Economics is not Wishcasting

212 thoughts on “Economics is not Wishcasting”

1. Reality always wins. In.The.End. Sadly, part of that same reality is that mush headed idiots with really good intentions can cause untold damage to the lives and welfare of the rest of us in the meantime while reality self corrects for their attempts to impose a vision of a world populated by unicorns and rainbows and fueled by popcorn poots.

2. I remember as a teenager a couple of summers I worked haying for a guy. He needed a couple of extra, strong hands for a couple of weeks. I agreed to work for $20 a day (good money then), and all done on a handshake, no paperwork involved. I got a whole lot of exercise, fresh air, great money for books (this when paperbacks were a wee bit of a dollar, new), he got his hay in without getting rained out, and he didn’t have to deal with “the paperwork, regulation, and mandatory contributions that go with it.” (And this was in New York State, so you can imagine the paperwork involved.) OSHA and Child Welfare would have a cow nowadays (but no hay to feed said cow) for making a kid work in such dangerous conditions. 

   1. In addition to real household chores, we had jobs as kids. During the school year it was firewood, garden work, brush clearing, horse stalls at the neighbors, manure delivery (dry, thankfully) from the dairy farm to local gardens, mowing, trash hauling, demo work, varmint hunting, etc.

      In the summer was sent to the farms (cotton and grains), where work was chopping weeds, spraying weeds (We literally swam in Roundup from leaky spray nozzles and wind), irrigation (think long aluminium pipes), various tractor work, (mostly sand fighting in summer), rock picking, shop work, livestock chores, picking fruit, etc.

      You rested on Sunday after 4 hours of church and potluck. If lucky you went to the movies Saturday afternoon. Occasional fish fries and BBQs. Sometimes you did youth group events to spark up young romances to breed the next generations of farmers. This was 3F and 4H country.

      And we never got paid more than the hired hands. They were full time year round and could usually work faster, longer, and better than we could. And we drove as soon as we could reach the pedals and steer. Everything except the planter, combines and cotton strippers, those were for the most experienced.

      My last two years of high school were in the city, but I still worked various jobs at restaurants, mowed lawns, and loaded/unloaded trucks to afford clothes, extra food and spending money.

      Totally different world for my nieces and their children. We sound like our grandparents explaining the world before WWII compared to their childhood.

      Military and college were easy mode compared to growing up on farms. Met a SEAL in the Navy. He said BUDS and the rest of his training was easier than spending the rest of his life on a dairy farm.

      1. This is something that I think it is all to easy to lose sight of for people in America. We are so insanely rich compared to other times and places. I had to deal with that from my ex; she was always complaining that we were poor, and I would try telling her that we were not poor, by pointing out we had plenty of food and clothes, nice cars, and a half million dollar house. Which never seemed to convince her, since the neighbors have even bigger, nicer houses.

         1. That’s the “But we should be *ahead of* the Joneses!” syndrome. AFAIK there’s no cure, since it usually stems from “lessons” learned in early childhood. 😦

            1. Yeah, it was extremely frustrating to deal with. At this point I think I am going to look for a nice lady who is ok with living in a trailer, since I am just so baffled at the vast differences in cost of living based on the status of the housing rather than any practical considerations.

               1. My problem with a trailer is the size; I’d have to get rid of almost all my books and tools (and a few other things… 😉) just to have space to walk through. Plus the lack of any possibility of a workshop bigger than a kitchen table. Nope. But good luck; I hope everything works out for you. 🙂

               2. Two factors at work here, neither to your benefit. Both predicated on property taxes. One is the desire of government (doesn’t matter which level, they’re all the same) to maximize the revenue they can steal from you. The second one is more malicious, the totalitarian statists of WEF ilk who want to deprive you of all wealth, including your property, by taxing it away. You can figure on paying property taxes vastly exceeding your property value ever 20 years, and I’m pretty damn sure you’re not receiving equal value for them.

                  1. Property Taxes. City of Eugene is reported to be 15 million dollars in arrears on their budget and revenue. Note, that is despite that city residents pay $4k more over county residents, in the same urban area, for the same property value (same house size, property lot, and 1990 starting value. Remember Oregon so *four property value safety nets, put in place by resident initiatives, that neither the legislature, nor the governor, can set aside or override.) Or why, despite being in the urban growth boundary, do not want to be incorporated.

                     ((*))
                     1. Taxable values set as of 1990 values.

                     2. Taxable values can only raise by **3% a year. Or why our taxable values went up even during the 2008 crash and stagnation. Our taxable value was less than the market value.

                     3. Base percentage for each taxing entity is set (school district, county, city, special districts, etc.) unless voted on (new school, safety, etc.) by residents of the being taxed base. Never passes on the first vote, but once passes “just renewing” seems to work. Technically can go away. Technically.

                     4. When selling, property values do not reset to market value sold at. Which makes older properties like ours, VS newer, more valuable.

                     ((**)) Adds up. Our 1990 value was at what we paid for it late 1988, $78k. At 3% a year for 33 years, the base value now at $228k.

      2. Farming (especially old school, manual labor intensive stuff) will wear you out fast. Even if you are “fit.” Even if you do manual labor on the regular. 

         I grew up around farmers that did it old school. Scythes, twisted blade mowers, hand-tilling, rock picking, weed pulling, the works. It sucked. I ran away from the farm and never looked back.

         Every job I’ve had, bar none, even all put together, are easier, safer, less strenuous, and shorter hours than farming. Even modern farming with all the bells and whistles.

         1. The ROI on farming is very low too. People see all that land, all that equipment, the barns, etc. and think the farmer is rolling in dough. Almost none of them realize that none of that is liquid wealth, it’s all investment and capital required to produce the end product, a surplus of meat, grain, or vegetables that has to be plowed back into all that as maintenance and production costs. The margin over time is in the single digits, far too frequently negative ones, and too many farmers have no long term retirement savings or investments other than selling the farm. Which usually ends up being bought by developers and we lose more farmland.

            1. Farmer wealth is otherwise termed as “Land Poor”. They have to bet the farm on a loan to work the land (whether crops, livestock, often both), and pray the selling prices are high enough to pay the loan, interest, property taxes, and leave a profit enough to pay income taxes and living expenses until the next loan is taken out.

               Sure my aunt and uncle had a grass seed farm. But how they made their money was combine harvesting of conglomerate grass seed organization grass seed.

               Their oldest, and her husband, have farmland. Just bought the neighbors property when that was sold by the estate. Their son manages that now. But they don’t make their income off the farm. Husband is an electrician, they have company that wires commercial buildings. When the children was in school, she worked for the school district. She has quit that, and now does the books for the electrician and farm business. Their youngest lives on the farm with his wife, two girls, and soon to be first son, they work the farm with his dad and her parents (who have property adjacent) but he too is an electrician during his day job.

               Aunt and uncles youngest, is also a farmer. He went to work in farm management for a number of larger conglomerates in Oregon, with interests in Mexico. Last job was a family business outside of Wilsonvile Oregon (a long ways outside). He married the farmer’s daughter (only child, also boss). Diverse operation in crops, flowers, and I don’t know what else. They also raise trail horses. They are expecting their first, a son this summer.

               His son will be younger than both great nephews being born this year (his sister son’s 3rd child, and her daughter’s first), and all of my current great-nieces and great-nephews. He is 10 years older than our son (wife is same age as our son), 22 years younger than I am. Not relevant to the the farming stuff, just more inter-generational continuation.

         2. People who complain about Third World sweatshops are apparently unaware that the locals fight and claw to get those jobs precisely because any job in any factory is better than subsistence farming.

3. But in the relatively non-regulated economy of the past, everyone did make a lot of money, or its equivalent. The poor in 2000 lived better than the crowned heads of Europe in 1900. Refrigeration, plastic packaging, and better civil engineering (sanitation and clean water) almost eliminated food poisoning. Central heat and air conditioning. Automobiles, radio and television, stereo equipment, and cell phones. Clothes washers and dryers. These were all new, and within the reach – based on the actual results, the actual ownership by the poor – of almost everyone. It is only relative prosperity – How am I doing compared to that other group? – that people complain about now. But over that century, everyone in the US became wealthy.

   1. Also note that the 20th century managed to automate many of the truly obnoxious time-consuming jobs, like clothes washing and dishwashing.

      1. We were still handwashing clothes well into the ’90s. Appalachia has always been the land that time forgot about, far as America goes. Had a good coal stove that you could heat a pot of coffee on top in the morning, a decent box fan for the window in the summer heat, and that was that. Dishwasher that wasn’t me only came along around 2006. 

         Modern conveniences are a lot more valuable than those who’ve never been without them can even conceive. 

         1. We had a washer and dryer, although mom was just as likely to use the solar dryer to save money on power. Dishwasher was “whose turn is it?” tonight, until after I was married, sometime in the ’80s. I had a, not me, auto dishwasher before mom did. Washer, dryer, and portable dishwasher, were our first three purchases.

