Social justice and the economics of the minimum wage
Our goal should be decent wages for all workers. The way to get there is to push for higher productivity in low-wage sectors by raising wages while maintaining full employment.
Our goal should be decent wages for all workers. The way to get there is to push for higher productivity in low-wage sectors by raising wages while maintaining full employment.
The problem with the “end of jobs” narrative is that it disarms us by suggesting that massive technological forces out of our control are most to blame for our problems. That is not the case.
What we need is higher productivity in low wage industries, and a higher minimum wage floor will help to do the job.
This well-known story of declining real earnings of younger workers is seemingly inconsistent with a story of increasing family incomes of children relative to their parents.
These data point to stark and growing disparity between incomes and housing prices since 2005, far outstretching a related but less pronounced trend in the rest of the country.
This is the kind of bold leadership needed in the rest of Canada to make headway on combatting inequality, poverty and to create the conditions for a growing economy that benefits everyone.
Government obsessions with keeping inflation low resulted in the relatively high unemployment rates of the 1980s and 1990s. And when unemployment is high, worker bargaining power is reduced.