With my endorsement

College loans, discuss

So to mollify some of those protesters, this seems like a good idea. I'm fully aware that student loans were written into the bankruptcy laws because they had high default rates, and for that matter aware that they're the exception to the bankruptcy system. It still seems nuts that we force people who have no ability to pay to pay for something that is essentially a mortgage payment.

What that should mean is that they will have high interest rates or will be given out less frequently (and for fewer types of students, in need students/students studying fields more likely to pay out). This would indeed have the consequences of a) fewer people would go to college. I, like McArdle, don't find that very troubling because of the abundance of people in colleges who clearly have no idea what they are doing there. And for that matter, neither do the colleges. and b) colleges could have to stop raising tuition at astronomical rates because the government funded spigot of free money would go down in its flow. Which would mean in about 10-20 years or so college could again start being a reasonable expense for some that could be paid off during attendance (by working) or shortly there after (by taking smaller loans/working less).

Other options: adopt a percentage of income post-graduate scheme for payment. People who earn more could be paid off sooner, so they'd have some incentive to get to it, and others would have incentive to take lower paying jobs (teaching for instance, or different medical specialties for medical students) because they could now afford it instead of a fixed payment that might represent a very large amount of their income. This would also mean that the college has some incentive for either a) training people who could potentially earn higher income or b) training people such that they will most certainly have a job post-graduation. And not for training people in useless degrees. I think this admits that our over-credentialed/over-licensing society uses college largely as a degree mill for jobs rather than as self-enlightenment and self-enrichment, but we really cannot afford to continue lying to ourselves about the utility and experience of college as some sacred rite of passage at the prices we must pay.

A quiz

http://www.reason.com/blog/2011/10/11/new-at-reason-the-gop-presiden

Not surprisingly, Johnson wins for me. The stark contrast between his statements (or statements similar to his) and the rest of the field is pretty shocking and obvious. Probably this was an unfair test, given the extreme nature of some of the choice quotes for the other candidates. But it's a harmless use of a couple minutes of my time.

Also, I hadn't realized he was Lutheran. I don't particularly care what religious tidings people practice privately so long as they are largely private or unenforceable social mores within their own communities. Investigating his religious perspectives wasn't likely to take a high value since he didn't make them much of a campaign or even a public issue the way Perry, Santorum, Gingrich, Palin, or Bachmann does. Suffices to say, "Lutheran" is a somewhat useful explanation for why this has been the case.

So about that Cain guy

He seems to be popular because he has a very simple tax plan.

And he has a very simple tax plan because it wouldn't work. 

There are the obvious political objections that he'd never get something like that passed without a Republican super-majority; Democrats would block it. The plan is highly regressive, at least not without some other details in there to offset relatively higher taxes on the poor and small businesses versus much lower taxes on rich and large corporations. Not only does tax incidence matter, but also a strong utilitarian objection can be raised because of the diminishing marginal value of money as one increases their income. Taxing poor people makes much less sense than is commonly believed.

I'd prefer getting rid of corporate income taxes (and payroll taxes) rather than capital gains. Taxing income and job creation is less efficient economically than taxing growth or consumption. If you have to be insistent on getting rid of capital gains taxes, then I'd prefer a larger consumption based tax with some sort of offset or prebate (similar to the Fair Tax, but not so much), and still get rid of the corporate income tax rate. It has other economic and political problems associated with it that a consumption tax would not (much harder to game), and does not actually generate much revenue for the government relative to its public image. 

