Lisa N:
Oregon has a higher minimum wage than the national…and we have had the highest (or occasionally second) unemployment in the country. It’s been the highest in the nation for years. Washington also has a higher minimum wage and they tend to be right behind us in unemployment Connect the dots. We also have a HUGE influx of illegals who are working under the table for less than the mandated minimum. Connect the dots. It’s not hard to figure out what’s happening here.
Ironically we supposedly have both the highest rate of hunger and the highest rate of obesity in the country. Go figure. I’m starting to think about lies, da**ed lies and statistics. I think that about sums it up.
Lisa N
Well, okay, but that makes a bit of sense. The problem is, that if you take that to an extreme, we could pay what they’re paying in China, because that’s where the jobs are going. Business has a place at the table, but if they’re allowed to call all the shots, we’re essentially back to the world of Dickens, including the need to wear black in the cities because of the pervasiveness of the dirt.
The high rate of obesity and hunger going together are not hard to believe. Hunger in Oregon is defined based on days a person does without or with less, and not on calories consumed over the course of the year. Diabetes, heart disease, and other diseases of over-consumption and under-nutrition are rampant in the lower economic groups. Fats are cheap foods, and cooking healthy foods is much more expensive, particularly if you don’t know what you’re doing or have less time. Those with less education are more likely to sucker into advertising, which also is heavily weighted in favor of choices that are bad both for the body and the bank account. That means you don’t save, which primes you for that month (or months) when the paycheck just can’t cover it all.
vern humphrey:
The minimum wage concept is based on an elitist concept – that many people can NEVER learn or gain skills that will be worth enough to support them. That, of course, is false.
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So the minimum wage ought to be equal to the value added by that labor? If that were true, there would be no need for the government to dictate a minimum wage.
You are not implying that market forces can be relied upon to lead to a fair wage… that employers, given the option of paying people less than they can live on, would refuse to do it? That they give people what their labor adds to the product, rather than the minimum that a decent worker will take? Tell that to Charles Dickens, or Frank McCourt. Or the sharecroppers. Or Harvard Business School, for that matter.
You are such a student of history. That you could make a statement that would so obviously fly in the face of it astonishes me. I have to be misunderstanding you, here, Mr. Humphrey.
vern humphrey:
If you REALLY care for the poor, why aren’t you campaigning for better schools in the poorest district? Why aren’t you pushing your diocese to expand Catholic schools for the benefit of the poor?
Who says we aren’t? That is a great idea, but we’re supposed to stay on topic. Besides, Mother Theresa pointed out that it is the slow students who are truly the poorest of the poor. Some of us didn’t get as much as others when God gave out talent. Those of us who are slow need to eat, too.
The fact remains that we have work that needs to be done that doesn’t take a lot of skill. We don’t have enough high school students to do it all. We could send everybody to college, and we’d just have the weakest of the college graduates in low-wage jobs. Or maybe we’d all be talented college grads in high information jobs, living on the labor of poor workers in other countries that we don’t trouble ourselves about. That won’t wash, either. We are Catholics, so our obligations don’t end at our borders.
Looking for ways to bring higher-wage jobs into a state is a great idea. If you don’t do it, you are almost certainly going to squander talent and force talented people to move to where there are jobs were talent is compensated. Losing those people or the businesses that employ them* is* going to be a huge blow to the poor. Still, a person with little talent but with the willingness to work needs to be protected from those who would prey on their desparation.
Any economic plan which penalizes either sloth or avarice, but not both, will never produce a just society. The problem is in striking a balance between the responsibilites of people for themselves to make choices that they’re going to have to live with and the responsibilites of the greater society to reward merit while keeping the greedy ones among the strong from literally preying on the weak.
In other words, a just society requires that those who succeed and those with power also collectively have wise and generous hearts. If you can’t hope to have that, throw the towel in.
corporations or a family buying groceries, look to “exploit” the supplier, if by exploit you mean they seek to pay the lowest amount possible. This is how a free economy works - buyers and sellers freely come to an agreement on the price paid for the thing offered. Government regulation, eg minimum wages or closed shops, interferes with and distorts that system.