On the Religion Law list of legal scholars, as you might imagine, considerable attention has been given in recent days to the contraception mandate cases pending before various courts. During those discussions, I posted a message designed to challenge that largely skeptical audience to entertain the possibility that women and men of intelligence and good faith could reasonably depart from the conventional wisdom in academia that artificial contraception is essential to human progress and gender equality. With that in mind, I suggested that a counter-cultural community grounded in such values should be, not just grudgingly tolerated, but liberally allowed the breathing room to thrive in a diverse and free society.
Because I received so many encouraging private messages, from across the political spectrum and from those on both sides of the contraception debate, I am setting out that message below:
Following up on yesterday’s conversation, let me approach the question of Catholic resistance to the contraception mandate as a plea for something more than grudging tolerance of different opinion but rather a request for a more “liberal” acceptance of a community with an alternative view of the good life. At the outset, I emphasize that my primary purpose here is not to persuade you that this alternative view is better. I am not even arguing today that those who advocate for ready and cost-free access to artificial contraception should refrain from advancing that policy preference through political means. My aim of the moment is much more modest, which is to contend that in a free and diverse society, public policy should leave ample breathing room for a community with a counter-cultural understanding on these important questions.
I appreciate that contraception is widely viewed throughout the academy as an unalloyed positive social good, even a “revolutionary” and necessary step for women’s equality. Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to describe the pro-contraception position as the privileged narrative in the academy. The contrary view is seldom heard in the halls of the typical law school and not much respected on the irregular occasion that it is voiced. Those who resist the use of artificial contraception are regarded at best as being quaint or in need of consciousness-raising and are seen at worst as retrograde believers in a subservient role for women as incessant baby-makers. Through this post, I want to challenge this group of open-minded scholars to entertain the possibility that women and men of sound mind and good heart, many of “feminist” inclinations, can reasonably and even joyfully embrace an alternative worldview that embraces sexuality as a gift but excludes artificial contraception.
The perspective that I sketch here, inartfully, is that shared with me by many friends, colleagues, and former students—Catholic women who accept the Church’s teaching on sexuality and contraception, not as a rigid doctrinal imposition, but as a gift. And these are successful professional women, who have satisfying careers as lawyers or law professors, which they have integrated with fulfilling personal and family lives. For on-line examples of these voices, although I do not know these women personally, I suggest these links: http://catholicmoraltheology.com/catholics-contraception-and-feminisms/ and http://www.integratedcatholiclife.org/2012/07/lorraine-murray-catholic-womans-journey-with-contraception
For the orthodox Catholic women that I have known in professional settings, they have not experienced the ready availability of artificial contraception as liberating. Rather, they have seen the assumption that all women use (or should use) artificial contraception as serving to fuel the hyper-sexualized environment on college campuses, leading to the familiar “hook-up” culture and its devaluation of human sexuality and degradation of women. Rather than seeing contraception as enhancing equality, these women have seen the presumption of contraceptive use as encouraging men to behave irresponsibly and to treat women as sexual conquests. In sum, by resisting the contraception narrative, these women have set a different path for romantic relationships. They believe they have achieved healthier relationships with men.
When these professional women marry, they engage in discourse and planning with their husbands about children, a dialogue that cannot be avoided because contraception is not used to make it possible to avoid the question. Contrary to the absurd suggestion that women who do not use artificial contraception typically have ten to twenty children, these women know that family planning and artificial contraception are not synonymous, and they insist that modern women have not lost all capacity for self-control. While they may choose to have larger families than the norm in some circles, the professional Catholic women that I know who joyfully follow Church teaching have families with children ranging in number from a single child to about half a dozen, with most in the two or three range.
Now let us suppose that a particular Catholic community—a Catholic university, let us say—wishes to build an oasis in which young men and women have an alternative to the contraception culture that dominates most of society. This university builds single-sex dormitories and adopts what we’ll label “parietals” that call for person of the opposite sex to leave a student’s dorm room after a certain time each night. Every student admitted to the university (and every faculty or staff member employed by the university) is well aware of the Church’s teaching and of the university’s considered policies in accordance with that teaching.
Knowing that their students are real people and not angels, the Catholic university leadership understands that not all young men and women on campus will succeed in living what they believe is a healthier and more satisfying lifestyle. But a critical mass of students (and faculty and staff) will so succeed within a supportive environment, quite different from that which prevails at most universities. And not wanting to be oppressive, university leaders certainly will not invade the privacy of students (which itself would be a violation of human dignity) by searching their rooms to ensure that no one brings artificial contraception on campus. But the university will in no wise facilitate or encourage artificial contraception.
