A14| Friday, February 21, 2020 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
Tom Steyer’s $22 Minimum Wage Is Net Loss
Your editorial “Tom Steyer’s $
Minimum Wage” (Feb. 13) points
out that a major problem with ex-
cessively increasing the minimum
wage is lost jobs. But it fails to
note the very significant impact
even an increase to $15 (let alone
$22) would have on American fam-
ily income.
The Congressional Budget Office’s
median estimate is that a federal
minimum wage of $15 would result
in the loss of 1.3 million jobs and
would raise wages for 17 million
workers who would otherwise make
less than $15 per hour and, poten-
tially, that 10 million additional
workers with wages slightly above
the new federal minimum also could
see increased wages. To some, par-
ticularly those who wouldn’t lose
their jobs, that might sound like a
decent trade-off. It is not.
Perhaps more significantly, the
CBO estimated that a $15 federal
minimum wage would reduce in-
comes for American families by $8.
billion due not only to the higher
rates of joblessness but also price
increases for consumers and re-
duced economic output (growth)—
more than offsetting any wage
gains. While individuals below the
poverty line would see their family
incomes increase by $7.7 billion, the
cost to families above the poverty
line would be a decline of $16.3 bil-
lion, or $8.7 billion more than the
benefit for lower-income families as
firms raise prices considerably to
cover their increased wage costs
while reducing both their work-forces and future growth.
You’d think someone with Mr.
Steyer’s business background would
consider a loss of $8.7 billion on a
$16.3 billion investment a terrible
result. Perhaps all this helps explain
why, in the end, socialists always
run out of other peoples’ money.
ANDYPUZDER
Nashville, Tenn.If progressives truly want to
bring more people out of poverty,
why not simply increase the earned-
income tax credit? The EITC is fo-
cused on low-income families,
whereas the minimum wage affects
workers in low-income and upper-
income families—the latter don’t
need the increase, and no one can
afford to lose his or her job, least of
all those in low-income families. The
beauty of raising the EITC is that no
one loses a job. This is because it is
paid by the government, not busi-
nesses. Politicians don’t like it be-
cause to increase it would require
increasing taxes to fund it.
The 1.3 million people who will
lose their jobs if the minimum wage
is raised to $15 means people are
applying for unemployment insur-
ance and also for welfare programs
which are paid for by taxpayers, and
will result in an increase in our
taxes to pay for this. We pay no
matter what. Politicians want to
stick the cost on companies and
turn a blind eye on the job losses of
raising the minimum wage.
STEVENCAPOLARELLOS
West Chester, Pa.LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Letters intended for publication should
be addressed to: The Editor, 1211 Avenue
of the Americas, New York, NY 10036,
or emailed to [email protected]. Please
include your city and state. All letters
are subject to editing, and unpublished
letters can be neither acknowledged nor
returned.
“Hang in there, kid.
The winner gets health insurance.”THE WALL STREET JOURNALVirginia Isn’t Trashing the Electoral College
Your editorial “Will Virginia Drop
the Electoral College?” (Feb. 18) is
based on a false premise. The Na-
tional Popular Vote Interstate Com-
pact doesn’t “drop” the Electoral
College nor does it perform an “end
run” on the Electoral College. The
editorial confuses the voting
method of awarding electors with
the Electoral College, which is the
electoral system prescribed by the
framers of the Constitution. As ad-
opted by 15 states and the District
of Columbia and under ongoing con-
sideration by Virginia’s legislature,
the compact fully preserves the
Electoral College.
Importantly, two states don’tuse the method now used by Vir-
ginia. If the Journal is consistent
in its defense of Virginia’s method
then it would have also decried
how Maine and Nebraska award
electors.
The simple fact is that methods
have changed countless times since
the first presidential election. This
is a byproduct of the Constitution’s
federalism, which vests state legisla-
tures with the power to choose any
method they want. Massachusetts
has changed its method of awarding
electors 11 times.
The National Popular Vote Inter-
state Compact is constitutionally
consistent. It also, importantly,
makes every voter in every state
politically relevant.
MICHAELSTEELE
Bowie, Md.
