Four days ago on March 22, Robert Mueller submitted his report on Donald Trumps collusion with the Russians in the 2016 election. Shortly following, Donald Trump was exonerated.

This report has caused an outcries from both parties. Democrats, especially those running for the presidential seat in 2020, have asked that the report gets released to the American people for them to check the legitimacy of the report.

Why shouldn’t the American people get to see the report? Personally, I think they should. The government should not have the ability to hold a report of this magnitude from the American people, especially because of the publicity this two and a half year report received.

Republicans have called out lead Democrats from “lying” about the report. Specifically, Representative Dan Crenshaw tweeted out at Representatives Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler, and Eric Swalwell for supposedly lying.

Many who identify as the right are mad at the media for ‘misleading’ them during these past two and a half years. Personally, if the exoneration holds, I believe this bump could really help President Trumps reelection campaign in 2020. He ran on the idea of fake news and draining the swamp and to find that this report cost about $34 million ( https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2019/mar/26/mueller-investigation-cost/ ) fits well with his political base. (On a side note, Paul Manafort forfeited approximately $42 million of his assets, bringing the total investigation to a profit around $8 million.)

If any Americans had been on the fence about what he was saying about corrupt politicians and ‘the swamp’, this report could have helped them pick Trumps side going into his 2020 campaign, we shall see.

Not to mention, this upcoming presidential election is expected to have some of the highest voter turnout in history. After the mid-terms had a Presidential election turnout ( pretty incredible if you look at turnout in recent years), analysts are expecting this Presidential election to have one of the highest turn outs in history. Also, when you consider the partisanship not only in congress at the moment, but also in the American public, there is a lot at stake. People are becoming more far-right and far-left than they have been in recent past. Personally, I see this creating massive turnout in 2020 considering the ideas coming from the Democrat candidates. From abolishing the electoral college to giving everyone $1,000 per month as a base income, the Democrats have been making noise.  This will no doubt give them good traction and viewership in their debates.

It’s not hard to realize the current minimum wage of $7.25 is impossible to live off of, even if one is working two minimum wage jobs. So the question remains, how do we get people to earn livable wages? Is it the businesses and corporations to blame? Or is it the people? I’m sure you already have an answer in your head like I do, but I’d like to explain both approaches here first.

To begin, lets explore the start of the minimum wage. Unfortunately, it wasn’t implemented then for the same reason it is raised here in 2019. FDR implemented it in 1938 at 0.25 an hour, or $4 in today’s dollars. Your first thought may be that he did this in order to make sure people were gaining something from work towards the end of the Great Depression, however there’s evidence this isn’t the case. Since minimum wage creates unemployment, the minimum wage was implemented to give businesses a reason not to hire people who weren’t white. More on this in the following articles:

https://medium.com/the-enclave-of-others/the-racist-history-of-minimum-wage-5dd71ebf0770

https://www.forbes.com/sites/carriesheffield/2014/04/29/on-the-historically-racist-motivations-behind-minimum-wage/#7077856d11bb

Democrats, as I’m sure you are aware, want a $15 minimum wage increase, typically over a period of time. For instance, the governor of Illinois just a signed law to make the states minimum wage $15 by 2025 (https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/politics/ct-met-illinois-minimum-wage-pritzker-signs-bill-20190219-story.html). Republicans have been silent on the issue, and typically aren’t for over 100% increase bumps in the wage.

Many economists believe in a slight increase of minimum wage periodically in order to prevent high end income inequality, while on the other hand many economists think the best way to raise wages is to abolish the minimum wage.

For a basic understanding of wages and business, when there are forced increases in wages, unemployment occurs. The wage floor set by the government, when high enough, creates a shortage in jobs. That’s why these laws are set in to raise the wage periodically. Also, businesses are forced to raise prices in order to maintain their margins and not go out of business because of their workers. Increases in the minimum wage also causes businesses to slow their hiring process as it is now more expensive for them to hire more workers.

Now for an example, think about the cashiers at a McDonald’s. Most make $10 an hour. Now in order for a business to hire the cashiers, each cashier needs to make the business at least $10.01 an hour for the business not to lose money on the employee. If the employee does not make the business at least $10.01, they can’t hire them.

I understand that there are people who don’t give a company direct profits like janitors, but companies hire these people to help maintain their business and that is where their value comes from.

