As always, follow the money

Academic Choice Theory Hits the NY Times | Mike the Mad Biologist

Why academic economists might not be counted on to be objective.

Not "a market like any other."

The Fear Economy - NYTimes.com

Negotiating a wage is not like negotiating a price. I don't have to buy a new car. I could make do with my old car, or buy a used car, or (if I live in a city) do without a car at all. I certainly don't have to buy an HD TV.

But I do have to have a job. That's why employers imposing their beliefs on employees is so much worse than movie producers advocating their beliefs in a movie-- you don't have to go to that movie, or any movie at all for that matter. So with the civilian labor force participation rate lower than it's been since the Nixon administration (when relatively fewer women were working) your employer can cut your wage, and you're forced to say "Thank you sir, may I have another?"

Krugman doesn't believe there is a "secret cabal" of C.E.O.s plotting to keep the economy weak, but I do. They didn't get where they are by being nice to workers, or caring how the rest of the world is doing. In fact, this is the biggest reason C.E.O.s make such lousy political leaders. They are used to running a zero sum game, not managing an economy to promote the general welfare.

A Government as Employer of Last Resort (PDF) plan takes care of this. Any worker would automatically have somewhere else to go. It might not pay as much as the MBA salary they've bamboozled their boss into paying, but it will keep them alive for a while. In fact, the best effect might be in shrinking the gap in wages between people who produce something and people who have conned their employers into believing they can't be had any cheaper thanks to that expensive piece of paper on the wall.

The government and the press that we deserve

Economist's View: 'Robots and Economic Luddites'

The good bits:

It is amazing how the media have managed to hype the fear of robots taking our jobs at the same time that they have built up fears over huge budget deficits bankrupting the country. You don't see the connection? Maybe you should be an economics reporter for a leading national news outlet.

So they scare us with contradictory narratives: Robots are stealing then jobs, and there are too few workers paying too little in taxes to support all those darned old folks.

Some confused souls may say that the problem may not be an economic one, but rather a fiscal problem. The government can't raise the tax revenue to pay for both the Social Security and Medicare for the elderly and the education of our kids. This is confused because if we are living in the world where the robots are doing all the work then the government really doesn't need to raise tax revenue, it can just print the money it needs to back its payments.

Okay, now everyone is completely appalled. The government is just going to print trillions of dollars? That will send inflation through the roof, right? Not in the world where robots are doing all the work it won't. If we print money it will create more demands for goods and services, which the robots will be happy to supply. As every intro econ graduate knows, inflation is a story of too much money chasing too few goods and services. But in the robots do everything story, the goods and services are quickly generated to meet the demand. Where's the inflation, robots demanding higher wages?

But the bottom line is this: Are we  or are we not in control of our own society? Will we let the servants of the plutocrats in the media scare us away from an equitable distribution of the fruits of a wealthy society?

There can of course be issues of distribution. If the one percent are able to write laws that allow them to claim everything the robots produce then they can make most of us very poor. But this is still a story of society of plenty. We can have all the food, shelter, health care, clean energy, etc. that we need; the robots can do it for us.

"I wonder if he'll remember that he's a duck, and he can fly" (Bugs Bunny)
Daffy duck runs off cliff and falls to the ground)
"Guess not."

We have the government, and the press for that matter, that we, in our ignorance and fear, deserve.

 

Dietary supplements

Spike in Harm to Liver Is Tied to Dietary Aids - NYTimes.com

It can't hurt you, right? I mean it's organic. And it's not poison, or a drug. It comes from a plant. Besides, it's not genetically modified, so it's safe.

It's way, way past time to get rid of the smoke cloud the "dietary supplement" people have erected, via their lobbyists. Even if the substance doesn't actually hurt you, its use might make people think they don;t need legitimate medical help.

There's a word for "alternative medicine" that works, you know. It's "medicine."

Sister clade to the flowering plants

On The Origin of Flowers | The Scientist Magazine®

This is really cool. Amborella trichopoda, a flowering plant which is the only survivor in a line that existed alongside the ancestors of all other flowering plants, has had its genome sequenced.

Angiosperms sometimes duplicate their entire genome, a condition known as polyploidy. This can lead to the rather sudden development of an entirely new species. The new species is able to tinker with the genes in the second copy of the genome, because the original remains intact. (Strictly speaking, what I mean is that a mutation in one of the copies may not be harmful, even though it would have been if there had only been one copy. Even if the original mutation is nonfunctional, a subsequent mutation can create a novel trait.)

