Free Republic

On August 7, I wrote about "McCashier" Your $15.00 Per Hour McDonald's Worker Replacement. Sure. You can make $15 an hour at McDonald's, at least in Seattle. You just have to perform better than this machine. Many commented along the lines of "What's the big deal? It's only a cashier. There are more cooking jobs that cannot be replaced." For example reader Chris commented ... A McDonalds worker isn't a "cashier." The person who works the front end doesn't just take orders and money. The person who works up front also fills drinks for drive thru. They clean the restrooms...

August 17, 2014 DailyWealth Dr. Steve Sjuggerud writes: A new record was set in Germany yesterday... The interest rate on a 10-year government bond in Germany fell below 1%. This number is shocking... Interest rates have never been this low in German history. What does it mean? Why would people agree to lend money to a government for 10 years with almost no return on that money? What is the message that we should take from this? Aren't things supposed to be getting back to "normal"? And doesn't "normal" mean something like this: By 2020, the Federal Reserve has short-term...

The Deloitte University Press has a very interesting, and comprehensive study on job gains and losses, by type of job, and state by state. The biggest winners are states involved in energy production, finance, or healthcare. The biggest losers are states that did not recover from the real estate bust, or lost population due to emigration. With that overview, let's dive deeper into the Geography of Jobs. Only now, as we reach the fifth anniversary of the end of the recession, has employment in the United States finally regained its pre-recession peak. The national story of slow recovery obscures the...

(CNSNews.com) - Combined federal, state and local government spending per household exceeded the median household income in 2009, 2010 and 2011, the three most-recent years for which full data is available, according to calculations made using numbers from the White House Office of Management and Budget and an historical online database of state and local finances recently established by the Census Bureau. In 2011, in current year dollars, total government spending in the United States was $6,115,429,668,000. That included $2,516,666,590,000 in net state and local government spending and $3,598,763,078,000 in net federal government spending. That year there were 121,084,000 households...

Some of the best analyses lie not in the field of economics, but in books like The Giver—dystopian tales sitting on shelves marked Young Adult.Meryl Streep and Jeff Bridges in The Giver.The world is an increasingly unequal and unfair place, economists tell us. Every year, it becomes a little harder to picture what equal opportunity and egalitarianism even look like. As the rich attract capital like Jupiter attracts space debris and the poor fail to make any substantial gains, the gap between them comes to seem to us less surmountable, more of a force of nature than something for which...

Alternate Title:  UPTREND SPECIAL EDITION!   That's right, last Thursday IBD announced that NASDAQ had its "follow-through-day"  so investors in the driver's seat just saw the light turn green.  That said, we also know that nobody walks across a one-way street without looking both ways, and even though the signs say 'buy' here's what they've been saying so far this year-- --and this is the problem we got driving down the road while only being able to look out the back window.Remember these market designations are not arbitrary, they're signals proven with decades of research.   That said, we're still looking at a...

Violence continues in Ferguson, Missouri. It began on August 9 with the death of Michael Brown, an unarmed African-American teenager cut down by a white cop’s bullets. Peaceful demonstrations turned into looting, the local police went in with rubber bullets and tear gas, all hell broke loose and, eventually, Missouri’s governor pulled out the local police and sent in state officers instead. But the rioting only paused; it didn’t cease. And it may continue. That’s probably because it’s driven by a deep, deep anger that will take a long time to calm. Observers might ask, “How can this be happening...

"Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations." A typical paradigm for a family business; mom and pop start the business, their children successfully grow the business, and the greedy acrimonious grandchildren squabble amongst themselves and fritter away the business. The Demoulas family, of the Market Basket supermarket chain in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine, has added some new wrinkles. Looking at Market Basket from the outside, you will see a business with discernibly lower prices, an operation with noticeably better service, and a staff anxious to please. The workers are much better paid than the competition and their total compensation includes...

Euro zone economic growth ground to a halt in the second quarter as Germany's economy shrank and France's stagnated. The zero growth reported by statistics agency Eurostat on Thursday was cause for alarm throughout the 18-nation region, which is already bracing for the impact of sanctions imposed on and by Russia over Ukraine. Germany, Europe's largest economy, contracted by 0.2 percent in the quarter, undercutting Bundesbank forecasts that gross domestic product would be unchanged. Foreign trade and investment were notable weak spots, the German Statistics Office said on Thursday. "Today’s figures show that the upturn remains too weak to withstand...

On the surface, California's job market is booming. The state has now recovered all the jobs lost during the recession, and done so at a faster pace than all but five states. The growth, though, belies a troubling imbalance. The fastest job creation has come in low-wage sectors, in which pay has declined. At the high end of the salary scale, a different dynamic has taken hold: rising pay and improving employment after rounds of consolidation. Most distressing, middle-wage workers are losing out on both counts. "People talk about it like an hourglass," said Tracey Grose, vice president of the...

