today was only half as productive as i really wanted, but it was good.

1) i got my pill cycle reset back to the start of the month, which is great news for me.
2) i finished about half of my grocery shopping.
3) i won the court case, and got $58 in costs. i'm still waiting to see if the landlord will accept it on this month's rent, or make me wait until next month.
4) i paid down half of the loan. the other half is due at the end of june.
5) i had the company remove authorization to debit my account, and provide it in writing - meaning they're the ones breaking the law if it happens, and i can prove it. retaliation will be brutal.

i'm going to nap for the evening. i want to at least pay the rent tonight, even if i have to wait until tomorrow morning to finish shopping. so, i can't fall asleep too long.

i'm only budgeted for $30 spending this month, so getting the other $58 is going to be helpful, to say the least. they're in their rights to make me wait until july due to the wording of the case, but it seems rather obtuse to do so if i'm offering to deal with it up front.

i won the court case.

which means.

1) i get to keep the fan....although, the upstairs tenants are moving out, anyways.
2) i get $58.00 - $50.00 for the application and $8.00 for the coal.

that $58.00 is huge this month.

the idea that trump pulling out of the climate accord is going to make a big difference in emissions is rooted in the false premise that the accord was ever going to reduce emissions in the first place.

and, what the politicians of the world that bought into this - trudeau, perhaps more than any other - are pissed off about is that they (falsely) perceived paris as a way to quiet down the discussion, and trump as opening a can of worms.

activists should actually thank trump for stopping the issue from being sidelined. i keep going back to this point: trump is going to do a lot of really stupid things that are against his own interests, because he's not smart enough to realize it and he doesn't have the staff (which he wouldn't listen to anyways...) to shut him down.

trump's self-interest is to just be quiet and let everybody think the issue is solved. instead, his insistence on fighting the issue is giving activists a new opportunity to push for actually meaningful, binding targets.

but, let's be honest. if paris was the best we could do, we were doomed, anyways. activists should be focusing less on international climate agreements and more on direct action in shutting down specific emissions sources.

we might get some breaks in the courts, but there is not a federal government anywhere that is truly committed to emissions reductions. not canada. not the normally reliable swedens or norways. there's no country on the right side of history, here.

we have to do this ourselves.

the scare-mongering around minimum wage hikes seems intuitive, but it is actually rooted in the irrational premise that increasing the costs of labour will decrease the demand for it. that's the crux of it. if we want to be technical, we should be talking in terms of poor modelling. more specifically, the scare-mongerers are modelling labour as perfectly or strongly elastic, when they should be modelling it as nearly perfectly inelastic! but, you almost lose something in context by getting technical.

think about the argument: increasing the cost of labour will decrease the demand for it. that's ridiculous. why would you think that?

it's the same kind of goofy thinking that wants to conceptualize a government budget the same as a household budget. it's really not intuitive at all, it's ridiculous on it's face.

but, this is the crux of the junk economics on the right. they throw ideas at you that are barely comprehensible enough to even be wrong, then they repeat them so often that you take them as obvious. of course increasing wages will reduce jobs - i've heard that every day of my whole life. why? well, because increasing the cost of labour will decrease demand for it. obviously.

this link explains.

https://jonmalesic.com/2013/03/10/the-minimum-wage-and-elasticity-of-labor-demand/

i wrote this out more technically somewhere or other some time ago, so we'll just do the short version.

suppose you're a walmart. hey, walmart. how's it going? k. so, you're a walmart.

how many people do you choose to hire when the minimum wage is $10/hr? the answer is the least amount that you possibly can. i know, you're thinking "i'm a job creator!"....but you know you're full of shit. i know you're full of shit, too. so, let's drop the bs. you're a walmart, and the minimum wage is $10/hr, and you're already staffed with the smallest number of people that you can possibly staff and still manage to actually run your business.

the gummamint is threatening to increase the minimum wage to $15/hr. wow. holy shit. $15/hr? so, you as a walmart, are threatening to fire people....because you're a job creator, and that's what job creators do: fire people when they get too expensive. obviously.

so, which one of the minimum number of employees required to run your business do you plan on firing?

yeah, that's right - you can't fire them, can you? because you've already hired the absolute minimum number of people that you possibly can - because you're a walmart, and that's how a walmart works.

so, you get grumpy and threaten to shut the whole store down! and release all of the video vaults of employees fucking in the back, too! don't act like you don't know that's a characteristic of every single fucking walmart on the planet, either. but, let's not dwell on this or visualize it too much. right. anyways..

as you're literally rolling a cart of beach balls out of the building, one of your managers runs towards you with a set of print outs, yelling - wait! wait! look!...

you stop. you look at the printouts. sales are up. by a lot.

"i think i understand", says the manager. "our customers are mostly low wage earners. they just got a 30-50% raise. so, they came here to spend a lot of money. stuff like clothes for their kids. that created a big increase in demand, all at the same time. but, come over here i want to show you something..."

the manager then takes you through the store. the line-ups are longer than they should be.

"we may need some extra cashiers."

she then takes you to the back, where you notice that there is a giant backlog.

"we need more stockers, too."

you realize that the minimum amount of staff you require to stay in business has now increased.

after a walk, you decide to roll your cart of beach balls back into the store. things will be fine, after all.

i'm going to tell you a little secret about the minimum wage hike in ontario, which is on it's way to $15/hr by the beginning of 2018.

*psstt*

lean in now, as the papers won't tell you this, and you don't need to know what they don't tell you, right?

the minimum wage in ontario is tied to inflation.

so, you can imagine that the press is yelling and screaming that the hike is meaningless because it will just raise prices, and in the end balance out.

not in this particular jurisdiction, it won't. right here, in this place, business owners can't get out of the increase that easily, because if they raise prices to compensate they'll just get hit with an equally sized increase in wages the next year. 

they're going to be forced to actually pay out.

that's the trick - the secret. it's how you win this game. 

and, what are the outcomes? will businesses close? will the economy collapse?

a few businesses may close, but that will be because they were barely profitable to begin with. and, it's funny to hear the so-called market advocates complain that unprofitable businesses will be forced to close, isn't it?

as workers will now have more disposable income, because capital cannot take it back via inflation, we should see an increase in gdp and a stronger economy, over all. when you fix increases to inflation, you can get a true shift in wealth.

i've stated this repeatedly: i actually like this government. i hope that they can turn things around before the next election.