From The Street...
Friday, October 31, 2003
Gilder on jobs...
" Seek to save jobs and you get unemployment. Seek profits and you get jobs."
Telecosm Lounge post:
In 1999, for instance, 1.15 million workers lost jobs through mass
layoffs, out of a total of 2.5 million lost. Liberalized, competitive
economies with flexible labor markets can usually cope with such
restructuring; the US economy, the world’s most dynamic, certainly should
be able to do so. Indeed, history suggests that, over the medium to long
term, a flexible job market and the mobility of US workers will make it
possible for the United States to create new jobs faster than offshoring
eliminates them.
The openness of the US economy and its inherent flexibility--particularly
that of its labor market--are two of its great recognized strengths. The
current danger is that public policy will make its economy less flexible.
To do so would endanger the economic well-being of the United States.
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George Gilder's reply:
Seek to save jobs and you get unemployment. Seek profits and you get jobs.
Peter Drucker said it years ago and it is still supremely true.
The most negative factor in the entire economic scene is the focus on lost
jobs, the trade gap with China, and the allegedly too strong dollar. This
set of concerns defies economic reality, in which the trade gap is a sign
of fast growth and attractive markets, China is the best hope for US
technology during this continuing jubilee of litigation, and US employment
is the envy of all the countries that we now affront with our fatuous pose
as an exchange rate victim.
Between January 1998 and January 2001, the US economy created a bulge of
some 8 million net new jobs with rising real wages, while all of Western
Europe created no net new jobs at all. With the regulatory collapse of
the Internet economy, the US gave two million jobs back by January 02. But
unemployment remains low by historical standards and will decline.
Productivity growth near 10 per cent is impelling wages ever higher.
Tax cuts, far from a transitory demand side factor, have no effect on
demand at all, but establish a long term and cumulative economic
superiority over most of our trading partners. This U.S. edge assures
healthy trade gaps, capital surpluses, and robust US markets far into the
future. Indeed, the tax cuts have already massively paid for themselves
with $2.5 trillion of capital gains on assets and are also shrinking the
budget deficit.
Critics want an end of outsourcing and a closing of the trade gap. But
nothing would so drastically damage US manufacturing output and
employment. Driven by our capital surplus and superior growth, the trade
gap mostly consists of commodities needed by US manufacturers, work in
progress, and critical path technologies such as memory chips. The only
way to close it is to render the US an unattractive market for capital,
crashing the stock market, wiping out the trillions of unrealized
appreciation, and expanding the budget deficit.
Stop outsourcing and you destroy the profitability of much of the US
economy. You cannot create jobs by squelching profits. --GG
Thursday, October 30, 2003
Pipe Smoking...
Pipe Smoking…
The two-hour drive east brought Rich, Barber Jim and me to Hardy, home of a famous Tobacco and Pipe Store. Dick is the proprietor, a long time tobacconist, and respected name in Pipe Smoking. The Pipe Puffers of Northern Arkansas is a club that Barber Jim had invited me to join, albeit some distance away, and here we were for the October Meeting.
Rich is an interesting fellow. When the Air Traffic Controllers went on strike and before Reagan fired them, seven from Dallas were prosecuted. Ordered to go to work, they refused, a crime punishable by federal prison time. Six served some time; Rich did not because of a process technicality. He “went ballistic” at the trial and then, so did the judge. Scary. His nickname in the Air Force and Marines (two Vietnam tours) was Psycho. A serial pipe smoker, he carries a leather six pack holder with his favorites.
Barber Jim has said a highlight of each meeting was a Pipe Smoking Contest; and when we walked into the Store, tables were set up for about fifteen who followed us in shortly. At each place was a small bag of about an ounce of tobacco, a candle, and two kitchen matches.
After the raffles and silent bids and other club business, the contest began. You had to use a corncob pipe, submitted to the Judge who okayed it. Mine was one Jim had given me..painted black…and sporting a filter element inside: probably five dollars retail. The good natured ribbing and jollity came to abrupt halt as we all packed our pipes carefully, not losing a scrap of stray tobacco. The goal was to keep it going – with smoke coming out – for as long as possible. If you could keep it going for an hour, you got a special cap, denoting membership in an exclusive bunch who’d done that. Jim had never made it. On the wall was a plaque with citations and names and times of those who had. Hmm…
The clock started and you had one minute to get your pipe lit properly, using the lit candle to light the two matches; then the Real Timing Began. Oops, George over there went out in the first two minutes.
As we settled down into the silence of the overworked ceiling fans, not much was said. Many minutes passed….then a few began to drop off with a grudging ”I’m out”. But most kept on slowly nursing their loads and time dragged on. Jim dropped out at about 27 minutes. Rich hadn’t entered. The Big Guy on the End of Our Table resembled A.J Foyt in appearance and manner. He’d just returned form the Nationals in Kentucky and placed 28th in a similar contest. He was quietly confident. Time dragged on. My first hope was to just outlast Jim..and I did…and then to outlast AJ..and I did!
