Damn Side Bar

Greetings all junior, deputy, aspiring, official or otherwise economists.

As you may have noticed the side bar disappeared a little bit ago and has since returned. This was due to a partially successful attempt to add a couple images and links to my side bar.

"Partially" because while I did get the link to connect, the image (which I did scale for the width of the side bar) did not come through. Additionally if you are using MS Explorer the entirety of the side bar was shifted to the bottom of the page.

If there are any HTML or programmer type economists out there that might have a solution for this I would be immensely grateful. I am currently poking around trying to find the code to prevent the scroll down and the issues I'm having with the image size, but if anybody out there happens to have an answer/solution to this, that would be grand.

Give Us a Kid for 12 Years and He'll Be Socialist Forever

If there's anything I loathe it is how the public education system has absolutely no reservations about brainwashing children at such a young age to become socialists. It's "brainwashing" and "concentration camps" if people on the right try to teach children the merits of capitalism, but it's compassion and caring if you teach them to become little Lenins.







The truth is though, they're only doing this for future job security. Wouldn't do the present day liberals any favor in the future to teach the youth about lower taxes and cutting government spending or the merits of fiscal austerity.

ht to Small Dead Animals

If You Can't Take Care of a Garden, Then You Can't Take Care of a Kid

I am a bachelor.

And I am a bachelor that likes peppers.

And so it is not an infrequent even where I will be sitting there watching a movie with some cut up peppers and a dish of vegetable dip.

However, I am also an economist. And so when you cut the peppers open you see seeds, hundreds and hundreds of seeds, emanating from the stem.

Now since I am a bachelor, yet at the same time an economist, it presents a paradox and these two traits become the shoulder angel and the shoulder devil.

The good wholesome economist in me says, "waste not! Look at all those potential peppers! Look at the production you could achieve! And impossible to tax no less! Go and plant those peppers and then you will have even more peppers to consume while effectively at the same time producing more in your life than a piece studies major!"

But then the sly, lazy, bachelor devil within me stirs, and protests, "Ehhh, peppers. Have to water the peppers. Have to till. Don't wanna till. Wanna sit here and smoke my cigar outside and drink whiskey. Want to play a video game where you plant peppers, but not actually plant them in the real world. Herman the Bachelor Bunny will probably eat the peppers. Just throw the pepper seeds away and smoke and drink instead."

But with some cajoling from a female friend of mine, who agreed to till a spot of land for me and plant something beyond peppers, I decided to let the economist in me rule and effectively became a bachelor economist sharecropper. The girl gets 25% of the produce, I just have to water it.

Of course this was 3 months ago and little was I told just how long you have to water these damn things before they bear fruit. And if you miss just even one day on the cucumbers, you can kiss them good-bye. And when i wanted to go out west to Sturgis, you had to find a surrogate waterer. It was just like having a kid.

And then I had an epiphany. I figured, that if you don't have the ability or desire to keep a small garden, then you probably shouldn't be having kids. And that if we could somehow test people when they're in college or high school, give them the garden test, we can then see how good or bad of parents they'd be.

This would result in immense savings for the tax payer as those with gardens that look like mine would be effectively banned from having children. My children would be malnourished, dry, kind of droopy (judging by the tomato leaves) and have weeds growing all over them. If child protection saw my garden they would insist on a vasectomy. My female friend on the other hand, who takes great care in nurturing and caring for her rival bachelorette CPA garden would have children that are healthy and strong and would go well on a pizza.

Regardless, if you and the significant other economist in your life are thinking about having children, try growing a garden first.

Clops is Back from the Vet

Visited Snarks and her rabbit, Clops, is back from the vet. Short one eye, but seems to be very well fed.

We Can't Get the Oil if You Don't Let Us Go Where It Is

I get an occasional e-mail from an insider I have in the oil industry (we occasionally get together after work and club seals and shoot polar bears when Dick Cheney gives us permission). She sent me a response the oil industry had to the group of 10, the democrats and republican congressmen who compromised on opening up "some" lands to new exploration.

But I like to keep things simple, because I'm a busy man. And so I asked her if I had the short version correctly which is listed below in a short e-mail exchange we had;



And that about sums it up. You can't find oil where the oil isn't located. Just like you can't find monkeys in the Arctic, nor can you find polar bears in Honduras or sane people in San Francisco.

