Pro Commerce

Data #5

Rising medical costs become a bigger mystery when you look at the data.

Any theory for the reason for medical costs to rise so rapidly over the past two decades is wrong when confronted with the data.

Prevailing theories have to do with insurance company policies and practices, insurance coverage, medical liability insurance and expensive new equipment.

Confront the data: hospital, prescription and doctor’s prices have risen 4.2 times, 3.4 and 2.8 times respectively for an average increase in medical costs of 3.2 times in the past twenty years. The group that is least effected by hospital prices, drugs, insurance or new technology are dentists.  Dentists prices have also risen by 3.1 times in the same period and they are uneffected by any of the issues.  Why? 

The main theories must be wrong.(Table 128, pp103)

Benedict XVI provocateur

My close reading of Pope Benedict XVI’s speech at the University of Regensburg makes two things clear. First, the Pope intended, unambiguously, to incite Islam. The quotations from Emperor Manuel II Paleologus were absolutely gratuitous and unrelated to the subject matter of the rest of the speech. In case you didn’t read my last sentence carefully, the part of the Pope’s speech dealing with Islam had nothing to do with the rest of the speech. It was tacked on for political purposes.

Even worse, it was a truly outrageous and disingenuous quote. Paleologus was leading an army against Islam at the time he made his statement.

Second, Pope Benedict XVI is one of the better minds of the 12^th Century.

The man has the knowledge and understanding of a person 1,000 years out of date. He has learned nothing from the experiences of the world over the past ten centuries. He mistakenly thinks European Enlightenment is the direct beneficiary of Roman Catholic theology.It isn't. On the otherhand, 15 centuries of warfare, slaughter and anti-Semitism can be laid on the steps of the Church right up to and including the IRA terrorists.

But since the Pope, in his speech, is still fighting against the Protestant Reformation and the rise of science he shows how out of touch he is and that the Church has no claim on the European Enlightenment. The Pope doesn’t even know the Industrial Revolution happened.

Read the Pope’s speech if you don’t believe me.

Data #4

My Lefty friends see a gigantic right wing religious conspiracy in the country.  They see conspiracies everywhere including the totally disproven Plame-Wilson conspiracy run by Bush-Cheney and Rove.

The Left sees a religious conspiracy.  The data belie them.  The growing religious groups in America are the unorganized single building churches with local charismatic leaders. 

With total adult population increasing almost 13% between 1990 and 2000, the percentage of Christians increased  only 5%  (151,500,000 to 160,000,000) while the non-denominational part of that total composed nearly all of that increase by more than doubling (8,000,000 to 16,500,000).

Unmentioned by anyone I know, the anti-non-religious establishment did even better.  “No religion” or “Refused to reply..”  grew by even more than double (18,500,000 to 41,000,000), up 225%.

If America is getting more pious and sanctimonious, nobody has told individual Americans.
(Table 69 page 59)

Hybrid absurdity

I frequently see comments about hybrid cars saying explicitly that 'they don’t pay for themselves in gasoline savings.'

Three things to know.  First, there is no American car that is a hybrid.  They are all standard engines with a big starting motor and a big battery.  The engine turns off when your brake foot brings the car to a stop.  When you move from the brake pedal to the throttle the starting motor powers the car to move the first few miles per hour. 

The Honda and the Toyota are real hybrids. They have real electric motors connected to the drive shaft that power the car past the first 30 miles per hour. The gasoline engine is intended to charge the batteries most of the time.

Second, getting 50 miles per gallon (Honda or Toyota) versus the standard 25 miles per gallon will save you $750 per year.

Absurdity:  To think that a hybrid car can be compared to some other arbitrary car on the market in order to evaluate the increased cost of the hybrid relative to the savings in gasoline.  There are plenty of cars on the market that have the same space, power and other design qualities as the Honda and Toyota hybrids.  Some cost more and some cost less.  There is no real hybrid premium to use in calculating gas-mileage-savings.

Third.  Saving $750 per year in gasoline won’t buy you any new car.  Hybrids don’t pay for themselves when thought of in simplistic terms of paying for the whole new car.

Data #3

There are about five times as many gay men as there are gay women.  But there is an adage that whenever two gay women find they like each other they have moved in together within 24 hours.

