Exploding Myths

Summary:

A surprising analysis of economic data calls into question the widely accepted idea that Republicans are better stewards of the economy than Democrats.

The data shows that:

• Democrats on average lower the National Debt particularly over the last 30 years.
• Democrats on average presided over periods of larger GDP per capita growth
• Democratic Congresses presided over periods of larger GDP per capita growth especially when working with a Democratic President
• Democrats presided over periods of larger GDP per capita growth despite monetary policy favoring Republicans
• Republicans suffered more recessions and even when the recessions were factored out, Democrats still presided over periods of higer GDP per capita growth
• Democrats shrunk the size of the Federal governments as effectively as Republicans, with Clinton ranking best.
• Democrats were equally as effective in controlling Federal Spending (with and without Defense) as Republicans, with again Clinton ranking most effective.
• As advertised the Republicans are better at cutting taxes, but at the cost of decreased revenue and weaker economic growth.
• Democrats presided over periods of greater job growth

The following analysis was originally authored as a series of posts over a period of several months at the Angry Bear economic blog. Most of the the blog's regular contributors hold a Ph.D in economics including the author of the original series. All of the charts and graphs (except the first and the last) come from these series of posts. All of the original posts are linked to in the title of each section heading. The original posts contain links to the original data tables (mostly the US Department of Commerce's Bureau of Economic Analysis and White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) ) and the rational behind each analysis. The comment section from each post contains lively debate by which the direction of next series was determined.

Because most people do not have the time to read through the many original posts, I have taken the liberty to compile and write this summary.

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Fiscal conservatives have accepted the gospel-like assumption that Republicans manage the U.S. economy better. But is this fact or fiction?

Turns out there is evidence that it is fiction. According to the following analysis, there is no evidence that Republican Presidents or Republican Congresses are better for economic growth. In fact, if anything the data points the other way.

The National Debt:

Lets start by looking at the National Debt as a function of Republican and Democratic presidential terms. This graph clearly shows that the National Debt as a percentage of GDP decreases when a Democratic President is in the Oval Office. By contrast the National Debt rose significantly under the two Republican Presidents that fully implemented Supply-Side economic theory.

Deficits are incurred when government spending exceeds government revenue. Excessive tax cutting without reducing spending is not fiscally conservative. You will note that the debt starts high on this graph due to WWII, but is steadily decreased by Eisenhower, Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. Republicans Nixon and Ford did not grow the National Debt. Note that despite that fact that the U.S. was at war in Vietnam for much of 1960's and early 1970's, the National Debt as a percentage of GDP was still reduced. (In absolute dollars the debt has grown from $270 billion in 1946 to almost $10 trillion today)

Funding a war by increasing tax revenue (or reducing spending elsewhere) is fiscally responsible and consistent with conservative economic policy. Not paying for a war while reducing revenues (by implementing the largest regressive tax in history) is not fiscally conservative and places a huge burden on the next generation.

GDP Growth:

The fact that Democrats have been better recently at reducing the National Debt is not surprising, so lets look at which party is better for the growth of the nation's Gross Domestic Product (GDP)? GDP is a measure of national income and industrial output and as such is a major indicator of the strength of the economy.

The table below shows the annualized percentage change in real GDP per capita associated with recent Presidential administrations. Also shown is the change in real GDP per capita when an administrations' best and worst year are left out.

Contrary to popular belief, growth rates in real GDP per capita tend to be higher under Democrats than under Republicans. The three Democrat administrations are all in the top four with Reagan the only Republican to crack the top half. All four of the slowest growing administrations were Republican. Perhaps that is why Reagan is so idolized by Republicans, because he is the only one to perform as well as Democrats (growing the debt not withstanding).

GDP Growth Minus Debt And the effect of Monetary Policy:

Perhaps the Democrats were merely the beneficiaries of an expansionary monetary policy. To find out this next series will examine the assumption that monetary policy has an effect on GDP growth as well as which administrations benefited from such policy. This analysis looks at the change in the real Money Supply per capita and the change in the amount of M1 or M2 per person above and beyond inflation. In economics M1 and M2 are measures of money supply. M1 is the physical currency circulating in the economy plus demand deposits. M2 is M1 plus time deposits, saving deposits and non-institutional money market funds.

The table below shows the annualized percentage growth in real GDP ( less debt) per capita, the annualized percentage change in real M1 per capita, and the annualized percentage change in real M2 per capita for the various administrations beginning in the sample. It also shows the correlation between the growth rates in Money and the growth rate in the economy:

This data shows that (with the exception of George W. Bush) the more beneficial the monetary policy, the better the growth rate for both Republican and Democratic Presidents. But what is again surprising is that the Democrats still did better growing the economy even though the the Republicans were operating with a more favorable monetary policy. (Its another question as to why the Fed was biased towards giving Republicans a more favorable policy).

