Does Science say that Djokovic can compete in the U.S. Open?

by philg

Science (as embodied in the CDC) now says that filthy deplorable germ-spreading unvaccinated people and clean virtuous vaccinated people should be treated the same with respect to coronapanic (see story from state-sponsored media below). Will Novak Djokovic then be allowed to play in the U.S. Open?

Separately, I am a little fuzzy on why anything should change for those who Follow the Science. According to the Google, COVID-19 killed 1,049 Americans on August 10, 2021. That level of carnage resulted in mask orders for public schools (but unmasked adults could spend an evening visiting the essential Marijuana shops of Massachusetts and then meeting new friends on Grindr or Tinder), forced vaccinations, the banishment of heretics from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. What was the level of carnage on August 10, 2022? 872 Americans killed. With a nearly identical number of deaths, for those who believe in the efficacy of mask orders, school closures, and forced vaccination, why give up these protective measures now?

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The sacred world of 2SLGBTQQIA+

by philg

On the front door of a restaurant in Indianapolis:

(Rainbow flag over “This is a Sacred Space.”)

I get pushback from teens when I casually refer to Rainbow Flagism as a religion. But if it is not a religion, how does the rainbow flag make a space sacred?

For reference, from Wikipedia:

Religion is usually defined as a social-cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatural, transcendental, and spiritual elements; however, there is no scholarly consensus over what precisely constitutes a religion.

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One day in Green Bay, Wisconsin

by philg

If your mind and feet are burned out during a week of EAA AirVenture, one idea is to take a day off in Green Bay, Wisconsin, which is 45 minutes northeast. The Green Bay Packers have an interesting museum and do tours of their stadium:

Right next door is Titletown, a paradise for kids with a steep hill covered in real grass, live music, epic playgrounds, etc. All free. There is a great 5th floor restaurant with an outdoor terrace overlooking the stadium. Taverne in the Sky, part of the LodgeKohler hotel.

The National Railroad Museum is a few minutes away by car and has roughly 80 locomotives and cars to look at, plus a diesel-powered train to ride.

Finally, there is Cabela’s on the way home:

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Inflation of 0 percent reported as inflation of 8.5 percent

by philg

Subhead from the newspaper of record today, “The Consumer Price Index climbed 8.5 percent in July, a bigger slowdown than expected, but inflation may remain uncomfortably high for some time.” Let’s dig into the article:

The Consumer Price Index climbed 8.5 percent in the year through July, compared with 9.1 percent the prior month, a bigger slowdown than economists had projected. After stripping out food and fuel costs to get a sense of underlying price pressures, prices climbed by 5.9 percent through July, matching the previous reading.

On a monthly basis, the price index did not move at all in July. That’s because fuel prices, airfares and used cars declined in price, offsetting increases in rent and food costs.

Core inflation was also slower than economists had expected on a monthly basis, climbing by 0.3 percent. In June, that figure was 0.7 percent.

The best official number that we have for the current inflation rate is actually 0 percent (“the price index did not move”). Or perhaps 3.65 percent (0.3 percent per month, annualized). But we are informed that inflation is a frightening 8.5 percent because of price changes that occurred at some point prior to July.

Do we believe that the 0 percent rate will endure? On the one hand, the typical American has bought so much since 2020 that it is tough to believe he/she/ze/they could fit anything more into his/her/zir/their house or apartment. On the other hand, every kind of service enterprise, including travel and tourism, is jammed, struggling to raise wages enough to attract labor, etc. (As noted here previously, one would expect that these enterprises would be half empty as the Followers of Science shied away from crowded environments so as to #StopTheSpread, but it seems that Science says the best way to end the COVID-19 pandemic is to gather unmasked in airliners, theme parks, concert halls, etc.)

Here’s the saddest photo from our Oshkosh trip, a donut shop in Chattanooga that has cut its hours due to “staffing shortages”. When they finally decide that they need to pay a high enough wage to open long enough to make enough profit to pay the rent, won’t they also have to contribute to inflation by raising donut prices?

In other words, until the labor market has cleared via employers raising wages, shouldn’t we expect more inflation? Also, we are still addicted to deficit spending since we can’t accept that the appropriate size for government is whatever we’re willing to pay in tax. It is tough to imagine inflation staying anywhere near 0 percent while politicians in D.C. are, at our behest, borrowing and spending (and then having the Fed magically absorb the new debt?).

