Booze Economics

As the Brewmaster I should blog a little more about brewing so here goes.

The first corn whiskey was made at Jamestown back in about 1620.  That is a few years ago!  The first significant federal tax went into affect on Whiskey right after the signing of the Constitution and the formation of the USA in 1790, so Whiskey and taxes have been with us a very long time and it owes it's origin to the Native American corn which is now the most planted crop in the world.  What would the world be like without corn and Whiskey?  Not a very good place.

Now some economics.  I looked these numbers up on the Internet and I think they are good. From one bushel of corn, you can make about 2.4 gallons of pure alcohol.  The average farmer in Iowa can grow 175 bushels of corn per acre.  That means he could make 420 gallons of alcohol per acre.  Bourbon Whiskey is normally about 80 proof or 40% pure alcohol.  That works out to 1,050 gallons of Whiskey per acre.  Normally, Whiskey is sold by the fifth or 5 bottles per gallon.  Now, that means that the farmer can make 5,250 bottles of Whiskey per acre.  This is getting to be  a very big number!
I normally buy the cheap stuff, so let's say the farmer got $10 per bottle.  That would mean that he could gross $52,500 per acre!  Compare that with current corn price at $3.50 per bushel where the farmer would gross only $612.50 per acre.

Are you starting to see why George Washington and his Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton caused the famous "Whiskey Rebellion" by the farmers in Appalachia?  The battle is still raging today.

You can look at this another way.  What is the farmer's share of  that fifth of Whiskey?  Would you believe $0.12 per bottle?  At $10 per bottle, that works out to just 1.2%.  Just think if the farmer was not growing corn, but was growing Marijuana or Heroin how much he could have made.  That is one of the reasons that we have such a problem with illegal drugs,  The profit incentive is just too great.

I could put together the numbers for homebrew made from barley and the answer would be the same.  How much to you think the farmer gets from a $3,00 beer?  You would be very surprised.

The Constitution Is A Contract

Most people don't think of the USA constitution as a legal contract, but that is exactly what it is.  I will explain that in this blog.

Some of this may sound like a repeat, but just bear with me a little.  Recall that the revolution started back in 1776, but it was not until 1790 or 14 years later that we actually had the USA.  It took that long for the 13 original English colonies to agree on how to combine.  Notice the problems that England is now having with the Common Market contract that they agreed with just a few years ago. If you were going to join some group where the group had control of your assets, wouldn't you want some kind of air tight contract?  Look at "time shares" and how sloppy many of those are.  Some people don't read the fine print and wonder later how to get out of their contract.  The people who signed the original constitutional contract were a lot smarter than our politicians are today and they did a very good job formulating that contract.  Looking at that contract, it seems clear that the individual colonies were very concerned about exactly what authority they gave to the federal government.  The constitution clearly focuses on limits to what the federal government can and can not do.  At the end, it states that all authority not specifically assigned to the federal government shall be vested in the colonies or states.  That is preity clear!

In the case of England, they don't have a constitution like the USA does.  That means they only need a simple majority to change any law.  The wise people who wrote our constitution looked ahead and knew that in the future, some faction of citizens might want to change the constitution or contract.  They wanted to make sure that if there was a change that more than a simple majority had to agree with it.  They knew that it was better to stay with the original contract rather than "risk" a future change that may turn out to be against what they had agreed too.

How would you like it if you sold your house to someone and at some future date they found that they had paid too much for your house and decided to stop making the mortgage payments?  I don't think you would like that.  What if you had died before the house was paid off and the new owners tried to screw your children out of the mortgage money?  You wouldn't like that either.  Isn't that what we are talking about here with the constitution contract that our forefathers signed?  My family was here back in 1608 and participated in the revolution so I have more of a person relationship with the original constitution than most, but that doesn't make any difference.  By law, we let immigrants come into the USA and become equal citizens.  That means they have to agreed to live by the original constitution or contract made back in 1790. No exceptions!

