Ever tried? Ever failed?
No Matter,
try again, fail again,
Fail better
Samuel Beckett
Whitney Houston Update
The official cause of death is deferred; it may take as many as 6 weeks to get toxicology results. TMZ reported earlier that it was one of Whitney's aunts whom found the singer submerged in the bathtub and was unable to resuscitate her. Unofficial reports say that drowning was not the cause of death (based on the amount of water in her lungs), but was likely a toxic interaction of prescription drugs (such as Xanax) and alcohol (found in alternate rooms).
Let me conclude with two versions of one of my all-time favorite songs from the late 70's, "The Greatest Love of All", on the soundtrack of a filmed biography of one of the most talented and controversial boxers: the former Cassius Clay, Muhammad Ali. The gifted songwriter Linda Creed, who wrote many Stylistic and Spinners hits (faithful readers will remember that I LOVE her song "Living a Little, Laughing a Little"), wrote this song while a 26-year-old fighting breast cancer. The great George Benson took it to #2 in 1977 on the R&B charts but barely cracked the Top 40. Whitney Houston proved that she had a gift for brilliant remakes of others' hits, easier said than done (e.g., Parton's "I Will Always Love You", an earlier country chart topper), hitting number #1 for three weeks in the spring of 1986 (when I defended my dissertation); around the same time, Linda Creed succumbed to cancer, done far too soon. [Which is my favorite version? All flowers in a bouquet are beautiful.]
George Benson's Original Hit
Whitney Houston's Remake: RIP, Whitney...
The Gray Lady's
Crackpot Quote of the Day
There is a popular semi-retired pro wrestler whose signature catchphrase is "Tell me you didn't just say that." I'm not sure what the New York Times editorial staff learned from their brown-bag lunches with Nobel Prize winning neo-Keynesian economist Paul Krugman, but yes, they really did write this about the New York state legislature's counterproductive consideration of raising the minimum wage (my edits):
New York is an expensive place to live, and unaffordable for workers struggling on $7.25 an hour, the federal minimum wage. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver is vigorously pushing a bill to raise the minimum to $8.50 an hour immediately and to adjust it each year for inflation. Only Republican state senators are resisting, using the same stale argument that a minimum wage increase is bad for business. The Senate Republican leader, Dean Skelos, argues that the measure “could be a job killer rather than a job promoter.” That contention has been proved wrong time and again.Let me start by saying that the New York legislature, which has more problems living within a budget than Oprah Winfrey has sticking to a diet, has no business interfering in the labor market. Wage and price controls (floors or ceilings) simply don't work; all they do is make the market less efficient and create deadweight loss. Wages are just another business cost, and the price a business can charge for a good or service is based on the market. In oil boom town Williston, ND, unemployment is almost nonexistent, and wages are far above the minimum wage (but so are prices given limited capacity in the local economy). The status quo in New York already reflects the economic equilibrium. "Fairness" is a political, not economic concept.
It seems as though the Gray Lady has lost some of her memory at her advanced age. Mark J Perry found a 1987 NYT editorial from a writer whom still remembers his Economics 101 course: "The Right Minimum Wage: $0.00":
There's a virtual consensus among economists that the minimum wage is an idea whose time has passed. Raising the minimum wage by a substantial amount would price working poor people out of the job market.It would increase employers' incentives to evade the law, expanding the underground economy. More important, it would increase unemployment: Raise the legal minimum price of labor above the productivity of the least skilled workers and fewer will be hired.From one of my favorite economics blogs, the wonderful Cafe Hayek, George Mason professor Don Boudreaux has penned a great tongue-in-cheek response to the Gray Lady called "Minimum Understanding":
I hereby call upon the legislature in Albany to force you and other newspapers in New York to raise your subscription and advertising rates by 17.2 percent (the same percentage raise that you want to force low-skilled workers to demand from their employers). You can thank me by giving me my own column, and pay me out of the extra profit that you’ll earn as a result of my petitioning the legislature on your behalfFYI from earlier this month: "The Times posted earnings per share of $0.39, an 11 percent drop from last year, and operating profit of $106.7, a four percent decline. The company continued to cut costs, but revenues decreased 2.8 percent to $643 million thanks to a 7.1 drop in advertising revenues. Both print and digital ad revenues were down."
