Coyote Blog

I am frankly exhausted with all the stories of people buying item X with food stamps that some folks fear they really should not be buying, where X is everything from liquor to twinkies.

People are either adults or they are not.  I don't think our act of charity towards them gives us the right to be their mother.  I am all for consolidating all the zillions of existing niche government benefits programs into one single EITC or similar income-floor program.  Then people spend their money however they hell they want -- if they screw up and spend on unwise things, well that is their business.

I used to have this argument all the time with my New England liberal mother-in-law.  Interestingly, in this argument, we would both call the other arrogant.  I would say she was arrogant for assuming she knew better than other adults how they should spend their own money.  She would call me arrogant for assuming that people without my background and education could make quality decisions for themselves.

Since this is my blog, I will grab the last word here.  If we were talking about having the poor choose between a number of exchange-traded derivatives, I could concede her point.  But we are essentially talking about what to buy in a supermarket.  We force everyone through 12 years of public education.  The Left pretty much gets to determine what that education encompasses.  If adults are leaving that system and still can't be trusted with their own money, then why are we even bothering?

I have made this argument before -- your lifetime Medicare taxes cover only about a third of the benefits you will receive.   Social Security taxes are set about right -- to the extent we come up short on Social Security, it is only because a feckless Congress spent all the excess money in the good years and has none left for the lean years.

But Medicare is seriously mis-priced.  I have always argued that this is dangerous, because there is nothing that screws up the economy more than messed up price signals.  In particular, I have argued that a lot of the glowy hazy love of Medicare by Americans is likely due to the fact that it is seriously mis-priced.  Let's price the thing right, and then we can have a real debate about whether it needs reform or is worth it.

A recent study confirms my fear that the mispricing of Medicare is distorting perceptions of its utility.

As debate over the national debt and the federal budget deficit begins to heat up again, an analysis of national polls conducted in 2013 shows that, compared with recent government reports prepared by experts, the public has different views about the need to reduce future Medicare spending to deal with the federal budget deficit. Many experts believe that future Medicare spending will have to be reduced in order to lower the federal budget deficit [1] but polls show little support (10% to 36%) for major reductions in Medicare spending for this purpose. In fact, many Americans feel so strongly that they say they would vote against candidates who favor such reductions. Many experts see Medicare as a major contributor to the federal budget deficit today, but only about one-third (31%) of the public agrees.

This analysis appears as a Special Report in the September 12, 2013, issue of New England Journal of Medicine.

One reason that many Americans believe Medicare does not contribute to the deficit is that the majority thinks Medicare recipients pay or have prepaid the cost of their health care. Medicare beneficiaries on average pay about $1 for every $3 in benefits they receive. [2] However, about two-thirds of the public believe that most Medicare recipients get benefits worth about the same (27%) or less (41%) than what they have paid in payroll taxes during their working lives and in premiums for their current coverage.

Update:  Kevin Drum writes on the same study.  Oddly, he seems to blame the fact that Americans have been trained to expect something for nothing from the government on Conservatives.  I am happy to throw Conservatives under the bus for a lot of things but I think the Left gets a lot of the blame if Americans have been fooled into thinking expensive government freebies aren't really costing them anything.

I don't have time to comment or peruse the study in depth, but this looks interesting.  From Randal O'Toole:

Harvard economists have proven one of the major theses of American Nightmare, which is that land-use regulation is a major cause of growing income inequality in the United States. By restricting labor mobility, the economists say, such regulation has played a “central role” in income disparities.

When measured on a state-by-state basis, American income inequality declined at a steady rate of 1.8 percent per year from 1880 to 1980. The slowing and reversal of this long-term trend after 1980 is startling. Not by coincidence, the states with the strongest land-use regulations–those on the Pacific Coast and in New England–began such regulation in the 1970s and 1980s.

