American guns

The best kept stats seem to be for lethal gun use. Using these as a rough proxy for the ratio of times that guns are used in a non-lethal way we find that defense counts for less than 1 in a thousand times that guns are used. For example, here are some numbers from 2010:

    

There were 30,470 deaths by firearm in USA in 2010

• 19,392 suicides  and
• 11,078 homicides, including:
• 1,923 instances of killing during the commission of a felony, of which a mere 236 were the killing of a felon, during the commission of a felony, by a private citizen

You are 14 times more likely to use your gun to kill someone you know during an argument than you are to use it to defend your home.

 

A child in your house is more likely to use that gun to kill himself or another child than you are to use it defensively.

 

And you are about a hundred times more likely to use it to kill yourself during a bad moment than you are to use it against an intruder.

 

Over the last week I've been checking the claims that gun proliferation reduces violent crime and find them to be unfounded; The reductions in violent crime following introduction of "right-to-carry" and other state laws to encourage gun presence are no greater (actually marginally less) than year-by-year reductions in crime that had already been occurring everywhere in the US since 1990. More guns are not correlated with less crime.

 

Civilization "would be a good idea" but cannot stop massacres. That can only come from limiting civilian access to weapons of extraordinary destructive power.

 

Tweeting guns

So I finally broke down and posted my first tweet just now.

I wanted to encourage the excellent reporting by DonLemonCNN. He is at the site of the Sandy Hook school massacre and is holding the line against the "Guns don't kill people..." bullshit. Good for him.

I cannot just wrap Christmas presents while this is going on. I challenge myself to find the stats (FBI?) and discover the ratio of crimes committed with a gun to "self defense" (if such a thing actually exists) using a gun.
 
This is especially real to me because my personnal ancestry investigations turned up birth registries for ancestors of mine in Sandy Hook hundreds of years ago, along with expense claims for militia call-up of other ancestors. We are a records-keeping people! It should be possible to introduce some facts to the guns control "debate" about to happen.

Cut-and-paste lies did not work!!

Why the next four years would be different

because the next four years would not start with the economy in free-fall

If only Obama

From the transcript, about a quarter of the way through the Presidential debate October 3rd:

MR. ROMNEY: Number two, let's look at history. My plan is not like anything that's been tried before. My plan is to bring down rates but also bring down deductions and exemptions and credits at the same time so the revenue stays in, but that we bring down rates to get more people working.

 

If only Obama had pointed out that Romney's plan to "bring down rates to get more people working" HAS in fact been tried before. Regan tried it (remember the 'Laffer curve'?) and Bush tried it. They have also tried it in recent years in Britain and elsewhere.

Every time it has been tried, the policy of cutting taxes or tax rates has resulted in ballooning deficits.  Even when accompanied by savagely reduced government spending, as in Britain, reducing taxes DOES NOT result in compensating higher growth of the economy. This is supply-side "fairy dust" and it does not work.

If the new wrinkle is that the existing "revenue stays in" then how, exactly, is that supposed to put more money in people's pockets to create the predicted economic growth? How does that "get more people working"? It doesn't !
 
How can you cut rates by 20 percent and keep the same revenue anyway? Eliminating deductions can't do it. There simply are not enough deductions available to compensate for a 20 percent drop. Deficits increase,  rolling into an INCREASINGLY inflated debt.
 
 

Rep vs Dem model of how economy works

The pending American election poses one big question:

How to strengthen the economy ?

The answer depends on how you think the economy works.


***

Republicans think it all comes down to motivation: They believe that many people will work hard and be productive if, and only if, the alternative is starvation. According to this world view BOTH eventual success AND opportunity in the first place are created by effort alone.

In this model of the world the Haitian economy is a mess because people have found a way to subsist with minimal effort. Stop enabling this and everyone will get up off their ass and get to work.

Romney’s magic formula for economic recovery is to make real the threat that your children will starve if you don’t hustle; In his worldview, that hustle is the ONLY missing element for economic recovery.

  

***

Democrats have a different model: They believe that effort, though necessary, is not sufficient. Building a business also requires access to consumers, to a workforce with relevant skills, to affordable credit, to usable public infrastructure and to physical security.

Most of all it requires a functional education.
 
Democrats believe that government has a unique role to play in removing barriers to entry to the world of productive activity. Locked doors stand between many people and the marketplace; Government unlocks them.

 

Reince Priebus

Perhaps the GOP's Reince Priebus is trying to hide an uncomfortable truth... He is a secret greenie!


