The Election of a Speaker of the House

 

Burning Down the House

Ah, watch out
You might get what you're after
Cool babies
Strange but not a stranger
I'm an ordinary guy
Burning down the house

Watching the Republicans in the speakership disaster is watching them “Burning Down the House”!

Mike Emmer has joined Steve Scalise in withdrawing his name from the Speaker’s race after winning the support of a majority of the Republican Conference.  The problem is that while there are  two parties in the House, the Republican Conference is in fact a coalition of the “Freedom” Caucus and moderate Republicans versus a coalition of Democrats of all persuasions.  While the coalition of Democrats has remained firm, the coalition of Republicans has been anything but firm.  Since the job of the Speaker is to govern a coalition of the entire House of both parties, a Speaker who can not even win the support of a coalition of Republicans can probably not do the People’s business. 

Because the Speaker of the House is the third in line to the President after the Vice President, maybe the People are better served by no Speaker until a new House takes office in January of 2025 than having a Speaker who has the support of those who want to burn down the House.  Matt Gaetz is like the dog who chased after trucks only to catch a truck. That dog did not know what to do after he caught that truck. Matt Gaetz did not know what to do after he removed Speaker McCarthy.  The People should watch out because Matt Gaetz got what he was after!

Perfection is the Enemy of the Good

 

If I Can’t Have You

If I can't have you
I don't want nobody, baby
If I can't have you, uh-ho-oh-oh-oh

Love the One You’re With

And there's a rose in a fisted glove
And the eagle flies with the dove
And if you can't be with the one you love, honey
Love the one you're with

Dueling lyrics to show that "Perfection is the Enemy of the Good.”

Stating an absolute position sounds admirable, but it is limiting. “All, or nothing at all” means you will accept the absolute, perfection, or will accept nothing. Like teaching sex education to teenagers.

Should unmarried teenagers be having sex?  Probably not. 

Will teaching sex education make unmarried teenagers have sex? Probably not. 

If unmarried teenagers are not having sex, then do they need sex education?  Probably not.  But if they do have sex, then at least they will know what then are doing.

Humans are not absolutes. We can approach an absolute but can not attain that absolute. IOW, we exhibit exponential behavior. Saying that you will only settle for an absolute, IOW perfection, guarantees that you will attain nothing.  On the other hand, if you accept less than perfection, then you will attain something.

When disaggregating an Origin-Destination table, such as USDOT’s Freight Analysis Framework, or any matrix which is itself an aggregation, or expansion of a survey,  then there is one unique outcome that is related to that aggregation or survey, IOW is accurate. However, there are many possible outcomes, e.g. disaggregations, many of which are virtually identical and some of those are also the most numerous, probable.  That most probable outcome may not be ACCURATE, but it is available and can be solvable.   Or as statistician George Box famously put it, “All models are wrong, but some are useful”  A most probable solution may be wrong, but it may be useful.  Use the solution you can solve, e.g. love the one you’re with.

Dr. Suess vs Mother Goose

 

Teach Your Children

Teach your children well
Their father's hell did slowly go by
Feed them on your dreams
The one they pick's the one you'll know by

All you really need to know you learned in Kindergarten.

As children we learned from Doctor Suess, not Mother Goose and maybe that is the issue.  To be fair the Little Red Hen was written by Mary Mapes Dodge, not Mother Goose.  But the lesson of the Little Red Hen, like much of Mother Goose, is that if you don’t work you will get no benefit.  However the Little Red Hen did not ask why no one else in her group would help her.  She ignored that her growing of the wheat depended on the weather being good, there being enough rain, there being no pests, etc. IOW, luck.  And when she ate the bread, it was not clear than she could actually eat all of the Bread instead of sharing it.

Doctor Suess instead taught us that 

“A person’s a person no matter how small."

“Maybe Christmas, the Grinch thought, doesn’t come from a store.” 

“Why fit in when you are born to stand out”. 

“Unless some like you cares a whole awful lot.  Nothing is going to get better. It’s not”.  

Thank you, children, for listening, and not giving up on the dream.

Business

 

Taking Care of Business

And I'll be taking care of business (every day)
Taking care of business (every way)
I've been taking care of business (it's all mine)
Taking care of business and working overtime, work out

Is the Business of America, Business?

