Elvis' 29th Deathiversary and Consequences

Follow the link and click on the pics to discover their links through the Oracle of Elvis.

Would the King know what to think of today's world. Instant e-porn and the diminishment of raquetball's sporting dominance? I wonder.

As the WSJ notes in what I fear is a subscription piece, after the aldermorons of Chicago passed huge citywide minimum wage and benefit hike which I recently condemned with other picayune acts of madness, retailers have responded quickly:

...Target was the first big chain to react, recently cancelling plans to open a new superstore in a run-down area on the city's North side. Only a few months ago the project was hailed by city leaders as an anchor for redeveloping that depressed neighborhood. Now it gets to stay depressed. Wal-Mart has also announced that its plans to build 20 new stores in the city over the next five years are "on hold" until the wage issue is resolved.

This isn't what the politicians said would happen when they mandated that certain mostly non-union "big-box" retailers pay a minimum of $13 in wage and health benefits by 2010, or more than two-and-a-half times the national minimum wage. "This is a great day for working men and women of Chicago," said Alderman Joseph Moore, who sponsored the ordinance but clearly doesn't think very far ahead, if he thinks at all. The Council was warned that stores would flee to the suburbs or not be built...

...Mayor Daley seems intent on vetoing the bill, which he says would result in higher property taxes to compensate for lost sales-tax revenue once stores leave. Alderman Shirley Coleman voted for the law but has since changed her mind now that a Wal-Mart in her district may never be built. At least three other aldermen who voted for the measure are also reportedly now open to giving Mr. Daley the votes he needs to sustain his veto...

Alderman Carrie Austin, who represents the area where the Target store was supposed to locate, puts it this way: "My colleagues are saying, 'Don't worry they [the big box retailers] will come.' Well, mine just left."

Catch the overwhelming whiff of aldermanic territoriality? Classic. Just like unethical Senators fighting over pork for their home states. Maybe instead of listening to the echo chamber of unenlightened rubes, when considering economic matters, they should consult those more well-versed in theory than their companions who've only concretely demonstrated an inordinately high tolerance for hypocrisy and rubber banquet chicken? After all, I guessed the future correctly without being psychic or even particularly clever. Just following some basic principles of wage dynamics laid out by economists, and restated for all of us recently by both the eminent Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams, fine economic thinkers and educators alike who ought to be hired for a on-site team teaching seminar at the City Council.

Now, I'm off to mourn the E in my own, idiosycratic way.