It is a fair assumption to make that the Democrat Party in the United States today encompasses policies that are called liberal – even Leftist and socialist. Conversely, the Republican Party may be considered the conservative party in America – even including Rightist. This year’s election was complicated by the presence populist candidates –one, Senator Bernie Sanders, on the Left; and another, Mr. Donald Trump, on the Right or Center. It may be fairly assumed also that President Barak Obama governed from the Left.
With these assumptions it is fair to ask, “Do Americans Trust liberals, Leftists, and even socialists to govern?”
Certainly, individual local communities reflect the different political views of the majority of their citizens. The governments of larger urban centers usually choose to be governed by Democrats.
During the two terms of President Obama (2009 – 2016) Americans have walked away from the Democrat Party and its platforms. In 2009 on the national level the Democrat Party had the office of the President and a majority in both chambers of the legislature. In 2009 there were 256 Democratic members of the US House of Representatives out of 435 voting members (59%). In the same year there were fifty-eight (58) Democratic members of the US Senate (58%). At the start of the session that begins in January 2017, the Democrats will have 188 Representatives and forty-six (46) Senators – a loss of almost twenty-seven percent (27%) in the House, and almost twenty-one percent (21%) in the Senate. In both chambers the Democrats have become the minority; and they have lost the Presidency.
Looking at the fifty states there is a similar trend. In 2009 twenty-eight of the fifty governors were Democrats. In 2017 there will be eighteen Democratic governors – a loss of thirty-six percent (36%).
In 2009 there were 4,082 Democratic state legislators. In 2017 there will be 3,172 Democratic state legislators. That is a loss of more than twenty-two percent (22%).
Only one year ago during the long presidential campaign season, the media suggested that the Republican Party and, more importantly, the conservative movement were in disarray. The opposite is true. The American people have turned to conservatives to govern. Democrats, liberals, Leftists, and socialists are becoming a regional (Pacific coast and Northeast) and urban centered political party.
Thanks for visiting. Come back soon! Yours in Christ, John
Ordinarily, it is not a good idea to base how you vote on just one issue. But if black lives really matter, as they should matter like all other lives, then it is hard to see any racial issue that matters as much as education.
The government could double the amount of money it spends on food stamps or triple the amount it spends on housing subsidies, and it will mean very little if the next generation of young blacks goes out into the world as adults without a decent education.
Many things that are supposed to help blacks actually have a track record of making things worse. Minimum wage laws have had a devastating effect in making black teenage unemployment several times higher than it once was.
In my own life, I was very fortunate when I left home in 1948, at age 17 -- a high school dropout with no skills or experience. At that time, the unemployment rate of black 16- and 17-year-old males was 9.4 percent. For white males the same ages, it was 10.2 percent.
Why were these unemployment rates so much lower than we have become used to seeing in later times -- and with very little difference between blacks and whites?
What was different about those times was that the minimum wage, established in 1938, had been rendered meaningless by a decade of high inflation. It was the same as if there were no minimum wage.
In later years, as the minimum wage was repeatedly raised to keep up with inflation, black teenage unemployment from 1971 through 1994 was never less than 3 times what it was in 1948, and ranged as high as more than 5 times the 1948 level. It also became far higher than the unemployment rate of whites the same age.
The relations between the police and the black community are another issue that has gotten a lot of attention, and produced counterproductive results. After all the rhetoric and all the efforts towards more tightly restraining the police, the net result has been that murder rates have soared in cities where that policy has been followed -- and most of the people killed have been black.
None of the most popular political panaceas for helping black communities has a track record of making things better, and some have made things much worse.
The one bright spot in black ghettos around the country are the schools that parents are free to choose for their own children. Some are Catholic schools, some are secular private schools and some are charter schools financed by public school systems but operating without the suffocating rules that apply to other public schools.
Not all of these kinds of schools are successes. But where there are academic successes in black ghettos, they come disproportionately from schools outside the iron grip of the education establishment and the teachers' unions.
Some of these academic successes have been spectacular -- especially among students in ghetto schools operated by the KIPP (Knowledge IS Power Program) chain of schools and the Success Academy schools.
Despite all the dire social problems in many black ghettos across the country -- problems which are used to excuse widespread academic failures in ghetto schools -- somehow ghetto schools run by KIPP and Success Academy turn out students whose academic performances match or exceed the performances in suburban schools whose kids come from high-income families.
What is even more astonishing is that charter schools are being opposed, not only by teachers' unions who think that schools exist to provide guaranteed jobs for their members, but also by politicians, including black politicians who loudly proclaim that "black lives matter."
Apparently these black children's futures do not matter enough for black politicians -- including the President of the United States -- to stand up to the teachers' unions. The teachers' unions produce big bucks in campaign contributions and big voter turnout on election day.
Any politician, of any race or party, who fights against charter schools that give many black youngsters their one shot at a decent life does not deserve the vote of anybody who really believes that black lives matter.
Thanks for visiting. Come back soon! Yours in Christ, John
There are many recent developments in the godless West. To name a few:
--The Supreme Court of Italy last week ruled that public masturbation is legal (except in front of minors).
--The New York City Council voted in May that public urination is not a criminal act.
--The San Francisco City Council decided, by one vote, to continue the city's ban on public nudity -- not, of course, on the grounds of "decency" but on the grounds of public health. Since that can easily be resolved by use of a towel on public benches and chairs, it is only a matter of time, probably a couple of years, before people will be permitted to walk around naked in San Francisco.
--A few weeks ago, teachers in Charlotte, North Carolina, were instructed not to refer to their elementary school students as "boys and girls" but as "students" and "scholars." The reasoning is presumably for inclusivity -- there may be a student who has no gender identity -- and that adults should not impose a gender identity on young people.
--In a New York Times op-ed column, a professor of philosophy noted his shock at learning that most young Americans do not believe that moral truths exist. They are incapable of asserting that anything, including killing for fun, is wrong beyond personal opinion.
These are all inevitable consequences of the death of belief in God and Judeo-Christian values, and of the Bible as society's primary moral reference work.
The West has been in moral decline since World War I, the calamity that led to World War II and the death of national identity and Christianity in most of Europe.
There has always been one exception: the United States. But now that is ending. The seeds of America's decline have been sown since the beginning of the 20th century, and they came to fruition with the post-World War II generation, the baby boomers.
Radical and aggressive secularism and atheism have replaced religion in virtually every school and throughout American public life.
We have gone from President Abraham Lincoln reading the Bible every day to Alaska Airlines feeling forced to stop passing out prayer cards with meals. In a hundred years, we've gone from near-total biblical literacy to near-total biblical illiteracy. One wonders whether half of America's college seniors could correctly identify Cain and Abel, or whether more than 1 in 10 Americans could cite the Ten Commandments. We have gone from President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaiming the need to save "Christian civilization" in World War II speeches to a virtual ban on American presidents mentioning the word "Christianity." And, as is widely noted, Americans are no longer supposed to wish strangers "merry Christmas," and they must refer to a Christmas party as a "holiday party."
Similarly, the European Union constitution never mentions Christianity, despite the fact that it was Christianity that formed Europe.
The prices that we Americans and Europeans are paying for creating the first godless societies in recorded history amount to civilizational suicide. Boys and girls are not to be referred to as boys and girls; Western elites dismiss national identity as protofascism; the belief that moral truth exists has been destroyed and replaced by feelings and opinions; fewer people are marrying; and more people live alone than at any time in American history.
