80% of LBJ's median wage = 66% of Obama's median wage = the same [1968!!!] $10/hr minimum wage!

80% of $12.50 = 66% of $15.00 = the same [!!! 1968 !!!] $10 federal minimum wage

If LBJ was able to boost his minimum wage to 80% of his era's relatively generous (as in fair?) $12.50/hr median wage: to $10/hr (old figures adjusted) -- why can't Obama refuel his time's minimum wage to at least 66% of his era's relatively tight-wad $15.00/hr median wage (advanced only 20% as average income grew 100%): to the same $10/hr?

Why not do it in one jump as Eisenhower's (1956), LBJ's (1968) and Nixon's (1974) did? Seems plenty of headroom beneath plenty more headroom.

John F. Kennedy reportedly said (I believe I read it in "The Making of a President 1968"): "Who cares if the minimum wage is $1.00 or $1.25?" Yet Kennedy pushed $1.25/hr minimum for 1963 through Congress, expanding its real buying power almost 15% over Eisenhower's $8/hr minimum (in parallel with per person economic growth): to $8.75/hr.

Does today's more unequal sharing of labor earnings fairly reflect a lesser need for unskilled labor in a higher tech economy (should barbers get relatively -- or absolutely -- less)?

Let's guess that 90 percentile income level roughly equates to the 90 percentile IQ level (willingness to work and opportunity do count as much). The earnings of 90 percentile earners, all the way up to about the 97 percentile earners (and IQs?) have not grown more or less than overall economic growth over the past 4 decades. Who else might possess such extraordinary new productive powers?

Even the low end of top one percentile incomes (and IQs?) have not grown that much out of proportion (ask your doctor). If you ask Paul Krugman it is the ballooning incomes of the top 1/10th of one percentile and especially the top 1/100 of one percentile earners which have absorbed most of the 15% of income share lost by the bottom 90 percentile since 1973: ball players, news anchors, CEOs -- many earning 25 times what the same job skills paid 36 years ago (when "stagwagion" began its apparently too-slow-to-be-noticed creep).

If it would be economically comfortable in our labor market to return the minimum wage to a relatively weaker (in this century) $10/hr, then, it should be as equally doable for re-organized American labor (under sector-wide contracts -- only modern way -- versions in every modern OECD nation except US and Japan) to push the median wage all the way back to the overall share of 40 years ago: to as much as $25/hr.

The minimum wage could then bring up the rear at at least 50% of the resurrected median wage: $12.50/hr: end of the Crips and the Bloods -- who will thank us -- who wants to get shot and/or jailed to make $10/hr selling crack: the end of the most poverty in a modern economy that is twice as productive per person as it was in LBJ's time (he is looking down impatiently).

A "Compact of Free Association" with the US the only way to secure Israel? [Israeli Palestinian conflict]

A "Compact of Free Association" with the US the only way to secure Israel [author's update: Japan type arrangement probably more practical]?

In 1949 Israelis made yourselves comfortable, didn't you, taking 80% of the former Palestinian homeland when only 55% had been allotted to you by the UN -- squeezing a like number of Palestinians off to both sides of their ancestral dominion. Today Israel stoops to lower behavior vainly hoping to drive them off the last 20%.

I have pointed out more than once -- last time, the same week Harretz reported 25% of Israelis would consider abandoning home if Iran even got the nuclear bomb -- that all any enemy of Israel needs to do is leave behind in Tel Aviv to be discovered an UNEXPLODED nuke -- maybe without fissionable material; maybe they don't even have any, maybe only bluffing. How will you retaliate: by leaving an unexploded nuke in Tehran?

Half of Israel might empty out; the other half would have to follow.

This kind of scenario will naturally suggest itself once a Mideast nuclear arms race speeds up. Check out books like "On Thermonuclear War", "Thinking About The Unthinkable" (Kahn) and "Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy" (Kissinger) which were widely read on both sides during the height of the Cold War to see the road you may be heading down.

My unsolicited (cabdriver) advice on how Israel can secure itself the twenty-first century [author's update: Japan type arrangement more practical]:

Some South Pacific Island nations that were formerly US possessions or territories under US administration have maintained a "hint" of a sovereignty connection with us since they became independent -- to avoid becoming someone else's possessions. Under arrangements called "Compacts of Free Association." both side cooperate in mutual defense. Former territories cooperate by leaving their territory open for our military bases. Current compacts are renewable after 20 years.

It may be hard to define the precise sovereignty connection but their former condition of American territories or control combined with mutual defense on their soil communicates to everyone else that stepping on their toes somehow equates to stepping on the 800 pound guerilla's toes (if only because everyone knows that is the idea).

To realistically take cover under a "hint" (if only because everyone knows that is the idea) of American sovereignty you will need to look more convincingly like you conform to Western ideals of equality and especially to American norms of assimilation. This inescapably means a substantial right of return for large numbers of Palestinians. You may sensibly impose requirements needed to protect the fabric of a modern state (e.g., they must be able to contribute to the economy or be able to purchase real estate). If you are to plausibly adopt some kind of political connection with America, then, "exiled" Palestinians can much more plausibly claim a legitimate citizenship connection to the former 80% of their land. That is your cost.

Your permanent security gain (and the whole world's) would be Mideast nuclear disarmament (including you!), a lifting of the economic and personal life burdens of maintaining enough tanks, 3000, to repel an invading force of 9,000 NATO quality tanks manned by NATO quality troops on the population base of New Jersey.

Another benefit for you (and your consciences): you can start to feel and act like Jews again instead of like purveyors of pogroms for Palestinians. (All I can say for so-called "religious fanatic" settlers [I don't like that phrase because I am a prolife Roman Catholic and we are sometimes called that] is that they would probably behave even worse without their religion -- like a lot of the Ayatollahs.)

American ground force and air bases on your soil under a "hint" of shared sovereignty would mean nobody is going to leave a nuke behind in Israel. If they do they wont do it again (not that the 800 pound guerilla needs to blow anybody up -- but we would take care of it like we might be next because of that "hint").

If all this doesn't work out the "other half" of the Jewish people can always move here. You will be less trouble for us here than you are there. (Alternately, one of my Irish-American siblings has suggested giving the Palestinians the burnt-out areas of the Bronx -- as former Jewish land. You can always work something out

If you see any value in a "hint" of political connection to the 800 pound guerilla you will have to take it up with the US government yourselves (there are those words "take" and "yourselves" again -- how the current mess all started). I wouldn't expect a letter to my congressman to get anything going except his robot letter machine.

(Maybe if you want to "convert" you can become a full fledged territory or state :-])