Minimum Wage, American Jobs

The Feb. 12 Opinion pieces on work and welfare by Guy Molyneux (“Toiling Longer--But for the Same Pay”) and Gregg Easterbrook (“Minimum Wage Not Always So Minimum”) are valuable helps toward dissipating the fog that vested interests have created to prevent ordinary people from understanding what is really happening in the economy. But two things need further elucidation.

First, the fear of inflation, hence the need to keep raising interest rates to prevent it. The business pages keep telling us that the bond market is the segment of the economy that most needs reassurance that low inflation will continue. Why has the bond market become so sacrosanct as to need so much protection, even at the expense of keeping the whole economy from growing too much and (God forbid) more jobs being created?

Second, is the scorned T-word (for taxes) to be banished forever in political debate? Have we really concluded that universal health care, job training programs, public education and repairing our decaying infrastructure are luxuries we can no longer afford? Or is it that the very wealthy (whose share of the nation’s income has significantly increased over the years) have conspired with the political decision-makers to convince the rest of us that increased taxes (especially on them) for investment in the social well-being of the nation are anathema?

RICHARD W. GILLETT

Pasadena

* Raising the minimum wage may abolish “chump change,” but it certainly won’t make it easier finding a job. Clinton’s proposed 21% increase will tempt employers to break the law by knowingly hiring undocumented workers for less money and not reporting these earnings to the IRS. Prop. 187 notwithstanding, this 21% increase offers an added incentive for illegal aliens to break the law. Our own citizens will find fewer minimum-wage jobs and encounter considerably more competition in trying to win them.

Instead of arbitrarily raising the minimum wage, we should reduce the transaction costs that make low-wage jobs unattractive to those on welfare. Who can afford to commute four hours to perform an eight-hour job paying $4.25 an hour? If there were a way of subsidizing the transaction costs of wasted commuting time--special tax incentives is one idea--raising the minimum wage would be unnecessary.

MARTIN G. MUTSCH

Fountain Valley

* Re “Springboards Instead of Safety Nets,” Commentary, Feb. 14:

The Japanese should pay Robert Reich to say the things he says. They enjoy a huge trade surplus with us. In November, for example, they sold us $6.19 billion more than we sold them. That $6.19 billion would have paid 6,190,000 Americans $1,000 each for working in November. It didn’t, though. It went to Japan. Reich’s answer to this: America needs to retrain itself. Please! We may never retrain ourselves sufficiently to catch up with the Japanese; and if ever we do catch up, it will be generations from now.

The fact is we don’t need to retrain to get those jobs back. We just need to stop buying things made in Japan and start buying things made here.

GENE POMERANTZ

Tarzana