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Notes from a Zoom talk today by David Autor, an economics professor at MIT. Whenever Democrats are in charge of the economy, I think it is worth listening to the “experts” at Harvard and MIT because that’s where the policy justifications come from.

Inequality is extreme in the U.S. and harmful, according to Autor. He did not explicitly say how he is measuring inequality, though. The charts that he presented seemed to show wages. But a previous slide showed the low and falling rate of labor force participation in the U.S. In other words, a lot of adults live in the U.S. despite $0 in earnings. What if he looked at spending power and lifestyle? Much of the U.S. welfare system is directed toward non-cash benefits, e.g., a free or low-cost apartment in public housing, a $3/month family subscription to MassHealth (Medicaid) that would be $20,000/year at market rates, SNAP (food stamps), Obamaphone, etc.. The non-working folks whom I know here in Massachusetts have a lifestyle that would cost $80-100,000 per year (after tax) to purchase at market rates (apartment in Cambridge or Boston, health insurance, etc.).

[See this Wall Street Journal piece: “The census fails to account for taxes and most welfare payments, painting a distorted picture. … In all, leaving out taxes and most transfers overstates inequality by more than 300%, as measured by the ratio of the top quintile’s income to the bottom quintile’s. More than 80% of all taxes are paid by the top two quintiles, and more than 70% of all government transfer payments go to the bottom two quintiles. … Today government redistributes sufficient resources to elevate the average household in the bottom quintile to a net income, after transfers and taxes, of $50,901—well within the range of American middle-class earnings.” See also the Work Versus Welfare Trade-Off, in which we learn that poor people are not stupid and Fast-food economics in Massachusetts: Higher minimum wage leads to a shorter work week, not fewer people on welfare, in which employees cut their hours to be sure to maintain eligibility for free housing, health care, etc.]

Minimum wage should be much higher, according to Autor. What about the fact that employers won’t want to pay people way more than they’re worth? A friend’s Spanish language tutor, sitting at home in Guatemala with only a high school degree, on hearing about the proposed $15/year minimum wage, said “Won’t that mean a lot more unemployment since many people aren’t worth $15/hour?” Autor says that the government will invest in educating Americans to the point that they’re worth more. On a per-pupil basis and as a percentage of GDP, we already spend more than almost any other country on K-12 education; why aren’t American high school graduates already worth a lot to employers? Autor points out that the average American high school graduate is way less skilled than a high school graduate in other developed economies. “We should fix that.” Autor’s big solution for 13 years of government-run education that he says are generally ineffective is to add one more year: “universal pre-K”. With 14 years of pre-K through 12 and maybe another 5 years of taxpayer-funded college, a worker will surely find employers delighted to hire him/her/zir/them at $15/hour. (Autor also notes that many of today’s college graduates are going into personal service jobs at low wages.)

Borrowing is free. Interest rates have never been lower. We will grow our way out of any amount of borrowing that we do and, after paying back whatever we borrowed, be richer than if we hadn’t borrowed.

Apparently contradicting the above point, he says that successful Americans should pay vastly more in taxes than they’re currently paying. (Why does the government need all of this current tax revenue if borrowing is, in fact, free?) The capital gains tax rate should be much higher (but still not adjusted for inflation, so actually it would be more than 100 percent in a lot of situations, as it is already (if you bought an asset for $10,000 in 2000, for example, the BLS says you spent $15,700 in today’s mini-dollars; if you sell it for $15,000 in 2021 you’ve actually suffered a loss, but will owe capital gains tax nonetheless).

Estate taxes should be higher and there should be no step-up basis for the assets inherited.

Everything that Joe Biden is doing and has proposed is awesome and will propel the U.S. forward toward a dreamland of prosperity. “The Biden Administration is right to go all in rather than nibbling around the edges.” Can all of our dreams be achieved via bigger government? Autor would rather the government “create” better quality jobs than address inequality through the tax code. (i.e., what we really need is a planned economy, a point made by an emeritus professor and former senior MIT administrator, who asked whether Capitalism wasn’t the real source of inequality).

Autor was in sync with the folks at New Yorker magazine: “The President, channelling his inner Elizabeth Warren, pitches an American utopia after a dystopian plague year.”

