Category: Uncategorized

New York Times and Piketty show that rich people are the most energetic?

by philg

“Our Broken Economy, in One Simple Chart” (nytimes) shows that the highest-income Americans are also the ones with the “largest income growth.” I wonder if Thomas Piketty and friends followed individuals over time or just looked at brackets of income that contained different people from year to year. If they followed individuals then these data suggest that the most energetic and motivated Americans are the richest. Instead of slacking off and enjoying their yachts, Gulfstreams, and 7 luxury homes worldwide, they are doing something that gives them a 6% pay raise every year.

If they didn’t follow individuals, though, aren’t the stated conclusions wrong? Suppose that the income of rich people is highly variable, e.g., inflated one year due to selling a company and comparatively depressed the next year. In that case, from simple volatility and economic growth you might see that the high end of the income scale was doing well (how else did those people get to the high end of the scale?) but it wouldn’t be the same people year after year. Similarly, for those with low income, someone who goes onto a diet of SSDI and OxyContin might have the same income as last year’s consumer of SSDI/OxyContin.

[Separately, the chart note suggests that it includes “transfers and non-cash benefits” for the poor, but I wonder how that is possible. Ever since the Clinton-era “welfare reform,” simple cash transfers have been a small component of modern-day welfare in the U.S. The non-cash stuff is tough to track and value. When a new apartment building is constructed, for example, the developer may be required to hand over 10 percent of the units to a government housing ministry for distribution to the poor. The value of these units are not on the government’s books. And if real estate prices go up, does the person who lives in a free apartment in Manhattan experience a boost in income according to Piketty and friends? Collecting child support and alimony is a big part of the U.S. economy and there are no convenient authoritative sources for the total cashflow (generally from higher-income defendants to plaintiffs with lower wage income).]

The article came to me from a hedge fund manager friend:

First, there has always been a distribution of income and we know it is skewed right. It pretty much has to be, if income is bounded by 0 but not limited on the upside. Allowing for negative income tax rates (the earned income credit) creates some weird growth rates. Overall, growth rates are compressed for people receiving income-based transfers when those transfers are progressive.

There is a tautological aspect to the results. People whose income rose the fastest (e.g. Steve Jobs) ended up in the 1% or the 0.1% because of that growth. So it shouldn’t be surprising that people who now have the highest incomes also had faster rates of growth in that income. That is how they got into the right tail. Few people complain when Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg leapfrogs into the high income brackets but it really bothers economists like Thomas Piketty that the averages behave different from the averages of other income brackets. Remember, we are measuring how fast the average moved, not how fast the income of a third-generation trust baby’s income rose over that period. Their income may have determined the average in 1980 but they are not part of the tiny super-high income brackets any more. Those brackets are reserved for people who grabbed the brass ring and held on for a meteoric rise in pay.

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Modest proposal for the Google all-hands meeting

by philg

“Google cancels all-hands diversity meeting over safety concerns: Google feared questioners would face threats if their names leaked online.” (ArsTechnica) is disappointing to any Lisp or SQL programmer because it was a missed opportunity to use the headline “Group of C programmers say that they feel unsafe.”

Apparently the issue is that adherents can’t anonymously suggest or vote on questions for the high priests. If done with Google’s existing discussion infrastructure, real employee names are attached to postings.

What if Google told everyone who wanted to participate in this process to sign up to AOL and get a username such as “SupportDiversity2017”? Then they could use AOL’s infrastructure to gather questions, vote questions up/down, etc.

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Even New York Times readers don’t want Australia’s refugees

by philg

“Australia’s Desperate Refugee Obstinacy” shows that Roger Cohen and his colleagues are brave enough to sit in the Manhattan offices of the New York Times and denounce the hard-heartedness of people on the other side of the planet. What’s interesting, though, is the Readers’ Picks section among the comments. It seems that even the loyal Hillary supporters who read the New York Times aren’t supportive of taking in these “asylum-seekers and refugees.” (I put in my own comment, making my standard offer:

If Mr. Cohen would like to house one of these families in his apartment or house for at least one year, I’ll be happy to pay for the airfare from Nauru.

