When Paxton Smith got up to deliver her high school graduation speech, it was supposed to be about TV and the media.

But the teenager ditched the script that had been approved by her school, and spoke about abortions instead.

In her home state of Texas, a law banning abortion from as early as six weeks has recently been signed.

"I cannot give up this platform to promote complacency and peace when there is a war on my body," Paxton said in the speech that's since gone viral.

Question for our Australian members. Is the rat problem around major Australian population centers as bad as some You tube reports have claimed or are they being widely over reported for sensationalism?

... Show a teenager ...

Real business can get done during "the hallway conversations, the drinks at the bar", the diplomat says.

The big takeaway from the past week in business news is that A) secretly released documents show that billionaires aren’t paying their fair share in taxes. (Gee, you think?) And meanwhile, B) hotels and restaurants and other businesses can’t find enough people to work as maids and dishwashers, etc.

Here’s a money sentence: “Taken together, [all the documents] demolishes the cornerstone myth of the American tax system: that everyone pays their fair share and the richest Americans pay the most.”

The main takeaways are 1) that the super wealthy, the .001%, make most of their money through the appreciation of property and especially stock, which isn’t taxed of course. And that there are myriad means at their disposal to derive monies from these troves, like bank loans, so they can live high on the hog tax free. And 2) to the extent that they do have income, none of these billionaires are paying anywhere near the top marginal rate of 37%—thanks to loopholes and deductions—and in fact some have paid no taxes at all.

What that means is working people essentially subsidize billionaires. Drive down Highway 101 in Silicon Valley, and know you chipped in more than Elon Musk did for that road, not only on a relative basis, but in some years on an absolute basis.

By the way, does the government waste money? Sure. Is that any reason not to pay taxes? No, it's a problem to fix, and it’s not all broken anyway. I was just at Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks and it was a joy to see my tax dollars at work there.

Sorry for the rant. I just couldn’t help myself when I discovered that in any given year I’m paying more, much more, taxes than George Soros or Mike Bloomberg. I don’t care what the tax code says. That. Is. Just. Not. Right.

Which brings us to Element B that I mentioned at the top, which is that hotels, restaurants and other businesses are having a devil of a time hiring right now. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Tuesday that job openings increased by almost 1 million at the end of April to nearly 9.3 million, a record high. Separations, or "quits" also hit a record of 2.7%.

Why is that?

Much of it is because of COVID-19, of course. The recovery and opening up of the economy is creating unprecedented demand for workers, ASAP. And there are worries about the workplace. “Part of the story is there are still workers who are concerned about COVID from a physical perspective (contracting the virus) and a mental perspective,” says Joseph Song, a senior U.S. economist at Bank of America. “A lot of these workers were in the service sector and dealing with customers during COVID is not easy, such as imposing COVID rules when a customer doesn't want to abide can be tough. There are also some concerns about childcare and family issues especially for children who are still doing virtual or hybrid. Someone has to be at home.”

But there’s another matter, which is pay. Some companies just aren’t ponying up enough to attract workers. Plenty of people, including Democrats, point to the $300 a week stimulus checks (on top of state insurance of course) as being a deterrent to workers coming back on payroll. “I do think unemployment insurance benefits could be having some effect,” says Heidi Shierholz, a senior economist and director of policy at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. “We know low wage employers have a lot of capacity to suppress wages, and when workers have another option and aren’t totally desperate to take a job no matter how sh***y, unemployment insurance may be playing a role to some extent.”

Do the math. Take the federal minimum wage of $7.25 (which hasn’t been raised since 2009), and multiply it by eight hours (a day), times five days (a week), times 52 weeks. It comes to an annual salary of $15,080. (And that’s with zero time off, which is unrealistic of course.) The $15,080 is less than the $300 a week federal COVID payment (annualized $15,600), plus you can on average double that from state unemployment insurance, which comes to some $30,000.

No wonder people won’t work for peanuts anymore. And furthermore, you can argue the government has taught them not to, beginning with the CARES Act which was signed into law by President Trump in March 2020. To get workers back, companies are going to have to pay more.

“Right now it looks like we might see a one-time step up in wages as a result of these labor shortages,” says Daniel Zhao, a senior economist with the job site Glassdoor. “Even though no $15 minimum wage was enacted by law, we’ve now seen companies set it as a minimum wage or average wage. Folks have said that because minimum wages are so far away from market wages right now, employers don’t have useful reference for where to set wages. Employers are having to experiment much more aggressively to find what the right market wage is, which could mean a more dynamic market and more competition in terms of setting wages.”

So basically $15 is becoming the new minimum wage, which is $31,200 annualized. Kind of makes sense, right? If more than doubling up the minimum wage seems like a huge leap to you, consider that it amounts to a raise of about .64 percentage points per annum over those past 12 years.

It’s all bunk of course, and if you don’t believe me ask the CEOs of McDonald’s (MCD), Target (TGT) and Chipotle (more on them below), which now have or are moving to $15 an hour. Even Walmart is heading in that direction. Amazon, btw, raised its minimum wage to $15 three years ago.

For a company of any size though, if you can’t raise your pay over $7.25 an hour, it means that over the past decade the federal minimum wage has helped you hold down wages and subsidize your business. I suspect the partly free lunch will soon be over for you.

“The owners of Klavon’s Ice Cream Parlor had hit a wall.

For months, the 98-year-old confectionary in Pittsburgh couldn’t find applicants for the open positions it needed to fill ahead of warmer weather and, hopefully, sunnier times for the business after a rough year.

The job posting for scoopers — $7.25 an hour plus tips — did not produce a single application between January and March.

So owner Jacob Hanchar decided to more than double the starting wage to $15 an hour, plus tips, 'just to see what would happen.'

The shop was suddenly flooded with applications. More than 1,000 piled in over the course of a week.”

For instance, as Yahoo Finance’s Brian Sozzi pointed out, Chipotle just raised prices, and presto, its stock went up. Why? Because people are now willing to pay more for their food.

“...despite the newest menu price increase, Chipotle (CMG) isn't showing any signs of losing customers upset with having to pay more for a burrito or salad bowl. Actually it's quite the contrary. With people becoming more mobile after getting their COVID-19 vaccine, they are packing out Chipotle (and other fast food restaurants) locations for lunch and dinner. What amounts to pricing power amidst strong demand is likely to be a tailwind to Chipotle's earnings this year, even when factoring in higher labor costs.”

“There’s a shaming that’s happening to working-class people,” said Schaefer, the owner of the D.C.-area hardware stores. “Nobody talks about the fact that the economy is going to fall apart when a tech guy gets a $195,000-a-year salary with a 5% raise every year, or when lawyers are making $300,000. This conversation only happens when you’re talking about the people who make the lowest wages. And I think as a society, that’s just really insulting.”

How about this for a radical thought: Close the damn tax loopholes and make the billionaires pay their 37% rate. Or have them fork over a minimum annual tax of 1% of their net worth—a third of what Sanders and Warren want.

The pitchforks will come/

3. Sketchy astronomy app
Astrology lets you peer into the stars to see why you are the way you are.

Do you approve or disapprove of the job Joe Biden is doing as president?
19-22 Jun 21 , Approv - 56%, Disapprove - 43%

Unsure whether to put this in the Trump or the Biden threads, but eventually decided this neutral thread might be best.

The poll you won't hear much about on Fox news. https://static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2021/06/Fox_June-19-22-2021_National_Topline_June-23-Release-1.pdf

Do you approve or disapprove of the job Joe Biden is doing as president?
19-22 Jun 21 , Approv - 56%, Disapprove - 43%