Some Models I Have(Desmos)

Pricing -> Customer Relationship

One of them works on the assumption that for every dollar increase the amount of customers lost is constant.
Model

The other works on the assumption that for every dollar increase, a percentage of customers is lost. Model


Bracket Taxes 


I'll put this up as soon as I figure out a better way to make it easier to adjust the variables and add new brackets.

The State(Hypothetical)

I was having a debate with a libertarian from the United Kingdom, and it got me thinking, what exactly is the state to begin with.

After thinking about this, I realized what I think can best describe a state in it's essence, a state is simply a "corporation" and it can either be owned by the people(democracy), or a king/queen(monarchy). It owns the land it holds sovereignty over, and it then either sells access and rights to the land, for people to do shit with(capitalism) or orchestrates total control over it, and guides all economic activity on it(state-planned economy). Rights, are simply what the corporation agrees to protect, over it's subjects. Voting in a democracy is either direct, like an Athenian democracy, or like those dual partnerships that are owned by like 2 people. Or they end up taking the form of republics, or like modern corporations, with their board of directors and shit. 

Now of course I think government and the state are way more complicated and not really like what I was trying to outline above, I guess idk tbh.

The Minimum Wage(again)

Well, yesterday in a fairly ugly piece I tried to argue against some talking points about the minimum wage, by going over some BLS data and shit. But now I want to focus my attention on more abstract thinking about the minimum wage.

Argument #1: A High Minimum Wage Will Lead To Businesses Raising Prices

This, while on the surface a seemingly logical assertion when thought about harder falls apart entirely. A businesses job is to generate a profit, to do this they must minimize costs, and maximize revenue. To determine revenue(black striped), simply multiply the price(blue) times the number of customers(green), Now, price and customers are pretty obviously inversely related, the higher the price the fewer the people willing to pay to but the thing/service you're selling. For this model, I'm assuming that it is a perfectly inverse graph, even though in reality the situation is more complicated.

Black Striped : Revenue
Blue Solid : Price
Green Solid : Customers

This is just the graph of the relationship I was outline above. Notice how revenue spikes in the "middle", and begins to fall when price is either too high, or too low. This same exact mechanic is why everything doesn't cause $50 million dollars. And similarly is the reason that an increase in the minimum wage will not cause any drastic increase in prices. If labor costs go up, there's no reason I would decide to reduce my revenue too.

Secondly, this assumption also assumes that, oh my, businesses already pay their employees so much it would hurt them so much to make them spend a little more. Well, again pricing for labor has absolutely nothing to do with how much revenue they generate. If, I could hire let's say 100 people to work for me at the very most for this scheme to work, and I made $100 per man hour, and this jobs requires unskilled labor, which is very abundant on the market place, so much so that other people are paying employees $7.5 per hour. Now, how much do you think I am going to pay my employees, if you answered $7.5 or maybe $8 to reduce turnover. This is the case in real markets to, businesses are dependent on the labor being cheap, it's just that it's so abundant that they can keep wages low.

Argument #2: A Higher Minimum Wage Will Lead To Higher Unemployment

I have heard to general premises that this argument follows, either that businesses will go broke, and that they will magically automate every affected job or a lot of them. 

Firstly, most businesses will not go broke, because of the reason I mentioned above which is that most businesses aren't just skimming the margin, and if they are then I would like to then start talking about the economic effects of giving low wage workers more money, which is more demand for consumer goods, and generally more spending in the economy. You see, unlike richer people, the poor generally don't have enough to satisfy most of their demands, hence when you raise their wages, the money will actually go into the local economy, rather than flow into offshore bank accounts. This spending then generates more economic activity, both for the people who have to service the servicers, and the effect that now more of these workers have a higher wage and hence, more money to spend.

Secondly, I would like to discuss this idea that a higher wage will lead to a massive amount of automation. While, this also makes sense in theory, consider the example a lot of people use, fast food workers. Well we could just replace them with iPads, while I do see the argument, I also have been to places like McDonald's and Tacobell and I don't see Robo Rob taking my order. And why would businesses have any less incentive to automate them at the current minimum wage of $7.25 a hour, which roughly translates to about $15,121.43 for a year if we assume they work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week no holidays. Now if you instead spend around $30,000 for labor, there's a larger incentive to automate the job. However, an iPad costs what $400? and imagine if you're buying them in bulk, like a corporation like McDonalds would, how much do you think it would cost then like $300 or $200, and unlike humans, your iPad won't decide that it has finals and can't make a shift, and will last longer in the job too, it won't demand a raise,benefits or worker's rights.

