Minimum Wage!!!!

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Unlike the world we knew when some of us were growing up, the world we have now is rather a puzzling one.  In some instances as a deliberate result of manipulation, nothing is as simple as it used to be.

The President has advocated raising the minimum wage to roughly $9.  Is this a good thing, or will there be a degree of inflation that negates the benefits of the higher minimum wage? 

Unfortunately, I believe that the answer in the long run is: yes; manufacturers and businesses will gamble that the people will expect prices to rise, and they will expect their competitors to raise prices, and the competitors will.  (The same thing happens with gasoline prices: prices go up just a little before the gas stations actually have to pay more for the gasoline. 

Unfortunately, of course, they wait until after cheaper gasoline supplies have been available for a while before they’re forced to lower their prices to compete with the less expensive gas across the street.  If they’re lucky, the gasoline station across the street will keep the prices up for a while, and both companies make out like bandits.  Does it sound as though I’m cynical about business?  No!  Really?  No!!!  Really?)

The problem, though, is that Congress is reluctant to encourage Washington to channel money into the economy (except in ways that will help Big Business, or at least the Big Businesses that are in Republican hands, e.g. Oil and Energy, generally).  To deal with the matter in a politically feasible way, Obama has to make a suggestion that will be politically dangerous to oppose.  If Congress says No to raising the minimum wage, the Democrats can hope that the fallout will be remembered until the polls in 2016.  If Congress says Yes, the Democrats can hope that the credit will go to Obama in 2016, in which case the Democrats can capitalize on the goodwill.

But the higher minimum wage will (if it comes about) create a temporary boom in the big cities, where most minimum-wage workers live (and also to a far lesser extent in rural areas).  Minimum wage workers do not, generally, hoard their money, in contrast to the Middle Class and the Economic Elite (the so-called 1%) which sends the money offshore to the Cayman Islands, or to the drug lords in Mexico.  So the money will come in to small businesses, which will then see a modest expansion.  It’s up to the Economists to predict how long the upturn will last, and of course they’ll get it wrong, as always.  There will be a slight increase in tax revenue, if the trickle-uppers are right.  I think I just invented a new phrase: Trickle-Up.  I ought to be canonized just for that.

I was just explaining to conjugal buddy K how fiscal conservatives (and Tea Partyers generally) suffer from not thinking their prejudices out.  I had just conjectured that the GOP lower ranks, people who have drifted into the GOP from elsewhere in the last several decades, consisted of hard-working, altruistic people who have just had enough.  They ascribe everything that is wrong with their lives as stemming from the sheer laziness of the working class. 

Of course they lump into the Working Class everyone who is either unemployed or underemployed, inner-city no-goodniks, druggies, single mothers, minorities, immigrants, criminals, rude shop assistants and taxi drivers, and people who give them the finger on the highway.  “Why don’t these people get jobs?” they ask.

Those who know the answer to the question know the answer well.  We also know that it is a long multi-part answer, and one that is not conducive to a sound bite, or even a sound meal.
These people sometimes do have jobs, but not enough to make ends meet.
Some of these people do not have jobs.
It has to do with poor education, where they live, and the schools they attended, and their circumstances while they were kids, which might not have been conducive to high achievement in school.

“Well, why don’t they study harder?  Why don’t they move to areas where the schools are better?  If they really wanted to, they could change their lives and improve themselves!” 

Suffice it to say that (1) it is difficult to get a decent education anywhere today, and especially in urban areas, and most especially if your parents have little education to begin with.  (2) It is difficult to move into a crime-free, drug-free area for anyone who doesn’t already live in one.  Who knows; those who keep minorities and the lower classes from moving into suburbs may very well be our good neighbors, Democrats.  Protection of turf knows no boundaries.  (3) Many of us and our friends who have good, high-paying jobs did not get them because of how well-qualified we were, but because of our connections.  We like to pretend that it's qualifications that got us our jobs, but most often it is matters that do not have to do with qualifications at all, such as what our hobbies are (in my case music, and computer programming), or the schools we attended, or the books we've read.

On the topic of education, what’s the deal here?  Are teachers lazy and incompetent, or are the students lazy and unmotivated?

Again there is no easy answer.  There is absolutely no doubt that students do not work as hard as they should.  There is absolutely no doubt that parents do not create an environment at home that encourages better achievement in school.  Look at what the parent must try to do:

• Emphasize that education is important, both economically (to earn enough money to enjoy life) and culturally (we value education in our family, and you need to have a life that is worth enjoying in the first place, which means interests, and interest in the people around you).
• Make clear that they valued their own education, and that they have high expectations.
• Make clear that they support the teachers, and that they do not encourage their children manipulating the flow of information to and from the teacher in such a way as to cause one side to be pitted against the other.
• Make clear that they value all subjects equally, and do not have preferences.
• Help kids with the sorts of homework that it makes sense for the teacher to expect them to get help with.
• Do their fair share of providing family values and social values to their kids, so that the entire burden of civilizing the kids does not fall on the teachers.

Very little of the above gets done at home, and parents are probably surprised that anyone could expect them to do it all.  Sometimes I wonder whether a couple has any idea of what goes into making a child into a successful adult, and how much of that has to be done by the parents.  Part of what both parents and teachers have to do is to prepare the students –indirectly and tactfully—to become parents themselves.  I tell my own students that being good parents involves a white lie now and then.  I tell them to tell the little kids around them that Math is Fun and Easy.  They look at me as though I’ve grown an extra head.  But seriously, isn’t elementary school math Fun and Easy?  It is an attitude that will be rewarded far, far more in the life of that little kid than warning the tyke to beware, that horrible Quadratic Equations are up ahead.  (Or, they can say that the most delicious thing they ever saw is yet in their future, namely the fabulous Quadratic Equations!  Yes, indeedy!  This is not a matter of truth in advertising; it is a matter of creating positive expectations.)

Doubtless there are teachers who are tired and incompetent, who should get shunted out of the classroom.  These people may well have been extremely competent and enthusiastic at one time, but depending on where you teach, the life of a teacher is not conducive to protracted motivation and ebullience.  “Well, you shouldn’t take up teaching unless you’re going to be peppy and motivated forever!”  Well, my answer to that is that your parents should have gotten an abortion if they knew you were going to turn out to be such an asshole.  I figure that in my life I have had close to, let’s see, about 30 teachers.  And all of them were at least good; most of them were fabulous.  And I did not have an expensive private education; for 10 years I attended a poor Methodist school, where the school fees were on the order of $5 a month, which is not expensive.  And then I went to a public school, and attended a public college, and finally a public university.  Given a chance, teachers want to teach.  Given a chance, these days the kids do not want their teachers to teach.  This is an impossible situation, and it need not continue.  Well, we can’t change everybody else’s children, but we can influence our own, even if they’re getting an onslaught of negative propaganda from their peers.  Maybe you have to move.

Happy St Valentine’s Day!!!

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