Priorities and Scare Tactics

Posted on July 16, 2009 | Leave a comment

Look, it’s simple.  We all do it.  There are times in every good household when something unexpected comes up.  Or, in times of over spending, perhaps it shouldn’t be unexpected, but, you get the point.  You look in the checkbook and look at the bills and confirm that it isn’t going to add up.  You are going to have to reduce spending or get another job.  It happens to all of us.  Happens to me.  Will happen to me again.  And this is healthy; it forces us to keep what is important to us and shed what isn’t.

For example, as I monitor my “play money” fund and see that it’s going to be bankrupt in 3 months I am forced to review what I am paying for in terms of “play”.  I see that I have 3 magazine subscriptions and 5 on line subscriptions.  Further, I am spending 90 bucks a month on aikido and so on and so on.  Given that I have to shave off $50 a month, I go through what everybody goes through.  I itemize my “play money” expenditures, rank them in order of value and cut the ones that are of LEAST VALUE!  Notice I say value, not dollar expenditure.  See, I really appreciate my aikido and am willing to keep that program intact even though it has a higher dollar value than say, Forbes.  Sadly, Forbes is a redundant source and it gets wacked.

What I don’t do is this:

Democrats generally agree that tax increases are needed to avoid what they say would be devastating cuts to education and social services for children and the state’s poor.

See, to me, that’s disingenuous.  Who DOESN’T want to avoid cutting these programs?  There’s not a person in the world that wants to cut education and social services.  First.  It has to be at the top, or close to it, of every single politicians value list.  Or should be.  And that’s what makes me mad about Liberals.  They want and take the easy way out every time.

  • When forced to cut, they won’t.
  • When asked to prioritize, they won’t.
  • When required to do what all adults do-they balk.

Now, this doesn’t mean that Education won’t have to cut back some.  It doesn’t mean that schools have a green light to spend spend spend.  But what it does say is that there HAVE to be places where we can cut before we have to implement “devastating cuts to education and social services”.

Sheesh.

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Posted in Economy, Education, Politics: North Carolina

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Corporate Good Will

Posted on July 16, 2009 | Leave a comment

This is how it should be done.

The state’s largest natural gas utility is asking its customers to pay a little extra each month, in a novel effort to help cover heating bills for low-income residents.

Piedmont Natural Gas, with 725,000 customers in the state, expects a surge of delinquent bills this winter in the midst of a grinding recession and is hoping to avert a corresponding increase in disconnected accounts.

The company this morning introduced a program to let its customers sign up to “round up” their bills, with the difference going to a fund to help residents who can’t afford to pay their utility bills. The program rounds up Piedmont customer bills to the nearest dollar and will result in an average monthly donation of 50 cents, or about $6 a year.

If 100,000 people sign up, Piedmont would raise about $600,000 a year toward the program. The company is contributing $100,000 of its own money and will contribute $50,000 more if 100,000 people sign up.

The money would be given to the state Department of Health and Human Services to distribute to social-service agencies. The donations would be distributed to all customers who can’t pay their utility bills, not just natural gas customers.

Here is a corporation that is using it’s position in society to help society.  Further, it is doing it by asking, not forcing by fiat.  Further, Progress is putting it’s money where it’s mouth is; they are donating $100,000 of their own money to the program.  Lastly, they are giving the money to social-service agencies to distribute as needed; not force those agencies to simply return that money to Progress.

Kudos to Progress Energy!

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Posted in Economy, Energy, Politics: North Carolina

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Obama’s Advice: Don’t Do What I Do

Posted on July 14, 2009 | Leave a comment

President Obama recently returned from his overseas trip.  A trip in which he paid a visit to Ghana to deliver a speech to the Ghanian Parliment.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I think that it’s perfectly acceptable, recommended in fact, that Presidents travel the world and deliver speeches like this.  Further, I actually enjoyed the message that he gave early:

We must start from the simple premise that Africa’s future is up to Africans.

I love it.  In fact, it’s what is at my Libertarian heart.  Personal Liberty-Personal Responsibility.

Most of the speech was as you would expect, but I did have to laugh at Obama’s advice on creating wealth:

No business wants to invest in a place where the government skims 20 percent off the top … or the head of the port authority is corrupt. No person wants to live in a society where the rule of law gives way to the rule of brutality and bribery.

So, lemme get this straight.  Obama’s advice to Ghana is for the government NOT to take a cool 20% off the top.  But his advice to America is to increase the skim we are already taking off the top?

Nice.

