Equity

 With all the interest in "Equity", I think that it deserves a blog.

I was thinking that what we need is some kind of system to score how good or bad equity is and if the things that the liberals are doing actually help.  What I came up with is an equity score that is made up of the "average" family net worth and the "median" family net worth.  Most of us are interested in the family net worth, but these liberals are concern about how equally the net worth is divided up.  Think about it this way.  If a country has a large group of poor people and a small group of very rich people, the "median" family net worth will be small while the "average" will be higher.  It is just 4th grade math.

Now, let's look at some data.  I found data on the internet for the USA and Canada broken down by the "median" and the "average".  If you are not familiar with the '"median", it means that 50% of the families have more and 50% have less.  Note that a few very rich families can significantly raise the "average" net worth.  Here is my data.

Description                                            USA                            Canada

Average Family Net Worth                $748,800                        $669,300

Median Family Net Worth                 $121,700                        $295,100

Inequity Index                                       6.15                               2.27

Look at the data.   What you will see is that the USA is far below Canada when it come to what the liberals call equity.  Why is there such a difference between the USA and Canada?  Do you think that part of the cause might be the fact that the literacy rate of Canada is much higher than the USA?  What about the average age of their population?  Canada has population that is significantly older than the USA.  The average age of the USA is about 38.9 while areas like Central America is only 20 years of age.  One other thing is that Canada protects its' border with the USA while we let in all kinds of poor and uneducated people through our Southern border.   When immigrants to the USA send a large share of their earnings back home, do you think that helps raise the "median" net worth of the USA?

Are you starting to see the problem?  What the liberals are doing is actually making the "equality" worse and they don't even know it.  Not very smart!

Compassion

 We all have compassion, but compassion should be a personal thing.  I will explain in this blog.

Many people who are watching what is happening on our Southern border are hiding behind the word "compassion".  That is they are watching the invasion of our country by illegal immigrants crossing our border and telling themselves that they are exercising their "compassion" by looking the other way.  That may be good for their egos, but they do not have the right to make people like me and you pay for their personal compassion.  If they want to help the immigrants, they can spend their own money, but not mine or yours. 

Most of these compassionate people do not realize that their decisions are costing you and me.  Further, they seem to have very different objectives than most of us.  Here is just one area.  Let's look at the concept of "equity" that most of them agree with.  The whole idea of "equity" is to reduce the gap between the median income and the average income.  If you do not understand that point, I will try to explain it.  First off, the median mean that 50% make less than this amount and 50% make more.  In the USA we have a small amount of people who are billionaires.  When the amount those people make is added into the total earnings and then divided by the number of people, we have the "average" income and it is clearly higher then the "median".  If you look at some of the poorest countries around the world, you will see that a few of their citizens are also much richer than the median.  Most of the liberals who believe in the idea of "equity" would see these countries as being very unfair and not "equitable".

Now, let's look at what is happening with the USA and our Southern border.  I think that we can all agree that most of those who are coming across our Southern border are coming here because of they want to live a better life.  Who can blame them for wanting to have a better life? The problem for you and me is that these people are going to learn less than the current median income.  You only have to understand 4th grade math to be able to calculate that they are going to "lower" the median income of the USA.  By definition, this means that they are making the idea of "equity" worse!

Here is another way that this makes "equity" worse.  One of these billionaires who owns some company now can expand their business and make more money by hiring these cheaper immigrants to work in their factories.  They are going to get richer while there are move people who earn below the median.  Note that for every one of these billionaires, their are hundreds or even thousands of low paid and low skilled immigrants to be added to the population of the USA.  It has to be clear to anyone who has a normal IQ that immigration across our southern border is actually hurting the USA.

It may be true that these new immigrants earn more than they did back in their own countries and some see this as good, but what about the impact on the USA?  I did not get into the tax that we have to collect to run this country, but if you look at it, you will find that less than 50% of the current citizens pay any federal income tax.  You have to admit that those who pay zero federal income tax and use our roads and schools are actually "free loaders".  We do not need any more "free loader" and that is what most those who immigrate into the USA across our southern border are.

