The Healer and the Hack...Politics, the Market, Steve Jobs, and Barack Obama

[HT to Will Wilkinson on FB]

This 6 ½ minute YouTube video shows us, in the beginning, life as no one wishes to live it. Life when your spirit dims, your body becomes frail, and your intellect fails. Life awaiting death. 

This can be life’s horror in the end. This is the purgatory we Americans choose to place ourselves and our loved ones in because our Puritan heritage demands we treat suicide as a disease and a sin rather than a Godsend and a solution. At least, for some...and only if chosen on their own, not forced upon them. See in this regard Tom Szasz’s latest offering, Suicide Prohibition: The Shame of Medicine, Syracuse University Press, 2011.

Barack Obama, in the landmark [albeit not yet clearly Constitutional] legislation he heralded and  hectored on, log-rolled and lobbied for, the PPACA--better known eponymously as Obamacare--has a solution to all this:

Noting that the last few months of life bring with it the greatest amount of Medicare and Medicaid spending, his efforts to “bend the cost curve down” include “expert panels,” known by opponents as “death panels.” So in Obama’s America--the one governed by noble ideals (or at least Nobel ideals…) rather than Social Darwinism--first you suffer, unallowed to take your own life; then you die, the State unwilling in the end to pay to sustain it once you’ve suffered enough. Coming soon to a hospital near you...

But the YouTube video shows another story as it continues, a story of hope and resurrection, a story of youth returning to reanimate the aged. A simple story, really...and all it took was the insight of Steve Jobs, who came up with the solution without ever once thinking about the aged or their problems.

As famed neurologist Oliver Sacks (see his book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat) explains, simply allowing these people to listen to an iPod downloaded with their favorite music--jazz for some; religious hymns for others; Tommy Dorsey hits--leads to IMMEDIATE change in the behavior of forgotten geriatrics, men and women who, up until then, led lives of quiet desperation, each day a repetition of the last, of chronic pain, of being left only to one’s increasingly failing thoughts. All of a sudden, their eyes brighten, their feet begin to tap, a smile so long absent again presents itself to their faces. As Sacks puts it, their lives have been returned to them, through a simple device costing well under $100, with music added at 99 cents a shot.

But let Sacks speak for himself, discussing Henry, an old man whose improvement unfolds before us on the video link above:

“We first see Henry, inert, mainly depressed, unresponsive, and almost un-alive.

“Then he is given an iPod containing his favorite music, and immediately he lights up, his face assumes expression, his eyes open wide, he starts to sing and to rock and to move his arms, and he’s been animated by the music...The philosopher Kant once called music the quickening art, and Henry’s been quickened, he’s been brought to life.

“Henry, [formerly] mute and virtually unable to answer the simplest yes or no questions, is quite voluble….So in some sense Henry is restored to himself”

A miracle...of capitalism.

There are two points here:

1. Steve Jobs set out to make music easier for people to listen to. He no doubt had some selfish reasons. He thought he could make some money this way. He thought he could turn his company around. He personally, it seems, really enjoyed listening to music. He had no idea it could transform the bitter stunted lives of the elderly in rest homes. But that is COMMONPLACE for the market. People offer products EVERY DAY that end up having uses they themselves could never have foreseen.

1. Barack Obama sees himself as a political visionary, THE man who will remake American healthcare. And yet Jobs, without effort and without knowing--Jobs, no longer even with us--has already done more to improve the lives of actual patients than Obama has accomplished. And yet, to people like Barack Obama, guys like Steve Jobs are just people who don’t pay enough in taxes. 

We live in a society of great injustice. No wonder so many end up abandoned and wishing for an end that cannot come soon enough. But here we see there is hope for change...in a simple iPod. Who knows what else might be done?

If only Barack Obama would get out of the way...

Obama, CAFE Standards, and Economic Illiteracy…

On the campaign trial, aware of the danger to his Presidency of $4/gallon gasoline, President Obama is telling the bumpkins that in a few years, due to his efforts, mandatory fuel economy standards will have new cars providing us with 55 mi/gallon efficiency.

One wonders why he didn’t simply mandate 100 mi/gallon…

Ignore for the moment the extensive research that rising CAFE standards mean lighter cars, which in turn mean greater risk of injury and death in car crashes. Tanks are safe, but not fuel efficient. 

Instead focus on how the President sells this to the rubes: “55 miles/gal means that over the life-time of the car, you’ll save $8,000! I bet there are some people here that would like an additional $8000 in their pockets! [Applause] Am I right? [Applause.]” 

