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Saturday, August 23, 2014

Miscellany: 8/23/14

Quote of the Day
The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Pro-Liberty Thought of the Day
"A man's natural rights are his own, against the whole world; and any infringement of them is equally a crime, whether committed by one man, or by millions; whether committed by one man, calling himself a robber, (or by any other name indicating his true character,) or by millions, calling themselves a government" -- Lysander Spooner, 19th century entrepreneur and author of "No Treason" who was forced out of business by the U.S. government for the victimless crime of delivering letters more efficiently than the politicians' first class postal monopoly. HT: Lawrence Reed
Tweet of the Day
Chart of the Day: Wage Mandates Have a Disparate Adverse Effect on the Younger, Less Educated

Via Mercatus Center
Image of the Day

National Lampoon's Presidential Vacation


The last 2 images via Pika Chan
Via Libertarian Republic
Via Speak Liberty Now
More on Dysfunctional Minimum/"Living" Wage Policies

I have routinely recommended to my readers to suscribe to a daily digest of Cafe Hayek; it's my most eagerly anticipated email of the day. I find myself invariably on the same side of Don Boudreaux and Russ Roberts' posts and opinions (it's more the rule than the exception); Don has more patience in dealing with economically illiterate trolls than I do (e.g., in FB Corner).

Don Boudreaux has had a number of posts and links related to the minimum wage over the past week. The familiar reader knows my position: it prices less-educated/experienced, younger workers out of the labor force. The government arbitrarily bars voluntary contracts between willing participants. These starter jobs/experience are a stepping stone for higher paying opportunities.

One of the posts focuses on a study done by George Mason students printed in the Wall Street Journal. One of the things the students examined was the typical Keynesian story that minimum wage increases tend to jumpstart a stagnant economy because lower-wage earners tend to spend those increases. The students first of all note that the amount of 2% of the workforce winning modest increases cannot have a material effect on a $15T economy. They found states that increased the minimum wage the most had little, if any positive effect on job growth and overall they didn't see a significant effect in higher minimum wage states; if anything, over the baker's dozen of raised minimum wage rate this year, job growth has been more sluggish. Don Boudreaux adds even if there was a positive effect, it may have boosted employment for more skilled/experienced workers like recent retirees vs. improving prospects for the lowest skilled/experienced/young workers.

Bob Murphy adds a more cautious note about recent revisionist research (notoriously Card-Krueger, which has been endlessly promoted by leftist propagandists). Don Boudreaux challenges a "progressive" troll to put his money where his mouth is, i.e., if he thinks low-end wages are artificially low, he should be able to run a profitable business arbitraging the wage spread. In another post, Don points out research suggesting restrictive wage policies may be linked to increased crime in the disadvantaged target group. Finally, Don engages in a sort of thought experiment in discussing minimum wage minutia.

Prominent AnCap Libertarian Jeffrey Tucker Does a Do-It-Yourself ALS Bucket Challenge



My Submission to a Caption Contest

Via Mike Lotfi
The Unholy Trinity of Racial Political Opportunists

Facebook Corner

(LFC). Lyft is terrible! Just got a ride for 18 bucks that I would have easily been charged $60 for by a taxi. Those evil low prices. ‪#‎Keynesianism‬  #sarcasm
Damn the internal combustion engine! Think of all the horses that could have been....

(IPI). Hostess has announced that the Illinois bakery where ‪#‎Twinkies‬ were first invented will close this fall, affecting more than 400 workers.
The baked-goods company has suffered from high labor costs before. But it also had to deal with a state government that gives huge tax breaks to some confectionaries while suffocating others under a high tax and regulatory burden.
I've seen the typical union rubbish trying to scapegoat "greedy" business executives; I'll cite a Fortune article at the end of this comment that looked at Hostess' problems around the time of the last bankruptcy. It points out the prominent involvement of former Dem presidential candidate and union darling Dick Gephardt; his own son was on the Hostess board. But Hostess had a huge debt load and liabilities including $100M annually to MPP pension funds, already chronically underfunded, and absurd make-work union work rules that, e.g., required Hostess products to be delivered on separate trucks.

 Hostess is/was competing in an industry that is highly competitive with low profit margins, not to mention more lower-carb dieters, like myself, won't buy their products. Union costs and high taxes and regulations sapped capital needed to modernize its plants and become more competitive. Scapegoating managers who face more challenging circumstances and difficult decisions is counterproductive; a good executive can mean the difference between a viable business and yet another bankruptcy.

 http://fortune.com/2012/07/26/hostess-is-bankrupt-again/
Over half the people and all the government workers live off the dwindling private sector workers so this is not really news as more businesses fail or close in Illinois under the democrats Detroit initiative than are actually being publicized .....Obama,Quinn,madigan,durbin hope to completely destroy Illinois before Obama leaves office.....Clinton's nafta bill was genius at creating dependent people for democrats to mine so the next step is obvious ...drive as much industry out of Illinois as is possible before people figure out their plan....
Don't blame liberalized trade for the effects of economically illiterate "progressive" economic policies. Regulations and the parasitic nature of government spending are to blame.
It has also suffered from ridiculously high executive pay and bonuses but somehow that always fails to get mentioned.
Crony unionist economically illiterate crap as usual.

