80% of LBJ's median wage = 66% of Obama's median wage = the same [1968!!!] $10/hr minimum wage!

80% of $12.50 = 66% of $15.00 = the same [!!! 1968 !!!] $10 federal minimum wage

If LBJ was able to boost his minimum wage to 80% of his era's relatively generous (as in fair?) $12.50/hr median wage: to $10/hr (old figures adjusted) -- why can't Obama refuel his time's minimum wage to at least 66% of his era's relatively tight-wad $15.00/hr median wage (advanced only 20% as average income grew 100%): to the same $10/hr?

Why not do it in one jump as Eisenhower's (1956), LBJ's (1968) and Nixon's (1974) did? Seems plenty of headroom beneath plenty more headroom.

John F. Kennedy reportedly said (I believe I read it in "The Making of a President 1968"): "Who cares if the minimum wage is $1.00 or $1.25?" Yet Kennedy pushed $1.25/hr minimum for 1963 through Congress, expanding its real buying power almost 15% over Eisenhower's $8/hr minimum (in parallel with per person economic growth): to $8.75/hr.

Does today's more unequal sharing of labor earnings fairly reflect a lesser need for unskilled labor in a higher tech economy (should barbers get relatively -- or absolutely -- less)?

Let's guess that 90 percentile income level roughly equates to the 90 percentile IQ level (willingness to work and opportunity do count as much). The earnings of 90 percentile earners, all the way up to about the 97 percentile earners (and IQs?) have not grown more or less than overall economic growth over the past 4 decades. Who else might possess such extraordinary new productive powers?

Even the low end of top one percentile incomes (and IQs?) have not grown that much out of proportion (ask your doctor). If you ask Paul Krugman it is the ballooning incomes of the top 1/10th of one percentile and especially the top 1/100 of one percentile earners which have absorbed most of the 15% of income share lost by the bottom 90 percentile since 1973: ball players, news anchors, CEOs -- many earning 25 times what the same job skills paid 36 years ago (when "stagwagion" began its apparently too-slow-to-be-noticed creep).

If it would be economically comfortable in our labor market to return the minimum wage to a relatively weaker (in this century) $10/hr, then, it should be as equally doable for re-organized American labor (under sector-wide contracts -- only modern way -- versions in every modern OECD nation except US and Japan) to push the median wage all the way back to the overall share of 40 years ago: to as much as $25/hr.

The minimum wage could then bring up the rear at at least 50% of the resurrected median wage: $12.50/hr: end of the Crips and the Bloods -- who will thank us -- who wants to get shot and/or jailed to make $10/hr selling crack: the end of the most poverty in a modern economy that is twice as productive per person as it was in LBJ's time (he is looking down impatiently).

HEADLINE: 2007 MINIMUM WAGE UNDER PERFORMED MALTHUS! :-)

HEADLINE: YEAR 2007 MINIMUM WAGE UNDER-PERFORMED MALTHUS! :-)

Even under defunct Malthusian theory, LBJ's $10/hr minimum wage ($1.60/hr in 1968, adjusted) should have shrunk only 33% as US population grew 50%. But by the time GWB's $5.30/hr minimum wage ($5.15/hr in 2007, adjusted) came to be it had sunk nearly 50%.

Adding 72.5% to today’s $7.25/hr minimum wage would make it $12.50/hr; would raise a $6.00 fast food meal to $7.45, but would raise nearly 40% of the US labor force to (a still shamefully low for the 40 percentile US wage?) $500/wk -- the fast food buying 40%. Direct inflation would be 2% -- not “1000%” with the fantasy “$100/hr."

Two short years ago the federal minimum wage was $212/wk. Today it is just short of $300/wk. Michigan Democrats are pondering $400/wk next. Does anybody expect -- has anybody yet experienced -- any great unemployment tragedy? $212/hr never should have happened!

A realistically* assessed (if never ever reported) 30% US poverty level shouts that there is lots -- and lots -- of room for more fairly set labor costs (which should be all the market will bear, just like ownership's prices) to be re-inserted into US products and services -- the same missing labor costs that have siphoned 15% of income share from the pockets of bottom 90 percentile earners mostly into the buckets of top fraction of 1 percentile earners over the past few decades -- with neither matching increase in relative output from the top nor decrease from the bottom. (*see charts, pp. 44-45)

This “http”* illustrates that minimum wages do not affect employment below half the median wage. Unfortunately (unbelievably?) the US median wage rose only 20% while average income climbed 100%, probably making half the US median no longer a true test (meaning that if the minimum could be pushed harmlessly to $12.50/hr that the median could sensibly be pushed to $25/hr?). *http://worthwhile.typepad.com/worthwhile_canadian_initi/2006/11/when_the_minimu.html

LBJ's 1968 minimum was about 80% (!) of the median (around $12.50/hr) -- really pushing it. It must have been recognized back then that nobody could live on half their day's median ($6.25/hr). LBJ's minimum wage earners would fit into today's $20,000/yr income tax paying bracket -- GWB'S were in 2007's $10,000/yr almost no income tax paying bracket. (If LBJ's minimum wage had kept up with average income growth, today, it would be $5/hr higher then Obama's median wage!)

Re-inserting (re-asserting!) fair US labor costs across the board must needs cause a boat load of inflation – but that just quantifies the depth of what I call America's "Great Wage Depression."

My neighborhood McDonald's enjoyed a noticeable up tick in business following Illinois' minimum wage jump from $6/hr ($5.15 in 2003, adjusted) to $8/hr -- noticeably (to myself and others) all in the low wage, foreign born customer segment. Minimum wage earners beginning to afford the products of their labor? My neighborhood owners even closed both their stores -- one at a time -- for 6 months to beautifully rebuild them for $1 million dollars apiece -- right in the teeth of the 33% real minimum wage increase which apparently did not phase them much.

