Demographics – Page 5 – The Wrongologist

Saturday Soother – August 20, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Stormy view from House Mountain, Sedona, AZ – August 2022 photo by Ed Mitchell

Tens of thousands of teacher openings are unfilled as students head back to American classrooms. That’s prompting states and school districts to try everything they can to address the teacher shortage.

Except increase their pay. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) has tracked teacher compensation for 18 years. Here’s the headline:

“…teachers are paid less (in weekly wages and total compensation) than their nonteacher college-educated counterparts, and the situation has worsened considerably over time.”

EPI tracks what they call the relative teacher wage penalty, the relative wages and total compensation of teachers compared to other college graduates. Here are the EPI’s findings:

Inflation-adjusted average weekly wages of teachers have been relatively flat since 1996. The average weekly wages of public school teachers (adjusted for inflation) increased just $29 from 1996 to 2021, while inflation-adjusted weekly wages of other college graduates rose from $1,564 to $2,009 —a $445 increase.

The relative teacher wage penalty reached a record high in 2021. It was 23.5% in 2021, up from 6.1% in 1996. The penalty was worse for men than for women. The penalty for men rose from 18.6% to 35.2%.
The great portfolio of teachers’ benefits used to be a selling point, but it hasn’t been enough to offset the growing wage penalty. The teacher total compensation penalty was 14.2% in 2021 (a 23.5% wage penalty offset by a 9.3% benefits advantage).
The relative teacher wage penalty exceeds 20% in 28 states. Teacher weekly wage penalties estimated for each state range from 3.4% in Rhode Island to 35.9% in Colorado. In 28 states, teachers are paid less than 80 cents on the dollar earned by similar college-educated workers.

The EPI has a chart showing the relative erosion of teacher wages vs. other college graduates since 1980:

The EPI focuses on “weekly wages” to avoid the comparisons of length of the work year (i.e., the “summers off” issue for teachers).

Add to this the general decline in working conditions for teachers, and many who are eligible for retirement are leaving. Republicans in particular are politicizing education. Some are pushing the idea of “parental rights.” That is happening in Florida, Texas and in other states. It’s clear that in some school districts parents want the right to censor what’s being taught. Some Conservatives are pushing for a camera in every classroom across America. Tucker Carlson called for cameras in classrooms to “oversee the people teaching your children, forming their minds.”

This comes under the guise of “transparency in the classroom”, parents keeping an eye on teachers, so they won’t teach the dreaded Critical Race Theory (or groom kids to become trans, or gay). Teachers naturally bristle at the idea of video auditing.

Forcing teacher compliance with imposed politicized curricula won’t make these jobs any more desirable.

Some states are relaxing licensing requirements to make it easier for people to fill some of those unfilled jobs. Florida, which has about 8,000 open teaching positions, is allowing military veterans without a bachelor’s degree and no prior teaching experience to apply for a temporary five-year teaching certificate while they finish their bachelor’s degrees.

The biggest issues to solve are better public school funding, which can help end the teacher wage penalty. That requires towns to raise taxes. Second, the politicization of education is changing the amount of parental control in the day-to-day operations in some school districts. That’s making teaching an even lower-status job than it is now.

According to the BLS, there are currently 300,000 fewer teachers nationwide compared to before the pandemic. Part of this is job satisfaction. A survey from the American Federation of Teachers found that 74% of teachers were dissatisfied with their job, up from 41% two years ago.

If teachers and staff are underpaid, under-resourced and are now being second-guessed in the classroom, they’re not going to stay. So replacing them will become an even bigger problem.

Enough of this week’s problems, it’s time for our Saturday Soother! Let’s put Trump’s secrets and Liz Cheney’s political prospects on pause. We’re facing moderate drought conditions here in CT, so lawn mowing has ceased, and our grass is brown and crunchy.

But, it’s time to empty our minds, so that we can begin filling them up again on Monday. Start by grabbing a cold glass of lemonade and a seat in the shade.

Now, watch and listen to Antonin Dvorak’s “4 miniatures”, for 2 Violins and Viola, played here by the Musicians of Lenox Hill at Temple Israel of the City of New York in April 2019:

Tuesday Wake Up Call, Unhappiness Edition – July 26, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Smoke in Yosemite Valley from the nearby Oak fire – July 25, 2022 photo via Today’s California

At a family party this weekend, my daughter who owns an upscale restaurant, mentioned that while post-Covid, the restaurant is full again, the patrons are much more mean and nasty. That made Wrongo revisit the answers to the latest data on the happiness of Americans from the General Social Survey (GSS), produced by NORC, a nonpartisan research organization at the University of Chicago.

