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gags

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Posts posted by gags

  1. You generally have to be careful to compare within a system rather than between systems, to look at many races taking place together at one time, rather than just one. So it works well if you compare small Canadian Parliamentary ridings (electoral districts) to large ones, or Senate races in small U.S. states versus large ones, or small districts in the City of London to large ones, for the same series of elections. It would not work, or at any rate the law would be much less apparent, if we created a grab-bag of different voter populations -- like mixing Greek, Ukrainian, and Iraqi election results in one data set. The law isn't that universal. It also doesn't work quite as well for presidential elections, where there is only one nationwide ballot. For more on this see below.

    Ok, I have no problem with the proposition that smaller groups will tend to reach a stronger political consensus than larger groups. However, I think that's relatively easy to explain, as smaller political groups are likely to be more homogenous and likely to have more shared experiences and values because they are less geographically dispersed, among other reasons. Given all of this, I don't see how this phenomenon is explained by a Power Curve and worse yet, I'm not sure what useful information a Power Curve or entropy or whatever we call it gives us when it comes to politics.

    By the way, threads like yours are why I give money to support the O'ism Online forum. A big thumbs up to everyone who has contributed to this thread. This forum consistently has some of the most intelligent back and forth discussions you can find anywhere on the internet.

  2. Can you cite that?

    That's something I read in a recent editorial and I've heard it repeated several times on various talk shows. Here's an excerpt from the editorial:

    Even the forecasters don’t trust the forecasts. If Medicare and Medicaid have taught us anything, it is that entitlement benefits expand over time and cost projections nearly always fall short. Much attention has been focused on the cost estimate “scoring” of the Congressional Budget Office. The CBO itself notes that these estimates are rough and based on assumptions that are somewhat unrealistic, assumptions it is bound to honor according to the rules governing its work.

    Consider that the CBO’s net cost estimate for the House plan assumes cuts in provider payments in Medicare of $229 billion and cuts to Medicare Advantage of an additional $170 billion. Congress has a habit of announcing but then withdrawing Medicare cuts. In fact, a 21 percent reduction in Medicare fees (worth a quarter of a trillion dollars annually) is still scheduled for 2010 but seems likely to be rescinded yet again. Moreover, payment provisions in the House bill require the CBO to assume that Medicare costs per beneficiary will grow at 4 percent a year, well below the 7 percent we’ve experienced in the past two decades (excluding Part D, coverage for prescription drugs).

    http://www.rbj.net/article.asp?aID=181861

    The other thing that is being done with some legislation is to go through an iterative process with the CBO until you come up with what appears to be an acceptable cost for a bill.

    "CBO analysts are required by law to provide a cost estimate for every bill reported by a congressional committee, but the agency's work -- and influence -- sometimes extends beyond that, Schick says."

    "In many pieces of legislation, particularly when they're important, there's a more interactive process between the CBO and members of Congress," he explains. "Members of Congress will bounce off CBO staff what will happen if the language is this or that, if we expand or contract the numbers who are eligible, [...] if we tweak the legislation one way or the other."

    http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/health.../cbo_11-12.html

    Sen. Ron Widen was interviewed by Ezra Klein of the Washington Post in June of 2009 and they discussed how he was able to obtain a favorable CBO score on his healthcare bill:

    "The last week has been one bad Congressional Budget Office score after another. Your bill, the Healthy Americans Act, is a universal coverage bill that managed to get a good score from the CBO. It was revenue neutral in two years and actually improved the deficit after four years. Tell me about the process behind that score.

    I was shot in the tailbone with good luck from the standpoint of the timetable. Peter Orszag, who was then the director of the CBO, and I spent 18 months together. It was every week on the sofas in our office going back and forth with various iterations and alternatives for the legislation....

    But I found that if you can get the time of the CBO and go through the process of trying different iterations out, you can find your way to the promised land: a score that doesn't blow you out of the water. Our whole objective was to try to get to budget neutrality. We were thrilled when it said in the third year that we started bending the cost curve downward. But to get there, we had to go at it week after week."

    http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klei...o_score_an.html

    If you've ever done any financial forecasting, you'll know that you can get the numbers to say just about anything you want by tweaking your assumptions. It looks to me like the politicians are gaming the CBO.

  3. As a practical matter, does experience tell us that the government can offer something of the same quality and at a lower price than the private sector? No, such a claim in this context is absurd.

    Also, the MIT professor relies on information from the Congressional Budget Office. I have a problem with much of what is put out by the CBO because when they score a bill (for example) they are bound by law to accept the premises provided by the author(s) of that bill. If the authors of the bill say that they will cut Medicare expenditures by $500 billion and there won't be any repurcussions in terms of the care delivered, then that's what the CBO analysis reflects. Then the politicians grab the CBO report and say "See, the non-partisan CBO thinks our plan is going to work...."