I don't have a problem with changing the constitution by the defined legal process, but I do have a problem with those who feel the constitution is some kind of "living" document that can be changed with a simple majority vote based on the whims of the day or by the whims of the Supreme Court.  Like a lot of things, once you let something out of the bag, it can be impossible to ever put it back in again.  That is how I feel about our constitution and see it as the "ultimate" contract with "all" of us and those who came before us and those who will be here after we are all gone!

PS--I forgot an important point about the constitution.  The founders were concerned about a future majority taking advantage of the minority with a "one man one vote" concept.  The contract tried to protect a minority from the tyranny of the majority.  In England there is no constitution and thus there is no protection of the minority from the majority.  Small states would never have signed the constitution if there was not this protection.  Democrats want to ignore the intent of the original founders!  That is why our constitution is a binding contract.  Thank the founders.

Free Money

Now another city wants to hand out free money. How much money do you deserve? Why is it that it has  never worked?

You may be surprised that I am not against the idea if those who are getting the free money have skin in the game.  It might work if that were the case. Let's look at that and see how they could put skin in the game.  I will use Finland vs the USA for my comparison.  In a prior blog, I gave my list of the types of things that we could all do "for free" so that we all had skin in the game.  I will use those here.

(1) Crime

Criminals should be excluded from the free money until they have been law abiding for some reasonable period.  I think 10 years would be reasonable.  Now look at Finland.  They have a fraction of the percentage of criminals in their jails and prisons that the USA does.  We have a larger percentage of our people in jail and prison than 99% of countries in the world.  If we had the same percentage as Finland, we could apply that money toward the free money program.  Notice that it does not cost anything for the individual to obey the law, so there is no reason that everyone should not be able to comply with this provision.

(2) Complete High School

The USA ranks no better than 39th in the world in terms of literacy.  Even though our schools are free, we have one of the lowest graduation rates of any country in the world.  To complete high school is free so there is no reason for not competing high school.  Given that a person's economic worth is a function of their education, it is clear that the average person in Finland is worth more than the average person here in the USA is.  Think of how much more money the USA would be able to collect in taxes if we had people who were worth more and thus made more.

(3) Out of Wedlock Births

Here again, the USA has one of the highest rates of out of wedlock births of any advanced country in the world.  In the case of Finland, they have one of the lowest out of wedlock birth rates.  You might notice that there is no cost to the individual to not have children out of wedlock.  This would be a very easy way for anyone to have some skin in the game and thus be a candidate for free money.

(4) Illegal Drug Use

Here is another way that people here in the USA could easily get some skin in the game.  Think of the money that people would save by not having to buy illegal drugs.  This money would be available to give away as free money.  In the case of Finland, they have an almost zero rate of illegal drug use and we have one of the highest.

After looking at the above, it is clear that a country like Finland who scores better than the USA on the 4 items above should have been able to afford their free money program, but they could not! Why then would you ever think that the USA could?  The other thing that you might realize is that if the people of the USA had more skin in the game by vertue the 4 items above, very few would need free money for not working. Don't fall for the statement that "the USA is the richest country in the world".  If you look at our economy on the basis of the average wealth of the individual, the USA is about 40th!  We are not rich, so stop expecting the USA to shell out free money any time soon.

PS--I could have stated that non-citizens and those here illegally should not qualify for free money either. Think of the money that we could save if we were to keep out all illegal immigrants?  We could use that to provide some of the free money too!  Do you think for a minute that Finland would put up with illegal immigration as we have?  No way!

Higher SAT Scores

How can our kids get higher SAT scores?  It is not by cheating or gaming the system in some way.  Here is my take.

I don't hold myself out as some kind of expert, but I have been a good observer and have formulated a few principles.  What I used to do when I was teaching at a major university was to try to keep my students juiced up and excited about learning.  Here is one trick.  I used to ask my class if anyone had ever gotten a speeding ticket.  When I did, several hands went up.  I asked one of the students when did they get this ticket?  Often, it was several years ago, but they remembered every detail of the event.  Why do you think that was?  Was it because they were so smart or had a high IQ?  No!  It was because they were "juiced up" by the event.  See how it works?