The Minimum Wage

Well I'm bored, so I guess I'm writing about the minimum wage. So let me just throw it out there, I am in favor of a $15 per hour minimum wage. And I know there are a lot of concerns about the minimum wage so let me try to justify this shit or whatever.

So, one of the biggest things I hear about the minimum wage is that it's going to cause massive price inflation which ends up negating the whole wage bump. And the thinking goes, well labor costs increase, so corporations will compensate by raising prices to get back to the same profit levels as before. And while this sounds like a compelling argument at face-value, you have to remember that increasing prices leads to fewer customers, which leads to lesser profit if the price is high enough. I guess, the reason for this rationale is that a lot of people believe that businesses are paying their employees the maximum that they can, this is simply WRONG! This ignores reality entirely and the operation of the market and labor market in particular.

Consider this, pretend I had a business, where I could hold a maximal number of employees at like 100. And from each labor-hour they put in I generate $1000 in revenue. This job by the way requires little skill, just human skills and shit(basically low-skill service jobs). Now everyone else is paying their employees with the exact same qualifications I need $7.25 an hour. Why the fuck would I pay them anything more, especially if it's low-skill and a lot of people are looking for jobs(which they always are. A similar thing happens with other minimum wage jobs too, just because they're simple doesn't mean they don't generate a lot of value for the employer, for example McDonald's in 2013 made about 2.5 million dollars per restaurant. And the amount of employees in a fast food restaurant is about 15. So they make about $166,666.67 per employee asking for a raise from $7.25 to $15 or about $16,000 a year doesn't sound that bad does it?

And while, that's a specific example, the Hospitality Department at Purdue did a study on this and would raise fast-food prices by about 4.3%. So that literally four cents about on every dollar and in return the most struggling among us getting a nicer live. Isn't that a nice deal, but NOO! conservatives would rather blow that money on making America "stronger" cause you know we don't spend enough already.

Or maybe, Purdue isn't convincing enough and you would like a specific example, well how about Seattle where they have been incrementing it up to the $15 an hour an they don't have massive price inflation or unemployment. All they have is slightly richer, poor workers who spend the money back into the local economy generating jobs, vs the richest Americans taking that too and sending it off-seas.

Don't believe him, well I crunched the numbers between Seattle and the total of Washington, in regards to unemployment.
The source for the following numbers is the Bureau of Labor Statistics is this page on the BLS site.
The Series ID's:
Seattle Employment : LAUCT536300000000005
Seattle Labor Force : LAUCT536300000000006
Washington Employment : LAUST530000000000005
Washington Labor Force : LAUST530000000000006

All the graphs attached below are from Jan 2014 to Jan 2017.

t1= Jan 2014

t2= Jan 2017

Seattle Employment

Seattle Labor Force

Washington Employment

Washington Labor Force

So how much worse is the employment rate of Seattle vs Washington, considering Washington isn't doing the raise to $15 while Seattle is. 

Seattle:

The amount of employed people in Seattle in 

t1: 386,382 

t2: 421,374

The labor force, or total in 

t1: 404,193

t2: 436,137 

Based on these numbers we can calculate how many people were employed out of the total, or what I will be referring to as the employment rate.

t1: 95.70% 

t2: 96.62%

Change: +0.91%

Washington(as a whole):

The amount of employed people in the state in 

 t1: 3,203,473  

 t2: 3,465,814.

 

The labor force

t1: 3,445,693

t2: 3,676,071

The employment rate by period of time is, 

t1: 92.97%

t2: 94.28%

Change: +1.31%

So overall, Washington did end up with slightly and by slightly I mean like 0.28% or in decimal form 0.0028. So it barely moved, I decided to read a bit more into the numbers, and calculated the difference between Seattle and Washington per time period

t1: +2.62%

t2: + 2.34%

Change In Range: -0.28%

Spreadsheet: link

So basically, Seattle didn't gain as many jobs as a percent than Washington as a whole, however the difference is so small it barely means any thing and in my opinion the costs of this are minimal compared to the upside of the poorest of workers having more money.

Who's Ready For Iraq 2.0

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/06/us-military-has-launched-more-50-than-missiles-aimed-at-syria-nbc-news.html

YAY! We're bombing Syrian government buildings, y'all know what this is right, an act of war. So now that we might just be at war with Syria, who's ready for more civilian deaths because Assad is a "bad guy". I mean, I'm not denying that he's not a bad guy, but you know I think I would much rather have a socialist secular dictator running Syria, over an Jihadist dictator. Which do you prefer, "Shut up, stop opposing me"(both of them) or would like an add on of, "You woman is HALAL *proceeds to rape and behead her*". This whole fucking situation is fucking absurd, pull out stop bombing and spend those resources back home, maybe on you know our crumbling domestic infrastructure. The even stupider part is that once again the Democrats were on the wrong fucking side of the issue, Trump is Putin's little bitch dog, Trump is Putin's little bitch dog with no evidence, and here we have it potential WW3.

