What's Wrong With Black Women?

I was just reading a short article in National Geographic about the marrying habits between different races in the USA. The article was just a statement of "fact" and did not try to draw any major conclusions. You know that that is my job. I am part Native American and no one has ever seemed concerned about it. Me either. But I have noticed that there seems to be a big difference when it come to Blacks. I know a lot of Indians from India who are married to Whites here in the USA in both directions. Some of the Indians are actually blacker than many American Blacks, so color alone does not seem to be the cause of the difference. So what is? Much "to do" is made of he fact that we have a President who is almost 50% black. It turns out that he does not have any slave heritage as would be the case with American Blacks. Actually, his White wife has the Black slave blood going way back. Just a side point.

What I found interesting in the National Geographic article was that they showed the couple mix both ways by male/female. Here is the data. Being a man, I focused on the choices that males of different raced made in terms of Black wives. First, Hispanics men chose Black wives the most at 27%. White men chose Black wives 25% of the time and Asian men chose black wives the least at only 20%. Black males seemed universality more likely to chose a non Black wife than any other group, chosing White wives 75% of the tiime. Now consider in all Black women are universally rejected as wives by almost everyone. Now why is that? I know a few males who have Black wives and I do not see any problem with it. Recall the TV show where the couple up stair was a White male and the wife was Black? That was several years ago and we have not seen much of this since.

When you also consider what percentage of young black men are in jail and thus not available for marriage, plus the fact that almost 90% of black children are born out of wedlock, something is really wrong, but is it Black women? Hispanic, White and Asian men all seem to act about the same toward Black women, so they don't look like the problem. If you check unemmployment figures, you will find that Black men have a far higher rate of unemployment than Hispanic, White or Asian men. Next, you would have to ask why so many Black men are unemployed? Their level of education is comparable to Hispanic, but Hispanics have both higher marriage rates and jobs. Why is it that you never hear Jessie Jackson or our Black President trying to fix whatever is wrong with the potential Black husband and father? Silence!

My brother is married to an Asian Girl and it seems like a good match. So what do you think is the cause of the significant rejection of Black women for wives? The Black women are much better educated than the Black men, so I don't think that is it. As I have pointed out in the past, when you see something that is out of line, there has to be some basic cause someplace. It does not just happen by chance. I would be very interested in you comments on the subject.

Jimmy Buffet's "Remittance Man"

Have you ever heard the song by Jimmy Buffet called, "The Remittance Man"? It is about this guy whose family is in some foreign country and he is here working and sending money back home to his family. Nice song and story until you look deeper into it. How could anyone be against someone trying to support their family? In this case, you may have met one. I try to look after my family and the future of America at the same time. You can do it.

I have blogged on this point before too. Back in about 1975, 50% of new doctors were born outside the USA. Because we had so many home grown doctors, it took a long time before people started to notice that most of their doctors could hardly speak English. Now you see foreign doctors every where. I recently interviewed a hospital administrator whose job it was to recruit new doctors for there medical system. He told me that we now import 60% of our doctors so only 40% are born here. Back in 1975, my guess is that foreign doctors amounted to no more than 15% of our doctors. Now the ratio is about 45%. If this trend keeps going, it will get up to well over 60% and maybe 75%. Is that good or bad? We need doctors don't we? We import 100% of our TV sets, why not a few more doctors? It is hard enough now to get an appointment and without all these foreign doctors, it would be impossible. That is only part of the problem.

Remember the "Remittance Man"? I know several doctors and other professionals from India and everyone remits a significant amount of money back to India to support their families. On the surface, you might think these are good responsible people, but you don't know the whole story. Here are some numbers. Back in 1990-1991 the data shows that Indians from India remitted 2.1 billion dollars back to India. That is a lot of money even here in the USA. Back then it amounted to 0.7% of India's total GNP. It is even more for Mexicans who are here and send money back home. Look what has happened since 1990. In 2009-2010 Indians here sent 55.0 billion dollars back to India. It is estimated that it now amounts to as much as 6.9% of their GNP. Mexicans and Indians are bleeding this country dry and it is happening right under our noses.

In the case of Indians, it is from the top and with the Mexicans it is from the bottom. Who does that leave in the middle? If you want to put this into perspective, compare the amounts remitted to to foreign countries to the amount some state budgets. I think that California is running about 25 billion in the red each year. If the remittances to India alone were kept here, it could take care of the tax shortfall in our largest state. This is not counting Mexico where remittances are the largest component of the Mexican economy. It is bigger than revenues from their oil and gas industry. I think you might be starting to see what is happening here and what its impact is. Isn't it interesting that we never hear anything about this on the News? Is it due to PC and everyone would think we are some kind of racist if we challenged what is happening? We have a problem and it has to be moved to the front burner if we are ever going to do anything about it.

The main problem is with our schools, colleges and universities. I have blogged before on how we are stabbing ourselves in the back with the way we train our doctors and how we allow lawyers to feast off the system as well. This country belongs to us for now and if we don't take better care of it, it will belong to someone else and we will be on the outside looking in.

Public Employee Compensation #4

Moving along here. In this example, we are still keeping the 3% yield from our bank. This assumes the school district actually has the money to pay our female school teacher honestly in the bank as would be required for any public company. That's the law for corporations, but not for governments. Just another interesting point.

Keep everything the same from example #3, except now we have to add continuing health coverage for our female teacher. Here I am assuming:

(1) She will live another 20 years and for 20 of those years we will have to pay at least $5,000 per year for her health care.

(2) Because our teacher is getting toward the end of her life, we will up the cost for the last two years to $20,000 per year. Seems like reasonable assumptions.

(3) One last point. we all know that medical expenses are going up a lot faster than almost anything else, so I am going to assume they continue to go up at 8% per year starting with the numbers above. This will make it real interesting.

Now let's do the math. Like I did before, how much does the school district have to have in the bank earning 3% interest to cover the medical cost? First, without any inflation of medical expenses which we all know will happen. Again, I go to the interest table and do the calculations. The total per (1) and (2) above show that the district needs $111,536 in the bank when our teacher retires. This is in addition to the money needed for regular compensation.

Are you ready for this? Now we do the math with medical cost inflation in the picture and the numbers really go up. In the 20th year, regular medical cost will be $23,305, not the $5,000 we started out with. That $20,000 we assumed for the 21st year increases to $108,720. We are now starting to get some place. When I add up all the cost for the 22 years and then figure out how much the school district will need to have in the bank, I get $412,504.

Now when we add the amount needed in the bank on the day of retirement for regular compensation to the above, we get almost 1.5 million. Isn't it interesting that this total is almost equal to the school teacher's total earnings for her whole life.
Now, I don't think my assumptions are out of line and see what the numbers show? We have a problem and we should all at least recognize that we have serious problem even if we do not currently agree on a solution. The one thing that I can say as a fact is that there is no "perfect" solution. There is going to have to some pain to be paid for our past stupidity and that includes all of us.

Fancy Government Accounting

Everyday we hear that our government is spending more than it is taking in. Since all of us are really the government, it means "we" are spending more than we are earning. The government is not the problem, "we" are the problem. "We" elected the officials who represent us in "our" government at all levels. All we have to do is to look in the mirror and there we will find the person responsible for our situation. Democracy is really a system that responds like the "average" person. The fact is that the "average" person is dishonest and wants more out of the pie than they have put in. It is that simple. I know what you must be thinking. You are not "average", other people are the "average" ones. That might be true. Are you one of those who takes more than the "average" out of the pot and are you one of those who puts less than the average into the pot? You need to ask yourself this simple question and answer it honestly. Look at the math. If the "average" person is taking more out of the pot than they are putting in, then is clear that many more than the "average" are taking more out than they are putting in. This means that "most" of the people are not carrying their own weight in our society. I hate to paint all of those people with one wide brush, but you have to admit that "most" of our population are "losers". Those are the facts. I have been reading Blogs from other countries and notice that many do not have much respect for the people of the USA. They know that "most" of "us" are losers. Face it, it is a fact.

When you look as some other country and see that they have a lower standard of living, I know that the first thing "most" of you think is that you are better than them. What happens when you look a little deeper? What you will find is that the "average" person there does not take more out of the pie than they have put in. On "average" they take out only what they have put in. Are they the losers or are "we" the losers? That is how most of the world sees the USA. My Blog about how different Japan has dealt with their earth quake compared to how New Orleans dealt with their hurricane had drawn a lot of comments. Most can't understand why we have acted so irresponsibly while the Japanese have acted just the opposite. We have acted like children, waiting for government hand outs rather than cleaning up the mess as has Japan done. If we are really the "losers", how else would you have expected us to act?

