OT: $15/hour minimum wage coming to Seattle

What I saw was the hiring of a large number of mentally handicapped folks, downs sufferers, and other not so well off folks.

I do not see that as much any more.

But the left excels at unintended consequences. You can't deny them the only thing they're good at.

Magnificent line! Do you mind if I steal it ?>:-} ...Jim Thompson

Please be my guest.

My favorite unintended consequence is the one where I almost got killed when my fuel pump failed and I stalled on the highway. The car was a 1992 so it wasn't designed for ethanol. If the oil companies had put it in there voluntarily then they would have been "evil" and I'd have a case against them. But there's no civil action against the government. Mechanics told me a lot of cars had problems, so the chances are that some people were killed. Then there was the inflation of food prices and food riots in some countries. That Robert Reich s*****ad and his kind thought 10% ethanol was such a reasonable amount.

We're heading for an interesting stand-off... the left wants yet more ethanol, and the car companies say it will void warranties. ...Jim Thompson

The food riots should get interesting too. If they get their way it will change the course of wars and alliances.

Certainly an advanced society needs government; the question is, how much?

The Laffer curve posits that tax revenues vs tax rates is an inverted parabola, with a peak point somewhere; neither 0 nor 100% tax rates generate much tax income. There is an equivalent graph of social happiness vs size of government. Clearly zero government is bad, and clearly having 100% of everything be government is bad, so there is a peak between those points somewhere. We're probably past the peak.

The other factor is the *quality* of government, which, in the USA, is really mediocre.

The major beneficiary of government in the USA is the governing class.

Their best trick is applying resources, messing things up, and then demanding more resources to fix the problem.

The homeless situation here is like that. SF spends about $160 million a year on "homeless services", we have over 5000 people in shelters and in "supportive housing", and the number of people sleeping in the streets continues to increase. The answer? Spend more!

Actually, if you get paid to solve a specific problem you want try to solve the problem but logically under no circumstances would it behove you to su cceed. This inherenty results in a situation where failure is rewarded.

Wat's more I think maybe they do it on purpose. Think about it. There is cr ime. This justifies an expense. It is acctually in their best interest to f rame the innocent and let the guilty loose. Could that be why they conduct investigations the way they do ? In the first five minutes they guess who d id it and then build a case agianst one person ognoring evidence that would exonerate them and implicate another.. Amd of course not give up that othe r evidence in discovery. Appeals have been won because of that but that tak es mooney, thus making for less injustice for thooose with money. those who cannot affor to fight either justify the expense of a prison cell or bette r yet provide slave labor for private industries which are already profitin g charging to incarcerate people. I neve used to believe people claiing the y were framed, but now I am not so sure.

It is not like on TV. When they find a dead body, unless sonmeone talks, th ere is not much of any investigation. They either got someone to pin it on or not. If not the file gets tucked away somewhere. The only reason to even call the police is for insurance purposes or if your car is srtolen. They do get some of those back, largely by accident.

But they laid taxes to build and maintain the roads. Well they ain't mainta ined. now they need monmey to maintain the roads. Well what happened to the money you already took to maintain the roads ? Huh ?

They stole it. No, they did not go to work with a big bag and walk out with it, it is done a little different. Pay your friends not to solve theproble ms you are paid to solve.

And then when they do tear up the roads, it is almost like they want traffi c jams and why would they ? Ever hear of gasoine taxes ?

At tis point I owuldn't put anything past them. ANYTHING.

Don't attribute to idiocy what can be attributed to greed. Seriously. They benefit from failure.

Yes.

That's not clear - principally because I don't think anybody can actually identify the market-clearing wage even after the fact.

Interesting - I am just repeating stuff from interviews with Ray Kroc. Whether his ideas were made real or not is beyond me.

Well, economist can identify the threshold, but actually it isn't important to measure it precisely.

A Boston-area datapoint: The minimum wage in Mass is $9.00 per hour. A local Dunkin Donuts in Natick on Rt 9 West has a sign advertising jobs at $10 per hour plus tips. Sign was there for some time now. I'll have to check if it's still there. In any event, DD clearly figures that offering $9 won't work, so the clearing wage must be higher, something like $10. DD has no problem measuring their clearing wage.

Joe Gwinn

Thee progressives will just blame it on global warming.

It was a steel town, and no college nearby so they hired older people who still wanted to work. It could have been different in other places, but that's what I remember of the two our family visited when I was a kid. Most restaurants used older people, in that area, even into the mid '70s. Were you ever waited on by a 60+ year old carhop? :)

What happens to the jobs that "go away"? Does the business just shut down? What happens to the demand that the business was satisfying? Do the people just stop buying?

Yes, there will be some slowing pressure on the economy when a wage is raised. But that is also offset by the increased demand created by the higher wage. I can't see how this will have a large impact on the economy one way or the other. What I can see is that people who work for crap wages will live a better life and I am for that.

I had a guy who was doing odd jobs and yard work. He was thrilled to get $15 an hour because I just don't feel right paying any less. Funny though, when he did electrical work (what he does for a living when he works) he wanted $20, lol.

One small store was on the edge of survival. Hard to say the minimum wage is really the cause of them going under. He also cited taxes and the fixed price the books are sold at. Sounds to me like he wasn't a good businessman. Most businesses diversify. Book stores often sell things other than books most of which have a higher profit margin.

I bet the minimum wage was what drove Borders out of business too, right?

Yeah, like depressions, right?

I have come to realize that the real issue with the conservatives is not that they have bad ideas about how government works. The problem with most conservatives is that they don't have any ideas about how government should work, they just like to complain when they find things the existing government doesn't do perfectly.

How about some positive ideas? How about *constructive* criticism?

Bitch, bitch, bitch...

Who exactly is asking for more ethanol in fuel?