Notes: Dec 8 – Wages, income, and equality

Is a $15 minimum wage high enough? Will it cover what’s needed?

How does an increase in the minimum wage affect higher wages? Maybe there should be a “maximum wage.”

Is a minimum wage increase a good solution to income equality? What is the fundamental problem underneath our current inequality?

Low-wage employers would rather pay higher wages than have a unionized work force.

How are our wages affected by the choices we make about careers, or how do wages affect the careers we choose?

Raising the minimum wage won’t solve the long term problem, though I’d never vote against increasing it. We actually work too much.

After brief background information on Penny U and introducing ourselves to each other, about 20 of us pursued conversations on wages, income, and equality in groups of four. 

Questions to Prompt Discussion

Edward started the conversations by first referring to a few of the many programs and speakers at Town Hall that have offered perspectives on this topic – from Andy Stern in January to Robert Reich and Naomi Klein more recently. Then to provoke more specific thinking, he offered us three sets of questions as options for discussion:

•   Sea-Tac, Seattle, and $15

     Did you follow the political process towards the $15/hr legislation in Sea/Tac and Seattle? Did you support any of the proposals, and are you happy with how they turned out?  What do you think will change in Seattle as the law phases in?

•   Income inequality, nationally and globally

     President Obama announced a goal of $10.10/hr minimum wage nationally at his last State of the Union speech. Though it seems politically infeasible for the near future, it might signal a shift nationally towards greater focus on wages and income inequality generally. Do you think that minimum wage increases are a good solution to income inequality? Is income inequality a problem at all, ethically or otherwise? Why? What about looking at income inequality as a global issue?

•   Your personal story: the relationship between work and compensation

     What has been your personal relationship to wages in your life? How have you balanced looking for work you enjoy or care about and looking for work with the highest compensation? Have you had that privilege, and what values guided you if so? Have you ever hired someone, and how did you determine what they should be paid? If not, can you imagine how you might decide? Finally—if you see income inequality or wealth inequality as problems, how do you think about your own wealth or income in that context?

Conversation – observations & more questions

Each of the groups took the topic up in a different way. One of the challenges we were given was to identify a question that warranted further discussion with the full group. One person at each table agreed to be a note taker. What follows is a slightly edited version of those notes.

Table 1

•     What do we think of the fact that Alaska Airlines isn’t honoring the $15 minimum wage set by the city of SeaTac? It’s a battle between the City of SeaTac and the Port of Seattle.

•     Raising the minimum wage doesn’t solve the long term problem. As a whole, we actually work too much. We need to reconsider the way society works. At the same time, I’d never vote against increasing the minimum wage.

•     People at the bottom of the wage scale need the money and often don’t get the hours they need. At the same time, we are in a surplus society. There is so much consumption. We need to begin emphasizing building relationships rather than accumulating more goods. And relationships take time not money.

•     Scarcity is artificial. Famines are not a result of a shortage of food, but are a question of distribution. Our surplus capital capacity doesn’t know where to go, and it often goes outside the U.S. where it can earn even more.

•     There’s a huge return on capital here, but it doesn’t go to workers. Worker productivity is up and should generate more money for workers. This is wage theft.

•     I’m anti-growth right now. I want to go backwards; today’s 2.8% growth is too much. We can’t continue endless capitalist growth. We can do things on a local level; change our lifestyles, slow down on our consumer spending.

•     In my work I’ve hired people, and I’ve never paid them just the minimum wage, always more. I wanted them to take pride in their work and to stick around. I was being intentional and wanted to responsibly allocate resources to people. 

•     The decade of the 1950s was the era of the middle class. Around 1968 we had, proportionally, the highest minimum wage. If it had kept up with inflation, it would be $18 now (another person said it would be $23 now).

•     At the same time, there’s a huge increase in the difference between CEO’s wages and workers’ wages. In the 1960s CEOs earned about 40 times what a worker did; now it’s around 500 times as much. Because their earnings come from the stock market, CEOs interests are aligned with stockholders’ interests, and they’ve squeezed profits out of the bottom line.

•     The main problem with capitalism is one of stagnation (referring to the Monthly Review), combined with the fact that in the 1950s finance was a small part of the overall economy; now it’s about 40%. We’ve removed the brakes put in place by the New Deal. Keynes hadn’t anticipated that stagnation and inflation could coexist.

