Go Big or Go Home, by the numbers

by philg

In a world with more government regulation and government consuming a larger percentage of GDP, you’d think that it become increasingly sensible for an individual to work for the government or a big company that can lobby the government. Starting your own company would go from dumb to dumber. Inc. magazine gives us some numbers:

49.7 percent of World War II vets went on to own or operate a business, according to Syracuse University’s Institute for Veterans and Military Families. Some 40 percent of Korean War veterans did the same–creating millions of jobs along the way. … only 4.5 percent of the more than 3.6 million people who have served in the U.S. military since September 11, 2001, have launched a company, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The government sorting potential contractors by race and sex may distort the statistics:

Government contracting preferences have recently made it more attractive for a company to be woman-owned, so some of the numbers may reflect paperwork changes (such as dropping a husband from a co-owner title) rather than broad-based demographic shifts.

But it is tough to see how this can explain a drop from 50 percent down to less than 5 percent.

Related:

  • Bloomberg article showing shift since 1988 of workers from small enterprises to larger ones
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Vote to legalize marijuana is a vote to further reduce labor force participation rate?

by philg

During America’s period of highest per capita GDP growth, recreational drugs were entirely legal. On the other hand the government wouldn’t give you a free house, free health care, free food, and a free smartphone. My entire lifetime has coincided with a War on Drugs and also a War on Poverty that has made being a jobless drug addict more comfortable. While the War on Poverty continues unabated (and Hillary proposes to expand it substantially; see Book Review: The Redistribution Recession for the effects of the Obama Administration expansion of this war), there are some ballot questions in various states this year proposing to end at least the state-run war on marijuana. There haven’t been any explicit arguments against marijuana legalization in the New York Times, but I’m wondering if “Millions of Men Are Missing From the Job Market” is an implicit argument against ending the war. The Times editorial says, essentially, that Americans are too busy taking prescription opioids to be bothered with a job. If this is indeed the source of the U.S.’s shrinking labor force participation rate compared to, e.g., Singapore, then wouldn’t legal and readily available marijuana further shrink the number of Americans who want to work?

One good thing about the proposed Massachusetts law is that citizens can “grow up to six marijuana plants in their residences”. A citizen who has been blessed with free public housing can thus sit on the sofa playing Xbox while taxpayers pay for the electricity supply to the grow lamps.

Milton Friedman said that we couldn’t have a welfare state and open borders at the same time. I’m wondering if he were alive whether he would say that we couldn’t have, simultaneously, (1) a welfare state, (2) legal recreational drugs, and (3) a high rate of labor force participation.

[Note that, other than paying taxes to support prosecutors, public defenders, judges, and the prison industry, I don’t have a personal dog in this fight. See my 2011 post regarding random drug testing for pilots.]

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Cirrus (and the Chinese) push the world’s first personal jet out the door

by philg

The Cirrus Jet is certified as of today and will be delivered in December. I think this qualifies as the first legitimate personal/family turbojet-powered aircraft. One-engine-plus-parachute and a service ceiling of FL280 (about 28,000′) are not so exciting if you have a two-pilot crew who fly a couple of times per week. But what about the regular private pilot who wants to take the family to the beach? The pilot who doesn’t want to spend two weeks every year maintaining proficiency at managing various emergencies, especially the failure of one engine while in instrument conditions? The Cirrus Jet is the first turbojet that could be as simple as a four-seat piston-powered plane. (The rest of the very light jets are about as difficult to operate as larger jets and therefore haven’t caught on as expected; if you’re going to do all of that training why not tow 8 seats behind the pilots instead of 4?.

Anyway, I’m grateful to Cirrus for bringing this to market and especially grateful to the Chinese owners of Cirrus who were willing to fund it!

[Oh yes, and what about the price? I think the paperwork says $2 million but, as is typical in aviation, that might be in 1946 dollars that have to be adjusted for inflation. Then there are mandatory options. I wouldn’t be surprised if the actual wire transfer is about $3 million, which is one reason people will be saying “I can get a used twin-engine plane that goes to FL410 for half that.”]

Related:

  • “Pipistrel Plans 19-Seat Hydrogen Hybrid”: Slovenia-based Pipistrel has signed a $550 million deal with Sino GA Group Co. of China to build its Alpha Electro electric trainer and hybrid-powered Pantera high-performance aircraft in China. And while that’s significant in itself, it’s Pipistrel’s plans for the money it will earn in the project that is bound to raise eyebrows. “Pipistrel will use a part of the mentioned amount also for the development of a new, very innovative zero emission 19-seat aircraft, powered by hybrid electric technology and hydrogen low temperature PEM fuel cells…
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Happy Halloween from Harvard Yard

by philg

A week before Halloween I learned that it is not just 6-year-olds who spend at least a week thinking about what to wear for Halloween. Here are some photos taken in Harvard Yard of a kiosk staffed by a couple of Harvard administrators from the HappierHarvard campaign. (The handout says that the staffed kiosk was operated for “two weeks leading up to Halloween.”)

