Category Archives: Economics

Posted on by

#Woke TikToker chooses not to Dress for Success, and whines when she doesn’t get the job

It is no great secret that better looking people are more successful in life. This isn’t just anecdotal: several studies have researched the question and found that that attractive people are more likely to find professional success and are often offered more jobs, higher salaries, and promotions.

So, it was with some amusement that I read this; hat tip to William Teach!

“Pretty Privilege Is A Real Thing”: This Woman Was Seemingly Denied A Job After Showing Up To Her Interview Makeup-Free, And Women Are Sharing Similar Stories

Eclipse Monday, April 8, 2024 | 12:15 PM EDT

The job market today might be bleak, but job seekers everywhere still adhere to “professionalism standards” when interviewing for new roles. Continue reading →

Posted on by

You will pay for it, and you will like it! All of the climate activists' plans involve huge increases in spending by consumers

Global warming climate change and the idiotic government policies which stem from the activists plans are supposed to be much more William Teach‘s bailiwick than mine, but I seem to have had a few recently. On Good Friday, I noted that the Biden Administration’s plans to have 500,000 commercial charging stations for plug-in electric vehicles installed by 2030 was falling very short. Philadelphia is going to ‘crack down’ on people parking on the sidewalks, something which many row home residents in the city have to do, and which means that at home charging of electric vehicles will not work for many of them. And now, The Philadelphia Inquirer has reported, though certainly not in any way to complain about government policies, just how all of this is going to fall on the consumer. Continue reading →

Posted on by

When a reporter has more of an agenda than an understanding of economics and business.

We have twice reported on the decisions of Wawa to close down some stores in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia. The late Josh Kruger complained bitterly about such.

This crime is not new, and The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the Headhouse Square Wawa “will become the sixth Center City Wawa to shutter since 2020.”

So, you would think that an article in the newspaper on food ‘deserts’ in some Philly neighborhoods would at least mention crime. But, if you did think that, you would be wrong.

About 40 million people in the United States don’t have access to a full-service grocery store

The 2023 update of the Limited Supermarket Access Study examines the lack convenient access to health food options across the nation — and in Philadelphia.

by Lynette Hazleton | Thursday, March 21, 2024 | 5:00 AM EST

What food is available has everything to do with the food stores that are available.

When the food store is a full-service supermarket, like the ShopRite in Parkside, it usually means you will have the access to a wider variety, higher-quality and lower-cost food, explained Michelle Schmitt, a senior policy analyst at The Reinvestment Fund (TRF) as she walked around the bustling 15-year-old supermarket.

As you can see, the article wasn’t produced by the regular Inquirer staff, but the Leftist Lenfest Institute for Journalism, the non-profit which owns the newspaper. I have previously noted that, as a subscriber, I sometimes receive begging for donations letters from the Leftist Lenfest Institute.

When you don’t have the same access to high quality food as you do to chips, fast food and soda, it can contribute to an unhealthy eating pattern that can ultimately lead to chronic disease.

How is it that Lynette Hazelton, the Philly native who reported this story, couldn’t bring herself to note that the densely-populated rowhouse neighborhoods which make up a significant part of the city’s neighborhoods don’t really have room for a huge Giant Food Mart? Yes, there are corner bodegas in most of the neighborhoods, where you can get those chips, fast foods, soda, beer, lottery tickets, and the occasional bullet in your chest. But the kinds of supermarkets that Miss Hazelton envisions take up around ten acres when parking lots are included.

Schmitt is the main author of the 2023 update to the Limited Supermarket Access (LSA) study which determines who is and is not well served by their grocery store. The official definition for limited supermarket access is 500 people in a low income tract where urban members are more than a mile and rural shoppers are more than 10 miles to a full service store. It is the fourth update since 2010 and the first to include Alaska and Hawaii.

The big take away: about 40 million Americans live without easy access to healthy food options.

Take Parkside, Belmont and Mantua neighborhoods of West Philadelphia. Together they are home to roughly 48,755 residents. Virtually all the blocks are very densely populated, 66% Black and almost half the people had an annual income of $25,000 in 2021, the latest data available.

This was some sloppy writing. Did Miss Hazeltom mean that $25,000 was the median income?

While this is the neighborhood many traditional stores would overlook, it is the type of neighborhood that the LSA study showed was in desperate need of a supermarket.

OK, why would “many traditional stores” overlook those neighborhoods? The author noted that “Virtually all the blocks are very densely populated,” which means less available area to put in a ten-acre supermarket. The neighborhoods are mostly poor, and grocery stores “operate on razor-thin profit margins. The industry average is between one and three percent, far below other retail sectors. With such lean margins, grocery stores rely on high sales volume and inventory turnover to thrive.” Then you throw in Philly’s crime rate, and the obvious question is easy to determine: how could a supermarket make a profit there?

Supermarkets were once associated with suburbs, and by the 1970s seven out of every ten food dollars were spent there. But also supermarkets did not place their businesses in low-income communities which lead to real consequences.

