Bend Over And Grab Your Ankles

It's everyone's favorite time of the year - Income Tax Time!

Yay!!!

But seriously, folks, here's a few facts and figures for you to ponder while you chase your tail filling out overly complicated. complex, and incomprehensible IRS forms.

And, if you're like me, at the conclusion of that fun-filled exercise you get to write a check to Uncle Sam.

Again ... Yay!!!

Some Historical Perspective.

“In the beginning” when the US federal income tax was first introduced in 1913, it used to be a lot, lot simpler and a lot easier to file taxes; so easy in fact that it was basically like filling out your federal tax return on a postcard.

Click to embiggen.

For example, page 1 of the original IRS 1040 income tax form from 1913 appears above. There were only four pages in the original 1040 form, including: two pages of worksheets, the actual one-page 1040 form above, and only one page of instructions, view all four pages here. In contrast, just the current 1040 instructions for 2014, without any forms, runs 105 pages...

Individual federal income tax rates started at 1% in 1913, and the maximum marginal income tax rate was only 7% on incomes above $500,000 ($12.02 million in today’s dollars).

More recently:

In a 2012 report to Congress, the National Taxpayer Advocate estimated that American taxpayers and businesses spend 6.1 billion hours every year complying with the income tax code... That amount of time spent for income tax compliance – 6.1 billion hours – would be the equivalent of more than 3 million Americans working full-time, year-round... By way of comparison, the federal government currently employs 2.7 million full-time workers, and Wal-Mart, the world’s largest private employer, currently employs 2.2 million workers worldwide and 1.3 million workers in the US... At the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, the dollar value of the opportunity cost associated with tax filing would be more than $44 billion, equivalent to the 2015 GDP of both South Dakota ($45.4 billion) and Montana ($45.8 billion) and greater than the GDP of both Wyoming ($40.1 billion) and New Hampshire ($29.7 billion).

As for the 'make the rich pay their fair share' mantra chanted by both Bernie and hillary supporters, take a gander at the following.

All told, individual income taxes accounted for a little less than half (47.4%) of government revenue, a share that’s been roughly constant since World War II. The federal government collected $1.54 trillion from individual income taxes in fiscal 2015, making it the national government’s single-biggest revenue source.

Of that 47.4% of total government revenue from individual income taxes:

In 2014, people with adjusted gross income, or AGI, above $250,000 paid just over half (51.6%) of all individual income taxes, though they accounted for only 2.7% of all returns filed... Their average tax rate was 25.7%. By contrast, people with incomes of less than $50,000 accounted for 62.3% of all individual returns filed, but they paid just 5.7% of total taxes. Their average tax rate was 4.3%.

When you look at taxes paid compared to benefits received, the inequity becomes even more obvious.

The top 0.1% of families pay the equivalent of 39.2% and the bottom 20% have negative tax rates (that is, they get more money back from the government in the form of refundable tax credits than they pay in taxes).

Click to embiggen.

Here's another view. The numbers differ slightly because of timing differences, but the overall trend is clear. The 'rich' pay more than their fair share.

That trend is even more pronounced over time.

"...to the 1.38 million taxpayers in the top 1%, I say “Thank You” for paying almost as much in federal income taxes in 2013 as the 131.4 million taxpayers in the bottom 95% by income."

Final thoughts:

Bowling vs. Taxes. Under the scoring rules of bowling, you get rewarded, not penalized, for being successful. If you get a spare, the scoring system rewards you by adding the pins from the next ball into the current frame, and if you get a strike you get rewarded by adding your next 2 balls into the current frame.

Under our progressive income tax system with 7 tax rates in 2015 increasing from 10% to 39.6%, you get penalized, not rewarded, for being successful, productive and entrepreneurial, because the more you earn, the higher the tax rate you pay.

Coincidence? Why are Tax Day (April 15) and Voting Day (first Tuesday in November) so far apart? Couldn’t we move Tax Day to the first Monday in November or Voting Day to the first Tuesday following April 15?

What’s In a Name? Why do we call the IRS a “service?” Couldn’t it have been named a department like Labor, a bureau like the BLS or the FBI, a commission like the FTC, an administration like FDA, an agency like EPA, etc.?

That last one really struck home. The damn IRS is the farthest thing from a service I can think of. It is a cumbersome, inefficient, and highly politicized parasite that tramples common folks beneath its indifferent and uncaring feet. As long as criminals and thugs like Lois Lerner are allowed to freely bully individuals and groups in order to curry favor from their political masters the IRS will remain the most despised arm of the federal monster that lords it over us.

I would go on, but my wife just informed me that some people from the government are at the door...

Our Tax Dollars At Work

We're still a few months away from income tax season. But keep the following in the back of your mind when you write a check to the IRS. And definitely remember this come election time next November. (Courtesy of Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz.)

One of the few constants in Washington is tossing taxpayers’ hard-earned cash not just to special interests who hire the best lobbyists, but for misbegotten purposes that only Uncle Sam could imagine ... each outlay “represents thousands, millions or, in some cases, billions of dollars that could have been better spent on cancer research, strengthening national defense, caring for veterans, or not spent at all to reduce our debt.” So much for that dreadful austerity that congressional spendthrifts claim we are suffering through.

For instance, the National Institutes of Health spent about $10 million underwriting studies of monkeys on treadmills. Researchers said the results should be helpful to “address physiological responses of exercise in a marmoset model.”

And the benefit of understanding physiological responses of exercise in marmosets is... anyone? anyone? Bueller?

The Agency for International Development spent $2.1 million on tourism promotion for Lebanon... Last May the State Department issued a travel advisory urging Americans to avoid visiting - you guessed it - Lebanon.

Left hand, why don't you coordinate with Right Hand, so maybe we're not working at cross purposes. Just sayin'...

The National Science Foundation (NSF) provided $5 million to figure out how long a “koozie” would keep a beer cold.

I'd run that study for a whole lot less than $5M. Let's see, around $40 for two cases of Shiner and ice, another $5 for a koozie, and maybe $15 for an instant thermometer. That comes to approximately $60. Toss in another $4 million for my time and expertise and I've just saved the federal government a whopping $1M (less the $60 for materials).

The Department of Housing and Urban Development will spend $104.4 million in 2016 to subsidize housing for people who make too much money to be eligible for the program...

The Department of Defense spent $43 million to build one gas station in the city of Sheberghan, Afghanistan...

NSF showed up again with nearly $1 million to subsidize wine industry programs at three colleges. The classes emphasize wine-tasting by students not otherwise old enough to drink...

NSF provided another $276,194 to figure out the impact of physical attraction on dating. Spoiler alert: physical attractiveness speeds positive results...

Gee, who woulda thunk?