The GSS has been monitoring societal change since 1972. The last GSS survey came out in January 2022. Here’s a significant chart:

Since 1972, the GSS has asked the question: “Taken all together, how would you say things are these days–would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?” As you can see above, historically the “very happy” people have outnumbered the “not too happy” group by about 3:1 for about 45 years.

But in 2021, the very-happies plummeted from 31% of the population in 2018 down to 19%, while the not-too-happies surged to 24% (the “pretty happys” remained constant at about 57%). For the first time in polling history, Americans are more likely to say they’re not happy than to say they’re very happy.

The Institute for Family Studies (IFS) has taken a look at the GSS data to see what’s driving this precipitous change. Here’s their chart of unhappiness by age:

Until 2018, fewer than 18% of Americans ages 35 and over claimed to be “not too happy”, while fewer than 16% of Americans under 35 had done so. But in 2021, unhappiness rocketed upwards for both groups, to 22% for those 35 and over, and to 30% for those under age 35.

The sharp increase for those under 35 indicates young adults are carrying a unique burden. They’re taking an extraordinarily dim view of the world and their own lives.

Among young adults, different groups had different levels of unhappiness even before Covid. For example, only 6% of married people said they were “not too happy,” versus 16% of the unmarried. The question is whether all groups saw the same spike in unhappiness. Here’s another chart from the IFS:

Unhappiness rose for every group: In each case, the red bars are higher than the blue bars.

In the GSS, social class didn’t protect people very much: Unhappiness rose about 16% for people with prestigious jobs vs. 15% for other people. People who attended college saw their unhappiness rise by 16% vs. 15% for people who didn’t attend college.

Some demographic traits did matter: Men saw their unhappiness rise 18%, vs. 12% for women. Unhappiness rose about 17% for non-Hispanic whites, vs. 12% for racial and ethnic minorities.

Religion seems to have buffered unhappiness. Among people who attended religious services at least two times per month, unhappiness rose only 4%, the smallest increase of any group.

Liberal Americans saw the largest increase in unhappiness of any group, by 19%. For moderates, it was 15%, and for conservatives, 13%. Despite what Tucker Carlson might try to make of this, the IFS says that given the sample sizes involved, those differences aren’t statistically significant.

We can blame the Covid pandemic for much of the increase in unhappiness, but we’ve also seen huge social disruption. Here’s a chart showing the percentage of 25-34 year-olds living with parents or relatives in the US:

In 1970, 11% lived with their parents, while in 2020, it was 29%. Note the decline in living with a spouse. From 80% to 38%. While people are getting married later, living alone is relatively unchanged since 1980.

This has occurred during a period when there was very little upside in real wages, and a huge increase in financial assets, which few young adults have, and in the cost of housing. This may also partially explain why young people are unhappy.

We’re about to head into a global recession and most of our politicians have zero idea how bad it will be, or how to fix it. When it comes to the midterm elections, nearly a third of voters say it doesn’t matter who wins.

Time to wake up America! We’re hoping that demography will save us before climate change slays us, or fascism overtakes us.

To help you wake up, listen to 9 year-old musical prodigy Ellen Alaverdyan perform a cover of Geddy Lee‘s iconic bassline on the classic Rush song “Tom Sawyer”:

Scroll away from the video, and she sounds like a pro. Very nice!

US Military Needs Recruits

The Daily Escape:

Old Victorian farmhouse between Santa Cruz and Salinas, CA – photo by Dave Alvin

The NYT has a report about how hard it is for the US military to find new recruits:

“Almost across the board, the armed forces are experiencing large shortfalls in enlistments this year — a deficit of thousands of entry-level troops that is on pace to be worse than any since just after the Vietnam War. It threatens to throw a wrench into the military’s machinery, leaving critical jobs unfilled and some platoons with too few people to function.”

“The Army is the largest of the armed forces, and….As of late June, it had recruited only about 40% of the roughly 57,000 new soldiers it wants to put in boots by Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.”

Still more: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Less than a quarter of young American adults are physically fit to enlist and have no disqualifying criminal record, a proportion that has shrunk steadily in recent years. And shifting attitudes toward military service mean that now only about one in 10 young people say they would even consider it.”

This is shocking. You don’t have to be a competitive athlete to join the Army. Too many young men have prison records. The military should seriously consider issuing waivers for criminal history. A willingness to die for one’s country should be seen as a gigantic step towards rehabilitation.

And since just 10% of potential recruits are willing to consider serving, young people have obviously understood the lessons of Afghanistan and Iraq. Why would young people want to die for wasteful wars of choice that have nothing at all to do with protecting their country?

