Month: February 2016

Timothy Taylor, one of the nation’s most influential teachers of economics (e.g., through his Teaching Company lectures), offered an interesting high-level perspective (in an interview) on how Americans currently think about economics:

“… when people talk about growth, the first thing they talk about is not the role of the private sector or firms. They talk about how the government can give us growth, through tax cuts or spending increases or the Federal Reserve. When they talk about fairness and justice, they don’t talk about the government doing that. They talk about how companies ought to provide fairness and justice in wages and health care and benefits and all sorts of things.”

Readers: Is he basically right?

Evidence for: here in Massachusetts, the state government preaches to businesses about how they should provide better benefits but meanwhile tries to hire as many as possible of its new workers as consultants so as to avoid having to pay for health insurance, pension, etc., and so as to avoid providing a lifetime employment guarantee. Instead of the government building houses to allocate to people whom the government selects, commercial property developers are required to give away a percentage of what they build (though the actual identification and selection of the recipients of the newly built apartments, etc., is done by a government worker). “The Eviction Epidemic” (New Yorker):

When tenants have legal representation, their chances of keeping their homes increase dramatically. A program that ran in the South Bronx from 2005 to 2008, for example, provided legal assistance to more than thirteen hundred families and prevented eviction in more than eighty-five per cent of the cases, saving New York City hundreds of thousands of dollars in estimated shelter costs.

Having a greater percentage of the GDP devoted to lawyers representing people who aren’t paying commercial landlords is considered by the writer as a way to “save” costs and there is no discussion of the fact that costs for providing free housing have to some extent simply been shifted from the government to commercial landlords (it might be true that a commercial landlord can provide a free house at a lower cost than a government-run “shelter”).

Evidence against: people who say that they’re interested in “social justice” spend a lot of time advocating for more taxpayer-funded government hand-outs, either by making benefits more generous or available to a broader group of residents.

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President Obama is against states taxing tampons (TIME):

“I have to tell you, I have no idea why states would tax these as luxury items,” Obama said Friday. “I suspect it’s because men were making the laws when those taxes were passed.”

[Planned Parenthood is using some of the tax dollars that they receive to argue against tampon purchases generating tax dollars.]

Leaving aside the question of whether or not paying a state’s ordinary sales tax rate on a purchase makes that purchase a “luxury,” I asked a divorce litigator what she thought of the tampon tax controversy:

“A smart woman who is the right age for purchasing tampons would spend her time looking for the right man to get pregnant with, not lobbying against sales tax. She won’t be using tampons during her pregnancy and, following the birth, she’ll have 18 years of child support to buy all the tampons and pretty much everything else that she could ever want.”

[Note that the cashflow duration varies by state; it would be 21 years in New York, 23 years in Massachusetts, potentially longer in tampon-tax-free Canada, etc.]

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The media is full of articles about the mechanics of replacing the late Justice Scalia on the Supreme Court. I haven’t seen any discussion of the kind of person that should be appointed, however, beyond “liberal lawyer/judge” or “conservative lawyer/judge.”

I wonder if the right answer isn’t “not a lawyer or judge.” The Court already has eight lawyers, all of whom were previously judges (list of past justices who were not). That gives rise to the potential for groupthink on issues such as “should we encourage people to come down to the courthouse and litigate this kind of thing?” (if you’re a lawyer, generally litigation seems like a productive activity!)

A lot of the Supreme Court cases that have recently been in the news aren’t technical questions of law. Should parts of the government, e.g., state universities, treat people with different skin color differently? Should states be required to offer two men or two women a civil marriage?

Why not a philosopher to replace Scalia, for example? He or she can still have plenty of clerks with law school degrees.

Readers: What kind of person would you like to see on the Supreme Court?

Related:

• “What Would Scalia Want in His Successor? A Dissent Offers Clues” (nytimes), which Scalia pointed out the lack of intellectual diversity on the Supreme Court (but did not go so far as to advocate for a non-lawyer)

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Happy Valentine’s Day to all of my readers!

In prep for this holiday, I invested $9 in a 70-gram bar of Mast Brothers “milk chocolate.” I assembled a panel of three tasters, all of whom had grown up in the Soviet Union. The unanimous conclusion was that the Mast Brothers product was greatly inferior to anything produced during the Soviet era (a 100-gram bar sold for about 1 ruble, slightly more than $1 at official exchange rates). A glaring fault of the Mast Brothers chocolate was its tendency to separate in one’s mouth into component pieces, e.g., cocoa butter.