 •    In 1971, before Lewis Powell was a Supreme Court justice, he drafted a memo for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to respond to the Chamber’s concern that labor was too strong, that the expansion of government regulatory power was a big problem, and that corporations had to organize and lobby government. The aim was to increase the political power of business and change the country’s ideology around corporations, workers, and the government. It worked. Among many other things, it represents the beginning of corporations being called “job creators”  and the idea that the business of business is making profits. (Reference: The Powell Memo)

•     We need to raise consciousness. Our conversation is not large enough. In her talk at Town Hall (and in her book) Naomi Klein proposed that climate change can be the “big tent” under which many of these concerns can be brought together and gain strength.

•     Question for the whole group:

      Is there a way to change the ideology around both income inequality and climate change so that we can deal with the system holistically?

Table 2

•     This group took up Edward’s initial question #2, about income inequality nationally and globally. 

•     What is inequality?  Is a living wage a good goal?  Does a minimum wage address inequality?

•     A living minimum wage is a solid issue. While other issues arise, they are more difficult to address and it’s good to have enough money to survive.

•     Wage demands are important. Do people get what they demand? There isn’t enough advocacy by and for poor workers. Being able to advocate for themselves is important. If nobody pays attention, it is easy for nothing to be done. At the same time, in some contexts, self-advocacy can lead to an “imposter syndrome.”

•     Low-wage employers would rather pay higher wages than have a unionized work force. Unions might be a way to galvanize workers to make demands.

•     We have to think about the discrepancy in social safety nets for people in poverty and people of wealth?

•     Does minimum wage address the real problem? What is the fundamental problem? Does building wealth address the same issue? Could the real problem be better addressed through a universal basic income? What’s the difference between income and wealth? Would wealth be as important if we had a better social safety net?

•     How do Americans feel about work? They like earning money more than just being cared for, as in the “nanny state.”

•     Why do people volunteer? Does this keep wages down?

•     What is the cultural framework for this? And how does expertise play out? How are our wages affected by the choices we make about careers, or how do wages affect the careers we choose? Some career decisions inherently mean low wages. Do people really make what they demand? How can we overcome historical relationships (or lack of relationship) between values and wages?

•     Changing values is a complex task. It takes long term commitment.

•     We have to look locally, things like education levies in the city, as well as initiatives for transportation. Timing for the $15 campaign was right, and it generated a real discussion. The Occupy Movement led to today’s advocacy. WTO was 15 years ago.

•     In the 1930s, Roosevelt gave us a social safety net. How do we facilitate a new uprising? Or do we not facilitate it and let it grow in a decentralized way?

•     The consumer mindset is a cultural phenomenon. How will the economy/quality of services be in this new order? Are we willing to have lower quality for solidarity?

•     Question for the whole group:

      What is the fundamental problem underneath our current inequality?

Table 3

•     Is a minimum wage increase a good solution to income inequality?

•     If the poverty level for a family of 4 is $23,850, how many hours would it take at $15/hour to earn that much? 

      The scribe says, if this were take-home pay (that is, not accounting for reductions for taxes, social security, holidays, sick days, vacation days, etc.), it would take 1,590 hours, or about 199 days, or 40 (5-day) weeks.  And at the Federal minimum wage level of $7.25 it would take about twice that many, or 3,290 hours, that is, 411 days or 82 weeks – 30 more weeks than there are in a year.  Maybe my logic is wrong, but the implication seems clear.

•     Why is there so much debate about raising the minimum wage and not about other wage levels?

•     A discussion of the ratio between the lowest and highest wages is a necessary part of a package solution.

•     Question for the whole group: 

      Instead of pushing to raise the minimum wage, should we push instead for a minimum ratio between the lowest wage and the highest? How do we move from a discussion of minimum wage to a discussion of wages at all levels?

Table 4

•     An optimistic spirit is rising; a general desire to address this is finding traction.

•     What are the effects of a higher minimum wage, or of the current extreme economic inequality, on the cost of goods?

•     How does the minimum wage affect higher wages? How does it affect the cost of living?

•     The national minimum wage is $7.25; Washington state’s is $9.25 (as of January 1, 2015, it will be $9.32). Is $15 high enough? Will it cover what’s needed – housing, transportation, and everything else?