These shortfalls put pressure on the military to bring in people who are either marginally qualified or unqualified. Wrongo ran a US Army unit in Germany during the Vietnam war. Back then, the US Army couldn’t recruit enough people who met its basic standards. The DOD came up with a program called Project 100,000 in October 1966 to recruit new soldiers who previously had been below the military’s mental or medical standards.

Project 100,000 personnel died at higher rates than other Americans serving in Vietnam. In Germany, more of our Project 100,000 soldiers served time in military jails than did our regular recruits. The project was ended in December 1971.

It looks like the Army is currently walking toward implementing a similar solution to the same problem it had 45 years ago.

Since jobs are plentiful in America, and wages have increased, the military has to compete by sweetening their deal with signing bonuses (up to $50,000). The military has also downsized. The number of active-duty service members is now about half of what it was in the 1980s and it’s projected to keep decreasing.

Also, the shabby way we treat our veterans hasn’t gone unnoticed by young people. The Watson Institute researches the cost of the Afghan war. They say that more than 40% of the troops who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan have already been approved to receive lifetime disability benefits. This is what happens when you continually redeploy the same soldiers into a 20-year long battle. Many get permanently injured.

And most of the costs associated with caring for post-9/11 veterans have yet to be paid, and will continue to accrue for years into the future.

July marks the 40^th anniversary of doing away with the draft. We instituted the all-volunteer army because during the Vietnam War, significant numbers of draftees didn’t want to serve. The all-volunteer army was a bad idea then, and it’s still a bad idea. The post-9/11 wars were the first major test of our all-volunteer military.

Leaving aside their bravery and personal sacrifice, which was profound, how do you think they did?

On September 11, 2001, roughly one in every four American men were military veterans. But over the past two decades, the number of veterans in the population has declined to fewer than one in eight.

We need to re-institute the draft to spread the responsibility for our defense to all Americans. Barring reinstituting the draft, the number of military in our population will continue to decline. The Census Bureau projects that the number of veterans will be just 1 in 14 by 2040. By 2050, when the costs of providing medical care and benefits for veterans of the post-9/11 wars reaches its peak, few Americans will have a direct relative who was involved in those wars.

The other benefit of a draft is that it exposes young people to others of all races, ethnicities, and beliefs, and forces them to find ways to get along to accomplish a mission.

That would be both a refreshing and necessary change.

Saturday Soother – June 18, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Rainy morning, with Vista House at Crown Point in right foreground, Columbia River Gorge, WA – June 2022 photo by David Leahy Photography

Wrongo has written before about the crushing burden of consumer debt in the US. Medical debt is an American disgrace, and Noam Levey, Kaiser Health News (KHN) Senior Correspondent has written an excellent piece about it. He says that 100 million people in America, some 41% of adults, owe some level of debt to healthcare providers.

But most studies don’t reveal the actual extent of the debt because much of it appears as credit card balances, loans from family, or payment plans arranged with hospitals and other medical providers. To calculate the true extent and burden of this debt, KHN partnered with NPR, and the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) to conduct a nationwide poll designed to capture not just bills patients couldn’t afford, but other forms of borrowing used to pay for health care.

The results are contained in the KFF Health Care Debt Survey. The KFF poll found that half of US adults don’t have the cash to cover an unexpected $500 health care bill. As a result, many simply don’t pay their medical bills. The flood of unpaid bills has made medical debt the most common form of consumer debt in America.

Over the past five years, more than half of US adults report they’ve gone into debt because of medical or dental bills. Moreover, a quarter of adults with health care debt owe more than $5,000, and about 20% with any amount of debt said they don’t expect to ever pay it off.

Debt incurred for health care is forcing many families to cut spending on food and other essentials. The poll also found that millions are being driven from their homes or into bankruptcy:

So, if 100 million people were in debt and 17% declared bankruptcy or lost their home, that’s 17 million people! The KFF poll found that the debt is also preventing Americans from saving for retirement, investing in their children’s educations, or buying a home. And debt from health care is nearly twice as common for adults under 30 as for those 65 and older. And that age cohort is supposed to be much healthier than the elderly.

Perversely, about 1 in 7 people with medical debt said they’ve been denied access to a hospital, doctor, or other provider because of unpaid bills. An even greater share (two-thirds) have put off care that they, or a family member need because of the cost.

Hospitals are among the culprits. They are capitalizing on their patients’ inability to pay. Hospitals and other medical providers are pushing millions of patients who can’t afford to pay into credit cards and other loans. These are high interest rate loans, carrying rates that top 29%, according to research firm IBISWorld.

