CALIFORNIANS TOLD THEY'RE SUFFERING AN EPIC DROUGHT, MEANWHILE 39 TRILLION GALLONS OF WATER GO UNTAPPED

"Fourteen months into a historic drought, with reservoirs running low and the Sierra snowpack 27 percent of normal, a growing number of Californians are wondering: Why isn't everyone being forced to ration?" ~ Paul Rogers, San Jose Mercury News

Not one to pass up a crisis, Obama has come to pitch yet another one of his schemes. Obama wants to stick future taxpayers for billions in outlays and interest for something his handlers have named a Climate Resilience Fund. 

Of course, because each year Congress runs a deficit, as all government spending is borrowed, the net result shall be cash accretion, which small make prices rise for items primarily paid by cash. So, facing the same output on offer, food bills shall rise. Gasoline shall rise. Movie ticket prices shall rise.

Californians never should fear being without water. Lake Tahoe holds a whopping 39 trillion gallons of water. That is enough water to flood California everywhere to a depth of 14.5 inches (36.83 cm)!

Lake Tahoe is the second deepest lake in the U.S.A. (1,645 ft; 501 m),  the 16th deepest lake on earth and the fifth deepest by average depth. Sixty-three tributaries feed the lake. 

Lake Tahoe feeds the Truckee River, which flows into Pyramid Lake, Nevada. Only one third of the water that leaves the lake leaves via the Truckee. 

Two-thirds of the water that leaves the lake gets wasted, evaporating into the air from the surface. 1,400,000 tons of water (330 million gallons; 1,249,186 kiloliters) evaporate from the surface of Lake Tahoe every day, which is enough to meet the water needs of all 3.5 million people living in Los Angeles, every day!

Meanwhile, one storm over the weekend doubled the mountain snowpack, even being labeled as "a game-changer." According to KTVU:

The snowpack in the Truckee River Basin jumped from 16 percent of normal for the date last Friday to 35 percent on Monday. Lake Tahoe Basin's went from 26 percent to 53 percent, the Carson River Basin from 31 percent to 53 percent and the Walker River Basin from 27 percent to 38 percent of normal.

Unfortunately, long ago, a U.S. Congress laid claim to 75% of the watershed of Lake Tahoe. Since then other Congresses have given management of the lake to the United States Forest Service (Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit).

What makes Americans' food supply so resilient are futures markets for various foodstuffs. For the same, Californians should embrace a futures market for water. Having a futures market for water would keep prices steady and supply sufficient.

A continuous, open market for water contracts would assure reasonable return to capital needed to create property in water. In so doing, prices would reflect the highest, best uses, and thus achieve among other things, conservation, without the need of a heavy-handed, inept, pseudo-scientific technocratic bureaucracy. The technocrats of California with their pseudo-science have failed to protect Californians from the vagaries of nature in a way that only futures markets can. 

It is for futures markets that Americans never run out of gasoline or food. Why should Americans view water as different from these other things?

To discover a bit more about futures markets, read here: WHY FUTURES MARKETS SHOULD SET THE FEDS FUNDS RATE RATHER THAN THE FEDERAL RESERVE BOARD OF GOVERNORS

For more perpetual fear-mongering over California water, check out OH NOOOOO! MORE POLITICAL FEAR MONGERING OVER WATER AND CALIFORNIANS MEANWHILE BILLIONS OF WATER POUR INTO THE PACIFIC.

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GREEDY CAPITALIST COMPLAINS ABOUT UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE EXPENSE AND QUITS HIS BUSINESS

So someone brought to me a story about a guy shuttering his business in Ventura County, California (see: A Milestone to Celebrate: I Have Closed All My Businesses in Ventura County, California)

What caught my eye is this complaint of his:

In most states we pay a percent or two of wages for unemployment insurance.  In California we pay almost 7%.  Our summer seasonal employees often take the winter off, working only in the summer, but claim unemployment insurance anyway.  They are supposed to be looking for work, but they seldom are and California refuses to police the matter.  Several couples spend the whole winter in Mexico, collecting unemployment all the while.  So I have to pay a fortune to support these folks' winter vacations.

While anyone can be sympathetic to this guy's sob story about suffering at the hands of Agent Smiths of the government matrix, some of which is true, the man himself fails to see reality.

The Coyote has been gaining unearned profits for all the years he operated his business, beggaring other businessmen as well as workers. In the absence of UI, the Coyote would have faced a lower profit margin on much higher expenses.

It is an unassailable fact of trade, that absent UI, wages would rise. No one would work at a loss (wages - living expenses). Market forces would force employers to pay more.

A wage is a price and conforms to the one, true, infrangible and only law of trade, the Law of Prices. The Law of Prices holds the winning bids of purchase and sale in the face of what is on offer set the price.

All producers get constrained by the great Axiom of Profit. The Axiom of Profit holds the sum of sales must at least equal the cost of production or the producer goes to ruin.

All laborers also are capitalists as labor is the poor man's capital. Labor is the sale of work through time.

As the Coyote, his laborers must get a price (wage) so the sum of the sales (work) must at least equal their living expenses (cost of production) otherwise, there is no incentive to work.

The unemployment insurance program in California as in any state, lets any business operator engage in beggar-thy-neighbor action both upon all employees who have taxes levied against them for this program but never who collect benefits at least equal to taxes they have paid as well as all other business operators who have paid more in UI taxes than have accrued net terminated employees.

Absent unemployment insurance, even if hands would remain idle, employers would need to pay for idle hands in the form of higher wages to induce workers to at least break-even (wages equaling cost of living). It would matter not that higher paychecks would come during the work season with none coming off-season or if paychecks would be spread out over a 12-month period.

With the presence of UI, business operators pay less than full, free-market wages into a fund, as UI is a percentage levied against active payroll. UI compensation lets a seasonal, laid-off worker break-even because UI as welfare subsidizes the laborer revenue (wages) against living expenses to achieve break even.

Absent UI, it would have been the decision of the Coyote to deploy his efforts and capital elsewhere if not wanting to earn less.

So, too, then without the subsidy to the Coyote and his workers, perhaps his product never would have come to market, which is what should happen in a system where people's profits (excess earnings) let them hold referendums on what everyone else should make and thus inhibition of anything not brought to market owing to efficiency under the constraint of the Axiom of Profit in the face of the Law of Prices.

The true meaning of greed is wanting to get something without honest exchange. So wanting to gain property (right of ownership) in something (excess profits) without paying for it (higher wages absent external subsidy) is the picture perfect definition of greed.

The right move is the end UI and all political interference in commerce. That idea frightens more businessmen to a greater degree than it does the people as too many businessmen fear authentic, manly competition.

This is why Americans suffer from crony politics, crony governance and crony regulatory capture. UI is expression of that cronyism.

Beggaring-thy-neighbors is the same whether done by politicians on behalf of government bureaucrats as the means to maintain power or by self-deceived capitalist-entrepreneurs shafting everyone else for their inefficiency and greedy quest for unearned profits.

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bu·reau·cra·cy (noun)

bu·reau·cra·cy (noun)

\byu̇-ˈrä-krə-sē, byə-, byər-ˈä-\

[1] being forced to pay for people thoroughly not as smart as you who then tell you what to do and force you to do it or throw you in prison for not doing it.

[2] a system wherein people make decisions for others for which they are not held accountable or in any way impacted by the consequences.

Bureaucracy is nothing but highly overpaid welfare. No one in a competitive marketplace seeking to buy anything has asked for bureaucracy to exist.

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