Operative MR has been working on a secret project for us, the nature of which shall not be revealed, named Project Shoot Down ISON. She takes time out from her busy schedule to write in. Please note especially her first full sentence, below. It is most vital you remember this.

Dear Czar,

I love your site, I check it out at least once a day.

I agree with you entirely on opposing the idea of a minimum wage and the evil of unions. Your assurance that $15.00/hr is not a living wage may be true for half of the country, but you should know that a single person can indeed live on $15.00/hour (40 hours/week) if they live in Dallas, TX, (my home) and I assume throughout the South and Southwest. I don’t mean for that to support any minimum wage, much less a raise in it, but just to be more accurate. It would not allow for any of what I think of as luxuries like vacation travel, eating out, a new car, cable TV, comprehensive mobile phone package, but it can be done. I’m not sure it can be done without employer supplemented healthcare pre-Obamacare. I know that $31,000/year gets you federal supplements under the ACA, but can’t know if it would be sufficient.

I confess that I make just under $18/hour, 40 hours a week. So if my pay went down to $15/hr, I’d simply quit tithing (as much) and quit my weekly private music lessons and find a few more economies I could handle, grudgingly. I can get a nice 1 bedroom apartment here for the same price as my current home mortgage, (that I have thanks to a small inheritance). I can’t afford the travel, the web/text mobile phone, the movie channels on cable, or the restaurants, and I’m single (with no dependents) and currently have very generous employer based health insurance. I do worry about how affordable that might be this time next year; what part of the mandate may kick in and affect the cost to me and my employer, and cause me to lower my tithe and cancel my lessons.

Thanks again to you and all of the Gormogons for the interesting, well written, and informative articles.

P.S. If I was reduced to $15/hr, I’d have to sell my house as I’d not be able to pay to maintain it. But I’d get a second job which I want to do anyway as I’d like to have a buffer and a rare luxury.

So as Emily Lutella said, never mind.

The Czar is astonished by this note. Not that MR could find a way to live on $15 an hour, but that there are very clear signs in her note that she read the entire essay, which was painfully long.

Small note of clarification—and not to be seen as a rebuttal to MR’s note—but the Czar is not opposed to all unions. In fact, trade unions—particularly those in the construction industry—seem to be pretty efficient, offer clear benefits to its members, produce a generally higher-quality work product, and are competitively priced. Sure, the Czar would love to see there be no unions at all, but if you have to have them, the pay-their-own-way trade unions are often quite reasonably run.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.