A response to Paul Krugman
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/opinion/27krugman.html
So, Mr. Krugman, suggesting another World War to solve the 'structural unemployment problem'? Sorry, the world is a different place and the nature of war has changed. Time to look for more productive solutions.
The US Treasury is empty. The Fed is printing toilet paper as fast as the presses can go. We don't have any money, and what there is, gets less valuable with each passing moment. The government cannot finance another wasteful and ineffective spending spree.
No one has sufficient understanding or control over the future to know what programs or policies to implement to restore our economy: that’s why Central-planning solutions have never worked. Therefore the federal government needs to concentrate on removing all non-essential obstructions to entrepreneurialism; and on eliminating all non-value-added costs that they have imposed on American business for the past 100 years. American business has been continually streamlining their processes for 40 years. It’s time for governments (federal, state, and local) to catch-up. The free market will reveal the ‘natural’ opportunities when it is freed of the suffocating detritus that accumulated when American business did not have to compete for consumers.
The most promising solution is to repeal the 16th Amendment and implement the Fair Tax as presently structured. With the stroke of a pen, everyone who is employed gets a 23% boost in their take-home pay; US exports become 23% more competitive in the global market; monthly pre-bate checks provide an offset for the taxes on essentials and provides cash flow to every household; and the Trillions of dollars sheltered off-shore can come back into our economy to fund the expansion that results from improved export posture.
The only way our economy is going to get better is for Americans to become more productive. The only way to become more productive is to become more competitive in the global market. Therefore we have to eliminate the non-value added costs that accrued during our 25 year, post WWII monopoly on global manufacturing capacity.
Longer-term we need to restore the historic American ideals of individual resourcefulness, entrepreneurialism, and accountability; even as we erase the deadly acceptance socialism promoted so disastrously over the past 50 years.
Monday, September 27, 2010
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Productivity is the only key to Prosperity
This is in response to a Jesse Jackson Op-Ed in the Chicago Sun Times
http://www.suntimes.com/news/jackson/2655308,CST-EDT-jesse31.article
Jesse, it’s comforting to see that your incomprehension of reality extends beyond race. Labor brought as much to the prosperity of America as you have brought to understanding between the races: thuggery, extortion, and destruction: nothing more.
Henry Ford, not the labor unions, created the Middle Class. He accomplished that by eliminating waste in the manufacturing process. He was able to eliminate so much waste that he was able to empower workers to be so productive that he could double their wage; cut the work week from 60 hours to 40 hours; all while improving the quality of his products and cutting the selling price in half (or less). That was accomplished by one factor and one factor only: relentless pursuit of productivity solely by eliminating waste in every form.
The labor unions have done nothing but destroy productivity. Their ability to do so was empowered solely by the manufacturing capacity monopoly that America enjoyed between 1946 and 1970 as a result of global manufacturing capacity being destroyed during WWII. Without competition, unions could make any idiotic, destructive, non-productive demand of their choosing (and happily did so). The only drawback was that Americans had to pay more for everything, but they had no alternative.
By 1970 there was sufficient foreign manufacturing capacity that they could start competing for American consumers. The labor unions and government created modern Detroit, Akron, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Flint, et al by sucking the life-blood out of American business. Productivity is the key to prosperity and no amount of liberal drivel will alter that.
Idiotic union work rules that destroyed productivity; coupled with idiotic government mandates and social engineering follies multiplied non-value added costs that make it impossible for American manufacturers to compete using American labor in American cities. Every new mandate; every new cost; every new restriction; every new entitlement chipped away at domestic employment until we are where we are today.
The financial collapse was solely the doing of liberals in Congress and the White House; not conservatives; though they contributed by not un-doing the destructive practices being implemented. The Barney Franks and Chris Dodds forced banks to lend to people totally unable or unwilling to repay their loans. The Fed (liberals all) made credit so cheap and so readily available that it created one bubble after the next as speculators drove prices far beyond intrinsic value: be it tech stocks or real estate. This was exacerbated by Fannie and Freddie that transferred all risk from the private sector to the backs of the taxpayers. The coup de grace was nationalization of AIG that took all liability and stuffed it on the taxpayer.
The BP catastrophe was caused by the failure of the federal government to assure that regulations in place since March of 2000 were implemented. Had they been implemented, the well failure would not have occurred; and had there been a blow-out, on site containment and recovery equipment required by the same regulations would have mitigated the damage so it would never have reached the shore. Keep in mind that the federal government netted $2.3 Billion from the lease that included the Deepwater Horizon site: that should have paid for at least some supervision and oversight. Keep in mind too that president Obama noted in 2008 that the MMS was rotten, yet Billions of dollars and two years later, he still had done NOTHING to correct the problems that he admitted were there. The Gulf disaster is solely the fault of the federal government’s failure to enforce regulations long established. Also note that the cleanup could have been started 3 MONTHS earlier than it did had the president not stupidly refused to make an exception to the Jones Act to permit highly capable and supremely experienced foreign men and equipment from 30 different countries to participate in the clean up: all to “protect” a handful of union jobs.
