'Unjust' wage hike fails - Aidan Rooney CM
‘American inequality almost took a giant step forward with the Senate’s effort to gut the estate tax,” Father Rooney said. “I find it unconscionable that House leaders pushed this effort at the expense of a straightforward vote for a minimum wage increase.’…
If approved, the bill would have benefited 8,100 wealthy people at the expense of the rest of the country, according to Vincentian Father Aidan R. Rooney, executive director, St. Joseph’s Seminary, Plainsboro, The bill would lower federal tax revenue on estates by about $270 billion over 10 years, according to one estimate.
“American inequality almost took a giant step forward with the Senate’s effort to gut the estate tax,” Father Rooney said. “I find it unconscionable that House leaders pushed this effort at the expense of a straightforward vote for a minimum wage increase.”
According to Catholic social justice teaching, people have a right to meaningful work and to be paid for it, to be respected, and political decisions should not exacerbate the differences between classes, Father Rooney said.
“Whenever the common good is not respected the people who pay are those who can least afford it, small businesses and working class people,” Father Rooney said. “The estate tax rates are perfectly just for people who can afford to pay them.”
Seán Patrick Sanford, associate director of St. Joseph Seminary and the director of the social justice ministry at St. Charles Borromeo Parish, Montgomery, said it is “absolutely abhorrent that we can’t manage to raise the minimum wage for the poorest people in the U.S.”
“Even a $2 increase isn’t going to be a living wage in most parts of the country,” Sanford added. “But we can’t do it by putting a $265 billion tax cut for the wealthiest of Americans, especially when so much of the money that comes from the estate tax goes to funding programs for the poor.”
He called raising the minimum wage a moral obligation.
Marianne Majewski, executive director, Catholic Charities Diocese of Metuchen, said any increase in the minimum wage would help because a person needs to make $17 or $18 an hour to afford a one-bedroom apartment in Middlesex County.
If the minimum is raised to $7.25 per hour, it still only represents an annual
salary of about $15,000 for a full-time worker.
“There is no social justice in legislation that would allow a situation where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer,” Majewski said.
“Many of our clients are people who are working two and three jobs and not even making enough to rent a one-bedroom apartment,” she added. “What you’ve got is multiple families in apartments.
“It’s not like people are not willing to work, but with the cost of living, a tank of gas, utility bills, food, how are you going to do that on $15,000? To me it seems more costly to provide people with governmental support when they are more willing to work if they are making a fair wage.”
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