perfidy

As resident contrarian, please allow me to differ. Greatly.

What dumb-ass playground do you think we are still all on? Do you seriously believe that there are terrorists out there who give a crap about US strategy and actions? They don't. They know that the consequences of their actions are visited upon others -- the citizens of the countries we blow up, in the name of collective punishment. It's beautiful for them, really...they just have to sit back, drug up a 20 year old, shove him into a car, and tell him that 29 (or 63, or whatever the 'magic' number is) virgins are waiting for him on the other side of a 15mm red button. We toss ten thousand bombs into their countries, maim children, and create a whole new generation of recruits. "Wag the dog" usually refers to something else.

Do you think the rest of the world gives a shit about how the US looks when it mobs a country with its Army? Here is the lesson any intelligent planner has learned from this: No one country can stand against America, but America can easily bankrupt itself through the sheer idiocy of pursuing unbelievably expensive foreign policy. A bankrupt America becomes a corrupt American, and this will lead to its decline in the shorter time, rather than the long wait history teaches us is the norm.

What kind of flypaper do we have in Iraq, exactly? Is it the kind that attracts terrorists (you know, the really stupid ones)? Or is it the kind that gets stuck to a world power, sapping resources that are needed elsewhere, compounding domestic problems, and potentially setting off a domino effect that results in a cultural decline?

It's probably a bit of both. Your "can of whup ass" mentality was all fine and fun in the Wild West, and probably worked great in the 'hood. This ain't the hood. We have a lot more to lose than the momentary satisfaction we gain by killing a few idiots, and deposing a few standard despots.

The world isn't going to run out of despots any time soon. It also isn't going to run out of smart terrorists, who are gaining converts, created by our actions, at ten times the rate they were before. And I refuse to back that up with anything other than a gut feeling. You know it's true too.

Do I advocate we do nothing? Of course not. That would be stupid. WWF Smackdown Foreign Policy sounds kick-ass to the Nascar crowd. Woohoo! Now comes the hard part. Put it back together again. There are other ways.

We could have cured AIDS and raised living standards by half in a dozen countries, earning respect worldwide, for less money than two months of this war has cost. Politics and true leadership is about allocation of scarce resources, making hard choices, and going for the maximum effect. It's not about posturing, point-making, and throwing a $300 Billion Finger at the rest of the world, with a follow-on "fuck you if you don't like it. But will you please pay for it anyway?"

It's not that the rest of the world is anti-American. By and large it isn't. It just seems like such a huge waste of potential. So much human capital could have been created, for so much less. With these kinds of expenditures there could have been a third way...a way where the US leads by example, by education, by being reasoned, and right.

Amen, Brothers.

This exercise in fantasy from the state controlled Egyptian press goes a long way toward explaining a lot of the problems that they have. Hat tip:
Daimnation! via Dodgeblogium.

This letter, from Cuban dissident Oscar Biscet Gonzalez, should be getting the same kind of attention that Martin Luther King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail got. It is sad the Castro gets a free ride from so many.

Read it.

In a newly released bio of Canadian PM Jean Chretien, it is revealed that the Canadian gov't was prepared to take a much harder line than it ever admitted if Quebec sovereignists had achieved a referendum victory in 1995. In an interesting quote, we hear the opinions of the Canadian Defense Minister at the time, David Collanette:

Earlier in the chapter, Martin suggests Collenette was also prepared to come to the aid of federalists still in Quebec.

" 'My view,' Collenette would explain in a later interview, 'was that these guys aren't going to get away with this. This is my country. I don't care what the numbers are. It's one thing to say you want to separate. But now we start playing hardball. Because we're not going to abandon all those people who want to stay in Canada.' "

"...A negation of the verdict in front of tens of thousands of celebrating Quebecers would have risked a bloody backlash. But in fact that is what Chrétien planned to do,"

Considering how opinion in Quebec was running, a repudiation of the referendum would have caused some havoc. The government felt that the constitution had no provision for leaving, and that therefore the referendum was merely a "consultative exercise." In an interview for the book, Chrétien admitted he would not have recognized a close vote.

"You know, at 50 (per cent) plus one, I was not about to let go the country. You don't break your country because one guy forgets his glasses at home."