Considering Congress:

Astute readers have no doubt by now questioned the role of Congress in GDP growth. After all, Presidents often have to work with a Congress controlled by the opposite party.

To address this question, the following chart shows the GDP per capita for all the combinations of Presidents and Congresses. The number of observations is the number of times that particular combination has occurred. The table also shows the effect of just Congress itself:

Again growth rates of real GDP less real increases in the debt per capita are higher under Democratic Congresses than under Republican Congresses. More striking is that the highest growth is observed when both the President and the Congress has been Democratic. And the lowest growth is observed when the President and the Congress were both controlled by Republicans.

Considering Recessions:

The data is starting to look bad for Republicans. But perhaps there are still other factors that have not yet been considered. One of these is the idea of "lag" - that economic performance lags policy implementation by several years. However, a logical analysis seems to rule this idea out.

Another possibility is that Republican administrations were victims of recessions due to business cycle reasons out of their control. Fair question, but what does the data show?

The following table shows GDP growth performance for each administration with recessions removed and the eight quarters past the recession removed:

So what does this reveal?

First it reveals that Americans spend much more time in recession (about twice as much) when Republicans are in office than when Democrats are in office. Furthermore, despite leaving out the recessionary periods, growth is still faster, on average, under Democrats than under Republicans.

And remember the whole point of this chart is to effectively cherry pick the Republican's best economic periods. This makes Clinton look a bit worse, but that’s because his entire term (fully recession free) is now going up against only the best four quarters of the Nixon administration and only about 75% of the Reagan administration's term. Nevertheless Clinton’s entire term still beats a cherry-picked George W. Bush term.

The same analysis was repeated without excluding the eight quarters after the recession, but the results were the same.

Size of the Federal Government:

Repeated analysis demonstrates that the Democrats are better at growing the economy. But what about the size of government? It is an undisputed fact that Republicans prefer a smaller government that the Democrats. But do they achieve that goal?

This section examines the size of the government, a topic of critical importance to conservatives and libertarians. At this point in the original series, the author provided a warning to Republican readers. I repeat it here because of its humor value, not as an indication of endorsement:

"Before we go on, I would like to warn those few Angry Bears that worship at the Church of the Holiest St. Ronald the Reagan to avert your eyes for what follows must be the work of the Democrat, er, the Devil (Clinton)"

This chart shows the change in the number of Federal Employees per thousand of the U.S. population:

Astonishingly and contrary to his perception, Reagan was one of only two administrations to increase the number of federal civilian employees. Clinton and Carter both shrank the Federal government more than Reagan and George W. Bush.

But what about total government, not just Federal employees? Here is chart showing all government employees:

Even taking to account all government at all levels Clinton reduced the number of government employees the most. (Though I'm not sure how fair this metric is as a President has far less control over a State's government than he does over the Federal government.)

Federal Spending:

Now we come to the holy grail of conservative economic philosophy - government spending. Again, I must include the original author's warning solely for its humor value:

"Yesterday I warned our more sensitive readers to avert their eyes, for the data was not kind to the Holiest St. Ronald the Reagan, and in fact showed the Devil himself to be the President who went the furthest toward reducing the size of the Federal workforce. For those who were too careless to heed my admonition yesterday, I beseech you today. Avert your eyes or you imperil your soul."

The following table shows Federal Spending growth as a share of GDP minus Social Security which is outside the control of any given administration:


Again, Clinton trumps all Republicans and even Jimmy Carter trumps both Bush presidencies. What makes this more remarkable is that a small government is not a stated goal of Democrats. Democrats believe that large government is OK if it can solve certain problems. Small government is very clearly a goal of Republicans, but it doesn't translate into reality.

Furthermore Clinton's annualized shrinkage from 1992 to 1994 was 3.26%. From 1994 to 2000 it was 2.37%. This means that Gingrich's Republican Revolution and subsequent control of Congress actually interfered with Clinton's ability to reduce Federal Spending. One counter argument is that Clinton would have spent more if his Health Care plan had not been defeated by Republicans (but again small government wasn't necessarily a goal for him).

All this does make one wonder why Republicans hate Clinton so much. He had the second best GDP economic growth in the sample, he was fiscally responsible and he reduced the size of government. These are all things that fiscally conservative Republicans favor.

