"Car Mechanic Simulator." I kid you not.
Hey, kids! Want to spend several sweaty afternoons cursing and cutting your knuckles up trying to find the right wrench to undo a rusty bolt? Long to spend hours trying to figure out the right order to disassemble, clean, and then reassemble a carburetor? Care to memorize the timing sequences of numerous engines? Do we have a deal for you! For the low, low price of only....
Is there a retirement crisis?
Andrews Biggs and Sylvester Schieber argue that there isn't. Their figures for retirement income include what workers saved for themselves, as well as what they'll receive from the government-mandated "retirement" program we call Social Security, in which a lot of money is taken from the worker throughout his career, not invested, and partially redistributed to him at below-market interest rates according to whatever Congress decides will garner the most votes.
We'll never know how much the workers could have saved for retirement without these career-long expropriations from their paychecks. As is usual in this sort of analysis, the answer probably is that the more prudent among them would have saved a ton and invested it in a reasonably diverse portfolio, and had a fine nest-egg upon retirement, while the less prudent would have found that an uncaring and unjust society conspired against them to ensure that they either never saved or lost it all later.
So Social Security continues to redistribute money from ants to the grasshoppers, or (if you prefer) from the lucky to the unlucky, while nevertheless serving as a vehicle to transfer wealth from the needy to the wealthy, which you have to admit is a neat trick. All it requires is selling the program as forcible retirement savings (which is what it takes to get votes to implement it) but administering it as a current subsidy of old retirees by young workers (which is what it takes to delay the day on which you acknowledge that it's flat broke, so that you'd be forced to discontinue it and take your political lumps). This rhetorical gambit reminds me of how industrial society is simultaneously causing global warming and global cooling. The important takeaway is: the government must always intervene to prevent a catastrophe! Unless, of course, voters decide to cut it out.
We'll never know how much the workers could have saved for retirement without these career-long expropriations from their paychecks. As is usual in this sort of analysis, the answer probably is that the more prudent among them would have saved a ton and invested it in a reasonably diverse portfolio, and had a fine nest-egg upon retirement, while the less prudent would have found that an uncaring and unjust society conspired against them to ensure that they either never saved or lost it all later.
So Social Security continues to redistribute money from ants to the grasshoppers, or (if you prefer) from the lucky to the unlucky, while nevertheless serving as a vehicle to transfer wealth from the needy to the wealthy, which you have to admit is a neat trick. All it requires is selling the program as forcible retirement savings (which is what it takes to get votes to implement it) but administering it as a current subsidy of old retirees by young workers (which is what it takes to delay the day on which you acknowledge that it's flat broke, so that you'd be forced to discontinue it and take your political lumps). This rhetorical gambit reminds me of how industrial society is simultaneously causing global warming and global cooling. The important takeaway is: the government must always intervene to prevent a catastrophe! Unless, of course, voters decide to cut it out.
Priorities
Steyn, reflecting on border security's seizure of bagpipes and other inexplicable dangers to the republic:
Come to that, US border security devotes more time and resources to my kid bringing in a Kinder chocolate egg from Canada than to Thomas Duncan bringing in Ebola. . . .
If you're wondering why the seizure of my kids' chocolate eggs is in the same book as war and terrorism and all the big-boy stuff, the answer is it's part of the same story. To function, institutions have to be able to prioritize -- even big, bloated, money-no-object SWAT-teams-for-every-penpusher institutions like the US Government. You can't crack down on Kinder eggs, bagpipes and Ebola: At a certain point, you have to choose. My line with the Homeland Security guys is a simple one: every 20 minutes you spend on me, or my kids' chocolate eggs, or Cameron Webster's bagpipe is 20 minutes you're not spending on the guy with Ebola, or Tamerlan Tsarnaev. The price of bagpipe scrutiny is a big hole blown in the lives of American families attending the Boston Marathon, or a bunch of schoolkids in Dallas having to be quarantined for a vicious, ravaging disease with a high fatality rate.
