Tom Keane

The luck of the vote

Will today’s casino decision in Revere bring salvation or destruction?

It’s Saturday afternoon, and cars crawl along Broadway in Revere. Slick placards obscurely urge “Vote Yes for Revere.” Signs with a more homemade look less obscurely push an opposing message: “CasiNo!” Passions have been high in the lead-up to Tuesday’s vote, making Revere the latest community to have to come to grips with whether a casino in its midst brings salvation or destruction.

This is Revere’s second bite at the apple. Last November both it and East Boston voted on whether to allow a casino at Suffolk Downs, which straddles both communities. Eastie said no; Revere said yes. The upshot of that was for proponents to cleverly shift the entire casino into Revere. The state’s gaming commission agreed there was a sufficiently different proposal on the table. Hence today’s vote.

Yes or no in Revere, though, the quest for casino gambling in Massachusetts looks to be a muddle. Casinos have been the dream of any number of state officials for decades, driven largely by claims they would be a boon for state coffers and the economy. When the idea picked up steam a few years ago, objectors seemed in the fringe. Today the mood appears to have shifted. The East Boston vote was a shock, as was a turndown that same day in Palmer. A possible ballot question this year asks voters to reverse the law.

I have no particular problem with gambling. If 7-Eleven stores want to put slot machines in a back corner, by all means let them. There really is no substantive difference between those and the variety of offerings pushed by the Massachusetts Lottery. Sure, gambling is a fraud that preys on the addicted and poor. But we already crossed that moral Rubicon 42 years ago when we first authorized “The Game.”

But casino gambling is an entirely different animal. The Massachusetts gaming law concentrates gambling in just four locations, at levels far more intense than the action lottery retailers ever see. That concentration is necessary because the entire idea is to create a number of small monopolies with exclusive control over their geography. One casino is set for eastern Massachusetts, one for southeast and a third for the west. On top of that the law allows one slot machine parlor.

Why so few? Fees and taxes. Later this week, the gaming commission is expected to announce its choice for a slot parlor. The price of that license is a cool $25 million. And casino licenses are expected to sell for at least $85 million. On top of that, the state expects to exact a tax of 49 percent on gaming revenues from slot parlors and 25 percent from casinos. It looks like a great deal for the tax collector, and it is.

Others less so.

Casino patrons will be the first victims. To cover their fees, taxes, and the host of goodies promised to the towns they’re in, casino operators will have to generate a huge amount of business simply to pay their bills. The only way to do that is to aggressively solicit customers and, when they come in through the doors, make sure they spend as much as possible. Entertainment centers? Not really. Everything would just be a come-on for gaming and, given the state’s piled-on fees and taxes, a bad deal at that. Illegal bookies offer a better return.

Host communities too will be victims. Spread out one kind of business all over the state, and it’s easily absorbed. But concentrate it in one place — as Boston’s Combat Zone once did with sexually oriented businesses — and the area is overwhelmed. Just as the Combat Zone became synonymous with a whole host of social ills, so towns with casinos will find themselves unalterably changed.

No matter the result in Revere, however, the casinos will eventually find homes. Everett has already said yes, and others may as well. Enough money and enough promises can do that. On the days the gaming commission announces which towns have won casino licenses there will doubtless be much celebrating. Those not awarded one will think themselves losers but over time, I suspect, they will find that not getting the roll of the dice was luck itself.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Globe on February 25, 2014.

With cellphone ruling, a win for privacy

John Adams, author of the Massachusetts Constitution, would undoubtedly be delighted. The Supreme Judicial Court ruled last week that warrants are required before police can track people’s locations by their smartphones. It’s a big win for privacy rights and for Article 14 of Adams’s brainchild, which itself served as a model for the US Constitution. Indeed, the court’s logic may bolster privacy rights even further.

The Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution and Massachusetts’ Article 14 contain basically the same idea. Citizens and their property can’t be searched unless police obtain a warrant — something they can only get if they show they have “probable cause” to suspect someone of a crime.

