Author Archives: Rabbi

    New York and California are set to raise the minimum wage from $10 to $15 per hour over the next few years, which sounds like good news for people struggling to make ends meet. What’s wrong with artificially raising wages across the board is illustrated by this priceless statement issued by California’s Governor Jerry Brown: “Economically, minimum wages may not make sense. But morally, socially, and politically they make every sense because it binds the community together to make sure parents can take care of their kids.” It was eloquently ridiculed by Dan Henninger in the WSJ but the statement bears deconstruction, if only because it illustrates the shallowness of the American electorate for whose support, if not love, Brown is appealing. Sadly, he probably means well.

Well, why does raising the minimum wage make no sense, economically? One would think that the more money a worker earns, the better for him, his family, and the commercial enterprises in which he will spend his hard-earned money. So why not raise the minimum wage to $20 per hour, or, even better, $100 or $1000 per hour? Why can’t teachers or nurses earn as much as Alex Rodriguez? Certainly many teachers and nurses will have better seasons.

The answer is because wages cannot exceed the productivity of the worker or the business will fail. This is the “no economic sense ” to which Governor Brown is referring. A worker earning $10 an hour must produce at least $10 worth of product or service. If he produces more than $10, he is either underpaid or the employer is profiting. If he is consistently underpaid, then he has the right, in a free society, to take his services elsewhere and be paid what he is worth. Usually, the employer benefits, as he is the one who is risking his capital in the business and his profit comes partly from the wage/productivity differential in his favor.

Conversely, if the worker earns, say, $15 per hour and produces value of only $10 per hour, then the worker is getting a windfall even as the employer is losing money. Since most employers are not in business to lose money, one of three things will happen: a small number of workers will lose their jobs (hence the spike in unemployment most studies show is a consequence of artificially raising the minimum wage); or, as is happening in the entry level jobs where the minimum wage is most common, the jobs are being automated (that’s why most people pump their own gas – outside of New Jersey, the only state that bizarrely prohibits drivers from servicing themselves – and even fast food restaurants are reducing staff and automating), in which case many employees will lose their jobs; or the company goes out of business, in which case everybody loses their jobs.

That is why teachers, nurses and a host of other professions (rabbis, for one) that accomplish more for society in real terms do not produce enough “economic” value to be paid what a mediocre professional athlete earns.

Obviously there is a number whereby the minimum wage can be raised and not trigger those Draconian consequences, but the number is speculative, much debated, and will probably vary from industry to industry. That is why a “one size fits all” increase is more problematic. And, certainly, one can make a cogent argument that some floor for wages is necessary to inhibit abuse but a ceiling is necessary as well. What $15 does that $17 or $13 or $10 wouldn’t is a partial mystery, although it has the advantage of being an easily calculable figure.

Each business will decide to what extent the higher wage will impair their profitability and/or viability. Buy why would ostensibly intelligent politicians impose a wage hike that they know will lead to increased unemployment among the most vulnerable elements in society, especially among the youth

for whom minimum wage jobs are often their portal into the work force?

For politicians, raising the minimum wage sounds caring in the short term but it is a very populist move, not to mention popular. Many people will earn more money in the short term, and not just those who earn the minimum wage (few do). But there are jobs whose earnings are indexed to the minimum wage (2X, 4X, etc.) and so many workers (i.e., voters) will be scheduled to benefit, although they too will be subject to the wage/productivity rule delineated above. Many of them will be casualties of this hike as well. So why would politicians support something that in due course will lead to higher unemployment among their constituents?

One reason might be that they have shielded the unemployed from the consequences of their bad decisions through unemployment insurance. Therefore, politicians have an interest in maintaining, increasing and prolonging unemployment insurance as long as possible. Part of every person’s paycheck goes to defraying this eventuality but of course most of it just comes out of the government budgets and adds to the deficit. The dislocation to the family and the psychological stresses on the unemployed are not really factored in by the political class. So raising the minimum wage sounds kind, as Brown mentioned, and it makes sense “politically” because also for a reason that I never considered until several days ago. Call it the latest government scheme.