But, of course, giving additional attention to West African visitors would be racist. Not like terrorizing Scotsmen over their bagpipes.
Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security expands its curious priorities from raiding Boston strip clubs for selling knock-off Red Sox T-shirts to raiding private homes to seize vintage cars that don't meet EPA standards.
"You Got Me. I Ain't Even Married."
1990 was long ago. 24 years, I guess: I wonder if as much changed between 1950 and 1974? Between 1974 and 1998?
Perhaps things did. Perhaps things wither away so quickly now that it is like trying to stand firm on quicksand. Perhaps: but that puts me in mind of an old story.
Cottage Bakers Unite!
Speaking of the way regulations destroy small businesses, a good way to estimate the damage is to repeal a few regulations and see what happens:
Since Texas does not issue permits or licenses for cottage food production operations, the state does not have a precise way to track them. However, anyone who wants to operate a cottage food business is required to become a certified food handler. In Texas, there are at least two organizations that offer courses specifically designed for cottage food: Texas Food Safety Training and Texas A&M AgriLife Extension. Between the two of them, over 1,400 individuals have purchased and completed courses over the past year. Given that cottage food entrepreneurs can also comply with the state’s regulations by taking a general food handler course, the true number of home baking businesses may be even higher.This makes a huge amount of sense, as many kinds of foods are very safe and don't require tight regulations to ensure consumer health. Breads may have eggs or milk in them, say, but they're going to be baked at several hundred degrees until they are dry and firm. As long as the ingredients were relatively fresh, there's very little danger. If you use powdered milk and eggs, the danger nearly ceases to exist.
The future is dire . . .
. . . and always has been. From The Age of Global Warming: a History, by Rupert Darwall, about the "small is beautiful" movement that inspired a lot of environmentalists to abandon not only capitalism but the very idea that an economic system should be evaluated by its ability to produce growth and prosperity:
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) set up a study group chaired by Harvey Brooks, a Harvard engineering professor. In a 1971 report, the group argued that developed societies were fast approaching a condition of near saturation. Even in higher education, people were suffering from information overload which risked stifling the production of new knowledge.Somehow or another, new knowledge was produced after 1971, but perhaps not by this guy and his buddies.
What Ails American Democracy?
Fukuyama writes:
But the last time the American political system girded itself up and did what it wanted in spite of clear and robust public opinion, what we got was the ACA -- the worst piece of legislation in the history of the country, the ramifications of which are still not clear years after it passed and which no one had even read at the time they passed it. They could not have read it: it was too long, and passed in too short a time, for a human being to have gotten through it even had it been as easy and light as a romance novel, let alone the technically dense and logically disrupted tangle that it was. What we get when the elite put aside their concern for the 'veto' of public opinion is exactly this.
Another example he raises is infrastructure. But there's no opposition from the American people to repairing infrastructure. The only opposition comes from within the elite class itself:
The roads are a little rougher than they used to be, but that's OK: there isn't as much industrial traffic. Or agricultural traffic either: all the local dairies that used to be here have gone out of business due to the cost of increased regulations.
Speaking of milk, have you noticed how steep the price is for a gallon of milk lately? Partially that's from driving farmers out of the market, but partially it's from robust regulation. The USDA congratulates itself on its regulation of that market, as the regulators openly disdain the market as a method for balancing supply and demand.
There's one more thing that is at work, which is that people nationally don't agree on what should be done in many cases. Localities have the kind of agreement about political problems that can produce progress; nationally we are divided, and shouldn't expect or even want "progress." All "progress" of that kind would mean is increasing the tension between Americans.
So from my perspective, the problem isn't that the government can't get anything done. The problem is that it shouldn't be doing at least half the things it's trying to do.
