Except for timely election info, the extensive list of voting resources will now be at the end.

“There’s a reason why you separate military and police. One fights the enemy of the State. The other serves and protects the People. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the State tend to become the People.” ~ Commander Adama, “Battlestar Galactica” (“WATER”, Season 1 episode 2, at the 28 minute mark.)

“… In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression …

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way …

The third is freedom from want …

The fourth is freedom from fear …

VIDEO: FDR’s Four Freedoms Speech (1941) FOUR FREEDOMS-SPECIFIC EXCERPT, WITH TAX FAIRNESS — 31:13 to 33:29  

FULL SPEECH TRANSCRIPT: Voices of Democracy: The U.S. Oratory Project

[1m 02s] Welcome to Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig on KPFT Houston at 90.1-HD2, Galveston 89.5-HD2, and Huntsville 91.9-HD2. KPFT is Houston’s Community radio.

And welcome to our international listeners from Hong Kong, Singapore, Belgium, the Netherlands, and elsewhere.

On this show, we discuss local, state, national, and international stories that may have slipped under your radar. At my website, THINKWINGRADIO-dot-COM, I link to all the articles I read and cite, as well as other relevant sources. Articles and commentaries often include lots of internet links for those of you who want to dig deeper. I do try to fact-check myself and include the links I use to do so.

It’s the 37th week of Trump’s military occupation of Washington DC; and 26 weeks since those states’ governors deployed National Guard troops to Memphis, Tennessee and New Orleans, Louisiana, at Trump’s request, which is where they remain for now.  

The next gubernatorial election in Tennessee is in about 6 months. I really want to see how that one turns out.

LAWFARE has a frequently updated chart of where US troops are currently stationed around the US. The link is in this show post at ThinkwingRadio-dot-com.

Due to time constraints, some stories may be longer in this show post than in the broadcast show itself.

