The Austrian School, which was born officially with Carl Menger’s 1871 book Principles of Economics, offers its own distinct price theory, its monopoly theory, its capital theory, and its own business-cycle theory.
It is solidly realistic, and grounded in the individual actor and his decisions and preferences. It seeks to understand real-world prices, not the prices of a long-run equilibrium that can never exist except in the minds of economists.
It was Austrian economists who predicted and properly interpreted the Great Depression, the dot-com crash and the Panic of 2008. The point of the Austrian School is that no competing system can do a better job than the market. Only actors on the market can allocate resources in a non-arbitrary way, because only on the market can someone evaluate a course of action according to the economizing principle of profit and loss. This is what the Austrian economists call economic calculation. This is the reason why economist Ludwig von Mises explained in 1920 that socialism could not work.
Under socialism as traditionally understood, the State owned the means of production. Now if the State already owns all those things, then no buying and selling of them takes place. Without buying and selling, in turn, there is no process by which prices can arise. And without prices for capital goods, central planners cannot allocate resources rationally. They cannot know whether a particular production process should use ten units of plastic and nine units of lumber, or ten units of lumber and nine units of plastic. Without market prices by which to compare in-commensurable goods like lumber and plastic, they cannot know how urgently demanded each input is in alternative lines of production. Multiply this problem by the nearly infinite set of possible combinations of productive factors, and you see the impossible situation the central planning board faces.
Even the non-socialist State has a calculation problem. Since it operates without a profit-and-loss feedback mechanism, it has no way of knowing whether it has allocated resources in accordance with consumer preferences and in a least-cost manner. For example, lets take a look at the State’s production of MRAPs, which stands for Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected. It is an armored vehicle built and used by the United States government and now they are also providing these vehicles for local police forces. Each vehicle costs about half a million dollars to produce and there is no consumer market for them which is why they are so expensive because the State has no way of knowing whether it has allocated its resources in a cost-effective manner and since the money was stolen from you and me via taxation they don’t really care.
So what you see is that the State’s decisions regarding what to produce and where, in what quantities and using which methods are completely blind from the point of view of social economizing, meaning the process by which we obtain higher-valued ends with lower-valued means. Hence, if we want to ensure that resources are not squandered or spent arbitrarily such as on the ugly monstrosity of a vehicle you see above, we must keep them out of the hands of the State.
So the Austrian School of economics teaches us that certain courses of action are more desirable from the standpoint of human welfare than others. We also learn that the State’s allocation decisions cannot be socially economizing. We learn that the desires of consumers are best served by the free price system, which directs production decisions up and down the capital structure in accordance with society’s demands. And we learn from the Austrian School that the State’s interference with money, the commodity that forms one-half of every non-barter exchange, gives rise to the devastation of the boom-bust business cycle.
I hope this helps with introducing you to Austrian economics and it is my hope it did not scare you off as that was not my intention. I am a young student of the Austrian School myself so I am learning along with you, but I promise you that the Austrian School of economics is based in reality and so you will be able to get it soon.
For more detailed information than this author can provide you here please visit the Ludwig von Mises Institute and become a member.
When you watch these videos about the internment camps that the United States government has prepared for us, please keep in mind the following quote from the book Fascism and Capitalism by a great leader of liberty named Lew Rockwell (2013):
“In the fight against fascism, there is no reason to be despairing. We must continue to fight with every bit of confidence that the future belongs to us and not them. Their world is falling apart. Ours is just being built. Their world is based on bankrupt ideologies. Ours is rooted in the truth about freedom and reality. Their world can only look back to the glory days. Ours looks forward to the future we are building for ourselves. Their world is rooted in the corpse of the nation-state. Our world draws on the energies and creativity of all peoples in the world, united in the great and noble project of creating a prospering civilization through peaceful human cooperation. Its true that they have the biggest guns. But big guns have not assured permanent victory in Iraq or Afghanistan–or any other places on the planet” (p. 26).
By William Norman Grigg
Pro Libertate Blog
August 21, 2014
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Whatever we eventually learn about what happened in the streets of Ferguson, Missouri on August 9, Michael Brown is beyond mortal help. The same is not true of Shaneen Allen, a 27-year-old working mother of two and robbery victim who faces an eleven-year prison term for the supposed offense of carrying a legally licensed firearm.
Like the late Mr. Brown, Allen – a resident of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania — is an African-American. She has no criminal record, and her case is untainted by allegations that she had committed a violent crime.
In planning to take the case to trial this October, Atlantic County Prosecutor Jim McClain is committing what could be construed as a race-specific violation of due process by seeking prison time: As we will shortly see, a white Pennsylvania resident who committed the same “offense” was given a pre-indictment plea deal involving two years of non-supervised probation. McClain’s proposed “deal” for Allen would have included a mandatory three and a half year prison sentence.
Allen, a medical professional who works two jobs, was victimized by a series of robberies. A concerned relative advised Allen to get a gun to protect herself and her two young children. She purchased a gun, completed a firearms safety course, and obtained official permission from the State of Pennsylvania to exercise her innate right to self-defense. However, she made the mistake of crossing the Delaware River into a different tax jurisdiction called New Jersey, where the ruling political clique is stingier in granting that supposed privilege, and refuses to recognize firearms licenses that are issued by their counterparts elsewhere in the country.
