My Obamist Friends: Pop-Sociology Updated 9/16/12

Another bad jobs report the morning right after President Obama’s triumphant speech. He couldn’t know yesterday about the dismal job report. Or, if he did have advanced knowledge, it did not make any difference. His declarations bear little systematic relationship to reality. The President was triumphant about what he is going to do next. Why not? He received the Nobel Peace Prize to reward his future achievements after all. His speech last night contained striking numbers pulled out of thin air, completely imaginary achievements, and taking credit for saying “yes” to the obvious (attacking Bin Laden in his lair). The speech was also very well delivered. It was more coherent than anything the Republicans gave at their convention (with the possible exception of Condoleeza Rice’s rousing patriotic speech). Republicans want to fix things. That gives you laundry lists. Barack Obama has a leftist, “no more injustice,” Third Worlder, “government-will- fix-it” vision. It was developed over the sixty years since World War Two by the international Left. Of course, it’s coherent.

It looks like this race is going to be between well-spoken histrionics backed by gut-feeling, on the one hand, and rationality and facts, on the other hand. Bad forebodings for me after brief conversations with three people in their late twenties.

One, a guy I have know since he was in elementary school, is an artist, a painter who actually paints, paints a lot. He sells some of his work but it’s not enough to support him. He lives off little. He has a small disability pension from the federal government. He is one of the able disabled, you might say. I can’t say more because I like him. His mother is your straightforward State of California bureaucrat. She works for a state agency I would abolish after one minute of serious thought and analysis if I had a chance. His father works in the real world but, like many others, he seems to be having a tough time right now.

One evening, I am buying the artist a beer and I ask him casually who he is going to vote for. Obama, of course, he replies. Why? I ask him. His reply has two parts. First, the government does not do much anyway. Obama has done fine with the minimal job of leading it. Second, he says, he looked at Romney and he couldn’t possibly vote “for someone like” him. In an instant, I see Romney with my young friend’s eyes: He wears a suit even when he does not wear a suit. When he actually wears a suit, he also wears a tie. The tie is not even elegantly tied. It’s a matter of style. My artist friend need not go further. He can’t vote for someone pokey, uncool. Romney is pokey; Obama isn’t.

There is an attractive young woman I know only a little. She lives in a smaller town in Northern California. I like her beyond her attractiveness. (I often have strong preferences in people. These things are mysterious. If I were not so sturdily anchored in rationality, I would believe this woman and I we were something to each other in a previous life. Maybe I am just fantasizing, of course. I am just trying to tell you that I am far from hostile to her.) She is a struggling student who works at mediocre jobs to support herself, I think. I have reasons to believe she has moral courage and independence of mind. (She wouldn’t even know how I know.)

My beautiful acquaintance posts on her Facebook, “Obama all the way.” I ask her why. She sends me a private message saying two clear things. First, Obama is pro-woman, Second she likes what he has done so far. First answer makes perverse sense: The rumor of a Republican “war on women” works for some. The Republican rigid anti-abortion platform does not help. Who is going to explain that party platforms are not binding? Who is going to explain that abortion is a state issue, that a US president’s position on the issue does not matter? Who is going to explain that Republican rank-and file differ little from the majority of Americans on abortion, that they believe what President Clinton said best: Abortion should be rare, legal and safe.

As for her second answer, I ask her what Obama has accomplished that she likes. She gives not answer, not even the obvious: health care reform. She is not embarrassed by her lack of response, I am guessing. Her non-answer resembles my artist friend’s answer: President Obama has done well enough at whatever he has done; no need to go into detail.

She has sent me a private message because, I am guessing, she would rather not her friends were aware that she even knows someone like me. Talking to me is a kind of slumming. Is there any other interpretation? Am I missing something?

Finally, I have the briefest of exchanges with the young woman who checks my membership at the gym. The truth is that I ambush her. She is curious about why I am sitting at her counter taking long notes (for this blog, actually). I explain briefly then I ask her abruptly: Who are you going to vote for? She volunteers that she is ignorant of politics but that she feels she has no moral right not to vote. Then she says she will vote for Obama. Why? Because of his “family values” she replies. I am guessing she refers to the attractive picture of Obama with his pretty wife and daughters on television much of the time. (I am just guessing. I can’t know for sure.) She admits readily she knows nothing about Romney’s family values. Of course, she did begin by asserting that she was ignorant.

