Lunch at the Labs

If you intend to vote for Barack Obama against Mitt Romney because he is the lesser of two evils, read this article and think again:

        Why I Refuse to Vote for Barack Obama
        by Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic, Sep 26 2012
            The case against casting a ballot for the president
            -- even if you think he's better than Mitt Romney

Some of the reasons given are (quoting directly):

• Obama terrorizes innocent Pakistanis on an almost daily basis. The drone war he is waging in North Waziristan isn't "precise" or "surgical" as he would have Americans believe. It kills hundreds of innocents, including children.

• Obama established one of the most reckless precedents imaginable: that any president can secretly order and oversee the extrajudicial killing of American citizens.

• Obama has done more than any modern executive to wage war on whistleblowers. In fact, under Obama, Bush-era lawbreakers, including literal torturers, have been subject to fewer and less draconian attempts at punishing them than some of the people who conscientiously came forward to report on their misdeeds. [This contrasts with the fact that in 2008, candidate Obama campaigned in defense of whistleblowers.]

For details about the first point see,

        The Stanford/NYU Report: Living Under Drones
        Death, Injury, and Trauma to Civilians From US Drone Practices in Pakistan.

In addition to a nice executive summary, there is a pointer to the full 182 page report which has all the gory details.

Also Glenn Greenwald has a nice blog post summarizing some of the more important parts of the report.

In addition to the above reasons I would add that Obama supports warrantless spying on Americans. When Obama was seeking the Democratic nomination 4 years ago, he vowed to filibuster any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies that were found to be guilty of illegally spying on Americans. But once he secured the nomination, instead of filibustering the bill he voted in favor of it! And earlier this year the Obama administration pushed for the passage of the bill extending the FISA amendments passed in 2008.

Some web links I found to be of interest this past week:

• Improve decision making quality: Use a journal and a checklist.
  Shane Parrish / Farnam Street, September 20, 2012

• A Rare Look at Why The Government Won't Fight Wall Street
  Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi, September 18, 2012

• Promoting Social Mobility With early intervention.
  James J. Heckman essay in Boston Review September/October 2012

• Complaints about automated calls up sharply - As I have experienced.
  Associated Press, Sep 17, 2012

• Do Tax Cuts Lead to Economic Growth? Doubtful.
  David Leonhardt, New York Times opinion, September 15, 2012

• The Power of Negative Thinking: The case against positive thinking.
  Oliver Burkeman, New York Times opinion, August 4, 2012

As reported on Wikipedia and elsewhere, the United States spends more on health care per capita and more on health care as percentage of its GDP than other nations, but life expectancy at birth in the USA is below most developed nation and even some developing nations. And in spite of high health care costs, the U.S. falls behind in quality and compares badly to the rest of the world.

Since so many countries are doing a better job at health care, the problem cannot be lack of knowledge about what to do. More likely it is problem of too many vested interests not willing to change for the betterment of all. I think too much emphasis has been placed on changing laws about who gets medical care and who pays and not nearly enough attention is paid to fixing the health care system itself.

Here are some (mostly recent) links related to that subject:

• Atul Gawande in the New Yorker examines how restaurant chains have managed to combine quality control, cost control, and innovation much better than health care providers.

• Peter Orszag discusses How Much Health-Care Spending Is Wasted and some steps to fix that.

• As a follow up to one of Orszag's points, Davis Liu in The Health Care Blog reports on the claim by venture capitalist Vinod Khosla that Technology Will Replace 80 Percent of Docs.

• And finally here is a new startup, Finding Health Care Prices to help consumers compare prices for medical procedures and items. It has been shown that medical costs across the country vary greatly and that often costlier medical care isn't better and (a bit older) cost isn't proof of high quality.

Addendum.
After writing the above I saw this frightening essay from the Wall Street Journal September 21, 2012.

