On water leaks in bathtubs, as they relate to ObamaCare

I'm spending Thanksgiving in Memphis, Tennessee, with some high school friends of mine.  Because God loves us and wants us to be happy, we're crashing at the apartment of a surgeon who grew up with us in Mississippi. 
This loft apartment is near the river, has a pool table, a flatscreen that rivals the one Jerry Jones hung in the roof of his stadium, and a coffeemaker with more elaborate controls than a, well, a thing with lots of elaborate controls. 
I like it here. 
However, there is a water leak in the bathtub.  I said that our host's water bill is going to be $300.00 this month, and he better get it fixed before it gets worse.  (I speak from experience.)
One of my friends said "Oh, he doesn't have to pay the water bill.  It's included in the rent.  I'm sure he'll mention it to the landlord in a few months when it becomes a steady flow." 

And that is why socialism, outside of tight-knit family units, doesn't work. 

For the best thing ever written on this subject, go here. 

On having to ring up your own groceries but pay "full price"

I saw the following quote on Instapundit:

SEEN ON FACEBOOK: “I work all day, go to Kroger late night, stock up on groceries and then get to the checkout and have to scan and bag everything by myself and still pay full price while Kroger can eliminate a job. Hmmmmm. That’s the equivalent to you coming into my restaurant, cooking your own food and I still get to charge full price. Am I being unreasonable???”

I honestly don't know where to begin.  For lack of a better place, let's start with the history of grocery stores. 

If you ever find yourself in Memphis Tennessee with a couple of hours to kill, check out The Pink Palace museum.  They've got a beautifully reconstructed model of a Piggly Wiggly grocery store inside. 

Why? 

Piggly Wiggly (founded in Memphis) was the first self-serve grocery store in the U.S.  Instead of handing the clerk behind the counter your list of groceries, if you were a Piggly Wiggly shopper, you took a cart or a basket and got your groceries all by yourself. 

This move didn't save or create any jobs in the grocery industry.  In fact, it eliminated them.  But it saved a lot of money for consumers.  This allowed them to eventually purchase more of other things instead of food: iPods, flatscreen TV's, or laptop computers, creating jobs in the iPod, TV and laptop industries. 

Skip forward about a half century.  Someone came up with a pattern of lines called a "barcode" that could be read by another device called a "scanner". 

This move didn't create any jobs in the grocery industry.  It made checking out much, much faster, and eliminated a lot of inventory and supply chain jobs in the grocery distribution system.  But it saved a lot of money for consumers. This allowed them to eventually purchase more of other things instead of food: iPods, flatscreen TV's, or laptop computers, creating jobs in the iPod, TV and laptop industries.

By the time the scanners came along, the U.S. military had already been using a warehouse concept called "cross-docking" for quite some time.  This is a warehouse design where incoming shipments are received on one side, outgoing shipments are shipped on the other, with minimal storage space in between.  Minimal inventory is kept on hand in the warehouse at any given time. 

Sam Walton, of Wal-Mart fame, was the first to apply this concept to the grocery and retail industry. 

This move didn't create any jobs in the grocery industry. It made distribution much, much faster, and eliminated a lot of inventory and supply chain jobs in the grocery distribution system. But it saved a lot of money for consumers. This allowed them to eventually purchase more of other things instead of food: iPods, flatscreen TV's, or laptop computers, creating jobs in the iPod, TV and laptop industries.

Finally, someone invented the self-serve grocery checkout stand.  If you have a minimal amount of stuff to ring up, you can choose to do it yourself. 

As the Facebook commenter wrote, the customer is doing some of the work himself.  Kind of like the Piggly Wiggly customer started doing in the 1920's. 

This move toward self-checkout doesn't create any jobs in the grocery industry. It makes getting out of the store much, much faster, and it saves a lot of money for consumers. This allows them to eventually purchase more of other things instead of food: iPods, flatscreen TV's, or laptop computers, creating jobs in the iPod, TV and laptop industries.