So far Roger Cohen hasn’t emailed to accept.)

The top pick:

I believe these refugees are predominantly from the Middle East, hence they had to travel through SE Asia, eventually to Indonesia, in order to board the rickety boat that people smugglers are using.

I know people here won’t like me for asking this, but I genuinely wonder if they couldn’t stay and feel safe in any of the countries they passed through, such as Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore or Brunei? If your only concern is flight from danger present in your native land, then any of these countries would have been enough to provide that sanctuary until events settled back home. But they had to come to Australia, after paying close to $10,000 to people smugglers. I genuinely wonder, if their motive wasn’t to improve their lot in life by coming to a wealthy democracy, why do they do this?

Another highly voted one:

Iran is not at war, and these people are not escaping persecution. They just want a better standard of living, but couldn’t get to Australia by legal channels. Why should Australians let them in, just because they tried to sneak in through the back door? How is this fair to people who emigrate legally? Pushing to the front of the queue should not be rewarded.

Separately, I wonder if the Great Migration of the 21st Century is going to relieve some of the media pressure on Israel. If scolding other countries for their resistance to immigration consumes the average journalist’s sanctimony budget, how much will be left over to complain about what Jews in Israel are doing?

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Google is replacing Uber, but not quite the way that I predicted

by philg

More confusing to me than quantum chromodynamics has been why Google, which knows where most of us are and already has most of us registered as customers, doesn’t replace Uber in the matching-of-riders-and-drivers business.

Year after year I have been waiting for this to happen and have been proven wrong. Maybe this is my year?

“More than 60 women consider suing Google, claiming sexism and a pay gap” (Guardian) suggests that the Google is, in fact, replacing Uber:

The manager said that dealing with frequent sexism in the workplace and helping other women navigate the discrimination they were facing took a toll on her and contributed to her decision to quit. “After a while, it just became exhausting,” she said. “It takes emotional energy that builds up over time.”

“I felt like I wasn’t playing the game in the ‘boys club’ environment,” said another woman who worked for two years as a user experience designer and recently left Google. She said she regularly dealt with sexist remarks, such as comments about her looks, and that she felt it was discriminatory when she was denied a promotion despite her achievements and large workload.

The women’s stories bolster the claims of labor department officials, who have said that a preliminary analysis found that women face “extreme” pay discrimination across the company …

Separately, do people working at Google need to engage in some exciting mental gymnastics? Consider the following:

  • Correct thinkers at Google say that a diverse workforce in every functional category is critical to success because white, black, Latino, male, and female brains operate differently and therefore have different strengths to bring. (I left out Asians because apparently nobody in the diversity industry cares about them)
  • Correct thinkers at Google say that their heretic is scientifically wrong to have asserted that male and female brains exhibit different distributions for level of interest in programming.

Naively these appear to be contradictory beliefs. (Note that the beliefs above are independent of whether you think the brains got to be the way that they are via genetics or environmental influences.)

Another apparent logical contradiction:

  • The heretic is a pinhead for interpreting the research literature to suggest that women, on average, are more delicate emotionally than men
  • Our female employees are delicate snowflakes who won’t be able to get any work done if they become aware of a leaf-node coder with heretical thoughts about men and women tending to be biologically different. (This is illustrated by the CEOs response: “The memo has clearly impacted our co-workers, some of whom are hurting and feel judged based on their gender. Our [female] co-workers shouldn’t have to worry …”)

A final one, from a New York Times reader:

If Google is so gung-ho about defending women in their workplace, how come there are not more of them working at Google in the capacity of leadership and engineering?

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Pilot shortage is the 21st century horse manure crisis?

by philg

“The Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894”:

By the late 1800s, large cities all around the world were “drowning in horse manure”. In order for these cities to function, they were dependent on thousands of horses for the transport of both people and goods.

In 1900, there were over 11,000 hansom cabs on the streets of London alone. There were also several thousand horse-drawn buses, each needing 12 horses per day, making a staggering total of over 50,000 horses transporting people around the city each day.