         2. When I was a lad, one of the ways I made pocket money was splitting firewood for a couple whose farm was nearby. Ida cooked on an ancient wood stove, and Elmer’s arthritis was catching up to him so it was easier to pay me $0.50 a load (plus Ida’s cookies – Yum) than do it himself.

            For their 50th anniversary, their kids and grandkids chipped in and bought them a propane stove and an initial load of fuel. Worked great, and I still got some of Ida’s cookies at church pot lucks. Then the propane ran out, and the shiny new stove became a not particularly handy pot and pan rack. Propane cost a lot of money, don’t you know, and fuel for the old stove was in the woodlot out back. I got my job back, which lasted until we moved down to The Cities.

4. Les extremes se touchent. His name rings British and we forget that the European right is as socialist as the European left. The only difference is who/whom.

5. Simple Simon clearly dug out his notes from Econ 101 and probably copied them out verbatim.

   Love the line about syphilis and madness, by the way.

   1. for many it’s syphilis, the old Mercury treatment and madness (with lead plumbing)
      too many

   2. Ditto!

6. I have been hiring people for 40 years. The quality of thinking of those hires has degraded to the point that I have to teach remedial math to be able to have someone able to count down their till. And this was a college graduate. 

   Even the de-greed manager hired last year is infected with the fuzzy (lefty) thinking while he also decries the lack of critical thinking skills of our new hires. 

   I taught my kids how to think, not what to think and both are very successful and often shake their heads at their peers. Also the idea of always checking your assumptions as there are no real contradictions.

   Anyway, good post as always.

7. I’ve never twitted but are you positive you were arguing with an actual person? Turning Test, maybe? The tweets sound like the output of some of the current LLMs: random strings of words fit together like jigsaw pieces without any understanding of their meaning.

   1. Fairly, yes. It’s too stupid to be an LLM actually. And I saw this in my kids economics books. (Oh, the ranting and showing them it was bs and why.) And he’s brought sock puppets to agree with him. It’s like watching someone masturbate in public.

      1. Its an anti-turning test situation: Indistinguishable from AI-spew.

         1. Detecting idiocy requires the Turnip Test.

   2. Should that be the Turing Test?

      1. lol. Ten points to you!

   3. Turing. Sorry, my error was glaring at me.

      1. TURning

         TOOring

         CenTOORi

         CenTAHHHHHHHrrri

         Lets call the whole thing off!

         1. Someone calling for Centauri?

            1. There is an -epic- blooper from Babylon 5, where Londo corrects Garibaldi’s pronunciation of “Centari”. both actors deadpan it then go -way- off script in perfect character deadpan until…

               G: CenTOORi

               L: CenTAHHHHHHHrrri

               G: ToMAYto

               L: ToMAHHHHHHto

               Unison: (singing) Lets call the whole thing off!”

               Epic!

               1. Meh. Showing my age. I’m talking about the con artist alien, Centauri, from “The Last Starfighter.”

                  1. “Always trust Centauri.”

                  2. I have long wanted to see Centauri try and con Lando. And I could so see a Who’s on First style gag along the line of “Who’s Centauri?” ”No, WHERE Is Centauri…”

8. Economics may be a science, but it’s a weird hybrid science. It’s a combination of mathematics and psychology, starting at the individual and rising up to the wisdom/madness of crowds. Part rock-hard and part sponge-soft. It’s really not a wonder so many people can find so many ways of misapprehending it. That’s why you have to treasure the people who can figure it out: a Friedman here, a Sowell there.

   And then there are all the others. Sorry you had to deal with one of them.

   Republica restituendae, et, Hamas delenda est.

   1. There’s a bit of game theory in it, too.

   2. No. It is a science. there are invariable results. Such as any attempt to control the market always fails and only introduces distortions. (Like the black market.)
      Psychology is quite outside it. It’s NUMBERS.

      1. I must respectfully differ. Economics is the study of human action; psychology is necessarily involved. While there are certainly “laws’ involved they are invariant only on a general level as in your example. A great deal of misery has followed attempts to proceed from the general laws to particular implementations, largely because psychology is involved and human desires diverge quite a lot.

         1. No. In the individual, sure. But in aggregate, it follows mathematics, and is unavoidable. We know what raising the minimum wage does. there is no wiggle room. It’s a science.

            1. No, the aggregate is made up of individuals. A scientific law would allow for specific predictions, economics does not. The predictions are true in the general, but cannot predict the specific. Raising the minimum wage will, in general, reduce employment for those whose productivity is below the threshold to support for the new wage. In the specific case too many other factors, many of them psychological, are involved to predict whether an individual employer will fire a given employee, or not. There is absolutely what you call wiggle room. Economics is not physics, precisely because it involves psychology. There is a reason Von Mises wanted to call the science Praxeology (the study of Human action). Austrian economic theory recognizes this fuzziness because value is inherently subjective (in other words psychologically determined).

               1. Economic laws are akin to the Gods of the Copybook Headings, not laws like Newton’s laws. Note that I am not disagreeing with the truth of what you are saying in regard to the consequences of violations, just taking issue with the idea that psychology is not involved.

               2. It doesn’t matter. In aggregate the variances smooth, and there’s an awful lot we know about “if we do this, this results.” Laws in fact.

                  1. I was talking to an economics professor at a party once. He said economics was learning to lie with numbers. The basic principles in econ 101 were true but once you got to higher levels it veered from reality. He also stated that professional economists generally just played with numbers to prove their employer’s ideas were correct. Keep your boss happy and the truth be damned.

                     1. yeah, so economists have turned their backs on reality and truth. Men of their time, I guess.

                        1. Weird Science!

                           (grin)

                           One of the instructors I had in various Econ courses emphasized that Economics is well known as “The Dismal Science”. Money quote: “There are -no- rich economists.”

                           His commentary was scathing on how folks can go seriously off the road either ignoring Economics, or claiming to adhere to it. He also observed that most folks can replace a business degree with reading “Economics in One Lesson” (Hazlit), “The Worldly Philosophers” (Heilbroner), and the Wall Street Journal daily, the whole thing minus tables, for six months. He was referring to editions available in 1998, so there has been some significant drift in the WSJ into Idiocracy. Also noteworthy, he called Heilbroner a flaming socialist, but recommended his chapters on various economists as well researched.

                           I suppose the current yahoos at my alma mater have burned him at the stake by now. The core of the faculty and administration were riding the crazy train to Leftroid Land in the 90s. I cant even open their dang alumni newsletter these days without spitting or laughing out loud.

                           1. Heh. So my ex is a big horror movie fan and used to host a showing every other week. One week, we’re watching the original Frankenstein, and we get to the point where Dr. F cries, “Alive, it’s Alive!”, and three of us in our late 40s, all men, sing “WEIRD SCIENCE” in unison. 😀

                     2. Kind of like statistics, then….

                        1. The Reader believes that statistics is the universal tool for lying with numbers. It is also the spawn of the devil in the ‘social sciences’.

                           1. The *misapplication* of statistics is a tool for lying with numbers. Used correctly and honestly, it’s not. The phrase should be “liars, damned liars and dishonest statisticians” rather than “lies, damned lies and statistics”; the rules and their correct application are valid and *very* useful.

                           2. It is useful. It is just that the Reader believes that today the appropriate uses of statistics are far outweighed by the inappropriate uses. The Reader isn’t a Luddite but he does wonder whether the computer revolution was a good thing where statistics are concerned.

               3. Gas laws predict the actions of molecules en mass, but not individually. They are still science.

                  1. They only yield valid results if you correctly identify the gas you’re working with. If you try to apply the equations for carbon dioxide to nitrogen tetroxide, the results will surprise you.

                     Briefly. 😮

                     1. Yep, like (mis)applying them to acetylene as you pressurize it. 😈

      2. Numbers are the rational foundation of economics. Economics being a human activity creates the scope for irrational behaviors, at least as far as the dry numbers are concerned. We aren’t mechanistic adding machines. People can fail to see the rational decision. People can judge other things to be of value rather than mere dollars and cents, and act to maximize those values rather than financial ones.

         To choose a nicely provocative example: for years, based on judgments of quality and price, Bud Light was the most popular beer in America. Now, when neither of those changed, it isn’t, and it’s not all that close. Was it an irrational choice for all those customers to abandon it? Was it, instead, a matter of them valuing other non-economic factors more highly?

         You are definitely right about market controls creating distortions, at least in markets big enough. (I could go into a loooong tangent about gas laws and Asimov’s Foundation series and the like, but I might want to get work, or more frivolous forms of goofing off, done today.) It’s not a denial of that economic law to say that there can be instances where market forces should be suppressed, for reasons outside the scope of simple economics. I don’t think there should be a free market for heroin or cocaine or top-secret military documents. You’ll have your own list.

         Okay, I’ve gone on too long, and maybe been more argumentative than I wanted to be. I’ll stop now.

         Republica restituendae, et, Hamas delenda est.

         1. People can judge other things to be of value rather than mere dollars and cents, and act to maximize those values rather than financial ones.

            And thus I refute What’s the Matter With Kansas and associated works. It’s just barely possible that people have other means of judging their quality of life than maximizing their entitlement benefits.

