Pro Commerce

Copyright right

In the previous blog I describe a piece of art that my partner made.

Inadvertently she came up with a brilliant way to super-copyright her work.  She had a sheet of postage stamps made of one of the pieces ($20 online).  It is easy to do on Yahoo Photos.  And now she has mailed a few of the stamps to friends.

Just like the early days of patents when inventors mailed an idea to a friend who was told not to open the envelop, the letter became a Post Office official confirmation of the date of first use or first development.

Now we have stamps with a postmark right next to it as an official timestamp stamp.

Floating away

Ideas and images have the strange quality of just floating off into widespread community use. Sometimes.

The photo on the right is a neckpiece that my partner made while in Japan this summer, in June and July.  It is about 18 inches around, made of her favorite small pieces of old Japanese fabric, stuffed with cotton.  You are seeing it only four months after the first one was made.

My guess is that you will see a commercial version within two years.  My partner had never seen anything like it before she made her first one.

Since she made these pieces (she made four) she has been wearing them.  Over the past three months, more than one hundred people have gone out of their way to comment;  in airports, on planes, in coffee shops and restaurants and even in high fashion stores.  People we know to be Jews and Scots often offer the compliment “we should market that.”  Quilt makers often say “I’m going to do that.”

The reason I think this particular idea will take off and reach the commercial market is that it is a synthesis of my partner’s mind.  First she has many pieces of small fabric that she loves and saves.  Second, she conceived of a new way to wear them, that is easy to make without a sewing machine, as opposed to a more common quilted creation of a skirt, cap or scarf,  Lastly, by using simple shapes she was able create an elegant model with a wide range of potential variety.

We shall see if this becomes a common piece of clothing.  I think it will, based on seeing several dozen previous idea-images be absorbed by the social commons.  No, I don’t think there is a viable way to turn this into intellectual property.  Unreproducible art, yes.  But the idea will be copied widely. 

(A photo of all four pieces is on my website.)

Arabs can’t reason

OK, that sounds like a bigoted statement.  It isn’t. It is a continuation of a comment I made in an earlier blog.  I'm making a statement about "national character."

If you’ve had any connection to international relations thinking you know that the traditional international relations model used “national character” as a core concept.  Today the comparable concept is ‘culture.”

In making this statement about Arabs and reason, I’m using that international relations concept as it refers to the people called "Arabs".  The boundaries of "Arab" are not exact.  The boundary definitely doesn’t include Kurds, Turks, Persians or Ethiopians.  But the boundary does include virtually everyone who speaks Arabic.

I observe that Arabs are incapable of reason.  "Reason" is simply defined as the ability to combine abstract thoughts in a way that allows one to make reliable predictions.   

Example of reasoning: My car is going 60 miles an hour; at 60 mph I need 240 feet to stop completely. That is a prediction based on reason. 

Such a statement about cars and braking would not make any sense to an Arab. An Arab would argue that stopping distance depends on the driver, the car and most importantly who are the people involved in talking about reason. The Arab would want to know what are the rewards and penalties for agreeing with this auto braking statement about reason.  Most importantly, the ability to agree with this automotive statement about reasoning would be heavily influenced by the familial relationship of the people carrying on the conversation.

Arabs adjust all facts all contingencies to the status of the immediate conversation.  That makes reason impossible because reason is stable, continuous and generally context independent.

The absence of reasoning helps explain why Arabs think that their behavior and public statements do not influence what Israelis or the world does.  Offer peace, send suicide bombers, fire missiles, complain about mistreatment, demand money, wail about homes being bulldozed, teach children to hate Israel; run newspaper, TV and radio programs about the need to kill Israelis, kidnap and kill Israelis, claim to be peace loving people and blame the World Trade Center destruction and all the problems of the world on Israel.  No assumption that these acts have consequences.

Of course there are probably one or two Arabs who can reason.  I’m not a bigot.

