Daily Archives: 13 February 2018

Costs, and Costs

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The fight to drive the Daesh out of Iraq (while killing too few of them IMNSHO) has caused more than $45 billion in infrastructure damage to Iraq.

That’s roughly half the cost of the damage a couple of hurricanes did in Texas and Florida last year, an even smaller ratio when Puerto Rico is figured in.  But it’s a lot of damage for a nation like Iraq.

What might that imply, besides the relative wealth of the two nations?

One is the relative dependence we have on our more highly developed, and so expensive, infrastructure compared to Iraq.  Iraq is scraping by with that level of damage and already beginning to recover.

If we suffered the same relative level of damage to our infrastructure, particularly our electric grid, how well would we fare?

Against Their Own Interest

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Fast food workers began protesting yesterday, demanding higher wages and the right to join a union.  Ashley Cathey, a 29-year-old Memphis fast food person, had this:

Fast-food cooks and cashiers like me are fighting for higher pay and union rights, the same things striking sanitation workers fought for 50 years ago.  We’re not striking and marching just to commemorate what they did—we’re carrying their fight forward. And we won’t stop until everyone in this country can be paid $15 an hour and has the right to join a union.

The work they do isn’t worth $15 per hour.  They’re just looking to price themselves out of their jobs, to be replaced by automated kiosks, as so many fast food restaurants already are doing.  Worse, if their unions, through strikes, force those higher wages, that will end with two outcomes: higher food prices for consumers, and from that, lessened demand for those restaurants’ fast food.  That, in turn, will result in fast food restaurants accelerating the move to kiosks or going out of business.  That last will cost not only the demanders their jobs, it’ll cost everyone in those restaurants their jobs.

And the right to join a union?  They already have that.  These folks should know that; they’re being misled by union leadership and the SJWs in the mix.