New Year’s resolution for a living wage - By MARY ANN DUNWELL

Found here. Reproduced here for fair use and discussion purposes. My comments in bold.

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This New Year rings in another 15 cents. On January 1, Montana’s minimum wage goes up from $7.90 to $8.05 an hour. I propose a toast however, not to 15 cents, but to a 15-dollar-an-hour minimum wage in Montana.

A "Fight for 15" movement is spreading across the country. It’s a campaign to pay folks a living wage. It means paying full-time workers enough to afford basic necessities, like food, shelter and health care, and maybe even a little to put aside for that unforeseen, often inevitable emergency. (No, it does not pay workers enough "to afford basic necessities." $15 is an arbitrary number, selected so as to sound reasonable and compassionate, but not excessive. It's a number selected for its marketability and image. It has nothing to do with a "living wage," because the cost of living varies greatly depending on where you live. 

That alone tells you all you need to know about the level of intellectual sophistication in the living wage movement.) 


In Montana, a living wage is $14.40 for a single person and goes up for families with kids. (Ahhh, so it isn't $15 in Montana. But wait, I'll bet the cost of living is higher in Missoula than it is in Havre. I'd suppose that $14.40 is an average, so too bad I guess for those of us who live in Missoula. One would think Missoulians should get more than $14.40. And shouldn't someone in Havre get less, because that person is obviously benefiting disproportionately?

Let's extend the logic of living wage proponents to its obvious conclusion. Since we're really talking about having government set this "living wage" via legislation, why shouldn't government be empowered to vary the amount by region, city, or even neighborhood? And, why not determine a living wage family by family? In fact, since we're getting government into the "living wage" business, why not have government allocate what it thinks each of us deserves? 

This is not ridiculous, because once one accepts the proposition that government should be involved in setting peoples' income, there is no rational justification to deny government from setting peoples' incomes in other ways. Any arguments used in favor of a living wage work equally well for government-set wages.)

Many Montanans earn just a fraction of a living wage, working hard all day, yet struggling to make ends meet. ("Working hard" has its virtues, but many people work hard without being particularly productive. Or they possess a skillset that is not all that valuable or unique. That is what people are paid for, their productivity and value of their skillset. From that descends the idea of working hard, but that only means you actually work and earn the wage that was agreed to beforehand.

So, enter the living wage. This turns the value of the employee into irrelevance. Now, government forces employers to pay their employees more without a commensurate increase in productivity. Merit is not a factor. A day's work for a day's pay is meaningless.

However, in the real world an employee renders a service to the employer, the value of which is determined by mutual agreement. Government intervenes in the transaction and dictates that regardless of the worth of the employee's labor, the employee must be paid a certain minimum level. So government-dictated wage minimums eliminates value as a determiner of wage and substitutes a forced redistribution of wealth.)

(Here come the sob stories...) One woman I talked with, who lives in pain every day, earns $300 a week at a daycare center caring for our children. She has to choose between gas for work and health care for her pain. A couple works several jobs between them to support their children, one child with a disability. Another woman is falling behind every month caring for her family. She choked back tears and said life’s hard. A living wage would make life easier for these Montanans, and lift them and countless others out of poverty. (Um, no. It would lift no one out of poverty, because the poverty line is a political decision, not an economic one. Definitionally, the poor are the bottom, the lowest 15%, more or less. There is always a bottom. Therefore, there are always the poor, and thus, there will always be advocates crying about the plight of the poor. The problem cannot be solved because there is always the lowest 15% on a spectrum of 0 to 100.)

That’s why, along with others, I am working on a living wage bill to introduce in the 2015 legislative session. The bill would phase in a $15 minimum wage over time, and like current law does, sustainably index the wage to inflation. The phase-in would be gradual, incremental, yet powerful. No business would take a big hit at once. (The author must have slipped. She tacitly acknowledges that the living wage will have a negative impact on businesses. Oops.) 

Businesses that employ fewer than 50 people full time could be exempt initially. (Weasel word.) According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, that’s 97 percent of Montana businesses – the ones that drive our Main Streets, grow our crops and innovate for the future. Those small businesses would have time to plan and take advantage of potential state incentives. ("Time to plan." In other words, "there is this disaster on the horizon, so how are we going to survive it?" The author seems to think that having warning of this means it will be easier, when in fact it will put many small businesses out of business, and cause others to lay off employees or reduce their hours.

What state incentives might she be talking about? Tax rebates? Subsidies? Paid for by the tax payer I suppose. So we the taxpayers will pay businesses to pay employees more so employees will be taxed more to pay for the subsidies. I see.)

At first, the phase-in to $15 would target the 3 percent of Montana businesses that employ more than 50 workers and can best afford it. (The author gets to decide who can afford it, hm? And by extension, if there are a group of businesses that can best afford it, there must be a group of businesses that can least afford it. Those businesses apparently get to plan for their demise.) 

Frankly, many of those companies grow wealthy off the backs of their substandard-wage workers. (Oh really? These workers are being paid what they're worth, and they're being paid what they agreed to work for. Thus, their wage cannot be "substandard.")  

More than 359,700 Montanans work for private businesses in Montana. Half of those folks work for the 3 percent bigger companies. The other half work for the remaining 97 percent small businesses. (If we look at the minimum wage, only 4.7% of workers earn that. There are about 580,000 workers in Montana. That means approximately 27,260 workers are at minimum wage. The author has not considered how many are working part time, those who are working while retired, or those who are working in 2 income homes where the partner makes more than minimum, or those who work more than one job. Her statistics are therefore meaningless.) 

(*Economic ignorance alert* If you must touch your computer, wear rubber gloves, or risk being stupid-o-fied...) 

Here are some upsides. If businesses double wages, they benefit from a rise in business tax deductions. (Ms. Dunwell, businesses would need to spend one dollar for each 30 cents they get back.) 

The state sees increased income tax revenue. (Hooray for government!) 

Folks have more money for things they’ve been putting off, like repairing or buying a new washer or dryer. (Which would cost more because of the living wage. And of course, having a higher income means paying more income tax.) 

More money gets circulated and multiplied through our economy. (Because right now that money is hidden in a mattress somewhere, right? Businesses  must be stacking their dough in filing cabinets. It's apparently not in circulation until government comes in and forces them to pay their employees more than they're worth. 

We need to understand that the living wage doesn't put more money into circulation, it simply changes whose pocket the money is located in.) 

More money flows into Social Security and retirement pools. (Hooray for government!. Oops, an inadvertent admission by the author that recipients of the living wage will pay higher taxes.) 

Waiting lists for public assistance shrink. (Probably not. Thresholds would increase to ensure that the poor are always available as an issue.) When we invest in people – our Treasure State’s true treasure – our families and communities thrive, and our Main Streets and great state prosper.

(*Economic ignorance alert* now over. It's now safe to use your computer without protection.)

A living wage isn’t a new idea. President Franklin Roosevelt appealed for living wages during the Great Depression. “Liberty requires opportunity to make a living, a living which gives man not only enough to live by, but something to live for,” said FDR. (And look at the wonderful Depression he perpetuated for us.) 

Eighty years later, it’s still all too true. Work is meaningful and dignifying. Working women and men deserve meaningful and dignifying compensation. (At a level dictated by government regardless of individual merit or achievement.) 

This New Year, let’s support living wage legislation and resolve to work for something not just to live by, but to live for.

Democrat Mary Ann Dunwell is Montana representative-elect for House District 84 in Helena. She encourages your comments and questions. You can reach her at 406-461-5358 or rep.maryann. dunwell@mt.gov