Letter 2 America for June 3, 2014

Dear America,

While listening to the news this morning, there was a piece on NPR's Morning Edition about the Seattle City Council's approval yesterday of a $15 minimum wage to be phased in over the next few years.  The success of the measure was largely a consequence of the campaign for her council seat of the body's lone, self-described socialist, who campaigned on this issue specifically, and her comments were largely as would have been expected of an activist in the labor movement, socialist or not, pointing out that the battle over the minimum wage, and over fair treatment of workers in general, was just beginning as is the struggle against earnings inequality and the wealth gap between the rich and the poor.  During the course of the piece, the reporter interviewed the owner of two Subway sandwich shops, who had professed concern that he would have to raise the price of his sandwiches by a dollar as the wage increase kicked in: a $5 foot long will become a $6 foot long at his shops.  What he never mentioned as he observed that some of the Subways in the area...those along the city's borders...might suffer from the competition of the shops just over the city line that were not being required to pay the higher minimum wage, but rather were paying only the state minimum of $9.32.  But he never mentioned the factors that would go into the necessity for the price hike he predicted, nor did he mention how much he was making from his sandwich shops.  It seemed never to have occurred to him that perhaps he would have to live on earnings closer to those of his workers in order to remain competitive.  My guess is that he was a Republican.

Across the nation, the discussion of this issue--more broadly describable as the disparity between the excesses of the top 2% and the persistent struggle of those in the bottom 50% to meet their needs--is percolating through the electorate, and since 50% is greater than 2%, that should precipitate election results that are reflective of the "wealth gap," as it is sometimes called.  But will it?  Elections in the past three cycles haven't born out that prognostication and the conservative, supply-side Republican trend that started in 2010 has continued, though slightly diminished in 2012, which begs the question, what are the American people thinking that makes them continue to support candidates whose loyalty is to someone other than them.  Most voters are not millionaires.  Most voters struggle every day to make ends meet while putting way enough to educate their children without incurring too much debt and simultaneously providing for their own old age, so why are they willing to vote for candidates...Republican candidates...who unabashedly unsubscribe to the supply-side notion that unless we help the rich get richer, the poor will get poorer.  The notion is so counterintuitive, and the consequences of that philosophy--the acceptance of which we can attribute to Ronald Reagan's advocacy of it--are so plainly inequitable, and demonstrably so over the past thirty five years or so since the end of the Reagan administration, that no one should be able to get elected on the basis of his adherence to it.  Yet, the tide seems to be running against a rational economic theory that allows for a reasonable distribution of the fruits of American business and industry.  The role labor plays in creating that wealth seems to be forgotten much of the time...even by labor itself, which includes many more of us than does the portion of the population falling under the rubric "capital."  We seem to be voting self-destructively as a nation, and for the life of me, I cannot understand why our electorate allows it to happen.  Of course, the nation as a whole is probably more socially conservative than liberal, and the Republican Party has managed to arrogate the relevant debate to its own benefit by pandering to those who not only want to live their own lives a certain way, but want everyone else to live their way also.  The consequence is that economic issues have been rendered secondary in the minds of many of the 50% who provide most of the labor that makes our nation rich.  And that is what makes the minimum wage change in Seattle so consequential.  Maybe that worm has turned.

It isn't necessary for minimum wage laws to change all over the nation for the people who have to live with whatever the minimum wage is to realize that they are being used to someone else's advantage.  This goes back to what I was talking about recently when the subject was "class warfare."  People are starting to realize that they don't need to give up their aspirations just because someone else call them names.  We may in fact be heading for a political era in which people say with satisfaction that they are class warriors, and then where will the Republicans be since they will no longer have the benefit of an unquestioned social stratification that favors the people who fund their political careers.  But partisan rhetoric aside, it may be the case that people are starting to do something that I have advocated all my life: think with their own heads rather than with someone else's.  It may be that the Republican use of derogatory shibboleths to disparage those who disagree with them will serve only to inflame passions against their creed.  It may be that we are heading toward a new populism based on practical reality.  I can hardly wait for November to find out...I think.

Your friend,

Mike