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The Progressive Revolution: From Democratic to Liberal to Progressive to Socialist


Muda69

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Neighborhood Activists Would Rather Preserve Tom's Diner Than Let Its Owner Retire in Peace: https://reason.com/2019/08/01/neighborhood-activists-would-rather-preserve-toms-diner-than-let-its-owner-retire-in-peace/#comments

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Tom Messina owns a restaurant. Or at least he thought he did.

For the past 20 years, Messina has operated Tom's Diner on Colfax Avenue in downtown Denver, Colorado. Running the popular 24-hour restaurant—located just a few blocks from the Colorado state capital—is demanding work that Messina is looking to move on from as he nears retirement age.

"I'm a restaurateur who's worked his life flipping pancakes and selling eggs," says Messina. "I have a beautiful family I want to spend time with. I just turned 60 and I want to do something else."

Messina's plan had always been to finance his retirement by selling his restaurant. That dream looked like it would become a reality earlier this year when Alberta Company offered him $4.8 million for his property, which the Colorado-based developer plans to turn into an 8-story apartment building complete with shops on the ground floor.

The price was right for Messina and Alberta's plans fit perfectly with Denver's 2010 rezoning of the property, which marked it as part of an urban center neighborhood fit for denser, mixed-use development.

Everything was going swimmingly until Denver's historic preservationists got wind of Messina's evil plan to sell his property and retire after two decades of serving Denver residents in order for new business owners and residents to work and live where his diner currently sits.

When Alberta Company applied for what is known as a Certificate of Non-Historic Status, which would allow the building to be demolished and redeveloped, five community members assisted by the local preservationist nonprofit Historic Denver filed an application to designate Messina's restaurant a historic landmark. If granted, this landmark status would prevent the building's redevelopment into apartments, drastically reducing the value of Messina's property.

In their 30-plus page application to the city, these activists argued that Messina's restaurant—first built in 1967 as part of the now-extinct White Spots restaurant chain—is a classic example of mid-century Googie architecture and thus worthy of protection.

The same application notes that seven White Spot restaurants were built in the Denver-area in the 1960s. Three of them are still standing, including another one on the same avenue as Messina's restaurant. Nevertheless, these preservationists argue that Messina's building is a particularly good example of Googie tilted roofs and expansive glass windows.

These same activists note that a 2008/2009 survey marked Tom's Diner as eligible for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places, and the Historic Denver Guidebook includes an entry on the building.

In a July 16 report, city planning staff recommended that Messina's building be given landmark status. The following week, the city's Landmark Preservation Commission, at a public hearing where Messina pleaded with them to leave his property alone, voted unanimously to recommend landmarking the restaurant. The landmark application now goes to the city council, which will make a final determination.

Messina describes that decision as "kick in the gut." The value he might lose from a landmark designation, he says, would jeopardize the retirement he's worked so hard for.

"I'm sure people can imagine how it would feel," he tells Reason. "You plan for something and you think it's yours to do as you wish and then this pops up."

In the run-up to the city council's decision, preservation activists have said they want to work out a mutually beneficial arrangement that will allow Messina to sell his building while saving the building aesthetic they value so much.

"We met with Tom today to present him with some creative and viable solutions. We know this is a life-changing opportunity for him, which is why our focus is on a solution that meets his needs and protects the identity and history of the Colfax corridor," Jessica Caouette, one of the five people who signed onto the landmarking application, said in a statement posted to her Facebook page last week.

Messina says that he's had several meetings with activists where they've presented him with alternate designs for his property that would have apartments go on the vacant parts of his lot while leaving the current restaurant structure intact.

But building only on the 60 percent of his land unoccupied by the diner, says Messina, would still greatly reduce its value. And that's assuming he could even find a developer who'd be willing to build what activists are looking for.

In addition to the personal cost this would visit on Messina, it would also deprive Denver—which is rapidly becoming one of the country's most expensive cities—of additional housing.

The city council is scheduled to discuss the landmark application for Messina's property next week and will vote on whether to grant it later in the month.

