Incomes

In the 1950s, the median cost of a home was a little more than double a family’s average annual income. A car was just under half of a family’s average annual income, according to data from the US Census Bureau and the US Department of Commerce. Today, it costs an average family about four times its average income to buy a house, and almost two-thirds its annual income to buy a car. To be sure, these are improved homes and cars and other costs like food have declined. But the implications, particularly for family structures, are deep.

A majority of households in the 1950s were single-income households. By the end of that decade, the husband was the sole income generator for 70 percent of American households. Analysis performed by Pew in 2015, based on the last US census, estimated that in 2012, 60 percent of American households were dual-income households. The purchasing power of the real median income has decreased even as US households have added a second breadwinner to the home.

 

We are earning more, affording less. This has been a long time coming. Why it is getting people's attention now is uncertain. It is often linked with the ephemeral "income inequality," a concept that is new and uncertain in significance.  (If you ngram "income inequality," it appears after the second world war, occurs sporadically, then starts to rise in the end of the 1960s and accelerates in the 1970s to 2000.)

The important--and unspoken--distinction to remember in the discussion of income inequality is the great difference is not within nations, it is between nations. Those who want to homogenize the incomes between Arkansas and New York really want to homogenize the incomes between New York and Botswana, an effort that will require "management."

Reverie

A man said to the universe: "Sir I exist!" "However," replied the universe, "The fact has not created in me a sense of obligation." -Stephen Crane, writer (1 Nov 1871-1900)


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The AI revolution is having ripples everywhere. Machines can beat humans in chess, checkers, the complex Go, and recently a CMU computer won a Texas-hold-'em tournament. Presumably the humanization efforts might threaten the Miss Universe contest. But what does all this mean? What does success in games mean? What kind of benchmark is Bobby Fischer? Some people are approaching this as a problem and want to flip the emphasis and use AI to enhance the brain through implants and stimulants. But there is another element: According to the new book How to Think by Alan Jacobs, we have culturally decided to avoid thinking. That will be hard to fix with electrodes.


For an individual to prosper, he only needs to have a job.  But society can only prosper if individuals do a job, if they create goods and services that someone wants.--Caplan


Ex Post Facto update: The church  George Washington helped found and where he worshiped has decided to remove a plaque commemorating him.
'The plaques in our sanctuary make some in our presence feel unsafe or unwelcome. Some visitors and guests who worship with us choose not to return because they receive an unintended message from the prominent presence of the plaques,' the church leaders said.  The poor dears.

I wonder what Newton's anti-Semitic writings invalidates.

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Who is...the Haganah?


The U.S. economy grew robustly in the third quarter despite two hurricanes, propelled by steady spending from American businesses and households. Gross domestic product expanded at a 3% annual rate in July through September, topping the consensus estimate of 2.7%.


There is a guy on TED trying to give everyone an address. It is a legitimate problem in the world. He has divided the world up into 57 million square meters and given each square a three word name. It's a five minute talk. https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_sheldrick_a_precise_three_word_address_for_every_place_on_earth

A precise, three-word address for every place on earth www.ted.com With what3words, Chris Sheldrick and his team have divided the entire planet into three-meter squares and assigned each a unique, three-word identifier, like famous ...

Our address is gazed.plug.thick.  


This is from a funny article on "The New Atheism:"

"Soren Kierkegaard, the great enemy of all pedants, offers a story that might shed considerable light. In his Concluding Unscientific Postscript, he describes a psychiatric patient who escapes from the asylum, climbing out a window and running through the gardens to rejoin the world at large. But the madman worries: out in the world, if anyone discovers that he is insane, he will instantly be sent back. So he has to watch what he says, and make sure none of it betrays his inner imbalance—in short, as the not-altogether unmad Danish genius put it, to “convince everyone by the objective truth of what he says that all is in order as far as his sanity is concerned.” Finding a skittle-bowl on the ground and popping it in his pocket, he has an ingenious idea: who could possibly deny that the world is round? So he goes into town and starts endlessly repeating that fact, proffering it over and over again as he wanders about with his small furious paces, the skittle-bowl in his coat clanking, in strict conformity with Newton’s laws, against what Kierkegaard euphemistically refers to as his “a–.” Of course, the poor insistent soul is then sent right back to the asylum […] Kierkegaard’s villagers saw someone maniacally repeating that the world is round and correctly sent him back to the asylum. We watched [Neil de Grasse] Tyson doing exactly the same thing, and instead of hiding him away from society where nobody would have to hear such pointless nonsense, thousands cheer him on for fighting for truth and objectivity against the forces of backwardness. We do the same when Richard Dawkins valiantly fights for the theory of evolution against the last hopeless stragglers of the creationist movement, with their dinky fiberglass dinosaurs munching leaves in a museum-piece Garden of Eden. We do it when Sam Harris prises deep into the human brain and announces that there’s no little vacuole there containing a soul."
He concludes--sort of--"This is my intuitive feeling of what was wrong with New Atheism as well. It wasn’t that they were wrong. Just that they were right in a loud, boring, and pointless way.