Given the too long, below fair share US labor market, those who perform minimum wage studies ought to separate US born from foreign born employment statistics to get a realistic assessment of the effect on both. How else can they detect whether today’s minimum wage may often (most often?) be too low for Americans to even show up for? Ditto for measuring teenage and adult minimum wage work participation simultaneously: a higher wage may merely attract a few more, more employable adult applicants.

Meantime my neighborhood Ronald's has begun to attract a few (very few) American born workers now that Illinois' 2009 minimum wage has caught up with Ike's (read senate majority leader LBJ's) $8/hr minimum wage ($1.00/hr in 1956, adjusted).

Huge minimum wage hike -- (supposedly?) loses sales -- while labor gains

You would never know it from reading “scholarly” examinations of the minimum wage but both labor and management could make more money moving fewer hamburgers for a higher price apiece. If all fast food franchisees could collude to raise meal prices from $6 to $7 they would do it, wouldn’t they?

Labor may legally “collude” if you will to double its price from $6.55/hr (federal minimum up to July 24) to $13.00/hr via a minimum wage raise (or via sector-wide collective bargaining if it were available). Ownership could potentially lose profit, of course, leading to some stores closed and some employees laid off – there could be nothing good in the price raise for ownership (OTH, there could very well be). But without a doubt, if American labor had a choice it would never have agreed to adding a more jobs (or even many more – most of the increase maybe going to desperate immigrants) if that meant dropping its fair market price in half.

Why not make the minimum wage $100/hr? 1000% inflation (to cite a genuine possibility) instead of 2% inflation (see link).

The so called “hidden hand” would be recognized by any modern day biologist as a system of equilibrium among equilibrium points – A.K.A., an evolved living organism. If the pin maker and the butcher and the lawyer did not cooperatively support each other’s occupations the market organism would never have evolved in the first place. Point being: a robust mechanism is the free market (how do all just the right products end up on all just the right supermarket shelves? – how do all just the right nutrients end up in all just our right mammal cells?), not some ethereal force never to be touched by human regulation lest the whole efficiency fall mysteriously apart as our eighteenth-century-myth based Republicans would have it.

By far the biggest users of labor are restaurants -- and the biggest users of minimum wage labor are fast food restaurants: one-third labor costs (typical businesses: one-tenth). Double the minimum wage and the one-dimensional (typical “scholarly”) expectation is demand will drop. Maybe not for fast food.

Last time I looked (see link) $13/hr was the 40 percentile wage. Raise the minimum wage to $13/hr and fast food demand should thrive, no? Almost half the work force (not the expensive restaurant half) gets a big raise (average $150/wk). In between restaurant eaters will their extra 2% inflation raise (40-90 percentile earners get some economic growth raises too; more as they get closer to the top).

When labor has been down in the raise department as long as it has been in our unbalanced market (as of 2007 25% of the workforce earned less than LBJ’s minimum wage!) every bit of inflation caused by labor getting some income share back should be looked upon as a positive sign – it may take 30% inflation to restore 15% of income share lost to the top 1% (mostly top fraction of) over the last few decades – with back and forth “chain-shifting” of income share; get used to it.

Why aren’t some progressive scholars working out models or whatever to predict just how demand would shift after a minimum wage hike to 30% over LBJ’s minimum ($10/hr adjusted -- 100% average income growth later!)? There are thousands of progressive economic researchers. Why is there only one positive study (that I know of: Card and Kruger) on the impact of minimum wage raises? Myth-based economists, of course, come back citing 100 studies. Reality-based economists have to close the minimum wage (not to mention sector-wide labor contracts) study gap!

-- An imaginary conversation with my family doctor on the true difficulty of paying for national health care --

-- An imaginary conversation with my family doctor on the true difficulty of paying for national insurance --

Me: $1.2 million is the average income for top 1 percentile households (2006 figure). You must have made at least a couple of million last year, right? I mean you are a doctor – and you are with Columbia Presbyterian hospital.

Doctor Levine: “[Laughs].”

Me: You mean that the 15% of income share that slipped out of the pockets of bottom 90 percentile earners and into the buckets of top 1 percentile earners over the past few decades slipped right past you doctors?

Doctor Levine: “[Smiles ruefully].”

Me: Still, with the US having 135% of the per capita GDP of comparable modern economies we should no trouble devoting 15% of GDP [.15 X 1.35 = .2025] to health care, right (note parallel with 15% of income shifted to pockets of folks who earn lots more than doctors)? Unless we have too deeply gutted much of our workforce’s pay – with something like 30% of families living below the poverty line.

In real life the poverty line for a family of three -- assuming they have to pay their own health premiums – is about $45,000 (not the unreal $20,000 government calculation based on three times the price of an emergency diet – premiums alone exceed $12,000!). If you look at the Census, median family income is about $62,000. The real minimum needs line would hover somewhere around 37 percentile – if we didn't count families with paid health insurance. Knock off 7 points (guesstimate) for families on the top end with paid insurance (not those on the bottom with Medicaid) and we can reckon – it turns out very reliably -- about 30% of American families’ incomes are below minimum needs without government helps like food stamps.

Sounds like a quarter of the country must be earning less than the minimum wage or something equally crazy, right? Nearly a quarter of the workforce is earning less than the minimum wage – if we are talking about Lyndon Johnson’s 1968 minimum wage of $10/hr [$1.60/hr adjusted] – back when average income was half today’s. (FYI, tech improvement, like how much better today’s Timex is, generally not counted in inflation estimates.)

Doctor Levine: “How can something like this happen; why can’t we straighten it out?”