I then tossed some industrial Callebaut out (sadly I did not get the full 11 lb. slab, available for about $5/lb.). This was universally praised as far superior to the Mast Brothers product.

Separately, I’m wondering if this explains our inability to control illegal immigration. Whatever people might say about the Soviets, there seems to be no dispute that they were able to control their borders. Despite the Soviets managing a vastly larger territory than the U.S., few people got in or out without authorization. Perhaps, despite our fancier uniforms, computers, helicopters, etc., we are as bad at border patrol as we are at making chocolate?

Readers: What chocolate-related items have you purchased for Valentine’s Day?

Related:

• Mast Brothers chocolate?

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Overheard in Beaver Creek:

Customer goes into a bookstore next to a mosque in Dearborn, Michigan. He asks the proprietor if he stocks the latest book by Donald Trump. The proprietor responds “Get the fuck out of here and stay out.” The customer says “That’s the one. Do you have it in paperback?”

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“It’s Been 10 Years. Would Clarence Thomas Like to Add Anything?” is a New York Times article from February 1. The 1000+ comments are interesting due to the confidence with which NYT denounce the Supreme Court judge as incompetent and/or stupid. Clarence Thomas also comes in for criticism from readers who believe that he lets his clerks do the hard work while he skates.

As it happens, my life as an expert witness brought me into contact with one of Thomas’s former clerks. This attorney was tops in his class at a first-ranked law school and is now one of the top patent litigators in the United States (i.e., he leads cases where fees on both sides may exceed $30 million and hundreds of millions of dollars may be at stake). His portrayal of Thomas was more or less the opposite of the readers’ comments. Thomas was brilliant, funny, collegial, and a good manager of the clerks. Thomas did most of the legal analysis and relied on the clerks to fill in details. In other words, at least according to one expert who had an entire year to see what was going on, Thomas excelled at the portion of the job where the law is actually made (though of course the other justices don’t necessarily agree with him).

Why would Times readers assume that, simply because Thomas disagrees with them regarding the interpretation of the Constitution, Thomas is therefore stupid, lazy, and incompetent?

Related:

• my review of a book on Supreme Court cases, which mentions Thomas
• remarks regarding Thomas-the-jurist from a federal appeals court judge (“too often … disparaged by people who have known little or nothing” and “one of the great jurists of his generation”)

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… when one of your favorite computer applications is simply killed by the manufacturer: “Google Is Finally Killing Picasa”

Adobe Bridge and Adobe Lightroom are the closest competitors, as far as I know, but neither of them are as efficient at the task of sorting through hundreds of photos that come out of a digital SLR, picking favorites, doing minor editing such as cropping, and pushing those favorites up to the Web for sharing. I guess this is a lesson that, for creative professionals, leaving the safety of the Adobe mothership will result in down-the-road agony.

Google hasn’t announced any plans to open-source the Picasa desktop app, so it looks as though users are simply being thrown to the wolves.

Readers who use Picasa: What is next for you?

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A friend from MIT emailed:

Do you have any advice on what to say to someone who has lost their beloved dog companion?

I knew Caleb [name changed] when he was an energetic puppy, thirteen years ago, and he’s followed his owner through an impressive series of moves and life changes, where he was almost certainly the one constant and loyal companion. This brief message [attached] implies a world of heartbreak. Caleb lived a long life for a Labrador, and as in your story about George’s final days, I’m sure [my friend] did everything he could to help him (as the [emailed CAT scan showing cancer] attests). But I’m also sure that doesn’t make his owner feel any better. It must be really hard to care so much about creatures that have such short lives, comparatively.

Is it insensitive to point out that one can get another dog? One can, but it also won’t be the same. Do you have any perspective on whether it helps to ease the heartbreak of losing your dog by getting another dog? It probably helps some, but maybe not enough.

I responded with

13 years is a good run for a Lab. So it is kind of like Marvin Minsky. He had a great life and we should be celebrating his accomplishments more than mourning his loss. George died young and suddenly.

A new puppy is fun at any time, but the puppy wouldn’t be that related to feelings about the lost companion. A parent who loses a child doesn’t replace that child with a baby. It is just a new relationship.