There are 108,000,000 households in the U.S. Unmarried male partners are roughly 365,000 households and unmarried female partners are roughly 340,000 households.  Almost the same.

That seems to support the adage about gay women forming nests very quickly considering there are one-fifth as many of them. (Table 57 pp 52)

Moral commerce?

Clemson University, in South Carolina, is establishing a study center devoted to finding the moral roots of commerce. 

Welcome Clemson and the new Institute leader, C. Bradley Thompson, to an important debate of our time. I have argued for a decade that commerce is nonmoral and that nonmorality is commerce’s greatest value.

However, I point out that commerce, because it has a cross-cultural empirical base, does promote some vales that might appear to be moral: meritocracy, honesty, diversity and openness. Problem is, no moral system in the previous three millennia of human activity has produced these values in this combination with such pervasive importance.

Afraid

Two pieces of evidence that suggests the NYTimes is afraid of being called Jewish. Same reason the Times never reported on the Holocaust, sixty years earlier.

While serving the densest Jewish population in the world, the NYTimes failed to mention two recent stories of importance to their readership.

On August 27th, the leaders of the World Jewish Congress reported to the Israeli Cabinet that anti-Semitism was so high that Jews' survival was at high risk in Venezuela and at serious risk in the Ukraine, Belgium and Switzerland.

On September 20^th several tens of thousands rallied at the UN to support Israel and the three kidnapped Israeli soldiers. Speakers included Gov. Pataki, Elie Wiesel, Foreign Minister Livni and Alan Dershowitz.  (Thanks to reader Madeleine.)

The moat of Baghdad

I think the proposed dirt moat around Baghdad is a good idea and it is about time that this idea was established.  The same should be used in Kabul and Kandahar.  The “moat” has an ancient tradition and is effective against marauders, the old name for terrorists.  It is not effective against armies.

Considering the multitude of voices against the same kind of wall keeping Palestinian terrorists and car thieves out of Israel, it is wonderful to see the idea spreading.

Clear signal to Iran

The nations of the world have sent a clear signal to Iran.

The UN force in Lebanon under the leadership of a main Middle Eastern player, France, is now nearly at full strength including 2,000 German troops by permission of Israel and Indonesia also by permission from Israel. The force includes Chinese and Russians.

What is the signal?  WE (the powers of the UN) are in Lebanon ready to stop Hezbollah from acting after Iran is attacked to destroy its nuclear facilities. WE (as NATO) are on your eastern border in Afganistan.

This is the strongest signal imaginable to Iran. There are only a few more signals that will be given before the Security Council authorizes a coalition of forces to bomb Iranian nuclear sites.

Interestingly, Syria read the message and has now offered to begin negotiations with Israel on a peace treaty. Having UN troops readily at-hand, makes the negotiations possible.

Data #2

Quess which are the largest tribes of American Indians? 

In order, they are Cherokee (730,000), by three lengths,  Navajo second, and all in a bunch for third place (170,000), Indians from South of the Border, Choctaw, Chippewa and Sioux.

The Navajo and the Hopi have been competitive tribes for centuries.  The Navajo now outnumber the Hopi by 25 to 1.  The Hopi may have become more integrated in the general population, they have a reputation for being very adaptive and they look more Asian.  The also have a reputation, like Arabs, of saying whatever the listener wants to hear to make reality conform to saving face.

Google shuttle

Google is recruiting at a high rate and getting the best mathematicians, computer theorists and engineers on the planet.

One of the attractions they are offering is a free shuttle bus from three locations in San Francisco. Their office is nearly 40 miles away.

This can only be driving up the rents in San Francisco.  A few years ago the bus was carrying hundreds a day.  It must be close to a thousand by now.  That is enough people to affect rental prices at the high end of the residential rental market.

Data #1

I got a spectacular birthday present and so did the few of my blog readers who love statistical data.  The present was the 2006 U.S. Statistical Abstract.

I read it page by page just like some other fools read the encyclopedia and the dictionary.

This will become a whole series of “Data #” blogs on my findings.

First off, the total population of the U.S. passed 300,000,000 in early August of this year.

Is that number significant?  Absolutely not.  It is just a convenient number to remember. 

It is also a reminder that the U.S. is the only large Industrial nation on the planet that has a growing population.  We continue getting richer and healthier.  Our reproduction rate is 2.0 (2.1 is the replacement reproduction rate), most Industrial nations have rates around 1.3.  We owe much of our continued growth to our ability to absorb immigrants.

