A few posts back, I linked to an article that discussed the entirely dismal productivity of the retail sector in Japan and other foriegn countries and how that was an indicator that they were actually much poorer than we were here. Now MarginalRevolution points to this article by Glen Hubbard about foreign financial unproductivity and how it may be the reason why so many foreigners choose to place their wealth here. The only way they can get their wealth into US dollars is for them to maintain a trade surplus with us. This would explain why the dollar keeps such a high value despite substantial US tradedeficitis.
As an aside: it is likely that the same forces that prevent financial sectors from getting more productive (e.g. by foreclosing on bad loans) are also the forces that prevent companies like Walmart from entering. Small business.
In "Broad Ownership Needs Broad Taxpaying", the PowerLine guys argue that:
Which leads to the question: What will happen if conservatives succeed, as part of their push for an Ownership Society, in redirecting much of the payroll tax from federal coffers into the personal accounts of workers? Most Americans would then be directly supporting the federal government only through the income tax and the few federal sales and excise taxes (e.g., on gasoline). The result: Most Americans would no longer be making any significant contribution whatever toward the maintenance of the federal government.
Any new programs that Congress might adopt would cost the average American little or nothing. He already pays scant income tax, and he would be getting much of his Social Security and Medicare taxes back in the expected personal accounts. So at that point the relatively small number of citizens who make significant income tax payments would be carrying our whole federal edifice.
And there's the rub. "Rebating" a big chunk of payroll taxes back to workers in the form of personal accounts is devoutly to be wished for in most ways. But one troubling side effect of such a transformation would be to nakedly expose the tax burden that our personal income tax disproportionately lays on the top 5 percent of Americans.
Our Founders had no confidence that voters, unmoored from financial responsibility, would refrain from pillaging the wealth of their neighbors. If most of Washington's costs end up piled on just a few backs, the only thing preventing a sharp ratcheting up of the income tax will be the decency and political principle of ordinary Americans.
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Love this one
Critics of cooked foods, and there is a raw foods movement in the world, Wrangham pointed out, say "Look at chimpanzees. They eat raw and thrive."Chimpanzees, he re-emphasized, spend far more time eating than humans do and as a result don't have time or energy to expand far beyond their range. In German research studies on the effects on humans of following a raw food diet, the results show that humans eating only raw food are hungry, experience weight loss and, in the case of women, quit having regular menstrual cycles, which means that the rate of reproduction is precariously lowered.
"It seems difficult for me to deny the evidence that the evolution of man came with the discovery of fire and cooking," Wrangham said. "Cooking changed the biological design of humans, and that fact is the basis of paleo-gastronomy," he added.
"Being able to spend a low percent of time eating made hunting possible and expanded the range of humans out of Africa and into Asia," Wrangham said. Cooking also prompted the sexual division of labor: men, being bigger and stronger, hunted, and women provisioned and cooked.
Cooking created the human family or civilization, where humans not only assumed tasks suited to their skills but also put those skills to work in taking care of one another. You hunted for the group or family, as well as yourself. Or, you cooked for the hunter, as well as yourself.
Great interview from Nick Shulz of William Lewis author of "The Power of Productivity, Wealth, Power, and the Threat to Global Stability."about how poor countries become rich. Its all about productivity and productivity is all about protecting the rights of consumers against producers. Structuring a political system so that producer lobbyists don't win control appears to be the key to success, but that turns about to be very difficult. If you are at interested in any of any of these things, I strongly recommend you read the whole thing.
Steve Pavlina says: Go to sleep when you are tired. But always wake up at the same time. And when you wake up, get up. Don't snooze. Read the comments on his post as well as the followup.
Friends know that for a while I have been skeptical about the whole software outsourcing to India story. The real value in software is the connection with the customer/user and that can't be outsourced. Now Half Sigma does a really good job of generalizing the point:
But what is left for the United States to do if both manufacturing and information jobs are moved overseas? The answer is marketing. Marketing is the craft of linking producers of goods and services with customers. And the customers exist in the United States because we are the world’s richest nation.Only Americans know what other Americans want to buy. Only Americans know how to create the perception of value where none actually exists. Two days ago I wrote about an $88 t-shirt. The Chinese can manufacture a t-shirt for $1, but they will never be able to figure out how to get Americans to pay 88 times what it costs to manufacture.
Ironman reviews public transport architecture and notes:
First of all, to really make public transportation really work, you need to make everybody live and work within easy access of it. From the public transportation standpoint, where today's cities go astray is in their grid system. Once city streets extend beyond easy walking distance of a main street or transportation corridor, public transportation begins to become more difficult to provide. As the distance grows greater, public transportation service becomes more and more difficult to provide, and as a result, it becomes more costly, less efficient and less effective as a viable means of moving people from place to place.So, to make public transportation viable as the primary means of transport for an entire city, cities themselves need to be designed to closely follow a single transportation corridor.
Max Boot says:
All the headlines about "Abuse of the Koran at Gitmo" are absolutely accurate. Brig. Gen. Jay Hood's internal investigation has uncovered some shocking incidents. On at least six occasions, Korans were ripped up. They were urinated on three times, and attempts were made to flush them down the toilet at least three other times.Why aren't millions of Muslims rioting in response to these defilements? Because the perpetrators were prisoners, not guards. As John Hinderaker notes on weeklystandard.com, the most serious desecrations of the Koran at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility were committed by the Muslim inmates themselves.
[...]
