Sometimes the grass is greener on the other side because it's been fertilized with more bullshit.
Anonomous

Shoot for the space in between, because that's where the real mystery lies.
Vera Rubin
https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/12/28/remebering-vera-rubin/?utm_source=Brain+Pickings&utm_campaign=f053a9c4e2-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_01_07&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_179ffa2629-f053a9c4e2-234390133

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
T.S. Eliot

There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.
Leonard Cohen

It's hard to beat a person who never gives up.

Babe Ruth, Historic Home Run Hitter
What's sad is to witness what Syria has become because nobody will give up.

Why, we grow rusty and you catch us at the very point of decadence --- by this time tomorrow we may have forgotten everything we ever knew. That's a thought isn't it? We'd be back to where we started --- improvising.
Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (Act I)

Why it will be easier to assonate President Trump in Denver

Kerry O'Grady, the special agent in charge of the Secret Service's Denver district, oversees coordination with Washington-based advance teams for all presidential candidate and presidential trips to the area, including all upcoming or future trips by the president, vice president or Trump administration officials says she will not take a bullet for President Trump (like she would take a bullet for President Clinton).
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/senior-secret-service-agent-suggests-she-wouldnt-take-a-bullet-for-trump/article/2612814

Nate Silver --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nate_Silver

The 5:38 Blog
The Real Story Of 2016 What reporters — and lots of data geeks, too — missed about the election, and what they’re still getting wrong ---
by Nate Silver
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-real-story-of-2016/

Jensen Comment
Once again I point out that I voted for Clinton.
Nate Silver's post-election analysis a well thought out piece and certainly not as superficial and naive as the thinking the Russians are primarily to blame for the Trump win. The Russians hacked Clinton's email messages, but damaging messages themselves were real and not fake news.

Having said this, I think Nate Silver misses one major point that I've mentioned several times before. Not once in the above link does he mention the Sanders campaign or the disgruntled Sanders supporters.

In my opinion what would have topped the election in favor of Hillary Clinton should have been the votes of more Sanders supporters for her in the general election. Too many Sanders supporters did not bother to vote after being angry with her after the Democratic primary election. Many were angry with her after she cheated in the debates with Bernie Sanders with the help of an anti-Sanders Democratic National Committee and a cheating CNN that fed her the debate questions in advance. Near the end other revelations of DNC bias against Sanders leaked out before the general election. This turned off many Sanders supporters who, if they bothered to vote in the general election, would've tipped the scales for Hillary Clinton since virtually none of the Sanders supporters would've voted for Donald Trump.

I looked for this reasoning in the Nate Silver piece cited above and found it wanting.

I might note that when he was at the New York Times Nate Silver also made a major 2010 analysis error by predicting that Scott Brown would lose in the Massachusetts race to fill Ted Kennedy's Senate seat. That time he blamed his error on non-stationarity where there was a high proportion of vote switching on election day making voter polls misleading up to election day. However, I view Nate Silver as a first-rate statistician who really is an expert in election and other types of predicting (most notably in sports like baseball). His 5:38 blog that he created after leaving the NYT is very interesting to follow. He and his other blog writers are heavily into sports. In politics the site leans to the left.

Bloomberg
Islands of Mass Destruction: How China killed essential reefs and built military bases on top ---
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-12-22/coverup-in-the-south-china-sea

Chronicle of Higher Education:  What's Wrong With Econ 101
http://www.chronicle.com/article/What-s-Wrong-With-Econ-101/238927?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=c1f2b1cc755c4f249f97e669c378314a&elq=0962dcfae8cd4ef9ba2395ba2a7d4165&elqaid=12240&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=4963

Up Up and Away in My New Jersey Tax Balloon
New Jersey’s infamously high property tax bills topped $8,500 per home in 2016, a 2.35 percent increase over the previous year, according to figures released Wednesday by the Department of Community Affairs ---
http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2017/01/average_property_tax_bill_reached_85k_per_home_in.html

States with the highest and lowest property taxes ---
http://247wallst.com/special-report/2017/01/26/states-with-the-highest-and-lowest-property-taxes-2/?utm_source=247WallStDailyNewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=JAN272017A&utm_campaign=DailyNewsletter

Companies Are Losing Shareholder Value by Ignoring or Downplaying Strategic Risks ---
http://daily.financialexecutives.org/companies-arent-spending-time-risks-really-matter-qa-deloittes-mike-kearney/

Question
Where did lawyers' campaign contributions go in the 2016 election?

