The Future Of Tipping - Every Solution Has Unintended Consequences

But that doesn't mean we should just stop and take things as they are.

I started thinking seriously about tipping when we had breakfast in Talkeetna last May.  I read this sign and as we left, without leaving a tip, I mentioned the policy to the person taking our payment.  Who then started talking about some of the side effects.  For one thing, I asked about the legal obstacles to tipping mentioned in the sign.  (I think that was part of what held up this post - I didn't have much internet access when we were at Denali and didn't want to spend on legal research.)

Basically he said that they went to this policy - abolishing tips and raising prices - because only the wait staff could legally benefit from tips, and they didn't think that was fair.  Some of the issues he brought up included:

1. The serious loss of income for the best servers.  People here on vacation or for climbing often have a lot of money and will tip a good server quite a bit, so when the policy was announced - after discussing it with everyone, if I recall right - some went to other restaurants were they could earn a lot more money through tips.  
2. They had to raise prices to pay everyone minimum wage without tips.  I get that, but I also figured the difference wasn't that great and was probably what I would have paid in a tip anyway.  
3.  Not everyone left tips and those people don't feel the way I do about the raised prices.  

This was last May and I can't find the notes I wrote down so I'll stop there.  I know I did want to look into the law, but I'm guessing that after several days at Denali, this slipped from my conscious todo list.

But Sunday, two things brought tipping back to my attention.  First, I got a thank you note for a tip I put into my check for a year of the Anchorage Daily News.  Our news carrier leaves our paper right  at our doorstep every day.  She doesn't throw it into the bushes or two steps from our door.  It's right there.  I can open the door barefoot and lean down and pick it up.  This is particularly appreciated in the winter.  How much should one tip a mail carrier?  My decision wasn't so much thinking about what she is paid, but more about saying, "Even though I've never seen you, I want you to know that I appreciate your great service."  Apparently I tipped her more than most others because she wrote the thank you.  Maybe it's just her route isn't full of fancy homes with high income earners.

She also noted in her thank you  - which was taped to the orange plastic bag the paper comes in - her appreciation that I was the only one of her customers who recycles the plastic bags.  I called the ADN once and asked about that, and they said to leave them outside and the carrier will pick them up.  Since then, I've been stuffing the new bag each day into one of the bags until the bag is
full.  Then I leave it out on the front steps - secured so it doesn't blow away - and in the morning it's gone.  I mention this so others who think about recycling plastic bags know you can do it this way.  (And the Assembly recently passed a law banning plastic bags at stores, but not for newspaper delivery.)  I'm not sure how they reuse the bags - since I'm sure it's easier to pull one off a role than to try to retrieve them out of a used bag, but knowing she thought that was a good thing and not a pain in the neck, was also positive.

Finally,  a Washington Post article reprinted  in the ADN Sunday about tipping and getting rid of tipping by requiring restaurants and hotels to pay the minimum wage not counting the tips.  It doesn't deal with the issue of losing servers (which wouldn't happen if a law were passed instead of one restaurant voluntarily making that decision).  Here's one snippet that I wanted to push back on a bit:

"Customers shouldn’t have to subsidize an employee’s wages through their tips, whether they’re ordering a pizza or taking a white-water rafting trip. And now, finally, it looks like we’re slowly reaching the point where we agree: This can’t go on."

My quibble here is the phrase "subsidize an employee's wages."  I'd argue we're subsidizing the owner's profit.  After all, the owner should be paying a fair wage.  And our tips, as important as they are, don't pay for health care or retirement.  And I want to acknowledge I know there are differences between small family owned restaurants and large corporate chain restaurants.

Of course, this is should all be in the larger context of the laws and customs that favor the educated and wealthy in ways that increase the gap between the very wealthy and everyone else, and our continued clinging to the morality of the Protestant work ethic to blame the poor for their poverty and assuage any guilt the wealthy have (since they deserve it for their assumed hard work.)

And I'll try to check on the Alaska laws about tipping to see how that fits in.

Croatia Beats Russia

Our guests were trying to watch the World Cup game on their phones, so I suggested we check if the Bear Tooth was showing the Croatia v Russia game.  Yes.

Tickets were free and at 10am it wasn't crowded.  Not the greatest two teams at the World Cup, but a great game that Croatia won on the last overtime penalty kick.  Some Russians near us had a drum and a trumpet, but most of the crowd was rooting for Croatia.


The first picture was just after Croatia's first goal.






The second picture is the Croatian team after winning at the last kick.














We stopped at the library for Little J.  It's not often that it's cooler inside than outside in Anchorage.
While he was checking out the kids' section, I was looking at the new books.






Here are a couple reflecting our current political situation - though writing books is a multi-year project usually, so these were probably conceived and begun before Trump was elected.  


Riddle:  What's the difference between Cost and Price?Answer:  Cost is the author and Price is the title.              

From Kirkus Review:

 Focusing on James Madison (1751-1836) and Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804), Weekly Standard contributing editor Cost (A Republic No More: Big Government and the Rise of American Political Corruption, 2015, etc.) offers a revealing look at how their contrasting political philosophies shaped the new nation’s domestic and foreign policies. Although they eventually became fierce opponents, Madison and Hamilton began as allies, sharing a belief “that people were easily led astray by selfish interests that undermined the cause of good government.” State oversight could not be trusted to rein in opportunism and greed. Their proposals for fostering a strong federal government, however, were at odds . . .

If we'd learn our history better, maybe we could argue about the real issues.  Maybe we'd understand that the debate is one of conflicting values and fears.  Maybe more people would understand that our government is basically there to support the wealthy and everyone else gets just enough to keep them quiet.  And that's why they need to keep making lots of noise.

From Pop Matters:

Nesi and Brera open with a vignette from 1999 -- the beginning of the end, they note. They yearn to go back to those good old days, or perhaps a bit earlier, when the mistaken path of neoliberalism could still have been avoided. They're not calling for socialism, but for a kinder capitalism (one which acknowledges the "rights conquered over the course of the twentieth century... a high-quality education available to one and all, universal health care, the right to a job and a home").

Neverthelessm their book is essential for any critic of the contemporary situation, because they achieve more ably than most a clear-sighted and beautifully expressed explanation of how untenable the present situation is. They're angry at corporations that try to avoid paying their fair share -- Brera, as an investment manager, understands clearly how his discipline has come to engage in the destructive delusion that undermining the social contract in pursuit of higher profits can ever be a good thing.

If you're thinking The Doors, you're right.  

When we got back from the airport tonight my granddaughter told me I could take the training wheels off her bike because she can ride a two wheeler now.

Bullshit Jobs

As I gather my thoughts - which I've done a couple of times here - on the problems with our economy, I sometimes run into articles that are of interest, but maybe not directly related  to my thesis.

[There's a fairly long introduction here before you get to bullshit jobs.  For the impatient, just skip down to the quotations below.]

Basic Thesis:  Underlying everything, the Protestant Work Ethic is no longer applicable and probably never was all that good a model for an economy.  Basically, the Protestant work ethic made work an intrinsically 'good' thing.  Work became a religious 'calling' from God.  Your worth in society is based on your work.  On keeping busy.  If you aren't working, you are a parasite.  Idle hands, you know.   That may have seemed useful at a time before steam engines and electricity and food and housing and the basics of life from dishes to clothing required as many hands as there were.  Yet even then, the wealthy didn't have to work.  But  children did.  (And I'd point out that all that work may not have been necessary.  In fertile lands, lots of cultures had times for art and music and elaborate festivals.)

