(H/T Breitbart) “I was at the National Restaurant Show yesterday and if you look at the robotic devices that are coming into the restaurant industry — it’s cheaper to buy a $35,000 robotic arm than it is to hire an employee who’s inefficient [while] making $15 an hour bagging French fries,” Rensi said Tuesday.
“It’s nonsense and it’s very destructive and it’s inflationary and it’s going to cause a job loss across this country like you’re not going to believe,” Rensi added.
Bonus: Naquasia Legrand, a leader of the $15 minimum wage movement, went on with Neil Cavuto today to defend the outrageous $15 minimum wage.
Hot Air has this wonderful story with it’s said humorous point at the end of my excerpt of the Hot Air excerpt:
This week’s installment of how renewable energy will save America is brought to you by Watts Up With That. It’s the heartwarming tale of Lake Land College in Illinois, where the administration decided to save some money and strike a blow for clean energy back in 2012 by installing a pair of wind turbines to produce clean, renewable power for the school. Putting up equipment like that isn’t cheap, though, so they arranged for some help from Uncle Sam (read: you the taxpayers) in the form of a $987,697.20 grant. The towers went up and the blades began turning.
That, however, was when the story (unexpectedly!) took a turn…
The turbines were funded by a $2.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Labor, but the turbines lasted for less than four years and were incredibly costly to maintain.
“Since the installation in 2012, the college has spent $240,000 in parts and labor to maintain the turbines,” Kelly Allee, Director of Public Relations at Lake Land College, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
The college estimates it would take another $100,000 in repairs to make the turbines function again after one of them was struck by lightning and likely suffered electrical damage last summer. School officials’ original estimates found the turbine would save it $44,000 in electricity annually, far more than the $8,500 they actually generated. Under the original optimistic scenario, the turbines would have to last for 22.5 years just to recoup the costs, not accounting for inflation. If viewed as an investment, the turbines had a return of negative 99.14 percent.
[….]
It’s reminiscent of another story from the same part of the country. Going back roughly six years we learned that their neighbors in Minnesota put up a major wind turbine installation only to find out that the bearings in the turbines froze up in the winter and were similarly taken out of service. For the slower readers in the green energy movement, allow me to spell that out a bit more clearly.
The wind turbines were essentially destroyed because they froze…
In the winter…
…In Minnesota….
While these parts can be used for future engineering classes and the like… the whole venture is better suited for the econ classes to use as an example that without the government confiscating money and propping up ventures that do not work… they would be (in a free-market) thrown into the heap-bin of history. See my post: Government Investing A Recipe for Failure
Interview by Dennis Prager {Editors note: this is how the USSR ended up with warehouses FULL of “widgets” (things made that it could not use or people did not want) no one needed in the real world. This economic law enforcers George Gilder’s contention that when government supports a venture from failing, no information is gained in knowing if the program actually works. Only the free-market can do this.}
From transportation to energy, and everything in between, should the government invest money in as many promising projects as possible? Or would that actually doom many of those ventures to failure? Burt Folsom, historian and professor at Hillsdale College, answers those questions by drawing on the fascinating history of the race to build America’s railroads and airplanes.
Breitbart notes the impact of the impending law via California Gov. Jerry Brown
The first accomplishment of California’s pioneering $15 minimum wage law is killing the revival of America’s clothing industry.
American Apparel, which provided 10 percent of all apparel manufacturing jobs in Los Angeles, has terminated 500 employees in the last two weeks. Chief Executive Paula Schneider also told the Los Angeles Times that “manufacturing of more complicated pieces, such as jeans, could soon be outsourced to a third-party company.”
The company did not tie the announcement directly to California Governor Jerry Brownsigning of the nation’s first statewide $15 minimum wage on April 4. But the layoffs started shortly almost immediately after Brown’s action, and were announced on April 14 as labor organizers filled Los Angeles streets with fast-food workers set to strike, supported by unionized home-care and child-care workers.
Lloyd Greif, Chief Executive of Los Angeles investment banking firm Greif & Co. told LATimes, “They’re headed out of Dodge.” He added, “They are going to outsource all garments. It’s only a matter of time.”
