NYT: the broadest economic recovery entails a falling GDP

by philg

This is one of my favorite New York Times headlines ever: “G.D.P. Report Shows the U.S. Economy Shrank, Masking a Broader Recovery”.

Our technocratically-managed economy is thriving, even if shrinking a bit (the per capita shrinkage would be more dramatic if you consider population growth, just as the headline “GDP growth” figures that we’re accustomed to seeing don’t represent an actual improvement for the average person because there are more people in the US every day). So we shouldn’t lose faith in the central planners.

Speaking of central planners, I visited a friend in D.C. who works as an economist at the Federal Reserve. A few days earlier, she had received the Economist magazine in the mail. The cover story: “The Fed that failed; Why the Federal Reserve has made a historic mistake on inflation”.

One of the things that I like least about the Economist is their faith in technocracy. All of the world’s problems can be solved with enlightened leadership. Here’s how the article begins…

Central banks are supposed to inspire confidence in the economy by keeping inflation low and stable. America’s Federal Reserve has suffered a hair-raising loss of control. In March consumer prices were 8.5% higher than a year earlier, the fastest annual rise since 1981. In Washington inflation-watching is usually the preserve of wonks in shabby offices. Now nearly a fifth of Americans say inflation is the country’s most important problem; President Joe Biden has released oil from strategic reserves to try to curb petrol prices; and Democrats are searching for villains to blame, from greedy bosses to Vladimir Putin.

It is the Fed, however, that had the tools to stop inflation and failed to use them in time. The result is the worst overheating in a big and rich economy in the 30-year era of inflation-targeting central banks.

(I’m not a subscriber, so I don’t know how it ends. Maybe a reader can enlighten us all!)

Update: After disabling JavaScript for this site in Microsoft Edge, I can see the whole article. Some choice excerpts:

Strip out energy and food and the euro zone’s inflation is 3%—but America’s is 6.5%. Also, America’s labour market, unlike Europe’s, is clearly overheating, with wages growing at an average pace of nearly 6%.

Uncle Sam has been on a unique path because of Mr Biden’s excessive $1.9trn fiscal stimulus, which passed in March 2021. It added extra oomph to an economy that was already recovering fast after multiple rounds of spending, and brought the total pandemic stimulus to 25% of gdp—the highest in the rich world. As the White House hit the accelerator, the Fed should have applied the brakes.

Is it fair to blame the Fed? When the government is spending like an alimony plaintiff, what could the Fed possibly have done to stop inflation?

The good news is that we can continue cheating hard-working foreigners, even as Americans continue to relax at home:

Inflation that is stable and modestly above 2% might be tolerable for the real economy, but there is no guarantee the Fed’s stance today can deliver even that. And breaking promises has consequences. It hurts long-term bondholders, including foreign central banks and governments which own $4trn-worth of Treasury bonds. (A decade of 4% inflation instead of 2% would cut the purchasing power of money repaid at the end of that period by 18%.)

When the Japanese (holders of $1.3 trillion of our debt) come over to redeem the 30-year Treasury Bonds that they purchased in good faith reliance on our integrity, they’ll be able to use that money to buy a one-week visit to Disney World for a family of three?

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Results of a mask experiment in Germany

by philg

Germany has had strict requirements for people to use N95-style masks and… a raging coronaplague to go with those masks (but the failure of two-way N95 masking should not shake our faith in one-way N95 masking! Don’t stay home to avoid COVID-19, get on a plane with an N95 mask, eat in restaurants, stay in hotels, etc.). There was a natural experiment done recently in which Hamburg maintained its mask order while the rest of Germany dropped it. Here are the curves:

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Laptop with off-center keyboard due to numeric keypad

by philg

After digesting reader advice in response to What is the best 15-16-inch laptop right now? I decided to go with the $1200 LG Gram 16 2-in-1 from Costco. I’m setting it up now and already somewhat at war with the device because the keyboard is off center. Why isn’t the QWERTY keyboard that I want to use in the middle of the device? Because LG crammed in a numeric keypad, which I will never use.

For the Apple zealots, I will note that even their biggest (16″ pro) has the keyboard smack in the center:

They don’t bother with a numeric keypad because bookkeepers aren’t going to need a $3,000 notebook computer.

Who has used a laptop with an off-center keyboard like this? Did you get used to it?

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Commercial air travel in the Mizelle Age

by philg

This is a report on a trip from PBI-DCA-PBI, April 21-24. Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle struck down the Biden Administration’s mask order on April 18. (Friends on Facebook have been continuously posting reminders that Judge Mizelle is “not qualified.” In other words, a confused 80-year-old is well qualified to be President of the U.S., but a sharp-minded 35-year-old cannot be a judge.)