Forty to 75 percent of the decline in inequality before 1880, the Harvard economists say, was due to migration of workers from low-income states to high-income states. The freedom to easily move faded after 1980 as many of the highest-income states used land-use regulation to make housing unaffordable to low-income workers. Average incomes in those states grew, leading them to congratulate themselves for attracting high-paid workers when what they were really doing is driving out low- and (in California, at least) middle-income workers.

As Virginia Postrel puts it, “the best-educated, most-affluent, most politically influential Americans like th[e] result” of economic segregation, because it “keeps out fat people with bad taste.” Postrel refers to these well-educated people as “elites,” but I simply call them “middle class.”

I have not read the study, but I think the word "proven" in the first sentence likely goes to far.  Economic systems are way too complex to absolutely show one variable among millions causes another.  I am convinced that the way we have regulated the housing market and promoted home ownership has reduced labor mobility.

My son is being recruited, at a minimum, at Bowdoin, Vassar, Wesleyan, Haverford, Kenyon and possibly Amherst and Pomona to play baseball.  We have a pretty good handle on all these schools except Wesleyan in Connecticut, which we have visited but we are having a hard time getting a read on.

In the 2011 Insider's Guide to the Colleges, Wesleyan is described as an extreme example of a college dedicated to politically correct intolerance.  The book says that the classes tend to be mainly focused on teaching kids to be radical activists rather than any traditional subject matter.  Social life is portrayed as revolving around marijuana and hallucinogens.   It is by far the most negative review we have read (well, I suppose this would not be negative to some).

We are trying to get a read on the accuracy of this.    Any of you know this school or attend it?   Is there truth to this, or does the writer have an ax to grind?   He is not naive to what he will find politically at New England liberal arts colleges. The question is not whether there is a lot of leftish political correctness - that is a baseline in all such schools.  The question is whether this school is unusually extreme.  The book makes it sound like it is Kos Kidz Academy.    Comment or send me an email.

Update:  Hmm, based on the comments, I explained myself poorly.  Nic will likely never play pro ball.  If that were his goal, we would definitely be looking to ASU or Texas.  He has decided he wants to go to a small liberal arts college.  Baseball has two synergies - one, he would like to play in college.  Two, being recruited for sports helps in the admissions process at selective schools.

There is money set aside to pay for college, from a source such that it needs to be used for college, so arguments about price-value issues with college are not immediately relevant.

On a college visit trip in New England with my son.  We will be at Cornell, Amherst, Williams, Dartmouth, Bowdoin, Colby, Bates, Brown, Yale, Princeton.  If your best friend is admissions director or the baseball coach at any of these schools and is desperately searching for smart kids from Arizona who blog and hit for power, you are welcome to email me :=)

Clearly, all the major problems of the world have been solved, because Arlen Specter wants to focus the Senate's time on the New England Patriots' violation of NFL rules for which they were severely punished and which violations in no way tread on any law, just NFL rules.

In a telephone interview Thursday morning, Senator Arlen Specter,
Republican of Pennsylvania and ranking member of the committee, said
that Goodell would eventually be called before the committee to address
two issues: the league's antitrust exemption in relation to its
television contract and the destruction of the tapes that revealed
spying by the Patriots.

"That requires an explanation," Specter
said. "The N.F.L. has a very preferred status in our country with their
antitrust exemption. The American people are entitled to be sure about
the integrity of the game. It's analogous to the C.I.A. destruction of
tapes. Or any time you have records destroyed."

Please, to the friends of Arlen Specter:  It is time for an intervention, before the man hurts himself any more. 

Next Up:  Kay Bailey Hutchison calls Jerry Jones in front of Congress to explain why the Cowboys gave up on the running game in the fourth quarter of this year's playoff game against the Giants.

Sixty-six years ago today, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, which turned out to be about as smart of a strategic move as taunting the New England Patriots just before the game.  During subsequent years, there was an inevitable investigation into why and how the US got caught so flat-footed, and who, if anyone, was to blame.