Mr. Steele is a former chairman
of the Republican National Commit-
tee.Pepper ...
And SaltMarch Sisters Exemplify
Christian Charity in Action
Regarding Charlotte Allen’s opin-
ion of Greta Gerwig’s latest film
(“God Goes Missing in ‘Little
Women,’” Houses of Worship, Feb. 7):
I would have been as disappointed as
she if I hadn’t seen as much abiding
faith in the film as in the book. Hav-
ing seen it three times (and count-
ing), I registered something the sec-
ond time about the director’s
commitment to the characters’ inner
journeys that perhaps the writer
missed: the background as the hun-
gry girls and Marmee walked their
Christmas breakfast to neighbors. Be-
hind the women, beautifully framed,
we see possibly well-fed parishioners
walking into the church on the hill.
Perhaps the audience is being
asked not to judge but to consider
the many ways of faith. I’d go so far
to say the director-screenwriter
stayed so true to Alcott’s story of
faith in action that we see characters
evolve to demonstrate something
called living prayer. Admittedly, we
are not, in this modern telling,
guided to choose only one path of
faith (or life as a grown woman).
The dancing on the porch is some-
thing Sufi dervishes would under-
stand. Isn’t that an amazing, graceful
moment?
PAULAM.CRAIGHEAD
Freeport, MaineShouldn’t Everyone Study
Dr. King’s Vision of Unity?
Regarding Heather Mac Donald’s
“Uproar Over Essays Turns MLK’s
Dream Inside Out” (op-ed, Feb. 7):
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s
vision was that “my four little chil-
dren will one day live in a nation
where they will not be judged by the
color of their skin, but by the con-
tent of their character.” One has to
wonder if the outraged and accusa-
tory individuals share in Dr. King’s
teachings. The irony is that their
criticism comes across as if they are
adherents of Malcolm X’s vision for
a separated society: “We go for sep-
aration. Separation is when you have
your own. You control your own
economy; you control your own poli-
tics; you control your own society;
you control your own everything.”
JACKJ.CHEN
Chino Hills, Calif.I suspect Dr. King would be
pleased that white students partici-
pated in a contest about his legacy
of fighting racism in our country.
JANISFRANKS
Merrimac, Wis.Importing Extraterrestrial
Life Could Be a Real Hazard
Regarding Brad King’s “Earth to
Billionaires: Finding Life Is Space’s
Final Frontier” (op-ed, Feb. 8): Cur-
rent events have us witnessing the
emergence of a viral scourge, the cor-
onavirus, with a genesis right here on
terra firma.
Meanwhile, some world-renowned
business elites are cavalierly on a
quest to find extraterrestrial life-
forms and bring them back to Earth.
Just imagine what would happen
if a spacecraft brought back some
life form completely unbridled by the
experience of Earth’s 500-million-
year evolutionary history. Life would
be imitating art and the 1971 sci-fi
classic “The Andromeda Strain”
could become a reality. If the last
couple of months are any indication,
I think we could be in trouble. Are
the billionaires going to underwrite
the risk involved?
KENRATKOVICH
Bloomfield Hills, Mich.Bernie’s Medical Stonewall
S
eventy-eight year old Bernie Sanders
wants Americans to hire him for one of the
world’s most demanding jobs. He has re-
fused to release detailed medi-
cal records, and this week his
press secretary said health in-
quires are reminiscent of “the
kind of smear, kind of skepti-
cism campaigns” of old.
Oh? “The American peo-
ple,” Mr. Sanders said in September, “have a
right to know whether the person they’re going
to be voting for, for President, is healthy.” He
added that he would “certainly release our medi-
cal records before the primaries,” and “before
the first votes are cast.” That would have been
three weeks ago.
In October he had a heart attack, and now Mr.
Sanders has changed his tune. “We have released
as much documentation, I think, as any other
candidate,” he said this month on NBC. “You can
start releasing medical records, and it never
ends.” He is “trying to walk a little bit more,” and
“trying to sleep a little bit better. Sometimes
that’s hard. But I’m feeling great.”