The PBI airport still had a few “masks required signs”:

Most of the advertising at PBI was geared toward selling real estate to those fleeing the Lands of Lockdown:

I estimate that 15 percent of the waiting passengers were masked here in majority-Democrat Palm Beach County. Contrast to a friend who was simultaneously flying SFO to EWR (he’s been a righteous supporter of masks, Biden, lockdowns, etc., but somehow is still participating in COVID-19-spreading activities such as travel) who reported 85-90 percent voluntary mask compliance at SFO and only 10 percent masked in Newark. Being in the airport was, despite the lack of audio announcements and signs regarding masks, not as relaxing as it might have been. The PA system was freed up for frequent reminders regarding unattended baggage and TSA liquid policies.

We were welcomed onto the plane by an unmasked flight attendant. The Followers of Science row was directly behind me, but even though were going from mostly-Democrat Palm Beach County to all-Democrat Washington, D.C., only a small minority of passengers chose to wear masks. (In other words, they voted for politicians promising to impose mask orders, but when given the choice won’t wear a mask themselves.)

The flight was on time and passengers, except maybe for the two behind me and their brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters in Science, cheered when the flight attendant announced that masks were optional. I witnessed no air rage.

I don’t remember any real estate ads in the D.C. airport. Here’s one for the central planners, though. All that they have to do to beat inflation is picture themselves winning:

The percentage of masked passengers and workers at DCA was no higher than at PBI, despite DCA being located right next to the twin hearts of Science (Anthony Fauci’s office at NIH and Dr. Jill Biden’s office).

On the return trip, I noticed a legacy “face coverings required” sign at DCA as well as a depressing Chick-fil-A (closed due to it being a Sunday):

Once again, JetBlue was on time and everyone was in a good mood. The lady sitting next to me had moved from Bethesda to Florida two months ago “for the freedom”. She and her husband (in “wealth management”) had returned for a wedding. They were not wearing masks.

We’re still left with a big question regarding each masked traveler. If he/she/ze/they is concerned enough about COVID-19 to wear a mask voluntarily, why isn’t he/she/ze/they concerned enough to stay home? Nobody held a gun to his/her/zir/their head and forced him/her/zir/them to travel by commercial airline or, indeed, to travel at all. The answer can’t be “an N95 mask protects against all viral attacks” because (1) not all of the masked travelers are wearing N95 masks, and (2) countries that imposed forced N95 masking, e.g., Germany, still had exponential plagues (i.e., two-way N95 masking failed to stop COVID-19 so what hope is there for one-way masking?).

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How does Twitter earn $44 billion before Elon Musk dies?

by philg

Twitter will soon be owned by African American entrepreneur and investor Elon Musk, who is paying $44 billion for a company that lost $493 million in 2021 on revenue of $5 billion (press release). The company would have earned something like $273 million if it hadn’t had to pay out on a big shareholder lawsuit. So if we look at things in the best possible light, and forget the fact that the government gave all of these screen-based companies a big lift in 2020 and 2021 by making non-screen-based activities illegal (except “essential” marijuana shopping in Maskachusetts and California), it will take 161 years for Twitter to earn $44 billion in profit. Unless the Silicon Valley life extension enthusiasts can deliver, Elon Musk will have died of old age before the Twitter investment pays back.

What could Elon Musk possibly do to make this platform worth $44 billion (other than wait for a few years when $44 billion could be the price of a Diet Coke)? Is the answer that Twitter can become as addictive as Facebook and therefore as profitable, on a percentage basis? Meta earned something like 30 percent profit after taxes. If Twitter could do the same it would earn $1.5 billion per year and Elon Musk would have paid 29X earnings for a company that is slowly growing (in other words, if everything goes perfect at Twitter it still isn’t an obviously good buy at $44 billion). Can we add this to the long list of things about the stock market that baffle me? (Remember that I’ve been skeptical of Tesla stock and Bitcoin for about 10 years, which is nothing to brag about in the investment world.)

Let’s look at some fun stuff from Twitter regarding Twitter….

Jeff Bezos says that it is good when a billionaire owns Atlantic magazine (Laurene Powell Jobs, who made money by marrying Steve Jobs, and promotes low-skill migration) and it is, presumably, good when a billionaire owns the Washington Post (Jeff Bezos himself). But it is bad when a billionaire owns Twitter:

Here’s a look at the likely thoughts of the Twitter Thought Police:

Here’s a chart of enthusiasm for censorship by party affiliation:

A summary of the situation:

Suppose that Elon Musk cancels the cancelers who work at Twitter. The folks who permanently suspended Donald Trump, for example, would have to look for other work. What if they re-formed as an independent company that took the entire Twitter feed and bowdlerized it by filtering out anything from the New York Post, vaporizing anything that says something positive about Donald Trump, etc. This would become a cherished safe space for Joe Biden voters. What to name the site? How about SafeTwit?

