From the mailbag:

(Blonde) directed my attention to a Gray Lady article that asks “How Did Walmart Get Cleaner Stores and Higher Sales?” and then answers “It Paid Its People More” and then asks “Can the answer to what ails the global economy be found in the people in blue vests at your neighborhood Walmart?” Click here to read it yourself.

Long story short: in 2015, Wal-Mart’s revenues dropped for the first time since God was a child, customer satisfaction was down, and so they decided to pay their employees more. Their revenues went back up while the rest of the retail market was down, and customer satisfaction improved. However, the stock price underperformed and profits dropped a bit.

So is attracting better workers via higher wages the “answer to what ails the global economy”? As any well-trained economist proficient in hedging his bets would tell you, it depends. I suppose that sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn’t.

Maybe Wal-Mart’s experience validates the concept of the efficiency wage. Or, since their profits are down, I should say “may soon validate” the concept. Maybe higher profits are right around the corner. Maybe profits will continue to lag and then there’ll be a hiring freeze, or a wage freeze until inflation eats away the value of the wage. After all, the stockholders are trying to make money, too– maybe for raw profit, maybe for retirement, maybe for a health savings account, who knows why?

I’m not surprised that offering a higher wage brought in better workers, though I would like more elaboration on this little nugget:

But at the store level, managers describe a big shift in the kind of workers they can bring in by offering $10 an hour with a solid path to $15 an hour. “We’re attracting a different type of associate,” said Tina Budnaitis, the manager of Walmart No. 5260 in Rogers. “We get more people coming in who want a career instead of a job.”

If I were a cosmic justice warrior, I might take that bit about “a different type of associate” and play the “what’s that supposed to mean?” game. But I’m not, so instead I’m going to play the “what happens to the original, ‘pre-different’ type of associate?” game. Here I go:

What happens to the original, “pre-different” type of associate? If that person’s out of a job, then all else being equal might there be no net gain in employment? And if profits are still down, or stay down after hiring the “different type,” then what was gained on net by hiring the “different type”?

Anyway. Maybe it’ll work, maybe not. It makes perfect sense that if you want more productive workers, maybe you should up the bid for those workers by offering higher wages. Those workers can increase profits, but it’s also possible that the revenue gains won’t offset the higher labor costs.

Those’re just a couple of ramblings, I haven’t done much blogging in a while. Just been feeling kind of off, and I guess I’m not as– wait. Wait a minute. I just noticed some minimum wage stuff in this article. Hold on.

Forgive me for being presumptuous, forgive me for impugning your motives, maybe I’m wrong, but is this story supposed to boost support for a higher minimum wage? To chip away at my opposition to minimum wage laws and living wage laws? Is that why you sent it? “Pay people more; we’ll finally have cleaner Wal-Marts that actually have more than two lines open?”

Well, first, we already have cleaner Wal-Marts that actually have more than two lines open. They’re called Targets.

Second, as I’ve said before, minimum wage is a restriction on the worker as much as it is a restriction on the employer. Say we raise the minimum wage to whatever New, Improved Wal-Mart is paying. Remember the original workers? Not the new “different type,” I mean the original workers they had before their profits started dropping off? Some of them just got put out of work, or didn’t get hired, because they’re not the right type of different. And as I’ve said in past posts, you’ve made it harder for them to get hired, to gain experience, to make contacts, and so on.

Third, minimum wage isn’t just an economic issue. It’s a matter of rights, specifically the freedom to make contracts. This often invites a comeback along the lines of “yeah, the right to get exploited” or “yeah, the right to get paid less,” to which I respond “I’d prefer to be exploited for not-enough-money than not exploited for zero money.” And I prefer it because I’ve been there.

Let’s pretend for a moment that this’ll work out as hoped for Wal-Mart: higher revenues, more customer satisfaction, cleaner stores, shorter lines, higher profits. If paying higher wages works out for Wal-Mart, does that justify forcing other businesses to pay higher wages, too?