The SJC case involved a murder, allegedly by suspect Shabazz Augustine. Police and prosecutors seized his cellphone records from Sprint and, using cellphone tower data, tracked Augustine’s movements over an almost two-week period. His lawyers argued that this amounted to a search and, because no one had obtained a warrant, the records shouldn’t be allowed.

Most of us would think it obvious this was a search but over the last several decades, courts have opened up some significant loopholes. Some of those are sensible. If the police see something, say a gun, in plain sight, they don’t need to run and get a warrant to seize it, for example. But other loopholes are more worrisome, particularly one called the “third-party doctrine.” It works like this:

Let’s say that the police want to search your bank records, hoping to find nefarious activity. Since those are your bank records, you’d think a warrant might be needed but, in fact, courts don’t require one. This wouldn’t be a search of you, runs the thinking, but rather a search of a third party — the bank. There’s no expectation of privacy because you voluntarily gave the bank your information. With some imagination, you can see where this leads. Without any warrant at all, cops might go to the phone company and find out who you’ve been calling. They could go to the library and get a list of books you’ve borrowed. They could seize credit card records and find out what you’re buying.

In the digital world, where data are routinely collected and retained by any manner of companies, the amount of information about you is staggering. And none of it, thanks to the third-party doctrine, is protected. This is, plain and simple, a dodge of such magnitude around the warrant requirement that it almost eviscerates it.

And the SJC appears to be figuring that out. People carry smartphones with them everywhere, the majority noted, meaning that the police could, if they wanted, track the movements of everyone. The disquieting notion of a perpetual surveillance society gave the justices heartburn.

It’s interesting to read the court’s opinion, if only to watch the gyrations of the majority as it tries to distinguish allowed “third-party” exceptions from the one it plans to disallow — searches of cellphone records. The court, for example, says that the third-party exception is OK in the case of banks because people know that they’re sharing account information but it’s not OK for smartphones because people don’t know they’re sharing location information. Really? Anyone who uses Foursquare or proximity apps such as Skout knows that’s exactly what’s going on. Does the court’s new rule apply only to those ignorant of the capabilities of their smartphones?

I suspect that the Massachusetts court will eventually recognize the third-party doctrine is itself flawed. Whether we keep our money under a mattress or in a bank, information about our finances should be considered private — and getting it should require a warrant. The same should apply to telephone records, purchasing histories and tracking of our movements.

And by the way, none of this is hard to do. Warrants are an important protection for privacy rights, but they don’t have to stymie law enforcement. After the decision, Suffolk County DA Dan Conley observed that, when it comes to cellphone records, his office gets warrants anyway. “We’ve been ahead of the curve for some time now,” he said. That underscores the wisdom of the SJC’s ruling. Privacy rights and public safety aren’t either-or propositions.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Sunday Globe on February 23, 2014.

Is college worth it?

AMERICA’S COLLEGES and universities must be delighted with yet another study proving just how valuable they are. With tuitions at some elite places soaring above $60,000 a year, higher ed needs such studies as rebuttals to increasingly skeptical students and their parents.

Students and parents should keep being skeptical.

The latest comes from Pew Research, and its title drives home the point: “The rising cost of not going to college.” The numbers seem compelling and especially for the millennial generation — those now ages 25 to 32. For example, millennials with a college degree have median annual earnings of $17,500 more than those with just high school degrees. Multiply that by a working lifetime of, say, 43 years, and you get a total difference of $752,500. Amazing, right?

Maybe. Remember, there’s a time value to money ($1 a year from now is worth less than $1 today), and when you run the numbers comparing the cost of college to that $752,500, you can generate what’s known as an internal rate of return. For a less expensive school such as UMass (about $69,000 for four years), the IRR is high – 25 percent. But for pricier places costing $240,000 or more, the return is just under 7 percent. That makes it worthwhile (especially in a world where interest rates are below 5 percent) but hardly staggering.

