Buck or Two Is the Least We Should Do

Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) is trying to raise the minimum wage, and the not-so-compassionate conservatives of the Republican Party in Congress are having a hissy fit.

Too much too fast, they say; jobs will be lost and unemployment among the poor will rise. If those fancy hotels in Washington have to pay their maids $6.15 an hour--$1 more than the current minimum wage--there would be massive layoffs, and the whole system could collapse.

The federal minimum wage is one of those issues that is almost embarrassing to talk about. At a time when so many Americans are becoming filthy rich just by playing the stock market, they dare deny a life-sustaining wage to the folks who clean their dishes and watch their children. The increase being requested is so low, a buck an hour phased in over two years, that most folks wouldn’t notice it on their bar tab.

Imagine discussing the minimum wage at one of those tax-deductible dinners Congress members have with business lobbyists who oppose it. Dinner for two in the vicinity of the Capitol likely costs more than the $206 (before taxes) that a minimum-wage dishwasher in that restaurant’s kitchen now earns for a 40-hour work week. Those same Congress members have given themselves a cost-of-living raise of $4,600-a-year to top the $141,300 they already get, along with the finest of pensions and free medical care. Kennedy’s bill would give a minimum-wage worker an increase of less than half of what Congress members have given themselves.

The last time Kennedy got the minimum wage raised, which was in 1996, the price of passage was to permit Republicans to tag on $21 billion in tax breaks for business to “soften” the cost of raising wages. Even with those concessions, there were dire predictions that raising the minimum wage would destroy the economy. Instead, the job market boomed and unemployment fell a full point to the historically low 4.2% now.

The current minimum wage pays $10,712 a year for full-time work, which, for the 11 million who earn it, leaves a family of three $3,200 below the poverty line. What it means is that the rest of us taxpayers are in effect subsidizing the wages of those workers by picking up the costs of their poverty, be it food stamps, emergency room visits or the social consequences of children neglected by parents who must work excessively long hours just to get by.

Welfare reform was praised by leading politicians of both parties, claiming that forcing welfare recipients into the work force would inspire poor families with the dignity of work. But if those pushed off the welfare rolls are stuck in jobs that require them to feed their children out of soup lines, where is the dignity of work?

Enforcement of the labor laws built around a decent minimum standard of pay is the only mechanism we possess for preventing the erosion of American labor standards through undocumented immigration. Yet often the very same politicians who bemoan the threat of immigrants oppose improving this nation’s legal labor standards.

The minimum wage is a small-bore weapon in the war against the startling class divisions that are threatening to tear this society apart. The richest 1% of Americans now hold 38.5% of the nations’ personal wealth, thanks to a booming market in the assets they already own. But the income of low-wage workers has declined by almost 10% in the past two decades, and four out of 10 Americans have a net worth of less than $900.

That last dreary fact reflects among other things a low rate of home ownership among the poor, making them ineligible for the tax breaks afforded by home interest payments, including second mortgages and those on second homes (and, by the way, a yacht can count as a second home). For many of the working poor, safe housing has moved out of reach as rent increases have surpassed wages. A recent survey showed that minimum-wage workers must work a national average of 100 hours a week to afford rents typical in their communities.

We talk a lot about all we’ve done to fight poverty, but, sadly, Kennedy’s bill doesn’t bring the minimum wage up evento the level of 1968 in purchasing power. To get to that level, you need to add yet another buck an hour, and while I don’t blame Kennedy for setting his sights low given the retrogrades who control Congress, wouldn’t it be great if our leading compassionate conservative, George W. Bush, suddenly saw the light and said, hey, I’ll sign on for fixing the minimum wage in real dollars at the level it was when Richard Nixon was president?