Category Archives: View

View 711 Thursday, February 02, 2012

Ground Hog Day

I had a lunch appointment with Larry and Mike Niven today. We were going to talk about how to save the country, Of course this would be in a book, but we try to make our books realistic, Mike’s very smart, and I was looking forward to it, but when I woke up my cold was much worse and I had to call Mike and cancel it. My cold was bad yesterday, but it’s far worse today. Thursday nights I usually go to LASFS, tonight I’ll stay home and miserate.

Now that Romney’s at the top of the polls as predicted Republican nominee, everything he says is subject to deep scrutiny in the hopes of finding something that can be made to look stupid. Today they think they found one. Romney was trying to indicate that he’s mostly concerned about the American Middle Class, and in the course of saying that he said that he wasn’t worried about the Poor because we have a safety net, and the Very Rich can take care of themselves; what’s needed is government attention to the Middle Class. No sooner had he said it than the drum beats began about how callous and awful Romney is, and this just shows, and you can fill in the rest at leisure. Romney could have taken this opportunity to come out with a real discussion about the role of government in eliminating poverty and for that matter about what government ought to be doing regarding the Middle Class. Instead he went a bit squishy, and lost the opportunity.

What’s needed is a discussion of poverty: how to get more of it, how to get less of it, and what government ought to do about it. After that, we need a discussion about the role of government in boosting the Middle Class. In both cases there are conservative and liberal policies and attitudes, and they’re important.

We all know how to get more poverty. That’s elementary. If you want more of something subsidize it. If you want people to be poor, pay people to be poor. It’s simple, it’s effective, and it has been demonstrated year after year. Make poverty pleasant. Give the poor a right to other people’s money. It works every time, and the larger the subsidy – the transfer of money from those who have it to those who don’t – the more people you will have apply for the position of being poor for a living.

Of course that sounds callous. After all, surely there are people who are in poverty through no fault of their own. There are widows and orphans. There are people who have no skills and aren’t likely to learn any. These are the classical “deserving poor”. Nearly everyone agrees they ought to be taken care of. Nearly every religion requires those who can to help the poor, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, give drink to the thirsty, care for the sick, and so forth, and for much of the history of the US all these religious commands have been assumed to be obligations of the state. We have had poor laws since Elizabethan times (and before for that matter.) And in general all of the poor laws were directed toward aiding ‘the deserving poor.

The deserving poor might be given alms and tithe money as well as food and shelter. Every parish in England and Wales was required to have officials who raised money and distributed it. Of course England had an Established Church in those days, and much of this activity was done by the local churchwardens. It wasn’t generally pleasant, and might be both incompetent and corrupt – think of the Beadle in Oliver Twist – but not always. Some Rectors and Vicars took their duties seriously. But this was all for The Deserving Poor.

Then there was the Undeserving Poor. There were several subclasses of undeserving poor. At the top were those who were generally honest and law abiding but did not work although work might be available, which is to say, they considered the wages offered to be too low, or they just didn’t want to work at all. They might be lazy or they might be drunks. They were people who “ought” to be working, but were not working. This group of undeserving poor generally got fed in soup kitchens and almshouses, and perhaps found shelter. Much of the aid to them was also given by churches and charities, not necessarily the Established Church. There were also evangelical groups like the Salvation Army (see Shaw’s Major Barbara) which tried to convert undeserving poor to deserving poor.

Other Undeserving poor were aggressive beggars, petty thieves — but surely the point is made.

Both law and morality said that there was a class of people, the Deserving Poor, who ought to be taken care of through taxation including some pretty aggressive demands from churchwardens intended to shame those who had into giving something for those in need. The principle was established that the state could and should take from the productive and give it to the unproductive because they needed it. Lyndon Johnson spoke of taking from those who have so much and giving it to the have-nots who need it so much.

Over time the distinction between Deserving and Undeserving Poor was lost or at least faded into the background, and more and more attention was given to not being “judgmental”, and to making it less unpleasant to be poor and on the dole. Moreover, the distinction between insurance programs such as unemployment insurance and worker’s compensation vs. straight out giveaways such as Food Stamps and rent supplements tended to disappear. The Americans With Disabilities Act made alcoholism and drug addiction disabilities.