I feel like Darwin

Darwin created a multi-century debate of ferocious intensity.  Why?

Because he provided evidence that the biological world we are imbedded in is non-moral.  We and everything else biological are here because of pragmatic survival of the fittingest.  No moral direction nor justification for anything living or dead that exists.

Since Darwin, new fossils and new fields, such as DNA, have been finding supportive evidence of the Darwinian thesis.

I claim the same truth for commerce.  It has created the modern world, OUR human world, and it is non-moral. My evidence is only for those who have eyes to see it.  The evidence is overwhelming but not nearly so testable as Darwin’s biological evolution. 

The mind

There is a connection between Amenhotep IV (changed his name to Akenaten), anti-Semitism and ideology.

Amenhotep IV is given credit by Freud for being the first monotheist and the father of Jewish monotheism.  This is my round-about-way of blaming someone other than the Jews for anti-Semitism. 

Indeed, I suggest that the non-monotheistic way of seeing the world creates a mind that is infertile ground for anti-Semitism or other ideologies.  Sub-Saharan Africa, India, Japan, Mongolia, much of China and traditional American tribes are cultures without monotheism.  What they all seem to have in common is a view of the world as multi-causal, highly localized.  They all focus on multi-causal explanations of life.  The weather can be related to specific prayers, dances, fertility rites and tribal behavior. Crops, food supply and health can be related to bad behavior, disrespect for tradition, ignorance of customs, mistreatment of people or the environment.  Specific rocks, hills, trees and mountains have significance in daily life.  The one thing that none of these billion people have is anti-Semitism, Marxism, a monotheistic religion or any love of ideology.

There is a connection.  In social thought we recognize that all thought, images, metaphors and concepts have a structure, a hierarchy.  In the world created by Amenhotep IV there is one ultimate pinnacle of all institutions (monotheism).  This model permits other forms of thought to converge on an ultimate pinnacle.  Thus anti-Semites can see a single cause for all evil (Jews), Marxists can see a  single cause for all evil (the bourgeois class) and monotheism has a single ultimate cause for good and evil (God, Allah).

Can we, who live in a monotheistic world, find a way to see the world without a single pinnacle?

Such a worldview is what many thinkers, from the earliest Charles Peirce to the most recent Isaiah Berlin, have been pushing us towards. 

San Francisco report

There is a great new lunch restaurant in the heart of downtown.  It is Mixt Greens.  They mostly serve salads, mixed to order at the counter, from 10:30 to 3 in a 1,500 square foot street front locale, on Sansome and Bush.  My estimate is 270 lunches per day at an average price of $10, for a $700 per day net profit. 

The Westfield Mall opened last week.  Very large and overflowing with stores.  They had to buy the nearby Metreon to handle the overflow of stores.  There are nine movie theatres on the top floor with restaurants a floor below and a food court on the bottom floor.

Brave thing to do in anti-commerce San Francisco and likely to succeed with a population base drawing on the whole Bay Area.  Should create some nightlife and a place that will be open till 10pm for tourists and should create a little vital street life which is completely missing in San Francisco now.  Better keep bums away if success is important.

I also saw the Museum of the African Diaspora.  I would ridicule the whole idea as I did before, but the museum is so tragically bad that it only arouses my sense of pathos.  No, there is no mention of Africa exporting slaves for a thousand years before Europeans arrived.  And no understanding that Europeans created skin color differences (the melanin tint scale) that allowed multi-generational slavery to be created after 1600. 

There is a wall plaque (see photo on the right) that is so stupid it hardly warrants comment, suggesting that Western slavery somehow has kept Africa backward. 

The museum is small, meaningless, unappealing and….as I said, pathetic.

Critic of democracy

I have long been a critic of democracy.  A helpful critic.  In the late 1970s I proposed a legislature selected from a scientifically random population.  Chick Callenbach and I wrote a book on the proposal (Citizen Legislature).  Bob Gnaizda added the suggestion that one house remain as it is today. A great suggestion now that I understand the need for power groups to be represented.

