Girl of the Day - Faye!

Faye Dunaway turns 73 today.   Perhaps people don't think of her as one of the great actresses of all time.   Maybe she's a step below the Katherine Hepburn class.   But is there a better string of movies in a decade than Bonnie and Clyde, The Thomas Crown Affair, Chinatown, Three Days of the Condor and Network?   Holy mackerel!  

When the Minimum Wage Goes to $15/Hr. Here's What Your Burger-Flipper Will Look Like

A robot:


























Don't say you weren't warned.   It is only a matter of time before a restaurant opens that has automated order-taking (via a touchpad), automated food preparation, and automated delivery.  

This is why the minimum wage increase is such an extraordinarily bad idea.

1.  At a time when there are more people (supply) than we have jobs (demand), the price of people's labor ought to go down.   Indeed, the mere fact that there is such high persistent unemployment is a market signal that the price of labor is too high.

2. If instead the government forces that price, which is already too high, to go up, you will have even less demand for labor, and even higher unemployment.   This isn't me being a Republican meany.   This is the law of supply and demand.  

3. Meanwhile, when any good gets priced too high, consumers start looking for substitutes.   If beef gets too pricey, we buy chicken or pork.   If gas gets too pricey, we take the bus or walk.   If Ivy League schools get too pricey, we choose a lower cost alternative for higher education.  

4. Consumers of labor (businesses) are no different.   When the price of labor gets too high, they start looking for substitutes.

5.  For years, the available substitutes for overpriced domestic labor were found in foreign labor markets.   "Made in China" labels might as well have been identified as "Not Made in America Because American Labor is Over-Priced."   The first-wave of computers facilitated this kind of substitution because they enabled, through information management, better control over ordering, inventory and shipping.

6.  But now companies like the one above are obviously identifying a need that they can fill by inventing and manufacturing and marketing substitutes for human labor.   This is the second wave of computers where they won't just facilitate manufacturing things wherever you want (globalization), but will facilitate manufacturing things using non-human agents (automation).  

But the Democrats keep thinking that they can vote their constituents rich.

It would be funny if it weren't so very sad.

 

Girl of the Day - With More Penguins!

Just because it's a free country.

Headline: Unemployment Down to 6.7%! Fine Print: The Economy Is Still Terrible.

As I've said ad nauseum, the only numbers that really matter are the percentage of people in the population who are working.   All other numbers are useless.   This includes the U-3 unemployment rate that is the one quoted in the newspapers every first Friday of every month, which calculates the rate based, not on the population as a whole, but only on those in the work force, i.e., those who haven't become so discouraged as to stop even looking for work anymore.  

Yesterday the BLS released the December unemployment numbers showing that the rate had dropped from 7.0% to 6.7%.    Good news?   Look again... the economy only created 74,000 new jobs and more than half of those were part time.   So how can the rate drop?   Because a half million people simply stopped looking for work.

Here are charts that tell the real story (and it's not pretty):

As this chart shows, employment took a significant dive from over 52% of the population (that includes retirees, students etc.) to under 48%, a drop of 5%, when the housing market/financial system collapse occurred in 2007-2008, and it's never come back.   That 5% represents something like 12 million Americans out of the 240 million or so in the "non-institutional" population.  

So why has the unemployment rate  dropped?   Here's the sad truth:


























So, if the same number of Americans were actually seeking work today as were seeking work in June 2009 (immediately after Obama's $1 trillion stimulus), we would have 11% unemployment.

Oh, and if the LIVs would have understood this, we wouldn't have had a second term of Obama, because his tenure as President would have been perceived as the abject failure that it is.   But apparently there are too many people who must prefer unemployment, so long as Obama keeps the food stamps flowing.

The Great Society and the Endless War on Poverty

The Great Society or War on Poverty begun under the Johnson administration reaches its 50th anniversary this week.   How have we done for the trillions we've spent?

Not so good.   To me the downward trajectory before the 1960s makes sense... America was the industrial leader of the world after World War II, and millions left the crushing poverty of rural life for jobs in the factories of mostly northern cities.   But the flattening out after the 1960s does not make sense.   The trillions we have spent on public education ought to have yielded better dividends, shouldn't they?   The increasing mobility of our population ought to mean that people find it easier to escape poverty... get on a bus and go where the jobs are!   Over the last twenty years, the increasing access to information ought to mean that finding out about available jobs would be easier... in economic terms, the "transaction costs" for finding a job should have gone way down.   So why the failure of the Great Society programs to "cure" poverty?

