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CBS has been in the news lately. The all-male corporate executive team is now trying to find sort out ways to “donate $20 million to women’s groups following the Sunday resignation of CEO Leslie Moonves after sexual-harassment allegations by several women.” (Chronicle of Philanthropy; maybe this is better in their view than hiring a woman to join their team?)

“Les Moonves, one of the highest-paid CEOs in the US, leaves CBS with a net worth of $700 million” (Business Insider) is something that seems more interesting for shareholders. The company’s market cap is $21 billion. Thus roughly 3 percent of the total enterprise value has been extracted by this one employee (he also made some money before joining CBS). Was he working 24/7 at this job? From a 2005 NY Times article: “Moonves, although a lifelong Democrat and a friend of Bill Clinton’s, is something of a throwback. In his shows, he likes the men alpha and handsome and the women smart and beautiful, and he wants little personal complexity: happy endings are imperative.”

How does it benefit shareholders to have an employee who is so rich that he is hanging out with former Presidents? And did CBS need to pay someone $50+ million every year to tell them that the American public likes a happy ending?

Related:

• Harry Potter and the $100 million/year manager (from 2003: “Yesterday’s posting raises the question “if an executive can’t do a good job for $2 million/year, will he do a good job when paid $20 million/year?” The moribund U.S. economy seems to suggest that paying out huge sums to managers is not effective. … think about how focussed on work you’d be if someone handed you a $75 million check tomorrow. You’d probably move into a bigger apartment and redecorate. And wouldn’t it be nice to have a few vacation houses? You know that you’ll be traveling by private jet from now on, but to which of the 50 fractional jet ownership plans should you subscribe? You’re going to get invited to a lot of fun charity events so you’ll need a new wardrobe. In short, living like a rich person is very time-consuming.”)
• Gawker on the lawsuit filed by Moonves’s first wife (2004; being a defendant under California family law was a further distraction from the job; the litigation lasted for two years prior to what was expected to be “a lengthy trial”; every extra dollar paid by CBS to Moonves would have prolonged the litigation (when more is at stake, people fight more intensively))
• The Journal of Popular Studies on how the current wife supports and defends the man (July 2018)

[Buried in the middle bullet is something interesting. The journalist for “legalzoom” says that “But appearing in court wasn’t Moonves’ only speedy option. He could have rushed the process earlier by divorcing outside of California. While most states have residency requirements or long cooling-off periods, a few states offer a quick out. Nevada isn’t just the home of the drive-through wedding chapel. It’s also the best state for a quickie divorce.” The lawsuit was filed by his wife in California under California law. At that point, Moonves had no choice but to defend the suit (under the “no-fault” system, the wife was guaranteed to win a divorce, but there was an open question of how profitable it would be). The “no-fault” system is referred to by researchers as unilateral. Yet the American media portrays the defendant as having a world of options (which would be the case only under a bilateral system) and/or the decision to engage in a divorce lawsuit as an entirely voluntary process, agreed upon by both spouses.]

Readers: What organization should get the $20 million? There are roughly 75 million women in the U.S. labor force (U.S. Department of Labor, Women’s Bureau). Should each of these women get 27 cents (minus admin costs) for what they’ve suffered at the hands (etc.) of guys such as Moonves?

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It has been 17 years since the events of 9/11 transformed the United States. Despite fears of domestic jihad, we have preserved some of our traditional liberties, including the freedom to fly (well, except in the Washington, D.C., area, any time the President is visiting, any time there is a major league sports event, etc.). From the 1920s through the mid-1980s, the idea was that a middle-class American could purchase an airplane and fly almost anywhere within the U.S. without filing a flight plan, talking to Air Traffic Control, or otherwise becoming tangled up in a bureaucratic process. Due to skyrocketing (so to speak) costs, this had to be backed out to rent an airplane rather than purchase, at least for the middle-class earner. But we still have most of the freedom of avigation that we had back in the 1920s.

Could it be that we’ll get closer to mid-1980s prices for aircraft? Read on…

I met a young pilot recently and we discussed the possibility of him buying an airplane. Here’s part of an email from him:

My game plan is to keep adding certifications and experience then buy an aircraft in 7-12 years or so. I’m a long term thinker to a fault. The market should be flooded with many small aircraft in the future. Below, per FAA data, you can see from the 2012 and 2017 charts of the private pilots they are fewer and older as time progresses.

(Complete data: faa.gov)

Certainly it does seem as though potential light aircraft owners were concentrated at 55-59 in 2012 and are now concentrated at 60-64. The composite airplanes, such as Cirrus and Diamond, that have been built over the last 20 years, are mostly immune to corrosion.

