Why Star Trek (Film 2009) is Science Fiction

Because in circa 2243 Nokia still exists as a company/brand.

The Difference Between Fantasy and Economics

There are two novels that can change a bookish 14-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

SergeantHeretic in the thread,

The I.S.O.T.ed house: One Woman goes from 2012 to 1952,

at AH.com

The South will NOT "Rise Again"

Deeply depressing overview of the American South, that is their South East, by someone who currently lives there.

"It will never, ever occur to this person that the causation just might work the other way: if you live in a blue state, with all its high taxes and regulations to try to protect people, you might be more likely to be poor.

Anyone who thinks small towns and rural areas are a "social Darwinist's paradise" doesn't deserve to be read any further than that."

I'm trying to curtail the length of my posts on this site, so maybe this won't be as complete as it should.

I am from the South, and currently live there again. Probably I'm going to leave again one day, and never go back, but that is a story for another day.

Additionally I am from the rural south. Now let me say what this post is all about:

There is literally nothing left in the rural south that is economically viable. The world of even 50 years ago is gone. Agriculture is a game that takes serious funds to operate now. You still see some guys do the little watermelon farming and whatnot, but essentially they are playing at it. The mills are gone now, and the other assorted factories that were once there are gone as well.

There are still some agriculture jobs, but not many. Mechanized agriculture has totally destroyed the world that existed as short a time ago as the 50's.

If it weren't for transfer payments like Social Security, Welfare, Food Stamps and the like it would not be financially possible to support yourself in these areas, let alone pay for things like schools (and football teams).

Even if you got the land for free.

The sad fact is that essentially no one is interested in these areas enough to even be Darwinian about it anymore.

sunbeam / Cail Corashev on Steve Sailer's 

post Dept. of Not Getting Moynihan's Joke

  about the Canadian Border.

The Great Man Theory and American Economic History

History has gone through many twists and turns over the past the century. The Great Man Theory has now been mostly discredited as historians of the annales school and others have examined the socio-economic conditions that give rise to the "great men" and the sea they swim in. That said it is useful to examine the captains of industry that made our near modern world and primordial ooze they crawled out of. This series seems, according to promo and this video, to be about a bunch of American "robber barons". As an aside the term "robber baron" is like "creeping barrage", it is term which is made of two synonyms.  The series is about the people who in the generations between the US Civil War an d the Great War built the industrial and technological capacity of the US.

Lately thinking of the recent Florida incarceration of Conrad Black I think how unlovable are all the press barons I have ever learned about. It made me think at first the interest in news corrupted and ink stained one's soul. Press Barons were creeps not because they saw newspapers as avenue of profit or as a venue of information but as a means of power. Using such a definition Lenin and Hitler were also Press Lords.

There have been power hungry men through out history.  They trundle over the earth exercising petty tyrannies extending over a some few generations. At certain hinge points their power can be magnified and men like Caesar, Genghis Khan and Cortez change the world forever.

Theoretical, Historical and Current Air Lanes of The World

Years ago on this blog I posted a link to a study of shipping lanes in the 18th and 19th centuries, Windjammer and East Indiaman Shipping Lanes. Now very little commercial cargo is shipped on sailing ships. Instead now there are container ships and air cargo. Weirdly there is a coincidence. Fed Ex according to Wiki shipped 15 million tonne kilometers in 2004.  One clipper, The Blackadder, with a tonnage of 900 tons on a trip to Sydney was capable of shpping 20 million tonne kilometers in one 2 month voyage.

Here is a map of the air lanes of the world published as of 1944 from The Atlas of Global Geography. Link from Thande in Things that look like alternate history, but aren't at AH.com. Look at how Canada is nearly empty of air routes. And how the USSR has dense network of air routes compared to China, India and the Middle East.

Here is a map from 1920 about possible air lanes from The People's Atlas. This atlas was published so soon after WW1 with the result one of the only sections that is not prewar is this section. Helpfully it also has pictures of warplanes drawn to scale. As you can see the scale it presumes that commercial air travel was going to limp along at 100 miles per hour. What may please the those futurists who drew this map is that four airlines that were founded in 1920 still exist.

Here is an illustration of the air traffic in 2008 based on observed contrails. It is from a blog concerned with contrails, Contrail Science. The image below comes from a blog post about the growth of air travel in last 30 years, 30 Years of Airline Travel. The paper that blogpost is based on is not available.

Taxes Versus Charity

I was listening to NPR coverage of the US Republican convention, while playing Civilization V. In a speech by Mike Huckabee he contrasted Obama's and Romney's charitable giving. In Huckabee's numbers Obama gave 2% versus Romney's 16%. Admittedly in the tax returns that Romney released showed he pay taxes at a rate of 15%. More of Obama's income is "earned" than Romney. However the idea to replace public sources of welfare with private sources of charity is a nonstarter. It has already been tried in the 18th and 19th century, read Dickens et al. 