A charitable reading: New Atheists weren’t reaching their intellectual opponents. They were coming into educated urban liberal spaces, saying things that educated urban liberals already believed, and demanding social credit for it. Even though 46% of America is creationist, zero percent of my hundred-or-so friends are. If New Atheists were preaching evolution in social circles like mine, they were wasting their time."

SpaceX has managed to launch fifteen rockets this year as a result of its more efficient production flow over last year, a maturing Falcon 9 rocket, and an experienced workforce. On Monday, the company will go for its 16th launch of the year, doubling its previous record. It plans a total of 19 launches this year.

Former Trump advisor Sebastian Gorka said Hillary Clinton and others should get the electric chair for “treason” against the United States during an interview on Fox News Thursday night. Well, it could be worse; we could all be jumping to conclusions , talking crazy, and sentencing people before trials. Thankfully the atmosphere in the country is calm and reasoned.


Long ago and far away: In 1946 the King David Hotel was bombed  by the Irgun acting under the umbrella of the overall Zionist force, the Haganah. The attack killed 92 people, most of them civilians, some 17 of whom were Jewish.

It was organized by Irgun leader, Menachem Begin, who went on to be twice prime minister of Israel. The bombing was directed at a strategic target: The King David Hotel housed the British administrative headquarters and symbolized the British Mandate in Palestine, which the Irgun was fighting as part of the Jewish Resistance Movement. The act of terror shocked the British, and helped accelerate their decision to withdraw from Palestine two years later.
What has changed in the world? After doing the bombing, The Haganah denied it.

 The Hotel:





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Golden oldie:
http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2013/07/sunday-sermon-71413.html
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Sunday Sermon 7/14/13 steeleydock.blogspot.com Today's gospel is the Good Samaritan. A priest and a Levite pass by the damaged man and an outcast stops and saves him. Christ is deliver...

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A special Massachusetts commission recommends the state stop observing Daylight Savings TIme "if a majority of other northeast states, also possibly including New York, also do so." Six other states are considering it.


Saudi defense forces said they had intercepted a ballistic missile over the capital Riyadh, which was fired from Yemen, and which targeted King Khalid International Airport in the Saudi capital.


There's a lot of tax discussion and one constant complaint is "tax breaks for the rich." The problem is, of course, that you can not cut taxes on people who do not pay them. Nonertheless the charge continues, and often the Reagan administration has been used as the example. But, as Sowell points out, the revenues collected from federal income taxes during every year of the Reagan administration were higher--higher--than the revenues collected from federal income taxes during any year of any previous administration. How can that be? Because tax RATES and tax REVENUES are two different things. "As for "the rich," higher-income taxpayers paid more — repeat, MORE tax revenues into the federal treasury under the lower tax rates than they had under the previous higher tax rates." More than that, "the rich" not only paid higher total tax revenues after the so-called "tax cuts for the rich," they also paid a higher percentage of all tax revenues afterwards.


 

The UK has announced a controversial policy "to support patients whose health is at risk from smoking or being very overweight." For an indefinite amount of time, it plans to ban access to routine, or non-urgent, surgery under the National Health Service until patients "improve their health," the policy states, claiming that "exceptional clinical circumstances (will) be taken into account on a case-by-case basis."


The conclusion of a recent survey of medical journal editors and payments they receive from industry: "Industry payments to journal editors are common and often large, particularly for certain subspecialties. Journals should consider the potential impact of such payments on public trust in published research."

On the night of November 5, 1605, the conspiracy by English Catholics to kill King James I and replace him with his Catholic daughter, Princess Elizabeth, was cut short by the arrest of Guy Fawkes, who had been charged with placing gunpowder under the Houses of Parliament. The plot involved digging a tunnel under the Palace of Westminster, filling it with gunpowder and then triggering a deadly explosion during the ceremonial opening of Parliament, which would have resulted in the death of not only James I, but also the leading Protestant nobility. From then on, November 5 was celebrated in Britain and its colonies with a bonfire burning either Guy Fawkes or the pope in effigy. (This became important to Washington during the Revolution because he did not want the Americans burning pope effigies while they were trying to attract Catholic support.)

Money is a singular thing. It ranks with love as man’s greatest source of joy. And with death as his greatest source of anxiety. Over all history it has oppressed nearly all people in one of two ways: either it has been abundant and very unreliable, or reliable and very scarce.--John Kenneth GalbraithThe U.S. government has spent a staggering $1.46 trillion on wars abroad since September 11, 2001, according to the Department of Defense’s (DoD) periodical “Cost of War” report... this amounts to $250 million a day for 16 years consecutively.

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AAAAaaaaaaannnnnnndddddd.......a graph:

Some Numbers 1

Some Numbers 1

It costs one hundred thousand dollars to investigate someone for a high security clearance.


If you 1. graduate from high school,  2. immediately get a job and 3. get married before you have a baby  you will have only a 5% chance of ever being in poverty. If you grow up in poverty and do those three things, 86% will never be in poverty.


70% of students in Great Britain have student loans that will not be paid off in their lifetime.


From 1987 to 2016, the average investor would have done as well in short term T-bills as stocks.


