Economic Stats

                                Economic Stats




This may have changed this week:


An economic outlook based on a state’s current standing in 15 state policy variables from the American Legislative Exchange Council (Stephen Moore, Art Laffer, and Jonathan Williams). Utah, Idado, North Dakota, and Nevada are the top four states for economic outlook and New York, Vermont, Illinois and California are the top four bottom states. Here s a graphic showing what the two groups have in common:








I have no idea where they get these numbers. Old Testament?

Law and Order

                                Law and Order

The debate of human structure in an indifferent universe will go on, fallacy or not.

Diedre McCloskey, from her debate with Binyamin Appelbaum.

Mr. Appelbaum says, “the marketplace is not a state of nature.” 

Yes it is. All humans trade, from about age eight on. The earliest evidence of trade comes from the Blombos Cave in South Africa, 70,000 years ago.

The market, he says, “is an artifact of society.” Sure, but so is art and language and journalism. “There is no ‘spontaneous order,’” he asserts—with sneering scare-quotes against the absurdity of the very idea that free adults could accomplish anything without coercion—as though art and language and journalism were not also spontaneous orders. “Markets must be constituted, the rules must be enforced,” by implication, by a state. 

Wrong again. Markets arise as spontaneous orders on the analogy with language in all societies, in prisons, in medieval market fairs, in the rough justice of exchanging books and snow-blowers and cups of flour among neighbors.

The Other Renewable

                                                     The Other Renewable

An energy startup in Oregon wants us to rethink our reluctance to embrace nuclear energy, Wired reports. NuScale Power studies new reactor technology from a lab on the Oregon State University campus—the same university where the 2019 climate crisis petition began. Their cutting-edge reactor is tiny and, its proponents insist, much safer than our existing notions of nuclear energy lead us to believe.

The oldest operating U.S. nuclear power reactor opened in 1969, and even the newest powered on in the mid-1990s. One completed in 2016, started construction back in 1973. “Only two new reactors are under construction in the U.S., but they’re billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule,” Wired reports.

Like our aging and increasingly dangerous infrastructure, these nuclear plants need to be comprehensively updated or replaced, and soon.

Even so, nuclear power accounts for two-thirds of the United States’s total renewable power output, meaning any reactor that reaches end of life can significantly reduce our amount of renewable energy. NuScale’s next generation nuclear reactor is tiny by comparison to today’s operating reactors in the U.S. It’s safe to install in clusters according to the power needs of a specific area, and because of its tiny size, these reactors are much easier to encase in safety devices and contain in the event of an emergency.

There are regulatory differences, too. A demonstrably safer nuclear plant wouldn’t need to be built ten miles or more outside of its service area. In fact, the existing regulatory process and paradigm is based on huge reactors that are all going to age out of the system soon. Once new technologies begin to receive approval, regulators can begin to convert or even sundown existing plants and reduce the overall risk.

In the NuScale reactor, a core is kept cool by circulating normal fresh water, as happens in today’s operating nuclear plants on a much, much larger scale. Inside huge nuclear towers, most of the space is dedicated to cooling. The NuScale reactor uses gravity and buoyancy to naturally circulate the cooling water. The size difference is staggering: “About the size of two school buses stacked end to end, you could fit around 100 of them in the containment chamber of a large conventional reactor,” Wired reports. The reactor technology itself isn’t completely different than before, it’s just wildly more efficient and up to date.

The Byron plant generates 2,450 megawatt electrical (MWe) with two gigantic traditional towers. The largest reactors in the world top out at about 8,000 MWe. Each NuScale reactor rates 60 MWe, which sounds small because the reactor is small by design. Plants can install dozens at a time.

Or, even better, our army of about 100 nuclear plants around the U.S. can be turned into 1,000 small plants that provide more local power with less distance to travel. The Byron plant supplies millions of people up to 100 miles away, which has been fine, but local power bleeds less energy in storage, transit, and other overhead energy costs.

The modular nuclear reactors have 12,000 pages of technical information wending its way through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. In the meantime, they're promising a clean, plentiful, cutting-edge energy source they say is just as good as wind and solar without the pitfalls. Only time will tell.

Source: Wired

Medallions

                                     Medallions

Freedom comes with risks but here's a little story from MSN News that shows that your local friendly government--along with its closest friends--can raise the risk a lot higher when it is to their advantage:

New York must pay US$810 million to its debt-ridden cabbies, the state attorney general said Thursday, accusing the city of fraudulently inflating the value of permits needed to drive its famed yellow taxis.

Letitia James, head prosecutor for the state of New York, said an investigation by her office showed that the auction price of thousands of permits, known as medallions, had been artificially inflated by hundreds of millions of dollars between 2004 and 2017.

The attorney general’s office alleged that the Taxi and Limousine Commission knew in 2011 that the price of medallions had passed actual value.

Yet the administrative body “published false and misleading medallion prices” in a number of cases, James’ office said, causing the price of a single medallion at auction to spike from US$283,300 in 2004 to US$965,000 in 2014.

The city allowed brokers and top players to collude on prices, the prosecutor said, as the TLC encouraged drivers to use the medallions as collateral for loans.

The state’s prosecutor said medallion prices were fraudulently set so high that drivers could not pay them off with their earnings from cab operation regulated by the city itself.

“These taxi medallions were marketed as a pathway to the American Dream, but instead became a trapdoor of despair for medallion owners harmed by the TLCs unlawful practices,” James said in a statement.

