Advice For Our Government

I know that many of you have advice for our government and so do I.  That is the point of this blog.

Here goes. This is going to be short because it is not that complicated.  Here are my three simple points of advice.

(1)  Make sure that the proposal is "good".  Easy, right?  Most people like our legislators are "one movers" and only look at a single point to make their decisions.  It only has to be "good" for most "one mover" liberals to vote "yes" on a proposal.  I agree that a it has to be "good", but that is not enough for me.  I need more!

(2)  Make sure the proposal is "worth it".  Easy again, right?  If you were spending your own money, I am sure that you consider if something is "worth it" before you go ahead with your decision.  Again, I agree with this point too, but like I said above, I need more before I agree.

(3)  Make sure that I can "afford" it.  I know that a nice steak is  both "good" and it is "worth it", but what if you can not "afford it"?  This is my final point in any decision process.  Most legislators are not spending their own money so they don't even consider whether we can "afford it".

Now, look at what the Obama administration did for 8 years.  They passed Obamacare on the basis that it was only "good".  They never considered if it was "worth it" or whether we could "afford it". It was just that simple.  If we had been awake with our eyes open, we would have seen what was going on and prevented Obamacare from ever going into affect.

How about another one?  Look at the student loan program where the government and us tax payers cosigned loans to students no matter what college they selected or what major.  For the students and their parents the student loan program was "good", but it was clearly not "worth it" and we could not "afford it".  For profit colleges cleaned up while student took classes and majors what were worthless now the students, even if they graduated, could not earn enough to pay back the loans.

Conclusion.  If our legislators and us voters had followed my three simple principles above we would never have passed Obamacare or the Student Loan program in the first place.  See how simple it would have been to just follow my three points above to have avoided all the problems that we now have and will be saddled with for years into the future.

Dupont Washington Train Crash

I gave my opinion on the gulf oil spill right after I heard about it and I was 100% correct within 24 hours of the event.  Now, I am going to give my opinion on the train crash in Dupont, Washington.

Here goes.  How about  little history first?  When I was in engineering college over 50 years ago, the one area where all engineering science brakes down is "compressive failure".  Column compression failures are called "indeterminate" because there is no way to exactly predict compressive failures. For those of you who are not engineers, think of the problem this way.  If you had a 1/4" wood dowel 48" long made from Maple, how much force could it handle as a column before it collapsed?  If you tested 100 dowels, you would find some that failed with 20# and some that could handle 50#.  Why is that?  Some have slight bows while others are perfectly straight. The ones that have bows fail with a lot less load than a perfectly straight one.  Now onto the train crash.

First a few facts.  The rating for the curve was 79 mph while the train was going 81.1 mph.  I have no idea what the safety factor was or how they tested the tracks in the first place.  My guess is that they ran a train thru the curve and recorded the actual centrifugal force.  That was the right thing to do.  Here is where the problem cames in.  The train had "two" engines, one at the front end and one on the rear.  Now, why is this critical?  If the engine in the front tried to slow down and gave drag from the front while the engine in the rear still provided "push", it put the train column in "compression".  It is the same as the dowel explained above.  If the train was on a straight track, the difference in compression would have had little affect, but on the curve the compression has the affect of buckling the train column.  I think this is exactly what happened.

It only takes a split second for a train to go from tension like is was being pulled from each end to a column that is in compression.  Think about this.  If you pull from both ends on a rope is stays straight, but what happens when you pull in on both ends?  I think that is what happened with the train.  We will not know for a while what caused the crash, but my position is that it was because of the momentary compression caused by the two engines on the curve.  Had they done this same thing on a straight section of track nothing bad would have happened.  It was not until they came to the curve that all hell seemed to have broken loose.

That is my position.  Watch the final report and see how I have done?  I was 100% correct on the oil spill.  We'll see how I do on this one.

PS--A few years ago I was driving from Grand Junction up to Vail, Colorado and saw several travel trailers crashed off the road "going down hill".  They were all on slight curves like Dupont, Wa.  What was happening was that the drivers put on their brakes to slow going down hill around the curves.  The travel trailers behind them were pushing them (gravity) like the rear engine was pushing the train in Dupont, Wa  The push from behind put the whole rig in compression and the system failed just like I have described above.  If the trailers had good brakes that prevented the compression I don't think there would have been any crashes.  Braking on a straight away is a lot different from braking on a curve while pulling a trailer.  Think about it!

PS--New data shows that the speed limit was 30 mph for the curve and they were going 81.1 mph.  I have a $99.00 Tom Tom in my car that would ring a bell if I exceeded the speed limit by more than 5 mph.  You have to ask if these AmTrack people are competent and should our government be running a rail road?

Median Family Income Optimization

If you have been reading my prior blogs, then you know that I test many government and personal decisions on the basis of how they affect median family income.  This blog is about how to increase the median family income and thus the median family quality of life.

I have been analysing data from the Federal Reserve and others to determine a best strategy.  The most common method for increasing the median family income is to "grow the economy".  If the economy grows then families will be able to demand higher wages.  Sounds good on the surface, but look a little deeper.  What if the number of families increases faster than the growth of the overall economy?  If that happens, it doesn't improve the median family income.  Simple, right?

The other thing is that most of the growth in the economy is in the area of technology and in jobs that require more intellect or education.  That means that the higher income families get most or all of the growth.  If this is the case, it does not help to raise the median family income and it might actually make them go down!  Making the rich richer by itself does not raise the median family income!

The data from the Federal Reserve clearly shows that people who do not graduate from high school earn much less than those who do.  If that is the case, why is there not more social pressure on kids to complete high school?  If those who graduate high school do not earn more than the median amount, they have zero affect on the median family income.  Remember this key point.  This is one reason that it is so difficult to raise the median family income.  If we were able to get families who were near the median to earn more, that would improve the median family income.  This is one area where we need to concentrate.

Here is another area that was pointed out in the Federal Reserve data. As families have more children they tend to earn more up to four children, but then the family income starts going down when they have five or more children.  I know that this might offend some, but the families who have more than four children tend to be Latinos, Muslims and Mormons.  As a group these groups, with the exceptions of the Mormons lower the median family income.  Families need to limit their number of children to a number that they can properly care for.

Even though many immigrates help the economy and the median family income, they are such a small percentage of immigrants that in total more immigrants "lower" the median family income and thus the median quality of life.  Are you starting to see my strategy?  Well here it is.

(1) Work more with those families who are below the median, but are near it.

(2)  Work on those at the bottom who don't finish high school.

(3)  Work on those who have more children than they can afford to care for.

(4)  Work on reducing immigration except for those who can raise the median family income.

Rather than just thinking about what is good or bad for "you", we need to think more about what is best for the whole country and our grandchildren.

Cost Of "Not" Graduating On Schedule

We have an alarming trend in with our current college students and that is that most do not graduate in the normal four years.  It does not sound like such a big deal, but it is and that is the point of this blog.

Any high school student who understands basic math should know how to deal with compound interest.  If they don't we all have a bigger problem.  I am going to use simple compound interest math to show the impact of the decision to take more than the normal four years to earn a BA or BS degree.  Here are the assumptions:

(1) Cost for college tuition and books is $20,000 per year
(2) Cost for living expenses is $20,000 per year
(3) Each student entered college at age 18
(4) Each student works 2000 hour per year upto age 60
(5) An interest rate of 5% is used to calculate the "present worth" of their degrees
(6) Assume student A graduated in 4 years and worked for 38 years
(7) Assume student B graduated in 5 years and worked for 37 years
(8) Assume student C graduated in 6 years and worked for 36 years

Here are the results of my calculations on the data above and the "extra" earnings each will need to make to get back "the bait" of their college cost.  You can look at this as the "payback" required for any investment.  The extra earnings per hour are:

(1) Student A---------------$5.12/hour
(2) Student B---------------$6.63/hour
(3) Student C---------------$8.23/hour

As you can see, there is a cost for not completing college degrees in the normal periods.  There are other implications as well.  Taking longer to graduate "reduces" the number of college educated workers that we have in our economy.  If normal students work for 38 years, the impact of those who take 6 years to graduate reduce our effective workforce by over 5.26%,  That alone is a big deal.

I leave to you to show that one of the worst decisions is for your child to get a Masters degree in social work.  It has a high cost on the front end and a short period of modest earnings.

PS--Check out my earlier blogs on the impact of how long it takes our colleges to produce a medical doctor.  Most doctors don't start real work until about age 35 and only work for about 30 years.

Cheaper War On Radical Muslim Terrorists

How much is our war on radical muslim terrorism costing us?  Did you ever consider that point?  How much did the suicide bomber in NYC today cost us?  Considering all the preparations and rapid response, I estimate that it has cost us all at least $10,000,000 for this one guy.  What do you think?  The cost of radical muslim terrorism is the point of this blog.

