Pundits and politicians are always going on about how improving education is the answer to income inequality. They're wrong.
College graduates are significantly more likely to be employed than high school graduates A lot of their jobs used to be performed perfectly well by high school graduates, but so what? If you can get a slightly more intellectual waitperson to serve your yuppie clientele for the same price, you may as well do it. Right?
Back in the old faculty room, it was pretty obvious to everybody that you can't make a silk purse out of sow's ear, nor a Rhodes Scholar out of a horse's ass. Human aptitudes, sadly, tend to follow that old normal curve. There are probable winners, possible winners,and certain losers.
This is not to say that we should not work very hard to improve education, especially to shove more of those nice kids in the middle of the normal curve towards the higher end of the "hump" — and certainly we have to lift a lot of poor kids out of the quicksand of poverty and failure, and give them all the opportunities that might help them.
None of that has anything to do with income inequality.
Nobody should work for poverty wages. Every worker should earn a living wage. Despite the insistence of Tea Party types, the real inequality problem is not a result of "government giveaways" to the poor (mostly children), but because people working full-time (albeit, at times, in several part-time jobs) cannot make ends meet.
The answer is legislating a living wage — at this time, about fifteen bucks an hour — indexed for inflation. Certain businesses will have to spend a lot more on labor. Who will pay for those extra expenses? Well, the rest of us, of course. We won't be able to lay it all on the rich, as much as we might like to do so. Just the same, we'd be spending a lot less to support programs like SNAP (aka food stamps) and Medicaid.
Also, when the people at the bottom get a boost, higher wages trickle up. Okay, that will push prices up — but the people hurt most by inflation (apart from retirees like me) are the bankers. You can be sure the bankers will find a way to deal with inflation, even if it means keeping a bit less of their wealth.
Nobody working full-time ever should have to depend on the social safety net for survival.
Showing posts with label living wage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label living wage. Show all posts
Saturday, December 21, 2013
Thursday, December 5, 2013
$15/hr
They were out there again today, demanding fifteen bucks an hour to work in fast food. The restaurant industry is violently against it, of course, claiming it will raise the price of our burgers and "destroy jobs."
Let's just take a closer look. First of all, fast food workers, these days, probably are not high school students earning a little gas money. Lots of them are adults. Plenty are single mothers, fitting in whatever work they can while their kids are in school. They qualify for food stamps (SNAP) and Medicaid.
That means taxpayers are subsidizing McDonald's, Domino's, Burger King, and other multibillion dollar corporations that contribute to obesity, diabetes, and other conditions that elevate health care costs. If the dollar menu goes to a buck twenty-five, and that results in fewer sales to poor people, we all come out ahead.
Other retail workers are in the same situation. Wal-Mart actually helps its "associates" apply for food stamps and Medicaid; and who's paying for it? We are – the taxpayers.
I'm angry. Are you?
Let's just take a closer look. First of all, fast food workers, these days, probably are not high school students earning a little gas money. Lots of them are adults. Plenty are single mothers, fitting in whatever work they can while their kids are in school. They qualify for food stamps (SNAP) and Medicaid.
That means taxpayers are subsidizing McDonald's, Domino's, Burger King, and other multibillion dollar corporations that contribute to obesity, diabetes, and other conditions that elevate health care costs. If the dollar menu goes to a buck twenty-five, and that results in fewer sales to poor people, we all come out ahead.
Other retail workers are in the same situation. Wal-Mart actually helps its "associates" apply for food stamps and Medicaid; and who's paying for it? We are – the taxpayers.
I'm angry. Are you?
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
The Minimum Wage
According to yesterday's Times, there is some pressure building for an increase in the federal minimum wage. Yes, it makes for a nice election year issue; and yes, it stands no chance at all of passing in the House. As you would predict, the United States Chamber of Commerce says it would be a "job killer" in this time of economic weakness.
The Chamber, as usual, is lying. American productivity, at the moment, is the highest it's ever been — which is another way of saying that employers are squeezing as much work out of their employees as those employees conceivably can produce. If the employers want more work done, their only option is to hire more workers. It does not matter if they have to pay an extra two dollars an hour. If they need the work done, they'll hire workers to do it.
When the minimum wage is increased, all lower paid workers tend to earn higher salaries. Their buying power is increased, which creates more demand for goods and services. Business meets that demand by expanding, not by pulling back. Higher demand means more jobs, not fewer.
Might there be price increases due to higher labor costs? Possibly; or, profit margins might get smaller — and it's that second outcome that has the Chamber's knickers in a twist. What the business community (always) fails to see, though, is that smaller profit margins don't mean smaller profits if more product is being sold.
Also, as usual, the hue and cry is about the damage that would be done to "small businesses." Well, thanks to the new JOBS act, we finally know what a "small business" is — a business with revenues up to one billion dollars a year. I think they can survive; and if the local convenience store has to charge two-fifty for a can of Coke instead of two bucks, I think we all can survive that as well — especially if everybody is earning something closer to a living wage.
The Chamber, as usual, is lying. American productivity, at the moment, is the highest it's ever been — which is another way of saying that employers are squeezing as much work out of their employees as those employees conceivably can produce. If the employers want more work done, their only option is to hire more workers. It does not matter if they have to pay an extra two dollars an hour. If they need the work done, they'll hire workers to do it.
When the minimum wage is increased, all lower paid workers tend to earn higher salaries. Their buying power is increased, which creates more demand for goods and services. Business meets that demand by expanding, not by pulling back. Higher demand means more jobs, not fewer.
Might there be price increases due to higher labor costs? Possibly; or, profit margins might get smaller — and it's that second outcome that has the Chamber's knickers in a twist. What the business community (always) fails to see, though, is that smaller profit margins don't mean smaller profits if more product is being sold.
Also, as usual, the hue and cry is about the damage that would be done to "small businesses." Well, thanks to the new JOBS act, we finally know what a "small business" is — a business with revenues up to one billion dollars a year. I think they can survive; and if the local convenience store has to charge two-fifty for a can of Coke instead of two bucks, I think we all can survive that as well — especially if everybody is earning something closer to a living wage.
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