9. A number of years ago, I had a similar conversation with someone. When they described the law of supply and demand as “only a theory” I figured there was no point in continuing the discussion.

   1. Yeah, well, nuclear physics is also ‘only a theory’ but there are hundreds of radioactive craters in Nevada to prove it works.

      1. I tried starting from “if the cost of something goes up, you buy less of it” and got the response “not if I need it.”

         Some people believe that no one will ever react to a law except in the way that they will expect. Forget about running a lemonade stand. It makes me think that they have never met a person in their lives.

         1. in many case they haven’t actually “met” a person, especially if they’re rich. Other people don’t really exist and everything is magic.

            I gave each of my children a copy of Economis in One Lesson when they were in HS. Questioned them on it too, to make sure they read it. It ought to be a set book, but perhaps we can spread the word.

            I’m actually a credentialed economist and am still surprised how few people with economics credentials actually understand anything about economics. The abstractions and the associated math allow wishful thinking to dominate. Reality seldom intrudes.

            1. That’s a better book than the Krugman text the college macroeconomics course I took used thirteen years back. I don’t think the center-left professor even agreed with too much of it.

         2. There are models for that in micro economics around inelastic demand. There are some items (food, water, Air if you’re a Looney) of which you MUST have a certain quantity. If the price rises you try to swap to other options to keep cost within reach. If no alternative exists you pay the price up to and including turning yourself into chattel slave. It’s that or die. But in general, unless Someone has a monopoly on these things someone else will USUALLY find some alternative. It’s in their interest as it makes them profit. That is the power of a free market.

         3. I mean, sure, there’s limits to substitutability, especially over different periods of time, but the basic idea that as cost/price of something goes up, demand goes down isn’t really up for debate. People don’t really NEED nearly as much as they think they do.

            1. there is the concept of a superior good where demand increases as price increases. An awful lot of “elite” opinion can be explained by oikophobia.

         4. Well, if you really need something you’ll pay the price necessary to acquire it. But that also means that you’ll buy less of something else that you don’t need as much, since you now have less money available due to the higher price of the necessities.

            Either way, as the prices go up you cut back your purchases. Even if you have the money, if the price of something exceeds its value to you then you won’t buy it.

            1. You’ll also look for other means to buy, which gets you oh black market, or how the USSR sort of survived.

      2. And Earth as stripper….

         See, if they hadn’t switched to using barges for the test shots….

         Earth might be wearing…. no bikini atoll!

         1. groan.

         2. your fish is incoming

         3. Thermonuclear Carp incoming… Take cover

         4. Ready the carpapult, Huns and Hoydens.

         5. So _that’s_ why Hank Johnson was worried about tipping Guam…

      3. Many people were never taught the difference between a theory and a hypothesis.

         1. #triggered

         2. To too many people, “theory” is synonymous with “conjecture”. In science, in contrast, “theory” is a good as it gets, being a(n) hypothesis subjected to extensive testing, explaining all available data, never being successfully refuted, and making testable predictions, which predictions have *also* never been disproven.

            1. Hell, they don’t know the difference between theory and fantasy. They consider their wish that something were true to be equivalent to a rigorously established scientific theory. And they won’t listen to why it’s not.

            2. That’s because a lot of people use “theory” for things that can’t be falsified, can’t make accurate predictions, and have the grand total evidence of “well, you come up with something better!”

   2. Heh. One of my favorite “no point in continuing the discussion” conversations was an argument about physics with a fan who said that she got all her knowledge of science from science fiction and comics: If it was in a story then it was either real or would be real some day (probably sooner rather than later.)

      Another was with a fan who insisted that there are no demographic differences in criminal offending: You will find identical crime rates in Highland Park as in the South Side of Chicago.

10. I swear these people think that employers are out to “exploit” the workers, just for funsie. Judging by his excursion into rage-envy of inherited money I’m going to assume he really thinks it’s two separate classes and no one who is rich ever had to get a job, or work up to a better job. This is by the way not only NOT the norm in the US but so far from the norm it’s ridiculous.

    This even shows up in theoretically professional studies- one recently came out about the costs to make diabetic drugs, and it ignored the costs of the machines. And appeared to miss most of the labor costs, too, unless they were done outside of the manufacturer.

    I swear, I recognize this, but … it’s from talking with my kids. Specifically, selling stuff so they have some spending money. Before the “people have to want to buy it” part, there’s that what they’re using to make stuff belongs to someone else….

    1. A typical run of Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3 study, needed to get FDA approval, can take 10 years and 50-100 million US Dollars. Or more.

       Of 1000 molecules that might become a useful drug, and start that 1-2-3 process, only 1 or two become marketable approved drugs. And then the long-term study begins.

       Generics are cheap because they only have to show biosimilar, not the whole 1-2-3 study chain. Essentially, they come up with a way to create a biosimilar without touching the patented “make it” process, or they wait until the patent lapses and straight-up duplicate it, again without spending all those “get this approved” dollars.

       The patents are intended to allow someone to make a buck or three back for all that effort, otherwise practically all drugs would get made by knock-off firms after some schmuck did the study for them. Which is also why getting them online from foreign firms is unwise, as you have no idea what is in that pill bottle from whoever and wherever the lie-ble on the package says it is from.

       And then there is all the liability if your drug has unforeseen long-term consequences, or just loses the litigation-lottery to some freak jury decision that amounts to “Screw those rich bastards. They have money. The plaintiffs don’t.”

       1. Oh, you optimist you. Getting a new drug approved can take 20 years and over a $billion. Easily. The FDA is a gigantic bureaucracy, and every little piss-ant bureaucrat in it has to take a turn peeing in the soup.

          1. See, this was the problem with Operation Warp Speed. Pharma told us that the FDA approval procedure required mountains of paper and that’s why it took forever. If we eliminated most of the paperwork, they could bring a drug to market just as safely but far quicker. People have been saying this for decades so it made sense to try.

             But I for one did not expect that they would just lie about the safety.

             1. they could bring a drug to market just as safely but far quicker.

                True. Yes, they can prove medications are safer in less than 20 years it normally takes. Not as fast as they did for the jab.

                People have been saying this for decades so it made sense to try.

                Not without backing it up with liability. To me this is the biggest shortcut they took.

                did not expect that they would just lie about the safety.

                Me either. Should have once I heard that PTB waved all liability for the developers.

                Heck it has been a year since the sudden illness that has hit and been killing dogs. Anything on the market? Nope. Nothing. You’d think PTB would be all over it. All the classic signs of having species jumped. Only thing I’ve seen has been to be sure to have your dog vaccinated for Leptospirosis, Bordetella (kennel cough), and canine influenza. While doesn’t address the new illness directly, data collected indicates dogs who become ill with it, who have a better prognosis if they have these 3 vaccinations. Pepper has been on Bordetella because I was taking her to agility and other classes. The Leptospirosis because we were hiking wilderness with her and it is carried by wildlife (the local backyard fauna also can carry it), but since she doesn’t play with dogs hadn’t gotten her on the influenza, until this year. This new canine illness, the red flag symptoms were not only put out in warning by our veterinarian, but our groomer, agility, and other classes, we’ve attended in the past. I guaranty pet vaccinations and medications don’t have 20+ years of testing behind them. I mean that is who they test people medications on before they ever get to human trials.

             2. There should be some middle ground between Death By A Billion Paper Cuts and using the American people as lab rats.

             3. Yes, it made sense to try. The problem was that The Jab wasn’t just a new vaccine, but a new not-a-vaccine (except by Orwellian redefinition) with known problems and no safe examples of its type.

                Another warning sign was the way early treatments (HCQ, Ivermectin) were badmouthed, despite the supposed desperation requiring special let’s-try-it measures (masks, social distancing, lockdowns) that… might not be effective. And despite these being known drugs with known and therefore manageable dangers.

                The authorities didn’t want to deal with the covid pandemic; they wanted a pretext to polish their tyrant-boners and crush the revolting peasants. This had become clear very early on.

11. so I’ve been thinking on this for a while. Kids/new graduates/new entry into workforce don’t know how to work, my current theory is that it’s related to the illegal immigration that has been going on for 40 plus years.

    Importing all the illegals means it’s cheaper to use them rather than machinery, and allows paying less, and then keeping the young teenagers out of the workplace for their own good, so they don’t learn the basics of work, show up on time, do the job, learn stuff.

    It also allows keeping wages down for those jobs that the illegals are willing to do, can’t really raise much fuss about working conditions or wages if the employer can ship you back.

    then all the paperwork to allow a young person to actually have a part time job has gotten to an absurd level. Have to have the government decide what the kids can do not the parents. One size fits all rules, all kids have to be in 12hours of school a day, when you add in the homework plus butts in seat time plus travel.

    1. It’s called ‘chopping the bottom rungs off the career ladder’. Nobody can reach it any more.

    2. It’s also very hard to legally hire kids.

       One of the reasons I know that Iowa’s labor market is tight is there are actually teens working at the grocery store! There’s half the football team working at the Papa Murphy’s!

