I don’t understand the obsession with Sarah Palin. I thought she was a perfectly charming governor of Alaska. President? Not so much. Not interested.
I don’t understand why anybody thinks there’s a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem. Every president of my lifetime including the incumbent apparently has thought so. What solution can hold if the most radical and violent have veto power?
I don’t understand the Obama Administration’s position on fiscal stimulus. Do they believe in it or not? Given that all but one of the administration’s senior economic advisors has resigned in remarkably short order, I suspect they didn’t understand it, either.
I don’t understand why you’d send crotch shots of yourself to people you don’t know. Heck, I don’t understand why you’d send crotch shots of yourself to people you know.
I don’t understand why President Obama hasn’t done a better job of selling his policies to the American people.
I don’t know when daringly different crosses the line into more of the same, cf. Lady Gaga. As I see it she’s essentially Marlene Dietrich 3.0 (who may have been Louise Brooks 2.0 but that’s before my time). Being Amish: daringly different. Meat dresses? Zzzzzz.
I don’t understand why those who are most in favor of action to fight climate change don’t lead by example or propose a solution that will deal with whatever problem exists. The proposals I’ve seen have been laughably inadequate.
I don’t understand why people complain that wages for entry level and unskilled workers are too low and that we should have a lot more of them. I can understand one view or the other just not in combination.
That’s a start. I may come up with others as the day wears on.
Update
I have realized that I don’t understand what the phrase “economic potential” means. I’m seeing it a lot lately. I understand the definition: the total capacity of an economy to produce goods and services. How is it measured? Dollars? I think that’s begging the question, i.e. does the ability to produce goods and services that have zero value contribute to economic potential?
Let me try that again. Let’s say you have 10,000 unemployed buggy whip makers and all the buggy whips that can conceivably be bought have already been made. What “economic potential” do those 10,000 unemployed buggy whip makers represent? I think zero but if that’s the case then the phrase has no meaning, at least not in the contexts that I’m seeing it used.
Update 2
Another one. I don’t understand why the U. S. healthcare system in which 60% of all spending comes from tax dollars is a free market system and the French system in which 85-90% of spending comes from tax dollars is socialized medicine.
Obama seems content to let Wall St. types choose the Fed’s direction. At the same time, he has let the public’s aversion to stimulus (and tax) drive the fiscal side. As I’ve said, it’s surprising that so many are mad at Obama for making the changes they want.
Why wouldn’t a guy named Weiner see that as his avatar? (Seriously, I just see the Weiner thing as typical narcissism in Congress.)
I think Lady Gaga was a clever girl who started with more art that outrage. But it’s a hard bubble to live in.
Do you mean prominent people on climate change? I lived by example, drive my footprint as low as it would go. Did anyone care?
Your unskilled wage complainers are not grasping the globalization. Having more _here_ does not change the global impact of Chinese semi-capitalism.
A comment from Ritholtz yesterday, might be the best answer to “economic potential.”
And of course, everything thing that does not directly benefit the country club set is “socialism.” And strangely, the Walmart set buy into this.
Seriously dude, think about the weird public angst on Prius. They can’t be an example and in-your-face snobbery at the same time.
…. I guess if you want the snobbery it’s a good buy. Only $22K and more snobbish than a Ferrari.
The free market versus socialist healthcare question is easy. Just over twice as many people have private health insurance as have government health insurance (Medicare; Medicaid; Military).
I don’t believe I receive any government-supported healthcare, unless you are going to count tax subsidies or R&D. I don’t think I could say that if I lived in France?
You might be right PD, that people start with who they send the check to, but surely that should have a feel for the bigger picture. Including that their provider might be required by law to threat the uninsured.
Every government employee at every level of government who has an employer-provided healthcare plan (most of them) has his or her healthcare insurance paid from tax dollars.
Medicare pays a stipend to every medical resident in the country. It’s paid to the teaching hospital not the resident and it’s been the case for decades. The value of the stipend used to average around $80,000. I don’t know what it is now.
