Rebane's Ruminations

‘Misreading the Nordic Model’

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 31 August 2016.]

For quite some time now Americans have heard the siren song of Nordic socialism performed consistently by our country’s Left from which more and more are actually outing themselves as socialists.  In this election season we have heard Senator Bernie Sanders promote the Nordic style welfare state with statements like, “I think we should look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, and learn what they have accomplished for their working people.”  And in order to scoop up Bernie’s base, Hillary Clinton has echoed those sentiments as part of her promise to continue the policies of Barack Obama.

Obama has also been quite open about his embrace of socialism, especially of the Nordic type as this year he declared, “In a world of growing economic disparities, Nordic countries have some of the least income inequality in the world . . . There have been times where I’ve said, why don’t we just put all these small countries in charge for a while? And they could clean things up.”

In these commentaries I have reviewed the current status of the Nordics, concentrating especially on the fiscal unsustainability of their welfare policies, and the realities of their economies to provide the growth they need.  Recently the non-partisan Council on Foreign Relations has published an essay by Kurdish born Swedish scientist and author Nima Sanandaji who has studied and written extensively on Nordic polity and policies.  His most recent book – Debunking Utopia: Exposing the Myth of Nordic Socialism – presents compelling arguments backed by reams of data that expose a more realistic picture of how the Nordics got to where they are, and how their current performance should be compared, especially by Americans, on an apples-to-apples basis.

Dump Trump and Pillory Hillary – 29aug16 (updated 1sep16)

George Rebane

OK, Donald Trump is beginning to sound more presidential as he sticks to the pillory Hillary script.  But I’m not sure of his new campaign leadership duo of Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway.  Today on Fox News Sunday Ms Conway was given an opportunity to showcase The New Donald while interviewed by Fox’s stealth liberal Chris Wallace.  Wallace was asked Conway a couple of loaded questions on Trump’s economic policy which Conway handled in due course, and then Wallace delivered the ‘clincher’ pointing out that there were “experts on the economy” who had given Trump’s policies a thumbs down – what did she have to say about that?  Conway was flustered, resorted to high blabberwocky on a side topic, and came out with egg on her face.

According to Rebane Doctrine the correct answer to the Wallaces of the world on citing expert economists should have been, ‘Look Chris, it’s yesterday’s news that the Federal Reserve, the Congressional Budget Office, the Office of Management and Budget, and the long list of academic institutions specializing in economics have a dismal record in correctly analyzing economic policies let alone predicting the performance of real economies.  The best they have ever been able to do is debate what they see in the rear view mirror, and even there they cannot agree.  Let’s face it, there are no ‘experts’ in economics, so quoting what some odd group of economists thinks is a gratuitous exercise at best that people cobble together to support some agenda or other.  What’s your next question?’

[1sep16 update]  For the record, I thought Trump’s immigration policy speech was excellent both in content and specificity (for this stage of the campaign).  While I question his ability to do all of his laundry list things on the ‘first hour/day in office’, even if he gets those processes started in the first 100 days will be a marked improvement.

Looking to the other side, it is hard to tell what Hillary is running on save that Trump is bad, and that what Obama has done is good.  The elements of her plan forward seem to be missing.  And that the woman is deathly afraid of an already fawning press says it all about how much she fears shoes already dropped and those yet to come from her many scandals.  The humorous part here is the consistent denials by her acolytes that what we see is a fire that has given rise to the considerable smoke that blankets her campaign.  Nevertheless, she continues to prove that it is possible to fool most of the people all the time.

