 The question to raise the minimum wage has been contemplated for years now and there has yet to be a change.  This decision is interesting because many states have already chosen to raise their individual minimum wage regardless of the federal minimum wage.  A decision to raise or lower it would change a lot for people earning and relying on minimum wage.  It could affect their financial status and some of their reliance on the government for federal financial help.  For me this topic is personally interesting because I worked in retail earning minimum wage for almost a year.  When I earned minimum wage it was 7.25 dollars an hour, for a high school kid that didn't have bills to pay and only had to use that money on things I wanted, it was still an extremely small amount of money.  Of course I was only a sales associate, and my manager made more, but she had a family with two kids and had to work everyday of the week to make ends meet with all of her and her families expenses.  If raising the minimum wage means supplying hardworking people like my manager with enough financial support to be able to take a day off from work during the week, than I think that would be a good personal reason to raise it. 

In an article by Jordan Weismann, "Should We Raise The Minimum Wage? 11 Questions and Answers", discusses most of the potential answers someone could ask in this argument and analyses them.  Weismann goes back and forth reasoning on both sides of the argument but ultimately says that it should be raised.  His major argument for not raising it is that most of the people earning minimum wage is not who you think it is; it's teenagers and people under 25 not started in their career path yet.  So if 62% of people earning minimum wage are under 25 years old, then is it worth it to raise the minimum wage if it could risk raising unemployment even the slightest bit.  However, he argues that raising the minimum wage would result in a raise for 11% of the workforce, through predictions on companies that have workers earning minimum wage and people affected by it.  Jordan Weismann is a senior associate editor for The Atlantic, although I couldn't find his qualification on writing on minimum wage, he has written for the Atlantic for years on economic related topics. 

Another article written by Dylan Matthews, "A $15 Minimum Wage Is a Terrible Idea" disputes all claims made by an economist that proposed to raise the wage to 15 dollars an hour.  Matthews' disputes revolved around the central idea that the economist who proposed this was using bias or mischaracterized evidence.  Matthews' cites findings where the evidence used would not make a good supporting case for this economist proposed plan, he asks a series of other economists about the plan and mostly all are in disapproval especially with his supporting claims.  However the author does agree "a mild increase in minimum wage" would be beneficial to the economy, he believes that making the minimum wage 15 dollars an hour is crazy, it is more than double the federal minimum wage right now.  Dylan Matthews is a Harvard graduate with a degree in social and political philosophy, and a prized writer for the Washington post, a major news source.  He won the publishers award from the Washington post in 2013, the year he wrote this article.  

A recent Forbes article discussed a new idea as to why we should raise the minimum wage.  John Harvey writes "The Real Argument For Raising The Minimum Wage" in which he argues that since the raising or lowering of the minimum wage would have no impact on unemployment, the real reason is social.  Harvey's main point is that raising the minimum wage would supply the least powerful people in society with more financial support.  It would help the law do what it is supposed to do: help protect the people in society, especially the least powerful people.  According to Harvey,  since raising the minimum wage wouldn't affect unemployment, it would supply minimum wage earners with more money which they need.  In addition, raising the minimum wage could supply the people earning minimum wage with enough money, where some could stop relying on additional federal financial help, like welfare.  John Harvey is extremely creditable in this topic, he is an economics professor at TCU and has served on the Board of Directors of the International Confederation of Associations for Pluralism of Economics.  
