New threads are useful. Since I’m still not doing climate analyses, I might as well comment on a homework-grammar thingie that’s been puzzling me. I’ve noticed that tons and tons of physics homeword problems use this sort of construction: “Would would be the ‘x’ of ….” Here’s a few examples I got by googling [“what would be” speed]:
- What would be the speed of boxes….?
- What would be the speed of the following particles if they had the same wavelength …?
- What would be the speed and acceleration of an square iron plate with an area of ….?
Whenever I read that, I think “What gives?” Those all sound so stilted to me. I
- What would the speed of the boxes be ….?
- What would the speed of the following particles be if they had the same wavelength …?
- What would the speed and acceleration of an square iron plate with an area of ..be ..?
I’ve seen the “what would be..” construction in physics problems so often, I started to try to think of non-physics sentences where I might use it. Try as I might, I find construction nearly always sounds odd to me. I don’t go around saying “What would be the price of eggs if….” or “What would be the girl’s SAT score … ” or “What would be my weight if I stopped snarfing a chocolate bar every time I went to the grocery store?”
So, I ask you: “What would be your opinion on this grammatical construction?” Feel free to give opinions on other matters too.
I think the problem writers don’t like splitting the parts of the auxiliary verb phrase “would be”, especially as the noun phrase grows in complexity. E.g. in your last problem example, “the speed and acceleration of an square iron plate with an area of …”, by the time the reader gets to the end and finds the “be” hanging there, the auxiliary verb “would” might have left the building.
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In your odd-sounding examples, you have short noun phrases, and that may account for their odd-sounding-ness. But consider this example: “What would the impact of legislation repealing the Obamacare subsidies to state exchanges be?” To me, that sounds way more awkward than the form where “would be” is kept together.
“What would be” seems to me a perfectly normal use of the verb to be. Interposing a bunch of stuff between ‘would’ and ‘be’ makes the construction awkward, but still correct. I use this kind of construct all the time:e.g. What would be the increase in cost for that modification?
HaroldW
Yep. I get that. Steve note the same thing.
I do understand the issue of separating “would” and “be” with to much stuff. I do usually avoid interposing humongonormous clauses. That sounds clunky too.
It’s just in real life I would never say “What would be it?” . I’d say “What would it be?” Sometimes the textbook questions are pretty close to the former.
Also, even though I understand the problem of separating “would” and “be” a huge amount, I find if I’m writing a physics problem I’m much more likely to break a sentence in sentences. So rather than write “What would be the speed if the car was traveling on a road inclined 16º to the horizontal with a coefficient of friction of …. while martians were attacking…..” I tend to just put all that long stuff in a sentence by itself. So more like: “A car was traveling…blah…blah…blah.. What would its speed be?”
That always sounds like the less awkard solution to me. I can manage to not shove a huge clause between “would’ and “be” and get all the detail out front. Plus, I end up with the actual question at the end so a student doesn’t have to hunt back for the actual question.
I’m not saying the other ways is wrong. I just always think it sounds awkward.
lucia –
For what it’s worth, I agree with you about breaking up such questions into multiple sentences. It’s as close as one can get to guaranteeing that the student won’t have trouble parsing the question, or misunderstanding.
I agree that putting first the premises or conditions for the problem to be solved is best. Then ending with the short question asking for the solution is naturally logical and less ambiguous.
The grammatical error that bugs me is the use of a plural verb for a singular noun. E.g., “the team are …” Teams are single entities even though they are composed of individual persons, just as persons are composed of individual molecules. We don’t say “that person are …” My earliest recollection of the error was about twenty years ago by a British speaker. I wonder if this is an invasive construct.
There’s no “correct” or “incorrect” because we never asked anybody to come up with rules that we would all then agree to follow. The claimed “Rules of Grammar” are nothing more than attempts by largely 18th century entrepreneurs to sell books to the newly-minted middle classes that enbaled them to mimic their supposed betters.
And occasionally they tried to justify the rules by leaning on Latin, even though English is not a Romance language. Thus the fabled split infinitive is wrong in Latin (it is never done) but there is no reason at all why it should not be used in English.
Languages are organic, they evolve through sue, and usage is always correct. Of course there is clear English and unclear English, but that is a different matter.
Gary,
I say “team is”. I don’t think this one is even close.
That said, I’m also in the “data is” camp. I see it as a collective noun like hair, so “is”.
I do think the issue with data is a somewhat close one. But if someone tells me the rule from Latin, my answer is “English isn’t Latin”.
The date-ah is collected.
The dat-ah are collected.
Technically, data is the plural form of datum, so it should take a plural verb form. But usage rules and data is now effectively a collective noun.
DeWitt,
If by “technically” you mean “based on Latin usage”, yes. That’s why my answer is “English isn’t Latin”.
There is no “technical rule” in English that says we must or should use Latin words according to the rules of Latin. The fact is, data has become a collective noun.
You have to ask yourself…What would Yoda do?
TimTheToolMan,
I’m pretty sure Yoda spoke yiddish, not latin.
lucia,
Not based on Latin usage, based on pretty much any English dictionary you care to choose. That means English usage. That will probably change when the lexicographers recognize that data has become a collective noun in common usage rather than the plural of datum. The etymology is from Latin and is relatively recent, seventeenth century according to one source I saw.
What’s the correct usage in ig-pay atin-lay? 😉
DeWitt,
I haven’t collected statistics on what dictionaries say. But I’m dubious about the claim about what “most” dictionaries say it’s plural. Merriam Websters says both treating data as plural and treating it as singular are standard. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/data
It does say publishers house style manuals often require it plural. But house style manuals aren’t dictionaries. Moreover, the are precisely the thing that often enforce made up “rules” that do not conform with the norms of spoken usages. (For example: rules like not splitting infinitives and so on.)
The Oxford dictionary says “The word data in English usage has evolved: a mass noun use, recorded in the OED from the 18th century, has become increasingly common over the past 70 years, particularly in computing and general contexts. Mass nouns are those which can’t be counted (for instance, happiness, concrete, warmth) and they are always accompanied by a singular verb. Data is now treated in the same way as its near-synonym, the mass noun information. This is well established and generally accepted in standard English writing:”
So: It’s been used as singular starting in the 1700s and is now pretty much singular. The way English works is that if a word is used a certain way, that becomes “the rule”. We don’t look look to Latin. At least two major dictionaries lean toward “data is“.
So, I still think that “data are” is only “technically” correct while “data is” is “technically incorrect” only if “techincally” means “if we go by rules of Latin”. If we go by what dictionaries actually say, “data is” both are correct with “data is” used a lot, but some people who still love “Fowler” being grumply they can’t make the rules. (Fowler seems to be the guy who made up rules of for English based on applying rules for Latin.)
I agree with Merriam-Webster and have used both singular and plural forms based on context. E.g., as a mass noun (singular): “The data provides a clear picture…” As a plural noun: “The data were collected by several laboratories.” In the latter case, I view “data” as shorthand for “data sets” and therefore would apply a plural verb. I don’t think that’s unreasonable, although I wouldn’t bristle at someone using a singular verb for the second example.
[Ed. To clarify my distinction, the second example emphasizes the discrete nature of the data, while the first refers to the data taken as a whole.]
lucia,
You beat me to a comment about the difference between style and grammar. I think style rules have their place. As HaroldW points out, data can be either collective or plural.
I don’t really bristle at either usage. I only bristle at author who prefer one correct usage being forced or even pestered to use the other correct usage. If a usage is correct — according to mainstream dictionaries– and an author prefers it, the author who prefers it should be allowed to use it. I’m in the “data is” camp. I probably would say “These data sets were collected by several laboratories” if I wanted to emphasize their origin from different labs. In that case, data appears to be an adjective modifying the plural noun sets.
If I were speaking, I have no idea whether I might not leave out “sets” as implied.
DeWitt,
I also mentioned the style rules above. I also think style rules have their place. Their place is to try to impose uniform style selections across a company or collective entity’s set of publications. That can be appropriate.
Of course the vast majority of companies and collective entities select style rules from the set of correct grammar rules rather than incorrect ones. (It’s not inconceivable that someone might pick from “incorrect” ones if they were trying to achieve a certain image– like “I’m a Beverly Hillbilly” or “Advice to Yokels” or something. In which case, the “style” manual rule would definitely not indicate grammatical correctness! )
That said, even when it selects from grammatically standard options, a style manual should not be treated as indicating an list of all correct grammar. That is not their place.
I might write:
“What would be the speed of the following particles if they had the same wavelength …?”
as:
“If they had the same wavelength …. what would the speed of the following particles be?”
(Where the ellipsis signify my tendency to add details and avoid short sentences.)
The German and Dutch languages are rather unique, I think, in putting the verb at the end of the sentence … a lot of the times.
Of course, any grammatical advice from me should be taken with a grain of salt since I was once accused that a blog comment of mine was more difficult to decipher than something from James Joyce and that being the James Joyce’s writing described as: “His language is not abstruse; rather, it is an echo or reflection of the reader’s own stream of unarticulated preverbal cogitations.”
Without a reputation of a famous author my comments at times might seem to be the abstruseness (laziness) of one more interested in putting ideas on paper without concerns for those attempting to read it.
Kenneth,
I’d write that sentence the 2nd way you show and I’d never write it the first way (unless forced to by some externally imposed style guide.) To me that’s not to so much between “would” and “be” to cause anyone confusion. That said, if someone complained there were too many words between “would” and “be”, I would be more likely to something like,
“The particles listed below have the same wavelength; what would their speeds be:
* proton
*electron
* 3.5 g baseball”
Or, if a copy editor was being a real butt-head about “would…stuff…. be”, I would write
“The particles listed below have the same wavelength; determine their speeds:
* proton
*electron
* 3.5 g baseball”
I find the sound of “what would be their speeds” sufficiently infelicitous that I would resist its use!
Lucia, your final version that might be forced by a butthead editor is what I would prefer to read. It is brief and to the point.
Unfortunately for me what I like to read and what I write can be two different things.
Would that 3.5 g baseball be traveling as a knuckle ball?
Kenneth,
HS physics problems ask the speed for the baseball with a certain wavelength. Or, more likely, they ask the wavelength given a speed.
They want the kids to compare wavelengths of different sorts of particles to better understand why something seem to use to act more like waves or particles.
I think maybe there’s some split infinitive aspects to this. Or, maybe it’s a dangling participle thingy.
Dan,
I suspect its something associated with the superstition about split infinitives.
Kenneth, Steve Mc just did a climate post pointing out the dueling perspectives on whether observations are in sync with models. For example, Christy’s chart showing the divergence versus Hausfather’s chart showing everything just peachy. https://climateaudit.org/2017/11/18/reconciling-model-observation-reconciliations/
In one of my comments I quote your figures from the CA Nic Lewis post on Richardson 2016. Just wanted to thank you again for doing that. I think the night marine air temp being a proxy for Tmin rather than a 5% lower trend that would be produced by Tavg is still unknown or unacknowledged by the “climate community.”
China eating our lunch?
JinkoSolar, the highest volume solar panel manufacturer in the world, has been repeatedly breaking it’s own record for efficiencies of solar cells – the efficiency by Jinko is now at over 23%. According to the article: “JinkoSolar pushed hard that their manufacturing processes, adhering to the principles of ‘Industry 4.0’, were as important as the solar cell record efficiencies. As part of the press announcement, JinkoSolar gave credit to their “Intelligent Manufacturing†innovations, which is partially inspired by the “Made in China 2025†initiative. These include: robotic workstations, traceable QA capabilities, improved workflow efficiency, optimized material transportation, and advanced data analytics. JinkoSolar says, ‘integration has revolutionized fab operations from “Automated†to “Intelligentâ€, allowing the company to achieve greater efficiency, flexibility and quality, maximize cost effectiveness, and accelerate overall innovation.’ ” See https://electrek.co/2017/11/08/jinkosolar-lighting-up-solar-efficiency-record-scoreboard/
While we sit here in the US immobilized by inane culture wars, China moves rapidly into advanced manufacturing that has gone beyond automated to intelligent.
Cheapest electricity on the planet, 1.77 cents/kWh solar in Mexico, is expected to go to under 1 cent as current 16-17% efficiency solar panels are replaced by the new Jinko panels at 23.5%. See: https://electrek.co/2017/11/16/cheapest-electricity-on-the-planet-mexican-solar-power/
Troglodyte Trump still pushing coal.
Owen,
You complain about the inane culture wars in one breath and engage in them the next. Doesn’t smack of sincerity, in my view.
Just saying.
Owen,
If solar is so great, why is China building new coal and nuclear electric generating plants? Answer: solar alone or wind and solar is not sufficient. It’s also not that cheap for countries further away from the equator than Mexico or Saudi Arabia. Germany, for example, pays about twice as much per kWh than the US because they produce a large fraction of their electricity needs from wind and solar. And that rate still isn’t enough to properly compensate their fossil fueled electric plants, which are forced to remain idle for long stretches.
China has been accused of dumping solar panels at below their cost. That puts a serious crimp in anyone else’s plans to produce solar panels. China has a pattern of monopolist behavior. They did it for rare earth elements, for example. IOW, don’t expect the prices to stay low forever.
Solar in the US would dry up and blow away if subsidies and guaranteed feed in tariffs were ended. It would be too expensive even if the panels were free.
Lesson: Don’t take press releases as gospel.
DeWitt,
Of course China is building coal and nuclear as well as solar – they have a voracious appetite for energy. Nuclear and solar and wind (but not coal) will prevail – economically and environmentally. At such low prices for solar, storage will be coming quickly as well, and smart grids. Electric vehicles can serve as an increasingly important delocalized-storage mechanism. A major paradigm shift is underway.