Reince Priebus
=
Prince Rebus [i.e.
 I b Prince ReUse]

 

or
maybe he actually is cold hearted...

Reince Priebus
=
Brine super ice

Justice and Mercy

By the end of his book Haight was representing Liberals as believers in equality of opportunity rather than equality of outcome. He did not acknowledge the change in his position, though, so I wonder if the chapter 7 statements reflected an overlooked residual, pre-edit state ?

Anyway I still disagree with the author about a few points. He contrasts what he describes as a liberal lack of some kinds of moral measurement with more numerous conservative dimensions of morality as if these were opposing responses. I actually believe that mercy is often applied by liberals only after they have gone through the same justice calculations as conservatives. In the courts, 'sentencing' follows 'conviction', it is not an alternative to conviction.
 
This is not just a metaphor; Conservatives are much more likely to favour mandatory sentencing for crimes. Liberals can also believe an act is wrong, but ask that before we condemn the actor let us remember that the guilty are sometimes confused by complexity, mistaken about missing information or constrained by the power of others. These conditions do not make an act less wrong, but they may mitigate punishment.

For liberals guilt and knowledge are matters of degree. For conservatives, these are absolutes. Haight is mistaken when he describes Liberals as less complex or less nuanced than Conservatives.

Jonathan Haidt and the Righteous Mind

I am about halfway through "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion” by Jonathan Haidt. So far it has been quite persuasive, but I just stubbed my toe on chapter 7: The moral foundation of politics.
Haight says:

“Everyone cares about fairness, but there are two major kinds. On the left, fairness often implies equality, but on the right it means proportionality – people should be rewarded in proportion to what they contribute, even if that guarentees unequal outcomes.”

  
I myself have NOT observed that “On the left, fairness often implies equality” of outcomes. Perhaps a handfull of communists believed that generations ago, far away across the planet but no-one I’ve ever met thinks it would be a good idea.
 

My left-leaning friends are just fine with unequal outcomes. What they do want to see is widely available opportunity… access… having a chance.

 

What anyone does with opportunity is up to the individual. We benefit from rewards earned by our own effort and skill. It is, however, profoundly unfair to condemn to eternal misery someone who was never allowed to compete in the first place, or who ran handicapped by illiteracy, bigotry, malnutrition or illness.

  
Taxation is NOT about redistribution of wealth.
It IS about removing barriers to competition and supporting a democratically designed institutional framework of opportunity and accountability for everyone. It is about public health and safety. It is about maintaining the system that made your own acheivements possible.  

   

Haight claims to have been raised a liberal, then he says things like this. It is not the first time in this book that I have questioned his statements, but this one is outrageous.

Hyperbolic Discounting

Hyperbolic Discounting is the act of over-weighting short term pain and under-weighting any resulting long term gain.

For an explanation of the term 'hyperbolic discounting' see the book review page of this blog. In 'Filthy Lucre' Joseph Heath writes in great detail about public policy implementation and the ways that details can derail intent.

In this post I had intended to share a few thoughts about how this concept resonnates with personnal freedom and commitment. I will, however, demonstrate it instead by going to a scheduled class at the gym. 

Americans got another thing right

Give Americans their due... The constitutional separation of Church and State was brilliant. It meant that 'citizen' was a category that transcended other tribal or sectarian affiliations.

Now, however, by turning the Republican Party into a tribe whose interests are more important than those of the wider country; by being willing to destroy government rather than let any part of it remain in the hands of the other sect; by playing 'chicken' with the national credit rating and by sheer pig-headedness they abdicate their own citizenship.

They aren't even coherent. They obstruct health-care reform that would lower costs over-all, improve the physical well-being of tens of millions of fellow citizens and prevent half-a-million bankruptcies caused each year by health care expense.

They would rather inflict pain, sufferring and unnecessary costs on it than allow the country to benefit in any way during a presidential administration of the other camp. This is not fiscal prudence, it is a self-inflicted wound. These malice-crazed fools have a real shot at grabbing the steering wheel in November.
 
God help them all.

Federation and the Other Net

We take our safety nets so much for granted that we no longer see they exist. It is gratifying to forget the occasional misstep and to remember our own success as a purely independent merit-fueled progress. 
 
Help does not have to have been continuous... A single out-thrust hand that prevented us from stepping off the curb in front of a car that might have killed us, that single momentary gesture, made everything since possible.

The concept of 'too big to fail' in banking reminds us that any institution, any person, any state no matter how strong before or after, can pass through a moment when their very existence is at stake.
 
In our personal lives we understand there will be times when a friend needs to camp on your couch, or you on theirs.

