Tag Archives: Business

Business, Politics

Mandating Disaster

Getting fired isn’t easy. It puts a person into self-doubt that can lead to depression. The future can be uncertain. Where do you go from here?  How are you going to pay your bills?  Where is your next meal coming from?  In extreme circumstances, getting fired can lead a person to suicidal thoughts or even suicide.

Ronald Reagan once said, “Governments first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.”  However, here in 2021, the tides seem to have turned.  With the Covid-19 pandemic going on, many people have chosen not to get the vaccine. To combat this and try to get people vaccinated, many businesses have started terminating employees that are not vaccinated. Some have chosen to quit their jobs rather than be forced to receive a vaccine that they don’t believe in.  With so many people out of work, this has caused a huge strain on the labor force. Drive around your own town or city and almost every business has a “now hiring” sign in the window.

With the recent push by the Biden administration to get Americans vaccinated, he has introduced what he calls a “a six-pronged, comprehensive national strategy” to combat Covid-19. In it, he says that this plan will ensure that they are using every available tool to combat COVID-19 and save even more lives, while also keeping schools open and safe, and protecting our economy from lockdowns and damage.  While I can admire the administrations attempt to combat the virus, I believe this plan will do more harm than good.

The reason that I believe that this plan will backfire is because of the mandate that is requiring all employers with 100+ employees to ensure their workers are fully vaccinated or tested weekly or else pay a fine of $14,000 per violation.  While this mandate will not affect business like Wal-Mart, Amazon, Costco, Lowe’s Home Depot, or any other big businesses, it has a detrimental effect on small businesses. According to the Small Business Administration or SBA, a government entity, in a 2019 report said, “Small businesses are the lifeblood of the U.S. economy: they create two-thirds of net new jobs and drive U.S. innovation and competitiveness.”  They also account for 44 percent of U.S. economic activity and produce 43.5 percent of the US Gross Domestic Product (GDP). That’s huge. 

Most, if not all, small businesses cannot afford a $14,000 fine for every single violation. A small business may not even make that kind of money on a daily basis. So, this leaves the small business with a dilemma.  Either they can shut down completely or they can start to lay off employees until their total staff is at 99 employees or less.  I can only assume that closing a business is off the table.  No one wants to close a business that they started from the ground up.  This leaves only one alternative which is to lay off employees. Once a small business owner can get their employees below that 100 employee mark, then they will be free of any fine or mandate that the Biden administration can put on them.  Another, not so desirable, outcome is that many employees have already vowed to quit their jobs if such a mandate is pressed upon them.

Whether people decide to quit their jobs, or a small business feels it is being forced to terminate employees just to stay open, this will have a huge impact on the US economy. With more people out of the work force, the labor crisis will continue to grow ever so scarce, and inflation will continue to skyrocket.

While Biden touts that his plan will boost the economy and save lives, I honestly think this plan will have just the opposite effect. While it may save lives, it will in no may boost the economy.  I predict that it will only make it worse.

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Politics

The Not So Golden State

With the recall of Gavin Newsome over, and his retaining of the Governor’s seat, I’m quite surprised. I think that I would have been less surprised if another Democrat had challenged his seat and won. I’m surprised because the state of California is in a mess. California has problems, and not little ones either.

California is currently in a loosing battle with it’s economy and it shows no signs of slowing down while Newsome is in office. I’ll look at just a few of the problems that they are having and give you, my solution.

For a state like California to remain a powerhouse in the economic game, it must have businesses. Since Californica is the most populous state, businesses are the very key that keep the state running. California takes it’s cut in revenue from the business through taxes. It also takes a cut from what the employees of those businesses make. A business must make enough money to pay their taxes, pay their employees, and make a profit. If it can’t then either the business closes shop or moves to a location where it can come out on top. This seems to be what businesses in California are doing.

