Monthly Archives: February 2015

Another Perspective on Minimum Wage

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Mark Perry has one in his Carpe Diem column for AEIdeas.

In a recent post, I posed the question: rather than calling it “an increase in the minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 (or $15) per hour,” if we instead called it “imposing a $2.85 (or $7.75) per hour tax on employers who employ or hire unskilled workers,” would it make any difference to those who support “an increase in the minimum wage”? Maybe not for some of the strongest advocates of a higher minimum wage, but perhaps it would make a difference for some weaker advocates who were never challenged to think of it that way?

He then calculates the associated payroll taxes (a tax on the tax, or a surtax, in his construction) based on full time work (i.e., 40-hour work weeks) and the larger minimum wage increment, but what would that surtax work out to for the typical minimum wage worker’s half-time employment?

The employer tax of $2.85 would work out to an additional tax of $2,850 per year per part-time minimum wage employee. The surtax on that under current payroll tax law would come to just under $220 per year per employee, or a total employer tax of just under $3,070 per year. Per employee.

How many small business employers (the Walmarts of the world are an aberration) can afford that additional labor cost tax? At what point does an employer, of any size, decide the work being done isn’t worth the mandated cost and either stops doing it or automates it?

Arabs’ Thoughts on Obama’s Iran Deal

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Arabia is worried, and with good reason.

The Obama administration initially said its policy was to completely dismantle Tehran’s nuclear infrastructure as a means to protect Washington’s Mideast allies.

Now, however, US officials say it is no longer plausible to eliminate all of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, suggesting that any final deal would leave some nuclear capability in place. Iran denies that it is seeking to build a nuclear bomb, but a final deal providing for nuclear enrichment capacity could prompt a competition.

Indeed.

Arab officials have increasingly spoken about a possible nuclear arms race in the Mideast as the negotiations have continued for 18 months, having been extended twice.

Thus,

“At this stage, we prefer a collapse of the diplomatic process to a bad deal,” said an Arab official who has discussed Iran with the Obama administration and Saudi Arabia in recent weeks.

This is confidence our Arab allies and erstwhile allies have in the negotiating skills of the guys who sit in the President’s and the Secretary of State’s chairs. They’re not unduly pessimistic.

“Must Pass” Legislation

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Alan Blinder, he of Princeton University, has a piece on this subject in The Wall Street Journal. Among other things, he wrote

The resolution funding the Department of Homeland Security expires at the end of this month. Both parties want DHS to remain fully operational, but the bills passed so far include provisions that would roll back the president’s executive actions on immigration. Mr Obama has threatened a veto. If neither side blinks, members of the Coast Guard, the TSA, and the border patrol might soon see their paychecks suspended, though they would be required to continue working.

His entire piece went on in this vein, castigating Republicans for attaching such “extraneous” provisions to a number of bills, past and future in this Congress. He did so while ignoring the fact that the Democrats have done this in the past; both parties have. Good, bad, or indifferent, it’s a hoary old way of getting lesser matters enacted: on the backs of larger ones.

He also ignored an underlying critical item. If the thing truly is “must pass,” then Senate Democrats must stop their filibuster, allow debate (on, for instance, the DHS funding bill), offer amendments, and then allow an up or down vote in the Senate. Following which the thing would go to conference (since it would then differ from the House-passed version) and an agreed compromise voted on in each house of Congress. Filibustering is the very sort of thing the Harry Reid Faction decried Republicans for doing the prior six years (and which both parties have done for the last century or so), and the very sort of thing that provided the excuse for the Harry Reid Faction to cancel the filibuster where it was inconvenient to the then-majority Democrats.

No. If the Democrats continue to block debate on must pass legislation, if they insist on their filibuster, the consequences are entirely on them. In the present case, if the DHS goes unfunded, then those Senate Democrats will owe their own paychecks to the members of the Coast Guard, the TSA, and the border patrol for whom Blinder shed his copious crocodile tears.

A Greek Exit

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In a piece in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal, about Greece’s economic status and its relations with the rest of the eurozone, Matthew Karnitschnig had this remark

[A] Greek exit would prove that the eurozone isn’t inviolable and trigger speculation over the future of other weak links, such as Portugal, Ireland and even Spain, in the currency bloc. The euro crisis could return in full force.

Perhaps the crisis could return. But only briefly, and only if misunderstood by the leaders of the eurozone. After all, what’s the long term (or even the medium term) downside of losing “other weak links” in the eurozone? What would be left would be, by definition, stronger.

The John Kerry-Barack Obama Plan

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The guy who sits in the Secretary of State’s chair laid it out in his Wall Street Journal op-ed Wednesday.

Put simply, we are building a global partnership against violent extremism.

That’s so vapid and empty it doesn’t deserve comment. I include it only as an illustration of the depth of thinking and the level of importance Kerry attaches to this as sum and total of this Plan.

And this:

We must identify the zones of greatest vulnerability…. And then we must tailor our efforts and target our resources to meet the specific needs of those places. It may be training young people so they can get jobs and envision a future of dignity and self-reliance. It may be working to eliminate corruption and promote the rule of law, so that marginalized communities can enjoy security and justice.

The Community Organizer School of Realpolitik. Offering terrorists alternative career paths will set them free.

This Plan operates from a very fundamental false premise: that these terrorists don’t already see, quite clearly, their future of dignity and self-reliance, that the path they see to security and justice is not the path we prescribe. No, the terrorists of Daesh, of al Qaeda and its associates, of Boko Haram, of Jahbat al Nusra, of the Palestinian Authority, of Hezbollah, of… all see their path to dignity, to self-reliance, to their security, to their concept of justice is through the elimination of all nonbelievers and the destruction of Western Civilization, a polity they view as evil incarnate and with which they cannot coexist.

And their freedom lies in martyrdom in pursuit of that cause.

There’s also this…laugher (because the alternative is tears):

We’ve combated violent extremism before. We know there are tools that work. …we combined our efforts most recently to fight Ebola.

Oh, and this aside:

There is no room for Islamophobia or anti-Semitism.

No one is arguing otherwise, especially regarding Islamophobia. Decrying Islamic terrorists and Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with Islamophobia. That argument is of a piece with President Barack Obama’s statement that we’re not at war with Islam. The one is Kerry’s straw man, and the other is Obama’s. They’ll have to play with their dollies without me.

As a man said not so long ago, in America everyone has the right to be stupid.  But when it’s an American in State exercising that right, it’s downright dangerous for all of us.