In the You-Tube debate this past week the candidates were asked if they would work for the minimum wage. Several who were wealthy of course agreed. Dodd complained about two young daughters whose college would be paid for. Biden complained about a net worth of ONLY $70,000-150,000 after being on the Federal payroll as a Senator since being elected in 1972 at age 29. Bill Richardson advocated a minimum for teachers of 40,000, which while significantly higher than beginning pay for many teachers, is also less than current entry salary in major metropolitan areas, where even that much is insufficient for a family or housing.
Derrick Jackson of the Boston Globe attempts to put the issue into context in an op ed this morning. Entitled An unlivable minimum, it is - as all of Jackson's work - well worth the time to read. I am going to quote the context he provides of the meaning of that wage, and then offer some remarks of my own.
Jackson refers to figures from the Economic policy institute to provide some context as to the value of the minimum wage historically. IN 1956 it was 56% of the national average wage (how that is determined is not described in the op ed). In 2006 it was down to 31%, and even when it goes to 7.25 it will only be 41% of the project average of $17,86, which itself is probably insufficient in many parts of the nation.
Jackson spoke to many experts that make the point clearly"
Wage fairness advocate Beth Shulman, author of "The Betrayal of Work," said even if the minimum wage were $9 or $10 an hour and indexed for inflation, which many policy experts and the Democratic candidates advocate as a meaningful bare minimum, "No one can live on that in America."Assuming a rent of $1,666, the average costs for a family of four in Boston is 50,000/year, and at 2040 hours 10/hour is less than half that - even with both parents working full time it is not enough.
Jackson puts all of this in context by calulating the hours necessary at 5.85 to purchase basic items, starting with 1 hour for 2 gallons of gasoline, reminding us how many who will read his column would think nothing of dropping that amount in a stop at Starbucks. He then uses prices at his local supermarket to make the point clearly, and repeatedly. Let me offer the rest of the column to illustrate:
Half an hour for a 5-pound bag of white rice.More than half an hour to afford a pound of butter.
More than half an hour for a loaf of white bread and a 16-ounce jar of peanut butter at $1.88.
More than half an hour for a 1.81-pound family-pack of pork chops.
45 minutes for a gallon of milk.
55 minutes for 1.52 pounds of beef chuck on sale.
A full hour to afford a nearly 5-pound family-pack of chicken drumsticks or thighs.
A full hour to afford a pound of fresh salmon.
A full hour to throw a 1-pound bag of frozen vegetables, a pound of fresh tomatoes, and a bag of carrots into the cart.
Biden is worried about his net worth being as low as $70,000. At $5.85 an hour, it would take nearly 12,000 hours, or nearly six years, to earn that amount. Even six rolls of toilet paper requires a half-hour of work at minimum wages. Shulman is right. No one should live like that in America.
Let me repeat that final line before I offer my own thoughts: No one should live like that in America
We have heard some argue for a sub-minimum wage, say for high school students entering the work force on a part-time basis. Others have complained that if the minimum wage is raised workers will be laid off, or in some cases replaced by machinery. Still more complain that things will become too expensive for the average consumer. Many try to argue that most who work at minimum wage are NOT supporting families. But remember what I said about AVERAGE wage, that even at two times that rate (both parents working) a family of four has trouble making ends meet in major metropolitan areas.
Hillary Clinton had said that Congress should not get its pay raised until the minimum wage was raised. I remember that more than a year ago I proposed to Jim Webb, while he was in his primary campaign, that at a minimum the ratio between Congressional pay and the minimum wage should be tied to its historical median value: that would rase the minimum wage now to 10/hour, and even that is not enough.
We sometimes complain that we see immigrant families living in overcrowded apartments, perhaps 9-10 people in a 2-3 bedroom apartment. Given what they are paid, they often have no other choices. We argue that we should raise standards so that all students are prepared for college, but absent free tuition families whose wage earners make minimum wage or even up to twice that have little hope of being able to set aside the funds to help their children with post-secondary education. If the students while in secondary schoolhave to work to help the family meet current needs, their academic performance inevitably declines. If even community college tuition continues to rise, and the Federal government continues to cut access to Pell grants, and allows for-profit lenders to get rich from Federally subsidized loans, one can see how the hopelessness which many confront can overwhelm any desire to work towards a future that is financially impossible.
And then there is health care. Our idiotic president thinks the answer is for people to go to emergency rooms, where ultimately we all pay the exhorbitant costs through our insurance for conditions that could have been either treated far less expensively earlier had the families had medical insurance, or even prevented - with health care, exercise, proper diet, all of which become difficult if not impossible even with the equivalent of three wage earners at minimum wage.
Our politicians bear responsibility for this situation - they have not addressed minimum wage for far too long, and still have addressed neither universal medical coverage nor even universal medical access. And as I know from my own recent expenses and from the tragic death of a young man in the County in which I teach, dental care is equally important, and almost totally unaddressed.