When you look at countries around the world who are more "equitable", you will see that they have a high literacy rate, like 99% while the USA has a 69% literacy rate.   The also have an average population age of over 35 years with many averaging over 40 years of age.  When you look at the countries where the immigrants come from you will see that they have average ages below 20 years of age.  What do you think "equity" looks like in those countries?

The Catholic church is one of the biggest advocates of illegal immigration into the USA and we all have to admit that.  Why isn't the Catholic church pushing birth control as a way to help these poor countries?  The Central American countries where many of the immigrants come from have population densities of over 1,000 people per square mile.  The USA has a density of  only about 70 per square mile.  Do you want to live in a country with 1,000 people per square mile?  I don't think so.

I have compassion, but my compassion is for my children and grandchildren, not some foreigner from a country where they have chosen over breeding.  We would not allow that for cats or dogs, so why is it so acceptable for the Catholic church?  

Covid-19 Masking

 This is an interesting blog about Masks and Bayes' Theorem.

This minister names Bayes came up with a theory when he was trying to prove the existent of God that is now recognized as one of the most important "medical" concepts.  He showed that most medical diagnostic tests are not 100% reliable.  Most give a percentage of "false positives' and "false negatives".  That means that the test says you have the problem when you don't and test you to not have the problem when you do.  Most of us trust our doctors when in many cases, we should not.  A key point from "Bayes Theorem" is that the percentages of errors changes as a function of the percentage of people in the population have the problem.  I hope that is clear.

Now, back to the masks.  I think that most people know that the masks are not very effective.  The virus is so small that most masks can only trap a small amount of the virus.  For my blog, I am going to assume that the mask will keep you from getting the virus 10% of the time you are exposed.  If you have a different number, hold onto it until latter. When the Covid-19 virus first came out, only a very small percentage of people had immunity.  For this example, I am going to 5%.  Further, I am going to assume that we have zero medical treatments or vaccines.  If that was the case, at the beginning the mask gave 10%  protection to 95% of the people or 9.5% of the people had benefit.  On the other side the mandated mash took freedom form  90.5% of the people.  Given the severity of the virus, it was judged by many that this was a good value or trade off.  The good ratio was 10,5 to 1.0.

Like in the Bayes Theorem above, things changed.  The good ratio is no longer 10.5 to 1.0 and here is why. Since the beginning we have come up with therapedics and vaccinations plus many have contacted the virus and have "natural" immunity.  I think this is now up to about 90% of surviving the virus.  That means the mask now saves 10% of the 10% or 1% while it imposes a burden to 99% of the people.  that means the new good ration is down to just  100 to 1.  As more people become aware of this new fact, they vote against the mask as being worth while.  How about you?   

For very young healthy children who we now now can easily survive the virus and thus gain natural immunity, the value of the mask is even less valuable to them.  If that is the case, why are we still asking very young kids to wear masks?  Now you know!

Batting Average

 If you follow baseball, then you are familiar with "batting averages".  In this blog, I will show you that this simple concept applies to many more situations.

There is a major discussion about "transgender".  It is every place and many are very emotional about the subject.  Are you?  You should be and it is not because of what you might think.  Let's go back to the "batting average".  When someone comes forward telling us how to hit a fast ball, we want to know a little about their "batting average".  Why is that?  It is because, if they don't have a high "batting average" you would be stupid to trust their judgement about hitting a fast ball.  When some one gives you an opinion about something, most of us first check their "batting average" before we take their opinion seriously.  Do you?