Next problem. Simply having a tax plan does not offer guarantees of growth. Fair Tax advocates also make wild-eyed claims about the growth of the economy based solely upon changes in the tax code (and upon which the "revenue neutral" aspect of their claims are entirely based). Cain's plan suffers from the same problem. Lower and simpler taxes we are told inspired the Reagan era growth.... except any serious economist/historian knows that Volcker's iron grip being released on the Federal Reserve had a lot more to do with that. The lower taxes that Reagan passed in 1982 did not a jot in increasing growth, and resulted in a very large tax increase in 1983 to semi-balance the budget from the massive deficit he created by lowering taxes. After which growth began (the 1986 tax reform simplifying things was much better, but by then 4-6% GDP growth was already in progress). In today's case as then, knowledge of monetary policy and pressing for a release of deflationary or decelerating inflationary pressures (as Ben Bernanke circa 2000 did, but not Ben Bernanke circa 2010) would probably do a lot more than any President's tax plan ever will. I certainly do not object to lower and simpler taxes. I think we could axe a ton of marginal deductions (starting with the home mortgage interest one), end up with a set of lower marginal rates to offset this and still significantly increase government tax receipts as a result. That's fine with me. What concerns me is the idea that such things would create job growth or some such. Because it has little to do with it. Has more to do with having an efficient government and light touch on the economy, with minimal redistributional pressures pushing money up the income ladder rather than down (we expend massive amounts of the national treasury giving money to people who already have money, and not as commonly believed, giving it to poor people).

Further problems. I have no problem with abolishing the payroll tax. I think this is a serious drag on job creation and funds programs that I would like to see function less as entitlements and more as social safety net roles anyway (medicare and social security). But first those programmes are popular among most of the American populace not named "me", and so gutting their funding is not exactly going to go over well. Second, even if we were to magically succeed in gutting their funding even a little, that money is still going to have to come from somewhere, and nowhere in Cain's tax plan is that source of revenue described. Those entitlements are #1 and #2 on the government's expenditure list and are mostly funded by payroll taxes right now. So if you propose to abolish the taxes funding them, either you should also propose to abolish those programmes (Cain hasn't), significantly reform them and describe how they would be funded out the general revenue (Cain hasn't), or admit you are an idiot who is pandering to other idiots (appears to be the case based on other Cain statements on issues like religious freedom, civil liberties, knowledge of foreign policy, etc).

In a race largely about the economy and the deficit, Cain looks more or less like Bozo the Clown because he's not offering much on the economy (to be fair, nor is anyone else) and he's offering a way to double down on the deficit by massively decreasing tax receipts and not listing off a bunch of spending cuts to go with them.

"Starve the beast" as it was once known, does not work. Reagan increased spending, not decreased. Bush increased spending, and deficits grew under both to what were once considered massive peacetime proportions. One suspects justly that a Cain administration would be little different. I cannot in good conscience let people delude themselves into thinking it will be otherwise.

Practicality

It occurs to me that while elements of practical/pragmatic thinking entertain my political philosophy outlook, I certainly hold a wide variety of views which are well outside the mainstream of political debate.

Given that, it also occurs to me that I seem to have only two "safe" topics with the average person, food and sports. That is: this is a topic that I know and they will likely know enough to be able to hold a conversation with give and take features. Other topics I am liable to have very few common ground threads of knowledge with such people. Music and entertainment subjects, I watch differently for movies and TV (I like excellent writing and complex plots and detest bad writing and simple plots with considerable social inaccuracies). And while I am aware that music has continued since 2002 or so, I haven't paid that much attention to know enough to discuss it. In the same manner, I have little to say about it with music prior to that era. Conversations on guitarists aren't exactly things I am knowledgeable about. I'm also not likely to encounter people with extremely similar musical tastes. Someone who likes both the Beatles and Tupac is kind of odd already. I want social commentary in my cultural consumption. Most of the time. Hence my disdain for country music. Which has social commentary, but of a society I find outdated and incomprehensible for its overt religiousity, flag-waving nationalism, and so on. I'm far more comfortable listening to the words of the oppressed and downtrodden than people who think themselves and their compatriots exceptional for dint of having been born.

In the meantime, I expend a considerable amount of mental energy on topics that do not concern the average person. I follow civil liberties abuses. Most of us will, we hope, never have cause to notice such things. I push a thought experiment relating to multiple partner sexual and marital arrangements. I doubt most people would be interested even were it available, including myself. For that matter, I am more than willing to discuss, usually abstractly, sex. A taboo subject. Or religion. Another taboo. Or politics. Or money and finances. All taboos. When I've amassed some expertise discussing such things that most people do not want in polite conversations, it leads back to discussing only safe topics like sports and food with most people.