This paragraph alone tells you just how poor Miss Hazelton’s article was. The source she hyperlinked told her that grocery stores in Philly were mostly the ‘corner grocery store’ type, operating in the rowhouse neighborhoods, yet somehow, she couldn’t figure out that those neighborhood structures dictated the kinds of grocery stores that were there. In more rural areas, we had “general stores” before supermarkets were developed, and many lament that so few of those old general stores exist. Alas! The old general store that was near where I now live went out of business, became someone’s auto repair shop for a while, and is now a small volunteer fire station. Kroger and Giant and Aldi forced those old country general stores out of business, but in the suburbs and rural areas, there was the physical room for supermarkets.

Perhaps it’s as simple as the reporter having more of an agenda than an understanding of economics and business.

Posted on by

“Queer Advocates” are alarmed that Uncle Sam isn’t going to pay for their kink parties

It was, I suppose, inevitable. As I reported here, a tweet from Chaya Raichik on Libs of TikTok exposed a proposed $1,000,000 federal grant to the William Way LGBT Community Center in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia, in which Mrs Raichik stated that “includes $1M of your tax dollars to go towards renovating an LGBTQ Center in PA which boasts rooms to try BDSM and s*x f*tishes and hosts BDSM and s*x k*nk parties. There’s even a k*nk party happening there this weekend!”

Upon hearing about that, Pennsylvania’s two Democratic Senators, John Fetterman and Bob Casey, removed the requests for the funding.

Well, of course the kinksters wanted to salvage what they could, and also of course, The Philadelphia Inquirer was perfectly willing to help them do it!

Philly’s kink scene speaks out about safe, ‘very chill’ parties, after Pa. senators pull funding from community center that hosts them

Queer advocates reacted to the withdrawal of funding with alarm.

by Zoe Greenberg | Friday, March 8, 2024 | 10:46 AM EST

The William Way Community Center, a central hub of Philly LGBTQ life since the 1970s, found itself in a media firestorm this week when U.S. Sens. John Fetterman and Bob Casey requested to pull $1 million in federal funding after learning the nonprofit rents space to a group that hosts kink parties.

Kink parties can range from educational workshops to casual networking meetups to play parties, where attendees consent to certain protocols beforehand, said Jamie Joy, a sex educator and kink organizer in Philly. Protocols often include respecting people’s identities and confidentiality, not taking photos or using phones, and negotiating risks and boundaries in a consensual way with other attendees. Many of the parties are explicitly sober.

“These community spaces are where we can actually learn how to be safe and keep each other safe,” Joy said.

Earlier this week, the far-right social media account LibsofTikTok called out Fetterman and Casey for supporting a federal spending bill that included money for “an LGBTQ Center in PA which boasts rooms to try BDSM and s*x f*tishes and hosts BDSM and s*x k*nk parties.” Soon after, the Democratic senators pulled funding they had previously requested. While both senators signed letters to withdraw the funding, Fetterman has said he’ll work to restore it next year.

So, at the very least, Mrs Raichik has saved the taxpayers a cool million bucks. As the Inquirer previously reported:

William Way has struggled to get federal funding this year. In July, Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee voted down several requests for funding of LGBTQ centers, including William Way and two others in Democratic Rep. Chrissy Houlahan’s district.

I can’t see why the federal government is subsidizing any private groups at all!

Some queer and kink advocates reacted with alarm, saying that kink is a normal part of human sexuality and that hosting safe parties that adults consent to attend is not something Congress should try to police. The monthly kink parties at William Way are run by a separate group called the Aviary, and have been held there for more than a decade.

Nope, sorry, wrong answer. Congress isn’t trying to “police” that kind of stuff, but Congress also shouldn’t be paying to support it. What consenting adult queers — hey, if they call themselves that, then so can I! — do amongst themselves, as long as they aren’t messing with minors, is really none of my business, at least as long as they keep it reasonably private. But when they expect me to have to pay for their ‘activities,’ expect the taxpayers to pony up, then we have the right to say no, it’s your business, not mine, and you can pay for it yourselves.

There’s more at the original, as reporter Zoe Greenberg tells us how good and wholesome the BDSM/kink parties are, with one-sided reporting which parrots the kinksters’ propaganda, and they’re just appalled that the Senators, people who have to do something really radical like face the voters — Senator Casey is up for re-election this year — might do things like be concerned about the actual voters in the Commonwealth.

Well, they can do whatever stupid things they want, as far as I am concerned, but they can pay for it themselves.

Posted on by

Chaya Raichik and Libs of TikTok save the taxpayers a million bucks!

Chaya Raichik, wearing a t-shirt with an image of Taylor Lorenz crying about something, from her Twitter feed.