But to give college its due, where it does get amazing is when it comes to unemployment. Last month, for example, the unemployment rate of high school grads was 6.5 percent. The rate for college grads, on the other hand, was a low 3.2 percent. Moreover, the labor participation rate — that is, the number of folks who are part of the job market — is far higher for college versus high school grads: 58 percent versus 76 percent.

In other words, not only will college grads earn more, but they are likelier to be employed. And to be frank, that difference will only worsen. The jobs of the future will require even greater levels of skills. So college is critical, right?

Not necessarily. The problem with all of this is that it confuses correlation with causality. College doesn’t make you smart. Rather, smart people go to college. And it’s an important distinction.

What these numbers are really telling us is that the educated and smart make more than the uneducated and less smart. But being educated and smart is something that happens well before college. Some of it is the luck of the genetic draw. But much if not most is what happens from birth (or even before birth) through age 18. Nutrition, including prenatal, matters. The culture you’re raised in (particularly one that places a premium on learning and accomplishment) matters. Character, especially qualities such as grit and determination, matters. The stuff that happens before kindergarten, when the brain is rapidly developing, matters. (Disclosure: I work for a nonprofit focused on early childhood education.) K-12 education matters. Your peers and the adults around you matter.

And college? It’s the reward you get if you successfully navigate those first 18 years. Granted, college can be fun and interesting and can expand and refine your mind. But it’s hardly the only way to gain new skills and knowledge. Trade schools, work experience, online courses and just reading can do the trick as well.

Still, if you’re looking for a job, you’ll probably notice that great high school grades and all of the online courses in the world will often not get you a job. And that’s because many employers — especially those with high-skill, high-paying jobs — simply insist on a college degree. If you don’t have one, you won’t be considered.

The degree is a marker, a shorthand way of saying you’re smart and educated. And this is where colleges do have an edge. As we’ve seen from some much publicized cases of resume fraud, it really is the piece of paper — the diploma — that counts and not the learning itself.

Someday, and perhaps soon, that may change. Which is why even as they tout proof of their value, higher ed — especially the private schools that charge a premium — should be worried. Education matters, yes. But not necessarily a college education.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Globe on February 18, 2014.

The Massachusetts medical marijuana goldrush

State shouldn’t limit the number of licenses

IMAGINE A land where there are no restaurants. Someone comes up with the bright idea of allowing folks to sell meals to others and, after much debate, the government says it might permit this to happen. Before it does, though, it tasks some bureaucrats with the job of deciding who should be allowed to operate these new places. The officials put together a complicated set of requirements, hundreds bid and, after many months, the government announces it has picked 20.

That’s 20 restaurants in a land of 6.6 million.

The winners are delighted, the losers — sore, of course — complain about political favoritism. The restaurants are hugely popular, with long lines and such high demand that they can charge almost any price they want. And, of course, with a stranglehold on this new-fangled restaurant business, the lucky 20 are vigilant in making sure no new restaurants are allowed to open. Consumers need to be protected, they say, although some suspect that the real reason is they don’t want new competition to threaten their sky-high profits.

Fanciful? Hardly. This happens all the time, be it with taxicabs, alcohol licenses, casinos, or, most recently, medical marijuana treatment centers. Massachusetts’ 2012 medical marijuana law allows just 35 such dispensaries in the state (after a year, the government has the discretion to permit more; don’t count on that happening). Out of 159 applications, the Department of Public Health recently selected 20 operators and, predictably, cries of cronyism and unfairness have erupted. At the center of the objections is former congressman and Norfolk district attorney Bill Delahunt. Delahunt’s name appeared on three applications, and he and the members of his team had multiple close relationships with regulators granting the licenses. And, lo and behold, all three applications were approved.

Much of this may be smoke, but it sure is unseemly, especially since it turns out that Delahunt won’t be running the dispensaries. That honor goes to a relative unknown from California, leaving the impression that Delahunt was just window dressing. My guess, too, is that we’ll hear a lot more allegations of misdeeds. It’s the nature of the beast.

