Wealth and the Standard of Living

I just read over this article, and I'm particularly interested in the first part. Specifically, this quote

But rage against the 1% is misplaced. Income is not a zero-sum game: The rich aren't getting wealthier at the expense of the poor. Harvard's Lawrence Katz has calculated that even if all the gains of the top 1% were redistributed to the 99%, household incomes would go up by less than half of what they would if everyone had a college degree.

That shit is awful.

Let's leave aside the fact that college isn't right for everybody. This quote is saying that if everyone in the United States had a college degree that our incomes would go up substantially more than by redistributing income from the 1% to the 99%. I certainly understand how Harvard's Lawrence Katz calculated that figure, but it ignores many things.

First of all, if Americans did become substantially more wealthy, where would that money come from? Other countries. The other countries of the world would necessarily become poorer, because with a fixed level of production, wealth is a zero-sum game (or, rather, a fixed-sum game). Consider this, everything that I (and you, and everybody else) consume is produced somewhere else. So by extrapolation, the sum of all consumption equals the sum of all production.

 The standard of living is this figure divided by the world's population. And when I talk production, I mean real, physical goods. When people produce non-physical goods such as entertainment or news they are bartering insight, information, and entertainment for money which they then go and exchange for goods.

There are only two ways to increase the worldwide standard of living. The first is to increase production. This is done by getting more people involved in production or by making production more efficient. The other way is to reduce the population, which is what I like to call "the psychopath option". I think we can all agree that murdering people who don't produce isn't the right way to go here.

So what are some ways we can increase production? Technology is the first that comes to mind. Technology allows you to harvest resources that were previously unharvestable. It allows you to use resources more efficiently, producing more goods from the same amount of material. And it allows you to create goods using fewer people, which allows those people to work on producing goods in other ways.

The other way is to get more people involved in the production of goods. There are tons of places in the world where there aren't good ways/places for people to work or make goods. If you really want to help an impoverished area, find a business that you could start there.

Another way is to recycle more. It let's you get more use out of the same resources. MAGIC!

So even if everyone in America had a college degree, that wouldn't really fix the really problem, it would just toss the problem on somebody else's shoulders. We need to focus on technology and worldwide jobs growth. America will benefit from helping out other nations.

Now, this isn't all to say that education is a bad thing. Education is good. Education allows people to fulfill their maximum potential. It will create more technological innovators whose ideas will allows us to produce more efficiently. It will do so many things. But education isn't the only thing that needs to be done. Jobs aren't the only thing that needs to be done. The income disparity problem, specifically as it relates to taxation, needs to be fixed. That is just the beginning of what needs to be done.

Now let's try and forget about the fact that the world only has limited resources and that eventually our population will grow to a level where poverty and its effects will be absolutely awful. Population growth is something that we need to work on because it's a hell of a lot faster than most people realize it is.

It hasn't been a good week.

The only thing keeping me going.

This week has been a pretty bad week. The first bad thing is that on Wednesday, Sarah got into a car wreck when she was leaving work. Someone was coming but they had their blinker on and were slowing down like they were going to turn in. She went out but they kept going straight. They told the officer that they were slowing down to turn in down the road, despite the fact that the next turn in was at least 150 feet down the road and it would have been irresponsible to turn on their blinker and slow down that early. She is fortunately completely fine despite the fact that, even at the slow speed the accident occurred at, this is what happened to her car

The door is ruined, the frame where the door latches to the car is bent, nothing forms a seal to keep out the elements, the door doesn't open, and the inside is a bit squished too. The paramedics and the officer were very surprised that she was okay. They would look at the car and then back at her and ask, "Are you sure you're okay." We went to the doctor the next day just to make sure and yeah, she's okay.

Right now we're in the how-much-would-this-cost-to-fix-and-would-it-be-better-just-to-sell-it-for-parts-and-buy-something-else phase. We're looking around and will hopefully have that cleared up in the next week or so. We're going to start by trying the maybe-we-can-just-use-one-vehicle strategy, with our schedules it will probably work, even if it may trap her at home when I'm at work (unless she wants to take me to work <wink>).

It gets worse
At work on Friday we learned that the medicare contract that we work is (finally) going to be awarded to another company. This means that at some point in the next (roughly) three months I won't have a job there anymore. They're looking for work to do once the contract expires, but everything that's been talked about essentially wouldn't include me.

