I chose a Swedish contralto over a Kenyan American citizen last night so probably I'm echoing a million talking heads. But what else is new?

What  most interested me could be summarized as............

Obama's $10.10 wage proposal was a failure because.....(insert choice)

A. It will only be available to 200,000 (cruelly underpaid )workers says the FT' s   Robin Harding 

B. Obama's DOD budget can't afford the extra billion bucks.  Harding again.

C.John Boehner,in his own words

"how many people will this executive  action actually help?I suspect the answer is somewhere close to zero'.

To which I'd reply

Come on Robin you can't attack Obama with both A  and B in successive paragraphs

As for Boehner.How he commented last night won' t in the slightest inhibit him when  he says the opposite today.

Meanwhile

" the White House said that paying higher wages would increase productivity."

I wish it hadn't. Productivity is calculated by taking the number of widgets you produce and dividing  it by the payroll. All business people know  that meaningful increases in widget productivity are caused by management's buying an all singing, all dancing widget maker not by Linda Lunchpail squeezing out an extra widget per hour to thank Management for the $3 pay increase the President forced them to give her. 

To be clear I'm not saying that improved employee morale won't ever result in some higher production and therefore some slightly higher"productivity".I'm saying that that is at best so small compared to what Management can achieve that by even mentioning it the White House makes itself appear clueless