Category Archive for ‘Outrage’ at Steven Landsburg | The Big Questions: Tackling the Problems of Philosophy with Ideas from Mathematics, Economics, and Physics

Archive for the 'Outrage' Category

I Heard the News Today, Oh Boy.

Published

on July 28, 2022

. 14 Comments

I’m getting a little tired of presidents of the United States repeating things that could only be spoken by an idiot or a liar, and then trying to intimidate people out of contradicting them.

The latest (though of course not the most egregious) offender is one Joseph R. Biden, who told the country today that he can raise corporate income taxes without imposing any additional tax burden on anyone who earns less than $400,000 a year. Because in the United States of America, nobody with an income under $400,000 owns any stocks or mutual funds. And if you disagree, he’ll stare you in the face and repeat himself. Like I said, this is getting old.

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How to Kill Off Amazon’s Damned “Popular Highlights”

Published

Steve Landsburg

on August 13, 2020

in Consumer Advocacy, Outrage and Technology

. 18 Comments

As my good deed for today, I’m posting a solution to a problem that I’m sure is plaguing others. I hope Google points them here.

I’ll say this much for brick-and-mortar booksellers: Not one of them ever sold me a book, then showed up at my house two years later, pulled the book off the shelf and started highlighting passages for me. I can’t say as much for Amazon, which has been selling me books for many years and has suddenly decided to highlight passages in all of them. Effectively, they’ve vandalized every book they’ve ever sold me.

Yes, I know about the checkbox in the settings for “Show Popular Highlights”. (This is in the Android Kindle App.) Yes, I have that box unchecked. I am not an idiot. Unchecking the box has no effect. Checking it and then unchecking it again has no effect. The highlights remain highlighted.

Here are some other things that don’t work: Clear the app cache. Reboot the phone. Express rage.

So I called Amazon customer service and had the good luck to hook up with Brandi G., who was fantastic. She instantly understood the problem, instantly understood everything I had tried to do to fix it, and, unlike what I’ve come to expect from customer service reps pretty much everywhere, she did not insist that I try all the same things again. Instead, she suggested that I uninstall the app completely and reinstall it, and she stayed with me on the phone to see how things would turn out. Presto! Problem solved. Yay Brandi.

Then an hour later, the popular highights came back.

So I uninstalled and re-installed about six more times (because that’s the kind of guy I am) and finally called Amazon again. This time I had the bad luck to hook up with Devan J., who kept me on the phone for 35 minutes, mostly in silence while he researched the problem. (When I suggested that we hang up and he could call me back when he had an answer, he insisted that I stay on the line, to no apparent purpose.) One of the first things I asked him was: What if I install an older version of the app? No, said Devan, unfortunately that’s impossible.

Like an idiot, I spent about 24 hours believing him. Then I decided to go ahead and do it. Here is the solution:

1) Fully uninstall the app. This means going to the phone settings, then Apps, then Amazon Kindle. First choose “Force Stop” and then “Uninstall”.

2) Go to apkpure.com, search for the Kindle app, and you’ll be presented with a great variety of choices, all representing different vintages of the same app. I chose one from June 2020, two months ago, well before my problems started. Click to download, click to install, and voila. Problem solved.

I hope this works for you too.

Coming soon, I hope: Tricks I’ve discovered for setting up a new Windows 10 machine, which has been something like a fulltime job for me for the past two weeks. Why can’t things just work out of the box?

A Tale of Two Universes

Published

Steve Landsburg

on August 9, 2020

in Bad Reasoning, Current Events, Outrage and Science

. 23 Comments

A short time ago, in a Universe remarkably similar to our own, a team of researchers investigated racial differences in cognitive skills and concluded, with high degrees of certainty and precision, that the correlation between race and intelligence is zero. They submitted their results to a journal called Science, which is remarkably similar to the journal called Science in our own Universe. The paper was accepted for publication, but the editors saw fit to issue this public statement:

We were concerned that the forces that want to downplay the differences between the races as well as the need for racial segregation would seize on these results to advance their agenda. We decided that the benefit of providing the results to the scientific community was worthwhile.

Which of the following best captures the way you feel about that statement?

A. Bravo to the editors for advancing the cause of truth, even if it might be misused.

B. Boo to the editors for even thinking about suppressing the truth, even if the truth might be misused.

C. WHAT?!?!? Since when is a failure to share the editors’ political priorities a “misuse” in the first place?

D. Both B and C.

E. Other (please elaborate).

My vote is for D. It is outrageously wrong for the editors to even consider using the resources of their journal to promote their private political agenda. It is doubly wrong for them to even consider doing so by suppressing a paper they would otherwise accept. And it is triply wrong for them to even consider imposing on the owners and readers of the journal to support a political agenda that some of those owners and readers will no doubt find deplorable.

I happen to be one of those who deplore the expressed agenda, but that has nothing to do with my point here. The outrage would be exactly as great if the editors were focused on protecting capitalism instead of segregation.

Now let’s come back to our own Universe, where the editors of Science (the real Science) accepted a paper suggesting that a large fraction of the population might already have a sort of pre-immunity to Covid 19, and somehow saw fit to issue the following statement:

We were concerned that forces that want to downplay the severity of the pandemic as well as the need for social distancing woud seize on the results to suggest that the situation was less urgent. We decided that the benefit of providing the model to the scientific community was worthwhile.

As I said, the two Universes are eerily similar. The statements made by the editorial boards in both Universes seem about equally outrageous to me.

