Living Wage / Schmiving Wage

Here's an impossible-to-read-if-you-don't-have-Times-Select NY Times Magazine article about local living wage movements in the States.  The article is hopeful at a time when Democrats have no hope.  It features compelling portraits of workers living way below the poverty line. And still, somehow it left me wanting more.  It's not that I don't like the idea of a living wage.  I just feel a little suspicious.  Suspicious -- because it's not clear whether people like the living wage all on its own.  I think everyone is excited about it because it's working.   

Let's take a moment and be those annoying economics tight-asses in the dining hall and list all of the reasons why the living wage won't help poor people.  I remember these reasons quite well, mostly because I learned them as a first-year during the Harvard Living Wage campaign arguing with ec concentrators who dripped condescension on me like hippies drop flowers.  The fears: it raises property values, making it more difficult for people to live where they work.  Because businesses have to raise costs, it drives customers away, ultimately taking business and jobs elsewhere.  It forces employers to hire fewer people to make up costs.  Another theory that I don't hear as often (probably because it's not as pc) is that giving people more money won't necessarily help them out of poverty.   

Although there is strong economic evidence to support the argument that a living wage actually doesn't have an effect on hiring practices, supporters of the living wage quoted in the article don't really care to use economic arguments at all.  They just say it's about humanity.  You have to pay people enough to live on.  Period.  If you're working full time, you shouldn't be earning wages that put you under the poverty line.  End of argument.

Liberals really have an almost gleeful excitement about this brand of moral stance.  As conservatives know all too well, moral arguments have a blanket power, a talk-to-the-hand-because-the-face-isn't-listening kind of authority.  People feel confident using them to dismiss even the most trenchant economic critique.  That's why liberals are so excited about living wage movements--now it's our turn, they say, to offer sweeping ethical claims that no one can fight.  They've enlisted religious leaders who cite the Bible as the source of their support for a living wage.  Now it's our turn, they say, to be stubbornly righteous. 

The movement seems to be working.  Wages are rising in targeted cities, and gosh darnit, people like the message.  It's something for Democrats to stand on.  Why can't liberals use morals more often to such a great effect?  In fact, much of the labor movement's arguments: workers deserve better health care and child care, and they should be organized and represented by someone other than their employer, all seem to have pretty strong moral components to them.  And we've got religious backing!  Democrats are always accused of picking up anti-religious causes that require long, complicated messages, while, while, the criticism goes, republicans instead have simple, bold, faith-based messages.  Maybe there's something so simple and bold about the living wage message that makes it work.

But, all the same, isn't the moral highground a slippery slope? (whew, mixed metaphors)  Sure, the religious leaders like it, but doesn't this just mean that they looked up the Bible on Sparksnotes and it said "poor people should be respected and dignified"?   What is so expressly "living wage" about this textual analysis?  Conservatives use this same message to say completely different things.  To me it sounds like we're dangerously close to "the good book told me so" kinds of arguments, the ones we don't like hearing from the Other Side.

The take-home-message of the living wage movement, for me, is that we're learning something (not so) new about how liberal politics should work.  We're learning, for instance, that religious leaders need to play a bigger part in democratic message-making.  We're learning that if the messages are clear and simple enough, and start local enough, change can happen.   These three strategies can also be referred to as beating Republicans at their own game.  This is what I think is so special about the living wage movement.   

This post has sat around in my draft box getting really stale, and now I'm not really sure whether I agree with it anymore.  Am I just being grumpy and contrarian?  If anyone wants to convince me that living wages are really central to the war on poverty, I am all ears.  For now, I'm signing out.  Happy Birthday, Maddy!   

Comments

[bixi chicks]

I really appreciate your point about the moral trump card -- it stops everyone else's arguments mid-sentence, which is both exhiliarating and perhaps not quite responsible. This must be how the right feels all the time. Thank you for pointing it out. At the same time, don't you find that it's kind of a relief use a moral argument to stop an economic debate, without trying to hide the source of your convictions? Most of the time we are motivated by "morality," even if we try to hide it. It's nice to be able to admit it for once.