Is today good? I can do it. I'm not really doing anything...

Well, here's a bit of post-Christmas cheer. Personally, I don't really see the point of the whole 30 days thing. I mean, why put off until tomorrow what can be done today?

On the minimum wage

I'm sure I've commented on the minimum wage before, but I don't feel like looking for it. And since it's coming up in the media again, I thought it was worth a fresh look.

As part of their first legislative actions, the Democrats have pledged to raise the minimum wage. And, as seems to be getting more and more frequent, President Bush is just bending over and taking it. But that's another issue entirely.

As a free market conservative, I essentially have to be against minimum wage laws. Of course, this often gets me branded as a money-grubbing, greedy, evil, soulless shell of a human being. But, I'm able to ignore such labeling because I know I'm right nonetheless.

Conservatives in general have done an absolutely pathetic job of framing this debate, but it's not entirely our fault. Any time an emotional (i.e. liberal) argument is countered with an intellectual argument, it will always be a losing proposition for the intellectual.

In this case, liberals talk about wanting to help those less fortunate, and say how it's only a dollar or two, and how people need to be able to eat and feed their families, etc. And Americans get all misty-eyed and go along with it because we're naturally a compassionate people. So when conservatives start talking about economic principles, production possibilities frontiers, Laffer curves, etc., people just tune out.

But it's still a debate worth having on the off chance that someone might listen and be swayed.

First and foremost, it is not the government's concern as to the wages paid by private businesses to its private employees. Look at it from the other side. What if the government sought to impose a maximum wage? What if the government went to a section of the workforce and said 'Sorry, you're making too much money, so we're imposing a law to lower your salary.' There would be riots. Not to mention the fact that the vast majority of the American people would think the idea of a maximum wage is absolutely ridiculous. Which it is. But why is the idea of a minimum wage so widely accepted?

Also, wages should be based on the worth of the work. If the government raised the minimum wage by $2.00, is the work done by the people in those job going to be worth $2.00 more? Not likely.

From an economic standpoint, artificially raising wages actually loses jobs. Now, I know some of you are going to say 'But millions of jobs were created after the last raise in the minimum wage.' That's true, but it's likely that the job growth was actually stifled by the wage hike and more jobs would have been created without it.

For example, say there are five employees working for the current minimum wage. Working at $5.15 an hour, eight hour days and five day weeks, each employee makes $206 a week, costing the business a total of $1,030 per week. Now, say the wage is raised to $7.15 an hour. That raises the business' total cost to $1,430. So, where is the business going to get the $400 dollars to cover the salary gap? Raise prices? That hurts business and leads to less revenue. More likely, the business would just fire two of the employees. So, while three people have been helped marginally, two others have been hurt immensely.

More over, as employers are forced to artificially raise the wages they pay, they'll be less likely to hire lower quality workers. Why hire someone at $7.00 an hour when their work is only worth $4.00? What a minimum wage law essentially says is that anyone whose work isn't worth the minimum wage shouldn't be employed. That's asinine.

People also shouldn't kid themselves about how many people would benefit from such a wage hike. Only some five percent of the workforce makes less than $7.15 an hour. And, as I mentioned before, how many of those workers would end up losing their jobs due to the hike?

The bottom line is that minimum wage laws have no business in a free market economy. But beyond that, it's just bad policy in that it hurts many of the people it supposedly tries to help.

And, as always, if you don't want to work a minimum wage job, be a better employee. Read a book or two. Get that GED. Show up for work on time and actually work hard. It can't be that hard if 95 percent of the country manages to do it. Not to be a jerk or anything, but come on people.

Pretty much

This more or less sums up my feeling on the current situation in the Middle East. [Insert Diety here] help us. What worries me is that I'm afraid it very well might cost us 50 million lives when all is said and done. Maybe more, given that the potential for the use of nuclear weapons goes up exponentially the longer this drags on.

Here we go again

About this time last year, I commented on the 'War on Christmas.' Well, like the rash after that weekend in Vegas, it still hasn't gone away.

I don't have anything new to say on the matter, except that there's a certain faction of these 'Christmas warriors' that seriously rub me the wrong way. They're the people that boycott stores that don't utter the phrase 'Merry Christmas.'

Really?

I've got no problem with people, or stores for that matter, wishing me a "Merry Christmas" even though I don't celebrate it. But I do have a problem with people who are angry that stores don't wish them a "Merry Christmas." That's just asinine. Heaven forbid an establishment wouldn't just assume that everyone wants to be wished a "Merry Christmas."

Is "Season's Greetings" too offensive? What about "Happy Holidays"? Are we really going to start pitching fits when stores don't acknowledge our holidays exactly the way we want them to? When did Americans become so whiny? (And why am I asking so many rhetorical questions?)

