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The Cognitive Dissident

A blog by Ronald P. Thompson, Ph.D.

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March 2016

The Moral Imperative for a Livable Minimum Wage

We are all prisoners of our own life experience.   Even the fairest minded person interprets the world as if their own experience in life is a universal life experience.   This is not a moral deficiency as some would assert, but rather it is an inescapable reality of our existence.   Sure, it is easy to throw rocks at people who have a different life experience and say they should be able to see things your way. But realize as you do so, you are in fact admitting you cannot see the world through the eyes of the person receiving your rocks. Not having lived that other person’s life however, is not an excuse for not trying to imagine how things look from the other side of the rock you are throwing.

I say that in introduction to the “minimum wage” issue that has been simmering for about two years  but has not raised to a level of even a soft boil.  Over the past few years a string of news stories declare  that the US middle-class continues to slip in relation to the last generation, not just that, but are slipping behind the rest of the industrialized world.  Something is fundamentally wrong, but neither political party has a real commitment in actually doing something about it.

It is simply a fact that over the past 40 years the purchasing power of the minimum wage has steadily declined as the minimum wage does not automatically increase to keep pace with inflation.  No one is disputing that.  Also no one disputes the fact that as our manufacturing base has declined, the percentage of the workforce in very low or minimum wage jobs has increased.

When I was a teenager there were jobs that were effectively “kids jobs” because only students like me would work for the minimum wage being offered (which was worth significantly more than it is today). Fast food, grocery store check-out clerk and such jobs were entirely the province of people under 21. But during the 90’s something began to change, you began to see adults who once worked as unskilled labor in factories and warehouses began to be pushed down the economic ladder into low/minimum wage jobs.

Continue reading “The Moral Imperative for a Livable Minimum Wage” →

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California is first state to approve $15 minimum wage

From the CNN article:

California has become the first state in the nation to approve a statewide $15 minimum wage.

“No one who is working full time in California should live in poverty due to a low wage,” said Democratic State Senator Mark Leno, who cosponsored the bill.

The measure will raise the state’s minimum wage to $10.50 in January and to $11 in January 2018. It will then increase by an additional $1 per hour every year until it reaches $15 in 2022. If, however, the state goes through an economic downturn or budget crisis, the governor may choose to slow the implementation.

The final bill gives small businesses, with 25 or fewer employees, an extra year to implement the increases.

About 5.6 million Californians, or about 32% of the state’s workforce, currently live on the minimum wage, according to Kevin De Leon, the president pro tempore of the state senate.

Setting a minimum wage at $15 has plenty of critics.

“California may be the first state to pass a $15 minimum wage, but it will also be the first to find out why that’s a bad idea,” said Michael Saltsman, research director of the Employment Policies Institute, a conservative think tank opposed to minimum wage hikes. He argues that many businesses will have to cut staff or close because of the deal. “This pain from a $15 minimum wage will only be exacerbated in more troubled counties in the state.”

My thoughts: 

So I ask Mr. Saltsman, how many business are employing more workers than they need?  Though my wife makes significantly more than minimum, her retail employer pays most people minimum or close to it; I can assure you they have already paired staff down to the bone.   How many janitors or McDonald’s burger flippers can these companies actually fire and still make money?  I suggest the number is close to zero.

What will happen is a modest level of inflation will occur in fast food and retail and other business that pay low wages. Perhaps a few percent points.  The real effect is that the moneyed class will take a hit in that they will make less profit and pay a more for personal services provided by the working poor.  Their concern for jobs and the welfare of the poor is a sham.

All I can say is “Boo Hoo for you.”

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Stop Blaming the Poor for being Born Poor

On the surface it seems this poster (below) promotes social justice; however, read the last two lines and the moral high ground falls away.

In both the UK and the US, your socioeconomic status as an adult is nearly 100% related to the socioeconomic status of your parents.   This poster clearly blames the poor the fact that it is nearly impossible to climb up from poverty. The poster says “your own poor choices.” is the cause.

Well in all my years working as a social worker, I never once found someone who chose to be born into an impoverished family. I never once found someone who said they chose to enter kindergarten impossibly behind their middle class peers. I never once found someone who was happy their family could not afford the resources that would improve their chances to escape poverty.

Look at the “foreigners” in the poster and ask yourself “What is the chance any of them were born in a slum?”  There are many foreign born professionals in the US and the UK, but virtually all of them were born into wealthy families in their home countries.  To attack the native born poor for”making poor choices” that caused their poverty will not lessen the resentment to foreigners. Instead, it will reinforce the feelings of alienation and anger.  People around the world keep wondering why working class whites in the US are flocking to Donald Trump.  This poster might just be the answer.

We must not blame the poor for being born into poverty, even if we are doing so with a “good cause”

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Erdowie, Erdowo, Erdogan

This video  has Turkey’s would-be dictator President Erdogan so angry that he called in the German Ambassador to complain about it and demand it be censored.   Of course the one way to make sure everyone see’s a video is to complain about it.  So, here is the video that you are not supposed to see.

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Conservatives Might Be More Cautious About Opening Pandora’s Box

The far right are becoming ever more vocal in their belief that they represent the viewpoint of a significant majority of Americans.  An article today   by FoxNews  states ”

 What if a supermajority of states could override a federal law or Supreme Court ruling? That’s just one idea being proposed by advocates of a “convention of states” to amend the U.S. Constitution. “The American people are mad and they’re looking for a way to say, ‘No more,’” said Brooke Rollins, president and CEO of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank. “Our founders, in their brilliance, gave us a tool to do that. And it’s Article V.”

I think it is rather sad that seemingly intelligent people can be seduced by their own rhetoric into believing their views are far more popular than they are.  It is as if these people simply pretend places like NYC, San Francisco and Boston where  ultra- conservatives are as rare as Dodo birds, don’t exist.   Not only do they fail to imagine the chaos that would ensue if America held a constitutional convention; but it seems not to occurred to them at all that the far left have an agenda too, and there are a lot of them as well.

With the percentage of Americans who hold to and articulate the core liberal values enshrined in the Bill of Rights continually shrinking I find the idea of such a convention terrifying.  It would become a battle between the totalitarian theocratic right against the totalitarian identity politics left.  Think Germany in 1925.  And like Germany after WWI, liberalism and universal human rights would be trampled by the totalitarians on both sides.  It could literally spell the end of the great American experiment and/or lead to a second Civil War.

This is simply the worse idea of all the crazy ideas spawned by the far right.

 

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Just a bit of reality check

I’ve been hearing lots of complaining about “Obamacare causing the cost of health care to rise.”   How sort are people’s memory?  The cost of health care  have been rising constantly for decades.  Heath care costs have risen slower in the past few years. The problem is that relative to income growth it has gotten worse. But to suggest the ACA caused the slowing of income has no foundation.  The truth to get the ACA passed, nearly all cost cutting measures were left out. Bernie Sanders is right, only by a single payer system can costs be cut. To cut costs, someone has to make less money. Now someone, but lots of someones, including doctors, lawyers, drug companies, insurance companies and a whole host of allied businesses. All have a huge financial stake in  keeping the gravy train flowing. That is why Bernie speaking of Never Never Land, not the USA.

For now, we aren’t going to do better than make tweaks to the ACA.  Which by the way is what Hillary is saying.

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