Introduction to Sociology

Watch It

Watch as Dr. Ann Huff Stevens, Director of the Center for Poverty Research and Chairperson of Economics at UC Davis, describes one way to address poverty
among children and to reduce its long-term effects.
https://youtu.be/fADKBjpWoh

Should We Raise the Minimum Wage?

In 2001, Barbara Ehrenreich published Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America in which she conducted an experiment by working a series of minimum wage jobs in three states and documenting her experiences. She focused especially on the challenges facing women among the working poor, who often hold the types of “service” jobs she herself sought out and analyzed.
A tenth anniversary edition was published in 2011, and Ehrenreich followed up with many of the minimum wage workers she had met a decade before during her participant observation research. In this edition she writes “In what has become a familiar pattern, the government defunds services that might help the poor while ramping up law enforcement. Shut down public housing, then make it a crime to be homeless. Generate no public-sector jobs, then penalize people for falling into debt. The experience of the poor, and especially poor people of color, comes to resemble that of a rat in a cage scrambling to avoid erratically administered electric shocks. And if you should try to escape this nightmare reality into a brief, drug-induced high, it’s ‘gotcha’ all over again, because that of course is illegal too.”
In the 2014 State of the Union Address, President Obama called on Congress to raise the national minimum wage, and then signed an executive order doing exactly that for individuals working on new federal service contracts. However, Congress did not pass legislation to change the national minimum wage for all workers. This has proved controversial, with various economists taking different sides on the issue, and with public protests being staged by several groups of minimum-wage workers, often with the assistance of unions and other advocates.
Opponents of raising the minimum wage argue that some workers would get larger paychecks while others would lose their jobs, and companies would be less likely to hire new workers because of the increased cost of paying them (Bernstein 2014; cited in CNN).
Proponents of raising the minimum wage contend that some job loss would be greatly offset by the positive effects on the economy of low-wage workers having more income (Hassett 2014; cited in CNN). In 2018, Amazon raised the minimum wage for its employees to $15 an hour, doubling the federal rate and resulting in higher wages for its 250,000 workers (plus an additional 100,000 seasonal employees).[7]
Sociologists may also consider the minimum wage issue from differing perspectives. How much of an impact would a minimum wage raise have for a single mother? Some might study the economic effects, such as her ability to pay bills and keep food on the table. Others might look at how reduced economic stress could improve family relationships. Some sociologists might research the impact on small business owners. These could all be examples of public sociology, a branch of sociology that strives to bring sociological dialogue to public forums. The goals of public sociology are to increase understanding of the social factors that underlie social problems and to assist in finding solutions. Ehrenreich’s book is a compelling example of public sociology. According to Michael Burawoy (2005), the challenge of public sociology is to engage multiple publics in multiple ways.