54 replies to this topic

[Rogerdodger]

Shades of Atlas Shrugged: Coal Mine Owner Ronnie Bryant Tells Feds "I'm just quitting."

Ronnie Bryant was vastly outnumbered.

Leaning against a wall during a recent Birmingham, Alabama, public hearing, Bryant listened to an overflow crowd pepper federal officials with concerns about businesses polluting the drinking water and causing cases of cancer.
After two hours, Bryant—a coal mine owner from Jasper—had heard enough and, in a moment being described as “right out of Atlas Shrugged,” took his turn at the microphone:

“Nearly every day without fail…men stream to these [mining] operations looking for work in Walker County. They can’t pay their mortgage. They can’t pay their car note. They can’t feed their families. They don’t have health insurance. And as I stand here today, I just…you know…what’s the use? I got a permit to open up an underground coal mine that would employ probably 125 people. They’d be paid wages from $50,000 to $150,000 a year. We would consume probably $50 million to $60 million in consumables a year, putting more men to work. And my only idea today is to go home. What’s the use? I see these guys—I see them with tears in their eyes—looking for work. And if there’s so much opposition to these guys making a living, I feel like there’s no need in me putting out the effort to provide work for them. So…basically what I’ve decided is not to open the mine. I’m just quitting. Thank you.”

The Blaze contacted Bryant, and he remains as resolute as he was at last week’s public hearing. To him, it’s just not worth the time, money, and regulatory hassle to open up a new mine—even one located in a remote area with less environmental impact.
VIDEO: http://www.youtube.c...player_embedded


And many of you with money and jobs will say: "GOOD!"
But YOU will not hire anyone.

Edited by Rogerdodger, 26 July 2011 - 08:11 PM.

[mss]

even one located in a remote area with less environmental impact.

I worked a tornado relief effort many years ago in this area and "remote" is a gross understatement. We used jeeps and 6x6-bys to get help and supplies close. Now they have a few roads. It is very hilly in that area.

Work is none. Several old coal mines left abandoned, with lots of low sulfur coal left.

Sad.
mss

[stocks]

Minds opening to libertarian ideas

"The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What's Wrong with America" by Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch. These incurably upbeat journalists with Reason magazine believe that not even government, try as it will, can prevent onrushing social improvement.

"Confirmation bias" is the propensity to believe news that confirms our beliefs. Gillespie and Welch say "existence bias" disposes us to believe that things that exist always will. The authors say that the most ossified, sclerotic sectors of American life -- politics and government -- are about to be blown up by new capabilities, especially the Internet, and the public's wholesome impatience that is encouraged by them.

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review http://www.pittsburg...l#ixzz1ThQyYpkh

Cool! Cuba lifts restrictions on air conditioners, fridges

Cuba is renewing sales of energy-sucking appliances, reversing a pillar of Fidel Castro’s “energy revolution” in response to popular demand and to support the growing ranks of independent workers under an economic overhaul launched by President Raul Castro.

Raul Castro launched an economic overhaul last year that aims to rescue Cuba’s perennially weak economy by including a taste of the private sector.

However, Castro emphasizes that the government is “updating” its socialist model, not embracing capitalism.

Cuba

[stocks]

What is Decadence?

Alistair Cooke explains:

[stocks]

The End of an Era

It always ends like this. Whether it's a dynasty, a corporation, or even a marriage, it ends in a collapse of confidence, with the guardians of the old order spitting with rage as their facile shibboleths vaporize into thin air.

The authoritarian welfare state was never going to reform itself into something "sustainable" or organized according to the "precautionary principle" on its own. It was always pure politics, with political raiders plundering the wealth of the nation to hand off to their supporters. It was always going to keep going until it ran out of money.

We are not yet to the point where people will start to sneer at politicians offering free lunches. Not yet. But the day will come when people will laugh at the idea that anyone imagined that government could deliver social services effectively and prudently. They will laugh at the idea that government could run a pension scheme. They will sneer at the idea that government could run a health system. They will joke about the bad old days when government ran a system of stunningly ineffective schools. But that day is not yet, for there are before us many years of failure and default that will be necessary to drive the lesson home.

Era

[stocks]

Welcome to the Collapse of the British Welfare State

British Degeneracy on Parade

The riots are the apotheosis of the welfare state and popular culture in their British form. A population thinks (because it has often been told so by intellectuals and the political class) that it is entitled to a high standard of consumption, irrespective of its personal efforts; and therefore it regards the fact that it does not receive that high standard, by comparison with the rest of society, as a sign of injustice.

And so unskilled labor is performed in England by foreigners, while an indigenous class of permanently unemployed is subsidized.

