Showing posts with label minimum wage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label minimum wage. Show all posts

Saturday, February 1, 2020

A Solution to "Sh*t-Life Syndrome" in America


by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

I shared on Facebook a recent article at the CounterPunch Website by Bruce E. Levine titled, “Sh*t-Life Syndrome,” Trump Voters, and Clueless Dems. I got back a surprising question from a conservative friend and Trump supporter. He asked, “What is your solution to this problem?

I will offer one solution below, but first, let’s define the problem. You can read the above article for yourself, but the premise of it is stated in the first sentence:

“Getting rid of Trump means taking seriously “sh*t-life syndrome”—and its resulting misery, which includes suicide, drug overdose death, and trauma for surviving communities.”

The author goes on to say,

“The Brookings Institution, in November 2019, reported: “53 million Americans between the ages of 18 to 64—accounting for 44% of all workers—qualify as ‘low-wage.’ Their median hourly wages are $10.22, and median annual earnings are about $18,000… For most of these low-wage workers… “Finding meaning in life is close to impossible; the struggle to survive commands all intellectual and emotional resources.” 



That last statement also explains part of the reason 91.7 million eligible voters didn’t vote in the 2016 election. So many of them are barely hanging on day-to-day. I have written elsewhere that for decades neither political party has addressed the needs of the 45% of all Americans who live below the middle-class. These are the people who stopped voting. Referring to non-voters, I have written elsewhere:

“For too long politics has failed to make any difference in their lives. It doesn't matter which party is in power. Nobody cares about them. For the past 30 years, politicians have only cared about the middle-class or special interest groups. Even after 10% of the voters voted for the first time in the 2016 election, 40% of all eligible voters still didn't vote. We can do better because much of this 40% were once a big part of the Democratic base. We stopped attending to the needs of the poor and working class.”

What is the solution?
No one has all of the solutions figured out, but we can start by valuing everyone who works for a living. We can start by paying the lowest wage workers a living wage for a week’s work. Hear me out.

A living wage is a market-based minimum wage index. It isn’t an arbitrary, one-size-fits-all government number. A living wage respects all regional economic conditions. A living wage in Biloxi would be lower than a living wage in the Bronx because of their different cost of living conditions. A living wage law would require business owners to provide their lowest-paid employees a sufficient wage package for full-time work so that a low wage employee is not dependent on taxpayer assistance for housing, food, essential transportation or medicine. It wouldn’t pay a mortgage, or for vacations or luxury items. It doesn’t replace competitive, merit-based wage compensation for the rest of the experienced or more skilled workforce. It sets a wage floor below which workers financially qualify for public assistance (aid to the working poor). It set the wage minimum at a level that makes an employee marginally self-sufficient and therefore it maintains the dignity of work.

Most people already agree that we must end wasteful taxpayer subsidies to wealthy corporations for all sorts of tax breaks they receive. We should start by ending labor subsidies for low pay workers in America. Let’s end government assistance to the working poor by making Corporations pay their low-wage workers enough so taxpayers don’t have to supplement workers’ income to pay the rent, put food on the table, care for their children while they work, or pay for a doctor and medicine every time their kid gets sick. When we pay a living wage to low wage parents, it frees them up to be better parents and good role models to their children.

Every time the government steps in to pay for necessities it is degrading for the workers who must request this assistance. It says to them that their employer doesn’t recognize their true worth. Their employers won’t even pay them the bare minimum it takes to live a life. This takes a toll on a worker’s self-esteem. It often forces them to work overtime or take a second job to make ends meet.
When the working poor and working-class families try and get off government assistance they are often forced to work more hours. They become absentee parents by degree. Without parental supervision, their children are less disciplined and more peer-influenced. Their children might stop doing their homework, for instance, or lose their focus on school making them less successful in school and in life. When parents aren’t home to structure their time children may start hanging out with the wrong crowd. They face greater temptations and risky behaviors that lead them into a vicious cycle of declining prospects, and the “sh*t-life syndrome” is passed along to another generation.

