In the APSA Public Scholarship Program, graduate students in political science produce summaries of new research in the American Political Science Review. This piece, written by Ewa Nizalowska, covers the new article by Christian Schemmel and Georg Picot, “Why We Need Minimum Wages: Pay, Recognition, and Economic Citizenship.”
Why do we need minimum wages, and what, if anything, makes them preferable to other forms of labor market regulation? Amid rising income inequality and declining union membership in many liberal democracies, minimum wages have become an important tool for regulating labor markets. Critics of minimum wages often point out their limited potential to resolve the many problems of contemporary capitalism, but they still recognize their usefulness for improving economic outcomes for lowest-paid workers.
Yet, as Christian Schemmel and Georg Picot show in a recent APSR article, minimum wages alone are woefully inadequate for tackling poverty and inequality on a systemic level. In-work poverty cannot be resolved solely through setting minimum wages, since many low-paid workers work part-time; provide for household members who cannot work; or pay taxes and receive benefits according to rules that further diminish their household disposable income. Minimum wages alone cannot address poverty across all possible household types, work patterns, and tax-benefit rules. They also cannot fully address the problem of income inequality because they do not tackle extremely high income on the other end of economic distribution. Empirical research shows there is little evidence that minimum wages reduce poverty rates or economic inequality. This raises the question: why should we value minimum wages at all? If minimum wages are ineffective at addressing the problems of in-work poverty and income inequality, should we instead prioritize other policy instruments?
“More generally, Schemmel and Picot propose that the idea of contribution respect should aim not only at decent pay for all, but also at giving workers a say in what counts as decent pay.“Schemmel and Picot propose that a stronger case for minimum wages is rooted in their social meaning. Minimum wages, on their account, are important because they express respect for the contributions workers make to society. Their argument is based on recognition theory —the idea that the demands of justice come from a basic requirement to show recognition for people as capable agents in their social contexts. A decent minimum wage, they argue, is one that offers individuals at least enough earnings to independently meet their basic needs and meaningfully participate in society.
In making the moral case for minimum wages, Schemmel and Picot make a distinction between respect for contribution and social esteem. While the idea that minimum wages are valuable because they give workers a sense of esteem also draws on recognition theory, they argue that all workers, regardless of how society values their work compared to that of others, are worthy of the respect that receiving a decent wage from their employer represents.
Schemmel and Picot’s argument is rooted in a vision of economic citizenship¾the idea that being a citizen means being empowered to participate fully in society, as well as fulfilling one’s duty to cooperate with others. They argue that a right to a decent wage should be understood as a right of economic citizenship. This view of citizenship has implications beyond the question of minimum wages: it suggests that workers who make essential contributions to society that are currently unpaid deserve equivalent forms of moral and material recognition. More generally, Schemmel and Picot propose that the idea of contribution respect should aim not only at decent pay for all, but also at giving workers a say in what counts as decent pay. As such, they call for prioritizing setting minimum wages through collective bargaining and increasing union density over setting minimum wage levels through legislation. This vision of economic citizenship also raises objections to extreme inequality. The idea of economic citizenship as equal respect for people’s work breaks down when some individuals have exponentially higher income than others, particularly when their income comes from sources other than work.
- Ewa Nizalowska is a PhD candidate in political theory at Cornell University with research interests in American political thought, feminist theory, and theories of political economy and empire. Her dissertation examines how early to mid-twentieth-century radicals theorized the organization of economic power in the United States and strategized for its rearrangement. Her work has been supported by, among others, the American Political Science Association, the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell University, and the Yan P. Lin Centre at McGill University
- SCHEMMEL, CHRISTIAN, and GEORG PICOT. 2024. “Why We Need Minimum Wages: Pay, Recognition, and Economic Citizenship.” , American Political Science Review, 1–14.
- About the APSA Public Scholarship Program.