I have also proposed that the U.S. Congress, probably both houses to some extent, have a few members elected by other countries, representing important democratic allies of ours such as Japan, Britain, Holland and Germany.  The countries would feel a part of our decision making process and would actually have appropriate input.

Now I realize that we need just such a mechanism in San Francisco.  We need an amendment to our City Charter that creates four new supervisors; added to our current nine, the total would be thirteen.  Each new supervisor would  be elected by San Mateo County, Marin County, Alameda and Contra Costa Counties.   

Too many, if not most, of the deliberations and laws passed by our Board have direct impact on the lives of the 250,000 workers and tens of thousands of shoppers who come to San Francisco for a livelihood everyday and for recreation.  Lets get them in on the decisions that effect their lives.

Offensive

One of the most offensive reports came out recently from Kenneth Hoffman of the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. He tells us officially that the EtG urine test is unreliable. 

This test has been widely used for two years on pilots, railroad engineers, ship captains and dozens of others who are forbidden to use alcohol for a day before going to the job. The damn test is unreliable, meaning it has a high false positive result.

Innocent people are getting positive results; accused of drinking alcohol when they haven’t.

I believe that a business test, applied under Federal regulations, that has falsely accused innocent people of drinking alcohol, should be a crime.  All people who got a positive EtG test result should get a $1 million payment from the Federal government immediately as partial restitution and anyone who can show actual damages should get 25 times the actual damages.

I really hate false positive test results. I wish civil libertarians were intelligent enough to recognize the moral repugnance of this issue.  They don't seem to be.

Data #16

The U.S. is 2.3 billion acres in size.  The Federal government owns 30% of the total, more than two-thirds of a billion acres.

The Feds own more than fifty percent of Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, Utah and Wyoming.  The Federal government owns nearly all of Nevada (over 90%) and nearly half (47%) of California.

Is that enough for all the environmentalists to live on?  It is four acres per environmentalist. It would take fifteen minutes to walk around each environmentalist's property if it were flat desert. (Table 348, pp222).

Three cheers

Johan Norberg got my message across in the October 2nd Wall Street Journal.  He says: 'Commerce is the driving engine of modernity.' 

Norberg doesn’t have it quite right because he focuses on entrepreneurs rather than commerce as a whole.  I’ve pointed out that in Japan corporations provide innovation rather than entrepreneurs.  Look at Toyota and the Hybrid as a good example and Sony and the Walkman.

Norberg also tries to contrast entrepreneurial success versus government.  He suggests that government is not much of a contributor to modern society.

This is going too far for me.  Governments provide streets, highways and airports generally more efficiently than commerce.  The U.S. government has created many important technological innovations from the first card sorters for the Census in 1870, to airplanes for WWI, airlines out of the Postal Service routes in the 1920s, 1938 radar, 1947 transistors and 1968 ARPAnet the mother of the Internet.  I’ve left out much including jet engines, the whole satellite, GPS and undersea worlds.

I’m glad to see a champion of commerce and one that a number of my friends have quoted, but he could do a better job.

Data #15

Are runaway kids a major national problem?  Only for the police and the parents, not the kids.

Most runaways leave home in the Summer, two-thirds go less than 30 miles away, rarely leave their state, are gone two weeks or less, are between 3 and 11 years old and more than 99% are found or return home. (Table 334, pp 213)

Political silly season

How long will the political silly season go on?  The simple answer is until the November election but this is not the right answer.

The political silly season goes on year round with politicians saying ridiculous and embarrassing things about their opposition. I believe that this silliness will go on for another century.  It will continue until at least a quarter of the public understands what democratic politics is all about.

Democratic politics is about finding reconciliation between conflicting power bases; what James Madison called ‘factions’ in Federalist Paper #10.   

The silly season will be over when we have politicians campaigning on the basis that ‘I am a successful compromiser an effective representative of powerful interests and excellent at reconciling differences.’