Germany made it very difficult on itself by closing nuclear plants – a bad mistake I think.
Scotland recently closed its last coal plant and is going all-in with offshore wind.
India has cancelled planned coal plants in favor of solar.
It’s happening, and fast. And that’s a good thing.
Mark Bofill,
You are right, of course. I actually don’t fault Trump so much for pushing coal, but I do fault his attempts to subvert the development of green energy.
Owen,
I hadn’t heard this, but I haven’t been paying attention recently. Last I heard (some time back) goes like this:
https://instituteforenergyresearch.org/analysis/despite-paris-agreement-china-india-continue-build-coal-plants/
Can you point me to your reference?
Thanks!
[edit: I find conflicting stories from this year. I see a bunch that claim India canceled a bunch of coal power projects. I see others than claim India was going ahead with coal powered projects. Around the same time frame; summer this year. Not sure where India stands right now.]
The Australian seems to think coal is coming out ahead; it’s from September.
Don’t know though. I’ll have to dig at some point.
Owen,
Angela Merkel has failed to assemble a governing coalition in Germany. The expense of Energiewende was a contributing factor. A recent study in Germany reported that 61% of Germans would not spend €0.01 more per kWh to reduce emissions. The AfD party, which wants to end Energiewende immediately, received 13% of the vote in the last election and finished in third place. That’s a lot more than the 9% that the Green party received.
To top it all, Germany won’t achieve it’s carbon emission reduction goals. That’s a lot of money down the drain.
edit: And let me know when Scotland goes off the UK grid. That’s when they will be all in for renewables. I’m not holding my breath.
Owen (Comment #165850): “Cheapest electricity on the planet, 1.77 cents/kWh solar in Mexico, is expected to go to under 1 cent as current 16-17% efficiency solar panels are replaced by the new Jinko panels at 23.5%.”
Fantasy. Pure fantasy. Prices in Mexico are subsidized and range from 5 to 25 cents per kWh, with the higher value being the unsubsidized rate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Mexico#Tariffs.2C_Cost_Recovery_and_Subsidies
DeWitt,
I had an interesting conversation on a plane a few months ago with a German journalist who was on a year-long assignment in the States… he was a strong backer of Merkel. I noted that there seemed to be a lot of Germans who are unhappy with Merkel over refugee and energy policies. He waved that away as an “insignificant” minority, like a Hillary supporter would wave away deplorable complaints about illegal aliens. I found it quite surprising, and I wonder what that journalist thinks now (does he blame it all on German deplorables?).
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If Merkel manages to form a government (even if after the next round of elections), and I very much doubt she will, it will be a weak one that won’t be spending so much time chasing energy unicorns. An un-repentant Merkel, who insists all her policies are just what Germany needs, means there is a good chance the far right party will pass 20% in the next round of elections. Just like ‘progressives’ everywhere, Merkel seems unable to accept compromise. It will be her downfall.
Owen,
“Cheapest electricity on the planet, 1.77 cents/kWh solar in Mexico, is expected to go to under 1 cent as current 16-17% efficiency solar panels are replaced by the new Jinko panels at 23.5%.”
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I have a very large bridge in New York City I would like to sell to you.
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By the way, that comment brought a smile… thanks.
If solar is going to be cheaper than coal and natural gas, then worrying about global warming should stop. You can say Trump is pushing coal, but if solar is cheaper, that’s what we’ll end up with.
I am skeptical of these various claims, but it is possible some storage technology and efficiency improvements can make it more competitive.
Mark,
I was quoting from the following article in Bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-01/cheaper-solar-in-india-prompts-rethink-for-more-coal-projects
Sure, coal must play a big role in the near term in India and China, but with dropping prices and increasing efficiencies of solar cells, solar will make inroads.
@Owen,
“Nuclear and solar and wind (but not coal) will prevail – economically and environmentally. At such low prices for solar, storage will be coming quickly as well, and smart grids. Electric vehicles can serve as an increasingly important delocalized-storage mechanism. A major paradigm shift is underway.”
I seldom agree with DeWitt Payne but he is right on this issue. If governments would stop intervening in markets this debate would be settled unequivocally.
>Electric vehicles can serve as an increasingly important delocalized-storage mechanism.
Meaning your electric vehicle will need its battery replaced more often.
This factor of electric vehicles or plug-in hybrids generates a religious fervor.
Mike M,
The prices per kWh were from bids on projects in Mexico. For 3 TWh worth of projects, the average bid price was very slightly over 2 cents/kWh, with the lowest bids coming from an Italian multinational ENEL. The bids were accepted and power is to be supplied by 2020.
Owen,
Many thanks.
Mark,
Renewable Energy Credits are involved in the bids in Mexico. That makes evaluating how much was actually bid complicated. I haven’t been able to find anything on the web that does an evenhanded analysis of the economics. It’s all recycled press releases.
Owen,
As DeWitt points out, with renewables the actual price is usually hidden in a thicket of incentives and subsidies. Two points:
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1) Intermittent power, at the wrong time of day, and no storage cost makes solar look much cheaper than it actually is. (As all the virtue signalers with subsidized solar panels back-feeding power to the grid are aware.) Storage capacity dominates the total cost in stand-alone solar systems, with just storage cost in the range of $0.10-$0.15 per KWH produced.
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2) Even not considering storage, USD$0.02 per KWH is absurdly low. Panels cost in the range of US$1 per watt peak capacity, unmounted and without equipment for conversion to AC power. A realistic installed cost is more like $3 per peak watt, not counting any cost for land or connection to the grid. So the investment for a peak kilowatt of capacity is in the range of $3,000. Even in very sunny areas, a realistic total daily production rate is equal to about 5 hours at peak rate. So $3,000 invested yields about 5 kilowatt hours per day, or 1,825 kilowatt-hours per year. At $0.02 per kilowatt hour, the annual payout is then $36.50 on a $3,000 investment….. a payout on your investment of 1.22% per year. Compare that the a typical minimum discount rate for investment of 6% to 9%, and you get some idea how out of line claims of $0.02 per KWH are. Nobody makes that investment without.. ahem… ‘incentives’. The typical investment cost for a dual-cycle gas-turbine plant, with thermal efficiency of ~60% is in the range of $1,000 per KW capacity. And that is continuous capacity, not intermittent; that $1,000 investment produces in the range of 7,500 KWH per year, and when the power is needed. The capital investment for solar (again ignoring a lack of storage) is on the order of 12 times gas turbines. Capital cost alone would lead to a minimum price of $0.10 – $0.12 per KWH for a solar plant with no storage.
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Solar is way less attractive than wind, and wind (un-subsidized) is not economically competitive with conventionally produced power. If these things were actually competitive, no subsidies and incentives would be needed.
DeWitt,
I gather the same thing from my searches. The thing I’d like for Owen to understand is this. Believe it or not I’m not actually one of the villains from a ‘Captain Planet’ cartoon who hates the environment and who wants to destroy it just because. I’d love cheap electricity from solar; that’d be great. I’ve got no special attachment to fossil fuels, my attachment is to economic viability I guess.
And economics make much of the discussion [irrelevant] in my view. When and if better solutions come up, we won’t need much (any?) political involvement for those solutions to become popular. If solar was a better deal, it’d be taking off on it’s own merits. I gather U.S. emissions are down because natural gas produces less CO2 than coal, and it’s more economical.
I think humanity would be better served if all the activists would forget about politics. Forget about trying to shape public opinion. For young people, drop out of liberal arts programs and pursuits, change their majors to sciences, do the work, and actually develop stuff that really is superior from a cost perspective. But I see I’ve digressed..
Thanks DeWitt.
mark bofill,
“Believe it or not I’m not actually one of the villains from a ‘Captain Planet’ cartoon who hates the environment and who wants to destroy it just because.”
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I am shocked… shocked!… that you are not as villainous as the rest of us ‘den!ers’…. I actually spend a good portion of my time devising ways to more quickly destroy Gaia.
SteveF,
Heh. :> Well, don’t spread it around that I admitted it…
SteveF,
I appreciate seeing your calculations – a thorough analysis. A couple things – the panel costs have been dropping and efficiency has been increasing, both rapidly, and the production of kWh must depend on latitude/insolation (Mexico being quite favorable). EIA has a recent analysis for US costs of installed solar in Kansas City (a mid-range insolation area according to EIA) at $1/watt installed and before investment tax credits – they get a cost of 6 cents/kWh. See: https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/09/solar-now-costs-6-per-kilowatt-hour-beating-government-goal-by-3-years/
Their analysis is for installed utility scale solar which EIA says dropped 29% in cost between Q4 2016 and Q1 2017.
Time will tell whether the project costs in Mexico are that far out of line.
Here is a PDF of a PowerPoint presentation of the utility scale solar analysis: https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy17osti/68580.pdf
Owen (Comment #165865): “The prices per kWh were from bids on projects in Mexico …”
Oh, I see. Wholesale prices. So the “cheapest electricity on the planet” is actually rather expensive.
Owen,
I looked through your links but admittedly didn’t study them. Question: are we talking 6 cents/KWh when the sun is shining, or 24/7? I missed the discussion of the costs of energy storage in all that.
Mark,
It would be the total 24/7 cost of producing electricity. I highly doubt that energy storage mechanisms are included in the cost they calculated.
Owen, thanks.
Ownen
The NREL study looks bogus to me, but that does not surprise me; their existence is based on substituting renewables for other power sources. They are not disinterested observers.
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Here is a more credible 2016 comparison of capital costs for different grid-scale power plants from the EIA: https://www.eia.gov/analysis/studies/powerplants/capitalcost/pdf/capcost_assumption.pdf
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I was a little high on my estimated capital costs; the EIA study places the 2016 PV capital cost for utility scale plants at about $2,600 per KW (not the $3,000 I guessed). Even if the cost fell precipitously between 2016 and 2017, and reached $2,000 per KW peak, you still have an investment which doesn’t pay for itself. In an ideal location, the annual total production per KW peak capacity will be about 1825 KW-hours. Ignoring ongoing maintenance and operating costs, at a discount rate of 7% per year, the minimum selling price for the power produced has to be somewhere over 0.07 * $2000/1825 = ~$0.08 per KW hour.
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This compares to the national average wholesale price of ~$0.0337 per KWH (2017 data EIA).
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And this ignores any price penalty of producing power when it isn’t needed. The national average wholesale price is dominated by continuous producers (coal, nuclear, large scale gas turbine) or rapidly dispatchable producers (smaller gas turbine, hydroelectric, etc.).
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Yes, the cost for grid scale solar has dropped, but it is nowhere near competitive with the alternatives. Take away the subsidies and incentives, and solar installations will drop to ~zero.
Yes, Mark and Steve, I know your intentions are good. And, Owen thank you for being one of my disciples. And you are really doing a great job. Carry on!
https://orig12.deviantart.net/f27a/f/2015/110/4/5/captain_planet_by_terraraptor-d8qghg4.jpg
Captain Planet,
How do know my intentions are good?
How can I know if your’s are?
Captain Planet: “I know your intentions are good.”
Oh lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood.
groan
Not to change the subject (by which I mean ‘to change the subject’) what’s the menu looking like for y’all for Thanksgiving?
I’m staying in the boring but dependable end of the pool – turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin crisp. Anybody got anything unusual planned? (real questions)
I’m in charge of apple pie, green salad, cranberry sauces and most grocery buying. Oh. And I bought those cut-in-half corn cobs to be sure to have all the “native to our continent” traditional things.
Jim is in charge of the turkey, stuffing, butternut squash au gratin.
Robert is in charge of potatoes and and his favorite– the traditional green bean casserole. (Yes. If you are American, you’ve seen it. You either love it or hate it. Yes, the one with the french fried onions.) We anticipate he will bring bread, cheese and ridiculously expensive wine (which I will be happy to drink.)
David is making nothing.
I’m making yogurt for yogurt cheese.
We have assorted nuts. Oh– and someone will cook the Pillsbury grand biscuits because Robert loves those.
Damn. I forgot sparking water. (It’s a defense against waaaaayyyyyy too much drinking. )
Green bean casserole! LOVE IT! I forgot about that. Yep, we’re making that too.
Hadn’t run across butternut squash au gratin, but on investigation it sounds pretty tempting.
Pillsbury grand biscuits are good. I demanded the right to make and eat crescent rolls this year instead, but same idea. Somehow a holiday meal doesn’t seem complete to me without gratuitous carbohydrates.
Lucia,
I am in charge of smoking the 12 lb turkey which serves as the (very tasty) alternative to my wife’s traditional oven roasted. The smoked version was wildly popular last year…. I hardly got any!
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mark bofill…
Sorry, I loath (really) green bean casserole. I stay away from it, even though someone usually brings it to dinner. OTOH, I there is usually a good Chardonnay available for dinner.
It’s a Steven Raichlen recipe.
Many years ago I posted that Jim got me a grill for my birthday and someone asked if I was going to let him get away with that since a grill was obviously a present to a guy… and warned me that Jim would be the one to use it. I said: That’s exactly what makes it a present to me. As far as I’m concerned him taking over grilling on most of the holidays means I do very little of the cooking. (I do make what I want to make. I want to make a pie.)
So for me: it was the gift that keeps on giving. (FWIW: Jim did agree it was a sort of present for him. But at the time, I really couldn’t think of something else I wanted. I’m not a big jewelry person. Clothes tend to be a sort of non-gift-gift because I buy those anyway. He did buy me roses and chocolate too– but the “big” $$ was the grill. My birthday is the end of April so it was there for all the summer grilling. )
Naturally, I encourage all this grilling by buying him every dang Steven Raichlen cook book I can find!
Steve/Mark
The two “traditional” dishes all American’s have seen most either love or loath are: 1) The green bean casserole, 2) The sweet potato casserole with mini-marshmellows.