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NYT: Mask Science is perfect, but will be more perfect in another few years

by philg

Two years into the forced masking of the general public (except in Florida!), the Science experts at the New York Times give us “Maskless Flying: What might a more effective mask mandate look like?”

On Sunday, I spent nearly five hours on an airplane, flying home from the West Coast. For long stretches of the flight, whenever the crew was serving food and drinks, many passengers were not wearing masks. Even when people did have their masks on, many wore them below their noses.

My flight was the day before a federal judge threw out the C.D.C.’s transportation mask mandate, but my experience was typical, as any recent flier can attest. The mandate was already more of an aspiration than a reality, which indicates that the ruling may be less important than the furor over it suggests. The Covid-19 virus, after all, doesn’t take a break from spreading so that you can enjoy the in-flight beverage service.

As Michael Osterholm, a University of Minnesota epidemiologist, puts it, a mask mandate with as many exceptions as the airline mandate is like a submarine that closes three of its five doors.

The trouble with the transportation mask mandate was that it was both too broad and too lenient.

Its breadth required people to muzzle their faces for long periods of time, and most people don’t enjoy doing so. (If you doubt that, check out the gleeful responses of airline passengers and school children when told they didn’t have to wear masks anymore.)

The transportation mandate had so many exceptions that many Americans understandably questioned its worth. Travelers took off their masks to eat and drink. Some flight attendants removed their masks to make announcements. Some passengers wore their masks on their chins. The mandate also did not require N95 and KN95 masks, which are more effective against the virus than cloth masks or standard medical masks.

Rigorous laboratory tests show that masks reduce Covid transmission, but supporting real-world evidence tends to be much weaker.

The most glaring example in the U.S. is that liberal communities, where masks are a cherished symbol of solidarity, have experienced nearly as much Covid spread as conservative communities, where masks are a hated symbol of oppression. Another example is school mask mandates, which don’t seem to have had much effect. A third example is Hong Kong, where mask wearing is very popular (although often not with N95 or KN95 masks, Osterholm notes); Hong Kong has just endured a horrific Covid wave, among the world’s worst since the pandemic began.

So the Science was perfect and should be #Followed (according to previous NYT articles), but the American public let down the Scientists. Regarding schools, see Face mask mandates in schools were not associated with lower SARS-CoV-2 incidence or transmission for data from 600,000 Spanish schoolchildren. On the righteous versus unrighteous community data, see the following chart (I can’t find a source for it, unfortunately):

Following the Science accelerated COVID-19 plagues by encouraging people to leave the safety of their homes:

Osterholm, who spent 15 years as Minnesota’s state epidemiologist and has advised both Democratic and Republican administrations in Washington, argues that much of the U.S. public health community has exaggerated the value of broad mask mandates. KN95 and N95 masks reduce the virus’s spread, he believes, but mandates like the one on airlines do little good.

“Public health advice has been way off the mark, all along, about mask protection,” he told me. “We have given the public a sense of a level of protection that is just not warranted.”

Note that this is exactly what the Swedish MD/PhDs (i.e., anti-Science heretics) said in March 2020. Ordering masks would give people a false sense of safety when what people actually needed to do was stay at home (if vulnerable) or maintain physical separation. Could it be that America’s public health officials are responsible for more COVID-19 deaths than anyone else? What could be worse than encouraging people to leave the safety of their houses and rely on a saliva-soaked face rag for protection from an aerosol virus?

The rest of the article speculates on what the Great Minds of Science might yet accomplish with redesigned mask mandates to keep us all safe from future COVID variants.

On a related note, “Judge’s Ruling on the CDC Mask Mandate Highlights the Limits of the Agency’s Power” (KHN) is about a CDC that still has the power to order landlords to continue providing apartments to tenants who don’t pay rent:

“If CDC can’t impose an unintrusive requirement to wear a mask to prevent a virus from going state to state, then it literally has no power to do anything,” said public health law expert Lawrence Gostin, faculty director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University.

For the public health technocrats, it is “unintrusive” to force a 2-year-old to wear a mask for 16 hours straight (Uber, airport, flight 1, airport 2, flight 2, airport 3, Uber).

