Main Street

A Jobs Solution for the Amoral and Immoral

On Monday, Washington Post editorial page staffer Charles Lane had a fantastic idea for solving the jobs crisis. Fantastic, that is, if you hate working people and the very concept of fairness. His idea, you see, was lowering wages for construction workers and low-wage workers. How? By repealing the Davis-Bacon Act, which requires employers receiving federal funding to pay the prevailing wage in the area. And by reducing the minimum wage.

Pandagon’s Jesse Taylor:

What Lane is actually proposing is that we create hundreds of thousands of terrible new low-paying jobs to artificially lower the unemployment rate.  While these jobs will technically exist (should they come to fruition; a drop of $2.10 per hour per worker isn’t exactly freeing up massive pools of money for new cashiers and ride operators at amusement parks), it’s hard to say that there’s a benefit to our economy in creating the least rewarding type of employment for a group of workers almost all of whom had better jobs paying more beforehand. 

Technically, we could “solve” unemployment tomorrow by allowing every employer in the country to pay $2.50 an hour (ever wonder why even in the most economically depressed times, shitty restaurants are still hiring waitstaff?) – employers could easily create incredibly low-cost positions, we’d have jobs for everyone and, best of all, our entire economy could collapse under the weight of a newly employed populace that doesn’t earn enough to pay rent.  Or get bank accounts.  Or eat, really. 

Jake McIntyre at Daily Kos:

Davis-Bacon simply requires the federal government to pay the same for its construction projects as the bulk of private builders in a metropolitan area. In so doing, Davis-Bacon allows construction workers to remain a bulwark of the shrinking American middle class. Without Davis-Bacon, construction wages would fall dramatically, which might warm Charles Lane’s heart, but which would put a damper on the overall economy by seriously depressing consumer spending. And at a time where even low interest rates and Federal assistance to banks aren’t spurring construction lending, I wouldn’t count on a drop in construction wages doing a damn this to create jobs. Lane’s prescription would serve to do little but line the pockets of mammoth general contractors like KBR. (As this piece is already running long, I won’t even get into the myriad positive effects of Davis-Bacon on the economy, but they’re substantial.)

The proposed repeal of Davis-Bacon is a niche corporatist hobby horse, like the repeal of the estate tax or the incessant call to cut capital gains taxes. And like the constant braying for tax cuts for the rich, the push to screw construction workers will forever be tailored to the tone of the moment. The economy’s booming? Cut capital gains taxes and repeal Davis-Bacon! The economy’s in the toilet? Cut capital gains taxes and repeal Davis-Bacon! No matter what the situation, the prescription from Lane and his plutocrat buddies in the same: make the rich richer and turn the middle class into the working poor. It never ceases to amaze me that comfortable, soft-handed pundits feel so threatened by tradespeople earning decent middle-class wages, but they do. It’s pathological.

So now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s see what else Lane suggests to create jobs:

Reduce the federal minimum wage.

Did I say that repealing Davis-Bacon “is a niche corporatist hobby horse, like the repeal of the estate tax or the incessant call to cut capital gains taxes?”  I meant, “repealing Davis-Bacon is a niche corporatist hobby horse, like the repeal of the estate tax or the incessant call to cut capital gains taxes or the non-stop attacks on the minimum wage.”

Truly, this is a jobs solution only someone without a decent moral sense could embrace.

Tags: Jobs, minimum wage