I can tolerate the green bean casserole but can’t actually say I like it. Basically: if the green bean casserole was the only food on earth and I had to eat it to stay alive, I could eat it. However, I can’t say the same for the sweet potato casserole with mini-marshmallows.
My sister makes a very good sweet potato souffle that does not include mini-marshmallows.
Also: I abhor pumpkin pie. People always try to convince me it’s the spices. Absolutely not: It’s the pumpkin. I eat all those traditional spices in other things.
HaroldW.
“Oh lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood.”
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Well, I think we ‘den!ers’ are misunderstood.
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My reasons for doubt about ‘certain doom’ are based on reasoning, data, and analysis. Still, I am clearly and utterly deplorable and wicked, as Hillary would say. Ask any climate nut-cake for confirmation…. they will say that anyone who doubts the veracity of doom (or who doubts climate models) is nothing more than the right arm of the Devil himself… or a shill for ‘big oil’.
Lucia,
“1) The green bean casserole, 2) The sweet potato casserole with mini-marshmellows.”
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I loath them both. I stick with things like rutebega, onions, broccoli, Brussels sprouts and the like. Sweet stuff like marshmallows for dinner? No!
That’s OK SteveF. I believe in tolerance for the opinions of others. Even flagrantly wrong, monstrously misguided opinions that indicate a high percentage of neanderthal genetic components in the DNA of the espouser, not utterly unlike the one you’re… ahHm, that is to say, that’s perfectly fine Steve. No worries.
[:p]
Lucia,
See, that’s the last straw. That’s it. I’m buying a Che Guevara tee shirt and leaving with Captain Planet for Ander’s blog.
Lucia,
The thing about ‘pumpkin’ pie is that it is rarely actually made from pumpkin…. more often it is a squash pie of some sort. Real pumpkin is pretty coarse for USA tastes. In Brazil, there is no delineation between ‘pumpkin’ and the many related plants.
When my wife makes a “squash/pumpkin” pie with a flaky butter crust, I find it very tasty. OTOH, if my mother-in-law makes a “pumpkin pie” with poisonous ‘hydrogenated vegetable shortening’, , which seems to be her want), I avoid it like the plague.
Jim– the one who makes the butternut squash recipe, informs me that it is a Jacque Pepin recipe.
https://www.npr.org/2011/10/04/141048505/jacques-pepin-selects-his-essential-favorites
SteveF,
I admit I haven’t eaten other non-pie pumpkin items. But I know the problem isn’t cinnamon, cloves or nutmeg, all of which I enjoy in all sorts of other non-pumpkin foods. So when people tell me it might be the spices I don’t like, I call “BS” on that.
Maybe it’s not the pumpkin…. but I know it’s not the spices!
Luica,
“Maybe it’s not the pumpkin…. but I know it’s not the spices!”
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No, it is the pumpkin. A ‘pumpkin pie’ which is made from butternut or Hubbard squash, is IMO, usually pretty tasty, especially if the spices are understated (rather than ‘in your face’) and the sweetness is likewise understated. Honest-to-goodness pumpkin pie, full of spice and sickening sweetness, is too edgy for most, including me.
Wishing y’all a Happy Thanksgiving.
Happy Thanksgiving one and all! And those of you not in the U.S. or otherwise not celebrating a Thanksgiving holiday, I wish you a joyous and wonderful Thursday.
I picked up my daughter at the airport last night. She is the family all-star when it comes to pumpkin pie. I’m sorry to say that the local gocer did not have any baking pumpkins this year, so we will have to make do with the canned variety.
I’ve got a turkey about ready to go in the oven, plus I’ll be handling the stuffing and gravy. The replacement to green bean casserole in my family is the spinach with onion rings casserole. My mother used to make it with cream of mushroom soup. I’m more a fan of creamed spinach with lots of cream, cream cheese, or sour cream in it. I don’t really have a recipe, I just keep adding the dairy fats and garlic to the spinach until it tastes right.
My son is making the mashed potatoes. He’s still in high school and not much of a cook, but he enjoys being the one called on for this responsibility. We’re having dinner at my folks again, but this year we told them not to cook anything. My sisters are bringing rolls and a few other veggie dishes. My wife will be making her famed cranberry-orange relish, which will be delicious but she will apologize for not starting it sooner and letting it season in the fridge several days in advance.
My brother and his family will come by after dinner, which they are having with his mother-in-law. There will be much eating of dessert, and one of his younger kids will be eating whipped cream on a spoon straight from the dispenser. Life is good, and I really look forward to this day.
“While we sit here in the US immobilized by inane culture wars, China moves rapidly into advanced manufacturing”
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Inane things such as debating why we shipped all our manufacturing to China? ha ha.
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I’ll know solar is viable when all my neighbors in Florida (aka the sunshine state) start putting solar panels on their roofs. The solar numbers don’t work yet. If it dropped in half again, maybe so. The people you need to convince are the people with their own money and so far the answer is no. When the numbers are viable the number crunchers won’t need any convincing from activists. Lots of progress has been made, more is needed. Cheap reliable batteries are still where one could make so much money they could buy the moon.
Tom,
That’s not entirely true. Manufacturing production in the US has increased nearly continuously over time, at least until the 2008 recession. It’s now regained almost all of what had been lost. The problem isn’t foreign trade, it’s automation. They even have an Iron Roughneck for automating one of the more hazardous jobs in oil and gas drilling.
Why are batteries necessary for having solar power? How about I skip the batteries and don’t connect to the grid, and let some energy be wasted? I could maybe connect to a water heater to absorb some, but save thousands of dollars for the battery.
MikeN,
What about after dark?
My understanding is the sun is occasionally blocked by clouds, the earth rotates, and the angle of incidence changes with the season as well as the hours of sunlight per day. Not to mention getting up at 6 am to shovel the snow off your solar array to make coffee sounds like a lot of fun. Of course we all know this. So you might be able to solve some of this by using much larger solar capacity than you would need without batteries.
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Florida is a better setup because the highest energy demands are for when the sun is giving maximum energy (air conditioning in the summer). If you want to heat your home using solar power it doesn’t work very well on overcast days in January in Fargo with 8 hours of poor sunlight and the average temperature is 10F. Fargo has some good wind though…
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It should be noted that Germany put up a lot of solar panels in the past decade, they are actually above Fargo in latitude. The world isn’t exactly optimizing solar capacity.
JFerguson, same as before. I meant I don’t connect the solar panels to the grid. The house will still be connected.
DeWitt,
Manufacturing isn’t exactly a simple case as you have pointed out. Technology has eliminated a lot of manufacturing jobs. The lower than average people don’t care, they don’t have prospects of well paying manufacturing jobs any more. They aren’t high fiving all the engineers for eliminating their jobs, nor are they high fiving the globalists for moving the remaining high labor / lower skill jobs off shore. The trade deficit with China was 347 billion dollars last year, or about a $1,000 per person.
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The knowledge class of our generation has (unintentionally) screwed these people. They (we) have constructed a self serving economy that is optimized for college graduates and smart people. When this has been pointed out over the last decade, the attitude is the people sitting in remedial English class just need to become ace coders for Google and all is well. Let them eat cake. The people in remedial math and English will never compete with the college prep class in this economy and can’t move to China.
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Unemployment is low, so they are getting jobs, but they aren’t what they used to be. Walmart greeters aren’t auto line workers. Wealth distribution has become increasingly uneven, which is exactly what the expected outcome would be if selfish smart people ran the economy. It is hard to refute that accusation.
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Perhaps the give and take of the economy will ultimately even things out, but if the trend continues then social upheaval may result. A certain segment of the lower class may never be productive anywhere, but some of them want to be.
Tom Scharf (Comment #165913): “Florida is a better setup because the highest energy demands are for when the sun is giving maximum energy (air conditioning in the summer).”
That is actually not true. Max solar is at local solar noon (usually early afternoon). Max demand on a hot summer day is late afternoon and demand stays high well after sunset. So even in that situation, to get full use of solar one would need storage. But the amount of storage needed would be modest.
And I should add that when AI starts taking over knowledge class jobs I’m betting the knowledge class will howl and demand change.
MikeN (Comment #165914): “I meant I don’t connect the solar panels to the grid. The house will still be connected.”
You would probably not get more than a small fraction of your electricity from solar with such a setup. And you would not be able to use all the solar available, effectively increasing the cost of what you do use.
There is definitely a lag as you correctly point out, but the time shift for max energy demand is hours instead of months.
MikeN,
I didn’t undetrstand what you were gvoing to do for electricity off grid and at night. Also a genset?
Tom Scharf (Comment #165915)
” Wealth distribution has become increasingly uneven, which is exactly what the expected outcome would be if selfish smart people ran the economy. It is hard to refute that accusation.”
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Even written with a straight face.
Tom, that is so very funny.
Tom,
I blame the modern cult of the CEO and share buybacks for flat to down worker wages. That’s where most recent profit and productivity increases have gone as well as the Fed’s Quantitative Easing money. I expect that any corporate tax cut returns will largely go to the same things.
for the record: just threw away mostly uneaten green bean casserole leftover. Epic fail.
The pumpkin crisp didn’t withstand me though; I still have that.
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That is all. You may now return to your regularly scheduled programming.
Tom Scharf,
Any cure for trade deficits will be worse than the disease. You’ll see if Trump is stupid enough to torpedo NAFTA.
I’m pretty much convinced that manipulating free trade will reduce GDP, but not convinced that “taking one for the team” isn’t still the right strategy.
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There’s an open question as to how free our free trade is, and whether the deals we made could be made better. I’m not qualified to answer that, I don’t understand the specifics enough.
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If you take free trade theory to an extreme then the high end of our economy could be so productive as to eliminate all the low end work which is then imported. This maximizes GDP but leaves a bunch of people unemployable. The theoretical answer I suppose is wealth redistribution to the unproductive workers or shipping them off-shore.
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Trade isn’t all about dollars, but also about utility (here we reach the limits of my economic knowledge, ha ha). We need to diversify the economy to optimize citizen satisfaction as well.
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Setting up paper clip factories for make work likely isn’t a good answer either. Straight out welfare isn’t very satisfying to most people. There aren’t any easy answers here, but I suspect staying the course will result in political upheaval, see Trump. If the smart people can’t solve the problem, then the not so smart voters will try.
Tom Scharf,
Taking one for the team will not solve the income and wealth inequality problem. IMO, that has almost nothing to do with trade. It won’t do much for jobs either, as any manufacturing that returns to the US will be highly automated.
I think it’s particularly ironic that the Democrats derided ‘trickle-down’ economics under Reagan, but seem perfectly happy with QE and low interest rates from the Fed, which is trickle-down on steroids. Worse, it’s more like trickle-up in practice. But then a lot of them think that a $15/hour minimum wage is a good idea.
A lot of stuff would be more expensive if it was manufactured in the US. The upper class having to pay more for goods would be a wealth transfer from them to…somebody. The lower class would also have to pay more for the same goods so it isn’t clear who really wins. If the lower classes get paid well for making more expensive hammers then it is basically a wealth transfer from the upper class to lower class hammer makers, and China loses. My guess is the details of implementation of this theory matter…a lot…like the upper class just making their stuff one hammer more expensive.
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What’s been different lately is that both the right and left are full throttle on policy that sends jobs off-shore. The lower classes have been abandoned by both parties and this leaves an opening for Trump / Sanders. If you want open borders and free trade don’t expect thank you’s from the lower class. The gleaming castles of Silicon Valley contrast sharply with the rust belt.
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Free trade and open borders have become religious doctrine for the elites in both parties. They don’t try to justify the polices to the voters anymore (you like cheap stuff from Walmart, right?) because it has exited the Overton window in their peer groups.
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Perhaps what we have is the optimal economic policy, but at least try to explain why that is the case to the electorate. Trust is being lost. When’s the last time you heard a politician attempt to justify free trade polices? There are arguments to be made, make them. “Trust me” from the Davos set is not a something I want to get behind.
If you want to read a really depressing article about the state of education in America…
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What Really Happened At The School Where Every Graduate Got Into College
https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/11/28/564054556/what-really-happened-at-the-school-where-every-senior-got-into-college
Tom Scharf,
I keep telling you that the trade imbalance is not the principal reason for low incomes or job losses. But since that doesn’t seem to make an impression on you, precisely how are you going to stop people from buying goods from, say, China? Real question. If you say tariffs, then you’re asking for a trade war and millions of jobs in industries that export may be lost. Do the words Smoot-Hawley ring any bells?
Tom Scharf (Comment #165929): “A lot of stuff would be more expensive if it was manufactured in the US. The upper class having to pay more for goods would be a wealth transfer from them to…somebody. The lower class would also have to pay more for the same goods so it isn’t clear who really wins. If the lower classes get paid well for making more expensive hammers then it is basically a wealth transfer from the upper class to lower class hammer makers, and China loses. My guess is the details of implementation of this theory matter…a lot…like the upper class just making their stuff one hammer more expensive.”
The winners may not be clear, but at least one group of losers is obvious: the people who end up unemployed or underemployed.
The framework to understand this is comparative advantage. Trade benefits an economy by allowing workers to make things that they are good at making, in comparison with what else they might be doing. If we outsource the production of widgets to China, then domestic resources (labor, capital, etc) are freed up to make other things. If the other things have greater total value than the widgets that might have been made, then the economy benefits. If widget production is replaced by an activity that is of less value than making widgets, the economy is hurt.
Much of the labor freed up by trade with China has been replaced by unemployment. That hurts the economy.
Free trade has become something of a cargo cult. True free trade should automatically result in maximal allotment of resources to the things for which we have a comparative advantage. But that has not happened in the U.S. The reason is that the “free trade agreements” we sign aren’t really about free trade. Actual free trade agreements are like the ones between California and Michigan, or Texas and New York.