My point is that the subsidies are much, much larger than most people realize.
Dave, I just think there is more than one way to describe a system, you can look at dollars, you can also look at the number of people in it.
BTW/ In July we should expect a report that the largest employment sector in Springfield, Illinois for the first time will be health care.
“Medicare pays a stipend”
Economists would also say there is a current cash value of everyone’s future, post age 65, benefits.
PD is asking us to believe that the private insurance user keeps that future benefit out of his mind’s eye.
I don’t mean paying a stipend indirectly via fees for services, jp. For the last 35 or so years Medicare has included a program under which it pays a direct stipend for post-graduate medical education. I don’t recall the name of the program. I’ve posted on it from time to time.
I got that Dave, I was just piggybacking from there to the more direct future benefit for everyone.
Just checking.
Their economic potential is in their next best use. Kind of like opportunity cost.
No kidding, considering that Al Gore’s household uses something like 10x the amount of electricity that the average American household you have to wonder…of course, Gore is expected to hit a billion dollars off his global warming sca…errr investment plans he is pim…errr promoting.
Really? You get hundreds if not over a thousand dollars in subsidies and you consider it a free market–i.e. absent government interference? Others get even larger subsidies which impact the prices and premiums you pay and you think it is a free market?
France has a mixed system, we have a mixed system. The mix is just different between the two.
And weren’t you one of the commenters several months ago telling me how a free market in health care can’t work, but now we have one?
Shouldn’t you just compare Gore to other Senators? That would be the correct economic baseline.
Angels, pins 😉
Because best use is a capricious thing, not just of mood and fashion, but feedback cycles of mood and fashion.
I’m merely pointing out that according to the last census information (2009):
People on Private Healthcare Plan: 63.9%
People on Any Government Plan: 30.6%
None: 16.7%
I assume in France that the figures would be around 100% (government)/ 85% (Private) and 0% (none).
I don’t have a problem with calling it a mixed system, but the U.S. mixture is far more heterogeneous (its an emulsion?).
When I studied socialism in school, the defining characteristic was government ownership. From that p.o.v. it does make a difference if the government owns the hospitals and insurance companies, either by fiat or by competitive advantage. It makes a number of important legal differences.
People who plan on receiving Medicare: 100%?
Ahh, rank has its privileges…I see. I thought the point was reducing one’s carbon foot print not expanding it. But he is a former Senator….so okay then.
No, the point is that they don’t have an economic potential of zero. Do I know what it is? No. Just as I don’t know what your true valuation is of your current television, it would be incorrect of me to set it to zero.
P.D.,
I think you are getting way off the reservation here. The point is that the U.S. is a free market (which in the past, I’m pretty sure, you’ve argued would not work) while France which has a mixed system, is socialist. Both views are dubious. Especially when you factor in that pretty much 100% of the population receives a subsidy of one form or another.
Well, what are you trying to measure? If you are trying to measure if Gore has any commitment, you should look at either his history and change (reduction in energy footprint) or you should compare him to his peers (Congressmen, or other millionaires).
I suspect that some don’t want to look at that ratio because they are looking for an out, you know, “until rich men put on a hair shirt and go live in a cave, I’m not going to change one whit”
Oh, I took Dave’s question to be “how do they come up with it?” rather than “what is it, as an abstract and unknowable quantity?”
Certainly an omniscient God could know the economic potential in a moment, but I think we agree that if he checked again the next day, it would be different.
Steve V, I really don’t recall writing anything like that, I’m rarely that certain or constructive about what to do about healthcare. The closest I can think of is I generally agree that there are problems with controlling costs in a purely private exchange given (a) wide disparity of specialized knowledge btw/ doctor and potential patient, and (b) the problem of emergency care, limitting pricing of alternatives. These just strike me as grounds for regulation. I don’t know if they are sufficient to control costs; I wrote my Congressman in support of Wyden Bennett and now I get spam.