Historically, before we even had a written language, we used to communicate special stories with "plays".  The audience could observe more than just the words on the script.  They could hear the inflection in the voices and the expressions on the faces of the actors.  They could also see how others in the cast were reacting to what was said or actions taken. A movie tries to duplicate this, but we all know that a real play communicates much more.  In a play, you can even "smell" what is going on in some cases.

Compare this to communicating to someone "face to face".  In those cases, you might even reach over with your hand and touch the other person.  What if the hand is warm or holds firmly on to your hand or arm.  How about the "firm" hand shake?  We all need to think about how us humans communicate and how we have communicated since the beginning of time.  I once saw a movie where no one ever said a word.  How about a foreign movie that had sub titles?  How much did you really get out of that kind of movie?

How about reading a book?  Notice that we often prefer one author over another.  Why is that?  Have you ever read the script of a play?  It can be a very disappointing experience compared to the actual play or movie. What I am trying to do is to build the case that us humans have perfected different systems for communication that worked.

Talking on the telephone, is clearly not as effective as talking face to face even though the same words are exchanged.  How about telegraph?  That one was so bad that most of us have rejected it all together.  Now, look at the most modern forms of communication like "face book" or "email".  Compare them with face to face, which is the base line.  Many of us spend several times as much time trying to communicate on these new modern modes and often feel that it is better.  The fact is that we are being duped.  We are busier trying to communicate, but are actually learning less than by the old proven methods.  Are you following this?

Back to SAT scores.  If we want to learn more, we have to get off these modern systems and back to the basics.  We have to figure out how to get more juiced up and more involved in our communications.  We will never improve our SAT scores as long as we sit in comfortable chairs in front of our computer screens.  We have to get some skin in the game! 

Boeing 737 Crash

Many are talking about the crash of the Boeing 737, but few really have anything to offer.  As a pilot and systems engineer, I think that I have a right to an opinion.  Here goes.

Considering the thousands of take offs and landing in the past few years, the fact that we have had two in the past year is statistically insignificant.  That does not diminish the concern since we would like to have zero crashes and loss of life.  There is a saying among systems engineers that goes, "Keep it simple if you want it to be reliable."  I am still amazed that we were able to get too and from the Moon considering how complex everything was.  I was involved in making a few parts that went on the vehicle and I can assure you that the processes to make them may have been complicated, but not the end product.

A problem that faces all of technology is that those who design electronics and control systems are among the most difficult people to manage.  To manage technology, one has to be more competent in the technology than those who actually do the design and coding work.  This means that the manager can't be an MBA from Harvard, but he might be a graduate of MIT. This sets the stage.

All control systems rely on sensors.  The advances in sensors has been one of the most understated parts of modern technology.  Just look at the GPS in your telephone or the chip in your kid's little drone.  None of these were possible just 10 years ago.  That is how fast this technology has progressed, but along with this progress have our controls and computer engineers kept up?

One of the worst things that can happen to the typical airplane is for it to "stall".  A stall is when the air flow over the wings does not produce enough lift to support the plane.  The corrective action is to gain speed or reduce the lift required.  During a climb the wings have to produce more lift to counter the weight of the plane, plus the additional forces of the climbing rate.  At this same time the air is getting thinner at higher altitudes and thus provides less lift.  Starting to see how complex this is?

Here is another thing.  The engines on the plane have a minimum safety factor which means that they can produce more hp for short periods of time, such as during take off.  Once climbing is over the engines have to be throttled back so that they can cool down.  It is the same with your car.  You can drive with the peddle to the metal for a few minutes, but not for hours.  It was during this 6 minute period of climbing that the failure occurred.  It could have been an engine problem where one or more of the engines could not produce the needed thrust or some kind of "false" sensor to the computer where it thought it was in or near a stall.  A problem with an engine would be something that most control engineers would know how to deal with so I am discounting this.  After 6 minutes after take off, the plane should have enough altitude to be able to nose down to avoid stall speed.  If there was a "false" speed or lift sensor that predicted the stall, they would not have then shown that the stall had been corrected.  The result would be a power on dive into the ground.

