Michael Foody

The title of this post is really hifalutin, that’s just for fun. OK. Older people are more conservative than younger people. Partially this phenomenon is due to individuals maintaining their outlook overtime as new people are born and the average outlook changes. In this sense people aren’t becoming more conservative so much as the world around them is becoming less conservative. This doesn’t seem to be the whole story however. Particularly in the case of taxation it seems the same people at different times in their life have very different preferences. There are going to be a couple explanations for this.

Talk and Action

Generally speaking the conservative ideology is for lower taxes and fewer services while the liberal ideology is for higher taxes and more services. The reality is a different story with conservatives pursuing low tax rates at the expense of both social services and future tax rates via increased national debt. Since both the reality and the ‘lip service” influence peoples’ preferences they both need to be examined. A possible explanation for the pro conservative bias of the old is naked self interest. Older people are wealthier than younger people, they as a cohort have the most to gain from a less progressive taxation system. More damnably in the case of deficit spending, they as a cohort will not incur the costs of having to pay off the debt accrued in pursuit of lower marginal tax rates now.

Rawlsian Wisdom

If you’re not liberal when you’re young, you have no heart. If you’re not conservative when you’re older, you have no brain. Churchill

In many cases people who have grown economically conservative with age like to cast their transformation as a result of their now superior understanding of the world. Realistically I’m too young to test that theory myself but I’d like to propose an alternative theory that, to me, seems more compelling. As an individual grows older they gather not just information about the world but also information about their place in that world. As a person ages the amount of potential futures available to them declines to zero. The amount of certainty about their futures approaches the infinite.

Risk and Reward

When selecting investments people seek to balance the risks against the rewards. Thus an investment which half the time triple your money and half the time make you lose all your money is less attractive than an investment that would be guaranteed to increase your money by 50%. Both investments in this example have the same expected value but the volatility of the first makes it less desirable than the second. Stability, security ,is in and of itself valuable. People are willing on the personal level to forgoe some gains in the interests of increased stability. 

An Intertemporal Wager

A young person has a higher chance than an older person of having both unforeseen positive and negative outcomes, because human nature values security the young person has an incentive to “dampen outcomes” entering a deal where some of the very best options are reduced in exchange for some of the very worst outcomes being eliminated (progressive taxation and a social safety net represent this desire). They like any other investor are even willing to sacrifice efficiency to achieve this security. The distortionary effects of progressive taxation and a strong social safety net do lead to losses in expected value in exchange for this increased economic security but young people seem to find value in mitigating the chance of a very bad out outcome. With age the chance of a very bad outcome will either approach zero or one hundred percent as the probability space contracts, the majority of people will not have to face that very bad outcome. So it is that the voting behavior of the young (even the fairly affluent young) and the poor old seems to converge when you control for other factors.

All Wisdom is Not Wisdom

People can, do, and (to a certain degree) should vote to advance their own interests. There does, however, seem to be a problem when the interests of a person changes over time. Rawls’ idea of the veil of ignorance was an abstraction, an impossible thought experiment meant to drive people towards an objectivity absent in typical decision making. But in a free society where a life’s outcome is determined not simply by station but by a variety of indiscernible criteria the ignorance of youth, in very specific sense, approximates the abstract ideal of Rawls’ veil of ignorance, and it would seem that separate from any Utopian ideal of equality there exists a practical, utilitarian desire for security. This desire once sated is sublimated by a desire for absolutely superior outcomes. But this desire while the result of more information is also a result of the worst sort of wisdom; wisdom of one’s specific experience which cannot, should not be generalized. For policy decision making there are millions of people who may have been right the first time, when they said, with their votes, I would rather risk less for the smaller pot.

