Rebane's Ruminations

Defining new limits to Butt Stupid

George Rebane

[This is actually a little memo to a cultural anthropologist in the distant future who may dig out my scribble about the early 21st century from some ancient server or its contents, on a yet to be discovered medium, stored in a deep cave on some distant moon or planet.  That future civilization should know that by the hundreds of millions we really did live and attempt to survive under such governance.]

This afternoon on Fox News Cavuto there was an interview with Congressman James Clyburn (D-SC).  The segment made clear that the man’s belief system and understanding of human action is beyond recovery by reasonable argument, and perhaps beyond recovery by any means known to civilization.

For openers, standing apart from many of his fellow Democrats, he neither understood nor agreed that the revocation of the Bush tax cuts would have any significant impact on our economy.  To him those tax cuts are immaterial and just allow the rich to pocket more of their ill-earned profits and squirrel them away in fallow “Swiss bank accounts”.  These same people do nothing to invest in America and in enterprises that create jobs.  Job creation actually results from giving tiny tax cuts to 60 million Americans, per Obama’s plan, who then go out there and create jobs by spending the marginal pittances that government deigns to leave them.

The 47% of Americans who pay no federal income tax don’t do so because “they don’t make enough income” to pay taxes.  People who “make less than $20K a year” shouldn’t have to pay taxes, and that’s why the 47% are free from federal income tax.  Cavuto had no luck trying to convince him that almost half the working age population of the United States did NOT earn $20K or less a year.  Clyborn stuck to his guns.

The interview - with Clyburn denigrating people who make money, invest, and create jobs - continued in this fashion for about ten minutes with Cavuto calm but a bit incredulous, along with his audience no doubt.  I think it is good to parade these butt stupid legislators in front of a national audience on a regular basis.  Else we would lose sight of what an imbecilic body Congress has become, and begin searching for solutions to the country’s problems in all the wrong places.  The question, of course, naturally arises as to what kinds of constituencies exist out there to regularly send legislators like Clyburn to Washington and to their state capitols.

Employment 2022 (Addended)

George Rebane

Here's a quick back of the envelope look at the employment situation over the next decade when we take into account accelerating technology that increases worker productivity.  GDP growth is taken at the indicated 2.5%/year.  This post is really as a 'memo to file' since people have asked me how I come up with the 70 million un/underemployed in the next decade with unemployment at 35%.  Even with GDP growth at 5%/year, the 2022 unemployment does not come down below 17%.  The blue numbers are inputs.  I have posted the actual Excel spreadsheet here so that readers may play with it and insert their own numbers - Download Employment2022.

 

Ruminations - 28jan2012

George Rebane

Woke up a couple of days ago to a National Propaganda Radio segment on business; those guys sure know how to report them.  Big ballyhoo on Obama’s visit to Intel’s new, highly roboticized chip manufacturing plant, slated to be the largest in the world when it kicks into gear.  The CCO sang loud praises about Intel bringing back manufacturing jobs to America.  But not a peep was said in the segment about Intel being a California company where it has always manufactured chips, and why it went to Arizona to build its new showcase manufacturing plant.

What’s a fair share in 2012?

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 27 January 2012.  In it I gently introduce the beginnings of monetary utility and mention fair division algorithms about both of which I intend to expand in future posts.]

In last Tuesday’s State of the Union speech President Obama made clear that he will not run for re-election on his record – it would be a disaster if he did.  With an historical congressional majority he has been able to pass all of his programs save the cap and trade bill which his own Democrats killed.  In spite of this, the resulting numbers are damning.

At a little above 60%, the fraction of productive age Americans in the workforce, working or looking for work, is the lowest ever.  Even with population growth, our economy has fewer jobs today than in January 2009.  And this after the so-called stimulus spending has increased our national debt by over $4T or about 40% in just three years, and costing $1.5M for every job that the administration claims to have created.  (Radio does not allow us to pause here for a minute or two to absorb this little statistic.)  Putting a ribbon around the whole thing, our employment rate at 8.5% is still higher than the 7.9% than the President inherited, while the major costs of Obamacare, hanging tax hikes, and the new costly EPA regulations have yet to kick in.  Running on his record is a definite no-no.

But not to worry, the political pyrotechnics locker is still chuck full of good stuff to loft into the air, there to create great eye candy in the sky, and take the voters’ mind off our real problems here on the ground.  The first thing to launch is the ‘fair share’ argument for the vilified 1%, with poster child none other than leading Republican contender Mitt Romney.