Western European countries have become empty, soulless places. They are pretty and appear materially secure (for now), but they stand for almost nothing (except "multiculturalism" and "tolerance"). They have replaced a Jewish population that overwhelmingly wanted to assimilate with a Muslim population that does not want to. And nearly all European countries are headed to Greece-like insolvency as fewer and fewer workers pay enough in taxes to support those who collect welfare, and as tensions with their Muslim inhabitants increase.
But the good news is that now, beginning with Italy and New York, citizens can watch each other masturbate or urinate in public.
There is no way to prove that God exists. But what is provable is what happens when societies stop believing in God: They commit suicide.
Thanks for visiting. Come back soon! Yours in Christ, John
If there were a contest for the most stupid idea in politics, my choice would be the assumption that people would be evenly or randomly distributed in incomes, institutions, occupations or awards, in the absence of somebody doing somebody wrong.
Political crusades, bureaucratic empires and lucrative personal careers as grievance mongers have been built on the foundation of that assumption, which is almost never tested against any facts.
A recent article in the New York Times saw as a problem the fact that females are greatly under-represented among the highest rated chess players. Innumerable articles, TV stories and political outcries have been based on an "under-representation" of women in Silicon Valley, seen as a problem that needs to be solved.
Are there girls out there dying to play chess, who find the doors slammed shut in their faces? Are there women with Ph.D.s in computer science from M.I.T. and Cal Tech who get turned away when they apply for jobs in Silicon Valley?
Are girls and boys not allowed to have different interests? If girls had the same interest in chess as boys had, but were banned from chess clubs, that would be something very different from their not choosing to play chess as often as boys do. As for chess ratings, that is not subjective. It is based on which players, with which ratings, you have won against and lost to.
Are women and men not to be allowed to make different decisions as to how they choose to spend their time and live their lives?
Chess is not the only endeavor which can take a huge chunk of time out of your life, and unremitting efforts, to reach the top. If you want to become a top scientist, a partner in a big law firm or a top executive in a major corporation, you are very unlikely to do it working from 9 to 5, or taking a few years off, here and there, to have children and raise them.
Applying the same unsubstantiated assumption to differences in "representation" between different racial and ethnic groups likewise produces many loudly expressed grievances, political crusades, and millions of dollars from lawsuits charging discrimination -- all without a speck of evidence beyond numbers that do not match the prevailing assumptions.
People who base their conclusions on hard facts often reach very different conclusions than those who base their conclusions on the preconception that outcomes would be even or random in the absence of somebody treating somebody wrong.
Something as simple as age differences among groups can doom any assumption of even or random outcomes.
If every 20-year-old Puerto Rican in the United States had an income identical with the income of every 20-year-old Japanese American -- and identical incomes at every other age -- Japanese Americans as a group would still have a higher average income than Puerto Ricans in the United States. That is because the median age of Japanese Americans is more than 20 years older.
People with 20 years more work experience usually make higher incomes. And age difference is just one of many differences between groups.
You can study innumerable groups in countries around the world today, or over centuries of recorded history, without finding a single example of the even or random outcomes that are used as a benchmark for determining discrimination.
Nevertheless, courts of law -- including the Supreme Court of the United States -- use something that has never been found anywhere as a norm to which current realities are to be compared. Billions of dollars, in the aggregate, have changed hands as a result of individual lawsuits charging discrimination.
Life is undoubtedly unfair. But that is not the same as saying that the unfairness occurred wherever the statistics were collected. The origins of this unfairness often go back to different childhood environments for individuals or different geographic or cultural settings for groups and nations.
These differences between nations, as well as differences between individuals and groups, reflect the fact that the world "has never been a level playing field," as economic historian David S. Landes put it. Renowned historian Fernand Braudel said, "In no society have all regions and all parts of the population developed equally."
How long will we continue to take something that has never happened, and never had much chance of happening, as a norm?
Thanks for visiting. Come back soon! Yours in Christ, John
Concerning entitlements, an issue that’s fallen by the wayside since the horrific Orlando attacks, there’s more bad news. Social Security will dole out additional money to beneficiaries. Is that a good thing? Not really—it’s only increasing by a whopping $2.50, whichThe Associated Press aptly noted is enough to maybe buy a gallon of gas. It’s Medicare; that’s where the cliff becomes more apparent after 10 years (via AP):
Meanwhile, Medicare is expected to go bankrupt sooner than expected - 12 years from now. And some beneficiaries could face higher monthly premiums next year.
The annual report from the trustees of the government's two bedrock retirement programs warned that politically gridlocked Washington needs to act sooner, rather than later, to shore up finances and avoid upending the lives of millions of retirees and their families.
Social Security's trust funds are expected to be depleted in 2034, unchanged from the trustees' projection a year ago. Medicare's trust fund for inpatient care will be exhausted in 2028, two years earlier than previously projected.
If Congress allows either fund to run dry, millions of Americans living on fixed incomes would face steep cuts in benefits.…
After Social Security's trust funds are depleted, the program would collect enough in payroll taxes to pay only 79 percent of benefits.
Medicare's problem is more immediate, and more complicated, because health care costs can change in unpredictable ways.
Friendly reminder that 10,000 baby boomers today, tomorrow, and over the next two decades become eligible for their states’ respective Medicare and Social Security rolls. The ship of state sees the iceberg ahead—and we’re going to hit it unless we do something. For now, nothing is going to happen because Democrats are confused as to who was responsible for the Orlando attack. A radicalized young Muslim man, who pledged allegiance to ISIS during the shooting, perpetrated it. Yet, the anti-gun Left feels that guns are the issue, and the AR-15 rifle, which wasn’t even used in the attack, has to go.
Thanks for visiting. Come back soon! Yours in Christ, John
Sweden has historically taken in many refugees across various countries, and it has a very liberal refugee policy. Yet, it’s one where the resources of the state have been pushed to the brink, where new restrictive policies have been adopted to curb the cost of housing the latest influx of refugees, especially from Syria, and where the whole attitude towards refugees has devolved into a debate that’s fractured this society, along with the rest of the European continent.
James Taub wrote in Foreign Policy in February about Sweden’s dalliance with Syrian refugees that have led to “the death of the most generous nation on Earth.” He noted the country’s rich history in housing and sheltering those fleeing war-torn countries. In some cases, like Eritrea, they take those fleeing forced conscription. For the most part, the country was able to soak up these newcomers, viewing them, as they once did, as a net positive concerning long-term diversity and integration. That’s one of the beautiful things about Western society—it’s not rigid. Any person, from any race, religion, or ethnicity can adapt and eventually adopt the traditions and values of Western culture; its political make up allows for tolerance (i.e. freedom of the press, speech, religion, and the right to assembly). Yet, that’s no longer the consensus as Taub writes, and integration usually forms the crux of the debate.
Sweden thought they could take on this massive feat, as their neighbors began to build walls along their borders. One could easily understand why the Swedes first thought the Syrian refugee experiment could be a success. They had accepted Muslim refugees before in the 1990s from the Balkans, where civil war was tearing the region apart over ethno-religious lines (Bosnians and Serbs). As Taub wrote, these were Muslims of a more moderate caliber, who adapted to the secular Swedish society. He noted that future generations of this group now serve as doctors and work in government, some are even ministers. That’s not going to happen with the Syrians. In the end, the government found that they had quickly run out of resources to handle the immediate needs of the refugees, and certainly could not afford taking care of them in the long term. Sweden extends its social safety net, health care, housing, and education to refugees with the same access as ordinary Swedish citizens.
