Article Review
Article Review
The topic of the article is “The Pay is Too Damn Low”. The article is written by James Surowiecki and appeared on his column-The Financial Page in the New Yorker onAugust 12, 2013.James Surowiecki writes regular articles on business and finance and works at The New Yorker as a writer.Surowiecki's business and finance articles have appeared in many publications which include The New York Times, Artforum, Slate, The Motley Fool and Wall Street Journal.
The article aims to support increasing the welfare of low-earning workers as well as increasing their pay. It does not, however, support increasing the wages of workers in fast-food restaurants and retail shops at the expense of the companies. Fast food companies and retail chains make very little profit and increasing the minimum wage will only reduce their profits or drive them into losses. He brings out this point very clearly.
He ends the article by comparing the fast-food jobs in the Netherland and Germany with those found in the U.S. He observes that they are also not well paying but their welfare is higher than the respective jobs in the U.S. He supports the idea of increasing the minimum wage but this has to be done hand in hand with increasing the welfare of the workers.
The article is well presented with appropriate examples to match the author’s ideas and beliefs.The author has managed to highlight the plight of both the fast food and retail chains as well as their workers. He has justified the plan of Congress to increase the minimum wage and has also supported the plans to improve the welfare of the workers, ObamaCare being a case in point.He has also noted the failure of the U.S. to create middle-class jobs for the increasing number of educates and skilled employees. This is especially so among the key sectors like manufacturing and production.
I am pleased with this article for two main reasons: the author supports the minimum wage increase and more importantly he defends the employers who are mostly overlooked in matters of wages and their implication on the profitability of the companies.
References
James Surowiecki. (2013). Retrieved from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Surowiecki