1. If you live in Harris County, there is an election calendar that you an access at com/Event-Calendar
2. On May 2^nd, there’s the Special Election for Texas Senate District 4.
   1. Texas SD-4 serves all of Chambers county, and portions of Galveston, Harris, Jefferson, and Montgomery counties.^[1]
   2. The candidates are Republican RETT W. LIGON vs. Democrat RON C. ANGELETTI.
   3. Early Voting for SD-4 ends this Tuesday, Apr 28, 2026. Poll hours are 7AM – 7PM
   4. SD-4 Election Day is May 2 from 7AM – 7PM.
   5. If you don’t get mail-in ballots and you’re not sure if you’re in SD-4, you can get more information at HarrisVotes-dot-com, your county election clerk, or from the Texas Secretary of State’s office at VoteTexas-dot-gov. Links to county clerks are at the bottom of the show post at ThinkwingRadio[.]com.
   6. As always, remember that if you are on line to vote by 7PM, you cannot be turned away until you have voted.
3. I got pointed to this “Funny or Die” video (to which I’ve included the link at ThinkwingRadio-dot-com). It stars David Alan Grier, Deon Cole, Neal Brennan, Ron Funches, and Sarah Silverman. It’s not only mildly amusing (because it’s true), but it also provokes some interesting historical and societal discussion. I’m going to play it first, and then talk about it. [PLAY AUDIO: 1m 19s]
   1. MIKE: I’m not personally an advocate of broad-based gun ownership. I’m certainly not a fan of broad-based open-carry and concealed-carry.
   2. MIKE: But I think this audio from the linked video makes an important point. If people only want and expect Second Amendment rights for some people and not others, that suggests the people who feel that way are just trying to intimidate unarmed Americans that they dislike or with whom they disagree.
   3. MIKE: Citing a short May 2022 article from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health about gun ownership myths, I extracted these bullet points:
   4. MYTH 1- Urban homicides falsely inflate statistics on U.S. gun deaths: The common trope is that places like Baltimore or Detroit or Chicago are the reason we have so many gun deaths in this country, But the places with the highest rates of death are Mississippi, Louisiana, Wyoming, Missouri, and Alabama.
   5. MYTH 2- Mass shootings… are the result of mental health issues: Rather, “we are seeing people who are frustrated, angry and hateful and using firearms take that out on a particular group.”
   6. MYTH 3- In most mass shootings, perpetrators do not know the people they kill: Nearly 70% of mass shootings involve domestic violence, Lisa Geller, MPH, state affairs advisor for the Center.
   7. MYTH 4- There are more gun deaths in the U.S. because America is a violent society: It’s driven principally … because we have decided to make guns readily available to almost anyone.
   8. MYTH 5- We don’t know what to do to curb gun violence: We now have evidence-backed solutions to do better.
   9. MYTH 6- More guns in more places will make us safer: If firearms everywhere made us safer … we would be the safest place in the world.
   10. MYTH 7- There’s a huge divide by gun ownership or politics on policies that work to reduce gun deaths, and that’s why we can’t enact the kind of change needed to prevent gun violence: Research has shown that most more than 75% of Americans, 63% of gun owners, and 70% of Republicans support gun laws that include background checks, permits, and minimum age requirements., as well as a law requiring gun purchasers to first get a license from law enforcement.
   11. MIKE: If you go to the linked article, there are lengthier comments with additional links for further research.
4. The Hill, which published this opinion piece and the one that follows, is generally considered a centrist news organization that drifts both left and right It’s important to emphasize that the following article from April 4^th is an opinion piece. I’m reading it because while written to be provocative, I think it also deserves some consideration and discussion. From THEHILL[.]COM — Opinion: America is heading for a recession — and it may be the worst yet; by John Mac Ghlionn, opinion contributor | THEHILL.COM | 04/04/26 11:00 AM ET. TAGS: Artificial Intelligence, Niall Ferguson, The Middle Class, The Wealthy, Recession,
   1. A recession is coming — not the manicured kind economists dress up in euphemism, but a real one, the kind that redefines the word retroactively. Niall Ferguson has been mapping the terrain: geopolitical shocks, energy disruption, [and] inflation that won’t be reasoned with. History, he notes, does not reward economies caught in that particular combination. It never has.
   2. But this one carries something extra, something structural.
   3. For years, the American economy ran on a dangerous illusion. Markets soared. Asset prices ballooned. Those already inside the system — with capital, with cushions, with connections — accumulated wealth at a pace that would have seemed obscene even a decade ago. Stocks surged. Property values became punchlines told at the expense of renters.
   4. For everyone else — those without a trust fund or a safety net — it has been a slow slide into the abyss. Groceries crept upward, then sprinted. Rent became a monthly reckoning. Credit cards filled the gap, then tightened it. The middle class now occupies an unfamiliar position in American life — more likely to descend the ladder than to climb it.
   5. Recessions do not hit such societies evenly. They amplify what already exists. The wealthy absorb, the rest surrender.
   6. Roughly 60 percent of Americans cannot cover an unexpected $1,000 expense without borrowing. Not a calamity. A surprise. A busted transmission. A root canal. A single night in an emergency room. More than half the country is living within one ordinary piece of bad luck from a crisis. Not poverty, exactly. Something arguably more insidious: the permanent condition of almost fine. And almost fine, it turns out, has a very low tolerance for what comes next.
   7. The layoffs have already arrived. It is no longer unusual to open the news and find another company — sometimes a ridiculously profitable one — shedding hundreds or thousands of positions in a single announcement. Compounding this, fewer graduates are finding work in the fields they trained for, entering a market that is contracting precisely as they arrive. To understand why, you cannot discuss what is happening to employment without discussing what is simultaneously happening to intelligence itself. Artificial intelligence is no longer something to prepare for. It has arrived as a co-worker, a contractor, a first draft, a diagnosis — fully, practically and indifferent to the lives it is replacing.
   8. It is moving, and it is moving through the wrong neighborhoods — wrong, at least, for those who thought proximity to a desk conferred some protection. From junior developers to paralegals, analysts to marketing departments, the entry-level architecture of white-collar work is being disassembled, methodically and without apology.
   9. Previous recessions were brutal but temporary. Jobs disappeared, then returned when conditions improved. Industries contracted, then recovered. There was pain, often profound, but there was always a path back. That path is no longer guaranteed.
   10. AI-displaced roles do not come back when the economy recovers. They are simply gone. Permanently retired behind a wall of efficiency gains and margin expansion.
   11. That changes the psychology of a downturn entirely. The question shifts from when will things improve to improve for whom? Those who own the technology — who build it, fund it, deploy it — stand to benefit enormously. For those replaced by it, there is the cheerful advice to retrain, to pivot, to adapt. All reasonable suggestions in theory. Less so when entire categories of work are shrinking simultaneously, and the competition includes systems that do not sleep, do not negotiate, and require no benefits.
