Lewis Hine | Wikimedia Commons

Note from Dan: Regular J.M. White weighed in with this satiric screed against raising the minimum wage on the Wednesday OPEN thread. It’s too good to let it get lost there.

“Our own independent studies have shown that 20-hour shifts at $1.25 per hour with no breaks, no health benefits and no days off coupled with the dumping of all waste products from production into a giant pit behind the factory is the best way for our company to turn a profit. Our employees are an important part of our production-line fodder, but they should be cost-minimized just as any other expense. We’ve worked hard at deciding what we feel is a fair wage with our workers.

Should any of them fall on tight financial times, we offer them a line of credit through our credit union that will help ease their burden. Our interest rates are comparable with many other lending institutions, as well, and we can deduct payment directly from the employees’ paychecks. All for their convenience, of course.

In our drive to show the world how conscientious of our employees we are, we’ve added a full-time medical examiner, morgue and cemetery on all of our production sites. We no longer have to ship the negligent employees who get mangled in our machinery out to the local hospital; we can write up a death certificate and bury them right there on the factory grounds. Our reasonable rates can be settled up on the balance of the employees’ company account. Read more »

ThinkProgress.org

This chart came from this post.

As 2012 draws to an end and 2013 is about to dawn, it might be worth your while to give a shout out to your local congressman and thank him for the tax increase you’re about to get, and the resulting spanking that will deliver to our economy. Because despite the best efforts of many Democrats in government to spare the poor and middle class from tax increases that will take effect Jan. 1, the Republican Party has made sure that EVERYONE’s gonna get hit by the taxman.

For this we can thank our own representatives — Republicans all — Bob Goodlatte, Morgan Griffith, and Robert Hurt. Click on those links for their contact information.

A bit of a recap here: Back in 2001, we had a projected budget surplus that amounted to trillions of dollars over a 10-year period. Basically, that meant the government was going to take in way more in revenue than it would spend on government programs.

We should have used that excess money to pay down the federal debt (the accumulated sum of all prior deficits). But President George W. Bush had a better idea that he sold to the Republicans who controlled both chambers of Congress at the time: Tax cuts for EVERYONE!

The Bush tax cuts, enacted in 2001 and 2003 by Republicans in Congress, were ALWAYS specifically designed to be a temporary 10-year deal. There was no way the GOP could have gotten them passed without that provision.

They cut income taxes on most people, although the wealthiest taxpayers were the ones who saved the most by far after they went into effect. Not coincidentally, these were some of the same people who contributed the most money to George W. Bush’s presidential campaign. (Yes, they got back far more than what they invested in his campaign). Read more »

Shot by Dan

Note from Dan: Basil Akers is a former business owner and business consultant who lives in Roanoke County. Basil: If you need help on your time-and-motion study at that Nevada brothel, let me know!

By Basil Akers

Dan,

Your columns and the Sunday coupons are the only two factors that keep me as a subscriber to The Roanoke Times. The reason is that they both are relevant to today’s critical issues. If you inject a little more humour you could rise to the status and wealth of Dave Barry of The Miami Herald.

Your column on Grandin Automotive dealt with a significant problem and should be required reading in high school economics classes, Oh, excuse me, they don’t teach economics in high school. However the reason for Mr. Millner’s lack of success is not Barack Obama nor would success have been achieved by the election of Mitt Romney.

There are other specific reasons that Mr. Millner has not achieved his profit objectives:

1. He bought the business at a time when full-service stations were in decline. Sam’s Club and other discounters had entered the market with huge volume-purchasing deals.
2. He failed to diversify his business as other small service stations have accomplished such as Sheetz and the Parker Companies in Savannah. Sheetz started as a dairy store. Read more »

Note from Dan: The regular known here as ‘dave’ has put together this fiscal-cliff Christmas wish-list, which he included as a comment on a thread Monday. Here it is, lightly edited and checked twice by yours truly, in a more prominent position. Good stuff!

We have to reduce the deficit responsibly over a 10-year period. And we need to ask EVERYBODY to participate in solving the fiscal mess. Here is, I think, a sane approach to doing that.

1. Allow the Bush tax cuts to expire for incomes over $300,000.

2. Increase the capital gains tax back to 25%.

3. Eliminate subsidies for oil companies, and giant agribusinesses.

4. Get out of Afghanistan and reduce foreign aid by 40% with no money to anybody for weapons of any kind.

5. Change the Medicare prescription drug program to allow for negotiation by medicare for prescription prices. Read more »

Candy Crowley | AP

By Mark Jurkevich

Candy Crowley’s Nov. 18 interview of Sen. Dick Durbin and Rep. Tom Price was the worst piece of mainstream TV journalism that I have seen this month. Here is the video and the transcript.