Here’s how a letter writer (Henry Schmid of Sonoma, California) to the WSJ put it last week, and the government plan is brilliant: the tax implications of raising the minimum wage are enormous. “For a family of four with both spouses making the minimum wage, their federal tax will increase from $4106 to $7219, payroll tax will increase from zero to $379, and the $2400 food stamp credit will be lost. Of the $20,800 increase in income in going from $10 to $15 an hour, $7778 will be diverted to the government, which doesn’t include loss of other income dependent government welfare programs and added costs due to the resulting inflation. Over one-third of the wage increase will flow to the government in the form of increased taxes and reduced benefits.”

     I’m assuming his figures are correct, and if they are, the scheme is ingenious when you think about it. The minimum wage increase is just a means for the government to get more revenue from the people, once again from business. And even if there is an interest in getting people off the dole and into the workforce, do those celebrating the doggedness and sensitivity of the liberal politicians pushing the higher minimum wage realize that many, if not most, of the beneficiaries will lose money, in the form of benefit reductions? And if they lose their jobs altogether, well, now their government benefactors have more money to redistribute in the form of unemployment compensation. Indeed, one of the debilitating peculiarities of the welfare state is that it often disincentivizes employment by denying benefits to people who earn more, I suppose, than they should.

Win, win, win, lose. The politicos look good and get the votes of the beneficiaries who do not realize how they are being harmed. The politicos get more money into the government coffers to redistribute and reward their favorite groups of constituents. The workers think they are earning much more money,  and actually are earning more money, but not as much as they think and are oblivious to the real consequences of the increase. Business pays more of its earnings to government, and either lays off the unsuspecting workers or raises prices, which usually depresses consumer spending (depending on what is being sold). Business suffers, the consumer suffers, and the worker suffers. The only entity that benefits is government.

It is ingenious, but not very moral. The letter writer suggests increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit, which would help the needy. There has to be a better way, linking increased wages to increased productivity, and keeping people gainfully employed for their own spiritual well-being as well as securing their path to financial stability and success. But don’t expect the politicians to find, endorse or encourage that way. For them, it is not as lucrative.

The proposition that the world has gone mad seems to be beyond debate.  The ubiquitous reality of radical Islamic terror has infiltrated every country, city and town across the globe. The will to eradicate it is increasing, albeit slowly. But it’s the culture wars that even more reflect how the world has gone topsy-turvy, and how those sweeping changes to our moral sensibilities pose an even greater to communal stability than a terrorist with a bomb, gun, or knife.

College campuses are challenged today in a variety of ways that tend to undercut the fundamental mission of colleges: education. The madness of March that has too many people preoccupied (on and off campus) with who “wins” this or that is one component, along with steady erosion in the quality of the college curricula. At one time, the objective of a university education was to ground a student in classical ideas and prepare the student for professional advancement and life in the real world. These days, education favors the faddish and the useless, and is less an effort to uncover eternal truths than it is a battle to stifle free discussion and suppress unpopular truths.

The morality on campuses has also deteriorated to a level that was unimaginable twenty or forty years ago when it already wasn’t that exalted. Relations between the sexes has, allegedly, become so strained that the liberal media speaks incessantly about a “rape culture” on campuses, wherein brutish men have their way with women in numbers approaching an epidemic. Or so it is claimed.

That the numbers don’t bear out the claim doesn’t detract at all from the repugnance of any assault on any one, but the numbers – and the logic – do not substantiate the claim. Just recently, colleges released their latest statistics and the colleges deemed the worst offenders, with the worst “cultures,” reported claims of assaults ranging from 10-20 annually on campuses with many thousands of students. Certainly, one is too many, but few of these claims involve the old-fashioned and execrable assault by a stranger in some dark alley. Some involve men taking advantage of drugged or intoxicated women (granted, some of the women drugged or intoxicated themselves of their own volition), and that too is appalling and should be prosecuted.

But most of them, judging by the media reports, involve the challenging “he said/she said,” with no eyewitnesses or corroborating evidence. Of those, the male(factor) contends, most are situations in which the couple had a romantic relationship that went sour after the intimacies in question. That is to say, the couple was dating, grew close (sometimes after a two-hour date, I suppose; people bond much more quickly these days), retired to someone’s quarters and quickly consummated their…friendship. Soon after the “friendship” ended, the woman, feeling used, as she was by the lecherous man, files a complaint for sexual assault.

