MAKING PLANS FOR NIGEL. THE WORLD OF WORK AND LEADING YOUR CHILDREN.

At least in America, most moms and dads do disservice to their children by not explaining the reality of the world to their children by the time their children enter teenhood.

By the time their children graduate from high school, their children flounder into adulthood. Those who do so, often end up having unfulfilled, mediocre lives. It's no wonder they end up taking anti-depressants by the time they reach their 40s.

To help out a friend whose daughter has been in her final months of high school, I wrote the following in an email.

At day's end, the work world hinges here: either you work for private industry or you work for legislators of a government, directly or indirectly.

If you work for private industry you can work:

• extracting stuff (mining, logging, fishing, harvesting)
• making stuff (manufacturing, construction) 
• selling stuff (wholesale, retail) 
• transporting and storing stuff (transportation, warehousing)
• destroying and re-purposing stuff (deconstruction, waste removal, recycling)
• financing stuff (credit for all the foregoing activities)

You can work recording stuff, either for the entertainment others or for the dispersion of facts (movies, music, publishing). You can work letting people or machines talk at distances (telecom).

You can work serving others for leisure (restaurants, gambling, sports, zoos), for business (accounting, designing, engineering, computing, testing, repairing, defending legally, advising, marketing) or for personal reasons (grooming, cleaning). You can work hauling away stuff that is no longer wanted (waste control).

You can work providing credit to all who do the above (banking, securities), paying off on loss when things above get wrecked (insurance), or brokering things of construction (real estate).

If you work for government indirectly, you can serve people by indoctrinating them into prevailing beliefs paradigms (education), by babysitting them (child care, chronic disease) or by helping to heal them (acute disease).

Working for government directly, you can provide political bribes to the lazy or needy (welfare). You can do oversight of those making stuff in private industry (regulation) or their personal behavior (policing). You can collect facts for those doing private work or government work. You can kill foreigners whom your politicians don't like (military).

In general, you earn more when you are willing to put your life on the line while fewer are willing to do the same. This is so whether you face immediate dangers (e.g., high rise construction, underwater welding) or you postpone living to educate yourself in ever harder to learn things (surgery, medical arts).

On average, those who work as doctors, engineers and those who sell high-priced stuff earn the most. The best rules of thumb are these:

1. The harder it is to get a skill used in producing property (right of ownership) that others are willing to bid high to acquire in purchases and sales, the more pay you can earn.
2. The more pressing and acute something is, the greater the willingness someone has to pay to solve it or to pressure others to pay for it.

In private industry, from the 1950s and 1970s until now, technological advance has replaced dumb hands with smart machines amplifying the work of smarter men and women. Thus, all job growth has been in specialization trades or support activities for the various major divisions of industries.

If your plan is to become a CEO, you must start from day one with that goal and every act you do at work must be geared toward the politics of office life toward reaching that goal. At minimum, you must earn a bachelor's degree. It's best to do so in the fields of finance or economics.

Also, among a world of more than seven billion, few rise to the top. Dreaming of being famous, a celebrity is a waste of time, unless you are willing to sacrifice yourself and all of those things that accompany everyday life for the typical person. In short, you must become a monster, a caricature of a man or woman to become a political leader, a CEO, a movie star, a pop star and so on.

Moms and dads of future teenagers should stress math, especially math for decision (odds, interest, ratios, rates of change) and measurement, English for expression (writing), visual communication (2d, 3d sketching for storyboarding), competitive athletics and musical performance.

Parents ought to lead their children in acquiring the skills and ways needed for self-expression. For self-expression is the key to good living. Those with the highest skills in self-expression end up earning more precisely because they can make property in things or experiences that others tend to bid highest to acquire.

Tattoos, fashion, idol worship of celebrities, and the work of psychologists and psychiatrists, thrive because most Americans grow up lacking skills needed for self-expression. Those with the weakest skills of self-expression live vicariously, dependent upon others to do the expressing for them.

Enjoy!