Jacques Parizeau, then the premier of Quebec, revealed in his book Pour un Québec Souverain that he was prepared to declare unilateral separation if Ottawa refused to accept the referendum result. Throw in Chrétien's stance and Collenette's willingness to call in the troops, Martin speculates, and you have the elements for a possible civil war.

It has always been my belief that we have let far too much time pass since the last invasion of Canada. Almost two centuries, in fact. The thought that Canada might spare us the trouble by conveniently dissolving itself is, well, delicious. We could easily absorb the good parts, and then seal the borders around Quebec, and give laser weapons to the Indians. Sorry, First Nations.

On a disturbing note, the article closed with this quote:

Frulla and other Italian Canadians in her riding were being warned they would "have to go back to your own country," when the sovereignist side won.

No this isn't from some Buchananite wacko. It's from Italy's reform minister, Umberto Bossi.

Mr Bossi, leader of the Northern League, said Brussels was "transforming vices into virtues" and "advancing the cause of atheism every day". He denounced the European arrest warrant as a step towards "dictatorship, deportation, and terror, instilling fear in the people, a crime in itself". It would lead to a Stalinist regime "multiplied by 25".

One day Italian citizens would be locked up on the orders of Turkish judges, he told Il Giornale newspaper, which is owned by the family of the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi. He added that the euro was a "total flop", its inflationary effects costing ordinary people "a fortune" in lost purchasing power.

I don't know if I agree completely, but I have my suspicions - on bad days, I agree with Rachel Lucas, and wish that the EU would just declare itself a fascist dictatorship so we could go over and kick their ass and get it over with.

The new draft EU constitution contains none of the protections for individual liberty that we enjoy here. The tendency of EU bureaucrats to take action without consulting the public - or even thinking about consulting the public, is worrisome as well. The unelected officials who form the nascent European federal government are completely removed from any kind of accountablility to the citizens of the several European nations.

It might be a good thing if some Europeans got together with a copy of the Federalist Papers, the Notes from the Constitutional Convention, and a lot of red pens.

It is surprising to me that the drafters of the new European constitution have paid so little attention to the lessons of our constitution - given that there are so many parallels. In both cases, there are a number of different soveriegn states, varying in size, population and wealth. There are issues of free trade and common currency. There are debates about the optimal miz of central and state power.

Of course, they may have paid attention, and decided that a representative democracy that devolved power to the masses and allowed maximal freedom for the individual; and enshrined notions of limited government inviolable rights is not what they wanted.

Jesse Walker has a short piece at Reason about the clusterfark that is "market reform" in Bolivia. The 800-lb gorilla in the room is (of course) the single biggest market in Bolivia, coca. Check it out. Walker reveals a tragic and misguided series of events, and offers this analysis: " the war on drugs has undermined not just peasant property rights but the rule of law."

is how we say it in Ohio.

And via Blogcritics I see that the five major labels have agreed to provide health insurance to their entire artist rosters. Fucking finally.

MIT has expanded significantly the course offerings through its
OpenCourseWare program. Over 500 classes in 33 academic disciplines are now available.

I'm diving into two courses, Systems Analysis of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Numerical Methods of Applied Mathematics I. Exciting and stimulating material. Oh, and I'm going to take Mechanical Assembly and Its Role in Product Development and Beginning Japanese I.

Actually, I think I'm going to check out some of the political science and history stuff. Pretty cool.

Fox News is reporting that Afghanistan is on the verge of unveiling its new draft constitution. For most of the last year, the constitutional commission has been working to write the constitution, but this bit was heartwarming:

The commission sent 460,000 questionnaires out to the public this year and held meetings in villages across the country seeking public input.

"So many people replied, including women who said they wanted more rights and good education," Constitutional Review Commission spokesman Abdul Ghafoor Lewal said. "The illiterate sent cassette tapes and we got tens of thousands of letters."

When the elections are held next June, we can hope that it will be the beginning of a prosperous and peaceful future. If that many people participated (however indirectly) in creating their future, I think they might even have a good shot at it.