(Trump’s fantasy was that Americans might not be rich enough to afford the work-free utopia that we desire; Biden is grounded enough to realize that utopia can be ours if we tax and borrow a little more.)

Readers: Have you been following Biden’s latest proposals, e.g., in last night’s speech? Are you as excited about bigger government as Professor Autor?

Related:

• the talk should eventually be available streaming from MIT Hillel
• Bitcoin has plenty of runway if we look back to the 1960s and 70s and the Great Society (beginning of a book review regarding the 1960s welfare spending expansion)

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We’re escaping to the Florida Free State for the Maskachusetts school vacation week (April 18-25). A journey of 1,000+ miles is the best way for the kids to get a “mask break” (under what would be the “law” if it had been passed by the legislature instead of merely ordered by the governor, walking outside one’s yard, even at midnight in a low-density exurb, is illegal without a mask).

Our destination: Jupiter, Florida, specifically Abacoa. Who wants to meet for coffee, lunch, beach walk, etc.? Please email philg@mit.edu if you’d like to get together! Bring the dog:

In case you’re wondering when coronapanic begins to wind down here in the epicenter of coronapanic… from Monday, “[Governor] Baker: No Plans Yet to Change Guidance on Outdoor Mask-Wearing” (NBC):

Gov. Charlie Baker said Monday he had no immediate plans to change the Massachusetts’ mask mandate, saying his administration would only do so when more people are vaccinated.

Almost half of the states in the country no longer have mask mandates, but all of New England still has them, which has prompted questions about when the rules might be relaxed in Massachusetts and the region.

In a press conference at the Family Health Center of Worcester, Baker said he would follow federal guidance on mask-wearing and incorporate additional information about COVID-19 variants.

“A lot of it is going to depend on both guidance we get from the feds and how fast we are able to vaccinate people, and how big a deal these variants are, not just here in Massachusetts and the northeast but around the country generally,” he said.

Everyone will be wearing a mask, which #Science says makes spreading coronavirus nearly impossible (it is even safe to join 150 people inside a 100% full Airbus!), much will continue to be shut down or capacity-restricted, and everyone who was previously considered vulnerable has already been vaccinated. But sticking healthy young people, the only folks left here who haven’t tried out the investigational vaccines, will make all the difference:

“The vaccine saves lives,” Baker said at the press conference, during which he highlighted the importance of community health centers during the pandemic.

Related:

• Relocation to Florida for a family with school-age children
• countries ranked by COVID-19 death rate (fully- and early-masked Czech Republic #1)
• states ranked by COVID-19 death rate (note that Massachusetts would be #1 on the countries list if we were our own country; note also that Florida is way down the list and would be a lot farther down if you adjusted for percent of population over 65 (and therefore vulnerable to death from/with COVID-19))

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According to Wikipedia, Ahmad Al Aliwi Al-Issa immigrated to the U.S. in 2002, complained that non-Muslims were unreasonably subject to “Islamophobia”, and killed 10 of his fellow Americans in a Boulder, Colorado supermarket in 2021.

Why did it make sense to admit Mr. Al-Issa as an immigrant in 2002? Housing in Colorado already cost more than Coloradans could afford: “Denver originally adopted an Inclusionary Housing Ordinance (IHO) in 2002, requiring for-sale developers building more than 30 units to set aside 10% as affordable to moderate-income households” (denvergov.org). Mr. Al-Issa would require 13 years of K-12 school, nominally costing taxpayers roughly $130,000, but the headline “per-pupil spending” numbers don’t include capital costs, e.g., for school construction. Arvada, Colorado, where Mr. Al-Issa lived, was considered to have “overcrowded” schools and therefore taxpayers also had to work extra hours to pay for new school buildings. Taxpayers without children would have had to pay for various tax credits and other government subsidies that are provided to non-welfare parents in the U.S. So let’s say that the expected cost would have been at least $250,000 by the time Mr. Al-Issa reached age 18.

At this point, would we have expected Mr. Al-Issa to earn more than a median income? Presumably that is the best assumption about someone for whom minimal information is available. We can expect the average person to be average. But already in 2002 the average (median earner) person in Colorado couldn’t afford the basics of life (housing, health insurance, etc.) without a government-run program of assistance, such as the above-mentioned affordable housing scheme.