This has been a little off the subject of the title, but it is a good set-up. This is about government accounting. You have heard very different statements about how social security is doing. Some say it is broke and others say that there is enough money in the social security account to cover cost for many more years. So what is the truth? They are both partially right. That is why it is so confusing. What I am about to describe applies to all kinds of government accounts and "trust funds". We know that our government is borrowing about 40 cents of every dollar that "we" spend. Didn't know that? If so, you are too dumb to be allowed to vote. The way our government borrows money is not like when you take out a loan. They sell bonds to people or governments and promise to pay back the bonds at some future date at some specified interest rate. It is like the savings bonds that you may have been given as a kid by your grand mother. Our government needs to borrow so much money, that they look every where for bond buyers. One of the best places to look is right under their noses. I'm talking about money that has been paid into the social security fund. The social security funds are not put in a regular bank, the funds are used to purchase government bonds. In affect, the government has borrowed from the social security fund and has promised to pay it back at some future date with interest. Two key points here. The interest rate on the government bonds are the lowest of any bonds in the world. That means the social security fund earns so little that it can hardly keep up with normal inflation. The other point is the fact that when it comes time to pay back the social security fund, it will have to be with borrowed money from places like China. It is not any different from charging on one credit card and then taking out a loan on another credit card to pay off the first. Hey, that is what is going on and it is standard accounting when it comes to our government.

I used the example of the social security fund, but it is the same with all of these types of special funds. How about the 20 billion from BP to take care of the expenses from the Gulf oil spill? Where is all that money now? It has been spent and there is a 20 billion dollar IOU in some file drawer in Washington DC. When the claims come in, our government will have to borrow the money from China just like they do every day. How about the 30 billion dollar fund set up when Johns-Manville went bankrupt over asbestos claims? Where do you think that money is today. It was not all used to pay claims. If anyone has a claim, our government will have to borrow the money from China to pay them.

Government accounting is not like your own personal accounting, like when you put your money in the bank or when you put those gold coins in your safe deposit box. Our government uses "Fancy Government Accounting" and then is able to talk out of both sides of their mouth as they have been doing.

Public Employee Compensation #3

I have come to the conclusion that this whole compensation business is so complex that it can only be explained too and by the average voter with the use of examples. It looks like this series of blogs is going to be a series of examples.

This will be my first one. Remember this is only an example and the final answer is based on the assumptions that I have used. The problem is that in real life there are an almost infinite number of possible assumptions and many can not be known until they happen in the future. That means the estimates of the future have to be realistic and conservative or there is a serious chance that the compensation system will "crash" as it now it appears it will. My examples are to show how critical assumptions can be and how they can be affected by future events. Remember, "fools rush in where wise men fear to tread". This is very true of what has happened in public employee compensation. Here goes #1.

(1) We have a female teacher who starts teaching at age 30 and teaches for 35 years until she is 65 and ready for retirement.

(2) Our teacher starts at $25,000 per year and gets annual raises of 3% each year. This means she will be making 2.8138 times her starting salary or $70,345 her last year.

(3) Further, we will assume that she will live on average to age 87 or 22 years during retirement. It would only be 17 years for a man.

(4) Now let's assume that the contract provides a retirement payment of 90% of the last year's pay per year.

(5) This first calculation will be to find out how much the school district would have to have in the bank yielding 3% on retirement to be able to draw out the retirement benefit. The annual benefit will be 90% of the $70,345 or $63,310.50. Next, we look up in the interest tables what the present worth of this annuity would be at 3% for 22 years. The factor is 15.9369. This factor times the $63,310.50 shows that the school district needs to have $1,008,973.10 in the bank on her retirement to provide for the retirement benefit. That is just over a million dollars. Note that the school teacher only earned $1,668,537.50 during her total life time as a teacher and now the district has to pay over an additional million for her in retirement. Because the school district is earning 3% on what they should have had in the bank, our female school teacher will actually be paid a total of $1,392,831. This works out to 83.4% of what she was paid for all the years she taught school. Getting the picture now?

(6) You might ask the question, "how much should the teacher have paid in per year to fund this retirement package?" Seems like a good question to me. To keep this a little simpler, I am going to use her average pay as the base. It will yield an answer that is a little smaller than if I did the calculations year by year. Again, I go to the interest tables for the Uniform Series Compound Amount factor for 35 years at 3% which is 60.4620. To find the amount she needs to put in each year, we divide this factor into the amount of money needed on retirement to support her retirement. We calculate that she needs to put in $16,687.72 per year.

(7) Now her average pay per year was $47,672.50, thus her contribution would have to have been 35% of her gross pay per year. Big number isn't it? In many cases, the teachers are not putting in anything. Now are you starting to see the problem?

This looks like a complex enough example for one Blog. Next time I will go a little deeper with slightly different assumptions. You can do all these calculations for yourself. You can find interest tables in books of standard math tables, on the inter net or at your library. Think how complex this would be including inflation or variations in the stock market or bond interest rates. That is the real life problem and we have to deal with it. Sorry.

Public Employee Compensation #2

I may have bitten off more than I can chew here. This is more complex than I thought and thus I am sure it has been for our public officials who are negotiating the public employee contracts. In this Blog, I am using the 2006 mortality tables for the USA by male and female.

The life expectancy is the first number people look at. This is the age year where 50% of those born on year zero are dead. Expection in math is normally the 50% 50% point. For males, the expected age is 79 while the age is 84 for females. It is shorter for blacks and higher for whites. This chart combines the two. When it comes to compensation, we need to know how long the people who we hire age going to live and you would expect that if we hire people at age 30, some have already died. This means that the average for the ones we hire is longer than the expected age above. You can calculate this new number with a little 4th grade math. When I make the adjustment I find that our retired people will live to 82 for males and 87 for females.

Now let's assume that our male and female work from age 30 to age 65 and we, together, put 1% of their pay into a bank account paying 3% interest for the full time that they work, which is 35 years. For the male, he will collect for an average of 17 years and the female for 22 years. Since no new money will go into the bank after they retiree, what they will get during retirement will have to come out of that accumulated amount. Now here is the big number that you were waiting for.

The male will be able to get 4.589 times the amount that he paid in each year so paid in $1.00/yr, he could take out $4.59/yr. For the female it would be lower since she is expected to live longer. She could only take out 3.79 times or $3.79/yr. Since I have show this example in terms of a single dollar, we could easily convert it to percentage of their annual pay. If they wanted to get their "full" pay while retired, they would have to put in a lot more. For males it would be 21.8% and for females 26.4%.

Now, many of our teachers are expecting 80% or 90% of their last years pay while retired and we know they have not come close to putting in the approximately 25% of their pay for all those years. Are you starting to see the problem?

Notice that, now, women get the same retirement as men while the live longer. Per my numbers, that is clearly not fair and it is a big difference. What do you think would happen if we required women to put in more or accept less? What if we required women to work 5 years longer than males? I think you can see we have problems with our current systems. If I were to bring in Blacks, on this same basis, they should get more on retirement and should be allowed to retire earlier. It is interesting isn't when you look deeper into the numbers? Notice that we don't seem to have similar problems with life insurance. Insurance companies charge "more" for males, but they market it on the basis that they charge "less" for females. Interesting.

I am not thru with this topic and will have more Blogs. One thing that you could do to help me is to find out what the mortality table is for the school teachers who work in your school district and what tables they use for retirement payments. You might also ask about what "actuary service" they used? These are the math and computer people who figure the odd out for the insurance companies like the bookies do in Las Vegas for the sporting games. If they don't have these figures, you will know that they don't know what they are going and you tax money is at even greater risk than you might have thought.

Connect The Dots--Continuation #2

This business of connecting the dots seems like is is making me less confident in the future of the USA. This might be a repeat, but I'll make it anyway. When I was very small, my father told me that, "it is a lot easier to get away with a big lie than it is a small one". At the time, I thought this was a very strange concept and never gave is serious consideration. His timing was right after WWII and I think he was referring to Germany and Hitler. The idea was that when a lie is big enough few people are big enough thinkers the see it. It is a little like being in a snow storm "white out". Normally, the lighter it is the better to see, but when everything is "white" it becomes harder to see. Once,when I was first sailed in the Bahamas, I was motoring into shore in my dingy and was worried about hitting the sharp coral. When the water started to look too shallow, I decided to jump out and pull my dingy the rest of the way to shore. When I jumped out, the water was well over my head. The water was so clear and the bottom seemed so close that I could not judge the distance. The point that I am trying to make is that even the smartest person can be fooled by a big lie. Here goes.

High Speed Train From Tampa to Orlando--

Obama wants to spend billions on a high speed rail system between Tampa and Orlando. I'll ask you the same question that I have been asking all along. Does that "investment" make America stronger or weaker? You say that it does not make any difference? How can you say that? When you take money from the tax payers for go and borrow it from China and then spend on a train that is not needed, how can that be good? How is revenue from the train going to pay back China or the tax payers? Realize that the money could have been spend better or better yet, not spent at all. It makes America weaker. Thankfully, the state of Florida rejected the idea.

Additional Bridge From Detroit Area To Canada--

Obama wants to spend billions on an additional bridge between the Detroit area and Canada. The state of Michigan and the city of Detroit are economically in the toilet and do not produce anything that Canada wants, so why do we need an additional bridge? It is the same argument as the high speed train. It makes America weaker not stronger.

High Speed Train From Milwaukee to Madison, Wisconsin--

I think it is less than 80 miles between these two towns. First, why would you want to travel between these two places on a "high speed train"? You can go by bus now at 65mph economically with less than 40 people on a single bus. The buses can start and end at different locations in both cities. In a distance of just 80 miles, with my 4th grade math, I can't figure out where any savings might come from. I guess I am not upto date on how valuable politicians and people too poor to buy a car are worth. Any thing the government wastes money, it make the country weaker, not stronger. It is same economics as in a family. Does buying fancy cloths make the family more prosperous or less? Does in make the family stronger or weaker? I think you got this one. Weaker!

