When confronted with the “antis” — anti-immigrant, anti-gay, anti-gun, anti-women, anti-science, anti-South, anti-sex, etc. — who seem so devoted to their agendas of hatred, ignorance, and irrational fear, I am reminded of a line from Anaïs Nin‘s “Seduction of the Minotaur” (echoing a much older idea):
We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are.
I think people who persist in clinging to theories that have been soundly refuted by facts should not be called “economists”: they should be called “philosophers”. The consensus among economists is that raising the minimum wage has little or no effect upon employment — because the evidence demonstrates that it does not. The reasons why that is the case are varied, but a major one is that at the lowest-paid end of the employment spectrum, the demand for labor is inelastic. If it takes three people to perform a task, paying them $10/hr won’t make the task require fewer people.
The chart above shows the results of more than 1,400 different studies. The x-axis shows the size of the employment effect, and the y-axis shows that statistical power of the analysis.
The results have clustered around the finding that a moderate wage increase — in line with the administration’s proposal to increase the minimum rate in 95-cent increments — has zero effect on total employment. And the higher a study’s statistical power, the more likely it is to fall on the line showing zero effect.
“I really think that’s a very compelling takeaway,” said Hall, who has testified before multiple state legislatures on the issue. “It puts the lie to the notion that it’s going to be a tremendous job killer.”
(From 1,400 Real World Minimum Wage Increases Show No Impact on Employment, Fiscal Times
Personally, I would go with $15/hr. There is no reason in the world that taxpayers should be footing the bill to make up for the below-subsistence wages paid by employers like Wal-Mart (Report: Walmart Workers Cost Taxpayers $6.2 Billion In Public Assistance). Increase the minimum wage to a responsible level and put the cost of doing business on the business, where it belongs.
Systematically oppressing the bulk of a population is not only morally indefensible, but terribly short-sighted. There are not enough firearms in this country to protect the rich (or just the reasonably comfortable) from the poor, if the poor decide they’ve had enough. Personally, I’d favor raising the minimum wage to $15/hr, eliminating loopholes that allow employers to pay even less than the minimum wage, and then pegging it to the Consumer Price Index (although someone should take a close look at how CPI is calculated to make sure that’s not being manipulated).
It has come to my attention that there are people who think what someone says actually matters. Allow me to educate you: what someone says does not matter. What they do matters. What someone says is only important if it has been shown to accurately reflect what they do. For example, PETA says they are advocates for animals’ rights, but what they do is kill every animal they can. For another example, the Republican party says it stands for smaller government, but what it does is expand the power and cost of government at every turn.
You are what you do, not what what you say. Aristotle knew this 2400 years ago: so what’s your problem?
There are really three different holidays, all known as “Christmas”. One is a religious celebration. I don’t practice that religion, so I have nothing to say about that. The second is a business event marked by pleas for conspicuous consumption and frivolous spending. My participation in that event is marginal, although I sympathize with small business owners whose livelihood is dependent upon a good “Christmas season”.
The third “Christmas” is the one I celebrate: a joyous occasion when people of all creeds set aside their petty disagreements and share a sense of good will. Numerous different religions and cultures have contributed traditions to my Christmas — it’s a holiday much richer than any particular religion or culture. It is a time when strangers are treated as friends, friends are treated like family, and family is given the appreciation we really should be giving them every day of the year. It is a time of generosity, kindness, and gratitude. It’s a holiday that belongs to everyone — to anyone who wishes to celebrate the best of what it means to be a part of the human family. By whatever name you wish to call it, that’s the Christmas I celebrate.
Welcome, Christmas, bring your cheer.
Cheer to all Whos far and near.
Christmas Day is in our grasp
So long as we have hands to clasp.
Christmas Day will always be
Just as long as we have we.
Welcome, Christmas, while we stand
Heart to heart, and hand in hand.
The ReThink Prize is offering $1,000 each for the ten best secular commandments, as determined by a panel of judges. The prize is promoting a new book, Atheist Mind Humanist Heart, which promotes a vision of atheism as positive and ethical rather than negative and reactive. Here are ten “commandments” I thought of, although I did not bother submitting them for the contest. It’s just a thought experiment.
I think that’s a pretty good list, but I don’t think it’s terribly innovative. Desiderata is better.
If I could have gone to eleven, I would have added something about being a good steward for nature, but I ran out of commandments.
The power has been out about five hours as I write this. I’m conserving my laptop battery, and I hope it lasts until power is restored.
I’m glad it’s cool out. I can’t bear the heat. If it warms up later, I’ll have to go down into the basement, or get in my car and drive somewhere. I don’t want to spend any money, though, and I know if I drive around, I’ll be tempted to buy a hamburger or an egg McMuffin or something. I can’t make coffee or even a bowl of cereal. So far I have had a couple of bananas, the last few Oreos, and a couple of glasses of warm cola. Breakfast of champions.