It took fifty years for the last doubling of our population and fifty years before that for the prior doubling.

San Francisco sinking

In an earlier blog “Looks like Colma” I noted that there is virtually no ship traffic in the San Francisco Bay.  I counted the number of waiting vessels yesterday: four.  Ten years ago there were 20-25 ships waiting to unload and load.

Both San Francisco and Oakland have done their parts to destroy the commerce, hundreds of thousands of jobs and vitality that shipping generates. 

This recent article shows why the political and incompetent Port Commission in San Francisco has done its part to destroy shipping.  New plans for dock facilities on top of new plans that never got executed.  Note all the bullshit PR statements in this article. The underlying truth is that S.F. won't keep up with market demands because S.F. is anti-commerce.

Willie Brown was asked why Chicago is able to get things done and San Francisco isn‘t.  His reply: ‘Chicago is goal oriented, San Francisco is about process.’  Translated that means that San Franciscans only want to fight, they have no interest in the real world or genuine human vitality.  Although fighting can be fun.

As for Oakland, only the recent visible incompetence of New Orleans shows that Oakland is not the most politically inept city in America.

Seven years ago when the Navy was giving the Alameda airbase to Oakland, I asked Jerry Brown, the mayor and an acquaintance, whether he could get a new 1,000-foot-long bridge built so that Alameda could become the center of airline freight traffic for DHL, Fedex and UPS.  Alameda is an island connected by a tunnel which could never handle the truck traffic for an major air cargo center.  Jerry said “No.”   

Just “no”  for a half million jobs lost.

Class nonsense

Nearly every Lefty believes in classes and elites in America.  That is a core definition of “Lefty.”

If you don’t believe there are classes in America nor that an elite class rules America, you are not a Lefty. You are also right.  Empirical evidence overwhelmingly discounts the nonsense of Marx, Malthus and the entire Lefty pyramid of economic fantasy.

This one chart, on the right, from the U.S. Treasury is all the evidence you need (click to enlarge).  The Treasury looked at the distribution of income taxes filed in a1979 and again ten years later in 1988 to compare the incomes of the same people in both years a decade apart.  Nearly everyone changed the income category they were in.

Moreover, look at the top 1% of income earners, the most maligned people in America by the press and the Left.  More than half of this top elite had been replaced, meaning half had dropped out of the elite in ten years.

If there are classes in the U.S. and an elite running the country, they sure aren’t the same people from year to year.  Income mobility trumps class in America by ten to one.

If this kind of evidence can't change your mind, then you have a religous believe, just like witchcraft, voodoo and crystal balls.

Good investment

I think buying an index fund in Sweden would be a good multi-year investment these days. Try Ishares index fund. (EWD)

The Swedes just became the first Europeans to come to terms with reality and vote the Social Democrats out of office with enthusiasm.  Socialism is morally wrong.  To imprision human beings in an economic and social system that has failed horribly for a century is just plain wrong and meanspirited.

The Swedes were probably also reacting to the difficulty of having an open immigration policy for the Muslim world when tolerant societies, like Sweden, can not survive a multi-million person dose of intolerance.

Holland and England look set to follow in Sweden's footsteps.

While I am it, attendees at the conference of anti-American countries that met last week in Cuba (and people who wear Che Guevara t-shirts) should be compelled to live as ordinary Cubans on $28 dollars a month for a family, with rations of two hamburgers worth of meat per month (bad pork, at that). I was in Cuba and everyone I met wanted to leave....as soon as possible.

People who continue to advocate Lefty socialist ideas in the face of reality are morally corrupt, unless they are personally willing to live like an ordinary Cuban.

Durban

A great letter came online in the Canadian National Post by Irwin Cotler. Cotler was a Canadian MP, Attorney General and Minister of Justice.

The letter outlines the venomous role of the UN in spreading the current worldwide wave of anti-Semitism. It is worth a read. I personally have stated that the wave began before the August 2001 Durban Conference; it started in January 2000 when Palestinians succeeded in slaughtering Israeli civilians in coffee shops and on buses on a weekly basis.

Any sign of weakness brings back the millennium old deep-seated desire to kill Jews.

