The wise man learns more from his enemies than a fool does from his friends.
Chinese Proverb
Image of the Day
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| via Free State Project |
The Virtue of the Free Market
The Left's Economically Illiterate Attack on Wal-Mart
On my frequent Facebook Corner segments, I have come across the preposterous claim that the government is "subsidizing" Wal-Mart's lower-wage employees. There are several obvious things wrong; first of all, a lot of relevant employees are members of middle-income households, e.g., spouses or teens/young adults, not heads of household. Second, Wal-Mart is competing with a number of small businesses, fast food places, etc., which compete for similar lower-wage/less-skilled, experienced workers. A lot deals with the growth in the local economy; for instance, many Wal-Mart jobs in oil boomtown Williston, ND were being advertised as starting around $17/hour, more than twice the minimum wage. Fast food jobs in the area were also starting well north of $10/hour. But more to the point, the Left is being highly selective and hypocritical because many, even most employers of lower-wage workers include small business, not just retailers. That's why several months back Washington DC attempted to impose a two-tier minimum wage with bigger retailers getting hit with a larger minimum wage. (Wal-Mart threatened to pull out of several DC planned stores, and the mayor killed the legislation.) Finally, there is no subsidy; Wal-Mart gets no money for hiring lower-wage workers. Social welfare dollars target lower-income people, regardless of work status. In fact, we have a disincentive for many workers to improve their earnings because increased earnings may lower government benefits, sometimes more than offseting wage increases. The bottom line is that the employer has no incentive to pay a worker more than that worker contributes to productivity. It often takes a mix of skills to run a business. For example, Wal-Mart has a legendary logistics system, say, to have the right mix and quantity of goods at the right time at each location. Just to give a minor example, when I lived in WV, the local Wal-Mart sold a lot of pepperoni rolls, Italian sausage, etc. I don't directly know, but I would expect that Wal-Mart pays its IT and PLM people very competitive salaries.
I'm not going to repeat or summarize here a couple of good pieces, but Carpe Diem Mark Perry's AEI colleague James Pethokoukis has a good alternative response here, and Cafe Hayek's Don Boudreaux reprises an oldie but goodie here.
Some Comments on John Denver
I don't always comment about the musical artists I feature in my music video segment. There are politics beyond government, One theme I've focused on in the blog is charity; I have some reservations about "feel good" faddish/gimmicky appeals like the "We Are the World" project (that being said, I bought licensed copies of the 2 project singles); no doubt being part of a prominent charity effort helps an artist's public image. Still the snubbing of John Denver, who was active in the world hunger movement long before the charity was conceived, was astounding, especially when you realize many of the invited artists had not charted prominently, frequently or recently, e.g., Akyroyd, Belafonte, Bob Dylan, Ray Charles, and most of the Jackson family members:
But John Denver..... who probably put more effort into solving world hunger than any artist, ever..... wasn't asked to be there.One Facebook fan opines: "A sad commentary on this is that even with his work with hunger around the world Michael Jackson refused to let John participate in the We Are The World project. He and his ilk said John was too country and not hip enough to be included." But Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings were part of the project. "Kragen set a goal for himself to secure two major artists each day until he had 15 to 20. "I made call after call all day but none was more important than the one on which I convinced Bruce Springsteen's manager, Jon Landau, to get him to do it," he said. "After that, the flood gates opened and I had to turn all sorts of people down. John Denver was the hardest one -- several people felt his image would hurt the credibility of the recording as a pop/rock anthem. I didn't agree." Exactly. Snubbing John Denver was unconscionable.
John called himself a "concerned citizen of the earth".
He was asked to serve on the Presidential Commission on World and Domestic Hunger.
He was one of the founders of The Hunger Project, an organization committed to the sustainable end of chronic hunger.
John Denver toured African countries devastated by drought and starvation as a representative of UNICEF. He performed benefit concerts for global hunger and environmental efforts, and was even awarded the Presidential "World Without Hunger" award.
Yet, astonishingly, he was not even invited to participate in that "We Are the World" campaign.
And from what I read, it was not an oversight. It was probably because the popularity and sales of his records had slipped during the 1980's.
A second comment has to do with John Denver's estate after his untimely death in a private plane accident off the California coast. John had been married and divorced twice: Annie (of the immortal "Annie's Song") and Cassandra. John acknowledged his own fertility issues, and he and Annie adopted two children, Zach and Anna. During John's second marriage, Cassandra gave birth to daughter Jesse. John had established $7 million trusts for each of his 3 children, Annie, and his mother but otherwise oddly enough had not done estate planning and his estate went through probate and was heavily taxed. I have also read that 2 or 3 of the trusts were victimized in the Bernie Madoff scandal. In any event, I've seen one rumor, cited in posts, that Cassandra, without her own trust fund and recently bitterly divorced from John, had contested the inheritance, arguing that Jesse deserved more as John's only natural heir. Even if it's only a rumor, it's appalling that an adopted child is considered anything less of an equal.
Political Cartoon
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| Courteay of Lisa Benson via Townhall |
John Denver, "How Can I Leave You Again"