For a working class taxpayer, wouldn’t Mr. Al-Issa’s presence in the U.S. have led to higher rents (more competition for scarce housing), worse traffic (if Mr. Al-Issa had gotten a job and commuted to work), and higher taxes (to pay for the subsidies that a median earner would require).

Maybe Mr. Al-Issa’s immigration could benefit the Colorado elites, as pointed out by Harvard professor George Borjas. A Colorado owner of apartment buildings or real estate could benefit from a larger population generating demand for housing. An upper-income Coloradan could benefit from the availability of labor at lower prices due to Mr. Al-Issa offering his services, e.g., as an Uber driver. A Colorado government worker, e.g., teacher, police officer, prison official, firefighter, or bureaucrat, could benefit from a larger population and resulting increased hiring by the government, thus generating opportunities for promotion.

But how did the elites sell so many non-elites on this kind of immigration? (55 percent of Coloradans voted for Joe Biden and therefore additional low-skill immigration)

(Separately, what will taxpayers spend to prosecute and imprison Mr. Al-Issa? Colorado has no death penalty. Mr. Al-Issa could easily live to 100, so that’s 79 years of incarceration, state-funded prison health care, etc.)

Readers: If Mr. Al-Issa hadn’t committed 10 murders, but instead had turned out to be a median wage earner, how would that have made the other median wage earners in Colorado better off?

(At first glance the above seems like a stupid question. The best expectation for a native-born baby is that he/she/ze/they will become a median earner. We don’t say that we’re worse off when a baby is born within our own family, right? The difference is that parents experience a lot of joy from having their own children in the house (except for, at worst, 95 percent of the time!). We value our children even if they never earn a dime, which would offset to some extent the loss to other taxpayers from having to support our children in means-tested housing, on means-tested health insurance, and shopping for food via EBT/SNAP.)

From a 2018 trip to Colorado, where stores began selling marijuana in 2014…

Related:

• Quality of Life in Denver (2019): This area certainly won’t win prizes for affordability. We didn’t see a sandwich for less than $13. A haircut from a barber shop, with tip, was $40. The first native-born Uber driver that I met was during the departure ride to the airport (20-minute traffic jam delay at 8 pm). He said “I’ve lived here my whole life, but I can’t afford it anymore. It is like San Francisco. I think I’ll have to move.”
• How was the immigration of Akayed Ullah supposed to benefit native-born Americans?
• How was the immigration of Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov supposed to benefit native-born Americans?

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Wikipedia on Mahaprasthanika Parva, a book within the Mahabharata:

Indra appears in his chariot with a loud sound, suggesting he doesn’t need to walk all the way, he can jump in and together they can go to heaven. Yudhishthira refuses, says he could not go to heaven with Indra without his brothers and Draupadi. Indra tells Yudhishthira, all of them after their death, entered heaven. Yudhishthira asks if his friend, the dog, can jump into the car first. Indra replies that the dog cannot enter his chariot, only Yudhishthira can. Yudhishthira refuses to leave the dog. He claims the dog is his friend, and for him to betray his friend during his life’s journey would be a great sin. Indra says that after abandoning his brothers and wife, he had acquired great merit, then why be stupefied by a dog, he is renouncing everything. Yudhishthira said that there is neither friendship nor enemity with those that are dead. When his brothers and Draupadi died, he was unable to revive them, hence he abandoned them. However, he cannot abandon the one who is alive beside him. Indra urges him to consider his own happiness, abandon the dog and hop into his chariot. Yudhishthira refuses to go into the chariot, explaining he cannot abandon the dog who is his companion, for his own happiness, while he is alive.

Today, from CNN:

The two German Shepherds belonging to President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden were returned to the Biden family home in Delaware ..,. Major, who is 3 years old, is the younger of the two Biden dogs, and has been known to display agitated behavior on multiple occasions, including jumping, barking, and “charging” at staff and security, according to the people CNN spoke with about the dog’s demeanor at the White House. The older of Biden’s German Shepherds, Champ, is approximately 13 and has slowed down physically due to his advanced age.

