Month: June 2017

For walking around shop-lined pedestrian streets and enjoying the feeling of the city, my favorite Moscow hotel turned out to be the Marriott Royal Aurora. Ask for comments, a local said “Yeah this is very close to center, and I think it’s about as high as you can go in Moscow without the hotel having a dedicated elevator for disposing of overdosed escorts….”

The location is fine for seeing the tourist high points. You’re almost next to the Bolshoi Theater and about a 10-minute walk from Red Square. More importantly, a lot of the city’s better restaurants and shops are immediately adjacent. It is convenient to Metro (trains run every minute during core weekday hours!) and bus services.

Breakfast was included in my $200/night (including tax) price for a “superior” room (as big as a “junior suite” in most hotels). This is served in a pleasant atrium (photos) and service is attentive and friendly. They’ll come by every 5 minutes or so to see if you want more coffee, some of the Russian sparkling wine, fresh juice, etc. There is an omelette station, meats and potatoes, fresh fruit, cold cuts, smoked fish, and a vegetable and pickle section. You could eat about four complete meals at the breakfast buffet and wouldn’t be hungry for the rest of the day (or week?).

If you do eat four meals per day during your one hour at the buffet, the gym is nice and pleasantly staffed 24/7. The pool is kind of small but was always empty during my stay so you could actually swim for exercise. There is also a hot tub, steam room, and sauna.

Front desk and concierge services are excellent.

The hotel laundry is an expensive piece-by-piece service (supposedly hotels don’t actually get rich off this and yet the price of washing a shirt is about the same as buying a shirt at Costco or Walmart; this would be a great subject for young economists to investigate!). Moscow doesn’t have laundromats or wash-and-fold services (everyone has a machine at home), so try to bring enough clothes for your entire stay or budget an extra $100 per-person for laundry.

Internet is free and throttled to about 4 Mbit/second. It works reliably with no annoying reauthorization process. You won’t be streaming Netflix, Amazon Prime, or YouTube into Russia, so this will be mostly for work.

Some alternatives that I considered…

• Four Seasons: right next to Red Square, but unless you just love seeing Chinese tour groups, this is less convenient for everything other than touring the Kremlin. The lobby is not all that nice or big.
• Ritz-Carlton. Russians seem to like this place.
• Park Hyatt. Russians also like this one. Very close to the Marriott.
• Metropol. A Gentleman in Moscow makes it sound fantastic, but in reality the lobby and restaurants are small and not that interesting. The atrium at the Marriott is actually nicer.

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For those Americans who have an EBT (Electronic Benefit Transfer) card, e.g., the roughly 44 million on food stamps (SNAP), Amazon has cut the price of unlimited Prime video streaming to $5.99/month.

At a minimum, the folks at CATO will have to update their 2013 work versus welfare tradeoff analysis (summary: for tens of millions of Americans, it is not economically rational to work; this is on top of the tens of millions of Americans for whom it is more lucrative to collect child support than to work).

Readers: Do you expect to see more price discrimination based on whether or not a consumer holds an EBT card?

Related:

• Book Review: The Redistribution Recession

 

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A reader was kind enough to take me to the Bolshaya Bronnaya Synagogue, in a fashionable neighborhood of central Moscow, for Friday night services. They are welcoming to strangers, even a blonde Russian and her French boyfriend who showed up out of curiosity. Everything is in Hebrew and the books are in Hebrew/Russian so if you’re casual about your Jewish observance you’ll be kind of bored during the service per se (etiquette hint: don’t pull out your smartphone and start reading on the Kindle app during Shabbat!). The Lubavitch Hasidim run this temple under the Chabad banner and they serve a community Friday night dinner after the service. There we talked to a guy who appeared to be in his 30s who’d grown up in a Russian military family in Vladivostok. His family had abandoned Judaism in the 20th century, but he was seeking to rediscover the religion of his great-grandparents. To Jews from the West who can adjust their level of observance every week if they want, it was touching to see how precious Judaism was to this man. (Contrast to “Jewish Americans, who will go to any length, short of practicing Judaism, to instill a sense of Jewish identity in their children.” (from Here I Am by Jonathan Foer))

If you’re curious about the revival of religion in Russia, or you happen to be Jewish, I would recommend spending a Friday evening at this synagogue. Dress code: most people wore suits, but I was in a T-shirt and blue jeans (if this upset anyone, I couldn’t understand enough Russian to learn about it).

