The group hit hardest by these conditions, and the people most likely to spend money in the economy, are workers in low-wage jobs that are directly affected by state and federal minimum wage laws.  These are usually unskilled or low-skill positions that experience high turnover and require little training.  The current federal minimum wage is $6.55 per hour.  Many states have laws that set higher levels.  California, Connecticut, Vermont and Oregon specify minimum pay that is at or over $8.00 per hour for non-tipped employees.

Most businesses have recently been forced to cut back, including those that hire low-wage workers.  Often, the choice may be between continuing to pay one or two workers, and remaining profitable.  Invariably, workers get cut - grunt work is inconvenient but can be performed by others who are happy just to keep their jobs.  As an example, two helpers working for a roofing contractor may have the job of setting up ladders, picking up old shingles and moving materials up to the worksite.  The contractor is charging lower rates to get more business in a tough economy, and is unable to pay as many workers.  Being unable to pay the helpers less than $6.55 per hour, they lay them off and just make everyone else work harder.  With less jobs to be had and less money per job, the helpers simply aren’t providing $6.55 worth of benefit per hour.

Maybe the workers would be worth $4 per hour to their employer.  Or maybe $3 per hour, or $5 an hour - whatever it is that keeps the business viable on the balance sheet.  Opponents will no doubt find fault with this by saying that such a low wage can’t possibly provide for a dignified existence or that it amounts to “slave wages”.  Realistically though, a business that fails can’t hire anyone, and $4 an hour is better than $0 per hour, or having someone draw unemployment.  Low wages, at least, keep people working while the economy is tight, and continues to provide them with an income.  It allows businesses to continue to function with more of their original labor force.

This may work, or it may not - but we couldn’t possibly do any worse right now, and it deserves to be put to a test.  Check out the Let People Work Facebook group and follow us on Twitter!

Fire extinguishers could be removed from communal areas in flats throughout the country because they are a safety hazard, it has emerged.

The life-saving devices encourage untrained people to fight a fire rather than leave the building, risk assessors in Bournemouth decided.

There are fears that their recommendation, which has seen the extinguishers ripped out of several private, high-rise flats in the town, could set a national precedent.

This is a great example of the mentality that says that average, “untrained” people are inherently stupid and incapable of doing anything besides breathing and uttering single syllables.  People can’t be allowed to use fire extinguishers, cell phones while driving, firearms, the internet, or anything else they can possibly botch.

If a small fire starts in a trash can, or a grease fire starts on a stove, it obviously makes sense to evacuate the entire building and let half of it burn down while the fire department shows up.  Since most average people can’t hold a 5-pound canister by the handle and squeeze that handle while pointing a nozzle at the fire without endangering themselves, then it would stand to reason that it’s far better to clear out residents from hundreds of apartments - some of which may have children with no parents home - while the fire steadily consumes the structure.

With the government doing everything, why does anyone need to keep around a device that might save their own life or those of others?  Let’s get rid of public defibrillators, too.  The coroner is far better qualified to take care of the situation than any passerby.

In an interesting twist, I had mentioned this issue several days ago, though it didn’t end up as I had intended.

The recent attacks by Pakistani militants in India have exposed a startling weakness in Indian domestic security policy.  Gun laws are extremely tight for both police and civilians, and any gunman with a political agenda knows that they are unlikely to encounter any serious armed opposition from victims.  Although the hotels employ private security guards, they’re unarmed - which seems completely pointless:

The Oberoi Group employs many plainclothes security officers in its hotels, but these are unarmed, Oberoi said. Obtaining a license for even a single officer to carry a gun is extremely difficult in India, which has tight gun control laws.

Ironically, “Gun Free Zones” are too often the site of gun-related massacres.  This is the situation on college campuses and schools in the United States, and it goes back to the old Luby’s Cafeteria situation - suicidal and deranged individuals target those areas because they know they can get away with quite a lot before the police show up.  Usually they simply get tired of waiting and kill themselves, after going through the area fairly thoroughly.  Law enforcement officers, it turns out, do not live in underground burrows scattered numerously across the urban landscape.  They can’t just pop out like groundhogs whenever trouble may arise.

Conversely, attacks on areas with lots of well-armed and responsible people are very low.  Except in times of conflict, military bases are generally extremely safe, despite the massive numbers of people carrying weapons around.  Police stations don’t usually get attacked, except by T-800 units looking for Sarah Connor.  Armed robberies on gun stores in the US are exceedingly rare, and those that do occur typically end with a lopsided outcome that does not fall in the perpetrator’s favor.

Above: The Kel-Tec .380, the smallest gun of its caliber in
the world, and a popular choice for concealable self-defense.