To add insult to injury, the president then arbitrarily slapped a moratorium on all deep water drilling (which was forced on the industry by making shallow water sites arbitrarily off limits) in the Gulf: driving the rigs and the jobs to foreign destinations. The icing: the president lied about the recommendations of his “expert panel” who unanimously counseled against a deep water drilling moratorium: More government interference destroying jobs.
How many real, productive jobs have been created by PUSH, the UAW, SEIU and AFSCME? The answer is “not a single one”. These organizations exist solely to suck the lifeblood out of employers (and employees) by doing everything in their power to destroy productivity. That in turn destroys jobs as is indisputably proven by the extinction of fruitful jobs over the past 40 years.
If those 570,000 registered voters would get their heads out of their butts and their hands out of other people’s pockets and instead use their God-given abilities to create real jobs based on providing top quality products and services in the most waste-free productive manner possible, there would be reason to hope for a better tomorrow. As long as they continue to be manipulated and lied-to by PUSH, UAW, SEIU, AFSCME and Congress et al they will continue to sink lower into the abyss.
America wasn’t built by government make-work projects or union featherbedders; it wasn’t built as a welfare state; nor was it built by rainbow coalitions of social malcontents. It was built by individuals ecstatically overcome by the opportunity to accomplish their dreams and to reap any rewards there-from; driven by the reality that if they failed to produce a useful product or service they would be back where they started: with nothing.
Our Founders were wise about human nature and that is why they created a federal government with very little responsibility; less authority; and prohibited to directly tax Citizens for the revenue to run a limited government.
The first, and necessary, step to restore America is to restore Constitutional governance. Anything less is counter-productive, and only productivity earns prosperity.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/jackson/2655308,CST-EDT-jesse31.article
Jesse, it’s comforting to see that your incomprehension of reality extends beyond race. Labor brought as much to the prosperity of America as you have brought to understanding between the races: thuggery, extortion, and destruction: nothing more.
Henry Ford, not the labor unions, created the Middle Class. He accomplished that by eliminating waste in the manufacturing process. He was able to eliminate so much waste that he was able to empower workers to be so productive that he could double their wage; cut the work week from 60 hours to 40 hours; all while improving the quality of his products and cutting the selling price in half (or less). That was accomplished by one factor and one factor only: relentless pursuit of productivity solely by eliminating waste in every form.
The labor unions have done nothing but destroy productivity. Their ability to do so was empowered solely by the manufacturing capacity monopoly that America enjoyed between 1946 and 1970 as a result of global manufacturing capacity being destroyed during WWII. Without competition, unions could make any idiotic, destructive, non-productive demand of their choosing (and happily did so). The only drawback was that Americans had to pay more for everything, but they had no alternative.
By 1970 there was sufficient foreign manufacturing capacity that they could start competing for American consumers. The labor unions and government created modern Detroit, Akron, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Flint, et al by sucking the life-blood out of American business. Productivity is the key to prosperity and no amount of liberal drivel will alter that.
Idiotic union work rules that destroyed productivity; coupled with idiotic government mandates and social engineering follies multiplied non-value added costs that make it impossible for American manufacturers to compete using American labor in American cities. Every new mandate; every new cost; every new restriction; every new entitlement chipped away at domestic employment until we are where we are today.
The financial collapse was solely the doing of liberals in Congress and the White House; not conservatives; though they contributed by not un-doing the destructive practices being implemented. The Barney Franks and Chris Dodds forced banks to lend to people totally unable or unwilling to repay their loans. The Fed (liberals all) made credit so cheap and so readily available that it created one bubble after the next as speculators drove prices far beyond intrinsic value: be it tech stocks or real estate. This was exacerbated by Fannie and Freddie that transferred all risk from the private sector to the backs of the taxpayers. The coup de grace was nationalization of AIG that took all liability and stuffed it on the taxpayer.
The BP catastrophe was caused by the failure of the federal government to assure that regulations in place since March of 2000 were implemented. Had they been implemented, the well failure would not have occurred; and had there been a blow-out, on site containment and recovery equipment required by the same regulations would have mitigated the damage so it would never have reached the shore. Keep in mind that the federal government netted $2.3 Billion from the lease that included the Deepwater Horizon site: that should have paid for at least some supervision and oversight. Keep in mind too that president Obama noted in 2008 that the MMS was rotten, yet Billions of dollars and two years later, he still had done NOTHING to correct the problems that he admitted were there. The Gulf disaster is solely the fault of the federal government’s failure to enforce regulations long established. Also note that the cleanup could have been started 3 MONTHS earlier than it did had the president not stupidly refused to make an exception to the Jones Act to permit highly capable and supremely experienced foreign men and equipment from 30 different countries to participate in the clean up: all to “protect” a handful of union jobs.
To add insult to injury, the president then arbitrarily slapped a moratorium on all deep water drilling (which was forced on the industry by making shallow water sites arbitrarily off limits) in the Gulf: driving the rigs and the jobs to foreign destinations. The icing: the president lied about the recommendations of his “expert panel” who unanimously counseled against a deep water drilling moratorium: More government interference destroying jobs.
How many real, productive jobs have been created by PUSH, the UAW, SEIU and AFSCME? The answer is “not a single one”. These organizations exist solely to suck the lifeblood out of employers (and employees) by doing everything in their power to destroy productivity. That in turn destroys jobs as is indisputably proven by the extinction of fruitful jobs over the past 40 years.