The Department of Defense, with nothing else in the world to do, is spending $2 million to develop music-playing robots. Both trumpet and jazz...

NSF spent $2.6 million studying why tweets are retweeted...

When you next hear a Washington official complain about how the federal government is starved for revenue and it isn’t possible to cut even a dollar from Uncle Sam’s allowance, think about Sen. Flake’s Wastebook. For most of us, the loss of a few thousand or million dollars matters. But obviously not in the nation’s capital.

Word.

The Dismal Science

One of the ways the left is winning the war is in the way they frame the debate. Here's a great example, courtesy of two of my favorite, and IMO two of the best, economists and political commentators out there.

First, the quote from Thomas Sowell:

Among the many other questions raised by the nebulous concept of “greed” is why it is a term applied almost exclusively to those who want to earn more money or to keep what they have already earned—never to those wanting to take other people’s money in taxes or to those wishing to live on the largess dispensed from such taxation. No amount of taxation is ever described by the anointed as “greed” on the part of government or the clientele of government. . . .

Think about that for a minute. When's the last time you heard about a government tax grab described as greedy? Excessive, perhaps, or unwise, but never the pejorative "greedy."

BTW - how's this for a biography?

Sowell was born in North Carolina, but grew up in Harlem, New York. He dropped out of high school and served in the United States Marine Corps during the Korean War. He received a Bachelor’s degree from Harvard University in 1958 and a Master’s degree from Columbia University in 1959. In 1968, he earned his Doctorate in Economics from the University of Chicago.

Just to make things tougher, Sowell is black. Can you imagine how tough it was for a black man in the 1950's to graduate from, much less get admitted to, three of the premier academic institutions in this country. But since he is a conservative, he receives very little notice, not to mention acclaim, from the media. He has the credentials that obama, Paul Krugman, and the rest of the media/leftist darlings lack.

Mark Perry is another of my go-to economic guys. He authors a blog that provides a sound economic basis for debunking the propaganda spewed by the left. Unlike Krugman, who is long on opinion and short on facts, Perry starts with facts and builds from there. Here's his take on Sowell's 'greed' quote.

Not bad, huh?

Anyway, if you're interested in an economic perspective on current events, I encourage you to follow Sowell here, or Perry here. If you do so, you will be much more informed, educated, and entertained.

Economics 101

It constantly amazes me how liberals (or progressives, or whatever else you want to call those fools who don't have a clue as to how the real world works) consistently ignore basic economics.

These Blue States Have Tried the Elizabeth Warren Model. Their Residents Are Fleeing.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren recently appeared on one of the late night talk shows, beating the class warfare drum and arguing for billions of dollars in new social programs paid for with higher taxes on millionaires and billionaires. In recent years, though, blue states such as California, Illinois, Delaware, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland and Minnesota adopted this very strategy, and they raised taxes on their wealthy residents. How did it work out? Almost all of these states lag behind the national average in growth of jobs and incomes.

So, if income redistribution policies are the solution to shrinking the gap between rich and poor, why do they fail so miserably in the states?

The blue states that try to lift up the poor with high taxes, high welfare benefits, high minimum wages and other Robin Hood policies tend to be the places where the rich end up the richest and the poor the poorest.

California is the prototypical example. It has the highest tax rates of any state. It has very generous welfare benefits. Many of its cities have a high minimum wage. But day after day, the middle class keeps leaving. The wealthy areas such as San Francisco and the Silicon Valley boom. Yet the state has nearly the highest poverty rate in the nation. The Golden State, alas, has become the inequality state.

So much for liberal policies creating a workers paradise.

The 19 states with minimum wages above the $7.25 per hour federal minimum do not have lower income inequality. States with a super minimum wage—such as Connecticut ($9.15), California ($9.00), New York ($8.75), and Vermont ($9.15)—have significantly wider gaps between rich and poor than states without a super minimum wage.

Anyone with a basic understanding of economics realizes that labor has value - but that value is determined by the market, not by the government. If the government imposes an artificial value on labor, businesses will seek the most efficient means of minimizing labor costs.

Hint to the libs/progs: machines don't require minimum wages or other government mandated benefits.

The ‘Fight for $15’ Suffers A Setback As McDonald’s Flirts With Automation

By the third quarter of next year, McDonald’s plans to introduce new technology in some markets “to make it easier for customers to order and pay for food digitally...

More:

Robots will replace fast-food workers

As protesters across the country call for the fast-food chains to raise their wages, a number of companies have begun experimenting with new technology that could significantly reduce the number of restaurant workers in the years to come.

Panera Bread is the latest chain to introduce automated service, announcing in April that it plans to bring self-service ordering kiosks as well as a mobile ordering option to all its locations within the next three years. The news follows moves from Chili's and Applebee's to place tablets on their tables, allowing diners to order and pay without interacting with human wait staff at all.

In a widely cited paper released last year, University of Oxford researchers estimated that there is a 92% chance that fast-food preparation and serving will be automated in the coming decades.

My first 'real' job - not counting my paper route or a lawn mowing service - was as a 16-year-old fry cook at a fast food restaurent in Alamo Heights, Texas (not a chain, but a single establishment owned by a guy who should have known better than to hire teen-agers).

Anyway, the owner did his best to minimize labor costs. His efforts had unintended consequences, one of which was our tendency to make huge triple-stacked burgers and incredibly rich shakes, not only for ourselves but for our buddies. He would have been better off paying more in order to get more responsible employees.

Fast forward to 2015. Rather than pay fast food workers a rate much higher than their labor is worth (not denigrating the workers, but rather being realistic concerning the value of their labor), employers are beginning to invest in lower cost automation.

What's next - the government setting a minimum wage for robots...?

Wine Woes

As if the ongoing drought and the recent earthquake in California weren't enough to cause problems for the wine industry there, now we have the state government piling on.

Castro Valley winery fined $115,000 for using volunteers

A small-time vintner's use of volunteer workers has put him out of business after the state squeezed him like a late-summer grape for $115,000 in fines -- and sent a chill through the wine industry.

The volunteers, some of them learning to make wine while helping out, were illegally unpaid laborers, and Westover Winery should have been paying them and paying worker taxes, the state Department of Industrial Relations said.

"I didn't know it was illegal to use volunteers at a winery; it's a common practice," said winery owner Bill Smyth.

State law prohibits for-profit businesses from using volunteers.

Before the fine, volunteer labor was common at wineries in the nearby Livermore Valley, said Fenestra Winery owner Lanny Replogle.

"But not anymore," he said Monday. When word got around, several wineries sent their volunteers home.

What next? Will the Red Cross be fined for using volunteers? In a state with a cratering economy, one would think the powers-that-be would do everything they could to help small businesses - heck, any businesses - to succeed.

One would be wrong.