I think Dave believes regulation is an abandonment of free market principles; that’s not my definition of socialism.
But that is where most of the bang is. Like with taxes, that is where the money is. If a rich person is living in a big house and setting the AC to 70, he can get a much bigger CO2 reduction by downsizing than I can by downsizing. And remember the earth is in the balance right? So why not start now and show by example. That is what Dave is asking.
In the buggy whip maker example he set their economic potential to zero, which I think is incorrect. What it really is, IDK….nobody really does.
PD,
I don’ t think Dave thinks regulation is an abandonment of the free market, but that is just my guess.
But I think calling the US a free market in regards to health care is just outright silly. Is the French system socialist in a strict sense of the word? I don’t think I’d go that far either.
Further, there are some interesting implications here. If the US system is not a free market, then it isn’t the free market that has failed. It might fail if we switched to it, or we might not like the results (which one would think is still a failure), but we don’t have that kind of system and very few people are advocating it. I think some market oriented reforms could help at the margins though.
I’m still not getting it. I don’t see how you can determine the potential of the economy without resorting to the intrinsic value of labor.
What’s the potential of the economy? If you said it was about $15 trillion, I could understand that. However, that’s not what those who are appealing to the potential of the economy are saying. They’re suggesting it’s something higher than that. How do they know?
Every time I see that graph of the huge spike in home prices (and home production) that ended five years ago, I can’t help but think that potential is being calculated from a questionable basis.
I use a classical definition of socialism: common or state control of the means of production. Using that definition we’re a hybrid economy like practically every other economy in the world.
BTW, we’re a lot more socialistic than we were when I was a kid. Example: money is a means of production. We have a fiat currency now.
I’ve occasionally noted that we are all socialists now and, every time I make the point, I always get a lot of guff for it. If you believe in anything other than a head tax and use taxes, you’re a socialist. That’s just definitional. I don’t think it’s possible to maintain a modern society without some level of socialism.
Regulation? I think that some level of regulation is necessary and regulation is de facto state control over the means of production, i.e. socialism. Like I say, we’re a hybrid and I think that’s pretty inevitable.
I think there are actually two points here. First, when the highly visible and influential who express a high level of concern about climate change continue their own behavior pretty much without change I think they do a disservice to the cause they’re espousing. The immediate reaction is “when they start taking it seriously, I will”.
However, there’s something else, too. I did some research and calculations a bit ago and determined that greenhouse gas production by the top .1% of income earners isn’t just a little bit more than that of median income earners it’s thousands, maybe tens of thousands of times more than that of median income earners. In practice that means you can substantially reduce greenhouse gas production by a relative handful of people altering their behavior.
Contrariwise, if only those in the bottom 99.9% of income earners change their behavior, the amount by which they’ll need to change their behavior will be enormous. I don’t see how to get there from here.
I am with PD. I think of socialism as owning and controlling production. The UK health care system, where health care workers are paid and controlled by the government is socialism. Medicare sends out checks to people who are privately employed. Is it socialism when people build roads or provide food on govt. contracts?
“I think that some level of regulation is necessary and regulation is de facto state control over the means of production, i.e. socialism.”
Very broad. Banning insider trading is socialism?
Steve
I’m pretty sure you have the physics off. Heating would be a surface-area based problem. You basically pay for the heat loss through your walls and windows. But a $10 million dollar home does not have 100 times the surface area of a $100 thousand dollar home.
There are all sorts of nonlinearities like this. Consumption in dollars do not rise with expense. A Ferrari gets about the same MPG as a Ford F150.
Ah, yes. That lines up with my physics ramble.
We won’t. It’s like fishing out the oceans. We, or the next generation, well get to see what it’s like.
(If might come down to a variation of “it’s hard to make somebody believe something when his paycheck depends on the opposite.” In this case, it’s the lifestyle that depends on the opposite.)