    I also noticed that the MIT Professor cited the Massachusetts experience to demonstrate how government control of healthcare can reduce premiums. Anyone who is familiar with Mitt Romney's healthcare fiasco knows that it has been a mess from the beginning and has resulted in doctor shortages, cost over-runs and is breaking the state's budget.

    http://johnrlott.blogspot.com/2009/07/some...tts-health.html

    So, one is left to wonder whether the MIT professor is ignorant or is he just plain dishonest?

  4. Math Guy, this has been a very interesting thread, thanks for starting it.

    For example, if you study election returns district by district, you will find a very regular power-law dependence of the result on the number of voters. Small districts tend to produce much more decisive majorities for the winner. Large districts produce weak majorities, or pluralities in a multi-party system. Once again the pattern appears to depend solely on numbers, not on culture or language or economics.

    In effect, when you try to achieve consensus on a particular candidate, information entropy (uncertainty) increases with the number of voters. A group of 2,500 voters will give the winner 75 percent of their votes, and distribute the remaining 25 percent among the other candidates. It can keep that kind of consensus up for election after election. A group of 25,000 voters will almost never do that well. They might manage a 60-40 split on a regular basis. A group of 250,000 voters will be lucky to manage 55-45. And so on.

    Wouldn’t a reasonable explanation be that it’s easier to achieve a stronger consensus with a smaller, more homogenous group of people located in a given geographic area than it is with one that is larger, more diverse, and more geographically dispersed? I’d like to hear more about what data you reviewed to come to your conclusions on this application of your theory. Which political races did you consider and over what periods of time?

    You can see the implications almost immediately. Large states or districts can't form strong consensus in favor of any one leader, and so they are more unstable. Small states or districts can stay with a policy or platform for several cycles with far less difficulty.

    The perpetual 50.5-49.5 split between presidential candidates in the modern U.S. system is not, at root, a problem with ideology or culture. It is not the fault of the Republicans and Democrats that America is perpetually locked in red-versus-blue warfare. It's a consequence of the principle of maximum entropy.

    If we look at presidential elections, the recent close races are not unusual in our history, however we shouldn’t necessarily expect them to continue this way forever. We don’t have to go back too far in history to see that Reagan beat Mondale by 18%, and Carter by almost 10%. Nixon beat McGovern by 23% and Johnson beat Goldwater by a similar margin. I don’t see much of a pattern here other than we appear to have several close elections, then we have a landslide.
  5. This is just more liberal froggy behavior from the worst President of the US ever. His "bowing" is just an indication of his capitulation to socialism. No true capitalist President would have bowed to that bloody Jap. Its an Obamanation folks!

    Thanks for actually turning this into a stupid conversation. I'm out.

  6. Obama is bad but he's not worse than Bush/Cheney, although he still has plenty of time to prove me wrong.

    I find this to be remarkable. There are degrees of both evil and stupidity. Obama hasn't even been in office for a year yet and he has already demonstrated he's far worse than the Bush/Cheney disaster on almost every issue that actually matters.

    Healthcare: B/C give us an idiotic prescription drug program for seniors, Obama takes a shot at socializing the entire system and destroying healthcare as we know it. This by itself makes Obama the worst president in US history, IMO.

    Foreign Policy: B/C take years to fight wars that could have been won at a far lower cost, Obama can't even make a decision about whether we should be in Afghanistan while US soldiers die and he waltzes around the world on a series of apology tours giving hope to our enemies.

    Government Spending, Taxation & the Economy: B/C spend absurd amounts and cut taxes which leads to big deficits, Obama wastes/spends absolutely astronomical amounts while unemployment skyrockets, deficits explode, and we hear about proposal after proposal to raise taxes on nearly every American.

    Concerning the issues that have an impact on our everyday lives, Obama is far worse than B/C. We can repair the damage from B/C.... I'm not so sure about the damage that Obama is causing.

  7. The country is in decline. How could you possibly say otherwise?
    I already explained that above. The country’s decline is the result of leaders like Obama and Bush as well as the bad philosophy they and many others hold.

    Considering who is borrowing and who is lending in the America/Japan relationship, I'd say that if anything, Obama's asking for a favor of the Japanese, not apologizing.
    And how can you possibly deduce that?

    There is just no way that anybody could deduce Obama's intentions with this bow/handshake thing, let alone claim the mental causation of his physical actions.
    Obviously we’re all speculating, but look at Obama’s speeches and actions. He has made a regular practice of highlighting our flaws before foreign audiences.

