Behold The Walmart

The largest employer in the United States is Walmart.  The second largest is the United States Postal Service (USPS). 

One is a private sector, for-profit corporation; the other is a government non-profit entity.  One is non-union, and the other is unionized.  One returns profits to its owners, the other must be subsidized by its owners.  One pays an average wage of $11.75/hr with limited benefits, and the other pays an average of $24/hr with generous benefits.  One is younger than I am; the other is older than the nation.   

There are 142,000 products in the average Walmart Superstore.  Each day, 2.1 million people go to work in 9,749 Walmart stores in 14 countries.  There is no government Czar telling them what to do, and none of them know me from Adam.  So what I am about to tell you is really amazing – check this out.    

I never told any one of those 2.1 million employees where I would be today, or what time I would arrive, or which of those 142,000 products I would buy; it is a little ninja test of the capitalist system I run every so often for Quality Control to make sure that markets still work.  The odds against them guessing which products I will choose to buy and from which store are astronomical, and yet they nailed it.

Kingsford, Michigan; 5:45 PM; Colgate Cavity Protection toothpaste and M&M Peanuts.  Scary, man - I’m still shaking.  It’s like they put a chip in my head or something.  And they do it every time; way better than Chriss Angel.

Now let’s give contestant #2 a try.  The United States Postal Service has had over 200 years to perfect its craft.  They have only 28 products.  Each day 700,000 people go to work in only one country.  They deliver my mail to one of only two possible locations once a day, six days a week and they get to pick the time.   

It’s the government, so I had to dumb-down the test quite a bit to even give them a shot. I gave them my location months in advance, let them pick the service, pick the day, pick the time, and pick the parcels. There is only 1/3 as many of them to align their efforts and they make twice as much as the Walmart folks, and for the 30th day in a row, they forwarded my mail to the wrong address. 

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the difference between markets and government. 

Behold the wonder that is the Walmart.  Do any of those hundreds of millions of people from all over the world who designed, built, transported, and merchandised those 142,000 products to their 9,749 stores know or care what I want or why I want it?  Why do they want me to have healthy gums and no chocolate mess more than they want to go fishing with their kids? 

The answer, of course, is that they did not make anything for me; they made it for profit.  Profit is the reason that I can buy generic medicine for $4, a wastebasket for $1.69, 2 dozen golf balls for $9.49, and get my tires rotated while I buy groceries.  I have no idea if the person(s) who made the Garden Weasel is black, white, male, female, gay, straight, Christian, Muslim, disabled, old, young, liberal or conservative. Nor do I care, and neither does he or she; profit makes us do what bumper stickers cannot – coexist.

He or she is working at the best opportunity available to them, and I am buying at the best opportunity available to me.  We both decided what is best for us on our own without coercion.  Two families have optimized our benefit in voluntary and peaceful exchange with each other.  Profit does that every day without breaking a sweat; no government has ever pulled it off, not even at gunpoint.   

It gets a lot better.  A person of modest means can buy high quality goods beyond the reach of the richest people in the world just one generation ago.  Moms who grew up wearing hand-me-downs can buy new clothes for all of their own children.  People who never had to do that probably can’t appreciate the anxiety of that first day of school when you have on your brother’s stuff all patched and darned and rolled up; or the relief when you discover that most every other kid is in the same boat.  And now kids worry if their smart phone battery will run out before the Justin Beiber download is finished.  

Profit did that.  Profit delivers luxury to the poor; government delivers promises to the poor. That is the difference.  That is the thing that the haters of free market capitalism don’t grasp.  There is nothing capable of replacing it - nothing.     

Of all of our governmental agencies, our military is the most able, the most accomplished, and the most admired.  With an almost unlimited budget, the most advanced logistics system of any government entity anywhere in the world, and the most advanced weapons to force compliance, they still run out of socks in the combat zone.   

Do they ever run out of socks at the Walmart?  There’s your moment of clarity.  

The next time you walk into a Walmart, take a minute to look around; think about all the millions and millions of people from all over the world who made the miracle that is the Walmart come together just for you.  All it would take is for one of them – just one – to not do their job, and the product you came in to buy will not be on the shelf.  Now grab your cart and go see if any of them failed.    

Not only did they pass my ninja QC test and deliver a decent return to their shareholders, but Walmart also gave $170 million of its profits to charities here in the United States alone last year.  The USPS lost money and had nothing to give to charities; in fact, it asked for a subsidy from its owners and proposed cutting back service in exchange. 