I can acknowledge that as the strict semantic answer, but all of your other questions highlight how limiting the semantic answer really is.
Must be free market then 😉
Feel free to read “Consumption in dollars do not rise with expense” as something about energy/expense .
It doesn’t take a lot of flights in a Bombardier Learjet 45 Super-Light Business Jet from New York to Hong Kong to produce a lot of carbon dioxide. My calculation is about 46 kg roundtrip.
That would be the place where it goes non-linear the other way, with the rich flying more than average.
I know people who aren’t rich though, who log many, many, miles for business. More Hilton credits than they know what to do with.
This is how I’d describe it Dave.
Over time the economy grows at a fairly stable rate. Lets say it is 3%. Typically the economy will move around that “line” (a 3% growth rate gives you a non-linear curve, but you can make it linear by taking logs) which are your recessions and booms. If you take that base line as the “potential” then during a recession you’d be below that line. The expansion will likely, historically speaking, take you above the line for a short period and then you return to the line.
At least that is how I’d think of it.
Now as for the buggy whip guys, I’d say, IDK what their economic potential is because they likely wont “move together”. Some will go into job X, others Y, and still others Z, and so on. Nobody really knows what their true potential is. Part of the problem here is that looking at the parts wont give you the same answer as looking at the whole.
That is suppose the economic potential for the economy at date T is $100. At time T+1 the economy produces $95, a recession. So the shortfall is $5. Now during the boom, time T+2, the economy might go to $103. Now, that doesn’t mean that the buggy whip manufacturers who are the missing $5 are getting that $5 plus the $3. Some of the extra money in the economy might be going to others who have found that whatever market they are working in has seen an improvement.
I hope that is clear as mud.
John,
Well I was talking about cooling a house, not heating it. That is I’m pretty sure it is going to cost more to cool a 12,000 sq. ft. home vs. my 1,200 sq. ft. home. It may not be 10x, but I bet if they went down to a 6,000 sq. ft. they could still be quite comfortable and reduce their carbon foot print. Expecting me and my family of 3 (plus two dogs) to make a similar type of change is retarded. I can’t move into a house with negative sq. ft. Even expecting a relative change is pretty harsh, a 600 sq. ft. house/apt. is very small for my family size.
Now, lets look at things like cars they drive, air travel, and other various things. As Dave says, we could get substantial savings by looking at those who live lavish life styles. When they get up there and start blubbering on about global warming my thoughts are, “F*ck off and die in a fire please.” After all they jet around in private planes, limos, and so forth. Compared to me their carbon foot print is humungous.
Its the per capita thing again. If I work for a company that puts me on lots of airliners with 299 other people, then the resulting GHG is divided by 300. So lets say it is 75, kg round trip. Now divide it by 300 it is .250kg per person. Now Al Gore takes a private jet with 2 other people and not it is 46 kg/3 or 15.333 kg. Al and his buddies just crapped out 61x carbon than I did. Get his fat ass on the passenger liner FFS.
Him and his security contingent? How many ex-presidential candidates fly commercial?
Getting back to Dave’s original point though, I don’t think it would matter. It would be one less point of complaint, that is all.
After all there are plenty of celebrities and non that try the green lifestyle, pilot it, test it, and find it fine.
Those are ignored while people, currently, focus on Gore.
To expand, I did a couple years as “how low can you go” on energy. It was an engineer’s hobby to an extent. I replaced every appliance with an efficiency model. (That wasn’t expensive, there is a sweet spot in Kenmore and Frigidaire line-ups, that have high efficiency and low cost.)
I even turned off the heat for 2 years, on the theory that this was coastal southern California and it was optional. That proved true. The lowest temp I ever saw in the unheated house was 52F, and that was rare. Most winter mornings were around 60F inside. (You poor east coast guys probably heat to that.)
I not only switched to the Prius, but I walked or biked for any errands that I could.
It worked. It was possible, and enjoyable.
So why did I stop?
