We’re so foolish –

Effective today, July 24, 2008, the federal minimum wage for covered nonexempt employees is $6.55. The federal minimum wage provisions are contained in the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).

One of the jobs of the Federal Reserve is to keep worker insecurity high. People who are worried about losing their jobs aren’t likely to demand better pay. In fact, worker insecurity puts downward pressure on wages. In the low-wage sector, that downward pressure is ever-present, as there is usually a pool of unemployed workers to take the place of those who are currently working. Therefore, the woman cleaning your office building and the field worker straining over rows of strawberries are chained to the yoke, and have no hope of a better life.

For them, the only protection afforded comes from government in the form of minimum wage laws. Conservatives, who preach the religion of unfettered markets, despise minimum wage laws. They think the market ought to be left to its own in all areas, and that every market outcome, no matter how unpleasant, is the right outcome. To enforce a minimum wage, they say, is to create distortion, and that distortion will manifest in other ways, like loss of jobs as employers cut back, and in rising prices for basic goods that creates inflation, making goods and services more expensive work workers and thereby offsetting any gains in minimum wage.

The problem is, it doesn’t work that way, never has, never will. In the real world, the market easily absorbs minimum wage increases, as workers were probably underpaid anyway, so employers don’t cut back. Conservatives cannot offer up one laboratory where minimum wages have cause increases in prices or increased joblessness. Quite the opposite. Absent data, they merely pontificate on theory.

At the base of conservatives’ concern is the belief that labor costs need to be controlled, and that market forces, aided by the Fed, ought to be the sole determinant. They show no such inclination to control other costs – rent and food and energy are constantly increasing, yet there is no effort to rein in those costs. We merely have to adapt. But with labor, increasing costs are scary, and Wall Street has heart palpitations with every increase in employment numbers.

Minimum wage laws truly benefit the little guy, and every worker up the line gets a bump when MW goes up. Rising wages is a good thing – more money for the working and middle classes is a positive outcome. If it’s a zero sum game, then we’re spreading the wealth by allowing workers to keep more of the wealth their labor creates. But if low-wage earners turn around and spend their new-found wealth on the basics of life, the money comes back to us in multiples.

If every conservative who preached to us about minimum wage had to live for one week on it, they would very quickly set it at $20 and index it to inflation. They are truly out of touch.

We had a tiny little debate on minimum wage over at Craig’s mtpolitics.net. It didn’t amount to much, but I ran across the following argument, posted by David, who runs a blog called Better Living Through Blogging :

My answer to the minimum-wage idjits: if increasing the minimum-wage to $6.15 per hour is good, then surely increasing it to $25 per hour is better. And by that logic, increasing it to, say, $100 per hour would be GREAT!

Right?

Oh, but that’s not what you meant? That’s not reasonable?

Well then what makes your figure of $6.15 per hour (or any other mandated wage) reasonable?

It’s an easy argument to answer – living costs exceed wages provided by a $5.15 per hour wage. Low-wage workers are disadvantaged in many ways, one of which is that there are, in many markets, a surplus of them. When that happens, downward pressure is exerted on wages, and people wind up working not for $5.15 per hour, but $4.00 per hour, $3.00, $2.00 – David likes to run his argument out to extremes, so let’s take an extreme case – $1.50 per day, as in places like Vietnam, where they make Nike sneakers.

In other words, there’s no correlation between living costs and wages paid low-skilled workers. The wage they can earn in a surplus labor market is too low to live on. That class of people experiences daily something that most of us are immune to – the free market. It’s not a pretty thing.

So, given the ugliness of market outcomes, we as a society elect to step in and set an arbitrary standard – there shall be no wage less than $6.15 per hour in the state of Montana. We didn’t say $25 or $100 per hour because a minimum wage that high would be absurd. That’s a strawman argument. We said $6.15 because we can easily absorb such a low minimum. In fact, we could do better. The people who worked so hard to get the wage passed surely knew that even $6.15 was not high enough, but politics is the art of the doable.

Question now for David, who put forth the argument above. The standard conservative response to a higher minimum wage – to any minimum at all, is that there’s no such thing as a free lunch – that whatever we gain in wages we lose in the number of people employed. Minimum wage has been raised in many states over the years while the Federal Government has dallied. Please, if you would, David, give an example of a state where minimum wage increased and employment in the low-wage sector decreased.

Clock’s running. Tick tock tick tock …..