The Canadian Federation is built on the understanding that the one-way flow of gift from today's 'have' to 'have-not' provinces is in everybody's long term interest. Maybe the flow has been one-way for decades, but for that one fleeting crucial moment when we most need it, the flow will come to us and make our own future possible.

Americans do not even see that they also catch each other when they fall. It just happens. It's just there.

George Soros writes:
"The authorities didn’t understand the nature of the euro crisis; they thought it is a fiscal problem while it is more of a banking problem and a problem of competitiveness. And they applied the wrong remedy: you cannot reduce the debt burden by shrinking the economy, only by growing your way out of it. The crisis is still growing because of a failure to understand the dynamics of social change; policy measures that could have worked at one point in time were no longer sufficient by the time they were applied."

Forming a European Federation means a commitment to being there for each other; It means accepting that we are ALL stronger when we stand together.
  
----
This was originally written in June, when the EU had just rejected Euro-bonds (again) because the Germans failed to commit resources.

IT "skills shortage"

There is much moaning about the "failure" of schools to produce IT professionals in sufficient quantity and quality for industry needs in North America.            
 
In fact, schools have never been the source of these desired skills. I have been an IT professional for more than three decades. It has always been the case that the most valuable skills are acquired on the job.    
 
I graduated with a BSc in Computer Science and started working for IBM in the eighties supporting mainframe operating systems. When I joined I was given a booklet claiming that IBM had never laid anyone off even during "the great depression" and that I was embarking on a lifetime career. The people I worked with certainly believed that and were totally committed to the wellbeing of the company and its clients. We were proud to work 'round the clock, if needed. We were a team.        
   
The team looked like this: There were a few senior hands who mentored the rest, recommended training and rescued us when we got in over our heads. The bulk of the team consisted of smart, well trained, dedicated professionals. We could stretch ourselves and be creative in our diagnostic techniques and solutions because we knew we were working with a net. Then there were always newbies coming along; They got stuck with the tedious work that was, nonetheless, good training.       
     
So the conveyor belt was always full. Ever more skilled workers were continuously moving into positions of greater responsibility. The system worked for everyone. Then, in the early nineties, management at our company and at our major clients decided that they wouldn't pay for a team or training or learning of any kind. The expensive senior staff were 'packaged out'. Then the juniors with their lower skills. Then the ones in the middle were 'outsourced' and only brought in on contract for specific, limited tasks.  
   
After two decades of this those of us who were originally in that middle group have become senior in our skills and earning capacity. We pay for our own upgrades and work mostly as independant contractors. For two decades the money that companies should have put back into developing IT staff has instead been paid out in bonuses to greedy, foolish managers. Now they wonder why there is a shortage of technical skill needed for their business.
  
They stopped watering the garden then wonder why it turned into a desert.     
  
I gnash my teeth in their general direction.

Reading

How-to read in bed

       

Not that I don’t love my Kindle, I really do, but I can’t read it in bed without having a light on and, well, I love my husband more.
 
So now I have a Blackberry Playbook running the most excellent app, BookReader by Untangleddev.
 
All you have to do is strip the DRM out of the Kindle mobi files and covert them to epub format, both of which you can do using Calibre, download them to the playbook et viola! reading heaven.
 
Bookreader has a configurable presentation so you can get it *just* right for your own eyes but best of all– you can click-to the in-text web references (those dotted underlines in Kindle are links!!).

American Empire

Republican candidate Rick Santorum is keen to expand the "American Empire".
http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2012/0117/How-Rick-Santorum-and-America-can-be-exceptional-Avoid-empire

Like the English centuries ago, he feels it is his nation's destiny to bring Christianity to the heathen and, for their own good, to dominate the 95% of humanity outside of the homeland.

He seems unaware that the United States was founded in opposition to that very concept, declaring their own independence and freedom as fundamental rights. Why does he think the people of the rest of the world want anything less for themselves?
  

All things not equal

Why taxes are good value for the money
  

Reason 1:  Justice … Effort is necessary but not sufficient for success.

All other things being equal, the person making the greatest effort will, over time, have the greatest success. All other things, however, are not equal.

Society has an interest in leveling the playing field and making sure that everyone plays by the same rules. We all suffer, even the rich (eventually) if barriers to entry cause ecconomic stagnation

Reason 2:  Efficiency … Public frameworks make business possible.

“Plug-and-play” environments minimize barriers to entry 

Reason 3: Safety … It is A LOT easier to prevent a disaster than it is to clean up after one

Regulation prevents those gambling on safety from gaining a cost advantage over more responsible players