The document you cite relates to businesses hiring services. There is a different publication that is germane: IRS publication 926 is for household employers; for example, someone getting their lawn cut.

From the document, "A self-employed worker usually provides his or her own tools and offers services to the general public in an independent business."

In fact, the very next paragraph in the publication gives an example that addresses the situation outlined here:

"Example. You made an agreement with John Peters to care for your lawn. John runs a lawn care business and offers his services to the general public. He provides his own tools and supplies, and he hires and pays any helpers he needs. Neither John nor his helpers are your household employees."

This is an important point. A minimum wage hurts the people for whom it is sold as a benefit.

The minimum wage is actually an unemployment law. It becomes illegal to hire someone below that wage.

Now, let's say you have a business and you have a choice between hiring someone who has a "market value" of $7/hour and someone whose value is $15/hour. If the work that needs to be done is $7/hour then you will hire the person whose market value is closest to what you have to pay. If the minimum wage is raised to $15/hour then you will hire the person who has a market value of $15/hour. Why would you hire someone who is worth $7/hour and pay them $15/hour if, for the same price, you can get someone who is worth $15/hour.

Let's look at it from the employee's perspective. The person who is currently worth $15/hour has to contribute $15/hour of worth to their employer, otherwise they would be out of a job. That person is now being offered a job where they only have to contribute $7/hour of worth to their employer for the same pay. Which job will they select?

Perhaps, you would like to argue that by raising the minimum wage to $15/hour then the employer who needs $15/hour worth of value from their employee will need to raise their pay so their $15/hour employee doesn't go and take the job that only requires $7/hour worth of work. Explain to me how that's not wage inflation.

The only real winners here are the tax collectors. The tax tables aren't indexed for inflation. When wages are inflated, the real purchasing power of no one is increased but real tax revenue goes up because more people make above the minimum required to pay taxes causing a broadening of the base that pays taxes.

You essentially have that now, in the U.S., with the number set at $1 million. This happened years ago during the last assault on economic freedom when the tax deduction for salary expenses above $1 million was eliminated. The push was to get more people paid by something at risk and dependent on company performance and, thus, we saw the massive increase in stock options used as compensation.

Now people complain that stock option based compensation is outrageously high. Stock options, in the U.S., by law have no value when issued and only have value if the stock price increases. Whether you think the stock increased because of sound management of the company or because of legal shenanigans is a matter of opinion left to the market to determine.

The bigger issue, economically, with asset prices of anything represented by a fiat currency is the expectation that has been set that hard assets have to increase in price when there's no underlying increase in value. Selling inflation as a means of saving and increasing the value of one's assets is no substitute for increasing the true economic value of one's skills or the stock price representing a company's value.

It is this very manipulation of asset prices via inflationary policies that has us in the discussion about paying people a wage that doesn't represent their market worth and also a discussion about accumulation of assets held by the bankers.

Whether you like to admit it or not, there are a lot of luxury items on your list.

Should we really pay a "living wage" so people can save money, buy life insurance, contribute to their retirement, have internet access, have a phone or a car that's nice enough to require a monthly payment. The student loan isn't looking like that great of an investment, yet we're still encouraging tons of people to get deeper into debt in order to fund the "higher education" cartels.

You mention your spouse and the ability to pay your bills and save for retirement. I think that's great, but why the argument and insistence that a "living wage" be enough for a single person to live alone and have all these things? What's wrong with pooling resources?

I get that you think things are tight for you and, like anyone else, would like things to be easier. But when I look at your list I see a pretty solid representation of things that aren't required to live.

The whole "living wage" thing is a joke because it has no definition. It's nothing more than a slogan to entrap those who can't think beyond their own backyard experiences.

How is a one-time price rise not inflation?

You don't pay employer taxes when you hire a contractor.

As the teen isn't hired as an employee then there's no need to be sure he has a work permit.

By definition within the law, Valeria Plame was not an operative.

Scooter Libby didn't out her.