Federal Spending minus Defense Spending:

Some arguments speculate that Republican spending looks worse because of defense spending. These tables look at federal spending deltas minus defense spending both as a share of GDP and in real dollars.



This data shows that every single President increased spending on non-Social Security and non-defense items per capita. Clinton increased spending the least, but he was actually cutting spending per capita before the Republican Congress took over. Reagan increased this type of spending by more than three times Clinton. Carter actually came in third increasing spending per capita at half the rate that George W. Bush did.

Tax Cutting:

Finally, we come to a metric where Republicans perform as advertised. This table shows the total taxes per capita other than social security collected plus changes in the national debt held by the public, all as a percentage of GDP. This measure of taxes takes into account the fact that a run-up on debt has to be paid off at some point.




Here all the Democrats are at the bottom of the table as one might suspect. But interestingly all the administrations with the best GDP growth are at the bottom of the table including Ronald Reagan.

This would seem to indicate that while the Democrats and Reagan had the higher taxes they were on the correct side of the Laffer curve. The Laffer Curve illustrates the idea that increases in tax rates will eventually lead to a decrease in tax revenue because high taxes will dis-incentivize business and job growth. This is the central idea of supply side economic theory. Similarly, the table suggests that the Bush tax cuts are too deep, lowering revenues and increasing debt.

Further analysis of the data revealed an optimal growth point. Based on that analysis, the following Presidents moved tax rates in the direction most likely to lead to faster growth in real GDP per capita: Eisenhower, JFK/LBJ, Carter and Clinton. The following Presidents favored policies that moved the country away from this faster growth point: Nixon/Ford, Reagan, Bush I and Bush II.

Finally, lower taxes are a powerful attraction, but is it enough a reason to vote Republican? Historically, the data would seem to suggest not as when taxes are too low (or perhaps too regressive) the result is a sluggish economy, median income loss and skyrocketing debt. This is a question of short term vs. long term interests. If this analysis is to believed the trade off is not worth it.

Job Growth:

The last metric is job growth. This graphic shows job growth index for all administrations beginning in 1921:



Only Reagan produced significant job growth among Republicans.

Conclusions:

In repeated metrics the Democrats performed better or equal to Republicans on all of the above economic areas.

What is a fiscally conservative person supposed to make of this?

First this analysis does not prove anything statistically. There were only eigth administrations in the sample and you can't statistically prove anything with a sample size of eight.

However, assuming the analysis is valid given the data (and all of the data is from the OMB or the US Department of Commerce) it is hard to completely dismiss the Democrat's surprising performance as sheer luck or statistical anomaly.

Lets assume that there is enough random variance in the data and analysis to assume a wash between the two parties. A wash still bursts the prevalent idea that Republicans are much better stewards of the economy (which is the original hypothesis).

If over the past 40 years Republicans were indeed superior at growing the economy then I think it would show in the data even given the relatively small sample. Sheer luck would not obscure a dominant trend.

So strong is the prevalence of the theory that Republicans are better on the economy that I had to question why I was skeptical of this data. Then I realized that all these years I have never seen any data that says the Republicans are better.

Could it be just distant memories of the Reagan/Carter transition? Republican hype? Possibly.

But I also think it is the intuitive idea that a smaller government and lower taxes are good. I still believe that a lean government is beneficial and should be a desired goal, but as shown, the Republicans are no better at creating a smaller government than are the Democrats. (And Republicans seem to have forgotten about some of the most important features of small government such as protecting the privacy of its citizens and the adherence to Constitutional principles such as seperation of powers).

As for taxes, it is true that sufficiently high marginal tax rates will dis-incentivize innovation and damage the economy, but despite accustations that Democratic governments are Socialist, their tax rates appear to be well below that threshold. At least that is the case given the government that we have. With a smaller government and a smaller debt, taxes could ideally be much lower.

Lastly, we should remember that conservatism and Republicans are not exactly the same thing. Republicans don't or can't implement policy in the way that conservative theory suggests they should. And in the same vein Democrats don't or can't always implement ideal Liberal policy. In many ways we should be thankful for this.

The larger lesson is that the two major parties respective branding is not always reflected in reality.

James Randi and "The Teachings of Carlos"

Back in April 2005, I wrote a post about how bad the media is at informing the public and performing actual investigative reporting.

In the post, the following problems were noted among the media's current failings:

• The media treats opposing arguments as equally honest and equally extreme, no matter what the factual merits are.
  
• The media replaces actual investigative reporting with punditry, often uninformed or obviously biased punditry.
  