This collections business is fed by hospitals, including public university systems and nonprofits granted tax breaks to serve their communities, who sell the outstanding debt to collections companies.

Welcome to the best country on earth, (maybe) one that doesn’t have the best health care system (and certainly one without health insurance for all). We have a system which shackles 100 million people to medical debt while at the click of a computer mouse, we send $billions in armaments overseas before those same dollars are recycled into the coffers of our Military-Industrial complex.

That’s all for this week. It’s time for our Saturday Soother, when we take a break from the J6 public hearings and whether Ginni Thomas was another Trumpist plotter. Let’s focus on calming ourselves for whatever insults are coming next week.

Here at the Mansion of Wrong, we’re engaged in an air conditioning project, adding more central air to our home. Hey, we’re aware of the crummy stock market, and the rampant inflation, but consume we must.

To help you clear your head on this warm weekend, grab a seat outdoors and brew up a cup of Supernatural coffee ($18.45/12 oz.) by Lee, MA’s own Barrington Coffee Roasting Company. This espresso is said to have flavors of Concord grape, dark chocolate, plum and tangle berry pie!

Wrongo has no idea what tangle berries look like, much less what they taste like.

Now, put on your wireless headphones and listen to the “Adagio for Oboe, Cello, Organ and Strings”, also known as “Elevazione” or “All’Elevazione” by Domenico Zipoli.

Zipoli was an Italian Jesuit priest who lived much of his life in what is now Argentina. He studied with Scarlatti, became a Jesuit, worked as a missionary, and died in 1726 in Argentina at age 38. If fate had granted Zipoli another 20 to 25 years, he might be regarded today as a major composer. Here it’s performed in 2015 by the Collegia Musica Chiemgau conducted by Elke Burkert :

Some Factors Affecting The Mid-Terms

The Daily Escape:

Before dawn, Kennebunkport, ME – June 2022 photo by Eric Storm Photo.

Even though the first public hearing about the Jan. 6 attempted coup happened last night, Wrongo doesn’t intend to write about them for a few days. The hot takes are all over the media, and it’s doubtful that we will know much about how the public is reacting for a few weeks. Once again Wrongo cautions that the media will cover this like a political contest when it isn’t. It really is about the health of our democracy.

And did you realize that only 21% of Americans over 18 read a newspaper every day? Cheryl Russell of Demo Memo has statistics from the General Social Survey showing how precipitously newspaper readership has fallen. She says that in 1972, 69% of the American public read a newspaper every day:

“Now, the share of adults who never read a newspaper (40%) is far greater than the share who read a newspaper daily. Fully 57% of the public reads a newspaper less than once a week…”

This also has implications for how broadly the findings of the Jan. 6 committee will be shared. As does the fact that FOX won’t be airing the hearings and plans to counter-program with GOP members of the House and Senate presenting real-time disinformation as the facts are aired.

Speaking of not knowing the facts, YouGov reports on an economic survey showing that seven out of 10 Republicans think we’re currently in a recession. More than half of all independents and 43% of Democrats also think the same. They sampled about 1,500 US adults online between May 28 – 31, 2022, with a margin of error of ± 3%. Here are the results:

How can we be in a recession when our unemployment rate is at 3.6%? When wages are up 5.6% over the past year, and consumers still are spending money like crazy?

People may believe we’re in a recession, but the US economy added 1.2 million jobs in the past three months. Yes, inflation is the highest it’s been in 40 years, but higher gas and food prices don’t mean we’re in the midst of an economic slowdown. Maybe the survey was poorly worded, or maybe, since people really never read in depth about what’s really going on in America, they never learn what’s really happening. This will be very damaging to the Democrats’ mid-term chances.

Next, you may have heard that there was a “political earthquake” in the California primaries, that Dems did poorly because of the “crime” issue, and that will hurt Democrats all across the nation.

A recalled San Francisco District Attorney didn’t cause an earthquake, and neither did a Republican-turned-Democrat’s advancing in the LA Mayor race. Former Republican and billionaire Rick Caruso spent $40 million on his mayoral primary! His opponent, Karen Bass, spent $3 million on her campaign. He won the primary by 3 points, although she is the likely winner in November.

What WAS an earthquake was the anemic voter turnout. Only about 19% of California’s registered voters actually voted.

There was no sign of an anti-Democratic wave in CA. Candidates from both parties that were expected to make the general election did so. Probably the weakest performances by incumbents were posted by Republicans David Valadao and Young Kim, who struggled to defeat challengers running to their right. In particular, Valadao, who voted to impeach Trump, appears to have advanced to the general election.