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Posted in Economy, Politics: International

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A Lot Different Than Motorcycles

Posted on July 13, 2009 | 2 comments

I live out in the county of Wake county.  There are a lot of old windy country roads.  Many of them are heavily wooded and would cause a person to think, “I would LOVE to ride bike through these roads”.  But the fact remains that these roads are barely, BARELY, two lane roads.  There is NO shoulder to speak of; the white line delineating the edge of the lane to the right side almost all of the time has 2-4 inches before giving way to grass, rocks or a ditch.  And we constantly have bikers riding these roads.

These raos are roads where cars are moving at speeds of 45-65 miles per hour.  Sure, most of that is speeding, but even at 45 MPH, the bike has no chance when facing a car.  Further, these bikers don’t just ride single file and give way to traffic, they often ride in groups; small or large.  Each of which presents it’s own problems.

I really don’t think that the roads here in Wake county are meant for bike riders.  There is not enough room on the side of the road and the speeds these guys are carrying is just too dangerous.  Both for the car traffic and for the bikers.

Which is why this comment reported on by the News and Observer makes me upset:

“…the N.C. Coalition for Bicycle Driving, an organization that works to educate bikers on safe ways to ride, while emphasizing that bicycles have as much right to the roadways as cars do. People often forget the high speeds that bicycles can go, Pein said.

“We’re essentially motorcyclists with an organic engine,” he said.”

No.  No they are not.  Motorcycles are capable of full speed.  They are able to keep up with traffic and not force it to change speeds.  Further, motorcycles are required to carry insurance.  Last, motorcycles have licenses, inspections and purchase gas; all of which entitles them to the use of roadways.  Bicycles have none of these.  Simply put, bicycles on roadways are “unsafe at any speed”.

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Posted in Fun, Politics: North Carolina

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Hope and Change

Posted on July 13, 2009 | Leave a comment

Look, by now you should know that I am no fan of Obama.  However, I am a BIG fan of me.  And when it comes to me, I like to apply the concept of “value” in my life.  In fact, I was describing just such a concept to my 1st grader this afternoon.  We were discussing haircuts and price.  See, I don’t like to spend money on haircuts AND I don’t like crappy haircuts.  So, this means that I often times don’t get haircuts even when I need ’em.  Further, because I will only purchase cheap haircuts, Ii have to drive to where they further reducing how often I get them.  Anyway, we priced a trim right next door to the grocery today and we began discussing value.

Back to the point–energy.  Look, I am a market believer AND I am a environment believer.  I enjoy both.  And so it is that I don’t like to pollute and destroy the nature that we live in [at the same time that I have a decent sized piece of property in rural Wake county that maybe isn’t very environmentally sound] AND I enjoy low energy bills.  What this means is that I like to spend less on gas and electricity than I do spending more.  And, according to almost everyone, you can’t have both.

See, we are stuck in the new “Don’t Pollute” meme.  In the past, you had the Indian riding the horse with a tear in his eye as he surveyed the land around him being destroyed.  Now, now you have the polar bear floating away on melting ice as he becomes extinct.  And I wonder how it works that these things are bought into every time.  I don’t know–maybe it’s because the young watch more tv and are more vocal than the elders?  Not sure.

But here ya have it.  Because of global warming, we have to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.  And, and if that doesn’t work, then we have to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels because we import oil from countries that hate us.  And, again, if that doesn’t work, then we have to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels because we’ll run out.  Wow.  It’s tiring.

I guess the point of all of this is this story by WRAL:

Imagine your power bill going up by $200 a month.

Progress Energy spokesman Mike Hughes said Thursday that it’s a possibility under President Barack Obama’s energy plan that narrowly passed the U.S. House of Representatives last week.

The bill, which Obama has said will reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign oil and clean the air, calls for a reduction of carbon emissions by 17 percent by 2020, and for 20 percent of the nation’s energy to be renewable – such as wind and solar – by 2020.

In the end, Liberals are not so much about doing much of anything on their own, they are more interested in dictating to others who they should spend THEIR money.  As such, I don’t suspect that this will actually come to fruition, but if it does, can you imagine what the impact would be on our economy?

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Posted in Global Warming, Politics: North Carolina

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How to Get a Ton of People to Cross a Freeway

Posted on July 8, 2009 | Leave a comment

Incent them.

See, for a long time the whole housing crisis and economy things has been blamed on greed.  You know, greed of the bankers and the banks.  Greed of the mortgage lenders and the lending houses.  Greed on the folks thta bought and sold mortgage backed securities.  All of ’em.  all Street is just infested with greed.  [Note the absence of the greed of the home owner.  Cause’ you know, guys who earn 17k as a fry cook at the DQ aren’t being greedy when they try and buy a 400,000 dollar house.]

