Common Sense with Paul Jacob

Unemployment went up in May. Why?

Well, note the two sectors where unemployment went up the most: teens and African-Americans.

Teenagers, as schools let out for summer, tend to change jobs and seek new ones, en masse. But that’s seasonal, and the figures for unemployment rates already adjust for that.

So why did teen unemployment increase by 3.3 percent, and for blacks unemployment go up 1.1 percent?

Steve Horwitz, a St Lawrence University economist, points out that last summer politicians in Washington pounded their chests about how good they were and raised the national minimum wage. Trouble is, minimum wage laws don’t increase skills. Or productivity. All they do is prohibit employers from paying below a certain rate, currently $5.85 an hour. In late July that shoots higher.

So employers become pickier. Increase the amount they must pay and they will naturally try to find every way they can to increase the productivity of those employees affected by the new minimum.

They tend to fire (or not hire) inexperienced workers, like teenagers, and those who have invested the least in their own skillset — historically, in America, that amounts to a statistically large percentage of African Americans.

“With a sluggish economy,” Horwitz writes, “it certainly seems possible that the higher minimum wage is discouraging employers from hiring lower-skill workers . . .”

Which suggests our politicians are also, if not low-skilled, low-wisdomed.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Democrats thump their chests. Congress just passed a budget . . . in an election year. For the previous four election cycles, that hasn’t happened.

But, since the budget crossed the $3 trillion mark for the first time ever, let’s choke our huzzahs. The federal government is spending us — and especially our children — into ruin.

The Iraq War is incredibly expensive, but spending for other items has shot up, too. Senator Obama says he’ll withdraw our troops, but doesn’t say he’ll do it in his first term. Budget-wise that doesn’t even matter. Obama has already said he’ll simply spend the money now spent on the war on other federal programs.

It gets worse. Sheila Weinberg, head of the Institute for Truth in Accounting, tells USA Today that “We’re running deficits in the trillions of dollars, not the hundreds of billions we’re being told.”

The official deficit last year was $162 billion. But government accounting is, well, crooked. It ignores huge liabilities like Social Security, Medicare, pensions for government workers, VA benefits. Use proper accounting standards and the deficit comes to a whopping $2.5 trillion.

Our national debt is already $57.3 trillion, when federal entitlements are factored in. With local and state government liabilities, the total is nearly $62 trillion, more than half a million per household.

Still, the Democrats running Congress say they’ll have a budget surplus by 2012. How? Well, through massive tax increases . . . which, speaking to other crowds, they promise won’t happen.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

I received an announcement from Governor Sanford of South Carolina. The odd thing is that I could read the whole document verbatim and you couldn’t tell the governor’s thoughts from mine. I’m in complete agreement.

With what?

Well, the new bill he signed, H.3803. It removes the legal requirement for shampooers to receive the same state-mandated 1,500 hours of training that cosmetologists receive.

Unfortunately, the bill does nothing to address the fact that state law requires 1,500 hours of training to be a cosmetologist — almost four times the amount of state-required training to become a police officer — and just one of a number of examples of overregulation by state government that Governor Sanford highlighted during the news conference.

There. I’ve just cribbed more than a paragraph from Governor Sanford.

And no, governor, your check is not in the mail.

The truth about South Carolina is that it is an amazingly over-regulated state. It makes no sense to demand cosmetologists be more schooled in their art than police. The worst that could happen from a bad cosmetologist? A bad hair-do. Lice. The worst from a police officer? You could be shot in the head.

Sanford said such regulation “is more about protecting the profits of people in a particular industry rather than protecting the consumer.”

In most cases, he said. The other cases?

Those regulations are “Just plain silly.”

Bingo.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

As fuel prices rise, a few things become obvious:

• We begin to conserve more;
• Many industrious folks look for energy alternatives;
• And many politically-minded folk hector us about using less of some type of fuels, more of another.

How useful is this third category? Well, they are the ones driving laws and subsidies and such. And you’d think those of this type, those in power who praise conservation would also encourage it.

But regulators are often a lot more worried about, you know, regulating things.

An example came to light recently out in California. It seems that instead of or in addition to gasoline, a mechanic out there has been using a fuel made from used restaurant vegetable oil for his vehicles. When the government found out, did they slap him with a medal for his clever conservation? Nah. Slapped him with fines. And taxes. License requirements. Reporting requirements.

So here you have a guy who has reduced his reliance on foreign oil, who has reduced waste by recycling, of all things, grease. And the response of environmentally concerned bureaucrats is to slap him silly. Fling a regulatory net at him. Make his life harder.

So please, people. If you’ve figured out a new way to save money and energy, do it in the dark, okay? And swear others to secrecy when you spread the word.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

We’ve got a mole in the U.S. Congress.

Not a foreign agent trying to undermine the American way of life. We’ve got plenty of homegrown politicians doing that already.

No, it’s a congressman who actually opposes porkbarrel spending. Now, a few others there also combat the regime of pay-for-play earmarks, of course — too few. But this guy sounds like he’s reading a script I dictated myself. It ain’t so. But gosh, I couldn’t agree more with the sentiments.

It’s Congressman John Shadegg of Arizona. His comments were picked up by C-Span and transcribed at their web site. Shadegg points out how darn corrupting the process has become.

