7th August 2008, 01:30 pm
* The Skeptical Optmist slays two myths regarding the national debt.
* I’m very impressed by the Republican Congressmen in the House doing their “Guerilla Congress” thing. I’d be more impressed if they actually shut things down once they came back.
* Quite simply, that neither of the candidates is seriously discussing the looming Social Security crisis is a problem. And yes, there is a looming crisis.
* Sun rises, Hugo Chavez continues to consolidate power. We continue to stand by and do nothing.
* I had to laugh at this story - the NRA may have successfully planted a spy in opposition organizations. Pretty awesome.
* More postal lunacy, this time in Maine. A small island is too small and not year round for daily mail service, so the mail gets sent over on a ferry and left in a specially-marked trash can. The higher-ups at the Postal Service catch wind and say “no more.” I’ll take “introduce postal competition” for $200.
* Long videos, but worth watching: A law professor and a police officer explain why you should never talk to law enforcement, even if innocent.
* Finally, some fun links: Details of the Twenty-One quiz show scandal, a New York Giants fan hunts for a Patriots 19-0 Super Bowl shirt in South America, and Hamlet: The Facebook News Feed Edition.
7th August 2008, 08:15 am
I’m trying, at least with the daily reason posts, to stay away from simple ideological differences in favor of more objective situations where we can look at the situations and make some sort of clear distinctions.
This, unfortunately, probably isn’t one of those times.
One of the most unheralded points of Obama’s platform at this point is his push for a living wage. From here:
As president, Obama would further raise the minimum wage, index it to inflation and increase the Earned Income Tax Credit to make sure that full-time workers can earn a living wage that allows them to raise their families and pay for basic needs such as food, transportation, and housing — things so many people take for granted.
Putting aside any disagreements I have with the minimum wage for a moment (and I have many), does anyone in the mainstream think this is a good idea? Speaking only from my experience, there is no clear idea of what a “living wage” is, given regional differences - 75 miles north and our cost of living is noticeably different. A guy in Nebraska making $12/hour is in a radically different place than the guy in New York City financially. A one-size-fits-all wage policy like this, which would undoubtedly be a significant burden on the very businesses supplying otherwise good wages for many of the areas in questions, can only spell trouble.
I know - the statistics suggest that a minimum wage hike like the one we recently saw probably doesn’t affect employment in a significant way. We’re also not talking about $3+ increases. We’re also talking about a rising unemployment rate NOW. Like the windfall profit tax proposal, I don’t know why Obama thinks fighting the costs to the lower and middle classes is best done by increasing those very costs. It just doesn’t make sense to me.