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Scanning the New York Times right now…

Comey Accuses White House of ‘Lies’

Mr. Comey said that President Trump lied to the American public when he said that the F.B.I. was in disarray.

Is this worth a citizen’s attention? The first headline, about a politician allegedly lying, sounds a lot like gambling in Casablanca. The second headline sounds purely subjective (see “FBI Admits It Missed Opportunities to Stop Tamerlan Tsarnaev” (Boston Magazine, 2014); was that because of “disarray” or due to some other reason?)

Readers: What’s interesting about Mr. Comey and/or what he has said recently?

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Unlike from New York, there are no nonstop flights from Boston to Moscow. An unusual option in terms of timing is departing Logan Airport at 7:50 am, having dinner during a three-hour layover at LHR, and then proceeding onward to Moscow on a flight 10:35 pm that arrives around 4:30 am Moscow time (that’s 9:30 pm in Boston). Hop in an Uber and you can be at your hotel at 6:00 am, the perfect time to go to sleep if your body still thinks it is 11:00 pm, which it is in Boston.

British Airways quotes some pretty low prices. One way that they accomplish this miracle is that seat selection in advance is not included. Add about $250 and some hassle because, at least if you’re in the Economy or Premium Economy (a.k.a. what they used to call “Coach”) ghetto, you need to go to a separate post-booking web site to see if any decent seats are still left. Then pay.

The flight over was awesome. Boston Terminal E was deserted. I had checked in a bag and was through security about 10 minutes after arriving at the curb. The flight over was pretty nice, though it seems that BA is getting out of the Economy business. Fully half of the 777 was given over to First and Business. I am ashamed to admit this, but I watched (and enjoyed!) a documentary on synchronized swimming: Perfect.

LHR is kind of hassle, involving two train rides, another security check, and Terminal 5 shops that seem geared mostly to luxury fashion. There are no quiet restaurants that I could find and, as with American airports, there are loud TVs going at most gates, so it was a long three hours. Business and First passengers can enjoy what are presumably some fairly plush lounges.

It is about 4 hours on a packed A321 to Moscow. They have a strange business class seating arrangement in the front, but it might well be worth paying for. Unlike U.S. airlines, BA doesn’t seem to have any way when checking in to pay for an upgrade on one or more legs.

Although Russia tries to hassle Americans with a visa requirement somewhat reciprocal to what we impose on them, actual immigration and customs is much more efficient than in the U.S. Unlike at U.S. airports, if your luggage is delayed they do have bathrooms in the baggage claim area!

It is a one-hour ride into central Moscow and it costs about $17.50 via Uber. Airport WiFi in Russia requires authentication via a Russia cell phone number or bank card, I think, so make sure that you have a strategy for getting data service once you’re there (see Verizon Wireless in Russia). Although technically my room reservation didn’t start until 2 pm, the Marriott Royal Aurora hotel (highly recommended) offered me an immediate check-in.

The trip back started at 4:05 pm from DME. There was a 20-minute line to get through departure immigration, so I would advise not cutting it too close (though sometimes they called for specific flights and took people out of sequence). This was a comfortable 777 with Premium Economy seating. On the final leg from LHR to Boston, about 7.5 hours, the seat that I’d paid for and gone through the hassle of signing up for via the Web was actually broken (would not recline). The flight attendants could not fix. BA did not offer any kind of refund for the seat selection or other fees. It was a smooth ride down the glideslope, but the 777 pounded Runway 27 at Logan so hard that passengers gasped. (Can we sign up to be the landing gear supplier to BA?) Wind was a steady 16 knots so it is unclear why the landing was so hard. In any event, the gear remarkably did not come off the plane and we arrived at the gate early. Clearing immigration was quick due to my global entry status.