Libya--

How are things going in Libya? Notice that we are spending all kinds of money there and for what? It is costing millions per day and it will cost billions before we are out. Take the best possible out come. If everything that Obama wants works out, will it have made America stronger or weaker? Well, if you spend tons of money and get nothing for it, that makes you weaker. If spending money that you don't have will make you stronger, then why is Greece in such a fix?

Green Movement--

Who is pushing this? Our public schools, that's who. I was just talking to a couple about their children and they told me that they just can't understand their own kids. They were raised in a conservative home, yet the kids are bleeding heart liberals and have no sense of financial or social responsibility. These kids are totally behind the Green Movement. Where is Obama on this one? You know. Is he trying to stop or slow it down? No! This is one where he can sit on the side and just watch because it has a head of steam on its own. Obama does not have to do anything and America will be weakened. If someone comes along with a plan to slow it down, Obama and his administration will throw sand in there way to slow them down. The "Rope-a-Dope" is alive a well. Do you know of any item in the Green Movement that will strengthen America? No, because there are none.

Rare Earths--

This is not a new planet. These are special minerals that are needed for modern industry. Take Palladium. You probably never heard of Palladium. It is use to coat plastics so they can be electro plated, for example. Plastics are non conductors and as such can not normally be electro plated. These are the dials and covers of your cell phones and computers. America has a lot of these Rare Earths, but for many the procedures for mining and smelting them can produce toxic waste. Now we don't want any toxic waste here in America no matter what we have to do or how much it would cost in lost jobs. That is becoming our mentality and Obama is right behind it because it hurts and weakens America. The good thing is that we can get most of these critical resources from China. Isn't that nice? Who is getting stronger and who is getting weaker? Easy isn't it?

Private Aircraft--

I think you know your history well enough to know that the Wright brothers invented the first powered airplane and flew it at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. I have been to that spot and have seen their old buildings and ramps. A key point is that the Wright brothers were not financed by the government or the tax payers. Based on their work, free Americans dominated the aircraft industry. I could recount how the DC-3 was created, but that is for another time. The most recent entry into the aircraft industry in America was Cirrus, located in Duluth, Min. Note also, this is the home of the famous "Crescent Wrench". Last year Cirrus produced more planes than the next two aircraft companies in the world combined. You might think that Cirrus would be flying high with their success, but you would be wrong. They were just purchased by a group from China. If Cirrus was the largest manufacturer of airplanes in the world, why couldn't they make it? Government regulations pure and simple. Of all aircraft manufacturers, they were on of the most technically advanced, but that was not enough to overcome government regulations. This was just one company that government regulations clearly killed, but there are many more that are being weakened and will die or not be internationally competitive. Have you heard anything from Obama about Cirrus? Not a word. Why? It is another dot. America is weaker and China is stronger and that is what Obama wants. Do your own research if you don't agree.

Readers, I am going to give you a challenge and that is for you to find decisions made by Obama that have made America stronger. You report them and I will see that they are published in the comments. This is a serious challenge.

Connect The Dots--Continuation #1

This business of connecting the dots will start to become a lot clearer. Look at what Obama has done this way, when he makes a decision does it make America stronger or weaker? When he makes a decision does it unite America or divide it? When something is going in the wrong direction, does he stall (rope-a-dope) and let the situation get worse. I think this will help you connect the dots.

Health Care (Obama Care)

It is clear that this program is and will become so expensive that it alone maybe able to bring down the American economic system. It also takes away any incentive for anyone to take care of their health so that they could qualify for "good driver" type discounts. Does this make America stronger or weaker? Has it divided America rather than unite it? See how easy this is to connect the dots?

Education and Unions

We all know that education is a state and local issue and we also know that even though we spend more than any other country on education, our results are among the worst, so why did Obama poke his nose into the debate in Wisconsin? Do you think that Wisconsin will be better off or worse off due to Obama's support of the teacher's union? Do you think he helped to bring the Democrats and Republicans closer together on how to solve our education problem?

Gays In The Military

We had a "don't ask, don't tell" policy in the military that seemed to work for several years, yet Obama canceled that policy and welcomed gays to go public in the military. Did this make our military stronger or weaker? Did it polarized the situation beyond what it was? Do we have a more heated debate about gays now than before? Sounds like a little, "divide and concur" to me. Getting easier to connect the dots isn't it?

EPA

The EPA has been doing its job for some time without attacking business too much. Now what we have under Obama is an aggressive EPA that is making carbon dioxide a toxic gas that needs to be regulated. Most of the policy people in the EPA have never before been in control or managed anything are telling farmers that they have to control farts from their cows and to not spill milk. Does putting all these new burdens on farmers and businesses make America stronger or weaker? Will it make food cheaper or more expensive? Will it make our exports more competitive or less competitive? Easy to connect the dots isn't it?

Women's Rights

I know a lot of people feel that there is some kind of national conspiracy to pay women less than men. If that is the case, why don't we see these cases in the courts? It is against the law to discriminate on the basis of sex. I am an old guy and have been around the block a few time and I have never seen a case of sex discrimination, so why is Obama still beating this drum? Does his action help to solve the non-existing problem or just divide the country further. Another easy one.

Lawyers

Both Obama and his wife are lawyers and we all know that trial lawyers were one of his biggest political contributors, so why did he not propose as part of Obama Care some type of control on malpractice claims and lawyer fees? While watching the earth quake situation in Japan, some commentator revealed that America has 30 times the number of lawyers per ca pita than does Japan. Obama knew that lawyers were driving up medical costs so he could do nothing and get what he wanted. The old "rope-a-dope" in action again. Noticing a trend yet? Wait.

Obama's Wife

Recall the statement by her that, "in all of her adult life she had never been proud of America until her husband was elected President". She was at least 40 years old when she made this statement so she has had those views for a very long time. Notice that she was well off message and had to be kept in the closet until things cooled off? No she is out and thru government regulations requiring new labels on most food products. Does this make our food better or cheaper or is it just one more item of cost that will be passed on the the public?

Did you ever hear the expression, "death by a thousand cuts"? I think this is a popular Chinese expression. Obama does not have to destroy America with one big bomb, he can do it with, "a thousand cuts" and that is exactly what he seems to be doing and few people can see it happening. This is another reminder that, "perfect is the enemy of good". Watch for this one because it is the main way that the debate on almost every issue is couched. Open your eyes and you will see it. I think that the desire for "perfect" solutions is a human failing and is why so many people flock to religion all over the world. Religion gives you "perfect" answers. Young, so called, intellectuals are of this same bent. From what little most have learned in our colleges and universities where simple examples were used to carry the points, they come out thinking that "perfect" solutions to every problem are out there just waiting for them to find and implement them. How about a "cure" for cancer? In a "perfect" world, you would think that there is one someplace. How about some root from a tree in the jungles of Brasil? We don't need "perfect", we need good and we need it now.

What Do You Get When You Connect The Dots?

This is one of the most difficult Blogs that I have ever written. It might require more than one to get the point across. If you have read me before, you know that I see most problems as very simple. It is a fact that when a complex problem is finally solved, it always turns out to have a simple solution. People are often fooled because they look for some thing complicated when it is some thing very simple right under their noses. This has been how magicians have been fooling people for thousands of years. Some things never change. I am going to have to take what might look like a detour to get my argument started.

Years ago during the 60's, I was teaching at a major university. It was the start of the Hippi movement and riots on most college campuses. Some were just for drugs and free love, but many had a dark political force behind them. Many wanted to tear down the American system so that a new and "perfect" system could be built in its place. The common thread was to destroy everything that that existed so that they had a clean sheet of paper to build this "perfect" state on. These were strange people for sure. The problem with those idealistic people was that none had ever created anything. In their eyes, every thing was wrong, but they could not explain what was right. In the last election, if I heard this once, I heard it a thousand times from liberals. "I hate Bush and anything is better than Bush". You know that I am a math and science guy and "anything" covers a lot of space compared to the small space occupied by Bush. Only an idiot could make such a statement, and many did. Remember this word, "perfect" because it will come up again. The point I want to make with this short intro is that the political movement of the 60's wanted to destroy the American system because it was not "perfect". Isn't this the common denominator when we refer to a person as being an "idealist"? They are dangerous people and you will see why.

Before I go on, I would like to present another point. It is a common concept in the military that goes like this, "perfect is the enemy of the practical". Kind of simple isn't it? Why is this such a big deal? Think about it. The current liberal movement is all based on the concept that they don't like the current arrangements because they are not "perfect". They have an idea inside their heads of what is "perfect", but they don't know that every other person who seems to agree with them also have an idea in their heads about what is "perfect" too. The problem is that all of these "perfect" ideas are "different". It is like the old saying, "the devil you know may be better than the devil that you wish for". Isn't this sound a little like the situation with Obama. He was the devil that no one knew and now we have him. Did he unify the country or fictionalize it? The answer to that is easy. I once had a Black professor who used the expression, "out of the frying pan, into the fire". It seems that all cultures have had some kind of experience with situations where people did not like the current state of affairs, but were cautious about making major changes. Idealist never consider the possibility that their ideas might be failures and they never consider how they might get back to where they had come from. isn't it interesting when you start connecting the dots? That is what I am going to try to do.

