Misunderstanding Understanding

I am reminded of "Pigs and Chickens". While the chicken was "involved" in my breakfast, the "pig" was surely more "committed".

It's a fair point, but the survey is a cheap shot. How reliable do you really think it is?

After all, the survey does not demonstrate that only 36% of American College Graduates can or cannot answer a particular question; it makes note that 36% of those students who answered the survey exhibit this characteristic.

If the students who can answer those questions correctly also happen to be less likely to voluntarily participate in a survey, that would tend to bias the results, wouldn't it?

As a graduate student in your own department, I'd appreciate it if you'd refrain from casually tossing out misleading statistics like that.

Dick Cheney is college educated, served in Congress, and was Secretary of Defense, yet could not correctly answer the question "What branch of government is the Vice President?"

It isn't what they young know, or even what they don't know; it's what they know that ain't so that's the problem.

It's what the old know that the young don't know, and the value of this knowledge is skyrocketing about now.

Look at Figure 2.3. The folks at the top vote and own property. The folks at the bottom don't. Folks at the top may raise rents. Folks at the bottom may not. This power to raise rents rises gradually as folks rise inevitably from the bottom toward the top.

As this pyramid becomes fully inverted, a huge mass of people share interests with the rent seekers who have always fought to expand state power. Rent pressure becomes suffocating.

And if you think it's all about Social Security, you don't know what lots of the old folks know. It's about a lot more than Social Security.

It's about bailouts for the world's largest provider of annuities and the credit default swaps securing the bonds backing other annuities.

It's about bank bailouts converted to bank dividends.

It's about substituting taxpayer obligations for GM's pension promises, so GM employees can enjoy retirement as richly as their brethren in the military and the rest of the Federal workforce.

It's selling about reams of paper "leverage" that can't find anything really to leverage as labor force growth dwindles. It's about selling entitlement to bond revenue while promising dubious growth to shareholders hoping for dividends instead.

It's about everything we started calling "capitalism" in the twentieth century, as Locke and Smith roll in their graves. I don't know if they're laughing or crying, but I know they're a lot older than I am.

Peak Fiat Money? Peak Oil? Forget about it. The real story is peak population and Peak Rent. Japan is a particularly dramatic example, but the story is the same everywhere.

… were more likely to vote Republican.

What does Global Warming have to do with Creationism? You conflate issues incredibly here. It's not like all the smart guys are in your partisan camp and all the morons are in the foxholes on the other side of the line. Get over your own groupthink.

Global temperature measurements have hardly risen in a decade, and we're now well under half of the temperature rise predicted by the IPCC in 1990. Under the circumstances, you don't need to be a moron to hold off on spending trillions of dollars to address a "problem" that hasn't developed as its gloomiest prophets foretold.

It's not all about politics. Sometimes economic fundamentals actually matter. Do you have any interest at all in labor force growth falling by two-thirds in the U.S. and disappearing altogether in Japan and parts of Europe? Unlike the IPCC's global temperature forecasts, these population stats aren't the least bit controversial, because they're based on birth rates in the past and death rates that aren't likely to change.

Do you have any interest at all in labor force growth falling by two-thirds in the U.S.

Of course not. With the government and the right people in charge, ANYTHING can be accomplished. Let's not let the limitations of reality stand in our way.

The models certainly didn't predict the temperature decline sine 1998. It supposed to be much warmer now, the models said so.

And notice he said "believe global warming is a hoax". The question was not about global warming, which was observed fact, but about anthropogenic global warming, which was always a theory based upon models which are now revealed to be fundamentally flawed by the lack of warming since 1998.

Sure, there were those who denied that there was any climate warming at all, but those who denied the temperature measurements are pretty few.

A good question: Why do people believe what they do?

If people disbelieve in a mystical god because of socialization rather than through philosophical and intellectual examination, is their opinion of any greater value than those who believe for the same reasons?

What exactly is opinion anyhow and when does it become something more?

We have all these schools, at a cost of billions of dollars, staffed by many thousands of educators as well, that are supposed to teach, among other things, U.S. history.