If you’re one of the Business or First travelers that BA actually wants to deal with, and you want to avoid flying overnight, I think these are good options in terms of timing. It might also work if you’re completely indifferent as to where you sit in the airplanes. I’m not sure that Premium Economy makes sense given the hassle of booking specific seats on a separate web site (coupled with the airline’s lack of any procedure for dealing with the consequences of their failure to maintain working seats).

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Brookline police log, May 23, excerpts:

At 8:25 p.m., a party came to the front desk and spoke to police officer about an orange gummy bear left on a rear bumper behind a Beacon Street business. The caller was advised that it was not a police matter.

At 12:42 p.m., a custodian reported aggressive turkeys at 1 Rene Playground during recess time.

At 1:28 p.m., a caller reported a gaggle of geese in her yard on Fenwood Road, and said they went after her dog.

At 7:00 p.m. a caller reported turkeys in the middle of Beacon Street.

At 12:37 p.m. a caller reported that there was a group of eight people vomiting and filming outside of 111 Cypress St.

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In Moscow a UK citizen told me “I’d love to live in London, but a decent apartment is at least 1 million pounds [$1.3 million] and I don’t have those kinds of savings.”

Then I flew to London and learned about a shortcut to the savings process…

I talked to a guy who’d been a divorce lawsuit defendant after a two-year marriage. He explained that courts split a married couple’s property 50/50 and that, unlike in California, premarital property is included. So he lost a London house that he’d purchased prior to the marriage. He agreed to a 50/50 shared parenting arrangement with his plaintiff, which meant that she had a “need” for a house in addition to her baseline entitlement to 50 percent of the combined property. She had enhanced her claim by refraining from work during the marriage.

Note that being married for just a day or two may not be sufficient in order to get a full 50 percent share. Courts can deviate from this policy if the marriage is “short-term”. There is no set definition of “short-term,” but the idea seems to be “a few months.” A two-year marriage is not obviously “short-term.”

It is difficult to contract out of this regime because English courts don’t typically recognize prenuptial agreements (see the International chapter of Real World Divorce for litigation regarding a German prenuptial agreement that Nicolas Granatino wanted set aside so that he could get more of his wife’s assets).

English courts are increasingly gender-neutral and therefore the above strategy could be employed by a man targeting a higher-wealth and/or higher-income woman. It is definitely helpful to have a child, though.

[Separately, I wonder if this contributes to the income inequality that the British complain about. A UK citizen who didn’t want to risk losing half of his or her assets after a year or two would have to avoid marriage or marry someone with at least as much in premarital savings.]

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My standing bet with Trumpenfuhrer-hating pilots is that I will buy them dinner if the target of their hatred is able to get even a single FAA regulation changed in 8 years.

All kinds of friends have been asking me about “President Donald J. Trump’s Principles for Reforming the U.S. Air Traffic Control System”:

the FAA’s ATC operations are currently mired within a Federal bureaucracy that hinders innovative operations and the timely introduction of new technology. In order to modernize our ATC system, the Administration supports moving the FAA’s ATC operations into a new non-governmental entity. This will enable ATC to keep pace with the accelerating rate of change in the aviation industry, including the integration of new entrants such as Unmanned Aircraft Systems and Commercial Space Transports. A more nimble ATC entity will also be able to more quickly and securely implement Next Generation (NextGen) technology, which will reduce aircraft delays and expand the availability of the National Airspace System (NAS) for all users.

The new ATC entity would grant FAA-certified users access to the NAS, subject to their participation in the system’s user fees,

America’s growing aviation system demands a new, independent, non-government organization to operate our Nation’s airspace. The new entity should have access to capital markets in order to spur capital investment, technology adoption, and innovation faster, more effectively, and securely. Over the last 20 years, more than 50 countries have already successfully transitioned their ATC operations.

