Category: Social Justice

Measuring income inequality in a centrally planned economy with income-based pricing

by philg

We are informed that income inequality is one of the biggest problems facing Americans, but I wonder if the activities of central planners is going to make it ever-tougher to get accurate measurements. Looking at gross cash income is relatively easy. Adjusting for federal, state, and local income taxes is also relatively easy. It gets tougher when we want to factor in the value of means-tested welfare programs such as housing subsidies from a housing ministry, Medicaid, SNAP/EBT, and Obamaphone, but some valiant attempts have been made in this area (see “Is rising income inequality just an illusion?” (The Hill, 2021) for a description of some of the efforts).

I’ve noted here that spending power for cultural activities is actually infinite in many states for those who are on welfare (see “Why you want to be on SNAP/EBT“) because the price of museum or garden admission, for example, is reduced to $0.

California’s central planners are adding an interesting wrinkle with income-based electricity pricing. “PG&E monthly bills could jump for many customers due to new state law” (Mercury News, April 12):

Customers for California’s three major power companies — including PG&E ratepayers — can expect to see some big changes in their monthly electricity bills in the coming years as compliance with a new state law begins to unfold.

PG&E, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric, the three major California utilities whose services include electricity, have filed a joint proposal with the state Public Utilities Commission that sketches out proposed changes in monthly bills.

At present, those bills are primarily based on how much electricity and gas customers consume.

A new proposal would add a fixed monthly charge that would be based on the household income levels of the respective customers.

PG&E says many customers would ultimately pay less for electricity — although the distinct possibility remains that an unknown and potentially significant number of more affluent customers might wind up with even higher electric bills.

The new law creates a need for a new government ministry of income verification:

It also appears that a formal effort will be made by state officials to confirm the household income declarations of utility ratepayers.

“The proposal recommends a qualified, independent state agency or third party be responsible for verifying customers’ total household incomes,” PG&E said in an emailed statement.

California is usually the leader in new ideas for expanding government. As more states adopt programs like this, I wonder if it will become practically impossible for academics to estimate spending power inequality in the U.S. (the relevant measure; if you can spend $200,000 per year on housing, health care, food, etc., what does it matter if your earned income is $0?).

This reminds me to relive some happy California memories. From Queer Ecology at Muir Woods (November 2020; San Francisco schools were closed, but youngsters could go to the forest (reservations required) and learn):

San Diego trip report and Meet in San Diego tomorrow or this weekend? describe my June 2022 trip to the Golden State:

Related:

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American Diversity concert tonight in Cambridge

by philg

I received a mailing from a music organization in Cambridge, Maskachusetts, “A unique program of music written by women and people of color”:

I’m very sorry that I can’t attend and see if The Mask is about an N95 mask and his/her/zir/their journey of protection (modern update to Gogol’s “The Nose”?). Maybe it will be explained in the program notes and pre-concert lecture.

Note that the concert is entirely free to those who limit their working hours so as to qualify for SNAP/EBT (“food stamps”):

We are proud to participate in the Mass Cultural Council’s ‘Card to Culture’ program. EBT card holders who present their EBT card in person at the Box Office receive 2 free Gold section tickets to a Spectrum Singers concert.

Related:

  • Thankful for archive.org (Government-supported Harvard University hosts a play in which only those who identify as Black can attend: “We have designated this performance to be an exclusive space for Black-identifying audience members”)
  • Why you want to be on SNAP/EBT
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Apple celebrates Women’s History Month

by philg

How are readers celebrating Women’s History Month? We walked by the Apple Store in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida and found that they were celebrating “female creators”:

In other words, they’re celebrating the women who created the Apple II, the Macintosh, MacOS (and underlying Unix/Mach), the iPhone, iOS, Objective-C, the Swift language, etc.