It should be no surprise that many of the genes common to Amborella are also found in non-flowering plants. Many genes in eukaryotes had their origin in prokaryotes.

But IMHO they are on shaky ground when they say:

The remaining 1,179 gene families—around a quarter of the total—were new. Some of these help to make flowers, but others are involved in stabilizing the plants’ physiology or responding to environmental cues, including plant-eating animals. “That was a surprise. The production of the flower wasn’t just a result of shifting gene expression, as is often assumed in the evolution of new development,” said dePamphilis. “There was a large amount of real novelty, too.”

Unless a large proportion of the new genes are needed to produce flowers, I don't see much reason to believe that the production of flowers per se is the reason these genes evolved. The duplication in the genome would have given the lineage some freedom to evolve many new genes rapidly, as I explained above. This would allow for fairly rapid development of environmental adaptations not related to flower development.

Now of course it may be the case that my reading of the article  as implying that only a small number of the genes were needed to produce flowers.

Anyway, very very cool stuff.

The worst of all possible worlds

Ryan-Murray budget deal doesn’t show the two parties can compromise, it shows they can’t

When a truly bipartisan idea comes along, you can bet it's a complete disaster. (See No Child's Behind Left Untested)

This was no bipartisan deal, though. It was everything that each party wanted that the other party didn't care about. It's two neighbors agreeing-- "OK, you can eat unclean food on the Sabbath, as long as I can use inorganic fertilizer on my roses," while ignoring the burning tree about to fall on both houses.

"I don't think that word means what you think it means," take gazillion

You have never actually used a Styrofoam cup, plate or takeout box

The more people believe a thing, the more likely it is to be BS.

It's an Epidemic!!! NOT

The Selling of Attention Deficit Disorder - NYTimes.com

Full disclosure: I have what I regard as mild ADD. I'm not "hyperactive," although I can get a bit restless. I have trouble ignoring things, like annoying "music" in the stores. I have trouble finishing a task, because I think of something else in the middle.

As the joke goes: How many people with ADD does it take to --Look! A Squirrel!

When I was working in retail, customers who knew I was also a teacher would ask me why there are so many cases of ADD now when there weren't when we were kids. ("We" means people 40 and up)

My facetious reply was "Hand sanitizer and air fresheners." But the more accurate reply would be "There are profitable drugs to treat it now."

Bipartisan?

How Paul Ryan's Budget Plan Could Bridge The GOP's Divide

This budget deal is "bipartisan" in the sense that it attempts to bridge the gap between the Über wingnut branch of the Republican tree and the Very-Serious-People branch. The "Democrats" who sign on are either trying not to let the Republicans completely destroy the government and the economy (pretty much their stated goal, BTW) or have been so brainwashed by the "Deficit is the number one problem" BS on the "Liberal" news that they are starting to actually embrace that insanity.

Is there a serious misunderstanding here?

Disorder No More | The Scientist Magazine®

So officially, Asperger's syndrome is no more. But I can't help thinking that there is considerable conflation between high functioning autism and a rather different condition because of some gross similarities.

Or, as I often say, I don't have Asperger's but I am very sympathetic to those who do. I just don't "get" the social cues others grasp intuitively. But I have a very good intuitive grasp of scientific concepts.

As Daniel Dennett quipped, they have a name for my (almost) condition, but not it's opposite, because nobody expects "normal" people to be intuitively good at science.

Does genetic analysis trump morphology?

A New Basal Animal | The Scientist Magazine®

I'm certainly not an expert on genetic analysis, but ISTM that there is peril in reading too much into the analysis of genes that are a good fraction of a billion years old.

I need to go back to school and study evo-devo.

Not all biologists come up with crazy ideas

Standing Up for Sex | The Scientist Magazine®

Or at least not seriously.

The biggest reason I want a time machine

Oldest Hominin DNA Ever Sequenced | The Scientist Magazine®

I would dearly love to be able to see a time when there were multiple species (or at least subspecies) of humans.

"Bipartisan" means what it has always meant

The budget deal isn’t good for the economy. It’s less bad for the economy.

As I have said many times before, one side says 2+2=5 and the other says 2+2=8. Somehow, compromise between those positions is viewed as a good thing.

This is not a bipartisan plan. It is a purely Republican plan. The fact that some of the Republicans caucus with Democrats doesn't make them actual Democrats.

