Category Archives: Economy

Obama’s Hate-Your-Boss Hotline

Barack Obama, Business, Economy, Individual Rights, Liberty, Regulation

“Get in the game,” the president instructed U.S. business leaders, in an address to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce today. As Bloomberg.com reported, this audacious president urged business to “support their country by moving cash from the sidelines into the economy,” “hiring more American workers,” and, generally “investing in this nation.” This, as Obama carves greater and greater sections out of the hide of American businesses for the assorted, unproductive oink sectors.

Just the other day, this deeply silly man “launched a new program at the Department of Labor which will refer workers who have complaints about their bosses to a toll free number at the American Bar Association, where they can get a lawyer to work on their case on a contingency fee basis.” (Via Elizabeth MacDonald of Fox Business) Yes, litigation always reduces the costs of doing business, doesn’t it?! What’s not to like in a collaboration between “the federal government and private bar” to promote “worker rights,” already covered by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and other legislation. This is how Obama is “doing his part to improve the business climate” in this country.

The meek reply to BHO’s demands from Johanna Schneider, “who directs external relations for the Business Roundtable,” will not do. “Jobs will follow demand,” she said. “Unless you see sustained demand for your product or your service, you cannot from a fiduciary standpoint invest in more employees.”

Business leaders will have to learn to speak the language of individual/natural rights, and link the rights of property and freedom of association to prosperity and peace. Unless they sound morally indignant about the violation of their rights, parasitical collectivists such as BHO will continue to make light of and mock the “incredible pressure to cut costs and keep margins up,” as the Idiot-in-Chief put it.

The Liars At Labor

Business, Debt, Economy, Government, Labor

The economic “experts” have a lot riding on the recovery ass. Hence the notion of a jobless recovery, which is a lot like a housewarming for the homeless.

“The unemployment rate fell by 0.4 percentage point to 9.0 percent in January,” reports the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. However, at 64.2%, the labor force participation rate … is now at a 26-year low, the lowest since March of 1984. The “labor force as a percentage of total population” has plummeted.

The reason for the “drop” in the unemployment rate, as the labor force shrinks from 86.2 million to 83.9 million—or 2.2 million in one year!—is the rise in the number of discouraged individuals who’ve left the labor force.

The more accurate, less finessed, number from the Liars at Labor is the U-6, which includes the unemployed and people who would like to work, but who have not looked for a job recently, as well as those involuntarily working part-time. “Not-seasonally adjusted U-6 surged from 16.6% to 17.3%” in February.

Green Light For ‘Lights Out’

Debt, Economy, Family, Feminism, Gender, Hollywood, Pop-Culture

It has become ALMOST impossible to watch the assorted “estrogen-oozing” action dramas and crime series inflicted on the TV viewer. The phony heroine lords it over meek meterosexuals with fussy falsettos. Men know their place. Dare-devil women run the show, which makes the show dull, because 90 pounds of botoxic, silicone-plumped flesh in stilettos can’t run very fast (in real life, and I’m a sucker for reality). And you just know that back on terra firma, the 200 pounder she’s cuffing with seeming ease would have flung her as far as the equator, or coshed her to death.

A leading man is invariably a mentalist (I don’t know what that is), a gentle doctor suffering from low-sperm count, or a buffoon (“Burn Notice”).

“Lights Out” (http://www.fxnetworks.com/shows/originals/lightsout/index.php) is a good antidote to the above fare. However, it is a sad series, and the protagonist a tragic figure—“an aging former heavyweight boxing champion who struggles to find his identity and support his wife and three daughters after retiring from the ring,” played by Holt McCallany.

Last night, Lights’ typically spoiled wife (the Lovely Catherine McCormack from “Braveheart”) begins to understand the extent of the debt they have incurred, helped in no small part by her lavish lifestyle.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with voracious consumption just as long one pays for one’s purchases. The data demonstrate that Americans, in general, don’t. Of late, consumption has tended to reflect, not an increase in real wealth but an increase in indebtedness.

Aggregate household debt in the US has a lot to do with female expectations. Steve Sailer goes as far as to call this “The Estrogen Recession.” (I’m first and foremost the enemy of the Fed, fractional reserve banking, and regulation.)

In any event, from what I’ve seen, the average American woman’s existence is every bit as voracious as this fictional character’s. The evolution of the “Theresa Leary” character ought to be instructive.

Rand Paul Revs-Up

Constitution, Debt, Economy, IMMIGRATION

Sen. Rand Paul is certainly showing his sclerotic Republican colleagues how it’s done. The son of Ron has proposed $500 billion in spending cuts to take effect in a year. A laid-back Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican Leader, showed some curiosity: “There is widespread interest in the Republican conference for spending cuts that pay more than lip service to reducing the debt.” (http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9L094PO1.htm)

How nice.

How will the Republican establishment grapple with Rand’s perfectly reasonable quest to limit the automatic grant of citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants, unless certain conditions are met. (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/01/28/senate-proposal-amend-constitution-restrict-birthright-citizenship/#ixzz1CUTO6zXN)

Limit? Now that’s a new concept. To stop the American Welfare State at the Rio Grande—now that would be mean. (Besides, Mitch doesn’t pay for it.)

ANN COULTER is often an ace on matters of law: “Democrats act as if the right to run across the border when you’re eight and a half months pregnant, give birth in a U.S. hospital and then immediately start collecting welfare was exactly what our forebears had in mind, a sacred constitutional right, as old as the 14th Amendment itself.”

… this alleged right derives only from a footnote slyly slipped into a Supreme Court opinion by Justice Brennan in 1982. You might say it sneaked in when no one was looking, and now we have to let it stay.
The 14th Amendment was added after the Civil War to overrule the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision, which had held that black slaves were not citizens of the United States. …
The drafters of the 14th Amendment had no intention of conferring citizenship on the children of aliens who happened to be born in the U.S. …

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