The Boston Globe is running a thought-provoking piece in which correspondent Matthew Miller interviews Milton Friedman and Willam Bennett on the role of the "birth lottery" in shaping people's lives.

It's a bit of a mind-blower, in that we find Bennett taking a stand directly BETWEEN nature and nurture, and Friedman asserting that free will isn't really free, not exactly.

In his Washington office, I asked Bennett which he thought was a bigger factor in determining where people end up: luck (by which I meant the pre-birth lottery), or personal initiative and character.

The normally voluble Bennett fell quiet.

"Genes are part of the first?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Parents are part of the first?"

"Yes."

"The first," he said. That is, luck.

Recalling his years as Secretary of Education under Ronald Reagan, he explained, "Having visited the schools, I'm convinced that you can change people's lives and people can change their own lives. But it's hard. Those things [genes, parents] matter hugely. They don't matter completely. But they matter hugely."

What should that imply for public policy? I asked.

Bennett cited the Marine Corps as proof of the "plasticity" of human nature, and of the potential for institutions to alter luckless lives for the better. Kids from the inner city come back from boot camp after 11 weeks and they're transformed, Bennett said, with new values, a new spirit, a new future. Mediating institutions -- family, churches, schools -- can create opportunities for people to "exercise autonomy and make a difference in their own lives. A lot of people aren't there because they're in crappy families, crappy schools, crappy neighborhoods."

. . . . . . .
Early in his career, Friedman (the son of poor Hungarian Jewish immigrants) wanted very much to prove -- mathematically -- that luck isn't as important in human affairs as we instinctively presume. In a 1953 paper called "Chance, Choice, and the Distribution of Income," he argued that inequality of income results not merely from chance, but also from the choices, tastes, and preferences of individuals. People who have a taste for working less, for example, and for spending more time basking in the sun, earn less. It's their own choices -- not luck -- that helps shape the inequality of income. . . .

"I think that luck plays an enormous role," he went on. "My wife and I entitled our memoirs, 'Two Lucky People.' Society may want to do something about luck. Indeed the whole argument for egalitarianism is to do something about luck. About saying, `Well, it's not people's fault that a person is born blind, it's pure chance. Why should he suffer?' That's a valid sentiment."

So what are the implications of luck for public policy?

"You've asked a very hard question," he said. In part, he added, because it's not clear that what we think of as luck really isn't something else. "I feel," he said, "and you do, too, I'm sure, that what some people attribute to luck is not really luck. That people are envious of others, you know, `that lucky bastard,' when the truth of the matter is that that fellow had more ability or he worked harder. So that not all differences are attributable to luck."

"I know it's not all luck," I agreed, but I added that it's legitimate to wonder whether it's luck, as opposed to personal initiative and character, that most accounts for where one ends up.

"That's right," Friedman said. "But that's luck, too." Was Friedman saying that character was ultimately a matter of luck? Where does luck stop and free choice begin?

"See, the question is. . . What you're really talking about is determinism vs. free will," he explained. "In a sense we are determinists and in another sense we can't let ourselves be. But you can't really justify free will." . . .

This awareness of luck's role -- even if he wouldn't have put it quite this way as a younger man -- is what led Friedman to stress the importance of providing equal opportunity via education, and of keeping careers open to talent. Friedman also told me that it inspired his call for the provision of a decent minimum to the disadvantaged, ideally via private charity, but if government was to be involved, via cash grants that in the 1950s he dubbed a "negative income tax."

There's more-- read the whole thing. It's an interesting contribution to the debate over equality of opportunity versus equality of outcome. Personally, I lean towards the "allowing all equal opportunity" end of the spectrum, because it's impossible to give everybody the same exact piece of pie. But to go too far toward the "equality of opportunity", to wit, asserting that circumstance doesn't matter as long as the law is blind, is deterministic, mechanistic, and profoundly un-humanistic. And also stupid.

Of course, the article is a bit of a puff piece, not a policy statement, so the question as to what, if any, social programs aimed at improving the situation of people unlucky enough to be born to crappy parents in a crappy neighborhood with crappy schools, would be appropriate.

From the comment thread on my recent France post, Johno said about the Anglosphere concept and the split in the west:

Buckethead, I think that may be true only insofar as it's always been true.