After being stopped by a revenue farmer for violating one of New Jersey’s myriad official restrictions on the right to travel, Allen made the tragic mistake of being entirely candid when asked if she had any weapons in her possession. Rather than being handed an extortion note (more commonly called a “traffic ticket”), she was abducted and charged the second-degree felony of “unlawful possession” of the means of self-defense.
The officer who carried out that abduction told the victim that she was being punished for her honesty. The same admission was made by the judge at her arraignment. Despite the fact that she clearly displayed no criminal intent, DA McClain refused to offer her entry into a diversionary program that would allow her to avoid prison.
McClain, it should be noted, is no stranger to clemency: He found it in what passes for his heart to allow NFL star Ray Rice, who was also accused of a felony, to enter the diversion program, thereby avoiding prison or even significant professional inconvenience.
Granted, Rice’s alleged offense was nothing as serious as carrying a licensed firearm: He committed the relatively venial infraction of beating a woman into unconsciousness in the elevator of an Atlantic City casino.
Mercy is a gift reserved for the wealthy and powerful, which means that prison is for single black working mothers trying to protect their families, rather than millionaire celebrity entertainers who beat black women to a bloody pulp.
McClain, and his allies in the civilian disarmament lobby, might try to pretend that violating New Jersey’s incomparably wise and inspired firearms laws is an offense of such transcendent magnitude that the guilty simply must spend time in prison, even when those violations are committed by otherwise innocent people from out of state.
Assuming that this is the case, why is Shaneen Allen headed for prison, while her fellow Pennsylvania resident Todd Doering was allowed to go home on probation?
During a visit to New Jersey’s Logan Township in July 2010, Todd and his brother had the misfortune of attracting the attention of a group of plainclothes officers involved in a “Cops in Shops” sting operation at a convenience store.
The purpose of that operation – other than to give the largely idle police force in that tiny town something to do — was to harvest revenue by cracking down on underage drinking and violations of the city’s open container ordinance. One of the officers spotted Todd’s brother, who was sitting in the passenger seat, crack open a can of Twisted Tea.
“Without telling us what was happening, one of these guys reached into my car and grabbed my brother,” Todd related to Pro Libertate. “Within a few seconds there were police on both sides of my car. It was like they thought I had murdered somebody.”
As Shaneen Allen would do later, when the intruders demanded identification from Todd he informed them that he was carrying a licensed handgun – in his case, a Glock model 22. “The weapon was immediately secured for officer safety,” relates the police report. “Todd Doering was then removed from the vehicle and secure with handcuffs” – that is, he was kidnaped and shackled. His abductors “did note that when securing Todd Doering’s drivers [sic] license from his wallet … a Pennsylvania license to carry firearms.”
While in handcuffs and awaiting transport to jail, Todd “spontaneously uttered that the magazine for the weapon was in the glove box and that he believed that as long as the weapon and the ammunition were kept separate he could legally carry the gun.”
By volunteering that information, Todd merely allowed his captors to multiply their excuses for imprisoning him: He was charged with both “possession of a handgun without a permit” and “possession of hollow nose bullets” in the separate magazine.
Todd’s brother was cited for having an “open container of alcohol” and released. A short time later, Todd related to me, the charge against his brother was dismissed “because of a lack of probable cause.” This should have meant the collateral dismissal of Todd’s felony firearms charges. However, by that time he had been blackmailed into accepting a plea agreement – albeit for a deal much better than the one that would later be extended to Shaneen Allen.
In October 2010, the Gloucester County DA offered Todd two years of non-reporting probation and relatively modest fines, including a $25 monthly fee he paid for the privilege of reporting to a probation officer.
It bears repeating that DA McClain wouldn’t so much as entertain the possibility of granting probation to Shaneen Allen.
“For most of 2011, the probation officer would visit me here, and he made it clear it was just a formality,” Todd recounted to me from his home in Landsdale, Pennsylvania. “He finally said, `Look, you don’t belong on probation; this shouldn’t have been done to you.’” In March 2012 Todd was granted early discharge from probation. But he remains unjustly tainted as a convicted felon.
“My attorney and I have filled out all the paperwork to request a pardon, which includes ten letters of endorsement and recommendation,” he explains. “It’s been sitting on Governor Christie’s desk.”
Currently working as a welder and recently married, Todd’s employment circumstances are stable. This is fortunate, given that his felony conviction – although patently unjust – would make it exceptionally difficult to find another good job, even if the ravaged economy were producing them. Until and unless he receives a pardon, Todd cannot legally own firearms, either for recreation or self-defense.
“My family spent a lot of time outdoors when I was growing up, and now I can’t even own a shotgun,” he laments. “I’m not permitted to buy any kind of firearm, or be in possession of one – despite the fact that I followed all of the rules and never did anything to harm anybody else.”
Todd is commendably outraged over the treatment inflicted on Shaneen Allen, and concerned about the prospect of her going to prison – leaving her kids without their mother.
