Let Justice Roll

Let Justice Roll GREAT SITE ABOUT ECONOMIC WAGE JUSTICE
Following two concise, biting articles that will c-c-chill you. This girl is writes like a machine gun. --JH
You may be interested in checking out these websites if you don't know them,
www.letjusticeroll.org, www.faireconomy.org, www.epinet.org, www.cbpp.org, www.cepr.org, www.ourfuture.org, www.americanprogress.org, www.commondreams.org

King would tell Congress to value workers
By Holly Sklar

Published by Cox News Service 1/15/06, MSNBC 1/13, Cleveland Plain Dealer, El Nuevo Herald (Miami), Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Albany Times-Union, Topeka Capital Journal, Daphne Bulletin (AL), Mountain Mail (CO), Herald (CT), Lake Worth Herald (FL), Daily Corinthian (MS), Laconia Daily Sun (NH), Waco Tribune-Herald (TX), Progressive Populist, MinutemanMedia, TomPaine.com, Truthout.org, CommonDreams.org, many more
Copyright © 2006 Holly Sklar

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was born on the brink of the Great Depression and died fighting for the right of workers to earn a decent living.

On March 18, 1968, days before his murder, King told striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tenn., "It is criminal to have people working on a full-time basis…getting part-time income." King said, "We are tired of working our hands off and laboring every day and not even making a wage adequate with daily basic necessities of life."

Two years earlier on March 18, 1966, King had called for Congress to boost the minimum wage. "We know of no more crucial civil rights issue facing Congress today than the need to increase the federal minimum wage and extend its coverage," he said. "A living wage should be the right of all working Americans."

King did not dream that in the year 2006, he would be remembered with a national holiday, but the value of the minimum wage would be lower than it was in the 1950s and '60s. At $5.15 an hour, today's minimum wage is nearly $4 less than it was in 1968, when it reached its historic high of $9.09, adjusted for inflation.

The minimum wage has become a poverty wage instead of an anti-poverty wage. A full-time worker at minimum wage makes just $10,712 a year -- less than $900 a month -- to cover housing, food, health care, transportation and other expenses.

As Congressional Quarterly observed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, "In the Lower Ninth Ward and other impoverished neighborhoods of New Orleans, people have long waged battle to make ends meet... That was a nearly unattainable goal in a city where many of the jobs were in hotels and restaurants that paid around the federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour."

A low minimum wage is a green light for miserly employers to pay poverty wages to a growing share of the workforce -- not just workers at the minimum, but above it. In its 2005 Hunger and Homelessness Survey, the U.S. Conference of Mayors found that 40 percent of the adults requesting emergency food assistance were employed, as were 15 percent of the homeless.

A low minimum wage is a green light for greed. Between 1968 and 2004, domestic corporate profits rose 85 percent while the minimum wage fell 41 percent and the average hourly wage fell 4 percent, adjusted for inflation. In the retail sector, which employs large numbers of workers at or near minimum wage, profits skyrocketed 159 percent.

With the federal minimum wage stuck in quicksand, a growing number of states have raised their state minimums above $5.15 -- Oregon and Washington are highest at $7.50 and $7.63, respectively. Studies by the Fiscal Policy Institute and others have shown that states with minimum wages above the federal level have had better employment trends than the other states, including for retail businesses and small businesses.

Dan Gardner, commissioner of Oregon's Bureau of Labor and Industries, says, "Overall most low-wage workers pump every dollar of their paychecks directly into the local economy by spending their money in their neighborhood stores, local pharmacies, and corner markets. When the minimum wage increases, local economies benefit from the increased purchasing power."

In the words of Joel Marks, national director of the American Small Business Alliance, "Fair wages are good for business."

Congress has taken eight pay raises since 1997, while denying fair pay for minimum wage workers. On Jan. 1, congressional pay quietly rose to $165,200 -- up $31,600 since 1997. And unlike minimum wage workers, members of Congress have good health benefits, pensions and perks.

Wages are a bedrock moral issue.

It is immoral that workers who put food on our table go without health care to put food on theirs.

It is immoral that workers who care for children, the ill and the elderly struggle to care for their own families.

It is immoral that the minimum wage keeps people in poverty instead of out of poverty.

