Gongol.com Archives: August 2017
August 5, 2017
The Chicago Cubs gave Steve Bartman a World Series ring. Closure.
What keeps young people from working?
One important factor to measure and consider is the minimum wage. The higher the barriers to entry for the young to enter the labor force, the harder it is to get on the great American prosperity escalator. Ideally, we'd look at entry-level jobs as the equivalent of classrooms for the soft skills needed to "graduate" into more sophisticated jobs.
Russia has more tanks invading Ukraine than all of Europe has tanks at all
That's an epic imbalance. Russia has invaded Ukraine in a big way, and that's not a settled condition.
Some people still look at public service with humility
A thoughtful brief essay on the dignity of serving in the Executive Branch.
"[L]eft-wing economic populists are enjoying a resurgence [...] This is a scandal." Venezuela is a grave example. In the words of the Associated Press reporter who has at last decided it's time to leave the country: "There was no war or natural disaster. Just ruinous mismanagement..." Venezuela's catastrophe is man-made, and its only way out will be man-made, too. Unfortunately, they're in the violent score-settling phase of a civil collapse, where opposition leaders are hauled off in the dark of night by shadowy forces.
Parts of Iowa are 16" above normal precip for the year
Others are 8" below. And they're not really that far apart.
A novel and interesting angle on the universal basic income
Consider: A complex welfare system rewards those who have the skills required to navigate it successfully. Those are skills that could be put to better use in the working world. While that's not a definitive case for the UBI, it's well worth taking into account. In a similar vein, there are people who doubt the value of revenue-neutral tax reform. They shouldn't be such skeptics: It's the same logic that rewards using an EZ-Pass on a toll road or a touchless card on a subway: Same cost, but with lower "friction" loss. If you pay the same amount but with less transactional friction, you're still better off.
NTSB report on narrowly-avoided disaster at San Francisco airport
An Air Canada jet almost landed on a crowded taxiway. The pilots got confused, and the radar system that's supposed to prevent this kind of thing didn't because the plane was in a blind spot. It could have been a calamity of huge proportions, and the pilots involved weren't rookies -- 30,000 flight hours between them.
One in 50 US deaths are drug-related
It's a problem that has at least doubled in magnitude in the last 15 years. Any condition like this ought to be treated as an urgent public-health problem, which is how we should have been addressing drugs all along.
European Council president: "There is a question mark over Poland's European future today"
Wouldn't pushing them away reward the people who want to take their country backwards and isolate the liberalizers?
Too many generals in the civilian government?
It's possible that we can have several good individuals serving as former military leaders in civil office right now, and still be engaging in a hazardous concept.
The White House isn't a "dump"
An expensive suit can look like a wreck if it doesn't fit the man. Maybe it's the same with a house that doesn't suit the occupant.
Retired pennies in the floor
Someone wants to experiment with the Dunkin' Donuts name
Taking the "Donuts" out of Dunkin' Donuts is like taking the "Burger" out of Burger King.
Exports are up and imports are down. Among those who will seek undeserved credit for this, who will acknowledge the impact of a weak US dollar in making our exports cheaper and imports from other places more expensive? The dollar is much-weakened (down 8% in value since November), and whether that is a direct result of politics or not, it's entirely unfair for anyone to take credit for "doing" anything politically to level out the balance of trade. Note, too, that the weak dollar has an inflationary effect on the stock market, so when the President tries taking credit for the stock market, he's doing so absent the offsetting impact of what's happened to the dollar.
34 million immigrants are in the US legally
Including 19.8 million who are naturalized citizens, which is a population equal to the State of New York -- the 4th largest state. A true credit to our nation.
