Raising the Minimum Wage: Why it Does More Harm than Good

In the State of the Union Address President Obama’s proposal to increase the minimum wage attracted a great deal of attention. At the time, the assembled audience greeted his statement with a standing applause. A few days post-speech is the nation finally ready to forget the rhetoric and focus on the consequences raising the minimum wage imposes on the middle class?

Let’s take a look at a local example. A smoothie business owner works every day to maintain a profitable store, support his growing family, and keep on three hard working employees at minimum wage. If the government mandate to increase the minimum wage he could be looking at $11,000 in additional annual expenses. Since businesses survive on profit, the owner may be forced to lay off a worker and pick up the extra hours himself. What happens to this former employee? All odds point to another person added to the unemployment payroll.

Additional government mandates on businesses places a strain on the middle class. Companies’ inability to retain employees send these individuals back onto the government’s payroll and forces the burden onto the hard working middle class.

What happens when the government finds itself faced with increased unemployment benefits to cover? Washington needs to instantly gain the funds while keeping the source practically invisible to the untrained eye. Enter a “stealth tax” coded as inflation.  When the government presses the magic button to print more currency the dollar loses its purchasing power. Suddenly, the middle class’s money earning 1% in the bank can no longer keep up with the 10% price increase that we are seeing in the vital staples of life; i.e. food and energy.. These consequences trickle back down to the smoothie store owner who is now forced to provide more free labor himself while paying more money as prices for ingredients and shipping costs continue to rise. The $1.75 appears to be a much bigger deal than the number lets on. Pretty soon the local businesses are going to run much like the government: on a deficit. The only difference is, the local smoothie store will not survive.

Silver Stockings

By: John Cioffoletti
CIO: RS Bullion 

There are about 60 million children in the United States under the age
of 15. Whether you celebrate Christmas as a Christian, or elevate
Hanukkah to its commercial equivalent, that means about 60 million
stocking-stuffers will be needed come December 25th.

What better stocking-stuffer than a one-ounce round of triple-nine
fine silver? It's the gift that will keep on giving to your children,
your grandchildren, your nephews and nieces and their kids as well.

When you think about the world's most vital purchasable commodity the
first thing that comes to most people's mind is oil – and rightfully
so. The global power-generating society that we've developed is fueled
by black gold.

World dependence on oil is unquestioned. Wars and lies are started over it.

But I wonder how many people realize what the second-most used
commodity in the world is? It's silver.

The world greatest conductor of heat and electricity, silver has
become vital in the technologically driven society we live in today.
The explosion in electronics now requires over 60 percent of the
silver that is mined to go the GE's, Apples and Samsung's of the world

Even though we are at the early stages of a global fiat currency collapse
the one area of growth that will be hard to suppress is technology.
Hyperinflation will not stop the iPhone 6 or 7, or the next great 4D
television by Samsung.

One can argue that we are as dependent on silver as oil. From the
first moment we wake up each morning – before we take one step out of
our beds – silver is helping us start our day. Silver is in the alarm
clock that wakes us; in the cell phone we check all bleary eyed; the
light switch we turn on and the computer or tablet we use to check our
email, Twitter and Facebook.

Those chores done, it's time to start the car and get moving. Oh wait!
There's silver in the ignition switch, and in that remote control you
zap the car doors with. Behind the scenes, silver is performing its
anti-bacterial and anti-fungal and anti-oxidation chores in your
laundry, your dishwasher, and on your computer keyboard. Silver has
more than 12,000 known and useful applications, and these applications
grow daily. It is truly the universal metal, and yet we use 200
million more ounces of it a year than we currently produce.

Without silver we'd be back in the Stone Age tomorrow. Without silver,
we certainly wouldn't have any use for oil or its byproducts. Without
it, we couldn't start our cars.


Silver's historic use is as money. Its original use was as medicine.
Because it's more difficult to produce than to use, silver reaches
back to the earliest civilizations as a means to settle accounts. You
cannot counterfeit silver. Silver keeps transactions honest. And in
recent as well as ancient times, silver appreciates in value as
governments pollute their currency with base metals (Rome) and paper.

Silver keeps us honest, and is our best friend in hard times. Like
gold it keeps its promises. Unlike a dishonest government's currency,
silver's value will never go to zero.


Which is why a one-ounce round of pure silver should be in every
child's Christmas stocking this year. The weak among them will
surrender their silver for paper money. The smart ones will save it
for the days when our currencies collapse. Either way, it sure beats a
lump of coal.

2013: A Year of War and Silver

By: John Cioffoletti

World War III is under way. It is not about nukes in Iran or terrorists in Afghanistan, or oil in Iraq. In the end, it boils down to food and the destruction of Everyman's net worth – in other words, money. World Wars occur because the moneychangers deprive Everyman of his ability to provide for himself and his family.

The so-called Arab Spring is a case in point. It began, if you remember, on Dec. 17, 2010, when a 26-year-old Tunisian produce seller, Mohamed Bouazizi, died by setting himself on fire after authorities seized his cart because he didn't have a vendor's license. He preferred death to being deprived of his living. Riots ensued, toppling Tunisia's president. Violence spread quickly from Tunis to Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria and Libya.

The mainstream media would have you believe that the people of these Mideastern and North African nations were demanding democracy. That's a red herring. What they are willing to fight and die for is their right to feed their famlies.

So what about Iraq and Iran? Why did the United States invade Iraq, and why is it sword-rattling at Iran? Again, it's about money. Iraq's Saddam Hussein, while a butcher and a despot, certainly was no worse than some African regimes we ignore. Hussein drew our military attentions because he decided, in 2000, to defy the U.S. petrodollar and sell his country's oil for Euros, not U.S. dollars, and was developing a currency based on silver and gold.

Noted William Clark, in 2005: It is now obvious the invasion of Iraq had less to do with any threat from Saddam's long-gone WMD program and certainly less to do to do with fighting International terrorism than it has to do with gaining strategic control over Iraq's hydrocarbon reserves and in doing so maintain the U.S. dollar as the monopoly currency for the critical international oil market.

And now Iran is our enemy de jour, not because it habitually invades other countries – it hasn't done so for more than 200 years, unlike the U.S. and its allies France, Great Britain and Japan, to name a few – but because of Iran's 2007 decision to accept payment for its oil in non-U.S. Dollar-denominated currencies.

All of these events: two wars, Arab Spring, have their roots in the massive U.S. dollar debasement caused by the printing presses of the U.S. Federal Reserve. Amok, these printing presses have caused massive inflation in the price of oil, corn, wheat, rice, sugar and other human staples outside the U.S. This is why a 26-year-old Tunisian man is willing to set himself on fire. Ask Mohamed Bouazizi's widow what she thinks of ethanol.

While we focus on Iran's nukes and Afghanistan's so-called terrorists, tensions around the world will escalate into World War III as the superpowers jump into the fray. The battle over the U.S. Dollar's 60 years' primacy is at hand. In the end, the fiat Dollar (and the fiat Euro, for that matter) will become ashes, but not before thousands, perhaps millions, of decent young men and women have been slain beneath the feet of the moneychangers at the central banks.

Assuming you are not of draft (military conscription) age, how can you shelter your family from the oncoming financial Armageddon? Try a 5,000-year-old solution: physical silver. It doesn't rot and it doesn't lie.