Form over function

Windows used to work. There were clear-cut things the computer did when you told it to do them. It was easy to see what version of the operating system you had, easy to move and organize files, easy to deal with various programs.

But in the name of making things easy for people who can't be bothered to figure out how to name files and create folders, Windows has become an opaque mess.

Why does every player in every industry fall over itself to emulate the very worst ideas of its competitors?

We are lost in that nether world between DOS and Commander Data, between a computer that only the cognoscenti can operate, and a computer that operates in ordinary language so seamlessly that it is, for all intents and purposes, conscious.

Wrong about everything

Republican Inflation Paranoia Is Political Suicide - Bloomberg

It's really amazing that so many can literally be wrong about everything. Well, with one exception, which gives me hope.

The unnamed "Republican politicians" who have been whipping up fears of inflation, in the face of inflation rates well below the Fed's too-low target level.

Consumers who, following Faux "Fear-O-Vision" News' constant rants, actually believe that inflation is high.

The idea that a gold standard economy is desirable to anyone at all.

But what gives me hope is this:

The third and biggest risk is that Republicans would eventually gain power and then impose an excessively tight policy. Errors of this sort have in the past proved disastrous - - not only economically but also, for conservatives, politically. Excessive tightness by the Federal Reserve made the New Deal possible in the 1930s.

Yes, we need for the Über Wingnuts to actually get what they want, destroy what's left of the economy, and make it crystal clear what they really want- a feudal society of powerless serfs beholden to them for the very air they choke on.

As long as that happens before democratic governance is completely destroyed, I can hope the people will finally understand that the short-term goals of the richest Americans are not in the best interests of the rest of the country.

Gotta follow this one

Mythbusting 101: Organic Farming > Conventional Agriculture | Science Sushi, Scientific American Blog Network

I actually can't get past the misuse of the actual word "organic." It's one of many words that actually means something, and has come to mean "Smurfy" through persistent misuse.

In chemistry, and organic substance is one in which carbon is covalently bound to hydrogen. In geology and biology, it means that a substance or material came from a living thing.

Neither of these definitions means, or even implies, that these substances are good for you. (Socrates, meat hemlock) The deadliest poisons known are mostly organic, and naturally occurring.

Look, I'm all for being environmentally responsible. But when the word becomes meaningless, it's just another marketing gimmick.

You want to be environmentally responsible? Then advocate policies that will reduce the human birthrate worldwide to fewer than one child per woman on average. The biggest environmental insult facing the world's ecosystems is the simple fact that there are 1000 times too many human beings on the planet.

Little bit o' dis, little bit o' dat

The U.S. economy does better under Democratic presidents — is it just luck?

But what does it really mean?

"We're not anti-anybody."

Dolan Says Church Is ‘Caricatured’ as Antigay - NYTimes.com

You can be whatever you like, but if you want to do something I don't like, you can't do that. Wanting to do naughty things is perfectly normal. Doing naughty things will get ya eternity in Hell.

I suppose a simple solution is too much to ask for?

U.S. businesses alarmed by Senate plan on corporate taxes - The Washington Post

Why on Earth can't they just eliminate corporate taxes altogether, and make all personal income "ordinary" income? Corporations would be expected to pay their investors, or reinvest in their business. Investors would pay taxes on their personal income. And not at the minuscule post-Reagan rate, they would pay taxes on earnings like any other flesh-and-blood person.

And by "all income," I do mean to include inheritance. The current $5 million exclusion could be preserved. The conservative claim that it's all money that has "already been taxed" is an outright lie. In fact, the vast majority of the money inherited by individuals is unrealized capital gains.

No program of their own...

...Or at least none they'll admit to. So their only strategy is to keep anybody else from succeeding.

Rooting for Failure - NYTimes.com

Th reality, of course, is that they do have a program. They want to make sure that all the mistakes other people make have dire consequences, so they can self-righteously proclaim that it's their own fault they're poor. They want to enforce their own brand of religious bigotry, but scream bloody murder when the traditions of others are afforded some respect.

But most of all, they want to make sure that the idle rich pay no taxes on their ill gotten gains.

Best in the world, except for all the others.

The U.S. Health Care System Is Terrible, In 1 Enraging Chart

Or, how to spend more and get less: Hint private enterprise and competition don't work in health care economics the way they do in, say, toaster economics.

Not even close

Americans think John F. Kennedy was one of our greatest presidents. He wasn’t.

"It tells us a great deal about the meaning of John F. Kennedy in our history that liberals and conservatives alike are eager to pronounce him as one of their own," [E. J.] Dionne notes. 

