Doomwatch^TM vs. Timesizing^®

1. Infant death rates still high in poor sections of Brooklyn, by Jennifer Steinhauer, NYT, front page.
   In central Brooklyn - where storefronts are boarded, housing projects stand in [concrete contradiction] to the boom times and the hospitals are more or less broke - babies are dying at rates that the city as a whole has not seen in nearly two decades. And they die, in some cases, at a rate double what the federal government has set as the infant mortality goal for the nation.... While the infant mortality rate in New York City has fallen steadily in the last decade [6.8 per 1000 in 1998, and the national average is 7.2], it has fallen more slowly in neighborhoods like Bedford-Stuyvesant [14 per 1000, up 20% from 1997] and Brownsville, neighborhoods with considerable populations of new immigrants....

2. Thousands in [Massachusetts] missing basic adult ed - Reports show resources lacking for workers who want to read and write, by Diane Lewis, Boston Globe, C6.
   Thousands of Massachusetts workers who want to learn to read and write cannot because there are not enough resources to keep up with the demand. According to the state Dept. of Education, 977,000 adults are functioning with 5th-grade skills or below, meaning they cannot read or write well enough to secure jobs that pay above minimum wage. Yet in fiscal 1999, Mass. served only 24,000 people in adult basic ed programs. An additional 10,000 people are on waiting lists....

2/26/2000 "bad, but..."

• Computer vandals disrupted F.B.I. site, AP via NYT, B4.
  ...last week in the same type of attack that disrupted some of the Web's major commercial sites. The Bureau's Web site, www.fbi.gov, remained inaccessible for more than three hours on Feb. 18 because vandals overwhelmed it by transmitting spurious signals.... Last year, the FBI pulled down its Web site for days after hackers overwhelmed it usign the same type of attack.... The FBI noted that its computers were not broken into and that its affected Internet site is separate from all its internal systems, including investigative files.

• Monuments to the Thai debt - Real estate fiascos rear their heads on Bangkok skyline - The IMF says the crisis is over; empty buildings say otherwise, by Wayne Arnold, NYT, C4.
  
  • The World Trade Tower, with 63 stories planned, has stalled at 39. Work should have been finished in 1997.
  • The 3.6m-sq.-ft Royal Charoen Krung Tower is finally nearing completion, but was supposed to have opened in 1996.
  • The Hotel Sofitel Riverside, with 550 rooms, requires a substantial investment before it can open its doors.
  All told, there are roughly 300 such buildings in Bangkok, from skyscrapers to single-family dwellings.... America's real estate collapse gave way to the S&L crisis; when Thailand's bubble burst, it set the stage in mid-1997 for the avalanche in asset values that swallowed Asia and seemed to menace the global financial system. This month the IMF declared the financial crisis in Thailand over. Over, perhaps, but not entirely solved....