•     We should talk about distribution. Maybe there should be a “maximum wage.” Graduated tax rates used to do more of this. The marginal tax rate on upper incomes was about 90% from the mid-40s after WWII through the early 60s; it was a time of economic stability and a strong middle class. Obamacare is a touchstone for economic redistribution.

Chart from The Tax Foundation

•     This group invoked David Stockman, Reagan’s budget director (who spoke at Town Hall last year). Stockman debunked economic myths associated with Reagan, what some call “Voodoo economics.” The group also referred to the “logical fallacy of aristocracy.”

•     In a context where the wealthy need an economy with cycles of cost increases, how do we legislate values?

•     Where are the public advocates? We need debates on money, media, and accountability. Can we galvanize more voting?

•     Elders face great instability as pensions are taken away, and they are forced into the stock market with their savings.

•     The range of people and topics discussed at this table was broad: Elizabeth Warren, Naomi Klein, the role of the Federal Reserve, debt, inflation, Kentucky as a contradictory state, and small businesses.

•     Questions for the whole group:

      What is the real nature of the problem?

      Is there a way to change opinions about climate change and income inequality?

      What adjustments should the wealthiest make in their habits?

Whole Group Wrap-up Conversation

Individual conversations were so animated and engaging that it was hard to come back together. Each small group did, though, bring back questions for the whole group to ponder:

•     Is there a way to change the ideology around both income inequality and climate change and to deal with the system holistically?

•     What is the fundamental problem underneath our current inequality?

•     Instead of pushing to raise the minimum wage, should we push instead for a minimum ratio between the lowest wage and the highest? How do we move from a discussion of minimum wage to a discussion of wages at all levels?

•     And a set of three questions: What is the real nature of the problem? Is there a way to change opinions about climate change and income inequality? What adjustments should the wealthiest make in their habits?

With very little time to get into such big topics, a few observations were made. 

•     If we want to change the prevailing ideology, Robert Reich suggests we need to go back to the 50s and push for a real balance of power.

•     So much change is needed now it will take revolution. We’ve reached a threshold where that’s necessary to wide spread change of the geist, or zeitgeist.

•     A question for Penny U is, can we or how can we take this discussion to a practical level. The potential is there and has a legitimate intellectual core. 

•     Is it possible to talk of a maximum wage, and an “idle aristocracy”? 

How does Penny U work?

Well, now that the fall series of Penny U events is over, it finally occurs to me to say something about the form they’ve taken. Better late than never, I guess. Edward and I are beginning to plan another series in the spring, February–April, so we’ll have more chances to keep trying new things.

Although speakers who present at Town Hall often inspire us, the premise of Penny U conversations is that everyone with interest who takes the initiative to attend has valuable knowledge and experience to share. So rather than being another opportunity to sit back and listen, Penny U aims to draw on the information and ideas in the room. Each evening’s discussion is prompted by a topic and series of questions, and most of our time is spent in small group discussions, usually among 4 or 5 people. Everyone’s views have a place.

Toward the end, we move back into a large group but have stopped asking someone from each group to report on their table’s conversation. Our experience is that the high energy generated by the small group conversations goes completely flat during a report-out session, sort of like air going out of a balloon. Instead, someone at each table agrees to take notes, and I volunteer to write them up and put them here for all to read. Last time, when we came back together after small groups, we asked for questions that arose in the conversations that everyone should think about. (Another post will follow soon with notes from December 8’s conversation.)

We consider Penny U’s form pliable and, so far, have adapted it each time as we learn more about what seems to work. We’re eager for ideas from participants for making Penny U more meaningful, and we’re already sorting out how to respond to some good ideas we’ve gotten already.

Next up: Dec 8 - Wages, Income, Equality

Our next Penny U will turn towards the recent political movement towards a higher minimum wage—in Seattle and nationwide. We will ask: What does $15/hr represent? Is it a goal or a starting point, too little or too much too soon? Is it a living wage, and what does that mean in the context of our economy, where so much work is becoming contingent? Our goal is to reflect on Seattle’s political process towards $15 and look beyond to the national and global question of wages and inequality.