But there are no such trade agreements. That is what free trade looks like.
Tom Scharf (Comment #165930): “If you want to read a really depressing article about the state of education in America…”
What a weird article.It says:
“For the first time, every graduate had applied and been accepted to college.”
and
“Records show half the graduates missed more than three months of school, or 60 days.”
Then it goes on in detail about the shenanigans the school administrators pulled to make every student graduate. And about how poorly prepared the students were for college. Disheartening, but not really surprising. But it never addresses the question that was uppermost in my mind: How did those students get accepted into college?
The article says that 164 seniors received diplomas and also says: “We know of 183 students accepted to the University of the District of Columbia, the local community college. But only 16 enrolled this fall.”
So I guess that the University of the District of Columbia is open admission and accepts any students who graduates from high school in D.C. And that the school administrators made sure every student sent in an application.
And that NPR has a numeracy problem and/or a proofreading problem.
Mike M.,
It sounds like you are making the argument that if trade isn’t completely free, then we should abolish trade entirely. I also don’t think you can document that the trade deficit is responsible for anywhere close to a majority of the many people of working age who have left the work force and are not looking for a job. It’s easy, however, to show that millions of jobs in manufacturing have disappeared because of automation.
Financial Times: Most US manufacturing jobs lost to technology, not trade
https://www.ft.com/content/dec677c0-b7e6-11e6-ba85-95d1533d9a62
Exports to China: $116B
Imports from China: $463B
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Lot’s of people would be OK with a trade war. I’m not asking for it, but China has more to lose because of the imbalance. As China’s cost of living increases, environmental and labor protections increase, their trade advantage will decrease. That may take a while.
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This economic system has losers and they get to vote. The bottom 40% of the US has an average of zero wealth. I doubt they are terrified about economic policy experiments or will heed doomsday warnings from the winners.
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The better question is what are our economic geniuses proposing to address this problem? I’m not sure they even recognize it as a problem at all.
Manufacturing must be automated in the US because it can’t compete with the low labor rates offshore for humans. Either automate it, offshore it, or likely be noncompetitive. The cause and effect here are intertwined. It’s a morass.
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One of the problems with “free trade” is that workers cannot export themselves to China to get a job where the cost of living is lower (as is the standard of living). Offshore has lower regulatory and labor standards which is an advantage workers cannot control.
Tom Scharf,
That’s because there aren’t many people still alive who have experienced one. Smoot-Hawley, which started the last trade war, was passed over 87 years ago. You can also find polls that show that a significant fraction of college students think that a communist government would be OK with them. The tune will change if either actually happens.
That trade imbalance money doesn’t get stuffed in a mattress either. It’s invested. It’s why the US Government can run a large fiscal deficit. It’s going to come out of the economy one way or another. I’d rather get stuff from China.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #165934): “It sounds like you are making the argument that if trade isn’t completely free, then we should abolish trade entirely.”
Nonsense. I am saying that free trade with a country like China is impossible, so we should abandon the ideological commitment to *pretending* that it exists. Instead, we should pursue balanced trade.
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DeWitt: “I also don’t think you can document that the trade deficit is responsible for anywhere close to a majority of the many people of working age who have left the work force and are not looking for a job.”
It is generally not easy to document any specific cause and effect in economics. What we have is a correlation that agrees with what we should expect from both theory and common sense.
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DeWitt: “It’s easy, however, to show that millions of jobs in manufacturing have disappeared because of automation.”
And meaningless. Almost every farm job in the U.S. was “lost” due to mechanization. That did not produce massive unemployment. Whole industries have been “lost” due to technological advances. No mass unemployment. Then many of the new industries were lost and most jobs in the remaining industries were lost and most of the jobs that replaced the lost jobs were lost, and so on. Luddite thinking is wrong. There is a sort-of-science called “economics” that explains why.
Ultimately, our economic well being is the result of what we produce. Mechanization and automation increase productivity and improve our economic well being. Exporting jobs reduces overall productivity and makes us less well off (or, at least, less well off than we would have been with a less stupid trade policy).
Tom Scharf (Comment #165935): “Lot’s of people would be OK with a trade war. I’m not asking for it, but China has more to lose because of the imbalance.”
For that reason, we don’t really have to worry about a trade war. China has to worry about a trade war.
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DeWitt Payne (Comment #165937): “That’s because there aren’t many people still alive who have experienced one. Smoot-Hawley, which started the last trade war, was passed over 87 years ago.”
It is not at all clear that Smoot-Hawley caused the depression. Also, at the time the U.S. had a trade surplus: http://www.econdataus.com/tradeall.html
McKinsey and Co. estimate that 1/3 of the current American work force jobs will disappear by 2030 because of automation. Globally, up to 800 million jobs will disappear, including in China. The link to the full report is in the following article.
https://www.axios.com/mckinsey-automation-may-throw-800m-people-out-of-work-by-2030-2513416488.html
Mike M.,
It’s not at all clear that Smoot-Hawley didn’t cause the depression either. The article below makes the case that, among other things, the bank failures that led to the massive drop in the money supply were triggered by Smoot-Hawley.
https://fee.org/articles/the-smoot-hawley-tariff-and-the-great-depression/
I trust macroeconomic models even less than climate models.
Mike M,
“Ultimately, our economic well being is the result of what we produce.”
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Of course. But that doesn’t address the very real political problem of rapidly widening income and wealth. On average, trade is hugely beneficial, but to individuals (and individual companies), that is not always, or even usually, the case. Independent of your politics, you have to recognize that people can vote, and if the income and wealth discrepancies grow too great, democracy almost guarantees that voters will elect people who will address those issues. You can have a socialist like Elizabeth “more taxes” Warren who will confiscate most income and wealth and re-distribute, a blowhard like Donald Trump who will claim he will bring back the good factory jobs, or any one of a host of other unsavory characters getting elected, but what you can’t do is ignore the problem. I have seen no moderate politician from either party willing to take the issue on in a meaningful way.
SteveF,
Despite what economists would have you believe, economic well being for the median individual or family in the developed world is only loosely correlated with GDP. For example, if you plot PPP adjusted median family income vs GDP for the top twenty or so countries, it looks more like a shotgun pattern at wide choke than a line or curve. You have to force a linear fit through zero. I posted a graph here a while back, but I’m not terribly interested in finding again.
Oh, and the US trade deficit is currently less than 3% of GDP. It peaked at about 6% during the Great Recession.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #165940): “McKinsey and Co. estimate that 1/3 of the current American work force jobs will disappear by 2030 because of automation.”
Studies like this tend to greatly over estimate the rate at which change will occur by ignoring the limiting effect of sunk capital costs. Given a more plausible rate of change, it is a good thing, just like all the previous times this sort of thing has happened.
SteveF (Comment #165942): “On average, trade is hugely beneficial”
Do we actually know that? How do we know? Real questions.
Mike M,
You could read https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/modeledbehavior/2015/10/17/actually-everyone-benefits-from-free-trade/amp/
For a quick argument. There are more theoretical analyses if you want to dig into them. But the basic issues are the same as why is is economically advantageous for people to specialize in their work. I am far more productive doing circuit design or software optimization than I would be if I divided my time between those things and growing wheat, raising chickens, weaving cloth, and building my own house. Economic specialization increases overall productivity, and international trade is just an extension of specialization and local trade.
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But there are real disruptions, and failure to address these may lead to real political problems…. as the election of a blowhard as president so clearly demonstrates.
DeWitt,
“…economic well being for the median individual or family in the developed world is only loosely correlated with GDP”
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Sure, but this is in large part the result of the widening income gap in many countries, but especially in the USA. The “economic well being” of the average family improves with GDP. But it is not the average that has the greatest influence on elections, it is the median.
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With regard to what economics tells us: the dismal science is indeed dismal, and is perhaps no more related to “science” than is “political science”… or in some cases, “climate science”. But the basics of the economic analysis of trade (“comparative advantage”) seems to me pretty sound.
Steve,
If that Forbes article is the best you can do, then we don’t know that we are net beneficiaries of trade. He merely asserts that is true, then sets up straw man arguments to buttress his point. Example: “if our claim is that the local economies are hurt by trade then turn trade off entirely should benefit them”. Nonsense. Just because trade can be beneficial, it does not follow that all trade under all conditions is always beneficial for everyone. Ozimek’s argument is more like religious fervor than reason.
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If we exported 15% of our production and imported an equal amount, I have little doubt that such trade would be beneficial, for all the usual reasons. But how large would the net benefit to the economy be? 2%? 5%? I don’t know, but it seems to me that it must surely be much less than 15%.
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But what if our exports dropped to 10%, with the same imports, and 5% of the workforce were put out of work? That would be a 5% drop in production, which could well exceed the benefit provided by balanced trade.
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For reference, current exports are about 12% of GDP and imports are about 17%. Maybe those numbers are a bit out of date.
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I have looked a little for numbers on the net benefit of trade and have not managed to find any. If they existed and showed a benefit, I think the free trade acolytes would constantly trumpet them. So I suspect that such numbers do not exist.
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I think that Trump has the right idea. Trade is, in general, good. But that is not automatic and we have hurt ourselves by signing bad trade deals.
SteveF (Comment #165947): “But the basics of the economic analysis of trade (“comparative advantageâ€) seems to me pretty sound.”
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It is sound as long as the assumptions hold. One of the key assumptions is that people who lose their jobs due to imports find work that is more productive that the jobs they lost. That is not what has happened. So the assumption is wrong and the conclusion is unreliable.
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I think I need to repeat this: The benefits of trade come from enabling a shift of resources from a less productive use to a more productive use. Trade that produces a shift in the other direction is detrimental. To some extent, that is exactly what has happened.
Mike M,
There are (of course) disruptions, and people who have lost their jobs is the clearest disruption. When trade is not blocked politically, a national economy faces competition from workers (and industries) in other countries. So the economic value of those workers and industries becomes set by global rather than local competition… and it may well fall. Factories that are not competitive will close and worker will lose their jobs. On the other hand, trade allows individuals and industries that are competitive to benefit from new international markets. In addition, there are diffuse benefits from trade which accrue to the entire economy. That is, cheaply produced Chinese products improve the standard of living of those who are not adversely impacted by competition from China. The competition makes domestic industries that survive the competition more efficient and productive. This diffuse benefit seems to me always ignored when people evaluate the net cost/benefit of trade. It is true that displaced workers may have great difficulty finding comparable jobs… and that is the political problem… but it is one that is self-resolving; the next generation of workers will not be looking for jobs that do not exist, and not limiting themselves to skills that are not in demand.
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If you examine countries with a range of wealths, those that have severely limited trade (import duties/regulations/tariffs) are generally poor countries, while those with more liberal trade laws are generally much more wealthy. I doubt that is coincidence. One country I know well (Brazil, where I am at the moment) has developed economically over the past 20 years mainly due to large reductions in trade barriers… in spite of terrible corruption and poor overall governance. Yes, there have been disruptions and displaced workers, but overall, the country is doing better economically.
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Do you think the citizens of the USA would benefit from each state imposing trade restrictions with other states? Do you see any logical difference between those trade restrictions and trade restrictions with other countries? Serious questions.
Whenever free trade comes up, I’m always reminded of this little spat in the UK/EU:
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“BRITISH supermarkets were banned by the European Court of Justice yesterday from selling a wide range of designer goods at greatly reduced prices.
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The ruling means that retailers cannot import designer goods such as Levi’s jeans and sell them at prices similar to those in America.
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However, they can continue to stock cut-price brands if they buy them in the European Union.”
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/1362985/Tesco-loses-fight-to-sell-Levis-at-American-prices.html
SteveF,
I don’t think you understand the theory of comparative advantage. The benefit of trade has nothing to do with the relative cost of Chinese goods relative to U.S. goods. Take a look at Ricardo’s original example. You can find it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage#Ricardo.27s_example
or any number of other places on the internet. In the example, Portugal can produce cloth more cheaply than England, but it is beneficial to Portugal if they import their cloth from England. Yes, I typed that right.
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Comparative advantage refers to the optimal apportionment of resources within an economy. Trade is beneficial by permitting a more optimal apportionment. Long term unemployment is not optimal. Trade that produces long term unemployment is damaging economically as well as socially.
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Countries that severely restrict trade are irrelevant to this discussion. No one is advocating that. So far as I know, no one serious is advocating any restriction on trade. The issue is the terms on which foreign trade is undertaken. That is NOT now free trade, or anything close to free trade, even where we have “free trade” agreements.
Dave JR,
As far as I can tell, the EU is, on balance, a terrible economic drain on the citizens of its member countries. Not to mention a consistent usurper of personal liberties. Not at all good.
SteveF (Comment #165950): “Do you think the citizens of the USA would benefit from each state imposing trade restrictions with other states?”
Of course not. We have free trade between the states and the conditions that make free trade beneficial apply.
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SteveF: “Do you see any logical difference between those trade restrictions and trade restrictions with other countries?”
The fact that you ask that tells me that you have not been listening. The so-called free trade agreements that we sign are enormously complex. That is NOT free trade. The trade regimes created by those agreements is nothing like the trade that exists between states. Trade between states takes place under a reasonably common set of tax laws, environmental regulations, labor laws, and safety regulations. It uses a common currency. There is not only free exchange of goods and capital, but also labor. Those commonalities do not apply to foreign trade. Without such commonalities, true free trade is impossible.
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The issue is not trade. It is that we sign trade agreements that are detrimental to our interests. We do that because of a failed ideology. Since trade should be mutually beneficial, we should have no problem getting trade agreements that are mutually beneficial.