Food Stamps were converted to a debit cards in part to avoid embarrassment. I needn’t belabor the point. We’ve all seen the results.

And one result was increasing numbers of undeserving poor being treated as deserving poor.

We now have a system in which those who have are required to share it with those who have not, even if the have not is someone able to work but satisfied with what comes from not working.

If you want more of something, subsidize it. If you want more people to be in a certain condition, pay them to be in that condition and make it less unpleasant to be in that condition. If you want more poverty pay people to be paupers. If you want more unemployment, pay people to be unemployed.

There’s another way to increase unemployment. The simple formula is make it more expensive to employ someone. Raise the minimum wages. Make it harder and harder to fire people. Give people with some conditions various protections and rights. Make it expensive enough to hire someone and potential employers will do without.

While you are at it, heap calumny on certain jobs. Make it shameful to be a domestic servant and make it despicable to hire one. That way you will eliminate a class of jobs that once employed millions. Of course that may be a goal. Apparently we are more willing to send an armed tax collector to take money and give it to the unemployed than to suggest that the unemployed work as footmen, maids, cooks, and gardeners. That may be a very good thing; but surely it is worth discussion. Romney spoke of a safety net, and how if it is defective it ought to be repaired. Are those who consider domestic service or other jobs they consider unpleasant or demeaning deserving or undeserving poor? Or have we given up that distinction and now consider that anyone who is in poverty is deserving of money taken by the tax collector?

Raise the costs of hiring people. Make it less unpleasant to be unemployed and in poverty. You will in due season reap the fruits of what you have sowed.

The question is whether there is any obligation to have a safety net, and if so, is that an obligation of the states or the Federal government; and just where in the Constitution is the authorization to use tax money to transfer from the haves to the have-nots who need it so much. It may all be in there and this may be the way for the nation to go, but surely it ought to be discussed openly, not just done by degrees?

It might be interesting to have the candidates debate just what ought to be done about that safety net. There may be more of it than we need, and it may be provided by the wrong people. Perhaps this is one more item to be left to the states.

Today in Sacramento there was a rally of people, many college students, chanting “We want jobs”. They were demonstrating in favor of a “high speed rail” line to run between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Initially put forth as a bond issue for $9 Billion which passed, nothing has actually been built and the cost is now estimated at well over $100 Billion. A lot of money has been spent. Nothing has been built. No one is quite sure how the rail line would cope with the San Andreas Fault and the mountainous area between Los Angeles and San Francisco, and the steep slopes down into the San Joaquin known as The Grapevine are pretty formidable. No matter how fast the rail line, it will take a lot longer to get from LA to San Francisco by train as opposed to flying. There are nearly hourly flights from Burbank and LAX.

We Want Jobs. You pay for them.

I note that I haven’t said anything about what the government ought to do to help the Middle Class. Sorry.

The answer, of course, is not much. Mostly, get out of the way. Get out of the way of development of cheap energy. Stop making it expensive to hire people and complicated to impossible to fire them. Repeal a lot of regulations. It’s really not all that complicated.

A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.
Thomas Jefferson

View 711 Wednesday, February 01, 2012

Another day being devoured by locusts, We had a plumbing emergency that fortunately was controlled so no collateral damage, and that has been fixed without problems. It was small enough that it wasn’t anything we were going to the insurance company about, but – well, it’s a story worth relating.

Our insurance company for auto and house insurance is USAA. We have been with them from long ago, since Mr. Heinlein recommended them to us. I’d never heard of them, but Robert recommended them highly, and we found they were certainly cheaper than what we had been paying. USAA is essentially a veteran’s mutual insurance company although they have opened the rolls to others including sons of veterans. I can only say that in thirty years we have yet to be disappointed in their service, or to run into a bureaucrat who uses fine print to put the company’s interests ahead of ours. I don’t mean they are patsies, but they are competent and fair. This includes both automobile and home insurance, two major collisions (someone else hit our cars) and a major house structural problem.