How is it that so many graduate without knowing much about history and government?

Obviously they do an even poorer job teaching economics.

How it comforting to realize that they can vote too.

You will see in the coming years …

That's what the IPCC said in 1990 when predicting a 0.3 degs C/decade increase in global temperature. It hasn't happened. Temperature measurements have now been flat so long that other prophets of doom are predicting catastrophic global cooling again.

I don't pretend to know what Global Weather will be like decades from now. Maybe Greenland will finally be green, Manhattan will be underwater, and I'll be sunbathing in Saskatchewan, or maybe Europe will be frozen over again, and I'll be ice skating on the Thames. I have no clue, and neither do you.

On the other hand, some things are more predictable than the weather. Why aren't we discussing those things?

The only thing more ignorant then discounting the facts of climate change is assuming the response to it will break our economy. It won't…

What facts? You aren't citing any facts here. Our economy will respond to any climate change that actually occurs, and I don't expect the economy to" break", whatever that means, but in the meantime, I know that labor force growth is falling dramatically while the rent seeking population explodes.

Unlike the endlessly varied Climate Change prognostications, these demographic facts are rock solid. The projections only require that people born over the last few decades survive at roughly the same rate as their predecessors. Their survival rate can't be much higher, because mortality is practically negligible for young people now. If they survive at lower rates, the problem only gets worse, which makes you wonder why the neocons are so intent on waging W.W. IV.

The creationist and the global warming deniers will be looked back at by our grandkids as the luddites of our day.

The IPCC predicted 0.3 degs C/decade in 1990. True or false?

The measured increase in the intervening two decades has been less than 0.3 degs? True or false?

Compare these "scientific" predictions to the predicted peak in the payroll tax surplus that occurred this year.

Muirgeo,

"…global warming deniers will be looked back at by our grandkids as the luddites of our day."

You may be right. There may be a day when green products are a boon to the economy. But until I see the products that aren't just subsidies (transfers of wealth from the productive to the political), I will remain a luddite.

I don't know how seriously to take any of these data, but five years isn't long enough to declare a trend, much less one year. Regardless, the Global Warming proponents are claiming only 0.16 deg/decade, with a very steady trend over three decades, and this rate just isn't catastrophic, even if it continues for a century.

The first IPCC assessment in 1990 called this degree of warming very low. Only after such a low rate persists for decades does it gradually become as alarming as the 5-10 degrees of warming forecast by the most hysterical prophets a few decades ago.

Even in the 2007 IPCC assessment, 1.6 degs/century is at the low end of the predicted range, now 1.1 – 6.4 degs rather than the 2 – 5 degs forecast in 1990.

Note that the range has been stretched downward to incorporate the measured rate, so fairness presumably dictates that it also be stretched upwards. "The measurement is lower than we first predicted, so our uncertainties must be too small. Maybe future measurements will be even worse than we first predicted."

The IPCC in 2007 calls a 1.1 – 2.9 deg warming over a century "environmentally sustainable". To reach the upper end of this range, the current rate of warming must double, but the warming shows no sign of accelerating. If anything, it's leveling off.

The warming that Global Warming proponents themselves report is not a terrible problem according to them.

An interesting article article over at Reason explaining the success of deregulation under Clinton.

Here's a chart from the GAO projecting labor force growth in the U.S. over the next few decades. I've posted figures comparing labor force growth between '70 and 2000 to projected growth between '00 and '30, showing 56% growth in the former period versus 18% growth in the latter.

The GAO chart shows that most of the growth in the latter period has already occurred. The growth rate is starting a precipitous decline right now. By 2020, labor force growth in the U.S. is near zero and remains near zero indefinitely, while the Japanese labor force shrinks and the Chinese labor force heads in the same direction.

Meanwhile, the number of would be retirees seeking rents doubles. Right now, they're desperately grasping for every rent they can get their fingers around, no matter how dubious the promissory note.