• The media determines the importance of a story based on how many other people are talking about it, and thus tends to favor coverage of celebrity trials over substantive news.
  
• The media tends to dumb down complex issues, particularly in the area of science, economics and foreign policy
  
• The combination of these failings tends to produce "fake" controversies. And, of course, it is then the "controversy" that is reported on and not the actual facts of the underlying issues.

Well now you can see for yourself in one neatly encapsulated story just exactly how poorly the media serves the public interest. This Google Video is of a relatively well known (in skeptic circles anyway) scam job that paranormal debunker extraordinaire James Randi perpetrated on the Australian media with the help of the Australian version of 60 minutes. Although I had read about in the past, I have never seen the actual story until now.

The scam revolves around "Carlos the Great", who James Randi had created by convincing a friend to portray a crystal toting, new age channeler who claimed to be able to channel an ancient mystical spirit who could make predictions about the future. To make sure he had a gimmick, Randi taught the actor playing Carlos how to suppress his pulse by placing a small ball under his arm and squeezing down on the ball at the moment when "Carlos" took possession of his body.

The beauty of this must see piece is that it shows how easy it was to manipulate the media and how terrible a job the media did at investigating the story:


In this one piece, we see several of the aforementioned media failings beautifully illustrated:

Non Investigative Reporting:
In a matter of days, Randi had manipulated the media into giving the unknown Carlos huge amounts of publicity. He did this by circulating bogus media reports and press releases on the "Wisdom of Carlos". One newspaper even re-printed the press releases in editorial space making it appear as legitimate news. The bogus media reports and press releases were all from non-existent media outlets and just one phone call by any one reporter would have revealed the entire scam. Instead in initial interviews Carlos received only softball questions from the media who asked him about the nature of his predications instead of asking him to prove or authenticate the fact that he can actually make predictions. With a nurse present to monitor his pulse, they fully accepted without further questioning that his heart had actually stopped upon channeling the ancient spirit.

Treating opposing arguments as Equal:
On skeptical TV personality did question Carlos. But instead of doing the actual simple investigative reporting that would have revealed him as a fake, he merely brought on TV a skeptic who rightly assumed Carlos was playing a trick with a ball under his arm. This demonstrates the media's lazy approach of just airing one opinion versus another. With a little more effort the reporter could have proved scientifically with reams of evidence that Carlos could not be doing as he claimed.

Reporting a Story because it is Being Talked About:
Randi knew that if he really wanted to generate buzz about Carlos, that he needed a story that people would talk about. So he planned to have Carlos (via his "manager") throw water into the face of George Negus on the nationally broadcast Australian Today show. Negus was the equivalent of Today's Matt Lauer and a household name. Sure enough after that incident, news of "Carlos the Great" was saturated all over TV and print media. Randi had successfully manipulated the media into proving all the free publicity Carlos could ever want.

Although this story is about a new age channeler, it should nevertheless be obvious by now just how dangerous it is to have a poorly informed public. More than ever, we need to put an end to supremely lazy and incompetent media and return to the days (if they ever fully existed) of intelligent, informative investigative news.

Mr. Randi, I think we are in need of another demonstration.

Knowledge or Certainty

Months ago, in the wake of the London subway bombings in a post about the ideological dangers of absolute certainty, I included an excerpt from “The Ascent of Man” by Jacob Brownoski.

I had read this magnificant book years ago and it left quite an impression on me, so much so that it motivated me to search out other works of Brownoski. I had known that the book was based on a 1972 documentary series that Brownoski put together for the BBC, but until now I had never seen any episodes of the series.

Thanks to Timothy Sandefur at Positive Liberty, I was alerted to the fact that all but two of the episodes now exist at Google Video. Sandefur linked to the episode entitled “Knowledge or Certainty” which is the episode from which I excerpted in my previous post. And I have to agree that it is a masterpiece. The episode eloquently explores the philosophical and scientific question of absolute knowledge and the dangers that arise when man foolishly believes he possesses such knowledge.



The production is excellent and holds up quite well even 30+ years later. In fact some of the cinematography is startling good.

I also learned surprisingly that it was unscripted, that Brownoski had only an outline and basically spoke to the camera off the cuff. To me, that makes it more amazing and illustrates just how knowledgeable and erudite Brownoski was. He was a fascinating man who was as knowledgeable and enthusiastic about the arts and literature as he was about science. Indeed, he considered both art and science to be wonderful manifestations of the creative mind of man and disliked what he thought was the relatively recent artificial cultural rift between the two.