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So, again, if it works out for Wal-Mart, great. Let others voluntarily follow their path. If it doesn’t, oh well. Hopefully others learn from it.

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I need to get back to blogging more.

A few months back, at ’06’s ten-year reunion, to which I was graciously invited, and which I happily attended, though it was a little bit awkward being the oldest person in the room by a decent margin, though come to think of it I wasn’t the oldest because the other teachers who showed up were a bit older than me, but either way I didn’t stick around too long because those reunions are about kids reconnecting with kids, and I’d prefer that they remember me as existing only within the confines of the school because it helps maintain a mystique conducive to discipline in the classroom and a good reputation outside it, a kid asked me a question.

The question was, “So have you bought your tickets to Canada?”

No, I’m not moving to Canada or anywhere else for that matter. The presidential candidates are the screw-ups; why should I have to leave?

This election is bizarre and horrifying. The fact that Hillary and Trump are the worst candidates in my life depresses me enough that I don’t want to think about this election. The fact that the best argument for Major Party Candidate X is that X is not Other Major Party Candidate Y has depressed me enough that I haven’t felt like writing about it for some time. And the fact that the internets are saturated with election-related data, analysis, memes, commentary, etc., to a degree heretofore unknown makes me feel like I have little to contribute to any conversation, even a conversation that on average is followed by under six people per day. But I’ll say these few things, for the record:

1. You’ll often hear folks say they’re sick of the same old partisan politics (I am not one of said people), and that they’d love to see a candidate who speaks his mind, who is unbeholden to anyone, who is willing to work with both sides. Well, that’s Trump, except that he’s a colossal @*#&$^%. If Trump were less of a jerk, not only would he have won the GOP nomination a lot earlier, this election would already be over.

2. I don’t like Hillary. I think she’s the most corrupt major party nominee for President since Nixon and LBJ (though she might be worse than either, and no, I’m not kidding). It has worried me from the get-go that her campaign has hidden her from the public and the press as much as possible, and that the press has largely played along. Hopefully the “pneumonia” is a minor non-issue and she is in good health, because she’s likely to win the White House and her judgement is poor enough without additional health problems.

3. Given their age and how much everybody hates them, I think both candidates would benefit from announcing that they’ll serve just one term and not seek re-election. “I promise that I will not waste one second seeking another term; that I will spend every second doing the best job I can,” etc.

4. I think a Trump presidency would have one huge and important advantage for over a Hillary presidency: Congress would check and balance him more than they have any President in several decades (i.e., they’d actually bother to do their jobs). No way Congress would fight President Hillary as hard as they’d fight President Trump.

More later.

Happy 240th birthday to the United States of America!

…and happy 144th to President Coolidge.

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If I had to articulate the foremost principle of the Founding as succinctly as possible, I think it’d be hard to beat “live and let live.” It works better than “live free” (which is Gary Johnson’s campaign slogan– and it’s a good slogan, don’t get me wrong; it’s borrowed from the motto of the great state of New Hampshire, my birthplace– but I digress) because it reminds us to also let others live as they see fit, instead of leaving it at “do whatever you want.” It’s about swinging your fist freely but without punching anyone in the nose.

Granted, there were and are too many examples of the Founders and their posterity (i.e., “us”) ignoring this principle, but let that diminish them (and us) and not the idea itself. That idea makes this country different from and better than everyplace else on Earth combined times seven.

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I attended the ’06 reunion a month or so ago. A former student asked if I had bought my ticket to Canada, given our apparent choices this November. My response was something along the lines of, “Why should I leave? They’re the ones who suck.” Election stuff next time.

Gram would’ve turned 106 today. Here she is at her confirmation with two of her brothers:

That might be the longest her hair ever was. Happy birthday Gram!

Today is my grandfather’s birthday. Here he is, wondering what you’re looking at:

I have no context whatsoever for this photo. No idea where he is, why he’s there, or what happened next. Just my grandfather– a stern-looking man, a man not to be trifled with– standing in a grove.

Grampa would’ve turned 116 today if he hadn’t died restoring the Earth’s orbit and rotational period.