And the beast, in this case, is not the appearance or actuality of corruption, but the licensing system itself. There’s a simple principle at play: The government should not be limiting the number of people who can participate in a market. If you want to start a business and as long as you comply with basic regulations affecting health, safety, and fair business practices, you should be allowed to do so.

We see this all the time with any manner of common businesses, be they restaurants, retailers, manufacturers, or service providers. There’s no limit on the number of clothing stores in a city or town, for example. There can be one or hundreds, spread out or next to each other. As long as the clothing stores comply with the rules — pay minimum wage, for instance, or post prices clearly — then no one else gets involved. That’s the way free enterprise works.

But there are numerous exceptions. Most municipalities put strict controls on the number of taxicabs they permit (so strict that they’ve given rise to new businesses such as Lyft and Uber). Boston is only allowed 650 restaurant liquor licenses, far fewer than demand, which is why the licenses trade for about $400,000. Massachusetts’ hesitant experiment with casinos will permit exactly three — spaced carefully around the state. And the marijuana dispensaries face similar restrictions on numbers and geography — no matter how much the demand.

None of these rules make sense. Because they limit competition, they create oligopolies, driving up costs to consumers even as they reduce supply. The pot shops rules are exceptionally restrictive. They have to be nonprofit, for example. And they can only sell pot.

A better approach would have been to allow anyone — for profit or not — to sell cannabis. Indeed, the most logical medical marijuana retailers would be local pharmacies — CVS, Walgreens, and numerous independents. They manage supply chains, know how to securely handle all manner of medications, and monitor patients’ drug intakes. It’s their business. Bill Delahunt? I’m pretty sure he’s never filled a prescription.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Sunday Globe on February 16, 2014.

Romney in 2016 is a losing proposition

ON PAPER, Mitt Romney looked to be ideal presidential material. There was the hair and the lantern-jaw good looks, naturally, and more substantively his intellect, temperament, and enormous breadth of experience. Then came the humiliations of 2012, a summer filled with missteps culminating in a sweeping loss that left Romney seemingly gone forever from the national stage, an exit welcomed by conservatives who never saw him as one of their own.

Yet Romney has now reemerged as a plausible — at least in the minds of some journalists and supporters — 2016 GOP presidential nominee. The campaign stumbles and bumbles forgotten, it is the paper-perfect candidate who now entices.

A Washington Post-ABC News poll conducted a year after the election found much buyers’ remorse, with the former Massachusetts governor winning handily, 49 to 45 percent, in a hypothetical rematch with Barack Obama. That was followed by the release of a remarkable and humanizing documentary, “Mitt,” by filmmaker Greg Whiteley. The behind-the-scenes look at the candidate and his family paints a far different picture than the robotic caricature we saw during the campaign. He’s funny, caring, thoughtful, and deeply committed to the betterment of the country. After seeing it, would you want to have a beer with the guy? Yes — although he’d be drinking an O’Doul’s.

Then too, Republicans are desperate to avoid the parade of clowns from 2012’s primary season: Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Donald Trump. The clowns squabbled with each other, alienated voters, and prevented the party from throwing its weight behind one front-runner early in the campaign season. The lesson for the next election is obvious. For a while, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie seemed like someone who could clear the field. Now, thanks to Bridgegate, that’s in doubt. Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush could also quickly line up support, but many think him unwilling.

That leaves Mitt. Romney’s denials notwithstanding (“No, no, no . . . ” he told The New York Times 11 times last month), the excitement over Mitt is such that the National Journal just headlined a story, “Mitt Romney is the 2016 Republican front-runner.”

I understand how the passage of time can blur the past, but what we have here is not nostalgia but amnesia. Romney may well make a good president, but he’s a lousy candidate. The Republicans choose him again at their peril.