We have previously noted Chaya Raichik, the creator of the Twitter site Libs of TikTok. LoTT’s schtick is to find the silliest things leftists put on the social media site Tik Tok, and snark them for sensible people on Twitter. Basically, LoTT is mocking people for their own exposed stupidity, and Mrs Raichik has found an absolutely unGodly amount of that stupidity. The left have been so outraged about the site that Washington Post writer Taylor Lorenz spent a lot of time and effort to dox Mrs Raichik, exposing the previously anonymous Tweeter, seemingly in the hope of getting her fired from her position as a Brooklyn real estate saleswoman.

Meet the woman behind Libs of TikTok, secretly fueling the right’s outrage machine

A popular Twitter account has morphed into a social media phenomenon, spreading anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment and shaping public discourse

by Taylor Lorenz | Tuesday, April 19, 2022 | 6:00 AM EDT

On March 8, a Twitter account called Libs of TikTok posted a video of a woman teaching sex education to children in Kentucky, calling the woman in the video a “predator.” The next evening, the same clip was featured on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News program, prompting the host to ask, “When did our public schools, any schools, become what are essentially grooming centers for gender identity radicals?”

Libs of TikTok reposts a steady stream of TikTok videos and social media posts, primarily from LGBTQ+ people, often including incendiary framing designed to generate outrage. Videos shared from the account quickly find their way to the most influential names in right-wing media. The account has emerged as a powerful force on the Internet, shaping right-wing media, impacting anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and influencing millions by posting viral videos aimed at inciting outrage among the right.

The anonymous account’s impact is deep and far-reaching. Its content is amplified by high-profile media figures, politicians and right-wing influencers. Its tweets reach millions, with influence spreading far beyond its more than 648,000 Twitter followers. Libs of TikTok has become an agenda-setter in right-wing online discourse, and the content it surfaces shows a direct correlation with the recent push in legislation and rhetoric directly targeting the LGBTQ+ community.

There’s more at the original, but Miss Lorenz wound up doing Mrs Raichik a favor, as she now has a guesstimated net worth of $800,000, and that’s only expected to grow.

And it should grow: it seems that Mrs Raichik has saved the taxpayers of the United States a cool million bucks!

John Fetterman and Bob Casey pulled support of LGBTQ William Way Community Center after LibsofTikTok kink parties tweet

On Wednesday Fetterman said he only withdrew the $1 million funding request to fend off anticipated Republican attacks, while Casey’s office defended pulling the money.

by Julia Terruso and Aliya Schneider | Wednesday, March 6, 2024 | 3:36 PM EST | Updated: 4:48 PM EST

U.S. Sens. John Fetterman and Bob Casey both signed letters Tuesday requesting to pull federal funding for the William Way Community Center after learning the LGBTQ-focused nonprofit rents its space for BDSM-kink parties.

But Wednesday, Fetterman (D., Pa.) said his staff withdrew the $1 million funding request to fend off anticipated Republican attacks, while Casey’s office defended pulling the money.

Casey spokesperson Mairead Lynn said the Pennsylvania Democrat believes “that consenting adults have the right to do whatever they want in their free time, but these types of appropriations projects warrant the highest level of scrutiny on behalf of taxpayers.”

Fetterman distanced himself from the decision to pull the funding, first telling reporters in Washington he had no knowledge of it, despite his signature appearing on the letter and then later issuing a statement saying the decision was made because of presumed incoming Republican opposition.

“(A)fter learning the LGBTQ-focused nonprofit rents its space for BDSM-kink parties,” huh? I’ve quoted four paragraphs above, but you have to scroll past an advertisement, four more paragraphs, and another advertisement, to get to how the Distinguished Gentlemen from Pennsylvania learned about those “BDSM-kink parties:

News of the funding consideration went viral after the controversial far-right social media account LibsofTikTok, which is operated by Chaya Raichik and is notorious for sharing anti-LGBTQ views, condemned Casey and Fetterman for supporting the allocation, calling attention to the fetish parties.

Raichik wrote that the funding “includes $1M of your tax dollars to go towards renovating an LGBTQ Center in PA which boasts rooms to try BDSM and s*x f*tishes and hosts BDSM and s*x k*nk parties. There’s even a k*nk party happening there this weekend!”

“(C)ontroversial far-right social media account”? “(N)otorious for sharing anti-LGBTQ views”? The article authors make no bones about it: they are fully supportive of the homosexual and transgender agenda.

Going unmentioned in the article is the controversy over the wholly legitimate arrest — though with Philadelphia’s hard left District Attorney not pressing charges — of Philadelphia’s “executive director of the Office of LGBT Affairs” and his ‘husband,’ Darius McLean, Director of Empowerment Programs at the Arcila-Adams Trans Resource Center of the William Way Community Center, due to ‘Celena’ Morrison driving a vehicle with an expired and suspended car, and Mr McLean then stopping to try to interfere with the citation. Messrs Morrison and McLean claim that they were taking the vehicle for repairs, certainly a legitimate trip, but not one which justifies driving an unlicensed vehicle on the public streets. Perhaps Senators Casey and Fetterman were unwilling to associate themselves with any support of the William Way Center at that moment in time.

