<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" Let&amp;#039;s all pop some bubbly and celebrate. Soon after trading began, the S.&amp;amp;amp;P. crossed the 1,800-point mark for the first time, and the Dow industrial average surpassed 16,000 points for the first time. Wahooooooooo!!!!!!!!! Wait, let&amp;#039;s look over the Sunday New York Times and see if we can&amp;#039;t find the single most embarrassing quote we can find about America. Hey, found it! &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve also been told point-blank to my face, &amp;#039;We don&amp;#039;t hire the unemployed.&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Let&amp;#039;s pour another flute and see what Congress is up to. Raising the minimum wage &amp;quot;makes it harder for unskilled workers to gain the labor market experience and on-the-job training that would raise their productivity and future pay,&amp;quot; wrote the economist Stephen Bronars, of Welch Consulting and a professor at Georgetown recently. &amp;quot;Unskilled workers are less attractive with a higher minimum wage because they produce less per hour and their hiring diverts more senior workers from revenue producing activities to training and supervision.&amp;quot; Exactly how many people does the average academic economist employ? Bottle&amp;#039;s almost empty. What else is going on out there? For single mother Laurinda Darosa of Dorchester, it has been difficult adjusting to unemployment after a heart operation. Before the cut, she, her 21-year-old daughter, and 11-year-old son relied on $66 in assistance to help them buy food. Now, nearly cut in half, Darosa&amp;#039;s monthly stipend is $37, causing her to budget &amp;quot;day by day&amp;quot; for food in a neighborhood where a gallon of milk at Shaw&amp;#039;s costs $2.99. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t know how I&amp;#039;m going to do it,&amp;quot; she said. &amp;quot;Everything is so expensive.&amp;quot; Should have expanded the old investment portfolio when you had the chance. And, finally, there&amp;#039;s an update from the modern heirs to the legacy of commodity traders Scrooge &amp;amp;amp; Marley. Wal-Mart has been criticized for paying low wages to its 2.2 million employees. Last week, 50 people were arrested after protesting the retailer&amp;#039;s pay at a store in Los Angeles. Wal-Mart turned a profit of $15.7 billion last year.  This is not sustainable in viable self-government. It simply is not. Either we change or our democracy does. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a19853/we-are-two-countries/>