ARTICLE
Almost every successful person I speak with has a vivid memory of a job they held as a young person. It may have been a summer job while in college to pay for school, a family business that required every member to do one's share to keep the business afloat or just a part-time job to earn some extra money. Each speaks with great pride for how hard he/she worked for very little earned and how important the lessons learned were on the road toward his or her ultimate success. It's an American rite of passage. The pursuit of "The American Dream" is one the most fascinating, alluring aspects of our capitalistic society. Not everyone starts at the same place, but we seemingly all have a pretty good shot at getting some form of the dream. I'm not saying the playing field is level, but if you're focused, a bit lucky and relentless you have a pretty good shot at some form of success. Trouble is "The Dream" is getting tougher and tougher to realize. Entry level jobs are shrinking and homes and cars are costing comparatively more than in the past. Take my first job on the assembly line at Mack Trucks. I was earning (with a little bit of overtime) approximately $20,000 in 1972. I bought a beautiful row home in West Allentown for one year's income or $20,000 and a brand new car for about one tenth of my yearly earning. It was a great start and clearly put me on a path towards pursuing and ultimately achieving the dream. Now take today's millennials. We have several really hard working, very bright young people at The Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce. Their work ethic is just as good as was mine (actually better) at 20-something. But, the big difference today is the numbers. If a young person is making $40,000, that same row home today is $100,000 or more (2 1/2 x annual income) and a new car $30,000 or 75 percent of his/her annual salary! I'm not saying it's not still the greatest country to build wealth, I'm just saying the numbers are different and success is a farther reach today. Oh, and need I mention the $35,000 average college debt they're most likely carrying. In case you haven't checked, colleges are pretty expensive these days. If you're not fortunate enough to have parents to give you a lift up, it's gonna take a lot of fortitude. Along those lines, the Chamber turned some heads when we proposed an increase in the minimum wage. A chamber agreeing to a minimum wage hike!?!? It took us over a year to analyze the facts, hear all input and consider ramifications. Ultimately our public policy committee recommended an increase to $9.25 an hour from the current $7.25. We could have gone with the typical arms folded "no increase, were not budging" of chambers past. However we felt, and continue to feel, that our positions should be open to compromise. And we encourage others to do the same .... compromise! When we heard proposed wage jumps as high as $15, we felt we had to add some sanity to the discussion. While $2 doesn't sound like much, if you have hundreds of employees getting that bump and now a need to increase others who were previously just over the minimum, it's real money. In addition to our proposed $9.25, we strongly encourage three stipulations: 1) Future increases should be tied to the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) with a 3 percent cap calculated on a 20-year rolling average. 2) Maintain the exemption for seasonal employees. 3) Implement a tiered system that takes geographic impact into consideration. Spendable income in Philadelphia is very different than say a more remote, rural area in northern Pennsylvania. More and more, we see legislation proposed with less and less interest toward any compromise. Proposers may feel good and justified by their "no compromise" stance but, let's face it, we are getting less and less done as a result. We want to, and always will, oppose legislation (or executive orders) that will hurt business. However, if we can at the same time lift up those who are in most need and/or the future players in this "American Dream," we say: Why not? In the end the more people pursuing "The Dream" and the more reachable it is, we all win. Tony Iannelli is president and CEO of the Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce. His column appears weekly on the Business Cycle. He can be reached at tonyi@lvchamber.org. Read the original article here.