Romney’s failings on the stump seem a contradiction: He was both not political enough while at the same time far too much so. On one hand, a good candidate understands the impact of his words. Instead, Romney gave us a seemingly never-ending series of gaffes: “the 47 percent,” “middle income is $200,000 to $250,000,” “$10,000 bet?” “I have some friends who are NASCAR team owners,” “binders full of women,” “I like being able to fire people,” and “I’m not concerned about the very poor.” Each of these became a story, drowning out whatever message the campaign was trying to send. Gaffes happen, of course (remember Obama telling Russian president Dmitri Medvedev, “After my election, I have more flexibility”?) but their ubiquity suggested a man who simply cannot control himself under the public spotlight.

On the other hand, Romney seemed a creature of value-free politics. In Whiteley’s documentary, he’s seen railing against the perception of himself as the “flipping Mormon,” but the image was well-earned. For the number of times it was raised during the campaign, Romney never had a good response to why he could support health care reform in Massachusetts (and call it a “model” for the nation) and yet oppose Obamacare. And the same problem affected a whole host of issues, from abortion choice to global warming. Romney, a man who is more manager and technocrat than an ideologue, came across as craven, willing to say anything to please an audience.

Romney’s an introspective man. Perhaps these are faults he could fix in another run or perhaps — and more likely — they are traits inherent to his character. He’s ill-suited to the tumult, pressures, and artifice of the campaign trail. “I think I’m a flawed candidate,” Romney says at one point during “Mitt” and the GOP should take him at his word. It’s time to move on.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Globe on February 11, 2014.

Gold medal for US in hypocrisy

Vladimir Putin can probably point to Fontbonne Academy and wonder about the criticism directed at Russia when gay people are refused jobs in America. The Catholic girls’ school just reneged on a promised appointment as its food services director when it learned the applicant, Michael Barrett, was married to another man. A lengthy explanation to Putin about church and state and the difference between private and government action would likely fall on deaf ears. The upshot, he might note, is you still discriminate.

The Sochi Olympics are in full swing, the first Olympics held in the country since the embarrassing games of 1980 — games the United States and other nations boycotted, rendering them a footnote to history. It’s not going so well this year, either. Sochi opened with shoddy construction, security worries, spectacular cost overruns, shootings of stray dogs — and widespread criticism over the nation’s treatment of gays. A recently passed law that bans “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations to minors” has provoked an outcry and demands that the United States do something — anything — to push back.

Such stuff isn’t new from the Russians. A number of years ago I visited the country when it was still the USSR. On a tour of Moscow’s churches, I asked our guide why religion was prohibited in the communist state. She adamantly disagreed. Anyone is free to practice religion, she said. “You just can’t talk about it,” and especially, she said, not to children.

Religion back then. Sexual orientation today.

All of this seems to have caught Putin by surprise, and one can understand why. After all, it was only in 2011 that the United States finally repealed “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the military policy that discharged 13,000-plus men and women from the services not because of anything they did but rather merely for who they were. Even today, 33 states have defense of marriage laws on the books; 29 of those have them written into their constitutions. Most states still permit discrimination against gays when it comes to housing, adoption, and even treatment of gay students. And as some gay advocates observe, a number of US states have laws reminiscent of those in Russia. Alabama, for example, requires that sex ed classes teach “homosexuality is not a lifestyle acceptable to the general public.” Arizona prohibits any lessons that portray “homosexuality as a positive alternative lifestyle.”

So really, who are we to talk? “Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye,” says Jesus in Matthew. Putin, Biblical scholar that he is, made essentially the same argument when he told George Stephanopoulos, “as they try to criticize us, they would do well to set their own house in order first.”

Moreover, why the focus on Russia when there are so many other countries out there — 78 by one recent count — where homosexuality is punishable by imprisonment or death? Then, too, why during the Olympics, which should be about the purity of sport and human endeavor? Politics, one would think, should be left at home.