A Look at Professor Watchlist

I apologize for not posting for the last forever, but I got bored and I decided to look at back at some old articles(as in like a year) and that led me to reading about Turning Point USA, which led to me to Professor Watchlist, and look into their "featured" professors.

So without much more, let me look into each of the professors on their page as of 3-29-2017, 8:42 PM, PST.

So lets just provide what they say they are for, "Welcome to Professor Watchlist, a project of Turning Point USA.

This watchlist is an aggregated list of pre-existing news stories that were published by a variety of news organizations. While we accept tips for new additions on our website, we only publish profiles on incidents that have already been reported by a credible source.

TPUSA will continue to fight for free speech and the right for​​ professors to say whatever they wish​;​ however students, parents, and alumni deserve to know the specific incidents and names of professors that advance a radical agenda in lecture halls." - Front Page, as of aforementioned time.

John Wiens

Entry : John Wiens is a professor at the University of Arizona. A scholar of extinction and evolutionary biology, Wiens joked that Donald Trump should kill himself over his climate and environmental policies.

My Response :  He joked that Donald Trump, should kill himself. And this is after he was asked what he would say to DJT if he met him, due to DJT's denial of scientific fact and the implications his refusal to take action on this issue could have on the future. Now I don't condone DJT killing himself, but is jokingly saying it somehow showing you pushing some kind of radical agenda, it's really noot.

Oh and I like how a professor of extinction and evolutionairy biology saying DJT should kill himself, is some kind of scandal. Because you know, his views on DJT are really going to influence him teaching students, about how life evolved and how dna and shit works. But, it's hacky, to mention that Jeff Sessions made a joke about how he liked the KKK until he found out some of them smoked weed. I personally, don't give a fuck about it since, it's a joke and he probably doesn't actually mean it, but if we just consider jokes and actual views into people's ideology, then why the hell is he the attorney general, you know the person who's supposed to crackdown on shit like hate-crimes, well I guess he will cuz you know good people don't smoke marujuana. I would go on with critizing Sessions, but I kind of want to finish this.

Danielle Allen

Entry : Allen, a professor at Harvard, said that the rise of Donald Trump is just like the rise of Hitler, in perhaps the least original academia arguments.  Her argument echoes that of many professors on this list, who resort to Hitler references when they lack a cogent argument.

My Response : Literally, in the first section of her oped or whatever they linked to in the Washington Post,she states that she "Leave aside whether a direct comparison of Trump to Hitler is accurate. That is not my point. My point rather is about how a demagogic opportunist can exploit a divided country". And while, the rest of the article does kind of have an anti-Trump message, and by that I mean it legit, has a really large anti-Trump message. It's not some kind of radical agenda, American's of both parties need to come together when common interest/desire emerges. I know radical! How radical, work with people in other parties if you agree with them, yup this is one nasty profesora.

Kelly Train

Entry : Train is a sociology instructor at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. When a student wanted to write a paper discussing the problems with the wage gap, Train said she could not challenge the wage gap. Even worse, this is not an isolated incident; Train's essay instructions prohibited using government data, newspaper articles, or business sources (they are part of the patriarchy according to Train). Instead, "feminist sources" are to be utilized.

My Response : Well at first glance of thier description, I get why they put her up their you know, her banning a student from challenging something and using only "feminist sources". However upon further reading of the articles provided, the source for the "email" correspondence reaches the twitter page of an anti-pc/feminism youtuber as the primary source. Hmmm, I wonder if there's something fishy about an anti-pc/feminism personality just happening to have a twin-sister who happened to have this kind of bigoted teacher. I don't think a snapshot of the email is enough to certify whether it's legitimate or not in my opinion, we simply don't know whether that's an actual email from her or staged.

Ok now let me look at the material the teacher supposedly provided, thanks to the Daily Caller article, we have a little note or rubric or whatever the fuck you call it, the thing with all the requirements and tips and shit. Well, she states that thinks like Newspaper articles an encyclopedia references don't count as scholarly sources, well no fucking shit, wow it turns out that scholarly sources have to be from scholars. She wanted scholarly sources and 5 of them, and said that non-scholarly sources don't count as scholarly sources. WOW! Here I was thinking that my dog counted as a cat, I'm #Triggered.