Well, what’s the point in being the only guy? Why feel guilty about driving 50 miles just to go mountain biking when no one else does?
It is more tragedy of the commons than “the tragedy of Al Gore” and in it most people really don’t care. You can have maybe 10% more fun for 100% more energy, and they choose the marginal fun.
Well with all the security at airports why not. Hell bet he could get rid of the security, right? Or is TSA and all their shenanigans just some modern day kabuki.
And I don’t think ex-presidential candidates get that much security…unless they pay for it. In fact, a quick review of the public law concerning this I’m pretty sure whatever security he has, is something he pays for.
Uhhmmm no. That was NOT Dave’s point at all. Let me quote you the relevant part,
That is we get Al Gore’s ever fattening ass on a passenger liner we’d save much more than making me and everyone in my neighborhood change to CFCs.
Gore is their spokesmen and the one that comes most readily to mind, and his large carbon foot print of use are well documented. Here is another Leonardo DiCaprio is also one of the people speaking out about global warming that uses private jets. These nitwits blabber on and on about government, good government and that kind of bullsh!t, but they have to have a private jet and a security detail to fly? Why can’t they trust the “good enough” government security the rest of peasants have to put up with.
See its not just that. These jerks really think the rest of us should change, that yes I should move my family into a smaller home and do with less so they can maintain their lavish lifestyles. F*ck them and the sooner they remove themselves from this existence the better for the rest of us.
BTW, as a Californian my carbon foot print is already pretty small. Californians tend to use considerably less electricity than the rest of the country, and we tend to have a higher ratio of that electricity generated via means that are good for global warming (nukes, solar, wind, geothermal, etc.). So, Al Gore and f*ck off and die in a fire for all I care.
I think your angry response captures the emotion in this tragedy of the commons, to a tee.
It’s twofold. First, set a careful group of “the others” to focus on (Gore, extreme environmentalists) and then angrily declare that you cannot follow the extreme environmentalists (living in hair shirts and caves) until Gore does.
Rationally there are many small, incremental, changes you could make which would save you money while maintaining your lifestyle.
You can’t think about that because you are trapped by the straw man that “these jerks” set for you, or more likely, one you set for yourself.
Shorter: There are six billion people on the planet, but strangely a group pick one, Al Gore, and will do no more on energy than he does. Never mind what other random individuals (like me) have tried.
Human beings are so strange.
Long-time senator, two term vice president, presidential candidate, Nobel Prize winner, Oscar winner just another face in the crowd? That beggars credulity.
Also, you might want to check up on the meaning of “synecdoche”. Al Gore is merely an example; one member selected to represent an entire class of individuals.
So whom do you think wears the synecdoche, Dave?
Are you a milder version of Steve, pinning any transformation of energy intensity on opposition-chosen icons?
No. I think that policies centered around the putative average producer of greenhouse gases are likely to be both draconian and ineffective. Rather than considering averages I strongly suspect that greenhouse gas production can be modeled as a baseline of production that can’t be addressed through changing individual behavior (things like the production by the military), commercial production (power plants, vehicle fleets), and a variable individual component that maps pretty closely to income although it isn’t exactly the same.
IMO you’ve got to address state producers, commercial producers, and the top .1% of individual producers. That’s where the action is. And Mr. Gore is almostly certainly among them.
BTW. I strongly suspect that the behavior changes you’ve suggested are only applicable to the top quintile of income earners. Most people in the bottom four quintiles can’t just go out and buy Priuses and change all of their appliances (I think there are production issues with hybrids and EVs, too, but that’s a different subject). Just as an example I know lots and lots of people who’ve never bought a new car in their lives.
I’m sick and tired of being hectored by a blowhard pimping his own business deals as a way to save the earth while wanting me to give up on things that he consumes in significantly greater quantities than I do. It is rank hypocrisy, IMO.
No, what I’m saying is he can make significant contributions. He and those like him.