According to Forbes, not only are major businesses fleeing the state, so are it’s residents. This makes sense. A person needs a job to stay afloat. If jobs leave, then so will the residents. If there are no jobs, then naturally people will move to where there are jobs. In 2020, California’s population decreased for the first time in recorded history. California lost so many people that it lost a congressional seat as well. Between 2000 and 2020, California lost 2.6 million people to other states. That’s incredible, and not in a good way, because California has a history of increase. From 1850 to 2010, California grew by 10% or more in each one of those decades.

Lee Ohanian and Joseph Vranich, of the Hoover Institution, wrote an article on why companies that were Headquartered in California are choosing to leave in unprecedented numbers. What’s amazing is the increase in speed at which companies are leaving. They found that companies are leaving at record speeds and are showing no signs of slowing down. In their report, which was conducted from January 2018 to June 2021, they recorded 265 business that were Headquartered in California, had relocated to other states. In 2018, 58 companies left the state. In 2019, it was 78. In 2020, it was 62. And in just the first 6 months of 2021 from January 1st to June 30th, a whopping 74 companies have already left the state. This is a huge deal for California and it’s also very concerning.

You can read their full report here.

You can also read a summery of their report here.

California has the highest tax rates in the country, and this seems to be the number one reason that companies are leaving. Fleeing to another state like Texas or Tennessee, which have no state income tax, can potentially save a company millions of dollars in revenue. These millions can in turn be used for higher wages, opening of new businesses, and hiring quality employees. It makes sense for a company to relocate to a state that has no state income tax or one like North Carolina which has the lowest corporate tax in America at just 2.50%.

Taxes are not the only reason that people are leaving the Golden State in record numbers. Cost of living is another big reason. Without question, California is one of the most expensive states to live in out of all states. Housing takes up the bulk of the cost of living, but other things such as utilities, transportation, food, regulations, and again, taxes like state and property taxes take up a massive amount as well. Fool.com has an excellent resource for finding what the typical home price in every state is. You might not be surprised; California comes in at #1 for the most expensive housing prices in the continental United States. The typical cost of a home in California is $683,996 which is 233% of the typical U.S. home price. Compare that to Texas, where most businesses are fleeing to, and the typical cost of a home drops dramatically to $247,210, which is only 84% of the typical U.S. home price. You can literally buy two homes in Texas for less than the cost of one home in California and still have $135,576 left over and avoid all state taxes since Texas has none.

As far as all other resources are concerned, numbeo.com has one of the best cost of living sites around. They claim to be the world’s largest cost of living database and you can compare most cities in California to almost any other city within another state. You can compare cost of living expenses such as restaurants, markets, transportation, monthly utilities, sports and leisure, childcare, clothing and shoes, rent, salaries, etc. Each category has different examples of the costs of certain items and compares the cost between the two cities and gives you the percentage difference. It’s an excellent resource and I encourage you to go and check it out.

Let’s talk about the homeless population for a minute. It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that California has the highest population of homeless citizens in the United States. When a state has the highest costs of literally everything such as housing, gas, taxes, food, etc., we shouldn’t be surprised that so many people can’t afford these things and therefore go homeless. According to The United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, as of January 2020, California had an estimated 161,548 experiencing homelessness on any given day. Of that total, 8,030 were family households, 11,401 were Veterans, 12,172 were unaccompanied young adults (aged 18-24), and 51,785 were individuals experiencing chronic homelessness. Public school data reported to the U.S. Department of Education during the 2018-2019 school year shows that an estimated 271,528 public school students experienced homelessness over the course of the year. Of that total, 11,021 students were unsheltered, 19,758 were in shelters, 14,386 were in hotels/motels, and 226,363 were doubled up.

You can read their full report here.

The more and more homeless people that California creates, the more and more problem mount. Two of the biggest are that of trash and feces. With no place to throw their trach, homeless people just throw it onto the streets that don’t get cleaned very often or at all. The more and more that trash piles up, the more and more it becomes a concern. It’s a concern because diseases start to come to light due to the piles of trash left sitting everywhere. Typhus, which is considered a medieval disease, has reared its head once again in California. Typhus comes from, you guessed it, trash.

