Different anon, but continuing the discussion about livable minimum wages, I've seen a few argue that our legislative process is such that by the time a $15 minimum wage is mandated at a federal level, the minimum livable wage will actually be between $17 and $19 due to inflation, and that minimum wage advocates will constantly be fighting for livable wages. They weren't disagreeing, just venting frustrations. Do you have any thoughts on that line of thought?
I mean, it does speak to the need for the Federal minimum wage to be indexed to inflation, so we can get off the constant treadmill of declining value. It also speaks to the need to reform the whole process of raising the minimum wage so that the systemic veto points are not so firmly in favor of stagnation and decline.
But speaking more broadly to the frustration of “advocates will be constantly fighting,” I want to ring out this year with one of my favorite quotes, one that’s stuck with me through many years of political setbacks and frustrations:
“Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards. It takes both passion and perspective. Certainly all historical experience confirms the truth - that man would not have attained the possible unless time and again he had reached out for the impossible. But to do that a man must be a leader, and not only a leader but a hero as well, in a very sober sense of the word. And even those who are neither leaders nor heroes must arm themselves with that steadfastness of heart which can brave even the crumbling of all hopes. This is necessary right now, or else men will not be able to attain even that which is possible today.”
Yes, it is true that activists will always have to be fighting for better wages, because activists have always been fighting for better wages and have endured greater frustrations than we have experienced. There had been a minimum wage movement going for decades that was crushed when Lochner v. New York invalidated state-level economic regulations and later Adkins v. Children’s Hospital invalidate minimum wage laws specifically.
It fell to the next generation of activists to push the Federal government into action, first through the industrial codes of the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) and then through the Fair Labor Standards Act, and it took fighting the Supreme Court itself to make that happen. And then it took the next generation to expand that Federal minimum wage from its initial levels to something that could provide a reasonable standard of living and to expand it to include all workers, especially women and workers of color who had been denied its protections initially.
And yes, it fell to future generations to be the ones fighting in the trenches as the minimum wage came under attack in the 1970s, and then went into decline in the 1980s. But without their struggle, there would have been no living wage movement to be born in the 1990s to inspire the Fight for Fifteen today.
