Monday, February 28, 2011
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Friday, February 25, 2011
Thursday, February 24, 2011
From the Wall Street Journal.......
Frank Zeidler, the Socialist Party mayor of Milwaukee, Wis., from 1948 to 1960, writing on the consequences of collective bargaining by public employees, in the magazine Personnel, July- August 1969:
This sharing of powers in wage determination and conditions of employment through the negotiation process has in turn diminished public officials' authority in other areas of policy involving organized employees.
The net effect has been to create what amounts to a two-chamber local government. One chamber is made up of elected representatives and chief executives—aldermen, councilmen, county board or commission members, mayors or other chief executives—the traditional decision-making body for local government. The other chamber comprises the organized public employees who have gained official recognition to negotiate. The public business on wages and conditions of work, and therefore indirectly on policy, cannot be carried on without mutual agreement between these two Chambers. . . .
The implications of this new method of reaching decisions in local government put an entirely different aspect on the sovereignty of councils and executives and elected officials as well. The challenge of organized public employees can mean considerable loss of control over the budget, and hence over tax rates and over government programs and projects.
The gravity of the challenge was recognized by some municipal officials at least ten years ago, but most of them took the position that to study the new phenomenon was to encourage it. As is usually the case, the ostrich stance was a mistake: When employee organizations suddenly burgeoned, municipal officials were not prepared with effective rejoinders before legislatures and in negotiations.
This sharing of powers in wage determination and conditions of employment through the negotiation process has in turn diminished public officials' authority in other areas of policy involving organized employees.
The net effect has been to create what amounts to a two-chamber local government. One chamber is made up of elected representatives and chief executives—aldermen, councilmen, county board or commission members, mayors or other chief executives—the traditional decision-making body for local government. The other chamber comprises the organized public employees who have gained official recognition to negotiate. The public business on wages and conditions of work, and therefore indirectly on policy, cannot be carried on without mutual agreement between these two Chambers. . . .
The implications of this new method of reaching decisions in local government put an entirely different aspect on the sovereignty of councils and executives and elected officials as well. The challenge of organized public employees can mean considerable loss of control over the budget, and hence over tax rates and over government programs and projects.
The gravity of the challenge was recognized by some municipal officials at least ten years ago, but most of them took the position that to study the new phenomenon was to encourage it. As is usually the case, the ostrich stance was a mistake: When employee organizations suddenly burgeoned, municipal officials were not prepared with effective rejoinders before legislatures and in negotiations.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Education spending...More money, more money, more money.
Look at these two graphs and you should not wonder why the private sector is now pushing back against state workers. Also, doesn't D.C. have the best educated youth in the country?
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Ad hominem anonymous email from my NPR piece last week.
Here is what someone wrote anonymously to my email account:
Pernicious anachronism!!
Did you stay up all night to come up with that?
Hilarity of that statement aside, I would like to know what favors you dished out to get quoted on NPR.
NPR does not normally interview an intellectual feather weights (sic.) from a no name school, does it?
Here is my response...Have a great day and listen to the following from John Lennon. He's right, it ain't easy.
Pernicious anachronism!!
Did you stay up all night to come up with that?
Hilarity of that statement aside, I would like to know what favors you dished out to get quoted on NPR.
NPR does not normally interview an intellectual feather weights (sic.) from a no name school, does it?
Here is my response...Have a great day and listen to the following from John Lennon. He's right, it ain't easy.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Saturday, February 19, 2011
The Parker family..."top 'o the world!!!"
My niece Audrey just climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro, the highest point in Africa and one of the 7 summits of the world. She is on the far right. Very proud of her.
Friday, February 18, 2011
NEWS FLASH!!! Revolutionary Guards say they will not shoot Protesters!
http://www.groundreport.com/Business/The-Revolutionary-Guard-Won-t-Open-Fire-on-Protest_1/2934735
I don't know what is going on, but I would love to believe this is the beginning of the end for that Thugocracy in Iran. Pray hard my brothers and sisters.
I hope there is a pot 'o gold at the end of the rainbow...they neeeeeeed it.