“The very government that was supposed to ensure fair practices in the marketplace engaged in a scheme that defrauded hundreds of medallion owners, leaving many with no choice but to work day and night to pay off their overpriced medallions.”

New York’s taxi industry has been upended by the arrival of ride-hailing platforms like Uber and Lyft.

More than 950 licensed taxi drivers have declared personal bankruptcy since 2016, according to a New York Times investigation of court records published last year.

Recent years have also seen a spate of suicides from cab drivers suffering under crushing debt.

The sum of US$810 million corresponds to the city’s revenues from medallion sales and resale tax, according to the attorney general, and must be paid within 30 days or James’ office intends to sue, it said.

Contacted by AFP, New York City Hall did not immediately respond.

Renewables

                                    Renewables

We need to show more admiration for those who want to replace petroleum with stuff we don't have. This list gives an idea of the size of the project:

From the article “U.S. Government continues to dump funds into an electrical sinkhole” by Ronald Stein, founder, and ambassador for Energy & Infrastructure of PTS Advance:

"Let’s be clear about what that means. First, it’s not renewable energy, it’s only renewable electricity, and more accurately its only intermittent electricity. Renewables have been the primary driver for residents of Germany, Australia, and California behind the high costs of electricity. Second and most important is, electricity alone is unable to support militaries, aviation, and merchant ships, and all the transportation infrastructure that supports commerce around the world.

Everyone knows that electricity is used extensively in residential, commercial, transportation, and the military, to power motors and lite the lights; but it’s the 6,000 products that get manufactured from crude oil that are used to make those motors, lights, and electronics (see table above). Noticeable by their absence, from turbines and solar panels, are those crude oil chemicals that renewables are currently incapable of providing.

We’ve had almost 200 years to develop clones or generics to replace the products we get from crude oil such as medications, electronics, communications, tires, asphalt, fertilizers, military, and transportation equipment. The social needs of our materialistic societies are most likely going to remain for all those chemicals that get manufactured out of crude oil, that makes everything that’s part of our daily lifestyles, and for continuous, uninterruptable, and reliable electricity from coal or natural gas generation backup."

Rags to Riches: An American Story

                       

                    Rags to Riches: An American Story


Bernie Sanders’ net worth is estimated to be around $2 million as of 2017. That is not from his meticulously saving his paychecks in his youth.

Sanders didn’t collect a steady paycheck before being elected to office as mayor of Burlington, Vt., in 1981. After graduating from the University of Chicago in 1964, with a BA in political science, Sanders did work a series of odd jobs before his political career began. Some of the positions he held include an aide at a psychiatric hospital, a freelance writer, a preschool teacher, and a carpenter. The Sanders campaign did not respond when asked if any of these jobs were considered full-time positions.

In 1974, Sanders did run for political office while collecting unemployment benefits.

Sanders was the primary sponsor of seven pieces of legislation that were enacted, according to records:

H.J.Res. 132 (102nd): To designate March 4, 1991, as "Vermont Bicentennial Day."

H.R. 1353 (102nd): Entitled the "Taconic Mountains Protection Act of 1991."

H.J.Res. 129 (104th): Granting the consent of Congress to the Vermont-New Hampshire Interstate Public Water Supply Compact.

H.R. 5245 (109th): To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 1 Marble Street in Fair Haven, Vermont, as the "Matthew Lyon Post Office Building."

S. 893 (113th): Veterans’ Compensation Cost-of-Living Adjustment Act of 2013.

S. 2782 (113th): A bill to amend title 36, United States Code, to improve the Federal charter for the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States.

S. 885 (113th): A bill to designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 35 Park Street in Danville, Vermont, as the "Thaddeus Stevens Post Office."

It has always been said that one of the merits of this country is that anyone can grow up and run for President. In this instance, just anyone has.

Sunday/New Laws and Hyperbole

                                                     

                             Sunday/New Laws and Hyperbole

Gandhi said, “Everyone in the world knows that Jesus and His teaching are non-violent, except Christians.” 75 percent of Christians believe in capital punishment because they think we can stop the killing by killing the killers.

The tribal law of retaliation, (Lex Talionis = Tit-for-Tat), was written by the ancient lawmaker Hammurabi during the period 2285-2242 BC. It has been ridiculed as crude and primitive but probably was a real philosophical advance for the time. It was actually an effort to eliminate tribal justice that would hold groups responsible for individual acts and individuals for group acts, for example, Hatfield and McCoy thinking. (This "primitive " thinking is now returning in Western politics, shamelessly.)

It is believed that the Mosaic law absorbed this thinking during the Jews ' captivity in Egypt and it became Old Testament law. instead of mutilating or murdering all the members of the offender’s family or tribe, one should discover the offender and only punish him or her with an equal mutilation or harm. Later, a milder version of this law was substituted that demanded monetary compensation, as decided by a judge, in place of physical punishment.

What Christ says in today's gospel is revolutionary. He says, “You have heard that it was said, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil." This is the "Turn the other cheek" gospel where one is to forgive the attacker, give away your clothes until you are naked and pray for those who persecute you.

This is simply different thinking, revolutionary in the West. And it is simply overwhelming as a way to live; one might say even "unhuman."

Yes, as Christ Himself says later in the sermon. "So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.” That is hyperbole. We can not be perfect. He is not asking us to change what we are, only to see an ideal to approach.
It's like how Flannery O'Connor explained her hyperbolic imagery: Sometimes the audience is so dense you need a two-by-four.