Here is where I defend the pilot.  The pilot has no seat of the pants idea how fast the plane is going.  He has to rely on his instruments.  If the instrument is fed by the same sensor that feeds the computer, the pilot has to conclude that the computer must be doing the correct thing and thus does not take over control.  In your car when the speedometer says that you are going 60 mph and you see kids on bicycles keeping up with you, you know your speedometer is wrong.  A pilot does not have this kind of reference.

I once had a speed sensor problem on my plane and I could not get back on the ground fast enough, but I was at low altitude and the sensor showed "zero" which I knew was clearly in error.  I would think that any sophisticated system would compare air speed with a GPS speed to prevent taking the wrong emergency action.

We will have to wait and see what really caused the crash, but it is interesting to speculate anyway.

PS--Here is a point that came up with my coffee group.  Let's say that we have a sensor that is the main source of determining if the plane is in or near a stall and it is programed this way.  The output of the sensor gives a 0 to 10 signal with anything below 5 indicating a stall.  The programmer uses this input to trigger anti-stall action.  If the failure mode of the sensor due to anything including loss of power to or an open in the output is interpreted by the program as being below 5 and thus a stall.  This means that there are two malfunctions of the sensor that could trigger a "false" stall.  If the design required the signal from the sensor to be between 2 and 10 as a test for the sensor working properly, the "false" stall could have been avoided.

In my example above where I lost air speed on my plane, I knew that the signal was in error because it indicated "zero" and I knew that was impossible if the sensor was working correctly.  As a result I ignored the signal and landed as soon as possible.

PS--Weight and balance is a key component of any plane.  All planes that I am aware of specify the balance range. As long as a plane is thus properly balanced if the pilot takes his hands off the controls the plane will tend to nose down slightly and thus avoid a possible stall.  The loading of baggage on a plane is critical so that it is not out of balance.  Once in flight, the pilot can "trim" the plane so that it will fly level.  I don't know about the 737, but it was not at cruse altitude where "trimming" is normally done.  After reading up on the 737, it appears that it was "not" designed normally so that Boeing had to add special anti stall systems which appear to be the root cause of the problem. It is during the lower airspeed climbing period that planes are most likely to stall.  All pilots know this.

Based on my experience, I have gained a lot more confidence in the design abilities of the old time air plane designers compared to our modern university graduate engineers and programmers.  They would never have designed a plane that was out side of their normal weight and balance rules.

PS--Boeing 737 correction is to "add" weight in the nose so that the plane is within "normal" trim standards.  This will reduce the amount of freight and number of passengers that the plane can carry.  Making more money is the reason that Boeing allowed a design with the trim out of "normal".  Their software "patch" put the plane at additional risk. 

PS--Wait till we get data on  how the plane was loaded.  It could have been over loaded or the load put in the wrong place or the load could have been improperly secured such that it shifted when the plane nosed up.  One set of data showed the plane's path oscillating up and down.  That could be due to a shifting in loaded baggage and freight.

Adverse Selection

Who has ever heard of adverse selection?  I will try to explain it in this blog.

I enjoy deer hunting and am always looking for that big buck.  Over the years, I have noticed that there seem to be fewer and fewer big bucks.  Why is that?  One of the main causes is that hunters like me are out killing the biggest bucks and passing over the smaller ones.  The affect of this over a long period of time is to gradually breed smaller and smaller bucks because most of the big ones were killed off. This change to smaller bucks take place very slowly so it takes a lot of time.  We have records of bucks killed over a 100 years ago and the data shows that they were bigger than deer today.  This is an example of adverse selection and it happens in more places than just deer.

What farmers do to grow better corn is just the opposite.  They save seeds from their best corn each year and plant it for the next crop.  The inferior corn they eat or feed to the pigs.  By doing this over hundreds of years, the farmer developed the modern high quality corn that we have today.  Are you starting to see how all this works?