Mike M,
I understand comparative advantage, and have for many years (50?). Yes, efficient allocation of resources (material and human) is the fundamental issue with all trade…. whether local or international.
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Where trade takes place under terms which impose a disadvantage on one side, then that is not “free trade”. I would never suggest that trade policy should be unfair to the USA in that way. Yes, there are terrible imbalances in the current trade agreements with China, thanks to a series of very bad trade negotiations, and those should be eliminated. There are still horrible trade restrictions in many places around the world, the worst of which usually involve protection for farmers (USA sugar tariffs, multiple EU farm tariffs, Japanese farm tariffs, etc.) or “local champion” industries (like wine in France). They are uniformly harmful. Take down the sugar duties, and the USA sugar industry would cease to exist. But this would not be an economic loss, it would be an economic gain. There would be short term disruption and “loss”)… but long term it would be beneficial.
Mike M,
“The fact that you ask that tells me that you have not been listening.”
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This comment tells me you would be better served being a lot less arrogant.
Mike M,
“Trade between states takes place under a reasonably common set of tax laws”
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Hummm…
Florida income tax – 0%
California income tax – up to 13%
All this bandwidth arguing about trade ignores the elephant in the room: automation. Any jobs lost because of trade are gone, but assuming that the trade imbalance remains approximately constant, it won’t cause a significant continuing drain on jobs. Automation, however, is ramping up. We could see taxicab and truck drivers go the way of switchboard telephone operators. And that’s, as it were, the tip of the iceberg.
Trump isn’t going to get what he wants from NAFTA renegotiation. He’s poisoned the well with Mexico with his wall. They would now rather see NAFTA blown up than give Trump a victory even if it hurts them more than it hurts us. Canada, btw, has demands of its own. NAFTA renegotiation is the proverbial can of worms.
DeWitt,
Automation is at least as disruptive as unfair trade agreements, and it will become an ever more important issue. Eliminating drivers of all sorts represents a huge disruption, and one that may be not more than a decade or so away. Of course, farm automation did the same, and we survived that. The policies needed to address this coming disruption are one in the same as policies to address workers displaced by trade… and nobody seems to be taking the problem seriously.
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I doubt Mexico is going to let NAFTA blow up… they have benefited hugely. Canada, not so much. The Canadians want to protect certain industries, and they may very well be willing to blow up NAFTA over those industries.
The current US trade policy is effectively rising the standard of living of people in China et. al. at the expense of the middle and lower class in the US. From a global perspective this is likely optimal. If the standard of living in these countries and the US were equivalent (as well as regulatory regimes) then we would have something that looked more like free trade to US citizens. In the US citizens can move to states where the cost of living is lower and jobs are more abundant. When car factories open in Alabama instead of Michigan people don’t demand trade barriers (right to work is another story). This is healthy fair competition.
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What is not fair about some foreign trade:
1. Lack of open access to foreign markets.
2. Non-equivalent environmental and labor regimes.
3. Government subsidies.
4. Product dumping.
5. Intellectual property rights.
6. Inability of workers to relocate.
7. Enforcement of policies.
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This is why trade agreements are hard. Trade needs to be as fair as possible and where large segments of society are affected, social solutions may need to be considered.
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I think the establishment has fallen into a trap of global optimization where elections are regional and are encountering blow back. It is alarming to me how many academics think “America First” (the concept, not the slogan) is bad trade policy when I believe it is utterly obvious. They seemingly just don’t care about their own citizens anymore than people in China. America is not their tribe any longer.
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The need to point out that it is not their ox that is getting gored should be unspoken, but their behavior suggests that they don’t understand this. The establishment is behaving like they are their own political entity and no longer represent the citizens that elect them. A bit of humility delivered via the voting booth and academia budget cuts would probably be useful at this point.
SteveF,
When we shipped products to Brazil a decade or so ago, we had to disassemble the product, ship the parts, and then pay someone in Brazil to reassemble them. Everything had to be in Portuguese. It was a nightmare.
The NYT ran an article today on one possible solution to wealth inequality, create a huge investment fund where each citizen gets one share and are sent dividends every year. Apparently this is done in Alaska and Norway.
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A Simple Fix for Our Massive Inequality Problem
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/opinion/inequality-social-wealth-fund.html
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A minor flaw is where to get the baseline funding. Can you imagine our politicians trying to agree on what to invest this fund in? Can you imagine our government not raiding this piggy bank within ten years?
SteveF, when there is free trade between states, the benefits even if one state is hurt go to other Americans. There is also free movement of labor towards the cheaper producing state, which we see with Texas gaining population while California failed to gain electoral votes for the first time even with all the illegal immigration.
Now we have China building artificial islands. Where did they get the money for this?
SteveF (Comment #165959): “Automation is at least as disruptive as unfair trade agreements, and it will become an ever more important issue.”
There is a fundamental difference between automation and unfair trade agreements. Automation increases productivity and therefore provides additional resources which may be used to deal with undesirable side effects of the disruption. Unfair trade agreements reduce production and reduce the resources that might be used to deal with consequences.
Tom Scharf (Comment #165962): “The NYT ran an article today on one possible solution to wealth inequality”
I see no need for a solution to a non-existent problem. The real problem is not inequality, it is income stagnation in the middle class. Had the billionaires never made their fortunes, the middle class income stagnation would be worse, not better.
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“… create a huge investment fund where each citizen gets one share and are sent dividends every year. Apparently this is done in Alaska and Norway. … A minor flaw is where to get the baseline funding.”
Right. The funds in Alaska and Norway were created as a way to distribute petroleum windfalls, not created de novo.
This is looking more and more like the comments at WUWT. It’s a bunch of relatively clueless people, and I include myself in that number, waving their hands and shouting about things they think they understand, but don’t. To quote Shakespeare: “It’s a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
Tweet from Judith Curry:
“This is absolutely the stupidest paper I have ever seen published https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/advance-article/doi/10.1093/biosci/bix133/4644513”
Link is to a paper by Harvey et al. (with some familiar names among the al.), “Internet Blogs, Polar Bears, and Climate-Change Denial by Proxy”. Abstract
HaroldW,
Makes me wonder if Judith Curry is familiar with much of Lewandowsky’s work. I see he’s not the lead author, so maybe it’s not fair to hold the paper to the high bar he’s set in the past…
Tom Scharf,
“1. Lack of open access to foreign markets.”
Absolutely.
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“”2. Non-equivalent environmental and labor regimes.”
I doubt it… too many green and moral judgments involved. Seems to me neither practical nor desirable to enforce uniform rules.
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“3. Government subsidies.”
Absolutely.
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“4. Product dumping.”
Tricky. Nobody sells below marginal cost, they sell at a price which generates positive cash flow, but which may have such a low margin that it puts higher cost producers out of business…. and the howling then begins. If someone sells at different prices in different markets (eg. higher price in their home market, lower price for exports), then that is unfair competition if that home market is protected from foreign competition by import tariffs or non-tariff barriers to entry, as unfortunately it often is.
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“5. Intellectual property rights.”
Absolutely.
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“6. Inability of workers to relocate.”
Are you suggesting competition from low wage countries is inherently unfair? China is never going to let millions of displaced American workers migrate to China, even if those Americans wanted to… and they don’t. .
“7. Enforcement of policies.”
I am not sure what this means.
Product dumping – Such as when the Japanese dumped DRAM’s on the market to put US manufacturers out of business, then increased prices. Not necessarily a product of trade directly, but in this case it was country specific.
Low wage countries are fine, but US workers should be able to relocate to a lower cost of living country to make things “fair”. I don’t think this will ever happen either, but if you were the worlds greatest shoe maker and you live in the US, tough luck.
Enforcement – Creating a trade agreement if hard enough, but making sure there are enforcement mechanisms for cheaters is even harder. China can agree all day to respect US IP, but when they let DVD’s / software be openly pirated then they aren’t playing fair.
“polar bear vulnerability”…in other words there isn’t evidence of actual impacts, only potential impacts. If only there was a betting market for polar bear populations.
So by that definition I guess US Big Pharma technically dumps pharmaceuticals on the world market. After all, they sell drugs in foreign countries for much less than they sell them in the US. The non-tariff barrier in the US is called the FDA.
DeWitt,
The FDA is not a barrier to entry, any more than it is for US based companies. Foreign firms regularly qualify their drugs for the US market, which offers much higher prices than other markets. US based companies do sell at higher prices in the USA than outside the USA, but so do all their competitors. I have never heard of dumping charges raised against a drug.
Pardon me while I soak up the crocodile tears of academia because the new tax bill will tax endowments and grad student tuition waivers.
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It’s almost like the endless series of “open letters” in the media about Trump and his supporters before last year’s election failed to endear them with the new government. Those chickens…
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Memo to large organizations: Do not get captured by a single political party.
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On a more serious note, just like the ACA, major legislation should be bipartisan in nature. Perhaps this is simply impossible in today’s political environment, but that needs to change.
SteveF,
The FDA isn’t an insurmountable barrier to entry for foreign pharmaceuticals, but it is a barrier. It’s expensive and slow. Drugs can be available in Europe years before the FDA allows them into the US.
What percentage of Trump’s Twitter followers would you estimate voted for him?
Number of followers 43 million
Got 63 million votes.
MikeN,
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I’d guess 2/3’rds-ish.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/robsalkowitz/2017/01/17/trumps-20-million-twitter-followers-get-smaller-under-the-microscope/2/#25af55e265c0
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Subtract out the politicos, the liberal women, the hollywood humor groups and wild ass guess to extrapolate / fill in the gaps. Just a guess.
Tom,
I think graduate student taxing tuition waivers is generally a bad thing. That said, I don’t know if there are ways the university can re-define things to get around this. It may turn out there will be.
For example: If grad students teaching and research assistants were officially called employees, then perhaps the schooling could be employer training. No one at normal companies pays for employee training. Or maybe if the schools created fellowships that were not technically connected to the work down as teaching or research assistants, perhaps fellowships would be tax free.
Mind you: it’s not the universities I feel sorry for if the tax grad student waivers. It’s students who are in grad school right now, who don’t have large incomes and who will have trouble paying their taxes next year. I’m pretty sure the schools won’t come up with creative solutions in less than a few months.
In the longer term: some departments need grad students to teach courses or work on funded research projects. (The ones that need lots of TAs tend to be departments that provided ‘service’ courses like first year STEM type classes and things like Rhetoric and so on that everyone takes. The ones that need lots of RA tend to be STEM). These tend to be programs we do want to supply a sizeable number of graduates.
Either the stipends will need to go up or some money to cover the expense of these new taxes will need to be found so grad students can and do remain in grad school. Other departments don’t need many grad students– but in many cases it’s not clear we need lots of graduates in those departments.
I don’t know enough about endowments to say much one way or the other on that.
MikeN,
I follow POTUS, and so Trump. I did not vote for him.
DeWitt,
The key point is if the hoops you have jump through are the same for all applicants. The FDA, AFAIK treats all applicants equally (and there are lots of hoops to jump!). The issue is if there is preferential treatment for domestic companies, and I doubt there is.
lucia (Comment #165978): “taxing tuition waivers is generally a bad thing. That said, I don’t know if there are ways the university can re-define things to get around this. It may turn out there will be.”
Tuition wavers are compensation for employment. Scholarships won’t be taxed, even under the House plan (the Senate version taxes neither). All universities will have to do is to redefine the wavers as scholarships, but then they won’t be able to require students to work for them. But they could still hire the students as TA’s and RA’s. See: https://www.forbes.com/sites/prestoncooper2/2017/11/20/no-the-house-tax-bill-wont-destroy-graduate-education/#42294cb34876
It might screw up billing research grants for crazy amounts of tuition. That strikes me as a good thing. It might make faculty pay taxes on wavers that their kids receive. Sounds reasonable to me. Perhaps those are the reasons for the change in the House bill.
Right, I think schools can just restructure how they give credit to grad students. Also if grad students are really poor, they won’t pay taxes anyway based on income. The rest of the world has to pay taxes, so I’m not convinced this loophole should have ever existed to start with. Everyone who pays tuition would like to be able to deduct it all, grad students shouldn’t be special in this regard. It comes off as “taxes for thee, but nor for me” as academia generally favor higher taxes. Their paycheck can be dependent on taxes so this is unsurprising.
Any company could provide benefits to employees and claim it shouldn’t be taxed in a quid pro quo (such as healthcare payments now). Using a company car for personal use is a taxable benefit, etc.
It’s a minor issue. Anyway the original point is that when you crap all over someone don’t be surprised when they don’t treat you favorably. Academia could use a big fat diaper.
If the tax code goes from a zillion pages to half a zillion pages that is likely progress.
SteveF,
As I said, technically we may be considered to be dumping pharmaceuticals. It wasn’t a great example. However:
1. I don’t consider a negative balance of trade as axiomatically a bad thing for the US economy, nor do I consider a positive balance of trade as a good thing beyond all doubt. The economy is not a zero sum game. As a result, you can’t claim that the negative balance of trade causes job losses equal to the size of the trade imbalance divided by average worker productivity, not that anyone has claimed that here, but I have seen it claimed.
2. It follows from point 1 that a negative balance of trade is not proof that the trade deals we have signed are automatically bad simply because they resulted in a negative trade balance. Nor do I think that it’s proof that our negotiators were incompetent and that we could get a better deal now. See, for example, the current NAFTA renegotiation.
3. There are winners and losers in dumping. Take steel, for example. The losers are the steel manufacturers and their employees, the winners are the steel users, their employees and their customers. So it’s not axiomatic that dumping causes harm to the economy as a whole and should be punished with tariffs. The argument on dumping steel and some other basic products seems to me to be based mainly on national security, not economics.
4. Trade agreements are never going to be perfect and there is very likely fault on both sides. But opposing imperfect trade agreements for that reason is the fallacy of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. See also point 1 again.