Grads, Bads, and Sads

                                            Grads, Bads and Sads

Some bad numbers for grads with bad jobs:


Amazing rise in car debt:




Rise in corporate debt:



Weird stats on high school loneliness:

Reactionaries

                              Reactionaries

According to Kohn, “At the end of the 19th century, in practically all civilized countries, the legal equality of all men was established, and in the backward countries the fight for civilization included the fight for the equality of all. This has never been known in history before."

But the demand for hierarchies continues. And in innovative guises. The old royal argument was Divine Right and the domestic safety of an iron rule. (The dangers of the king's international ambitions were another matter.) Now we are offered, not equality of opportunity and the equality before the law, but rather equal access to limited resources, a promise that demands conflict--and an organizer. And we are offered the prime reward of all philosophers of inherited history: Revenge.

The new totalitarian tribalists, like their Marxist and Nazi intellectual ancestors, reject the innovative ideas and achievements of the 18th and 19th centuries. Those ideas gave dignity and respect to individuals and cultivated a social, economic and political climate and institutional setting of peaceful self-fulfillment and collateral social advancement. The tribalists want to return to the animosities, indignities and cruelties that characterized most of human history before then. Indeed, they want to feed them.

There has never in history been a reactionary movement the size of that of the last 100-150 years where the astonishing advancement of human dignity and rights--and their concomitant advances in wealth creation--have come under fire. Nor have such reactionary beliefs been centered so uniformly in institutions of higher learning. Nor have reactionaries ever claimed that such advances--material included--were inherently wrong.

There is a story about a man imprisoned by the Khmer Rouge during the Year Zero campaign, when the government tried to push Cambodia back to pre-modernity, a time of "no families, no sentiment, no expression of love or grief, no medicines, no hospitals, no schools, no books, no learning, no holidays, no music: only work and death." He knew the animosity the regime had to learning so he survived for years in the camp by pretending he was an idiot.

That might help now.

ARPA and DARPA and Not

                                  ARPA and DARPA and Not

The Spectator has an article on Dominic Cummings’s plan to hype the British economy through the creation of another ARPA. 

The first Advanced Research Projects Agency was created in the US in 1958. The previous year the Soviets had launched the world’s first artificial orbital satellite, Sputnik. The thought was that only if the US immediately copied the brilliant engineers who ran the Soviet Union could the West hope to keep up. What emerged was the basis for digital technology.

In his 2002 book Digital Culture, Charlie Gere reveals that crediting those inventions to ARPA isn’t so simple:

‘The first head of XeroxPARC was Bob Taylor [of] ARPA’s computing research arm… The Mansfield amendment and the presence of Taylor at XeroxPARC meant that many talented computer scientists and researchers who had been ARPA-funded were drawn to the Centre [ie, the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center].’

The Mansfield amendment was the amendment by which Senator Mike Mansfield, in 1973, stopped ARPA from doing any further pure research. Thereafter it was to be limited only to applied defense work. Its name subsequently changed to DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.) 

The article called the amendment "infamous." There is an interesting argument over the success and productivity of focused research programs rather than those more free-range.

The researchers streamed out of ARPA to the private sector and XeroxPARC, the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, to create all of those technological advances. So it was only because the U.S.’s ARPA was depopulated that the U.S. pioneered today’s tech revolution.

What model is Mr. Cummings advancing?

The American Family Survey

              The American Family Survey


You don't hear these kinds of studies reported much. More than half of conservatives say they are completely satisfied with their family life, compared with about 4 in 10 of liberals or moderates, according to the new American Family Survey conducted by YouGov.


At the same time, conservatives are more pessimistic about the family trends outside of their own homes. More than half of conservatives (56%) say that the divorce rate in the U.S. has increased in the past 10 years, even though the divorce rate has been falling. Though most of the public is ignorant about this trend, conservatives are the ones most likely to mistakenly believe the divorce rate is climbing even though it’s actually falling.


Conservatives are also more concerned about the health of marriages in the United States. For example, more than 4 in 10 conservatives report that marriages in the U.S. are weaker now than they were about two years ago. In contrast, a much smaller share of liberals (23%) say this is the case.


Marriage is highly valued by conservatives. A vast majority (80%) of American conservatives believe that marriage is needed to create strong families, while only 1 in 3 liberals and half of moderates agree. Not surprisingly, conservatives (62%) are much more likely than liberals (39%) or moderates (46%) to be married. In fact, in a multivariate model with standard controls, ideology is about as predictive of who is married in America as is education. That’s noteworthy because so much of our discussion about America’s marriage divide focuses on class, not culture.


The new American Family Survey, then, tells us that the very Americans—conservatives—who are most pessimistic about American families are themselves the most likely to report having happy families. This can be partly explained by the fact that conservatives are significantly more likely to be married and to accord marriage greater significance compared to other Americans. It may also be because they are more likely to erect boundaries against messages, values, and norms in the larger culture that they deem to be corrosive of family life. And these worries, in turn, appear to be connected to their pessimistic views about the trajectory of family life in the nation at large.


The new American Family Survey reveals a central irony: the very Americans who are most likely to report they are “completely satisfied with family life” are also the very Americans who are most likely to think that American families are going to hell in a handbasket.


(from a review by Wendy Wang, the director of research for the Institute for Family Studies, and Bradford Wilcox, professor of sociology at the University of Virginia)

Rights and Wrongs

                                   Rights and Wrongs

One of the common political insincerities is the creation of unlimited access to limited resources. Not everyone can have a BMW and that is not just because only the evil rich can buy them, it is because there are not enough of them made. If you defenestrate all the practical laws of supply and demand, granting universal access to a limited resource is simply a lie.