• Tracking the wealth effect - Imbalance of supply to demand causes Greenspan to fret, by Richard Stevenson, NYT, C1.
  [This is a very bizarre story, because if true, it indicates that our Fed chairman is seriously out of touch with reality. Any stories we have seen before on the wealth effect indicate that it has a negative effect on commodity inflation (regular CPI) because monied people have concentrated such astronomical wealth that there's no way they can spend it. Oh, they may have some inflationary effect on prices in the luxury markets, but luxury markets are such a small proportion of commodity markets in general as to be negligible. If there is any carry-over to commodity markets in general, any inflationary pressures are temporary and unsustainable because the majority of consumers are not participating in the wealth effect and are financing purchases with record consumer debt. Greenspan is shying from shadows when he worries about...]
  ...the economy's ability to produce the supply needed to meet \any\ broader increase in demand for goods and services [because there are so many ongoing downsizings indicating excess capacity rather than deficit capacity, and so much flexible technology that can easily be used to increase output at will].
  [Greenspan's interpretation of the wealth effect would reverse the marginal revolution of neo-classical economics. Instead of the diminishing utility of concentrated wealth at the margin, we would have the increasing utility of concentrated wealth at the margin. The whole problem here arises because Greenspan's crude measurement of the ratio of net worth to annual disposable income does not factor in the concentration of either net worth or annual disposable income, so the huge rises in those two factors for the top 1-5% of the population look 'spread out' to Greenspan, when in fact they're astronomically concentrated. An example of the problem is shown in the article right below this one in the NYT -]
  Some foundations choose to curb donations and pay more taxes - An administration plan to revise the tax law gets a mixed reception, by Reed Abelson, NYT, C1.
  ...Last year, for example, faced with the decision whether to maintain its historical level of giving or pay twice as much in taxes, the Carnegie [foundation] of New York paid [the taxes]....
  [If not even the professional money-givers can be counted on to maintain giving levels, how the heck are the nouveau riche in the Internet bubble supposed to be thinking of keeping their spending abreast of their stock inflation? One interesting thing that even mainstream economists are pointing out about Greenspan's new reverse paranoia was expressed by Sen. Paul Sarbanes of Maryland -]
  "There's a whole new theory being laid out here...that's going to justify raising [interest] rates, curtailing the economy [and jobs and incomes for the majority as opposed to the stock bubblers] when there is no inflation. And it's all being done on the basis of the wealth effect." Mr. Greenspan never completely explained the distinction, if there is one \between raising rates\ to slow the whole economy...and [raising rates] to curb the wealth effect.... [Greenspan thinks that] the economy has absorbed the growth in demand...over the last few years through [only] two "safety valves." They are an increase in imports and a decline in unemployment.
  [We find it scary that our Fed chairman has his brain so far back in the 17th century that he has missed the biggest "safety valve" of all, TECHNOLOGY, as highlighted in the Ford-Reuther anecdote (Ford - let's see you unionize these robots; Reuther - let's see you sell'em cars). Plus the second biggest, TRAINING - which has all but disappeared from the American economic scene, being ever the first budget item to cut in a crunch, such that high tech CEOs would rather whine for more visas for pretrained talent from India than TRAIN THEIR OWN. But that option is always there, and its massive mobilization is amply demonstrated by our own American ramp-up for World War II in 1942. So Greenspan has completely missed the two biggest safety valves and he's got the wrong take on the two smaller ones that he's recognized. He thinks...]
  ..."The wealth effect cannot persist indefinitely because it relies on two safety valves, both of which are limited"....
  [But what evidence does he have that they're limited? We have a record trade imbalance - that indicates that there are functionally infinite imports out there, not limited imports. And at 4%, we are still double the level of unemployment that we regarded as alarmingly high during World War II, namely 2%. And our leaky unemployment rate does not even begin to count the whole problem, since it counts part-time work the same as full-time and excludes our record homeless and prison populations, all of whom would be much happier with on-the-job training and well-paying jobs - and it would save us a lot of tax dollars too. But Greenspan continues to be taken in by our supposedly "low" unemployment rate as if it reflects, not just the notraining-caused skill shortage that it actually does reflect, but a comprehensive labor shortage - something that is totally belied by the flatness of wages (except top executive pay) for the last 30 years and by the blatant unwillingness of today's spoiled employers to train. Greenspan is making the same mistake as reported by Stephen Leacock (The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice, 1920, pp. 30-31) in reference to World War I. Many people thought that the enormous demands of the War would far outstrip supply and...]
  ...bring the industrial world to a standstill within a year. [But] the expectation was unfounded. Great as is the...misdirection of productive power...of war, not even five years of it have broken the productive machine. And the reason is now plain enough. Peace...under the old conditions of industry is infinitely wasteful of human energy. Not more than one adult worker in ten...is employed on necessary [i.e., urgently market-demanded] things. The other nine perform superfluous [i.e., casually or reluctantly demanded] services. War turns them from making the glittering superfluities of peace to making its grim engines of destruction....
  [But Greenspan, like so many "modern" economists, is an ignoramus when it comes to history. And, unfortunately, when the Fed chief fails to learn the lessons of history, he dooms us all to suffer in repeating them. While Greenspan fiddles with a cosmetic tool, interest rates, that concerns mainly just the top brackets in our economy and whichever way he moves it, hurts someone, the tool he really needs, the tool that would help everyone by UNdistorting the economy and reversing the income gap, goes untouched. That tool is the flexible rationing of labor to the employment market as manageable not indirectly via interest rates but directly via the adjustment of the workweek (and the enforcement of its character as a maximum - in the least stifling way possible of course). We're talking about Timesizing.]