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Pretending to work from home is not very productive

by philg

One of the enduring mysteries of coronapanic is how the economy stayed so apparently healthy for so long. Unless gathering people together in an office was worthless, people working from home in 2020/2021 should not have been as productive as they had been in 2019. Unless education is worthless from an economic point of view, Americans in lockdown states who missed 1-2 years of education shouldn’t have been as productive as their counterparts in 2019.

“U.S. Productivity Falls for Second Straight Quarter” (Wall Street Journal, today):

U.S. labor productivity declined for the second consecutive quarter as overall economic output contracted and employers spent more on labor as they added workers.

U.S. nonfarm labor productivity—a measure of goods and services produced in the U.S. per hour worked—fell at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.6% in the second quarter from the prior quarter, the Labor Department said Tuesday. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had estimated a drop of 5%.

On a per-hour basis, in other words, Americans generated less value.

Unit labor costs, a measure of worker compensation and productivity, increased at a 10.8% pace in the second quarter from the prior quarter, Labor said. Economists had expected a 9.5% increase.

“The trend in productivity growth has worsened compared to prior to the pandemic, and the surge in unit labor costs makes the Fed’s challenge of getting inflation back down to its 2% target all the more challenging,” Wells Fargo economist Sarah House said in a research note.

In other words, the cost of getting Americans off their sofas and into a productive situation, from an employer’s point of view, is higher.

The bond market does not expect high inflation over the next 10 years. The breakeven inflation rate on 10-year TIPS versus Treasuries is only 2.5 percent per year:

The only thing that I hate more than intolerance and hate is saying that markets are wrong, but I don’t understand how the bond market can be right in this case. If it costs companies more to produce everything, how do prices go up only 2.5 percent per year?

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Glacial pace of innovation in non-electric aviation slows due to coronapanic

by philg

Certified fossil fuel-powered aviation has been notable for the slow pace of innovation. As the world of the consumer has been transformed, the typical aircraft flying is a refined version of what pilots operated during World War II. Through 2019, it would not have been unfair to characterize the pace of innovation as glacial. Coronapanic, however, has slowed the pace to geologic. Garmin, the 500 lb. gorilla of general aviation avionics, had nothing new to show. “All of our engineers have been working on getting certification to use substitute parts in existing designs,” explained a senior sales exec. “Even with the substitutions, we had a 9-month backlog that is now down to 90 days.” Three months to get an 11-year-old nav/com doesn’t seem like a great situation for consumers, but the sales guy said, “It takes 4-6 months to get a slot at any avionics shop, so our lead time doesn’t slow anyone down.” (This does not seem to be true for autopilot installations; Garmin has been shipping partial kits and, if the shop starts work based on Garmin’s forecast delivery dates for the lagging items, the result is that airplanes are grounded for months waiting for the full kit to arrive.)

(The good news is that Garmin bought a container full of displays for the ancient 430/530 nav/coms, so if you like 25-year-old technology they will keep supporting it!)

Small competitors such as Avidyne and Dynon did not have anything new at Oshkosh either.

The electric “super drone” companies don’t have certified products and they do not seem to have been slowed down as much by coronapanic, at least if we measure by hype. Back in 2018, Uber said that customers in Los Angeles would be fleeing the traffic-clogged streets in electric aircraft by 2023 (post). Maybe the electric super drone is always 5 years in the future? Joby came to AirVenture with a sim and no aircraft. They predict Uber using their 5-seater the day after certification in 2024.

The experimental aircraft folks seem to have maintained their work efforts while everyone else pretended to work from home. The RV-15 was conceived in 2019 and flew in 2022:

(There are more than 10,000 Van’s Aircraft kit planes flying today, which exceeds the number that Cirrus has built.)

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Maskachusetts rejects Science (90 percent refuse vaccines for children under 5)

by philg

Despite being nearly 100 percent Deplorable-free (as commenter Angry Australian notes, the handful of “rightwing nutjobs” who did not appreciate the healing powers of essential marijuana, lockdown orders, forced masking, and vaccination papers checks have likely moved away from the State of Science into the famously Republican strongholds of Miami Beach and Palm Beach County), Massachusetts is apparently rejecting the Sacrament of Fauci for its most vulnerable residents. “11% of Children Under 5 Have Received COVID-19 Vaccine in Mass.” (NECN, today):

Before COVID-19 vaccines were rolled out for children under the age of 5 back in June, many parents had been calling for those shots to become available for young kids.

But new data looks like some parents’ stance may have changed.

Massachusetts ranks third nationwide, with 11% of those kids getting at least one dose, according to The Boston Globe. Washington D.C. took the top spot, with nearly 18% and Vermont came in at second place.

