North Coast Online

Poor Underpaid Mom

Mothers Day is almost upon us and so, of course, are silly Mothers Day "news" articles like this one.

If you’re a mom, it’s time to ask for a raise on the homefront. According to a just-released study by Salary.com, working mothers put in enough additional hours on the homefront to earn an additional $85,939 per year. Meanwhile stay-at-home moms put in enough hours running house and home to pick up an average annual paycheck of $138,095.

For its “2007 Mom Salary Survey,” Salary.com surveyed 40,000 American mothers on the amount of time they spend each week doing 10 homefront job functions. The equivalent pay calculations were based on such job titles as housekeeper, day care teacher, cook, facilities manager, psychologist and CEO.

It's interesting that Salary.com (no, I won't link it -- you'll just have to figure it out for yourself), which purports to have some tenuous relevance to the world of business, uses the same spurious methods to price a mother's "wages" as Democrats often propose to determine how much women should be paid.  You know, comparing typically "female" jobs such as secretary to traditionally "male" occupations like truck driver.

But just as women can become truck drivers (the country's crying for more truck drivers), moms can work toward becoming CEO's -- it isn't the seventies any more.  I mean, the whole thing's a crock.  Who would pay them the $138,095 anyway?  The government?  If that were the case, dads would just quit their jobs in droves and become moms -- which, of course, would then allow moms to become CEO's much more easily.

The taxes required to support those well-paid stay-at-home dads would kill them, though.

Why Punish Us Instead Of Rewarding Them?

The Rainbow, Whirlpool and Lewiston-Queenston (or is it Queenston-Lewiston) bridges are raising tolls for those paying in American currency.  The reason given is the dropping value of the American dollar and, after all, they must be scrupulous about such things.

If you are paying with American money, tolls will increase by 50 cents for passenger cars on the Rainbow, Whirlpool Rapids and Lewiston-Queenston bridges as of Feb. 1.

For those using Canadian money, rates will remain the same.

The prolonged weakness of the U.S. dollar against other world currencies is the reason for the increase, the first since 1998, according to the Niagara Falls Bridge Commission.

"We look at it as an adjustment rather than a toll increase," said Thomas Garlock, general manager of the bridge commission.

Round-trip passenger car tolls will go from $2.50 to $3 U.S. They will remain at $3.50 Canadian.

Now, in mathematical terms, they're perfectly correct to do so.  As it turns out, at today's exchange rates, the $3.50 Canadian toll equals almost precisely $3.00 American.  But I have to wonder, while the American dollar is dropping in value, it's also true that the Canadian dollar is rising.  One currency's loss is another's gain after all.

Wouldn't it make just as much sense to adjust the tolls from Canada downward to $2.90 to account for their dollar's sudden rise and leave our tolls alone? 

Ah, but Grasshopper, the bridge commission would be taking in less revenue under that scenario. This is the perfect cover them.  Blaming currency fluctuations makes a toll increase sound like nothing more than a year-end bookkeeping entry. Who could possibly complain about that? 

If You Don't Know What A Free Market Is, How Can You Create One?

A Buffalo News article today on fines levied against New York wine and liquor retailers includes a quote from Eliot Spitzer that reinforces my extreme doubts that he is capable of improving the state's business climate.

Seven of the area's largest liquor stores will pay fines totaling $150,000 and agree to refrain from longtime illegal buying schemes under a final agreement announced Friday by state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.

The local retailers are among 31 liquor stores across the state that will pay more than $700,000 in penalties as Spitzer's crackdown on liquor and wine purchases comes to a close before he becomes governor on Monday.

Now, before I get to Spitzer's statement, let's be clear that New York State's liquor laws are unlike those regulating any other retail business in the state.  They were passed in large part in the 1930's after the repeal of Prohibition and were designed to eliminate any possibility of Mafia influence -- the mob having controlled liquor sales up till then.

Over the years, though, the laws have been modified to protect small liquor stores from competition by larger ones.  The so-called Mom-And-Pops have a surprisingly large lobby in Albany and have managed to keep things their way.

In other industries, it's perfectly normal business practice to offer discounts to favored customers -- usually your largest. That's how business is done and it's one of the reasons that the best are able to get better and grow even more.  But New York's liquor laws essentially prohibit that. 

But in New York, if a wine or liquor wholesaler offers a discount, then he must give it to all his customers. This is one of the reasons why we see so few big discount liquor retailers along the lines of Premier in Kenmore.  The laws are concocted specifically to make it difficult for them to exist.

And so, the efficiencies of scale that we enjoy with supermarkets and Target, for example, can't work in New York when it comes to wine and liquor sales.  A lot of New Yorkers heartily approve of this regulation, believing mistakenly that it helps average citizens make a living and encourages more neighborhood retailing.  But what it really does is cause the consumer to pay more for a smaller selection. 

In short, New York state has set up a rigged system, a controlled market that benefits one group of retailers while hindering the best who would grow larger and benefit the rest of us.  Eliot Spitzer, of course, is perfectly right to defend those laws.  That was his job as Attorney-General and this liquor store investigation was on much more stable ground than his Wall Street fishing expeditions, but here's what worries me.

Spitzer said he launched the investigation into practices by liquor retailers, wholesalers and suppliers because illegal pricing had prevented a free market that would lead to lower prices for consumers.

In this case, of course, "illegal" pricing means  "low" pricing.  Charging too much for gasoline may catch the Governor's eye but so does charging too little for alcohol.  And, he goes on, this low pricing prevented a free market!    

If Eliot Spitzer believes that New York's onerous and consumer-harming liquor regulations create a "free market" than I cannot believe that he has the ability to do what it will take to improve the economy in New York State.  He's sounds like nothing but another government-obsessed planner who thinks he knows better than the rest of us what we need to prosper and will make sure that we do it his way.

He'd made some good noises about the economy lately, and I hope I'll be proved wrong, but I think that one statement sums up Eliot's attitude toward business quite accurately and succinctly and it doesn't inspire confidence.