So the politician creates a very modern thought process; he creates an alternative universe. He creates an imaginary world where all things are available and then asks you to congratulate him. If you just had a mental prodding of something distantly familiar, you are right. This is the imaginary world of childhood.

If you now think of a petulant, blustering politician lecturing pouting ones, suddenly the political world begins to make sense.

Lessons From Space

                                                           

                             Lessons From Space

How do you survive in space? It turns out that mental models are really useful. In his book An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth, Chris Hadfield gives an in-depth look into the learning and knowledge required for a successful space mission. Hadfield was, among other roles with NASA, the first Canadian commander of the International Space Station. He doesn’t call out mental models specifically, but the thinking he describes demonstrates a ton of them, from circle of competence to margin of safety. His lessons are both counter-intuitive and useful far beyond space missions. Here are some of them assembled by Farnam St.: 

“An astronaut is someone who’s able to make good decisions quickly, with incomplete information, when the consequences really matter. I didn’t miraculously become one either, after just eight days in space. But I did get in touch with the fact that I didn’t even know what I didn’t know.” (circle of competence) 

“Over time, I learned how to anticipate problems in order to prevent them, and how to respond effectively in critical situations.” (second-order thinking) 

“Success is feeling good about the work you do throughout the long, unheralded journey that may or may not wind up at the launch pad. You can’t view training solely as a stepping stone to something loftier. It’s got to be an end in itself.” (velocity) 

“A lot of our training is like this: we learn how to do things that contribute in a very small way to a much larger mission but do absolutely nothing for our own career prospects.” (cooperation) 

“If you’re not sure what to be alarmed about, everything is alarming.” (probabilistic thinking) 

“Truly being ready means understanding what could go wrong – and having a plan to deal with it.” (margin of safety) 

“A sim [simulation] is an opportunity to practice but frequently it’s also a wake-up call: we really don’t know exactly what we’re doing and we’d better figure it out before we’re facing this situation in space.” (back-up systems) 

“In any field, it’s a plus if you view criticism as potentially helpful advice rather than as a personal attack.” (inversion)

“At NASA, we’re not just expected to respond positively to criticism, but to go one step further and draw attention to our own missteps and miscalculations. It’s not easy for hyper-competitive people to talk openly about screw-ups that make them look foolish or incompetent. Management has to create a climate where owning up to mistakes is permissible and colleagues have to agree, collectively, to cut each other some slack.” (friction and viscosity) 

“If you’re only thinking about yourself, you can’t see the whole picture.” (relativity) 

“Over the years I’ve learned that investing in other people’s success doesn’t just make them more likely to enjoy working with me. It also improves my own chances of survival and success.” (reciprocity) 

“It’s obvious that you have to plan for a major life event like a launch. You can’t just wing it. What’s less obvious, perhaps, is that it makes sense to come up with an equally detailed plan for how to adapt afterward.” (adaptation and the red queen effect) 

“Our expertise is the result of the training provided by thousands of experts around the world, and the support provided by thousands of technicians in five different space agencies.” (scale) 

“The best way to contribute to a brand-new environment is not by trying to prove what a wonderful addition you are. It’s by trying to have a neutral impact, to observe and learn from those who are already there, and to pitch in with grunt work wherever possible.” (ecosystem) 

“When you’re the least experienced person in the room, it’s not the time to show off. You don’t yet know what you don’t know – and regardless of your abilities, your experience and your level of authority, there will definitely be something you don’t know.” (circle of competence) 

“Ultimately, leadership is not about glorious crowning acts. It’s about keeping your team focused on a goal and motivated to do their best to achieve it.” (hierarchical instincts) 

“If you start thinking that only your biggest and shiniest moments count, you’re setting yourself up to feel like a failure most of the time.” (map is not the territory)

Sunday/Anger, Lust, and Oaths

                                    Anger, Lust, and Oaths

A tough gospel today wherein Christ attacks sanctimony, equates murder with anger, and says a man's word should be as good as his oath. It is the gospel that poor Jimmy Carter quoted that allowed him to be belittled (lusting after women in his heart.)

Christ is presenting a revolutionary thought here, that of the desire being equivalent to the act. Remember, Jewish teaching did not hold desire as sin because it could not be measured.

His basic point is that responsibility goes beyond the letter of the law to a man's essence, his soul.


A Poison Tree
by William Blake

I was angry with my friend;
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I waterd it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears:
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night.
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine.

And into my garden stole,
When the night had veild the pole;
In the morning glad I see;
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

Some Economic Charts

                                          Some Economic Charts

Some interesting graphs on GDP and comparative R&D.

The Safe Mode? Decline

                                                   The Safe Mode? Decline

Heather Mac Donald has an article in the WSJ that Don sent. It is enough to inspire despair in the most hopeful people. Politics has introduced a new option to the glass half full concept: Shoot the glass.

The University of Montana asked students, staff and community members to participate in an essay contest on the legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. When the school released the results last month, Montana students and race activists across the country accused university officials of racism and disrespect. That’s because all four winners were white. Turns out some would rather the school had honored King by judging entrants on the color of their skin rather than the content of their submissions.

The four contest winners started receiving threats, and the African-American studies program, which had sponsored the contest, removed their photos and essays from its website. A central fact—no black students had even submitted an essay—failed to defuse the racism charge.

