Quel surprise

So, today I look at the New York Times editorial page and what do I see? Barbara Ehrenreich staring back at me. So she's going to be replacing Thom Friedman for a few months on the op-ed page. I prefer to see her as the liberal beacon as opposed to Krugman, who seems to be more about Krugman than about anything else. Everyone should have read nickel and Dimed. And, although Beth Shulman and not Barbara Ehrenreich wrote it, Betrayal of Work should have also been read. Powell's or Amazon or even the wise folks at Bookpeople, where my wife works, should be smart enough to bundle these books together. They go brilliantly together. Poverty and the working poor is a problem that should concern everyone. It is very clear that the typical American, with our willingness to shop at Wal-Mart, Target and the like, is not doing enough to help low wage workers. These stores don't keep the prices low by getting some super secret deals from distributors that aren't available to your local merchants. They take it out on the wage earners. They treat their employees as disposable tools. It's not right or good. It doesn't help society. If this is how we keep prices down, maybe the prices need to come up, not because of inflation though. The government needs to get involved, raise wages, legislate profit sharing. I'm convinced that wages could go up and prices could stay low if there were some mechanism legislating the distribution of profits between manager and worker. It makes sense. All arguments for keeping the minimum wage low is that increases in wages lead to increased unemployment. That's true, but aren't executives compensated? Don't their monies count as wages as well? Wouldn't an increase in their wages lead to increased unemployment? If that's the case, then skyrocketing executive pay should be considered a problem for the public good meriting government intervention. I don't mean to imply that managers and executives don't deserve to be well compensated. Surely they deserve compensation for their expertise, experience and education. But, not hundreds of times that of the typical employee. That's just silly. That will conclude my partially completed thought. The first such post in months.