How long before all of the above are attributed to nerds identifying as “female”? In Digital Apollo MIT Press, 2011), Margaret Hamilton is credited as a source, but is not described as having written any of the code. The credited engineers and programmers are Eldon Hall (chose to use integrated circuits), “Hal Laning, a mathematician and control engineer,” (the calculations, the operating system), David Hoag (gimbals/gyros and calculations upstream from them), David Hanley (Apollo Guidance Computer design with Ray Alonso, Hugh Blair-Smith (who also built the assembly language), and Albert Hopkins), Joe Shea (systems engineering), Dick Battin (lead software engineer), Jim Nevins (user interface), Tom Sheridan (user interface), Bill Tindall (system engineering, code review), Howard Sherman (user interface), Floyd Bennett (flight mechanics for the lunar landing), Allan Klumpp (lander software), Don Eyles (lander software), Donald Cheatham (lander software algorithms), Hubert Drake, Donald Bellman, and Gene Matranga (lunar lander simulator),

The book does credit women specifically for manufacturing core memory (invented by Jayla Forrester for the female-designed Whirlwind I):

Raytheon did the manufacturing in its plant in Waltham, Massachusetts. The town had a history of precision machining (the Waltham Watch Company was nearby), and drew on an industrial community familiar with weaving and textile manufacturing: ‘‘we have to build, essentially, a weaving machine,’’ Raytheon manager Ralph Ragan told the press.30 Raytheon assigned the work to older, female workers. Engineers nicknamed them ‘‘little old ladies,’’ and actually referred to them as ‘‘LOLs.’’ Core rope weaving was a specialized skill, and Raytheon paid the women to sit around and do nothing if the software ran late, so they would not be called to other projects that would degrade their currency.

Within four years of the book’s publication, history had been revised so that a late-to-the-project female-identifying individual had built all of the software. From “Photo celebrates unsung NASA software engineer Margaret Hamilton” (Caroline Seide, 2015):

The article goes on to point out “It’s not an exaggeration to say that Hamilton was directly responsible for some of NASA’s most impressive achievements.”

For those who are concerned that Florida does not keep pace with national progressive trends, a recent email from the local MIT Club:

They don’t explain their rationale for age discrimination. Why is the achievement of a “young female coder” to be celebrated while the achievement of an “old female coder” can be ignored? Nor do they explain their rationale for ignoring the achievements of young coders who identify with the other 72 non-male gender IDs that are recognized by physicians.

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Celebrating Black people, but not hiring any

by philg

Here’s a pharma company that celebrates Black women:

The executive team, according to the company’s “Our People” page:

Maybe there are some Black employees just below the “executive “leadership” level?

It looks as though the top of the “people” page is a stock photo that includes a Black woman. The office building in which these non-Asian stock photo models are assembled has exposed brick walls. Below this is a photo of some actual employees. The walls are painted sheetrock and the workforce has a decidedly different skin color distribution compared to the stock photo models:

Related:

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21-day antiracism, inclusion, diversity, and equity challenge at our former public school in Maskachusetts

by philg

Email from the K-8 public school in our former suburb of Boston, featuring 2-acre minimum zoning to ensure that nobody with fewer than 3 million Bidies ($2 million in pre-Biden money) can afford to buy a vacant lot and build a house:

We believe that in order to become and maintain being a district and larger community in which AIDE [antiracism, inclusion, diversity, and equity] thrives, members must commit to their ongoing growth in learning and awareness … To complete the challenge, each day pick just ONE piece of content. We’ve included three kinds:

reading (articles, blogs)
listening (podcasts/audio)
watching (video)

… some are explicitly created for White readers and others speak directly to people of color or specific racial groups.

Many organizations across the town and our connected communities will be participating in the challenge and we hope many of you will join, as well.

My favorite part is that each racial group gets its own reading list!

The included link has a helpful chart:

We are informed that racism is a public health emergency (example from Minneapolis; and “Declare Racism a Public Health Emergency” (New York Times)). Yet, according to the above chart, the emergency is not so severe as to preclude a “Pause for February Vacation”. It is okay to sit on the beach in Aruba while daily oppression continues.

The white background indicates that white is the default and/or preferred race? One good thing about our former town is that I’m pretty sure almost everyone there is qualified as an expert on the Day 4 subject: “What is Whiteness?” Also note that the next step after identifying as 2SLGBTQQIA+ is joining the military (days 18 and 19).

Here are the local victimhood experts:

Here are some photos of Aruba (February 12, 2022) getting ready for the February break arrival of the anti-racists:

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Farewell to Black History Month from ChatGPT

by philg

A February 5, 2023 exchange with ChatGPT:

What if we change the question slightly?

Let’s get away from skin color:

I’m sick with envy every time I see a Gulfstream on the ramp. Maybe ChatGPT can help.

(Does the above answer make sense? Melinda Gates and MacKenzie Scott are billionaires, but they did not get rich by employing workers or engaging in business. Why are they told to “implement responsible and sustainable business practices” and to support workers?)

How about our corporate overlords?

