Philip Greenspun’s Weblog

“Supreme Court Labor Decision Wasn’t Just a Loss for Unions” (nytimes):

The Supreme Court decision striking down mandatory union fees for government workers was not only a blow to unions. It will also hit hard at a vast network of groups dedicated to advancing liberal policies and candidates.

Some of these groups work for immigrants…

If the purpose of a labor union is primarily to increase wages for its members, why would they try to increase competition at the lower end of the labor market? (see “Yes, Immigration Hurts American Workers” by a Harvard economist for a summary of the literature).

Is the theory that the latest crop of immigrants and their children will never achieve the level of education, skill, and connections necessary to do the kind of work performed by members of current unions?

Or that compensation for union members is determined only by what local, state, and federal governments can afford to pay? That the overall size of the labor pool is irrelevant? (for example, unionized workers in a nearby town of Methuen, Massachusetts just got a raise, e.g., from $157,000 per year for a police captain up to $440,735; median household income in the town is $72,631) I wonder if they are banking on the inherent assymetry in public worker union negotiation. The union members bargain for money that will be paid to them and they will get to spend. The government officials on the other side are spending someone else’s money.

Or that union members are mostly government workers and more immigrants means a larger government and more opportunity to expand the union? Immigrants and their children are more likely to be on welfare. There are 30 unions getting money out of the New York City Housing Authority and one plumber made $369,152 in 2016. As the population expands we will need to build more free housing and hire more union members to administer and maintain the free-to-residents houses. Unions of nurses lobby for increased Medicaid funding (example). More immigrants means more people on Medicaid. How many undocumented immigrants will earn a bachelor’s degree and qualify as registered nurses so as to compete with current union members?

Maybe the answer is that union members (like I used to be!) are better-than-average people and they want to help immigrants out of altruism. If so, why does their altruism stop at the U.S. border? If they simply want to help non-citizens, why wouldn’t unions support aid groups that operate in poor countries?

It makes sense to me, as a graduate of Econ 101, that an employer of low-skill workers would advocate for more immigration (especially if middle-class taxpayers are going to pay for those workers’ housing, health care, and food!). But Cesar Chavez was anti-immigration for most of his career as a labor union official. From ABC:

From when he co-founded United Farm Workers in 1962 with Dolores Huerta, Chavez took a hard line on illegal immigration. He thought employers would use undocumented workers as strike breakers, and that temporary workers would undermine the wages of Mexican American residents and citizens. He even reported some undocumented workers to immigration authorities, Gutiérrez writes.

(He later modified this position, but it is unclear whether there was an economic rationale or only a sentimental one that offered no tangible benefit to union members at the time.)

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“What Trump Gets Right About Europe” sounds like an April Fool’s piece from the New York Times (e.g., it would be a blank screen), but in fact is authored by a German in a serious mood:

Mr. Trump’s anger at America’s allies embodies, however unpleasantly, a not unreasonable point of view, and one that the rest of the world ignores at its peril: The global world order is unbalanced and inequitable. And unless something is done to correct it soon, it will collapse, with or without the president’s tweets.

The Europeans have basically been free riders on the voyage, spending almost nothing on defense, and instead building vast social welfare systems at home and robust, well-protected export industries abroad. Rather than lash back at Mr. Trump, they would do better to ask how we got to this place, and how to get out.

The European Union, as an institution, is one of the prime drivers of this inequity. At the Group of 7, for example, the constituent countries are described as all equals. But in reality, the union puts a thumb on the scales in its members’ favor: It is a highly integrated, well-protected free-trade area that gives a huge leg up to, say, German car manufacturers while essentially punishing American companies who want to trade in the region.

Here’s where I get lost:

The eurozone offers a similar unfair advantage. If it were not for the euro, Germany would long ago have had to appreciate its currency in line with its enormous export surplus.

