The big debate when we finally get over the non-event of Ukraine is about the minimum wage. The basic existing labor situation in this country is that productivity has risen amazingly in the last two decades but salaries haven’t. One recognized organization, which follows this kind of thing has estimated that if salaries had followed productivity, the minimum wage would now be $18.00 per hour. Why hasn’t that happened? Maybe because the profits from increased productivity have all gone to CEOs and shareholders and none have been redistributed to labor. This is the height of inequality. Even right wing wank, Bill Kristol sees this and says that we have to find a way to reward labor. And strangely enough he says it should be done with taxes. He wants to expand the income tax credit so that the burden of the added income to lower end laborers is born by everyone instead of just those who are cheating their workers out of a fair wage, the same people who will benefit from the added productivity. Sure, Bill, why should the billionaires pay for their workers when we can spread it over the entire tax base?
Despite all this the Senate avoided a vote on the minimum wage this week and walked away, basically ignoring this overwhelmingly important problem.
It seems that the fact of increased wages helping everyone should be self evident, but the oligarchs have immediately come out with the figure of 500,000 jobs that would be lost if we increase the minimum wage not to $18 but only to $10.10 an hour.This may be an accurate figure, because there are always shortsighted idiots who would rather stifle production than shell out a tiny fraction of their profits to the people who make those profits possible, but that number is indeed ingenuous and certainly fails to paint a true picture, because it doesn’t take into account the 900,000 workers who would be pulled out of poverty and the 16.5 million who would benefit from these increased wages. Those numbers would result in increased consumerism that would come from the added wages because as any economist understands, people in lower end jobs who are close to poverty don’t save. They spend all their income, mostly because they have to, in order to survive. This will, in the long run add jobs to fill the need for goods and services, that will be the result of added spending, creating demand for consumer products that will force employers to increase their labor force to meet the demand. This will offset the initial loss of jobs created by management too greedy and too stupid to share the rewards of their company’s profits. Oh yeah, it will also increase profits.
The minimum for tip workers is $2.13 an hour, the same as it was over two decades ago. That’s disgraceful.
Increasing the minimum wage for employees at Walmart, will raise the cost of a DVD by one cent, one single penny. Does anyone think that this added cost will keep any consumer away? And if they absorbed the one penny cost will it break any of the four billionaire Walton family members? If you think so, you are deranged.
But just this week, as stated above, the senate rolled up its rug and went home without considering the minimum wage. It has never been considered by the Republican House. It was our senators way of saying F**K YOU to the low-end wage earner. Maybe those people who were told to take a walk by the senate will remember who they should not vote for in the net election.
Regardless of what anyone says or how logical the argument, there are still those out there on the right who will have some kind of screwed up reason for not raising the minimum wage. So why even bother to fight that fight. Why not go all the way to the other extreme and fight the fight for a concept that’s actually somewhat extreme even by liberal standards.
What I’m talking about here, is a Basic Income for everyone. That’s right, a basic number that would be paid to every man woman and child in the country, just because they exist. Yes, I can feel right wing sphincters closing down all over the country. Two friends of mine up in Warren, CT just threw up their breakfasts but, though I’m sure you have never heard about it, half of all Canadians want it, the frugal Swiss have a referendum on it and many economists think it is the real roadmap out of universal poverty.
The idea isn’t new, of course. Both Martin Luther King and Richard Nixon, yes that Richard Nixon, supported versions of it as far back as the 1970’s. America’s the richest country in the world but despite that, there are huge pockets of poverty that have existed as long as has the nation. We can debate the causal reasons for this poverty until our tongues fall out, but the immediate reason is lack of money in the hands of those who need it most. Lynn Paramore of The Campaign for American’s has come up with a number of reasons why this concept is a good idea and why it would help. Now before all you redneck gunslingers start popping your corks and screaming “socialist,” just sit back and try to consider the reality to which I speak.
Social security and Medicare have arguably been the most successful government programs for reducing poverty in American history. Social Security has kept millions above the poverty line and has done it without government help. In fact, if the government would keep from illegally using social security money to pay for other projects, it would be safe and secure all the way into the next century. So why not expand that program to include the rest of the people in the country? If everyone in the country including children, received $3,000 per year we could cut poverty in half. To make it work you would have to give it to everyone, whether they needed it or not. This would insure that there was no question of anyone avoiding work to keep the benefit because they would get it whether they worked or not and regardless of how much they made. If there was no penalty for having it, there would be no reason to stop earning other money and it wouldn’t otherwise affect the work force.
In the 1970’s the small Canadian town of Dauphin started an experimental program called Mincom. Everyone in town was given a cash benefit for the duration of the program. It worked, it kept all the residents of Dauphin above the poverty line but it had other major benefits too. Healthcare went up, education was upgraded and family care was improved.
The great driver of any capitalist economy is demand. People with no money don’t create demand. When ordinary people have money in their pockets they spend it on the necessities of life. When rich people have extra money in their pockets they invest it because they have already satisfied the needs and wants of their lives. Rich people getting more money does not drive demand, poor people getting new money does. A basic guaranteed income would drive demand because it would be spent immediately, not saved or invested.
The Right will immediately counter with the augment that if people are guaranteed an income they will get lazy and no loner try to earn a living. It’s the same argument we have heard for years about unemployment insurance and food stamps, in fact any benefit program that tries to help the poor. Starve them to death and they’ll work hard and more importantly cheap. That’s the motto of the oligarch. But for the most part, it’s pure, unadulterated bullshit. The fact is that poor people are just as greedy as rich people and given the chance to make more money, they will take it. Sure there are always a few malingerers but they are a very small percentage and they actually beat the system for a very small number when compared to what one billionaire steals from the tax rolls by means of favorable tax rulings that his lobbyists had procured from well bribed congressmen.
During the test program in Dauphin, more kids finished high school, more adults pursued education, student achieved higher scores, fewer people visited the hospital, mental illness decreased and the number of work related injuries went down.
Of course the big question is who will pay for it? I’m not an economist but it seems that a combination of additional payroll taxes and the added revenues from sales taxes on the increased demand caused by people with money in their pockets could be a start, There’s also the much named per trade tax on Wall Street trades and possibly some kind of National Lottery that will replace online gambling or maybe even casino gambling. If we gave each person in the United States $3,000 per year it would cost someplace in the neighborhood of a trillion bucks. That’s a lot of money but at least it would have a return, as opposed to the trillions we threw away in our phony wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Oh yes, and those of you who are jumping up and down, chanting socialism, don’t forget that any form of government that does anything for the people of any country it serves, has more social programs than you can count. Without socialism there would be no government and without government there would be chaos. So get over it.