       1. Sam’s Club now has a “high school intern program” starting at 16 dollars an hour, plus goodies. If you know somebody who is in high school, let him/her know.

          Traditionally teenagers could not work at Sam’s Club in many places, which is why they are making a big deal of it.

          1. Oooh, I’ll have to see if it’s in our area– I don’t even know where the nearest Sam’s is, but I do have a high schooler.

       2. Sam’s Club now has a “high school intern program” starting at 16 dollars an hour, plus goodies. If you know somebody who is in high school, let him/her know.

          Traditionally teenagers could not work at Sam’s Club in many places, which is why they are making a big deal of it.

       3. thats good though, i think a rite of passage really for high school kids to get jobs, i see so many now who have never had a job at all go off to college and they are generally the ones with ridiculous degrees holding out for a 6 figure entry level job 🙄

          1. You apparently missed what she said. It’s not a matter of kids not wanting to have jobs. it’s almost impossible UNDER CURRENT LAWS to hire people under 18

             1. Heck try working kids for an Eagle Scout project. Even 25 years ago it got interesting. Son’s Eagle Project was done over summer/fall 2004. Part of it involved chain saws (tree removal), and table saw, none of which, any of his youth volunteers, or him, could use, or be in the area where the power items were used. Since he was in charge, the planning had to be detailed to the adult volunteers who did those parts of the project.

                Children, under 18 can still do farm work, if they are a member of the family. Cousins ran grass seed combines as early as age 10 (had to be able to reach the controls and see out the window). Their kids in turn have worked the farm (well the oldest’s two, youngest will have his first in August). Guarantied the oldest’s grandchildren will work as soon as they are big enough.

                However, because we do not have a part in aunt and uncles farm, our son, as great-nephew couldn’t go run farm equipment when he was tall enough to do so, or rather when cousin and her husband were running the farm.

             2. na i got that, its the same over here, especially with minimum wage going up and the ridiculous bureaucratic BS they heap on anyone trying to run a business.

                most places will hire a migrant over a kid now, cheap and can do more

          2. Indeed – my daughter worked summers when she was 16 and older as a lifeguard at the local community pool – and got so much out of it. Also worked retail at a big local department store for the Christmas rush, and absolutely loved getting treated as a responsible adult by the other staff, and by the customers.

             1. This is one of the big hidden costs of minimum wage and other regulations that suppress youth labor.

                There are many advantages to learning to work, as you note. One addition that I think is important is the skills *to find a job* I say this as someone who really struggled with job hunting, and I can see that knowing people professionally is very important for moving up in the world. Case in point, for my current job I applied to about 1000 jobs, and got the one interview. The next person hired after me got referred by one of the guys and was basically a shoe-in.

                1. So much this.

                2. addition that I think is important is the skills to find a job

                   Problem is the skills to find a job, change overtime. Different from 1974 to 1990, and especially 2024. These days even knowing someone at the job, anymore companies hire through temp agencies for the first 6 months.

                   knowing people professionally

                   Having someone on the job recommend you, definitely helps. My ’90s job I got as much as because someone on the job knew who I was, as my skill set. Did not know that they were working there. My ’04 job, the boss knew the boss from 20 years prior (it is a small, small, world) because he’d rented space on the AS400, from the old boss.

                   In 1979, I put out no applications, was asked to apply. 1990 one application. 1996, half a dozen applications in 6 months. In 2002 – 2004? I have no idea how many applications. Probably 4 to 7 interviews a month. However there were a few that had they made an offer, I would have said no. Not a good fit. Very bad fit. I’m not that hard to work with (been told that). Yes, I have turned down a job, never when I didn’t have one. But I have done so. Twice, if I count the one day consult (not enough time. Weren’t willing to act on free advice. No. Thank you.)

       4. my local grocer has very few kids working there anymore. A few who are now ‘adults’ really, but it used to be a regular summer after school job, and now it’s mostly older folks … the two Wisconsin stores have more, I occasionally can’t use (“over here sir, I can do the beer”) or have to wait on a manager at them when buying booze or beer. and now all locations dropped baggers. If you’ve got teens bagging for you, it’s a fundraiser.

          1. the law makes it almost impossible. It’s ridiculous.

             1. Michigan jumped min wages after a slight delay due to Stasi Whitless’ lockdowns, but the grocer was already installing self checkout.

                1. Word out here is that the places that installed self checkout are seeing too much “Oh, I forgot to scan that one” shrinkage and are retiring those.

                   1. My local supermarket recently expanded its self-checkout. It had just been a stand-in for the Express Lane. But they added two stations with long conveyor belts a few months ago.

                   2. Here one person monitors the works. so instead of 4 cashiers they have one.

                      1. Two cashiers, one supervisor, and cameras over the stations, for 12 self checkouts at our local Fred Meyers. Albertson’s removed the self check out. Costco has 9 stations and 4 or 5 checkers overseeing. Costco at least counts and initials that everything has been scanned, then checked again at the door. Also self check checkers scan the heavy/large items.

                         I use the regular check out when I have high count of one item (my fizzy water, same flavor). They can put in quantity before scanning. But I have to wait every time because Fred Meyers never has enough manned stations open (3 usually). This is most the time now since I’m only shopping Fridays (4x fuel points Friday). I also pre-bag (using reusable), how I want bagged, before putting on conveyor (I’m picky).

                   3. Oh, and post Covid they were trying to have no cashiers after 7 or 8 on weekends (no one wanting/able to work) but now there is always one cashier at least and the manager/montor for the self checks. Wally World here also went with a monitor for each self local. Not been to GB but last I was in Woodman’s they had someone standing among the self checks instead of over in a kiosk further away.

                2. Here’s a link to a SFGate story from last December which references other locations across the U.S. doing the same, so it’s not just a City by the Bay Death Spiral thing:

                   https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/self-check-out-removed-sf-stores-18542348.php

                   1. SF has had continued self checkout, but we call it looting.
                      I have read about other places are getting away from self check, especially in Soros DA Blue Zones. They were losing more than saving, but it only delays relocation for a time. Smaller areas like mine make do with closer watching for now.

          2. The feds and the states keep cranking down– Iowa had our dems go nuts because we legalized a few options.
             Our new “child labor laws”:
             https://www.iowadivisionoflabor.gov/child-labor

             1. Those look pretty decent.

                ….

                There’s something insane and cruel about not letting kids work until they are 18 and at the same time saying that they are adults at 18 and responsible for their own support.

                Y’know: “We won’t permit you to build up the resources you need to go out on your own while your parents are still legally obligated to provide for you.”

                Thus either forcing people to stay under their parents’ aegis, or forcing them out to scramble desperately for food and shelter.

                So far the solution seems to be to obligate parents to continue supporting their grown children by effectively designating them as minors until they are 26 and no longer eligible for coverage on their parents’ insurance.

                I guess it wouldn’t be the first time in history that the age of majority was that high, maybe.

                1. We were forced to work around the system. Most might be called chores. Working for grandparents. “Volunteer” work. Fund raising work. At least with the latter he funded his scouting trail, and (most of) the council contingent participation in high adventure (Philmont and National Jamboree, twice). Which he was fully made aware of. Now, by all accounts, TPTB (courts) have made some of this difficult. Making the process socialist. Even if you don’t participate in fund raisers (where it is hours that count), you still get rewarded.

                   It was bad enough when parents would whine that there was enough money in their scout’s account to pay for registration, annual gas fund, monthly dues, and summer camp, when the parents couldn’t be bothered to ensue their son actually got to the major annual fund raiser (it’s not like people didn’t volunteer to come get the kid, so parents didn’t have to bother).

                   Note, the fund raiser in question also benefited everyone, in that half the net proceeds went to troop equipment, stipend for high adventure council contingents, and funds for partial scholarships (in addition to what camp scholarships the council provided). But the other half went to those who actually showed up to work. Absolutely no reason why a scout couldn’t fund their entire time in scouts (starting with crossing over from cubs, because they were invited to participate to start building their funds).

                2. That was one of my biggest beefs with Trump’s [first?] term: the nationalized No Tobacco Or Vapes Until 21 nonsense. I don’t do either, but it’s not the Feds’ job to regulate that or tighten those rules. I was already of a mind that soldiers ought to be authorized to drink when off-duty at their commands’ discretion, but the 18-yrs-to-smoke had been a matter (iirc) of state laws (with Federal encouragement).

                   The 26ᵗʰ Amendment gives 18-yr-old citizens the vote. For most other purposes, as well, they’re legally Adults. But then when it comes to buying alcohol, smokes, (and, and …) one has to be 21, as if those three years made a magic difference in use or abuse of addictives. I’d say, let’s make it all at 18 as Federally recognized age-of-majority for all of it.

                   1. I lived in Michigan when they raised the drinking age from 18 to 21. One day I could walk into a bar and have a beer. The next day it was against the law.

                      Great Lakes Naval Training Center is in Illinois, drinking age 21. A short drive away is Kenosha in Wisconsin, drinking age 18. Talk about an incentive to drive and drink and drive…

                      If somebody is stupid at 18, they’ll probably be at least as stupid at 21. Some of them are still doing Stupid Human Tricks in their 40s and 50s. Unless they won a Darwin Award earlier than that.

