Out of Egypt:

Misc. replies to the most recent post

Ryan: sometimes people are victims of circumstances beyond their control. The man I mentioned who was working as a cook for Boston Market until he was laid off didn't plan on that happening. And he wouldn't have been working in the warehouse with me if the temp agency hadn't lied to him about the pay.

Also, I still think Wal-Mart could take the hit. Witness the situation of businesses roughly in the same sector, such as Target and Costco. They pay their employees better, do they not? I would imagine that Wal-Mart just funnels all their profit back into the business, acquiring new products to sell and building more locations. Citibank, on the other hand, doesn't need to do anything to grow but send out more credit card applications.

I think John's criticism is right on the mark. Someone has to do unskilled work, and teenagers aren't going to be able to do all of it. And even if teenagers could do it all, that doesn't justify exploitation. I don't want to go back to the days before the progressive era, when business owners could treat their employees however they wanted. As I said before, freedom of contract is illusory in an unequal relationship. We don't let business owners pay their employees whatever they want for the same reason that we don't let executives sleep with those they supervise - the one on top has all the power.

Furthermore, if we want to get people off welfare, we've got to give them confidence that they can succeed through work. If they can't make as much working as they could being indigent, then they'll never break the cycle of dependency. And surely not all those people can become nurses, lab techs, etc. Not everyone fails at education because of a lack of will. Some people just aren't suited for it.

In conclusion, there's only one reason I would oppose minimum wage: if the inflation it caused, which I don't dispute (costs have to be passed on somehow), was equal to the increase in pay that was mandated. And that, I believe, is highly unlikely.

As John said, a just society knows how to value the people at the economic bottom. Having worked in dehumanizing environments, I know that it's natural to lose hope and to fail to take pride in your work. Cash fixes that, not motivational posters that say "Only the strong survive."

Christians especially need to take note of this. Often when we speak about vocation, we are thinking about the professions or about "Christian service." In the PCA, it may be, laborers are excluded from our middle-class white vision of the ideal Christian life. In this, I fear that we may receive the condemnation of James, who warns us in his letter not to show partiality to the wealthy (or the well-educated) among us. With our penchant for intellectualism, the PCA can be especially guilty of the latter.