Category: Uncategorized

Mailvox: update requested

CA writes to inquire about QM, progress on Book Two, and other matters:

Just wondering how your writing projects have been going. A few weeks back you mentioned that you would talk about Quantum Mortis that you are co-writing with Steve Rzasa (I know about the co-authoring part cause I found the mention of QM on Rzasa’s site before it showed up on yours.) You haven’t yet mentioned anything. When are you going to spill the beans? 😉

Also wondering how Book 2 of Arts of Dark and Light is coming? How close are you to having a first draft of the book? What’s the page count so far? Any tasty morsels that you can drop for us readers? Looking forward to your writing,

I have to apologize for the light posting last week. I was rather busy with my day job, which involved a technology conference that was truly excellent. I had the distinct privilege of meeting the founder of the Pirate Party, and you can expect to see an interview with him posted here in the reasonably near future. I’m also going to see if I can arrange to do a Lions Den of his tactical manual, Swarmwise.

I also had the chance to see my better-looking intellectual twin again, which is always a delight. While everyone else was discussing who Yahoo was overpaying for next and the wisdom of staying out of the way of Google in the consumer space, we were talking about the implications of Janet Yellen at the Fed, various gold conspiracy theories, and the possibility of the pseudo-shutdown turning into a real one. Great fun and I learned a lot from a number of different people. It was easily the best conference I’ve been to since the 1996 CGDC in Santa Clara.

As to Quantum Mortis, it is the result of the realization that TAODAL will prevent me from getting around to any of my other ideas for at least five years. QM is based upon a novella I started about 12 years ago and somehow managed to lose in the transition from one computer to another. When it turned up again, I read it and really liked the idea, but I knew I couldn’t justify taking the time to turn it into a proper novel.

So, I contacted Steve, handed it over to him, and he turned the beginning into a complete novel. I took 30 days off of Book Two to rewrite certain parts and add some new sections, and finished it last week. Two of the regulars who shall remain nameless for the present have read the draft, and I will take the liberty of quoting one of them concerning it:


“I loved every second of this. I sincerely did. I think it’s more
enjoyable than A Throne of Bones… and I think it has broader market appeal. Seriously. Standing fucking ovation.”

That’s all I will say about it for the present, other than to say that the release date of the ebook will be safely before Christmas, with the hardcover to follow.  As before, those who preorder the hardcover will receive the ebook free. With regards to Book Two of TAODAL, I’m not quite as far along as I would like to be, but I do not expect any trouble sticking to my 24-month release schedule.  Also, ACX has released the audiobook of A Magic Broken to Audible, iTunes, and the other retailers, so I expect to be able to post a sample and make an announcement about that being available very soon.

And no one need worry that I am pulling a Martin. In addition to being considerably younger and healthier, I have no intention of allowing myself to be unduly distracted by other writing projects.  It was refreshing to take a brief break from the war and politics of Selenoth, but I’m quite happy to rejoin Marcus Valerius, newly christened “Cavarus” by the men of his legion, and the other surviving characters again.

Failing at surrender

Only the Republican Party could manage to try to surrender and then fail at it:

President Obama used his weekly radio address to reject the latest offer from House Republicans to end the fiscal stalemate. The outline of their proposal was released Friday and would have reopened government through December and lifted the debt ceiling for six weeks.

Heckuva job, Johnny! One wonders what master backup plan grand strategerist of the House Republicans has up his sleeve.

Forbes on falling wages

I always enjoy it when various anklebiters try to Beli-check me by attacking an economics post. Because I don’t make these things up, it’s always easy to cite others who are saying the same thing. In this case, Forbes is pointing out that real falling American wages are actually worse than they appear in dollar terms.

Today’s minimum wage employee works 12 percent longer to earn a gallon of milk compared to 1965, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Today’s senior engineer works almost twice as long to buy a gallon of gasoline, according to the Department of Energy.

So, in real terms, wages have fallen. The drop is larger than it appears. Look at costs to see why.

Dairy farm statistics show that a cow produces two and a half times the milk compared to yesteryear’s cow and the Department of Commerce reports that labor per cow has fallen by two thirds. These two improvements alone—there are others—eliminate about 87 percent of the effort to make milk.

Efficiency is not the only way for companies to reduce costs. Businesses also remove certain features that consumers don’t want to pay for. For example, milk used to be delivered to a home in a glass bottle. Today it comes in cheap plastic containers that consumers pick up at the store. A more recent example is wine, which is moving from expensive corks to cheaper screw tops.