So the 13-year-old dog will die without the human companions on whom he has depended for 13 years.

Background enthusiasm from November and contrast to the hated dictator… “Biden to Restore a White House Tradition of Presidential Pets” (NYT):

President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. is expected to restore a time-honored tradition of having a presidential pet at the White House.

At a February 2019 rally in El Paso, Mr. Trump said that he didn’t have a dog because he didn’t have time, and felt it would be “phony” for him to get one for political reasons. “You do love your dogs, don’t you?” Mr. Trump said. “I wouldn’t mind having one, honestly, but I don’t have any time. How would I look walking a dog on the White House lawn?”

“Biden tells NASA engineer Indian Americans are ‘taking over the country’” (New York Post):

“It’s amazing. Indian-descent Americans are taking over the country — you, my vice president, my speechwriter,” Biden told Swati Mohan, NASA’s guidance and controls operations lead for the Mars Perseverance rover landing.

In May, Biden walked back comments telling voters they “ain’t black” if they supported a candidate other than him.

He said in August that blacks are less diverse thinkers than Hispanics.

Fair to say that, despite the above sentiments about the impending take-over, President Biden and Dr. Jill Biden, M.D. will not advocate for the Mahabharata to be taught in our schools (should they ever reopen)?

A photo from the reverse journey, starting with a small-scale breeder saying goodbye to an 8-week-old Samoyed:

Leo, now 10 weeks old, has been #MarkedSafe from the Bidens and is receiving all of the love to which white privilege entitles him at a friend’s secure compound.

Related:

• “In Delaware, the largest growth of population is Indian Americans, moving from India. You cannot go to a 7-11 or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not joking.” (TIME)
• “I want a world where Frank junior and all the Frank juniors can sit under a shady tree, breathe the air, swim in the ocean, and go into a 7-11 without an interpreter.” — Lieutenant Frank Drebin, 1991 (video)
• “Which dog breeds will homeowners insurance not cover?”: The most commonly excluded dog breeds are rottweilers, pit bulls, German shepherds, chow chows, and many wolf breeds.

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Previously on this blog: Godforsaken Sea, a book about a round-the-world solo yacht race.

This year… “‘Just terrifying’: Vendée Globe sailor rescued after yacht breaks in half” (Guardian):

“I didn’t have time to do anything,” said Kevin Escoffier. I just had time to send a message to my team. I’m sinking, I’m not joking. MAYDAY.”

Escoffier, 40, the French sailor who was lying in third place in the Vendée Globe solo round-the-world race, was talking after his dramatic rescue. On Monday afternoon, 840 miles south west of Cape Town, in strong winds and heavy seas, his 60ft carbon fibre boat PRB slammed into a wave at 27 knots and broke in half. PRB is one of the latest generation Imoca 60s with foils to lift it up so that it is practically flying. Escoffier abandoned ship and took to his life raft.

Escoffier was at 40°55′ S, 9°18′ E (source), confirming the old saying:

Below 40 degrees south there is no law;
below 50 degrees south there is no God.

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A friend who has been suffering through shutdown on an oceanfront estate in Maine mentioned that Acadia National Park has experienced record-breaking visitor counts. For the first time in history, you need to make a reservation before driving into the park at all.

Our National Park system was set up in 1872, i.e., for a country with a population of roughly 40 million. Today there are 330 million residents of the U.S. (or 350 million maybe?). Mobility, even in coronashutdown, is greater than it was in 1872. This leads to what I would have previously called “Manhattan-style crowding” in some parks (but now Manhattan has been de-crowded!).

Having the Federal government run stuff is not ideal, as evidenced by the filthy and decrepit bathrooms that are provided for visitors to Acadia. On the other hand, of all U.S. government functions, the National Park system seems like the best value for the dollar.

Why not see if we can create some additional National Parks or at least National Forests with much better visitor facilities and cut out the logging?Demolish some ugly condo buildings before climate change can get them and create additional National Seashores?