Data #14

New Orleans was not just an aberration because of Katrina.  The South has a significantly higher crime rate than the rest of the country and New Orleans is just the worst of the South. 

Of the six states with the highest crime rates four are in the South: South Carolina,  Florida, Tennessee and Louisiana.  Only Maryland with a large population of Southern blacks and New Mexico with a large Mexican immigrant population are in the top six.

The migration of 11 million blacks who came North in the 1950s and 1960s brought their Southern crime patterns with them.  Five million returned to the South in the 1980s and 1990s.

We should also note that complaints about the high proportion of blacks on death row are complaints that ignore the data.  While blacks are only 12% of the population they are half the men on death row. 

What is happening is that half of all the murder victims are black.  Justice seems to be working. (Tables 295,299; pp195,197)

Be a bad good guy

I’ve yet to see any Lefty outrage over the U.N. terrorist list.  The Wall Street Journal reported on Oct 2nd that the Security Council has a list of 359 people who are subject to having their passports confiscated along with all their assets. Only a government can put a person on the list.  There are no requirements for hearings, evidence, appeals or civil rights protections and there is no appeal once a person has been put on the list.

No outrage from the Left yet on this issue.  Rule of thumb, since the Left considers the UN a model form of governance, if you want to be bad, establish your Lefty credentials as a good guy and become immune to criticism like the UN.

Reminds me of advice I gave to a friend about to become head of the Marxist Radio station KPFA in Berkeley a decade ago.  I said "go to the first meeting and tell everyone you hate capitalist pigs more than anyone, you want to blow up their businesses and torture them to death." I said "that will make you king of the hill, the badest of the bad and you will succeed as station manager." 

She didn't follow my advice and was kicked out by the staff after 6 months.

Data #13 education

In case you missed the investment boat a few years ago I pointed out the growing importance of for-profit-colleges and recommended a few stocks that tripled.

Now I see the underlying data behind that investment success.  Non-profit higher education institutions have grown by over one million, 46% since 1980 while the smaller number of for-profits has grown from 112,000 to 600,000 a significant growth of 500%.

A prime source of this growth has been overseas Asian students who have increased in numbers from 165,000 in 1980 to over 360,000 now.

Nanny Government

I like the term “Nanny Government.”  It means a government that treats citizens like children. 

One of the most annoying elements of Nanny Government is local parking tickets. The municipal government can be petty and picky in situations where corporations can’t be.  Auto insurance companies raise your rates after three moving violations in a three year period.  That would be the model if city governments competed in a marketplace of good governments.

We should be able to get 3-5 parking tickets in a one year period before we are penalized.  The penalty can be equal to three or five times the average ticket but we would feel more like we’re being treated as adults and not like children.  Picky, picky picky nannie government.

Data #12

Are kids taking the easy class because they come from homes where the language is spoken or are our kids preparing for a Mexican future? 

There has been no increase in the number of students taking a foreign language class in public High School over the past 30 years, yet the number taking Spanish has more than doubled from 1.8 million kids in 1970 to 4.0 million in 2000. French, German, Italian and Russian have lost out.

While we are on the subject.  High school drop outs are disproportionately of Mexican origin.  The good news is that blacks and whites are not dropping out of high school.  At age 21 12% of whites have not completed high school and 13% of blacks have not.  For Mexicans who go to school in the U.S., at age 21, 25% have not completed high school.

Bothered me

I’ve been bothered for more than 15 years by the high infant mortality (6.5 per 1,000) reported for the U.S.  The numbers (U.S. ranks 23rd down the list in infant mortality) belie the reality of our wealth and excellent health care.

The NIH spent over $100 million in Chicago in the 1980’s to reduce infant mortality and failed. 

Now, thanks to the CDC (and the Wall Street Journal that found and published the data) we have the answer. More than a third of our infant mortality is due to premature infants’ deaths.  Take a third off of our global infant mortality figures, include our geographic and ethnic diversity and we are right in the correct range of 4.3 deaths per thousand.

