OK, time to speak up.
I was going to sit out recent discussion, including Carlos Guerra's piece last Thursday in the San Antonio Express News, about the increase in the federal minimum wage last week for a couple reasons. Based on my graduate studies, it affects so few people, and even fewer breadwinners these days, I thought there were more important topics out there. Plus, whenever I see a "Hiring" sign these days, particularly at fast food restaurants, they’re mostly starting at about $2 above the minimum.
The Heritage Foundation published an article in January of this year based on a study of exactly who and how many earn the minimum wage based on Bureau of Labor Statistics' Current Population Survey in 2006. It indicated (as I suspected and recalled) that 1.7 million Americans earn the minimum wage or less. That's just 1.3% of all U.S. workers. More than 62% of these, just over 1 million, are part-timers. Of those, almost 650,000 are between the ages of 18 and 24. I'd be willing to bet that most of those fit my characteristic when I was that age: living at home, not the sole-breadwinner and/or in school. That's not to deny that there were others, and I knew some, who were either out on their own and/or supporting children.
Mr. Guerra and the left-leaning Center for Public Policy Priorities, whom he cites, use a dividing age of "adults of 20 or older". OK. Seems to me 18-24 is a better segment to use as that is when many, if not most, young adults are still finding their way, trying to figure out what they want to do with their life. In the meantime, they are working hourly jobs. At any rate, it's hard to put into comparative context the fact that fewer that 70,000 minimum wage workers are single parents working full-time.
Then there's a whiff of Al "The-time-for-debate-is-over" Gore when Don Baylor, senior policy analyst for the CPPP, says "We need to take (minimum wage increases) off the table as a political issue..." Wow! So I guess people who argue that the minimum wage is a form of social promotion (giving workers a raise via government mandate as opposed to employers rewarding them solely on merit) should just shut up. And I guess people who have studied the topic even more than I have and found that there is a link between the minimum wage and teenage unemployment are just wasting their time. I wish I'd heard from people like Mr. Baylor sooner; I wouldn't have wasted all that time at school.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Monday, July 30, 2007
Is Dick Durbin Simply Unlucky?
I have to think Senator Dick Durbin (D.-Ill.) is a smart fellow. He is highly educated, and he is, after all, Assistant Majority Leader in the Senate. One does not ascend to such a post by being empty-headed, even if it is in the Democratic caucus. He would also have to be, one would think, a pretty decent politician. Yet, he lobs some of the softest pitches right down the middle of the plate when debating Republicans, more than any other senator or congressman/woman I can think of.
I remember an appearance he made on CNN's Crossfire in 2001. He was on opposite former Senator Rick Santorum (R.-Pa.) debating President Bush's tax cut proposal. Naturally, like all redistributionist's, he was whining about how unfair it was, how it was a "tax cut for the rich". Leave aside, for a moment, how obtuse of an argument that is (in an across-the-board cut, wouldn't those who pay the most save the most in taxes??). Senator Santorum broke it down in a perfectly simple way. If 4 people paid $40, $30, $20 and $10, respectively, to go to a ball game that ended up being rained out, if the Democrats were in charge of the refunds, they'd give all 4 a $20 refund, plus $20 for a guy walking past the ballpark who wasn't even going to the game. You have to hand that debate to Senator Santorum. Durbin just got beat.
It wasn't too smart of him, however, to compare treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo a couple years ago to treatment received by the those in Soviet gulags and Nazi concentration camps. Seriously, I understand pandering to the base, but don't such claims have to be tethered at least a little bit, perhaps by a hair, to truth? How do you compare 100s of enemy combatants to, by most accounts, 1000000s of innocents, including women and children? We feed these people probably more than they were eating on the battlefield. Did he seriously think not 1 of the 55 Republican senators at the time would stand up to debate him on that subject? The way Senator McConnell rose and asked "Is the Senator aware that millions died under Pol Pot?", for example, was entertaining. On the other hand, it was baffling, because it was still sinking in that Durbin made it so easy for Republicans to score political points.