At the turn of the 21st Century, Los Angeles County was the “rag trade” capital of America. With 4,000 active apparel-making sites employing almost 90,000 workers, the Los Angeles area was over twice the size of the rag trade in the New York region.
Apparel-making got cut in half over the next decade, as Chinese and Asian imports coming through Los Angeles ports sky-rocketed to $46 billion. The number of local apparel-making sites fell to 2,200 and local industry jobs shriveled to 46,000.
But according to the California Fashion Association, Los Angeles apparel-making was back to growth by 2013 as a “steady inflation rate” in China, driven by higher labor costs, increasingly pushed apparel manufacturing and textile contractors to move to lower wage countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, and Bangladesh. Coupled with high sea, land, and air shipping costs, the advantage in outsourcing apparel-making versus U.S. manufacturing became much less attractive….
(Inserted a video from Western Journalism)
Here is an excerpt of the National Review article Prager was referencing:
…White Castle, established in 1921 in Wichita, Kan., now operates more than 400 locations, with many in the New York City metropolitan area, which makes the news of New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s signing a bill that steeply hikes the minimum wage deeply personal. The wage will go from $9 to $15 an hour by 2018 in New York City, with the rest of the state seeing a more gradual phase-in schedule.
“We’ve been in New York for a long time,” Richardson says. “Castle No. 2 over on Fordham Road opened in 1930.”
Unfortunately, despite the Castle’s Empire State history, the road ahead may be difficult: “We’re disappointed. What this means for White Castle is we really have to evaluate how we manage our business,” Richardson tells me. “About 30 percent of every sales dollar covers the pay of our hourly workers, and that doesn’t include management.”
It’s our biggest investment, our biggest cost. And it’s one that if we see increase dramatically through fiat, and we don’t do anything — it’s unsustainable,” Richardson says. “We are in uncharted waters.”
Of course, Cuomo, California governor Jerry Brown, Hillary Clinton, and minimum-wage activists across the country think that dramatically raising the minimum wage will be a boon to workers and that business can handle the cost increases without too much trouble.
“By moving to a $15 statewide minimum wage and enacting the strongest paid-family-leave policy in the nation, New York is showing the way forward on economic justice,” Governor Cuomo said after signing the minimum-wage legislation on April 4. “These policies will not only lift up the current generation of low-wage workers and their families, but ensure fairness for future generations and enable them to climb the ladder of opportunity.”
But Cuomo’s idea of “economic justice” is a long way from the dollars-and-cents reality of running a burger business. If labor costs rise dramatically, White Castle will have to balance its books by raising prices or changing its business model so that it needs less labor.
“Is there any room to raise prices to cover costs?” Richardson muses. “We think we’d need to increase menu prices by something like 50 percent. It’s not something we’ve done before. It’d be catastrophic.”…
Two graphs used in video upload:
And a third:
Mind you, this Larry Elder audio opens with Ronald Reagan discussing Milton Friedman.
In this fill in for Dennis Prager on Monday, Larry Elder’s first two segments of the show are really a “GOP vs Ideals” 101 course. Economics, Donald Trump, GOP nominees since 1988, Milton Friedman, Ronald Reagan, Obama, and more are covered in “Sage” fashion.
As usual I learn from Larry and I share this with you in the hopes you will as well.
For more clear thinking like this from Larry Elder… I invite you to visit: http://www.larryelder.com/ ~AND~ http://www.elderstatement.com/
Can the government ever be too big? How much spending is enough spending? And if there can be too much spending, where is that point? William Voegeli, Senior Editor of the Claremont Review of Books, explores these complex questions and offers some clear answers.
A number to keep in your mind as you read is about how much you have to earn to be in the top 1% ~ and is why “being rich” is a fluid matter and why so many move in and out of this designation of “rich.” There is opportunity for all in this market-based system. And the rich-get-poorer while the poor-get-richer! One should note as well that this number changes by geography as well.
The richest percentile of Americans makes many hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. So how could a $135,000 salary make you a one-percenter? If you’re 31 or younger, that figure puts you ahead of 99 percent of your age group.
[….]