I think there are two explanations.   One is somewhat hopeful, the other is more pessimistice.

First, I think that liberalism itself, for all of its good intentions (if we grant them), actually creates conditions that lead to poverty.   Aid to single mothers leads to the erosion of the family.   No-fault divorce leads to the erosion of the family.   The sexual revolution leads to the erosion of the family.   And... not incidentally.... the increasingly burdensome regulatory state makes it more and more difficult for working-class men to find manufacturing jobs that pay wages enabling them to support families.    Poverty persists because, not despite, the presence of federal and state welfare programs and the ethos of liberalism.

So, theoretically, if you could (a) enact policies encouraging family formation; and (b) deregulate the economy so as to encourage manufacturing and the jobs it would bring, then theoretically you could reverse the trend and begin again reducing poverty.   Hence the optimism.

Now for the pessimism.   When I look at America I see the most wildly affluent society in human history.   If poverty could be reduced to a minimum anywhere, it ought to be here.   Which leads to my pessimistic question... is there a floor below which you simply can't reduce poverty?   Is poverty for at least a certain percentage -- the mentally ill, the intellectually feeble, the physically disabled, the indigent elderly -- inevitable?

Sadly, I think that's probably the case.   Consider the standard IQ distribution:

 

In this standard graph, there are approximately 25% whose IQs are below 90.   That's roughly 50 million adult Americans.   Leave out the disabled or mentally ill... there are still tens of millions of Americans who are essentially intellectually incapable of holding down jobs that require much more than assembly or manual labor.   That is a sad truth, perhaps, but it is still at truth.    And, of course, in modern America we have increasingly created a regulatory state that makes creating those kinds of jobs more and more difficult.  

 

What conclusions should we draw?   Two, I think.   First, the Great Society is a failure.   The War on Poverty is a failure.   And they are failures precisely because they refused to grapple with the fundamental unchangeable nature of actual human beings.  

 

That should be a chastening lesson for liberals, if they were willing to engage in self-examination.

 

Second, the reality that differences in ability, sheer native intelligence, leads to disparities in wealth, should also be a chastening lesson for conservatives.   We can talk about the efficacy of a free market as a rising tide that lifts all boats, but it's also reality that a rising tide also means that some will swim and some will sink.   The free market is a good thing, and increases wealth for a nation, as Adam Smith said it would 238 years ago.    But conservatives should also go back and read Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments.   If we are going to have a free market, as Christians we must also acknowledge that we are going to have to develop and refine our moral senses so that we can expand our charity for those who are less fortunate.   As conservatives we want that to be private charity, not charity filtered through the rent-seekers of government.   But we have to put our money (and our time and our energy and our creativity and our love) where our mouths are.

 

Just some quick lunch-time thoughts.

Hall of Fame

The following 36 players are on the ballot for the Hall of Fame, which is scheduled to announce this year's results at 1 PM centrall/2PM eastern today:

Moises Alou	Jeff Bagwell	Armando Benitez	Craig Biggio
Barry Bonds	Sean Casey	Roger Clemens	Ray Durham
Eric Gagne	Tom Glavine	Luis Gonzalez	Jacque Jones
Todd Jones	Jeff Kent	Paul Lo Duca	Greg Maddux
Edgar Martinez	Don Mattingly	Fred McGriff	Mark McGwire
Jack Morris	Mike Mussina	Hideo Nomo	Rafael Palmeiro
Mike Piazza	Tim Raines	Kenny Rogers	Curt Schilling
Richie Sexson	Lee Smith	J.T. Snow	Sammy Sosa
Frank Thomas	Mike Timlin	Alan Trammell	Larry Walker

Sportswriters (and why is it again that they get the vote and not ex-players and ex-managers and ex-scouts?) get to name 10 players if they want, but don't have to name that many if there aren't good candidates.   If I had a vote, here's who I would name:

1. Bonds... I don't care about the steroids enough to ignore that he was the best player in baseball for more than a decade.
2. Clemens... ditto.   Best pitcher for more than a decade.  
3. Maddux... dominant pitcher and an easy choice.
4. Morris... best big-game pitcher of the 1980s.
5. Schilling... best big-game pitcher of the 2000s.
6. Thomas... a dominant hitter for a five-year period with the White Sox.   Sort of like Dale Murphy, only with better counting stats.  
7. Piazza... a closer call, but the best power-hitter catcher in history.
8. Raines... the second-best leadoff man in baseball over a long period (trailing only the inestimable Ricky Henderson).  