If those 570,000 registered voters would get their heads out of their butts and their hands out of other people’s pockets and instead use their God-given abilities to create real jobs based on providing top quality products and services in the most waste-free productive manner possible, there would be reason to hope for a better tomorrow. As long as they continue to be manipulated and lied-to by PUSH, UAW, SEIU, AFSCME and Congress et al they will continue to sink lower into the abyss.
America wasn’t built by government make-work projects or union featherbedders; it wasn’t built as a welfare state; nor was it built by rainbow coalitions of social malcontents. It was built by individuals ecstatically overcome by the opportunity to accomplish their dreams and to reap any rewards there-from; driven by the reality that if they failed to produce a useful product or service they would be back where they started: with nothing.
Our Founders were wise about human nature and that is why they created a federal government with very little responsibility; less authority; and prohibited to directly tax Citizens for the revenue to run a limited government.
The first, and necessary, step to restore America is to restore Constitutional governance. Anything less is counter-productive, and only productivity earns prosperity.
Monday, August 2, 2010
Fundament Restoration is what is required.
The critical issues to the Tea Party Movement are not Republican or Democrat: they are economic and Constitutional. America is in a mess because the federal government, over the past 70 years, under both political parties, has engaged in policies, programs, and entitlements that they have no Constitutional (ie Legal) authority to implement.
Gov. Christie is fortunate that he is dealing with problems with fairly straight-forward and achievable solutions (though admittedly solutions that all of his predecessors have lacked the courage to implement).
The Congress on the other hand has been stealing from the American people and their forced "contributions" to Social Security and Medicare for generations. In addition, Congress has been using these vehicles to promise expansive benefits far exceeding receipts (notwithstanding that the sleazy Congress stole them anyway).
As Boomers reach "retirement age", after "contributing" to mandatory government insurance programs for 50 years or more, they are finding the cupboard bare. Long nothing more than a Ponzi scheme, SS and Medicare are now forced to pay the piper and there are no resources to do that with. Where Christie is faced with $Billion problems, the federal government is facing $100 Trillion in problems.
Making matters worse, we are saddled with a president and his administration who have never held nor created a real job in their lives. Without any real-world experience they are mesmerized with idiotic wealth re-distribution schemes learned from ivory-tower outhouse philosophers that have failed every time they've been attempted since the beginning of time.
There are indeed hard choices that must be made, and expanding entitlements knowing that there is no imaginable way to pay for them simply makes an impossible problem even worse: So clearly so that any rational person should be questioning the ulterior motives of this administration.
We don't need "fundamental transformation" we need fundamental Restoration of Constitutional governance.
Gov. Christie is fortunate that he is dealing with problems with fairly straight-forward and achievable solutions (though admittedly solutions that all of his predecessors have lacked the courage to implement).
The Congress on the other hand has been stealing from the American people and their forced "contributions" to Social Security and Medicare for generations. In addition, Congress has been using these vehicles to promise expansive benefits far exceeding receipts (notwithstanding that the sleazy Congress stole them anyway).
As Boomers reach "retirement age", after "contributing" to mandatory government insurance programs for 50 years or more, they are finding the cupboard bare. Long nothing more than a Ponzi scheme, SS and Medicare are now forced to pay the piper and there are no resources to do that with. Where Christie is faced with $Billion problems, the federal government is facing $100 Trillion in problems.
Making matters worse, we are saddled with a president and his administration who have never held nor created a real job in their lives. Without any real-world experience they are mesmerized with idiotic wealth re-distribution schemes learned from ivory-tower outhouse philosophers that have failed every time they've been attempted since the beginning of time.
There are indeed hard choices that must be made, and expanding entitlements knowing that there is no imaginable way to pay for them simply makes an impossible problem even worse: So clearly so that any rational person should be questioning the ulterior motives of this administration.
We don't need "fundamental transformation" we need fundamental Restoration of Constitutional governance.
Friday, July 23, 2010
Journolist terminally perverts the 4th Estate
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/horseraceblog/2010/07/whats_so_bad_about_the_journol_1.html
“American democracy is unthinkable without the two political parties, so partisanship can't be all bad”.
Dear Mr. Cost, obviously you have no understanding of what is America. I’ll try to explain it to you.
First, America is most intentionally NOT a democracy; which is best described as two wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for dinner. America is a Constitutional Republic: that means that we are governed by a Constitution, administered by representatives elected by Sovereign Citizens.
The Constitution of the United States (COTUS) is the contract, crafted by Sovereign Citizens, to establish and define the federal government created to do a very limited range of clearly defined responsibilities within a very narrow range of clearly defined authorities.
We elect a federal government to do two things: to exercise their Constitutionally defined responsibilities; and to “preserve, protect, and defend the COTUS”: Only this and nothing more. Within the COTUS there is no such thing as a “popular mandate”: there is no authority for “fundamentally transforming the USA” (which in reality is a clear violation of the oath of office required of every federal employee before we grant them any federal authority).