Conservative

Conservative is the wrong term for me and most people like me.  We are anti-ideology, pro-empirical.  If conservative meets those qualifications then it is a welcome descriptor.

In the Spring New Criterion, Paul R. Gross, a biologist does a wonderful review of Larry Arnhart’s Darwinian Conservatism.  He summarizes the point of the book with a brilliant paragraph:

“evolution was and remains a body of empirical science and solid theory that displays and supports bedrock conservative principles. These include the inextricability of present and future from the past, the inevitability of variation in individuals and systems, differential survival of useful variations and the containment of damaging ones, and the omnipresent control of everything by environment, itself changing as its inhabitants change—in response to itself. There could not be a system of thought more opposed, Arnhart believes, to what radical utopianism has sought to bring into the world since 1860.”

On second thought, that sounds a great deal like Zen Buddhism.  Why aren’t Zen Buddhists conservatives?

Looks like Colma

A friend loaned me her downtown top floor apartment with a view of the entire Bay from the Bay Bridge to the Golden Gate.  I was in the apartment for a week…went out at night and watched the view by day.

Conclusions:  San Francisco is too much like Colma; the Bay is like the middle of the Pacific.

Colma is a small town adjacent to San Francisco that is entirely populated with cemeteries. 

When I went out at night, downtown, the City....

Nicotine lovers

Today’s Wall Street Journal raises a very unPC subject: there are ways to get that wonderful high from nicotine without significant risk of health side effects.

I have pointed out in several earlier blogs that the evidence linking smoking to lung cancer is weak and that the second hand smoking connection is non-existent.  The one good study on the effects of smoking, (by my definition a good study has to be Danish or Swedish and use twins) is a Danish study of identical twins where one smoked and the other didn’t.  The only difference was that the smoking side of the twins had a higher incidence of lung related problems, like coughing, but not lung cancer.

A different demographic study showed that the low incidence in Japanese lung cancer among smokers may be connected to the low level of nitrosamines in Japanese cigarettes.  The Japanese cigarettes have one-seventh the level of nitrosamines in the smoke that the average American and European cigarette has.  If you like smoking you can get a Japanese brand in good tobacco stores: Mild Seven #10.

If you like nicotine but don’t need to smoke it, we now know the way to go is snuff with low nitrosamines: Swedish snuff.

Runway style

I don’t want you to be too surprised when you see bicycle racing pants on the fashion runways in the coming seasons.

We are moving into the period of American dominance of fashion, particularly West Coast dominance.

The category is called active-wear.  I have a relative who has moved from fashion in New York to active-wear in Los Angeles. I saw a woman in her 50s out for dinner at a restaurant in her yoga clothes with jewelry. 

The latest WWD was all about active-wear. Look for it on runways.

Peet’s on Market

I regularly go to a Peet’s coffee shop on Market Street in the Castro district.

This Peet’s location is very busy, probably a top earner in the chain, with a perpetual line that is very fast and a splendid staff.

Two things to report.  Since I returned from Tokyo in August, Peet’s has added a whole new line of coffee drinks with chocolate in them.  I am guessing that this appeals to a younger clientele.

As I see the coffee explosion, it grew out of the widespread use of cocaine during the late 1970s.  Cocaine was an upper, popular among Silicon Valley types and most people who wanted to get a lot of work done.  Espresso drinks were the sane sequel to cocaine.  The coffee explosion started on the West Coast.

What we may have now, with the addition of chocolate, may be the next iteration of the “uppers”-for-work pattern that has been such a vital source of productivity. The age group is migrating down.

Second observation about Peet’s.  The staff in the Castro, as I said, is first rate…friendly, competent with good team work.  I think that a large part of this esprit d’corps is a reflection of the courtesy and camaraderie of the customers in this neighborhood.  Good work gets done around favorable customers.

Mexican lefties

The recent Mexican national election is being rejected by the radical followers of the PRD’s Lopez Obrador.  I don’t claim to know Mexican politics.  I know that a large part of the electorate doesn’t trust their government.  Of course the incompetence of the government lies directly with nearly a century of rule by the Left.  Too much government and people don't trust government.

My only point in this blog is that social discord in the governance of our next door neighbor will probably mean an increase in immigration to the U.S.. 

Values and hairstyles

One of my daughters has accurately observed that most people keep the same hairstyle, makeup and clothing style that they had in their twenties.  Even when they are 80 years old.