Back at the Red Cross station, opinion was surprisingly anti-refugee, including among volunteers. The translator said that he did not believe many of the new arrivals would ever be able to integrate into Sweden’s liberal, individualistic society. A border policeman told me, “Last summer, my grandmother almost starved to death in the hospital, but the migrants get free food and medical care. I think a government’s job is to take care of its own people first, and then, if there’s anything left over, you help other people.” I had heard the same view a few months earlier in Hungary, the country in Europe most outspokenly hostile to refugees — the anti-Sweden.…
Even before Sweden slammed on the brakes, it seemed that the country had posed for itself a test that it could not pass, and could not acknowledge that it could not pass. The financial costs, even for one of Europe’s richest countries, were daunting. Sweden expects to spend about 7 percent of its $100 billion budget next year on refugees. The real number is somewhat higher, since the costs of educating and training those who have already received asylum are not included in that figure. It is, in any case, double the 2015 budget. Where will the additional funds come from? It’s not clear yet, but since the cost of caring for refugees is considered a form of development assistance, Sweden has already cut 30 percent of its very generous foreign aid budget, which largely goes to fortify the very countries from which people are now fleeing, to help make up the difference. Other European donors, including Norway, have done so as well.
The refugee issue has split Sweden’s genteel consensus as no other question has in recent memory. As Ivar Arpi, a columnist at the daily newspaper Svenska Dagbladet and an inveterate critic of the country’s refugee policy, said to me, “People have lost friends over this; families are divided against one another. I’ve had agonizing discussions with my mother and my little sister.” It is very hard to find a middle ground between “we must” and “we can’t.” One of the few people I spoke to who was seeking one was Diana Janse of the Moderates. I asked her if she feared that Sweden was in the process of committing suicide. “It’s an open question,” Janse replied. She worried that the costs of Sweden’s generosity were only beginning to come due, and no one cared to tally them. She had just learned that since the right to 450 days of parental leave per child enshrined in Swedish laws also applies to women who arrive in the country with children under seven, refugees could qualify for several years’ worth of paid leave — even without working, since unemployed women also receive maternal benefits. She was convinced that Sweden needed to end the practice of giving Swedish social payments to refugees, not only because it was unaffordable, but because Sweden had no interest in out-bidding its neighbors to woo refugees.
At first the Swedish government made several very modest concessions to this ugly reality. In November, Prime Minister Stefan Lofven disclosed that migrants would no longer be granted permanent asylum, and thus no longer become eligible for the massive package of social benefits that comes with it. Applicants, if approved, would receive a three-year temporary residency permit with the possibility of renewal. Refugees could still bring in spouses and children under “family reunification” policy, but those relatives would not qualify for social benefits. In late December, Sweden finally threw in the towel. Henceforth, no one would be permitted to enter Sweden without proper identity documents. The new regulations, no longer described as temporary, violated the Schengen regimen; soon after, Austria imposed similar rules. The refugee crisis has, at least temporarily, ended free movement across borders, one of the signal achievements of the European Union.
Since many refugees arrive without passports or other valid forms of identification, the new rules sharply curtailed the number of asylum-seekers arriving overland who would be permitted to enter the country. Cross-border immigration has, in fact, come to an almost complete stop. Sweden now accepts only those refugees arriving directly from Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan, and cleared by the U.N. refugee agency. After taking 160,000 refugees — 30,000 less than the maximum it had projected — Sweden had finally run out of room, money, and patience.
The kibosh came down, literally, in January when Sweden announced that 80,000 Syrians would be deported. There also seems to be a problem concerning debating the issue, especially when it comes to integration. Syrians aren’t the only refugees facing problems in Sweden, but they’ve become the most immediate crisis given their surge towards Europe. Taub wrote that recent refugee groups, like the Somalis, have had trouble integrating into society. Taub quoted Diana Janse, a foreign policy adviser to the Swedish Moderate Party, who noted the observation with the Somalis and wondered how would “10,000-20,000 young Afghan men who had entered Sweden as ‘unaccompanied minors’ fare? How would they behave in the virtual absence of young Afghan women? But she could barely raise these questions in political debate.” Taub added that unaccompanied minors have special protections in Sweden, with those arriving without parents becoming wards of the state. Yet, to question whether one group could be integrated as well as a previous one is tantamount to racism in the country—a rather paralyzing form of political correctness, where an innocuous inquiry like that would be viewed negatively, though it’s exactly the type of questions that apparently need to be asked.
Taub added that Sweden has absolutely no room for low-skill labor. And while the political left of the country views the nation’s elderly as an area for work with these newcomers, he notes that the old people of this Nordic country have it together regarding their own care.
“Old people in Sweden seem awfully self-sufficient. You can’t push someone’s wheelchair if they’re going to cross the street on their own,” he writes.
Still, he places some blame on how individualistic the responses to the crisis have been towards Syrian refugees, while noting the European Union response has been met with total disaster (a plan to disperse 160,000 refugees among EU states has only relocated 272). While noting that Europe will probably close most of its access points for refugees, and only allowing those who have been screened (sound familiar), Taub ends his lengthy piece by saying things could've been different:
Yet it need not have ended this way. If their neighbors had pitched in, Sweden could have afforded the price of its remarkable generosity. At the Davos forum in January, Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, said bluntly, “We are a continent of 500 million people; we could easily handle this task if we cooperated, if we met this as a union and not as individual member states.” But Europe did not cooperate. Already the Schengen rules lie in tatters. The refugee crisis threatens European foundations as even the recent euro crisis did not. “If we cannot handle this as a European union,” Lofven went on to predict, “the European Union in itself is at risk.”
Something even greater is at risk. The Europe that rose from the cataclysm of World War II understood itself not simply as a collection of peoples, white and Christian, but as a community of shared values. The refugee crisis has forced Europeans to choose between the moral universalism they profess and the ancient identities they have inherited. Eastern Europe has already reasserted its status as a white, Christian homeland — just as many people in the Middle East have reclaimed the sectarian identities they had seemed prepared to discard.
Now the Europe where the Enlightenment was born may well be making the same choice. The Muslim influx threatens Europe’s liberal, secular consensus; but rejecting the refugees also shakes one of the great pillars of that consensus. Europe may fail on both counts, driving the refugees from its doorstep while succumbing to right-wing nationalism. Americans have no reason to be complacent. It is all too possible that we will do the exact same thing.
Frankly, there are other issues at play here. For starters, the whole refugee mindset was rocked by terrorism and the horrific gang rapes that occurred in Cologne, Germany, and throughout the continent, starting on New Years’ Eve. At least 500 rapes were committed on that night. On April 1, conservative Mark Steyn, along with UK Independence Party’s Nigel Farage, historian Simon Schama, and Canadian Lawyer Louise Arbour, who has persecuted people guilty of using rape as a weapon of war; debated the global refugee crisis in a Munk Debate held in Toronto, Canada. The event is sponsored by the Aurea Foundation, which deals “in the study and development of public policy.” Here, Steyn noted the rampant sexual assaults that have occurred since the start of this crisis, and how nations are accommodating to the cultural prism of the refugees, instead of simply telling them we don’t grope or rape women. This is not a welcome element. Moreover, Islamic State (ISIS) isdefinitely using refugees to move its operatives into neighboring Europe and possibly the United States. There are grave national security concerns, and to ignore them based on some absurd ethos of political correctness is reckless. At a time when ISIS is stretching the limits of its global reach, this isn’t a time to consider which Western values we possibly could be undermining by not allowing these refugees into the United States, or elsewhere in Europe.
For Sweden, they learned the hard way—with their checkbooks. Blessedly, the shift in public opinion was based off of finances, instead of dead bodies, though Taub noted that an act of terrorism within Sweden would rapidly alter the “national mood.” In the U.S., that mood was changed on 9/11. For Europe, they’re still reeling from horrific terror attacks in Belgium and France. Open arms leads to economic insufficiency, while also inviting possible terrorist elements that intend to do harm to innocent people. Europe and the U.S. need to vet these people unless we wish to open ourselves up to a potential disaster.