Second, you will find nothing in the COTUS to encourage, support, or authorize political parties, which our Founders rightly considered an anathema to our Constitutional Republic. Political parties exist solely to pervert the electoral process.
So, if America is not a democracy (it is not); and political parties are an anathema to our form of government (they are) partisanship is in fact necessarily all bad. Partisanship presumes that there are two or more perspectives on an issue, but in a Constitutional Republic there is only one perspective: that specifically defined by the Constitution.
While the history lesson was honestly fascinating it merely denotes that partisans have been doing their damnedest to pervert our form of government since the beginning. That’s why the Sovereign Citizens amended the COTUS by adding the Bill of Rights listing a number of authorities that the federal government was intentionally, and specifically denied: including the admonition that just because some authorities had been delegated, no other authorities not listed, are. Finally, just in case there is any is any confusion, in the event that someone may think they meant to include some unnamed authority the Sovereigns said “Nope”. Any authority not listed is retained by the Sovereign Citizen unless they have specifically delegated it to the States.
It is patently clear that no elected (or appointed) federal officer has any authority not specifically listed in the COTUS.
Since the role of the federal government is clearly defined (by branch); and since none in the any of the federal government’s three branches has any authority to alter those definitions, the Founders excluded the press from federal control in the 1st Amendment to enable them to freely be the peoples’ watchdog: to keep the federal government “on the straight and narrow” in compliance with the COTUS.
Of course there has always been a partisan press, but the rightful role of the press is to objectively report the facts so that Sovereign Citizens have the honest information required to make an informed decision. Unfortunately in the current age, the press has so badly abdicated it’s essential responsibility by corrupting their reportage in order to shape the debate to their own terms, that they have destroyed their credibility and thereby, destroyed their usefulness. That explains why the 4th Estate can no longer support itself: they no longer provide a useful service.
Mr. Cost, you may find a deceptively partisan press acceptable, but clearly the Sovereign Citizens do not.
In the Founders age anyone that did what the Journolist participants did (pervert the political process for their own gratification) would have been tarred, feathered, and run out of town on a rail. In the modern age they are simply bankrupted and run out of business. Good riddance to them, but it’s such a shame to lose the theater of it.
“American democracy is unthinkable without the two political parties, so partisanship can't be all bad”.
Dear Mr. Cost, obviously you have no understanding of what is America. I’ll try to explain it to you.
First, America is most intentionally NOT a democracy; which is best described as two wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for dinner. America is a Constitutional Republic: that means that we are governed by a Constitution, administered by representatives elected by Sovereign Citizens.
The Constitution of the United States (COTUS) is the contract, crafted by Sovereign Citizens, to establish and define the federal government created to do a very limited range of clearly defined responsibilities within a very narrow range of clearly defined authorities.
We elect a federal government to do two things: to exercise their Constitutionally defined responsibilities; and to “preserve, protect, and defend the COTUS”: Only this and nothing more. Within the COTUS there is no such thing as a “popular mandate”: there is no authority for “fundamentally transforming the USA” (which in reality is a clear violation of the oath of office required of every federal employee before we grant them any federal authority).
Second, you will find nothing in the COTUS to encourage, support, or authorize political parties, which our Founders rightly considered an anathema to our Constitutional Republic. Political parties exist solely to pervert the electoral process.
So, if America is not a democracy (it is not); and political parties are an anathema to our form of government (they are) partisanship is in fact necessarily all bad. Partisanship presumes that there are two or more perspectives on an issue, but in a Constitutional Republic there is only one perspective: that specifically defined by the Constitution.
While the history lesson was honestly fascinating it merely denotes that partisans have been doing their damnedest to pervert our form of government since the beginning. That’s why the Sovereign Citizens amended the COTUS by adding the Bill of Rights listing a number of authorities that the federal government was intentionally, and specifically denied: including the admonition that just because some authorities had been delegated, no other authorities not listed, are. Finally, just in case there is any is any confusion, in the event that someone may think they meant to include some unnamed authority the Sovereigns said “Nope”. Any authority not listed is retained by the Sovereign Citizen unless they have specifically delegated it to the States.
It is patently clear that no elected (or appointed) federal officer has any authority not specifically listed in the COTUS.
Since the role of the federal government is clearly defined (by branch); and since none in the any of the federal government’s three branches has any authority to alter those definitions, the Founders excluded the press from federal control in the 1st Amendment to enable them to freely be the peoples’ watchdog: to keep the federal government “on the straight and narrow” in compliance with the COTUS.
Of course there has always been a partisan press, but the rightful role of the press is to objectively report the facts so that Sovereign Citizens have the honest information required to make an informed decision. Unfortunately in the current age, the press has so badly abdicated it’s essential responsibility by corrupting their reportage in order to shape the debate to their own terms, that they have destroyed their credibility and thereby, destroyed their usefulness. That explains why the 4th Estate can no longer support itself: they no longer provide a useful service.
Mr. Cost, you may find a deceptively partisan press acceptable, but clearly the Sovereign Citizens do not.
