Two Aug. 8 Bloomberg View pieces and Noel Gallagher’s lead article Aug. 9 illustrate the propensity of the American press to omit essential, if inconvenient, dimensions of stories.
• “Another View: Deportation advocates have explaining to do” discusses what to do about the 11 million “illegal” Hispanic immigrants.
It omits any notice of why they’re here: NAFTA’s foreseen displacement of a million Mexican farmers and their families (it turned out to be 2 million) whose survival required coming to the U.S.
NAFTA’s collateral damage obliges recognizing our moral responsibility for these victims of our greedy policies.
• In his commentary, Noah Smith argues against a national $15 minimum wage: Untested, the danger of its having a negative effect on the economy could be greater.
Two omissions: The original minimum age was not set by any such calculation; it reflected a recognition that a worker is worthy of his hire – that full-time employment required a living wage.
The present minimum wage is less than half that because in the 1970s, investor and owner discontent with modest business profits (in a very healthy economy) dictated a continuing war on government regulation and unions. Along with globalization and the purchase of Washington, this disempowered labor and unleashed greed at the expense of the dignity of labor and a healthy economy.
Noel K. Gallagher’s college debt series (“Political response to crushing college debt ratchets up”) and every discussion of Barack Obama’s tuition-free community college proposal and the broader Democratic tuition-free public college proposals I have seen fail to ask why they haven’t proposed replicating the successful GI Bill. It allowed students to take government aid to their school of choice – public, private or church.
John Kennedy’s proposed federal aid to public schools only crashed in the 1962 elections in the face of opposition by parents of church-related school students who were already denied state education funding.
William H. Slavick
Portland
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