“I’ve been trying to contact her attorney, and tell him about my case, which has to be considered a precedent,” Todd explained to me. “My attorney advised me not to go to the media, but what is being done to that poor lady is unconscionable. I’m trying to undo the damage that was done to me, but at least I’m not spending years in prison. They want to take this woman away from her children for doing something that no reasonable person would consider a crime.”
“When law and morality contradict each other,” wrote Frederic Bastiat, “the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.” Shaneen Allen has never broken the law in any sense; the edict that she ignorantly violated has no moral validity. Her case offers infuriating, albeit redundant, proof of the maxim that the only thing governments “make” are criminals out of innocent people, and corpses out of living human beings.
Since the eruption of Ferguson, Missouri, it has become commonplace for people to say that the revelation of the contemporary police state in all its malignant glory has wrought a measure of redemption out of the violent death of Michael Brown. While not minimizing in any way the necessity of learning why Brown was killed, those who are consumed with a laudable zeal for justice should direct at least some of their energy into the effort to prevent the unwarranted imprisonment of Shaneen Allen.
A legal defense fund has been established on behalf of Shaneen Allen.
Recently, I had the opportunity to engage in a brief email exchange with first pilot Patrick Smith of Askthepilot.com and author of Cockpit Confidentials which you can purchase to the right of this article. Mr. Smith shared with me his frustrations as a first officer with the way Hollywood depicted the relationship between the captain potrayed by Denzel Washington in the movie Flight ahd his first officer. I did understand intellectually that in this modern era a flight crew is made up of employees who are on equal footing with each other. Captains dont boss first officers around and it hasnt been that way since the 1960s where airlines like Pan-Am used to hire military personnel. Since the 1970s a first officer can most certainly question the decision of the captain as they are coworkers and are trained to work as a team. But I still didnt get why Mr. Smith seemed a bit edgy about the Hollywood depiction and so I decided to research the airplane crash of United Flight 232 in 1989 and then when I watched the movie Flight again, thats when I got it and saw how absurd the crash scene is and I could, for the first time, really see things through the eyes of a first officer like Patrick Smith.
As you can see in the scene above, the first officer keeps referring to “Whip” as “sir”, this is not how pilots relate to each other. Unless, the captain is a really old man, I got the sense from Mr. Smith that pilots just refer to each other by their first names. Also, how did “Whip” come to the conclusion that they lost hydraulics? Also, as someone who has worked in the airlines post-9/11 it was my understanding that the flight attendants do not just hang out in the cockpit during flight. You see Denzel just barking orders at his first pilot, to shut off an engine, put out a fire, etc. This is not how it works in the airline business. Lets take a look at a real airline crash that is similar to what supposedly happened to “Southjet 227” in the movie Flight.
In 1989 United Airline Flight 232 was on its way to Chicago when there was a loud bang like an explosion. It was so loud, a couple of passengers thought it was a bomb. Flight 232 slewed hard to the right. It shuddered and shook violently and almost immediately climbed three hundred feet, as the tail dropped sharply.
So this is what happened next, keep in mind that the airplane in the movie Flight seems to be a McDonnell-Douglas MD-80, according to First Pilot Patrick Smith, author of Cockpit Confidential. In the real life crash of United Flight 232, the type of aircraft was a McDonnell-Douglass DC-10 which still required the use of a third crew member in the cockpit and that was the engineer. Dudley Dvorak was the name of the engineer on Flight 232 and after the explosion that was heard he radioed the Minneapolis Air Route Traffic Control Center in Farmington, Minnesota, saying, “We just lost number two engine, like to lower our altitude, please.”
While the First Officer, William Roy Records struggled with the controls, Captain Alfred Clair Haynes called for the checklist for shutting down the failed engine. Did you get that? The captain cant just say okay you shut down the failed engine, no he must call for a checklist to shut down the failed engine, in other words teamwork. Haynes asked Dvorak to read the checklist to him. The first item on the list said to close the throttle, but “this throttle would not go back,” Haynes said later. “That was the first indication that we had something more than a simple engine failure.” The second item on the list said to turn off the fuel supply to that engine. “The fuel lever would not move. It was binding.” Haynes realized that the number two engine, the one that was mounted through the tail, must have suffered some sort of physical damage. The crew as yet had no idea what happened, but Haynes felt a deep wave of concern surge through him. He knew that he was facing something far more serious than the loss of power to an engine. Events unfolded at lightning speed. Only a minute or so had elapsed since the explosion when Records said, “Al, I cant control the airplane.” Did you notice that? He called him “Al”, not “sir” like the actor playing the first officer in the movie Flight.
The DC-10 had stopped its climb and had begun descending and rolling to the right. Records was using the control wheel to try to steer, but the aircraft wasn’t responding. He was commanding the aircraft to turn left and to bring its nose up. The aircraft was doing the exact opposite. Haynes saw this dissonant image. It didn’t take a pilot to know that something was dreadfully wrong.
In the movie Flight they show “Whip” played by Denzel keeping his emotions under control and his first officer doing the exact opposite. In a real crash such as United Flight 232, all crew members were scared and in fact, First Officer Records later recalled the startled look on Captain Haynes’s face: “I think the picture was worth a thousand words when he looked over at me and saw what was going on.”