Democracy is like the market in that it takes advantage of local information to make complex decisions. For that reason, its effects work best when they remain local: when townships and school boards and churches and clubs vote on the rules that govern them as bodies. The more power is centralized, and the more it is slowed by the ossification that comes with size and bureaucracy, the more even democratic decisions are bad ones.
Want to fix America? Push power down. Break the Federal government's stranglehold on everything except its few limited, Constitutional roles. Eliminate most of the government, repeal all regulations back to say the first Bush administration, and have state and local governments decide which ones they want.
The Federal government can retain its basic role, the one Jefferson thought was important:
But do these few things, and nothing else, at the Federal level. That would radically reduce the power available to the elite, and radically increase democratic forms. It would also improve the nation in every respect.
The fundamental problem, he argues, lies in the Madisonian machinery of American constitutional law. The Founders’ separation of powers can generate positive outcomes only when political opponents trust one another sufficiently to approve one another’s nominees, support one another’s bills, and practice the grubby but essential arts of political compromise. When the spirit of trust breaks down, the result is not democracy but vetocracy, a term coined by Fukuyama. Too many political players—courts, congressional committees, special interests like the National Rifle Association and the American Medical Association, independent commissions, regulatory authorities—have acquired the power to veto measures; too few have the power to get things done....I'm sure it would be easier to get things done if bureaucrats didn't have to ask the people very often. In recommending a more British system, what he wants is what Sir Humphrey wants: control of the important things taken out of the hands of the barbarians.
Contemporary American conservatism has no solution to paralysis; “starving the beast” ignores the necessity of capable government regulation for any efficient capitalist economy. The progressive side, Fukuyama argues, is equally at fault: encumbering American government with contradictory and unfunded mandates only reduces public confidence in the state’s capacity to serve its citizens fairly and efficiently.
What separates Fukuyama’s analysis from conservative and progressive polemics alike is his argument that this crisis of government results from “too much law and too much ‘democracy’ relative to American state capacity.”
But the last time the American political system girded itself up and did what it wanted in spite of clear and robust public opinion, what we got was the ACA -- the worst piece of legislation in the history of the country, the ramifications of which are still not clear years after it passed and which no one had even read at the time they passed it. They could not have read it: it was too long, and passed in too short a time, for a human being to have gotten through it even had it been as easy and light as a romance novel, let alone the technically dense and logically disrupted tangle that it was. What we get when the elite put aside their concern for the 'veto' of public opinion is exactly this.
Another example he raises is infrastructure. But there's no opposition from the American people to repairing infrastructure. The only opposition comes from within the elite class itself:
The president-elect's original plan was designed to stop the hemorrhaging in construction and manufacturing while investing in physical infrastructure that is indispensable for long-term economic growth. It was not a grab bag of gender-correct programs, nor was it a macho plan--the whole idea of economic stimulus is to use government spending to put idle factors of production back to work.Now I will admit that our public libraries are looking better these days. Both of the ones within twenty-five miles of here have undergone significant expansion, adding computer rooms and staff (who are not only exclusively female, but the only people in that twenty-five mile radius with Obama bumper stickers). Mission accomplished!
The president-elect responded to the protests by sending Jason Furman, his soon-to-be deputy director at the National Economic Council, along with his senior aides to a meeting organized by Kim Gandy and Feminist Majority president Eleanor Smeal. Gandy described the scene:
I can't resist saying that this meeting didn't look like the other transition meetings I attended. In addition to the presence of more women, the room actually looked different--because Feminist Majority President Ellie Smeal had asked that the chairs be set in a circle, with no table in the center.
The senior economists listened attentively as Gandy and Smeal and other advocates argued for a stimulus package that would add jobs for nurses, social workers, teachers, and librarians in our crumbling "human infrastructure" (they had found their testosterone-free slogan). Did Furman mention that jobs in the "human infrastructure"--health, education, and government--had increased by more than half a million since December 2007?
