Summer Jobs III

We now have completed three weeks of the Federal make work summer jobs program that was part of the stimulus package. Frick and Frack, the original two hires, have both flown the coop. Frack stopped showing up last Monday. Frick waited until last Wednesday to let us know that he was quitting the program.

So we went back to the well, and requested two more summer hires. After all, the grant money has to be spent. Let’s call the two new guys Heckyl and Jeckyl.

Heckyl came in last Wednesday and worked one day. He then had some kind of family emergency, and called in to let us know that he was going to skip Thursday. For regular hires, missing your second day of work is not a prescription for long employment, but Heckyl is only a part time summer hire, so what the heck.

Jeckyl stopped in last Thursday for a quick orientation, and was told to report to work Monday morning.

Fast forward to Monday morning. Wonder of wonders, Heckyl actually came back to go to work. Alas, Jeckyl was a no show. He probably developed a vision problem over the weekend: he just couldn’t see coming in to work.

This program is supposed to be reserved for the economically disadvantaged, job seekers between the age of 18 to 24. It’s easy to see why these jacklegs are in the economically disadvantaged category. When you only work a few days before quitting a job, it’s hard to get ahead in life. Even with the Federal government guaranteeing their paycheck, these clowns can’t hold a job long enough to get any usable experience.

This whole experience so far illustrates one of my general rules for predicting behavior:
Everyone wants a paycheck. Most people want a job. Some people want to work for a living.

So, we’ve put in a request for a new Jeckyl. We’ll call him Jeckyl II. I’ve a sneaking suspicion that we’ll be on to Tweedledee and Tweedledum before the summer is over.

Summer Jobs II

Frick and Frack, the two summer temps hired through the stimulus package make-work jobs program, have finished their second week of employment.

We can already see differences between the two. We started out knowing that due to the lack of training and experience, they would be about half worthless. For Frick, however, the dial has slid over to about 95% worthless. In two weeks he has left early or come in late four times. If he was a regular hire, that alone would be enough to get him shown the door. But he also has a propensity to leave a job half done. When all you are asked to do is sweep out a warehouse, to do the job poorly doesn’t speak well to your energy or enthusiasm.

One of the supervisors in the plant suggested that by the end of week three, we would have to fire Frick. “But he’s free labor,” I protested. “You get what you pay for,” came the response.

Frack, on the other hand, seems to work hard at whatever task he is assigned. Unfortunately, he didn’t show up for work this morning. Nor did he call in. The combination of the two usually indicates that someone has voted with their feet, and has resigned their position. This is actually superior to the more common approach of quitting work, but continuing to show up and draw a paycheck.

Anyway, we called the agency administering the make-work summer jobs grant, and asked them to call Frack and verify whether he was coming back or not. If he has quit, they promised to find a replacement, because “we have to spend the money.”

If they are starting to worry about using all of the money from the grant, and it is only week three, do you think we’re the only workplace having trouble keeping these guys on the job? It makes you wonder what the hiring criteria were for this program.

Sometimes you get what you pay for. Sometimes you pay for something, and you get nothing in return.

Iran's "Election"

Iran held what was ostensibly an election for President last week. The two main candidates were Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the incumbent, and Mir Hossein Mousavi, a more moderate politician. Mr. Ahmadinejad was declared the victor.

The thing is, Ahmadinejad was declared the victor before the vote count was finished. And the announced vote tallies show him winning by a landslide, drubbing Mr. Mousavi by a margin of two to one. This despite polling that shows Ahmadinejad being increasingly unpopular, and support for Mousavi growing in the run up to the election.

So it looks like the election was stolen. Violent street protests have ensued, with the security services not being shy about bludgeoning and even killing the protestors.

Now, from an American perspective, I’m not sure it really matters who the President of Iran is. In Iran’s theocracy, real power resides with the Revolutionary council, a group of twelve Islamic mullahs. The Council has to approve the candidates before they can even appear on the ballot. So in that sense, both Ahmadinejad and Mousavi are products of the system, tools of the ruling clerics.

Here’s what scares me about the situation. Iran is enriching uranium so that they can build atomic bombs. This is perceived by most Westerners as adverse to our interests and destabilizing to the Middle East. The US and our allies are trying to deter Iran from pursuing this policy of pursuing nuclear ambitions.

The problem is that all of our tools diplomacy, both hard and soft, assume that the Iran state has a government that acts as a rational player. They don’t have to be reasonable, but they have to be sane. Sane men will not knowingly pursue policies that damage their own interests, and will pursue policies that enhance their interests. All of the carrots and sticks in the international system are based on that principle.

If the government of Iran is not rational, that is very frightening. Give insane men plutonium, and anything could happen. It is very difficult to deter insane men.

This brings me back to their Presidential campaign. The Iranians staged a major election, with months of campaigning. Then on election day, the whole process was revealed to be a sham. The election wasn’t just stolen. It was blatently, obviously stolen. It was stolen in a way that enraged the opposition, and sparked violence in the streets.

Now, that’s just crazy.

Health Care Assumptions

The Obama administration is getting ready to unveil their plan to massively restructure the delivery of health care in this country. One of the core rationales for this plan is to extend "access" to health care services. This argument overstates the case. I would argue that there is no problem with accessing health care in this country.

If you have a medical problem, you can go to any emergency room in the country. They must, by law, treat you without reference to your ability to pay. When you go to the emergency room, a doctor will (eventually) see you about your problem. If you are bleeding on the linoleum, you will move to the head of the line, guaranteed.

The problem is not that people want access to health care, and they can't get it. We already have universal access to health care. The problem is that people want unlimited access to medical care. The question is not whether everyone should have health care in this country. The question is whether everyone should have access to as much medical treatment as they want.

