A bad day

I've been having a bad day recently.  Since about March, actually.

I work in a support role at my company.  I have teammates halfway around the world who also support many of the same people I do.

Recently, however, one of those teams we support has been in fire-fighting mode.  They're placing demands on my time as well as my colleagues off-site.

My off-site colleagues best know the system supporting this customer team.  I have an incomplete working understanding.

The system is located where I am.  So's the customer team.  So when then nighttime and network problems hamper my colleagues' efforts to keep the customer team happy, guess who gets stuck with the problem?

The thing is, I'm supposed to be working something that's also high-priority, but on another project.  So whom do I tell to kiss off?  Politely, of course.

Yes, I know, this sounds like a first-world problem to me too.

Despicable

That's a word I rarely use, but it definitely applies to KayInMaine of White Noise Insanity.

In the wake of the movie theater shooting in Aurora, CO, she posted this crap:

A wingnut kills 14 in a Colorado movie theater…

…and you know what that means! It means Glenn Beck & Rush Limbaugh are to blame. Yes, that’s right: THEY’RE TO BLAME. Both of those assholes with a national microphone are causing the reich wing armed militias in America to go off the deep end. When will these two be arrested for terrorizing the nation!!!

and then she went on to blame one of the Left's favorite bogeymen:  Michelle Bachmann.

Others on Twitter are not letting an absence of facts get in the way of a narrative:

Hannity beck limbaugh paraphernalia Found at aurora shooters home

Really, jakecovo?  That's interesting.  How would you know, since the police at this time have yet to effect entry into the shooter's home, since it appears he wasn't bluffing about his apartment being booby-trapped with explosives.  Did the police somehow, enter the apartment, find the materials, notice the apartment was booby-trapped, and then leave and have the bomb squad send a robot in?  That's a good trick!

Now I hear news about ABC finding a connection between the shooter, James Holmes, and the Colorado Tea Party.

One problem:  ABC got the wrong James Holmes. 

Jeez, rank amateurism at work.  Laura Ingraham described them best:  Dinosaur Media.

In the meantime, the Left will continue its hate-filled, fact-challenged rants.

It seems to be their M.O.:  React to such news reflexively and emotionally.  Blame people whom you feel are "evil".  When facts come out that dispute your beliefs, change the topic.  Never admit you were wrong, because that would be an indicator of growth.  If you grew and matured, you might learn, like the rest of us, to be patient for the facts to emerge, to "look before you leap", as it were.

But when facts in these situations come out, they rarely if ever support the left-wing arguments.  That's why I think they jump the gun:  Whip people's emotions into a frenzy and get them believing lies before the truth, as Mark Twain put it, has gotten its shoes on.

It's fortunate that I don't know any of these people personally.  I'd have to exercise great restraint to keep from slapping some sense into them.

Minimum wage laws don't work

Minimum wage laws don't work.  Anybody with a calculator and an understanding of economics and logic can comprehend that.  So why do politicians keep pushing it?

Because a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Reading Perkins’ essay today reminds us of the potential that minimum wage laws hold for shaping a fair and productive economy.

Which do you want a fair economy or a productive economy?  And by the way, a mandatory minimum wage guarantees neither.

At the time of her writing, the nation was in the midst of the Great Depression. Perkins feared the destructive potential of the growing number of “fly-by-night” sweatshop operators attempting to gain an unfair advantage over their competitors by selling cheaper products made possible by rock-bottom labor costs.
These low-wage sweatshop operators were, in other words, cheaters. They offered cheaper products by taking advantage of workers who, in a period of record unemployment, had no choice but to accept whatever job they could get — in some cases, earning only 3.5 cents per hour.

I'm sorry, what made the advantage "unfair"?  And guess what?  If the market allowed employers to get labor for so cheap, it was because people were willing to work for so cheap.  What was/is a fair wage?  Something arbitrarily set by the government?

