One of my standing google alerts brought me this from someone’s blog:

Working poor people have always existed.

Many of them are poor because they are fiscally irresponsible, the rest impoverished because of lack of financial education or opportunity.

Which leads me to ask how the millions of jobs which pay less than, say, $15 per hour would get staffed if everyone in America had financial education or opportunity.

Let’s say that there are, what, 15 million such jobs out of, say, 90 million jobs in total? One approach would be to say that everyone had to spend the first 1/6th of their working years working at jobs which only paid WP wages, before they could move on to higher paying jobs. College graduates could, perhaps, count their college years in that calculation, and those with less education would be required to stay in WP jobs for a few more years. But after their required years in low-wage work, they could move into the ranks of those who are no longer in WP-wage jobs.

1/6 of a working career that is calculated from age 18 to age 66 would be about 8 years. So everyone under 26 would be working at WP-wage jobs, even our new Harvard graduates. And after that, they could move up into jobs which paid wages on which one could actually support themselves. Our fastfood restaurants would be fully staffed by young people.

Okay. Let’s get real.

We still have, say, 1/6 of our jobs which simply do not pay enough to support oneself, and 1/4 of our jobs do not pay enough to support oneself and a child, and 1/3 do not pay enough to support a non-employed spouse and a young child. And they clearly do not pay enough to support a family with more than one child.

What should we do about this? A large share of our children are growing up in families with insufficient income to meet everyone’s most modestly defined needs (see “Self Sufficiency Standard Studies” – most recently Ohio’s – to quantify this cost of living). A large share of our jobs are simply too low-paying to support anything other than dormitory-style living for a single person, often in shared rooms, even shared beds.

Is there nothing we can do to remedy this, other than provide charity and tax credits to our low-wage workers, subsidized housing, food stamp, child care assistance – all expensive programs, particularly when a large share of our nation’s young families find themselves needing help?

No – there is a lot we can do to shift this situation around. But it requires something more than nibbling around the edges of the problem, something more than building even an excellent fence at the top of the cliff, something more than driving ambulances at the bottom of the cliff.*

What can we do? Can we raise wages at the bottom in any meaningful way, without damaging the economy, without taking the legitimate wages of others who work?

Yes. The answer lies not in minimum wage legislation, or in living wage legislation, both of which are well-intended but ultimately counter-productive to the very goals they seek to achieve. The answer requires a deeper analysis than most of us have been prepared to undertake … even college-educated economics majors, and even many PhD economists. But it isn’t all that complex an analysis, and it isn’t a new analysis, and the solution is radically simple – and radically just, and radically consistent with the ideals we say we hold dear as a nation.

Under the banner of “property rights,” we have structured our society and our economy in such a way that we have created automatic poverty for a large segment of our community. It has little or nothing to do with the individual virtues or vices of members of our community. Rather, we have designed things in such a way that a relative few of us get rich from the labor of others, and those others receive far less in wages than they would receive if we were to reform that structure.

Now I suspect that many readers are momentarily sidetracked, trying to figure out on which side of the wedge that separates the gainers in this scenario from the losers they are. And then, perhaps, the thought process might extend to where their own children are likely to be: above or below that wedge? And next whether there is some way that they can leave their children and grandchildren enough to place them above that wedge. Think those through, and then rejoin me…

But I also suspect that most readers would subscribe to the idea of Hillel: “What is hateful to thee, do not do unto your neighbor,” or perhaps they would subscribe to the idea expressed as the second great commandment: “Love thy neighbor as thyself” (Leviticus 19:18, Matthew 19:19, Matthew 22:39; Mark 12:31; Luke 10:27; Romans 13:9; Galatians 5:14; James 2:8) or ‘Do to others as you would have them do to you.(Luke 6:31) – whether or not their own worldview and language are theologically based.

And then, of course, the question becomes who is one’s neighbor? Are there people it is acceptable to oppress? Is a system acceptable if it only oppresses them, or oppresses one group disproportionately?

Heavy thoughts. Much easier to blame the victim, isn’t it, and put one’s effort into charity [ambulance driving] and random acts of kindness. Much harder to seek justice for all, and a system which oppresses none – no matter which side of the wedge you believe yourself to be on.

But if you’re ready to explore the matter, have I got a book for you!! Henry George’s Progress and Poverty. The original was subtitled “An inquiry into the cause of industrial depressions and of increase of want with increase of wealth … The Remedy” A recent abridgment, in modern language, is subtitled “Why there are recessions and poverty amid plenty – and what to do about it.” (Both can be read online; both are available in paperback. Check out the reviews at Amazon.)

Progress & Poverty describes the problem, and lays out the remedy … what to do about it. Are you prepared to know?

The answers might disturb some of your thinking … and you may find answers that make sense to you, and inspiration toward a concrete solution which will create a more just society for all our children, within our lifetimes.

* See “The Ambulance in the Valley” Are you an ambulance driver, a fence builder – or one who would re-engineer the cliff?