   12. Tie that to the wealth gap, and what was troubling becomes something closer to a verdict. 
   13. The last time the West faced a comparable collision of forces — stagflation, geopolitical upheaval, structural economic disruption — the social fabric frayed in ways that didn’t fully mend. Trust retreated and never fully returned. Institutions survived but emerged diminished. Recovery followed, in time, but the marks it left were permanent.
   14. That was 1973. The foundations today are considerably more fragile. Faith in institutions sits near historic lows. Communities have been decimated by addiction, and the social infrastructure that once absorbed such shocks has been coming apart for decades. The cultural confidence that once carried societies through genuine hardship — the belief that sacrifice was worth something, that tomorrow warranted patience — has faded into a nihilism that is difficult to condemn in people who arrived at it honestly. 
   15. A society that still believes in endurance can survive contraction. A society built entirely on consumption faces a harder test.
   16. Because economies are not merely systems. They are expressions of collective belief — about work, about fairness, about who gets ahead, and whether the game is rigged. When enough people conclude, simultaneously, that the answer to that last question is obviously yes, what follows is not a reckoning so much as its overture.
   17. MIKE: The way this piece describes AI is a bit like that line from “The Terminator (1984)”. [AUDIO ] “‘It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity! Or remorse or fear! And it absolutely will not stop!… ever… until you are dead!” ~ Kyle Reese
   18. One might expect that an article with a title like, “America is heading for a recession — and it may be the worst yet” to rely on a fair amount of statistical evidence. Such evidence is sparce in this piece, although the few examples given have some validity.
   19. MIKE: It’s true that vast numbers of American households cannot withstand the impact of what many of us might consider an expensive but manageable emergency. The author uses the example of a thousand dollars, but for many, an unexpected expense of even $500 could precipitate a crisis. If that crisis led to the taking out of payday loans, it could balloon into a long-term debt trap.
   20. MIKE: This would certainly be a tragedy for that household, but it would also be bad for the economy as a whole, since that person’s purchasing power as a consumer of goods and services would be permanently damaged. Multiply that by thousands or millions of people, and the economic impact is real, making a national economic recovery that much harder.
   21. MIKE: The observations about Ai taking jobs that will not come back to humans, especially after an already painful recession, are a particular case in point. Ai could lead to massive structural unemployment.
   22. MIKE: Perhaps some of you have heard of the Luddites. Ned Ludd is a legendary and perhaps fictional character who supposedly smashed two knitting frames in what was described as a “fit of passion”.^[4] The anti-automation movement among some early 19^th century English textile workers took his name and called themselves “Luddites“.
   23. MIKE: As described in Wikipedia, “The Luddites were members of a [movement of] textile workers who opposed the use of certain types of automated machinery due to concerns relating to worker pay and output quality. They often destroyed the machines in organised raids.^[1][2]”
   24. MIKE: How would 21^st century Luddites battle the Ai that is taking their jobs? They can’t just go into buildings and destroy mainframe computers. Instead, we may find that computer hackers will be the backbone of a 21^st century Luddite movement, and while such criminal attacks would create limited havoc, they would likely be no more successful in stopping the advance of Ai into the workplace than the 19^th century Luddites were in stopping textile automation.
   25. MIKE: And yet the danger of Ai replacing workers and creating structural unemployment for millions of people is real and emergent.
   26. MIKE: According to The University of Queensland, the average person is likely to have between 3-7 careers in their lifetime. That is to say “careers’, as opposed to “jobs”. That matches both my personal experience and my anecdotal belief.
   27. MIKE: But a change of career can be a wrenching experience. Sometimes, it’s a choice. But sometimes it’s entirely circumstantial. In either case, it usually leads to at least a temporary drop in income, one that is often substantial.
   28. MIKE: And depending on one’s age, a career change can lead to catastrophic consequences that range from financial to social to psychological. Results can be a disabling depression. There can be physical health consequences as well, due to a loss of health insurance. Even if they have health insurance, there may be an inability to pay medical deductibles or copays.
   29. MIKE: Talk of retraining people for new careers in new fields is all well and good in theory, but there can also be obstacles there. First, there is the basic question of what to retrain to. There’s also the need to support oneself during retraining. Then there’s often the obstacle of the cost of retraining, which may require substantial and potentially crippling loans.
   30. MIKE: Add to that, the scammy so-called “career universities” that take their students’ money and still leave them unprepared.
   31. MIKE: When my dad was looking for work around 1960, he was 43 years old and feared he might never find a job. Well, 50 is the new 40, and someone 50 or older might find it challenging to find a new job regardless of how much retraining they get. Yet that person is far too young to retire and get social security or qualify for Medicare. Such people — and there are millions of them — find themselves in a real, almost insoluble crisis.
   32. MIKE: The information age led to many changes in many job markets, and to the skillsets necessary to adapt to it. These changes were difficult for older workers and evolutionary for younger workers.
   33. MIKE: Ai may be no different … or it may be calamitous.
   34. MIKE: When I was 21 in 1972 and jobs in that recession were hard to find, I was brand new in the job market and had been unemployed for 4 months, and my finances were in dire shape. At that time, my father commented with perhaps one of the wisest things he ever said, and I’ve remembered it to this day. He said, “You won’t always be this poor, but remember what it feels like.”
   35. MIKE: Well, I have remembered, and that’s why the circumstances of people who struggle financially matter to me in a visceral way.
   36. MIKE: For all the advantages capitalism may offer for a relative few and for our economy overall, government and society must formulate a response for the newly or structurally unemployed that gives them the assistance and support they need to re-establish themselves in our economy. That would not only be good for the individuals helped, but also for our nation as a whole.
5. From the same opinion writer at The Hill in the same vein came this next piece three weeks later — The death of the American Dream is now official; by John Mac Ghlionn, opinion contributor | THEHILL.COM | 04/24/26 2:30 PM ET. TAGS: American Households, Credit Years, Financial Crisis, National Survey,
   1. Tens of millions of Americans are three months away from financial ruin. A single quarter stands between the average household and bankruptcy, and the average household knows it.