And that's it for me.   Here's the people I left off who are worthy of a sniff at the Hall in some people's minds.

• Glavine -- arguably only the third-best pitcher (behind Maddux and Smoltz) on his own team.
• Kent - a power-hitting second-baseman... but that's just it.   His numbers don't look that great in any other position, and I never heard anyone say he was a great fielder at the least important fielding position other than left field.
• Martinez - I'm not that interested in DHs.
• Mattingly - career was too short.
• McGwire and Sosa and Palmeiro - here's where the rubber meets the road for me... Bonds is in because he would have been in without the steroids.   These guys aren't, because, in my judgment, they wouldn't have made the Hall without the help.   That's my rationale.
• Biggio - a very good player who was never thought of as a great player at any point in his career.   Would I want him on my team?   Yes.   Do I want to go to Cooperstown to see his plaque?   No.    

All of the rest are good players who may have had a few great years, but aren't anyone's idea of a HoF'er.  

If I had to bet, though, I bet that Maddux, Thomas, and Glavine are the only ones who get in.   The hypocrisy of the Viagra/Cialis gobbling sportswriting establishment in rejecting Bonds and Clemens will continue.   Also, I fully expect McGwire to drop off the ballot because he won't get 5%.  

We'll see in a few minutes.

****

UPDATE:   Well, it was as expected.   Maddux, Thomas and Glavine were the only ones voted in.   To put in perspective the lunacy of keeping Barry Bonds out and putting Thomas in... even though I agree that Thomas is deserving, consider this:

1. Thomas had 73.6 WAR.   That's a HoF career in my book... he was essentially a 6 WAR player for a dozen years, which means he was at the very top of the game.

2. But Bonds had 162.5 WAR.   I mean, holy crap!    That trails only Babe Ruth among position players, and only slightly.   He's 34 WAR ahead of Stan Musial, for crying out loud.  

3. And, Bonds had over 100 WAR by age 34, i.e., before he started having the monster seasons from 2000 on that people associate with his steroid use.   Let's say you cut his WAR in half for his career after 34 as an adjustment/punishment for using steroids.   He still has 130 WAR... more than Musial, more than Ted Williams, more than Lou Gehrig, more than Mickey Mantle.   See what I mean?   Even if you punish him, he's still a first-ballot, no questions asked Hall of Famer.

4. Finally, consider this... you could basically take nine 10 WAR seasons away from Bonds and have Frank Thomas' career value.   That's nine seasons of Mike Trout production at the top of his game.   Take it away and Bonds is still, apparently, the equal of Thomas, who just became a first ballot HoF'er.

Q.E.D.   Barry Bonds has to be in the Hall of Fame and it's ridiculous that he's not.

Girl of the Day - Justified! (Alicia Witt)

A new character on Justified this season, Alicia Witt plays the slutty sister of the Florida Crowe criminal clan.   I vaguely remember her from Friday Night Lights too, where she played the slutty mom of a girlfriend of Tim Riggins.   In real life, she's a terrific singer-songwriter, often collaborating with her boyfriend, Ben Folds of the Ben Folds Five.

Birthday Today - The King!

Not a big Elvis fan, but it's hard to say he didn't have a huge impact on American pop culture... he would have been 79 today if he had lived.   What kind of elder statesman of show business would he have been?   Frankly, I tend to think that he, unlike, say, Frank Sinatra, would have faded out in popularity if he hadn't become, essentially, a martyr to his own excess.  

Anyway, this is the Elvis that matters:

Justified!

The best-written show on TV premiered last night, the Elmore Leonard-inspired Justified.   A really good episode too, with a brand-new set of villains in the Florida set of the Crowe family, Boyd Crowder losing his Canadian drug connection and now looking to Mexico (likely to be interesting), and a lot of funny lines from our favorite U.S. Marshal.

