Recently, something happened that changed the way most people view the universe—Pluto was demoted from its status as the last of the nine planets to a “dwarf planet.” My view of the world and the fallibility of the things that I learned at school were once more brought to mind as I mourned the loss of my favorite planet. It seems that not a day goes by where basic tenets that we hold to be true are challenged by the public eye and sometimes it can cause one to doubt. However, there are a couple of things that one must keep in mind as they ponder recent events.

God governs the affairs of men, as Benjamin Franklin stated so eloquently many years ago. This was true when the founding fathers wrote the Constitution and it is true today. In the world we live in today it is not at all uncommon for humans to declare themselves infallible. However, it is simply not true. Shocked? Well, I have got some news for you—only God knows the ways of the universe, because He created it and He knows every intimate detail about the stars, planets, comets, and anything else that is out there. Therefore, He is the only one that we can always trust to be infallible.

The first issue of Civilized Revolt is out today, and you can check it out here! This first issue features the following articles:

A Right to Revolution, by Alessandra Kroger
Farcical Justice, by Sam Ashwood
Groupthink, Comrades, Groupthink!, by Jarret Mock
The Dating Game Is Not A Game, by Darcy Ingraham
The Forgotten President, by Casey Coolidge
“Who Am I?”, a history column by R.E. Wehrwein

So head on over there now and take a look at the new Civilized Revolt!

For those curious, a new issue of Virtue will be published next Monday.

How often have you heard someone say, “The government needs to raise the minimum wage,” or, “We need a decent minimum wage”?

I hear it (and read it) all the time. Most recently, I read it on my local newspaper’s website, where it appeared in the “comments” section of this week’s poll. (Scroll down the page a bit, and on the right side you’ll find the poll. Click “Current results” and then click “Comments” to view the comments voters have made so far.)

A person made the following comment on the poll question:

We need a change in leadership, We need new legistors to stand up to the abuses of power and who will take what the average American has to say. We need a decent minimun wage without cutting estate taxes for the rich How can we vote for a party that deceives people by attaching the estate tax bill to the minimun wage increase.

In response, I posed the following question: what would happen if the government raised the minimum wage to $20 an hour? (The answer: the cost of the McDonald’s Big Mac—and a lot of other things—will triple; jobs will be eliminated, and businesses may be forced out of business.) By posing this question, I hope to get people to understand what a farce the minimum wage is and always has been.

There never will be a “decent” minimum wage. That’s because whenever the minimum wage is raised, companies will eventually raise their prices to make up the loss, and we’ll be right back to where we started. My younger brother saw this on a personal level—he works at a McDonald’s restaurant and saw first-hand what happened when our state of Minnesota recently raised the minimum wage from $5.15 to $6.15. The minimum wage artificially drives up the cost of products. The only way to counteract this would be for the government to put price caps on products, but that is certainly one of the quickest ways to destroy an economy.

There is a glut of information about all the problems of the minimum wage—see here for one example—and yet so many still unfortunately believe in a minimum wage, and a “decent” one at that! We should do our best to correct this glaring problem.