That’s good to hear. Yet Mr. Sanders has a
special duty to be forthright. He is the oldest
candidate in the field, and if elected he would in-
stantly become the oldest-ever sitting president,
at age 79. Ronald Reagan, today’s record holder,
left the Oval Office at age 77.
At the moment, Mr. Sanders is scrapping for
delegates with millennial Pete Buttigieg, 38, and
OK Boomer Amy Klobuchar, 59. Surely he sees
why his age is a political issue? “If I were just 80
years old,” Jimmy Carter, now 95, said last year,
“I don’t believe I could undertake the duties that
I experienced when I was President.”
Add Mr. Sanders’s recent heart attack. The
three letters he has released from his physicians
are reassuring. After a blockage in his coronary
artery, doctors reopened it and placed two drug-
eluting stents. “Your heart muscle strength has
improved,” writes Brian Monahan, Congress’s
attending physician. “You have never had symp-
toms of congestive heart failure.”
Two physicians at the University of Vermont
add more details. Mr. Sanders “did suffer modest
heart muscle damage,” but he has “made an un-
eventful recovery.” The results of a Dec. 11 exer-
cise test were “average” for a man of his age. “I
am confident,” one of the doctors writes, “he has
the mental and physical stamina to fully under-
take the rigors of the Presidency.”
At Wednesday’s debate in Nevada, Mr. Sand-
ers presented this as sufficient: “We released the
full report of that heart at-
tack.” Voters should want a
second opinion, even if Presi-
dent Trump sets a poor exam-
ple. Mr. Trump refused to re-
lease his tax returns, and his
doctor’s letter in 2015 praised
his “astonishingly excellent” lab tests and
boasted that Mr. Trump would be “the healthiest
individual ever elected to the presidency.”
Two precedents are worth pondering. The
first is Paul Tsongas, the Democrat from Massa-
chusetts, who won several states during the 1992
primary. Tsongas had received a bone-marrow
transplant in 1986 while fighting lymphoma, but
he was fit and an avid swimmer. “I consider my-
self cured,” he said. “The standard definition of
cure is survival five years out. Five years ended
in August.”
Yet soon after dropping out of the race, Tson-
gas admitted that he had also received radiation
in 1987, when cancer cells were discovered in an
armpit lymph node. His doctor called it “residual
disease,” not a recurrence, and Tsongas denied
any attempt at deception. Then in late November
1992, when he might have been picking White
House rugs, his doctors found cancer in an ab-
dominal lymph node.
“I have come to the painful conclusion that
there is no way around full medical disclosure,”
Tsongas said. “Anything less than full disclosure
is politically impossible at the presidential
level.” He received another bone-marrow trans-
plant in 1996 and died in 1997, at age 55.
In 2008 John McCain set a better example.
He was turning 72, and he’d had melanoma. He
gave reporters—some of them physicians—
three hours to examine 1,173 pages of medical
records, going back eight years. “The documents
went into great detail,” a pool reporter wrote,
“about his operations to remove melanomas and
colon polyps.”
Mr. Sanders can stonewall on releasing a de-
tailed medical history, but deflecting questions
could come at a political cost. For all his appar-
ent vitality, Mr. Sanders is still a 78-year-old man
recovering from a heart attack. If he won’t pro-
vide more clarity about his health, voters will
have to factor that risk and his lack of transpar-
ency into their electoral calculus.He pledged to release his
health records. Then he
had a heart attack.
Bloomberg the Moral Capitalist
E
verybody agrees Mike Bloomberg had
an awful debate Wednesday night, as
Democrats took turns flogging him for
offenses against woke pro-
gressivism. The painful expe-
rience should convince the
businessman and former New
York mayor that he can’t win
the Democratic nomination
with his current strategy of
contrition and a leftward policy lunge.
How about running instead as a capitalist
with liberal values who can expand the econ-
omy and extend opportunity to millions of kids
trapped in terrible schools? Run as the entre-
preneur and education reformer he is, and give
the socialists and unions the debate the Demo-
cratic Party needs before it bets four more
years on Bernie Sanders.
There were hints of that Mike Bloomberg in
the debate, albeit too few and too weak. Take
his exchange with Mr. Sanders, who is thrilled
to be running against a man he portrays as
Daddy Warbucks from central casting.
