The Corner Kids on Employee Compensation and the Abduction of Ahmed Qusai al-Taayie

How dare I mix these two discussions you ask? Well, the Corner Kids are not discussing the fact that one of our soldiers has been abducted and apparently abandoned by the Commander in Chief. I guess they are too busy bashing Senator Kerry.

Jonah Goldberg, however, is elated that “wages and benefits moved up” pointing to this discussion:

Wages and benefits paid to American workers rose last quarter by the most since 2004, as the unemployment rate matched a five-year low. The Labor Department said Tuesday that its employment cost index rose 1 percent compared with the second quarter. In the 12 months ended in September, costs shot up 3.3 percent, the biggest year-over-year advance since the first quarter of 2005.

Gee Jonah – nominal compensation typically goes up. Aren’t you in the least bit curious whether the nominal compensation increases was greater or less than the increase in the cost of living. But take heart as real compensation did rise by 1.2% over the past 12 month, but not enough to completely offset the decline in real compensation during the earlier 12 month period. I guess Jonah never realized that the “talk about stagnating wages” was referring to real compensation.

But this is just a prelude to tomorrow’s new about employment during October 2006. Stay tuned.

Update: Ramesh Ponnuru is interested in something else altogether:

A review of the excerpts clearly reveals that The Emperor’s General contains a number of instances of significant plagiarism from Japan’s Imperial Conspiracy.

First, Webb’s novels are full of smut and now they are plagiarized! I wonder if Webb copied his alleged smut from David Bergamini? I also have to wonder how much George Allen paid Ramesh Ponnuru for this hit job.