Here’s where the proposal begins to go off into the realm of fantasy, in my opinion. It can cost the U.S. 5-10X as much to do anything involving the government, whether run by the government itself or run by a crony (“privatized”), compared to what other countries spend (see New Yorker, for example). We would be bankrupt if we tried to operate a huge subway system that runs every minute like they do in Moscow, for example. We spend 4X as much, as a percentage of GDP, as Singapore on health care. Any argument of the form “people in Country X can do Y” is irrelevant, in my opinion, unless the plan is to import people from Country X to run Y here in the U.S.

Two members [of the Board] should be selected from the airline list, two members should be selected from the union list, one member should be selected from the general aviation list, one member should be selected from the airport list, and two members should be selected from the Department of Transportation list. Those eight initial Board members would then select a Chief Executive Officer. Those nine Board members would then select four independent Board members.

Why does the union for air traffic controllers support this proposal? Under the current system, controllers are civil servants so it is tough for them to get paid more than $400,000 per year (the President’s salary). Under a privatized system in which they have a monopoly on labor and board seats on the monopoly entity that pays for labor, there is no limit to what controllers might get paid. It could be the $500,000 per year that stage hands can get in New York (Forbes). It could be the $1.2 million per year that controllers in Spain are able to get (previous post).

Harrison Ford spoke in Boston on Sunday (People). Regarding ATC privatization, he said “What is the problem that we’re trying to solve?” Considering all of the things that the government does, running a 1950s-style ATC system is probably one of the best. Controllers are competent, energetic, helpful, and reliable. They get a lot more than private-sector workers (as with others in the federal government), but not so much that taxes on aviation fuel and airline tickets have to be cranked up to insane levels. The 1950s-style radars are up and running most of the time.

The Trump proposal is to hand over to a government crony a monopoly on running a 1950s-style ATC system and let the crony charge whatever fees it wants. There is a hint regarding new technology, but the U.S. track record in this area is terrible. The contracts regarding the fancy new ADS-B system ($20 billion?) have completely stifled innovation according to the FAA employees with whom I’ve spoken. The contract specifies a minimum level of performance and therefore the performance is fixed at that level indefinitely (e.g., this brand-new system won’t give you weather information for airports that are farther than about 500 miles away, so the people who paid for this new system still have to keep installing and paying subscription fees for XM satellite weather).

It would be interesting to see a rethinking of ATC that used modern technology and clean-sheet engineering. One small example: Americans have paid and are paying billions of dollars for ADS-B, which streams digital information into aircraft avionics systems. Why are aircraft operators having to swap out SD cards with updated databases every 28 days? The databases contain information on airports, navigation beacons, and intersections (lat/longs) that changes at a geological pace. For airline and charter operators, the FAA and DoT requires that the work of swapping out SD cards be done by maintenance (not pilot) employees who are on random drug testing. If an aircraft is based remotely from the maintenance facility, therefore, mechanics or avionics technicians must drive out to where the aircraft lives. It might cost $5,000 per year to keep the database in a GPS (functionally the same as the GPS in your smartphone) current. Why aren’t the handful of bits that are updated streamed to aircraft either in flight via ADS-B or on the ground via LTE?

It would be interesting to see a proposal for a system that starting from the following goals:

• separation of human-occupied aircraft from drones, including drones sold to consumers for $500
• zero humans in the loop for en-route operations by Date X
• zero humans in the loop for approach control by Date Y
• zero humans in the loop for airport (tower/ground) operations by Date Z
• only a single communications method required for in-flight operations (not VHF voice radio plus transponder plus ADS-B)

How challenging is this? There are only about 7,000 aircraft in the sky at once spread across 5 million square miles of U.S. airspace (FAA). Admittedly these tend to be clustered in certain areas, especially around the busiest airports. Nonetheless, we are not discouraged from working on self-driving cars despite the fact that a single Interstate highway might carry 7,000 cars in one hour in one direction.

So… the Trump Administration proposal doesn’t seem to address the real safety hazard that has developed over the past 10 years, i.e., drones. In fact, the proposal probably makes it worse. The organization that has the power to regulate what equipment is included in a drone sold to consumer (federal government) will become disconnected from the organization that has to deal with the potential for mid-air collisions.

