Government vs. Private Sector Time Off

According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics here are the hours absent from work (for health or personal leave reasons) as a percent of the hours usually worked.

Private Sector               1.4
Federal Government      2.0
State Government          2.2
Local Government         2.0

Clearly this indicates that if you work for government you are about 50% more likely to be sick. Unless someone can think of another reason for this disparity?

If Amazon Operated Like Government. Mayday!

Amazon has a major technical initiative planned for its new Kindle Fire tablets next month. It's called Mayday, and it's a little button on the screen you can press at any time to get live onscreen help with whatever it is you're trying to do on the Kindle. The operator can even take over your Kindle and demonstrate how to solve the task. It's absolutely critical to Amazon that this service delivers as promised. Otherwise people will walk away from it pretty quickly and buy other tablets.

Imagine, though, that Amazon ran like government.

• Nobody's job would depend on whether this thing worked. If it didn't work, nobody would be fired.
• If it weren't operable in time for holiday sales, Amazon would simply declare that Christmas will be postponed this year.
• Amazon would charge some people $500 for the Kindle Fire so that other could buy it for $5. 
• Amazon would charge everybody who didn't buy a Kindle $100.
• Jeff Bezos would call a press conference and surround himself with ten people who actually got Mayday to work. He would then proudly announce that when Mayday wasn't working you could still call Amazon's 800 number and speak to an operator.
• When confidence in Amazon crashed and sales plummeted, Amazon would simply issue more bonds that the Federal Reserve would buy from it. 
• The Board of Directors would reelect Bezos as CEO because, well, he's really a pretty cool dude and knows how to use a TelePrompter. 

Waking Up to reality. The Obamacare Free Lunch.

The notion of the Free Lunch has always been a particularly popular myth with Americans. In fact there is an entire political party based on it's allure. Every now and then, though, believers come face to face with painful reality.  From today's LA Times comes a particularly poignant example.

Pam Kehaly, president of Anthem Blue Cross in California, said she received a recent letter from a young woman complaining about a 50% rate hike related to the healthcare law.

"She said, 'I was all for Obamacare until I found out I was paying for it,'" Kehaly said.

Spending and Spending On Creating More and More Poverty

Over the last five years, the federal government has spent a total $3.7 trillion on approximately 80 different means-tested poverty and welfare programs. And yet the government tells us that poverty is increasing, Usually if you spend a lot of money on projects to reduce something and that something keeps increasing, it's called a FAILURE. In Washington that's grounds for spending even more money.  Because in Washington, doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the norm. Everywhere outside the Beltway it's called insanity. 

America's Bridges Are Falling Down?

How many times have you heard a story like this one: “America’s road to recovery may face a costly detour due to a fraying transportation network. One in nine of the country’s 607,380 bridges are structurally deficient …”  This is immediately followed by a call for higher taxes and more Government Spending (remember the Stimulus?). Just another case of those mean Republicans cutting spending at the expense of your safety. Except . . .  here's an inconvenient chart. 




Whatever those dastardly Republicans have been doing, it seems to be working. Or maybe the call for more government spending is like a broken record that just plays over and over and over.

The Fed's Infinite Do-Loop

In 2008, the Federal Reserve sharply increased it's bond buying in the face of severe liquidity problems and a major recession. What was supposed to be a temporary, radical monetary policy has now become a permanent one. 

Ben Bernanke recently said that the reason they would hold off on reducing bond buying was that “the Fed has some concern that the rapid tightening in financial conditions in recent months could have the effect of slowing growth…a concern that would be exacerbated if conditions tighten further.”

I think I've identified what computer programmers used to call an “infinite do-loop”.  

Step 1: The Fed announces that they are considering reducing bond buying.

Step 2: The markets respond by driving interest rates up

Step 3: The Fed cites this“tightening in financial conditions” as a reason to hold off their bond buying

Step 4: The Fed increases its purchase of Treasuries for its balance sheet,

Step 5: Go to Step 1

Prostitution Pays

Paul Krugman, economist, wrote the following in 1998:

So what are the effects of increasing minimum wages? Any Econ 101 student can tell you the answer: The higher wage reduces the quantity of labor demanded, and hence leads to unemployment. [Those who advocate for higher minimum wages]  very much want to believe that the price of labor--unlike that of gasoline, or Manhattan apartments--can be set based on considerations of justice, not supply and demand, without unpleasant side effects. 


Fast forward 15 years. Paul Krugman, now a lapdog at the NY Times, wrote in support of a minimum wage increase:

 . . . .workers aren’t bushels of wheat or even Manhattan apartments; they’re human beings, and the human relationships involved in hiring and firing are inevitably more complex than markets for mere commodities. And one byproduct of this human complexity seems to be that modest increases in wages for the least-paid don’t necessarily reduce the number of jobs.

All of which simply demonstrates that Mr. Krugman discovered that being a prostitute pays more than being an economist

Hat tip to William Occam  

That's not how we do things in America

President Obama had this to say today.

Consider that just a couple of weeks ago, Apple rolled out a new mobile operating system, and within days, they found a glitch, so they fixed it. I don't remember anybody suggesting Apple should stop selling iPhones or iPads or threatening to shut down the company if they didn't. That's not how we do things in America. 

I can't think of anything that is more revealing of the President's utter economic ignorance as to how market choices are made among products (as opposed to government products where you have no choices). 

First of all, Mr. President. When Apple released OS7, 99.9% of it actually worked.  More importantly it was something people voluntarily chose to do. Nobody forced them to use OS7 -- or even an Apple phone. There weren't any fines levied if you didn't buy an Apple.  In fact you have other choices in phones, and, Mr. President, if Apple phones worked as well as the government does, people would run to those other phones in droves and Apple would be out of business. Apple cannot simply tax their customers to make up for their incompetence. 

Mr. President, with all due respect, on what planet did you learn about economics? 

You're right about one thing, though.  That's not how we do things in America. At least the part of America that continually produces things that people want at lower and lower costs every year.