Here’s a nice picture of Solar Impulse 2 during its flight between Honolulu, Hawaii and Mountain View, California. The flight is part of its circumnavigation of the globe.
The thing that struck me in the article, though, was that this flight took 62.5 hours. If you look up the distance between Hawaii and California, you get (roughly) 2500 miles. That would make the average speed during the flight about 40 MPH.
What type of craft can stay aloft at that slow speed? Was there a continual headwind that added to its airspeed? Or do its long wings just provide incredible lift?
I enjoyed this report from the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers, which is a nice nuts and bolts summary of the electricity challenges facing developed nations in the next 30 years. Here is the slide most people would simply reject out of hand:
The engineers’ report is a year old. If you’re interested in reading it, you can find it here. (It’s a PDF that looks to have been made from a slide deck.)
Here’s an e-mail I got today from Scott Bullock with the Institute for Justice. You gotta love what the IJ does — and they don’t fool around.
Yesterday, IJ won our fastest victory ever. Just hours after we launched our latest civil forfeiture case with an exclusive feature in The Washington Post, the government agreed to drop all charges against our clients and returned every cent that it had wrongfully seized.
This case involves one of the most outrageous forfeiture actions we’ve seen yet. During a routine traffic stop for a broken tail light, the Muskogee, Oklahoma, sheriff’s department seized more than $53,000 from our clients—a church and a Burmese Christian band on tour in the U.S. trying to raise funds for charity. The full Washington Post story is here, and you can find more information about the case, including IJ’s video, on our website.
Law enforcement nationwide continues to use civil forfeiture to steal property and hard-earned cash from innocent owners. But with your support, we were able to act quickly and marshal resources across time zones—and, in this case, continents—to come to their defense. Despite its short duration, this case involved a great deal of work and hustle by IJ attorneys. Indeed, I suspect this is the first time anyone has had to chase down notaries in Burma, rural Thailand, Omaha, and Dallas all on the same day. This victory brings us one step closer to our goal of abolishing forfeiture, and we are grateful to you for making it possible.
My, what a contrast to Merle Haggard’s song Okie from Muskogee. I wonder what Merle (may he rest in peace) would make of this story?
It sounds to me like some of those Okies aren’t doing right and the rest of ’em may not be too free.
Just last night at dinner I was wondering aloud what Apple (and Apple iPhone owners) thought of the FBI’s claims that someone had hacked the phone used by Farook & Malik in San Bernadino. It wasn’t a concern to me since I don’t own an iPhone, but if I did own one I’d be wondering whether (a) the FBI really had hacked the phone and, if so, (b) what that implied about security on my iPhone.
And speak of the Devil… today’s Wall Street Journal ran this article about a newer case. (It’s behind their paywall, of course).
WASHINGTON—The Justice Department on Friday night dropped a court case trying to force Apple Inc. to help authorities open a locked iPhone, adding new uncertainty to the government’s standoff with the technology company over encryption.
In a one-page letter filed with a Brooklyn federal court Friday night, the government said an individual had recently come forward to offer the passcode to the long-locked phone. The filing means that in both of the high-profile cases pitting the Justice Department against Apple, the government first said it couldn’t open the phone, only to suddenly announce it had found a way into the device as the case proceeded in court. […]
The case involves an iPhone 5s that was seized from suspect Jun Feng as part of a 2014 drug investigation in New York. Mr. Feng pleaded guilty last year, but both sides agreed the legal dispute surrounding the phone still needs to be resolved.
After he was arrested, Mr. Feng told agents that he didn’t remember the phone’s passcode, leading investigators eventually to seek Apple’s help. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Mr. Feng only recently learned his phone had become an issue in a high-stakes legal fight between prosecutors and Apple. Mr. Feng, who has pleaded guilty and is due to be sentenced in the coming weeks, is the one who provided the passcode to investigators, according to people familiar with the matter. […]
Earlier this week, James Comey, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, told a London security conference audience that the government paid more than $1 million for an unidentified third-party to help open the San Bernardino work phone of Syed Rizwan Farook.
Mr. Farook and his wife killed 14 people and wounded 22 in a Dec. 2 shooting rampage at a holiday gathering of county employees, before being killed later that day in a shootout with police.
Earlier this week I ran across this video on Darrell Issa’s Twitter feed.
It makes the point about security on network devices pretty well, I think. The question’s not as simple as people putting their privacy ahead of the common good (as the FBI and politicians would have it). It’s not just about Snapchat and Twitter. It’s about all the data on what have become our personal computers — the bank passwords, or the business data that you don’t want made public, or your Ashley Madison account maybe.
