US-Created System In Iraq Is Collapsing: Protesters Storm Parliament, State of Emergency Declared - Live Webcast
. . . the man was handed a resolved recession, and a stable world where America was respected. He, and his foreign policy architect, Hillary Clinton, took great pains to utterly destroy every accomplishment. How much must this man hate America? It is impossible to even come to grips with the destruction. Central Africa, North Africa, the Middle East, the Near East, Europe, Russia, Eastern Europe/Ukraine/Georgia, the South China Sea, North Korea, are all building catastrophes. The collapse of the BRICS economies was unnecessary. The implosion of many parts of South America Venezuela/Brazil/Argentina was unnecessary. Yet neither the President nor his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had viable plans to address any of these or any of the other problems facing the world. This has been the most incompetent Administration in my lifetime; the most destructive of democracy, free markets, liberty, and the most encouraging of tyranny, terror, and hate. An election looms, choose wisely.
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Just 37% of U.S. High School Seniors Prepared for College Math and Reading, Test Shows . . . with only a tiny fraction more than a third of students prepared for college. Can you imagine if airlines only achieved their primary goal one time out of three? How about medicine? What would happen if moving companies could only find the correct house in one out of three moves? But we should be fair, they only have 12 years to get this right. It's not like they have a lot of time . . . oh, wait! "Only 37% of American 12th-graders were academically prepared for college math and reading in 2015, a slight dip from two years earlier, according to test scores released Wednesday. The National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the “Nation’s Report Card,” said that share was down from an estimated 39% in math and 38% in reading in 2013. Educators and policy makers have long lamented that many seniors get diplomas even though they aren’t ready for college, careers or the military. Those who go to college often burn through financial aid or build debt while taking remedial classes that don’t earn credits toward a degree." But nearly 70% will enroll in college. Perhaps if the teachers spent more time instructing and less time instructing students to go to college the results would be better. COLLEGE ENROLLMENT AND WORK ACTIVITY OF 2014 HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATES The result for many of these students will be unaffordable debt used to complete high school. As Mamet said, if you are in a con and you don't know who's the mark . . . you're the mark. We are the mark, our children are the mark, the students are the mark, and it is the school administrators, teachers, and the college's which are running the con. Providing students with "courtesy" passing grades so they can graduate, benefits no one, well, except the schools, teachers, and administrators. They all have much easier jobs because of this "innovation" in education. The colleges also benefit, since they receive a huge cohort of uneducated students who will need to pay to be educated to the college level, and until that happens, they receive no credit for the courses. This means the college will receive tuition payments for even longer than they should expect. Until we take the government out of our school system, there will be no change in this outcome. Is it any wonder high school grads can't get a job! The smug style in American liberalism
Kyle Smith helps with some analysis. Liberals embrace the smug life Read Smith first, then if you need, go read the Vox piece. Smug is nearly always a result of living in an echo chamber, without countering opinion. This is a disaster for liberal, and is probably the reason they are unable to simply run the board on most elections. Obama's smug campaign in 2008 was backed up with indifference, dithering, incompetence, and failure. He reprised his smug campaign and was reelected in 2012. Stein's Law states, “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” This will stop once the electorate comes to the understanding that no matter how good the liberal positions sound, the implementation is bollocks. Read the Smith piece, it is worth your time. Venezuelans Face a New Threat – a Beer Shortage
Up till now Portlandia's hipsters haven't shown even the vaguest interest in Venezuela, but this should change all that in a New York minute. No Portlandian hipster worth his vintage cloths could live through a beer shortage. In Portlandia, such an event could cause a tectonic shift sufficient to trigger the long over due Richter 9 earthquake the scientists are always going on about. There is more below the break. LILEKS (James) :: The Bleat 2016 . . . with photos, and video! Lilek's is brilliant. How Americans fell for this tripe back in the 1960s-1970s is unfathomable, but it happened. Thanks to Ed Driscoll Instapundit JAMES LILEKS ON HOW TO MURDER A CITY Another city murdered by progressives. The shot: The chaser: The hangover: The solution:
Get rid of progressive government, reform the economic model to allow businesses to thrive. Small Business Should Be Priority Number One The Stockman, The Donald, The Noonan all in one place! Student Loan Excesses Harm the Most Vulnerable It looks more like the goal of these schemes is to impoverish the poor. This article is written about student loans, and points out how these loans actually hurt the people the Boomer progressives are attempting to help. "The real losers in the student loan merry-go-round are precisely kinds of students—marginal, little family experience in college, low income—that the Obama administration most wants to help. The Wall Street Journal: 'The conventional wisdom among student activists and and elected leaders is that high levels of student debt are causing young Americans to delay key milestones like buying a home, getting married and having kids. New research paints a more complicated picture. It suggests student debt is indeed a barrier for a significant minority—college dropouts—but that it’s generally not holding back those who earned degrees […]' College dropouts … typically owe small amounts of student debt—under $10,000—but don’t have the degrees that provide an earnings boost that would position them to buy a home." But this problem is much deeper than just student loans. The prior post on the minimum wage is another area where the Boomer progressives have created policies disastrous to the poor, The list is endless, public transit, the minimum wage, higher education, and higher education loans, occupational licensing, unionization, and myriad other Boomer progressive government policies damage the poor, while benefiting the upper middle class the most, and while still offering some benefit to the middle class. Most of the benefit comes from the upper middle class being able to navigate the rules, so upper middle class parents help their children navigate the college by ensuring they take a major which will result in a job as well as an education. "Well-intentioned but harebrained social engineering is a menace to the poor. Instead of idealistic social schemes, policy elites should go back to the basics: expand vocational education and training programs, limit competition from illegal unskilled immigrants, reduce paperwork and regulatory restrictions that make it hard to start businesses in the cities where so many poor people live, and put an end to the war on low-wage jobs that is forcing employers to replace tellers, checkout clerks and other unskilled and semiskilled jobs with machines. These are policies that would actually help, but they violate treasured liberal myths, so we earnestly saddle poor kids with debt they can’t afford for degrees they can’t get—after making them waste 12 years in lousy schools that we can’t seem to operate effectively." Mead gets much wrong here. Yes, the idealistic social schemes are terrible, but his prescriptions for solving the problems won't work. It is not competition from illegal unskilled immigrants which are causing problems. And while reducing paperwork and making it easier to start businesses would be a benefit, it is not as important as eliminating occupational licensing, eliminating the minimum wage, eliminating all federal and state employer/employee regulations, implementing a federal right to work law, eliminating all Davis-Bacon and related work laws, among many others. These would have immediate, direct, and positive results on employment, and create the underlying pressures necessary to create jobs which would allow people to build job skills, and begin to rise up the wage ladder. Italy Concocts €5 Billion “Atlas” Rescue Fund to Cure €360 Billion in Non-Performing Loans; At Gunpoint | MishTalk
. . . by putting together a fund equal to 2% of the needed money, and calling it "Atlas." Holy Mother of Pearl, that will need to do better than that, Batman! Mish defines the terms: "€5bn backstop – 2% of what’s needed Atlas, a mythological god who held up the sky – It a myth this scheme any chance of working Bankruptcy procedure – Banks will take over pledged assets and sell them for whatever price they can get, causing more capital shortfalls. Tense meeting – Tense meeting No choice but to give money to ensure financial stability – This is the exact equivalent of Hank Paulson gathering US banks together and demanding various mergers or he would shut them down Private company – Taxpayer sponsored under the table Capital hole uncovered by EU regulators after a mis-selling scandal – Hole was so big regulators did not find it, they fell into it Capital call – Margin call by regulators Likely to trigger competition scrutiny – Illegal under EU rules Eleventh hour – Noon €1.75bn cash call – First margin call is set at €1.75bn Two further cash calls – Two more margin calls coming Flash point – Flash point Not the first time – And certainly not the last" Heh! The idea that this drop in the bucket will solve or even slightly mitigate the problem is folly. Italy has a serious problem, which comprises a huge percentage of its total loan portfolio. If this problem remains unsolved, it will eventually all but destroy the Italian economy. Venezuela Takes Permanent Three-Day Weekend