Then a couple weeks ago came a debate on the Fairness Doctrine. Senator Durbin believes "that when Americans hear both sides of the story, they're in a better position to make a decision." Here was yet another hanging curve for someone to knock out of the park! How stupid does he think we are?? Every time a new issue comes to the fore, be it net neutrality, private equity taxation, the troop surge in Iraq, etc., I read both sides of the argument. I'd feel dishonest, disingenuous arguing or debating my point with someone if I didn't know all sides. I'd also feel kinda vulnerable not knowing the other side's argument. We don't get this information from only talk radio. When he asked "What is (sic) the marketplace does not provide opportunities to hear both points of view?" during a recent floor debate, Republican Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota reminded him, as if he or we needed it, of the 1000s of "opportunities for stations and satellite, where you have cable, you have blogs, you have a whole range of information." I'm sure Senator Durbin has heard, for example, of The Daily Kos, or the Huffington Post, or The New York Times, although he probably thinks they have no slant. Funny thing about The Times. I used to read their columnists as regularly as I read conservative columnists. I miss Paul Krugman, yet they don't offer up their columnists for the kind of public balance that Senator Durbin et al seek.
Sometimes, his statements simply prey on the ignorance and fear of the population. One of the Democratic goals this Congress was to assume negotiating power on behalf of Medicare prescription drugs. If Congress takes that power from insurance companies, they will achieve monopsony power. Monopsony is the inverse of monopoly. Whereas a monopoly is the sole supplier of a good, a monopsony is the sole buyer. Think of a coal mining company in a small, mountain town. If that were allowed to occur, pharmaceutical companies would be brow-beaten into selling their product at a price determined by government bureaucrats, not by competing insurance companies. Watch R&D and the number of new drugs developed dwindle. This would be just another step in the government creep to take over the health care industry.
When I see Senator Durbin, I always kind of wonder if he knows there are smart people watching him, when there isn't a smart person sitting next to him to soundly refute what he says.
I remember an appearance he made on CNN's Crossfire in 2001. He was on opposite former Senator Rick Santorum (R.-Pa.) debating President Bush's tax cut proposal. Naturally, like all redistributionist's, he was whining about how unfair it was, how it was a "tax cut for the rich". Leave aside, for a moment, how obtuse of an argument that is (in an across-the-board cut, wouldn't those who pay the most save the most in taxes??). Senator Santorum broke it down in a perfectly simple way. If 4 people paid $40, $30, $20 and $10, respectively, to go to a ball game that ended up being rained out, if the Democrats were in charge of the refunds, they'd give all 4 a $20 refund, plus $20 for a guy walking past the ballpark who wasn't even going to the game. You have to hand that debate to Senator Santorum. Durbin just got beat.
It wasn't too smart of him, however, to compare treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo a couple years ago to treatment received by the those in Soviet gulags and Nazi concentration camps. Seriously, I understand pandering to the base, but don't such claims have to be tethered at least a little bit, perhaps by a hair, to truth? How do you compare 100s of enemy combatants to, by most accounts, 1000000s of innocents, including women and children? We feed these people probably more than they were eating on the battlefield. Did he seriously think not 1 of the 55 Republican senators at the time would stand up to debate him on that subject? The way Senator McConnell rose and asked "Is the Senator aware that millions died under Pol Pot?", for example, was entertaining. On the other hand, it was baffling, because it was still sinking in that Durbin made it so easy for Republicans to score political points.
Then a couple weeks ago came a debate on the Fairness Doctrine. Senator Durbin believes "that when Americans hear both sides of the story, they're in a better position to make a decision." Here was yet another hanging curve for someone to knock out of the park! How stupid does he think we are?? Every time a new issue comes to the fore, be it net neutrality, private equity taxation, the troop surge in Iraq, etc., I read both sides of the argument. I'd feel dishonest, disingenuous arguing or debating my point with someone if I didn't know all sides. I'd also feel kinda vulnerable not knowing the other side's argument. We don't get this information from only talk radio. When he asked "What is (sic) the marketplace does not provide opportunities to hear both points of view?" during a recent floor debate, Republican Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota reminded him, as if he or we needed it, of the 1000s of "opportunities for stations and satellite, where you have cable, you have blogs, you have a whole range of information." I'm sure Senator Durbin has heard, for example, of The Daily Kos, or the Huffington Post, or The New York Times, although he probably thinks they have no slant. Funny thing about The Times. I used to read their columnists as regularly as I read conservative columnists. I miss Paul Krugman, yet they don't offer up their columnists for the kind of public balance that Senator Durbin et al seek.
