Category: Politics and Government

Reality

Donald Trump has two premises behind his ‘make american great again’ initiative — (1) the solution to outsourcing and automation is to ask [a.k.a. use presidential power to bully] companies into manufacturing products domestically and (2) that no one has tried this because they just aren’t as clever as he and never thought of it.

Reality is that most people have a much firmer grasp of the long-term and wide-scale repercussions of their actions. His approach may work as a one-off — a single company or industry certainly doesn’t want the bad publicity associated with the president of the United States denigrating their reputation (see broccoli & Pres Bush #1 in 1990). Specifically mentioning Carrier during the debate was notable. A president specifically singling out one company for offshoring manufacturing jobs will be national news. There’s a cost/benefit analysis. Shifting manufacturing overseas saves a million, but bad publicity costs five mil in sales … OK, we’ll ship a quarter of the jobs overseas and keep more than the 0 we initially planned on leaving here.

This approach has diminishing returns. Who is going to read the White House Press Office’s list of today’s “companies that suck because they want to offshore production”?! Individually calling out one company is news partially because it is so outside the norm. If his plan was to select the three largest potential employers and strong-arm them into keeping jobs in the country … OK, it’s a strategy. I doubt, though, that Carrier is one of the largest potential employers in America.

The other reality that Trump ignores is that manufacturing automation negates wage differences — we’re all going to be unemployed while robots make everything, AI engines diagnose illness and negotiate legal proceedings, workflows process mortgages. We have the opportunity now to retrain people for the post-robotic world – hypothesize what jobs will look like and fund training programs to ready people for those opportunities. Bullying companies might work in the short term – even keep jobs around long enough for re-election. But this is the same ideology that wrote NINA mortgages a decade ago — *I* am making money *now*, who cares about next year. Eventually the conjecture of lost sales will be insignificant compared to the savings offered by automation.

Hypocrisy

First of all, some understanding of the NATO charter would be good before you go talking about countries not living up to contractual obligations. But eh, facts are so passe. NATO counties that are not funding their military at the 2% level (a.k.a. the countries that are not paying their fair share for protection) are a huge problem and we should remove our services … but not paying your federal taxes makes you smart? And failing to pay contractually obligated fees to vendors … also a good thing? As long as *I* am the one screwing someone, it’s fine but no one else better do it to me. Hypocrite.

And I’m surprised no one speculates on the awful judgement of someone who engages with so many vendors who fail to meet expectations (taking at face value the statement that the payments were not made for this reason). Either you have the absolute best judgement about everything (including the hire of subordinates who may be engaging these contractors) and could only select the best vendors (in which case, you should be paying them).  Or you’ve misjudged something in your life (oh, the horror).

Deregulation

I’ve always believed anarchy was a wonderful governance methodology — for very small communities of highly intelligent, self-aware individuals. I do not find the methodology scalable.

Pure free market principals suffer from the same problem. The free market involves informed actors making rational decisions. Rational is the word that always stood out to me — how many decisions (purchasing or otherwise) are truly rational?

But a recent report regarding a study from before there were regulations about disclosing the source of a study’s funding highlights the “informed” component. How can you be an informed actor without regulations that ensure the “facts” are not being paid for by industry associations?

This isn’t to say I believe we limitless regulations to avoid the possibility of an individual making a poor devision, or that it wouldn’t behoove us to review existing regulations to determine if they are still sensible. But I cannot understand anti-regulation fervor.

 

Debate “Instant Replay”

This: http://www.salon.com/2016/09/13/an-open-letter-to-the-commission-on-presidential-debates-bring-on-instant-replay/

Like my proposal of allowing AMT-exempted tax deductible donations to departments of the federal government, the implementation would be a little tricky but the outcome incredible. There are well defined facts, questionable facts, and then “facts” that have some kind of spin. It would be difficult to stick to the well-documented facts (is some research paper published by a group who got funded by someone benefiting from the result of the research still a “fact”?). I think I would stick to opponent flagged comments too — having a limited number of wrong challenges discourages challenging every statement. But as long as your challenge is substantiated, it isn’t like you’ll find yourself halfway through the fourth quarter, fourth down two yards from the goal line, and unable to challenge a call.

Alternately candidates could be provided a list of their top n lies and told that any of these statements will be immediately challenged by the moderator. The FBI says you were careless … you can say you thought you were doing everything you could, but were found to have been careless. There are recordings of you supporting a war, you can say you changed your mind as new information came to light (why no one does this is beyond me – the “he was for it before he was against it” thing a few elections cycles ago seemed to have such an easy answer to me. I was not privy to all of the information the President had available. Based on the information we were provided at the time, I was for it. Now that new information has been made pubic, I have changed my mind) but you cannot just say you opposed it.

Elector Unfairness

Gore won the popular vote in 2000, but the electoral college process subverted the popular decision and irrevocably changed our country’s history. Essentially this country is set up to elect Republicans, and only a supremely popular Democrat can win. This year, though, we’ll see if a Republican can actually be unpopular enough to overcome the party’s advantage.

What advantage? Well — each state has a specific number of electors based on population but (a) at least one and (b) they also each have two more electors. Three electors doesn’t seem like it should make a big difference, but calculate the number of people represented by each elector in the most and least populous states and the impact is clear. One elector from California represents 713,000 people. One elector from Wyoming represents 195,000. And, yeah, Texas may be conservative and Vermont may be liberal … but on the whole, Republicans have an electoral advantage.