Yet as fewer labor hours go into producing goods, workers work longer to buy the goods. Using the hour as a measure of costs, we can calculate how much more work a wage earner must produce to buy milk today. But it’s harder to measure the reduction of work that goes into production. We know that it’s less by empirical evidence, but we only get a sense of it.

By switching to gold, we can measure both wages and prices on an absolute scale—in ounces—and we can make precise comparisons. To convert the price of anything to gold, just divide the price by the current gold price. For example, in 2011 if a big-screen TV was $785, then divide that by the gold price of that year; the television set cost half an ounce of gold.

The bottom line is that, in terms of gold, wages have fallen by about 87 percent. To get a stronger sense of what that means, consider that back in 1965, the minimum wage was 71 ounces of gold per year. In 2011, the senior engineer earned the equivalent of 63 ounces in gold. So, measured in gold, we see that senior engineers now earn less than what unskilled laborers earned back in 1965.

That’s right: today’s highly skilled professional is making less in real, comparative terms than yesterday’s unskilled worker.

Now, this is not entirely the result of women entering the labor force en masse. But that is one of the primary contributing factors.  One of these days, I’ll go through the issue and rank those factors.  But my guess is that it is probably number three, after increasingly free trade and the consequences of government fiscal and regulatory policies.

Can you ban what you don’t notice?

Effectively, that is, not legally. A technological blow for freedom in the drug wars:

More and more, people are smoking marijuana out of e-cigarettes and vapor pens — right out in the open with little or no fear of getting caught, users and experts say.

“I was on the train from New York to Baltimore and I enjoyed the pen the whole way there and back with no one noticing,” said one life-long marijuana user who asked not to be identified. “I absolutely was thinking ‘This is not bad at all.'”

As Spacebunny commented, the only surprise is that it took pot smokers so long to figure it out. I don’t partake of the herb myself, but I am 100 percent pro-legalization.

Hawks and doves at the Fed

Female managers tend to seek consensus, and it looks as if we can be certain that Yellen will have whatever organizational support she requires to keep the Fed’s monetary policy as expansionary as possible.  Notice that she is considered to be even more dovish than Helicopter Ben. And one of the newcomers, Kocherlakota, is arguably even worse.  In 2011, he claimed that the Federal Reserve didn’t cause the housing bubble, and worse, that he was “agnostic” with regards to what did cause it.

So, we not only have Tweedledim at the Fed, but Tweedledimmer voting to support her futile attempts to print credit in 2014.

The slow birth of American secession

Pat Buchanan observes the growing incidence of secession movements, both in the USA and around the world:

What are the forces pulling nations apart? Ethnicity, culture, history and language – but now also economics. And separatist and secessionist movements are cropping up here in the United States.

While many red state Americans are moving away from blue state America, seeking kindred souls among whom to live, those who love where they live but not those who rule them are seeking to secede.

The five counties of western Maryland – Garrett, Allegheny, Washington, Frederick and Carroll, which have more in common with West Virginia and wish to be rid of Baltimore and free of Annapolis, are talking secession.

The issues driving secession in Maryland are gun control, high taxes, energy policy, homosexual marriage and immigration.

Scott Strzelczyk, who lives in the town of Windsor in Carroll County and leads the Western Maryland Initiative, argues: “If you have a long list of grievances, and it’s been going on for decades, and you can’t get it resolved, ultimately [secession] is what you have to do.”

And there is precedent. Four of our 50 states – Maine, Vermont, Kentucky, West Virginia – were born out of other states.

In both Catalonia and Lombardia, I have seen that the common people increasingly feel no loyalty to a central government of foreigners who treat them like milch cows while ruling them in an incompetent and self-serving manner. This growth of secessionism should not be surprising to anyone. Bob Prechter and others have long observed that political unions take place in economic booms, while disunions, both violent and non-violent, tend to take place in times of economic contraction.

And we are not even halfway through the Mother of all Contractions.

There is no default

I’m not the biggest fan of Powerline, given their full-throated preference for all things Republican rather than conservative, but Hindrocket has provided the best explication of why all the talk of a federal “default” is sheer nonsense.