There have even been occasions when the woman who later claimed she was “raped” spent the night, or several nights thereafter, with her beau, only to realize weeks later after their breakup that she had been assaulted. Yes, I am quite familiar with the literature about the psyche of the rape victim, and how it is quite possible to love, honor and cherish in the moment of passion that man who will be later accused of sexual assault. Certainly that is far, far from the common sexual assault cases I dealt with in my prior life as an attorney, in which women knew immediately they had been violated, went to the hospital /police, filed charges, picked out her assailant from a photo array, testified against him in court, etc. These types of assaults are actually quite uncommon on college campuses. That I am familiar with the literature on the campus type “assaults” detailed above doesn’t mean I buy any of it. I don’t.

If indeed there was a “rape culture” on American campuses no intelligent woman would want to attend college. The fact that more women attend college today than men itself belies the accusation. What is also true, and completely dismissed today by the elites and the sophisticates who have fabricated an entire industry, is that men and women approach intimacy much differently. Men are creatures who seek physical gratification in the first instance and who, lamentably, could find intimacy with complete strangers and be satisfied. Women attach a much stronger emotional significance to intimacy than do men, and look at love as, well, love. Many men (none that I know, but I hear things…) don’t even need to be “in like” much less “in love.” They just need to be attracted.

Whether this speaks well of men or not is not the issue. It has just been reality since the creation of the first man and is not going to change. Women simply feel a closer connection to the men with whom they are intimate than do the men with the women; hence the great, real and sincere hurt when those feelings are betrayed by the callous man who does his deed and heads out the door.

That might be despicable but it is not an assault, except on decency and values. Our Sages (see Sanhedrin 22b) were quite familiar with the more intense connection a woman feels with the man to whom she is amorous and with whom she feels complete, much more than does the man.

Naturally, this litigious society sees the solution to the campus social problem in the drafting of contracts or compacts to be signed by both parties (each accompanied by an attorney, obviously) before the commencement or display of any affection. Talk about taking the romance out of romance! This might obviate the problem of “he said/she said” litigation but not the greater problem of the psychological wound felt by the woman who is scorned by someone for whom she has feelings. Unrequited love is painful, and the feeling of being used and discarded is even more painful. No contract is going to change that but something else will.

Here’s a novel idea, one that has been tried before with great success but has fallen into desuetude, apparently, on college campuses. It will solve all these problems, the “rape culture,” the “he said/she said,” the feelings of rejection by the party who had an emotional connection with another person who just sought a physical connection. It’s called… abstinence, self-discipline, or chastity. It involves waiting until marriage to engage in intimate acts, and then in a relationship in which the couple genuinely loves each other. It is preceded by a joyous ceremony known as a wedding, which too involves contractual obligations that are grounded in mutual respect. Problem solved…

Undoubtedly, this will not please the men who take pride in their multiple “conquests” of women, nor will it endear the women (who evidently exist) who do not mind construing the sublime expression of love as something casual and cavalier. But it is something that women truly deserve and that men truly need, and can also benefit marriages. There is something special about intimacy that is reserved for one person, and one person alone, in a committed relationship sanctified by G-d and man. One who is serially promiscuous will never know that, and that is a shame. Blessing awaits those who wait.

Only a mad world rejects a solution that will work.  Of course, it won’t happen, except among those whose lives are governed by religious mandate, but this problem doesn’t exist in those precincts to any measurable degree. (There are other problems, just not this one.) But self-control and defined boundaries will surely put an end to any misunderstandings, miscommunications and gray areas. There is a problem of “culture” on college campuses, but it is the culture of promiscuity and entitlement that poses the greatest dangers.

There are also times, like now, when the world’s madness is apparent through its heavy-handed assault on society’s sensibilities. The latest such insanity is the decree that so-called “transgenders” must be allowed to use the bathrooms of whatever sex they claim to be, regardless of their biological reality. Of course, sympathy for anyone suffering from such a malady is in order, especially since many professionals still maintain (privately, of course; the backlash would destroy their careers if their thoughts became public) that this is a mental illness. Even more extreme are the bizarre parents who are “letting” their children choose their sex when they come of age, not wanting to prejudice their choices by recording it on their birth certificate.

Different jurisdictions are handling this predicament in a variety of ways, but it is a sign of the times that, in some places, the activists have rejected permission given to the transgendered teenager to use a private bathroom, this in order to cause no discomfort to anyone. This suggestion was rejected because it is allegedly unequal, discriminatory, and other such buzzwords which, used indiscriminately, give ignorance and insanity a more prominent place in our society than reason and fairness. Why would a perfectly reasonable suggestion be dismissed in favor of allowing a 15 year old biological male to dress in a locker room with 15 year girls, itself an invitation to miscreants of the most sordid type?