5. A vibrant Mexican economy is a better cure for illegal immigration than a wall. I don’t think there’s much doubt that NAFTA was a boon to the Mexican economy. Besides, we get stuff for our trade imbalance with Mexico. We get nothing from spending money to build a wall. I doubt it would have much effect on illegal immigration.
6. Withdrawing from NAFTA now will cause an immediate loss in US jobs, regardless of its long term effects on employment. A probable unintended consequence would be an increase in illegal immigration.
7. Trade wars are a bad thing. Nobody wins a trade war. That is an axiom.
> A vibrant Mexican economy is a better cure for illegal immigration than a wall. I don’t think there’s much doubt that NAFTA was a boon to the Mexican economy.
Then why was there more illegal immigration after NAFTA than before?
> Trade wars are a bad thing. Nobody wins a trade war.
OK, you also said that Mexico benefited a great deal. So a threat of trade war with Mexico would put Mexico in a position where they lose a lot while the US doesn’t feel they lose as much. Leverage to get something in negotiations.
If Trump weren’t promising a new tariff regime, he could use that leverage to get Mexico to pay for the wall.
Michael Flynn was indicted, but the indictment makes no mention of failing to register as a foreign agent, or that he tried to kidnap Gulen for money as one media report said.
Could Mueller have agreed to drop all that for something big, or is this the best he has?
Flynn is charged with lying to FBI agents. If Mueller had anything on Flynn with respect to some sort of conspiracy, he would have been charged with a crime involving that, so that his admission of guilt as part plea deal could be used as evidence against co-conspirators. It looks more and more like Mueller has nothing, except to do damage to some Trump associates.
Mike M,
As always, just my impression and people can correct me where I’m wrong, but in my view the whole darn thing is pointless. Suppose Trump ‘colluded’ with Russia. As Dershowitz says, ‘so what?‘. There’s no crime here in any event.
How I think will it play. Those still suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome will scream for his impeachment. Say for the sake of argument the midterms flip the Senate (a distinct possibility). I believe it takes two thirds of the Senate to impeach the President.
The fact that the dude got elected in the first place rocked all the pillars and foundations of certainty. Still, I got to say I’m not holding my breath on this one.
No, I remember now. The collusion isn’t the thing. It was just the pretext to go searching and investigating. If Mueller somehow digs up something big; if Trump’s hands are sufficiently dirty in some way he can prove, then maybe they’ll have a shot. But it’s going to have to be something pretty outrageous.
Wouldn’t surprise me to find out Trump’s got bodies buried (figuratively speaking) out there. Regarding the question: Is there something Mueller can find that’s outrageous enough to turn his base against him? – Well, it takes a lot in this day and age. Being a pussy grabber didn’t stop the Trumpster. Grown men putting the moves on teenage girls doesn’t appear to be stopping Roy Moore. I don’t know what it would take, honestly. Maybe Trump is a practicing nun-rapist or something.
shrug The whole thing is a shiny festival of nothing substantial to entertain the Trump hateys I think.
Tom Scharf
They would if a tuition waiver was considered income. According to this page, tuition and fees at MIT are $45K
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/031915/what-does-mit-cost.asp
If the waiver is for $45K, and that’s “income”, you will not “look” poor on your tax form.
But I think MikeM has pointed to the obvious solution. Instead of giving a “tuition waiver”, you give a “fellowship” (which is just a scholarship for graduate school.) The thing is fellowships cannot require students to be a TA or RA. So the school who offers one hoping the student will still need money and accept the TA or RA will risk that the student will accept the fellowship and decline the to take a research or teaching assistanceship. This is not inconceivable if student can get work that pays more that a TA would. Schools would prefer to force the students to take TA’s and RAs to get their waivers. Students would generally take RA’s regardless because that generally pays you to work on your thesis– so a win win. But TA is a bit dicier.
Now that things like online tutoring exist, I imagine lots of students can make more tutoring, though that’s not certain. Monthly stipends for TA’s at MIT seem to be near $2,856. If that’s nominaly for 20 hours/week * 4 weeks/ month , that’s $35/hr.
https://gradadmissions.mit.edu/costs-funding/stipend-rates
My guess is if schools made the “waiver” a “fellowship”, they’d also change graduation requirements to require some number of hours “teaching”.
University of Illinois did not require any “teaching” to graduate with a Ph.D. when I went there. People with fellowships or RAs did not work as TAs. Some faculty would prefer not to require students with externally funded fellowships be forced to teach because it cuts into time they can spend doing research. (Many MS students who only want an MS certainly won’t want to teach if they don’t have to.) So, generally, schools would prefer force students to be TA’s to get waivers rather than risk having them accept a fellowship and then not be a TA. But leaving the choice to the graduate student doesn’t necessarily harm the student.
Tom Scharf
Well…
https://ttlc.intuit.com/questions/3190142-can-i-deduct-professional-development-tuition-courses-and-books
If their current job is “research assistant”, then one could claim tuition is generally to improve their skills in their present job– to be a better researcher. That might just leave TA’s paying taxes.
lucia (#165990):
“If their current job is “research assistantâ€, then one could claim tuition is generally to improve their skills in their present job– to be a better researcher. That might just leave TA’s paying taxes.”
That argument can be extended to TAs, I think. If one is a TA in EE (say), EE courses arguably qualify as improving skill. It seems reasonable that additional knowledge about the subject will improve ability to teach. Not a guarantee, of course — we all (likely) had professors who knew lots about the subject and were terrible teachers. But as a general rule, it might get by.
High school teachers typically earn a salary based on experience (steps) and education credits (lanes). The credits can be either in the subject they teach, or in education courses. Such a structure seems to presume that further education in the field one teaches, improves skill at teaching.
I don’t think the tax code actually requires the education to be effective to be deductible. I think teachers can deduct for any teacher development class even if it’s badly designed and results in no help at all. The same teacher couldn’t deduct a class in wine tasting or something like that.
Flynn was not indicted. Indictment requires a grand jury. He waived this requirement and instead was charged directly. Likely waiving the grand jury indictment was a courtesy to the prosecutors saving time and aggravagtion, all as an expression of his desire not to do real time in the slammer.
MikeM, is Mueller required to detail all charges against Flynn right now?
Manafort’s charges do not include bank fraud or tax evasion, which will presumably be added later.
MikeN (Comment #165994): “”is Mueller required to detail all charges against Flynn right now? Manafort’s charges do not include bank fraud or tax evasion, which will presumably be added later.”
But Manafort was charged and plead innocent. Flynn is pleading guilty as part of a deal. That deal surely covers everything with which he might be charged.
The list of people who face jail time, having committed no crime except talking to the FBI, seems to be long and growing. Maybe it is unwise to talk to the FBI.
Steve,
They don’t appear to know how. Just do the Hillary: I don’t know. I don’t remember. I can’t recall. Then wipe everything.
Steve, How do you know these guys didn’t do anything other than talk to FBI?
Well, Manafort and Gates were basically charged with what, money laundering, conspiracy against the U.S. (I guess conspiracy to commit crimes), and not registering as a foreign agent. The failure to disclose lobbying I’m pretty sure I read someplace hasn’t usually been taken as a crime, more of a sort of guideline. As in, ‘Oh, you didn’t register? You need to go do that then.’ I don’t remember the deal behind the money laundering, I have to go re-read about that.
Flynn, as far as I can tell, lied about conversations with the Russian ambassador to the FBI.
Now,the idea that ‘if they aren’t guilty of that they’ve surely done something else to warrant a hanging’ is another matter. I do lean towards a default presupposition of guilt when it comes to powerful political / military figures.
Here’s some support for my ideas that the Manafort charges were basically jumped up horse hockey:
1. Nobody (basically) gets prosecuted for not registering as a foreign agent.
2. If I’m understanding this right and if it’s correct, it appears that the money laundering charge depends on item #1 – the illegal thing that makes what he did the crime of money laundering was that he didn’t register as a foreign agent / lobbyist. I might have this wrong though.
> That deal surely covers everything with which he might be charged.
I don’t see anything like that in the deal.
Mark, that is right. I am skeptical whether that would count as money laundering. The money itself has to be criminal to begin with. Tax evasion makes more sense there. Acting as a foreign agent is not illegal. It is illegal to not register as a foreign agent, but Manafort wasn’t paid for that, he was paid to be a foreign agent. The text of the law does say it is unlawful to act as a foreign agent without registering, but given that lobbying is a constitutional right, I don’t think it is the correct interpretation to say that the act of being a foreign agent while unregistered is illegal.
On top of that, I think money laundering laws are a little bit more specific than any criminal money, and require money to be obtained with particular crimes.
J Ferguson,
When someone is charged with nothing except telling a lie to the FBI, then I think that is good reason to believe they did nothing else worth prosecuting. Like the defense lawyers always say: never answer questions from the police, even if you know you have done nothing illegal. Same goes for the FBI. They are under no obligation to be truthful, while you can go to jail for even a minor mis-statement (eg. I never slept with that 21 yo woman who is my second cousin once removed…. when you did) Not worth it.
SteveF,
With the FBI in particular, it’s nearly certain that when they ask you a question, they already think they know the correct answer. So it’s not merely pointless, but dangerous to lie. Lawyer up immediately and let the lawyer answer any question that is asked.
SteveF, what about registering as a foreign agent. Isn’t that as much a slam dunk case as Manafort?
There seems to be a theory here that once charged, the now admitted miscreant cannot be charged with anything else. I do not think that is correct. I think Flynn may be exposed to a whole raft of charges depending on his level of cooperation.
This may be wrong, but if the idea is to relieve him of his anxiety about spending years as a guest of the state, then the best way to do it is to get him to plead guilty to a small thing for which the punishment is a month or two of bad food.
Something like this. Look Flynn, we know you’ve done all these things and we’d like your cooperation, but we have to charge you with something, so plead guilty to not putting the potty lid down when you are done, which will only give you a month or so in the slammer on the sea, and so long as you hep us, we won’t hit you with anything else. But if you don’t help or we think you are lying to us, it will be 20 years on Devil’s Island which is what your other pranks might be worth.
Holding charges or even (gasp) indictments on his more flagrant naughtiness pending satisfactory completion of his helpful service to tbe prosecution seems much more likely to be effective than hitting him with an axe now with only a spoon left to prod him with later.
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It must be my basically criminal nature, but this seems so obvious to me.
J,
I think that’s true as far as it goes. But does Flynn actually have anything useful to Mueller? (real question). Even if he does, Dershowitz points out he’s no good as a witness; he was indicted for lying to the FBI in the first place. His credibility is gone.
Dunno. I’d have thought Manafort would have had more dirt on Trump than Flynn, but I concede of course that I really have no way of knowing. We’ll see.
[Edit: Also, Flynn is scum. This said, he doesn’t appear to be any dirtier than anybody else in the cesspool swamp we call a political system. I don’t know that they’ve got much of anything hair raising on Flynn. Other than that he’s run of the mill Washington sleaze.]
Hi Marc,
Dershowitz’s views are always very specific. Flynn may be no good as a witness, but there may never be a court proceeding. The FBI needs to know what happened; who did what. The more they know, the more they will have to squeeze someone else in the very remote event that they do need someone respectable to testify.
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My guess is if there really is something there, Mueller will go to senior senators he can trust and show them what he has and they, in turn, will go to Trump and suggest that the toaster has been plugged in and that he might want to think about retiring early.
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No matter what is found, I doubt that Trump will be impeached. And not the 25th either. But a strongly recommended resignation? I think that’s how he’ll go.
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FWIW, I don’t find Deshowitz to be a very reliable guide to anything other than what can or cannot happen in a court proceeding or perhaps how the constitution might be interpeted by a specific jurist. As far as the real world is concerned, nah…
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as to Flynn, you don’t think conspiracy to kidnap is serious — assuming of course that there is anything to it?
Apologies for posting excessively. I’ll muzzle myself after this.
I fell behind reading the news on this.
A day or two ago, it came out that Kushner told Flynn to contact the Russians. A very senior member of the Trump team directed Flynn to make contact.
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The Smoking Gun!?!?
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No not really. This wasn’t candidate Trump at this point in time, this was President-Elect Trump.
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Okay. I shut up for awhile now.
[Edit: Sorry, just saw your post J. Kidnapping Fethullah Gulen, no kidding! Sure. I’d missed that story. Well, like I said. Flynn is no saint.
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Trump quietly step down? I doubt it J. You guys can set me straight if I have this wrong, but Nixon stepped down because he knew he’d be impeached and he knew it’d stick. Without the threat of what would be an obviously successful impeachment, why on earth would Trump step down? (real question).] He didn’t pull the plug in the election campaign even though basically nobody thought he had a chance in heck of winning. I don’t buy it.]
j ferguson (Comment #166005): “There seems to be a theory here that once charged, the now admitted miscreant cannot be charged with anything else. I do not think that is correct. I think Flynn may be exposed to a whole raft of charges depending on his level of cooperation.”
Assuming that Flynn has at least a semi-competent attorney, he can’t be charged with anything else provided that he lives up to his side of the deal. If he had any involvement in anything criminal, he would be made to plead guilty to some reduced charge pertaining to that activity. That way his allocution could be used as somewhat credible testimony against someone else. But as mark points out, this plea largely kills any credibility Flynn might have as a witness.
The only way this does any damage to Trump is if Flynn can tell Mueller where to look to get the goods on Trump. But that is not going to happen, since there was no collusion with the Russians (except maybe by Hillary and the DNC).
Mike M,
How do you know there was no collusion (conspiracy)?
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On another point, is the admission of lying the problem, or does the existence of a deal diminish his credibility as a witness?
