20/20 vision on minimum wage

Yesterday president Obama came to Ann Arbor to talk about raising the minimum wage. Since tickets went mostly to students and many students slept out overnight to be in line to get them, I wasn't there. I know the basic message was a proposal to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 by 2016. Considering current politics in Washington it's hard to imagine the success of this proposal. There's more hope for statewide proposals including the Michigan ballot initiative for a $10.10 minimum wage.  The group “Raise the Minimum Wage” identify legislative or ballot campaigns in nine states and the District of Columbia all focused on raising the minimum wage. Even Alabama has a minimum wage proposal modest though it is at $8.50 an hour. The raise the minimum-wage campaign points out that if minimum wage had kept up with inflation it would now be $10.74 an hour. But as Elizabeth Warren recently pointed out if the minimum wage had kept up with productivity since 1960 it would now be somewhere in the area of $22 an hour.

Now with my environmental hat on I'm going to tell you that increased productivity is not always a good thing. Don't get me wrong I'm all in favor of more resources and a better life for all of us. But gadgets alone don't get us a better life, and the processes for making much of what masquerades as progress are so contaminating to our environment that they detract from the quality of our lives. If raises in wages translate to increased increased consumption, a greater carbon footprint, further global deforestation and more new questionable chemical compounds and more new questionable chemical compounds then it's not clear the world can afford it. (Of course it goes without saying the world cannot afford the superrich either). The only real downturn in global carbon emissions was in 2007 and 2008 after the housing market crash and global recession.

 We are going to have to think about how to build a society that is shaped around needs including human needs and the biological needs of our environment we may have to think in terms of both more and less.

Of course it's important to keep in mind both what could be and what should be. From the standpoint of the latter I would argue that what we need is (excuse the pun) a 20/20 vision. How about increasing the minimum wage to $20 an hour, just shy of the productive gains of our economy, but at the same time reducing the workweek to 20 hours. It seems to me that this splits the difference. At the same time that it would raise the income of a full-time minimum-wage worker to an amount similar to what they would be making under Obama's proposal, it would reduce the workweek giving working people more time to pursue the myriad interests that make life great. Perhaps that means pursuing education, perhaps more time for creative endeavors, time enough to participate in our political system, more time for parents to spend with their children.

Remember this conversation is not about what could happen at this point in the American political process. But even from the standpoint of should many people are likely to ask how this would even be possible. Where would the resources come from in a shrinking economy. As I mentioned above the world can no longer afford the superrich. If we look at just the richest 400 families in the United States, they make more than the bottom 180 million Americans. We need to figure out how to redistribute not just the wealth of those 400 families, not just the 1%  easily the top 10% could live comfortably with considerably less in their pockets. There is of course the concern that if we just shot up and hours worked decreased the result would simply be across the board inflation with less resources available and more people scrambling for them. Within the context of our current economic system that no doubt would largely be true. When I suggest that we should want a minimum-wage of $20 an hour and a workweek of 20 hours a week I'm arguing for a wholesale redesign of our economic system.

So in the politics of the real when Obama calls for $10.10 minimum wage he is doing this not to achieve it at the federal level which as I've argued is not so likely in the current political atmosphere of Washington, but he is using this push as a political tool. In part it is a tool to try to engender support for the Democratic Party, in part it is the bully pulpit from which he can promote an idea that is building momentum among the states.

For now the achievable political goal of state-by-state raises in the minimum wage deserves our support. At the same time we need to begin to envision much bigger changes in how our society does business.