Sustainability &…Wages
First, some context…
U.S. federal minimum wage after 12 years is still $7.25/hour ($15,080/year*). If it had kept pace with inflation from 2009 to now (2021), it would be $9.19/hour today ($19,115/year). If minimum wage had kept pace with inflation from 1978 ($2.25) to now, it would be $11.58/hour ($24,086/year). Sadly, even this is still too low to be a living wage in most of the United States, today.
The issue, though, is bigger than just federal minimum wage not budging for more than a decade: last year, median household income decreased by 2.9% ($69,560 to $67,521) and the number of Americans living in poverty increased by 3.3 million to a total of 37.2 million. And let’s not forget the 56% of Americans living paycheck-to-paycheck, as I mentioned last week. On top of that, rent inflation often outpaces wage inflation, sometimes significantly so. Rent prices in my area have gone up so fast that the very shitty 2-bedroom apartment (an older, male coworker was filled with fatherly concern when I told him where I lived) my husband and I shared when we first moved in together in 2015 cost about $1,100/month. It now rents for between $1,650–1,805/month, an increase of 50–64.1% in only 6 years.
But what does income have to do with sustainability?
Simply put, people with short-term budgets make, out of necessity, short-term decisions. Terry Pratchett, in his Discworld series, illustrated this dilemma perfectly:
“The reason the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socioeconomic unfairness.” — Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms, pg. 32
What Pratchett illustrated so clearly and simply is how expensive it is to be low-income. Cheap options are a necessity for those living paycheck-to-paycheck, but those cheap options often don’t last long and end up costing more in the long-run. If you’ve ever been to a dollar store, you may have noticed that packages of things like laundry detergent aren’t simply cheaper, they’re also smaller. Other items are lower quality and won’t last as long. An acquaintance of mine once suggested that poor people simply needed to buy in bulk, since that was cheaper. Seems reasonable, right? But economies of scale (Costco, Sam’s Club, BJ’s) are out of reach for anyone living paycheck-to-paycheck because you have to have the cash up front in order to buy a month’s worth of, say, toilet paper or breakfast cereal, not to mention the annual membership fee. For example, if your weekly food budget is $50, it won’t matter that Costco sells a 61.9-oz box Frosted Flakes for $8.49 ($0.14/oz) because you can’t afford to spend 17% of your food budget on cereal. Instead, you’re more likely to choose the 13.5-oz box for $2.99 ($0.22/oz) at Target because it’s only 6% of your budget.
Beyond the obvious long-term expense of always buying the cheapest option, there is a grimmer systemic expense: it increases our dependence on goods made in countries with weaker labor laws and lower wages. This serves to continue the ugly cycle in which underpaid workers choose cheaply made goods all around the world. Consider how much you paid for your favorite pair of jeans — now consider what that means for how much the stitcher was paid to sew them and how much they can afford to buy in return. This is how we end up with tragedies such as the 2013 Dhaka garment factory collapse — the building was cheaply constructed and the workers were poorly paid (and management threatened to withhold wages if they didn’t come in, following a negative safety inspection). The necessities of low-income budgeting also increase our dependence on disposable/single-use items, which are often cheaper and more accessible than sustainable, multi-use options. For example, $3/cup of coffee at Starbucks adds up quickly in cost and waste, but getting set up to make your own coffee costs at least $15.
It doesn’t have to be this way, either. Corporations like McDonald’s, Wal-Mart, & Amazon are unsustainably supported by government assistance for thousands of underpaid employees despite their CEOs’ being extremely wealthy. 14,500 Wal-Mart employees and another 8,800 McDonald’s employees rely on SNAP (aka “food stamps”) to make ends meet. Also damning is the employee financial guide McDonald’s made back in 2013, suggesting that their employees work two jobs. Although the money may be going to families and individuals, the real beneficiaries of this assistance are the corporations that are getting away with paying unlivable wages. These unlivable wages increase dependence and strain on welfare. Arguing that it’s not the corporations’ responsibility and people simply need to get better jobs ignores the fact that cashiers, fry cooks, and shelf-stockers are all jobs that need doing — otherwise, it wouldn’t be a job. And if it’s a job that needs doing, it’s a job that needs payment.
*Assuming a 40-hour workweek, 52 weeks per year.
How you, as an individual, can help make wages more sustainable:
- Contact your Senators and Representatives to tell them you support raising the minimum wage
- Tell those same Senators and Representatives that you support measures to limit CEO pay proportionally to worker pay
- Join your local labor union, if eligible
- Check out which political candidates your local unions endorse and why