I'd argue it tells us more about the role of presentation over substance in the media and the public mind. In fact, I'd argue that the reason Kennedy is highly regarded is exactly the same reason Reagan is highly regarded.

To sumarize the article:

• the Cuban Missile Crisis was his fault
• the Bay of Pigs invasion (which precipitated the missile crisis) was his fault
• he escalated in Vietnam
• he backed a coup that put Baathists in power in Iraq
• he required tremendous pressure to do anything about civil rights
• and he never really passed domestic legislation of consequence

Besides the things in the article, he also started cutting top marginal tax rates. He didn't make up the "rising tide" line, but it's something only a rich person would say. If you can't afford a boat, a rising tide leaves you stuck in the mud, drowning.

From the "If natural selection is real..."

...then why hasn't Faux and Friends dropped dead of teh stoopid?" archives:
Daily Kos: Gettysburg Address 'outrage' provides handy checklist of stupidest people in America

One note: Sarcasm is wasted on these people. They are unable to detect obvious hoaxes because their own beliefs are so completely full of crap.

Interesting, but flawed

Are We Alone in the Universe? - NYTimes.com

So Paul Davies throws (deserved) cold water on the hope that we should encounter intelligent life estimate of how many "Earthlike" planets astronomers say are out there.

As he points out, just because conditions are like they were on Earth at some time in the past doesn't make it inevitable that life will have arisen in a majority of those cases.

But then he makes almost the same error. He says that since intelligent life on Earth has arisen by natural selection, and that life elsewhere must logically evolve as well*, then once life appears, it's only a matter of time before intelligent life evolves.

Sorry. Nope. The only thing that natural selection increases is fitness. If, through some accidental set of circumstances, increased intelligence results in higher fitness, then intelligence might arise. But if anything, I regard that as much less sure than the likelihood that some kind of life will arise.

* Life must be subject to natural selection, because logically, natural selection is inevitable when imperfectly reproducing entities compete for resources. A number of experiments bear this out.

This is the best health care system in the world....

...except for most of the others.

From Ezra Klein's Wonkbook email:

The airwaves are alive with impassioned protests against the idea that anyone might change a market that relies on discriminating against the old, the sick, the female, and people who don't read the fine print of insurance policies. This is the best health care in the world, you know.

And here are the statistics.

 Their data compares the U.S. to Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom on a host of health-system measures, both objective (like diabetes amputations) and subjective (like satisfaction). The results are a reminder of why reform is so badly needed. 

Start with cost. Americans spend 17.7 percent of GDP on health care. No one else spends even 12 percent. Let's make that more concrete: If Americans only spent 12 percent of GDP on health care we would have saved $893 billion in 2012. 

The reason isn't that Americans get more health care than anyone else. We have more uninsured than anyone else. We have fewer physicians per capita than anyone but the Japanese. We go to the doctor less often than anyone but the Swiss. We don't have more hospital beds than other developed countries, and when we do go to the hospital, we don't stay longer.

But we do pay more for the privilege. The average hospital stay costs more than $21,000 in the U.S. It costs only $8,363 in France.  

My WTF moment for the day

Can we get rid of inflation and recessions forever?

Sounds to me like this guy is going through all sorts of monetary gyrations just to avoid admitting that there is a time for fiscal policy to be used to stimulate the economy.

Self control, or perception of time and reliability?

You’re So Self-Controlling - NYTimes.com

This is an extremely interesting article. Apparently, whether you are willing to forgo an immediate reward for greater future gain depends on how you perceive the real expectation of that future gain.

So if I'm thinking about trying to lose weight, and I'm offered a tempting high-fat meal, I'm not just thinking "that high-fat meal will cause me to gain weight, and I won't get the reward of losing weight." I'm also taking into account the probability that I really will lose the weight anyway.

The other thing I find interesting, though (and this is completely speculation on my part) is that I suspect that some people will read the article and say "That's an interesting insight into how the brain works," and others will engage in some kind of moralizing on the virtue of austerity or some such thing. The second group of people are more interested in scolding reality into fitting their expectations (And how's that working for you?) and the first group is more interested in seeing how the world works.

It's never been about the deficits

Or we have always been at war with Eastasia, or something...

The Plot Against France - NYTimes.com

Seems those self-appointed police of the morality play that passes for conservative economic thought don't like France. Gee! There's a surprise!