One interesting point... too often on TV and in movies we are given the impression that criminals are masterminds.   They're not.   They are usually low-IQ losers who turn to crime because they have no other options and no imagination for finding other options.   Justified doesn't make that mistake... its criminals are often dumb as rocks, which is both funny and, ironically enough, more realistic.

The Bob Gates Book Is a Giant Nothing-Burger

People who leave Presidential administrations have a built-in retirement plan... get a book contract and then write a book that will reveal supposedly scandalous details about the administration long after they can do any real political good.   Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates has put this plan into action with his new book, and is now priming the pump for sales by releasing certain passages that put the President in something of a bad light... or at least the breathless wags in the media think so.  Here's the ever-breathless Bob Woodward talking about the book:

In a new memoir, former defense secretary Robert Gates unleashes harsh judgments about President Obama’s leadership and his commitment to the Afghanistan war, writing that by early 2010 he had concluded the president “doesn’t believe in his own strategy, and doesn’t consider the war to be his. For him, it’s all about getting out.” 

Leveling one of the more serious charges that a defense secretary could make against a commander in chief sending forces into combat, Gates asserts that Obama had more than doubts about the course he had charted in Afghanistan. The president was “skeptical if not outright convinced it would fail,” Gates writes in “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War.”  

Obama, after months of contentious discussion with Gates and other top advisers, deployed 30,000 more troops in a final push to stabilize Afghanistan before a phased withdrawal beginning in mid-2011. “I never doubted Obama’s support for the troops, only his support for their mission,” Gates writes.

Well, knock me over with a feather!   You mean to tell me that Obama, who had run as an anti-war Democrat, turned out in office to be... an anti-war Democrat?   Do tell!

Look, I think Obama is a terrible President.   And I think he has absolutely screwed the pooch across the Middle East from Libya to Palestine to Syria to Iraq to Iran.   But what do we really learn here?   That Obama was skeptical about whether the surge of 30,000 troops in Afghanistan would work?   Hmmmm... pretty much everyone was skeptical, including yours truly.   That Obama didn't consider the war to be his?   Again, Obama is terrible, but in fairness this revelation by Gates was just over a year into his Presidency and he had, in fact, inherited the war from George W. Bush.   That it was all about getting out for Obama?   Sheesh.... who didn't know that?   He had promised that in his campaign, after all.

Again, I hold no brief for Obama whatsoever.   But the Afghanistan War was a lose-lose proposition for him.   Surge 30,000 troops, or 300,000 for that matter, take thousands of casualties, or tens of thousands, and you still can't civilize a fundamentally tribal and pre-modern culture... you can't "nation-build," because there's no "nation" there to begin with.   Or... withdraw immediately and have American look even weaker and have Republicans (like me) lambaste you as a coward and surrender-monkey.

Frankly, I sort of sympathize with Obama on this one.   What should have happened in Afghanistan should have happened seven years before he became President.   Bush should have gone in, taken down the Taliban, captured a couple of hundred al Qaeda and then, on worldwide TV, he should have announced that the al Qaeda fighters are lawless, un-uniformed combatants in violation of the Geneva Convention and all civilized laws of war and, under those laws, are subject to summary execution upon capture.   And then (this part not on TV), he should have ordered their execution.   Then he should have gone to the Saudis and demanded complete transparency and access to their financial records, and said that, if they didn't comply, he would order the destruction of all of their oil fields if so much as a dollar of their money found its way into the hands of any terrorist or terrorist front organizations.    Then he should have gotten out of Afghanistan.   

But we didn't do that.   And so we are in the second decade of a war in Afghanistan that we are going to end up losing.   And, frankly, I find it hard to blame Obama too much for that, as much as I would like to.

VDH on the Moral Bankruptcy of Academia

Victor Davis Hanson has a must-read piece up at NRO about what I would call the "moral bankruptcy" of 21s Century academia.   Here's a key passage:

Two factors have so far shielded the American university from the sort of criticism that it so freely levels against almost every other institution in American life. (1) For decades a college education has been considered the key to an ascendant middle-class existence. (2) Until recently a college degree was not tantamount to lifelong debt. In other words, American society put up with a lot of arcane things from academia, given that it offered something — a BA or BS degree — that almost everyone agreed was a ticket to personal security and an educated populace.

