easy to fix and I did them first. I replaced weak sources and evidence with stronger and more appealing articles that showed to be more reliable. For example, I used a quote from a website called Minimum Wage Mythbusters, which is obviously not the most professional cite, but I found same information on a different site called the Economic Policy Institute. I would say that sounds much more reliable and trustworthy than Minimum Wage Mythbusters. Once I fixed most of my grammatical and source issues, I wanted to improve my content. Give it some life. For my pro argument, I wrote a moral argument and added a more personal depth to my piece. I wanted people to feel connected and be able to relate rather than them just reading facts on facts. There always needs to be a human element when trying to connect with people. Without it, there is nothing for them to connect with it. Alos, I feel as if I'm better and being able to write something from my heart rather than something I found learned off the internet. If I really put my heart and soul into a writing piece I can create something that not only I enjoy but other people can enjoy too. So when I wrote this part, I got really into it and actually started to discover how I felt about the topic. This is a perfect example of how writing is not only an outlet to express your ideas, but also a way to create new ones. As I was writing, I just kept adding on and coming up with more arguments that I just thought up. This made my piece much stronger and it really helped me to really understand my topic. In other words, I didn't quite understand or enjoy my topic too much, but the second I started writing from the heart, I dove into a pool of thought and opinions. I hope that this can be seen in my final piece.
Like I said, When I went into this project, I didn't know much at all about it and had zero opinion on anything. The only background knowledge I had was that California was increasing their minimum wage to $15 by 2020. I didn't even know if this was good news or bad news. That shows about how much I knew. Anyways, as I did my research for the pro arguments, I found that they were convincing both logistically and morally. I found that increasing the minimum wage would not highly impact the economy negatively and that it is the right thing to do for low wage families who are trying to survive. The argument talking about low wage families definitely impacted me more than the economy argument even though they are both pretty important. This was the first stage in the development of my final opinion. As I kept researching, my perspective began to shift towards the pro side for sure. I found it easier to write about because I agreed with it more. When I started to research the con side, I found it difficult to relate to the arguments because they didn't quite make sense. Both sides said the opposite thing. The pro side said that it would benefit the economy and low wage workers but the con side that it would not benefit the economy or low wage workers. I was very torn on which one was correct. So I did more research. I found out that Seattle had increased their minimum wage about a year ago and nothing but good things have happened. Also, the current minimum wage currently does not seem to be working too well if it has caused protests all over the nation. In order for there to be real change, there needs to be a REAL change. Therefore, I finally came to the conclusion the the Federal Minimum Wage should be increased...But there should be some boundaries.
When talking about the minimum wage, there can be some complexity to the issue that I didn't quite see before. For example, the most complex argument I found was that the increase of the federal minimum wage was increased, then small local business would have to lay off workers, or simply go out of business. This was definitely the strongest argument I heard from the con side but soon discovered a solution the we have already implemented to the increase. In order to prevent this, there needs to be a very subtle but steadily increasing minimum wage. By doing this, small business can plan and adapt to the change rather than rushing into a $12 minimum wage in a month. This needs to be a yearly thing. And that is exactly what we are doing. By setting a certain increase to a specific date, we are preventing collateral damage in the economy. So the best thing for people to do, is simply just be patient and let the minimum wage take its course up the latter.