One of President Obama’s top national security aides said Tuesday that the president did not take criticism from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over his handling of foreign policy personally. “I think their relationship is very resilient,” deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes told CNN. “They’ve been through so much together.”

The Japanese economy shrank at an annual pace of 6.8 percent in the second quarter after spending got slammed by a sales tax hike that kicked in from April, government figures showed Wednesday. Japan’s gross domestic product, or the total output of goods and services, also contracted 1.7 percent during the April-June period from the previous quarter. The decline in GDP was the worst since the March 2011 tsunami and quake disaster in northeastern Japan. In the first quarter of 2011, Japan’s economy shrank at an annual rate of 6.9 percent. The weak figures were expected as consumers and businesses...

Brothers and sisters, following 12 August. From Bad: 1. the Council in first reading adopted a bill that enacts the Institute sanctions according to the decision of the President and the NSC [National Security Council.] And all. The Council has thus exhausted - and finally the law was not accepted. As you know, sanctions (and their 29 varieties) should touch virtually all aspects of foreign and domestic policy. Among them is the cessation of mail, disabling television channels, closing all kinds of MEDIA, including the Internet, the ban on the use of radio frequencies, etc. In common sense such a...

No matter how you look at it this is truly an amazing world we live in if everyone has more information than any time in recorded history and the only thing that's for sure is (like Sam Goldwyn said): "nobody knows nothing!"  What we got is that 2014 started out great for gold and the blahs for stocks, then the other way around w/ stocks powering up, and now we're back w/ metals out-shining stocks again.   In fact, right now the Russell 2000 (favoring small stocks) even shows the infamous 'death cross' w/ the 50 day moving average punching down...

“Cash for Clunkers,” the 2009 Obama administration stimulus program designed to spend $2.85 billion to jumpstart the auto industry, turned out to be a complete disaster — for the auto industry. In the minds of Obama’s team of advisers and economists, the program made total sense, of course. The plan was to dangle a $4,500 credit to persuade car owners to trade in their older automobiles for new cars with better fuel efficiency. It would stimulate an economy then in the midst of a deep recession. As a bonus, it would mean less oil consumption and cleaner-running cars. The law...

The last 3 months have seen Russia's "de-dollarization" plans accelerate. First Gazprom clients shift to Euros and Renminbi, then the UK signs currency swap agreements with China, then NATO ally Turkey cuts ties and mulls de-dollarization, Switzerland jumps in the currency swap agreements, and BRICS create their own non-US-based funding vehicle, and then finally this week, Russia's oligarchs have shifted cash holdings to Hong Kong. But this week, as RT reports, Russian and Chinese central banks have agreed a draft currency swap agreement, which will allow them to increase trade in domestic currencies and cut the dependence on the US...

KINGSTON New Hampshire (Reuters) - As President Barack Obama considers sidestepping Congress to loosen U.S. immigration policy, a Reuters/Ipsos poll shows Americans are deeply worried that illegal immigration is threatening the nation's culture and economy. Seventy percent of Americans - including 86 percent of Republicans - believe undocumented immigrants threaten traditional U.S. beliefs and customs, according to the poll. The findings suggest immigration could join Obamacare - the healthcare insurance overhaul - and the economy as hot button issues that encourage more Republicans to vote in November's congressional election. With Congress failing to agree on broad immigration reforms, Obama could...

<p>Brazil may have never wanted for places to play soccer, but that didn’t stop the country from spending billions of dollars on stadiums for last month’s World Cup.</p> <p>The Arena Amazonia, a $300 million edifice designed to look like a woven basket, was built in a rain-forest city where the professional team regularly draws fewer than 2,000 fans per game. And Brazil is only getting started.</p>

CHATSWORTH (CBSLA.com) — Hundreds of Angelenos could soon be out of work after Nestlé USA announced it will relocate a Hot Pockets facility in Chatsworth back east. KNX 1070’s Margaret Carrero reports the 184,000-square-foot production facility in the 9600 block of Canoga Avenue has been making the popular snacks since 1988 The Glendale-based Nestlé USA will move the Chatsworth operation to another facility in Mount Sterling, Kentucky, where the company will invest $13 million and hire 150 new employees locally as the operation converts to a round-the-clock schedule, officials announced. Approximately 360 employees will be impacted by the closure, but...

Though I typically resist, my wife often tries to get me to put down the laptop and enjoy the Zen of gardening with her. So you can imagine her surprise when she returned from a trip to find a beautiful clump of nonwild flowers planted in her garden. She loved the welcome-home gift and was ready to bestow upon me many valuable (and increasingly elusive) good-husband points. The thing is, I have no idea how those flowers got there. And like George Washington, I could not tell a lie. But had I in fact been an actual president, I probably...