You can get Spam at McDonald's in Hawaii. (Not really numerical but....)


The number of American stocks is declining due to mergers, acquisitions and, the most important, going private. Private companies can do a lot more, have less federal regulations, are subject to less shareholder complaints and less activism.


Industrialism has decreased the profit margin in marijuana.


There is $70 trillion in world stock markets, $217 trillion in world bond markets, $5 trillion in trading currencies per day. Day.


42% of people will not date a person with a credit score below 600. Females are more demanding than males.


Last year, more than $55 billion was spent on weddings. Statistically, divorce is more common in weddings costing more than $25 thousand and with more expensive engagement rings.


In 2016, $15 Billion was spent in the U.S. on cosmetic surgery.


In many areas of the country, 70% of the cars are leased.

Hayek, Spengler and Nazis

Hayek, Spengler and Nazis

In the Thanksgiving season, it might be worthwhile to reminisce about options to the American experiment. One of the questions that arise periodically is, "Where did Nazism come from?" A famous explanation is that it arose from a misunderstanding of modern evolutionary thought, a Darwinian application to specie subsets. So the Nazis were amateur anthropologist and geneticists gone a bit wrong.

Hunter writes that Hayek has some interesting observations on the sources of Nazism in philosophy. Hayek writes of Spengler, for whom the Prussian model stood in opposition to England’s liberalism; Prussianism was the ideal example of what Germany should aspire to. In the Prussian political model, the individual has no other role than to be a part of the whole and to serve the collective’s interests in the name of the state.
This is from Road to Serfdom:

"The three last nations of the Occident have aimed at three forms of existence, represented by famous watchwords: Freedom, Equality, Community. They appear in the political forms of liberal Parliamentarianism, Social Democracy, and authoritarian socialism... The German, more correctly, Prussian, instinct is: the power belongs to the whole. . .  Everyone is given his place. One commands or obeys. This is, since the eighteenth century, authoritarian socialism, essentially illiberal and anti-democratic, in so far as English Liberalism and French Democracy are meant."
(Note he distinguishes between English Liberalism and French Democracy, between "Freedom" and "Equality.")

And while Prussian militarism was seen to be the enemy of socialism, Spengler helped bridge that gap. Both schools of thought require an abandonment of the individual identity and a dedication to the greater good of society. Explaining the similarities, Hayek says:

"In Prussia there existed a real state in the most ambitious meaning of the word. There could be, strictly speaking, no private persons. Everybody who lived within the system that worked with the precision of a clockwork, was in some way a link in it. The conduct of public business could therefore not be in the hands of private people, as is supposed by Parliamentarianism.”

Spengler write, "The decisive question not only for Germany, but for the world, which must be solved by Germany for the world is: Is in the future trade to govern the state, or the state to govern trade? In the face of this question Prussianism and Socialism are the same...Prussianism and Socialism combat the England in our midst.”

So the Spengler saw the liberalism of the English a model of inefficiency and national socialism as its solution. Hide the women.

Sunday/Singularity

In the Catholic Church, today is designated as a specific feast day: Christ , the King of the Universe. Such a phrase in history might be so gigantic and vague as to be glossed over  and not thought about too hard. In modern times, we are beginning to comes to grips with the universe, if not in specifics at least in general.

For example:

As many stars as there are in our galaxy, 100 – 400 billion--, there are roughly an equal number of galaxies in the observable universe. So for every star in the colossal Milky Way, there’s a whole galaxy out there. All together, that comes out to the typically quoted range of between 10^22 and 10^24 total stars, which means that for every grain of sand on Earth, there are 10,000 stars out there.

The black hole NGC1365 has the mass of 2 million suns with the energy that is given off by a billion stars burning for a billion years. 

Thomas Nagel, in his book Mind and Cosmos comments on the development of consciousness, “It is prima facie highly implausible that life as we know it is the result of a sequence of physical accidents together with the mechanism of natural selection.” (The Guardian awarded Mind and Cosmos its prize for the Most Despised Science Book of 2012.)

But Nagel is no fool. Nor is he a theist.
What we know of the natural world and the universe has become, in the original sense of the word, awesome.

The word "singularity" originates in Middle English, derived from the French meaning "unique." In the modern world its meaning has undergone, if you will excuse the expression, an expansion. It retains its "singular" meaning--individual and unity--but also has a complex application in both physics and artificial intelligence that fulfills its other meaning, "remarkable  and unusual."
 

The artificial intelligence application first. Singularity refers to a point in time when artificial intelligence will surpass human intelligence, become independent and so be able to self-replicate and improve itself autonomously. There are some wonderful ideas here that could facilitate such an event but one disturbing possibility is corruption of data--essentially an accidental change in programming, as is done purposely with a computer virus--which would allow programming to change autonomously--the definition of "evolution." One particularly creepy idea is the evolution in machines of non-human powers, like telepathy.

The second application is in physics, particular astronomy. A singularity means a point where some property is infinite. So, for example in a black hole, density is infinite; a finite mass is compressed to a zero volume. Matter has infinite density and an infinitesimal volumes and spacetime is infinite.

