the meaning of minimum

The debate over minimum wage in this country should be filled with nuance, complexity and common sense.

By Ruben Navarrette, Jr.

Congress recently increased the federal minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 per hour over the next two years. They did it with virtually no debate, which is unfortunate given that this is a debate that is worth having.
It’s not that I oppose the wage increase; $5.15 per hour for a 40-hour week, spread over 52 weeks per year, adds up to an annual salary of $10,712. The higher figure—$7.25 per hour—amounts to $15,080. If the lower figure is nothing, then the higher one is next to nothing.
The reason for the debate would have been to flesh out the complexities surrounding the minimum wage. The best way to do that is to start in the middle of the road and steer clear of the extremes. That is true with a lot of issues, from gun control to the death penalty to abortion to immigration. The voices that tend to dominate the discussion are the loudest and shrillest. Everything is all or nothing.
But what’s wrong with saying you support the Second Amendment and the constitutional right to bear arms, but don’t have a problem with banning assault weapons? What’s wrong with saying you support a woman’s right to choose an abortion, but also parental consent laws? And what’s wrong with saying you support stricter border controls, but also like the idea of comprehensive immigration reform that allows some illegal immigrants to earn legalization?
On the minimum wage debate—where those at one extreme think the minimum wage should be a living wage, and those at the other don’t think there should be a minimum at all—what’s wrong with supporting an increase in the minimum wage, while maintaining that these jobs should be as a starting point and not a way of life?
Don’t try telling that to Beth Shulman, a labor lawyer and former vice president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. She is also the author of the book, The Betrayal of Work: How Low-Wage Jobs Fail 30 Million Americans. The title of her book tells you where she’s coming from, and where she
thinks the country is headed.

Shulman maintains that the minimum wage should be high enough to support a family, and she insists there are millions of minimum wage workers who are at this moment trying to do just that.
“If people are willing to work hard,” she told me in an interview from her office in Washington, “they should be able to take care of themselves and their families. I think many Americans are facing a situation where they can’t do that even though they’re working hard.”
In fact, if Shulman had her way, she’d go further than Congress was willing to go when it raised the minimum wage to $7.25 per hour.
“That doesn’t even come up to where the minimum wage would have been if it had just kept up with inflation,” she says. “I would argue that it should be even higher.”
Shulman prefers to think in terms of a living wage, which she defines as roughly twice the poverty level.
“It’s in the $15 or $16 per hour range in a lot of places,” she says. “It comes down to this: What does it take for a family to provide basic housing, clothing, food. No luxuries. It’s about $35,000 per year.”
Is it the government’s job to set the baseline there? Shulman says absolutely.
“The questions that need to be asked are whether we’re going to have family-sustaining jobs in the 21st century, and what are the things that we can do to ensure that we do have those jobs.”
Those are fair questions. But so are these: Are we going to try to convince workers that they can live on minimum wage and then set the wage high enough to make it believable, or do we want them to aspire to something more? Why should the under-educated and the low-skilled make $15 per hour, if the services they’re providing are valued at less than that by the market? And if such people can earn $15 per hour, what incentive would they have to get the additional education and training needed to earn higher salaries?
Of course, in any civilized society, workers need to be treated fairly and paid decently. But they don’t need to be paid excessively relative to their level of skills and to the point where they no longer feel the urgency to take the steps needed to improve their lot.
That’s the debate we should be having in this country—one filled with nuance and complexity and common sense. You know, some of the very things that the members of a polarized Congress find so tough to comprehend, let alone practice. No wonder they ducked it.

Ruben Navarrette, Jr. is a member of the editorial board of the San Diego Union-Tribune, a nationally syndicated columnist with The Washington Post Writers Group, and a regular contributor of commentary to CNN.com and USA TODAY.