This problem came to a head when in 1894, The Times newspaper predicted… “In 50 years, every street in London will be buried under nine feet of manure.”

Recently pilots have been in the news for reasons other than screwing up: there aren’t enough pilots to meet expected global demand.

A 50-page report from UBS, however, says “UBS analysis of the Aerospace, Airlines and Logistics sectors suggests that reducing the intervention of human pilots on aircraft could bring material economic benefits and improve safety. Technically speaking, remotely controlled planes carrying passengers and cargo could appear by c2025.”

UBS acknowledges that what can be built by engineers might not be approved by government bureaucrats: “The regulatory framework will define the waves of technology advancements becoming reality and cargo will likely be at the forefront” and “The technology is there; two main obstacles are regulation and perception.”

Back in 2008, I wrote about a ground-based co-pilot who could bring airline safety to private operations. UBS talks about this too: “in the not-too-distant future, we would expect to see a situation where flights are pilotless or the number of pilots shrinks to one, with a remote pilot based on the ground and highly-secure ground-to-air communications.” This would dramatically cut the need for pilots per flight because a ground-based pilot could monitor 4-8 in-flight aircraft as long as they’re not all taking off or landing at once.

Readers: What do you think? Despite the current favorable outlook, will pilots circa 2030 actually find themselves in the same employment situation as draft horses circa 1920? (see unemployed = 21st century draft horse?)

Related:

  • ADS-B, technically feasible in 1995 and we’re hoping to have it mostly implemented by 2020.
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Google Heretic sparks interest in the history of Computer Science

by philg

James Damore, a.k.a. the Google Heretic, has spurred my Facebook friends to talk about the history of Computer Science. A sample illustrating how the early years of CS are now understood:

in the beginning computer science used to be almost entirely women.

It’s hard to find a profession less suited to illustrate women’s alleged biological unsuitability for certain vocations than computer science and specifically programming, given the history of the profession. … “Women aren’t good with computers”? They _were_ the original computers. (NASA article)

Piling abuse onto the already-cast-out heretic being a well-respected human endeavor, I responded with

So true. Church, Turing, von Neumann, and Emil Post all identified as women.

That’s why it is always “E.F. Codd” for the RDBMS pioneer. She didn’t want anyone calling her Edgar.

The non-nerds accepted these as legitimate responses. A couple of programmers, though, offered up Ada Lovelace.

When I asked for examples of what these folks thought of as early “computer science” it was setting up patch cords for the ENIAC.

It is kind of an interesting history. Women created computer science. After the excitement of the first few decades was gone, women wandered off into law, medicine, business, banking, politics, etc., and left working out the remaining dull details to colorless men.

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Great reminder that none of us own land in the U.S.

by philg

“Rich SF residents get a shock: Someone bought their street” is a reminder that “owning” property in the U.S. should really be called “renting it from the government by paying property taxes every year.”

Excerpts:

Tina Lam and Michael Cheng snatched up Presidio Terrace — the block-long, private oval street lined by 35 megamillion-dollar mansions — for $90,000 and change in a city-run auction stemming from an unpaid tax bill. They outlasted several other bidders.

Now they’re looking to cash in — maybe by charging the residents of those mansions to park on their own private street

Those residents value their privacy — and their exclusivity. Past homeowners have included Sen. Dianne Feinstein and her financier husband, Richard Blum; House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi; and the late Mayor Joseph Alioto. A guard is stationed round the clock at the stone-gate entrance to the street to keep the curious away.

The couple’s purchase appears to be the culmination of a comedy of errors involving a $14-a-year property tax bill that the homeowners association failed to pay for three decades

Two years ago, the city’s tax office put the property up for sale in an online auction, seeking to recover $994 in unpaid back taxes, penalties and interest.

He and his wife see plenty of financial opportunity — especially from the 120 parking spaces on the street that they now control.

“We could charge a reasonable rent on it,” Cheng said.

Lam and Cheng happen to be immigrants. How awesome would it have been to have been able to survey the rich people on this street, just before and just after learning about the new ownership structure, regarding their attitudes toward immigration?

