Low wage, essential workers ... we have lots of them

[Axtremus]

Trigger warning for Horace: the following op-ed was written by a white man.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/24/opinion/wages-coronavirus.html

The salient points seem to be:

• We have lots of low wage workers
• We have lots of “essential workers” who are low wage
• They are hurt more than others during crises, like the recent pandemic
• If they are not sufficiently protected, they may collapse and then we are all fucked

Who/what to blame:

• Shift of power from labor/unions to shareholders
• Shift of income from labor to capital
• Globalization
• Automation

How to fix it:

• Raise the minimum wage a bit ...
• ... but not too much as to accelerate automation
• Return more power to the labor/union (same caveat about not overdoing it because of the threat of accelerating automation)
• More earned income tax credit, and make it progressive such that lower income people get higher rates of said credit
• don’t count on getting low income people into higher paying jobs (not enough of such jobs, takes too long, too hard), but make those existing jobs taken up by low income people pay better (this one seems to contradict the point about not raising the minimum wage too much, but, ok)

What I think this guy missed:

• How to pay for this? (I.e., how to “redistribute” the wealth/income?)
• Automation will happen more and more anyway, regardless of minimum wage and unionization
• The Andrew Yang solutions like taxing robots/automation
• The European Union proposal to tax digital services

[Larry]

Whoever came up with that is an utter moron.

[LuFins Dad]

So the solution involves giving more power and control to the groups that have completely devastated Detroit and damn near destroyed Pittsburgh. Right.

[Mik]

How about low wage workers have always been and will always be more vulnerable. This is the motivation to better oneself, not make it more comfortable to be one.

[Jolly]

@Mik said in Low wage, essential workers ... we have lots of them:

How about low wage workers have always been and will always be more vulnerable. This is the motivation to better oneself, not make it more comfortable to be one.

Yep.

[Loki]

The challenge is that there is a rising population of voters who are increasingly distanced from European immigrant values and middle class benefits.

The GOP better get a handle on this demographic and appeal to them. The baby boomers are no longer the 800 pound gorilla.

[Horace]

I don’t really believe that the school-to-boring-middle-class-job highway appeals to any meaningful segment of leftward voters. But that is in fact the quantifiable privilege of the white folk.