So that makes this an issue about introducing weaknesses in devices on an open network that already has its share of security risks. Anyone work for the OPM? Do you think the Feds should dictate security measures for everyone?
But getting back to what I was wondering about, I couldn’t find that there’d been any answer to that question. Here’s a three-week-old article in the Los Angeles Times.
Apple Inc. refused to give the FBI software the agency desperately wanted. Now Apple is the one that needs the FBI’s assistance.
The FBI announced Monday that it managed to unlock an iPhone 5c belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters without the help of Apple. And the agency has shown no interest in telling Apple how it skirted the phone’s security features, leaving the tech giant guessing about a vulnerability that could compromise millions of devices.
“One way or another, Apple needs to figure out the details,” said Justin Olsson, product counsel at security software maker AVG Technologies. “The responsible thing for the government to do is privately disclose the vulnerability to Apple so they can continue hardening security on their devices.”
But that’s not how it’s playing out so far. The situation illuminates a process that usually takes place in secret: Governments regularly develop or purchase hacking techniques for law enforcement and counterterrorism efforts, and put them to use without telling affected companies.
I’d be very surprised if Mr. Olsson’s suggestion that the government disclose its method to Apple ever happens.
Update 4/26/16
Well, that easy prediction was quickly confirmed. Here’s more news from today’s Wall Street Journal (and behind its paywall, naturally). My emphasis below.
The FBI is preparing to send a formal notification to the White House in the coming days saying that while the agency bought a hacking tool from a third party to unlock the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone, officials aren’t familiar with the underlying code that runs it.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation doesn’t plan to tell Apple Inc. how it cracked a San Bernardino, Calif., terrorist’s phone, said people familiar with the matter, leaving the company in the dark on a security vulnerability on some iPhone models.
The FBI knows how to use the phone-hacking tool it bought to open the iPhone 5c but doesn’t specifically knows how it works, allowing the tool to avoid a White House review, the people said, The FBI plans to notify the White House of this conclusion in the coming days, they added.
Any decision to not share details of the vulnerability with Apple is likely to anger privacy advocates who contend the FBI’s approach to encryption weakens data security for many smartphone and computer owners in order to preserve options for federal investigators to open locked devices. […]
And if you believe the FBI’s claim that it "doesn’t specifically know how it works" then please call me about the bridge I have for sale.
While it’s a Federal crime for us to lie to Federal law enforcement agents, it’s not a crime (of any sort) for them to lie to us.
Update 5/19/16
Here’s probably the most persuasive response to the government’s demands for backdoors in phone security. If a government has access, it will be abuse that access sooner or later.
14ymedio, Generation Y, Yoani Sanchez, Washington, 5 March 2016 — When they returned his mobile phone all his contacts had been erased and the card with the photos was gone. Stories like this are repeated among activists who have been detained, over whom an iron vigilance is maintained with the complicity of the Telecommunications Company (ETECSA), the technology arm of repression in Cuba. An entity that should take note of the rebuff Apple has dealt the FBI in the United States, by refusing to access its clients’ data.
For decades, Cuban society has become accustomed to the government’s failing to respect individuals’ private spaces. The state has the power to delve into personal correspondence, to display medical records in front of the cameras, to air private messages on television, and to broadcast phone conversations between critics of the system. In such a framework, intimacy doesn’t exist, one’s personal space has been invaded by power.
People see as “normal” that the phones are tapped and that in the homes of opponents hidden microphones capture even the smallest sigh. It has become common practice for ETECSA to cut off dissidents’ phone service during certain national events or visits from foreign leaders, and to block the reception of messages whose contents upset them. This Orwellian situation has gone on for so long, that few take note any more of the illegality involved and the violation of citizens’ rights it entails.
I came across a couple of encouraging news items recently. First (via Reason), this news from Florida about a new law governing civil asset forfeiture. (My emphasis below.)
Gov. Rick Scott on Friday signed into law another 14 bills from the 2016 Legislative Session. […]
The latest bills include SB 1044, under which law enforcement will have to charge people with a crime before they can seize their money, cars, homes or other property.
State Sen. Jeff Brandes, a St. Petersburg Republican, sponsored the measure, which was supported from both sides of the political spectrum.
It’s designed to prevent abuses of the current law, which doesn’t require an arrest before property is seized, but rather law enforcement’s belief that it was likely used in a crime.
“Today is a major win for liberty in the Sunshine State,” Brandes wrote on his Facebook page Friday.
