Raise the minimum wage.

Rebuttals: While the McDonald's scenario was clever, it was entirely unfounded. First of all, you made the mistake of suggesting that any of the McDonald's food was made from farm-fresh produce when in actuality it's gained from factories belonging to large producing corporations, but for simplicity's sake I will continue with your scenario and pretend it comes directly from farmers. You made the assumption that because McDonald's raised the pay of their workers, the farmers would also want a pay raise. This makes sense, but then you continued with yet another assumption that because the farmer raised the costs of beef for McDonald's, he also would raise the price of all other produce. In reality if a farmer were to be providing the beef for a fast-food company as large as McDonald's, that would probably be his primary customer. The entirety of all the McDonald's sells 75 hamburgers every second, so you can imagine that a single restaurant would need quite a bit of beef to supply all of its customers. So a beef farmer might charge more to supply the McDonald's, but it would not do anything significant to the economy, or cause any vicious cycles. Also, McDonald's made a $1.5 billion surplus in 2013 (1). They could probably afford it. And as a relevant yet irrelevant addition, certain studies (2) show that if you were to double the salary of every McDonald's employee, from the $7.25 of the cashier to the $8.75 million of the CEO, Big Mac prices would only rise around 68 cents. This study has been disputed, however, and some people say that the current $3.99 price could go up to above five dollars, while others say that it wouldn't go up at all. Regardless of this, the raising of the minimum wage would have more benefits than ramifications for reasons I will get into shortly. Arguments: 1) Over 45 million people are impoverished in one of the richest countries in the world. (3) When you compare the 45 million in poverty to the total population of 310 million, it's a startling comparison. Approximately one in every seven people lives under the legal poverty line, with it increasing in certain states such as Arkansas, where it is more than one in five. But that's not all--of the 45 million in poverty, 15 million of these are children under 18. By increasing the minimum wage, this allows families and individuals to receive more money and be able to pay for food, shelter, and their children's education. 2) The minimum wage is supposed to be much higher than it is now. If the minimum wage had tracked U.S. productivity gains since 1968, it would be $21.72 an hour (4). This differs greatly with our current $7.25 federal minimum wage. By not raising the minimum wage, it is swindling workers and laborers of the monetary compensation they deserve for their efforts. 3) Raising the minimum wage would reduce crime. As of right now, the top fifth of US families control 89% of all wealth in the US (5), leaving the remaining four fifths of the population to split the remainder among themselves. It is a logical assumption that this wealth inequality produces crime as impoverished individuals might have to resort to extra-legal means to gain money, such as burglary or drug-dealing. Raising the minimum wage would help to reduce this wealth gap and subsequently reduce crime. 4) Women, especially women of color, are most affected by the minimum wage. (6) Women are more likely to hold a minimum-wage job than their male counterparts, studies show. In 2011, 63% of all minimum-wage jobs were held by women. Raising the minimum wage would therefore benefit women significantly, directly or indirectly. 5) Having such a low minimum wage actually costs the government (and taxpayers) money. Going back to the McDonald's example, I said that McDonald's experienced a $1.5 billion profit in 2013 (1). This is close to the $1.2 billion taxpayers shell out each year to help pay public assistance to the McDonald's workforce, who do not receive enough money from their salary to pay for all their expenses. The public assistance came in the form of welfare, food stamps, Medicaid, and other federal programs. McDonald's isn't the only company whose workers need this--the employees of other chain fast-food places such as KFC, Taco Bell, Subway, Burger King, Sonic, Domino's, and Wendy's all need billions of dollars in welfare just to cover the costs of their lives. By raising the minimum wage, the government would be saving these billions of dollars to be given to a better cause because the workers would now be able to independently support themselves. Sources: (1) http://www.huffingtonpost.com... (2) http://thinkprogress.org... (3) http://www.feedingamerica.org... (4) http://www.bloombergview.com... (5) http://www.pewresearch.org... (6) https://www.americanprogressaction.org...