The Baltimore Sun had an article today titled O'Malley pledging a 'living wage'. This legislation deals with companies who do business with the state, but do not be fooled. This is just the beginning of more minimum wage increases applied to all businesses in the state. It didn’t take him long to live up to the hype. We have a true, hardcore liberal in the governor’s mansion. Why the democrats would want someone to make a living flipping burgers or bagging groceries is beyond me. We should encourage people to educate themselves and contribute to society. Low pay is incentive to get a skill and move on to a job that has more purpose. Do we need grocery baggers and fast food workers, absolutely. Those jobs should be for our youth, or unskilled workers, immigrants, the uneducated, etc… The motivation to move on is often found in the low pay.
The Unions in the state are now enjoying the spoils of war. They won the battle and are being rewarded accordingly. Now the unskilled helper who sweeps the floor on the construction site is going to make a living wage. I know a lot of people in the construction industry and they pay helpers minimum wage. Why do they do that? Because they don’t want them to sweep floors forever. They want them to watch and learn the trade so they can contribute. As the helper acquires his own tools and learns the trade, the company rewards him with pay raises. That is how the real world works. The democrats live in this fairytale land. The harsh truth is that not everyone deserves a living wage. It is harsh to say to someone that the skills they have are not enough to support their living. Harsh, but true.
One thing is for sure. Martin O’Malley is anti-business. Democrats simply do not get it. On the other hand, I feel that Republicans do need to support slight raises in minimum wage. $6.15 is not enough for someone to even begin getting their feet under them. Here’s an idea. Make minimum wage different based on age, dependents, education, experience, etc… On second though, experience might not be necessary because you can make over $100,000 a year in Harford County with no experience at all (sorry I couldn’t resist).
This post got screwed up so I had to delete it and repost it. The following were comments from the first posting.
Comment from Brian Bittner | Edit comment
Time: February 3, 2007, 12:25 am
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The living wage legislation has to do with state employees, not businesses. Requiring “all businesses in the state†to pay a living wage would be wildly unpopular – what makes you think that’s the next step? We call that the slippery slope fallacy.
A living wage is not just some crazy, meaningless invention. It is calculated to provide someone with a reasonable standard of living that relieves burdens on everyone. If people can make a reasonable wage they will have more money to spend to strengthen business, and will be able to afford necessities that many people cannot afford today like healthy food and medical insurance. Without these things, we all have to pay extra to subsidize businesses and bankroll welfare programs.
Why would anyone “want someone to make a living flipping burgers or bagging groceries� Because those people provide you the consumer with comfort and you ought to do unto them as they do unto you.
Comment from GOPerative | Edit comment
Time: February 3, 2007, 7:13 am
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“a proposal that would force companies doing business with the state to pay workers upward of $11 an hour.†It’s not just state employees, unless the Sun was incorrect.
Let’s give the burger flipper a living wage. The burger company can no longer afford to give me the burger for $1. They must now charge $2. So I stop going there because it is too expensive. The burger company loses money and has to close stores and lay people off. Who was helped in that situation? I have less choice, the employees now make $0, and the business loses revenue hurting our economy. That is what happens. If you don’t believe me ask an old union worker from Bethlehem Steel. I spoke with one last Saturday.
Comment from Brian Bittner | Edit comment
Time: February 3, 2007, 10:20 am
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You keep using the example of the burger-flipper, but burger companies don’t do business with the state. Companies who enter into contracts with the state CHOOSE to do that, they aren’t forced to do anything. If they don’t like paying a living wage, they don’t have to enter a bid.
Baltimore City actually passed a living wage law in the early 90s, and it had no adverse effect on employment levels, contract prices, or demands on taxpayers. “In fact, the value of business investment in the City of Baltimore actually increased substantially in the year after passage of the law.†An analysis of the impact of the law can be found at http://www.cepr.net/columns/weisbrot_II/baltimore.html.
Comment from GOPerative | Edit comment
Time: February 3, 2007, 9:38 pm
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Brian,
I want to start out by saying, thanks for commenting. I enjoy your comments because they are not the same old, same old. You are a liberal, or should I say a progressive. There are some things that we will never see eye to eye on but that is fine by me. This is one of those areas. Unions and minimum wage legislation have almost single handedly exported every single industrial job right out of the U.S. Who has that benefited? Let’s do the math on doing business with Maryland after living wage legislation. I will be a contractor bidding two buildings, one for the state and one for a private company.
I have 200 employees. On the building for the state my bid includes the following wages: 50 at $11.95, 50 at $15, 50 at $18, and 50 at $21. For the wages alone my bid was $6,595,000.
Again, I have 200 employees. On the same building for the private company my bid includes the following wages: 50 at $6.15, 50 at $9, 50 at $12, and 50 at $15. For the wages alone my bid was $4,215,000.
That is a difference of $2,380,000 for the exact same building with the exact same employees. Why should the tax payers pay an extra $2.3 million? This is where the living wage legislation actually hurts taxpayers. They are paying more but getting noting in return (maybe a few people off welfare but not $2.3 million). If the government acted like the corporate world they would have an extra $2.3 million to invest in schools, business development, job training, parks and recreation, etc…
The site you linked did not work. I am interested in reading about the impact of Baltimore City’s law. Was that a law that required companies that operate in the city to pay a living wage or just companies that do business with the City government?
On this one we may need to agree to disagree. I can only hope MOM is JUST pandering to the base and you can hope that MOM IS pandering to the base.
