Arkady's Thoughts

With Colorado poised to lower it's minimum wage for the first time in 70 years, this seems like a good time to discuss minimum wage in greater detail.  Before understanding the implication of minimum wage laws and their tendency to discriminate, let us briefly delve and solidify the economic consequences of such laws. Firstly, let us all agree that minimum wage laws are feel-good laws because they instinctively make sense.  A question asking whether or not the working poor should have higher wages technically should illicit a resounding yes!  Not only because the working poor are struggling as it is, but because it prevents exploitation of these working poor by corporations and greedy businessmen seeking a profit.  Unfortunately when it comes to economics fairness is a very poor indication of what works and does not work.  Price Controls Feel free to skip this section if you understand how minimum wage laws create shortages. Minimum wage laws are a...

Mr. Obama wants to balance this by sending out $250 checks to people.  Cost of life adjustments better known as COLA will not be made in 2010 because we are in a deflationary period, at least according to government officials.  Take a look at your supermarket or your energy bills, do you feel deflation?  So no refreshing beverages for 50 million social security recipients, but there is hope. Obama wishes to spend about 13 billion dollars on seniors, veterans and the disabled.  Neat trick, huh?  So the people that social security insurance is designed to assist is not doing it's job and looking more and more financially insolvent with each passing day, but the American taxpayer for the moment is solvent. So we are going to go ahead and borrow 13 billion, chump change after a 787 billion stimulus package and do the job social security insurance failed to do.  What better way to extend a Ponzi scheme than to make someone else pay the participants?  Thi...