We didn't need Barney Frank to push subprime mortgage backed securities on us. We're dredging the bottom for any "security" we can find right now, because so freakin' many of us want entitlement to output that cannot grow in the near future nearly as rapidly as it grew in the recent past.

The worker's revolution is ahead of us, not behind us. It's not about "the rich" vs. "the poor", particularly. It's about the old vs. the young. If you aren't old already, you're caught in a demographic squeeze of historic proportions, and you're largely oblivious to it, because we're hardly discussing it at all.

Here's a start. The problem is not a contraction of production as much as a maldistribution of entitlement to consume. If population peaks and then declines sustantially in this century, production presumably also declines ultimately, but per capita production could continue rising regardless. I'm not a doomsayer here.

An ideological problem exists among nominal "capitalists". We are part of the problem. We tell each other than we're "free" when graduate high school, that we "start life" at this point owing nothing, that we then "earn our way" through life, and if we "save" some of our income, we thus "earn" rights to consume later in life.

This "liberal capitalist" story is transparent nonsense. We obviously don't start life at eighteen, and we obviously aren't free of legal obligations at this point, particularly obligations to pay taxes and other rents, and we obviously don't "save" much except entitlement to claim the same sort of rents that we're obligated to pay.

That we trade entitlement to these rents in markets doesn't substantially change these facts. It certainly doesn't change the fact that entitlement to the rents involves countless forcible proprieties established by a powerful state.

Anyone simply accepting this "liberal capitalist" story can't credibly oppose a powerful state. We end up with absurdities like vidyohs wiling away his hours at this web site damning the godawful state while consuming the goods you and I produce by writ of his state pension.

So after enacting a reform of the Social Security program that recognizes the real investments of real workers in the real means of production we're actually renting when we buy entitlement to Social Security benefits, we must also recognize and then diminish the value of other unproductive rents, like interest and principal payments on Treasury securities, interest from FDIC insured bank accounts, annuities from AIG backed by mortgage securities sold by Fannie Mae and bailed out by the TARP, dividends from Lockheed Martin and countless other entitlements, extending even to rents on our inflated real estate. We must abrogate obligations to pay these rents. We must "redistribute wealth" away from people now entitled to collect the rents.

In inflated real estate markets, market forces might naturally lower rents on inflated real estate under particular circumstances, but chanting "market" certainly is not a panacea. Market forces won't shrink the empire or cut your taxes or redirect entitlement to your children's income away from people who never much supported them but simply become entitled to your children's income by supporting their own parents instead, while you also support your parents. That's what the Social Security system actually does, and we'll never change this reality without acknowledging it.

If we think long enough about the Social Security system, we must eventually concede this inescapable logic of the system's distribution formula, but then we must also concede that accumulating Treasury securities is no different, and these securities are only tip of a rent seeking iceberg far older than the United States.

Of course, nothing compels us to think very long about anything. We simply think about our entitlement to rents instead.

We mustn't pretend that we can cut taxes without terminating not only much current Federal employment but also some of the pension and health insurance benefits of current and future, Federal retirees, just as GM's reorganization requires some adjustment of these benefits for GM's retirees.

In the case of GM, we can simply not bail the company out and allow a bankrutpcy court to sort out the real value of GM's plant and equipment, trademarks, market share and the rest.

In the case of the pension funds for GM employees, we simply default on their Treasury securities and don't sell them any more (at best we print money to buy them back), and we don't swap their CDOs of dubious value for more Treasury securities, and we don't support the value of GM shares or other securities in their portfolios with bailouts, and we don't subsidize any pension benefits through the PBGC.

But that's not about to happen anytime soon, of course, because "capitalism" is not remotely about free markets. It never has been. In fact, perverse incentives and unintended consequences of the statutory system called "capitalism" have a lot to do with the shrinking birthrates contributing to the problem. Why have children when I can buy entitlement to your children's income for the same price that you pay for the same entitlement, without bearing any of your cost of supporting the children? This statutory game didn't begin with Social Security. Social Security is only a new game modeled on earlier versions.

Vid is perpetually fired up anyway.

