It is sad, indeed, when people like Tim Donnelly (January 11, 2016) feel that paying workers a living wage is moving “too close to communism.” Since the ‘80s, when the country became so infected with a particularly insidious disease now known as Reaganism, wages have been going steadily down to a point where today, too many millions of Americans, no matter how hard they work or how many jobs they hold down, cannot even afford what are the simplest, most essential, basics of life. The whole notion that higher wages cause runaway inflation is a myth used by the wealthy to “conserve” the shameful inequality of our current tax system. The single most significant effect of higher wages (as they were before Reaganism infected the country) is simply more money in circulation. Inflation “as an economist would describe it is: “more dollars chasing fewer goods”), and it is manageable. Hard times, as too many of our neighbors have found, is not.