“We have a grotesque and immoral distribu-
tion of wealth and income. Mike Bloomberg
owns more wealth than the bottom 125 million
Americans. That’s wrong. That’s immoral,” the
Vermont socialist intoned. NBC’s Chuck Todd
amplified the thought: “Mayor Bloomberg,
should you exist?”
Mr. Bloomberg: “I can’t speak for all billion-
aires. All I know is I’ve been very lucky, made
a lot of money, and I’m giving it all away to
make this country better. And a good chunk of
it goes to the Democratic Party, as well.”
Mr. Todd: “Is it too much? Have you earned
too much—has it been an obscene amount of—
should you have earned that much money?”
Mr. Bloomberg: “Yes. I worked very hard for
it. And I’m giving it away.”
This didn’t satisfy Mr. Sanders: “Mr.
Bloomberg, it wasn’t you who made all that
money. Maybe your workers played some role
in that, as well.”
Mr. Sanders won the ex-
change because he made a
moral case for socialism,
while Mr. Bloomberg made a
technocratic case for capital-
ism. Why not make a moral
case of his own instead?
Mr. Bloomberg didn’t inherit his wealth, or
steal it, or merely get lucky. Like all entrepre-
neurs, he started with an idea. He fulfilled an
unmet need with innovative financial software
and data that helped investors make money. He
provided a service that people wanted and were
willing to pay for.
Yes, his employees were indispensable, and
he can boast that he and they created thousands
of jobs that have made it possible for parents
to buy homes, send their kids to college, and re-
tire in comfort. Who do you think pays the taxes
in this country, Bernie, so you have the money
to redistribute?
Mr. Bloomberg has writers and consultants
who can elaborate, but you get the idea. So far
he has been running as a pale-rider progressive,
with plans for a $5 trillion tax increase, ex-
panded student loan forgiveness and increased
Social Security benefits. He’s for gun control
and cares about climate change. None of that
sets him apart from the other Democrats on the
debate stage.
What would set him apart is if he took on
Bernie’s socialism directly and in moral and hu-
man terms. At one point Mr. Bloomberg
quipped: “What a wonderful country we have.
The best known socialist in the country hap-
pens to be a millionaire with three houses.”
There’s a theme there to build on. It may not
succeed, but he’ll never win running as a guilty
billionaire.A socialist demagogue
will beat a guilty
billionaire every time.
Roger Stone’s Sentence
J
udge Amy Berman Jackson on Thursday
sentenced President Trump’s former con-
fidant Roger Stone to 40 months in prison,
which if nothing else offers
some lessons about the politi-
cal hysterics of the last two
weeks in Washington.
The first is that the sen-
tence vindicates the interven-
tion of Attorney General Bill
Barr and his senior colleagues to change the
Justice Department’s original sentencing rec-
ommendation. The trial prosecutors had recom-
mended seven to nine years, which was exces-
sive for Mr. Stone’s crimes of lying to Congress
and tampering with a witness.
The second sentencing memo suggested
something less, and Washington went nuts say-
ing Mr. Barr had bowed to Mr. Trump, the sup-
posed authoritarian who wants to run the exec-
utive and the judicial branches of government.
Judge Jackson criticized the intervention but
in the end handed down a sentence that was far
less than seven to nine years because, she said,
following the original recommendation would
result in a sentence that “would be greater than
necessary.”
The second lesson is that
the judiciary is in no danger of
being politically intimidated.
Judge Jackson didn’t hold
back as she lectured Mr. Stone
for showing “flagrant disre-
spect” for Congress and the court. She also said
in court that Mr. Stone was “prosecuted for cov-
ering up for the President.” Apparently there
was no need for that “emergency meeting” of
the American Judges Association that the press
played up so loudly.
All of which shows again that the panic over
Mr. Barr and the supposed political corruption
of his Justice Department is partisan nonsense.
The rule of law is doing fine. Critics can de-
nounce Mr. Trump if he pardons Mr. Stone, as
he probably will, but the verdict on that should
be in the November election.Apparently there
hasn’t been a coupagainst the judiciary.
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
OPINION