For us humans and animals, Darwin set the rules for breeding selection over thousands of years.  By selecting those stronger or smarter animals for breeding, Darwin got us humans and animals to where we are today.  The problem is that Darwin has been taken out of the picture to a large degree and the selection for breeding follows different rules and in some cases this selection is "adverse" and thus tends to cancel out the hard work that Darwin had done.  Next, let's get closer to home on this.

Take the USA in 1950 or 1960 as the base.  Back then we had about 160 million people and since then our population has over doubled.  During that period, the type of people here have changed.  It might appear small, but it is still significant.  Right after WWII we had an influx of immigrants who were trying to get out of the devastation of war to a place where they had a better quality of life.  It is my opinion that the mix of people was just a little above the average of where they came from.  They had both the means to immigrate here and the motivation that they wanted to return to the quality of life that they had had.  This caused the average to go up a little here in the USA by positive selection.

Now, what is different today?  Immigrants are still coming in from all over the world, but most are coming in form place where the quality of life is the worse.  That is only the first part.  Not everyone in these shit hole countries are destitute.  They have rich well off people too, but they are not the ones who want to immigrate here.  What we have is a case of adverse selection where the worst people are the ones who want to immigrate here.  The affect of this kind of immigration is to lower the quality of life for the median family here in the USA.  The USA is only rich when you look at the total size of the pie, but when you look at the size of the pie each person has, you see that it is actually going down or not going up!  This is due to adverse selection and it is happening right under our eyes and most of us don't even know it.

I remind you that we all need to look at our basic objective and that is to increase the quality of life for the median person or family here in the USA.  If we let in immigrants who are below our current median family income, the mathematics are clear.  Our median family income goes down!  There does not seem to be anyway that we can selectively attract just the "good" people.  If we get one, it is often followed by a lot of low quality baggage like sending money earned here back home or worse bring in all their relatives. Starting to see the problem?  I don't see a solution that is any better than just stopping all immigration.  Do you?  Every plan that I have seen ends up lowering the median family income and thus the median family quality of life in the long run.

I will change, but someone has to show me a better path.

!3th Grade In Boston

I saw an interesting interview on the news about Boston proposing a 13th school grade to prepare their kids for college.  This blog will explore the idea.

As I understand Boston's problem, fewer and fewer of their high school graduates can get in to their local colleges and universities.  The idea behind the 13th grade is to prepare their students to score higher scores on the entrance exams and thus get into the local colleges and universities.  Sound good to most "one movers", but is this really the solution?  It sounds to me like their problem is the quality of there educational system for grades 1 thru 12.  It also sound like what they are doing is "gaming the system" so their students get better scores without really being better qualified.

Here is another thing that we always see in deals like this.  Rather than look for the true cause which would point to some thing or some one who did not do their job, adding some thing does not offend anyone!  This is why you always see liberals "adding" special classes or programs without having to face the real problem and solve that.  Think about how many times you have heard about "adding" some thing and how you fell for the whole thing.  Looking into the mirror can often show you what you don't want to admit too.

What has been happening in our largest cities, like Boston, is that their populations are gradually shifting away from being intellectual centers to more and more lower quality students in their schools.  The more intellectual and ambitious people have been shifting to the better quality suburbs, leaving the big cities lower quality places to live and their school student similarly of lower quality.  I didn't create the this problem.  It is a natural selection process that has been going on with in the human race for thousands of years.  There are some ethnic groups, like asians,  who concentrate in center cities and do exceptionally well in school.  Boston College and Harvard are concerned that they have too many asians compared to other ethnic groups so they want to figure out how to keep asians out as a way of providing space for others.  It seems that they don't see merit as a good reason.

In prior blogs, I challenged our school administrators to tell all of us what they were going to eliminate from our school's curriculum to make room for all their "new" programs.  If you notice, they never tell us what they are eliminating.  We all know that there is only so many hours of school and that we have to use those hours in the best way.  If we are adding all this stuff, what have we been mistakenly made out children study in the past?  Interesting!

I believe in merit and the great equalizer.  When the government or some do gooder thinks that they can do better, they always turns out to be wrong!

Data Mining

I know that most of you have heard of data mining, but in this blog, I am using low tech.