King would tell Congress to value workers and raise the minimum wage. We need a wage ethic to go with our work ethic.

Holly Sklar is co-author of "A Just Minimum Wage: Good for Workers, Business and Our Future" (www.letjusticeroll.org) and "Raise the Floor: Wages and Policies That Work for All Of Us" (www.raisethefloor.org). She can be reached at hsklar@aol.com.
Copyright © 2006 Holly Sklar
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Carving up our economic pie
By Holly Sklar
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services, November 22, 2005
Copyright (c) 2005 Holly Sklar

Pie season is here. Pumpkin, apple, cherry, whatever you like. We can use edible pie charts -- and some chocolate -- to see how our national economic pie is being carved up more unfairly.

Let's look first at income distribution.

Take two pies -- one for 1979, the other for 2003 (using the latest IRS data).

Divide the 1979 pie into 10 equal slices. If the slices were eaten according to the distribution of income in 1979:

-- The richest 1 percent of taxpayers would get one slice.
-- The rest of the top 20 percent would get four slices.
-- The other 80 percent of taxpayers would split five slices.

Now, divide the 2003 pie into 10 slices.

-- The richest 1 percent would get nearly two slices.
-- The rest of the top 20 percent would get a little over four slices.
-- The other 80 percent would split four slices.

In 1979, the top 20 percent of taxpayers had about as much income as the other 80 percent combined. In 2003, the top 20 percent had 60 percent of the income, leaving just 40 percent for the rest. The richest 1 percent nearly doubled their share.

Let's look more closely at the upward shift in income.

In 1979, the bottom 40 percent of taxpayers had about 15 percent more combined income than the richest 1 percent. In 2003, the richest 1 percent had twice the income share of the bottom 40 percent.

The richest 1 percent share of reported income jumped from 9.6 percent in 1979 to 17.5 percent in 2003. The bottom 40 percent share fell from 11.3 percent to 8.8 percent.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston puts the growing gap between the very rich and everyone else in stark perspective. He examined the income reported on tax returns of the top 0.01 percent -- about 14,000 households with at least $5.5 million in income.

From 1950 to 1970, for every additional dollar earned by those in the bottom 90 percent, those in the top 0.01 percent earned an additional $162.

From 1990 to 2002, for every additional dollar earned in the bottom 90 percent, those at the top brought in an extra $18,000.

If you are feeling financially down this holiday season, there's a good reason. Average workers have been earning less after inflation, not more. Average hourly earnings dropped 5 percent, adjusting for inflation, between 1979 and 2004 -- while domestic corporate profits rose 63 percent.

The share of national income going to wages and salaries is at the lowest level since 1929 -- the year that kicked off the Great Depression. The share going to after-tax corporate profits, which heavily benefit wealthy Americans through increased dividends and capital gains, is at the highest level since 1929.

Income gaps in the workplace have become increasingly outrageous, as seen in the growing gap between worker pay and CEO pay. We can demonstrate it with a pile of chocolate.

Give 1 piece of chocolate to your worker stand-in and 44 pieces to your CEO stand-in. That was the 1980 ratio of average full-time worker pay to average pay among CEOs in Business Week's survey of major corporations.

For the equivalent 2004 ratio, give 1 piece of chocolate to the worker and 362 to the CEO.

As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports, federal policy is contributing "to a further widening of income disparities between the most affluent households and other Americans." Households with incomes over $1 million will receive an average tax cut of $103,000 this year -- an increase of 5.4 percent in their after-tax income.

The congressional majority is done crying crocodile tears over Katrina and the shameful inequality it exposed.

They're working overtime to stiff the have-nots with more budget cuts so they can keep stuffing the pockets of the haves with more tax cuts. The budget knife is dropping on Medicaid, education, child care, food assistance and more-- even public health, despite loud warnings we are unprepared for bird flu and other threats.

Tell your senators and members of Congress what you think about their priorities, and make your voice count when you vote next November.

Holly Sklar is co-author of "Raise the Floor: Wages and Policies That Work for All Of Us" (www.raisethefloor.org). She can be reached at hsklar@aol.com.
Copyright (c) 2005 Holly Sklar