The work ethic may not be a good economic model, but it's a great moral model to keep workers working and  to help the rich  justify why they have so much more than they need while others are barely scraping by.   And so  the rich folks really have no obligation to the poor.  Quite simply, the rich worked and 'earned' their wealth, and the poor were simply lazy. We still hear a lot of this from Republican politicians.  Even many liberals believe this.  It's fed to us with fairy tales and television and movies.  Our whole society is based on this notion.

In the US in the 1950s there were lots of articles about what Americans were going to do with all their spare time when automation cut jobs to 30 hours a week or less.  The 50s were a rare time in the US when the gap between rich and poor was fairly low.  Income taxes (at least before deductions)  were near 90% for the wealthiest.  (I don't think that's part of Trump's vision of making America great again.)  Unions were strong, blue collar workers could make a lot of money.  There were decent wages and benefits for people without a college degree, even a high school degree.  So the economists maybe saw things going along at the same pace, with robots taking over some jobs, allowing workers to work less for the same income.

But they forgot this is a capitalist society.  As the owners brought in more automation, instead of cutting back the work week, they cut back jobs.  People got full time leisure (also known as unemployment).  Those who kept their jobs often ended up working well over 40 hours a week, often without an increase in pay.   The financial profit of automation went, not to the workers, but to the owners of the businesses and their shareholders. And politicians acknowledged these realities - that not all unemployed folks were deadbeats - enough to set up various welfare program for some of them.

And so as this trend continued - more automation replacing workers who can no longer find good paying jobs with pensions and health care - we've ended up with a huge gap between rich and poor and lots of unemployed (not just those officially 'unemployed')  and a growing homeless problem.   Building houses for the homeless isn't the solution, because if the economy continues in this trend, there will be an endless stream of people who become superfluous and who can't earn enough to pay for housing.

We need to change the economy so it doesn't bleed workers, or so that work doesn't become the only way to morally redistribute wealth.

So we need a new model for the economy, one not based on a 16th Century religious revolt against the excesses of the Catholic church, but one based on the reality that not everyone needs to work to support the economy any more.  Jobs should no longer be the only morally acceptable means of distributing income.  Paid work shouldn't be mandatory for a decent basic lifestyle.  A practical alternative model is what I'm looking for.

But in the meantime, here are some thoughts from a book about bullshit jobs by David Graeber.  First a quick definition and second a simplified list of examples of bullshit jobs.

"How does Graeber define a “bullshit job”? Essentially it’s a job devoid of purpose and meaning. It’s different to a “shit job”, which is a job that can be degrading, arduous and poorly compensated but which actually plays a useful role in society. Rather a bullshit job can be prestigious, comfortable and well-paid, but if it vanished tomorrow, the world would not only fail to notice, it may actually become a better place. Bullshit jobs ‘take’, more than they ‘give’ to society. 

Graeber refines his definition by providing his own hilarious typology of bullshit jobs. There are “flunkies”, also known as “feudal retainers”, who are specifically hired by directors to make them appear more important. “Goons” are the aggressive, hired-muscle frequently found in telemarketing teams and PR agencies, employed solely to cajole people into do something that contradicts their common sense. “Duct tapers” who are employees hired only to fix a problem that ought not to exist. “Box tickers”, which we need no introduction to and “task masters”, whose sole function is to create whole new ecosystems of bullshit (the latter can also be described as “bullshit generators”). And there are various combinations of the above, which Graeber describes as 'complex multiform bullshit jobs'”.

But Graeber doesn't blame capitalism ( I need to read more on this to be sure  that's accurate).  Rather he says capitalism has been perverted by "Managerial Feudalism."  And this results in the creation of bullshit jobs.

"One of the most compelling arguments in Graeber’s book is the simple observation that the creation of meaningless jobs is exactly what capitalism is not supposed to do. Governed by the need to maximise profits and minimise costs, companies subject to “pure” capitalism would gain no advantage in hiring unnecessary staff. However, Graeber points out that many industries no longer operate on this dynamic of profit and loss. Instead some industries like accountancy, consultancy and corporate law, are rewarded through huge, open contracts, where the incentive is to maximise the length, cost and duration of the project.
One testimony from a former consultant helping a bank resolve claims from the PPI scandal described how they, 'purposefully mistrained and disorganized staff so that the jobs were repeatedly and consistently done wrong… This meant that cases had to be redone and contracts extended'”.

Bullshit jobs really isn't what I'm talking about.  Though it shows the hollowness of the Protestant work ethic - since these jobs aren't needed, yet they are there.  People work at these jobs that are not only unnecessary, but at times harmful, and probably not mentally healthy for the workers.

So, consider this post as notes.  As I run across interesting things like this, I'll post them as more notes.     Is Managerial Feudalism just a disease that capitalism caught, or is it a natural outcome of competition leading to power and greed that sets up perverse incentives for corporations to make money?  (Think about the housing crisis where banks made loans they knew wouldn't be repaid, but everybody was making big profits on.  Think about Wells Fargo setting up false bank accounts to bleed their customers who had set up real accounts.

Enough for now.  But also note, if we move to fewer and fewer real jobs, then the Supreme Courts' regular cutting back of union powers may not matter.  Unions too need to refocus so they can help define the new economic and moral model for wealth distribution to go along with or even replace work.

"Whatever you eat, a $200 lunch or a $2 hot dog, the results are the same, toilet-wise" and Other Thought-Provoking Quotes

Artist  Maurizio Catelan, in article about the Guggenheim museum declining President Trump's request for a Van Gogh for the White House, but offering instead Catelan's solid gold toilet,

“Whatever you eat, a $200 lunch or a $2 hot dog, the results are the same, toilet-wise,” he has said.

From a paper called "The Economic Roots of the Rise of Trumpism" from the German Center for Economic Studies in Munich (CESifo) we see that many US children don't even get the $2 hotdogs:

 "Six million children are reported for maltreatment to U.S. agencies annually,33 and five children die daily due to abuse or neglect.34"

If you follow the links on the two footnotes, the six million figure is lower than the source, though it apparently covers a wide range of issues reported.  The figure from the second footnote is 1670 deaths per year, which divided by 365 days equals 4.57 which they rounded up to 5.  But it's still a shocking number.  If these numbers are accurate, then more kids in the US die from neglect or abuse by their parents than in school shootings.

This is a purely economic look that offers lots of interesting statistics that they use to explain Trump's election.  It doesn't seem to consider other contributing factors.


Jeremy Corbyn, Labour Leader in UK (From BBC) on what would change if he becomes Prime Minister:

"A Labour government, he said, 'will take decisive action to make finance the servant of industry, not the masters of us all'". 

Rachel Crooks quoted in a Washington Post article about how the forced kiss she got (when she was a 22 year old office worker) from Trump affected her life:

“It was one of the first real failures or defeats of my life, where the world wasn’t what I hoped it was going to be, and I started to really doubt myself,” she said.

