For some states, the recession has been in the rearview mirror for a long time now. That’s certainly the case in North Dakota, where the unemployment rate is the lowest in the country at 3.4%. Oil and gas from the Bakken formation help, but as I’ve written, North Dakota ranks third in associate-degree-and-above educational attainment among 25- to 44-year-olds. It’s attractive to younger workers. Rounding out the top 10 after North Dakota are Nebraska (4.1%), South Dakota (4.3%), New Hampshire (5.2%), Vermont (5.3%), Iowa (5.7%), Wyoming (5.8%), Minnesota (5.9%), Oklahoma (6.1%), and Virginia (6.2%).

On the other end of the spectrum, where unemployment rates are the highest, it probably feels like the recession never ended. These states are Nevada (13%), California (11.3%), Rhode Island (10.5%), Mississippi (10.5%), North Carolina (10%), Illinois (10%), Florida (10%), South Carolina (9.9%), Georgia (9.9%), and Michigan (9.8%). Some of these states may quite possibly be stuck in a death spiral for years to come, but others will be able to rebound. There isn’t a magic bullet per se, but there are tools states can use that are like a flashing neon “Open for Business” sign. One tool is becoming a right-to-work state—meaning it’s illegal to force employees to join a union against their will.

Workers, like money, go where they’re well treated. College grads are moving to right-to-work states. The nine states with the greatest gains in college-educated adult population between 2000 and 2010 are listed below, courtesy of the November-December 2011 National Right to Work Committee Newsletter:

You can see in the table that South Carolina, Florida, North Carolina, and Nevada are among the nine states with the greatest gains in their college-educated adult populations and are right-to-work states. They are also among the states with the highest unemployment numbers that I discussed earlier.

But there’s a reason why Boeing set up its sophisticated 787 Dreamliner manufacturing facilities in South Carolina. Boeing recognizes that it needs workers who cannot be stifled by unions and can work freely to increase their merit-based wages. “The simple fact is, highly educated employees, like other employees, benefit from right-to-work laws,” says Matthew Leen, vice president of the National Right to Work Committee. “Employees of all kinds prefer to live in right-to-work states when they can because living costs are lower and real incomes are higher.”

There are two states that are in the group with the slowest growth in their college-educated adult population from 2000-2010 and the highest unemployment rates: Michigan and Rhode Island. The weak recovery may be self-perpetuating for the weakest states. In his Wall Street Journal piece “No Easy Balm for Joblessness Wounds,” Ben Casselman writes:

Unprecedented rates of long-term unemployment could threaten the economy’s recent gains. Some 5.6 million Americans have been out of work at least six months, 3.9 million of them for a year or more. Research shows that the longer people are unemployed, the less likely they are to find jobs. Economists aren’t sure why—to what degree it’s because workers’ skills deteriorate, or because they find ways to cope and give up looking for work, or whether the stigma of being unemployed for so long makes employers unlikely to hire them—but the effect is the same: Many of the people out of work the longest likely will never work again.

The risk, economists say, is that the U.S. will develop an underclass class of semipermanently unemployed workers, with severe consequences for productivity, public finances and even social stability. Europe, which faced a similar problem in the 1980s, is still dealing with the consequences.

States like South Carolina that are open for business and treat workers well will attract a mobile workforce. Those that are not attractive, like Rhode Island and Michigan, could be left with a non-mobile workforce, saddled with public debt and pension debt they didn’t spend or promise. How they pay it down when so many of the most productive workers have left has yet to be determined.

Originally posted: January 17, 2012

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Do Barack Obama and the entrenched members of the Senate and the House really believe that Americans are going to buy into today’s budget sham? Barack Obama, in a campaign-style White House appearance, haughtily told Americans that “revenues have to be part of the equation in turning off the sequester and eliminating these automatic spending cuts.”

From the start, revenues, as most informed Americans know, should not have been part of the discussion. My two charts below show that for five decades income taxes as a percent of GDP have been remarkably stable. Federal outlays (spending) as a percent of GDP have gone through the roof, however, with the biggest jump coming on Barack Obama’s watch.

Now, among other things, Obama (with help from the entrenched House and Senate warhorses) plans to raise the tax rates on estates and dividends—two revenue sources that already have been taxed once. This outrage goes to the very heart of the Communist Manifesto. Karl Marx taught Barack Obama that the proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, ALL CAPITAL from the bourgeoisie. As Obama knows well, Marx called for a heavy progressive or graduated income tax. Marx called for abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

I urge you to pass along my post to friends, family and associates. And your elected Senators might give this a look and then tell you exactly why most voted to double tax dividends and estates and raise income tax brackets on successful Americans (you know, the guys who take all the risk and provide most of America’s new jobs). Americans failed to reshuffle the deck in November, but will get another shot at altering the political landscape in less than two years.

Warm regards,

Dick Young

P.S. Only 8 Senators voted against the budget charade.

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Testing shows advances in robot’s autonomy, maneuverability and recovery.

For the past two weeks, in the woods of central Virginia around Fort Pickett, the Legged Squad Support System (LS3) four-legged robot has been showing off its capabilities during field testing. Working with the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory (MCWL), researchers from DARPA’s LS3 program demonstrated new advances in the robot’s control, stability and maneuverability, including “Leader Follow” decision making, enhanced roll recovery, exact foot placement over rough terrain, the ability to maneuver in an urban environment, and verbal command capability.

The LS3 program seeks to demonstrate that a highly mobile, semi-autonomous legged robot can carry 400 lbs of a squad’s equipment, follow squad members through rugged terrain and interact with troops in a natural way similar to a trained animal with its handler. The robot could also be able to maneuver at night and serve as a mobile auxiliary power source to the squad, so troops can recharge batteries for radios and handheld devices while on patrol.

“This was the first time DARPA and MCWL were able to get LS3 out on the testing grounds together to simulate military-relevant training conditions,” said Lt. Col. Joseph Hitt, DARPA program manager. “The robot’s performance in the field expanded on our expectations, demonstrating, for example, how voice commands and “follow the leader” capability would enhance the robot’s ability to interact with warfighters. We were able to put the robot through difficult natural terrain and test its ability to right itself with minimal interaction from humans.”

Video from the testing shows the robot negotiating diverse terrain including ditches, streams, wooded slopes and simulated urban environments. The video also shows the map the LS3 perception system creates to determine the path it takes.

The December testing at Fort Pickett is the first in a series of planned demonstrations that will test the robot’s capabilities across different environments as development continues through the first half of 2014.

The DARPA platform developer for the LS3 system is Boston Dynamics of Waltham, Mass.

Source: DARPA

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Karl Marx wrote that the essential condition for the existence and for the sway of the bourgeois class is the formation and augmentation of capital. Marx taught that capital is not a personal but a social power. The distinguishing feature of Karl Marx’s plan for takeover was not just the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property (i.e. “You didn’t build that”).

Marx specifically highlighted hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property. Marx called for the conquest of political power by the proletariat. To deprive the bourgeois of capital Marx proposed a ten-point plan featuring abolition of private property, concentration of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank (i.e. the Fed) with State capital and a heavy progressive or graduated income tax. Any of this seem relevant to you given events of recent days in Washington. Read Return of the Real Obama by Charles Krauthammer in the spirit of Karl Marx.

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