So the question is, if Congress does not raise the current debt ceiling, will the federal government run out of money needed to pay its existing debts? The answer is clearly No. A reader supplies the math: 

 On average the federal government’s daily expenditures are about $16.7 billion; receipts are about $14 billion, implying an average daily borrowing requirement of about $2.7 billion. So the planned flow of revenues is now about $650 billion less than the planned flow of expenses…about $2.7 billion a [business] day, $650 billion annually.

So the “default” scenarios are bogus. Interest on the $16 trillion in debt is covered by a factor of about 10x by revenues! That puts the federal government deep into AAA land. Revenues would have to fall by a staggering 90% to jeopardize interest payments.

And, of course, retiring principal by “rolling over” maturing debt can never require an increase in the debt ceiling, since there is no net increase in the nation’s debt, even if the money used to repay the original principal is borrowed.

So what will actually happen if Congress doesn’t increase the debt ceiling by approximately October 17? The government’s debt obligations will be paid, but reductions in other spending will start to become necessary. In effect, leaving the debt ceiling as is would function as a spending cut. This is why the Democrats hate the idea so much. They know there is zero chance of default, but they are horrified at the prospect that voters and taxpayers may find out that there is a relatively simple way to bring about spending reductions that would create, in effect, a balanced budget. Hence the hysteria.

If Republican senators and representatives give in to the Obama administration for fear of a nonexistent threat of federal “default”, which is actually a real threat of reduced federal domestic spending, it will underline the fact that they have no genuine reason to exist.

As Rand Paul and others have pointed out, there are 10x more tax revenues than are required to pay the interest on the debt. It is absurd to say the Federal government is in any danger of debt default than to say a man who makes $10k per month is in imminent danger of losing his house because he has to make an $850 mortgage payment every month.

UPDATE: Apparently the minor fact of the threat being nonexistent wasn’t sufficient to prevent the leading Republicans from aggressively pursuing surrender:

House Republican leaders said Thursday they will offer a temporary increase in the federal debt ceiling in exchange for negotiations with President Obama on longer-term “pressing problems,” but they stopped short of agreeing to end a government shutdown now in its 10th day.

In a news briefing following a closed-door meeting of House Republicans to present a plan to raise the debt limit for six weeks, House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said, “What we want to do is offer the president today the ability to move a temporary increase in the debt ceiling.” He described the offer, to be presented to Obama in a White House meeting with House Republicans on Thursday afternoon, as a “good-faith effort on our part to move halfway to what he’s demanded in order to have these conversations begin.”

Boehner did not immediately provide specifics of the plan. But the speaker made clear that House Republicans are not agreeing to Obama’s demand that they pass legislation to fund the government with no partisan strings attached, thereby ending the first government shutdown in 17 years.

Mailvox: econo-ignorati

I’m not sure which is more impressive, the ability of those who don’t wish to see the obvious to not see it, or the stubborn determination of the inept anklebiter to think that this time, for sure, he’s going to be able to prove me wrong.

Irish Farmer doesn’t appear to understand what is meant by either “wages” or “consumption”:

If women were consumers before they entered the workforce, then who’s money were they consuming with? Mens? Parents’? In that case, those wages were already practically depressed by the fact that men and/or parents were providing women with a sort of salary. 

No. Wages are not reduced by consumption. Wages are reduced by increased supply of labor or decreased demand for labor.  Because consumption tends to increase demand for labor, it tends to increase wages. He digs himself deeper by failing to understand that a consumer is a consumer regardless of whether the consumer is in the labor force or not:

I think it’s simplistic to say, “Women were still consumers.” I’ll admit I don’t have the answers to these questions, but they still come to mind: Isn’t it possible that women workers created new markets, created increase consumption in some way? Can you really just say, “It was the exact same level of consumption now as it was in the ’50s”?

It is not only not simplistic to point out that women were, and continued to be, consumers before, during, and after they entered the labor force, it is absolutely idiotic to attempt to claim otherwise. None of this is equivalent, in any way, to saying anything about “the exact same level of consumption as in the 1950s”.  In fact, a moment’s thought will make it apparent that an increased number of women entering the work force will tend to reduce consumption in the short term; perhaps the women here can help us out.  Do you do tend to do most of your shopping when you are at work or when you are not at work?

Moreover, the reduced number of children produced by working women has unquestionably meant less consumption and less demand for labor in the long term as well. The mitigating effect on the labor supply of fewer children will not suffice to counterbalance this, since children are consumers for 18+ years before they enter the labor force.