Never understood that.  I have always felt it’s supposed to be that way.  You know, like when I’m offered two similar jobs, I take the one that pays the most.  When trying to buy a car, I try to find the best price and then again, when given a chose between gas at $2.55 or gas at $2.85, I always pick the $2.55 price.  Always.  Never occurs to me who is more deserving.  IN fact, the only person I think of is me.  And how I benefit.  We’re all greedy.  And the whole thing depends on that.  It’s why we invent all the things that we invent.  Because we want to make money.  And because of that, we have innovations and quality of life increases and all kinds of progressive stuff.

Anyway, so, I have tried to explain it this way.  Suppose I have a hundred bucks that I wanna lend in order to make some money.  And two guys come to me wanting to borrow that money and then repay me $103.  Who am I going to lend it to?  Well, I am going to try to identify which one is better able and most likely to repay me.  Then I’m gonna lend the money to him.  Every time.  Every single time.  Always.  Not ever the other guy.  Ever.

Except.

Except if I can change the rules a little and shade gain along with risk.  That it, if I am able to enter into agreement on different terms, I may be willing to lend to the other guy.  What, you ask, would cause me to lend to the less qualified borrower?  Why, by increasing the return.  I may be willing to lend to the guy if he agrees to pay me back $115 dollars.  And so we negotiate and come to terms.  Note, however, that neither of us are going to agree to terms unless we think that it is in our best interest to do so.

Now, in this small example, can you think of a thing that would cause me to ignore the ability of the borrower to pay me back?  In other words, what would cause me to just loan that hundo out to EVERYBODY that knocked on my door?  Nothing.  I would never do that.  Ever.

Except.

Except if Ii could turn around and sell that loan to another company.  Now to compress the story…what would cause THAT company to buy these loans from lenders without knowledge of risk?  The same thing.  The ability to sell ’em.  And you know who was buyin?  Fannie and Freddie.  And you know why THEY were buyin’?  Cause they had NO downside.  If they as a company fail, the government would bail ’em out.  And they did and Uncle Sam did too.

So, I have always said that if you lined up 10,000 people on one side of I-540 and I was on the other, I could increase the number of people who tried to cross by increasing the financial incentive to do so.  And, in the end, whose fault would it be if someone was hit and killed?  Tricky huh?

But today, today I am vindicated.

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Posted in Economy

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What is Good for Me is Not Good for You

Posted on July 7, 2009 | Leave a comment

Stunning.  Truly stunning.

As the State is considering adding new taxes to the mix, they are at the same time telling local municipalities that they, in fact, can not tax those same businesses.

CHAPEL HILL — Local governments are watching anxiously as state lawmakers consider eliminating one of their revenue streams.

It’s called the privilege license tax, a fee that businesses pay for the privilege of operating within a local government’s jurisdiction.

Some lawmakers say the state needs to replace an unfair hodge-podge of fees that differ by locale and businesses without clear reason.

I wonder why?

Actually, I don’t.  See.  It’s much MUCH easier to be smart with someone else’s money than it is to be with your own.  Which is why governments, ALL of them, are not to be trusted with MY money.  This has nothing to do with conservative vs. liberal [although I do posit that conservatives are more for small government than libs are].  It has to do with the fact that the best people able to make decisions about their money are those people that EARNED it.  But hey, we all know that politicians are better able to spend our money than we are!

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Posted in Economy, Politics: North Carolina

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How to Get More of a Thing

Posted on July 6, 2009 | Leave a comment

I have posted a in the last week about getting less of a thing here and here.  I posit that when something becomes more expensive you get less of it.  As that same thing becomes less expensive, you get more of it.  For example, when you tax jobs, you get less jobs.  When you reduce the price of beer, you sell more beer.

Real life example is here.

MAIDE — Dirt could start moving as soon as August on a new $1 billion facility Apple is planning to build in Maiden, officials said Monday.

Catawba County commissioners and the Maiden Town Council approved incentives at a Monday evening meeting for the project, which is expected to create roughly 50 jobs 60 miles northwest of Charlotte.

The local incentives approved Monday are on top of changes to North Carolina law intended to attract the technology company. In June, Gov. Bev Perdue announced the expansion just hours after signing legislation that will cut the California-based computer company’s tax bill in this state by about $46 million over a decade. Apple must agree to invest $1 billion over nine years in land, property and equipment to qualify for the benefit.

See how easy this is?  When you reduce thhe cost of doing business, you do more business.  Funny that.  Truth and Facts!

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Posted in Economy, Education, Politics: North Carolina

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Strange Numbers

Posted on July 6, 2009 | Leave a comment

This past Thursday, workers at a Smithfield Foods went to work covered by a Union contract.  And from all accounts, they are very very happy to finally be so covered.   For example, the article mentions as benefits:

  • Guaranteed sick leave
  • Time-and-a-half holiday pay
  • $1.50 an hour raise over the next four years

“We really did accomplish something with this union,” said Mattie Fulcher.  “We might not have gotten the raise that we wanted, but that will come in time. This is our first contract, and it is a start.”

