Category: Business

Chinese Restaurant Success Secret

Chinese Restaurant Success Secret

A push is on to raise the federal minimum wage to $9.80 per hour from $7.25. One suspects that those who conceived of the idea know it will weaken  small businesses and destroy opportunity for the marginal worker. One suspects that those who have joined the bandwagon are clueless of the consequences.

The ones who truly care are the ones looking to get rid of it.

The biggest beneficiaries of the law are connected white suburban college kids on summer jobs. The ones most harmed are those upon whom business owners can’t afford to take a chance.

Here’s an exercise: The next time you go into a locally owned Chinese restaurant count the members of the waitstaff who are white. Now count the ones who are black. Based on the answer do you judge these restaurant owners racist bigots? Not if you have an ounce of sense. That waitstaff is almost certainly family, literally, working for the future. The kids are helping their parents with an eye on getting a college degree. The parents are helping the kids with an eye on them getting a college degree.

This is true not just for the Chinese but for most immigrant businesses. The help is not getting paid in the governmental sense.

Now suppose you come from a more unpleasant family environ, say, one in which all your siblings have different fathers. You certainly will face a disadvantage in getting a start in the business world. If you are of an entrepreneurial bent you will more likely find yourself selling drugs that food.

Ending the minimum wage would give the young with bad breaks a much better chance.  Economist Walter Williams explains it well here.

Most small business owners really are not exploitative and care  enough about the community to make small sacrifices for it. The only reason many don’t make jobs for the marginal and inexperienced is because they simply can’t afford it.

Some might make the reasonable-sounding argument that the minimum wage prevents sweat shops. Reasonable sounding, at least, until you start considering from whence comes the iPhone and underwear of the young hipster making that claim.

Anyway, here’s a compromise:  Raise the wage to $9.80 as the fools want, but let each business exempt five employees from it. Only a totalitarian can object to such an exemption.

Hat tip Elizabeth Stelle and John R. Bouder

Chinese Restaurant Success Secret

 

2013 Very Bad Year

A Economist/YouGov poll shows that 69 percent of Americans thought 2013 was either a bad year or very bad year.

That’s unchanged from 2012.

Only a quarter say health care coverage is better today than it was a year ago. More than half say it has gotten worse.

Hat tip Washington Examiner.

2013 Very Bad Year

Insurance Websites

Insurance is a relatively complex product for potential buyers to
understand, reports eMarketer.com Insurance Websites Digital channels are now an integral part of how consumers research and get insurance quotes, but the process remains a multifaceted journey, where traditional sources like agents and call centers are valuable. Golly, we wonder if anybody entrusted with nuclear weaponry managed to figure this out.

Digital channels are now an integral part of how consumers research and get insurance quotes, but the process remains a multifaceted journey, where traditional sources like agents and call centers are valuable.

Golly, we wonder if anybody entrusted with nuclear weaponry managed to figure this out.

Insurance Websites

Good Senator Supports Bad Bill

Good Senator Supports Bad BillPat Toomey (R-Pa) was among the senators who voted for the Employee Non-Discrimination Act,  yesterday, Nov. 7, and the bill that would  make it a federal crime to discriminate against employing gays is now before the House.

Hopefully, it dies a quick death. It’s a bad bill. In the current form, the bill does not exempt religious institutions that hold homosexuality to be sinful but even with such an exemption it would still be a bad bill.

Senator, you are a good guy but the only thing anti-discrimination laws do with regard to hiring and firing is to screw things up for the “protected category”.

The source of all anti-discrimination laws regarding employment is the civil rights movement that freed blacks from Jim Crow. Even those, while understandable, were still bad ideas.

The black experience differed from the Irish/Italian/Japanese/Jewish/everybody-whose-ancestors-did-not-come-on-the-Mayflower experience not in the existence of job discrimination but in the existence of government oppression which included acts of terror. And those other ethnic groups would go on to thrive despite the discrimination, and that would have likely happened with blacks as well once the government oppression was ended.

As it is now the protected category makes it less likely for a black to be hired. Ask yourself this: if you are an employer would, everything being equal, be more or less inclined to hire the guy you can’t easily dismiss?

And gays certainly don’t need protection with regard to hiring.

In fact, if gays do become protected by civil rights laws, I envision a whole lot of bad employees suing their employers for disciplining them who care not a whit about their sex lives. Ironically, this will make employers much more, well, thoughtful, about hiring gays.

To Toomey’s credit he attempted to add an amendment that would have exempted religious institutions. To his discredit, he voted aye anyway even though the amendment was rejected.

“I voted for final passage to help move the legislative process forward. I hope that – should the House consider this bill – it will move to improve and strengthen this measure so we can both advance equality in the workplace and protect religious liberty,” he said.

As we noted, it’s still a bad bill even with the amendment.

Good Senator Supports Bad Bill

Toomey Demands EPA Follow Law

Toomey Demands EPA Follow Law
Jobs would be less endangered at places like Delta Airline’s Trainer Refinery with saner EPA regulations.

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) is calling on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to lessen the renewable fuel standard (RFS) that refiners must meet when manufacturing gasoline – and to do so in a timely manner.

According to federal law, every November, the EPA must announce a sensible RFS mandate for the upcoming calendar year.

“Unfortunately, the EPA failed to meet this responsibility last year when it ignored the deadline and increased the RFS mandate on gasoline manufacturers,” Toomey said. “This led to increased compliance costs for many Pennsylvania employers, including refineries located in Southeast Pennsylvania.”