Notice the natural response would be for these oil companies to go outside the US to find their oil. Ahhh, yet another 10,000 potential jobs lost to idiotic environmental fascism not to mention the furtherance of our dependence on foreign oil. Right now the Saudi's and all oil producers LOVE the democratic party.

Whites No Longer the Majority

I love the American media.

Publish a story, but then do you provide the jim dandy chart that comes with it?

No.

Thanks to our British media counterparts, here's the chart;

Daddy's Little Girl Gone and Got Herself a Degree in Sociology...EXCELLENT!

This is a repost, sorry for the repost, but I'm testing the new Del icio, Digg, etc., link buttons I've put in to see if they work. Figured it's one of my better posts so it might get some linkage.

I will confess!

Many years ago when men were giants and women were angels "The Guys" all lived in this house in St. Paul.

The house was a holy and sacred temple to bachelortude.

Owned by one particularly savvy member of "The Guys," he would rent it out to 4 other friends. However, even if you didn't live there, if you were one of "The Guys" you could walk in at any hour (doors always unlocked), crash there any night, and to appease the Great Gods of Bachelortude, occasionally bring a sacrifical 12 pack of beer.

Thusly, my friends and I would pay nightly homage to "The House of Bachelortude" by drinking, playing 16 person X-Box linked Halo Fests till 3 AM, WarCraft, Texas Hold 'Em, throwing the occasional party, and I explicity remember one night requiring banning all communications with girlfriends (UNLESS the girlfriends came over bearing gifts of beer and food which would earn them a 5 minute audience with their boyfriend, whose dumbasses should have been covering my approach to the blue team's base with the sniper rifle while playing Sidewinder in Halo, but oh no, somebody has got to go talk to his girlfriend, meanwhile I'm run over with a tank and the Blue Team has the bazooka and shotgun and is heading over to our base...I'LL NEVER FORGIVE YOU KILGS!!!!!!)

And life was good.

But as this was The House of Bachelortude the magazine subscriptions were not exactly The Economist or the Journal of American Political Economy...actually it was FHM and Playboy.
Not that we had a choice in the matter you understand. The Great Gods of Bachelortude DEMANDED IT! So what were we to do? You don't want to incur the wrath of The Great Gods of Bachelortude!

Anyway, as I said before I will confess, that while waiting for the pizza to show up, or being recently defeated in a game of Texas Hold 'Em I would peruse the most recent issue of Playboy that would be strewn on the table (to appease The House of Bacherlortude of course).

While not as attractive as some of the charts I've seen in The Economist, I will admit some of the girls were OK looking. Of course as any good economist would do, I read the footnotes to make sure the source is reputable, the methodology sound, etc. But instead of reading "Source: Retroactively Applying Standardized Unemployment Rates in Sweden, OECD Sept 12, 2006" the footnotes to these Playboy models was;

"Bambi Jones, Age 23, Height 5'2" weight 105 pounds. Degree - Bachelors of Arts in Sociology from the University of Arizona."

And then my economic spidey senses started tingling. For fresh in my memory was when I was stood up, not once, not twice, but thrice by a drop dead, Playboy-esque girl who had went to school for cosmotology. This observation, combined with my utter disdain for fluffy majors got me thinking;

Was there a correlation???

Do Playboy Playmates pursue easy degrees?

And if so, do they pursue these degrees because they're dumb?

Or are they just bidding their time in college majoring in philosophy whilst scoping out for a husband effectively earning themselves an MRS. degree?

Furthermore, should they not find a husband are these degrees so worthless that they resort to baring it all to make ends meet?

And finally, can what daddy's little girl major in be a predictor of whether millions of young horn-dog guys will see daddy's little girl spread eagle on a centerfold?

So I set forth to conduct this serious study. Selflessly dedicating my time for the sake of advancing our understanding of economics. And took it upon myself to study all the Playboy Playmate's profiles and see what they majored in.

No no, you don't have to thank me. It's my patriotic and American duty to foist this heavy burden upon myself. And it is the least I can do to repay the great freedoms our forefathers fought so valiantly for.

The results?

Here is a breakdown of what Playboy Playmates studied in college;


*Note, the vast majority of Playmates either didn't attend or list whether they attended college. This includes all the data found on Wikipedia for all playmates going back to 1980. An interesting side note, the further back you go, less and less playmates went to college reflecting the increasing trend in labor force participation by women. Total number of playmates that listed a major was 54, understand this does not mean they finished college or earned a degree. It just mentioned college.

