US Debt Passes $28 Trillion for First Time

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How concerned should we be about America’s $28 trillion debt?

America has a problem. Well, almost 28,000,000,000,000 problems.

The national debt has ballooned to an astounding 27.9 trillion dollars. To put in perspective of just how much money that is, consider this.

If you were to stack $100 bills on top of each other, one million dollars would be around the three feet mark – about the height of a chair or a toddler.

And if you keep stacking the $100 bills, eventually past the peak of the world’s tallest building, going a little over half-a-mile into the air, this would be one billion dollars.

But we’re going for a trillion.

This would have you stacking $100 bills into the stratosphere and past the International Space Station. You would have to stack these bills 631 miles above Earth’s crust. That would equal one trillion dollars. Now imagine 28 stacks of 631 mile-high $100 bills.

That’s America’s debt.

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George Shultz, American statesman who sought Mideast peace and end to nuclear arms race, dies at 100

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Former Secretary of State George P. Shultz, a titan of American academia, business and diplomacy who spent most of the 1980s trying to improve Cold War relations with the Soviet Union and forging a course for peace in the Middle East, has died. He was 100.

Shultz died Saturday at his home on the campus of Stanford University, where he was a distinguished fellow at the Hoover Institution, a think tank, and professor emeritus at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.

The Hoover Institution announced Shultz’s death on Sunday. A cause of death was not provided.

A lifelong Republican, Shultz held three major Cabinet positions in GOP administrations during a lengthy career of public service.

He was labor secretary, treasury secretary and director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Richard M. Nixon before spending more than six years as President Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state.

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Minimum Wage in America: How Many People are Earning $7.25 an Hour?

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President Biden Proposed raising the Federal Minimum Wage to $15.00/hour as part of his $1.9 billion stimulus plan.

Americans have debated where to set the federal minimum wage for decades. President Joe Biden’s proposed stimulus plan aims to increase the federal minimum to $15 an hour, more than doubling the current wage of $7.25. Currently, wages vary by state, with some cities mandating more than double the federal minimum and other states with requirements below $7.25. Employees covered by both state and federal minimum wage laws are entitled to the higher of the two minimums.

How many people earn the federal minimum wage?
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) 1.6 million workers, or 1.9% of all hourly paid, non-self-employed workers, earned wages at or below the federal minimum wage in 2019. That year, 82.3 million people were paid hourly rates, making up 58.1% of all wage and salary workers in the United States.

Fewer Americans today make the federal minimum wage or less.
In 1980, when the federal minimum wage was $3.10 ($9.86 in 2019 dollars), 13% of hourly workers earned the federal minimum wage or less. Today, only 1.9% of hourly workers do. The number of federal minimum wage workers has decreased from 7.7 million in 1980 to 1.6 million in 2019. This is partly due to states establishing higher minimum wages than the federal level.

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$15 minimum wage an anchor on struggling businesses

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President Joe Biden has proposed a nationwide $15 minimum wage as part of his so-called “American Rescue Plan.” Talk about bad timing: Raising labor prices on businesses that are struggling to stay afloat is like throwing them a load of bricks instead of a life preserver.

State and local governments raising their minimum wages is one thing, but to more than double the federal minimum, from $7.25 to $15 per hour?

Nearly 1 in every 5 restaurants permanently closed their doors in 2020 as 30 large retail and restaurant companies filed for bankruptcy.

Meanwhile, employment in food services (restaurants and bars) fell 19% in 2020 as retail clothing jobs dropped 24% and accommodations (hotels) jobs plummeted 32%.

Although very few people — only about 1% of all workers and 0.1% of single parents — make the $7.25 minimum wage, a good portion of restaurant, retail and hotel jobs pay less than $15 per hour.

No one would suggest raising the rent on households who are months behind on their payments, so how could raising labor prices help businesses?

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Walt’s announcement drew big crowd, but details were thin

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Counting down to the 50th anniversary of Walt Disney World’s opening in October 1971,the Orlando Sentinel begins a weekly feature looking at the construction and impact of the theme park on our area. See more Disney at 50 coverage at OrlandoSentinel.com/DailyDisney. Walt Disney’s presence in Florida went from rumored to reported to reality as he … Read more