Using historic landmark designations to prevent unwanted development is not uncommon, and is often done over the objections of the property owner in question. Similar cases include the Strand bookstore in New York City and the fight over the Showbox concert venue in Seattle.

For Messina, the issue boils down to the fact that this is his building, and he should get to decide what happens to it, not a city council or neighborhood activists. He tells Reason "that something I've worked for my entire life could be decided this way is very unsettling."

So none of us really own our property?  Is this a principle that our country was founded on?

If the activists are so hell bent on preserving Mr. Messina's property they should pay him fair market value for it and then find someone else to manage the business.  $4.8 millions sounds about right.

 

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More government mandated minimum wage fallout:  Robots Ready to Scoop Ice Cream Jobs: https://mises.org/wire/robots-ready-scoop-ice-cream-jobs

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California isn’t nicknamed Commiefornia for nothing. Decades of limited housing, water use restrictions, overzealous environmental regulations, and now a rapidly increasing minimum wage make it difficult for entrepreneurs. But despite it all, businesses are adapting, shifting investments away from personnel and toward automation.

Robots, at an increasing pace, are serving customers, as fast-food joints and grocery stores adapt to California’s high costs of doing business.

So in order to turn a profit amid overregulation, Generation NEXT Franchise Brands launched the Reis & Irvy’s soft serve kiosks, the world’s first robotic ice cream vendors.

After a year-long process, the San Diego-based company finally got the OK from the state to operate. Small ice cream shops will be forced to get creative to stay competitive in the disrupted industry.

Without any need for human assistance, these kiosks dispense ice cream or frozen yogurt — as well as toppings — in just 60 seconds or less. Much faster than most experienced ice cream shop employees.

The convenience for customers combined with the affordability of not having a payroll might very well put some mom-and-pop stores out of business. Especially if they had already been suffering from the state’s minimum wage rules.

Much like Washington, California is slowly but surely facing the very bad consequences of minimum wage. And as the state grapples with the highest levels of poverty in the country amid evermore government interference in the name of income distribution, the state’s future doesn’t seem as sunny.

Reis & Irvy can’t be blamed for the worsening economic conditions in the state, just as we can’t blame the state’s nightmarish economic realities on McDonald’s or major grocery chains. But we can blame the lack of employment options to unskilled workers on the state’s constant labor market interference.

When businesses are faced with increased costs prompted by minimum wage laws, they need to choose between letting people go or looking elsewhere for cuts. Unfortunately for workers, especially those who aren’t as experienced or skilled, many choose to cut down on payroll to keep things going.

Over time, this translates into a problem for the poor and the less educated, as employers will prefer to hire someone with experience than pick someone who needs training. And that’s because the work produced by a less skilled worker may not be worth a higher minimum wage.

To blacks and Latinos, the two groups in California that fare worse when it comes to financial stability, this is a hard blow. These groups either become slaves to the state, as they become more inclined to seek welfare to survive, or to crime.

With one swift blow and a strike of a pen, bureaucrats not only worsen the already calamitous economic situation of the Golden State, but also grow a voter base all the more ready to keep them in power. After all, whenever the economy worsens, politicians make pledges that involve allocating more taxpayer money for those in need. In this way, a bureaucrat’s career is dependent on bad economic policies.

....

As an aside several months ago my employer installed one of those Reis & Irvy’s soft serve kiosks in one of their cafeterias.  It has been broken down more than it has been working.

 

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So, You Want Canadian Health Care?: https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/08/democratic-candidates-health-care-plans-canadian-system/

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....

Several candidates this week stressed that the Democratic party is veering too far to the left, which was refreshing, if probably futile. The undertow pulling the party left is very strong. As recently as 2009, the public option in health care was considered too extreme, which is why President Obama omitted it. Now, it’s the moderate position compared with Medicare for All, which is endorsed by Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Andrew Yang, Bill De Blasio, Julián Castro, and, with some reservations, Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg.