The culture of the person in this situation is not such as to elevate his behavior. One in which the late Amy Winehouse—the vulgar, semicriminal drug addict and alcoholic singer of songs whose lyrics effectively celebrated the most degenerate kind of life imaginable—could be raised to the status of heroine is not one that is likely to protect against bad behavior.

Finally, long experience of impunity has taught the rioters that they have nothing to fear from the law, which in England has become almost comically lax—except, that is, for the victims of crime. For the rioters, crime has become the default setting of their behavior; the surprising thing about the riots is not that they have occurred, but that they did not occur sooner and did not become chronic.

link

[Rogerdodger]

Hostess going out of business; nearly 18,000 to be laid off

About one-third of the company's workers are union members who are unhappy about the company's cutbacks during its bankruptcy reorganization.
But problems with several unions -- including the Bakery, Confectionery, and Tobacco workers and the Grain Millers International Union -- have prevented the company from moving forward.
Hostess said it will seek bankruptcy court permission to sell all of its assets. The company said bakery production has already shut down.

NOTE TO YOU UNHAPPY UNION WORKERS:
Hostess Bakery is an extremely profitable business, greedily enriching the 1% at your expense, according to you.
So you are now free to start your own union owned bakery business!!!
Pay all of your employees what you are now demanding, or more.
Hire people you don't need.
Keep people who don't work.
If it's so easy, show us the way.

How many union employees will work at each bakery? About 1/2 of them.

Edited by Rogerdodger, 16 November 2012 - 10:07 AM.

[voltaire]

The idea that polution is better than lack of jobs is nonsense. The Libertarians would argue that you can then sue the polluter. The problem with that is you can't restore people's health or bring them back from the dead. Money does not compensate. Capitalism is built on greed, a base instinct but one we all respond to. How does forming a company that destroys peoples lives, that then goes bankrupt but leaves the founder richer serve justice? Yes, employment is paramount but so it seems was sending children down coal mines or sweat shops in Asia. Slavery was justified on economic terms. Without slavery the cotton farmers couldn't produce economically. Today we have farmers saying they can't get citizens to pick crops. Why? They won't pay decent wages. If you can't run an efficient business model then leave it to someone else. But don't blame it on people needing a livable wage. The stupidity of it all is if that workers don't have disposable income they can't consume production. Greed is not good. What is good is collaboration. A partnership is far better than any exploitation.

[voltaire]

Hostess going out of business; nearly 18,000 to be laid off

About one-third of the company's workers are union members who are unhappy about the company's cutbacks during its bankruptcy reorganization.
But problems with several unions -- including the Bakery, Confectionery, and Tobacco workers and the Grain Millers International Union -- have prevented the company from moving forward.
Hostess said it will seek bankruptcy court permission to sell all of its assets. The company said bakery production has already shut down.

NOTE TO YOU UNHAPPY UNION WORKERS:
Hostess Bakery is an extremely profitable business, greedily enriching the 1% at your expense, according to you.
So you are now free to start your own union owned bakery business!!!
Pay all of your employees what you are now demanding, or more.
Hire people you don't need.
Keep people who don't work.
If it's so easy, show us the way.

How many union employees will work at each bakery? About 1/2 of them.

No Hostess is not an extremely profitable business.

I think its been through bankruptcy twice and struggled for years.

How about making employees shareholders.

Is making employees part of the working poor fair?

If so then they are better off not working.

They are better off going elsewhere.

If Hostess are that inefficient then they deserve to fail.

They will be replaced rapidly.

[Rogerdodger]

A line from Atlas Shrugged?: "Now is not the time for profits."

Twinkie goes the way of Detroit when union demands, not markets control.

Twinkies likely to survive, become a foreign import...

The Twinkie: Will it return as a Mexican expat?
But the big question is whether the same problems that haunted Hostess – high sugar prices tied to US trade tariffs, changing consumer tastes, and union pushback against labor concessions – will squeeze whatever profit is left in the brands.
Especially if a Mexican buyer is involved, production may go the way of the Brach’s and Fannie May candy concerns: south of the border. With US sugar tariffs set artificially high to protect Florida sugar-growing concerns, a non-unionized shop with access to lower-priced sugar in Mexico could be the Twinkie lifeline, economists suggest.
On the other hand, if Hostess’ problem is its legacy delivery system, which is what University of Maryland economist Peter Morici suspects, Bimbo may be able to squeeze profits out of the supply chain while still making Twinkies in the US, albeit probably not in union shops.

Edited by Rogerdodger, 19 November 2012 - 10:39 AM.