The business of a business is to make money, to seek the user equilibrium of their business. The business of America is America, not business, to ensure that a system equilibrium is reached and to ensure that each individual, including businesses, have the resources available to be able to do business. This may mean spending money on the group rather than making money on every transaction.

In order to do business, those businesses have to access to goods. Goods are classified in two dimensions by economists: rival (priced) and exclusive (only one person can use that good), not just one dimension as private and public property. There are private goods, and those are priced and exclusive, using a good prevents another from simultaneously using that good. Government, the group, has a role in ensuring that private priced and exclusive goods are not taken without compensation. That is why there are crimes against stealing and a police force to deter that theft. There are Public Goods and those are unpriced and nonexclusive. Government has a role in ensuring that everyone has access to those goods. Individuals can not demand access fees from others to public goods.

It gets more complicated for Common Resources, which are unpriced but exclusive. These are not necessarily free or unlimited. Businesses may not be able to function unless these resources continue to exist. An educated workforce is one example. Each business may depend on, take advantage of, but not pay for, the education of the workers that it employs. But that education has a cost which is covered by the government with no expectation that it will make a profit, or even cover those expenses.

It also gets more complicated for Club Goods, also called Public Monopolies, which are priced but nonexclusive. While they are priced, using that good does not prevent others from also using that good.  Unless they are protected in some fashion, those goods may not be produced. Government may license those goods, for example a cable TV system, or may issue copyright or patent protections to ensure that these goods are not copied without compensation. The government may not receive a profit or even cover the expenses for the license, copyrights, or patents.

Why is this an issue? The Constitution says that a Postal Service will be provided to ensure the free exchange of ideas among all of its citizens. It may not be profitable to make this service available to citizens living in rural areas. But we currently have a businessman in charge of the United States Postal SERVICE (emphasis puposefully added), who is discounting or curtailing rural service that does not make a profit. Duh,…. it is called service because it is NOT always expected to make a profit or even cover its costs. But that does not mean that it is not essential. No one is saying that a service should be provided at any cost, but a small loss does not mean that the service ( there is that work again) is not essential. And that is the difference between America and a business, America seeks a system equilibrium, an a buisness seeks an individual user equilibrium. Taking care of business means respecting and cherishing that difference.  In other words, viva la difference.

Packing SCOTUS?

 

Midnight Rider

And I've gone by the point of caring,
Some old bed I'll soon be sharing,
And I've got one more silver dollar,
But I'm not gonna let 'me catch me, no
Not gonna let 'me catch the Midnight Rider.

Should the Supreme Court ride again?

The United States currently has 12 Circuit Courts of Appeal.  So why are they called Circuits?  At the time of the country’s founding, travelling was difficult, and it made more sense for judges to travel to the trial, rather than having the trial come to the judge.  The judges instead would thus "ride" a circuit from trial to trial.

As travel became easier, the practice of riding a circuit was discontinued, but the word remained.  Why does this matter for the Supreme Court?  At the time of the Supreme Court’s founding, each Supreme Court Justice was responsible for a circuit.  There are 12 Circuits of Appeals Courts in the United States, so there must be 12 Justices on the Supreme Court?  Oh, there are currently only 9 Justices?  Then adding three Justices would be returning to normal, not court packing.  The idea that there should be Circuits, is because while there could be an opinion within a Circuit, which is typically several states, it is the opinion of the entire United States that should be the opinion of the Supreme Court.

The Justices of the Supreme Court are individuals, not an absolute.  So how can we ensure that they have the certainty of an absolute?  The answer is in the very jury system overseen by the judiciary.  There are twelve members of a jury in a criminal case.  Those cases are decided by unanimous decisions, i.e. 12-0 of the jury, not by dominate decisions, i.e. 7-5. 

There is a reason for that.  There are 4,096 possible votes of a jury, only two of which are unanimous decisions: Unanimously Guilty; or Unanimously Not Guilty. The certainty of a Unanimous Guilty decision by a jury is thus not 100% but it is 99.98%.  But as could be imagined a lone hold-out juror might extract concessions from the rest of the jury and the decision could then be biased, not certain.  That is why a unanimous decision is not required in a civil case.  The decision is less certain, but also with less of a possibility of a hung jury, or a decision which reflects the lowest common denominator of the entire jury.