It traces back to the degradation and loss of dignity that so many Americans experience when they are unable to make a viable living in the world’s richest nation. The enormous wealth-gap and the huge compensation paid to CEOs in this country are all evidence that the money is there for the working poor. Paying the lowest wage worker, a living wage wouldn’t even leave a dent on the highest-paid corporate leaders or wealthiest Americans.

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And for the 40% who can't imagine attaining a middle-class life or a politician really caring about them or their community, I offer this poem read on video by its author, the late, great Maya Angelou: 

 https://www.facebook.com/brooklynphenix/videos/3484505501622790/

Sunday, December 8, 2019

The Economy and Society Benefit When Poor Families Have More to Spend



by Brian T. Lynch, MSW


Enhancing the human dignity of employment is an obvious, self-evident social benefit of raising minimum wages. It is both empowering and ennobling when breadwinners are able to provide for the needs of their family on their own, without government or extended family supports. This is reason enough to enact a living wage law. The minimum fair exchange for a full-weeks work ought to be a self-sufficient minimum wage. The burden for this minimum standard of living should rightly be on employers and not on the taxpayers who currently help support full-time low wage earners.

Corporations and business owners enjoy the benefits of government-subsidized labor and don’t want to give it up. Most of their arguments opposing higher wage standards rely on business-friendly economists whose academic theories and scholarly studies plum the detrimental impacts on businesses from higher labor costs. It is current practice to treat workers as a labor commodity separate from workers and their families as consumers and social beings with basic human needs. It is also current practice to take a business view of the economy without consideration of the broader context of the overall social economy within which commerce operates. All this results in flawed and biased arguments against self-sufficient minimum wages.

The overall beneficial impacts of increasing the purchasing power among poor families are rarely studied. Now a major new study has found that the ripple effects when direct, substantial cash assistance is given to poor families have, “… large positive spillovers on non-recipient households and firms, and minimal price inflation. The researchers in this large-scale experiment in Kenya estimated that a direct cash payment of $1,000 US dollars to poor families within randomly selected communities resulted in a local fiscal multiplier of 2.6 times within the local communities.

In addition to measured improvements in the welfare of the children and families who received an infusion of cash, the experiment reinforced the relationship between income and increased consumption to the benefits of both businesses and the families who did not receive cash payments. Here is an excerpt from the study:

“A large-scale cash transfer program in rural Kenya led to sharp increases in the consumption expenditures of treated households, and extensive broader effects on the local economy, including large revenue gains for local firms (that line up in magnitude with household consumption gains), as well as similar increases in consumption expenditures for untreated and treated households approximately a year and a half after the initial transfers. Local firms do not show meaningful increases in investment, and there is minimal local price inflation, with quite precisely estimated effects of far less than 1% on average across a wide range of goods.” [snip]... The consumption expenditures of untreated households and firms rise substantially in areas receiving large cash transfers…”

The infusion of cash payments to poor families in the study did not come from employers, and the economy of Kenya is very different than the economy here in the US. Directly extrapolating the results isn’t possible. Nevertheless, these findings are hopeful. The high fiscal multiplier stimulus effect on local businesses from increased consumption by poor families appear to mirrored results found here within states and municipalities that have raised minimum wage standards. While the burden of cash transfers from higher minimum wages is on businesses, the literature I’ve seen so far suggests there is still a positive fiscal multiplier within the business community coupled with little increase in unemployment and negligible increases in inflation.

A broader look at the spillover effects of increased base wages might show similarly positive results for the business economy and those workers who are already self-sufficient wage earners. Future studies of communities where the wage base is improved should also look at the wellbeing and overall welfare of children living in low wage households as well as the social wellbeing of the wage earners themselves.

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Further Reading

Debunking the Myth That It's Your Fault You're Poorhttps://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2015/09/debunking-myth-that-its-your-fault.html

Myth Busting Data RE: Minimum Wage Increaseshttps://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2012/09/myth-busting-data-re-minimum-wage.html



NPR -

Researchers Find A Remarkable Ripple Effect When You Give Cash To Poor Families

 https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/12/02/781152563/researchers-find-a-remarkable-ripple-effect-when-you-give-cash-to-poor-families

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