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Canceled my Amazon Fresh subscription

by philg

Earlier I asked Who loves AmazonFresh? The answer turns out to be “not me.” On a Saturday I placed an order and picked the following Tuesday morning as the delivery slot. After I placed the order I realized that Wednesday morning would be better. This was just a few minutes later. It was possible to add stuff to the order, change the payment method, etc., but not to change the delivery date/time. It was easy to reach Amazon Fresh support via chat, but unfortunately the answer was “you have to cancel the order and start over.” I canceled my $14.99/month subscription instead.

The more I used AmazonFresh the less I liked it. Peapod is a subset of all of the most popular items you’d find at a regular grocery store. You can get produce, Windex, and packaged food all in one order. With AmazonFresh you are constantly guessing as to what they might have (strange considering that Amazon is “the everything store”; why does their delivery service actually have way less choice than 30-year-old Peapod?). The inflexible interface was the straw that broke the delivery camel’s back.

Amazon does get some credit for having good customer service people. I didn’t walk away from the experience saying “I don’t want to use other Amazon services.”

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Casting out the heretic at Google

by philg

My Facebook friends are talking about the Google programmer’s memo regarding why there aren’t more coders at Google who identify as “women” and “Non-discriminatory ways to reduce the gender gap.” Here’s a representative comment:

female VC: Even if it were true that there were “population level” differences in women/men, Google doesn’t hire nearly enough people to make this relevant. Back when I worked at Google, it was a haven of rationality. Said man should be fired for inane use of statistics.

her friend: Did you read the entire document?

female VC: No, just the first two paragraphs. It was very poorly written.

The article quotes the Google VP of Diversity:

Part of building an open, inclusive environment means fostering a culture in which those with alternative views, including different political views, feel safe sharing their opinions. But that discourse needs to work alongside the principles of equal employment found in our Code of Conduct, policies, and anti-discrimination laws.

The guy’s boss:

… we cannot allow stereotyping and harmful assumptions to play any part. One of the aspects of the post that troubled me deeply was the bias inherent in suggesting that most women, or men, feel or act a certain way. That is stereotyping, and it is harmful.

The Code of Conduct is available online. Will this guy ultimately be fired for violating “Each Googler is expected to do his or her utmost to create a workplace culture that is free of harassment, intimidation, bias, and unlawful discrimination”? Among other things the guy says women are prone to “Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance).This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs.” [Update: these are precisely the parts of the memo and the Code of Conduct cited by CEO Sundar Pichai in a company-wide response email.]

Separately, is the memo ridiculous on its face? If an employer is short of Worker Category X, isn’t the first explanation that these workers aren’t being offered sufficient pay? Google could have plenty of female workers in any category if they were willing to pay up, no? Why would an intelligent hard-working woman want to be a coder at Google, get paid 1/20th the cost of a decent house nearby, and stare at a screen all day when she could instead be a physician, get paid 2X the cost of a decent house near her office, and interact with people all day? (Alternatively, she could realize the spending power of a programmer by having sex with a couple of programmers.)

Programming is considered by most people to be a disagreeable boring job, a desk-bound analog of sewer cleaning or garbage pick-up, so, absent much higher pay to women, wouldn’t we expect there to be a similar male-heavy gender ID ratio as in other disagreeable jobs?

I asked the Facebookers in the thread why Google didn’t stop with the fine sentiments about diversity and instead just pay whatever it took to get the workers it wanted. One guy said “It would be illegal to adopt practices that specifically aim to increase pay for women.” (But why not instead pay for some characteristic that women tend to have in a larger quantity than men?) Another responded with “A very small data point but I sat on a small committee which placed a few hundred elite tech grads at Google and FB. In this limited sample size of high performers, women were making 40% more.” (i.e., the market is working; women programmers are more valuable to employers and therefore can command higher pay)

Readers: What do you think? Is this guy a pinhead? Will Google fire him? Once his name gets out, will any other employer be willing to take the risk of hiring him? (thus opening themselves to a slam-dunk sex discrimination case because they have created a “hostile environment” for female coders)

[Update: I broached this topic with a female programmer friend. She said that she thought there was some truth to the heretic’s point of view, e.g., that men were more willing to put in hours of dreary solitude when learning to code. I was able to convince her, however, that the only real problem was money. I ran through a list of mutual acquaintances, all of whom were smart, capable, and had great jobs. She agreed that all of these women would have been able to become competent software engineers and would indeed have done so if the compensation and working conditions were competitive with the career options that they’d actually chosen (e.g., medical specialist, Wall Streeter).]