The real-world editors, if they cared what I thought, might want to respond that my analogy fails because “the need for racial segregation” is a political stance, whereas “the need for social distancing” is a scientific one. If so, they’d simply be wrong. Biologists have no particular insight into whether people would be happier in a world with both a little more Covid and a few more hugs. If any group is uniquely qualified to estimate the terms of that tradeoff, it’s the economists — but I wouldn’t want the editors of an economics journal making this kind of call either.

I’m glad that the editors did the right thing. I’m appalled they even considered doing the wrong thing, and concerned that this means they might do the wrong thing in the future, and might have done so in the past. It is not okay to suppress truth in the furtherance of a political agenda. It is not okay to presume that all good people share in your agenda, or to co-opt other people’s resources in order to advance it.

(Hat tip to David Friedman, whose blog made me aware of this.)

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Block Heads, Redux

Published

Steve Landsburg

on July 17, 2020

in Bad Reasoning, Current Events, Education and Outrage

. 15 Comments

Walter Block is under fire from a bunch of very silly people, for reasons that he recounts in this week’s Wall Street Journal.

Unfortunately, if you’re not a Journal subscriber that link probably won’t work for you. Fortunately, it doesn’t matter, because these people are as unoriginal as they are silly, and the issues are pretty much the same as they were when a bunch of equally silly people ganged up on Walter six years ago. So you’ll be pretty much caught up if you just re-read the accounts from back then.

You could, for example, re-read my 2014 blog posts titled Block Heads and Chips Off the Block. I’ll even make this easier for you by reposting the first one right here:

Block Heads
February 13, 2014

The righteously irrepressible Walter Block has made it his mission to defend the undefendable, but there are limits. Chattel slavery, for example, will get no defense from Walter, and he recently explained why: The central problem with slavery is that you can’t walk away from it. If it were voluntary, it wouldn’t be so bad. In Walter’s words:

The slaves could not quit. They were forced to ‘associate’ with their masters when they would have vastly preferred not to do so. Otherwise, slavery wasn’t so bad. You could pick cotton, sing songs, be fed nice gruel, etc. The only real problem was that this relationship was compulsory.

A group of Walter’s colleagues at Loyola university (who, for brevity, I will henceforth refer to as “the gang of angry yahoos”) appears to concur:

Traders in human flesh kidnapped men, women and children from the interior of the African continent and marched them in stocks to the coast. Snatched from their families, these individuals awaited an unknown but decidedly terrible future. Often for as long as three months enslaved people sailed west, shackled and mired in the feces, urine, blood and vomit of the other wretched souls on the boat….The violation of human dignity, the radical exploitation of people’s labor, the brutal violence that slaveholders utilized to maintain power, the disenfranchisement of American citizens, the destruction of familial bonds, the pervasive sexual assault and the systematic attempts to dehumanize an entire race all mark slavery as an intellectually, economically, politically and socially condemnable institution no matter how, where, or when it is practiced.

So everybody’s on the same side, here, right? Surely nobody believes the slaves were voluntarily snatched from their families, shackled and mired in waste, sexually assaulted and all the rest. All the bad stuff was involuntary and — this being the whole point — was possible only because it was involuntary. That’s a concept with broad applicability. One could, for example, say the same about Auschwitz. Nobody would have much minded the torture and the gas chambers if there had been an opt-out provision. And this is a useful observation, if one is attempting to argue that involuntary associations are the root of much evil.

Continue reading ‘Block Heads, Redux’

Dear Google: Please Stop Trying to Kill Me

Published

Steve Landsburg

on October 27, 2019

in Consumer Advocacy, Outrage, Progress, Rants, Technology and WTF?

. 17 Comments

When I’m in the car, I use my phone as a music player. Sometimes a song comes on that I’m not in the mood to hear. Once upon a time — in fact, once upon a very recent time — I could say “Okay Google. Next song.” Then the current song would stop and a new song would start. It was all part of Google’s awesome — and free — service. The service was imperfect in some minor ways, but mostly it was awesome and free and I was thankful to have it.

Here’s what happens now when I say “Okay Google. Next song.” The perky Google Assistant voice comes on and says something like “Oh, you want a different song? Okay. Let me sing you one.” Then the perky assistant sings some stupid little jingle for me, and then it returns me to the song I was trying to bypass. My only options at that point are to either a) listen to the rest of the unwanted song, b) try again and have the same thing happen again, which approximately triples my frustration level with each iteration, or c) fumble with my phone, call up the music player, search for the little “next song” button, push it, and try to put the phone back down before I drive into a lamppost. The pattern I’ve developed is to do b) approximately three times, then do c). I hope I’m still alive by the time you read this blog post.

Okay, so the service is still free, and still mostly awesome, right? But I am furious and I think I have a right to be. Let’s review the bidding here. Google has deliberately done the following:

Disabled the good and useful “next song” feature, for no apparent reason.
Trained its Assistant to mock its users when they try to invoke that longtime feature.
Done so in a way that is sure to drive those users into a state of combined frenzy and distraction while they are driving.

Let’s be clear: Mocking users and driving them into a state of frenzy seems to me to be the only conceivable reason for the whole “Here, I’ll sing a song for you, ha ha” bit. I am willing to bet you at substantial odds that no user requested this mockery. It’s apparently put there by Google (or perhaps by a rogue programmer on his last day of work, and overlooked by a lethargic quality control team) for the sole purpose of pissing people off and giving the folks at Google a good chuckle, without regard for possible deadly consequences. It seems to me to be roughly the moral equivalent of throwing watermelons off overpasses.

And just to make that analogy fair: If someone, through sheer technical brilliance and the goodness of his heart, ever designs the world’s most awesome overpass, builds it at his own expense, offers it to the world for free, maintains it for years, and then one day starts throwing watermelons off it — the main thing I’m going to remember is the watermelons.