The roads are a little rougher than they used to be, but that's OK: there isn't as much industrial traffic. Or agricultural traffic either: all the local dairies that used to be here have gone out of business due to the cost of increased regulations.
Speaking of milk, have you noticed how steep the price is for a gallon of milk lately? Partially that's from driving farmers out of the market, but partially it's from robust regulation. The USDA congratulates itself on its regulation of that market, as the regulators openly disdain the market as a method for balancing supply and demand.
There's one more thing that is at work, which is that people nationally don't agree on what should be done in many cases. Localities have the kind of agreement about political problems that can produce progress; nationally we are divided, and shouldn't expect or even want "progress." All "progress" of that kind would mean is increasing the tension between Americans.
So from my perspective, the problem isn't that the government can't get anything done. The problem is that it shouldn't be doing at least half the things it's trying to do.
Democracy is like the market in that it takes advantage of local information to make complex decisions. For that reason, its effects work best when they remain local: when townships and school boards and churches and clubs vote on the rules that govern them as bodies. The more power is centralized, and the more it is slowed by the ossification that comes with size and bureaucracy, the more even democratic decisions are bad ones.
Want to fix America? Push power down. Break the Federal government's stranglehold on everything except its few limited, Constitutional roles. Eliminate most of the government, repeal all regulations back to say the first Bush administration, and have state and local governments decide which ones they want.
The Federal government can retain its basic role, the one Jefferson thought was important:
With respect to our State and federal governments, I do not think their relations correctly understood by foreigners. They generally suppose the former subordinate to the latter. But this is not the case. They are co-ordinate departments of one simple and integral whole. To the State governments are reserved all legislation and administration, in affairs which concern their own citizens only, and to the federal government is given whatever concerns foreigners, or the citizens of other States; these functions alone being made federal. The one is the domestic, the other the foreign branch of the same government; neither having control over the other, but within its own department. There are one or two exceptions only to this partition of power. But, you may ask, if the two departments should claim each the same subject of power, where is the common umpire to decide ultimately between them? In cases of little importance or urgency, the prudence of both parties will keep them aloof from the questionable ground: but if it can neither be avoided nor compromised, a convention of the States must be called, to ascribe the doubtful power to that department which they may think best.We've added one more constitutional role to Jefferson's ideal, which is making sure that even within states government does not violate basic rights. Generally the Federal government has done this badly, but at times they've been the only one to do it at all. For now, it might be retained.
But do these few things, and nothing else, at the Federal level. That would radically reduce the power available to the elite, and radically increase democratic forms. It would also improve the nation in every respect.
A Less Democratic Process
Another police department shuttered, this time because their insurance refused to continue to cover them. Too many lawsuits:
According to PEP Executive Vice President JT. Babish, these “variables” are lawsuits stemming from wage disputes, employment harassment, wrongful terminations, allegations of wrongful arrest and violations of civil rights within the departments.I'm surprised by that. Traditional motorcycle clubs either exclude police, or are made up only of police. It's rare to see overlap.
Nine of these lawsuits are currently ongoing which led to PEP dropping the coverage claiming that they could not keep up with the cost of all the suits....
The closure of the Lincoln Heights police department comes just days after a revealing investigation into the overwhelming corruption within the department. The investigation revealed that the department had not only hired, but heavily promoted an officer with a felony background, who was later fired for felony theft on duty.
The investigation also found that one officer was fired and rehired who had a history of harassing female drivers and was an actual member of several biker gangs known for their felonious activity.
It's a Start
A propos some other discussions we've had.
I could live without the dinner party lessons, though....
Eric Hines
I could live without the dinner party lessons, though....
Eric Hines
Condescending Political Ads
Cassandra is talking about a Cosmopolitan complaint about political ads from male candidates that are condescending to women.
Well, if it makes you feel any better, there's plenty of this to go around.
I'm not even from Kentucky, and I'm feeling the condescension. So your qualifications for office are (a) you're not Barack Obama, and (b) you can shoot skeet?