A twelve-member court has a mean of 6.5 and a variance of all of their votes of 4.  A 6-6 decision reflects no more than chance, 0% dominance but 77% certainty.  A 7-5 decision  reflects 100% dominance but only a certainty of 80.6%.  A decision that is 9-3, still reflects 100% dominance but its certainty has increased to 94.6%.

For reasons cited in a previous blog post,  https://dbeagan.blogspot.com/2023/05/judicicary.html, which discussed only increasing the size of the Supreme Court’s bench to 10 members, a sixteen-year term, staggered among the Justices, is recommended, but the first terms of the three new Justices could be adjusted such that they have terms that expire, assuming their appointment in 2025, respectively, in 2045, 2047, and 2049.  The sitting Justices’ terms would then begin to expire in 2027 with one term expiring in that year and every subsequent 2 years based on the seniority of the sitting Justices. Thus the last sitting Justice’s term would expire in 2043, assuming that the terms of the three new Justices begin in 2025. Upon the death, or resignation, before the end of that term the President would be expected to nominate and the Senate to confirm the nomination of a Justice to complete the unexpired term.  A president, serving one four-year term could thus nominate only 2 Justices  serving full terms. A president serving two one-year terms, could thus only nominate 4 Justices serving full terms.  Even in the event of a vice president being promted into more than 3 years of the term of his President, and then subsequently beginning elected to two of his own four-year terms would only get to nominate 6 of the 12 Justices serving full terms. That nomination could be of the Justice whose term is expiring.  Yes, that would mean that individual could conceivably  serve 32 years, but life expectancy and interest is expected to cut that short, such that a two term limit for justices seems superfulous.

The number of Supreme Court Justices would then be consistent with the number of Circuit Courts of the United States, even if those Justices would not be required to "ride" those Circuits.  The decisions of the Supreme Court would be required to be 9-3 which represents both the certainty of one standard deviation, the square root of variance, from the mean, AND dominance.

Distribution of Income II

 

It’s A Wonderful World

I hear babies cry
I watch them grow
They'll learn much more
Than I'll ever know
And I think to myself
What a wonderful world
Yes, I think to myself
What a wonderful world

If we knew how to treat growth, it could be a Wonderful World

In the movie It’s a Wonderful Life, George Bailey, played by Jimmy Stewart, gets to see the nightmare of Pottersville which replaces his beloved Bedford Falls.  Pottersville is a horrible place where people only look out for themselves, instead of looking out for each other.  The world seems to be living that movie, but I am afraid that we are living in Pottersville.

When dealing with growth you can either increase the variance within, or increase the median of, the group.  In today’s United States, we seem to have chosen the path of living in Pottersville by only increasing the variance, not increasing the median.  The relationship to an absolute is defined by an exponential distribution.  The relationship to others in a group is NOT defined by an exponential distribution.  It is defined by a normal logistics distribution, whose cumulative distribution function is a form of a hyperbolic tangent.  The mistake is by treating each other like absolutes, instead of like individuals, it squanders that growth, which effects even those who seem to have benefited from that growth.

The United States economy, stated in 2021 inflation adjusted dollars, has grown from an annual income of $3.5 trillion in 1968 to $15 trillion in 2021.  However by insisting that the median of the group (which again should considered to be individuals, not an absolute) be zero, ( $0 at 0%, which is in fact 50% of the group) the distribution of total income, and the amount of total income that could spur future growth, is concentrated in only a few.  However if just a fraction of that growth had been used to increase the median of the group, which amounts to a median public expenditure of $142,000 per household, which is called Universal Basic Income, UBI, in the figure below, the distribution of income to the top 5% would be the same, but the distribution of income to the group would increase dramatically.  If ALL of the growth in taxes had been used to increase the median of the group, which would be the ideal, then every income group would benefit.  This would amount to a public expenditure of $367,000 per household, but that is only 2.15% of the total growth in taxes, if taxes were at a median of 20% of the total growth.

