Vox Popoli

From a May paper entitled “U.S. Household Deleveraging and Future Consumption Growth” by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco:

Since the start of the U.S. recession in December 2007, household leverage has declined. It currently stands at about 130% of disposable income…. The Japanese stock market bubble burst in late 1989, followed soon after by the bursting of the real estate bubble in early 1991. Nearly 20 years later, stock and commercial real estate prices remain more than 70% below their peaks, while residential land prices
are more than 40% below their peak. In both countries, leverage ratios rose rapidly in the years before the peak. After Japan’s bubbles burst, private nonfinancial firms undertook a massive deleveraging, reducing their collective debt-to-GDP ratio from 125% in 1991 to 95% in 2001. By reducing spending on investment, the firms changed from being net borrowers to net savers. If U.S. households were to undertake a similar deleveraging, their collective debt-to-income ratio would need to drop to around 100% by year-end
2018, returning to the level that prevailed in 2002.

This has very, very bad implications for the most important component of GDP, Personal Consumption Expenditures, which hit a historic high of 71.2 percent in the first quarter of 2009. Translation: the stock market is no better an indicator of future economic growth now than it was when it was hitting historic nominal highs in 2008.

On the basis of their deleveraging calculations, the FRBSF calculates a US savings rate of 10% by the end of 2018. One has to presume Paul Krugman hasn’t read this paper or he would have stroked out already.

I wonder what excuse PZ will produce for ducking this challenge? Or is it possible that he might surprise us all and actually put his reputation where his mouth is?

Non-crackpot arguments are more challenging and require more thought, and are ultimately more satisfying. However, there is a problem when the focus is on an issue rather than an individual. Some issues, and I would put evolution in this category, don’t match this model well. While the issue is real and red-hot in the culture, the Green Zone of Worthy Opponents is unfortunately rather underpopulated. There is no one in the green box. So what should we do? Simply ignore the mobs of people populating the red box?

I posted the following at his blog: “Well, my dear Dr. Myers, since you were previously afraid of a radio debate with me on the evidence for the existence of gods, perhaps you’ll be more willing to engage in a written debate on the scientific evidence for evolution. After all, if the issue is so comprehensively settled in evolution’s favor, it should be no trouble whatsoever to make your case to everyone’s satisfaction, however initially dubious they may have been. And since you have now asserted that there are no Worthy Opponents, you no longer have any need to hide behind your stated belief in my supposed crackpottery.”

So, will PZ dare to enter the Red Box? Given that this is the area of his scientific and academic expertise and I am, according to him, “a pathetic little twerp with delusions of grandeur”, there’s absolutely no reason he should not… unless, of course, he’s afraid he can’t present a sufficiently convincing case for Darwin’s dangerous idea.

UPDATE: Wow, the Pharyngulans are already hurling metaphorical feces, providing excuses for PZ to run away, and trying to change the subject to religion. I find their lack of faith… amusing.

JB plunges once more into the breach:

In his 2nd response to me, Vox gives two criticisms. First, Vox states “one need only find a few extant remaining DNSP ecosystems” to falsify. From his original links I understand what he means: places where the guppies are getting bigger, or are pressured to. I expect we will find many such ecosystems. That is not what I meant by DNSP.

Perhaps I was not clear when I defined it as “gentle pressure to develop a trait.” My DNSP is really Potentially Speciating DNSP, or PS-DNSP. I don’t care about the kind of DNSP that sterilely bounces species between hereditarily predefined poles. Obviously, demonstrating an ecosystem is PS-DNSP is MUCH harder than simply observing DNSP. But I suspect DNSP is common, and PS-DNSP may be too. There are other reasons besides rarity why abundant PS-DNSP may fail to speciate.

This brings us to Vox’s second criticism. I contend PS-DNSP could conceivably stop or slow to a crawl for long periods of global stasis, as often and frustratingly happened in Sim Earth. Meanwhile DNSP would still be constantly arbitrating inter and intra species wars. This is especially possible during competitive late stage ossification, where advanced adaptable species mop up all available ecological space. Vox scoffs at this possibility; I suggest he play Sim Earth. The ecological space and environment needed to foster the next wave of transitional forms can’t be taken for granted, even when you have a planetful of pondscum bubbling for revolution.

