The Weird, Random, and Interesting things that Fit Nowhere Else Thread..

[Amentep]

Thor 23%

Hawkeye 21%

Black Widow 21%

Nick Fury 14%

Captain America 7%

Iron Man 7%

Hulk 7%

[Raithe]

For the Forbes...   Forbes - Seeing the effects of Seattle's 15 an hour minimum wage
 
 

Some time back I wrote a piece entitled “We can predict the effects of Seattle’s $15 an hour minimum wage.” It’s here. And without going into boring detail it essentially said that we’d see what we would expect to see from a rise in the price of something, that is a fall in the demand for it. Ever since I’ve had comments from people insisting that human labor just doesn’t work that way. That if wages rise then actually more people are going to get employed. An example came in only this morning:

Between January and December of 2014, while Seatac’s business owners (and their customers) were absorbing the cost of paying minimum wage employees $15, unemployment decreased 17.46%, falling from 6.3% to 5.2%. It turns out that you CAN increase the minimum wage (even in large increments) and increase overall employment at the same time.

 
No one at all has ever doubted that it is possible to increase employment and the minimum wage at the same time. The impact of the general economy is usually going to be larger than the impact of the minimum wage. The impact of that general economy could mean that employment rises, stays the same or falls, whatever happens to the minimum wage. But that’s not the interesting thing we’d like to know. Which is, what is the effect of raising the minimum wage on unemployment? Freed from the impacts of everything else happening in the economy? And there the standard answer is that it will raise unemployment and no, no one has managed to come up with a convincing case against this standard wisdom.
 
Do note what actually happened in that general economy over that same time period. The US unemployment rate fell, over that year, from 6.6% to 5.6%. Seatac’s performance is, including the usual boundaries for error, actually the same as the US economy’s. Which isn’t all that surprising really as the minimum wage rise at Seatac affected 1,500 people (yes, that’s all) and we’d not expect to see any effect at all in macroeconomic figures from so trivial a change.
However, we are seeing changes in the rather larger case of Seattle itself, as I predicted we would:

Though none of our local departing/transitioning restaurateurs who announced their plans last month have elaborated on the issue, another major factor affecting restaurant futures in our city is the impending minimum wage hike to $15 per hour. Starting April 1, all businesses must begin to phase in the wage increase: Small employers have seven years to pay all employees at least $15 hourly; large employers (with 500 or more employees) have three.

Since the legislation was announced last summer, The Seattle Times and Eater have reported extensively on restaurant owners’ many concerns about how to compensate for the extra funds that will now be required for labor: They may need to raise menu prices, source poorer ingredients, reduce operating hours, reduce their labor and/or more.

Washington Restaurant Association’s Anton puts it this way: “It’s not a political problem; it’s a math problem.”

Restaurants are closing at higher than normal rates. And Seattle is already a fairly high wage place:

Regarding amount of labor, at 14 employees, a Washington restaurant already averages three fewer workers than the national restaurant average (17 employees).

As Don Boudreaux likes to point out one of the reasons we don’t see large job losses (as opposed to small ones) from rises in the minimum wage is because we’ve had a minimum wage for a long time and have already lost a lot of jobs as a result.

And there’s more such reporting going on too:

As the implementation date for Seattle’s strict $15 per hour minimum wage law approaches, the city is experiencing a rising trend in restaurant closures. The tough new law goes into effect April 1st. The closings have occurred across the city, from Grub in the upscale Queen Anne Hill neighborhood, to Little Uncle in gritty Pioneer Square, to the Boat Street Cafe on Western Avenue near the waterfront.

The shut-downs have idled dozens of low-wage workers, the very people advocates say the wage law is supposed to help. Instead of delivering the promised “living wage” of $15 an hour, economic realities created by the new law have dropped the hourly wage for these workers to zero.

Advocates of a high minimum wage said businesses would simply pay the mandated wage out of profits, raising earnings for workers. Restaurants operate on thin margins, though, with average profits of 4% or less, and the business is highly competitive.

Human labor really is an economic good like pretty much all of the others. Raise the price and the demand for it will drop (another way of putting this is that human labor is not a Giffen Good). Please do note though what is the prediction. Not that there’s going to be a wiping out of employment opportunities, nor that the economy of Seattle is going to become a howling wasteland. Rather, that less human labor will be employed at $15 an hour than would have been employed if the minimum wage had not risen to that amount. And for people who would like to have a job but now cannot find one that’s bad news.

