EastWord presents opposing viewpoints on hot topics. The question this time is: The ever-present debate heats up as to rather or not our nation’s most basic wage system should change, but at what cost? Check out what our opposing gust writers have to say on the topic:

Take minimum wage away all together

There was a time when I had much more hair and much less money. It was 1995 and I was sixteen years-old. That year I got my first job at Crest Foods. Having been raised on the principles of hard work, I was glad to have the job, inglorious as it was. I was a sacker and the pay was $4.25 per hour, which was the minimum wage at the time. I went to school at Carl Albert from 7:45 to 2:40 and worked from 3 p.m. until 10 p.m. most days. I remember complaining to my father one day about how I thought I should be paid more and my father gave me one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever received.

He said, "How much money you’ll make in life is directly proportional to how many people can do your job." Nobody had ever said that to me. At the time I had no marketable skills, no work experience and I was a teenager living with my parents. In fact, a drunken monkey could have done my job. My daily duties involved opening bags and placing groceries in said bags and finally, placing said bags in a cart. It required no intellectual effort and wasn’t that physically difficult.  What is that kind of labor worth, I ask?  Not much. I just didn’t have that kind of value. 

Proponents of raising the minimum wage are more social advocates than economists. Nearly all economists agree that raising the minimum wage does little to affect the poverty rate. This is for many reasons, but the biggest reason is that as minimum wage increases, so do the costs of goods and services. Payroll is the thorn in every employer’s side and in the case of my business, it’s the largest expense. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, one-half of those being paid the minimum wage are under the age of 25. This makes sense because these are the least skilled workers with the least amount of work experience. 

Like most insanely misguided liberal policies, raising the minimum wage is an attempt to paint the Democrat party as compassionate while railing against corporations and businesses which they seem to enjoy doing so much. It’s a wholly political issue though as even the proponents of raising the minimum wage know it will have little or no impact on poverty in America. 

Most minimum wage employees are like I was back in 1995. Young, uneducated, inexperienced and living with their parents. I wonder what would’ve happened had I demanded a raise back then. I imagine I would have been fired because there was an available work force who would have easily replaced me. I sometimes wonder what would’ve happened had we unionized and demanded higher wages.

I imagine Crest would have fired us all and either made the customers sack their own groceries or hired from a new pool. Either way, the end result would be my unemployment. In the end, the market should determine wages, not arbitrary mandates set by politicians.

I believe there shouldn’t be a minimum wage at all and that market conditions ought to determine who gets paid what. This may sound shocking to those accustomed to the federal government bailing people out of their bad choices, however, if you fail to educate yourself properly, fail to learn marketable skills and fail to work hard enough to be promoted, those aren’t problems your employer should be forced to compensate you for.

Minimum wage is like so many other liberal programs, it’s designed to steal money from one group and give to another. It’s no different than Obamacare and food stamps in that respect.  Also, if we’re going to be paying sackers at grocery stores $15 per hour, there will be people with college degrees doing that job and the poor and uneducated will likely just be unemployed. They wouldn’t be able to compete in the market. 

Minimum wage is a feel good law. It serves no purpose, does no good and compels the free market to overvalue certain members of the workforce. If you want to make $15 per hour, I strongly suggest you put yourself in a position to have a skill not a lot of other people have. That gives you value and after all, value is what should determine your income.

Weighing social responsibility with regulation

This was a very tough article to compose.  I am not an economist.  To insure that I was able to write an article that was based on informed opinion, I questioned friends and family to learn from them.   Additionally, I wanted balanced input so that I did not base my opinion on ideology alone.

Should we raise the minimum wage?  The short answer is a resounding YES!  Determining the best way to do so requires far more than a short answer.

One friend of mine who holds Libertarian ideals and is an EastWord contributor showed me some research that gives evidence that raising the minimum wage increases unemployment among African-American teenagers.  He contends that we Progressives often implement policies that we think will do good, but end up hurting some of the people we most want to help.

One individual stated that the market should determine wages instead of the government.  He stated that, "companies are in the business to make money, not to take care of their employees."   During the same discussion, another Conservative friend of mine stated that he believes when a business opens its doors, that business then enters into an implicit "social contract" in which the business has an ethical responsibility to take care of its employees and also contribute to the community.

My father-in-law, who is a Conservative and also extremely wise, stated that there can be no blanket solution to the minimum-wage issue.  I agree.

For too many people, the minimum wage is too low. People work, but cannot live on the wages they earn. Some major corporations are only too willing to make their quarterly projections on the back of the employees who are paid the least.  The all-powerful market too often is corrupted by greed in that workers see no increase in compensation for long periods of time or are laid off while upper management increases their own salaries and bonuses to what many consider exorbitant levels. 

Some large corporations are very creative in finding ways not to compensate their employees, while cutting benefits and eliminating perqs such as holiday and overtime pay.  All of this occurs while increasing the workload of the employees.  In short, too many companies view their employees as an expendable resource, make conditions and compensation progressively worse for the employees they have, and then complain to each other and those around them that, "No one wants to work."  Unfortunately, they left off the, "…for us," at the end of that complaint.  Meanwhile, taxpayers foot the bill for government assistance to these folks...who are employed and working.

These conditions are not seen across the board, and there are examples (Costco comes to mind) of exemplary corporate responsibility toward employees.  We know that small businesses struggle with payroll but do their best with what they have, and many truly try to take care of their employees at great personal expense.  So how do we address paying employees a living wage without hurting large groups of people?

No single "blanket" legislation will solve the issues inherent with a minimum wage increase.  Instantly raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour will harm a number of U.S. companies. Some possibilities are setting a differential for small vs. large businesses (although this creates other problems), setting a different scale based on age (such as under those aged 21 or younger can receive less than the higher minimum wage which would be imposed for those employees who are older than 22 years), and raising the minimum wage a smaller amount than to the proposed $15 per hour, but then tying the minimum wage to inflation and/or the Consumer Price Index.  The "market" will not fix the problem itself (sorry, my Libertarian and Conservative friends), nor will one-size-fits-all legislation (apologies to my Liberal friends). 

Any solution to this issue will require significant thought – free of ideology – that is geared toward finding a responsible, yet effective, solution. 

(Editor’s Note: EastWord provided this week’s topic to two local community members that have agreed to participate in our Point/Counterpoint. Their identities will remain anonymous to our readers, but are known by EastWord’s editor. We hope this feature encourages our readers to engage in a friendly conversation.)