Should Representatives Have to Live on Minimum Wage?

Dear Auntie Pinko,

I think I got a solution to getting a minimum wage increase for the nation's working poor-you want to hear it? What we should do is change the Constitution so that a Congressman's hourly wage can not exceed the hourly wage of his state. I know they don't get paid by the hour, but you can do the math. Let's say a 1st term Convict-I mean Congressman takes home 125K per year, and he's from Georgia, if the minimum wage there is $5.65 per hour, then that is all that congressman from Georgia can get paid per hour. Plus-he'll have to pay his own transportation to/from his job in DC. What do you think about that?

Dorian in Alaska


Dear Dorian,

Auntie thinks that while it’s awfully tempting to take out our accumulated rage at the increasing levels of economic injustice and the damage it’s doing to our society on the current crop of highly unsatisfactory Congressional Representatives, we should probably focus on long-term solutions rather than short-term satisfaction. The problems are too complex for rigidly simple solutions. Nor is the Constitution the place to start tinkering with the economy.

Now, this doesn’t mean that I don’t agree with you that a) Something needs to be done about the minimum wage; and, b) Something needs to be done about the quality of our House of Representatives. Since the latter control the former, it’s easy to connect the two, but in my opinion we would ultimately regret the error.

Let’s start with the minimum wage. I live in a community that has adopted a local ordinance establishing a minimum wage much higher than the Federal $5.15 per hour, so I’ve had a chance to see a higher minimum wage in action, and I'm for it. So are the residents of eighteen states (plus the District of Columbia) that have established minimums from $5.25 to $7.63.

Although a great deal of analysis and tracking has been done and is continuing, most of the conclusions are still highly disputed. Businesses advance studies and figures that seem to prove that higher minimum wages depress employment, promote net job loss, inhibit the establishment of new businesses and the growth of existing businesses, and discourage business investment in higher-wage communities. Labor advocacy groups provide research and numbers that appear to demonstrate stronger community growth, increased economic activity, and minimal to no impact on the number of jobs and the net rate of job growth. Since the Federal Government has abandoned the practice of providing reliable, understandable, unbiased information on any subject, it’s difficult to mediate among these claims. ‘You pays your money, you takes your choice,’ as my grandfather used to say.

However, since the current Federal minimum wage would leave a full-time worker with one child more than $2,000 short of the appallingly inadequate Federal poverty guidelines, the current minimum wage is undeniably damaging to American families. Indeed, by current standards, two adults working full-time at the minimum wage trying to support three children would still fall short of the poverty line. The minimum wage falls short of meeting two important social goals: Providing incentive for hard work, and enabling parents to spend time raising their children. A paycheck totaling less than $200 (after employment taxes) for forty hours of work is at best a poor incentive. And requiring a parent to work more than 40 hours a week to maintain a poverty-level household doesn’t allow them much energy and time for checking their children’s homework, reading them bedtime stories, cooking nutritious meals, supervising their television viewing, meeting with teachers, or just sitting and talking.

That said, there are not too many minimum wage jobs in our economy. Depending on whose figures you use, somewhere between about 1/2 of one percent, and three percent of all jobs held by adults pay minimum wage. Minimum-wage jobs are unevenly distributed with rural areas seeing higher percentages of minimum-wage workers in the workforce than urban areas. On a practical level, most potential workers would rather cobble together a mix of sporadic part-time work, assistance program benefits, and unreported income derived from the shadow economy, than take a full-time minimum wage job. But it's critical to note that minimum wage sets the floor above which all the other jobs set compensation levels to compete for workers. When the minimum wage goes up, it exerts upward pressure on the next few levels up, where a great many Americans are employed.

Employers know that there is a strong correlation between the compensation they offer and the quality of workers they will be able to employ. Jobs requiring the least in the way of experience, education, and/or ability, and jobs that are not very demanding physically or mentally, are usually the bottom end of the wage scale. Employers can accept workers without much qualification or ability to do those jobs, but if they want more from their workers, they will have to pay more. The more ability, experience, etc., they need, the more they will have to pay to attract workers who can fill those jobs.