Decades later, revisionist historians reopened this debate.  In the 1970's, not coincidently in the time of Watergate and lingering questions about the Kennedy assassination and the Gulf of Tonkin, it was fairly popular to blame Pearl Harbor on ... FDR.  The logic was (and still is, among a number of historians) that FDR was anxious to bring the US into the war, but was having trouble doing so given the country's incredibly isolationist outlook during the 1920's and 1930's.  These historians argue that FDR knew about the Pearl Harbor attack but did nothing (or in the most aggressive theories, actually maneuvered to encourage the attack) in order to give FDR an excuse to bring America into the war.  The evidence is basically in three parts:

• The abjectly unprepared state of the Pearl Harbor base, when there were so many good reasons at the time to be on one's toes (after all, the Japanese were marching all over China, Germany was at the gates of Moscow, and France had fallen) could only be evidence of conspiracy.
• The most valuable fleet components, the carriers, had at the last minute been called away from Pearl Harbor.  Historians argue that they were moved to protect them from an attack known to be coming to Pearl.  They argue that FDR wanted Pearl to be attacked, but did not want to lose the carriers.
• Historians have found a number of captured Japanese signals and US intelligence warnings that should have been clear warming of a Pearl Harbor attack.

I have always been pretty skeptical of this theory, for several reasons:

• First, I always default to Coyote's Law, which says

When the same set of facts can be explained equally well by

1. A massive conspiracy coordinated without a single leak between hundreds or even thousands of people    -OR -
2. Sustained stupidity, confusion and/or incompetence

Assume stupidity.

I think it is more than consistent with human history to assume that if Pearl Harbor was stupidly unprepared, that the reason was in fact stupidity, and not a clever conspiracy

• The carrier argument is absurd, and is highly influenced by what we know now rather than what we knew in December of 1941.  We know now that the carriers were the most valuable fleet component, but no one really knew it then (except for a few mavericks).  Certainly, if FDR and his top brass knew about the attack, no one would have been of the mindset that the carriers were the most important fleet elements to save.
• I find it to be fairly unproductive to try to sort through intelligence warnings thirty years after the fact.  One can almost ALWAYS find that some warning or indicator existed for every such event in history.  The problem occurs in real-time, when such warnings are buried in the midst of hundreds of other indicators, and are preceded by years of false warnings of the same event.
• I don't really deny that FDR probably wanted an excuse to get the country in the war.  However, I have never understood why a wildly succesful Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was more necessary than, say, an attack met strongly at the beach.  I can understand why FDR might have allowed the attack to happen, but why would he leave the base undefended.  The country would have gotten wound up about the attack whether 5 ships or 10 were destroyed.

It is interesting how so much of this parallels the logic of the 9/11 conspiracists.  And, in fact, I have the same answer for both:  I don't trust the government.  I don't put such actions and motivations past our leaders.  But I don't think the facts support either conspiracy.  And I don't think the government is capable of maintaining such a conspiracy for so long. 

I almost never ever post on politics and political races, but I had an interesting conversation the other day.  As a secular libertarian, I find no one (beyond Ron Paul) among the Republican candidates even the least bit interesting.  I trust none of them to pursue free market and small government principals, and several, including McCain, Giuliani, and Huckabee, have track records of large government intrusiveness.

What I found interesting was a conversation with a friend of mine who self-identifies as a Christian conservative  (yes, I know it is out of vogue, but it is perfectly possible to have quality friendships with people of different political stripes, particularly considering that I am married to a New England liberal Democrat).  My Christian conservative friend said he found no Republican he was really interested in voting for.

I find it interesting that the Republicans (again with the exception of Ron Paul, who I think they would like to disavow) unable to field a candidate that appeals to either of its traditional constituencies.  It strikes me the party is heading back to its roots in the 1970s in the Nixon-Rockefeller days.  Yuk.