. . . it has driven the country with the largest energy reserves in the world into energy poverty. "The Venezuelan government, facing a deepening economic crisis, rampant hyperinflation, widespread shortages, and an escalating political crisis, has decided to give everyone in the country Fridays off. As Bloomberg reports: Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro has designated every Friday in the months of April and May as a non-working holiday, a bid to save electricity as a prolonged drought pushes water levels to a critical threshold at hydro-generation plants. The country will unveil details of a 60-day plan to conserve energy Thursday, Maduro said, adding that measures would include asking large users such as shopping malls and hotels to generate their own electricity for nine hours a day. Heavy industries operating in the country will be asked to cut consumption by 20 percent, he said." Brilliant. List of countries by proven oil reserves - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia "Proven reserves" is a bit of a canard. "Because proven reserves include oil recoverable under current economic conditions, nations may see large increases in proven reserves when known, but previously uneconomic deposits become economic to develop." Proven reserves also require the political freedom to develop, and drill for the oil, so America always ranks low because so much of our oil reserves remain under federal lands off limits to oil production, or in the offshore continental shelf , or Alaska which are also off limits to production. Back to the many wonders of Socialism, of which the primary seem to be the democidal murder of tens of millions of people. Perhaps its time for a Dead Pool on when and how many Venezuelans will need to die to propel the "revolution" forward for another year? It looks like the economy is about dead. How much longer before even the poor rise up in revolt? Well at least they will have a three day weekends now to scour the land for toilet paper, cooking oil, and flour. The ability of the Socialist economy to provide for the people is unmatched. Why California’s risky experiment with a $15 an hour minimum wage will likely backfire, Part I
. . . the younger brer, and Maddog have been discussing the problems, effects, and likely outcomes from the Oregon, and California experiments with a radically higher $15 minimum wage. The links it to Part II is here, and Part III is here, and Part IV is here. Part I California is unfriendly to business, this change in labor rates will make it less friendly to business. This unfriendliness is manifested in high regulations, and high taxes. It is ranked by Chief Executive Magazine as the worst state for "level of taxation, burden of regulation, workforce quality, and living environment." The Tax Foundation found California 48th worst for business tax, and 50th for its personal income tax burden. You go Cali! Part II The $15 per hour minimum wage acts like a $10,000 per year tax on full-time minimum wage workers. Many businesses which employ higher numbers of minimum wage workers operate on margins of only 2-6% profit. This large additional cost will be a serious problem to these low margin/high minimum wage worker businesses. John A (Naif) in the comments makes two inane points, first he claims, "it's not a tax." We know, as does our faithful correspondent, he utilized simile, naif! Second he claims, the law will increase the wage amount for all businesses/restaurants by the same amount. No. It will affect the ones with higher numbers of sub $15 per hour workers in very different ways than restaurants with lower numbers. Also he assumes all restaurants will need to increase costs by the same amount. No. See above. Mid and high end restaurants have ways of dealing with these changes, they could eliminate tipping since the waiters will be paid a living wage, for example. Restaurants like fast food do not have these avenues to reduce customer costs (more accurately keep total costs the same as before). Further, this problem will be localized, smaller in San Francisco and other wealthy areas, and greater in places with large numbers of low wage workers like El Centro, Merced, and Salinas. Here Naif suffers from Pauline Kael Syndrome, where the afflicted does not know anyone who makes minimum wage, and would not be affected by a $.50 or even a $1 increase in a Big Mac, so he cannot understand why anyone else would be. Well played! Naif also misses the point entirely that many people