Read more ...

WAKE UP BRITS. MEMBERSHIP IN THE EU MAKES YOU POORER BUT DOESN'T MAKE YOU ANYMORE EUROPEAN THAN ANYONE ELSE.

This morning I read about the weak British prime minister, David Cameron, and his political grandstanding over having to pay a surprise whopping bill of €2.1 billion to greedy European Union parliamentarians.

Almost 7/9ths of the EU budget gets spent by meddling socialistic bureaucrats to subsidize inefficient farmers and to make richer all those living in many parts of Europe by making poorer those living in some parts of Europe. The rest of the EU budget goes to paying EU government workers and to bribe foreign leaders in third world countries in exchange for securing access to resources.


Why would any working stiff Englishman, Welsh, Scot or Northern Irishman beg to have another layer of meddling, leeching politicians bleeding him of his income for more taxes to pay for foreigners living in other countries likely who would not lay down their lives in troubled times for him and equally likely who might rob him when he is on holiday with his wife and kids?

Why would any working stiff in Britain yearn to have Poles, Lithuanians, Romanians and Portuguese move to his town in droves so they can offer to work for his employer at lower wages, undercutting him and taking away his job? Already, the working bloke must contend with massive immigration from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Jamaica and Kenya.

The working mate gets richer only when capital spending goes up. But when labor gets cheaper to hire because suddenly there are more workers arriving on the shores from immigration, wages fall.

Only in proportion as labor becomes pricier that it becomes profitable to use cheaper methods (capital) to amplify labor. But when labor becomes cheaper, it becomes less profitable to use capital.

The Brit working stiff pays twice over for his products. First, he gets forced to pay even more income taxes to subsidize shoddy businesses run by eastern Europeans of the EU and then he pays again to buy products from them at retail!


Wake up Brits. It's time to vote UKIP and vote yourselves out of the European Union. Have a watch of Nigel Farage talking about the absurdity of the EU.

Europeans can have tariff-free trade and easy-pass travel between countries. They don't need a massive meddling technocracy. The European Free Trade Association (EFTA) seems to work fine for Norwegians, Icelanders and the Swiss. They don't need membership in the EU to enjoy the same standing, effectively.

So why does the EU exist? Why does the EU operate as it does?

In short, the EU exists to give politicians more control over your lives and in so doing, give themselves more power. With power, they can reward their backers.

Politics is the great evil. Politics is the art of using rhetoric to steal property. Politics is perpetual, (mostly) bloodless civil war.

Politicians and bureaucrats get their property (right of ownership) first by confiscating it from others, almost always working stiffs. Then, politicians give what they steal to pay off those who back them for power — the largest for profit firms and unions (fascism) as well as welfare seekers (socialism).

And that is the world in which you live today. You live under a hybrid system of socialism-fascism, which masquerades as the center and goes under the phony name democracy.

If you lot were smart, as Brits you would exit the EU and strive to rekindle an Anglo-American commonwealth of unfettered movement of individuals and goods among yourselves, Americans, Canadians, Aussies and Kiwis. A global Anglo world would have an impressive GDP of £14.17 trillion (US$22.8 trillion), a population of 443 million with a per capita GDP of £32,001(US$51,484).

There would be a shared heritage, a common legal framework, no language barriers and most of all, no crazed continental Europeans.

Those being made poorer are everyone living in England, Ireland, southern Scotland, Sweden, Finland, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Austria, northern Italy, north-central and southwest France, northern Spain and the Balearic Islands, Cyprus, as well as those living in Prague, Czech Republic; Central Hungary; Masovian Voivodeship, Poland; Bucharest, Romania, Bratislava, Slovakia.

Those being made richer live in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Croatia, Bulgaria, half of Greece, most of Portugal, Spain (Extremadura), Slovenia (Vzhodna Slovenija), southern Italy, Sicily, West Wales,  Isles of Scilly and Cornwall, UK, and the French foreign territories of French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Réunion.

