Two potential pillars

Zohran Mamdani's pledge to incrementally raise New York City's minimum wage to $30 by 2030 is a viable goal and moral commitment that should be applauded even by those of us who are generally not his fans. That is true also of his positions on charter schools.

No matter the theories of adversarial economists and the doomsday scenarios they conjure for sport, if it is too much to ask of the system that it deliver slightly embellished sustenance beyond barebones survival to honest, hard-working people, then the fault is with the system, which will need correction, not its victims.

All New Yorkers know that the minimum wage never affords a basic existence, regardless how downwardly defined, and is impossible to live on. Frugality, sacrifice, restraint, reconfigured spending priorities and lapping up every drop of available overtime pay, cannot offset the confiscatory costs of staying alive.

Five years from now, $30 might as well be monopoly money. The board game; not the boardroom kind.

A decent standard of living and quality of life may not be birthrights, but they should be guaranteed when earned, and minimum wage workers are the hardest workers who get the fewest breaks. A living wage must be literally the bottom line on even the most massive budgetary ledger. 

All obstacles must quickly and furiously be cleared away like landmines, and elected officials must make it happen as though commanded by holy writ. The disparity between the pay packets of low-wage earners and the receipts for necessities bought at the cheapest supermarket is flabbergasting.

According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), without the proposed wage floor, about 1.67 million NYC workers, (which is 36.7 percent of the labor force), would be receiving $30 in 2030. It is feasible. In Los Angeles, the minimum wage will reach $30 in 2028. 

Although prior minimum wage increases did not cause a spike in unemployment, as its detractors predicted, it may in the future. Nonetheless there can be no compromise on the imperative of a fairer minimum wage. It is overarching and must be utterly non-negotiable. 

Some policy analysts predict a grim aftermath to the brightening hopes of low wage earners:  proliferating layoffs (particularly among restaurant and retail workers), shelf-auditing, scan-and-go apps on smartphones, customer-friendly touchscreens, self-checkout kiosks, customer-friendly touchscreens, ordering tablets, robotic floor cleaners  and rogue technology advances like AI customer services.

The Manhattan Institute is among those who warn of the draconian consequences of charitable impulses in government policy.

Corporations would eventually replace workers with cost-saving technology as soon as it becomes available and is practicable, no matter how undemanding, submissive, productive, loyal and underpaid they are. There is ample precedent for this.

Very few people will openly admit they favor an economic caste system and the perpetuation of a permanent underclass. But some television hosts, with annual salaries well in the double-digit millions, are opposed to any minimum wage at all, trusting in the doctrinal faith of Darwinist fatalism. 

One of them said, in effect, that "the indigent will survive when they discover they're on their own and will not be bailed out. If worse comes to worst, they will swallow both their pride and the crumbs they find in dumpsters. Deprivation will strengthen their character, especially when they're weary from double shifts." 

Antagonists to a decent minimum wage fear the domino effect of cascading improvements to the lives of the vulnerable. When the poorest folks get a certain percentage increase, there will be clamor and pressure among all other economic classes to prorate their advantages and preserve the perfect symmetry of accustomed injustices. 

Mamdani's proposed minimum wage boost will not be seamless. According to an analysis by the Harvard Business School, the average restaurant's chance of closure jumps 14 percent for every dollar increase in the minimum wage. A solution must be found, but yielding on the principle of progress towards a livable minimum wage is as unthinkable as the Netherlands opting to be washed away by the sea. 

Historically, systemic economic fairness has always been a foregone non-starter, although there are documents and court decisions that have been codified, at least in part, to distract us into believing otherwise. Instead of begrudging a few dollars to the needy, let's note a couple of representative examples of indecorous largesse:

Elizabeth Smith, CEO of the tax-exempt Central Park Conservancy, gets an annual salary of around $1 million, and another executive caretaker pulls down over $654,429. The CEO of the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, Elizabeth Hillman, is another winner in the remuneration sweepstakes. While her organization was financially bleeding out, her $856,216 salary in 2024 was a 63-percent raise over the prior two years, according to the New York Post. 

They may well be personally generous individuals who can't be blamed for embracing a legal windfall that came their way but do the majority of folks in their bracket embrace Mamdani's minimum wage plan? What would conscientious fiscal watchdogs recommend the bonus should be for troubleshooting workers repairing the towers of the Verrazzano Bridge?

Many folks who indulge in ritualistic piety see no contradiction between the sublime injunctions they profess to absorb in their houses of worship, and the behavioral licenses they take when they re-merge onto the highway of everyday life. 

Plaudits to Mamdani for his minimum wage position, his refusal to be bullied by the mortal antagonists of public schools, and also for his recognition that leeches, in the form of charter schools, act as apex predators attaching themselves to the taxpayer-funded budgetary arteries.

Recently a swarm of their teachers, students and parents were conscripted to participate in a march across the Brooklyn Bridge. Classroom instruction was canceled, and the "stakeholders" were reportedly strong-armed into hamming it up for cameras and microphones. This event was a sequel to prior pageants.

Public schools showcase; they don't grandstand. They don't shut down academic operations to do an entrepreneurial infomercial. 

Almost 300 charter schools have mushroomed in New York City. 

Their disciples yearn for the current cap on them to be lifted. Their dream is to eventually replace public schools, not compete with them on a level playing field. They describe every aspect of their operation in the most glowing terms but don't answer challenges about their truth in advertising problems. For instance, if their educators are as fulfilled as they say, why is their staff turnover comparable to the longevity of a Yankees baseball remaining in play?

Charter school devotees call Mamdani an "existential threat" to their aspirational hegemony. Their claim that they are actually public schools (syphoning taxpayer dollars) is a cynical manipulation of language. They are independently run, like private schools. 

They are, for the most part, notoriously hostile to teacher unions and make crooked imputations about them.

Whenever real or imagined educational failures and their spinoff woes to the nation are cited, teacher unions are their default scapegoat. This conflation is part of a larger agenda, which includes many right-wing subscribers and is sometimes laced with semi-hidden bigotries. They are preoccupied by the "power" of teacher unions, while neglecting to mention the unions' intense local and federal focus on child advocacy.

If Zohran Mamdani upholds the dignity of labor by hoisting the minimum wage, and champions our public schools, he will hopefully be on his way to defining the character of his administration.