Every so often, some enterprising soul points to the gap between what our esteemed champions of social justice preach for others and what they practice themselves.
Most recently, this involved the hot-button issue of minimum wages. A group of interns at The Nation — “America’s leading progressive print and online magazine” — noted that the same publication that advocates paid internships and living wages for others pays its own interns a stipend of $150 for a full-time work week.
To put this in perspective, the great progressive villain Walmart over in nearby Valley Stream pays a starting salary for full-timers that is more than double that — plus health benefits. Meanwhile, The Nation Institute, which funds the internships, has announced that, come this fall, Nation interns will be paid minimum wage.
That might have been the end of the story. But ProPublica went on to ask whether paying more interns a higher wage would mean fewer interns. The institute’s director, Taya Kitman, responded by saying The Nation was “not yet certain” about the long-term, “but for the fall we are anticipating hiring 10 interns rather than 12.”
We give The Nation credit for trying to pay its workers what it wants to force everyone else to pay. We’d give it even more credit if the experience would lead it to acknowledge that, as Michael Saltsman notes on the opposite page, you cannot simply decree wages without tradeoffs — in this case, fewer workers.
That’s a timely lesson in the midst of this year’s mayoral election. For if raising interns to the existing minimum wage cost The Nation two full-time slots, imagine how many jobs in this city will be lost if the higher minimum wages favored by all the Democratic candidates ever become law.