Why the Left's Fight for $15 Misses the Point.
Understanding not only why we need more, but how we got here.
A brief Intro
Since late 2009-early 2010 there has been a larger push by the left for an increase to the Federal Minimum Wage which currently sits at $7.25 per hour. The push is for a little more than double that wage claiming that $15 would be able to pull most of the minimum wage or near-minimum wage employees out of the brink of poverty and improve the overall economy.
It’s a hundred percent the case that higher wages would do wonders for the economy. It’s definitely the case that some of those whose wages bump from seven to fifteen dollars an hour would see a pretty drastic improvement in their overall quality of life. I’m not going to argue those facts. Because they are indeed facts, proven by a multitude of economists’ time and time again.
What I am going to point out is that we have been conditioned over time to not push for a thriving wage but rather settle for a minimum one. You see, the concept of the minimum wage was established to provide a “decent living” for a typical American family on a single income. It was not designed to pay just enough to live paycheck to paycheck, but rather provide enough for a home, food, transport, and enough left over for a reasonable amount of leisure. The push for $15/hour sets the bar at rent, some food, and nothing else.
The median cost of living in the US (and we use Median instead of average because averages are skewed by people like Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and the Waltons, whereas the median provides a more accurate figure) sits somewhere around $50,000 per year which accounts for 30% of that as housing, 15% for food, 10% transport, 5% healthcare, 10% utilities and 30% for “other”1. This makes plenty of sense when you look article after article discussing rising costs of housing, some as high as $1800/month for a one bedroom in cities like Denver where the new pot rush has spiked property value, as well as food and gas costs.
What we fail to realize is that the median costs of living aren’t met by a $15/hour wage which equates to about $31,000 annually2. So, in order to meet the baseline level of living in most U.S cities, you would need two people working forty hours per week, 52 weeks per year to cover those costs.
Think about that for a second. Two people. No vacations. No sick days. Just a solid forty hour per week grind, all year long. If you do factor in sick days and some vacation, that total drops to about $29,000 per year. The above numbers also assume you have any kind of decent healthcare coverage (of which a large number of people don’t). Instead, in order to meet the level of a decent living (one in which a single income can support a typical family) you would need to be closer to $25.00/hour.
Even at this new price point, you are still basically just hitting the bar for what most people would call a “basic standard of living”. You can pay your bills, take a vacation, get sick without losing everything, and maybe even save a little money for something down the road. There was a point in history in which wages weren’t so abhorrent that one could expect a little more than that. Most of us who have older parents will remember hearing stories of their single factory job which allowed them a house, two cars, plenty of food, and some version of a family vacation road trip for two weeks during the summer. All paid for on a single income (usually your fathers, which is a separate issue).
In the modern era, there aren’t that many $60K a year jobs, and the ones that do exist require either a lot of college education (which breeds a massive set of other problems regarding debt) or a trade skill3, which takes upwards of a decade to reach the point where you are making that kind of money. While your Facebook friends list may abound with people who claim to make a fortune without a college education, the reality is they are probably lying. For the ones that aren’t, they spent 5 years making nothing, and another five making between $12-14/hr. Those who do happen to not be full of shit (and this part is VITAL), belong to a union. That union has fought tooth and nail to ensure higher wages, safer conditions, and guaranteed work.
The last point above is essential in understanding the overall wage conversation that needs to take place. Retail employees, food service, temps, and others in the Min/Near-Min wage grouping don’t have access to industry unions and lack collective bargaining power. Which is why we, socially, must fight for one of two things: A Thriving wage that is then pegged to cost of living increases; or unionization for all vertical segments (which would then allow the employees to determine their own course for wages). In any case, marching in the street for a bare minimum survival only forces us to revisit this conversation in a few years when living costs have grown again and 15 becomes the new 7.
**A quick additional note and something well worth discussion in another piece is the conversation around how sales positions are literally designed to prevent unions from forming amongst employees. Whether it's forcing everyone into a 1099, giving every random asshole a manager position (even though they don’t actually manage anything), or forcing their entire salary and benefits package into a commission structure to prevent them having access to any kind of leverage.**
It’s Capitalism Stupid!
In a perfect world, we would have one of the two solutions proposed above and we’d have some amount of proper wage growth for the current generation. Unfortunately, this problem also requires us (in addition to aggressively organizing our workplaces) to fight for workers that aren’t in the visible eye of your everyday citizen. This includes (but isn’t limited too) immigrants on H2 visas, illegal immigrants working under the table, prison inmates, sex workers, online content creators, artists, and more.
While we all pat ourselves on the back when a Bernie Sanders speech forces Amazon to bump its pay, we ignore the fact that in every U.S prison there are hundreds if not thousands of people working for between $0.15-$3.00/hour4. That “made in America” product you bought is overwhelmingly likely to be made in a prison by someone who spent around thirty minutes on it and earned 45 cents. Gross. I don’t mean that as in yuck, I mean that as those 45 cents earned are before taxes, restitution payments, fees, and other charges levied by the prison as part of its punitive fine system. So more likely than not, that inmate is paying money to make your product. As many others much smarter than I have pointed out: It’s literal slavery.
According to the Government Accountability Office, the last time Congress even investigated the problem, was in 1993 where a short paper was drawn up suggesting wages for inmates were fine as they were, and that no advantages were shown in paying them more5. Granted the people they asked were private prison owners who were making money off the labor of those inmates, but I’m sure they were “wholly unbiased” in that survey.
By not addressing the issue of state sponsored slave labor in the U.S we are going to have a hard time addressing the issue of stagnant wages across the board. The reason your boss doesn’t want to pay you more than $7.25/hour to do back breaking farm work, is because they can always use prison labor. Prior to 2016 Whole Foods was using the prison system for things such as raising fish, making goat cheese and more6. In some cases they were charging $12/lb on fish that they were paying $0.74/lb to grow. It makes the act of you asking for money a lot harder when there exists a labor pool that can be forced into working for pennies on the dollar.
In industries like the Hotel or Agriculture, companies use a system of foreign labor under the H2-Visa to exploit foreigners for a multitude of jobs. A BuzzFeed report7 found that thousands of immigrants are denied food, raped, die on the job, and are forcefully worked in abhorrent chattel slavery conditions. You may even remember recent photos of Mexican farm workers picking food in the fields while the wildfire in California began descending over the mountain. Those workers were almost assuredly under H2-Visas and couldn’t flee the fire without risking deportation. By not standing with them and their wage issues, we not only allow American companies to commit disgusting humanitarian crimes, we also prevent ourselves from being able to fight for better wages. Why should a resort hotel pay you a thriving wage when they can enslave someone from southeast Asia to do it for basically free?
By focusing our conversation strictly on a minimal minimum wage hike, and not looking deeper into wage issues across the board, we are ignoring the primary source of our wage woes. In order to fix the problems brought on by wage-stealing bosses, we’re going to have to confront the wage-stealing capitalists in Washington and in our respective State houses. Only a massive worker solidarity push and a willingness to reinstate the labor movement of old for all workers, both seen, and unseen, will solve our current wage crisis. If you aren’t already part of a union, or your particular job field is “anti-union” you can register with general union groups like the IWW (https://www.iww.org/) or find a local workers rights group in your area. For those in North Alabama, for example, groups like the Tennessee Valley Progressive Alliance, work to provide information and support for low-wage workers. Check with a local DSA branch, or other leftist organization. Most of all, organize local groups to put pressure on elected officials to have conversations with you about why they think you should live in poverty, while they live a life of idle leisure. The only way out of this is through Solidarity.
-EQ
This refers to work like: Plumbing, Electrical, HVAC, etc.
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