From Lysenko Loonies to Climate Change Clowns

George Rebane

The 27jan12 WSJ publishes a major piece ‘No Need to Panic About Global Warming’ signed by sixteen science and technology heavyweights.  From my perspective as a systems scientist, I long ago joined the once lonely voices that pointed out that the climate change alarmists (especially of the anthropogenic global warming stripe) were intellectually naked shills with a pernicious political agenda.

Led by internationally recognized serious science commentators (links on right) like Anthony Watts, and locally by Russ Steele, the voices of reason and scientific accuracy have been growing and becoming more prominent over the last years.  But the political steamroller has yet to show significant slowing.  AGW is now a recognized and much applied tool of the political Left which uses it at every turn to remove individual liberties and shackle economies.

The authors of the cited piece point out the eerie similarities of how politicized science today recalls the days of church proscribed scientific enquiry and communist mandated politically correct sciences of (Lysenko, et.al.) of the USSR during the first half of the 20th century.  We are there again with claimed “incontrovertible evidence” that AGW exists.  Science contains no incontrovertible evidence, and once ‘evidence’ is so ascribed, it exits the halls of reasonable enquiry and science and enters the temples of religion.

The piece concludes –

A recent study of a wide variety of policy options by Yale economist William Nordhaus showed that nearly the highest benefit-to-cost ratio is achieved for a policy that allows 50 more years of economic growth unimpeded by greenhouse gas controls. This would be especially beneficial to the less-developed parts of the world that would like to share some of the same advantages of material well-being, health and life expectancy that the fully developed parts of the world enjoy now. Many other policy responses would have a negative return on investment. And it is likely that more CO2 and the modest warming that may come with it will be an overall benefit to the planet.

If elected officials feel compelled to "do something" about climate, we recommend supporting the excellent scientists who are increasing our understanding of climate with well-designed instruments on satellites, in the oceans and on land, and in the analysis of observational data. The better we understand climate, the better we can cope with its ever-changing nature, which has complicated human life throughout history. However, much of the huge private and government investment in climate is badly in need of critical review.

Every candidate should support rational measures to protect and improve our environment, but it makes no sense at all to back expensive programs that divert resources from real needs and are based on alarming but untenable claims of "incontrovertible" evidence.

SESF Launches TechForum

George Rebane

TechForum is a new program from the Sierra Economics and Science Foundation that will feature distinguished speakers and prominent industry professionals to talk about advances in technology that will impact Nevada County businesses, industry, governments, and education.  These quarterly presentations are designed around a congenial luncheon format that allows the participants to connect and network.  The purpose of these forums is to support SESF’s TechTest merit scholarship program (‘Where the Elite Compete’) now in its sixth year.  More information on the upcoming TechForum2012.1 is found on Russ Steele’s NC2012 and by downloading the TechForum2012.1 flyer pdf seen below.

A TPP Evening with Mark Meckler

George Rebane

A vision cannot be imposed on a people, it can only be inspired.

After a good dinner at the GV Cirino’s, the Steeles and Rebanes hightailed it to the fairgrounds for the monthly evening gathering of the Nevada County Tea Party Patriots.  Our featured speaker was Mark Meckler, national co-counder of the TPP.  We thought we arrived early, but that was not to be.  The assigned parking for Ponderosa Hall was chuck full, and I wound up going in Gate #4 and weaving through a dark forest that was also packed with vehicles, before finding a slot for my truck.  The hall itself was overflowing with folks of all political colorations (even an occupier or two).

As a TPP member I am overjoyed that each meeting we hold has more people than the last.  It is now definitely a place to meet and greet all kinds of friends who feel that the country is off on the wrong track, liberty and the Constitution are sacred, and that neither party has a clue on how to get out of big government business as usual.

Homeland Security’s fundamental transformation

George Rebane

As reported here, LA and other American cities are the new training ground for our military.  They’re not exactly saying who the enemy is, but you have to be pretty dense not to figure it out.  Prominent LA radio station KFI reports that these “closed to the public” exercises in the city “are designed to ensure the military's ability to operate in urban environments, prepare forces for upcoming overseas deployments, and meet mandatory training certification requirements”.