Sandbox – 28aug16

[Just got back from a little RV trip with friends and family.  We did the Bend, OR to coast, down the coast to CA, and back home again on good ol’ Hwy 20 circuit.  Connectivity still sucks in most of the RV parks, even the ones near bigger towns.  In the evening when everyone is attempting to stream videos, it feels like we’re back in the 300 bps modem days.  But we had good use from our cell provider’s LTE service.  The small coastal and mountain towns of both OR and CA have borne the full brunt of our rabid econuts abetted by the EPA and what was our justice system.  Beginning with Weed, CA, we saw lots of celebratory evidence of RMJ production and consumption.  Nevertheless, we had a great time with our pals and kids.  I’m thinking of establishing a 501c3 foundation to seek and sanctify the self-sacrificing soul who, in some long lost age, invented and introduced us all to Happy Hour.  I can just see the poor sot, alone for years and drinking himself silly, as he worked desperately to demonstrate and spread the word about a more joyful use for the late afternoon hours.  Such selflessness should not remain lost to history, but recognized by those of us who today follow (or is it wallow?) in his footsteps.  gjr]

Buying Votes and Voters

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 17 August 2016.]

Student debt and college costs are out of control.  Under the passionate paeans of progressives over the last decades, we have been taught that we’re equal enough so that everyone will benefit from a college education and therefore everyone deserves a college education.  A wider reading of this theology has also taught young people that everyone has a right to pursue their passion and then expect all practiced passions to command a more or less equal place in the compensated workforce.  Well, that ain’t necessarily so, but blindly pursuing such a value system has landed us in a world of hurt with more of it on the way.

College costs that include tuition have increased about 4% annually, far outpacing inflation.  To enable everyone to go to college, government has taken over the student loan business, and now lends equally to all students with no thought about their ability to repay the loans.  Students majoring in art history and therapeutic recreation can borrow on the same basis as students majoring in physics or any of the other STEM fields.  Subsequently the art history and therapeutic recreation majors can’t get jobs while the STEM graduates are in high demand.  Each year there are about 1.3M openings in STEM fields, and fewer than half that many graduates in science, technology, engineering, or math.

Such realworld inequalities in the marketplace have yielded a student debt exceeding $1.3T that continues to grow at almost 7% annually.  In ten years student debt will exceed $2.5T.  Today about 30M students attend college.  Of these, 22M students with outstanding loans are not making payments, with the inevitable result that at least half or over $600B of this debt will have to be written down and its repayment transferred to taxpayers. (more here)

And what did we buy for all these billions?   According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York almost half or our recent college graduates are un- and underemployed in jobs that do not require their earned degrees.  With this y’all come policy only 48% of entering full-time students graduate within six years.  Almost all of these dropouts and miseducated former students have borrowed from the government, and their repayment rates are close to zero simply because they are not working or cannot earn enough to pay down their debts.

More reasoned voices, such as finance academics S.P. Kothari of MIT and Korok Ray of Texas A&M, recommend incorporating credit risk into the student loan programs. (more here)  The short of it is that students with better job prospects who can pay off their debt would then more likely get bigger loans.  Listeners may recall that it was lenders ignoring credit risk that brought on the recent Great Recession from which we have yet to recover.  However, for some reason it is still deemed politically prudent to ignore credit risk when the government lends trillions to students with unemployable majors.

To top this, along comes the next wave of promised socialism to make college free for everyone to pursue their value-free passions along with a carte blanche invitation to join the government bloat when the private sector rejects their skills.  This ‘free’ program is estimated to cost somewhere between $100-200B annually.

As a conservetarian who has tracked institutions of higher learning and the evolution of the job markets, I don’t hold much hope for including credit risk to determine who should get to borrow how much.  This for the simple reason that the Left has too much to gain from the legions of graduates with lightweight majors from institutions, already hopelessly in bed with socialism in all its forms, that turn out young people totally beholden to the state for their upkeep.  These people daily demonstrate their fealty to the politicians and parties that promise to shield them from the uncertainties of the private sector through civil service jobs or rapacious regulation of their employers.  And some still wonder why democracies are so fragile.

My name is Rebane, and I also expand on this and related themes on Rebane’s Ruminations where the transcript of this commentary is posted with relevant links, and where such issues are debated extensively.  However my views are not necessarily shared by KVMR.  Thank you for listening.

