Numbers game
The big jump in L.A. in the minimum wage to $15 by 2020 doesn’t just mean a big raise for a lot of people working at McDonald’s. It’s also a grand experiment for economic theorists everywhere. Questions that could be answered: What will happen to low-earner employment in Los Angeles – and how will the numbers affect the argument everywhere else? Via The New Yorker.
Follow the leader
Will the nearby cities like Santa Monica, Pasadena and Long Beach follow L.A.’s lead? And what will happen if they don’t? Via The Guardian.
Credit card
Warren Buffet writes in The Wall Street Journal that a major hike in the minimum wage will be bad for employment. What we need, he says, is a raise in the Earned Income Tax Credit.
Never forget
Americans gave their lives to fight the Nazis. In the Netherlands, at a cemetery where 8,300 American men and women are buried, the Dutch never forget the sacrifice. Via The Washington Post.
Bad dreams
One more untold cost of war: The moral injury done to soldiers who are haunted by what they did in wartime. Via Vox.
Rising tide
Megan McCardle argues in Bloomberg that some Obamacare customers are in for a real sticker shock in 2016. Kevin Drum argues in Mother Jones that the numbers — like the 51.6 percent hike being requested by a leading insurer in New Mexico — will never come to pass. But whatever happens in the near term, one thing is clear, writes Dylan Scott in The National Journal: People are still nervous about rising health-care costs, and with good reason.
Legacy matters
How do you get to be a great ex-president? You live a long time, and you find something else important to do. Like William Howard Taft did. Or Jimmy Carter did. Or Teddy Roosevelt did not, unless you count getting Woodrow Wilson elected president. Via Justin S. Vaughn at The New York Times.
Follow the pollster
Marco Rubio’s pollster has written the book on how a Marco Rubio-style candidate could win the presidency in 2016. What Dan Balz wonders at The Washington Post is whether Rubio can follow the blueprint.