Answer
Trump 3% versus Clinton 97%
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2017/01/lawyer-presidential-campaign-contributions-97-to-clinton-3-to-trump.html

Jensen Comment
Seems about as lopsided as the campaign contributions of professors and Wall Street (where firms like Goldman Sachs banned employee contributions to Trump)
http://fortune.com/2016/09/06/goldman-elite-trump-pence/

The DNC Race Has Become Another Fight Over Bernie Sanders When the Dems Need it the Least ---
http://www.vox.com/2016/12/30/14062696/dnc-ellison-sanders

What's Good for Amazon May Not Be Good for the USA (or the world)
Amazon to Create 100,000 New Jobs in U.S. in Next 18 Months ---
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-12/amazon-to-create-more-than-100-000-new-jobs-in-u-s-in-18-months?utm_source=MIT+TR+Newsletters&utm_campaign=8f37b32526-The_Download&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_997ed6f472-8f37b32526-153727301

 Amazon.com Inc. revealed plans to hire more than 100,000 people in the U.S. in the next 18 months, grabbing the spotlight as President-elect Donald Trump pushes companies to employ more Americans.

The staffing up isn’t particularly surprising for a company moving into multiple categories from groceries, hardware and video to fashion and cloud services. But the move could appease Trump, who tangled with Amazon Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos during the election campaign.

“It’s a very powerful headline, and the timing certainly makes Trump look good,” said Ivan Feinseth, an analyst at Tigress Financial Partners LLC. “It’s going to happen in the first year and half of his administration. Bezos couldn’t have set him up any better to look good -- timing is everything.”

Bezos and Trump publicly exchanged hostilities during the presidential campaign, with Bezos joking that he would send Trump to space on one of his rockets and Trump saying that Amazon has a “huge” antitrust problem, and accusing Bezos of using the Washington Post to influence politicians to help Amazon on taxes. After Trump’s victory, Bezos tweeted: “I for one give him my most open mind.”

Bezos was among a group of leading technology industry executives who met with Trump last month in Manhattan to discuss points of concern. Jobs, immigration and China topped the agenda. Since then, several companies -- from IBM to Ford and Alibaba -- have publicly announced hiring sprees, though some of them were re-polishing previously announced intentions. In a call with reporters on Thursday Trump spokesman Sean Spicer said his boss was happy to play a part in Amazon’s decision.

The new positions “are for people all across the country and with all types of experience, education and skill levels -- from engineers and software developers to those seeking entry-level positions and on-the-job training,” Amazon said. The company also said businesses like Marketplace and Amazon Flex will create hundreds of thousands of jobs for people who want the flexibility to be an entrepreneur and set their own schedule.

Feinseth said Amazon’s hiring pledge transcends political optics. “You have a good company hiring people in an area where a lot of tech companies tend to be outsourcing people,” he said. “So it’s very positive, political or not. It’s still 100,000 more people in the U.S.”

Still, in 2015, the most recent year for which numbers are available, Amazon was hiring an average of about 6,400 people a month globally. So it’s a good bet that a big chunk of the announced U.S. recruiting would have happened anyway.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
Killing off the competition and traditional jobs in favor of creating a monopoly with fewer new jobs is not exactly what capitalist theorists will applaud.

This is becoming a real test of what economists call economies of scale that have always bothered capitalist theorists. Many economic theorists contend economies of scale are over-hyped, but in the case of Amazon they seem to be not so over-hyped. One click shopping on Amazon and next day free delivery is really convenient for me and most other Amazon shoppers.