“Nobody would touch you, especially not Trump. You look like a boy. A gun to your head would be good for our nation.”  (Annonymous email to Crooks) 

This next quote from ImperfectCognitions seems a perfect response to all the Trump supporters who deny the truth of her story, including friends and relatives:

"You’re arguing with someone – about politics, or a policy at work, or about whose turn it is to do the dishes – and they keep finding all kinds of self-serving justifications for their view. When one of their arguments is defeated, rather than rethinking their position they just leap to another argument, then maybe another. They’re rationalizing –coming up with convenient defenses for what they want to believe, rather than responding even-handedly to the points you're making. You try to point it out, but they deny it, and dig in more."

The article is well worth reading.  It goes on to say that those who think they are more rational and wouldn't let their biases affect their judgment are possibly more susceptible because they think they aren't.

Will Africa Help Free Americans By Boycotting Us Like We Did For Them?

When the US and other countries boycotted South Africa in the 1980's it led to the end of apartheid and the release of political prisoners.  It's time for Africa to return the favor and help us overturn our racist administration.   So I thought when I read this short piece.

From the Anchorage Daily News, but originally from the New York Times:

TRUMP COMMENTS,
INFURIATING AFRICANS, MAY
SET BACK U.S. INTERESTS
South Africa and Nigeria
have joined a chorus of nations
condemning President Donald
Trump’s inflammatory remarks
on immigration, as Africa experts
warned that the controversy
threatened to set back U.S. interests
across the world’s fastestgrowing
continent.
Botswana, Ghana, Haiti, Namibia,
Senegal and the African
Union have all protested the
remarks. The U.S. has many interests
in Africa: battling Islamist
insurgencies, reducing political
instability and improving governance.
The State Department has
instructed diplomats not to deny
Trump’s remarks, but simply to
listen to complaints.

Pot, Deflating Bubbles, And Other Word Battles

Words play a huge role in what we know.  Even our own observations are affected by the language we speak and think in.  We wrap our experiences in the words we have available.  Very few of us break those constraints and create new words if the ones we have are inadequate.

Here are some examples word issues in today's newspaper:

1.  Stop using the word 'pot' - An ADN headline:

Marijuana industry gets blunt: Stop using the word ‘pot’

". . .But marijuana still carries a stigma that surfaces with the use of old slang like pot and weed. For many, the words evoke an image of lazy, not-so-bright people who puff their lives away.
The image deeply bothers the marijuana industry, which is telling the public — sometimes gently, sometimes curtly — that they should use the word cannabis. That's the scientific name for the plant from which marijuana is derived."

Here, it appears the cannabis industry is trying to change its (in business jargon) 'brand.'  'Brand' is a word I dislike.  "Branding" epitomizes the idea of substituting the image of something for the actual essence of it. Branders want people to think about their product a certain way so it sells better.  It's the image, not the product itself, that they are selling. 'Brand' is a way of 'branding' the word 'deception' and making it into something that's seen as good.

I don't think that the name for cannabis matters all that much - it's the intrinsic product that people are  interested in, no matter what you call it.  I suspect those holding negative images of 'pot' are dying out.  That view was part of the political ideology that didn't like rock music, hippies, and Vietnam war protestors



2.  Bubble Deflates - Another ADN headline that comes originally from the New York Times:

BITCOIN FALLS BELOW $10,000 AS VIRTUAL CURRENCY BUBBLE DEFLATES

Did you ever see a bubble deflate?  Balloons and tires can lose their air slowly (deflate), but bubbles burst.  Except, it seems, in economics.  But then economists often deductive,  starting with theory they tell us how the world works.  It's the theory, not the real world that matters.   In economics, for example, people only  make 'rational' decisions. And, bubbles deflate.  It took people like Vernon Smith to actually do experiments to burst some of this economic bubble nonsense.

This is just lazy thinking.  Mixed metaphors are a kind of lazy thinking.  "A carpenter was the low rung on a totem pole." comes from a long list of mixed metaphors.   But if you google 'deflated bubble' you'll find lots of serious economics examples of this term.

3.  Other Word Battles

George Lakoff tells us that framing the debate is the most critical thing in political discourse.  We've fought over words like "illegal alien" versus "undocumented worker"; 'baby killing' versus 'pro-choice.'  The list goes on and on.

The conservatives have made a science of this and do it masterfully.  The never say 'the Democratic Party."  They say 'the Democrat Party." It's like taking someone's name and changing it just a little bit to irritate them and control what they are called.  It's a form of bullying.   And their most successful reframing was the term  'political correctness.'  Even liberal have bought into this perversion.

I've written about the origins of the term 'political correctness' in the past.  I don't want to repeat all that.

I also posted about my view of the difference between conservative and liberal use of restricting words.  Conservatives try to restrict words as a way to win debates.  If you ban or demonize words needed by your opponent, it rigs the whole debate.   Their opponents aren't allowed to use key terms needed to make their case.   The NRA has bullied the Center For Disease Control to end research on gun deaths in the US.  Without data it's hard to make a rational argument.  And the Trump administration has banned terms like 'climate change' and 'fetus.'

Liberals try to ban words that insult or demean or even terrorize other human beings, generally people who are NOT white heterosexual males.  There are plenty of other terms to use that are more respectful and so these bans don't hinder political discussion.  

The Lost Post Reconstructed - What Is Davos And Why Is Trump Going?

I can't remember the last time it happened - that a post vanished.  But it did yesterday.  There was a trace of the post - 15 visitors had visited, but it had reverted to a draft and the content was gone. [Bloggers might want more explanation, so see * at the bottom.]

I don't have time to reconstruct it all of yesterday's post, but I do think the World Economic Forum is something people should know more about, simply because a fair number of world leaders are planning to attend and what they say there will influence how the world operates in the next year.  And while I think that the WEF leans too heavily toward business and the issues of the wealthy, I also think that they take a rational approach that is sorely missing these days in the US among those in power.

So, here's the video - I recommend the first 14 minutes where Klaus Schwab talks - and I'll try to reconstruct some of the key points I had up yesterday.



[After Schwab's 14 minute presentation,  the rest is talking heads (well, so is Schwab).  This is simply a video of the press conference.  The fact that they didn't feel a need to spruce it up with graphics or closeups or other video tricks that keep audience attention, may reflect a) need to get it up quickly, b) the age of most participants  c) lack of concern because they have lots of power and might think they are so important that they don't have to trick it up.   It's not lack of money or technical know-how because the WEF website has lots of fancy charts and online sophistication. And the fact they have it up means the rest of us get to have a glimpse of the public part of this event.]


Klaus Schwab founded, and is the executive chairman, of the World Economic Council.  In this introduction to the conference for the media he covered:

Seven Reasons why Davos is significant  

1.  Collaboration - this is about the who can solve the problems - no one person, country, organization can handle these issues

Six Stakeholder Groups

• Governments
• Business groups
• Civil Society - NGO's (non-governmental organizations)
• University/Academic experts
• Younger Generation
• Media

2.  Integrative Approach - This is about the nature of the issues -They are  complex, must use systemic approach, ecosystem - 14 different systems (he didn't list them but said they are in the program)

3.  Not Stand Alone - everything is integrated into ongoing workshops - 3 example

• Global Network of Centers for the Fourth Industrial Revolution
• Global Center for Cyber Security
• Uplink - worlds foremost innovation accelerator 

He also mentioned:

• Middle East Summit
• Sustainable Development Impact Summit

[He didn't enumerate a #4]

5.  Timing - Beginning of each year is important.  Focuses the agenda for the year.  This is a critical year for Europe and most leaders will be here.

