First it was Karol Wojtyla (aka Pope John Paul II), now it’s Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu (aka Mother Theresa).Why does Jorge Bergoglio (aka Pope Francis I) insist on sprinkling saints hither and asking questions later?
We all know that neither Wojtyla (pronounced woy-TEE-wah) nor Bojaxhiu (bo-YAH-joo) will withstand the test of time.
There’s a Rasputin-like murky figure who stowed away evidence of Wojtyla’s hiding pedophile priests in Krakow; that will eventually all come out. Then there’s Bojaxhiu’s little romp with Charles Keating, the 1980s savings-and-loan fraudster whose donations of ill-gotten money she took, then refused to return (perhaps thinking she was paid for the character witness testimony she delivered to a U.S. court on his behalf).
Apparently, there’s more in Bojaxhiu’s dossier, concerning her disregard for needs of poor people in Calcutta and her outrageous celebrity seeking.
There is nothing even remotely redeemable in Wojtyla’s life to warrant putting him up as a model of Christian behavior, even if we dismiss his efforts to avert a scandal he personally did not cause. But Bojaxhiu appears to be downright reprehensible.
Couldn’t the Vatican, which usually thinks in centuries, have waited a tad and investigated more thoroughly?
Wednesday, September 07, 2016
Wednesday, August 31, 2016
How will the life of minimum wage workers change if the minimum wage was increased to $15 an hour?
How will the life of minimum wage workers change if the minimum wage was increased to $15 an hour?
An increase of the federal minimum wage to $15, from $7.24 at this writing in December 2015, will mean a 106% increase in pay, effectively a doubling of income for workers at the bottom of the pay scale. Over time, but not immediately, some of it will be eaten up by inflation (just as it has been already); but the hike is necessary to recover the earning power lost since 2009, the last time it was raised, very modestly, from $6.55. People who earn the minimum wage (it is mostly adults, some with families, not just teenagers as the restaurant industry wants you to believe), have had their earnings frozen.
More importantly, a raise in the minimum wage will likely affect all workers, since it raises the floor and for competitive reasons other wages will go up.
The "gold standard" study of the effects of increasing the minimum wage by Andrew Card and Alan Krueger, which has been replicated, proved that raising the minimum wage increases consumption and helps the economy. (The study is available here.)
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions in italics and their subtexts are not mine.
An increase of the federal minimum wage to $15, from $7.24 at this writing in December 2015, will mean a 106% increase in pay, effectively a doubling of income for workers at the bottom of the pay scale. Over time, but not immediately, some of it will be eaten up by inflation (just as it has been already); but the hike is necessary to recover the earning power lost since 2009, the last time it was raised, very modestly, from $6.55. People who earn the minimum wage (it is mostly adults, some with families, not just teenagers as the restaurant industry wants you to believe), have had their earnings frozen.
More importantly, a raise in the minimum wage will likely affect all workers, since it raises the floor and for competitive reasons other wages will go up.
The "gold standard" study of the effects of increasing the minimum wage by Andrew Card and Alan Krueger, which has been replicated, proved that raising the minimum wage increases consumption and helps the economy. (The study is available here.)
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions in italics and their subtexts are not mine.
Monday, August 29, 2016
How is society affected by poverty?
How is society affected by poverty?
Poverty has a broad variety of social effects that are felt by average citizens who are not poor to varying degrees, depending on the percentage of poor people and the palliatives a society offers them.
Scholars differ on how to define poverty, from the ability to “live decently” (Adam Smith) to the ability to consume a basic necessary food basket (Molly Orshansky). Broadly speaking, I would define poverty as a serious, recurrent and life-altering lack of food, clothing, education, housing, transportation and employment in a quantity necessary to develop and thrive on one’s own without chronic and persistent want.
The existence of poverty deprives a society of productive members whose self-sustaining physical well-being and sanity has every potential to help everyone’s lives improve. In societies in which it is accepted as a value that all human beings have a right to live in dignity, poverty costs society expenditures and effort to reduce or eradicate it.
Moreover, poverty has broad ripple effects. People who have dire need, but not the education or means to get self-sustaining employment, often turn to crime and abuse of drugs and other antisocial behavior that, because it is paradoxically inflected mostly on other poor people, makes poverty worse. Poverty also serves the need of some of the rich and powerful people who know that uneducated, needy people are easy to manipulate and control and will work for very little pay; this leads to eventual corruption at all levels of society.
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions in italics and their subtexts are not mine.
Poverty has a broad variety of social effects that are felt by average citizens who are not poor to varying degrees, depending on the percentage of poor people and the palliatives a society offers them.
Scholars differ on how to define poverty, from the ability to “live decently” (Adam Smith) to the ability to consume a basic necessary food basket (Molly Orshansky). Broadly speaking, I would define poverty as a serious, recurrent and life-altering lack of food, clothing, education, housing, transportation and employment in a quantity necessary to develop and thrive on one’s own without chronic and persistent want.
The existence of poverty deprives a society of productive members whose self-sustaining physical well-being and sanity has every potential to help everyone’s lives improve. In societies in which it is accepted as a value that all human beings have a right to live in dignity, poverty costs society expenditures and effort to reduce or eradicate it.
Moreover, poverty has broad ripple effects. People who have dire need, but not the education or means to get self-sustaining employment, often turn to crime and abuse of drugs and other antisocial behavior that, because it is paradoxically inflected mostly on other poor people, makes poverty worse. Poverty also serves the need of some of the rich and powerful people who know that uneducated, needy people are easy to manipulate and control and will work for very little pay; this leads to eventual corruption at all levels of society.
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions in italics and their subtexts are not mine.
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