So Barack Obama wants to raise the federal minimum wage to $9.00 an hour from its current $7.25 level. Is this a good idea? Many bloggers and economists will argue that lower wages mean more jobs and that this relationship is mathematically fixed and a basic fact of economics. They will seek to paint a picture in which all serious or reasonable people agree that higher wages will hurt business or stifle growth. I intend to show their line of reasoning to be overly simplistic and to question this consensus.
Tag: Barack Obama
Small Government Democrats
I ran across an interesting hunk of data supplied by Paul Krugman that confirms what I have long suspected–American politics is no longer a contest between the progressive left and the conservative right; it is a mere feud between different conservatives. Let me show you what I mean.
Contraction Reaction
The United States has just now posted the worst quarterly growth figures since 2009. The United Kingdom, the country in which I study, is also experiencing economic contraction again, in what may be the start of a triple dip recession in that country. What’s going on? Let’s have a look.
David Cameron’s EU Referendum
British Prime Minister David Cameron has pledged to hold an in-out referendum on British membership of the European Union by 2017. This is a very bad idea. Here’s why.
Clinton on Benghazi
The last time I mentioned the attack on the American embassy in Benghazi was November. Since that time, republicans have continued to call into question the administration’s response to the incident, accusing them of having covered up the fact that the attack on the embassy was an assault by extremists rather than, as was initially believed, a spontaneous outgrowth of a protest against an anti-Islamic video. One of the primary casualties of this ongoing discussion was Susan Rice‘s bid to succeed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. Now, Hillary Clinton has taken the stand to defend the actions of the state department to congress. Her response was sufficiently interest that I decided, one last time, to make the Benghazi incident the focal point of a post.