When the GI's went into France back in Dubya Dubya Two, there was considerable culture shock on both sides. Although the US and Western Europe have grown familiar with each other on a day-to-day basis, there are both systemic and current reasons why they won't necessarily see eye to eye. You know that as well as I do.

I wouldn't make too much of this grade-school crap. The US and France have been at odds before, and will again and again. At least we're both Constitutional Republics.

It wasn't the deck of cards exactly that prompted the anglosphere comment, but rather the trends we see in Europe that are most visible in the growth of the EU bureacracy, and in the language of the proposed EU constitution. England was always distinct from the general political climate on the continent. The United States, and to a lesser extent Canada and Australia, have focused on the very things that made England different, and are thus more different. The unparalleled success of the United States in, well, damn near everything is dragging the other English speaking nations in its wake, while the continent is pursuing its dream of a thousand year socialist Frankenreich. The two political natures of the west, once more or less evenly distributed seem to be settling into a kind of geographic division. This might actually drive further separation in the core of the west.

Others, such as Huntington, have already suggested that the West has already split twice - that Russia and Latin America are already distinct, though related civilizations. Is it that farfetched to imagine that a similar process could be dividing the west again?

Eugene Volokh, who now works a mere stone's throw up the river from my worker-pod, reminds us to "Repeat after me: I will not believe generalizations from on-line self-selected surveys. I will not believe generalizations from on-line self-selected surveys. I will not believe generalizations from on-line self-selected surveys. . . ."

Clueless has a short (for him) post up focusing on the recent goings on in the Palestinian leadership. I've been thinking a bit about this since Abbas quit.

When I saw the first news reports of his resignation my first thought was, "Damn, he just set made a huge deposit in his Karma bank." Clueless commented,

If another Prime Minister is appointed and forms a cabinet, and then Arafat is exiled, then as a practical matter the new Prime Minister will have far more control than Abbas ever did. I think Abbas was genuinely trying to work things out, and the next PM might not be willing to do so. But such a leader would not have the kind of grip on power that Arafat has, and would in turn be easier to replace.

I don't know for sure whether Abbas is genuinely interested in peace or not, but I am sure that this resignation not permanent. Abbas will be back, and the very fact that he resigned because Arafat would not give him the power to work with the Israelis will in the future give Abbas some serious world credibility. If Arafat leaves, Abbas will come back, and likely with the support of both the American and Israeli governments.

What he does with that power, we'll have to see.

This Fox story informs us that California will allow illegal aliens to get driver's licenses.

The legislation, by Sen. Gil Cedillo, D-Los Angeles, would help undocumented immigrants get drivers' licenses by allowing them to submit a federal taxpayer identification number or some other state-approved form of identification to the Department of Motor Vehicles instead of a Social Security number. (emphasis mine.)

I think that California is quite purposefully ignoring something very important here, as their euphemistic description of illegal aliens indicates.

These are illegal aliens, for chrissake! We can have a meaningful and interesting debate over all the issues surrounding immigration except for this one. Access for foriegners: easy or hard? How long can they stay, and what can they do while they are here? How many immigrants a year, from what countries, and with what skills? How quickly can we assimilate them, and how should we do it? What requirements for naturalization? Reasonable people can differ on these issues, and I've heard good arguments for many sides of the argument.

But, illegal immigrants do not deserve the benefits we extend to our own citizens, and to those who have moved here legally and dealt with the insane bureaucracy of the INS. They are here illegally. If caught, they should be immediately deported. Any "undocumented immigrant" who shows up at a CA DMV should be instantly shown the door, and warned not to come back.

I am prepared to welcome any citizen of any nation regardless of race, creed, color, or hairdo - provided that they come here in accordance to the laws of this nation. Otherwise, get the hell out. It is ridiculous to extend to them taxpayer funded benefits when their very existence in this country spits on the laws we live by. And amnesty for illegals is a slap in the face to all the immigrants who did jump through all the hoops to get here legitimately.

They don't need an ID. They need a bus, ship, train or plane ticket home. 

