Anyone who has never made a mistake
has never tried anything new.
Albert Einstein
Pro-Liberty Thought of the Day
Facebook Corner
(Libertarian Republic). Walmart, Panera Bread, Other Big Corporations Not Opposing Minimum Wage Hikes http://bit.ly/1jp5aBr
"More than 99 percent of Wal-Mart employees make more than minimum wage, and some three-quarters of the company's U.S. managers began with the company as hourly workers, Wal-Mart CEO Michael Duke told CNBC."
"And unfortunately for wage hike advocates, Census Bureau data show that the majority of minimum wage employees do not work at large corporations with 1000+ employees. In fact, nearly half of minimum wage earners work at small businesses with fewer than 100 employees."
One of the most predictable facts in a heavily regulated economy is that Big Businesses find their scale is a competitive advantage to absorb government cost shocks. WalMart and other big businesses know, of course, morally unjustifiable wage controls, lower-wage prohibitions that price lower-experienced/skilled workers out of the market are bad economics, but it's more about the bad PR, of the appearance of looking like they're "exploiting" the bottom 1% by opposing some arbitrary wage floor that has minimal effect on their bottom line. "It's just not worth it..."
[Troll posts photo here. There is a limit to which I'll republish rubbish; in this case, the image makes reference to Walton family wealth and makes a not-that-subtle charge that WalMart is using government welfare state expenditures to pay its workers artificially low wages.]
Unlike the federal government, which perpetuates an underclass with morally hazardous policies and waters down the purchasing power of their scarce resources with massive deficits and loose monetary policy, WalMart allows lower-income customers to stretch their dollars by offering highly price-competitive, low-margin goods, making their profits on sales volume. Unlike wasteful government, WalMart can't force customers to spend their hard-earned dollars at their stores.
No, WalMart doesn't receive a government subsidy from hiring low-skilled/experienced workers at a market-clearing rate (I don't know how many clueless populist conservatives fall for this "progressive" claptrap nonsense trying to justify prohibitions of lower market-clearing wages, perpetuating unemployment for a surplus of lower-level workers, whom continue to be subsidized by the welfare state). Less than 1% of WalMart workers make minimum wage. If you make money saving other people money, the way I see it, it's win-win. Envy is a vice, not a virtue.
(Libertarian Republic). Big corporations don’t oppose raising the minimum wage because it puts their smaller competitors out of business.
I think that's a bit of an overstatement. There is no doubt that government cost overhead has a regressive nature that particularly bites smaller-scale businesses, and many smaller businesses have tight budgets and have a higher reliance on lower-experienced/skilled labor. There's going to be a disparate effect of this mandate on smaller companies with narrow profit margins. In a competitive, sluggish economy, the small vendor can't always pass along their cost increases, government-mandated or not; they risk losing part of their market share.
Do companies on shoestring budgets threaten the likes of a WalMart or IBM? Probably not. In the case of the minimum wage, since they employ only a tiny fraction of minimum-wage workers, they aren't as vested in the issue and probably see fighting it as bad PR, As a matter of principle, they should oppose it, of course.
Can and do big companies support government regulation for anti-competitive purposes? Of course. Take, for instance, taxi cartels fighting ridesharing services, occupational licensing restrictions, or Sarbanes-Oxley type government reporting regulations. I think the impact of the minimum wage depends more on the nature of the business.
But let's not pretend that a group of populist political whores are giving lower-skilled/experienced workers a "raise". Wage controls are counterproductive economic policies. Prohibiting contracts below an artificial wage floor does nothing but outlaw gainful employment/experience for otherwise unemployed people at a market-clearing rate--with "friends" like these, who needs enemies?
You can thank the Fed and their inflationary policies for this one as well. Higher minimums are only fair.
It's not a question of "fairness"; it's a matter of supply and demand, and a third party to the transaction making the rules.
(Reason). There's nothing wrong with Marco Rubio's boilerplate anti-Obama positioning, but there's nothing especially unique about it, either.
How all-but-unknown Rubio crushed the incumbent governor, Charlie Crist, a party-annointed successor to the open GOP-held Senate seat was impressive. He clicked; he's congenial and articulate.
I think just as Obama positioned himself as a JFK-style alternative to a 70-year-old McCain, there is something to say about Rubio positioned next to an aging Hillary Clinton; it seems like we've had continuous Bush or Clinton in the Executive Branch from 1981-2013. Rubio is more of a conservative than any post-Reagan GOP nominee. And, of course, there is something to be said about this no longer being your Grandfather's GOP than the first Latino nominated to the first national ticket.
