Minneapolis about to have 1st hand experience of the "laws of supply and demand"

Minneapolis City Council approves $15 minimum wage

Excerpt:

The Minneapolis City Council approved a $15 minimum wage Friday, a move years in the making that will affect hundreds of businesses and thousands of workers across the city.

The vote adds Minneapolis to a list of cities nationwide, including Seattle, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., that have approved similar measures in recent years.

“Today, we uplift all workers,” Council Member Abdi Warsame, who was absent from Friday’s meeting, said in a letter that was read aloud. “Today’s vote, while historic, is just another step in our unending journey to build a better city.”

The $15 minimum wage will be fully implemented citywide by 2024, with a faster phase-in for large businesses — those with more than 100 employees.

Only Council Member Blong Yang voted against the ordinance. Before the vote, he read a statement listing his concerns about how a $15 minimum wage might negatively affect his north Minneapolis ward, including small business owners and entrepreneurs of color and youth workers.

The laws of supply and demand apply to labor, too.

Excerpt:

Thanks to a new study from economists at the University of Washington, American progressives have learned that the laws of supply and demand apply to the labor market. Everybody already knew that, except for professional economists. The study, commissioned by the city government of Seattle and published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, found that Seattle’s law incrementally raising its minimum wage — to $13 an hour last year, en route to $15 — resulted in low-wage workers’ earning less money rather than more. This surprised many in Seattle, who had been assured by all the best economists, including Paul Krugman, that such a thing would not come to pass.

So, what happened? The short version is: You can pass a law saying you have to pay low-wage workers more, but you cannot pass a law that says you have to hire them in the first place, or that you cannot cut back on hours when the price of hourly labor goes up. As businesses responded to the new higher labor costs by reorganizing their processes in less labor-intensive ways (the classic examples here are the replacement of wait staff with computer screens in restaurants and the replacement of bank clerks with more sophisticated ATMs), the law that was supposed to increase low-wage workers’ incomes actually reduced them — substantially, by an average of $125 a month.

The first lecture in Economics 101 is that supply and demand interact through prices. (And a wage is a price — the price of labor.) Producers will produce more of any given product at a higher price, and consumers will consume less of it at a higher price. At some point, producers’ preferences coincide with those of consumers, and that is the market price that emerges. That’s a rough model, of course, but it describes the basic reality of how commercial transactions actually happen.

When Economics 101 tells you something you don’t want to hear, the thing to do is to commission a study. As Ronald Coase observed: If you torture the data enough, it will confess to almost anything. For progressives desiring to raise the minimum wage in spite of the consequences predicted by basic economics, that study came from two Princeton economists, David Card and Alan Krueger, who in 1994 compared employment at fast-food restaurants in New Jersey to that of their counterparts across the river in Pennsylvania after New Jersey enacted a relatively modest increase in the minimum wage.

The Card-Krueger study found that raising the minimum wage had not cost jobs in New Jersey. There were many problems with the study: It used fast-food employment as a proxy for minimum wage even though most fast-food workers do not make the minimum wage; it ignored workers in other industries, such as hospitality, that might have been more strongly affected; it covered a relatively short period of time; it relied on telephone surveys of restaurant managers rather than on hard employment data.

The Card-Krueger study included only a few months’ worth of data from after the time the minimum-wage hike went into effect. Some economists suspected that while fast-food operators were unlikely to simply start hacking away at their staffs in the months following an increase in the minimum wage (which, again, would not affect the wages of most fast-food workers), they would instead change their medium- and long-term plans, choosing less labor-intensive modes of production, substituting capital for labor through automation, reducing hours to make their labor consumption more efficient, etc. And that is, in fact, what subsequent studies found: Restaurants didn’t just start firing people after the minimum wage went up, but the wage hike did significantly reduce future job growth and labor consumption.

Comment: See Seattle's minimum wage hike may be hurting workers

Life's Big Questions

Zelle: First Test

My 1st sends:

• I sent birthday money to my son yesterday. From Wells Fargo to Wells Fargo. He received it immediately. I used his email address. This send is not reflected in the above images
• I sent my daughter $ 10 from Capital One 360.  (I used her email account as the destination "address")
• I sent myself $ 100 from Capital One 360 to Wells Fargo.  (I used my cell phone as the destination "address")

Zelle homepage

Look at all the banks on board!