The purpose of a minimum wage law was not only to protect workers from abuse by their employers, but to also ensure fair competition by requiring that all businesses play by the same rules

the minimum wage peaked in 1968 and has since trailed behind the rising cost of living. In fact, the minimum wage would be well over $10 today if it had simply kept pace with inflation. Instead, it’s only $7.25 an hour — or just over $15,000 a year.

My god, do these economic illiterates look at what happens whenever the mandatory minimum wage is increased?  Like with most economic meddling by the government, it precipitates inflation.  Everyone's purchasing power is reduced because of an arbitrary floor to labor costs.  Businesses operating on thin profit margins either reduce their workforce, raise their prices, or both.  Since savvy business owners don't employ more people than they need, an increase in per-head labor costs often gets them looking at ways they can reduce the number of heads of labor to restore the product of the labor calculation to some form of equilibrium that allows them to stay in business.  Some businesses will fail because they can't break even, let alone turn a profit. Say a company has 50 employees making $7/hr.  The government bumps the minimum wage up.  Now everybody has to be paid $8/hr.  The company's labor costs have gone from $350/employee-hour, or $14,000 per 40-hour work week, to $400/employee-hour, or $16,000 per 40-hour work week. 

To be sure, the employees are happy.  Briefly.

A second, larger company, with say, 500 employees, has gone from paying $140,000 to $160,000.  Company A saw their labor costs jump $2,000 in one week, but Company B saw their labor costs jump $20,000 in the same week.  Company B decides to internationally out-source the bulk of its labor force to stay competitive.  They lay off 400 employees and find they can hire twice as many foreigners at their new overseas operation which cost them $50,000 to set up.  A week later, Company A is still paying an extra $2,000 per week for the same productivity.  Company B now is paying $20,000 a week, but saw their productivity increase about 55%.  Increases in productivity give company B flexibility in tempering the inevitable spike in its product's price to consumer.

Granted, these are simplistic numbers, but think about Company A.  Maybe it can't compete with Company B at the new labor rates.  Company B can essentially outlast Company A.  So, six months down the road, perhaps all 50 of the employees from Company A join the 400 from Company B in the unemployment line, where they aren't earning taxable income.  And as prices rise, the extra money the surviving employees of both companies receive is worth less.  Does that make sense?

Low-wage industries are now among the economy’s fastest-growing sectors, and some of the lowest paid occupations are expected to create the largest numbers of new jobs over the next several years. For many employers low wages are part and parcel of a robust growth strategy. As of last year, no fewer than 35 of the nation’s 50 largest low-wage businesses had posted profits that exceeded their pre-recession levels.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of businesses in the United States have yet to recover from the recession, particularly small businesses. A Gallup poll earlier this year revealed that fully 85 percent of small businesses still have no intention of hiring or expanding their business because demand remains so weak.

 I refer you to the above paragraphs as to why this is essentially the government's fault.  The labor unions in this country have learned that the old game of "chicken" only works against employers so long before the employers simply move their labor to a more friendly climate.  The unions priced themselves right out of business in many cases.  An in a textbook definition of insanity, the government thinks it can repeat the exercise with minimum-wage employees and then act surprised when the same result occurs.

The American people have noticed. According to a recent poll, more than two-thirds of Americans support raising the minimum wage to over $10 per hour. This support is behind a proposal by Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Ia., that would raise the minimum wage to $9.80 an hour, significantly raise the minimum wage for tipped workers (currently at $2.13 an hour), and provide for annual cost of living adjustments for both.

Not to disparage my fellow Americans, but the two-thirds of respondents to the poll need to see the world through a macro-economic lens.  Like with low-income people on welfare, you can count on them to vote for a continued supply of funds.  It's clear the author doesn't comprehend the economic impact of annual cost of living adjustments.  An apt analogy would be the dog chasing his tail:  It keeps him busy, but he doesn't achieve his goals.

Thank you, Government.