(The winery's owners) are holding a going-out-of-business sale and plan to shut down before the end of the year. The fines represent more than a decade's worth of profits for the winery (emphasis added), which nets about $11,000 a year, Smyth said.

"There's just no money left; they've taken everything," he said.

"We're a small winery, open only 10 hours a week. We didn't really need any helpers; we were just educating people about wine," he said.

About half the people the state considered Westover employees were taking a free class at the Palomares Canyon Road winery. Students learned about growing vines, harvesting and blending grapes and marketing the finished product.

"This was an incredible opportunity for me," said Peter Goodwin, a home winemaker from Walnut Creek who said he dreams of opening a winery with some friends. "I got to learn from someone who knows the business."

The winery sometimes asked Goodwin if he wanted to assist in different tasks.

"That's what I wanted, to be as involved as much as possible -- it was all about learning," he said. "I don't understand the state's action. It was my time, and I volunteered."

Ken Tatum took the classes because he thought it would be fun to learn more about making wine and running a winery. The state fines were ridiculous and unfair, he said.

"I should be able to volunteer my time," said the retired Castro Valley resident.

I'm sorry, Mr. Tatum, but the state, in its infinite wisdom, has decreed that you should not be able to volunteer your time. The state, you see, knows better than you what is in your best interest.

So one business gets shut down, the owners lose a substantial amount of money, people who were learning a trade no longer have that opportunity, and the state loses tax revenue.

Well done, government bureaucrats!

Why, Tatum asked, didn't the state first warn Smyth that using volunteers was not OK?

The law does not allow for warnings, Melton said.

If there's one thing government drones are good at, it's following orders...

What A Revolting Development This Is

I like to think of myself as a glass-is-half-full kind of guy, tempered with a healthy dose of realism. But lately that dose of realism has reached such proportions that it threatens to overwhelm my normally sunny disposition. I won't post a laundry list of reasons why that is so. It would take too long and be too depressing. Besides, I'm sure you're familiar enough with them yourself. But I will post one more gloom and doom article. Tomorrow, however, I promise there will be something to take your mind off all these clouds gathering over our heads. In the meantime, though, you'll have to suffer through this.

In real terms, the U.S. economy expanded by a total of $290 billion dollars in 2013. With some minor adjustments, that's essentially the amount of extra income created by the nation as a whole. It also represents the increase in the purchasing power of its residents.

By comparison, China's economy added over $800 billion dollars to its citizens spending power during 2013 alone. That's an extra $800 billion that is now available for Chinese households to purchase new products and services or to save and help fund new ideas and technologies. At this rate, China is expected to overtake the U.S. as the largest marketplace in the world by the end of the decade.

One implication of this trend is that international capital -- both financial and intellectual -- will begin to shift from the U.S. to China. As a result the chicoms will be able to invest in new and improved physical facilities and infrastructure. They will also attract the 'best and brightest' by virtue of being able to provide opportunities for innovation and growth. The U.S., in contrast, will become less and less attractive to producers and entrepreneurs.

What can be done?

A lot is beyond our control. China is already large and is still growing quickly. Although the pace is starting to slow, the yuan is still undervalued by perhaps 10 percent or 15 percent, and it is hard not to see its economy making similar size gains for the rest of the decade.

But the U.S. can and should grow faster. It needs to grow faster. For demographic and budgetary reasons. And also to ensure it remains an attractive place for biotechnology, communications, electronics and other forms of frontier knowledge. Low growth perpetuates itself.

How did we get in this mess? In short, declining workforce participation.

(Average labor productivity and economic growth) have fallen sharply in the last few years. Some of this is surely cyclical. But much is beginning to look structural. The Congressional Budget Office now estimates that U.S. economic growth will remain below post-war levels well into the next decade ... the growth in total hours worked will fall to just 0.6 percent per year. Since population growth will continue unabated well into the next few decades, this means that the average American is expected to work less and less.

The decline in working hours has been happening for quite some time now. More precisely, after adjusting for population growth, fewer and fewer Americans are working, or even trying to work. In 1999, at the height of the tech boom, over 74 percent of working-age Americans were employed. The same ratio is now 67.4 percent. That represents a loss of about 14 million workers. It also appears that those still at work are also working slightly fewer hours, although the evidence is less clear.

Reversing this trend has to be a priority for the next administration. And virtually every major domestic policy debate should be viewed from this perspective. Any policy reform that fails to deal with this issue has to be seen as an outright failure.

For example, the ongoing changes in health care law may or may not lead to improvements in the provision of quality medical care. However, their impact on the labor market is nothing short of disastrous. Once fully implemented, income-linked subsidies for individuals, combined with the employer mandates and various tax penalties, are estimated to cost us a minimum of another 2.5 million full time jobs.

Two related problems:

Reforming Social Security and immigration are two other major unresolved policy issues that will have a large impact on the incentives for households to work, on job creation, and ultimately the U.S. economy's growth potential. These have to be our primary focus.

These are the types of problems that in the past were addressed at least to some extent by our elected 'leaders.' But today's politicians are more concerned with cementing their worthless posteriors into office in perpetuity than in solving the problems we face. Until that changes (or until we change them) things will continue moving from bad to worse.

Equal Pay For Equal Work

One of the issues sure to surface in the 2014 elections is the so-called gender pay gap. Google those three little words and you'll get "About 32,600,000 results." Here's an excerpt from one.

When it comes the gender pay gap there is (a) one famous statistic that everybody knows; (b) a couple famous rebuttals to that statistic; and (c) one big unanswered question about equal pay for men and women.

The statistic is that a woman earns $0.77 for every $1 earned by a man. The 77-cent talking point is everywhere, and too often the conversation ends with the double-sevens.

The rebuttals matter. The 77-cent stat doesn't account for the fact that women choose different jobs than men (often in lower-paid occupations and industries). It doesn't account for the fact that many women choose ... to leave the workforce for extended periods of time, which means they have less work experience by the time they turn 40 or 50.

But even when you equalize for all these variables, a pay gap of about 9 percent persists between men and women, and it's particularly cavernous at the top end of the income scale. Why?

The article goes on to point out that the gap is significantly influenced by time: "time since entering the workforce and time spent working." Since many women - rightly or wrongly - are primary caregivers for their families, they spend correspondingly less time on the job. That translates into lower pay.

Nevertheless, there is reason to believe that the gap is narrowing.

On Pay Gap, Millennial Women Near Parity – For Now

A new cohort of young women—members of the so-called Millennial generation—has been entering the workforce for the past decade. At the starting line of their careers, they are better educated than their mothers and grandmothers had been...

...In 2012, among workers ages 25 to 34, women’s hourly earnings were 93% those of men...