I would love to see a corporation “engage in … self-reflection”! ChatGPT demands “fair wages”. Suppose that a corporation accepts ChatGPT’s demand.

(ChatGPT implies that employers are paying $8.65/hr, but a quick search reveals that entry level at McDonald’s is $13.75 to $15/hr in Palm Beach County.)

Is there room for improvement among those who walk across the southern border?

In short, “No.”

Is there room for improvement among those who are already U.S. residents?

(Item #3 seems consistent with the others. If migration is good for the U.S., why would we strive to reduce the flow of valuable migrants?)

Combining all of the above… If you identify as white and native-born, I hope that you’re spending today acknowledging your privilege and making sure that you pay sufficient taxes to buy all migrants free access to the healthcare services that you’re unable to use (because out of network).

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Examples of our apartheid economy?

by philg

We’re a third of the way through Black History Month. Let’s check in with the voluntary apartheid economy that Americans have set up.

An email from Tripadvisor in which we are urged to “eat, stay, and shop” only at enterprises owned by people who identify as part of a particular race:

Oprah reminds us to “Celebrate Black History Month by Supporting These Black-Owned Businesses”:

There’s never been a better time to put your money where your mouth is. … Here, we’ve rounded up a selection of 55 Black-owned businesses online that the team here at Oprah Daily recommends—including in the beauty, food and drink, fashion, and home decor categories. These thoughtfully curated selections are nothing short of stunning, so you’ll want have your wallet ready. Supporting them is something you can do all year long.

Want to watch some TV on Amazon Prime? The top option is a section segregated to one skin color:

How about HBO Max? The opening screen:

The NBA wants us to eat at restaurants owned by people identifying as part of one race… “10 Black-owned restaurants in every NBA city”.

Throughout the month of February, we will be spotlighting 10 Black-owned restaurants in every city with an NBA team. This initiative aligns with the league’s commitment to broader diversity and inclusion efforts in the communities where we work and live.

What if you get fat in your tour of these restaurants? “15 Black-Owned Businesses in Health and Wellness to Support During Black History Month and Always” (ET). (Just remember that you can be healthy at any size and that obesity is definitely not a risk factor for COVID-19 that would be worth addressing.)

Readers: What are you seeing in terms of voluntary apartheid? (Official race-based programs, such as in government contracting or hiring, do not count.)

Related:

  • “Abolish the White Race” (Harvard Magazine, Sept/Oct 2002): “The goal of abolishing the white race is on its face so desirable that some may find it hard to believe that it could incur any opposition other than from committed white supremacists.”
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New York Times considers a forbidden point of view on diversity training

by philg

Loyal readers may remember a post from September 2021: Focusing on race and racism just makes the problem worse. (true or false?) My friend was forced to disagree with the proposition “Focusing on race and racism just makes the problem worse” in order to keep her job with a big Maskachusetts health care system. A week ago in the New York Times… “What if Diversity Trainings Are Doing More Harm Than Good?”:

Diversity trainings have been around for decades, long before the country’s latest round of racial reckoning. But after George Floyd’s murder — as companies faced pressure to demonstrate a commitment to racial justice — interest in the diversity, equity and inclusion (D.E.I.) industry exploded. The American market reached an estimated $3.4 billion in 2020.

Though diversity trainings have been around in one form or another since at least the 1960s, few of them are ever subjected to rigorous evaluation, and those that are mostly appear to have little or no positive long-term effects. The lack of evidence is “disappointing,” wrote Elizabeth Levy Paluck of Princeton and her co-authors in a 2021 Annual Review of Psychology article, “considering the frequency with which calls for diversity training emerge in the wake of widely publicized instances of discriminatory conduct.”

But there’s a darker possibility: Some diversity initiatives might actually worsen the D.E.I. climates of the organizations that pay for them.

What happened to my friend? She worked from a home office in a suburban bunker. Lacking faith in the Sacrament of Fauci and having had a bad reaction to her one and only dose of the experimental J&J COVID, she refused to comply with the employer’s demand that she accept the Sacrament of the Bivalent Booster. Although she pointed out that she always worked from home and never came into physical contact with any employees or patients of the health care enterprise, she was fired.

Speaking of Maskachusetts and business commitment to social justice, here’s an office building in Kendall Square, Cambridge, photographed January 13, 2023. The 2SLGBTQQIA+ rainbow flag is the literal foundation of the skyscraper:

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College-level thinking: overthrow capitalism and pay $trillions in reparations

by philg

Florida’s state Department of Education’s rejection of the College Board’s AP African American Studies Course (already obsolete? Why isn’t it called “Black Studies”?) provides a window into the problems being tackled by America’s best academic minds.