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Not that I think there will ever be a court proceeding on any of this.
j ferguson (Comment #166010): “How do you know there was no collusion (conspiracy)?”
Occam’s razor. There is zero evidence of a conspiracy in spite of months of digging. The logical reason is that there is no evidence to find.
Plus, there is the fact that the whole collusion theory is just a nutty conspiracy theory that defies all logic and reason.
Mike M,
The Occam’s razor test is pretty good if you know the whole tortilla, but how can you?
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Suppose prosecuters want to get the whole thing and there are only faint signals that there is something there? Do you really think they’d blast whatever they do have out to the media? Really?
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If they want to get the entire story and maybe prosecute the miscreants there is no advantage to them in broadcasting what they do know. So even though I too doubt that there is anything there, I certainly don’t KNOW one way or another. And I can see you don’t either.
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As to the quality of Flynn’s representation, it doesn’t matter. Of course he isn’t going to be prosecuted further if he behaves, but the operant thought in my earlier post was that he is under considerably more pressure to behave if the prosecuters have a really big hammer, like the threat of an eternity eating oatmeal.
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This is why the prosecuters would accept a guilty plea on a relatively insignificant felony and hold back the really juicy ones. Since the penalty for lying to the FBI seems around 6 months inside, if this were his only offense, he might have let them try to prosecute him. It should be crystal clear to anyone that he has much more exposure, much more. The threat of them prosecuting the heavy stuff if he lies or fails to perform is what makes this work.
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It is so obvious.
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And remember Marc, charged not indicted sort of like stirred not shaken.
Thanks J. As always, it’s a pleasure when you share your perspective and ideas, I appreciate it. Particularly when they are different from mine.
Careful marc, I could be nuts.
🙂 I’ve heard that madness and genius are two sides of the same coin. Mad or not, I enjoy and appreciate hearing stuff that helps limit the stagnation of my thinking.
J Ferguson,
Sounds like you have been reading the NY Times, or maybe listening to the talking heads at CNN. 😉
Don’t forget our dinner bet about Trump leaving office before his first term is over.
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With regard to Flynn, we don’t know any details, so most discussion seems based on speculation. What I think is a safe bet is that Mueller will continue his investigation of all things Trump until Trump leaves office…. He is the swamp’s best hope, and he knows that.
Nah, Steve, it’s the WAPO. I hate the Times. Don’t worry. I haven’t forgotten the soiree.
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Of course it’s all speculation on my part for the stuff I’ve written above, but just like it must be Co2 because they can’t think of anything else, I can’t think of any convincing alternate scenario which would produce the current Flynn story.
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I suppose if Flynn had done nothing prosecutable other than lie to the FBI and decided to fight it, the FBI might have demurred from not wanting to produce their evidence in court, or there may be some way to try something like this under seal. But even a conviction for lying doesn’t produce any more than a mild sentence and even then, he might have beaten it. So I say that the plea shows that he’s done far worse and it is likely that he would be charged or indicted for somethign with a heavy sentence – conspiracy to kidnap for example.
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As to the possibility that the Trump capaign might have somehow cooperated (conspired) with the Russians, I rely on what seems to me the political innocence of the people around Trump. As for Trump, he’s clearly an effective politician no matter how ignorant he is of the way things work. So would he do something like this? I don’t think it’s impossible although I agree it’s not likely.
Nah, Steve, it’s the WAPO. I hate the Times Don’t worry. I haven’t forgotten the soiree.
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Of course it’s all speculation on my part for ther stuff I’ve written above, but just like it must be Co2 because they can’t thknk of anything else, I can’t think of any alternate scenario which would produce the current Flynn story.
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I suppose if Flynn had done nothing prosecutable other than lie to the FBI and decided to fight it, the FBI might have demurred from not wanting to produce their evidence in court, or there may be some way to try something like this under seal. But even a conviction for lying doesn’t produce any more than a mild sentence and even then, he might have beaten it. So I say that the plea shows that he’s done far worse and it is likely that hde would be charged or indicted for somethign with a heavy sentence – conspiracy to kidnap for example.
I add that if all that Flynn had done was lie AND Mueller hadn’t become convinced that Flynn can lead them to bigger fish, likely nothing would have followed.
I don’t know how i doubled down on that, but i agree that once was probably enough.
j ferguson (Comment #166019): “I add that if all that Flynn had done was lie AND Mueller hadn’t become convinced that Flynn can lead them to bigger fish, likely nothing would have followed.”
Not true at all. Mueller needs scalps; Flynn is a scalp. If all Mueller had on Flynn was lying to the FBI, what would Flynn have to gain by fighting it in court? Months of his life being on hold while it was fought in court, big legal bills, likely conviction, and then a sentence that would be more severe than he is probably getting from the plea.
From where I sit, this whole Russian collusion thing looks no more plausible than any other conspiracy theory.
The discussion has inspired me to take a fresh look at the situation. Going back to the top, here are the questions I’m looking at:
1) Did Russia do anything to interfere with out elections, what did they do, was it unusual, was it directed by Putin.
2) Did Russia do anything specific to help candidate Trump, was it directed by Putin.
3) Did Russia have any sort of coordination or agreement with candidate Trump, was it directed by Putin.
4) For any element of the above, did people associated with the Trump campaign violate laws. Did candidate Trump violate laws.
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a) email hacking. Did Russia hack the DNC. Did it do so under Putin’s direction. Was it successful. Was Trump or Putin involved. How does Wikileaks fit in. What were the impacts.
b) voting system hacking. Did Russia hack any sort of voting systems. Was it successful. Was Trump or Putin involved. What were the impacts.
c) media campaigns. Did Russia launch some sort of fake news campaign, or facebook campaign, or anything of the sort. What were the impacts. Was Trump or Putin involved. What were the impacts.
d) Money. Did Russia finance Trump’s campaign. What was Putin’s involvement.
e) Any evidence of quid pro quo arrangements.
f) Anything else.
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Stuff to keep in mind. Fusion / Steele dossier involvement. Was that paid for by Trump’s political opponents. Did it have any basis in fact. Did it have any impact.
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Am I missing anything, broadly speaking? (real question)
Good points Mike M.
those are good questions Mark. Why does it matter if Putin was involved?
I don’t know if it matters if Putin was involved, actually. What I’m trying to get at by that is, is it ‘official state’ involvement by Russia, as opposed to some random Russian hackers or something. Maybe it doesn’t even matter. But it seems like it might matter. Not sure.
[Maybe I should replace ‘Putin’ with ‘Russian officials’]
that makes sense, mark
I think this is the public version of the ‘official’ assessment:
https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf
Steve McIntyre, who spent a lot of time researching the Climategate hack, and who apparently knows who did it, doesn’t believe that the Russians hacked the DNC and downloaded a bunch of emails which were then passed on to Wikileaks. He has several articles on the subject at Climate Audit. He also doesn’t think much of Cloudstrike, the organization the DNC hired once they discovered they’d been hacked. About half the emails, and most of the especially damaging ones, in the Wikileaks trove were dated after the DNC hired Cloudstrike.
https://climateaudit.org/2017/09/02/email-dates-in-the-wikileaks-dnc-archive/
If it was an independent hacker or group of hackers, much of the Russian collusion meme goes down the toilet.
But even if it was a hack by the Russian government, so what? That says nothing about collusion. It only says that Russia seized an opportunity to make mischief. Yawn.
On the other hand, if it was not Russia, then the U.S. intelligence community tried to influence domestic politics by claiming it was Russia and by implying that Trump was involved. That would be a big deal.
This is pure (well maybe pure is the wrong word) speculation, but I suspect what the prosecutors are looking for is something along the lines of the Russians asking someone in Trump’s campaign when the best time would be to release Hillary-damaging hacks, and that person telling them when. It is very hard for me to believe that there could be anything worse than that, and I don’t really have a feeling for whether that really is naughty. It doesn’t look good, but if something like that really happened the usual folks will hemorrhage over it and the rest of us will wonder what the fuss is about.
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Maybe no different from Russians offering dirt on Hillary. Expressing an interest in seeing the dirt seems perfectly reasonable to me. As someone in the Trump campaign said, “Who wouldn’t?”
(apologies for not supporting my statements with links, will organize and supply if anyone is curious later)
So – It coulda been Fancy Bear / Cozy Bear. Maybe it was Guccifer 2.0. Some think that the DNC at least was an internal leak. It’s said the RNC was hacked as well.
The only thing we know for sure: We can be confident that ~somehow~ the emails got out. They appear to be legit.
I don’t seem to be reading anywhere that anybody thinks Trump was behind this. I read that people think that Putin preferred Trump, maybe he had a grudge against Hillary or thought Trump would be a preferable President to Hillary. I read that these Russian hackers have been plaguing us for quite some time, hacking the State Department and the Pentagon in years past.
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Does it seem reasonable to think for starters that even if Russian state sanctioned hacking occurred, that there is no particular reason to believe Trump was involved? [Edit: by involved I mean complicit]
Putin’s problem with Hillary is her statements about him made when he was running for re-election a while back. He must find it a bit rich that we are whining about him meddling in our election after what she did.
Where did the first claims of collusion between Trump and Russia come from? Anyone know?
[Edit: The earliest I can find (here for example) is that the FBI launched an investigation in late July 2016:
]
ferguson (Comment #166029): “I suspect what the prosecutors are looking for is something along the lines of the Russians asking someone in Trump’s campaign when the best time would be to release Hillary-damaging hacks, and that person telling them when.”
That would definitely be more than naughty. But there is absolutely zero evidence of that and zero reason to believe that it happened.
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mark bofill (Comment #166030): “I read that people think that Putin preferred Trump”
People meaning conspiracy theory minded democrats. Why would Putin prefer Trump? He pushed Secretary Clinton around very nicely. So why would he not look forward to dealing with President Clinton? Some seem to think (based on exactly zero evidence) that Putin sees Trump as a kindred spirit, but then Putin would surely not want to be faced by Trump as president. I suppose some might say that Putin would prefer Trump in the hope of Trump being incompetent. But no diplomat wants to deal with incompetence on the other side; too unpredictable. Surely, Putin would prefer predictably weak to unpredictable and possibly strong and aggressive.
mark bofill (Comment #166032): “Where did the first claims of collusion between Trump and Russia come from? Anyone know?”
From Clinton and the DNC, I think. But probably via their PR arm, a.k.a. the mainstream media.
Mike M.,
Yes. In a sense what I’m trying to do is get an upper bound on what seems reasonably possible. So – assuming worst reasonable realistic case for Trump, what does that mean?
Say Russia meddled. I read that CIA and FBI may differ on their opinions as to the specific motive – was it specifically to elect Trump or was it just general mayhem (https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/12/12/13919702/russian-hackers-donald-trump-2016). Either way though, nobody seems to think Trump was directly involved with that.
Well, except that the FBI started investigating over a year ago. I haven’t been able to determine why specifically they thought so. Why would Trump be involved?
We can speculate of course. But there doesn’t seem to be any information out there (at least that I can find so far) that provides any sort of justification for this idea. The Russians were doing just fine without Trump, assuming they were meddling. Trump benefited, assuming they were meddling. No reason I can see for him to pay a price for something he was apparently getting for free.
I seem to remember reading someplace that the Steele dossier was serving as a roadmap to an FBI investigation at some point. I will go back looking for that. I mention this because merely because the FBI investigates something doesn’t mean that something has a good factual basis. That’s what investigations are for I think. Yet it may be the case that the investigation is the only basis for thinking there was ever any collusion to begin with.
[Edit: sorry Mike M, I didn’t see your last comment before posting. I’ll look into that.]
mark bofill,
My bet would be the Fusion GPS Trump dossier. IOW, the DNC.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/trump-dossier-timeline-whats-known
As I’ve said before, the people who need investigating for meddling in the election are the FBI and the US Intelligence community, not foreign governments. It’s also the height of hypocrisy for the US to be upset about foreign hacking when we now know that the NSA was running perhaps the largest hacking organization in the world.
Wow Mike M. my exact same reasoning on Putin’s preference for who our president should be.
I can’t believe he would prefer someone obviously unstable (another word for unusually creative) to a plodder whose reactions to nearly everything could be predicted by anyone.
mark bofill,
No, that would be a fishing expedition. I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to have legitimate probable cause to start an investigation. Well, unless you’re a special prosecutor. Then all bets are off.
DeWitt,
Thanks. I sort of flubbed the point of my review there and my looking for bounds. Maybe the FBI investigation is a good reason to think something was up. Maybe it’s naive to imagine Trump was getting something for nothing.
My bias colored my analysis. Still, I’d like to know if there was some other basis for thinking collusion besides these things.
DeWitt,
😉 I understood what you meant BTW, even though my response doesn’t reflect it.
I need to go review the Steele dossier stuff. After I vacuum the floor and buy some groceries.
For the convenience of anyone curious, the dossier in question.
Putin is still mad about Clinton’s bombing of Kosovo. Russia was led to believe when NATO expanded that they would have a veto over NATO actions, then Clinton reneged. Putin was complaining about this when Bush was re-elected, saying Democrats can’t complain about illegal war given Kosovo.
On the other hand, he would prefer Clinton’s energy policies, which would benefit Russia financially and give her leverage over the rest of Europe as their main supplier.
Wow hosed the link sorry.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3259984-Trump-Intelligence-Allegations.html
Come on. The most credible claim in this incredible document is the golden shower ‘kompromat’ thing with the prostitutes.
Trump had a secret meeting near Volgograd Russia on August 15’th, 2016? He was at a campaign rally in Youngstown Ohio on August 15’th, here’s footage. It takes over 11 hours to fly from Ohio to Volgograd.