Lower quality, higher prices, unreliable, unsustainable, uncharitable. And with the benevolent government as the employer and a union workforce, surely the USPS would be a perfect socialist utopian workplace, right?  No, the term “going postal” has become slang for violent workplace rage. 

And they say capitalism doesn’t work? 

And they also insist that we free marketers need the government to step in and fix us?  What can government possibly teach markets?  What could Walmart possibly learn from USPS about giving me what I want, when I want it, where I want it, and at a price I am willing to pay?  Why should I expect people who go postal to protect me from the greeter? 

Forget what rubbish you have been taught by your professors about failed capitalism; go teach yourself about its miracles.  Walk in and trust what you see with your own eyes – and behold the wonder that is the Walmart.    


“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment and order Tim’s new book, “BRING IT!”     

It's Raining Coin

Like most other “rich” people, I slept in this morning; rolled out from under the spun-gold sheets at the crack of noon, showered in Evian and went outside to fill up my humungous money bucket with the golden coins that fall out of the sky on people like me. 

No, no really – that’s where it comes from, don’t you know.  The raining of the coin doesn’t happen everywhere, as it would be silly of us who already got ours let the middle class siphon off any of the loot.  You have to watch Fox News and know the secret code words to learn where and when the Koch brothers are going to make the next drop.  There’s an app for that, too.

They teach us all about this stuff in that secret rich white boy’s school – how to steal the poor people’s buckets and rig the game so we are always first in line when prosperity rains.  That way there is nothing left for the working class and they all have to go on food stamps so we can belittle them, just like Juan Williams said… 

Sadly, it is necessary to tell some people now that this is satire.  For the record, there is no secret rich boy’s school and wealth doesn’t really fall out of the sky - you have to earn it.  Sorry to burst your bubble, lefties.      

Actually, I don’t even know if I am rich or not – certainly better off than I ever dreamed possible growing up in my little mining town, and super-rich in all the really important ways that don’t involve counting up money.  When the Democrats start the drumbeat for more taxes on the rich, sometimes the line is as low as $106,000 and sometimes it is $250,000 and sometimes you have to be a millionaire or billionaire. 

I guess it doesn’t really matter; it is one of those questions of which came first - the chicken or the chicken-tax. 

The President just gave his State of the Labor Unions address (yawn) and announced that taxing the rich (yawn) will be the backbone of his new plan (yawn) to build the economy.  Funny, since he just decided we wouldn’t be building pipelines, power plants, drill rigs, Gibson guitars, planes in South Carolina, or cars that people actually want to buy.  I guess the economy is something else.      

And incidentally, I think that Republican congressman who boycotted the President’s speech was as wrong as the Wisconsin state senators that fled to Illinois.  Until the day the next President is inaugurated, President Obama is everyone’s President, and we all have jobs with stuff we don’t like to do.  But I digress…

Just in case there is one liberal somewhere whose brain is not bolted down to the deck of the U.S.S. Economic Suicide, let me try one more time to explain why increasing tax rates on the rich is a really bad idea, even though it might feel good to think they won’t miss a couple scoops out of their rain-money buckets.       

The Wall Street Journal did a recent piece on a 2007 Congressional Budget Office analysis of tax burdens – a CBO which was under the control of Nancy Pelosi’s Democrats at the time.  Nancy doesn’t bring up this particular tax study very often.      

CBO found that the average total tax rate of the top 1% was slightly less than 30% of their income, while the middle class paid an average tax rate of 15%, and poor people (bottom 20%) paid just under 5%.  It turns out that the rich indeed do not pay their fair share of taxes; they pay nearly twice their fair share.

And if we raise the top marginal tax rates on the rich – as Democrats like Mr. Obama and Ms. Pelosi propose - it will increase the tax burden on the middle class.  That is not economic theory, it is economic history.

In the 1970’s, when the top marginal tax rate on individuals was 70%, the top 1% paid 19% of all taxes collected, while the rest of us paid 81%.  Today, with the top marginal rate reduced to 35%, the wealthiest 1% pay 40% of all taxes and the rest of us now pay only 60%.  Trickle up economics. 

Imagine if it were the middle class who earned 28% of all the income and paid 40% of all the taxes – would Krugman and Reich be clamoring for tax increases on teachers and firefighters?  Would Buffet’s secretary come forward and volunteer to pay more?  What would the protesters occupy, an Applebee’s? 

The liberals tell us we must increase tax rates on the rich – they say to put them back up to the pre-Reagan rates that were “fair”.  Ok, but if we do, taxes on the rest of us will go back up by 35% to make up for the shortfall in tax revenues.  Been there, done that.