The episode begins with a blind woman studying by touch the face of an old man and correctly concluding many facts about him. It then moves on to how both science and art interpret the face of the man. But more interesting is the time in Gottingen where Brownoski recalls how the great physicists of the day were shaping Quantum Theory and the surprising (and frustrating to Einstein) formulation of the Uncertainty Principle. Though Brownoski preferred to call the theory the Principle of Tolerance as described in this excerpt:

The Principle of Uncertainty is a bad name. In science-- or outside of it --we are not uncertain; our knowledge is merely confined, within a certain tolerance [i.e. probability]. We should call it the Principle of Tolerance.

All knowledge--all information between human beings--can only be exchanged within a play of tolerance. And that is true whether the exchange is in science, or in literature, or in religion, or in politics, or in *any* form of thought that aspires to dogma.

It's a major tragedy of my lifetime and yours that scientists were refining, to the most exquisite precision, the Principle of Tolerance--and turning their backs on the fact that all around them, tolerance was crashing to the ground beyond repair.

The Principle of Uncertainty or, in my phrase, the Principle of Tolerance, fixed once for all the realization that all knowledge is limited. It is an irony of history that at the very time when this was being worked out there should rise, under Hitler in Germany and other tyrants elsewhere, a counter-conception: a principle of monstrous certainty. When the future looks back on the 1930s it will think of them as a crucial confrontation of culture as I have been expounding it, the ascent of man, against the throwback to the despots' belief that they have absolute certainty.

The work in Quantum Physics ultimately led, of course, to the development of the atomic bomb which was dropped on Hiroshima to hasten the end of World War II. Brownoski was friends with Leo Slizard, a humanitarian physicist, and relays several stories about him from that time, including this:

I had not been long back from Hiroshima when I heard someone say,in Szilard’s presence, that it was the tragedy of scientists that their discoveries were used for destruction. Szilard replied, as he more than anyone else had the right to reply, that it was not the tragedy of scientists; ‘it is the tragedy of mankind.’

The episode concludes at Auschwitz with the moving and eloquent excerpt that I am compelled to share again (but a bit more of it) and it is there we also learn more about the man whose face was earlier examined:

There are two parts to the human dilemma. One is the belief that the end justifies the means. That push-button philosophy, that deliberate deafness to suffering, has become the monster in the war machine. The other is the betrayal of the human spirit: the assertion of dogma that closes the mind, and turns a nation, a civilisation, into a regiment of ghosts - obedient ghosts, or tortured ghosts.

It is said that science will dehumanise people and turn them into numbers. That is false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people.

And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma. It was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known, we always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error, and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible.

In the end the words were said by Oliver Cromwell: 'I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken'.I owe it as a scientist to my friend Leo Szilard, I owe it as a human being to the many members of my family who died at Auschwitz, to stand here by the pond as a survivor and a witness. We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. We have to touch people.

It is all so amazingly relevant today. Sadly, mankind has not changed one bit, we have not learned anything from the despots and tyrants of history who claimed a special hold on the Truth.

Link to Google video:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5526076062300172543

(If you don’t have time to watch it all, at least skip to 30:00 mark and watch the last 19 mintues.)

The Rule of Law

Last week the Senate Intelligence Committee in a shameful straight up and down partisan vote decided not to investigate the White House NSA surveillance program. This is the illegal wire tapping issue where the Bush administration claims the right to conduct surveillance on U.S. citizens without approval from the FISA courts.

As to be expected this issue has become a partisan circus with plenty of rhetoric, exaggerations and lies to go around on both sides. Millions if not billions of words have already been written in the blogosphere about this issue, so I don't want to spend a lot of time providing redundant analysis, but I do want to comment on the importance of the "Rule of Law" on which the whole of civilization rests, let alone our democracy.

Regardless of one's political stripes or view of the War, one should be able to see that getting answers to the questions raised by this program is important enough to the American people to minimally warrant at least an investigatation by the Senate Intelligence Committe. Unless I am mistaken this is still a government "of the people, for the people and by the people." Please remember that the government can perform surveillance for 72 hours before getting the FISA warrants so any insinuation that opposition to the program is a threat to national security is overstated. Secondly, for the sake of argument, lets assume that government should have the right to perform warantless surveillance. If so, the administration should seek to overturn the existing law or get a temporary exclusion from the current law. But to simply allow any adminstration or goverment agency to willfully ignore the law is too dangerous a precedent to allow.

As I have said, this has expectedly turned into a partisan issue but it is still striking to realize that Republican Senators are more loyal to their party than to the idea of checks and balances in government, to the idea of an independent Congress. They are effectively curtailing their own powers and importance at the threat of displeasing the White House.

