The New Jim Crow

[Amianthus]

Can you keep that up a long time?

Only about 35 years now... ;-)

[Plane]

What I first said about your numbers still applies - - they are purely speculative, based entirely on past performances, which cannot and do not guarantee future performances,  as you yourself well know.

There is nothing "speculative" about adding up past expenditures. Although I would love to see you argue that point with an auditor.

"No, I shouldn't be taxed on that income that I deposited into the bank - it was purely speculative, it might or might not have actually come in."

Wait one , doesn't Mike's Objection appl;y to his own figures too?

[Amianthus]

Wait one , doesn't Mike's Objection appl;y to his own figures too?

I pointed that out earlier. He glossed over it.

[Michael Tee]

<<There is nothing "speculative" about adding up past expenditures. Although I would love to see you argue that point with an auditor.>>

Why would I argue with an auditor over a proposition that I happen to agree with?  There is nothing speculative about adding up past expenditures.  What is speculative is when you add them up and say "This is what is going to be spent over the next 20 years."

<<"No, I shouldn't be taxed on that income that I deposited into the bank - it was purely speculative, it might or might not have actually come in.">>

Very funny, but it certainly doesn't apply to the situation of you and your extrapolations.  It should be more like, "No, I shouldn't have to pay tax on the next 20 years of my income because nobody really knows what it's gonna be, you're just speculating on it."

Guess what?   The auditor would probably agree with you.

[Plane]

<<If treatment rates between races prove that rates of use are diffrent , then incarceration rates also prove that rates of use are diffrent .>>

Not really, since the hospital ER users are largely self-admitted or medically admitted, there is little to no opportunity for the hospital itself to influence who is going to walk in its doors.   OTOH, admission into the criminal justice system is not all that voluntary.  The perps don't walk themselves into the stations and their families don't rush to bring them in either.  The people in the system are more often than not - - probably 99% to 1% - - dragged in by the system and thus their numbers in the system is a lot more reflective of who the system wants to drag into its maw than the number of ER patients is reflective of who the hospitals are dragging in.

Or, who takes the drugs and who comitts the crimes are allmost all volenteers.

Your figures indicate who has better health care insurance and who can hire better lawyers as well as anything elese .


Or...


They could reflect an actual differential in the number of crimes comitted.

Why not?

Doesn't Occams razor apply?



I think it does not , because these stats are too cluttered to be considered data.  No one thing is indicated at all.


If you insist on finding proof in this mash of stuff pretending to be data , then I insist that you accept also my findings that Males are suffering from bias since the evidence is of simular quality and type.

[Amianthus]

What is speculative is when you add them up and say "This is what is going to be spent over the next 20 years."

Good thing that I didn't say that, then. That would be stupid anyway. We'll always spend MORE in the future than in the past.

My estimate for the past 20 years of expenditures was fairly sound - I sampled 5 evenly spaced years, totaled, and multiplied by 4. I doubt I'm off by more than 5%.

For my future estimate, I took the current budget and assumed that it will not increase (thereby getting a minimum figure). To be more accurate, I could have factored in an increase roughly equal to a COL increase of about 3% to get closer.

[Michael Tee]

<<So, you are saying that no health care costs would have accrued for these vets had the war in Iraq not cropped up? Our troops are so perfectly healthy that it costs nothing in health care unless we go to war?>>

No, what I am saying is that if you take 100,000 troops who have stayed home in the  U.S.A. for a year and 100,000 troops who have been in Iraq for that same year, I am guessing that you will have a shitload more medical, rehab and long-term health-care costs for . . .  well, YOU figure it out.

You take the forces who DON'T go to Iraq, and their health-care costs are the base-line.  You calculate a base-line medical, rehab and health-care costs, and then you calculate the projected actuals, and the COST of the war in terms of medical, rehab and long-term health-care (and funeral and death benefits) is the DIFFERENCE between the base-line expenditures and the calculated actuals.

[Amianthus]

You take the forces who DON'T go to Iraq, and their health-care costs are the base-line.  You calculate a base-line medical, rehab and health-care costs, and then you calculate the projected actuals, and the COST of the war in terms of medical, rehab and long-term health-care (and funeral and death benefits) is the DIFFERENCE between the base-line expenditures and the calculated actuals.

You have evidence that this is what was done? I'm pretty sure that one of the criticisms of the methodology used to arrive at the $3T was that they used the TOTAL health care costs of the military.

[Plane]

<<So, you are saying that no health care costs would have accrued for these vets had the war in Iraq not cropped up? Our troops are so perfectly healthy that it costs nothing in health care unless we go to war?>>

No, what I am saying is that if you take 100,000 troops who have stayed home in the  U.S.A. for a year and 100,000 troops who have been in Iraq for that same year, I am guessing that you will have a shitload more medical, rehab and long-term health-care costs for . . .  well, YOU figure it out.

You take the forces who DON'T go to Iraq, and their health-care costs are the base-line.  You calculate a base-line medical, rehab and health-care costs, and then you calculate the projected actuals, and the COST of the war in terms of medical, rehab and long-term health-care (and funeral and death benefits) is the DIFFERENCE between the base-line expenditures and the calculated actuals.

Is that what was done?

Then how did such a high figure emerge?

Was he projecting WWI or VetNam rates of Injury?

After the Civil war , the number of injured  was phenominal , we are not going to get into that order of magnitude of expense . I note that, though it was close that time, the nation did survive that expenditure.

[Michael Tee]

<<Or, who takes the drugs and who comitts the crimes are allmost all volenteers.

<<Your figures indicate who has better health care insurance and who can hire better lawyers as well as anything elese .>>

Not at all, since the hospital ER's are obliged to treat all who show up, better health insurance has nothing much to do with it.  And since the bulk of criminal defences especially for less serious offences like simple possession are handled by the Public Defender's offices, better lawyering has nothing to do with it either.  Nice try, though.


<<Or...


<<They could reflect an actual differential in the number of crimes comitted.

<<Why not?>>

Why not?  Because we weren't talking about all crimes all across the board, we had a differential between two systems, one of which goes out looking for bodies  and the other of which has virtually no recruiting system whatsoever.  The recruitment-neutral system clearly shows more white kids than blacks (proportionately) using illegal drugs, but the system that recruits its victims (law enforcement) shows a definite systemic bias in favour of recruiting young black males.

<<Doesn't Occams razor apply?>>  

YES  SIR!!!!   God-damn right it applies.  It applies because we can assume that if law enforcement is racist in apprehending blacks over whites for drug use (where there's an independent measuring system available in the hospital ERs) then it is also racist in apprehending blacks over whites in all other criminal offences.  To assume otherwise would be to reason that for some unknown cause, police and courts are racially biased against black dopers, but not racially biased against black car thieves, black burglars, black robbers, etc.  That is ludicrous.  Occams Razor tells us that if they're biased against black dopers, they're just plain biased against all blacks.  That they are, as everyone knows but no one wants to admit, racist.


<<I think it does not , because these stats are too cluttered to be considered data.  No one thing is indicated at all.>>

I guess what it really boils down to is professional differences of opinion between statisticians.  The statisticians who put together these studies have some degree of faith in their reliability, and other statisticians such as yourself do not.  Oh well.  What can you do when the experts themselves do not agree?

<<If you insist on finding proof in this mash of stuff pretending to be data , then I insist that you accept also my findings that Males are suffering from bias since the evidence is of simular quality and type.>>

Well, I guess it comes down to the fact that some of us think the difference between black males and white males is as big as, or bigger, than the differences between men and women.  Personally, I don't see it that way, but then what the hell would I know?  I was born and raised in Ontario, not Georgia, so I guess I'm pretty naive about these things.

[Michael Tee]

I looks  like I need to make it clear that when I spoke of calculating the loss as being a question of measuring the projected actual expenditures over an extrapolated base-line expenditure, I was merely describing a standard accounting technique for measuring financial or monetary loss, not attempting to explain what actual methodology was used by Stiglitz and Bilmes.  I wouldn't presume.

As for plane's reference to Civil War medical costs, it's a well-known fact that due to advances in battlefield medicine, you have much larger numbers of combatants surviving their wounds, living longer and claiming more benefits.  Instead of giving the guy a wooden leg or an iron hook, they are claiming rehab and prosthetics that can run into the millions and IMHO, this is only the start of it.  Even in the Viet Nam war, U.S. airforce planners aimed to cripple rather than kill on the theory that every wounded tied up a minimum of three persons to care for him or her.