US Energy Policy

Is The Minimum Wage Beneficial?

Another study has come out showing that the minimum wage actually hurts those it intends to help: unskilled workers.  This is not the first of these studies, but simply another study that will go unrecognized by those who favor high unemployment among minorities.  The author goes on to say:

Minimum-wage proponents argue that a higher wage floor will improve the standard of living for poor families. The reality is that higher labor costs reduce employment, especially for younger workers, and the greatest amount of pain is felt by black men. The Even and Macpherson study finds that among whites males ages 16-24, each 10% increase in a federal or state minimum wage has decreased employment by 2.5%. For Hispanic males, the figure is 1.2%. "But among black males in this group, each 10% increase in the minimum wage has decreased employment by 6.5%."

The effect on the black community is so pronounced, write the authors, that "employment losses for 16-to-24 year-old black males between 2007 and 2010 could have been nearly 50% lower had the federal and state minimum wages remained at the January 2007 level."

It gets worse. Not all states were fully affected by the federal minimum wage increases because some already mandated a minimum wage above the federal requirement. But in the 21 states that were fully affected, about 13,200 black young adults lost their job as a direct result of the recession, versus 18,500 who lost their job as a result of the minimum-wage mandates. "In other words," write Messrs. Even and Macpherson, "the consequences of the minimum wage for this subgroup were more harmful than the consequences of the recession."

In an interview, Mr. Macpherson told me that racial disparities in the employment consequences of minimum-wage hikes result from a number of factors. "One problem is that I think blacks tend to have, on average, inferior schooling," he said. "Also, the effects of the minimum wage differ by industry, and blacks tend to be heavily concentrated in, for example, eating and drinking establishments, where it's easier to substitute capital for labor."

Milton Friedman discusses the paradox of the minimum wage law:



It is actually interesting to note that the precursor to the minimum wage law was based on racism.  Powerful white unions were intimidated by having to compete against lower-cost black workers, and this led to the passage of the Davis Bacon Act.  Dr. Thomas Sowell discusses this in the following clip:

Navy SEALs Character Quality = Matthew 22:39?

As I was reading an article in the Wall Street Journal on Navy SEALs, I was stunned by the one common trait among all SEALs.  The following section explains a little bit about SEAL training and what has been called "Hell Week" which weeds out want-to-be SEALs from will-be-SEALS.  

"What kind of man makes it through Hell Week? That's hard to say. But I do know—generally—who won't make it. There are a dozen types that fail: the weight-lifting meatheads who think that the size of their biceps is an indication of their strength, the kids covered in tattoos announcing to the world how tough they are, the preening leaders who don't want to get dirty, and the look-at-me former athletes who have always been told they are stars but have never have been pushed beyond the envelope of their talent to the core of their character. In short, those who fail are the ones who focus on show. The vicious beauty of Hell Week is that you either survive or fail, you endure or you quit, you do—or you do not.

Some men who seemed impossibly weak at the beginning of SEAL training—men who puked on runs and had trouble with pull-ups—made it. Some men who were skinny and short and whose teeth chattered just looking at the ocean also made it. Some men who were visibly afraid, sometimes to the point of shaking, made it too.

Almost all the men who survived possessed one common quality. Even in great pain, faced with the test of their lives, they had the ability to step outside of their own pain, put aside their own fear and ask: How can I help the guy next to me? They had more than the "fist" of courage and physical strength. They also had a heart large enough to think about others, to dedicate themselves to a higher purpose."

Compare with Jesus' summation of the entire OT law in Matthew 22:34-39:


34 But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him,“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

It is interesting to note that the quality which sets the most elite military commandos apart from the rest of the military is the deep internalization of Jesus' commandment to love your neighbor as yourself.

Illiteracy Abounding in Detroit

According to a study by the National Institute for Literacy, 47% of Detroit's citizens are functionally illiterate.