If we start with those ideas from the 60's and see if there are dots that we can now connect, what kind of picture do you think it will paint? These might not be in the order of most important, but they are dots and I will connect them.

Unions-

Where is Obama on unions? He is clearly in their pocket because they were the major factor in getting him elected. If the objective of America is provide the highest quality of living for the greatest number of people, does the power of the unions aid or limit that? My position is that union hurt America for "most" people. It is clear that they help union members initially, but in the limit, they kill the goose that layed the golden eggs. Even kindergartners understood that we should not kill the goose that layed golden eggs. A simple test is to ask what industry is now stronger because of unionisation? Can you think of one? I can't. We used to make our own shoes and now we don't. We used to weave our own cloth, but now we don't. We used to be the largest producer of steel and there was an expression that went,"as goes US Steel, so goes the USA". Remember when we made our own TV sets? Now we don't make any TV sets. Why not? The answer is easy. Unions and Obama is doing everything that he can to support unions. Now ask yourself, "why"? I will come to that.

Coal--

We have more coal than any other country in the world. Our coal has more stored energy than all the know oil in the world. Much of our coal is easy to dig and much of it is high quality low sulfur. Currently we get about 50% of our electricity from coal. All carbon fuels emit carbon dioxide when they are burned. Obama has declared that carbon dioxide is toxic, yet no plant could live without it. Now ask yourself it Obama wants to help the USA, why is he against the use of coal, but has no problem it we ship the coal to China and let them burn it? Strange isn't it? He could be for or against the use of coal and what position has he chosen? Does it make the USA stronger or weaker? You can use the same answer that you used in regard to unions. He could take either of two positions and what is the impact of each? Remember your answers, because we are starting to connect the dots.

Oil--

Take Alaska first. We could either expand the drilling in Alaska or stay the same. Now which position did Obama take? Drill more or drill less? Now let's go the Gulf and see what happened there. We all must know that drilling in very deep water can not guarantee zero risk. We can't design a well that is "perfect" and has zero chances of a spill. We all knew this before the spill, so what is different now after the spill? What does a freeze on further drilling in the Gulf do for the economy of the USA and what position did Obama take? Did he help or hurt our economy? Starting to connect thew dots? Easy isn't it.

Wind Power--

Is Obama for wind power? Does he want to spend your tax money helping people and companies build wind mills? He sure does. Is power from wind mills competitive with any other form of energy? No. If Obama is successful in converting a large percentage of our power over to wind mills, it will make every aspect of our economy less efficient. It will make our economy weaker. Are you having problems connecting thew dots?

Solar Power--

Solar power is "free" from the sun. All we have to do is to go out and collect it. How could it be simpler? It is simple because the USA is one of the dumbest countries in the world when it comes to science and math so it is easy for Obama to spin this one. Is this another dot that you can connect.

Atomic Power--

This one was handed to Obama with the earth quake in Japan. He can say that he is for atomic power and can then do the "rope-a-dope" and stall the building of any new atomic power plants. He can used the EPA or other departments under his control to make life difficult for existing atomic power plants. He can always use the standard argument that we do not have "perfect" atomic power plant designs or safety procedures. Notice that he never has to define what is "perfect". Isn't it interesting how most of the stupid public accepts the "not perfect" logic for almost anything? Connect another dot.

Mexican Border

We all know that we have millions of illegal Mexicans flooding into the USA and we all agree that we should do something. We need an immigration plan. Isn't that right? The problem is that we don't have the "perfect" plan and can't start protecting the border until we have that "perfect" plan in place. The only reason that we don't now have that "perfect" plan is that Republicans and Tea Party people are now helping. Do we now have laws against people coming into the USA without permission? I think we do. So why don't we just enforce the current laws until the "perfect" solution can be perfected? What happened when the state of Arizona tried to help enforce the law? Obama attacked them. He could have accepted the help or attacked the people of Arizona and what did he do? Which position would have helped the economy of the USA? I think you can now connect another dot.

Spending--

Did we just spend a lot of money on GMC? What Obama did was to "save" GMC. That is the spin. What happened to Johns-Mansville when they went bankrupt many years ago?
Don't know? They are the company who had all the asbestos health claims. Remember now? They are still around and were just purchased by Warren Buffet a few years ago. What most people don't know is that most companies that go into bankruptcy don't liquidate. They reorganize and pay a % of their debits and go on. If this were to have happened with GMC, GMC would be better off as would the tax payers today. Who came out ahead compared to a standard bankruptcy? The unions, not the stock holders. Stock holders got zero. Did Obama's decision help or hurt the tax payers of the USA? Ready to connect another dot?

I am getting tired and will pick this up later, I have about 15 more similar dots.

Understanding Public Employee Compensation

I am going to start a whole new series of Blogs on the real and total cost of Public Employees to the tax payers. As I see it, it is impossible for the average voter and tax payer to make informed decisions about unions and public employ compensation without a fundamental understanding of "Mortality Tables", "Discounted Cash Flow" and the "Cost of Living Index". These and other key point are all tied up in the problem of understanding. How long people can be expected to live is more complex than looking up your birth date in a Mortality Table. We can not add costs or money together if their value is not adjusted to the same date. Don't understand what I am talking about? Think of it this way. You have $100 in your pocket and a $500 savings bond in your drawer that matures in 6 more years that pays 5% interest. The question that you ask yourself is, "How much money do I have?" Easy question, but the answer is a little complicated. You can't just add $100 and $500 and get $600. That is not correct. Ask the question again, "How much money do I have right now?" Now we are getting someplace. We know we have $100 in our pocket "right now" so we are OK with that, but what about the savings bond? In 6 years when it matures with the compounded interest at 5%, it will be worth $500, but what is it worth "right now?" To answer that we need to take off the future 5% interest because it has not been earned yet. To do that, we need to consult standard interest tables and find the "present worth" of the savings bond "discounted" by the 5% unearned interest. In the 5% tables, this would be the "Single Payment Present Worth Factor For 6 Years". The factor turns out to be 0.74621540. Notice that it is less than 1.0. Now if we multiply this factor by the $500, we find that "right now" the savings bond is only worth $373.11. That's right, it is not worth $500. You don't think you could sell it to a friend for $500, do you? Now when we add the $100 in your pocket "right now" with the value of your savings bond "right now", we only get $473.11, not the $600 we got the first time. See why this whole thing about retirement pay is so complicated? Add into this how long a person can be expected to live and it gets even more complicated.

I looked up one mortality table that showed a person born in 1950 had a life expectancy of 68.2 years while a person born in 2000 had a life expectancy of 76.9. This is only part of the reason that we are looking at serious problems with social security in the future. This mortality table did not take into account the difference between males and females nor the difference between Blacks and Whites. Just the shift toward more females in the workplace who are qualified for retirement programs has made a big difference in the size of future obligations. Females live longer than males. It is complicated, but we can't let the fact that it is complicated prevent us from making the correct decisions now and making sure that our elected officials also make the correct decisions "right now".

In this series, I will go slow and cover each point using only basic math and when I get to the end, we should all be in a better position to make decisions "right now" and know what their impact will be on the future and the future of our kids.

Hey, this is going to be interesting.

When Will You Know?

I think you know from my blogs that I deal with current social,economic and educational problems. I don't pull punches and I may be controversial at times, but I try not to be rude or self serving. I want to encourage debate on what I feel are important issues. Today is another one. Note also that I do not accept that the solutions to our problems are complex. Thru history, we have seen claims that this or that was complex, but when we found the solution, it always turned out to be very simple. It is like all the complex conspiracies that we hear about, yet how many complex conspiracies have been revealed over the years? None.

What you don't know is that he higher education system in the USA has been shifting from the hard subjects like math, science and engineering to easier majors. It has happened right under your noses. The affect is to dumb us down from the top rather than the bottom. We all know that we have lost the education battle from the bottom. Our kids are among the dumbest in the world and have the lowest graduation rates though we spend more per student than any country in the world. Those are the facts. The problem is that we have lost it from the top too. Our colleges and universities are being dumbed down too. Check up on you local college or university and see what kinds of degrees are being earned. You will be very surprised to find that few are in Math, Science or Engineering. It is all easy stuff. You might earn a degree, but you can't earn a living in the world of the future with that degree.

Mixed in all this is a program being encouraged right from the top to make the student body of our colleges and universities look like the same mix of ethnic groups that make up our society. Sounds good, but the way that they are going about it is to lower the standards until the preset ratios are met. If you are an Eskimo or some other ethnic group, it does not matter if you complete high school or not. You will be accepted into our colleges and universities and qualified kids of ethnic groups who are over their quota will be rejected. Is this a great system or what?

If you are an Asian, you may have a difficult time getting into college because too many Asians are already in college. That's right. Our colleges and universities are more interested in the ethnic ratios than they are in their basic mission of teaching. Check it out and you will see that what I am saying is correct. Rather than working to fix the problem or just accepting the fact that some ethnic groups don't want to go to college or value education, our colleges are "gaming" the system to get the numbers to work out. It is like cheating on a massive scale. If you have all the answers for an advanced math class and score an "A", does that make you smart? You may have scored an "A", but your brain is still an "F".

