Reverie

"I have not the pleasure of knowing my reader but I would stake ten to one that for six months he has been making Utopias, and if so, that he is looking to Government for the realization of them."--Bastiat

 

Identity politics has engulfed the humanities and social sciences on American campuses; now it is taking over the hard sciences. The STEM fields—science, technology, engineering, and math—are under attack for being insufficiently “diverse.” The pressure to increase the representation of females, blacks, and Hispanics comes from the federal government, university administrators, and scientific societies themselves. That pressure is changing how science is taught and how scientific qualifications are evaluated. The results will be disastrous for scientific innovation and for American competitiveness. (from an article by Heather Mac Donald in City Journal)

Led by a president who doesn’t appear to understand basic economics and who insists that the long-term drivers of America’s unsustainable national debt—Social Security and Medicare—can’t be touched, the mainstream GOP has proven that the grumbling about big government under Obama was mere political posturing. After years of swearing to repeal the Affordable Care Act, unified Republican power has instead come with a noticeable new taste for Medicaid expansion and support for other provisions of the law. --deRugy

In 1869, Americans spent 95% of their food budgets on food prepared at home and only 5% on food away from home, mostly at restaurants but also for “food purchased at hotels and motels, recreational places, vending machines, and schools and colleges.” But the turn of the last century, it wasn’t much different, Americans spent 90% of their food budget at home and only 10% away from home. By 1950 the shares were 75% (food at home) and 25% (food away from home), as Americans gradually became wealthier and restaurants became more popular and more affordable. In 1970, the shares were 2/3 (food at home) and 1/3 (food away from home). And then in just the last few years, Americans spent slightly more on food away from home (50.2% in 2016 and 50.1% in 2017) than on food at home for the first time in history.

To offer to rent a room in your own home through Airbnb in Arlington County, Virginia, now requires a business license--to rent a room in one’s own home---a 7.25 percent tax and filing a monthly tax return for the unit.

Today only one organization in the world legally does not have to make others happy but can be happy on its own. That organization is government. Government receives revenues through taxes. Taxes are forced, not voluntary, because the government has the power to collect taxes forcefully. Even if in theory we require government to serve the people and to provide public goods to citizens, we have no way of guaranteeing that the taxes collected by the government are not higher than the value of the public goods provided while serving the people. In fact, taxes collected by government often exceed the value of services provided. --Weiying Zhang

Who is...Christopher Thomas?

"Intellectuals hate progress. Intellectuals who call themselves “progressive” really hate progress. It’s not that they hate the fruits of progress, mind you: most pundits, critics, and their readers use computers rather than quills and inkwells, and they prefer to have their surgery with anesthesia rather than without it. It’s the idea of progress that rankles the chattering class – the Enlightenment belief that by understanding the world we can improve the human condition."

Pinker means by this, I think,  they hate progress without their specific intervention, the idea that improvement of the human condition can develop without their help--and usually violence under their leadership.

Walmart is said to be considering buying Humana.

Oil producers, not consumers, are the anti-carbon activist's target.  Coal producers, petroleum producers and natural gas producers draw all their fire while the eager consumer, the other half of the supply and demand equation, gets a pass. But it is more complicated than simply the producer being the favored target. Multinational oil companies produce just 10% of the world's oil and gas reserves. State-owned companies now control more than 75% of all crude oil production. Yet it is the private companies that get the activist's ire despite the fact they produce only a fraction of the carbon fuel.  Saudi Arabia and Russia come to mind. So the carbon activists attack the private companies despite knowing that the impact--even with success--will be minor.

Why is that?

Suzanne Patmoe Gibbs, a widely respected TV development executive who shepherded “Grey’s Anatomy” during her time at ABC and most recently headed Sony Pictures TV’s TriStar TV banner, died  after complications from minor surgery. She was 50.

According to a new report by a steel lobbyist group called the Coalition for a Prosperous America, the Trump tariffs on steel and aluminum imports will create 19,000 jobs and reduce the United States’ gross domestic product by only $1.4 billion.

First, let’s consider these findings in the most favorable light. Let’s assume that the tariffs will actually produce 19,000 jobs. Let’s also assume that the creation of these jobs will cost only $1.4 billion in economic growth. As George Mason University economist Donald Boudreaux notes, “each job created will cost $73,684 (which is $1.4 billion divided by 19,000). The typical worker in a steel mill earns in annual wages about $55,556. If we assume that this worker gets another 20 percent of this pay in the form of fringe benefits, each steel-mill worker, on average, is annually paid about $66,667. It appears, therefore, that the price we Americans will pay per job created will be roughly $7,000 more than each of these jobs is worth.” (de Rugy)

The Los Angeles Times (3/29, Kaplan) offers coverage of a report issued Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention which says opioid overdose deaths continue to rise across the US. “From 2015 to 2016, opioid-involved deaths increased in males and females and among persons aged ≥ 15 years, whites, blacks, Hispanics and Asians/Pacific Islanders,” the researchers from the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control wrote. “Deaths involving synthetic opioids increased in every subgroup examined.”

The Republicans are discussing a Balanced Budget Amendment, probably a Russian idea. This after passing a 1.3 trillion Omnibus Bill, a bill that grants, but does not direct, money to the government. The original uprising in the Republican party was over spending--and the debt. It morphed into a Trumpish nationalism. It is hard to imagine the original enthusiasm returning. But all the talk about the health care expenses being a drain on the economy might imply that some are beginning to feel that taxes and spending are actually important.


Enterprise is the largest of the car rental companies, as big as the next three combined. It owns one million cars and has annual revenues in the range of 14 billion dollars. It includes National Car Rental and Alamo Rent a Car. And it is private, family owned.

Christopher Thomas was released in January from prison in New York. He, in 1984, murdered 10 people. He must be all better now.

The Giant Brains in Washington are planning a "Family Leave Bill" to subsidize the desires of new parents. Amazingly, this will be added on to the already insolvent Social Security program.

Golden oldie:

http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2014/12/wild-pigs.html

Wild Pigs steeleydock.blogspot.com Pigs were domesticated in China around 4900 B.C. (although some experts claim 7000 to 6000 B.C. in Western Asia) and were being raised i...

Justice Stevens wants to repeal the Second Amendment. So does that mean these people really do want to be able to outlaw guns?

The constitution of Wisconsin prohibits the governor from coining new words:
“... the governor may not create a new word by rejecting individual letters in the words of the enrolled bill ...”

From 2007-2015 there was a decrease in the proportion of vasectomies performed in all age groups and in all locations of the country.

AAAAaannnndddd.....a graph ( “When someone says ‘diversification is the only free lunch in finance,’ the phrase may not truly resonate as well as a picture, and the picture above says it all,” he wrote on The Disciplined Systematic Global Macro Views blog. “I can honestly say that for all of the educating in investments, this picture is not used enough.”

He starts with a risk-adjusted return of a single asset and then adds asset classes that have the same risk but different correlations. )