Sandbox - 17aug16

[Putin is making nice with Iran and Turkey, two competitors for the new Mideast hegemon.  That sure looks like the latest, and possibly the worst, Foxtrot Uniform of Obama's foreign policy, leaving Russia as the new 'go-to power' if you want to get anything done in the region.  When you decide to lead from behind, then the view never gets any better and the smell gets worse.  gjr]

Dump Trump and Pillory Hillary – 13aug16

George Rebane

Democracies are stable only to the extent that they enjoy a cohesive ideological spectrum and in which questions are decided with close votes.  In such jurisdictions the alternatives decided are not inimical to each other, and everyone knows their vote on the matter counts.  In lopsided democracies the minority’s vote no longer counts, which then induces its members to start seeking an alternative body politic.

Time for a fresh page of campaign revelations that present our country with possibly the most vexing election in its history.  Both sides can and do make the case that if the other is elected, then the America we have known and loved is down the tubes.

Hillary released her 2015 tax returns carefully manicured for the 2016 election.  Trump is still hiding his under an IRS audit.  The Clintons tithed about a $1M of their $10M to charity.  What could be more generous in the eyes of the nation’s nebbishes?  Actually a lot when you discover that about 96% of that was donated to The Clinton Family Foundation.  And the other 4% came back with dividends to their Clinton Foundation, that cosa nostra cash cornucopia that funds the Clinton Empire.

You heard about Hillary’s plan to get the economy kick-started, the same economy that from the other side of her mouth has been doing such a swell job of recovery?  Well anyway, she’s going to tax more of the bejeezus out of the rich and the corporations, and come up with $275B to fund “infrastructure” over the next four years.  I kid you not, that’s what that woman and her economists brain trust really believe will do it this time – yep, it’s all those “shovel ready jobs” that weren’t so shovel ready when Obama pissed away over $8T over seven years to get the economy up to an anemic 1-2% growth level.  And she’s gonna kick us back up to the 3-4% level in the next four years.  For the arithmetically challenged, that gal is going to spend 16 cents a year for every dollar Obama spent, and do in four years what Obama failed to do in 7.5 years.  How do you spell Double Dummy? – those are the people who believe her.

I’m having a real hard time with Trump.  It doesn’t look like he is going to do much ‘presidential’ campaigning.  And now he’s let out that his Plan B is beginning to look good to him in case he loses – not a clever thing to start lipping off about while the RNC is already soiling their shorts.  What a choice, between a self-centered know-it-all whose clumsy pronouncements are grist for the lamestream that doesn’t even have to work hard to keep him off message, and a corrupt political hag who is beyond-the-pale demonstrably crooked, unaccomplished, evil, and stupid.  Oi weh!

For your reading assignments I recommend Peggy Noonan’s insightful 13aug16 column updating the historical disconnect between our governing elites who make policies that cause untold hardships on their ‘little people’ while they and theirs remain immune above the fray that they construct around the world.  Also take a peek at Norm Sauer’s piece in the 13aug16 Union in which he summarizes some insights about international and national socialism vs nationalism (well-established in RR) that he gleaned from his (our) recent trip to Europe.  

Congressional Reform Act of 2017 a la Buffett

George Rebane

A correspondent sent me this transcription from a Warren Buffett interview in which he assembled the whole list of things we have all heard piecemeal here and there.  This is something that I believe most Americans can get behind, and as history shows, when we overwhelmingly vote for something, it can come to pass in a hurry.  So when will we get off our fat butts?  Consider it, and then pass it on.

"I could end the deficit in 5 minutes," Buffett told CNBC. "You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election.

The 26th amendment (granting the right to vote for 18 year-olds) took only 3 months & 8 days to be ratified! Why? Simple!  The people demanded it. That was in 1971 - before computers, e-mail, cell phones, etc.  Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven (7) took one (1) year or less to become the law of the land - all because of public pressure.

Congressional Reform Act of 2017

1. No Tenure / No Pension. A Congressman/woman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they're out of office.

2. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security. All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people. It may not be used for any other purpose.

3. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do.

4. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.

5. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.

6. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people.

7. All contracts with past and present Congressmen/women are void effective 1/1/17. The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen/women. Congress made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work.

Sandbox - 9aug16

[Many apologies for my delinquency.  I (we?) got so caught up in analyzing the conventions and candidate bloopers, that the last sandbox just faded away in the rear view mirror. gjr] 

Scattershots – 7aug16 (updated 12aug16)

George Rebane

More evidence that our Great Experiment has failed.  Great Experiment?  - self-governance, the raison d’etre the Founders nominated for our Republic, ‘Is common man capable of governing himself?’  Today we have finally ‘educated’ our dumbest generation ever – the Millennials.  These young people are now overwhelmingly ignorant of history, modes of governance, economics, and general American civics to a degree unmatched and unimaginable.  For example, they seriously doubt that capitalism has been more beneficial to mankind than has collectivism, and are ready to demonstrate their credentials in the voting booth.

They care not a whit that the US today owes $122,000,000,000,000 which is more than the value of everything else we own that comes only to $121,000,000,000,000.  And that unsustainable debt will explode as interest rates return to normal market levels.  The proximal result is that all entitlements, from retirements to government healthcare, will simply end with the destruction of the dollar.  Their own economic futures have been irredeemably pawned, and they have no clue.

Today there is clear indication that a majority of voting Americans have no idea that the protectionism promoted by both major candidates would make our country into an insular island of expensive labor and high priced goods/services that will be out of reach to most of our people.  These people believe that government allocates capital better than the private sector, that economic decisions are not affected by tax rates, that wages can be raised by fiat without regard to productivity or value delivered by labor, and that the balance of risk and potential profits do not impact investment.  Our union schools have purged it all from the minds of the most recent generation since the launch of President Johnson’s Great Society in 1965.

Whoever wins in November, America can never retreat from being a leading participant in global commerce.  If it tries, chaos would ensue.  More here from Dr Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign Relations.  The only thing here is not to confuse the control of our borders with starting a trade war.  With almost 40% of our workforce refusing to enter job markets, these to aspects of foreign and economic policy are totally independent issues.  The Democrats continue to hitch ‘The Wall’ to trade isolationism because they can field no legitimate reason to oppose it in the context of a new immigration policy.

The Obama years.  These years have literally NOTHING to show for them that has benefited the country.  Obama was presented with an unprecedented opportunity in 2009 with a dominant Democrat Congress to soar like an eagle.  The recession that was in full swing when he arrived was merely a superimposed boil on an otherwise healthy economy.  And he could have shown what a rocket ride America could have in its recovery.  Instead, he squandered the whole thing with an ideological disaster, a program we now call Obamacare.

On the face of it Obamacare, passed in the dead of night with only Democrat votes, was a road to ruin.  Now years later all of what reasonable people could see (including on these pages) have come true, and much more sewage is in the pipeline for the country to swallow.  The progressive central planners wrote into the legislation terms that would limit the profit margins of large insurers to 5% (remember progs believe they know how much profit is socially just) which turned away investment capital as predicted.  Also predicted was that the only ones who want to buy Obamacare are the destitute already on the dole, and the deathly ill heading for the final round-up – not much profit in either cohort.  Now insurers have already started pulling out of the states’ programs with Aetna being the latest to bail.

All of this goes to sustain the Rebane Doctrine tenet that progs are butt stupid when it comes to most aspects of governance, and that goes double for managing an economy.  As further corroboration, we notice that in this campaign the progs are not highlighting any of the last eight years’ accomplishments, and are thankful that The Donald has been been equally stupid in reacting to their tweets designed to keep him off message.  Can you imagine the shift in polls if Trump ever gets his sh!t together and goes after Crooked Hillary, the weakest and most shameful candidate the Democrats have fielded in memory?  By comparison Jimmy Carter was a giant.