Misogynist Economist Joke

"I'm sorry you're so jealous of economists. Did they steal your wife?"

Yeah but they calculated that she was a Declining Value Asset and that the cost of entering into a long-term partnership with her held a strong negative correlation with their future growth aspiration graph, so they returned her. 

Truth in a discussion

 on Steve Sailer's blog about

this graph

Workforce Dumping - Update

There is a move by the Canadian government and business interests to admit 700,000 people in one year to clear the immigration backlog. In a move to support this action there have been a number stories sprinkled throughout the media about worthy small business that have trouble recruiting enough people. There was a story last night of a truck manufacturer and its trouble recruiting welders. Today in the Globe and Mail Jeffery Simpson had a snarky column about how Canadian employers have to recruit aboard because locals are unreliable. In this Simpson gave the example of Stanfield, Underwear makers, and how it has trouble recruiting locals (id est Canadians) because they (a) can't work (b) won't work (c) work badly.

My answer to these champions of free enterprise is pay more money. People are willing to do more for union wages (living) than for a few bucks above minimum. For the sake of saving $5 bucks a hour our champions of industry want more people in the country.

In Alberta there is an example of the difference over time between high quality, high wage, low turnover, jobs with low quality, low wage, high turnover, jobs. A couple decades ago when meat packing plants were primarily in cities there was a long strike at Gainers against Peter Pocklington. Pocklington wanted to reduce the wages at Gainers, a union shop, to a couple of dollars above minimum wage. Now the biggest Albertan packing plant is in Brooks. The wages there are $10/hr versus $20/hr twenty years ago at Gainers. After the plant was established it quickly ran out of people who would work at slaughterhouse for $10/hr. So the company turned to mass immigration.

In the NY Times there is a story of illegal immigrants that have been hired by contractors to clean up New Orleans. The locals are very angry with this development. The question is why would government contractors would feel they are free to hire illegals. Because in America immigration policy is aimed at maximizing are creating a large pool of insecure workers. Otherwise their illegal immigration problem would disappear if the crime of immigration violation would apply equally to employers as with the employees.

Mass immigration is crutch for bad employees. Productivity improvements occurs when more value added is created for each additional input. Attempting to get discounts on labour, raw material and energy is just way of getting productivity increases on the cheap. Technological improvements are more long lasting than any slight temporary saving. Also the business may be saving money through negative externalities as its costs are borne by the wider public.

Note

National contractors in New Orleans preferring to hire illegal immigrants over locals, In Louisiana, Worker Influx Causes Ill Will

I can't link to the Jeffery Simpson oped. The Globe and Mail's website has gotten worse. They have put more and more of their content behind a paid registration screen.

Update: November 6, 2005
Here is a recent story, link in cutout limbo, from the wire service AP about the abuse of illegal workers. A number were employed by subcontractors of a subsidiary of Haliburton. The entire crew were stiffed out of their pay. These "white collar" crimes are fraud, theft, and conspiracy. The local authorities should lay these and RICO charges all the way up the chain from subcontractor to Haliburton. The local law enforcement should actually lay charges and enforce laws but the practice of condoning immigration offenses by employers in the US has become traditional. 

Update 08/04/2012: For greater visibility.

Harry Crane (Head of Media) and his Pay at SCDP in 1966

Roger Sterling pays Harry Crane $1100 to give up his windowed office in Mad Men S05E01. This supposedly equals his net monthly take home pay. Looking at historical tax rates at the (US) Tax Foundation on can calculate that Crane is making about $20K in the middle of 1966. According to Measuring Worth that has a economic value of somewhere between $200K and $350K.

The Tax foundation also has inflation adjusted numbers. Measuring Worth however has measures more than just straight inflation rates but also the relative economic value, or clout, of money in the past.

There is another thing about this scene. Roger Sterling is walking around with the equivalent of $10 grand in his pocket. For the same relative value the US should have a $1000 bill. The Euro comes in 500 Euro bills. To fight the drug war the US made handling of large sums of money difficult and expensive in time and regulation. The other reason why the Roger Sterling's of today don't walk around with wads of wads of cash large enough to wear out their pockets is because of credit cards. Today Roger Sterling would have a black AMEX and only just enough currency to tip well.

Looking Back on Bohemian New York

It [early '70's New York] must have seemed that absolutely anything was possible.

Donald Macleod

Well, that's true. Most everything was possible, except making a living. And we couldn't figure out how to do that.

Phillip Glass

Interview On BBC Radio  3 

Composer of the Week

20 Mar 2012

 

Why I Hate Facebook

I am not on Facebook. I will never be on Facebook.

