By The Numbers - part the thirty seventh

Today brings Krugman's scheduled offering. He takes up the issue, appearing here a few times, about the effect of increasing life-span-at-birth on SS and Medicare. He reaches the same conclusion that I, and other intelligent lifeforms, have: increasing the eligibility ages for them will only hurt the poor and downtrodden, aka the group the Right Wingnut Populists claim to support. But he doesn't offer up any numbers. Well, I'll take up the gauntlet, once again.

Curiously, someone put the column title (not always at an author's discretion), "Nikki Haley Is Coming for Your Retirement", which doesn't make a whole lot of sense, since the NYT is the newspaper of record for the well-to-do, not Joe Sixpack who favors the New York Post and the Murdoch Universe. Be that flaw as it may.

Anyone who says, as Haley does, that the retirement age should rise in line with increasing life expectancy is being oblivious, perhaps willfully, to the grim inequality of modern America. Until Covid struck, average life expectancy at 65, the relevant number, was indeed rising. But these gains were concentrated among Americans with relatively high incomes. Less affluent Americans — those who depend most on Social Security — have seen little rise in life expectancy, and in some cases actual declines.

As offered here in the past, life expectancy at birth has, indeed, risen dramatically since 1900, and a bit less so since 1930 (a reasonable benchmark for SS benefit start):
at birth 1900 - 47
at birth 1930 - M:58 F:62
at birth 2021, est - 76

So, the Evangelical Radical Right Wingnuts scream, "this can't go on!!! nearly 30 fucking years longer!!! this can't go on!!!" They are, per usual, lying.

First and foremost, almost oll of that increase in lifespan has been due to reduction in early death, mostly through drugs and vaccines. In other words, more births lived through working age which led to an increase in SSA revenue compared to 1930. Or another way: the Baby Boomers' incomes were what made generous SS benefits possible for their parents and grandparents. You're welcome. SS was never, and could never be, an 'individual retirement account'; if that had been the implementation, no one would have gotten SS until about when Kennedy was shot, assuming a 30 year work life. It was implemented as a current account system so that those reaching 65 would receive benefits irregardless of how long they had 'contributed' to SS; they didn't contribute. It is just a dedicated tax input.

What actually matters is what's happened to geezer life expectancy over that time frame. If geezers still live about as long as they did in the Good Ole Days, then the bitching is all theatre.

So, what are those numbers?

Here's the numbers, once again
all folks
at 65 (1950) - 13.9
at 65 (2007) - 18.6

poor folks
at 65 (1950) - 13.9
at 65 (2007) - 17.2

So, how to 'save' SS?? The straightforward solution is to simply increase the income level that contributes and, of course, make it progressive just as income tax is supposed to be. For 2023, the max is $160,200. Not even near the 1%-ers' level. There hasn't been an adustment since 1990. Let's do it again. So, yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

And, just so ya know: those of the Evangelical Radical Right Wingnut Brigade who point to the at-birth numbers and insist that such dramatic increases are in the future imperils 'the rest of us' are lying. Of course. The dramatic increase from 1900 to 2000 (or so) was due to much better medicine (and public health initiatives, which the Evangelical Radical Right Wingnuts hate; it's Socialism and all that) are about done with. The easy 80% (or may be 99.9%) and all that. The improvement in overall survival from cancers and heart diseases is barely out of the noise. Get old enough, and one or the other will get you if dementia (there's no therapy known to work here) doesn't. And, by the bye, ignore 'cancer survival rates' or 'heart disease survival rates' numbers as the answer. What matters is the mean/median length of survival from disease. Just because the survival rate may rise, doesn't mean that the afflicted live longer, just that more of them live long enough to die after the same length of time they always have.

This is the crux of the matter for cancer (2022)

However, overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) were only prolonged by a median of 2.80 and 3.30 months

Yeah, that's going to keep lots and lots of geezers on SS so much longer.

Externalities - part the second

Near as I can find, the earliest example of Dr. McElhone's oft shared observation, "The world is not linear" was in 2015, in the context of resource depletion.

To no one's surprise, NYT, once again has a long piece on the water wars of the West; just have a gander at the graph of the pumping by the Barrick mine. The aspect of which that is so stupid is, in the states mentioned, the largest slurpers of that finite resource are the ones making the rules regarding how much and who can do the slurping.

And, while we're here, is a massive example of the effects of the Tyranny of Average Cost, to wit: we spent a lot of money on capital (which we intend to recoup with a healthy profit) in anticipation that the past would continue undiminished forever, so we have the right to slurp as is most profitable to us:

Ms. Erling testified at the committee meeting, expressing deep concern. She told lawmakers that "massive investments" had been made based on existing Nevada water law and that "massive pieces of our economy have grown up around those investments."