Sometimes, his statements simply prey on the ignorance and fear of the population. One of the Democratic goals this Congress was to assume negotiating power on behalf of Medicare prescription drugs. If Congress takes that power from insurance companies, they will achieve monopsony power. Monopsony is the inverse of monopoly. Whereas a monopoly is the sole supplier of a good, a monopsony is the sole buyer. Think of a coal mining company in a small, mountain town. If that were allowed to occur, pharmaceutical companies would be brow-beaten into selling their product at a price determined by government bureaucrats, not by competing insurance companies. Watch R&D and the number of new drugs developed dwindle. This would be just another step in the government creep to take over the health care industry.
When I see Senator Durbin, I always kind of wonder if he knows there are smart people watching him, when there isn't a smart person sitting next to him to soundly refute what he says.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Don't We Want to Be the Best?
Living in San Antonio, one might think I am mentally under the weather due to, well, the weather. We have received the most rain I can remember in my 7+ years living here. But guess what; I love it! It's keeping summer temperatures down, we don't have to water our lawn and, consequently, we're saving on our water and electric bills. The other day I heard news radio talk in terms of record levels for the Edwards Aquifer, the main source of drinking, bathing, watering, etc. water for the area. Incidentally enough, it was while doing one of my favorite things, reading bedtime stories to one of my girls, that all this came to head...in my head ("Daddy, why'd you stop reading?")
The first thing that came to mind is something that pops up from time to time; people paying attention to politics and the goings-on of their different levels of government about as often as they pay attention to the Olympics. What brought it to mind recently was an article in the Washington Post by Markus Prior ("The Real Media Divide", http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/15/AR2007071501110.html). It's no secret to those who know me that my T.V.-watching habits have changed and been squeezed in the last few years, basically ever since I started paying more attention to relevant stuff (the aforementioned politics and government). I should clarify what I mean by 'relevant'. Watching The Food Network or DIY and/or HGTV is probably relevant if you cook or build and/or decorate houses for a living. In his piece, he declares that "The new fault line of civic involvement is between news junkies and entertainment fans," with fewer than 20% making up the former. It doesn't surprise me that the other 4/5 have become even more entrenched in entertainment that "promises greater immediate gratification," and that, as a result, "cut down on their political participation" even more. What I lament is that they don't go far enough and just refrain from voting. Because they pay so little attention to politics, they are more susceptible to 30-sound bites, what makes politics politics and politicians politicians. If you don't know, for example, that tax increases on wealth and the creation thereof actually hurt the economy, or that school choice would actually help your child's education, please stay home on that first Tuesday after the first Monday every other November (research).
The second item to disappoint me stemmed from James Pethokoukis' blog entry in U.S. News & World Report yesterday ("1980s Redux: Hillary Clinton and Industrial Policy", http://www.usnews.com/blogs/capital-commerce/2007/7/23/1980s-redux-hillary-clinton-and-industrial-policy.html) concerning industrial planning. One could successfully start and finish the argument against industrial policy by simply saying, as Pethokoukis does, that it was the Democrats "'big idea' to counter Reagonmics", a philosophy that provided and/or laid the groundwork for the economic growth of the past quarter century. But that wouldn't be any fun. Pethokoukis hits the nail on the head when he counters the claim by Ezra Klein, he of the recent opinion that the U.S. can probably remain the wealthiest country in the world even if keeping people from working more ("Land of the Overworked and Tired", http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-klein15jul15,0,6435203.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail), that industrial policy seems to have worked in recent years for China and India by pointing out that "it's easier to run an industrial policy when you are a developing economy playing catch-up rather than a leading-edge economy that relies on innovation for future growth."
That gets to the heart of what depresses me; don't Democrats want us to remain a "leading-edge economy"? Don't they want us to remain the wealthiest country in the world, or do they perhaps feel guilty that we are, and want us to come back to the pack? Such a policy, along with their pro-union and "soak the rich" stances, would certainly do it. It would engender favoritism toward certain industries and big companies therein in the form of tax breaks, protective trade barriers, etc. For one, under Democratic leadership, it would, no doubt, be easier to unionize workers. Thanks to the hit the bottom line that results at least partly from unionization, trade barriers would have to go up to protect these companies from foreign competition (never mind the screwing the consumer gets). After all, we can't allow this policy to fail, now can we?? To pay for the tax breaks derived from the favoritism, the unfavored companies would effectively have to pony up more. Sure, "the rich" are "the rich" no matter how they make their money (assuming Democrats believe wealth is actually created), but the favored "rich" aren't as affected by their personal income taxes because of how handsomely their rent-seeking activities would probably be paying off. In the meantime, the unfavored, and everyone else for that matter, are being discouraged from inventing new and improving existing products. Where's the incentive when you're being taxed more??
