Philip Greenspun’s Weblog

“U.S. sues Oracle, alleges salary and hiring discrimination” (Reuters) says that “the technology company systematically paid its white, male employees more than other workers” and then “Oracle was far more likely to hire Asian applicants – particularly Indian people – for product development and technical roles than black, white or Hispanic job seekers.”

Does this make sense? Suppose that Larry Ellison wants to run a club where white guys can talk about their college frat days and steals from shareholders by overpaying these guys. But at the same time he tries to avoid hiring any more white guys to join the backslapping and beer pong club? Going forward, he prefers to hire Indians?

For all of this to be true, doesn’t the company need to have multiple personality disorder? It doesn’t care about profit for existing workers so it just ladles out way more cash than it needs to, as long as the worker is a white male. When it comes to new workers, though, the company would much rather hire an Indian applicant than a white applicant because the white applicant would cost more (see above).

Readers: Can anyone explain how both allegations could be simultaneously true?

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From American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant by Ronald White…

Before the conflict in Texas erupted, Mexicans regarded the United States highly. Many politicians wished to emulate American democratic institutions. But Americans did not appreciate how much more difficult and complex Mexico’s path to becoming a nation was as it sought to shed the bonds of imperial Spain. From the Mexican perspective, America’s determination to tear Texas from Mexico initiated generations of distrust.

These letters [to Julia, his future wife, in 1846] reveal his observant, artistic eye. While some soldiers wrote home disparagingly of Mexico, he marveled about Monterrey: “This is the most beautiful spot that it has been my fortune to see in this world.” With feeling, he described the “beautiful city enclosed on three sides by the mountains with a pass through them to the right and to the left.

Grant would come to believe the Mexican War was unjust—a large nation attacking a small nation—but he had high praise for the American army. “The men engaged in the Mexican War were brave, and the officers of the regular army, from highest to lowest, were educated in their profession,” he declared. “A more efficient army for its number and armament I do not believe ever fought a battle.”

The Mexican War of 1846–1848, largely forgotten today, was the second costliest war in American history in terms of the percentage of soldiers who died. Of the 78,718 American soldiers who served, 13,283 died, constituting a casualty rate of 16.87 percent. By comparison, the casualty rate was 2.5 percent in World War I and World War II, 0.1 percent in Korea and Vietnam, and 21 percent for the Civil War. Of the casualties, 11,562 died of illness, disease, and accidents. Thirty-nine men Grant had known at West Point died. Four members of his 1843 class lost their lives.

What did we get as a reward for our aggression?

On February 2, 1848, Trist concluded a peace treaty that the commissioners signed at Guadalupe Hidalgo. The Senate ratified it on March 10, confirming American claims to Texas and setting the boundary at the Rio Grande. The Mexican government ceded to the United States New Mexico and Upper California, which included present-day Arizona and New Mexico, as well as parts of Nevada, Utah, and Colorado. In exchange, the United States paid Mexico $15 million and assumed claims against Mexico by United States citizens. The Mexican Congress ratified the treaty on May 25. United States troops began leaving Mexico five days later.

After the Civil War and the Presidency, it was time to think about commerce with Mexico:

Traveling with friend and diplomat Matías Romero, Grant became convinced that investment of foreign capital would “put the people on their feet” so that “Mexico would become a rich country, a good neighbor, and the two Republics would profit by contact.

Think that the debate over the pros ad cons of NAFTA and free trade with Mexico are new?

Knowing of Grant’s interest in Mexico, in early 1882 Chester Arthur—president of the United States since the death of James Garfield by an assassin’s bullet in September 1881—invited Grant to become U.S. commissioner to draw up a commercial treaty with Mexico. Mexico appointed Matías Romero as one of its two commissioners. The commissioners quickly agreed on terms of a free trade treaty that would remove tariffs on U.S. and Mexican products. The treaty of reciprocity was signed on January 20, 1883, but needed to be approved by the senates of both countries. The treaty was defeated in both countries.

In the United States, protectionists decried the free trade provisions. Some in the United States and Mexico charged that Grant and Romero were involved primarily for their own pecuniary gain.

More: read American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant

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“Federal Debt Projected to Grow by $8.6 Trillion Over Next Decade” (nytimes) describes the basic economic situation with which Trump is faced. If the economy meets Congress’s rosy growth projections, which seems unlikely given that a rising minimum wage will reduce labor force participation (see Puerto Rico), the government will spend 3.8 percent of GDP over and over any tax revenues received. (The article is unintentionally humorous:

Despite the swelling deficit, the report describes an economy that is currently on “solid ground,” with increasing output and job growth on the immediate horizon.