The degree of tawdry mutual back-scratching can vary. But what is happening more and more is that congressmen are creating their own corporations. Staffing these corporations with relatives and pals. And then using the secretive earmark process to send funds to this entity. Everybody wins. The congressman and the cronies do, anyway.

Taxpayers lose in at least two ways. They’re losing money. And their purported representative is violating their trust. The Constitution of course is going out the window. There’s nothing in there about how congressmen may randomly lather their associates with taxpayer dough.

All done without any open debate, any clear public disclosure before the money is appropriated. Shadegg thinks it’s contemptible.

Mr. Congressman, when you’re right, you’re right.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Obesity is a problem. Doctors warn about the ill effects of carrying too much flab. The Washington Post is running a front-page series about overweight children.

Good. Knowledge is power, even when it comes to diet and exercise.

But by the second paragraph of the May 19 story we’re told of an additional problem. It is, and I quote, “inadequate direction and dollars at the federal level.”

My first thought? We’ve finally found it! The one thing the federal government isn’t spending too much money on.

European governments spend more dough than ours hectoring people on health. Britain has restricted food ads aimed at kids. But, frankly, I don’t find European nannyism very appealing. I bet one can lose weight without losing freedom. Or a whole lot of money.

My second thought? Losing weight shouldn’t cost us, well, anything. I know for me, when the pounds start to pile up, no one charges me a nickel to leave the house for an evening jog. Running is absolutely free.

Maybe our federal government should stick to its own outrageous fat problem. Our weight problems pale in comparison to all the bloated, wasteful globs of fatty pork thrown around by politicians.

Why not start the government diet by saving the taxpayers the costly, preachy public education campaign? Besides, what American would even listen to the over-stuffed federal government commanding, “trim down”?

Doctor, trim thyself.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev no longer reigns as king of Nepal. On May 28, the Nepalese Constituent Assembly abolished the monarchy. The members of the assembly told Gyanendra to clear out of his Katmandu palace before mid-June.

Consider it the world’s most definitive eviction notice.

A small nation on the opposite side of the world — does it matter to America? Maybe not. But it is worth noting the passing of another monarchy.

After all, our country began in revolt against a king. But we had it easy, in a way; the king was distant. All we had to evict were his soldiers.

But don’t get the idea that Nepal got through it without bloodshed.

First, as I speak this, the monarchy’s end has just been declared. The king isn’t out on his now-civilian keester yet. He could still try something.

Second, he himself came to power in such a manner as to suggest royally red hands. (A common color for kingly hands.) The previous ruler and his whole family were slaughtered. A whole heckuva lot of people in Nepal suspect Gyandendra himself as the conspirator behind the murders.

Third is the Maoist factor. In the April elections, Maoists led the polls but failed to gain a majority.

For the good of the Nepalese, let’s hope the ex-king packs up in peace, and the Maoists pack away their dangerous ideology. Or are themselves soon sent packing.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Subway, America’s leading fast-food sandwich franchise, is sponsoring a contest for kids. It’s an essay contest entitled “Every Sandwich Tells a Story.”

This contest itself is something of a story.

First, the contest explanation and rules contain multiple typos.

Second, homeschooling families are prohibited from entering.

What’s going on here? Subway’s official explanation is that the first prize award of athletic equipment can only go to a school. This is a bit lame, since the equipment could easily go to a local park frequented by the winning homeschooling family . . . or any number of homeschooling associations.

What could the folks at Subway really be thinking? I wouldn’t be surprised if the team in control of the contest have spouses in one of the teachers’ unions . . . teachers’ unions are notoriously opposed to home schooling. Go figure.

There’s been a lot of speculation. Some folk say that Subway just couldn’t bear to see another homeschooler win. My thought is that any contest with that many typos in the promotional material is badly in need of an education.

Many homeschooling families — and their sympathetic friends — have started a boycott. And I have to say, much as I like Subway, I’ll be steering the family car to Quiznos or a local deli the next time my family agrees to go out for sandwiches.

Subway has, perhaps inadvertently, taken on a hot-button political topic, and come out on the wrong side.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Last summer, ice in the Arctic reached new levels of . . . non-existence. That is, the extent of polar ice receded.

And some of you got alarmed.

But some other folks got excited by a new Northwest Passage.

Quark Expeditions charges many thousands of dollars to tour the Arctic on the icebreaker Kapitan Khlebnikov. Alas, a May tour from the Bering Sea across the north of Canada turned out to be no picnic. The mammoth ship got stalled. In ice.

Lots of ice.

They were stalled for seven days.

A polar bear entertained the passengers early on, but tensions rose as the days of going nowhere piled up. According to the fascinating story in Canada’s Globe and Mail, the hoped-for Northwest Passage is still very “unpredictable.”

It’s barely passage at all, after this last winter, which was brutally cold . . . nearly everywhere. Yes, new records of coldness helped re-establish northern ice.

The winter thumbed its nose at global warming, a sort of global nanny nanny boo-boo.

What can I say? Seasons go in cycles. The same seems to go for the climate in general. Hedge your bets for “unstoppable global warming,” folks. And if you are on Quark’s planned June 28 departure for a north-of-Siberia cruise this summer, hoping to view, up close, the New Siberian Islands and other, uh, hot spots of the Arctic, keep your cool.

Nature might, too.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.