• Dow's doldrums - Correction spurs question on fate of red-hot Nasdaq, by Kimberly Blanton, Boston Globe, D1.
  It's official. The stocks that make up the Old Economy are in the midst of a correction. The mystery is whether New Economy stocks will follow.... The Dow Jones industrial index, despite a small rally yesterday, has tumbled 12% from a record of 11,722.9 on Jan. 14. A correction occurs when stocks decline 10% or more....

• 2/21 The eFiles - Stoddard Whitredge, 23 - Team leader, StudentAdvantage.com (discount provider for college students), globe photo by Pam Berry, Boston Globe, C1.
  ...Sleep deprivation - I'm here 60 to 70 hours a week. It's a lot of hours, but if you work efficiently, you don't necessarily need to have to work more. I have weekends and a good night's sleep most nights.
  [Where did we go wrong in bringing up these young people? Not only is this sample specimen working 60-70 hrs a week standard, which is what we left behind as a nation fully 100 years ago, but (A) he regards it as "efficient" and (B) he feels he has to explain why he isn't working more. Qoyannosqatsi!]

• 2/20 Shocking visits to the real world - Even if you're rich, it's uncool today not to have a 'real' job. So you get one. And then what?
  by Monique Yazigi, NYT, Sec. 9, p.1.
  ...She obeyed what she called the bank's "silly" rules, but then the summer approached and she informed her supervisor that her family traditionally took a three-month vacation in the south of France. She was told she could have one week off. "One week?" said the woman (whose fear of ridicule led her to ask for anonymity). "That was so ridiculous. That's not even enough time to shop."
  [Maybe we'll get the same situation with the shorter-worktime movement as with the civil rights movement - once the offspring of the privileged became involved, the real progress begins.]
  When she returned to the office 3 mos. later...she found, not surprisingly, that she was out of a job. "The entire experience was a shock," the woman said.... Pity the adult children of the modern leisure class. Well, OK, don't pity them - but at least try to see it their way for a moment.... now it has become socially unacceptable not to work, no matter how much money your parents have.....
  [Incidentally, this article also suggests the beginnings of an answer to the following linguistic equation, "Take away work and you're automatically giving back a valuable commodity, leisure or free time. Take away wealth and you're automatically giving back a valuable commodity, _________." We'll probably have a number of good words for this slot in the future once we get employment balanced and get to focus on the next-biggest problem behind it (then looming just as large once the employment&skills concentration is centrifuged), but meanwhile, this article suggests words like "cool," "social acceptability," normalcy....]
  Tara Peters, 28, an artist, attended private schools in Manhattan...said..."If you don't work, and you don't have to work, you eventually look like a dummy who lunches."
  Anthony Buhl, 30, who grew up in New York and Switzerland...worked for an uncle on building sites in Palm Beach [which] he found tedious [so he] returned to New York where he has many friends who are supported by their families. They call themselves artists, he said, or hop from job to job....
  Mr. Buhl's father, Henry Buhl, a retired mutual fund manager and philanthropist, laments that all three of his grown children lack career ambitions.... "This is a flighty group from New York and Switzerland.... I won't mention names, but there are so many kids of rich people who are given too much money and too much freedom and are 'cool' and haven't been handled properly.
  [Nice that the father thinks they're cool. They themselves don't seem to think they are - without a job.]
  To force his children to take responsibility, Mr. Buhl said, he stopped giving them money a few years ago....
  [So what's all the astronomical extra money for then? Where now is all the talk about - "oh it gets right back into use!" Here we have a cross section to the heart of the marginal utility of wealth. Past a certain point - which Timesizing defines non-arbitrarily by its opposite - wealth is just as problematic and distorting as poverty. And the first cut at balancing it has to occur in the employment dimension or you're just creating aimless parasites - on both ends - as this story documents so well on the top end.]
  ...but they have independent incomes from their grandparents.... It is no small paradox that Mr. Buhl is the founder of the SoHo Partnership, which helps homeless people find jobs as well as housing. Participants are paid $6 an hour to clean the streets while being trained to dress and speak well in interviews to win jobs.
  [$6 an hour. "Modified rapture."]
  Mr. Buhl said his program has helped more than 200 people find employment since 1992...
  [Great, that's 25 a year. How long would that take to solve our record homelessness and start into our record 2m prison population? Clearly this is about as effective as government programs - and really for the same purpose = feelgood for the rich, who really haven't taken the trouble to design a market-oriented work&skills sharing program like Timesizing to really solve this whole mess systemically instead of just capriciously.]
