HorsesAss.Org

When I was discussing the mayor’s race last year, I said that the thing that most worried me about a second McGinn term was his foot dragging on police reform in his first term. Since Ed Murray has come to office, he has been worse than foot dragging.

When Murray demoted Jim Pugel, that was a worry. When the new interim chief overturned officer discipline, that was trouble. Now Pugel is out, and it’s one more nail in the coffin.

Nobody knows, of course, if this is a direct payback for the union endorsing Murray or if the Mayor’s Office actually believes this is the best way to police the city. Either way, it doesn’t bode well for people having interactions with the police.

Sometimes a question can be as revealing as the answer.

In between sessions at yesterday’s Income Inequality Symposium, I was drawn into a discussion with fellow attendees about the “total compensation” minimum wage that some in the business community are still pushing. Under total compensation, an employer’s obligation to pay a minimum of $15 an hour could be met by a combination of cash wages, tips, and the cost of providing certain benefits. For example, I explained, $10.50 an hour in cash wages, plus $2.50 an hour in tips, plus $2 an hour in benefits would amount to a legal $15 an hour wage.

So if an employer were to offer a matching 401K contribution up to a maximum of one percent of an employee’s salary, I was asked, what would be the maximum benefit a minimum wage worker could receive? Would it be $0.15 an hour—one percent of the putative $15 an hour minimum wage? Would it be, using the example above, $0.105 an hour—one percent of the employee’s cash wages? Or would it be some more difficult to calculate number?

It took me a moment to wrap my mind around the question, but the answer I arrived at surprised even me. It doesn’t matter on which figure the employer chooses to calculate the maximum 401K match: under total compensation a matching 401K contribution is worth absolutely nothing to a minimum wage employee. Zero. Bupkes. Zilch.

And the same is true of the value of every other benefit.

Think about it. If you are earning a $15 total compensation minimum wage, and your employer generously matches your 401K contribution up to one percent of that higher number, you would receive $0.15 an hour in additional benefits. But that higher benefit could then be used to reduce the wage portion of your compensation by an equal amount. The benefit ends up costing the employer nothing, and the net result is that the “matching” contribution comes directly out of the employee’s paycheck. The employer gives with one hand and takes away with the other.

Likewise for other benefits like health insurance premiums and “paid” vacation days, the cost of which may also be used to decrease the wage component of your total compensation by an equal and offsetting amount. It’s as if minimum wage employees were purchasing these benefits through paycheck deductions; the employer bears none of the costs.

Some business owners argue that without total compensation they will be forced to eliminate benefits in order to shave costs. That may or may not be true. But from the minimum wage employee’s perspective, total compensation virtually guarantees the equivalent outcome. For when a benefit is transformed into a line item to be deducted from your take-home pay, it becomes nothing more than just another monthly expense. “Benefits” are no longer additive to one’s total compensation—eliminate them and your cash wages go up by a corresponding amount.

Of course, the caveat holds that all this analysis is only true of full-time employees. Lacking the cost of benefits to subtract from total compensation, low-wage part-timers and temporary workers could see their effective wage floor rise substantially.

But as a policy for raising the incomes of all low-wage workers, total compensation fails to deliver on its promise, while (for reasons I’ve explained previously) eroding the effective wage floor over time. A $15 total compensation minimum wage simply does not guarantee a $15 minimum wage. And to insist otherwise would be a lie.

I know, I was late to the party with my original post. And then only an update of that post and a link in an open thread when they reversed their policy. Still, I was glad that this former World Vision employee [h/t] was so blunt about what’s wrong with the reversal.

“The effect is going to be the children and those that we serve,” former World Vision financial analyst David Tobias said.

Tobias is disappointed in his former employer, which he says is as financially complex as any major corporation.

On Monday, the Christian nonprofit announced it would open employment to people in same-sex marriages. After an uproar from conservative donors, it reversed the decision just two days later.