There’s talk now of a higher mandated minimum of over $7.00 per hour coming out of Washington in the wake of the election landslide. It’s a good wedge issue, and if Bush were to veto it, his approval ratings would plummet. (Just kidding.) But Democrats have an opportunity here to do something that will truly help their supposed base. Let’s hope they have it in them.

Years ago I read an article so stimulating that I copied it and filed it – “Five and a Half Utopias” by physicist Steven Weinberg. In it, he disputes our tendency to idealize our human pursuits, and specifically disassembles five utopian ideals – bad thought habits, I suppose. They are 1)free markets, 2) rule by the best and brightest, 3) religious, 4) green, and 5) technological utopias. (The “half” utopia is one that he himself idealizes, the Civilized Egalitarian Capitalist Utopia.)

I insert below part one, the free market utopia, as we seem to spend so much time going around about it here. The entire article is equally riveting.

Here’s Weinberg:

Free Market Utopia

Government barriers to free enterprise disappear. Governments lose most of their functions, serving only to punish crimes, enforce contracts, and provide national defense. Freed of artificial restraints, the world becomes industrialized and prosperous.

THIS style of utopia has the advantage of not depending on any assumed improvements in human nature, but that doesn’t mean we have to like it. If only for the sake of argument, let’s say that something (productivity? gross national product? Pareto efficiency?) is maximized by free markets. Whatever it is, we still have to decide for ourselves whether this is what we want to be maximized.

One thing that is clearly not maximized by free markets is equality. I am talking not about that pale substitute for equality known as equality of opportunity but about equality itself. Whatever purposes may be served by rewarding the talented, I have never understood why untalented people deserve less of the world’s good things than other people. It is hard to see how equality can be promoted, and a safety net provided for those who would otherwise fall out of the bottom of the economy, unless there is government interference in free markets.

Not everyone has put a high value on equality. Plato did not have much use for it, especially after the Athenian democracy condemned his hero, Socrates. He explained the rigid stratification of his Republic by comparing society to the human soul: the guardians are the rational part; the soldiers are the spirited part; and the peasants and artisans are the baser parts. I don’t know whether he was more interested in the self as a metaphor for the state or the state as a metaphor for the self, but at any rate such silly analogies continued for two millennia to comfort the comfortable.

In the course of time the dream of equality grew to become an emotional driving force behind utopian thinking. When English peasants and artisans rebelled against feudalism in 1381, their slogan was the couplet preached by John Ball at Blackheath: “When Adam delved, and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?” The French Revolution adopted the goal of equality along with liberty and fraternity; Louis-Philippe-Joseph, duc d’Orl�ans, wishing to gain favor with the Jacobins, changed his name to Philippe-Egalit�. (Neither his new name nor his vote for the execution of Louis XVI saved the duke from the Terror, and he joined the King and thousands of other Frenchmen in the equality of the guillotine.) The central aim of the socialists and anarchists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was to end the unequal distribution of wealth. Bellamy followed Looking Backward with a sequel titled simply Equality. It is a cruel joke of history that in the twentieth century the passion for equality has been used to justify communist states in which everyone was reduced to an equality of poverty. Everyone, that is, except for a small number of politicians and celebrities and their families, who alone had access to good housing, good food, and good medicine. Egalitarianism is perhaps the aspect of utopian thinking that has been most discredited by the failure of communism. These days anyone who urges a more equal distribution of wealth is likely to be charged with trying to revive the class struggle.

Of course, some inequality is inevitable. Everyone knows that only a few people can be concert violinists, factory managers, or major-league pitchers. In revolutionary France the ideal of equality soon gave way to the carri�re ouverte aux talents. It was said that each soldier in Napoleon’s army carried a marshal’s baton in his knapsack, but no one expected that many soldiers would get to use it. For my part, I would fight against any proposal to be less selective in choosing graduate students and research associates for the physics department in which I work. But the inequalities of title and fame and authority that follow inexorably from inequalities of talent provide powerful spurs to ambition. Is it really necessary to add gross inequalities of wealth to these other incentives?

This issue cannot be judged on purely economic grounds. Economists tell us that inequality of compensation fulfills important economic functions: just as unequal prices for different foods help in allocating agricultural resources to produce what people want to eat, so unequal rewards for labor and for capital can help in directing people into jobs, and their money into investments, of the greatest economic value. The difference between these various inequalities is that in themselves, the relative prices of wheat and rye are of no importance; they only serve the economic function of helping to adjust production and resources. But whatever its economic effects, gross inequality in wealth is itself a social evil, which poisons life for millions.