Other options

• Paypal (I've used this and it works great!)
• Venmo (A Paypal company)
• Cash.me
• Facebook messenger  

My kids' P2P preference:

I use @Zelle and am very happy with ithttps://t.co/tjsbhQN9Gp

— James Peet (@jrpeet) July 14, 2018

STOR - taking my cue from Warren

Buffett's Bet on Store Capital Shows Not All Retail Real Estate Is Equal - Berkshire Hathaway takes 9.8% stake in single-tenant REIT

Excerpt:

Warren Buffett is betting that some types of brick-and-mortar real estate will hold up better than others in the age of Amazon.

His Berkshire Hathaway Inc. took a 9.8 percent stake in Store Capital Corp., sending shares of the real estate investment trust surging Monday. Unlike other retail landlords that have come under pressure as consumers shop more online, Store focuses on what it calls service properties: preschool facilities, health clubs, dine-in movie theaters and pet-care sites. Less than a fifth of its portfolio is invested in traditional retail -- and even those it calls “internet resistant,” including furniture stores, hobby and craft centers, and hunting, fishing and camping shops.

“Store doesn’t compete on the beaten path,” said Haendel St. Juste, an analyst at Mizuho Securities USA Inc. “They are targeting more experiential retail, trying to provide a buffer against risk.”

Comment: 5% dividend. Hard to find that kind of yield!

Ferguson vs FaucetDirect

We needed a new faucet for our laundry room utility sink. I purchased the Elkay 406GN05T4 above. I found this interesting.

• First I searched Ferguson and called their wholesale / retail location. They've got it but it wasn't in stock at their Plymouth location and would have to be shipped in. Price $ 229.44
  
• Then I searched and purchased it from FaucetDirect. Price $ 154.70 with free shipping and no sales tax
  
• When it shipped, I checked out the shipping source and it was a Ferguson warehouse
• Interestingly, digging deeper, FaucetDirect is a Build.com company and Build.com is owned by Ferguson

Diamonds as an investment? Not really and this story proves it!

Have you ever tried to sell a diamond?

Excerpt:

In the fall of 1978, a thirty-two-year-old Californian computer wizard named Stanley Mark Rifkin discovered an ingenious way to become a multimillionaire overnight. While working as a consultant for the Security Pacific National bank in Los Angeles, he had learned the secret computer code that the bank used to transfer funds to other banks telegraphically at the end of each business day. With this information and his mastery of the bank's computer, he realized that he could transfer tens of millions of dollars to any bank account in America. The problem would be withdraw the money from the system. In early October, he devised a plan for siphoning this money out of the bank and converting it into Russian diamonds.

The first step was establishing an alias identity. Under the pseudonym "Mike Hanson," Rifkin opened a bank account at the Irving Trust Company in New York, arranged a phony passport and other. documentation and retained a respected diamond broker, Lou Stein, to acquire for him a multimillion dollar consignment of diamonds from Russia. The Russian diamond organization, Russ Almaz, agreed to sell "Hanson" at its fixed wholesale price 115,000 perfectly cut, round, brilliant stones for $8,145,000. For arranging this low price, the broker took a standard 2 percent commission, or $162,000. For the deal to be consummated, Rifkin only had to wire the money to Zurich.

On October 25, Rifkin coolly entered the bank's transfer room under the pretext of inspecting the computer. He picked up a telephone connected to the computer and dialed in the necessary digits. Instantly, the computer withdrew $10,200,000 from a non-existent account and transferred it to the account of "Mike Hanson" at the Irving Trust Company in New York. Rifkin then had the New York bank transfer $8,300,000 to the Zurich account of Russ Almaz.

A few days later, using his phony passport, Rifkin flew to Switzerland, took delivery of the diamonds, which weighed under five pounds, and smuggled them through customs into the United States. He then began contacting dealers in Los Angeles, but none was willing to buy the diamonds.

Meanwhile, the Security Pacific National Bank discovered that more than ten million dollars was missing. It was one of the largest bank robbery in history. The FBI, investigating the loss, received a tip about Rifkin, and arrested him in Carlsbad, California and found on him the Russian diamonds, as well as the remaining cash.

Initially, bank officials assumed that most of stolen money prudently invested in diamonds would be easily converted back to money. Only a few weeks earlier Newsweek had reported in a cover story, "The Diamond Boom," that diamonds were "the ideal asset" and that quality diamonds were soaring in price. While the diamonds that Rifkin had bought were commercial-grade stones used in jewelry. the London-based Economist Intelligence Unit had such diamonds, which had increased by at least 50 percent that year, were still increasing in price. Independent appraisers estimated that the diamonds, which Rifkin had bought at a low price, were worth at least $13 million at the retail level, and so the I bank foresaw that it might make a profit of some $5 million with the reported appreciation in value of the diamonds. In anticipation of this windfall, they agreed to pay the ten percent custom tax on the diamonds which Rifkin had evaded, as well as part of the cost of the FBI investigation. Before this expected profit could be realized, the bank had to await the outcome of the trial, since the diamonds were important evidence.