What is amazing is how there is not one, NOT ONE COMPUTER PROGRAMMER OR PRE-MED OR PHYSICS OR OR ACCOUNTING OR ENGINEERING MAJOR (bar Cindy Crawford who spent 1 quarter in chemical engineering, but never graduated). The majority of playmates pursue degrees in utter fluff, the biggest pulls being "psychology," "acting/theater," "journalism," "communications," "education," "junior college," and that weak pathetic worthless degree that tries to score some credibility as passing itself off as a "business major;" marketing.

I further simplified this chart between what I like to call "Fluffy El Crapo Degrees" and "Real Degrees That Will Get You A Freaking Job."


A full 82% of the playmates that went to college, effectively wasted their time and pursued worthless degrees, whilst a paltry 18% actually went and did something useful with their time (sadly even this can't be said as most of them didn't graduate with those degrees, when you adjust for this it literally is only about 3%).

So what lesson can we take away from this fellow aspiring and junior deputy economists?

How can we end this post so that in a Stan and Kyle like way we say,

"you know, I think we learned something here today."

Well, for one, maybe Larry Summers shouldn't have been punished for his truthful statement that women just aren't cutting it in the real sciences. Maybe good ol' Larry was just trying to prevent some of these young girls from having to resort to posing nude to make ends meet or make a living. Maybe Larry was trying to actually do something tangible that would help close the wage gap between men and women by getting more women into the sciences and engineering.



Secondly, maybe we ought to cut back on fluffy subjects in not just the high schools but the colleges as well. Enough of the "pscyhology" or "sociology" or "communications" crap. And certainly do away with "peace studies" programs. Maybe instead of enticing women with the false illusion that they're going to make it big or even make it period with touchy feely degrees that we show them just what caliber go and pursue such worthless degrees and encourage them to pursue careers that would actually increase their incomes and make them TRULY independent women.

Third, upper middle income fathers who think "daddy's little girl can do no wrong," think daddy's little girl is superior to all other humans, and think nothing of preparing his little girl for the real world beyond giving her his credit card for a trip to the mall better pull his head out of his ass and start fathering instead of thinking his arrogance and bank account is going to carry through his little suburbanite princesses. That you might want to instill a little work ethic in her and teach her the merits of work and self-reliance before you go and buy her a little Honda Del Sol or Pontiac Sunfire.

And finally, if daddy's little girl goes into the fluff-stuff for college, be aware that the day might just come when you go to the office and all the other guys will see just how much your little princess has grown up.

However, there is a way to prevent this embarrassing situation. Note that the sciences;

engineering, computers, medicine, physics, chemistry, etc.

are like a vaccine practically innoculating your little girl from ever showing her assets to the entire world and all the horn-dogs at The House of Bachelortude. Again, Cindy Crawford is the only one to major in engineering, and she gave that up because she had the rare opportunity to become a bona fide supermodel. And although I didn't add it up, the majority of "post playboy careers" a lot of these playmates had were either "dancers" or "strippers."

Only problem is we keep on telling women that math is too "tough" for them and channel them to the majors and careers that are less paying than subjects that have traditionally been pursued by men.

Of course, when we say this, everybody gets in a hissy fits and demands blood. Larry Summers lost his job over it. Feminists and leftists don't like it because women entering the sciences would result in more capitalists and Republicans and take away from the liberal arts.

Besides which...it just occurred to me...if we encouraged girls to major in the sciences, where would we get our Playboy Playmates?

Uhhh..sooo...ummm, yeah, on second thought ENCOURAGE YOUR YOUNG DAUGHTERS TO MAJOR IN FLUFF! We wouldn't want them getting real jobs with real careers. We men need them desperate enough to disrobe for our viewing pleasure.

Besides which, THE GODS OF BACHELORTUDE DEMAND IT!!!!!

Percent of People in Favor of Nuclear Power

The problem with surrounding yourself with informed educated people is you start to think that everybody in the world is as informed and educated. Therefore when I see charts like this;



I am harshly reminded just what an insanely high percent of the population are morons. How (with all the hype and worry about global warming not to mention our drive to become energy independent) could we only have a 44% support rate for nuclear power?

