One More: Teddy and the Mininum Wage
August 27, 2009
I just could not resist posting this. We need a fighter like this in the health care reform battle this fall:
Advertisement
26 Comments
Comments are closed.
Catholic perspectives on culture, society, and politics
Blog Associations
Site Counter
Ad Free
Mark – if only there were more Democrats like this!
My more cynical side sees a Republican Party covered in insurance-industry pocket lint; the Democrats less so, but possibly enough to have a better-than-even chance of derailing a public option (and thus real, lasting reform.)
We’ll see.
“When does the greed stop?”
“Why the distain for working Americans?”
“What is it about working men and women you find so offensive?”
We have lost a senator who understood the dignity of labor.
The most terrible terms I come across are “low-skilled labor’ and “unskilled labor”, whenever they are used to somehow downplay that there is work that society needs done and that the workers who perform these tasks deserve to have a reward commensurate with their dignity as laborers.
It’s too bad that Senator Kennedy’s economic understanding didn’t match his lung capacity.
Actually, his economic understanding was just fine. Thankfully, he didn’t rely on simplistic Econ 101 nostrums.
“Wanted or unwanted, I believe that human life, even at its earliest stages, has certain rights which must be recognized — the right to be born, the right to love, the right to grow old.”
“When history looks back to this era it should recognize this generation as one which cared about human beings enough to halt the practice of war, to provide a decent living for every family, and to fulfill its responsibility to its children from the very moment of conception.”
–Ted Kennedy, 1971
For BA, I think his position is terribly wrong and I think it would have terrible consequences for the working poor. But I don’t doubt his sincerity, misguided as his thinking is.
But I remember the minimum wage debate the clip shows. The Republicans did not take the BA/Cato viewpoint (at least if we believe their public statements). Most of them never attacked nor dissented from the underlying rationale for a minimum wage. They just sought to hold it at a measly $5.15/hr. That was greed. it was destain. Is was offensive. And it denied the dignity of labor.
Minimum wage hurts the poorest of the poor.
Notice none of them ever stop the hurt by giving it back!
“I was unaware of any negative connotation” — Rep. Lynn Jenkins (R-KS), apologizing for using the term “great white hope” at a recent town hall (Lawrence Journal-World).
Kurt,
You can’t give back what you didn’t even get in the first place. If the minimum wage does increase unemployment (and contrary to MM’s comment most economists agree that it does) then the minimum wage hurts the poorest of the poor* not by giving them more money, but by preventing them from being employed at all.
*Granted, most of those making the minimum wage are teenagers or otherwise aren’t the primary source of income for their household, and so aren’t properly described as being the poorest of the poor. But some are.
BA,
I’m not disputing your theory. Laws against prostitution increase unemployment.
Justice requires that labor has dignity. An employer who takes from a man the brawn of his back and the sweat of his brow and from that, even from an unskilled worker, cannot organize labor so that the worker adds enough value to pay him a living wage, that boss has failed in his duty.
Conservatives love to talk about capitalism’s ‘creative destruction.’ Well, let me be blunt. If you can’t organize labor so it adds enough value to pay a man more than $5.15 an hour, your business should fail. That is creative destruction.
Actually, the research points to very minor negative effects on employment, and more among younger than prime age workers. In fact, most of the labor market protections in Europe (the ones that the free marketers hate) do not effect prime age employment.
But let’s not get side tracked. The real issue is that, in Catholic social teaching, workers should be paid a living wage and the market-derived wage (in the absence of labor bargaining power) can represent an unjust outcome. And given the trends in inequality over the past 30 years, combined with stagnant median real wages, it would be hard to make the case that the free market is giving rise to just wages.
If you can’t organize labor so it adds enough value to pay a man more than $5.15 an hour, your business should fail.
This is one of those statements that sounds righteous until you look beneath the surface. If an employer decides to let a worker go because it’s not worth it to pay him $7 an hour it is the worker, not the employer, who suffers. He’s the one who is punished by the minimum wage, regardless of where your rage is directed.
I am for the dignity of labor (that’s why I favor the EITX, among other things). But CST makes clear that unemployment can be as much a threat to human dignity as low wage work. As Pope Benedict says in Caritas in Veritate: “Being out of work or dependent on public or private assistance for a prolonged period undermines the freedom and creativity of the person and his family and social relationships, causing great psychological and spiritual suffering.”
Actually, the research points to very minor negative effects on employment, and more among younger than prime age workers.
The minimum wage (even after the increase) gives only a small increase in wages to a small percentage of the population, most of whom are young rather than prime age. So it’s hardly surprising that the aggregate effect on employment is small and concentrated among young rather than prime age workers (of course, if you happen to be one of the people disemployed the effect for you is profound).
If the market doesn’t ensure everyone adequate wages, this is a reason for doing something. But I don’t see how it’s a reason for doing something counter-productive.
Blackadder – even if minimum wage increases unemployment, that doesn’t really address whether it is necessary and just. Any harm done can be mitigated in other ways than throwing people to the wolv- er, “free market.”
One of the good things the minimum wage does is exert pressure further up the income scale – especially wages near, but not at, the mimimum.