Critics blasted “shameful” university officials for holding a contest at all. A lecturer on the college race circuit admonished the university for thinking that “there is a universality around writing an essay,” when in reality blacks express themselves “completely different.” One black student sniffed that participating would have been a “sellout/compromise.” “Having grown up in all white spaces,” he posted on Facebook, “I often avoided events such as this because I knew the purpose was a performative gesture from the administration.” How the student determines when events are not “performative gestures” was left unspecified.

The African-American studies program was denounced for not canceling the competition when the organizers realized the skin color of the six entrants. “I cannot understand how anyone would think remembering the legacy of MLK Jr. is achieved by giving four white girls a shout out,” wrote a critic. “Do not center Whiteness on the day we are supposed to remember MLK Jr.’s legacy.”

But the contest rules had no racial prerequisites. The essay prompt—“How are you implementing Martin Luther King, Jr.’s legacy here at the University of Montana?”—was universal.

Outraged observers accused the contest committee of not specifically soliciting submissions from black students. In fact, the committee, whose majority consisted of “persons of color,” including the presidents of the Black Student Union and the Latinx Student Union, had asked members of the Black Student Union to participate. The students’ failure to do so, despite a $250 first prize, was nonetheless deemed the university’s fault and another instance of the university silencing minority voices. Woke white students declared that they would never presume to write about MLK and racism, since doing so would be an example of “speaking OVER black voices.” If no white students had submitted an essay, that too would have demonstrated campus bigotry.

Naturally, the demographics of the University of Montana student body and faculty were cited as evidence for the white supremacy charge. The undergraduate population is 79% white and 1% black; the faculty is nearly 90% white. Never mentioned was the state’s demographics: 89% white and 0.6% black, according to the 2019 census estimate. To boost its black enrollment, the university would have to poach black students from other states, whose colleges are equally desperate to increase their own diversity numbers. The essay submission rate for white undergraduates was 0.1%. If the school’s population of black students had submitted at the same rate, 0.08% of the essay contest submissions would have been from black writers. That’s essentially zero, which is, in fact, how many such submissions were received.

The long-effect of this kind of behavior is predictable: Cautious non-participation in any project that has the slightest chance of being turned against you by creative virtue-signaling entrepreneurs.

Brexit and the American Revolution

                        Brexit and the American Revolution

Ridley has an interesting comparison between Brexit and the American Revolution.

When William Petty, Earl of Shelburne, became prime minister in July 1782 he faced roughly the same problem as the EU faces today: how generous an empire should be to a departing nation, in that case the 13 American colonies. As sore losers of the recent war, British ministers’ initial stance towards the Americans at the Paris treaty negotiations that began that year was condescending and tough: call them “colonials”, threaten to deny them access to British and Caribbean ports and refuse their demands for land beyond the Appalachians.

Shelburne realised this was a mistake, if only because Britain might need the Americans as allies in future conflicts with the French. But also, being a leading champion of free trade and an avid follower of Adam Smith, he refused to see the negotiation as a zero-sum game.

Being generous to the Americans would benefit both sides in the long run, Shelburne argued. So he changed tack and instructed Richard Oswald, the British delegate, to offer the astonished American delegates — Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and John Jay — a uniquely generous deal instead. The deal was agreed in 1783. It meant that the United States, as they would come to be known, would get access to British ports and would have open-ended ownership of the vast trans-Appalachian lands, including the extensive territory known as Illinois County, an area that had previously been deemed still British.

Although the Americans bit Oswald’s hand off, and peace treaties with the French, Dutch and Spanish soon followed, it made the sometimes devious and unreliable Shelburne unpopular with most of his fellow cabinet ministers and the British public. Charles James Fox criticised Shelburne for having made “concessions in every part of the globe without the least pretence of equivalent”. That is the eternal zero-sum cry of the mercantilist who does not think that gains from trade can be mutual. Shelburne lost office in March 1783 and never served as prime minister again.

Yet he was proved right. America’s subsequent prosperity helped Britain hugely by providing it with both a market in which to sell its manufactured goods and a hinterland to source the raw materials it needed. It was not all smooth sailing, of course, and there was the small matter in 1814 of British troops burning the White House in retaliation for the destruction of property in Canada during a brief sideshow of the Napoleonic wars. But in the long run the special Anglo-American relationship emerged and endured to immense mutual benefit.

Mr Barnier seems tempted to repeat his tough stance, to show us what fools we have been to step outside the tent. But the governments of member states, and Mr Timmermans, are edging towards a more emollient line, mindful of the opportunity we will both have to be markets for each other’s goods and services.

Lord Shelburne did the right thing and got the sack. The lucky thing for President Ursula von der Leyen, as she contemplates whether to follow in his footsteps, is that, being unelected, she does not have to worry about losing office.

China and Influence

                                    China and Influence


When officials at the Texas A&M University System sought to determine how much Chinese government funding its faculty members were receiving, they were astounded at the results—more than 100 were involved with a Chinese talent-recruitment program, even though only five had disclosed their participation.

A plant pathologist at the Texas system, where the median annual salary for such scientists employed by the state is around $130,000, told officials that the researcher had been offered $250,000 in compensation and more than $1 million in seed money to start a lab in China through one of the talent programs. The researcher ultimately rejected the offer, according to the Texas system’s chief research security officer, Kevin Gamache, who led the recent 18-month review that has garnered praise from U.S. officials.