For these reasons, as a faithful witness to the community and as an encouragement to students to live faithfully, this Catholic university will not permit artificial contraception to be dispensed on campus and will not associate itself in any way with those who market or distribute such artificial contraception. Not wanting to give any scandal or tarnish in any way the Church’s message about the sacred beauty of human sexuality, the university refuses to cooperate or be complicit with distribution of artificial contraception.
Now shouldn’t a genuinely “liberal” and free society not merely tolerate but leave ample breathing room for a community that adopts an alternative view of what it means to thrive as human beings? Shouldn’t we strive for a public policy respectful of diversity that does not suffocate these countercultural views by all-embracing mandates? Shouldn’t we be alarmed by a governmental orthodoxy that cannot allow this community to march to a different drummer?
If President Obama wants to reduce income inequality, he should focus less on redistributing income and more on fighting a major cause of modern poverty: the breakdown of the family. . . . According to Census Bureau information analyzed by the Beverly LaHaye Institute, among families headed by two married parents in 2012, just 7.5% lived in poverty. By contrast, when families are headed by a single mother the poverty level jumps to 33.9%.
Those on the conservative side of our Mirror of Justice family, me included, frequently explain that our skepticism about state-centric proposals does not mean that we lack compassion for the unfortunate. To the contrary, we conclude that Catholic values are better advanced — not always, but often — by relying on inspired private initiatives and making room for communities and charities to work, not weighed down by government bureaucracy administered from Washington, D.C. Still, we insist, that doesn’t mean we think there is no role for government. We do believe in a safety net after all. Really.
If so, then the current debate in Congress about extension of long-term unemployment benefits should be an easy case for us. If ever there were a case for preserving the “safety net,” this is one.
We’re not talking about permanent welfare type benefits given to those who shirk work and enjoy living free and easy on the dole. The very fact that these individuals are receiving unemployment benefits means that they were employed. They had established themselves as working Americans and then had that taken away from them, through no fault of their own.
Nor can continuation of those benefits legitimately be criticized as fostering dependency and discouraging a return to the work-force. No one who has earned a living wage will be satisfied for any length of time by the small weekly supplement provided through long-term unemployment benefits, always less than half of prior wages and typically about $300 per week. As Michael Strain, a conservative economist, pointedly observes: “A large share of the long-term unemployed are people with relatively high earnings potential and personal responsibilities that extend beyond themselves. It is hard to imagine an educated worker in her prime working years with a kid at home having allowed a $300-a-week check to stand between her and a strenuous job search for over half a year.”
Even with such benefits being continued, savings accounts will dwindle, mortgage payments will be missed, plans for assisting children with college expenses will be put on hold, and plans for retirement will go out the window. At best, long-term unemployment benefits slow down the economic decline and ease the impact. But the beneficiaries retain every incentive to return to full-time work.
Michael Strain points out yet another reason for allowing unemployment benefits to continue somewhat long: “If the benefits allow people to be more selective with which jobs they take, and they end up with a better match, that will increase their productivity, their contributions to the economy are higher in the long run, the likelihood that they'll quit or get fired later is smaller.”
Without long-term unemployment benefits, our neighbors who still cannot find work in this weak economy risk damage to family economic security from which they may never recover — a legacy of displacement and impoverishment that will be passed down to the next generation. When the house is lost to foreclosure, not because of foolish real estate purchases but the tragedy of a lost job, that family may never again be able to accumulate savings for a down payment or obtain the credit to buy a house. When children are forced to drop out of college because parents’ have emptied all savings to keep a roof over their head and put food on the table, their first steps into adult life lead to disappointment and discouragement. Long-term unemployment benefits provide a way to help ease that interruption of work and safeguard the American dream despite temporary setbacks.
Moreover, Republicans, so often incompetent in recent years in political messaging, have yet another reason to support long-term unemployment benefits. The very need to continue these benefits sends the message yet again about the failure of the Obama Administration on the economy. Now entering its sixth year in office, the Obama Administration continues to have a dismal record in restoring jobs to this economy. Indeed, President Obama has a history of promoting job-killing measures, from the Obamacare mandates to employers to the ramp up in environmental regulations.