In the Founders age anyone that did what the Journolist participants did (pervert the political process for their own gratification) would have been tarred, feathered, and run out of town on a rail. In the modern age they are simply bankrupted and run out of business. Good riddance to them, but it’s such a shame to lose the theater of it.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Natural Law, Unintended Consequences and Job loss
President Obama obviously has a distorted view of achievement and appears to believe that somehow social justice can be accomplished by giving to some from the achievement of others. This is in fact a corruption of nature and true justice at the most elemental level. The unintended but actual consequences are the opposite of what is intended as verified by every redistributive effort in history.
Our Creator grants us skills and abilities in ways that we do not comprehend. Some appear to be more gifted in some areas than others in terms of musical ability or athletic ability or abstract thinking ability. For example some appear graced with superior coordination; some with superior mechanical aptitude.
Our Founders realized that we are each endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. The essence is that while we may each have different innate abilities, we each have the inalienable right to develop or pursue what it is that makes us happy (as long as it doesn’t infringe on the rights of others). Equal opportunity to pursue is a guarantee: equal outcome of the pursuit is not.
We have a right to the fruits of our labor; and no one is empowered to unilaterally decide for another the manner in which he must labor or how much he must labor. The true value of our labor is determined by the service our labor provides, as can only be determined by the consumer of that service.
A high-demand service that can be provided by anyone is necessarily of lesser value than a high-demand service that requires highly specialized training, facilities and experience that can be provided only by a very limited number of providers. At the same time, a highly specialized service for which there is no demand has no value.
In a free market controlled only by natural law, the reward or value of labor (physical, mental, or entrepreneurial) is determined strictly by the consumer. As a result the market is very efficient in supporting those services it values; and in eliminating those services that are not valued.
Henry Ford was the most revolutionary producer in history. He created the Middle Class by creating products of high consumer demand using processes to assure high quality at ever reducing costs by eliminating wasted resources in the processing. The ever reducing costs were applied to reducing the price of the products and thus expanded the available market; and permitted a wage sufficient that those who built the product could afford the product-expanding the market still further. Ford also revolutionized manufacturing by cutting the average laborer’s work week from 60 hours to 40 while doubling the daily wage which he accomplished by maximizing the value of the laborer’s effort by eliminating all waste of the worker’s effort.
We know from the unmatched results he produced that Henry Ford’s principles of labor and value are valid and worthy of replication.
Ford grew up on a farm and was motivated in his mechanical pursuits primarily to eliminate the drudgery of farm labor. Specifically he identified plowing as the most rigorous of labor; a task made much less so by using one of his tractors. However, Ford noted that farmers expected 12 months of income for four months of work concentrated during planting and harvesting. Since the market garners no service from farming during the other 8 months, such expectations are unreasonable.
Individuals encounter problems when the value of their labor doesn’t support their desired lifestyle. In a free market the individual has to adapt continually as market demands change, though this is counter to human nature that prefers unchanging routine over constant change and adaptation.
There are always unintended consequences when attempting to alter natural law because natural law is self-policing.
The forces shaping the free market are in a constant state of change and are as diverse as the number of consumers; the number of providers; and the work environments that comprise it. Therein lays the unconquerable obstacle to controlling the free market: interactive complexity beyond the ability of mortals to alter any part thereof without the high probability of severe unintended consequence outweighing any benefit of the original alteration.
Government interference in the free market always leads to failure because government regulations always attempt stagnation in an incessantly dynamic market. Such regulations always attempt to artificially force an unnatural outcome; usually to favor a political contributor or political point of view. Invariably they attempt to control a segment of the market process independently of all the other forces impacting the market, causing systemic imbalances that eventually disastrously rectify themselves.
For example, when Chris Dodd and Barney Frank forced banks to lend to un–creditworthy borrowers, and the Fed increased the money supply and kept interest rates artificially low (rather than naturally dynamically competitive); the result was explosive growth in borrowing for ever-increasingly bloated and otherwise bad investments (in real estate and it’s derivatives this time) that naturally creates an unsustainable bubble to disastrous results.
Government interference in free markets is no different than a poorly designed and incorrectly constructed dam on a fast moving stream. It initially may do what is desired and create a pond, but since it’s design is incomplete and it’s structure insufficient it eventually fails like a bursting bubble, creating great destruction to everything down-stream. That is exactly what happened in the recent financial collapse.
Another example of unintended consequences: Minimum Wage laws exist solely to increase the cost of labor above the natural value of that labor. This is clearly unsustainable. If there is no free competition in the market, only the consumer loses by having to pay more for the product or service than it is naturally worth. At a minimum this reduces the consumer capital available to create and sustain truly valuable products and services.
If there is free competition, the producer required to pay elevated Minimum Wages must produce off-setting cost reductions elsewhere in his processes to compensate for the overpayment of wages. Rather than using those cost reductions to reduce the selling price and expand the market and increase employment, they are used to simply maintain the existing level of employment.
Automation is an early choice to reduce costs and most likely eliminates the jobs most impacted by Minimum Wage laws. Affected employees not only don’t realize an improved income intended by the Minimum Wage laws, but lose their income completely.
If automation cannot provide a viable cost reduction, frequently the worker must have more abilities, experience, or training in order to do more of the work. This too most likely eliminates the job of the less experienced, less capable Minimum Wage worker; accomplishing the opposite of what the Minimum Wage was intended to do. It also makes it more difficult for new workers to get a start in employment without a higher level of education or training than is typical for new workers.