[11aug16 update]  Nevada starts ending solar subsidies.  Very little has been covered about that in the lamestream.  Nevada taxpayers (through their utility company) finally said enough is enough.  They’ve been putting up with this folly for 18 years and concluded that if that industry cannot sustain itself after all these years of state help, then it’s time to pull the plug (more here).  However, the government tit has been so comfortably exercised for so long, that a sudden stoppage of the $16M annual cost is not in the cards; they’ll do it over a number of years.  The econuts are, of course, screaming and demand at a minimum that the 17,000 subscribers to the scam be able to continue their artificially low rates.  We’ll see how this bamboozle goes down with the rest of the Nevada’s taxpayers.  In the meanwhile, other states (e.g. California) with similar programs have yet to come to their senses, and some are even planning to double down on the insanity.

Meanwhile, Marxist Maduro plans to further mangle Venezuela’s economy that is already down for the count.  The tyrannical president and holder of western hemisphere’s functional idiot title will hire Spanish communist economist Alfredo Serrano (pictured) to come and help revise the country’s economy (more here).  Serrano has diagnosed Venezuela’s problem as not having enough government control of the economy.  These people are the heroes of America’s own progressives who can’t figure out how come it’s so hard to fix the economy when it’s so easy to double down on government control.  Now isn't this guy exactly the type Obama needs to figure out why his nostrums haven't worked.  Don’t expect the lamestream to cover this, or our liberal minded readers to rein in their over-worked crickets.

DOJ's Loretta Lynch will continue her AG job under Clinton.  That appears to be enough of a reason to shut down FBI's investigation of the Clinton Foundation from which the latest emails draw a compelling corroboration of 'pay for play'.  Yes sir, nothing to see here folks.  Just keep it moving along.  (more here)

[12aug16 update]  Focus on farts.  The Left outdoes Trump every single day in the sinister silliness they spread across the land.  As the latest example, in California we have cow farts that progressives now want to regulate and police to meet the state’s GHG target for 2030 (more here).  It seems that Bossie’s is the next source of methane that needs to be plugged.  The econuts have put their crosshairs on destroying California’s dairy industry by drafting regulations that will make our milk and cheese prohibitively expensive, because fighting flatulence is fiscally frightful to dairy farmers many of whom have already planted their pastures with nut tree orchards.  And from the lamestream we hear the sound of silence.

Bayes sans equations and tears

George Rebane

This little monograph is the most recent in the series to explain Bayesian reasoning to the non-technical (but otherwise intelligent) reader, and will serve as a reference for future posts.  Some previous efforts in this direction can be found here and here.   In the sequel we repeat the exercise graphically without resorting to a rigorous development using equations.

Understanding Bayesian reasoning is important because of its place in all of our lives.  Today it is marbled into literally every facet of what we do, what is done to us, how we handle uncertainty (e.g. risk), and how we attempt to reason.  Bayesian methods underlie and enable countless technologies that range all the way from providing the water out of your faucet, the manufacture of your car, how your 401K is invested, to the detection of dreaded diseases.  In the last thirty years Bayesian reasoning has literally become ubiquitous in all areas save demagoguery, journalism, law, and politics.  The major effort of protagonists in those arenas is to hide and/or deny Bayesian reasoning to their audiences.

Dump Trump and Pillory Hillary – 5aug16

George Rebane

OK, boys and girls, I see that between now and November many of us will have real serious problems with the two main candidates running for president.  To date these feelings have proven so strong that they demand expression under posts of opportunity, posts that have more focused topics and whose comment streams don’t require your detailed diagnoses of the candidates’ character flaws, recently discovered sins, tweets du jour, and general pickings from a wide palette (smorgasbord?) of incoming slings and arrows with which each candidate has inflicted us, our country, and/or our body politic.  Think of these lightly introduced receptacles as another form of dedicated and dated sandboxes which will be refreshed as new fault lines develop in each member of this dynamic duo.