And in CA-41, moderate Democrat Will Rollins advanced to the November election against Republican incumbent Ken Calvert, who voted to overturn the 2020 election results. Rollins has a decent chance to win in November in what is a 50-50 district.

Finally, Larry Sabato reports on the redistricting landscape now that most state redistricting is complete:

The total number of competitive districts has declined from 84 to 75.
The number of super-safe Republican districts (those where Biden won 40% or less) increased from 112 to 131.
The number of super-safe Democratic seats, 127, while similar to the Republican total, is down slightly.
There are 211 seats where Biden received 49% of the vote or less, and 202 seats where he won 53% or more.

Sabato’s Crystal Ball rates Republicans having 214 seats as safe, likely, or leaning Republican. That means that if they hold those seats, they are just four additional seats from controlling the House. They rate the Democrats as having 193 seats as safe, likely, or leaning Democratic.

That means if both Parties hold serve, there are just 28 seats in play in the 2022 mid-terms. For the Democrats to retain control of the House would require them to win 25 of those 28 seats.

If the Dems want to retain control of the House, what message should they be telling voters who: a) Don’t read newspapers; b) Think the economy is crashing; and c) Fail to turn out in Democratic and Independent-leaning Congressional Districts?

Monday Wake Up Call – April 3, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Makapu’u Lookout, Oahu, HI – January 2022 photo by TwoBongs on Tour

Let’s talk about the “Wealth Effect”. It’s the notion that when households become richer as a result of a rise in asset values, such as stock prices or home values, they spend more and stimulate the broader economy. The idea is that consumers feel more financially secure and confident about their wealth, even if their income and costs are the same as before.

This concept has been endorsed by two recent former Fed Chairs, Janet Yellen and Ben Bernanke. It’s simply another term for trickle-down economics.

In 2019, after nearly 11 years of the Fed’s policy of adding money to the economy, by “Quantitative Easing” (QE), the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) did a study on the Wealth Effect, to quantify how much richer the rich would have had to become to have x% impact on the overall economy, and how long this boost lasts before it fades.

They found that QE makes 10% of the population a lot richer, producing immense concentration of wealth at the top 1%, and mind-boggling concentrations of wealth at the billionaire level. After which, there were some very muted trickle-down effects on the economy.

Wolf Richter used the Fed’s wealth distribution data to create a chart he calls the Wealth Effect Monitor. The Fed divides the US population into four groups by wealth: The “Top 1%,” the “2% to 9%,” the “next 40%,” and the “bottom 50%” to report on wealth.

Richter divides this data by the number of households in each category, to obtain the average wealth per household in each category. Here’s his chart for the past 21 years:

Note the immense increase in the wealth for the 1% households after the Fed’s latest QE effort that began in March 2020. They have been the primary beneficiaries of the Fed’s policies since 2020.

True to the Wealth Effect’s concepts, the Fed’s policies helped to inflate asset prices, and thus only asset owners benefited: The more assets held, the stronger the benefit. Here’s Richter’s analysis of average wealth (assets minus debts) per household, by category in the 4^th quarter, 2021:

“Top “1%” household (red): $36.2 million
The “2% to 9%” household (yellow): $4.68 million
The “next 40%” household (purple): $775,000
The “bottom 50%” household (green): $59,000

The Fed doesn’t provide separate data on the 0.01% and the Billionaire class, but they were the biggest beneficiaries of the Fed’s monetary policies. The top 30 US billionaires have a total wealth of $2.12 trillion, sliced into 30 slices for a wealth of $70.8 billion per billionaire, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Compare that to the bottom half of the US population (the “bottom 50%”) who have a combined wealth of just $3.7 trillion, divided into 165 million slices for each individual. The way percentages work, you would think that households in the bottom 50% would have the largest percentage gains since they start from a lower base. But because they own fewer assets, when adjusted by population, they stay mired in last place. From Richter:

“When the wealth of the bottom 50% increases by 5%, they gain about $3,000. And when the average wealth of the top 30 billionaires increases by 5%, they on average gain $3,500,000,000.”

Which States Have the Highest Homicide Rates?

The Daily Escape:

Moonrise over Salt Run, St. Augustine FL – March 2022 photo by Bob Willis

Republicans can’t stop talking about how the murder rate in America has grown. It’s true that the homicide rates are up, although they remain well below their historic highs of the 1990s. There were more than 21,500 murders in 2020, the latest year for which we have data. The national murder rate in 2020 was about 6.5 per 100,000 people, about 40% below what it was in the 1990s.