I am underwhelmed by the experience of communicating with these three Obamists. There is so much to do and, at the same time, it’s so little. It’s only a little that nobody, but nobody seems to be doing. Here is what I would do if I had a chance. I would tell them this:

8%+ unemployment (and probably underestimated) is very high. Unemployment impoverishes everyone, not just the unemployed themselves.

2% Gross Domestic Product (GDP) economic growth rate is miserable for America . (In France, it would be an occasion for celebration; another story, obviously.) The dollar someone does not earn today is lost forever. That dollar will not have children, ever.

When unemployment is high and economic growth slow, women are among the first to suffer. Poverty is anti-women.

Both unemployment and low economic growth ( GDP growth ) respond to specific government policies. Any government that does not do what needs to be done is deeply stupid or criminal. (One does not exclude the other.)

The nation is obligated to support increasing large numbers of older people. It does not have the money to do so. Something has to be done.

Current high unemployment and low economic growth are pulling back this country to the level of much poorer countries and possibly toward economic disaster of Greek magnitude. (Explain Greek disaster.) There is no guarantee anywhere that the US cannot become a Third World country. It could even happen in a short time, in less than the lifetime of my younger friends. A high national debt will do that (explain national debt). Unfulfilled Social Security and Medicare obligations impose and even worse burden on the next generations, on people who are now I their late twenties, precisely

That would take an hour or so. Then, if I had another hour with them, I would try to explain what a corporation is. That would be a challenge. Every time I say in front of young people that I own parts of several oil companies and of several large pharmaceutical corporations they dismiss my words. That’s because I don’t seem rich. The “rich “ own corporations. (Would I make this up?)

My Obama-friends friends don’t know that the guy who made the best speech at the convention urging them to trust Obama again was himself impeached for lying under oath. If they have heard of it, they think it’s only a rumor.

As a teacher, I feel terrible, guilty by omission.

I wish I could vote for my neighbor, Clint Eastwood. He speaks more clearly than anyone in politics today. He does it with a great economy of words. As he said,  Obama is a hoax.

Updated 9/16

Nine days later. The reader who said in a comment that “reproductive rights” (abortion rights)  are being eroded state by state did not respond to my challenge to give instances, or an instance.  I don’t read much into this absence. People are busy. They have lives.

I do read something however in the lack of any other response to my simple challenge except one. Dr Terry, my most faithful liberal critic, also a professor well versed in empirical research, referred us to a something in the Huffington Post. The quality of this response speaks for itself.

The original commentator illustrated a general phenomenon: The overwhelmingly liberal media makes noises about this or that form of oppression from conservatives. The noises are so persistent that regular people end up believing that they correspond to something in the real world. People are too busy to check much of anything. They rely on media which they think wrongly to be objective. This is a source of sadness for me and of frustration. I do what I can but it’s not even a drop in the bucket. I wonder what it would take to cause the main liberal media to lose their undeserved credibility. I wonder what will happen that might remedy the fact that schools don’t train students to be critical. It would have to begin in the fourth grade or so. Instead children, and later adult students, are trained into mindless conformity.

Illegal Immigration: Bad Faith and Mental Confusion

When I have insomnia, I watch the news and news commentaries in a language other than English. Looking at the same object from different angles makes you smarter, I think. So, the less I sleep, the smarter I become, and the smarter you become, indirectly (to a very small extent, I realize).

Early in the morning, there is a long interactive discussion about immigration on Univisión’s “Despierta America “(“Wake up America”) First, comes a badly illustrated, falsely descriptive jeremiad by a Hispanic immigration advocate. He is what I called in academia, a “professional Mexican.” I don’t know what he is getting at. He is not doing anything useful. He only perpetuates a sort of 1970s exploitation narrative that does not even make me feel young. The advocate complains bitterly of course, that today or yesterday, several hundred illegal immigrants, presumably all with a rap-sheet, have been gathered nationwide for deportation. The charming and beautiful anchorpersons play along. Everybody refers to “immigration.” No one ever says, “illegal” immigration or even “undocumented” immigrants. Next comes an immigration lawyer. He takes questions on-air from callers who want help to fix their status as people who entered this country illegally, some, several times. Still, there is no reference to illegal immigration in general; the topic is still simply “immigration.” The show remains on “immigration, “ no qualifier. It makes you wonder if there are any people from Spanish-speaking countries of the Western Hemisphere who ever entered this country legally.

The confusion between immigrant and illegal immigrant in this largest of Spanish-language television networks in the whole world, Univisión, constitutes a massive exercise in collective bad faith. It’s not going to help in the next political stage. No wonder conservative stay pissed off. No wonder their anger at illegal Hispanic immigrants sometimes comes to resemble anger at Hispanics in general.