As the plane continued its roll, Haynes said, “I’ve got it,” taking hold of his own control wheel. Both Records and Haynes now struggled with the failing steering, while Dvorak watched his instrument panel. Something bizarre was happening. The gauges were showing the pressure and quantity of hydraulic fluid falling lower and lower. So did we catch anywhere in the Flight movie where Denzel saw pressure and quantity of hydraulic fluid falling for him to make the statement that they lost hydraulics?
Captain Haynes explains, “As the aircraft reached about 38 degrees of bank on its way toward rolling over on its back, we slammed the number one [left] throttle closed and firewalled the number three [right] throttle.”
Dudley Dvorak recalled the moment: “I looked forward, and we’re rolling to the right. I just said, ‘We’re rolling!’ And Al, in one quick movement, took his right hand off the yoke and swatted the number one engine back, and on the way back up, pushed the other engine up and was back on the yoke in just a matter of seconds.”
This is where the heroics that you see in the movie Flight actually take place in this real crash with Flight 232, where Captain Haynes did take it upon himself as a reflex reaction more than bravado, to steer the plane with the throttles, the crippled DC-10 would have rolled all the way over and spiraled into the ground, killing all on board. After a few agonizing seconds, “the right wing slowly came back up,” Haynes said. He had no idea what made him use the throttles. Nothing in his training would have suggested it. The DC-10 manual does briefly mention “the use of asymmetric thrust,” but Haynes had no memory of having read that entry. He responded automatically, as a reflex that has remained a mystery to him ever since that day. Now as Dvorak watched his instruments, he was horrified to see the pressure and quantity of fluid in all three hydraulic systems fall to zero.
I will leave you with the rest of the story from Captain Haynes himself below.
I am really enjoying reading Jason Riley’s book Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed which I did a book review on yesterday and you can go to the right of this article and purchase a copy. I am going to be quoting here at length what he has to say in terms of the gun control topic and if you are a reading this and you believe in liberty and the right and responsibility to protect yourself from harm, you have got to read on:
“Gun control is another issue that the left raises to avoid discussing black behavior. After the Zimmerman verdict, Obama and Holder called for a reassessment of stand-your-ground laws, which allow people to use force to defend themselves without first retreating…But do such laws, as the president and others have suggested, make us less safe? According to John Lott, a former chief economist at the United States Sentencing Commission, states with stand-your-ground laws…between 1977 and 2005 saw murder rates fall by 9 percent and overall violent crime fall by 11 percent. ‘The debate has everything backwards over who benefits from the law,’ Lott told me in an e-mail exchange shortly after the Zimmerman verdict. ‘Poor blacks who live in high crime urban areas are not only the most likely victims of the crime, they are also the ones who benefit the most from Stand Your Ground laws. It makes it easier for them to protect themselves when the police can’t be there fast enough. Rules that make self-defense more difficult would impact blacks the most’ (page 77).
“Gun deaths fell by 39 percent in the United States between 1993 and 2011. Justice Department data from 2013 show that ‘In less than two decades, the gun murder rate has been nearly cut in half. Other gun crimes fell even more sharply, paralleling a broader drop in violent crimes committed with or without guns.’ More remarkable is that this drop in gun violence happened at the same time that firearm purchases were increasing. In 2012 background checks for gun purchases reached 19.6 million, an annual record, and an increase of 19 percent over 2011. Some of the most violent cities in America, like Chicago and Baltimore, already have some of the strictest gun laws. Yet the political left continues to insist that disarming ghetto residents improves safety in these communities” (ibid)
Do we love Jason Riley or what? Here at dancortes.wordpress.com we definitely love Jason Riley, please support by purchasing his book on the right hand side of this article.
Please stop helping us could have also been titled, please stop enabling us, it is an excellent book and I dont think its just a message to White North American liberals but its a message to African-American leftists as well. Editorial board member of the Wall Street Journal, Jason Riley uses sharp and to the point statistics to debunk the nonsense yammering about white people being on top always and black people being at the bottom always. Allow me to give you an example of Mr. Riley’s editorial prowess:
“We are in the second decade of the twenty-first century, and a black man has twice been elected president in a country where blacks are only 13 percent of the population. Yet liberals continue to pretend that its still 1965, and that voters must be segregated in order for blacks to win office. Never mind that in 1982 five black candidates from majority-white districts won seats in the North Carolina State House of Representatives. Or that between 1991 and 1997 Gary Franks, a black Republican from Connecticut, represented a congressional district that was 88 percent white. Or that in 1996 Sanford Bishop, a black Democrat from Georgia, easily won reelection to Congress in a district that was only 35 percent black. Or that in 2010 Tim Scott of South Carolina and Allen West of Florida, both black Republicans, were elected to Congress from districts that are overwhelmingly white. Or that Representatives Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri and Keith Ellison of Minnesota are black Democrats who represent districts that are more than 60 percent white” (page 27).