I keep hearing concern from people about the population of the USA getting older.  I know that the people who are saying this sort of thing are getting older, but what about the population of the USA.  To avoid shooting from the hip, I looked up the data and here is what I found for just a few countries.

Country                              Median age                Life expectancy
Japan                                   46.9                             83.7
Germany                              46.8                             81.0
Italy                                      45.1                             82.7
Canada                                  42.0                             82.2
Czech Republic                    41.7                              78.8
USA                                      37.9                              79.3
China                                    37.1                               76.1

Look at these numbers and tell me what you think?  There seems to be a lot of countries who have older populations than the USA who do not have a crisis!  So what is the big deal  I could have given you some numbers from Africa where the median age is less than 20.  How are they doing?  The next time some one tell you that the USA is getting older and that it is some kind of crisis, step forward and set them straight with the facts!

What I see in these numbers is something quite different and very significant.  I think that we can all agree that the economy of the world has shifted toward technology.  The currency of today is not a strong back.  It is intellect.  I explained this in prior blogs.  I also pointed out the difference in value between these two types of work has gotten even greater and will continue to get wider.  That is a fact.  Now, how does this affect the numbers above?

Isn't it clear that the older one gets the more they know thus they have a higher intellect index.  Compare Japan at a median age of 46.9 with a typical African country with a median age of 18?  There is no comparison!  The median value of a person in Japan is several time that of the median person in Africa.  Even if they both had the same quality of education, the difference would still be significant.  Is this starting to sink in?  If it does, it should affect your decisions about the future.

Here is one.  If 99% of immigrants come to the USA from countries that have younger median ages and the affect is dumbing down the USA and making the median aged worker worth less.  Isn't that crystal clear!  I did not have Finland in the data above, but you can look them up and see if what I am saying is not true.

The bottom line is that having an older median population is not bad, it is good.  You only have to open your eyes and look at the facts rather than get alarmed by what the talking heads on TV are saying.  Think for yourself for a change!

PS--The only down side that I can see with an older population is if people "stop" learning and making themselves worth more as they get older.  Unions are an example of groups who what to be paid more based on age rather than worth.  The worst case that I can think of is our public school teachers who teach fewer and fewer kids as they get older and yet get paid more.  I know teachers who taught 30 kids when they got out of teacher's college at age 22 and now at age 55 teach only 20 kids and get paid almost 10 times as much.  Is this sick?

PS--If you have been reading my bogs, then you know that my basic objective for the USA is to raise the median family income.  To do that, you have to figure out how to make people "worth" more.  If the median age is older, the median person is worth more.  Simple isn't it?  How can Africa ever have a high median income if their median age is 18 years old compared to Germany where the median age is 46.8?  Starting to understand the problem and the solution?

PS--There is clearly a new paradigm in economics which means that technology is worth more than physical skills,  Years ago, when child labor was such a big deal, it was because children had better eye sight and nibble hands and thus could better thread the weaving looms.  Their value or worth now is almost zero, while intellect has become much more valuable.  This means that a "high" median age work force is significantly more valuable than a younger one.  This is one of those double impact factors affecting quality of life.  Why is that so hard for many people to understand?

Graphical Vs Digital

For many, this is the digital age., but for the human race, we are graphical.  This blog will explain what I am talking about.

This digital age is like trying to screw a right hand nut onto a left hand bolt.  We often call this "going against the grain".  It is not natural.  Us human have been evolving for millions years and we can't be changed from our natural behavior in a few generations.  If we are so smart, why don't we try to take advantage of our natural characteristics rather than trying to put a square peg in a round hole?

Here is an example.  In our school system, we focus on "right" and "wrong" when there is a lot more out there that is neither "right" nor "wrong". With the way we are now doing it, we ignore our natural tendencies and continue to try putting that square peg in the round hole.  Take the data set of how tall the kids are in our 4th grade class.  We have about 30 or 40 data points, but we digitally reduce them down to a single "average" number.  What does that tell us?  If you look at the individual data points, you may find that there is no one in the class that is exactly as tall as the average.  Interesting isn't it?  We night even ignore the data because it shows that all of the students in the class are not equal in terms of height and PC demands that we stress "equal".

