The fundamental transformation of the country just keeps coming

March 19, 2024

Being fed up with most everything that has made America the very special place that it is, those on the left want to change how our system of employment works. We have fairly recently seen efforts to replace people getting promotions and raises due to the level of their performance with a focus on DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion). With DEI, getting a particular job or a raise is based upon who they are, their race, gender, etc., not their level of skills and knowledge.

One aspect of this desire for change was posted in a meme on Facebook that said: “Every single job should pay a living wage. If the work matters enough to hire someone to do it, that worker should be able to afford a safe, comfy home; fresh, nutritious food; and fun vacation sometimes, and enough left to save. Yes, every single job, including yours.” 

First, there is the question what a living wage is, and who gets to decide that? A living wage in some cities and areas of the country is very different from a living wage in towns and cities in other places.

This idea ignores the different levels and requirements of jobs.  Some have high demands and greater needs, and higher pay. Others have low requirements, with lower pay. Then there is the background and level of performance of the worker. Under this theory, a high school or college student working a very basic job should earn a wage high enough to satisfy the details of the Facebook meme. Or someone in an apprenticeship learning the basics of a new job should earn a living wage from day one.

The job/pay situation is complicated.

Support for reducing the standard 40-hour, five-day workweek to a 32-hour, four-day workweek has recently gained momentum. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT, has introduced a bill to do just that. Under his bill, people will work a four-day week, but be paid for what they would earn working a five-day week.

The 40-hour workweek has been the standard for some 80 years, being brought into effect by the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1940. It has worked very well, for the most part. But, Sanders says that due to advances in automation and other aspects of production, companies can afford to give employees more time off, but keep their pay and benefits the same.

He told a Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions that the economic gains that have resulted from automation and other factors have benefitted CEOs, while workers have still made the same amount of money.

“The question that we are asking today is a pretty simple question,” Sanders said. “Do we continue the trend that technology only benefits the people on top, or do we demand that these transformational changes benefit working people? And, one of these benefits must be a lower workweek, 32-hour workweek. This is not a radical idea.”

However, if labor and machine operation are reduced by 20 hours a week, productivity will drop by 20 percent. Employers will have the same labor costs, but will have fewer goods and services to sell. Businesses will lose income and profit.

The employer will then have to raise prices to compensate for the lost productivity, or hire more workers to take up the slack. More workers may make up the loss of productivity, but that will cause an increase in labor costs. 

Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy argued that the proposal is essentially a pay increase forced upon businesses. And, he predicted that the 32-hour workweek would "destroy some employers" who would be unable to adjust to the new system.

Both of these concepts — first, that every worker should get a living wage, regardless of job demands, ability and experience; and, second, pay workers the same for working 32 hours per week as they got for 40 hours per week — are typical of liberal/socialist “reasoning.” They represent what the great economist and author Thomas Sowell so rightly termed “stage-one thinking.” 

Stage-one thinking is when an idea pops up that delights many, and they react with “Wow! What a great idea. Let’s do it!” They fail to look beyond the attractiveness of that “great idea” to see what might happen down the road. After it has been in effect for a while, the results are most often much worse than expected.

So often, liberal/socialist ideas target and negatively affect businesses, because the proponents of these ideas think businesses are just selfish entities that take advantage of their workers. But businesses provide jobs and make things we want and need. And, being able to work and earn money to live on is a good thing. Without businesses that can operate relatively freely, where would we get the things we need and want?

It is also a good thing that in America anyone can pursue any work area they choose, and so long as they can learn the trade or profession and perform it at a suitable level, they will be happy and can live a decent life.

Recklessly altering this proven system is a dangerous move that will likely produce negative effects on the country, its people and its businesses.

“As California goes, so goes the nation.” Is that still true?

Not so long ago, California was “the” place to be. Known as “The Golden State,” it has beautiful topography, with the ocean, cliffs, lakes, mountains and forests, and generally nice, warm weather that lured those from other states to visit, and even to relocate. Many special attractions add to the state’s allure.

