Theoretical Approaches

In my last blog I touched upon the ways that different public advocacy groups advocate the issue on raising or not raising the minimum wage to the public.  In my previous blog that main organization that I talked about was NELP( the national employment law project). NELP promotes polices that strengthen jobs, help unemployed workers and create job. I also talked about republicans and democrats  whom are are or against the wage.   There are many different ways to go about approaching the public and providing the best insight while in lightening them with information. 

Elizabeth Warren is a senator for Massachusetts and is also a member of the Democratic Party. Warren believes  that the minimum wage should be changed to $22 dollars an hour if would have kept up with history. Warren stated "If we starting in 1960 and we said that as productivity goes up, that is as workers are producing more, then the minimum wage is going to go up the same...then the minimum wage today would be about $22 an hour." Warren uses history to back up her evidence and uses evidence of the past to try and reach her audiance she mainly tries to focus on facts and what is known to be true. 

Persuasion is constantly surrounding us thanks to Aristotle and Plato. Campinas and persuasive messages are almost constantly surrounding us. Plato's believes that humans do not see truth directly and used dialogic approach to purse the truths. He believes that truth is something that is arrived at through dialogue.  I believe that NELP uses this theoretical approach because they  use dialogue to answer questions from the opposing views side to persuade their public and allows the public to understand both views of the argument. NELP seeks the interest of their listeners and targets its main audience of the people who work at places like Dunkin Donuts, Pizza Hut, Walmart because these people are there target audience and it is the people that the minimum wage is mainly effecting. NELP tries to resolve disagreement by educating the public by doing campings all around the country about both sides of the spectrum. NELP has the interest of the people in mind  and urges the public to show up at town hall meetings, call the congress' office and write a letter to the newspaper's editor because the more the word is out there, the more likely it will be hear. I believe that NELP uses Plato's dialogic approach to reach their audience because they want to establish truth and they make there arguments by reason. NELP's facts are clearly advocated and their values are credible.Like Plao, NELP favors truth by cross examining both sides of the argument which makes them more credible.

After look at all the theoretical approaches I realized what ways work best make arguments to people is through the truth and what is best for them because it makes you more credible.

Minimum Wage and the Public

The controversy that I will discuss in my term paper is the controversy that President Obama sparked at the recent State of the Union Address.  President Obama called for  raising the  federal minimum wage to $9.00 per hour. The controversy over the minimum wage has two sides that are both very strong opinionated about their views. There are two main public advocacy groups who both have different opinions on the issue of what the wage should be and both are making movements.

The National Employment Law Project (NELP) is an advocacy group that is working to restore the promise of economic opportunity in the economy.  NELP owns the website raise the minimum wage, where they share their new campaigns to raise the minimum wage. They work with advocate groups of the state and nation to rebuild the minimum wage in the United States. NELP is a partner to the national minimum wage movement and help develop new ways to raise wage standards at state, federal and local levels by designing new polices.  There slogan is “rebuilding an economy that works for all of us”, and there main goal is to help America’s economy.  George Miller, an advocate for NELP, introduced the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013 which would raise the federal minimum wage by 2015 to $10.10 in order to restore the value of the federal minimum wage (http://www.raisetheminimumwage.org). There are many other public advocacy groups  for this issue and another one being Let Justice Roll Living Wage Campaign. Let Justice Roll's slogan is “a job should keep you out of poverty, not keep you in it.” This organization has over 100 members in the organization and their goal is to raise the minimum wage to a living wage by educating the public the link between poverty and wages. Let Justice Roll has played a huge part in raising the minimum wage in 18 states (http://letjusticeroll.org). Along with these advocacy groups there are many more who all have the same goal in mind, to raise the federal minimum wage. 

On the other hand, the Conservative Lobby Group is against the push to raise the wage. The American Legislative exchange council (ALEC) introduced 67 laws in 25 states trying to reduce the minimum wage and stop creation of minimum wage laws in cities. ALEC's  main goals are to repeal, suspend and weaken state minimum wage laws.  ALEC has worked to repeal the state minimum wage laws  and ALEC believes that NELP portrays unfair views on ALEC. ALEC is not against employees they just think that the market should command the wages. According to NELP, ALEC has worked to repeal the state minimum wage laws and prevent the establishment of local living wage. 

I believe that for both advocacy groups struggle on impacting how the issue is debated. There are certain boundaries and morals that you have to be careful not to step on. I think the minimum wage is a moral issue and involves a difference of beliefs not preferences.  It is hard to say who is right and who is wrong. I do believe that the minimum wage should be raised but I also believe that it is hard to advocate for that because you do not want to get in the way of peoples morals.  I think it leads to a moral issue because are we really paying our lowest paid workers what they deserve? Or are we robbing them from what they are worth?

New study by national employment law project documents ALEC’s attack on wages. PRWatch.org. Retrieve from http://www.prwatch.org