Finally, in September 1978, the bank announced that it would sell its hoard of diamonds to the highest bidder. Twelve major dealers were invited to the bank's vault to inspect Russian diamonds. They were instructed to submit sealed bids by the end of the business day on September 18. A minimum price Of $7.5 million was established to encourage high bids, though independent appraisers assured the bank that the diamonds would fetch far more.

On the day of the auction, bank officials anxiously waited to see how much profit they would garner from the diamonds. However, only a single bid had been submitted, and when it was opened, it was for several million dollars less than the minimum. The bank officials were disappointed at this turn of events. Even though the diamonds had been purchased through a reputable broker at wholesale price, no American dealer would pay anywhere near this price nearly a year later.

The bank offered to sell the Russians back their own diamonds at the original 1978 Price. But they refused to buy the diamonds back at any price.

The bankers learned that two Israeli banks were also trying to sell large quantities of diamonds received as collateral from Tel Aviv dealers; and this might make it far more difficult, if not impossible, for the Security Pacific Bank to unload its 115,000 diamonds. So they decided not to wait any longer.

Walter S. Fisher, the vice-president of Security Pacific, was charged with the responsibility of selling the 115000 diamonds. He realized that diamonds were not a standardized, or fungible commodity, as were gold, silver and platinum. Different appraisals of the same diamonds varied widely dependent on what the prospective buyer thought he could sell them for. And, though all the bank's diamonds were commercial stones for the mass market, Fisher found that it was extraordinarily difficult to find a buyer. None of the dealers in the United States were willing to buy such a large consignment of diamonds. Fisher found it necessary to deal through De Beers' main broker in London, I. Hennig. Finally and accept the terms dictated by the buyer, if he wanted to sell the diamonds. He then had to deliver the diamonds to an unknown corporation in Liechtenstein, G. S. G. Investments, without receiving any money for them for eighteen months. These were terms that the bank probably would not have accepted in selling any other commodity. With a flourish of understatement, the banker concluded, "Selling diamonds is far more difficult than I had anticipated."

While the Security Pacific National Bank's problem was made worse because it had to dispose of the diamonds quickly, even when diamonds are held over long periods of time, selling them at a profit can prove difficult. For example, in 1970, the British magazine Money Which tested diamonds as a decade-long investment. It bought two gem-quality diamonds, weighing approximately one-half carat apiece, from one of London's most reputable diamond dealers for $1,000. For eight years, it kept these diamonds in its vault, inflation ran As high as 25 percent a year. For the diamonds to have kept pace with this inflationary spiral, they would have had to increase in value at least 300 percent. When the magazine's attempted to sell the diamonds, the highest bid that received was $1500 pounds, which led the publication to conclude "As an eight-year investment the diamonds that we bought have proved to be very poor."

 Comment: Top image is Laurence Olivier from Marathon Man. Middle is Security Pacific and bottom is Stanley Mark Rifkin

Powder Room Remodel

Start - Basically plain

The marble for the vanity-top

Kathee selected the stone

Tear out

Need new hinges: "double demountable"

New door pulls

New art from art.com

Bathroom painted and Vanity (now painted) reinstalled

Ron Danielson, our contractor

Marble counter-top and sink install by 

Minnesota Tile and Stone

Finished job with Ron

New mirror and light fixture

Bill of material

Lori H from Studio M was our design consultant

Finally burying the Sarah Palin - Gabby Giffords "targeting" link

The New York Times Runs The Worst Editorial In Human History, Blames SARAH PALIN For Giffords Shooting AGAIN https://t.co/kO9HDBy2oK pic.twitter.com/a8fbb2rQMw

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) June 15, 2017

The Deeper Problem With the NYT's Editorial Blaming Republicans for Political Violence https://t.co/6ZJB8tghNa via @WeeklyStandard

— Brit Hume (@brithume) June 16, 2017

The bogus claim that a map of crosshairs by Sarah Palin’s PAC incited Rep. Gabby Giffords’s shooting

Excerpt:

“Was this attack evidence of how vicious American politics has become? Probably. In 2011, Jared Lee Loughner opened fire in a supermarket parking lot, grievously wounding Representative Gabby Giffords and killing six people, including a 9-year-old girl. At the time, we and others were sharply critical of the heated political rhetoric on the right. Before the shooting, Sarah Palin’s political action committee circulated a map of targeted electoral districts that put Ms. Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized cross hairs. But in that case no connection to the shooting was ever established.” — New York Times editorial board, June 14

This quote is from a corrected version of a New York Times editorial that had falsely claimed that the gunman in the 2011 Giffords shooting was politically incited by Palin’s political action committee. Many readers asked about the uncorrected version, which initially claimed “the link to political incitement was clear” between the gunman’s actions and the map portraying crosshairs, including one over Giffords’s congressional district in Southern Arizona.

Comment: More from above link under the heading "The Facts"

Gun control is back in the national debate, after the shooting Wednesday at a baseball practice among congressional Republicans. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) was critically injured, and four others were wounded. The shooting quickly became political. The gunman, who died after a shootout with police, had volunteered for the 2016 Democratic presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and posted angry and vulgar comments on social media aimed at President Trump.

The Times argued that our politics has become lethal, and argued for stricter gun control measures. The Fact Checker obviously has no opinion on this matter.XXX Here’s what happened in 2011.

Jared Lee Loughner shot Giffords in the head during a Jan. 8, 2011, constituent event, then opened fire on the people lined up to meet her there — injuring 14 and killing six. Contemporaneous news reports noted that Giffords was one of 20 Democrats targeted in a map circulated by Sarah Palin’s political action committee in March 2010. The map portrayed stylized crosshairs to mark each of their districts, in a “Take Back the 20″ campaign to reclaim seats in the 2010 midterm elections.

After the map was published, Giffords said in an interview: “We’re on Sarah Palin’s targeted list, but the thing is that the way that she has it depicted has the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district, and when people do that, they’ve got to realize there are consequences to that action.”

As the corrected version of the Times’s editorial notes, no connection was established between this map and the 2011 shooting.

After Loughner’s shooting, some of Palin’s surrogates claimed the map was never intended to portray crosshairs, and instead said they were “surveyor’s symbols.” But that was debunked by Palin herself, when she acknowledged that the symbols were intended to be crosshairs.

It’s unclear whether Loughner even knew of Palin’s map, but it probably would not have changed the outcome. His focus on Giffords began as early as 2007, long before the map was published. He became fixated on her since he met her at a constituent event in 2007, and decided he was unsatisfied by her answer to his question: “If words could not be understood, then what does government mean?”

Three days after the shooting, authorities filed criminal charges against Loughner after finding items in his home that showed he had plotted her assassination. They found in his safe a 2007 letter from Giffords thanking him for attending the constituent event, and an envelope stating “I planned ahead,” and the words “assassination” and “Giffords,” along with his signature.

Loughner had no clear political views. Instead, he was a troubled man who abused alcohol and drugs, and whose mental illness was apparent to his classmates and family even before he was diagnosed as schizophrenic during his court trial.

... We’re glad to see this fixed in the editorial, but it’s not a good sign that the debunked talking point was included as fact in the editorial of a major media outlet. Any future references to this talking point by politicians or political groups will receive Four Pinocchios.

MORE: New York Times corrects editorial that drew huge backlash for blaming Sarah Palin in Gabby Giffords' shooting

New Fact Checker: The bogus claim that a map of crosshairs by Sarah Palin's PAC incited Gabby Giffords 2011 shooting https://t.co/1sw0T4AFTf

— Michelle Ye Hee Lee (@myhlee) June 15, 2017

Two REITs that lease to the Federal Government

This REIT Is Actually Printing Dividends

The REITs:

• Easterly Government Properties, Inc. 
• Government Properties Income Trust

Comment: I don't have a position in either ... yet!

Before Gal Gadot was Wonder Woman ...

#wonderwoman @GalGadot first day in the Israeli army. Great photo by Shaul Golan, @YediotAhronot pic.twitter.com/YJErunxUu5

— ידיעות אחרונות (@YediotAhronot) June 9, 2017

Gal Gadot's performance as 'Wonder Woman' is the dazzling embodiment of female empowerment, says @joemorgenstern https://t.co/4M8Rb2nBNc

— Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) June 2, 2017

The Data Center REITs

6 Great Data Center REITs For 2017

Top REIT Ideas: Shining The Spotlight On Data Centers - 2016 Recap

Comment: Got $ 12,000? Here's a way to invest in a diversified way in 6 REITs. Want even broader? Consider the VNQ ETF. Look at that low expense ratio!

