It happens every few years that some Democrat wants to raise the minimum wage and some Republican wants to keep it level. The Democrats argue that the minimum wage is too low to be a living wage and the Republicans argue that minimum wage hikes cost jobs and that it's better to work for pittance than to not work at all. Of course, the minimum wage is too low. In my old hometown of Albuquerque the city released an economic report which said a person would have to make $8 an hour in order to buy food and rent an apartment without the benefit of a roommate. The minimum wage is still around $6 an hour. In my new hometown of New York $8 will get you a Corona at most bars, and add up to rent and food nowhere.

There's a basic principle which we should adopt -- if you work full time, you should be able to house and feed yourself. In the most technologically advanced civilization approaching the dawn of a new millennium, that should be a considered a right. Actually, it should be considered a global right, but I'll qualify it with the "technological advancement/free society" talk just to keep the argument small.

Are the Republicans right? In a way they are, because employers are a greedy lot. They have no problem cutting their work forces and demanding more productivity for less compensation. Indeed, when that happens, Wall Street tends to cheer and people make gobs of money. Well, investors make gobs of money. Some people see expectations for their labor increase with no corresponding increase in pay, while other find themselves unemployed.

A minimum wage increase which causes job loss isn't good for anyone. If you're worker A and worker B gets fired and you have to handle all of worker B's responsibilities, you're salary should be doubled. But a minimum wage increase isn't likely to be worth more than 10% or 12% of your check. Worker A is basically being robbed. The employer who gives an extra $2 to one person but saves $6 by firing another is basically a crook. Now, the firing ratio might tend to be less than the A/B scenario, but I can't think of any circumstances where the increased work is worth the money given in a minimum wage increase. Besides, it's all wrong on principle -- we increase the minimum wage because we are saying, as a society, that the work being done for $6 an hour is actually worth say, $8 an hour. More work would be worth more than $8 an hour. So, the workers are getting screwed on principle, which is nothing new.

What we need is a living wage guarantee -- if you work, you should be able to feed and house yourself. We also need a guarantee against wage-caused firings which ask people to work more for the same amount of money. This will eventually mean we should cap CEO salaries as a percentage of a company's total income. Bottom lines are always met at the bottom rungs and that needs to change. It's time for the higher ups to make a sacrifice or two, which doesn't mean downsize them, it means downsize their pay (hell, they can still make more than other people, they just shouldn't make more at the expense of their employee' living wage.) None of this will happen soon.

But there was a minimum wage compromise offered by the Republicans which Clinton has threatened to veto and I don't understand why. The Republicans have offered a short-term solution -- increase the minimum wage, but offset the cost with tax breaks. Of course, this is just a Band-Aid --- you can't offer a tax break every time you raise the minimum wage or company's will start running tax free -- but it's hardly a bad idea right now. Right now, people are working too hard for too little. Give the businesses their damned tax break and get the money into the hands of the people who need it. Maybe it'll trickle up and help the economy.

Then it's time to start working on something we should have done a long time ago -- get the minimum wage up to the living wage (by region) and pass a law tying annual wage increases to the cost of living. Tax businesses who cut work forces rather than pay out. It's time we all agreed that people who work should be able to live.

Michael Maiello has been fortunate in that he's always been paid fairly. That means he's sometimes poor, but it's always a deserved poor.