Protest

I hate to rain on a parade, well actually I seem to enjoy it, but I still haven't figured out what exactly the occupy Wall St people want. Or at least, I haven't figured out what that could be that would be a potential policy that would make sense. Watching footage, I get the sense that yes, there are a few Paul-ites who want the Fed gone who are there (and may or may not be all that pleased with the tea party). They're not the driving elements, and they're more likely practically another species from the garden variety token protesters.

What seemed to be the complaints
1) We don't like banks. Like not even that we don't like that the banks got money from the federal government through TARP, but that we don't even like banking period. I guess that Sharon Angle quote about chicken bartering found an audience? Because that's just utterly stupid. One thing to have gripes and misgivings about centralised bankers or corporatisation of regulatory commissions, those may or may not be sensible and actually relate to our problems. Quite another to say Fuck this and want to get rid of the entire institution of finance.

2) We don't like Citizens United. Sorry, I can't get behind people who don't like what other people have to say using their free speech. I certainly agree that too often the political system is bought and sold, but it was too often BEFORE the Supreme Court said corporations and unions could throw more money into it. The problem is a) that too much of the political structure can be gamed by political influence in the first place or b) that there is too much that is left up to the political structure rather than left free to markets and social forces. Not that some of those social forces say things with which you may or may not agree. That strikes me as an essential function of democracy that people express themselves. Including even yourselves. It's not a required function of democracy that I, or anyone else, have to think everything you say is smart and clever and wonderful. This problem arises also with the morons like Palin who think that's what free speech means is that you don't criticize other people for saying idiotic things.

What it means is that you don't get put in jail for saying idiotic things. (note also that overlooked in the CU case is the expanded freedom for non-profits to say things in elections, for unions, and for basically anyone but the actual press. Also overlooked is that not all large business-corporate entities want the same things. They're no monolith. The road to profit has many turns.)

3) We don't like paying for student loans for our useless degrees that didn't give a decent job, or any job. I think the supposed policy proscription here is to bailout these protesters the way banks were. I don't see how that a) helps them get jobs b) helps the overall economy (it mostly destroys a lot of issued credit) c) sends appropriate and socially necessary signals about how useful a particular degree will be for employment purposes (a problem we clearly already possess). If you wanted to educate yourself for other purposes, self-enrichment, self-fulfillment, etc, that's one thing, but in that case, one supposes that you would find your education worthwhile and not be bothered that you are burdened with debts and unemployment as a possible outcome. If you thought it was somehow leading to a career field, then I suggest that somebody needed to have a chat with you at some point and somebody needed to say "no". It probably won't.

4) I still don't see how this becomes a useful left-wing political movement. I see some elements for class strife, but mostly I see some pretend anarchists who don't like much of anything about the current system (but who, curiously, want the government to do something). There are some Tea Partiers who had similar dispositions or even some actual anarchist leanings, but most were conservatives dressed up in funny hats. From what I can tell about the Tea Party. It cost the Republicans a chance at controlling the Senate, and possibly a couple of House seats, and in a few other cases shifted their base farther to the right. This has meant that the party establishment has had no control over making deals to manage to accomplish much of anything of a tea party demand (things like cutting government spending require the ability to make deals to reduce spending or things like passing new laws to overturn some of the old ones, etc).

Unless I guess the demand was for ineffectual government that accomplishes nothing. I suspect a similar insurgency of actual socialists in the Democratic party would be similarly useless. But hey, I'm a pragmatist. Not an ideologue or a movement guy.

PS, that Peter King quote, yeah. Peter King is a moron first class of the moron brigade. Particularly on assessing potential threats. Why exactly would this mean that he's got some idea to speak seriously about protesters? What it says is that he's annoyed by media attention given to it, not that it has taken on any higher purpose and as yet deserves that attention. In the 60s, the movement of protests had many facets, but the primary unifier among them was opposition to the Vietnam War and civil rights for blacks. I'm not seeing any protest points being used that can be turned into a simple and effective policy for influencing national policies at all. We are not getting rid of banks or nationalising them. Corporate influence in politics isn't going away. And so on.