With the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, the trope about a liberal soft-on-crime plot against America returned. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said:

“We are in the middle of a violent crime wave including soaring rates of homicides and carjackings….Amid all this, the soft-on-crime brigade is squarely in Judge Jackson’s corner.”

Would you be surprised to learn that McConnell’s home state of Kentucky has the third-highest homicide rate per capita in the US? In fact, eight of the 10 states with the highest homicide rates in 2020 voted that year for Trump. The truth is that Red states (those run by Republicans) have a bigger problem with murder than do the Blue states; their murder rate is higher.

Jonathan Capehart says in the WaPo: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“This startling data is revealed in a new report from centrist think tank Third Way. Mississippi leads the way with a 2020 homicide rate of 20.5 per 100,000 residents…the five states with the highest murder rates, all Trump-voting states, had rates at least 240% higher than New York’s murder rate and at least 150% higher than California’s.”

Here’s a chart from the WaPo:

The per capita homicide rates above are per 100,000 people. Remember that the national average is 6.5 per hundred thousand people. Beyond the top 10 states, the report looked at the 2020 murder rates in the 25 states that voted for Donald Trump and compared it with the murder rates in the 25 states that voted for Joe Biden.

The news was the same. The murder rate in Trump states (8.20/100k) was 40% higher than the 5.78/100k murder rate in Biden states. These facts really hurt the Republican narrative of “crime-is-out-of-control” in cities like Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Portland, Baltimore, and Minneapolis, all of which have a bad rap among our Red state friends.

When you dig into the report by city, Jacksonville FL, a city with a Republican mayor, had 128 more murders in 2020 than San Francisco, a city led by a Democrat. Despite having comparable populations, few would say that San Francisco is a safer city than Jacksonville.

The narrative by the Right (and supported by the media) about crime and murder is both convenient and wrong. Many on the Right attribute the homicide increase to Democratic policies, specifically about police reform. The fact is that murder rates are actually higher in Republican states that haven’t even flirted with ideas like defund the police.

The eight of the ten Red states in the top ten are not only Trump-voting states, but they have been bastions of GOP policy for the last 25 years. The true conclusion from the data is that Republicans do a far better job of blaming others for high murder rates than they actually do to reduce murder rates.

Sorry Mitch, the increase in murders is not a liberal cities problem. It’s a national problem.

Saturday Soother – March 19, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Cherry blossoms, Tanque Verde Ridge, AZ – February 2022 photo by Bel Meader

Wrongo and Ms. Right started our return trip from Florida yesterday. We said goodbye to being able to sit on the patio with our coffee at 8 am and to walk without wearing a jacket. Two observations from our visit: First, it’s clear that all older people there are members of a “club”. On our morning walks, everyone said hello, something that doesn’t routinely happen in the north. Second, virtually everyone is maskless in public spaces.

That’s largely due to the public health policies of Florida’s governor and legislature. This time around, it didn’t work out badly for them. But we all should be at least somewhat concerned about what’s visible on the Covid horizon.

We’re talking about the arrival of the Coronavirus BA.2 subvariant. The Omicron we know is BA.1. CNN reports that the BA.2 variant is 80% more transmissible than trusty old Omicron, and about as serious an illness. They also say that BA.2 has been growing steadily in the US. The CDC estimates it is causing about 12% of new Covid-19 cases in America.

Hong Kong is in the throes of a severe wave caused by BA.2. It currently has the highest Covid-19 death rate in the world. The WaPo reports this from China:

“China’s worst coronavirus outbreak in two years has reached almost all parts of the country, stretching medical resources, shuttering businesses, and manufacturing outfits, and raising questions about the government’s staunch commitment to its “zero covid” policy.”

Meanwhile, BA.2 now accounts for more than 50% of cases in the UK and in several European countries.

Here’s an interesting chart from Charles Gaba, showing the point at which Covid deaths in Red states overtook Covid deaths in Blue states:

They crossed when Biden was inaugurated. The graph includes all variants of Covid. It shows the cumulative Covid death rates in the reddest and bluest tenths of the US at the county level. The total population of the 50 US states, plus DC, is right around 331.4 million people. That puts each tenth of the population at around 33.1 million each.

The date may be a coincidence, but the data aren’t. You know why this happened.

We look like we’re about to have another surge. That’s depressing since we are barely past the Omicron surge. If the data coming in from places where Omicron BA.2 is surging hold up, it means that our vaccinations should mitigate the worst of it.

But if you are over 60 or are unvaccinated, or unboosted, or have any medical vulnerabilities, you’d better wear your mask when out and about, even in Florida.

A whole lot of people won’t do you the favor of wearing one, so you should be extra careful.