A second big issue will be the Future of the Global Corporation.

Future of Economic Growth - at the end of a big upswing cycle.

G20 and G7 Agendas are prepared at Davos

Publication of the Global Risks Report.  

Inclusive - one-third from emerging countries and Modi is a key speaker.

Integration of these discussions into discussion of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

[He didn't identify specifically #s 6 or 7.  Maybe they were in the items mentioned after he mentioned #5.]

Conclusions

1.  Collaborative Approach - No one alone can solve the issues
2.  Integrated Approach - No issue can be solved in an isolated way
3.  Constructive Approach - great opportunities, but also unprecedented perils - danger of collapse of our global system, in our hands to improve the state of the world.

Some Background

From Wikipedia:

"The World Economic Forum (WEF) is a Swiss nonprofit foundation, based in Cologny, Geneva, Switzerland. Recognized by the Swiss authorities as an international body,[1] its mission is cited as "committed to improving the state of the world by engaging business, political, academic, and other leaders of society to shape global, regional, and industry agendas".
The Forum is best known for its annual meeting at the end of January in Davos, a mountain resort in Graubünden, in the eastern Alps region of Switzerland. The meeting brings together some 2,500 top business leaders, international political leaders, economists, and journalists for up to four days to discuss the most pressing issues facing the world."

Here's a brief Vanity Fair bio of Klaus Schwab.  


This second time for this post was much easier than the first.

*For Bloggers - I think I somehow got two draft posts going.  I completed one and posted.  But the other one was still open, but very rudimentary.  When I found it, I was confused.  I think I deleted the few lines and I thought I closed it, but I must have revered it to a draft.  When I looked today there were 15 visitors but it was in draft status.  And there was no content.
There are a couple of things I could have done:
1.  copied the published post and started a whole new post and then deleted both the old ones.
2.  opened the published post to edit, then deleted the second post, then updated the original post.

Video Economics Primer Offers Four Ways To Reduce Long Term Deficit

Someone sent me a link to this video that explains the economy. I'm always skeptical about people explaining the economy. Why? Because economists tell us the economy is doing well, all signs are positive. But we hear

• about the people struggling to get by, (and probably know some of them too.)   
• that US income inequality hasn't been so high for a century. 
• (and see) a lot of homeless folks all over.  
• that to keep the economy growing we have to destroy the environment. (Well they don't word it quite like that.)  

My reaction is that if these things are happening in a 'good' economy,  then the economists aren't measuring the economy right.

But this video is a great start to learn how economist think about the economy,  some of  the jargon, and our options for debt reduction beyond the Republican mantras of no new taxes and spending cuts.

In fact, near the end of the video, Dalio explains why spending cuts alone exacerbate the debt problems.

And who is Ray Dialo?  Wikipedia tells us:

"Raymond Dalio (born August 1, 1949) is an American investor, hedge fund manager, and philanthropist.[3] Dalio is the founder of investment firm Bridgewater Associates, one of the world's largest hedge funds.[4] He is one of the world’s 100 wealthiest people, according to Bloomberg.[5]"

So, when he says at the end, that this 'template' has helped him, I'm assuming it means it has helped him to time and direct his investments.



Crib Sheet

This video is content rich.  He has reduced his presentation to the essentials.  Every word is important.  I couldn't listen to this while doing something else.  In fact, I had to stop it repeatedly so I could take notes.  But by doing that, I understood his conclusion.

Basically, he's saying:

The economy works in a simple, mechanical way.

• A few simple parts
• A lot of simple transactions, that are repeated over and over again.
• These transactions are driven by human nature and create 3 main forces that drive the economy
• productivity growth
• the short term debt cycle
• the long term debt cycle

He explains these three forces and uses the three visually superimposed on each other - productivity growth, short term debt cycle, and the long term debt cycle - to explain what people have to do to keep the cycles going in our favor.  

He starts by talking about transactions (people exchanging goods and services for money and credit) and shows how these can lead to cycles of increasing and decreasing productivity and debt.  

He puts CREDIT in the center of this model - as a critical means to increasing productivity and living standards  (He points out there is $50 trillion in credit in the US, but only about $3 trillion in cash.)

You can agree or disagree with his presentation (I have a few questions and quibbles) but it does a great job of spelling out the basics of mainstream economics.  

He tells us at the end that the short term debt cycles can be fixed by the central bank (The Fed in the US) decreasing interest rates.  But each time it does this and restimulates the economy and productivity growth, it increases the long term debt until the long term debt cycle gets us to a depression.

He offers four solutions at that point. (Lowering interest doesn't work because it is already at 0% at this point):

1. Cut spending
2. Restructure the debt
3. Income redistribution
4. Print more money

He argues that cutting spending increases the problem, and the ultimate solution is a combination of all four, which, if done well (balancing inflationary and deflationary ways to deleverage) it is 'beautiful' and gets us balanced again with the least disruption.  

I promise if you watch this carefully and take some notes, all this will make perfect sense.  

This is useful to gather jargon and understanding for when you talk to your Republican congress members who only want to cut spending and taxes.  

And, of course, economists don't agree amongst themselves, so take this all with a grain of salt.  Consider it a starting point for finding out more.

[UPDATE 5:45pm:  I've added the word 'video' into the title after seeing how relatively few people have looked at this post so far today.  LA Rain got more hits faster.  People apparently don't want to deal with the hard topics.  The video is really well done, and maybe by adding video to the title more people will stake a look.  Just musing here on blogging and people's interests.  I do recognize that I too get overloaded and skip things I should read.]

Trump's China Deals And Alaska's Liquid Natural Gas Pipeline

NPR had a report on Trump's visit to China the other day and the story essentially said China was eating our lunch.  I'm going to offer you a fair amount here, because it's all relevant, but the key points are:

1.  Trump has sidelined the professionals who know China and replaced them with political hacks.  

2.  Even with seasoned professionals at the table for the US, China is one of the most restrictive countries for foreign businesses and the US is one of the most open, giving China great advantages.

3.  China has regularly supported its private companies so they could compete with an unfair advantage overseas.

4.  China, when it does work with foreign companies, requires partnerships with Chinese companies and access to all their technology advances.  

OK, here's from the NPR piece, just before this point there's a discussion about American beef having a much higher tariff than Australian beef.

"James McGregor, president of the greater China region for the consulting firm APCO, says China's lifting of the U.S. beef ban in May is the latest case of too little, too late. And he's not optimistic the Trump administration is focused enough to improve business for U.S. companies in China.
"There is no strategy and professionals are not involved," he says. "The people from [the U.S. Trade Representative's office] and Commerce and State are sidelined."
McGregor says instead of representatives from the U.S. Trade Representative and other government staff who typically deal with China, President Trump has political appointees with little to no trade experience engaging with the Chinese.
"It's really been a farce," says McGregor. "And if it continues like this, it's really going to hurt American business. The Chinese are pros. They know what they're doing. Anybody sitting on the other side of the table as Chinese negotiator has been doing that subject for 20 years."
McGregor says Chinese negotiators have called friends of his in Beijing to see what the Chinese side could give to Trump during his Beijing visit to please his base. He calls these "Twitterable deliverables," and he puts the lifting of the Chinese ban on U.S. beef in this category: an easily promotable gift that, because it has come so late, may not have a meaningful impact on the U.S. economy."

