NYT Magazine | The $15 Minimum Wage Doesn’t Just Improve Lives. It Saves Them

ADVERTISEMENT View in [Browser]( | Add nytdirect@nytimes.com to your address book. [The New York Times]( [The New York Times]( Friday, February 22, 2019 [NYTimes.com »]( [The $15 Minimum Wage Doesn’t Just Improve Lives. It Saves Them.]( By MATTHEW DESMOND [Julio Payes works full-time as a room attendant at a hotel and part-time as a cashier at Burger King.]( Julio Payes works full-time as a room attendant at a hotel and part-time as a cashier at Burger King. Celeste Sloman for The New York Times “We will spend an incredible amount on a new heart drug. But if we increased wages by $1, we’d save more lives.” - For years, when American policymakers have debated the minimum wage, they have debated its effect on the labor market. What most didn’t ask was: When low-wage workers receive a pay increase, how does that affect their lives?  - Poverty can be unrelenting, shame-inducing and exhausting. When people live so close to the bone, a small setback can quickly spiral into a major trauma.  - Being a few days behind on the rent can trigger a hefty late fee, which can lead to an eviction and homelessness. An unpaid traffic ticket can lead to a suspended license, which can cause people to lose their only means of transportation to work.  - In the same way, modest wage increases have a profound impact on people’s well-being and happiness. Poverty will never be ameliorated on the cheap. But this truth should not prevent us from acknowledging how powerfully workers respond to relatively small income boosts.  - A $15 minimum wage is an antidepressant. It is a sleep aid. A diet. A stress reliever. It is a contraceptive, preventing teenage pregnancy. It prevents premature death. It shields children from neglect. [Read our full story on the profound impact that a living wage has for its earners.]( [Can I Turn Down Family Requests for Money?]( Illustration by Tomi Um By KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH “My family splits into two camps: people who have money and people who don’t. We didn’t start in different places; we evolved into them. My father, my brother and I are savers and planners. My sister, my aunt and my mother received the same inheritances, the same educational opportunities and the same career options, but they have spent everything they have and more. My mother and sister each filed for bankruptcy (my mother passed away with more than $1 million in debt). My aunt is hanging by a thread. The question is how to deal with the desperate requests for money. I love my family, and it is extremely painful to see them suffer, but at the same time it is difficult for me to fund their lifestyles when they seem like a bottomless pit. I feel guilty and uncomfortable, but also angry and annoyed.” [Read the Ethicist’s reply]( [John Legend on Kanye West, Making Political Music and Morality in Art]( Mamadi Doumbouya for The New York Times Earlier this year, John Legend was widely commended for his involvement in Lifetime’s “Surviving R. Kelly.” In an interview with David Marchese, he described why he spoke out, and why he said no when offered a song by R. Kelly. - On making a moral decision to not work with someone: “I was offered songs by R. Kelly! Within the last 18 months, someone said R. Kelly had a good song for me. I said no.”  - John Legend on defenders of R. Kelly: “What they’re really saying is that they want their guy to be free at the expense of these black girls they don’t care about. I’m not the morality police, and I’ve had my own failings, but at some point you’ve got to draw a line. I feel like a reasonable line would be not working with R. Kelly.”  - On being called “radical” for taking his political stances: “I don’t believe that what I think is radical. We’re the most incarcerated country in the world. That should be considered radical. Police are allowed to shoot unarmed black men in the street. That’s radical.”  - On going to working as a management consultant before becoming a full-time musician: “After that point I had to decide whether to go to business school in order to be able to continue in consulting. I was like, Nah, I’ve got to focus on music. I haven’t looked back.”  [The Rise of the WeWorking Class]( [A WeWork in Paris.]( A WeWork in Paris. Matthew Pillsbury for The New York Times By GIDEON LEWIS-KRAUS The co-working giant’s real product isn’t office space — it’s a new kind of “corporate culture.“ More from the Magazine: [Leon Kalajian, 82 (above)
Founder, Tom’s Sons International Pleating
Garment district, Manhattan
Years in the job: 76

“My mother was doing pleating when I was very, very young. Every chance I get, I am in the factory — I was 6 years old. I have to work. I cannot stay at home. I have to do something. I have to be around people. Someday they ask you: ‘When the pleating is not in fashion, what will you do?’ I do pleating! For me it never goes out, the pleating. Every day I can create a new style.”]( Christopher Payne for The New York Times [Decades on the Job, and Counting]( Photographs by CHRISTOPHER PAYNE These New Yorkers have been doing the same thing for 50, 60, 70 years — and love it too much to stop. Mamadi Doumbouya for The New York Times [Why John Legend Said No to a Song From R. Kelly]( By THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE ‘At some point, you’ve got to draw a line.’ [John Olson’s famous photo of wounded Marines being evacuated during the Battle of Hue in February 1968.]( John Olson/The LIFE Images Collection, via Getty Images [The True Story Behind an Iconic Vietnam War Photo Was Nearly Erased — Until Now]( A celebrated book and a major museum exhibition revealed the harrowing tale behind the image of a wounded Marine. Their version was wrong. Illustration by Radio [How to Crack a Whip]( By MALIA WOLLAN Start with an eight-footer. Wear a long-sleeve shirt. Stay in touch:  Follow us on Twitter ([@NYTmag](  Appreciated this email? Forward it to a friend and help us grow. Loved a story? Hated it? Write us a letter at [magazine@nytimes.com](mailto:newsletters@nytimes.com?subject=Newsletter%20Feedback%20NYT%20Magazine). Did a friend forward this to you? [Sign up here to get the magazine newsletter](  Check us out on[ Instagram]( where you’ll find photography from our archives, behind-the-scenes snippets from photo shoots, interviews on how we design our covers and outtakes that don’t make it into the issue. We’ve got more newsletters! You might like At War.  Learn more about the experiences and costs of war. [Sign up for the At War newsletter]( to receive stories about conflict from Times reporters and outside voices.  ADVERTISEMENT FOLLOW NYTimes [Twitter] [@nytmag]( Get more [NYTimes.com newsletters »]( | Get unlimited access to NYTimes.com and our NYTimes apps. [Subscribe »]( ABOUT THIS EMAIL You received this message because you signed up for NYTimes.com's The New York Times Magazine newsletter. [Unsubscribe]( | [Manage Subscriptions]( | [Change Your Email]( | [Privacy Policy]( | [Contact]( | [Advertise]( Copyright 2019 The New York Times Company 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018