Tangentially, VD finds it very hard to believe all species, “including the ancient ones,” have reached stasis. But ancient species are hopelessly bypassed on the tech tree. One should expect nothing from them, and everything from the latest, still freshly malleable models, e.g. humans.

Going back to Vox’s first reply, I find I would respond differently. Vox says there’s no evidence EVERY extant ecosystem has the capacity to exert DNSP. No evidence is good for my unfalsifiability. But perhaps some ecosystems have always lacked the capacity to exert DNSP, and don’t living fossils support this? To answer: In general, I suspect HS-DNSP is ubiquitous while PS-DNSP is a special confluence of factors that can touch one species in an ecosystem and leave unaltered the one beside it. The idea of a major ecosystem without HS-DNSP is absurdly unlikely, and it follows that PS-DNSP should also be evenly distributed among them, yet could leave some fossils untouched.

FODOR TANGENT
As for Fodor’s attack on evolution, I evade the dilemma by failing to adhere to either adaptationism or the opposite. His point is a contentless Zeno’s paradox, which I will demonstrate by exploding the example given.

In the first example of the field experiment controlled test, the conclusion is wrong. TENS predicts brownness wins on brown snow. If brown loses, well, TENS doesn’t GUARANTEE the fittest will arrive, survive, or thrive, much less outbreed. It simply claims to be the only force promoting speciation. More accurately, natural selection eliminates the vast majority of potential speciation.

The non-vacuous formulation of natural selection is that the phenotype best adapted to the ecology is also the most sexually successful. But if a better design comes along and the bear girls refuse to sleep with it, no kids for Mr. Fittest. Darwin can predict phenotypic improvements well but much of the rest is up to “chance,” i.e. everything we don’t know about evolutionary ways and means. A weak force is not the same as “no predictive ability.” Dilemma solved.

I’ll restrict myself to addressing JB’s reply to Fodor as I’m content leaving him with his retreat to Sim Earth and speciation-related natural selection to preserve his concept’s unfalsifiability. It boils down to rarity and great quantities of time, as evolution defenses so often do. If the non-science needs to hide in that corner, then let it hide, I say.

But I must point out that the Fodor dilemma is not so easily ducked, because JB has misunderstood the definition of fitness. TENS not only guarantees that the most fit will outbreed the less fit, it declares the most fit MUST outbreed the less fit for what should be the obvious reason that fitness is defined as the most successful production of progeny. However, JB has pointed to the weakest point in the logic – not science – that presently serves as the foundation of TENS. To slightly adapt his terminology: is the phenotype best adapted to the ecology also the most sexually successful?

Darwinians answer yes, on balance. They have little choice, since this is the foundation of their entire theory. But they don’t actually have much, if any science on their side to date, as the Penn State scientists performing natural selection studies have readily admitted. It seems strange to have to point out to scientists and science fetishists that logic is not science, especially considering that many of them consider the Enlightenment triumph of science over logic to be one of the seminal points of human history. And if any Darwinians are unwilling to accept the implications of a hypothetical failure of science to demonstrate natural selection, then the only rational conclusion is that their faith is in Darwin, not science.

This was a decent chapter from a historical perspective, but I felt that it lacked an awful lot regarding any actual, you know, economics. Of course, this is a problem that can be safely expected of any economics-related history written by a non-economist. Quite possibly the biggest flaw, however, was the author’s failure to demonstrate the leftism of the very concept of the modern corporation given that it is intrinsically a creation of the state. This isn’t a knock on Jonah Goldberg, it’s just interesting to see how different the non-economists’ perspective on economics can be.

But honestly, an entire chapter on economics without a single chart, formula, table, or folksy analogical tale? What sort of strange beast is this?

However, Goldberg also overlooked the easiest way to demonstrate how corporations and corporatism cannot possibly be considered inherently right-wing. It is a little-recognized fact that Communist governments have owned and controlled a number of the world’s largest corporations. In fact, until recently, one of the largest “capitalists” in the world as measured by the revenues of the many corporations it owned, was the People’s Liberation Army of China.

