GOP Pledge to America

A plan to create jobs, end economic uncertainty, and make America more competitive must be the first and most urgent domestic priority of our government.

Does not everybody?

So first, we offer a plan to get people working again. We will end the attack on free enterprise by repealing job-killing policies and taking steps to assure current businesses and future entrepreneurs that the government will not stifle their ability to compete in the global marketplace.

It is not the government which you are a part of, is stifling your ability to compete in the global marketplace, you Morons; it is your businesses oursourcing on their free will to make tons of money. Are you going to repeal the job-killing free trade policies?

By permanently stopping job-killing tax hikes, families will be able to keep more of their hard-earned money and small businesses will have the stability they need to invest in our economy and help grow our workforce.

Good paying manufacturing jobs are all gone overseas. Cutting taxes will only remove the social safety net that you depend on. These GOP Morons have no clue about the state of our nation.

We will further encourage small businesses to create jobs by allowing them to take a tax deduction equal to 20 percent of their income.

That will not create jobs, that money goes to their savings, since the economy will not be any better under the GOP. Besides, it is cheaper to import the product than manufacture in this country, thanks to our trade policies that will not change under GOP.

We will rein in the red tape factory in Washington, DC by requiring congressional approval of any new federal regulation that may add to our deficit and make it harder to create jobs.

Good luck, since no party has been able to do that in the last 200 years.

Thoughts on Neuroeconomics

From http://neuroeconomics.typepad.com/

“Social psychologists have found that Westerners (North Americans and Europeans) tend to view the self as an autonomous entity separating from others and to behave according to their own internal attributes and thoughts (the independent self). In contrast, East Asians emphasize the interconnectedness of human beings along with contingencies between the individual’s behavior and the thoughts and actions of others in the relationship (the interdependent self)….

These fMRI results showed strong empirical evidence that MPFC mediates cultural influence on the neural substrates of representation of self and close others. While social psychological studies suggest that cultures create habitual ways of processing information related to the self and one’s important others, our fMRI results indicate that these habitual cognitive processes are accompanied by detectible parallel neural processes. The relatively heavy emphasis on interpersonal connectedness in Chinese culture has led to the development of neural unification of the self and intimate persons such as mother, whereas the relative dominance of an independent self in Western cultures results in neural separation between the self and others….

But when one takes a multidimensional view of culture, the results of this study open more doors than they close: the “something” that generates “relatively heavy emphasis on interpersonal connectedness in Chinese culture” and the “other thing” that generates a “dominance of an independent self in Western cultures” remain obscured whenever we let the assertion that “culture matters” end the debate. “

Well could it be, the western culture starts out with the first trauma like circumcision and ends in divorce has something to do with self vs. collective? Just a thought.

Why Economists can not solve Poverty

Here is one famous economists’ (Christopher B. Barrett)  poverty report with words like…

“Take, for example, the burgeoning literatures in each discipline on thresholds and multiple dynamic equilibria, often referred to as “stable states”. Systems characterized by multiple equilibria are locally stable (or “resilient”) in the neighborhood of attractors (or “stable equilibria”) but prone to sudden shifts in their dynamics at critical thresholds (or “tipping points” or “unstable equilibria”). Such systems pique the interest of scholars in both disciplines. At least since the seminal work of Holling (1973), May (1977) and Hanski et al. (1995),1 environmental scientists have worked tirelessly at identifying and understanding thresholds in ecological systems in order that they might help resource managers avoid catastrophic collapse of key ecosystems. Economists’ interest focuses more on the reverse process, on understanding why some people, communities and even entire nations remain mired in grinding poverty while others have enjoyed rapid improvements in standards of living, i.e., how to move social systems from low- to high level equilibria.”

The paper at: http://library.wur.nl/frontis/economics_of_poverty/02_barrett.pdf

The problem is, one can not understand what a stable or unstable equilibria is – unless one has taken electrical engineering and done Laboratory work to have a concept of such stability criteria’s. And if one really does not understand what that means, then everything one does in that name is garbage. Systems Engineering is taught in Electrical Engineering and not in Economics.