Who's the True Muslim?

Solus Christus now "[dis]respectful of other religions" and "[not] what this country is supposed to be about"

Watch Bernie Sanders Attack a Christian Nominee and Impose an Unconstitutional Religious Test for Public Office Excerpt:

You think your statement that you put into that publication, they do not know God because they rejected Jesus Christ, His Son, and they stand condemned, do you think that’s respectful of other religions? ... I would simply say, Mr. Chairman, that this nominee is really not someone who this country is supposed to be about.

Commentary:

• Two U.S. Senators Apply an Anti-Christian Religious Test for Government Officials
• In Christ Alone: Bernie Sanders Attacks Wheaton Grad’s Stance on Salvation
• BERNIE SANDERS TO TRADITIONAL CHRISTIANS: YOUR BELIEFS ARE INDEFENSIBLY HATEFUL AND INSULTING, AND NOT WHAT THIS COUNTRY IS SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT

@jgumbel

Related satirehttps://t.co/WjjNlL14zk

— James Peet (@jrpeet) June 9, 2017

The Atlantic gets it right. It was a religious test. https://t.co/QZUjH3GjRu

— Jennifer Gumbel (@jgumbel) June 9, 2017

Update: Is it hateful to believe in hell?

.@SenSanders imposes religious test for @realDonaldTrump budget pick #RapidReactions by @ckchumley https://t.co/aXcwH3cltL

— The Washington Times (@WashTimes) June 11, 2017

Top 100 Websites

Click here for biggen. Source w article

Hillary's Alt-Facts

Hillary Lacks Remorse of Conscience - Oddly, she seems completely sincere, as if she believes the alternative facts she’s peddling.

Excerpt:

I don’t want to beat up on Hillary Clinton. She thought she’d win and she lost, embarrassingly, to a man she considered deeply unworthy. At the same time she won the popular vote by 2.9 million. It would take anyone time to absorb these things emotionally and psychologically.

But wow. Her public statements since defeat have been malignant little masterpieces of victimhood-claiming, blame-shifting and unhelpful accusation. They deserve censure.

Last weekend she was the commencement speaker at her alma mater, Wellesley, where she insulted the man who beat her. This Wednesday she was at the 2017 Code Conference, hosted by the Recode website, where she was interviewed by friendly journalists Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. She eagerly offered a comprehensive list of the reasons she lost the 2016 presidential election.

She lost because America is a hopelessly reactionary country in which dark forces fight a constant “rearguard action” to “turn back the clock.” She lost because Republicans are both technologically advanced and underhanded. Democrats, for instance, use data and analytics to target and rouse voters—“better messaging.” Republicans, on the other hand, use “content farms” and make “an enormous investment in falsehoods, fake news, call it what you will.” Democrats “did not engage in false content.” She lost because of the Russians: “Who were they coordinating with, or colluding with?”

She lost because of “voter suppression” and “unaccountable money flowing in against me.” She lost because the Democratic National Committee didn’t help her. “I inherit nothing from the Democratic Party. I mean it was bankrupt. . . . Its data was mediocre to poor, nonexistent, wrong. I had to inject money into it.”

She lost because FBI Director James Comey told Congress the investigation regarding her email server had been reopened. “So for whatever reason . . . and I can’t look inside the guy’s mind, you know, he dumps that on me on Oct. 28, and I immediately start falling.”

She lost because she was “swimming against a historic tide. It’s very difficult historically to succeed a two-term president of your own party.” She lost because she was “the victim of a very broad assumption that I was going to win.” She lost because the news media ignored her policy positions.

And then there was sexism. “It sort of bleeds into misogyny. And let’s just be honest, you know, people who have . . . a set of expectations about who should be president and what a president looks like, you know, they’re going to be much more skeptical and critical of somebody who doesn’t look like and talk like and sound like everybody else who’s been president. Any you know, President Obama broke that racial barrier, but you know, he’s a very attractive, good-looking man.”

Oh my goodness, how she thinks.

Comment: Please just go away!

#FridayFeeling#HillaryMemoirTitles

The Bitch Is Back
HilLIARy Clinton

Never Stop Barking
Say Anything To Win
Blame Anything When You Lose pic.twitter.com/iftfydifq5

— AliceInCovfefeLand💋 (@American1765) June 2, 2017

Dems want Hillary Clinton to leave spotlight https://t.co/njUuaxU2AC

— James Peet (@jrpeet) June 4, 2017