If so, where should the new parks be? My semi-local ideas…

• Lake Champlain (Vermont/New York)
• Chappaquiddick Island (“The Ted Kennedy National Seashore”)
• Baxter State Park (take it over from Maine, expand it, and make it more accessible with some awesome roads; call it “End of the Appalachian Trail Park”)
• Moosehead Lake (Maine; buy up some land to connect with what is now Baxter State Park)

A few photos from Acadia, September 2020:

• 

• 

• 

And, right next to the park, a guide to healing our nation (“Vote Democrat; Wach MSNBC & CNN News”):

Related:

• Park Drive photo above by Tony Cammarata of Aerial Boston (I was flying the Robinson R44 helicopter)

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… more lockdown. Just off a WhatsApp call with a friend in Ireland. The mostly-island nation has been mostly locked down since March. After six months of lockdown and 14-day quarantine for anyone returning or coming in, what’s new with our favorite virus? The #Scientists have recommended that the country go into “level 5” lockdown in which nobody can be more than a short distance from his/her/zir/their home. More or less everything will be closed except for schools (I explained that, in the U.S., science tells us that the schools are the first thing to close, not the last!).

“Coronavirus: ‘Act now to prevent lockdown’, Irish PM warns” (BBC):

In a televised address, he confirmed that level three restrictions would be imposed nationwide from Wednesday.

The move rejects a recommendation by public health experts to impose the strictest level five measures.

Mr Martin said moving to level five could have “severe implications”.

“If we all act now we can stop the need to go further, with introducing level four and five restrictions,” he continued.

The taoiseach said this would risk hundreds of thousands of jobs.

Does the failure of lockdown thus far to contain the virus shake anyone’s faith in lockdown? “No,” said my friend. “People say that the lockdowns haven’t worked because not everyone adhered completely to the lockdown.”

What did he think of these policies? “The problem with listening to NPHET [National Public Health Emergency Team] is that they have only one brief: COVID-19. They can’t tell you how to balance other interests.” (This is the same point I made in Looking at Covid-19 death rate is like the old saying “An economist is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing”?:

Is asking an epidemiologist whether to keep schools and playgrounds open like asking your accountant whether you should buy a dog? Yes, the expert can give you a bit of insight (“my other clients with dogs spend $4,000 per year on vet, food, and grooming”), but not a life-optimizing answer.

If Ireland, a small island nation, can’t control COVID-19, is the U.S. kidding itself?

For maximum health, my hotel breakfast in Cork, Ireland in 2019:

A place for Corkers(?) to pray to the God of Shutdown:

Kilkenny, a rare glimpse of COVID-19-killing UV light:

Now-illegal gathering in Kinsale:

At what point can the Irish say that their multi-month lockdown has failed and it is time to try something different, e.g., what I proposed in a comment on Transmission of coronaplague among the fully masked Japanese:

Masks Reduce Viral Load Enthusiasts: If you’re right, why drag out the “light load immunity development” for several years, as the U.S. is doing by combining masks with shutdown? Why not fill sports stadiums with (a) sick people who can cough out virus unmasked, and (b) healthy people who will wear masks and absorb healing immunity-building light viral loads? After a couple of weeks of this, how could coronavirus possibly thrive in the U.S.? Also, reopen workplaces, gyms, schools, etc., and actively encourage anyone who is sick to continue coming in amongst the masked healthy.

(Separately, if masks and feverish sanitizing and most-things-shut-down work, why is there a raging common cold epidemic in Boston right now? How did the cold virus manage to get through all of these barriers we’ve set up?)

Is there any standard for declaring lockdown/masks a failure?

Related:

• WHO dashboard (Ireland has about half the COVID-19-tagged death rate of the U.S. or U.K.)
• Irish plan for checkpoints to restrict mobility: More than 2,500 Garda members are set to be deployed as part of a policing surge across the Republic in response to all parts of the State being upgraded to Level 3 Covid-19 restrictions, with major traffic congestion anticipated due to the impact of so-called super checkpoints. Gardaí have said they believe traffic congestion, especially on the approaches to Dublin and within the city and county, will be very heavy. They were hopeful the delays would prove so long it would discourage people leaving their home county and encourage them to work from home. Garda Commissioner Drew Harris said 132 permanent static checkpoints would be established on motorways and other main arterial routes across the country, as well as thousands of mobile checkpoints erected for short periods before moving elsewhere.

