When the pay raise issue first arose, commentators thought that after, after a week or so of outrage, it would go away. Why are we still so focused on it? To answer that question we need to put the pay raise issue in some political and economic context.
One reason political scientists and journalists thought that the issue would die is that we know that people don’t pay much attention to politics. Another reason is that many of us think there is a case to be made for a well paid legislature. Much research shows that well paid legislators tend to be better informed, more interested in policy innovations, and more resistant to special interests. They also tend to spread power from legislative leaders to the backbenchers. These tendencies are hard to discern in our General Assembly now. But if we are ever to see reform inHarrisburg, it will be fought for well paid legislators.
What got our legislators into trouble is the process by which they raised their pay. A pay raise at the last moment of the session and without any public debate is emblematic of all that is wrong with our politics. True democracy requires open and broad debate. But our politicians are addicted to the backroom deal made by a few. That is how they reward the special interests they frequently serve. And that is also how they serve themselves, creating districts lines that favor incumbents and allowing the uncontrolled flood of campaign money that make them practically impossible to defeat.
The legislative pay raise should also be understood in its economic context. Why is it that our legislators think they deserve wage increases of 16 to 34 per cent? And why do so many of us disagree? Both the pay raise and the reaction to can be understood if we look at the increase in inequality in our country over the last thirty years
Since the mid-seventies, the real wages of those with only a high school education have dropped by about twenty per cent. The real wages of those with a college education have gone up less than fifteen percent while those with graduate degrees have increases of about twenty percent. The gap between those at the top and bottom of our corporations has also increased dramatically. Between 1990 and 2005, CEO compensation has gone from 85 times to 419 times the average wage of a blue collar worker.
The lives of the less well-off have been even more stressed by the decline in public services. The well-off live mostly in isolated suburbs, have security systems and private guards, send their children to private schools, drive SUVs that protect them from bad roads, and use their health insurance at private hospitals. The less well-off more often live in gritty neighborhoods, make do with a police force that is overwhelmed by crime in the streets, send their children to under-funded public schools, rely on expensive and inadequate public transit, and use crowded emergency rooms because they don’t have health insurance.
Many legislators have college or graduate degrees. They all hold positions of responsibility. They must become envious when they see the wages of friends in law firms and corporations. This is not just a matter of greed. We all do worse when public services decline. Even those with college degrees struggle for higher wages in order to afford the private goods that replace inadequate public services or the few neighborhoods with adequate public services.
So, under pressure to stay in the middle class, our legislators decided to give themselves a big pay increase. What they didn’t recognize, however, is that all of us suffer from the same struggle and we can’t give ourselves a 16 to 34% raise.
I, for one, would give our legislators a break if they were concerned with political reform, the growing inequality of income, and the decline of public services. To begin with, the General Assembly could atone for the pay raise by raising the minimum wage. If the legislature were to then improve public education and transportation and guarantee everyone health care, the pressure on all of us—rich or poor, legislators or citizens—to increase our wages would be diminished.
Imagine that instead of trying to make themselves part of a disconnected economic elite, our legislators debated ways to make Pennsylvania a real commonwealth, that is, a community in which essential public goods are available to every citizen. Then public service would legitimately be well compensated, not to mention honored and respected.
If we want outrage over their pay to lead to a betterPennsylvania, that is the standard to which we should hold our legislators.