Burger King and Brown Gravy

It appears Burger King is Buying Tim Horton’s in Canada so it can move it’s base of operations up North to avoid the confiscatory corporate tax rates in the United States.

Let me ask anyone who see’s this as a Treasonous Betrayal…

Do you want the Number Two Fast Food Chain to stay in business so it can pay the Artificially High Minimum Wages set by politicians and moronic voters?

Yes… I do!

Well that’s what they’re trying to do, so you should be headed to the Burger Kind Drive-Up Window for your Double Whopper with Cheese and a Large Coke that you know you Love. (Eat it while you drive.)  Instead of calling for a Boycott.

No… I don’t!

Then you Hate minimum wage workers. You Hate readily available nutrition for the poor. You Hate the additional time afforded those single Moms who have to work three jobs and don’t have time to make dinner at home. You just Hate.  Hater.

You created this conundrum.  Sleep in it.

I’m just excited now that I can get my Double Whopper with Cheese, Extra-large Coke and an order of Fries WITH Gravy and Cheese Curds!  Brilliant!

(Some Day BK might see clearly and bring back the Veal Parmesan Sandwich.  I would buy shares at that point.)

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Number Monkeys

(Does ANYONE believe that the Administration Magically produced 7 million enrollees in Obama Care in just two weeks?  Bueller…. Bueller… Anyone?  Really?  We have Seen This Before.  In fact, we’re still seeing it with the Unemployment numbers.  Please re-read the below post, then ask yourself is Anything this Administration says believable?  Anything?  Then ask yourself, Is the Press now totally co-opted by the ruling party?  Are our Media simply Propaganda Arms of the Government?  It’s all so Incredible to be Unbelievable if it wasn’t happening right before our eyes.)

(And yesterday, Sibelius actually said that 5.3-5.4% Unemployment should represent “Full Employment”.  Not long ago a President was Condemned Roundly by the Left when Unemployment went over 5%.  5%.  Again… 5%.  These people know no bounds when it comes to blatantly insulting our intelligence.)

Why isn’t anyone asking for the exact formula used to calculate unemployment and then posting it on the screen every time the numbers are presented?  How hard can this be?

I contend that just like the rhetoric employed by politicians such as “Forward”, “Hope and Change” and “Country First” the formulas we use to get our numbers are always left intentionally vague.  Think about it for a moment… If you know exactly how the data is arrived at, you might be able to do it yourself.  And… if you could do it yourself then there is no way for any Administration to monkey with the results.

In other words, if you define anything, it will be used to measure your performance.  We certainly cannot have any of that in government.  And clearly we are willing to accept, allow, endorse this behavior from our political leaders.  Why on earth would you be specific when you can leave it all up to the listeners imagination?  If they like you, they’ll make it mean whatever they think is favorable, if they don’t like you… well, who cares?

So once again we have an unemployment number that is meaningless except that it’s bad, or good, depending on who you like.  Keep in mind, it’s the best one the Monkey’s could produce… and sometimes it’s better than the last one, until the Monkey’s revise it when no one is looking, and then it’s not… or it is.

My latest favorite bit of Monkey business has applied a number to those “dropping out fo the work force” and “those who have stopped looking for work”.

I’m not the sharpest bowling ball in the deck, so it’s probably no surprise that I don’t understand what that means.  Help me here.  Does that mean that these people have disappeared from the face of the earth?  Does it mean they have illegally crossed the border into Canada to find work?  Does it mean that they are no longer a burden on our already overwhelmed social safety net because they stopped taking welfare? (This one I would be happy with.) Apparently none of the above.  It simply means they are not considered “unemployed”.

Well okay!…  Let’s all drop out of the workforce thus solving our problem.

Frankly, I’m not sure why our government goes through all the posturing to create an idea that any of this is based in reason.  I would have more respect if they just came out and said “We made up this months unemployment number, at it’s X.”  (It’s been done before… FDR did it with gold.)  Then at least there would be some honesty, even if inaccuracy remains, in the system.

I can hear it now… “Mike, you’re just not educated enough to understand the complexities involved when trying to get an accurate number for something like unemployment. It’s just not that simple.”  Yes… Yes… it’s FAR TOO COMPLEX for small minds like mine.  I seem to hear this anytime the Number Monkey’s get challenged.  Well, yes, it is that simple which is why I’m educated enough to understand it.

Floating metrics are loved by anyone not wishing to be held accountable to the results of their prognostications.  “We created 4 million new jobs!”  Just don’t bother me with the fact that unemployment is going up, not down.  And don’t bother me with the fact that many of these jobs already existed but we decided to call them something else in order to count them.  I get to decide what job is and I get to decide how I calculate it… so SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP and stop bothering me…  As long as we let them get away with it then they will keep behaving like your little sister.  This truly is supposed to be the function of our news media as our watchdogs over government.  Where are these bastions of objectivity when you need them?

I guess it’s up to us.

So, let’s all agree on a single, unalterable, formula and stick to it.  We should also agree that people don’t simply disappear.  I’m sure all the media will jump on this idea after they read this post.

If nothing else it would be fun to watch the politicians screams out in pain after being shown the cross of accountability.  Remember, the formulas should not change from Administration to Administration.