We can straighten out our labor market any time we wish – nothing like this happens anywhere else in the first-world. Simply institute the same labor market structure in place in virtually every modern economy (and many not so modern like Argentina and Indonesia): sector-wide labor agreements – wherein everybody with the same job description within the same locale works under identical collectively bargained terms with all the different firms – legislation required. [Note: check out French-Canadian “lite” version.]

Medical Doctor (not psychiatrist) Levine: What is holding back our big wig progressives from pushing – or at least mentioning out loud – such apparently badly needed and promisingly efficacious labor market changes?

Me: Something I call “pack check.” Males instinctively check in with what everybody else is thinking on any economic or political – or metaphorical “hunting pack” -- issue. And as long as they stay fix-focused on what everybody else is thinking it can seem impossible to them to make headway in an entirely new policy direction: so many different people require so many different approaches – and whom did we ever convert before with our most reasonable (we thought) arguments. Impostavazoo!

Sociobiology time – my lay opinion anyway: chasing wild pigs (what human males evolved doing) required a kind of perfect awareness of what every other hunting pack member was doing (pigs, as anyone who owns one can tell you, are not stupid) – was an essential survival mechanism. Without awareness of the need to break free from this innate focus-on-everybody-else’s-focus, at least for short breaks, all the economic male geeks in all the world may never initiate any new solution to the uniquely lop-side bargaining power ruining the American labor market – nor anything else – no matter how obviously practical, no matter how desperately (!) needed.

Human males are not so much pig headed as we are “pig-chase” headed.

Doctor Levine: “[Makes excuse; finally escapes].”

School corporal punishment: closer to the final "anti" argument

http://nospank.net/n-u88.htm

For a more comprehensive treatment click on: Corporal Punishment in Schools: Economic, Liable, Practical, Ethical, Constitutional?


Even closer to the final “anti” argument against corporal punishment in school – the big jump (not yet the final) comes at the very end.

First, I can now delineate between the slipper (more like a size 12 sneaker), the cane and the paddle.

Getting the slipper turns out to be a painful spanking (never sounded like much to me). It starts out stinging badly and by the time you get hit on the same spot for the sixth time it is unbearable.

But English students who got the slipper were so happy not to be getting the cane. IOW, the slipper meant a spanking, the cane meant real torture.

OTH, an African slave in America would never be lucky enough to get the cane. Even a small woman can give you max pain with a cane – it is light enough. It takes a strong man (or, for example, a female phys ed coach) to deliver all a paddle can deliver.*

I once found a paddle lying around a place I worked and since nobody was around I gave myself a weak, clumsy, back-handed shot on the butt with it – I thought I would hardly feel it, the shot was so weak. It took the hair off my head for ten years (so don’t let women loose with a paddle – everything is a matter of degree).

I once got the equivalent of the cane, thirteen shots with a 36 inch pointer in the seventh grade (he lined up half the class – we had been falling behind doing assignments) and can remember every shot like 1956 was yesterday.

I would probably brave the slipper rather than spend all day in school (even I who “suffered” through every second of school). I would do a dozen Saturdays before braving the cane or the paddle.

To me this means that the usual “anti” arguments about permanent trauma are more appropriate to spanking – the slipper. When you are dealing with true torture (the slave paddle) the only “anti” argument you need is the torture itself.

Now we are ready for the big “anti” finale: I find the adult paddler to be the one who is behaving immaturely – the definition of immature being not keeping things in the right proportion – in the case of the adult paddler just to give in to his or her bureaucratic impulses.

We covered the light weight of the student infractions elsewhere (we don’t tell students that) – student rules equate to adult office management. We now know how unacceptably (criminally!) painful being paddled or caned is. The adult paddler ignores – really inverts – the true proportion of both: the personification of immaturity.

[*Further "physics" insights: the reason students victims may be told to spread their feet wide for a paddling is prevent them from instinctively puckering their butt cheeks together to absorb the power of the incoming missile (making the pain penetrate deeper). Nothing like that happens with a cane which doesn't have anything resembling the impact force of paddle.

[Students relate living if fear of the paddle or the cane through their school years. Nobody reports living in terror the whole time of every getting the slipper -- which is very painful punishment but not full-fledged torture.

[A caning is a trip through hell. Every single shot with a paddle is a trip through hell -- making a paddle totally inappropriate for "spanking" children; should be outlawed even for parents.]

Another possible approach is that you cannot hit a school child if they have not done anything morally offensive: e.g., spitting on passersby from the school bus, cheating on exams, etc.

We cannot legally strike adults with a stick for lateness (no "option" to getting fired allowed) under criminal law. Children are no different from adults under the constitution -- equal protection (parental exemption for practical keep-state-out-of-family rationale -- not a "sacrament" to be conferred on schools which usually are government). Tardies, doing homework, smoking in the parking lot are all everyday office management issues -- not moral issues.

And if you do hit a school child it is not with the slave-paddler ("er" is more active) or the cane (ownership of which should be outlawed -- perhaps even from parents -- like they were switch-blade knives). The "slipper" or gym shoe (the lower level of old time British corporal punishment) should be the limit -- and it had better be a standard approved by whatever body with what we are talking about in mind; can't let the "hold drillers" lose or they will come up with a near fatal shoe sole. Not unknown in this country -- saw it in a National Geographic story of all places, 25-35 years ago.

[More creepy comparisons (can't help it: I am gifted with this flood of mechanical associations): I am sure most would agree that the strap or the hairbrush are a lot worse than the sneaker (I saw four Brit soldiers in an online video (this research takes you where it takes you) drawing straws to see who would take a sneaker shot from the other three -- the loser jumped around with the shots but I don't think they would play that way with the strap or the hairbrush.

