Saturday, June 7, 2014
The Minimum Wage and Economic Mobility
By Kurt von Behrmann
I was up late one night, and just
felt the need to get these ideas out and into the world wide web. Several days ago I read a response to an item
I had posted. The entry under my
original post made me ponder. It also
left me a bit angry in that I could not understand the reason behind anyone
seeing a negative to the establishment of a higher minimum wage. For decades, wages have remained
stagnant. What has not remained frozen
are the assorted costs for living. Rent,
education, cars, insurances, homes, food, energy nearly anything that can be
purchased as risen in price.
I can’t address everything, but let
me touch upon some points. There are
jobs that are frequently seen as low paying and therefore jobs that require
very little. Often the opposite is
true. Bus drivers can be paid as little
as $ 9.37 an hour. What many may not realize is that the training is
demanding. One has to know detailed parts
of a bus and pass several demanding exams.
They are also responsible for
hundreds of lives and must deal with the physical task of assisting disabled
passengers, and this requires a great deal of effort.
Walmart is notorious for low
pay. One can expect $ 8.86 an hour full
time without benefits. These jobs are
not easy. One may be required to do
everything from moving carts, handling inventory, dealing with customer service
and stocking shelves, as well as assisting with shipping. While all of this is transpiring, one may be
pulled from the floor for mandatory training. This can take place all in one
day.
Fast food may seem like an easy
profession. It is not. It is fast paced, requires standing up for hours on end
and dealing with customer service. These jobs are not easy. Call center work is the same way. It is fast paced and your bonuses can be
taken away at a moment’s notice with incentive programs designed to make sure
you cannot take advantage of them.
From personal observable
experience, I know of one working mother who works as a server for a large
cinema chain. She works long hours,
deals with a demanding work loads while standing and is paid $ 5.00 an hour. She depends on tips, and those are
infrequent. Let me add, this individual
is highly educated, speaks several languages fluently and is also involved in
continuing education for another career.
At present, in our economy, this is what she could find. Previously she had been a very well paid
professional who received a 30 percent raise during her tenure at her previous
job. The argument that servers and others are lazy and lack ambition is a
fiction. It is not the reality of the
present.
There is an argument that people
who work these jobs have it “easy.” They do not.
One may also comment on social
mobility. Sadly, that is becoming nearly
impossible. Tuition hikes are unending. This key stone for advancement is becoming inaccessible.
Supplies for courses are rising.
Hundreds of dollars are not uncommon figures when it comes to
supplies. As the price of an education
rises, assistance is going down.
Loans burden students with eternal
debt. Without an education, social
mobility becomes impossible, or at best highly unlikely to happen. I arrived at a shock regarding my education
costs when I attended high school. I was
fortunate to attend a very good private high school. My family was able to afford the costs, which
were rather high in the 70’s. Tuition for the school then was about $ 2,000.00
a year. Flash forward to now and that
same education costs $ 30,000.00 a year!
There is the idea that hard work
pays off in terms of compensation. It
doesn’t always work out that way. The
fiction that hard work leads to economic mobility is simply a fiction. You can work hard and go nowhere. The huge
wage disparity between those who perform labor and those that are in ownership
positions and management posts where two hour lunches become tax deductible
business expenses is in part to blame. Enormous
corporations are utilizing the commons, paying below living wage salaries to
their workers and then off shore jobs in order to avoid U.S. taxes.
The wealthy become wealthier and
the poor become even more destitute.
Our economic system works on consumption. Products are produced with the idea that they
will be sold. The more items sold, the
better. However, with a destitute
majority, goods and services will decline in consumption. Without a viable consumer market, there is no
economy. What we have witnessed now are
austerity approaches to the economy. As
consumption weakens, jobs are lost.
While jobs and the attendant lower wages proliferate, companies look for
cheaper means of labor. This translates into jobs being moved over seas and
stagnate wages on these shores.
There
are other reasons for wage discrepancies.
The lack of dedication on the part of some elected officials to social
services that empower people and assist in their self-reliance are in a large
part to blame. Privatization of public
education through the establishment of charter schools translates into defunding
public education. What is offered as
choice, more charter schools, is in reality the opening of poorly funded public
ones with the idea that privatization is the answer to the woes of our dilapidated
education system. Charter schools are
not subject to the same scrutiny as public ones are. These new charter schools are funded by
diverting funds that would go to public schools.
If you
would like to know more, read what the Alabama Education Association has to say
on the topic.
The
forces that are creating and maintaining an American underclass are numerous.
They are also complex. What compounds
the problem is that we have not had a political environment that has addressed
the issue of economic inequity in a straight forward manner. What
we have is grid locked government because one party, the Republican Party, has
made it very clear in actions and in language that they intend to do nothing.
They have done just that, nothing.
