Europe is further down the drain

Than the US is.  This week's  Economist showed a couple of telling charts.  Chart 1 shows the European tax load for each employee.  The Euro average is 30%.  Each employee hired, hikes the employer's taxes by 30% of the new hire's wages.  In short, new employees cost 30% more in taxes that what the company has to pay them.  Pricey.
   In the US the tax load is only 20%. 
   And we have a graph of "protection against layoffs", on an arbitrary scale.  Europe has an average of 2.5, with Portugal leading the pack at 3.  The US is only 0.25.  The Brits are doing better than the European average at 1.0.   Granted it's nice for workers to be protected against layoffs.  But it slows the overall economy if companies know they cannot layoff workers when business gets bad.  To avoid being stuck with  well paid workers with full benefits, companies simply do not hire.  Which accounts for Europe's horrible unemployment rate.     Supporting data for the notion of American exceptionalism.  America's economy is far better than the EU economy because of less tax load on employment and more labor mobility, companies are willing to hire and grow because they know they won't be stuck with unneeded workers in a business slowdown. 
   The Europeans have much cushier social welfare, but the cost is massive unemployment.   Which would you rather have, a job, or cushy government benefits and unemployment for 10% of the workforce?

The surveillance state reaches out

So I bought an HO model railcar.  Inside the box was a slip of paper offering to sell me a $4 decal sheet of different road numbers.  $4, last of the big time spenders. 
  In the upper right hand corner was this:  "Due to banking restrictions, we are no longer able to accept checks or money orders drawn on non-US banks (includes postal money orders)."
Wow!  $4 checks or money orders might aide terrorism.  Or stamp out money laundering.  $4, big money that.  Or US banks want to stick it to overseas competitors?  with Uncle Sam's help? 
Clearly some Treasury Dept snivel servant has too much free time if he can think up Mickey Mouse like this. 

Clothes shopping for Guys

Depressing mostly.  I'm going to my 55th high school reunion shortly and I thought at my age I ought not to show up in khakis out at the knee.  Littleton really only has Walmarts for guys clothes.  I both a few there and then for variety, I drove over to North Conway to shop the world famous outlet stores. 
  Weather was poor.  Overcast, cold, snowing thru Crawford Notch.  Great Depression 2.0 has been hard on North Conway, it shows.  Numerous strip malls and outlet stores closed and empty.  North Conway is a pure tourist town, anchored by the ski area on Mt. Cranmore (home of the eccentric ski mobile lift) and a main street (Rt 16) wall to wall outlet stores.  Granted it is mud season, inbetween ski season and summer season, but still, the number of dead storefronts was discouraging.
   Then it's hard to find stores that carry stuff in my size.  The racks are all full of shirts too small to fit my sons, let alone me.  The slacks are all 34 waist by 36 inseam, I haven't worn a  34 waist since high school, which was 55 years ago.  The shirts are mostly knit tee shirts with collars, the few shirts tailored from real woven cloth cost $50 apiece, a ripoff  IMHO.  Even more depressing are the LL Bean khakis with only the waist size marked.  They expect you to find a tailor to cuff the inseam at the right length.  Great, I'm really gonna get wash pants tailored, even $65 a pair wash pants. 
   Dunno what the chicks see in clothes shopping. 

"Investing" in the Balsams.

For those readers outside of New Hampshire, the Balsams was a big old summer resort way up in northern NH, up in Dixville Notch.  Times were hard, and the Balsams went out of business a few years ago.  Now there is a push to revive the Balsams.  Adding urgency is the collapse of the paper industry in northern NH.  All the mills are now closed, and the northern mill towns like Berlin and Clearbrooke and Lancaster are hurting.  The hurt is so bad you can see it just driving thru town.  So naturally everyone in Coos County is in favor. 
  Trouble is, the developer[s] are saying they need government support to the tune of at least $28 million in cash, and more in loan guarantees.  Money to come maybe from the state, and maybe some from Coos county.  Loan guarantees to come from the State.  Which means the taxpayers cover the developer's risks.  If the project goes belly up in a few years,  my tax dollars make good the developer's losses. 
  The real question is, can the Balsams be made to work?  To make enough money to pay its suppliers, its workers, and service its debt.  Good question, which nobody is asking.  The Balsams is way far north, too far north to attract Boston skiers.  The drive is just too long.  The Canadians don't ski in NH much, they go north to Mt. Tremblant in Quebec.  Tremblant gets more snow and more cold than NH 'cause it's 150 miles further north. 
   I'd like to see a real business plan, one that shows how many skiers, hikers, snowmobilers, and others it needs to cover projected costs.  I haven't seen it yet. 
   I'm OK with spending my tax money to bring some business and employment to hard stricken Coos country.  But I'd like to see that the money has a chance of doing some good rather than just getting flushed down the drain.

