the price of good intentions
by J.C Phillips
In her book Open Wide the Freedom Gates, Dorothy Height, one of the doyennes of the civil rights movements of the '50s and '60s, describes a meeting wherein women of the Mississippi delta talked openly about the effects of certain federal programs on their lives. Discussing the minimum wage, one woman is quoted as saying, “When minimum wage came in, our hours were shortened. So now instead of more adequate pay, we do double the work in half the time.” It is noteworthy that this meeting was not sponsored by a republican club, but the National Council of Negro Women and was moderated by Fannie Lou Hamer, another elder of the movement. Neither was the woman quoted some ivory tower intellectual or partisan gun slinger. She was one of the real-life people actually affected by minimum wage laws as opposed to so many of us that merely talk about such things in the abstract. In very plain language, the woman in Height’s story gives testimony that economic laws remain true, and their effect on the lives of people are real regardless of the pronouncements of politicians.
Amidst promises to lift legions of low wage workers out of poverty, the 110th Congress recently passed an increase in the minimum wage, a bill the president has indicated he will sign providing there are protections for business owners included in the legislation. Let us put aside for the moment the fact that the overwhelming majority of minimum wage earners do not live in poverty, do not raise families on their salaries and do not work full-time. As the Mississippi woman’s story attests, a minimum wage increase is more likely to actually harm those it is intended to help. We may wish it differently, but the laws of economics, which are neither cruel nor kind, say differently. Federal and state governments are perfectly able to set the price of labor. They are, however, unable to change the VALUE of labor and business owners, like all consumers, seek value for their money. As Height’s story demonstrates, a job whose real value has been overpriced by minimum wage laws will be eliminated, performed by those pricing their services appropriately or absorbed by other workers who must now justify their increase in wage with an increase in productivity.
It is ironic that this nugget of Mississippi delta wisdom now seems lost on a generation of Blacks that now demands minimum and living wage laws that invariably end up locking low skilled workers i.e. young black men out of work.
If past is prologue, sometime in March a major newspaper will publish a report describing the deepening plight of young Black men. The story will detail a list of afflictions including incarceration rates, lack of education and employment. What the story will not discuss is the impact minimum wage laws have on Black unemployment rates or how Black men on the margins are now in competition for low skilled jobs with illegal labor that is not burdened by federal or state wage laws.
In 1954, the unemployment rate for both black and white teenagers was 14 percent. In the decades that followed, the minimum wage increased sharply and the Black teen unemployment rate followed suit. After a brief dip in the 1980’s, the Black teen unemployment rate currently stands at 42 percent.
Congressmen will continue to make impassioned speeches about how raising the minimum wage will be the hand that lifts the poor from destitution. More than likely, it will mean continued unemployment for black men living on the margins, fewer prospects for entry level employment and a hobbling of the opportunity to build job skills and an employment record that will lead to better paying jobs in the future. It will mean men marginally educated with few or no skills resort to the street hustle to make ends meet and end up in the prison system.
That is the more realistic result of minimum wage increases. None of us wishes it so, but as an anonymous Mississippi woman made plain in 1965, there are real life consequences to all our good intentions.
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