   2. According to a recent national survey, a little over $6,000 in additional debt is all it takes to push a family over the edge. Six thousand dollars. The cost of a half-decent secondhand car. A modest kitchen renovation. In the country that put a man on the moon, mapped the human genome, won two world wars, and produces more billionaires per capita than anywhere on earth, that’s the cliff edge.
   3. The old vocabulary no longer fits. The conservative catechism of thrift, discipline, and delayed gratification has aged poorly in light of the evidence. Tariffs, as the survey notes, rippled through supply chains and left a sizeable dent in consumers’ pockets. Health care waits in the background, capable of dismantling a decade of careful saving with a single bad diagnosis. American households have always lived under financial pressure. The difference now is the direction — or rather, the directions. It is coming from everywhere at once, which is what makes it almost impossible to outrun.
   4. The longer story begins decades ago. Factories closed, towns traded paychecks for addiction and obituaries. The political class, meanwhile, offered transition as consolation. Some regions absorbed the shock. Many, however, did not. The geography of opportunity broke along those lines and remained broken. 
   5. Then came the credit years. The early 2000s brought about a feeling of abundance through borrowing. Houses grew larger, lifestyles expanded, and risk accumulated somewhere just out of sight. When the financial crisis arrived, markets bounced back faster than many assumed. Wages took considerably longer. A peculiar imbalance followed. Prosperity looked strong on paper. Portfolios recovered, headlines declared victory, and an entire generation discovered that homeownership had become a spectator sport. Education kept raising its admission price until the debt preceded the diploma. 
   6. The gap between prosperity as described and prosperity as experienced widened until the gap was the whole story.
   7. Recent years removed what remained of the cushion. Inflation peaked at 9 percentin the summer of 2022, the highest in 40 years. Between March 2020 and December 2025, grocery prices rose by nearly 30 percent. Rent now consumes an ever-larger share of take-home pay. In some states, parking a child in daycare costs $30,000 a year, roughly what a starting teacher in Montana Bankruptcy, once a remote abstraction, has filed itself into the mainstream. In 2025 alone, nearly 544,000 Americans went through the process, some 55,000 more than the year before. 
   8. The response has been behavioral rather than political, which is another way of saying people have given up waiting for someone to fix it. Nights out get canceled. Rent falls behind. Medical appointments get postponed and rarely rescheduled. None of this is irrational. When survival takes priority, everything else enters a waiting room with no clear appointment time. What makes it particularly disturbing is that financial distress doesn’t stay financial. It moves through relationships and communities, rearranging what people believe is possible for themselves. 
   9. Some will call it hyperbolic to suggest the American Dream is dead. Perhaps. But a dream balanced on a six-thousand-dollar ledge, in a stiff wind, is not exactly thriving. With energy prices soaring and the probability of a recession climbing with every new data release, the wind is picking up.  
   10. Character changes under sustained financial strain. Optimism vanishes. Long-term planning becomes a kind of cruel joke. Saving, when income permits it at all, competes with too many immediate demands to accumulate meaningfully. Risk starts to feel less like opportunity than stupidity. Innovation tends to slow when people are primarily focused on surviving the current month. 
   11. Social trust vanishes alongside personal finances. Institutions that failed to prevent this and offered little during it don’t commandmuch confidence now. The shared sense of national direction, always somewhat mythological, becomes harder to locate. 
   12. The American Dream was never just about money. It was, in many ways, a promissory note about upward trajectory, about the basic believability of a better tomorrow. That note hasn’t officially been declared worthless, but fewer peopleare accepting it at face value. 
   13. Reviving the American Dream would require structural change on a scale that runs against short-term political incentives. For now, more and more Americans move forward with the particular alertness of people who know the margin is thin, the options are limited, and one wrong step results in a conversation nobody wants to have with their family. 
   14. MIKE: These two opinion pieces were published in The Hill, which is generally considered a centrist news organization that drifts both left and right. It’s owned by Nexstar Media, which is itself considered a center-right to rightwing company. There’s a site called Open Secrets which shows a breakdown of political contributions from Nexstar owners and employees. The company itself apparently does not make political contributions.
   15. MIKE: All those stipulations having been made, I think that this article accurately sums up the current situation among most people in this country.
   16. MIKE: It brings us back to the small number of people in the US that have obscene wealth in the many billions of dollars, and that is not to exclude people with great wealth in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
   17. MIKE: According to the Congressional Budget Office, in 2022, “… families in the top 1 percent … held 27 percent [of the wealth], up from 23 percent in 1989.”
   18. MIKE: According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, in 2025, “The top 10% of households by wealth had $8.1 million on average [and as] a group, they held 67.2% of total household wealth. The bottom 50% of households by wealth had $60,000 on average. As a group, they held 2.5% of total household wealth.”
   19. MIKE: Hoarding of resources is generally frowned upon as a societal harm. If you consider such concentrations of great wealth to be the equivalent of hoarding, here’s how hoarding is often managed in the United States.
   20. MIKE: In some instances, federal law regulates hoarding. One example is this, from Title 50-WAR AND NATIONAL DEFENSE, The “text contains those laws in effect on April 23, 2026. “Hoarding of designated scarce materials”.
   21. MIKE: It says in part, “In order to prevent hoarding, no person shall accumulate (1) in excess of the reasonable demands of business, personal, or home consumption, or (2) for the purpose of resale at prices in excess of prevailing market prices, materials which have been designated by the President as scarce materials or materials the supply of which would be threatened by such accumulation. … [T]he President may prescribe such conditions with respect to the accumulation of materials in excess of the reasonable demands of business, personal, or home consumption as he deems necessary to carry out the objectives of this chapter. …”
   22. MIKE: States and localities also make laws regarding hoarding of resources and price gouging under certain circumstances, typically States of Emergency.
   23. MIKE: We might then pose the question of whether the extreme hoarding of wealth might constitute a national emergency at some point in time, if not now?
   24. MIKE: In today’s show post at ThingwingRadio[.]com, I’ve included supporting links.
   25. MIKE: Now, I’ll grant that this law is intended to be invoked in wartime, and I’ll further stipulate that the excerpt I’ve chosen is somewhat self-serving for the point I want to make.