Think of a simple graph with the number of students on the left scale and the height on the bottom scale.  In one simple clear picture, we can see that there are a very few kids who are very short and a few who are very tall while most are in the middle.  Isn't that the same clear picture that we all have in our minds when we look at the class all lined up?  Is anyone really concerned about the "average"? I don't think so.

What if the class made another graph with the grades of the kids on one scale and their heights on the other.  It would look like a bunch of dots arrayed in a circle.  They would clearly see that there does not appear to be any relationship between height and grade point.  If you tried to get this same point across using some kind of digital process, I can guarantee that you would have a bunch of 4th graders with blank stares on their faces.

Us humans are clearly pre-programed to deal with graphical patterns and can understand large sets of very complex data if it is presented in a way that is natural to us.  The other thing about graphical or data presented in pattern form is that we can easily communicate our interpretation of the data to others.  It is clear that much is lost between individuals if we are limited to things like "average", "most" or "least".  We all think analog or graphical, not digital "yes" or "no".  In our current political debates, if you notice, no one can get past "exact" or "perfect".  Any idea that is not "exact" or "perfect" is assumed "bad".  What ever happened to us humans?  We have to get back to our analog roots, but I am sure that 90% of voters have no idea what analog means!

Say Neighbor Not Government

This blog will explain to liberals how to better understand socialism.

I was watching some young voters being interviewed at a Bernie's rally in New York and was surprised at how they answered the interviewer's questions.  They always ended up praising how a socialistic government would provide them with all this tuff.  Many started out saying that the USA is the richest country in the world.  Where did they ever get that idea?  After getting sick watching all of this, I decided to write this blog about "say neighbor not government".

Here is how it works.  When a liberal socialist says that if Bernie is elected the "government will provide them a job with a living wage".  What they should say is that "my neighbor" will provide me with a job with a living wage.  After they realize that the government has nothing more than the money and property of their neighbor to provide that "living wage", they realize that they are the neighbor of the socialist who lives on the other side of them.  

In birthday parties when we were young, we used to play "musical chairs".  It was a fun game until there were no more chairs.  It is like that with socialism when the government runs out of all the neighbor's money.  Many years ago, there was a saying in Washington DC that went something like this when it came to who to blame for a government screw up.  "Don't blame me, don't blame thee.  Blame the person behind the tree."  The fact is, there is no one behind the tree.  There was another one from the comic strip "Po Go".  It went like this, "We have found the source of the problem and it is "us"."  Remember that one, "There is no such thing as a free lunch."  Given that this same ground has been tilled many time before, why is it that people keep forgetting and continuing to make the same mistakes over and over again?

I guess that the reason is that the definition of a fool is a "person who keeps doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different out come".  Does this sound like someone who never heard of Newton and the laws of physics?   I for got one key point and that is, most of these fools are graduates of our unionized public school system.

Global Warming vs Over Population

Given that most agree that over population is the cause of global warming, why no discussion about over population? That is the idea behind this blog.

First, a few facts.  Population growth is caused by us humans having babies. Is that clear?  There are at least three factors that affect the growth of population:

(1) Number of babies each mother has.
(2) The age that the mother has her first child
(3)  Survival rate of the child

There has been a lot of data published on the number of children different groups have and I think that it is clear which ethnic and religious groups and countries have the most.  There is also a clear relationship that show the quality of life of those who have more children is the lowest.  The data is most often shown in terms of population density.  El Salvador, for example has 885 people per square mile, while the USA has about 75 or less than 10% and the quality of life reflects this difference!