My response to Trish's fears in my recent big brother post was lighthearted. But when I think about the real problems of increasing surveillance, out of control federal agencies, the erosion of civil liberties and the prospect of ubiquitous law enforcement I oscillate between long periods of complacency punctuated my moments of extreme paranoia.

On the one hand, the traditions of the republic are still strong, as witnessed by the consensual freak out when poindexter revealed the TIA with its ubercreepy eye-in-the-pyramid logo. There are well funded organizations that fight the good fight in our stead, like for example the EFF.

Libertarians and others fear that the erosion of liberty is a ratchett effect, where there is an ever tightening grip of law and regulation and surveillance, and that every liberty lost is nearly impossible to regain. I have sympathy for this position - for example, the RICO statutes have proved impossible to remove, despite their manifold flaws, and their frequent abuse.
There are legitimate security considerations to be weighed - we should not ignore reasonable measures for the sake of protecting against a minor infringement. Its hard to enjoy liberty when you're dead.

I think that we should in the interest of protecting liberty use the following criteria to evaluate any new security legislation:

• How easy would it be to abuse this law/police power - to use it for purposes other than those intended? Like the RAVE act, for example, or the RICO statutes.
• Does this power actually mirror some older power? (For example, the cell phone taps in the Patriot act just extend the traditional wiretap power into the world of modern telecommunications - it allows the police to tap the person, even if he is rapidly switching phones. This is reasonable, and only technically an extension of police powers.)
• Does it effect citizens or non-citizens, and how easy would it be to blur the line? Increasing surveillance of non citizens is not a problem for me. Inspections on entry, tracking them while here, etc. Non citizens are a potential threat, and they have far less claim to privacy protections than citizens. (Sorry, Ross.)
• Does it create new enforcement agencies? I am of mixed mind about this. On the one hand, a thousand competing LE agencies would probably help us, as it would be less effective. On the other, it would be less effective. But the idea that every federal agency has its own paramilitary special forces style swat team is unnerving, and completely unnecessary. The only agencies that should have them are the Secret Service, the FBI and maybe the DEA. No one else, period.
• How much does it actually restrict our freedom, as opposed to how much does it invade our privacy? Both are bad, but the first is more important. We are not going to escape record keeping. That is out of the bag, and won't be put back. What we need to be careful of now is how that information is used, and who can use it. Problematical, I know, but a government file does not infringe my right to say what I want, believe what I want, live where I want, etc. Even if that file makes me nervous. Anyway, something to think about over your holiday weekend. 

I am an optimist though, and think that if we could repeal Prohibition, we can unpass some laws.

Loyal Reader #0008, Trish, emails with concerns over the growth of big brother and the erosion of liberty in this nation. Perfidy is nothing if not responsive to its readers, so after some googling and random clicking on the interweb, we have found some solutions.

Here we have a counter-tips program, where we the free citizens of the republic can keep track of nosy neighbors, narcs and informants.

Here we see the efforts of RSA Labs to develop RFID blockers to keep big brother out of our undersclothes.

Enjoy Protection Services Incorporated's Hospitality Weekend, where you can learn to defend yourself with a wide range of firearms, and learn about guarding against surveillance.

The Big Brother Awards keep track of what bad people are doing to our privacy. Naturally enough, Poindexter's TIA won this year. Here is the award:

To fight back, and set up your own surveillance networks, you can go to spyville.com.

For some background on the surveillance and freedom arguments, these articles are good places to start.

For those who need more fuel for their paranoia, this story about MIT's efforts to develop a RFID tag replacement for the barcodes in current use will help. A barcode could handle different codes for different brands of rice. A 96 bit code, this new development could have a unique code for every songle grain of rice on the planet.

Finally, when nothing else seems to work, there is always the tin foil hat.

Over at Parapundit, there's some ideas for how you can hasten, (if only slightly) the demise of the contemptible North Korean dictatorship.

The idea centers on getting solar power radios into the hands of North Korean citizens, through a variety of means. How effective this will be, I really can't say. It is of course potentially lethal for North Korean citizens just to have a radio, but getting some truth into the hands of the oppressed can't be a completely bad idea. We know that the voice of America broadcasts and BBC shortwave were crucial lifelines for dissidents in the Soviet block. East Germans were not so cut off from their cousins in the west as the North is from the south in Korea - at least the East Germans had radios.