This contract bidding process has apparently been going on for five years, and was something that I knew about when I accepted the job. I accepted the job because, well, I hadn't had a 'real job' doing statistics before and I definitely needed the experience/recommendation/everything so that I could leverage it for a job that I really wanted. I even knew that we would be hearing about the contract this week or next and I knew that we probably wouldn't get it, but actually having it happen really hits hard.

So now begins the process of looking for a new job. Although I'm certainly going to be checking local (central Arkansas) places for jobs, I'm not optimistic of the prospects. So I'm definitely going to be checking other states (mostly more northern states) for places to work. I'll also be doing online searches and other things. You'll probably hear more about this in the future from me. I have literally drawn up a document that I have called my "Action Plan" for how I'm going to deal with this.

If I had to describe everything in a picture, it would be this:

OH, and Fred broke my watch last week, also. It wasn't intentional, since he's a cat and I don't think he harbors ill will against my watch, but it is no less frustrating. It's just the band and I'm 99% sure it can be fixed, but UGH.

There are some other things going on now, but they aren't definite so I won't talk about it yet. This would be something very positive that I'm quite excited about. It's a reaction to what has happened above and would make me very happy.

Politics: Is 50% enough?

I've been sitting on this post for a while and just decided to bite the bullet and hit 'Publish'.

Typically, when people vote on something, it's agreed that majority rules. Put another way, whatever opinion has more than 50% support wins. Recently I've been wondering if that's good enough. Should a simple majority rule? Or should more things require a supermajority?

A supermajority is when more than 50% support is required to make something pass. For example, in order to remove the President of the United States from office, the House of Representatives must pass a simple majority to impeach the president and then the Senate must pass a 2/3 majority (67 of the total 100 available votes). A three-fifths supermajority is required to pass a bill with no further debate (i.e. break a filibuster) and either chamber of Congress can forcibly remove one of its members with a two-thirds supermarjority. This was last done in 2002. A two-thirds supermajority can also overturn a presidential veto.

When is a majority necessary?
A simple majority is necessary when some sort of positive resolution must be made. For example, a simple majority is necessary for all elections, because somebody must hold the office. Furthermore, say you were a member of a group of travelers going through the forest and you came upon a fork in the road. The group must come to a decision about with path to take, if you required a supermajority consensus, then you may not be able to come to a resolution.

However, most bills don't require an immediate resolution. They aren't "We will do A, and if we don't decide to do A then we must decide to do B." If A doesn't pass, A can be voted on again at a later date.

What's wrong with a simple majority?
As it stands, a simple majority is enough to strip people of their rights. This allows just slightly more than half of a group to restrict the rights of the other half. Personally, that doesn't seem right to me. Is 50% strong enough to force a piece of legislation on people when so many disagree with it? As it stands in the United States, the majority rules and the minority suffers.

The other problem with a simple majority system is how it plays in with our system of voting and our party system. As I've noted before, our method of voting and how it interacts with our party system and the public creates a situation where party representation in Congress is A) always very close to 50% and B) bounces across that line regularly. This has the effect of the dominant party changing hands frequently and then using their newfound power to undo previously passed legislation. One party bullies their way into passing legislation, and then the next time congress changes hands it can easily get repealed.

Could we force supermajority votes on certain topics?
In New York, most tax increases requires a 60% supermajority vote. So this is certainly something that could be done; the main question is what would we want a supermajority vote for and how enforceable that is.

Personally, I would like to see a supermajority vote on any legislation that would restrict the rights of any person. Legislation that opens up rights that were previously closed to a group of people would still require the standard 50%. I don't know what kind of supermajority I would like to enforce on it, but I know I would like one. In a country that is founded on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, you need to be very strong in your convictions before you restrict the rights of any person.

One thing I wonder is if a slight supermajority, say 55%, may just be good to require for all legislation. The immediate thought that I have is that no legislation would ever pass; the opposing party could just block everything. But that's thinking too simply, I feel. The real question is, what changes would be required of congresspersons if such a thing were true?

No legislation could pass unless it had support, at least some, from both sides. Legislation would be less controversial, less contentious. It would force congress to work together, to give things up on both sides. I think this might lessen tensions in Congress, and make the two parties less violently opposed to each other.

There is a potential downside, however. If you consider that congress/law is on a path towards what's best (even if it is slow, often), then this could be seen as a impediment to progress. If the overall trend is towards a better United States, then this would slow that progress if it were implemented across the board. Sure, it would slow down/stop legislation that would take us backwards, but it would also slow/stop legislation that would push us forward. So implementing this across the board would be a bad idea.