You Can't Make This Up

Here's the story.

Could we perhaps sum these people up as "I don't have anything to offer the world, therefore I'll create a little crusade in my mind to rationalize destroying it?"

Shoot 'Em Up

OK, so I just watched Shoot 'Em Up.



Hands down the best movie in the past decade.

Pointless, impossible, mindless, action shoot em up, ultimate guy flick.

If you have nothing to do for the evening, just trust me and get it.

Keep the Bad News Coming!

The worst the economy, housing and financial sectors do, the better my book sales will be.

Article 1

Article 2

I have become shamelessly contrarian.

MBA's Obey

I don't know what others' experiences have been with MBA's, but basically mine have been;

"Have a pulse? Get an MBA!"

I'm not impressed with MBA's. In business school I learned and took the exact same classes the MBA's did and the truth is things like "management" or "leadership" is all BS when you try to codify it and turn it into a class. Things like "management" and "leadership" cannot be learned, only experienced. Thus, when I see some 27 year old MBA putz who when not wearing a suit and tie is wearing his baseball cap on backwards with the latest in Ambercrombie and Fitch whilst at Applebee's and calls girls "hawt!" I have a hard time really taking the "rank" or "title" of an MBA seriously, let alone would charter the individual with a position of power.

So it does not make me have great hope for the future that when GDP goes down, MBA applications go up.


Regardless, my position on MBA's runs contrary to the realities of the labor market. Firms do pay more for MBA's. Ergo there must be some benefit, and I think I've found it.

You don't hire an MBA to lead or to think. You hire them to obey. And if there is an advantage to an MBA, they certainly obey. Which only make sense, because in corporate America conformance and obedience is much more sought after than thinking or progress.

Left Handed Presidents

The Economist had an interest item showing a disproportionate # of our presidents (especially recently) have been south paws. And if I read the article correctly, both McCain and Obama are lefties too (of course some more than others HAR HAR HAR!!!)

How Wine Proves Women are Communists!

I ordered some wine.

And the reason I ordered some wine is because I wanted some wine.

Now let us review that simple statement.

“And the reason I ordered some wine is because I wanted some wine.”

Not

“I ordered some wine because I wanted somebody else to have my wine.”

Not

“I ordered some wine because I wanted to SHARE my wine.”

Not

“I ordered some wine so I could go and share it with the masses and we all sing kumbya while talking about how dreamy Obama is.”

I wanted some wine for me, because I wanted some freaking wine.

But sure as bears and popes, the girl slowly reaches across the table, going for my glass of wine.

Not even asking.

Not even requesting permission.

Just sloooooowly moving her hand across the table, making a bee line towards MY wine.

I waited patiently for her hand to make contact with it, but once it did I said,

“Whoa, whoa whoa whoa whoa! Just what do you think you’re doing?”

Almost with a shocked look on her face she said, “I was just going to have a sip of your wine.”

Now let me explain something to ladies out there. You see, I ordered MY wine because I wanted some wine for ME. When men buy themselves something, they intended it for them. Not for you. Not to be shared. Not to make us have warm fuzzies in our stomachs as we all capitulate to Marxism and spread the wealth. It’s for us! Not you.

So I explained the concept of how I forfeited some of my finite life in exchange for the money to buy this wine for ME. That I gave up a part of my life in the form of labor to earn the money that bought me this wine and ergo, I was 100% entitled to all of it. Every single drop. I went so far as even to offer to buy her, her own glass of wine if she wanted one. But then she dropped the Ultra-Marxist bomb on me;

“But I want to taste yours.”

You see, this is why women deep down inside are communists. They don’t want to pay to taste some wine. They don’t want to even have their entire whole glass of wine. No, they want a “little sip” of YOUR wine.

So I asked said girl,

“Said Girl, why is it you want a sip of MY wine when I am more than willing to buy you your own glass of wine?”

And the Leninist across the table from me responded,

“Because I just want a sip. Besides it tastes better when it’s somebody else’s.”

This confirmed something I knew all along. Communists derive an additional utility from the same volume of consumption if what they’re consuming is somebody else’s. It’s a sick and twisted masochistic aspect of the weaker political ideology.