I want a new drug
One that wont make me sick
One that wont make me crash my car
Or make me feel three feet thick

Not being sick or crashing a car are good qualities for the perfect drug to have. A number of drugs can make one sick either through intoxication or withdrawal. Also I could see how a wide variety of drugs could make driving a more dangerous endeavor. But make Huey feel three feet thick? That’s an odd thing to for a drug to do. I think there are no drugs that literally make you thick (I mean steroids sort of can). Maybe he means thick like slow witted. You know like Mike’s friend Boner was on Growing Pains.  Did you know that Mike Seaver wanted to change Boner’s name after he found Jesus. He wanted to call him Erection. Because that isn’t slang. But some drugs could make you have more in common with Boner from Growing Pains. So there’s that.

I want a new drug
One that wont hurt my head
One that wont make my mouth too dry
Or make my eyes too red

All good qualities of a drug to have.

One that wont make me nervous
Wondering what to do
One that makes me feel like I feel when Im with you
When Im alone with you

Remember ‘Minority Report’ where Tom Cruise was doing drugs and watching future movies of his dead family? I wonder if this is the sort of drug that Huey Lewis is taking about? That would be pretty cool. Like Huey Lewis’ ideal drug can fool you into thinking that your lost loved ones are around again. That could be nice if you are really grief stricken you could just take Huey Lewis’ New Drug and feel like the person is alive again.

I want a new drug
One that wont spill
One that dont cost too much
Or come in a pill

Not spilling seems like a pretty neutral thing for a drug to have.  At first I thought all liquids are out but then I thought no wait a minute all powders are out too. You could spill a bottle of pills but you couldn’t spill a single pill or a pills in a blister pack. But wait, pills are specifically out. Why not a pill? What is more convienent than a pill. Everything is less convienent. I guess cigarrettes don’t spill (a pipe could spill) or like inhalents I guess they don’t spill. Huey Lewis’ new drug is almost certainly an inhaler of some kind. I think if he rejects the inconvience of an occasional spill he would similarly have to reject the inconvienence of his drug having to be on fire. 

I want a new drug
One that wont go away
One that wont keep me up all night
One that wont make me sleep all day

Huey Lewis wants to remain diurnal.. that’s a lifestyle choice I can get behind. Maybe Huey Lewis just wants us all to believe he isn’t a vampire. Overcompensating much?

One that wont make me nervous
Wondering what to do
One that makes me feel like I feel when Im with you
When Im alone with you
Im alone with you baby

I want a new drug
One that does what it should
One that wont make me feel too bad
One that wont make me feel too good

The too bad thing is obvious, the too good on the other hand is an odd thing to ask for. How can one feel too good? Maybe he’s worried about developing a dependence. Why then wish for a drug that won’t go away? I think at this point in the song Huey under argues exactly what he wants from a drug. 

I want a new drug
One with no doubt
One that wont make me talk too much
Or make my face break out

Lots of drugs are social lubricants. They lower inhibitions and can help one loosen up. These can have the side effect of making one suffer from mild logorrhea and I can see how that might be an undesirable outcome. Talking too much can be out. Having his face break out isn’t much of a worry is it? Only steroids really cause that as far as I know. Steroids really don’t seem to fit in with the kind of drug Huey Lewis is describing. Steroids aren’t like a fun drug to do or anything. They make you better at stuff. Maybe Huey Lewis means that his drug should not be face paint. Or smeared on the face in a pore clogging slathering. I hope he knows that these forms of drugs don’t exist.

One that wont make me nervous
Wondering what to do
One that makes me feel like I feel when Im with you
When Im alone with you

Wasn’t the drug from ‘Minority Report’ an inhalent? Like an inhaler or something. I think so right. If the future is anything like the fancifal vision of ‘Minority Report’ Huey Lewis will be a hapy man! 

There’s a big move to replace incandescent bulbs with compact florescent bulbs. Compact fluorescents require much less energy than traditional incandescents. Which means that they’re much more efficient. Yes, they’re much more efficient at converting electricity to light. Compact florescent bulbs are probably going to be more efficient as a rule, but the truth isn’t that simple. For another example take modern video game consoles, powerful processors like those found in the xbox 360 and playstation 3 use a serious amount of electricity, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they waste a lot of electricity.