Mr. Riley reminds us of an important lesson that the Chinese and Japanese have been teaching us all along if we would have only paid attention. Instead of protesting about discrimination this and racism that and how the US bombed them here or invaded them there, oppressed ethnic groups such as in this case, African-Americans, could have not only followed the examples of Booker T. Washington who was saying all along to focus on building businesses and being captains of industry and forget protests and riots, but could have observed how the Japanese got back on their feet from being nuked and how the Chinese got back on their feet from communism, but nobody listened. It was easier to listen to W.E.B. Dubois and his socialist ideals of redistribution of wealth and mass movements demanding this and that.
Forget Manning Marable, who by the way, once told me that since I am not one of his students he could not be bothered by me when I met him briefly in the hallway of the Arthur Schomburg (a dark-skin Puerto Rican) Center for Black Studies in Harlem, New York, if you really want to read truth to power, check this other quote from Mr. Riley:
“One reason that returns on black political investment have been so meager is that black politicians often act in ways that benefit themselves but don’t represent the concerns of most blacks. So in addition to being overly reliant on politicians, blacks typically have poor political representation” (page 30).
We will not name any names, right Chaka Fattah? Isn’t that correct, Donald Webster, Melvin Primas and Wilson Goode? Isn’t that correct State Representative Kenyatta Johnson? I pass by your districts and as I write this the streets are as filthy as they were when you all were first in office and the houses just as vacant as Beirut in 1982.
Isnt it ironic that the Point Breeze section of South Philadelphia, a predominantly African-American area historically, prior to being heavily represented by black politicians had a history of being vibrant with African-American businesses and in all of Chaka Fattah and Kenyatta Johnson’s career, that reality has yet to return to the Point Breeze area.
Anybody in the United States of Amnesia remember the protests to keep Wal-Mart out of Harlem? Yeah I didn’t think so, so here is an excerpt from Riley’s book once again speaking truth to power:
“For years, black political leaders in New York City aligned themselves with labor unions to block the construction of a Walmart in a low-income community with persistently high unemployment. According to a Marist poll taken in 2011, 69 percent of blacks in New York would welcome a Walmart in their neighborhood. Yet these black leaders put the interests of Big Labor, which doesn’t like the retailer’s stance toward unions, ahead of the interests of struggling black people who could use the jobs and low-priced goods” (page 31).
Mr. Riley goes on to share how black politicians such as Obama and others is a triumph of style over substance and it is a sad thing to admit but very true.
Please read this book if you really care about truth and justice and are not some white liberal just trying to placate what you think would otherwise be black anger and resentment and please read this book if you are yet another African-American complaining about the white man this and the white man that. Here is another great excerpt by Jason Riley:
“The black underclass continues to face many challenges, but they have to do with values and habits, not oppression from a manifestly unjust society. Blacks have become their own worst enemy, and liberal leaders do not help matters by blaming self-inflicted wounds on whites or ‘society.’ The notion that racism is holding back blacks as a group, or that better black outcomes cannot be expected until racism has been vanquished, is a dodge. And encouraging blacks to look to politicians to solve their problems does them a disservice” (page 33).
Mr. Ridley cites research done by a Professor Ogbu whose researchers noted that “in classes where most of the kids were black, teachers expected less of the students in terms of homework, even going so far as to de-emphasize its importance” (page 46).
I can relate to the above citation from a personal experience working as a Peer Education Coordinator at Camden High School in Camden, New Jersey many moons ago. I was assigned to grade the grammar copy books of 12th grade, predominantly African-American students and book after book of what I saw made me want to cry. They were spelling the word “math” as “maff” and “reading” as “reedin” and I couldnt believe that teachers had the nerve to have these kids in 12th grade about to graduate high school. They were not ready and these teachers turned a blind eye and didn’t seem to care, but more importantly, looks like their parents didn’t care either. I complained about it to my supervisor and it fell on deaf ears. I left the program.
There is a lot of speaking truth to power, forget Manning Marable, forget Michael Eric Dyson, you need to pick up this book, Please Stop Helping Us by Jason Riley and you can do so by clicking on a copy of his book to the right of this article. Do it, do it now!
A tip is supposed to be a reward for services performed, as well as a supplement to an employee’s income. The word tip comes from the mid-eighteenth-century innkeepers’ sign TO INSURE PROMPTNESS. Patrons deposited a few coins on the table before ordering a meal or drinks and were served faster.
The average tip is 15 to 20 percent of the total bill before taxes. A slightly larger tip may be in order if the food and service were outstanding. Some restaurants include a 15 to 20 percent service charge in the European manner, especially if the party is six or more.
The following guide to tips is an average that I am sharing with you all so that fun of dining out or any other situation that requires a tip does not get hampered in the end by trying to figure out how much you are supposed to leave behind.
UPSCALE RESTAURANT
CAPTAIN/HEAD SERVER/MAITRE D’
$10 for special services
SOMMELIER (WINE STEWARD)
15 percent of the cost of the wine
MIDRANGE RESTAURANT/DELI
LUNCH COUNTER
10 TO 15 percent of the bill
BUFFET MEAL
10 percent for the person who serves your table
VARIOUS SERVICES
FOOD DELIVERIES
10 percent or less of the bill.
PIZZA DELIVERY
$2 for an order totalling $20. A tip for a larger order may be between $3 and $5, depending on the size of the order.