As for Harvard:

Charles Lieber, a pioneer in nanotechnology, allegedly signed a contract with Chinese counterparts under which he would be paid around $50,000 a month, plus another $150,000 a year for personal expenses; he was also promised—and received—more than $1.5 million to establish a research lab at the Wuhan University of Technology, according to prosecutors.

He is specifically charged with deliberately lying to U.S. government investigators when asked if he received Chinese talent-plan funding, rather than simply omitting the information on forms.
(from the WSJ)

State Economies

                                  State Economies

America’s largest state economy is California, which produced more than $3 trillion of economic output in 2019, more than India’s GDP last year of $2.9 trillion. Consider this: California has a labor force of 19.5 million compared to India’s labor force of 519 million (World Bank data). California as a separate country would have been the 5th largest economy in the world last year, ahead of India ($2.81 trillion), UK ($2.74 trillion) and France ($2.71 trillion).

America’s second-largest state economy – Texas – produced nearly $1.9 trillion of economic output in 2019, which would have ranked the Lone Star State as the world’s 9th largest economy last year. GDP in Texas was slightly higher than Brazil’s GDP last year of $1.85 trillion. However, to produce about the same amount of economic output as Texas required a labor force in Brazil (106 million) that was 7.5 times larger than the labor force in the state of Texas (14 million).

America’s third-largest state economy – New York with a GDP in 2019 of $1.73 trillion – produced slightly more economic output last year than the entire country of neighboring Canada ($1.70 trillion). As a separate country, New York would have ranked as the world’s 10th largest economy last year, ahead of No. 11 Canada ($1.70 trillion), No. 12 Russia ($1.64 trillion) and No. 13 Korea ($1.63 trillion).

Florida ($1.09 trillion) produced about the same amount of GDP in 2019 as Indonesia ($1.1 trillion), even though Florida’s labor force of 10.5 million is less than 8% of the size of Indonesia’s workforce of 134 million.

Even with all of its oil resources and wealth, Saudi Arabia’s GDP in 2019 at $779 billion was below the GDP of US states like Pennsylvania ($814 billion) and Illinois ($898 billion).

Overall, the US produced nearly 25% of world GDP in 2019 ($87.2 trillion), with only about 4.3% of the world’s population. Four of America’s states (California, Texas, New York and Florida) produced more than $1 trillion in output and as separate countries and each would have ranked in the world’s top 17 largest economies last year. Together, those four US states produced nearly $8 trillion in economic output last year, and as a separate country would have ranked as the world’s third-largest economy.

Adjusted for the size of the workforce, there might not be any country in the world that produces as much output per worker as the US, thanks to the world-class productivity of the American workforce.

The Inquisitors of Art

                              The Inquisitors of Art

In December 2018 Chinyere Ezie, a lawyer at a social-justice nonprofit, discovered Prada’s Pradamalia collection. Prada described its bag charms, figurines, and other trinkets as “a new family of mysterious tiny creatures that are one part biological, one part technological, all parts Prada.” Ms. Ezie instead saw “blackface imagery” and “Sambo like imagery,” she wrote in a Facebook post that went viral.

Within days, Prada pulled the merchandise and said it “never had the intention of offending anyone and we abhor all forms of racism and racist imagery." Ms. Ezie still filed a complaint. In this week’s settlement, Prada denies engaging in unlawful discriminatory practices. Yet the agreement gives New York City bureaucrats broad influence over the fashion house’s day-to-day operations, including its creative process, training, and hiring.

Prada now must appoint a diversity and inclusion officer who can review all of “Prada’s designs before they are sold, advertised or promoted in any way in the United States.” The diversity cop will ensure that “Prada’s activities, including, without limitation, its production, advertising, and business activities, are conducted in a racially equitable manner.”

Commissioner Carmelyn Malalis said this “really never became about a free speech issue” because Prada was “immediately very cooperative” with regulators. But it’s only a matter of time before the inclusion czar nixes creative content over a political sin.

Prada also must create an advisory council to help the company “stay abreast of global social issues related to race, culture, and diversity” and “create meaningful and cooperative partnerships with social justice organizations, including organizations that advance equity for marginalized communities, including communities of color.” 

(In the original statement, organizations are referred to as people.)

The settlement requires Prada to provide the human-rights commission with “a report describing the demographic make-up of Prada’s staff at all levels” and “evidence that it has taken meaningful steps towards increasing the number of people from protected classes under-represented in the fashion industry, including people of color, among all levels of its staff.”

It is said that there was a bottleneck in history, a narrow place in time where, out of a vast and diverse homo sapien population, only a small group slipped through to populate the future. They brought with them the qualities that have allowed us to develop and hinder our success. That bottleneck must have allowed through farsightedness and the jeweler's eye. It also allowed the pure of heart and the tyrannically pure. The latter always reappear in every generation in various soul-crushing guises.

(Much from a WSJ piece)

Sunday/Salty Language

                     Sunday/Salty Language

In the gospel today, Christ calls his disciples "the salt of the earth." There is a lot to it. Salt has a number of connotations of value and meaning. The phrase itself raised an interesting concept: Did the spirituality Christ and his followers were offering add an element to mankind or was it revealing mankind's essence?

Christ is certainly saying that the salt is its own essence, its own common denominator. It cannot be flavored.

And the passage has some unfortunate elements too, especially as an "evolutionary" passage. The Catholic Church has tried to update the language, arguing that the bible is not primarily literature.

