On Topic: Top and bottom of the ladders

Isn't that just the way? You read one thing and you think, yeah, that makes sense. Then you hear something else and you wonder, well, gosh …

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In response to this column of two weeks ago, which was about judgment calls for better or worse made by the news media, Gazette reader Garry Ellis emailed to say that 'we see multiple articles agonizing over the size of the minimum wage …

(which) overlooks the objective understanding that it only covers three percent of the work force while ignoring the ills of the 97 percent.”

Not addressing 'the ills” of that 97 percent, he added in a follow-up email, 'has more people pushing high school and college students out of jobs for which the minimum wage was designed. It was never designed to be a full-time living wage.”

Mr. Ellis certainly is not alone in those views. Liya Palagashvili of New York University's School of Law and Rachel Mace, who studies economics at George Mason University, contended in an Aug. 21 Wall Street Journal guest column that the notion of a rising tide that lifts all boats - at least when it comes to minimum wage increases and the economy - is 'dubious for many reasons.”

They argued that the number of workers affected when upping minimum wage - the guest columnists settled on 'about two percent” of the national work force - is simply 'much too small to have an effect” on the overall state of things.

In addition, they claimed that the top three of the 13 states that recently boosted their minimum wage - ranging from five to 14 percent for those three - also suffered the worst job growth between January and May.

The writers stuck to their guns throughout their WSJ column, that 'when you raise the cost of hiring, companies will do less of it.” But they also admitted that, so far, what figures we have on recent minimum wage increases and job growth are 'meager.”

So the jury, if we wish to remain nonpartisan about this, would seem to remain out.

But what do I know? William Deresiewicz, a one-time Yale professor and the author of 'Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life,” says we really don't comprehend what's going on along at the other end of the spectrum, either.

He's referring to the fancy-pants Ivy League schools that we've assumed are the ideal places to train tomorrow's brainiacs and world tamers. But that belief, he writes, is long past its sell-by date.

When considering admission, these schools some time back lost their way and started to demand overachievers who boast an armload of extracurricular activities and off-the-chart grades. Overachievers on steroids.

The results?

Some four decades ago, almost three-quarters of freshman at upper-echelon universities and colleges said in a study that they hoped to find 'a meaningful philosophy of life,” Deresiewicz reports. Nowadays? Fewer than half indicate they care about figuring out that big picture, and eight out of 10 channel Jerry Maguire and say it's all about the money.

Going to college once was about obtaining 'a different sort of education,” learning more about the many avenues the world has to offer. But it has evolved to focus primarily on how to earn big dollars.

The author points out half of Harvard graduates in 2010 went into finance or related fields.

Top schools today, Deresiewicz adds, are producing 'smug” graduates who are 'isolated from the society (they are) supposed to lead.”

So if I'm reading all this correctly, the folk at the top are uninterested in the problems of the under- and unemployed. And if we improve the earnings of those on the lower rung of the earning ladder, employers won't be able to offer them jobs.

Or maybe they will.

The truth, I imagine, is maybe a bit more nuanced, as it usually is. There are, surely, employers who care about getting more people jobs, and enabling the working poor to improve their own lot.

Just as there likely is a way forward to help American who want to work and who deserve a decent wage for what they do.

We owe it to everyone to keep tinkering until something works.