what if?

A New Year

In a few hours, we'll bid adieu to 2013, and face the days, weeks and months that 2014 has to offer. People will make their predictions, yet only time will tell what glories and disasters the new year will hold.

Still, we cannot help but make our best guesses.  One of mine is that the left will continue to do all it can to force all of us to "do the right thing" - as the left so well knows.  This news article is more evidence of what the left things is good for us - and how too often, their best intentions go so wrong.

Andy Puzder, the CEO of CKE Restaurants, the parent company of Hardee's and Carl's Jr., should know. His company is expanding rapidly abroad due to higher potential outside the U.S., which is hampered by what he sees as too much government regulation.

"It's difficult to open in the U.S., but we love the U.S. and continue to fight the good fight to open restaurants and create jobs," Puzder said. "It's just that the government is making it hard for us to build those restaurants."

"Under the current U.S. business climate, regulatory and tax restrictions tend to curb otherwise dynamic entrepreneurial energy," Puzder said. "We'd love to see more growth in domestic markets. Unfortunately, it's easier for our franchisees to open a restaurant in Siberia than in California."

Puzder named ethanol regulation, which has resulted in higher beef costs, a rising minimum wage and higher labor costs due to Obamacare as three obstacles that make doing business in the U.S. more difficult than in the past.

To help lessen the effect of these rising labor costs and to attract a tech-savvy generation, CKE is turning to technology and looking into options for mobile ordering as well as tablet ordering within its restaurants. 

"I think it satisfies the needs of younger people. It also reduces your costs," he said. "When they talk about raising the minimum wage or providing health care for employees over 30 hours, you're really encouraging automation."

Although I personally do believe many on the left understand that more jobs and better wages leave our nation in superior condition, they do not comprehend how much of what they wish to regulate and force makes their goals more difficult, not easier. Their hate of "fast food" and belief that "healthy" unprocessed food may be, overall, accurate.  Nevertheless, their constant regulating of the industry serves only to send jobs to other nations, and automate away the entry level jobs that might otherwise stay in the U.S.

Put me down as someone who thinks it is not good to eat every meal at a fast food restaurant.  Yet, the answer isn't killing the industry.  The answer is having people work out for themselves what is best in their own lives, allowing them to make their own personal choices - and then learn from those choices.  Having life forced and regulated upon us rarely works out well.

And on that note - a Happy New Year, with all it may portend - for us all!

Have They NO Shame?!

No.

A Sunday episode of MSNBC’s political commentary show Melissa Harris-Perry has sparked outrage because of a segment that turned Mitt Romney’s adopted black grandson into the butt of a political joke.

Host Harris-Perry stirred the pot by displaying a giant photo of Mitt Romney’s extended family Christmas photo to a panel of liberal pundits and comedians.

‘It really sums up the diversity of the Republican party, the RNC. At the convention, they find the one black person,’ joked Dean Obeidallah, just one of the uncouth digs the group made at the expense of Kieran Romney.

Critical Government Programs

Did you think that our government doesn't fund research for critically important services?  Guess again!

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has provided nearly $1 million in taxpayer funding since 2010 to “The Popular Romance Project,” an academic program to study the genre of popular romance fiction.

The Project aims to “explore the fascinating, often contradictory origins and influences of popular romance as told in novels, films, comics, advice books, songs, and internet fan fiction, taking a global perspective,” and will culminate with a 2015 documentary called “Love Between the Covers,” a “content-rich website,” an academic symposium, and a “nationwide series of library programs dealing with the past, present, and future of the romance novel.”

Under Obama-appointed former chairman Jim Leach and Obama-appointed acting chairman Carole M. Watson, NEH has given $914,000 to the Project, according to Sen. Tom Coburn’s annual “Wastebook.”

In the spirit of academic inquiry, let’s have a look at some of the book titles featured on the Popular Romance Project’s website, which was funded by a $250,000 NEH grant:

"Income Inequality"

Everyone who is infatuated with this new buzzphrase should read this.

If I’m reading this report correctly (and if the reporter has interpreted the data correctly), fully 20 percent of Americans are, for some portion of their working lives, in the top two percent of income earners in America.  This fact strikes me as strong evidence against the proposition that Americans are not very economically mobile.

Four other things to note.  First, note the kinds of people who are most likely to be among the “new rich”: they’re married and educated.

Second, note some of the strange conclusions drawn by the reporter (and the caption writer).  For example, in the caption we read that the success of the “new rich” makes them “the biggest barrier to reducing the nation’s income inequality.”  This claim refers to the fact that the “new rich” are less likely than are many other groups to support massive government schemes of ‘redistribution.’  But, my gosh, these people (the “new rich”) are themselves, each and everyone of them, personally working at – and succeeding at – reducing income inequality.  They work hard and are responsible; therefore, they enjoy larger monetary rewards than they’d get were they less hard-working and less responsible.  Through their personal efforts and responsible behaviors they reduce the differences that separate the sizes of their incomes from those of the super-rich.  Far from being the biggest barrier to reducing the nation’s income inequality, such people are proving that income inequality is neither as great nor as insurmountable and stifling as “Progressives” would have us think.

Third, the last sentence quoted above from the report is (albeit unintentionally), taken in the context of the whole report, further evidence that, if the middle-class in America is disappearing, it’s chiefly because more and more Americans are becoming rich.  By “hollowing out” the middle (as conventionally classified), the economic distance between “the poor” and “the (greater numbers of) rich” might appear to be larger, if only because many once-middle-income Americans are now rich Americans.  But surely such “hollowing out” is to be celebrated rather than lamented.