This chart partially explains why the 1 percent is such a fluid club (about half of the top 1 percent flips over every year.) To stay in the top percentile, a 30-year-old earning $130,000 in 2010 would have to raise her salary by $80,000 by 35, and then another $70,000 before she turned 45.
In an article I enjoyed, “10 Myths in the Movie ‘Inequality for all‘.” I do think however that the article does not explain each point well enough. A good example of this is their point number two, that reads:
Just a quick addition to the above before getting to my example. When banks have large sums of money they invest that capital in loans, investment in the markets, and the like. This leads to funding many of the retirement packages the elderly retire on, creates job growth and opportunity for the poor, and all the other benefits that follow from it. So if all the rich did was stuff their money into banks ~ Great! However, as we will see from a oft tarred-and-feathered favorite whipping boys of the left, this just isn’t the case… in which case we go beyond saying “Great!” to “Hallelujah, I hope the rich-get-richer!”
I will use the EVIL Koch Brothers to make my point. The first point is that these uber rich persons give a lot of money to various “good works.” Here NewsMax zeroes in on the issue:
The Kochs’ critics are free to disagree with the Kansas industrialists and their libertarian ideas. However, most who despise the Kochs would be shocked by what these “greedy capitalists” do with their profits, beyond campaign donations.
For starters, the Kochs, support university programs and think tanks that try “to understand the nature of human freedom and how that freedom leads to prosperity,” as the Charles Koch Foundation (CKF) explains.
The Kochs fund cures and treatments.CKF underwrites research and teaching at Brown, Mount Holyoke, Sarah Lawrence, University of Wisconsin at Madison, Vassar, and some 245 other colleges. This includes a speaker series, reading group, and essay contest at the University of Nevada Las Vegas in Harry Reid’s home state. Koch Industries (which offers same-sex spousal benefits to its legally married employees) also donated $814,000 to the Kansas State University Office of Diversity to assist “historically under-represented students.”
David Koch survived a 1991 plane crash that killed 34 people, including everyone else in first class. He soon was diagnosed with, and then endured, prostate cancer. These challenges reinforced his passion for medical philanthropy. Among $506 million in such gifts, his major grants include:
“Quality care, not Koch care!” unionized nurses screamed outside Koch’s Park Avenue apartment. Never mind that his contributions create work for unionized nurses.
The Kochs back the arts.
Elizabeth B. Koch, Charles’ wife, launched the Koch Cultural Trust. It has furnished $1.8 million in grants to artists and musicians with ties to Kansas.
David Koch supports PBS’ documentary series “Nova.” He also is a paleo-philanthropist, having given $15 million to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History for a Hall of Human Origins and another $35 million to update its fossil and dinosaur displays in Washington, D.C. New York’s American Museum of Natural History will enjoy a new Dinosaur Wing, thanks to David’s $20 million gift.
David also donated $100 million in 2008 to modernize the former New York State Theater at Manhattan’s Lincoln Center, home to the New York City Ballet and the New York City Opera.
The Kochs also steward the environment.
“Koch Industries, Inc. takes a leadership role in the promotion of biodiversity, wildlife habitat enhancement, land restoration and conservation education,” according to Wildlife Habitat Council president Robert Johnson. “Koch and its subsidiaries maintain Council-certified programs at 10 facilities throughout the United States,” including Montana’s 300,000-acre Matador Cattle Company Beaverhead Ranch.
Flint Hills Resources (a Koch company) helps Ducks Unlimited maintain 36,000 acres of waterfowl habitat on 116 Minnesota lakes. Thus, Ducks Unlimited gave the company its Emerald Teal Award.
Another point worth making is one from my own life. I have never worked for a poor person. So let us apply this to our Koch example. Koch Industries “employs about 60,000 people in the United States and another 40,000 in 59 other countries.” These are people, real people, providing sustenance to their kids, spouse, community (in being able to donate to causes they support), and the like. In our own and in the other countries Koch Industries hires people… this job may be what is keeping said family from poverty.