First, most media articles on this controversy are likely mostly false. “Ron DeSantis government bans new advanced African American history course” (BBC) says the course is “banned” and that it was done by Ron DeSantis and staff. The New York Times:

Florida will not allow a new Advanced Placement course on African American studies to be offered in its high schools, stating that the course is not “historically accurate” and violates state law. … Even before Mr. DeSantis signed the contentious laws last year restricting what can be taught, his administration rejected dozens of math textbooks for use in public school classrooms, claiming their incorporation of social-emotional learning and critical race theory.

See “Florida school boards, not state officials, choose textbooks” (Miami Herald, April 21, 2022) for an explanation of how the purportedly “banned” textbooks (“Florida says why it banned these math textbooks” (Washington Post)) could be used in any and every school in Florida. Was this course actually “banned” or was it “banned like the textbooks were banned”? Public schools in Florida are run by counties and if a county wishes to teach a particular class, I don’t think that there is a mechanism for the state to stop it. Palm Beach County Schools, for example, could teach a class on “The Social Justice of Kiteboarding” even if state-level bureaucrats allege that it “lacks educational value”. Here’s the “ban” letter from the Florida DOE, in which the cruel bureaucrats have refused to include the course in a “directory”, not banned counties, which they do not control, from teaching it:

More interesting is a document that is generally absent from media reports of the atrocities committed by Ron DeSantis. It contains excerpts of material in the class and, therefore, a window into what Black Studies scholars in our elite universities are grappling with. Students are taught the importance of “overthrow[ing] capitalism” (Topic 4.31) and also that reparations must be paid (Topic 4.30). For each American who identifies as Black (roughly 50 million says the Census Bureau) to get $5 million (the fair number according to a learned committee in San Francisco), the country needs to scrape up (or print?) $250 trillion, more than 10 years of current GDP. Given that our economy is based on transferism, how is the $250 trillion to be found if capitalism is overthrown? This is the question that the PhDs in Black Studies who put together the AP African American Studies course raise. Who says that high school students aren’t being challenged?

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A crisis among the righteous

by philg

Excerpts from a mailing list for residents of our former suburb of Boston, in which Social Justice is the most important issue after maintaining the 2-acre zoning minimum that ensures people need at least $1 million to buy in. November 16:

Last night we heard erratic driving/wheel screeching outside of our home on Old Sudbury Rd. This morning we found our Black Lives Matter sign run over and deep tire marks where the truck bowled over the sign and our snow stakes. It was reported and I do believe there is no coincidence it happened shortly after Trump announced his presidential run. The sign is going back up

I am so sorry to hear that happened. I also found a raw egg thrown into my mailbox yesterday after dark on Sandy Pond Rd.

There is only one side of racism. There is only one side

We must all be vigilant and remain resolved to resist intolerance and
bullying. Ignorance and fear cannot be allowed to dominate.

Thank you all for both the love and the hate messages [via private email] I received about the BLM sign vandalism. Now I am more informed and glad that I chose speak out. Much progress needs to be made for our children’s future.

The kids will be prepared for that future by growing up in an all-white town!

And from the library, an upcoming event with an apparently unchanged signature from the spring:

Virtual Event: Settler-Colonist Ties to Thanksgiving and Columbus: Taking Back the Narrative

In this presentation, we will explore this colonial system through primary sources and examine how language perpetuates invisibility and how we can dismantle oppression to bring accurate counter-narratives to life.

Claudia A. Fox Tree (she, her) identifies as a multiracial Indigenous woman.

The Lincoln Board of Health (BOH) voted to rescind the town-wide indoor mask mandate effective Monday, March 14, 2022, in response to substantially improved and positively trending public health data, including Lincoln’s high vaccination rate.

Updated indoor mask use recommendation as of April 14, 2022: Due to recent data showing an increase in positive COVID-19 cases, the Board of Health members voted last night to strongly recommend that people wear masks in public indoor spaces until early May as we see how the infection rate from the new BA-2 variant evolves over the next few weeks after spring vacation.

What happens in Florida when a redneck in a pickup runs over your political and social justice signs? Nothing! Because, unless there was an election happening within the next two weeks, you didn’t have a sign in the first place. Here’s our late-November scenery:

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