And again…

This past Sunday was, of course, Father’s Day (can we get an official ruling on the apostriphication: “Fathers” vs. “Father’s” vs. “Fathers’”).  It was also my 34th birthday.  In celebration, Jen, Rosa and I went down to visit another Father friend of ours and his family, the Hertlers, in Red Bank, NJ.

Rosa barely slept, so we all walked around like zombies for a while, but we had a great time.  I just want to wish all the Dads out there a belated “Happy Fathers Day”, and especially my Dad.

There are some pictures of our trip posted in the Gallery.

Rosa recently made her first big car trip to New York to see her Grandpa John’s side of the family including her Great Grandmother Rose and her 1st cousins once removed, Alex, Jordan, and Sam. She was nervous about making a good first impression, but was definitely successful in showing the family her true fussy self. For pictures from the trip, check out the subfolder under Rosa’s picture Gallery.

I uploaded a few new pictures including this one which is my absolute favorite. It’s her first big smile and we captured it on “film”.

Many of you know that I am anti-Facebook.  I know there are tons of people on there who use it as a primary vehicle to communicate with their friends and family.  I totally admit that for this reason I am very tempted to get an account.  I’m sure I’ll break down someday and do it.  Not surprisingly, it seems the younger you are, the more personal you are okay with those communications being.  Some people update their status to give their mood, or that they’re stuck in traffic.  I find this totally shocking because:

1. It is conceited in the extreme that you would think anyone cares that you are ticked off at the red Honda in front of you, and
2. People actually do!!!

Still, the main reason I’m against Facebook is that they keep track of everything you do, and collect a huge database about you.  Worse, by being “friends” with someone, even if you don’t post images or other personal information, those people can “tag” you in images they post, and so Facebook learns about you anyway.  In fact, right now, they may not be doing much with all that power.  But they certainly can.  Today, the blogosphere is abuzz with news that Facebook has just changed their terms of service (TOS) to give them more power over your data.

The main thing I find most appalling: Facebook reserves the right to change their TOS at any moment, and without notification.  Your “continued use of the service” constitutes an agreement with their TOS.  That means they could say tomorrow that “all data on Facebook will be sold to the highest bidder” and, if you log on even once, then you have “agreed” to that!

It is for this reason that I don’t post pictures of Rosa on social networking sights.  I can’t recommend highly enough that you get anything you think you (or someone you care about) wouldn’t want to be public knowledge ten years (or one year, or one hundred) from now off of Facebook ASAP!!!

Read More.

My family are all in the market for new phones.  I’m trying to get them to hold out for the new Palm Pre, but I don’t think they want to leave T-Mobile.  So, as I was scouring the blogosphere trying to find out what the best thing going on T-Mobile is to offer my sage wisdom, I stumbled across this video.  Pretty funny!

I am not an economist.  Not that it matters much, economists don’t know what the heck they’re talking about, anyway.  If Nobel laureates can’t get lined up on the same side of a stimulus bill, then what are we non-economists to do?

Well, one thing I generally like to do is apply the KISS protocol to any analysis.  That is, keep it simple, stupid.  In this protocol, I’m “stupid.”  So let “stupid” walk you through a few simple facts that are, well, facts, and see where it takes us:

1. We run a massive spending deficit,
2. Which piles onto our already massive debt load.  People like to talk about our debt as a “percent of GDP” and comment that our debt isn’t at historic levels.  However,
3. Our GDP has been arbitrarily inflated over the past couple decades by the growth of the financial sector.  If I take out a loan, and then someone repackages that loan and sells it, and then someone derives a new product based on my loan and 1000 others and resells that, and then someone ensures that derivative, and then sells that insurance policy, and the buyer derives a new package of 1000 such insurance policies and then…well, you get it.  It’s kind of like matter never being created or destroyed, but every one of those transactions goes on the GDP.  Now, if I had built a car…
4. We run a massive trade deficit.
5. Savings levels in this country have been, over the last few years, negative.  They are just now reaching ~10%, which is anemic at best.

So, what does all this mean?  Well, the massive deficits (budget, trade) and debt (national, personal) that we carry mean that we are, quite literally, slowly (or not so slowly, that’s subjective) giving away the country.  Eventually, we will simply owe a sizable chunk of what the country is worth.  At that point, the country fails.  I have no idea how near or far we are from that point, because I’m not an economist, but rest assured, if things don’t change, that point is coming.  And it may be sooner than we think.  Other powers (The Soviets, the great colonial empires, etc.) have disappeared, in some cases quite quickly, when their balance sheets went red.  They may or may not be parallels to our present condition, but they should nevertheless serve as warnings to how fast things can go south.  Okay, so what about the stimulus?  Will it save us?

There are several competing interests.  One side shouts, “Tax Cuts!”  Their argument is that tax cuts get money into the hands of the people quickly, and thus produce spending.  Another side shouts, “Infrastructure” or, “Jobs Programs” or, “Green Energy!”  These people believe that we should make investments in specific, often tangible areas and that that will improve both the present and future economy.  Finally, there is a large, and, I get the feeling, intellectual group that remains nearly completely drowned out that is whispering, “Don’t do anything.”  Well, at least not a massive government stimulus.