Hopefully, before too long, we won't have to worry about this. While many fear the cataclysm they expect will attend the demise of the Communist rulership, I have to pull out my dusty rose colored optimist shades and say that the pattern of Communist collapse is largely a peaceful one. Throughout Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union and even elsewhere, the Commies generally go quietly. The most violent example so far of a Communist regime losing power is Romania, and even that was peaceful compared to the extraordinary bloodiness of Communists taking power anywhere.
 

The USS Clueless has a recent series of posts touching on the growing rift between Europe and America, and the underlying reasons. Toward the end of the most recent one, den Beste speculates on what might happen if the economic decline he foresees for Europe's future comes to pass. He concludes that a serious possibility is the rebirth of Fascism, this time in a unitary European Federation.

Some other people have commented on this as well. The Limey Brit makes the point that an essential characteristic of Fascism is nationalism, something that is unlikely to develop in the near future as a pan-European phenomenon. So while he agrees with the coming relative economic decline of Europe, he feels that a more likely end scenario is a wave of 1848 - style revolutions and unrest leading to an intra European war if demagogues seize power in one or more regions.

If (big if) current trends in European economies continue, the European economies will be in big trouble. While the political landscape makes it seem unlikely that the EU or its member states will adopt what to Americans are the obvious solutions to their problems, the Europeans are not irretrievably stupid. If things get bad enough, in all likelihood they will muddle through and make at least enough reforms to allow their economies to recover. Who would have thought that Britain of the mid-1970s would in only a couple years turn to Margaret Thatcher to lead them out of the economic wilderness of socialism? Similar reversals could happen in Germany, or even France.

Nevertheless, it is interesting to speculate about the worst case scenarios. As I mentioned in the comments on the Limey Brit's post I linked above, while Nationalism is unlikely to develop in a pan European sense, that does not mean that you couldn't get a fascist state out of the EU. Napoleon, in the early part of his career, had many admirers throughout Europe. To the progressives in Germany and elsewhere, Nappy represented the wave of the future. Many in Germany welcomed the French army as liberators. Of course, they soon changed their minds - but not after the French had seized control of the vaster part of Europe.

I can easily imagine a demagogue - especially if he is from one of the smaller countries, but yet with a base of power in either France or Germany - mouthing the right kind of cant and moving to the top of the political system. Especially given that the proposed EU government is mostly isolated from any kind of accountability to the people, or even the member states.

At this point, European governments avoid military spending; but a functional dictatorship, backed and implemented by the EU bureacrats in Brussels could easily turn to a military build up to distract attention from economic woes. In fact, this scenario would be more likely just before economic collapse rather than after.

And then, we'd have to go over and kick their ass all over again. 

According to the AP, between three and four hundred thousand barrels of oil will begin flowing into Turkey today. This oil will come from the Iraq's northern oil fields. The article did not say when oil would begin pumping from the southern oil fields.

Via CalPundit comes a link to this article by Douglas McKinnon, former press secretary to Bob Dole. McKinnon is taking his fellow Republicans to task for not supporting a minimum wage increase. Well-- he takes the Democrats to task too, but since he's a Republican it's more fun to play that side of things up.

A lightly trimmed version of the entire article, presented for your edification:

In politics, those in power rarely witness the consequences of their actions or look into the eyes of the people devastated by the cold stroke of a pen or an impersonal yea or nay vote. Such is the case with the much-needed minimum-wage hike now stalled in the Senate Labor Committee.

What price are we, as Americans, willing to put on human worth, on safety, decent medical care and hope? If a minimum-wage increase isn't passed, Congress will have decided that $5.15 an hour is that price — a number that should bring shame to anyone who truly cares about those barely existing below the poverty line.

I'm a Republican with a somewhat unusual perspective on this issue: I grew up in abject poverty and was homeless a number of times as a child. Poverty has never been an academic or partisan issue for me. It destroys the human spirit, creates crime, divides classes, fosters misunderstandings and, worst of all, crushes innocent children.