At this point the laws of physics do not exist--or are being formed.

Infinite density, the laws of physics not applying, 400 billion stars in our galaxy, 400 billion galaxies in the observable universe, a black hole with the density of 2 million suns and the energy of a billion stars burning for a billion years, the possible failure of evolutionary creation of consciousness--being King of the Universe should be a lot easier to imagine.

Reverie

'Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.' -- E. L. Doctorow   

The American cartoonist William (“Billy”) De Beck (1890-1942) was most famous for his comic strip Take Barney Google, F'rinstance (1919), which became Barney Google and Snuffy Smith in 1934. De Beck is responsible for coining heebie-jeebies, balls of fire, and time’s a-wastin. 

In medicine, law, finance, retailing, manufacturing, and even scientific discovery, the key to winning the race is not to compete against machines but to compete with machines. While computers win at routine processing, repetitive arithmetic, and error-free consistency and are quickly getting better at complex communication and pattern matching, they lack intuition and creativity and are lost when asked to work even a little outside a predefined domain. Fortunately, humans are strongest exactly where computers are weak, creating a potentially beautiful partnership. So in this chapter we want to focus on recommendations in two areas: improving the rate and quality of organizational innovation, and increasing human capital— ensuring that people have the skills they need to participate in todayʼs economy, and tomorrowʼs. Making progress in these two areas will be the best way to allow human workers and institutions to race with machines, not against them. --from Brynjolfsson and McAfee, MIT. They are optimistic because they think the U.S. has a big upside--because we have fallen so far behind in education and thus can improve.

But this is harsh optimism. According to Acemoglu’s and Restropo, the impact of just industrial robots on jobs from 1993 to 2007 is that every new robot replaced around 5.6 workers, and every additional robot per 1,000 workers reduced the percentage of the total population employed by 0.34% and also reduced wages by 0.5%. During that 14-year period of time, the number of industrial robots quadrupled and between 360,000 and 670,000 jobs were erased. And the robots are getting better; they will replace more over time. They predict a loss of up to 3.4 million jobs by 2025, alongside depressed wage growth of up to 2.6%, and a drop in the employment-to-population ratio of up to 1.76 percentage points. And this is just industrial jobs, not software-sensitive work.

Public choice theory is well known as a theory that was espoused by Nobel Prize winner James Buchannan. It attempts to provide something of a unified approach to behavior in the economic and political realms. The theory famously argues that people who pursue their selfish interest in the economic realm do not somehow become perfect altruists in the political realm.  Instead, one must take serious account of the selfish interests of politicians who present themselves as selflessly pursuing the public interest.

"I'm delighted to report that - after experimenting with conventional high school - my elder sons have resumed homeschooling.  Their complaints were numerous, but our whole family was taken aback by their school's disinterest in academics.  Math aside, every class was infused by a pedagogical philosophy I can only describe as "touchy-feely."  This philosophy was so pervasive that teachers seemed unaware of the possibility that other views even exist." This is from a long article by Caplan with the wonderful title, "Touchy-Feely Bull in a China Shop," and ends with this:

"Still, as we economists emphasize, nice people often do bad things.  Good intentions are not enough; if you really want to do good, you have to calmly weigh the actual consequences of your actions.  You may find drawing posters more fun than reading textbooks, but that's a reflection of your personality type, not a universal law of human nature." 

Who is...Alex Bregman?

I still can't get over the World Series.

The Astros tie the game in the ninth, go ahead in the tenth but the Dodgers tie it in the bottom of the tenth. At the beginning of the eleventh, Verlander comes out of the clubhouse and starts screaming at his team.
“I just wanted,” Verlander said, “to really remind these guys how great they are. I’ve pitched against them, I know how good they are. It doesn’t matter how good a pitcher you are, this lineup can hurt you so quickly. And I guess maybe that was just my message, is stay positive. Remember how good you are.”
And Springer hits a two run homer to win it.
“This game has so much failure in it,” Bregman said. “You’re going to go through stretches where you’re not feeling great. and you’re not putting together great at-bats. It’s how you come back, how you bounce back.”
“If you’re beating us, you’re beating us,” Bregman said, smiling in front of his locker. “And guess what, we’re still coming, we’re coming for you.”

Zipcar is expanding its bet urban commuters will pay monthly subscriptions for access to cars to get to and from work, escalating competition with ride-hailing services. (wsj)

Apparently there is some discussion in England of the discriminatory nature of university admissions. Since university indeed create criteria then I suppose they are discriminatory by definition. But my bet is that this is not what the critics mean; my bet is they imply a more insidious selection, a process based upon social bias or, worse, gross bigotry. But unmerited distinctions have arisen long before university level; those distinctions have developed in the lowest educational levels--levels where the society already has a lot of direct control. Why focus upon these very small end-point distinctions when influence at an early age would be so much more productive? Could it possibly be because that has already failed and, anyway, the later and mature problem is higher profile? And easier?