It is difficult for me to figure out the merits of the last two arguments.  However, given the 5 points above, it’s pretty much a fact that the first argument is bull-doodle.  When you are in debt, running a deficit, and sending what money you do have to spend overseas at an alarming rate, tax cuts will do nearly nothing.  Except to entrench China (etc.) into their export-driven mentality, and entrench us in our consumerism-driven mentality.  It was these mentalities that got us where we are today.  There is simply no rational argument for tax cuts, and there are huge moral arguments against.  Think about it: if I simply hand you money (borrowed from future you and offspring), you, as an individual, are going to do one of two things with it: pay down your debt (I’m assuming you are an average American, and therefore in debt), or spend it.  You won’t invest it because, given the state of the economy, there’s nothing to invest it in.  If you pay down debt, the money goes into the financial sector, which will hoard it because the balance sheet of whomever you are paying is likely insecure, and therefore they need the cash.  Hoarded cash is not a stimulus.  If you buy something with it, a significant chunk of that purchase will, on average, get sucked up under point 4, the trade deficit.  This will dilute the stimulative effect, and worse, it will reinforce the relationship we have with China (etc.), and discourage them (and us!) from becoming balanced consumer/export economies.  [Sidebar: One of China's big problems is that lots of their economic growth goes to savings, not to spending, which is why they're trying to get more consumerism going in their country now to counter the worldwide economic downturn.  But if more consumerism is good for them, then by definition it is bad for us (at least vis-à-vis this particular trade relationship), since we have a trade deficit where the ideal is a trade balance of $0; thus, if they increase consumerism, we should be compensatingly increasing exports.]  And remember, future you still has to pay for that purchase with interest.

Now, as for big spending programs, these may well create jobs.  Further, they may well have a psychological effect on the population that encourages economic growth.  They also may legitimately make us more productive in the future.  I must admit, however, that the rationale for many of these programs is very difficult to figure out when KISS is applied to them.  Infrastructure?  This is a no-brainer.  Hand people a shovel, put them to work, and at the same time make transportation more efficient, increase the reliability of the national power grid, bring broadband Internet into the far suburbs and rural America, and more.  These are things that will most definitely pay big dividends down the line, and are things that really ought to be the government’s responsibility.  Jobs programs?  That is, training people to do things in the “new economy,” is a little different.  First, what will the new economy be?  How does the government know (i.e., did we have jobs programs for the Internet boom?  Would they have helped or was Webvan DOA?)  Jobs programs are a great idea provided they train people to truly be productive.  In that case, they should be training people to do jobs that we know are going to be here — and the only way to know that is that they be in industries the government has pledged to support or create.  And those industries should make something (I’m looking at you, GM).  Lastly, “Green Energy” is the most difficult to swallow.  I have no doubt that global warming is real and represents a world-changing threat.  Perhaps it’ll never be that bad, but the fact that it might be should be enough to make sure we take action, now.  But know this: China, India, Russia, and other growing economies are unlikely to accept meaningful carbon caps, and therefore any nations that unilaterally switch to “green energy” will be at a competitive disadvantage.  The reason for this is as follows: the only way to make green energy work is to make not-green energy (what color is it?) more expensive than the green alternative.  That will, by definition, increase the cost of doing business, which will, by definition, put those companies that opt to go green at the aforementioned competitive disadvantage.  Thus, green energy, while noble and important, is not a panacea and is, in fact, perhaps counterproductive as a stimulus in the long term.  And again, all these benefits must be paid for by future you, so if they don’t help enough that future you is rich enough to pay for them, present you has being screwed to look forward to.

Keep in mind that none of the above are opinions.  They are simply facts.  The relative importance of the various issues is certainly not fact.  The likelihood that the best or worst case scenarios turn out is not fact.  What the ideal China/USA trade relationship looks like is not fact.  The probability of the developing world becoming green partners in not fact.  But the basic, underlying truth that these are hard problems with unclear solutions passes the KISS test.  And spending ~1 trillion on “unclear” is a big gamble.

Which brings me to the last viewpoint.  The I-don’t-want-a-stimulus view.  There really is an appeal here, but it comes down to an opinion about the likelihoods and importance of all those things that are not facts.  Instead of passing a short-term stimulus package, the effect of which is nearly unknowable but very likely largely counterproductive, the idea I hear from these people, who occasionally pop up on NPR or on the Globe’s opinion pages, is to simply begin work addressing those fundamentals that we think are important.  To leave the world of facts for a moment and switch to opinion, those programs should, in my view, be to:  1) Strengthen the safety net that supports the bottom of society.  A strong safety net will encourage entrepreneurism because the costs of total failure will not be too great.  It will make the lives of children born to poverty less oppressed, and therefore give them the greatest chance to succeed.  2) Make health-care a right.  That means make it affordable, first.  Some places to start?  Let the academic world actually invent drugs, not just treatments.  Bring electronic medical records to every health-care provider in the country, and make the systems be able to communicate using a standard XML protocol.  Let Medicare negotiate drug prices.  3) Fix the farm bill so that it subsidizes healthy foods, not just corn, corn, dairy, corn, dairy.  4) Get decent, affordable Internet to just about everyone.  WIFI is one way, but what about through cell phones or satellites?  5) Launch a national movement to improve America’s school systems, from the quality of early education through the affordability of advanced degrees.  The best teachers in the country, from K-Ph.D., should be millionaires.

But none of those things are simple.

Stupid out.

A few new pictures of Rosa.  Some older ones taken by Grandma and Grandpa, and some new ones from us, posted by Jen just a few minutes ago.  They start here.

Mom and Dad just got back from a trip to Spain and Portugal.  They got off the plane, were picked up by their favorite daughter, Natalie, and came right on over to see their granddaughter.  They brought their digital camera with them, and so I pulled the pictures off from their latest adventure.

Maybe we can get Mom to blog about their trip (but probably not)!

Just a quick note, Jen posted some fresh pictures of Rosa to the Gallery.  They start with this one (click the image to go there):

By the way, if you haven’t downloaded the CoolIris plugin to view these galleries, you’re missing out!