And now for something completely different

In an effort to keep my head from exploding, I'm going to get off the whole 'The world is going to hell' thing for a little while. In the meantime, I found this video quite amusing. You might've already seen it, but it's still worth posting.

We're not winning! We're not winning! We're not winning!

Number 23,492 on my list of Things I Hate About the Media popped up today. During his confirmation hearings today, Secretary of Defense nominee Rober+ Ga+es was asked if the U.S. was winning in Iraq. He gave a simple two-word answer: no, sir.

Now, it seems to me that the answer to such a loaded question would be just a titch more complex than that. But ok.

Naturally, the media proceeded to breathlessly plaster the misleading headline, literally, all over the world. And of course, in an attempt to appear prophetic, nay-sayers everywhere started a chorus of "See? I told you so." (Personally, if you've been saying we weren't the war since it started, I don't believe your opinion counts. Yeah, I can say it's going to rain every day for two weeks. If it happens to rain on day 14, it doesn't make me brilliant.)

But more to the point: what constitutes "winning" and, if we haven't yet attained it, how do we get there?

Since the beginning of the war, I've had disdain for those who expected this venture to be quick and easy. There was a noticeable amount of squawking recently when it came to be that we have been in Iraq longer than we were involved in WWII.

This in and of itself is misleading. We fought WWII until we'd forced the surrender of the Axis powers. At the time, this took about four years and cost about 300,000 American lives. Bear in mind that this is only major combat operations. In terms of how long we were actually in theater, that number is running about, oh, 65 years, because we're still there.

For some perspective, we toppled the Hussein government in right around three weeks with less than 200 combat deaths. Granted, over the last four years there have been about 2,900 American deaths (about 2,400 from actual combat). But that's still more than 100 times less than the sacrifice during WWII. In fact, more American servicemen died in a botched training exercise than have died in the entire Iraq campaign.

Granted, military success can't solely be measured in casualty numbers. But it can hardly be argued that we aren't militarily winning in Iraq. (For what it's worth, Rober+ Ga+es made a similar clarification during his testimony.)

All that said, the political progress in Iraq has certainly left something to be desired. Are we winning? Maybe not. But nor are we losing. Yet. We're simply not trying. We're not doing what needs to be done in order to win. We're trying to fight a war without upsetting anyone, and all that does is upset more people.

The enemy is using our political correctness against us. They use mosques as sniping posts. They use women and children as human shields. They intentionally target civilians in order to insert an air of chaos into their society.

We cannot overcome this if we continue our current modus operandi. As I said, it doesn't mean we're losing. It means we need to change the game plan to one that will speed victory, as opposed to forfeiting.

It's probably a good thing that the Defense-Secretary-to-be recognizes that the current game plan isn't working. But now it becomes a question of what the game plan should be. Do we do what needs to be done to win, or do we pack up and go home?

Many of those who take Ga+es' opinion as a validation of their peace-at-any-cost worldview likely hope that we take the latter option.

If that's the path we take, however, you can be sure that there will be bloodshed on a scale that we have not yet seen in Iraq. And that blood will be on the hands of those who lead our retreat.

Hey, aren't you married to what's-his-face?

Many people are upset about the things Gwene+h Pa|trow recently said about Americans. For those unaware, she essentially (and by that I mean 'directly') said that we are less civilized and less intelligent than our English brethren.

I don't see the big deal. If I got upset about every American celebrity that spoke ill of America, I wouldn't have any time to get upset about the Foreign celebrities that speak ill of America. Not really, but you get my point. Unless you're uncivilized and stupid.

People, and even celebrities, will always find something to harp on about America. Why? Because in a country of 300+ million people, we've probably got someone you can hate. Ignoring for the moment that it is the very same 'uncivilized' and 'unintelligent' populous that allows Ms. Pa|trow to live the life that she does, if she has disdain for such people there are certainly plenty in America. There are also, however, plenty of exceedingly brilliant Americans that would take exception to the actress' characterization.

America is a one-stop-shop for stuff that pisses people off. If, like most of Europe, you hold disdain for prudish religious types, America was founded by them. If, like Islamic extremists, you have a homicidal rage for secularists with licentious morals, there are plenty of those in America as well. Hate war-mongering conservatives? Hate tree-hugging liberals? Hate black people? Jews? Country music? You'll find plenty of all of it in America. It comes with the territory of being a 'melting pot.'

Personally, I find it a bit unintelligent to over-generalize a nation as large and diverse as America. But maybe that's just me.

I've heard several people saying that they plan to boycott Pa|trow's movies. I was all in favor of that until I realized that I had, in fact, never paid to see one of her movies in the first place. (Incidentally, I had a similar realization when people vowed never to buy another Dixie Chicks album.)