Toomey said that the EPA’s failure to follow the law last year put many good-paying jobs in Southeast Pennsylvania in jeopardy.

“I urge the EPA to follow federal law and announce the RFS for 2014 in a timely manner,” he said. “Additionally, I encourage the EPA to establish standards that ease unnecessary burdens on employers and consumers across our commonwealth. The RFS requires fuel suppliers to blend millions of gallons of biofuels – most often corn ethanol – into the nation’s gasoline supplies. It drives up gas prices, increases food costs, damages car engines, and harms the environment. This Washington mandate is anything but sensible.”

Toomey supports repealing the RFS and has co-authored a bipartisan bill and offered an amendment in efforts to eliminate the costly mandate.

Toomey’s letter to the EPA can be found here

Toomey Demands EPA Follow Law

Lowe’s, Happy Shopping Experience

We had a nice experience at the Havertown (Pa) Lowe’s, Saturday, which resulted in the replacement of the section of soffit beneath our eaves as per the photo. Betcha can’t even tell which section was replaced.

The wood on the bit of the nearly 90-year-old house was found rotted and we went to the store with a particular repair plan in mind, which in hindsight would have been a very bad one.

The fellow we ended up talking to deduced exactly what the problem was and knew exactly how to fix it. He gave us the right materials and perfect instructions, and the result was a project about which we are quite pleased. Frankly, we didn’t even know what a soffit was.

So thank you, Lowe’s guy.

Lowe’s, Happy Shopping Experience

Philadelphia Inquirer Dirty Linen Exposed

Philadelphia Inquirer Dirty Linen Exposed
Once upon a time half the residents of the Philadelphia area read the Sunday Inquirer albeit today once suspects that half may not even know the publication exists.

For those that remember its relevance,  former Inky reporter Ralph Cipriano is doing yeoman’s work at BigTrail.net covering the saga among the battling Democrats who own the publication regarding the firing of editor Bill Marimow.

It’s fascinating writing and shows that straight reporting can be far more interesting than the entertainment garbage that now passes for news in the dying dinosaurs. Cipriano makes the implicit case that the dinosaur may not be dying — at least as certainly — if they actually did its job rather than be a mere mouthpiece for the union-backed establishment that runs — and corrupts — the City of Philadelphia, and by extension the state.

Did you know that the Carpenters’ Union dumped $45 million of its pension fund into the Inky when it was sold  to a group led by Brian Tierney in 2006? You wouldn’t if you depended on the Inquirer for news. It lost most of it. On the other hand, it kept a crusade from being launched to reform things at the city’s miserable failure of a convention center.

“They don’t hand out prizes for
pissing people off,” Cipriano notes. “And that’s what the job of journalism often is. To
create a newsroom that Ed Rendell wouldn’t feel comfortable in.”

For a scorecard as to who is on what side in the Marimow fight — owners Lewis Katz and H.F. Lenfest want to keep him and owner New Jersey Democrat boss George Norcross with Publisher Bob Hall want him gone — visit here. Tidbits include that the rage aimed at Marimow is based on a claim that he leaked a plan to cut the paper’s editorial pages by 50 percent and the paper has lost 24 percent of our readers in the last year. Free clue, maybe normalizing homosexuality is not as popular as you guys seem to think it is.

Hat tip Bob Guzzardi

 Philadelphia Inquirer Dirty Linen Exposed

BAM Bookstore Discovery

Went to the Springfield Mall, today, for the first time in ages and found a bookstore. BAM or Books-A-Million can be found near the Macy’s end.

I meet Kerri (I think) and a lady whose name I won’t even try to guess at. Both were nice and helpful. They said they had been in the mall for about a year, albeit they never had a grand opening. They said they are doing well.

I found some neat books and will be returning.

For the Legend of Abd-el-Kader and a recipe for baba ghanoush, which goes great with Cryptowit Quote Puzzles, visit here.

 

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Visit BillLawrenceOnline.com

 

BAM Bookstore Discovery

 

Ex-ACORN Director Is County Council Candidate

The Delaware County (Pa.) Democrats have picked Chester City’s former director of ACORN  as one of its candidates for County Council, and the GOP is shouting it loud and proud, albeit the woman in question not necessarily so. Ex-ACORN Director Is County Council Candidate

It was most recently noted at tonight’s, Sept. 18, meeting of the Springfield Republicans by party Chairman Mike Puppio

Patricia Worrell has not been referring to that bit of her life in either her campaign literature or public statements. She has also not been boasting about her job with Action United, which succeeded ACORN after it was implicated in shameless vote fraud.

Chester, it should be noted, was one of the places where ACORN was caught tilting the scales.

Ms. Worrell is running — here’s  a bit of irony — with Bill Clinton, albeit this one is an Upper Providence Councilman and has never been accused of raping anyone in an Arkansas hotel, albeit he has been a strong supporter of tax hikes in his township, according to Puppio.

Their opponents are incumbents Mario Civera Jr. and David J. White, who are basing their campaign on their record of saving the Delaware River refineries and keeping the county pension plan solvent which is actually a pretty significant achievement considering what has been going on in the rest of the state.

Puppio noted tonight that apart from the natural gas counties, Delco has the best employment record in the state.

Ex-ACORN Director Is County Council Candidate

Fresh Grocer To Become Shop Rite

The Fresh Grocer in the Drexeline Shopping Center, Drexel Hill, Pa. is going to become a Shop Rite, if you haven’t heard.

The good news is that Shop Rite is great. The bad news is that you could sure save a lot of money on those Fresh Grocer coupons mailed to card holders.

Fresh Grocer To Become Shop Rite