What we should be doing is considering the "cheapest" or least cost method of dealing with the radical muslim terrorism problem.  What do you think is the least cost way to deal with our problem?  We all know that what we are now doing is not the least cost.  We are spending billions of dollars and we have not eliminated the problem.  Let's go back to basics.  Who are these terrorists and who is "not"?  I have been keeping track of these terrorists and so far none have been Native Americans or Eskimos.  None have been women over the age of 60 and you could come up with even more groups.  When we look at the group where 100% of these terrorists come from they are all Muslims. If we have any intelligence we should be focusing on that group.  If we had zero muslims in the USA, we would have zero radical muslim terrorists.  Simple logic right?

Now look at the cost trade off.  Do we get more from allowing Muslim immigration in than it costs us?  I don't think so.  I know that there are a lot of smart hardworking Muslims, but do they off set the cost from the terrorists among them?  Again, I don't think so.  Remember my test?  How does the immigration of Muslims impact the "median family income"?  We know that they have very large families and any family income needs to be "divided" by the number of members if we are going to understand the impact.  If normal families have 2 kids and Muslim families have 4 kids, then the normal family's income has to be divided by 4 while the Muslim family is divided by 6.  Muslims have to earn 50% more than normal families just to be even.  We should not allow immigration that makes us only "equal", it should be required to improve our "median income"!

Look at this other point.  It costs over $12,000 per year to keep a kid in school.  That means the normal family eats up $24,000 a year in taxpayer's money while the average Muslim family eats $48,000 of taxpayer's money.  What percentage of Muslim immigrant families do you think earn enough and pay enough taxes to cover their cost to taxpayers?  Very few!  That is just one more reason that we do not need immigrants without considering "merit".  Another point is the "remittances" back to their home country.  Those remittances take money out of our economy and make our economy weaker.  Bottom line is that most immigrants hurt the people of the USA.

I ask you now to think about the simple question, "Is it worth it to keep allowing in more Muslims?"

Broken Record

This blog is like a broken record because I have stressed this point so many times.  Economics can be either complex or simple, depending on how you look at it.  In this blog, I am going to try to keep things simple.

Since Trump was elected President, the value of the stock market has gone up by 6 trillion dollars.  Here is what that looks like, $6,000,000,000,000.  Note that this is only the companies that are on the stock market.  It does not include private companies and most of the real estate which I estimate is equal in size.  If and when that new additional value is cashed in, taxes will be owed.  Example, let's say that the total value increase is 10 trillion dollars and that our government will collect at least 20% tax on that amount.  That will account for 2 trillion more dollars in taxes collected.  Why is no one talking about this point?  Is it over their heads or is it just too simple?

Another way to look at the economic situation is to look at individuals and how much they earn and how much in taxes the government collects.  First off, let's assume that the economy grows at the same rate as the growth in population.  If that were the case people in an average job would not earn any more and the government would collect taxes equal to the growth in population and the corresponding economy.  This does not look so good does it?  But wait, now look at an individual rather than at an average job.  The average person does not stay in the same job at McDonald's all their life.  They move on up the economic ladder as older workers retire.  This means that the average person makes more and has a growth in their quality of life.  I don't understand why people can not get this simple economic point.

Next, look at an economy that grows faster than the rate of population growth.  If that is the case, the average worker at McDonald's makes "more" as they become in short supply.  At the same time, the average worker progresses faster up the ladder and the government collects more taxes per person.  In the example above, the government did "not" collect more per person and thus they were not able to lower taxes.  This latter is what the new tax reduction bill is supposed to do.

Here is the broken record part.  We need to look at the economy in terms of the "median" worker and not just on the growth in the economy.  It seems to me that the purpose of our economic system is to improve the quality of life for the "median" person or family.  This is why I am against liberal immigration policies that mostly add people who are below the "median".  What that does is to lower the "median" quality of life here in the United States.  My other point is that there is a major change going on in the world wide economic game and that is the new currency is intellect and technology.  The days when you could make a good living with a strong back are gone.  The other think about this new ball game is that there is a much bigger spread between individual when it comes to intellectual value.  When the currency of the ball game was a strong back the differences was much less.  That is the other thing that we all need to get used to because it is not going to change.  It is only going to get worse.  People seem to be able to understand this point when it involves professional athlete, so why not when it involves computer programmers?

That's my broken record!

PS--The Obama administration just spent a trillion and a half dollars for loans to students who took college courses that will be a total waste in the future technological economy and we will never get back that money or the waste of young lives.  What I expect is a generation of bitter young people who want to blame someone else for their bad decisions,  It is not going to be a very nice future as a result.

PS--Do you understand "big" numbers?  How much is 6 trillion dollars per person?  We have about 325 million people in the USA.  Can you divide those numbers/  Didn't think so.  The answer is $18,462 per every man, women and child.  That is a lot of money!

Retraining Myth Revisited

I wrote a blog about a year ago showing that most retraining is a myth.  Here, I am going to revisit the subject with a few new points.

In that prior blog I used the example of an assembly line worker in a washing machine factory who is 40 years old and his company is closing down.  Social workers proposed retraining as a solution to the person's situation.  I pointed out that at age 40 the payback period for the retraining is half of that for a 20 year old and thus a bad investment.  Here is my new point.

The fact that this person took a job as an assembly line worker is an indicator of the intellectual ability of the person.  We know that there is a major economic trend toward more intellect required for jobs of the future.  People who now have those more intellectually demanding jobs started out having a higher IQ in the first place.  Like wise, those who were assembly line workers had lower IQ's on average.  To expect that at age 40 and person starting with a lower IQ can be "retrained" to compete with a person with a higher IQ trained at age 20 can compete is ridiculous.

It would be wonderful if retraining could compensate for IQ, but we have to be realistic.  We have another trend and that is that it costs much more to teach a low IQ person compared to a high IQ person.  In a typical college lecture, the low IQ students are lucky to retain 50% of the lecture content while the higher IQ person can retain 90% or more.  As students, we all have experience with kids in school who were "good at" math or science and others who had difficulty.  Those are the facts.  This is why retraining costs much more while the pay back period is shorter.  If it cost twice as much to retrain a person and they have half the time to pay back the cost, it means that the retrained person will cost "four times" that of the higher IQ younger person.  Now, what do you think of the value of "retraining"?

I have not proposed the solution, only defined the problem.  What do you think is the solution for the 40 year old assembly line worker who is out of a job?  The assembly line worker should have seen his problem coming and he should have tried to prepare himself.  Why don't assembly line workers recognize their problem?  I know that many feel their union will "save" them, but we all know that there is no way that any union can save them.  Remember the people on Easter Island who built giant statues as a means to save them from starvation due to over population?  How is what the 40 year old assembly line worker did any different?

PS---The most economical alternative is for the low skilled 40 year old assembly line worker to take any job that they are qualified for and accept lower pay and a lower quality of life.  We have to put our money on the winners and minimize the cost of losers.  Automation has always worked it way up from the bottom, not from the top down.  Recognize the facts of life.

PS--In the past, we have been sloppy about advanced technical education.  We let kids who were not interested in technology opt out of these classes when they had the IQ's to do well. Many kids made this decision at a very young age when they had no understanding of how they were going to make a living in the future.  Our teachers and parents are going to have to start acting like adults and requiring young people to study the STEMS in school so they are prepared for "their" future.

Tesla's Electric Car Violates The Laws Of Physics

Have you heard the latest claims from Tesla about how fast they can recharge their batteries?  They claim that it only takes "one minute" to recharge.  If that were true, it would be great.  They claim that it can drive 500 miles.  This blog is about the truth and rules of physics.

Here are the starting points.  It takes at least 50 hp for the typical car while it drives at 50 mph.  That means we need 50 hp for 10 hours.  We know that a hp is equal to about 750 watts.  That means we need a total of 375,000 watts-hours.  That would be the same as 375 kilo-watt-hours.  If we pay $0.20 per KWH, it will cost us $75 for power given we have 100% efficiency.  This is only the first part.

Next, we need to consider how we will get $75 worth of electricity into our battery in just "one" minute.   Just what is a "watt"?  It is one volt times one amp.  Simple! The highest voltage we can expect to have is 220 volts.  Next, we need to convert the 375,000 watt-hours to watt-minutes.  That works out to 22,500,000 watt-minutes.  The final step is to convert the watts to amps and that works out to 102,272 amps.  Most new homes have electrical systems rated at 200 amp at 220 volts.  That means we would need to tie together 511 homes to get the amps we need.  Those are the facts.

Even if Tesla charged up a big capacitor bank over a period of time and then discharged that accumulated power into their battery in only "one" minute, it would be like setting off a bomb.  Bombs don't have all that much power.  It is the fact that that power can be released in less than a second that accounts for the blast.  It would be the same with a "one" minute battery charge.