             2. Something I’ve seen on complaints is employers (rather those who set schedules) not taking into account class schedules, when hired as a college student (HS students don’t generally have flexible gaps during their school schedule, if allowed to work). Where the student’s primary “job” is classes. Responses when student points out the conflict is “Don’t care.”

                Not that I kept the job long (found a better one), but while the rules have changed over the last 50 years, still would not be allowed to actually pour alcoholic beverages. 50 years ago was not allowed to pour, serve, or clean up in any area where alcoholic could be served (back when there were family and not-under-21-not-family areas). Which is kind of difficult when scheduled as the only server/clean up, and you are under 21. There was another adult scheduled, just their job was to do something else, and to not be interrupted every 10 to 15 minutes. Substitute supervisor had a rant about that, even after being told multiple times before, that I couldn’t be scheduled alone, by me and others.

                1. “Where the student’s primary “job” is classes. Responses when student points out the conflict is “Don’t care.””

                   That’s why – if asked – I would recommend that people try to get a job on campus.

                   University departments are usually a bit more understanding about their temp help needing to work around classes.

                   1. “people try to get a job on campus. University departments are usually a bit more understanding about their temp help needing to work around classes.”

                      Which is what I did, first time around. Bit hard however, if most of the campus work requires student qualify for work study, which I did not. Job I got was because I was in the school club, which the employer was one of the advisors for. Wasn’t much. But it helped.

                      Second time around it was 20 hours per week, Tues/Thurs (after employer who got me started left town). No classes on those days.

                      Note, when a family only qualifies for “Parent Plus” loans, the student does not qualify for on campus work study positions.

                      1. Must be a difference in universities.

                         Mine was perfectly willing to hire students as temp help, which has nothing to do with your eligibility for work study (which was part of your federal financial aid package.)

                         … or maybe it was different since I wasn’t ever eligible for work study. If I had been, I wonder if they would have insisted I use that instead of just… working.

                         1. Comes down to “who is paying”. Them or something else (scholarship, federal loans via work study).

                            Job I had ’75 – ’78, wasn’t so much for the campus or specific college I was enrolled in, but the school forest. Technically part of the school campus, but not on campus. Also had to use school car pool (no car). At least until I had my own car.

                2. Oh the idiots doing scheduling is a whooooole thing on its own. I’ve heard enough of the folks who get their 34.9 or whatever is juuuuust under the next level of benefits hours… in a three day span, or with two hours between clock-off and -on, or other flat out abuse of employees.

                   1. I’ve heard the same stories. I’ve never worked retail, harder for me to relate. My only story is being scheduled on Saturday mid-morning, to early evening, and not being able to serve the sports side during games (over 21 only, I was 18), and getting yelled at for following the rules and the law.

                   2. Yeah, a lot of that sort of thing has to do with Obamacare and other government mandates. Which we TOLD THEM would happen, but were pooh poohed because they (lawmakers and regulation writers) really don’t understand economics, psychology, or business.

       5. I remember having to get a medical physical exam and a work permit to do what was 98% an office job in Chicago as a 18 year old. (The 2% entailed things like going to the warehouse and stamping numbers in specific pieces of steel for a nuclear power plant under construction.) Curiously(?), it wasn’t a doctor of my choice but one under contract. Who’s contract wasn’t clear. Jumping through those hoops was impressive.

          As I recall, I had less intervention when I worked at a suburban (Chicago Metro) hardware store at 17, where I was doing (horrors!) physical labor, delivering purchases, unloading trucks, and occasionally dealing with garden chemicals. (My first exposure to chemicals that do a number on the skin. Sigh.) Still had the physical exam, but part and parcel of the family doctor’s gig. (Who doubled as the football team doc in season. For a large high school, he saw a hell of a lot of people.)

          I was still a legal minor when I interned at Motorola in Chicago Metro, but out of the county. Restrictions? None.

          1. I (along with *many* others) was a legal minor when I reported to Parris Island. That didn’t seem to stop me from doing anything the DI’s told me to… 😉

12. For me, the economic ignorance is just another example of the ‘dumbed down’ population we now have. How about those idiots who were claiming the eclipse was due to “climate change” and how the earthquake in NJ was another example of the impact of said change?

    Logic and critical thinking were long gone and now we also have a loss of common sense and connections to reality. As has been said, it is not sustainable and will implode – but not without causing untold harm getting to the collapse. Sigh… 

    1. I’d say the real trouble isn’t people being ignorant about economics but people knowing so much about economics that isn’t so.

       1. So much of our world is created by us that we only rarely meet Reality, and don’t recognize the Beautiful Bi*ch when we do meet her.

       2. They know economics means you should look after the poor and the the working class. Not letting people negotiate and strive for themselves.
          Morons.

          1. They know that Smart People(tm) can totally totally totally make the economy perform better than stupid deplorables making uncoordinated individual choices. Or stupid deplorables ignorantly dancing to the tune of mustache-twirling Capitalist Villains(tm).

             And they know that if you oppose their obviously Good and Kindly policy prescriptions it cannot be because you honestly think they’re a bad idea that will hurt the poor and the working class, but must be because you harbor a malicious hatred against the poor and the working class, wanting them to suffer and be exploited by those aforementioned Capitalist Villains(tm).

             And they know that ‘peak other people’s money’ is evil lying propaganda, that The Rich (individuals and corporations) have hidden Scrooge McDuck money bins, and that it will only take a little social and legal fracking to get The Rich to disgorge their ‘fair share’ and make everything wonderful.

13. Some idiots are too stupid to even understand how stupid they are. 😦

    1. What the line? Something on the order of:

       Being stupid is like being dead – the only one to not know is the most affected.

14. “…he was actually arguing with what he thought I’d said and meant, not with anything I’d typed.”

    Yes. [insert eye-roll here.]

    There are a lot of them. This one seems like he can’t decide which side of the fence he’s on, arguing all over the map.

    There seems to be a wide swath of people in academics that CAN’T UNDERSTAND A LOGICAL ARGUMENT. A=B, and B=C, therefore A=C, they can’t do it.

    This leads to pink-haired sea-mammals shrieking at people like myself because we won’t go along with their cosplay demands. Or your idiot with the minimum wage.

    An extremely common occurrence, you’re arguing with one of these and they respond by simply dismissing anything you say as not authoritative. Not because it isn’t true, but because the source has been declared anathema. An example is Dr. John Lott, anything from him is “debunked” because… reasons. J.K. Rowling is another, she’s worse than Hitler these days.

    To the point where you say something like this: “If J.K Rowling said ‘the sun rises in the East and sets in the West,’ would it still be true even though it was her saying it?” Then they will glitch, and then scream, or cry, or change the subject.

    Because they can’t allow anything said by an officially declared un-person to be valid.

    Now, normally one would give the offensive creature a Glasgow Kiss and send them on their way, but unfortunately some of them seem to be running the government. That’s why the discussion about minimum wage is relevant, they KEEP DOING IT even though it is self-evidently not working.

    I don’t know what to do about this. You can’t talk to them and you can’t ignore them, what does that leave?

    1. Illegal actions, mainly.

       1. You’ll have to narrow it down a little, Orvan. Nearly everything is illegal these days. Canada, you know. ~:D

          1. The fun ones. 😀

             Apropos of nothing, there needs to be a good slasher smile emoji thing.

15. Need more coffee. ☕☕☕☕☕☕

16. Wow. That man was just incredibly insulting to working class/poor people. “No one you’d really want as your fellow citizen would . . . volunteer himself to be your cheap labor?” Sir, my father worked in a machine shop as the foreman for 40 years; despite not finishing higher education, his skills were so highly valued that by the end of his career that they had to hire three men to replace him, because no one could do his job. But yeah, he was ‘cheap labor’.

    My next door neighbors (Hispanic) also work ‘cheap labor’ jobs in machine shops and factories to make ends meet – but y’know what? Better people you will not find. There are good and bad people in every economic strata, but assuming that someone is more prone to crime because they’re poor or working class is just rude. From what I’ve observed, it depends more on the moral character instilled by parents, than how much money said parents make.

    1. When I first came to the US I worked for under $3 an hour. I no longer remember how much. I had the skills, but I had major cultural issues to work out AND I had no work history. So I worked very cheaply for a year and a half. It was worth it.

       1. For a brief period in the early 2000s, I worked for zero dollars. Showed up. Clocked in. Did my job. Went home. All for no pay. Not a single thin dime. 

          The reason I did this was I worked for a small business. Local economy was tight. Work was there. Money was not. I needed to have a job. So I showed up and kept working until the money was there again.

          Things were tough, but we got by. Favors were exchanged. The understanding was, things’ll work out in the end.

          So, for about four and half months, I worked for free. There was no money to pay me. I subsisted on savings to pay bills, and ate what I had canned or caught and cleaned myself with occasional bits from the garden (it was late summer/early fall, fortunately).

          My employer barely had enough to eat on himself and keep the doors open. The work was *there.* Sometimes customers could not pay. IOUs were kept. Jobs got done. 