The state’s openness to, and propensity for novel ideas on government and other things led to the creation of phrase “As California goes, so goes the nation.”

Today, California is only a dark shadow of its former self. The natural beauty is still there, many of the other attractions remain, but the state has lost much of its charm and allure.

In certain areas it is very expensive to live, and that situation has not been improving of late. AMAC Magazine tells us that “In 1970, Californians spent three times their salary on a home.” That cost/earnings ratio has risen to 10 times salary. 

This and other factors drove a million residents to other states between 2007 and 2016. “The online survey, conducted [in January] by Edelman Intelligence, found that 53 percent of Californians surveyed are considering fleeing, representing a jump over the 49 percent polled a year ago,” as reported by CNBC. 

Taxes add to the discomfort. In some locations the state sales tax is worsened by local sales taxes, and the total tax averages out to 8.54 percent for people in those locations, one of the highest in the country. The 18-cents per-gallon gasoline tax makes things even worse.

The state has become very difficult for middle income earners, who can’t afford to live there comfortably anymore. 

As a result of high taxes and aggressive regulation, businesses now do studies to see if it makes economic sense for them to expand in California, or expand elsewhere, or to totally move from the state.

California’s “sanctuary state” status puts unneeded stress on social welfare programs and public education, both of which are funded by taxes. And, the homeless population is out of control.  

“In 2018, there were 129,972 people on the streets on any given night statewide,” as reported by the Los Angeles Times back in August. “The most recent count conducted in Los Angeles County revealed that there were nearly 59,000 homeless people in 2019, while there were 9,784 homeless people in San Francisco, including in jails, hospitals and rehab centers — a jump of 30 percent from 2017.”

And recently the state has been suffering from the annual wildfire season. Each year hundreds of thousands of acres of land and dozens of buildings are lost to these fires, and the lives of thousands of residents are turned upside-down, and some die. And things are getting worse each year.

Many people place blame on climate change, not only for the worsening degree of the fires each year, but for their origin. Democrat California Gov. Gavin Newsom, his predecessor, Jerry Brown, and many Newsom political allies claim climate change is driving California’s increasingly intense and deadly wildfires.

While natural circumstances contribute to the problem, most of the fires are started not by nature, but by the actions of people, about 84 percent of them, according to Vox.

Such things as a tree limb contacting a power line. Sparks from a trailer wheel rim with no tire on it produced sparks that caused one fire. Another was deliberately set by an arsonist. And so on.

Some sources say that the degree to which climate change contributes to the fire problem is directly related to the intensity of climate change assumptions that drive the state’s energy and environmental policies. 

“For instance, California’s large and heavily regulated public utilities — PG&E, SDG&E, and SCE — prioritize wind and solar power, leaving little for powerline maintenance and upgrades,” Chuck Devore wrote in The Federalist. “Simply put, the utilities are doing exactly what the regulators tell them to do. They make money for their investors on wind and solar; they don’t on powerline maintenance.”

And a 2015 Reason Foundation study noted: “While it is possible that climate change has played a role in increasing the size of fires, the primary cause seems to be forest management practices, which have changed several times over the course of the past 200 years.”

Failure to harvest timber and manage the downed trees that proliferate in wooded areas and fuel the fires has greatly increased the likelihood, and also the intensity of fires. The policies that limit forest management often are decisions by government to protect wildlife.

No one can argue that California does not have many problems, some very serious. But elected representatives have made scant progress, if any, toward solving the worst of them.

It is a fact that the state government and many/most local governments are and have been under Democrat control for a while. With the hard-left leanings of the current potential Democrat nominees for president, a Democrat president could be a real danger to the country, championing higher taxes and regressive policies such as those in The Golden State.

If it is still true that “As California goes, so goes the nation,” America is in deep trouble.