[And think about it: the paddle is like 5 or 10 hairbrushes. And if you look at the one used in the famous Principal's Office episode it looked like 10 times the area and 20 times the weight -- swung by a beefy ex-welder of course (who seemed to be humanely intended in general -- may have no idea what he delivers).

[To combine with the last (unbracketed) point above: you don't give someone -- least of all a child -- that kind of pain if they have not done something morally offensive (e.g., cheating on a test). You don't train human children to be a little more efficient (reduce tardies) by using what amounts to a cattle prod. Some don't object to a parent hairbrushing a kid for being out late? The parent is not talking about 5 minutes late for dinner -- the parent is worried about being out all night and getting in a car crash with a drunken driver.]

What to replace the US Senate with: a representative US Senate.

FOR A MORE SOPHISTICATED SOLUTION CLICK HERE: http://ontodayspage.blogspot.com/2009/12/end-cheap-seats-in-us-senate-via.html


What to replace the US Senate with: a representative US Senate.

First raise the number of representatives to 500 (representing 600,000 people each, to be apportioned across state lines if necessary; no state need have less than one, lowest population, Wyoming, 621,254).

Then (you guessed what was coming), have 100 senators represent 5 contiguous representative districts. California (pop. 36 million) could share 12 US senators with Hawaii (pop. 600,000) under this arrangement.

No other country in the world has such screwy undemocratic representation as found in the number one legislature body of the United States. 18% of our citizens supply 50% of the US Senate vote.

On top of which no new progressive directions can be taken without an undemocratic 60% of the vote. 10% of our citizens can supply enough votes block any legislation. (This reactionary setup reminds of why California cannot raise taxes to pay for expenditures that have not risen beyond inflation over the years – the only kind of setup the Republican disease can thrive in anymore.)

Worst – so I thought -- of all to alter the Constitution requires a two-thirds vote of the US Senate: making it practicably impossible. I contemplated the most populous states (e.g., Texas) seceding from union with the least populous (e.g., Alaska) – temporarily – just long enough to get rid of the old US Senate and replace it with something more practical (until this week I could not think of what that might be).

“When in the course of human events…” Then the full states can re-adopt the empty “territories.” Under this scenario Obama can play the part of Jefferson Davis. I don’t think the national guard of Alaska is going to suppress the “rebellion” in Texas. J

Just today I learned there is another path to amendment (and junking the US Senate). Two-thirds of state legislatures can convene a Constitutional convention to propose an amendment which then must be ratified by three-quarters of the state legislatures. Worth a try.

15% of US GDP goes to health care – with 135% of comparable (OECD) per-capita GDPs – what’s the universal health hold up?

15% of US GDP goes to health care – with 135% of comparable (OECD) per-capita GDPs – what’s the universal health hold up?

Imagine a US economy in which 25% of wages lie below the federal minimum and 30% of families subsist below realistic (not the phony federal) poverty lines (not counting government helps like food stamps -- sounds like something out of “Soylent Green”).

Not merely imagination if we are talking LBJ’s federal minimum wage of 1968: $10/hr ($1.60/hr adjusted for inflation – average income has nearly doubled since!).

Matching believable family minimum needs tables found in the 2002 book “Raise the Floor” (not quack federal poverty lines, computed as three times the price of an emergency diet -- dried beans only please, no canned) with Census historical family income tables reveals in the neighborhood of 30% of American families below minimum needs (without government helps -- eight-grade math is here).

Meanwhile, average top 1 percentile household income reached a stratospheric $1.2 million dollars (hint: 100 X $12,000) in 2006 – just not your over-trained, over-worked family doctor’s household. The 15% of income share relocated from the pockets of bottom 90 percentile earners to top 1 percentile buckets flew right past him or her. (Note match with 15% of GDP we strain to allot to less than universal care.) It’s the labor market, doc.
******
Bumping up the minimum wage over three years to $12.50/hr (in real terms -- $1 every six months?) would add all of 2 1/2% to the cost of GDP output (how much our per capita GDP typically grows every year or two) and presumably to direct inflation – raise 40% of American workers to a still minimum family needs short $500/wk -- and likely recirculate much demand in the direction of high minimum wage use businesses (lower wage tending to serve lower wage).

The end of the middle class race to the (Wal-Mart) bottom in almost the entire first-world (even in second-world Argentina and third-world Indonesia) is called sector-wide labor contracts: same job description, same geographic locale equals same contract conditions across diverse firms – legislation required.

The French-Canadian “lite” version of sector-wide – in which non-union firms work under terms collectively bargained with unionized firms -- is available right nearby for easy study and adaptation -- Canada’s economy mostly mirroring our own.
******
What could be tying the tongues of our economic geeks who should be pressing upon we less knowing these make-or-break American labor market moves? In sociobiological (evolved behavior) terms, and to my lay observation: the more momentous and more critical any political or economic issue is, the less likely human male geeks are to be guided by their internal gyros in “pack” dialogue – almost forget challenging the general direction. This is not exactly herd instinct; better called “pack” instinct: “No time for new notions now: the wild pigs are running away!”

No matter how diverse the rationalizations for doing it; whatever the reasons offered for practicality of – all males perform the identical mental operation: all check in (within seconds?) with where “pack” thought is running and why – all tend to get stuck (lost?) in the flow. Females do not automatically perform "pack-check" (within seconds). Females in my experience are able to assess the prospects of new directions and (just as importantly) their marketability in purely substantive, is it a good idea or not a good idea, terms.

