Category Archives: Government is useless

February 15, 2021 · 4:53 pm

Biden’s proposes $15 minimum wage…what should we really do about that?

So let’s talk about Biden’s $15 an hour minimum wage proposal.

I could talk about how this doesn’t need to be in a bill about COVID relief, but those who believe that this is an important issue will take the ‘take advantage of any opportunity opening.’ And since both sides have foolishly engaged in that behavior, there is no chance of arguing for not doing it again because no one wants to be rational and seek polite behavior that will make politics more stable right now.

I could talk about how this will make a moderate increase in inflation and probably a massive increase in the amount of unemployment for those who do not have higher education while also negatively affecting minority groups across the board. But economists have been banging that drum for years, and if you’re not going to listen to their facts in all those previous times, then why would you now.

I could talk about how this will even further increase incentives to mechanize and automate as much as possible as the machines will be so much more attractive as they now have to be worth $14.99, not the $13.49 set by the highest state minimum wage in Washington. Because again, you’re not concerned with economics…or apparently that Biden’s plan doesn’t have nearly enough investment in education to counter the fact this will put a lot of people out of jobs.

I’m also not going to point out that this will kill the economies in all those red states that still are at the national level of $7.25…meaning that vast numbers of those people in those red states are going to move to places that have better economies…meaning the MAGA idiots are going to move into other states and this will probably shift the electoral college map a little more to the red, which, right now, is a terrible idea. (I may have no deep abiding love for the Democrats, but right now, the opposition is a bunch of Nazis, so I have to throw in with the liberal idiots until the opposition can stop being evil).

No, what I’m going to point out is the continual problem all opponents of minimum wage increases have. They don’t come up with better ideas.

Let’s go over how all problems go—housing, minimum wages, unions, health care, climate change. One side identifies a problem. They then blow it out of proportion, making something that is a serious problem only for a small segment of the population for a period of time and makes it seem like it affects almost everyone for perpetual periods of time. This works because people are, regrettably, easily susceptible to fear. People fear they won’t have enough, so they fear they won’t have income or healthcare, They’re afraid of what they can’t control, and the weather is always the thing that none of us can control. They fear they won’t be needed anymore, so they fear an economy that requires constant change and growth. And, of course, there is the fear of the other that dominates the mental processes of too many people. They then suggest a solution that makes the situation worse. The opposition to this lousy proposal then does two things that don’t work (and I certainly have been guilty of this) they either try to argue that the problem isn’t that big. We shouldn’t freak out, and they argue that we shouldn’t do anything because what the other side suggested is a bad idea. The problem here is that if people are afraid, they’re not going to listen to reason. It took me too long to realize this, but at least I have realized it…unlike so many. You can’t reason with a person who is afraid, and if you try, you’re going to lose. And if you suggest that we shouldn’t do anything about the situation they’re afraid of, then you’re going to lose.

However, better would be to propose something that addresses the small issue that people were afraid of and deal with serious issues, and not only soothe people’s fears but fix the real problems.

For instance, when Obama suggested a terrible, bloated, pork-filled monstrosity of a healthcare plan that just exacerbated the problems it was meant to fix, the right should have come out with a that would have solved the existing problems…like every citizen in the country gets sent a voucher for $3000. Every private insurance company to stay in business has to offer a plan covering all major medical, long-term care, and emergency medical costs for $3,000. If you want better coverage, you can pay for it. If your employer wants to negotiate a group deal that employees can sign over their voucher and get a more robust plan through the company policy, they can. And Medicaid, Medicare, and a dozen smaller bureaucracies in the state and federal budget can just be disbanded. Everyone gets coverage, less government, costs less, and no forcing people to buy things (if you don’t want to use your voucher, that’s your call, it would be a stupid choice, but it’s still your choice). But no, they just said, let’s not do that.

And the same with minimum wage.

We could argue why the minimum wage is a terrible idea, why it will hurt economies and growth, and most importantly, the people it is most claims to want to help. But those people who are afraid won’t be comforted by the idea that is remaining with the status quo they’re afraid of.

So what should those who know the minimum wage is a terrible idea be proposing?

We’ll it may sound like beating a dead horse on this website but, the Universal Basic Income.

Unlike a minimum wage that will only benefit some for a tune of about $20K a year (taxed at the federal and state, with social security and Medicare also taken out) with still all the fear that comes with the possibility of losing your job…we could give EVERY adult citizen $1,200 a month, free of all taxes, and relieve not only the fear of not having a safety net but there are so many other benefits. People wouldn’t waste time filling out forms for unemployment or welfare, which can take over forty hours a week and leaves no time to find a job or get the education you might need to get a new job. We could eliminate the boondoggles of Social Security, SNAP, unemployment benefits, or the fear that comes that if you earn too much, you will be thrown off welfare. There would no longer be the incentives in the current welfare programs not to get married or get a promotion—just the security of knowing that no matter what, you will have a safety net.

And as a net bonus, because we would have a Universal Basic Income, that would mean we could eliminate the minimum wage. You know all those reasoned arguments on how raising the minimum wage hurts employment numbers and prevents people from getting experience…well, the reverse is true too. With no minimum wage, employers would be more willing to hire low-skilled workers at younger ages meaning that more people would necessary job experience and opportunities to be promoted earlier in life at lower education levels. If the positive effects of that aren’t apparent, then I think you oppose a minimum wage increase not because it makes good economic sense but because one party promotes it. And that is the worst reason ever to oppose something.