Sure, eurozone membership makes imports to Germany more expensive than they would be under the deutschemark; wage restraint has also helped maintain the competitiveness of German machinery. But how can the very same politicians and journalists who defended the euro bailout payments during the financial crisis, arguing that Germany profited disproportionately from the common currency, now go berserk when Mr. Trump makes exactly this point?

Suppose that the medium of exchange in Europe were gold doubloons or simply gold. Wouldn’t the distribution of manufacturing and wealth among European countries be pretty similar to what it is today? If so, why blame the exotic euro? If not… maybe someone can explain it below. And also explain how this would be different than what happens among U.S. states, which can vary dramatically in wealth or manufacturing output.

Related:

• “Fall of the American Empire,” a piece by Paul Krugman that appeared on the same day as the above article, but making pretty much the opposite points

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“Air ambulances, backed by private equity firms, leave patients with $45,000 bills” (LA Times) was sent to me by several different friends. A kid took a 66 nm helicopter ride, which would be about $500 round-trip in a flight school’s four-seat Robinson R44. The cost was $45,930 in a presumably magnificent turbine-powered machine. The parents’ presumably gold-plated university-affiliated health insurance plan paid out $6,704 for this trip, which should more than cover marginal operating expenses even for a deluxe turbine helicopter. But the operator has been fighting for three years to get paid the remainder.

The median charge to Medicare for a medical helicopter flight more than doubled to almost $30,000 in 2014, from $14,000 in 2010, according to a report last year by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Air Methods’ average charge ballooned, from $13,000 in 2007 to $49,800 in 2016, the GAO said. Medicare, the federal health program for people 65 and older, pays only a fraction of billed charges; Medicaid, the state-federal program for the poor, pays even less.

In other words, after every four flights the turbine helicopter operator bills enough to purchase a decent-condition four-seat Robinson R44. After every eight flights the turbine helicopter operator bills enough to purchaes a brand-new Robinson R44.

Thanks to the decision by Americans to spend all of their wealth on health care, this Medicare biller turns out to be worth more than a medium-sized airline:

Wealthy investors attracted by the industry’s rapid growth have acquired many of the biggest air-ambulance operators, leaving control of the business in the hands of private-equity groups. American Securities LLC bought Air Methods for $2.5 billion in March 2017. Rival Air Medical Group Holdings, which includes Air Evac and several other brands, has been owned by New York private-equity firm KKR & Co. LP since 2015. Two-thirds of medical helicopters operating in 2015 belonged to three for-profit providers, the GAO said in its report.

Despite the apparent glut, air-ambulance operators are profitable. Air Methods had an average annual profit margin of 9.1% from 2012-16. Over the same period, companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Health Care Providers & Services index had margins of 7.9%, on average. PHI, a helicopter company that operates medical flights and transports for oil and gas drillers, reported average operating margins of 15.7% from 2014-17 in its medical segment, compared with 10.4% for the benchmark index in the same period.

As with everything else in the U.S. health care system, analysis under Econ 101 cannot be done:

Seth Myers, president of Air Evac, said that his company loses money on patients covered by Medicaid and Medicare, as well as those with no insurance. That’s about 75% of the people it flies.

According to a 2017 report commissioned by the Assn. of Air Medical Services, an industry trade group, the typical cost per flight was $10,199 in 2015, and Medicare paid only 59% of that.

One part of Econ 101 that does seem to apply is that a monopolist will price according to someone’s ability to pay:

In West Virginia, the Cox family went through two appeals with their health plan. After they retained a lawyer, Air Methods offered to reduce their balance to $10,000 on reviewing their tax returns, bank statements, pay stubs and a list of assets. The family decided to sue instead.

“I felt like they were screening us to see just how much money they could get out of us,” Tabitha Cox said. “I think about people that really struggle — single moms, people that don’t have the financial blessings that we have. Bottom line, it’s just not fair.”

(Why would a single mom be someone who “really struggles”? Under West Virginia family law, the maximum parental profit from obtaining custody of a single child is about $24,000 per year. Any child support award obtained above that number will generally be put into trust for the child on reaching adulthood. Children are simply not nearly as profitable as in a lot of other U.S. states.)