The bottom line is that Tesla can't violate the laws of physics.

PS--In a prior blog, I pointed out that if you want less pollution from cars, then you need to figure out how to make them "cost" less.  The bottom line with everything that humans make or use is that "cost" is 100% correlated with pollution.  The more people we have who spend morenmoney for living the highest quality of life, the more pollution we will have!  Fewer people or a lower quality of life.  There is no free lunch here!

PS--The only logical way to supply the energy needed to drive 500 miles in just one minute would be to have the energy stored in a big capacitor bank.  At Jennings Radio Corporation in San Jose, Ca, we had a capacitor bank that filled a whole building in 1960.  It would take something like this to hold the amount of energy needed.  It took several hours to charge the capacitor bank.  If this is the kind of thing that Tesla is using and it was in your garage, it could only be used about one per 24 hour period.  At Jennings, to discharge the big capacitor bank we had to use "buss bars" rather than wires.  It would require copper bars 1/2" thick by 3" wide to carry that much energy in just one minute.  If something went wrong, the whole thing could explode like a bomb.
  

The Economic River

I have been trying to understand economics and have been frustrated by all the supposed experts and talking heads on TV and in our universities.  Back in graduate school, I ran head on into Ted Krepps who was a famous economists.  We locked horns and to this day, I feel that he was dead wrong with his ideas.  This blog is about how I look at economics.

I have blogged in the past about "one movers".  Those are the people who can only see things "one step" at a time.  They have no mental ability to consider the interaction of independent variables or variables that have a degree of inter correlation.  In economics, there are few variables that are 100% independent of one another.  Here goes my position.

First, look at our economic systems as a "river" with boats on the river being paddles by people.  There are a lot of variables that need to be taken into account if we are to understand what is going on out on the river. How about the speed of the river and the fact that it might change over time.  How about the boats on the river and the fact that they are paddled at different speeds and that speed can change over time.  Consider that there are new boat added to the fleet over time and some sink or are taken off the river as time goes by.  This is getting complex isn't it?  I did not tell you that economics was simple did I?  If a person can not keep the situation that I have described above straight, how can we have much trust in them as economists and their ability to predict the future?  Even if they understood the economic situation on the "river" do you think that they could explain what is happening to the average person?  I don't think so.  That is the reason that we get the mish mash that we do from economists.  Now, back to the "river".

Most of us look at economics like we were standing on the river bank at a fixed spot.  We see the boats moving on the water, some going forward and some going backwards.  Let me use and example.  We have two boats on the river, one is being paddles at 3 mph and the other at 5 mph.  The river is flowing at 2 mph.  Now, what does this picture look like?  We have one boat that is going up stream at just 1 mph and the other at three time that speed at 3 mph.  Now, lets ask if that is fair to have one boat earning 3 times as much as the other boat?

What if the speed of the river increased to 4 mph?  This could represent an economic recession.  Now, we have one boat that is actually going backwards at 1 mph while we have the other boat still going 1 mph forward.  Is this starting to look familiar?  What we have is an economic situation where the economic river is flowing faster and faster while we have people who have more intellect who are figuring out how to paddle faster.  Here is what you now see on the river.

The flow is still at the 4 mph, and the person in the first boat is only able to paddle at 2 mph rather than their original 3 mph.  Now they are going backwards at 2 mph rather than the 1 mph described above.  Now, the other boat with the smarter paddler is able to paddle at 6 mph and even if the river is flowing at 4 mph, they are still gaining 2 mph.

Next, lets take an other look at the boats from our chair on the river bank.  If the slow boat was being paddled at the original 3 mph and the river was flowing at the original 2 mph, the boat would be making "progress" up river.  Look at this like growth in the economy.

What we do not notice from our chair on the river bank is that the paddlers are getting older as they paddle up the river.  Further, that boat out in front of you on the river is "not" the same boat.  It is a different boat paddled by a different person who is at the "same" age as the person who was at that same point last year.  Paddling up the river is a little like climbing the economic ladder.  As you sit in your chair on the side of the river, you do not notice that the people in the boats are earning more money each year as they climb the economic ladder.  It is like the person who works at McDonald's who does not get a raise in pay while the person who worked at McDonald's last year is now the manager and paid much more.

Are you starting to see how economics is more complex than economists tell us.  The human mind can handle pictures and graphical things that are very complex and that is one of the reasons that I use the "river" model.  Think how your mind can keep complex things on the river straight.  The "river" has changed from what it was before 1950 and most economists who learned from books written in the 1930's ans 1940's are just out of touch.  Remember the "river" and how it changes as well as the boats and the boaters.  Think about Amazon and how they changed "river"?

Advice On Tax Plan

I have never seen so many incompetent people in government until they exposed themselves by discussing their new tax plan.  First, they need a clear objective and they don't have that. Second, they need to explain how their plan meets the objective and they are not doing that either.

You only have to look back at the Obama administration and the problems that he created to see what needs to be done now.  Obama doubled the nation debit and only grew the economy at about 1%.  This caused a significant reduction in the median family income and put more people on food stamps. What he did was to allow government to spend much more money than they collected in taxes.  During the Obama term, we should have collected much more in tax than we did.  You have to ask, "How is that any different from lowering taxes now?"   It is not!

Here is the problem.  We need to encourage companies to make things that they can sell and then hire more workers.  We have a big market here in the USA, but the products here cost more than those imported.  One way to change that is to take some of the burden off companies and put them onto imported products.  If we don't want to put a penalty on imported products, then all we can do is to, at least, take cost off companies.  That is where the 20% top tax on companies comes in.  Next, we need to assume that companies will sell more and thus pay a lower tax on "more" sales.  If sales grow enough, it is possible that some companies could actually pay more tax, Why are we not counting that?

The other thing is that under Obama we have more people on welfare who could work.  This is a big one.  Not only do people on welfare not pay tax, they consume the taxes paid by people who do work. If you can get them off welfare and into a job, they have a double impact.  That is what the lower tax on companies is supposed to do.  Who is talking about that?  No one!

Now for those who now have jobs and pay all the taxes.  With more jobs, many of these will get promoted and thus earn more even if the tax rates stay the same.  If they own stock, they will cash in as companies are taxed less.  We need to be counting that.  The other thing is that if companies expand, the people they hire will pay tax with the idea that it will offset the lower tax paid by companies.  Not hearing about that either!

As far as selling the new tax plan, politicians need to start telling the middle class that they are "not" directly the main beneficiaries of a tax cut.  What they will get are higher paying jobs as companies expand.  Since most of the middle class does not pay any tax, the best way to help them is with higher paying jobs, not lower taxes!  Explain to the middle class that lowering the tax on companies will lower the amount of imports and get people who do not have jobs off welfare and back to paying taxes.

PS--The other thing is that they have to stop discussing "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin"?  They have to stop using the words "all" or similar words.  There is no plan that will promise 100% of any group of people will pay more or less tax in the future.  Rather than trying to answer the stupid question, "Will everyone get a tax reduction?", they need to attack the stupidity of the question.  They need to focus on words like "most" rather than "all". If voters can't handle this, they don't deserve help!

Data Normalization

I know that 99% of you have no idea what "normalization" means.  My introduction to the concept came in advanced math.  It is a simple concept that we all need to understand and that is the idea behind this blog.

Notice that I used the word "data".  The analysis of "data" is where I have used this concept the most.  One area where "normalization" is critical is in economics and decision theory.  Here is a simple example.  If you gave your friend $100 and he promised to pay you back the same $100 in a year, is this "equal"?  Is the $100 your friend paid you back one year later "equal" to that $100 you loaned him a year before?  With that same $100, a year ago, you could have purchased 50 loaves of bread.  Now, with that same $100 paid back to you a year later, you could only purchase 44 loaves of bread.  Now, that is not equal is it?  Adding interest to the original $100 is one way to "normalize" the $100 you expect to be paid back a year later.

Where "normalization" comes in is that you have to "normalize" that $100 paid back a year later in some way so that it can be compared on the day that the transaction was made.  It is like adding apples and oranges.  If the money is not "normalized" to its value on the same dates, it can not be added or subtracted.  This is the same with almost all data that we used to make judgements and decisions.

Look at something like personal income.  Let's say that in 2000 the median family income was $50,000 and in 2010 it was up to $55,000.  Is this good?  Is this progress?  Politicians will claim that they have helped the median family.  Is that true?  It might be or might not.  To compare the two numbers, you first need to "normalize" the data.  For this example, I will use the loaves bread method.  Back in 2000 the median family could purchase 25,000 loaves of bread, but in 2010 with $55,000 the median family could only purchase 24, 444 loaves of bread.  Once the median family income is "normalized" in terms of loaves of bread, it is clear that the median family is "not" better off.