    Are you being forced to read what I write? Come on - surely you could do better than that?
    You’re the one who proclaimed this conversation to be “stupid”. If that’s the case, why are you wasting your time and mine?
  8. Unlike Obama's bow, which verged on prostration, kissing on the cheek really is just a friendly gesture in the Middle East.

    I recall plenty of outrage when Bush embraced the Saudi King. Given Saudi support of Islamic fundamentalism, I think the outrage was justified.

  9. You don't think America is in decline?
    If America is actually in decline, it's the result of statist like Obama and Bush who have pointed us in that direction.

    I don't think it's died and I don't think it's dying started with Obama, either.

    It's not something that can't be resurrected, however this President makes quite an effort to point out our flaws rather than focusing on the good. This nation is unique and I don't think that computes with Obama's underlying philosophy.

  10. Obama comes from the Jimmy Carter school of diplomacy. People in this country may shrug off comments like the ones he has been making overseas, but the dictators and Islamic fanatics who hate this country see an opening that they will eventually attempt to exploit.

  11. I'm pretty for sure most of the people who would get really upset over this thing didn't even know Japan still had an emperor until they heard this. He's pretty irrelevant.

    This clearly isn't about the Emperor of Japan. It's about our President's embarassing willingness to accept and even embrace the idea that America is in decline and that this nation really isn't better than any other nation. We're all just citizens of the world. American exceptionalism died with Obama.

  12. This is pretty stupid, honestly. Why do we care? Does this affect us? Really?

    Yes it will have an impact on us. I agree with Freestyle in that this is a physical manifestation of his ideology. He thinks this country is in decline and he has gone around the world apologizing for all of America's sins. It's pathetic and our enemies are watching closely.

  13. Here's an interesting piece from Bob Pozen where he talks about the problems caused by short-term thinking:

    If we want corporate America to avoid short-termism, we need to help free portfolio managers and company executives from the tyranny of quarterly results. Since I work in the investment management industry as the Chairman of MFS Investment Management, I am particularly aware of the pressures to take a short-term perspective in the financial markets--and the often unintended or unknown collateral damage they wreak. This problem is particularly pernicious in that other countries don't focus on the short term nearly as much as the US. As a result, these pressures impede the pursuit of long-term strategies by American public companies to their competitive disadvantage in the global marketplace.

    http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/hbr/resto...anny-of-qu.html

  14. I just came across this paper from Lord Monckton re: MMGW. Here is his conclusion:

    Even if temperature had risen above natural variability, the recent solar Grand Maximum may have been chiefly responsible. Even if the sun were not chiefly to blame for the past half-century’s warming, the IPCC has not demonstrated that, since CO2 occupies only one-ten-thousandth part more of the atmosphere that it did in 1750, it has contributed more than a small fraction of the warming. Even if carbon dioxide were chiefly responsible for the warming that ceased in 1998 and may not resume until 2015, the distinctive, projected fingerprint of anthropogenic “greenhouse-gas” warming is entirely absent from the observed record. Even if the fingerprint were present, computer models are long proven to be inherently incapable of providing projections of the future state of the climate that are sound enough for policymaking. Even if per impossibile the models could ever become reliable, the present paper demonstrates that it is not at all likely that the world will warm as much as the IPCC imagines. Even if the world were to warm that much, the overwhelming majority of the scientific, peer-reviewed literature does not predict that catastrophe would ensue. Even if catastrophe might ensue, even the most drastic proposals to mitigate future climate change by reducing emissions of carbon dioxide would make very little difference to the climate. Even if mitigation were likely to be effective, it would do more harm than good: already millions face starvation as the dash for biofuels takes agricultural land out of essential food production: a warning that taking precautions, “just in case”, can do untold harm unless there is a sound, scientific basis for them. Finally, even if mitigation might do more good than harm, adaptation as (and if) necessary would be far more cost-effective and less likely to be harmful.

    In short, we must get the science right, or we shall get the policy wrong. If the concluding equation in this analysis (Eqn. 30) is correct, the IPCC’s estimates of climate sensitivity must have been very much exaggerated. There may, therefore, be a good reason why, contrary to the projections of the models on which the IPCC relies, temperatures have not risen for a decade and have been falling since the phase-transition in global temperature trends that occurred in late 2001. Perhaps real-world climate sensitivity is very much below the IPCC’s estimates. Perhaps, therefore, there is no “climate crisis” at all. At present, then, in policy terms there is no case for doing anything. The correct policy approach to a non-problem is to have the courage to do nothing.

    http://www.webcommentary.com/climate/monckton.php

    As the politicians kick around "Cap & Trade", they would do well to consider the fact that this entire "crisis" is a fabrication and their proposal will do untold damage to the US economy.

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