Next week’s reading is Chapter Nine, “Brave New Village: Hillary Clinton and the Meaning of Liberal Fascism”. The quiz for it will be posted on Saturday, August 15th.

Salt sends an email informing us that North Carolina has raised the bar:

§ 14-454. Accessing computers.
(a) It is unlawful to willfully, directly or indirectly, access or cause to be accessed any computer, computer program, computer system, computer network, or any part
thereof, for the purpose of:

(1) Devising or executing any scheme or artifice to defraud, unless the object of the scheme or artifice is to obtain educational testing material, a false educational testing score, or a false academic or vocational grade, or
(2) Obtaining property or services other than educational testing material, a false educational testing score, or a false academic or vocational grade for a person, by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations or promises.

A violation of this subsection is a Class G felony if the fraudulent scheme or artifice results in damage of more than one thousand dollars ($1,000), or if the property or services obtained are worth more than one thousand dollars ($1,000). Any other violation of this subsection is a Class 1 misdemeanor.

Rumor has it that the White House is putting pressure on Hawaii to consider similar legislation regarding birth records….

He explains why more government involvement isn’t going to make anything cheaper:

I believe that Econ textbooks say that price controls haven’t worked from Diocletian on. Wrong. They work splendidly. Ask Bausch & Lomb. If you could make over twenty-two bucks on a dime’s worth of salt water, wouldn’t you be in favor of governmental interference in the economy?

Let me explain medicine briefly. It’s an unholy scam. Here in Mexico my wife occasionally gets ear infections. At any pharmacy, we pick up Amoxicillin, 250mg three times a day for ten days. Six bucks.

Recently we were staying in Maryland with friends, and she got an ear ache. Amoxicillin is by prescription only in the US, which means that doctors have a monopoly on ear aches. It was Friday evening. It was either agony until Monday or go to one of those mall-based walk-in clinics, which wanted $150 for the appointment and prescribed $78 in medicines. It’s a scam, pure and simple. Above the level of county government, the US is as corrupt as Mexico could ever be, and it’s mostly legal.

The problem boils down to this: focused interest groups will always have more influence with national politicians than the public. And the more centralized the industry, the easier it is for those interest groups to wield their influence. It is, as Fred describes it, government by looters.

The so-called lull in the foreclosure rate had nothing to do with fewer people failing to pay their mortages:

Khater said the foreclosure rate and REO rates have been impacted by government tinkering in the market. He said federal and state efforts have mostly delayed foreclosures, preventing few. The same is true for loan modifications — they fail about half the time. So to tune out the noise, just look at the 90-day rate. In Khater’s view it shows “one giant wave.”

I never understood why people were commenting on the “lull” in foreclosures and REOs when California had declared a short-term moratorium on permitting banks to foreclose. Combined with the demonstrated reluctance of banks to follow through on the procedure because of what it does to their balance sheets – they carry the delinquent, abandoned property on their books at the full value of the mortgage until the whole process is complete – the mortgage banks are terrified of taking ownership of foreclosed properties. But the graphic below shows the true picture, which indicates that there can’t be any reasonable expectation of a substantive economic recovery until 2012 at the earliest.

The gap between REOs (foreclosures on the books) and foreclosures in process is the extent to which the damage is being underestimated. And the delinquency rate is an indicator of more foreclosures in process still to come.

Of course, the reason more people are finding it difficult to pay their mortgages is because their wages and salary are continuing to drop. In 1973, the median male weekly wage was $486.10. Source: The State of Working America by Lawrence R. Mishel, David M. Frankel, p. 78. Corrected for inflation, that is $2,361.45 in 2009 dollars, or $122,795.40 annually. In its report entitled “USUAL WEEKLY EARNINGS OF WAGE AND SALARY WORKERS: SECOND QUARTER 2009”, the BLS reported the median male weekly wage is now $815, or $42,380 annually.

So, that’s what immigration, offshoring, and women’s rights have accomplished for the country, a two-thirds reduction in male wages. Inexpensive debt has hitherto concealed some of the ramifications of that collapse in real wages for a while, but as the chart shows, it can’t do it forever.