And Phony not only reveals that he doesn’t know anything about economics, but he’s a relative newbie here. He’s clearly unaware of the fact that I addressed his objection back in 2006 as well as again earlier this year.

You’re making the implicit assumption, Dipshit, that they don’t produce anything for the wages they get. If they *are* producing more value than they get paid for, as seems reasonable in a capitalist society, then the wages paid will go up but be spent purchasing even more goods.

By your “logic”, Dipshit, the best America could do would be to have one person working to produce goods for 300 million consumers – after all, if anyone else enters the workforce, it will lower wages…

You talk about the post-1950 rise in female employment. So tell us, Dipshit, how come real wages continued to rise (in line with productivity) between 1950 and 1975 or so?

First, I am quite obviously not making the implicit assumption that women don’t produce anything for the wages they receive.  Second, if we apply his own logic, then the fact that real wages have not gone up since 1973 forces us to conclude that women are not producing more value than they are paid for. Third, my logic doesn’t suggest anything of the sort.

And fourth, in answer to his question, I quote myself from seven years ago:

“In the perfect world of economic modeling, it would make no difference
if men or women were working. And in fact, the deleterious effects on
wages of women entering the work force was largely hidden until 1973,
when men finally stopped leaving the work force in numbers sufficient to
conceal what was happening. In fact, one could characterize the period
from 1950 to 1973 as women working so that men over 60 could play golf.
The BLS numbers make this clear.”

TL;DR

Ms Wolf could have saved herself considerable trouble had she simply titled her book: Supply and Demand: How Seventy Million Working Women Created a Lower-Paid Society. With a few simple graphs, she probably could have wrapped the whole thing up in less than 10 pages.

I always find it remarkable, and perhaps even a little depressing, how few people are able to grasp that the primary consequence of the addition of 70 million working women, all of whom were already consumers, to the labor force, could never have been anything else but to lower wages. 

One can debate whether female workers are more or less productive than male workers, and one can certainly debate whether the societal effects were beneficial or negative, but the one thing that cannot be denied, on logical, theoretical, historical, or empirical grounds, is that the post-1950 doubling of the female labor force has had a severely depressing effect on American wages.

Jews who are not Jews

It appears neither the Semitic origin theory of the Ashkenazi “Jews” nor the Khazar theory are genetically correct:

The origins of Ashkenazi Jews remain highly controversial. Like Judaism, mitochondrial DNA is passed along the maternal line. Its variation in the Ashkenazim is highly distinctive, with four major and numerous minor founders. However, due to their rarity in the general population, these founders have been difficult to trace to a source. Here we show that all four major founders, ~40% of Ashkenazi mtDNA variation, have ancestry in prehistoric Europe, rather than the Near East or Caucasus. Furthermore, most of the remaining minor founders share a similar deep European ancestry. Thus the great majority of Ashkenazi maternal lineages were not brought from the Levant, as commonly supposed, nor recruited in the Caucasus, as sometimes suggested, but assimilated within Europe.

Overall, we estimate that most (>80%) Ashkenazi mtDNAs were
assimilated within Europe. Few derive from a Near Eastern source, and
despite the recent revival of the ‘Khazar hypothesis’,
virtually none are likely to have ancestry in the North Caucasus.
Therefore, whereas on the male side there may have been a significant
Near Eastern (and possibly east European/Caucasian) component in
Ashkenazi ancestry, the maternal lineages mainly trace back to
prehistoric Western Europe. These results emphasize the importance of
recruitment of local women and conversion in the formation of Ashkenazi
communities, and represent a significant step in the detailed
reconstruction of Ashkenazi genealogical history.

I thought it was interesting that Doron Behar, the scientist responsible for the claim that the four most common mitochondrial DNA lineages came from the Near East “said he disagreed with Dr. Richards’ conclusions but declined to explain his reason.”  Notice that even on the male side, the most that can be said is that there “may have been” a Near Eastern connection; that’s a remarkably strong negative statement given the potential sensitivities on the subject.

The fascinating thing is that instead of being of Israelite descent, the Ashkenazis may actually be Italians, as their closest genetic match appears to be Northern Italians. Which would certainly put an interesting spin on the concept of the Third Rome in Jerusalem. It might also help explain the historical Italian affinity for Ashkenazis during WWII, as 80 percent of Italy’s Ashkenazis survived the Nazi persecution despite the German military occupation.