I have previously said that I thought Romney's 2012 general election campaign was strategically flawed, that I thought he should have thrown Bush under the bus and taken a strong stand against the 12 years of Bush/Obama profligate spending, government regulation, and interventionist/nation building. What I would like to see in 2016 is something of a resurrected, revamped Old Right, with an emphasis on free market, foreign non-interventionism, fiscal reform, with a particular emphasis on the principle of Subsidiarity and against failed, centralized federal programs.
Rubio has disappointed me (but not surprised me) on one pet issue (I want to end mercantilist policies on sugar (of course, Florida is a big sugar state)), and I would prefer less of a neo-con foreign policy and more emphasis on pro-liberty issues like the Fourth Amendment. I think in part he is trying to position himself against other candidates, including Rand Paul.
As a fellow libertarian-conservative, Rand Paul is my first choice. But I could easily see myself endorsing Rubio, and I think Bobby Jindal would be a superb VP choice for either.
(Cato Institute), "There is a trade off between the number of lower skilled guest worker visas and the number of unauthorized immigrants. More lower skilled guest workers means fewer unauthorized immigrants. Fewer guest workers mean more unauthorized immigrants. We just have to look back to the Bracero program to see this relationship."
This is, of course, common sense. It is amazing how people don't understand that the result of dysfunctional government policy and/or prohibition result in black markets, where supply meets demand. The government enforcement of dysfunctionally restrictive policy is never cost-effective because it's treating the symptoms, not the disease. Under traditional liberalized immigration, we did not have organized crime for stiff high-margin fees involved in related smuggling activities. In my view, there is nothing more anti-American than the fact that economically ignorant labor protectionists and bigots are determined to interfere in the voluntary contracts of other people in the lose-lose economics of restrictive immigration, a violation of our heritage and sacred principles.
A simple example can illustrate the folly of protectionism. Suppose I as a bachelor fell in love with a woman from another country. The protectionist might argue, "There's no reason for him to marry a foreigner; it'll take away the marriage prospects for an available American woman." But even if you take away my ability to marry the woman I love on arbitrary grounds, it doesn't mean I'll "settle" for an eligible American woman I don't love. If, on the other hand, I marry the woman I love, she and our progeny will contribute to our economy, over and beyond what I would contribute dying as a bachelor without dependents.
They are only guests if they are visiting.
You don't get it, do you? Not everyone who comes to America wants to stay here, In 1995 I spent 3 months working in Brazil for one of my company's clients. I had no interest in staying there beyond my assignment, but I needed to get my visa approved. Some of my Indian friends wanted to build savings to afford a comfortable retirement back in their home country. Perhaps some farm workers make enough in a harvest season to provide a cushion of savings for the rest of the year back home. Statistics showed during the Great Recession we actually saw a reverse net outflow.
By this logic, decriminalizing any crime will result in fewer criminals. Problem solved...?
What tipped you off? The fact that the supposed "land of the free" has one of the largest relative and absolute prison populations in the world? What do you think happens when government restricts the economy that it gets in the way of employers getting the labor resources they need? Did Prohibition work? The artificial shortages made for a highly profitable black market and organized crime. Same thing with the War on Drugs. And the century-old War on Liberalized Immigration.
Do you have problems with alcoholism, DUI, addiction, etc.? Yes, But enforcement expenses are not cost-effective.
But more to the point, the past century of restrictive immigration laws are unworthy of America's ideals. Immigration is a win-win economic policy. Why should crackpot labor protectionists and angry bigots be allowed to interfere in the voluntary contracts between employers and workers? To anyone who believes in pro-liberty, limited government, the status quo is unsustainable and unjust. Yes, we need to liberalize immigration law...
sounds like amnesty....electric fences and machine guns coupled with very punitive hiring laws mean less criminal invaders
That's the same type logic as the Berlin Wall--we need to keep Westerners out of our socialist paradise. No, you are putting the cart before the horse--the reason why we have unauthorized entry is because legal pathways have been obstructed by anti-immigrant forces to the point they are a sham.
What you write is indefensible--wanting to kill or injure people whom are trying to work around restrictive, anti-growth laws, wanting to attack people whom want an opportunity to work, employers whom are looking for able, willing workers? What the hell business is it of yours?