Waste isn’t waste. Waste is heat. So depending on a consumer’s particular circumstances the drawing of electricity by lights, appliances, and electronics might not be wasteful at all.

• Are you heating your home? Simple question. You probably don’t heat your home all year round. If your thermostat is set to a setting above the outside temperature you’re going to be heating your home at some point.
• How do you heat your home? If you heat your home with natural gas, you probably pay significantly less for heat than you do for the same amount of electricity. On the other hand heating oil, propane, and electricity have similar costs.

Anything that uses electricity is a space heater. The more electricity it uses the more heat it puts out. A playstation 3 running Folding@home uses 200 watts of power. It produces for all real purposes exactly as much heat as a space heater that uses 200 watts of power. Electric heaters are no more efficient at producing heat than anything else that uses the same amount of electricity (this is not technically true, but it is so close to true as to make the distinction unimportant.) In a real sense it’s much more efficient than direct electric heat because in addition to heating it lets you play video games. Or have a more pleasing quality of light. Or better understand side-chain recognition and gating in the ribosome exit tunnel.

Most economists agree that a seriously big stimulus plan is needed for the economy. The question then becomes how can you spend money quickly enough to help without spending it on things that aren’t completely useless.

Infrastructure takes time: High speed rail, high speed broadband, a modern energy grid, alternative energy sources, these things are worth doing but they’ll take a long time to even get started. By all means get people together to plan these big projects, but remember these projects will take a long time to get started and there is a big price to pay in rushing them.

Labor isn’t (entirely) fungible: People are going to be out of work, but the people who are getting laid off aren’t going to be able or willing to do any old job. Ideally the stimulus jobs should require a generalized skill set. Services that provide social benefits like vaccinations, testing for contagious disease could be made cheaper than free (by actually combing the records to find individuals with vaccinations or seeking out high risk individuals). Money could be given to local governments for prekindergarten programs or for increasing the number of police officers. The 2008-2009 school year could be made year round. Public buildings could be audited and repaired.

Think Small: Big things take a long time to even get started, and in crafting a stimulus package time is of the essence. Think small. Instead of making starting work on a new nuclear power plant which will take a decade to even make it through court you could subsidize decentralized wind power in rural areas. Initially these sorts of projects would probably provide power where it is needed least, but wind power has low upkeep so that when the energy infrastructure was updated it could provide clean energy to more densely populated areas.

But Lots of Small: 20 billion dollars could build and install 1 million windmills at $20,000 a pop. Placed appropriately your looking at 2 kW average. Taken as a whole or that’s 2 gigawatts. Or about what the Hoover Dam puts out. Only the Hoover Dam took a long time to build, a million windmills would take a long time to build and install too, but 1 millionth of a Hoover Dam doesn’t do anyone any good, but 1 millionth of 1 million windmills puts out 1 millionth of the power of a million windmills. I’m not characterizing windpower as a panacea but rather using this as an example of a smaller scale public works project that can be repeatedly iterated to have a significant effect when aggregated.

Keep things humming: Many would be college students aren’t going to be able to get loans to go to school. If they can’t go to school not only will the enter the job market with significantly less human capital than they would if they went to school, but they would be entering an already overcrowded job market at the worst possible time. Not to mention that our higher education system already has the resources to maintain or even expand how many students we teach. Letting that infrastructure and personal sit idle or contract is a misuse of our resources. The government would be well served offering subsidized student loans to at the very least maintain the amount of students entering college, professional, vocational, and graduate programs.

Cut taxes: There are problems with a  temporary tax cut, and generally the tax rate is probably too low given our public expenditures. That said cutting taxes even temporarily will help.