There are many groups that don't seem to want to learn. There are exceptions in any group, but I am talking about group averages. Blacks and Latin Americans don't seem to put much value in education and as a result, they are not carrying their weight in our society. That is a fact. We are all in this one big "pot" we call American and it is our individual responsibility to attempt to carry our own weight. We know that some can carry more than others, but everyone has to try to carry their share. It is a fact that Blacks and Latin Americans do not carry their own weight. They are mostly in that 50% group that does not pay any federal income tax, yet they are allowed to feed at the public trough. That's the problem. I don't know the solution, but as a kid, I was poor and hungry much of the time. I did not feed at the public trough, though I was born in the charity ward of a hospital. No one gave me a free ride. I climbed up by my own will. I have not come all that far, but I am proud of the progress that I have made because I know it was based on my hard work. From the first American families, they all had one goal and that was to "get ahead" and for their kids to do "better" than they had done. Isn't that enough? Do we need some kind of government program to show people that education is the best path for "getting ahead"? I don't think so. What we need is "benign neglect" where we don't help people or allow them to eat at the public trough. If we did that, then they might get the message about their responsibility to carry their own weight. Look in the mirror and ask yourself if you carry your own weight. If you answer "NO", then ask "why not". Ask the same questions about your kids. You have to ask the question even if you don't want to know the answer.

My final point is, "When will you know?" Here again it is real simple. You will know when 15% of the graduates from our colleges with degrees in Math, Science and Engineering are Black. Blacks make up 15% of the population, yet they are less than 1% of graduates with Math, Science and Engineering degrees. That is a fact and as a result, they are not carrying their own weight. The degrees have to be real degrees, we can't allow gaming of the system by lowing standards. If anything, we need to raise the standards for every one. I was in college for about 8 years and taught engineering for 4 more. During that time I never had a single Black in any of my engineering classes.

That's the problem and "When will you know"? When Blacks and Latin Americans earn degrees in Math, Science and Engineering in proportion to their populations. Can't bull shit this one!!

Education, What Should America Do?

We all know from President Obama down that our schools and colleges are not getting the job done. Now, if most of us know this, then why isn't anything being done about it? I can't answer "why", but I can recommend what we should be doing. We all know that if we keep on doing what we are now doing we will get the same results that we are now getting. I thought that I would throw in a little 4th grade logic to help you understand the point. To keep this simple, let's agree that the three major things wrong with our education system are (1) It costs far too much (2) We have a 40% high school drop out rate (3) We are almost dead last in Math and Science. We also know that the world's economics are changing rapidly in at least two areas. Low paid and uneducated people world wide are able to participate in the world economy by producing low tech products far cheaper than can the USA. The result is that many of our poorly educated people or those who demand a higher wage than they are worth can not contribute economically in the USA. The only group left in the USA who are competitive on a world wide basis are those who are well educated, hardworking and innovative. The affect has been that the newly unproductive have become poorer and those who are still productive have gotten richer. There is a widening difference, but we need to attack the cause, not attack those who are winners. This is where we find ourselves today. Sorry, we can not turn back the clock, nor should we want to.

Now, you know where I am coming from. Historically, we have copied the English model from the middle ages and it needs to be updated. In those days, the "educated" studied Latin and Greek Philosophy. They were members of the Geological Society and went around the world trying to find new animals or places that they could name after themselves. In my opinion, 90% of education was just a big ego trip that allowed those who could speak Latin to look down on those who could not. I am not going to recount all the stupid things the English did in the name of education or science, like "discovering" the South Pole or the source of the Nile.
There is a short story that does show the mindset of the educational elite of the time and that is the "clock". The King and the Geological society offered a large reward for the first person who could build a clock that was accurate enough and able to be carried on a ship that would allow the calculation of "Longitude". An English clock maker by the name John Harrison made such a clock and because he was not an "educated" person, they tried to cheat him out of the reward. This clock made it possible for England to rule the seas and thus was responsible for the growth in power of England for the next 200 years. The intellectuals never accepted John Harrison as one of their own in spite of his significant contribution. This is still the problem here in the USA. Publish or perish. Have you ever read the bull shit in most of those publications? Read some of the Phd publications that your taxes paid for and you will understand what I am talking about. Many are on the Internet.

Now, how do we fix the problem. Dump the Latin and Greek Philosophy model and require all high school kids to take exactly the same classes. Dump all of the "fuzzy feel good" classes. Any kids who drop out go directly into the army. Those who can't complete high school due to mental problems should go to mental hospitals and held there under lock and key until cured and then transferred to the army. All colleges and universities supported with tax money should dump all sports programs. Kids can play games on their own time and at their own expense. The first two years of college should be the same for all kids and majors. The series of classes should be modeled after the military academies and engineering curriculum. If we have a problem with Math and Science, I guess our kids should start taking Math and Science classes, like engineers and our military. After the first two years of college, out kids could then start taking special classes in their majors. I Blogged before, that our kids don't take Econ 101 until their Jr year anyway. If they knew any serious Math when they took Econ 101, the professor would be able to really teach Econ rather than the non-quantitative way that it now has to be taught to kids who can't do 4th grade Math.

Like most problems, when you know what the real problem is, the solution never turns out to be very complex. Remember, if we keep doing what we are now doing, we will keep getting the same results. We have to change and change now.

Stock Market, Gold, Japan, Libya

What do all these have in common? Try a guess. I am going to have to repeat myself in this Blog so be patient. The world is a very complex "system". As time has passed, us humans have gamed the natural systems of the earth in such a way as to take advantage of it. Our world wide standard of living has been going up for the past 10,000 years. Isn't it just great? We are on top of the world. Life is great. Now are you starting to see what the Stock Market, Gold, Japan and Libya have in common? They are both parts of this complex system and symptoms of the same system. Now what is so different and confusing? That is what everyone is saying these days. Recall, when Yogi said, "tomorrow is not going to be what it used to be". Well he was right.

In the process of gaining all these advantages for us humans world wide, we have made the basic "system" that support us much more "brittle". The USA and Japan are bigger and stronger than they have ever been and so is China. So what's the problem? The problem is that our advance came at a price. When we pushed the system further up, it got more "brittle". I think you know what I mean by "brittle". Everything seems strong and it is, but it is like the kid's game with the stack of blocks. You can pull out a lot of the blocks and it will still support the load, but as the blocks are taken out and used to build something else, the stack gets more "brittle". If just the wrong block is pulled out the pile falls down. That is what is happening right now in the whole world. As population increases, it puts more demand on the "system". Blocks have to be removed to feed these new people. They need more energy or fuel and there is less fuel available per person. It is simple math. The earth only has so much oil and coal and as the number of people increases, the amount of these per person goes down. Us humans are smart and we can pull out a few blocks and keep the train moving, but when we pull out too many blocks it all comes down.

One thing that happens in all complex systems as they approach their crash is that the system oscillates more and more. Think of a car going out of control on ice. At first it is still some what in control, but as it swings wider and wider, you lose total control and at the end it crashes. All systems do this. Your not dead when your car starts to slip on the ice and you are not dead when it swings farther and farther out of control, but you are dead when it hits the tree. We have already started to slip on the ice and we are going farther and farther out of control and soon we will all be dead. I don't mean everyone will be dead. A few will crash into something softer than a tree and survive, but they will have destroyed their car and every other car by this time.

I will most likely be dead from old age or a crash in my airplane when the big one for the world comes, but I think my kids will be here to see it. What is happening in the Stock Market, Gold, Japan and Libya are "normal" events. Few people recognize the end game when it comes. It is coming.

PS, There are tons of indicators if you will just look for them. At first the game will be played out between the players, countries, with fewer and fewer survivors left to continue play. Recall my Blog on who will make it the longest? What will be the currency in the later rounds of the game? Are you starting to see them now? If you like looking at the big picture and guessing about the future, it could be interesting. When you went to college, do you now feel you took the right major? If you were to start college today, what would be your major? See what I mean?

Japanese Earth Quake vs New Orleans Hurricance

It hasn't taken long before people are starting to compare the earth quake in Japan with the hurricane in New Orleans. It is an interesting comparison. What I like to do is to go out on the limb and predict what is "going" to be different between the two events. It must be clear to everyone that the earth quake in Japan was much worse than the hurricane in New Orleans, so you would expect that getting back to normal in Japan will be much more difficult than it was for New Orleans. Well, I don't know if that will be true and here is why.

I think that by now, you must know that I like to take a more technical approach to social problems. The two situations, Japan and New Orleans allow me to show how two "systems" can operated differently and with much different results. In the case of New Orleans, they had about a weeks notice that they were going to be hit by a hurricane. In the case of Japan, they had only seconds for the earth quake and only a few minutes for the tsunami that followed. First thing you notice is that in Japan, they used what little notice that they had and those in New Orleans did almost nothing to prepare. This is only the start of the differences.

In Japan, they have a "distributed" system for dealing with their earth quake. This means that like honey bees or ants, each person operates on their own to clean up the mess. No Queen or King has to ask the people of Japan to get out the brooms and shovels and start cleaning up and rebuilding. They operated just like a hive of bees. In the case of New Orleans, they have a "centralized" system where they require instructions and help from a central authority to clean things up and get back to normal. Notice in the case of New Orleans, looting started from the first few seconds of their disaster while in Japan, here was "zero" looting. If food or fuel was available in Japan, the people lined up and waited in line for their share. In the case of New Orleans, the food was stolen and sold by looters. You may have seen on the news, where the people of New Orleans were waist deep in water stealing guns and TV sets.