Few graduates have the ability to pay back the principal; they are simply paying the compounded interest. More importantly, a college degree is not any more a sure pathway to a good job, nor does it guarantee that its holder is better educated than those without it. If the best sinecure in America is a tenured full professorship, the worst fate may be that of a recent graduate in anthropology with a $100,000 loan. That the two are co-dependent is a national scandal.
Not now. Colleges have gone rogue and become virtual outlaw institutions. Graduates owe an aggregate of $1 trillion in student debt, borrowed at interest rates far above home-mortgage rates — all on the principle that universities could charge as much as they liked, given that students could borrow as much as they needed in federally guaranteed loans.

In short, the university has abjectly defaulted on its side of the social contract by no longer providing an affordable and valuable degree. Accordingly, society can no longer grant it an exemption from scrutiny.

Downton Abbey Thoughts

Well, the premiere (in the US) of Downton Abbey has come and gone, and here are my quick thoughts:

• Mary's grieving for Matthew was moving, but predictably so.   She's dressed in black, she's wasting away, she stares off into the distance.   Wouldn't it have been more interesting to have her veer off into some behavior that was out of character for her?   Let her be the wild one for a  change in the Roaring Twenties, which would mean you wouldn't need...
• Cousin Rose.   The wild young cousin Rose is a stock character, but one that makes little sense in the show.   By now we've had Mary's lover die in her bed, Sybil run off to Ireland with her chauffer boyfriend, only to die in childbirth, Bates be imprisoned for murder, Lord Grantham blow his fortune twice, etc., etc.    This family ought to be immune to shocks by now, and who exactly would have the complete lack of self-knowledged as to criticize her for being wild in such a conventional way... the pretty stupid girl who wants to go to dances and meet strange men?    
• Speaking of Lord Grantham... it was not just predictable, but truly repetitive to have him once again purport to "take charge" of the business side of the estate.   Why would anyone listen to what he has to say about business for five seconds, after he's blown the family's money so many times?
• Anna and Bates moon at each other like newlyweds throughout.   Where are those characters supposed to go now?   We like them, but their story is at a dead end.
• The discovery of Matthew's will making Mary his sole heiress... sheesh, could they really not think of a better plot device?   Thinking back to the completely banal grieving Mary was doing... wouldn't a better storyline have been to open with Mary already in charge of the estate because Matthew had already left it to her in his will and apparently not grieving at all, and everyone criticizing her for (a) not knowing her place as a woman, (b) neglecting her child, and (c) not grieving with suitable publicity?
• The other downstairs dramas are also completely predictable and, frankly, not memorable.   I think there was a new maid with a past who is going to conspire with Thomas... blah, blah, blah... I don't care.
• A few good things... I very much like what appears to be a very cautiously budding romance between the elderly butler and the elderly head maid.   I also continue to like the story of Edith's romance with the married newspaper editor who may have to adopt German citizenship in order to get a divorce.   Those seem at least to be stories that I haven't seen a million times before.  

All in all, though, I thought it was barely good enough to make me want to keep watching for one more week.   But it's swimming pretty close to the shark.

Global Warming? Meh... Not So Much.

I'm just sayin'.

40 Days... Until the Best Four Words in the English Language

Pitchers and catchers report to Cardinals spring training camp on February 12th.






























I.

Can't.

Wait.

Maybe Too True to Be Funny

From the Onion:

Relatives Gather From Across The Country To Stare Into Screens Together

  

 

OAK CREEK, WI—Turning on the television while unpacking tablets, iPhones, and laptops from their suitcases, members of the McPherson family communed from across the nation this holiday season for several straight days of staring into electronic screens while in the same room together, sources confirmed Friday. “Nothing puts me in the Christmas spirit more than sitting down on the couch with my parents and siblings, turning on the TV, and then proceeding to either look at the screen or gaze down into my glowing tablet display for hours on end,” 28-year-old Andrew McPherson told reporters, adding that he always felt most connected to his relatives when they were both silently gazing into glowing screens of some kind. “It’s just great to get home for a while and spend some quality time not speaking a single word to my relatives, whether that’s by sipping hot cocoa with my sister while we both check our emails, or by gathering the whole clan for a nice holiday meal where everyone is fixedly looking down at the text messages on their phones—’tis the season, you know?” McPherson noted he was sad, however, that Grandpa Sam would not be there to stare into screens with them this year.