Top down is down

Air America went into bankruptcy yesterday and replaced another CEO. What’s the problem?

I’m sure there are enough Lefty listeners in the Bay Area, LA and NY to support a few stations running Air America, especially since Al Franken is funny some of the time and honest some of the time.

The problem was applying Lefty thinking to a commercial issue. Lefty thinking says “We are right, there is a need for Lefty talk radio, so lets get the money and put up a national program.” Just the sorts of backward thinking Lefties do everyday in Congress and dozens of State houses across the country.

That isn’t the way commerce works. Commerce requires bottom up marketing. You get your first customers, then you get more and finally you get more. Along the way you refine what you are selling.

Air America could have started with a satellite program and gained listeners slowly while running on AM radio in three cities for three hours a day. As the audience grew and the programs adapted themselves they would get a market.

I don’t think the market would be a fraction as large as Rush Limbaugh’s for one reason. The Left has the entire mainstream media doing its job. The Limbaugh audience that started in Sacramento in 1984, and grown organically since, has operated in the total absence of any mainstream media coverage of its position. It stood alone until Fox arrived and has a twenty year base of loyal listeners.

delete.

Thank you John

John Podhoretz has answered a question that has baffled me for a long time.  Podhoretz was reviewing a movie about the film rating system.  The film is a piece of Lefty nonsense but Podhoretz dealt with the question of why sex is rated so negatively while violence isn’t.  The Hollywood rating board is not out of step with America, it is made up of mostly ordinary people.

I have, for a long time, looked at non-Puritan Japan where sex and violence co-exist in manga for the answer.  The sex and violence in Japanese manga has always been more extreme than anything Americans can conceive. Japanese kids read manga and so do proper ladies sitting in the lobby of a bank. 

Now I understand manga versus filmed action.  Quentin Tarantino used cartoon footage in Kill Bill that seemed to pass the censors even in America where Tarantino's cartoon sex and violence were way over the top.

Japan doesn’t hold the answer to my question.

Podhoretz explains it: we all know the violence in the movies is fake.  That is not real blood, that is not a real brain on the floor.  On the other hand, sex is real on screen.  The actors are really doing it.  It doesn’t matter if they have cellophane between their lips.  It doesn’t matter if they actually dislike each other.  The simulation is either real or might as well be.

Puritanism is the rule: nobody anywhere should be enjoying themselves.  That explains why we have negative ratings for sex which is clearly real before our eyes on screen but don't have it for violence which we know is fake.

Definitely not me

The Michael Philips reported kidnapped in Nabulus yesterday was Michael Phillips with two Ls and was released.  You know the guy was rather pathetic because he said he didn’t change his position on Palestinians.  Which is to say he is your standard ideologue, incapable of learning.

Before I went to Israel for the first time in 1958, my father, who had been there the year before Israel was created, told me: ‘You’ll find the Arabs the most charming people in the world and the Israelis quite difficult.’  I did and it took me years to learn why.

The Arabs are charming because they will say anything to flatter you.  The Israelis, like the Japanese are, as a rule, as honest , nea candid, as human beings can get.  As time goes by, in my life, I have grown to appreciate honesty and candor, unequivocally, over flattery.

Arabs have a wonderful saying: ‘Never let your enemy know he is your enemy.’ To put it more bluntly, Arabs lie to save face at all times.  That sounds like bigotry on my part, it is only stereotyping because I’m willing to believe that there is some Arab somewhere who doesn’t lie for convenience sake. 

I’ve worked with dozens of Arabs on a very close basis for more than a dozen years.  That has been my unqualified experience: incredibly charming and flattering, lying to save face 24 hours a day seven days a week.

I will go even further, I don’t find Arabs, including intellectuals like the late Edward Said, capable of “reason.” I suspect that what we call reason is based on a combination of honesty and consistency.  Without either, the Arab condition, is one without the possibility of ‘reason.’ 