Researchers say they created a new Crispr-based system to edit RNA instead of DNA in human cells, offering a way around some of the ethical and scientific challenges associated with editing the genome and helping advance a new avenue to potentially treat diseases. This is a big advance as it allows the manipulation of gene expression without altering the germline cells, egg, sperm and zygote cells that could influence the genetic line by handing down basic changes. This type of change alters only one individual and does not alter his germ cells. Or so we think.

Chinese researchers have found small pieces of rice ribonucleic acid (RNA) in the blood and organs of humans who eat rice. The Nanjing University-based team showed that this genetic material will bind to receptors in human liver cells and influence the uptake of cholesterol from the blood. These proteins are called microRNA (abbreviated to miRNA) due to its small size. MiRNAs have been studied extensively since their discovery ten years ago, and have been implicated as players in several human diseases including cancer, Alzheimer's, and diabetes. They usually function by turning down or shutting down certain genes. That is to say, food might be a gene-regulator.

Now think about that for a moment.

CVS Health is in talks to buy Aetna for more than $66 billion as the drugstore giant scrambles to fortify itself against looming competition from Amazon amid a continuing reordering of the health-care industry. (wsj)


Golden oldie:
http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2013/07/an-openminded-man.html

An Openminded Man steeleydock.blogspot.com "War on Terror is drawing to a close and its very legal underpinning, the September 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, should ...

"On Monday, the conservative educational nonprofit Prager University filed a lawsuit against YouTube and its parent company, Google, for "intentional" censorship of conservative speakers. YouTube made more than fifteen percent of the organization's videos impossible to access in its "restrictive mode" -- meant to protect younger and more sensitive viewers -- and only slowly provided contradictory answers for why they were restricted."


This is from PJMedia and its objection may miss the big point: As a private company, they can do what they want. They are only masquerading as an open-minded public access utility. The real point is the tremendous impact of these gigantic corporations and moneyed interests.


Elliott is a very successful hedge fund run by impressive guys. One of their founders, Paul Singer, recently wrote an article in defense of activist investors, a group he believes are part of the overall "efficient market" scenario. Since, he asks, passive investing--that type of investing in ETFs and the like--is reducing the percentage of active managers to the point where they may actually become the minority in a few years, who is going to do the work that theoretically creates efficient markets?


Ideals are not givens; nor are they universally held.
William Robinson and Marmaduke Stevenson, two Quakers who came from England in 1656 to escape religious persecution, were executed in the Massachusetts Bay Colony on this day in 1659.
The two had violated a law passed by the Massachusetts General Court the year before, banning Quakers from the colony under penalty of death.
The Religious Society of Friends, whose members are commonly known as Quakers, was a Christian movement founded by George Fox in England during the early 1650s. Quakers opposed central church authority, preferring to seek spiritual insight and consensus through egalitarian Quaker meetings. They advocated sexual equality and became some of the most outspoken opponents of slavery in early America. Robinson and Stevenson, who were hanged from an elm tree on Boston Common in Boston, were the first Quakers to be executed in America.




A story from Quora describing the writer's favorite Olympic moment:

Yamashita Yasuhiro, the Japanese opponent was the strongest favorite for the gold medal in LA 1984. Unbeaten for 7 years, 194 consecutive matches in total, he was the man to beat. However, during the second bout in the tournament, he tore his right calf while defeating Arthur Schnabel of West Germany. In the following match, Laurent del Colombo of France, attacked the injury and was very close to win but Yamashita scored an Ippon (the equivalent to a knockout in boxing) and passed to the final.
Rashwan, on the other hand, also stormed smoothly to the final scoring Ippons against all his opponents.
After the final, Rashwan said he purposely didn't target Yamashita's injury, settling for the silver, as he regarded it not fair-play. At the medal ceremony, Rashwan had to help Yamashita up onto the podium.

Sport has too often become like a war, we must return to the core values of sport: an athlete must respect his/her opponent, the students must respect their masters, the referees must respect the competitors and vice versa. - Mohamed Rashwan.

"To put it simply, immigration controls are controls on people, and it is not possible to control some people without controlling others.  More to the point, it is not possible to control outsiders (aliens, foreigners, would-be immigrants) without controlling insiders as well.  Immigration controls are not merely border controls but controls on the freedom of the population residing within those borders." This is from Kukathas but seems to imply that any demonstration of law is by definition oppressive, or portends to be. That is sort of a definition of law, is it not?



According to the UN's annual demographic report, "World Population Prospects," one-sixth of the world's population currently lives in Africa. By 2050, the proportion will be one-quarter, and at the end of the century -- when Africa will have four billion people -- one-third.


Savings, where investment, repairs and retirement come from:

An interesting article shows a rise in oil rigs but no increase in oil rig workers. This is attributed to a machine called the Iron Roughneck. What is astonishing is the time this took: Two years. In two years the technology arose, its support systems arose, and it is now displacing really high paying jobs. Now, surely, someone makes the machine but the timing and impact is quite impressive.