Back to the cashier example, if a company now has to pay the worker more than what they earn to the company, they either A) Hike their prices, or B) Fire their workers. Option B) can be seen in restaurants or gas stations where you order from a screen. Option A) is can be seen in places like New York City. NYC has a very complicated minimum wage, where a business needs to increase their minimum wage based on the size of their business. At a certain level of workers, they need to hike their wages. This is an incentive for businesses to not hire and spread more work to their already hired employees who may then feel they are underpaid for their work.

When businesses are forced to raise their wages, they increase their prices. This is why the minimum wage will never be enough to live off of and the cost of living will always be more than the minimum wage.

Many economists think that increasing the minimum wage periodically like this allows for greater amounts of inflation, which is a sign of a healthy economy. It also jogs the economy, as more money will be spent and GDP will increase year over year, and wages will climb.

The other group of economists who think it should be abolished believe that with no minimum wage (remember it causes unemployment) will allow for constant labor competition. Yes, no minimum wage. Most people when they see this think “that’s ridiculous, there would be slavery,” but let me explain.

The argument is that businesses don’t work without employees. They need employees to function and that is why they are willing to pay people for their skills. However, no rational person would work for $1 an hour, or $0 an hour. Businesses have to encourage their workers to work and perform well and do so by raising wages. These are called efficiency wages and it is statistically found that people who are paid more are more productive at work. Therefore, businesses who only offer their employees small wages will be forced to raise them in order to get people to work. Also, the businesses will be able to choose how to pay their workers and not have to fire people or raise prices in order to stay above water during forced raise increases.

So, those are the two radical arguments, however there is somewhat of an in between. Here in the United States there are currently more job openings than people, which means businesses will compete via increasing wages to gain employees. The same thing would occur with $0, so there is no reason to get rid of it as $7.25 really isn’t worth much anymore and there is already labor competition in the U.S. economy. Therefore, increasing the minimum wage by small increments does indeed seem the best option, but not by the federal government. Because of the reasons explained above, it is best done by the states.

This allows for people to learn the skills needed by businesses so they can climb the economic ladder, while also earning some wages. Again, it is impossible for the minimum wage to be livable off of as explained above.

January 23rd marks the 32nd day of the government shutdown. With the Democrat party in control of the House of Representatives and Republican Donald Trump as the commander in chief, there has been no agreement in government funding. President Trump and most of his Republican Colleagues are looking for $5 billion of the roughly $3.8 trillion to fund a wall across the roughly 2,000 mile southern border with the hopes of slowing illegal immigration, human trafficking, and drug smuggling. Of course both parties would like to stop all three, however they are having a disagreement on how to do so. Therefore the government has been shutdown for just over a month. On the Republican side, democrats are being blamed for shutting down the government over what is considered “a sliver” of the budget (pictured below)

The line is said to be the $5 billion of the of the total budget of a roughly $5 trillion budget.

The argument is also made by the right-wing that the $5 billion of tax payer money would be worth the cost in the long run because illegal immigrants cost tax payers and the US roughly $54 billion per year (cost of services received – taxes paid per CNBC at https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/fact-check-how-much-does-illegal-immigration-cost-america-not-n950981 ).

On the other side, the Democrat party has claimed a wall would be a waste of tax payer dollars. Although Democrats have supported physical barriers and had spent 2.3 billion maintaining and building barriers along the border from 2007 to 2015, they feel as if the wall is unnecessary. (https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/15/18177566/democrats-trump-wall-shutdown) According to the same Vox article, democrats are okay and willing on increased border security, however they will not accept a wall as the centerpiece of security.

The two parties have been in a stalemate since the beginning of the shutdown in December of 2018 thus causing the hold of federal worker paychecks. As of January 22nd, federal workers have missed only one paycheck (don’t get me wrong, I understand this is a lot to some if not most families) that was due January 11th of 2019. The next paycheck would be due Friday January 25th of 2019.

Regardless of the outcome, both parties have named illegal immigration as an issue. Former President Obama had labeled it as a problem in his 2011 state of the Union address (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5Y1ExlzaWU), current speaker of the house Nancy Pelosi did the same in her first term as speaker (2007-2011)  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZHddAyzLKk) as did Mitt Romney during his 2012 presidential run. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2012/06/22/mitt-romneys-immigration-plan-the-full-text/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.ad68ff0d2900)

Finally, the reason many believe Trump is holding his ground is because this is what he based his 2016 election on. Many analysts find it unlikely Trump could win again in 2020 (assuming he will run again) if he does not get his wall.