Minimum wage....Hi-yaah!

Cliff Kirkpatrick acknowledges that the minimum wage increases of 1997 backfired. Despite this fact, he agitates...er...advocates for an increase in the minimum wage now that the Democrats have the country by the purse strings. His letter can be found here.

Most of the working poor earn more than the minimum wage, and most of the 0.6 percent (479,000 in 2005) of America's wage workers earning the minimum wage are not poor. Only one in five workers earning the federal minimum live in families with household earnings below the poverty line. Sixty percent work part-time and their average household income is well over $40,000. (The average and median household incomes are $63,344 and $46,326 respectively.)

George Will gave an interesting correlate to minimum wage increases.

Forty percent of American workers are salaried. Of the 75.6 million paid by the hour, 1.9 million earn the federal minimum or less, and of these, more than half are under 25 and more than a quarter are between 16 and 19. Many are students or other part-time workers. Sixty percent of those earning the federal minimum or less work in restaurants and bars and are earning tips -- often untaxed, perhaps -- in addition to their wages. Two-thirds of those earning the federal minimum today will, a year from now, have been promoted and be earning 10 percent more. Raising the minimum wage predictably makes work more attractive relative to school for some teenagers, and raises the dropout rate. Two scholars report that in states that allow persons to leave school before 18, a 10 percent increase in the state minimum wage caused teenage school enrollment to drop 2 percent.

Celebrating Extraordinary Life in Ordinary Time

January 21st is Sanctity of Human Life Sunday.

I know what you're thinking - you looked in your Presbyterian Planning Calendar and only saw that it was Camp & Conference emphasis, but let me assure you that there wouldn't be a need for Presbyterian camps if it weren't for live-born children.

Restore some sanity to "ordinary time" with these resources from Presbyterians Pro Life.

Now...who's going to ask the Women's Center at their various almis matribus to put out notice?

P.S. If you haven't seen the film adaptation to P. D. James' Children of Men, don't use it as an illustration. It has been thoroughly stripped of its Christian, pro-life, anti-euthenasia message and replaced it with an anti-Bush, anti-America agenda. I'm not saying that these don't have a valid place in Christian discourse. But they are a perversion of James' original moral vision.

Bring Boys Home, It!

Yes, both the left and the right are given to absolutely useless shows of solidarity.