Full version of today's N&R column
Today, the N&R published a partial version of a column (unposted, as far as I can tell) written by our committee's co-chairs, Jim Boyett and Marilyn Baird. Here is the full version:We read with interest Andrew Brod’s article against raising the minimum wage to $ 9.36 per hour in Greensboro and the News & Record editorial wherein they promote other ways to deal with poverty then raising the minimum wage. The members of the Greensboro Minimum Wage Committee believe that there is more to the story that should be considered by the citizens of our city before they vote next November. The business and political leadership of Greensboro, the State and the Nation have failed the working people who built this country. For 30 years 75% of working people have been suffering from stagnant or declining wages. This trend is now accelerating. On October 23, 2006 the News & Record published an article that stated. “Adjusted for inflation median family income in Greensboro dropped from $46,459.00 in 2000 to $36,733.00 in 2005.” Most families in Greensboro have suffered a drastic loss of purchasing power. In our opinion this happened because of deliberate political choices made by our leaders. Over this period of wage decline for working people our Business and Political leadership has been pursuing a course of action that they call “free trade.” A more accurate description would be “trade policy to protect monopoly power and special interest.”
Every trade deal in the last twenty years has been designed to extend copyright protection, patent law protection and financial protection to banks, drug companies, software companies and other powerful special interests in foreign markets. In exchange for these special protections in foreign countries, we open up our domestic markets to manufactured goods that can be made cheaply in foreign countries. What’s going on has nothing to do with free markets or free trade. It has everything to do with protecting powerful special interests at the expense of working people. A copyright is a special protection from the market granted by government. It is in fact a government-imposed monopoly. Bill Gates is incredibly rich because the government will imprison anyone who makes copies of Windows without Mr. Gates’ permission. What cost practically nothing to produce and distribute over the Internet is worth thirty billion dollars per year to Microsoft. What NAFTA, CAFTA and the other foreign trade deals really do is allow Microsoft and Mr. Gates to arrest people in India, China, Mexico and Africa if they use Windows without his permission. Because of government action, not the market, Mr. Gates will be worth another thirty to fifty billion dollars. The only things Mr. Gates and friends have to give up to get this protection are other people’s jobs. At last count the manufacturing job loss is three million nationwide and continuing. Our own politicians contributed a few hundred thousand textile and furniture jobs in North Carolina.
The privileged and the elites of our society want us to believe that we lost our jobs because of some impersonal market or lack of education. They are counting on us being too stupid to understand that this problem is a political problem and it was made in America. We on the Greensboro Minimum Wage Committee believe in democracy. Democratic action will allow us to protect ourselves and our families from economic slavery. This fight is only beginning at the local level.
Slate magazine reports that 35,000 mostly business lobbies are spending two billion dollars per year every year to influence congress. This money is being spent so that the “Free Market” can be manipulated for their clients' benefit. Real democracy, not a market controlled by special interest, is the answer to the workingman’s problem.
When another generation was faced with economic collapse, we elected a leader who pledged to confront the Economic Royalists and give working people a chance. Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “Necessitous men are not free men.” Liberty requires opportunity to made a living----a living decent according to the standard of the time, a living which gives man not only enough to live by, but something to live for.”
When adjusted for inflation the minimum wage would have to be approximately $9.36 per hr today to equal the purchasing power it had in 1968. We think we are being more then reasonable to expect that business can afford to pay its employees at least as much as they paid them 39 years ago. Working people can’t afford to buy our own politicians, however, millions of us can began to vote for things that will make a difference. It’s a start.
