Pay the People!

People need real-time wages that keep pace with real-time expenses. Despite how challenging our day to day lives feel we are not actually in a period where there are limited profits in the business sector. Massive layoffs yes. But not profit deficiencies. Quite the opposite is true for the majority of businesses; profits are soaring. Corporate determination for Greed and Power is rock solid. Remember those potato chip bags that used to be full when you opened them? Those were the days!

Sure, Portland, Oregon can’t seem to pass a budget without a 13.6 million dollar annual funding gap, but then again, they just “found” a spare 106 million they have been sitting on as a secret reserve fund, as eligible recipients of those funds and staff to support the distribution of said funds, struggle immensely. At the same time they have experienced a net gain of 92.4 million dollars and a reserve account. I reviewed data this week put out by the Portland Metro Chamber that shows the outright economic suffocation that is also occurring in the Portland metro area.

Moving forward, the allocation of equitable and realistic living wages to people who live in the Portland metro area in exchange for their work is a critical solution to extend life support to the local economy.

Paying non-livable wages in the nonprofit sector can take us no further. This issue is endemic and it harms employees, employers, and the economy of whole eco-systems where this problem persists (i.e., Portland). It befuddles me why City and County contracts continue to not allow for more equitable staff wages in procured contracts. Isn’t the City and County also responsible for the health of the economy these workers are operating within? Answer: Yes, they are.

Did you know that in 2025 ECOnorthwest found that nonprofit workers make up more of our human powered workforce in Oregon than both Nike & Intel combined? That’s right, non-profit workers make up 11% of the state’s entire workforce.

Economic prosperity, livable wages, and community re-investment are all interconnected. It’s a losing strategy to run businesses as if they are not.

How much longer do people need to struggle to survive until whole communities and employers decide it’s time to pay people a living wage in order to economically revitalize their own economies? This is a serious question.

People are dying everyday who are eligible for basic human rights and who are not receiving services they work hard to achieve, i.e., healthcare, equitable wages, quality of life, affordable housing, safety, etc. We are in an economic crisis and have been for some time. When managing through crisis there are not single solutions available. There used to be, during the time of prevention. But society as a whole and City/County governments in general don’t often implement great work in the name of prevention. Generally, they will jump into action well past the point of no return, run around in a house on fire, and then issue PR messages to ‘soothe the people’. We don’t want to be soothed. We want to be paid. Multiple levers need to be pulled in order to contain the crisis including permitting for affordable housing, significant wage growth across the non-profit and for-profit sector, and intelligent incentives must be crafted.

When we consider the severe lack of newly permitted affordable housing sites in the area, and the current affordable housing stock stuck in permit review for years…. Maybe the answer to affordable housing is actually to pull the other lever in the scenario and release current stagnant and oppressive wage ceilings on everyday workers. That does make housing more affordable doesn’t it? If you can’t un-stuck the buildings from the current system anytime soon, lets un-stuck the people, so they can afford to live in their current buildings and then invest in more buildings and local businesses. Two or more things can happen at once. The biggest issue I take on this topic is the refusal of those in leadership to raise people’s wages. Until then, why yes… housing will remain unaffordable. Homelessness will increase. Small businesses will continue to close due to lack of a workforce or because they will not be able to pay anyone including themselves since people cannot afford to patronize their shops. Local economies will not recover. If tariffs are suddenly why we can’t pay people a living wage then offering low wages to workers in all fields would be a sudden and brand new issue that appears only after Tariff’s were implemented. That’s just simply not the case. Please See Figure: All of history.

The Reverse Shop Vac Solution
Local governments continue to Shop Vac funds out of the economy via taxes, by under paying our workforces, by issuing inadequate and out-dated policies and incentives to support only the wealthy, and by supporting PR campaigns against solutions that work. Also, by misunderstanding the problem entirely. One more time, the problem is people don’t have money because we aren’t paying them enough to afford their basic expenses and sustain life. Some folks who work in government will read what I just wrote and interpret that foot traffic caused by hybrid work schedules is the only problem in their downtown corridors. Really? Foot traffic of workers? NO. What I said was, WAGES. THERE ARE NO WAGES TO SUPPORT LIFE.