...In 2012, the median hourly wage for women, full-time and part-time workers combined, was 84% as much as men ($14.90 vs. $17.79).5 In 1980, the gap had been much wider: the median hourly wage for women was 64% as much as men ($11.94 vs. $18.57 per hour, in 2012 dollars)...

But...

Clearly, Millennial women are well-situated for career success and advancement. However, analysis going back to 1980 suggests that the gender gap in earnings may increase for them as it has for earlier cohorts of young women. Looking at the most recent cohorts of young women, by the time they reached their mid-30s, their earnings relative to those of men began to fall further behind, even if they had started out ahead of the previous cohort of young women.

Motherhood is one factor, as it can lead to interruptions in career paths for women and increased time spent on unpaid work at home. Most Millennial women aren’t there yet, but when they do have young children at home, their level of participation in the labor force is likely to decline.

As will their pay in relation to their male counterparts with uninterrupted career paths.

There is, however, one industry in which the gender gap is reversed. In this field, women make around 3 1/2 times as much as men.

...females earning upward of $350,000 annually and top male stars pulling in around $100,000.

Before all you ladies stampede to the hiring office, be forewarned that we're talking about the porn industry.

Despite what you may think, life as a porn star isn't all fun and games.

One of the biggest problems for female porn stars is that their careers, which typically begin in their early 20s, tend to be short—the typical career arc stretches from six to 18 months. Thus, most adult actors find themselves "retired" before age 25 and many are forced to pursue new avenues.

...some go back to school to earn a degree; some invest in hot artisan industries, including winemaking; still others turn to more adventurous careers, like bounty hunting, which is where you'll find retired porn star and professional wrestler Sandra Scott...

Others follow the same boring, but tried-and-true financial advice that enabled me to retire a few years early: "You save, you invest, and you diversify..."

Like I used to tell my students (and still tell my kids), any day you don't learn something is a wasted day. As a result of reading this blog, you now have (hopefully) learned several things you didn't know before.

You're welcome.

Burned Out?

On Feb. 7 the U.S. government will bump into the federal debt ceiling - again.

Unless congress raises the ceiling, the federal government will be unable to pay all its bills.

"Without borrowing authority, at some point very soon, it would not be possible to meet all of the obligations of the federal government,” (Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew) said...

So where's all the drama? The fireworks? Why doesn't anyone seem concerned?

Is it because, after all the sturm und drang of the sequester and the government shutdown, we're all burned out over faux fiscal crises?

Or is it because most people think that the debt ceiling will be raised without the brinksmanship and theatrics of last year?

I suspect it's the latter. The republicans feel burned by the way they were portrayed as obstructionists and extremists. That's what happens when the media is firmly on one side, and the other side is woefully inept at getting its message out to boot.

What we have here is a system that is broken in many ways. One of the more systemic is the current process in which congress continuously passes spending bills far in excess of tax revenue, separate and apart from legislation authorizing the debt ceiling. Not only does that encourage fiscal irresponsibility -- how long can any entity exist by spending more than it brings in? -- but it also decouples any limit on borrowing funds from the process that creates the necessity to borrow those selfsame funds.

Unifying the spending, revenue, and debt actions into a single process and bill would help clarify and highlight the nation's financial situation.

Maybe that's why they don't want to do it...

Of course, any serious discussion of the country's finances simply must begin with a hard look at how, and how much, $$$ is spent on things that never should see the light of day. Here's just one example.

The Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management is taking heat for spending $98,670 to install a single outhouse at a trailhead in Alaska, the most recent example of federal agencies making questionable purchases in September.

That last bit - the part about "questionable purchases in September" - is related to the 'spend it or lose it' aspect of the federal budgeting process, whereby an agency's budget for the next fiscal year (which ends Sep. 30) is based on how much of their budget was spent in the previous year. If the agency doesn't spend all its allocated funds (or more), next year's budget is slashed. That results in a powerful negative incentive to spend, spend, spend.

Back to our example:

The prefabricated Aspen Single, produced by outhouse manufacturer Romtec Inc., has a single toilet, operates without water and can hold 750 to 1,000 gallons of waste. But the company website puts the estimated starting price of the unit at $10,000, a little more than one-tenth of what the government paid.

Okay, I know what you're thinking. Why on earth did the government pay almost ten times what a private citizen would have paid? We'll get to that in a moment. But first, think about this a little deeper. Basically, we're talking about a shed over a hole in the ground that holds somewhere around 1000 gallons.

The taxpayer-funded $98,000 outhouse.

Granted, it's a nice looking shed. But still, I can dig a big hole, line it with sealant so the contents don't leach out, and build a shed over it for one helluva lot less than $10K, much less $100K. So why the inflated cost?

After five companies competed for the contract, BLM hired Alaska-based Big Street Construction, a small company run by a married couple that is listed in federal databases as both owned by a woman and minority-owned.

"...owned by a woman and minority-owned."

Oh.

Now I get it.

But wait. It gets worse. Instead of constructing the outhouse themselves, the "woman and minority-owned" firm turned around and purchased it from a company that actually builds the damn things.

The actual manufacturer, Romtec, is based in Oregon, and government paperwork lists it as the manufacturing location. That suggests that the unit itself is being transported to Alaska all the way from Oregon. The trip from Romtec’s headquarters to the trailhead is almost 2,500 miles.

That means we taxpayers are being billed for the cost of the outhouse, including the manufacturing firm's overhead and profit, along with transportation costs from Oregon to Alaska, installation cost, and the "woman and minority-owned" firm's overhead and profit.

And here's the cherry on top of the outhouse sundae. The outhouse doesn't have internal plumbing. It's basically a fancy port-a-potty sitting on top of a small septic tank. At some point the tank will get full, which means the BLM will have to hire a private company to empty it. That means another grossly (hah!) inflated federal contract to some loophole-savvy firm.

Of course, BLM personnel could empty the tank themselves.

Let's see a show of hands from everyone who thinks that will happen...

Since the federal government knows only one way to deal with crap - dump it on the taxpayers - there's little doubt what their solution will be.

A Modest Proposal To Reduce The Deficit

If the SCOAMF currently wasting oxygen in the Oval Office truly wanted to offer solutions instead of spouting nonsense during last night's State of the Union address, there is one simple change he could make to the federal budgeting process that would be of immense value in trimming the deficit.

Most of you who have experience with how the federal government administers its budget are probably way ahead of me. For those of you blissfully ignorant, in a nutshell here's how it works.

Next year's budget is to a large extent based on the current year's budget. If an agency doesn't spend all of its budgeted funds in Year A, its budget for Year B is reduced by the amount of the unspent funds. This creates what economists call a 'perverse incentive' - that is, an incentive that produces an undesirable or adverse consequence as a result of the actions undertaken to receive the incentive.

Here's the budgeting process perverse incentive in action.

