In January, a new Mecklenburg County task force is supposed to start finding ways to help poor residents climb out of poverty. However, because of North Carolina’s oddball rules of governance, the task force will not be able to propose one of the most promising tools currently being used by some American cities to combat poverty: a higher minimum wage.
North Carolina, unlike 31 other states, does not have unlimited “home rule,” meaning that N.C. cities and counties may not pass new revenue-generating laws without permission from the General Assembly. Charlotte City Attorney Bob Hagemann explained that state law specifically bans municipalities from imposing certain conditions on local employers “such as paying minimum wage or providing paid sick leave to its employees.”
Why are the state’s restrictions a big deal for the economic mobility task force? Because 1) Raises in the minimum wage are being tried in a number of American cities and states, and the results so far seem promising; and 2) The GOP-controlled legislature is not likely to approve a raise in the minimum wage, nor give the OK for North Carolina cities to do so.
The GOP’s intransigence on the minimum wage issue is controversial, particularly after a July 2014 joint study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research and Goldman Sachs — hardly a voice of liberal spending — showed that the 13 states where minimum wage increases went into effect Jan. 1 saw faster job growth than those where minimum wage stayed the same. The researchers note that raising the minimum wage doesn’t automatically create new jobs, but it does give evidence that runs counter to common conservative objections, which claim that raising the minimum wage costs jobs.
Another study, this one by UC-Berkeley, looked at nine cities that raised their minimum wage, and found that the raises had no measurable effect on employment, one way or the other. What they did find, however, was that the raises spurred consumer spending in those cities, thus boosting local economies.
Mecklenburg’s economic mobility task force is an indirect result of a January 2014 study by Harvard University and UC-Berkeley, which looked at poverty in America’s 50 largest cities. Local leaders were stunned by the study’s conclusion that poor children in Charlotte have less chance of moving out of poverty than kids in any of the other cities studied. That report led County Commission Chair Trevor Fuller to describe the county’s increasing poverty as “intractable” and promised to get a task force together to identify the root causes and present the commission with plans for acting on the problem.
The committee will be co-chaired by Dr. Ophelia Garmon-Brown, a physician and Novant Health senior vice president, and U.S. Bank executive Dee O’Dell. Both co-chairs say they plan to have a “very diverse” group of people involved; the task force will doubtless include local business and religious leaders and actual, for-real, low-income folks to hopefully keep the discussions based in the reality that poor people face day to day. We were unsuccessful in attempts to speak with Garmon-Brown for her take on the task force, despite numerous tries.
Some local elected officials were unwilling to go on record regarding the task force. They were skeptical of either the task force’s worth or its likelihood of producing practical solutions. Two officials mentioned a current local task force they fear is falling short of expectations: the city’s Immigration Integration Task Force, which is slated to recommend policies to ease access to city services and increase civic engagement by immigrants. “There’s an impression that they’re not getting very far in their project,” said an official who would only speak off the record, calling Charlotte task forces “where good ideas go to die.” Another official expects the highlight of the economic mobility confab “will be when they serve the sandwiches at the first meeting.”
Other local lawmakers were more positive, albeit guardedly. City Councilman John Autry said he’s “hopefully optimistic” that the task force will be worthwhile, “as long as they come up with real, concrete actions to help the situation — with the understanding that government can’t correct the problem on its own; the business community will have to step up, too, which, in the long run, will be to their great advantage.”
Councilwoman Claire Fallon would love for the task force to succeed, and thinks it’s a good way to draw attention to the problem of ongoing poverty. However, she said, “We’ve been talking a long time about this, and I wish I could be more optimistic that something will happen now, but … what’s really needed is for people to be paid a real living wage.”
Unfortunately, that is one thing the task force will not be able to recommend.
This article appears in Dec 23-30, 2014.
Oh good. Politicians are going to pay themselves and a few supporters to operate yet another task force. Well, that will help increase THEIR income.
The sooner the GOP abandons the delusion that wealth trickles down like rain from the beneficence of the rich upon the poor, the sooner the economy will recover. Wealth flows UP via consumer spending to the people providing good or services that the working class needs or wants. The Reagan and Bush tax cuts are strangling the middle class. We need to stop measuring the economy by measuring it’s effect on investors and begin measuring the purchasing power of the average citizen. THAT is the engine that drives the economy.
The only direction in which the government mobilizes people is DOWNWARD. Consider that in 1968 the minimum wage was $1.25 and it had the equivalent purchasing power of $15 in today’s money. Note those last three words: IN TODAY’S MONEY. Had the government not engaged in a systematic destruction of currency, both via the Federal Reserve and by abandoning copper/silver/gold coins, there would have been NO inflation and the working poor would have the same purchasing power today that they did back then. If you take five silver quarters from the 1960s and melt them down, the price of the silver is $15. Funny how that works….
JQP:
In 1960, the average chief executive earned 40 times as much as the average worker. By 1990, the average CEO earned 107 times as much. In the following decade, this ratio rose to 525:1 before settling back to 301:1 in 2003.
Is the government responsible for that, too?
Inflation is normal in a capitalist economy. The inflation is driven by the corporations in the private sector demanding that their profits constantly increase and holding their CEOs responsible for seeing that it happens.
In 1960 banks did not charge fees on savings and checking accounts. In 1960 it was a crime to charge more than 18% interest on a loan. The law was called Criminal Usury, the slang term was Loan Sharking.
Is the government responsible for that, too?
Did you ever notice that the politicians who scream the loudest about how evil the government is are the same people who are trying to make it harder to vote, trying to stick their government noses farther into the women’s health clinics, are building hundreds of miles of fencing at our borders, are starting wars in every third world country that they can find oil in, and are still loudly defending the government’s right to monitor Americans’ communications, torture people and hold them indefinitely in off shore prisons?
