I Tried

 I have a good friend who is a devoted "Liberal" and I am trying to argue with her that she needs to be more honest about her set of supposed facts that she is basing her "liberal" opinions on.  I am going to share some of my failed arguments in this blog.

The first off is related to the classified documents seized from Trump at Mara lago. She sees Trump as a clear law breaker because he challenged the claim by Biden's DA that Trump had to immediately release the documents to the "archives" department.  I argued that Trump, as President, had a life time top secret clearance and that he had the rights as President to "declassify" documents and that there was no law or written documentation of how he could do that.  I argued that only the Supreme Court had the authority to make a decision related to if Trump had to release the documents, not a lower court.  This all fell on deaf ears.  The way this should have been handled would have been to defer to the Supreme Court if Trump had to give up the documents.  This never happened.

I asked if she had ever seen any of the wrist bands worn by illegal immigrants and she said, "No".  I showed her, using the internet, piles of colored wrist bands that illegal immigrants left behind as they crossed the border.  The article explained that the outlaws in Mexico used the wrist bands to keep track of who had paid their "tax" to cross the border.  This was the first time she understood that the outlaws in Mexico were getting rich by collecting a "tax" on all those who illegally cross our borders. She did start to understand how the Biden administration contributed to illegal immigration, but would not stop blaming Trump.

We then moved on to a "need for illegal immigrant workers".  She asked about needing illegal workers to do work that USA citizens refused to do.  She seemed to feel that she had finally cornered me, but has she?  I proposed that the solution might be growing tomatoes in Mexico and then just allowing us to import them.  She did not understand that with the above, eventually the USA would be importing all of our food and our farmers would have to go on welfare.  I reminded her that when we have had illegal immigrants working here, they send a percentage of what they earn back to places like Mexico.  In the case of Mexico, over 8% of their economy is in the form of these types of "remittances".  The same thing happens with India too.

Are you starting to see how these liberals are to some degree are "brain dead"?  I tried.

  

Better or Worse

 Like most of you, I have been following the cabinet appointments by Trump.  My problem is how they are being evaluated.  Here are my ideas in this blog.

If you noticed, the evaluation going on with the media has been the typical Yes or No or Good or Bad.  I feel that it needs to be compared with some kind of factual point.  We need to be asking if the appointments by Trump are either Better or Worse than those who now or who have held those jobs.  Several years ago, I worked with a guy who would always pop out with, "compared to what?" every time I made any kind of statement.  At the time, I thought that this guy was some kind of jerk.  Over time I came to realize that he was actually giving me some very good advice.  Now, I am passing along his advice to all of you.

I think that Trump's choice of Matt Gaetz is his most controversial choice so far.  The media is in full attack on Matt when they should be comparing him to the current Attorney General.  Rather that being so concerned about what Matt may do, they should be concerned more about what the current AG has done. You can go right down the line and compare all of Trump's appointments this way and I think that if one is honest that they will not look that bad.  My prediction is that 100% will end u; getting approved.

Look for another blog when the Senate finally acts.

Think Double

 We  need to look at many of Trump's changes as "Double". I will explain in this blog.

First I want you to visualize a playground tetter-tatter. What happens when an extra kid moves from one side to the other?  To get it balance out again, you need to add "2" kids to the side where the first kid was moved from.  This is the "Double" impact that I am talking about.  Now, back to Trump's actions.

Trump promises to start "draining the swa=mp" and that action will have a "double" impact and in some cases, it will have even more/  When Trump gets rid of some government employee who is not needed, it will save the cost to taxpayers his direct cost and we all understand that.  This person who was never needed will have to now go out and get a real job where he starts producing something.  To the way I look at this action is a "double" impact.  That is just one reason why draining the swamp is so significant.  I hope you all follow that simple logic.

The impact by stopping illegal immigration will have a similar impact and here is how.  We are now providing all kinds of services to these illegal immigrants, plus we have had to hire extra people to process them.  We have also had to hire more teachers who speak illegal immigrant's language.  When the illegal immigration is stopped, all these extra people can be eliminated and they can go out and get regular jobs and produce something.  Starting to see how it works/

It is the same with crime and criminals.  Note that we do not have a real shortage of worker bees.  We just have been wasting our workers on jobs that are not needed and which do not produce anything of real value.  Pass this on to your friends who do not understand what will really happen.

Urban Vs Rural "#1"

 Given that this last election showed how different voters are between Rural and Urban, we need to take every opportunity to examine this fact and understand "why".  In this blog, I will start to doing just that.