”Pack check” may have played its part in keeping our species fat in the rain forests. It can play its role today in keeping even worldwide discussions coherent. But, if you ask me, as long as the inhibition goes unchecked because unconscious, it can contribute to too many modern Americans living too lean.
******
Looking for a “natural” (as in no artificial inducements) demand boost to ease our two-pronged (financial and real estate) recession: start most Americans toward recapturing that 15% of income share lost over three and a half decades to folks who earn lots more than doctors (the top of top 1 percentile earners). Mere anticipation of renewed buying power to be refreshed by rebuilt bargaining power could unleash a third of a century of pent up demand. It’s the “Great Wage Depression” Americans.

How to depersonalize TSA backscatter x-ray "strip searches"

Emailed this to TSA a while back (for latest controversy see below):

To reach an acceptable level of privacy with the use of low energy backscatter x-ray machines we could try morphing all personal body images into standard impersonal templates: fat persons' images would be shrunk to fit a standard image and vice versa for example. All males and all female images could could be morphed into one standard gender image (not very personal). We could even try squared off "standard body" images if that would make the public feel less exposed.

Standardized male and female body images might actually make it easier for TSA employees to search for hidden objects. Even modified images should do a significantly better job than metal detectors.

Whether or not standardized images would satisfy public objections of virtual strip search would be purely subjective. If it works for the public, it works.
******
LATE NOTE:
Touching private parts might be considered a felony criminal law violation as part of random checks entering a disco. You cannot be forced to agree to allow an illegal assault.

When the government is the main -- only -- actor setting TSA frisking policy the Fourth Amendment may be invoked under the same kind of rationale that finds some so-called private contractors (e.g., leasing limo drivers) to be employees because all their job activities are governed by management.
******
I went on hundreds of prison visits in New York State in the late '70's (Rikers Island, Elmira, Fishkill, Coxsaki, Camp Monterey and Hudson) and the metal detectors were set so sensitively the brass rivets in your plastic eyeglass frames would make them go off (take them off and go through again) -- but the frisks never touched anyone's genitals, male or female.

"By buying your ticket you gave up a lot of rights," countered the TSA supervisor.

You cannot give up your First Amendment rights by buying a ticket -- nor your right to due process; going to jail without trial. You cannot give up your rights not to have the private areas of your body groped. The latter becomes especially egregious when the TSA, according to some stories, presents a male agent to intimately frisk a female flier on the excuse of no female agent available (one of the first stories on Drudge I believe) for a RANDOM AIRPORT (as in on the ground) check -- not a bomb threat at 35,000 feet.
******
I just finished reading about prosecution for leaving the pat-down area without permission: once you enter the pat down area you have to allow it (unless you get "permission" ???). No rational relationship to a valid state interest -- shamelessly violates 14th amendment's rational test." You are forced to allow someone to grope your private parts because a terrorist might want to look at the no-tech, empty room (and leave unfrisked?). Even if it were high-tech, pat-down room what difference could being patted-down or not make? Someone at TSA has a serious skull full of mush.

The supposed letter of the law (check out the way law enforcement sees the strict legality of men frisking women as opposed to mere, if almost universal outside TSA stories, policy prohibitions) means that even if only a man is available a woman has to submit.
******
For the last word on pointless TSA over focus on passengers read: http://ontodayspage.blogspot.com/2010/11/no-meaningful-precedent-for-tsas-so.html

MY COMMENTS FOR 5/22/09:

Steven Pearlstein: Budget Scolds Shouldn't Drown Out the Chorus Calling for Health Reform

15% of today's GDP goes to health care.

15% of overall income shifted from the bottom 90 percentile of earners to the top 1 percentile of earners between 1973 and today.

Anybody see a possible connection between the pressure of health expenses and the uniquely distorted (mostly because uniquely ignored) American labor market?

*****************************

Rex: Vengeance is his: Jared Diamond in the New Yorker

Does culture or genetic behavioral programming influence us the most? Actually the two can powerfully reinforce each other in a loop that can be nearly impossible to break -- for male "hunters" at least. I have found males to unbendingly unable to accept new pathways on more than one old issue.

I see males as so programmed to "check in" with what everybody else is thinking before they allow themselves to decide their what their own agenda will be that they will permanently freeze out what would be the most obvious practical approach in purely abstract terms. Prime example: the inability of America's progressive economic elite to pick up on the easy solution -- that could be even more easily sold -- to America's uniquely low labor pay: sector-wide labor agreements (I'm not the least bit kidding about any of this) -- American supermarket and airline workers would kill for legislated sector-wide agreements.

But males are programmed so heavily -- this was an all important survival mode -- to integrate their thoughts with everyone else in the group -- this is not the time for new ideas: the wild pig is getting away! -- that they are impervious to the most practical abstract innovations. When they are alone in the library at one in the morning they are still on the "hunt."

Meantime 20-25% of America's workforce is earning less than the minimum wage...
...of 1968! Meantime top one percentile income averaged $1.2 million in 2006 according to CBO* -- while our intellectual males (unconsciously) chase ever receding wild pigs.

* http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=2789

*************************************

What Would Happen if we Delayed Health Care Reform?

20 years out average income should be 140% of today's by normal expectations. 26.7% of 140% equals 37%. 140% minus 37% leaves 103% in my eighth grade math to spend on everything else. Compares favorably with 85% today (100% minus 15% for health costs) to spend on everything else.

Almost 20% more income to spend on everything else -- along with 20 more years progress in medical care -- and who knows what amazing everything else (adjusted for inflation -- tech advance not usually reflected in inflation numbers -- no realistic way to measure it): sounds like a great time to be alive and amazingly healthy to me.

Want something to worry about? Imagine if 25% of the American workforce (not the typical OECD economy's workforce -- not them) were earning less than the minimum wage (with the income curve pretty flat most of the way to the top)...
...of 1968! That was the state of affairs as of a couple of years ago when the fed minimum was $5.50/hr (in today's money) compared to LBJ's $10/hr.