As a bonus, here is Professor Boudreaux in the flesh, debunking Robert Reich, a former Clinton Administration Cabinet member whom had uploaded a widely-viewed video on the economy, by showing how progressive economists manipulate discussions of income inequality by (of course) picking and choosing "apples-and-oranges" measures. This is another in a series of videos available at George Mason University's learnliberty.org (recall yesterday's Valentine's Day economics video?)
Payroll Tax Cut Deal? Thumbs DOWN!
I am libertarian conservative, but I'm also a pragmatic problem solver. What I wanted for last year's debt ceiling vote was a symbolic speed bump: I wanted Obama to pay for his totally political, hypocritical vote against raising the debt ceiling years earlier and his reckless spendthrift ways. But raising a debt ceiling of and by itself doesn't imply or suggest that it can or should be used. We need to understand the political calculus: the Democrats know there is a short-term political price for austerity measures--you name a program, and some special-interest groups go into crisis mode, not unlike the public sector unions last year in Wisconsin over taxpayer-friendly reforms. Where's the short-term political pain for putting it on the next generation's credit card?
I know that the GOP has been boxed in by its own middle-class tax cut rhetoric. But the payroll tax cut is totally political and fiscally irresponsible. You see, today's workers still expect their full social security check in the future, even though they put in a third less last year and now this year. This aggravates the entitlement solvency problems.
One thing I didn't hear in the below report was federal pension reform; the outcome of Obama was proposing to increase federal workers' current 0.8% for their deferred benefit system up to 2.0% over 3 years--in exchange for lifting that pay freeze (after all, it's hard to make ends meet on an average $76K salary and total compensation $120K a year...). Now faithful readers may recall a few weeks ago I embedded a C-SPAN hearing on federal pension reform and particularly singled out Andrew Biggs' testimony (reprinted here). One of the things Biggs pointed out was that as bad a shape as most state pension funds are, federal workers currently pay about a third of what other (state/local) government employees pay towards their pensions.
Here's the point: what I understand has been under discussion is for these funds used not to shore up the existing pension obligations but to help plug in the gap for reduced social security contributions, now not even covering current social security benefit checks
Don't get me wrong--I would like to privatize the entitlement systems, which are unsustainable. But the reduction in taxes must be accompanied by a commensurate reduction in benefits (now or in the future). I see absolutely no chance Obama is prepared to make the necessary concessions. That is all politics, and the Republicans should call the pandering spendthrift Democrats, including the Deadbeat-in-Chief, out on it.
The only good thing I see here is the fact that Democrats are having to scale back on the morally hazardous 2 years of generous unemployment insurance. Not good enough.
Enough of the business-as-usual accounting smoke and mirrors and double counting! The GOP should simply play it straight with the American people and point out that Obama is trying to buy their votes for reelection on the backs of their children and grandchildren. This is NOT a tax hike, John Boehner. You know as well as I all short-term tax cuts are gimmicks (as Friedman's permanent income hypothesis points out). The deal was for one year, not two (or infinite). The Democrats should be forced to explain why they are ripping off future retirees instead of engaging in permanent fixes to an unsustainable system.
My Greatest Hits: February 2012 Edition
I started this periodic last month after getting improved blog readership statistics after the blog facelift several weeks back. These are specific post statistics, e.g., through Internet search hits, links in emails, etc. Given 1158 posts to this blog, I thought readers, especially more recent ones, might be interested in knowing which posts have drawn the widest interest. Over the past month, here are the 5 most popular, in descending sequence:
- Feb. 11: Whitney Houston tribute; extended Entertainment Potpourri
- Aug. 22, 2010: Also #2 last month: I suspect a critique I wrote about a Texas college transparency law
- Oct. 23, 2010: Also #3 last month. I think it probably involved my critique of Obama and small business
- Feb. 14: yesterday's post, zooming up the charts in just one day. Perhaps my rant on a Laura Ingraham guest host O'Reilly Factor commentary?
- July 29,2010: Down from #4 last month. The Shirley Sherrod kerfuffle?
Guess Who member Randy Bachman: BTO, "Roll On Down the Highway". This ends my Guess Who series