Comment from Brian Bittner | Edit comment
Time: February 3, 2007, 10:39 pm
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GOPerative,
I think we will have to agree to disagree on a lot of things, but disagreeing with conservatives sure is fun. I think we both have a sense of right and wrong and similar moral values. I just don’t see the workplace, particularly a taxpayer-funded workplace, as a place where the bottom line trumps those values. As the article I included points out, living wage laws exist because a minimum wage-earner must try to survive below the federal poverty line, and “governments should not be using tax dollars to create or subsidize poverty-wage jobsâ€. (If you take the last period out of the link it works.) We have to make decisions about what our government and our corporations should stand for, and I stand for reasonable accommodations for workers, not never-ending profit for owners.
For example, in your latest example, the top wage earner under a minimum wage standard makes $15, while the top earner under a living wage standard makes $21. Why would increasing the salary of the bottom-level earner necessitate an increase in the salary of the top-level earner? It is important to do away with the minimum wage because it keeps people in poverty; it is not important to raise wages at all levels to maintain prestige or make higher earners feel superior.
A living wage will by its nature require businesses and the government to pay more. But the government is already spending millions on subsidies to the very businesses who pay minimum wages to many of their workers, as well as paying for the health care that these companies are not providing (since the attempt to change that for just the largest company in the world, Wal-Mart, was struck down). I say start writing laws for workers and stop writing them for owners.
P.S. If you want to debate for the heck of it, lets take your earlier example (â€The burger company can no longer afford to give me the burger for $1. They must now charge $2. So I stop going there because it is too expensive. The burger company loses money and has to close storesâ€). I’m all for that. But maybe we can take that one into the forum.
Comment from Independent Educator | Edit comment
Time: February 4, 2007, 11:57 am
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Good debate, Brian and GOPerative! My thought is that both companies- despite the wages they pay would come in with similar bids – what the market will bear. The end result is that the company with the lower wages will then enjoy a higher profit margin. That will be the ultimate difference. And the taxpayer will be saddled with the cost of the uninsured health expenses, and other basic needs.
I think the debate boils down to values vs bucks. As a taxpayer I would rather my tax $ be spent on lifting people out of poverty rather than fattening the pockets of the CEOs and the investor class. Why are exhorbitant profits (greed) sacrosanct? ( take a look at Exxon when poor people are burning down their houses for lack of heating fuel) My dollars have certainly been spent less productively in many areas of govt. Inject values into this debate and I think the debate changes- -it’s not just about money.
Pingback from Delmarva Dealings | Edit comment
Time: February 5, 2007, 4:27 am
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[…] When will Democrats learn? So-called “living wage†bills lead to unemployment, not increased earning power for minimum wage earners. Who benefits? The unions… and the Democrat party. […]
Maybe I just enjoy playing “Devil’s Advocate,” but I can see another side to this one: if you ignore the union angle for a minute (haha) one could perhaps make the argument that higher-paid employees are perhaps better (or at least more motivated) workers, and thus would provide superior service.
Hey, I tried.
Really, though, there are small pluses on the conservative side of things: illegal immigrants usually aren’t paid well, so this sort of legislation means less business with companies that employ illegals.
Oh, and according to the Sun article, there’s already a $10.50/hr minimum in place. (“…a bill that passed two years ago mandated a $10.50-an-hour minimum wage for government contractors.”) O’Malley would be raising it, but not from $6.15/hr.
Well, unless legislators passed it, but it was vetoed by Erlich…? The Sun reporters make it sound like it’s in effect right now.
The reason all pay rates go up is because of scaling. Just because the floor has been raised all rates must be scaled up also. If the rate for level 1 job is increased, don’t you think that the level 2 and up jobs that require more skill, attention, and or knowledge would also be increased? What happens in the real world when the lowest level job becomes too expensive is that it is eliminated. Those duties are now assumed by the next level job or distributed among levels. Why? Because anyone can do the lowest level job, they just may not want to but can probaly do it as well if not faster or perform it in between other tasks. Does it always work? Nope, just check with someone who works in an office or plant that has cut back janitorial or maintenance services about the crud level increase. If positions are not eliminated, then costs rise.
If the market does not decide pay rates and the government dictates the rates at artificially escalated scales, then we will end up with increased unemployment or inflation of some type. If it only applies to government programs, then it is increased government expenditures which will mean cutting other programs or increased taxes. In the end, it is just another welfare program by another name. Those in the government and academia that have never had decision making responsiblities or operated a business should listen to the taxpayer base that has this experience.
Did anyone read the Aegis dated 2/7/2007. Councilmember Guthrie wrote a letter to the editor where he discussed fees vs. taxes and the use thereof. He wrote about the county’s “fee” on cable subscibers to a tune of $900,000 a year . Apparently this is earmarked for cable access and only $550,000 is used. The overage goes into the county’s budget. Read it, quite interesting.
Lets see, we need funding to build schools… I know, lets increase the costs on school construction. That is how we will build more schools.
wait, do i have something backwards here?
no wait, yeah, I think that’s right? isn’t it?
I mean, same money to start, we pay more per school, we get more schools correct?
If you based a minimum wage on the characteristics of the employee you would have employees discriminated against based on the costs to the employer. Basically, if I was a 30 year old male with 2 kids, and i desperatley needed a job, employerer’s wouldn’t choose me since I would have to be paid more than the 24 year old with no children…
So that wouldn’t really work either. Let’s face it. People have to have the oppurtunity to succeed and make money, not the guarentee that they will succeed and make money. Give people more the resources to increase the education, to increase the demmand for their services and give them the oppurtunity to succeed. Democrats want to hand out the fish rather than teach people how to fish on their own. If someone is still 30 years old and making minimum wage, i think that there is something wrong and it is not with the government.
For an added bonus, O’Malley is now pledging “diversity” in contracting. See MD Conservatarian for his reaction which I echo.
http://marylandconservatarian.blogspot.com/2007/02/great-moments-in-diversity.html