What would have an impact, says William Zarit, chairman of the board at the American Chamber of Commerce in China, is forcing China to open its markets to U.S. business and to stop giving preferential treatment to Beijing's own so-called "global champion" companies. Tech giants Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent, as well as telecommunications company Huawei, have all received generous support from Beijing. 

"These global champions are being nurtured in the domestic market with protection and with strong state support, so that in some ways, when these companies go international, it's tantamount to a Western company competing with the country," says Zarit. 

And when U.S. companies come to China, they're often forced to hand over their technology and enter into joint ventures with Chinese partners. U.S. companies in at least 10 sectors — including automotive, healthcare, tech and entertainment — have investment caps preventing them from competing with Chinese companies on a fair playing field. Chinese companies in these sectors have no such caps in the U.S. market.

I thought about this as I read  the Alaska Dispatch New account of the an Alaska deal signed with China's Sinopec, two large Chinese financial institutions, and the Chinese government to move along  the governor's pet project, the one he ran for governor to accomplish, a liquid natural gas pipeline.  

Are we once again the colony having our resources exploited by wealthy Outsiders?  Is the governor making too many concessions because this project is so important to him?  Are the Chinese giving Trump some empty fluff he can use to show his base how successful his trip was?  The ADN article said that nothing was really final and that "senior Sinopec executives weren't aware of the gas pipeline deal with Alaska."

Our governor is smarter and more pragmatic than most of our politicians.  He spent time as a lawyer in court over oil and gas issues.  That's a good way to learn to understand a business and the players in it.  

Maybe the best thing for the state is to just be able to use the gas we have to raise revenue while we can.  There don't seem to be any details available and we probably don't have that much leverage anyway.   Though I have wondered, with global warming, whether we might spare the $43 billion price tag for the pipeline (which experience suggests will be considerably higher in the end) and just wait a few years until tankers can pick up the gas directly from the North Slope.

But for now, we're part of Trump's evidence of what a great negotiator he is.  And maybe it's a show of Governor Walker's smarts, that he's willing to let Trump get the credit.  Stay tuned, this is going to be a long process.

From Flavor and Soul to Muslim Cool On UAA's New Book Shelf

I thought this was going to be a quick post.  Just some pictures of books I saw at the library.  A reminder to me and others of how much we don't know and all the wondrous books out there that will fill in some of the gaps.  This has taken much longer than I expected as I got engrossed in finding out more about these books.

These books were in the new book section of the library.  But then I realized some of these were hardly 'new' books.  So I went back to find the publication dates of all of them.  I have question for the acquisition office of the library about how some of these were chosen.  I know when I've asked that question in the past, there were some that were gifts which might explain a few.




Nahid Aslanbeigui and GuyArthur Oakes,  Cecil Pigou (2015)

"The British economist Arthur Cecil Pigou (1877-59) reconceptualized economics as a theory of economic welfare and a logic of policy analysis. Misconceptions of his work abound. This book, an essay in demystification and the first reading of the entire Pigouvian oeuvre, stresses his pragmatic and historicist premises." From Palsgrave (the publisher.)

Karen Tei Yamashita, Brazil-Maru (2010)

"A range of characters, male and female, tell about a particular group of Japanese who emigrated to Brazil in the first decades of this century. Christian, well-educated, and reasonably affluent, they sought to establish communities where Christian and Japanese values could flourish. The group prospered, though not without cost, and it is this cost that's a major theme here. A secondary theme, suggested by the quotes from the philosopher Rousseau that precede each section, is the nature of education in a new world where emigrants' children often have only 'natural and purely physical knowledge.''' From Kirkus Reviews.

'New' at the UAA library means new to the library.  The review quoted above was published in 2010.




James Hinton, The Mass Observers (2013)

Even after reading the book cover flap, I still wasn't sure what 'mass observers' meant.  I guess in UK people know what this is.  From Google Books:

"This is the first full-scale history of Mass-Observation, the independent social research organisation which, between 1937 and 1949, set out to document the attitudes, opinions, and every-day lives of the British people. Through a combination of anthropological fieldwork, opinion surveys, and written testimony solicited from hundreds of volunteers, Mass-Observation created a huge archive of popular life during a tumultuous decade which remains central to British national identity. The social history of these years has been immeasurably enriched by the archive, and extracts from the writings of M-O's volunteers have won a wide and admiring audience. Now James Hinton, whose acclaimed Nine Wartime Lives demonstrated how the intensely personal writing of some of M-O's volunteers could be used to shed light on broader historical issues, has written a wonderfully vivid and evocative account which does justice not only to the two founders whose tempestuous relationship dominated the early years of Mass-Observation, but also to the dozens of creative and imaginative, and until now largely unknown, young enthusiasts whose work helped to keep the show on the road. The history of the organisation itself - the staff, the research methods, the struggle for funding, M-O's characteristic 'voice', and its role in the cultural and political life of the period - are themselves as interesting as any of the themes that the founders set out to document. This long-awaited and deeply researched history corrects and revises much of our existing knowledge of Mass-Observation, opens up new and important perspectives on the organisation, and will be seen as the authoritative account for years to come."



Anthea Taylor  Celebrity and the Feminist Blockbuster (2016)

"In the first book-length study of celebrity feminism, Anthea Taylor convincingly argues that the most visible feminists in the mediasphere have been authors of bestselling works of non-fiction: feminist ‘blockbusters’. Celebrity and The Feminist Blockbuster explores how the authors of these popular feminist books have shaped the public identity of modern feminism, in some cases over many decades. Maintaining a distinction between women who are famous because of their feminism and those who later add feminism to their ‘brand’, Taylor contends that Western celebrity feminism, as a political mode of public subjectivity, cannot in any simple way be seen as homologous with other forms of stardom. " Again, from Palgrave







W. G. Sebald  Die Ringe des Saturn (1995 German, 1998 English according to Wikipedia)

This is one of those cases where the similarities between English and German are so close that I don't have to translate the title.

It's not science fiction, or even science from what I could tell.   It's a travel book of Seabed's walking trip through the  rural Suffolk heath and coast where he finds traces of past glories and scandals.

Since people who can't read German won't read this book, I'll post a German description:

"Einer geht zu Fuß. Er wandert durch die Grafschaft Suffolk, eine spärlich besiedelte Gegend an der englischen Ostküste, und dort findet er, in den Heidelandschaften und abgelegenen Küstenorten, die ganze Welt wieder. Überall stößt er auf die Spuren vergangener Herrlichkeit und vergangener Schande."








John Gennari  Flavor and Soul (2017)

Another interesting looking book - this one looks at the overlap of American Italian and Black cultures.  See more at the University of Chicago Press.














Joel C. Rosenberg Inside the Revolution

This is listed as a non-fiction book and Rosenberg's cached website says it's based on hundreds of interviews including former CIA chief Porter Goss, Israeli prime minister Netanyahu, and "more than 150 Christian pastors and ministry leaders operating deep inside the Islamic world."  The website also has a link to books on biblical prophecy.  I can't tell if that's part of this book or not.