Why do higher tax rates produce less tax revenue?  Because the rich quit earning taxable income when we take away more of what they earn – guys like Michael Moore make less movies (ok, wishful thinking, but you get the drift).  Investment also dries up because half of the reward is no longer worth all of the risk.  Investment is what creates jobs; we do not need less of it.   

And for those who enjoy only a casual acquaintance with the obvious, this is not the only country where it rains money.  The very rich can take their buckets to the Caymans, or Ireland, or Singapore or a dozen other places who would be thrilled to tax them at lower rates than we do.  And 70% of zero is zero, whether you are a Keynesian, an Austrian, or Chicago School economist.  Or just from Chicago. 

Last year the state of Illinois slapped a 67% increase on tax rates for wealthy individuals – the Obama/Pelosi magic pill to cure budget deficits.  But taxing the rich did not reduce their deficit; it made things predictably worse.  Much worse. 

$4.5 billion of unpaid bills sit past due, with another $4 billion coming due that can’t be paid – tax refunds, employee health insurance, invoices for road repair, things like that.  The state is losing residents at a rate of one every 10 minutes.  Hint: the poor and unemployed are not chief among them.  

The President apparently doesn’t get back home much; or he is too busy blaming everyone else for his failures to bother about economics and home-state reality.  “Tax the rich” is good chanting material, and that is what passes for deep thoughts these days.    

If you want to bet your prosperity on Tooth Fairy Government doing any of that stuff the President promised you tonight, then put out your bucket and wait for it to start raining coin.  As for me, I’m getting up early tomorrow and going to work.          


“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment and order Tim’s new book, “BRING IT!”.    
  

Dr. Tim's Walker Rally Speech

 (Note: a grass-roots rally in support of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker was held today in Wauwatosa, where thousands of Walker supporters stood outside for 3 hours to listen to a virtual who's who of GOP speakers...and me.  If you were not there, here is what you missed.)

 

Well, Wisconsin, they did it; they got enough  signatures to force a recall election for Governor Scott Walker.    

Did anyone really doubt you could find 540,000 graduates of Wisconsin public schools who would demand a sticker and a hug and a do-over when they lose?  That’s how they roll nowadays.  

So now $20 million will have to be cut from state and local budgets for education, the environment, the elderly, cancer research, day care, special needs children, bike paths, and bridge repairs to pay for their little tantrum.  Own that, Madison. 

It also means that more than 3.3 million eligible voters in Wisconsin said no.  We listened to the protests for a year, we thought about our options for 60 days, and we decided not to waste $20 million and to just stick with the guy who was elected fair and square. 

So what do I think of the recall?    Two words:  BRING IT!  

Now, all these other speakers here today are Republicans, and they all came to say “I stand with Scott Walker.”  

Well, not me. I’m not a Republican and I don’t stand with Scott Walker.  I’m a Libertarian - and Scott Walker stands with me. 

I stand for jobs. 

I stand for job-creators. 

I stand for free markets, open competition, lower taxes, and sensible regulation. 

I stand for developing our natural resources responsibly. 

I stand for rewarding hard work, and not punishing success. 

I don't stand with Scott Walker.  Scott Walker stands with me. 

I believe in less government and more liberty. 

I believe in fiscal responsibility. 

I believe in school choice.

I believe in the right to carry.

I believe in the right to work. 

I believe in the right to vote…once…residents only…with ID.

I don't believe in Scott Walker.  Scott Walker believes in me.

In the past three years, 132,000 teachers have been laid off in the other 49 states. 

Why?  Because their Governor is NOT Scott Walker.  There is only one.  And as everyone knows, one Walker beats 14 runners.   

The tens of thousands of teachers and government workers in Wisconsin who did NOT get laid off have Scott Walker to thank for it. 

And those few hundred who DID get laid off – in Madison and Milwaukee - can thank their unions. 

You guys with the signs and cowbells over there are drumming for the wrong team.

If we Libertarians got a mulligan every time we lost an election, we would need a full time department of voter nullification.  Oh, wait – we already have that, it’s called the Government Accountability Board. 

And in a few days they will rule that all those millions of votes we cast in November 2010 didn’t count.  They will hope for better luck this time.   They are wrong.
 
I write a blog called Moment of Clarity, and if there ever was ever a time for clarity, this is it.  So here’s your moment:  this has nothing do with Walker, or rights or any high-minded principle at all – this is the last tug of war between the taxpayers versus the taxeaters. 

There is no fence to sit on; there is no rock to hide under.  It is the State versus you.   Pick your side. 

I’ve picked mine; I’m going to stand on the side of liberty, and Scott Walker stands with me.    