will simply see the price increase necessary in the product, and decide it is not worth the price. So, if a 10% price increase results in a 10% demand decrease, there will need to either be further price increases or job reductions. This will simply grow over time as the minimum wage is phased in. In locations with a 15 % jobless rate cutting even more workers out of the wage pool can create a sustainable downward economic spiral. You know, like Detroit. He also seems to not understand about productivity which is nothing more than making more product with less wage costs/fewer workers. Automation exists, and as wages rise, automation alternatives become economically feasible. The ultimate problem with this is once the magic number is reached, nearly all the restaurants in the category will simply adopt this technology or bankrupt. While I do not know where this number is, I suspect that it is somewhat less than $15 per hour minimum wage. Again, this will cause an increase in joblessness, so see above for more info, er, like Detroit. Phase III Many localities in California may be economically too weak to support a $15 per hour minimum wage. Outside the coastal enclaves, California is not an economic powerhouse, it is a very weak kitten. The wealthy coastal enclave cities may not suffer too much, but the low wage cities will suffer greatly with a 50% wage increase to low end workers. Part IV A one size fits all won't work for California's low wage, low cost of living cities. "To help understand how the “one-size-fits-all” approach of a $15 an hour minimum wage will have a disproportionate adverse impact on low-cost communities in California, the table above displays the local annual salaries that would be equivalent to a $100,000 salary in San Francisco, adjusted for differences in cost-of-living using this website. For example, the cost-of-living in Bakersfield is about 57% lower than San Francisco overall, including housing costs that are 79% lower, so that an annual salary of $100,000 in San Francisco would be equivalent to a salary in Bakersfield of about $43,000. Local incomes equivalent to $100,000 annually in San Francisco are displayed above for the other nine cities. Then if we assume that a $15 an hour minimum wage is appropriate for a high-wage, high-cost city like San Francisco, we can calculate what the minimum wage should be in the ten cities above adjusted for the much lower costs of living in those communities. Adjusted for the 57% lower cost of living in Bakersfield, the minimum wage there shouldn’t be $15 an hour like in San Francisco, but rather only $6.43 an hour. Minimum wages adjusted for the cost of living in the other nine California cities are displayed above, and range from $6.10 an hour in Hanford-Corcoran to $7.90 an hour in Salinas. Stated differently, we could also say that if a $15 an hour minimum wage was appropriate for Bakersfield, the minimum wage in San Francisco, adjusted for its much higher cost of living, should be about $35 an hour, and not $15. By either minimum wage comparison, the costs of living are so disparate between San Francisco and the cities listed above, that there is no way that a uniform $15 an hour wage could be optimal in both communities." So, part of the problem in all of these cities already is that the California current minimum wage of $10 per hour is too high! Brilliant. We should expect the problems of Merced, Salinas, and Bakersfield to spread to even more cities, and towns throughout California as the minimum wage slowly rises, and destroys employment in these towns. Oregon's model which has a higher minimum wage for large cities and a lower minimum wage for rural areas might be better than the California one-size-fits-all model, but neither rate above poor. The market is well equipped to evaluate and provide an accurate minimum wage for each location, and for each individual worker's skills, talents, and experiences. But legislators are the smartest people on earth, and they know everything, including what a six-layer dip maker, a cunning linguist, or a teen exorcist should make as a wage. Honestly it seems more likely the politicians understand that driving people on to the dole keeps them in work. Study Finds Public Pension Promises Exceed Ability to Pay
. . . and many will fail, or partially fail stranding many of the pensioners. We've discussed this before. This is a very serious problem which is treated un-seriously because neither the politicians, nor the unions want to be limited in how much future money they can throw at the union members. This is shockingly unethical on the part of both the politicians, and the unions. Worse yet, every time I take a serious look at this problem it has become worse, more endemic, broader, and more intractable. I fully expect this to be part of the Great Realignment where Millennials take Boomers to task for screwing them out of trillion of dollars. |
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