He credited help from fellow Sens. Aaron Bean and Jeff Clemens, and state Reps. Matt Caldwell and Larry Metz, “as well as the wide range of stakeholders from our law enforcement community to civil libertarian organizations.” […]
Now there’s a thought: make the cops stand up in front of God ‘n’ ever’body and charge some people with some crimes if they think crimes were committed.
Amen, Sen. Brandes. It’s a major win indeed. Thank you, Florida! I hope the other states take a lesson.
But, wait, there’s more! And mirabile dictu, it gets even better. The BBC had an article about the State’s Attorney in St. Clair Co., Illinois (which is the next county east of mine).
In St Clair County, Illinois, the local prosecutor is trying a radical new experiment: admitting his office has charged innocent people with crimes and clearing their names before they spend a day in prison. It’s a unique reform effort as prosecutors around the country face increased scrutiny and diminishing public trust.
Lashonda Moreland’s day had barely begun when the pounding on the front door began. Her husband had already left for work, and she was home with her two children in their second storey apartment in a suburb of St Louis, Missouri.
When a voice barked through the door, Moreland realised the figures outside were police officers.
“He said, ‘You need to open up the door or we’re going to kick it down,'” she recalls. “My kids are scared and they’re crying…I’m upset and I start crying.”
The police arrested Moreland – a 30-year-old home healthcare worker with no criminal history – and she spent the next several days in various jails until she was transferred over the river to St Clair County, Illinois.
“It was scary because I had never been in jail. I never had to be on lockdown,” she says. “I literally cried every day. I was trying to wrap my mind around, ‘Why am I in here?'”
Moreland was accused of shoplifting, evading police and for trying to run down a police officer with her car. […]
All the police had was the licence plate number, which was registered to Lashonda Moreland’s address. When Officer Rutter looked at Moreland’s driver’s licence photo, he immediately identified her as the woman who had tried to run him over.
Moreland didn’t own a Buick, nor did she do her shopping 30 minutes away in a completely different state. She did, however, have a cousin who had registered his maroon Buick LeSabre to her address without telling her. She explained all this to the Fairview Heights police when they first contacted her after the incident, but they didn’t believe her.
Things looked bad for Moreland. She couldn’t prove her alibi and the witness who placed her at the scene was an officer of the law. She was facing up to 11 years in prison.
Instead of getting dragged through a jury trial, something surprising happened. Moreland’s lawyer Kristi Flint told the St Clair County state’s attorney office that her client was innocent. In response, the prosecutor offered Moreland the chance to take a polygraph test. Flint nervously agreed, and Moreland passed. Six months after her arrest, the charges were dropped. Everyone, including the Fairview Heights police department, agrees that Moreland is innocent.
Moreland did not know it at the time, but she was the beneficiary of a new programme created by St Clair County State’s Attorney Brendan Kelly: the Actual Innocence Claim Policy and Protocol. It is a unique, pre-conviction intervention which attempts to prevent the “actually innocent” from going through a trial, taking a plea deal, or ending up in prison.
Actual innocence is a legal concept which means, simply, that a defendant did not commit the crime of which he or she is accused. It is usually invoked when a prison inmate is attempting to appeal his sentence, but Kelly wanted to bring the spirit of the concept to the pre-conviction level.
“That’s distinct from ‘I didn’t get treated fairly’,” says Kelly, a Navy veteran who became the county’s top law enforcement officer in 2010 when he was only 34 years old. “It’s not, ‘Some of the evidence was obtained unlawfully, there was an incorrect ruling by the court, on the trial level some error by the defense’ – no, you actually have the wrong person here…they’re actually innocent.”
Since Kelly implemented the policy two years ago, nine defendants – including Lashonda Moreland – have had their charges dropped before trial. Those cases include a reckless homicide by vehicle, four armed robberies and one murder.
To the best of his knowledge, no other prosecutor in the country is attempting anything quite like it. Even the US Department of Justice has taken an interest in what is happening in St Clair County. […]
Kelly does not think being open to admitting law enforcement mistakes makes him soft on crime. He considers himself an “aggressive” prosecutor who believes in law enforcement and its role in bringing about the precipitous decline in crime in the US since the 1990s. […]
“Your local DA is accountable not to some person who appointed them in DC, or some state capitol somewhere, but is accountable to the people that they serve,” he says. “I think the prosecutor has the ability to be uniquely part of the solution, because again, we’re the one entity whose duty is first and foremost to justice.”