One of the best features of USAA is their list of contractors who do the work, both home and auto; and in all our experiences with USAA recommended and approved companies we have again found it more than satisfactory. Today’s plumbing problem wasn’t covered by the home owners policy being below the deductible, but the repair was done by a company recommended by the contractors who had done our last major USAA paid repairs; and once again it was a satisfactory experience. It turns out our water pressure regulator had worn out, so that our internal house water pressure was 150, about twice what it ought to be. This caused a pipe to burst, but fortunately it was a pipe from a valve to a lavatory faucet and thus easy to control and cheap to replace; they also replaced the regulator and the whole mess was done quickly and efficiently. I love USAA.

In addition to the house matters eating my time, I managed to catch my granddaughter’s cold, and I have the miseries. Not fun.

I’ll comment on the Florida primary another time. It’s lunch time although I don’t much feel like eating. Arrgh.

View 711 Tuesday, January 31, 2012

It’s late and past bed time. The day was used up in household activities, and of course yesterday was devoted to family matters. Richard and his family are off to the East coast where they live. About half my stuff seems not to work well. Alex updated some things last night and nothing works properly now. My twenty year old hi-fi stereo has stopped working and I haven’t replaced it. I was using I to listen to the radio, but now KFI is directing me to something called I heart Radio rather than live streaming, and that keeps telling me oops something went wrong but we’re working on it. Real competence. I don’t want I heart Radio I want to listen but apparently they no longer offer that. Instead the link takes you to I heart radio which gives me the oops. As I say, real confidence inspiring competence.

The Florida election is over and Romney won big time including among those whose main concerns are economic matters and the budget. Of course Romney has saturated Florida with negative ads, and most voters are sick of them. As am I. I’ll think about the Florida primary later. It’s really bed time.

The Author’s Guild has a piece worth reading on Amazon and the publishing revolution. http://blog.authorsguild.org/2012/01/31/publishings-ecosystem-on-the-brink-the-backstory/ The Guild is increasingly more representative of the Guild and less of authors and writers, but then so are all the writers organizations now. Pournelle’s Iron Law seems to apply to the lot of them. As you would suppose.

There’s a related piece here: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-31/amazon-s-sales-miss-estimates-profit-drops-as-expenses-surge-shares-drop.html

I should have the first Chaos Manor Reviews column of the year done soon. I am sorry it didn’t get done in January but things have been a bit busy here, and for some reason the house and general household chores are demanding more attention than they used to. Or maybe things just take longer.

View 710 Sunday, January 29, 2012

My son Richard and family have been visiting this weekend. My oldest son Alex came over today, so that we could have the traditional New Year’s dinner of blackeyed peas and rice with vegetables. It’s been a busy weekend.

Here are a few pictures. My granddaughter Ruthie with her father Richard, and our dog Sable who was very well behaved:

And me being a doting grandfather:

I look a bit like a sap, but Ruthie didn’t mind. Sable off in the background was watchful; she has decided that Sable needs protecting. Fortunately Ruthie has a dog of her own at her home in Washington, so she’s used to dogs and knows that pulling tails is something you don’t do.

I can’t resist one more shot, Ruthie, her father, and Alex doing a high five:

So that’s what I’ve been doing lately.

I note that when challenged about the cost of space development Newt Gingrich answered that it wouldn’t be done by spending public money in the usual way. He wasn’t talking about grand Apollo style projects – although I can say I am prepared to prove that Apollo made a net profit for the United States, and I don’t mean through the development of Tang – but about using prizes and X projects to develop technology and encourage private enterprise. I covered all that in my book A Step Farther Out, along with other reasons for the United States to become a spacefaring nation again, and while I said all this long ago I see no reason to change my views. Mankind has no choice but to go to space, and there are profits to be made there. At the moment we are not a spacefaring nation, but we can become one. We have the technical means to build systems that will allow commerce in space, with voyages taking less than a year between significant places in the solar system. This is quite comparable to the commerce times after the discovery of the Americas and continuing well into the 19^th Century. But I have said all this before. Space development proved to be more difficult and expensive than I thought, but much of the expense was due to bureaucratic inefficacies, and a lot of the technological developments were financed by and the military and focused on military uses.

I suppose I should do a modernization of A Step Farther Out one of these days. I understand that Peter Dimandis is saying many of the same things I said in Step in his new book Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think . I’ve been preaching this sermon for thirty years. It’s good to see that others agree.

