Wisconsin this week became the latest state to raise its minimum wage. Wisconsin employers must pay at least $5.70 an hour through June 2006, when the minimum wage rises again to $6.50 an hour. The Federal Minimum wage is $5.15. Fool economics contributor Charlie Wheelan talks about the economics of the minimum wage.
Organic Milk in Short Supply
Michele Norris (audio):
ome supermarkets are having trouble stocking organic milk as demand has outstripped supply. And strict organic regulations make it difficult to increase production. Norris talks with Vermont dairy farmer George Siemen, CEO of Organic Valley.
Nationwide Municipal WiFi Ban?
The language of the “Preserving Innovation in Telecom Act of 2005” is so hilariously broad and ill-defined that it could kill all kinds of projects that the incumbent carriers this is meant to protect would support or are involved in deploying. It has such a broad grandfather clause that it could allow massive projects to continue if even a tiny portion of the service was in use.
Apple & Intel? Is it about the DRM?
Dave points to and comments on Stephen Shankland:
Apple has used IBM’s PowerPC processors since 1994, but will begin a phased transition to Intel’s chips, sources familiar with the situation said. Apple plans to move lower-end computers such as the Mac Mini to Intel chips in mid-2006 and higher-end models such as the Power Mac in mid-2007, sources said.
In light of recent moves by Intel to bake DRM into their chipsets, along with Apple’s growing DRM platform (Fairplay, iTunes and Quicktime – which run on windows pc’s and Mac OS X’s), this smells to me like a deal based on a big DRM rollup – paving the way for Apple’s much discussed HD movie/video download system.
Tom’s Hardware has more on Intel’s hardware DRM (Digital Restriction Management) plans.
Political Math
Mary Lazich comments on the political spin around small changes to the State’s UW Budget (the budget is going up, just not quite as much as Governor Doyle wants). Doyle refers to this as a “cut” while Lazich corrects his math:
There are two ways to do simple math. There is the way most everyone does it. And there is the way Governor Jim Doyle does it.
As a member of the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee entrusted with crafting the state budget, I voted with the majority to approve a package to give the University of Wisconsin System a slight increase in state aid over the next two years. The increase amounts to $9 million.
Nevertheless, the governor could not resist issuing a news release referring over and over again to “cuts” he called “senseless.” Apparently in the governor’s world of fuzzy math, an increase is considered a cut.
The fact is the Joint Finance Committee gave the UW System more money for the next two years. The UW System is not being shortchanged. It receives close to $1 billion a year. That is billion with a “b.” Funding for the UW System accounts for close to 8% of the entire state budget.
Matt Pommer, writing in the Capital Times also referred to this change as a “cut”. He doesn’t mention total state support anywhere in the article. We’re better off getting our facts right. There’s no doubt that education funding at all levels has its challenges, but we do currently spend a great deal of money on education, at all levels. Choices must be made, perhaps there are things the State should not fund, allowing additional cash for education purposes.
Finally, Madison’s recent school referenda initiative was also somewhat guilty of this. The questions were often phrased as costing a taxpayer no more than a Latte per day (avoiding any mention of the current, growing school taxes that property owners already pay). Transparency is critical to public support. Our politicians, and some writers, have a ways to go on this matter.
Getto’s Top 30 Milwaukee Area Restaurants
Dennis Getto adds five new restaurants to his annual top 30 list.
AJR on Lee Enterprises, Parent of the Wisconsin State Journal
At the Wisconsin State Journal in Madison, Bill Wineke, the books editor and a columnist, recalls a time in the early 1970s–he’s been there since ’63–when he wrote a column that was distributed to about 15 Lee papers.
After a number of weeks, the State Journal decided to syndicate the column and asked the papers to pay 50 cents each, for postage. Every one of them dropped it.
….
Ron Seely, science and environment reporter at the Wisconsin State Journal, said in late April that his paper was leaving two key jobs unfilled: a regional reporter position and an assistant city editor job. “That makes it harder on our already small staff,” he said. “That’s frustrating.”
Jason Shephard take a look at the local daily newspaper business in the June 2, 2005 Isthmus – available now. Shephard mentions Lee’s 20% profit margins along with a few local reporter’s comments.
Is Wharton Ruining American Business?
That is, anyway, the assertion of an increasingly influential batch of business-school professors, including noted iconoclasts like McGill University management guru Henry Mintzberg and Yale economist Robert Schiller (who wrote that MBA curriculums are “so devoid of moral content that the discussions of ethics must seem like a side order of some overcooked vegetable”). More reasoned types like the late Sumantra Ghoshal of the London Business School, whose posthumously published Bad Management Theories Are Destroying Good Management Practices has roiled the business education world, agree. “Business schools do not need to do a great deal more to help prevent future Enrons,” Ghoshal wrote. “They need only to stop doing a lot they currently do.”
Flaws in the National ID Card – Supported by Feingold & Kohl
The standards are intended to weed out impostors applying for licenses, in part by requiring state employees to check on the validity of birth certificates and other supporting documents. After states adopt the necessary changes, anyone applying for or renewing a license will get one reflecting the new standards.
But once the law takes full effect three years from now, it will also give many more bureaucrats access to personal information on people nationwide. And it will add more data to each file — including digital copies of documents with birth and address information.
To some industry experts and activists concerned about the fast- growing crime of identity theft, putting so much data before more eyes guarantees abuse at a time when people are increasingly concerned about who sees their personal information and how it gets used.
“It’s a gigantic treasure trove for those who are bent on obtaining data for the purpose of creating fake identities,” said Beth Givens of the nonprofit Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. Armed with a stranger’s name, Social Security number and date of birth, it’s not hard for fraudsters to take out bogus loans that can wreck a victim’s credit record.
Additional Background. Let Senators Kohl & Feingold know your views on this latest personal information grab.
Great Doonesbury
Check it out.