I think that what would help is to talk about things that you remember about Caleb and help the owner celebrate the 13 years together. Talk about how lucky Caleb was for the companionship provided by your friend and any family members. Did they give him the best life that a dog could have for 13 years? Well, then they did all that they could. That’s something to celebrate.

She followed up a week later to say “I took your advice and it seemed to be the right thing” with the owner saying “It is the intensity of the relationship rather than the length that constitutes the loss. Caleb is the only one who has been there for me, and I was always there for him, too. Thanks for writing back and sharing your memories.”

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Two months ago Whirlpool tried to explode our suburban house with natural gas (previous posting) during a failed attempt to repair a less-than-five-year-old range (and in fact it turned out that it could never have been repaired; follow-up posting). Through their KitchenAid division they then tried to burn down our Cambridge apartment with a less-than-three-year-old dual-fuel range. The range had been top-rated by Consumer Reports, which shows the danger of relying on tests done on fresh-out-of-the-box products. The knobs don’t seem to control the gas directly, unless the valves are very light [See updates below; they actually are gas valves]. You push a knob in and turn it and the gas comes on, the burner lights, and you’re cooking. What if the mechanical interlock that keeps the knob from turning, unless it is pushed in, jams? Then there is no way to turn the burner off. If the gas flow is electronically controlled you’d think that there would be an “all burners off” option on the oven control/clock panel, but there is not. With four adults in the house, two of whom have engineering backgrounds, and a pair of pliers, we managed to get the burner off after about 15 minutes of experimentation. Until that happy moment we had four adults and three kids in an apartment with an open flame that could not be extinguished.

[Note that the range had previously failed, also out of warranty, with a control board that emitted a continuous 60 Hz. buzzing (would reset if the breaker was turned off then back on). And the companion $1,500 KitchenAid dishwasher suffered from two failures in less than 12 months of use, requiring a total of at least six service visits (it now has a new control board and circulation pump and works pretty well).]

I called the KitchenAid 800-number to arrange service. They took the position that because the range was more than one year old they had no responsibility for repairing it and would charge me for an out-of-warranty repair. I was curious to see if this was the final answer so I asked to speak to a supervisor. After I asked “Can you really design a product that will burn a customer’s house down and then charge them to fix it?” I was transferred to someone in the safety department who finally agreed that Whirlpool would cover the new control knob.

As it happens, my friends’ two-bedroom rental in Beaver Creek, Colorado has a new-looking KitchenAid gas cooktop. Half of the burners won’t light. Gas flows and an igniter sparks (sometimes on a different burner, though), but there is no resulting flame.

While I have been struggling with these new-and-not-cheap ranges, a friend posted these photos on Facebook:

He was replacing a White Westinghouse range, purchased in 1957, that was working perfectly at the time of its de-installation, 59 years later. He wanted a convection oven, but I am wondering if he will come to regret this decision!

Readers: I hate to sound like the old codger who claims that everything was built better in the old days, but is it time to give up on natural gas as a cooking fuel? If you combine the engineering departments of American appliance manufacturers with the expected skill level of repair technicians who are going to show up, would it make sense to say that all new ranges and cooktops should be electric? (induction?) What about foreign brands? Are Korean-engineered (Samsung and LG) or German-engineered (Miele) gas ranges more reliable and therefore, considering the power source, safer? And should we give up on high-end appliances? If the expensive ones are going to fail every few years, why not buy bottom-of-the-line products that can be replaced for about the same cost as a repair?

Update 2/19/2016: Whirlpool factory service shows up to try to fix the problem. My report of a stuck gas burner turned into a written note that the (electric on this model) baking element had failed. So the repair guy didn’t have the correct parts.

Update 2/22/2016: Whirlpool factory service shows up with the gas valve. It turns out that the knobs are directly connected to a common gas line:

Unfortunately, somehow the old knob wouldn’t fit onto the new valve. So the saga continues with a quest for a new knob…

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At age 74, Bernie Sanders is 20-25 years too old to be hired as a computer programmer (to judge by employers’ actual hiring practices). Is he too old to be President of the U.S.? I might have said “yes” until this week when I signed up for a group lesson at Beaver Creek, Colorado. Wink started ski instructor school at 48 and has been working full-time since then. He’s 77 years old, recently did a two-day 200-mile bike ride, and teaches every day at Beaver Creek or Vail.

Readers: What do you think? Bernie would be working as President from age 75-79 or from 75-83? Is that too old? Or has railing against Wall Street kept him young at heart?

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