   26. MIKE: There’s also this other point to consider: “Cornering the market — acquiring control of a commodity or security to manipulate its price — is illegal under US antitrust and securities laws, including the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Regulatory bodies like the SEC, CFTC, and FTC prosecute such actions when they constitute market manipulation, price fixing, or unfair monopolization.”
   27. MIKE: So, I think given all of that, while it would be impractical and probably impossible to consider the accumulation of great or obscene wealth a crime, it could nonetheless justify much heavier taxation at the upper tiers in order to reduce the “hoarding” of financial resources — i.e., money — based on the premise that the concentration of extraordinary wealth is seen as a danger to our national security.
   28. MIKE: That danger is to the political integrity of our democracy; the social cohesion and tranquility of our society; and the economic health of our country.
   29. MIKE: There is simply no justification for the current destructive and insidious distribution of wealth that our country is now experiencing.
   30. MIKE: It must be seen as a structural problem that it’s essential to solve.
6. And speaking of personal financial solvency as a structural problem, there’s this story from FORTUNE[.]COM — Economists warned California not to raise the minimum wage to $20. They were wrong in almost every way so far, another economist says; By Sasha Rogelberg, Reporter | FORTUNE.COM | April 15, 2026, 7:05 AM ET. TAGS: California, Minimum Wage, Employment, Prices, Inflation,
   1. Following California implementing a law raising its minimum wage to $20 for more than 500,000 fast-food workers in the state in 2024, Christopher Thornberg, founding partner of research firm Beacon Economics, offered a warning about the state raising its minimum wage. 
   2. [He wrote earlier this year,] “California’s well-intended push to reduce income inequality via wage floors is beginning to have a significant negative impact on some of our most vulnerable workers—our youth, particularly those from lower-income households.”
   3. His concerns echoed those of fast-food franchise owners, one of whom told Fortune in 2024 that higher wages would be unsustainable for smaller chains with slim margins.
   4. But nearly two years after the law’s passage, economists are seeing very different results than what was initially feared. A working paper from University of California at Berkeley released this month found the policy increased average weekly wages for eligible workers by 11% and did not reduce employment. Prices increased modestly, about 1.5%, or the equivalent of about six cents for a $4 item.
   5. [Michael Reich, the study author and chair of the Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics at UC Berkeley, told Fortune,] “The results are nowhere as dire as predicted.”
   6. The study compiled payroll data from Glassdoor job postings and Square and collected data on how many workers entered a fast-food establishment on a given date using Advan Research, a firm aggregating cell phone locations. It tracked changes to food prices using DoorDash. The analysis uses a vastly different set of data to come to the same conclusion as previous research on California’s minimum wage, which likewise found little impact of the law on employment, as well as benefits and hours.
   7. California’s [raising of the] minimum wage for fast-food workers is part of a wider conversation the state is having around the distribution of wealth, particularly as wage growth for low-income Americans is dwarfed by that of higher-income households.
   8. California voters will decide in November if the state will impose a one-time wealth tax on residents making more than $1 billion. A survey released last month in partnership with the Los Angeles Times, found that 52% of Californians were in favor of the ballot initiative.
   9. [Saru Jayaraman, president of national advocacy group One Fair Wage, which is campaigning for a $30 minimum wage, told Fortune in March,] “Minimum wage is by far the most popular issue out there right now. … But the billionaires tax is a close second.”
   10. Though Californians’ concerns mirror a nationwide anxiety about a growing K-shaped, or two-tiered economy, the Golden State is nearly its own economic case study. California has a $4 trillion GDP, making its economy about the same size as that of the United Kingdom. Home to more than 200 billionaires, the state also has [the] country’s highest percentage of residents living below the poverty line [at] 18%, in part as a result of its high cost of living. 
   11. … Reich said evidence from his research suggests the concerns associated with raising minimum wages are overblown. For example, the 11% increase in wages found in the study is below that approximate 25% leap in California’s $16 wage prior to the 2024 law. That’s likely because many chains were already paying their workers above the minimum. In-N-Out, for example, was offering workers a starting salary of $17.50 in 2023. California cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles already had starting wages above the state minimum prior to the law.
   12. Moreover, labor is 30% of a restaurant’s operating costs, meaning that an 11% increase in wages would mean overall costs for a business would increase by just 3%, half of which is passed down to customers, resulting in a modest 1.5% price increase, according to Reich.
   13. The study went as far as to say that increasing minimum wages could even increase revenue for fast-food restaurants. Higher wages are associated with increased productivity and lower turnover, Reich noted.
   14. [Per Cornell School of Hotel Administration data,] Turnover can cost a fast-food restaurant an average of $5,864 per worker, incentivizing companies to keep their employees. The small price increase could also be beneficial to restaurants, as the tick up would likely be negligible to customers.
   15. [Reich said,] “When faced with small increases in fast-food prices, [consumers] reduce the amount they spend by an even smaller amount.”
   16. Other research has contradicted Reich’s findings. A Cato Institute report from November 2025 found, using Bureau of Labor Statistics data, that the fast-food sector lost 18,000 jobs relative to the rest of the labor market. The research backs up economist Christopher Thornberg’s claims around hiked minimum wage having an outsize impact on workers who are younger and lower-income, characteristics disproportionately represented in fast food. Thornberg did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
   17. A November 2025 study from University of California at Santa Cruz found the minimum wage law was associated with higher menu prices, as well as fewer hours and benefits for restaurant workers. That research, based on interviews with restaurant managers and owners, lacked quantitative evidence, according to Reich.
   18. However, future data on the impact of minimum wages on a state’s economy may be hard to calculate given the confounding impacts of other policy changes, Reich said. For example, a University of California Merced study, using U.S. Census data, found private sector employment in California dropped 3.1% following the Trump administration’s push to increase Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in the state, and future research on state employment will have to account for the dip, he added.
   19. But California’s minimum wage push may be setting a trend. Nearly two dozen states, as well as 66 cities and counties, will increase their minimum wages at some point in 2026, according to a National Employment Law Project report.
