Proof

Posted on May 17, 2016 | 2 comments

Alison Krauss is not simply proof that God exists – she is proof that He loves us.

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Posted in Life

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California – The Land Where They Hate Poor People

Posted on May 17, 2016 | 2 comments

Job Line

It’s simple econ 101:

Put a ceiling on the price of a commodity, you get less supply of the commodity.

Put a floor on the price of the commodity, you get less demand for the commodity.

Rent control – a ceiling – results in fewer rental units.

Minimum wage – a floor – results in reduced demand for workers.

Politicians ignore this:

In December, The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco released a paper examining the current research on the impact of minimum wage increases. It stressed that the “most important” policy consideration was whether there would be “fewer jobs for the least skilled workers” because “they are the ones the minimum wage is intended to help.” It found that the “most credible” research showed minimum wage increases resulting in “job losses” for these workers and “with possibly larger adverse effects than earlier research suggested.”

Or worse, they acknowledge AND ignore:

In January of this year, Gov. Jerry Brown agreed, stating that raising “the minimum wage too much” would put “a lot of poor people out of work.” His conclusion: “There won’t be a lot of jobs.”

I’ll include the math, though it likely won’t help the average minimum wage earner supporting a family [they don’t speak math]:

Take a typical quick service restaurant employing 25 people with annual sales of $1.25 million. The National Restaurant Association’s annual Operations Report states that the average pre-tax profit margin for such a restaurant is 6.3 percent, or $78,750. While more experienced employees typically contribute more to a business’s bottom line, for this example let’s assume that each of these 25 employees contributed an equal amount to the business’s success of $3,150.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, restaurant sector employees work an average of 26 hours per week. Increasing California’s minimum wage from $10 an hour to $15 for such an employee results in an annual cost increase of $6,760, or more than double what the employee contributed to the business’ success – resulting in a loss of $3,610 per employee per year.

I recently went to see “Captain America: Civil War” and had the pleasure of waiting in line for concessions.  Agonizing.  Lines forever, employees that couldn’t remember “a beer, medium buttered popcorn, duds and a water” and the idea of making change was foreign.  Not a whiff of customer service much less mastery of task at hand.

Fifteen an hour?  Hardly worth the job.

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Posted in Economics

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North Carolina Teacher Pay

Posted on May 16, 2016 | 2 comments

Teacher

With all of the news out of North Carolina, it would be understandable if you hadn’t heard of this:

Raleigh, N.C. – New rankings of average teacher pay across all 50 states and the District of Columbia show that North Carolina teacher pay is increasing faster than any other state in the country.

Data from the National Education Association shows that North Carolina has moved up six spots in the rankings of average teacher salaries since the 2013-2014 school year, the single-biggest improvement of any state in the country. North Carolina has also seen the largest average gains in teacher pay in the country over that same time period, according to the data.

During the 2015-2016 school year, North Carolina’s average teacher salary of $47,985 ranked 41st in the nation. When the data is adjusted for cost-of-living, North Carolina ranks 33rd in the nation for teacher pay, according to preliminary analysis by the John Locke Foundation.

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Posted in Education

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Shrinking Middle Class – Good News?

Posted on May 16, 2016 | Leave a comment

Share Middle Class Pew

Listen to Bernie and all you hear is that the Middle Class is taking it on the chin.

“One of the major reasons why the middle class is collapsing is because of the greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior on Wall Street.”

True?  Well, the data from Pew in the chart above seems to indicate so.

From 1971 through to 2015, the share of adults living in the Middle Class dropped from 61% to 50%.  That’s 11 points or 16%.

Horrible!

But where are they going?

Well, if you look at the lowest income tier their ratio grew from 16% to 20%.  That’s 4 points and 25%.

The lower tier also grew from 9 to … wait.  It didn’t grow.

So, the Middle Class shrank 11 points since 1971 and only 4 – FOUR – of those points moved to the lowest tier.  Where did the remaining 7 points go?

Well, the higher income tier grew from 10 to 12 points; 25%.   And the highest?  It grew from 4 to 9 points.  The highest tier grew by 5 points; 125%!

Yes – there is a ‘war’ on the Middle Class – but the winners are those folks in the Middle Class!

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Posted in Economics

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It Takes a Village

Posted on May 13, 2016 | 7 comments

It Takes a Village

It’s true.  It DOES take a village to succeed in life.  You need family, friends, neighbors and networks to survive in the world – you can’t do it alone.

Yet I cringe when I hear the phrase.  That’s my issue.

Anywho – I’m surprised at the tone of The Atlantic:

How do single moms with few resources and little income survive?

“They trade, they bargain, they strategize, they give each other daycare help, they share housing and food—women learn to strategize their way through all of these resources,” Suzanne Morrissey, a professor at Whitman College who has studied these families, told me.