Durbin, a stalwart Illinois Democrat, and Price, a Georgia Republican, are key negotiators over the budget impasse, the so-called fiscal cliff. The interview took place on State Of The Union, CNN’s flagship Sunday political program, which Crowley currently moderates. It is broadcast world-wide.

Price predictably laid out and defended the Republican positions. Quickly, Crowley seemed to forget her role of moderator, and went on a leftist attack against Price. Bizarrely, but appropriately given the circumstances, Dick Durbin assumed the moderating role. At times he seemingly defended Price from Crowley’s attack, with chastising interjections such as: Read more »

Carlos Latuff | Wikimedia Commons | Modified by Dan

By Mark Jurkevich

President Barack Obama delivered to America the worst economic performance of any president in modern times, and in return, America delivered to him a second term.

I could rant endlessly in this column about how in 2007 Obama promised health-care reform that will contain middle-class insurance costs, but instead raised their insurance costs in order to create universal health care, a massive wealth-redistribution scheme.

Or, how Obama promised a giant stimulus package that would focus on “shovel ready projects” that would rebuild our physical infrastructure for the next 50 years, but instead delivered the largest pork–laden spending spree in history. As a stimulus package, it was terribly ineffective. However, as candy for traditional Democratic constituencies, it was sweet indeed.

But such rants would only rehash old debates. Instead, I will focus on macroeconomic facts, many from the White House’s Office Of Management and Budget (OMB).

All four of Obama’s annual budgets produced historic deficits as a percentage of gross domestic product, according to the OMB table 1.2: 2009 – 10.1%; 2010 – 9.1%, 2011 – 8.7%; and in 2012 – 8.5% (estimated). Excluding the World War II years, these are the four highest deficits in modern American history. Read more »

Some Russians in folk costumes at a London 2007 festival. | Wikimedia Commons

By Mark Jurkevich

As widely reported last week, the U.S. has fallen out of the Top 10 countries on the Legatum Institute’s Annual Prosperity Index.

Scandinavian countries dominated, with Norway, Denmark and Sweden grabbing the top 3 positions in the 2012 ranking. The U.S. fell to the 12th position, behind No. 6 Canada; No. 7 Finland; and No. 11 Luxembourg, among others.

The Legatum Prosperity Index seeks to capture long-term underlying components of national prosperity, rather than focus on quarterly or annual fluctuations in national economies.

In discussing this year’s ranking, authors Jeffrey Gedmin and Nathan Gamester caution against outdated thinking that places to much emphasis on GDP growth when evaluating national prosperity:

“For three-quarters of a century, gross domestic product has been single most important framework for evaluating economic success. In recent years, though, a ‘beyond GDP’ debate has started.” My recent column “Can America’s middle-class learn something from France?” makes a similar case that higher GDP numbers do not necessarily equate to higher prosperity for the middle-class.

The Wall Street Journal, a pro-business bastion of Republican-leaning fiscal conservatism, published “U.S. Prosperity Is In Decline” by the Legatum authors as its lead op-ed on October 30th. Read more »

Submitted by "Ron," shot by his son in Christiansburg

Just kidding about the headline, folks. It’s a jab at the RWers here who have so gleefully, loudly, viciously and unfairly blamed President Barack Obama for their rising fuel bills.

The president can do little to control the world oil markets, or refinery retools or temporary shutdowns, etc. etc. So we should not necessarily give him the credit.

But golly, at the rate gas prices are plummeting, who knows, they might be only $1.25 a gallon by Nov. 6 or so.

That date just happens to be Election Day.

The pic was sent in by the regular “Ron,” who notes that it was shot by his son in Christiansburg, and it reflects a 20-cent per gallon Kroger-shopper discount.

Mark Jurkevich

By Mark Jurkevich

Since the euro crisis began, the euro zone, like a terminally ill patient, has had its bad phases and its bearable phases.  With this month’s bank failures in Spain and the election results in Greece and France, it has entered into a very bad period.  More than at any time since the crisis began, world financial and political leaders are openly speculating whether Europe’s common currency has now begun a death spiral.  Contrary to liberal media coverage of this potential death watch, dissolution of the euro is in America’s medium- and long-term interest.

In recent decades a bipartisan U.S. movement has championed the virtues of global economic competition.  So far, the result for Americans has been a mixed bag.  On the plus side, it has helped keep U.S. inflation and interest rates low, while letting Americans enjoy a lot of reasonably good quality Chinese consumer products.  On the minus side, globalization has gutted American manufacturing, suppressed income growth and caused massive trade deficits.  The U.S. is now the world’s largest debtor country, a politically disadvantageous position vis-à-vis its creditor nations. Read more »