Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 12, 1995 TAG: 9502150011
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: G-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ELIZABETH STROTHER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
"What?" he asked.
The man can be so slow.
"I have an E-mail message from you here about going to lunch that shows it arrived at 12:43. But the clock on this same computer says that, even now, it is only 12:35!" I explained impatiently. "Have you been pulling a 'Star Trek' and traveling forward in time, or what?"
Ah, understanding dawned as he realized who he was talking to, and he calmly assured me that, yes, he had just returned from eight minutes in the future, and the nuclear holocaust we have always feared had occurred while he was there.
"Thank God!" I said, fervently. "I won't have to write this column."
Column-writing day. I face this just once a month, while Cody struggles with it weekly. We commiserated with each other about how half the day was gone already, and neither of us had even an idea about what to write about. Then we went to lunch.
I don't know what Cody did with his morning, but mine was spent in an editorial board meeting with the publisher. We have these periodically to hash out some sort of consensus on public-policy issues so that editorials will reflect an institutional opinion, not just the views of whoever happens to write them. But all of those personal opinions are argued, often vehemently, in arriving at a consensus.
One of the topics this day was the minimum wage. Do we think it should be raised? Abolished?
Now, I'm guessing there are a whole lot of letter-writers out there who assume we simply listen for Ted Kennedy's take on a policy issue such as this and give it a hearty round of huzzahs. Instead, we talked for 30 or 45 minutes about the possible effects of raising the minimum wage, failed to reach a consensus, and deferred the discussion to a later day.
Our quandary is that, while we have no Marxist desire to punish businesses - our publisher, after all, heads a business that must be profitable if we all are to remain gainfully employed - we are at least as worried about workers at the low end of the wage scale, who are slipping in ever greater numbers into poverty.
Conservatives argue that raising the $4.25-an-hour minimum wage 90 cents over two years will simply cause businesses to eliminate jobs, and this would hurt the very people the government is hoping to help. Businesses can't pay 90 cents an hour more unless minimum-wage workers are suddenly 90 cents an hour more productive.
Besides, only 3 percent of full-time hourly workers make minimum wage, and most of these are young people who don't support families. A family breadwinner making the minimum wage won't be lifted above the poverty line with a 90-cent-an-hour raise. The head of a family of four would have to make $7 an hour to reach that plateau.
Liberals scoff at the "crocodile tears" conservatives are shedding over workers' rights. Is it a right to be able to work for below-poverty wages, they ask. If there were no market for the worker's labor, there would be no job even at $4.25. And few service-sector employers are going to invest in automation to eliminate what would still be low-paying jobs.
And, though few jobs pay the minimum, a raise in this rate would push up the wages of workers slightly above it. That would give workers more purchasing power and stimulate the economy.
Opponents and proponents both point to the same study of service-sector employment in New Jersey, which raised its minimum wage in 1992, to bolster their positions. The study concluded the raise did not cause job loss. Opponents say the study was flawed and that, yeah, it did.
My first inclination, I said at the meeting, was the knee-jerk liberal reaction. Yet, I was prepared to oppose raising the minimum wage if there was convincing evidence that it would throw significant numbers of people out of work. A small paycheck is better than none at all when you are living on the edge.
I know this from the years I worked for the minimum wage, and was darned glad to get it. Thanks to heavy state subsidy of higher education in Missouri, I could go to college on a few small scholarships and my earnings from minimum-wage jobs, worked most waking hours when I was not in class or studying. I needed those jobs.
My employers also needed me. The minimum wage was raised once during those years, and I spent nary a second worrying about losing my job.
My boyfriend at the time also was working his way through college. He held an entry-level job that was about equivalent to the skill level of mine. Both of us were doing work that had to be done. Yet he earned several times the hourly wage that I earned. We both got through college, but he had a lot more discretionary income and free time than I did.
Of the many things I learned in college, one was that low-paying jobs are essential, for people in a variety of situations.
Another was that not every raise requires a matching increase in productivity. Sometimes, even after giving a raise, employers are getting a bargain. If we could make a computer leap forward in time, I'm guessing we'd find a $5.15 minimum wage had not sent the economy into a tailspin.
by CNB