If increased automation and increased employee capabilities is insufficient to produce a competitively priced product or service, the provider looks for markets unencumbered by Minimum Wage laws (or other regulations) that results in all jobs in the Minimum Wage market being lost.
The veracity of this scenario has been playing out in America for 40 years as we respond to ever increasing costs of government regulations, taxation and ever increasing competition from less encumbered providers in China and India.
President Obama is apparently being guided by mentors who have no real-world job-creating experience; who have no appreciation or understanding of the free market; and who wrongly believe that government intervention and control can result in a compassionate employment market. History confirms that violating the natural laws of man and markets always leads to failure.
This explains why no jobs are being created in America today; and won’t under Obama’s policies.
Our Creator grants us skills and abilities in ways that we do not comprehend. Some appear to be more gifted in some areas than others in terms of musical ability or athletic ability or abstract thinking ability. For example some appear graced with superior coordination; some with superior mechanical aptitude.
Our Founders realized that we are each endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. The essence is that while we may each have different innate abilities, we each have the inalienable right to develop or pursue what it is that makes us happy (as long as it doesn’t infringe on the rights of others). Equal opportunity to pursue is a guarantee: equal outcome of the pursuit is not.
We have a right to the fruits of our labor; and no one is empowered to unilaterally decide for another the manner in which he must labor or how much he must labor. The true value of our labor is determined by the service our labor provides, as can only be determined by the consumer of that service.
A high-demand service that can be provided by anyone is necessarily of lesser value than a high-demand service that requires highly specialized training, facilities and experience that can be provided only by a very limited number of providers. At the same time, a highly specialized service for which there is no demand has no value.
In a free market controlled only by natural law, the reward or value of labor (physical, mental, or entrepreneurial) is determined strictly by the consumer. As a result the market is very efficient in supporting those services it values; and in eliminating those services that are not valued.
Henry Ford was the most revolutionary producer in history. He created the Middle Class by creating products of high consumer demand using processes to assure high quality at ever reducing costs by eliminating wasted resources in the processing. The ever reducing costs were applied to reducing the price of the products and thus expanded the available market; and permitted a wage sufficient that those who built the product could afford the product-expanding the market still further. Ford also revolutionized manufacturing by cutting the average laborer’s work week from 60 hours to 40 while doubling the daily wage which he accomplished by maximizing the value of the laborer’s effort by eliminating all waste of the worker’s effort.
We know from the unmatched results he produced that Henry Ford’s principles of labor and value are valid and worthy of replication.
Ford grew up on a farm and was motivated in his mechanical pursuits primarily to eliminate the drudgery of farm labor. Specifically he identified plowing as the most rigorous of labor; a task made much less so by using one of his tractors. However, Ford noted that farmers expected 12 months of income for four months of work concentrated during planting and harvesting. Since the market garners no service from farming during the other 8 months, such expectations are unreasonable.
Individuals encounter problems when the value of their labor doesn’t support their desired lifestyle. In a free market the individual has to adapt continually as market demands change, though this is counter to human nature that prefers unchanging routine over constant change and adaptation.
There are always unintended consequences when attempting to alter natural law because natural law is self-policing.
The forces shaping the free market are in a constant state of change and are as diverse as the number of consumers; the number of providers; and the work environments that comprise it. Therein lays the unconquerable obstacle to controlling the free market: interactive complexity beyond the ability of mortals to alter any part thereof without the high probability of severe unintended consequence outweighing any benefit of the original alteration.
Government interference in the free market always leads to failure because government regulations always attempt stagnation in an incessantly dynamic market. Such regulations always attempt to artificially force an unnatural outcome; usually to favor a political contributor or political point of view. Invariably they attempt to control a segment of the market process independently of all the other forces impacting the market, causing systemic imbalances that eventually disastrously rectify themselves.
For example, when Chris Dodd and Barney Frank forced banks to lend to un–creditworthy borrowers, and the Fed increased the money supply and kept interest rates artificially low (rather than naturally dynamically competitive); the result was explosive growth in borrowing for ever-increasingly bloated and otherwise bad investments (in real estate and it’s derivatives this time) that naturally creates an unsustainable bubble to disastrous results.
Government interference in free markets is no different than a poorly designed and incorrectly constructed dam on a fast moving stream. It initially may do what is desired and create a pond, but since it’s design is incomplete and it’s structure insufficient it eventually fails like a bursting bubble, creating great destruction to everything down-stream. That is exactly what happened in the recent financial collapse.
Another example of unintended consequences: Minimum Wage laws exist solely to increase the cost of labor above the natural value of that labor. This is clearly unsustainable. If there is no free competition in the market, only the consumer loses by having to pay more for the product or service than it is naturally worth. At a minimum this reduces the consumer capital available to create and sustain truly valuable products and services.
If there is free competition, the producer required to pay elevated Minimum Wages must produce off-setting cost reductions elsewhere in his processes to compensate for the overpayment of wages. Rather than using those cost reductions to reduce the selling price and expand the market and increase employment, they are used to simply maintain the existing level of employment.