This is lengthy, but it is a wonderful, wonderful description of what went wrong in Ireland...just like all bubbles from history. Warning...it contains the "F" word in some text. Be ye warned. But it is so well written and so packed with information I am compelled to post it with that caveat.
Oh yes and one more thing...Greece is in even worse shape than Ireland.
http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2011/03/michael-lewis-ireland-201103
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Robert Hall starts at minute #38. He and James Hamilton are the clearest and cleanest economists on the planet.
Listen to what he says at minute 43:45. That is one of the answers as to why we are where we are.
http://amps-web.amps.ms.mit.edu/public/150th/jan27/150econFinance-part2.html
http://amps-web.amps.ms.mit.edu/public/150th/jan27/150econFinance-part2.html
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Monday, February 14, 2011
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Friday, February 11, 2011
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Allan Meltzer on inflation...time to sit up and pay attention.
Is inflation on the horizon? Maybe. But when Allan Meltzer says it is, better wipe off your glasses and look real hard. You can't wait for it to show up in the CPI and then do something about it then. And any belief in the exploitability of the Phillips curve is a Faustian bargain.
If you are worried about inflation you should be. And what should keep you awake nights is wondering whether the Fed has the political will to increase interest rates when the recovery is less than complete (whatever that means). Given how they have compromised their independence lately, tell those sheep you are counting hello for me.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704709304576124033729197172.html?KEYWORDS=allan+meltzer
If you are worried about inflation you should be. And what should keep you awake nights is wondering whether the Fed has the political will to increase interest rates when the recovery is less than complete (whatever that means). Given how they have compromised their independence lately, tell those sheep you are counting hello for me.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704709304576124033729197172.html?KEYWORDS=allan+meltzer
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
From the great Herb Meyer.....
by HERBERT E. MEYER
"There's only one thing really worth working for...to create work. I don't know if you've ever thought about machines," he said. "Every machine that's put into a factory displaces labor. That's a very old story, of course. The man who's put to work the machine isn't any better off than he was before; the three men that are thrown out of a job are very much worse off. But the cure isn't socialism — or, if it is, I'm too much of a capitalist myself to see it. The cure is for somebody to buckle to and make a job for the three men.
"I believe that that's the thing most worth doing in this modern world," he said quietly. "To create jobs that men can work at, and be proud of, and make money by their work. There's no dignity, no decency or health today for men that haven't got a job. All other things depend on work today; without work men are utterly undone." — from Kindling, by Nevil Shute, 1938
More than 60 years after Nevil Shute wrote his savvy novel about a British investment banker who struggles to restart a dormant shipyard in the midst of England's depression — the book should be required reading for MBA students — the need for work sits at the top of our national agenda. Indeed, as the 2004 election cycle revs up, the only thing that President Bush and Senator Kerry agree about is that today we are not creating enough new jobs.
The question is, "Why not?" One obvious reason is that we are only now emerging from a recession. This should improve the jobs situation over time as economic growth takes hold. Another is outsourcing — the transfer of both manufacturing and service jobs that would have been done by Americans to workers overseas who are well educated, well trained, and willing to work for a lot less money. This won't improve over time; we are so addicted to low prices that we bemoan the loss of jobs to foreigners even while driving to Wal-Mart for a $60 DVD player made in some country whose capital has only just gotten indoor plumbing.
A less obvious reason we aren't creating new jobs fast enough is that — like agricultural productivity a century ago — manufacturing productivity today has risen so high, so fast, that we are able to make whatever we need with fewer people. Since 1995, more than 22 million factory jobs have disappeared worldwide, while global industrial output has risen by more than 30 percent. This really is a worldwide phenomenon; the total number of manufacturing jobs has dropped not only here in the U.S., but in low-wage countries including Brazil and even China.
ENTREPRENEURS ARE CRUCIAL
There is one more reason we aren't creating jobs fast enough, but saying it out loud would be so unpopular, and so politically toxic, that none of our leaders — including those few who actually understand it — seem willing to take the risk. So, here goes: We aren't creating jobs fast enough because we have crippled the people who do the creating, and turned them from the heroes and heroines they are into villains. Read the last sentence again, then say it aloud to whoever happens to be nearby. This is the core of the problem — no, it is the problem — and until we fix it we aren't going to start creating new jobs fast enough. And yes, it really is this simple.