Where Do I Go to Get the Truth Back?

Tornadoes are at 40 year low in the continental U.S. and we are in the midst of the longest stretch without a category 4 hurricane since the Civil War.

Extreme cold closing schools in Minnesota (of all places).

Global warming activists trapped in ice in Antarctica.

But I'll bet it will be a generation or more before grade school and high school textbooks are rewritten to airbrush out the mass hysteria of "global warming."   And no one will ever apologize for inflicting this insanity on us.

Here Come the Obamacare Horror Stories

Ace links to these two stories about delayed surgeries and patients turned away because people who enrolled in Obamacare policies couldn't show that they were actually covered.  

It is only a matter of time before some news station finds it irresistible, even though it conflicts with their liberalism, to report that SOMEONE HAS DIED because of Obamacare.  

And when that happens, Katie bar the door.

Girl of the Day - Michelle Dockery of Downton Abbey

How will Lady Mary survive the death of her beloved Matthew?   Do I care?   Against my better judgment, I guess I do.

See you on Sunday.

The Lazy President Prefers Golf to Work Scandal Continues

The ongoing scandal of our inattentive, lazy President continues, as Obama yesterday played his 159th round of golf as President.  

If he were a conservative Republican... well, you know the rest.  

Duck Dynasty Update - The Utterly Predictable Conclusion to an Utterly Trivial Story

On December 19th, I wrote the following on the Duck Dynasty "scandal":

Now, I don't think the suspension will last very long -- Duck Dynasty is a huge hit, by far the biggest hit A&E has ever had, and they're in business, so you do the math. And I also am not convinced that the whole thing isn't a publicity stunt. Duck Dynasty's new season starts January 15th, they're obviously interested in capitalizing on its popularity and growing the audience share, etc. Again, you do the math.

Well, lo and behold, on December 27th, in a transparent holiday-weekend, Friday news dump (and while yours truly was still on vacation), A&E caved and reinstated Phil Robertson to the program, after his family said they would walk if he remained suspended.

Not a big surprise.   Money talks, bullshit walks.  


 

Girl of the Day - Victoria Principal

Dallas seems like a long time ago, doesn't it?   She turns 64 today.

Global Warming and Falsifiability Redux

More than three years ago I noted an article in one of the London papers about the harsh winter in England and how environmentalists claimed that the cold and snow somehow was evidence of global warming:

... scientific fact has to be "falsifiable," i.e., there has to be some evidence that, if true, would make the theory false. If all evidence can be incorporated in the theory -- much like everything can be described as "God's will," or by the phrase "God works in mysterious ways," or "God can do anything" -- then you are not talking about science, but religion. If warmth is evidence of global warming, and cold is evidence of global warming -- or, in England, if no snow = global warming and snow = global warming --then global warming is not science anymore, it's a faith system. And, like any faith system, its arguments of late have often boiled down to demanding that heretics be silenced.

This came to mind over the past few days as we watched while environmentalists traveling to Antarctica to view the melting polar ice instead were trapped by expanding ice and had to be rescued:

In an event chock-full of bitterly cold irony, perhaps even Al Gore has noticed that multiple icebreakers couldn't free a boat stuck in Antarctic ice that global warming was supposed to have melted. 

Few of the media reports on the plight of the Russian-flagged research vessel MV Akademik Schokalskiy have noted the irony of a ship full of climate scientists getting stuck in an Antarctic ice sheet so thick that early attempts at breaking through the ice to free them were failures. 

"We're stuck in our own experiment," the Australasian Antarctic Expedition said in a statement. "We came to Antarctica to study how one of the biggest icebergs in the world has altered the system by trapping ice. We ... are now ourselves trapped by ice surrounding our ship." 

In a statement only climate-change die-hards could make, the group said, "Sea ice is disappearing due to climate change, but here ice is building up."

I think that "global warming," like "Obamacare," is fast becoming the punch line for a joke that everyone is in on.   These people just aren't serious, and no one should take them seriously anymore.   We will look back on this as a form of mass hysteria no different from millenialist fears of the end of the world.