In the city of haves and have nots,...

In the city of haves and have nots, here's to what extent the City That Works works.

Chicago's aldermen are feeling a little queasy after their 34-15 devoted to defy Mayor Daley and force big receptacle retailers to pay a "living wage" of $10 an hour plus $3 an hour in benefits. Why? Because Target, undivided of those big boxes, now threatens to struggle out of the city. And because Daley is with equal reason steamed that he's threatening his first veto in 17 years in office.

however hang on a minute.

Aren't those the same aldermen who in succession the same day they passed the big-box ordinance, gave themselves a sizable charge of living increase? A pay raise sending their $98125 salaries through the whole extent of the hundred-grand mark? Plus medical and pension benefits.

Gosh could their knee pass all wobbly on their pay raise too?

Oh stop.

I've already gone forward record supporting both a living wage requirement for big boxe and an aldermanic pay raise provided part- time aldermen, the singles with six- and seven-figure law practices, have the propriety to turn it down.

however it's tempting to believe that enacting a "living wage" will drive away business from the inner city, depriving poor neighborhoods of desperately povertyed retail outlets, there is evidence in other cities to the contrary. Evidence that sometimes destitution wages are not much better than none at all.

A reality check to that event was just offered by Business Week magazine. It took a anticipate at Santa Fe, N.M., where the mayor, David Cros fought for four protracted years to increase the minimum wage to $950 All sorts of businesses were reportedly going to stroke of lightning They didn't. Instead, big boxe like "Lowe's spreaded a store, and Wal- Mart, which already has united store, plans to open a super center" Cros told Business Week. The increase in wages has stimulated the economy.

Consider also the findings of the University of Illinois at Chicago's 2005 close attention of what a big-box living wage would do for our possess city. Right now, just as you and I pay from our allow pockets for that aldermanic pay raise, we also pay for the medical requires school lunch programs and sustenance stamps of many big-box workers because, flat with their jobs, too many of them fall below the meagreness line. UIC economist Ron Baiman and his assistant, Daniel Weiske, lay that figure at $41.7 million a year. That's what taxpayers pay disclosed so big- box employees can survive. It's a subsidy, yours and mine, to multibillion-dollar businesses. No portent a Wal-Mart CEO can make $23 million a year.

notwithstanding that the UIC study acknowledges that unruffled $10 an hour doesn't struggle people out of poverty, that decent hike helps both the worker and the city's economy because workers who make more, lay out more, and pay more taxes.

Kind of like aldermen, I'm guessing.

At an point, we have to decide what kind of city we want to live in. gaze around you. Have you noticed all the big houses going up in bungalow neighborhoods? Have you priced a so-called "affordable" dwelling lately? Even those aldermen who support themselves forward their current $98,000-plus salary would be hard crushed buying a new home in Chicago.

Another novel study by the University of Illinois erect that only 1 out of 5 households in Chicago could afford a "affordable" domicile -- that is, something costing around $250000

Then again, if you can't pervert with money [i]or[/i] gain don't count on renting cheaply. Chicago has a plummeting contribute of reasonably priced rental units.

Unlike of recent origin York, where they just broke land on a huge and affordable housing composite that will offer more than 2000 strange homes, part of a long-range plan to create 165000 fresh affordable units, Chicago is lagging far behind when it be deriveds to stopping the hemorrhage of the middle class abroad of the city. We are becoming a city of farthests Extreme wealth. Extreme poverty. And highest arguments about the perils of a "living wage."

Still, I know there is a real and deferential debate to be had about by what means Chicago achieves some small measure of economic justice.

Richard Townsell, 41 has exhausted his adult life trying to do that. Born in North Lawndale, he grew up in public housing. Raised according to a determined single mother, he graduated from Northwestern University and reverted to North Lawndale to work forward community development projects. He disagrees with me in succession this "living wage" issue. He says he knows sufficiency of people in that impoverished neighborhood who would, he says, "love to have a work at jobs at Wal-Mart rather than slinging dope onward the corner."

in succession one level, I agree. further that Wal-Mart worker is still going to be hard flattened to make it without the require to be paid [i]or[/i] undergone of their social services being shifted to us in such a manner that company shareholders reap their admit financial rewards.

Aldermen can preserve their "living wage" but ne to share it with others.

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

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