Well, if it makes you feel any better, there's plenty of this to go around.
I'm not even from Kentucky, and I'm feeling the condescension. So your qualifications for office are (a) you're not Barack Obama, and (b) you can shoot skeet?
On the Workings of the System
A sub-debate between Cass and I has to do with how well the system we have still responds to democratic pressures. The Federal system is problematic, to be sure. Obamacare has been underwater forever, and only gets less popular, and yet no repeal is in sight until perhaps 2017 -- depending on what other issues come up between now and then. Democratic pressures have not been successful at reforming the law, and indeed the system is structurally such that even wave elections in 2010 and possibly this year can't produce reform. Meanwhile, the changes to the insurance landscape in America are going to be so sweeping by 2017 that it's not clear if things can still be undone by that time.
On the other hand, at the local level, things still work sometimes. On the very issue we were discussing -- abusive writing of traffic tickets for revenue -- the little town of Waldo, FL, has had a stunning success at stopping the problem through democratic means.
On the other hand, at the local level, things still work sometimes. On the very issue we were discussing -- abusive writing of traffic tickets for revenue -- the little town of Waldo, FL, has had a stunning success at stopping the problem through democratic means.
In August, five Waldo officers rebelled against their superiors and made a presentation to the city council about the malpractices.... After State Attorney Bill Cervone advised that he would bring a case before the Alachua Grand Jury that would be “humiliating,” the city council voted to disband the notoriously corrupt police department.Now, it took good officers stepping forward to report the abuses to force action, as well as the State Attorney's threat. Still, the system worked: a corrupt department was identified and disbanded by the democratically-elected city council. Well done, all around.
Stand aside, sonny!
As my husband remarked, you have to wonder if the Fed took into account what would happen when "retirees" found the return on their retirement savings had gone to zero? It might have guessed that they'd go back to work. It turns out that they're still pretty competitive:
The further one digs into today's "blockbuster" jobs report, the uglier it gets. Because it is not only the participation rate collapse, the slide in average earnings, but, topping it all off, we just learned that the future of the US workforce is bleak. In fact, with the age of the median employed male now in their mid-40's, the US workforce has never been older. Case in point: the September data confimed that the whopping surge in jobs... was thanks to your "grandparents" those in the 55-69 age group, which comprised the vast majority of the job additions in the month, at a whopping 230K.This was the biggest monthly jobs increase in the 55 and over age group since February!
What about the prime worker demographic, those aged 25-54 and whose work output is supposed to propel the US economy forward? They lost 10,000 jobs.Some thought-provoking charts at that link. Will Affordable-Healthcare-for-All have to kill off Gramma and Grampa before employers break down and hire the youngsters? And have you checked out the voting patterns among the Grizzled Grumblers?
"Why Medieval Logic Matters"
The three greatest centuries for logic were the 4th BC, the 14th AD, and the 19th AD. The philosopher interviewed here suggests that this order is not merely temporal but is also the order of importance, such that if we were to speak of the "two greatest centuries for logic" the 19th century would drop out.
Want to know why? Enjoy wrestling with a thorny paradox or two?
Want to know why? Enjoy wrestling with a thorny paradox or two?
What truly deserves the title ‘paradox’ is the Knower paradox. Consider the proposition, ‘You don’t know this proposition’—call it U, say. Suppose you know U. Then U is true (one can only know truths), so you don’t know U. Contradiction, so (by reductio ad absurdum) you don’t know U. But that is what U says. So U is true, and moreover, you’ve just proved it’s true, so you know U. That really is a contradiction—we can prove both that you know U and that you don’t, that is, that U is both true and false. But surely that’s impossible!Consider the solutions. Do you like the 14th century solution better than the contemporary ones?
Can You Read English and French? Try Romanian.