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From Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World:

As a regular solo customer of Delmonico’s, the polite and gracious inventor had let the highly trained staff know that he liked to have eighteen pristine napkins in a stack at his table. Very discreetly, Tesla used them to wipe the germs off each piece of heavy silverware, sparkling china, and crystal stemware before he partook of the chef’s many delights. Tesla’s germ phobia had developed after a fellow scientist allowed him to observe through a microscope the many normally invisible creatures inhabiting unboiled water. Tesla would later explain, “If you would watch only for a few minutes the horrible creatures, hairy and ugly beyond anything you can conceive, tearing each other up with the juices diffusing throughout the water—you would never again drink a drop of unboiled or unsterilized water.” So Tesla was ever vigilant in limiting his exposure to these vile microscopic bugs.

(Thank you to Steve for the Amazon gift card and suggestion to use it on this book!)

Nikola Tesla was also a pioneer in social distancing:

More and more [in the 1930s], Tesla lived in his own world, as big a romantic as ever, and as eccentric. He had his vegetarian meals specially cooked by the hotel chef and insisted that the help not get closer to him than a few feet, part of his phobia of germs.

How about #FollowScience and #BelieveTheExperts?

And in fact, on May 6, 1893, the officers of the Niagara Falls Power Company declared unequivocally that polyphase alternating current would be their choice. This was, at the time, still a very bold and highly controversial stance. The eminent Sir William Thomson, chairman of the International Niagara Committee and just elevated to become Lord Kelvin by Queen Victoria, cabled Adams on May 1 to head off the announcement. He proposed an ambitious DC plan, urging, “Trust you avoid gigantic mistake of adoption of alternate current.”

In other words, one of the greatest scientists of the age was sure that low-voltage DC was the way to electrify a country.

BLM at the 1893 Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition (named after someone who refused to #BelieveScience and lit up by Westinghouse AC):

On the hot Friday of August 25—Colored People’s Day at Festival Hall—the great abolitionist and leader Frederick Douglass wearily entreated in this era of Jim Crow, “All we beg is to receive as honest treatment as those who love only part of the country.”

How rich was the pre-electrified country?

… [in 1890] America’s population up to a mighty sixty-three million, according to the recent census. Politicians had taken to boasting that the United States was now a “billion dollar” country. It was, in fact, far richer than that, thanks to its relentless can-do commercial spirit and the reckless ambition of men like Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse. In the postbellum United States, the national wealth had soared to $65 billion, more than the accumulated holdings of all the aristocrats and commercial classes of Great Britain, Germany, and Russia combined. By 1890, in America, nearly $40 billion was invested in land and buildings, $9 billion in the sprawling network of railroads, and $4 billion in manufacturing and mining.

In other words, roughly $1,000 in wealth for every resident, roughly $28,000 in today’s mini-dollars. The U.S. had a net worth of $124 trillion as of 2014 (Wikipedia, assets minus debts). Population back in 2014 was 318 million (compare to 330.1 million today). So the per-person wealth in 2014 was $390,000, about $430,000 in 2020 dollars.

How did folks in New York City entertain themselves back then?

As an appalled Parkhurst and his two companions toured every kind of beer-soaked dance hall, cheap saloon, and sleazy brothel, they became astonished, genteel witnesses to a large and rowdy underworld thriving on illicit gambling, cheap liquor and beer, and organized, commercial sex catering to every kind of appetite. Gardner also had his own detectives out gathering affidavits. So when Reverend Parkhurst mounted his pulpit a mere month later on Sunday, March 13, 1892, he possessed documented evidence that Tammany was “rotten with a rottenness that is unspeakable and indescribable.” He had proof that 254 saloons and 30 brothels had been roaring with business just the previous Sunday. In the ensuing months, a grand jury handed down a few placating indictments, but little would change immediately. The urban poor (and a certain number of their better-off confreres) wanted jollity and dazed forgetfulness, be it craps, bawdy dance halls, or cheap, quick sex, for theirs were hardscrabble lives.

Reverend Parkhurst would be a big fan of coronashutdown!