A Matter of Perspective

Published

Steve Landsburg

on January 9, 2019

in Current Events, Outrage and Politics

. 26 Comments

Let’s stipulate that:

A. The border wall is stupid.

B. The border wall would cost about $5 billion.

According to Democratic congressional leadership, these reasons suffice to withhold funding for the border wall.

This is a radical new stance for the congressional leadership, which last year rejected the Trump administration’s bid to cut roughly $300 million a year from the budgets of the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities. Assuming a 3% interest rate, that’s a present value of about $10 billion — enough to fund two border walls. (Take that, you pesky Canadians!).

One could argue that a border wall is not only stupid but a grotesque symbol of xenophobia. One could equally well argue that a National Endowment for the Arts is not only stupid but a grotesque symbol of government overreach and the politicization of everything.

Continue reading ‘A Matter of Perspective’

Walls Versus Walls

Published

Steve Landsburg

on December 31, 2018

in Bad Reasoning, Current Events and Outrage

. 21 Comments

The President of the United States tweets that his proposed border wall is essentially “the same thing” as a wall built around the Obamas’ house (or presumably anyone else’s house) to keep away intruders.

No, you idiot. There is absolutely no relevant similarity between a wall somebody builds around his own house and a wall that you build between other people’s houses. The effect of a wall around my house, if I had one (and if I controlled the gates), would be to increase my control over who enters my living room. The effect of a border wall would be to decrease my control over who enters my living room.

That doesn’t prove that the border wall is a bad idea. But if the President believes there are good arguments for his pet project, why does he resort to ridiculous analogies that have absolutely zero chance of being taken seriously by anybody on either side of the issue? I’m pretty sure Rex Tillerson had this right.

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Letter from an Infantryman

Published

Steve Landsburg

on July 8, 2018

in Outrage, Personal and Tragedy

. 11 Comments

I found this among my father’s papers. He wrote it as a 20-year old infantryman who had been in combat for about six months.

I am struck by the eloquence, and doubly struck that he managed to be eloquent in the medium of pen-and-ink, with no copy/paste/delete and not even any crossouts:

Monday, Jan. 8 (1945)

Dear Mother and Dad:

Well, the new year has arrived and with it, sadly enough, have come no great changes. The war is still being fought, I and millions of other boys are still several thousands of miles away from home and our loved ones, and it almost seems as if there will never be an end to this useless, heart-breaking, killing war.

Whether a man is German, American, or French, he looks just the same when he is wounded, dying or dead. The battlefield bullet is a great leveler; it can make the biggest man very small or the weakest man a hero, but in this war most of the heroes are dead.

We who are actively engaged in defeating the enemy would not hesitate to lay down our arms and surrender if we thought that the people who make the peace will fail to make it permanent. The mere thought that our comrades may have died for nothing, that we may have a brief pause from this war so that we can raise sons to fight another war would cause us many sleepless nights. The last thing one dying soldier said to me was that he was dying on the battlefield so that his son would not.

I may sound very bitter and full of resentment and frankly I am. This war should have been averted in 1918 and the ensuing years, but instead of preventing war, the American people actually encouraged it by ignoring everything that was going on around them. For the sake of all the men who have gone through this hell, we must not let this happen again. We must not have allowed so many of our boys to have died in vain.

I can’t possibly express the resentment these boys feel when they hear about these “Victory in Europe Celebrations”, and when they hear about the lotteries that are held to determine the date of the European victory. Here their own sons are being killed, maimed and crippled for life, and they trouble themselves with such trivial tripe. What is the matter with the American public? Is it entirely aloof to this war?

Perhaps I don’t sound like a twenty-year-old kid anymore, but I’ve seen things that I shall never forget, ghastly things that I shudder to think about. I think that a just punishment for any of these “Victory in Europe Celebration” planners would be to pick up a soldier’s boot on a battlefield and find the foot still in it, or sweat out just one artillery barrage. If they could just realize what is going on they would spend all their spare time praying for the safety of their boys and thanking God that America has been spared everything but an army.

Aside from being a little angry, I’m feeling fine. I’ve received several of your packages and everything is swell. I know that God has been answering your prayers, and he will continue to watch over me.

Love, Norman

Like the Groundhog, He Emerges

Published

Steve Landsburg

on February 24, 2018

in Outrage and Personal

. 33 Comments

Regular readers of this blog will have noticed by now that my blogging has been mostly dormant for a while. This is partly because I’ve been working on multiple book projects (e.g. this one), partly because I felt so disillusioned after the outcome of the election season, and partly because I’ve felt like I’ve already said much of what I have to say. But sometimes you can’t resist.

This is the City Mattress store on Monroe Avenue in Brighton, New York:

My wife recently wanted to buy a mattress, drove by the store, and noticed that there were no hours posted in the window. The next day, she guessed at the opening time, happened to get it right, went into the store, and mentioned to the friendly manager that it would be nice if they could post their hours. The manager agreed that being able to post their hours would be very nice indeed, but that the town of Brighton had forbidden them to do so on the grounds that it would “make the store look like a sub shop”.

Question 1: Please study the picture above. How probable do you think it is that you’d mistake it for a sub shop? (Your answer should be a number between 0% and 100%).

Question 1A: By how much would your answer to Question 1 change if this store had its hours posted in the window?

Question 2: If you did happen to mistake this store for a sub shop, how much damage would you feel you’d incurred? (Your answer should be the number of dollars you’d have to lose to feel equivalently damaged.)