I’ve read that a lot of U.S. states have more dedicated medical evacuation helicopters than does the entire country of Canada. In the old days police and/or military helicopters would be used as necessary (they have to make up all kinds of training missions to stay proficient; why not fly patients every few days instead?). Or patients would be transferred on highways in heavily equipped ambulances. The helicopter is an old technology, having been mass-produced starting in the 1940s. The life-saving benefits of getting to a trauma center were well-known even then and documented by automobile manufacturers in the 1960s (they sponsored studies showing that the cost per life saved would be much lower with helicopter ambulances than with airbags and maybe even than with seatbelts (which are cheap, obviously, but most minivans get scrapped with all 7 or 8 seatbelts never having been needed).

Why is it 70 years after helicopters began hovering off assembly lines that we have this industry and this debate?

Related:

• FAA punches a hole in the U.S. economy today (some expensive new regulations for the air ambulance industry that may partially account for the price increase)
• “Arizona family shocked by $47,000 air ambulance bill for their child” (Arizona Republic): “The bill for the 15-minute emergency flight totaled $47,000. When the family’s insurer agreed to pay a fraction of the cost, $5,000, the air-ambulance company came after the Brunners for the rest, billing records show.” (it is a one-hour drive between these destinations)

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Most add-ons to certified aircraft end up tangling the interior with USB cables, suction cups, etc. Levil Aviation has come up with an exception: the Broadcasting Outer Module (BOM). In kind of a throwback to the 1920s and 1930s, in which slipstream-powered instruments were popular for aircraft that lacked electrical systems (also gyros powered by vacuum pumps).

This is kind of a victory for advocates of more sane regulation under a NORSEE policy.

The device starts up when it senses engine vibration (maybe it will not work for the next generation of battery-powered aircraft?). It broadcasts attitude and heading to an iOS or Android device (i.e., everything in the panel could fail and you could stay safe in the clouds by reference to your phone). It contains its own pitot-static system for airspeed and altitude information. It has its own GPS plus ADS-B IN for weather and traffic data. So you get about $1 million worth of airliner stuff or $50,000 worth of light aircraft stuff for $2,000 plus the cost of the phone that you already own.

Vaguely along the same lines is the SkyBeacon ADS-B OUT transponder that replaces a wingtip light and installs in a few minutes. Instead of taking an airplane apart so that an avionics shop can rewire it to deal with all of the transponder requirements of the last 70 years plus the new one of ADS-B, this thing listens to the replies of the legacy transponder in the panel and adds a legal ADS-B OUT transmission on top of whatever the legacy transponder is sending.

Readers: What would be the next cool thing that could be mounted under an aircraft wing or out at the strobe/nav light spot? At a minimum, I would like to see the above two products combined! And a video camera added while we are at it.

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Back in 2017 I asked “Can engineering make us comfortable in 200-square-foot homes?” and wondered if it might be possible to design multi-purpose furniture for urban Americans with medium incomes.

Here in 2018 the gap between American incomes and American housing prices is even wider, e.g., “Full time minimum wage workers can’t afford the rent on a 2-bedroom apartment anywhere in the USA”. With our borders now open to anyone who can get hold of a companion who appears to be under age 18, nothing stops us from reaching Chinese levels of population density.

At those Chinese levels of density even a moderately prosperous worker will be considered fortunate to live in a studio apartment. Instead of depending on new engineering achievements, what about simply declaring that the existing technology of adjustable bed (see Consumer Reports) can function as the only non-dining seating in a home?

Readers: Who actually has one of these adjustable beds? If so, does it work just as well as a recliner chair for reading, watching streaming video on a phone or tablet, conversation with others in the home, and watching a wall-mounted TV? Could it work to design apartments with a small table for dining and an adjustable bed? So if there were four dining chairs and three people could squeeze in on the bed, you could have a total of 7 people gathering and sitting.

Question: Are these made in China? If so, it seems like a harsh comment on the state of American manufacturing considering that the simplicity and weight/bulk would tend to favor a local factory.

