In the recent editorial about City Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke's proposal to increase the minimum wage in Baltimore to $15 ("Baltimore's gamble," August 10, 2016), the writers state that setting a higher wage in the city than surrounding jurisdictions will hurt city workers and businesses.
The authors cite a foundational 1993 study that found there is no negative effect on businesses or employment when there is a difference in minimum wage rates in adjoining areas but dismiss it as inapplicable. They might have cited a more recent Institute for Research and Labor Employment (IRLE) study from 2010, examining all local minimum wage differences over 16 years. That study found "no adverse employment effects" in restaurants and other industries that employ low-wage workers, a finding consistently borne out by economists.
The editorial states that the $15 minimum wage is a "massive gamble that Baltimore can't afford to lose." I would argue that Baltimore can't afford not to raise wages to $15 by 2022. As last year's uprising after the death of Freddie Gray and the Department of Justice's investigation of the Baltimore Police Department demonstrate, the poor, black residents of our city are suffering from the failure of our institutions as well as poverty wages.
I agree that improving the economic outlook for city residents should be paramount for the Baltimore City Council. To do so will take bold progressive action, not the same tired policies that have kept too many in our city back for too long. A $15 minimum wage will help the nursing home workers, maintenance employees and staffers at the city's restaurants and hotels work with dignity and a hope of moving their families forward economically and socially.
It will also help businesses in the city's poorest neighborhoods by putting more cash in the pockets of their customers.
For decades, we have tried to enrich the city by paying many of its hardest working people, who typically are parents, a poverty wage. All that has earned us is more poverty and pain for too many of the city's parents, children, and elderly and the local businesses that serve them.
The time has come to embrace current facts and try a new path to a more prosperous city for all who love and work here.
Ben Jealous, Baltimore
The writer is the former president of the NAACP.