#Arkhaven INFOGALACTIC #Castalia House
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
LD provides a second look at Brad Torgersen’s Lights in the Deep:
I went into this with two disadvantages: I wasn’t at all familiar with
the author, and I haven’t regularly read short form science fiction for
many, many years. I ended up enjoying this collection nonetheless.
Diving into these stories quickly reminded me why I’m not as
big a fan of short stories as I used to be–the limitations in form
itself. As a young man I would devour short stories, but just about any
author, but particularly Larry Niven, Heinlein, Zelazy, Keith Laumer,
Robert Sheckley, and other similar authors. Back then, quick dips into
short stories appealed to me, but now that I’m an old man, I find my
tastes trending toward larger sized (huge) Space Operas from Peter F.
Hamilton, Neal Asher, Alastair Reynolds, etc.
The only recent short story collections I had read were by
Hamilton, and those were related for the most part to the various novels
he’s written, so this was my first dive into a collection like this in
years.
I’ll make quick comments about each entry in the collection and then give my summary.
The
Three Introductions – I read them, but I couldn’t tell you a thing
about them now. They were nice, but didn’t contain anything memorable.
Neither a plus, nor a minus to the whole.
Outbound – Quite a good story, one that I would have been
happy to see expanded to novel length. For me the downsides were the
brevity of this story… I wanted more detail about this setting.
Gemini 17 – A nice exploration of a *slightly* alternate history. Fun story with a good, humorous ending.
Influences: Allan Cole and Chris Bunch – I’m not familiar with
either author, but it’s always nice to see the influences in an
author’s background.
The Bullfrog Radio Astronomy Project –
Be careful what you transmit or the Men in Black (or are they) will
come for you. It brought back memories of laughing at the Art Bell show.
Exiles of Eden – Another nice story. I figured out what was
happening before the characters did. It’s an interesting concept that
you’ll be familiar with if you’ve read Alastair Reynolds “Revelation
Space” novels.
Writer Dad: Mike Resnick – More background on the author.
Footprints – A character piece. Perhaps a bit too “literary” for my tastes.
The
Exchange Officers – This excellent story is the polar opposite of most
of the previous stories. It has action, combat, technology, and less
emphasis on memories, and feelings. Perhaps my second favorite story in
the collection.
Essay: On the Growth of Fantasy and the Waning of Science
Fiction – An excellent subject to discuss that’s quite relevant to my
own thoughts and tastes. I’m NOT a fantasy fan. I’ve read Lord of the
Rings once, and that was quite enough for me thank you. I enjoy the Game
of Thrones TV show, but my attempt to start reading the first novel
resulted in boredom and sleepytime. I’m a HARD SF kinda guy, and this
essay covers some of the things that bug me with current SF/Fantasy–I
hate Star Wars, especially the second trilogy, I only liked the original
Star Trek, anyone who likes Avatar is an Ava-tard in my book. My
opinion is that the growth of fantasy reflects the decline of STEM in
modern American society. Fantasy is perfect for those with less than a
firm grasp on science.
The Chaplain’s Assistant – A return to a “character-based”
story. Interesting, but ultimately boring to me. I was not enthused to
find out that the next long story in this collection was a sequel to
this.
The Chaplain’s Legacy – My lack of enthusiasm for the previous
story caused me to put the entire collection down for a few days, but I
had volunteered to review this book for Vox, so I did my duty and read
the story. The good news is that I liked this much more than the
previous short, though in my opinion the size could have been condensed.
The Hero’s Tongue: Larry Niven – Of all of the essays in the
book, this one was the most enjoyable for me because of my own fondness
for Niven.
Exanastasis – Interesting, enjoyable, but ultimately forgettable.
Ray of Light – The final story of the collection and probably
my favorite. There were points in this story where I thought it was
going to break badly, but the story didn’t go in the direction I thought
it would end up, and I enjoyed it a lot.
The last story really brought my opinion of the whole
collection back up from a low spot. I enjoy Torgerson’s writing style,
and I will look up some of his longer work, but probably not the
forthcoming “Chaplain” story.
I’d give this collection a solid 3 out of 5 stars.