This is the exact same excuse for stopping alt-energy initiatives: if the Damn Gummint allows roof top solar, for example, only the rich will benefit and we'll have to increase prices to the poor because we have all that expensive plant and equipment to pay for, bought on the assumption that we'd be pushing so many more wee little electrons on those big fat wires.

What's so pathetic about rampant capitalism, unlike the variety sold by neo-con econ types, is that real capitalists slough off as many externality costs as they can buy off the Damn Gummint to permit. Now, one might ask, why are they so short-sighted? Do they not care about their kids and grandkids and further generations? Ah, no, they don't. So far as the water crises go, the rich (farmers, miners, industrialists) will simply abandon the burned out land, take their piles of cash, and move to some place that does have water; the real owners may well be living in the well watered Northeast, anyway. They and their spawn will have plenty to continue to waste.

The story in Montana is even more grotesque.

Good Omen? Bad Omen?

Well, it is announced that Milei is Dear Leader of Argentina. An acolyte of Bone Spur Samurai, who claimed that if he didn't win, it had to be because the election was rigged.

He had warned that if he lost on Sunday, it may have been because the vote was stolen. After signs emerged on Sunday that he would win, Mr. Milei's campaign told reporters that the election was clean.

Now, one need note that he was behind in polling before the run-off. May haps he used Chinese smart thermostats and Italian satellites to switch votes?

What's the omen, from the USofA point of view of course? Good: Milei has a year to show what a Trumpian can do to an economy and society; nothing good except for the moneyed elite. Bad: he doesn't get to do all the venal things he wants, and the result is ambiguous.

Chief among his promises is No New Taxes, just like Poppy Bush. Of course, as in the USofA, only the little people pay taxes, thus only the little people support governance. Remove what support there is for the underclass, and revolt is possible. We'll see.

I Told You So - 14 November 2023

Well, yet more data supporting the assertion that Demon Inflation isn't driven by dirty, greedy wage workers, but the burning off of all that Covid Cash:

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) showed prices were flat over last month and rose 3.2% over the prior year in October, a deceleration from September's 0.4% monthly increase and 3.7% annual gain in prices.

Too bad for the vermin hating MAGA Morons.

Roe, Roe, Roe Your Gat

Well, boy howdy!! Now that the Evangelical Radical Right Wingnuts have caught the anti-choice dump truck after all these decades, what's next?? Note that the latest Gallup numbers shows a mere 13% for some kind of absolute ban. Yet, the Evangelical Radical Right Wingnuts cling to the 'belief' that they're the only righteous folks. This from Ohio

While lawmakers cannot directly change the amendment through legislation, Speaker of the Ohio House Jason Stephens (R-Kitts Hill) said, "As a 100% pro-life conservative, I remain steadfastly committed to protecting life, and that commitment is unwavering. The legislature has multiple paths that we will explore to continue to protect innocent life. This is not the end of the conversation."

Of course, these self-same Evangelical Radical Right Wingnuts are against things like free school lunches; can't have poor folks feeding at the government trough.

So, what's the next? Gun laws, of course. Where do the American People stand? Well, about the same as Choice. Gallup, to no surprise, has numbers for that, too. A mere 10% want less strict gun control. How's that for a dump truck worth chasing? As one might expect, for such a triggering subject (sarcasm intended, of course), the pro-death squad hates the notion of widespread, accurate data on civilian defensive gun use (DGU), thus there are fighting numbers. Oh well. So, here's one effort.

According to the most recent firearms violence report, published in April, 2 percent of victims of nonfatal violent crime — that includes rape, sexual assault, robbery, and aggravated assault — and 1 percent of property crime victims use guns in self-defense.

Other numbers are even murkier: suicides, neighbor-on-neighbor disputes, spousal homicides, and so on.
suicide = 26,993
neighbors = no simple number to be found, but the report sheds a good deal of light

If you grew up in the coal mining region of eastern Pennsylvania your chance of dying of a gunshot is about half that if you grew up in the coalfields of West Virginia, three hundred miles to the southwest.

spousal homicides = 70/month (2019)

So, yeah... We need more pistol packing mamas.

Dumb Shit

So, there are just a few TeeVee shows that I'm drawn to: How the Universe Works and Nova among them. Mostly for the universe topics. Tonight's Nova wasn't about the universe, but the 'rise' of China's tech sector. The crux of the episode is Huawei, which means, mostly, cellphones. Turns out that the 'tech writer' responsible for the presentation (I didn't note whether he's among the show writers) sounds more like a China propagandist. The first third to half of the episode is about Huawei's 5G 'innovation' and, of course, the banning of the company.