          Stayed there for another three years after that. Business is still a going concern, despite Bidenomics. 

          That is what is meant by “the real minimum wage is zero,” in my experience. Sometimes the work is there, but the money to pay the worker is not. Often enough, it is less than what the worker would like or thinks his labor is worth. 

          But the employer cannot remain solvent overpaying his workers. Not without extreme measures, like robot cashiers and robot burger flippers. Some jobs are not worth the “minimum wage.” 

          They are still jobs that need doing. Good for newcomers to the workforce. Young people and the like. Mandating those higher wages cuts off that entry level position. 

          Like so many democrat policies, it is short on practical understanding. Every action, every law holds consequences. Understanding and accounting for those is the proper job of lawmakers.

          Maybe new laws need to be made someday. That possibility exists. For sentient AI (sometime far in the future), for example. Now though?

          We need less laws, less regulation, and a LOT less bureaucrats. We need that a lot MORE than we need anything so idiotic as a minimum wage.

          1. When my beloved bought into the tax business, he didn’t collect a paycheck for the first three months of the year. If I recall, the business was three years old before he got a paycheck for the entire year. But the employees got paid. During WuFlu, he was (and is) proud that we stayed open, did not take out a PPP loan and everyone got paid. If that had meant we went without, so be it.

             One of our disappointments with the new owners is they believe the employees exist to ensure their paychecks an if someone has to do without, it won’t be them.

             1. Neighbors are accountants, or rather he is. She runs the office. They are retiring this May after tax season. At one point they had the firm sold to someone, but the individual chose to not continue. The problem they (by her account) ran into is current accountants do not want to deal with individuals (families). Finally found someone who wanted to expand their business that they felt they could trust their tax clients to. The audit part of the business they just didn’t renew the contracts. We’ve used them for specific questions (otherwise we do our own taxes). I know he does his daughter’s taxes. But she is also an accountant, just doesn’t professionally. FYI. They are 75.

          2. That’s actually how James Cash Penny got his start. He worked in a store, for free, in exchange for learning the business. Ended up founding the J. C. Penny company with stores all over the US, stealing a march on both of the big mail-order companies (Sears Robuck & Co, and Montgomery Ward) in the changing retail landscape of the time.

             1. Cash Penny? WERE HIS PARENTS NUTS?

                1. Or wise beyond the ken of us mere mortals, considering where he ended up.

       2. My first job was working for minimum wage doing clothing mending and alterations.

          I begged the owner to pay me less than that, as I knew I couldn’t work fast enough to make it worth her while. (I was doing the job for the experience, mostly, first summer out of high school).

          No, says she, we have to pay you minimum wage.

          By the end of the summer she was paying me by the piece. Because, it turns out, I wasn’t worth minimum wage. Like I’d said from the start.

    2. Most of my father’s life he worked as a collator operator. He ran the machine that merged the sheets for multi page carbon/ncr forms. He was particularly good at keeping the 7ply plus machine used for hospital forms working. No one else could keep that cranky whiney machine running like he could. He also was a skilled photographer, a decent jack carpenter, fair tiler and bricklayer and could do simple electronics (had been a radar operator/ repair tech in US Army anti aircraft artillery). He was at least as sharp as elder brother who was an inorganic/analytic PHD chemist Dad just had pretty severe ADHD/dyslexia.  Mom was a bookeeper and could mentally add columns and rows of figures faster than most folks could do it with an adding machine or calculator and with less error. Most of my moms family were tradesmen/farmers. Anyone that thinks blue/pink collar workers are stupid have shown their own lack of interaction with “lower class” members of society. I’d spit on them but they’re not worth wasting the moisture.

       1. Seriously! Part of the reason they couldn’t replace my dad in the shop was that he understood materials better than the engineers, and could correct their blueprints so the things they were trying to make actually worked. He made prototypes of all kinds of weather monitoring equipment and sensors for years, including (this amused him) the one that originally measured the methane that cows produce.

          My brother who has an actual degree in engineering still consults with Dad on projects, because he’s so skilled. He does things with basic math and simple machines that are nigh superhuman – and he made it out of a 60 year career in welding and machining with all his limbs and digits intact, which shows uncommon caution.

          Yeah, there certainly are stupid and/or criminal people in all levels of society, but dumping on the working poor just because they’re poor? That’s ridiculous. Just watch what happens when all your sanitation workers, plumbers, and truck drivers leave town because they’re not appreciated or paid. Oh wait – New York’s finding that out the hard way.

          1. Indeed my dad was an EXCELLENT semi professional photographer. The thing that broke my heart about him is the summer he died in ’82 we had massive flooding in our cellar. All his prints, stuff he did learning in NYC at Ebbetts Field, pictures he did when he did a seminar with Ansel Adams and Adams help with the Printing (Adams real special sauce was in the printing technique) silly pictures of our dogs and hordes of B&W negatives, Color negatives 2 1/4 slides all destroyed. These idiots would only see a guy in dungarees driving a beat up old SAAB covered in paper dust coming home from third shift with OT so his wife and son had a roof over their head and food.

             1. Ouch. It’d break my heart to lose all those pictures and work too. We’ve had all our stuff boxed and in dry dark places, and still a lot of the slides, prints, and the film, did not survive well. Don’t know if we just got bad batch of film and slide rolls to start? Processing was subpar, or what. Not like we were doing anything other than taking pictures, and having them processed by the usual retail options. A lot has survived. Not like we could afford to have everything preserved digitally, but still. Have no idea how maternal grandparents stuff survived, sister hasn’t said. Know storage was sub optimal just based off the condition of their house (I’ve ranted on that before).

                1. Dad made a lot of photos with Kodachrome II, with one summer’s trip in Ektachrome. The vast majority of the pictures I made were on various types of Ektachrome, and a largish number of them I developed myself. K-II is fairly stable over the years, but Ektachrome is/was notorious for fading, and screwing up the colors. However, there’s a fix.

                   Dad took lots of pics, and the “best of” got put in cassettes (36 slides for a Bell and Howell projector). He died in 1970, and the pics not in the cassettes went away over the years. I got the case-o-cassettes in 2014, with most of the pics. (Somebody glommed onto pictures from a favorite vacation trip all three of us boys were on. Wish they had put them back…)

                   I had a few thousand slides of my own, plus the few hundred of Dads, all with color fading of various levels. I also had color negatives, though not so many. I also had an Epson flatbed scanner with transparency functions, though the driver was for Win XP, and I was on both Linux and Win 7.

                   Enter VueScan software from Hamrick dot com. They sell software with drivers for a huge number of scanners, and that software has color correction features. I was able to get the Ektachrome slides recovered (mostly; some of my more experimental shots did better with the faded colors) as well as the K-II and the negatives.

                   It’s a slow process. The Epson handles something like 4 slides at a time, but it was a decent project for foul weather. My Standard* license is probably still valid; haven’t needed the extra capability beyond the standard Xsane Linux software, but it was supposed to be lifetime. Right now, it looks like film/slide-aware software is running $120 for a permanent license, or there’s some form of subscription.

                   If you have the hardware, it’s a good way to recover sketchy pictures.

                   ((*)) Looks now like the Pro version is needed for film. I’d have to upgrade or buy fresh. Not in a hurry.

                   1. Do not remember the brand, but 2002 had a cable software system to convert video tape to digital. Could only do one tape at a time. Process was play tape through cable to hard drive, full tape time was 2 hours + setup. Run process to convert to digital video. Save off digital to CD. Repeat. (I had an extra step because a CD would only hold 1 hour of digital video, so had to split the converted digital into half, and burn 2 CD’s. But you get the gist.) Total time per tape was length of tape x 2 + 1, or 5 hours. For us, that was 35 tapes. For middle sister it was only 11 tapes. Converted all of the 2001 National Jamboree print film via HP printer scanner (had the adapter built in), when I was done with the tapes. Repeated with the 2003 Philmont trip with son’s print film, and hubby’s slides. Was absolutely not repeating with our back catalog, to 1979, of slides and prints. Perfectly willing to pay for selections to be converted. Hubby’s camera work has gotten worse (picture count) to get that absolutely fantastic picture now that he has gone digital in the last (almost 20 years). That doesn’t mean that before there wasn’t at least 3 to 5 shots to get each photo. Besides the prints and slides that went bad (not recoverable bad) there were a lot of pictures not selected just because not the best representation or angle, or we’ve been back and already have new digital landscape. Focus was on pictures that can never be replicated again, ever (people, especially the kid’s baby, toddler, and young child, stages). Cost of digital storage? Lots and Lots of 2 – 5 GB drives. Current count is 4, 14 GB total, + 2, 1 GB travel, drives for backup of the camera SD’s and dashcam video. Dashcam videos only copy on scenic drives, mostly through National Parks, but have been some interesting captures in between. Like the slot canyon just south of the Idaho border crossing the highway went through.

