Starbucks is sharply raising its total compensation for its employees in the Seattle area. Total compensation from wages and stock options is going up some 5% to 15%. Carefully buried in the very last paragraph of The Seattle Times piece is this little nugget:
Last July, Starbucks raised its prices 3.5 times as much in Seattle as in the rest of the country. It raised the price of its typical coffeeshop purchase across the U.S. by 1%, but in Seattle by 3.5%.
Hmm….
Great Britain’s Ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair has sensed danger from the Brits’ vote to leave the European Union.
Blair said in a Friday column in The Daily Telegraph that the future of the United Kingdom is at stake as the country faces negotiations on the terms of leaving the European Union.
Of course there’s danger—there always is when a change as large as this is embarked on. But Great Britain didn’t get to be as great as it was and still is by being timid. This move is a great opportunity for the nation, much more so than it is a risk, however real that risk is.
Blair also worried:
Britain is dangerously divided, with “profound dismay” felt by many of the 48 percent who wanted to remain in the EU.
He’s missing the other question, though: would Great Britain be any less divided had they voted to Remain? Not a bit.
Look forward, not backward.
Before the government can measure the size of the gig economy—or is it the sharing economy? The digital economy?—the sector needs to be defined.
No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t even need to measure the size of the gig economy; government has shown it’s not going to do anything useful, or freedom-promoting, with that measurement.
And this misconception, by Commerce Department Acting Under Secretary for Economic Affairs Justin Antonipillai:
In order to have good policy making, you have to have good data[.]
Again, no. Government doesn’t need to make any policy in this area. Not at all. Government just needs to butt out, and let American entrepreneurs make their own way.
Only our Liberals are unable to function without being told every little thing every step of the way. Even Liberals can learn how, though.
Some employees of Cablevision in Brooklyn, members of the Communication Workers of America union, were at a company BBQ circulating a petition to decertify their local, 1109. Naturally the local’s officials objected, and they threatened the petition circulators.
I just want you to understand, to be perfectly clear that CWA we’re probably going to personally sue y’all[.]
…
[W]e’re going after y’all personally[.]
It’s especially serious when an NLRB administrative judge objects to the union local’s behavior, ruling these union officials had violated Federal labor law with their threats. It’ll be interesting to see how the NLRB board itself rules on the union’s inevitable appeal.
Competition is at the heart of America’s economic success, but not every type of contest benefits society. Consider the growing trend of businesses cajoling states and politicians to compete for who can dole out the most corporate welfare. It’s especially frustrating because there are already plenty of ways to promote job growth without robbing taxpayers.
And
States could start with eliminating tax carve outs and replacing them with lower-overall tax rates and lighter regulatory burdens. Federal lawmakers could also do their part by lowering America’s highest-in-the-developed-world corporate tax rate.
And
Embracing these policies would protect taxpayers…multinational firms with multimillion-dollar profit margins.
You bet. Lower-tax rate policies, among other things, would directly increase those entities’ profit margins by reducing the size of a cost center. They also would let these entities lower their prices (if only slightly), which would increase their sales (if only slightly), which would then increase their profits if not their profit margins.
In the end, States compete better on the basis of who has the lower tax and regulatory rates over all rather than who gets to the better carve-outs and special treatments. In fact, the carve-out/treatment path, among other things, leads to an enormously byzantine tax structure within which it’s increasingly difficult to measure which State’s carve-outs/treatments are better.