People who create jobs are entrepreneurs, which Webster's defines as "a person who organizes and manages a business undertaking, assuming the risk for the sake of the profit." Sometimes these are people who invent new products or services, then launch companies that become billion-dollar enterprises that in turn spawn new industries. Think of Apple computers, or Starbucks. And sometimes these entrepreneurs launch smaller enterprises, such as neighborhood shops or a local business that specializes in making windows for new homes or in remodeling kitchens. Anyone who launches a new venture is by definition an entrepreneur, and these are the people whose efforts create work for everyone else. They are the only people who create work, which is why entrepreneurs are vital to the economic health of any free society.
The jobs that entrepreneurs create — keep in mind that 80 percent of all new jobs are created by small businesses — provide incomes to the people they hire, who in turn spend their money on the products and services they need and want. This is what allows the big manufacturers, such as the automakers, to rev up their own production lines and by doing so to expand their own workforces. And all this activity, over time, generates enough economic activity to enable still more entrepreneurs to launch or expand their own ventures and thus to keep the economy — think of it as one huge "jobs machine" — humming.
Common sense suggests that a country whose people want jobs would do everything possible to help entrepreneurs to succeed — to encourage them, or at the very least to get out of their way. Alas, nothing is so rare today as common sense. And in the last decade or so we Americans have been making it less attractive for entrepreneurs to do what they do — and less likely they will succeed when they do give it a shot. Through a combination of high taxes and onerous regulation, we have discouraged entrepreneurs from doing the one thing they must do for everyone else's sake — namely, create new jobs.
More precisely, unlike their predecessors, today's entrepreneurs struggle to expand without creating jobs, because the cost of doing so — both financial and emotional — just isn't worth it. This is the big shift in attitude that no one wants to talk about. Even in my own tiny, home-based publishing business, we are killing ourselves to grow — and terrified that if we grow to the point when we need to hire someone, we will be crippled by local, state, and federal taxes on our employee's salary, and made miserable by regulations that might force us to rip out the flower bed for a wheelchair-access ramp or even be sued by someone who never applied for the job we created but somehow feels that he or she is the victim of discrimination.
FINED FOR A COMPLIMENT
And if we push forward anyway and actually do create a job — and assuming the company isn't hit with a multimillion-dollar fine because one morning I lost control of myself and said something vicious like, "You look nice today, Lucille" — rather than be celebrated for our achievements we will be berated or reviled for getting rich on obscene profits.
This is nuts. We have reshaped our society to protect endangered species whose continued survival is of no discernible benefit, such as the black-footed ferret or the spotted owl, while blithely writing laws and regulations that threaten the survival of the one species — the entrepreneur — on whom our lives and welfare utterly depend. And we wonder why we aren't creating enough new jobs! It's like slaughtering herds of dairy cows, then wondering why we haven't got enough milk. Really, it is.
With the need for jobs so pressing, this is the time to launch a full-bore effort to teach Americans just how their jobs get created in the first place; to teach them what entrepreneurs are, what they do, how they do it, what risks they take — and what tax and regulatory changes we must make to help more of them succeed. Above all, we need to teach all this to our children. Which means we need to crash head-on into the Leftist, anti-business culture of our country's education establishment and force it to stop teaching our children that the Furbish lousewort must be protected at all costs, but that entrepreneurs are ruining the planet and should be made extinct.
Until we get Americans to understand that their welfare depends utterly on those few among us who create work — that "soaking the rich" also means "no work for you" — we will never create enough new jobs no matter how rapidly our economy may grow. Entrepreneurs will survive, for we are a hardy species. It's the workers who will suffer, and for their own sakes they need to understand how the world works. This means we want more than merely their tolerance. We want their understanding and even, perhaps, their gratitude.
At the very end of Kindling, the investment banker returns to the now-bustling shipyard that his efforts brought back to life — after serving three years in prison for violating a securities regulation while raising the needed capital.
