Bill Humphrey

About Bill Humphrey

Bill Humphrey is the primary host of WVUD's Arsenal For Democracy talk radio show and a local elected official.

In defense of the minimum wage

There’s a proposed bill in Congress to raise the Federal minimum wage for the first time since 2009. It won’t pass, given Republican control of the U.S. House, but it’s still sparking debate. And by “debate,” I mean we’re getting to hear the same tired and false arguments against the minimum wage (let alone against raising it) that we hear whenever the topic comes up. I’d like to talk about one of these more common arguments.

People who want to eliminate the minimum wage often claim more people would be able to get jobs if wages weren’t so high (because businesses could hire more people with the same amount of money). For some, this is just a claim they make without believing it, but others have been duped into believing it’s actually a legitimate argument.

Let’s break down how this doesn’t make sense. Sure, we could employ everyone in the country for pennies an hour (if, for the sake of argument, people were willing to accept that), but that’s not really the point of having a job. The core goal of getting a job, at minimum, is to support, feed, clothe, and shelter one’s self (and often a family but not necessarily). The core goal of getting a job, for everyone except maybe some bored person born into great wealth, is not to have something to do from 9-5.

How does someone seriously believe that the goal of promoting higher employment is just to get everyone jobs even if the jobs don’t pay them enough to be able to do anything? Ending the minimum wage would just put more people on government benefits which also costs money and which the same conservatives opposing the minimum wage don’t want either.

And if not that, then it would create an expensive and awful Dickensian/Malthusian nightmare land with mass poverty, out-of-control levels of crime and associated violence, etc. Which eventually negatively impacts business — even without accounting for the lost/reduced purchasing power of the consumer base. We know this because it’s called the last three decades of the 19th century.

The minimum wage is not an economic “distortion.” It’s an efficient, market-oriented tool to address poverty that is probably actually better for business in the long run than the alternatives.

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Hello again

red-A-198To our past readers from Starboard Broadside, shuttered at the beginning of February 2011, Nate and I want to welcome you back.

The two of us have been very busy on a number of other endeavors in the past 33 months, which didn’t leave us much time for writing. This won’t be the same site, of course, but we’re looking forward to delivering some of the same type of insights and essays you have come to expect from us, as well as some new ones, on a regular and, we hope, daily basis.

It is particularly fitting as we launch this site that the U.S. Senate has just reformed its filibuster rules significantly, given that its failure to do so nearly three years ago was one of several factors in the timing of our decision to suspend operations (and indeed, the predicted near-total gridlock, preventing policy from going far enough for us to discuss, did come to pass unfortunately). The new reforms are far from a cure-all, but it’s a nice turn of events as we return to the written medium.

To our new readers, particularly those who are listeners to my talk show on WVUD, welcome to our written commentary. My first radio show, Broadside Radio, was a spinoff of the old blog and ended concurrently. My new show started later that year and has in great part led me back to writing. Here you’ll get bonus related written content that didn’t make the final cut for the 45 minutes to an hour I have each week, and you’ll find a whole lot more as we think out loud (in writing, at least) on various new stories — some of which may develop into segments. If you like the show, you’ll definitely want to stick around for all the online-only content.

A note about older posts:

The site is officially launching today, December 1, 2013. Everything dated prior to December 1st has been re-located here from other sites, including Starboard Broadside, if it predates February 2011. These posts have not been modified or changed except for the occasional correction of a dead link or inclusion of an editor’s note about subsequent developments. We do not plan to move all or even most of the Starboard Broadside posts over, as this is not the same site and many of the posts are short and narrowly focused on something that was only momentarily topical. We will however, be transferring some of the more interesting and timeless items from the SBBS archives on an ad hoc basis as we find connections to past posts in current events.