                2. The color stuff was mostly 2 1/4 (on a Maymiya C330 TLR) shot on 64 ASA Kodachrome slide or period Agfa or Kodak negatives. The stuff with Adams was on 100 ASA 2 1/4 B&W including shots in Yosemite and a couple color shots Dad just did for fun. Older stuff was shot on some 2 1/4 on a Rolliflex TLR and some stuff (Ebbetts field, NYC scenes) on 35mm negs likely viewfinder not sure what the camera was heonly had the Rolliflex when I was a kid til he traded up to the C330. Storage was actually fine cool nice humidty so the slides and negatives stayed better, but not too much to mold the prints/ That is until 3/5′ of water overtopped 3′ filing cabinet. I sold the C330 long ago TLR are a fiddly piece of kit and getting 2 1/4 film developed was expensive as even by the mid ’90s that was professionals with RB67 and Hasselblad SLR
                   doing wedding shoots.

    3. And no matter how many homes he owns, or extra vehicles, or investment funds, he will insist that HE is not “rich”. Because people with all the trappings of wealth who are lefty-insane HATE “rich” people.

       Your father was one of the last of a dying breed. These days machine shops DO hire “cheap labor”–my retired-machinist husband calls them “button-pushing monkeys” because that’s all they know how to do. They can’t adjust feed-and-speed by intuition, no matter how many years they spend pushing those buttons.

       1. They can’t enjoy being rich unless everybody else is poor. They feel diminished if other people are rich too.

          1. They want to be “our betters.” Thus they see being rich as being a nice add-on if it signifies their being “our betters” and a cheap fraud if it doesn’t.

17. The big problem is many are so brainwashed about this even them having experienced the issues caused by leftoid policy, they ignore it. Company J buys/merges with Company T and then uses T’s corporate HQ in low tax Ireland instead of staying in High tax Land . . . Leftoid from Detroit – “They shouldn’t be allowed to leave like that” and when pointing out high taxes on a company is not paid by the company but it’s customers, he replied “That’s not true, I have my own company and I pay my taxes!” Oh, yeah? And tell me, just where do you get the money you used to pay thos company taxes? bit of a stammer ” Um, from my customers . . . mostly” It better be ALL from your customers or you are not going to be in business much longer. Gell-Mann Amnesia in a political sense on steroids.
    Now we get to Cali, and San Fran trying to penalize businesses who close down because of massive monetary loss due to high crime, high taxes, loss of customers, and crap laws like $20 Min wage. Yeah, that’ll fix the issue!

    1. I love this insanity in city councils, where they’re going to MAKE Walgreens stay open. When Walgreens is closing because organized gangs of robbers are -pillaging- the store every day.

       Makes me wonder what they’ll do when all the big chains pull out of the entire state in self defense.

       1. attempt to regulate interstate commerce by taxing the AZ and NV locations?

       2. City and County of SF is proposing allowing locals to sue stores that close, apparently because that will make them lose money longer?

          1. And as always with leftists, they can’t even see first-order effects of their actions. (Second-order effects? Fuhgeddaboudit.) Namely, that if their regulation passes and goes into effect on, say, July 1st, there will be a WAVE of business closings on June 30th. Including many businesses that might not have closed otherwise, but don’t want to run the risk of being unable to close later should they get hit with shoplifting sprees.

       3. One move ago, the town socialist (it was a good town – we only had one), used the closing of a grocery store location as a rallying cry for a unionization drive – as though a union could have prevented the job losses.

          A look at local history should have disabused him of that notion, but that’s apparently too much to ask of a socialist.

    2. Hmm. Wasn’t there something against seizing private property without just compensation?

       1. they think Just is Just Shut Up!

       2. You still have title! You still have to pay property tax!

18. Back in college, I had an exercise in a small class to show why certain topics were picked by economists. “Pick Topic A, small and not well-researched, or Topic B, the hot button of today.” People who picked Topic B got chocolate. Did a second round, everybody picked Topic B. (The student who was allergic to chocolate looked sad until I slapped a sourdough round in front of him instead of a chocolate reward.)

    Economics is, as a topic, subject to the same pressures it is, itself, exploring. Go figure that it isn’t a well-understood topic.

19. The Reader is suffering a migraine today so the comments section is marked safe from one of his rants on economics.

    1. aw….

    2. Oof.

    3. We await a rant tomorrow.

    4. Already deleted the one I started. Need sleep tonight. Hope the migraine passes with some rest.

20. People don’t generally consider government-mandated minimum wages to be the same thing as price controls, but they are; the thing being controlled is labor, at the price set by the government. And anyone with any sense of history knows that price controls have never worked, in any country, in any century. They have led to gas station lines in the ’70s, the really weird housing situation in NYC, the epidemic of decapitation in France in the late 18th century…and businesses closing, and workers being replaced by machines, right before our eyes.

21. Those posts read like someone’s badly programmed AI.

    Artificial Shitposter is apparently a thing.

    1. Yeah, but I don’t think so. I think it’s all too human.

22. Minimum wage is job euthanasia. It’s the government saying, “Let’s put your job out of its misery.”

23. One answer to these ignoramuses is, “Why don’t you start a business and show the rest of us how wrong we are?”

    The answers would be stupid and evasive, but at least it would take the discussion in a different direction.

    1. The Reader notes one case of a lefty politician doing just that and learning the right lessons from his bankruptcy – George McGovern.

       https://web.archive.org/web/20190818191714/https://digital.library.ucla.edu/websites/2008_993_056/Politician_Dream.htm

24. Was thinking about that thread.

    I wonder if our best recourse is to put together a short reading list of good, well thought out and well written economics books that are easy to get ahold of, and when someone is starting from false premises that far out of bed, just tell them their school teachers fed them a pot of message, and these are where you can go to reset their baseline back with what is real?

    BGE’s Economics in One Lesson seems like a good starting point. I’ll have to give it a read.

    On the poverty/crime thing, I suspect it is a reverse causation. I can’t find the article now, but when rural America got hammered into poverty, they didn’t really see an up tick on violent crime. Rather they saw massive increases in deaths of despair. Either drug use to overdose, deaths of neglect, or straight up suicide.

    In converse, the inner city areas plagued by poverty and high crime rates, it looks more that poverty followed a wave of riots, destruction and crime, that destroyed or drive out all the wealth and capital.

    There have also been municipalities that go into death spirals because they just stop policing when funds get tight, rather than cut any of their other pet projects. Same overall deal: law dissolves and no-one can have nice things anymore so anyone who could afford to start a business flees.

    This, of course, gets conflated with race things because often it is only a specific ethic group who isn’t having the law enforced, which leads to a lot of lawlessness and vigilantism in that block, and the designated punching bags bail. Who wants to sit around and be the whipping boy? (Aside from the masochists.)

    It’s a mess. And I don’t think it’s going to get better without a lot of digging, documenting and disseminating to all the people who’ve been fed a bill of goods their whole lives.

    1. The Reader endorses Economics in One Lesson as a great starting point. If you get obsessed, after that he recommends Basic Economics (Thomas Sowell) and Free to Choose (Milton Friedman). None of them are math heavy.

       1. Seconded the nomination. Smith is more readable than you’d think, but Mises can be a bit heavy. Sowell is a solid pick, and Milton Friedman was a saint among men.

    2. It’s not that poverty causes crime; it’s that (violent) criminals tend to be poor. The criminal lifestyle causes their poverty, and they inflict misery on people for whom poverty is not so self-chosen.

       1. Eh. Slight quibble, but I believe it is the criminal *mindset* and psychology that is the root cause. 

          Criminals do not think like you and I. Their moral structure, if it exists at all, is extremely self centered. Their understanding of cause and effect, consequence, empathy, and perception of social cues are all skewed. The psychology causes the lifestyle to come into being, if they were not raised that way in the first place. 

       2. Not just violent criminals, of course, thieves and scammers cheaters too. Get a reputation for dishonesty and your circle of friends will shrink drastically and nobody will want to lend you help or money, recommend you to employers, and so on.

          1. There was a story in “The LawDog Files” that pretty much defined that as a “lifer”. they’ve been crooks for so long that they can’t function in a non-criminal environment.

25. I’m straddling two sides of the issue-there are employers that will try to low-ball employees and often there are circumstances where the employee has no real recourse but to stay the course at the current job (i.e. for some reason, my previous long-term job with a lot of sub-tasks that would qualify me for any number of positions based on what I had to do doesn’t, because my job title was a “simple supervisor position”-actually had that said once. Even with the information in my cover letter and in other sections of my resume…). So, keeping the employers honest with the Invisible Boot of government is vital.

    But the world doesn’t owe you a living. You have to earn one, one way or another. And many of these college-educated people don’t know how to earn a living. I’m not the sharpest pencil in the drawer academically, as my grades when I went to college part-time in the early ’00s can testify (I blame that on travel issues and frustration with work). It wouldn’t have taken a lot of effort to get all A’s my graduating semester in 2022, and I don’t think I am that much smarter. It’s all…mulch these days. A mill designed to get as many students-and their government-guaranteed loans-through the system to make money.

    1. on the first: we’re dealing iwth a highly distorted by regulation market, which encourages that type of shit. But the solution is NOT more regulation.