I once told Bill Gates that those who take mankind permanently into space will be remembered long after Isabella the Great is long forgotten. That remains true.

 

a free public lecture Wednesday, February 8, presented by artist David Em and astrophysicist Julian Merten

in connection with the exhibition

THE SHAPE OF THE UNIVERSE: RECENT DEEP SPACE PHOTOGRAPHY at the Pasadena City College art gallery, curated by David Em.

LECTURE: Wednesday, February 8 at 7 PM, lecture hall R-122 (directly behind the art gallery).

I have yet to hear any of David’s presentations that were not exciting and thought provoking. Highly recommended.

Evidence continues to accumulate in the climate change discussions.

Solar Minima and Cooling Story

Jerry,

You’ve probably been sent this by others, but just in case. It seems that scientific support is emerging for the idea that Solar activity strongly affects Earth temperatures. I know, shocking, isn’t it? Seriously though, there’s news here that we may be entering a deeper than usual Solar minimum, as deep or deeper than the Dalton Minimum of the late 1700’s (cannon sledged across the Hudson ice, yes) and possibly as deep as the Maunder minimum of the second half of the 1600’s, when the canals of Holland were skatable and London held winter fairs on the Thames ice.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2093264/Forget-global-warming–Cycle-25-need-worry-NASA-scientists-right-Thames-freezing-again.html

Henry

From the article:

Forget global warming – it’s Cycle 25 we need to worry about (and if NASA scientists are right the Thames will be freezing over again)

Met Office releases new figures which show no warming in 15 years

The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.

The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.

Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.

Observations and data are to be preferred to models in most sciences – indeed are the criteria for determining the usefulness of models. So far as I know, not one climate model including the ones that have cost tens of millions of dollars predicted any kind of hiatus in the steady climb of Earth temperature. At this point I would be far more inclined to rely on the data than the models.

I can recall the days of “The Japan That Can Say No”. These were the days of the “Japanese economic miracle”, and many of our financial pundits warned that Japan was going to eat our lunch. Then Japan faltered economically, and the ear from 1990 – to 2000 was known as “the lost decade.” Japan is recovering and they have done many things well; their ups and downs have been different from ours. Still, they are not in an era of rapid economic growth.

China appears to be in a recession, although they are keeping that a state secret. I may be misinterpreting the information I am getting, but I don’t think I am. China is faltering in its headlong growth. So are the other Asian Tigers.

Europe is certainly not in a period of rapid growth, and much of Europe appears to be in deep trouble, kept afloat largely by German determination, even as Greece and some of the faltering countries refuse to cut back on consumption and deficit financing.

All of which is to say that we’ve seen this kind of thing before. The Crash of 1929 didn’t have to lead to the Great Depression. There are reasons why it did. I don’t think those who control US economic policies understand how it happened.

There are some economic fundamentals that cannot be ignored. One of them is that some of the jobs exported cannot be recovered, and some long term unemployment will never be remedied by people returning to jobs that will never return. Something else must be done. At the same time, paying people for not working will produce more people applying for the job of not working. Thus has it ever been and I see no reason to believe it won’t be that way in future. If you want more of something, subsidize it. If you want more unemployment, subsidize that. And if you want to predict global economies, look at global employment.

All of which is to say that we need to do some fundamental rethinking about this, but perhaps when we do so, we need to remember that we haven’t been smart enough to command our way out of our problems – are we smarter now?

I do know some fundamental economic truths – at least they are ‘true’ in the sense that they come from observation, not theory. I have stated them before. Energy and freedom lead to prosperity. Restricting energy and adding not freedom but commands and regulation lead to downward economic pathways. Thus has it been, and thus will it be.

Civilization trends toward converting more and more of its output to structure. Infrastructure or superstructure isn’t important: output is seized and converted to structure, and the largest beneficiaries of that are bureaucracies. Bureaucracies are devoted to the preservation and expansion of the bureaucracy and its members, and only secondarily to the purposes for which they were founded. Thus has it been, and thus will it be.

I suppose I merely state the obvious. I will plead that, as Samuel Johnson observed, people seldom need educating, but they often need reminding.