It's a bit of work, to be sure, but there's a straight-line connection. Romanian is 20% Latin, and 43% borrowed Romance loan-words. (Don't laugh: English is 75% borrowed Romance loan-words, thanks to William I.)
Istoria creării cerurilor şi a pământuluiLooks very intimidating, with all those inflections and nonstandard characters. But I'll bet you can work it out.
La început, Dumnezeu[a] a creat cerurile şi pământul. Pământul era pustiu şi gol; peste faţa adâncului era întuneric, iar Duhul lui Dumnezeu plutea peste întinderea apelor.
Atunci Dumnezeu a zis: „Să fie lumină!“; şi a fost lumină. Dumnezeu a văzut că lumina era bună şi a despărţit lumina de întuneric. Dumnezeu a numit lumina „zi“, iar întunericul l-a numit „noapte“. A fost o seară şi a fost o dimineaţă: ziua întâi.
More Laments, and Beautiful
Pity upon those for whom these speak the truer.
'Great sweetheart... they poured your blood yesterday.'
'The prophecy was nigh... ride fifty miles, and not hear the crow of a cock...'
'Great sweetheart... they poured your blood yesterday.'
'The prophecy was nigh... ride fifty miles, and not hear the crow of a cock...'
Service
Today I did my feudal service in return for another year of holding, in fee simple, this land from our Great State of Georgia. I also paid all my automobile taxes and tag fees to pay for another year's excitement on the highway.
What happens when that fee is no more paid, because the one who held in fee simple has died and another cannot stand good? We've made it seem so small a matter -- just taxes and accounting -- but it is not that. The world falls apart: the world of a people. Enemies come rushing in to tear apart the world you held for yourself and your family, and it vanishes forever. That is the story at the end of the Beowulf when the king dies who could hold a place in the world for the Geats to live free, and likewise at the end of the Iliad with the mourning for Hector of Troy. Both poems end in lament for the one who held it together, so that for a while a life and a people could flourish.
What happens when that fee is no more paid, because the one who held in fee simple has died and another cannot stand good? We've made it seem so small a matter -- just taxes and accounting -- but it is not that. The world falls apart: the world of a people. Enemies come rushing in to tear apart the world you held for yourself and your family, and it vanishes forever. That is the story at the end of the Beowulf when the king dies who could hold a place in the world for the Geats to live free, and likewise at the end of the Iliad with the mourning for Hector of Troy. Both poems end in lament for the one who held it together, so that for a while a life and a people could flourish.
Quarantine
I'm confused again. The UN thinks travel restrictions on Ebola-ravaged countries are misguided, because they don't reflect the way the disease is transmitted, which is (apparently usually) by direct contact during an overtly symptomatic period. It's as if the UN spokesman thought the only concern was that fellow passengers in an airplane might be infected; if the passenger has no fever when he boards, everything is in all likelihood going to be fine. But that's not really the only issue, is it? We just had a rather graphic example of what happens when someone still feels fine when he lands, but becomes symptomatic later, and wanders all over the place throwing up on the public for a few days before someone puts a net over him and gets him into isolation.
It's hard for me to understand why we wouldn't, at a minimum, quarantine for 21 days everyone who presents himself at our borders direct from an Ebola hotspot. Yes, people will be able to get around this restriction by taking an indirect route, and there is that problem of the completely porous southern border, but it would at least help.
I'm sorry, I just realized I'm taking up digital space criticizing a policy advocated by a UN representative. On the other hand, the CDC seems to be on the same page, so maybe it's worth talking about after all.
It's hard for me to understand why we wouldn't, at a minimum, quarantine for 21 days everyone who presents himself at our borders direct from an Ebola hotspot. Yes, people will be able to get around this restriction by taking an indirect route, and there is that problem of the completely porous southern border, but it would at least help.
I'm sorry, I just realized I'm taking up digital space criticizing a policy advocated by a UN representative. On the other hand, the CDC seems to be on the same page, so maybe it's worth talking about after all.
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