“It was challenging for me to accept that my gay friends at work couldn’t be who they were,” Tobias said. “Really breaking their back and putting their heart and soul into World Vision, then being told publicly they weren’t good enough to do it.”

Unfortunately, King 5 felt the need to balance it with people who think World Vision should actively discriminate against gay people, and double unfortunately the person willing to criticize them is a former employee. I suspect that there are a lot of people inside the organization, probably people who were pushing for the policy change in the first place, who agree.

Because I’m too stupid to get it through my thick skull that nobody cares what I have to say about the minimum wage anymore, now that I don’t have a media outlet to say it through, I’m spending my day at Seattle’s Income Inequality Symposium listening to people discuss a lot of things I already know. I’m nothing if not stubborn.

“The most pro-business thing you can do in a capitalist economy is invest in the middle class,” billionaire(ish) keynote speaker Nick Hanauer stressed to the crowed. Can’t get much more unequal income-wise at the moment than me and Hanauer, but it sounds like we’re mostly on the same side of this issue.

Balky web site and balky Internet connection permitting, I’ll post some updates throughout the day. Or, follow me on Twitter for more frequent and reliable updates.

UPDATE: Lot’s of informative Tweets from me today, but also this:

 

– So, yeah. More on World Vision.

– On year anniversary of devastating DUI, community rallies in call for ‘vision zero’

– Five Reasons Contraceptive Coverage Is Essential

– Glad to see that Oregonians care about climate change. Hopefully that will lead to real action.

– Olympia has ducks

– If you’re interested in the memorial service for Jim Compton, it’s Saturday at Town Hall 10:00 to Noon.

World Vision is a good organization that has had problematic hiring policies. They have a better policy now.

World Vision is decided an Evangelical Christian organization. And, as such, they have strict rules about hiring, requiring employees to be Christian and to adhere to sexual ethics which includes “abstinence outside of marriage, and fidelity within marriage”.

Now World Vision has decided to, well, NOT change the terms of those requirements. They have, however, decided that gay Christians who seek employment with them must follow the same rules as heterosexuals.

Yay. Yay?

Sure, it’s better than discriminating against gay folks (although they’re still discriminating against gay folks who can’t get married). It’s an important milestone that an Evangelical organization with this much clout is letting this happen. The no-sex-outside-of-marriage stuff is still problematic, but a step toward decency — especially for an org that’s generally good — should be celebrated.

Of course, the good that they do is still the most important thing. Since they’re being attacked for taking this small step in the right direction, now might be a good time to give. Fill in some of the gaps if assholes and gatekeepers are threatening to leave.

…Or not. See comments, the haters and the gatekeepers have forced World Vision to reverse their policy. They are still an organization that does good work, but this is too bad.

It’s really, really complicated. The impact, the morality, the unintended economic incentives… everything about a “tip credit” (or “tip penalty” as opponents call it) is a lot more complicated than our current minimum wage debate allows.

Which is a long way of saying that I’m not finished writing the post on the tip credit that I had previously promised. In the meanwhile, I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts on it in the comment thread.

Sorry if you’re seeing those annoying 508 errors again. I’ve been messing around under the hood trying to optimize site performance and add some nifty new features, and while everything was working fine yesterday, I awoke this morning to find HA struggling to load pages. So I’m dialing some of the updates back in the hope restoring some equilibrium.

In any case, if you see new features that you like, let me know. If you discover bugs, really let me know. And if there’s some change you are aching for, I’d love to get your suggestions and feedback.

– Getting ORCA Cards to people who need reduced fares is a bit of a problem, so one more way is good. If Metro is going to have a reduced rate the next time it increases the fare, I hope that they have that figured out.

– “This case is about much more than contraception. It is about the principles of liberty that animate our Constitution.” Indeed! Which is why the IWF’s arguments should be rejected.

– Well, I’m sure if we let McMorris Rodgers get away with using public money for her campaigns (Seattle Times link), she won’t do it again.

– Let people play soccer in a hijab, for goodness sake.

– From Hans in the comments, this certainly helps explain trolls.

