Making money
President Biden and the Democrats are
embracing a fight for a national $15 mini-
mum wage, said Paul Waldman in The
Washington Post. There’s a good reason
for that: “People need it.” Workers get-
ting by at the current national wage floor,
$7.25 per hour, are “making less than
$15,000 a year, which is almost impossible
for one person to live on” in any state.
Though Republicans have been “united
and adamant” in opposition and want to
make this a red-or-blue issue, raising the
minimum wage will actually help more
people in the South than in the blue states.
“Five states— Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina,
and Tennessee—have no minimum wage law,” and 15 others
(almost all run by Republicans) haven’t increased theirs over the
$7.25 level. Most Americans do not agree with that policy. Since
1998, “there have been 23 minimum-wage ballot initiatives, and
every one succeeded,” including the most recent one in Florida in
November, which “passed by over 20 points.”Raising the minimum wage costs jobs, said Robert VerBruggen
in NationalReview.com. Democrats contend that while older
economic research may show a loss of jobs, “newer, better re-
search does not.” But that’s not quite true. About half the studies
on this issue since 1992 found a “statistically significant hit to
employment.” Amazon pays a $15 minimum wage and wants
other employers to be required to do so, said Timothy Carneyin Washington Examiner .com. We
should be wary of Amazon’s altruism.
It can afford to pay higher wages, but
most of the lowest-paying jobs are at
small and very small businesses strug-
gling to compete with the e-commerce
behemoth. Outlawing low-wage jobs
hurts the brick-and-mortar businesses
on Main Street that are “the building
blocks of tight-knit communities”—
the same ones Amazon is eroding.Some small businesses may struggle
to pay workers a living wage, said
Annie Lowery in The Atlantic, but that doesn’t justify economic
policies that “don’t just allow, but promote, destitution.” The
government spends $100 billion a year on welfare, food stamps,
Medicaid, and the earned-income tax credit for the working
poor. There is “no better deal for the taxpayer in economic pol-
icy” than helping the neediest “at no cost to the government.”This should be a “no-brainer” for Congress, said Stephen Prince
in Newsweek.com. When I raised wages at my manufactur-
ing firm in Georgia, it did “wonders to improve my company’s
turnover rates and productivity.” I also know that my business is
dependent on consumers, “and the more money workers have in
their pockets, the more they spend.” It’s about time we realized
that long-term economic success in this country doesn’t come
from wealthy elites but “from the bottom up.”Wages: Democrats unite behind national $15 minimum
BUSINESS 33
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Florida’s voters approved a $15 state minimum.Cuts in aid for siblings in college
Changes to the FAFSA form are prompting an
outcry from some parents, said Ann Carrns in The
New York Times. The legislative package passed
by Congress last December “simplified the Free
Application for Federal Student Aid,” which was
reduced from eight pages to only two. However,
it also removed a “break for having multiple
students in college at a time,” according to Mark
Kantrowitz, an expert on college financing. In
one example, a family with $100,000 in income
and $50,000 in assets would end up with a total
expected contribution, by Department of Educa-
tion calculations, of about $14,000 a year. Under
the old formula, with two kids in college at once,
that would be cut in half to $7,000 per child. The
coming change removes that break. Supporters
of the change say it’s fairer for families with kids
far apart in age. “There’s no reason why a family
with twins should get more money,” says one.Another chance for WeWork?
WeWork could end up going public after all, said
Maureen Farrell and Konrad Putzier in The Wall
Street Journal. Almost 18 months after the very
public implosion of the office-space company’s
effort “to stage a traditional initial public
offering,” WeWork has been weighing merger
offers from multiple special-purpose acquisitioncompanies, or SPACs. These so-called blank-
check firms, which have proliferated in this
bull market, raise money from investors to buy
private companies to take public. “A deal could
value WeWork at $10 billion.” That’s still “a far
cry from its peak valuation of $47 billion” in
2019, before investors rejected WeWork and “its
visionary yet erratic leader, Adam Neumann.”
The company has a surprisingly “ample cash
cushion” for another run at the public markets,
thanks to a $9.5 billion rescue from the Japanese
investment firm SoftBank.A $7 billion crypto joke
“A digital coin originally founded as a joke”
became another obsession of retail traders on
Reddit last week, said Arjun Kharpal in CNBC
.com. Following the example of “the group
WallStreet Bets, which was behind the GameStop
rally,” SatoshiStreetBets forum members started
bidding up the cryptocurrency Dogecoin. The
frenzy added “about $7.17 billion to its market
capitalization or total value,” catching the atten-
tion of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who “tweeted out
a picture of a magazine cover of ‘Dogue’—a play
on the popular fashion title Vogue.” The short-
lived mania ended, however, when the brokerage
app Robinhood limited purchases of cryptocur-
rencies, citing “extraordinary market conditions.”What the experts say
Founded
in 2010 by
photogra-
pher Nick
Brandt,
conservationist Richard Bonham, and
entrepreneur Tom Hill, Big Life (biglife
.org) was the first organization in
East Africa to coordinate anti-poaching
operations across the Kenyan and
Tanzanian borders. Using airplanes,
tracker dogs, hidden field cameras, and
patrol vehicles, Big Life’s trained Maasai
rangers protect some 2 million acres
from threats to wildlife and endangered
species. It has successfully prevented kill-
ings and has tracked down and arrested
hundreds of poachers. Big Life works to
keep elephants away from farming areas
where they are likely to come to harm,
and it has 10 dedicated response teams,
with 57 rangers, to protect eight critically
endangered black rhinos. In addition, Big
Life’s investigations of wildlife trafficking
have led to the confiscation of thousands
of pounds of ivory.Charity of the week
Each charity we feature has earned a
four-star overall rating from Charity
Navigator, which rates not-for-profit
organizations on the strength of their
finances, their governance practices,
and the transparency of their operations.
Four stars is the group’s highest rating.