So, here's the dumb shit part: the 'tech writer' narrator makes a big deal out of Huawei's dominance in 5G infrastructure, crowing about how their 5G gear makes 5G so much better than what comes before and that Huawei is so much ahead of the good ole USofA. We all know, don't we, that such is 4G/LTE, yes? Well, soto voce, the narrator tells us that Huawei's 700 Mhz gear is what makes 5G the high-button shoes of tomorrow. And we all know, don't we, that the key to such devices is the litho machines from ASML? (The narration finally does admit that much later. Key parts are made right here in The Land of Steady Habits.) Yikes!!!

It would be nice if such programs spent a few minutes deciphering for the viewer the difference among: low (700 Mhz), mid (C-band Ghz), and mmWave (high Ghz) 5G. 700 Mhz 5G is only distinguishable from LTE by instruments, not cellphone users. Gad. One might wonder how much Xi paid PBS for this dumb shit.

That Pesky Exponent - part the third

Once again, into the maths. Here's a new paper which contends that climate change, aka global warming, is proceeding faster than previously predicted. Why should anyone be surprised? As Dr. McElhone often opined, "the world is not linear." No, it isn't.

The planet is on track to heat up at a much faster rate than scientists have previously predicted, meaning a key global warming threshold could be breached this decade, according to a new study co-authored by James Hansen — the US scientist widely credited with being the first to publicly sound the alarm on the climate crisis in the 1980s.

If you read the whole enchilada, you'll find some who disagree, but assuming that natural processes are linear is almost always a mistake. Just look at the world population graph. Ain't no straight line to be seen. Well, at least when it matters. That's the cruelty on non-linear processes: they look straight-line early-on, but eventually drop their Romulan cloak long after you're convinced that life goes on ever so incrementally, and to quote Ralph Kramden, "To the Moon Alice, to the Moon!" .

The Evangelical Radical Right Wingnuts claim all this is woke nonsense and that Mother Earth is merely 6,000 years old and early man frolicked with Dino and cousins. And that God promised never to destroy mankind. Yeah, right.

Balancing Acts

There's been some uptick in reports about 'alternative' energy, mostly wind and solar. Sleepy Joe wants Bongo Bucks for upgraded transmission; places with nearly 100% wind and/or sunshine are places with few to no humans. We build petro pipelines without questioning said wisdom, but not for the other two.

A wind farm proposed for coastal Viginia is running into opposition. Boy Howdy!!

If you keep your ear to the ground, you'll find the opponents to any and all things wind/solar are those with some financial interest in fossil fuels. Who wooda thunk it? Not I said the cat.

Regular reader will note missives about both the tyranny of fixed cost and average cost (the titling changed along the way for reasons lost in the mysts of time). And this is all the reason fossil fuel adherents need. Energy production is very capital heavy, and thus has little margin against drop in demand. The CPAs figured out the spend on plant and equipment based on known and predicted demand for those wee little electrons and petro molecules. Remove even a wee bit of said demand, and the CxO class in fossil fuel energy companies start to feel their sphincters tightening. Never mind that fuel-less generation of those wee little electrons is really a win-win for the rest of us.

Without all that demand assumed from the past, profit drops. And so the salaries and bonuses for the CxO class. That they're managing to turn Mother Earth into a burnt out cinder by the time their grandkiddies reach adulthood (likely, sooner) makes not a whit of difference.

The 'alternative' I find most interesting, but barely a blip on the radar, is tidal generation. The tides move inexorably; well mostly so in human time scales. Turns out the moon has moved away over that billions of years of our twin existence, and as such the tidal force has diminished. The scientists figure the early tidal forces made Mother Earth not such a great place to live.

An Interesting Map

It's been quite a while since I've mentioned the NYT Covid page, but wander on over there anyway. The second section offers four maps; go to "Vaccinations". Somethings are odd about it.

First, as one might expect, Blue States have higher vaccination rates. Intelligent folks, them. Red States, are umm... Red. As you might expect.

Second, there are a couple of, perhaps, unexpected bluish places. Parts of Arizona and New Mexico are. Geezer havens, one might conclude; most imports from Blue States. Far North Minnesota is bluish, as well?

The glaring anomaly? Maverick Cty., TX, the only Blue spot in the state. One might wonder why. The wiki tells all:

In 1972, Maverick County was one of the only counties in Texas where George McGovern received a majority of the vote. The last Republican to carry the county was Herbert Hoover in 1928.

A lonely island of Blue in a sea of idiocy.