During the State of the Union address President Obama suggested that having a minium wage was a moral issue. In the speech he said:

Even with the tax relief we’ve put in place, a family with two kids that earns the minimum wage still lives below the poverty line. That’s wrong. That’s why, since the last time this Congress raised the minimum wage, nineteen states have chosen to bump theirs even higher.

The President believes that it is a moral wrong for any full-time worker, regardless of what the job is, how much the job is worth, etc., should be able establish a home for a family of four. To solve this problem the President announced:

Tonight, let’s declare that in the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works full-time should have to live in poverty, and raise the federal minimum wage to $9.00 an hour. This single step would raise the incomes of millions of working families. . . . For businesses across the country, it would mean customers with more money in their pockets. In fact, working folks shouldn’t have to wait year after year for the minimum wage to go up while CEO pay has never been higher. So here’s an idea that Governor Romney and I actually agreed on last year: let’s tie the minimum wage to the cost of living, so that it finally becomes a wage you can live on.

I probably sound like a broken record, beating the same drum, but if you were a minority or teenager raising the minimum wage to $9 per hour is not what you wanted to hear. Here’s why as I stated back in 2006:
Read more on The President’s $9 Path to Increasing Minority and Teen Unemployment…

Last September the New York City Board of Health approved a measure that would ban the sale of sugary drinks over 16 ounces. Politicians justified the action because of the city’s escalating obesity rate and research linking sugary drinks to weight gain. Overall, care for obesity-related illnesses costs the New York City nearly $2.8 billion annually, according to city Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley. Politicians, then, believe they have the authority to legislate how much of a beverage citizens can legally purchase at one time.

In a strange turn of events, and possibly the first time in recent history we seen cooperation of this nature, the NAACP and the Hispanic Federation are joining forces to fight government intervention in the market to try to stop the ban from taking effect March 12. The Associated Press reports:
Read more on NAACP, Hispanics Fight Government Intervention…

Just after the Presidential inauguration several leaders raised questions about whether or not President Obama should have sworn the oath of office by placing his hand on the Bible. Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church—a Protestant mega-church in Seattle—after seeing Obama sworn in said, “Praying for our president, who today will place his hand on a Bible he does not believe to take an oath to a God he likely does not know.” Driscoll’s comments stirred up a firestorm of controversy across the country and the Internet.

From a different angel, Dr. Cornel West, professor of Religious Philosophy and Christian Studies at the Union Theological Seminary, reacted strongly against President Obama placing his has on the Bible of Martin Luther King, Jr. in particular. From West’s perspective President Obama had no business placing a hand on King’s Bible for any reason. Obama is no King, suggests West:
Read more on Questioning Obama’s Hand On The Bible…

The Food Bank For New York recently released their annual report on the state of hunger in the city and the growing disparity between low-income New Yorkers and New York City’s professional class. The report refers to this disparity as the food “haves” and “have nots.” The report, “NYC Hunger Experience 2012: One City, Two Realities,” was released Tuesday at the 21st annual Agency Conference.

The New York Non-Profit Press summarized the key findings:
Read more on Debating Food Equality in New York…

Ernesto Sirolli says we are failing at helping the developing world, and he should know: he’s been doing this work for a long time. In this fresh, funny and insightful TedX talk, Sirolli says the key to bringing people out of poverty is entrepreneurship. Pointing out that the prevailing attitudes of paternalism and patronization don’t work, Sirolli emphasizes that we must become servants to the local passion before any development can occur. He quotes Peter Drucker: “Planning is actually incompatible with an entrepreneurial society and economy. Planning is the kiss of death of entrepreneurship.”

Read more on ‘Well, at least we fed the hippos’: How To Fail At Aid In Developing World…

The Pew Center on the States is reporting that ten states voted to raise the minimum wage for workers in 2013. Teens and low-skilled workers should be protesting in response. According to the report,

Read more on Ten States Further Crippling Workers in 2013…

The BBC News reports that 1 out of 10 young people between the ages of 16 and 25 are struggling to cope with life. The main culprit: despair related to unemployment. The survey of 2,000 teens and young adults was conducted by The Prince’s Trust Youth Index.

The survey commentators seem surprised that education and training opportunities alone are not enough to provide hope for unemployed young people. Young people rightly want to know why they are training for jobs that do not exist. This has been particularly difficult for Northern Ireland where 20% of 18 to 24-year-olds cannot find employment. From the BBC:
Read more on Unemployment and Despair in the UK…

In the German newsmagazine Spiegel, Kenyan economics expert James Shikwati says that foreign aid to Africa is doing more harm than good:

SPIEGEL: Mr. Shikwati, the G8 summit at Gleneagles is about to beef up the development aid for Africa…

Read more on African Economics Expert: “Please stop the Aid!”…

In France, more than half of the population benefits directly or indirectly from welfare payments. Not surprisingly, the result has been that that the poverty rate for the past twenty years has remained unchanged. “Despite its good intentions,” says Sylvain Charat, “welfareship has created a ‘poverty trap.’”
Read more on The Poverty Trap in France…

This past Friday, I had the opportunity to present a paper at the Sophia Institute annual conference at Union Theological Seminary. This year’s topic was “Marriage, Family, and Love in the Eastern Orthodox Tradition.” My paper was titled, “What Makes a Society?” and focused, in the context of marriage and the family, on developing an Orthodox Christian answer to that question. The Roman Catholic and neo-Calvinist answers, subsidiarity and sphere sovereignty, respectively (though not mutually exclusive), receive frequent attention on the PowerBlog, but, to my knowledge, no Orthodox answer has been clearly articulated, and so it can be difficult to know where to begin. To that end, it is my conviction—and a subject of my research—that a historically sensitive, Orthodox answer to this question can found be in the idea of asceticism, rightly understood.

While I will not reproduce my paper here, I wanted to briefly summarize two of its main points that might have broader interest. First of all, what is asceticism? Second, how can asceticism be viewed as an organizational principle of society? Lastly, I want to briefly explore—beyond the scope of my paper—the relevance of this principle for a free society. Read more on Asceticism and the Free Society…