Opinion: Do businesses owe workers a living wage?

A new phenomenon has spread across the nation in recent weeks: "fast-food strikes," named for the restaurant chain workers who have walked off the job in several cities, saying that establishments like Burger King and McDonald's don't pay employees enough to make ends meet.

McDonald's became an object of ridicule recently when it offered employees assistance in home budgeting -- and put together a model budget showing its own full-time workers needed a second job to pay basic expenses. This comes as a new Associated Press survey suggests 80 percent of Americans "struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives." Are full-time workers owed a living? If not, how can they survive? Joel Mathis and Ben Boychuk debate the issue.

MATHIS: A good chunk of conservative ideology these days is based on the idea that the people at the bottom of the heap are there because they're lazy, and perhaps parasitical. It's one of the foundational ideas of the Ayn Rand-inspired elements of the Tea Party movement. It found its expression most clearly in Mitt Romney's infamous "47 percent" comments during the presidential race last year: Folks want government programs because they're too lazy to work.

Perhaps that was true, back in early postwar America, when the economy was booming and the opportunity to lift yourself up out of humble circumstances really did exist for many folks.

But consider this: The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that 63 percent of all new jobs created in the United States will require a high school degree or less. The "food services" industry will be the fastest-growing source of jobs for such folks. No longer can a young American walk out of high school and into a factory job that will land him or her in the middle class. "Working at McDonald's doesn't usually amount to a career today," Jordan Weissmann wrote in The Atlantic recently.

"But it might tomorrow." This isn't to pick on McDonald's, whose aim isn't different from any widget maker in a capitalist society: Make a product and sell it at a price that's high enough to earn a profit but low enough to draw customers. Accomplishing that task might be trickier if the company suddenly paid its employees a "living wage." But if the rest of us are fair-minded, we Americans (conservatives especially) will have to reconsider whether it's moral to let folks work careers in industries that won't let them pay the rent, or whether it's better -- for them, and for capitalism's survival -- to surround the working poor with services instead of berating them for failures they don't possess or can't change. Businesses may not provide their employees a living, but even unskilled workers deserve one.

BOYCHUK: A good chunk of the liberal ideology these days is based on the idea that the people at the bottom of the heap are there because they can't help themselves. But for the tender mercies of government, who knows how much more miserable their lives would be? It's an old, paternalistic idea that has lately found a new voice in these silly fast-food strikes. If it's true that millions of Americans will be consigned to McDonald's and similar low-skilled jobs for the rest of their working lives, then why shouldn't government force those businesses to pay a "living wage"? Surely the benefits would outweigh the costs.

To buttress the point, the liberal Huffington Post alighted upon a University of Kansas study claiming to show McDonald's "can afford to pay its workers a living wage without sacrificing any of its low menu prices." Sounds great! Let's do it! Well, maybe not so fast. Turns out the "study" was conducted by an undergraduate, and its methodology was less than rigorous. Oh, and prices would go up substantially. The price of a Big Mac would rise "just 68 cents," which is nothing when you're talking about a single meal on a single day. But 68 cents adds up quickly for a family of four over weeks and months. And don't think price hikes would be limited only to Big Macs.

That's the problem with demands for a "living wage" -- liberals rarely seem to think through real costs and consequences. San Francisco has a "living wage." It also has one of the nation's highest costs of living.

There is "one and only one" responsibility of business, as the great free-market economist Milton Friedman observed half a century ago: "to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud." It's a lie that "open and free competition" doomed Americans to "McJobs." Instead of pining for a living wage and other mandates, we should help people find ways to live and thrive by their own best efforts.

Ben Boychuk is associate editor of the Manhattan Institute's City Journal. Joel Mathis is a contributing editor to The Philly Post.