This impacts medical care too because the people who have all the money the rest of us did not get (CBO reports top one percentile households averaged $1.2 million in income in 2006*) don't have any more hearts and livers to fix even if they have the money to throw at fixing them -- and the rest of us may not be able to support the taxes to pay for adequate national insurance because we make less all the time.

The warped out of shape American labor market -- that is what to worry about.

* http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=2789

More on the practicality of doubling today's minimum wage (at Thoma's)

>>>>And of course, that it wouldn't cause a spike in unemployment among minimum wage workers, including increases in teenage unemployment which wouldn't be so great for crime and poverty.<<<<

Larry,
I almost don't know where to start -- but there are few teenage Mexicans working fast food in Chicago, nor many teenage Chinese working fast food in San Francisco, the other city I have recent experience in.

If the minimum wage were $500/wk (up all of $100 since 1968 -- TWICE the average income later) a lot of gang members would remember the desperate reason they joined a drug selling gang in the first place; and would not stick around long.

Recently, the Illinois minimum wage jumped all the way from $5.50/hr (in 2009 dollars) to $8.00/hr. I and other customers of my neighborhood Ronald have noticed a distinct uptick in business -- all in the third world end. IOW, a minimum wage increase feeds the pockets of minimum wage employees who are most likely to patronize a minimum wage business out of proportion.

Prices went up but not enough to keep anyone else out. Wouldn't you pay 1/3 more to go to Ronald's if you had to? Enough higher paid people would to keep Ronald going I am sure. But, if fast food is an overextended business dependent on low price Mexican labor to keep its market share then so be it -- let some Ronald stores close up. A few years ago Ronald closed 733 stores that were not making a profit -- nobody took notice -- not even Mexico.

Fast food price is 1/3 labor -- by far the highest of any business -- and a business that uses mostly minimum wage labor. If Ronald can survive doubling the minimum wage it should have little impact on any other business.

Ultimate effect to be hoped for: higher paid workers who have more bargaining power will get their inflation raises to cover the extra 2 1/2% inflation and less money overall will be left for the top 1% or earners to take home because American workers are too asleep to grab it before it percolates all the way up.

I'm not saying: For the want of a higher minimum wage everybody else is underpaid. "Everybody else" had better get in touch with something called sector-wide labor agreements -- and then the minimum wage earners and "everybody else" can squeeze back the 15% of overall income that percolated to the top 1% of earners since 1973 in our uniquely warped out of shape American labor market.

Posted by: Denis Drew | May 05, 2009 at 03:24 PM

Evidence that doubling minimum wage would only cause 2 1/2% direct inflation? + low pay more about power than skills

What evidence the minimum wage would only add 2 1/2% to cost of GDP output and direct inflation? Just eighth grade math -- worked it out a couple of years ago as 3 1/2% to go from then minimum of $5.15/hr to $12.50/hr:

$12.50 was 40 percentile wage then meaning 54 million workers (.4 X 136 million) at half (average raise) + 6 million at minimum wage level (who get the full raise or another half raise) = 60 million half raises.

Half raise = $7500/yr (average raise or half-raise = $7.50/hr X 1000 hours -- 1000 hours being half a work year).

60 million workers X $7500 average raise = 45 million at $10,000 = $450 billion added to the cost of GDP output. GDP at the time was $12.5 trillion. $450 billion is about 3 1/2% of that year's GDP.

GDP last year -- and when output returns to normal -- was about $14 trillion; minimum wage is now $6.55/hr: so, I figure (without actually figuring) knock off 1% inflation for 2 1/2% direct inflation -- about how much we grow every couple of years.
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How much "skill" does it take to be a taxi driver? The reason taxi drivers can no longer earn a living is that American labor has sleepily given up all power to protect itself in the market place.

In Chicago where I hacked for 20 years they allowed on 30 cent mileage raise over the 16 years (!!!) from 1981 to 1997 (at which point I was hacking in SF where they are so liberal they treat you like you have a union even if you don't) -- at which 1990 midpoint they started cutting the business in half with subways to both airports, unlimited limo licenses and (the shot in the head, not just the last straw) free trolleys between all the hot spots in the downtown -- AND at which 1990 midpoint the city began adding 40% more cabs (now on its way to 50% more as the city likes the money from selling the medallions).

Which is why I had to move 2000 miles to get a job driving a cab (while some drivers moved 10,000 miles to drive a cab in Chicago not Pakistan -- low pay outsourced my job to Pakistan and fast food jobs to Mexico). Not lack of skills the problem -- lack of power to maintain labor's fair share of the pie.

There is no reason any 2 unskilled people cannot earn $1000/wk working fast food -- with universal medical insurance. We are clearly that rich. Any 2 WOULD have earned $800/wk in 1968 (adjusted) -- at half today's average income. We are incredibly rich: why our top 1 percentile households can average $1.2 million/yr.

Posted by: Denis Drew | Link to comment | May 05, 2009 at 07:38 AM

A cab driver vs. economics -- and economists

As ALWAYS, our progressive economists leave out of ANY and EVERY discussion of the dropping price of American labor any mention of POWER or in the American case the total lack of union based bargaining power in the labor market -- actually in the American case even the lack of discussion of labor power among laborers themselves, which is where we came into this sentence.

Bargaining power is not all Xs and Os -- bargaining to paraphrase a NY Giant football coach of old is a game played by two players down in the dirt. But the American labor team typically just takes whatever employers offer -- believing that somewhere in the conjugation of distant equilibrium points their actual worth to their employer (and ultimately to their employer's customers) is automatically tallied up.

