Opinion

This is not a free market

James M. Contois
Claremont
To the editor,

I would like to address the “Bramblings” column in the weekend Eagle. The author, Ms. Nelson, disparages a living wage as compared to a minimum wage. She thinks that a living wage is rewarding excellence. She is very confused. The author apparently knows very little about the “free market,” which is an economic system in which prices are determined by unrestricted competition between privately owned businesses. If we had a “free market” in Claremont the gas prices throughout the city would be varied. They are not and the system is fixed against the consumer. In a free market, we would have more choices for our landline telephones and cable. Look at the parking lots of the area markets and you will get a small glimpse of what a free market could look like.

The City of Claremont has between a 13.3- and 17.4-percent poverty rate (depending on different sources) and almost 7 percent are below half the poverty rate. A Claremont homeless count in 2018, called “point-in-time homeless count,” lists 152 people. All these numbers are important, and they are exacerbated by a low minimum wage. Low wages are an impediment to growth, causing no housing, no car and no hope. The low minimum wage often effects people of color, women and children at a higher rate. I have worked in this community for 14 years and I watched as many people, young and old, young moms and dads, married and single, struggle and who must work several jobs to stay afloat. A low minimum wage says that you are a resource to be exploited when you should share in the profits. After all, the workers make the businesses run and make the economy possible.

Several studies show that a higher minimum wage had a positive impact on employment and not the inverse as Ms. Nelson would have you believe. In 1914 Henry Ford started paying his workers $5 per day so they could afford to buy the cars they were building, and we know the impact of the auto industry on the economy. At that time, $5 was twice the average daily wage.

The federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour which establishes the New Hampshire mininum wage. At this rate a person would have to work almost 3 hours to afford one of the pies Ms. Nelson sells at Beaver Pond. A $15 minimum wage would lift the wages of 40,000,000 Americans. We cannot continue to be a first-world country and treat our workers like a third-world economy does.

 

James M. Contois

Claremont

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