The moral case for a $15 minimum wage is simple and straightforward. In the words of Robert Reich, the Harvard professor and former Secretary of Labor: “no one should work full time and still remain in poverty.” For Reich the job loss that might follow is insignificant. Jobs that don’t provide a living wage are not worth having. For him, this is analogous to laws restricting child labor or sweatshop conditions. The economic case for a higher minimum wage wrests on multiple grounds – that on an inflation-adjusted basis the wage is lower than it was fifty years ago, that the increase would reduce economic inequality, that employment could actually rise as a study by Card and Krueger showed occurred in the 1990s, that the increase would boost the economy by boosting demand. The political case for the minimum wage is irrefutable – it is extremely popular among Republicans and Democrats. How can you possibly be against helping the country’s neediest?

The moral case against the minimum wage is first, that it violates the principle of freedom of contract, second that the consequence is apartheid for the least skilled.

The moral case is bolstered by a study of the history of minimum wage in both the United States and South Africa where minimum wage laws had their origin in the attempts by white workers to price relatively low skilled blacks out of the market. It worked. The economic case against the minimum wage is closely related. The first law of economics is “tax it get less of it, subsidize it get more of it.” Raise the price of labor, demand for labor will go down. To raise the minimum wage is to rip the bottom rung from the ladder of opportunity for the youngest and least skilled.Two touchstones are critical in assessing any social policy: the leakage rate and the coverage rate. The leakage rate measures those not in the targeted population who benefit from it. The coverage rate is the percentage of the targeted population that benefit. The minimum wage has a high leakage rate – most people with minimum wage jobs are not poor – was well as a low coverage rate – most poor people do not work at minimum wage jobs. If you care about poor people, target them directly. A means-tested basic income program or an expanded earned income tax credit are social programs that are consistent with reducing want and encouraging work without violating freedom of contract or the basic laws of economics. A carbon tax makes sense because it taxes something that is bad (carbon burning). A minimum wage is bad because it taxes something that is good (job creation).

The Palestinian Case:

• Palestinians have an exclusive right to Palestine – Palestinians are analogous to Native Americans.
• The state of Israel is the creation of imperialist Western powers – Secretary of State George Marshall was right and Truman and Clifford were wrong. (Marshall opposed US recognition of Israel in 1947/8)
• Palestine is sacred to Muslims and once a land is Muslim it will always be Muslim. The Al-Aqsa Mosque in Old Jerusalem is the third holiest place in Islam. From there Muhammed ascended into heaven.
• Palestinians are treated as second class citizens by the Israelis – with the perfect symbols of apartheid being the West Bank Wall, the ID system, and the Palestinian exclaves.
• There have been many massacres of Palestinians by Jews: Safsaf (1948), Deir Yassin (1948) , Kafr Kasim (1956),  Sabra and Shatila (performed by the Lebanaese Phalange with the complicity of the IDF),  war crimes in Gaza in 2014 including airstrikes killing 1472 one third of which were children, confirmed by UN Human Rights Commission.

The Israeli Case:

• If any people on the earth has a well documented claim to any land, it is the Jewish people to the land of Israel. It’s even in the Koran, Chapter 7, verse 137.
• The Jewish people were homeless for almost 2000 years and the most persecuted minority on the planet, culminating in the Holocaust.
• Jerusalem is to Judaism as Mecca is to Islam and while the Jews have but one country Arabs have 22, and Muslims 50.
• Jews came to Israel in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries not as invading army but as settlers and refugees who turned a desert into a garden and built a state where Muslims (especially women) have more rights than they do in most Muslim lands.
• Israeli territorial expansion and any restrictions on Palestinian life after 1945 was in response to threats to its national security by the coordinated invasion by surrounding Arab countries (1948), (1974) or by the planned invasion whose success was prevented by a preemptive air strike (1967) or by vicious terrorist attacks or bombings from Gaza.

Why have the Jews  been the most persecuted minority in human history? Why has Israel, of all the countries in the world, been singled out for a  boycott by the American Studies Association? Why are there more Talmuds in South Korea than in Israel? Why are children in China taught to “be like the Jews”?

One of the greatest paradoxes of human history is that the ethnic minority that has contributed most to humanity is also the most persecuted. Remember first of all that both Christianity and Islam grew out of Judaism. They are in effect Jewish offshoots. You might even call them Jewish sects. And then there is the scientific contribution. Jews have won an absolutely astonishing 21% of Nobel Prizes while only representing .2% of the world’s population.  The key to the paradox is simple: envy. The Jews are hated because they are so successful. But why are they have they been so ridiculously productive?

The South Koreans think the Talmud has something to do with it. That’s why Seoul has more Talmuds than Tel Aviv. After World War II, South Korea was a devastated impoverished land with pathetic prospects. But the South Koreans wanted to pull themselves up and looked around the world for models. They saw the success of the Jews and decided to emulate them. So they started buying Talmuds.

As a Catholic boy growing up in Washington DC in a parish made up of mostly Irish and Italian families, I had met all of one Jew before heading off to Harvard in 1971. There I was utterly astounded at the concentration of Jews in the student body and even more on the faculty. After forty years of puzzling over this enigma, I have come up with what I call the Jewish Triad theory.The three parts of the Jewish triad are the Talmud, the Bar Mitzvah, and Chavruta. Compare the Talmud page to the Catholic catechism that I had to memorize as a child. The catechism consists of a list of questions with one and only one answer for each. By contrast The Talmud page consists of one key passage of sacred text at the center with multiple different interpretations radiating out from the center. The student is to consider all the opinions and come up with his own. At the Bar Mitzvah the young man publicly presents his interpretation to an assembled congregation. This after a daily trial by Chavruta – the practice of being paired up with a peer (Chaver) whose job is to destroy your arguments as yours is to destroy his. By age 13 in this tradition every boy has the analytical equivalent of a Harvard Law degree. In stark contrast was my experience – memorizing the one official answer to every question and my coming of age ceremony consisting of standing silently in a cathedral with 700 other boys and girls and being blessed by a Cardinal 300 feet away and barely visible.

The Jewish triad is cultural gem. The most successful minorities should not be envied and hated but emulated and celebrated. The South Koreans and the Chinese have chosen the right path in this regard. And the results speak volumes.