I research a couple of articles and each built on the fact that Urban people are more likely to be college graduates, often with the bias that Rural people are not as smart.  I look at it very differently.  It is a fact that rural people are different from Urban people, but "why"?  In most cases, it is a choice made by each individual and driven by history.  Remember that back when the USA was formed in 1790, 85% of people lived on farms or ranches.  New people who first immigrated to the USA were mostly farmers because the were attracted by the offer of free land.  Much has changed since 1790, now immigrants do not get free land so almost all end up in Urban areas. This points out the significance of trends.

Back in 1790, 85% of the people who formed the USA lived on farms or ranches.  Now that is down to less than 5%.  That is too big of a shift for it not to result in a significant impact on the USA today.  I think that the shift can not ever get to 100% living in Urban communities, but it is getting closer and closer. Think of the shift after WWII where the mother worked out of the house or think of today where most college graduates end up in jobs that are only in Urban areas?  Well that trend may have reached its limit because now people can work at home using the internet.  You can already see the impact of this as people move out of California too more rural states and rural communities.  It has significantly impacted the real estate in both the cities and rural areas.  When I graduated from college many of my friends took jobs in NYC with the thought that they had to "start" there, but as soon as they could, they would move back to the smaller towns where they were from.  That trend still exists today.  Most big cities are "hell holes" when it comes to raising a family.  I have spoken to many people who have moved to large cities and who have moved out.  Those who claim to like life if the bigger cities are mostly bull shitting themselves or are young and single.  Think about this.  Why do most people like to vacation "out side" of big cities?  No one goes to NYC or Chicago for a vacation.

There is a lot more to explore in "Urban vs Rural" so I will leave it here, but you can look forward to a series.

High or Low?

This is a strange title, but I think you will see that it is very significant as I expand it further in this blog.

I am going to start out with how I first stumbled onto this whole concept.  It has to do with deer hunting and I have been a deer hunter since I was very young.  Here is the decision that drove this concept.  When you shoot at a deer, you know that you can never shoot "exactly" where you want.  If that is the case, it brings up the next question and that is, is it better to error on the high side or the low side?  How would you answer that question given that you accept the fact that you can never make the "perfect" shot?  I thought about it and decided that, since I could not make the perfect shot, do I shoot high or low? I chose "high" and why was that?  Here is my logic.  I could miss if I was too far high or low, but if I shot low it would kick up dirt below the deer and it would run away, thus not giving me a second shot.  If on the other hand, I shot high, the deer would not even know that I shot at him and I have the chance for a second shot.  See how it works?  Now back to the blog.

Trump proposes to want to cut taxes to get the economy going as he did the last time he was in office, but things have changed.  Now it is excess spending by our government that is the root of our problems. If Trump addresses the spending problem as #1, it begs the title of this blog, "High or Low".  We know that Trump will not be able to cut spending by the perfect amount, just like me shooting the deer perfectly.  What do you think?  Should Trump cut too little or too much and why?  Trump only has 4 years and that is all.  If he takes a lot of time analysing things, he might get nearer to perfect, but that would waste time and thus reduce the net impact.  I think that he should work fast and error on the side of cutting too much because he could always correct his decision by spending more.

Are you starting to see why this whole concept is so critical?  We know that people will defend the fact that their job and cost are critical and important, but they have a vested and biased in what they will be saying.  If the elimination of the job or cost is an error, the data showing that will be clear and unbiased.  Are you starting to see how all this works?  If you agree, go out and promote it with your friends.

Democracy

 It seems that most people do not understand the unique aspects of a governmental Democracy,  That is very hard to believe, but it apparently is true. In this blog, I will try to explore exactly what a true Democracy is.

What is a Democracy?  It is a government where the decisions made by the government are not made by a single person, but by the vote positive of a majority of the participants.  A Democracy voters may be by the total of 100% of the legal players or by people designated by the individuals. In the USA the voters are individuals designated by a process of Democracy by 100% of the individual citizens.

Once a decision has been made by the Democratic process of one side gaining more than 50% agreement, the group earning less than the 50% has agreed to accept the decision by the majority.  If one does not like this, what system could provide a greater agreement?  So far no system has proved that it can make decisions for a group than can a Democracy.

Given a Democratic decision, there is no requirement that the decision be modified in anyway to accommodate the wishes of the group representing the side who lost.  It is true that by making concessions to the losers might help foster unity, it is also a sell out to those who acted responsibly in the original vote.

Given the above, my concern is that Trump will compromise those who voted for him and his stated policies.  It is not Trump's responsibility to change the original decision for general unity.  It is their responsibility to "accept" the decision made by the process of Democracy.  Trump now needs to focus on those who voted for him and press those who did not to get in line rather than violate the clear decision made by the Democratic process.

