Tag Archives: political economy

The Price of Labor

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…is also a cost to labor.  Minimum wage mandates took effect at the start of the year in 18 States and in 20 cities.  These mandates have drastically raised the cost to labor.

Late Monday, casual dining chain Red Robin Gourmet Burgers (RRGB) announced that it would eliminate bus boys at 570 restaurant locations, a move that is expected to save the company an estimated $8 million over the course of the coming year. The company’s chief financial officer said the decision was made in order to “address the labor increases we’ve seen.”

Those busboys can thank their respective Progressive-Democratic politicians for the wage increase they can enjoy not having.  They also should remember this largesse in the coming primary season and again this fall.

There’s another cost to labor, one that is far longer lasting, and so far more devastating to us citizens and the economy in which we must operate.  Michael Saltsman, Employment Policies Institute Director, addressed the problems faced by our teenagers and other first-time workers:

I think the loss, as the minimum wage goes up…[is the] hollowing out of entry-level opportunities[.]

Without that entry-level experience—not only in a particular job, but in the nature of having a job, the ethic of work—how will our first-timers get the next-level job?  How, indeed, will they even get any entry-level job when they’re being priced out of the starter market?

Tax, Tax, Tax

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That’s the position of European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.  With Great Britain going out from the European Union, Juncker says the remaining nations will have to pony up yet more money “if we are to pursue European policies and fund them adequately[.]”

Currently, the EU budget is capped at 1% of the total of the EU members’ aggregated GDP.  However, it’s not enough, though, that the remaining nations will have to fill the large-ish gap created by the British departure.  Juncker wants yet more.

Yet, even that “have to fill” bit remains unjustified in any concrete terms.

Some of those new [policy] demands include building a common European defense, the fight against terrorism and protecting borders as more and more refugees and migrants seek to enter Europe. There are also calls to increase spending on research and making the bloc’s economy more competitive in the digital age.

Never mind that these are individual, sovereign nation needs.  Nor is there need for any EU-level taxes—much less increased taxes—in order for the members to coordinate those programs among themselves.  Ordinary trade agreements could achieve most of those, were EU legal requirements not in the way.  Even the fight against terrorism and protecting borders: the US and Canada handle that between us, as do Mexico and us for the most part, and we don’t tax each other for the purpose.

Unspoken among those policies, too, is the demand for money to bail out individual member nations that have differing ideologies, for instance, about the purpose of money and of government.  This at bottom is a diversity demand that’s driven by a concomitant too-great diversity of national political and social philosophies.

Juncker has pointed out that his tax demands amount to the price of a daily cup of coffee for the average taxpayer, while eliding the fact that that average taxpayer has little to no say regarding whether he’d rather have that daily cup than send his money off to Brussels.

I am of the opinion that Europe is worth more than a cup of coffee a day[.]

Europe, certainly.  The EU, not so much.  (Notice, too, Juncker’s mindset regarding national sovereignty with his careful conflation of the EU with Europe.)

Energy Poor?

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In an otherwise reasonable piece on the disaster that the Global Warming Funding Industry represents for the poor folks, Bjorn Lomborg, Copenhagen Consensus Center President (aside: he, too, uses the climatistas’ euphemistic obfuscation “climate change”), Lomberg based much of his argument on this definition of energy poverty:

Economists consider households energy poor if they spend 10% of their income to cover energy costs.

Wow.  I guess, then, that households that spend 20%-30% on their housing costs must be housing poor even more so.

Prolly need lots of Government subsidies for homeowners and renters, too.  The solution to [housing] need not punish the poor.

Value in Spending vs Parity in Spending

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The House and Senate leadership met Wednesday in Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R, WI) office, along with White House Director of Legislative Affairs Marc Short and OMB Director Mick Mulvaney, to see if there’s any possibility of the Progressive-Democrats working with Republicans to get Federal spending under control.  It seems not.

Both parties claim to want to increase our ability to defend ourselves and our friends and allies, and so both claim to want to increase defense spending.  Only one of the two seems serious, however.  House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, CA):

In these talks, Leader Schumer and I will continue to insist on parity in the caps[.]

Parity in the spending caps, she meant.  The icon of Progressive-Democracy in Congress is conflating parity with equal value.

There will be no domestic spending available if we can’t defend ourselves.  We will have nothing with which to deal with the opioid epidemic, veterans, pensions, disaster relief, National Institutes of Health, Children’s Health Insurance Program and community health centers, or infrastructure rebuilding, or education, or Social Security, or Medicare, or Medicaid or anything else if we can’t defend ourselves.

Or if we merely go broke, whether by being forced to spend all of our money just to pay the vig on that debt or by defaulting outright.

Parity—this is not the same as equal value. It is, however, another example of the Progressive-Democrats’ constant demand for equal outcomes rather than true equality.

It may be time to kill the filibuster on matters involving the Federal budget and spending bills, at least for the current Congressional session.  The alternative, if the Republicans stand tall on spending, along with getting their messaging skills up to snuff—finally—is to let the Progressive-Democrats shut down the Federal government over their demand to spend us into oblivion as their price for letting us spend enough on defense to rebuild our military.

To do any of that, though, Republicans also will have to understand that parity is not equality.

Trade Reciprocity

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When the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US refused to approve a deal between the People’s Republic of China’s Ant Financial Services Group and MoneyGram International Inc, wherein the former would acquire the latter, Anjani Trivedi in a Wall Street Journal article lamented the demise of “deal making” between American companies and PRC companies.

Beijing has softened its attitude somewhat recently, relaxing its foreign-investment policies to lure more capital into specific sectors, including financial services. With the CFIUS decision on Ant and MoneyGram, it’s clear such moves aren’t going to be met with much reciprocity.

And

For investors, the takeaway is that the “China bid” that has helped boost global asset prices this century may be gone for good….

Leave aside the artificial hysteria of “gone for good.”  The PRC’s “moves” are empty rhetoric, as their limited nature demonstrate. Further, such “moves” can only be tokens as long as the PRC demands that partnership with Chinese companies; or transfer of technology, including proprietary tech; or PRC-run back doors into foreign business’ software be accepted by the foreign business as the price of doing business in the PRC.  Such “moves” can only be tokens so long as PRC acquisitions of US companies are aimed not at strengthening a business but at “acquiring” US technology.  Such “moves” can only be tokens so long as Chinese companies are arms of the PRC’s government.

There’s nothing with which to reciprocate.