Scotter Libby lied to investigators, for whatever idiotic reason, and was convicted of that crime. His sentence was commuted but the conviction and its costs are still on his record.

No, it's worse than that.

Obama never really said anything of substance. He said many things that led people to believe they heard what they wanted to hear; a classic move by a flim-flam man.

A friend of mine used to be in the stock market and people would ask him, "What's the market going to do tomorrow?"

His stock reply was, "A lot of people are going to be surprised."

The number of people who thought he actually told them something was shocking. Obama was the same. He said a lot of things were bad but never said what he would do instead. He used the ultimate echo-chamber, a biased media, to say things for him that he never said.

Allow the local governments to charge more for faster lanes.

Oh, wait, they already do that in some localities.

I've heard arguments like yours before and it's similar to someone who argues against wearing a seat belt because they might be in an accident involving fire or submersion and they want to be able to escape quickly. There are very limited circumstances where wearing a seat belt may cause more injury or damage than not wearing it. The vast majority of people in the vast majority of accidents are better off wearing their seatbelt. It's the same with carrying a gun for self-defense. There are very limited circumstances when carrying a gun for self-defense is worse than not having one at all when facing danger.

I will give you that if someone sneaks up behind me and shoots me there's little I can do.

Self-defense is about a lot more than being able to use a firearm in a proficient manner; one has to be aware of their surroundings. Someone minding their own business is at a disadvantage when confronted by a predator as they are forced to be in the position of reacting. Fortunately, the first thing a predator does when you ignore his demand is to repeat the demand. You'd be surprised at how much time is available to someone sufficiently trained in gun handling skills.

When I carry my gun it is loaded, cocked and ready to go. It is in condition 1. Being a 1911, it has two safeties - a thumb safety that has to be pressed down and a grip safety that disengages when I properly grip the firearm. Disengagement of these safeties is a reflexive move for me and an integral part of the draw stroke from the holster. It takes me no more time to disengage those safeties than it takes me to draw the firearm from the holster.

In a close-quarter situation I may not be aiming at all. I may be firing from a retention position.

Anything from 6 to 15 feet or so and I can aim well enough using a flash-sight picture and deliver a shot quickly. Anything out to 75 feet and I'm comfortable delivering the shots I need from a standing position. My drills at 75 feet are usually two shots center of mass (8" circle) in under 2 seconds from the holster. My drills from 9 feet are two shots center of mass, or one head-shot, in under 1 1/2 seconds from the holster. These performance standards are fairly easy to accomplish with proper training and practice.

In my force-on-force training and in my real-life situations, the amount of time necessary to draw and aim is the least of my issues. There's usually a lot more going on that has to be properly assessed. With proper training these other issues become part of an overall process that becomes ingrained and easily relied upon.

One other thing I'll give you or anyone opposed to using firearms for self-defense: I've seen a lot of people in force-on-force training that should never carry a gun. Many of them should probably never leave the safety of their basement either.

It's impossible for me to understand your logic.

I've certainly lived off a lot less than that (either of your numbers), quite comfortably. I once worked three jobs to be able to afford 1/2 a bedroom in a two bedroom apartment with three other guys. It created an incentive for me to find a more efficient way to earn what I needed in order to live in the style I wanted to live.

At what point did it become necessary that the government mandate a wage level so that people can live the way they want without incentive to live better?

Really, you think I'm a mean-spirited jerk with no empathy because I want people to have an incentive to get a better life and improve their skills?

What is your hierarchy of needs list that makes it so difficult to "live on" $1,000/month? Do we need to mandate a wage so that people can live alone in their own apartment or house? How large? Should they be able to have cell phone service, internet service? How about a computer? What kind?

Get a roommate or two and pool your resources.

In the richest country that *ever* existed, in an era of post-scarcity (at least here in the US) with productivity through the roof and increasing rapidly, how can we allow the removal of incentives for people to work hard and get ahead and make something of themselves.

