When Doing Good Does Great Harm To The Poor
By Jeffery McNeil
Economics is the study of choices and the consequences of the choices one makes. As I look back on why I became poor, I can say with great candor that I made some pretty poor decisions. I didn't save or plan for the future. Every dollar that I came across I made it a ritual to spend it at the bar.
I can take the easy road and make excuses for my shortcomings however I have taken responsibility for the part I played in my failures. To say that I have failed because I am black or that my parents were poor might gain me some pity and sympathy. However this would be dishonest to those who read my articles. Opportunities were presented to me but I squandered them. As I reflect other kids came from hardships far worse than the ones I faced, applied themselves, got educated and today are making good salaries far above the minimum wage.
Although I wasn't a great student in school, I have always been a student of human nature and have always managed to keep a job. I attributed much of my early work experience to the policies of President Ronald Reagan whose economic policies of non-intervention allowed troubled teenagers such as myself inexpensive for companies to hire. .
My first job was in 1983, back then the minimum wage was $3.35 an hour. What are called dead end jobs today were once plentiful for troubled youths such as myself. My first job was bagging groceries for a family grocery store. It was a small business that ran on thin profit margins that had to compete with larger retail supermarkets. For this small business owner it was a great risk to invest in somebody with no work experience. As I reflect I am grateful that he didn't cut his losses and fire me. I was awkward, clumsy and inexperienced. The truth was he should have used me as a charitable contribution because he was losing money on the deal. However, after a year of work experience I got a raise and was eventually promoted to manager .
The supermarket of the eighties was a far cry from the ones of today. Watching the marketplace of my youth helped convince me that free markets are the best way to help the poor. Back then there were jobs available that have since been phased out such as elevator operators, baggers and pushcart vendors. It was great to see people, including uneducated people and teenagers getting valuable work experience by bagging groceries, running elevators or selling from pushcarts. Today they have been replaced by ex-convicts demanding compensation packages such as health care benefits and long term pensions.
This is one of the reasons why the minimum wage should be relaxed not raised. Jobs such as bagging groceries or washing dishes are not intended to be jobs for life, laced with health care benefits and compensation packages. These jobs are given to people who can’t find employment because they lack a degree or skills. These jobs give these people a chance to get good work experience.
Somewhere the madness has to stop. Although progressives have demonized cheap labor, truth is cheap labor is not as immoral as some have you believe. There are many advantages for keeping wages low. Low wages expands the economy. They are also a source of income for people who are not qualified for skilled jobs and who would otherwise go without any income at all. Low wage jobs also give troubled youths alternatives to a life of crime and gangs.
Historical evidence proves conclusively the minimum wage has the most impact upon disadvantaged groups such as teenager and minorities. However there are few discussions on how the minimum wage affects consumers with low incomes. When the wage increases, the prices of products go up. For poor people, Happy Meals and Big Macs become unaffordable. While the suburbanites can still afford their lattes at Starbucks, well-meaning liberals still need to consider those who are living on the margins.
As Jesus said before he was crucified “Father forgive these people for they know not what they do.”
In future issues of Street Sense I will show that the intent of raising the minimum wage is not to alleviate poverty but as weapon by both corporations and unions to either drive off competition or to discriminate against unskilled workers.
I appreciate your desire to take responsibility for yourself, and I appreciate your lack of desire to project your success or lack of it onto anyone else.
ReplyDeleteI can relate to your experience as a kid. When we were teenagers we had minimum-wage jobs that paid only a few dollars per hour. This allowed us to dip our feet into the experience of the employment economy and find out what it's like to invest effort, be rewarded, and to manage limited resources.
The jobs we had were good places to start, and they made sense for children still living in their parental homes, We were dependents, and jobs that pay so little are only suitable for dependents. Kids, retirees, those on disability pensions, housewives, etc.
By hiring someone to work at an hourly rate that will not provide for the necessities of independent life, a company expects those workers to have their needs provided for by some other means. That is fine, because there are many types of people who want to participate in the economy who are dependents and have their necessities provided for them elsewhere.
But I think we must also consider that this group of people (dependents looking for part-time low-wage work) is much smaller, and much less important, than the group of people who are forced by the weakness of local economies and limited options to seek and accept any paying work they can find. Because this is what America looks like today - even for many people with degrees.
That is the reality. The old factory jobs that paid strong family wages, the kinds of places who employed the parents of teenagers who worked at Micky D's, don't exist anymore. Virtually the only kinds of family-wage jobs that you can get with a high school education anymore is with the government. But while those jobs are long gone, Micky D's is not only still around, but is booming with many times more locations than they ever did ... So what does the new generation of adult householders do, unable to support themselves as their parents did? Stop working altogether because the only jobs available aren't "age-appropriate" according to the standards of a prior generation? Or do they take the jobs they can get, organize themselves and work to make their bad jobs into better ones? Either through employee-organizations or through civic activism to make poverty-wages illegal?
Which route is more responsible? Which route is more self-assertive? Which route is more dignified?
Do you expect people to sacrifice themselves on the cross of corporate-imposed austerity, or would you rather see them betting on themelves, standing up for their co-workers, and taking a risk for their families by getting active?
I think you've got a good heart, and a good mind, but I think you're looking at these problems from a perspective that leaves out some really important realities of life in 2013.
These opinions about low-wage work actually sound like they were cooked up by people who have never lived poverty. You and I have. We should know better than to keep demonizing people for their poverty and to enhance their suffering by making laws that keep people from paying their bills, no matter how hard they work.