Another common error is just looking at the growth in the GNP.  If during the same period above, the GNP grew by 10%, it looks good.  Obama or some other politician would take credit for helping the median family, but is this accurate.  During this same period, the population of the USA has grow by 12.5%.  That means the share of the GNP for the median family has actually gone "down".  If we divided the GNP by the size of the population and compared those numbers, this is called "normalization" so that the two numbers are comparable.

The numbers would look something like this.  (GNP/100)= .01GNP compared to (GNPx110/1.125= .00982.  It is clear that the median family is worse off even with the growth in the economy.  This is one reason that we all need to think about "normalizing" data before we jump to a decision or conclusion.

Electric Car Pollution Myth

We have been taken in by the "one move" people with the electric car pollution myth.  Exactly what am I talking about?  That is the point of  this blog.

We have been sold a bill of goods on the electric cars and most of us don't even know it.  As it turns out, rather than looking at the gas mileage, we should be looking at the "cost" of the car.  If he car did not exist, there would be no pollution from cars.  Is that logical?  The fact that the car does exist we do have pollution as a result of cars.  For most people, they feel that gas mileage is how you measure how much a particular car pollutes.  That is only a small percentage of the pollution problem.  You have to look at the "total" cost, not just the cost for gas.  I will show you that the total "costs" that go into a car is the best measure of exactly how much it pollutes.

To build a car that has a cost of $10,000 creates one tenth as much pollution as one costing $100,000.  The reason that a car can cost $100,000 is that it take a lot more man hours and costly materials to build it.  Every one of those workers creates pollution when they drive to work, eats and build a homes. The more worker hours needed, the more the cost and pollution.  It is the same with materials.  Aluminum costs more than steel and plastic is difficult to recycle.  GM's Saturn found that out.

People forget about the short life and high cost of batteries for electric cars.  A little known fact is that for the life of a battery, and that the battery costs more than all the electricity that it stored over its life time.  Further, the rating of the battery goes down over time.  It might be good for 200 miles when it is brand new, but as it ages the miles goes down and when it is cold it is also derated.  What if you lived in Minneapolis and had to pick up the kids from school on a cold day?  What if the kids were late getting out, could the battery keep you warm?  Big question.

Here is an example.  A few years ago I purchased a used 2001 E320 Mercedes for $6,500 with 80,000 miles on it.  I have now driven the car 100,000 additional miles.  I get 30 mpg and my gas cost averages $3.00 gal.  I think the car is still worth about $2,500.  Here is my cost per mile so far: $0.04 per mile for car depreciation and $0.10 per mile for gas for a total of $0.14 per mile.

Now, the electric car that costs $100,000 and after 100,000 miles is only worth $50,000.  Further, you had to replace the battery for a cost of $25,000.  Electricity cost $0.15/kwh with 90% charging efficiency for a cost of $0.17/kwh.  The electric motor develops 50 hp steady state at 750 watts/hp and averages 50 mph. That works out to $0.13/mile. Now add that to the depreciation and battery cost and you have $0.88 per mile.

Now remember that the amount of real pollution is directly related to "cost" and it is clear that the electric car costs more and thus has created more pollution.  If you have followed the above, then you know that ii is clear that what we need are cheaper cars that last much longer.  If you look around you will see thousands and thousands of used cars sitting around while everyone is driving newer cars.  Rather than tax gas and mandate higher and higher mileage, what we need to do is to tax new cars and double it for the more expensive cars.  This would force people to buy cheaper cars and drive their old car longer.  With the new synthetic oils where car engines were worn out after 100,000 miles, they can now easily go 500,000 miles.  Why is this not the focus?

PS---I know that some of the exotic materials in electric cars will create much more pollution in the future.  The other thing about electric cars is that it give the "tree huggers" a way to put the real pollution in someone else's back yard, like the car factory, power plant and exotic material smelters.

Thoughts On Trump's Federal Tax Proposal

I have been following the Trump tax debate and have some very contrasting opinions.  That is what this blog is about.

First, we should agree on a clear objective and we have only partly done that.  Further, the objective needs to be honest and logical. Lowering the tax for those who do not now pay their share is not logical, but it might buy votes.  If the objective is buying votes, let's get that out in the open.  Making the tax fair is so nebulous that you know that we could never agree on that one.

How about collecting less tax?  We did that for 8 years under Obama with the results that we collected 10 trillion dollars less than what we spent.  If spending more than we have is going to grow the economy so that the middle class makes more money, why didn't that happen under Obama?  Sounds to me like spending more than one earns does not make one wealthy just like is does not for a government.  This seems to be the current objective of the Trump tax plan.

Next, the USA economy is a giant complex system and like driving a super tanker, when you have never driven something that large, one should be very cautious.  What do you think of a person who only had experience flying a small one engine plane taking over the controls of a 757?  If he was smart, he would not move the controls very much.  Why is Trump so willing to move the controls of the economy so far so rapidly?  Do you think that is smart or very risky?  Trump might not personally have much to lose, but how about the rest of us?

We should try to agree on a very few simple objectives and just work on those items that might need "adjusting".  We know that we have a negative balance of trade with almost every country in the world.  How about just addressing that single point?  Why do we have a negative balance of trade with almost every country in the world?  Don't know?  It is simple.  Most of our products cost more than those made by others or end up costing move to the final consumer.  Look at Amazon.  What they have done is to cut out the big block store and reduced the "net" cost to the end consumer.  Could out government do something like that?  If so how?

We need to look at all types of taxes which our government loads onto businesses and agree that anything that adds to the cost of a product is a "tax".  Social Security is a tax.  Obamacare's mandates are taxes too.  These add to the cost of products that the consumer has to pay.  Now look at our competitors.  If they don't have the amount of tax that we do on our products, their products will cost less.  Further, if they tax our products, it adds to the cost of our products in their markets and they do.  It would seem to me that if we would put a share of our Social Security tax and Obamacare tax onto imported products, it would tend to level the playing field.  It would make our products cheaper than now and make imported products cost more while not affecting the total tax revenue collected by the government.

Remember that 50% of our citizens don't pay any federal tax.  Cutting the tax on individuals does not make our products cost less.  What it does is to give individuals more money to buy imported products.  It is like all the BS about government spending as a means of "stimulating" the economy.  It does nothing to reduce imports or make our products more competitive.  Taking some of the tax off business does help, but it is only a small part of the Trump tax plan and he only gets this small benefit at the expense of not collecting all the tax we need.

What is happening is an insult to the intelligence of any thinking person.  I have more,

PS--It looks to me like high tax states like New York, California and Illinois are gaming the tax system so that other states pay more federal tax.  I think that the elimination of this loop hole will make the tax collection more fair!  It is like the old problem of taking the candy away from the baby.  Good parents know that it has to be done.

Health Care Debate

I have been listening to the current health care debate and would like to add my position.  The current debate has clearly gotten off the rails and someone needs to try to bring it back to reality. That is what this blog is all about.

The first thing that we need to do is to try to figure out how much we can afford to spend on health care.  We do not have an unlimited amount of wealth to spend!  Further, we need to consider the payback on what we spend on an incremental basis.  We all know that we get more value out of the first dollar that we spend than we do on the last.  A simple vaccination for small pox is a better value than a heart transplant.  If you can't see that simple point, you should not waste your time reading the rest of this blog.  For the record, we now spend about 20% of our total GNP on medical costs.  Remember that this 20% has to compete against all other places where we could spend our wealth.  Now, I would like to go into this with a little more detail.

Let's start with doctors.  Theoretically, we would like to have the best educated and qualified doctors possible, but we know that we could never afford that.  Over the years, the age that doctors start serving patients has increased.  A 100 years ago it was about 24 years old and now it is about 35 years.  That means the number of years that a doctor serves patients has gone down from about 41 to 30.  Just to stay even, we would need to produce 37% more doctors than we used to.  We all know that we import more than 50% of our doctors and we still do not have enough!  It is even worse than the numbers above because the cost of producing a doctor has gone up by more than 100%.  Given those two factors, now a doctor has to charge over $100 per hour to just get back the investment in their education and training.  That is one reason that medical costs have gone up so much. What we have is a clear case of most of us wanting better medical service than we can afford.  What if we had this same attitude about cars, houses or food?  See where this is going?

When we shop for anything with our own money, we look for the best value.  We don't go out expecting to buy the prefect product regardless of cost do we?  If that is the case, why don't we apply the same logic to medical?  In the case of medical, we expect to get a hip replacement rather than adjusting our life style to accommodate the sore hip.  Given that it costs several thousand dollars for the hip replacement that allows us to play golf for a couple more years, is it really worth it?  Is playing another 75 rounds of golf worth spending $15,000 of your hard earned money?  That works out to $200 per round or on your 9 hole course, it is $22.22 per hole.  Now you tell me.  My guess is that these types of elective surgery would go down by at least 75% if people were really spending their own money and our net quality of life would not change significantly.

