What the Rich Don’t Want to Admit About the Poor | New York Times

Why do we leave millions of people in poverty? The answer should make us uncomfortable.

In a recent Op-Ed for the New York Times, Ezra Klein interviews Berkeley Opportunity Lab’s Hillary Hoynes, who explains that America’s policy choice of paying some workers less and leaving them with few options for getting out of poverty also leads to lower prices for other consumers:

“I suspect the real political problem for a guaranteed income isn’t the costs, but the benefits. A policy like this would give workers the power to make real choices. They could say no to a job they didn’t want, or quit one that exploited them. They could, and would, demand better wages, or take time off to attend school or simply to rest. When we spoke, Hamilton tried to sell it to me as a truer form of capitalism. “People can’t reap the returns of their effort without some baseline level of resources,” he said. “If you lack basic necessities with regards to economic well-being, you have no agency. You’re dictated to by others or live in a miserable state.”

But those in the economy with the power to do the dictating profit from the desperation of low-wage workers. One man’s misery is another man’s quick and affordable at-home lunch delivery. “It is a fact that when we pay workers less and don’t have social insurance programs that, say, cover Uber and Lyft drivers, we are able to consume goods and services at lower prices,” Hilary Hoynes, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley, where she also co-directs the Opportunity Lab, told me.”

Source: Opinion | What the Rich Don’t Want to Admit About the Poor