If so, that’s probably a first. There’s always a political undercurrent to the Olympics, sometimes overtly so. The 1936 Olympic Games were about Aryan superiority, neatly undercut by black American Jesse Owens’s four gold medals. The 2008 summer Olympics in Beijing were an occasion for China to open its doors to the world. And this year, the Russians clearly see the games as a chance for redemption, a moment to prove themselves equals on the world stage.

The Biblical beam-in-the-eye injunction can be taken too far. No country and no individual is perfect, and if we demanded perfection before anyone could voice criticism, then criticism would never be voiced and nothing would ever be accomplished. The Olympics represent a signal opportunity to advance human rights and the United States as well as its athletes, media, and thousands of Sochi visitors, have an opening to put Russia on the spot. I hope they do. Putin is undoubtedly taken aback at the rapid evolution of attitudes toward gays — from pariahs to equals in a remarkably short span of time — but that, in a sense, is the price of membership in the civilized world.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Sunday Globe on February 9, 2014.

Cigarette tax is a bad habit for Mass.

Massachusetts officials are dismayed that there is a burgeoning black market in cigarettes. Surprise, surprise, surprise. Black markets are what happen when we ban things or tax them too heavily. And the solutions the state seems ready to offer up will only make things worse.

The feds and each state impose taxes on cigarettes, with state excise taxes ranging from a low of 30 cents a pack in Virginia to a high of $4.35 in New York. Massachusetts ranks second, at $3.51. (it increased by $1 last August.) The reasons for the taxes are two-fold. One, of course, is money: The Bay State collects over $500 million annually from tobacco. The second is a hope by health officials that higher prices will cut consumption.

Leave aside the inherent contradiction of this (the state relying on revenue from tobacco users while at the same time saying it doesn’t want people to use tobacco) and consider the impact on smokers themselves. In Massachusetts, name brands are now around $10 a pack; a pack-a-day smoker is dropping about $70 a week. Some smoke less or quit, which is what the public health crowd wants. Some just suck it up and pay the price. Others, however, are a little more devious.

Actually, it turns out, a lot of people are more devious. Tobacco giant Altria estimates that 16 percent of cigarettes in Massachusetts are sold on the black market, thereby avoiding the state excise tax. Research firm RTI International says that 30 to 42 percent of cigarettes in five Northeastern cities were smuggled, with the number at 40 percent in Boston.

And it’s easy to be devious: Just drive to another state with low excise taxes and buy them there. New Hampshire, for example, charges just $1.78 in excise taxes. Make a quick trip north for five cartons, and you’ll save over $86. Or if driving seems too tough, just go online. One cigarette website will sell you a case of Marlboros for $29.78 — a savings of more than $64 (!!!) over the Bay State’s prices.

All of this is thoroughly illegal, of course. Moreover, if individual consumers can figure this out, so too can other folks who see this as a potentially lucrative business. It’s an old story. Prohibition gave rise to rumrunners. The war on drugs gave rise to drug gangs. And tobacco taxes are now giving rise to cigarette smugglers. The state Department of Revenue figures that it’s losing perhaps $246 million annually to smuggling. The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives says the illegal tobacco trade runs to the tune of $100 billion worldwide.

And as taxes rise, it’ll just get worse. The center of cigarette smuggling is New York, and the reason, of course, is that it has the nation’s highest excise taxes. But don’t worry, Massachusetts is getting there.

This has state officials so worried that they created something called the Illegal Tobacco Commission, which has been meeting over the last few months to sort out the problem. Its report is expected in March, but reading through the minutes of its meetings makes it pretty clear what the panel will recommend: stronger laws (right now, cigarette smuggling is a felony under federal law only if it involves 10,000 or more cigarettes), tougher penalties (commission members seem particularly intrigued with putting people in jail), and more resources for enforcement. As with the illegal drugs, you can see where this will go: dealers, violence, organized crime, and the criminalization of those who have a bad habit and can’t afford to pay the taxes.