Related:

• Sealy adjustable bases (surround these with any bed frame? How can that work?)
• Serta adjustable bases
• Legett & Platt

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I know someone who works at Pixar. He is a reliable source of confident lectures on the moral superiority of Democrats, Californians, liberals, immigrants, bigger government. He is also a reliable source of confident denunciations of Republicans as sexist, racist, and stupid. Donald Trump, needless to say, is an affront to everything that is righteous by Bay Area standards.

“How Pixar’s Open Sexism Ruined My Dream Job” (Variety) thus caught my eye:

At Pixar, my female-ness was an undeniable impediment to my value, professional mobility, and sense of security within the company. The stress of working amidst such a blatantly sexist atmosphere took its toll, and was a major factor in forcing me out of the industry.

It was devastating to learn, right from the start, that women were open targets for disrespect and harassment –– even at a world-renowned workplace in the most liberal-leaning city in the country. I was likewise told to steer clear of a particularly chauvinistic male lead in my department. Much like John, this man’s female targets had been reporting his vulgar, unprofessional behaviors for years, but his position and demeanor remained much the same.

I had my first uncomfortable encounter with this department head in a company kitchen, just two weeks into my internship. He cornered me with sexual comments while openly leering at my body.

Cassandra Smolcic is a freelance graphic designer, photographer, and writer. She worked at Pixar from 2009 to 2014.

Maybe correct-thinkers in “the most liberal-leaning city in the country” do actually treat women in the workplace better? That’s because women are treated so much worse in states that voted for Trump? But how would folks in the Bay Area know since they never visit such places?

I emailed my source within Pixar to find out how it was possible for people at the company to have been simultaneously sanctimonious about Trump voters and running a workplace that was hostile to women. His response was that Pixar was recently woke. Things would be different and better going forward and, in fact, had already improved.

 

But that leaves us with things being pretty bad still in 2016, when Pixar employees joined with the rest of the Bay Area in jeering at Deplorables.

So… how can Bay Area folks talk about how much progress they’ve made in enabling women to work in their offices, something that became common nationwide roughly 100 years ago during World War I, while also sanctimoniously strutting about how much better their political philosophy is for the “vulnerable,” such as women? Where is their evidence that women in Deplorable-run enterprises faced more hostility than women at virtuously managed Pixar? Or than women interviewing for roles with Hillary Clinton-supporter Harvey Weinstein?

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Harvard Medical School is running a crowd-sourced Network of Enigmatic Exceptional Responders to see if Big Data can help win the War on Cancer (kicked off by President Nixon in 1971). There is an interesting WBUR story about the project.

Given the amount of damage that computing has done to health care via incompatible and impossible-to-use electronic medical records perhaps computer nerddom can redeem itself with a cure for cancer?

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At least according to my Facebook friends, the U.S. is in crisis because we can’t figure out what to do with migrants who stream across the border with companions under 18 years of age (or at least who say that they are under 18!).

As noted in Americans separating children and parents at the border and within and How does our government deport children? it seems that we are forced by our current interlocking laws to operate an open borders policy for anyone who can get hold of a child before coming into the U.S. Because the child cannot be imprisoned in our current facilities and the child cannot be separated from adults claiming to be his or her parents, the adults and children who are here contrary to our immigration laws must be set free to roam this great land of Sanctuary Cities.

It is kind of interesting that the country that permanently separates more native-born children from parents than any other (comparative statistics on what our family law system does: “The USA stands out as an extreme case”), an activity that excites little interest and no media coverage (unless it is a Hollywood plaintiff), is now mad with passion regarding the temporary separation of foreign children from parents (my own state of Massachusetts, for example, which has historically been very pro-separation of children from loser parents in its winner-take-all family court system (e.g., if the winner parent wants to move to California with the child), has sued the Trump Administration to demand that migrants be set free in Texas).