And, let’s start making a public list of those “surprised” economists every time the economic numbers come out.  I think it would be useful for the news agencies (since they are incapable of doing this themselves) to finally figure out who not to listen to.  (For all you news nets out there, you can just send me a check for that one.  I also accept scotch.)

(Originally posted 091912… yet here we are again.)

(And Again… and again…)

Got Mad Skillz?

And you ain’t got no J.O.B.?

Or

Taxpayer Financed Workforce Training is Stupid….

Or

Outsourcing totally makes sense…

Or

Let’s get back to the Fundamentals…

Anything other than a business directly training its staff is ridiculous, and a colossal waste of taxpayer money.

Only the Business, Corporation, LLC etc. knows what specific skills are needed at any specific moment. And only they have the ability to “re-tool” quickly enough to meet market demand and best practices. Thus, they are the only ones equipped to train personnel in a competitive environment because of their flexibility due to their market participation and the knowledge derived from it.  This was called “On The Job Training”.

Then why doesn’t this happen?

So why is “On The Job Training” a phrase of the past. In other words, what happened to the days when “unskilled” workers would be hired and trained to fill the desired positions within a company?

The Minimum Wage happened.

The Minimum Wage is why you have to go to school and GUESS what skills will be necessary to secure a job of your liking.

Decades have passed since “getting into”, “starting in the mailroom” or “getting in on the ground floor” of the profession of your choice was an option. Now those industries must hire “trained” or “skilled” employees because they cannot afford to spend any time paying you to learn on the job. It is simply too expensive… because there is an artificial Minimum of which they must pay.

This is why “unskilled” labor in other countries such as China CAN be employed to make things like Apple iPad’s because the wages are far lower and make it possible to build the time spent training the workforce into a product cost consumers are willing to pay.

This is why companies, who want to stay in business, outsource jobs…

If they could not outsource jobs… you would not have an iPad to play with in addition to many other things you take for granted.

Are you with me so far?

Outsourcing, because labor is too expensive in the U.S., enables YOU to have cool stuff you would otherwise NOT HAVE.

But instead of illustrating this simple truth for all to understand, we embrace ideas like “The Living Wage”. (As an aside… considering the “Living Wage” kills jobs as illustrated above resulting in “No Wage”, I’m not sure why anyone supports it. But too few out there seem to think past the warm, pleasant, feeling of the inane goo being poured into their ears. I digress.)

Another problem that should be understood is Big Labor’s relationship to the Minimum Wage/Living Wage. If you’ve ever been confronted by someone with a clipboard asking you to sign a petition to “raise the minimum wage” it is always a Union Member or someone being paid by a Union. Weird… right?  We all know Unions don’t get paid minimum wages!

Well, the Unions base their “scale” or pay rate upon whatever the minimum wage is.  So… by raising the Minimum Wage (A Wage hardly anyone other than first time, entry-level, workers earn) you are handing the Unions an exponentially larger raise. For example, a 25-cent increase in the minimum wage can hand the Unions a $1.25 raise in their base scale. Play around with that math for a second… we have lately seen the minimum wage raised from $5.25 to $7.50+ in some areas with Union base wages already at $35. So using this example, a $2.25 raise to a “Living Wage” gives the Unions a… wait for it… $11.25 raise! That’s a 30% increase in pay per hour to $46.25. That’s just for one hours worth of the same work they were doing prior to the law being changed.  That takes a Union member making $72,800 a year to $96,200 plus benefits!  Are we still talking about the “minimum wage” here?  No… no we are not.

What also happens is the artificially higher wages prevents companies from being able to afford to hire unskilled labor and train them to fulfill the need of the company.  And, in the dim thinking of the Unions, assures their employment at their already exorbitant hourly wage rates… right up until the company lays them off, or goes out of business completely.  Hostess Twinkie anyone?  Seems self-explanatory… but apparently it’s just complicated enough for the Union membership not to understand, so the Union dues keep pouring in.  Then pouring out to the Union Bosses and Leftist Politicians for their election campaigns.

So is it any wonder that jobs move overseas?

If you’re still not convinced… let’s take your $750 iPad and multiply the cost of the labor alone ($250) by 30% with a required 33% profit margin on each unit… now you would have to pay $1100… which you would most likely not do, thus too few people would be interested in buying it over a lap-top… so nobody would have one because there would be no profit available incenting Apple to make it.  If you doubt this and think Steve Jobs would have made it anyway just because he was a “caring”, “altruistic” humanitarian… read his book.

Can you imagine the cool stuff we would have if the government, and those people with the very best of intentions, would just keep their fingers, and noses, out of the Free-Market.

There’s no telling how great our lives might be…

We’ll never know, because this issue is too easy for the Demagogues to make anyone speaking the truth about a Government Mandated Minimum Wage out to be evil.  Which, frankly, illustrates the ignorance of the masses who allow themselves to be manipulated by the Unions and Politicians.  Too bad… it’s a huge loss for all of us, including them.

This is a very important concept to understand as it’s a building block in the foundation of basic economics.  Once you can wrap your mind around what is being explained here you are half way to fully understanding how the world works.

So if you got Mad Skillz and ain’t got no J.O.B. it’s your fault if you support a minimum wage…

…Biaaoootch!

(Originally posted 111112.  But some things need repeating.)