From Minimum Wage to the Wall Street Journal January 30, 2007January 9, 2017 FREE WALL STREET JOURNAL Rockwell Wade: ‘Your readers can get free access to Wall Street Journal, Zacks, Morningstar, etc. with a free Netpass from: congoo.com – amazing financial news too.’ ☞ Click here for a quick clip that explains it all. RICH DAD Michael Axelrod: ‘I read that book [that your reader reviewed] and I agree – it’s awful. But the review says: ‘There is also something vaguely creepy about Kiyosaki’s resentment of his father who devoted his life to public service.’ My impression from the book is that Kiyosaki respects his father, but thinks he didn’t know much about money. He says you don’t get rich by working the way his dad did. I see no resentment there, only an appraisal of this father’s strength and weaknesses. He doesn’t resent a life devoted to public service, he just says it won’t make you rich. The problem with the book is it keeps telling you go into business and get rich, but doesn’t really say how. It’s a little like saying ‘don’t get sick, stay healthy.’ Ok what do I do to stay healthy? However the message of the book is clear: to get rich, write books on how to get rich and hope the public buys it.’ ☞ Worked for me. MINIMUM WAGE Kent Hammond: ‘I am surprised that you advocate an increase in the minimum wage. You of all people should know that it will hurt the people that it is supposed to help, those at the bottom of the economic ladder. The simple laws of economics will prevail once again. The increase will accelerate the use of outsourcing and mechanization by employers. Those seeking entry level jobs will be the ones to suffer.’ ☞ This is an old debate, and Kent is dead right that the minimum wage can’t successfully be set too high – $30 or some nutty thing. But the long-overdue cost-of-living adjustment that the House passed, from the current $5.15 an hour to $7.25, phased in over two years – the first raise in 10 years – will not see motel rooms being sent to China to be cleaned. It may add a nickel to the cost of a fast food meal. And there will certainly be some people, on the margin, not hired, or let go. But that will be offset by the increased economic activity from giving workers more money to spend . . . vaguely reminiscent of Henry Ford’s choosing to pay his workers enough so they could afford to buy Ford cars . . . and offset by the increased economic activity from giving people an added incentive to work. Certainly, when President Clinton got the last hike written into law, it did not kill the economy of the 1990s. But it helped a lot of people at the bottom. See this scholarly analysis, published not long after the last minimum wage hike. For now, Republican Senators have blocked the House bill. As reported here Friday, they are demanding yet more tax breaks in return for allowing this first-time-in-ten-years cost-of-living increase. (They have voted themselves $31,600 in such increases in those same 10 years.) But with any luck, we’ll get this done. In the meantime, those earning $5.15 an hour can still, as noted above, go into business and get rich – or access the Wall Street Journal for free.