A month ago, the job numbers were reported widely to be encouraging, although most commentators overlooked the fact that nearly half of those new jobs were in government and thus not adding to the productivity of the economy. And now this month, the job numbers are forthrightly discouraging. And more so than after earlier recessions, the numbers facing long-term unemployment are staggering. That is why we need to continue long-term unemployment benefits.
This should be the Republican message, which would have more power (and more persuasive value) if accompanied by the sensible step of extending long-term unemployment benefits. Instead, failing as a matter of principle as well as political strategy, Republicans in Congress have missed the chance to do the right thing here and to get political credit for it.
McKay Coppins on Buzzfeed writes an article that begins with: "How a backstage prayer in Cleveland and a new leader in the Vatican set the budget-slashing congressman on a mission to help the poor. 'My bet is that he’s on Pope Francis’ team.'”
Here’s a sample:
But those closest to him say Ryan’s new mission is the result of a genuine spiritual epiphany — sparked, in part, by the prayer in Cleveland [at a meeting with advocates for the poor], and sustained by the emergence of a new pope who has lit the world on fire with bold indictments of the “culture of prosperity” and a challenge to reach out the weak and disadvantaged.
“What I love about the pope is he is triggering the exact kind of dialogue we ought to be having,” Ryan told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel this week, adding, “People need to get involved in their communities to make a difference, to fix problems soul to soul.”
The newspapers and television news report that the death
toll in the Philippines from the strongest typhoon in recorded history could climb
to 10,000 (or higher). I am reminded of
the cynical but sadly often true observation:
When one person close to you dies, it is a tragedy. When 10,000 people die in a distant land, it
is a statistic. Even for us as Catholics
who cherish the unique value and dignity of each individual, we can find it
difficult to get our minds around loss of life at a large scale, and we struggle
to feel an emotional connection with the victims of disasters occurring in
exotic places.
When I spent a summer teaching in Rome in the Summer of 2007,
I regularly watched “BBC World News” in the mornings and evenings, as it was
one of two English-language stations available on our cable network (the other being,
interestingly enough, “Al Jazeera Sports”).
That was the summer of the 1-35 bridge collapse in the Twin Cities,
which of course was a story of particular interest to those of us from the
University of St. Thomas. But I remember
being struck one morning when the BBC anchor announced, “Ten thousand people
have died in Turkey as the heat wave continues.
But, first, we go to our person on the scene at the bridge collapse in
Minnesota.” (And, yes, the BBC indeed had
a reporter — complete with BBC British accent — at the scene of the bridge
collapse for live reports every half hour.)
Ten thousand dead in Turkey. But
the priority news story for the BBC was the bridge collapse in Minnesota at
which thirteen lost their lives.
Now we can ridicule or disparage the BBC’s choice to
highlight one story over the other, or we might attribute the choice to the race
for ratings. But I think there is
another way to understand that seemingly odd contrast. For those of us in the western developed
world, we can more easily relate to the calamity of a collapsing highway
bridge, plunging dozens of cars into the river — that is, we can imagine such a
thing happening to us. We have more
difficulty imagining ever being in a situation without easy access to cooling
and clean water where scorching temperatures would cost thousands of lives.
Because our empathy and sympathy grows out of
relationships, we naturally will have more for those with whom we are in relationship
— or at least those with whom we identify in common experience and thus can envision
a form of relationship. The Gospel of John reminds us that "God so loved the World," but it is so hard to love "the World" until we develop relationships within the Body of Christ.
The same is true for most of us in America when we see the
images of destruction left by a typhoon on the other side of the globe. We pause to be shocked and sincerely express pity,
but we lack the imagination to be deeply moved (for any length of time) by what
we see. And I must confess that I have
often been counted in that number — wanting to care and meaning to care, but lacking
the connectedness to have the concern of relationship. While I want to do the right thing and lift
up others in prayer and contribute to disaster relief, it may be hard to think
with the mind of Christ about persons so far removed from me and my situation.
For me, not anymore. Or
at least not today. My brother, Dan, was
in a small city on the Filipino island of Biliran, which
was directly in the path of Typhoon Haiyan. You’ve all seen the horrifying images of
death and devastation coming out of Tacloban on the island of Leyte. The provincial capital of Naval on Biliran,
where my brother was staying with his expecting fiancé, is just 50 miles
to the west of Tacloban.