Clean Water Rule gets its long overdue and well-deserved repeal

President Donald Trump began an effort to relieve the country of an unnecessary and harmful regulation by signing an executive order in February of 2017. The order began the roll-back of the Clean Water Rule put in place by the Obama administration in 2015. The Rule was a regulation published by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the United States Army Corps of Engineers to clarify water resource management in the United States under a provision of the Clean Water Act of 1972. 

That action to repeal the Rule has now been finalized. It has been termed a major win for the rule of law, property rights, and the environment. It was heavily criticized for making it difficult for people to farm or even build a home on their own property.

What it did was to alter the meaning of the phrase “waters of the United States” — those waters under the control of the federal government — to include waters so small that they couldn’t even be seen by the naked eye.

Here is the way the American Farm Bureau Federation explained things: “…distant regulators using ‘desktop tools’ can conclusively establish the presence of a ‘tributary’ on private lands, even where the human eye can’t see water or any physical channel or evidence of water flow. 

“That’s right — invisible tributaries! 

“The agencies even claim ‘tributaries’ exist where remote sensing and other desktop tools indicate a prior existence of bed, banks, and [ordinary high-water marks], where these features are no longer present on the landscape today.”

That definition of what regulated “waters” were literally made it impossible for property owners to know what on their property is or might be covered by the Rule, but subjected them to heavy civil and/or criminal penalties for breaking the Rule.

It would therefore have been possible for dry land that holds water for a few days after heavy rain to be ruled a “water” under the Rule. That meant a mud puddle could have fallen under federal control.

The result was that some perfectly good lands were judged improper for projects their owners intended to use them for, and in the worst cases, land owners were punished for what were otherwise normal, acceptable land uses.

The vagueness of the rule, and thus the danger it imposed on property owners who want to use their property for their chosen purposes, such as to farm it or to develop it, was substantial enough to have drawn criticism from then-U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy back in 2016: “[T]he Clean Water Act is unique in both being quite vague in its reach, arguably unconstitutionally vague, and certainly harsh in the civil and criminal sanctions it puts into practice.”

Its reach also encroached on states’ rights, the ability of the individual states to have much to say about properties within their own borders, an important element of the restrictions imposed on the federal government by the U.S. Constitution.

Such examples of overreaching by the federal government are not difficult to find. They have been growing, as legislators have enacted overreaching laws, and bureaucrats have implemented regulations with the force of law. All of which puts regular citizens at risk of breaking one of the thousands of federal no-nos.

On that topic, Townhall.com said the following in 2016: “There are at least 5,000 federal criminal laws, with 10,000-300,000 regulations that can be enforced criminally. In fact, our entire criminal code has become a leviathan unto itself. In 2003, there were only 4,000 offenses that carried criminal penalties. By 2013, that number had grown by 21 percent to 4,850. The code has become so big, that the Congressional Research Service and the American Bar Association simply do not have enough staff to adequately categorize every law we have on the books.”

This information becomes even more important when considering what might happen after November of 2020 when the nation elects its president for the next four years.

This land, built on the principals of personal freedoms and limited government, has already seen exponential growth in the size and reach of the federal government. The more laws, regulations and rules we have on the books, the less freedom the people have. The number of decrees is unfathomably large and therefore the average person, or even those knowledgeable about laws, cannot possibly know everything for which we citizens can be criminally or civilly punished.

While President Trump believes in removing regulations that needlessly or improperly interfere with normal activities — like the Clean Water Rule — and reducing taxes that allow Americans to keep more of their hard-earned income, the socialistic promises offered by Democrat hopefuls will do a sharp 180 on both of those things.

With a compliant Congress and like-thinking, over-zealous bureaucrats, if one of the more radical folks running for the Democrat nomination gets elected, they could initiate scores of new mandates and prohibitions, further limiting the freedoms of law-abiding Americans.

Robert Francis “Beto” O'Rourke gave a hint to the thinking of some of these people: “Hell, yes, we're going to take your AR-15, your AK-47."

This is precisely the opposite of the attitude we need in the White House.