Those who grew up in comfortable circumstances often have trouble understanding this. They call any effort to reduce inequality “the politics of envy.” The best place for the well-to-do to get some feeling for the damage done by inequality may be American literature, perhaps because America led the world in making wealth the chief determinant of class. This damage is poignantly described in the novels of Theodore Dreiser, who grew up poor during the Gilded Age, when inequality of wealth in America was at its height. Or think of Willa Cather’s story “Paul’s Case.” The hopeless longing of the boy Paul for the life of the rich drives him to give up his whole dreary life for a few days of luxury.

Another thing that is manifestly not maximized by free markets is civilization. By “civilization” I mean not just art museums and grand opera but the whole range of public and private goods that are there not merely to help keep us alive but to add quality to our lives. Everyone can make his or her own list; for me, civilization includes classical-music radio stations and the look of lovely old cities. It does not include telemarketing or Las Vegas. Civilization is elitist; only occasionally does it match the public taste, and for this reason it cannot prosper if not supported by individual sacrifices or government action, whether in the form of subsidy, regulation, or tax policy.

The aspect of civilization that concerns me professionally is basic scientific research, like the search for the fundamental laws of nature or for the origins of the universe or of life — research that cannot be justified by foreseeable economic benefits. Along with all the good things that have come from the opening of free-market economies in Eastern Europe, we have seen the devastation in those countries of scientific establishments that cannot turn a profit. In the United States the opening of the telephone industry to free-market forces has led to the almost complete dismantling of pure science at the Bell Laboratories, formerly among the world’s leading private scientific-research facilities.

It might be worthwhile to let equality and civilization take their chances in the free market if in return we could expect that the withering of government would serve as a guarantee against oppression. But that is an illusion. For many Americans the danger of tyranny lies not in government but in employers or insurance companies or health-maintenance organizations, from which we need government to protect us. To say that any worker is free to escape an oppressive employer by getting a different job is about as realistic as to say that any citizen is free to escape an oppressive government by emigrating.

From another section of the piece, on a utopian vision he supports, the Civilized Egalitarian Capitalist Utopia:

We are in the process of giving up our best weapon against inequality: the graduated income tax, levied on all forms of income and supplemented by taxes on legacies. A steeply graduated income tax, if accompanied by generous allowances for the deduction of charitable contributions, has another virtue: it amounts to a public subsidy for museums, symphony orchestras, hospitals, universities, research laboratories, and charities of all sorts, without putting them under the control of government. Oddly, the deductibility of charitable contributions has been attacked in whole or in part by conservatives like Steve Forbes and Herbert Stein, even though it has been a peculiarly American way of achieving government support for the values of civilization without increasing government power.

Anyway, I found the piece to be fascinating, in January of 2000 in Atlantic Magazine, and now. And if you have taken the time to read this far, here’s a reward for your troubles – a 74 minute discussion between Weinberg and biologist Richard Dawkins on just about everything. (It’s a Google video – I hope you don’t have to be logged in to Google to view it.)

From Murial Kane of Raw Story:

A new book about media mogul Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp. owns Fox News, is to be released next week. Its most sensational revelations involve what the author describes as Murdoch’s loathing for leading Fox commentator Bill O’Reilly.

Politico received a pre-publication copy of Michael Wolff’s The Man Who Owns the News and reported on Friday that Murdoch is not only embarrassed at times by his ownership of Fox News, but that he “absolutely despises” O’Reilly, who is that network’s top-rated personality.

Here’s a way for the unemployed to pass the time – the 100 greatest movie characters of all time. You have to hit them one by one, and I do think that Dr. Emmett Brown (76) should be 43, and #75, Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand in Fargo) should be more like 28, but it’s a fun list. Here are the top ten:

10: Don Vito Corelone
9: Ellen Ripley
8: Captain Jack Sparrow
7: The Dude
6: Indiana Jones
5: Dr. Hannibal Lecter
4: Han Solo
3: Heath Ledger as “The Joker”
2: Darth Vader
1: Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt in Fight Club)

I sure didn’t see that #1 coming. Here’s some others – 91: Scarlett O’Hara; 74: ET (I did not know ET’s voice was done by Debra Winger); 70: Atticus Finch; 55: Lt. Frank Drebin; 53: Luke (Jackson – not Skywalker); 46: Anton Chugurh – the best villain to come along since Hannibal Lecter, IMO; 34: Rocky; 27: Daniel Plainview (I get depressed just thinking of that movie); and #23: Harry Callahan.