As usual, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren were in full outrage mode about the corporate villains who are sucking us dry. It isn’t a sign of our political maturity that the most successful politicians now are demagogues who find some target to blame — foreign competition, immigrants, greedy corporations, millionaires, and billionaires. Warren claims that “giant corporations” and billionaires will foot the bill for her MFA, which rivals Trump’s claim that Mexico would pay for his wall. Sanders pointed to the nation across the river from Detroit to shame Americans about health care’s not being treated as a “yooman right” in this country.

This seems like a good time to review what Canada’s single-payer health-care system does and doesn’t do.

It’s true that all Canadian citizens and legal residents (though not illegal immigrants) get “free” health care, but only in the sense that you don’t get a bill after seeing a doctor or visiting a hospital. Medical care is subsidized by taxes, but the price comes in another form as well — rationing. A 2018 report from the Fraser Institute, a Canadian think tank, found that wait times between seeing a general practitioner and a specialist average 19.8 weeks. That’s the average. There are variations among specialties. Those waiting to see an orthopedist wait an average of 39 weeks, while those seeking an oncologist wait about 3.8 weeks.

Canada has the same modern medical technology that the U.S. offers, but Canadians must wait more than a month for a CT scan, more than ten weeks for an MRI, and almost a month for an ultrasound.

Imagine the anxiety of learning that you need an MRI to find out whether the mass in your breast is anything to worry about and then being told that the next available appointment is in ten weeks. In addition to the psychic price, Canadians who had to wait for treatment expended an average of $1,972.00 out of pocket last year, owing to lost wages and other costs. The Fraser Institute also calculated the value of the lost productivity of those waiting for treatment — nearly $5,600 per patient, totaling $5.8 billion nationally. Wait times to see physicians in the U.S. have been creeping up in recent years — perhaps in response to increased demand following Obamacare — but remain much shorter than those in Canada or other OECD countries with nationalized health services.

When there’s an artificial shortage of a good or service, a black market usually follows. I have heard from several Canadians that paying doctors bribes to jump the line is not uncommon. But Canada has another pressure reliever: 90 percent of Canadians live within 90 miles of the U.S. border, and medical centers in Buffalo, Chicago, Rochester, and elsewhere receive tens of thousands of Canadian patients every year.

Advocates respond that Canadians are happy with their system, and that’s fine. It’s their choice. But Americans tend not to be so docile about delays. And in any case, the Democrats’ pretense that we can provide Medicare for All and receive the same level of care we’ve become accustomed to is applesauce. You want the Canadian system? Fine. Just know what you’re giving up.

No rational, principled individual in the United State of America would want the Canadian system.

 

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26 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

More government mandated minimum wage fallout:  Robots Ready to Scoop Ice Cream Jobs: https://mises.org/wire/robots-ready-scoop-ice-cream-jobs

As an aside several months ago my employer installed one of those Reis & Irvy’s soft serve kiosks in one of their cafeterias.  It has been broken down more than it has been working.

 

Job opportunities for robot techs!

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2 hours ago, Impartial_Observer said:

Job opportunities for robot techs!

Not for long -- they are already working on the robots to repair the robots. 😳

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2019/04/25/will-we-really-need-humans-to-fix-the-robots/amp/

https://www.google.com/amp/s/gizmodo.com/a-self-repairing-space-robot-on-the-international-space-1580869685/amp

 

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1 hour ago, Wabash82 said:

I have long advocated the perfect manufacturing facility will run with one man and one dog. The man is there to feed the dog, the dog is there to keep the man away from the machines. 

It has been several years since I've looked at robots in a manufacturing capacity. I would think by now the mechanicals are pretty mature technology. I would think it's more software issues that are immature and of course there is always evolving tech that has to be dealt with. I know from the late 80's and 90's to the early 2000's robot technology exploded. Robots of yesterday were dedicated machines to a single task. Robots evolved to being adaptable as manufacturing processes evolve. The Yang dude hit the nail on the head, the American factory worker is not being replaced by Hispanics, he/she is being replaced by automation. But automation still needs to be manufactured, installation, programming, maintenance, repair, etc. All of this is in the near term of course. Long term, according to the articles I W82 posted, perhaps we'll just need to determine what we're going to do with all of our free time.