On the other hand, Christopher Hitchens, a vocal proponent of the War in Iraq, showing that it is possible to support the War and still oppose illegal wire tapping, has has signed on as a defendant in an ACLU suit being brought against the program. But alas there are not too many public examples that kind of independent thinking.

Anyway, the whole point of this post is to point out that the "Rule of Law" is more important than partisan politics and that I recently came across an excellent expression of this sentiment in the following excerpt from Robert Bolt's "A Man for all Seasons" about Sir Thomas More which I discovered on the http://www.dailydoubt.blogspot.com blog:

Wife: Arrest him!

More: For what?

Wife: He's dangerous!

Roper: For all we know he's a spy!

Daughter: Father, that man's bad!

More: There's no law against that!

Roper: There is, God's law!

More: Then let God arrest him!

Wife: While you talk he's gone!

More: And go he should, if he were the Devil himself, until he broke the law!

Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!

More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!

More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down - and you're just the man to do it - do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's
sake!
- A Man for All Seasons, Act 1: Scene 6 by Robert Bolt

Brilliant. If that were not enough how about these two excerpts from President George Washington's Farewell Address:

"If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers (checks and balances) be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit, which the use can at any time yield." George Washington - Farewell Address

"The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart, is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position." George Washington - Farewell Address

Good stuff, particulary when you consider that Washington was not considered intellectual when compared to the other founding fathers . Compare the complexity those passages to what you might hear from our modern day politicians.

FOX News, At Least the Title was Right

I was recently sent a link to a FOX News editorial written by "Father Jonathan" a FOX news regular commentator. The title of the piece was called "Intelligent Design: Not Modern Science". You can read it at this link: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,184953,00.html

In the article, Father Jonathan seems to support the scientific view that Intelligent Design is not a science and should not be taught in science class. Unfortunately he goes on to mischaracterize evolution and its proponents, creating a bit of a straw man called "neo-Darwinism" and suggesting that is also unscientific:

They may say “evolution,” but it’s more than that. They are being taught a very unscientific theory called Neo-Darwinism, the belief that there is NO purpose or intelligence behind life forms, that it’s all random. Where’s the empirical evidence for that? As a matter of fact, it’s impossible to prove, either scientifically or otherwise. It too should go down the hall [to the philosophy department].

This argument is, of course, disengenious and ignores the scientific rigor that is applied to the modern study of Natural Selection and Evolution which supported by geology, palentology and molecular genetics forms the basis of all modern Biology.

Since I felt the piece was thus a ruse to discredit evolution, I was compelled to send him the following letter to his FOX news email address:

Dear Father Jonathan,

Though I essentially agree with the title of your column, I would like to point out that Natural Selection is NOT random. It is self-optimizing -- it is anything but random, though random mutations are required to create the continuing set of options from which to optimize. This is a common misunderstanding of the scientific theory which is propagated by ID proponents.

Also, the science of Evolution makes no claims as to the purpose of the Universe. Because of the culture wars, there may more noise from evolution proponents making materialist arguments, but that is their opinion and not part of the science. I know of no science curriculum that espouses a material purposeless Universe as part of its study of Natural Selection and I know of no scientist who despite his personal beliefs and philosophies would argue that Evolution as a science makes any statement regarding the purpose and origins of the life and Universe. Indeed Natural Selection and belief in God are not mutually exclusive, there are many Evolutionists who simply view Natural Selection as a manifestation of God's creation -- including the Catholic Church.

Another complaint I have is of the use of the term "neo-Darwinism". Since Darwin himself made no statements regarding the ultimate origins of life (just the descent of new species), let alone the nature and purpose of the Universe, it is misleading to use the term in the context that you used it. The term "neo" tends to take on an inflammatory tone as in "neo-fascist", "neo-conservative", etc. The proper term for those who believe the Universe has no purpose or is subject only to natural forces is "materialist".

So to sum up: Evolution and Natural Selection should definitely be taught in Science class. Intelligent Design and the opposite materialist purposeless view of the Universe should "move down the hall" to Philosophy class.

Regards,
Alan

P.S. - One illustration of the power of Natural Selection is that of "evolvable hardware", where evolutionary algorithms are used to design things. One experiment at the University of Sussex in England used reconfigurable chips to design a logic circuit that could distinguish a particular audible tone. After about 5000 permutations, they ended up with an astonishingly efficient design. What's more, the researches didn't know how it
worked. It didn't seem possible, yet it did work.