By definition, GDP is made of domestically-produced goods for consumption, investment, government expenditures, and exports, that is, C+I+G+X. When they actually measure GDP, however, statisticians only find a C, an I, and a G that include imported goods and services. In order to correct for that, they have to remove all imports from the formula, which becomes the familiar C+I+G+X-M, where M represents imports. Compounding the error, the formula is usually written as C+I+G+(X-M), where (X-M) is labeled “net exports,” a subliminal version of the trade balance. It looks as if net imports subtract from GDP while, in fact, M is subtracted only because it was already hidden in the available data.--Lemieux, among many 

Mediocracy:  noun: Rule by the mediocre. ety: A blend of mediocre + -ocracy (rule). Earliest documented use: 1845. USAGE:“Why are gifted individuals always forced out by the mediocracy?”
Christopher Fowler; The Victoria Vanishes; Bantam; 2008.

The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another.--Freidman



AAAaaaaannnnndddddd..... a graph of rigs vs. workers:

Sustainability

The Pilgrims, before leaving Plymouth England, signed a seven-year contract on July 1, 1620,  stipulating that the Pilgrims were to pool, for common benefit, “all profits and benefits that are got by trade, traffic, trucking, working, fishing, or any other means of any person or persons…” It further noted “that at the end of the seven years, the capital and profits, viz. the houses, lands, goods and chattels, be equally divided betwixt the Adventurers and Planters…” During this time the colonists were to “have their meat, drink, apparel, and all provisions out of the common stock and goods of the said colony.” To each according to his need. It sounds like a prescription written from a Pharaoh's dream, and it was. Lean years ensued. They did not make it to the lean seven. In the first two years the result was shortages and starvation. About half the colonists died. The group's Governor, William Bradford, wrote of the scarcity of food “no supply was heard of, neither knew they when they might expect any.” (from his book, Plymouth Plantation)

The socialist experiment Bradford added, “was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to the benefit and comfort. For the young men, that were most able and fit for labour and service, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense….” In did more than make strong men lazy. In another book written by the same author, History of Plymouth Plantation, Bradford spoke of another problem because of the government created famine—thievery. Even in this Christian community, “much was stolen both by night and day….”
And, as they say, the rest is history.

So, at the very founding of the nation and 200 years before the bloody-minded Marx, a remarkable social-economic experiment was founded, nurtured and discarded. Yet is seems we are fated to redo these experiments until we can make the experimenters happy. These demands, usually from tenured and barely working abstractionists, demand we relive these awful periods as if every society were subject to a constant Meckel-Serres social-economic   recapitulation. In the NYT this week is an editorial actually calling for a dismissal of Capitalism--as if it were a creed and not the consequence of one--and the substitution of "Sustainability."

This sounds like, and is, global warming in drag but it has an oblique thrust as well. Sustainability as a concept is not new and is championed by some good and admirable thinkers--Abbey and Wendell Berry come to mind--but there is a subtle mental shortcut necessary: Surplus must be curbed. Sustainability's enemy is excess, as in "wretched." But sustainability also is close to subsistence; it is production without wealth. Or trade. Nothing is less like us. I know this brings up the dreaded "naturalistic fallacy" objection--why do we have to be limited by how we have behaved before--but there are some realities here. The question is always what is basic and what is culturally layered on and slough-able. But I think growth, expansion, improvement and the participation in the interactive social structure is as much of what we are as is altruism.

And so we again try to teach the wolf to knit.

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is a tricky word. It means gratitude but it implies more than something to be grateful for, it implies something to be grateful to.

In the fall of 1621 the Plymouth settlers had a celebratory meal with a local Indian tribe as part of a traditional English harvest festival. There are two accounts; no mention is made of a Day of Thanksgiving but they were probably happy; since their arrival they had a 50% mortality. It lasted three days. A Day of Thanksgiving, a day the English would have considered religious, was first held in the new land in 1623 following a needed rainfall. Various days of thanksgiving were celebrated by the country over the years, the first in commemoration of the end of the Revolution by Washington. In 1863, in the middle of the Civil War, Lincoln formally made Thanksgiving an annual event.

It is interesting to see these two men, Washington suspicious of organized religion and Lincoln harder to read, celebrating an official Thanksgiving, but both seem heartfelt, Lincoln's surprisingly so. Washington's is almost a mirror of the mindset of the time. The two proclamations are below.

The Thanksgiving Proclamation
New York, 3 October 1789

By the President of the United States of America: a Proclamation.

Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor--and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me `to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.'

Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be -- That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks -- for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation--for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his Providence which we experienced in the tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed--for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted -- for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.

And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions--to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually -- to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed--to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shewn [sic] kindness onto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord -- To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease [sic] of science among them and us -- and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.

Given under my hand at the City of New-York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.

George Washington

Proclamation Establishing Thanksgiving Day October 3, 1863

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence [sic], have not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; the axe had enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years, with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the independence of the United States the eighty-eighth.

Abraham Lincoln

November 22, 1962

The Thanksgiving holiday, one of the best holidays and certainly the best secular one, has been spoiled for everyone who was awake and thinking in the mid 60's by the assassination of Jack Kennedy. That promising shift from the generation of Eisenhower to its sons, to youth and its potential, to the charismatic and the virile was just stopped cold by Oswald in Dallas. We defaulted back to the older, ponderous Lyndon Johnson, a true guardian of the Old Guard. That loss--of youth, of hope, of promise, of beauty--has never been overcome and we are reminded of it every Thanksgiving. One only wonders how much of the unrest in the 60's and 70's was a result.