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Everyone Has a Right to Call Politicians "Idiots" …: https://reason.com/2019/08/03/everyone-has-a-right-to-call-politicians-idiots/

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A N.C. gun store put up this billboard:

642Hx17M?format=jpg&name=900x900

Rep. Rashida Tlaib responded:

No, calling politicians idiots or "Four Horsemen [of the Apocalypse]" isn't "inciting violence" or "encouraging gun violence." It is urging people to dislike the politicians—a basic right of every American. That's so when people criticize President Trump or the Republican Congressional leadership or the left wing of the Democratic party or anyone else. It's so regardless of what groups those politicians belong to.

It's true that some tiny percentage of listeners may react to such criticism by deciding to violently attack its targets, whether the targets are on the Left or on the Right. But one basic premise of free speech isn't that we don't treat speech as "inciting violence" (a label for constitutionally unprotected speech, see Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969)), and suppress its communication to the 99.9999% of people who don't act violently because of it, just because of a risk that 0.0001% would act violently.

And that's so even for much harsher speech, such as calling people traitors or fascists or other such labels that some might see as morally justifying attacks. It is even more clearly true of simply calling them idiots or "Four Horsemen" (for a famous earlier Four Horsemen reference, see here). That's true, I think, not just a matter of law but also of political ethics: There's no basis for morally condemning such speech as supposedly "inciting violence." (One might mildly condemn it as being nonsubstantive, but that condemnation would of course apply to a vast range of common criticism, and of common praise, of political figures from both sides.) It most certainly does not "NEED[] TO COME DOWN."

Reps. Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Ayanna Pressley have set themselves up as leaders of the left wing of the Democratic Party. They have achieved national prominence, not just individually but as a group. In my view, their policies and views merit criticism; but even if you agree with them, surely others have a right to disagree. People have a right to criticize them as a group and not just individually. People have a right to continue to criticize them even when the politicians had gotten threats from third parties (as Omar, Tlaib, and Ocasio-Cortez, and Pressley reportedly have, and as I'm sure many other politicians have as well).

People have a right to criticize them disrespectfully and not just respectfully. They have a right to criticize them with slogans and not just substantively, again just as they do with President Trump or Republican Congressional leaders or anyone else. And of course they have a right to call them "idiots."

UPDATE: I revised the post slightly to make clear that my analysis applies just as much to calling people "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" as "idiots."

UPDATE: Some people seem to think that this speech becomes incitement of violence because it's a gun store that puts it up, presumably because somehow viewers of gun store advertising are particularly likely to buy a gun and shoot a politician because she was called an "idiot" (and, obviously hyperbolically, an idiotic Horseman of the Apocalypse). No: Calling a politician an idiot, whether it's on a gun store billboard or anywhere else, isn't incitement of violence, whether as a legal or as a moral matter. It's criticism, and one of the fundamental rights of free citizens.

Note also the implications of that sort of argument: If this sort of criticism becomes illegal or immoral when a gun store says it, surely the same must be even more so as to gun rights advocacy groups (which tend to have much more public stature than ordinary gun stores). Presumably it would be as to prominent gun rights advocates, too. And if something like "idiot" is "inciting violence" in that context, then of course most other criticisms would qualify. (Indeed, criticizing a politician as advocating bad policies would be slightly more likely to encourage violence than criticizing them for being "idiots," not that either likelihood is substantial enough to warrant condemning the criticism.) What a convenient way for politicians and advocates to try to suppress criticism that comes from their political adversaries.

 

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Minimum Wage Hikes in NYC Are Forcing Businesses to Cut Jobs and Raise Prices: https://reason.com/2019/08/06/minimum-wage-hikes-in-nyc-are-forcing-businesses-to-cut-jobs-and-raise-prices/

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New York City business owners are eliminating jobs, cutting hours, and raising prices in the wake of a $15 minimum wage hike implemented at the end of last year.