Please note that final paragraph. Here’s a State’s Attorney who gets it. (Of course, a cynic might point out that the State of Illinois, in its parlous financial condition, probably can’t afford too many wrongful conviction settlements.)
The only downside to this story is my surprise that the justice system had to come up with the concept of “Actual Innocence” to distinguish how it handles some suspects as compared to how it’s usually handled suspects.
Need I say more about ‘how it’s usually handled suspects’?
Now Bernie Sanders is trying to abuse trademark law in an attempt to suppress my free speech, in almost the exact way the NSA, DHS, and Hillary Clinton’s Super PAC did.
Yesterday, April 14th, the Bernie Sanders campaign sent a cease and desist letter claiming that I am unlawfully selling my parodies because they used the likeness of the official Bernie Sanders for President logo in this shirt. […]
I’m hoping the Streisand Effect will kick in and teach at least one lawyer a lesson.
This episode only confirms that your first reaction to any lawyer who sends you a demand letter should be to tell him or her to go piss up a rope. Seriously.
I wish I’d known that 20 years ago when an overzealous legal nitwit at CBS tried to shake me down for a domain name (of all things). I let him off for expenses, which in retrospect was being way too easy on him.
And is there anything more ridiculous than a publicly funded agency trying to protect a copyright from the very public it’s supposed so serve? Who owns that copyright, anyway? Shouldn’t it be public property since it was funded with public money?
Why does the NSA even have lawyers to write those obnoxious demand letters?
I found this pretty amusing not only on its face but also because it reminded me of a similar discussion I had in the summer of 2000. At the time, I was managing a small development group in Minneapolis. One of the group members was a fairly hippie cat who wrote Java for the company’s web site. We came to get along fairly well and we spent a few evenings eating pizza (in the office) and discussing his Java and whether it was good object-oriented design.
I recall one day he was telling me about how he disliked American Consumerism (whatever that means) and how cool it would be instead if people could only trade with each other. I asked him if he meant that everyone would be bartering with one another.
No, he told me, it would have to be more flexible than that. So I asked if his "trading" scheme wouldn’t lead to some type of markets. He admitted it would and added that the thought discouraged him. I was a little bemused by that.
A post from Facebook has been making the rounds, where I came across it by way of my Federalist colleague Scott Lincicome.
Here’s the mind-blowing argument: “If we each grow a large crop of different food, we could all trade with each other and eat for practically free.”
Where to start?
Well, for one thing, growing your own food isn’t exactly “free,” not even “practically free.” As anyone who has his own vegetable garden knows, it requires seeds, fertilizer, irrigation, weeding, protection from insects and birds and animals, and a lot of work. The cost may not all be measured in monetary terms, but it isn’t free. In fact, it’s notoriously easy for a vegetable garden to end up costing more money than it saves, which is why most of us do it just as a hobby. […]
But let’s not pick this apart. Let’s take the idea seriously. Hey, what if we all became small farmers and traded with each other? As they say on the Internet: you’ll never guess what happened next.
Maybe instead of everybody growing the same things, we could all produce what we’re best at and trade with others for what we need. We could come up with a catchy name for this, like “division of labor.” And we would need somewhere to exchange these goods with each other, which we could call a “market.”
Don’t Stop There!
Maybe we could get even more specialized. Some people could devote themselves just to growing young plants in greenhouses in the spring for others to plant when the weather gets warmer. Or they could provide seeds for other people to use, or breed hybrids with better yields or other desirable characteristics.
And maybe some crops would grow better in different areas, or at different seasons. I’ll bet you can’t grow blackberries in the middle of winter, but there are other areas of the country, or of the world, where these things still grow even when they won’t grow in your front yard. Maybe you could trade with people who live in those places.
Still, crops come ripe at different times, so maybe we need a system where I can trade my spring harvest of peas for somebody else’s fall harvest of pumpkins. Maybe we could write this all down on little pieces of paper which we pass between us to make trades. Has anybody ever thought of that? […]
It’s a tough problem to design a replacement for a system which generates an enormous bounty but which still doesn’t give the results you like. It’s an attitude I hear from Senator Sanders when he says things like, "You don’t necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or of 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry in this country."
I won’t say that children never go hungry or are never poorly nourished but I suspect that when they do (or are), it’s not for lack of food but instead for lack of responsible parents or care-givers.
I’m not sure what the relationship is between "too many" choices in the consumer market and the number of irresponsible parents. I don’t think Sen. Sanders knows that relationship either.