You are a pathetic excuse for an American. I would rather live next door to one of these industrious workers than some bitter busybody excuse of a man.
Anything to water down labor pay...."F" bastards!
Labor protectionist policies are not only bad, counterproductive economics, anti-growth in nature but morally reprehensible. Just who the hell do you think you are telling other people whom to hire or whom to work for? Mind your own freaking business, you know-nothing....
Libertarians must be brain dead....you vote them out....voting blue is the first step.
Actually the corruptibility of the State is directly related to its size and authority, which the Jackass Party is largely responsible for since the Wilson Administration and the Sixteenth Amendment, which funded a morally corrupt expansion of the profligate, inefficient, ineffective parasitic empire at the expense of the private/real economy.
But the clueless "progressive" troll, who conveniently ignores a flood of Blue Party corruption, e.g., Jefferson, Rangel, Blago, Kilpatrick, DC council members, and IPI has outlined dozens of other cases in Illinois, ignores what I call Sumner's paradox: how do we expect political whores to cure the very problems their own corrupt natures are responsible for?
(We the Individuals). Being leftist: The dreadful feeling that someone, somewhere, is making more money and/or having more fun than you, which cannot be tolerated
Salon, the toilet paper of the Internet: where innovative startups, which explicitly rely on customer feedback loops, threatening the market share of obsoleted State-sanctioned cartels, are seen as a proxy not of consumer empowerment but "corporate greed", i.e., "we didn't think of that", "we didn't authorize that", "you can't build that"...
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| Via Bastiat Institute |
The first step to resolving our issues with failed government programs in healthcare and education is to restore the free market. It is not rational to throw good money, stolen from the private economy, after bad in the vain hope that somehow, some way they'll stumble across a "fix" this time. It is only under the dynamics of a competitive marketplace that merit and consumer satisfaction vs. entrenched self-interested bureaucracies and special interest groups vested in the status quo will decide true solutions.
But here we go again, another vacuous, pretentious thought from someone whose opinion is cited, not on the basis of merit, but because she had the good fortune to marry some unprincipled snake oil salesman years ago.... Let the private sector take the risk, acquire the kitchen, ingredients, and labor, and produce a pie, while Politicians of Envy self-righteously exclaim, "You didn't bake that!" and then wield their knife at the point of a gun deciding just how big a piece they'll leave for you.
The Next American Idol Finale
Who couldn't see this one coming, although it might make things a bit uncomfortable at 17-year-old high school senior Jena Irene's prom in a couple of weeks when Caleb Johnson escorts her? One thing is for sure: the newest American Idol will be in attendance. They have compatible musical tastes and styles.
I'm probably not the first to make this comparison, but he comes across to me both in appearance and style as a Meat Loaf Next Generation. (After writing the last sentence, I did a Google search on the two singers and saw not only others made the same comparison, but several have lobbied Caleb to do a Meat Loaf song.) There's an interesting related sidenote. Caleb and Jena have just released their finale singles on iTunes. Caleb's single "As Long As You Love Me" was penned by Justin Hawkins of The Darkness, whom also had written a couple of tunes on Meaf Loaf's 2010 album. (To me, the single comes across like a classic Foreigner single; Caleb's vocals, as usual, are superb.)
Although Jena is a worthy opponent and has a compelling Cinderella story as an amateur teen, in my opinion, Caleb probably has the best pipes of any male finalist in AI history. Barring an uncharacteristic bad performance Tuesday, I expect to vote for him, as I've done all 3 occasions this season I voted. Jena has decent pipes, and we do have the precedent of Jordin Sparks as a young female winner, but to my ears, her voice comes across as a little untrained, a little sharp or flat at points, versus Caleb's flawless vocal. I think this may be similar to season 7 where David Cook, another rocker, by some accounts went into the finale as an underdog and won going away...
More Love and Marriage
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Michael Ramirez via Townhall |
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, "Woman In Love". One of the greatest rock songs ever; I've played and sung along with this song hundreds of times. Just glorious: the songwriting, the arrangement, the performance, the wailing guitar, the heart-wrenching angst of confusion, anger, frustration, rejection, letting go: what guy hasn't experienced this, losing the love of your life to an unworthy rival? I always imagine Petty at the end of the song with its signature soaring guitar climax throwing down his mike in disgust, maybe smashing his guitar...