Thanks for visiting. Come back soon! Yours in Christ, John
White teenage unemployment is about 14 percent. That for black teenagers is about 30 percent. The labor force participation rate for white teens is 37 percent, and that for black teens is 25 percent. Many years ago, in 1948, the figures were exactly the opposite. The unemployment rate of black 16-year-old and 17-year-old males was 9.4 percent, while that of whites was 10.2 percent. Up until the late 1950s, black teens, as well as black adults, were more active in the labor market than their white counterparts. I will return to these facts after I point out some elitist arrogance and moral bankruptcy.
Supporters of a $15 minimum wage are now admitting that there will be job losses. "Why shouldn't we in fact accept job loss?" asks New School economics and urban policy professor David Howell, adding, "What's so bad about getting rid of crappy jobs, forcing employers to upgrade, and having a serious program to compensate anyone who is in the slightest way harmed by that?" Economic Policy Institute economist David Cooper says: "It could be that they spend more time unemployed, but their income is higher overall. If you were to tell me I could work fewer hours and make as much or more than I could have previously, that would be OK."
What's a "crappy job"? My guess is that many of my friends and I held the jobs Howell is talking about as teenagers during the late 1940s and '50s. During summers, we arose early to board farm trucks to New Jersey to pick blueberries. I washed dishes and mopped floors at Philadelphia'sHorn & Hardart restaurant, helped unload trucks at Campbell Soup, shoveled snow, swept out stores, delivered packages and did similar low-skill, low-wage jobs. If today's arrogant elite were around to destroy these jobs through wage legislation and regulation, I doubt whether I and many other black youths would have learned the habits of work that laid the foundation for future success. Today's elite have little taste for my stepfather's admonition: Any kind of a job is better than begging and stealing.
What's so tragic about all of this is that black leadership buys into it. What the liberals have in mind when they say there should be "a serious program to compensate anyone who is in the slightest way harmed" is that people who are thrown out of work should be given welfare or some other handout to make them whole. This experimentation with minimum wages on the livelihoods of low-skilled workers is ethically atrocious.
In the first paragraph, I pointed out that black youths had lower unemployment during earlier times. How might that be explained? It would be sheer lunacy to attempt to explain the more favorable employment statistics by suggesting that during earlier periods, blacks faced less racial discrimination. Similarly, it would be lunacy to suggest that black youths had higher skills than white youths. What best explain the loss of teenage employment opportunities, particularly those of black teenagers, are increases in minimum wage laws. There's little dispute within the economics profession that higher minimum wages discriminate against the employment of the least skilled workers, and that demographic is disproportionately represented by black teenagers.
President Barack Obama, the Congressional Black Caucus, black state and local politicians, and civil rights organizations are neither naive nor stupid. They have been made aware of the unemployment effects of the labor laws they support; however, they are part of a political coalition. In order to get labor unions, environmental groups, business groups and other vested interests to support their handout agenda and make campaign contributions, they must give political support to what these groups want. They must support minimum wage increases even though it condemns generations of black youths to high unemployment rates.
I can't imagine what black politicians and civil rights groups are getting in return for condemning black youths to a high rate of unemployment and its devastating effects on upward economic mobility that makes doing so worthwhile, but then again, I'm not a politician.
Thanks for visiting. Come back soon! Yours in Christ, John
Fox Business’ Elizabeth McDonald has obtained some horrifying footage of hungry Venezuelans eating from the garbage, as the nation continues its death spiral brought on by a dependence on oil and socialist tendencies. In April, the nation’s chamber of food noted that food producers had about 15 days of inventory left. Mass looting of supermarkets has ensued. It’s become so bad that there are reports of Venezuelans hunting dogs, cats, and birds for sustenance. Rolling blackouts are common, which has had an impact on hospitals, which lack basic medical supplies, including soap and gloves. Things have become so bad that dead and dying babies are becoming the norm.
Now, on top of hungry Venezuelans prying into trashcans, the nation could be on the verge of defaulting on its massive debt (via Fox Business):
People in the nation’s capital, Caracas, have resorted to eating and fighting over old food thrown away in garbage bags outside shopping malls where restaurants are located.
"They're ripping through garbage bags searching for food, the government says this is not happening, but we are very hungry here in Venezuela," says a male bystander on camera. A local says: "We are starving, we are eating dog food and food meant for farm animals."
Another video shows drivers in Venezuela pulling over to join in the ambush and looting off grocery trucks. That is what happened on the national highway to Puerto Ordaz, in southern Venezuela, where the country's largest oil reserve and a major steel operation is located. The National Guard is shown on camera standing back, not doing anything.
"People are starving, the last resort for them is to loot and steal rice," one bystander says on camera. "The National Guard is here but no one is paying any attention to them at all, they're letting it happen."
[…]
The situation in Venezuela is growing more desperate by the hour as its unraveling socialist economy is trapped in a debt vice. The collapse in oil prices has Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, the handpicked successor of Hugo Chavez, desperately fighting to avoid a default on its $185 billion in debt. Wall Street and government sources indicate that would be the largest default in history, with Venezuela’s debt about double the roughly $100 billion in debt Argentina had when it defaulted in 2001. Estimates of the amount of assets and reserves remaining in Venezuela that could be used to pay back its debt have ranged from Bank of America Corp.’s $50 billion to as low as Nomura Holdings’ $10 billion. Venezuela’s foreign reserves have sunk to their lowest levels in 13 years.
Law and order has reportedly broke down, with children’s lunches being stolen by hungry “thugs.” Coca-Cola has halted production due to a sugar shortage—and toilet paper has become a luxury item. It’s just a complete mess.
Thanks for visiting. Come back soon! Yours in Christ, John
Facing a disastrous economy and growing political opposition, Venezuelan PresidentNicolas Maduro recently declared a 60-day state of emergency, which will most likely be used to stifle those rallying for his immediate recall. No, scratch that—that’s exactly what it’s going to be used for, as the Supreme Court and the election committee is pro-Maduro (via the Guardian):
Police have fired teargas at protesters calling for the resignation of the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, and shut down swaths of central Caracas to control the demonstrations, as the Caribbean nation slid deeper into political crisis.
Wednesday’s protests came the day after Maduro said the opposition-controlled parliament had become irrelevant and predicted that it might soon “disappear”, as his political enemies upped pressure for a referendum to force the leader from office.…
If Maduro can put off a referendum until next year, losing would have a more limited impact. If he is ousted this year, it would trigger an election, while next year it would simply allow his deputy to take over power.
For now, Maduro has the upper hand, because the supreme court and election authorities are broadly supportive of his government, and can overrule parliament on the state of emergency and obstruct efforts to organise a recall vote.
But the opposition parties who took control of parliament with a landslide victory in December elections have warned Maduro against using his powers to ignore popular discontent.
Yet, socialist cronies or not, no one is going to stand for children being robbed in broad daylight. The Atlanticcharted the harrowing decline of the country, which has impacted almost every aspect of its socioeconomic structure. The capital of Caracas is now a crime-ridden haven akin to John Carpenter’s Escape from New York:
…the Venezuelan government can no longer afford to provide even rudimentary law and order, making Caracas, the capital, by some calculations one of the most murderous cities in the world. Drug traffickers run large sections of the countryside. Prison gang leaders keep military-style weapons on hand, and while grenade attacks still make the news, they are nothing new. Recently, the police captured an AT4 antitank rocket launcher—basically, a bazooka—from a suspect.