I’ve said it before and repeat here.  We are exposed to endless lies and prevarications by Arab leaders and Arab spokespeople and never hear a rebuttal from another public Arab.  Give me a counter example. 

A typical offense was a few weeks ago in a letter to the Wall Street Journal from an Arab businessman who lied and said he created the first Coke franchise and then said Israeli’s were making life so difficult that foreign businessmen couldn’t help create jobs for Palestinians. Never for one moment did this Arab suggest that the Palestinians could do something to help themselves by stopping the Kasam missiles or suicide bombers. Never even hinted at it. I claim that is typical.

Data #11

Two mental disabilities have increased at a stunning rate while everything else has remained nearly the same.  From 1995 to 2005 the number of children enrolled in special education has risen 25% while the enrollment in public schools has increased only 10%, which makes sense as more parents find 'special ed' a viable way to get more attention for their children in public schools and plenty of Federal funds. Special ed kids get 6-10 times the level of funding of other public school kids.

One area of growth has been in the category of autism.  Children admitted to special ed with autism have increased from 23,000 in this period to 141,000.  Another category that has seen a rapid growth as well; “delayed development” grew from 1,000 kids in 1995 to 70,000 in 2005. 

What is going on?  Both diagnoses are harder to do than “mental retardation” or “specific learning disabilities” the two large categories of special ed students.  Is it also easier to exagerate these categories?  (Table 249, pp 167)

Not me

Please don't worry, the report of a student kidnapped near Nabulus named Michael Philips is not me.

Although my son went into the West Bank to teach some martial arts classes, I have not gone into the West Bank.  I know that I would be uncooperative if kidnapped by Arabs in any circumstances and unlikely to survive.

Modernity

I have been asking myself ‘what is modernity?’  It is common to think of modernity in terms of technology. Modern people watch TV, drive cars, fly on airlines and use cellphones.

I don’t think that works as a usable conception of modernity. 

In my experience a town in Maine, say Bangor, feels no more modern than Isfhan in Iran, Cochin in India, Sorez in Southern France or Puebla in Mexico.  The social hierarchy in most towns in the world are rigid, pyramidal, unchanging over centuries and, to me, stultifying.  The presence of modern technology does very little to change the daily life of the inhabitants.

On the other hand, many big cities, California and specifically Los Angeles are truly modern.  The social hierarchy is nearly nonexistent, individuals lead self defined lives, with a great deal of flux in their activities over time and most importantly, their social networks are self made.  These seem to be the defining qualities of modernity.

Am I way off base on this?

Data#10 congratulate us

We read about law suits against fast food and have noxious movies about 'supersize me'.

Have you ever heard about the splendid improvements in American eating habits?

In the past two decades we Americans have reduced our beef consumption from 72 pounds per person to 62 pounds, while increasing our chicken consumption from 33 pounds to 58 pounds. 

Egg consumption is down and so is whole milk, while eating fish and drinking skim milk are up. Margarine is down while vegetable and olive oil is up.

Most surprisingly, all fresh fruits and vegetables are up, from 258 pounds per capita to 322 pounds. That is a 25% increase in fresh fruit and vegetable consumption. 

The fresh fruits and vegetables with the greatest increase in popularity are, in order: broccoli, bell peppers, tomatoes, strawberries, pineapples, cucumbers, onions, and grapes. Good work my fellow Americans. (Tables 203, 203 pp136)

Total heart beats

One theory of Chinese medicine suggests that everyone has a finite number of heartbeats in their life.  The number is roughly 2,600,000,000 beats. 

One piece of evidence supports this theory.  People who are obese (30+ BMI) between age 25 and 40 lose from one to six years of life, on average. It doesn’t help increase lifespan to lose weight later in life.

I know that exercise helps lower heart rate.  Because I’m a pilot and see my heart rate records going back to 1964, I know that my five days a week of running for three years lowered my heart rate by 15 beats per minute, average, and my continued running kept it low since then. 

