Analyzing Context

This post is to take a step back and analyze the context of the controversy and look at the big picture. I will do this by answering 7 questions from the book Writing Public Lives.

Bottai, Sean. Reading the Context of Your Public Debate.  

1. What are the key perspectives in the controversy?

The main perspectives mainly come from the low-wage workers and the companies that hire a large amount of low-wage workers. The low-wage workers feel that they cannot make enough money to live on while being paid minimum wage, therefore want to raise the minimum wage. The other school of thought thinks that if the minimum wage is raised, companies won't be able to afford to hire as many people and have to lay people off, resulting in less jobs and the opposite of what was intended. There is an in between view that thinks that if the minimum wage is raised in increments so that the companies can adjust, there wouldn't be as many layoffs.

2. What are the major disagreements in the controversy?

People disagree with raising the minimum wage because they think that it will result in less employment because businesses won't be able to pay as many people as they did before. Also, the people who are against increasing the minimum wage believe that as the wage increases, so will prices through inflation, so it would be as if they were being paid just as much as before.

3. What are possible points of agreement?

Both sides recognize that something needs to be done to help those who are not making enough money to live on. But that is the extent of agreement.

4. What are the ideology differences?

This is an economical issue. There are several economic ideologies that are behind the beliefs. While neither of the opinions are extreme economic ideologies, they do lean to one or the other. The two main ones are capitalism and socialism. Not raising the minimum wage leans towards the capitalism- wanting government to step back and let the economy work itself out. Hiking up the minimum wage leans towards socialism- the government should control all parts of the economy.

5. What specific actions does each perspective ask their audience to take?

The capitalism asks people to disagree with the minimum wage increase. The socialism asks their audience to agree with increasing the minimum wage.

6. What perspectives are helpful for my own opinion?

I think it is helpful to know what it's like to work for minimum wage and also running a company. I have both of these perspectives to help me in making my opinion.

7. What perspective will be the biggest threat to my argument?

The biggest threat is probably other countries that have raised their minimum wage higher but haven't seen the negative effects that I'm claiming.


Reflection:

I read Casey and Mira's posts on Analyzing Context. Mira did a great job of identifying the key schools of thought. She was very thorough in her answers. Casey did a pretty thorough job as well. I was slightly confused by the arguments though. I didn't understand why there was no middle ground. Comparing our answers, I did a thorough job on some questions and others are shorter and to the point.  Neither of their topics were even close to economics.