I am a Mercedes-Benz

Let me begin by saying that I am a Mercedes-Benz.  Not a Ferrari, not a Rolls, not a Corvette, but a little better than a Cadillac. 

I'm 53 years old, work in a family business, and I've always been pretty damn good at what I do.  I've been "Employee Of The Year" or "Manager Of The Year" for three different companies, one of which you've probably heard of. 

If Washington decides to raise the minimum wage to $20.00 an hour I won't be one of the ones going unemployed because the political idiots set the bar too high for me to find employment.  Except for one brief stretch of starting over in a new field, I've made more than $20 per hour for the last 30 years or so.  (Thirty years ago, $20 was more like today's $40.)   

Now that the throat-clearing is out of the way, here's what you'll find this morning in the New York Holy Times:

The White House has thrown its weight behind a proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to at least $10 an hour.  

“The president has long supported raising the minimum wage so hard-working Americans can have a decent wage for a day’s work to support their families and make ends meet,” a White House official said. President Obama, the official continued, supports the Harkin-Miller bill, also known as the Fair Minimum Wage Act, which would raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, from its current $7.25.  

The legislation is sponsored in the Senate by Tom Harkin of Iowa and in the House by George Miller of California, both Democrats. It would raise the minimum wage — in three steps of 95 cents each, taking place over two years — to $10.10, and then index it to inflation. The legislation will probably be coupled with some tax sweeteners for small businesses, traditionally the loudest opponents of increases to the minimum wage.

The overwhelming majority of economists know that there is a trade-off with this type of legislation. 

1)  They know that the true minimum wage is zero dollars per hour, and that the higher Washington sets the minimum (actually, a price floor), the more low-skilled workers they condemn to earning the true minimum wage, which is....zero. 

2)  They also know that higher and higher minimum wages have a disproportionate effect on teen employment, minority employment, and most of all, teen minority employment.  A couple of years ago, when the unemployment rate was at 9%, teen unemployment was at 24%, and black teen unemployment was at a whopping 42%.  (It's now dancing around 50%, BTW.) 

Why does this happen?  As a very general rule, minority teens have no skills.  No track record.  No one knows if they can get to work on time, work hard through an entire shift, or get along with others. 

The same thing can be said about white teens.  But white parents can (generally) get to work on time, work hard through an entire shift, and (sometimes) get along with others.  And the apples usually don't fall too far from the tree. 

So if you're thinking about hiring a kid, who are you going to go with?  The little white snowflake from the 'burbs, or the black kid from the 'hood?

Here's what you're going to do.  I've sat back and watched you do it.  This is the minority teen unemployment rate, cross-referenced to the rising minimum wage.  One of the most beautiful correlations you'll ever see:

I'm almost 100% safe from unemployment.  So is my daughter.  We got us some skills.  We can type, manage, hire, fire, ship, transport, purchase, cashier, file, pile and get 'er done. 

I'm a Mercedes-Benz. 
Minority teens are 30-year-old Yugos. 

If the government declares that the least you can pay for a car is $50,000.00, which one are you going to buy? 

You're going to go with the Mercedes every time. 

Good work, Barack!!




 

How Not To Increase The Black Employment Rate

This morning on the way to work, I listened to NPR's Scott Simon interviewing Darrick Hamilton, an economist from "The New School".  (I often listen to NPR since I'm forced by the government's men with guns to help pay for it.)
The topic was the incredible disparity between black and white unemployment rates.  It's now a 2 to 1 ratio.

I interviewed black guys for about four hours yesterday, so I listened to the whole thing.  It took an ACT OF GOD to keep me from shoving my fist through the windshield. 

Go here to listen to the whole thing.  If you're a regular reader of this blog, stay away from glass and sharp objects. 

Perfesser Hamilton wants to have a Federal Job Guarantee.  Hit the link for the whole thing. 

By creating a National Investment Employment Corps (NIEC), states and municipalities could develop inventories of needed jobs for all who are able to work, matching skilled and unskilled alike with full employment opportunities. Jobs would address physical and human infrastructure needs, including building, repair and maintenance of bridges, damns, roads, parks, museums, mass transit systems, school facilities, health clinics, child care centers, even restoration of our damaged postal system. Pay would range from a minimum of $20,000 to a maximum of $80,000, each job also providing benefits, opportunities for advancement, on-the-job training and professional development.

Christ Almighty in a sidecar.  Wealth is created by moving assets from lower valued uses to higher valued uses.  Nobody becomes better off in the long run by hiring more government munchkins to train more and more black unemployed drug war victims in the skills needed to build museums, or the "restoration of our damaged postal system" LOL.  But enough about Perfesser Hamilton's FDR-era fantasies....

I interviewed 5 black guys yesterday.  One of my supervisors (who happens to be black) sat in with me.  We heard 5 depressingly similar stories. 

All 5 candidates had a criminal record related to the Nixon-Ford-Carter-Regan-Bush-Clinton/Rodham-Bush-Obama Drug War. 
All 5 candidates would have cheerfully taken $5.00 an hour.  It would be illegal for them to work for that amount, BTW.  I could hire all 5 at $5.00 an hour.  Barack Obama, in his wisdom, will only let me hire 3 of them at $8.00 an hour and stay within my semi-budget. 

A couple of these guys were really, really sharp.  They have absolutely no business coming to work for me, unloading shipping containers.  One of them was an honor student and captain of his high school basketball team, and had had a fairly good Air Force gig. 