If this kind of sophistication can be achieved after only 5000 permutations, what kinds of things are possible after countless trillions of permutations churning along countless trillions of simultaneous paths? Given that, it seems to me, the complexity we see in the biological world should come as no surprise. (The preceding P.S. text was largely borrowed from a commenter on a post in the Panda's Thumb)

Needless to say, I was disappointed to not receive any response or to see any reader comments of any kind posted below his commentary. Though I can imagine the volume of emails/comments he received was very large as it is on any forum anywhere on the Internet where the ID/Evolution debate is raised.

P.S. - I also refrained from commenting on his snarky remarks about University Professors, perpetuating the meme that all University Professors and curriculums are part of a liberal conspiracy to take down America. Unfortunately, there is a sad modicum of truth feeding that sentiment, but the way Conservatives like to play that card (particularly the conspiracy angle) for the manipulation of their followers is still very disengenious to me.

Stossel on Why Privatization is a Good Thing

One thing I find annoying about the Left is a growing anti-capitalism ideology that is starting to make inroads amongst more moderate liberals. It is most often expressed as anti-corporatism, but occasionally comes across as anti-free market and anti-privatization. I am generally willing to entertain any argument that is supported by reason and evidence, but I rarely see any of the Left's condemnation of capitalism as anything other than ideology which is bound by an "oppressor/victim" framework.

At any rate, as I look at the world and at history I have a hard time not applauding the free market as an economic liberating force that where applied has generally has led to a much higher average quality of life for the largest number of people than any other economic system thus tried. It is by no means perfect and I do not advocate complete de-regulation and unbridled "lazie faire" capitalism as some utopian minded Libertarians might, but it does appear to be in some need of defending.

So having recently came across this excerpt from an upcoming John Stossel ABC news special on Sharing, I decided to share it (pun intended?):

Think about shared public property, like public toilets. They're often gross. Public streets tend to get trashed. Earlier I mentioned how people litter on public lands, and think about what you share at work. The refrigerator where I work is disgusting -- filled with food that's rotten. I found cottage cheese that was more than a year old. It's because it's shared property.

Russell Roberts, professor of economics at George Mason University, points out that private property rarely gets abused or degraded. And there's an explanation for this. "When something belongs to everyone, it belongs to no one. No one owns it. There's no incentive to take care of it. It gets abused and degraded," Roberts said. Private property sounds selfish. We think of rich people taking advantage of other people. But it works a lot better, Roberts said. Compare dirty public toilets to privately run toilets. They're common in Europe, and cleaner, because their owners -- selfishly seeking a profit -- work at keeping them clean.

Why do we have so many catastrophic forest fires? Did you know that most of them are on government land -- land we share? The feds own only a third of the forests, but they have most of the forest fires. Private forests are less likely to burn, because the livelihood of "greedy" timber companies depends on having healthy trees. But the government, managing land we all share, is less careful.

Here's another example. I can throw my trash on the floor at a pro basketball game. The home team leases this space, and they're fine with people littering, because they clean it up. The price of the cleanup is included in the ticket price, and they clean it up well. At stadiums, they don't even call this litter, it's just part of the game. Compare that to public parks or fields -- the litter tends to stay here.

It's the same reason people overfish the sea. The ocean is public property, shared property. So for years, fishermen took all they could. They had little incentive to make sure enough fish were left to reproduce, and the supply of fish has dropped drastically.

But good things happen when this public property is privatized. For example, private fishing quotas helped restore fisheries in the United States and New Zealand. In the 1980s, New Zealand's government gave fishermen individual fishing quotas, setting a total allowable catch for different species of fish. Then it granted each fisherman the right to take a certain percentage of that. Because the fishermen own those rights, it's private property. The government can't take it away from them. The fisherman are free to buy or sell those fishing rights, just like private property. The result: Fish populations went up.

Communal farming is similar. The Pilgrims tried shared farming when they first arrived in America. But, rather than working shared property, they faked illness. Some of them said the kids were too young to go out in the fields. The Pilgrims nearly starved to death, and ended up eating rats, dogs, horses and cats. When each was given his own land on which to grow crops, food was abundant. I wish they taught the kids that at Thanksgiving. Likewise, when Stalin and Mao collectivized their farms, their people nearly starved to death.

High school teacher Tori Haidinger runs an experiment to show her students that this is just the way people act. Each group of students gets a covered beaker of candies they must share. She tells the kids, take as many as you want and then pass them on to the next kid. Any left over will reproduce, just like fish, because the teacher will double them. What happens? The beakers were emptied completely, because nobody shared. Bad news if the candies were fish.