Pediatricians say they did expect some hesitancy, and according to the Globe, surveys predicted that only around one in five parents would actually plan on getting children in that age bracket vaccinated. The numbers so far are lower, though, than many pediatricians expected by this point. The vaccination rates for these young children are lower than any other age group in the state.

As a result, some doctors say they’ve actually had to throw some of these vaccines out because they’re not being used.

How can this be? The COVID-19 vaccine for young children was Emergency Use Authorized by the FDA. Therefore, young children are facing a health emergency. Yet the smartest people in the United States are not Following the Science and applying proven-by-Science emergency remedies to ameliorate the emergency.

Loosely related, I found Dr. Fauci’s most recent book for kids at a toy store in Amana, Iowa:

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Team USA’s new airplane at Oshkosh

by philg

Delta Airlines brought its “Team USA” airplane to Oshkosh this year. Our elite athletes will travel in style to the next few Olympics. Where do the proud Americans who built this machine live? Toulouse, France. It’s an Airbus A330.

Delta even flew it during an afternoon airshow (there is an airshow every afternoon at Oshkosh, plus two evening airshows).

Separately, on the way to Oshkosh we visited the Indianapolis Motor Speedway museum and learned that no American-made car has won the Indy 500 for 40 years:

On the way back from Oshkosh, I stopped in Amana, Iowa, a center of All-American quilting. Where is the fabric made and printed for this All-American craft? Korea and Japan.

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Progressives in Maine want U.S. to admit more low-skill migrants…

by philg

…. who will live somewhere other than in Maine. “Maine’s open door for refugees meets a housing shortage” (Christian Science Monitor):

Yet the city [Portland, Maine] that has been one of the most benevolent in America toward outsiders now finds itself with 1,200 newcomers, most from Africa and the Caribbean. They have come to Portland because they heard it had received fellow travelers humanely. Most speak no English; they have no money, no relatives or friends to house them; and they are not allowed to work for a living as their appeals for asylum slowly crawl through the system.

Its shelter filled, the city has put them up in motels while COVID-19 and winter created vacancies. But now the innkeepers want their rooms back for tourists, and Portland has no place to put them.

And still they keep coming.

Portland’s city health director took the extraordinary step in May of emailing agencies working on the southern U.S. border, telling them that immigrants “are no longer guaranteed shelter upon their arrival” in the city. The adjoining municipality of South Portland sent a similar message, and 79 local aid organizations followed with letters to the state of Maine and the federal government saying they were stretched too thin.

Judging by real estate prices, Portland has never been wealthier. Apartments and single-family houses have been bid up to a median price of over $500,000 (Zillow). What stops people rich enough to pay $500,000 for an apartment from paying up to house their refugee brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters?

… most pushback is framed in terms of the cost of services to newcomers at a time of inflation and rising expenses, says Ms. West, the city manager. “When you increase taxes, that’s really difficult for a lot of people in Portland to handle,” she says.

Aha! As with California Progressives, housing is a human right, but so is a Progressive’s right to save Mother Earth by buying a new Tesla rather than funding housing for the unhoused (whose right to housing remains undiminished by their lack of housing).

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Americans still prefer not to work, but that preference varies from state to state

by philg

While celebrating the fact that the U.S. economy has added back some jobs to pre-coronapanic levels, not bothering to adjust for the millions of additional folks who now occupy the United States, e.g., via immigration, the New York Times is forced to add the following:

In a substantial asterisk for the report’s broad strength, however, high demand has done little to expand the ranks of available workers by bringing people off the sidelines of the labor market.

And an accompanying chart shows that the trend of Americans sitting at home playing Xbox (back in stock!) is actually accelerating:

Does it make sense to look at these statistics on a nationwide basis? The level of coronapanic varied widely from state to state. The attractiveness of relaxing at home on welfare, compared to the spending power afforded by working full time at the median wage, also varies widely from state to state (CATO; see Table 4).

Let’s have a look at New York, where CATO found (2013) that the welfare lifestyle yielded 110 percent of the spending power of a median worker (St. Louis Fed):

Still down a full percentage point compared to pre-coronapanic. With perhaps some exceptions for young attractive women, Science-following Governor Andrew Cuomo made it illegal for New Yorkers to work and they followed his instructions. What about in Florida, where relaxing on welfare was worth only 41 percent of the spending power of a median worker and where the tyrant Ron DeSantis allowed people to continue working? (source)

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