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With 3D scanning and 3D printing, why can’t we get reproductions of any sculpture?

by philg

I visited the National Gallery of Art recently, trying to figure out when the Hunter Biden wing will open, and was impressed by the extensive collection of animal sculpture by Barye. I thought that it would be fun to get reproductions of the works that include crocodilians for the kids to enjoy back in Florida. Yet, in fact, these aren’t for sale. Now that we have 3D scanners and 3D printers, shouldn’t every sculpture in every museum be available at any size that a visitor wants? The 3D scan could be sent to some hard-working folks over in Asia where a mold would be printed and, eventually, a resin or bronze version shipped to the happy consumer (add a “replica” stamp underneath so that authenticity cannot be falsified). The profit would be shared by the craftspeople and the museum.

This doesn’t happen in the marketplace, so I know that the above idea is defective. But why? The Louvre offers a feeble 7 choices for replica Baryes and they have a huge collection.

This article makes it sound as though there is still a lot of work to be done by hand in making a bronze cast of a 3D-scanned object. So maybe the dream of on-demand replicas in any size is unrealistic with present technology, but surely there is a sufficient market for one or two sizes of each sculpture worthy of being displayed in a museum.

Museums already do this with 2D works. You can order custom prints of works from the Metropolitan Museum, for example (don’t forget to wear a mask if you go into the museum to place the order; they still require all visitors 2 years and up to wear masks). Why aren’t we ready to go 3D?

What can be purchased in the gift shop, you might wonder, if not reproduction alligator sculptures?

Suppose that we had to summarize that last book, What would Frida Kahlo do? How about “When trying to become successful in a career, have sex with a married much older guy who is already very successful in that career”?

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What is the best 15-16-inch laptop right now?

by philg

It is time to replace my 5-year-old Dell XPS 13. Despite multiple return trips to Dell for service, the computer has never worked properly, refusing to sleep when closed or even to sleep when “sleep” is selected from the power options at lower left (the only way to prevent the battery from being drained is “shutdown”). It lacks whatever mojo is required to run Windows 11:

I probably could have predicted this given that the machine runs out of CPU zorch on Zoom calls and warnings about compromised audio quality pop up. Also, having the camera at the bottom of the screen is an unbelievably bad idea for Zoom (others on the call will see your fingers as you type and, thinking that they’re on mute, will say “that guy has more chins than the Shanghai lockdown registry”).

The experience of being a Dell customer was traumatic, so I don’t want to repeat that. I’m not ready to abandon my love for all things Microsoft (the keyboard, the folding mouse, Windows itself) so I can’t join the young, hip, and stickered with MacOS. I haven’t enjoyed the 13″ screen, despite the high (3200×1800) resolution, but lugging a 17-inch laptop in the old days wasn’t fun.

[My 17-inch HP laptop died to support a worthy cause. A friend and I had it almost completely apart so that we could remove a failed component. Another friend walked in the door wearing a “women in STEM” T-shirt (“Maker Girl” or “Girls Code”?). She decided to assist us and, confused by a zero insertion force connection, rather than flick the male part out with a pinky, snapped the female portion off the main board (surface mount and therefore not field-repairable). (Are “male” and “female” terms for connectors obsolete in our 2SLBGTQQIA+ world? If so, what are the new names?)]

Back in 2019, I selected an LG Gram 17-inch laptop for Senior Management (see What laptop for Senior Management? and 17” laptop for seniors (note that Senior Management is not a senior!) and notice the lack of progress in specs; the LG Gram 17 had 16 GB of RAM, which is still the prevailing standard for higher-end laptops three years later). The machine is still functional, despite some abuse from the kids, and no tech support has been required either from LG or the Domestic IT Department (me). This machine will be used for travel and I like having a touchscreen, which LG still doesn’t make in a 17-inch version. So I am thinking about a 16-inch version. Last year’s model, which includes an 11th generation CPU, is marked down to $1200 at Costco (the newest 12th gen version isn’t quite available):

Given the feeble progress that I’ve noted in GPUs, for example, is there a practical difference between 12th and 11th gen Intel CPUs?

The Surface Laptop Studio direct from Microsoft is probably a great product, but the screen is only 14.4 inches in size. It is $1,550 with a 512 GB SSD (the minimum for me) and over $1,800 with the “i7” CPU. It also has the 11th gen CPU and a similar resolution (2400 x 1600).

What about gaming laptops for someone like me who mostly carries a machine into a conference room or a hotel room? Do they offer big advantages for sound quality, Zoom, etc.? I wouldn’t actually play games, though I would love to have (a) the time, and (b) the skill.