Thank you all so much for reading Arsenal For Democracy. –Bill

Edison Rising: The Return of Direct Current

For all the complaining about what a burden the German government’s energiewende policy (total denuclearization of the country’s power generation) is, we’re already seeing long-term benefits of forcing the power industry’s hand. Without having been pressed into getting creative, German engineers might have indefinitely put off critical research in power grid transmission upgrades, which are needed all over the world. This research & testing is already showing some of the improvement theories work in practice — and expand total grid capacity dramatically. Everyone stands to gain from this R&D.

 

Related News Clipping (Economist.com):

The decision, taken in 2011, to close down Germany’s nuclear power stations risks leaving parts of the country with insufficient electricity. This will have to be brought in from elsewhere. But to do that seems, on the face of things, to require the building of new transmission lines, which will be unpopular with those they pass by. One alternative is to make better use of existing lines.

Read the rest.

AFD 65 – Iran, Central Africa, DOMA

Latest Episode:
“AFD 65 – Iran, Central Africa, DOMA”
Posted: Tues, 26 November 2013

Guest co-host Greg joins Bill to assess the Iranian nuclear deal, the chaos in Central African Republic, and recent developments on LGBT rights in America.

Relevant links:
Iran deal…
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/25/world/middleeast/with-iran-accord-obama-opens-mideast-door.html

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_world_/2013/11/25/iran_nuclear_deal_will_saudi_arabia_now_seek_a_nuclear_program_of_its_own.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-24823846

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_reckoning/2013/11/24/israeli_stock_market_reaches_record_high_share_prices_love_iranian_nuclear.html

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2013/11/24/israel_salls_iran_nuclear_deal_a_historic_failure.html

Central African Republic…
http://thinkprogress.org/security/2013/11/19/2940251/central-african-republic-chaos/

http://thinkprogress.org/security/2013/11/21/2981151/car-coup-tiring/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-24986275

LGBT Rights in America…
http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2013/11/19/2970531/oklahoma-national-guard/

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/11/24/scott-walker-same-sex-marriage-ban-is-part-of-a-healthy-balance-of-lgbt-rights/

http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/local/gov-jay-nixon-says-he-supports-legalizing-gay-marriage/article_6c271bde-4d72-11e3-92c7-001a4bcf6878.html

AFD 64 – The Role of Finance

Latest Episode:
“AFD 64 – The Role of Finance”
Posted: Tues, 19 November 2013

Bill asks what role the financial services sector should have in the U.S. economy. Sarah talks with Bill about Oklahoma’s abortion restrictions which the Supreme Court blocked. Then Bill assesses the UN Congo mission.

Additional:

I wrote this item in The Globalist after recording the finance segment, to expand upon a point I briefly passed over in the show.

Cameroon repels major CAR rebel incursion

From BBC Africa: Cameroon ‘repels CAR gun attack’

Cameroon’s army has repelled a cross-border raid by gunmen from the Central African Republic (CAR), killing six of the attackers and capturing one of them, the defence ministry says.

A soldier and a villager were also killed in the clashes on Saturday, it said.

 
What this headline and blurb don’t say is that the total number of attackers was estimated to be four hundred. It’s believed the rebel group crossed the border in an effort to free their captured leader, who had previously been arrested by the government in Cameroon because he was trying to destabilize the Central African Republic from within their territory.

Basically, Cameroon doesn’t even have time for your mess, CAR.

Op-Ed: The Problem With Billionaires

My latest op-ed from The Globalist:

In the 1980s, the supply-siders became ascendant in Washington D.C., preaching voodoo economics as “the way, the truth and the life.” Their central claim was that rich people create jobs, while high taxes on the rich leave them with less money to create jobs. Therefore tax cuts for the rich equal job growth.

In reality, this hasn’t borne out. Neither the macroeconomic data nor academic studies have shown much evidence of a direct correlation between rich people having more money and using it to create jobs.

Instead, they mostly just use it to speculate, because it’s essentially extra wealth well above and beyond any other spending or genuine investments they could possibly conceive of.

Read the full op-ed here.