Maybe President Obama will tell us tonight about these “upcoming overseas deployments”.  I thought that he was hell bent on bringing our troops home.  As usual, the government’s stories don’t fly in tight formation.  But not to worry, all things will be ‘clarified’ in the coming weeks, you think?

Having lived in LA all my life, we never witnessed the military training in the city to “ensure (its) ability to operate in urban environments”.  Over the years, when the riots came, so did the California National Guard, and that was that.  Now American cities are becoming training grounds for the regular military.  How does all this tie in with the promised Civilian National Security Force that is supposed to make sure we don’t get too uppity?  (H/T to a couple of RR readers on the heads up.)

Ruminations - 23jan2012

George Rebane

The Fresno Bee reports that its largest public service union SEIU will lead its 4,100+ county worker members out on strike today.  The walkout is scheduled to last three days and protest pay cuts that the union says were negotiated “unfairly”.  RR readers are familiar with the pernicious policies of public service unions first heralded in 1937 by none other than FDR himself.  No one listened.  And now across the land we are harvesting the bitter fruit of yet another progressive policy – compromised and corrupt elected officials, overcompensated public employees, society debilitating unethical ‘work actions’, and trillions of dollars of unfunded pension liabilities.

In my 18jan12 ‘Log entry on the road to ruin (aka fundamental transformation)’ I outlined the utter cynicism of Moonbeam’s new proposals on taxing the “rich”.  The state is in an economic death spiral and the socialists are doing nothing but piling on the misery, knowing full well that it will not raise anywhere near the projected revenues.  Moonbeam’s last hike in taxes projected $4B in receipts and delivered $2.2B, the projection missed the actual by more than 80%.  Now our leftwing looney is telling all his equally gifted constituents that his new taxes will pull in $5B a year.  Even California’s own Department of Finance is advising everyone within earshot not to hold their breath; that the max they could expect is about $3B a year.  And that doesn’t account for all the added high earners who will bail out for better financial climes.  The 23jan12 WSJ finally picked up on RR’s lead on this ;-)  Bottom line: much tougher sledding ahead in the gelded state.

Speaking of worldwide socialist tragedies, our own version of it will be put into overdrive if our dedicated anti-capitalist Chief Community Organizer gets re-elected.  He will take that to be ‘Mandate City’ on the path to a fundamentally transformed workers’ paradise.  Those who don’t believe this are invited to listen tomorrow night to Obama’s State of the Union speech, it promises to be a doozy.  Oprah will again shed tears of joy as she envisions ‘social justice’ spreading across the world.  But first we gotta tax all them rich guys.

The Value of Stereotyping

George Rebane

Stereotyping is the use of a template of characteristics that are thought to belong to members of a particular class more frequently than members of the general population of which the class is a subset.  The template of characteristics is also known as the stereotypical characteristics like, say, a plastic pocket protector full of writing instruments more often seen in the shirt pockets of male engineers than in the pockets of other men.

Stereotyping has gotten a bad rap in our society, and its use is roundly criticized in the public forum.  However, stereotyping, so as to assign or exclude someone from membership in a given class, is built in to almost every critter that lives on this planet.  Why?  Simply because it is a low cost survival technique that has evolved in all species to simplify quick decisions about the famous ‘Three F’ functions – feed, fight, or mount - important to everyone.

But if you understand the underpinnings of stereotyping, it can be a valuable tool in making all kinds of decisions, and also serve as a mirror for better understanding yourself.  I was motivated to write this piece when recently reading Daniel Kahneman’s monumental Thinking, Fast and Slow which dances around the subject without getting into the nitty-gritty of it because of the little math involved.  Kahneman, recent Nobelist and co-father of behavioral economics with the late Amos Tversky, is also a giant in the field of psychology.  In that field stereotyping comes up under the forbidding label of representativeness (q.v. – which is short for quod vide or ‘which see’, and I’ve concluded that its modern version is simply ‘google it’.)

Now consider seeing a good looking woman, finely coiffed, beautifully dressed, and dripping with expensive jewelry, getting out of a chauffeured limousine in front of a fancy restaurant.  You wonder if she’s a member of the currently notorious ‘1%’.  More particularly, what are the chances (friendly word for ‘probability’) that she is a member of that exclusive class, given she has some of the stereotypical characteristics of that class that you just observed?  If you had been facing the other way and your friend told you that a woman just got out a car behind you; then without seeing her, what would you answer if he mused whether the woman belonged to the '1%'?