Time for our Saturday Soother, where we try to forget about what’s happening in Ukraine, or whether Jessie Smollett deserves to be out of jail on appeal. Let’s unplug and relax and think about how Spring is just around the corner. Of course that means yard work on the Fields of Wrong, but it also means enjoying weather like we were having in Florida.

To help you relax, grab a seat by a window and listen to Mozart’s Rondo from the Horn Concerto Number 4 KV 495. This is a trio arrangement played by Sarah Willis (horn), Tamás Velenczei (trumpet) and Jesper Busk Sorensen (euphonium). It was performed live in a virtual concert in the Berlin Chamber Music Hall for the Pacific Music Festival 2021:

Monday Wake Up Call – February 28, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Wiggly Bridge, York, ME – February 2022 photo by Eric Storm Photo

Wrongo intended to write about domestic issues today. One domestic issue is how Republicans and the Right-wing media pivoted over the weekend from being pro-Putin and his War, to now saying Russia was wrong to invade Ukraine. Is that proof that the sanctions are working?

It’s hard to turn away today from Ukraine news, despite knowing that Biden’s State of the Union (SOTU) speech is tomorrow night. The Republican reply will be given by Iowa’s Governor Kim Reynolds. This happens at a time when there are big differences of opinion about the most important issues facing the nation by Democrats and Republicans.

According to a Pew Research Center survey, 71% of US adults rated strengthening the economy as a top policy priority, followed by reducing health care costs (61%), addressing the coronavirus (60%), improving education (58%) and securing Social Security (57%). The survey was conducted between Jan. 10-17, 2022 among 5,128 adults.

But as expected, the top issues were very different for those who identified as a Republican or as a Democrat. When asked which issues “should be a top priority for the president and Congress to address this year,” the top five regarded as most important by Democrats were:

Top 5 priorities, according to Democrats (percent saying issue should be a top priority)

Dealing with the coronavirus outbreak (80%)
Reducing health care costs (69%)
Improving the educational system (66%)
Dealing with global climate change (65%)
Strengthening the nation’s economy (63%)

Here’s the Republicans’ top-five list:

Top 5 priorities, according to Republicans (percent saying issue should be a top priority)

Strengthening the nation’s economy (82%)
Dealing with the issue of immigration (67%)
Defending the country from future terrorist attacks (65%)
Reducing the budget deficit (63%)
Reducing crime (60%)

Strengthening the nation’s economy is the only priority that both Democrats and Republicans rank among the most important. Two of the Democrats’ top priorities are among the five lowest-priority issues for Republicans. Only 11% of Republicans think global climate change should be a priority (vs. 65% of Democrats). Just 35% of Republicans think dealing with the coronavirus outbreak should be a priority (vs. 80% of Democrats).

Conversely, two of the Republicans’ top priorities are among the five lowest-priority issues for Democrats. Only 35% of Democrats think immigration should be a priority (vs. 67% of Republicans). Just 31% of Democrats say the budget deficit should be a priority (vs. 63% of Republicans).

All of this may be on display at the SOTU and the Republican reply on Tuesday.

Returning to Ukraine, it’s reported that Ukraine and Russia have agreed to have low-level delegations meet, hosted by Belarus, to discuss ending the war. It’s unclear what exactly might be achieved from these negotiations, given that Putin’s War appears to be aimed largely at removing Zelensky from power.

Finally, assuming that Russia wins either on the battlefield or at the negotiating table, that will almost certainly be followed by a Ukrainian insurgency supported by NATO. The US military knows a lot about how many troops it takes to hold ground when most of the locals want you dead.

Many military studies say that the number needed is 10 troops to one insurgent. From The Dupuy Institute (TDI): (Brackets by Wrongo)

“…TDI amassed data on 109 post-World War II insurgencies, interventions, and peacekeeping operations between 2004 and 2009. [TDI]…found that….While overwhelming numbers were not required to defeat an insurgency, force ratios above 10-to-1 nearly always produced a counterinsurgent victory. Conversely, lower force ratios did not preclude success, but conflicts with two or fewer counterinsurgents per insurgent greatly favored an insurgent victory.”

Remember in this case the insurgents would be Ukrainians, and counterinsurgents the Russians. More from TDI:

“When force ratios were assessed together with the nature of the motivation for the insurgency, TDI found that….when facing broadly popular insurgencies, counterinsurgents lost every time they possessed a force ratio advantage of 5-1 or less, failed half the time with odds between 6-1 and 10-1, but succeeded three-quarters of the time when outnumbering the insurgents by 10-1 or more.”