Speaking of conservatives and of their distaste for illegal immigration, it does not help that they are confused on several important points. The fact that this country does not seem to be able to control its borders, the fact that its official immigration policies do not serve our interests, that’s all bad enough. We, conservatives, don’t need, in addition, to entertain and to propagate false notions of the burden immigrants, legal and illegal impose of us.

First, let me repeat that immigrants earn slightly more money on the average than the native-born. In our economic system, this means straightforwardly that immigrants contribute more, on the average than the native-born. Second, there is a widespread idea that illegal immigrants (illegal) consume government services while they don’t pay taxes. However common this belief, it does not withstand the most superficial examination. Here is why: It’s probably true that illegals avoid paying the federal income tax and also what state income taxes there are. That would be because they fear that filing government paper entails a risk of detection and of deportation. They routinely exaggerate the risk but it’s understandable.

Illegal immigrants however cannot avoid any indirect taxes or most other taxes, be they property taxes (that support schools), sale taxes, or excise taxes, including both federal and state tax on fuels. You might think that’s not much until you remember that 46 or 47 % of Americans do not pay any federal income tax. It’s likely that the % of Americans not paying state income tax is identical or, even higher. Thus, only illegal immigrants who situate themselves somewhere near the top 50% income bracket or within it would have to pay income tax at all if they filed. How many can that be? Think it through, don’t dismiss the thought out of hand.

What am I telling you?

It’s likely that illegal immigrant pay something close to their normal share of all taxes. I mean of the taxes they would have to pay if they were legal immigrants or US citizens. Not worth getting into a tizzy over, I say!

I know I have not dealt with payroll taxes, including taxes that support Social Security and Medicare. It’s likely that, by and large, illegal immigrants don’t pay those either. Reason is fear of detection again (see above). I know what you mean. I am with you. I wish they would pay those, right now, or at least, tomorrow. Please, follow through with this thought also. You will be amazed.

Bad faith, intellectual dishonesty on the one side; utter confusion fed by angry indignation on the other. It does not look good unless some conservatives will come to their senses. (Hint: The Wall Street Journal does a good job on the topic of immigration but it’s doing it so quietly hardly anyone is paying attention.)

 

PLEASE, THINK OF FORWARDING TO YOUR CONSERVATIVE FRIENDS.

Scattered Thoughts: A Bribe; Rush Limbaugh caught; Women’s Continued Inferiority; Global Warming Consensus at Last.

I am getting back, one month at a time, a little of the money the federal government confiscated from me throughout my working life. I am talking about Social Security, of course. This year, like last year, there will be no SS cost of living raise. Frankly, I don’t see why there should be. Nevertheless, the President and the senior Democrat leadership want to send me $250 as a compensation for not giving me a raise.

The decision to “adjust” or not is made yearly based on a specific way to to measure inflation, in place for many years. You don’t throw away the tape measure because you don’t like the measurement. It’s this kind of self-indulgent thinking that put us in the trou de caca ( French) we are in. Second, who else gets automatic income inflation adjustment except for a few union members who need to get a life anyway? Third, if you think about it, it’s hard to find an economic category less affected by the current crisis than “seniors.” Most of them are out of mortgage trouble. They don’t have children in school to suffer reductions (if any) in educational expenditures, except for a handful of Hollywood actors on speed. A handful of seniors get laid, as I said, but most seniors can’t get laid off since they are already retired.

President Obama and the Democrat losers want to give me a $250 bribe to buy my November vote. Pathetic! If it passes, I vow to spend the money entirely on tea-party Republican candidates. If the money comes to late for that, I will just send it to Sarah (Palin).

The other day, around 10/10/10, I caught Rush Limbaugh making a big geopolitical mistake on air. It’s a rare event; Limbaugh is usually very well informed. He confused South Sudan, which is about to split from Sudan after a referendum, with Darfur in the west of the country. The slow genocide continues in Darfur. Here is the summary: The Islamist National Congress, in power in the capital, believes it can enslave the southerners because they are not Muslims. It thinks it can enslave the people of the west because they are not Arabs (though Muslim).

Men have more upper body strength than women, almost everyone agrees and they run faster. Often, when you make comparisons between well-defined categories, it’s more useful to look at extremes than at averages. For one thing, there are always real people at the extremes while the “average woman,” for example may not exist; she is just an arithmetic calculation.