Because Japan operates with a "distributed" system, each person takes care of their own problems. Think about 25 homes on a street where each owner is out cleaning up their own homes. Think also that the average Japanese person should have their home livable withing about 30 or 60 days. If that is the case, then in 30 or 60 days the whole street should be back to near normal. It has now been several years since the New Orleans hurricane and most of the place is still a mess. What happened to all the tax money that was poured into New Orleans? Was it stolen like every thing else? The people in Japan are spending their own money and you can be assured that they will demand that they get their monies worth for it. Isn't it interesting how fast you can spend someone elses money?

My prediction is that Japan will be back to normal before New Orleans. I also predict that it will look very normal within about 90 days. It won't take years like it has in New Orleans. Finally, why do you think things are so different between Japan and New Orleans? Is it possible that "Race" has anything to do with it?

Japanese Earth Quake Fears vs Logic

You can't be watching the news without seeing what is going on in Japan. Most of the news is related to the atomic power plants. Here in the USA, people are all asking if our atomic power plants can take a 9.0 earth quake? Is this logical or not? As you might have expected. I have my own views.

I was listening to the news and heard several people asking if an atomic power plant in their area could take a 9.0 earth quake? This seems like a very logical question to ask, but let's look a little closer. Try this one to get a better idea of what we are up against. I read in the news paper about a home that was crushed and the owner killed by a falling pine tree. The question that was immediately asked was why the home was not built strong enough to with stand the force of a falling tree? It seemed like a logical question. Next, they wanted all homes in the nation inspected to see if they could handle a similar falling tree. Again, this seemed like a logical question, but wait. What all these normal people forgot about was the probability of a bad thing happening. If you have home located far from the nearest tree, the chances of a tree falling on your home is "zero". People seem to focus on the event rather than the probability of that event happening. We all take chances all the time and we know the risk, but when the remote even happens, we forget about the probabilities and complain that they should have been zero.

In the case of Japan, a decision was made about the chances of a big earth quake and the amount of money that should be spent to strengthen the atomic power plants. Knowing the chances of a big earth quake, they built the atomic power plants accordingly. Now when the bad event happens, it seems every one forgets about the earlier decision. They knew when they made the original decision what could happen. Now that it has happened, everyone seems to want a "do over". This big earth quake has to be a one in a thousand year event. What if Japan went without any atomic energy for a thousand years? How much of a loss do you think that would have been? How many kids would have died from hunger during that time?

Most people do not know this fact. More people have been killed in the USA by cars hitting deer than all the people killed by atomic power plants world wide. Why don't we hear an out cry about deer? They are far more dangerous than atomic power plants. I think you are starting to see how little logic is being used by the news. More people have been killed in car accidents than by war in the USA. More people were killed in the drug war in Mexico than were killed in Iraq. What we need is to keep things in perspective and use more logic than emotion.

Atomic Energy---Get Ready For The Debate

After the big earth quake in Japan, now it is Atomic Energy. We all know that it has been over 30 years since a new atomic reactor was built here in the USA. Does this mean that we are looking at another 30 years? Be ware of the debate being between people who don't know anything about atomic energy. That is what we had 30 years ago and it looks like it might be exactly the same this time. How about a little story? When I was a kid, my grandfather told me the story about the farmer who seemed to be talking to his mule. The problem was that he could not tell which one was the mule. When you see a debate going on about atomic energy, see if you can figure out which one is the mule. Here is the test that I use.

First, I ask the person who I am discussing atomic energy with if they know what "half life" means or what "heavy water" is? If they can't answer correctly on both of these, I know that I am wasting my time discussing the atomic energy issue with them. When I was in high school and lived on a dairy farm, early in the morning before daylight, I could see the flash of the above ground atomic bomb testing over the mountains in Nevada. They did these tests about once a week for several months and I don't know of any serious problem that resulted. I know that many people in California act strange, but I don't think it was due to the atomic bomb testing.

When I was teaching at a major university in California in the 60"s, I used to take my engineering class to the GE Atomic plant where we could see them making fuel rods. The fuel rods did not constitute a serious problem because they were arranged with a wide space between them. What happens in an atomic reactor is that the fuel rods are placed in close proximity to each other so that the rods heat up. The heat is taken away with water or liquid sodium thru a heat exchanger where steam is produced with pure water. The problem with using water as the primary heat collector is that it has a low boiling point. To raise the boiling point, the water has to be held under pressure. In Japan when you hear that the reactor blew up, it did not blow up like a bomb, it blew up like your pressure cooker might blow up. The water inside the actual reactor is radio active, but does not have a long half life. The material in the fuel rods is the real dangerous material that has the long half life. So far there is not indication that any of this material has escaped.

When I was a kid reading about subatomic particles and nuclear physics, we called atomic reactors, atomic piles. Some where along the line we drooped the name "pile". I think that it might be that those early reactors were made from piles of graphite blocks. The reactor at Hanford, Washington was a graphite pile like the one in Russia that melted down. What most people don't realize is that any metal if heated hot enough will evaporate like water turning to steam. That is why they did not find very much fuel when the Russian reactor melted down. It went up like steam and was deposited over a wide area. Let me give you an example.

Did you ever see a dead skunk on the side of the road? Did you also notice how strong the smell was in the area? I am sure that you did. Now think of the smell like radioactive material from an atomic power plant. When you are right at the plant, the radioactivity can be very strong, but as you drive away like driving away from the dead skunk, the smell dissipates fast. The formula for this dissipation is a function of the cube. Let's say you measure the radioactivity one mile away from the plant at 100. Now how much would you expect at 10 miles away? We are talking about 10 times itself 3 times or 1000. We have only 1/1000 as much as we had 1 mile away. Think about the west coast of the USA being several thousand miles away from Japan. Try 5,000 miles times itself 3 times? I'll let you do that one.

My final guess is that Japan will have their atomic energy mess cleaned up in about 6 months and no more than 25 people will have died as a result. If Japan did not have any atomic power, my guess is that several thousand Japanese people would have died over the years from starvation. There is no free lunch and no "perfect" solution as I have stated in the past.

The Pill, The Solution

If you have read my Blog, "40 Years Ago In Almaden Valley", you will know that I am into pills. In that case, my pill would have bankrupted the USA. This new pill will save the USA. Now that you are interested, exactly what is this new pill? This pill is a big deal and you will see why.

I was reminded by the recent news from the state of Georgia, that they are spending over twice as much per year on people in jail than they do per year educating their kids. That is right, for most states, they spend more on their prisoners per person than they do for educating their kids. Think what we would have if we did not have so many in our population in prisons? The USA, sad to say, have more of our population in jails and prisons than any other country in the world. How can that be? I feel that the main reason is that most of our prisons are not all that bad compared to the rest of the world's. In most counties, when you commit a crime and are convicted the penalty is very bad. Because it is so bad, most people don't commit crimes. We give criminals the same punishment that we give to first graders, which is a "time out". That's right, we give our worst criminals the same type of "time out" that we do for our school kids. The result is that it does not prevent crime and it is costing us billions that could be used better somewhere else.
So what is the solution?

When you look at what a 5 or 10 year "time out" does, you find that the only real change in the criminal is that they are 5 to 10 years older. That's it. They are 5 or 10 years older. Next, I ask if there is some other way that we could accomplish this same thing at a much lower cost? Based on that need, I invented a "pill" that I call the "time out pill". What this pill does is to cut 5 to 10 years off your life expectancy, but it does it in a natural way just like normal aging. After taking the pill, the persons hair starts to turn gray and they have less energy and all the things that happen to a normal person when they age 5 to 10 years. I have designed this new "time out pill" in units of 5 years. If you take only one you will only age 1 year. If you take 3, you will age 15 years. The good thing about these pills is that they take affect in only about 30 days. This means that a person who is convicted and sent to prison for 15 years would only have to remain in jail for 30 days rather than the full 15 years. This would amount to a very significant savings in tax money.

Mentally, the person who went into jail at age 25 and sentenced to 20 years would come out in 30 days as a 45 year old person without all the trouble making attitude of a 25 year kid. Because he is now 45 years old, none of his old friends who were still only 25 would want to hang around with him and thus get in back in trouble again. I think you are starting to see how this new "time out pill" would work and save the country.

If you are a doughtier, think about the poor people who take Chemo for cancer. What that stuff does is to almost kill the person in an attempt to get rid of the cancer. I know what you are thinking. If we were to give prisoners Chemo, it would be declared a "cruel and unusual punishment" which is against our constitution. Isn't it a little strange how we have to treat prisoners better than we do tax paying citizens. Well, I am working on the pill and when I have it perfected, we will have to revisit this whole legal situation. I think I have the solution, but we still need the will.

Union Member's Curse

I think that most of you have heard of the "Liar's Curse". The curse goes like this. If you are a liar, you can no longer trust anyone because you suspect that they may be a liar as well. There are all kinds of curses similar to the liar's curse and they all seem to work in the same direction. Well, there is another curse that you may not have heard of before and that one is the "Union Member's Curse". Here is how it goes.