One area that does not get much attention is (2), the age mothers have their first child.  This is even more significant than the actual number of children that a mother has.  It is like compound interest with a shorter compounding period. I feel that one of the easiest things that the human race could do to reduce the rate of population growth would be for mothers to have their first child at an older age.  Here is some data to support this position:

Country                                              Average Age
Angola                                                          18.0
Bangladesh, Niger                                        18.1
Chad                                                              18.2
Mali                                                               18.6
Guinea, Uganda, Mozambique, Malawi       18.9

These are the worst countries in the world and you would not like to live in or visit one of these. Here is the data for countries where you may want to visit or live:

Greece                                                            31.2
Australia                                                         30.5
S, Korea, Japan, Italy                                      30.3
Switzerland, Luxembourg                               30.2
Singapore, Spain, Ireland, Hong Kong             29.8

Big difference in these numbers as is there a big difference in the quality of life in these countries.  Are you starting to get a feel for the root cause?  How does the USA stand in all of this?  The USA is about in the middle at 26.3.  If you look deeper into the data of the USA, you will see that for married mothers the age is 28.8 which is not bad.  When you look at those who were unmarried the age falls too just 23.1 which is far below.  Looking at other data, those mothers who are college graduates were 30.3 which puts them in the same group as the "best" countries above.  Those who were not college graduates were way down at 23.8.

The reason that I have dug out all this data is to try to point to a path out of the global warming problem and also as a painless way to improve the quality of life for the citizens of the USA.   I think that most of us would like to leave the USA as a better place than we found it and one way to do that is to have fewer children and have them later in life.  For anyone with a brain, and who honestly looks at the world we live in has to recognize that over population is killing the human race and making the quality of life for us all "worse".  Look in the mirror and ask yourself . "What can I do to make this a better place for my children?"  The answer is simple.  Have fewer children and have them later in life while encouraging others around the world to do the same.  I think that we all want people around the world to have a better quality of life and we must also know that they can not have a better quality of life by immigrating here and destroying our quality of life!  We all have to have some skin in the game and you know what that means!

PS---Darwin regulated the population using the food supply and disease.  Mothers who are starving can not get pregnant.  When Ireland got the potato, it was not long before they were over populated. In the last 200 years, we have reduced death from childhood disease and good intentions have provided food to countries that were over populated.  Like any system, are now "over shooting" with too much population and have to take the difficult steps necessary to reduce our population.

                    

Free Medical For All

Is "Free medical for all" a good idea?  I will explore that point in this blog.

I feel that free medical for all is a good, but there are more aspects that need to be considered.  Like all decisions, this one is a choice between alternatives.  Each alternative has to take into account its affects on other things.  In mechanics we use the "free body diagram" to make sure we have taken into account all the affects of an action.

It is clear that the money needed to fund "medical for all" has to come from some place.  To make my point, I am going to use some numbers.  We now have about 300 million people and about 150 million get their medical coverage as part of their employment.  About 50% of the others, or 75 million get their medical paid for by taxpayers.  That leaves about 25 million who can afford to pay for their own medical requirements.  That leaves no more than 50 million who have "no" medical coverage.  With me on these numbers?

We know from our government's experience with Veterans Hospitals that when the government takes over something, it costs at least 50% more.  If we examine the numbers above, it is clear that the total cost for "medical for all" will cost significantly more if the government takes it over.  We now spend almost 20% of our GNP on medical.  This is by far the most of any country in the world.  If we are now going to spend more, where is the money going to come from and what other things will we have to give up?  You know that there is no free lunch here.

What we should be doing is trying to figure out how to spend "less" on of our GNP on medical!  We could look at other countries who spend less and have similar life expectancies, but most don't want to do that.  How about making this personal?  Would you recommend that one of your children become a doctor?  Do you have any idea how much it would cost here in the USA?  Is your kid smart enough to get into medical school?  Why is it that we graduate less than 50% of the doctors needed?  It appears to me that we are shooting ourselves in the foot when it comes to medical doctors.

If we want medical cost to go down so that more can afford them, we have to figure out how to get doctors to earn "less" and for it to be faster and cheaper to train a doctor.  Do you see anyone talking about that?  How about our legal system that "leaches" so much money from our medical system?  No country in the world has a perverted legal system like we have!  Did you know that?  We have more lawyers than doctors while in many countries around the world, it is just the opposite.

Rather than suggesting that government take over our medical system, why don't we focus on way to make our medical system more efficient?  We all know that more government is not the solution!