Just because some fail doesn't mean we should dumb down the entire system so you don't hurt. Fear of failure is a great incentive.

I'd prefer to keep telling people that with hard work they can become something. It might not be easy but they will be all the more satisfied when they succeed.

Your argument strikes me as wanting to tell people the "man" is keeping you down and you'll never succeed so don't work hard and we'll make sure you can live a life of relative luxury.

Forget all that and explain the economics that would allow raising everyone's pay to live the standard you've set without causing a rise in the cost of living at that level.

What didn't happen was some asshat's desire to demonstrate his knowledge of "inside knowledge" outweighed the oath he or she took to keep their mouth(s) shut.

It wasn't the method that was used to gather the intelligence that caused the problem, it was the disclosure of that method.

From the summary - "researchers, backed by millions of dollars from the federal government, are looking for ways to protect key industries from the impact of climate change by racing to develop new breeds of farm animals that can stand up to the hazards of global warming."

I think he meant to say, "researchers, lured by millions of dollars from the federal government, are looking for ways to win federal grants related to climate change and are racing to suck up as much money from the feds as they can under the rubric of fixing the hazards of global warming."

Great points. I've gone through similar processes essentially balancing calories-in vs. calories-out. It's easier today using any number of apps for my phone.

What's most shocking about selecting the proper foods is portion sizes.

I had a meal last night that was lean pork loin (6 oz/168 grams), green peas (1 cup) and about 3 cups of potatoes. It felt like a huge serving to me. That meal had significantly fewer calories (556) than my 1/2 of a fast food meal my wife and I shared the day before while we were driving across Arizona.

I now look at food as expensive or cheap based on calories provided rather than dollars. My wife will ask me if I want a particular item to eat and I might respond, "No thanks, that's too expensive," meaning that I'll spend too many of my day's allotted calories on that particular food.

One can still eat at a fast food restaurant by getting a grilled chicken sandwich (relatively cheap calorie wise) vs. a fried chicken sandwich (very expensive calorie wise). If one is careful then one can eat a larger volume of food and feel fuller while getting fewer calories and better nutrition.

It does require, however, a certain level of personal responsibility and ownership.

I agree, mostly, with your comment about the 10th amendment. It has two parts - the States and the People.

However, your reading of the 2nd seems to imply that the 2nd grants a right rather than restricting a power. The preamble to the Bill of Rights states the intention of the BoR to be a further set of restrictions on the government and not a grant of rights to the people.

I, obviously, find it very difficult to accept that the 2nd amendment is not a fundamental right given the preamble to the Bill of Rights, its inclusion in the Bill of Rights and its appearance near the top of the list.

It's difficult for me to see how I could agree with your conclusion without some significant manipulations of the purpose of the document and language:

- The overall purpose of the Bill of Rights is to place further declaratory and restrictive clauses on the power of the government not on individual rights

- The Bill of Rights enumerates individual rights and, except for the 10th, mentions no other entity except in a restrictive capacity. In the 10th the states are mentioned in order to further restrict the powers of the national government.

- Whatever the purpose of the 2nd amendment its conclusion is direct, "...the rights of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." The directness of that statement can not be ignored. The authors could have just as easily said, "...the rights of the states to arm their citizens shall not be infringed." An insistence on using the first part of the sentence to modify the second ignores the plain language of the second. There are many elegant ways to write the sentence to support your position and none of those were selected.

Finally, I believe that all our rights are fundamental. The concept of a fundamental right is a fiction invented by the Supreme Court and one that really started to erode in the 1930s. Nevertheless, it is part of our current jurisprudence.

What is most disturbing to me is that we now have to demonstrate that a right is fundamental in order to have that right incorporated against the states. This is another example of why Roberts and other Supreme Court justices are wrong when they start with a presumption of constitutionality when examining a law rather than a presumption of liberty. That presumption began in the 1930s with the wholesale redefinition of "commerce" in order to expand the reach of the national government.