On January 28, 2014 President Obama made his 5th State of the Union speech. During it he asked for an increase in the minimum wage from $7.25 per hour to $10.10 per hour. Anyone who reads my site on a regular basis or who scans the Table of Contents devoted just to Obama matrices will know how deeply I oppose this president. In fact, I believe he probably occupies the office of President illegally due to his likely birth in Kenya. However, as I indicate on Figure 1, even a broken clock is right twice per day. I support a minimum wage increase. There are two matrices on Figure 1, but they are both based on the same axis term of INCREASE SALARY. They both show the same exact ELS of OBAMA, but the matrix on the left has no row split allowed, whereas the matrix on the right is based on a row split of 4. The reason I include the larger version is to show that the open text statement GIVE HIM HIS SALARY touches SALARY in INCREASE SALARY.
STATISTICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE MATRICES. As per my standard protocol, no statistical significance is assigned to the axis term, here INCREASE SALARY at its 4th lowest ELS in wrapped Torah. As I have often written before, OBAMA is such a high frequency ELS term that I don't like to show matrices where it is not at a special case skip of +/- 1 ot he absolute skip of the axis term. In fact, since Obama never occurs at skips +/- 1, this means that I really want to find it just at the absolute skip of the axis term. That's the way it appears on both matrices shown on Figure 1. Odds against it being found in the 72-letter matrix with INCREASE SALARY are at least 265 to 1. When I searched for the matrix I also sought words from Deuteronomy 24:15 which states of a poor or destitute person hired, "On that day shall you pay his hire (give him his salary); the sun shall not set upon him, for he is poor, and his life depends on it; let him not call out to against you to God, for it shall be a sin in you." The words sought were GIVE HIM HIS SALARY. When I thought about it, $7.25 is such a small amount of money that with oil prices these days being what they are, just to get to a job by car or mass transit would probably take an hour's wages every day in many places. Further, if adults are trying to support their families with such a salary, they might not be able to pay their electric bills, which would mean that they might freeze to death in many areas. The sought phrase was found touching INCREASE SALARY, but only when I allowed a row split of 4. Still, odds against it and OBAMA being on the matrix after division of initial combined odds by 4 to account for ELS rank 4 of the axis term were about 30,796 to 1. The matrix is therefore judged to be highly significant.
HOW MANY FEDERAL WORKERS BENEFIT FROM OBAMA'S PROPOSAL? Actually, very few. In this sense his offer is somewhat of a trick. At this link you can see the hourly wage for Federal workers in the Washington D/C., Maryland and Virginia area. The only jobs paying less than $10.10 were as follows:
JOB | PAY |
Waiter/Waitress | 9.70 |
Laundry, Dry-Cleaning, Pressing And Related Occupations: | |
Assembler | 9.88 |
Counter Attendant | 9.88 |
Finisher, Flatwork, Machine | 9.88 |
Presser, Hand | 9.88 |
Presser, Machine, Dry cleaning | 9.88 |
Presser, Machine, | 9.88 |
Presser, Machine, Wearing Apparel, Laundry | 9.88 |
Thus while it sounded like Obama would raise Federal worker wages from $7.25 to $10.10 per hour (a $2.85 per hour raise), in reality the people highlighted above only see raises of 22 cents per hour (laundry workers) to 40 cents (waiters and waitresses). We may presume that waiters and waitresses make tips, so $9.70 per hour is not what they really earn. His offer to start with Federal workers is thus basically a trick. For the laundry workers a 22 cent per hour raise over 40 hours per work week amounts to an increase of $8.80 per week, hardly enough to lift them out of poverty and into the middle class.