Upon the blackened, ten-foot wall not many yards from the gate there was a sign that he did not remember. Hesitating for a moment to go in, he went across to look at it. It was a bronze plaque, about three feet square, apparently a memorial of some sort, dignified and restrained. As he approached he saw it bore, embossed in low relief, the sculptured head and shoulders of a man, in profile. He read the words below:
Henry Warren
He Gave Us Work
Maybe Kindling should be required reading not just for MBA students, but for politicians, union leaders, high-school seniors — and especially for ambitious prosecutors who know how easy it is to trip up an entrepreneur on some technical violation, then trick the public into thinking they have "stood up for the little guy" when all they've really done is thrown a monkey wrench into the jobs machine those little guys so desperately need to keep running.
"There's only one thing really worth working for...to create work. I don't know if you've ever thought about machines," he said. "Every machine that's put into a factory displaces labor. That's a very old story, of course. The man who's put to work the machine isn't any better off than he was before; the three men that are thrown out of a job are very much worse off. But the cure isn't socialism — or, if it is, I'm too much of a capitalist myself to see it. The cure is for somebody to buckle to and make a job for the three men.
"I believe that that's the thing most worth doing in this modern world," he said quietly. "To create jobs that men can work at, and be proud of, and make money by their work. There's no dignity, no decency or health today for men that haven't got a job. All other things depend on work today; without work men are utterly undone." — from Kindling, by Nevil Shute, 1938
More than 60 years after Nevil Shute wrote his savvy novel about a British investment banker who struggles to restart a dormant shipyard in the midst of England's depression — the book should be required reading for MBA students — the need for work sits at the top of our national agenda. Indeed, as the 2004 election cycle revs up, the only thing that President Bush and Senator Kerry agree about is that today we are not creating enough new jobs.
The question is, "Why not?" One obvious reason is that we are only now emerging from a recession. This should improve the jobs situation over time as economic growth takes hold. Another is outsourcing — the transfer of both manufacturing and service jobs that would have been done by Americans to workers overseas who are well educated, well trained, and willing to work for a lot less money. This won't improve over time; we are so addicted to low prices that we bemoan the loss of jobs to foreigners even while driving to Wal-Mart for a $60 DVD player made in some country whose capital has only just gotten indoor plumbing.
A less obvious reason we aren't creating new jobs fast enough is that — like agricultural productivity a century ago — manufacturing productivity today has risen so high, so fast, that we are able to make whatever we need with fewer people. Since 1995, more than 22 million factory jobs have disappeared worldwide, while global industrial output has risen by more than 30 percent. This really is a worldwide phenomenon; the total number of manufacturing jobs has dropped not only here in the U.S., but in low-wage countries including Brazil and even China.
ENTREPRENEURS ARE CRUCIAL
There is one more reason we aren't creating jobs fast enough, but saying it out loud would be so unpopular, and so politically toxic, that none of our leaders — including those few who actually understand it — seem willing to take the risk. So, here goes: We aren't creating jobs fast enough because we have crippled the people who do the creating, and turned them from the heroes and heroines they are into villains. Read the last sentence again, then say it aloud to whoever happens to be nearby. This is the core of the problem — no, it is the problem — and until we fix it we aren't going to start creating new jobs fast enough. And yes, it really is this simple.
People who create jobs are entrepreneurs, which Webster's defines as "a person who organizes and manages a business undertaking, assuming the risk for the sake of the profit." Sometimes these are people who invent new products or services, then launch companies that become billion-dollar enterprises that in turn spawn new industries. Think of Apple computers, or Starbucks. And sometimes these entrepreneurs launch smaller enterprises, such as neighborhood shops or a local business that specializes in making windows for new homes or in remodeling kitchens. Anyone who launches a new venture is by definition an entrepreneur, and these are the people whose efforts create work for everyone else. They are the only people who create work, which is why entrepreneurs are vital to the economic health of any free society.
The jobs that entrepreneurs create — keep in mind that 80 percent of all new jobs are created by small businesses — provide incomes to the people they hire, who in turn spend their money on the products and services they need and want. This is what allows the big manufacturers, such as the automakers, to rev up their own production lines and by doing so to expand their own workforces. And all this activity, over time, generates enough economic activity to enable still more entrepreneurs to launch or expand their own ventures and thus to keep the economy — think of it as one huge "jobs machine" — humming.