   20. [Reich said,] “A lot of people are watching what’s happening in California. … And it could be a model for the rest of the country.”
   21. MIKE: Conservative economists — and most economists are small “C” conservative by nature — always over-estimate the impact of higher minimum wages, and data almost always proves them wrong.
   22. MIKE: And capital “C” Conservatives have been trying to eliminate or at least mitigate minimum wages since they were first created in 1938 under FDR’s Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).
   23. MIKE: If the Conservatives had been right, we would have been losing jobs since 1938, and things haven’t worked out that way.
   24. MIKE: Even if there is a dip in low-wage employment after the creation of higher minimum wages, it’s usually temporary because higher wages in the public’s pockets ultimately create more purchasing power and more consumer activity.
   25. MIKE: But Conservative opposition to any reasonable minimum wage, let alone an increased minimum wage, always comes down to two factors. 1) Employers hate to spend more money, even when that increase is justifiable and tax deductible; and 2) If everyone is increasing the minimum wage — like a national minimum wage increase — then the playing field is flat and most businesses will ultimately see sales growth as a result of increased spending power, canceling out the increased costs with increased sales and profits.
   26. MIKE: Nonetheless, the article makes the point that today, there are “confounding impacts of other policy changes”, such as Trump’s push to increase ICE raids in the state.
   27. MIKE: It’s important to note that radical ICE enforcement hurts the economy and may be directly responsible for shrinking employment in at least two ways.
   28. MIKE: First, it reduces a class of workers most likely to work in low wage jobs. Second, it shrinks the number of consumers most likely to purchase food at fast food outlets.
   29. MIKE: Thus, a reduction in employment numbers is not necessarily exclusively due to a higher minimum wage. It may also be due to a reduction in the workers most likely to take low-wage fast food jobs. In other words, employment may be shrinking partly because workers are harder to find due to reduction in the potential worker pool.
   30. MIKE: It’s important to note that I neither condone nor endorse employment of illegal immigrants. It simply states a fact.
   31. MIKE: There may also be a third factor for reduced employment in fast food and other low-wage jobs that was not mentioned in the story: Namely, mechanization, robotics, and Ai.
   32. MIKE: Mechanization of repetitive jobs and jobs that are simple enough to be automated can both increase human productivity on the one hand and eliminate some human jobs on the other.
   33. MIKE: This is often described as increased worker productivity, and that can be a good thing, but for over 40 years, businesses have not shared that productivity with workers. They’ve essentially kept most of that productivity gain at the top. That has meant stagnant worker wage growth for the better part of a half century while business profits have grown substantially.
   34. MIKE: This pattern is socially and economically unsustainable, and I believe there must be a radical change in how worker compensation is calculated when automation is introduced into the equation.
7. Next, from EURASIANTIMES[.]COM, there’s this timely story — Pentagon Pushes Ford & GM to Revive U.S. Arsenal of Democracy After Iran War Munitions Crisis; By Sumit Ahlawat | EURASIANTIMES.COM | April 19, 2026. TAGS: Automobile Makers, Ford, General Motors, Chrysler, Defense Manufacturing, Second World War, WW2,
   1. Automobile makers have a rich history of defense production. During the Second World War, many of today’s renowned automobile makers, including Japan’s Mitsubishi and Toyota, Germany’s Volkswagen and Daimler-Benz, France’s Renault, the UK’s Rolls Royce, Italy’s Fiat, and the US’s Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler, were deeply involved in defense manufacturing, producing everything from tanks and aircraft engines to armored vehicles, munitions, and military utility trucks.
   2. In the post-World War era, many of these companies returned to civilian automobile manufacturing; however, some companies, such as the UK’s Rolls-Royce, maintained active defense production units.
   3. In the modern era, Turkey’s preeminent drone manufacturer, Baykar, began as a car component manufacturer in 1984.
   4. Similarly, South Korea’s Hyundai Motors has been actively involved in defense manufacturing for the last five decades.
   5. However, in the aftermath of the Russia-Ukraine War and the tremendous pressure it is putting on countries’ stockpiles of weapons, many governments are once again exploring the possibility of automobile companies reentering defense manufacturing.
   6. Last year, the French government approached the automobile manufacturer Renault to re-enter defense production after an 80-year gap. Renault was to mass-produce drones in collaboration with Ukrainian defense companies.
   7. Last month, it was reported that Volkswagen is in talks with Israeli defense company Rafael Advanced Defense Systems about potentially converting VW’s Osnabrück plant, currently threatened with closure, to produce defense-adjacent parts.
   8. Similarly, during the Iran War, the US has depleted its stocks of missile interceptors and precision munitions to [historically] low levels, which has raised uncomfortable questions about Washington’s ability to sustain a war of attrition with peer adversaries, such as China and Russia.
   9. In fact, many governments are waking up to the harsh reality that their current defense-industrial base is not sufficient to sustain intense, long, drawn-out wars.
   10. In desperation, they’re now turning to automobile manufacturers to boost defense production.
   11. [The Wall Street Journal reported that earlier this week,] Pentagon officials … met with senior executives of Ford Motor and General Motors to gauge whether the auto industry could help the military acquire vehicles, munitions, or other hardware more quickly and at lower costs. …
   12. The Trump administration has complained for months that traditional defense contractors take too long to manufacture weapons systems and charge too much for them. In January, President Trump signed an executive order aimed at punishing defense contractors that failed to expand their manufacturing capacity.
   13. And in November, the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, rolled out a strategy for military procurement that included buying more widely available off-the-shelf components to avoid the high costs and delays associated with the specialized systems that the military typically uses.
   14. [The strategy read that] The defense industrial base [D.I.B.] “is stagnant, building the world’s best and most exquisite weapon systems at low volume while relying on obsolescent parts, outdated manufacturing processes, and stale innovation. … In contrast, the commercial industry outpaces the D.I.B. in advancing cutting-edge technology.”
   15. At this stage, the discussions are in early stages, sources said, and relate to the production of certain components, not … entire weapons systems.
   16. Still, these discussions with automakers underscore the Trump administration’s efforts to boost defense procurement after the wars in Ukraine and Iran have depleted [US] stocks.
   17. While the exact figures are classified, according to some estimates, the US fired more Patriot missile interceptors in the first five days of the Iran War than Ukraine used in its four years of War with Russia.
