Category Archives: economics

Facts are inconvenient things

These results were predictable to anyone with a triple-digit IQ.  “Feel the Bern?”  I’ve got your burn right here:

The Chart That No Minimum-Wage-Supporting Socialist Wants You To See

A new report from JP Morgan Chase & Co. finds that the summer employment rate for teenagers is nearing a record low at 34 percent. The report surveyed 15 US cities and found that despite an increase in summer positions available over a two year period, only 38 percent of teens and young adults found summer jobs.

[…]

Most of the 15 cities studied in this report have minimum wage rates above the federal level, with cities such as Seattle having a rate more than double that. Recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics seen in the chart show exactly how a drastic rise in the minimum wage rate affects the rate of employment.

Seattle has experienced the largest 3 month job loss in its history last year, following the introduction of a $15 minimum wage. We can only imagine the impact such a change has had on the prospects of employment for the young and unskilled.

Venezuela Feels the Bern

Our future, should Sanders end up winning:

Venezuela Declares New Emergency: It Has Run Out of Food

Venezuela’s opposition legislature has declared a “nutritional emergency,” proclaiming that the country simply does not have enough food to feed its population. The move comes after years of socialist rationing and shortages that forced millions to wait on lines lasting as long as six hours for a pint of milk, a bag of flour, or carton of cooking oil.

Opposition legislator Julio Borges announced the measure on Thursday, which would allow the legislature to push for more imports on basic food goods and inspect government-owned food companies to ensure they are meeting efficiency standards. “This will make corporations and expropriated lands produce food again, will simplify the process of national and foreign investment, and establish incentives for investors,” Borges promised.

Socialist party members are arguing that the decree goes beyond the scope of the power of the legislature and cannot override the executive decree President Nicolás Maduro put into motion in January, which declared an “economic emergency” and allowed the government to further intervene in private corporations. Venezuela’s Supreme Court extended the viability of the emergency decree this week, in a move many consider an attempt to keep the opposition legislature from asserting too much power over the food industry in Venezuela.

Scratch a liberal, find a fascist

robert_reich

A short one, in this case, angry at the world and seeking vengeance for…something:

Reich Demands Punishment for ‘Disloyalty’

Robert Reich, whose surname so nicely fits the increasingly totalitarian mood of the [Democrat] party that a fiction author would be mocked for making it up, has some suggestions on the theme: “What To Do about Disloyal Corporations.” Focus in and hold on that word “disloyal” for a moment and consider its implications: What is expected of a business now is not that it should follow the law and conduct its affairs honorably, but that it should knuckle under to the demands of whatever faction happens to hold political power or be punished by the state for “disloyalty.”

At issue is the question of corporate inversion, which is a jargon-y way of describing the fact that when U.S. firms merge with firms headquartered in other countries, they sometimes locate the legal residence of the new merged enterprise in the country with friendlier corporate tax policies — and, given that the United States has the highest and most cumbrous corporate tax code in the developed world, that almost always means relocating abroad. We are not talking here about firms relocating to Caribbean tax havens or the like, but companies moving to Ireland, Canada, Switzerland, etc.

The real minimum wage is zero

That’s what you end up with when the job you were working is no longer worth whatever the government decides the “minimum” wage should be:

Ruinous “Compassion”

It is fascinating to see brilliant people belatedly discover the obvious — and to see an even larger number of brilliant people never discover the obvious.

A recent story in a San Francisco newspaper says that some restaurants and grocery stores in Oakland’s Chinatown have closed after the city’s minimum wage was raised. Other small businesses there are not sure they are going to survive, since many depend on a thin profit margin and a high volume of sales.

At an angry meeting between local small business owners and city officials, the local organization that had campaigned for the higher minimum wage was absent. They were probably some place congratulating themselves on having passed a humane “living wage” law. The group most affected was also absent — inexperienced and unskilled young people, who need a job to get some experience, even more than they need the money.