Yet another reason for men to avoid marrying American women:

Thinking her husband was dead, a 26-year-old newlywed pulled up to her Boynton Beach town home Wednesday morning in apparent panic. She surveyed the crime scene tape and swarming police officers and began to sob hysterically. A good act, police called it. Investigators say she was the one planning his death – and they were a step ahead. The would-be widow was Dalia Dippolito, and since Monday police say an undercover detective posing as a hit man had been planning with her the details of her husband’s demise.

For $6,000, he was to murder Michael Dippolito, 38, Dalia’s husband of six months, police say. “I will be very happy,” she allegedly told the hitman, and laughed at the thought.

Of course, upon reflection, one realizes that this is all the husband’s fault. Why should his petty desire to continue living stand in the way of a woman’s right to happiness? This arrest is really an outrage. It is obviously nothing more than sexist patriarchal oppression for the police to forcibly prevent a woman from leaving an unsatisfactory marriage. And it is total fascism to set up a fake crime scene in order to make a perfectly innocent woman doing nothing more than legally exercising her woman’s right to end her marriage look bad.

Fortunately, the American judicial system is a little more enlightened. Since the penalty for a woman shooting her sleeping husband in the back with a shotgun is three months jail, we can be confident that the soon-to-be ex Mrs. Dippolito will soon be set free with six months probation. Outrageous, to be sure, but every revolution must have martyrs to make the occasional sacrifice.

It often turns out to be a very good way of finding it. AW, who also informs us that she is in the process of bidding the market adieu, writes of her experience with the blog:

For every 20 emails you get from irate, offended females, I hope you receive one like mine. My original email was about three pages long – I realized what I had done, and promptly deleted it. You don’t know me, therefore you definitely don’t care about my back story or what I’ve been through or my thoughts on women today, so it would have undoubtedly gone unread. Instead, I’m just going to thank you and tell you what you – and the Ilk – have done for me.

When I started reading your blog about two years ago, I was initially offended by the things you wrote about women. I don’t like to think of myself as a feminist, nor do I care for anything resembling female “equality”, so it wasn’t that – maybe your meanness sparks something in about 99.9% of the female population to stand up and defend whoever is being attacked (usually other women). As well it should, because you continually hold up the modern Western woman for inspection. In the glaring light of logic, common sense, decency and reason – what you write can be an ugly reality to swallow. But – it’s undeniable and avoidable, especially if you don’t want to become “that” woman. To avoid turning into the shrill, selfish harpy whose only goal in life is to be “happy” (the definition of which changes endlessly) and actually believes that fulfillment comes from pursuing that personal happiness, you have shown me that I must:

1.) Get over myself

and

2.) Realize that “being happy” isn’t guaranteed by getting what I think I want, even if at the expense of others. Often, the consequences of pursuing your own personal happiness causes disaster and misery to others and, eventually, yourself.

I have to say – my happiness has actually grown over the last two years. The more I discard the secular view of “womyn”, and embrace the Biblical definition of what a woman of value truly is, the richer my life, my relationships, and my walk with God becomes. It’s like shedding a disgusting piece of clothing and finding that you’ve been wearing a beautiful gown all along. While you need no encouragement from me, I do hope that you keep your blog going for a long time. I enjoy it greatly, and have learned much from you and your long-time commenters.

The simple fact of AW’s realization that complete strangers aren’t particularly interested in the minutiae of her personal history reflects how far she has evolved from the average woman today. It’s not that people don’t care at all, it’s merely that they don’t care that much. Understanding that we all live in occasionally intersecting self-orbiting universes is one of the keys to tranquility for men and women alike, although learning to stop looking to a man to provide for her ever-shifting happiness is absolutely vital for the dynamic creatures known as women.

And while it’s true that as an independent theocentric universe I have no need of external encouragement, I’m nevertheless pleased to see or hear when people demonstrate that they have not only learned something here, but been able to put it to successful use in their lives. You can always tune me out if you wish, but it’s rather more difficult to escape the remorseless logic of real life behavioral patterns that I am attempting to describe.