My observation is that they keep the same worldview.  Few people ever change either their style or their worldview.  Is that true?

Taxes and domestic partners

As mentioned in the previous blog I am a trustee in a will, actually several wills.   One of my friends is joined to his new partner by a domestic partner agreement.  In California, a domestic partner agreement has all the legal meaning of a marriage.

So what happens to Federal inheritance tax?  When one domestic partner dies the property would ordinarily be transferred, tax free, to the surviving spouse.  If the person is single and has enough property, it would trigger Federal inheritance tax.  So how is this treated when a California domestic partnership agreement  exists?

Does the Federal government have to recognize California domestic partnerships and let the money move to the partner without paying inheritance tax?

Inheritance and marriage

Am I missing something? I don’t see much written or talked about the problems of serial marriage and inheritance...not in the Wall Street Journal or Forbes.

In every case that I know of where somebody has been married several times and there are kids involved, there is a serious question of inheritance.

For example, I am the trustee for a friend of mine who remarried and has children by his first wife and his second wife has her own children.  He has made no special provision for his kids neither has his first wife who has remarried.

The sample problem comes from a close relative of mine who had children by his first wife (who died).  He remarried, a woman from Europe who had a son.  When my relative died, his second wife sold the house and took all the possessions, including the family heirlooms, back to Europe to live near her son. 

In California, the wife who survives her husband gets all property that is not excluded in a pre-nuptial or a trust.

The children of the first wife, who were quite needy in two cases, got nothing, not even their mother’s possessions.  There was nothing a will would have done for these kids. 

The same with my friend if he dies before his new wife.  Most people don’t think of that and fewer are willing to pay for it.  They love their new spouse and trust them to do the right thing.

Again….am I missing some major national discussion of this issue?

Bill Maher

Bill Maher, the comedian, was interviewed by Larry King.  After many Lefty jokes, including some about the absurdity of the Palestinians, Maher was asked about President Bush’s strong support of Israel.  Did Maher appreciate it?

Maher replied that he fully appreciated Bush’s and the Republican’s strong support of Israel.  Larry King asked whether he would vote Republican in the future.  Maher said he wouldn’t because the Republicans had too much support from religious conservatives who scare him with their proselytizing of Jews.

I mention this because I hear it often from Jews who continue to support the Left that is increasingly anti-Jew.  Come on! No Christian would want Maher in his church.

Moreover, the fact that Christians of all persuasions have been proselytizing for centuries, including Lefty Methodists and Presbyterians (they send a portion of all collection plates to missionaries)  isn't a rational reason for not supporting the Republican party.  The Republicans are now 84% supporters of Jews compared to the Democrats who are 43% supporters.  That is a very big difference.

The Republicans don’t have open anti-Semites like Jimmy Carter, Cynthia McKinney and Michael Moore.

San Francisco

Because San Francisco is in such a morose slump I keep wondering about the nature of this town. Most institutions are shaped by their founders.  Cities are no exception to this rule. 

San Francisco’s founders were ribald, New Orleans migrants with a strong outlaw sensibility.  Gambling, sex, license and corruption were the key ingredients.  Government was weak and pretty useless.  Crime was controlled for decades by vigilantes. The City burned to the ground many times, once completely in 1864.  By 1895 it was home to pre-hippy radicals, Wobblies and by 1930 the City had one of the only two general strikes in the U.S.  A decade later the main union, the longshoremen, was run by a public communist for twenty years (a friend of mine).

I know San Francisco...

Homeless stability

Judith Hahn et al published a study in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, summarized in a local newspaper based on a fourteen year study of homeless in San Francisco.  The sample was over 3,500 interviews.  The findings were checked against other urban areas.  Conclusion: most people who are homeless stay homeless indefinitely. 

I created a park for San Francisco street people in 1979 (6th and Minna).  “Wino Park” as it was affectionately known, was built before the absurd term “homeless” migrated from New York.  I can assure my readers that most of the street people I knew, a quarter of a century ago, are either still homeless in San Francisco or dead.

There were only three kinds of people in the population, I doubt that it has changed.  One was short timers, a week or a couple of weeks on the street, usually men from the suburbs expiating some demon they had encountered in their lives.  The second group were those who were on the street for years and left the street population for some strong personal reason.  Example: Herman, a former jazz musician, all around wonderful guy, who got an apartment and sobered-up after his sister died from her drunken life in the streets. 