If the minimum wage goes up by a quarter, say, then the guy who got a quarter raise from the old minimum wage three months ago can make a good case to his boss that he should get a raise to a quarter over the new minimum.
ANYthing that will empower workers, that will give them more power at the negotiating table, is something that will increase fairness in the current system.
Business, especially BIG business, has too much power in our current economic set-up; the government can be a necessary counter-balance on behalf of workers.
Plus – There are all kinds of ways to mitigate any small harm done to employment levels by a raise in the minimum wage. How about having public works projects? Maybe repairing all this broken infrastructure, for example? Building a network of high-speed rail for the Eastern US, Midwestern industrial states, and West Coast? Building massive solar and wind electrical generating capacity to wean us off oil once and for all?
One of the good things the minimum wage does is exert pressure further up the income scale – especially wages near, but not at, the mimimum.
Whenever you see statistics on the effect of the minimum wage this typically includes the so-called spillover effects for people above the minimum who get a small boost nonetheless because companies want to maintain their wage structure. All the negative effects of the minimum wage are also present for this group, so if a minimum wage was a bad idea without considering spillover effects it will be a bad idea if you consider them. Even counting spillover plus those directly effected you’re still only talking about less than 4% of the workforce, most of whom are teenagers and other second-wage earners.
There are also distortionary effects that come from the minimum wage, as workers are drawn from more productive sectors of the economy to less productive ones. There’s some evidence, for example, that raising the minimum wage can increase the dropout rate for highschool students, as the alternatives to getting your diploma become more attractive.
There are all kinds of ways to mitigate any small harm done to employment levels by a raise in the minimum wage. How about having public works projects?
If this really worked you wouldn’t need a minimum wage, as private businesses would have to raise wages to keep all their workers from signing up for the government. I wouldn’t hold my breath.
If you want workers to be paid more, making them more attractive to employers really ought to be the focus. If you’re going to have the government directly involved, wage supplements (like the EITC) would seem to be preferable to make work projects. In either case, though, the minimum wage will end up being either superfluous or harmful.
Minimum wages aren’t there to be economically efficient, BA. They’re there because the government has a role in promoting justice.
Look, BA: if you know (or can easily find out if you lifted a finger to find out) that the minimum wage needed by a guy to provide a minimum level of subsistence to himself is $11.50 an hour, but you pay him $8 an hour, you’re committing an act of injustice.
Having a law in place that sets a floor under wages addresses that injustice, but more generally provides for an atmosphere of fairness and decency in society – “Go ahead and make money, but keep it fair, folks.”
Now, if it turns out that there are unintended consequences, then you find a way to mitigate those consequences – in a way that, again, is consistent with the demands of justice.
It occurs to me that our disagreement is actually ideological and not practical: you seem to object in principle to government “interference” in the activity of business; I see such interference as (maybe unfortunately?) necessary in order to assure that the demands of economic justice are met.
Minimum wages aren’t there to be economically efficient, BA. They’re there because the government has a role in promoting justice.
Look, BA: if you know (or can easily find out if you lifted a finger to find out) that the minimum wage needed by a guy to provide a minimum level of subsistence to himself is $11.50 an hour, but you pay him $8 an hour, you’re committing an act of injustice.
Having a law in place that sets a floor under wages addresses that injustice, but more generally provides for an atmosphere of fairness and decency in society – “Go ahead and make money, but keep it fair, folks.”
Now, if it turns out that there are unintended consequences, then you find a way to mitigate those consequences – in a way that, again, is consistent with the demands of justice.
It occurs to me that our disagreement is actually ideological and not practical: you seem to object in principle to government “interference” in the activity of business; I see such interference as (maybe unfortunately?) necessary in order to assure that the demands of economic justice are met.
OH! You’re my new favorite blogger fyi
It is perfectly just to reward more skilled work at ahigher wage than less skilled work (while respecting the dignity of labor). Among the skills a boss should have for his higher wage is being able to figure out how to organize labor into jobs with at least minimal dignity. If he cannot do that, his business should fail and his share of the market picked up by a more skilled boss who can organize labor in a way that does not offend human dignity.
If a boss can fires employees because he is unable to pay them a more than $5.15/hour, you say it is not employer who suffers. One must wonder what this work was that the boss can do without and not suffer in any way.
It occurs to me that our disagreement is actually ideological and not practical: you seem to object in principle to government “interference” in the activity of business
Matt, with all due respect, this isn’t a reasonable interpretation of my position. If I say that government shouldn’t do X to help the poor because X will, in fact, hurt the poor, but instead should do Y, then it’s not reasonable to respond by saying to yourself “huh, I guess he just objects in principle to the government doing anything.”
It will only hurt the poor if nothing else is done to mitigate that effect, BA.
The basic question is really “What is the purpose of work?”
An excellent question in anticipation of Labor Day weekend, coming up next week!
This should become a topic of a post here sometime next week.
It seems that you are all interested in the politics of minimum wage. Right now the Asia Floor Wage is fighting for a minimum wage in the Asian garment industry. A minimum wage has far LARGER implications there, and all it would take is the consumer a dollar more for exploited workers to receive a decent salary that may just come CLOSE to providing their basic neccesities. Please, check out the website and have a look! asiafloorwage.wordpress.com.