Quotulatiousness

July 2, 2017

Minneapolis is going Seattle one better … and the results will be even worse

Filed under: Business, Economics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Tim Worstall explains why, despite all the pious hopes that significant increases in the minimum wage won’t negatively impact employment or take-home pay, Minneapolis will have measurably worse outcomes:

Minneapolis has just passed an ordinance making the minimum wage in that fine city $15 an hour at some point in the near future — the effects of this will be worse than the effects of the similar Seattle ordinance raising the minimum wage there to $15 an hour. I agree that this is an unpopular prediction but it’s one that I’ll still stick with for the interesting bit is that I predicted the effect of the Seattle rise correctly. I even managed to get right why it would go bad. This is not, sadly, because I have a crystal ball, nor am endowed with super-powers, it’s just that I understand the basic economics of the minimum wage.

The details of which are that modest rises in the minimum wage don’t have much effect. They don’t have much effect on wages and thus they don’t have much effect upon employment. Changes which are at best “Meh, marginal” have effects which are at best “Meh, marginal.” The problem with Seattle’s minimum wage rise was that it wasn’t marginal, the problem with that in Minneapolis is that it is even less so.

[…]

But why isn’t it all going to be wondrous? If we just insist that poor people should be paid higher wages then why won’t it all become copacetic? Well, this was tried in Seattle. And the results weren’t that way. We have the actual academic study of why and it’s just as conventional economics predicts. Modest rises in the minimum wage have modest effects, immodest rises have immodest. Which leaves us with trying to define immodest.

As I’ve been saying for some yeare now that definition of immodest seems to be 45 to 50 % of median wage in that labour market. We don’t usually have median wages by city, only by a rather larger economic unit. But Seattle’s area median is higher than that of Minneapolis. When we look at the cities, the mean is higher in Seattle than in Minneapolis.

We already know that $15 an hour is too high a minimum wage for Seattle, it leads to lower incomes for low wage workers. The Minneapolis $15 an hour minimum wage is higher compared to local wages–the effects will be worse.

Fighting Without A Country – Czechoslovak Legions of World War 1 I THE GREAT WAR Special

Filed under: Europe, History, Military, Russia, WW1 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Published on 1 Jul 2017

Czechs and Slovaks were minorities with the Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empire. Even before the outbreak of the war they demanded more rights as industrious citizens but were often overheard. During the war, they decided to take matter into their own hands and fight. And that they did in many armies across Europe.

The US Navy’s WW2 floating drydocks

Filed under: History, Military, Pacific, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

I’d never heard of these massive mobile drydock facilities before:


USS Iowa (BB-61) in a floating drydock at Manus Island, Admirality Islands, 28 December 1944. (via Wikimedia)

The United States Navy, during World War 2, decided to create a temporary forward base utilizing service stations; these stations meant the United States Navy could operate throughout the huge Pacific Ocean for more sustained amounts of time.

Creating these pretty much meant they could have a major naval base within a short distance of any operation carried out in the area. The base was able to repair; resupply and refit, meaning fewer ships had to make the journey to a facility at a major port, which allowed them to remain in the Pacific for up to a year and beyond.

These stations were officially named Advance Base Sectional Docks (ABSDs) and were put together section by section. Each part was welded to the next once in their correct position.

There were two different sizes of floating docks created, the largest ones were created using ten sections and could lift 10,000 tons each – being 80 feet wide and 256 feet long. Once these sections were welded together, it became a fully assembled dock that was a whopping 133 feet wide, 827 feet long and could lift up to 90,000 tons.

This was more than enough lifting power for any ship within the Fleet.

The post also included this film, showing the USS Idaho being moved into an ABSD at Esperitu Santo in August, 1944:

Published on 7 May 2015

On August 15, 1944 the mighty battleship Idaho arrived at Espiritu Santo in the Pacific and slipped into a floating dry dock so that emergency repairs could be made to the ship’s blisters. This special film — likely made by the crew of the battleship’s observation aircraft — documents the activities as the ship is maneuvered into position. The dry dock shown is likely one of the Large Auxiliary Floating Dry Docks (AFDB), probably AFDB/ABSD-1. This was constructed in sections during 1942 and 1943 at Everett Shipbuilding Co., Everett, WA., by the Chicago Bridge & Iron Co., Eureka, CA., the Pollack-Stockton Shipbuilding Co., Stockton, CA., and Chicago Bridge & Iron Co., Morgan City, LA. During World War II ABSD-1 was assigned to the Asiatic-Pacific Theater and towed to Espiritu Santo in the New Hebrides and assembled for service. Later it was disassembled and towed to Manicani Bay, P.I. and reassembled for service by September 1945.