Why are we spending all of this tax money and potentially productive hours of our children on student loans for degrees that are worthless?  We have about 1.5 trillion dollars in student debits that will have to be paid back!  Why didn't we require that our kids use the money to get medical or engineering degrees that we need rather than worthless fluff degrees?  I guess it is because we are a lot more stupid than we are willing to admit.  We can't unscramble the eggs, but we could stop wasting our wealth on worthless degrees right now. By changing the rules for student loans, we could start creating more wealth and producing cheaper doctors right now.

The bottom line is that we need to start thinking about limiting the types of medical procedures that will be paid for with public tax money.  We need to start thinking about spending our tax money like it is our own, which it is.  I have no problem with spending their own money on any thing that they want.  I like wine and drink it regularly.  My strategy is to drink cheap wine that is reasonably good rather than high priced wine that is just slightly better.  If this works for wine, how about how we spend money on medical?   We need to live at all levels with in our means!

PS--I would like to point out that USA life expectancy has been going down.  The main reason that it went up in the first place was not the amount we spend on health care or our hot shot doctors.  It was cheap antibiotics and cheap vaccinations that became available after about 1940.  The reduction in smoking was the other big one.  The main reason that life expectancy is going down is due to more people being over weight and getting less exercise.  Little of this has to due with doctors and the amount that we spend.

Trees And Global Warming

Here is a different slant on global warming and trees.

I did a little research on the number of trees per person by country and found some interesting information.  Trees are the main plant that takes carbon dioxide out of the air.  To keep the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere down, we can either put less in or figure out how to take more out.  It is as simple as that.  If that is so, why is there not more discussion about trees?  In the past, I have blogged on the population density as a big factor in the global warming debate and it is highly correlated with tree density too.  Here is some of the data that I found.

Canada---------------8,953
Russia----------------4,451
Brazil---------------- 1,494
USA------------------  716
China-----------------  102
India------------------    28

This is all the data that I could find, but it gives you a good idea about the problem with not enough trees. Rather than building more wind mills and solar farms, why don't we just plant more trees?  Using my 4th grade math, the way to improve the tree per person ratio, you can either increase the number of trees or you can lower the number of people.  The results are the same when it comes to global warming.  I did find data on the USA by state and it tracks with population density too.

For the record, I own land that has several million trees and supports just two people.  Given that being the case, why don't I get more recognition for helping to reduce global warming?  Why do I have to live with poor mileage for my car and truck when I have all these trees?  Voters in Los Angeles are making me pay for the carbon dioxide that they are putting into the atmosphere.  Is that fair?

Look in the mirror and ask, "What are you doing to slow global warming?"

PS--Compared to China, the USA has 7 times as many trees per person and 25 times as India.  On this basis, which countries should be doing the most to reduce global warming?  Does the Paris Accord take the number of trees into account?  No!!!

PS--The Muslim countries of North Africa are the worst countries on Earth based on the number of trees per person and it is getting worse with their birth rate which is also among the highest.  What are all the global warming voices doing about the Muslims problem?  Nothing!

Health Insurance Cost Trends

This discussion of heath care cost is a little off beat, but it builds on trends that are happening whether we agree with them or not.  Most of the health care in the USA is paid for by your employer as part of your benefit package, but like most things, not all are equal.

To make my point, I we need to agree on a few starting points.  If you don't agree with these starting points, make your own and see if my argument is still valid or not.  The first is the cost of the average health insurance plan for the company.  Let's agree that it is $10,000.  Nest, we need to agree on who and how many people are covered by that policy.  This is where it gets more complex.  For our example, lets say that it covers the employee and their wife and two kids.  Further, let say that 25% of the wives work and have an insurance plan too.  I say that it might get complicated, but this is the way it really works.  By running the math, cost per person actually covered is $3,333 since the employer actually only has to cover 3 people.  Now it gets even more interesting.

What if the company has a single worker who has no dependants?  Their cost would them be the $3,000 above.  Knowing this, why wouldn't an employer favor hiring a single person over one who had a bunch of kids and a wife who did not work or have other insurance?  May be they do!

What about workers who are worth more or less for the employer?  This is reflected in how much they are paid. Look at a worker who makes $30,000 and one who makes $100,000.  If both are single like above, the heath care insurance is 11% and the other is only 3%.  As you can see, the low paid worker cost the employer a lot higher percentage of their actual worth.  Do you think that this might be a factor in automating the low paid work out of a job while the high paid worker keeps their job?  I leave it to you.

Another point is the size of families.  It is clear that lower paid workers tend to have more kids than do higher paid workers.  It is also true that higher paid and thus higher skilled workers tend to have two workers.  Using the same numbers from above, let's look at one family who has two employed high paid workers compared to a family who has 5 kids and only one worker.  The cost for the employer for the low paid worker is $23,331 and for the high paid worker only $3,000.  Don't believe my numbers, calculate your own.

What can we draw from the above?  People with poor skills should have fewer kids, but it is just the opposite.  These same people tend to have only one bread winner too.  Look at the immigrants who we have been letting in.  Ask yourself, are these people "more" or "less" skilled than the average American?  You know the answer.  Next, do they have "more" or "less" kids than the average American?  Again, you know the answer.  The bottom line is that with the facts on the table and the trends, there is no way that our society can afford high quality health care for the growing number of low skilled workers that we have, so what can we do?  We have to have policies that prevent the mix of our society from becoming "3rd world". 

In this blog, I only picked on health care, but there are many other areas of the economic model that are being affected and most in way that you would not like if you were to open your eyes and look ahead to see what with be happening as a result on our short range decisions.  The gap in earnings is going to get worse. Social justice as is being promoted is only going to get worse if we do not open our eyes and protect the future of our children by making those difficult decisions today!

PS--Look at Obamacare.  Obama tried to help poor people with poor job skills and big families by mandating that companies had to keep kids on their policies from age 18 to age 26.  This was an addition of 8 more years and that was "not" for free.  Like the companies described above they had to pay much more in health insurance for these marginal workers.  Automation is a function of how much pay can be eliminated vs the cost of the automation.  In the case of Obamacare, it made it a lot more economical to eliminate these low paid employees with a bunch of kids and that is exactly what has been happening.  I know that a lot of people have good intentions, but one has to look ahead at the impact of simple minded good intentioned decisions.  As I stated above, we have to minimize the number of low skilled people that we have in our society and encourage them to have a minimum number of children.  Our problem is not global warming, it is population growth from the "bottom"!  We have that in Africa today and the world is going to reap the results.  Mark my word.

Quality Of The Dreamers

With all the debate about the "value" of the dreamers, someone needs to address the debate with a few facts.  That sounds like me and that is what this blog is about.

The discussion from the left seems to assume that the dreamers are of a better quality than our own kids.  We all know that there are serious questions about the quality and work ethics of our own kids and are concerned about our future as a result.  If that is the case, why do so many from the left feel that these dreamers will be such a value to median quality of life in our future?  I might agree to let those dreamers stay who can pass entrance tests for one of our major medical or engineering schools.  If you look at our own kids, only about 10% can meet the entrance requirements while 50 years ago the number was at least twice that.  What makes anyone think that these dreamers are of a higher quality than our own kids?

The median family income and the quality of life for the median has been going down while those with the intellect and skills needed for the future are making big gains.  Those are the facts and the world wide trend toward more technology is not going to change.  World wide and here in the USA we are all going to be affected.  Back in 1915 Henry Ford was able to pay a good wage for a worker who could not read or write, but who could screw on hub caps fast.  We have machines to do that now so that job is gone and gone for ever.  It is my position that these dreamers are of a lower quality than our own kids and thus will lower the median family income and quality of life faster than it is now going down.  The only logical strategy is to "slow" the rate that our median family income's quality of life goes down.  More immigrants and more dreamers are only going to make the decline go faster!

Who really pays their share of taxes?  Did you ever think about that?  We all know that 10% of tax payers pay about 90% of all taxes and 50% don't pay anything.  Where do you think the 50%-50% point is?  My guess is that your family would have to make around $150,000 per year.  If we let in immigrants and dreamers who don't make that much, they don't pay their share.  More of them will make us poorer.  Do you want to know what the median family income is now for Latinos?  The overall average for everyone is only about $50,00 and Latinos are about half of that at $25.000.  You can find a few who make more, but we need to deal with the average or median, not those few exceptions.  For example, Asians earn over three times that of Latinos and thus pay significantly more tax.  Do you want to let in Asian dreamers?  I don't think that there are very many of those.

