Friday Meme Fest

The smoke is Canadian

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The Nation's Cartoonists on the Week in Politics.

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Cartoons of the Week.

Mourning Lost Social Capital

The American Mind, a publication of The Claremont Institute, publishes a very interesting essay by Colin Redemer concerning the declining value of higher education, and more importantly, the mechanism by which that decline is caused.

The argument focuses on a decline in free social capital available, and the consequent need to purchase replacements at inflated prices.

Young people only appear to be doing fine in official statistics because those measures fail to capture the collapse of “social capital”—the free inheritance of trusted neighbors, functional public schools, safe streets, and marriageable norms that previous generations received at no cost. 

Because that commons has been liquidated and privatized, young people must now repurchase its components individually at market prices. Expensive homes in good districts, private schooling, daycare, credentials, and more—all of it requires substantial financial resources, even as incomes have risen only modestly. Meanwhile, the cost of these essentials has increased many times over.

Higher education is much more expensive today than it was when I was a 20 year old. Meanwhile, the BA/BS is worth less in terms of career access and graduate degrees have also been devalued. Reason: supply exceeds demand.

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If I have any criticism of the Redemer treatment, it would be ignoring the impact of the late 1940s GI Bill which flooded the employment market with degreed people without much concern for how doing so devalued the formerly esteemed high school diploma.

The GI Bill was an inspired way to prevent runaway unemployment as veterans in their hundreds of thousands left the military and resumed civilian life. It's unintended societal consequences, however, were profound and far-reaching.

Red States Keep Winning

Power Line's John Hinderaker posts a couple of charts you will like, from the Committee to Unleash Prosperity. Based on Census Bureau and Bureau of Economic Analysis data, they look at the effect of states' political orientation on household income and net migration (both in and out). 

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis called our states "the laboratories of democracy." Very clearly red states - unambiguously embracing Republican policies - have experienced more growth in income and in population over the past quarter-century, and the differences are far from trivial.

Blue state politicians need to tell us how their model, which drives people away and provides less income growth for those who remain, is still somehow superior. I don't believe they can do it.

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Image courtesy of today's Lucianne.com.

We Have a Promise ...

Nearly a week ago I wrote that I'd be certain we were serious about Iran when we started bombing power plants. It hasn't begun yet.

Now we have at least the President's promise of bombing civilian infrastructure, specifically power plants and key bridges. One destroyed for each ship transiting the strait attacked in any way by Iran.

I'm still awaiting before and after photos of Tehran brightly lit, and in the no-power dark. We'll see ....

Who Are the DSA?

Nate Silver is a data guy; number crunching, polling, and gaming are his jam. At his Silver Bulletin website, he looks at DSA demographics.

What is the most Democratic voting group in America? It’s voters with postgraduate degrees but lower-to-middle household incomes of $30K to $60K per year.

This is very much also the sweet spot for the DSA. In the group’s most recent member survey in 2021, 80 percent of members aged 25 or older had bachelor’s degrees, but 45 percent had household incomes below $60,000 per year.

This is unusual, because education and income are usually substantially positively correlated. In the composite CES data, only 19 percent of Americans with bachelor’s degrees or higher had household incomes of $60K or below. The DSA rate is around twice that. These voters aren’t necessarily “blue collar” in the sense of working with their hands. But that doesn’t mean they’re privileged.

Silver concludes thus:

DSA members aren’t necessarily struggling to pay the bills, nor are most of them traditionally “blue-collar”. But they’re likely to be genuinely upset about their station in life as well as how things are going with the country.

Translation: Most Democratic Socialists of America are overeducated and, by their own lights, underemployed. They do not earn enough to ever purchase a home.

Data Center Popularity … Cratering

Politico reports their recurrent poll finds in the past 6 months public opinion on AI data centers has shifted dramatically in a negative direction. In January it was 37% for, and 28% against, today the results are 24% for and 41% against. Coincidentally, 35% were unsure or had no opinion both times.

The shift was especially pronounced among people who said they had voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race.