We know Dan and Dayline were in Naval when the storm struck. We have not heard anything more from him in
the few days since, nor has the State Department or the American embassy in
Manila been able to offer us any word of his situation.
We prayerfully assume that they are both well
and simply unable to get word out with electricity and communications down and
likely to remain down for days or weeks more.
We pray that they are able to persevere and find food and water as they
wait for rescue and restoration. And in
praying for my brother, whom I know, I can better envision the lives and plight
of those around him in the wake of the typhoon.
Mirror of Justice friend Harry Hutchison, professor at George Mason Law School, offers this response and supplement to my post yesterday (here):
Well said
but it is important to remember the lead role played by American citizens in
the potential crackup of Obamacare. In what follows, I must confess that my
analysis is far from original. In any case I think two things are worth noting
given the problems emerging with respect to the Affordable Health Care Act.
First, Americans were only too willing to
avoid the warnings offered by many analysts which suggested that the Affordable
Health Care Act, representing the promise of Progressivism, would promise more
than it could possibly deliver. Second, it is important to remember what
Patrick J. Deneen has said about Tocqueville and the individualist roots of
Progressivism which may explain why Americans were only too willing to believe,
the often unbelievable promises of the law itself.
Deneen
suggests that although the major figures of Progressivism would directly attack
classical liberalism, a lucid understanding of Tocqueville’s analysis supports
the conclusion that Progressivism arose not in spite of classical liberalism
but because of its inherent and supreme emphasis upon, and cultivation of
individualism. Whereas the idea of the individual
is at least as old as Christianity, individualism
within the context of Progressivism represents a new experience of self that
arises with the diminution of a strong connection to a familial, social,
religious, generational and cultural setting wherein change occurs relatively
slowly consistent with a hierarchical (aristocratic?) society. With the onset
of notions of highly individuated equality, Americans have (perhaps)
experienced a new conception of the self—a self that emerges, unfettered by
historical ties, as individuals are now defined by their membership in
something larger—humanity itself. Liberated from embedded ties that ground us
in quotidian reality, individuals crave unity—unity that is found within the
pursuit of the ideal.
Liberated
from membership in mediating groups, individuals seek forms of protection from
the uncertainty that arises from the vagaries of human life. Thus understood
the acclaimed conflict between individualism and the collective represents a
false dichotomy because in reality unmediated individualism reinforces the
state. The State grows on what it gives the individual (presumably affordable
health care on demand at low costs) while diminishing the role of competing
local institutions such as the church or family. The individual is seen as
desperately alone and her only source of support is the State. If we are all,
as individuals profoundly weak, alone and isolated, the State is obligated to
support us in our autonomy and isolation as a fundamental requirement that is the
fulfillment of a democratic commitment to individuality and equality. The
Affordable Health Care Act was sold to individuals who were only too willing to
believe the promise that this law would ultimately free them and us from the
need to depend on our communities, churches, employers and other mediating
institutions. Instead, it would free us to pursue our fulfillment (whatever
that means) knowing that the existence of a “right” to healthcare would help us
achieve the unachievable, the illusion of autonomy. Other casualties emerge include a
pre-commitment to truth.
You knew that at some point that someone here on the Mirror of
Justice just had to say something
about what HHS Secretary Sebelius has now acknowledged to be the Obamacare “debacle.”
There will be ample time in the coming months to explore
in more detail the underlying issues about affordable health care, health
insurance options, access to physicians, controlling costs of health care (or
not), whether Obamacare expands the availability of affordable health insurance
as much as it contracts that availability, etc.
And it’s always possible that, after an initially disastrous
unveiling, the new health care regime will evolve into a model of government-managed
efficiency that strengthens the social safety net and enhances the health care
system to the popular applause of the American people.
But as the shoes continue to drop, and the focus shifts from
bad website tech to bad policy collateral effects, such a happy
outcome seems increasingly unlikely.
Consider how quickly political fortunes are shifting. Just a couple of weeks ago, House Republicans were pilloried
by the media and chastised by the public for shutting down the government and
risking a default on the national debt service for the solitary and dominating purpose
of undoing or at least revamping Obamacare.