An aspect of the assassination that has dogged its shadow has been the shameless exploitation of the atrocity by writers, politicians and artists. This exploitation, which has become almost a cult, believes--or says it believes--that the assassination was a conspiracy of a number of men, groups or organizations. Every aspect of the event has been picked over, every inconsistency of life magnified, every possibility made a probability. The result is that the event, right before many of our eyes, has been completely recreated and, like an alternative universe, continues without interference with its own laws, experts and history. It is very like those academic musings run wild. "If, instead, you assume that history and archeology was 300 years wrong--or falsified--and Moses was actually alive in the court of Akhenaton...." "If, instead, you assume there is a unexplained and unexplainable driving force in history..." "If, instead, you assume that everyone is possessed at birth by sexual urges towards their immediate family...." It is another victory of the Art of the Plausible.

This is nowhere more revolting than is seen in the movie "JFK" where a seemingly respectable director rewrites the assassination story according to a man whose grasp on the event is dangerously close to psychosis. Oliver Stone writes a story of the assassination through the eyes and the belief set of James Garrison, the District Attorney of New Orleans, who had arrested, charged, indicted and tried a local community figure, Clay Shaw, for involvement in the Kennedy murder. Shaw's arrest was virtually random. There was no evidence against him other than the word of a psychiatric patient who failed a lie detector test and refused to testify. How an American citizen could come under such unreasonable, whimsical charges has never been explained. But Garrison persisted and then Stone followed up after the laughable trial (where the jury took longer to find their seats than to find "not guilty") with a movie inexplicably presenting the Garrison thesis as within the same time zone as reason. Of course, all the facts of the assassination were changed to implicate the innocent, the shooting presented was almost a complete fiction and this all was delivered by Kevin Costner, a credible actor, with certainty and outrage. Anyone who knew anything about the assassination walked from the theater with their collective heads spinning. But many with less of a good grasp left alarmed and resentful. This constant barrage of misinformation has done a lot to undermine this country's credibility and value in the minds of its people who, after all, own and run it.

There are two bad lessons here. The first is there are people and industries in the world who, even in those cultures with the highest of ideals, will do anything, say anything, publish anything to make a buck. If possible they will take the Plausible-made-Art and create an industry of it with historians, academics, and franchises. The second is that they often hide their entrepreneurship in the gowns of Art. How many of our greatest artists have questioned the reliability of memory, the interaction of history and art--even to the point of their blending? So Stone calls Julian Barnes and Cormac McCarthy as witnesses for his defense.

Stone is more Goebbels than John Huston here. He is everything that is wrong with businessmen gone rogue. His product is harmful to the society, toxic to the young and delivered without an ounce of social conscience. The real story about Garrison is how is it possible that Clay Shaw could be treated like a Kafka character in the United States. Another would be a clarifying and cleansing explanation of all the facts and evidence that has been gathered over the years about the murder. This might set the country at ease. But there's probably not much money, or return on arrogance, in this. Instead why not take advantage of the distressed and confused citizens, contribute to their malaise and cash in.

In 1976 the U.S. House of representatives created a commission, The House Select Commission on Assassinations, to investigate all the evidence in the murder again. This time they applied all the newer technologies available as well. Aside from the single and erroneous "fourth bullet thesis" not a single new conclusion was reached. Instead this august deliberative body concluded there was no evidence of a conspiracy--but they believed one existed anyway

Nantes

The Drownings at Nantes

We do not remember the French Revolution nearly enough. But for some reason the world remembers it fondly. Indeed, "The Revolution" in Europe always refers reverently to the French one, sort of like the American Revolution but without the philosophy, the heroism or the restraint.

During the Reign of Terror, Jean-Baptiste Carrier, a member of the Revolutionary Tribunal, was sent to Nantes to suppress a revolt by anti-revolutionaries. He did.

16th November 1793 is the anniversary of the first Drownings at Nantes. One of the bleakest episodes of the Terror, the drownings were a method of mass execution used to remove those who did not agree with the revolution or were suspected of sympathizing with the royalists. They were also used as a ruthlessly efficient means of executing Catholic priests and nuns and eventually resulted in the loss of approximately 40,000 lives. 40,000! That is almost as many people as Caesar killed at the Siege of Alesia--but , of course, they were fighting back. It is a lot harder to kill that many people if there is no conflict. (If you are interested in an example of some peculiarly grotesque and gratuitous savagery of the time, google "Republican marriages.")

Carrier requested that almost 200 Catholic priests who were being held on the prison barge, La Gloire, be assembled on the dock. Here a customized barge waited for them and 90 of the priests were bound and herded onto the vessel. With the prisoners packed tight and helpless, the craft was piloted out into the Loire where it was scuttled.

