Category Archives: jobs

Jobs

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French President Emmanuel Macron had the effrontery to say to a heretofore unsuccessful job seeker that, were the latter not absolutely set on a job in his chosen career field, the man easily could find work in France.  And the man wouldn’t even have to relocate very far.  The Left is in an uproar over Macron’s arrogance in saying an obvious truth.

The jobseeker, an aspiring gardener, said to Macron at an Elysee Palace open house,

I’m 25 years old, I send resumes and cover letters, they don’t lead to anything[.]

Macron’s terrible advice?

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He Didn’t Build That

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Our economy had the awe-uninspiring growth rate of 2% per year during ex-President Barack Obama’s (D) time in office.  Now, the Census Bureau has reported that

  • [r]eal median household incomes rose 1.8% to $61,372 between 2016 and 2017
  • the overall poverty rate dropped 0.4 per centage points to 12.3%
  • poverty rates for blacks and Hispanics fell to 21.2% and 18.3%, respectively, the lowest in more than 45 years
  • the share of people earning less than $15,000 declining 0.3 per centage points

Obama didn’t build that.  Those folks also think they’ve reached the point where they’ve made enough money.

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Government Diktat

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California style.  That state has passed a law.

The law requires a company to appoint one woman to its board of directors by the end of 2019. By the end of 2021 a five-member board would need to have two women, while boards with six or more directors would need three. The Legislature, always alert to possible micro-aggressions, defines female as “an individual who self-identifies her gender as a woman, without regard to the individual’s designated sex at birth.”

(One wonders whether the law would be satisfied by a male Board member self-identifying as a woman for the purpose of Board-related activities.  [/snark])

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A Minimum Wage

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David Neumark, an Economics Professor at the University of California, Irvine, thinks he has an idea on how to implement “fairly” a minimum wage.  Unfortunately, his idea isn’t even good enough to be bad satire. He wants to

provide a tax credit of 50% of the difference between the prior minimum wage and the new minimum wage for each hour of labor employed. It would phase out at wages above the new minimum wage and, as wage inflation erodes, the value of the new minimum wage.

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Irony

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Her name is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D, NY), a candidate for the House of Representatives.  Recall that Ocasio-Cortez is an ardent supporter of minimum wage laws, and as a start wants the minimum to be $15/hr.  New York City already has mandated that minimum wages in the city rise to $15/hr by the end of this year.

She went by her favorite coffee shop, The Coffee Shop in Union Square (which employs 150 folks), over the weekend to shoot the breeze because, she says, she used to work there. Then she discovered the place is closing this fall…because it can’t afford the rising labor costs on top of high rent and high regulation costs.

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Union Politics

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Here’s what the American Federation of Teachers union “agency fees” would have been spent on absent the favorable ruling in Janus vs AFSCME, which said that public unions can no longer make non-union employees pay into union coffers as a condition of employment.  These are actual resolutions to be offered at the AFT’s convention this weekend.

Keep in mind, too, that those agency fees typically ran to 60% to 80% of member union dues—which gives an idea of how much a public union’s intake was spent on politics rather than on member matters.

  • single-payer health care
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Gun Control

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…done right.

A disgruntled customer in a George Webb restaurant took his anger out on one of the women employees, going behind the counter to physically attack her.

He didn’t get far: a fellow employee, another woman, drew her pistol and drove the thug off.  It seems that she has a concealed carry permit to go with her weapon, and George Webb allows its employees to carry on the premises.  With good reason, it seems.

But those on the Left would rather have the good guys—and girls—unarmed, so thugs like this can have their way.  Talk about a war on women.  Geez.

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A Related Note

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I wrote recently about the Court’s ruling on Janus v AFCME Council 31, which eliminated public service unions’ ability to collect “agency fees” from non union members.

The dissent by Justice Elena Kagan and joined by her three cohorts in the Court’s liberal wing is instructive, and it foreshadows the kind of government we can expect from today’s “liberals,” should they succeed in gaining control of one or both Houses of Congress and then of the White House.

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The Supremes Get One Right

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Resoundingly so.  Janus v AFCME Council 31 is a case originating in Illinois concerning a public service union’s ability to collect a per centage of ordinary union dues—agency fees—from non-union members who work alongside the union’s bargaining unit in for a government agency.  A 40-year-old Supreme Court precedent, Abood v Detroit Board of Education, upheld this ability.

The Court’s opinion (a 5-4 majority) is summarized in the syllabus:

The State’s extraction of agency fees from nonconsenting public-sector employees violates the First Amendment. Abood erred in concluding otherwise, and stare decisis cannot support it. Abood is therefore overruled.

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Cynical Union

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Recall President Donald Trump’s Executive Order limiting the amount of time public union employees can spend doing union business during their work day.

The American Federation of Government Employees has demurred and gone into court to seek an injunction blocking enforcement of the EO.  AFGE General Counsel David Borer insisted

We will not allow this or any other administration to trample on the Constitutional rights of federal workers[.]

This cynical claim is based on Borer’s insistence that his members’ freedom of association right is violated by the EO.

This, of course, is nonsense.

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