Incidentally, the lack of an hours sign inconveniences not only people like my wife, who wasn’t sure when to show up. The manager mentioned that every night at closing time, they have to turn away new arrivals who, due to the lack of a sign, were unaware of the store hours.

The Brighton Town Supervisor is Mr. William Moehle. This is a picture of his house:

Continue reading ‘Like the Groundhog, He Emerges’

Interventionists

Published

Steve Landsburg

on August 4, 2016

in Current Events, Outrage and Politics

. 28 Comments

Fox News reports that senior Republicans, including Reince Preibus, Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuiiani, are planning an “intervention” to try to talk Donald Trump down from putting his psychopathy quite so visibly on display. The psychopathy itself is presumably intervention-proof.

Which raises the question: Why intervene? Presumably the answer is: To get this man elected as President of the United States, from which venue the psychopathy will have free reign. The very necessity of the intervention implies that if the intervention is successful, it must be disastrous. We intervene with drunkards to begin the slow process of returning them to a normal life. We do not intervene with drunkards to get them to hide their drinking so they can be hired as jet pilots in three months’ time.

I realize that there are still a few scattered people who think (or at least hope) that Trump’s whole idiot-manchild schtick is just some kind of an act, and that there is some substance beneath the lunacy. Presumably those who believe that an intervention is necessary are not among those scattered few. This makes it their responsibility, at a minimum, to stop trying to elect him.

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Poison Apple

Published

Steve Landsburg

on September 30, 2015

in Consumer Advocacy, Outrage, Rants and Technology

. 39 Comments

There are about a million reasons why I hate my iPhone, but this one pretty much sums it all up.

On my phone, I’ve got quite a few files that were not downloaded from any of my other devices. These include pictures I’ve taken with the phone itself, pdfs I’ve downloaded through the phone’s browser, etc.

Of course, I’d like to have backups of all these files. And of course Apple makes this as difficult as possible by pushing me to use its abysmal iTunes software for creating the backup.

Now here is what iTunes does: I have photo files with names like IMG_0840.jpg — which, if not terribly descriptive, is at least immediately recognizable as a photo. I have pdfs with names like Dirac.QuantumMechanics.pdf, which is a nice, easily recognizable name. I download everything to my computer via iTunes, and here is a partial directory listing of what I get:

Continue reading ‘Poison Apple’

Bad Planning

Published

Steve Landsburg

on September 29, 2015

in Current Events, Outrage and Politics

. 32 Comments

In a bid for ongoing taxpayer support, Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards will be appearing before Congress today. It’s reported that as part of her testimony, she will admit that only 1 percent of Planned Parenthood’s affiliates currently harvest fetal tissue, and that even those affiliates charge only modest fees of $60 per tissue specimen.

Which raises the question: Why should we give money to an organization that has access to a valuable resource but can’t be bothered to sell it to the highest bidder?

When your brother-in-law is out of work, you might be inclined to help him out. When your brother-in-law is out of work, deluged with job offers, and refusing even to consider them, you’ll probably be less inclined. Planned Parenthood is that brother-in-law.

Continue reading ‘Bad Planning’

Ask Not What the Church Can Do For You; Ask What You Can Do For the Church

Published

Steve Landsburg

on September 17, 2015

in Current Events, Outrage and Religion

. 129 Comments

Pope Francis is coming to New York, and Cardinal Timothy Dolan is disturbed about ticket-scalping:

“Tickets for events with Pope Francis are distributed free [via lottery] for a reason — to enable as many New Yorkers as possible, including those of modest means, to be able to participate in the Holy Father’s visit to New York,” Cardinal Dolan, the archbishop of New York, said in a statement. “To attempt to resell the tickets and profit from his time in New York goes against everything Pope Francis stands for.”

So according to Cardinal Dolan, “everything Pope Francis stands for” consists of the proposition that for New Yorkers of modest means, nothing should take precedence over turning out to see Pope Francis — not groceries, not medicine, not car repairs, not any of the other things that people can buy with the proceeds from selling their tickets.

I doubt that Pope Francis is quite as egomaniacal as the Cardinal paints him. But apparently the Cardinal himself would rather see poor people cheering for the Pope than improving their lives.

Block Heads

Published

Steve Landsburg

on February 13, 2014

in Bad Reasoning, Current Events, Education and Outrage

. 57 Comments

The slaves could not quit. They were forced to ‘associate’ with their masters when they would have vastly preferred not to do so. Otherwise, slavery wasn’t so bad. You could pick cotton, sing songs, be fed nice gruel, etc. The only real problem was that this relationship was compulsory.

A group of Walter’s colleagues at Loyola university (who, for brevity, I will henceforth refer to as “the gang of angry yahoos”) appears to concur:

Traders in human flesh kidnapped men, women and children from the interior of the African continent and marched them in stocks to the coast. Snatched from their families, these individuals awaited an unknown but decidedly terrible future. Often for as long as three months enslaved people sailed west, shackled and mired in the feces, urine, blood and vomit of the other wretched souls on the boat….The violation of human dignity, the radical exploitation of people’s labor, the brutal violence that slaveholders utilized to maintain power, the disenfranchisement of American citizens, the destruction of familial bonds, the pervasive sexual assault and the systematic attempts to dehumanize an entire race all mark slavery as an intellectually, economically, politically and socially condemnable institution no matter how, where, or when it is practiced.

Continue reading ‘Block Heads’

State of the Union

Published

Steve Landsburg

on January 28, 2014

in Current Events, Outrage and Politics

. 35 Comments

I’m leaving this one up to my readers. What was the most egregious moment?

Click here to comment or read others’ comments.