But now and in the light of recent events, people are recalling
that President Obama and the Senate Democrats were equally willing to shut down
the government and risk a default rather than allow even the most modest
adjustment to Obamacare. When House Republicans sought to save face by asking only for a delay in the individual
mandate—which would have been parallel to the delay granted by President Obama to big
business in providing more comprehensive health insurance benefits to employees—President Obama and the Democrats would have none of it. (Ironically, now President Obama is thinking of doing exactly that because of the web site failure, which I guess makes his hard-line against House Republicans and the consequential government shutdown all for naught.) When moderate Republican senators proposed at
least abolishing the new tax on medical devices, which had been criticized by senators
of both parties as undermining American innovation and increasing the cost of
health care, President Obama and Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid were
immovable.
In sum, the public is coming around to the realization that
President Obama and the Democrats are just as ideologically committed to
Obamacare as the Republicans are ideologically opposed to it. To be sure, the Obamacare crack-up has not
meant that Republicans are ticking up in popular approval. But President Obama and the Democrats are
definitely ticking down.
Three-and-a-half years ago—right after it had been enacted on a
straight Democratic-party-line vote—I predicted that Obamacare was unlikely to
succeed and that the just cause of greater access to health care might be
set-back rather than advanced by this irresponsible legislation. I argued
that we should keep our attention on the matter of health care and diligently
continue the search for genuine reform, because Obamacare was not prudent, was
not economically viable, and was not politically sustainable. (That
March, 2010 five-part series can be found here, here, here, here, and here). The points I made then remain salient today
(mostly). But, again, there will be
ample time in the coming months to return to these issues.
For today, one lesson emerges most clearly for anyone
advocating social justice initiatives:
Be scrupulously honest. If there
will be winners and losers under a proposal, admit as much. If enactment of a government program or regulation
will restrict freedom of choice by citizens to a certain menu of options
approved by the government, be willing to say so. If intervention by the government will have economic effects, such as increasing the costs of products, don't pretend otherwise. If advancing the common good will require
sacrifices by the many in order to provide better for the few, be forthright in
defending that result.
If instead, you mislead the people about what will come,
even for what you believe to be a higher cause, then the public cynicism and
popular backlash may do more than damage your cause in a political sense. It may set back the cause of social justice
altogether and dissolve the common good into a battle of special interests
seeking advantage in the aftermath of failure.
By overreaching—and by being disingenuous as you overreach—the most vulnerable in our
society may suffer the most when the house of cards collapses and public faith
in civil society is weakened.
Peggy Noonan’s column today on the prevarications that
accompanied the adoption of Obamacare makes this general point more specific in
this context:
They said if you liked your insurance you could keep your
insurance—but that’s not true. It was never true! They said if you liked your
doctor you could keep your doctor—but that’s not true. It was never true! They
said they would cover everyone who needed it, and instead people who had
coverage are losing it—millions of them! They said they would make insurance
less expensive—but it’s more expensive! Premium shock, deductible shock. They
said don’t worry, your health information will be secure, but instead the whole
setup looks like a hacker’s holiday. Bad guys are apparently already going for
your private information.
A few months ago (here), I suggested that we should be troubled by the growth of the "Surveillance State" in the United States as an affront to human dignity, which demand appropriate respect for privacy and confidentiality. As the
Catholic Catechism says, even beyond the special protection of professional secrets,
“private information prejudicial to another is not to be divulged without a
grave and proportionate reason.”
Now we learn (here) that even Pope Francis is apparently a suspect in the eyes of the National Security Agency, which intercepted telephone calls from his villa during the Vatican Conclave at which he was elected pontiff. To the government's assurances that it abides by strict constraints in conducting its surveillance and that abuses are rare, wiretapping bishops and cardinals serves as a contradicting response.
Good intentions, aspirational ideas, holy motives cannot
be translated into real progress for the common good or the advancement of God's Kingdom without a plan.
Whether one is a
lawyer or law student working for social justice, a minister promoting a new
apostolate, a social worker empowering the impoverished, an educator enlightening
a class, or, yes, an elected member of the polity advancing a political agenda, one must have a
plan. And that plan must include a realistic assessment of the prospects for success and how the
plan will come not only to a climax but to a conclusion.
In Chapter 6 of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells his
followers:
'That is why I am telling you not to worry
about your life and what you are to eat, nor about your body and what you are
to wear. Surely life is more than food, and the body more than clothing!
26 Look at the birds in the sky. They do not
sow or reap or gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you
not worth much more than they are?
27 Can any of you, however much you worry, add
one single cubit to your span of life?
28 And why worry about clothing? Think of the
flowers growing in the fields; they never have to work or spin;
29 yet I assure you that not even Solomon in
all his royal robes was clothed like one of these.