Grilling Hillary

The MSM is sure putting up a lotta flak aimed at Hillary.  The uranium thing being the latest.  Could it be that the MSM doesn't like her?  And is any of the flak scoring?  The registered democrats (yellow dog democrats) will vote democratic no matter what.  The registered republicans will vote against her no matter what.  What are the independents thinking?  
I notice that the Hillary camp isn't saying much, or at least isn't getting their side of the story out to TV.  Silence gives assent.  If she doesn't say something, the mud will stick. 
If the flak brings down Hillary, who will the democrats run?  And will he/she/or it be any better? Or easier to beat?   
Inquiring minds want to know. 

Hiking Minimum Wage

The Dems are all in favor.  They think all the people making minimum wage will enjoy a pay hike and vote democratic in return.  But what about all those people thrown out of work 'cause the business loses money when it pays it's unskilled labor $15 an hour?  Well, they probably don't vote.  In fact they are less likely to vote after loosing their jobs.
  What is a just and equitable wage? And how, and by whom,should it be set?  A business has a lot of claims upon it's money.  It has to pay it's suppliers, the rent, the utilities, plant maintenance, advertising, the investors, wages, taxes, new product development, pensions, and lots of other things.  How much should go to wages, as opposed to all those other things?
   Free market thinking is that the business bids for workers against all the other businesses around.  Workers, finding a business willing to pay more than their current employer, change jobs.  This way the business that needs the labor the most gets it, 'cause they are willing to pay more for it.  This works better than the now discredited Soviet communist idea of the state allocating workers to industries as it saw fit.  And setting their wages too. 
   This can be hard on the workers, especially the unskilled workers, when there are plenty of workers and not enough jobs.  In this case, companies don't have to offer much in the way of wages to get all the labor they can use.  There are plenty more workers out there, all needing a job, and willing to work for less. 
   In America, labor unions solved this problem.  Organize the plant, lead the workers out on strike, and management will cave.  This takes some doing on the part of the workers, but it has been done, repeatedly, and it works.  Management has been so terrorized by unions that it will do anything to keep their workers happy enough that they won't unionize.  Non union companies pay pretty much the same as union companies, in order to stay non-union. 
  So, American wages are set by a combination of free market supply and demand, and union activism.  Due to the long long Great Depression 2.0 that set in with the Obama election in 2008, wages have been flat since then.  Companies lack customers, and everyone understands that a wage hike means a price hike which means fewer sales and hence layoffs.  Nobody is very happy about the situation,  but everyone figures it's better than unemployment or going out of business.  So wages stay flat, and except for crazies like Boeing's machinist's union, nobody goes on strike.  Everybody is waiting for the economy to get better.
   So, with things sorta balanced out, but sorta shaky, is it smart, or ethical, to pass a $15 an hour minimum wage that will throw a lot of people out of work?  This kinda boat rocking can tip the boat clean over and put us all in the drink.

How do I get photos OFF the tracfone?

Let's see, I got the Tracfone (LG model 305c) to dial, keep a phone list, speak to the new router via WIFI, and snap a picture.  It's still flaky on answering an incoming call.  But I haven't found out how to get the photo OFF the cell phone.  My two computers won't talk to the phone on USB.  They don't see the phone in network neighborhood.  The phone offered to send the photos but all it offered for destination was telephone numbers.  My real telephone number is a plain old wired phone, which will not do anything with pictures except make funny noises in the earpiece. 
   The secret of connecting to the router is two fold.  Learning how to input an alpha password using the telephone keypad, and replacing the router with a new one to which I was sure I knew the password.  I might had changed the password on the old router and forgotten what it was.  Old router went belly up and refused to connect to the Internet, so I bought a new one and now two computers and one cell phone are talking on it, I think.
  Any suggestions are welcome.