Update:  Which isn't to necessarily say the Democrats have everything figured out.  For example, in response to a Republican President thought to be over-reaching, secretive, and overly fond of executive power, they seem ready to nominate Hillary Clinton, who may be one of the few people in the country more secretive and power-hungry.  Anyone remember how she conducted her infamous health care task force?  I seem to remember she pioneered many of the practices for which Democrats tried to impeach Dick Cheney this week.

I almost never ever post on politics and political races, but I had an interesting conversation the other day.  As a secular libertarian, I find no one (beyond Ron Paul) among the Republican candidates even the least bit interesting.  I trust none of them to pursue free market and small government principals, and several, including McCain, Giuliani, and Huckabee, have track records of large government intrusiveness.

What I found interesting was a conversation with a friend of mine who self-identifies as a Christian conservative  (yes, I know it is out of vogue, but it is perfectly possible to have quality friendships with people of different political stripes, particularly considering that I am married to a New England liberal Democrat).  My Christian conservative friend said he found no Republican he was really interested in voting for.

I find it interesting that the Republicans (again with the exception of Ron Paul, who I think they would like to disavow) unable to field a candidate that appeals to either of its traditional constituencies.  It strikes me the party is heading back to its roots in the 1970s in the Nixon-Rockefeller days.  Yuk.

Update:  Which isn't to necessarily say the Democrats have everything figured out.  For example, in response to a Republican President thought to be over-reaching, secretive, and overly fond of executive power, they seem ready to nominate Hillary Clinton, who may be one of the few people in the country more secretive and power-hungry.  Anyone remember how she conducted her infamous health care task force?  I seem to remember she pioneered many of the practices for which Democrats tried to impeach Dick Cheney this week.

Congress is again on the verge of conferring new Constitutional rights to a narrow subset of American citizenry.  Already the recipient of speech rights that the rest of us don't enjoy, the major media organizations are also about to receive a special pass from cooperating with law enforcement and criminal investigations.  The reason for granting these new rights is in part because the media, with their business model in tatters, has learned a lesson from the steel and airline industry about running to Congress for help.

First there were special speech rights for the Press:  McCain-Feingold

This special treatment began with the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Act, which gave journalists unique speech rights during elections by taking away the speech rights of every other non-media-credentialed American in the 30-90 days prior to an election.  Of course, those of us who don't work for the NY Times or CBS were kind of confused about how we had somehow lost our constitutional right to political speech.  Reasonably, many of us in the blogosphere wanted our speech rights back, and campaigned to be called journalists (i.e. to get the media exemption from campaign speech restrictions).  As I wrote back in June:

These past few weeks, we have been debating whether this media
exemption from speech restrictions should be extended to bloggers.  At
first, I was in favor.  Then I was torn.
Now, I am pissed.  The more I think of it, it is insane that we are
creating a 2-tiered system of first amendment rights at all, and I
really don't care any more who is in which tier.  Given the wording of
the Constitution, how do I decide who gets speech and who doesn't - it
sounds like everyone is supposed to...

I
have come to the conclusion that arguing over who gets the media
exemption is like arguing about whether a Native American in 1960's
Alabama should use the white or the colored-only bathroom:  It is an
obscene discussion and is missing the whole point, that the facilities
shouldn't be segregated in the first place.

Now, Congress is Considering Enhanced "Shield" Laws

Now Congress is ready to take another step in the same direction of giving the media special enhanced platinum-level Constitutional rights with the proposed Federal Shield Law.  No doubt inspired by the whole Valerie Plame / Judith Miller mess, this is yet another example of Congress feeling like it has to "do something" with a half-assed solution to a non-problem that no one at this point, except perhaps Ms. Miller, even really understands.  The Federal Shield Law, named in typical Orwellian fashion the "Free Flow of Information Act", would make reporters the only citizens of the United States who can evade subpoenas and legally stand in contempt of court, a right we have determined that not even presidents have.