Another problem with this would be our current electoral system. As I've mentioned before, our system for electing representative drives congress towards ~50% representation. This would give the minority party the power to veto anything they want. Quite frankly, my hope for cooperation from both sides seems pretty unlikely, given how much like children they act. So a blanket 55% majority needed would definitely not work with our current political system. If a legislature were not composed of two parties embroiled in such a close battle for the majority constantly, if there were, say, more than two viable parties, then there is definitely a potential for this to be a meaningful way to operate.

Supermajorities are a very interesting thing to consider. If I were creating a new country from scratch I would strongly consider an expanded role for them in legislature. However, they don't fit within our current system due to our tense 50-50 party politics. It's a shame really, because I feel we deserve better. Perhaps in a country with different system for presidential and legislative elections, this would be a much better idea.

Valentines Day!

Yesterday was Valentine's day. My day began like any other, since I wasn't going to present Sarah with anything while she was asleep/waking up. I went to work, where I was asked by my female coworkers repeatedly if I had done anything for Sarah that day. When I went home for lunch, however, I presented her with Valentines.

At first, I presented her with a joke card. One of those ones that tries to be sexy. It said, "You+Me+Naked+Chocolate Sauce =" then on the inside "Happy Valentines Day." I changed it to, "Naked Ice Cream Eating, YEAH!". This card was accompanied by some candy. THEN, I went and got another card, this one was another funny one about how I'm not sick of her yet, blah blah blah. It was presented alongside a serious gift, a blu-ray of The Princess Bride. THEN, I went and got another card, a serious, pretty, lovey card. After she finished reading it I gave her the final gift: The blu-ray deluxe edition of Twilight. I was worried she was going to die from laughing as much as she was at this gift. I bought it for her because we'll periodically rent it so we can laugh at it and watch the RiffTrax for it.

She is going to get me the golden bananadragon. I say going to because the queue was too long to get it for me yesterday. We then had a lovely dinner at Jimmy Johns (because we're classy, damnit) and then we watched TV together. Happy Valentine's Day.

In WoW news, I keep forgetting to do my daily dungeon for the holiday. Oh well, what are you going to do. I doubt I'll get anything cool out of it anyway.

Dinner Tonight

We went to IHOP for dinner tonight, because I owed Sarah breakfast for dinner, and some really interesting stuff was going on at the tables near us. At the table behind Sarah, the guy spent the whole time talking about Coke, as in Coca Cola. First he talked about the Coke Freestyle machines and how they're super cool and how they were designed by Ferrari (I don't actually know if that's true). Then he spent an inordinate amount of time talking about New Coke and about where it was a great or terrible business decision. He has apparently written at least 3 papers about Coke and, from what I could observe, was drinking a Coke during the meal. He was with a woman. I presume they were on a date, since I'd think that if you were in a relationship with someone you would have already released your Coke craziness on them before you managed to make it to that point.

At another table nearby, I first noticed that the guy was just staring at his phone and completely ignoring the woman he was with. As I paid more attention, things started to seem more unfortunate to me. I could tell that she was talking to him, but that he was hardly saying anything, if anything at all. She was leaned forward, staring at him directly, really trying to engage with him but he continued to ignore her. She was even holding his free hand across the table as she was trying to engage him in conversation. I only saw him make eye contact with her briefly. Even when their food came, phone.

It really seemed like she was trying to talk to him about something important. Sarah said it seemed like he felt guilty about something. I felt really bad for her. I wanted to go up to her and say something like, "Are you okay?" when he went to the bathroom. I wanted to tell her that he would probably always be a dick and that she shouldn't be with him, but I felt if I did so it wouldn't be well received and would be an incredibly awkward gesture. Now I kinda with I had said something to her. She deserves better.

The last weird thing was that at one point our waiter asked us if we would like to make a donation to the Arkansas Children's Hospital, which we did take the time to do. The weird part was that he told us that his manager isn't only making them ask patrons to do this, but that if they don't perform successfully at soliciting these donations from people that they will lose shifts, since the donations are a big tax writeoff for the company. I just thought that was horrible. I'm not at all surprised that a manager would do that, but I'm very disappointed that they would do that. I left a fairly nice tip for our waiter for having to put up with that kind of shit.