Now let's look at this business of "transgender".  Here we are talking about a decision that will have a major impact on the individual for many years into the future.  If that is the case, how many of those have any kind of "batting average" about this subject which covers the total life of many individuals?  They only know what they are thinking or experiencing for the past few days or months.  How many kids have sat at the dinner table and crying that they do not want to eat this or that?  Many times, but when they were a few months older they found that they really liked the food that they had rejected only a few years before.  I have seen this situation many times over the past "75" years and I have also noticed that a few of those individuals continued to hate that particular food for life,  I know for a fact that "zero" of those favoring talking to very young people about the trance gender have no long term experience with its impact.

Next time you hear or get into a discussion about the transgender subject with young people, you need to ask about their "batting average" on the subject for at least the past 50 or so years.  If they are under 50 years old, then you can be assured that they have a very low "batting average" on the subject and thus you should just walk away.  It would be like talking to a mule.  When this happens, it is impossible to tell which one is the mule!  Don't be a mule.

Over Population

This blog is a collection of historical facts that prove that the Earth is over populated by humans.

In the mid West of the USA there are many "mounds" that were built many years ago by Native Americans.  They teach us some very important lessons about over population.  The original Native Americans came here from Asia about 35,000 years ago.  Originally they lived as nomadic tribes who survived as "hunter gatherers".  They lived off the land just like the animals and like animals their population grew to the point that they could no long live off the land like animals.  Things had to change if they wanted  their population to grow.  That change meant switching to farming.

The "mound builders" were farmers, but different from Europe and Asia the Native Americans did not have domestic animals.  That meant that they had to use human muscle power for their farming.  They were blessed by some plants unique to the Americas that provide exceptional amounts of food for the Native Americans.  Some of these plants were potatoes and corn.  The "mound builders" eventually exceeded their food supply and the urban type mound society failed and the Native American left the Mound concept and went back to hunter gathering.  When Columbus came to the New World in 1492 there were both farm societies and hunter gatherer societies.

At this time Europe was still in the farming society stage with their domestic animals, but had clearly reach the limit of that system even though they had both domestic animals and slaves.  They had all the elements for their next stage, but lacked the plants for the farmers to plant to supply the needed food.   In 1492 the human population of Europe was on the verge of starvation.  Most of the people were less than 5 feet tall and females could not get pregnant.  Places like Ireland had a stable population due to the lack of food.  Europe had reached their population limit.

When Columbus returned to Europe with the potato and corn, Europe finally had the food needed to allow the society to move the next stage.  Now Europe had food and excess workers from the farms who could work in factories.  At the same time they figured out how to take energy from the burning of coal with the steam engine thus supplementing the work done by domestic animals.  The industrial revolution was thus on the march.  The cost of burning all the coal had its effect on the environment and thus the quality of life could not go to the next stage.

About 150 years ago oil and natural gas was discovered in the USA and around the world.  This provided a totally new source of energy.  At this same period electricity was able to be produced and transmitted around the country.  Rivers were dammed to make electricity until most practical sources were exhausted,  It took a few more years for the rest of the world to dam up their rivers, but the end is clearly in site.  The auto and airplane engine were developed to convert the oil to works in factories and for farmer's tractors.  You only have to look at the current cost of gasoline to see that we are near the end of the cycle driven by Oil and Natural Gas.  What is next?  

Notice that all these progression have had one purpose and that is to allow our Earth to support more and more people. There have been periods within many of these cycles of progress where the quality of life for us humans improved.  My concern is that we are now at the point where the quality of life has to go down if we allow the population of the world to continue growing.  If you examine the world, you will find many countries where they have gone over the edge where there is no return in terms of quality of life due to over population.  It is also clear that allowing the shifting of population out of these failed states will only accelerate the decline of the host countries.  This is thus clearly not a solution.   

I have pointed out many of the major events that have allowed the quality of life to progress as well as the cause for their failures.  The Earth is now in the first stage of another failure and I do not see any path out.  If we accept a major decline in our quality of life it maybe possible to continue world population growth, but do you want that decline for yourself and your children when the solution is so clearly available?  With an inflation of 8.5% there is not much time to debate the issue.  Once we go over the edge of the cliff, it is just a mater of time before we come to a crashing stop at the bottom!