Growth of the group should be used to benefit the group, not just a few in the group.  If the response is only to increase the variance of the group, then the group suffers, which means that even upper income households of the group suffer.  Let’s instead live in a Wonderful World.

Income

 

Happiness Is

Happiness is having a sister.
Sharing a sandwich.
Getting along.
Happiness is singing together when day is through,
And happiness is those who sing with you.
Happiness is morning and evening,
Daytime and nighttime too.
For happiness is anyone and anything at all
That’s loved by you.

According to Mr. Micawber, happiness is income greater than expenditures.

Is income an absolute? If income can be negative then income is relative, NOT an absolute. 

Can there be negative income?  If you ask an accountant, then everything is either a credit or a debit.  The sum of credits over a period of time is your income.  The sum of debits over a period of time are your expenses.  The sum of your credits at any point in time are your assets.  The sum of your debits at any point in time are your liabilities.  The difference between your assets and your liabilities is your net worth.  If your net worth is positive, then you are said to be wealthy. If your net worth is negative then you are said to be in debt and possibly bankrupt.

On these definitions alone, because credits and debits are aways positive, it would seem reasonable that income should always be positive.  However there are loans which are treated like income but are actually debits.  And you can pay for debits with previous assets, such that your change in net worth in a period is negative.  So while income may always be positive, mathematically it is convenient to treat it as if it can also be negative.

So why does this matter?  If you act like income must always be positive you might treat it as an absolute.  In this case, the distribution of income should follow an exponential distribution which has an absolute value at zero.  If instead, income can be negative, then the distribution of income should follow a hyperbolic tangent.  The Cumulative Distribution Function for an exponential distribution is 1-e^-λ*x, but this should really be 1 - e^-λ*(x-µ), where µ is equal to zero.  By contrast the formula for a hyperbolic tangent is tanh((x-µ)*b), where in this case b is a function of the variance, σ².   The value µ is not only the translation along the income axis, but also a parameter defining a random distribution of an individual in a group. 

The US Census reports on the distribution of incomes.  Using the distribution of incomes, adjusted for inflation, the limit of the decile percentage, and the top 5% are shown as reported in the figure below. Both an exponential distribution and a hyperbolic tangent fit the distribution of income very well.  However if you treat the amount of public investment at 0% as not confined to zero, but you keep the same variance from 1968, then you end up with a completely different distribution of income.  I am calling this amount Universal Basic Income, UBI, but this income does not have to be in cash.  It can also be in the form of public education, public healthcare, public childcare, public housing, etc. that are available to any one with little or no income. 

Fitting an exponential distribution in 1968 implies a basic public expenditure of $12,327 dollar per household, while fitting to a hyperbolic tangent implies a basic public expenditure of $6,480 per household.  However in 2021, the exponential distribution implies a basic public expenditure of $14,770, while the hyperbolic tangent implies a basic public expenditure of minus $1,298 per household.  The fit to the exponential distribution was achieved by allowing the value of µ to be as close to zero as possible but allowing the variance to more than double.  ( Ironically, mathematically the square root of the variance is called the standard deviation.  Those in favor of the 2021 existing distribution of income, which requires an INCREASE in variance, also want a DECREASE in deviation). If there is no change in the variance from 1968, then the basic public expenditures, Universal Basic Income, µ, might be $58,937.  At this amount, the distribution of income is almost equal for those in the top 80% . The mean income increases for those households under 80% and the mean income decreases for those over 80%. This UBI sounds like a lot, but the economy and the number of households have both increased from 1968.  If the tax revenues average 20% of household income (the median, NOT the mean) then that amount is only 0.345% of the increase in tax revenues. 

That the distribution of incomes does not follow an exponential distribution is apparent from the difference between the mean and median incomes.  Under a true exponential distribution, the mean would be equal to the median.  That it is not, and in fact the gap between the mean and the median is growing, shows that income is not an absolute and should NOT be distributed according to an exponential distribution.  

The slope of a hyperbolic tangent is the hyperbolic secant squared. In 1968 and 2021, the slope of a hyperbolic tangent looked very much like an exponential distribution, but that does not mean that income is an absolute.  As a group it should follow a random distribution. A way to increase the distribution of the group is to maintain the variance while increasing the “income” at zero percent.