The third group, the remaining vast majority, were perfectly content with their lives on the street and wanted to be left alone, outside of society.  They appreciated the kindness of a clean bathroom, personal safety, a shower and the abundant food that was available.  But they didn’t want to be sober, straight or cogs in the social wheel.

Most of the people I knew on the street are still around.  The bleeding heart Lefties were trying to convert them to striving Americans, with full membership in society in 1979...and they are still trying.

Cute

There is a new Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco.  I will go and give a report at a future date.

Right now I just want a comment on how cute the idea is.  The idea of an African Diaspora is a pure African American wannabee concept.  Nearly all peoples of the world have been dispersed from their home country, voluntarily and involuntarily.  We aren’t going to see a Museum of the Chinese Diaspora or the Italian Diaspora.  The Chinese Americans and the Italian Americans aren’t trying to be wannabee Jews.

There is a clear distinction between Jews and the African American wannabees.  The Jews couldn’t go back and practice their religion freely in their original homeland and the Jews maintained their religious connection throughout the Diaspora by mail.  Africans didn’t and haven’t.  Most slaves, when freed, just stayed where they were (with the exception of the group that created Liberia).

I might note that the Japanese Americans have built a museum in Los Angeles remembering their poor treatment in American internment camps and their heroic military contributions to the American Armed Services.  American Indians have also built a museum in Washington D.C. memorializing their great contributions to the fabric of America.

Tibetans are a group of people in Diaspora who might someday have a right to call attention to their Jew-like status.  They will need to keep in touch with their leaders including the Dalai Lama and carry on the tradition for several hundred years before the parallels make sense.

Sabbath Internet

The Third Commandment is to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.  For two millennium the wandering people of Judea have been trying to deal with local problems of following the Mosaic Laws.  Keeping the Sabbath has been a high priority and a serious legal problem. When elevators came along, the act of pushing the button for a floor was considered work and violation of the Sabbath.  Where Jews own elevators or use them regularly the elevators are set to stop at every floor on the Sabbath or with two elevators one goes to all even numbered floors the other to all odd numbered floors.

Today there is an interesting new problem that is not local.

For two thousand years this people have mutually agreed to write letters to the scholars among them for advice.  That advice is written down and called the Talmud.  At one point the center of Mosaic scholarship was Baghdad, today it is Jerusalem. Jerusalem is where this solution came from.

A problem arose roughly ten years ago when it became possible to do autonomous business on a global scale with the Internet.  The Sabbath is defined as starting at sunset on Friday and lasting until sunset on Saturday.  But on a global scale sunset on Friday first begins at sunset in New Zealand and continues until sunset in Hawaii. 

The rabbinical solution:  If no person is working, the Sabbath is not an issue.  Shut off your own computer screen or cover it and if your business is run autonomously (sales are going on in the server with credit cards) it is not violating the Sabbath.  Keeping the Sabbath is about maintaining a holy presence in your own person without interruption.  Think meditation for 24 hours.

I think that is a splendid solution.

A different question arises if you are doing business on Friday or Sunday and you know you are doing business with a Jew who is using a server in a Sabbath time zone.  Answer: don’t.

Lastly, there remains the question of what to do about using a server that is located above the Arctic circle or below the Antarctic circle.  That question hasn’t been answered yet because the actual problem doesn’t appear to have arisen, although it is theoretically a problem now when using a computer or doing any work while flying over those areas.

Beggars license

I was thinking about the customers who find beggars appealing and pay them.

Using the word “customer” changes the dynamics of beggar politics.  Cities have established the legal right to license street vendors.

I believe that the same logic and legal taxation opportunity applies to beggars who use city streets to sell their product… pathos… to interested customers.  The beggars are competing directly with established non-profit businesses that sell pathos to the public. 

The beggars should be licensed and it should be constitutional to license them.

Let's get a municipal jurisdiction to try this licensing of beggars approach and get some judicial rulings on the books.

I am against street begging for several reasons listed in this blog before.  Beggars and street people drive away, tourists, shoppers, families and seriously degrade the vitality of retail business. They have a large economic cost, far out proportion to any need the society has for protecting them.