The old HP worked great until its encounter with Women in STEM and HP allows customers a certain amount of configuration flexibility. Maybe it is time to consider HP? Like LG, they won’t sell you a high-res 17-inch touchscreen, at least not on the Envy models. Maybe there is a conspiracy over in Asia to deny Americans 17-inch touchscreens? For $4,000+, HP will sell a laptop for “creators” with similar specs to the LG that I purchased in 2019: 16 GB of RAM and 256 GB SSD: HP ZBook Studio G8 Mobile Workstation. It has a 15.6″ screen.

I poked around on the Lenovo site and didn’t see anything comparable to the LG. They don’t seem to make 16-inch devices, for example, and their 17-inch laptop is low res (HD) and non-touch. Perhaps their specialties are 14-15-inch business laptops and gaming laptops?

Maybe this is why Apple is so beloved. Since they’re the monopoly hardware supplier, consumers don’t have to cope with a paralyzing array of choice.

Readers: Please help! I want to make sure that I have a good laptop in time for Hate Week in case I am traveling then! (prediction based on what I’m hearing right now here in Washington, D.C.: Ron DeSantis and Kathryn Kimball Mizelle will be featured)

(Separately, I tried using a supersized iPad and keyboard as a Windows substitute on one trip and was unsuccessful. I couldn’t figure out how to use Dropbox and Office 365 together effectively and found myself missing the Windows File System(!), despite having previously raged against the tyranny of a single hierarchy.)

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JetBlue doesn’t recognize Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle’s authority?

by philg

I attended a family event this weekend in Washington, D.C. The Cirrus is in for annual inspection and, in any case, is not suitable for transportation on a rigid schedule so I bought a ticket on JetBlue. On Monday, Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle famously freed Americans from the rule of the CDC (“Our system does not permit agencies to act unlawfully even in pursuit of desirable ends”). On Tuesday, however, JetBlue emailed to say

Federal law requires masks to be worn by all travelers 2 years and older at all times during air travel including during boarding/deplaning, on board and at the airport. Failure to comply may result in denied boarding, removal from the aircraft and/or penalties under federal law.

Here’s the core of the “Need-to-knows for your trip” email:

The IT department was still catching up or should we read something deeper into this apparent defiance of Judge Mizelle’s authority to say what Federal law does and does not require?

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An evening with Senator Tom Cotton

by philg

As balance to a 2018 gathering (see Elizabeth Warren helps another politician raise money on a “get money out of politics” platform), I recently attended an evening with Senator Tom Cotton. It pains me to say this about a Harvard graduate, but his knowledge of world history going back at least to the 1950s is impressive, especially regarding the Middle East and China. The voters of Arkansas picked a seriously bookish person to represent them. Cotton is 44 so by current American standards of cognitive excellence he won’t be ready to run for U.S. President until the year 2056.

Some of the guests (total of about 15) talked about quitting public company boards because of the pressure to jump on the social justice, BLM, and 2SLGBTQQIA+ bandwagons. I personally attribute this to the lack of competition in the U.S. European airlines, for example, are more numerous and ticket prices are lower for comparable trips. Therefore, European companies are less likely to have the extra profits to be able to indulge in non-business activities. An investor said that he thought companies waved the rainbow flag because it enabled them to recruit employees at lower wages. It wouldn’t simply be a job, but rather a mission. Senator Cotton thought that this was something that would be dealt with at the state level, e.g., California’s law to force companies to hire board members based on gender ID. From ca.gov:

Publicly held corporations were required to have at least one female director on their Board of Directors by December 31, 2019. … Who qualifies as a female director? A female is an individual who self-identifies her gender as a woman, without regard to the individual’s designated sex at birth.

Definitely a politician to watch, though I didn’t agree with some of his comments regarding China. If the mission of Americans is building a low-skill low-labor force participation society via open borders, a lavish welfare state, and tens of millions of low-skill migrants, I think we need to cooperate with, not confront, China. We’re not going to start making our own iPhones!

An older attendee, originally from the Midwest, asked why we couldn’t have bipartisan action on a range of issues that she believed to be important. None of those under 60 thought that there was any reason for Joe Biden and the Democrats to compromise.

As I was leaving, I thanked Senator Cotton for educating us on a wide range of topics but said that I wouldn’t be able to support him if he were running against Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle. He responded that he fully understood.

From the neighborhood where the gathering was held, white and Black can coexist peacefully:

And, of course, people in a full rainbow of race and gender IDs can enjoy the beach:

The adjacent playground has a sign reminding visitors that it is an “inclusive environment”:

(Not like the Playgrounds of Hate that are common elsewhere; see Harvard graduate discovers that the suburbs are packed with narrow-minded white heterosexuals in which the 2SLGBTQQIA+ minister talks about feeling excluded by the white hetero soccer moms in the playground back in Lincoln, Maskachusetts.)

An idea if you’re redoing the driveway…

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