Let Justice Roll

Backing for a living wage
By Diane Stafford
Kansas City Star, 10/19/06

Earnestine Kennedy can't imagine thinking that anyone should be expected to work for $5.15 an hour.

"The cost of everything has risen since the minimum wage went up 10 years ago," said the owner and operator of Just Schooling Adult Day Care Center on Prospect Avenue.

"People on minimum wage don't get a reduced price for things because they're poor. They pay the same as millionaires."

The purchasing power of the minimum wage has eroded 20 percent since it last was raised in 1996-97.

John Scott doesn't relish the idea of government getting any further involved in business and the free market, but he'll make an exception in advocating a mandatory increase in the minimum wage.

"There has to be an incentive for people to work, especially when the alternative is welfare, and $5.15 an hour isn't it," said the owner of Scott Fitnessin the Westport area.

A full-time minimum-wage earner - 46 percent of all minimum-wage earners - makes just about $10,000 a year, well under the federal definition of poverty.

David Scott (no relation to John) thinks it's in the best interests of business to have customers who can afford to buy its products and services, and $5.15 an hour doesn't afford much consumption.

"I'm not sure that anyone making an argument against raising the minimum wage has ever had to work and make a life on that," said the Kansas City tax accountant at Circle Tax & Accounting.

About three-quarters of minimum-wage earners in Missouri are adults, not teens earning spending money.

Kennedy, John Scott and David Scott are among many small-business owners and operators who aren't toeing what is perceived as the "business" position against proposed increases in the mandated federal or state wage floors.

Kennedy said she long ago realized that rock-bottom wages attracted rock-bottom workers. She pays her entry-level workers more than the $6.50 minimum proposed on Missouri's November ballot because she's concerned about staff quality.

Furthermore, she said, she sees the effects of poverty on society: crime, to name a big one.

"And loss of hope. When you take away hope, people become desperate," she said. "I see the effects of poverty. I see young adults growing up with parents in minimum-wage jobs who can't provide adequately for their families. It is loss of hope."

John Scott is concerned about the massive and growing disparity between America's haves and have-nots.

"We need to raise our lowest-wage workers and get to a point where the CEOs say: 'I don't need a third house. I don't need all this stuff.' I think we need a conscionable effort to limit executive pay," Scott said.

"We need to fine-tune our ethical capitalism."

David Scott rejects the argument that a minimum-wage increase would be inflationary.

"Oil prices are more inflationary than raising the minimum wage by an amount that would still put it lower than what any of my tax-preparation clients pay - and they are almost all small businesses who already pay well over the minimum wage," he said.

"The minimum I see on any of my clients' payrolls is $8 an hour. The market has already dictated. They've decided to take care of their people."

Read Diane Stafford's Workspace blog at KansasCity.com.

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/business/
columnists/diane_stafford/15792015.htm

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