The Minimum Wage Should Be Abolished, not Increased

International Liberty

As I discuss in this recent interview, a higher minimum wage is a terrible idea if we care about facts and evidence (and also want to help poor people).

In the interview, I mentioned that minimum wage mandates aren’t good news for workers who lose their jobs.

One of them, Simone Barron, wrote in the Wall Street Journal about her unfortunate experience after the minimum wage was increased in Seattle.

This city’s minimum wage is rising to $16.39 an hour on Jan. 1. Instead of receiving a bigger paycheck, I’m left without any pay at all… That’s because the restaurant where I’ve worked for six years is closing as a consequence of the city’s harmful minimum-wage experiment. …When rent is too high, labor costs too much, and customers don’t want to pay $40 for a roast-chicken entree, the only way for many operators to ease the pain is to…

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2019 update on my permanent portfolio

So, we close out 2019 with only a slight gain from 2018. Frankly, you would have been better off investing in a simple index fund than in my portfolio in 2019. That said, over the last four and a half years the portfolio has increased in value by just shy of 160% (159.5%) while the DOW increased 73% and the S&P increased 63.5% over the same period (8/21/2015-12/31/2019).

While the DOW increased by about 25% in 2019, my permanent portfolio only increased slightly due to the decrease in Bitcoin. As mentioned in a few prior posts, we would have likely sold off a lot of the Bitcoin during a once a year rebalancing of the portfolio; however, this portfolio is designed to be static (buy and hold). Nonetheless, the portfolio has seen gains over 2X the DOW and the S&P with near-zero tax consequences and little risk. The only tax consequences of this portfolio can be found in the mutual funds as the hard assets (gold, silver, etc.) and the three stocks do not throw off a dividend.

We’ll take another look at the portfolio on August 21, 2020, which will be 5 years the portfolio has been public.

Here is a link to the permanent portfolio page.

There’s No Galt’s Gulch, but New Zealand, Switzerland, and Hong Kong Are the Next-Best Alternatives

https://wp.me/przCm-beh

Shoddy Oxfam Study on Inequality Puts Greece, Afghanistan, and Zimbabwe Ahead of Singapore

https://wp.me/przCm-b4q

Florida is the 8th most diverse state in the nation

With Hispanic Heritage Month in full swing and the leadership in Fortune 500 companies still dominated by Caucasian males, the personal-finance website WalletHub conducted an in-depth analysis of 2018’s Most & Least Diverse States in America.

To determine where the most idea and identity exchanges have occurred at the highest level in the U.S. — and where the population is relatively more homogeneous — WalletHub compared the 50 states across six key categories: socio-economic, cultural, economic, household, religious and political diversity.

Diversity in Florida (1=Most Diverse, 25=Avg.):

• 22^nd – Educational-Attainment Diversity
• 9^th – Racial & Ethnic Diversity
• 7^th – Linguistic Diversity
• 2^nd – Birthplace Diversity
• 16^th – Industry Diversity*
• 3^rd – Marital-Status Diversity
• 1^st – Generational Diversity
• 12^th – Household-Type Diversity

*Includes civilian employed population aged 16 and older

For the full report, please visit:
https://wallethub.com/edu/most-least-diverse-states-in-america/38262/

Stealing by Government

Class-Warfare Taxes Are Most Harmful to Prosperity – International Liberty