If you belong to a union and feel that the unions are a good idea, then you have the "Union Member's Curse". The curse is that deep down inside, you know that you are not worth what you are being paid. You know that you could never have earned this much money based on your own ability. Now there are a few union members who are very competent and could easily earn more than their union based wage, but they still remain in the union. These people do not have the Union Member's Curse, because they are too stupid to get a different job where their ability and merit would be rewarded. This leaves all the others who are clearly over paid with the curse.

The curse is similar to the coward's curse. Deep down they know they are cowards and go to great lengths to avoid showing their true colors. Many over react and get into fights, just to prove they are not cowards. Union members do exactly the same thing. They have all kinds of ego saving methods to avoid having to deal with their basic problem of not measuring up to those who have more ability and thus more merit. You can watch any union member when confronted do this union "tap dance" as they avoid answering directly as to why they deserve to be paid so much more than the free market could justify. They often see themselves as victims of some sort. In the final analysis only cowards are victims and they know it.

They carry the curse and they know it. Now you know it too. Next time you confront a union member, be armed with the knowledge that they are cowards who know in their hearts that they don't have the ability to cut it one on one with a competent person. Don't let them off the hook. If you stay at it, you will expose them for what they are. I recall hearing some of these union type arguments back in grade school when it came to doing math or any other subject that had quantitative answers where they could not get by on bull shit. They always said that they could do it if they wanted to. They never admitted that they were just too dumb to get the correct answers. They had the curse too. Now I think you are starting to see how it works.

Economics, Japan vs Chile

With the big earth quake in Japan, all eyes are on Japan right now. On that basis, I thought a Blog on Japan might be due. What I want to do is to compare economics in Japan to those of Chile. These are two very different countries and their current and, I think, their futures equally will be very different.

I have Blogged in the past about the currency of the future and noted that Education or intellect was one of the key one. Japan does very well on this factor as compared to Chile. They have a very discipline society that has been pushed toward optimization at the expense of becoming very "brittle". I think you understand the concept of brittle systems. It is like glass. It seems strong, but a strike in the right place can shatter the whole window. I guess the point that I want to make here is that being good in just one of the currency of the future factors is not enough to assure future success. Japan is very short on energy and food as well as population density. I am coming to the conclusion that being the best educated is not by itself enough. You have to have at least one of either food or energy to have a chance of making it in the future. Japan just does not have what it is going to take.

Now Chile. We all know about their experience with socialism under Salvador Allende in the 70's. Chile was a mess and many were ready to write it off. What Chile did was to go in the opposite direction and become one of the freest business environments in the world. That was not on my list, but it has to be an important item of currency. Japan, on the other hand, has been and continues to be a centrally controlled business society. T. Boone Pickens tried to break into the business world of Japan and was clearly rebuffed. No outsiders allowed. He could not get onto the board of directors of the auto parts company where he owned a substantial share of stock. Pickens, who is a billionaire, gave up and left Japan. This is just a side point that needed to be considered. Now for the big points. Chile has both food and natural resources, including energy. These are the key items that Japan does not have. Look on you store shelves and see how many food items come from Chile as compared to Japan and you will see the significance. With food, you can buy energy and with energy you can buy food. Another point about food. In the last 50 years, we have seen more automation in food production than any other economic area. Computers have had a greater impact of reducing the cost of food than they have in any other economic area. The fact that most people are so far from actual food production, they did not see this happening. The net result is that profit from food production has grown more than almost any other area. Now why is this so important? Because Chile has excess food to export and Japan does not. Besides food, Chile is a big exporter of key minerals, such as copper and other metals. Japan has to import most of theirs.

The future looks bright to me for Chile, but not for Japan. Some people will claim that the problems in Japan are due to its ageing population, but that is not it. If their population was growing faster their food and energy problems would be even worse. Good education alone will not get the job done. You think about it and let me know what you think the future holds? The past is the past. You know that Japan attacked the USA during WWII because we cut them off from our oil. Their problem was here long before today.

Electric Cars With Regenerative Brakes

This might be a little thick for some of you, but I'll try to keep it simple. One thing that we have been hearing about electric cars since the beginning is that when you stop, the electrical system saves that energy rather than turning it into heat like regular cars do. Sounds good and it is technically possible. There are a lot of things that are possible, but there are very few that are practical or economical. I think you know the story that we can get power from the sun, wind and even the waves in the ocean. All true, but you and your kids would starve if you had to depend on those. Now back to one of my favorites, electric cars. I don't have a real problem with electric cars or electric golf carts. My problem is when the promoters make out landish claims about them.

Take this business about regenerative brakes. Here again, it is possible, but there are some problems with the concept. When you apply the brakes, you want the car to stop. With mechanical brakes like disc or shoe brakes, the kinetic energy of the car is transferred into frictional heat. That is why your brakes get hot, very hot. After you stop or stop using your brakes, they cool off transferring the heat to the atmosphere. Some big trucks run water on their brake drums to help get rid of the heat faster. With me so far?

Now let's take an example. We have a car that weights 3,000#, an average size car. Even the little electric cars are heavy because they have to carry that big battery. If we want to stop from 60 mph, the friction between the tires and the road will be the limiting factor by not having a coefficient of friction grater than about 0.5. That means the tires will slip if the stopping force is more than 50% of the weight of the car. That works out to 1,500# or 1/2 G. With a force of 1/2 G, and the car going 88 ft/sec, it will take 5.5 sec to stop the car. Sounds good. Now the kinetic energy of the 3,000# car at 60 mph or 88 ft/sec works out to be 66,000 (#ft**2)/sec**2. A little messie, but this works out to be equal to 122 hp. That means the car needs motors on the wheels that can generate a total of 122 hp. Wait, we are not done. Generating the energy is one thing, but putting it back into the battery is another thing. My prior calculations showed that the battery pack could only be recharged at the rate of about 11,000 watts and the brakes system is putting out over 8 times this amount. By my calculations, most of the kinetic energy is not going to be saved, it is going into heat just like standard disc brakes and is lost.

If you followed all this, you can do your own calculations and see what you come up with. My main point is that the car companies are playing fast and loose with technology because they know that most of us are dumb shits and won't know the difference. Our kids are even dumber and we are turning the future over to them. You figure?

Obama Care Revisited Again

This is garbage that smells worse the longer it lays there. The more people know about it the less they like it and the more that it is going to cost. Look at it like oil prices. The more the demand for oil, the higher the price. Once the price gets high enough, the demand slows and the prices stabilize. The problem with this model is that the money that supports the demand is coming from the government and the government does not want to cut it, because they would be cutting the free loaders who vote them into office. It is like the teacher's unions. They are getting the money directly or indirectly from the government too. Notice when things are paid by individuals with their own money, economic systems work, but when it is the government, all we have is a bunch of people "gaming" the system. Unions are the best at gaming the system when it is the government. Notice that union membership has gone down in private companies while it has increased in the government.

With all this, there has to be a solution. Well what is it? First, we need to come to a balance between supply and demand. The demand is coming from government money so the solution is to reduce the demand and that means reducing the amount of government money and let individuals spend their money or a voucher. This will mean that people who drop out of school or take drugs or allow themselves to get infected with AIDS, they might not have enough resources to pay for state of the art care. If that is the case, I'm sorry. Why should some person who is a total loser be allowed to take tax money out of the pot when they did not put anything in? It comes back to responsibility and incentives. As I have Blogged before, we need incentives for positive behavior and we don't. Why is that? In the caveman days, if some one did not want to hunt or bring back wood for the fire, they were eaten. Now that was a positive incentive and it seems to have worked because the caveman survived and we are here today.

Would you be in favor of some kind of life time limit on medical service paid by the government based on a formula of what you have paid in taxes. If you paid no federal income tax, you might be eligible for some minimum amount and when that was gone, you would be on your own. If you paid in a large amount, then you should be qualified for more. Does that seem fair? It does to me. I had an aunt who never paid any federal income tax, yet she got open heart surgery at great expense to tax payers when she was over 80 years old. She died a few years later and did not know her own name. For those few years of being a vegetable, we paid more for each year than her and her husband made in their total live time. The surgery did not save her life, it might have extended it. Let's say that she could have lived 2 more years without the surgery and 4 years with the surgery. She lived 4 more years, but the surgery can only take credit for the last two years and those were the worst and the most expensive. What is the logic in this? My father refused to go to the hospital when he had lung cancer due to a life time of smoking. He prefer ed to stay at home and smoke until he finally died. I don't think he would have live a month longer if he had been in the hospital and I know he was a lot happier staying at home and smoking. My grandfather died during surgery at age 85. My grandfather did not what any surgery. All he wanted was to go home and die in his won bed. My uncle was able to get my grandfather declared incompetent so that he could over rule my grandfather's wish and to go home without the surgery. Aside from the crazy decision by my uncle, it cost the tax payers a ton of money and had zero value. This is the kind of waste that I am aware of personally and I know that there must be much more.

I think you can see the problem and how we can reduce medical cost. Some people will not get the space age medical services that they do now and I am sorry about that. I would rather have the money to start a new business rather than spend it down a rat hole like the examples sited above. What we have with Obama Care is more money being pushed into an already over heated medical business. I am not going to go into insurance companies because they are not the problem. From my experience talking to average people, I don't think that 5% have any idea how insurance works. All I can say is that it seems that it will get a lot worse before we have the will to do anything about the trend. How bad, I don't know, but it will be bad.