These shield laws, which I have criticized before, are often justified as necessary supports for the First Amendment.  Beyond the fact that the press in this country has functioned for centuries quite nicely without such shield laws, and have toppled President's without these extra rights, they are somehow now "necessary to help the United States regain its status as an 'exemplar' of press freedom", according to bill sponsor Richard Luger  (a statement made without explaining either why this was true or even how or when the US stopped being an 'exemplar' of press freedom).

Luger is not even shy about admitting that this law effectively creates two classes of citizen in the United States:

Lugar acknowledged that the legislation could amount to a "privilege" for reporters over other Americans.

"I think, very frankly, you can make a case that this is a special
boon for reporters, and certainly for their role in freedom of the
press," he said. "At the end of the day what we will come out with says
there is something privileged about being a reporter, and being able to
report on something without being thrown into jail."

Um, reporters can already report things without being thrown in jail.  Judith Miller, the explicit reason for the bill's existence, according to Luger, was thrown in jail not for her reporting, but her refusing to participate in an investigation.  An investigation that her employer the NY Times cheer-led the government into starting.  She was put in jail for refusing to testify about a source who had in fact already given her verbal permission before she went to jail to reveal his name.

Glenn Reynolds has a nice quote about the proposal:

ONE CHARACTERISTIC OF THE TITLED NOBILITY was its immunity from some
legal rules laid on the commoners; that's why such titles were an
important boon that the King could bestow on favorites. Reading this statement by Richard Lugar on the proposed journalists' shield law, which probably won't cover bloggers, I wonder if we're getting into the same territory

The Licensing Issue:  Who is a Journalist?

This new special privilege afforded to journalists, when combined with the special speech rights conferred in McCain-Feingold, increases the importance of the question "So who is a journalist and who qualifies for these unique privileges?" I predicted way back in February that I thought some type of official licensing program was going to be proposed for journalists.  Well, here it is in black and white in the aforementioned article on the new shield law:

A key reason some journalists oppose the popular federal shield
proposal is fear that giving Congress the power to define who is and
isn't a journalist could lead effectively to the licensing of
journalists.

Back in February, I predicted that the effort at licensing would fail, but now I have changed my mind.  After all, you can't have all of us unwashed folks who actually got good grades in math so we didn't have to default back to a journalism degree in college getting hold of these special privileges.  Only elite people who have proved themselves worth of being beyond legal accountability, folks like Dan Rather or the Katrina reporters, can be trusted with these extra rights and privileges.

Whenever the government by legislation gives a group of people special powers, it always leads to licensing.  It HAS to, else the courts would forever be bogged down with fights over who is in and who is out.  It is much easier to say "the only people who have the right to evade subpoenas are people with this piece of paper."  Using medicine as a parallel example, once you decide the average person can't be trusted to educate themselves enough to make their own medication decisions, you end up with a process where only licensed MD's can issue prescriptions.  The same will be true in journalism.

What is Really Going On Here

To understand what is really going on here, think "steel industry" or "airline industry".  When technology or markets or customers or competition changed in industries like steel, the last desperate defense of the US steel industry was to run to the government begging for import restrictions and price supports and subsidies and pension bailouts and god-knows what else.  Boy-oh-boy wouldn't the steel industry in the US love to have a law that says only licensed steel makers can sell steel in the US, and by the way, the current steel industry participants will control the licensing board.

Think that is a ridiculous exaggeration?  It can't be any more stupid than this form of licensing (or this one;  or this one).  Here are the various trade-specific licenses
you need here in Scottsdale - I would hate to see the list for some
place like Santa Monica.  My favorite is the one that says "An
additional license is required for those firms which are going out of
business."  Or for an exact parallel to my steel industry hypothetical, try this law from Ohio to liscence new auctioneers:

Besides costing $200 and posting a $50,000 bond,
the license requires a one-year apprenticeship to a licensed auctioneer, acting
as a bid-caller in 12 auctions, attending an approved auction school, passing a
written and oral exam. Failure to get a license could result in the seller being
fined up to $1,000 and jailed for a maximum of 90 days.