Elliot's Blog ("Generally Christian Book Reviews") tells us more about the book:

"Inside the Revolution takes the reader on a journey through the histories and present-day mindsets of three distinct religious groups in the Middle East: the radical, fundamentalist Muslims; the peace-loving, open-minded mainstream Muslims; and the Christ-following Christian converts (former-Muslims and non-). What drove Osama Bin Laden to become the man he was and relish the things he did? What do the Muslims in your town really think of Al Qaeda and jihad? How many Christians are worshiping in Iran, and how does the government treat them? The answers to all these questions (and so many more ) are developed throughout this book, a well-researched and beautifully arranged masterpiece on the roots of what has recently brought our world into its nervous instability."

   From Wikipedia:

"Rosenberg was born in 1967 near Rochester, New York. He has stated that his father is of Jewish descent and his mother was born into a Methodist family of English descent.  His parents were agnostic and became born-again Christians when he was a child in 1973. At the age of 17, he became a born-again Christian and now identifies as a Jewish believer in Jesus. He graduated in 1988 from Syracuse University, after which he worked for Rush Limbaugh as a research assistant. Later, he worked for U.S. Presidential candidate Steve Forbes as a campaign advisor. Rosenberg opened a political consultancy business which he ran until 2000, and claims to have consulted for former Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Natan Sharansky and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, where he says that he garnered much of his information on the Middle East that he uses in his books."

Rafe Blaufarb The Great Demarcation (2016)

"The French Revolution remade the system of property-holding that had existed in France before 1789. This book engages with this historical process not from an economic or social perspective, but from the perspective of the laws and institutions of property. The revolutionary changes aimed at two fundamental goals: the removal of formal public power from the sphere of property and the excision of property from the realm of sovereignty. The revolutionaries accomplished these two aims by abolishing privately owned forms of power, such as feudalism, seigneurialism, and venal public office, and by dismantling the Crown domain, thus making the state purely sovereign. This brought about a Great Demarcation: a radical distinction between property and power from which flowed the critical distinctions between the political and the social, state and society, sovereignty and ownership, the public and private. This destroyed the conceptual basis of the Old Regime, laid the foundation of France’s new constitutional order, and crystallized modern ways of thinking about polities and societies. . . "  From Oxford Scholarship.

Jan Brandt  Against the World (2011 German, 2016 English)

When I opened the book, I was surprised that someone had already made notes in the first few pages.  Then I realized these notes were part of the book.  The dust jacket reviews were sensational, something like these from the German publisher Dumont:

“Jan Brandt’s outstanding debut novel. (…) Brandt changes perspectives and times with the utmost of ease, and his novel is consequently a grandiose 360 degree view of a small world where more of the larger world outside is reflected than its inhabitants themselves can recognise at times.”
SPIEGEL online
“A stunning, wonderfully presumptuous book, triumphant in its obsession for details and lexical richness, that is aimed a world of hindrance and oppression. (…) The result is an expansive mediation on friendship, the power of music, love and other cruelties. (…) It is splendid how the 37-year old is capable of driving on his complex and multifaceted story about a handful of characters over hundreds of pages with-out ever boring the reader – and it leads one to hope for more from the pen of this manic realist.”
Rolling Stone

A still admiring, but also critical review, that would have Brandt taking advice from Robert Frost to keep it concise comes from Dialog International:

". . . What's frustrating is that Gegen die Welt contains several excellent sections and strands that could be crafted into terrific novellas or novels.  I especially liked the character Bernhard "Hard" Kupers, Daniel's father, a funny and energetic small businessman who does whatever it takes - including arson - keep his drug store afloat, even as he indulges in gambling and adulterous affairs. The dialogue between Hard and his wife "Biggi" is pure comedy.  The strongest piece of writing is the story of the locomotive driver who suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome after two young people throw themselves in front of his train.  His story goes on for over 150 pages - the bottom half the page, while the top half continues the saga of Daniel Kupers.
Jan Brandt has many such "techniques" for tormenting his readers, and I confess I put the book down for weeks at a time. But, to the author's credit, I did decide to finish Gegen die Welt, and, reading the last third of the novel, I realized Brandt's true achievement.  Gegen die Welt was published in 2011, three years before Pegida  or AfD (Alternative for Germany), yet Brandt predicted the wave of right-wing populism that today is washing over the provinces.  The citizens of Jericho are no different from those in Sachsen or Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. They see their world threatened by globalization, big box stores, automation, immigration - and are attracted to any rhetoric that promises to 'make Germany great again. . .'"  

Joseph René Bellot, Memoirs of Lieutenant Joseph René Bellot : with his Journal of a voyage in the polar seas, in search of Sir John Franklin (1855 originally, not sure of this edition)


Here's a look at a great engraving in the original.

Patrick Jory Thailand's Theory of Monarchy (2017)

"Since the 2006 coup d’état, Thailand has been riven by two opposing political visions: one which aspires to a modern democracy and the rule of law, and another which holds to the traditional conception of a kingdom ruled by an exemplary Buddhist monarch. Thailand has one of the world’s largest populations of observant Buddhists and one of its last politically active monarchies. This book examines the Theravada Buddhist foundations of Thailand’s longstanding institution of monarchy. Patrick Jory states that the storehouse of monarchical ideology is to be found in the popular literary genre known as the Jātakas, tales of the Buddha’s past lives. The best-known of these, the Vessantara Jātaka, disseminated an ideal of an infinitely generous prince as a bodhisatta or future Buddha—an ideal which remains influential in Thailand today. Using primary and secondary source materials largely unknown in Western scholarship, Jory traces the history of the Vessantara Jātaka and its political-cultural importance from the ancient to the modern period. Although pressures from European colonial powers and Buddhist reformers led eventually to a revised political conception of the monarchy, the older Buddhist ideal of kingship has yet endured."  From SUNY Press

Su'ad Abdul Khabeer  Muslim Cool (2016)

"Muslim Cool is a way of being an American Muslim—displayed in ideas, dress, social activism in the ’hood, and in complex relationships to state power. Constructed through hip hop and the performance of Blackness, Muslim Cool is a way of engaging with the Black American experience by both Black and non-Black young Muslims that challenges racist norms in the U.S. as well as dominant ethnic and religious structures within American Muslim communities.  
Drawing on over two years of ethnographic research, Su'ad Abdul Khabeer illuminates the ways in which young and multiethnic U.S. Muslims draw on Blackness to construct their identities as Muslims. This is a form of critical Muslim self-making that builds on interconnections and intersections, rather than divisions between 'Black' and 'Muslim.'”  . . . From NYU Press

Black Humor Alert

Sometimes sick humor is the only response to the news.  Here are some headlines I expect to see soon.


1.  Guinness Book of Records' New Category:  Most People Killed and Injured By A Mass Shooter

Sick, but the news I heard on NPR kept saying "the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history" which to some will be a challenge to set a new record.  There will be records for one person shootings, two person shootings, police shootings, military massacres, etc. And surely there is someone out there who wants to know about the deadliest mass shooting BEFORE modern U.S. history, so they can beat that too.  And Listverse has gone where Guinness has yet to go.