Now, it’s hard to gauge “success” of this contract for the members.  Among the most glaring omissions of the article are the pre-contract benefits.  For example, what have the pay increases for the average worker been for the past 4 years?  Or, what was the pay multiplier for holidays and overtime before the Union came in to “save the day”?  We do get an idea of what pre-contract life might have been in respect to sick leave:

Fulcher said that on Thursday she got a 40-cent-per-hour raise…and she began earning sick time for the first time since going to work for Smithfield. The sick time is unpaid, but in the past workers earned disciplinary points that could lead to firing if they stayed home sick.

Okay, so lemme get this straight.  The new Union contract says that Ms Fulcher is able to begin to accumulate sick time.  Sick time that is unpaid.  And this is different than in the past when the worker was afforded unpaid sick time but could, if abused, be fired for taking too much sick time?  Now, the article doesn’t mention this specifically, it does point out that employees were given “discipline points”; whatever that means.  Look, I work in corporate America and my sick leave policy is pretty straight forward and generous.  If you are sick, stay home.  As often as you are sick.  And guess what?  few of us ever really call in sick.  But when we do, our bosses mark it down and track us.  Cause, ya know, far be it from an employee to take every other Friday off and claim to be sick.  Sheesh.

Next on the hit list, guaranteed hours:

The contract will also guarantee workers at least 30 hours of work each week…

Awesome.  Really awesome for peope who wanna work more than 29 hours a week.  Really REALLY bad for folks who don’t.  Cause guess what?  Those people get fired.  No company in their right mind is going to pay someone 30 hours of pay for 15 hours of work.  Nice.

And the last piece of good news:

Union members will begin paying dues of about $7 a week…

So, Ms Fulcher gets a $0.40 per hour raise AND gets to pay $7 bucks a week.  Let’s say, just for fun, that she works 40 hours a week.  40 hours at $0.40 is $16.  Assume a 15% tax burden and that 16 bucks goes to $13.60.  Of which $7 goes to the Union.  In the end, she gets $6.60 a week, or about $26.40 a month.  The Union’s take?  7 bucks.  7 bucks or $28 a month.  Guess who makes out better here?  The worker or the Union?  In this specific case, even considering that Ms. Fulcher kept her job, the Union made more money than she did.  But let’s not forget the folks that lost their job as a result of this.  In the end, they have lost the most.

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Posted in Economy, Politics: North Carolina

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How to Get Less of Something: Only More

Posted on July 5, 2009 | 1 comment

Last week I posted about how to get less of something; raise the price.  You see, as price goes up, demand goes down, that’s how it works.  If you sold 3 cases of beer at a buck a bottle, you could expect to sell less than 72 bottles at 2 bucks a bottle.  Now, this isn’t all bad news.  Sometimes, the supply is limited.  Take, for example, a concert.  You can only fit so many people into the RBC Center.  So, what sense would it make to price the tickets where the demand exceeds the supply?  Rather, a shrewd business manager would continue to raise the prices until the demand met the supply exactly.  Anyway, I digress.

In our story, the Great State of North By God Carolina has only begun, Be-GUN, to talk about assessing state sales tax for on-line purchases made as a result of pass though retailers.  Wow.  That’s a lot to think through.  But it works like this.

Say, as readers are flocking to this site by the ones and twos, I decide to cash in on the traffic.  I make a deal with randomsite.com and put their advertisement on the side of my web page.  Then, as my gentle readers clock though to randomsite.com and make purchases, I get a percentage.  The beauty of Capitalism.

Now, however, North Carolina is wanting to apply sales tax to those purchases made as a result of click through programs.

Much like our local pub above, these retailers are seeing sales go down as a result of prices going up.  After considering their situation, costs, benefits and other tricky business school kinda stuff, they decide to end their commission relationships with their on line partners.

Net/net – North Carolina sees the same amount of sales tax dollars as they would have without the law.  Namely $000,000.00.  And, this is the best part, North Carolina residents who run websites see a reduction in their incomes.  Further, we have to assume that these North Carolina residents are reporting the income that they make as a result of these relationships.  That is, they have to submit as income and then pay State and Federal income taxes on any money that they make.  Now the state, AND Obama, is losing the State Income tax revenues too.

Awesome.  Simply by talking, just talking, about such a tax, we have seen two on-line retailers leave the market.  The latest?  The NewsandObersever is reporting that Overstock.com is ending their arrangements with North Carolina partners.

The real slap in the face for Carolina?  This concept is SO insane that even the Govna’ of California, The Terminator, vetoed a similar bill in California.

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Posted in Economics, Politics: North Carolina

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