Eric Canin

Entry : Canin, an adjunct at Cal-State Fullerton assaulted a member of College Republicans during two protests on campus; one organized by Students for Justice in Palestine and a counter-protest by College Republicans. According to The Daily Titan, "“(Canin) came up, tried to grab (my) sign and pushed our way … Then he went after (Ingalls) and started swinging at him,".

My Response : Ok, well the link isn't working for me, however if they are right about him trying to grab 'em by the sign, and swing at people, then yeah fuck him. Freedom of speech goes both ways, and as long as they aren't attacking you, you have no right to grab their shit or punch them.

Areej Zufari

Entry : Zufari, a professor at Rollins College, successfully lobbied to have a Christian student suspended for challenging the professor on Christianity and Islam. Zufari claimed that the crucifixion of Jesus was not true, which lead to a student, Marshall Polston, to challenge the student. Zufari, however, had no problem with a student that said gays and adulterers should rightly be punished in accordance with Sharia law.

My Response : My opinion on this is kind of split, mostly however pissed that the student in question was suspended for what appears based on what I know to be a disagreement w/ the professor. However, at the same time I think private universities have the right to get rid of student's they don't want in their universities. And at the same time, the entry is mainly focused on how Zufri claimed that the crucifixion of Jesus is not real, but that she was fine with a student that said gays and adulterers should be punished. Well, the difference is that one of these is something that can be disproven, while the other one is a shitty opinion. The difference being is that there is very little evidence outside of the Bible of Jesus's existence. While the historian makes the case that even if someone was making up a messiah they would make them powerful and shit and not tortured. Which do you think elicits a more complicit population, battle and fight I am Jesus and I will fuck up anyone trying to opress me or my people(You know like Israel under Roman Occupation), pretty much fight back with me on your side. Or, do you think they would invent a chill dude, love everyone and give unto Caeser what is his. I think the answer if fairly obvious if I do say so myself. So pretty much fuck the student getting suspended, though I do believe that under the current law the uni. probably has the right to do so. And that I agree with her that Jesus most likely wan't hung on a cross, because the guy probably wasn't even real. 

Rashid Khalidi

Entry : Khalidi, a professor at Columbia, laced a criticism of Trump's foreign policy with not-so-subtle anti-semitism. Discussing Trump's position on Israel, Khalidi said "They have a vision whereby there is no such thing as the Palestinians. They have a vision whereby international law doesn’t exist. They have a vision whereby the United States can unilaterally cancel a decision of the United Nations. And unfortunately these people infest the Trump transition team, these people are going to infest our government as of January 20th. And they are hand in glove with a similar group of people in the Israeli government and in Israeli political life who think that whatever they think can be imposed on reality."

My Response : Wow, it's anti-semitic to state the fact that a lot of people in the Trump administration and Israel(cough cough Nethanyahu if that 's the right way to spell his name, I'm too lazy to check) think that the Palestinians don't exist and that occupying their land(illegal under international law btw) is anti-semitic. Then I think that Russia annexing Crimea, is totally good and you know what, in fact anyone who says anything against it is a Ruso-phobe. BTW, I'm not one of those retarded dems, screaming about how Russia hacked the DNC, like I'm sorry but how the fuck is that suprising to you, wow foreign powers want to influence politics shocking. Not to mention, all they did was tell us about the shitty shit the Democrats were doing against Bernie Sanders, I mean frankly they should have done it to the GOP too, but hey some transparency is better than no transparency. And frankly, this professor might just be my favorite professor atm, I mean the smear job against him by these dumb-asses makes me frankly extremely sympathetic to him. 

John Motherfucking Ossoff

http://www.npr.org/2017/03/02/518136415/attack-ad-marks-new-era-for-millennials-running-for-office

Damn, I kind of want to vote for him now, just to fuck with the guy/gal who came up with this ad. Well, whatever guess I now know what I need to do if I want a future in politics don't be a retard as a young adult.

But honestly, this is ridiculous he was crazy in college/high school, OK so are most people? I mean, wow scandalous he played San Holo just for funnsies, Ted Cruz in college literally did the shitiest "The Crucible"(look it up if you haven 't eww.). At least he didn't go around acting like the straightest man ever and get found looking for gay sex in an airport, heeeeeeeey Larry[1]. I mean I have no problem with people being gay, I have a problem however when they are bigots to other gay people and don't expect people to note that, you know when Mr. I hate Gay Soldiers turns out to be gay himself[2].

Just to sum it up, GOP tries attacking someone over the radical crime of being a kid when they were a kid. #NotMyRep.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Craig_scandal
[2]: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_nature/2007/08/same_sex.html