All week, while Congress fought over (the 2014) budget, federal workers were immersed in a separate frantic drama. They were trying to spend the rest of this year’s budget before it is too late.

The reason for their haste is a system set up by Congress that, in many cases, requires agencies to spend all their allotted funds by Sept. 30.

If they don’t, the money becomes worthless to them on Oct. 1. And — even worse — if they fail to spend the money now, Congress could dock their funding in future years. The incentive, as always, is to spend.

So they spent. It was the return of one of Washington’s oldest bad habits: a blitz of expensive decisions, made by agencies with little incentive to save.

Private contractors ... brought in food to keep salespeople at their desks. Federal workers quizzed harried colleagues in the hallways, asking if they had spent it all yet.

“The way we budget [money] sets it up,” said Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.). “Because instead of being praised for not spending all your money, you get cut for not spending all your money...”

Seems like an easy fix, no? So why hasn't it been changed by now?

Maybe because the fatcats in congress and heading up all those federal agencies are getting their backs scratched by the large corporations who are getting fat at the government trough.

And my wife wonders why I drink so much...

A Modest Proposal To Reduce Income Inequality

Income inequality is the latest liberal crusade. It is also a load of crap. Here is just one of many analyses to support that statement.

Income by Household	% in 1967	% in 2009
Less than $50,000	61.4%	50.1%
$50,000 to $200,000	38.0%	45.9%
Over $200,000	0.6%	3.8%

The table shows that the amount of people making over $200,000 per year has certainly grown while the middle group has also grown and the amount of people in the lowest economic strata has declined. More households have moved into the middle-class and more people have joined the highest income group.

(The data comes from the US Census Bureau ... (it) is in constant dollars to remove the impact of inflation/disinflation from the analysis.)

But refuting the notion of income inequality is not the point of this post. Most people (myself included) can cherry-pick and torture numbers to support any position we care to take. What I would like to do today is to offer a suggestion to help decrease the (perceived and alleged) rise of income inequality.

I've spent the last five years working in South Texas, which is enjoying an unprecedented economic boom as a result of energy-related activity in the Eagle Ford Shale region. It's not just the energy companies that are benefiting. Good-paying jobs are plentiful. Landowners are reaping windfall profits, and not just from mineral rights or drilling fees. Housing, grocery stores, restaurants, shops, commercial developments ... all are going through the roof.

The same results can be seen in the Bakken Shale Oil region in North Dakota.

In 2006, North Dakota ranked 38th among the states in average personal income. By 2012, it was sixth. Department of Commerce data show that over those six years, North Dakota’s per capita personal income went from 14 percent below the national average to 25 percent above.

Granted, having a heaping helping of energy reserves in your back yard helps raise income levels. But that's missing the point. Take a closer look at a tale of two states.

...the Marcellus shale, which has been the biggest new source for the nation’s natural gas renaissance, is for the most part located beneath New York and Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania has allowed landowners to rapidly develop the reserves they own, while New York has maintained a moratorium on the smart-drilling technology (hydraulic fracturing and directional drilling) that unleashes the gas.

The farmers on the New York side of the state line gnash their teeth, while the farmers in Pennsylvania cash their checks. One state grabbed the brass ring while the other thumbed its nose at jobs, income and lower energy prices.

The picture on the national level is strikingly similar.

Our stunning increase in petroleum production (nearly 40 percent in the past three years) has occurred almost exclusively on state and private land. In fact, production on federal land dropped over the past couple of years.

One statistic epitomizes why that is so: In North Dakota, it takes about 10 days to get a drilling permit. In contrast, the delay for a federal drilling permit is about 10 months—double what it was in 2005.

Money quote:

You’d think that an administration that is so intent on redistributing income would be a little more sympathetic to generating the income in the first place.

Bottom line, if obama and his cronies are serious about increasing income for the majority of American workers, they'd devote more time to removing impediments to innovation and job growth, and less time to political posturing.

When pigs fly...

Confused And Conflicted

This is one of those situations that end up leaving me confused and conflicted.

I was reading a story in the local paper about pending legislation in congress to extend unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed. My first reaction was "No way. Let the lazy bastards get a job."

Then I thought about the dismal state of the job market.

"...while the short-term unemployment rate is back near its pre-crisis levels, the long-term unemployment rate remains higher than at any point from we began collecting records in 1948 to the onset of the Great Recession."

Meanwhile, obama is running around spouting off about 'his' economic recovery.

Saying the economy is doing better than it was a year ago, Obama said "I firmly believe that 2014 can be a breakthrough year for America."

Does anyone besides me see the irony of barry proclaiming that the economy is doing well, while at the same time saying we need to extend long term unemployment benefits?

Which brings me back to the story in the local paper. It focused on a San Antonio woman who was laid off and has been unable to find work. Now her unemployment insurance has expired.

When she was laid off in April, Catherine Dueñas was making nearly $60,000 and was so confident her solid work record would land her another job quickly that she felt no need to apply for food stamps.

That was 10 months ago, by far the longest the 50-year-old mother of three — who evaluated contracts with physician groups for an insurance company — has been without work.

... long boring recap of unemployment benefits bill here ...

She reapplied at UnitedHealth Group, her employer of 12 years, as well as other companies, including Valero Energy Corp., USAA, Martin Marietta, and Baker Hughes.

She said hiring managers told her she'd be a great hire — if she had had a college degree.

Why? She's done the job for 30 years. What would a college degree add to her qualifications? Where do these inane HR requirements come from?

“I've always wanted to go to school but always had to work to support my family,” she said. “I know now that I need to be able to do that, to be able to get back into the same market.”

Her plan is now to take out student loans for an associate's degree in business at San Antonio College.

Poor woman. She's been convinced that taking out student loans to get her a two-year business degree from the local community college will make her more marketable. She's 50 now. When she gets done paying off those loans it will be time for her to retire.

I realize I've been rambling. Despite the simple sound bites being broadcast from D.C., this is a complex problem without a simple solution. While the congresscritters play politics real people are being hurt.

Is It Worth It?

Our son has been home from college the last month or so on Christmas break. The Spring semester starts on Monday. He's leaving Friday "to get a head start on the new semester" (read: to party all weekend before going back to class).

His grades for his first college semester were a little disappointing. He was an A/B student in high school. He had the infuriating habit of doing just enough to make the minimum grade cut-off level; his A's were all 89.5s, his B's 79.5s. If he had spent as much time studying as he did figuring out how to get by with the minimum effort he would have been the valedictorian.

Youth ... sigh...

Anyway, his college grades were all one level lower - B's and C's instead of A's and B's. We had a little come-to-Jesus meeting about them. He now understands that if there is not significant improvement this semester his future options include living at home while going to the local community college, joining the military, or moving out and getting a job.

With that as background, I ran across this article.