Fourth and finally, note the Mr. James Lott in the photo – one of the “new rich.”  He’s the son of Nigerian immigrants.  He obviously works hard and acts responsibly.  He doesn’t moan about what he doesn’t have, and he didn’t sit around envying other people and hoping and waiting for the government to give him someone else’s money in order to make his income more on par with that of “the rich.” I don’t know anything about Mr. Lott beyond what is reported here by the AP, but he certainly seems to be a testament to the proposition that if you work hard and act responsibly in America, you can still succeed regardless of your starting circumstance.  (Oh, and note also that Mr. Lott is a pharmacist working for, and being paid handsomely by – wait for it! – Wal-Mart!)

When Is "Enough" Enough?

One man wonders vis a vis the health care industry.

The naivety I had witnessed during the Clinton Wars was still in force. Many of us tried to warn the industry that they would regret this arrangement. Yes, they might be assured of modest profits, but the cost of sacrificing their autonomy would be far too high. They would become little more than public utilities. They would lose all control over benefit design, marketing practices, and rate setting. They would have no idea of the risks they were enrolling and would have to set premiums blindly.

It has become much, much worse than I ever imagined. Obamacare is not even fully in effect yet and already we are seeing the President playing with the carriers like a toddler plays with toy trucks –

• Employers will be mandated to buy your policies for 2014

• (Oops, employers are angry)

• Employers won’t be mandated until 2015 – if then

• Small employers will give workers a choice of health plans through the SHOP program in 2014

• (Oops, we can’t get the web site ready in time)

• Small employers won’t have to offer a choice of plan until – sometime later

• You must cancel these individual policies

• (Oops, public backlash)

• You must reinstate these policies

• (Oops, many insurance commissioners won’t allow it)

• You must continue to cover providers and drugs even for cancelled policies

• The deadline for enrollment will be December 15, 2013

• (Oops, web site problems)

• The deadline for enrollment will be December 23, 2013

• (Oops, too much traffic)

• The deadline for enrollment will be December 24, 2013

• Never mind, there is no deadline

• First month’s premium must be received by December 31, 2013

• (Oops, back-end problems with the web site)

• First month’s premium must be received by January 8, 2014

• Make that January 10, 2014

How can anyone run a business this way? This is worse than being a federal agency. No federal agency would be expected to stop and start on a personal whim like this. These aren’t rules, they aren’t regulations, they are dictates based on nothing more than Kathleen Sebelius’ momentary feelings.

These are only the “glitches” that have been made public. God knows what orders and threats are being issued in closed-door meetings.

How long will the insurance industry abide being treated like shoe shine boys? Mr. Obama will not be in office forever. His regime is already coming to an end. What will these companies do then? He will no longer be around to grant or withhold bailout (“risk corridor”) money. No other president, Democrat or Republican, will ever be as arrogant or irrational.

 

And As The Year Ends

I hope that this incredibly sad story does not spread to more and more American cities.

Kearney, an 18-year-old aspiring architect, persuaded his father to travel with him from Britain to Detroit to participate in one of the city's few burgeoning industries: tours of abandoned factories, churches and schools.

Led by tour guide Jesse Welter, they crawled on their hands and knees to peek inside a train station closed long ago; they squeezed through a gap in a fence to climb the stairs of what was once a luxury high-rise; they ducked under crumbling doorways to see a forgotten ballroom where the Who held its first U.S. concert.

"In Detroit, you can relate, you can see traces of what's happened, you can really feel the history of a city," Kearney said. "In Europe, when things become derelict, they'll demolish them."

That's not possible here. The city estimates it has 78,000 vacant structures, and demolishing each derelict residential building costs $8,000 — money the bankrupt city can't afford.

.....

His experience touring crumbling ballrooms and onetime high-end residences caused him to think long and hard about what lessons Detroit can teach the rest of the country.

"It makes you question your mortality as a species. We try to make our mark on the planet by building these concrete and brick structures, but Rome obviously fell," he said. "What is Manhattan going to look like in 300 years? Is it still going to be a bustling metropolis?"

Will we take the lessons of Detroit and learn from them?

Here's hoping.

If

Some conservatives and/or libertarians mock liberals.... And, I must admit I have done the same on occasion.  Nevertheless, in many cases, I believe that their intentions are good ... they either are ignorant as to the underlying factors or too idealistic about human nature.

Take the concept of minimum wages.  Having those who work hard yet earn very little sounds like a situation that ought to be correct.  Yet - if you examine what would happen with government intervention to "fix" this problem, then you may well realize the cure is worse than the illness.

George Will gives us the details about IF we were to "fix" this problem.

If you think forcing employers to spend X dollars more than necessary to employ labor for entry-level jobs will stimulate the economy. If you believe this, you must think the workers receiving the extra dollars will put the money to more stimulative uses than their employers would have. If so, why not a minimum wage of $50.50 rather than the $10.10? Because this might discourage hiring? What makes you sure you know the threshold where job destruction begins?

Be Happy

Yes, I know I've been gone for a while.  What can I say?  Life intrudes.

And - another perspective on life and being happy.

It turns out that choosing to pursue four basic values of faith, family, community and work is the surest path to happiness, given that a certain percentage is genetic and not under our control in any way.

Work can bring happiness by marrying our passions to our skills, empowering us to create value in our lives and in the lives of others. Franklin D. Roosevelt had it right: “Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.”

In other words, the secret to happiness through work is earned success.