GROCERY STORE DELIVERY
$2 for a small delivery of one or two regular-size bags; $5 for three or more bags.
BELLHOP OR SKYCAP
$2 per bag. For a heavy bag, tip $3. For several bags, tip $5.
COATROOM ATTENDANT
$2 for each coat; increase the tip if you leave a briefcase, a laptop, an umbrella, or a package.
GARRAGE ATTENDANT
$3 when your car is brought to the front of the restaurant or hotel; $5 if the attendant helps with doors, packages and so on.
HOUSEKEEPER IN A HOTEL
Tip $2 for each night if you request an extra service. Ask for the name of the housekeeper and place your tip in an envelope addressed to him or her with a personal thank-you note. You may hand the housekeeper the envelope, or leave it at the front desk at checkout.
Note: Housekeeper (not maid) is now the preferred term for a person who cleans rooms.
NEWSPAPER DELIVERIES
$20 to $25 once a year at Christmas is appropriate.
TAXI
Meter systems, 15 percent; for long rides, 15 to 20 percent. (Avoid Philadelphia cab drivers if possible, they have no customer service skills).
BEAUTY SALON/DAY SPA OR BARBERSHOP
SHAMPOO PERSON
$1 to $5, depending on assistance relating to services such as perm and color.
STYLIST
15 to 20 percent.
HAIRCUT AT A BARBERSHOP
15 to 20 percent of the bill.
MAKEUP ARTIST/AESTHETICIAN
15 to 20 percent of the bill.
NAIL TECHNICIAN
15 to 20 percent of the bill.
MASSAGE THERAPIST
15 to 20 percent of the bill.
Note: If the beauty salon/spa or barbershop owner provides one of the above services to you, he or she should be tipped. The old rule that one doesn’t tip the owner is obsolete. Be mindful that customers should tip for services performed.
What can I say about George Carlin that his fans dont already know? Well, for starters, he was a good writer as he was a comedian. I recommend both his books, Brain Droppings and George Carlin: Last Words as well as the third one which I think was written about him called, 7 Dirty Words: The Life and Crimes of George Carlin and all of them can be purchased here on my website by looking them up on your right hand side and clicking on them and purchasing it.
For someone with the kind of humor of George Carlin, I always had an idea that he had to have had a dysfunctional childhood and I dont say that to demean him, but, in fact, I am grateful to find out from George via his book George Carlin: Last Words that it was this type of childhood, similar to my own, that made him such a great comedian. Perhaps there is a future for me in comedy. I am certainly not making big bucks writing these blogs.
Buy this book! Learn about Carlin’s humble beginnings if you really love this comedian. You will want to know him and you will get to know him more closely and appreciate his comedy and Carlin as a human being as a result. I am still reading this book myself and enjoying every minute of it. At best I am hoping this will inspire me to become a rich and famous comedian myself as that always helps heal the wounds of a dysfunctional family. If not, then at least I will have enjoyed another blessing to our civilization, the comedy of George Carlin. So come to think of it, why do I keep contributing to this blogsite if I am not making any money at it? I guess its because I have this real moron thing I like to do, its called…writing!
Cockpit Confidential by First Officer Patrick Smith is an excellent everything-you-have-ever-wanted-to-know about the airline industry and airplanes. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has ever flown and works or has worked in the airline industry. I finally know what that sound is underneath the Airbus 320 series aircraft that sounds like somebody is sawing off the landing gear. Also, a lot of mysteries that were presented to me when I worked in the airline industry myself have been demystified, Mr. Smith is an insightful, intelligent man and I love his views on the ineptitude of the TSA. Around page 182 he shares a confrontation he had with the TSA boobs because he had in his carry-on a butter knife that his airline provides for passengers inflight. The TSA were not listening or were in George W. mode and didn’t seem to understand that they were denying him silverware that he can just get again once he boards his airplane. Let me share some of it here if for nothing else, so you can see the dimwits that this fascist government has working as our security supposedly and their poor command of the English language. The writing in parentheses are mine own and not part of the book:
TSA: Bag check!…You got a knife in here?
Smith: A knife?
TSA: A knife, she barks. Some Silverware? (Can you just imagine an obese woman from West Philly here?)
Smith: Yes, I do. I always do. Inside my suitcase I carry a spare set of airline-sized cutlery–a spoon, a fork, and a knife…Its identical to the cutlery that accompanies your meal on a long-haul flight…Yes, I tell the guard. There’s a metal knife in there—a butter knife.
TSA: You aint taking this through, she says. No knifes[sic]. You cant bring a knife through here. (notice the excellent English grammar).
Smith: Ma’am, that’s an airline knife. Its the knife they give you on the plane.
TSA: Have a good afternoon, sir (the obese boob with the poor English from West Philly is not listening, obviously).
Smith: You cant be serious, I say.
Mr. Smith has an excellent and accurate view of the uselessness of the TSA. In fact, I also have to share this bit on page 186 for your education:
“In fact, TSA workers do not hold law enforcement power as such—much as they have done a good job fooling people into believing otherwise. TSA holds the authority, legitimately, to inspect your belongings and prevent you from passing through a checkpoint. It does not have the authority to detain you, interrogate you, arrest you, force you to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, or otherwise compromise your rights. Both TSA and the traveling public need to remember this.”
