Archive for January, 2007
All from the East:
1. Technical knowledge is not enough. One must transcend techniques so that the art becomes an artless art, growing out of the unconscious. -Daisetsu Suzuki
2. The less effort, the faster and more powerful you will be. -Bruce Lee
3. In activity there should be calmness, and in calmness there should be activity. -Daisetsu Suzuki
I will try to keep these in my mind this weekend, especially as I practice my guitar and bass.
Minimum Wage Heeyah!
OK, just for the record – I’m not a democrat, I’m not a republican – I am an American. I do tend to be a more conservative type of person but I don’t like to be put in a group. That said, I think the minimum wage increase is a bad idea. All I can see the increase in minimum wage accomplishing long term (3 years) is pushing inflation up 40%, causing US goods and services prices to increase, and further weakening the dollar against other foreign currencies.Â
Prices are set at what people can afford. When people can afford more, prices go up. This is called inflation. When the minimum wage workers can start affording more things, the prices just go up. I guess the government doesn’t realize that changing the minimum wage will not change the standard of living. Â
US goods and services will also increase.  If business now have to pay their workers an extra 40%, in order to keep the same profits, their prices will also go up 40%.  What this does is hurts anyone but those the raise affects because they didn’t get a 40% raise but their costs went up 40%.  It’s like everyone who makes above 7.25 will be getting a 40% pay cut.  Ouch!
Weakening the dollar? That one’s easy. If our money is 40% less valuable in the US, what do you think it will be worth outside the US?
OK, I can see how people can think that giving the lowest paid people in this country a boost in their paycheck may be a good idea and a nice thing to do, but I think it is very short-sighted.  I think to make a better contribution, the best thing to do is to raise the standard of living for all.  Heck, you could give free healthcare, charge everyone a 40% tax (end result is the same) but it would actually cause inflation to decrease and strengthen our dollar.  Don’t get me wrong, you’ll see another angry post if someone gets the bright idea of instating a 40% tax, but you get the idea.
Here in central NJ, we had our firt snow of the year. OK, so it only lasted about 2 hours (started at ~10AM and was gone by lunch), but I was excited to see it fall. Not like when I was driving up to Buffalo in November and we still had 3 hours to drive and it started coming down. But anyway, it was almost 70 on saturday, snow today, and supposed to be back up in the 60’s this weekend. The weather is mad!!
Drat!
You would think that being a web programmer for two years, my blog would look a heck of a lot better. Granted, I was using perl & html – none of this CSS, AJAX, RSS fun was available yet. But I am stumped! I want to do something as simple as embed some youtube and I can’t figure it out. I don’t want to embed a link, I can do that, but I actually want to post the video. Anyone help me out?