The breakdown of law and order is so severe that even children are being robbed. At Nuestra Señora del Carmen school in El Cortijo, a struggling neighborhood of Caracas, supplies for the school-lunch program have been stolen twice this year already: Thugs have broken into the school’s pantry late at night after fresh food is delivered. The second burglary meant the school couldn’t feed the kids for at least a week.
So, when criminals raid school pantries due to a lack of food because the grand experiment of 21st century socialism has completely and utterly failed, don’t expect the people to just let things slide, even with a state of emergency. Besides food, people don’t have electricity or basic medical supplies. And now kids are being robbed. We shouldn’t expect this to end well.
Thanks for visiting. Come back soon! Yours in Christ, John
We know that Venezuela’s headlong plunge into the socialist experiment has turned into a total nightmare. Food shortages have led to mass looting and the eating of dogs, cats, and pigeons to abate the wave of hunger that’s set in, as supermarkets are not being regularly stocked. The Venezuelan Chamber of Food reported on April 27 that the country’s producers only have about 15 days worth of inventory left. Toilet paper is now a luxury item, and the rolling blackouts from the energy shortage is also a major problem, especially for those working in the hospitals. Right now, there’s an appalling lack of medical supplies, and babies are dying in maternity wards. Can the socialist government help? Well, that depends if you can reach them, as they’ve shortened workweeks to only two days to save energy. In the meantime, Venezuelans are dying (via NYT):
The day had begun with the usual hazards: chronic shortages of antibiotics, intravenous solutions, even food. Then a blackout swept over the city, shutting down the respirators in the maternity ward.
Doctors kept ailing infants alive by pumping air into their lungs by hand for hours. By nightfall, four more newborns had died.
“The death of a baby is our daily bread,” said Dr. Osleidy Camejo, a surgeon in the nation’s capital, Caracas, referring to the toll from Venezuela’s collapsing hospitals.…
At the University of the Andes Hospital in the mountain city of Mérida, there was not enough water to wash blood from the operating table. Doctors preparing for surgery cleaned their hands with bottles of seltzer water.
“It is like something from the 19th century,” said Dr. Christian Pino, a surgeon at the hospital.
The figures are devastating. The rate of death among babies under a month old increased more than a hundredfold in public hospitals run by the Health Ministry, to just over 2 percent in 2015 from 0.02 percent in 2012, according to a government report provided by lawmakers.
The rate of death among new mothers in those hospitals increased by almost five times in the same period, according to the report.…
Here in the Caribbean port town of Barcelona, two premature infants died recently on the way to the main public clinic because the ambulance had no oxygen tanks. The hospital has no fully functioning X-ray or kidney dialysis machines because they broke long ago. And because there are no open beds, some patients lie on the floor in pools of their blood.
It is a battlefield clinic in a country where there is no war.
“Some come here healthy, and they leave dead,” Dr. Leandro Pérez said, standing in the emergency room of Luis Razetti Hospital, which serves the town.…
Yet even among Venezuela’s failing hospitals, Luis Razetti Hospital in Barcelona has become one of the most notorious.…
Samuel Castillo, 21, arrived in the emergency room needing blood. But supplies had run out. A holiday had been declared by the government to save electricity, and the blood bank took donations only on workdays. Mr. Castillo died that night.
For the past two and a half months, the hospital has not had a way to print X-rays. So patients must use a smartphone to take a picture of their scans and take them to the proper doctor.
The Times also added that basic items, like soap and gloves, have vanished from these medical facilities. Yet, this medical catastrophe has been festering since the death of Hugo Chavez. The UK-basedChannel 4 News reported in July of 2015 that the same lack of medical supplies, including bags to take out human waste, were lacking at Venezuela’s hospitals. Rising inflation have led to doctors only making £10 a month. That’s a little over $14. So, with that meager wage, it’s not entirely shocking that 10,000 doctors have left Venezuela since 2010.
The real culprit is chavismo, the ruling philosophy named for Chavez and carried forward by Maduro, and its truly breathtaking propensity for mismanagement (the government plowed state money arbitrarily into foolish investments); institutional destruction (as Chavez and then Maduro became more authoritarian and crippled the country’s democratic institutions); nonsense policy-making (like price and currency controls); and plain thievery (as corruption has proliferated among unaccountable officials and their friends and families).
A case in point is the price controls, which have expanded to apply to more and more goods: food and vital medicines, yes, but also car batteries, essential medical services, deodorant, diapers, and, of course, toilet paper. The ostensible goal was to check inflation and keep goods affordable for the poor, but anyone with a basic grasp of economics could have foreseen the consequences: When prices are set below production costs, sellers can’t afford to keep the shelves stocked. Official prices are low, but it’s a mirage: The products have disappeared.
With people suffering from chronic medical conditions, like epilepsy, the search for critical medicines to help with symptoms is now akin to finding a unicorn. In the case of Maikel Mancilla Peña, The Atlantic added that this journey ended in his death after his mother wasn’t able to find the anti-convulsion drugs necessary to help him with his seizures:
At 14 years old, Maikel Mancilla Peña had been battling epilepsy for six years. His condition was under control, just about, thanks to a common anti-convulsive prescription drug called Lamotrigine. It had long been a struggle for his family to get it, but as the gap between the real cost of the drugs and the maximum pharmacies were allowed to charge for them grew, it became impossible to find them.
On February 11th this year, Maikel’s mom Yamaris gave him the last Lamotrigine tablet in their stash. None of Yamaris’s usual pharmacies had any anti-convulsants in stock. She worked social media— which in Venezuela these days is filled with desperate people trying to source scarce medicines—but no luck. She drove hours to track down a lead, but came up empty-handed.
In the following days, Maikel experienced a series of increasingly violent epileptic seizures, as his family watched helplessly. On February 20th, he suffered respiratory failure and died.
At a time when the country needs government services the most, they’re only working two days a week. The people are hungry, law and order has broken down, the hospitals are disaster zones, and the nation is so broke it can’t even print its own currency. Over a trillion dollars have been spent on 21st century socialism. It’s done nothing but made scores of people hungry, unable to seek proper medical care, and increased infant mortality to egregious levels. Socialism kills people. Full stop.
Recently, Venezuelan President (and Chavez successor) Nicolas Maduro declared a 60-day state of emergency.
Thanks for visiting. Come back soon! Yours in Christ, John
Venezuela’s economic catastrophe is getting worse by the day. The energy shortage has created rolling blackouts; government has shortened workweeks to two days, and the level of hunger that has arisen from the country’s inability to provide has led to lootingand now locals are hunting dogs, cats, and birds for food. In all, 21st century socialism has evolved into a total nightmare. Venezuela is literally at a point where the country is so broke it can’t print its own currency. Government food dispensaries are being ransacked. At a wholesale market in Maracay, 5,000 people stormed the establishment, marking a week of looting that left two people dead and millions of dollars worth of damage (via PanAm Post):
Venezuela saw a new wave of looting this week that resulted in at least two deaths, countless wounded, and millions of dollars in losses and damages.
On the morning of Wednesday, May 11, a crowd sacked the Maracay Wholesale Market in the central region of Venezuela.
According to the testimonies of merchants, the endless food lines that Venezuelans have been enduring to do groceries could not be organized that day.
As time went by, desperate Venezuelans grew anxious over not being able to buy food. Then they started jumping over the gates.
“They took milk, pasta, flour, oil, and milk powder. There were 5,000 people,”one witness told Venezuela outlet El Estímulo.
People from across the entire state came to the supermarket because there were rumors that some products not found anywhere else would be sold there.
