Globalization or Laziness and Stupidity? Maybe a little of both?

SEE HERE The data here is that the 20 somethings are earning less as a class that the Baby Boomers they are replacing. Two narratives are offered to explain the reasons and this seems to me to be one of those things called a false dichotomy. Our schools are certainly failing us to some degree as Greenspan points out, and the increased competition from cultures which are exploiting their populations is having some impact. There are also likely other factors. It's always dangerous to suggest one knows the causes of things, but it is far easier to say that one knows the result which is that America is no longer as productive as it once was. This is a bigger problem than people realize for if it continues we will decline to being second rate, and then perhaps third rate.

As a boy I remember when "Made In Japan" meant something was shoddy goods. Today we tend to think that about "Made In China" but with effort the Chinese are likely to reverse that. Increasingly "Made In USA" may come to mean shoddy goods and that would be tragic. We need to reverse this trend regardless of why it is arising.

I Knew Obama Was a Carter Clone

Laura Ingraham provides the Carter/Obama remix. This is fascinating. Do you suppose that politicians simply come out of some sort of stasis and you hit the replay button? This is so eery that I almost have to assume that Obama is recycling Carter's talking points. I knew he couldn't think for himself, but neither could Carter. If you're going to recycle pick someone good.

The Deathly Debt Ceiling of He Who Shall Not Be Named

Krauthammer On Obama's Posturing

SEE HERE It's all a big game of chicken with Obama thinking he can just have his way eventually without so much as giving a damn about the fact that he's driving the economy off the cliff. He's making out that it is the Republican's fault for just not letting him keep taxing and spending us into oblivion. Can people really be as stupid as this?

Razoring Through The World of Nut-Jobs

There are a wide range of ideas that people come up with and someone like me who hangs out a lot on the internet runs into them all the time. I'm actually rather fascinated by the folks that seem to leave proportional reason behind in a rush to affirm all kinds of "over the top" ideas. When they get into them far enough they start to sound reasonable, which is a little scary.

What I'm talking about is all the conspiracy theorists, doomsdayers, ufo-olgists, environmental wackos and the like. The ideas often have a certain plausibility but often simply segue into total lunacy, but the surface plausibility sucks you in. How do you respond to these things?

On the flip side is the folks who think nothing is ever really wrong, that everyone sounding an alarm is a wacko. That doesn't seem entirely reasonable either since bad things do happen and sometimes the most well-intended things turn out to have wildly unexpected and disastrous consequences.

My strategy is to try to understand the claims when I encounter them and then see if they make sense on the whole. It's often important to see what the reaction to the claims is. So many of these things are just totally crazy like the idea that the government was involved in dropping the Twin Towers as part of some conspiracy. I think you really have to be wearing a tin-foil hat to believe that. One of the most useful tools to at least prompt questioning of a wild idea is Occam's Razor, which simply stated says: "Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity." which might be further reduced to the idea that the best explanation for something is likely to be the simplest. So complex theories are less likely than simple ones.

Every now and then I'll trot this out to try to slice up a conspiracy theory or other off the wall idea. Another principle worth mentioning is Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." I particularly like the fact that one of my favorite science fiction writers, Robert Heinlein, used a version of this before Hanlon. Between Occam's Razor and Hanlon's Razor one can cut through a lot of the nonsense.

The Unknown Unknowns

SEE HERE The idea that the folks in Washington are really really smart people and that they will take care of us, is one of the single stupidest ideas in common vogue. The reality is that smart people are blind. Why is that? It's mostly because they think that because they know a lot that they know everything worth knowing and this leads them to make particularly stupid mistakes. Thomas Sowell talks about what amounts to intellectual humility and recognizing that there are a lot of "Unknown Unknowns" to use Donald Rumsfeld's phrase. Unintended consequences emerge form this ignorance and the current administration's blind policies are crushing the nation. We'd be better off with a lot of chimpanzees running the government than with all these "smart people."

It's Time For a Change While We Still Have Some Change

This evening I found a claim that Standard and Poors says there is a 50% change they will downgrade U.S. credit rating within three months. SEE HERE The problem is that the president just want to keep spending out of control and play the blame game with those who want to move us towards fiscal sanity. "The president has no plan to deal with an economy that is going bankrupt." — Yup Sarah, that about sums it up!