“The wages of a hired man are not to remain with you all night until morning.”
— Leviticus 19:13
Whatever is old eventually becomes new again, even in today’s mobile phone-dominated world. In the Old Testament, the nation of Israel was commanded to pay laborers every day for their work. The idea was that they had earned the money and would need it to buy food and other necessities for their families. Now thousands of years later, some are looking at that concept with fresh eyes.
A front-page story in The Wall Street Journal Nov. 25 documented that more large corporations are using apps to pay their low-wage employees daily. Those include McDonald’s, Uber and Outback Steakhouse.
The advantages, the companies say, include boosting attendance and tenure and allowing workers to avoid payday loans. It’s needed as high employment has made it harder for companies to keep people in service and restaurant jobs.
A smartphone app, Instant Financial, notifies users at 10 a.m. of how much they earned the previous day and allows them to deposit up to half onto a debit card. A McDonald’s franchisee said roughly 20 percent of his 1,300 employees enrolled in the program take the money every day.
“People are begging to come into work now,” Rebecca Kyeretwie, a general manager of a McDonald’s in Tampa, Fla., was quoted as saying.
The app doesn’t cost employees anything, but employers pay a fee. Other apps charge that to the workers.
The biggest benefit economically is that it might prevent people living paycheck to paycheck from having to use short-term, high-interest loans when they are in a tight spot between paydays. Giving them the money they’ve rightfully earned already to pay those bills makes sense and could allow more poor Americans to get on even ground.
But the cost could be that it discourages savings. The tendency if you get your pay early is to spend it on things like eating out that are fun but not smart uses of limited funds. Then when the rent comes due, you’ve already spent your check.
A better tact for the economy’s sake might be to teach people to manage their money better, which often seems like a losing battle. That reminds us of another Bible verse: “The wise store up choice food and olive oil, but fools gulp theirs down (Proverbs 21:20).”
A moment of class
As bitter as the rivalry between Ole Miss and Mississippi State has become, it was commendable to see the Rebel players feel almost as badly for Nick Fitzgerald as the Bulldogs did when MSU’s star quarterback went down early with a serious ankle injury in the Egg Bowl. This was a notable exception to other, non-classy moments.