New year, same bad news for recent college grads

If you’re getting ready to send junior back for his spring semester of college (or preparing to start your own), you may want to avoid the latest edition of the New York Fed’s Issues in Economics and Finance. In it, three Fed economists ask “Are Recent College Graduates Finding Good Jobs,” and the news is sure to fuel talk of a “higher education bubble.” In just seven short pages, the paper lands a series of body blows on the college value proposition.

Among the findings:

1. Underemployment for recent college graduates is high and has steadily increased since 2001.

During the first decade of the 2000s, the underemployment rate rose somewhat sharply after both the 2001 and 2007-09 recessions, and in each case, only partially retreated, resulting in an increase to roughly 44 percent by 2012. Thus, it appears that the underemployment rate has, in fact, been rising for recent college graduates since 2001.

2. Underemployed college graduates are increasingly working lower quality jobs.

The proportion of recent graduates holding “good non-college jobs” (those earning $45,000 or more per year in 2012) has plummeted since 2001, while the percentage holding “low-wage jobs” (those with average salaries below $25,000) jumped during that period.

3. Not all college majors are created equal.

Among recent grads who majored in business, 50% were underemployed and 6% were unemployed; in communications, 54%, 6 %; in liberal arts, 52% and 8%; and in leisure and hospitality, 63% and 7%. At the other end of the spectrum, engineering majors fared particularly well (20% underemployed, 5% unemployed), as did those who studied health (22%, 3%). Education majors also did well (22%, 4%), an indication of how the public schools fared when compared to the rest of the economy.

Supplementing the above, a Hamilton Project report has found that nearly half of families in the U.S. fall into the "lower-middle class" category, defined as those with income between 100 and 250 percent of the federal poverty level (that is, between roughly $15,000 and $60,000, depending on family size and composition). Almost half of those families are headed by individuals who have attended college, with 14% of them holding a bachelor's degree or higher.

In other words, a college degree is not a ticket to the middle class (or above).

Just what parents want to hear as their kids get ready for a new semester...

For Harper

Harper is having trouble with her bank. This post is for her.

A Tiny Silver Lining

This is how low our government has sunk. An emerging budget deal to avoid another round of faux-crises is being hailed as good news.

I guess it is one small step forward compared to the recent D.C. follies (see: sequester; shutdown), but it's still a far cry from what this country really needs - adult leadership.

The good news for Congress is that if both houses pass a budget deal by Friday, they get to go home for Christmas break with no high-stakes fiscal grudge match awaiting them when they get back. And the prospects for passing a budget deal being hammered out by Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), maybe even without the histrionics of recent years, seem to be pretty good.

The deal reportedly proposes to authorize about $1.015 trillion in discretionary funding, more than the $967 billion sought by Republicans — the amount specified in the budget-slicing sequestration that kicked in earlier this year — and less than the $1.058 trillion sought by Democrats. Spitting the difference — so far, so good.

But other than partially reversing the sequestration, Democrats don't appear to be getting much in the package ...

What are the Republicans giving up? A little bit of deficit-reduction, primarily — though a hefty chunk of the increased spending will be used to ease $19 billion in Defense Department cuts scheduled to kick in come January. Most Republicans would like to avoid those cuts...

Republicans also gain from what's not in the emerging deal: There's no raising of the debt ceiling and, equally important, it erases the risk of another government shutdown anytime soon. Congress is deeply, deeply unpopular, and Republicans are still more unpopular than Democrats, in large part because they're seen as obstructionist. A budget deal without any big Tea Party theatrics would be a welcome change for GOP leaders concerned with portraying the party as ready to govern.

Left unsaid in this whole mess is that all the agreement does is give congress the holidays off. It merely avoids another long and loud argument over shutting the government down or balancing the budget. Rather than solving our long term problems, it just kicks the can down the road.

Again...

Drowning In Debt

The recent 'solution' to the government shutdown did nothing but kick the can a little farther down the road. In a few months we'll go through the budget/debt ceiling drama all over again. Rather than spend a lot of time commenting about it I'll just post this cartoon which does a damn good job of illustrating the difference between the two different approaches favored by liberals and conservatives. (H/T Mark Perry)

Needless to say, obama and the dems are all wet...

A Modest Proposal That We Desperately Need

Thirty-plus years ago the Texas legislature established something called the Sunset Advisory Commission. It's stated purpose:

"to identify and eliminate waste, duplication, and inefficiency in government agencies ... The Commission questions the need for each agency, looks for potential duplication of other public services or programs, and considers new and innovative changes to improve each agency's operations and activities."

Like many government programs it has produced mixed results. It's a good idea beset by politics and flawed implementation. Still, overall it has done more good than harm, which is not something we can say about most other legislation (see: obamacare).

I've long desired to see a similar law put into effect at the national level. Now there's a chance that may come to pass.

Thomas Stemberg is the founder of Staples - the national office supply chain. Here's what he has to say on the matter in a recent WSJ article.

Nearly 30 years ago, I started a company called Staples Inc. that went on to do pretty well. Launching a business like Staples in 2013 would be a much harder proposition, with success by no means certain. There are so many government impediments to business today that the next Staples—and its 50,000 jobs—might never get off the ground.

Chief among those roadblocks: the blizzard of bureaucratic red tape that buries businesses and stifles job creation ... All told, American business faces 46,758 pages of rules to live by in the Federal Register.

This confounding web of federal regulations may be curtailed if Sens. Angus King (independent, Maine) and Roy Blunt (R., Mo.) have anything to say about it. Their Regulatory Improvement Act of 2013 could be a game changer.

The legislation introduced in late July would create a bipartisan Regulatory Improvement Commission, charged with recommending cuts in the regulatory regime, and the law would require Congress to vote on the proposals. This is desperately needed. The government has few processes at its disposal through which it can re-evaluate the efficacy of outdated regulations—and many members of Congress lack the expertise, time and courage to effectively scale them back.

The King-Blunt proposal is modeled on the Defense Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC). Like the Texas Sunset Commission, BRAC consists of an independent, bipartisan panel. It was created in the late 1980s and tasked with reducing the number of military bases. While not everyone agrees with everything BRAC recommends, the results have been significant.

Since 1988, there have been 121 major base closures, 79 major base realignments (which may close down part of a facility or transfer personnel away from it) and 1,000 minor closures and realignments under BRAC.

In short, the BRAC Commission gave politicians what they crave most: cover. Nobody back home could blame them for losing a military base. The King-Blunt proposal will give representatives the same cover with regulations.

The proposed bipartisan Regulatory Improvement Commission would be charged with identifying redundant, obsolete, and excessive regulations. We all can cite numerous examples of such job-killing and economy-strangling rules. Below are two such tales. The first one is, sadly and unbelievably, true. The second one is not (but no one would be surprised if it was).