NATIONAL REVIEW points out the following:
Politicians often divide Americans between “the rich” and “working people,” implying that the rich don’t work for their money. Complaining about the tax deal, Rep. Jim McDermott (D., Wash.) contemptuously referred to the rich as “trust-funders,” suggesting that most had done nothing to earn their wealth. But in reality, roughly 80 percent of millionaires in America are the first generation of their family to be rich. They didn’t inherit their wealth; they earned it.
In fact, several studies indicate that the rich work very hard for their wealth. For example, research by professors Mark Aguiar and Erik Hurst found that the working time for upper-income professionals has increased since 1965, while working time for low-skill, low-income workers has decreased. Similarly, according to a study by the economists Peter Kuhn and Fernando Lozano, the number of men in the bottom fifth of the income ladder who work more than 49 hours per week has dropped by half since 1980. But among the top fifth of earners, work weeks in excess of 49 hours have increased by 80 percent. Dalton Conley, chairman of NYU’s sociology department, concludes that “higher-income folks work more hours than lower-wage earners do.”
Research by Nobel Prize–winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman showed that those earning more than $100,000 per year spent on average less than 20 percent of their time on leisure activities, compared with more than a third of their time for people who earned less than $20,000 per year. Kahneman concluded that “being wealthy is often a powerful predictor that people spend less time doing pleasurable things and more time doing compulsory things.”
The rich are not sitting by the pool, sipping their cocktails; they are sitting in their offices, working their behinds off….
People do not realize this, but about 80% of America’s Millionaires are first gen rich, started with nothing and became wealthy. The Left has this idea of people being rich by the luck of inheritance… which isn’t bad itself. If I was able to “make it,” I would want to leave my kids my money. But the reality is more like INVESTOPEDIA points out:
The Bottom Line
Maybe you see a pattern here: today’s millionaires are people who live within their means, budget and spend wisely, and focus on financial independence first. These are habits that take discipline, but ones we can all adopt to begin growing wealth….
Which brings us back to NATIONAL REVIEW’S article:
…The Left also makes two other contradictory claims about the rich and their wealth. On the one hand, we are told that the rich spend their money frivolously. Perhaps some do, but this ignores the fact that frivolous expenditures often provide jobs and income for the rest of us. Back in 1990, for example, Congress decided to impose a “luxury tax” on such frivolous items as high-priced automobiles, aircraft, jewelry, furs, and yachts. The tax “worked” in a sense. The rich bought fewer luxury goods — and thousands of Americans who worked in the jewelry, aircraft, and boating industries lost their jobs. According to a study done for the Joint Economic Committee, the tax destroyed 7,600 jobs in the yacht-building industry alone.
On the other hand, we are told that lower taxes on the wealthy won’t help the economy because the rich don’t spend enough of their money. That old-fashioned Keynesian economics — which assumes economic growth is driven by consumer demand — ignores the fact that money not spent by the rich is not simply stuffed under millionaires’ mattresses. The savings of the rich provides the investment capital that funds new ventures, creates new jobs, and spurs innovation. The money that the rich save and invest is the money that companies use to start or expand businesses, buy machinery and other physical capital, or hire workers.
No doubt there are dishonest or unscrupulous businessmen who have gotten rich by taking advantage of others. And it’s hard to feel much sympathy for the Paris Hiltons of the world, flitting through life with a sense of entitlement that they haven’t earned. But most wealthy Americans have worked hard for what they have, pay more than their fair share of taxes, give generously to charity, and, most important, drive the economic growth that all of us non-rich people rely on.
That’s something to remember the next time that politicians start to beat the drums of class warfare.
What do these “class warfare” politicians do to create jobs and wealth? Not much. You can see more on this and other subjects via my ECON 101 Topics Page. In the following 11-minute audio, Radio talk show hos Michael Medved sheds some light on the Koch’s and takes a dissenting call on the matter:
Again, I will let other’s share my point about the rich with the Koch’s as my example:
The question is “what happens when you do tax the rich”? Well, we know from past experience:
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See my Minimum Wage Page.
Economics: Is raising minimum wage to $15 a bad idea? Professor Don Boudreaux explains why raising minimum wage actually hurts the economy instead of improving an employee’s chances of maintaining and getting a job.