Afraid

I'm afraid about my future after the election last night. Not because Democrats are probably going to control both houses of congress, but because Colorado voted to increase its minimum wage to $6.85. I agree that minimum wage needs to increase, but on a national level. Changing it only at the state level seems disastrous to me. I cannot imagine the rationale behind such a short-sighted decision. Now I have to wait and hope that either the Federal minimum wage requirement quickly is raised to or above $6.85, or that the profit margin is high enough in Colorado that companies feel like its worth sticking it out even though they could be paying their employees less if they moved to a different state. I really hope that this doesn't destroy Colorado's economy, but I really feel like it could. And I doubt there's any chance of the Amendment being repealed in some kind of emergency vote, if there is even a provision for such a thing, now that Democrats hold both state houses and we have a new Democrat governor.

Speaking of the Democrats taking both houses last night, is it just me or were the Republicans of the last six years the worst majority ever? It seems like they still never got anything done, even with a solid majority. Plus the alienated a large chunk of their base, like me, by deciding that they didn't have to appeal to people anymore and sold out to the Evangelical right. Which backfired, since a lot of evangelical groups were talking about not voting to try to teach the Republicans some lesson. I don't know, I feel like they deserved to lose. I didn't vote for any Democrats, but I'm not that upset at their winning. To them I say congratulations, I hope you don't live up to your critics expectations. And please don't make Nancy Pelosi the Speaker of the House. Please.

Closing

Today at 11:30AM I am selling my house. I have had this house listed since March 24th -- almost six months to the day. I hate this house, due in no small part to the fact that it has been on the market for 6 months and I've had to pay the mortgage and maintain it during that time. I cannot express how excited I am to go to closing today. I hope I can refrain from dancing on the table.

In somewhat related news, the Dow Jones, and all other American stocks, has been making tremendous gains lately and is close to its historic high. I have no idea what this really means for the economy, but it sounds very promising. Is this another 90s? Probably too soon to tell, I'd bet. But I really don't know anything about economics except that Adam Smith wrote "Wealth of the Nations" about it and John Nash's "original idea" changed the way the world looked at economics. Can anyone with more insight give me some clue as to how significant the stocks' gains and (relatively) low gas prices (down to $2.09 in Waco!) really are?