  ...but he has been unable to help his own children. "My kids should be in the program, but they are not hopeless enough," he said. "You have to be desperate to make my program work."
  [Ah, Henry, why don't you have the imagination to design a program that's less extreme and doesn't require complete desperation?]
  He conceded that he bears some responsibility for his children's aimlessness. "I guess I shouldn't have given them such a high life," he said.
  [Guess not. But that just reinforces the point that past a certain level in the hands of one person, money is just plain useless.]
  It's hard, no doubt, to work up much sympathy for this segment of the trust-fund set, especially when so many others in their age group are working 70-hour weeks on the lower rungs of law firms or banks or as Internet entrepreneurs....
  [Some fools are working 70-hour weeks, other fools are working zero-hour weeks, with or without money. Timesizing provides the essential five-phase outline of a balancing system for this insult to intelligence.]
  Merrill Lynch offers advisers who help clients teach their children the responsibilities that come with wealth.
  [Yeah, like "noblesse oblige"? - Any system that relies on charity (i.e., capriciousness) for vital functions is lethally flawed.]
  Dr. Pamela Sicher, a psychiatrist in private practice on the Upper East Side, said: "We have more and more children that are having trouble finding personal reasons to work hard at their own goals...."
  [So maybe the "work hard" thing is obsolete - why all the B.S. about "hard" - why the masochism?! the melodrama?! - why not just work and play in balance - let the robots do the hard stuff - THAT'S WHY WE INVENTED THEM!]
  "...Many feel that they will passively inherit, if not money, a work life, and this type of thing tends to stifle creativity and drive.' She added, "A lack of focus, a lack of direction, and a lack of drive is a problem that has increased in frequency among the young 20-somethings and 30-somethings, who are now going to therapists."
  [Great - the therapist as expensive bandaid dispenser.]
  Robert C. Elliott...at the Bessemer Trust Co., which manages trusts for many old-line families (minimum fund: $5m) said..."The work ethic is hampered by access to money at too young an age....
  [The work ethic in its present form is obsolete. We need to cut our frozen (and like ice, expanding) workweek and spread around the vanishing market-demanded employment to integrate all of us, megamonied and regular-moneyed, and LIGHTEN UP.]
  "...Ultimately they become less committed to their career than their peers, which obviously produces less success in their career and ultimately less satisfaction with their lives." And trust funds have a habit of running out, especially in the second or third generation....
  Bobby Kravitz admitted that he grew up as a spoiled brat in and around New York.... Between ages 23 and 28 Mr. Kravitz held four jobs. He quit three and was fired from one.
  [The sameness of the opposite extremes. We know a 20-something brought up on welfare who's exactly the same way.]
  At one point he moved to London to try developing real estate, but was discouraged and returned home. In moments of introspection, he recognized that he was deeply unhappy with his inability to sustain a career, or even a long-term relationship. He saw how the heavy use of drugs and alcohol among his set was an attempt, as he put it, "to medicate these awful feelings."
  Mr. Kravitz became depressed over his lack of direction and considered suicide.
  [Hey, our own family background is full of suicide - we couldn't help considering it, it was thrust in our face - and we came up with the greatest all-purpose direction imaginable = identify and solve the greatest human problem of your lifetime. We identified the problem of the tendency of value to concentrate beyond imagination and split society in half, and the solution is a 5-phase program that defines variables by their opposites, by the market, or where that is impossible, by public referendum of all the affected population. These 5 phases are mappable onto an ordered sequence of value dimensions, the first and most accessible being market-valued activity alias work or employment.]
  "My life just stopped working the way it was," he said. "I had no clue about how to focus on work. I saw my life standing still while friends were getting married, were getting promoted at work.... I had to grow up and I had to learn how to work and have responsibility," Mr. Kravitz said. He married, and he says he now goes to an office all day, almost every day. At 33, he says he has turned his life around....
  [Well, wouldn't it be a lot easier if we used the promise of all our technological time-saving and cut the workday? - for everyone? - and if you wanted to work longer, you could, as long as you stopped being a work consumer at a certain point and became a job creator - by reinvesting your overtime earnings in training and hiring.]