Feces is another huge problem that comes from the homeless. These people have no where to use the restroom, so the local streets become their “dumping” ground so to speak. Human fecal matter then goes down storm drains and then pollutes area lakes, rivers, and creeks. People swim in the lakes and rivers and then end up getting bacterial infections and diseases. The problem is so bad that the Environmental Protection Agency has gotten involved in trying to do something about the situation.

These are just a few of the reasons that California needs new leadership. Certainly, people don’t want to live this way or pay the high cost of living that’s associated with California. Gavin Newsome may be a great guy in person, but his leadership skills are the worst in the nation. My fear is that he is not doing anything to stop the rising cost of living, diseases, businesses, and people that are leaving. If things keep trending the way that they are, in a few years, California might just be a barren wasteland of a state.

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Business, Politics

When Will We Grow Up

It’s amazing to me how today’s society has become so clouded in their judgement.  We protest at almost anything that doesn’t fit our own narrative of thinking.  I mean, God forbid someone else have an opinion that doesn’t fit yours.  Isn’t the right of the individual to have their own opinion?  Certainly in our lives at some point we have all experienced something that we did not agree with that others did.  It’s bound to happen hundreds of times in our lifetime.  Used to, we would just brush this stuff off, but today we take a whole new approach.  We boycott, we strike, we avoid, and the list goes on.  Simply put, when we don’t get our way, we just cry about it.

Over the last year or so, America had done more damage that it has good when it comes to boycotting.  We have just about boycotted every business possible when they seem to see something that isn’t inline with what we believe.  The major part of this comes from the presidential election and the presidential campaigns.  There’s no doubt that this past election had to have been one of the more bizarre elections in recent history, if not the most bizarre.  What’s even more amazing is how much we have protested over things not going our way.  We have burned down cities, started riots, enacted violence upon each other, all because something didn’t go our way.  How foolish have we become?  The most amazing part of it all is when we boycott over something before actually knowing all the facts and then it comes out later that what we thought was true was actually false or misconstrued in some way.

This morning I wake up to find out that the American based company L.L. Bean is facing a backlash and boycott because people thought that they were backing the current president elect Donald Trump.  Come to find out, all these people boycotting L.L. Bean jumped to conclusions based on a donation given to the Trump campaign by the granddaughter of one of the companies members.  People misinterpreted it as if the company themselves had made the donation, which is completely false.  In fact, if you look at the company’s history, you’ll quickly find out that L.L. Bean has never in their history endorsed a presidential candidate…ever.

Shawn Gorman, L.L. Bean’s executive chairman, said in a Facebook post, “We are deeply troubled by the portrayal of L.L. Bean as a supporter of any political agenda.  L.L. Bean does not endorse political candidates, take positions on political matters or make political contributions. Simply put, we stay out of politics.”  

This all began when Linda Bean contributed $60,000 to the Making America Great Again LLC.  In response, Grab Your Wallet, a group that advocates boycotting companies that “do business with the Trump family,” added L.L. Bean to its running list of pro-Trump entities.  The fact is that Linda Bean made the donation on behalf of herself and not the L.L. Bean company.  Never the less, people across America have vowed to boycott the company because of this reason.  

But that’s just one of many examples of the foolishness that we are pouring over our great country.  The fact is that no matter what people do, Trump is still going to be President.  It’s inevitable.  He won the Electoral College, he won the Electoral College vote, and is only days away from being sworn into office.  When are we going to grow up and stop this foolishness?  We are doing nothing but hurting our own country.

The one thing that we must do is come together as a nation despite our differences.  If we cannot do that we are doomed to destroy ourselves.  It doesn’t matter your background.  It doesn’t matter the color of your skin, whether your male or female.  It just doesn’t matter.  If we cannot come together as a nation and stand with one another, we will simply ruin this country from within.  We won’t have to worry about some other country or group like ISIS coming over here.  We will have accomplished their goal for them.  

So to America I say, stop the foolishness.  Let’s stand hand in hand and support one another no matter our differences.  America is a great nation that has tons of great people here.  If we can come together we can become greater.  If not, we are doomed to destruction.  United we stand.  Divided we fall.  History has taught us this.  Let us not repeat the mistakes of history.

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