What is reasonable is rejected because the elitists are not interested in equal access of any individual as much as they are in transforming social norms. There was a time when reasonable accommodation sufficed, and those handicapped in one way or another were content with that. That is fair. This is not. To inconvenience one hundred people to satisfy one person’s needs, who in any event cannot be satisfied, is not justice. It is tyranny. It is bullying, bullying the overwhelming majority of people, using the weapon of new forms of victimization, in order to promote a social agenda that is distasteful to the vast majority of people.

To be reasonable and judicious would also be a novel change in public affairs. The tyranny of the elitists and their condescension has unsettled a great many people in America, which is why the upcoming presidential election features too many cranks and crooks. People are disgusted with being told the emperor is fully clothed when in fact the emperor is naked, weird and decadent.

The growing unrest in America is multi-faceted but rooted in a common denominator: the attempted renunciation of traditional morality. The acolytes of that emperor should take heed. For the rest of us, it seems pretty simple. Men and women should keep their hands off each other unless and until they are married. Boys and girls should use their own facilities.

Life is simple but mankind complicates it.

See the “Culture” Wars – Update:  here

Donald Trump is a showman, an entertainer, a braggart, superficial, occasionally crude and coarse, and not very knowledgeable about the major issues of the day. So here’s why I would vote for him in a heartbeat over Hillary Clinton.

Barring some unlikely chain of events, Trump will win the Republican nomination for president. A brokered convention still remains a possibility, but voters tend to coalesce around a winner in the latter primaries. Trump has won almost two-thirds of the Republican primaries, and as he routinely notes, people do not like to associate themselves with losers. Notwithstanding the candidacy of Ted Cruz, who is still preferable to Trump among the remaining candidates, it would be shocking if Trump did not win a first ballot majority despite the cries of the pundits.

It remains true that establishment Republicans and committed Conservatives are less than enamored with Trump, many openly despise him, some are plotting a third-party Conservative candidate, and a handful would even prefer the election of Hillary (if her well-deserved indictment does not materialize) over that of Trump. Trump has a relatively short history as a Conservative, and a slightly longer one as a Republican – but anyone who gave tens of thousands of dollars to the Clinton Foundation, to Hillary herself, to Nancy Pelosi and a host of others will give true Conservatives the jitters.

But just what is the Republican Party? It is an alliance of like-minded people around a certain set of ideas that the American people in the most recent national elections have come to reject. Laments about the quality of this or that candidate aside, Republicans have lost the popular vote in five out of the last six presidential elections. One can blame the candidate’s flaws or missteps, or the policies proposed, and certainly the cannibalization of the Republican candidates that occurs during every nominating process. Food for thought: the only time in more than two decades Republican presidential candidates were not disparaging each other in bruising and ugly primary battles occurred in 2004, not coincidentally the only time in that time span that the Republican nominee won the popular vote. That year saw only one Republican candidate – the incumbent President George W. Bush. Here’s to the return of the smoke-filled room…

The bottom line is the same. The Republican Party is a party that has mostly good ideas but has not won presidential elections with those ideas, for whatever reason. Purists should take note: there is a certain intellectual elegance and endearing obstinacy in preferring to lose elections while going down with the ship. But it doesn’t help the nation, the world or the party to keep losing.

That’s not to say Trump will win or that Cruz would lose. Who knows? Any Republican has an uphill battle against Hillary Clinton due to the nature of the electorate and the concentration in large states of devotees of free stuff. For sure, Trump as president will be a disappointment – but Clinton as president will be a constant irritant, even ignoring her execrable policies that are intended to promote class warfare and divisiveness and punish the successful in order to reward the clueless.

Clinton is a liar, a crook, an active participant in the largest pay-for-play scheme in the history of mankind, someone who accomplished nothing as a Senator and only harmed American interests as Secretary of State, and whose main qualification for office – this, from a feminist icon – is that she is the “wife of…” Worse than all of that, she is an awful speaker, shrill when she tries to be passionate, and consistently inflecting the wrong word IN the sentence she IS speaking at any GIVEN time or the wrong syllable in words she used for the sake of emphaSIS. Her presidency would be unbearable.

