Letters: Creating jobs that pay well too

Re “Better than a minimum wage,� Opinion, Feb. 21

USC economist Larry Harris says that instead of raising the minimum wage, low wages should be beefed up by government wage vouchers. Harris mentions that payroll taxes would increase with more employment, but since this would be facilitated by government money, it would be the dog chasing its own tail.

Arguing that wage subsidies would be better than boosting the minimum wage, Harris says that business owners follow the market principle of supply and demand. When labor becomes more expensive, as it would with a higher minimum wage, businesses will buy less of it. And if they hire new people, it would be the ones with experience, leaving out young people and unskilled workers again.

In other words, these businesses act like machines in a closed control loop, not like thinking and planning, responsible human beings.

In the end, these wage subsidies would have taxpayers paying businesses to train their future skilled workers. Is anybody crying socialism?

Stefan Belger

Palm Springs

Harris says that raising the minimum wage is equivalent to taxing employers. No. Requiring an employer to pay a worker enough to feed, clothe and house himself or herself is not equivalent to a tax.

Paying a living wage is a moral obligation that must be enforced by the government.

Harris’ view is a symptom of a wider problem. Republican economists have fetishized the market and the law of supply and demand, and we are left with a view of workers as widgets instead of people. This idea isn’t even economically sound.

Republicans bray about job creators. Nobody gets hired because a job creator has a bunch of money burning a hole in his pocket. Jobs are created in response to demand for products and services. The decimation of the lower and middle classes has hurt demand.

Getting money into the hands of those people, who will actually spend it in the real economy, creates jobs.

Branden Frankel

Encino

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