Oddly missing: Jake LaMotta, Rambo, Rhett Butler, Dorothy, Jim Stark, and Ray Kinsella – some very memorable characters.

It’s a clickathon – a good way to sell banner ads. But fun.

The chart below represents IQ spans for various professions. My profession, accounting ranges from 92 to 123 or so. My son’s profession, high school teacher, has the same range. My brother’s profession, minister, has the same range. At the high end are college professors and medical personnel. (No wonder most Phd’s are liberals.) Scientists score high, as do lawyers.

To use this chart: Find your profession. Go to the far right end of the bar. That’s where you belong – at the very top of your profession.

h/t: Dr. Peter Rost

Firedoglake asks the question:

Anyone else noticed that somehow the banks and brokerages and so on getting all the huge bailouts don’t seem required to come up with a plan for “long term economic viability”, but somehow the Big 3 do? Why is that? If it’s true that this financial crisis is such that banks can’t be expected to be viable on their own, why is it that Detroit has to be?

My best answer? Citibank is not troubled by labor unions.

I just finished reading Chris Hedges’ book American Fascists. Hedges is a Harvard Divinity graduate and a deeply religious man, the son of a minister. He’s put off by the Christian Right, and in the book likens their leaders to others with less savory reputations, like Mussolini, Stalin, and Godwin. I found the book interesting, but I think a bit overblown. The right wing Christians are useful to politicians, but are much like Fredo Corleone – that is, even though well connected, out of the loop.

But lately (Vice President Sarah Palin anyone?), they’ve been having close encounters with real power. It is troubling.

Here’s what Hedges has to say (in an interview with Michelle Goldberg) about the persistent question on whether George W. Bush is a true convert or a poseur:

I think he’s a believer, to the extent that this belief system empowers his own arrogant sense of privilege and intellectual shallowness. When you know right and wrong, when you’ve been mandated by God to lead, you don’t have to ask hard questions, you don’t have to listen to anyone else. I think that plays into Bush’s character pretty well.

I think there are probably other aspects or tenets of this belief system that he finds distasteful and doesn’t like. But in a real sense he fits the profile: a washout, not a very good family life – apparently his mother was a horror show – he was a drunk, allegedly used drugs, coasted because of his daddy, reaches middle age, hasn’t done anything with his life, finds Jesus. That fits a lot of people in the movement.

There’s a chapter on this weird Rapture stuff – the idea that true-believing Christians will be taken from the earth, that the rest of us will die horrible prolonged deaths, and then they will come back to rule. (A priest once told my son that they really blew it when they put the Book of Revelations in the Bible – they should have used Star Wars instead.) In another part of the book, Hedges mentions in passing the concept of the “Master Race”. That’s all that their eschatology is about – the penultimate time for them, when they take control of all. They are the Master Race.

They’d be just another cult waiting for a comet if there weren’t so damned many of them. They have untoward effects on us all. They threaten the first amendment, the separation of church and state, and are really bad for the environment – they believe that since the end is near, there’s no sense in preserving the earth’s resources. God will provide in abundance anyway. (Many of us remember James Watt, an end-timer who was Secretary of the Interior under Reagan. He once told Congress “I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns, whatever it is we have to manage with a skill to leave the resources needed for future generations.”) They can do real and lasting damage.

I get a bit testy around fundamentalists. You can’t reason with them – they are out of reach. They are so certain they are right that they can be Machiavellian in pursuit of their goals, as when, according to Stephen Spoonamore, a few of them rigged the 2004 presidential election in Ohio (“saving babies”). When you are right, when you know you are right, when you know everyone else is wrong, when God is on your side, any means justifies your ends. Hence, Inquisitions.

This too shall pass, I keep thinking. But it’s lingering. We have people in high office with crazy belief systems, like Rep. Michelle Bachman and Gov. Sarah Palin and U.S. Senator Mark Pryor, who said in Bill Maher’s movie Religulous that you don’t have to pass an IQ test to be a U.S. Senator. But there’s a supreme shallowness with these people that they exhibit before us proudly – they are not interested in complications or nuance. They are simple people with simple answers.

Throughout U.S. history there have been extremes of religious fervor, which we call Great Awakenings. What’s happening now is merely a continuation. The U.S. is off-the-charts religious and fundamentalist. It’s a wonder that we get intelligent pragmatists elected to the presidency. It’s time now for the Republicans to control their base. They are coming too close to the seat of power. Give them minor jobs, keep them busy, but by all means, keep them out of power.

Even Newt’s family doesn’t love him.