USS Idaho had been damaged during long days of combat that began with the bombardment of Saipan in June. With the landing assault underway on 15 June, the battleship moved to Guam for bombardment assignments. As the American fleet destroyed Japanese carrier air power in the Battle of the Philippine Sea from 19–21 June, Idaho protected the precious transport area and reserve convoys. After returning to Eniwetok from 28 June to 9 July, the ship began preinvasion bombardment of Guam on 12 July, and continued the devastating shelling until the main assault eight days later. As ground troops battled for the island, Idaho stood offshore providing vital support until anchoring at Eniwetok on 2 August.

After repair, Idaho‘​s mighty guns were needed for the next giant amphibious assault on the way to Japan. She sailed from San Diego on 20 January 1945 to join a battleship group at Pearl Harbor. After rehearsals, she steamed from the Marianas on 14 February for the invasion of Iwo Jima. As Marines stormed ashore on 19 February, Idaho was again blasting enemy positions with her big guns, and fired star shells at night to illuminate the battlefield. She remained off Iwo Jima until 7 March, when she underway for Ulithi and the last of the great Pacific assaults – Okinawa.

At the end of the conflict Idaho made her triumphal entry into Tokyo Bay with occupation troops on 27 August, and was anchored there during the signing of the surrender on board the Missouri on 2 September. Four days later she began the long voyage to the East Coast of the United States, steaming via the Panama Canal to arrive at Norfolk on 16 October. She decommissioned on 3 July 1946 and was placed in reserve until sold for scrap on 24 November 1947 to Lipsett, Incorporated, of New York City.

James May crossing his Meccano Bridge

Filed under: Britain, Randomness, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Published on 15 Nov 2009

James May crossing his Meccano bridge in Liverpool across the Mersey (actually a canal). He’s nuts! lol…what a star! He then crosses his bridge, but cheats with a harness.

QotD: Not (yet) ready for democracy

Filed under: Government, History, Middle East, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The absolutely vital elements of a successful democratic component of government (note – component of a system, not the entire system): is that there be a literate population; a free and enquiring press; a well developed and just rule of law; and a tradition of give and take being acceptable to the society.

Tribal societies have none of these things. That is why democracies have consistently failed in African countries where tribalism is still the most important element. (In fact politics in some of these places is still largely a competition between which tribal groups served in the imperial militaries, versus which served in the imperial civil services. With very bloody competition between the two.) The fact that illiteracy is rampant; free presses almost non-existent; and the rule of law where judges are not beholden to tribal interests, or simply threats, doesn’t exist: makes democracy impossible to sustain.

Muslim culture has none of these things. A system where a woman’s evidence in court is one third of a man’s – and dhimmitude is recognized even if slavery officially isn’t – is unlikely to have these things. And for literacy, free press, or rule of law, see Africa, but doubled.

It is also possible to suggest that without a clear understanding of the logic of natural laws, you can’t have a democracy. The fact that Muslim scholarship specifically rejects natural law on the basis that Allah can cause anything, so there are no ‘natural laws’, means you cannot have these things. The reason the Muslim world lost its scientific supremacy of the 11th and 12th centuries relates specifically to their decision to turn their back on empirical evidence. Without that basic understanding, I do not believe democracy is possible. (In fact that basic approach helps explain why democracy is actually anathema to good Muslims, and why Boko Haram literally means ‘Western education is evil’!)

So the concept that an ‘Arab Spring’ could work in the Middle East is a sad indictment on the Western media and ‘intelligentsia’s’ failed understanding about how democracy works.

In fact the entire deluded Western project of attempting to impose ‘republics’ on tribal societies as part of post-colonialism, is an indictment on the western fantasy that republics are workable, let alone good things.

Let’s face it, no western republic, even in the most educated, literate, and rule of law abiding parts of the Anglosphere, has survived a first century without a collapse and or bloody civil war. The most ‘successful’ Western republics have included the American (see above), French (see above), Weimar (heard of the popularly elected Adolf Hitler?), Italian (50 governments in 50 years), Greek (how’s that brilliant financial planning going?) and Polish (are they on their 3rd, 4th, or 5th?). Those are the good ones. 90% of all republics ever founded in Europe, South America, Asia, Africa, or the Middle East, have collapsed into dictatorship, civil war, mass murder, or ethnic cleansing, within 20 years of being set up.

And that’s what we thought would work in the Middle East?

Nigel Davies, “The ‘Arab Spring’, 1848, and the 30 Years War/s…”, rethinking history, 2015-09-19.

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