[What has the FAA been busy with instead of managing the drone hazard? One example is the FAA’s huge staff devoted to hassling aircraft manufacturers and owners regarding extremely unlikely problems, e.g., forcing Bell to put an $18,000 backup attitude indicator into a VFR-only 505 helicopter, which already has two huge G1000 screens that offer attitude information. These themselves are unnecessary because under VFR the pilot looks out the window to see if the helicopter is pitched up or down. It is not legal to fly the 505 into the clouds and it would only be in exceptional situations when a pilot would refer to the extremely reliable G1000 for basic aircraft control. The old Bell Jet Ranger, which the 505 replaces, was legal to operate without any attitude indicator (“artificial horizon”). If an operator stuck a mechanical gyro in the panel the FAA required no backup to the unreliable mechanical instrument. Now that the new 505 Jet Ranger comes with a bulletproof electronic attitude indicator, a backup is required, and it can’t be the $500 backup that is available in the world of kit aircraft or portable electronics that Cessna pilots might use. (Thus does an ever-larger fraction of GDP get devoted to stuff that has no value to Americans, making GDP an even less reliable indicator of economic progress.)]

The Trump Administration proposal locks Americans into paying for a unionized labor force of 24,500 people (BLS) to do a job that, in a clean-sheet design, likely wouldn’t be done by humans at all. If the controllers are able to use privatization to boost their salaries to $300,000 per year and total comp (including pension and health care benefits) to $500,000 per year, this will be a $12 billion cost to the U.S. economy (some comparison numbers).

The Trump Administration proposal contains no metrics for how we would know whether or not the implemented privatized/cronyized system was actually better. The people will be able to declare “success” and “mission accomplished” as soon as this is spun out. Currently there is no metric for FAA success or failure, but at least they are subject to Congressional oversight if the lack of accomplishment becomes too obvious.

If the government can’t resist privatizing something related to aircraft this year, I suggest starting with aircraft certification. Due to our comparatively ponderous bureaucracy, the U.S. is at a competitive disadvantage to countries such as Switzerland and Austria where new aircraft designs can be tested and approved quickly. The FAA can turn over aircraft certification to a competing group of UL-style companies, maybe with some involvement by the insurance industry. Unlike with ATC there is no need for a “big bang” change due to the fact that the team certifying a new Boeing 787 variant need not talk to the team certifying a new helicopter.

If Congress can’t resist privatizing ATC, I suggest starting with Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico and giving those three disconnected airspaces to different organizations. There is no reason that multiple private ATC operators can’t cooperate with existing government ATC and/or each other. The FAA controllers already cooperate with privatized Canadian and governmental Mexican, Cuban, and Bahamian controllers (for example). If this goes well, let these three competing vendors start bidding for one center (out of 20) at a time within the continental U.S.

Whatever we do, it needs to be done with some high-level goals (such as the elimination of in-the-loop humans and redundant legacy communications systems) and metrics so that we can evaluate our progress against those goals. We also should be humble with respect to our repeated failures at executing projects like this and consider that government-run ATC is one of our government’s few success stories. If the goal is, as it seems, to continue running a 1950s-style system (humans primary, augmented by radar and computers), I don’t see how it can be worthwhile. If the goal is to run a system that takes advantage of modern technology, the proposal should start with “let’s redesign this from a clean sheet.”

[Comment from a friend: “Think of the last time the ATC system went down? Vs private airline scheduling and reservation systems? (Two weeks ago)?”]

Related:

• The potential train wreck of privatized air traffic control (2016 posting showing that this terrible idea is not original to the Trumpenfuhrer)
• Atlantic article on Trump’s proposal

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One of the things that I’ve been spending money on for the last 25 years or so is heroin. Recently I discovered that heroin is not part of a healthy lifestyle. My dealer has been getting pretty rich from all of the money that I and other customers have been handing over. So I’m planning to sue him for selling me the heroin that I didn’t realize was bad for me.

