HOW WOULD you like to be one of the workers in the Congressional Budget Office these days? Lord-a-mighty. You might have to answer more angry phone calls than those operating the IRS complaint line. (Does the IRS even have a complaint line any more, or are you just automatically switched to their Targeting Office now?)
The folks at the CBO-which soon might have to change its official name to The Nonpartisan CBO, as it’s invariably known in the public prints-wandered onto the wrong end of the D.C. political firing range earlier this month. That’s when it found that Obamacare would cost the economy the equivalent of two million jobs over the next decade.
Why? People may decide to chase their dreams rather than work for health insurance, because now they can sign up for Obamacare instead. And get it through these new government insurance exchanges-though many of them may wind up on Medicaid. Up to half of them, according to the last estimate we saw from the feds. Which is what Arkansas’ own “private” option amounts to in hundreds of thousands of cases. But that’s all right. It’s a good thing. Take the administration’s word for it.
Just as the outrage and counter outrage was dying down on that front, the CBO came out with another report-this time about the minimum wage. Specifically, about what raising it would do to the economy-and American workers. According to the CBO, the president’s plan to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 a hour would (1) give 16.5 million people a little more in their paychecks every week, and (2) throw half a million others out of work.
Well, sure. Did the rest of us really need a Congressional Budget Office to figure that out? A hike in the minimum wage would mean more money for those who get those raises, yes. But employers aren’t just going to eat the loss when they have to shell out more in pay. Instead, they’ll either raise prices or cut the number of employees-or both.
And it won’t just be the 500,000 who pay the price for any increase in the minimum wage. All of us would see higher prices, including the 16.5 million who still would be living paycheck to paycheck on the new minimum wage. Higher prices at the grocery store. At the mall. At the pizza joint. How long it would take for inflation to eat up all the increase in the minimum wage is anybody’s guess.
You can guess what’ll happen next. Some mastermind will think the minimum wage isn’t high enough so we can all do this again! Until everybody makes 100K a year. And a gallon of milk costs twenty bucks.
Right on cue, Mark Pryor was heard from. He’s the senior senator from Arkansas now that Blanche Lincoln’s been booted out of office and taken the usual lobbyist’s post. The senator addressed this subject over the weekend. He endorsed a ballot initiative here in Arkansas that would raise the state’s minimum wage from $6.25 to $8.50 over the next three years.
Noting that it’s been more than seven years since the last increase in the state’s minimum wage, Senator Pryor, who’s up for re-election this November, said it’s all about the Little Man: “You can talk about the economics, you can talk about all sorts of different things, but the bottom line is it’s just the right thing to do.”
Yeah, who wants to talk about anything as boring as economics when you can pound your Bible and say you’re just doing the Right Thing, whether it’s the right thing or not? Oh, how dismal the Dismal Science can be when economists point out that raising the minimum wage can (1) get a lot of folks fired, or (2) maybe not hired in the first place.
But it’s good to see the senator wanting to do the right thing by the Little Man these days. A body has to wonder where that Mark Pryor was when he was attorney general of the State of Arkansas and let payday lenders keep preying on those who live check to check. Was that the right thing to do, too, Mark? Where was your concern for the Little Man then, hidden away behind all those contributions from the payday lending lobby?
LISTEN to Stephen Copley, the chairman of the outfit out to raise the minimum wage in Arkansas by putting it on the ballot this fall. After praising the senator for his help, he put the case for a higher minimum wage in these words: “People are working hard, playing by the rules.They share the American dream, and, quite frankly, they just can’t make ends meet.”
So cut some of their jobs and raise prices for the things they buy? Is that the plan? Here’s a better idea when it comes to helping the working poor here in Arkansas, and the Legislature actually tossed it around last year:
How about adopting a version of the federal Earned Income Tax Credit? That’s the part of the tax code that supplements the wages of poor workers. Its effect is to reward work, not make it less available. Imagine that-giving the working poor a break, and more money, without throwing so many of them out of work. Sounds like a plan. One that might work, as opposed to just raising the minimum wage, and so costing the economy jobs, and-as an Extra Added Bonus-raising prices, too.
A state Earned Income Tax Credit might actually reduce poverty rather than add to it. Let’s give that idea a try. Before increasing the minimum wage still again, and decreasing the number of jobs-today and tomorrow. There was a bill to create a state EITC introduced in the 2013 session. It didn’t pass. Let’s see if our lawmakers can pass it this year. Or would that make too much sense?
Editorial, Pages 16 on 02/28/2014