Wake me when you reach a consensus on something we might actually wish to do as a society to improve ourselves. (Get out of Afghanistan! or something, anything of that ilk).

Musical.

obligatory sports post

Because this month and March are for me the busiest and best sports months, I figured I should jot down my thoughts on some of it.

1) I think the rain-suspended game 1 of the Yanks-Tigers series was suspicious, but it may or may not end up being significant to the outcome.
2) I think Verlander at least has a case to be AL MVP. Though I'd personally rather go with Miggy Cabrera from his own team. One of the three Red Sox hitters would each have a good case if the Red Sox hadn't blown a huge wild card lead (I'd have picked Ellsbury if they had made the playoffs). Matt Kemp in a decent universe would have gotten a lot more media attention for a potential triple crown/ 40-40 season. Didn't (and didn't accomplish either in the end anyway, missed by one home run and a few base hits). Probably should win NL MVP. Won't. Ryan Braun would be my second choice and should end up winning it. If neither does I will be very confused.
3) The impending lack of an NBA season start is going to be very annoying. I like my basketball fix to start very soon after baseball dries up. I don't care for the American football and waiting until college basketball starts is an extra month or so. Blergh for organised labour contract disputes.
4) I don't particularly care about the conference re-alignments in college sports. I think the reason this is annoying the media types is that a) it's flagrantly about money and thus upsets the network executives who have to make TV contracts with the new conferences not knowing who will be in the conference in 5 years or so, naturally this annoyance is demanded to be demonstrated by their employees b) it upsets the media types' personal nostalgic sense for what the "Big 10" used to be or what the "Big East/ACC",  which is a fun story but has little actual relevance for whether the current or future product is or can be better or worse and c) it upsets a false sense of us-them rivalry concerning those aforementioned conferences. There are still traditional rivalries between teams that should be mostly maintained even during these otherwise radical shifts. Duke-Carolina. Oklahoma-Texas. Auburn-Alabama. Ohio St-Michigan. These work in the way that Red Sox-Yankees still matters in baseball or Patriots-Colts to football. But even those significant individual rivalries are mostly ways to get semi-casual sporting fans engaged in consuming the sport. The even more nebulous conference rivalries are much more trivial to the casual fan, thus they won't care. After it is explained to them why if they do ask about it at all. And the most engaged fan is unlikely to care very much about realignments as long as he (still mostly "he") can be swiftly provided with quality product on the field. They will want to see better games between high powered and skilled opponents. If these realignments allow for that, so be it. In an era where it's possible for a single basketball conference to send 10 or 11 teams to the postseason tournaments, it makes no difference what conference it is or how it is structured so long as those are 10 or 11 qualified and solid teams. Versus the previous era where a single conference could, by rule, send only one or two, where it did matter very much how those conferences were structured and who was in them. Today is not yesterday.

Purists will complain, but purists have complained about most every change in sports over the last two decades. Which have seen some highly radical shifts in sports, BCS championship, wild card and inter-league play in baseball, instant replays, expansion and divisional realignments in all sports, etc. Most of those shifts were consumed eagerly by the public which has poured ever greater attention and money into the sporting world as it has shifted. Purists will lose that argument as a result. I think there are ways that a sport could be shifted that could cause it problems, redefine or lose its base of support, (highly radical rule changes for instance). But these changes are not them.

Much bigger problems for these sports arise out of things like competing with high end televisions and constant streams of information that can be consumed in the comfort of one's home rather than dealing with the physical discomforts of rowdy and drunken fans, public bathrooms, expensive parking. Rather than whining about conference realignments and minor rules changes, "they" should focus more attention on this issue.

A week updated

One other point. Concerning those protestors in NYC.

I may not think they have a good idea what they are protesting (other than some vague mistrust and dislike for the financial sector).

But I don't think the appropriate response of the state is to pepper spray them either.

