The proponents of the former viewpoint pose a very simple, but effective argument: if people are not making enough money to have a decent quality of life due to the low minimum wage, the province should raise it. Apart from giving low-earning families a better chance at livelihood, the injection into the economy from the increased income will hopefully create more profit and subsequently more jobs across Ontario. As one anonymous commenter on Twitter had to say, “It’s a matter of simple addition.”

However, those who support the latter viewpoint also make a lot of sense when they claim that raising the minimum wage would actually be harmful to the economy. As the Canadian Federation of Independent Business has estimated, as was noted in The Globe and Mail, “every 10-per-cent hike in minimum wages could trigger up to 321,000 job losses nationally, put cost pressures on smaller businesses and disproportionately hurt students and temporary workers.” Indeed, as another commenter on Twitter appropriately said, “It’s a matter of simple economics.” If employers are forced to increase their costs in employee wages due to an increase in the minimum wage, the basic truth behind the profit motive states that employers would more than likely cut costs, which could involve sacking workers. And as hard as it may be for the individuals who are suffering from the supposed “trap” of the minimum wage, this fact of macroeconomics is a harsh reality — but a reality nonetheless.

At the end of the day however, I am not an economist. As hard as I may have tried to sum up the two sides of the minimum wage debate, and as much truth as there seems to be in both of them, I cannot objectively and confidently state which side is the more correct of the two.

As young people exposed to the adult world of political decisions, my peers and I are often discouraged from the fighting that debates like this one often cause. Although I realize that the democratic debate and political discourse are important for us to function as a society, it is much more important for us to not lose sight of the reason the wage hike was announced in the first place: an interest in social justice, a desire to fight poverty and turn the “minimum” wage into a “living” wage.

(Olivo, 17, is a Grade 12 student at Neil McNeil High School in Toronto.)