Friday, March 16, 2012

The Regulation BS

There was an editorial in my local newspaper complaining about how jobs can't be created because of too much regulation on employers, "Mountain of Regulation." While I am not an employer, considering the "mountain" that the author reports, it sounds a lot more like a molehill. He says his electrician refuses to hire an employee because of "regulatory and tax hassles." The author goes on to explain the regulations a prospective employer has to deal with. I have to believe that this was just a partial list, because frankly, I found the complaint ridiculous.

The author states that in hiring just one employee, an employer must fill out a whopping four forms, obtain worker's compensation insurance, calculate Fica tax (here, I'll help, my paycheck took out 5.8% after my 401k or 5.46% if before 401k - wow, that took me 2 minutes to figure out), and follow regulations such as paying above minimum wage, hiring someone above a certain age (i.e. not a child) and paying overtime (time and a half) for hourly employees working more than 8 hours a day or 40 hours a week. Wow, that's so hard. They have to keep their workplace safe. Somehow, I feel that if the author's electrician had enough work, or too much work, he'd be more than willing to be "burdened" with spending 30 minutes filling out a few forms and knowing a few rules so he could make a lot more money with an employee.

If an employer hires more than 10 employees, the author reports they have to put up posters about worker rights and keep records. I'm just flabbergasted at the burden. A few more employees and wow, they have to treat people, women, blacks, older people, all the same. Can't you just see the hassle to be a decent human being? But no, the author wants employers to have no regulations, to be "flexible." Presumably, this "flexibility" will allow the employer to pay workers as little as possible (hey, be happy you have a job), to not worry if their workplace injures an employee, to treat women, older people, non-white people differently than other employees. Wouldn't we all be so happy to have such "flexible" employers?

Maybe it is more complex to hire employees. But if the author wants to persuade people that these regulations are wrong, he needs to come up with more than let's pity the employer who has to follow the Civil Rights law and pay minimum wage. With the possible exception of some taxes, the vast majority of regulations are put in place to protect workers and consumers. Excuse me for wanting to eat food that isn't exposed to bacteria that requires a restaurant or food truck to be inspected by a health inspector. Excuse me for wanting my children to work in a place that follows worker safety laws.

So until you show me some real overly burdensome and irrelevant regulations, I'm going to support them and continue to believe that the only reason more jobs are not created is because us consumers are so overly burdened in our debts and low wages, that we don't have the money to eat out every night (or even every week) or run out and buy an old iPad, let alone the new iPad.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

"Free" Time

Been busy over the holidays and such. December had hubby's parents visit, which is always nice. But work was incredibly busy with a huge case scheduled for trial Jan. 4. It mostly settled, but not until after I'd done pretty much all pre-trial work. At least my billings are good. January continued about the same, with the big case going to arbitration, plus two other biggish cases that needed briefs.

What free time I have is spent either doing cheerleading stuff with my oldest, or my computer games. Hubby doesn't really care for C's "sport of choice" so its pretty much up to me to take her to all practices and competitions. Sure, its not soccer or some other "sport", but its very much like gymnastics, plus it promotes a team spirit. Whatever she likes that keeps her active, and while not necessarily cheap, its less expensive than some other activities. And at least the times of her practices are workable with my work schedule. So many other kids activities start right after school, 4pm and such. Still, hopefully E will chose some activity S likes more, so he won't mind chauffering her to practices and programs.

I've been splitting my computer time between raiding in Rift and leveling in SWTOR. SW has been a lot of fun, the story line is, imo, far superior to the fantasy story lines, or at least a lot more engaging and involved. Likely having a known backstory is a big help. From what I understand, there's so many different ways to play the game, even doing some of the same quests will provide a good variation in how the stories play out. For probably the first time in years, I'm actually looking forward to running several alternate characters.

Hopefully there will still be others doing the same, so I'll have people to group with for the heroic quests. That's one problem a lot of games have, after the initial few months, the lower level areas become ghost towns and difficult to get groups for certain quests. I play SW mostly on the weekends, when not rushing around at cheer stuff. Haven't yet seen or heard much about the end game, I don't know if SW has the raids comparable to the fantasy games. Guess we'll see.

My weeknights are mostly spent raiding with my guild in Rift. I wish some of my old guildies had kept at it. I do like the new people I've met in the game, but I miss a lot of my old friends as well, both from LoD/EQ/WoW and my old Rift guild. Its pretty ironic that my old Rift guild, Penumbra, broke up because a couple of key players were unsatisfied with our slowish progress, so they joined DHB to "raid better." Yet only a few months later, after I too had joined DHB, they all quit playing Rift completely.

The new guild is pretty fun, but sometimes I still feel like the new person. And it gets frustrating sometimes when bad luck in a fight means I have to sit out a 10 man raid in favor of someone else who didn't have the bad luck.

For the most part, at least, there's been little "guild drama" that I experienced a lot in EQ. But then, I'm not part of the officer crew as well (for at least partly that reason). We did have one, when another guild merged with ours, and one of its officers got upset when she wasn't told about a problem over another merged member who was trying to set up weekend raids outside our established guild loot guidelines.

The merged officer threw a fit, and threatened to quit taking her 15+guildies with her. When our guild leader called her bluff, she did leave, but only 3 others followed. The rest remained with our guild. This officer and her 3 friends ended up transferring to another server to find a guild to join. In applying to another guild, they said how their former guild hadn't progressed more in Hammerknell because some members had "issues with following instructions and game mechanics." Yet, the first raid night we have after those people left, we downed the next two bosses in Hammerknell that we were stuck at when they were here. Hah!

At least by playing two games, I'm not getting bored with either one. While I certainly could do more stuff in Rift to improve my character (I'm behind most other players in getting the ton o'planarite needed for resist cores, factions for the extra stat boost food/runes and attunement experience), I know I'd get bored if I had to grind for all that several days a week, when not raiding. As it is, I try to do some of that a few hours a week, its slow, but at least it doesn't bore me.

So what have I given up with no other free time? Reading books mostly. I read some on the train, but usually with my kindle. I have a good dozen books at home that I had bought (some were pre-kindle, some were after but far cheaper bought used than through kindle) and I wonder if I'll ever get through them. I've gotten spoiled with my kindle so I don't want to carry around a big book, so that limits reading them at home. But I don't have much time for that anymore. Takes me a good month to get through a book these days.

I need to find some new authors soon. Some of my old-favs seem to be running out of a lot of steam in their series. I suppose after 20 books with the same characters, it all starts to get very repetitive. Hopefully ASOFAI will finish up in another two books or so, before that becomes stale.

At least I don't have to waste time watching the news these days. Its all politics, presidential primary/campaigns. I don't have time, or need to hear that stuff. I don't think anything will change my mind on my votes, so I'd rather just fastforward to November, please. All this money in politics just makes the whole process so extended, I can't wait for it to be over. Please, give us our TV/media "free" time back.