The Black Market Burgers of Connecticut 1963

The above is a screen capture from the new TV Show Pan Am, S01E02. For 1963 the price for a onion-less, chili-less, cheese-less burger costs somewhere between $10 to $40 in today's currency, according to Measuring Worth. It seems a little high.

Mad Men Comparing Cars versus Trains

Mad Men On Trains from Rich Sommer

There is a theory that the only things that need to be actively and energetically sold are things that are bad deals. Another thought is that only things are profitable enough to support salesmen are going to sold by salesmen. I once knew a guy who made a good living selling cell phones back in the early '90's. Now cell phones are a commodity business and are not sold by salesmen. Mutual funds and whole life insurance

There is something else going on in this piece because companies may have different and mixed motives to be promote their brand, themselves or products. At such times companies may engage in advertising and marketing even when when they don't nurture a diverse ecosystem of commissioned sales.

Here is an interview with Vincent Kartheiser, Q&A: Mad Men's Vincent Kartheiser on High-Speed Rail, where he discussed the above piece. There is a great scene in Yes, Minister, where where he meets three different civil servants, who in case of regulatory capture all champion different modes of transport (road, rail and air).

A Tankful of Gas in 1932 - Mildred Pierce

	$20.70	using the Consumer Price Index
	$17.90	using the GDP deflator
	$51.60	using the value of consumer bundle
	$63.80	using the unskilled wage
	$77.40	using the Production Worker Compensation
	$129.00	using the nominal GDP per capita
	$317.00	using the relative share of GDP

That's not too bad.

Musicians and Debt

It looked like the kind of music emporium which doubles as a pawnshop, since every musician has at some time in his life has to hand over his instrument if he wants to eat and sleep indoors.

Soul Music, Terry Pratchett

See also Ray's Music Exchange in the Blues Brothers

Upstairs, Downstairs Economics: Junior Maid

What do they pay you?

dissolute artist

Mind your business.

Sarah

₤10 a year and a bed in the basement.

dissolute artist

No, its twice that much and and a room in the attic.

Sarah

Upstairs,Downstairs S01E02

The cost of employing a junior maid in 1904 for a year plus room and board in today's values:

£8,550.00
using the average earnings

£10,100.00
using the per capita GDP

£14,800.00
using the share of GDP

The American South and Minimum Wages

The above is from a map American minimum wage laws at the US dept of Labor. The colors are for the relative level of each states minimum wage law compared to the US federal rate. Green is for states the have higher rates, blue is for the states that use the federal rate, yellow is for those states that have a minimum wage lower than the federal and red is for those states without a minimum wage law. I found this page because I was watching a video post at Boingboing about the struggles that Disney employees have, Walt Disney World castmembers speak about their search for a living wage.

What is striking is how many off US states that formed the Old Confederacy are still not, even 150 years after they fought a war over it, that keen on paying people who work for them.

You Are Richer Than You Think

The Global Rich List is a calculator designed to show you how rich you are compared with the whole Terran population as opposed to the Jones. Then it hits up for a contribution. In a way it is the reverse of the Total Perspective Vortex because it shows that compared the rest of humanity you are probably doing OK, if you viewing this blog on your own computer. The difference between prosperity and wealth to me is that prosperity depends on living standards whereas wealth is a measure of relative living standards.

Link given by the_lyniezian on AH.com thread Frivolous ASB Ideas Thread.

The Financial Industry Lives Off the Stupid

There is an old joke where a prospective brokerage client is shown the impressive yachts owned by the partners. This leads the prospective brokerage client to ask where are clients' yachts. In the context of this strip Hardcastle is a stodgy and generally unsuccessful metal bashing company oop north.

The Vacancy Rate by Building and Floor on Bay St

Above is a graphic from an article on the towers in the Toronto financial district, Toronto’s aging office towers losing tenants to new eco-friendly offerings. As many have pointed out before commercial real estate is a trailing economic indicator. The tallest buildings are finished in economic downturns, see Empire State Building. The signature building, the namesake building is often built when a company peaks and begins its decline, see Pan Am and Sears or even fictional Sterling Cooper. Office buildings occupancy rates peak just before a downturn. Vacancy rates then increase as new buildings are finished and businesses reduce their leased space. Then as economic conditions improve office space is taken up until vacancy rates hit new lows. The fact, according to this article, that vacancy rates are still increasing is not a good sign.

This is with our economic system however at other times and places property developers have less constraints placed on them. According Simon Johnson the 3rd world suffers from "financial oligarchy". Only the connected in these societiesget funding/credit. The result is an orgy of overbuilding that exaggerates the boom/bust cycle in commercial real estate as building are built on spec, see Dubai, Texas in the '80s, The SE Asia crash in the '90s.

Years ago I got into an empty, never being occupied, floor at the south end of Eaton's Centre. It was eerie, an eerie aerie, with only the sound of the Peruvian flutes coming from the street below.