Sometimes the grass is greener on the other side because it's been fertilized with more bullsh*t.
Anonomous

The University of Washington Has a Course Devoted to Bullsh*t ---
http://www.openculture.com/2017/01/calling-bullshit.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

Jensen Comment
I wonder whether an A or F looks best for a Bullsh*t Course listed on a resume?

It's probably not much of an honor to have your writings featured in this course. In fact, it might even be libelous.

Do visiting speakers know what they're stepping into?

This adds new meaning to a student's claim: "This was a bullsh*t course"

What if a claim that a piece of research is "bullsh*t" is in itself a "bullsh*t" claim?

Does the professor of this course appreciate the value of "bullsh*t" like farmers appreciate the value of "bullsh*t"?

January 16, 2017 message from Craig Keller

The best example of an egalitarian nation benefiting the poor and middle class was
the USA for the 30 years or so before 1980.   Norway is another example.

Actually Cuba for all its problems is by many measures of what makes a society
better is better off than it was under US domination with Batista.

In 1776 Adam Smith said it best (I paraphrase).  That country that has the highest
rate of profit is fastest going to ruin.  That country with the highest portion of income
to wages prospers. I see nothing in history that makes me doubt his considerable
wisdom and vision.

Markets are efficient when powerless price takers face one another but efficient is
not fair.  In fact it is ruthless and in the hands of powerful price makers markets are
only efficient as a totem that the wealthy place before us to quiet the masses.

Maybe that is why these voters distrust academics, because we are the messengers.
Nothing in accounting offers a counterpoint to the market message, but don't worry
the filthy rich are safe with Trump.

January 16, 2017 reply from Bob Jensen

I hesitate to compare Norway and Kuwait with most nations since nobody knows what they would've become without king oil. These are also very small and relatively non-diverse societies, as is Japan. The best example for a wealthy diverse nation without natural resources is Singapore, but then that's capitalistic.

Even Castro eventually admitted that the Cuban Model is not sustainable. Of course, there are many examples where corrupt dictators were and still are worse than Castro for exploiting the poor, especially nations of Africa that virtually all are in violent revolutions in the 21st Century.

I'm still looking for a realistic example where national takeover of wealth resulted in better living for the poor.

The Nordic nations, including Norway and Denmark, reduced marginal tax rates on high income people over the past 4-5 decades. There must be a reason why none of them went back, including Sweden and Finland, to high marginal tax rates on high income earners.

Denmark is one of the best examples of a somewhat egalitarian society that makes heavy use of cooperatives rather than some for-profit large enterprises. But Denmark is a small and relatively homogeneous society on bicycles that builds virtual "walls" to prevent immigration into the country. It's highly unlikely that the Denmark model can be exported to larger and more diverse nations like the USA, South Africa, India, China, and the rest of Asia where capitalism is on the move with it's resulting billionaires.

I don't know that the USA was ever in history a good example of egalitarianism --- certainly not in terms of tax rates and property ownership. Actually the safety nets and progressive tax rates are better than ever for the poor such that USA's poor are no longer comparable to the poor in Africa and Asia. For example, nearly half of USA "taxpayers" no longer pay an income tax, although they are subject to payroll taxes and sales taxes.

Many of "poor" in the USA supplement reported wages in the $2-trillion underground economy that thrives almost everywhere. However, it thrives best the closer one gets to the southern border. Having lived in San Antonio for 24 years it's evident to me that the underground economy in some industries is bigger than the legitimate economy. My point is that the USA has less income diversity than many other parts of the world because of the underground economy.

Of course the USA has about 25% of the world's known billionaires. But many of those, half of whom are Democrats, strive to provide more opportunities for all people willing to work.

It sickens us when some billionaires live lavish lifestyles. Exhibit A is Michael Jordan's unbelievable yacht. But I don't begrudge him his yacht. He also does good things with his vast wealth and sets a role model for many aspiring folks.

