Minimum Wage
John Burbank the author of “The Minimum Wage: Making Work Pay” agrees on increasing the minimum wage and uses distorted numerical data to influence the reader to agree. The article mainly states that the minimum wage is not high enough for minimum wage employees to support themselves or their families. The article may seem easy to agree with, but, when looking at the numerical data and how numbers are used to persuade the reader, they tend to distort the real truth behind the facts of minimum wage workers. In this article Burbank gives facts only to persuade the reader, that the increase of the minimum wage is necessary. The first distorted information we can look at is when Burbank describes how a full time minimum wage worker earns $10,500, 15 percent below the poverty level for a family of three (Burbank 256). ... This article suggests that the minimum wage should be raised so it can “simply tie the minimum wage to the poverty level. ... People say that teenagers are most of the minimum wage workers and work only to pay for their entertainment. But a specific statistic according to the conservative employment policies institute shows, 71 percent of minimum wage workers are over 20 years old and fewer than 30 percent live with their parents. ... Even though fewer than 30 percent could mean that 3 percent of minimum wage workers still live with their parents.