News-Record.com

Bruce,

All thru your letter I was thinking "what a load of manure". When I reached the bottom and saw you were a professor in the economics dept. of UNCG. So then I'm thinking "Well mabe he knows what he is talking about". Then I decided to check out some web sites to refute or confirm your legitimacy.

I now find your "counterpoint" opinion to be full of misleading, inflammatory and omitted "information". First, nowhere could I find where Easley signed a proposal for a minimum wage of $12.32. I wanted to know over what peroid of time this more than double minimum wage would take effect. What I found were several hundred web sites that mentioned him signing for the MW to be increased to $6.15/hour. Nary a one mentioned any other increase.

Secondly, you failed to mention Easly also gave small business owners a tax break since they are the ones who will be most impacted. This changes the picture considerably, imho.

After discovering these two "error", I give little credence to the rest of your assertations. Even if you are a professor in the economics dept. of UNCG. Your letter smacks of partisan BS.

Yvonne,

You are confusing minimum wage with living wage. From this paper's reporting (Oct.14 this year)of Gov. Easley's remarks at the NAACP meeting in Goldsboro:

"Raising North Carolina's minimum wage to $6.15 an hour should be seen as a "first step" toward a living wage, Gov. Mike Easley told delegates at the NAACP's annual state convention......

....Of North Carolina's minimum-wage increase, he said:"It's a step, that's a first step toward a livable wage. Now we've got to get a living wage in this state and in this country."

Although there is no fixed definition of living wage, liberal-leaning policy groups have fixed the number at $12.32 an hour for North Carolina residents."

Since Easley's policitcs lean left, what do you think he meant?

How many minority abd women owned businesses do you think will suffer under that kind of central planning mentality?

Bruce is right.

Free market rules.

I looked up the phrase "living wage" in the Libertarian's Common Sense Bible, and the translation of the phrase is "...the high unemployment, anti-personal freedom wage which gives demorats greater control of unemployed Americans and a reason to ramp up the welfare state..."

(just kidding- there is no such book- it's just common sense)

Yvonne,

W.J. is right. That's the number that Alma Adams has been pushing. They call it a 'living wage'. Do you think it is a good idea to raise the minimum wage to $12.32 an hour?

I'd be a lot more likely to listen to someone with a doctorate in economics from a respectable institution than a politician any day.

My personal thoughts are that such a minimum wage increase would be devastating to the middle class. I can't even imagine the superinflation that would result from such a move. Unemployment would skyrocket. IMO, it's a dumb idea.

And here I was thinking that democrats were trying to take back the house and senate. More coverage of ideas like this one will not help.

How'd ya'll like that fact filled response?

James Rockefeller is going to slam me!

Seriously, though, I can see some positive components of a living wage. However, to think that you can just take a whole bunch of folks and pay them more without there being negative consequences to others (like the middle class) is naive.

How would such a move hurt our ability to compete for jobs and businesses. Would a business move here if they knew they'd have to pay workers twice what they'd have to pay them in South Carolina?

"In a survey for the Employment Policies Institute in 2000, more than three-fourths of the 336 economists polled believed that a national living wage mandate is likely to cause job losses. They also noted that Earned Income Tax Credits are most efficient in terms of assisting low-income families followed by general welfare grants. Living wage ordinances are judged the least effective. "

"The results of a 1999 study conducted by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy concludes that living wage mandates do little to help workers as they reduce privatization initiatives, contribute to unemployment, slow job creation and economic growth and foster race discrimination in the construction trades"

Here's an interesting and fairly balanced discussion about living wage:

http://www.ilchamber.org/kc/hr/hr020914A.asp

Mea cupa. All of you are right; I confused the "living wage" with minimum wage. Pre-caffinated, body in upright position but brain not in gear. My apologies to Hollis and all.

Perhaps I am having a Monday Mindblock but I cannot find where Easley has said outright that $12.32/hr should be the "living wage". I found a site (N&R blogspot) where Alma Adams was proported to have suggested $12.32/hr but nothing to indicate Easley would support that in it's entirety. Could I have a bit of help this AM?

Lte's leave out the inflamatory "left-right" labels and look at the question. It's a tough one. The minimum wage as we know it now, from my experience, keeps people at or below the level of the Working Poor. Hence, mostly all these people will in all likely hood need some form of public assistance. If we double the minimum wage, we may have "more unemployment" but maybe less the number on public assistance because the other half are makeing a "livable wage"?

The big picture is that when you take away competition and mandate what private companies can pay their employees, then you get further and further away from what this country was built on. You make our workers less competitive. Notice the big sucking sound of jobs leaving this country, yet?

Yvonne, I seriously doubt Easley has come out and stated people should be paid $12.32 an hour. He's not the brightest bulb in the box but he's smart enough not to do that (I think) I did read where Adams said that number some time back.

Robert Samuelson of the Washington Post had a column recently on this question and he concluded, like the economists cited above, that EITC was an effective way of redistributing income, and that minimum wage laws were political window-dressing with minimal effects, mostly bad ones. A "living wage" would, as the letter argues, simply be disastrous.

If Easley is giving small business owners a tax break for one dollar/hour rise in minimum wage, what kind of break would they get for an even higher increase? Perhaps I'm missing something but it seems like this balances things somewhat.

I mean, if increasing minimum wage is likely to be the death of small businesses as some have stated, wouldn't getting a tax break level the playing field somewhat?

Nit,

Remember Norma Rae? Prior to her lead in fighting for the common laborer, employers did not have any federally mandated requirements for benefits and wages (as I recall). Are you, or anyone else, suggesting employers should not have any guidelines regarding wages and benefits? As in no minimum wage?

First let me state I am against minimum wage .. let supply and demand rule. At teh same time, get rid of unqualified workers, including those without the appropriate citizenry.

Given that, it's unclear to me how encouraging "living wages" will cause unemployment - if only those qualified are hirable, there'll be about 11 million new openings at the low end of the pay scale.

Given that, I would expect to see inflation - but would also expect more folks to have more money to pay for stuff - those on fixed income not withstanding (and I do not have a solution for that problem).

Yvonne,

I really don't know. I can see it both ways. In one sense, I see the wage being an agreement between the employer and the employee. If an employee agrees to work for $5 an hour, then who am I to say he can't? Heck, the illegals do it every day, don't they?

On the other hand, if we had no protection, would employers abuse it and we end up with a bunch of folks working for a dollar an hour like in some other countries?

To be honest, I haven't been affected by minimum wage since I was 15 years old. I held a job paying minimum wage for about 2 months before I was paid a wage. At no other time in my working career have I worked for minimum wage, even before getting a secondary education.

As far as the taxbreak, considering payroll is often by far the largest expense on the operating ledger, I'm not sure if the government could give that much of a taxbreak to offset the cost of doubling their worker's salaries. And if they could, where are they going to make up the difference in tax revenues? You're not going to make it up from folks making $12 an hour because they barely pay taxes as it is. More likely, you'll have to make it up by increasing taxes on the middle to upper class. You know the really rich are the one's in power and they aren't going to take money out of their pockets. :)

"before I was paid a wage" should have read "before I was given a raise"