Lying Low

Published

Steve Landsburg

on October 29, 2013

in Current Events, Outrage and Truthseeking

. 21 Comments

Faithful readers of this blog might remember the despicable antics of Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who, in a televised hearing last June, spent eight excruciating minutes impugning the honesty of a young economist named Salim Furth — because Furth had presented actual data that contradicted a bunch of numbers Whitehouse had made up out of whole cloth. For those who need a refreseher, the entire sordid story — including Paul Krugman’s reprehensible piling-on to Whitehouse’s McCarthyite smear — is here with a follow-up here.

Well, it turns out that Senator Whitehouse is no more interested in understanding the numbers today than he was last June. Last week, the Heritage Foundation held a symposium on the effects of austerity and what the data actually show — the precise data that Whitehouse disputed. In addition to Furth, who has continued his meticulous research on the subject the speakers included illustrious scholars such as Harvard Professor Alberto Alesina. Heritage sent personal invitations to Senator Whitehouse’s staff and to the various journalists who screwed up this story by reporting Whitehouse’s made-up numbers as accurate and his smears as justified.

The result? None of them showed. Apparently Senator Whitehouse’s passionate interest in the austerity numbers tends to cool off when he can’t hog the spotlight, or might risk learning something.

Meanwhile, if you care more about this subject than Senator Whitehouse does, you might want to look at Furth’s most recent report on the subject, or at the data set he’s posted online, or at his most recent blog post calling Paul Krugman to account for misinterpreting some of these numbers.

Continue reading ‘Lying Low’

Double Standards

Published

Steve Landsburg

on August 1, 2013

in Current Events and Outrage

. 71 Comments

Remember last January, when the President said he wouldn’t negotiate with hostage-takers—like the Republican representatives who demanded spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling? His argument, as I understood it, was that:

A failure to raise the debt ceiling would be unambiguously bad policy.
It is irresponsible to threaten to implement a bad policy just to gain concessions on the spending front.

It’s an argument I expect we’ll hear again, next time the debt ceiling comes up.

And what’s the President up to in the meantime? He’s demanding a new round of spending increases in exchange for corporate tax reform. Now, since pretty much every sentient being in the Universe agrees that we’re long overdue for corporate tax reform (and in particular for lower rates), I think it’s fair to characterize the President’s position as a threat to retain a bad corporate tax policy just to gain concessions on the spending front.

Continue reading ‘Double Standards’

The Road Not Taken

Published

Steve Landsburg

on July 8, 2013

in Bad Reasoning, Blogging, Outrage and Paul Krugman

. 82 Comments

Paul Krugman, having apparently received another of his divine revelations, proclaims that if we demand (somewhat) better working conditions in Third World countries (backed up, presumably, with boycott threats), “we can achieve an improvement in workers’ lives … And we should go ahead and do it.”

Don’t ask how he knows; the ways of the Oracle are mysterious and beyond human ken.

Look. A well designed policy of boycotts and boycott threats can certainly improve working conditions in the Third World. It can also lower either wages, employment or both. Whether or not that package amounts to “an improvement in worker’s lives”, as Krugman puts it, is an interesting and important question, and well worth thinking about. But apparently the last thing Krugman wants you to do is think about it, since he’s already told you the answer, and seems to presume you won’t have the slightest interest in where it came from.

Now, among the many differences between me and Paul Krugman, there are probably some that redound to his credit. But his propensity to hide all of his reasoning (if any) is not one of them. Compare, for example, my blog post of a few years ago on working conditions in 1911 New York City, when the Triangle Shirtwaist fire claimed 146 lives, most of them young women, partly because the fire exits were blocked to prevent pilfering. Would workers in 1911 have wanted safer working conditions (including unblocked fire exits)? This was my answer:

Continue reading ‘The Road Not Taken’

The Story Darkens

Published

Steve Landsburg

on June 10, 2013

in Current Events, Outrage, Paul Krugman, Politics and Truthseeking

. 65 Comments

It turns out that last week’s tag-team smear of a young Heritage Foundation economist, executed by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and his lackey Paul Krugman of the New York Times, was even worse than we knew.

As you’ll recall, Salim Furth of the Heritage Foundation testified before the Senate Budget Committee, accurately presenting data on economic policy changes in various countries for the years 2007-2012. Then Senator Whitehouse, cheered on by Paul Krugman, spent eight minutes excoriating Furth for inventing those numbers — the sort of accusation which, if it were taken seriously, would surely destroy Furth’s career. (As well it ought to, if it had contained a grain of truth.)

And what was Senator Whitehouse’s evidence for Furth’s “meretriciousness”, as he put it? Well, it was the fact that Whitehouse had gone to Furth’s source, looked for the numbers, and found them to be entirely different.

What Senator Whitehouse didn’t tell you was that he was “refuting” Furth’s accurate report of the historical record with projected numbers, which is to say pie-in-the-sky promises by politicians about what they’re going to do in the year 2016. It was, as I said last week, as if I’d announced plans to lose 30 pounds and then promptly gained 10. When Furth accurately reports my recent weight gain, Whitehouse calls him a liar because a 10 pound gain is not a 30 pound loss.

Paul Krugman, who must know better, cheered on this mendacity when he wrote:

a Heritage Foundation economist has been accused of presenting false, deliberately misleading data and analysis to the Senate Budget Committee.

What’s so shocking? Not the false, misleading data and analysis — that’s SOP at Heritage. … What’s shocking is that they got called on it, in real time.