Compare the original King James with the more accessible version:

"Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men."
vs.
“You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned? It is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.”

How long do you think they debated over "savour" vs, "taste?"

There are sacrifices egalitarianism demands.

STEM, Gender and AP

                            STEM, Gender, and AP

Discrimination in its numerous subtle guises is offered to explain the differences in STEM gender disparities. But here’s another possible explanation for the female shortages in STEM and economics starting in high school: Boys have a greater interest than their female counterparts in STEM and economics and demonstrate a higher level of aptitude in STEM and economics. In all 14 STEM and economics AP subjects as shown in the top two graphs, high school boys out-perform high school girls based on average test scores in 2019. More high school boys than girls received scores of 5 (the highest score) in the 13 subjects, and in some cases (three of the physics subjects) the male-female ratio was more than 4-to-1. In other subjects (Microeconomics, Computer Science and Physics Mechanics), the male-female ratio was greater than 2-to-1.

These graphs are from Perry.

Tweaking the Scales

                     Tweaking the Scales

Britain’s Prince Andrew has provided “zero cooperation” to the American investigators who want to interview him as part of their sex trafficking probe into Jeffrey Epstein, a U.S. prosecutor said Monday. Speaking at a news conference outside Epstein’s New York mansion, U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said prosecutors and the FBI had contacted Andrew’s lawyers and asked to interview him. “To date, Prince Andrew has provided zero cooperation,” said Berman, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan.

Buckingham Palace declined to comment.

At a news conference outside Epstein’s New York mansion? Why is that? And why was there a news conference at all? Aren't there well-worn pathways for the wagon wheels of justice to follow? Procedures and policies? Cautious and constitutionally sensitive routines to pursue in investigations?

Or is this just Schiff-like tropism, seeking the light of the camera?

It sounds like more, more than just self-aggrandizing or an hour to make the wife proud. Outside Epstein’s New York mansion? It sounds like a planned effort to garner publicity. The Feds are doing publicity stunts?

Putting aside the theoretical problems of influencing potential jurors, is this what we want? Having the Feds scrounging some downtime in the very free press to hype an investigation? Or, as Chris argues, is the system--and the Press--so corrupt and in thrall to political and financial interest that Justice needs the help?

Bringing Back the Stone Age

                      Bringing Back the Stone Age

Clean-burning natural gas has reduced CO2 emissions in the U.S. back to levels experienced in the early 1990s, yielding a 15% reduction in overall U.S. carbon emissions, more than any other country. This with a growing population and an exploding economy. It would be interesting to see how those results compare to the signers of the Paris Accord. Yet almost the entire Democratic field for president wants to dismantle and destroy the industry that has done more for middle-class Americans than any other over the past 10 years. U.S. electricity costs are the envy of the industrialized world. Subsidized energy alternative energy sources are a source of tremendous domestic disruption in France and Germany. Russia has a major disinformation campaign about fracking in Europe to reduce fracking competition for their gas.

Lower energy prices are like a progressive tax cut that helps the poorest households most. But Democrats would reverse all of it. A bill introduced last week by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) with help from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) would ban hydraulic fracking nationwide by 2025. That ban would increase CO2 emissions and restore Russia as the world’s top energy superpower. And it would raise baseline budgets across the country.

Incompetence usually trumps malice in government but this kind of thinking is hard to place in a reasonable context. On the other hand, maybe standing in front of a freight train of progress is mainly posturing. And fatal.

SOTU

                                                    SOTU

I rarely watch the SOTU but, after Iowa, I did. It was astonishing. Somehow Trump, on some primal level, understands these political people and holds a mirror up to them; what they see drives them nuts.

Trump spent the evening listing his accomplishments. The point in this country, of course, is the achievements of the State within clear borders defined by the Constitution, but no politician cares about that. The list was long but, amazingly,  locked in to their political hardware, the Democrat counter-speech emphasized "accomplishments," like fixing potholes.

Trump filled the evening with political handouts, real time awards a la Oprah, patriotic bravado and schmaltz as if plagiarized from the Democrat playbook. The Dems responded with pouting and, in a rare look behind Pelosi's curtain, gross petulance. JLo and Shakira did not appear.

An evening of theatrical posturing, insincerity and childishness with Trump looking like the grownup.

The political class may never recover.

Trust vs. Reliance

                          Trust vs. Reliance

Declines in trust of government correlate strongly with calls for more government regulation in more parts of our lives. "Individuals in low-trust countries want more government intervention even though they know the government is corrupt," explain the authors of a 2010 Quarterly Journal of Economics paper. That's certainly the case in the United States, where the size, scope, and spending of government has vastly increased over exactly the same period in which trust and confidence in the government has cratered. In 2018, one of the paper's authors, Andrei Shleifer, a Harvard economist who grew up in the Soviet Union before coming to America, was asked, why do citizens ask a government they don't believe in to bring order? "They want regulation," he said. "They want a dictator who will bring back order."

While this might be a simplistic--or Russian--explanation, the correlation is curious.

Counterintuitively, the relative size and spending of government in the United States actually flattened or dipped during periods when trust and confidence in government picked up:

From 1994 to 2001, Pew data show upticks in the number of people who trust the government to mostly do the right thing…. Using inflation-adjusted dollars, the feds spent about $250 billion more in [Bill] Clinton's last year than in his first, a small increase compared to the spending surges seen under Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. Viewed as a percentage of GDP, federal spending fell significantly during that period. In 1991, it equaled 21 percent. By 2001, it equaled just 17.5 percent.