30 Now if that is how God clothes the wild
flowers growing in the field which are there today and thrown into the furnace
tomorrow, will he not much more look after you, you who have so little faith?
31 So do not worry; do not say, "What are
we to eat? What are we to drink? What are we to wear?"
32 It is the gentiles who set their hearts on
all these things. Your heavenly Father knows you need them all.
33 Set your hearts on his kingdom first, and on
God's saving justice, and all these other things will be given you as well.
34 So do not worry about tomorrow: tomorrow will
take care of itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.'
Some over the ages have miscontrued this passage to mean that
good intentions and prayerful resolve are all that a follower of Christ needs
for any venture. Evangelicals are wont to describe a person with that attitude as "so Heavenly minded that he is of no earthly good."
Jesus was speaking about inward-focused worry, that is,
selfish pursuits of material things and especially about how those who become
obsessed with these things are then torn by anxiety for the future. Worry, particularly for selfish reasons, may
be a sin. But planning remains a must.
Keeping our focus on God and recognizing that all else must be subordinated to God’s
Kingdom is not an invitation to ignore the future consequences of our actions
in this life.
As the nineteenth century Anglican Bishop of Liverpool, J.
C. Ryle explains this passage, “Prudent provision for the future is right;
wearing, corroding, self-tormenting anxiety is wrong.”
Let
us pray that “prudent provision for the future” will become the watchword for
our leaders, in government as well as in ministry.
One of the challenges to achieving social justice by including a significant measure of government regulation of the private sector is to ensure that the secondary economic effects are considered in advance and do not threaten to undermine the primary effects sought to be achieved. Until recent years, the bishops in the United States had a tendency to endorse government-centric platforms for social justice with little attention to or awareness of economic incentives, disincentives, collateral consequences, etc. In more recent years, the bishops have appreciated the necessary prudential judgment that goes into evaluating the right mix of public and private, government and charitable, regulatory and market elements toward the end of reducing poverty and enhancing human thriving.
Yesterday's guest column on the economic consequences of increasing the minimum wages in the Minneapolis Star Tribune by Michael J. McIlhon, who teaches economics at Augsburg and Century Colleges here in the Twin Cities, ought to be required reading for anyone who aspires to "economic literacy" in public policy discussions.
McIlhon cites the "11th Commandment" in economics, which is "Thou shalt ever do only one thing." The point is that by doing one thing, one inevitably does another as well (and another and another). If the government mandates that employers provide health insurance to full-time employees, especially an expensive menu of prescribed coverage, while the result may be that some employees receive health care who did not have it previously, the other result will be that employers to remain competitive in labor costs will move more employees to part-time status and hire fewer full-time employees. If the government requires that employers provide guaranteed leave for health or childbirth reasons, fortunate employees may enjoy that new benefit, while the employer likely will have to make adjustments in benefits or salaries or in overall number of employees to offset that cost.
And if the government increases the minimum wage that must be paid to employees on the lowest end of the pay scale, who overwhelmingly are those with less education and lower skill sets, some employees will receive higher wages while other employees will be laid off and still other potential employees will never be hired. Indeed, as even advocates of a minimum wage generally must acknowledge, the calculation for the benefits to some of the increase always must include the number of jobs to be lost and not created as a consequence of increasing the cost of unskilled, low productivity labor.
Thus, while economists tend to differ about a lot of things, there is near unanimity that, as McIlhon describes it, "a minimum wage is a very bad antipoverty tool, poorly focused with some ugly side effects":
The National Bureau of Economic Research recently published work in which the authors find “no compelling evidence” that minimum wages raise household incomes. They found that the “disemployment
effects” on some household incomes (the loss of a job or the inability
to find a job at higher mandated wages) more than offset the income
effects in other households of higher wages for those who manage to keep
their jobs. Since both these effects are concentrated
in lower-income households, the authors conclude that minimum wages
simply redistribute income among low-income families, that they “help to
raise the level of income above the poverty line in some families, but
push income below the poverty line in others.”
Indeed, the problem with a raise in a minimum wage is worse than the immediate effect of simply redistributing income among the poor. By thereby suppressing the labor market for uneducated, low skill workers, many people and especially teenagers will be left unemployed and deprived of the experience and skills training of a low-wage job as "the first rung on the productivity ladder."
Again, you can read the rest of this lesson in economic literacy here.
