At the New Republic Osita Nwanevu says what I’ve been saying for some time—that the main impediments to progressives not achieving their policy goals are not Republicans but other Democrats:
While the demand for a $15 minimum wage has become a central plank in the progressive agenda over the last decade, it’s worth being clear about the scale of change it would actually bring about. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that raising the wage would benefit 32 million workers. Hundreds of thousands would be lifted out of poverty. But $15 an hour is not a living wage, nor is it a sweeping solution to inequality in this country. It would not fundamentally restructure our economy in any way. Raising the minimum wage is best understood as the ground floor of welfare policy. In fact, it’s the basementâ —a high aspiration for those whose expectations are subterranean. And this week, our lawmakers couldn’t manage it.
That’s not to say a $15 minimum wage is dead—it isn’t, technically. A regular bill on the proposal can be introduced at any time. But the gambit of bundling an increase with the Covid-19 reconciliation package has failed. It has been written and said that the gambit failed because the Senate parliamentarian ruled that including the minimum wage increase would violate reconciliation rules. This is false: The Senate parliamentarian is a wholly powerless functionary who can be overruled at any time by the party holding the White House and Congress—both of which, as you might recall, are now controlled by the Democratic Party. The gambit failed because the White House and many Democrats in Congress opposed overruling the parliamentarian.
Progressives on and off the Hill have proposed alternatives that might satisfy the parliamentarian. Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, for instance, wants a 5 percent total payroll penalty on large corporations that pay workers less than a desired wage, and a tax credit equivalent to 25 percent of wages—for up to $10,000 a year—for small businesses that pay their workers well. But most minimum wage workers aren’t employed by large corporations—in Oregon, only 20 percent of minimum wage workers are in firms with over 500 employees—and the measure would lack the force and simplicity of a federal minimum. Policy minds who’ve examined what Wyden has slapped together, including Dube, have been puzzling over whether and how exactly it might work.
But the reality is that Senate Democrats don’t have 50 votes for broadly and significantly raising the minimum wage, either directly or through some hastily jury-rigged tax scheme. Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema and West Virginia’s Joe Manchin would have killed the increase even if the parliamentarian had approved it and would have killed it even if Kamala Harris had been willing to override the parliamentarian to include it in the reconciliation package. If the $15 wage is resurrected in a regular bill, their opposition to eliminating the legislative filibuster will kill it before the two of them have a chance to kill the proposal on substance in an up or down vote. Some have argued all this absolves the Democratic Party as a whole of responsibility for the proposal’s fate. But as long as Sinema and Manchin remain in opposition to it, it will be plainly and literally true that a $15 minimum wage increase is being blocked by Democrats.
Mr. Nwanevu goes on to blame President Biden for not using the “bully pulpit” sufficiently to impel enough Democrats to support a $15/hour minimum wage to drag it across the finish line.
IMO it’s long past time for progressive to recognize that the reason that their preferred policies aren’t being adopted is that there just aren’t enough people who agree with them. “Progressive” is not synonymous with “Democrat”, as anyone who’s travelled outside a major metropolitan area can tell you.
Just to clarify my views on a $15/hour minimum wage is that I think a national $15/hour minimum wage is imprudent and would result in less employment and slower growth in jobs that pay the minimum wage. Minimum wage multiple contracts might cause even more economic troubles.
What we really need is an economic policy that produces more jobs that pay substantially above the minimum wage but don’t require college educations to land. Reindustrialization of the U. S. could be an important part of accomplishing that. Producing more of what we consume and maintaining a tight job market are vital to it.
That’s essentially the opposite of the policies we’ve pursued over the last half century which have been to maximize the number of minimum wage jobs produced and increase the educational requirements for jobs that pay decent wages.