The Wall Street Journal has a feature on 10/14/1 about women who run marathons. As a rule, they are given 30 minute handicap over men. This means that the first woman who arrives 30mn after he (invariably male) winner is considered an equal. It also means, in theory, that if a woman arrives 25 minutes after the first man, she should logically be declared the winner. The piece in the WSJ points out that in many recent marathons, the fastest woman was only 15 minutes or so behind the fastest man. And the gap is closing

This, to my mind, is a better measure how much faster than women men are. For one thing, the fastest woman and the fastest man are comparable on other, tacit but nevertheless important, dimensions such as dedication to the sport. Female marathon runners who are in the middle of their pack might be less devoted, or more devoted than men who are in the middle of their pack. Fast women are like fast men: They want to get there first. (I am only referring here to women who run fast, not to the other kind of fast women, another topic altogether.)

All this brings me back to a question I have raised before: Why are there very few female bridge Grand Masters when it is likely that more women play bridge, world-wide, than men? The feminists among you, if any, might get cheap thrills at my expense by showing me either that there are many female Grand Masters or that fewer women than men play bridge. Rough figures will be fine.

And, of course, I have to ask why women and men still play professional chess in different categories. Is it possible that the best women have less than the best men of whatever it takes to succeed at bridge or at chess? One thing I am certain of is that it’s not upper-body strength.

Some questions have become forbidden, many in academia, for sure. Rationalists must hit political correctness in its disdainful and pious mouth wherever and whenever the occasion presents itself. It clouds judgment in every way.

Global warming upon us: the consensus. Below, a formulation I plagiarize from the current issue of Skeptic magazine (vol 16-1. Irwin Silverman, PhD). I hate myself for not having thought about it first.

Hardly anyone had used the term “climatologist” before the current controversy. And the term covers a variety of realities, in terms of training. Those who give themselves the title are linked mostly by ideology, an apocalyptic ideology. To say that 99% of climatologists agree that there is dangerous, man-made global warming is analogous to stating that 99% of Christian ministers believe in God. No shit!

A Common Conservative Fallacy (Revised 7/24/10; revised again 4/9/12))

I believe folly serves liberals better than it serves conservatives. Our way is the rational way while liberals tend to rely on their gut-feelings and on their sensitive hearts which make them comparatively indifferent to hard facts. That’s why they voted for  Pres. Obama. That’s why many of them still can’t face emotionally the possibility of buyer’s remorse.

It’s the task of every conservative to correct important errors that have found their way into fellow conservatives’ mind. Here is one I hear several times a week, especially from Rush Limbaugh (whom I otherwise like and admire). What’s below is a paraphrase, a distillation of many different but similar statements, from Limbaugh and from others I listen to and read:

“Government does not create jobs.” and, “Government does not create wealth (it just seizes the wealth created by business and transfers it to others.)” Both statements are important and both statements are just false. It’s not difficult to show why.

First, some government actions make jobs possible that would not exist, absent those actions. Bear with me.

Suppose I have a large field of good bottom land. From this land I can easily grow a crop of corn sufficient to feed my family, and our poultry, and our pig, Gaspard. I grow a little more to make pretty good whiskey. I have no reason to grow more corn than this. I forgot to tell you: This is 1820 in eastern Ohio. Now, the government uses taxes (money taken from me and from others under threat of violence, to be sure) to dig and build  a canal that links me and others to the growing urban centers of New York and Pennsylvania. I decide to plant more corn, for sale back East. This growth in my total production works so well that I expand again. Soon, I have to hire a field hand to help me out, After a while, I have two employees.

In the  historically realistic situation I describe, would it not be absurd to declare that the government gets no credit, zero credit for the two new jobs?

Second, it should be obvious that government provides many services such as mail delivery. Also, some of the services private companies supply in this country are supplied elsewhere by a branch of government. They are comparable. Emergency services, ambulance service, is a case in point. Most ambulances are privately owned and operated in the US while most ambulances are government-owned and operated in France. If you have a serious car accident in the US, you or someone calls a certain number and an ambulance arrives to administer first aid and to carry you to a hospital if needed. Exactly the same thing happens in France under similar circumstances.

In both countries, the value of the  service so rendered is entered into the national accounting and it appears in the American Gross Domestic Product for the year (GDP) and in the French GDP, respectively. The GDP thus increases by something like $500. GDP is important because it’s the most common measure of the value of our collective production. When the GDP is up by 3,5 % for a year, it makes every American who knows it happy. When the GDP shrinks by 1%, we all worry and we all feel poorer. If it shrinks at all for two consecutive quarters, you have the conventional definition of a recession and all hell breaks lose, including a rise in unemployment.