And yet although First Officer Smith is on point with his analysis of TSA and security at the airports today, he is very harsh on what he calls 9/11 “conspiracy theorists” which is just a harsh way of saying kook or someone who has a view that does not match the official story. I have written to Mr. Smith and one day I would say about this is, okay, I will concede some views about 9/11 may be a stretch, but I am wondering Mr. Smith, can you explain to me how did building 7 collapse considering that no plane hit it? Also, Mr. Smith tries to debunk the controlled demolition theory, yet even the firefighters of New York City heard explosions after the planes hit the building. One more thing Mr. Smith, can kerosene, the fuel used to fly an airplane, get hot enough to collapse a building like the World Trade Center? A builiding which its Japanese architect built it specifically to withhold airplanes smacking into it? One of the things I admire about you Mr. Smith is that you bring your pilot expertise and well-thought out analysis into your book, but at some point you must concede that you are not an architect. Mr. Smith watch this video, the fire department of New York City knew they would have to bring down the building, here they are saying it.
Regardless of where we disagree, First Officer Smith is a level headed, insightful author and I still recommend this book to anyone. His view on the TSA and security is spot on and he will teach you everything there is to know about the airline business. Get this book!
I recently suffered another disappointment with another author whom I thought I would read his new book because he has been on the Alex Jones Show and has had his articles featured on Lewrockwell.com only to find out that Mr. Paul Craig Roberts holds some extreme leftist views. He is definitely not a libertarian nor anarcho-capitalist nor has he ever lived in Venezuela under Hugo Chavez. Extremists are called as such because they believe that an enemy of the USG must be a good guy and that is an extreme view to have. Putin is an enemy of the United States, but that doesn’t make him a great guy. I just read his self-potrait and it is actually quite boring and I learned a bit about how Russians dont really believe in live and let live. As a former KGB agent, he admitted that it was through the help of the Russian citizenry, what we here would call snitches, who would report on each other all the time, is how the KGB was able to accomplish their intelligence work. How about that? What the USG is trying to get us to do, snitch on our neighbors.
Chavez is also not a great leader by default of him being an enemy of Washington. He is no miracle as Roberts suggests but simply your typical run of the mill dictator. Roberts shares how Chavez has received honorary doctorates from China, Russia, Brazil, and other countries, but not from Harvard, Yale, Cambridge, and Oxford. This is laughable and yet another author named Bill Blum had the nerve to call me juvenile. The countries that have given Chavez honorary doctorates are all countries that are grateful to the dictator for providing them oil for almost nothing, with the exception of Russia that does not need his oil. Roberts has the nerve to say that Chavez did not sell out to the elites and had he done so he would be a wealthy man. This is an astounding comment to make, be clear ladies and gentleman that Chavez died a wealthy man. Having lived out his dream of ruling a country, taking other peoples businesses, sleeping with Naomi Campbell and having movie stars like Sean Penn as his invited guest. It is true that Chavez was not a puppet of the United States, but he was also no real threat to the United States militarily either. Chavez purchased eight Soviet Sukhoi jet fighters and sacrificed his men by allowing them to hop in equipment they did not know how to work and as a result several of them crash landed and died. As far as Chavez and his wealth goes, this dictator was going live on television as some dictatorial robin hood expropriating the businesses of private citizens. Check out the videos below:
Since Mr. Paul Craig Roberts comes on RT and all these other wonderful show as a defender of liberty and the Constitution, what about the Venezuelan Constitution? Mr. Roberts dedicates an article in his new book to a dictator who doesnt give a whip about the Venezuelan Constitution. What you will see above is, simultaneously with Chavez expropriating private property, is that Article 112 of the Venezuelan Constitution, which Chavez would often wipe his ass with, says, “The State will promote private initiatives, the creation and just distribution of wealth…the right to work, own businesses, engage in commerce and industry…”
Chavez won in 2003 in a fair and square election, yes I will give extremists that one, boy do they love to harp on that one. They dont tell you, that like Obama, he was a wolf in sheep’s clothing in 2003 and revealed himself afterwards once he made himself president for life and expropriated jewelry businesses, the rice producing industries, banks, television new stations, including one that belonged to Colombia. So he stole other peoples wealth and he didn’t die a wealthy man Mr. Roberts? So what did he do give it all to the poor of Venezuela? Is that your argument? Mr. Roberts are you going to tell me that Chavez gave out oil money to the poor? He gave cheap and almost free oil to China, Brazil, Argentina and Cuba, but he definitely didn’t hand out any free oil or its proceeds to the poor by any stretch of the imagination.
