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The Cognitive Dissident

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

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Poverty

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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Mocked and forgotten: who will speak for the American white working class?

This is a terrific article. Here are two excerpts.

“The National Review, a conservative magazine for the Republican elite, recently unleashed an attack on the “white working class”, who they see as the core of Trump’s support.

The first essay, Father Führer, was written by the National Review’s Kevin Williamson, who used his past reporting from places such as Appalachia and the Rust Belt to dissect what he calls “downscale communities”.

He describes them as filled with welfare dependency, drug and alcohol addiction, and family anarchy – and then proclaims:

“Nothing happened to them. There wasn’t some awful disaster, There wasn’t a war or a famine or a plague or a foreign occupation. … The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles.”

“The differences are manifest in education. The pathway offered out of the working class is to get a college education. Yet at the best colleges there are veryfew low-income students, except for a few lucky enough to grow up in New York City, Los Angeles or Boston.

Differences are also stark around health issues, as well as social issues such asmarriage, family and where people live. The growing differences have made it easier and seemingly acceptable to ridicule the white working class, further marginalizing and isolating them. Go into an office in New York City (I worked in them for 20 years) and you will hear people joke about “white trash”, “trailer trash”, “rednecks”, “round people from square states”. Turn on the TV and you hear more cheap jokes about how they dress, talk and behave.”

My thoughts:

The author is quite right in how the Republican elites attack working class whites, but he is remiss in not pointing out that the Democrat elites do the same.

I spent over a decade as a social worker in Appalachia.  I know full well how these people feel utterly abandoned and powerless.  As a social worker I found that all of the activist and advocacy groups were based on race not income. The Urban League, NAACP and La Rasa are all good groups that do a lot of great work. However, there is no comparable group advocating for the working poor whites, especially rural and suburban whites.  It is hardly any wonder why they feel marginalized and are easy prey for those advocating white supremacy.

These are the Donald Trump voters. I am seeing and hearing increasingly virulent attacks on these low income white supporters calling them neo-NAZI’s and such, but in fact they are not; however, it is easy for them to be convinced the problem is caused by foreigners when no other easy answer is given.  You will notice that working class whites are also flocking to Bernie Sanders. He also gives the working poor whites a simplistic scapegoat (Wall Street bankers); but in reality he, just like Trump, sidesteps the larger problems facing the working poor.

To make matter worse, the working poor whites are increasingly hearing attacks on them because they are white. Poor blacks and Hispanics are being taught to scapegoat whites in general, not just rich whites, but all whites.   Talk of “White Privilege” coming from rich kids at elite universities does great harm to impoverished whites who would love to trade places with their accusers. The effect of this is to divide the working poor and further dis-empower all of them.

It seems the white working poor no longer have any political friends and are consequently easy targets for the elites of both parties. Not only is this immoral, it is a ticking time bomb in the US.

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Of Opportunity

I recall a visit I made a couple of years ago to the home of a low income family with whom I had spent over two full years assisting as a social worker.  I was delivering a donated computer so that the family, which included a bright sixteen year old high school student, a struggling seven year old and their semi-literate mother, could get internet access.  I had promised them a computer because I found that even grade school teachers make the middle class assumption that there is a computer in the home, and high school teachers regularly give homework assignments to be done via the internet; yet, this family, like many with whom I worked, did not have internet nor even a computer.  I had recently received word that the younger child would be retained due to a lack of academic progress.

As I spoke I found myself, not for the first time, putting the burden of the younger child’s success on her older sister. I did not like doing that but the older sister was the only one in the home capable of providing the daily assistance the seven year old needed if she were to have any chance of academic success.  I had, by that point, been pressing this child to help her younger sister for two years.  It wasn’t fair, I didn’t like putting that responsibility on a teenager, but I saw no other hope for her little sister.   I knew full well that it was her mother’s responsibility to provide such assistance, but in this case, a single mother who is low functioning and semi-literate was simply not up to the task.

It is a trite cliché, but true none the less: life isn’t’ fair. Continue reading “Of Opportunity” →

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