But we are also responsible. And in the process we are also economically foolish. We are often driven in our purchasing decisions by price, or by the prestige of what we purchase. In neither case are we looking at the costs incurred in making and transporting those products. If more of our workers earned more, they would spend more, pay more in taxes, and ultimately our society would not only be more equitable, it would be healthier and more productive. As little economic instruction as our students do get, these issues are never part of that learning.
We shift costs of our society from those who can afford to pay them onto either the society as a whole (not properly charging corporate interests for environmental despoiling and pollution) or onto those least able to afford them (think about locations of toxic waste dumps, incinerators, power plants, prisons, mountainside removal for coal mining, and the like).
Jackson is right, the issue is far more than raising the minimum wage. And he is limited in the space of one op-ed in how far he can explore the relevant issues. The comparison of hours worked to basic purchases is a powerful indictment.
But it is not enough. And if we do not see how all of these issues - health, environment, education, national security - are interconnected, especially through the idea of economic fairness, we will never be able to properly address the issues that not only confront us, but have the potential of destroying the future for this nation as a democratic republic. If the economic inequity becomes too great, those with economic power will continue to further remove themselves from the lives of ordinary folks, living in their gated communities, protected by their private security forces.
Henry David Thoreau once wrote that
Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.. But if the desperation becomes too great, the hope for song lost, then the promise of our Preamble becomes impossible, for we will no longer be able to "insure domestic tranquility" because we will NOT "promote the general welfare" because there will be no "blessings of liberty" to secure "for ourselves and our posterity." There will be no justice. We are far too close to such a point already.
We must demand of those who would seek to lead us that they address ALL of these issues. It is not merely a question of those who are poor now. If we do not address the panoply of interrelated issues, there will be no hope of economic improvement, of a positive future, for increasing numbers of Americans. The issue of the future will be merely how quickly each of us - and our progeny - slide further down the economic ladder inot despair and hopelessness.
Peace? In that case, I don't think so.
Essential to our or any nation's survival is equitable compensation for the contributions of members of the market and society. In the United States, this has to now effectively translated into a healthy middle class. A substantial middle class is essential to social stability.
But that equitable distribution requires market maintenance. A bit over a century ago, the concentration of wealth and power was addressed and somewhat mitigated by the mood that generated the Sherman anti-trust act. There subsequently have been other necessary rudder corrections that brought us great social and economic success. But the equity is diminishing again. That decline has accelerated during the past decade. And with it has come the growth of a sub-middle class.
People know when they are being treated fairly. It is self-evident. In any society there are members unfairly treated, but so long as they are in the minority, they can be pacified. If our sub-middle class grows and continues its downward economic spiral, the stage will be set for social upheaval.
This market and society require maintenance now to ensure justice and prevent a justifiable upheaval in an attempt to force equity. Unfortunately, while those kinds of upheavals result in redistributions of wealth, they have not proven that they result in justice and equity; only retribution.
Nowadays the figures show that we are a far more unequal society, with CEOs' incomes and those of Wall Street finaciers grossly inflated to obscene levels, and the lower levels of society including the middle class falling further and further behind--- we are more like a pre-capitalist society now, with a spread worse even than under the Communist system. I do not consider that we live any longer under a true "capitalist" system, but are in transition to a different system, perhaps a mature capitalism or corporatism, which I call corporate feudalism.
The basic philosophy of business/economic organization has changed. Today's dominant motive is completely that of the bean counters' bottom line for everything and everybody in every relationship, including that of sports stars and health care--- even when it is inappropriate. The dogma of an unregulated "free market" solving all of society's needs is a fraud, since mega corporations seek every political advantage they can wring out in order to dominate a market, distort the market, and increase profits, no matter what the social costs, which are generally ignored and ultimately passed on to society in general--- the mega corporations are in fact parasites.
This philosophy is the philosophy of the Republicans, who have married it with a virulent evangelicalism as a matter of convenience. It is this philosophy which has to be replaced as a guiding light in politics in addition to getting rid of the Republicans in government--- at every level.
Those in the the more powerful business industries and firms have been able to leverage their donations to legislators that show favoritism to their cause. That favoritism in legislation, leads to increased wealth and increased leverage. The cycle perpetuates at an alarming rate until this point in history where it is almost an anomaly to experience a "clean" politician. The presidential candidates of 2008 are expected to have to raise twice as much as those in 2004 to be truly competitive.
With more leverage for the very wealthy, the bottom and middle of America are left without an advocate for their causes: savings for retirement, avoid bankruptcy from medical bills, afford higher education for their children, keep up with energy prices, fair working conditions and livable wages, high property taxes, and worries of the environment we will leave to our children.
I propose that we end our endless cycle of fundraising and focus on big donors and special interests. Campaign financing is the single most devastating factor in politics today because this leaves the politicians' allegiance in the hands of those with the heavy donations. We should push for public financing.