Word: pslm
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Such narrow engagement of the issue is unfortunate. Noise from PSLM notwithstanding, people need to ask whether raising the hourly wage of Harvard’s lowest earners to $10.25 is a good idea. When they do, they’ll encounter at least two reasons why the answer...
...PSLM activist would likely respond that Harvard’s low-level employees lack the skills necessary to get better jobs, meaning that their choice to work for Harvard isn’t really voluntary. But the problem with this response is that it offers a positively dismal assessment of people’s ability to improve themselves. To uphold PSLM’s position, it isn’t enough to say that low-level employees are currently unable to command higher wages. Instead, we have to say that they will never be able to do so?...
Admittedly, the situations of unskilled workers often present difficulties to seeking education. But the administration’s efforts to improve worker training and provide literacy instruction are far better solutions than simply throwing wads of money at the problem, which is what PSLM wants. The very idea of a wage floor suggests that its beneficiaries are powerless without our indiscriminate pity. Isn’t that selling them just a little bit short...
...PSLM wants to ignore this fact and let extreme social reforms trammel Harvard’s academic mission. PSLM’s own estimate puts the total cost of implementing the living wage at $10 million per year. This is $10 million that, if PSLM has its way, won’t be available to hire professors, fund research and provide scholarships for students...
With characteristic sensationalism, PSLM points out that some of Harvard’s money managers earn annual salaries of over $10 million. But this argument misses the point. While it would be wonderful if Harvard could pay its financial gurus less, doing so wouldn’t give them an adequate incentive to render their services here—services that are vital to Harvard’s academic aims in a way that the labors of individual less-skilled workers...