Tales of the Red Tape #40: The USDA Rabbit Police

There’s no good way to deliver this disturbing bit of news except to come right out with it: Marty the Magician and others in the business of pulling a rabbit from a hat are under strict orders from the federal government to develop a “contingency plan” for handling their critters in the event of a natural or man-made disaster.

Said plan will be evaluated once a year, when enforcers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) make their annual unannounced bunny home inspections. Oh, and all magicians are required to carry a copy of the contingency plan at all times and make it available for inspection while in “travel status."

With the July 29 compliance deadline looming, the USDA recently sent Marty the Magician (aka Marty Hahne of Springfield, Missouri) an eight-page communiqué detailing requirements for the plan, which must:

• Identify common emergencies most likely to occur,
• Outline specific tasks required to be carried out in response to each of the identified emergencies,
• Identify a chain of command and who (by name or by position title) will be responsible for fulfilling these tasks, and
• Address how response and recovery will be handled in terms of materials, resources, and training needs.

All of which means that Marty must prepare for all the calamities that could possibly befall Casey the Rabbit while making the rounds of more than 150 performance venues he visits each year, including schools, libraries, churches, and homes.

Alas, this isn’t Marty’s first encounter with the bunny patrol. By law, magicians must be licensed by the federal government to use rabbits in their acts, as specified in Title 9, Chapter I, Subchapter A, Parts 1-4 of the Animal Welfare Act.

Marty’s first home inspection didn’t go so well. He was written up because Casey’s travel cage lacked stickers indicating “live animal” and the arrows pointing upward (in the event he’s tempted to carry the cage upside down). When questioning the enforcement action, Marty was warned that verbal abuse of an inspector carries a fine of $1,000 per incident.

Yes, you read that right. The federal government actually has an agency (and agents!) that regulates and inspects bunny rabbits used in magic acts - and intimidates anyone who dares question them.

To make matters worse, they're armed.

Now for the fictional story (hard to tell them apart, isn't it.)

Noah and the Ark - Updated

In the year 2013, the Lord came unto Noah, who was now living in America and said: "Once again, the earth has become wicked and over-populated, and I see the end of all flesh before me."

"Build another Ark and save two of every living thing along with a few good humans."

He gave Noah the blueprints, saying: "You have six months to build the Ark before I will start the unending rain for 40 days and 40 nights."

Six months later, the Lord looked down and saw Noah weeping in his yard – but no Ark."Noah!," He roared, "I’m about to start the rain! Where is the Ark?"

"Forgive me, Lord," begged Noah, "but things have changed."

"I needed a Building Permit."

"I’ve been arguing with the Boat Inspector about the need for a sprinkler system."

"My homeowners association claim that I’ve violated the Neighborhood by-laws by building the Ark in my back yard and exceeding the height limitations. We had to go to the local Planning Committee for a decision."

"Then the City Council and the Electricity Company demanded a shed load of money for the future costs of moving power lines and other overhead obstructions, to clear the passage for the Ark’s move to the sea. I told them that the sea would be coming to us, but they would hear none of it."

"Getting the wood was another problem. There’s a ban on cutting local trees in order to save the Greater Spotted Barn Owl."

"I tried to convince the environmentalists that I needed the wood to save the owls – but no go!"

"When I started gathering the animals, PETA took me to court. They insisted that I was confining wild animals against their will. They argued the accommodations were too restrictive and it was cruel and inhumane to put so many animals in a confined space."

"Then the Environmental Protection Agency ruled that I couldn’t build the Ark until they’d conducted an environmental impact study on Your proposed flood."

"I’m still trying to resolve a complaint with the Human Rights Commission on how many minorities I’m supposed to hire for my building crew."

"The Immigration Dept. Is checking the visa status of most of the people who want to work."

"The labor unions say I can’t use my sons. They insist I have to hire only union workers with ark-building experience."

"To make matters worse, the IRS seized all my assets, claiming I’m trying to leave the country illegally with endangered species."

"So, forgive me, Lord, but it would take at least 10 years for me to finish this ark."

"Suddenly the skies cleared, the sun began to shine and a rainbow stretched across the sky."

Noah looked up in wonder and asked, "You mean you’re not going to destroy the world?"

"No," said the Lord. " The Government beat me to it."

Amen...

Hard Times In Nevada

Lots of businesses have been suffering during the obama economic 'recovery.' But I never thought that would include brothels.

 The legal prostitution industry in Nevada is on its back. So say brothel owners, their employees and customers.

George Flint, who somehow manages to be both a retired minister and the brothel industry's lobbyist (hey, it's Nevada) told ABC News that gross revenues are down 40 percent to 50 percent from what they were 10 years ago. The number of legal operators has shrunk from 37 to 19.

"Just like every other small business in the U.S.," said Flint, "brothels have been affected by the downturn in the economy. In as much as they depend on discretionary spending, there's not a lot of that to go around."

Brothel experts say additional factors explain their industry's slump. The Internet now makes it easy for illegal, freelance prostitutes to hook up with customers, circumventing legal brothels.

"Substitute service is being offered," Flint said.

Like Miley Cyrus...

In addition, he said, the price of diesel fuel is up. That means truckers -- among brothels' most reliable customers -- have less to spend.

Not all brothels are suffering equally.

"Small mom-and-pop operations with three or four girls" are suffering the worst, said Flint.

"mom-and-pop operations" ... really? You'd think a lobbyist could come up with a better term for small establishments.

But even the biggest operations are reporting sharp declines. The owner of the famous Mustang Ranch, said Flint, told him just the other day that his business, compared to a year ago, is down by 3,000 "dates."

"The concept that sex will always sell probably is not a true concept," said the lobbyist. "It's not that there's any less interest in sex; it's just that people don't have the dollars to spend."

Hard times beget consolidation, and at least one big, deep-pocketed operator is using the downturn as a chance to expand by buying up struggling competitors.

Dennis Hof, who owns the Moonlight Bunny Ranch outside Carson City, Nev., told Bloomberg that the recession has allowed him to buy five more brothels, bringing his total to seven.

When the economy comes back, Bloomberg quoted him as saying, "I think I'm going to do real well."

In gambling, that's called "betting on the come."

Meanwhile, a new threat looms on the horizon: higher taxation. To date, brothels have not been subject to Nevada's 8 percent tax on live entertainment. But bills introduced in the state's last legislative session would change that.

Combining a new tax on brothels with existing estate taxes means the tax man will get you coming and going...

Idle brothel workers sit around and discuss the economy.

Sick And Tired

Bear with me. This post takes a while to get to the point, but there is one.

obama was bumbling around my neck of the woods yesterday, trying to divert attention from the Benghazi hearings and at the same time fool people into thinking he's doing something to improve the economy.

