Something to Keep in Mind (Minimumawecity Mix)

Barry Ritholtz, for Bloomberg:

Consider as an example what Mark Perry, at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote a month before the first phase of Seattle’s new minimum-wage law went into effect. The city’s “government-mandated wage floor … guarantees reduced employment opportunities for many workers.”

As one of my colleagues wrote last week, the “unemployment rate in the city of Seattle―the tip of the spear when it comes to minimum wage experiments―has now hit a new cycle low of 3.4%.” Meanwhile, a University of Washington study on the minimum wage law found little or no evidence of job losses or business closings.

Although you can never declare a game over until the final whistle, this experiment is starting to look like a rout.

Given the strangely anti-labor mood in which Americans find themselves, remember this when we start hearing about what a bad idea a useful minimum wage is supposed to be.

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Image note: McPoverty protesters outside Wendy’s restaurant on Lake City Way in Seattle on Thursday, 20 February 2016. (Photo: Joshua McNichols/KUOW)

Ritholtz, Barry. “Minimum-Wage Foes Tripped Up by Facts”. Bloomberg View. 7 December 2016.

Something About Happiness Having Nothing to Do with a Warm Gun

A brief note on narrative, and how details can change the context.

Alexis Krell of The News Tribune posted this lede today:

A man was shot Tuesday in Federal Way while trying sell a phone, police said.

On the surface, it sounds like a routine, run-of-the-mill, idiots-all-around neighborhood crime. According to police spokesperson Cathy Schrock, the buyers stole the phone, the seller chased them down, and in the resulting struggle someone shot the seller.

And some might pause here to wonder why one would chase multiple criminals; it didn’t work for a boxing champ, and Federal Way is a town with few boxing champs.

Maybe if one was, say, a Triwizard Champion, or some such.

It turns out there is a reason, though, one might wonder why one would chase multiple criminals, getting shot in the process, for a phone. After all, few secondhand phones transfered in street deals are worth much money.

But guns are; hence the update as more accurate facts came in:

Police said it appears the man was selling a gun, not a phone, and that he was shot with the gun he was selling, Schrock said. The victim is about 21 years old.

The victimized gun trader will live. At least there is that.

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Krell, Alexis. “Police: Man shot with gun while trying to sell it in Federal Way”. The News Tribune. 18 November 2014.

An Occasion When You Don’t Want the Punch Line

Stop reading now.

The owner of a nursing home in Washington State was arrested last week after police say a hidden camera caught him sexually assaulting an 83-year-old woman who has dementia.

(Hanson)

Signs, signs. To wit, you know it’s a sign that you need new friends when you see a lede like that and think, “Hey, G needs to read this!”

No, really. Do you even want to know why he needs to read it?

That’s what I thought.

A woman who was sexually assaulted and set on fire was in critical condition Monday, and police turn to the public for help in finding her assailant.

(Associated Press)

Again, you don’t really want to know.

A correctional officer in Ferguson, Missouri, is accused of raping a pregnant woman who was in his custody.

(Murdock)

I promise, you really, really don’t want to know; suffice to say, we might doubt my associate’s answer will ever be known.

But there is a common theme that goes beyond the (ahem!) mere observation that these are all sex crimes.

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Hanson, Hilary. "Nursing Home Owner Caught On Tape Sexually Assaulting Resident: Cops". The Huffington Post. 17 November 2014.

Associated Press. “Kansas Woman In Critical Condition After Being Sexually Assaulted, Set On Fire”. The Huffington Post. 17 November 2014.

Murdock, Sebastian. “Ferguson Correctional Officer Jaris Hayden Raped Pregnant Woman, Lawsuit Alleges”. The Huffington Post. 17 November 2014.

Something You Would Rather Not Read

With our horrified condolences:

Sheriff’s officers are investigating the suspicious death of a woman whose body was found in her Port Orchard, Washington-area, apartment and graphic photos posted online that purport to show the body. A sheriff’s officer says the photos were posted before authorities learned of the death.