Enjoy this one by Colin Moulding and XTC.




You put your cleanest dirty shirt on
Then you stagger down to meet the dawn
You take a ride upon a bus, it's just a fuss
You know it keeps you born
You get to know a morning face
You get to join the human race
You get to know the world has passed you by

Who cares? You might be dead
Who cares? You stayed in bed
Who cares? You wrote the note
Who cares? You might have spoke

Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up
Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up
Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up

You take a snack to fill the gap
And then you're ready for another shift
Your attention was diverted
By the girl who smiled and made the lift
The radio is blaring out
It's in one ear and then it's out
You didn't notice that the record's over

Who cares? You might be dead
Who cares? You stayed in bed
Who cares? You wrote the note
Who cares? You might have spoke

Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up
Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up
Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up

In the road a crowd had gathered
And a man was close to dead
The blood is running down the gutter
While you're yawning, nothing's said
His body's wriggling like an eel
They got no sense, no touch, no feel
Somebody better go and get a blanket

Who cares? You might be dead
Who cares? You stayed in bed
Who cares? You wrote the note
Who cares? You might have spoke

Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up
Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up
Wake up, wake up, wake up, who cares?

Wake up
Wake up
Wake up

Read more ...

TOO MANY EBOLA COOKS IN THE KITCHEN. THE RECIPE FOR FAILURE IS ASSURED.

Back on October 17, Bureacrat-in-Chief Barry Obama established the job of Ebola Response Coordinator and appointed long-time taxpayer ward Ron Klain to the job.

A congressman from California, Ed Royce, a guy obviously unfamiliar with all of the agencies Congress has created and continues to fund said, "It is right that the President has sought to task a single individual to coordinate its response."

Over the years, successive U.S. Congresses have established far too many overlapping agencies to do the same thing as the Ebola Response Coordinator.

Between 1979 and 1980, Congress established the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) by separating the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, which Congress established in 1953. The DHHS contains the United States Public Health Service (PHS), which Congress established through the Public Health Service Act of 1944.

The Assistant Secretary for Health (ASH) for the DHHS oversees the PHS the PHS oversees all agency divisions of the DHHS and the Commissioned Corps, which Congress established 1871 along with the Office of the Surgeon General.

Congress gave the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services statutory responsibility for to prevent the introduction, transmission, and spread of communicable diseases in the United States. To do so, Congress created the Division of Global Migration and Quarantine.



The U.S. Secretary of the DHHS can prevent the entry and spread of communicable diseases from foreign countries into the United States and between states through another Congress established agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and another Congress established agency, the Office of the Surgeon General.

Under 42 Code of Federal Regulations parts 70 and 71, the CDC has authorization to detain, medically examine, and release persons arriving into the United States and traveling between states who are suspected of carrying these communicable diseases. Whenever a pilot of a plane or captain of a ship, neither who are licensed medical doctors, alerts the CDC about about ill passengers or crew, enforcers of the CDC can detain passengers and crew as  necessary to investigate whether the cause of the illness on board is a communicable disease. Under mere suspicion, enforcers of the CDC can issue a federal isolation or quarantine order if a disease is suspected.

To be sure that Congress totally adds to the confusion that is the United States government, Congress has authorized the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to meddle in such matters. The DHS has the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which can inspect animals and plants. As well, the DHS has the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which Congress has authorized to involve itself in any "catastrophic incident ... any natural disaster, act of terrorism, or other man-made disaster that results in extraordinary levels of casualties or damage or disruption severely affecting the population."

Because Congress can't organize its activities, Congress authorized the U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Coast Guard officers to help enforce federal quarantine orders.

The DHS even has the Office of Health Affairs (OHA) headed by a Chief Medical Officer who leads 101 bureaucrats whose job is to prepare for, respond to, and recover from all hazards effecting health security of Americans.

The U.S. Congress created The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on July 1, 1946, for the express purpose to protect public health through developing and applying disease control and prevention of infectious diseases and food borne pathogens.