And my commentary on it:

Note that under this system, auctioneers
have an automatic veto over new competition, since all potential
competitors must find an existing auctioneer to take them on as an
apprentice.  Imagine the consumer electronics business - "I'm sorry,
you can't make or sell any DVD players until Sony or Toshiba have
agreed to take you on as an intern for a year".  Yeah, I bet we'd see a
lot of new electronics firms in that system - not.

This is exactly what is going on with the media.  The world, at least for the US media, is changing.  Subscriptions and ad revenues have been falling year after year after year.  People either giving up this media all-together or switching to new competitors, such as online media, in large numbers and there is no indication that this trend will stop.  As a result, the traditional media finds itself with its back against the wall.

What to do?  What every other industry has done - run to Congress!  Major media groups were extraordinarily strong supporters of McCain-Feingold, knowing that by limiting speech of everyone else, it added to its own influence and power come election time.  Over time, Congress will continue to add new privileges for the media, like the shield law, in part because it knows that it needs to stay in good with the only group of people who have full speech rights come election time.

The one thing I disagree with in the quote above about licensing is the notion that many in the press oppose it.  They are right to see the prospect as scary (see unintended consequences below) but once a licensing system is in place, I GUARANTEE that the licensed press will be huge supporters of licensing.  Just like lawyers and doctors, the press will find a way to take control of their own licensing and use it to keep out competitors they don't like.  Those pajama-clad bloggers irritating you - well, just make sure that they don't get licensed.  Come election time, they will all have to shut up, because only licensed journalists will have the media exemption in McC-F.  Milton Freedman described this process years ago:

The justification offered [for licensing] is always the same: to protect the consumer. However, the reason
is demonstrated by observing who lobbies at the state legislature for
the imposition or strengthening of licensure. The lobbyists are
invariably representatives of the occupation in question rather than of
the customers. True enough, plumbers presumably know better than anyone
else what their customers need to be protected against. However, it is
hard to regard altruistic concern for their customers as the primary
motive behind their determined efforts to get legal power to decide who
may be a plumber.

And as I said here:

Such credentialing can provide a powerful comeback for industry insiders under attack.  Teachers, for example, use it every chance they get to attack home schooling and private schools,
despite the fact that uncertified teachers in both these latter
environments do better than the average certified teacher (for example,
kids home schooled by moms who dropped out of high school performed at
the 83rd percentile).  So, next time the MSM is under attack from the blogosphere, rather than address the issues, they can say that that guy in Tennessee is just a college professor and isn't even a licensed journalist.

Hit and Run described how doctors use the licensing process, and even hazing of interns, to keep their numbers down and therefore their salaries (and their fees to us) up:

When Kevin Drum commented on the New England Journal
article, he said that the system's defenders "sound like nothing so
much as a bunch of 50s frat boys defending hazing after some freshman
has been found dead in an arroyo somewhere."

Hazing is the right metaphor. The system serves the same
purpose: It's a brutal initiation to a privileged club. Medical hazing
is part of the set of barriers that limit entry to the profession;
whatever other reasons there are for it, it's ultimately a byproduct of
occupational licensing.
Those long shifts don't just undermine public health. They drive away
qualified men and women, reducing the supply of doctors and allowing
those who survive the trial to charge more for their services.

Unintended consequences

Of course, all this has unintended consequences, as does any government meddling in individual decisions, limitations of rights, or attempts to pick industry winners. 

The first unintended consequence, or more accurately I guess I should call it the first irony because I am not sure that it is unintended, is that laws meant to keep the elite from having undue influence vs. the little guy in politics (via spending limits) have done just the opposite - concentrated political speech in a few elites in the media and squashed the one medium, blogging and the Internet, that hold the promise of giving individuals like myself new, inexpensive ways of influencing politics.