On both sides of the aisle, senators and representatives are insulated from the consequences of such stratagems and positions. Few have ever experienced real poverty. They live in a cocoon of security and ignorance, and they earn pay that lumps them with the highest-earning 1% of all Americans. Not a lifestyle conducive to understanding what it's like to try to live on $5.15 per hour. The last time the minimum wage was increased was 1997. Since that time, members of Congress have voted themselves $21,000 in pay raises.

The accepted "poverty line" for a family of three in the United States is about $14,800 per year, another national disgrace. Pick up a newspaper in any large city in our country and try to find a decent apartment for less than $1,000 per month. Figure in money for food, clothes, medical bills, transportation to and from the $14,800-a-year job, utilities, entertainment and unexpected expenses. It doesn't add up.

Now imagine trying and failing to live on today's minimum wage: $5.15 per hour works out to $206 a week, or $10,712 per year. That's $4,000 less than what most would agree no American family can survive on.

And the really bad news about the proposed minimum-wage hike is that even if it goes through, the minimum wage will be only $6.65 per hour. That's $266 a week, or $13,832 a year.

Americans who exist below the poverty line do so mostly because of accidents of birth or circumstances beyond their control. Instead of the Hamptons, they were born in Harlem. Instead of order, they are surrounded by dysfunction. Until you've been there, you have no idea of the pain, humiliation and hopelessness. The poor in the United States are not "non-persons." They have the same hopes, dreams, fears and integrity that the well-to-do have. All they lack is enough money to care for their children and themselves.

The minimum-wage hike is not much but, below the poverty line, every penny counts. The Senate should strip it out of the foreign aid authorization bill and approve it immediately. Morally, it is the right thing to do. As a Republican, I would say that to represent the majority, we must serve the majority. We must be there for those in need.

Damn straight. I'm not a bleeding-heart Democrat because I realize that trying to help everyone in every way results in actually helping very few at the expense of all. But this is another matter entirely. The collateral benefits of raising the minimum wage would be very great, far outweighing the theoretical hardships facing employers to meet the new minimum.

For my part, I used to subsist at $.25 above minimum wage, while living in a part of the nation where the cost of living is pretty cheap, especially compared to coastal New England where I now live. I was supporting myself only, economizing reasonably, and I couldn't save a penny. Granted, I wasn't interested in saving at the time, and if I'd have cut out the beer, I could have done so. But I was a single young adult male, renting a single room, childless and without any major expenses such as car payments/insurance, and I could barely get by at minimum wage.

Yet, we expect entire families to make do for a year with less than it takes to buy a new Toyota Corolla.

McKinnon is right-- it is shameful. I understand the money has to come from somewhere, that it doesn't just grow on trees, but congressmen on both sides of the aisle are not doing their jobs if they don't find that money.

[update]Income disparity, while in and of itself neither good nor bad, is nevertheless on the rise in the US, and has been for a while. I would rather see a higher minimum wage (actually, much higher-- $8 or more) than a permanently disenfranchised and debt-ridden underclass. Such things are bad for democracy, bad for neighborhoods, and bad for the country.

This brings up a point that Windy City Mike raised a few months back-- that many, if not most, of the social problems attributed in this country to lingering racism are actually class-based. A higher minimum wage, loosely indexed to the actual cost of living, might help this quietly yawning chasm from growing wider.

Actually... this reminds me of a second point. Buckethead is fond of citing Chicago-School economics as the road to new American prosperity. Although Mr. Bucket ("Bouquet") , or is that Mr. Head, brought this philosophy up in defense of tax cuts, the principle would apply here as well. By raising the minimum wage, and also raising (Raising! not Eliminating!) the EITC to recognize the higher baseline assumption, we could put more cash in the hands of consumers and further drive the economy.

Of course, this is assuming that the Chicago School of economic philosophy has merits.

A final thought. The job market is not efficient. An efficient market assumes rational players who have choices. People who need money, and now, often take out of desperation the first offer that comes along. An argument that the minimum wage is what it is because it's what the market has set is both specious and droolingly moronic. People generally want to work, because it's what gets them money. Why not make it possible for more wage-earners to actually save what they earn and turn it into hard assets? Higher minimum wage-- yes!