1. EPA calls US government big water polluter, by David Armstrong, Boston Globe, front page.
   The federal government is polluting the nation's waterways at a record rate, violating the landmark Clean Water Act more frequently than private companies and six times as often as in 1993, according to a new report by the Environmental Protection Agency. Nearly four out of 10 federal facilities, primarily those operated by the Dept. of Defense and Dept. of Energy, were in signifacant violation of the water pollution law in 1998, the last full year examined by the EPA. By comparison, three out of 10 private facilities and those operated by local governments failed to comply....

2. Toxic [cyanide] spill drains life out of Hungary's Tisza River - Accident affects tourism, livelihood of 1.6m [people], by Theresa Agovino, Bos Globe, A22.
   VEZENY, Hungary - Live fish have been a rare sight on the Tisza River since...what Europeans are calling "the greatest environmental catastrophe since Chernobyl"....
   [Thanks to a Romanian gold mine. And the worst isn't even the cyanide but the heavy metals like mercury and lead that the cyanide has leached out of rocks.]
   ...Heavy metals in the spill will be a greater long-term threat to the river than the cyanide, which is largely gone....

1. America's rags-to-riches myth - Income mobility fails to soften the blow of growing inequality, editorial 'observer' column by Michael Weinstein, NYT, A30.
   Americans cling to the conceit that they have unrivaled opportunity to move up...the income ladder [but] the gap in earnings, for example, between college and high school graduates more than doubled \in\ the past quarter century.... Prof. Peter Gottschalk of Boston College...and Prof. Shledon Danziger of the University of Michigan have looked at the plight of children during the 1970's and 1980's.... The upshot is that few families occupying the low rungs of America's income ladder get rich.
   Economists provide no rule for figuring out how much mobility a society needs to counter the impact of any given amount of inequality.
   [The Timesizing program solves this lack by simply inching up the amount of overtime being converted into training and hiring (by inching down the workweek) until the under-employment at the bottom is reduced to acceptable (including zero) proportions, as defined by repeating referendum.]
   But there is indirect evidence that mobility is not high enough in this country to provide an adequate safety valve for those on the bottom rungs....
   [No kidding!]
   Some inequality is essential for capitalism....
   [Capitalism, shmapitalism. Equalizing on a range, not a point, is essential for a spread of incentives.]
   But high incomes can result [from] reasons that have little to do with merit, reflecting rich parents, luck or manipulation of the political process.
   [And as someone pointed out, what sports league would survive if every team's scores accrued year after year instead of being reset to zero at the start of each season?]
   Inequality driven by such factors can breed social division, anger and a politics of resentment.
   [How about just a politics of apathy. We had a 51% apathy rate in the 1996 election, the lowest since 1924.]
   It also belies the notion that America gives everyone a fair chance.
   [Oh no, you DON'T mean to tell us that there isn't really "equality of opportunity"?!]
   Economists are in general reluctant to tamper with market-driven incomes. The risk of squashing incentives and innovation can be great.
   [But much of what drives incomes is not market-driven. The critical time factor, for example, in terms of the length of the workweek. It has always been a cultural-political call, not a market call. After all, it is a factor predefining the market, not something that the market, working entirely within its parameters, can possibly define in any general sense - only in specific areas of spot skill shortages. But what a difference a change in workweek makes, because it alters the relative supply and demand of labor and employment, and if we have global labor surplus and employment shortage, as during the last three decades, nothing on earth can make general wage levels rise - except cutting the workweek - and nothing has - because we haven't even enforced the outdated and frozen workweek we established in 60 years ago.]
   But there is a compelling case for eradicating one virulent form of inequality: poverty....
   [As we've said so many times before, you can't start with the money imbalance. You must start with the work and skills imbalance. Start with money and you generate dependence among your "beneficiaries." Start with money and you generate resentment among those you deprive, because take away money and it's not obvious what you're giving back, if anything; but start with work and if you take it away you're automatically giving back leisure, the personal freedom of free time. It's a lot easier to share the money by sharing the work than directly sharing the money. Maybe a time will come for that, but it's not in first place on the Pert chart, - worksharing is. Giving money away is not solving the problem of uncontrolled concentration of skills and employment. For that you need something a little better designed, like Timesizing. And merely calling for it and flattering us and talking about "the children" and bringing in the race issue doesn't help either -]
   The richest country in the history of the universe [= something we can't possibly judge] tolerates a poverty rate of about 20% among its children [when do we raise the question of overpopulation?] and about 35% among its black children [an untouchable subject, hemmed round about with political correctness]....
   [Bottom line. The solution has to be designed. It has to be spec'ed out and designed, just like any software program. Because it IS a kind of software program - it's social software. And even the machine language of social software has to be designed, not just the 4GL. And as any machine language programmer can tell you, it's nasty work - but somebody has to do it. As far as we know, it's all been put together and actually done only once. And that once, you guessed it, is Timesizing and its successor programs. Michael ends with a typical sublimation into polysyllables -]
   No conceit about mobility, real or imagined, can excuse that unconscionable fact.
   [Oh we're so impressed and feeling SO guilty - but without economic design, we're still back where we started.]