The second unintended and really scary consequence is that in attempting to remove a lever of government control over media - the subpoena power - Congress is potentially creating a larger one - that of licensing.  Of all the news-oriented media in the world, which is the most bland?  I would answer local TV and radio (by this I mean their local programming, not the syndicated stuff they air).  Why?  Because they are already subject to government licensing that to this point other media, such as newspapers, have not.  Local broadcast outlets are VERY self-conscious about protecting their license, and tend to keep their programming bland to avoid irritating some government bureaucrat.  Just look at how many rolled over immediately and dropped Howard Stern when the government started looking cross-eyed at Stern's raunchiness.  Do we really want all the media subject to this kind of pressure?

Technorati Tags:  Media

Previously, I explained why I like Football Outsiders here. Their week 10 statistical rankings of teams is here.

Despite the win last week, our Arizona Cardinals have finally returned to their usual stomping grounds -- in the bottom 5 teams, along with Miami, Oakland and San Francisco.  Hard to argue about these teams being the worst.  Perhaps the biggest surprise is the team fifth from the bottom - Dallas.  Cowboy haters rejoice.  Parcel's record of second year improvement seems to be in serious trouble.  If the season ended today, San Francisco would set the record for the worst statistical performance since these guys started keeping the stats, beating the second worst team, the 2002 Cardinals and the third worst team, the 2003 Cardinals, but just shy of the 2002 performance of the expansion Texans.  (Gotta love our Cards).

The top three, unsurprisingly, are New England, Philly and Pittsburgh.  New England has taken the top spot, which is where I think they belong.  For a while, Philly's special teams rank was carrying them, but history in these rankings has shown that special teams ranks are very volatile and tend to regress to the mean.  Philly's soft defense may well spell another playoff disappointment for the Eagles.

Previously, I explained why I like Football Outsiders here. Their week 9 statistical rankings of teams is here.

Miami still can't nail down that bottom spot. San Francisco and the Raiders both have fallen below the Fish (so much for Bay Area football). Miami has the worst offense in the league by a HUGE margin, but its defense keeps it off the bottom, as it probably should:  A good defense will win you a few games, no matter how bad the offense is.  My Arizona Cardinals continue to fall, down to their rightful place in the bottom quartile, despite having a pretty good defense. At the top, Pittsburgh, New England and Philly are threatening to run away and hide, which just goes to show that every once in a while, BCS notwithstanding, computers and common sense can converge.

Yesterday, Florida apparently passed a new minimum wage $1.00 higher than the Federal minimum wage of $5.15 per hour.

This is actually an oddity - a red state with a higher minimum wage. Before the election, this Department of Labor map, showing the states with minimum wages higher than the Federal rate (shown in green) looked a lot like the presidential election map. With the exception of Alaska (which has price and wage levels so different from the lower 48 that it should have its own currency) all the states with higher than federal minimum wages are also strong Kerry states (e.g. Left Coast, New England and Illinois).

This is going to have huge implications for us. Camping is a low margin business, and most hosts are paid minimum wage. In fact, many of our hosts, who are retired, don't want to get paid at all, so they don't mess with their social security, but that of course is not possible. The total increase in wages will be higher than what we make in Florida, so we are going to be spending a lot of time evaluating price increases vs. cutting back on labor somehow.

UPDATE

I see from our logs we are getting a lot of hits on this post from search engines.  For those of you looking for more information on the implementation of this increase, we still have not seen any enabling regulation to go along with it.  Will it have the same exemptions as the Federal law?  Anyway, the go-live date is apparently 6 months from approval, which I presume equates to early April, 2005.

Previously, I explained why I like Football Outsiders here. Their new weekly statistical rankings are up.

Unsurprisingly, Philadelphia is number 1 (by a huge margin) and New England is number 2. The real surprise is that Miami is NOT last - storied Green Bay is.

Also, this week's Tuesday Morning Quarterback is up.