Now it turns out that Senator Whitehouse’s numbers were even farther off base. Not only was were the numbers invented to begin with; he took those numbers for various years and added them up, even though they were already cumulative. It’s as if I’d announced plans to lose 30 pounds in 2013 and another 20 in 2014 — a total of 50 over two years. What Senator Whitehouse did was the equivalent of adding the initial 30 to the total of 50, and then announcing that my projected weight loss is 80 pounds. And then calling Furth a 90-pound liar for accurately reporting my 10 pound weight gain.

Continue reading ‘The Story Darkens’

Lies and Lying Liars

Published

Steve Landsburg

on June 7, 2013

in Current Events, Outrage, Paul Krugman, Politics and Truthseeking

. 35 Comments

When a politician misleads the public with distorted or flat-out fictional data, or uses eight minutes of national TV time to smear the character of the careful scholar who dared to report an inconvenient set of facts, you can always count on Paul Krugman of the New York Times to leap to the defense of truth and honesty — or, alternatively, to jump on the bandwagon if the politician happens to be a Democrat.

Here, you see, is what happened this week: Salim Furth, an economist at the Heritage Foundation (and a graduate of the University of Rochester, where I knew him to be a thoughtful and honest researcher) testified before the Senate budget committee, where he presented data from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) showing that most European governments have recently increased their spending. (This isn’t surprising for several reasons, one of which is that governments often spend more in recessionary times.)

Enter Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, who spent eight excruciating televised minutes lambasting Furth and questioning his honesty, by reading out OECD numbers that differed dramatically from what Furth had reported. Some choice comments:

Dr. Furth, I am very concerned about your testimony….

When I look at the graph, for instance, which you source to the OECD — did you actually look at what the OECD says?….

They’ve actually written what the numbers are. And here’s what the numbers actually are, according to the OECD….

I am concerned that your testimony to this committee has been meretricious…I am contesting whether you have given us fair and accurate information.

And then there’s another eight minutes of reading out numbers that are, Senator Whitehouse keeps reminding us actually from the OECD, as opposed to these other numbers reported by Furth, which Furth claims are from the OECD, but obviously can’t be, because Whitehouse has the actual OECD numbers right here, and look how different they are — all of this interspersed with a barrage of attacks on Furth’s character and integrity. (See the video below, if you have the stomach for it.)

Now here’s the thing: There are a couple of legitimate reasons why Furth’s and Whitehouse’s numbers don’t agree. The first is that they’re for different time periods. Furth’s are for the years 2007-2012, while Senator Whitehouse’s are for the years 2009-2016. That’s right, 2016. Which brings us to the other reason these numbers differ: Furth’s come from the historical record, while Senator Whitehouse’s come from somebody’s ass.

Continue reading ‘Lies and Lying Liars’

Never Give Your Credit Card to the Wall Street Journal

Published

Steve Landsburg

on March 27, 2013

in Consumer Advocacy, Outrage and Personal

. 41 Comments

Having just discovered a staggering $910 (!!!!) in unexplained and unauthorized charges to my MasterCard by the Wall Street Journal (no, these were not legit renewal fees), I have just spent what seems like the better part of four days telling my story on the phone to one customer service rep after another, each of whom has found a new way to lie to me. (“We’ll call you back by the end of the day” was the most frequent lie, followed by “we’re putting through a half-refund now and someone with higher authority will call you shortly to arrange the rest” — which turned out to be two lies in one). Finally, I decided to send an email with the whole sad story, asking for a refund and mentioning that I sure hope there won’t be any resulting confusion that interrupts my delivery service. I got an email back saying “Per your request, we’re cancelling your delivery service”. Today I had no newspaper — and still no refund.

Think of the top three worst customer service stories you’ve ever heard. Chances are excellent that versions of all three have cropped up along the way in this sordid saga, the details of which I will suppress because I’m sure they’re less interesting to you than they are to me.

But I will mention this: Aside from the lying, and the lying and the lying, there’s also the fact that absolutely nobody appears to keep any record of these conversations, so that each time I call, I’m starting from scratch, explaining the whole story to a customer service rep who won’t put me through to a supervisor until I rehash the whole thing, then waiting on hold ten minutes for said supervisor, who needs the entire story told from scratch again before connecting me to the department that’s really equipped to deal with this, where I wait on hold for another ten minutes before telling my story yet again and, 50% of the time, getting disconnected. When I call back, it’s back to Square One.

Oh, yes….and they’ve also studiously ignored my repeated requests/demands that they expunge my credit card number from their records, and refused to acknowledge my repeated notifications that they do not have my authorization to charge my credit card for anything ever again.

Continue reading ‘Never Give Your Credit Card to the Wall Street Journal’

Rush to Judgment

Published

Steve Landsburg

on March 2, 2012

in Current Events, Fairness, Morality, Outrage, Policy, Sex and Snark

. 214 Comments

Rush Limbaugh is under fire for responding in trademark fashion to the congressional testimony of Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke, who wants you to pay for her contraception. If the rest of us are to share in the costs of Ms. Fluke’s sex life, says Rush, we should also share in the benefits, via the magic of online video. For this, Rush is accused of denying Ms. Fluke her due respect.

But while Ms. Fluke herself deserves the same basic respect we owe to any human being, her position — which is what’s at issue here — deserves none whatseover. It deserves only to be ridiculed, mocked and jeered. To treat it with respect would be a travesty. I expect there are respectable arguments for subsidizing contraception (though I am skeptical that there are arguments sufficiently respectable to win me over), but Ms. Fluke made no such argument. All she said, in effect, was that she and others want contraception and they don’t want to pay for it.