2. In a time of plenty, some states facing plenty of shortfalls, Michael Janofsky, NYT, front page.
   CHEYENNE, Wyo. - The nation's record economic expansion has left most states so flush with tax revenues that lawmakers argue over how to spend a surplus.
   Not here.
   These days Wyoming's elected officials are debating how large the budget deficit could become.... A handful of states are facing choices that more commonly arise during recessions. Their lawmakers are deciding whether to raise taxes or cut spending because their state economies are not diversified enough to reap the full benefits of the boom.
   [Or too stupid to recognize a bad idea when they see one, like Massachusetts' "Big Dig."]
   In Louisiana, unstable oil prices.... In Tennesee...increased spending in areas like education.... A slow rate of economic growth in Iowa caused by depressed farm prices.... Some of the factors [in] Kansas....
   Wyoming [is] the least populated state with just 479,000 people, about the population of Denver. It is one of only seven states with no personal income tax levied by the state and one of four with no corporate taxes, major sources of the windfall in other states....
   [So get with it, Wyoming.]

3. Kindergartner study finds 4 sectors starting far behind the pack, AP via NYT, A19.
   The vast majority of children enter kindergarten knowing the alphabet and numbers, well behaved and in good health....but the news [is] not so good for children in poverty, single-parent homes and non-English speaking families, and those whose parents did not finish high school....

4. FBI's Internet cases quadruple in a week, AP via Boston Globe, C2.
   The number of newly opened FBI computer cases have quadrupled since the first electronic commerce sites were attacked last week. Investigators theorize that copycats may have emerged.... Now the total is "more than 17 including 13 where the victim suffered a distributed denial of service attack" \said\ FBI spokeswoman Debbie Weierman....
   ["And awaaaaay we go."]

1. Group asks NLRB to file unfair labor practices, by Diane Lewis, Boston Globe, C10.
   ...The union said the [16 nursing assistants at a Medford, Mass. nursing home] were fired after complaining about long hours, overtime, and verbal harassment.... Russ Davis, director of Jobs with Justice, said one woman was fired after she told a supervisor she could not work an additional eight hours.

2. Faulty nuclear generator showed problems earlier, utility says, by Revkin and Wald, NYT, A25.
   ...A leak in...the Indian Point 2 nuclear plant in Buchanan, NY, released a small amount of radiation Tuesday night....
   [Well, it doesn't take much.]
   Tuesday's leakage was the most serious in the plant's history....

3. Banker and husband tell of role in [money] laundering case - Pleading guilty, couple describe network transferring billions out of Russia, by O'Brien and Bonner, NYT, front page.
   [Russia is never going to get back on its feet with this level of "capital flight"!]

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