Research suggests that while two-parent families may be isolated islands of efficiency, single parents—even poor ones—rely on an ever-expanding social network to get by. That social network has become even more important in the wake of welfare reform, when women who couldn’t find work could no longer count on cash assistance, and had to depend on their families and friends.

“It was really piecing together help from family and friends, letting bills stay unpaid, and in some of the more dire situations, they doubled up with friends and other family members because housing is such a big cost,” said Kristin Seefeldt, a professor at the University of Michigan who recently released a study about the strategies used by low-income parents in the wake of welfare reform.

I remember being low income.  I had a roommate and often times roomMATES.  We shared many things; food, rent, cars, utilities and yes – money.

In fact, I vividly remember having conversations with my main man that should either of us find ourselves in the position of having a kid out of wedlock that we would BOTH work to support that child – whatever came our way.

Why is that a bad thing?

Also, and I can’t let this slip, especially after my post on ‘social contract‘, when does single mom become a choice as opposed to an unwanted aspect of life?

Syracuse resident Brandi Davis, a 35-year-old mother of five, has been on public assistance since she was 18 years old. She asks her parents and grandmother to watch her kids when she’s working her minimum-wage job at the grocery store, and sometimes her older children help out, too. The help is necessary, especially since the jobs available to Davis, who has a GED, mostly pay minimum wage.

Beginning at adulthood, young Ms. Davis has never cared for herself yet has brought 5 children into this world.

Five.

Does society’s obligation have limits?

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Posted in Politics: National, Poverty

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Restroom Solution

Posted on May 12, 2016 | 6 comments

No Stalls

With all of the hullabalu created by the liberal democrats in Charlotte regarding potty policy, I humbly suggest an easy and economical solution.

One room, no stalls and no sexual discriminating facilities.

Simple.

This doesn’t discriminate on sex, biological or identify, and allows for maximum usage based on events that might skew based on gender – home craft show vs. fishing expo.

In real life,  I ran track in high school and when we traveled to Fairmont, MN the field house for the men was configured in this manner.  One large room with 4 toilets in the center – no walls creating stalls at all.  Two sinks in the corner.

Similarly, in the 7th and 8th grades I was introduced to ‘public showering’ in PE and then in after school sports.  12-13-14 year old boys showered in this:

Gang shower.2

One giant room with 8-10 shower heads where we all showered together.  My freshman year at the University of Minnesota – same thing.

In high school, the showers transitioned to this:

Gang shower.1
Post showers with 4-5 heads per pedestal.  Two pedestals per shower room.

If you think that North Carolina’s HB2 is discriminatory or offensive or distasteful, then step forward and support complete and total gender agnostic bathroom and shower facilities in our Jr. and Sr. High Schools.

Anyone?

6 Comments

Posted in Politics: National, Politics: North Carolina

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Why Men Make More Than Women – Part 1,782,873

Posted on May 12, 2016 | Leave a comment

Income Inequality

Going through some old material on wage gaps between men and women when I came across this article from The Atlantic:

Though headway has been made in bringing women’s wages more in line with men’s in the past several decades, that convergence seems to have stalled in more recent years. To help determine why,  Francine D. Blau and Lawrence M. Kahn, the authors of a new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research parse data on wages and occupations from 1980 to 2010. They find that as more women attended and graduated college and headed into the working world, education and professional experience levels stopped playing a significant role in the the difference between men and women’s wages. Whatever remains of the discrepancy can’t be explained by women not having basic skills and credentials. So what does explain it?

Simple, but huge.  Try telling a liberal that women make less for reasons other than sexism and watch the reaction.  And yet, right here in The Atlantic we have progress.  People are willing to admit that there might be other reasons behind a difference in pay.

The largest factor in the persistent wage gap is the dearth of women in specific jobs and industries, the researchers found. That means that narrowing the wage gap further requires making high-paying, male-dominated industries like STEM fields and tech companies more enticing and welcoming to women. And even before that, encouraging women and girls to take advantage of opportunities to explore and learn about fields like coding and science that remain male-dominated at both the professional and college level.

The proof in this can be seen by simply looking up ‘work place mortality’.  There you will see a dramatic difference in the sexes.  While not explaining the gap in pay – it does show a difference, a significant difference, between the jobs that men and women take and work.

The study also points to … wait for it … culture, which continues to favor men’s participation in the workforce and women’s participation on the home front. “Current research continues to find evidence of a motherhood penalty for women and of a marriage premium for men,” the report finds. “The greater tendency of men to determine the geographic location of the family continues to be a factor even among highly educated couples.”

Again, absolutely true – and NOT a sign of sexism.

When marriage and kids come around, more women tend to want to stay closer to home and family while men want [are forced] to work and provide.  While I would never say that being a stay at home mom is easy, it surely ranks VERY high on the ‘best job in the world’ scale.  Highly rewarding to say the least.