We will also look back on Town Hall programs this year that have touched on the question, including our Reclaiming Prosperity events with Robert Reich, Andy Stern, and Manuel Pastor, as well as locally focused events like our evening with newly elected City Councilmember Kshama Sawant on socialism, and our public hearing on the city’s minimum wage legislation. We will investigate the case for $15 as it’s been made at Town Hall and consider it in the context of Penny U’s larger theme: What consequences will this movement have for the many forms of work that are done in society, compensated and uncompensated, and how will it fit into a rapidly shifting technological economy?

We hope you come to December’s Penny U with your thoughts on the process of moving toward a higher minimum wage as you’ve seen it play out in our city, and with your hopes or fears about the movement more broadly. Also valuable would be your personal history as a worker, wage earner, or employer and how it has shaped your life and values around work, compensation, and equality.

Please join us at 5:30 pm on December 8 for the conversation!

NOTE:  Many thanks to Edward for pulling this focus together.

REFERENCES for this conversation

Manuel Pastor at Town Hall:

http://www.seattlechannel.org/videos/video.asp?ID=5201318&file=1

Robert Reich at Town Hall: http://townhallseattle.org/event/robert-reich/

Kshama Sawant at Town Hall: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0ECYB3RJk0 

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Notes: Nov 5 - Technology wrangling, awkward adolescence, and a post-drudgery world

The Impact of Technology on Work

Penny U conversation, November 2014

We need to not let technology control us... We need technologies to aid our personal control of technologies, to defend us, to be technology wranglers.

In terms of our evolution with computers, we’re in our “awkward adolescence.” We’re glad for the benefits but are ignoring the risks.

In an optimistic, sci-fi world, post-scarcity and post-drudgery, would we dedicate ourselves to higher pursuits?

About 20 people of many ages and lines of work discussed the impact of technology on work at Penny U on November 5 in Town Hall’s downstairs cafe.

We started the conversation in pairs by identifying a technology, not counting computers, that both of us relied on in our work, A few of the technologies that people had in common are maps, the telephone, transportation (specifically cars), remote working/meeting software (like Go2Meeting), central heating, and a very small trowel-like tool that no one in the room except the two talking about it knew even existed.

We learned about individual visions of how technology will affect our futures by arranging ourselves in a line representing a continuum with lost jobs and social breakdown on one end and with new jobs and new ways to make a living on the other. Altogether, we stretched along the whole continuum, positioning ourselves all along the line.  Asked why he placed himself on the “pessimistic” end of the line, one person said, “Technologies tend to create more problems than they solve.” And a reason given on the other end was, “The environment, especially overpopulation and climate change, will require radical technological solutions, and we'll figure something out.” From the middle of the line came, “The future could go either way depending on the actions we take.”

Questions

Then, small groups each took up this set of questions:

      How is technology changing your work?

      Could you be replaced by technology?

      What can you do that couldn’t be replaced by technology?

      And then, the continuum question that participants tended to restate as: Are you pessimistic or optimistic about technology’s future impact?

No moderators were assigned; each group, with 4-7 people each, just used the questions as a loose guide. The energy in the room suggested lively conversations all around me. Since I couldn’t be at more than one table at once, I can’t report on the texture and direction of the individual discussions, but, because one person at each table agreed to be a scribe, I have notes that give me a glimpse of what happened. It was quite a treat to read through them all. As I mined them for information to share, I’m sure I filled in blanks in ways that are only half right. Perhaps someone actually in the conversations will correct me.

•     Fast & free – Technology affects people in general, not just at work. The tech “world” sets up expectations that then cause our expectations in general to change, expectations that we must adapt to. Everything is fast paced. There’s less interest in “slow” activity and slow products, like art, for instance. We want things “fast & free.”

•     Balance – We live with the perception that there’s “too much information,” everything’s “too available,” full of distractions, driven. Even though the information has an upside too (like the ability to email photos), people can’t control their own pace. How do we find the balance between all that and personal autonomy?

•     Inspirational vs. inhibiting – The availability of information allows broader opportunities to contribute to creative activities. It allows for collaboration worldwide, new ideas, and perspective. We’re able to check to see whether something is really new. It’s difficult to balance information that’s inspirational with information that’s inhibiting.

•     From union to independent – “I started out in a union job of print workers who were pretty bound to a specific technology – letterpress and other physical presses. Now I’m a designer for magazines and news and have clients all over the world.”

