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Saturday, February 19, 2005Minimum wage, minimum income, progressivity and more!Cicero has an interesting post spurred by proposed minimum wage increases. I usually oppose increases in the minimum wage. I don't oppose the idea of a wage floor, however. And I think Cicero has some very useful thoughts on what our current economic policies are getting us: [A guaranteed national income] undercuts business demands for special tax breaks and low wages in state A backed by a threat to move to low-tax and low-wage state B.One of the uglier moments of the early '90s was Clinton running for Prez as a job creator while the unions ignored that he did so by running a "right to work" state. It's also ugly that sometimes the major thrust of a state's modified poverty program is not finding a better way to give help to those in need but driving them into a state more sincere in its committment to the least among us. It's one thing to boast that you figured out how to feed a homeless person for $2.00 less a day, saving a million bucks a year for the state. But making your state unliveable so that somebody else gets stuck with the tab is like a company stiffing laid off workers and counting on the unemployment/welfare system to take care of them - it's just state, rather than corporate, welfare. Cicero's (and Richard Nixon's) ideas have their problems, but they should be considered as we head toward the next stages in remaking tax and welfare policy. 
posted by gbarto at 8:50 PM |
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