Automation is an early choice to reduce costs and most likely eliminates the jobs most impacted by Minimum Wage laws. Affected employees not only don’t realize an improved income intended by the Minimum Wage laws, but lose their income completely.
If automation cannot provide a viable cost reduction, frequently the worker must have more abilities, experience, or training in order to do more of the work. This too most likely eliminates the job of the less experienced, less capable Minimum Wage worker; accomplishing the opposite of what the Minimum Wage was intended to do. It also makes it more difficult for new workers to get a start in employment without a higher level of education or training than is typical for new workers.
If increased automation and increased employee capabilities is insufficient to produce a competitively priced product or service, the provider looks for markets unencumbered by Minimum Wage laws (or other regulations) that results in all jobs in the Minimum Wage market being lost.
The veracity of this scenario has been playing out in America for 40 years as we respond to ever increasing costs of government regulations, taxation and ever increasing competition from less encumbered providers in China and India.
President Obama is apparently being guided by mentors who have no real-world job-creating experience; who have no appreciation or understanding of the free market; and who wrongly believe that government intervention and control can result in a compassionate employment market. History confirms that violating the natural laws of man and markets always leads to failure.
This explains why no jobs are being created in America today; and won’t under Obama’s policies.
Monday, July 12, 2010
NAACP Vs Tea Party Movement and Racism
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/naacp-tea-party-civil-rights-group-considers-resolution/story?id=11144640
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is claiming that the Tea Party participants are racists. I can’t be the only one who sees the insidious irony in that. The NAACP is dedicated to the advancement of a people based solely on skin color, but somehow it isn’t racist; while the Tea Party is a movement dedicated to restoring Constitutional government with no thought of race; is racist. How can that be?
The clear and unmistakable emphasis of the Tea Party Movement is to protest excessive government spending and overly intrusive government unbounded by the legal limits of the Constitution of the United States.
Evidently two generations of equal educational opportunity have been insufficient for some Colored People to comprehend that incompetence isn’t a function of skin color any more than skin color is a function of competence. People protest president Obama because he is wrong, not because he is a Colored Person (to use your term).
The Colored People association is making stale accusations about unverified, allegedly racist comments and degrading behavior amidst a staged Congressional gloating event that $100,000 in cash could not confirm in a sea of cell phones, recorders, and video cameras. Apparently the economic recovery is so good that $100,000 isn’t enough for an offended person to share a video verifying some form of racist behavior. Not likely.
In typical unjustified righteous indignation the Association of Colored People is demanding that a movement of people who have done nothing inappropriate apologize for baseless and unsubstantiated accusations. No credible source has confirmed any tangible form of racism promulgated by any Tea Party Movement group, yet the Colored People Association presents it as if it were undisputable fact: Saul Alinsky anyone?
There are two groups here: the Tea Party Movement that wants a return to Constitutional government; and the Colored People Association that apparently thinks Constitutional government is a threat to democracy (it probably is, but then America is not a Democracy, it is a Constitutional Republic). Apparently no one has ever explained to Ms. McDowell that it is the Constitution that prevents the federal government from infringing on the inalienable rights endowed to all of us by our Creator.
It is an interesting concept to have a Protest March to segregate the 60% of Americans who support the Tea Party Movement in order to “pull America together and back to work”. Care to explain how that works?
Ms. McDowell: the only people who still care about race in America are those on the fringe such as yourself who hope to gain some advantage: not based on the content of their character or competitive performance; but solely based on the color of their skin. How trite; and how degrading to the real progress that has been made to make race immaterial in America.
Do you suppose that this organization that promotes advancement of people solely based on skin color might repudiate racism? That Ms. McDowell would be progress.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is claiming that the Tea Party participants are racists. I can’t be the only one who sees the insidious irony in that. The NAACP is dedicated to the advancement of a people based solely on skin color, but somehow it isn’t racist; while the Tea Party is a movement dedicated to restoring Constitutional government with no thought of race; is racist. How can that be?
The clear and unmistakable emphasis of the Tea Party Movement is to protest excessive government spending and overly intrusive government unbounded by the legal limits of the Constitution of the United States.
Evidently two generations of equal educational opportunity have been insufficient for some Colored People to comprehend that incompetence isn’t a function of skin color any more than skin color is a function of competence. People protest president Obama because he is wrong, not because he is a Colored Person (to use your term).
The Colored People association is making stale accusations about unverified, allegedly racist comments and degrading behavior amidst a staged Congressional gloating event that $100,000 in cash could not confirm in a sea of cell phones, recorders, and video cameras. Apparently the economic recovery is so good that $100,000 isn’t enough for an offended person to share a video verifying some form of racist behavior. Not likely.
In typical unjustified righteous indignation the Association of Colored People is demanding that a movement of people who have done nothing inappropriate apologize for baseless and unsubstantiated accusations. No credible source has confirmed any tangible form of racism promulgated by any Tea Party Movement group, yet the Colored People Association presents it as if it were undisputable fact: Saul Alinsky anyone?
There are two groups here: the Tea Party Movement that wants a return to Constitutional government; and the Colored People Association that apparently thinks Constitutional government is a threat to democracy (it probably is, but then America is not a Democracy, it is a Constitutional Republic). Apparently no one has ever explained to Ms. McDowell that it is the Constitution that prevents the federal government from infringing on the inalienable rights endowed to all of us by our Creator.
