Livable Minimum Wage Could Help Eliminate The Dole

The poverty rate in America is the highest in 10 years.

A recent report shows a wider gap between the rich and poor than in any other industrialized nation.

“People are working harder and not making it,” laments U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich. “There are growing legions of working poor in this country.”

In Spokane, the 3rd Legislative District has the highest welfare rate in the state.

In the nation’s capital, Washington Post columnist David Broder decries “compensation policies that have enriched the top percent of Americans mightily in the last 20 years, while the earnings of most working class and middle class workers have stagnated or declined.”

Growing numbers of Americans work two or three jobs.

Others turn to welfare. It pays better.

At the same time, Secretary Reich observes, “We are enaged in a great debate of how to get people off welfare and into work. And Americans are starting to disbelieve the American dream.”

What to do?

The consensus is that expanded education and retraining will enable the nation’s work force to compete more effectively for better-paying jobs in the global economy. But this is long term.

In the meantime, says labor’s Reich, “We’ve got to raise the minimum wage. Not by $10 an hour. By 90 cents over two years. From $4.25 to $5.15.”

But the extra pennies hardly seem sufficient to lift working families stuck on the bottom rung of the pay scale out of poverty or liberate unwed mothers from the stubborn clutches of the welfare system.

A better solution, it seems obvious, would be to raise the minimum wage to a truly livable level that enables everyone capable of working to earn enough for all their needs.

That includes health care. Child care. Shelter. And the many other family services now available through endless social programs so costly to taxpayers and destructive of the human spirit that the damage to the fabric of American society is beyond estimation.

Even so, any suggestion of a truly livable minimum wage will be viewed as unpatriotic, anti-business, and obscene by defenders of the existing convoluted and wasteful system of tax collection and wealth redistribution.

Public employees unions, government officialdom and the National Federation of Independent Businesses lobby will automatically protest it can’t be done. Could it be their mutual interests are best served by an unskilled labor force cast into perpetual bondage by low-paying jobs and a giant web of grossly costinefficient programs?

Granted, adapting to a livable minimum wage would be scary and extremely challenging. It very well may be impossible. Or impractical.

But maybe not.

On the surface at least, the idea embodies exciting potential for reversing America’s economic and social decline. In concept, a livable mimimum wage could:

Cut government down to size.

Put everyone back to work.

Curb socialism creep.

Strengthen and reward the private enterprise system.

Renew the work ethic.

Restore human dignity.

And require a best effort by all Americans to earn their keep instead of living off others and resenting those who work harder and smarter.

The savings to businesses and taxpayers of slashing traditional social services to the bone should easily outweigh the costs.

Entry-level wage minimums could be lower so that beginning workers are required to gain experience and earn their spurs in the workplace.

Similarly, levels of minimum pay might be pegged to classroom training, thus rewarding and encouraging the pursuit of education and skills.

Any unable to secure employment in the private sector would be found work in the public sector - running a computer, sweeping the floor, or mowing the grass for taxpayers.

The goal would be elimination of the dole, except for a relative few medically determined unable to work. Otherwise, no exceptions. Work, or else.

Drastic steps, yes, but the present uncaring manner in which America treats its disenfranchised, most of whom truly do want to work if they can make a living at it, is an international disgrace.

Earning a living wage used to be the American way of life. Restoring it might be worth a shot.

, DataTimes