Every trade deal in the last twenty years has been designed to extend copyright protection, patent law protection and financial protection to banks, drug companies, software companies and other powerful special interests in foreign markets. In exchange for these special protections in foreign countries, we open up our domestic markets to manufactured goods that can be made cheaply in foreign countries. What’s going on has nothing to do with free markets or free trade. It has everything to do with protecting powerful special interests at the expense of working people. A copyright is a special protection from the market granted by government. It is in fact a government-imposed monopoly. Bill Gates is incredibly rich because the government will imprison anyone who makes copies of Windows without Mr. Gates’ permission. What cost practically nothing to produce and distribute over the Internet is worth thirty billion dollars per year to Microsoft. What NAFTA, CAFTA and the other foreign trade deals really do is allow Microsoft and Mr. Gates to arrest people in India, China, Mexico and Africa if they use Windows without his permission. Because of government action, not the market, Mr. Gates will be worth another thirty to fifty billion dollars. The only things Mr. Gates and friends have to give up to get this protection are other people’s jobs. At last count the manufacturing job loss is three million nationwide and continuing. Our own politicians contributed a few hundred thousand textile and furniture jobs in North Carolina.
The privileged and the elites of our society want us to believe that we lost our jobs because of some impersonal market or lack of education. They are counting on us being too stupid to understand that this problem is a political problem and it was made in America. We on the Greensboro Minimum Wage Committee believe in democracy. Democratic action will allow us to protect ourselves and our families from economic slavery. This fight is only beginning at the local level.
Slate magazine reports that 35,000 mostly business lobbies are spending two billion dollars per year every year to influence congress. This money is being spent so that the “Free Market” can be manipulated for their clients' benefit. Real democracy, not a market controlled by special interest, is the answer to the workingman’s problem.
When another generation was faced with economic collapse, we elected a leader who pledged to confront the Economic Royalists and give working people a chance. Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “Necessitous men are not free men.” Liberty requires opportunity to made a living----a living decent according to the standard of the time, a living which gives man not only enough to live by, but something to live for.”
When adjusted for inflation the minimum wage would have to be approximately $9.36 per hr today to equal the purchasing power it had in 1968. We think we are being more then reasonable to expect that business can afford to pay its employees at least as much as they paid them 39 years ago. Working people can’t afford to buy our own politicians, however, millions of us can began to vote for things that will make a difference. It’s a start.
posted by Jill Williams at
9:56 AM
11 Comments:
"before they vote next November."
Does that mean the committee expects city council not to adopt the ordinance?
Now that I've finished reading the column, it stinks. I mean, it really misses the mark.
Choosing to use Microsoft and copyright enforcement as examples of why the minimum wage should be raised is wrongheaded and way, way off target. Microsoft is a domestic employer that pays great salaries, yet Jim and Marilyn have, in their distorted argument, tried to make the case that Americans who earn good wages by building Microsoft products should not have those products protected against theft. Lame -- and completely lacking any compelling reason to raise the minimum wage.
Using the nebulous yet inflammatory words "privileged" and "elites" moves the issue to exactly the place where it stands its greatest chance of failure -- a class war. Make this about those at the bottom end of the wage scale versus everybody else and the proposal will go down in flames.
What this column did was rage against a number of perceived ills in a market economy without making a single good argument in favor of the minimum wage. It may have made the authors feel good about having an opportunity to vent, but they should have kept their eyes on the prize and tried to put forth arguments that would persuade people that raising the minimum wage has merit. Instead, I'm afraid they just turned a lot of people off of the idea by staking out politically narrow ground as the home turf for supporters of a wage increase.
Thanks for your thoughts, Roch. I hope that Jim will get on and respond to you directly, but I'll take a shot at a couple of points.
First, I personally haven't given up complete hope, at least in theory, that the city council will adopt the petition to raise the minimum wage. But given my experience in Greensboro over the past two and a half years, I have a pretty good guess of how their vote will turn out. But they could surprise me and I'm open to that surprise.
Second, I think the point of the article was to point out the fallacy in arguments against the minimum wage that assume that implementing such a policy is to restrict the otherwise free market. Jim and Marilyn were pointing out that the concept of a free market is just that - a concept - and not a reality.