It seems as though history is on his side. The pilot-owners who knew how to fly piston twins have aged out of being able to handle these high(ish)-performance aircraft and they are now selling for under $100,000, oftentimes for less than a same-era single-engine plane.

So perhaps in 7-12 years we will still have the freedom to fly and a Cirrus SR22 will be almost free (at least to acquire, if not to maintain)?

On the third hand, what about China? They have a rapidly developing general aviation culture. They are the owners of Cirrus and Continental, the manufacturer of the engines inside nearly all Cirruses. As Americans hang up their wings, why wouldn’t there be thousands of Chinese folks interested in exploring their new freedoms?

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At a recent family event I asked a young cousin what he was doing for a job. “Working on the Senate race in Tennessee,” he responded. He describes himself as a passionate liberal so I was later surprised to look up the race on Wikipedia and see that that the liberal New Yorker is doing his best to ensure that a female-identifying candidate (Marsha Blackburn) is defeated by a white male (Phil Bredesen, a former advocate of amending the state constitution to ban same-sex marriage).

How does it work with voters when they find out that out-of-state consultants are employed to persuade them? Can a “bring in the (Scarsdale) New York Democrats” approach succeed?

[Separately, if the Democratic Party tells voters that American women are victims and only the Democrats can help them, how can they spin their attempt to defeat a woman trying to bust through the glass ceiling and instead place a 74-year-old white male in a position of power?]

Related:

• “Should Republicans run only black women for Congress and Senate?“

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Boston peeps: You’re invited to MIT Room 35-225 at 6:30 pm on Wednesday, September 12. Oxana and I will talk about Oshkosh as a Safe Space (photos) based on our 2018 trip. Sponsor: MIT Flying Club.

(It might be safer to show up closer to 7 pm. The first 30 minutes of the block may be devoted to MIT Flying Club administration because it is the first meeting of the semester.)

Related:

• Oshkosh Reflections and Tips for Next Time
• Realistic Aerobatic Excitement at Oshkosh (GB1 GameBird and L-39X)
• Shaesta Waiz at Oshkosh
• What I learned about aircraft paint at Oshkosh
• Transitioning to electric flight (lectures at Oshkosh)
• Icon Aircraft at Oshkosh 2018
• Folks I want to meet at Oshkosh

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My Facebook friends are outraged because umpire Carlos Ramos penalized Serena Williams at the U.S. Open. This was a textbook example of female victimization in their view. Given that Ramos is Portuguese, however, would it make more sense for them to be outraged at Mr. Ramos being called a “thief”? That is an example of a Hispanic being victimized, no?

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Our local supermarket used to have at least one brand of packaged coffee on sale every week. It would rotate among Starbucks, Peet’s, and Dunkin’ Donuts. Discounts were typically 30 percent, e.g., from a regular price of $10 down to $7.

In May of this year, however, Nestle acquired the Starbucks supermarket coffee operation. Shortly after the deal closed, the sales stopped on all of the brands. What formerly cost $7 is now $10.

Readers: Have you noticed anything similar in your region?

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“Harvard Is Vaulting Workers Into the Middle Class With High Pay. Can Anyone Else Follow Its Lead?” (nytimes) is a feel-good story for readers about an enterprise so stuffed full of cash that it claims to pay workers wages based on something other than the market (left out of this is that, with higher pay, the contractors may just hire fewer and more-productive workers; see “MIT professor studies high-wage retailers” for how high wages may actually cut the percentage of an enterprise’s revenue that flows out to labor due to “Costcoization” (hiring only the most productive and energetic folks)).

From the Times:

Martha Bonilla is not your typical middle-class worker. And it’s not just that she was born in a backwater of El Salvador and crossed Mexico hidden among a pile of bananas in the back of a truck to make her way illegally into the United States at age 20.

Like millions of Americans lacking a college degree…

“Coming to the United States was the best decision I ever made,” Ms. Bonilla said.

For Ms. Bonilla, the result is an hourly wage of more than $25. Adding the money from a part-time job cooking at a student dorm, most weeks she clears more than $1,500.

So the good news for an American with minimal education is that it is possible to earn nearly $80,000 per year (in a town where a 3BR house costs $2 million!). On the other hand, the actual job described has been taken by an illegal immigrant.

The folks at the New York Times can’t imagine that an expanding supply of low-skill workers due to low-skill immigration has anything to do with the challenge of finding a high-paying job:

As the wages of American workers without a college education languish below where they were 40 years ago, Harvard’s experiment has led some economists and union organizers to think about similar arrangements to broadly benefit low-pay service workers, who form the biggest and fastest-growing part of the job market.

