The right to aspire

"Make that respect for me, not for you." Via somebody's tumblr.

Just about everybody you might want to hear from is on this astonishingly offensive remark by the governor of New Jersey, but I'd like to help pile on:

"I gotta tell you the truth, I'm tired of hearing about the minimum wage, I really am," Christie said during an event at the Chamber of Commerce in Washington, according to a recording of his remarks by the liberal opposition research group American Bridge.

"I don't think there's a mother or father sitting around a kitchen table tonight in America who are saying, 'You know honey, if my son or daughter could just make a higher minimum wage, my God, all our dreams would be realized," he added. "Is that what parents aspire to for their children?"

He's no doubt right about that. And the vast numbers of parents who don't have kitchen tables because their kitchens are too small aren't saying it either. Nor are the parents earning minimum wage themselves saying it.

That includes plenty of parents, by the way: 29% of the low-wage earners in the US are single parents, and their wages—between the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour and the $10.10 that could be the federal minimum under the recently discussed legislation—are all the family's income; another 27% are married. And

If our low-wage worker is in a family with two or more workers (i.e., is a working husband, wife, son, or daughter), he or she contributes, on average, 44% of total family income. If our low-wage worker is in a family with two or more workers over 18 (i.e., in most cases, is a working husband or wife), then this person contributes, on average, 47%.

The single parent isn't aspiring at all, just barely surviving, and often unable to continue, losing the job because of a sick kid or a transportation problem, losing the home. The married parent or living-at-home kid may be taking the family a little beyond mere survival. Among the things they are paying for is things that could enable them to get a better job some day: business clothes, cars, education, the things that give a person in our society the right to aspire.

That weird formulation—you should accept $7.25 because you should aspire to more than $10.10—is about something it isn't directly saying. It's an idea of how some people (which ones, I wonder?) need to be kept hungry, to "incentivize" them to give their all to the economic struggle. If you gave them the $10.10 they'd just be contented, the brutes. Giving them less is a form of tough love, for their own good.

And as in most cases of tough love, it's a fake. It's a way for abusive employers to congratulate themselves about how stingy they are.

Does starving the worker make her or him a harder worker? Let's try paying Governor Christie $7.25 until he figures out a way to fund the pension system.