Paul Craig Roberts tells you that Chavez was elected four times again, the same extremist and oversimplified propaganda as Bill Blum. Chavez was elected fairly the first time where he came in as a good little sheep who would do right by his people. Once he took power he got rid of all of his opponents in Congress, either by jailing them or some other political play and put all his supporters in every single government position available. He expropriated or liquidated any media news source that didn’t support his policies. So all his subsequent elections were manipulated. With South America being the land of manipulated elections, Mr. Paul Craig Roberts is going to have the nerve to write that Venezuela is the exception. Lets ask Mr. Roberts, where was he during 2003 up until 2013? Certainly not living in Venezuela. The RT channel puts people like Roberts and Blum on because they don’t care about truth and justice, they are aligned with Chavez and all they do is sell anti-US propaganda all day long so they can create chaos and social unrest in this country which I am afraid the US government is actually helping further it along.
Mr. Roberts criticizes the New York Times and yet he is a columnist for which newspaper? The Wall Street Journal. We all know how the Wall Street Journal is anti-state, anti-Keynesian and pro-free market, right?
Mr. Roberts criticizes Pamela Sampson’s judgment that Chavez wasted Venezuela’s oil wealth on “social programs including state-run food markets, cash benefits for poor families, free health clinics and education programs..” and she is right. Mr. Roberts are you having some fantasies about living in a socialist system? We already have one right here under Obama, its just more fascist than socialist. Mr. Roberts people would look at you as say you are more “American” than me because of your light skin, light hair color and light eyes and look at me as un-American with my often confused for Middle Eastern features and yet sir you dont seem to have been born and raised in the United States with those views. The United States was never founded on “state-run” anything and it seems you are now accustomed to cash benefits for the poor which we were not originally founded on that either. Free health clinics and education programs are initiatives for the private sector. Government cant give you anything for free without taking it from somebody else. I am amazed that your articles appear on lewrockwell.com, a libertarian publication. I am really starting to get concerned about that.
I have yet to hear or see a voice of reason here in the United States on the issue of Hugo Chavez. Although I am sure that Lew Rockwell himself has a clue when he posted that Chavez was building more prisons. In addition to building more prisons, he has taken private property, enriched himself and his family, I would agree with Mr. Rockwell that Chavez is very “American” in the U.S. Empire sort of way.
Now let me clear, lest I be accused of being some type of right winger that I am a non-interventionist. I believe we should have peaceful relations with all the countries of the world including Venezuela, there is no exception to that rule. The reason I point out what I pointed out is because, apparently among columnists on Lew Rockwell’s blog and other sources of media in the United States there is a lack of inside knowledge to the wonderful wacky world of living under Chavez in Venezuela, so its up to my family and I to be that voice of balance. I am tired of hearing leftists and those who claim libertarianism to place Chavez in a role that he does not deserve. Chavez was no different than Obama and if you believe all governments are evil then stop making statements like, “well at least Chavez didnt do this…” No he may not have done that, but he has done plenty to enrich himself and impoverish his nation. How is that qualitatively different than what Obama has done?
I want to post here the one voice of reason I am happy to see on lewrockwell.com and that is an author named Bill Anderson:
“One of the things that Mises emphasized in his critique of socialism was that the real problem was in the economic calculation for the factors of production. Because mainstream economists tend either to be clueless about factors or to assume the factors into market supply and demand functions, they miss one of the central reasons as to why socialism fails.
The government of Venezuela under Hugo Chavez nationalized the oil companies awhile back and, surprise, surprise, production has fallen severely. In 1998 before Chavez assumed power, production stood at 3.2 million barrels a day. Now, it is at 2.4 million and I estimate that production will fall even more in the next few years.On top of that, Chavez has assumed that his oil money will be able to bankroll socialist revolutions around the world, and he is selling oil at cut-rate prices to other socialist governments. Alas, he throws good money after bad, as Bolivia, rich in natural gas resources, has nationalized its gas industry and, surprise, surprise, output is falling.
The reason it will get even worse for Chavez is that capital wears out, but because he will spend the profits on socialists schemes instead of new capital, Venezuelan production will fall as the government will lack the machinery necessary for pulling the oil out of the ground and getting it to port. Furthermore, he will not be able to attract new capital investment because his government seized private investment in the past and is extremely hostile to private enterprise.
So, sit back and watch Chavez wreck the economy. People are worried because they are afraid he will become another Castro. Indeed, like Castro, he will destroy a once-productive economy and drag people down to poverty. I say let them do it. If the people want socialism, let them enjoy its fruits.”
Thank you Mr. Bill Anderson. No country in South America is a threat to the United States much less one lead by an idiot who destroyed his own nations’ economy in order to enrich himself and place his family members in positions of power.
Now Nicolas Maduro, a former bus driver with the charisma of a flat tire is taking over as dictator and he is the Venezuelan version of George W. The guy doesn’t even know the names of the different regions of his own country. Maduro goes around saying that Chavez has reincarnated as a little bird that talks to him. Um…okay..no comment.
So I am waiting for the next round of extremist comments on how the USG is evil but Maduro is not. The funny thing is that neither Bill Blum nor Paul Craig Roberts ever actually lived in Venezuela under Chavez and they dont live there now, do they?
I definitely have more respect for Gore Vidal, may he rest in peace.
Please stop the madness of saying that governments that the U.S. Empire hates are good governments, that’s too extremist. If you are a true libertarian, a true student of Austrian economics and a true anarcho-capitalist, how in the lunacy of your mind do you say that Chavez was a great man?
Libertario 