•     Evolving tools – A geographer in an environmental consulting firm who works on superfund sites to plan remediation reported that the technology in his field is changing a lot. ArcGIS, for instance, an interactive mapping system (its website refers to it as “intelligent mapping”) has been the dominant software in cartography/geography for quite some time, but it has also evolved to be much more than that.

•     Lots and lots of change – An ad manager on broadcast TV reported that there’s lots and lots of technological change in her field, and in ad delivery overall.

•     Disruption – Is the question about the impact of new technology? Does humanity change to fit new technology, or the other way around? We’re always adapting to new things, and there’s always disruption around the “new.” By itself it’s not good or bad. New ideas often solve real human problems; these get built on, then monetized, and then there’s a switch, a flip from the first to a later iteration. Disruption can circumvent norms, like Uber and homesharing.

•     What would we do instead? If we remove humans from tasks we don’t want to do, what would we do instead? Would it free us up to do more artistic stuff, more philosophy, more leisure? But a world that’s all artists, philosophers, etc. would be a very narrow world. An interesting psychological topic is whether we have to experience the pain to appreciate the joy.

•     Drudgery.  Even if we got rid of drudgery, we wouldn’t do away with our need for work. A person needs to learn a skill to attain mastery. Technology’s job could be to take away tasks that get in the way.

•     The human element. One table wondered how technology changes the way we value life. We’re not as hands-on, we’re disconnected from life, removed from the object. Are we automating the management of “you”? That idea “freaks me out!” There always has to be a human element. And at another table a discussion revolved around the comment, “People are meaning-seeking creatures; computers are not.”

•     “Corporatocracy.”  The people who control the laws that regulate computers will use that power to manipulate the economic system. At the same time, people in the power seats don’t necessarily understand how computers work. Is censorship by corporations different from political censorship? What’s the difference between government control and corporate control? Is one better than the other?

What can and can’t be turned over to a computer?

•     Life coaching can’t be automated. We in that field can use a computerized forms, like Meyer Briggs, but the data has to be humanly interpreted. Testing can be turned over to automation, but we find that humans are needed after all.

•     Digital software for art and design doesn’t have the radical freedom of analog; it’s more restrictive. And design implies the work flow.

•     The limitations of software development are constantly being challenged. Some tasks benefit from automation – for instance, if simulating 10,000 people is required. But a computer can’t tell if a picture or an artwork is any good.

•     Figuring out what’s wrong, identifying value-based needs, is a human competency. The “highest end” is the most human end. But another table made a note about self-healing computers and wondered if those will take away even more jobs from people.

•     Technology can’t maintain a value framework around things like ecology, love, and the environment.

•     “Much of my bartending job could be handled by machines, through switches and buttons.” But others at the table quickly argued that much more happens at a bar than just pouring drinks.

•     “ Medical diagnostics could be taken over by tech.”

•     “Computers and I grew up together, but at the same time, the magazine writing I did was killed by computers.”

•     A translator who has worked in many countries including in deep west Africa, said that translation depends a lot on the cultural context and could not always be replaced by computers.

•     TaskRabbit helps people find others in their neighborhood willing to do small tasks they can’t or don’t want to do to, replacing the work of the “middle man.”

•     Human beings are good at creating problems and chaos.

•     Grant writing can’t be automated; there are so many subjective things to take into account.

•     “You can’t hike with a segway.”

Intriguing one-liners

•     Unlike machines, people want choice. For instance, we each need and want to choose different amounts of freedom and structure.

•     Complex experience is a good thing.

•     Does technology take us to a place of depleting our resources? The “green-ness” of computer technology is an overstatement.

•     Data is data, and people are people.

•     Is our data a right?

•     The world outside the internet (of humans and all) is sometimes referred to as the “meat” world, or the “what” world.

•     There are many ways to lose our jobs to technology.

•     One person in a small group reported working directly with technology, as a programmer. No one else at his table works without technology.

After coming back together and sharing with each other some of what was discussed in the small groups, we closed with a question from Andy Stern, former SEIU president who spoke at Town Hall in early 2014. Referring to all the jobs likely to be lost through “technological unemployment,” he asked:

What future economic activity or industry can we expect to offer large scale job creation? In other words, what are the future jobs that will require hundreds of thousands of people to accomplish?