I haven’t had much to say on the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, because I’ve got no particular aerospace expertise and thus had nothing useful to add to the speculation. But I do know something about modern telecommunications, and so all this talk about attempting to track the plane via pings and other automated transmissions to various satellite and ground-based receivers, got me thinking: in this day of on-board WiFI Internet connections, why are we still relying  solely on an aircraft’s “black box” for a record of its final minutes or hours?

This instrument data is simply too important to be left at the bottom of a deep-sea trench, so why isn’t it constantly being transmitted real time via satellite as a kind of off-site backup? Cockpit voice recordings too. All of it compressed and securely encrypted. With no means of turning off the transmission. The technology is there. The satellites are there. Isn’t this a totally obvious solution?

Am I missing something here? Are there any experts out there who can explain why we don’t already do this?

It wouldn’t take much more than the whim of federal and international regulators to mandate this virtual black box on all modern jetliners. And given the low cost of telecommunications technology, it wouldn’t add much to the cost of flying. But it would provide closure for the families of victims of future crashes, as well as valuable data on how to prevent a repeat.

[Oddly, some of my more popular posts over at Slog were about my backyard garden, a stark departure from my wonky policy analysis and foul-mouthed political rants. So I’ve decided to continue these posts here on HA.]

I spent the past few days of fair weather belatedly getting the last of my early spring sowings into the garden before the rains returned. Snap peas, snow peas, carrots, and a variety of lettuces, greens, and herbs have been sown under floating row covers in freshly turned and composted beds. Radishes, arugula, and at least one variety of lettuce have already sprouted. Potatoes have been buried in compost in separate containers. And 20 feet of onion starts are beginning to take root—I’ll start thinning out salad onions in another month so. (I’ve had much better luck with the Walla Walla onion starts that McLendon’s carries than I ever have with sowing directly from seed or from bulbs.)

In case you’re wondering about the floating row covers, they serve dual purposes. These thin yet sturdy pieces of remay fabric let through light, air, and water, yet are light enough to be lifted by the growing seedlings. The result is that they function as a sort of green house, warming and insulating the soil, while keeping out pests. But the row covers are also necessary to protect the beds from cats, squirrels, and other animals that just love to dig through freshly turned soil. Without the row covers the loose soil beckons like a giant kitty litter box. Once the seedlings are well established and the soil crusts over a bit, the cats tend to lose interest.

So I’ve found floating row covers to be an absolute must.

As for what I’m currently eating from my garden, well, not much survived the couple of extended hard freezes we had this winter. I’ve got kale, of course, and in addition to the leaves, the tender stems and flower buds are delicious in stir-fries or sautéed with garlic and tossed with pasta. I’ve still got a few leeks left to harvest, and the over-wintered parsley is coming back nicely and should stock my kitchen until its newly sown replacement matures. Other than that, it’s just perennial herbs—rosemary, oregano, sage, and thyme—plus a few scattered chives.

But next week no doubt I’ll be adding radish and arugula thinnings to my salads, and the 2014 garden season will officially begin.

The Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally has a new home! After more than two months of searching, the group has decided to settle at the Roanoke Park Place Tavern, 2409 10th Ave E, Seattle.

So please join us for a housewarming celebration this Tuesday evening. We meet at 8:00 pm, but some folks show up even earlier than that for dinner.

Can’t make it to Seattle? Check out another Washington state DL over the next week. The Tri-Cities chapter also meets on Tuesday night. On Wednesday, the Bellingham and Burien chapters meet. And on Thursday, the Woodinville chapter meets.

With 215 chapters of Living Liberally, including nineteen in Washington state, four in Oregon, and three more in Idaho, chances are excellent there’s a chapter meeting somewhere near you.