Have you been to an airport lately? Does that look like America to you? Do you thing Americans would have tolerated that in 1960?
Inflation is NOT normal in a capitalist economy. In fact the Federal Reserve Act explicitly requires The Fed to pursue policies that favor “stable prices”. And for as long as the dollar was backed by copper/silver/gold, prices remained stable. For example, a one-ounce Hershey bar cost 5 cents in 1921 and a one-ounce Hershey bar cost 5 cents in 1965. That’s forty-four years without a price increase. Where’s your “normal” inflation, genius? Now compare the 5 cent price of a Hershey bar in 1965 (when quarters were silver and the dollar was backed by gold) to its current price of 75 cents to a dollar.
CEO pay is a straw man; the CEO of McDonald’s made $13.8 million last year. McDonald’s has 440,000 employees. So if the CEO’s salary dropped to one dollar, and that money distributed to all their employees, each employee would get $31. Would you like to refute this math, or are you just going to downvote me?
I’m against most of the things you mention in your penultimate paragraph, which you wrote when you realized you’d lost the economic argument and just started sputtering out irrelevant partisan insults.
Regarding your last paragraph, I endorse full repeal of the PATRIOT Act and abolition of the TSA. This makes me, according to your buddy Harry Reid, an accomplice to terrorism.
JQP:
Do you seriously believe that your 42 inch flat screen TV would cost the same as the 21 inch CRT television you had in the ’60s? Go out and sit in your car and tell yourself that all that technology would exist at ’60s prices. When power steering became standard equipment, the price of cars went up. repeat that for every other advancement they contain. Products get improved because manufacturers want to sell more items at higher prices. I actually worked at McDonalds when hamburgers were $0.15 each. Trust me, those were not the same burgers they sell today and at least in the store I worked in they sold a lot more of them. Product prices go up, people demand more money so they can buy the more expensive products, and the result is inflation. The only way to tell whether you are better off is by calculating how many hours you have to work to buy the things you need and want.
It is your claim about parting out the CEO salary that is the straw argument. Compare the CEO salary to the average McDonalds employee salary and you will find it actually supports my argument that corporate greed is what keeps employees in poverty. Companies hire mostly part time workers so they are exempt from much of the labor law. If you object to reasonable minimum wage it is a safe bet you don’t work for minimum wage.
I see it is impossible to convince you that not everyone who is not a Republican must be a Democrat. Your absurd claim that Harry Reid is somehow my hero proves that.
I’m glad that at least we agree on the USAPatriot act.
Actually advancements in technology disprove your claim that “inflation is normal in a capitalist economy”. Consider the iPhone and iPad. Every new model has come out at the same price point, yet each is a substantial improvement over the previous model. I remember in the 1990s when Hewlett-Packard would bring out a new printer (LaserJet, LaserJet II, LaserJet III, LaserJet 4), each with faster speed and higher resolution but at the same price. Apple and HP could have kept the same features, or raised the price, but they did neither. Why? Because they are competing in a capitalist economy.
I chose the Hershey bar because it is a product that has remained pretty much unchanged for a hundred years. Your 15 cent McDonald’s hamburger proves my point again.
>> Product prices go up, people demand more money so they
>> can buy the more expensive products, and the result is inflation.
Where does the money to buy those products come from? Inflation cannot happen unless the money supply increases faster than the value of goods and services. If the money supply increases at the same rate as the value of goods and services, you can have a growing economy WITHOUT inflation. This is why the mandate for “stable prices” is explicitly enshrined in the Federal Reserve Act.
>> The only way to tell whether you are better off is by calculating
>> how many hours you have to work to buy the things you need and want.
Well, just as we agree on PATRIOT, we agree on method of calculating the purchasing power of labor. The problem is that inflation erodes that purchasing power. Let’s say I work an 8 hour day at $25 an hour. That means I earn $200 a day (for this example I am ignoring taxes). Now, let’s say I spend half of that but I save the other half. After a year of 5% inflation, the $100 I saved has only $95 of purchasing power. But as my example of the Hershey bar shows, when the monetary system is sound, my purchasing power is not eroded: the $100 I earned in 1921 has the same purchasing power forty-four years later!
Another example I like to use is postage stamps: in the 46 years preceding 1968, a first class letter went from 2 cents to 6 cents (an increase of 200%). In the 46 years since 1968, it’s gone from 6 cents to 49 cents (an increase of 716%). A silver quarter would buy you 4 stamps in 1968; today a silver quarter would buy you 5. But today’s quarter only buys you a half a stamp. Same with gasoline. Two silver dimes would buy you about a gallon of gas, same as today. How much gas can you buy with two of today’s dimes?
>> If you object to reasonable minimum wage it is a safe
>> bet you don’t work for minimum wage.
OK let’s say the McDonald’s workers get their $15 minimum wage. What happens to the wages of someone who previously made $12 an hour (i.e. 65% more than the current MW)? What happens to the wages of union workers whose pay is tied to the MW?
You allege that I believe:
>> everyone who is not a Republican must be a Democrat.
I am not a Republican and I am not a Democrat, therefore I know firsthand that your accusation is false. I did not vote for the US Senate candidate who would have voted for Harry Reid for majority/minority leader. You did (tell me I’m wrong). But I did not vote for the US Senate candidate who will vote for Mitch McConnell for majority leader.
Oh, as a followup to your first paragraph (about the television), the Bureau of Labor Statistics considers the replacement of a 27″ CRT costing $250 with a 42″ Plasma costing $1250 to be DEFLATIONARY when it calculates the “official” inflation rate:
http://www.bls.gov/cpi/cpihqaqanda.htm