It’s a simple truth: Mrs Raichik and her “controversial far-right social media account” have would up saving the taxpayers a million bucks!

At the end of the Inquirer’s story:

William Way has struggled to get federal funding this year. In July, Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee voted down several requests for funding of LGBTQ centers, including William Way and two others in Democratic Rep. Chrissy Houlahan’s district.

All three of the organizations had received similar funding in the past.

That’s a start! I, of course, not only don’t see why the government should be funding private “LGBTQ centers”, but cannot see why we should be funding any supposedly private organizations with taxpayers’ dollars. The William Way Center should be able to support itself with private donations, and if it can’t, then it does not deserve to stay open.

Posted on by

The Philadelphia teachers and crappy work attitudes. If some teachers believe that they are not "treated with dignity," it is because other teachers have not been worthy of dignified treatment.

I’ve seen the forms before. In an employee evaluation form from the University of Kentucky, when I was in grad school, there was an attendance section which had four different possible selections, one of which was “Uses sick days as fast/almost as fast as they are accumulated.” And no, that box was not checked in my case; I almost never missed work, and yes, I went to work even when I was not feeling 100%.

I did have a few instances of missing time when I was hospitalized due to Crohn’s Disease, something I have but which is almost completely in remission. My last serious flare-up was in 2012.

However, in an article in Wednesday’s Philadelphia Inquirer, on the use of sick days in the city’s public schools, there was one line which told subscribers — yes, it’s another of those “subscribers Only” articles — which encapsulated the problem very succinctly:

“The days were meant for us to take,” said Cristina Gutierrez, a kindergarten teacher at Elkin Elementary in Kensington.

No, Miss Gutierrez, the sick days are not some sort of personal time off that employees are “meant” to take; they are there for employees to use when they are actually sick! Perhaps the Inquirer’s school system reporter, Kristen A Graham, or an editor was as appalled by that statement as I was, given that someone made it the lead photograph, complete with that abysmal quotation, in the online version of the article!

Sick days come with their contract. But Philly teachers get punished for taking them.

10 are allowed each year, but after accumulating a few, instructors are expected to meet with the boss. Then things intensify.

by Kristen A Graham | Wednesday, February 28, 2024 | 5:00 AM EST

Philadelphia teachers’ contract allows them 10 sick days a year. But they are progressively penalized just for taking them.

No, the teachers are not being punished for using sick days; they are being held to account for abusing sick days.

That means when a teacher comes down with a virus or has a family member with a medical emergency, there’s a constant calculus in the heads of many: Can I afford to take the day off? Will there be consequences for doing so?

The policy, known informally as “3-5-7-9,” works this way: After a teacher’s third “occurrence,” whether a single sick day or the third in a consecutive stretch of days, principals are instructed to have an informal conversation with the instructor and write a memo documenting the episode. After the fifth occurrence, the teacher gets a warning memo in the permanent file; after the seventh, the teacher gets an “unsatisfactory incident” memo in the file and a formal conference. A teacher who reaches nine occurrences gets a second unsatisfactory incident report, a recommended suspension, and conferences with the principal and assistant superintendent.

The policy seems kind of bulky and overly documentarian, but I suppose that’s something that’s required in a large, unionized environment.

My far too expensive Philadelphia Inquirer subscription. I could use a senior citizen’s discount right about now!

Miss Graham’s article continues to tell readers “subscribers like (me)” — and I subscribe so that you don’t have to — several different stories about hardships that some teachers have: sick children, handicapped spouses, and the like, many of which would appear to be legitimate concerns.

Much further down:

The policy stems from a case dating 40 years, when a district secretary was fired for poor attendance. The PFT (Philadelphia Federation of Teachers) challenged the termination and ultimately lost; the arbitrator wrote that management can “require reasonably steady attendance as a condition of employment, regardless of the reasons for the absences, since otherwise the employee is of no practical value to the enterprise.”

The PFT contract sets the number of sick days at 10 (plus three personal days), but the arbitration decision gives the district the right to set the 3-5-7-9 policy. The district’s employee relations department tells principals that “progressive discipline uses increasingly more severe penalties to bring about positive change in employee behavior. The goals of progressive discipline are to improve employee output, correct inappropriate behavior, or terminate recalcitrant employees.”

Under the union contract, full-time teachers, referred to as ten-month employees, have a work year defined as 188 days[1]Article XVII, §A and a work day set at 7 hours and 4 minutes, including a duty-free lunch our of 30 minutes in secondary schools, and 45 minutes in elementary schools.[2]Article XVII, §B(1)(a) How many employees in the private sector, who normally have a 244-day work year plus two weeks of vacation, would love to have ten sick days plus three ‘personal’ days? Yet here we have teachers, who get a solid two months off a year, combitching that they can’t use sick days just willy-nilly. I can guarantee you that, if I had taken ten unscheduled says off a year, I’d have been fired in any job I ever had!