(Associated Press)

To the one, there is already a body count. To the other, though, there is no way the rest of this can go well.

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Associated Press. “Woman found dead in apartment; photos online”. The News Tribune. 4 November 2014.

A Note to “Responsible Gun Owners” in and Around Mill Creek, Washington

Let me clear my throat.

You know, when I find your spent bullet in my garden, it would be difficult to imagine how such a thing might please me. Indeed, we think the bullet was fired around 10:30 pm on April 7, but that is based on a memory of a weird sound that was too long after a meteor sighting to be a cosmic rock exploding in the atmosphere. And it didn’t have the right resonance, either. Rather, it sounded, well, like something small striking something hard at high velocity. A pebble on the windshield, only more so. Of course, neither can that noise, which compelled us each to ask the other what had happened, be definitively established as the event. We’re having trouble figuring out where, exactly, the bullet hit the structure. Note the relatively light deformation from impact.

There were no reports of major crime in the area such to land stray rounds about the neighborhood; the nearest gun range is out of range and, at any rate, indoors.

But among all the rattles and clangs and bangs of traffic and construction in this area, every once in a while there comes a sound something akin to a responsible gun owner celebrating his or her constitutional rights.

To which end I would like to thank all the responsible gun owners in and around Mill Creek, Washington, for this treasured reminder of how they’re all keeping us all safe.

No, really, you do realize, do you not, there is a reason why I laugh whenever I hear the phrase responsible gun owner? You’re all responsible gun owners until one day you aren’t. If it is too much to ask that you keep your (ahem!) “responsibility” to yourself, then maybe you’re not the sort of person who should be allowed to possess or handle firearms.

An Exercise in Contrasts: Beer Edition

While it is certainly possible to get farther apart in the United States than Edmonds, Washington and Jacksonville, Florida, we must admit it to be some distance. And, perhaps, miles apart is metaphorically apt. Or something about a room a thousand years wide. Never mind.

First up, Edmonds, Washington:

For the price of a pint of Breakaway IPA at American Brewing Co. in Edmonds, you could soon buy eight shares in the microbrewer itself.

The little company and some current shareholders are preparing to sell shares in an initial public offering of stock, the first since the mid 1990s by a brewery here.

The 3-year-old company will use proceeds to fund expanded brewing and distribution of its four main beers, including Flying Monkey Dogfight Pale Ale and Caboose Oatmeal Stout.

(Grunbaum)

To the other, while the brewery is said to “have more ambition than your average brewery”, the IPO aims for all of $285,000, cut into fifty-cent shares.

Thus, there are all sorts of caveats, as this seems almost a novelty sale, but still the company finds itself at a crossroads:

With revenues of nearly $1 million, American Brewing reported a $330,000 loss for 2013, according to its prospectus.

Last year it ranked 20th among the state’s roughly 200 craft or microbreweries, producing 3,119 barrels or nearly 100,000 gallons, according to data from the Washington State Liquor Control Board. Top dog Redhook brewed 149,000 barrels, while the 10th largest, Silver City Brewery in Bremerton, produced 7,615 barrels.

Fueled by about $700,000 already raised in a private placement, American Brewing has been adding bigger boilers and fermenting tanks, remodeling its tasting room and readying 56,000 empty 12-ounce cans to be filled with one or two of its beers, the regulatory filing says. The expansion should yield physical capacity to handle 10,000 barrels or more, though “current funding will achieve 5,000-7,000 barrels per year.”

Competition for space in grocery stores is tough, Kaiser says. “The key is you’ve got to be able to continually supply what stores like QFC want.”

While it is a critical time for the brewery, it is hardly the worst of situations. The situation looks much different in Florida.

A Scary Trend

Now trending:

The Yakima County sheriff’s office says a man mistook his pregnant wife for an intruder at their Terrace Heights home and shot her, leaving her in critical condition.

So let us go over this, just so we’re all clear on the issue: When people remind that one is more likely to shoot a household resident than stop a criminal with a gun, it isn’t a suggestion.