I know that this attitude is harsh, but it is still the most fair and honest way to make decision that satisfy the will of a group.  Think about it and if you have a better idea than a Democracy, show me where that has been tried and proven. 

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Sharp Knife

 In a prior blog I added a PS about a sharp knife cutting both ways and the fact that Democrats appear not concerned about this fact.  In this blog, I will explore why that might be.

I think that most of  us understand the fact that a sharp knife can cut both ways, but whether to use a sharp knife for its good aspect is a analog judgement.  Now, if you have never heard of an "analog judgement", I will first expand on that concept. It means the answer is not simply a yes or no or just good and bad.  Many people only think in terms of yes or no, yet in most cases there are degrees of yes or no. How does this whole thing relate to a sharp knife?

Let's look at giving the central government more power over you so that the central government could do more "good" things for you.  It sounds like this would be a good thing and many Democrats agree with this idea, while Republicans are more cautious.  One way to look at this difference in reasoning is to look a a "life boat".  If you were in a life boat and were not sure that you would survive and you were offered food or water that was contaminated and your choice was to eat it or not, what would be your decision?  If on the other hand, you were sitting at a pick nick table and offered the same food, would you eat it?  Do you now see how the mental situation of the decision maker can make a big difference in the decision made?

The big difference between voters have more to do with being rural or urban than any other factor.  Those in rural areas feel that they are in more control of their personal situation than those who live in urban areas.  The people in urban areas have less personal control of their personal situation than do those living in rural areas and thus they see the risk of giving more authority to a central government l ess of a risk than to people living in rural areas.

It is like the life boat where urban people see a powerful government as the only alternative while rural people have confidence in their own personal ability to deal with a situation and do not want to risk their life to a more powerful central government.

This old saying that "a sharp knife can cut both ways" is still well and good today.

Urbanization And Politics

 Today is election day in the USA and most of us have noticed the impact of "urbanization" on the election. In this blog, I am going to explore the subject.

To get things started, I am going to point out that back in 1790 when the USA was first formed 83% lived on farms or ranches, but not today.  Remember that was only about 200 years ago.  Only 17% of people then lived in cities. Now, over 95% of people live in cities or urban areas.  That is a major change and it all happened in only 200 years. The people who wrote the constitution and form the USA were mostly rural people as well as their friends.  What kind of country do you think a group of urban people would form today?

Why do you think that urban areas tend to vote Democrat and rural areas vote Republican?  It is not an accident that there is clearly a significant difference, so what do you think is the cause?  I am not going to go thru all the reasons that life in urban areas have problems, but one is "worse equity".  In urban areas the rich tend to isolate themselves from the poorer people in the urban areas.  They tend to send their children to private schools and leave poorer families to send their children to public schools.  This all is a contradiction to what Democrats advocate regarding "equity".

In rural areas, there are similar differences in income, but all send their children to the public schools.  In the rural areas, people know their neighbors, contrary to those living in urban areas.  They may even ask their neighbors to baby sit their children or borrow a tool.  This is a rare event in an urban community.

Pollution is worse in urban areas too.  In rural areas, even if they throw garbage on their land, the land has the ability to process the small amount of garbage.  This is not possible in the urban community.  Mother nature can keep the environment sanitary in the rural area, but it is over whelmed in the urban community.  The urban  people rely on the government to deal with many of their social problems, while the rural person takes care of themselves,  May be that is why Democrats feel that a powerful central government is good, while rural people do not trust putting too much authority in a central government.

As you may have guessed, I live in a very rural area where there are only 10 people per square mile and I live in a log cabin on a river where my nearest neighbor is half a mile away. 

PS--Democrats do not see a problem with giving the government a "sharp knife" but the Republicans do. I am a knife person and one who likes sharp knives, but as a Republican, I know that a sharp knife can cut "both" ways.  I don't think that Democrats think that far ahead.

Three Factors To Consider

 I would like to keep this upcoming election as simple as possible.  I have boiled it down to just "Three Factors".  I will discuss my "Three Factors" in this blog.

As I have blogged in the past.  We need to come up with an objective.  Without a clear objective, it is impossible to evaluate the different alternatives or "Factors".  For this blog mine is, "Higher quality of life for the median citizen of the USA".  All of use may have a slightly different of the "quality of life", I think we can agree when we compare different situations.  Income being one of the biggest factors.  Because we can not "all" agree, I think that the "median" is the best point to start. Now, the factors.