The union contract has the sick day provisions in place not to be [insert plural slang term for the anus here], but due to teachers with an attitude as expressed by Miss Gutierrez[3]Perhaps Miss Gutierrez simply expressed herself poorly; I do not know her, so I cannot really judge. But I have been proceeding as though she meant exactly what she said., that sick days are things simply granted to teachers to take off for whatever reasons they have. If the employees had a decent employee attitude, they’d come to work every day they were scheduled to work, do their f(ornicating) jobs, and the Inquirer would have had no story on the subject.

What about Lewis Elkin Elementary School, where Miss Gutierrez teaches? According to US News & World Report, only 5% of students tested at or above grade-level proficiency in reading and 5% scored at or above grade-level proficiency in math. Niche.com gives the school a C- in overall performance, a C- in academics, and a C for quality of teachers.[4]US News & World Report mistakenly called the school Elkin Lewis Elementary, while Niche.com got it right as Lewis Elkin Elementary. Perhaps Miss Gutierrez’s expressed attitude has been shaped by working in a poor school in Kensington, or perhaps the poor school in Kensington has been shaped by her attitude.

Shortly after he started teaching at Building 21, a district high school in West Oak Lane, Julian Prados Franks explained his new employer’s sick time policy to his family. His father, a casino worker, was mystified.

He said, “‘They do what?’” said Prados Franks, who has not incurred consequences for using his sick time — yet. “This policy just demonstrates a fundamental distrust between the district and the teachers; that level of control makes it feel like we’re not adults, like we don’t deserve to be treated with dignity.”

It’s simple: the Philadelphia Public Schools are unionized, and the union contract has to specify how teachers who do not act like adults have to be treated and subjected to discipline. Mr Prados Franks may very well be one of the good guys, but the School District has to have the policies in place for everyone — and Miss Graham’s article noted that there have been complaints that the policy has not been enforced evenly — good and bad. If some teachers believe that they are not “treated with dignity,” it is because some teachers have not been worthy of dignified treatment.

You know, we used to have a pretty strong work ethic in this country, and some of us still do. We go to work and do our jobs, every day we are scheduled to work. I’ve had to work many Saturdays in my career, and not a few Sundays as well. I’ve worked 19 full days in a row before, and one year, because another worker had a heart attack, I had only two work days off all year, no vacations, nothing.

But now we have a generation of whiners, and I find it sickening.

References

References
↑1 Article XVII, §A
↑2 Article XVII, §B(1)(a)
↑3 Perhaps Miss Gutierrez simply expressed herself poorly; I do not know her, so I cannot really judge. But I have been proceeding as though she meant exactly what she said.
↑4 US News & World Report mistakenly called the school Elkin Lewis Elementary, while Niche.com got it right as Lewis Elkin Elementary.
Posted on by

The Philadelphia Inquirer tells us about yet another government economic program that just didn’t work.

My good friend Daniel Pearson — OK, OK, I think he knows who I am, but we’ve never met other than in debates on Twitter — is an editorial writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer, and that makes him a liberal, but he’s not a far left whacko, and conservatives can actually talk to him. And, other than the fact that he appears to be holding a disgusting Philly cheesesteak in his Twitter pic — a hot, freshly baked Philly pretzel would be more than acceptable, but cheesesteaks are vile — I pretty much like him. Today’s main editorial shows that, for a liberal, he’s not completely ignorant of economics.

Inclusionary zoning has failed to deliver on affordable housing promise | Editorial

Since enforcement began in July 2022, only five housing projects — with a total of 106 new apartments and fewer than 30 income-restricted units — have received permits within the restricted area.

by The Editorial Board | Tuesday, February 27, 2024 | 6:00 AM EST

In December 2021, Philadelphia City Council created a new affordable housing program — known as inclusionary zoning — that sounded almost too good to be true.

With no public subsidy, density bonuses, or other financial concessions, developers of new properties with 10 or more units in parts of West Philadelphia and the greater Kensington area were required to set aside 20% of every proposed new development for affordable housing. Given the then-hot real estate market in these areas, supporters pitched the concept as a cost-free way to prevent displacement as neighborhoods changed.

The problem is obvious. Developers, like is the case with all other types of investors and businesses, are in business to make money, the maximum amount of money possible for the shareholders. A requirement to set aside 20% for “affordable housing”, without any financial kickbacks or concessions, means that there’s less money to be made. Not only is there less money to be made on the “affordable” units, but the presence of the lower cost units brings down the sale value or potential rents for the luxury condominiums or apartments.

“Philadelphia is in the midst of a full-blown housing crisis. If we continue to do nothing, housing prices will continue to go up, and the Black and brown people who are the backbone of this city will continually be pushed to the fringes,” said Councilmember Jamie Gauthier at the time. Gauthier, along with then-Councilmember Maria Quiñones Sánchez, proposed the bill.

Two years later, the legislation hasn’t lived up to those lofty goals — and it’s clear a new approach is needed.