Seriously. You sit there and talk about taxing the rich because they have money. They also have the bigger carbon foot print. So they should be the ones cutting back the most, but they aren’t. In fact, they hector the rest of us. It is the hypocrisy and lies.
And they are nothing compared to the supposed benefits Gore could achieve by simply flying on a commercial airliner vs. a private jet. Why should I make small incremental changes when he is spewing out 1000x more CO2 than I am?
See here is the thing. I think they are liars. Liars and crooks. Gore is cashing in on this in a big big way. So no, I think about this. I’m supposed to help him cash in while he maintains his lavish life style. Sorry, no. I’ll take them more seriously when Gore says, “Hey, I’m serious I’m flying commercial airliners even though, yeah I can afford a private jet. I’m refitting that house that sucks up electricity. I’m going to switch from tooling around in suburbans to more fuel efficient cars.” But he doesn’t.
In other words, why can’t our GHG policies be progressive like our income taxes? If gore is contributing 1,000x what the average U.S. person is, then shouldn’t he be trying to cut back even more?
It isn’t that he is an icon, it is that he is a hypocritical icon who has set himself up as a paragon of virtue. He is like the religious figure who preaches chastity and morality, but in reality is one of the worst sinners.
We can also swap out the name of Leonardo DiCaprio, Keith Urban, or many other rich celebrities.
BTW, as far as my own behavior goes on average I drive about 300 miles a month (I frequently walk to my various errands), in the winter my thermostat is set to 52°, and I’ve got high-efficiency appliances. Most of my electicity is derived from nuclear.
Would it make sense if I said shifting the whole curve, and the area under the curve, made more sense to me than … what, making a social claim that the high end of the bell curve go first?
I don’t have high hopes about how far that curve can be shifted either. There are too many big consumers at all strata of society. There may be rich jet setters, but there are also a lot of working class people with “toy haulers” and associated internal combustion recreation.
That’s why I keep coming back to AGW being inevitable and my prediction that we’ll live it. In part, because there is this “you go first” thing going on.
(Any data driven articles on the footprint of the top 0.1 would be appreciated.)
John,
You just don’t f*cking get it. It isn’t a social claim, it is a claim of efficiency. They produce orders of magnitude more GHGs than I do. Expecting me to cut back and not them is rank hypocrisy.
It isn’t that Gore is famous or has championed this cause. It is he is a liar.
Everybody cut back on GHGs, but me. Oh and I’ll get rich doing it too.
Shift? You mean I have to make the same cut backs as Gore? Bullcrap. It is like you are suddenly in favor of a flat tax….no scratch that, it is like you are in favor of a flat dollar amount tax. Everyone pays $500 irrespective of income. That is what a shift in the curve means.
Dave and I are talking about rotating the curve. Sure there will be savings near the origin (i.e. where most of us peasants live) but the big savings will come further out…with those like Leonardo DiCaprio or Keith Urban or Al Gore.
Here is a graph of what we are talking about.
The line Y, the blue line, is where we are now. The green line or Y” is a parallel shift downwards. Note that the impact on those at the top is virtually nil in this scenario. The line Y’ the red line is a rotation of the the original line, note that in this scenario we get the biggest impact and that those at the top bear a larger burden….just like taxpayers who earn more income bear a heavier federal income tax burden. Under the shift scenario those at the bottom bear the heaviest burdens when looked at as proportions.
You are so amazingly inconsistent here and so completely blinded to it, it is quite astonishing.
Oh, and under the rotation approach the reduction in GHGs is 5x larger than the shift given the numbers and functional form I’m using. If the actual functional form is convex (right now I’m using concave) then it would be even bigger and the argument still holds.
So to recap.
1. From an efficiency standpoint you are quite simply wrong.
2. From a moral standpoint you are quite simply wrong.
Sorry Steve, but I don’t believe the data Dave produced prove this at all.
Basically, to get out-of-line GHG production you have to go too far up the income curve, to something like 0.01% of the population.