George Westinghouse might not have been. In response to Edison’s arguments that high-voltage AC was dangerous, he responded that, statistically, electrocution was an uncommon cause of death:

Westinghouse tried to put it into perspective with the following: In the year 1888, sixty-four people in New York City were killed in streetcar accidents, fifty-five by omnibuses and wagons, twenty-three by illuminating gas, and all of five by electric current. This was not exactly an orgy of wanton and careless killing.

Westinghouse might have referred to the CDC’s excess deaths chart:

Speaking of death, there was a huge amount of enthusiasm for capital punishment via high voltage.

Two physicians leaned forward to examine Kemmler [the first electric chair victim]. The other doctors gathered around and dented Kemmler’s flesh to judge his state. Dr. Southwick smiled broadly as he came away from the fresh corpse. “There,” he exclaimed to a knot of witnesses who had quietly withdrawn to the far end of the chamber, “there is the culmination of ten years’ work and study. We live in a higher civilization from this day.”

Higher civilization wasn’t completely civilized…

But the blood was continuing to ooze from Kemmler’s small finger wound. His heart still had to be beating. The physicians around the limp figure recoiled as one yelled in horror, “Great God! He is alive!” Another ordered, “Turn on the current.” “See, he breathes,” gasped a third. When Dr. Southwick and the others whirled around at these cries, they saw that Kemmler’s body was still limp, but his chest was heaving up and down. He seemed to be struggling for breath, and foam was seeping horribly from his masked mouth hole. “For God’s sake, kill him and have it over!” screamed one witness. The Associated Press reporter fainted on the wood floor, and several men carried him to a bench, where they fanned him. Durston had turned chalk white. He fumbled and reattached the scalp electrode. As the current flowed anew and Kemmler again went horribly rigid, “an awful odor began to permeate the death chamber.” Kemmler’s hair and skin were being visibly singed. A blue flame played briefly behind his neck. His clothes caught fire, but one of the doctors quickly extinguished them. “The stench,” reported the Times, “was unbearable.” After several minutes, the current was turned off, and as purple spots mottled Kemmler’s hands, arms, and neck, the doctors again declared him dead. The room reeked of burned meat and feces. The nauseated witnesses signed the death warrant for Warden Durston and then trailed out into the stone corridors, silent, shaken, several sick, the Erie County sheriff so distraught that tears trickled down his face. Three hours later, when the doctors had sufficiently recovered to perform an autopsy, they found that rigor mortis had stiffened Kemmler into a permanent sitting position. Examination of the body showed scorch marks wherever the electrodes and buckles touched the body. Kemmler had been “roasted” as well as a piece of overdone meat. Once the autopsy was complete and numerous organs removed, Kemmler’s baked corpse was taken and buried at night in the prison courtyard with great quantities of quicklime to dissolve all ultimate traces.

The author chronicles the cruelties inflicted on innocent animals, such as dogs and calves, in the years leading up to the execution of convicted criminals via electricity. This was the work of Edison affiliates, anxious to paint the Westinghouse AC system as dangerous.

Investment advice from Tesla turned out to be almost as bad as investment advice from Paul Krugman (November 2016: “It really does now look like President Donald J. Trump, and markets are plunging. When might we expect them to recover? … If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.”):

And what of Niagara Falls? the local reporters urgently asked. Tesla replied without hesitation: “The result of this great development of electric power will be that the falls and Buffalo will reach out their arms and will join each other and become one great city. United, they will form the greatest city in the world.”

(See “Can Buffalo Ever Come Back?” (2007), in which we learn that “The 1920s were the last real growth period for Buffalo” and that rail and road transportation reduced the importance of the Erie Canal. “Then the Saint Lawrence Seaway opened in 1957, connecting the Great Lakes to the Atlantic and allowing grain shipments to bypass Buffalo altogether.” Meanwhile “New York’s high taxes, burdensome regulations, and pro-union laws made Buffalo less attractive to employers than its more successful southern competitors. … Despite 50 years of population loss, Buffalo has one of the steepest metropolitan tax burdens in the country—including one of the nation’s highest local property tax rates, according to a 2003 study.”)

Vaguely related, the Glen Canyon Dam, circa 1990, captured with Kodak Tech Pan film:

It was legal to go to the Canadian side of the Falls just a year ago!