How can an economy that has to spend more than it generates, borrowing from a hoped-for brighter future, be considered on “solid ground”?)

Given that members of Congress are addicted to being reelected and Americans are addicted to showers of cash (SSDI, SSI, Social Security, food stamps, etc.) and what they perceive as free services (Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare subsidies) from Washington, what can Trump do as a practical matter? Every federal spending program is popular. Even Reagan wasn’t able to persuade Congress to cut anything substantial (which is why there were big deficits back then; Congress heeded his call to cut taxes, but ignored the calls to cut spending).

If we could grow our way to a Singapore level of per-capita GDP (50 percent higher than U.S.) then all of our fiscal dreams could come true. But Singapore seems to have done that by (1) running an effective public school system, and (2) not having a substantial welfare system (mostly an earned income tax credit-style system in which people whose market-clearing wage is low get a boost, but, unless they’re disabled, they do need to work). Public schools are beyond federal control and the U.S. welfare state has grown more or less continuously since the 1960s.

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“Trump Abandons Trans-Pacific Partnership, Obama’s Signature Trade Deal” (nytimes) says that the Trumpenfuhrer has done what both Hillary and Bernie suggested. The 5,000-page TPP is dead.

Given our heavy debt from pensions, bonds, etc., (at least five years of GDP) my method of evaluating the TPP would be whether or not it could have been expected to lead to per-capita GDP growth (obviously there would be winners and losers, but at least with growth there is a chance for the gain to be larger than the pain).

As an Econ 101 graduate I was vaguely in favor of this deal, though I admit that I didn’t read any of the 5,000 pages. Should I be sad or glad that it is dead?

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What happens after boy meets girl at a meeting of the Collaboration of Male Peer Educators Against Sexual Assault and Stereotypes (COMPASS)? The Michigan State University group’s mission:

We seek to educate our community, and particularly men, about sexual assault and how to prevent it, teach men how to interact with and assist survivors of sexual assault, support campus or community organizations and groups that seek to raise awareness about sexual violence and how to prevent it, engage men in dialogue about how their status and privilege can be used to create positive change on both personal and community levels, and confront stereotypes surrounding men and issues of masculinity.

This question is answered in “An unwanted touch. Two lives in free fall. A dispatch from the drive to stop sexual assault on campus.” (Bridge, January 19, 2017):

They first met in 2013 through a campus group called Compass. Ironically, the group’s mission was to help men create a safer and more respectful campus, to support women students. The son of a Birmingham psychologist and psychiatrist, political progressives, Nathan saw himself as a political being, a person trying to do good in the world.

As with most people accused of crimes, the cisgender guy here was popular with his mom:

“He is a humanitarian. He’s the sensitive one. He’s the kind of guy you want dating your daughter. That’s the kind of person he is,” his mother, soft-spoken and weary-looking, told me. “You know, he conducted training in sexual harassment…” He was so proud of his involvement in Compass that he invited his mother to attend a couple of meetings with him.

Well, you can probably guess what happens next. Unusually for today’s college students (see Missoula, below), it seems that (kangaroo court) plaintiff and defendant were able to have sex without first consuming alcohol.

What makes this situation a great example of the Zeitgeist:

More than two years after the incident, even Melanie’s gender has changed. When 16 months later she reported what happened on the train tracks, Melanie had been taking male hormones for 12 weeks; she had legally changed her name, adopting a male identity. Her voice dropped; she shaved her facial hair. The woman referred to in this account as Melanie now hopes to surgically alter her gender in the future, and lives and dresses as a man.

(Thanks to German for letting me know about this article.)

Related:

• Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town (a.k.a. majoring in partying and football)
• “The Domestic Violence Parallel Track” (turning abuse allegations into cash)

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First of a series of posts drawn from American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant by Ronald White.

First, the name. President Grant was born “Hiram Ulysses” in 1822 and changed his name to “Ulysses Simpson” upon entering West Point:

Ulysses went the next day to register. Having decided to reverse his first two names, he reported to the adjutant, presented his deposit of $48, and signed the register “Ulysses Hiram Grant.” By transposing his two names, he believed he could start afresh at West Point—no more HUG. To his surprise, his name was challenged. After checking the official list, the adjutant told the young man standing before him the records showed clearly that a Ulysses Simpson Grant from Ohio was to be enrolled in the entering class. Ulysses protested, unaware that Congressman Hamer had bungled his name. The adjutant informed Ulysses that any changes to his name would have to be approved by the secretary of war.