Last week, Megan McArdle wrote about a group of attorneys general and about one in particular, who had served a subpoena to the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute is getting subpoenaed by the attorney general of the U.S. Virgin Islands to cough up its communications regarding climate change. The scope of the subpoena is quite broad, covering the period from 1997 to 2007, and includes, according to CEI, “a decade’s worth of communications, emails, statements, drafts, and other documents regarding CEI’s work on climate change and energy policy, including private donor information.”
My first reaction to this news was “Um, wut?” CEI has long denied humans’ role in global warming, and I have fairly substantial disagreements with CEI on the issue. However, when last I checked, it was not a criminal matter to disagree with me. It’s a pity, I grant you, but there it is; the law’s the law. […]
Speaking of the law, why on earth is CEI getting subpoenaed? The attorney general, Claude Earl Walker, explains: “We are committed to ensuring a fair and transparent market where consumers can make informed choices about what they buy and from whom. If ExxonMobil has tried to cloud their judgment, we are determined to hold the company accountable.”
That wasn’t much of an explanation. It doesn’t mention any law that ExxonMobil may have broken. It is also borderline delusional, if Walker believes that ExxonMobil’s statements or non-statements about climate change during the period 1997 to 2007 appreciably affected consumer propensity to stop at a Mobil station, rather than tootling down the road to Shell or Chevron, or giving up their car in favor of walking to work.
State attorneys general including Walker held a press conference last week to talk about the investigation of ExxonMobil and explain their theory of the case. And yet, there sort of wasn’t a theory of the case. They spent a lot of time talking about global warming, and how bad it was, and how much they disliked fossil fuel companies. They threw the word “fraud” around a lot. But the more they talked about it, the more it became clear that what they meant by “fraud” was “advocating for policies that the attorneys general disagreed with.” […]
No matter how likely you may think catastrophic global warming might be (and Ms McArdle thinks it more likely than I), I’m hoping you’ll think this move by the group of A.G.s sets a bad precedent. And that’s a point McArdle makes later in her column.
And it’s a bad precedent regardless of your opinion about the CEI. Say that you think the CEI is a tool of greedy oil companies; it’s still true that the antidote to "bad speech" is free speech and not censorship.
Today, I ran across Glenn Reynolds’ column on the same topic. He puts a much finer point on the A.Gs’ actions and press conference.
Federal law makes it a felony “for two or more persons to agree together to injure, threaten, or intimidate a person in any state, territory or district in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him/her by the Constitution or the laws of the Unites States, (or because of his/her having exercised the same).”
I wonder if U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker, or California Attorney General Kamala Harris, or New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman have read this federal statute. Because what they’re doing looks like a concerted scheme to restrict the First Amendment free speech rights of people they don’t agree with. They should look up 18 U.S.C. Sec. 241, I am sure they each have it somewhere in their offices.
Here’s what’s happened so far. First, Schneiderman and reportedly Harris sought to investigate Exxon in part for making donations to groups and funding research by individuals who think “climate change” is either a hoax, or not a problem to the extent that people like Harris and Schneiderman say it is.
This investigation, which smacks of Wisconsin’s discredited Putin-style legal assault on conservative groups and their contributors, was denounced by the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Hans Bader as unconstitutional. Bader wrote:
Should government officials be able to cut off donations to groups because they employ people disparaged as “climate change deniers?” … Only a single-issue zealot with ideological blinders and a contempt for the First Amendment would think so. …
The First Amendment has long been interpreted as protecting corporate lobbying and donations, even to groups that allegedly deceive the public about important issues. … So even if being a “climate denier” were a crime (rather than constitutionally protected speech, as it in fact is), a donation to a non-profit that employs such a person would not be.
Nope, but conspiring to deprive “deniers” of their free speech rights would be. […]
But here’s what happened next: After Bader’s critique, Walker, the U.S. Virgin Islands attorney general, subpoenaed the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s donor lists. The purpose of this subpoena is, it seems quite clear, to punish CEI by making people less willing to donate.
This all takes place in the context of an unprecedented meeting by 20 state attorneys general aimed, environmental news site EcoWatch reports, at targeting entities that have “stymied attempts to combat global warming.” You don’t have to be paranoid to see a conspiracy here.
Not everyone believes that the planet is warming; not everyone who thinks that it is warming agrees on how much; not everyone who thinks that it is warming even believes that laws or regulation can make a difference. Yet the goal of these state attorneys general seems to be to treat disagreement as something more or less criminal. That’s wrong. As the Supreme Court wrote in West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette, “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.” […]
If there was ever an example of a Chilling Effect, this is one on steroids.