Ukraine’s pre-war population was 44 million. Let’s assume that 20% would support an insurgency, and that 2% would participate in an insurgency. That would be 176k Ukrainian insurgents. Following the 10-1 ratio would mean Russia would need to keep 1.76 million troops on the ground to win, an unsupportable number. Cutting the number of insurgents in half would mean Russia would need 880k troops to occupy Ukraine, still an unsupportable number.

This could mean that an insurgency in Ukraine could succeed as easily as it did in Afghanistan.

Time to wake up Putin! You might win before you lose in Ukraine. To help you wake up, watch the Saturday Night Live open, where the Ukrainian Chorus Dumka of New York performed “Prayer for Ukraine”:

Kinda makes you tear up.

Saturday Soother – Super Bowl Edition, February 12, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Owens River, east of Big Pine, CA – 2022 photo by Brian Joliffe

Tomorrow brings the Super Bowl, an American cultural icon that transcends football. Even people who don’t watch football watch the Super Bowl. Advertising executives know that it is the one time each year when most Americans are tuned into one show at the same time, across most forms of media.

It’s watched by roughly 100 million viewers. Given the fragmentation of our media, it’s a huge number of eyeballs to find in one place. That’s why Super Bowl commercials cost so much. NBC, broadcaster of this year’s game, sold out all of its Super Bowl ad space for $7 million per 30 second spot.

And though it may only last for a short time, this is the first time in 22 years that the Super Bowl will be played when the country is not officially at war.

On Sunday, the Super Bowl halftime show will be a celebration of hip hop, featuring Los Angeles rap heroes Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, and Kendrick Lamar. That places hip hop firmly at the center of the Super Bowl for the first time. The show will also star Eminem and Mary J. Blige.

Depending on who you ask, that’s either one of the greatest classic hip-hop lineups ever assembled, or way too much lineup for a show that only lasts for about 13 minutes, less than 3 minutes per artist.

This isn’t the first time the Super Bowl has included rap music. But it’s had a rocky path to headliner status. Headlining this year’s event comes at a time when the NFL is again confronting issues regarding its tin ear about race.

Since 2016, when the quarterback Colin Kaepernick began kneeling during the national anthem to protest police killings of Black people, the league has faced questions about its commitment to diversity and social justice. Brian Flores, a Black NFL head coach who was fired last month, sued the league, claiming he and others had been discriminated against during various teams’ hiring processes.

This year, Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg are taking the NFL in a different direction, and that may be the idea. The NYT quotes Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas, who headlined the show in 2011:

“At one point, Dre was in a group that was banned by popular culture,”

Will.i.am is referring to Dr. Dre’s gangster rap group NWA, widely considered in the late 1980s to be one of the greatest and most influential groups in the history of hip hop music. Their music had explicit lyrics, and many viewed NWA as misogynistic. They also glorified drugs and crime.

Their work was banned from many mainstream American radio stations. In spite of this, the group has sold over 10 million albums in the US. Wrongo’s favorite NWA cut is “Fuck Tha Police” from their 1988 album “Straight Outta Compton”. You should take a listen, but don’t hate on Wrongo if you despise it.

That the NFL has now turned to these formerly controversial figures, makes it seem as if we’ve moved far from White America’s pearl-clutching days of Janet Jackson’s 2004 wardrobe malfunction. Or from M.I.A.’s middle finger in 2012, or Beyoncé’s nod to the Black Panthers in 2016.

Or maybe we haven’t moved on. But right now, the league needs to embrace Black music and culture to help shore up its badly damaged community bona fides.

And there’s the open secret: The NFL, a fabulously wealthy sports league whose least valuable team is worth more than $2 billion, doesn’t pay its Super Bowl performers. They consider their halftime show to be music’s ultimate for-exposure gig. But how much is that exposure worth when multiple performers are competing for just 13 minutes of attention?

On to our Saturday Soother. Weather is positively spring-like in Connecticut, so Wrongo will venture outside for some way-too-early spring cleanup. After that we have a family party followed by making turkey chili and queso con chorizo for Sunday’s extravaganza.

It’s time for you to forget about Trump’s missing call logs from Jan. 6, and grab a seat by a window. Now, plug in your Bluetooth headphones and listen to John Williams, who turned 90 this week. Here’s his “Cowboys Overture” from the 1972 film, “The Cowboys” starring John Wayne.

It’s played live in 2020 by the Film Symphony Orchestra, Spain’s first orchestra specializing in cinematic music:

While you listen, to this mythical view of the west, do you hear echoes of Aaron Copeland?

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: Demographics

Some Factors Affecting The Mid-Terms