L.A. Raises the Minimum Wage a Little
State and local minimum wages can be useful not just as an attempt to set a floor standard of living, but also as providing sometimes better enforcement mechanisms than federal law provides. So I don't mean to suggest that, by passing a law that will raise the minimum wage gradually up to $15 by 2020, the city of Los Angeles has done nothing useful. And certainly a similar change in, for example, the state of Mississippi, would not be insignificant. The minimum number not only sets a floor, it tends to result in smaller increases in the bottom-middle portion of the scale as well, while simultaneously slowing the flow of labor-less profits to capital, resulting in some compression of income inequality.
But let us not kid ourselves. As a practical matter, this change is just keeping up with the cost of living. As Steve Earle says, this is things not getting worse.
The more important question, in my mind, is the impact on the organizing behind the change. Is this going to build up something meaningful? Is this going to help galvanize further organizing? Or is this going to have a deflationary effect, tying hopes to conventional politics and politicians that won't ultimately prove sufficiently thoughtful to make this meaningful?
Only time will tell.
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