Self-defense is a human right, and a very natural reaction to the actions of a predator.  This does not mean that armed civilians should go out hunting down an attacker in another area of a mall or school.  More often, people simply lay low in an area, and defend themselves if needed.  The arguments about interfering with police and responding officers “not being able to tell the difference” between perpetrators and civilians are illogical canards.

Until people are recognized as rational beings capable of decisionmaking and taking responsible actions to defend themselves, incidents like Mumbai, Columbine and Luby’s will probably continue.  Governments that remove that aspect of responsibility and inherent freedom are doing their citizens a disservice and placing them in danger.

More than 100,000 tourists, including at least 5000 Britons, are trapped in the country. Many have been heading for provincial airports in Phuket, Chiang Mai and Had Yai near the Malaysian border in the hope of catching regional flights. Others are catching buses and trains to Kuala Lumpur and Singapore.

Thai Airlines opened up U-Tapao airbase in Chonburi province 120 miles east of Bangkok last week and have said they are operating 18 flights out daily. The only European destinations on offer were Copenhagen and Frankfurt. But the airline said it was also flying to Beijing, Hong Kong, Seoul and Sydney.

Both sides in the conflict in Thailand depend on revenues from tourists.  It’s a big part of the economy in the country, and this certainly isn’t helping their image as a travel destination.  Rather than being stuck in the middle like helpless kittens, stranded tourists should themselves organize, and demand that they be allowed to leave.  This is not like a hurricane or a terrorist attack - it’s been purposely created by thousands of rabblerousers hanging around in airports, who could leave if they wanted to.

An organized boycott on travel to Thailand may be an effective measure to get assurances from the government and the PAD that the future travel of commercialized tourists will not be obstructed.  Nothing can be accomplished by the effective false imprisonment of over 100,000 non-Thais who are waiting to leave.  Nations like the UK, which has been derelict in evacuating its own people out of the middle of an armed political conflict, should also be held accountable by returning travelers.

The Associated Press has reported that the domestic auto industry should look to a previous government-financed loan during the Carter administration to understand how to properly wheedle the American people out of their money.

Still, the Chrysler chapter offers lessons to the executives of General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC — the private equity successor to the old Chrysler Corp. — as well as the United Auto Workers union as they try to win support in Congress for a stalled $25 billion rescue plan.

Apparently they already have learned - and the lesson is that if the government tossed them a bone before, they might do it again.  It’s like feeding an alligator in the wild.  They quickly learn where to get food from, and never fail to approach another human.  Some missing and chewed-up limbs are par for the course.

Just as with the bailout of banks and financial institutions, this is a process that will allow large institutions to act irresponsibly during prosperous times, and when things get tight, treat the government like a piggybank of last resort.  Unfortunately, this routine of pampering and coddling businesses that operate under a cloud of failure does not encourage them to improve.  Chuck Grassley notes that there is no impetus for improvement here:

“We’re asking the taxpayers to throw money in. We’re not asking management to do anything,” said Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who supported the Chrysler deal as a House member. “We’re not asking unions to do anything and we aren’t asking government to do anything except throw the money in. We aren’t undoing a lot of the reasons why they’re in trouble.”

What’s the real point of this loan?  This sounds less like a “bridge” through tough economic times, and more like a failed business model trying to save itself without having to put forth the effort to adapt to changing conditions.

Take, for instance, his scheme to provide free labor on the back of millions of students in middle school, high school and college.  Rebadging this as “community service”, Obama has apparently tipped his hand that he’s been bluffing all along on race.  Barack Obama’s ancestors were never forced into a national program of “community service” (ie, slavery) to build up the United States - they lived in their native land of Kenya for centuries.  Apparently, Obama missed the memo about the difference between the type of labor that one does out of coercion and for free, and the type that one does willingly and for pay.

President-Elect Obama should take a minute out of his future-gazing and vision-questing and read the Thirteenth Amendment:

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

And there it is - a national requirement for “involuntary servitude” for those who have not been convicted of any crime, is prohibited by the Constitution.  It would amount to punishing people before they’ve committed a wrong.

That idea of “guilty before proven innocent” actually dovetails nicely with the liberal mindset - taking away anything that might possibly hurt us, before any incompetent, non-able individuals might do something foolish.  We can’t have cars; we might run over ourselves.  Guns are dangerous; we might shoot ourselves.  Controlling our own money?  Heavens to Betsy, no!  That money must be taxed and redistributed among people who can’t possibly use it wisely.

I’m looking forward to hearing more of Obama’s hare-brained scam ideas.  What next…a proposal to ban “bad” opinions?  A requirement that we all volunteer to quarter members of his “citizen army” in our own houses?  Gently erasing the Tenth Amendment?