That is why most economists (except a few self taught ones)  can not understand what is what let alone fix anything…..

Offshoring America’s R&D

My comment is in response to

http://www.economyincrisis.org/content/why-rd-offshored-too

Former Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen predicted that passage of the Uruguay Round of GATT talks (creating the WTO) would result in an added $1700 income per family in the U.S.

How would a Lawyer know about manufacturing, production of hard goods and what its impact is on a country’s economy? By 1994, we were in a serious decline in trade deficit for hard goods at -$165 Billion dollars. One would think, as a treasury secretary he would have correlated a decline in hard goods production means loss of income for the family and not a gain of $1700 per family. How stupid is that?

Another prediction is that the so-called low-end manufacturing should be sent overseas so we could do high-end work here.

My suggestions to the Chinese were to start with low-end manufacturing to build up the technology base and the lower middle class as a strong foundation and then go for the high end manufacturing which requires massive investment. I did not expect at our end, we will get rid of the low-end manufacturing along with its base benefits of strong technical foundation, lower middle class, ancillary money circulation, lower crime, just to name a few. It is like cutting off the arms and legs of a smart person, because the appendages are of low value compared to the brain. Another stupid idea that we are full of.

Simply put: Low-end manufacturing begets high-end manufacturing begets serious R&D. We are rapidly losing in everything

Nassim Taleb and Nouriel Roubini

I have been following Nassim Taleb and Nouriel Roubini’s work for the last two years. They discuss mostly the factors that contributed to our economic demise, but not the key solutions. That is because, they are superb at analysis and find mathematical co-relations and causes. It is like when you slide on a ice road while driving, a scientist can tell you why in every detail and may even give you advice how to control the car – but never tell you, you should not be driving on ice road in the first place or that use deicing agents to change the environment. It is our job to solve the possible outcome.

See: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/jan-june10/makingsense_06-15.html

Until we fundamentally change our processes and reconfigure our activities – there is no real solution. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. (Einstein)

For example, on Gulf Disaster, the Government decided to own the problem and trying to solve it. Well, the Government rarely hires top engineers who work in private industries. There is no mechanism to do that. In the last 40 years, I have worked in the safety system designs for Oil and Gas companies, never a call from a head hunter to join the Government team. So, how are they supposed to know which end is up? It is like a bunch of Lawyers get together and hire Dentists to do the brain surgery.

Gulf Disaster

My comment at: http://www.economyincrisis.org/content/disaster-gulf#comment-2450

We could have collapsed the well very easily using explosives, and later drilled it nearby – but we got too greedy, so we will be paying for the fiasco.

It is a blessing in disguise. We need to focus on Natural gas, wind power, roof top personal wind power and solar power, bio-renewables etc. right now. While this will not support our energy needs of the future, we need to put serious money and talent in nuclear fusion research in the next 30 years starting now.

One would think that if Obama wants to be the next JFK, he would challenge us with a 10 year prototype fusion rector like our man on the moon program.

Fusion energy is not like Anti-gravity, we know the theory, it is a matter of engineering. But as more students go to become lawyers, it is difficult to create engineering talent out of thin air (like money!)

Never let a Lawyer do brain surgery

Rant # 101

American government is composed of three parts. Judicial Branch, Legislative Branch, and Executive Branch. It so happens that Judicial Branch is perhaps 99.5%  Lawyers, Legislative Branch could be 96% Lawyers and the Executive Branch could be 94% Lawyers.

Now these Lawyers together are trying to solve the most complex issues of our time – from economy to organizational conflict to Gulf Coast Oil Spill. Guess how all these things are going in the most technological society. Also guess their mental model vs. the Real World.

It is no different in certain part of Europe namely Greece where it is a pride that only non-technocrats run the country since the days of Alexander the Great (Μέγας Ἀλέξανδρος). The results are self evident.