And your humble corespondent happens to be married to a more capable human than he.  My wife is a far superior corporate warrior than Ii am, and has been rewarded accordingly,  But she has turned down multiple opportunities because the trade off isn’t worth it to her.  The sacrifice to family would be too high.

However, had I ever been offered as such – I am sure she would have supported me in my new role.

Why the Left can’t just nod and pass the beer nuts here is perplexing.  And their insistence on forcing culture to shift to accommodate a condition that no one is fighting is even more perplexing.

But – War on Women and all.

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Bernie Sanders And The Social Contract

Posted on May 11, 2016 | 8 comments

Sanders Supporter

The Human Condition.

Liberals forget that the Human Condition is basically base.  At the core of it all, people tend to look after their own self interests.  Greedy?  Maybe.

But generally true and non-controversial.

And we see guys like Bernie Sanders extolling the Social Contract.  That agreement between the Haves [the State?] and the Have Nots that speaks to basic protections for the needy to stave off destitution.

We all know the responsibility of the 1% according to Sanders.  We know what he think ‘their fair share’ is.  But what  of the OTHER side of the contract?  The quid pro quo?  In return for such safety nets, what can society expect from those who seek such protection?

You see, after the 1% provide free food for the birds of the air there is always one Bernie dude that has to ruin the party for everyone and results in the Haves just walking away.

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Posted in Government, Liberty

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Capitalism – Not Bernie – Reduces Poverty

Posted on May 10, 2016 | Leave a comment

Global Poverty

With Bernie Sander’s most recent campaign it would be easy to believe that we are poor and getting poorer.  And that the only salvation available to us is to beg government to save us.

Let us never forget – the natural state of man is poverty and the only cure to date, the ONLY condition where the lot of the everyday man has improved, is freer and more open markets:

Despite the recent recession in the West, absolute poverty is continuing to retreat in fast-growing developing countries. The escape from poverty that was once limited to the industrialized countries of the West is also happening in “the rest.”

Unfortunately, many people remain unaware of the dramatic decline in global poverty, let alone the reasons for it.

According to an announcement released this week by the World Bank, “less than 10% of the world’s population will be living in extreme poverty by the end of 2015.”

The bank has “used a new income figure of $1.90 per day to define extreme poverty, up from $1.25. It forecasts that the proportion of the world’s population in this category will fall from 12.8% in 2012 to 9.6%.”

Now, to be sure, 9.6% is still high  – higher than it should/could be.  So whence came you?

Grinding poverty was the norm for most ordinary people throughout human history. As recently as 1980, the World Bank estimated that 50% of the global population lived in absolute poverty.

Even in the most economically advanced parts of the world, life used to be miserable until relatively recently.

At the end of the 18th century, to give one example, France had the fourth highest standard of living of any country in the world, behind the U.S., Great Britain and the Netherlands.

Yet, 10 million of France’s 23 million people relied on some sort of public or private charity to survive, and 3 million were full-time beggars.

All of this occurred, of course, with not a single Commissar in charge of this phenomenal growth.

Cast off the chains of regulation and throw open the doors of the freer market!

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Posted in Economics

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Where The Liberal Confronts Proper Role of Government

Posted on May 9, 2016 | 16 comments

Role of Government

I often harp on the proper role of government.  In fact, it’s a favorite topic of mine.

“Yes, programs that provide milk to mothers are good for the mothers and the children, but is that the proper role of government?”

So you can imagine my excitement when I was confronted with a liberal questioning if a particular policy was, indeed, the role of government.  After all, it is the fall back position of the liberal to use the coercive force of the state to force compliance for an otherwise unpopular program.

“Don’t wanna voluntarily donate money to the plight of the spotted owl?  Fine, I’ll elect 2 new county commissioners and force you to pay taxes to do just that.”

Anyway, to the chase:

Is this the role government ought to be playing in people’s lives? John Stuart Mill condemned such efforts, writing, “The only purpose for which power may be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.”

People may make bad choices, Mill and others argue. But that’s one of the costs of a free society. And it’s not as though government intervention is risk-free: The government may make even worse decisions on people’s behalf. Or, when it treats them like children, why expect that they will ever act like adults?

What sorcery this?  Who has swooped in and transformed my liberal into a rock-ribbed conservative?  What government over reach could they possibly be protesting?

Or, as described below:

But the Worcester program goes a step beyond many of these initiatives, as the penalty for not complying is so great.

Jeepers!  What horribleness could this be?

“IMPORTANT MESSAGE: Residents Required to Go to Work/Attend School.” As long as they weren’t disabled or over 55, the letter elaborated, at least one member of each household had to go to work or school, or risk eviction.

Bullshit!

How dare the government over reach when applying conditions to government over reach!?

Yes, you read that right.  Forget the fact that confiscating my money to pay for someone else’s home is somehow not over reach, the radical idea that such a recipient should work or learn a skill enabling work IS over reach is only  possible in the mind of the leftist.

 

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Posted in Politics: National

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