A weekend

1) PBS is running yet another Ken Burns documentary. It appears to be largely similar to Okrent's book (Okrent appears himself, so that's one obvious hint). It's amusing. As I recalled from my reading and previous encounters with Prohibitionist history: a) Ohio sucks and b) Wayne Wheeler should really have a rather large section dedicated to him in most any history textbook. Maybe a couple other names could be involved, but he has to be covered. Period. Most people don't even know who he is and he's essentially the man responsible for getting the 18th Amendment across the finish line. (Or maybe people responsible for getting the 21st across would be useful too, but it's difficult to see a lot of enthusiasm for studying, say, the DuPont family).

Among the things that sticks out the most from studying Prohibition is the WCTU's largely successful attempt to popularize educational textbooks that deliberately supplied misinformation relating to alcohol and alcohol consumption. It reminds a lot. A lot. A LOT, of the evolution "debates" today, where misinformation is attempted to be fed (and in the case of private evangelical schools and their texts, or of many home schooled children, successfully so). Or even more so of abstinence only education which follows exactly the same model of attempting to scare children away from something. Only to run into reality when, most, teens actually have sex, don't die immediately from some horrible disease and then, only somewhat inaccurately, conclude that adults must be full of shit.

2) Speaking of science education.



This has a set of fascinating discussions. First off, part of the problem with science today is that it appears so divorced from the common person's experience. People do not see, or rather they take for granted, the many, many, ways that scientific discoveries and inventions have improved, enriched, or otherwise amused their lives. The creative endeavors made possible by modern genetics are among the most likely to be noticed in the near future. So talking about things like the evolution of modern cellular biology and its continuing applications (such as the adaptation made by sea slugs becoming photosynthetic), and its possible technological applications moving forward is a huge blessing. Something like the neutrino speed measured at some billionths of seconds faster than expected is unlikely to really be noted in any way by the common man, even though if confirmed it might kick over a mild revolution in quantum and particle physics. Science, for all its wonderful benefits at offering better good explanations for the world around us, also has the burden of offering ways to deal with that world around us in a practical way from time to time in order for most people to notice and appreciate it (temporarily) and then allow it to fade back into the background.

Secondly, the debate at the end about educating the people generally concerning science is enlightening. Explaining scientific principles goes beyond bright colors and playful displays and exhibits designed to appeal to 5 to 10 year old children and is a worthy cause for scientists to ask themselves how they could improve their PR situation, manner, and messaging. There are plenty enough of biologists who take the position of "those people are idiots" and don't bother either listening to them (a sensible enough response), addressing and explaining their concerns away, or in any other meaningful way engaging with, their public opposition in such debates. While I don't think the specific strategy devised is necessarily always useful, I do think that hammering people with information in response to their vigorous denials and objections can have its uses. It has problems, owing to basic human psychology, of course. And that didn't sound like it was addressed in full (the problem of confirmation biases and of people rejecting sources of information and any associated evidence that don't conform to their pre-conceived notions). Some level of engagement between the players involved would perhaps help there, I'm just not sure that the methods described will necessarily work (from my own experiences having talked with creationists on this issue).

I do feel it's a modest blight upon our scientific credibility as a nation-state that we have a margin of people much higher than some place like Kuwait who actively and vigorously doubt even the most basic scientific conclusions. But one way to look at it is that we also have the luxury of a nation-state that affords people the luxury of time to expend and waste on this issue in the first place. It's a first-world problem that a place like Kuwait wouldn't have. Of course, it's a first world problem that is largely limited to Americans. Which is kind of the point of the problem.

Having said all that, however, I disagree with the importance that such a dearth of information actually plays. As disconcerting as debates over geological time scales (or even the existence thereof) can be and their relation to the wider evolution "debate", I don't really think such things actually effect most people's lives. People who aren't actually studying evolutionary biology or psychology, or other academic subjects like quantum physics or developmental economics, may be misinformed or uninformed dolts on those issues, but they may have other pursuits in life which are perfectly valid ways to spend their time educating and enriching themselves (and some pursuits which are less so, Dancing with the Stars for instance). More to the point, this collective lack of knowledge has little impact on public policy. In what way does it actually impact the rest of us? Sure there's the matter of the local school boards and a few textbook publishers, and that's annoying and slightly terrifying. But it's slightly terrifying to someone like me largely because WE (all of us, religious and irreligious alike) made it a matter of public policy in the first place by appointing local school boards to advise on curriculum and then made such positions electable and accountable to the public. To my mind, any issue where we've injected public policy where there ought not to be any governing interest by the state is disconcerting, and there are all manner of sensible philosophical and economic reasons why this is. The general public's misinformation, disinformation, or uninformed sensibilities on virtually all matters of public policy is a serious problem. The general public's lack of scientific knowledge is merely an annoyance by comparison, and much more easily allayed and fixed.