I have been trying to think of things do that don’t require electricity. I have our Red Cross radio on some local “classic rock” station. Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, Teenage Wasteland, that sort of thing. There is a lot of yard work I would like to do, but between everything being wet from the storm and my not having any way to clean up afterward (we have well water, so no power means no water), I probably won’t be doing yard work today.
However, there are things I can do. For example, I have been straddling two different laptop bags for over a year now. Yes, that’s ridiculous. It’s just been really low on my to-do list. But now I have gone through all of pouches and pockets of my old laptop bag, tossed a lot of things I never used (or just plain garbage), and moved the rest to various pouches in the new laptop bag. So hooray, I’ve accomplished something. That took the better part of an hour, if you include the time I have spent playing with Vixen.
I’ve also been playing with Vixen, of course. She seems to sense that something isn’t quite right, but she’s been making the most of it, batting around and chasing the odd little gizmos I pulled out of my old laptop bag but hadn’t yet thrown away or put into the new laptop bag. Now she’s taking a break and lounging on my calves.
I think I may tackle the pile of paperwork that’s been piling up on my desk. Old receipts, work orders from repair work on our house, that sort of thing.
Oh, hey! The power just came back on! Yay! Now I can spend the next two hours reading Facebook….
[ten minutes later]
And now the power’s back off. I had ten minutes of power, and I wasted it on Facebook (what, you thought I was kidding?). Well, when the power comes on again (if it does), I certainly won’t be wasting it! The first thing I will do is make a pot of coffee. After that, I will read my email. After that… I’m not sure.
I guess I will go ahead and sort out those papers now.
[later]
The power is on, I have a hot cup of coffee, and I am making a dent in these papers.
Now that the Kickstarter is over, I can go back to talking about other things. For example, how happy I am that I am no longer working in web design. The work I would like to do, in decreasing order of preference, is:
There are reasons why web design is at the bottom of the list. The biggest one is that the people who pay to have that done are too often operating under the false assumption that they know how to do it, and that they just need someone else to do the grunt work of actually using the software. Oatmeal has a pretty funny cartoon on what that’s like for a web designer.
That’s an exaggeration, of course. I am lucky that back when I did web design as my primary profession, I very rarely had clients quite that clueless. A more frequent occurrence was the “we need to Do Something” problem. Smashing Magazine has a pretty decent article on that, but if you have been a user of YahooGroups or FaceBook for any length of time, you have seen that phenomenon in action.
System administration is at the top of the list for even better reasons. For one thing, I simply enjoy it. I like making things work. It’s like working on a car and getting it to run smoothly, but you don’t bang your knuckles or get your hands dirty. Also, success is generally objective: if the system works, that’s success. None of the “that color is too aggressive” type feedback you get when doing web design (I actually had a client say that phrase to me). Of course, there are some subjective measurements of success, even in system administration. For example, you can continue throwing time and money at a database server to increase performance, and the point at which the performance is good enough is a subjective call. Even so, generally speaking, the line between “working” and “not working” is pretty clear. I like that.
I celebrate Epicurus’ Birthday on the third Monday of February, in honor of the philosopher Epicurus, the ancient Greek philosopher and the founder of the school of philosophy called Epicureanism. His school was the first of the ancient Greek philosophical schools to admit women as a rule rather than an exception.
For Epicurus, the purpose of philosophy was to attain the happy, tranquil life, characterized by ataraxia—peace and freedom from fear—and aponia—the absence of pain—and by living a self-sufficient life surrounded by friends. He taught that pleasure and pain are the measures of what is good and evil; death is the end of both body and soul and should therefore not be feared; the gods do not reward or punish humans; the universe is infinite and eternal; and events in the world are ultimately based on the motions and interactions of atoms moving in empty space.
Pay attention to the people around you. Your life is ticking away, minute by minute, and when they’re gone, you’re gone. Don’t waste your life staring at an object in your hand.
For myself, I am going to attempt to spend my time more wisely, with a greater awareness of who and what I am paying attention to.
If I had to pick one Christmas special that sums up what I consider the “true meaning of Christmas”, it would be Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
“Welcome, Christmas, bring your cheer. Cheer to all Whos, far and near. Christmas Day is in our grasp, so long as we have hands to clasp. Christmas Day will always be, just as long as we have we. Welcome Christmas while we stand, heart to heart, and hand in hand.”
Christmas (or Yule or whatever other name you want to call it) is not merely some religious festival. It is bigger than that. Christmas belongs to everyone — that is the entire point of “How The Grinch Stole Christmas”. And that is the lesson that Grinches who want to limit it to their tiny religious set-piece need so desperately to learn. Christmas is no more a “Christian” holiday than Tuesday is a “Norse” day of the week. Christmas is a human holiday, for the whole human family.
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Blackmoor Vituperative