A big problem the USA is having in the 21st Century is separating poverty wars from drug wars. Warring gangs took over large swaths of urban centers like Chicago and LA. This discourages capital investments (public and private) providing opportunities for jobs. Actually life is miserable in subsidized housing in our large cities, but misery in this housing gets confounded by high crime, especially drug dealing, drug addiction, and prostitution. We've lost the war on drugs.

Danish cooperatives in LA and Chicago? Yeah right!

I don't think Adam Smith really understood the meaning of types of poverty than cannot be compared between nations or within a single nation over time. Certainly poverty in the UK today is no longer comparable with the utterly horrid poverty of the UK in Adam Smith's days in the late 1700s.

I'm still looking for an example where national takeover of wealth served to better the poor on a sustainable base. It most certainly is not Cuba. And it most certainly is not any diverse nation without natural resources like oil that can be exploited for elimination of the worst poverty.

Bob Jensen

Finland’s Brain Drain After major budget cuts for universities, Ph.D.s are leaving the country.---
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/01/19/finlands-universities-fear-brain-drain-following-budget-cuts?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=efc433a523-DNU20170119&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-efc433a523-197565045&goal=0_1fcbc04421-efc433a523-197565045&mc_cid=efc433a523&mc_eid=1e78f7c952

 . . .

“The future seems very bleak,” he said, saying that the “worst” impact of the cuts is that the “best young scholars” are looking for university jobs abroad and some are choosing to leave academia altogether.

Recent figures from Statistics Finland show that the number of Ph.D.-educated Finns who have moved abroad increased by 37 percent between 2011 and 2015.

In 2015, after a weakening of the country’s economy, the Finnish government announced that basic funding to the country’s 15 universities and 26 polytechnics would be reduced by approximately 500 million euros ($533 million) over a four-year term and €100 million ($107 million) of research funding would be cut.

Last year, the University of Helsinki said that it would cut staff numbers by nearly 1,000 by the end of 2017 in order to reduce its budget by €106 million ($113 million) by 2020.

Jukka Corander, biostatistics director at the University of Oslo, who also recently left Helsinki, said that “some central figures” in the Finnish government have sent a “clear message” that they “don’t really appreciate scientists.”

“It felt pretty hopeless to continue doing high-level basic research in Finland,” he said, adding that the “consensus” among senior academics is that the situation in the country amounts to a “catastrophe.”

Corander said that “one major reason” for the funding problem today was the emphasis placed on innovation-led research -- at the expense of basic research -- during the “heyday” of Finnish tech and telecommunications company Nokia between 1990 and 2008, despite the fact that “Nokia built its success on basic research that was around in the 1970s and 1980s.”

The recent cuts mean that basic funding has declined even more, he said.

Petri Koikkalainen, president of the Finnish Union of University Researchers and Teachers, added that brain drain is particularly impacting fields such as the humanities and natural sciences, in which it can be harder to find jobs outside academe.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
Finland is struggling with high unemployment and the costs of being a welfare state with college education and healthcare financed by taxpayers. Worried that high unemployment may be chronic in the robotics age Finland just commenced a limited basic income experiment where selected unemployed people receive a long-term basic income of slightly less than 600 euros per month to reduce labor oversupply. If expanded nationwide this will be somewhat like the Cuban Model without the ration books and caps on maximum daily wages ($27 per day) in Cuba that leads to a lot of daily dominos playing on front porches or participation in a rising underground economy. Since a lot of underground jobs need doing Cuba now tends to turn a blind eye to parts of the underground economy where workers make more than $27 per day.

Castro belatedly admitted that the Cuban Model is not sustainable. Finland is studying whether its new basic income version is sustainable with a serious number of people willing not to work productively in exchange for a low basic income. I envision some unemployed academics accepting low income to do full-time, high-risk research on their own --- a little like but not totally like what we call post-docs in the USA. However, most of the Finns in the current basic income experiment will not be academics. Academics in Finland are more apt to leave the homeland rather than try to live on a low basic income. Most academics in Finland speak several languages.

How Andy Puzder's fast-food industry sticks taxpayers with the cost of supporting its workers ---
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-puzder-workers-20170123-story.html

. . .