Republicans also shifted in a negative direction but by a much smaller margin.

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Looking back on these opinion shifts, historians may perceive the beginnings of what the Arabist/novelist Frank Herbert called “the Butlerian jihad.” He predicted that mankind would be swept by a movement that opposed “thinking machines,” eventually abolishing them. 

A product of his era, Herbert explored what would arise to replace AI in his novels beginning in 1965 with Dune. What he came up with was drugs and mysticism. 

While I hope he was wrong, in Herbert's universe the spice must flow.

A Natural Experiment Beckons

RealClearScience links to a Psychology Today article that argues if we are to go to year-round time, that should be standard time, not daylight savings time. Standard time more closely tracks the body’s circadian rhythms, it argues.

What PT doesn’t mention is that a natural experiment already exists. Most of Arizona stays on Mountain Standard Time year-round. The exception being the large but lightly populated Navaho Reservation. 

Does the non-rez AZ population experience fewer of the negative effects attributed to time-switching per capita than an equivalent comparison population from other states? If so, are the differences large enough to justify the change to year-round time? Specifically, to year-round Standard Time?

We need this analysis.

Geopolitical Game of 'Chicken'

Writing for Asia Times, Leon Hadar calls the standoff at the Strait of Hormuz "unwinnable." Both sides have (and are willing to use) the ability to close the straits to shipping, neither is able to genuinely prevent the other from doing so. Ergo, stalemate.

Except, as Hadar notes, Iran cannot tolerate the Strait being closed indefinitely, as doing so means they cannot export significant oil and LNG, with such export being almost their only source of foreign exchange. And our allies pressure the US to get the strait open.

If the US was politically able to continue the blockade semi-indefinitely Iran would eventually overthrow its current leaders as the nation-wide poverty became unsustainable. Our political system doesn't really accommodate such a policy, and Iran knows it. 

Therefore, both sides are trying to outlast the other, and because our timetable is fixed and knowable, whereas Iran's is not, the advantage is theirs, unfortunately.

Glimmers of the Future

A very interesting long article at Tyler Durden's Zero Hedge website, authored by Madge Waggy. It looks at how far androids have come since the early days of vaguely humanoid robots. 

I have not read widely in the relevant literature, but I've had a notion that I've not seen elsewhere. It is that the real market for artificial women exists in China where the results of the one-child policy have created a decided scarcity of young women.

In a true market economy, that need would produce product innovation; China is not entirely a market-driven economy. China's government exhibits outbursts of prudishness which militate against this innovation.

In the US the market demand will be for live-in caregivers for the widowed or single elderly. A talented artificial companion would enable individuals to live at home for years longer. Why shouldn't these resemble an attractive young adult, with designed gender of your choice?

Saturday Snark

Both can hurt you.

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and its Comments section.

Images courtesy of Sarah Hoyt's

Meme It Like It's Hot.

ICYMI

Three weeks into March, earlier this year, I wrote about the impact destroying Iran's electrical generation stations would have on their civilization, some parts of which approach first world standards.

Without electric power civilization disappears and society reverts to prior norms. Water and sewage don't move, refrigeration ends, heat comes from fire, or sunlight, most homes become little more than artificial caves. Gas stations can't pump fuel, traffic lights don't work, etc. Phones and tablets can't be charged.

Imagine digging a pit privy in your yard, if you have a yard. Carrying water from God-knows-where, cooking over an open fire, and scrounging for light after sunset. Apartment dwellers can't even do this much.

I'll know we've gotten serious about crippling Iran when it is reliably reported we've blacked out the power grid in several large cities. I look forward to before-and-after nighttime satellite photos showing a Tehran gone dark after sundown. 

The veneer of civilization, upon which we all rely, is far thinner than most imagine. Berlin had a brief taste of the 'medicine' this past January.

Friday Meme Fest

Images courtesy of Politico's

The Nation's Cartoonists on the Week in Politics.

Images courtesy of RealClearPolitics'

Cartoons of the Week.