One question raised by the above is whether the woman at the lower left is wearing a geisha outfit or a Noh costume. Either way, wouldn’t it be safe to say that she was wearing Japanese dress? And yet the students surrounding her don’t look Japanese. Did someone preparing the poster go out and find assorted “Orientals” to photograph? Does that imply that all Asian cultures are pretty much the same? And that’s not racist?

More:

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The early voter in Massachusetts

by philg

A friend reported on the early voting here in the western suburbs of Boston. “There aren’t any Republicans on the ballot except for Trump,” she said. “And most of the races are uncontested though there are some independent candidates running for a handful of them.” She said that the ballots go into a box to be kept by town officials until Election Day. Presumably at that point they are fed into the same scanner that is used for same-day votes? Certainly it would be possible for a town official to correct any mistakes on the ballot, e.g., voting for Ballot Question 2, which would reduce town officials’ budgets and authority by authorizing more state-supervised charter schools.

Separately, I recently agreed to be part of a climate change panel discussion in Cambridge where they wanted one panelist from each political party. I agreed to be a “small-L libertarian” so that I didn’t have to defend current Libertarian candidates. They couldn’t find anyone willing to show up identifying as a Republican. Some more items from the panel:

  • a woman said that she had complained to a Cambridge city councilor about exterior lighting on some office buildings being (a) bothersome to her sleep, and (b) a waste of energy. She said that the councilor had threatened her with eviction from “affordable housing” (controlled by a city-run housing ministry)
  • the moderator said that a few previous panels had been all-female, which was okay, but this one happened to be all-male, at least in his opinion. He said that the lack of gender balance was unacceptable and would any woman in the audience be willing to come up to the table and sit with the panel. No qualifications were sought other than being a woman. This idea of last-minute token female presence was seconded by the organizer of the event. (Of course I promptly scolded him for the cisgender-normative assumption that panelists named “David”, “Larry”, etc. actually did identify as “men”.)
  • at the end of the discussion, the moderator said that this showed that people with different political points of view could be civil. I reminded him that this might have been because they’d excluded Republicans from the room.
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California police officer and firefighter pay

by philg

Here’s a fun database application with a web interface:

For young people who have been listening to politicians braying about the importance of STEM:

Related:

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Ideal Trump message to voters?

by philg

Folks:

Trump seems to be doing badly in the polls. Aside from conceding right now, chess-style, what’s his best strategy?

From the second debate transcript, it seemed to me that his most powerful message was that a status quo politician such as Hillary Clinton generally rides to power (and, in her case, wealth) on a magic carpet of broken promises. Trump, in response to Clinton saying he had “targeted immigrants, African Americans, Latinos, people with disabilities, Muslims,”

DT: It’s just words, folks. Just words. Those words, I’ve been hearing them for many years. I heard them when they were running for the Senate. In New York.

Where Hillary was going to bring back jobs to upstate New York and she failed. I’ve heard them where Hillary is constantly talking about the inner cities of our country, which are a disaster. Education-wise. Job0-ise. Safety-wise. In every way possible, I’m going to help the African Americans, help the Latinos, Hispanics. I am going to help the inner cities.

She’s done a terrible job for the African Americans. She wants their votes and does nothing and then comes back four years later. We saw that firsthand when the United States senator she campaigned where the —

MR: Mr. Trump, Mr. Trump — I want to get to audience questions and online questions.

DT: So, she’s allowed to do that, but I’m not allowed to respond. Sounds fair.

The moderator cut Trump off but, especially if expanded and supported by data, this seems like an effective message to voters who have been paying taxes and listening to incumbent politicians talk about all of the great things that the planned-by-them economy will do for average citizens.

In response to attacks on his business success, usually centered around some Chapter 11 reorganizations in the early 1990s (25 years ago, a bad time for leveraged real estate developers), he could tell the story of the Wollman Rink, which the government spent 6 years and $13 million trying to renovate. Trump was able to get it up and running in just 4 months for $2.5 million. This doesn’t exactly compare to the scale of the carnage when the Atlantic City casino went bankrupt, but voters don’t seem to have a great sense of proportion (Democrats lapped up the tax returns of Warren Buffett, never questioning why the world’s third-richest man has the same income as a successful Medicare ophthalmologist). And it is a direct comparison of standard government operating procedure versus what the Trump Organization can do. Similarly Trump could compare healthcare.gov ($1 billion+?) to any web sites that he may have built to support golf courses or hotels. Voters outside the Beltway can’t understand why it costs the government 4-40X what private industry pays for the same product or service (compare Boeing 757 operating costs for airlines and USAF, for example; also see what New York spends to operate helicopters).