Ryan Spak, an affordable housing developer with a track record of delivering new income-restricted housing without public subsidy, predicted that the concept would struggle. Spak told anyone who would listen that the bill would force him to either raise prices to unsustainable levels or to do business outside of West Philly. The math simply didn’t work out.

Mr Spak did the math, writing on January 6, 2022:

Today, rents have already risen to unseen levels. This legislation forces those costs to rise faster and higher because developers will have to charge more for the market-rate units to pay for the affordable units. For one example, to meet the required 20% of the units at 40% AMI (Area Median Income), Spak Group would need to rent a two-bedroom apartment in Cedar Park for $2,150 per month — $500 per month more than I’ve ever achieved in my 10 years developing and managing rentals in West Philly. The market will reject these prices; the project will never be constructed and, as a result, neither will the affordable units.

Other requirements would have different math, but he noted that “every analysis” made, with different tweaks of the proposal, would fail without direct government subsidies.

Going back to the first cited article, we can see the problem:

Gauthier said that while developers might make less money, the potential of adding 200 income-restricted housing units a year was too promising to reverse course. The fruits of the program, however, have been minimal, and even those were achieved only by reopening the door to subsidies.

Mr Pearson, who had told me personally that he strives to keep his editorials around the old 750-word limit, was pretty kind to the Third District Councilwoman with that small paragraph. What she actually wrote was:

A complaint we’ve heard from developers since day one is that MIN will diminish the return on investment for their projects — and yes, it’s true that this legislation will require them to see lower profits than they’re accustomed to. It remains unclear to me why we should find it unacceptable for developers and investors to see less of a return, but fail to question why we continue to build housing that doesn’t meet the needs of current residents. Just because the existing system works for developers and investors doesn’t mean we should let socially irresponsible development continue, unfettered.

Opponents of this legislation say it will stymie development in my district. I have a hard time believing that. To say that commercial development is booming in University City would be an understatement — and we know that today’s workers want their jobs to be close to their homes, which will lead them to continue moving to this part of the city. MIN will ensure that this growth doesn’t displace working-class residents and that we have equity in our neighborhoods for years to come.

So, why was development booming in University City? The area is home to the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania[1]2023-24 cost of attendance, $73,494, not including housing., Drexel University, the former University of the Sciences, now part of St Joseph’s University, the very famous Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania (CHOP), along with several other places of note, and has been gentrifying since the 1960s, pushed by Penn’s programs to help faculty and staff buy there. And, of course, there’s student housing.[2]We have previously noted, and the Inky reported, on the absolute mess that the very liberal and environmentally-conscious students left when they moved out in May of 2023. The furthest left candidate … Continue reading Simply put, there were people with money to spend, and developers have chosen to make money in an area where there was money to be made. Miss Gauthier might believe that developers would blithely accept “lower profits than they’re accustomed to,” rather than considering the possibility that many would not accept “lower profits” and would simply invest their money elsewhere.

There’s more than that, or course. As we have reported previously, there is significant resistance to city projects in West Philly that some believe would lead to more gentrification in the area.

In a plan for a safer, vibrant 52nd Street, worried West Philly neighbors see gentrification looming

Angst is roiling minority neighborhoods as they struggle to balance the opportunities and the threats created by gentrification. “West Philly is the new Africa,” one resident warned at a community meeting. “Everyone wants the property that’s in West Philadelphia.”

by Jason Laughlin | February 21, 2020

The topic of the community meeting — a plan to beautify 52nd Street, to make it safe, welcoming, and prosperous once again — was, on its face, nothing but good news for West Philadelphia’s long-declining business corridor.

Yet the audience of about 50 residents and retailers, mostly African American, grew increasingly agitated as urban designer Jonas Maciunas flipped through a PowerPoint presentation of proposed improvements. Many weren’t seeing a vision of a neighborhood revitalized from Market to Pine Streets. Instead, in the talk of redesigned intersections, leafy thoroughfares, and better bus shelters, they heard the ominous whisper of gentrification.

“It just seems that when white people decide to come back to a certain neighborhood, they want it a certain way,” said Carol Morris, 68, a retired elementary school teacher.

Morris’ declaration opened the floodgates of fear and anger that recent night at the Lucien E. Blackwell West Philadelphia Regional Library. Maciunas and Jesse Blitzstein, director of community and economic development for the nonprofit Enterprise Center, which is spearheading the project, were peppered with skeptical questions ranging from the validity of surveys showing community support for the improvements to the maintenance of trees that would be planted.

Now, why would any developer want to risk his money on a project that the neighborhood doesn’t want? Who among the higher-end buyers and renters, would want to buy or rent in a neighborhood in which many of the locals don’t want beautification projects because they might bring in more white residents?

Mr Pearson also noted that Philly isn’t the only place where ‘inclusionary zoning’ hasn’t lived up to the promises made for it:

Portland, Ore., enacted inclusionary zoning in 2020 and saw a similar decline in the construction of large apartment buildings, with many developers instead opting to reduce the scale of their projects so they did not meet the threshold that required set-asides. The well-meaning measure also seems to raise the cost of existing homes.