To use Trumpian language, she would be a “disaster!” on Israel, continuing the policies of harassment of Israel, subtle support for the BDS movement organizers who are all Democrats, pressuring Israel not to build in its heartland and not to take elementary measures of self-defense , and continue down the suicidal path to the creation of another Palestinian state. Of course, Jews will find every reason not to vote for Trump the Republican, as they would find every reason not to vote for Cruz or Kasich the Republicans. Jews would vote against Moshe if he ran as a Republican, as, of course, he would. See Joseph Epstein’s WSJ article “On the Political Stupidity of the Jews,” and nothing more needs to explained. Jews have voted themselves into political irrelevance – and think they are the kingmakers.

Of course, just because Hillary is a “disaster!” on Israel doesn’t mean Trump will be “incredible!” on Israel, but the known unknown (Trump’s coyness – and shallow grasp of the issues) is preferable to the known known (the Hillary hostility). That most secular Jews do not feel like that is attributable to their fragile and halfhearted support for Israel, all their pious protestations to the contrary notwithstanding.

Not for a moment do I believe that Trump believes that he will be able to fulfill even half the blustery promises he is making. Mexicans will not pay for the wall even if it is built. He is not deporting 13,000,000 people. Iran would love to have the US abrogate the nuclear agreement, now that it has the billions of dollars it craved and the European contracts it craved even more. Anyone who believes that Trump will slap a 35% tariff on imports should quickly summon for consultations Mr. Smoot and Mr. Hawley, whose tariff legislation in 1930 plunged the United States and the entire world even deeper into depression. It won’t happen. He is the great unknown and that carries great risks, but Trump will likely compromise, settle and declare whatever deal he makes “incredible, the best deal ever.”

Here’s what will certainly happen in a Trump presidency: the culture will change and largely for the better. I wouldn’t mind four years without hearing the phrases “politically correct, micro aggressions, safe spaces,” and other such claptrap; four years in which a president and others can say freely that “all lives matter,” in which the radical Islamic enemy abroad and within is named, identified and targeted, and in which police are respected and goons disrespected; four years in which the emasculation of America that Obama has presided over disappears, along with the constriction of the First Amendment that entails. People have had enough of the moral posturing of the faux victim, which has resulted in nothing less than in the increase of the numbers of faux victims and even the possible causes of victimhood. People are tired of having to whisper the truth because murderers, evildoers, or sinners will have their feelings hurt by it, even unintentionally.

No one wants to live in a country and be harassed for faith, for belief in the Bible, for service of G-d, and no one I know wants to be ridiculed for clinging to their religion (or their guns, for that matter). That dimension of American culture has been so debased in the Obama era that even the uncouthness of a Donald Trump comes as a welcome relief. People are exasperated about having to constantly second guess themselves when speaking, writing, or even thinking, lest they offend someone for who knows what. Imagine that – Trump as redeemer of the popular culture!

If there is a reason why so many people are voting for Trump across the country – and many of them would be characterized as “not traditional Republicans” – it is for that reason alone. People are dismayed over having to watch every word and be accused of some “-ism” if they laugh at a joke. People are distraught over an America where hard work is penalized, where illegal aliens soak up the tax dollars of the tax payers, where people enter America from abroad with ease (and unknown numbers of those visitors arrive with hostile intentions), where our enemies are on the ascent and America boasting about leading from behind, where wages are stagnant and the American dream is stifled. A lot of people apparently don’t care what the Republican elders feel or what any politician says. Democracy is a most unwieldy form of government.

All of the above will be exacerbated under a Clinton administration (how can she escape indictment? It boggles the mind and evidences a rigged system.). Political correctness will get a shot in the arm. It is a weird election year that is symptomatic of the problems and discontent afflicting American society. This is worse than the usual “these are the best candidates available?!” or the hackneyed “choice between the lesser of two evils.”  Most presidents in the last half-century have left office with negative ratings (Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton are the only exceptions). These two currently have negative ratings, and only wishful thinkers assume that means their popularity can only increase. It can easily descend even more. There are people on both sides of the political divide who genuinely despise both likely candidates.

Donald Trump may not be able to revive the American dream, the problems are that entrenched. (Cruz would be better.) But he will be able to revive the American spirit, unless he too is aborted by the purists, the perfectionists and/or the short-sighted.