A reader writes:
I read your latest post on usury and Catholic Social Teaching, and ended up in an argument with someone who claimed that it is impossible for every job to pay a Living Wage, and that the Catechism’s words must therefore be interpreted as “everyone must have the OPPORTUNITY to earn a Living Wage”. He claims that anything else would be absurd and mean that Church Teaching is so flawed as to be worthless. I understand that, say, some businesses may not be able to afford it, or that some jobs may be “insufficiently productive” for that, but it rubs me the wrong way, because it seems to put a fence around Church Teaching and say “yeah, well, that’d be nice, but get real! That’s never happening and it would be undesirable in any case”. It just seems to the Teaching of its power and turn it into a dead letter.
Related: Mammon Mob Comes for Retirees
From the Church’s own social teaching:
The Church insists that all workers, in return for their labor, are entitled to a living wage. A living wage is a wage which will enable a well-conducted and thrifty workman to live in reasonable comfort. Hence, a living wage does not mean “just enough to keep alive on.” Leo XIII writes: “Wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner.” (Rerum Novarum, §45) Pius XI writes: “Every effort must be made that fathers of families receive a wage sufficient to meet adequately normal domestic needs.” (Quadragesimo Anno, §71) A living wage, therefore, means a wage sufficient to keep a man up to a standard of moderate comfort, or, in other words, a wage sufficient to support himself and his family in Christian decency. What size of family? An average family; that is, four or five children.
Related: Debt Zombies
A few important notes here: The encyclicals cited here are exercises of the Papal Magisterium which, while not infallible definitions, nonetheless propose to settle moral disputes, and so bind all Catholics to give religious assent.
Nowhere does it say that every job must pay a living wage. The Church does insist that all workers have a right to receive a living wage. Those are two different ideas concerning different sides of the wage agreement.
Related: Finding Solutions
God does not command the impossible. The fact that murders occur no more invalidates the right to life enshrined in “Thou shalt not kill” than the existence of unjustly low-paying jobs invalidates the right to a living wage.
Now let’s take a look at another paragraph:
If an industry or business, through no fault of the employer, cannot bear the strain of paying a living wage, the latter is not bound to pay a wage which the business cannot afford. Neither is he bound to pay a full wage to workers in preference to allowing himself a moderate recompense for his own work. But, having taken moderate recompense to cover his needs and those of his family, he may not set aside any further profit until he has paid his workers the just minimum rate of the living wage. Pope Pius XI writes: “Let employers and employed join in plans and efforts to overcome all difficulties and obstacles, and let them be aided in this wholesome endeavor by the wise measures of the public authority. … In the last extreme, counsel must be taken whether the business can continue, or whether some other provision should be made for the workers.” (Quadragesimo Anno, §73)
Since every worker has the right to a living wage, and the boss is also a worker, employers have the same right, too. The Church acknowledges that the world is fallen, and men’s failure to abide by the universal destination of goods leads to wealth inequality, which can mean that some businesses can’t afford to pay living wages. But in that case, we don’t throw out Church teaching as a dead letter, we work to repair the social disorders that deny those companies the ability to pay just wages.
Again, we don’t call the 5th and 7th Commandments “worthless” even though no society in history has yet eradicated murder and theft. Instead we try to make laws and pass initiatives to address the root causes of those injustices. So it’s rather a double standard to dismiss Church teaching on the living wage because some businesses pay unjust wages.
And on a purely economic note, with corporate profits nearing all-time highs while wages have only grown at 1/4 the rate of worker productivity, it’s hard to make the case that corporations can’t afford to pay their workers more.
Get get FREE books and first looks at my exciting new projects each month! Join my elite neopatrons this month to attend the live streamed author reading of my new dark fantasy novel The Burned Book!
Join on Patreon or SubscribeStar now.
There is the simple question of what is your work worth? It is unjust for an employee who only provides $8/hr of value to his employer to demand $10/hr pay. And there is also the inevitable fact that the true minimum wage will always be zero per hour. The government can’t raise that. It can only make it more difficult for you to get more.
That is a question. But as Leo XIII and Pius XI point out, it’s far from the only question. The worker’s needs and the common good always receive due consideration in a Christian society.
And seeing as how the average American worker is underpaid by $9 an hour relative to the value he produces, pretty much nobody’s labor is worth less than $10 an hour.
“And there is also the inevitable fact that the true minimum wage will always be zero per hour.”
Our Lord begs to differ.
Having worked in fast food for a long time, the question of “How much is your labor really worth?” has been a constant object of internal debate. My belief at this time is multifaceted.
First and foremost, I think people are grossly underpaid. There’s no excuse for productivity and profits growing and wages not be in lockstep with them. The rise in inflation and cost of living aside. Plus with how “optimized” and “flawlessly efficient” most FF places are trying to be, all that pressure is not properly compensated. The typical employee also doesn’t get paid enough FU money to deal with abusive customers.
To better answer the question how much someone’s labor is worth, I’d refer to a thought experiment. Using fast food as an example: If all your lowest level employees (the ones who do the actual work) collectively walked out and wouldn’t return until the pay matched the compensation for their duties, how much would it cost to bring them back and balance out the compensation for work? Whatever that dollar amount is what the new minimal pay should be.
There’s other facets to this issue, but I don’t want to make a great wall of text, so I’ll leave it at that.
Were you aware of this? This adds a significant wrinkle to the whole question and is a microcosm of the U.S.
https://www.takimag.com/article/divide-and-conquer/
By the way, by 0/hr., I simply meant having no job at all, which is always possible, and fiddling the wrong way makes much more common.
I would say that Americans disregard Catholic social teaching for two reasons:
• Protestants receive insufficient revelation from God. They hear “social justice” and think of John Stuart Mill.
• It’s open to abuse Marxists.
In my parish’s RCIA, for example, we talked about the Catholic understanding of justice and how it obligates civilians and leaders alike to contribute to the common good. Thus, the presenter for that day explained, “In a just world, employers might pay higher wages to employees who raise more children.”
I quietly challenged this on the grounds that wages were different from alms; they compensated workers for their labors, not their family sizes. I also remembered Matthew 20:11–15, and I concluded that higher wages for family men were generous acts of mercy more than obligatory acts of justice.
They are missing seven books.
And parts of two others. While I’m not quite sure about the Greek sections of Esther, or the last two chapters of Daniel, I rather wish we had the long form of Daniel 3.
D. Cal hit the nose on the head about how the term “social justice” lands with evangelical, or even evangelical-adjacent, Protestants. Mainline protestants are somewhat more comfortable with it, though unfortunately not always for the right reasons. When I run into that term, I get suspicious and start reading for Marxist overtones, or anything that adds up to “God said, ‘X,’ therefore government should do Y.” Whatever it is liberals aver government should do usually turns out to be something the Church should be doing, and would do better, if she is not already, though perhaps not in a way which earns the notice or approval of the social justice crowd.
I’ll grant resolving economic issues like the disparity between the enormous surplus profits some companies are making and the stagnant wages paid out to those companies’ workers may be outside the realm of what the Church can do directly. The various form of usury which power our economy would also require legislative abolition. The hierarchy can explain prophetically why it ought not be so, but in the end, the laity would have to vote their prophetically informed consciences to bring the injustice to an end.