I’ve had my share of minimum-wage or low wage jobs; I’ve even held more than one at a time, years ago. I’ve been nickle & dimed, as Barbara Ehrenreich would call it.
So I’m all for people who work low-skill jobs getting all the pay they can. (For that matter, I’m all for people working any type of job to get all the pay they can.)
But letting the government set minimum wages is effectively saying that those people have no flexibility – they can’t bargain about wages because it becomes unlawful. That’s a nasty handicap if you’re new to the job market, or you’re new to a line of business, or you’re new to a particular area (see below).
I’ve mentioned before that Mark Twain claimed the best way to get the job you want is to go to work for free. When your value becomes apparent, the pay will follow. If it doesn’t become apparent, you’ve learned a lesson. That’s not possible when the law makes such a bargain illegal.
Back in October, The New York Times reported that the law of supply and demand still works. “Yes, Soda Taxes Seem to Cut Soda Drinking,” the newspaper told its readers, relating the results of Mexico’s new tax on sugary beverages. Mexico’s measure imposed a 10 percent tax on soft drinks, and so far has cut consumption from 6 percent to as much as 17 percent among the poorest Mexicans.
The efficacy of the soda tax comes as no great surprise. After all, as the news story noted, “the idea for the soda tax is in some ways modeled on . . . tobacco taxes. . . . A robust literature now exists showing that the resulting higher prices really did push down cigarette sales, particularly among young people.”
The paper’s editorial page soon came out in full cry demanding higher soda taxes for Americans, too. Noting that “a big tax on sugary drinks in Mexico appears to be driving down sales of soda,” the editors urged “lawmakers in the United States to consider comparably stiff taxes.”
Some already have. Soda taxes have become a chic cause in progressive enclaves, from Berkeley and San Francisco to Philadelphia and New York.
But if you want to make liberal heads in those same enclaves explode, dare to suggest that raising the minimum wage might reduce employment.
Thanks to legislation their governors signed Monday, California and New York are hiking their minimums to $15, the target hourly rate of a national campaign by labor activists. Earlier this year The Times encouraged Hillary Clinton to join Bernie Sanders in demanding a $15 minimum for the entire country. “Mrs. Clinton has argued that $15 might be too high for employers in low-wage states, causing them to lay off workers or make fewer hires,” the paper noted, but then argued: “There is no proof for or against that position.”
Sure there isn’t — not if you don’t remember the argument for soda taxes, anyway. […]
In San Francisco and Oakland, Calif., employment growth has been cut in half. In Seattle, job growth has plunged from 4.6 percent to 1.8 percent — even while restaurant hiring rose more than 6 percent for the rest of Washington State.
Sure, you can find studies that purport to show small hikes in the minimum wage don’t hurt jobs. You can find a lot more that say they do. But the more honest advocates for a higher minimum wage acknowledge that it will cost some people their jobs. But some argue that’s no big deal and might even be a feature, not a bug: “What’s so bad about getting rid of crappy jobs?” asks public-policy professor David Howell.
Which is easy to say if the job being gotten rid of isn’t yours.
Brown, traveling to the state’s largest media market to sign the landmark bill, remained hesitant about the economic effect of raising the minimum wage, saying, “Economically, minimum wages may not make sense.”
But he said work is “not just an economic equation,” calling labor “part of living in a moral community.”
“Morally and socially and politically, they (minimum wages) make every sense because it binds the community together and makes sure that parents can take care of their kids in a much more satisfactory way,” Brown said.
In this same vein, here’s an account by Mitch Hall about his job search in Seattle (which I assume happened late last year).
Over the weekend, lawmakers and labor unions in California, the nation’s most populous state, reached a tentative agreement to gradually raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour over the course of the next several years. […]
Twenty-nine states have minimum wages that exceed the federally mandated $7.25 per hour. Heading into the 2016 election, the issue remains hotly contested and politically potent, with Republican presidential candidates in fierce opposition to, and Democratic candidates in strong support of, a dramatic increase in the federal minimum wage. […]
My opposition to minimum wage increases comes as a direct result of my own experience searching for jobs as a new resident of Seattle, Washington, a city that currently has one of the highest minimum wages in the nation. In June 2014, the Seattle City Council, composed of just nine members, unanimously voted to increase the city’s base pay to a whopping $15 an hour, to be gradually implemented over the course of several years.
I’ve spent the majority of the last two months stalking online job sites and entire days traversing the various neighborhoods of Seattle.
