Author Topic: Two from Mangan  (Read 1281 times)

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Religious Dick

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Two from Mangan
« on: June 30, 2012, 02:22:46 AM »
Social Capabilities in Decline

Mankind has not been to the moon for a long time, and Bruce Charlton has made the argument that this is because we no longer have the ability. We can say until we're blue in the face, goes the argument, that we haven't sent men to the moon lately because we don't want to, because we feel we have better uses for the money or other projects to which the talent must be devoted, but the simplest explanation is that we don't because we, as a society, can't.

Because the task of getting to the moon was one imposed by politicians, and was not within our technical capability at the time, only the most talented engineers and project leaders were assigned to the task. The leaders had the ability to make crucial decisions without (much) bureaucratic interference. Now, however, government agencies such as NASA recruit personnel on the basis of qualities other than mere smarts and decisiveness, such as diversity, minority membership, obedience to the bureaucracy, and organization-man conformity, and recruiting on this basis means that the agencies don't necessarily have top talent.

Can we use the same argument about other social tasks, such as border control? We haven't controlled our borders for decades now, and the question is whether we can. It takes little technical expertise to do so, so not having top talent in that field shouldn't matter. But, as a society we now give priority to other values, such as cheap labor, diversity, or filling the ranks of voters for socialism. It could be argued that a simple policy change would do the trick, but despite endless polls that show that a large majority of Americans are against illegal immigration, nothing is ever done. So maybe as a society we don't control the borders because we're unable.

Another example might be the prosecution of a war. The U.S. had (has) specific war aims in Iraq and Afghanistan that it has not been able to fulfill. We have not succeeded, for example, in pacifying either country. A good way of looking at the problem is to say that we have not because we can not. Other priorities than war-winning have intruded onto war plans, and these include not looking like a bully to world opinion, an unwillingness to sacrifice American lives (not that that's a bad thing), an unwillingness to be seen killing the "enemy".

So it seems that there are a number of things we can no longer do. California can't build a bullet train because of bureaucratic bungling and environmental concerns. We could probably no longer build an interstate highway system. Oil refineries and nuclear power plants are virtually incapable of being built.

Posted by Dennis Mangan at 12:39 PM

http://mangans.blogspot.com/2012/06/social-capabilities-in-decline.html


I speak of civil, social man under law, and no other.
-Sir Edmund Burke

Religious Dick

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Re: Two from Mangan
« Reply #1 on: June 30, 2012, 02:26:35 AM »
Spot the Correlation: Wealth vs. Immigration



A commenter posted a link to the above graph that he compiled by the juxtaposition of two other graphs. It's more than just suggestive: it points to one of the main reasons that the rich have gotten richer while wages for the rest of us have stagnated. A greater share of national income has been going to capital in the past few decades, and a lower share to labor, and mass immigration has been a key strategy in the elites' grab for more money.

It can be seen that the post-WW2 era was the golden age for labor's share of national income, with its zenith around 1970 almost exactly corresponding to the low point for the fraction of the population composed of immigrants, about 4.7%. The postwar era was also the high tide for labor unions, but if this chart has any validity, unions were successful because companies couldn't just bypass them by hiring cheap labor.

Also, note that the peak for capital's share of income was 1928, four years after the passage of the 1924 immigration restriction law, and it began a downward sweep that lasted for decades. Coincidence?

For those who might say that public policy shouldn't be biased one way or another to either capital or labor, these are the same libertarians who believe that being an American citizen should carry no advantages whatsoever. We are not to be entitled to any restrictions on the ability of capital to undercut us at any time.

It's no wonder that people like Bloomberg and Soros and Gates constantly browbeat us about the "need" for more immigration: it's one way that they get richer.

Posted by Dennis Mangan at 10:06 AM

http://mangans.blogspot.com/2012/06/spot-correlation-wealth-vs-immigration.html
I speak of civil, social man under law, and no other.
-Sir Edmund Burke

Plane

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Re: Two from Mangan
« Reply #2 on: June 30, 2012, 01:30:01 PM »
  Nasa recently took a 20% cut in its planned funding. A lot of robot explorers are never going to be built.

  I don't agree with this demographic supposition, the peak government revenue also coincides with a high immagration period , and with the peak earning period of the baby boom generation.

    It is the age and entitlement situation that causes this dip in the charts, immagration actually can cause a bit of relief.