   18. According to a New York Timesreport, the US and its allies have expended over 800 anti-ballistic missiles … worth US$2.4 billion, during just the first five days of hostilities with Iran.
   19. Notably, the US made an average of 270 advanced Patriot missiles a year from 2015 to 2024, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), [and]Lockheed Martin delivered 620 PAC-3 MSEin 2025…
   20. This means that the US and its allies have burned through more Patriot interceptors in just the first five days of war than the US has the capacity to produce in the next year.
   21. A recent Payne Institute analysis shows that in the first four days alone, the US used 16% of its THAAD and 15% of its Patriot interceptors.
   22. Similarly, reports suggest that Iran has targeted at least four THAAD radars during the conflict. Currently, there are only 10 THAAD systems globally. The US operates seven of these; two were sold to the UAE, and one THAAD battery is with Saudi Arabia.
   23. The Pentagon has turned to auto suppliers because U.S. officials remember how Ford and G.M. revamped production lines during the Covid-19 pandemic to make personal protective equipment and ventilators.
   24. Even more importantly, during the Second World War, automakers, particularly Ford, helped the US boost defense production manifold.
   25. That industrial mobilization for the war effort led President Franklin D. Roosevelt to term the automobile factories the “arsenal of democracy,” which helped Washington turn the tide of the war in Europe.
   26. … During the Second World War, Ford’s Willow Run factory churned out thousands of aircraft. At its peak, Ford factories were producing one B-24 Liberator bomber an hour, a production rate that has never been matched since then.
   27. In one three-day period in April 1944, the Ford factory built 100 bombers. For context, in 2025, Dassault Aviation built just 26 Rafale fighter jets, and Lockheed Martin built 191 F-35 fighter jets.
   28. In 1939, U.S. aircraft factories manufactured 921 warplanes. Three years later, in 1942, US President Roosevelt asked Congress for 50,000 planes a year.
   29. When Hermann Göring, head of the German Luftwaffe, heard this, he laughed. [Göring reportedly said,] “No one can build 50,000 planes a year. That’s pure propaganda.”
   30. In 1944, the U.S. would build nearly 100,000 airplanes.
   31. According to the book The American Aircraft Factory in World War II, the US produced over 300,000 aircraft during the Second World War.
   32. This unprecedented output would not have been possible without the massive contribution of the US automobile sector.
   33. Construction of Ford’s massive Willow Run Bomber Plant began in 1941. [It] became the world’s largest factory under one roof at the time, and applied automotive mass-production methods to aircraft manufacturing.
   34. Ford also produced Rolls-Royce Merlin and Pratt & Whitney aircraft engines, tank components, and other equipment … .
   35. By 1943, the Willow Run factory was employing nearly 50,000 workers.
   36. During the war, Ford also built nearly 1,700 M4A3 Sherman tanks and over 1,000 M10A1 tank destroyers.
   37. The last B-24 rolled off the Willow Run line on June 28, 1945. In total, Ford built 8,685 B-24s at Willow Run, accounting for nearly half of all Liberators produced.
   38. Ford also built 278,000 military jeeps, … and nearly 57,000 aircraft engines.
   39. This massive aircraft production helped the Allied forces achieve air superiority over Germany and Japan.
   40. Germany surrendered in May 1945. By July 1945, Ford factories were already shifting back to civilian automobile production.
   41. In the post-World War era, Ford maintained a minimal defense production output.
   42. Ford supplied military versions of its trucks and other support vehicles during the Korean War. However, defense work supplemented, rather than dominated, its core civilian business during the Cold War.
   43. It remains to be seen if Ford and GM will re-enter the core defense production business eight decades after the Second World War.
   44. MIKE: This was the problem I and others foresaw decades ago as US manufacturing moved overseas, and pundits were touting how the US had advanced from a manufacturing economy to an information economy.
   45. MIKE: Information is great, but it doesn’t build anything tangible. Converting information into products requires a manufacturing capability.
   46. MIKE: The US and other so-called “advanced economies” are learning to their regret and chagrin that outsourcing their factories to China and other Asian countries might have made economic sense on a profit basis, but led to a structural deficit.
   47. MIKE: This deficit is not only in the ability to make consumer products on their own national territory. It meant that in cases of national emergency, there were not enough existing factories that could be mobilized quickly to meet demands necessary for national defense.
   48. MIKE: Prior to WW2 and until the US defense buildup started around the late 1930s, there was a lot of manufacturing capacity that the Great Depression had left idle. This included not only factory machinery, but the massive buildings to house that machinery.
   49. MIKE: I don’t usually go to the Heritage Foundation for my research, but they have an interesting article from 2024 called, “The U.S. Defense Industrial Base: Past Strength, Current Challenges, and Needed Change”.
   50. MIKE: One of the comments made in this piece is that, “Today, America’s national defense remains just as dependent on the nature of its economy; those ties, however, do not make the U.S. as secure as they once did. The U.S. economy is now based primarily in knowledge and services: Manufacturing accounted for only 8.7 percent of U.S. jobs in 2015, compared to 32 percent in 1953. … [Leaders] must pursue the development of a strong U.S. military and resilient defense industrial base within today’s economic environment, utilizing innovative policies to ensure that defense production can meet America’s demands in today’s changing security environment.”
   51. MIKE: All true, but that will take policy incentives and time, and it leaves the immediate defense industrial advantage to nations whose economies are already geared toward war production such as Russia, or countries like China that have both excess capacity and dual-use industries that can be quickly converted to sustainable defense production.
   52. MIKE: An article from the Oxford China Policy Lab called, “How Does China’s Dual-Use Industrial Base Enhance Its Mobilisation Readiness for War?,” is summarized thusly:
   53. “China’s massive manufacturing capacity gives it a major military advantage that could decide future wars, even though it wasn’t necessarily built for that purpose;
   54. “China dominates global production in critical areas like shipbuilding (53%), drones (90%), steel (54%), and rare earth magnets (91%);
   55. “This ‘peacetime overcapacity’ could be rapidly switched to military production during conflict;
   56. “The US and allies rely on “just-in-time” production that takes too long to ramp up in wartime;
   57. “[And] China’s system allows faster conversion from civilian to military production than Western democracies.”
   58. MIKE: It must be noted that all the aforementioned does not mean that China might be an invincible adversary.
   59. MIKE: In my opinion it’s past time to develop a national policy of “in-sourcing”, or what is sometimes called “onshoring”, to re-develop more domestic industrial capacity.