On January 1, 2016, the newly mandated minimum wage rose to $13 for larger companies (those that have more than 500 employees in the United States), and $10.50 for smaller employers (those with fewer than 500 employees in the United States). On top of this, Washington state law now requires businesses to adhere to this minimum even for tipped workers, a rule that only six other states have on the books.
In December, I found myself needing a break from college, for a variety of reasons. So at the close of last semester, I decided (rather impulsively, as young people are wont to do) to take my spring semester off from the College of William and Mary and move out west to try my luck in Seattle, a place I had only visited once before. […]
Having a combined two years of serving experience and close to five years of total experience in the customer and food services industries (which is literally as much as you can ask for from a 20-year-old college student), I assumed I’d be able to find a restaurant gig in no time. So, after reassuring my parents all would be well in the financial department, I boarded a plane in Philly a few weeks later and made the move.
Yet seven weeks and more than 70 job applications later, I still have yet to land a part-time, minimum wage job. I’ve spent the majority of the last two months stalking online job sites and entire days traversing the various neighborhoods of Seattle, filling out applications and inquiring about job opportunities at any restaurant, coffee shop, retail store, or other service-oriented establishment I can find. […]
At first, I was utterly dumbfounded by my lack of success, and figured only bad luck was to blame. After all, I had been hired at every single one of my past serving jobs within only a day or two of searching and applying. I’d have to find something in Seattle eventually, I thought; I’m young, competent, and college-educated, and serving is by no means a highly skilled occupation that requires degrees or extensive training. I know how to make a good impression with prospective employers, and I already have years of experience in the food services industry. What more could these people want?
Employers, especially in the restaurant and food services industries, are far less willing to take chances on who they hire with so much money on the line.
But soon enough it became clear, through talking with potential employers and local college students also trying to find work, that my failure to land a job was likely due, at least in large part, to Seattle’s absurdly high minimum wage. […]
I think the real problem here is what to do about those who are seemingly stuck in low-skill jobs. I don’t think they’re the majority of people in those jobs, but they’re the chronic cases that seem to motivate the urge to raise minimum wages.
Just eyeballing that graph above, my guess is that maybe a third of the people making minimum wage are heads of households. If I’m right, that’s 33% of 4.7% or 1.6% of the total labor force.
A better approach would be to address directly the needs of the adults stuck in those jobs rather than raising the bar for everyone, children included. Don Boudreaux and Nick Gillespie touch on these points in this interview.
Taking a cue from Governor Brown, is it "moral" to inflict hardships on a large class in order to relieve a small number of those people from other hardships? I’d disagree. I’d say that’s an immoral action by a government based on purely utilitarian grounds (greatest good for the greatest number).
Bear in mind that it’s a different case if particular individuals step up and volunteer for hardships in order to spare their peers or fellow citizens – in that case, the action may be admirable and moral. But when it’s legally compulsory, it’s just so much bullying by legislators.
Update: Now this I can believe. Based on what I read, I think that unions are trying to regain the political power they once exercised; so this explanation seems possible. But dang… it’s gotta sting to be a union member who’s making less than the minimum wage championed by your union. Where’s the brotherhood?
If you thought that the union-backed #FightFor15 movement was really about making sure that all workers earned a living wage—rather than about using the government to enrich progressive interest groups—think again. The Guardian:
Los Angeles city council will hear a proposal on Tuesday to exempt union members from a $15 an hour minimum wage that the unions themselves have spent years fighting for.
The proposal for the exemption was first introduced last year, after the Los Angeles city council passed a bill that would see the city’s minimum wage increase to $15 by 2020. After drawing criticism last year, the proposed amendment was put on hold but is now up for consideration once again.
As it turns out, this practice is not uncommon. The WSJreported last year that at least six municipalities have created special minimum wage carveouts for unions. The logic is straightforward: Kill non-unionized jobs, add more workers to the union rolls, and extract higher fees for union bosses. It’s not a minimum wage hike the labor movement is after, exactly: It’s a penalty on non-union employers, and a payout for modern-day Jimmy Hoffas. Expect unions in California and New York, which recently enacted statewide $15 minimums, to start lobbying legislators for their own sweetheart deals in the near future. […]
Update 2:
Here’s an interesting graph from Business Insider. It explains to some extent how California can get away with its hike in the minimum wage: it’s easy when you have one of the lowest minimum-wage work forces in the country.
Here’s an recent op-ed by Natalie Morales in Flood Magazine that’s both interesting and snarky. I found her advice about clothing amusing, for one thing. It reminds me of the post in January about "North Korea with palm trees."