Economists call this the "Tragedy of the Commons." When Haidinger changed the rules and gave each student, rather than a group of students, his or her own private beaker, things worked out better. She's privatizating the beakers. People sneer at the term privatization, but this time no one overfishes. Kids are careful to leave enough in their ponds and new generations of chocolate candies are born. One of the students understands the lesson. "If it's ours, we will care more about it," she said.

The same principle is saving elephants in Africa. In many African countries, the elephants belong to everyone. Governments have outlawed killing them, but the vast plains are too big to police. So greedy poachers kill elephants and steal their tusks. Roberts said, "It's a nice idea to say it's wrong to kill elephants. But that method has not worked." In Zambia, Uganda and Kenya, where elephant hunting is banned, the number of elephants has actually dropped dramatically -- from 180,000 to 44,000 -- in the past four decades. But in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Namibia and Botswana, local villagers have a form of ownership rights. They have the right to sell hunting licenses for about $10,000 per elephant. And this permission to kill elephants is actually saving elephants.

"Oh, it's disgusting. But it works," Roberts said. It works, because the villagers now say, these are our elephants. Even a former poacher now works to protect the elephants. "The villagers have a profit motive to make sure that elephants don't get poached and killed. As a result, they take care of them. They don't want to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs," Roberts explained. In these countries where villagers virtually own the elephants, elephant numbers have almost tripled -- from 80,000 in 1960 to about 230,000 in 2000.

So while sharing may feel warm and fuzzy, it often makes things worse. By contrast, private ownership -- whether it's public toilets or hunting and fishing licenses -- makes the world better.

I can't comment as to the rigor of Stossel's report, but the examples are very instructive.

Television Psychic Busted (Surprised?)

So-called "medium" Sylvia Browne got caught live on a radio show making an incorrect "prediction" about condition of miners trapped in the Sago mine disaster and then tried to backpedal when the tragic news came out reversing previous news that had indicated that many of the miners had survived.

Browne was a guest on "Coast to Coast", a live syndicated radio show hosted by George Noory. Noory was discussing the recent (now known to be incorrect) news that all but one of the miners was alive. (As detailed in this link: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,180681,00.html)

Noory: "Had you been on the program today, would [you] have felt if — because they heard no sound — that this was a very gloomy moment — and that they might have all died?"

Browne: "No. I knew they were going to be found. I hate people that say something after the fact......."

But later in the show, news broke that contradicted the earlier report confirming in fact that tragically all the miners had perished, except one who was in critical condition. Noory tried to protect Browne from the obvious conclusion that she had (surprise!) no psychic ability, but Browne cut him off and tried to reverse her original "prediction":

Norry asked: "With your accuracy rate so high ...."

Browne (interjecting/blurted): "I didn’t believe that they were alive."

Noory: "What’s that, the miners?"

Browne: "Yeah, I didn’t think — and see, I’ve been on the show with you, but I don’t think there’s any that are going to make it."

The sad thing is that this gaffe will not dissuade any of her fans that she is truly a psychic medium. There is no evidence at all that any of these television psychic have any psychic ability whatsoever. Mostly that is because there is no scientific evidence at all that has stood up to any peer review that validates the existence of any paranormal phenomena. Browne herself has refused to submit to James Randi's paranormal challenge (to which she agreed live on CNN) which will award $1 million dollars to anyone who can demonstrate any paranormal powers under his observation. Needless to say no one has claimed that prize.

Yet, people like Browne, John Edwards and James Van Praagh regularly appear on television and what's more they often appear on shows, such as Larry King Live, that people generally associate with "real" news. This is shameful, because most of the time there is not even the mention that psychic power is scientifically questionable in general and often 100% completely disproved in the case of specific psychic personalities.

James Van Praagh has been featured on Entertainment Tonight in such a manner as to make it seem like his powers are unquestionably fact. This is incredibly dangerous in a society where scientific literacy and critical thinking are lacking. Its even more disturbing when main stream news programs do not hold so called psychic personalities accountable to any standard of proof.

If people are unwilling to apply even a modicum of critical thinking to these and other charlatans, how can we expect to have an informed and intelligent public capable of making important and nuanced decisions in important areas of public policy such as medical research, the environment, international relations, the future of our democracy, etc.

The media is our most important tool for disseminating accurate and critically analyzed information. When mass media as an institution starts to fail, it should be very alarming to all. As I have quoted before, we must heed Thomas Jefferson's warning: "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be".

P.S. - The internet is chock full of sites debunking these so-called "mediums". For starters try this piece by Michael Shermer: http://www.valleyskeptic.com/crossing_over.html