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My Facebook feed has been alive lately with Post Office Panic supplementing the usual Coronapanic:

Trump acknowledged he is starving the USPS because he thinks it will hurt the Dems. His selfish nature in full display. He doesn’t care how many businesses and seniors of his own base he will hurt by doing this. His lunatic rationale will backfire. It will reduce his own voter base and motivate the Dem voters to go vote even in the rain and with long lines just like it did in Michigan for their Supreme court position.

Trump is refusing to sign any bill that provides additional financial support to the USPS, where new cost-cutting policies are leading to delays in the delivery of every kind of mail, including checks, bills, and medications.

Maybe if people aren’t alarmed by the USPS being dismantled before the election, what about a month and a half later when it’s time to send Xmas presents?

If you’re concerned about the United States Postal Service, you might want to file a complaint with the Inspector General for the Post Office.

Shared from Hillary Clinton (she is still alive?): Call your Republican senators and let them know: We won’t let them dismantle the USPS–and disenfranchise millions of Americans—without a fight.

I am alarmed by recent actions by the Trump administration to sabotage the 2020 election. It is very clear that their strategy is to suppress voting by slowing down the post office, telling lies about so-called danger of mail-in voting and endorsing voter-ID. All this during a pandemic when many of us are worried about the safety of grocery stores or banks, let alone polling places.

In response to one of these, I wrote

People who think the post office has collapsed and can’t deliver a few ballots also want a similar agency to take over their health care.

This was labeled “trolling” of course! But it is still interesting that people simultaneously believe that any government function can be destroyed by a wrongly-selected Great Father in Washington AND if that it would be smart to give the Great Father/Mother/Other control over health care. I asked

If the Post Office can be destroyed by Donald Trump acting alone, what stops whoever takes over from President Kamala Harris in 2028 from acting alone to destroy whatever government-run health system that President Harris and a Democrat-controlled Congress set up in 2021?

One response to this is that Medicare and Medicaid have been running for decades, much to the satisfaction of providers (who are pocketing 18 percent of GDP now, up from 5 percent prior to Medicare/Medicaid being introduced in 1966). But maybe they are running only because Trump, for whatever idiosyncratic reason known only to him, did not decide to terminate these programs as well. If he can kill off the postal service, running in various forms for at least 2000 years, why couldn’t Trump kill Medicare as well?

From the Azores, 2017… what a Post Office truck should look like (Portugal’s postal service was fully privatized by 2014):

Related:

• “Aspiration for Democrats: a government voted into office by people who can’t find the Post Office” (2018, before Trump shut the USPS down)
• a Post Office in D.C. that Trump is keeping from reopening
• the four-hour lunch breaks scheduled at our local post office
• Calvin College on the Post Office: “The postal service rendered the public is good,” [President Coolidge] acknowledged. He warned, however, that the precedent of an increase for the post office staff was itself troubling: “an organized effort by a great body of public employees to secure an indiscriminate increase in compensation should have the most searching scrutiny.” “The post office ought to be self-supporting,” [private citizen Coolidge] wrote on August 4, 1930.

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Facebook remains a safe space for Shutdown Karens to pour out their fear regarding school reopening. Children will die. Maybe the death rate among children could become 100X what it had been? Certainly it could! The Tuesday, August 11, 2020 dashboard:

Out of 8,529 deaths so far, exactly 0 have been among those under 20. A naive person might look at these data and say “since I’m not 82 years old, I won’t worry too much and I certainly won’t worry about children, none of whom have ever died here in Massachusetts.”

[How is Maskachusetts doing as Month 6 of Shutdown begins? The never-masked, never-shut Swedes have lost 5,770 residents so far (WHO). In other words, righteous Massachusetts, carefully following Church of Shutdown dogma, has had twice the cumulative death rate of the wicked Swedes, sending their children into the killing zones (schools) daily.]

The August 12, 2020 dashboard has a new format. This one is much scarier to middle-aged parents. 8,547 of us have perished. There is no breakdown by age nor average age reported. 18 people were reported dead yesterday (compare to 4 in Sweden, suggesting that Massachusetts has 6X the daily death rate compared to Sweden).

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