I mention here that the above paragraph is me in a Michael Daisey moment. Michael Daisey, you’ll recall, is the monologist who lied in his one man show, and lied on public radio’s This American Life, about conditions in the Chinese factories Apple uses to make their iPads, lies he claims capture the dramatic essence of his “The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs.” So I should admit out front, without waiting for the Ira Glass interview, that what I affirm the President as saying in quotes above may not be exact--I was driving when I heard the President say it on NPR’s All Things Considered this afternoon--but I think it largely captures the dramatic essence of his campaign hokum. It certainly gets a lot closer than Daisey did, and is a mere paraphrase, not a lie. Call it the Agony and Ecstasy of Barack Obama…

Call it as well the economic illiteracy of Barack Obama. He seems to think that if a car now sells at $X, and in the future an otherwise identical car will save you $8000 in gas over its lifetime, that car will still sell for $X. That is, he assumes you, the consumer, get the entire benefit of the gas savings.

Yet he has foisted new light bulbs on us that he claims are not only environmentally safer but WILL LAST LONGER. “Over the course of the light bulb’s lifetime, you’ll save…” Did he not notice they also became more expensive? That’s not ONLY because they are more expensive to make. Any businessman knows you can’t just blithely pass on any increased costs to your customers willy-nilly. One reason the producers can charge more here is that the light bulbs last longer. That is, the producer got a component of the savings associated with the light bulb’s longer life. Does it surprise anyone that if one new light bulb lasts as long as two old ones, the new light bulb price about doubles?

What about new cars with higher CAFE standards? Economists talk about a product’s “elasticity.” This is a measure of the effect a rise or fall in price has on the quantity of a good demanded. 

We know demand curves slope down; that is, that the higher the price, the less is demanded. Elasticity measures the steepness of that slope. Nearly vertical curves--where large changes in price have little effect on quantity demanded--are INelastic. Nearly horizontal curves--where small changes in price have large effects on quantity demanded--are very elastic.

What does this have to do with who gets the $8000 savings from better gas mileage? It turns out--economists can prove this--the more inelastic the demand curve, the greater the share of the benefit goes to the producer, as seen in increased car prices (paid up front); the more elastic, the greater the share of the benefit goes to the consumer (in lower gas charges, a benefit accrued slowly over several years.)

So are cars, and their demand curves, relatively elastic or inelastic? Economists have certain heuristics as to what goods and services are more or less elastic:

• All else being equal, durable goods tend to have inelastic demand curves. Cars are durable goods.
• All else being equal, short-run responses to changes tend to be inelastic. Long-run effects, giving people time to plan and react, tend to be more elastic. So rules that take place on a particular model year tend at least initially to be inelastic.
• To the extent there are close substitutes, demand curves for goods are elastic. If, for example, the CAFE standards applied to Chevys but not GM cars, the quantity demanded for Chevys would be elastic. You could easily substitute a GM. To the extent that all cars and trucks are held to the same CAFE standards, the changes in quantity demanded will be inelastic.

Therefore, all indications point to the car producers generating most of the $8000 from improved gas mileage, which is to say the cars will likely be about $8000 more expensive. Of course, getting back to Kasman’s research that car companies have to trade off car safety for improved fuel standards, the consumer will be taking all the increased risk of injury in car accidents.

So: Consumers take all the increased risk and little of the increased savings associated with higher CAFE standards. And this is what the President considers a big winning argument for him on the campaign trail. And given the average voters’ knowledge of economics is as weak as the President’s, he may just be right...

NOTA BENE: If you’re in the audience when President Obama makes this point, DO NOT ask, “But won’t the car companies just charge $8000 more for the cars?” This will immediately lead to price control legislation...

Where Will All The Paulistas Go?

HEY! We’re Willing to Say Some of the Things He Says!! Actually DO Them? What, Are You Crazy?!

As reported on 3/6/12 in NewsMax (newsmax.com), “A significant number of Ron Paul’s supporters are likely to exit the battlefield when the GOP nominating fight ends and not return for the general election. An exit poll of Michigan primary voters last week, for example, found that 35 percent of the Texas congressman’s supporters will not vote for another Republican, The Washington Post reported.

 ...

Regardless, other campaigns say some of Paul’s supporters can be won over and even the Obama campaign plans to make an effort.”

It seems to me Paul supporters voting for Obama is just too much like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football Lucy is holding. Talk about a fool-me-once situation...

All A-Twitter…

January 13, 2012

Ron Paul is 76 years old. But he has the energy of a much younger man...and the following. Here’s just one example:

I look at the national Twitter counts of the various Presidential candidates over the last week, the number of tweets mentioning each candidate:

Barack Obama        116,803

Mitt Romney            215,873

Rick Perry               68,638

Jon Huntsman        44,309

Rick Santorum        96,878

Newt Gingrich         65,906

Ron Paul                 279,839

Jon Huntsman, who bet it all on New Hampshire, has the fewest Tweets coming out of Granite State; he will be spit out by the Palmetto State. 

Newt Gingrich and the two Ricks can’t get out of 5-digit territory. 

Barack Obama, that darling charismatic leader of hope and change who so captivated the youth of only 4 years ago, barely passes the 6-figure mark. 

Ron Paul more than DOUBLES the number of weekly tweets of the President of the United States. Only Mitt Romney comes close, getting 77% of Ron Paul’s traffic.

Ron Paul, a bit of a grandfatherly crank, the oldest man in the race, a man who was born in 1935 and had an obstetrical degree before there was ultrasound, OWNS the Internet. Go to YouTube. Check out the hits on Paul websites and compare them to those of other candidates. Look at the pro-Paul Internet ads spreading like viruses. This man captures the imaginations of the youth more than anyone could themselves imagine...and more than Barack Obama could hope for, or change.

President Obama inherited a bad situation, the result of a big-spending Republican who frittered away two terms on foreign wars. Barack Obama made things much worse, spending to such an extreme the Bush II regime appears in retrospect humbly frugal, and extending but only barely revising what can now be called the Bush/Obama wars. As Peggy Noonan put it month’s ago, he inherited a bad situation, and he made it worse...much worse.

Barack Obama owns the moment, and has to take responsibility for it.

But Ron Paul owns the future. And as Nick Gillespie of Reason.com often reminds, the future’s so bright we’ll have to wear shades.

A Thought That Would Never Occur to Rick Santorum, Understandably...

 January 11, 2012

“This is a president who thinks he’s smarter than everybody,” Rick Santorum said today in South Carolina, criticizing President Obama for “trying to run people’s lives.”

Santorum, opposed to gay marriage equality, said HE would never try to run people’s lives.

Santorum, who seeks to strengthen the power of the State to throw hundreds of thousands of Americans into prison for using marijuana, said that unlike the sitting President, he believed people should run their own lives. 

Just according to Santorum’s rules...

Do Actions Speak Louder Than Words?

12/30/11

The blogosphere and MSM are spending an inordinate amount of time on the two-decade old scandal of Ron Paul’s eponymous newsletters. “Is Ron Paul a RACIST?” they indignantly inquire.

Short answer: No. No one who knows him--not a patient, not a fellow Congressman, not a constituent; neither political friends or enemies--is willing to make this claim for the camera. But, we’re nonetheless told, it’s important to look at the man’s record.

I agree. Let’s ASSUME he’s a racist. What follows? If you were black, whom would you rather vote for: a racist who nonetheless supports policies and programs that in fact benefit you, or a candidate who champions black equality but nonetheless supports programs that in fact harm you?

Let’s ASSUME Ron Paul is a racist; not, of course, a string-‘em-up lynch mob racist. But someone who makes broad and false generalizations about you and your character based on the color of your skin; who crosses the street at night to avoid you if he sees you approaching; who prefers not to deal with you as a customer, client, employee, or fellow club member. 

Such people should be shunned. But should they not be elected to high office? That would seem to depend on the policies they support. 

Ron Paul has strongly and almost alone called for ending the drug war. What has the drug war done to black America? According to scholar John McWhorter, writing for the Cato Institute (”How the War on Drugs Is Destroying Black America” , Cato’s Letter [Washington, DC: The Cato Institute, Winter, 2011, p. 1]

"The main obstacle to getting black America past the illusion that racism is still a defining factor in America is the strained relationship between young black men and police forces. The massive number of black men in prison stands as an ongoing and graphically resonant rebuke to all calls to “get past racism,” exhibit initiative, or stress optimism. And the primary reason for this massive number of black men in jail is the War on Drugs. Therefore, if the War on Drugs were terminated, the main factor keeping race-based resentment a core element in the American social fabric would no longer exist. America would be a better place for all."

The Drug Policy Alliance noted in March of this year:

"Mass arrests and incarceration of people of color – largely due to drug law violations – have hobbled families and communities by stigmatizing and removing substantial numbers of men and women. In the late 1990s, nearly one in three African-American men aged 20-29 were under criminal justice supervision,  while more than two out of five had been incarcerated – substantially more than had been incarcerated a decade earlier and orders of magnitudes higher than that for the general population. Today, 1 in 15 African-American children and 1 in 42 Latino children have a parent in prison, compared to 1 in 111 white children. In some areas, a large majority of African-American men – 55 percent in Chicago, for example– are labeled felons for life, and, as a result, may be prevented from voting and accessing public housing, student loans and other public assistance." [5 footnoted references in this quotation removed]

Even though Barack Obama is on record in his own autobiography as having used drugs when he was younger, he has done nothing to limit the harm to the black community, or Americans in general, from the drug war that he prosecutes as strongly as his predecessor George W. Bush. Meanwhile, Ron Paul, a physician on record as never having used illicit drugs and as counseling patients and political supporters not to use drugs, favors ending this blight on the black community. 

Black Americans make on average lower incomes than white Americans. Therefore the current recession--which Obama has been singularly unable to ameliorate--harms blacks to a greater degree; black unemployment is higher, and persistently so, than white unemployment. This is especially true of teenagers seeking their first step up the economic ladder to success. Economists across the political spectrum see increasing regulations on hiring, concerns about the as yet incalculable costs of Obamacare, and a high minimum wage as contributing to the black youth unemployment rate. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics black unemployment is almost twice that of the white youth unemployment rate--39.6% to 21.4%--under President Obama, who allowed the last increase in the minimum wage to go into effect in July, 2009, at the height of our recession. Obama supports expansive government regulations, increasing minimum wages, and Obamacare. Ron Paul opposes all these things. Therefore objectively blacks are economically better off under Paul’s economic policies than Obama’s nostrums.

The continued and persistent gap in black educational success in government K-12 schools is a moral blight on our nation. Ron Paul calls for major change in this area--ending No Child Left Behind, closing the Federal Department of Education, offering tax credits for education--while Obama wants to double down with more spending. Yet the government at all levels in the USA has doubled spending in inflation-adjusted per-capita education dollars over a generation, with NO change in reading, math, science or other basic skills. This, more than anything else, harms black America, and only Ron Paul wants fundamental change for the better:.

Blacks make up a disproportionate number of active service forces in the military. Since its an all-volunteer force, there is nothing wrong with that per se. But with 23% of active duty Army personnel being African-American, compared with 12.6% of the population as a whole, it follows that Blacks are disproportionately at risk when US politicians decide to go to war. Obama claimed he would end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq when he came into office in 2008. It’s taken him an entire first term to end the Iraq war, and only then because Iraqi Prime Minister Malaki refused Obama’s preference to keep American troops deployed in his country. Meanwhile, Obama is anticipating many more years of American troops in Afghanistan. Ron Paul, on the other hand, wants to end foreign wars and bring the troops home, arguing it is both safer and less costly to American blood and treasure...arguing, in effect, that we shouldn’t be willing to trade black blood for black gold.

I could go on, but here’s the hypothetical: ASSUME Ron Paul IS a racist. In that case he’s a racist with economic, civil liberties, educational, and foreign policy positions that happen in fact to benefit black Americans. Meanwhile, President Obama, whom we stipulate is NOT a racist, favors policies that in fact harm American blacks on many dimensions. 

If you were black, whom would you vote for?

Losing Jobs

Originally written: October 6, 2011

Steve Jobs died yesterday, at the young age of 56. The homages pour in from all over the world, on machines and via communication methods that he popularized and gave to the masses. 

The world is vastly richer, more pleasant, and a more exciting place to live and learn thanks to this one man, someone who gave us not only Toy Story but the most magical Toy Store the world has ever known, filled with the most amazing and engaging gadgets and tools.

Jobs once said, asked to comment on Bill Gates’ giving away most of his fortune, “My congratulations to Bill. He has realized there’s no benefit to being the richest guy in the cemetery.” But Steve Jobs likely will be the richest guy in the cemetery—not in terms of the money he earned…you really can’t take that with you…but in terms of the wealth he created each year for society…which, sadly, he must now take with him. It is lost to us as we move forward.

It is perhaps not the time, with Jobs’ passing less than 24 hours in the past, to focus on current politics. But as I ponder the loss of Steve Jobs, I can’t help but thinking of Elizabeth Warren with her stump speech —really, what wealth has she bestowed on society?—, explaining that Steve Jobs didn’t literally make the iPad and the iPhone and all the rest entirely on his own, and therefore he has to pay back, as if flooding the world with iPads and iPhones wasn’t enough, as if creating hundreds of thousands of high paying jobs throughout the globe wasn’t enough. I can’t help but thinking of President Obama, condemning billionaires. The White House released Obama’s homage to Jobs this morning: “America has lost a great visionary.” But we all know what he was really thinking: “America has lost a great visionary who didn’t pay enough taxes.”

Obama is pushing the idea that “billionaires” don’t pay enough, pushing the view that their wealth is unearned, pushing the view that people like Jobs get rich by taking from others rather than creating immense wealth for society. Pushing class warfare.

Warfare is generally something to avoid. Peace is preferred. But there is a saying from Jobs’ youth that comes back to haunt…No justice, no peace.