When more unskilled workers are available than unskilled jobs, employers can pay the minimum required by law. Competition will ensure that those jobs will eventually be filled, as long as the employer isn’t too picky about the quality of the work and the commitment of the workers. However, the number of jobs requiring virtually nothing in the way of ability, experience, and education are limited.

Congressional Representative is certainly not one of them.

If the job of Congressional Representative paid minimum wage, the only individuals who would run for Congress would be: a) Independently wealthy and able to subsidize themselves; b) Already totally corrupted by those willing to subsidize them in return for their votes; or c) Grotesquely unqualified and/or passionate to promote a personal agenda or ideology. There isn’t much difference between such a hypothetical House of Representatives and the current crop we are enjoying, is there, Dorian? Do you think they’d be able to do their very complex, demanding jobs any better than the current lot? Would they be able to resist the inevitable temptations of those who wanted to corrupt them any better than the current lot? And considering how reluctant American voters are to hold them accountable (we all want to throw out all those other scoundrels, but keep voting for our own scoundrel, don’t we?) I’d hate to get such a bunch entrenched in power.

Basic Congressional salary levels should be high — after all, making the laws we live by isn’t an easy job and we need to attract smart, committed, careful people to do that job. The level of responsibility is great, and the level of accountability should be equally great. We need to work the kinks out of that, first, and it will be a long tough fight. But once that accountability is established, I don’t see anything wrong with tying Congressional salary increases to some measurement of how well the least fortunate 40% are faring in our economy. I’m not an economist, and I know that such measures are tricky, but it should be possible to sort something out.

In the mean time, we need to demand that our Representatives do the right thing for American workers and their families, regardless of what is (or isn’t) in it for them. That’s their job, and our job is to hold them accountable. Thanks for asking Auntie Pinko, Dorian!

and gave up the graft and corruption that turns them into gluttonous pigs.

That was my response...

........they wouldn't make it thru the first month. And then they would fall all over themselves to try and raise it......to 15 bucks an hour - at least.

say quite sanctimoniously the other day that he could live on $5.15 if he had to? Prove it, asshole.

By the way, this is such a typically freeperish argument.

Whatcha cryin' for, ya got a job, dontcha'?

If Frist thinks he can live on $5.15/hr., then he really is out of touch and hasn't a clue. I say put ya money where ya mouth is Frist; bring it on!!

second or third job

and kids just starting out. As people gain skills, they're supposed to be able to rise above it, whether or not they can afford education or formal skills training.

If we forced Congress to live on minimum wage subsistence, we'd end up with only rich dilettantes in Congress. I'm not sure any of us wants that. It's bad enough as it is.

However, the MEDIAN wage is quite another thing. If they had to survive on what the average American is surviving on, they'd have a completely different outlook on things. These days, they might have enough to live on day to day, but they'd have to hope future congresses wouldn't chip away at their pensions, because there is no way to save or invest on what most of us are making. They could forget the vacation homes, the nannies and the name colleges for offspring.

I think we'd have a very different country if this happened.

though I'm undecided whether it should be median or mode (the salary the greatest number of people in the state make). If most people make $10,000, but the state has a little cache of millionaires, the salary would be pushed artificially high. Like the average domestic product of Qatar is higher than that of the US (I think it still is.), but everybody except the royal family live in total squalor. So maybe it should be the mode--in my example, $10,000--to give the representative a sense of how his peeps struggle.

And I'd just love to see Cat-Killer Frist on $5.15/hour.

the lowest and highest numbers are discarded. It truly is the measure of what the greatest number can expect to earn.

The mode would be good, too.

You were thinking of the mean, which is skewed by the handful of millionaires at the top.

keeps all wages down, I think. As long as the minimum is only $5.15 an hour, my boss thinks he's paying me handsomely for doing all the bookwork, sales, and office managing-at $8 an hour.

I agree that the MEDIAN wage might be a more realistic 'target' for each conman to earn, but what I'd like to see more is that each one of them gets only Social Security for retirement. Since there is no national health plan, no health plan for them--unless they are vets, and then they are treated like any other vet.