According to The Wall Street Journal, entrepreneurs across the city are having to make tough choices to the detriment of their employees in order to stay solvent. Thomas Grech, the president of the Queens Chamber of Commerce, told the Journal that small businesses have been shuttering over the last six to nine months, which he blamed on the minimum wage legislation.

"They're cutting their staff. They're cutting their hours. They're shutting down," he said. "It's not just the rent." Businesses with 11 or more employees were required to raise the minimum wage to $15 on December 31, 2018, while businesses with 10 or fewer workers will have to do so at the close of this year.

As I've previously written, those pay increases disproportionately impact the restaurant industry, which operates on snug profit margins. Waitstaff in New York City currently collect a tipped wage, which sits below the mandatory minimum and allows workers to make up the rest—and sometimes much more—in tips. If the hourly average falls below the minimum wage with tips included, employers are required to make up the difference.

...

Susannah Koteen, who owns Lido Restaurant in New York's Harlem neighborhood, told CBS News in January that she was consolidating employee positions to save money, putting the lowest-skilled workers in danger. "A server can bus their own table," she said, "but you can't ask a busboy to open a bottle of wine and talk about what it can be paired with." She recently told the Journal that she has been able to avoid layoffs, but is slashing hours and is hawkish about overtime, as she can no longer afford to keep an excess of employees on the clock.

"What it really forces you to do is make sure that nobody works more than 40 hours," Koteen said. "You can only cut back so many people before the service starts to suffer." She is also raising prices with regularity, and has demurred on her plans to open a new restaurant at a larger location.

Koteen's experience comports with a study released by the New York Hospitality Alliance earlier this year. According to the 324 full-service dining establishments surveyed, 75 percent plan to cut hours and 47 percent forecast eliminating some positions entirely in response to the minimum wage increase. What's more, 87 percent said they would need to raise prices to stay above water.

Anthony Advincula, a spokesman for the ROC, has argued that such negative effects need not happen in tandem with the city-mandated wage hikes. "Increasing to $15 would reduce income inequality, and the number of individuals living in poverty now is ridiculously high," he told The Wall Street Journal. "This is not just a business issue, this is a race, gender, pay-equality issue." But if New York City is any example, the measures pushed by Advincula will only serve to make those issues worse.

...

So this is progress for workers and for consumers?

 

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On 8/2/2019 at 7:09 AM, Muda69 said:

Neighborhood Activists Would Rather Preserve Tom's Diner Than Let Its Owner Retire in Peace: https://reason.com/2019/08/01/neighborhood-activists-would-rather-preserve-toms-diner-than-let-its-owner-retire-in-peace/#comments

So none of us really own our property?  Is this a principle that our country was founded on?

If the activists are so hell bent on preserving Mr. Messina's property they should pay him fair market value for it and then find someone else to manage the business.  $4.8 millions sounds about right.

 

I think a clever lawyer could make the argument that designating his property as “historic,” thereby dramatically reducing its market value, constitutes a “taking” under the “due compensation” clause of the Constitution. 

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2 hours ago, Muda69 said:

Minimum Wage Hikes in NYC Are Forcing Businesses to Cut Jobs and Raise Prices: https://reason.com/2019/08/06/minimum-wage-hikes-in-nyc-are-forcing-businesses-to-cut-jobs-and-raise-prices/

So this is progress for workers and for consumers?

Business close all the time. This is just an excuse to complain.

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2 hours ago, Muda69 said:

Minimum Wage Hikes in NYC Are Forcing Businesses to Cut Jobs and Raise Prices: https://reason.com/2019/08/06/minimum-wage-hikes-in-nyc-are-forcing-businesses-to-cut-jobs-and-raise-prices/

So this is progress for workers and for consumers?

 

It’s not nice to fool with Mother Nature. Or, in this case, market forces.

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22 minutes ago, Bobref said:

It’s not nice to fool with Mother Nature. Or, in this case, market forces.

But, but doesn't the state always know what an individuals labor is worth on a hourly basis?  Are they not the experts?  

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