Jobs combat poverty; over-regulation discourages businesses and jobs

Magatte Wade was born in the West African nation of Senegal, was educated in Germany and France, then came to the U.S. She is a frequent speaker at business conferences and college campuses, including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Cornell, Brown, Dartmouth, MIT, and Wharton. She has started businesses and with her husband is working to create schools in Senegal.

Part of one of her addresses featured on YouTube dealt with how not to be poor. What she said to her audience is a good lesson for everyone.

“People are poor. Why are you poor?” She answered, “you're poor when you don't have enough money to meet your basic needs.” 

And then, the big question: “Where does a source of income come from for most of us?” The answer is, as former Vice President Joe Biden famously said: that three-letter word: ‘JOBS.’

This is not a bolt from the blue to most of us, but to her audiences in colleges and in her native Senegal, this solution may not be so obvious. In fact, some of her audiences responded that jobs actually come from government.

Yes, she responded, some jobs are provided by government. But where does government get the money to pay its employees?

“It comes from taxes. People who work, employees; people who hire them, the companies and employers, pay [taxes] so that we in turn pay these government people.”

So, “we're back to commerce … we're back to business.”

“So I say,” Wade continues, “okay, if ‘jobs’ is the solution to this massive, massive problem we have out there of poverty, then don't you think that maybe we should try to think about where jobs come from?”

If jobs are the answer, and jobs come from entrepreneurs, businesses, “then don't you think that we should really try and pay attention to what type of environment those businesses get to operate in,” Wade asked?

What a concept! Since businesses large and small provide the jobs people need to avoid poverty, and enable workers to pay taxes, and pay taxes themselves to support the government, let’s be careful about the environment that we create for businesses.

In America, it should be easy for someone with a new idea or just the drive to start a business that will provide goods or services, and hire some people to work in it, so long as it follows reasonable laws and regulations. The operative word is, “reasonable.”

Far too often, this is not easy, and sometimes impossible. 

Writing in Business Insider, Michael Snyder addresses this issue. “Small business in the United States is literally being suffocated by red tape. We like to think that we live in ‘the land of the free,’ but the truth is that our lives and our businesses are actually tightly constrained by millions of rules and regulations.” 

“Today there is a ‘license’ for just about every business activity,” Snyder adds. “In fact, in some areas of the country today you need a ‘degree’ and multiple ‘licenses’ before you can even submit an application for permission to start certain businesses.” It gets worse. “And if you want to actually hire some people for your business, the paperwork nightmare gets far worse. It is a wonder that anyone in America is still willing to start a business from scratch and hire employees.”

“The truth is that the business environment in the United States is now so incredibly toxic that millions of Americans have simply given up and don't even try to work within the system anymore.”

To put the regulatory issue into perspective, the Federal Register is where federal rules are catalogued. The number of pages in it was about 2,600 in 1936. That’s a lot of pages of rules, but it pales in comparison to the calendar year of 2016, when the number of Federal Register pages stood at 95,854.

Certain variables factor into this: Some rules take more pages than others, and page size is also important. However, most novels have 250 words per page, and a really long novel has 425 pages. At the end of 2016, the Federal Register had as many pages as 225 long novels, and 383 normal-sized ones.

President Donald Trump has implemented efforts to reduce regulations by signing an executive order on Jan. 31, 2017 for the agency requesting a new regulation to cut two older regulations.

A Daily Caller story said that the Trump administration “reported $23 billion in savings from 176 deregulatory actions in fiscal year 2018. Even more consequential, the administration has issued 65 percent fewer ‘significant’ rules — those with costs that exceed $100 million a year — than the Obama administration, and 51 percent fewer than the Bush administration, after 22 months in office.”

That’s a start, but a lot more needs to be done to give Americans the freedom and ability to start a business or get a job.

A final word from Magatte Wade: “Not living up to our potential is a failure for which the only person who can possibly be responsible is oneself.“

She’s right, of course, but things like over-regulation make that much more difficult for even those who are determined to succeed.