S&P downgraded France's bond ratings, and the markets don't seem to care. They still pay near record low interest on their bonds.

So what’s going on here? The answer is that S.& P.’s action needs to be seen in the context of the broader politics of fiscal austerity. And I do mean politics, not economics. For the plot against France — I’m being a bit tongue in cheek here, but there really are a lot of people trying to bad-mouth the place — is one clear demonstration that in Europe, as in America, fiscal scolds don’t really care about deficits. Instead, they’re using debt fears to advance an ideological agenda. And France, which refuses to play along, has become the target of incessant negative propaganda.

And contrary to the expectation of those champions of everybody else's fiscal responsibility:

According to standard estimates, French workers were actually a bit more productive than their German counterparts a dozen years ago — and guess what, they still are.

But if France is doing OK, why the uproar?

Here’s a clue: Two months ago Olli Rehn, Europe’s commissioner for economic and monetary affairs — and one of the prime movers behind harsh austerity policies — dismissed France’s seemingly exemplary fiscal policy. Why? Because it was based on tax increases rather than spending cuts — and tax hikes, he declared, would “destroy growth and handicap the creation of jobs.”

In other words, never mind what I said about fiscal discipline, you’re supposed to be dismantling the safety net. 

France's real sin is in having a healthy economy without taking money from poor people and giving it to a handful of rich people.

 If all this sounds familiar to American readers, it should. U.S. fiscal scolds turn out, almost invariably, to be much more interested in slashing Medicare and Social Security than they are in actually cutting deficits. Europe’s austerians are now revealing themselves to be pretty much the same. France has committed the unforgivable sin of being fiscally responsible without inflicting pain on the poor and unlucky. And it must be punished.

 

Doonesbury tackles intelligent design. - Born Again Pagan Cartoons

Doonesbury tackles intelligent design. - Born Again Pagan Cartoons

"But that's 'microevolution' so it doesn't count! It's only real evolution if a goldfish turns into an canary!"

So now a Tea Eucharist? (or whatever)

Conservative U.S. Catholics Feel Left Out of the Pope’s Embrace - NYTimes.com

First, the press always gets religious ideas wrong, so I wouldn't take their theological observations seriously. (In fact, I don't take anyone's theological observations seriously)

Second, as I understand it, almost all of these "controversial" things the Pope has said actually do not represent any change at all in doctrine, they merely emphasize a different part than has been emphasized before. People don't do nuance, and the press is especially guilty.

That said, I am rubbing my hands with glee at the prospect that extreme American conservatives will protest that the Pope isn't wingnutty enough for them. They have already formed an elite suicide squad in the Republican Party.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUHk2RSMCS8

Each side has their problems...

... but if they ever agree, watch out!

Missing the Bad Old Days - NYTimes.com

Back to business as usual? Maybe, but only when it's bad for the people and good for the Congresscritters.

See, this is what I like about the farm bill. The agriculture parts harken back to the golden era when Republicans and Democrats could work together to promote stupid ideas that benefited the special interests in their districts. 

One term better defined at least

Far-Off Planets Like the Earth Dot the Galaxy - NYTimes.com

So there may be 40 billion habitable planets in the galaxy. Depending, of course on what you call "habitable."

But that comes closer at least to nailing down one of the variables in the Drake Equation, which I still view as a WAG (wild-ass-guess) multiplied by Who Knows? multiplied by Not Bloody Likely and allowing for the accelerated rotation of the status quo....

How I learned to quit worrying and love the Miocene

How the world is failing at its climate goals, in one giant chart

I can't get too excited about this, for the simple reason that no matter what 8 billion people do, they will foul the nest so badly that continued survival becomes impossible.

We can only hope that those of us who are now living (and sadly, also responsible for the mess) aren't around to see the worst of it.

Blame the recession? No.

The Great Recession may have crushed America’s economic potential

Blame the tepid response, and Republican foot-dragging.

The paper offers a depressing portrait of where the economy stands nearly six years after the onset of recession, and amounts to a damning indictment of U.S. policymakers. Their upshot: The United States's long-term economic potential has been diminished by the fact that policymakers have not done more to put people back to work quickly. Our national economic potential is now a whopping 7 percent below where it was heading at the pre-2007 trajectory, the authors find.

Or maybe blame idiotic economic theory  ideology: (interjections in brackets are mine)

There is a tendency  [among supply-siders, e.g ideologues] to think of a nation’s “aggregate supply,” or potential output, as something that exists outside the realm of influence by short-term economic policy. The economic potential, after all, comes from the education of its people, the richness of its land, the quality of its machines — all things that a central banker can’t do much of anything to influence.

