Thanks for your article on the minimum wage. One little-known factor of the resistance to the $15/ hour minimum wage, is the negative effect it would have on the poverty draft supplying bodies for our “all-volunteer military” in our endless, winless wars in the Muslim world. Northern New York’s own John McHugh, while Secretary of the Army, told the press that any sudden dramatic end to the Great Recession would make his job much more difficult.

A former West Point faculty department head agreed with me that peace breaking out would stick the defense industry with a trillion dollars in unsold inventory on their shelves. So they buy up every politician in sight. The 23rd Congressional District North of SU has more cows and trees than voters, yet it costs over a million bucks to run for House of Representatives re-election every two years.

Endless, winless wars have consequences. One VA study showed that at some point later in life, more Americans eventually committed suicide after returning from Vietnam than died over there. I’m currently helping online, with survivors of a US Marine unit that suffered 14 suicides since Afghanistan.