(IPI). Several of Illinois’ most influential government unions are wasting money, causing a whole lot of government workers to lose their jobs.
In fact, state employment has dropped 11% since 2006, a lot of which came about through layoffs.
Nothing wrong with government layoffs. It's been happening in the private sector for decades.
Everyone is missing the bigger point which is that public sector, being a monopoly, is not vested in productivity gains as in the private sector. This is a classic problem Mises discussed with respect to socialism. The real problem is not a smaller government footprint, but in the fact that government is parasite and steals resources needed to fund investment and correlated job growth in the real economy. Almost everything involving layoffs would be resolved by privatization.

(Rand Paul). In case you missed it- Earlier tonight, NBC Nightly News covered my medical mission trip to ‪#‎Guatemala‬. 
WATCH: http://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/sen-rand-paul-heads-guatemala-n187661
God bless you, Dr. Paul, for living your Christian faith in charitable work.
Wouldn't it be nice IF he did pro-bono More often than for just a photo op
Nobody has to do pro bono. It's a blessing to those who otherwise would go untreated; stop judging people's motives.
What you doing down there. We got our own problems here.
I know he posted recently about doing local (Kentucky) pro-bono work. Stop being judgmental about charitable acts for others.

(Reason). A pint of blueberries contains more than 40g of sugar. That’s about as much sugar as you’ll find in a pint of soda.
Oh, what will Mary Poppins do without her spoonful of sugar? And the rancid aftertaste of ObamaCare?

(LFC). "By socializing a good, the demand for the product increases. However, the supply for a socialized good is still subject to scarcity. For health care, that scarcity comes largely in the form of manpower – there are simply not enough doctors in most countries with socialized healthcare to deal with everybody at once. This is why the wait time for healthcare in countries (like mine, Canada) are so high for certain services." 
\http://speaklibertynow.com/2013/08/05/high_price_of_healthcare/
EXACTLY. One of the points I've made is why other groups, other than multi-state corporations, can't self-insure, why interstate commerce authority wasn't legitimately used to bypass anti-competitive state barriers to entry.

(LFC). "A common but incorrect view of banking in the United States is that it went through a period of unregulated “Laissez Faire” freedom in which persistent malinvestment of deposits led to a public demand for government regulations and the central bank. I intend to illustrate how banks of the United States have never been laissez faire, and in fact are a product of government interference from its onset."
http://speaklibertynow.com/2013/10/24/free-banking-era/
Exactly. Unit banking and restrictions on reserve assets (exacerbated when the feds actually repaid war debts) made US banking (vs, say, Canadian banking) much more volatile.

(LFC). Empirical evidence Walmart is evyl. They just offered to exchange me headphones for 5 bucks. That's right...5. Damn them SOBs. Almost took the bait, too. Went with the $7 pair instead.
Gotta be careful with these greedy capitalists. Never can tell what kind of tricks they have up their sleeves. That was too close for comfort.
Wait for the crony union protectionist trolls to argue that foreign headphone manufacturers are "dumping" headphones "below cost" and you should have to have to pay crony Big Headphones double the cost.... They don't understand being able to stretch one's dollars improves one's standard of living, while mercantilist policies simply defer the day of reckoning at a deadweight loss for the consumer. Mark Perry of Carpe Diem attributes the following quote to Bastiat: "Treat all economic questions from the viewpoint of the consumer, for the interests of the consumer are the interests of the human race."
I wouldn't care a bit, but 50% of their employees are subsidized. So yeah, those headphones probably should have cost you 10.
Pathetic economically illiterate "progressive" troll. Listen, retard: a subsidy would be paid to Walmart to hire low-skilled workers, including, yes, household dependents. The government CHARGES Walmart payroll taxes, unemployment compensation taxes. etc. If WalMart didn't pay competitive wages, their employees would be poached by competitors. Some 98% of jobs pay above minimum wage.

 Let us all agree the social welfare programs should be immediately ended as dysfunctional and counterproductive. The same for so-called living wage policies that basically price low-skilled/experienced people out of the labor force.

More Proposals







well, this one is somewhat laid back...


Political Cartoon
Courtesy of Nate Beeler via Townhall
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists

Billy Joel, "The Downeaster Alexa". A song named after his daughter, an aspiring singer herself now, this makes my short list of Joel favorites; I love a good percussion arrangement, and this is one of Joel's better vocal performances, like "Piano Man".

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