It could also be that lack of confidence in government is taught, that it rises when government action is more prominent. On the other hand, in a crisis people may just turn to the seemingly strongest solution.

Bad Rumors, Righteous Responses

                            Bad Rumors, Righteous Responses


Facebook Inc said it will take down misinformation about China’s fast-spreading coronavirus, in a rare departure from its usual approach to dubious health content that is presenting a fresh challenge for social media companies. How "dubious" is defined is anyone's guess.

Here is a particularly delicious one.

There is a theory that China obtained the coronavirus via a Canadian research program, and started molding it into a bioweapon at the Institute of Virology in Wuhan.

The narrative is that the virus, which was developed by infectious disease experts, may have originated in the Wuhan-based lab of Dr. Peng Zhou, China's preeminent researcher of bat immune systems. The lab specializes in how bat immune systems adapt to the presence of viruses like coronavirus and other destructive viruses. Somehow, the virus escaped from the lab, and the Hunan fish market where the virus supposedly originated is merely a ruse.

Now, a respected epidemiologist, who recently caught flack for claiming in a twitter threat that the virus appeared to be much more contagious than initially believed, is pointing out irregularities in the virus's genome that suggests it might have been genetically engineered for the purposes of a weapon, and not just any weapon but a really deadly one.

In "Uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag", Indian researchers are baffled by segments of the virus's RNA that have no relation to other coronaviruses like SARS, and instead appear to be closer to HIV. The virus even responds to treatment by HIV medications.

Just as if it were built.

Sunday/Simeon

                              Sunday/Simeon

The Feast of the Presentation is one of the oldest feasts of the Christian church. Also known as Candlemas, it is a Christian Holy Day commemorating the presentation of Jesus at the Temple. It is based upon the account in Luke 2:22–40. This is an old Mosaic law where the mother is "purified" 40 days after the birth of a boy, 80 days after a girl, and returns to society after seclusion. In accordance with Leviticus 12: a woman was to be purified by presenting lamb as a burnt offering, and either a young pigeon or dove as a sin offering, 33 days after a boy's circumcision. At the same time, a boy was "bought back" from God, "ransomed," a reference to the deaths of the first-borns in the escape from Egypt.

While it is customary for Christians in some countries to remove their Christmas decorations on Twelfth Night (Epiphany Eve), those in other Christian countries historically remove them on Candlemas.

I traditionally remove my Christmas decorations around the 4th of July

The blessed candles serve as a symbol of Jesus Christ, who referred to Himself as the Light of the World. It is a very interesting--and usually ignored by the rabbis--that Isiah, who references this "light of the world" image earlier, does it in terms of the Gentiles.

(And, especially with the virus loose, you might be interested in the other use for the candles, throat blessing for St. Blaze Day Monday.)

The family encounters a prophet, Simeon, who has been waiting his whole life for this moment. He says,

Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace,
according to your word;
for my eyes have seen your salvation
that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
and for glory to your people Israel.

This scene is the source of the T.S. Eliot poem, "The Song of Simeon," an overlooked poem, surprisingly sad and ominous compared to the source's jubilation.

                 A Song for Simeon

Lord, the Roman hyacinths are blooming in bowls and
The winter sun creeps by the snow hills;
The stubborn season has made stand.
My life is light, waiting for the death wind,
Like a feather on the back of my hand.
Dust in sunlight and memory in corners
Wait for the wind that chills towards the dead land.

Grant us thy peace.
I have walked many years in this city,
Kept faith and fast, provided for the poor,
Have taken and given honour and ease.
There went never any rejected from my door.
Who shall remember my house, where shall live my children’s children
When the time of sorrow is come?
They will take to the goat’s path, and the fox’s home,
Fleeing from the foreign faces and the foreign swords.

Before the time of cords and scourges and lamentation
Grant us thy peace.
Before the stations of the mountain of desolation,
Before the certain hour of maternal sorrow,
Now at this birth season of decease,
Let the Infant, the still unspeaking and unspoken Word,
Grant Israel’s consolation
To one who has eighty years and no tomorrow.

According to thy word,
They shall praise Thee and suffer in every generation
With glory and derision,
Light upon light, mounting the saints’ stair.
Not for me the martyrdom, the ecstasy of thought and prayer,
Not for me the ultimate vision.
Grant me thy peace.
(And a sword shall pierce thy heart,
Thine also).
I am tired with my own life and the lives of those after me,
I am dying in my own death and the deaths of those after me.
Let thy servant depart,
Having seen thy salvation.

Graphs and Art

                              Graphs and Art

After increasing about three-fold between 1950 and 2000 at an average rate of about 2.3% per year, total US energy consumption peaked in about 2000 at around 100,000 trillion BTUs and has been flat for about the last two decades. And over that 20-year period, US real GDP has increased by almost 50%! CO2 emissions in the US over the next decade are expected to continue a downward trend that started in 2007, and by 2030 will fall to the lowest level since 1986 and 22% below the 2007 peak.


US energy production as a share of energy consumption topped 100% for the first time since 1956 as America was actually a net energy exporter for the first time in more than 60 years. In 2005 the US produced less than 70% of its energy consumed as the country’s energy self-sufficiency reached an all-time low.



Japanese artist Kumi Yamashita winds a single black thread around a grid of nails on a wooden board to create intricate portraits.

The Coronavirus is less lethal but more communicable than SARS.

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10:12 AM - Jan 31, 2020