Did I mention that ever-increasing trade barriers and taxes hurt the overall economy, both on the supply and demand side? I'll save that for another day. Right now, I'm going to go watch storm clouds gather and enjoy myself.
The first thing that came to mind is something that pops up from time to time; people paying attention to politics and the goings-on of their different levels of government about as often as they pay attention to the Olympics. What brought it to mind recently was an article in the Washington Post by Markus Prior ("The Real Media Divide", http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/15/AR2007071501110.html). It's no secret to those who know me that my T.V.-watching habits have changed and been squeezed in the last few years, basically ever since I started paying more attention to relevant stuff (the aforementioned politics and government). I should clarify what I mean by 'relevant'. Watching The Food Network or DIY and/or HGTV is probably relevant if you cook or build and/or decorate houses for a living. In his piece, he declares that "The new fault line of civic involvement is between news junkies and entertainment fans," with fewer than 20% making up the former. It doesn't surprise me that the other 4/5 have become even more entrenched in entertainment that "promises greater immediate gratification," and that, as a result, "cut down on their political participation" even more. What I lament is that they don't go far enough and just refrain from voting. Because they pay so little attention to politics, they are more susceptible to 30-sound bites, what makes politics politics and politicians politicians. If you don't know, for example, that tax increases on wealth and the creation thereof actually hurt the economy, or that school choice would actually help your child's education, please stay home on that first Tuesday after the first Monday every other November (research).
The second item to disappoint me stemmed from James Pethokoukis' blog entry in U.S. News & World Report yesterday ("1980s Redux: Hillary Clinton and Industrial Policy", http://www.usnews.com/blogs/capital-commerce/2007/7/23/1980s-redux-hillary-clinton-and-industrial-policy.html) concerning industrial planning. One could successfully start and finish the argument against industrial policy by simply saying, as Pethokoukis does, that it was the Democrats "'big idea' to counter Reagonmics", a philosophy that provided and/or laid the groundwork for the economic growth of the past quarter century. But that wouldn't be any fun. Pethokoukis hits the nail on the head when he counters the claim by Ezra Klein, he of the recent opinion that the U.S. can probably remain the wealthiest country in the world even if keeping people from working more ("Land of the Overworked and Tired", http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-klein15jul15,0,6435203.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail), that industrial policy seems to have worked in recent years for China and India by pointing out that "it's easier to run an industrial policy when you are a developing economy playing catch-up rather than a leading-edge economy that relies on innovation for future growth."
That gets to the heart of what depresses me; don't Democrats want us to remain a "leading-edge economy"? Don't they want us to remain the wealthiest country in the world, or do they perhaps feel guilty that we are, and want us to come back to the pack? Such a policy, along with their pro-union and "soak the rich" stances, would certainly do it. It would engender favoritism toward certain industries and big companies therein in the form of tax breaks, protective trade barriers, etc. For one, under Democratic leadership, it would, no doubt, be easier to unionize workers. Thanks to the hit the bottom line that results at least partly from unionization, trade barriers would have to go up to protect these companies from foreign competition (never mind the screwing the consumer gets). After all, we can't allow this policy to fail, now can we?? To pay for the tax breaks derived from the favoritism, the unfavored companies would effectively have to pony up more. Sure, "the rich" are "the rich" no matter how they make their money (assuming Democrats believe wealth is actually created), but the favored "rich" aren't as affected by their personal income taxes because of how handsomely their rent-seeking activities would probably be paying off. In the meantime, the unfavored, and everyone else for that matter, are being discouraged from inventing new and improving existing products. Where's the incentive when you're being taxed more??
Did I mention that ever-increasing trade barriers and taxes hurt the overall economy, both on the supply and demand side? I'll save that for another day. Right now, I'm going to go watch storm clouds gather and enjoy myself.
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