Exactly the same is true in France. The government-provided French ambulance service has exactly the same effect on the French GDP.

Now think of this: Is there anyone who believes that the equivalent service supplied in France by a government agency does not have more or less the same value as the American service provided by a private company? Would anyone argue that the ambulance service supplied in France, in most ways identical to the service in America, should not be counted in the French GDP? Clearly, both propositions are absurd.

Same thing for job creation. When the French government agency in charge of ambulances hires an additional ambulance driver, it creates a new job, same as when an American company hires an ambulance driver.

By the way, don’t think my story trivial. “Services” is a poorly defined category. It’s even sometimes too heterogeneous to be useful (not “erogenous,” please pay attention). It includes such things as waitressing, fortune-telling, university teaching, and doing whatever Social Security employees do. Yet it’s good enough for gross purposes. Depending on what you include, last year, “services” accounted for something between 45% and 70% of US GDP. So, if you think services, such as ambulance service, should not be counted, you should know that it means that we are earning collectively about half to three quarters less than we think we do. If memory serves, that means that our standard of living today is about the same as it was in 1950 or even in 1930.

Does this all imply that we should rejoice every time the government expands? The answer is “no,” for three reasons. These three reasons correspond to three questions that conservatives should ask over and over again:

1 Is this service a real service to regular people or is it created only, or largely, to serve the needs of those who provide it, or for frivolous reasons? Some government services fall into this area, not many, I think. Look in the direction of government control, inspection, verification functions. Don’t forget your local government.

Public education looks more and more like a service provided largely or even primarily to give careers to teachers and administrators protected by powerful unions. It does not mean that the real service “education” does not take place, just that it’s often done badly by people who are not the best they could be to provide that particular service

2   Is this particular service better provided by government or by the private sector? Is it so even while the provision of the service requires collecting taxes and then paying out the proceeds to the actual civil servants through a government bureaucracy? That’s a very indirect way to go about. That’s probably enough to make it more expensive than it would otherwise be. That’s true even if every government employee inv0lved is a model of efficiency

The US Post Office remains the best example of a  situation where one would say  the private sector can do it better

Only conservatives dare pose this question with respect to services one level of government or other has been supplying for a long time or forever. The Post Office is inefficient; if it were abolished, the paper mail would be delivered, faster or cheaper, or both. Some paper mail would not be delivered anymore. Many more of us would count it a blessing than the reverse. While there is a broad consensus across the political spectrum that children should be educated at collective expense, there is growing certitude that governments should not be in the business of education. In many parts of the country, the public schools are both expensive and bad. Last time I looked, Washington DC was spending over $20,000 per pupil per year. Give me half that amount and half the students or better will come out knowing how to read, I say. (It’s not the case now.)

3   This is the most serious question and the most difficult to answer concretely: Does the fact that this service is provided by government (any level) have any negative effect on our liberties? This is a separate question altogether. It may be that the government’s supply of a particular service is both inefficient and dangerous to freedom. It may be however that government supply is the most efficient solution possible and yet, I don’t want it because it threatens my freedom. As a conservative, I believe that my money is my money. I am free to use it to buy inefficiently, in order to preserve liberty, for example. I am not intellectually obligated to be “pragmatic” and short sighted.

To take an example at random, if someone showed me, demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt, that Obamacare would reduce the cost of health care without impairing its quality, if that happened, I would still be against it because of the answer I would give to the third and last question above.

I don’t want a any government bureaucracy to make decisions that are ultimately decisions of life and death on my behalf. The possibility of blackmail is too real. Even thinking about it is likely to make some people more docile than they otherwise would be.

The rule of thumb is this: Every expansion of government reduces individual freedom. That’s true even if this expansion creates and efficient and effective government agency, say, a real good Post Office we don’t even know how to dream of.

This is not  something I worry much about, in the case of Obamacare obviously. It would be inefficient, ineffective and dangerous to individual liberty all at once.

Conservatives don’t do enough to proclaim that their opposition to big government has an ethical basis, that it’s a moral position independent of the quality of big government. This silence makes if easy for liberals to caricature conservatives as just selfish grouches who don’t want to pay taxes.

Most of the time, I don’t want to pay taxes because I don’t want to be forced. I would gladly give away twice the amount of my taxes if there were a way to do it voluntarily instead of paying taxes.

I am so opposed to this kind of force that I think even the undeserving and obscenely rich should not be despoiled by the government. It’s an ethical position, not a pragmatic one. And, it sure cannot be called “selfish.” (WTF!)