Giving Thanks, Even Now

Last year, on Thanksgiving day, the subject of a rant on this blog was the minimum wage. It was the second of two, in which I presented arguments—both pro and con—about increasing the minimum wage. My intent in writing the two pieces was to remove emotion from the arguments and rely, instead, entirely on economic principles. This morning, in reading the two pieces (November 25 in opposition to increasing the minimum wage and November 26 in favor of it), it occurred to me that the effort to extract emotion from the argument was a fool’s errand. Economics is one of the social sciences; emotion, therefore, is endemic to the discipline. And, in fact, my emotion won out over my attempt at dispassionate argument against raising the minimum wage. The lesson, for me, is this: compassion will ultimately win in a battle with greed, even greed cleverly disguised as rationality and science. I hope the lesson is based firmly in reality. Happy Thanksgiving. Even in times of uncertainty and fear, I have a lot for which to be thankful. I hope anyone reading this post does, as well.