       1. Definitely the solution isn’t more regulation.

          We’re just doubling down on madness at this point and there’s a lot of unnecessary fat to be trimmed. One of the points I made on the same Twitter thread-that getting the costs of things like gas and utilities and groceries down helps the poor because they are now spending a smaller percentage of their paycheck on critical items. The more money they have, the more they can spend it on things that might improve their condition.

          But I also realize that we need some regulations, because assholes are going to asshole if you don’t make it clear that they’ll suffer if they asshole.

          The scales are definitely out of balance. And the sooner they’re balanced back in a reasonable direction, the better.

          1. Like when the Republicans’ Contract With America arm-twisted Clinton into changing the unemployment laws so that after a certain amount of time, able-bodied and otherwise capable people would get removed from the rolls. Lo and behold, they found jobs! Miracle! Amazing how that worked. (Until the do-gooders got even.)

             1. Unemployment should be uncomfortable. Ditto poverty. These are tried and true methods to get individuals OUT of poverty. They work. (pun intended).

26. Wow, that guy is wrong on everything.

    I must say, having previously worked for the government ( teaching) and now literally working in a factory for a soulless multinational megacorp, the private employer is vastly more of a human centered environment to work in. Government buearacracy poisons everything it touches.

27. In my opinion, the minimum wage laws are the most insidious efforts to control. If they’re too low, there is an initiative to find a better wage. If they’re too high, there is no effort to go beyond the wage and the workforce becomes a stagnate, lazy, unproductive group of people that don’t want to do anything other than survive. Neither is the ideal condition, since you can’t control with the right amount of economic coercion. If the amount is right, large groups of people can be controlled with just the right amount of initiative to think they may someday be beyond the existence they will never leave. At that point, there is no stepping stone to prosperity, the very rich establish a control that can’t be broken, and millions are retained to provide the service those in control deem necessary.

    1. There should be n minimum wae law.

       1. I agree. Establishing a base line of what is paid removes the ability of a business to make its own decision. Reality states few will work at a wage that is too small to offer some money for survival, and a business owner would never be so bold to offer a wage that will prevent employees from seeking a job. Reality also states some are not worth hiring, regardless of the wage. Forcing a bottom figure removes the willingness to work. Why try harder if the most unproductive are rewarded for their laziness?

       2. Most union contracts base the pay on “prevailing wages” which are based on … wait for it… the local minimum wage. Thus if the minimum goes from $7 to $15, every single union worker on such contract, at -all-levels, gets at least another $8/hour, even if they are making $100+k a year. And the higher tier scales are often based on a multiple, not a straight add. The language is deliberately obscured so the rubes don’t see it and balk.

          So “raise minimum wage” drives more low cost competition out of the market, -and- mandates union raises on existing contracts. And the Union gets its cut, of course. Plus rules for paying “worker” to do “union” activities, thus for DonkPartei, thus the useless dweebs who would otherwise get fired are instead union-supported on the grift-job gravy train circuit, thus insanely loyal to their masters.

          1. Used to hear this when union contract gave a 3% raise across the board. “But the higher tiers are getting a bigger raise!” No. Everyone getting the same raise: 3% But 3% of $35k is less than 3% of $45k (and yes, after 35 years, in 2010, hubby’s yearly salary was $48k not exempt, so actual income was higher, given 10 – 15 hours OT/week at 1.5x, but base salary was $48K).

             Note, tiers were: Trainee, full trained thru 4 year, 5 – 9, 10 – 14, 15 – 19, 20+. Same job. Just time on the job.

28. 1, his main language is not English.

    2, he is just parroting talking points. It doesn’t matter what you say, except as it creates a trigger for the next point.

    3, he’s not arguing for your benefit, but for the useful idiots.

    I think it’s highly entertaining how often these people expose their ingrained prejudice without even knowing it.

    1. Bot. Set to “disagreeable”.

       1. Not bot. He blocked me after my post 😉

          1. :gets curious:
             :goes to look:

             :Twitter account declares that there is indication of irregular activity and has to be authenticated:

             Rofl, that didn’t work.

29. One of the major political drivers of increased minimum wages, from the DemonRat side, is that union contract wage increases are often tied to the minimum wage, because they know that the reported inflation numbers are crap.

    I had an economics prof in the 90s tell me that the best economic results would be after enough foreign workers came in to drive US wages down to world levels. I asked if you take 40%+ purchasing power out of the economy, who will buy the products, even if they might be cheaper? No answer.

    Then I asked who would bury the bodies of the foreigners, when the US workers got angry with them for breaking the economy. He stopped talking to me after that.

    He was a former prof of Western Economies at the Moscow Technical Institute.

    John in Indy

    1. Of course. Moscow. He knew nothing. But it’s what our idiots are following.

30. Another thought on the minimum wage: with economic growth and inflation it rapidly becomes meaningless. Case in point, a couple years ago I saw Taco Bell of all places hiring at 13 dollars and hour while the minimum wage was still down at 7 whatever. 

    Thus the minimum wage impacts very few people. Unfortunately, those who are impacted are impacted very badly, i.e. poor youth with no skills yet who need to start on the ladder which is now missing the bottom rungs and thus they cannot develop the skills to find better work.

31. The reason they keep raising the minimum wage is very simple, they don’t care if it works or not, that’s not the point, the Union Wage is often times tied to the minimum wage. So if the minimum wage is raised, union workers automatically get a raise. Also, the union dues which almost exclusively goes to Democrats is raised. Ergo the union has more money to bribe or kick back to Democrats. That it is failing, is of no concern, politicians don’t look past the next election cycle. Now in Commifornia their whole economy is starting to collapse, they have not only killed the golden goose but cooked and ate it as well. My question is when will Commifornia build a wall, not to keep immigrants out, but to keep people in.

    1. I thought they already tried a fiscal wall with an exit tax “for the wealthy”. The annoying part of living in Oregon is that the worst ideas from California seem to resonate in the progtards in the West side. The sole good news is that the worst of Washington’s spew hasn’t caught traction here. Yet.

32. I’m an HR director of an admittedly tiny company (under 15 employees over the last 4 years at any given time). Offer too little, nobody will take the job. Offer too much, the employee most likely will not prove worth the cost. Either way, no employment. It’s a purely value decision on both sides, and coming to an arrangement that works for both is always hard. Putting the government in the middle does absolutely nothing but cause aggravation and increase the cost. We ended up off-shoring some of it – we always have a few contractors out of a company in Pakistan since they cost about 1/2 to 2/3rs of a US employee. That, we can manage. And with the modern internet, they answer calls, do data entry, and all kinds of lower level tasks that free up the more expensive US employees for higher level work.

33. I’m an HR director of an admittedly tiny company (under 15 employees over the last 4 years at any given time). Offer too little, nobody will take the job. Offer too much, the employee most likely will not prove worth the cost. Either way, no employment. It’s a purely value decision on both sides, and coming to an arrangement that works for both is always hard. Putting the government in the middle does absolutely nothing but cause aggravation and increase the cost. We ended up off-shoring some of it – we always have a few contractors out of a company in Pakistan since they cost about 1/2 to 2/3rs of a US employee. That, we can manage. And with the modern internet, they answer calls, do data entry, and all kinds of lower level tasks that free up the more expensive US employees for higher level work.

34. The creation of economic illiterates is part and parcel of the Ignorance is Strength aspect of the society that aspiring totalitarians seek to impose. Again, they use 1984 as a “how to guide”, although given the rampant overt Jew-hatred in their ranks, it appears Mein Kampf has been added to their “how to” worklist as well.

35. Had to go to court for jury duty today. Why are they going through the motions when the real crooks are in Washington, and damn-all is being done about them?

    1. Why? So the serfs do not wise up and revolt.

36. The real problem behind the notion that the statutory minimum wage should be a “living wage” is that too many American adults’ skills and labor are effectively worthless.

    1. It’s thinking from the other side. It’s “people should have.” Not ‘what is it worth.” And as such it destroys everything.

37. I’ve a strong suspicion that nutso there–and all the others in the same part of the Venn Diagram as him–looked at something like Cyberpunk 2077 in the same way they looked at Marx and went “Look! Blueprint!” only they decided that conservatives will result in the cyberpunk dystopia because of that whole “if the government is small then corpos will rule the world” lunacy.

    (Note: It wasn’t conservatives in 2020 who had drive thru STRIPPERS so that people could “social distance” while still enjoying their exploitation of sex, or who shut down churches and then added a whole bunch of stuff that was straight up dystopian s**t.)

    ((Also: look, I enjoy Shadowrun as a fantasy cyberpunk setting, and the Cyberpunk 2077 game is fun…but I spend half the time I play it looking for my eyeballs under the desk, because I rolled my eyes so hard they fell out. No, that’s not how economics work. That’s not corporations running the world, that’s fascist governments with their crony corpos running the world. And good lord, that is NOT how an ecosystem would EVER WORK. No cats/dogs/hardly any animals left bc of “climate change”?? Yeah, no–that city would have been BURIED IN RATS (and roaches) ages ago, in that case…)

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