In other words, supply is “exogenous” to a policymaker’s economic model. But that may turn on its head in circumstances like the present. They write:

The implications for monetary policy may differ sharply from what is commonly presumed because much of the supply-side damage could be an endogenous response to weak aggregate demand. [Ya THINK!!????] If so, then an activist monetary policy may be able to limit the amount of supply-side damage that occurs initially, and potentially may also help to reverse at a later stage such damage as does occur. By themselves, such considerations militate toward a more aggressive stance of policy and help to buttress the case for a highly aggressive policy response to a financial crisis and associated recession.

In other words, when there is weak demand and people remain out of work, the cyclical downturn can become a structural downturn. That means that policymakers should move particularly aggressively to keep that from happening.

As I have been saying, 1937 all over again.Inadequate response, followed by chickening out over TEH DEFIZITTZZZ!

Here be monsters

Oarfish Offer Chance to Study an Elusive Animal Long Thought a Monster - NYTimes.com

Very cool!

Snowden did not betray the American people

Snowden Asks U.S. to Stop Treating Him Like a Traitor - NYTimes.com

I still like what Mr. Snowden's father said.

The elder Snowden said

"If folks want to classify him as a traitor, in fact, he has betrayed his government. 
"But I don't believe that he's betrayed the people of the United States."

And I think that's exactly right. When the government systematically breaks the law, whistle-blowers are not betraying the people.

Why I hope Hillary doesn't run.

If Hillary Rodham Clinton passes in 2016, which Democrats run? The Fix ranks the tiers. - The Washington Post

So if Hillary doesn't run there's a chance that the Democrats will run an actual liberal for the first time since Lyndon Johnson

More from the Rockefeller Republican in the White House

If it comes to a choice between Social Security cuts and sequestration, then keep sequestration. After all, it's the only program that has been successful at cutting bloated "defense" spending.

Would the White House accept a budget deal without taxes? Maybe!

Once again, we have one side saying 2+2 = 5, and the other side saying
2+2 = 9 . I don't see much virtue in compromise between those positions.

Gonna be a Mental Toss Flycoon

Vision of Prairie Paradise Troubles Some Montana Ranchers - NYTimes.com

“It’s a misnomer that we’re paying top dollar,” said Sean Gerrity, the president of the American Prairie Reserve. “There are some properties we’re interested in, but they’re currently priced at above market value and we can’t go there.”

OK, look, I support your idea. I think it's great. Some day I hope to be able to visit. But PLEASE! get a dictionary and look up "misnomer."

Well DUH!

In Fed and Out, Many Now Think Inflation Helps - NYTimes.com

Inflation has been below the Fed's target rate most of the time for the last decade. That is bad for most Americans. The dollars that bought the house I grew up in, for instance, were greatly devalued over the next 30 years by inflation, making a higher standard of living possible for my family even while paying back the mortgage. But college graduates now face very high interest rates on student loans, while not able to expect increases in pay as they pay these loans back.

The article I cite above says that the Fed may increase the inflation rate, and this is what I have been saying they should do for quite a few years. The trouble is, people are swayed by the crocodile tears shed about those poor people on fixed incomes. (wait! I thought the same people making that argument have eliminated pensions, haven't they?)

They also buy in to the fairy tale that higher corporate profits cause corporations to hire more people. If that were true, then as corporate profits skyrocketed over the last couple of decades, they should have been hiring just about anybody with a pulse. And yet labor force participation rates are falling.

And they also say that inflation gives corporations the opportunity to cut wages. That's certainly true, but it's also true that cutting real wages over the last 35 years or so is what ultimately caused this mess. When things like this are true:

 The typical worker has had stagnating wages for a long time, despite enjoying some wage growth during the economic recovery of the late 1990s. While productivity grew 80% between 1979 and 2009, the hourly wage of the median worker grew by only 10.1%, with all of this wage growth occurring from 1996 to 2002, reflecting the strong economic recovery of the late 1990s.

then workers have less to spend, and firms sell less. They may make higher profits by cutting workers' real wages, but those profits do not lead to hiring when nobody's buying.

So overall I'm encouraged that it's just possible that the Fed's economists (especially if Yellen is confirmed) may get their collective heads out of the but of 1970s stagflation, even if the major reform needed, a stronger bargaining position for labor, is not part of the package.