I was always intuitively aware of this as the same thing happened with fries. Lord knows you couldn’t just sit there on a date in high school, about to engorged yourself with those heavenly McDonald’s fries, and then, sure as bears and popes some your 16 year old steady is burrowing into YOUR fries like a badger in a hole. But now I had proof, a confession, self-admitted guilt she was gunning for my wine because it was MY wine.

And don’t think for a second this is just relegated to fries or wine. Oh no no no no! Ice cream. My god, has any man in the history of America been able to enjoy 100% of his own, labor-bought-and-paid-for ice cream? Can’t get one bite before “she” wants to “try” some of “your” ice cream.

Any pie left in the fridge? Go ahead and try to have a full piece of pie. Oh no, you can’t. Not in a million years. Even though there is a whole 3/4ths of a pie in the fridge and she could very well have her own entire piece of pie to herself, no, she wants “just a little bite” of yours.

And don’t think it’s just relegated to food. Ha! If you had a favorite shirt she likes, yeah, well pal, you HAD a favorite shirt. Now it’s a communal shirt. That nice little sporty convertible you have out there. If it’s 85 and sunny, she’s going to want a little taste of that. Nothing is safe from their Marxist reach.

Of course, try to then share something that was intended to be shared and she wants none of it. Video games are the perfect example. Designed to bring the masses together, designed to make us all players, designed to increase camaraderie and bonding and bring us all closer together, arguably the key to world peace, but oh no, she wants none of that. No, it has to be something that she covets. Your ice cream. Your wine. Your martini. Your convertible. Your favorite old ratty sweatshirt from college.

Oh, and you may be laughing now, but they’re out there men. And it all starts with just a “little sip” of your much-coveted wine.

Wasn't the Timing on This Precious?

Yeah, keep telling me that the married life is better. I'll be doing what I please today.

Making Christianity More Appealling

If pastors made their sermons like this, I think you'd get a little more attendees at church.

Why Is Everything in English?

Again, I shall ask the question; "why is everything in English at the olympics?"

Not that I'm for diversity and puppy dogs and flowers and progressive taxation, but if we're all playing in China, and given China is 1/5th the population, wouldn't the majority of the lettering and people's jersey's be in Mandarin or Cantonese?

Captain Capitalism and the Great South Dakota Mystery

So I went out to the Black Hills/Badlands area earlier this week and I uncovered a mystery that I can't figure out and am figuring one of you savvy junior, deputy, official or otherwise economists might do a little better.

I was in the FAR south west corner of South Dakota. And when I say far, I mean literally 1 mile east of the Wyoming border and about 5 miles north of the Nebraska border. There is absolutely NOTHING out there (bar some crystals and what not which I did find). No paved roads, no telephone wires, no traffic, no town, no buildings, no farms. True wilderness. Regardless, I come around a dirt road corner and in the distance I see this (you'll have to click on it to see the detail).



Way off in the distance are these buildings.

Now I looked at a map and there is no town nearby. The closest town is a town called Igloo, South Dakota, but these buildings are not part of it.

I then did a google satellite image search and found the exact same thing I had seen from the ground.



Miles of the stuff. I just saw the edge. The geometric patterns is what I noticed the most.

Now I have no idea what these buildings are. Housing for cattle? Didn't see any cattle or livestock and there were so many buildings. Storage of some kind? In any case, see if you can solve the mystery.

Can I Beat Pelosi?

I never had any real idea as to how to measure what I'd deem "success" based on the number of books I sold. I was thinking I'd be pretty happy with 5,000. If I could pull that off all by my little lonesome, that would be pretty sweet (plus it would really piss off a lot of leftists who genuinely would love to see the book fail). But I think a more reasonable goal would be simply to beat Nancy Pelosi.

If I can sell more than 2,737 copies, I will raise a celebratory glass of scotch.

Single Men Make Less Than Married Men Do

I happened upon this chart at the St. Louis Fed of all places whenst doing research for something else.



Throughout the whole report they forgot to make one major adjustment or distinction;

A married man's wages must be divvied up amongst a family.

A single man gets to keep it all himself...of course minus the taxes we pay to subsidize all the married mens' children through school.

Still, that Pontiac Solstice is better looking than any brand new newborn baby I've seen. And more affordable.

Though, a rather cynical FEMALE friend of mine suggested another theory;

"Married men know how to obey. You single boys just go and do whatever you want and goof around!"

Heh heh.

Yes.

Yes we do.