I can hardly imagine persuading anyone of anything while truth is always off the table. Here is another article on the Japanese "recession" signaled by a 0.4% drop (annual rate) in Japan's GDP in a quarter. This article, full of economic "analysis" purporting to "explain" the number, like every other report I've seen, simply ignores well established, uncontroversial population data from Japan's own Bureau of Statistics suggesting a 0.7% decline in the size of Japan's labor force this year.

The labor force declines 0.7%, and GDP declines 0.4%. Duh! That's a "recession"? Japan is in for decades of "recession" by this standard, even if their productivity rises at full employment throughout. This long "recession" is as predictable as the sunset.

A conspiracy of silence is obviously going on. Why? I don't know. Maybe, it's just the systematic denial of a generation of people that didn't invest but nonetheless expect the same retirement benefits their parents enjoyed. They now hold most of the political offices, most of the corporate offices and most of the seats on corporate boards. They write most of the editorials for major newspapers, and they're most of the talking heads on television.

They're everyone in their forties, fifties and sixties right now, and they're the richest lot of people in human history, but even as rich as they are, they're not as rich as they imagine and desire, so they're seeking rents like bats out of hell, while pretending every possible, political explanation for every apparently perilous economic statistic, except the simplest explanation staring us all in the face.

They're everyone in their forties, fifties and sixties right now, and they're the richest lot of people in human history, but even as rich as they are, they're not as rich as they imagine and desire, so they're seeking rents like bats out of hell, while pretending every possible, political explanation for every apparently perilous economic statistic, except the simplest explanation staring us all in the face.

That's because most people, perhaps especially those "in charge", have a poor comprehension of the source of wealth and a poor comprehension of the nature of money. Government programs of redistribution have enabled people to separate themselves from their dependence on other people. They have transferred their perceptual dependence to pensions and transfer payments.

We live in an unreal world.

vidyohs, you make many assumptions.

"vidyohs, you make many assumptions.
Posted by: | Nov 23, 2008 8:15:44 PM"

Unkwn,

When I make an assumption I label it as such by using the appropriate qualifier.

Point out an assumption I made that was not so labeled and I will fix it.

Here again, there's nothing substantial in your post to which I could reply. What about your personal contracting with corporate USA? I don't have a clue. Who are you anyway? You post pseudonomously, so your personal business seems an unlikely subject of discussion. You apparently want other people to stop paying the taxes providing your pension benefits. I take your word for that. We agree on this point, but the agreement doesn't satisfy you. I don't know a thing, specifically, about any other business you do, and I don't say a thing about it for this reason.

I'm discussing demographic changes in Japan and the effect on Japan's economy, based on public information, something I can understand, but you aren't interested.

Martinduck,

"What about your personal contracting with corporate USA? I don't have a clue."

You presumed to know enough about it or me to make this snide stupid comment:

"We end up with absurdities like vidyohs wiling away his hours at this web site damning the godawful state while consuming the goods you and I produce by writ of his state pension."

All-in-all a paragraph of stupid assumptions, tacked together without a shred of rationale or logic, and expressed with the bitterness of a pompous irrelevant, pontificating and confused fool.

You remind me of a man who has stumbled into a swamp full of hungry alligators, but who can't get his focus off the mosquitos (employment in Japan, productivity of workers in China). The alligators are ripping huge chunks of your butt off in bailouts, and give aways, and you want to talk about gold standards in Scotland? LOL.

One assumption you make is that the U.S. gov't extracts no value from you because you have managed to arrange your life so you don't make account transfers to the IRS.

Another assumption you make is that I am making such payments.

As I have no income, it would be difficult for the IRS to tax it.

And when I had income, I went for eight years without filing. "We The People"

I am quite familiar with your arrangements, not yours specifically, but I do know of which you speak.

Do you always think like you shoot?

Martinduck,

and, off to the mulberry bush you went, as usual.

Even attempting to corral you before you get to the bush is fruitless, and that makes this whole conversation with you one of those irrelevancies I have been talking about.