Do Gooders

I think that I may have mentioned this before, but it deserves repeating. Most Americans are very nice people who would not knowingly hurt a fly. Most don't even want to hurt someone's feelings. If they see someone in need, the first thing they want to do is help that person. If a person is down, they what to help them back up. If someone is rude to them, they don't get rude in return. They foregive those who are rude to them and tend to just turn the other cheek. If they know someone is hungry, they will share their food with them. The bottom line is that most Americans are very nice people. Even when provoked, most will not fight back. Americans have been involved in several wars, but none were for personal or national gain. Most Americans just want to be left alone. This is who we are. It is both good and bad. Like two sides to the same coin. What I want to Blog on today is the "bad".

What normally happens to "Do Gooders" is that they are eventually taken advantage of.
As time progresses, the number or percentage of people who see that Do Gooders are easy marks grows until they overwhelm the Do Gooders. It is a gradual process until the whole social system fails. I don't know if any of you ever watch the travel channel and the Anthony Bourdan show called, "No Reservataion"? In this last episode he was visiting Hatti a year after the earth quake. He was eating at an out door food stand when he noticed some hungry young men watching. Tony decided to buy all the food from the vendor and give it "free" to he hungry young men. The final results did not help the young men as Tony expected. All that happened was a big fight and no one got the free food. It was amazing how in less than5 minutes a normal street was changed from quiet to a deadly fight. This type of thing happens a lot more often than you might think.

What often happens with Do-Gooders is that the people they are trying to help start to depend on them rather than on their own efforts. They find it easier to just wait for food to be given to them rather than going out and finding a job and getting their own food. I have traveled all over the world and it always turns out the same. do-Gooders create a large group of people who depend on them and they interpret this as confirmation that they are really doing "good". It is like a preacher who wants a bigger and bigger church. The other thing about Do-Gooders is that they go out and solicit money from people like you and then they give out the food or care. They have very big egos. There is nothing like giving away someone elses money and taking credit for it. Sounds a little like the policital model that we have in Washington DC. Social workers fit into this group too. I have always like the title "paid volunteer". How can you be a volunteer if you are being paid to do the job? It can only happen in government or within the family of Do-Gooders.

I don't see anything wrong with the attitude of most Americans regarding help for those less fortunate, but I do have a problem with helping people who should first help themselves. You would think that by now most of would have recognized the fact that it does no good to help people who repeatedly don't help themselves. I can see helping to get a stuck car out of a ditch if the engine in the car still works, but I don't see any reason to waste my time pulling a wrecked car out of a ditch if I know that it will never run again. You have heard the expression about "whipping a dead horse"? It is the same thing. We have 40% of our kids nation wide who do not graduate high school. Is that my fault? I don't think so. When these same kids can't find or hold a job, is it my responsibility or that of society to care for them. I don't think so. Should they even have the right to vote? I don't think so either. What is the incentive to finish high school? No much. What is the incentive to work hard? What is the incentive to not smoke or do drugs? What is the incentive to avoid getting pregnant out of wed lock? I love dogs, but I expect them to behave and I reward them for good behavior and punish them for bad behavior. The only punishment that seems to be allowed today is a "time out". Isn't that what prison is? Just a time out. What is the punishment for dropping out of school without graduating? None.

There is a punishment and it is punishment and it is not what you think. I get punished for the kids who drop out of school by having the government raise my taxes so the people who drop out can be taken care of. There is punishment, but it is a punishment on those of us who have acted responsibly, not the other way around. Is this a screwed up mess or what? Listen and see how often you ever hear anyone say that the cure to many of our proplems is to punish those who don't seem to want to pull their own weight. You will hear a deafening scilence.

4th Grade Logic Lesson

I went to a two room country school where we had 1-4 in the little room and 5-8 in the big room. It was a real advantage having 4 grades in one room because we could listen in on the lessons for the older kids. When I got to 4th grade, I already knew 4th grade logic. I did not realize it at the time, but by the 4th grade, I already knew more real logic than 90% of the politicians in Washington DC.

Here are a few of the logic lessons that I learned. First, the bathroom. I discovered if I turned the faucet handle to the left, the water came on and if I turned it more, the water came out faster. With me so far? When I turned it in the opposite direction the water flow got slower until it was finally off. You have all seen in comic books how a light bulb would light over a person's head when they got an idea. That is what happened to me.

It was a few years earlier when I found that when I touched a hot stove, it burned my fingers and when I took my hand away, the burning stopped. I realized that I was picking up real life long lessons and was starting to understand how the world that I lived in really worked. I knew that I was on a roll now. I rode in my grandfather's old truck and sat between his legs while he drove. I told him that I wanted to go faster and he told me to move the lever on the steering wheel up. I did it and nothing seemed to happen. I then moved it down and still nothing happened. At this point, I started to suspect that the lever that I was using did not have anything to do with the speed of the truck. Later, I found that my grandfather was just playing a trick on me. Just then, another light came on. If I moved the lever and nothing happened, then it must not be connected to anything to do with speed and it was worthless to keep fooling with it. This was one of those events where at about 6 years old, you realize that somethings people tell you are not the real truth and if you try something and it does not work, then don't waste your time by keep fooling with the lever.

Now we are starting to get to the point of this Blog. Like most of you, I have spent a lot of time in public school and have noticed that as we have spent more and more on teachers and per each student. I have also noticed that the test scores of our students, during this time, have gone down. That's right, they have gone down. Now when I apply my 4th grade logic, it would seem that since adding more money to education makes test scores go down, it should work out that decreasing the amount of money should make the test scores go up. Seems logical to me. When I went to college, they analysed expenditures on the basis of "value ratio". This went even farther than simple 4th grade logic. It is like, "did we get our monies worth".

Now if we want to get a better ratio and currently we spend more and get less. Using 4th grade math again, if we put the test scores on the top of the fraction and the cost on the bottom, we have the "value ratio". This is getting complicated, but I will try to keep it simple. Currently the "top" (test scores) are getting smaller while the "bottom" (cost) is getting bigger. I think that you can see the "value" is getting worse and at a very high rate. It has only taken about 25 or 30 years to gut the American education system. Now with my good old 4th grade logic, if we take some of the money away form the "bottom" of the fraction, the value goes up. Isn't that a wild concept? If things follow all the logic that I have seen since that first ride in my grandfather's truck, lowering the amount of money we spend on education should increase test scores. Hey, now we are talking about increasing the number on the "top".

I have been using this simple logic for many years and it has worked. What we need is to spread 4th grade logic to those people who represent us in Washington DC.

A Plan For Libya

I was talking to a few friends about the situation in Libya and they seem occupied with the Obama "Rope-a-Dope" about a "no fly zone". Did you ever see a magician do tricks on TV or in a movie and then go back a play it again in slow motion? When it is played back in slow motion, you can pick out the point where he tricked your eye with the "Rope-a-Dope" and made the item appear or disappear. The concept is as old as the hills. What Obama is doing with this business about the "no fly zone" is that the media and the population have picked up on it and have their eye fixed on it. The question is what is he really up to? The misdirection and the "Rope-a-Dope" accomplish the same thing. Both kill time and it gives the viewer the impression that something significant is going on when it is but it is not what you think. I warned you about the "Rope-a-Dope" before and you must already know about the magician's misdirection. Obama is good at both. As much as the guy talks and the amount of time he is on TV, isn't interesting how little we still really know about him and about his associates prior to him becoming President? He is good and that is the danger. Watch him when looks at someone else who is talking and he is listening. Notice how he holds his head back and looks down at the person like he was looking thru bifocals. This is the look that you need to be worried about, because what he is thinking when he does this is something that you don't want to know. Getting a little off the subject.

I proposed to my group that we do the same thing for Murmur Qaddafi that we did for Marcos. That is, to give him asylum here in the USA if he will leave peacefully. Like Marcos, we could also give him immunity for any thing that he did while in Libya. We did it for Marcos, so why not for Qaddafi? When I proposed this, you could not imagine the response that I got. They said, "no way. He is a criminal". All that may be true, but remember what the objective is. It is to settle this situation in Libya with the least loss of life and to allow the people of Libya to sort out their affairs as soon as possible. It is also to do it in a way that risks the fewest American lives and treasure. I think if you look at it that way, my plan is the best one that has come down the pike. The problem is that most Americans are of the one dimensional knee jerk variety and can't see past their nose and self interests. I would not what the guy living next door to me, but the alternatives all seem to be worse.

I know what you must be thinking. You want some "perfect" solution that does not exist. You want a solution that will save all lives, cost nothing and end up with all the people in Libya rich, happy and living in a democracy, and you want it to happen tomorrow. Right? I mentioned this before in another Blog that most simple minded people feel that there is some "perfect" solution out there in space for every situation and we only have to find it. Am I right? The fact this is a general mind set, politicians take advantage of us by holding out for the "perfect" solution when ever they are challenged. Happens every day. It is happening in the state of Wisconsin right now. The Governor is going to lay off about 1,500 state employees and cut shared revenue to local governments, but most people really think that there is a "perfect" solution out in the wings that will allow things to continue just like they are now. Ain't going to happen. Don't waste time looking for the "perfect" solution. The only place that I know of where they have "perfect" solutions for things is the church. Maybe that is why religion is so popular.

What do you think of my plan for Libya? Like to hear from you. I'll post your comments so others can chime in.