On immigration, since Trump has demonstrated already that the quickest path to pariah status is questioning the wisdom of admitting folks from a particular country or particular religion, why not simplify to “Do you love sitting in traffic and paying 50 years of income to afford a house in a decent neighborhood? If so, you’ll love Hillary’s plan to expand the U.S. population to 600 million via immigration. If you think that 325 million is sufficient then vote for me and let’s be judicious about whom we invite to join our party. Even if you do want to live in a country dotted with Chinese-style megacities, ask Hillary how she refutes Milton Friedman’s observation that you can’t have open borders and a welfare state at the same time.” (maybe quote from this Senate Budget Committee report that says the 80-plus federal welfare programs cost $1 trillion annually and are the largest budget item currently (Social Security and Medicare are additional))

Since Trump can’t win the personal character war at this point (his comments about the availability of women surrounding TV stars being far more shocking to voters than the Clintons becoming billionaires through selling access and influence), why not stick to some simple policy points?

Readers: What else could Trump be doing in the home stretch of the campaign?

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FBI investigates Anthony Weiner?

by philg

“New Emails in Clinton Case Came From Devices Once Used by Anthony Weiner” (nytimes) contains an interesting section:

In a letter to Congress, the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, said the emails had surfaced in an unrelated case, which law enforcement officials said was an F.B.I. investigation into illicit text messages from Mr. Weiner to a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina.

What will it cost taxpayers to have the FBI look into the question of how exactly Anthony Weiner uses the Internet?

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Trump and Hillary voters looking at the same slides on immigration

by philg

At a gathering of photojournalists in California there was a presentation of photos and stories about immigrants from Afghanistan living in Sacramento. These folks typically got here because someone in their family had worked as an interpreter for the U.S. military or “were doctors, diplomats or engineers” somehow affiliated with our endless war. In other words at least one family member was fluent in English before arriving in California. Despite this advantage compared to many immigrants, the Sacramento Bee journalist told us that these 2,000 Afghans settled in Sacramento County are doing badly, consistent with the story saying “Professionals in their own country, they have been relegated to the American underclass, enduring poverty and crime.”

The audience vocally concluded from watching the slides and hearing the stories that our government needs to do a lot more for these folks (beyond the public housing, free unlimited health care, free cell phone, and food stamps to which they are already entitled). I pointed out that a Donald Trump supporter might conclude from the same story that we shouldn’t be accepting immigrants from Afghanistan if they can’t prosper here in the U.S. If they needed protection from their former neighbors, the Trump supporter would suggest that they be resettled in a culturally compatible country with a low cost of living (so as to reduce the burden on the American taxpayer).

This prompted a discussion amongst the 60 audience members as to whether anyone had a personal acquaintance with a Republican. For most of them it seems that the answer was “no” and therefore that they relied on conjecture and the press for what might motivate someone to resist Hillary Clinton (standard conclusion: voters who don’t support Hillary are stupid, sexist, and racist, in that order).

There was also a follow-up from a 2005 story regarding an Iraqi boy who came to Oakland for medical treatment. His entire family emigrated to the U.S. so now there are five kids, one of whom suffers from a permanent disability, and two adults being supported by the father’s paycheck as a truck driver plus any welfare (public housing, Obamacare, etc.) to which they are entitled. Only a racist would ask “How can we generate per-capita economic growth if we bring in foreigners who earn a below-median wage?” and therefore nobody raised the subject of whether this had been a wise investment of tax dollars.

Separately, a top German photographer whose specialty is scientific subjects was present as well. Although he says that immigration has rendered Germany unrecognizable even compared to a year or two ago, he supports the current government and Angela Merkel because “They really had no choice. A friend was sitting at his farm near the Austrian border and his son said ‘Dad, look at the woods.’ Out of the forest came a swarm of migrants who walked across the farm. After they were gone not a single sheep, chicken, or any other animal remained. It was like a locust swarm. Merkel recognizes that the only other option is to shoot people at the border and she is making the best of a bad situation.”

What did the future look like from this German’s perspective? “When I talk to scientists privately they say that the Earth can sustain about 2 billion people. We will soon have 10 billion so that means that either the human race goes extinct or about 8 billion people will die.” [Readers: Can he be right about the best estimates of a sustainable human population for the planet? China seems sustainable, if not a pleasant place to live for many of its citizens, and yet it supports 1.3 billion people on much less than half of the Earth’s land surface. Perhaps they are sucking ground water dry?]

Environmentalism was a popular theme for the photojournalists at this gathering and the environmentalists all agreed that the growth of human population was the primary reason that the environment is being trashed. Yet none of them (all Hillary supporters) raised a hand to ask “Why would we want to work to increase the U.S. population through immigration and guarantees to provide housing, food, and health care to however many children an immigrant family (or low-income native-born family) chooses to have?” (A lot of these folks had chosen not to have children or had been working so hard that the female partner’s fertility was inadvertently exhausted. So it seems that they are doing something truly altruistic in working to save the planet for the benefit of others’ children and grandchildren.)

I’m wondering if this is one reason why poll numbers have barely moved despite a lot of media coverage of the relative merits of various candidates. Americans with different political affiliations will look at the same story and come to opposite conclusions about what should be done. People complain about what the media does but perhaps it has almost no influence at all regarding the big issues (can still do a lot with stories centered on soundbites, e.g., Trump’s unfiltered comments on hypothetical women).

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