Burn it down isn’t an ethical demand- sacrifices material well being of most marginalized

(Tommy J., Phil@TexasA&M, The Cost of a Thing: A Kingian Reformulation of a Living Wage Argument in the 21st Century.)

Over the last decade the living wage has been tied to some local successes in America. States and municipalities have indeed succeeded in raising the minimum wage in Maryland, Florida, and some counties in California with calls for a national increase underway. As Donald Stabile notes, “Advocates for a living wage typically support it by arguing that it is necessary for ‘economic justice’ and a ‘fair economy’;” the weight of their cry largely upheld through moral suasion and the sympathy our society has respecting to the rights of low-wage workers and addressing the ever-expanding boundaries of poverty. While proponents of a living wage have emphasized ideas of justice, fairness, dignity, and of course the sacred American creed of rights, few economists have recognized these constructs as actual entities translatable into market principles or governing dynamics. Proponents of the living wage largely dismiss the need for values to be accountable to economic postulates, insisting “the higher compensation would mean they [workers] could walk down the street and look anyone in the eye. They could walk with the self-confidence that only dignity gives. They could, whatever else, feel that they belong.” Such debates largely obscure what is really at stake in the actualization of the values one intends. Is it the case that dignity is realizable through income, and home ownership, rather than equality, or the end to discrimination? Are we unshakable in our belief that discrete attainments within society constitute enough of one’s social self such that a higher income remedies racism, or sexual exploitation, and the sheer brutality of anti-Black violence? How do we reconcile dignity, justice, and fairness with a dehumanizing, unjust, and precariously biased world? Poor people are discriminated against. Poor Black and Brown people are killed, indigenous peoples are erased and defined as savage, and immigrants are thought, contrary to fact, to destroy the economy and live under the constant threat of deportation. Race determines the risk populations have for poverty, and poverty itself has been highly related to crime, domestic abuse, substance abuse, sexual violence and incarceration. Recently, Alejandro Varela has argued that “maps of poverty in the United States…overlay quite seamlessly onto the maps of HIV. That should come as no surprise to anyone who studies or treats chronic conditions, most of which—diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease, etc.” Poverty breeds disease and because of the enduring segregation and stratification of races in America, it is drawn to the racialized members of our society. Unfortunately, these are our realities; yet we seem impotent to address them beyond screaming that we rebuke their existence, declaring we will “burn it down,” questioning the causes of such inequities, or even recognizing these social phenomena exist. All these phenomena, all the deaths caused by them, the lives lessened by their persistence; despite all our claims—the consequences will remain. Our theories, and the values we use to justify them, will ultimately do little to actualize our paradigm anymore than those who remain committed to the status quo. We need a stronger approach.