Editor’s Note: Natalie Morales’ Op-Ed was written before President Obama announced his intention to travel to Cuba and is not in any way intended to be a response to the president’s remarks.
Just last week, I was at my friend Michaela’s house dropping off a bag of stuff I’m sending to my family in Cuba. Her husband, Fred, is visiting Havana and was kind enough to be my courier. Among the things I sent with Fred were two packages of Cuban coffee. Yes, that’s right: I’m sending Cuban coffee to Cuba. It’s absurd and hilarious and I got a real kick out of telling everyone I came across that day about it. This is because Cuban coffee is too expensive for the average Cuban to buy in Cuba. […] I, on the other hand, buy it for three bucks at Target.
Coffee is just one of the things my family in the States sends to my family in Cuba. Usually, monthly, we send money, medicine or syringes for the diabetic aunt (since the hospital doesn’t have any unused disposable ones), baby clothes, adult clothes, shoes, or food (there’s a website for Americans to buy food that is sent to Cuba, but at an absurd upcharge). They cannot survive without our help. For many Cuban-American families all over the States, this is just a regular part of life, another bill to pay each month.
Here’s a terse explanation of why: a doctor, a lawyer, or another similar profession that is considered to be high-earning everywhere else in the world will make about twenty to thirty dollars per month in Cuba. Yet shampoo at the store still costs three dollars. This is because everything is supposed to be rationed out to you, but the reality is that they’re always out of most things, and your designated ration is always meager. […] That’s good ol’ Communism in practice.
Now, knowing this, picture me at any dinner party or Hollywood event or drugstore or press interview or pretty much any situation where someone who considers themselves “cultured” finds out I’m Cuban. I prepare myself for the seemingly unavoidable “Ooh, Cuuuuuba” — as if the country itself were somehow a sexy woman or delicious food — followed by the inevitable, “I have to go there before it’s ruined!” I try to be polite, because I am aware that, oftentimes, people who think they are very thoughtful are the least thoughtful. So I ask, “What do you mean by ruined?” and they always say, “You know, it’s so cool looking! It’s stuck in time! They have all the old cars and stuff… Everything’s gonna change soon!”
So depending on the situation […], I will say some version of this: "What exactly do you think will ruin Cuba? Running water? Available food? Freedom of speech? Uncontrolled media and Internet? Access to proper healthcare? You want to go to Cuba before the buildings get repaired? Before people can actually live off their wages? Or before the oppressive Communist regime is someday overthrown?" […]
If you want to go to Cuba, I want you to go. I do. But can I ask a favor? Be aware of what’s going on there. Try, if you can, to stay in people’s homes — casas particulares — instead of hotels. They’ll take much better care of you, the food will be much better, and you’ll be putting a little less money into Castro’s tourism pocket. When you go, ask the people to tell you what’s really going on… not the version they’re supposed to tell you. […] Also, for God’s sake, please don’t wear a fucking Che t-shirt.
This year, Tax Freedom Day falls on April 24, or 114 days into the year (excluding Leap Day).
Americans will pay $3.3 trillion in federal taxes and $1.6 trillion in state and local taxes, for a total bill of almost $5.0 trillion, or 31 percent of the nation’s income.
Tax Freedom Day is one day earlier than last year, due to slightly lower federal tax collections as a proportion of the economy.
Americans will collectively spend more on taxes in 2016 than they will on food, clothing, and housing combined.
If you include annual federal borrowing, which represents future taxes owed, Tax Freedom Day would occur 16 days later, on May 10.
Tax Freedom Day is a significant date for taxpayers and lawmakers because it represents how long Americans as a whole have to work in order to pay the nation’s tax burden.
What Is Tax Freedom Day?
Tax Freedom Day® is the day when the nation as a whole has earned enough money to pay its total tax bill for the year. Tax Freedom Day takes all federal, state, and local taxes and divides them by the nation’s income. In 2016, Americans will pay $3.34 trillion in federal taxes and $1.64 trillion in state and local taxes, for a total tax bill of $4.99 trillion, or 31 percent of national income. This year, Tax Freedom Day falls on April 24th, or 114 days into the year (excluding Leap Day). […]
This interesting graph accompanies the article.
And don’t get me started on how all this money flowing into the capital still won’t reduce the national debt. They’re spending it as fast as they can print it, I think.
Here’s another graph that comes from a Mercatus Center post about the Congressional Budget Office’s projections for national debt as a percentage of GDP.
It’ll get worse before it gets better… assuming it ever gets better.
No Truce With Kings 