"The Representative from Texas" has come to be the new intellect-based insult.

Barton vs. Barton in a 'monkey court' | MSNBC

Maybe they read 1984 and really thought the news was being scoured of their past idiocies?

What I've been saying for quite a while

If low tax rates on top earners caused economic growth, why has economic growth fallen since top tax rates were cut?

And the top tax rate reported is not in fact what most of the very rich really pay, since their income is taxed differently than earned income.

Why the 1% should pay tax at 80% | Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty | Comment is free | theguardian.com

I firmly believe that taxing the top earners at a much higher rate gives them an incentive to make sure that their employees are well paid and productive, and not just treat them like "human capital." After all, if the rich pay a very high marginal tax on very high earnings, they have less incentive to grab a very large part of the earnings of a firm, leaving the workers with little.

Drug Widens Immunity to Flu | The Scientist Magazine®

I really, really, reeeealy wish I had taken immunology and developmental biology when I was an undergraduate.

This is just too cool.

Drug Widens Immunity to Flu | The Scientist Magazine®

Fixing Congress

In the last Congressional election, there were fewer votes cast for Republicans than for Democrats. Polls show approval ratings lower for Congress than for bedbugs. Everybody complains, but it never changes (at least not for the better). And most of the problem is that it's always somebody else's representative we don't like.

As things stand now, we are not fairly or equally represented by our Congress. Because the number of representatives was capped at 435 in 1929, states with high populations, or states with populations not quite enough to get another representative, get shortchanged. The only thing the Constitution says is that a single representative will not represent fewer than 30,000 people. The limit of 435 is a simple act of Congress, and could be changed by Congress.

As more and more people move to more urban centers, the bulk of the population is becoming underrepresented. But some small states are underrepresented as well. Montana and Delaware are first and third on the list of People per Representative, presumably because they don't quite have enough people in them to get two representatives.

So here's my suggestion: Set the number of people per representative at half of the population of the least populous state. There will still be inequities, but not as great in magnitude.

Trouble is, that means we'd have to have about 1300 Congresscritters.

A possible solution

Of course Congressional hearings are more about grandstanding and speech making than fact finding. And of course politicians only lie when their lips are moving.

So maybe we can solve a bunch of problems by placing all committee members under oath at the beginning of the hearings. They could ask any questions they wanted to, but if they make statements of "fact," (such as the whopper that parks did not close in previous shutdowns) they could be imprisoned for perjury.

Oh wait! I forgot. Lying to Congress only matters if you are lying about a blowjob, right?

Why did national parks close? Ask the Republicans. - The Washington Post

Student misconceptions

Interesting article about how teacher awareness of student misconceptions, along with teacher subject area knowledge, affects student achievement.

I was particularly struck by this:

For the strong misconception items, the low-achieving students learned very little, whatever the teacher knowledge. For high-achieving students, knowledge mattered, and they were most likely to learn when their teacher had both subject-matter knowledge and knew the misconceptions their students likely held (KoSM in the graph).

So low-achieving students are not swayed from their misconceptions, no matter how much the teacher knows. I wonder if that might have something to do with cultural rejection of intellectualism by low achievers. IOW, they may say to themselves "Who does that egg-head think he is? Everybody knows [insert misconception here]."

What science teachers need to know (that isn’t about science)

Missed opportunity

Of course there's no way they could have known ahead of time, but the Republicans missed an opportunity they'd have had if they had waited until the rollout of the ACA's nifty new webisite. (You know, the one Jon Stewart was talking about when he challenged Kathleen Sibelius to a race; he'd download every movie ever made, and she's sign up for Obamacare)

(See this, for instance)

But while the completely unsurprising technical SNAFU unfolded, the chattering class was fully engaged in the hostage-taking on Capital Hill.

I suspect that this points to the Republican's greatest fear about Obamacare-- that it will succeed, and succeed spectacularly. Too bad they undervalue cynicism these days. I could'a told 'em.

Is China going to overtake us in research?

This is interesting. Just spending a lot on R&D doesn't guarantee you'll get much out of it, especiallyIs Chine going to overtake us in research? when the quality of the researchers is not up to snuff.

The U.S. isn’t about to lose its top spot in science — despite Congress’ best efforts

Study: Congress’s budget battles have cost the economy $700 billion so far

There's something very important to notice about this article. I reads very much like it was written for Faux News.

First, a study is published, and the immediate reaction is Whoa! Wait a minute! Now I'm all in favor of that attitude to press releases from partisan groups. It's really too bad reporters don't do this more often.