Far from confirming accusations of American depravity, what the report actually shows is that Guantanamo is the first gulag in history run on the principle that no sensibility of the inmates should be offended, no matter how inadvertently.
[...]
The Hood report suggests that, for the most part, this elaborate etiquette is obeyed. The worst lapse, splashed (so to speak) across front pages around the world, occurred March 25, when a guard urinated outside an air vent and some of his urine blew into a cell and onto an inmate and his Koran. Human rights absolutists should be relieved (sorry, can't help myself) to know that the detainee received a fresh uniform and a new Koran, and the guard was reprimanded and reassigned.That's the most heinous case of Koran abuse by Gitmo personnel. The four other verified incidents involved an interrogator kicking a Koran, guards accidentally getting a Koran wet with water, an interrogator (subsequently fired) stepping on a Koran and a "two-word obscenity" mysteriously appearing on the inside cover of a Koran.
[...]
More serious incidents of Koran abuse by Americans conceivably could come to light, but it is clear that anyone who did so would be acting against orders. Reading the Hood report — which is by one count the 189th (no kidding) Defense Department investigation of how prisoners in the war on terrorism are treated — I couldn't help but think: Too bad Muslims don't show the same exquisite concern for the sensibilities of others.
In that comment Robert also says that Guantanimo has been a symbol of malintent. Perhaps that is because the mdiea reports every allegation of prisoner abuse as if it was fact and is skeptical of any claims by or for the US. Heather MacDonald notes:
It may be true that Guantanamo Bay has become synonymous with lawlessness throughout vast swathes of the Western and Muslim worlds. But no one is more responsible for that reputation than the New York Times, Newsweek, the Washington Post, and other mainstream media outlets, which have never encountered a prisoner-abuse story that they didn’t find credible and worthy of broadcast.
The techniques Rumsfeld balked at included “use of a wet towel or dripping water to induce the misperception of suffocation.” “Our Armed Forces are trained,” a Pentagon memo on the changes read, “to a standard of interrogation that reflects a tradition of restraint.” Nevertheless, the log shows that interrogators poured bottles of water on al-Qahtani’s head when he refused to drink. Interrogators called this game “Drink Water or Wear It.”
This is how articles are written, conventional wisdom chopped pressed and formed: the techniques Rumsfeld “balked at” – meaning, I assume, did not permit – did not include actual suffocation, but the use of a wet towel that would induce the misperception of an emanation of a penumbra of suffocation. NEVERTHELESS. Key word, that. Lines crossed not in fact but in spirit. He balked at fake suffocation, aye; NEVERTHELESS the climate of pain and retribution did not forbid men from freely dumping bottles of Dasani on the heads of the detainees. Why, it was a game to the interrogators. “Drink Water or Wear it.” Spiritually, it’s a first cousin to Saddam’s game, “Use Tongue Then Lose It.”After the new measures are approved, the mood in al-Qahtani’s interrogation booth changes dramatically. The interrogation sessions lengthen. The quizzing now starts at midnight, and when Detainee 063 dozes off, interrogators rouse him by dripping water on his head or playing Christina Aguilera music.
Djinni in a bottle, no doubt.According to the log, his handlers at one point perform a puppet show “satirizing the detainee’s involvement with al-Qaeda.”
So Doug is part of the torture crew, then. From the ever-prescient Pythons:Vercotti: Doug (takes a drink) Well, I was terrified. Everyone was terrified of Doug. I've seen grown men pull their own heads off rather than see Doug. Even Dinsdale was frightened of Doug.
2nd Interviewer: What did he do?
Vercotti: He used... sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor, bathos, puns, parody, litotes and... satire. He was vicious.
He is taken to a new interrogation booth, which is decorated with pictures of 9/11 victims, American flags and red lights. He has to stand for the playing of the U.S. national anthem.Okay, this is torture. But only if you’re interrogating a poster on the Democratic Underground.
His head and beard are shaved. He is returned to his original interrogation booth. A picture of a 9/11 victim is taped to his trousers. Al-Qahtani repeats that he will “not talk until he is interrogated the proper way.”
Meaning what? Forced to kneel before a camera and confess you’re a Jew before your head is sawed off?
It is interesting how the news media today will jump on a story if it denigrates our military or our country. The media may get their facts from an anonymous source and rush to print it in a major newspaper or weekly magazine. The story may turn out to be inaccurate. The original accuser may even retract his accusations. But, the damage is already done and our media moves on to their next anonymous sourced Anti-American story.
Yet, here tonight there is actual footage of Muslims burning, spitting on, and making urinals out off our American Flag. And, as US citizens we are supposed to get immuned to a lot of this. Many people believe that we even deserve this! We constantly see Muslims spit on and burn effigies of our president, threaten our country with the words (in English) on their posters, spit on the symbols of our nation, and now today, piss on our flag and our president!
At the end of his post, Robert calls me to account for demanding more responsibility of Newsweek and the other MSM. He thinks I am being inconsistent or irresponsible for calling Newsweek to account for its lies. He is intent on protecting Newsweek from any sort of legal liability associated with the deaths it caused. He implicitly admits that Newsweek is guilty of its crimes even as he explicitly tries to deny it. He just suggests that the punishment should be competition from other media. I'm ok with that punishment, but then I expect explicit condemnation of newsweek's reportage from people like Robert, not mealy mouthed defense as "reasonably accurate." Robert when you stand up and say that people should stop subscribing to Newsweek while they are being this irresponsible with the truth, I will back down on demanding punishment.