It had better be something good and hilarious, or I’m going to be disappointed.

Carmakers claim that we’ll see an additional 10% unemployment if they go belly-up:

The auto companies argue a bailout is justified because one in 10 U.S. jobs depends on them.

GM, Chrysler and Ford employ close to 250,000 people in the United States and supporters claim they touch more than 4 million other jobs at suppliers, dealers, car haulers and rental companies.

Oddly, Japanese companies that have long out-competed American manufacturers are not screaming for the same time of assistance.  In fact, Honda is opening a new US plant, just as our own companies are backed into a corner asking for government aid - and they’re doing a better job of making cars here, and then selling them to us, than domestic automakers are.

As a shiny Honda Civic sedan rolled up beside Indiana’s governor and Honda’s president, Greensburg Mayor Gary Herbert posed a question designed to remind Americans that the U.S. auto industry extends beyond Detroit.

“Is this Civic an American-built automobile?” Herbert thundered, smiling at a sea of white-suited workers who seemed very pleased to have landed high-paying jobs in an industry where layoffs are common.

“Yes,” came the shouted reply from hundreds of voices.

This, along with their “sky is falling” warnings, illustrates what has been wrong with General Motors, Ford and Chrysler all along: for nearly 50 years, they have failed to realize that while they’re a big deal, they’re also not indispensable.  They have allowed themselves to be slowly marginalized by foreign innovation, and have not built particularly compelling products designed to compete on a long-term basis.  Marketing gimmicks such as 0% financing and commercials with rocks falling into trucks simply does not cut it.  In a market economy with active competition, complacency spells trouble.

These companies, which have not engaged their unions and until recently have not aggressively pressed development of automotive technology, claim to be at the forefront of the domestic economy - a prospect which is really quite scary.  The writing has been on the wall for some time, and they haven’t heeded it.  Maybe it would be better if these clowns found something that they’re better at, such as propelling themselves out of cannons.  The end result is that these companies may need to fail, and their assets reabsorbed into something that can more efficiently utilize them, so that the economy is better off in the long run.

Our economy may do poorly in the short run if these large automakers collapse - but we’ll continue to buy cars, and someone will be happy to continue to sell them to us.  Whoever that is will probably purchase some of the assets of the Big Three, hire their former employees, and do a better job of what they should have been doing all along.  In fact, Honda and Toyota seem to prefer opening plants in the United States - as opposed to General Motors’ tendency to open shop in Mexico.

Just in case anyone has any ideas, none of this has anything to do with executive pay.  Unlike government, businesses can pay their employees whatever they wish.  Corporations are answerable to their shareholders, but members of the public at large are not shareholders in a given publicly traded company.  If Alan Mulally brings home $100 million in a bad year, that’s between him, Ford and Ford’s shareholders.

At the start of the weekend, a one-day Zogby survey suggested McCain has surged significantly and was gaining ground fast. But further Zogby polling is not panning out as well. Most polls now show Obama leading from 4% to 11% nationally and with an electoral edge of at least 50-100 votes.

But there are still signs of hope, two very notable ones coming today in polling from CNN and IBD. The TIPP/IBD poll, which claimed the title “most accurate” in the 2004 race, has Obama leading McCain by only 2%. That’s a lot closer and represents a several day tightening trend.

The second bright spot is a poll just reported on CNN that shows Obama leading in Pennsylvania by 7%. That’s down from a 13% lead just a couple of weeks ago. Pennsylvania is the McCain campaign’s Hail Mary play in this election.

If McCain, somehow, manages to win Ohio and Florida… AND an upset in Pennsylvania… he could still win the White House even if he loses Virginia, North Dakota, Montana, and some of these other tight states. It’s not likely. But it is possible.

Yesterday’s sampling for the 3-day Zogby tracking poll showed a single day lead of 48-47% for McCain. A result that is sending some shockwaves out… disrupting the script of the media’s 96 hour coronation of Barack Obama.

According to John Zogby: “Is McCain making a move? The three-day average holds steady, but McCain outpolled Obama today, 48% to 47%. He is beginning to cut into Obama’s lead among independents, is now leading among blue collar voters, has strengthened his lead among investors and among men, and is walloping Obama among NASCAR voters. Joe the Plumber may get his license after all.”

“Obama’s lead among women declined, and it looks like it is occurring because McCain is solidifying the support of conservative women, which is something we saw last time McCain picked up in the polls. If McCain has a good day tomorrow, we will eliminate Obama’s good day three days ago, and we could really see some tightening in this rolling average. But for now, hold on.”