Obama touts economic recovery in visit to Austin area

President Barack Obama came to Texas on Thursday to tout the economic recovery...

Traveling to the heart of a state that bounced back quicker than many after the deep recession, Obama said the government has a role in fostering policies to encourage innovation, improve education and help assure middle-class jobs and opportunity.

Obama was greeted by a half-page ad in the Austin newspaper from Gov. Rick Perry that tweaked the president, saying the lesson he should take from Texas is that economic success is the product of low taxes, light regulation and protecting businesses from lawsuits.

Gov. Goodhair has a point. barry is claiming that recent stock market gains and rising economic indicators justify whatever it is he's doing to improve the economy (Can anyone name three things obama has done that have stimulated the economy? Anyone? Bueller...?)

But underlying those optimistic and IMO misleading reports is the ugly fact that the U.S. job market is a train wreck.

For all the positivity about the April jobs report—lowest unemployment rate in four years!—the U.S. job market remains dismal. One statistic makes the point: Just 58.6 percent of American civilians aged 16 and up had jobs in April, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s a lower employment-to-population ratio than during the worst of the 2007-09 recession. Even though the jobless rate has fallen, millions of people aren’t counted as unemployed because they’ve stopped looking for work, or never started.

The breakdown of the labor market can be blamed on either supply or demand. Those who argue that the supply of labor is the main problem say that many Americans simply aren’t qualified for the jobs available. On May 7, the BLS reported that there were more than 3.8 million job openings in the U.S. at the end of March—at a time when more than 11 million people were looking for work.

The “supply” case hinges on the notion that the working world is getting more complicated and demanding. “Complexity has opened a great divide between those who have mastered its requirements and those who haven’t,” Brink Lindsey, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the Kauffman Foundation, argues in a new book, Human Capitalism. The economists’ term of art for this is “skill-based technical change.”

One fact supporting the "American's aren't qualified" argument is that our institutions of higher education are doing a poor job of preparing graduates for life after college - students are taught to memorize and repeat, not to think. In my experience, there's quite a bit of truth in that accusation, as indicated by the graph below.

The other side of the coin is that the skills mismatch is a short-term and fixable problem. The real issue is that the economy is too feeble to create new jobs.

Getting the U.S. economy producing at full potential would add about $950 billion to annual gross domestic product and go a long way toward putting people back to work. For the Fed, accelerating economic growth through monetary policy is Job One. Alas, for Congress, which controls taxing and spending, faster growth appears to be Job Two, behind trying to shrink the federal budget deficit. Hence the January tax increases and the March sequester, both of which weigh on growth.

Both the supply and the demand arguments have merit. Other factors are in play as well. Automation has decreased manufacturing and other related jobs, while many white-collar jobs have moved offshore where they can be done cheaper.

But it's not an either/or problem. It's a complex and interrelated problem that requires multiple approaches to resolve

Five years since the start of the unemployment crisis, the problem with the U.S. labor market isn’t weak supply or weak demand. It’s both. At the same time, plenty of good and innovative ideas for how to put more Americans back to work are out there. Fixing aging infrastructure is a job generator that’s a no-brainer at today’s low interest rates. Youth jobs programs need more funding, not less. Jeff Madrick, a senior fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, calls for a revival of “Fordism”—Henry Ford’s sensible idea of paying workers enough to afford what’s for sale. All that’s needed is the will to act. Tackling Unemployment, a new book by Ruth Ellen Wasem on the Employment Act of 1946, describes how postwar Americans made up their minds that they would not let the economy slip into another Depression. “There was a sense of ‘let’s do it,’ a can-do spirit,” Wasem says in an interview. A little of that American swagger would go a long way right now.

I'm doing my part. Next week is my last week at work before I retire and open up a slot for some ambitious young junior professor.

Except I've learned that my duties will be filled by part-time adjunct professors, who already teach a few assorted classes. Thus one full-time position is being eliminated, shrinking the number of available jobs. One of the reasons given is that this alternative is cheaper. Part-time adjunct professors do not get benefits, such as healthcare.

obamacare strikes again...

And that's the point of this post. Until we stop creating what economists call disincentives and start creating a positive environment for job creators, this stagnant economy will persist.

Update To Today's Events

An earlier post today mentioned a firearms company leaving an anti-gun state (Oregon) for a gun-friendly state (Texas).

Now there's a report that another firearm manufacturer is leaving another anti-gun state (Connecticut) for someplace where they'll be more welcome.

Rifle manufacturer PTR Industries kept true to its word when it announced on Tuesday it planned to move the growing company out of Connecticut.

PTR chief exective officer Josh Fiorini told the Republican-American on the eve of legislature's vote last week that it planned to move its company to another state if the new law banned gun hardware. On Tuesday, the company posted a message on its Facebook page announcing it planned to move.

PTR hasn't said where it's headed, but the ripple effects of its announcement have already started.

...the move is something local vendors are watching nervously.

Sam Cavallo, owner of CavTech Industries, said if PTR stops buying parts from his manufactured products company after the move it will affect his company. Products for PTR make up a third of the business for CavTech, according to Cavallo.

It appears that states which pass knee-jerk ill-considered feel-good legislation are learning that the consequences can be fast and furious (sorry...).

Let Them Eat Cake

Yesterday we heard from a couple of democrat congresscrittters moaning and groaning about how the sequester is eviscerating the creatures that serve on their official staffs (boo-friggin'-hoo).

Today we have a brief summary of how our overlords the obamas are faring during that same time period.

More than a Vacation a Month for Obamas in 2013

In the first three months of the year, members of the first family have been on three vacations, averaging a vacation a month...

The Obamas began the new year in Hawaii. "President Obama departed Hawaii this morning for Washington, after spending NINE days vacationing with family and friends in his native state...ABC reported on January 6, 2013.

Then (in February) the first lady and their daughters vacationed in Aspen over President's Day weekend...

While the rest of the family was in Colorado, Obama went to Florida for a golf weekend (with) one of golf’s most famous guys, Tiger Woods...

As if that wasn't enough, the first daughters are now spending Spring Break at a luxurious resort in the Bahamas.

Sasha and Malia Obama are quietly vacationing at the Atlantis resort on Paradise Island in the Bahamas...

I don't have a problem with people taking a few days off every once in a while. And I certainly don't object to the kids having a good time over Spring Break. But what does chap my ass is that (1) we the taxpayers are footing the bill for these boondoggles; (2) they're taking place during a time when so many people are struggling to make ends meet; and (3) obama is spending all of his time when he's not on vacation pissing and moaning about how the government doesn't have enough money, so taxes should be raised.

Oh yeah - and at the same time the White House tours have been cancelled due to lack of funds.

The hypocrisy is mind-boggling...