I got the fifteen beat reduction which comes to 8 million extra beats per year by increasing my heart rate for an hour a day by 100 beats per minute. The exercise took an extra 1.5 million beats per year off my life long heart beat total but generated 8 million more heart beats by lowering the average for a net gain of 6.5 million beat per year.

Exercise probably helps longevity.  I will have have an average of 325 million extra heart beats during my life because of exercise for a 12% increase in my lifespan.

Data #9 obesity

Sorry to report this, but my earlier writings about obesity usually being a self control problem, like failing to get good credit, is borne out by the Census data.  My earlier observations were based on looking at the most visible non-obese category of exercise and diet fanatics: yuppies.

Going to the data and knowing that educational attainment is mostly a measure of self-control, I was not surprised to find that the difference between not finishing high school resulted in a population with 28% obese (30+BMI) compared to only 17% of the population who are among college graduates. Significant difference. (Table 197 pp133)

Summary: if you have self control, you can finish college, restrain your spending and control your eating.

One effect of minimum wage

I am involved with one business that has over forty employees in San Francisco.  All of the employees were paid more than the minimum wage.

San Francisco raised the minimum wage for businesses in the City and the first effect was to drive out all minimum wage businesses that could move.  The entire sewing trade moved next door to Daly City. Over 1,000 businesses left in the first few months of the new law.

The S.F. minimum wage keeps rising and will reach $9.25 per hour next year.  Not only did this specifically hurt all the restaurants in the City with non-family employees (about 2,000) because waiters are all paid minimum wage.  Waiters usually receive two thirds of their wages in tips on top of their minimum wage.

Now it turns out that everyone earning within a few dollars of the minimum wage is demanding a raise.  People at the $9.50 to $ 12.00 per hour level consider their wages as a ratio to the minimum.  As the minimum goes up they want to maintain their $1.00 to $3.00 advantage.

One solution businesses have used to pay the higher wages has been to eliminate all medical coverage on employees.  Price increases are occurring in some retail fields but in the short run cost cutting has been implemented.  Costs being cut include sanitation, product quality, capital improvements and all employee benefits.

It is hard to argue that our anti-commerce Board of Supervisors has done something to help workers with their City wide requirement of a high minimum wage.

Data #8 education

The biggest current drop-out problem is with Mexican-Americans.  Since the 1960’s the proportion of our population that has graduated from high school has risen from 43% among whites and only 20% among blacks to 85% for whites and 80% among blacks.  A truly significant change for America and a reflection of the success of blacks in catching up and getting an education.

Mexican-Americans have only risen from under 20% in 1960 to 51% three years ago. When you hear 'drop-out' think Mexican-American. (Table 214 pp147)

Rental market

Craig’s list has changed the rental market in San Francisco.

Before Craig’s list became the market for rental apartments, the usual list of neighborhoods in newspapers and rental agencies ranged from nine to thirteen. There never were such neighborhoods as the simplistic short list identified.

Craig’s list has 34 neighborhoods to choose from. Craig’s 34 neighborhoods are much closer to social reality.  The consequence is that people know the neighborhoods they want to live in. With Craig’s list they don’t waste their time looking in the wrong places.

Consequence: some of the newly defined tiny neighborhoods are able to get a premium on rent because there are few other listings in that area and landlords have figured that out thanks to Craig‘s list.

Data # 7 politics

The Democrats have a problem that I haven’t seen discussed anywhere.

Between the 2000 and the 2004 presidential elections, the proportion of Democrats who graduated from high school and those who had some college declined compared to Republicans.  The proportion of Democrats who graduated and went to college declined from 52% to 46% while the Republicans rose from 48% to 54%.

With a steady increase in the educational level of Americans, it doesn’t look like the Democrats are benefiting, even with most of the Ivy League schools in the grip of an anti-American fever. (Table 386 pp 247)