Cui Bono?

Imagine your autistic seven-year-old still isn't potty trained. He or she can't even tell you that they have to go potty, because they have very limited language skills. He or she might not have any vocabulary at all. They can't tell you when they are thirsty, or hungry, either. For many parents, seeing their kid getting dressed by themselves is only a vague aspiration.

These are very basic skills that you and I take for granted. Most parents expect that their children will learn how to tie their own shoes and ask for their favorite toy, and build on these skills until eventually they can lead independent lives.

But there are hundreds of thousands of California children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, who need varying degrees of specialized intervention to be able to achieve their independence potential.

This is personal for me. My partner is a licensed, clinical psychologist who operates a practice providing services to children on the spectrum. We hire young people who want to work with children and train them to high standards. Our interventionists make home visits using their own vehicles, and their casework is under regular supervisory and reporting standards.

Our starting salary is fifteen dollars per hour. There is some room for pay raises based on merit, but not much, because our reimbursement rates are set by insurance companies. One insurance company reimburses us forty dollars an hour for direct intervention.

Wow, big profit, you might be thinking. But hold on.

We are required to pay our employee's travel time, for which we pay minimum wage. So if our employee drives thirty minutes each way for a two-hour intervention, we pay them another ten bucks. That eighty-dollar reimbursement already costs us forty dollars. Plus, the IRS requires us to pay our employees a mileage rate, to compensate for vehicle wear-and-tear. That's currently fifty-three cents per mile.

Our therapists are paid as employees, not contractors. They get a W-2, not a 1099. Some of our competitors are paying their workers as contractors. Back to the two-hour intervention. We must factor in our employer's share of the Social Security Tax and the Medicare Tax. That's another two fifty. Finished? We're only getting started! We also pay workers compensation insurance and liability insurance. We have a group health care plan. And recently, California mandated that we accrue paid sick leave in order to pay workers when they can't work.

If there is any profit left over, it goes into overhead. The lights have to stay on.

If this sounds like we are obsessed with money, it's because our highest moral obligation is to keep the lights on and to keep providing services, and to make sure our interventionists don't have to worry that their paychecks will be deposited on the fifth and twentieth. My partner still drives an eleven-year-old Honda hybrid, and she may never be able to pay back her student loans in full. We're not in this for the money!

So when I hear that the California legislature has "struck a deal" with Governor Brown to increase the minimum wage to $15.00 per hour, it frightens me to think that we might have to stop providing services. And it makes me feel powerless against a governing body that makes laws without the consent of the people of California.

I've seen polls that say nearly two-thirds of Californians are in favor of a minimum wage increase. Why not put the issue before the voters, if it is such a sure thing? Maybe they could poll-test the following question: who should be paid more, a waitress who also receives tips, or an interventionist?

The best argument in favor of a raise in the minimum wage is that there are single parents and other family breadwinners who work at McDonald's or WalMart, and they are unable to make ends meet. Isn't that what the Earned Income Tax Credit is for?