2.  NRA Establish 24 Hour Massacre News Channel  

As I listened to NPR (looks pretty close to NRA, doesn't it) switch to all day coverage of Las Vegas today, I realized it's only a matter of time before we need full time coverage of mass murders.  They'll fill in with other more mundane murders on slower days.  The more shootings, the more people will want more guns to compete for the Guinness records or to protect themselves.



The gun control people want to limit who gets guns and the kinds of guns they get.

The pro-gun people (chiefly sponsored by the gun and arms industry through the NRA) argue that people, not guns, kill people, so everyone (except Muslims probably) should have unlimited access (it seems since they seem to start lobbying if a member of Congress even thinks about gun control.)

It's clear that both people and guns together kill people.  A person with a knife can kill a small crowd, but not fifty, and not from a distance.  People can also use bombs and vehicles and other ways to kill more people at once.  But automatic weapons seem to be the most efficient and effective way to kill many people in a short time.

Then there's the people.  The president used the word 'evil' to describe the Las Vegas killer.  That's a word that is bandied about whenever there is a mass killing.  Evil is a word that makes the killer seem to be inherently bad through and through.  An agent of Satan.  (ISIS claimed credit for the Las Vegas killing, but I haven't heard about Satan's claim yet.)  Not someone you might know and say hi to every day.

The stats on deaths by guns around the world, make it clear that the easy access to weapons in the United States plays a role in the carnage here.  And as we learn about people involved in mass shootings, there's always some sort of long simmering resentment of people in general or some group of people.  Mostly based on personal issues of some sort.

There is currently a high level of anger among people in the United States.  Our current president claims that anger is what got him elected and he may be right.  But my point here is that people who commit mass murders often are people with a great deal of anger about something - loss of a job, loss of a spouse.  But underlying it all is loss of respect, probably most importantly self-respect.

We have a society that produces a lot of angry people with declining self-esteem.  I would argue that a number of social, political, and economic factors play a part.

Capitalism, which reduces everything to money and making it as efficiently as possible, plays a role, by squeezing more work out of employees for less money and using much of the employee share to enrich officers and shareholders.  That's the abstract part.  More concretely technology is making workers redundant.  Technology and foisting work onto the customer is now rampant.  It started, in my experience, with self-service gas stations.  Now travel agents are almost gone as people have to go online to book their own tickets.  Receptionists are gone as we spend a minute or more listening to simulated voices giving us choices of buttons to push until we finally get to what we need - and the companies seem to hope we won't need a human.  We have self service lines in the grocery.  Each of these changes cuts out jobs.  Businesses have been fighting unions forever.  With fewer employees represented by unions, workers rights and wages and benefits erode and erode.  Lots of people work long hours for less money.  A smaller number of workers get good wages and benefits.

Pluralism is a political theory of governance that stems from the idea of separation of powers and the competition of interest groups to influence policy decisions.  The money spent by corporations to support candidates and ideas, to lobby legislators, and to spin truth to the public has gone up significantly.  So we have a majority party that wants to cut millions out of the health care programs and wants to cut taxes to the wealthy at the expense of the middle and lower economic classes.

Both capitalism and pluralism share the idea that the best outcome comes from the competition of self-interested players.  And while surely different interests keeping watch on each other is helpful, the theory doesn't account for things like altruism and community spirit.  Self-interest was the only thing most economists counted as 'rational' thinking for years.  It's all about competition.  And the balance falls apart when some groups gain much greater power to compete than others.  And that's what has happened over the last 60 years as we've moved from a country where the gaps between the richest and poorest in society, and the lowest and highest paid employee in a company, were much lower, to our current (and worsening) situation where the gaps are growing greater and greater.  And if the Republicans manage to pass the kind of tax reform our president is extolling, it will get worse.

I'd argue that it is this spreading sense of loss of economic and political power that plays a huge role in the anger Americans feel these days.  If we don't address that, we won't affect the people who not only are angry, but are also unhinged enough to commit suicide through spectacular mass murders which give them so sort of attention.  And as I mentioned in the previous post (not at all thinking about writing this post since Las Vegas hadn't yet happened), bad attention is better than no attention.

These shooter know that their lives will be the center of national, if not world, attention for at least several days if not more.  They will get their 'glory' for the way society has treated them.  I'm not saying their thinking is right, but I'm just trying to offer a possible explanation for behavior that seems unexplainable.  Because if we don't understand why people commit such acts, we have no hope for finding ways to prevent them.  Calling them 'evil' essentially puts all the blame on the shooter and doesn't allow for reflecting on how our society helps to create so many angry, bitter people with access to weapons that can kill fifty people in a few minutes.

As I listened to NPR this morning, I kept hearing the same stories over and over.  They simply do not have enough information to fill the time with meaningful new news.  It's as though they feel that to compete with social media, they have to report each tidbit of new information - whether confirmed or not - because otherwise people won't listen.  I'd argue that people would like to hear more reasoned thoughtful stories and can wait a few hours for serious updates on the current crisis.  Only people who might have a direct connection to the story - people whose friends and family might be involved - have a compelling reason to stay closely tuned in.  And they'd probably do better with social media outlets where they can set up two way communication.

But we all have a responsibility to let the media know we want more thoughtful coverage.  Instant news is less important than well-done news.  And it may well be that people like me are in the minority.  That we have become, as a nation, sensation junkies.  That news, for most people, serves the functions of entertainment and confirmation of our own biases.  If that's the case, democracy won't survive.

Alaska Budget Crisis - Head Tax

There's so much to write about, but not nearly as much time to do sufficient research to say something  that adds meaningfully to what others have already said.  So I'm going to keep this really focused.

Senator Click Bishop has introduced SB12 which establishes a head tax.  I had some questions about how that would work and contacted my Senator, Berta Gardner.  So I can say something with a bit of authority on this.

We used to have a head tax - I remember it being minimal, like $10 from everyone's first paycheck of the year.  But if 200,000 people got at least one paycheck a year (our population was much lower then) it would still amount to $2 million.   Sen. Bishop's bill would have several levels based on income, so it would be somewhat progressive.

However, it's only for people on a payroll.  So people with other kinds of income - pensions, rental properties, investment income, etc.  would not have to pay.  That seems blatantly unfair and why a graduated income tax is a better option.  Though I'd vote for the simplest-to-calculate income tax possible - like a percent of the federal taxes.  Minimum wage workers shouldn't have to pay if people with much larger, but unearned, incomes don't.

The one benefit of this tax is that it does include non-residents who work in Alaska.

Senator Gardner also wrote it could be part of the compromise package  if the Senate ever agrees to any new revenue.  She also said there haven't been any hearings on the bill.

Is Trump Turning Lemons Into Hotels?

The LA Times had a story yesterday about the lifting of a 16 year old ban on lemons from the north of Argentina.

“We were completely blindsided,” said Joel Nelsen, president of the California Citrus Mutual, an industry advocacy group. “They just flat-out ignored us, and that’s completely unacceptable.”

That doesn't sound like the Trump who was going to protect American business and agriculture from unfair foreign competition.

Meanwhile, a November CNN Money piece talked about Trump and his daughter's post election phone call with the president of Argentina.

