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We are wiser than we know.Ralph Waldo Emerson
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| Via Carpe Diem |
I attended two academic conferences in Las Vegas during the mid-80's, the latter as a junior (nontenured) professor. I've never been into gambling, and as a young academic, I couldn't afford to gamble anyway. For the budget-minded, there are the inexpensive buffets (at the time, maybe $3-$4); of course, they were strategically located so you had to find your way through a maze of gambling tables and other distractions. But they were so inexpensive that a senior professor in my area decided to claim per diem (no receipts) and cleared a few bucks. I found myself battling the bureaucracy for reimbursement with itemized receipts totaling below per diem. (They threw out the last receipt, claiming a snack served on the plane was a 'meal' and that I was effectively double-dipping. It wasn't so much the $3 or so, but the principle. It was like trying to pull teeth; I eventually got reimbursed, but only after I suggested that I wanted to file per diem instead.)
Why am I discussing buffets? Don Boudreaux of Cafe Hayek did one of his signature Who'd a Thunk It? pieces on a Gray Lady news item over a casino operation closing its buffet operations a few months after a corrupt labor arbitrator more than doubled the pay of buffet staffers. One thing should be clear: buffets are not cash cows--they have been a type of loss leader (e.g., like a free trial period: obviously a business that gives things away without offsetting revenues/profits is unsustainable). The casinos hope that they can clear enough profit from incidental gambling activities of buffet customers to make the operation worthwhile; whether other casino customers or operations are profitable is irrelevant. (I did a quick check on Google with respect to Las Vegas buffets while writing this piece; I think the days of $3 buffets are in the past: inflation, not to mention buffets have gone upscale (more premium offerings) since my last visit, but there are still places you can go for little more than you might pay a la carte at a casual restaurant.)
Don in his posts gets a little bit into the weeds, combating claims of monopsony. (A monopsony is the flip side of a monopoly. The latter involves one principal seller (vs. buyer). The idea is that dominant market players can manipulate prices favorably (higher or lower) than the true/"fair" market price, at the expense of buyer or seller respectively.) "Progressives" seem to think that labor unions or regulations are the only things keeping employers from driving down wages, take it or leave it. That really doesn't explain why only a tiny fraction of workers make minimum wage, despite a declining percentage of union membership. A business can't sustain gains by lowering wages: it shrinks the pool of available labor for said wages, and other businesses might be attracted by the pool of labor at attractive prices. But, in the end, there is an intrinsic reason for why a business hires as many employees as it does: even if the price of bread is only a dime a loaf, there is only so much bread I can eat, and I have only so much space in my freezer. I might need only so much low-skilled labor; even if I was a parent and there was a BOGO special on babysitters, I would only need one babysitter. It's tied to worker productivity. Wage restrictions simply filter out mutually beneficial labor transactions.
In the Gray Lady piece, 175 buffet restaurant workers learned that the money-losing restaurant was closing; a recent price increase couldn't stop the bleeding. The casino operator denied that the labor ruling was tied to the closure--but let's face the facts: if a restaurant was losing money even before the arbiter in many cases more than doubled wages to a "living wages" criterion, windfall wage compensation exacerbated the restaurant's losses. Whether or not other casino operations are profitable is irrelevant: a restaurant is not a charity; it doesn't exist for the personal interests of its employees. Losing a job is traumatic; it has happened to me in the past. A few years back I worked for the national consulting arm of a well-known information services company; the sales guys went through a dry patch of not winning relevant project bids, and my job was tied to utilization. The company had other operations tied to profitable long-term contracts, but the idea that other business units would subsidize my costs if they could not use me would have created a risk to them. (Ironically my former boss recently contacted me to see if I was available.) The closure of a business is not retaliation for a counter-productive, economically illiterate arbitration decision; they simply didn't see the business as viable, even as a loss leader.
Facebook Corner
(LFC). "NSA apologists accuse Snowden of "breaking the law" for having violated his contract with the government not to disclose the intelligence that he did. But Snowden, presumably, believed that the government was acting in violation of the Constitution--the fundamental LAW of the land. No one can have a contractual obligation to BREAK THE LAW. Thus, those, like Obama, who refer to Snowden as having acted in an "unauthorized" way, beg the question, for if Snowden is right, then it was the President and this government that acted in an unauthorized manner. Snowden was just trying to rectify the original illegality."
- Jack Kerwick
No, Snowden downloaded every single document he could, not just the NSA spying; he violated the terms of his contract; he did not act in good faith to address his concerns under whistleblower protections. Depending on the nature of the documents, he could compromise foreign policy or intelligence activities and personnel, accountable to no one except himself.
I am not an apologist for NSA. It's collected information in a way that is the logical equivalent of a general warrant; it has violated the spirit and intent of the Fourth Amendment.
On Restoring Education Competition
Some salient insights via Cato Institute:
Of twelve randomized controlled trials—the gold standard of social science research—eleven found that school choice programs improve outcomes for some or all students while only one found no statistically significant difference and none found a negative impact...A 2009 literature review of the within-country studies comparing outcomes among different types of school systems worldwide revealed that the most market-like and least regulated education systems tended to produce student outcomes superior to more heavily regulated systems, including those with a substantial number state-funded and regulated private schools.I will say I have one major difference with this piece: as a measurement guy, I do like the idea of multi-point objective data points on student/teacher performance. I think it provides early feedback on performance issues and facilitates development of baselines and comparative assessment. Of course, what tests and who designs them are the rub...
Political Humor
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| Courtesy of Lisa Benson and Townhall |
Art Garfunkel, "I Only Have Eyes for You"