California towns with inclusionary zoning saw housing prices increase by 20% relative to towns without it. Those kinds of spikes limit the restrictions’ potential to stave off gentrification. It isn’t much use to provide 30 new affordable apartments if the price of Philadelphia’s existing 700,000-plus homes goes up.

Gee, how ’bout that? Governments try to push and pull on the economy, doubtlessly aided by doctors of economics, yet they always seem to get it wrong.

Councilwoman Gauthier got everything wrong, because she was basing her ‘economic’ policy on what she sees as promoting ‘socially responsible development’. Well, investors don’t care about socially responsible development; they care about making money!

In the end, there’s a great fact about economics that so many people, liberals and conservatives alike, and economics professors, just don’t understand. The economy simply cannot be controlled, because the economy is 250 million taking over a billion economic decisions, every single day. Deciding whether to stop on the way to work at Wawa or just making a cup of coffee at home is an economic decision, deciding to scarf down two pieces of toast at home or grab a bagel at Dunkin’ Donuts is an economic decision. These things may seem small, and individually, they are, but when a thousand potential customers have to decide whether to get coffee and a sandwich at Ultimo Coffee or go elsewhere, because the baristas are on strike,  those things, in the aggregate, start to become influential economic decisions.

And those decisions are taken by people, not graphs or flowcharts or city councils. Miss Gauthier’s act, pushed through the Philadelphia City Council, didn’t work out the way she expected, because the economic actors she wanted to influence, took their decisions differently from what she hoped.

 

References

References
↑1 2023-24 cost of attendance, $73,494, not including housing.
↑2 We have previously noted, and the Inky reported, on the absolute mess that the very liberal and environmentally-conscious students left when they moved out in May of 2023. The furthest left candidate in the 2023 Democratic mayoral primary, Helen Gym Flaherty, received a plurality of the votes in wealthier, whiter and more heavily Asian University City.
Posted on by

Baristas on strike! Heaven forfend!

I was aware that some Philadelphia coffee shops were unionized, though I will admit that I didn’t see how that made much sense. In response to the tweet from The Philadelphia Inquirer pictured at the right, @JoeDollinger replied:

We have a barista union? Do people realize it’s not hard to make coffee?

@TooMader replied and repented being a capitalist stooge:

I never realized how overly capitalist I was pouring my own coffee at Wawa. Sorry comrades.

The Keurig coffee machine on our kitchen countertop, with one of my favorite coffee cups.

I applaud anyone who recognizes the superiority of Wawa coffee!

Alas! There is no Wawa close to us in the Bluegrass State, though one is planned for eastern Fayette County, where I-75 meets Richmond Road. However, rather than counting on baristas to serve me overpriced coffee, we have instead exploited another capitalist invention, the Keurig! Since Mrs Pico prefers a different coffee than I do, it’s the perfect thing for us, and, brewed one cup at a time, there’s no wasted half-pots of coffee in a carafe sitting around.

Local 80, Philly’s barista union, calls for Ultimo Coffee boycott

Local 80 is encouraging customers to “suspend their use of Ultimo Coffee products until owners settle a contract with their workers.”

by Jenn Ladd | Wednesday, February 21, 2024 | 6:00 AM EST

Local 80, the nearly two-year-old food service union that represents employees at various independent coffee shops in Philadelphia, announced it is calling for a boycott of Ultimo Coffee beginning today. The boycott comes a week after unionized Ultimo employees publicly authorized a strike, and a week before the union’s next bargaining session with the cafe’s owners.

Ultimo Coffee, Rittenhouse Square, from their website.

Ultimo’s four Philadelphia cafes unionized in late 2022. Owners Aaron and Elizabeth Ultimo and union employees have been negotiating a tentative first contract for just over a year. In January, employees at the Germantown and Graduate Hospital shops moved to decertify their unions, leaving just 12 workers represented under two Ultimo unions at the Newbold and Rittenhouse cafes.

Local 80 is encouraging customers to “suspend their use of Ultimo Coffee products until owners settle a contract with their workers,” according to a release.

The Ultimos could not be reached immediately for comment.

There’s more at the original.

Unions have power when the employees are highly skilled at some difficult to train and replace position; it’s not like Joe Schmuckatella can just walk in off the street and do skilled welding jobs. Electricians and plumbers require training, and if some of them were trained on the job while working as helpers — I was! — it still takes a long time.

But the photo used in the Inky’s tweet, by the newspaper’s staff photographer David Maialetti, shows “Barista Emily Halpern mak(ing) a hand pour coffee at Ultimo’s Catharine Street shop in Philadelphia on November 20, 2014.” Just how much training does it take to get a new employee to be able to pour hot water through coffee grounds in a filter to make a single cup of coffee? The barista shown is doing, in person, what our Keurig does: pouring a measured amount of hot water through coffee grounds — though a Keurig actually pressurizes the water a bit — to make a single cup of coffee.

