Great News:   Seattle votes to raise minimum wage to $15.00

Don’t get too excited. I am still opposed to most Government interference in the lives and businesses of Americans.  BUT Seattle raising their minimum wage will answer lots of questions without endangering the lives and business of all Americans.

If raising the minimum wage has positive results, it will be a fact. If it destroys business and causes job losses, it will be documented.

In 1831 Alexis de Tocqueville studied America and in 1835 published “Democracy in America.” In it he calls democracy “The Great American Experiment.”

The beauty of States rights is that instead of one big experiment we should have fifty states each operating independently but under the umbrella of the federal government.  Then within each state there should be cities, towns and counties each conducting their own “experiments in democracy.”  Finally within these there are citizens each conducting their own experiments.

If a single state, county, or town attempts an experiment that fails it does not damage the entire country.  Detroit failed. The country survived.  But did we learn a lesson about what not to do?

Some states are bankrupt or almost so. These states provide answers for the rest of us.

People leave failing states and towns. They move to the successful ones.

When the federal government forces each and every state, city, town, county and individual to follow the same path we face the possibility of massive national failure.

The Seattle minimum wage experiment will answer the questions. That’s great news.

As this editorial is rather short I’ll include the following de Tocqueville quotes for your consideration.

Alexis de Tocqueville

“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.”

“America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”

“Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom, socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.”

“Americans are so enamored of equality, they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.”

“I do not know if the people of the United States would vote for superior men if they ran for office, but there can be no doubt that such men do not run.”

“Society will develop a new kind of servitude which covers the surface of society with a network of complicated rules, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate. It does not tyrannise but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”

“When the taste for physical gratifications among them has grown more rapidly than their education . . . the time will come when men are carried away and lose all self-restraint . . . . It is not necessary to do violence to such a people in order to strip them of the rights they enjoy; they themselves willingly loosen their hold. . . . they neglect their chief business which is to remain their own masters.”

“Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.”

“Nothing is more wonderful than the art of being free, but nothing is harder to learn how to use than freedom.”