DagSeoul: Positions, Populations, Punk, Poetics

Minimum Wage is not a Social Welfare Program

I’ve noticed economists talking about perhaps increasing the earned-income tax credit instead of increasing wages.

Really?!

Why can’t we talk about the cooperation between employers and employees. Certainly, we work for less than we value our labor in exchange for certain benefits. Tax breaks are not a benefit of labor. Tax breaks can never be indexed to, say, increased production the way wages can. I don’t know enough about inflation to say the same for it, but I feel like that would be just as nutty.

When did economics become a means for justifying the failure of employers, owners, stake holders, and the government ignoring their bargains in the cooperative effort to produce value? All I’ve got to sell is my labor, and I don’t want to do that in order to secure a tax credit that exists only to prevent me from falling below the poverty line.

In addition, I don’t know why we’re tying the success of a minimum wage increase to whether or not unemployed workers will benefit from such an increase. It seems like a willful conflation. It sounds like we want to begin composing wages as a social welfare program. Not surprised Capitalists would seek to externalize the cost of wages, but the anti-state employing classes can’t have it both ways, right?

There’s a reason Milton Friedman supported negative income tax policies and it wasn’t because he gave two shits about poor workers.

I forgot to post this when I wrote my earlier post “Why Penny Pritzker Matters”. From the article:

School board member Penny Pritzker’s Hyatt Hotels Corp. is benefiting from a $5.2 million TIF subsidy on 53rd Street – while CPS’s proposed 2013 budget cuts seven schools surrounding the hotel project by $3.4 million, which is roughly the portion CPS is losing from the TIF deal.

“This one example shows the fundamental corruption in the way things are done here,” said David Orlikoff of the Chicago Teachers Solidarity Campaign, a labor and community coalition growing out of Occupy Chicago’s labor committee and supporting the Chicago Teachers Union.

CTSC will hold a press conference and speakout and picket the project at 53rd and Harper on Wednesday, August 8, starting at 5:30 p.m.

“As a member of the Board of Education, it’s Penny Pritzker’s job to find money for our schools, not to take our money for her business,” Orlikoff said.

The $5.2 million subsidy is part of $20.4 million in TIF funds going to the University of Chicago-led redevelopment of Harper Court (see here for some background).  In addition to the hotel, the university is building a 12-story office building in the first phase of the project.

CTSC points out that Pritzker has a net worth of $1.8 billion, and the University of Chicago – now engaged in a huge campus expansion – has an endowment of $6.6 billion.

“They have plenty of money,” said Lorraine Chavez of CTSC.  “They don’t need a taxpayer subsidy to pay for it.  It’s outrageous.”

At Catalyst, Penny Pritzker clarifies that she’s not personally receiving the $5.2 million, and in a statement to Newstips, Hyatt points out that the Hyde Park Hyatt will not be owned by the corporation but, like many Hyatts, operated under a franchise agreement, thus “neither Hyatt Hotels Corporation nor Penny Pritzker…is receiving TIF funds as a result of this project.”

dagNotes: The Old White Stand By…Blame It On The Blacks.

Thinking about Rick Santorum’s racist dog whistle to the Iowa Republican voters. He claims he doesn’t want to use other people’s money to enrich black people. Overtly racist language, of course. I’d not expect anything less from the Catholic conservative. I’m surprised and dismayed to have heard from more than one white friend that there’s an excuse for Rick Santorum’s statement, or that it’s politics as usual. I’m learning that many of my liberal white friends are not willing to betray their whiteness. Something about calling out white supremacy in everyday life seems inappropriate to many of them. It’s ok to attack nationalists and fascists, but everyday white folks and “respected” leaders is not nice. I hate that racist civility.

That white people continue to color wealth-distribution is a problem insisting that black America is so corrupted that they cost “us” too much. An argument implying black people are a financial drain on US wealth (thus potential for equality, i.e. white people like to say, “it’s their fault,”) is crazy considering how many black men we purposefully and willfully incarcerate each year, at great cost, and our inhumane sentencing policies that are unjustly applied in states nationwide. That sort of grand expense is cool, but the small amount of revenue spent on useful and successful, necessary welfare-programs is supposed to be unfair.

That’s white supremacy. It’s not veiled, it’s public policy, it’s explicit and obscene.