Finally, was this a good article strategically? I don't know. You may be reading the response correctly. I've not talked with many others who have read the column yet.
Roch has good points. Jill has some good points as well. What does everyone else think?
I think Ben has some good points, too.
:-)
Just kidding, Ben.
I think Jill clarified points that were NOT clear in the column. I think Roch is right when he describes how the column will come across to many readers, the many-of-the-few who have/will read it at all.
On the other hand, Roch used a phrase that I am suspicious of; i.e., "class war." Why is it that only the (relatively and in some cases absolutely) well-to-do use that phrase? You don't hear poor people talking about "class war." Just a less inequitable distribution of wealth.
Thanks for posting the column, Jill. I only get the print version of the N&R on Friday - Monday (and then never have time to read them), so the stuff that makes it online is the only stuff I get to read, and only a subset of that, for that matter.
The column is a bit strongly-worded. Personally, I would have focused more on the positives that would come from enacting the Minimum Wage Ordinance and less on the negatives of the current situation, though these are important to point out.
Of course I agree with many of the points made in the column, but I also see Roch's point about its strategic value. We are running a campaign with the intention of passing an ordinance, so I believe we should focus on the merits of the ordinance itself.
The most oft-repeated argument I've heard against the ordinance goes like "I support raising the minimum wage to this level statewide or nationwide, but doing so only in Greensboro would put us at an economic disadvantage, would cause jobs to go elsewhere and would bring too many working poor people to the city from elsewhere in search of a better-paying job."
We should focus our written efforts on countering this argument and some of the others we have heard given and speaking in terms most Greensboro residents will relate to (unfortunately, I don't think the average Greensboroan thinks in such stark class terms as presented in the column).
The arguement against the minimum wage is always "Let the free market
decide what is a proper wage. This is a private matter between employer and employee. Get the Government out of private decisions." What our article is doing is exposing the falacy in their arguement.The "free market" doesn't exisit.Government is setting the rules as to how business operates. Everyone is trying to get the government to help them. Those with money get more help from the government then those without money.Microsoft is just especially good at playing the game. Roch that arguement might upset you but I don't know how you can deny its truth. The only way that people have to fight is with our vote. Unless people began to wake up there will be no middle class and no democracy.
The one point of Jim and Marilyn's column that I didn't highlight in my first comment was stated clearly by Jim here and it is one that can't be repeated often enough: "Those with money get more help from the government then those without money."
This observation seems to run counter to the dominant understanding of how our system works. And I think the example of Microsoft, as misunderstood as it may have been, is a perfect example of that state of affairs. To agree with that assessment is not necessarily to say that the kind of protection Microsoft receives from the gov't is wrong. It is merely to recognize the disconnect between that protection and the argument that the minimum wage should not be increased because of the need to protect the "free market."
I think that the government officials who write our trade deals with foreign countries are exceedingly talented and intelligent people. They understand exactly what they are doing. When they strike a deal with China wherein China says they will recognize and enforce Microsofts copyright if we will eliminate tariffs on textiles everyone knows there will be economic consequences. In human terms a decision has been made that that the 78000 employees of Microsoft are more deserving then 200,000 textile workers in North Carolina. The term "free market" in this situation is a smoke screen
for favoring some people with a lot of money more then other people with less money.
Maybe the original examples were not the best ones but the point still stands. For the first time since NAFTA came into effect are greensboro workers, activists, ect...fight back to gain something that has been kept from us since 1968.
As for the argument on the free-market or not, I say the free-market is alive and well, and the state is not some alien abstract entity placed on the market. capitalism and capitalists have organised the nation-states of the world to coordinate and organize the globe for business.
the arguments against wage increase are purely reactionary. there is an interesting argument going on between GRAF and Doug Clark on the "Too simple" column on Doug's blog on free trade, wages, and who is to blame for America's economic problems.
Thanks, anon, for the heads up about the conversation at Doug Clark's, and also for your comments.
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