We all have to be honest and realize that this USA belongs to all of us and that it is our responsibility to assure that the future for our children is as good as we can make it.  I know that many of you feel sorry for these dreamers, but how about your own kids?  Realize that the dreamers have broken the law and are here illegally and are not citizens with the same rights as your children.  It is all of our responsibility to obey the law and make sure that other do as well.  Which other laws on the books do you also think we should ignore?  How about raping your daughter?  How about stealing your car?  If you are honest, you have to agree that we need to obey all laws or legally try to change them.

If you have been reading my other blogs, you will notice that I have a simple objective and that is to make the future better for my children by doing what ever I can to keep the median family income from going down or at least going down as slow as it can.  I test all immigration decisions against that simple objective.  You should think about your own objectives before you jump into trying to make decisions about whether current government policies are correct or not.

The Earth Is Losing Its Atmosphere

For some time, I have been questioning whether the Earth's air pressure has been changing.  There is very little data on the Earth's  prehistoric atmosphere so one has only been able to speculate on what it may have been and what affects that it might have had.  It has been my position for some time based on the fact that other planets in our solar system had an atmosphere and one time and have lost theirs that this is happening to our Earth.  That is the point of this blog.

We have fossil examples of many animals that existed at one time on Earth that clearly could not survive on today's Earth.  Large flying reptiles are just one example.  As a pilot, I am familiar with how difficult it is to fly and especially at high altitudes.  The density of the air or air pressure is a very significant factor and the only way that I can see that these large reptiles were able to fly was if the atmosphere were much denser.   The Earth's atmosphere is so thin that 50% is below 10,000 feet or approximately 2 miles.  Considering that the diameter of the Earth is about 8,000 miles, that is a very very thin layer.

Some of you are familiar with hyperbaric chambers used for medical purposes and how they can increase healing.  There is now research that shows that plants can grow much faster in these same conditions.  This matches with what we find in may of the plant fossils so one could assume that the conditions on Earth may have been much different at the time these plants were growing.  Animals show some of these same characteristics. How do you think the hearts of very tall dinosaurs were able to pump blood all the way up to their heads?  It would have been much easier if the Earth had higher air pressure.

If you read my prior blog on this subject, I also proposed that the Earth is slowing down and the length of a day is getting longer.  Why is that important?  With a denser atmosphere and higher rate of rotation, the temperature on Earth would be more "even".  That would make life much easier for both plants and animals and thus they may be able to grow larger.  This same affect on plants could be a major factor in the formation of "coal" and "oil".

The other thing that I pointed out is that the Earth is getting much smoother and there are fewer tall mountains.  At the same time the oceans are filling in and getting shallower by erosion and the collection of space dust.  What I would like to see are mathematical models that would attempt to take many of these factors that I have mentioned into account to see what they might be able to predict about the past and the future.  Every thing that I have seen regarding global warming looks like it was put together as a high school science project.

I just hope that you are as curious as me.  It is a lot of fun.

Perfect Solution Smoke Screen

Are you starting to see that liberals are still hanging onto their "perfect solution" montra?  This blog is just a reminder about how liberals keep using the demented "perfect solution" logic, if you can really call it "logic".

I was just watching the morning news and two talking heads were discussing what to do about North Korea.  One of the talking heads said that we needed to keep putting on more economic pressure on North Korea.  The other did not want to put on more economic pressure because it would hurt "innocent" people and not changing the actions of their President.  He wanted a solution that got the President to change his attitude, but not hurt the "innocent" citizens.  Notice that the person who wanted the perfect solution had no idea what the perfect solution would  be.  I suspect that he expected some kind of magic perfect solution to materialize out of thin air.  Did you ever notice how your two year old did not like the food that you had prepared for them, but wanted "some other" food that did not exist?  This is the kind of immaturity that we see every day from our liberals.

The interviewers on TV don't help the situation either.  Why don't they ask these liberals what their perfect solution actually is?  As a technical person, I hear immature liberals every day jumping on the band wagon claiming that there is a perfect solution right around the corner, if we only spend more money on scientists.  They seem to have unbound confidence in the science that they have zero understanding of.  How many times have you heard one of these liberals proposing that we can violate Newton's Laws of Motion.

Look at illegal immigration?  How many times have you heard a liberal advocate birth control as the perfect solution?  Why do 99% of the people who want to immigrate here all come from countries that are over population?  Seems like liberals should look at some of the facts.  Every time you hear a liberal advocating a perfect solution, people like you should speak up and demand that the liberal tell you exactly what the perfect solution is and how it could  be implemented.

The Short And Long Of DACA

One of the big problems with both voters and politicians is their lack of the concept of "short and long".  Don't follow me?  That is the objective of this blog.

I used to teach Decision Theory at a major university and know a little about decision making.  In prior blogs, I pointed out that a frequent error in decision making was "not considering all the alternatives".  This blog will go one step farther.  Before any decision can be made, you need a good definition and understanding of the objective.  If you don't know what the purpose of your decision, there is no way that you can expect to come up with the right decision.

I am going to use Obama's DACA executive order as my example.  Just before his second election, Obama issued his DACA order to satisfy his Latin American supporters so that they would turn out to vote for him.  Obama was just looking at the "short term" affects of his order, not the "long term".  The result was a massive influx of young Latin Americans flooding into the USA.  They were much like "anchor babies" that would have long term "bad" affects.  Had Obama been, at all, concerned about the "long term" affects, he might not have issued his order.

Remember when President Reagan signed the amnesty bill to try to cure our illegal immigration situation?  What he did was to only look at the "short term" impact, not realizing that the "long term" impact would be to encourage future illegal immigrants to expect the same treatment.  The amnesty actually made things worse in the "long term".  You know that now.

On TV News today, Geraldo said that we should not deport the "dreamers" because it would not be fair to kids who were sent here by their parents from Latin America.  What Geraldo was doing was exactly what all other politicians have been doing for years and that is just looking at the "short term".  At all levels, we are going to have to start looking at the implications of our simple minded "short term" decisions.  When kids drop out of school, isn't it clear that the decision has much more serious "long term" affects?  How about getting knocked up out of wedlock?  Is the "short term" thrill worth the "long term" impact?

I could go on and on with examples, but I think the above makes my point clear.  The main difference between immature decisions and mature decisions is the balance between their "short term" and "long term" impact.  What we need is more "maturity" at all levels of decision making!!

PS---If these "dreamers" are now so well educated and valuable too the USA's economy, they would be even more valuable to their Latin american homes countries.  Isn't that a "long term" factor that should be taken into account?  Would it be better to send our tax money to these same Latin American countries or to send back their own educated and trained citizens?

PS---Another thing that is talked about is the reason that parents sent their kids here.  What do you think that was?  Don't know?  It was so they could send money back to the family!  That is what the kids do from India and Mexico now.  Remittances account for a very significant component of both India and Mexico's economies and it comes at the expense of the USA. They are not sending those kids here so that their kids will have a better life!

PS---If you want "more" bad behavior, reward it with amnesty.  If you want "less" bad behavior, punish it.  Darwin has been using this principle for millions of years and it has works everytime.

PS---Remember my basic objective?  It is to raise the "median" family income.  It is now about $50.000.  If the average Dreamer does not make at least $50,000, they are making the USA poorer.  It is not enough that they pay "some" taxes.  If they don't earn at least $100.000, they don't pay their share of tax like most of the people in the USA now do not do.  As I said above they should not send a penny back to Mexico either.

Is The Free School Lunch Program A Good Idea

Remember one of my earlier blogs where I show that many things that are "good" can also be "bad" at the same time.  In this blog, I am going to challenge the Free School Lunch Program as being  both "good" and "bad" at the same time.

I have a grandson who has a food allergy problem and thus he takes his lunch from home each day.  There are many kids who have similar problems which requires their mothers to prepare their special lunches.  When I was going to my two room school, my mother came to school in the morning and prepared lunch for us kids just like most schools do today.  On with the story.

Kids used to work on the farm before and after school and were generally stronger than kids are today.  Now kids don't ride their bikes to school, they ride the bus.  The fact is that kids today do not get near the exercise that kids used to.  Farmers have automatic loaders to handle their heavy bails of hay and the result is that farmers are not as strong as they used to be either.  This same principle applies to all areas of human physiology.  If you want something to get weaker, figure out a way to make it easier.  Simple isn't.

I think that we can all agree that the biggest problem with our schools is not the teachers, but the parents of the children.  I know that I have bad mouthed teachers in the past and they have a share of the blame, but parents are a bigger factor.  You only have to look at home schooled kids compared to those in our public schools to see that on average the home schooled kids do much better.  My point is that if you want the parents to be worse, make their jobs easier, just like I said above.  By having the school provide the free lunch and often a free breakfast too, we make the parents job easier and easier and thus we end up with worse parents.  Do you follow that?