I’m having a hard time taking this seriously. Trump team employing moles in the DNC and hackers, reporting back to Putin on Russian Oligarchs and their families.. I mean, really. Why the heck use Trump for this. I was unaware of members of his election team having any special espionage qualifications. And tens of thousands of dollars involved in paying hackers through the Russian pension system. Tens. Of. Thousands. This is a silly joke.
~blush~
It’s OK, you guys can tell me. I fell for a spoof, is that what happened? Like the Onion or something, right? (sort of serious question)
Oh, sorry. My eyes had glazed over. The meeting wasn’t with Trump, it was Putin and Yanukovych.
Still – I’m not spending more time on this. It’s not that I think Trump is an angel, just that these claims are so bizarre.
Mark, the idea that Trump is an active Russian agent has merit in some quarters.
Mark Bofill,
When reality is too painful to accept, some people opt for fantasy. This is the heart of the Trump derangement syndrome. Some people will never accept that Trump was legally elected. That reality is too painful, so they belief anything (vote machine hacking, Russian collusion,etc)! which avoids accepting that realiry.
MikeN,
Sure. In the left’s tinfoil hat wing.
Or the Democrat wing of the FBI. Come to think of it, they’re probably the same people.
MikeN,
I’m still chewing on the idea. But what I think so far is this.
1.According to the dossier, the Kremlin has been cultivating this long shot Donald Trump for years. They’ve got the goods on him (and oddly, this is one of the items I find least implausible. Why not? Rich, powerful men often seem to be unable to keep their pants zipped). Against all odds, the guy has won the Republican nomination and might in fact become President.
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2. Put yourself in the shoes of whoever’s running this show in Russia. You have this potentially extremely valuable asset. By all reports, you also already have a sophisticated cyber capability. You’ve got professional grade capability with respect to hacking and so on already. So why do you risk your asset by having him run an amateur night spy shop, to keep track of Russian Oligarchs in the US? You’ve got your professionals ~already hacking~ the DNC, and you want the Trump campaign to get in on the act. This seems implausible to me. Trump’s campaign is obviously in the spotlight. His value can be easily broken by shenanigans like this. I guess we are to believe that the Kremlin is simultaneously possessed of advanced cyber capabilities but so hard up for resources that they’ve got to use Trump’s people.
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3. I’m sure Christopher Steele is good at what he does. I read that he has a good reputation. But he’s been private since 2009. I don’t think the guy, however talented he may be, has the same resources that a government spy agency has got. But we are to believe that this ex-spy operating in private is able to penetrate this incredible scheme. One would think that the FSB could keep important secrets like this under pretty good wraps, because after all, the Kremlin has invested years in Trump and has the goods on him, and he might actually become President. But alas no, the successor agency to the KGB, specializing in counter intelligence, can’t keep top secret information out of the hands of Steele. I’ve seen James Bond movies that seem more reasonable than this.
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4. I have no basis whatsoever for the fiction I am about to put forward whatsoever. But if we’re looking for some slightly less implausible theory to explain all of this, how about this one: the FSB fed Steele crap, mixed in with just enough verifiable truth that the intelligence community would swallow it. They did it just to whack the hornets nest and sow discord / domestic political unrest and discord in the U.S. I don’t really believe that, but it serves as an example of an alternative that’s at least as likely. I’m irony impaired, but I think it’d be ironic if this were the case. The FSB playing the U.S. like a piano.
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Anyway. The FBI already has ‘Machiavelli’ Manafort. Now they’ve got Flynn. If there was substance to this I think it would have already been leaked like everything else. I think I heard Feinstein speculate that Mueller is going after Trump on obstruction of justice. If it turns out that’s all he has, I’m going to conclude this was the fairy tale I think it is.
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We’ll find out eventually I think.
MikeN (Comment #166047): “”the idea that Trump is an active Russian agent has merit in some quarters.”
The idea that the Bush administration planned 9/11 has merit in some quarters.
The idea that LBJ and Earl Warren were part of a plot to assassinate JFK and/or to coverup what really happened has merit in some quarters.
The idea that the government has alien spacecraft hidden away at Area 51 has merit in some quarters.
And so on.
But among rational people, the Russia collusion conspiracy theory has no more merit than those other conspiracy theories. It only really differs in the number of people who have deluded themselves into believing it.
mark bofill,
The Steele dossier is well established as a complete fabrication. Basing your thinking on it is like basing your understanding of French history on the Priory of Sion.
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mark: “the FSB fed Steele crap, mixed in with just enough verifiable truth that the intelligence community would swallow it. They did it just to whack the hornets nest”
At least that is not crazy.
Mike M.,
I hope so, that it’s well established that it’s a fabrication, but I have to admit I haven’t gotten that impression from my readings. It appears to be the primary (possibly the ~only~) basis for Mueller’s investigation. And at least according to the press, intelligence people seem to have taken it seriously.
But – wouldn’t be the first time I misunderstood what the heck was going on around me. 🙂
mark bofill,
Your #4 is my working hypothesis. It’s the sort of thing that’s been done before. The NSA hackers got hacked. The Manhattan Project was penetrated by Soviet spies. They’re better at the spy game than we are.
DeWitt,
It bears thinking about. The Russians knew about Steele; he was compromised in 1999 according to this.
Seems like an easy enough way to distribute misinformation.
Steele was not just paid thru intermediary Fusion GPS and a law firm by the Clinton campaign. He paid Russian sources thru intermediaries for information. The Russians wanted the money so they paid.
The dossier also includes that the Russians have compromising material on Clinton. It’s curious they didn’t get that excised prior to distribution.
mark bofill (Comment #166054): “I hope so, that it’s well established that it’s a fabrication, but I have to admit I haven’t gotten that impression from my readings.”
Frankly, I have not spent a lot of time on the credibility of the dossier. I start from a position of skepticism. Not a single claim of the dossier has been verified. There are good reasons to doubt it’s pedigree.
Here is a fairly detailed criticism of the document:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2017/01/13/the-trump-dossier-is-false-news-and-heres-why/#397700b56867
It seems that the following is typical of the reasons to give some credence to it:
http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/16/opinions/is-it-fake-news-dowling/index.html
“The US intelligence community has made no determination as of yet on the contents, but has deemed the documents sufficiently credible to warrant further investigation and included a summary of the dossier in briefing materials for both President Obama and President-elect Trump. It is worth noting that these leaders are all career professionals, including two non-political appointees, FBI Director James Comey and NSA Director Mike Rogers, who have zero incentive to pick a fight with their future boss.”
Seems to me that is pretty close to “you have to want to believe”.
Mike M.,
I think we are essentially in agreement. ~I~ don’t find the dossier credible, but I note that there seem to be plenty of people out there who do, which you are clearly aware of.
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I don’t know that I’d go so far as to say ‘not a single claim’ has been verified. I gather Mikhail Kalugin turned out to be a spy, as mentioned in the dossier. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/3/29/1648576/-US-verifies-Mikhail-Kulagin-was-a-Russian-spy-bolstering-credibility-of-Steel-dossier-reports-BBC
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But this is a quibble. Basically I agree with you.
Britain is being asked to pay $100 billion before Europe will let them into a trade deal.
Having Mexico pay for a wall for access to NAFTA is small compared to that.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/nov/28/uk-and-eu-agree-brexit-divorce-bill-that-could-reach-57bn
mark bofill: “I gather Mikhail Kalugin turned out to be a spy, as mentioned in the dossier.”
As you say, that is a quibble. Everybody knows that Russian diplomat staff here includes spies (and that our staff there includes spies). When someone is suddenly withdrawn, it is a good guess that it is because he has been fingered as a spy. There is nothing remarkable about that. The significant claim is much more specific:
“A leading Russian diplomat, Mikhail KULAGIN, had been withdrawn from Washington at short notice because Moscow feared his heavy involvement in the US presidential election operation… would be exposed in the media there.”
That has not been verified.
It is almost like saying that the dossier got Trump’s name right, so that is a verified fact in the dossier. (By the way, the spy’s name was Kalugin.) I should have said that nothing of substance has been verified.
Other things were verified based on Steele giving them to British intelligence, and they shared them. Steele was the source on both sides, but CIA uses one as verification of the other. A Michael Isikoff story for which Steele was the source was also used as verification of the dossier.
MikeN,
Can you say: “circular reasoning?” The press seems to do that a lot.
MikeN,
The story you linked about the Brexit divorce settlement got me thinking. California’s got a population of about 40 million. I think if they exit the Union they need to agree to pay their share of our debt; say 2.4 trillion to call it even.
[Forgot my silly tag; they ain’t going anywhere.]
Trump reversed two national monument designations. Escalante in Utah has been rumored to have been put in place because it locked up a source of low-sulfur coal, giving an Indonesian Clinton donor a monopoly. This monument has been cut in half.
Mark,
Governor Moonbeam doesn’t stand a chance against a few battalions of marines, or even a few thousand nationalized National Guard weekenders. That “leaving the United States” talk is for crazies and wild-eyed Hollywood has-beens only. California isn’t leaving the Union. But I sure wish their Hollywood citizens would decamp for Venezuela and renounce their US citizenship. The Country would be a lot better off.
This just in, the tax system will likely get its biggest overhaul in decades. 10 years from now this will be the biggest thing that happened in 2017.
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If the Russians want to cause problems in the US, they will manufacture collusion evidence with regards to Trump. They can’t take us down, but they may be able to cause us to self destruct. Plenty of people will believe just about anything that is anonymously sourced.
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This FBI guy Strzok who got removed by Mueller for political tweets who also ran the Clinton investigation is not making the FBI look good. He apparently softened the Clinton report from “grossly negligent” to “extremely careless”.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/04/politics/peter-strzok-james-comey/index.html
No wonder the FBI and the DOJ have been stonewalling the Congressional investigations.
Another chapter in the saga of the most powerful force in the universe.
Climate Change Might Lower Salaries
The more 90-degree days a fetus or infant endured, the lower his or her earnings in adulthood.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/12/hot-weather-fetuses/547406/
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“The researchers found the difference in earnings went away in areas where most people got air conditioners installed.”
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Obviously future people will be so dumb as to not install air conditioners, there will be a tipping point here in the stupidity vs air conditioner index. Researchers suggest the tipping point may be sooner than what the same researchers suggest.
Tom,
We obviously need to install air conditioners in private residences wherever public school students do poorly compared to the national average…. makes perfect sense to me. And heck, imagine the positive impact in tropical Africa…. wait, AC’s need electric power….. especially at night when people are sleeping ( which would finally stop malaria), so never mind. Those Africans have to make due with solar panels or less.
SteveF (Comment #166070): “…wait, AC’s need electric power…”
Which is why we need to air condition the entire planet by getting rid of atmospheric CO2.
The latest edition of why it’s unwise to talk to the FBI:
https://www.popehat.com/2017/12/04/everybody-lies-fbi-edition/
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“Everybody lies. Especially the FBI. Look, mate: the FBI gets to lie to you in interviews. They can lie to you about what other people said about you. The can lie to you about what they’ve seen in your emails. They can lie to you about what they can prove. They can lie to you about what they know.”
Tom,
Popehat is not alone…. every defense attorney I have heard says the same thing…. you are under zero obligation to talk to the police or FBI, and you are a fool if you do.
The Popehat piece is both funny and sobering. Especially:
“Dumbass, you don’t even know if you’re lying or not. When an FBI agent is interviewing you, assume that that agent is exquisitely prepared. They probably already have proof about the answer of half the questions they’re going to ask you. … You, on the other hand, haven’t thought about Oh Yeah That Thing for months or years, … So you’re going to answer questions incorrectly, through bad memory.”
I suspect that may be what happened to Flynn. The Russian envoy brought up sanctions, Flynn said something like “I can’t discuss that with you until I am officially in office”, and then in Flynn’s mind the fact that he refused to discuss sanctions meant he did not discuss sanctions. As a result he “lied” to Pence and then the FBI.
I’ve felt that way being interviewed for security clearances before. I always wish I could just tell them, ‘Go investigate me! There’s nothing there, whatever you find is what it is, but I don’t remember the details.’
No such luck. Mr. Bofill, you claimed that in June 1994 you rented at apartment X, but records indicate you actually moved in May. Can you tell us more about the circumstances surrounding this discrepancy? Ugh. No. I. Didn’t. Remember. I keep poor records. (Nobody has ever specifically asked me that, but that’s what the process feels like.)
The NYT today:
Opinion: “Nowhere is that clearer than in the wretched tax bill passed by the Senate in the early hours of Saturday morning, which would make the rich richer and the poor poorer.”
…
Article: “Among the Tax Bill’s Biggest Losers: Blue State Taxpayers Who Earn More Than $200,000” …. “Why the wealthiest are hit the hardest”
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/05/us/politics/tax-bill-salt.html
…
“it could send home prices tumbling, increase the region’s tax burden and make it harder for local governments to pay for infrastructure.”
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As if lower home prices in NYC would be a bad thing for the not-rich. What does the NYT do when it has lemonade? It makes lemons. Why should high local taxes be deductible on federal income tax? Why am I subsidizing NYC’s infrastructure?
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This is a follow up to the “rich richer, poor poorer” articles the NYT ran alongside articles of how “nobody knows what is in the tax bill” for the last few months. This is one of those subjects that the NYT can’t be trusted on.
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It should be pointed out that poor people already pay basically no federal income tax, so it would be difficult to construct a “tax” bill that reduced their burden. There are other ways to redistribute wealth to the poor of course.
Don’t make light of it Tom. It’s the end of the world.
:p
[ sarc ]
Given state and local tax deduction, proposal for a state income tax form:
1) How much money did you make last year?
2) Send it in.
3) 98% will be rebated back to you bi-weekly.
MikeN,
Govenor Moonbeam has a job for you as a bugetary consultant.
They would never give back 98%.