Recent research by economists at four top universities and the Social Security Administration concluded that the parceling out of less-skilled work to low-wage contractors — Goldman Sachs outsourcing its janitorial services, say, or Apple contracting out the assembly of its iPhones to Foxconn — could account for around one-third of the increase of wage inequality in the United States since 1980.

It is shuffling an employee from one enterprise to a different one that accounts for the huge wage cut. Nothing to do with supply and demand. Thus, if you’re a hospital and tired of paying surgeons $600,000 per year you can contract with Surgco and get surgeons for $400,000 per year plus a 5 percent fee for Surgco.

Larry Summers still remembers some economics (see “Women in Science” for how he never considered an economic explanation when he pondered a phenomenon and got fired):

But as Mr. Summers pointed out, across the economy, better jobs may mean fewer jobs. If, say, Massachusetts were to introduce a similar policy for public services, it would need to find the money. Taxpayers could provide it — or the state could scale back services and cut jobs. And employers forced to pay more may attract better-trained workers, displacing less-educated ones.

(i.e., Summers could manage a Costco if he gets forced out completely the next time he says something about women)

Readers: Is the nytimes trying to get low-skill Americans to vote for Trump? If not, how can we explain this article highlighting the fantastic low-skill job that has been snagged by an illegal immigrant?

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“Toilets Clogged, Plane Passengers Asked to Urinate in Bags” (NBC) will amuse those of you who fly in light piston-powered aircraft…

[It is tough to believe that one diaper in one toilet was enough to disable this critical system!]

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“Alexander Ciccolo to get 20 years for terror plot, assault” (Berkshire Eagle) is about a young Massachusetts man who converted to Islam and aspired to wage, but did not actually wage, jihad.

He couldn’t finish high school, but supposedly he was going to accomplish his terrorist goals: “he dropped out of school in the 11th grade and worked fast-food and roofing jobs after that, had once been a peace advocate, having taken part in a peace walk around Lake Ontario, organized by the Grafton Peace Pagoda, located off Route 2 in Petersburgh, N.Y., in July and August 2012.”

He only got close to his goals because the U.S. govenrment helped him: “On July 4, 2015, he accepted a small cache of weapons from an informant cooperating with the FBI and who had been in contact with Ciccolo beginning in June 2015”

He did not grow up in a two-parent home: “He came to the attention of authorities after his estranged father, a Boston Police captain, alerted them to his son’s stated interest in supporting the work of the terror group. … Ciccolo’s mother and stepfather attended the hearing…” (The child was the subject of significant litigation in Massachusetts family court. From ABC News:

Ciccolo had missed so many days of school the Wareham School Department filed what is known in Massachusetts as a CHINS – or Child In Need of Services – complaint to the Department of Social Services which opened an investigation into his mother, who had full custody.

The entire time his father, who was rising in the ranks of the Boston Police Department, desperately petitioned the court to let Alexander live with him, his new wife, and his stepchildren in Needham, an upscale Boston suburb, rather than with his ex-wife, Shelley Reardon, who refused, he claimed in court records, to have Alexander evaluated by mental health professionals.

“He [Robert] seeks this change because the child’s mother…who presently has primary physical custody of the child has in the past verbally agreed to allow the child to be evaluated but without exception has subsequently refused to allow such evaluations to proceed,” Ciccolo’s lawyer wrote in an emergency motion that petitioned a court to give him full custody of Alexander. “At present mother… has threatened legal action against father if initiates” psychological treatment.

The contentious divorce between Robert Ciccolo and Reardon, who split after 10 years of marriage when Alexander was five, are a glimpse into their only son’s long history of behavioral problems and mental illness that culminated with him coming “under the sway of ISIS,” as a young adult, prosecutors said at his first court appearance on July 14. He changed his name to Abu Ali al Amriki 18 months ago and opened a Facebook account where he posted a picture of a dead American soldier along with “Thank you Islamic State! Now we don’t have to deal with these kafir [non believer] back in America.”

).

He doesn’t seem like great neighbor, but does it make sense to put him away for 20 years given that he didn’t do much besides dream? What else could we have done with this troubled young person that would have kept us safe in case he did ever become capable enough to realize his dreams (without government assistance)?

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Folks: Weather permitting, I’m heading down to New York on Thursday, September 13 to hear Brian Keating present a lecture on cosmology and his interesting book for laypeople, Losing the Nobel Prize. The lecture is free and at the National Museum of Mathematics (5th Avenue and 26th; registration link). Refreshments (and conversation amongst ourselves) at 6:15 pm. Lecture at 7. I would love to get together with readers. If that doesn’t work, maybe coffee on Friday morning? Happy also to meet at Teterboro on Thursday morning or Friday around noon.

Related:

• Losing the Nobel Prize
• Losing the Nobel Prize: on careers in science

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