Grant grew up as one of six children. The idea of a government school hadn’t caught on yet:

Ulysses’s formal schooling began when he turned five. Education in small communities in the old Northwest merged public and private spheres: public in that it was open to all boys and girls in the community; private in that parents decided which of their children would attend, then provided a “subscription” to pay the teacher. Parents who had the money gave between $1 and $2 for a typical thirteen-week session; others paid in corn, wheat, or tobacco. Class sessions were usually conducted only in winter, when it was too cold for boys to be working outside on family farms.

The young Grant was an accurate shot, but wouldn’t kill animals. He loved horses and his parents let him do substantial solo drives.

Around this time, Jesse developed a delivery service. Capitalizing on his young son’s prowess with horses, the father became comfortable with “my Ulysses” transporting travelers in a small carriage to various destinations: the nearby river towns Ripley and Higginsport, where passengers could get an Ohio River steamer; inland to West Union; across the river twenty miles to Maysville in Kentucky; and fifty miles east to Cincinnati. Eleven-year-old Ulysses created quite a sensation when he arrived in Cincinnati and attempted to check into the Dennison House for an overnight stay. According to the story, the hotel manager was not sure what to make of the boy standing in front of him; finally, with reluctance, he let Ulysses sign the register and handed him a room key.

Some debates are never settled:

At [Grant’s] second meeting [of a school debate club], he took the winning affirmative side on “Resolved: That females wield greater influence than males.

(See Gender equity should be measured by consumption, not income? for example)

Grant’s father was a tanner:

… 1838, as Ulysses approached his seventeenth birthday, his father announced, “I reckon you are now old enough to go to work in the beam-house” in addition to his schooling. The most repulsive part of the tanning process took part in the beamhouse. Beamhouse derives from an ancient practice of hanging the hide over a curved log or table known as a “beam” for the arduous process of de-hairing. In the beamhouse, workers removed flesh and hair from raw hides, wielding long knives for this tough and unpleasant task. Ulysses responded, “Well, father, this tanning is not the kind of work I like. I’ll work at it here, though, if you wish me to, until I am one-and-twenty, but you may depend upon it, I’ll never work a day longer at it after that.” With these words, Ulysses voiced his generation’s fealty to a father’s wishes for a son but at the same time declared his determination to chart his own life path. Jesse replied, “My son, I don’t want you to work at it now, if you don’t like it, and don’t mean to stick to it. I want you to work at whatever you like and intend to follow. Now, what do you think you would like?” Ulysses responded, “I’d like to be a farmer, or a down-the-river trader, or get an education.

Mostly because it was free, the answer turned out to be West Point and then the Army:

West Point understood itself to be primarily an engineering school. During Grant’s four years at West Point, nearly 70 percent of his classes would be concentrated in engineering, mathematics, and science. In the curriculum before the Civil War, cadets studied military strategy for merely eight class periods in their final year. The liberal arts, especially the study of English and American literature, went missing in action. The heavy technical emphasis at West Point would be challenged from time to time, but Thayer and the superintendents who followed argued that mathematics and engineering promoted reasoning power.

He would complete his four years ranking twenty-first in a graduating class of thirty-nine students.

More: read American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant

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I got together with friends this evening to watch my first football game of the season. One thing I learned is that Roku plus the CBS streaming service will tend to cut out during every critical play. Fortunately none of us are actually passionate about football…

I asked an Indian-American entrepreneur who studied at Harvard Medical School if she’d gone to the Women’s March. She looked at me incredulously. “I was working.”

Exercise for readers: Use Google or Bing image search. Count how many images of the Women’s March you need to review before you find an Indian-American or Chinese-American woman. Extra credit: How many images before you find an Indian-American or Chinese-American wearing a hand-knit hat?

Related:

• “Why they marched,” a photo essay from the D.C. event showing no Asian-Americans
• What were other Asian-Americans doing on the Saturday of Women’s March? “U.S. figure skating champs: Maia, Alex Shibutani win ice dance gold” describes the latest triumph for the ShibSibs plus Karen Chen‘s victory

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From a Facebook friend regarding Hidden Figures (movie) who works for the government and is still mourning Hillary Clinton’s loss:

It really was an excellent film (and a very insightful interview about the story), and captured much of what I experienced [as a white male?]. It left me very conflicted, however. First, I was awed (and loved) that it so honored the long unsung minority (and female) contributions and that my former employer (NASA) was such an unusual agent of change and inclusion. I very much appreciated the pointed lessons at a time when our country seems to be retreating from these ideals. But at the same time I felt a sense of shame and disgust that so many of the same issues persist to this day, and that too many people who need to receive those messages are either unlikely to even see the film, and even so, are unlikely to recognize the persistent biases that are ongoing even today.