Hell he just got caught making 3 million off of the Highway bill in a land deal. The fatman would fall apart

www.john06.com

Problem solved.

"walked a mile in my shoes" then their attitude just might change about a decent living wage.

if they get a 10% increase min wage goes up 10%

Whp pays their employees more than they pay themselves?

I do not believe anybody could do a worse job running this country than the immoral criminals in office.

So I say, give the job of running this country to the illegal aliens(there's 10 million or so to chose from), pay them minimum wage and 10 to 20 in each shanty. As a rule these people have more honesty, work ethic, and compassion than any thing I see coming out of Washington or anywhere else.

As for "intelligence", the only intelligence in politics is Greed.

Give these honest, hard working, compassionate people the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and we will have a better chance of saving this county than we do now.

Just a thought.

after serving they get a good pension and healthcare for life.

Minimum Wage for years!

And a fistfull of them should be held to the "Training Wage" the pushed for years ago.

These people are horrendous. And to add the Estae Tax cut is beyond belief. Not one person that any of us know will benefit from this, and the burden will fall on the Middle Class once again.

This IS Class Warfare, and we better get it together and toss these bums into the street, and repeal any law that gives them "Retirement" benefits. If they are voted out, they effectively were fired, and should be treated as such...:grr:

the House and the Senate. Minimum wage plus the satisfaction they will derive from patriotically serving their country as legislators should be more than adequate compensation.

Let's see what great help they can muster up at just over $5 per hour! Might there be a complete lack of interest? I'd hate to think that our able representatives would be compelled to do their own staff work, personally read their constituents' mail, and answer and hand-sign the responses THEMSELVES!

Just make a maximum wage law and peg it to the minimum. Let's say we make the maximum wage 10 times the minimum and eliminate ALL salaried positions. Also pass a law that all "perks" would have to be available to every employee of the company. Penalty for violation would be forced unemployment for say 15 years. If this was done what do you think the minimum wage would be?:think:

them serve for minimum wage.

They would think twice before raising their own salaries 5 times a year if they were forced to match minimum wage with the same increase percentagewise..... OF course the GOP would then HAVE to go 100% corrupt and we'd have more evidence of their dealings.

making our representatives live on an hourly wage might help in a completely different way-- the brief amount of time reps actually spend on legislating vs. fundraising and campaigning would expand a great deal. If at the same time we had some sort of quality assurance and accountability and some decent enforcement against corruption, we might finally get some hardworking representation with the good of Americans at heart.

oh yeah... right.

Slightly more realistically, I've long felt that the best way to get true tax simplification would be to require that members of congress prepare their own tax returns...

I've been saying for 40 years that ALL politicians should be on social security and medicare, with NO other pension & health care "benefits". In the FIRST place, when this country was founded, it was EXPECTED that Honorable Men would volunteer to Serve For The Common Good Of The Country And Their Countrymen for a limited amount of time AND THEN GO BACK HOME TO DO WHATEVER THEY DO FOR A LIVING. It was NEVER meant that someone should be given a gazillion cushy perks and a 'salary' for LIFE! And especially the Pres's... who continue to live like Kings with Secret service, all kinds of 'security' and services until they die (and God knows with all the free Special medical/hospital care they get, that takes too damned long...)
Think how fast they'd FIX Medicare and Social Security if THEY had to count on it in their old age!
All the perks and benefits AND the UNLIMITED opportunities for profiting from graft and corruption IS THE REASON WHY THE WORST SORT OF DISHONORABLE MEN ARE ATTRACTED TO BEING POLITICIANS IN THE FIRST PLACE! ...and most of them are lawyers, which is how they've passed all the self-serving laws to protect themselves.
BTW- where is it written that hundreds of laws have to be passed at every session? There should be one other one: "for every new law 99 should be erased".

There should definately be changes made, but since ONLY they THEMSELVES are 'able' to make any changes = AINT EVER GONNA HAPPEN!
They vote themselves 'pay' raises,but WE should have to vote for that! We need to elect NON-politicians. Teachers, farmers, firemen, grocery clerks, librarians.... until that happens we're always going to be stuck with weasels and sneaks and thugs.