Slaving for Pin Money

One thing about this minimum-wage debate truly fries me. It's the idea that the minimum does not have to be raised because the people who get it don't need the money.

"Many, maybe most, of the gainers from a higher minimum wage are not poor," Nobel economist Gary Becker and U.S. Appeals Court Judge Richard Posner write. As examples, they cite retirees who want to get out of the house "and earn pin money." On PBS, a businessman in Clarkston, Wash., explains that the servers making minimum at his pizza place aren't adults supporting families but kids who want to go home and "play video games."

There is a conservative worldview that people who don't make serious money aren't serious people. Economic incentives are for entrepreneurs. For the low-of-wage, you put a bowl of nuggets on the ground and pat their heads.

First off, it's not true that minimum-wage earners are overwhelmingly in it for the fun. The average such worker brings home more than half the family's weekly earnings, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute. And 9 percent of the beneficiaries of a minimum-wage hike would be single parents.

But let's assume for the sake of argument that the majority of minimum-wage earners regard their paychecks as mad money. What of it? The minimum wage puts a dignified floor under what a worker's time is worth. Whether people use that money to play the slots or pay a dentist is nobody's business but theirs. By the way, if the high-school waitress is covering the family's rent, does that mean she gets a raise?

I've not heard of a single case in which a board of directors delved into an executive's spending plans before setting compensation. Imagine their saying: "Our CEO has a house in Palm Beach and a ranch outside Aspen.

If we give him an extra $5 million, he'd probably just blow it on another jet. Nope, he doesn't need it."

The Senate and the House have both passed bills to raise the federal minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour over two years, but conservatives attached a pile of small-business tax breaks to the Senate version. House Ways and Means Chair Charlie Rangel had insisted on a "clean bill" but now says he'll negotiate.

Many conservatives like to both baby and worship the small businessperson. They are especially fond of sob stories about how a raise in the minimum will drive a mom-and-pop into bankruptcy. Odd, but businesses seem to cope with increases in electricity rates, property taxes and the price of materials. Where is it written that wages can't go up? The minimum hasn't budged in 10 years.

If business owners can't make a decent profit paying their workers a minimum wage — that adjusted for inflation would still be lower than it was in 1969 — then perhaps, just perhaps, they shouldn't be in business.

In the conservative songbook, however, never is heard a discouraging word about the heroics of the small businessperson. It's always some government regulation that's tripping them up — never that they took on too much debt, their burgers aren't as good as another guy's or they're selling the wrong thing.

Raising the minimum is good politics, and so you do have Republicans from blue-collar districts, like Rep. Phil English of western Pennsylvania, signing on. That's laudable, but then English gets onto C-SPAN and says we should also acknowledge that "raising the minimum wage does not create wealth."

According to this perspective, creating wealth means funneling $2 million into an executive's pocket — not an extra two bucks-an-hour into a dishwasher's. Makes me nuts.

To find out more about Froma Harrop, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

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