[Update 2: A friend sent me this post from Slate Star Codex: “About 20% of high school students taking AP Computer Science are women. … which exactly matches the ratio of each gender that eventually get tech company jobs.”]

[Update 3: “No, the Google manifesto isn’t sexist or anti-diversity. It’s science,” by Debra Soh, a professor in Canada with a PhD in sexual neuroscience, says “the memo was fair and factually accurate. Scientific studies have confirmed sex differences in the brain that lead to differences in our interests and behaviour.” Thus the Hillary supporters at Google who mocked Trump voters for being “science-deniers” now find themselves denying neuroscience whose implications they don’t like. (Separately, I must part company with Professor Soh on a non-scientific point. She says “seeking to fulfill a 50-per-cent quota of women in STEM is unrealistic.” Give me a stack of cash and I will fill any quota!)]

[Update 4: In response to a Facebook posting characterizing the memo as containing “logical errors,” her friend responded with “I’d love your thoughts on what you think is illogical. You may not agree, but to me it was all a reasonable position to state, and I agree with most of it. I’m a woman in tech, and a woman CEO, and I know full well why there aren’t more women in my position and it has less to do with discrimination or bias than biology and lifestyle preferences. Would love your thoughts as to which bits you didn’t agree with?” (note that the response kind of proves the Google Heretic’s point; she softens her disagreement with “would love your thoughts”).]

[Moderator is removing some comments to keep the total within the 50-comment display limit of Harvard’s software.]

Related:

the reason I left is that I came into work one Monday morning and joined the guys at our work table, and one of them said “What did you do this weekend?”

I was in the throes of a brief, doomed romance. I had attended a concert that Saturday night. I answered the question with an account of both. The guys stared blankly. Then silence. Then one of them said: “I built a fiber-channel network in my basement,” and our co-workers fell all over themselves asking him to describe every step in loving detail.

At that moment I realized that fundamentally, these are not my people. I liked the work. But I was never going to like it enough to blow a weekend doing more of it for free. Which meant that I was never going to be as good at that job as the guys around me.

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Where in the world are the current round-the-world pilots?

by philg

My vote for World’s Bravest Person currently is Karl-Heinz Zahorsky, traveling around the world in a 1985 Continental-powered Piper Malibu. The Malibu is the best personal/family airplane ever designed… as long as you have a letter from God promising that the engine won’t quit. So far he and his copilot have made it from Germany to Sri Lanka (zahorsky.net). How stressed out is that engine? I was chatting with a pilot the other day who had done a lot of long-distance Malibu trips. Asked if she’d ever had any issues she replied “No. The engine never quit. Well, once we heard a loud bang and lost oil pressure [presumably a turbocharger] and had to land. All of the emergency equipment was waiting for us by the runway, but the engine never stopped.” This was conveyed in the same tone that a Cessna 172 pilot might use to describe the failure of a backup radio.

Shaesta Waiz, 29, is at least 10 years older than the youngest pilots, e.g., Matt Guthmiller, to fly solo around the world, but she expects to be the youngest solo female pilot when she lands her leased 2001 Bonanza back in Daytona Beach. So far she has made it at least to Indonesia (her site says “At this time, flight tracking is unavailable due to the region Shaesta is flying” but there are some recent news stories from Indonesian media). The home page is devoted to relating statistics about the lack of women in aviation and STEM: “450 female airline captains worldwide; 24 percent of U.S. STEM professionals that are female; 3 percent of pilots worldwide that are female.”

[Could a 25-year-old cisgender male pilot identify as a woman for a month, become the youngest woman to fly solo around the world, and then switch back to a male ID?]

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