According to the journalist and historian, Louis-Marie Prudhomme, the victims under Carrier amounted to 32,000. He provided a partial breakdown, which is shown in the table below and lists how 10,244 victims were executed:    
    Method of  Execution Number ==Method of Execution Number ==Total By Group
Children    Shot   500                          Drowned 1,500                       2,000
Women     Shot 264                             Drowned 500                                  764
Priests       Shot 300                               Drowned 460                                 760
Nobles                                                 Drowned 1,400                             1,400
Artisans                                               Drowned 5,300                              5,300
Total             1,064                                         9,160                                       10,224

Kratom

The leaves of the herb kratom (Mitragyna speciosa), a native of Southeast Asia in the coffee family, are used locally to relieve pain and improve mood as an opiate substitute and stimulant. The herb is also combined with cough syrup to make a popular beverage in Thailand called “4x100.” Because of its psychoactive properties, however, kratom is illegal in Thailand, Australia, Myanmar (Burma) and Malaysia. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration lists kratom as a “drug of concern” because of its abuse potential, stating it has no legitimate medical use. The state of Indiana has banned kratom consumption outright.

Now, looking to control its population’s growing dependence on methamphetamines, Thailand is attempting to legalize kratom, which it had originally banned 70 years ago.

At the same time, researchers are studying kratom’s ability to help wean addicts from much stronger drugs, such as heroin and cocaine. Studies show that a compound found in the plant could even serve as the basis for an alternative to methadone in treating addictions to opioids. The moves are just the latest step in kratom’s strange journey from home-brewed stimulant to illegal painkiller to, possibly, a withdrawal-free treatment for opioid abuse.

Scientific American spoke with Edward Boyer, a professor of emergency medicine and director of medical toxicology at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. These are some of his comments:

Mitragynine—the isolated natural product in kratom leaves—binds to the same mu-opioid receptor as morphine, which explains why it treats pain. It’s got kappa-opioid receptor activity as well, and it’s also got adrenergic activity as well, so you stay alert throughout the day.
Some opioid medicinal chemists would suggest that kratom pharmacology might [reduce cravings for opioids] while at the same time providing pain relief. I don’t know how realistic that is in humans who take the drug, but that’s what some medicinal chemists would seem to suggest.
Kratom also has serotonergic activity, too—it binds with serotonin receptors. So if you want to treat depression, if you want to treat opioid pain, if you want to treat sleepiness, this [compound] really puts it all together.
In animal studies where rats were given mitragynine, those rats had no respiratory depression.
At least one pharma company [Smith, Kline & French, now part of GlaxoSmithKline] was looking at it in the 1960s, but something didn’t work for them. Either it wasn’t a strong enough analgesic or the solubility was bad or they didn’t have a drug delivery system for it.
I don’t know that there are studies showing animals will compulsively administer kratom, but I know that tolerance develops in animal models.

Sunday/MacBeth

The poet and novelist George MacBeth (1932–92) explored the tension in pastoral poetry between the sharp particularity of “the kernels of what we know and can see and touch” and the imaginative use to which poets are apt to put them. In the early 1960s, MacBeth played an influential part in “The Group”, whose members – Philip Hobsbaum, Edward Lucie-Smith, Alan Brownjohn, Peter Porter and, for a while, Ted Hughes – rejected what they regarded as the Augustan decorum of “Movement” poets such as Philip Larkin and insisted instead on “real toads”. MacBeth’s readiness to experiment (Porter called him “the most inventive poet of his generation”) is reflected in his various and prolific output – he published no fewer than thirty-one volumes of verse, fiction and autobiography, and seven anthologies. In her review of MacBeth’s second Collected Poems (1989), Carol Ann Duffy said he had “waltzed with traditional form and partied with the avant-garde with equal gusto”.
MacBeth’s Group sympathies are not much in evidence in his distinctly Larkinesque poem “The Hornet” (first published in the TLS in 1981 and then appearing in Poems from Oby, a collection from 1982 set in the remote Norfolk idyll he moved to with his second wife, the novelist Lisa St. Aubin de Terán), which swells from a finely caught domestic detail (“drowned in a jug, with cardboard slid across / To keep it under”) into gathering thoughts of death (“somewhere to grow cold / And die in, when the time comes”). But we can hear Hughes, too, in MacBeth’s respect for the dead insect (“its warrior’s head bent sideways like a bow”) which, refusing to serve simply as a metaphor for human fears, bobs threateningly to the surface of the poem in its own “scoop of terror”. (lts)

The Hornet
October brought the last one of the year
And laid it sleeping on your window-frame.
It stood for winter, and the failing game,
The end of something, and death coming near.


Drowned in a jug, with cardboard slid across
To keep it under, it sleeps always now,
Its warrior’s head bent sideways, like a bow
Made to an enemy, for the mortal loss.


I see its body, simple as a cone
Of pine or douglas fir, cypress or spruce.
It has no meaning, scarcely any use
Except to make more precious all we own,


The last of life, and living in this place,
Year in, year out, with what we have and hold,
Great barns, and trees, and somewhere to grow cold
And die in, when the time comes, with some grace


In folded honour, free from bitterness
Or rancour, and not losing elegance
At the last, as this dead hornet’s final chance
Left it a scoop of terror. That, O yes. 
                                                             
GEORGE MACBETH (1981)