 

[Rosbjerg]

Higher wages all around could also means more purchases as consumers are better off and can afford to spend more, or means restaurants could raise prices without hurting profits / scaring away customers... Raising prices doesn't automatically = fall in demand, especially not if the demand is still as high and the purchasing power follows suit.

 

[Nonek]

 

Which Avenger are you?

 

http://marvel.com/whichavengerareyou/en_US/

 

 

John Steed - 100%

[Amentep]

 

 

 

Which Avenger are you?

 

http://marvel.com/whichavengerareyou/en_US/

 

John Steed - 100%

Figured you for Dr. Keel, personally.

[Gromnir]

woulda' assumed we would get nick fury as our #1, but apparently black widow edged him by 2%.  we do have stereoscopic vision and a good bum, so perhaps that would explain.

 

even so, w/o a moon knight option, we don't see any avengers with whom we would natural identify. 

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Bartimaeus]

The last 2% (100/14 questions = 7% per question, remainder 2%) just goes to whatever you score highest at (review everyone's previous scores and/or retake the test and answer randomly, if you want to confirm), and it seems like it goes at random if you have multiple tying for the highest. The test isn't designed all that well, and it's especially frustrating that there are more than four answers per question (I would wager there's likely 7 - one for each character - but I didn't actually check)...but you're only given four out of each question's pool for each taking of the test. So even if you actually matched them perfectly in actuality, a given character's answer is likely to be missing randomly at least a few times because of the four answer limit and you'll have to make do and answer non-optimally in favor of a different character.

 

So...in reality, the test isn't even capable of competently determining what character you most match: retake it and answer in the exact mindset as you had the previous time, and it's quite likely you'll be forced to answer differently as a few of your original answers may not be present for some questions...and you may want to answer differently for a few others as different and new answers may more closely match what you actually think. It's very possible you'll "match" a different character most if you didn't have a super-majority like I did.

 

(e): making this post actually coherent

Edited June 9, 2015 by Bartimaeus

[ShadySands]

Oh man, Moon Knight, that takes me back

 

I completely forgot about him

[ManifestedISO]

Dagmar will always be my girl, and for ten months I also fell in love with Megan, but Vanessa shines brightest through the marine layer covering my heart.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNTBHQlWIDU 

[Malcador]

[Raithe]

Snerk.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVylJLQn4vI

[Agiel]

 

For the Forbes...   Forbes - Seeing the effects of Seattle's 15 an hour minimum wage

 

 

Some time back I wrote a piece entitled “We can predict the effects of Seattle’s $15 an hour minimum wage.” It’s here. And without going into boring detail it essentially said that we’d see what we would expect to see from a rise in the price of something, that is a fall in the demand for it. Ever since I’ve had comments from people insisting that human labor just doesn’t work that way. That if wages rise then actually more people are going to get employed. An example came in only this morning:

 

 

 

Between January and December of 2014, while Seatac’s business owners (and their customers) were absorbing the cost of paying minimum wage employees $15, unemployment decreased 17.46%, falling from 6.3% to 5.2%. It turns out that you CAN increase the minimum wage (even in large increments) and increase overall employment at the same time.

 

No one at all has ever doubted that it is possible to increase employment and the minimum wage at the same time. The impact of the general economy is usually going to be larger than the impact of the minimum wage. The impact of that general economy could mean that employment rises, stays the same or falls, whatever happens to the minimum wage. But that’s not the interesting thing we’d like to know. Which is, what is the effect of raising the minimum wage on unemployment? Freed from the impacts of everything else happening in the economy? And there the standard answer is that it will raise unemployment and no, no one has managed to come up with a convincing case against this standard wisdom.

 

Do note what actually happened in that general economy over that same time period. The US unemployment rate fell, over that year, from 6.6% to 5.6%. Seatac’s performance is, including the usual boundaries for error, actually the same as the US economy’s. Which isn’t all that surprising really as the minimum wage rise at Seatac affected 1,500 people (yes, that’s all) and we’d not expect to see any effect at all in macroeconomic figures from so trivial a change.

However, we are seeing changes in the rather larger case of Seattle itself, as I predicted we would:

 

Though none of our local departing/transitioning restaurateurs who announced their plans last month have elaborated on the issue, another major factor affecting restaurant futures in our city is the impending minimum wage hike to $15 per hour. Starting April 1, all businesses must begin to phase in the wage increase: Small employers have seven years to pay all employees at least $15 hourly; large employers (with 500 or more employees) have three.

 

Since the legislation was announced last summer, The Seattle Times and Eater have reported extensively on restaurant owners’ many concerns about how to compensate for the extra funds that will now be required for labor: They may need to raise menu prices, source poorer ingredients, reduce operating hours, reduce their labor and/or more.