But the only economist who is mentioned by name is Krugman, who is likely to be dismissed out of hand by Faux's target audience. Then they start with the Faux News stock source for truly authoritative quotes, "Some People." If they can't get a quote from "Some People," they'll call "The people I talk to."

And in looking at the cuts in government spending and their contribution to economic losses, they still don't quite seem to understand that "the government" is not quite the same thing as "the federal government."

Study: Congress’s budget battles have cost the economy $700 billion so far

Pure, simple, absolute corruption of the worst kind.

The rules were changed so that only the majority leader can end the shutdown.
The GOP's little rule change they hoped you wouldn't notice - YouTube

Can someone please tell me...

...what's the important difference between the ACA and the 1993 Republican plan?
Summary Of A 1993 Republican Health Reform Plan - Kaiser Health News

Of course I mean except for "Ai! Ai! Obama! Obama is come!"

Spaceflight Now | Breaking News | Lunar orbiter set for long-distance laser data linkup

I saw this one go up. Even from about 60 miles away, it was exciting.

Spaceflight Now | Breaking News | Lunar orbiter set for long-distance laser data linkup

Is the shutdown really SCOTUS' fault?

Here's an interesting point:

If it weren't for the Citizen's United decision, it would not have been possible for a few dozen ultra wealthy families to derail the entire government.

Idiot reporter gets it wrong In other news, water is wet.

Rule 1: Reporters are idiots.
Rule 2: any concept, no matter how concise and useful, will be hopelessly screwed up if "pop culture" get hold of it

From Ed Brayton's Dispatches From the Culture Wars:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/dispatches/2013/10/13/save-us-from-ignorant-reporters/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Is Economics a "science?"

There has been some discussion of whether economics is "really" a science.

On the question of whether economics is a science, I say that a discipline is a "science" to the extent that it's practitioners are acting scientifically. When they accept or reject theories because of ideology, they are being unscientific. When they accept of reject theories because of empirical fact, they are being scientific.

Fields such as medicine, history, sociology, psychology, and economics can be science, or not, depending on how they are practiced. And people in established sciences can certainly act unscientifically. When that happens, it is up to the rest of the field to enforce scientific ways of thought. This is the role of peer review.

As to whether economics is or is not currently being practiced scientifically, this quote says it all:

 "At no point was this rejection of Keynesianism driven by superior empirical performance; it was all about the principle, about refusing to incorporate anything that wasn’t derived from maximization all the way."

Greetings.

The "Chinese Room" is a thought experiment by John Searle used to argue against the idea that a computer could actually possess true artificial intelligence. In this thought experiment, an English speaker is in a room with Chinese symbols and complex instructions. When someone passes a question through a slit in the door in Chinese, this person, who does not himself speak Chinese, is able to follow the instructions, put symbols together, and answer the question.

Searle claims that since the person does not understand Chinese, then a computer similarly cannot truly understand questions put to it.

I believe  that this is an error. The person in the room is not "the computer." That person is only the processor. The room as a whole is the computer. And (assuming that the "Chinese Room" can pass a reasonable test of consciousness) the room as a whole does understand Chinese.

I am not a trained philosopher, nor a computer scientist. I am a science teacher whose primary background and interest is biology. Naturally, that means I teach chemistry. So maybe I'm the Chinese room, and maybe I'm the person in it. Who really knows? Do you take the Red Pill, or the Blue Pill?

This blog will contain my discussions of scientific, educational, economic, and political issues, from the point of view of someone who knows about enough to get himself into trouble. I may or may not have much time for extensive research beyond a link or two. I may or may not know what I am talking about. But I do hope always to think as a scientist. By that I mean that the real world is out there, and is the final authority. Disagree with me if you like, but lets try to be reasonably respectful, of each other as well as of the real world.

As I once told biology students who wanted to argue about evolution, feel free, but it's always about the evidence. If you have questions about the evidence, ask away. If you're just rejecting scientific conclusions because you don't like them, sorry, but the real world doesn't much care what you do or do not like.

I am an avid homebrewer, husband and father, and a grandfather. I love the natural world, but seldom have the time to do what I would love the most, just wander around in a natural setting and take in the wonder of life. I am a materialist in the philosophical sense. I see no evidence for supernatural phenomena, and to be completely honest, I'm not sure just what could count as evidence of non-material things anyway.

As my students always complain, I have already talked too long for an introductory post.