To his credit, Rush stepped in to provide the requisite mockery. To his far greater credit, he did so with a spot-on analogy: If I can reasonably be required to pay for someone else’s sex life (absent any argument about externalities or other market failures), then I can reasonably demand to share in the benefits. His dense and humorless critics notwithstanding, I am 99% sure that Rush doesn’t actually advocate mandatory on-line sex videos. What he advocates is logical consistency and an appreciation for ethical symmetry. So do I. Color me jealous for not having thought of this analogy myself.

Continue reading ‘Rush to Judgment’

Why Not Bob Dole?

Published

Steve Landsburg

on October 13, 2011

in Bad Reasoning, Outrage, Policy and Politics

. 31 Comments

So Mitt Romney wants to exempt capital gains from taxation — but only for taxpayers who earn less than $200,000 a year. In Tuesday night’s debate, Newt Gingrich asked him (I’m paraphrasing) “Why the cap?”. Romney’s answer — that he’s looking out for the middle class because “the rich can take care of themselves” — was as incoherent as anything I’ve heard this election year.

Here’s why:

I interpret Romney’s answer to mean that he wants to cut capital gains rates not on efficiency grounds, not on supply side grounds, and not on philosophical grounds, but on redistributionist grounds. Well, okay, I myself don’t think very much of redistribution as a primary driver of tax policy, but Romney and I can disagree on that one. But where the incoherence comes in is this: If your goal is to redistribute from the rich to the middle class, why on earth would you do it by cutting the capital gains tax, as opposed to lowering income tax rates in the middle and raising them at the top?

To put this another way: If you care about efficiency, you’ll want to cut the capital gains rate to zero for everyone. If you care about fairness, and if you believe fairness mitigates against double/triple/quadruple taxation, you’ll still want to cut the capital gains rate to zero for everyone. If you care about redistribution, you’ll want to juggle the tax brackets. But I can’t think of a single thing you could care about that would lead you to laser in on cutting capital gains rates for middle income taxpayers only.

Now it might be that somewhere in Romney’s 59 point economic plan there’s an answer to this. If so, Herman Cain was surely right when he intimated that Romney himself can’t be terribly familiar with the contents of that plan. Because, when asked a simple question about the justification, Romney wasn’t able to come anywhere close to making sense.

Continue reading ‘Why Not Bob Dole?’

Compassion Play

Published

Steve Landsburg

on September 19, 2011

in Current Events, Economics, Morality, Outrage, Paul Krugman and Policy

. 83 Comments

One thing I like about the study of economics is that it fosters compassion. When part of your job is to predict human behavior, you quickly learn the value of understanding other people’s problems. When the other part of your job is ferreting out the unseen global consequences of our choices, you’ve taken the first step toward caring about those consequences.

For example: Suppose a guy with no health insurance and no assets shows up at a hospital emergency room with an urgent life-threatening condition. Should you let him die? Ordinary compassion says no. The heightened compassion of the economist says, at the very least, maybe.

First, a policy of providing emergency health care to everyone is pretty much the same thing as a policy of providing emergency health insurance to everyone. It was specified here that this was a guy who didn’t want health insurance. So let’s recognize for starters that such a policy runs counter to — I am tempted to say runs roughshod over — the guy’s own revealed preference. It’s an odd sort of compassion that forces people to buy things they don’t want.

Now you might object that nobody’s forcing this guy to buy emergency health care; we’re trying to give him emergency health care. Not so fast. Here’s the first place where a little economic training goes to hone one’s sense of compassion: The emergency health insurance we’re foisting on this guy has a cost. We can spend that money on emergency rooms or we can spend it on a myriad of other things the guy might prefer. How is it compassionate to give him one thing when he prefers another?

This is particularly true if the guy happens to be very poor. Poor people have a lot of problems, and emergency health care is only one of them. They need better education, they need better transportation, and they need a little help buying groceries.

There is room for lots of debate and lots of disagreement about how much we as a society should be spending to help poor people. That’s not the issue here. The issue here is: Given that you’ve decided to spend an extra such-and-such many dollars a year helping poor people, why would you spend it in this particular way rather than one of the many other ways they could use it? For God’s sake, why not at least ask them if they’d rather have the cash?

Continue reading ‘Compassion Play’

In a Fit of Pique

Published

Steve Landsburg

on June 21, 2011

in Consumer Advocacy, Outrage, Personal and Rants

. 28 Comments

For God’s sake, don’t let your children subscribe to Sirius/XM.

Since May 4, when Sirius rearranged all its channel numbers, my radio has been badly confused. If I punch in station 23, it goes to the station that’s currently 23 for a while, then jumps to the station that used to be 23, etc. And certain stations, which according to the Sirius website are part of my standard package, are completely inaccessible.

Given my past experience with XM customer service, I knew this was not going to be an easy fix, so I’ve been putting off making the call. Today I had some spare time. Sure enough, I’ve spent over TWO HOURS on the phone with these people being alternately put on hold, lied to, put on hold, lied to some more, and put on hold again.

They claim the missing channels are missing because they’re “premium” channels not included in my package. Except that their website clearly identifies these channels as standard channels that *are* part of my package. They tell me that they’re instituting a fix at their end which requires me to leave my radio on for fifteen minutes before it takes effect; this gives them a convenient excuse to hang up and not be there fifteen minutes down the line when nothing has changed. When I complain about how long I’ve been on hold (the automated system always says the wait time is “about eight minutes” before stranding you for half an hour), they give me a direct number to call to bypass the queue. I call that number and am told that no, this number is only for radios installed on airlines or boats. I complain that I’ve just waited twenty minutes to get this message. They give me a *different* number to call, promising me that there is currently no wait at that number. Thirty five minutes later, I’m still waiting.