MMJ Ordinance – The Saga Continues

George Rebane

The years long debate on RR over how to deal with MJ grows in Nevada County now enters a new, and perhaps final phase.  Our latest post on this was ‘Medical Marijuana Ordinance – BoS Meeting’.   I want that post to be a preamble to the continued deliberations for NC's newly adopted MMJ ordinance that will continue with modifications and no doubt stabilize only after the November elections, and after more meetings with citizen stakeholders.  The discussion/debate for this post-adoption phase needs its own venue on RR, and here it is.

Wages by Fiat

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 3 August 2016.]

Liberal economist Professor Alan Blinder of Princeton maintains that 'Only (Hillary Clinton) Can Make Wages Grow Again', and then launches into a lecture on how economic policies by government fiat will outperform the market driven nostrums advanced by Donald Trump.

He rejects out of hand Trump’s workforce supply and demand argument along with lowering the American employers’ tax burden as ways to encourage and promote the ability of companies to raise wages.  In Blinder’s epistle there is no recognition that workers’ wages are based on the value workers deliver to their employer, and that in turn is naturally dependent on the workers’ productivity.  There is no reasonable way around these age old economic principles save through force by the government gun, and history makes plain the kind of economies which result from such autocratic policies.

It is important to understand the good professor’s counsel because he serves as an economic adviser to Mrs Clinton, and is a prominent national spokesman for a cadre of progressive economists.  Blinder’s list of Clinton’s superior economic policies is 1) raise the minimum wage, 2) force corporations to share profits with workers, 3) launch government subsidized vocational education programs, and mandate employer provided apprenticeships, 4) compel states to provide pre-K education to all, and 5) increase the federal Earned Income Tax Credit.

Scattershots – 1aug16 (updated 3aug16)

George Rebane

The Republicans are rightly worried.

Hillary rolls Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday.  Hillary Clinton gave an impeccable interview yesterday in which she remained presidentially poised, in control, non-defensive, and as devious as she has ever been.  Interpreting and revising everything from congressional testimonies, FBI investigations, news videos, published emails, … . The woman showed everyone how all of these damning issues appear absolutely benign from the parallel universe in which she dwells.  The interview was simply an exoneration of Hillary provided by Fox and the inept Wallace who let every outrageous response stand and simply moved on to the next question to repeat the farce.  Understandably Hillary was visibly pleased with the interview and her performance in it.  She will be back.

The chameleon face of Hillary reveals itself in more secure environments absent the press.  There she is notorious for being a world-class shrew with her pecked-order peers, staff, and security using language that would make a sailor blush.  Numerous authors and former staffers have all told the same stories of a banshee whose temper is permanently frayed and screams epithets like, “Fuck off! It's enough I have to see you shit-kickers every day!  I'm not going to talk to you, too! Just do your Goddamn job and keep your mouth shut."  Yes indeed, Madame President.

Everyone remember when Romney told the naïf Obama that the embarrassingly ‘reset’ Russia is our main enemy?  He still doesn't have a clue.

And does everyone know the pro-jihadist past and views of our new Democrat VP Kaine who now will be “Stronger Together” with Hillary?  I didn’t until a correspondent sent me this revelation from The American Thinker.  More true colors of what the Obama 3.0 administration will deliver for America.

Appeal to readers – can anyone point me to the site that publishes the updated polling data from CNN, Fox, and WSJ?  These polls are acknowledged as being technically the most reliable.  I’m interested in data that includes the poll’s sample size and description, polling date/interval, questionnaire, and, of course, the results and their confidence interval.

Ever wonder why the networks air interviews with pundits whose 'expert views' on possible future alternatives on an issue are 50-50 – ‘but on the other hand …’.  When one assigns equal likelihood to the possible outcomes, he is just pumping hot air to extend his complexified version of the more succinct simple answer of ‘I don’t know.’  That being the case, why have such talking heads consume valuable broadcast time?  If nothing else, they could instead have a pleasant musical interlude to more profitably fill the interval.

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