Extreme example: doctors are too busy taking care of us to take care of themselves: average physician income increased only 2/3 as average income doubled since 1968. Dentists apparently not too busy to take note that medical insurance something like doubled since 1996 because of all the new treatments and machines and seem to have doubled their fees for doing the same old same old; perhaps hoping no one notices in the climb out of medical costs.

Overall result of unorganized -- and unawake -- American labor (and unawake progressives?): CBO reports for 2006, average top one percentile household income at $1,200,000. Meanwhile the bottom 20-25% of the American labor force earns less than LBJ's 1968 minimum wage ($10/hr). The later have 25 times more livers and hearts to treat; no wonder doctors are being squeezed.

Sector-wide labor agreements (say it over and over). If we had sector-wide we would be like Europe and we never would have elected George Bush-league. Labor empowerment is the ultimate progressive answer -- the Alpha and the Omega; the beginning and the end. When are progressive leaders going to at least mention the concept out loud?

Posted by: Denis Drew | Link to comment | May 04, 2009 at 09:28 AM

Today, April 26's musings on corporal punishment in schools

http://nospank.net/n-u88.htm

For a more comprehensive treatment click on: Corporal Punishment in Schools: Economic, Liable, Practical, Ethical, Constitutional?

"I am convinced that whatever about instinctive human nature teaches us – sensibly -- to treat minor children as subordinates – somehow less sensibly – permits us to magnify their transgressions in our sight, especially their repeated transgressions (!) and – least sensibly of all – permits us to minimize the darkness of a student’s darkest day (being slave-paddled)."
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[OTW – I am still working out the component parts of the motive involved -- or trying to.] Subordination may not magnify the seeming weight of the infraction (at least not for repeated tardies; maybe yes for talking back!): leading to physical beatings. Subordination my lead to feeling free to be antagonistic towards a subordinate (slave or student – the tiny midbrain doesn’t house many categories). Even if not antagonistic overall a principal who is swinging a bat on meat is certainly being antagonistic at that moment.

Feeling free -- in the way we do not feel free to be antagonistic towards a “fellow” we don’t know on a bus stop – but in a way we do feel free to be antagonistic towards a “stranger” separated from us by twin social borderlines – two car windows. This lack of inhibition may free us from a careful rules of engagement.

To use a biblical parallel for careful rules: a child will be spoiled if it does not receive time outs or whatever for being repeatedly late for dinner or talking back. A child will be spoiled if it receives -- only a time out -- for stealing a goat or burning down another child’s tent. The Bible does not command anything like beating a kid with what amounts to a cat of nine tails that strikes the same nine stripes over and over (a paddle!) for sometimes taking a too long to put on her make up and as a result arriving a bit late for school ever couple or few weeks: detention will prevent spoiling even if lateness occurs ever day.

Being allowed to be antagonistic – leading to not carefully thinking through the rules of engagement. What more is there to this? ??? Still trying to break it down. [May add more to this later today.]


HERE ARE MY FINAL THOUGTHS ON SCHOOL CP -- FOR NOW:

Under my notion of constitutional equal protection, before legislatures are free to exempt school discipline from conventional assault prohibitions -- to allow corporal punishment -- they ought, first, to be able to identify a compelling state interest in deterring certain misbehaviors and, second, attest to an absence of workable alternatives -- the institutional equivalent of rules of engagement.

Practical example: if Oliver were leading a charge of kids on the lunch counter day after day and no other punishment restrained him -- the institutional equivalent of self-defense.

How much offense can be caused the great commonweal – as opposed to the likes and dislikes of deans of discipline -- if, for a practical example, occasionally disorganized students arrive a few minutes late for class every couple of weeks (20 times a year! -- as I did in high school; not in my shorter stay in college)? Many colleges do even not require students to show up for classes, so long as they master course materiel. Employers of the New York City of my youth would have been happy if employees only showed up a couple of minutes late for work only every couple of weeks given the state of rush hour commuting there.

The excuse most offered for exempting schools from normal assault prosecutions – in carrying out the equivalent of everyday office management – is that school teachers act “in loco parentis”, in place of parents. And everyone knows that parents may – as long as state law does not proscribe it – legally paddle children for even minor infractions.

However, so called “parental sovereignty” itself is less a natural verity and more a legal device to insulating sacrosanct family life from potentially crackpot state interference (parents may not legally strike children for no reason)...
…which compelling family privacy interest has absolutely zero application to school administration and in no way should exempt schools from conventional criminal prohibitions. Acting “in loco parentis” may constitutionally require student obedience; it does not confer any “parental sacrament” to disobey criminal law.

Whatever about instinctive human nature teaches us – sensibly -- to treat minor children as subordinates – may less sensibly – magnify their transgressions in our (bureaucratic?) eyes, especially repeated transgressions and -- even less sensibly -- put us on the (bureaucratic?) path to discipline for its own sake: the war on the student!

Legislatures should not feel free to suspend constitutional equal protection -- against assault with an instrument designed to deliver to slaves maximum pain but with minimum injury (same physics still delivers; same biology receives) -- in carrying out our sometimes too thoughtlessly applied genetic code of child deference.
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MORE PROGRESS ON THE ISSUE:

Even closer to the final “anti” argument against corporal punishment in school – the big jump (not yet the final) comes at the very end.

First, I can now delineate between the slipper (more like a size 12 sneaker), the cane and the paddle.

Getting the slipper turns out to be a painful spanking (never sounded like much to me). It starts out stinging badly and by the time you get hit on the same spot for the sixth time it is unbearable.

But English students who got the slipper were so happy not to be getting the cane. IOW, the slipper meant a spanking, the cane meant real torture.

OTH, an African slave in America would never be lucky enough to get the cane. Even a small woman can give you max pain with a cane – it is light enough. It takes a strong man (or, for example, a female phys ed coach) to deliver all a paddle can deliver.