 

Washington Restaurant Association’s Anton puts it this way: “It’s not a political problem; it’s a math problem.”

Restaurants are closing at higher than normal rates. And Seattle is already a fairly high wage place:

Regarding amount of labor, at 14 employees, a Washington restaurant already averages three fewer workers than the national restaurant average (17 employees).

As Don Boudreaux likes to point out one of the reasons we don’t see large job losses (as opposed to small ones) from rises in the minimum wage is because we’ve had a minimum wage for a long time and have already lost a lot of jobs as a result.

 

And there’s more such reporting going on too:

 

As the implementation date for Seattle’s strict $15 per hour minimum wage law approaches, the city is experiencing a rising trend in restaurant closures. The tough new law goes into effect April 1st. The closings have occurred across the city, from Grub in the upscale Queen Anne Hill neighborhood, to Little Uncle in gritty Pioneer Square, to the Boat Street Cafe on Western Avenue near the waterfront.

 

The shut-downs have idled dozens of low-wage workers, the very people advocates say the wage law is supposed to help. Instead of delivering the promised “living wage” of $15 an hour, economic realities created by the new law have dropped the hourly wage for these workers to zero.

 

Advocates of a high minimum wage said businesses would simply pay the mandated wage out of profits, raising earnings for workers. Restaurants operate on thin margins, though, with average profits of 4% or less, and the business is highly competitive.

Human labor really is an economic good like pretty much all of the others. Raise the price and the demand for it will drop (another way of putting this is that human labor is not a Giffen Good). Please do note though what is the prediction. Not that there’s going to be a wiping out of employment opportunities, nor that the economy of Seattle is going to become a howling wasteland. Rather, that less human labor will be employed at $15 an hour than would have been employed if the minimum wage had not risen to that amount. And for people who would like to have a job but now cannot find one that’s bad news.

 

 

 

Kind of wonder what that means for recent grads going into entry-level but college diploma-required positions in fields like creative services and IT and nurses. Fresh out of college I made $16/hr with medical, vision, dental, and massage and chiropractor with it. But now people are speaking of $15/hr minimum wage in LA, so the person with that job would make only marginally more per hour than a burger flipper still in high school  Hopefully "a rising tide raises all ships" comes into play for those positions and they get a corresponding pay increase as well.

Edited June 10, 2015 by Agiel

[kirottu]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Voa9QwiBJwE#t=8m57s

 

Chess grandmaster gets tricked by an amateur. Don't get scared by the length of the video. The match in question only lasts few minutes. 

[Calax]

 

Blast from the PAST! (don't watch the whole thing).

[Gfted1]

Stepson of Stuxnet stalked Kaspersky for months, tapped Iran nuke talks.

[Gfted1]

Tourists Detained in Malaysia After Nude Photos Were Said To Cause Quake.

 

Primitives gonna primitive.

[Malcador]

Actually being charged for indecency. One of them is a Canadian, responded to this with "**** your culture" and seems to be a scumbag in dire need of a public flogging.

 

http://www.thestar.com.my/News/Nation/2015/06/08/Sbah-quake-nudist-dismisses-superstition/

Edited June 10, 2015 by Malcador

[ShadySands]

Tourists Detained in Malaysia After Nude Photos Were Said To Cause Quake.

 

Primitives gonna primitive.

 

What kind of barbarians are these tourists? Don't they know better than to provoke the mountain?

[Agiel]

Reminds me of the "Boobquake" thing a couple of years back in response to an Iranian cleric saying indecent women's dress was responsible for earthquakes.

 

I think that's feminism everyone here can get behind.

[ShadySands]

Boobquake, huh?

 

If I ever die that's how I want to go

[Gfted1]

Dusty Rhodes, "The American Dream," dies at age 69.

 

That stinks. I grew up watching him drop Atomic Elbows on mofo's, like Iron Sheik.

[Meshugger]

I think this story is weird enough for this thread: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3121061/Local-NAACP-leader-professor-African-studies-outed-WHITE-parents-convincing-community-black-years.html?ito=social-twitter_dailymailus

[Blarghagh]

I think this story is weird enough for this thread: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3121061/Local-NAACP-leader-professor-African-studies-outed-WHITE-parents-convincing-community-black-years.html?ito=social-twitter_dailymailus

 

...

[Malcador]

I guess she identifies as one.

 

For those not wishing to read the Fail - http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/12/civil-rights-activist-rachel-dolezal-misrepresented-herself-as-black-claim-parents

Edited June 12, 2015 by Malcador

[Malcador]