Most do gooders feel that the free lunch and breakfast are "good" ideas and they are, but there is clearly a bad side too.  You can't get away from the fact that many decisions have this good and bad side.  The problem is to look at both sides and decide if the good side is "worth it"!  In the case of the free lunch, I don't think so.  I know that when I started kindergarten, I had to be able to tie my shoes, feed myself and go to the toilet by myself.  My mother had to teach me that or I could not go to kindergarten.  My point is that parents have responsibilities and to let them get off from their responsibilities under the name of the tax payers doing "good" for the kid is bad for everyone.  If a parent does not send a lunch to school with their child, someone should got to their home and find out why.

I think that it would be a lot better in the long run if we corrected the parent responsibility problem early rather than having their kid spend time in jail years later.  If you have been following my blogs, I try to search out the "cause" of a problem and correct that rather than just treating the "symptoms" with pain pills.  If kids are hungry in school, giving them "free lunch" does not solve the real problem!   Think about it!!

PS---I could have used the example of schools having janitors to clean up the mess made by the kids when it is clear as a bell that having the kids clean up their own mess would be a much better solution.

Social Justice And Piece Work

This blog is from a slightly different angle, but I will try to make it easy to follow.

As a kid I worked in the fields and orchards picking crops.  We also camped in the fields and orchards too.  We were what was then called "fruit tramps".  We followed the harvest from spring to fall when we had to go back to school.  I did not see anything wrong with the process.  I had a good time and learned life long skills and ended up with money in the bank.  By the time that I was 10 years old, I had over $500 in my bank savings account.  Today, that would be worth at least $5,000 today.  Tell me how many 10 years olds do you know who have earned and saved $5,000 today?  Not many.  This was all done on "piece work".  That means that I did not work on the basis of how many hours I worked, but on exactly how much I produced.  It is a fact that I made more than most other kids at the time and that was because I "produced" more.  Even today, I can not think of a system that was more fair.  To me social justice was served because I was paid what I was worth.  Now, look at today.

Today, there is almost no jobs that pay on the basis of piece work.  Most are by the hour or month.  It is the clock and the calendar which determine how much a person is worth, not what they actually produce.  As I have stated in prior blogs, the range of what people produce with physical work does not vary too much.  The difference between the best a worst worker might be only a difference of 50% with most near the middle.  For management simplicity it can be easier to pay by the hour rather than by the piece even though those the few at the bottom get a free ride and those at the top get screwed.  For most people who only look backwards, they saw the by the hour system as being more fair and more in line with their idea of social justice.  The problem with only looking backwards, these same people have a hard time dealing with the current situation or the future.

What has happened is that there has been a major shift in the "currency" of economics.  Historically, the currency had been a person's physical attributes like strong back and good eye sight.  Now, that has all changed.  The currency of today is intellect.  For those who were being screwed by the old by the hour system, they can now be paid on the basis of what they produce.  Here is what is going to happen.  The median family income is going to go down and there is little that can be done to change that fact.  If you are not familiar with the term "median family income", it is that family in the middle where there are as many families that make less than you do as there are families who make more than you do.  It has little to do with the growth of the economy.  If in terms of social justice, all families got an equal percentage raise in pay, it would have zero affect on the median family income.  What those on the social justice band wagon want is for those below the median to get a bigger raise in pay than those above the median and that is never going to happen.  I think that most people understand why the top technical people make so much more than those who do physical labor like drive a truck or cook your meal in a restaurant.  The difference is going to get even worse.  What is happening is that most technical people are paid on the basis of piece work or what they are able to produce.

School teachers are paid on the basis of how many hours they work and how old they are.  If anyone thinks that is a system of social justice, they need to stop smoking something.  Technical people are not paid on the basis of how old they are and in many cases younger technical people earn more than their older counter part.  Would it be an example of social justice if the more productive young technical person earned less than the older technical person?  Any social justice system that I have seen proposed screws someone, either at the top or at the bottom.  In the case of piece work, no one gets screwed!!

PS--What if salesmen were hired like school teachers based on their grades in Salesman School and then paid on the basis of their age.  Do you think that any business would put up with that?  Why is it that our colleges and universities do not offer degrees in Salesmanship?  Salesmen are paid on a piece work system which is fair and assures that we really do have social justice!

Business Executives And Affirmative Action

This past Sunday I watched part of a TV News Show where a group of our "hot shot" executives discussed how they deal with the concept of affirmative action.  Most were no less than pathetic.  I have no idea what rock many of these crawled out from under.  That is the point of this blog.

First off, I think that racism and favoritism of any kind is totally sick.  I have blogged in the past about how colleges used to ask on their application, "what college did your parents attend".  The purpose of that was to give people like John F. Kennedy special treatment on admission.  We have the same thing today in our military academies and that is clearly how John McCain got into Annapolis over people like me.  I am one quarter Native American and have no desire for that to be taken into account over "merit"!  With me so far?

On the TV show, I listened to executives one after the other explain how they have problems finding and hiring qualified technical people.  Many were against Trump's policy on immigration because it limited their ability to import foreign technical people.  They claimed that it was difficult to meet affirmative action goals if they could not get people from foreign countries.  This has to be sick logic!
Do you understand why this is sick logic?  If not, I will explain it.

I will use engineers for may example.  If you look at most technical companies, you will find that they have far more male engineers than they do female.  They clearly have far fewer female engineers than the ratio of females in our population.  Males and females are about 50%-50% in the general population.  The problem with this sick bunch of business executives was that they were trying to meet a 50%-50% ratio of female engineers.  They believed that they might be able to meet that goal if they could "import" a bunch of female engineers.  Do you see that was a sick idea?  The fact is that females only account for less than 10% of new engineering graduates because females, by free choice, select other careers.  You have to ask why the goal of businesses is not the ratio of engineering school graduation rates?

If the executives had a brain, they would adjust their goal to account for trends in engineering school graduate rates.  Here is how it should work.  If the mix of your engineers is such that the median years that they are out of college is 15 years, you should look at the graduation rates 15 years ago and use that as the goal.  For the record, I never had a female or a Black in any of my engineering classes nor did I have any when I was an engineering instructor.  I know that times have changed and now there would be a few females in those classes.  If the ratio today were 50% female or Black, it would be sick logic to expect that a company that had been business for 50 years should be expected to have 50% female or Black engineers.

As I pointed out earlier how I believe in "merit" not favoritism of any kind.  That applies to sports as well.  Would you watch professional football or basketball if the players were selected on the basis of current affirmative action policy?  I don't think so.  This business of sick affirmative action will continue if you don't speak up and get businesses to start applying real logic.

What Do Politicians In Washington DC Think?

I have been listening to PC talk from politicians in Washington DC for years and I never hear anyone tell us what they actually think.  Don't  believe me?  I will explain my position in this blog.

Remember when a reporter asked Obama what his opinion was on a particular subject?  How did he answer?  The reporter wanted to find out what Obama was thinking about the subject.  Seems clear to me, but how did Obama answer?  He never revealed his opinion or what he was thinking.  What he did was to lecture the reporter on what "many people think".  How does he know what anyone thinks?  He only knows what he is thinking and he never reveals that.  Now, do understand the political two step?

This morning a reporter was asking Ryan what he thought about Trump's promise to shut down the government if they did not approve building the "wall".  How did Ryan answer that simple question?  He state that "the public" did not want a government shut down.  Does that simple minded statement have any real content?  No!  It would be like asking if he agreed with the idea of raising taxes.  Ryan would respond in PS political talk with, "people would not like a tax increase".  How much did we learn about Ryan's opinion or thinking?  Zero!

The idea of this blog is to point out how our politicians give us PC talk and never really answer our questions.  Most people go away thinking that the politician has answered their question when he has just pulled the wool over their eyes.  Are you one of those people?  I hope not!

PS--I have a friend who I regularly have coffee with who answers question about "his" opinion about something just like politicians do.  When I am face to face with someone, I want to know what they think, not what some stranger thinks.  Does this irritate you as much as it does me or do you even notice that you are being manipulated?

Destroyer McCain It Happened Again

Are you getting tired of tankers and container ships running into our expensive state of the art destroyers?  Well, I am and that it what this blog is about.

I have never sailed thru the Malaccan Straits, but my Passport sailboat has.  The old owner after sailing around the world in the sailboat, he left all his charts on the boat.  One chart showed a red line where he had sailed thru the Malaccan Straits.  It is a very narrow area with a lot of pirates.  Every Captain of every boat that sails thru that area knows that they have to keep careful watch all the time.  It is no different for the Captain of one of our expensive state of the art destroyers.  In this case, we are going to have another Navy Captain "fired".  How many do we have left?