Raise retirement benefits: Many people depend on fixed incomes, they’re going to be hurting if their incomes remain fixed because the government ought to…

Cause inflation: That’s right just print more money, the dollar has grown in strength rather suddenly, unemployment is on the rise. Employers are laying people off because they can’t afford to pay them their salaries. Ideally they would probably rather give workers a pay cut than lay them off, but historically that’s proven difficult to do. Inflation would effectively give everyone a pay cut. This sounds bad (and who am I kidding it sort of is) but you could think of a worker trading a 10% chance of getting laid off for a 10% reduction in salary. Additionally planned inflation would have the usual stimulus effect of lubricating the credit markets and helping people who burdened by debt.

Let Detroit Fail… later: The big 3 have a flawed business model, the unions get an unsustainable compensation. They companies have been mismanaged, have lobbied against fuel standards and environmental regulations that in the end have been actually counterproductive. Much of Michigan’s auto industry is, it would seem doomed, but really now isn’t a good time. Negotiate with the unions and get their compensation down to levels comparable to the American autoworkers working for foreign automakers in other states. Mandate higher fuel standards. Order some mas transit vehicles, update some aging public vehicles with newer models more efficient models. The money spent on maybe just buying the auto business some time won’t be flushed down the toilet, it will pay people who know how to make cars to make cars. So we’ll have more cars, yeah they’ll be made at a loss, but are you driving an old car? Maybe you’d like to get a new car. The cars will be cheaper because there are more of them. And really it’s not a choice between paying autoworkers to make cars and not, the choice is between paying automakers to make cars, or paying them (less) to make nothing.

Not even close to comprehensive, but I think the general principles of pursuing less glamorous projects and seeking to maintain the status quo where we can, and preserving market incentives whenever possible, are sound.

If I lost my sense of smell I would be bummed out at first. I would feel pretty down in the the dumps. I would try and remember smells in my mind. My grandfather’s pipe smoke. A new born baby. The smell of money and this girl from highschool’s shampoo. My mom’s cookies baking and whisky/a lovers mouth. I would try and remember these and keep them alive in my mind. I’d try as hard as I could and I wouldn’t be able to remember the smell of a newborn baby. That’s sort of a bummer. People treat it like it is a big deal. I just figured that new born babies smell like baby powder and human. Sometimes their baby droppings.

Food would be a let down. I would find that food tastes dull and boring. I could still tell sweet from sour or bitter from salty. Temperature and texture would become more important than they currently are. I could lose my spice rack and replace it with lemon juice, hot sauce, salt, sugar, and something bitter (divorce lol). I wouldn’t be able to tell whether food was spoiled so would probably just give up fresh meats, fruits, and vegetables entirely; cheese and bread too. I would probably spend less money on food over time. After all, what’s the point? For me food would be something that I need to injest to keep from dying and nothing more like breathing. I would eventually settle on an energy, vitamin, and protein rich gruel designed for affordability and promoting health. Only my gruel for norishment. Once in a while I would add hot sauce to the gruel for a special treat.

I wouldn’t know I how smell so whenever I sweat I would worry about whether my deodarent was holding up. I wouldn’t ever use cologne for fear on erring in applying too much. I would have to get more responsible about clearly delineating my clean laundry from my dirty laundry. The inexact “piles system” would have to be left behind since it is useless without a sniff test. I would probably make friends with smelly people. Those otherwise good people that others shun because of their horrible odor, I might even unwittingly join their ranks.

I would try to take advantage of my lack of ability to smell. I would do the dirty jobs that no one wants to do but need to get done. I would clean an elephant’s cage or do homeless people’s laundry. Stuff like that. I would get skunks out of our suburban neighborhoods, by force if need be.

My other senses would probably be heightened. Much like blind people have other DareDevil level senses to compensate for their missing sense (nonsense lol) of sight I would have my other senses improved by some compensating amount. I would be more likely to die in a fire. If there was a really smelly woman who was also a good person and very foxy woman I would ask her to marry me. She might say no. She might say she doesn’t want to marry a man who only loves her for her terrible odor. I would tell her that she’s wrong about me. I don’t love her because of her odor rather I am uniquely able to love her inspite of it. She may be unconinced. Still even without scent life would march on, a little bit grimmer, a little less worth living.