"The question is whether Donald Trump and his children are using their newly found political power to push the deal across the finish line. It would raise questions of yet another conflict of interest between Trump's business empire and the White House.
Trump spoke to Argentina's president, Mauricio Macri, on November 14 and Ivanka Trump also briefly came on the call, according to Macri's spokesperson.
The two go back a long way. Macri has a similar background -- his father was a billionaire real estate developer, and the Macri family did a real estate deal with Trump in New York in the 1980s. Macri and Trump were friends at the time, and Macri has known Ivanka since she was a kid."

But maybe we shouldn't jump to conclusions so fast.

The LA Times article on the lemons goes on to say:

"In December, President Obama’s administration said it would lift the ban, which had been imposed after complaints by producers in California that the Argentine lemons carried diseases.
But a month later, Trump’s administration issued a 60-day stay on the decision. That stay had been extended, stalling the return of imports from one of the world’s top lemon producers to its largest market."

So this was something that was already decided by Obama, and Trump stopped it for two months.  OK, at this point, Trump is going against Macri's interests and is with the lemon farmers.  Then it goes on:

“We [the lemon growers] disagreed with the Obama administration, but this rule now belongs to the Trump administration and it flies in the face of the administration’s priorities, which are to protect domestic agriculture, U.S. businesses and U.S. jobs,” Nelsen said. [Nelsen is the spokesperson for the lemon growers]

He [Nelsen] also said serious questions remain about the hazard posed by pests that could hitch a ride on Argentine fruit and damage U.S. groves.

The article mentions that we get lemons from Mexico and Chile.  Do they have better pest inspection and control than Argentina?  Or is this just 'fake news' from the California lemon industry to stop a competitor?  Good questions to pursue.

The CNN article, further down, also raises questions about the relationship between Macri and Trump.

"The two haven't always been close though. Macri threw his support behind Hillary Clinton in September."

So we don't really know all the details and motivations.  It could be that Trump held up Obama's change of policy to retaliate against Macri for supporting Clinton (who, like everyone else at that time, thought she would win.)  And now perhaps they have made up and part of the negotiations included lifting the lemon ban in exchange for hotel approval.  We don't know.

This is why so many of us are angry that Trump ignores legal and ethical standards that he  should divest his business interests and that his kids play such a big role in the business and the administration.

Even if he did everything totally above board - something that is hard to picture - there would still always be the appearance of conflict of interest, and the appearance that Trump is using the presidency to improve his business.

But Trump rejects that.  The November CNN piece ends with this quote from Trump:

"Prior to the election, it was well known that I have interests in properties all over the world. Only the crooked media makes this a big deal!"

Trump seems to think he can badmouth anyone, but if anyone turns the tables, it's a lie.  No matter what the real motivations for the lifting of the lemon ban, this man is seriously ill.

Why Bad Politicians Hate Good Academics - Mouhcine Guettabi Explaining His Research on Economic Impacts On Two Alaskan Boroughs

There's a war going on against academics as well as against the media.  People who try to uncover the truth are never the favorites of people in power and often they are persecuted.  (See this and this, for example. Journalists are being killed in a number of countries including Trump's role model, Russia.  But first he wants to get rid of the First Amendment.  While that may be just distraction or hyperbole, the trouble with liars is you don't know when they are serious. You get the idea.  Tracking down fake news takes up time that could be better spent.)


Dr. Mouhcine Guettabi's Presentation at ISER

Friday at noon, I went to a display of what good scientists do to get near the truth.  And why bad politicians hate good scientists.

Economics professor and researcher at UAA's Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER,) Mouhcine Guettabi,  gave a talk.

I don't claim to understand all the details of his formuli, but what was so refreshing was listening to how he treated the 'truth.'

He never claimed to have it.  He qualified everything he said.  And, in fact, the whole presentation was a preliminary look at work in process (he even said he didn't think he could say 'in progress') in front of about 25 others, many of whom know the subject and the methodology well.  He wanted them to critique his methodology, to challenge his tentative claims, to help him get closer to the elusive truth.

After hearing so many politicians attack or embrace statistics to 'prove' that their policies are working, regardless of whether the claim has any validity, I found Guettabi's talk to be like a walk in the wilderness.  Instead of the noise of politicians trying to spin everything in their favor, we just heard the pure sound of good minds struggling with the difficulties of really knowing things.


Impacts of Red Dog Mine on NWA Borough and Oil Price Increase on North Slope Borough


These were the issues Guettabi was wrestling with:

1. How did the opening of the Red Dog Mine in the Northwest Arctic Borough impact people in the borough?
2. How did increasing oil prices affect employment in the North Slope Borough?

Of course, in situations like this, you don't really have a control group to measure against.  The big problem was how could he know what each of those boroughs would have looked like if a) there had been no mine or b) there had been no sharp increase in oil prices?   

He attacked that problem by creating hypothetical 'twin' boroughs that he could compare them with on a variety of measures.  He took all the Alaska boroughs and found the handful whose numbers in the years prior to the Red Dog Mine's beginning (and before the oil price spike) and used those 'twins' to compare the 'after' years.  How did the hypothetical 'twin' boroughs do compared to the actual NWA Borough and the NS Borough? So he had different groups of boroughs for different measures (since the ones with the closest matches were not the same for the different statistics he was looking at.)

Here's my transcript of what he says on the video below:

"However, I have all these boroughs that had no mine, so let me use information from those other boroughs in order to construct a unit that looks as much as possible like the Northwest Arctic Borough before the mine was created, and therefore the difference, essentially, between the outcome I actually observe, right?  So this is, for example, employment in the Northwest Arctic Borough in 1992 minus the weighed average of employment in that ‘twin’ would give me, arguably, the effect that I’m interested in, which is what is the actual effect of the  mine itself."

I don't want to go into all the details - well, even if I wanted to, I couldn't get too far.  But I just want to highlight

• how difficult it is to really know how living communities or political subdivisions are impacted by things
• how painstakingly good scientists work to find ways to answer these questions
• how humble good scientists are and how welcoming they are to other experts reviewing and challenging their thoughts and methods
• how different this process is from the way bad politicians 'prove' cause and effect

And while President Trump offers an extreme example of a bad politician* I think you can all find lots of examples of other federal, state, and local politicians who range from careless with numbers to  creating their own totally unjustifiable conclusions from the data they have.

And let me also note, that these are simply attempts to check on the impacts in these boroughs.  Guettabi recognizes that there are many factors that could go wrong and he worked hard to consider them in his model.  Most, if not all, of the data Guettabi is using (this is a work in process as he said) comes from governmental data sources.

And my guess is that this is precisely why some politicians are trying to defund data collection in key agencies.  Without good data, scientists, journalists and others, can't demonstrably refute politicians' false claims.  The NRA's successful campaign to limit the Center for Disease Control's (CDC) gun violence data bases) is a good example of this.

Data sets aren't as photogenic as physical violence, but destroying them is a form of structural violence and in many ways just as important.  It's an assault on how we know things, how we get closer to 'truth.' And whether we have good data to make good policy decisions.  

*"bad politician" here means one whose approach is to highlight whatever makes him look good (whether it's true or not) and attack his opponents or detractors (whether it's true or not) rather than focus on getting everyone together and solve our collective problems.