 

State Electors  Population  # People / Elector
Wyoming 3              586,000                   195,333
Vermont 3              626,000                   208,667
Alaska 3              663,000                   221,000
North Dakota 3              758,000                   252,667
South Dakota 3              865,000                   288,333
Delaware 3              946,000                   315,333
Montana 3           1,042,000                   347,333
Illinois 20         12,801,000                   640,050
Pennsylvania 20         12,802,000                   640,100
New York 29         19,795,000                   682,586
Florida 29         20,612,000                   710,759
Texas 38         27,862,000                   733,211
California 55         39,250,000                   713,636

 

 

Modest swimming costumes

I read an article on BBC News last night that asked a question I’ve often wondered why people ask: Why do some people find the burkini offensive? I remember news stories in the 1980’s and 1990’s about the scandalous thong bikinis showing up on beaches near you with all the near-nakedness and permanent mental scarring. Communities banned these strings with a few patches of cloth amid debate about the offense such attire engendered. Cannot say I was personally offended by any near-nakedness … but I understand that there is a social convention that failing to sufficiently cover oneself is undesirable. Rarely is the convention reversed — apart from compulsory nude beaches, and to me that’s more of a “you are not wearing the proper uniform” than “ack, CLOTHING!” thing.

Ostensibly, the offense some people seem to find in a “burkini” — which is about as far away from a thong bikini as one can get – is perplexing. When I was in Egypt, people at the beach in Alexandria had everything from thongs to long sleeved shirts, long slacks, and hijabs. Not wanting to embarrass my host, I wore fairly modest surfing apparel – a long sleeved rash-guard and neoprene leggings. It’s comfortable. You don’t have to worry about reapplying sunscreen all over your person. You don’t get sand in places you would much rather not have sand.

The whole “offense” discussion is a red herring. I doubt anyone is actually being offended by not seeing enough skin at the beach. Otherwise surfers out in SoCal would have been harangued to stop wearing exactly what I purchased to swim in Egypt. The real offense, such as it is, is that (1) someone is displaying anything that identifies them as Muslim and (2) people do not want to admit their own prejudices. Like don’t-ask-don’t-tell, they’d be comfortable with a Muslim at their beach as long as they couldn’t identify the person as such.

Now the legal justification is secularism … which is at least reasonable sounding. The potential disproof of that notion reminds me of the short-lived school prayer initiative in my senior year at High School. Instead of the legal battles that went on in other districts, I simply asked the Superintendent how many subversive teenagers he thought I could find to sign up to read prayers from non-traditional religions – and, sure, you could get a bunch of kids to read Christian prayers … but it’s a sign-up to read one thing, and we’ll get in queue too. How long will parents support having their kids exposed to Pagan, Wiccan, Satanic … there sure are a lot of religions out there to which people take offense, and as soon as you tell me *my* religion cannot have a prayer read but yours can, we’re out of the murky free speech realm and into clear separation of Church and State territory. We had exactly zero prayers read in our morning announcements. I would love to see a line of beachwear reproducing the stations of the cross, Star of David prints, Buddha prints. Oh, a different outfit for each of the Hindu Gods. How many people wearing those would get fined? And how many people would support the ban after people start getting fined for their religious iconry.

 

Cultural Heroin

One of the most astute observations of what Trump has to offer comes from JD Vance in The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/opioid-of-the-masses/489911/

“Trump is cultural heroin. He makes some feel better for a bit. But he cannot fix what ails them, and one day they’ll realize it.”

I think Trump has a cathartic release of anger and frustration. He has someone to blame. He has a simple solution that sounds great unless you bother to question if summoning unicorns actually can cure Aunt Sally’s meth addiction or if pouring billions of dollars into “the wall” would actually bring back mining jobs lost to automation. It’s not real, but the idea makes someone feel better for a bit.

Tax and Budget Reform

I wish there was a decent way to file RFE’s (request for enhancements) with the federal government. I can’t do a thing about the complexity of the tax code or the annoyance of having to spend a weekend filling out forms just to get my money back. But there’s existing tax code for charitable deductions (although you can fall afoul of the AMT if you donate too much of your income … so that may need a little rewrite here). Create a new tax deductible donation categorization for government entities — then each department of the government not get themselves registered as a not-for-profit-goverment-entity that qualifies for tax deductible charitable donations. I would feel a LOT better about paying 10k in taxes this year if I knew the money was going toward departments I support (and not going to departments I do not support). I could literally donate every dollar I owe in taxes to specific departments – then get my payroll deduction contributions completely refunded (bonus, US government, you got the interest on my payroll deductions since you held on to them). Don’t want to bother? Then don’t – your payroll deductions will get allocated out for you through the budgeting process.

With a significant adoption rate, if no one wants to fund the Department of Whatever, then the people writing the budget could well take that as a hint. Obviously that’s not a perfect rule – no one wants to fund the IRS, but you’re still going to need someone to handle tax collection & filing (at least until you manage to sort out the tax code & processes). But someone who advocates eliminating the Department of Education may be surprised how many people voluntarily earmark their taxes for Education. Or the military industrial complex may be shocked that donations don’t approach the 60% or 16% (depending on your point of view of “all spending”) of the federal budget that goes into the military and Homeland Security.