This is so dumb it’s almost breathtaking. Even as the nation seems to be moving to dismantle some of the drug trade by legalizing cannabis, the war on tobacco is now creating the incentives for a new kind of organized crime. There’s an easy way to stop this. Cut taxes so that there’s little reason to purchase tobacco illegally. Revenues wouldn’t drop that much (since people now avoiding the excise tax would start buying legally). And truthfully, if you want people to stop smoking, don’t punish them financially. Urge them with facts and, if they choose to smoke anyway, so be it. They’re adults and entitled to make their own decisions.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Globe on February 4, 2014.

The political benefit of minimum wage hike

Barack Obama’s state of the union proposal to require federal contractors pay a $10.10 minimum wage seemed little more than a gesture, almost laughable really. “How many people . . . will this executive action actually help?” asked House Speaker John Boehner. “I suspect the answer is somewhere close to zero.”

Boehner’s probably right. The order only affects future contracts, and most federal contractors likely pay their employees more than $10.10 anyway. But no matter, because what Obama has done is seized on an issue of consequence and finally, even if ineffectually, done something about it. He’ll get points for that, points he should be able to turn into ballot-box wins for Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections.

The larger worry that the president seeks to address is the deteriorating circumstances of the middle class. Those families — neither rich nor poor — have been taking a beating. The share of Americans who think of themselves as middle class is now 44 percent, down from 53 percent in 2008, according to a new survey from the Pew Research Center. The causes of these changes are complex and over time — especially with the economic recovery underway — some of it might right itself. Any proposed solutions are complex as well. But one fix, at least, appears simple and immediate: Increase the minimum wage. “Give America a raise!” Obama urged in his address, and really, what not-so-well-paid voter wouldn’t want that? Few, I think, which is exactly what makes it so politically powerful.

First put in place in 1938, the federal minimum wage started at just 25 cents (of course, back then two bits could get you a shave and a haircut). It’s not pegged to inflation, so Congress has to legislate any changes. The last rise in 2009 was to $7.25, which is, historically speaking, comparatively low. The high point for the minimum wage was 1968, when the real rate (that is, adjusted for inflation) was $10.77. Today’s minimum is thus a third less, which gives Obama much room to argue that any proposed increase is long overdue.

The push-back to hiking the minimum wage is that it’s a job killer. In theory, increases to wages cause businesses to hire less (in the same way that an increase in the price of a product would cause consumers to buy less of it). But sometimes theory gets hijacked by reality. Economists endlessly debate the point, but much data suggest past rises haven’t significantly hurt jobs. “Why does the minimum wage have no discernable effect on employment?” wonders a 2013 study from the left-learning Center for Economic and Policy Research. The report advances a number of explanations. Better-paid employees stay with their jobs, companies find other efficiencies to compensate, businesses simply raise prices, or incomes of the highest paid get slightly reduced.

Granted, at some point a large boost to the minimum wage — say doubling or tripling it — would wreak economic havoc. But at the modest levels Obama is proposing? Probably not.

But the impact on wage earners would be huge. A full-time worker making the minimum today grosses around $14,500. A boost to $10.10 would push annual earnings to $20,200. Is nearly $500 a month meaningful? You bet it is. Moreover, increases in the minimum wage tend to have a ratchet effect, in that workers now paid slightly more than the minimum will also see their compensation go up.

You can see where this goes politically. Some argue that since lower-paid workers tend to vote for Democrats anyway, there’s no real political gain to be had from the increase. But during his reelection, Obama’s team figured out that there were certain wedge issues — such as same-sex marriage or immigration reform — that would energize segments of the Democratic base, boosting turnout and overwhelming less-enthusiastic Republican voters. The minimum wage is a wedge issue too. If Republicans resist an increase, they’ll look to be denying money in families’ pockets all out of some nebulous concern for well-heeled corporations. Us versus them doesn’t make for a pretty picture — unless, of course, you’re a Democratic strategist seeing that a path to victory runs along a minimum wage road.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Sunday Globe on February 2, 2014.