Quote of the Day
Be yourself;no base imitator of another,
but your best self.
There is something which you can do better than another.
Listen to the inward voice and bravely obey that.
Do the things at which you are great,
not what you were never made for.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image of the Day
A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Waste: Alternatives To Being Sentenced to 12 Years in a Public Education Penitentiary
If I Wasn't Doing Low Carb
Economy, Jobs, the Minimum Wage
Job growth over the last 2 months has slowed dramatically, which many attribute to the brutally cold winter weather. Official unemployment (using an arbitrary labor force criterion) ticked down to 6.6%; a better measure, labor force participation rate, ticked up slightly to 63%. However, the increase of just over 100K was roughly a third less than expected.
Bill O'Reilly, who is a fusion conservative/populist, recently scolded the GOP over resistance to increases in the minimum wage. I have written several pieces on this, but let me simply point out that only 2% of workers make minimum wage, many of them are young people, like teenagers with a 20% unemployment rate (Economic Freedom on FB). O'Reilly doesn't seem to have a problem with parasitic politicians whom have never run a business pulling a number out of their asses and declaring voluntary employment agreements below that number illegal. But no business has to hire workers at arbitrary rates.
Don Boudreaux of Cafe Hayek points out there's often a hidden agenda by proponents of minimum wage legislation. Many of my ancestors were part of the French-Canadian immigrants attracted by employment at textile mills in New England. It was inevitable, of course, that textile mills would move closer, say, to cotton producers and save costs. Part of the Southern cost advantage was low-cost labor. The minimum wage championed by Northerners had less to do with empathy, say, for low-paid Southern blacks and more to do with narrowing any Southern mill cost advantage. This, of course, meant fewer blacks would be hired with lower mill sales. With friends like these, who needs enemies?
Facebook Corner
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| Via Jeffry Tucker |
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Michael Ramirez, Investors.com, and Townhall |
Barry Manilow, "Mandy". Reportedly, the song was titled "Brandy", but Barry wanted to separate his performance from Looking Glass' "Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)", both songs personal favorites. This is one of those songs that brings out the amateur music producer in me. I have in mind a gritty blue-eyed soul version; I particularly like the bridge chorus, with more of an echo effect (signifying his loneliness), a mix of both spoken and sung versions, some run-on or laid over vocals to emphasize his confusion, a flood of thoughts and emotions. Aren't you lucky to have been spared of my artistic endeavors?
Poor Barry; in the mid-70's, he had a strong string of highly-rated hits, but he was notably mocked by the sitcom "Murphy Brown". To be honest, my male friends and I would never express ourselves in lyrics like these over a lost love; for example, I'm more apt to identify with Joe Jackson's "Is She Really Going Out With Him?", Tom Petty's "Woman in Love", or Rick Springfield's "Jessie's Girl". Heart does it beautifully in their signature hit "Alone" (although not the part about waiting for a phone call)--I like the "you don't know what you're missing" message. I haven't written my version of a song like "Mandy", but it would include verses similar to Styx' magnificent "Dear John": "I thought I saw you on the street today..." with a twist like Joshua Kadison's "Jessie", i.e., "Oh, Jessie, you always do this [reappear] every time I get back on my feet [from losing you]." I haven't lost a great love, but I wouldn't express feelings like that, almost wallowing in self-pity, not very attractive to most people. That's not to say I wouldn't have strong emotions (like most guys, I've experienced my fair share of rejection), but I deal with adversity by moving on in life
