I'd
recently heard a reference to the 47% again, and while that one did really get
to me (http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2012/10/100-wrong-about-47.html), lately I
have been thinking more about something else Romney said.
It
came up because it was related to things he said during the presidential race,
but apparently this quote came from his failed Senate campaign in 1994. Maybe
that's why it didn't draw too much attention, being older.
"This
is a different world than it was in the 1960s when I was growing up, when you
used to have Mom at home and Dad at work. Now Mom and Dad both have jobs to
work whether they want to or not, and usually one of them has two jobs."
I
am still surprised that this, and his more recent comments about even mothers
of young children needing to work didn't get more attention. I think I know
why, and that is the people who supported him imagined he was referring to
single mothers who don't work at all. If you were against Romney he said so
many horrible things that you need to prioritize, but I think this merits some
discussion. Why are we willing to accept that it might take three jobs to
support a family?
This
isn't about lazy people - one job can drain you pretty well, and he is saying
it takes more. That is saying that even in a two parent home, at least one
parent might be working 60-80 hours a week, with the other working 40.
Maybe
it bothers me more since the death of Maria Fernandes.
Her
name may not be familiar to you, but you have probably heard the story of the
woman who was working three jobs, and died napping in the parking lot of one
job.
Okay,
she was working part-time, low-wage jobs, but does anyone doubt that she was a
hard worker? Does anyone doubt that if she could have found one job to pay all
of her bills that she would have taken it?
There
are a lot of things that could be said here about minimum wage and heartless
corporations and a devaluation of human life that is sociopathic but supported
by people who should know better, but instead I want to talk about Henry Ford
for a moment.
Yes,
his innovation of the assembly line was clever, but something else really cool
that came out of there was letting his employees have a higher wage and
Saturdays off. It wasn't a philanthropic move - he wanted his employees to be
able to have the means and the motivation to buy his cars - but it changed the
standard.
As
long as Ford Motors was taking job applications, then other employers in the
area had to have similar offerings. That meant even more people who could then
afford cars and have time to drive places, so it continued to benefit Ford, but
it was also great for the workers in the area, and it did not kill the other
employers.
During
that brief period when I was an Intel employee, I had phenomenal wages and
pretty good benefits. When I came back as a contractor the benefits were not as
good, but they compensated with more money. That wasn't out of the goodness of
their hearts, but at the time there were a lot of good jobs out there, and employers
had to be competitive. The economy did great. No one's stock fell because they
paid good wages. If the rising tide didn't raise all the boats, it raised a
lot.
Favoring
employers can be helpful when they are already hiring, but it doesn't make them
hire anyone. It didn't in Kansas, and they gave it a
harder shot than anyone else:
Somehow
it doesn't seem to matter how many times you can go back and show that raising
the minimum wage doesn't cause inflation, or point out that most people
receiving benefits also work, or that Wal-Mart costs taxpayers $6.2 Billion in
aid to workers, but gets $1.2 Billion in tax breaks, some people just don't
want to hear it.
(For
those last two, http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2014/04/15/report-walmart-workers-cost-taxpayers-6-2-billion-in-public-assistance/
- and we all know how liberal Forbes is - plus http://www.walmartsubsidywatch.org/)
Right
now we need both more and better jobs. It is not going to happen with tax cuts.
It can happen with mandated higher wages. Even if it doesn't create new jobs,
if some of the people who are working multiple jobs can afford to go down to
one, then the extra jobs they relinquish are new openings. That can be three
jobs, and better quality of life for all three workers.
More
jobs will not automatically be created by raising corporate taxes, but if those
funds are used to create jobs, it will still have a valuable impact on the
economy. There are plenty of things that need to be done. Have childcare
workers affiliated with employment centers. That could have been good for
Shanesha Taylor. Do road maintenance. Do job training.
Often
those who are against raising the minimum wage will point out that people
should not be staying in minimum wage jobs, ignoring the fact that employers
will not pay more than they have to, whether it be due to legislation or
competition. Well, if the government is hiring people at living wages with good
benefits, than private employers will have to offer those things.
This
isn't even choosing between alleviating human suffering versus doing good
things for the economy. This is about both. Anything aligned with supply-side
economic policies will do neither.
Ask
Kansas.
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