According to the Congress, "Congress finds that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has an essential role in defending against and combatting public health threats domestically and abroad" including "bioterrorism and other public health emergencies." To do this, Congress has authorized the CDC to "establish a near real-time electronic nationwide public health situational awareness" network to detect and manage "potentially catastrophic infectious disease outbreaks, novel emerging threats, and other public health emergencies that originate domestically or abroad."

Congress has authorized the Surgeon General to make and enforce such regulations as in his judgment are necessary to prevent the introduction, transmission, or spread of communicable diseases from foreign countries into the States or possessions, or from one State or possession into any other State or possession. Congress has authorized the Surgeon General to destroy whatever he or she feels like, whether animals or things, if such are "found to be so infected or contaminated as to be sources of dangerous infection to human beings" as well as apprehend and detain individuals "for the purpose of preventing the introduction, transmission, or spread of such communicable diseases ... specified from time to time in Executive orders of the President upon the recommendation of the Secretary" of the DHHS.

So Congress added the president himself to the mix of meddling cooks with authority to handle communicable diseases.

As it is, the U.S. Congress claims authority from the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution to isolate and put in quarantine anyone, anytime, who could have any contagious disease.

Breaking a federal quarantine order is punishable by fines and imprisonment. Federal law allows the conditional release of persons from quarantine if they comply with medical monitoring and surveillance.

Title 42 of the U.S. Code reveals expression of the many muddled minds who inhabit Congress year after year.

Enjoy this kitschy, catchy tune by Colin Moulding, bassist of one-time hit maker XTC.

There's too many cooks in the kitchen
There's too many minds on the job
There's too many cooks in the kitchen

Everybody wants a piece of the action
Cooking the books and getting their fractions wrong

What we need is law and order
Everybody knows
Can't have chiefs without the injuns
Stepping on their toes

There's too many cooks in the kitchen
There's too many dabs in the pie
There's too many cooks in the kitchen

Everybody needs a place in the rat race
Playing games of power, it's only a cat chase

Too many too many too many etc.
Too many cooks in the kitchen

Read more ...

GENERALS AND MAJORS SEEM SO UNHAPPY UNLESS THEY'VE GOT A WAR. YOUR WORLD WAR THREE IS GOING TO COME.

Sometimes, the poet says it far better than the literary man. Here are a few songs that seem for the times in light of Obama vs Putin, Ukraine-speaking Ukrainians vs Russian-speaking Ukrainians, Hamas vs Israelis, The Islamic State vs Everyone.

Here are a few from one of all-time faves, XTC. Enjoy the well-crafted poppy rock.

Generals and majors, uh-huh
They're never too far
From battlefields so glorious
Out in a world of their own
They'll never come down
'Til once again victorious 

 ~ Colin Moulding, XTC

[ Sir Richard Branson makes his acting debut in this one. ]

Russia and America are at each other's throats but don't you cry.

Just on your knees and pray, and while you're down there, kiss your arse goodbye. 

~ Andy Partridge

Let's make a den.
What shall we use?
Make it underground.
Who will be leader?
Protect us from the flash and sound of the big stick they drop just to stop us from cuddling and hanging on for the rest of our days.

~ Andy Partridge

Oh my my this war dance, a patriotic romance.
No we ain't seen nothing like it since coronation day.
But when the tickatape flies and blood is on the rise,
You know it's got you in its sway.
You got yourself a war dance

~ Colin Moulding, XTC

Here comes President Kill again.
Surrounded by all of his killing men.
Telling us who, why, where and when.
President Kill wants killing again.
Hooray, ring out the bells.
King Conscience is dead.
Hooray, now back in your cells, we've President Kill instead.

 ~ Andy Partridge, XTC

Will you tell them about that far off and mythical land?About their leader with the famous face?Will you tell them that the reason nothing ever grows in the garden anymore because he wanted to win the craziest race?That's this world over.

 ~ Andy Partridge, XTC 

Read more ...