Common sense suggests that a country whose people want jobs would do everything possible to help entrepreneurs to succeed — to encourage them, or at the very least to get out of their way. Alas, nothing is so rare today as common sense. And in the last decade or so we Americans have been making it less attractive for entrepreneurs to do what they do — and less likely they will succeed when they do give it a shot. Through a combination of high taxes and onerous regulation, we have discouraged entrepreneurs from doing the one thing they must do for everyone else's sake — namely, create new jobs.
More precisely, unlike their predecessors, today's entrepreneurs struggle to expand without creating jobs, because the cost of doing so — both financial and emotional — just isn't worth it. This is the big shift in attitude that no one wants to talk about. Even in my own tiny, home-based publishing business, we are killing ourselves to grow — and terrified that if we grow to the point when we need to hire someone, we will be crippled by local, state, and federal taxes on our employee's salary, and made miserable by regulations that might force us to rip out the flower bed for a wheelchair-access ramp or even be sued by someone who never applied for the job we created but somehow feels that he or she is the victim of discrimination.
FINED FOR A COMPLIMENT
And if we push forward anyway and actually do create a job — and assuming the company isn't hit with a multimillion-dollar fine because one morning I lost control of myself and said something vicious like, "You look nice today, Lucille" — rather than be celebrated for our achievements we will be berated or reviled for getting rich on obscene profits.
This is nuts. We have reshaped our society to protect endangered species whose continued survival is of no discernible benefit, such as the black-footed ferret or the spotted owl, while blithely writing laws and regulations that threaten the survival of the one species — the entrepreneur — on whom our lives and welfare utterly depend. And we wonder why we aren't creating enough new jobs! It's like slaughtering herds of dairy cows, then wondering why we haven't got enough milk. Really, it is.
With the need for jobs so pressing, this is the time to launch a full-bore effort to teach Americans just how their jobs get created in the first place; to teach them what entrepreneurs are, what they do, how they do it, what risks they take — and what tax and regulatory changes we must make to help more of them succeed. Above all, we need to teach all this to our children. Which means we need to crash head-on into the Leftist, anti-business culture of our country's education establishment and force it to stop teaching our children that the Furbish lousewort must be protected at all costs, but that entrepreneurs are ruining the planet and should be made extinct.
Until we get Americans to understand that their welfare depends utterly on those few among us who create work — that "soaking the rich" also means "no work for you" — we will never create enough new jobs no matter how rapidly our economy may grow. Entrepreneurs will survive, for we are a hardy species. It's the workers who will suffer, and for their own sakes they need to understand how the world works. This means we want more than merely their tolerance. We want their understanding and even, perhaps, their gratitude.
At the very end of Kindling, the investment banker returns to the now-bustling shipyard that his efforts brought back to life — after serving three years in prison for violating a securities regulation while raising the needed capital.
Upon the blackened, ten-foot wall not many yards from the gate there was a sign that he did not remember. Hesitating for a moment to go in, he went across to look at it. It was a bronze plaque, about three feet square, apparently a memorial of some sort, dignified and restrained. As he approached he saw it bore, embossed in low relief, the sculptured head and shoulders of a man, in profile. He read the words below:
Henry Warren
He Gave Us Work
Maybe Kindling should be required reading not just for MBA students, but for politicians, union leaders, high-school seniors — and especially for ambitious prosecutors who know how easy it is to trip up an entrepreneur on some technical violation, then trick the public into thinking they have "stood up for the little guy" when all they've really done is thrown a monkey wrench into the jobs machine those little guys so desperately need to keep running.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Friday, February 4, 2011
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
From Greenpeace founding member Patrick Moore...
The collapse of world communism and the fall of the Berlin Wall . . . added to the trend toward extremism. The Cold War was over and the peace movement was largely disbanded. The peace movement had been mainly Western-based and anti-American in its leanings. Many of its members moved into the environmental movement, bringing with them their neo-Marxist, far-left agendas. To a considerable extent the environmental movement was hijacked by political and social activists who learned to use green language to cloak agendas that had more to do with anti-capitalism and anti-globalization than with science or ecology. I remember visiting our Toronto office in 1985 and being surprised at how many of the new recruits were sporting army fatigues and red berets in support of the Sandinistas.
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