As I pointed out in my blog about the Fitzgerald, these expensive new destroyers are constructed so that they have a very very small radar return.  They can be almost invisible or appear to the tanker as a small fishing boat.  From what happened to the Fitzgerald you would think that all the other Captains of our expensive destroyers would take a lesson and deploy a radar reflector when they are in tight quarters like the Malaccan Straits.  I had a radar reflector up all the time on my Passport sailboat when I was off shore.

I know that our Navy wants to keep quiet about the location of our guided missile destroyers, but they have to realize that there are bigger boats out there that can run into them if they can't see them on radar.  When I went aboard a couple of modern destroyers while they were in dry dock, it was clear that they did not have armor like a battle ship.  I think that the steel on the sides was no thicker than 1/2".  I think that "Hum-v's have thicker armor than that.

The bottom line is that whoever is in charge of our Navy needs to wake up.  The top guy is responsible for those below them.  He can't just keep firing Captain's of destroyers without someone considering firing him!  We need someone who is a little more concerned about taking better care of our tax money!

PS--Remember that McCain did not get into Annapolis on merit.  He got in over more qualified candidates because of nepotism.  Both his father and his grandfather were Admirals. Did McCain get into Annapolis over one of your kids?  We need more honesty in our military.

PS--It finally happened, the 7th Fleet Admiral was fired!  Notice that none of the talking head experts mentioned that our destroyers are almost invisible on radar.  What has our Navy done to deal with this?  Few want to say that Affirmative action was a major part of the cause too.

Gray Squirrels Produce Black Squirrels

This is a blog that appears to need to be repeated.  If you did not read my first blog, here goes another one.

I have a real problem with Black squirrels eating all the sunflower seeds from my bird feeder.  Many of my neighbors have the same problem too.  One of my neighbors has been trying to get rid of his Black squirrels by shooting everyone that he sees at his bird feeder.  He has been doing this for several years and the Black squirrels keep coming back.  Even poison has not helped.

He was over the other night sharing a homebrew with me and telling me his sad story about Black squirrels.  He said that he had shot at least 50 over the past several years and they still keep coming back.  I listened for a while and then explained how I had gotten rid of all my Black squirrels.  His ears perked up while listening to my story.  First, I explained the breeding patterns of Gray squirrels and how they had a gene that caused Gray Squirrels to have a certain ratio of Black squirrels.  Further, I explained that no matter how many Black squirrels he shoots, killing only Black squirrels will never eliminate Black squirrels from invading his bird feeder.  He had to start shooting Gray squirrels and when he got rid of all the Gray squirrels, he would then be rid of the Black squirrels!

My friend was puzzled at first, because all of his prior experience told him that to get rid of a problem, all he had to do was to deal with the problem directly.  That worked for almost everything else, so why not Black squirrels?  After a few more homebrews, my neighbor finally understood his problem with Black squirrels.

We had a few more homebrews and my neighbor asked me if this same cure would work for radical Muslim terrorists?  He noted that with all our efforts to screen out just radical Muslim immigrants, there were still a lot of "home grown" radical Muslim terrorists" killing people.  Going after non-radical Muslims may be the solution, just like it was the solution for getting rid of Black squirrels.  At that point, I proposed a toast to the wisdom that comes from a few homebrews.

Do you think that we just have a Black squirrel problem or do we really have a Gray squirrel problem?  Is there enough homebrew in the USA for our voters and politicians to figure out that the real problem with radical Muslim terrorism is Muslims?

PS--Notice that Gray squirrels did not stop having the Black squirrel, just like Muslims have not eliminated the radical Muslim terrorist with in their community.  In most communities, the good guys eliminate the bad guys within their communities, but not Muslims  Why don't the good Muslims do this?  Starting to see the real problem?  Where are all the good Muslims when we need them?

Change And Not For The Better

I just got  back from an airplane fly-in.  There were a total of 79 planes for the complementary lunch and free hats. What was interesting is that the median age was about 65.  That seems old to me, but it is happening all over the place.  I had my high school year book along to show some friends and noticed how things today are so much different from those shown in my old year book.  That is the point of this blog.

The number of people playing golf is down by at least a third while our population has actually increased.  I think that I could say the same about tennis.  In my year book, it showed our radio club where we made our own radios from scratch.  I don't mean just receivers.  We made our own transmitters too.  That was real technology, not just pushing buttons like kids do today and calling it technology.  There is more.

Look at a company like Apple.  Where did all those sales come from?  Those sales did not occur on some desert island.  What people have done is to buy Apple type products with the money that they would have spent on golf or some other activity that is now in decline.  When a company grows faster than the over all growth in the GNP, that extra money has to come from some other activity.  With me on this?  Not only did they buy the Apple products, they spent their golf and tennis time play with the buttons on the devices.

Look at Amazon.  Their growth has clearly been faster than the growth in our GNP.  That money had to come from some place else like Sears, Dillards and Macys,  Are you surprised?  You should not be.  I know that most of you believe in free competition and I do too, but it is not 100% for the good.  There are some bad aspects.  Our kids don't ride bikes like they used to.  Modern bikes are a lot easier to peddle.  That means our kids get less exercise even if they were to ride the same amount and we know they do not.  How about jump rope?  When was the last time you saw a bunch of kids playing jump rope?  Think hard!

Look at Harley Davidson, the motor cycle maker.  Their sales went up as the baby boomers got older and had more money, but now with their kids taking over, sales have gone down significantly.  Kids today do not want to drive out in the open and feel the clean fresh air blowing in their faces.  They want sit and punch buttons on an electronic box they purchased from Apple.

My bottom line is while all this progress is going on, who is watching the store to see that we don't lose some of the real good things in life?  There are forces out there whose only objective is to separate your money from you and your kids.  To many, that is the definition of progress, but those of us who are old enough know that is not true.  It is up to us to see that many of these good things in life survive.  Are you up to the challenge?

PS--Yesterday I was talking to some young kids and asked them if they knew what a "skate key" was.  They had no idea what I was talking about.  This is just one small example of what I have been blogging about above.  Why don't you go and ask some young kids about things that you used to enjoy and see what they have to say.

Immigrants And 4th Grade Math

I was just watching Varny on Fox Business News and he had some guy on who said that immigrants from Venezuela would be good for the USA economy.  He claimed that it would help "grow" our economy.  That may be true, but its clearly a lie at the same time.  Recall that our economic objective should be to raise the "median family income", not just grow the economy or raise the "average" family income.  More people could be worse off even if we grew the economy or raised the average.  That is the point of this blog to open your eyes to the real facts.

If the 10 riches people in the USA were to double their income, it would raise the "average", but the guy in the middle might actually go down in terms of income.  It is the quality of life of that family in the middle that we should be concerned about, not just economic growth.  Here are some simple 4th grade facts.  It has been reported that 50% of immigrants are now on welfare.  That means that they are below the "median".  If 50% are below the middle, there is no way that immigrants can help to raise the "median family" income, no matter how much they might earn.  Do you follow that?  Think about it!

What about the other 50% who are not on welfare?  Let's assume that they are just average Americans and 50% are above the median and 50% are  below the median.  Do you see a problem with that assumption?  Using our 4th grade math, it is clear that 75% of immigrants are below the median family income.  Any claims for some kind of brain drain from places like Venezuela are over powered by the 75% who do not appear to be in this exclusive group.

The other disappointment with the Varny show was that he just sat there and listened to the BS from his guest and did not question how immigration might affect the "median family income".  If this guy was just talking about himself and if more immigrants would allow him to sell more of his widgets, that might be true, but it is clearly not in the best interest of the USA.  When people like Varny interview people like this, they should ask if the person talking about their own personal interest or the interests of the USA.  You all know that we need to vote on the basis of what is best for the USA and our children in the long term, not just what is best for us for the next 4 years, or do we?  That is our problem and we all need to recognize that.

Immigration might be good if we could get the "right" people, but do you know how we would ever do that?  Since every system to screen immigrants always ends up letting in more than 50% who would lower the median family income, I do not see any alternative other than to not let in any!  Remember that Gray Squirrels can often produce Black Squirrel off springs!

PS--How about this key decision principle.  What if  by not letting in any immigrants, the median family income stated the "same", would that be bad?  No!  Because the quality of life would be better if we had a lower population density.  Find me someone who believes that the quality of life in Los Angeles is better today than it was in 1960 or any other big city.  Is Pheasant hunting better today in California than it was in 1960?  How about fly fishing for native trout in the stream in the Sierras?   I think that you know the answer.  If there were a trade off between my definition of quality of life above and the median family income, how much higher would median family income have to be for things to be just "equal"?  The fact is that median family income is not higher.  Now what?