Living wage idea is just — and credible
Wednesday, November 29th, 2006
By Chris Fitzsimon
The following is a Counterpoint:
By Larry Morse
Regarding recent articles about the merits of living wage legislation in North Carolina: The idea of a living wage is not new. For example, in 1891, Pope Leo XIII issued a papal encyclical proposing what today we would call a living wage.
Why would the pope have done that? I think the answer is clear. Christianity, and the other major religions, teach that we — as individuals and as a society — are judged by how we treat the least among us.
Can we say that we have a just society when millions of individuals work full time and yet do not earn enough to allow their families to escape poverty? Needless to say, it was with pleasure that I read Gov. Mike Easley’s endorsement of a statewide living wage.
"Despite the absence of correlation between the minimum wage and the unemployment rate, most economists believe that the minimum wage does contribute to teenage unemployment." UNCG Professor Bruce Caldwell seems to be among the "most economists" in this quote from a "Principles of Economics" textbook. Let me provide some of the economic evidence that Professor Caldwell did not mention.
Recent studies using original surveys in Boston and Los Angeles found that the workers affected by the living wage ordinances were mostly adults and mostly working full time, not primarily teenagers, as Caldwell implied. Caldwell describes those working for minimum wages as being "spread throughout the income distribution." While technically correct — as in the case of a teenager in middle-class family working for minimum wage — it ignores the income level of the great preponderance of minimum-wage workers. (more…)
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