Recall Your Mom

And kudos once again to opponents of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker who celebrated their Dr. Martin Luther King Day holiday yesterday by hissing and chanting at the Governor during a solemn proclamation honoring Dr. King at the State Capitol in Madison. 

In doing so, the Democrats notched yet another important victory for loutish self-absorption over common decency in the continuing battle for the hearts and minds of independent voters in the Badger State. 

The highlights of their perfect season, undefeated by couth, includes shouting down the Pledge of Allegiance, booing the National Anthem, disrupting a ceremony honoring Special Olympians, and hassling returning troops, just to name a few.  Their behavior in our Capitol rotunda would get them thrown out of Walmart.   

Forget Scott Walker; you guys should recall your mom. 

Or whoever it was that raised you to believe it was ok to interrupt ceremonies, hurl vulgarities at 14-year-old girls, disenfranchise cloistered nuns, bribe children with cigarettes to sign recall petitions, stalk the families of public officials, throw beer or coffee on opponents, make death threats, and try to shut down dissenting media outlets. 

That might be what Democracy looks like in Venezuela or Iran, but not here.  That’s not even what 4th grade looks like here.  Our moms raised us to wait our turn, to let everyone speak, to compromise, to watch our language in public, to be gracious in both victory and defeat.  We learned to stand our ground, but not to stand in the path of others’ rights to pass.  We learned tolerance and patience – from our moms.  

We don’t taunt, we don’t bully, and we don’t respect people so undisciplined that they cannot put a sock in it for one hour to honor the memory of a man who sacrificed his life for a cause he carried with dignity and respect.          

I can understand why Democrats and unionists might not think disrupting an MLK commemoration is any big deal; after all, Dr. King had to fight Democrats to get black people their right to vote, and he had to fight unions to integrate the workforce.  It is unlikely that the union/government schools tell students who was the party of the KKK and separate-but-equal back in the day.

So what if Dr. King gave his life?  That is nothing compared to having to pay 12% of a health insurance premium, right?  And how can we equate something trivial like institutionalized segregation with something really awful, like allowing school boards to compete those WEA trust insurance contracts now that the scam is blown?  

I’ve heard the comeback: both sides do it.  No, they don’t; one side does it.  And that one side is not winning over any unaligned voters by pitching fits in public. 

We are about to waste $9 million of our hard-earned money to give our Democrats another mulligan, money that will not be available for education, the elderly, the environment, cancer research, bridge repairs, or bike paths.  Or, God forbid, tax relief for working people who can hardly make ends meet, thanks in part to one of the highest tax burdens in the country. 

2/3 of that recall money will be paid by Republicans and Independents, both of whom overwhelmingly approve of the job Governor Walker is doing – the job he was elected fair and square to do.

It will come out of township budgets across the state, townships run by common-sense people from both Parties who would prioritize snow removal over an unbudgeted election if it were up to them – and us.  If it were up to us, we would have the election to recall Scott Walker in November of 2014, when it was originally scheduled. 

But it’s not up to us. It’s up to people whose moms did not teach them to wait their turn.  It is up to union bosses from out East, together with the Madison liberals who think everyone’s money is their money, the Chicago urban vote factory which views Milwaukee as a colony, and out of state students who will leave us after graduation, taking with them the benefit of one of the best educations taxpayer subsidies can buy. 

Many of those students putting their idealism and energy behind the Walker Recall will relocate to the low-tax, Right-To-Work, concealed carry, energy-friendly, business-friendly states where there is opportunity.  I wish they would use that enthusiasm to help Governor Walker and his successors turn Wisconsin into one of those states, so they could find opportunities here.

That would make all our moms happy.  They could see their grandchildren without having to pay a bag fee and endure a public groping at the hands of TSA. 

 


“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment.    

Rich Is The New Gay

It’s ok to hate them for who they are.  It’s ok to vandalize their property, taunt them, seize their assets, deny them government benefits, make them register and buy a license to practice their alternative lifestyle. 

You can hound them at their workplace, you can bully them in schools, you can picket their homes, you can send them death threats with impunity, and you can occupy public buildings for months on end chanting bad things about them. 

Rich is the new gay. 

It is no longer permissible in our civil society to hate based on skin color, gender, ethnicity, religion, disability, or sexual preference.  But wealth – that’s a free-fire zone.  Wealth is evil.  Capitalism is sodomy.  Free enterprise is lewd and lascivious conduct.  Wall Street is the new Castro Street, only it’s ok to light it on fire.  Even Tiffany Newt feels free to tee off on Mitt Romney for being (gasp) too rich – think Ellen reefing on Elton John to win George Michael’s vote.          