“There were 250 people for each National Guard officer… lots of people and few soldiers. At least one officer was beat up because he tried to stop the crowd,” another source told El Estímulo.…
On April 27, the Venezuelan Chamber of Food (Cavidea) reported that the country’s food producers only had 15 days left of inventory.
Lootings are becoming a common occurrence in Venezuela, as the country’s food shortage resulted in yet another reported incident of violence in a supermarket — this time in the Luvebras Automarket located in the La Florida Province of Caracas.
Videos posted to social media showed desperate people falling over each other trying to get bags of rice. One user claimed the looting occurred because it is difficult to get cereal, and so people “broke down the doors and damaged infrastructure.”
In the central province of Carabobo, residents ransacked a corn warehouse located in the coastal city of Puerto Cabello. They reportedly broke down the gate because workers were giving away small portions.
“There’s no rice, no pasta, no flour,” resident Glerimar Yohan told La Costa, “only hunger.”
Yohan, like the approximately 50 other people asking employees to give her a “little bit” of corn to feed her children for breakfast, was turned away.
While food shortages are pervasive, so is the lack of medical supplies. Babies dying in hospitals and people dying from serious medical conditions, like epilepsy, are becoming more frequent occurrences. So, take a bow Chavistas—you’ve totally destroyed the country.
Thanks for visiting. Come back soon! Yours in Christ, John
I'm not just referring to Bernie Sanders' surprisingly strong showing in the Democratic primaries. Various polls show that millennials have a more favorable view of socialism than of capitalism. And millennials generally are the only age group that views socialism more favorably than unfavorably.
Some conservatives aren't surprised. Schools have been force-feeding left-wing propaganda to kids like it was feed for geese at a foie gras factory.
On the other hand, what are we to make of the fact that only a fraction of the young people who say they like socialism can explain what it is? If left-wing indoctrination is so effective at getting kids to like socialism, you'd think it would have more success at getting kids to at least parrot back a serviceable definition.
Regardless, this is a familiar tale. Young people have a well-documented tendency of skipping facts and arguments and going straight to conclusions.
Writing in The Federalist, Emily Ekins and Joy Pullmann note that many of these young people think socialism is federally mandated niceness. A 2014 Reason-Rupe survey asked millennials to define socialism. They had in mind a more generous safety net, more kindness and, as one put it, more "being together."
But when asked if they agreed with a more technically accurate definition of socialism -- government control of the economy -- support dropped considerably (though not nearly enough). Given a choice between a government-managed economy and a free-market economy, millennials overwhelmingly chose the latter. It seems young people realize that putting bureaucrats in charge of Uber wouldn't work too well.
Still, it boggles the mind that anyone can see the folly of having the government take over Amazon or Facebook but be blind to the problems of having the government run health care.
More intriguing to me is the fact that kids who don't know what textbook socialism is actually have a better understanding of what drives socialism in the first place.
Karl Marx was one of the worst things to ever happen to socialism, and not just because he set the world on a path to the murder, oppression and enslavement of millions upon millions of people. It was Marx and his confreres who convinced the intellectual classes that socialism was a strictly "scientific" doctrine. For generations, economists -- real and so-called -- worked on the assumption that the economy could be run like a machine. Just as engineers had mastered the steam engine and the transistor, they could do likewise with supply and demand.
For generations, intellectuals -- real and so-called -- argued that economics was best left to "planners." Time and again, reality -- specifically, the reality dictated by human desires -- refused to be bent to neatly arrayed columns of numbers and well-stacked slips of paper. The philosopher-economist Friedrich Hayek long ago explained that planners suffer from what he called "the knowledge problem." Even the best bureaucrat couldn't know what customers, suppliers and managers on the ground wanted or needed.
And each time the planners insisted that if they just had a little bit more power, a bit more data, a few more resources, they could make planning work. When all you have is a hammer, you're inclined to believe that there's no problem a few more nails won't fix.
The Soviet Union and its various cousins did much to discredit "scientific socialism," what with all the killing and totalitarianism. The fact that it didn't seem to make people richer also undermined its appeal. "Scientifically," people didn't want to be bullied, oppressed or impoverished.
The unrealism of socialism spelled its undoing -- for a time.
The dilemma is that there is a reality underneath the fraud of scientific socialism. The first socialists were not economists or technocrats. They were romantics and nostalgists. They loathed the relentless logic of the market and its reward of merit and efficiency as judged by the marketplace.
They wanted to return to the imagined Eden of the noble savage and the state of nature. They wanted to live in a world of tribal brotherhood and mutual love. Long before the math of "scientific socialism" there were the emotions of socialism, both light and dark: egalitarianism and envy.
Young people understandably are drawn by the promise of "being together." But they think the federal government can make it happen. If government planners can't even provide goods and services efficiently, how will they ever provide togetherness?
Thanks for visiting. Come back soon! Yours in Christ, John
One Colorado politician was unusually candid about the rising health care costs Americans can expect as the President’s Affordable Care Act goes into full effect. In a painful interview with The Daily Sentinel this weekend, Sen. Michael Bennett (D) basically said that consumers in western and central Colorado, who face the most expensive health plans in the country, are out of luck.
“I don’t have answers for Grand Junction, but I’m aware of the problem,” he said.
Because Obamacare lowered the threshold for Medicaid and allowed working-age adults to reap the program's benefits, it doubled enrollment in Colorado from 358,000 to 721,000, explainsThe Colorado Statesman. The financial consequences were not pretty.
As a result, general fund spending on Medicaid grew from $1.15 billion in 2009-10 to $2.67 billion in 2016-17. Add to that nearly $1.5 billion from the “hospital provider fee” and matching federal funds. Total spending on the department that oversees Medicaid has grown to more than $9 billion — fully one-third of all money spent by the State of Colorado.
Bennet is simply left speechless.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is also having trouble answering voters' questions as to why their premiums keep going up. At a campaign stop in Virginia on Monday, one concerned mother who earns a decent salary asked Clinton how lower income families can expect to pay for health care when she's even struggling to make payments. Clinton was just as puzzled as she was.
"Like, people shouldn’t just once they get to a certain income, lose all subsidy or lose all tax benefit or whatever else we could piece together that would enable you to make this more affordable for yourself," Clinton responded. "So that’s something I’m looking at. I think that the Affordable Care Act is a big step forward for the vast majority of Americans, but we have to look at out of pocket costs, copays, deductibles, premiums, and we have to make the insurance companies justify what they are charging because a lot of them are moving costs up without really explaining, at least not to my satisfaction, why that’s happening."
The solution escaped her.
"What could have possibly raised your costs $400?" she asked. "And that’s what I don’t understand.”
At least we all agree on that.
With Democrats now admitting they can't answer for Obamacare’s rising costs, will the issue make or break them in the November elections?
Thanks for visiting. Come back soon! Yours in Christ, John
So, you know Venezuela is on the verge of economic collapse. The price of oil has dropped precipitously over the past few years—that’s a budgetary nightmare for a nation dependent on its oil exports. As a result, basic necessities, like toilet paper, are being rationed. There’s limited access to television and long distance phone service. There are rolling blackouts due to energy shortages. And now the government is cutting back the workweek to just two days. This comes at a time when Venezuela’s citizens need government services the most. Supermarkets are not stocked regularly, so there’s a food shortage; people are starving. They’ve resorted to looting to survive. You would think that the government can’t really afford to print its own currency because it’s so broke would be the cherry on top of this socialist nightmare. Nope—the hunger games appear to have begun, as Venezuelans are now hunting stray dogs, cats, and pigeons for sustenance (via PanAm Post):
Ramón Muchacho, Mayor of Chacao in Caracas, said the streets of the capital of Venezuela are filled with people killing animals for food.