If we answer that question as a yes, then it leads inevitably to another question. how do we pay for it?

Summer Jobs

We picked up a couple of summer interns at my company this week. They came to us through a government program that is part of the Obama stimulus package. Basically, the government pays their wages and picks up their benefits (worker’s comp, FICA taxes), put they actually work for us.

Free labor. What’s not to like, right?

Actually, it is kind of a tricky prospect, trying to get useful output out of these guys. Business was slower earlier in the year when we signed on for this program, and we were working reduced hours. I had a concern that our regular workforce would perceive the summer workers as competing with them for work.

Fortunately, business has picked up from the low point last winter. But these guys (let’s call them Frick and Frack) know nothing about working in an industrial facility. Zip, zilch, nada. So to get any more output out of them than pushing a broom, they will have to be trained. I can’t even let them mop the floor after they’ve swept it without proper training. Oily mop water from an industrial facility has to be properly disposed of.

It is the classic investment problem. I have to invest resources into training Frick and Frack in order to turn them into usable resources in their own right (or, as I like to call them, interchangeable worker units). To train them I have to take my regular folks off their jobs to do the OJT. Too much training, and I can’t get my money back out of them by increased productivity, especially since they’re only here for the summer. Also, I have to keep regular work going while they are being trained.

Still, I want them to get more out of their summer job than just pushing a broom. So I’m looking for that balance point where we teach them enough for them to say they have learned something, but at the same time keep the training short enough to get some payback off the investment in training.

In a larger sense, I want Frick and Frack to come out of this experience with more skills than they went in because they aren’t really free labor. After all, the government is picking up the check. Spending money just to create make-work jobs is a terrible use of the government’s limited resources. Spending the same money to help develop the next generation workforce makes a lot more sense to me.

After all, it’s my tax dollars at work.

Off Topic Post: Great Moments in "D'uh"

Breaking News! Adam Lambert, the runner up in this year's American Idol competition, has come out as a gay man. He made the announcement as part of an interview in this month's Rolling Stone magazine.

Really? Seriously? This is supposed to be news?

I mean, I watched all of about three minutes of American Idol this season, and I could have told you that Adam Lambert was gay.

All of you aspiring journalists out there, repeat after me: "Dog bites man, that's not news. Man bites dog, that's news."

False Modesty

Last week’s big business story was the bankruptcy filing by General Motors. The Federal government will be taking the lion’s share of the reconstituted entity once it emerges from bankruptcy court. In exchange for the billions that the Feds have already loaned GM, plus providing the debtor-in-possession financing, the government will have 60% of the equity. The UAW will have about 20%, and the secured bondholders will have the balance.

Just as in the case of Chrysler, the secured bondholders are getting the short end of the stick. Under normal bankruptcy law, the secured creditors usually get the majority of the equity in the company that emerges. In the case of these two car companies, the unsecured health insurance and pension claims of the union have been moved up in seniority, compared to the bondholders. Of course, this wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that the UAW has supported Democratic candidates almost exclusively, with resources of both money and manpower. No, no, there’s no payola at work here.

What I found interesting about the deal was the government’s protests that they did not want to own a part of General Motors, let alone the majority stake. Over and over, spokesmen for the administration kept claiming that they did not want to be responsible for managing operations at a car company.

That reticence confuses me a little bit. After all, these are the same guys who are proposing to take control of the entire US health care sector in the interest of providing universal coverage. One out of every six dollars in this country is spent on health care, but the administration is not being shy about planning a massive restructuring. That restructuring will include a government owned health insurance fund that will compete directly with private health insurance companies.

Or how about energy, another major industrial area of the economy? The Obama administration is putting the finishing touches on their plan to completely restructure how electricity is generated and distributed in this country. Those plans include bankrupting the entire coal mining industry, and making obsolete any coal-fired power plants.

These guys aren’t shy about directly injecting government control over huge swaths of what is now private industry. The outlier is the automotive industry. For some reason, they don’t want to be in charge of that.

Just everything else.

"You can't handle the truth!"

I can’t figure out the appeal of California. As a former Floridian who has visited the Golden State several times, I thought the oranges tasted funny, the sunshine was the wrong color, and Disneyland was at best a prototype for the real theme park at Disney World.

On the down side, California suffers from earthquakes, mudslides, raging forest fires, occasional civil insurrection, and ridiculously expensive real estate. And the traffic is hellacious.

Now the state appears to be in complete meltdown. After the voters soundly rejected a mixed bag of referendums that raised taxes, redirected earmarked funds, and sold off assets, the state is announcing big cuts to try and balance the budget shortfall that approaches $24 billion. California may become the first state to declare bankruptcy.

In the middle of all this, the state’s finance director, Mike Genest, made the following extraordinary statement during a conference call with reporters last Friday:

“Government doesn’t provide services to rich people. It doesn’t even really provide services to the middle class.” He added: “You have to cut where the money is.”

Now, I’m sure Mr. Genest’s intention was to explain why the proposed budget cuts were hitting low income residents so hard. No doubt he was trying to answer a question along the lines of “Why do all of the cuts seem to target poor people?” or “Is this political payback because poor people tend to vote Democratic, and the governor is Republican?” Something like that.

As a middle class taxpayer, I interpret Mr. Genest’s statement a little differently:

“If you’re in the upper or middle class, you are not going to get your money’s worth from the state government. Never have, never will. Yeah, we’ve been screwing you out of your taxes right along. You got a problem with that?”

Kudos to Mr. Genest for his refreshing honesty, but if I was a California taxpayer I’d be a little bent right now.