Don't worry, scrote. There are plenty of 'tards out there living really kick-ass lives.

The march towards Idiocracy continues. On Wednesday the Associated Press reported that only a quarter of last year's high school graduates who took the ACT have the basic skills they need to succeed in college or in the work place.  It's a damn good thing that as a society most of these people will be obsolete in the next decade.

I know that the knee jerk response to this information will be that we need to better fund education. While I would love to see better schools I really do not believe that this would fix the problem. This is a societal problem that begins at home. If a high school senior cannot score better than a 22 on the reading comprehension portion of the ACT no amount of schooling is going to help that student. An 18 year old should be able to read at that level merely by associating with his or her parents. The education system should turn that 22 into 32 not bring a 12 up to 22.

The fact is that if some level of education does not begin at home there is nothing the schools can do about it. Asking the schools to fix this problem will only drag the other students down as the teachers have to spend more time catching up the underachieving students. At some point the schools have to say enough is enough. The Schools must stop promoting kids to the next grade if they haven't developed the skills to move on and in some cases just tell the kids not to come anymore if they aren't learning.

While I am aware that it is not the kids fault that their parents are horrible people it is the responsibility of those parents to care for their kids. There are just too many kids who are not succeeding and whether or not anyone wants to admit it they are holding back those who might succeed. It's time to worry more about what is fair to those who have a chance to succeed rather than what is fair to those who do not.

Otherwise this will be the future of the medical profession.

Looks like the iPhone is getting an Upgrayedd

Oh Apple you give and you give and all you ask is complete blind loyalty from your cult of fanatics. Well as I have mentioned before Apple is announcing a new iPhone in the coming weeks. It appears that they may have figured out that they need to open more markets as their market share is dwindling. TechCrunch.com is reporting that the iPhone 5s will have a fancy new finish sure to attract a special kind of customer.

Interestingly enough "Upgrayedd" with two D's for a double dose of this pimping is considered a properly spelled word according to Google. Idiocracy is already here.

It Appears Movies and TV Have Lied to Me

Soon to be fifth grade student Tyler Weaver has been consistently winning a summer reading contest in upstate New York. This has lead library's director Marie Gandron to ask that he quits competing because the other kids cannot keep up. 

Asking this kid not to compete because he is too good is like the United States Swimming Coaching suggesting the Michael Phelps just do bong tokes instead of competing because the other guys cannot beat him. I mean what kind of a librarian ask a kid not to enter a reading contest because he reads too well?

Clearly the woman to the right would never ask a kid to stop reading. Unless late night Cinemax has lied to me that woman would give all sorts of incentives to encourage reading. (editors note: if the woman in the picture to the right is reading this call us)

Lets face it the highlight of this kids life for the foreseeable future is going to be these reading contests. Soon enough puberty will hit and he will notice girls at which point winning all these reading contests will work against him. So let him have his moment of glory. He has earned it and soon he will be picked on in Middle School by all those kids he beat. He will be hearing this soon enough. 

Oh wait this is the kind of librarian that would do something this absurd. Now it makes sense, if you had to see that every morning in the mirror you'd be mad as well.

If that's what librarians really look like I guess movies and TV have lied to me.

The Leisure Economy or Let the strike for 15 usher in Idiocracy the choice is yours

This past week Mary Kay Henry the International President of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) went on the Colbert Report to discuss the "Strike for 15". It occurred to me while watching her interview that the main issue in this strike is the hatred of large corporations such as McDonald's and Yum Brands not the concern for the workers themselves.

Much like with the anger aimed at GMO's which I sincerely believe to be more about Monsanto making large profits off of the GMO's not the perceived dangers of the GMO's themselves this is about hatred of profitable companies. If GMO's were open source and Monsanto weren't making so much money I don't think people would care about them just like if the only restaurants were family owned dinners you wouldn't hear the outrage at the wages fry cooks receive. 

This is the real issue here, if the minimum wage were to be increased to 15 dollars an hour you would see economic collapse. Family owned dinners and cafe's couldn't afford to pay 30,000 dollars a year to their full time employees and stay in business. Increasing the minimum wage to 15 dollars an hour would lead to record inflation and job loss. The cost of the increase in wages would be passed on to the consumers much like what has happened in Australia where the minimum wage is over 20 dollars an hour.

Consumer prices are 50 percent higher in Australia than they are in the United States. This is the outcome of an increased minimum wage. The reason wages are low is about supply and demand. We have larger supply of workers than jobs. This, not greed, is why wages are low. If you force employers who are already employing more workers than they need to function efficiently  than you will simply hasten the downsizing of the workforce and the rate at which human workers are replaced by machinery.

It comes back to population size. At one point in time we needed a large workforce to plow land. At another point we needed a large workforce to build goods then we needed a work force to sell those goods. Now the land is plowed by a one worker in a large piece of Caterpillar machinery 

and the manufacturing is done by these awesome dudes

As for the selling of products that is now done in this manner. Every time you order a product online you are eliminating retail jobs in the same manner in which the occupation of travel agent is now only seen in movies from the 80s and in the museum of Natural History thanks in part to the Roaming Gnome and Travelocity. This lowers the price to the consumer and gives the consumer more freedom. These innovations improve the quality of life and have created a leisure economy.  

As more and more people choose to be childless

the population will eventually decrease and the workforce will level out and wages will go up.

No longer is wealth created through arduous labor. It is now created through providing travel and entertainment. This is a golden time to be alive because the costs of leisure have gone down. What creates the most wealth in the United States today you might ask? The NFL not only do the players receive lots of money but they spend it on luxury items such as Ruby's, Lexus', Porsches and Mercedes. They also spend money things other than strippers. The sole reason why cable companies and the Networks haven't had to cut their workforces drastically is the amount of money generated by NFL television contracts. These jobs will vanish once the NFL goes to a subscription based streaming service that doesn't require Direct TV. Bars make up for the down summer months the minute the NFL kicks off. Included in this the merchandise and vendors in the stadiums. This is the new economy, It is based on leisure activities and as the population decreases everyone will have a better life.

Of course it really does matter who is having children and who is not. For if the only people have children are those that have four of them when their only source of supporting their family is a retail job than the future of this planet is extremely bleak