When we didn't have a minimum wage, black folks sometimes had a higher employment rate than whites. 
When we didn't have a drug war going on, we weren't locking up so many black guys and totally ruining their employment prospects. 

The disparity between black and white unemployment is a solved problem.  Eliminate the minimum wage.  End the idiotic drug war.  We could do this tomorrow. 

But we're just too compassionate. 

Does Barack Obama hate black people??

Here's the late senator Jacob Javitz on why he supported minimum wage legislation:

"I point out to Senators from industrial states like my own that a minimum wage increase would also give industry in our states some measure of protection, as we have too long suffered from the unfair competition based on substandard wages and other labor conditions in effect in certain areas of the country – primarily in the South.
....Although probably no northern senator today would dare admit it, many who vote for increases in the minimum wage understand that one consequence will be to destroy  jobs for the least skilled workers, a disproportionate number of whom are black.”

And now, thanks to the good intentions of our government, we now have a black teen unemployment rate of  40%.

Here's a summary of the situation....  I can teach you how to play a piano, but if you pay me more than $7.00 an hour, you're getting ripped off.  I'm not much of a piano player, or teacher.  But if I had to, I could make some money teaching piano for $7.00 an hour.

My neighbor down the street is a really good piano teacher.  She gets $10.00 an hour.  One street over is another guy who gets $15.00 per hour.

If you raise the minimum wage for piano teachers to $12.00 an hour, who does it help?  Me or my neighbors?

It helps my neighbors.   I ain't worth $12.00 an hour as a piano teacher.  Nobody will ever pay me that, because I'm not worth it.  All it will do is guarantee full employment for my neighbors.

That's what happens to inexperienced and low-skilled labor when a Washington Messiah raises the minimum wage.  They get priced out of the market.  Just hide and watch what happens to the black teen minority unemployment rate if The Teleprompter Jesus gets his way with this proposal from his Union Of The Statists speech last night :

"Even with the tax relief we’ve put in place, a family with two kids that earns the minimum wage still lives below the poverty line. That’s wrong," Obama said. "Tonight, let’s declare that in the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works full time should have to live in poverty, and raise the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour. This single step would raise the incomes of millions of working families.

Never mind the question of WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING WITH TWO KIDS IF YOUR SKILLS AREN'T WORTH MORE THAN MINIMUM WAGE????
The real question is this....

Why does Barack Obama hate black people?

Don't get me wrong...I love the minimum wage, because I'm white.  My daughter is white, and also has established plenty of work experience.  She was offered jobs at more than 40K per year at the age of 20.  Minimum wage legislation will ensure that we're the last to be laid off.  We got skills!!!  

But does Barack Obama really hate black people?  Or is he just not very smart?

Ron Paul's Racist Past

An awkward question about economists

Here's economist Walter E. Williams on "Fair" trade, with some editing by The International Liberty Blog. 

The primary issue is whether or not a politician should have power and control over what you can purchase, or at what price:

At first blush, the mercantilists’ call for “free trade but fair trade” sounds reasonable. After all, who can be against fairness? Giving the idea just a bit of thought suggests that fairness as a guide for public policy lays the groundwork for tyranny. …Last summer, I purchased a 2010 LS 460 Lexus, through a U.S. intermediary, from a Japanese producer for $70,000. Here’s my question to you: Was that a fair or unfair trade? I was free to keep my $70,000 or purchase the car. The Japanese producer was free to keep his Lexus or sell me the car. …The exchange occurred because I saw myself as being better off and so did the Japanese producer. I think it was both free and fair trade, and I’d like an American mercantilist to explain to me how it wasn’t. Mercantilists have absolutely no argument when we recognize that trade is mostly between individuals. Mercantilists pretend that trade occurs between nations such as U.S. trading with England or Japan to appeal to our jingoism. …That’s nonsense. Trade occurs between individuals in one country, through intermediaries, with individuals in another country. Who might protest that my trade with the Lexus manufacturer was unfair? If you said an American car manufacturer and their union workers, go to the head of the class. …it’s never American consumers who complain about cheaper prices. It’s always American producers and their unions who do the complaining. That ought to tell us something.


I think Williams once said that he goes to his mailbox every morning to see if he's gotten a government check for not raising pigs.  He never has gotten one.  But lots of millionaire farmers get them every year, millionaire farmers who are no better at not raising pigs than Williams is. 
Even if you're a vehement supporter of corporate welfare, you've got to admit that is funny. 

On a (slightly) related note, "Basic Economics" by Dr. Thomas Sowell has now gone into a 4th edition. 

I have quoted, mis-quoted, mangled, highlighted, posted, and fallen asleep with this book so many times that I'm not going to burden this post with an excerpt.  Just hit the Thomas Sowell label down below. 
The man is brilliant AND readable.  My new copy of the 4th edition (on my truck seat at all times) is already starting to look like it's been owned by 3 different students with too many highlighters. 

This gets me to Glenn Loury, now comfortably situated in Brown University's economics department. 
Loury started his career as a conservative but now calls himself a progressive.  
Loury once had a domestic violence problem, and a Bolivian Marching Powder problem.   (I think he's a libertarian, but hey, Brown U. doesn't hire many of those.  There are some things that an academic just can't admit.) 

Go here to read what Loury had to say about Obama's race speech, the one Obama had to compose after the Revered Wright incident.  Like most of my blog topics, I came across this one while looking online for something else.   
I don't agree with a lot of it, but it is readable.  There is a structure to the sentences.  It flows.  You can see a pattern from paragraph to paragraph. 

So here's my point.  Or my question....
Why are the most readable (and therefore best) living economists all black?