 

The Berkeley Labor Center painted a different picture of the core fast-food workers, which it defined as someone working 27 weeks a year or more and 10 hours or more per week. Only about one in five of those workers are under the age of 19 and living with a parent; a much larger share, 26% have children of their own. “Overall, 68% of the core front-line workers in the fast-food industry are not in school and are single or married adults with or without children,” the Berkeley researchers found. “For more than two-thirds of these workers, fast-food wages are an essential component of family income.”

That places them squarely in the target population of federal assistance programs, especially Medicaid, food stamps and the earned income tax credit. More than half of the families of frontline fast-food workers are enrolled in one or more public assistance programs, Berkeley says, compared to 25% of the general workforce.

Some economists question whether it’s fair to say that that these programs are boons for low-wage employers. Gary Burtless of the Brooking Institution, for example, argued in 2015 that it’s “flatly wrong” to call them “a handout to Walmart, McDonalds, and other low-wage employers.” Because these programs reduce the number of adults “willing to work for low pay and lousy benefits,” they force employers to pay higher wages to get workers into such jobs — in other words, they’re a cost, not a subsidy. Burtless distinguished programs available only to working individuals, such as the earned  income tax credit and child care subsidies for low-earning parents. These, he said, can force wages downward because they encourage low-wage workers to remain in the workforce

But Ken Jacobs, head of the Berkeley labor center and an author of its minimum wage reports, says those arguments are beside the point. “It’s clearly the case that firms that don’t pay their workers enough to get by are shifting those costs to taxpayers.” Given the evidence that public costs come down when employers raise pay, then “if employers paid better wages, we could spend public funds in more efficient ways.”

 

Jensen Comment
There are no easy answers here. Finland is experimenting with a "basic income" concept that will pay chronically unemployed people to not work (currently less than 600 euros per month) --- thereby removing them from the workforce supply. Programs like the earned tax credits and child care encourage low income workers in the USA to stay in the work force, thereby adding to an oversupply of unskilled workers in the "legitimate economy." Add to this the USA complications of a $2-trillion underground economy that Finland does not have (at least not to a great extent)  for unemployed workers. Many higher-paid workers in the underground economy in the USA still are receiving many benefits such as food stamps, Medicaid, and housing subsidies. But they're not receiving that EITC cash.

And when low income workers turn to crime it often costs much more for taxpayers to incarcerate them. Finland's prisons are relatively plush without guards and most prisoners go back and forth from prison to home at will. There's some question as to whether the 600 euro basic income may be a better deal for taxpayers than prison costs. It may not be a better deal for prisoners who must pay to live on their own.

One of the huge injustices of a "basic income" concept is the unfairness of it in this era of living together with "significant others." A person trying to live all alone on 600 euros a month (for not working) is not going to live very high on the hog (think fatty pork shoulders and pickled pigs feet). However, when living with a significant other who makes 10,000 euros a month, the living is all the way up to pork tenderloin kabobs and plush apartments while also taking in taxpayer basic income as well.

Third ex-Rhode Island lawmaker in 11 days charged criminally ---
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_RHODE_ISLAND_CORRUPTION?SITE=MYPSP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2017-01-23-16-33-49

A former Rhode Island state lawmaker has agreed to plead guilty to fraud charges, becoming the third former House member in 11 days to be charged with criminal conduct and prompting the U.S. attorney to decry the state's political culture.

The charges filed against Democrat Ray Gallison in federal court Monday include mail fraud, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and filing false tax returns. Gallison, an attorney, acknowledged taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from a dead man's estate and other misconduct.

"This says something about our political culture here, which I think should get our attention," U.S. Attorney Peter Neronha said during a news conference announcing the charges and plea deal.

He listed a long string of local and state public officials his office has prosecuted and sent to prison, including former House Speaker Gordon Fox.

"I wish I could say with confidence that we are at the end of the line, and that no other trains will pass this way," Neronha said. "I suspect, however, that there will be more work to do."

 Continued in article