Ah, but what about just using the form on their web site? Well, you see, that form will not allow me to submit a query unless I give it the serial number of my radio — a serial number that it insists is wrong, even though I have *copied and pasted* it from the “My Account” section of their own damned website. Therefore my query cannot be submitted.

Continue reading ‘In a Fit of Pique’

Dakota Winds

Published

Steve Landsburg

on June 15, 2011

in Bad Reasoning, Outrage, Policy and Politics

. 58 Comments

Here is Senator John Thune (R-SD), speaking on the floor of the United States Senate:

Ethanol producers have been ripping us off for a long time, and they’ve come to rely on that for a source of income. So it’s only fair to let them rip us off a little longer.

I’m quoting from memory, so I might have the wording slightly off, but that was the gist of it. Oh, wait, here’s the exact quote:

We have a lot of folks who made investments, you have people across the country whose livelihoods depend upon this. I think it makes sense, when we put policy in place and we say it is going to be in place for a certain period of time, that it be honored.

As you can see, my parapharase was accurate.

Senator Thune speaks in the great tradition of his institution. Back in 1848, senators by the score made exactly the same argument for preserving slavery. A lot of folks had invested in slaves, you know. And their livelihoods depended on it.

Continue reading ‘Dakota Winds’

Who Owes Whom?

Published

Steve Landsburg

on May 18, 2011

in Current Events, Economics and Outrage

. 59 Comments

Under the headline “Ultimatum Holding Up Trade Deals”, the New York Times reports that:

The Obama administration said on Monday that it would not seek Congressional approval of free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea until Republicans agree to expand assistance for American workers who might lose jobs as a result.

I have said this before and I will say it again: Anybody who loses his job because of a free trade agreement was overpaid to begin with. The $20-an-hour American who loses his job to a $5-an-hour Colombian is an American who has spent the past few years charging his countrymen twenty dollars for something they ought to have been able to buy for five.

So if I were writing this article it would have read something like this:

The Obama administration said on Monday that it would not seek Congressional approval of free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea until Republicans agree to extort additional money from American consumer/taxpayers who might stop being overcharged as a result.

I guess that’s why I never got that call from the New York Times.

Sins of Omission

Published

Steve Landsburg

on May 13, 2011

in Fluff, History and Outrage

. 6 Comments

The Smithsonian Magazine asks its readers to vote on who had the best Civil War facial hair. Burnside wins, as well he should. But how is Longstreet not even among the candidates?

Click here to comment or read others’ comments.

Senator B.S.

Published

Steve Landsburg

on April 4, 2011

in Bad Reasoning, Current Events, Outrage and Politics

. 31 Comments

A lot of people think of janitors as a group that’s not particularly well paid. Those people might be surprised to learn that in the last five years alone, American janitors earned over $250 billion! That’s billion! With a B!

Despite that enormous income, janitors pay no taxes whatsoever — or at least no taxes whatsoever over and above the taxes that are paid by you, me and other ordinary Americans. And shockingly, it appears that the U.S. Congress would rather cut spending than institute a new tax on janitorial income.

If the above strikes you as insane, congratulations. You are smarter than the intended audience of Senator Bernie Sanders, who observes in his new book “The Speech” that General Electric’s shareholders collectively earned a staggering $26 billion over the past five years, and paid absolutely no tax on that amount.

Of course $26 billion is only a tenth of what janitors earned over the same time period, but I guess it does look mighty big if you don’t bother dividing by the number of shareholders. Without having all the numbers in front of me, my best guess is that we’re talking maybe a few hundred bucks per shareholder, though of course (as with janitors) some earn more and others earn less.

And as for the shareholders paying absolutely no tax, perhaps they didn’t, as long as you don’t count taxes on dividends, capital gains and wages. To wit:

Continue reading ‘Senator B.S.’

The Protection Racket

Published

Steve Landsburg

on August 13, 2010

in Current Events and Outrage

. 24 Comments

Say you run a restaurant. And say a competitor announces plans to set up shop just across the street. What can you do to minimize the impact on your business?

Well, you could lower your prices. Or you could work on providing better service. Or you could send over a couple of guys who are really good at convincing people it’s not in their interest to compete with you.

Or say you run a personnel company that brings foreign workers into the United States. And say you’re worried about competitors who cross the border without your help. One option is to try doing a better job. Another is to send over about 1500 guys with unmanned aerial vehicles, new forwarding operating bases and $14 million in new communications equipment to tamp down the flow.

President Obama, with support from both sides of the political aisle, will be signing a bill today that allocates $600 million for “border security”. According to CNN, “The bill is funded in part by higher fees on personnel companies that bring foreign workers into the United States”.

I imagine the personnel companies will consider it money well spent. Let’s not lose sight of how ugly this is.

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Archive for the 'Outrage' Category

I Heard the News Today, Oh Boy.

How to Kill Off Amazon’s Damned “Popular Highlights”

A Tale of Two Universes

Block Heads, Redux

Dear Google: Please Stop Trying to Kill Me

A Matter of Perspective

Walls Versus Walls

Letter from an Infantryman

Like the Groundhog, He Emerges

Interventionists

Poison Apple

Bad Planning

Ask Not What the Church Can Do For You; Ask What You Can Do For the Church

Block Heads

State of the Union

Lying Low

Double Standards

The Road Not Taken

The Story Darkens

Lies and Lying Liars

Never Give Your Credit Card to the Wall Street Journal

Rush to Judgment

Why Not Bob Dole?

Compassion Play

In a Fit of Pique

Dakota Winds

Who Owes Whom?

Sins of Omission

Senator B.S.

The Protection Racket

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