I once found a paddle lying around a place I worked and since nobody was around I gave myself a weak, clumsy, back-handed shot on the butt with it – I thought I would hardly feel it, the shot was so weak. It took the hair off my head for ten years (so don’t let women loose with a paddle – everything is a matter of degree).

I once got the equivalent of the cane, thirteen shots with a 36 inch pointer in the seventh grade (he lined up half the class – we had been falling behind doing assignments) and can remember every shot like 1956 was yesterday.

I would probably brave the slipper rather than spend all day in school (even I who “suffered” through every second of school). I would do a dozen Saturdays before braving the cane or the paddle.

To me this means that the usual “anti” arguments about permanent trauma are more appropriate to spanking – the slipper. When you are dealing with true torture (the slave paddle) the only “anti” argument you need is the torture itself.

Now we are ready for the big “anti” finale: I find the adult paddler to be the one who is behaving immaturely – the definition of immature being not keeping things in the right proportion – in the case of the adult paddler just to give in to his or her bureaucratic impulses.

We covered the light weight of the student infractions elsewhere (we don’t tell students that) – student rules equate to adult office management. We now know how unacceptably (criminally!) painful being paddled or caned is. The adult paddler ignores – really inverts – the true proportion of both: the personification of immaturity.

[*Further "physics" insights: the reason students victims may be told to spread their feet wide for a paddling is prevent them from instinctively puckering their butt cheeks together to absorb the power of the incoming missile (making the pain penetrate deeper). Nothing like that happens with a cane which doesn't have anything resembling the impact force of paddle.

[Students relate living if fear of the paddle or the cane through their school years. Nobody reports living in terror the whole time of every getting the slipper -- which is very painful punishment but not full-fledged torture.

[A caning is a trip through hell. Every single shot with a paddle is a trip through hell -- making a paddle totally inappropriate for "spanking" children; should be outlawed even for parents.]

Another possible approach is that you cannot hit a school child if they have not done anything morally offensive: e.g., spitting on passersby from the school bus, cheating on exams, etc.

We cannot legally strike adults with a stick for lateness (no "option" to getting fired allowed) under criminal law. Children are no different from adults under the constitution -- equal protection (parental exemption for practical keep-state-out-of-family rationale -- not a "sacrament" to be conferred on schools which usually are government). Tardies, doing homework, smoking in the parking lot are all everyday office management issues -- not moral issues.

And if you do hit a school child it is not with the slave-paddler ("er" is more active) or the cane (ownership of which should be outlawed -- perhaps even from parents -- like they were switch-blade knives). The "slipper" or gym shoe (the lower level of old time British corporal punishment) should be the limit -- and it had better be a standard approved by whatever body with what we are talking about in mind; can't let the "hold drillers" lose or they will come up with a near fatal shoe sole. Not unknown in this country -- saw it in a National Geographic story of all places, 25-35 years ago.

[More creepy comparisons (cannot help it; I am gifted with this flood of mechanical associations): I am sure most would agree that the strap or the hairbrush are a lot worse than the sneaker (I saw four Brit soldiers in an online video (this research takes you where it takes you) drawing straws to see who would take a sneaker shot from the other three -- the loser jumped around with the shots but I don't think they would play that way with the strap or the hairbrush.

[And think about it: the paddle is like 5 or 10 hairbrushes. And if you look at the one used in the famous Principal's Office episode it looked like 10 times the area and 20 times the weight -- swung by a beefy ex-welder of course (who seemed to be humanely intended in general -- may have no idea what he delivers).

[To combine with the last (unbracketed) point above: you don't give someone -- least of all a child -- that kind of pain if they have not done something morally offensive (e.g., cheating on a test). You don't train human children to be a little more efficient (reduce tardies) by using what amounts to a cattle prod. Some don't object to a parent hairbrushing a kid for being out late? The parent is not talking about 5 minutes late for dinner -- the parent is worried about being out all night and getting in a car crash with a drunken driver.]

Possible legal defenses for maldistribution of teen sexting images?

The classic reason for exempting distribution or even possession of child pornography from First Amendment protection is that a child must be harmed in the making of the porno (drawn or computer created child porn seems covered so far). But a teen who makes a nude image of herself is not harmed. And sexting the image to a boy she may have legal sex with hardly raises a compelling interest in favor of overriding her most basic constitutional right.

Unauthorized distribution to other teens; to adults? If grandma makes the most extreme pornographic images of herself and I sext grandma's images around (I am 65) against her wishes would that constitute sexual abuse of grandma under the law? Or could it at more logically be classified as invasion of privacy?

Ultimately it is constitutionally possible to criminalize unauthorized distribution of even adult self-made porn against the wishes of the self-image maker but that would come under a different category than pornography (ultimately not all that important by which category to a jailed offender).

But, if current law against distributing child abuse was based on – if the intention of the legislature was – to protect children from the sexual abuse during image making…

…then, law prohibiting distribution of sexted material may have to be written over from scratch to register the intention of the legislature on this entirely new question.

Could we constitutionally use the threat of jail to deter a child from the potential harm of making or sexting images of herself in the same manner that we jail drug users to deter harmful drug possession? Jailing a teen to prevent the possibility her image may be shared without her okay sounds more than a little too thin to pass First Amendment muster.

With a situation of millions of teens (some over 18) distributing sexting images without permission of the maker it may be better public policy to leave the responsibility on the maker and original distributor of the her own image – for creating something like an “attractive nuisance” – leaving the threat of a law suit her best protection -- rather than making millions of teens into "electronic prohibition" felons.

Until such constitutional and policy questions are settled, perhaps no prosecutions like that of the 18 year old in Florida, ought to take place.