It is an interesting concept to have a Protest March to segregate the 60% of Americans who support the Tea Party Movement in order to “pull America together and back to work”. Care to explain how that works?
Ms. McDowell: the only people who still care about race in America are those on the fringe such as yourself who hope to gain some advantage: not based on the content of their character or competitive performance; but solely based on the color of their skin. How trite; and how degrading to the real progress that has been made to make race immaterial in America.
Do you suppose that this organization that promotes advancement of people solely based on skin color might repudiate racism? That Ms. McDowell would be progress.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
America needs leaders not politicians
No one exemplifies ineptitude more thoroughly than president Obama. Nothing he has said, nothing he has done has accomplished anything other than making the problems of our society worse. Now, rather than dealing with serious problems as president, he's back on the campaign trail spouting divisive partisan lies and deceits.
The fact is that both parties have spent us into catastrophe; have manipulated the free markets to reward themselves and their friends and to punish their enemies; and failed to meet their Constitutional and moral responsibilities to the Citizens they are elected or appointed to serve.
Obama’s affectation of third-rate evangelical elocution foretells arrogant, deceitful and/ or unwarranted ridicule of his political opponents. Given his utter lack of accomplishment, this simply adds insult to injury. He offers radical “solutions” that have been universally proven to fail; even as he disdains effective solutions simply because they are different than what some unaccomplished outhouse philosophers or wanna-be rich-kid revolutionaries convinced him were the answer to America’s problems.
He has focused on solving contrived injustices fabricated and spewed by Jeremiah Wright and his ilk, while undermining the actual solutions that can make life better for all Americans. Obama is a political shell, an empty suit: a wizard of Oz. His essence was noted by Ronald Reagan’s: “It’s not that Liberals are ignorant, it’s just that so much of what they know simply isn’t so”.
What makes Obama dangerous is his incessant racism: choosing race rather than results. He is single-handedly undoing so much of any real progress made in civil rights over the past 45 years and substituting it with the vitriolic rhetoric of Liberation theology. The fact that the Obamas have benefitted so remarkably and unjustifiably from American social largess; and at the same time are so utterly unappreciative of it underscores the failure of social programs that reward race or gender rather than excellence and thereby deny the recipient the satisfaction and rightful confidence of personal accomplishment.
In sum, Obama is a lie. The only promise that he is honoring is to “fundamentally transform the USA” though he has no Constitutional authority to do so. His idea of change is founded on reinstituting racism rather than eliminating it: for compensating those who have done nothing as if they deserve it simply for existing.
American’s foolishly fell for his empty promises of undefined Change; only to get his lies, deceit, empty rhetoric and unbridled incompetence.
Let us hope that we don’t make the same mistake again; and that we elect only those who understand and honor the COTUS; have demonstrated problem solving skills; who respect the free market; and who won’t waste time and effort blaming others for their failures and incompetence.
Please, America: no more useless politicians when we need accomplished leaders.
The fact is that both parties have spent us into catastrophe; have manipulated the free markets to reward themselves and their friends and to punish their enemies; and failed to meet their Constitutional and moral responsibilities to the Citizens they are elected or appointed to serve.
Obama’s affectation of third-rate evangelical elocution foretells arrogant, deceitful and/ or unwarranted ridicule of his political opponents. Given his utter lack of accomplishment, this simply adds insult to injury. He offers radical “solutions” that have been universally proven to fail; even as he disdains effective solutions simply because they are different than what some unaccomplished outhouse philosophers or wanna-be rich-kid revolutionaries convinced him were the answer to America’s problems.
He has focused on solving contrived injustices fabricated and spewed by Jeremiah Wright and his ilk, while undermining the actual solutions that can make life better for all Americans. Obama is a political shell, an empty suit: a wizard of Oz. His essence was noted by Ronald Reagan’s: “It’s not that Liberals are ignorant, it’s just that so much of what they know simply isn’t so”.
What makes Obama dangerous is his incessant racism: choosing race rather than results. He is single-handedly undoing so much of any real progress made in civil rights over the past 45 years and substituting it with the vitriolic rhetoric of Liberation theology. The fact that the Obamas have benefitted so remarkably and unjustifiably from American social largess; and at the same time are so utterly unappreciative of it underscores the failure of social programs that reward race or gender rather than excellence and thereby deny the recipient the satisfaction and rightful confidence of personal accomplishment.
In sum, Obama is a lie. The only promise that he is honoring is to “fundamentally transform the USA” though he has no Constitutional authority to do so. His idea of change is founded on reinstituting racism rather than eliminating it: for compensating those who have done nothing as if they deserve it simply for existing.
American’s foolishly fell for his empty promises of undefined Change; only to get his lies, deceit, empty rhetoric and unbridled incompetence.
Let us hope that we don’t make the same mistake again; and that we elect only those who understand and honor the COTUS; have demonstrated problem solving skills; who respect the free market; and who won’t waste time and effort blaming others for their failures and incompetence.
Please, America: no more useless politicians when we need accomplished leaders.
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