Through Twitter, Muchacho reported that in Venezuela, it is a “painful reality” that people “hunt cats, dogs and pigeons” to ease their hunger.
People are also reportedly gathering vegetables from the ground and trash to eat as well.
The crisis in Venezuela is worsening everyday due in part to shortages reaching 70 percent. This to go along with the world’s highest level of inflation.
The population’s desperation has begun to show, with looting and robberies for food increasing all the time. This Sunday, May 1, six Venezuelan military officials were arrested for stealing goats to ease their hunger, as there was no food at the Fort Manaure military base.…
The Venezuelan Chamber of Food (Cavidea) said many businesses only have 15 days worth of inventory. Production has been effected as a result of a shortage of raw materials, as well as exhausted national and international supply resources.
Just when you thought this left wing dystopia couldn’t get any worse—it does.
Thanks for visiting. Come back soon! Yours in Christ, John
“Health insurance premiums continue to rise for American families,” wrote the authors of the EOP report. “Premiums are rising in all states and far in excess of wage growth or inflation. If we do nothing, the soaring rise of health insurance premiums will mean that millions of families and businesses will be unable to afford these increases and will lose their coverage over the coming years. For families that manage to keep their health insurance, health costs will consume an increasingly large portion of their budgets.”
The EOP report called for substantial reforms Obama said would lower costs and increase access to quality health care services, including a ban on pre-existing condition restrictions.
More than six years have passed since the EOP report was released and the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was signed into law. A new analysis by Freedom Partners shows the promises and projections made by EOP in 2009 have not come to fruition. In fact, health insurance premiums continue to grow at rates similar to those experienced before ACA and wage growth has actually slowed. Between 2004 and 2009, average wages increased by 12.2 percent; since 2009, wages have risen by less than 9 percent.
In addition to rising premiums and falling wage growth, deductibles have also grown in recent years. According to data made available by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and analyzed by Freedom Partners, only five states and Washington, DC, saw average Obamacare exchange deductibles decrease from 2015 to 2016. Twenty-one states had average Obamacare deductibles rise by $300 or more, including eight states with deductible increases topping $500.
Lower-cost “Bronze” plans experienced the most significant deductible increases, hurting lower- and middle-income families. Average Bronze plan deductibles fell from 2015 to 2016 in only two states: Alaska and Arkansas. In 34 states, Bronze plan deductibles rose by at least $500.
There’s no denying the fact millions of Americans are now enrolled in Medicaid and Medicare or are receiving federal subsidies in an Obamacare health insurance exchange. But at what cost? If the mission of health care reform is to make tens of millions of people pay significantly more, have access to fewer health insurance options, be forced to purchase a product some people don’t want, and be required to contribute their hard-earned money toward health care services they are morally opposed to, then Obamacare has been a great success. This isn’t what effective health care reform looks like.
Instead of mandating how people live their lives, artificially manipulating health care markets, and raising taxes on an already over-taxed populace, pro-liberty health care reform gives more options, not less. It empowers states with the funding and freedoms they need to enact policies best designed to help the poor in their own local communities. It gives people the ability to purchase the health insurance they want rather than force them to buy from a select few options many people don’t need. It gives people the ability, using ground-breaking reforms such as health savings accounts, to save for their own health care instead of being forced to go through third-party insurance companies. It also doesn’t ask people to violate their deeply held personal or religious beliefs.
Pro-liberty health care reform ensures the nation’s most impoverished people are taken care of, but it also guarantees each person has the freedom to seek out the highest quality care possible and guarantees health care providers have the liberty they need to pursue the kind of innovation that has made the United States the most medically advanced nation in world history.
Thanks for visiting. Come back soon! Yours in Christ, John
Economically, even California Gov. Jerry Brown admitted California's new $15 per hour minimum wage doesn't make any sense. He signed it anyway, however, justifying that it made moral sense.
But does it?
When one considers that a Military E-1 (Marine or Army Private; Air Force Basic Airman, Navy and Coast GuardSeaman Recruit) has a base salary of $18,378, which amounts to roughly $8.84 per hour, Brown’s argument seemingly falls apart. It seems morally wrong to offer more pay to someone flipping burgers than to a member of the military willing to put his or her life on the line in service to this nation. Of course it could be said that bonuses, allowances, and other benefits bump up an Army Private's salary, but not all minimum wage earners are fully supporting themselves or families, as we are are often told.
Just take a brief glance at some of the characteristics of minimum wage earners:
They’re probably still living at home.Minimum wage workers tend to be young. Although workers under age 25 represented only about one-fifth of hourly paid workers, they made up nearly half of those paid the federal minimum wage or less. Among employed teenagers (ages 16 to 19) paid by the hour, about 15 percent earned the minimum wage or less, compared with about 3 percent of workers age 25 and older.
They’re not trying to support families.Of those paid an hourly wage, never married workers, who tend to be young, were more likely (7 percent) than married workers (2 percent) to earn the federal minimum wage or less.
It’s a stepping stone.Among hourly paid workers age 16 and older, about 7 percent of those without a high school diploma earned the federal minimum wage or less, compared with about 4 percent of those who had a high school diploma (with no college), 4 percent of those with some college or an associate degree, and about 2 percent of college graduates.
Can you name a way the Obama administration can really boost wages in this country without actually raising the official federal minimum wage... AND get plenty of Republican support while doing it? […]
Here's the answer: boost military pay, especially for new enlistees. It would work because it's worked before. And it would also help solve some other problems that go beyond just the economy. […]
By contrast, increasing military pay achieves those goals with a lot more upside thrown in. First off, there's actual demand for new soldiers and sailors. For only the third time in 20 years, the U.S. military is falling short of its designated annual recruitment levels this year. Reports out last week showed we're currently 14% behind the target. There are a number of reasons for this gap, but a generally improving job market has traditionally been the biggest reason why recruitment levels drop. That's especially true when it comes to high quality recruits who have graduated high school and score the highest on military assessment tests. Has anyone even asked whether the fast food industry or the local Applebee's actually needs more workers before we demand they pay everyone more? If wages in the free market are flat, that pesky supply and demand issue is probably the reason. But the employer in this case is Uncle Sam and he can't raise military pay without an act of Congress. And even though military pay is not one of the items effected by the budget sequester, annual raises have only been between 1% and 2% for five years running. Based on economic principles alone, a military pay raise is much more warranted than a federal minimum wage hike for the private sector.
Now there’s an idea you’ll never hear our progressive politicians, you know, the champions of social justice, advance.
Thanks for visiting. Come back soon! Yours in Christ, John
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders isn’t coy about his intention to spend like crazy and raise everyone’s taxes if he’s elected president. Forgetting that fact that his health care plan is a disaster for the working poor, these sentiments of taxation to solve every societal ill appears to be the governing ethos in his state of Vermont, where the state legislature just passed millions more in tax increases. Hence, why Vermonters are fleeing the state, as Americans for Tax Reform’s Patrick Cleason wrote in an op-ed for Forbes:
High taxes, heavy regulations and other policies that depress economic growth have made Bernie Sanders’ home state of Vermont a difficult place to create jobs, earn a living and raise a family. Underscoring this is the fact that Vermont saw a net outmigration of more than 5,000 residents over the last decade. Now Gov. Peter Shumlin (D) and state lawmakers are looking to double down on their anti-growth policies with the state house’s approval last week of another round of tax hikes of individuals, families and employers in the Green Mountain State.
The Vermont House of Representatives recently approved $48 million in higher taxes and fees. Levies were raised on home heating oil, mutual funds, banks, drivers, and the Employer Health Assessment Tax on businesses who don’t provide health insurance for employees was hiked.
