Beyond Labels

A 360° Discussion of Foreign, National and Local Policy Issues

Notes 9 May 2016

A theory: French Revolution stopped after they instituted a draft that took young people out of Paris. Not sure if this is true. Didn’t read the link.

Voter turnout in the United States trails most other countries. Pew  Results.

Scott Adams, of Dilbert fame, predicted the Rise of Trump in August 2015. He’s posted extensively (here’s his list of posts) not because he likes him, but because he appreciates his skills as a “master persuader” and as a “Clown Genius.”  In the latter post Adams, as a trained hypnotist deconstructs some of Trump’s techniques and how they work.

For starters, the visceral reaction that makes so many people dislike Trump has a lot to do with his New York style. I grew up in upstate New York and his style registers with me in a completely different way than it does with my California friends who can’t stand him. What I see is bluntness, honesty, some risk-taking, and a competitive nature. I don’t hate any of that. In fact, I kind of like it.

I have blogged about making the transition from my New York personality to my California personality. New Yorkers tend to say whatever they think is true to whoever is standing nearby. Not much filter. Californians say what they think will make you feel good. The California way would feel like lying if it were not so well-meaning.

I certainly understand that Trump comes off as arrogant, obnoxious, and lots of other bad stuff. But over time, and compared to the liars on stage with him, you might get hooked on hearing his honest opinions. That’s how the New York style works. At first you hate it because it seems so harsh. In time you start to appreciate the honesty. And when you realize the harshness is not a signal of real evil – just a style – you tend to get over it. He won’t win over all of his haters, but I predict that his New York style will grow on people more than you would expect. You could say his style is his biggest problem, but it might be self-solving with time and exposure. He is getting both.

Study Hillary gets the most negative media.

Media will build Trump up and Hillary down in order to create the idea that  there is a an exciting election story worth spending your time on.

Propublica report on “requirements” for home schooling. Mostly “none.”

States passed laws to make schooling compulsory between 1852 (Massachusetts) and 1917 (Mississippi). (History of public schooling)

Slavery myths, debunked, article in Slate, with link to the Confederate Constitution.

Indentured servants.

About half of the white immigrants to the American colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries were indentured

Charleston, SC is a cultural outlier. Form the history of the Jews in Charleston, South Carolina:

By 1800 there were about 2,000 Jews in South Carolina (overwhelmingly Sephardic and settled in Charleston), which was more than in any other U.S. state at that time,[1] and more than any other town, city, or place in North America

I never knew that. And if you’d asked me for a guess, I would have said that it was almost certainly false.

Longer article on Jews in the American South.  Economist article: “Shalom, y’all

Reduction in contraception funding during the Bush years had this effect, but it looks like currently that is not true.

Simplifying the tax code: I think Scott said: “A randomly chosen person’s taxes would be unchanged” Sounded wrong when I heard it. I think it must be wrong, and only could be true if the deductions made by the “average person” whatever that might mean, were exactly offset by the reduction in tax rates for their bracket. Since deductions are very unevenly distributed across any given income bracket (some people have big houses and get big deductions, others making the same amount of money rent and get no deduction) this is unlikely to be true.

IMPORTANT: 

Daniel Gilbert, (et al) wrote this paper  called “You Can’t Not Believe Everything You Read.” It addresses the following proposition: supposing you are an open minded person and someone tells you something. If you understand the claim and don’t reject it right away as false, and you don’t accept it right away as true. Do you stick it in your brain as “understood pending verification” or do you stick it in your brain as true?

For a practical example: you’ve heard a bunch of negative things about, say, Hillary Clinton, some of which you might have rejected out of hand, and some you might have accept out of hand. But as an open-minded person you might judge, in some of those cases that you just don’t know, and you assume she is innocent until proven guilty.

Gilbert’s research argues that if you don’t outright reject a claim about Crooked Hillary, then it’s filed in your brain as true, and you have to do If you are told that it is false (by a source that you would rely on) and your mind is sufficiently occupied, then you will not do the cognitive work needed to reclassify it, and continue to believe that it is true.

For example, according to Gilbert’s research, merely hearing the term “Crooked Hillary” without entirely rejecting it (Saint Hillary, anyone) causes your belief to tilt against her.

Less Wrong Article “Do we believe everything we read” elaborates and points to some other resources.

Web site to help Americans who might want to move to Canada if Trump wins. He’s gotten millions of hits.

Great book on understanding American politics: Colin Woodard’s American Nations.

Albion’s seed covers several of the “American Nations” in greater depth. Excellent book review of Albion’s Seed at SlateStarCodex.

 

 

Here’s an interesting twist…

…at least I think so. This article from the NY Times highlights the intersection of two current political themes:

  • Increasing taxes on the “1%” and
  • Income inequality

As I read it, several states have become concerned about (or at least highly focused on) the concentration of their income tax revenues on a handful of taxpayers.

“Residency flight” seems to be a particular problem facing Maine as well.

2 May 2014 Notes

Today’s starting point for our random topic walk was jobs. Here is Scott’s original post announcing the topic.

My favorite line from the meeting was Shovels or pitchforks” I think due to Charles.

Out of print  NBER report ” Output, Employment, and Productivity in the United States after 1800”  Lots of interesting detail in the table below. Among other factoids:  growth in the number of slaves prior to the Civil War. Decline of agriculture in percentage terms over the entire period, and ultimately in absolute terms.

Labor Force and Employment  1800 1960

FRED time series on Agricultural employment from 1970 to 2012. This is was discontinued after flat-lining at 1.5% for several years.

Humans Need Not Apply“, YouTube video by CGP Grey (Wikipedia article with links to some resources). Highly recommended.

From the transcript:

This is an economic revolution. You may think we’ve been here before, but we haven’t.

This time is different.

Jobs and the Great Depression and whence came the recovery to fuller employment: this paper explains structural employment following the depression. How the recovery stalled (and crashed) because FDR was pushed to balance the budget; how the recovery recovered when the US no longer had to balance the budget because — war. How experienced people who were long-term unemployed were unable to get jobs until enough inexperienced people were pulled into the military and out of the workforce and deficit spending created jobs. The paper points out that  the economic dynamics led to the Work Product Administration becoming, instead of a route back to the workforce, the kiss of death.

Perception of reality changes when you have data — like from the St Louis Fed (Federal Reserve Economic Data = FRED) . Some people say: the unemployment rate is down. Yay!!!!. Others say: the labor force participation rate is at an all time low. Boo!!!

Interesting what you can find when you dig into the data. The rate for men, steadily declining since about 1955. The rate for women increasing from about that time until around 2000, where it flattens.

BLS Labor force participation rates breakdowns.

Engineering graduates in China from issues.org  (2007)

Jobs plans: sound bites from Donald Trump on jobs from “On the issues.” And Hillary Clinton, here.

Donald Trump web site positions. Hillary Clinton, web site issues.

Analysis of health care “excess spending.” Part 1 is here. Part 2, here.

Health care professional costs. Raw data, here.

Teacher pay, advocacy from the NEA.

Link to the article on “Where did the government jobs go” from NY Times, recommended by Marion.

Guaranteed Income and Choose Your Boss.”  The author is Morgan Wrastler.  I believe that’s an alias. The post is from 2013. The idea is interesting and worth more serious thought.

 

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