Pages 214-215 (Propositions):
“Proposition One: All workers deserve to be paid a living wage.
“While people can debate the appropriate level for a ‘living wage,’ most people would probably agree that a full time worker should be able to support two or three people in reasonable comfort. That is, a worker with a spouse and one child could expect to live in a decent home or apartment with adequate food, medical care, the goods necessary to function in their community such as a telephone and a car, and a few luxuries such as a television set and Christmas presents for their children.
“Proposition Two: If certain businesses cannot provide a living wage, the national government should increase the Earned Income Tax Credit sufficiently to provide a living wage to all workers.
“There are other possible approaches to the problem of businesses that cannot or will not provide decent salaries, including raising the minimum wage to a living wage level or providing resources through various entitlement programs…. The first step, however, is for the nation to recognize that in cases where a business provides a product or service without paying a living wage, the underpaid workers and their children are actually subsidizing the consumers’ prices and the stockholders’ dividends.
“Proposition Three: Universal health care must be provided, with an emphasis on preventive care and coverage for prescription drugs, mental illness, and drug and alcohol treatment.
“Health care is an investment in efficient workers and a fulfilling family life. The current situation saps the energy and resources of families. At present only the very wealthy and those working in a few large organizations can be sure of continued access to health services. Children do not receive dental care or eyeglasses. Teenagers lose their mothers to cancer because the family cannot afford the treatments and drugs….
“Other industrial countries spend far less on health care, leave health decisions in the hands of the medical profession and provide care for everyone. Their citizens generally report satisfaction with their care and live as long or longer than Americans. The argument against such approaches claims that those systems ration health care. They do. They ration according to seriousness of health condition. They ration resources in favor of prevention rather than expensive interventions in the last months of life. The American system also rations care. The care is rationed according to where you work, where you live, the health providers selected by your boss, and the decisions made by a clerk in the insurance company….
“Proposition Four: Affordable quality child care for all workers invests in America’s future.
“Providing good child care, and especially quality preschool, may be the most cost effective investment society can make….The majority of mothers work outside the home. In order to return to the Norman Rockwell idealized nuclear family with one wage earner, the minimum wage would need to be sixteen dollars an hour even if the couple had only one child. Therefore, most mothers will continue to work. Without their participation in the labor force the economy would collapse. Quality child care which enhances future school success and workforce capability must become not merely an individual family but a national priority.”
Page 217 (Future job prospects):
“The economy currently depends upon the efforts of millions of workers not being paid a living wage. A large proportion of the job growth for the foreseeable future will be in occupations that do not pay a living wage for even one person, let alone a family. Of the twenty-eight occupations projected to account for 50 percent of the total job growth in the 2006 to 2016 period, the median wage of one-quarter of them will not support a family of four even at a poverty level.
“Who are these workers? They include the man stocking the shelves at your grocery store, the woman caring for your child at the day care center, the aide feeding your mother in the nursing home, and the woman helping your daughter select a prom dress. None of these individuals should ever expect to live well. Some individuals will manage to move up in their organizations, but few opportunities exist. Most of those opportunities require higher education or specialized training. Moreover, American society cannot function without millions of workers filling the jobs at the ‘bottom’ of the job pyramid.
“The weekly median wage paid by a number of types of high-growth jobs is less than the amount nationally needed to rent a two-bedroom apartment. This includes most service jobs and almost anyone working in technical, sales or administrative support jobs except for those in a few specialized areas such as insurance, real estate and high technology….
“Of the twenty-eight growth-producing occupations, the median wage in nineteen of them will not support a family of four at twice the poverty level, a self-sufficiency standard that would provide a very modest standard of living without government subsidies or private charity. Modest means food, housing, child care, transportation to work and for one shopping trip a week but no savings, no entertainment and no meals purchased outside the home.”
P. 237 (American dream and values):
“A vision for the twenty-first century could be an expansion of the American dream. Traditional American values have included a belief in individualism, hard work, [and] honoring family…. The dream has included the belief that the future would be better for one’s children.
“Americans still hold these values. Our future, however, is being undermined by the way we are interpreting some of these values and by clinging to outdated myths about our families, communities, institutions, government, the economy and what individuals owe to the community and common good.
“If we value hard work, is it acceptable for a full time worker to earn so little that he cannot afford to have a child?
“If we value children, is it acceptable to have the highest rate of infant mortality of any industrialized country, 200,000 children sleeping on our streets every night, and eight a day killed by gunfire?
“If we value young people, can we ignore the fact that an average of eighty-one commit suicide each week?”
Copyright © 2008 by Transaction Publishers. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