You can say the most hateful things imaginable about rich people - even the President does it, cheered on by a wealth-o-phobic media.  Imagine how the fur would fly if a President blamed all his failures on homosexuals, or if he expressed support for violent mobs rioting in the streets if it were the 3.6% instead of the 1% whose heads are demanded on a pole.   

The left/right paradigms for wealth and sexual preference are pretty much the same:  liberals insist that material preference is assigned at birth; conservatives believe it is a choice.  Closet richos like Michael Moore or the Obamas possess the same self-loathing false piety as Ted Haggert or Larry Craig.  Their response to being outed is loud, angry denial; wide stance or baseball cap, the disguise doesn’t fool anyone.    

The rich even have their transgendered equivalents – trans-wealthered, I suppose - who have crossed over from the poor side to the rich side.  I don’t think the abuse hurled against Herman Cain was because he was black; it was because he is black and refused to stay poor.  To the haters, that is one sick puppy.  Tim Tebow is even worse – openly rich, openly humble, and openly Christian.  Unforgivable.       

I can’t explain the liberals’ reflexive hatred of wealthy people.  Perhaps they are guilty about the way their own leaders have enriched themselves – Obama, Corzine, Soros, Pelosi, Kennedy, Gore, Trumka, Jackson, Hillary the pork belly whisperer. If all you know is swindling and influence peddling, then maybe that’s all you can imagine. 

Whenever I say something nice about rich people in a column, I can count on a deluge of angry comments and personal attacks.  The number of things haters guess wrong about me reveals a prejudice so deep-seated that it can’t be tempered by reason.  The last acceptable negative stereotype is the rich white guy – presumptively unethical, presumptively privileged, presumptively unaccomplished and undeserving. 

People who hate rich people don’t like it when I credit rich businesspeople for improving our living standards. They say that the only reason that rich people ever improve products, workplace rules, and the environment is because unions or government force them.  Rich people are inherently evil and greedy and left to their own devices would poison us and starve us to death – they can’t help themselves.    

But let’s think about that.  The government only forces them to pay their workers a wage of $7.25 per hour, and yet private employers pay a median wage of $21.10 per hour.  Why?  Who makes them do that?   Not unions - only 7% of private sector employees choose to be represented by unions.  How is it possible that rich people would voluntarily pay poorer people triple what the law requires?  Hmmm.  

And government does not force any employer to provide benefits, either; yet the average private sector employee receives $17,000 worth from his evil rich employer.  Health insurance, holidays, and how about vacation days - nobody forces rich people to pay you to take time off with your family, but they do.  How un-greedy is that?

Want more?  Tuition reimbursement, retirement savings matches, private loans, contributions to charities, service on community boards, partnering with schools and government agencies, funding recreation, the arts, museums – show me the law that was passed by the progressives that makes rich people do any of that. 

Or tell me what union went out on strike until the employer agreed to build a soccer field for inner city kids or fund scholarships for girls in non-traditional careers?   Which one traded a wage increase for increased funding of Boys and Girls clubs or Junior Achievement?  That’s what owners do all the time, into the billions.   

Some employers’ subsidized cafeterias are the only decent meals their employees will eat during the week.  Nobody made them do that; and they want to starve the poor, remember?   Poison their water, take away their health care, shut down schools for their kids, hate women – stuff like that.  Not offer free mammograms.   

Do you think that executives must sit on civic boards under some court-ordered community service sentence?  Is it like the Huber law – we get a pass to get out of work to do it?  Why would rich people give so much of their time and money to the poor, the sick, and the disadvantaged if they really hated them as much as liberals say we do? 

Most of the rich people I know used to be a lot poorer than most of the people I know calling them names.  Now that I think about it, most people I know calling them names have never been poor a day in their life – not really poor, not like the poverty I have seen. 

The average American worker earns 29 times as much as the average worker in the world’s bottom quintile – that is a lot bigger guilt-gap than between our worker and his CEO. What does that prove – that the American workers are even more greedy and selfish than the dreaded CEO?  No, it proves we are very productive top to bottom in the working class, and yes, business owners work their tails off.                     

Rich is the new gay, so go ahead and hate if you must.  But remember this: gay people can’t make you gay, but rich people can make you rich.  That is, if you quit screaming at them long enough to ask them how they did it.  That is how most of us trans-wealthered people started our rise on the updraft.; we shut up and listened. 

I bet you Romney’s $10,000 that any one of them would be glad to tell you if you asked nicely.  Try it.  


“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment.