England Prevails! Or not. The Invisible Hand is weighing in now.
by Adam L Silverman| 152 Comments
This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Open Threads, Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You, Silverman on Security, Get off my grass you damned kids, Going Galt, I Reject Your Reality and Substitute My Own
England Prevails! Or not. The Invisible Hand is weighing in now.
This post is in: Because of wow., C.R.E.A.M., Open Threads, Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You, World's Best Healthcare (If You Can Afford It), Ever Get The Feeling You've Been Cheated?
As explained at Slate:
On Sunday night John Oliver staged what he described as “the largest one-time giveaway in television show history,” giving $14,922,261.76 to nearly 9,000 lucky Texans. Or maybe not-so-lucky Texans, at least until Sunday: The money came in the form of forgiveness for out-of-statute medical debts, debts so old they could no longer be recovered in court. It was part of a lengthy investigation into the shady ethics and questionable practices of debt buyers, companies that buy up debts for pennies on the dollar and go to great, sometimes illegal lengths to collect them…
The broader case Oliver is making is that the entire debt buying industry is corrupt and underregulated, not just the most laughably incompetent collectors. It’s difficult to argue after seeing his footage of the Debt Buyers Association’s annual conference, in which trade group members scoff at the idea of their debtor’s legal rights. But the strongest argument Oliver makes that the industry needs work is that they let him become a part of it. Without too much hassle, he was able to set up his own debt collection company and purchased a portfolio of nearly $15 million in Texas medical debts. (Total cost: less than $60,000.) Then, with the press of a giant red button, he forgave all $15 million. As best as the staff of Last Week Tonight could figure, this gives Oliver the record for largest giveaway (previously held by Oprah Winfrey for giving her audience cars). Given the misery debt buyers and collection agencies cause, it’s hard to imagine any late-night host doing more concrete good for such a small cash outlay—but here’s hoping they make a competition of it.
Oliver’s deft at turning jokes about what’s actually a horrific situation: America’s self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe have birthed an entire industry based on screwing every last penny out of the victims of medical catastrophes. I cannot believe this is the best and highest purpose for the richest, most advanced society on the planet.
by Hillary Rettig| 171 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, Politics, Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You
Years ago, a NYC cabbie gave me this sage piece of advice: “The only way to get crosstown during rush hour is to be born there.”
Apparently this is truer than it seemed at the time. Economist Robert Frank has a piece in The Times detailing the strong link between luck and success:
One’s date of birth can matter enormously, for example. According to a 2008 study, most children born in the summer tend to be among the youngest members of their class at school, which appears to explain why they are significantly less likely to hold leadership positions during high school and thus, another study indicates, less likely to land premium jobs later in life. Similarly, according to research published in the journal Economics Letters in 2012, the number of American chief executives who were born in June and July is almost one-third lower than would be expected on the basis of chance alone.
Even the first letter of a person’s last name can explain significant achievement gaps. Assistant professors in the 10 top-ranked American economics departments, for instance, were more likely to be promoted to tenure the earlier the first letter of their last names fell in the alphabet, a 2006 study found. Researchers attributed this to the custom in economics of listing co-authors’ names alphabetically on papers, noting that no similar effect existed for professors in psychology, whose names are not listed alphabetically.
Particularly interesting that bit about econ departments, given that many economists no doubt consider themselves exemplary Rational Actors.
Much of this will be familiar to those who have read Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers. But it can never be said enough–especially as the people who most need to hear it are the ones most resistant to hearing it. Sadly, the problem isn’t just whiny billionaires; the article’s comments section is filled with a lot of, “Yes, but I work harder than all those other guys.”
*The bloody-but-wise Charlemagne, from the original cast album of Pippin.
Smarter to be Lucky Than Lucky to Be Smart*Post + Comments (171)
This post is in: Austerity Bombing, Cruz-ifiction, Election 2016, Free Markets Solve Everything, Fuck The Middle-Class, Fuck The Poor, Getting The Band Back Together, Republican Stupidity, Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You, Vote Like Your Country Depends On It, Assholes, Bring On The Meteor, Sociopaths, Somewhere a Village is Missing its Idiot, Their Motto: Apocalypse Now
Look who Ted Cruz has recruited as his economic advisor:
If it’s true that a man can be judged by the company he keeps, what are we to make of the appointment of former Sen. Phil Gramm as economic advisor to the Presidential campaign of Ted Cruz?
Cruz made the appointment Friday, when he collected Gramm’s endorsement of his quest for the Presidency.
As Micheal Hiltzik points out in his coverage of this — what’s the word?– curious appointment, Gramm is exactly whom you’d choose if one global financial meltdown just wasn’t delicious enough:
Gramm left a long record as a dedicated financial deregulator on Capitol Hill, with much of his effort aimed at freeing up trading in derivatives. That’s why he’s often identified as one of the godfathers of the 2008 financial crisis, which was spurred in part by banks’ imprudent trading and investing in these extremely complex financial instruments.
Gramm himself is undeterred by his own disastrous record, and clearly Cruz is equally unbothered. That would be why both men are ignoring Gramm’s last appearance as a campaign surrogate:
Gramm’s previous stint as a Presidential campaign advisor ended inauspiciously. That was in 2008, when he served as co-chairman of John McCain’s Presidential run.
Gramm’s most notable moment in that position came on July 10, 2008, when he dismissed the developing economic crisis as “a mental recession” in an interview–and video–released by the conservative Washington Times. “We’ve never been more dominant,” he said. “We’ve never had more natural advantages than we have today. We’ve sort of become a nation of whiners.” McCain immediately disavowed the remarks, and a few days later Gramm stepped down as his campaign co-chairman.
I’m assuming that Ted Cruz does actually hope to become president, and thus makes his choices in the belief that they will advance him to that end. So I can only see two possible interpretations for this exhuming of one of the most egregious poster children for GOP economic failure.
One is that this is what epistemic closure looks like when it’s at home. It takes a hermetic seal between you and reality to think the “nation of whiners” trope is a winner this year (or ever, really, but especially now).
The other is that this is just trolling, or rather yet one more instance of believing an action is simply good in itself, transcendently so, if it pisses liberals off. Which lands Cruz — and the GOP — in exactly the same place as option one: doubling down on the crazy for reasons extremely clear only to those with the correct implants in their upper left second molar.
All of which is to say that I remain firm in my belief that the entity identifying itself as Senator Cruz is in fact one of these guys.
“Where are we going?”
“Galt’s Gulch”
“When?”
“Real soon!”
Image: J. W. M. Turner, Sunrise With Sea Monsters, 1845
This post is in: Election 2016, Fuck The Middle-Class, Fuck The Poor, Hail to the Hairpiece, Republicans in Disarray!, Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You, Ever Get The Feeling You've Been Cheated?, Jump! You Fuckers!, Our Awesome Meritocracy, Our Failed Political Establishment
…comes from Thomas Edsall at The New York Times
He answers his question “Why Trump Now?” by looking at the material reasons for working-class white disaffection, not just with the post-civil-rights Democratic Party, but with the cabal to whom that group turned in increasing numbers from 1968 forward. He writes:
The share of the gross national product going to labor as opposed to the share going to capital fell from 68.8 percent in 1970 to 60.7 percent by 2013, according to Loukas Karabarbounis, an economics professor at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.
Even more devastating, the number of manufacturing jobs dropped by 36 percent, from 19.3 million in 1979 to 12.3 million in 2015, while the population increased by 43 percent, from 225 million to 321 million.
The postwar boom, when measured by the purchasing power of the average paycheck, continued into the early 1970s and then abruptly stopped (see the accompanying chart).
In other words, the economic basis for voter anger has been building over forty years. Starting in 2000, two related developments added to worsening conditions for the middle and working classes…
If you’re too busy the TL:DR of those two developments are the interrelated facts that from the year 2ooo, upward mobility reversed itself, with more people falling into the middle class and poverty and fewer making it up the ladder — and the impact of China and its increasing integration into a world-wide free-trade regimen. Edsall’s reporting on the China development — with its accompanying misreading by free-trade elites — is particularly sharp.
Add to that, as Edsall does, the TARP bailout after the elite-engineered collapse of 2007-8 and the Citizens United decision and you have specific and plausible reasons for Republican working class voters (and everyone else, of course) to see their chosen political leaders as shills and swindlers:
By opening the door to the creation of SuperPACs and giving Wall Street and other major financial sectors new ways to buy political outcomes, the courts gave the impression, to say the least, that they favored establishment interests over those of the less well off.
Edsall’s conclusion?
The tragedy of the 2016 campaign is that Trump has mobilized a constituency with legitimate grievances on a fool’s errand.
The crux for this year is exactly that: Lots of Americans have been screwed — systematically, with comprehensive effect — for decades. The material losses they – we — have suffered are real. The responses Trump offers, such as they are, may be hopelessly at odds with any actual redress of those wrongs. But any campaign (are you listening, Hillary?) that ignores the fact that two generations of Americans now have seen the basic expectations of life reversed is going to have hard time winning, just by pointing out that Trump’s bloviating won’t help either.
Image: David Vinckbooms, Distribution of Loaves to the Poor, first half of the 17th century.
This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Cruz-ifiction, Election 2016, Open Threads, Republican Venality, Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You, Assholes, Ever Get The Feeling You've Been Cheated?
First there was the “voter report card” fraud in Iowa, then the fake fund-raising checks. The Cruz campaign is obviously, publicly comfortable with skating as close to the ethical line as they can get away with. Now the AP is casting some light on Cruz’s data-collecting app… and its beneficiaries:
Protecting the privacy of law-abiding citizens from the government is a pillar of Ted Cruz’s Republican presidential candidacy, but his campaign is testing the limits of siphoning personal data from supporters.
His “Cruz Crew” mobile app is designed to gather detailed information from its users’ phones — tracking their physical movements and mining the names and contact information for friends who might want nothing to do with his campaign.
That information and more is then fed into a vast database containing details about nearly every adult in the United States to build psychological profiles that target individual voters with uncanny accuracy.
Cruz’s sophisticated analytics operation was heralded as key to his victory in Iowa earlier this month — the first proof, his campaign said, that the system has the potential to power him to the nomination…
Data-mining to help candidates win elections has been increasing among both Republicans and Democrats. Mobile apps by other presidential campaigns also collect some information about users. But The Associated Press found the Cruz campaign’s app — downloaded to more than 61,000 devices so far — goes furthest to glean personal data.
The Cruz app prompts supporters to register using their Facebook logins, giving the campaign access to personal information such as name, age range, gender, location and photograph, plus lists of friends and relatives. Those without a Facebook account must either provide an email address or phone number to use the app…
Cruz’s app also transmits to the campaign each user’s physical location whenever the app is active, unless a user declines to allow it. The campaign said it does this “so that we can connect you to other Cruz Crew users based on your particular geographic location.”
The campaign tells users it can share all the personal information it collects with its consultants or other organizations, groups, causes, campaigns or political organizations with similar viewpoints or goals.
It also shares the material with analytics companies. Cruz’s campaign combines the information with data from a group called Cambridge Analytica, which has been involved in his efforts since fall 2014. A Cambridge investor, Robert Mercer, has given more money than anyone else to outside groups supporting Cruz.
Cambridge has a massive 10 terabyte database — enough to fill more than 2,100 DVDs — that contains as many as 5,000 biographical details about the 240 million Americans of voting age. Cambridge considers its methodology highly secretive, but it may include such details as household income, employment status, credit history, party affiliation, church membership and spending habits. Cambridge uses powerful computers and proprietary algorithms to predict Americans’ personality traits…
Cruz, the junior senator from Texas, has been outspoken about protecting Americans’ personal information from the government, including the National Security Agency. “Instead of a government that seizes your emails and your cellphones, imagine a federal government that protected the privacy rights of every American,” he said when announcing his campaign.
Cruz campaign officials say it’s different for the government versus a campaign to collect data. Sickle said Cruz is building on the use of big data pioneered by the successful Democratic campaigns of Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012.
“It’s not like we’re giving it to the NSA,” Sickle said.
A campaign spokeswoman, Alice Stewart, added: “Why wouldn’t we want to use every tool available to us to win?”…
I’m assuming, apart from disingenuous campaign disclaimers, data mining at this granularity would also be very, very valuable to any corporation large enough to pay either Cruz or Cambridge Analytica. But as long as it’s not the nasty, low-minded gubmint getting all up in your psychographics, it’s all good — right, Freedumb luvvers?
Open Thread: TrusTED (to Screw Over His Voters)Post + Comments (233)
This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Excellent Links, Movies, Open Threads, Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You
Half of the population is below average, so it’s hardly surprising that there’s a market for fart jokes/racism/misogyny from a reliable delivery agent like Adam Sandler. Kevin Lincoln, at NYMag, explains why the outsized success of Netflix’s least loveable product shouldn’t be a shock, either:
[Wednesday] Netflix announced that The Ridiculous 6, Adam Sandler’s abysmal Western movie-thing, has been watched more in its first 30 days on the service than any other film during its 30 days. The. Ridiculous. Six.
Now, the instinct here—and it’s an understandable one, because, again, The. Ridiculous. Six.—is to say that Netflix is lying, or, more specifically, putting dizzying spin on their data. “Of course they’re saying it’s their most-watched movie,” you think. “Netflix made it! It’s a Netflix original! They’ve got a stake in this!” You’d be making a legitimate point. We have no glimpse into the metrics behind this claim; for all we know, Netflix has been auto-playing the movie on your Apple TV while you sleep. For all we know, nobody has watched The Ridiculous 6. Have you?
But far more likely is that they’re telling the truth. The most important thing is to consider what Netflix is. Then, once we come to terms with that, we have to consider what this means. Because it means something significant, both about filmmaking in general and what Netflix is as a company in particular.
Since Netflix started streaming movies and not just sending them by mail, it’s had an eclectic selection. Netflix licenses movies to stream; they don’t own any of this content. At any given time, a movie can disappear or appear on the service based on the unforeseen jockeying of its distributor and Netflix…
..[One] case in particular stands out. Back in 2012, the Duplass brothers executive-produced a movie called Safety Not Guaranteed. They made it for just $750,000, and Mark acted in it, along with Aubrey Plaza and Jake Johnson. It was directed by a first-timer named Colin Trevorrow. During a limited theatrical run that never reached 200 theaters, it made $4 million — good money for such a cheap film, but nothing that’ll buy anyone an estate in Malibu.
Safety Not Guaranteed then landed on Netflix some time in early 2013, where it stayed until August 2014. I’ve spoken with multiple filmmakers who stressed that the exposure Safety Not Guaranteed obtained on Netflix transformed their ideas about distribution. For whatever reason — likely a mix of positive response from audiences and its surprisingly wide-ranging appeal — Safety Not Guaranteed seemed to basically live on the Netflix front-page the entire time it was on the service, showing up as a recommendation and in the various category scrolls. Now its director, who had never overseen a movie that cost more than a million dollars prior to 2015, directed Jurassic World, which was briefly the highest-grossing opener of all time. Next up, he will direct a Star Wars movie…
Pecunia non olet: Money has no stink.
Speaking of crappy movies, what overrated / underrated films have you perused with discernment recently?