   60. MIKE: In a time of relatively low unemployment — at least for now — automation and mechanization of these on-shored factories could keep productivity and efficiency high, keep prices reasonably competitive, and potentially lead to increases in the wage base. These new, highly automated factories would not only increase our industrial base, but could offer job and career opportunities to people in this country that are, or will be, displaced by Ai.
   61. MIKE: Thus, a national policy of reindustrialization would benefit us both economically in peacetime and defensively in wartime.
   62. MIKE: For those who want to dig deeper into this topic, I’ve included some reference links in this show post at ThinkwingRadio[.]com.
   63. REFERENCE: China’s Defense Buildup: A Rapidly Expanding Industrial Base and a Stagnant U.S. Response — WEDGEMEREPARTNERS.COM
   64. REFERENCE: How Does China’s Dual-Use Industrial Base Enhance Its Mobilisation Readiness for War? — Oxford China Policy Lab
   65. REFERENCE: I used the following search terms: “How much idle factory capacity could the US mobilize in a war”; “How much idle factory capacity can China mobilize in a war?”; and “China +”excess capacity” ”.
8. In more military build-up news, and for those countries in a position to take advantage of it, from EURASIANTIMES[.]COM — After Historic $7B Australia-Japan Warship Deal, New Zealand Shows Interest in Upgraded Mogami-Class Frigates?; By Sakshi Tiwari | EURASIANTIMES.COM | April 20, 2026. TAGS: Royal Australian Navy, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Warships, Arms Exports, Defense Contracts,
   1. In a big boost to the Royal Australian Navy, Australia and Japan signed a [deal worth US$7 billion] for upgraded Mogami-class warships, heralding a new era for Japan’s arms exports. Interestingly, this purchase may have triggered a domino effect, with countries such as New Zealand also eyeing the Japanese warships to bolster their maritime capabilities. …
   2. As per the plan, the first three ships will be built in Japan and delivered to Australia by 2029, whereas the remaining 8 will be built locally at the Henderson shipyard in Perth, Western Australia, by the Australian company Austal.
   3. [MIKE: That last bit is an important stipulation. It will not only provide important technology transfers to Australia. It will also increase their native shipbuilding capacity at home. This echoes the deficiency in shipbuilding capacity that we have here. Continuing …]
   4. This has been described as the biggest and most significant arms export deal signed by Japan since it lifted the export ban in 2014, and [it] is considered a breakthrough in Tokyo’s shift away from its post-war pacifism amid rising security threats from China. [Japan’s Defense Minister Shinjirō Koizumi stated that] The frigates program was a “major step that was finally being taken to elevate our defense relationship to a greater height.” …
   5. [There] is reported an indication that Australia’s selection of the upgraded Mogami-class ships has sparked New Zealand’s interest. …
   6. The interest is well-timed, as Tokyo is poised to revoke a stipulation that restricts Japan’s military exports to five non-lethal categories in an effort to increase defense-industrial cooperation with allies and key partners as early as next week.
   7. [Japan’s Defense Minister Koizumi stated that] The revisions to Japan’s export regulations “will enable us to pursue transfers that meet the needs of like-minded countries and strengthen their deterrence and response capabilities. … We are already hearing about the needs and expectations for Japan’s high-tech defense equipment from a range of countries.”
   8. With New Zealand looking to replace its aging … frigates by the mid-2030s, the British Type 31 and the upgraded Mogami-class have emerged as top choices.
   9. Although New Zealand has not explicitly stated that it would choose the Japanese frigate, it has repeatedly signaled its intent to acquire a system that would enhance interoperability with its closest military ally in the region — Australia.
   10. In fact, New Zealand has been exploring the option of acquiring the upgraded Mogami-class ship since Australia selected it last year. …
   11. At the time, Golding expressed concerns about China’s increasing maritime assertiveness and emphasized the need for closer collaboration with Japan.
   12. The People’s Liberation Army Navy of China conducted live-fire exercises in the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand in February 2025 without providing adequate notice. At the time, NZ’s Defense Minister stated rather emphatically that more investment was needed in the region in response to China’s power projection.
   13. Japan and New Zealand have forged closer ties in recent years, including through an intelligence exchange and logistics support agreement. New Zealand could, thus, build on this cooperation to acquire the Japanese upgraded Mogami-class warships. 
   14. … New Zealand operates one of the world’s largest exclusive economic zones (EEZs), … about 15 times its land area, in addition to [its] responsibilities in the Southern Ocean and support for Pacific partners. However, the Royal New Zealand Navy’s (RNZN’s) current fleet is small and faces chronic personnel shortages and readiness pressures. The ANZAC-class frigates are nearing the end of their extended service lives.
   15. Japan’s New [FFM stealth frigate] offers a suitable solution for New Zealand.
   16. With a high degree of overall automation, … the upgraded Mogami-class requires only 90 personnel, which is roughly half the ANZAC complement. For a navy struggling with recruitment and retention, this would free up sailors to crew more vessels, sustain longer deployments, or expand the fleet — addressing one of the RNZN’s most pressing constraints. …
   17. MIKE: The story then goes into a lot of technical pros and cons for considering the Japanese frigates. Continuing to the story’s conclusion …]
   18. Australia has selected the upgraded Mogami for its general-purpose frigate program. A shared design between the Royal Australian Navy and the Royal New Zealand Navy would deliver Common training, spares, and maintenance, resulting in significant savings for the small RNZN.  If New Zealand indeed decides to purchase the new [FFM stealth frigate], the Japanese warship would become a shared security backbone in the region. 
   19. For Japan, a sale of the upgraded Mogami-class to New Zealand would further validate its policy pivot from being a manufacturer of sophisticated weapon systems to a worthy exporter. And it would expand cooperation among Japan and the two strategically located Pacific countries in the face of sustained Chinese aggression and military expansion.
   20. MIKE: I believe this story is part and parcel of the new era we’re now living in, and it will end up being described in one of two ways by future historians.
   21. MIKE: Retrospectively, it will either be seen as the biggest prewar military arms race since the 1930s, or it will be seen as a massive military buildup that ultimately created a balance of power among potential adversaries that avoided a major — and potentially global — war.
   22. MIKE: Unfortunately, these kinds of rapid and somewhat panicky responses to each other’s military buildups rarely presages peace, and almost always presages war.
   23. MIKE: As I’ve noted before, if the Russian invasion of Ukraine is equivalent to Japan’s 1931 invasion of Manchuria, then we are already in the prewar period.
   24. MIKE: I’ll also note that while Europeans consider WW2 to have begun with the September 1^st Nazi invasion of Poland, many East Asians, particularly in China, consider World War II to have started on July 7, 1937 with the Marco Polo Bridge Incident near Beijing.
   25. MIKE: So you see, it all depends on your perspective.

There’s always more to discuss, but that’s all we have time for today.