I wonder if there is a middle ground that can satisfy at least some people on both sides of this issue: facilities sort of like the debtors’ prisons that were run starting in medieval times, e.g., Marshalsea. Obviously the physical quality of the community would be up to a 21st century standard rather than a 14th century standard, but the basic idea would be the same: families could all be in prison together and adult members could go out and work during the day.

[Credit for this idea to a European friend who is a student of history. He noted that it was bizarre that a nation that was so passionate about divorce, custody, and child support litigation would find the treatment of migrant children to be intolerable. He drew a parallel to the Bad Old Days in Europe as well: “In the 18th century there were kidnappers in Europe. You’d pay them and get your kids back. The difference between kidnappers and an American pussy worker is that you have to pay her, but you don’t get your kids back.”]

Readers: Could this work if we simply didn’t call it a “prison”? Could we combine it with Sanctuary Cities? From Compromise: Unlimited Haitians for communities that prepare to welcome them?

What if Trump were to offer immigration proponents an unlimited supply of people, without any preference for those capable of working, on condition that immigration advocates use state and local tax dollars to pay for their housing, health care, food, and walking-around money? So if people in San Francisco want to build a 1000-unit apartment complex for Haitian immigrants, and folks will be permanently entitled to live there by paying a defined fraction of their income in rent ($0 in rent for those with $0 in income), and San Francisco commits to build additional apartment complexes in which any children or grandchildren of these immigrants can live, why should the Federal government stand in the way of their dreams? (Of course, the city and state would also have to pay 100 percent of the costs of Medicaid, food stamps, Obamaphones, and any other welfare services consumed by these immigrants or their descendants.)

So being in “family immigration prison” would simply mean that you didn’t have the right to move. A Sanctuary City would welcome you, park you in a public housing development that its citizens had funded, and let you live there for however many years it took for your asylum application to be considered (and then, in the event of a negative finding, obstruct your deportation?).

Basically we would have the same de facto open borders policy that we have today for anyone who can find a convenient baby or toddler, but the “families” admitted under this policy wouldn’t have the same freedom to move from city to city or state to state as legal U.S. residents.

Related:

• Promise of divorce ruined by children (Australia parental relocation study) (notes on a talk about how Australia has tried to balance the interest of adult plaintiffs in family courts (they want to have sex with new friends while spending the income of their former spouses) with the interest of children (they want access to both biological parents, even parents who are court-deemed “loser parents”))

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Although the TV show Silicon Valley has a lot of accurate-sounding dialog regarding various software tools, it depicts young childless workers living in a group house.

This is a little different than Pakistanis working in Dubai, for example, where a middle-aged man would export himself to labor and leave the wife and kids behind.

This summer, two of my middle-aged friends with wives/kids are taking up residence in an all-male hacker house on the very eastern edge of Palo Alto (roll out of bed and land on the 101!). They’ll travel back to Boston periodically to see the family while they try to earn more money than would be possible in the comparatively moribund software world of Boston.

Neither of these guys has enough money to buy a family-sized house in Silicon Valley.

Is this a trend that others have seen?

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One of our neighbors is departing the Land of the Deplorables (TM) for Canada (folks protest Trump’s election and the country’s newfound hostility to non-whites by moving to our yet-whiter northern neighbor rather than to, e.g., Mexico?). She has been upset for more than a year by Donald Trump’s collusion with Russia, his lack of respect for women who were paid to have sex, and his stated passion for enforcing U.S. immigration laws. The tipping point for her was an attractive job offer from a Canadian employer.

She’ll still be a U.S. citizen, but she doesn’t want to be a Massachusetts citizen any longer. Write-in votes here won’t help advance her passion for higher taxes and an expanded government. “I want to choose a state where my vote matters,” she noted. I suggested Michigan or New Hampshire, the states that were closest in the 2016 Presidential Election. “No,” she replied. “It has to be a state that is tax-free.” (Michigan imposes a 4.25 percent income tax; New Hampshire is widely believed to be tax-free, but that’s only for W-2 income; dividends and interest are taxed at 5 percent)

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