Then as the time approached 45 minutes, many dropped out. I was getting a little woozy, but felt like I could keep the fire going, so to speak, for a bit longer. And I did. Finally, the last Club Member, Eddie, sighed “I’m out” at 57 minutes…and I was still going, and The Last One! The nervous silence that followed was punctuated by whispered inquiries to Barber Jim about me and his Pipe. The hour mark passed, and I kept going. At one hour, ten minutes and thirty seconds, my pipe smoke disappeared and I was through.
Grins and smiles and congratulations then flowed along with invitations to Join and Come Again and Consider Going To Nationals in Michigan Next Year. As a non-member, I missed out on the winner’s One Hour Cap, but I did get a bunch of different tobaccos. I was a Bit Wasted, and was not sure I could make it to the car, much less drive the two hours home. But I did.
I had no idea what I was doing, but just went slowly and paid close attention to The State of The Fire. Not sure I’ll try again, without Becoming An Expert of Pipe Fires via the Internet by the November Meeting.
Better To Be Lucky Than Smart, they say. I’m still a little woozy…
Friday, October 24, 2003
Fall Events
Fall Events
The Annual Turkey Trot Festival here last weekend featured live turkeys dropped from a helicopter while “the kids’ merrily chase and catch them. Turkeys are fast, and can be mean. No casualty reports or numbers were available.
Color Photo Front Page Above The Fold of – an airplane! Yes, an American Airlines commuter plane flew into the little used local airport to allow folks to go inside and ask questions of the crew.
In a nearby community, BeanFest and the Great Outhouse Race begins on Saturday morning at the town square with a Big Breakfast of Pinto Beans and Cornbread. Then, Outhouses On Wheels (no, not a program for the incontinent elderly as you might first think…) are madly pushed by participants in A Race Down The Street (ESPN- call me) for the Coveted Golden Toilet Seat Trophy. BeanStuffed Observers cheer them on and Anxiously Await for the finish.
And support is increasing for an In-Town Deer Hunt. For long bow archers only, and lasting two months, proponents claim safer driving and disease prevention as good reasons to do this. Previous hunts in the last few years killed 80 deer; accidents caused by deer decreased from 12 to seven to two in the same period. And, good news for consumers, the Sausage Price Index plunged.
Saturday, October 18, 2003
GM Car Profits drop over 90%?
From TDR 10/16:
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- Yesterday, the giant automaker reported a profit of $425 million in the third quarter. But GM's global automotive operations contributed only $34 million to the bottom line - down dramatically from $368 million a year ago. GM's finance operations - especially its mortgage finance operations - carried the day, contributing essentially all of the company's third-quarter profit.
===============
Sunday, October 12, 2003
River Rats....
This three-man group plays guitars and sing like true hillbillies. They are from Mountain View, about an hour away on the White River, where they run tourist stores and a bed and breakfast. “Don here he makes fiddles and banjos outta gourds he grows hisself…”
But they are excellent musicians, and lapse into three part “gospel” and country harmony flawlessly. After an hour, they break to walk back to the lobby to sell their CDs and tapes, sign autographs and talk to the folks.
After intermission, Brick, the one with one tooth, disappears and is said to have gone outside “to turn the truck around” – this being the Arkansas expression for drinking out of a bottle in the truck. We’re not talking Evian here, folks. He comes back ”drunk”, and does some very funny bits.
“Honey, I’ve struck it rich” says a fellow calling his wife from Las Vegas. “Pack your clothes!”
“Should I pack summer or winter clothes” she asks.
“I don’t care as long as you’re gone by the time I get home” he replies.
Moon, the Chet Atkins Fan, draws out a classical guitar he has built, copied from one Andres Segovia used and proceeds with a show stopping rendition of Malaguena.
The crowd was only about fifty in a venue holding 600, but we all had fun. NASCAR races in Flippin and Turkey Shoot Days in Gassville cut into the attendance, they say.
Friday, October 10, 2003
VDH: We Are At War....
Victor Davis Hanson, The California Classics Professor again scores...from The National Review On Line
Legends of the Fall
Excerpt:
"French newspapers may blare, "The slowly rotting situation in Iraq, the Mideast and Afghanistan has destroyed the myth American omnipotence," but they don't tell us how removing the Taliban and Saddam Hussein is worse than selling weapons to them — or why and how France lost 30 times more of its own citizens to heat in a month than we lost soldiers in battle in two years. Apparently French apartments are far more deadly places than the Pakistani border or the Sunni Triangle."
A Lesson for Young Men of All Ages...
The Dangers of Drinking Beer