-The National Institute for Literacy estimates that 47% of adults (more
 than 200,000 individuals) in the City of Detroit are functionally illiterate,
 referring to the inability of an individual to use reading, speaking, writing,
 and computational skills in everyday life situations.

-We also know that of the 200,000 adults who are functionally illiterate,
  approximately half have a high school diploma or GED, so this issue cannot
  be solely addressed by a focus on adult high-school completion.

-The remaining 100,000 of these functionally illiterate adults (age 25 and
  older) lack a high school diploma or GED, another prerequisite for
  employment success.

The second and third statements above are the most shocking--half of the illiterate people graduated with a high school diploma or GED--that means teachers KNEW they couldn't read or write yet they still passed them all the way through their senior year of high school.  Why is this the case?  Thomas Sowell explains some of the reasoning in the following video:



  If you want to read the rest of the initial article, you can find it here.

Obama's Plan to Skyrocket Electricity Prices

If you like paying more for gasoline, you will undoubtedly love the upcoming electricity price increases that Barak Obama wants to implement.

I don't make this stuff up--it's his own words.



If you're thinking about energy prices, you may want to ask the president what his plans would be for gasoline prices...

Want to Make Money? Don't go to Harvard, go to Prison!

When I taught in China, every one of my students wanted to go to Harvard so they could make a lot of money in the future.  They were wrong.  As Allysia Finley shows in her article that is almost too absurd to believe how prison guards in California have a more advantageous position financially than the typical Harvard alum.

The job might not sound glamorous, but a brochure from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitations boasts that it "has been called 'the greatest entry-level job in California'—and for good reason. Our officers earn a great salary, and a retirement package you just can't find in private industry. We even pay you to attend our academy." That's right—instead of paying more than $200,000 to attend Harvard, you could earn $3,050 a month at cadet academy.

It gets better.

Training only takes four months, and upon graduating you can look forward to a job with great health, dental and vision benefits and a starting base salary between $45,288 and $65,364. By comparison, Harvard grads can expect to earn $49,897 fresh out of college and $124,759 after 20 years.

As a California prison guard, you can make six figures in overtime and bonuses alone. While Harvard-educated lawyers and consultants often have to work long hours with little recompense besides Chinese take-out, prison guards receive time-and-a-half whenever they work more than 40 hours a week. One sergeant with a base salary of $81,683 collected $114,334 in overtime and $8,648 in bonuses last year, and he's not even the highest paid.

Sure, Harvard grads working in the private sector get bonuses, too, but only if they're good at what they do. Prison guards receive a $1,560 "fitness" bonus just for getting an annual check-up.

Most Harvard grads only get three weeks of vacation each year, even after working for 20 years—and they're often too busy to take a long trip. Prison guards, on the other hand, get seven weeks of vacation, five of them paid. If they're too busy racking up overtime to use their vacation days, they can cash the days in when they retire. There's no cap on how many vacation days they can cash in! Eighty officers last year cashed in over $100,000 at retirement.

If you say "Well, that's California, they've always been a little off" you aren't being realistic.  In 2010, 76 correctional sergeants in Wisconsin received at least $100,000 in pay.  Every one of these officers made at least $20,000 in overtime alone!  The highest paid correctional officer made $162,676 in salary and $102,168 in overtime for a combined salary of over $250K!

Looking back on it, t's no wonder why there were so many police and fire fighters protesting with the teachers in Madison over the last few months: they don't want the same thing to happen to them.  And why wouldn't they be so angry about the thought of paring their salaries back?  Who wants to make less than $100K per year?

GAMECHANGER

The Maciver Institute, a conservative public policy think tank, has compiled all of the publicly available information on state employees online for the average citizen to peruse.   

If you want to look at the site--which you should--it is at www.wisconsinopengov.org .  On this site you will be able to search for employees and their compensation plans, see the highest paid employees (already looked and it's David C Villa at $560,461) and salaries of employees since they began working for the government.

I would encourage you, next time you see someone in the news saying that they can't afford to pay the extra for healthcare and pension, look up their name on this web site and see if they're telling the truth.