I hope this has helped. 

We have not become a prosperous nation by "saving or creating jobs".  We have become a prosperous nation by constantly churning the process, always trying to come up with a better way to get things done. 

No one can predict what the next way will be.  No one knows which kid is working in the Produce Department of an Albertson's Grocery Store who has already come up with a better way to distribute and merchandise fruit and vegetables, and who just can't wait to open his own store and try out his idea.  No one knows which computer geek in his Mom's basement has already come up with a system to make distribution and logistics more efficient. 

These people are going to bring us improvements and levels of progress that we can't even imagine, here in the primitive year 2011. 

The only thing we do know is that there will always be someone complaining about the cost of progress and doing everything in his power to keep it from happening. 

Tater Red's

One tenth of the survivors of my high school graduating class (North Sunflower Academy, 1979) had a reunion in Memphis during Thanksgiving. 
That means there were three of us. 
One of the high points was a visit to Tater Red's Lucky Mojos and Voodoo Healings on Beale Street. 

It turns out that Tater Red is none other than Leo Allred, another graduate of North Sunflower Academy.  Leo was two or three grades ahead of us at NSA.   

That's Leo on the left, then my friend Tricia's popular dress with Tricia inside it, then me, and my friend Henry is on the right.  Those are autographed drum heads on the ceiling.  Posters and autographed Blues/Rock memorabilia are on the back wall.  The aura coming off my forehead is not a sign of balding, but of my entry into Blues-Rock Geek Heaven. 

Tater Red's has now joined John Evans' Lemuria Books as one of my favorite places in the South.  Leo sells a unique assortment of T-shirts, books, stickers, guitar picks, autographed memorabilia, bizarre Mojo spells, curses, amulets, icons and posters and just...stuff. 
Imagine the polar opposite of a generic suburban Starbucks, Best Buy, or Target. 

Do you need a Mojo Hand?  Leo has them for sale. 

How about an authentic Voodoo doll?  Tater Red's is the only place to go. 

If you can't imagine why anyone would want a Mojo Hand or Voodoo paraphernalia, just listen to Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, and Lightnin' Hopkins for 30 years and get back to me. 

Do you need an Aquarian Tarot Deck, one that you've sought for years, but have never seen for sale in Dallas/Fort Worth?  And do you want to purchase it at a 33% North Sunflower Academy Graduate Discount?   Leo is your man. 

Hey, very few people still believe in any of this stuff.  But you're from the Mississippi Delta, you also know that you can't be too careful.... 

....and if you grew up on a Mississippi farm that was exactly halfway between Highway 61 (as in Bob Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited") and Highway 49 (as in Howlin' Wolf's "Highway 49" - "I'm gonna get up in the morning, hit the Highway 49"), it's not every day that you'll get a chance at a Photo Op like this one. 

You can hit this link to read a glowing tribute to Leo, his love of music, his friendship with Stevie Ray Vaughan, and everything else that's great about Leo Allred's wonderful patch of Beale Street real estate in Memphis, Tennessee.  This was written by Robert Tooms of AmeriBlues News and it just might be the best tribute to a NSA graduate ever written.  Here's an excerpt:

This paragraph by Robert Tooms of AmeriBlues News turns out to be copyright protected, Dang it.  Therefore I can't copy and paste it, and I'm not about to re-type the whole thing.  Trust me.  Hit that link.  Read some more about Leo and his store.  Then go to Memphis.  Go into Leo's store, fully prepared to be amazed.  Note to Robert Tooms: turn off the copyright protection on your website, and more people will spread your writing around.

Sorry to put you through all of that.  Hope you'll hit that link anyway.  It's good stuff with great (copyright protected) pictures.

Leo, it was great seeing you again.  You growed up good ! *

The pics of Tater Red's merchandise came from the stores's website.  The picture of the store exterior came from Flickr. 
* The "You growed up good !" quote was originally directed from Leo toward Tricia's red dress.