I worked on the NASA plantation as a Fortran programmer on the Pioneer Venus project for $13,000 per year back in 1978 (that’s $47,854 in today’s mini-dollars). My co-workers included women, Indians, Chinese, white males, etc. Other than receiving a paycheck, all of us were “unsung” for our contributions of software for the PDP 11/70 and the IBM 360/95.

I’m not sure why the (white male) author of the above posting thinks he is doing women a favor by encouraging them to become “nameless faceless scientists” (see Bill Burr at about 0:50) at one-fifth the salary of a dermatologist (see “Women in Science” for a comparison of the career trajectories). Maybe this is actually how white men will keep women and, specifically, women of color, down? Encourage them to become quiet nerds in a cubicle farm instead of going into medicine, politics, etc.?

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Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer is a novel that is tough to review without spoiling. I wouldn’t say that it is an essential read, but I wanted to clip and save a few passages. Here they are…

Parenthood:

[child talking to an adult] “Babies kick you from the inside, and then they come out and kick you some more.” “It’s been my experience,” Julia said, her hand moving to her belly. “I read it in one of my parents’ parenting books.” “Why on earth do you read those?” “To try to understand them.”

Before they had kids, if asked to conjure images of parenthood they would have said things like “Reading in bed,” and “Giving a bath,” and “Running while holding the seat of a bicycle.” Parenthood contains such moments of warmth and intimacy, but isn’t them. It’s cleaning up. The great bulk of family life involves no exchange of love, and no meaning, only fulfillment. Not the fulfillment of feeling fulfilled, but of fulfilling that which now falls to you.

On Jews in America:

But instead of driving, Irv turned to press the point from which he’d strayed: “Here’s the deal: the world population of Jews falls within the margin of error of the Chinese census, and everyone hates us.”

Especially Jewish Americans, who will go to any length, short of practicing Judaism, to instill a sense of Jewish identity in their children.

On Israel:

All Tamir wanted to talk about was money—the average Israeli income, the size of his own easy fortune, the unrivaled quality of life in that fingernail clipping of oppressively hot homeland hemmed in by psychopathic enemies.

A child on his home life:

Sam knew that everything would collapse, he just didn’t know exactly how or when. His parents were going to get divorced and ultimately hate each other and spread destruction like that Japanese reactor. That much was clear, if not to them. He tried not to notice their lives, but it was impossible to ignore how often his dad fell asleep in front of the absence of news, how often his mom retreated into pruning the trees of her architectural models, how his dad started serving dessert every night, how his mom told Argus she “needed space” whenever he licked her, how devoted his mom had become to the Travel section, how his dad’s search history was all real estate sites, how his mom would put Benjy on her lap whenever his dad was in the room, the violence with which his dad began to hate spoiled athletes who don’t even try, how his mom gave three thousand dollars to the fall NPR drive, how his dad bought a Vespa in retaliation, the end of appetizers in restaurants, the end of the third bedtime story for Benjy, the end of eye contact.

[This is not a novel about divorce litigation. Foer describes a woman divorcing her husband in the winner-take-all jurisdiction of the District of Columbia but without striving to be the winner.]

A rich guy on his impending divorce:

“You’re right. We’re resolutely young. If we were seventy it would be different. Maybe even if we were sixty or fifty. Maybe then I’d say, This is who I am. This is my lot. But I’m forty-four. A huge portion of my life hasn’t happened. And the same is true for Jennifer. We realized we would be happier living other lives. That’s a good thing. Certainly better than pretending, or repressing, or just being so consumed with the responsibility of playing a part that you never question if it’s the part you would choose. I’m still young, Julia, and I want to choose happiness.” “Happiness?” “Happiness.” “Whose happiness?” “My happiness. Jennifer’s, too. Our happiness, but separately.” “While we pursue happiness, we flee from contentment.” “Well, neither my happiness nor contentment is with her. And her happiness definitely isn’t with me.” “Where is it? Under a sofa cushion?” “In fact, under her French tutor.” “Holy shit,” Julia said, bringing the knob to her forehead harder than she’d intended. “I don’t know why you’re having this reaction to good news.” “She doesn’t even speak French.” “And now we know why.”

Again, there is no litigation. This couple is together. Then they are divorced. (The French tutor idea is not original to Foer; a wife having sex with her language tutor instead of learning the language is in the 2000 remake of Bedazzled.)

The book is not as antic as Everything is Illuminated.

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A friend’s Facebook status, regarding the Boston Women’s March, as displayed in my browser:

125,000 people, a sea of pussy

Scrolling revealed that this was not the complete status. The continuation:

hats, colorful and creative signs…

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