The first on is the size of the economy or the "size of the pie".  What we want is an economic system that produces the largest "pie".  One measure of the size of the "pie" is the size and growth of the "GNP"  I feel that most of us can agree that one of the factors is the size of the "pie" or the "GNP".  That is just the start, but there are at least two more factors that we all need to consider.

Second on the list is the size of the individual share of that "pie".  What difference does it make if the :pie" is larger, but the median individual gets a smaller piece?  If you look a little deeper into the situation, you will see that if more people are required to produce a bigger "pie", it only means that the "pie" has to be shared with more mouths.  You only have to look at our border to see that more mouths are crossing and that means a smaller bite for each person unless they can produce a bigger "pie" than the average USA citizen and we all know that the bring down the median.  We don't need more mouths, what we need are more productive citizens.

Now for the third factor.  Now, we need to go back to our original objective which is to make sure the median citizen gets the largest piece of "pie".  I the size of the "pie" gets larger and only the top people get a larger piece, that violates our original objective.  This third factor is that the size of the bite that the median person gets is what needs to happen.  That means the ratio between the size of the bite for average citizen and the median citizen can not get larger.  By adding low skilled immigrants, it may increase the GNP and the average GNP per person, but not the median.

In a prior blog, I pointed out that Mexico has a worse ratio than the USA, while Canada has a better ratio.  Most new growth in Mexico makes the rich richer while growth in Canada it makes the poorer richer.  If that balance gets worse, the country might be looking at some kind of revolution as often happens in many third world countries.

Running Out Of Intelligence

 What will happen when the world runs out of intelligence? That along with "Brittleness"  will be the subject of this blog.

I think that we can all look at the recent history of the human race and the world to see that we are needing more intelligence and know that intelligence is limited.  If you look back at history, you will see that all you used to need to earn a good living was a "strong back".  That is clearly no longer the case.  Remember when workers used to chop down trees with an axe?  Now they do it with an expensive and complicated machine. Now only a very few people are smart enough to design, build and maintain those machines. There is now no need for  a person with just a "strong back".

We all know that the intelligence of the human race is normally distributed and that the average is 100.  That means 50% are less than 100 and 50% are greater than 100.  Historically at least 80% of people were smart enough to chop down trees, but today only about 60% are smart enough to operate a timber harvester and it is getting worse every year as machines get more complex and efficient.  The greater efficiency is good and bad at the same time.

Education may help the situation, but we all know that education does not really effect one's intelligence and that is the problem.  Education can show a person "how" to do things, but does not impact the basic intelligence.  The big problem with education is that it costs so much and takes up so much time from the worker's productive life and has to be repeated more and more as jobs change faster and faster.  The increase in life expectancy is not fast enough to counter act the problem.  Think of a person who lost their job at age 40 or 50 and had to be retrained;.  The person who was 50 would only have 15 years to pay back the cost of their education and it is getting worse.

Some might say that AI will compensate for advances in complexity, but will it?  What is going to happen is that AI will have a short term improvement, but in the process it will cause more "brittleness"'  For many, exactly what is "brittleness"?  One form would be that fewer and fewer people would be intelligent enough to devise new AI programs while more and more people would come to rely on them.  What most AI programs do is to collect and organize knowledge so that others can access it and use it.  Right now the AI programs collect "existing knowledge.  Who is going to generate the new knowledge if more and more people rely on historic AI?  I think you can see the problem.

Here is another way to look at "brittleness".  Think of climbing a tree.  Most people can climb using a ladder and a few can just climb the tree without anything but their ability.  As all get closer and closer to the top they risk falling.  So far no one has been able to climb to the very top of a Christmas Tree.    

I don't know how long its going to take to reach the limit, but it is coming sooner than most think. The best indicator that the limit is near is "equity" and it is getting worse as we strive to improve our quality of life. If you are unaware of my definition of "equity", it is measured by the ratio between the "average income" and the "medium income".   Pure "equity" would be when both the "median" and "average" are equal.  For example, the "equity" is better in Canada than in the USA and Mexico is worse than the USA.  As the rich get richer and poor get poorer here in the USA, our equity is going down and our society is getting more "brittle".

Think about it!!

PS--Think about this.  In 1950 most girls had only two choices for college careers.  Those were to be either a teacher or a nurse.  I think that we all knew that, but today it has changed very significantly/  Now girls have many more choices, like veterinarians, doctors, lawyers and engineers.  If we start out with a group of college qualified girls and we take out those who have chosen the above new careers, those left are clearly not as qualified.  This clearly means that the teachers of today are not as qualified as those who taught us and went to college back in 1950.  That is just one more reason that our children are not doing as well today.