So, why does Ultimo Coffee use baristas to hand pour the coffee in front of customers? I can see one reason: if they just had Keurigs lined up, customers might be able to see it and say to themselves, “Self, I can do this at home for maybe 50¢ a cup!” Of course, when it comes to the shop in tony Rittenhouse Square, perhaps saving money doesn’t really matter. And, depending upon how busy their shops are, they might need several people to handle customer service during peak hours.

That’s a bit simplistic, in that Ultimo’s website shows fancy shops in upscale locations, with seating both inside and out, as well as various breakfast foods. Showing a picture of a hard coffee mug, you can apparently sit down with your pretty wife and enjoy a pleasant breakfast, outside on Locust Street in nice weather, or inside if that’s what you prefer. But it’s still not the kind of job for which a new employee can easily be trained.

Unionization and the threat of strikes work when replacement workers cannot easily be found, and the company against which the strike is called cannot handle a long work stoppage.

A previous story in the Inquirer reported that “The Philadelphia Joint Board recently set up a relief fund for organized Ultimo employees.” But it also noted that:

“We will continue to work through all remaining issues with the Union, and we are confident that we will reach a mutually-agreeable solution,” the Ultimos said in a statement. “We are proud that the employees at our Newbold and Rittenhouse stores make an average of $25 per hour. Employees are guaranteed a minimum of $20/hour, including tips.”

What the heck does a cup of coffee and a croissant cost there that employees average $25 an hour? That 50¢ for a cup of coffee in my Keurig sounds better all the time!

Posted on by

Maybe Jeff Bezos could spend some of those tax savings on The Washington Post?

I will admit it: I liked the way that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post, to save it when the Graham family were running out of money. Full disclosure: I am a basic digital subscriber to the Post. I have previously said that I appreciated billionaires who bought newspapers, to fail an otherwise failing industry, as long as they understood that losses were inevitable. Sadly, Mr Bezos isn’t too happy with that last part. We have also noted that Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire who bought the Los Angeles Times, with a piddling $5.9 billion to his name, might feel much more pressure than Mr Bezos, current guesstimated net worth of $194.1 billion, in taking $40-$50 million a year losses.

Well, perhaps Mr Bezos can put a little less pressure on the Post, now that he’s made this money-saving move:

Jeff Bezos will save over $600 million in taxes by moving to Miami

by Robert Frank | Monday, February 12, 2024

  • Last year, Bezos announced on Instagram that he was leaving Seattle after nearly 30 years to move to Miami.

  • In 2022 Washington state imposed a new, 7% capital gains tax on sales of stocks or bonds of more than $250,000.

  • Bezos plans to unload 50 million shares of Amazon before Jan. 31, 2025. Posting those sales in Florida will save him at least $610 million.

Jeff Bezos’ $2 billion stock sale last week came with an added perk: no state taxes.

Last year, Bezos announced on Instagram that he was leaving Seattle after nearly 30 years to move to Miami. He said the move was to be closer to his parents and his rocket launches at Blue Origin. The timing also suggested another reason: taxes.

In 2022 Washington state imposed a new, 7% capital gains tax on sales of stocks or bonds of more than $250,000. Washington state doesn’t have a personal income tax, so the new levy marked the first time Bezos would face state taxes on his stock sales.

Starting in 1998 Bezos sold billions of dollars worth of Amazon shares almost every year for more than two decades to fund his philanthropy, his space company Blue Origin, and more recently his $500 million mega yacht and a growing collection of mansions purchased with his fiancé Lauren Sanchez.

In 2022, when the tax took effect, Bezos stopped selling. He didn’t sell any Amazon stock in 2022 or 2023, gifting only $200 million of shares at the end of last year.

After his move to Miami, Bezos made up for lost time. Last week, a filing with the SEC revealed that Bezos launched a pre-scheduled stock-selling plan to unload 50 million shares before Jan. 31, 2025. At today’s price, that would total more than $8.7 billion.

Simply put, rapacious state governments trying to steal more money from the people who earned it wind up influencing the decisions of the people who earned that money. Mr Bezos had the freedom to move away from the left coast to the far more sensible Sunshine State, and did.

Florida has no state income tax or a tax on capital gains. So on the $2 billion sale last week, he saved $140 million that he would have paid to Washington state. On the entire sale of 50 million shares over the next year, he will save at least $610 million. And that’s assuming Amazon shares remain flat. If they continue to rise, the value of his shares — and his tax savings — will be even higher.

That’s some major bucks he doesn’t have to give to a left-wing state government, which would doubtlessly spend it on welfare and illegal aliens. Mr Bezos could, and should, spend some of those savings on the Post, to decrease the financial pressure on that august newspaper, at least if his girlfriend Lauren Sanchez doesn’t persuade him to waste more of it on yachts and mansions.