The only issue at present where scientific ignorance appears to present a meaningful obstacle is climate change. And here I think the most salient objections are not "it's not happening!", but rather are things like "China and India don't care and we can't yet make them" or other related geopolitical problems. There are problems in public debates concerning a lack of understanding of scientific inquiries and methods of asking better questions. Something they don't quite cover in their debate is the idea that while science doesn't answer certain questions very well (what do ugly people look like?, seriously?), there are plenty of questions that are answerable in some empirical way that could inform those questions or could be asked instead. The public, the media, or the even the scientists themselves, "asking the wrong questions" to me is a much more serious problem than the public's lack of interest in cellular biology or some other reasonably obscure concern that they sensibly ignore in favor of daily and lifetime considerations where their time is better applied. But getting people to occasionally ask for some qualifications, some evidentiary support, and seeking out these things themselves, if available, when they aren't provided would be a better use of their time.

A week

1) I'm not sure what the deal with the perpetual search for the next fling within the Republican party is. I'm not entirely displeased that Christie's the "next" thing. He's a mixed bag, like most major political figures, and he's no libertarian, but he does at least run some high notes out there about how governments actually work for the idiots among us. And also things like "Muslims are not all terrorists, so shut it morons", which is refreshing if sad that it is refreshing.

I just don't think he will actually run so it all seems sort of pointless. (Plus his positions on homosexuals and immigrants are basically persona non grata in the national stage GOP, and they're still too far to the right for my taste... and his positions on foreign policy are really, really ill thought out. Which is to say that they're marginally more thought out than say, Romney or Perry's, but still on the dumb side of foolish things to say).

2) Speaking of Muslims and terrorists, we finally got around to killing American citizens without trials. After all that unpleasant cheering over the death penalty, I guess we figured we should just skip it. I'm not sure that our friend in Yemen is necessarily the most sympathetic figure of course. But making our policy choices based on sympathetic figures isn't any better than making them based on unsympathetic figures. A war which has assumed global characteristics (or at least we assume it to have global characteristics) means that enemy combatants can be killed anywhere at any time. To an extent, this is in fact reasonable. What concerns us now is these means being used against American citizens (or otherwise used against people living or visiting our legal jurisdiction).

In a related story, the FBI has busied itself creating yet another disgruntled worshiper. This time with the inventive method of using remote controlled planes to blow up Washington. Or perhaps a Bell of Tacos or something similarly useless. I realize that there are really people out there who want to attack or do something otherwise heinous. Our friend in Norway was a considerable reminder of this. I'm not convinced that running around encouraging them in order to arrest them is the best method of defence. Kind of seems like entrapment problems?

3) In another related "why does this matter" story, a bunch of protesters showed up in Wall St. I have more or less the same reaction I had to the tea party protests. It sounds and looks like an incoherent mess. There's a lot of "dirty commoner" feel to both formats and a lot of reading signs and then wondering what the hell such people were smoking. I'm still not much impressed that the tea party has mattered much on a national stage, if at all, and it largely impressed upon me the notion that vast numbers of Americans have become so disengaged with politics that they don't have any idea what they are supposed to be protesting. They might as well be annoyed with Roswell conspiracies for all the sense they've made (cut taxes, not medicare/defence/ and pretty much any popular government programmes that account for most of the budget...). I'd hardly expect a quasi-economic protest to go off with a much better informed set of dumb masses. If there's anything substantial to our daily lives that the public knows less about than politics, it might be economics.

Naturally, I've seen commentators and activists trying to anoint this as the leftist response to the tea party. Good luck with that. Let me know when you get around to having a point besides "we hate bankers!".