Isaac Schrödinger

Still not getting it

Throwing a glass of water on a forest fire:

The Swedish government has decided that all asylum seekers who come to the country in the future will undergo a mandatory social introduction course shortly after their arrival. [...]

Among other things, the new arrivals will be informed that polygamy, female genital mutilation, child marriage, and domestic violence are forbidden, as is racism (inluding anti-Semitism, Afrophobia, and Islamophobia) and other forms of hostility.

This will turn out to be a smashing success. I can see it now: a Muslim guy smacks his forehead as he's finally told that the countless beatings he gave his second pre-teen wife were super uncouth. From then on, he'll be a model husband.

Can you feel the compassion?

Kroger Co. will close two Southern California supermarkets in response to a local ordinance requiring extra pay for certain grocery employees working during the pandemic.

The decision announced by the company Monday follows a unanimous vote last month by the Long Beach City Council mandating a 120-day increase of $4 an hour for employees of supermarkets with at least 300 employees nationwide and more than 15 in Long Beach.

The ignorant politicians don't understand basic economics:

The Long Beach ordinance was approved during a Jan. 19 meeting in which council members and Mayor Robert Garcia said that many grocery stores gave employees hazard pay during the early stages of the pandemic but later phased it out.

“These folks that are working at these markets and these grocery stores are heroes,” Garcia said at the time. “This is nothing new. They have received this type of additional pay in the past and if they deserved it in the past, they deserve it today.”

Thanks to his actions these heroes will soon get zero dollars an hour. This is going to be the ugly reality for hundreds of thousands of unskilled and low-wage workers across America in the next few months as the minimum wage is increased and many businesses with thin margins have no choice but to fire their workers and shut down.

Bezos has spoken!

007 will have a new nemesis:

"Running Amazon with my army of warehouse minions has been fun," he said, "but it has really taken me away from some of my lifelong passions-- like building superweapons in space to dry up the world's oceans, or creating a killer virus so I can make trillions selling the cure, or having a shark tank in my living room!"

Know your place, peasants!

John Kerry, environmentalist pic.twitter.com/xaMUZzFxPe

— TakingHayekSeriously🧨 (@FriedrichHayek) January 31, 2021

There is no equality

A CEO learns a very important lesson:

One of the big decisions that Calvin made when he founded Spill was to pay himself and his colleagues an equal salary.

"There were five people, and everyone was pretty much contributing the same," he says. "So we tried this experiment where we paid each of us an equal amount of money - regardless of experience, regardless of role. We wanted to challenge the traditional model of pay. We decided on £36,000 a year for everyone. We calculated that was a decent living wage for London."

That simple strategy doesn't work when one hires varied staff:

As Spill took off, Calvin recruited new staff such as a software developer, a salesperson and clerical workers - and decided to offer them all the same £36,000 salary. This is when the problems started.

The real world is ruled by the iron laws of supply and demand. You'll get a lot of clerks for $4,000 a month but almost no software developers.

Calvin eventually let go of the equality nonsense and now has pay grades. It's distressing that nobody in his social or professional circle convinced him that this was an extremely bad idea from the start. Well, at least, he learned.