Mayor Ed Murray’s Income Inequality Advisory Committee has released the two studies it commissioned on proposals to raise the minimum wage in Seattle to $15 an hour. I’ve only just skimmed through them—there’s a ton of data and analysis—but I thought it useful to skip straight to the conclusion of the report from three professors at UC Berkeley, Local Minimum Wage Laws: Impacts on Workers, Families, and Businesses:

In 1994 David Card and Alan Krueger published a groundbreaking study that changed how many economists view the minimum wage. Card and Krueger (1994) looked at employment in fast- food restaurants across the New Jersey and Pennsylvania border after New Jersey increased its state minimum wage. They found no measurable negative impact on employment. As we reviewed above, a large body of research has since built upon their methodology. As a result, we have learned a great deal about how employers respond to increases in the minimum wage.

First, paying workers more can change their work performance. It can change their productivity, their attitude about their job, how hard they work, and their ability to make it to the job on time. Second, low-wage labor markets have high levels of job churning. Turnover levels are high as workers leave jobs looking for better wages or because they are unable to stay in their jobs due to poverty-related problems such as difficulties with transportation, child care, or health. As a result, rather than eliminating jobs, raising the minimum wages can reduce turnover and increase job stability. Third, firms can absorb higher labor costs through other means as well. They can pass on some of the increased costs to consumers through higher prices or earn lower profits. In short, firms use a combination of strategies to adjust to higher minimum wages without cutting jobs or hours (Schmitt 2013).

Nonetheless, it is important to emphasize again that the existing research literature is necessarily limited to the range of minimum wage increases that have been actually been implemented. While these studies are suggestive, they cannot tell us what might occur when minimum wages are increased significantly beyond existing local, state, or federal mandates.

Finally, raising the minimum wage is not a cure-all, especially in the face of larger forces generating inequality that require national attention. Still, our assessment of the research evidence is that these policies have worked well. They raise the incomes of low-wage workers and their families. The costs to businesses are absorbed largely by reduced turnover costs and by small price increases among restaurants. Additional benefits, such as reduced spending on public assistance programs and the local stimulus of additional spending by low-income families, might also occur. But we do not yet have enough definitive research on these effects.

Seattle’s business community insists that raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour will result in the loss of hundreds of businesses and thousands of jobs. That’s what opponents claim before every proposed minimum wage hike. Yet according to the UC Berkeley report, there is no evidence that this ever happens.

Yes, the proposed Seattle hike is larger than most others (though not unprecedented), so no, we cannot know for sure that a hike to $15 won’t have a negative impact on businesses or employment. But the point is, there is nothing to suggest that it would. And so the burden of proof is on opponents to support their arguments with more than just the anecdotal empty threats of business owners who are loathe to abandon the low-wage economy to which they’ve grown accustomed.

As someone who gives the slightest fuck about politics, I get plenty of email from various politicos. I get policy stuff from Patty Murray in the email associated with this blog, I assume since I write open letters to her here. I get political stuff at my personal email since I was a volunteer on her last campaign. I get emails from all sorts of campaigns for policies and politics. Usually lefty but sometimes others.

I just recently got on the national GOP list. And unlike the policy that lefty groups send, they seem to just be trolling. For instance, I got a link from them over the weekend to some shitty bumper stickers. They were anti-ACA bumper stickers with the odd phrasing OBAMA DOESN’T “CARE” OBAMA “COSTS.” Never mind that the law isn’t called Obamacare; That’s just their nickname for it. If they’re unhappy about the name they gave to a thing, why not stop calling it that instead of being angry?

No, whatever. You want to sell dumbass bumper stickers that don’t make a lick of sense, sure GOP. Who am I to stop you? But the subject of the headline was “Tick off the Democrats.” So I realize there are a lot of digressions for this short post, but here’s another one: just say “piss.” When you use the minced oath you just make it sound like you’re a 12 year old trying to get away with swearing in front of your parents. Well, your parents knew what you meant, and so do people reading your emails.

Second, and finally to the point, I’m not ticked off about a bumper sticker. I’m ticked off that the GOP policy is shit. Democrats and liberal groups email me policy, even when they’re going after the GOP. The GOP seem to think the most important thing is pissing people they don’t like off.