• How to Stop Hospitals From Killing Us

In the book Fooling Houdini, author an amateur magician Alex Stone reveals the secrets behind some magic tricks and in the process angers many magicians. While discussing this book in a Scientific American blog, Literally-Psyched, Maria Konnikova points out studies that argue against secrecy, including one that claims knowing the surprise twist of a book or movie can enhance (not detract from) your enjoyment by allowing you to concentrate on how it unfolds. Likewise seeing how a concert violinist produces the sound they make, increases my appreciation of the music I hear. People usually do not understand how much skill is required to perform most illusions and think they could do it if they just knew the "trick". For the few that I know, it only enhances my appreciation of the performance.

She also argues that secrecy inhibits innovation and creativity in magic and many other artistic and scientific endeavors and I agree. Openness seems to be necessary for progress to occur in both the arts and sciences. This reminds me of what the physicist Edward Teller said on the subject (I think mainly in relationship to politics):

        Secrecy, once accepted, becomes an addiction.

Although he was a staunch anti-communist he thought that keeping some scientific knowledge secret hurt us more than them. In the interview Questions of secrecy he tells this story:

One of the few physicists who were there was a very well known man, Tolman, and we came under serious attack: Did we give away too much? One of the points was, did not- did we not have to- did we have to tell on what element we were working? Wouldn't it be sufficient if we would say that Z=92? Well it did not take very long for me to explain that if I said the one thing I have said the other thing. But the amusing point about all of this was that in our being questioned a lot had been disclosed about the reactors that worked in Hanford and after the meeting when I took Maria to the railroad station she said- Well I really learned a great deal, very interesting what was said about reactors. Secrecy on occasion seemed to work against itself.

Here is a great idea that apparently has been around for a while but I just learned about it. It is called Prize Linked Savings (PLS) and solves two problems simultaneously:

        (1) Americans do not save enough money.
        (2) Americans love to gamble, even when the odds of winning are very low and they cannot afford it.

It works by taking a small amount of the interest from all savings accounts and uses that money to pay out cash lottery prizes. It has been very successful in places where it has been tried, but local governments in the United States want to keep their lottery monopoly and prevent its adoption in this country.

For more information listen to (or read the transcript of) the Freakonomics Podcast

        Lottery Loopholes and Deadly Doctors

There is a bubble in the cost of a higher education because the price paid has exploded compared to the value received (not unlike the recent bubble in housing). The current recession has begun to make people more aware of the problem but it goes beyond that. Last May, Mark Cuban gave a good summary of the situation in his blog,

        The Coming Meltdown in College Education & Why The Economy Won’t Get Better Any Time Soon

And more recently Jonathan James, a research economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland wrote an economic commentary related to this:

        The College Wage Premium

But since he failed to consider what I think are some important points concerning this matter, I emailed him the following response:

In reference to your economic commentary dated 08/08/2012:

        The College Wage Premium
        http://www.clevelandfed.org/research/commentary/2012/2012-10.cfm

I think the points you made to counter the prevailing thoughts about the college wage premium are good but they do not go nearly far enough.

When evaluating the value of higher education it is not good enough to just compare all those who go to college versus those all who do not, because generally the SMARTER students are the ones who who choose to continue their education. Instead it is necessary to compare those with EQUAL INTELLIGENCE and ability, some of who go to college and some who do not. What happens if you consider students with equal SAT scores and compare those who start their own business after high school with those who go to college? After considering the monetary cost of going to school (including paying off debt) as well as the lost years of income, who does better over a lifetime?

Also how much of the trouble that people without a college degree have with getting a job has to do with the hiring process itself? HR people who often do the hiring usually don't have a clue as to the what is required to do a specific job and much less how to evaluate someone to see if they do have the needed abilities. Hence all they have to go on is what is written on a piece of paper. In addition how much of the problem has to do with people thinking "I worked hard (suffered?) to get a college degree so you should too?".

I do think a college education is a good thing to have, but I think it is greatly overrated concerning having the skills to be a productive member of the workforce. This has long been a pet peeve of mine and now that we appear to be in a bubble with respect to tuition costs and student debt, something needs to be done. How much of the myth that a college degree is needed to succeed is due to the fact that professors need students to attend their classes so they have a job?

That was a month ago and I have not received a reply back.

Addendum.
Steve Randy Waldman in the second half of a very interesting interfluidity blog post says rational astrology is sufficient to explain a large college wage premium.