The $48 million tax hike package, if approved by the Democrat-controlled state senate and signed into law by Gov. Peter Shumlin (D), would come on top of the $30 million in higher state taxes signed into law by Gov. Shumlin last year, and the more than 20 federal tax increases signed into law by President Obama over the last seven years. Forty-five states have a better business tax climate than Vermont, and the $48 million tax increase passed by the Vermont House last week will only make the state business tax climate less hospitable and put Vermont at a greater competitive disadvantage.
As a New Jersey native, out of control spending, tax increases, along with some healthy dashes of corruption, was a typical day in Trenton. Democrats have an iron grip on the legislature, so tax and spend policies are common. The state is rightfully placed on the worst states to conduct business, according to the Tax Foundation and rightfully so. It’s the Bermuda Triangle of trying to make a living. There are so many taxes and regulations; you’ll simply disappear. It’s not worth. In fact, the only thing that has made the state cool was when The Sopranos was on HBO. That series ended in 2007. The butcher’s bill for decades of Democratic leadership: 2 million people gone, thousands of jobs cannibalized, and billions in lost economic activity over a ten-year period (via Star-Ledger):
More than two million people left New Jersey between 2005 and 2014, taking billions of dollars in income and economic activity with them, according to a state business group that blames high taxes for the exodus.
The Business and Industry Association's new report said so-called outmigration over a 10-year span cost the state $18 billion in net adjusted gross income, 75,000 jobs, $11.4 billion in economic activity, $4.2 billion in labor income and $8.4 billion in household spending.
"This outmigration of New Jersey residents has had a substantial and continuing negative impact on the state's economy," the report said. "When New Jerseyans leave the state they not only take their income with them, but they take income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes and purchasing power with them as well."
Half of all New Jersey residents say they want to eventually leave the state, and more than a quarter of them say their future departure is “very likely,” according to a new Monmouth University poll.
By comparison, only 45 percent of current residents say they’d like to live out their lives in the Garden State, numbers that continue to reflect a seven-year trend.
Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, said the survey found the state’s high cost of living is the driving factor, adding, “the chief culprit among these costs is the New Jersey’s property tax burden.”
The incessant liberal penchant to tax appears to have the same consequences in Vermont, as it does in Jersey, though millions aren’t fleeing; Vermont only has a population of a little over 626,000 compared to the Garden State’s 8 million-plus residents. Still, the impact is the same–only the wealthy can truly live comfortably in blue states. Frankly, this overtaxing folly and its consequences should’ve been recognized when Gov. Shumlin tried to institute single-payer health care in the state. The plan was torpedoed in December of 2014 after it turned out to be too much of a tax burden. These liberal Democrats never learn.
Thanks for visiting. Come back soon! Yours in Christ, John
Millions of Americans have become foolish, lazy and irresponsible. They’re wrecking our nation and ruining our future. I see this trend in my businesses. During the past decade, scores of people, who want a free ride, fall for promises that ultimately bankrupt their family. That explains how a devout socialist like Bernie Sanders even had a chance.
There are only three types of people in the United States. First, there are those who just want free stuff. This is the fastest growing segment. Second, there are the ‘logicals,’ the people who make choices based on logical conclusions of what’s most sensible. Third, there are the sheep (nice people) who follow, but never lead.
The ‘free stuff’ people just want to find a way to get something for free. They are the Trump University people who are filing the lawsuit because they didn’t get rich quick after taking a few courses. They wanted the magic formula without the effort. These are like the Bernie supporters who believe that health care is a right, rich people are stealing their opportunities and that the government should supplant their personal responsibility. They’re lazy, apathetic and mostly without purpose. They want the fruits of our labor without contributing much of their own. They’ll never reach their full potential or make any contribution that’s meaningful until they break free of their greedy, lazy lifestyle.
The ‘logicals’ are people who analyze the facts, question the facts and make analytical decisions based on what they feel is best or right. This crowd usually makes great money, lives a life with purpose and is envied by many (especially the ‘free stuff’ people). They work hard and use discipline, skill and restraint. Their fault? They don’t connect with ‘free stuff’ people or ‘the sheep’ because they live in the world of reality, where nothing sounds easy.
The ‘free stuff’ people and ‘the sheep’ live in an emotional cocoon which protects them from having to embrace how distorted and wrong they are. It’s when ‘the logicals’ try to point out the obvious that they respond with anger or dismissiveness.
The sheep are what we commonly refer to as ‘establishment.’ Many of them are in leadership positions, but aren’t quality leaders at all. They blindly follow an ‘established’ set of ideals without knowing why. The reason? It feels great to be accepted which requires not challenging tradition. They hate conflict unless it’s to maintain their status quo. They want everyone to fall in line. But, when a ‘logical’ suggests that their way isn’t working, they become hateful. Their inner turmoil, pinned up resentments and general lack of logic comes pouring out in a gush of unfettered emotions.
This is why the #nevertrump crowd will stop at nothing to defeat him. They’re the ‘sheep.’ With a Trump victory, they assuredly will be forced to face years (or decades) of failure or unrealized potential.
Back to business. The most successful business people are ‘the logicals.’ They rarely lose. No matter the regulation, the obstacle or the punishment, they find a solution to those setbacks. They challenge the status-quo and are always reaching for their goals. They only run afoul when competitors lie (offering free stuff) to a steal business or diminish their success.
I’ve seen this trend building in the housing business over the last two decades. Most real estate agents will say anything (outright lie) to get a listing contract; then do the complete opposite. The latest trend is offering free services to appeal to the ‘free stuff’ crowd, in order to win the business. They don’t bother to disclose that there will be a significant up-charge ($1500 or more) in order to fully complete what’s ‘free.’ But, the free stuff crowd falls for it every time. It’s not just housing. It’s banking, cable, insurance, car sales, cell-phone service and most every service we purchase. If it sounds too good to be true, ‘the free stuff’ crowd will take two. Then, they’ll blame their lame decision-making on the billionaires. It’s never their fault for being fools.
The Sheep. I don’t know what we do with these people. They act very nice. They tell all of us ‘logicals’ to be nicer - to lower our tone. They expect us to follow society’s unwritten rules (rules they made) and to use a certain ‘tone.’ “Be professional….act presidential,” they will say. As ‘devout Christians’ they judge others constantly and even cheat in business dealings. They aren’t abrasive enough to attack, yet they are likely more of a detriment to society than even ‘free stuff’ people. I despise this group. They’re never straight forward and they’re nearly impossible to please unless you fall in line with their way of thinking (no matter how hard you try). Most of their decisions are emotional.
This is why we need only ‘logical’ people as leaders, both in business and politics.
What you’ve seen this election season is unprecedented. For years, ‘the sheep’ have been leading us down the wrong path. They are hypocrites. They have been pushed aside. And, they’re terribly angry. The ‘logicals’ have taken control and most of them are voting for Trump or Cruz. The ‘free stuff’ people clearly explain Bernie Sanders’ success. Let’s not forget Hillary Clinton; she’s promising plenty of free stuff to her supporters too - so much, in fact, they’ll completely ignore how big of a liar she is.
What I didn’t realize is just how many freeloaders we have in our society. It’s at least a third of our nation. They want you to work hard, act with personal responsibility, do the ‘right thing,’ and pay their bills for them. And, if you don’t, you’re the problem.
There is no free stuff revolution. The ‘free stuff’ people are too lazy to show up consistently even to vote for free stuff. What we have is a ‘free stuff’ revelation. This is a revolution of logic and everyone else is shocked!
Thanks for visiting. Come back soon! Yours in Christ, John
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