One other tidbit: One of my part-time activities is educating children about how they shouldn’t use heroin and other narcotics.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury: How do you like my lawsuit?

Okay… now how is the above-described hypothetical different from the real lawsuit by the state of Ohio against five vendors of heroin pills:

The state of Ohio sued five pharmaceutical manufacturers Wednesday, arguing the companies fraudulently marketed addictive prescription painkillers and seeking hundreds of millions of dollars to address Ohio’s opioid crisis.

Attorney General Mike DeWine said the drug manufacturers knowingly misled physicians and patients into thinking OxyContin, Percocet and other opioids were nonaddictive and safe in large quantities. Although the state has cracked down on prescribing the drugs, DeWine said, they were and are a gateway to more dangerous heroin and fentanyl, street drugs now responsible for most opioid overdoses.

So… the state regulates doctors, deciding which can and cannot practice within Ohio. The state also runs anti-opiate classes in its schools. The state decides what pills can and can’t be purchased with Medicaid (see Who funded America’s opiate epidemic? You did.). But the drug manufacturers are responsible?

Related:

• “Generations, disabled” (Washington Post), about the government paying Americans to stay home and take pills: “They were the fourth generation in this family to receive federal disability checks…”

 

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Antonio Garcia Martinez (of Chaos Monkeys fame) recently made a Facebook posting from Havana:

The detailed how-to on how to bring home prostitutes from my Airbnb hostess is worth recording.

I should call her once I know I’m coming home with a ‘chica’, so she can be there to officially register her as ‘visitante nocturno’, which implies taking her identification details and sending them to the state. Once the girl robs me in my sleep, which she’ll inevitably do, the señora will report her to the police, and the full machinery of Cuban state suppression will be engaged to hunt her down. And hunt her they will: the señora reported that a guest of hers had a bottle of expensive cologne stolen, and the police found the girl and returned the cologne. Totalitarianism has certain advantages.

Lastly, Cuban sexual mores are evidently rather less than evangelical. ‘Las chicas…es lo normal,’ she intoned (‘the girls…it’s normal’), punctuated with that resigned shrug common among Habaneros. Note, this is a stately and briskly competent older lady well into her 50s.

I see a five-star Airbnb review in your future, Margarita.

This is consistent with a 2013 Miami Herald story:

easy access to young women willing to ignore age differences — in exchange for as little as $30 for the night.

Today, prostitution may well be the most profitable job in an island where the average monthly salary officially stands at less than $20 and a bottle of cooking oil costs $3.

What if the embargo collapses and it is straightforward to JetBlue to my home town of Boston, for example? Under the Massachusetts child support guidelines, the Cuban tourist who has sex with a local earning $50,180 will get $30 per day ($210 per week; $10,920 per year) for 23 years. If the Cuban tourist can find a partner who earns $250,000 per year, revenue per the guidelines is $40,000 per year ($920,000 over 23 years). (See “American Child Support Profits Without an American Child” within “Child Support Litigation without a Marriage” for how U.S. taxpayers will fund the administrative and legal costs of getting the cash flowing over the border.)

[Nearby Florida has similar laws, but child support ends at age 18 or 19 and the revenue is only about half of what can be obtained in Massachusetts or New York, so the return on investment in a few extra hours of air travel is substantial.]

It seems that some of this already goes on with respect to Canada, though if the biological parents had sex in Cuba rather than in Canada, the Canadian child support formula would not necessarily apply. From Havana Times:

a prostitute in Bayamo who gives birth to a Canadian client’s baby and receives just $100 per month from Canada will live better than the OB/Gyn who delivers the baby.

Readers: What happens when/if Cuba-U.S. travel is completely open?

Related:

• Cuban divorcee moves from Cuba to Florida and seeks modification of child support from $1.50/month to $8,000/month (2001) [but if the pregnancy had occurred in Florida she would have been able to collect at Florida rates even while remaining in Cuba]
• Where New York Times readers don’t want to follow Europe: Legalized prostitution

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