So your options are (A) oppose a minimum wage increase and lose (B) support a minimum wage increase and have ill economic effects (C) support a UBI which would eliminate vast swaths of government interference in the economy, promote growth, and reduce people’s worries about instability. And reducing that fear is one of the key reasons we have a government in the first place because when those fears are left unchecked, you have a second French Revolution.

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October 12, 2020 · 5:33 pm

What needs to be done about the Electoral College

So once again there is, as always a call to end the Electoral College and replace it with just a national vote.

As if replacing one broken system with an even more broken system is a solution. Yes, the current system gives a bizarrely huge advantage to small states that have effectively zero population like Wyoming and the
Dakotas. But going to a pure popular vote will make all elections just pandering to the wants of the 10 largest cities in the country and will be just as off-kilter, possibly even more so, than the current situation. Both systems give too much power to one group or another and neither is a viable solution. Let’s not forget that the Founding Fathers recognized that there are supreme problems with democracy and the tyranny of the majority and that the more democratic you make a system the more likely you will have demagogues like Trump and Obama, not less.

But clearly, the system has given us hollow men with cults of personality for the last twelve years so it is clear that something is off and needs to be fixed. But complete democracy is not the answer.

To find a solution we need to go back to why it’s the way it is. Like so much of the Constitution’s creation, it was designed to allow for majority rule but allow for the minority rights to be protected. At the time of the first census, the smallest state was Delaware which had 1.5% of the population and 2.3% of the electoral votes. Now Wyoming has 0.17% of the population but .55% of the electoral college (from having the smallest state have 1.5 advantage over their population to now our smallest state having a 3.2 times advantage over what a pure democracy would give them).

We have too many states with next to no population and therefore a huge advantage in the electoral college.

On the other hand, we have a handful of massive states like Florida that make their swing state status make them disproportionately important.

So we need a system that both ensures states with smaller populations are not powerful and that huge swing states don’t control everything. The point is to force candidates to care about the largest swatch of the country if they want to get elected and reelected not just worry about their states and a couple of swing states (seen by Trump not caring if people die in blue states, and Obama foolishly dismiss the people who cling to their guns and Bibles). The point is to make sure that the President must care about the most states as possible. To do this we must have no bizarrely small states that one side can ignore, and no huge states that get all the attention.

And, while I know this is not popular (but one of the jobs of leadership is to explain to the public why the right solution should be popular—it is only unethical demagogues that pander to what is popular) by any means there is a way to solve this, here is what we need to do:

A constitutional amendment that states any state over 20 electoral votes has to split apart and any state under 6 votes has one census cycle to either get their population up or have to join with the lowest state that they’re next to…failure to do so will have their electoral college votes annulled.

The Dakotas become one state because it’s simply preposterous to think that a whole lot of nothing requires two full state governments. Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming the same. As with everything north of Massachusetts. Rhode Island and Delaware serve no conceivable purpose and we all know it. But California would be broken up into three states, one probably blue one red, and one swing, New York would be NYC and everything else. Florida two states because no single government should be responsible for that much crazy, and Texas would thankfully be broken up because I think we can all agree that shithole excuse for a state deserves to be knocked down a peg (also, as a Dodgers fan, I need to point out that every member of the Houston Astros needs to be publicly executed).

By doing this states will now be in a nice 6-20 vote margin which means that now middle red states are important enough for democrats to care and the huge bastions of liberalism are broken into areas that become an attractive target for conservatives…i.e. the candidates will have to moderate their view and policies and actually be president for ALL OF AMERICA, no longer will strategies that just focus the parts of the country they want to pander to and two or three swing states. A conservative will finally have to care about things that happen on the West coast, a liberal will have to look into the concerns of the people in the middle part of the country who are afraid of the fact that their ways of life will be done away with by technology in another generation.

The only other thing that probably needs to occur in every state should probably reserve two of their votes for statesmen chosen for their common sense before the primaries even begin with the right to vote their conscience. How many godforsaken presidents might we have been spared if that check existed?

Finally, these laws that some states are putting in that force electors to vote with the state vote have to be eliminated also by Constitutional Amendment (because the Supreme Court recently made the dumbest error in thinking that electors, not representative who are elected to use their best judgment, which they are). If a presidential candidate picks John Doe to be their elector in the electoral college and come the day of the election John Doe feels that he can’t vote for the candidate that choose him…there is probably a damn good reason, and forcing them to vote against their conscience is just endangering the nation.

…Oh, and while we’re on the issue of the size of states, every state should take a long hard look at the size of their counties. Most counties were set up with the idea that a person could reach a county seat within less than a day at the time they were founded. For most of the history of the country that was the distance a horse and carriage could go in a day. And in modern terms, that’s about 20-50 miles. There are places in the country where if you’re just driving a legal speed of 65mph you can cross four or five counties in a single hour. This was a practical size when your governance was limited by the speed of a horse…it is no longer necessary to have that. Every country has swaths of redundant public officials and corrupt officers who like to keep their own fiefdoms and do so because they are able to control such a small area with a small level of corruption. Two-thirds of the number of counties in America do not need to exist because a single county seat for four or five existing counties would probably be able to offer the same level of service for a fraction of the overhead price. The government should be local in many cases, but that is what cities are for.

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