Common Leftist Economic Claims, Part II: Refuting the “Supply Side” Canard
To continue from yesterday’s article: in a previous article here at TAH, one of our frequent commenters made this unsupported claim:
Additionally, inflation adjusted income is negatively correlated with tax cuts for the the top tax brackets.
Presumably, the individual meant “increasing inflation adjusted income”. I’ll make that assumption, because otherwise the statement doesn’t make much sense.
The same commenter also posed this question.
When in the history of human society has wealth ever flowed DOWN in any meaningful way?
Essentially, these two items are a restatement of the old Leftist claim that “supply side economics doesn’t work”.
Well, let’s look at that. Luckily, data shedding light on the answer to that question is readily available. That is, it’s readily available if you (1) actually know what to look for, (2) are willing to do some simple calculations using common software, and (3) are willing to believe your own eyes.
And unlike our commenter above, I’ll provide a graphic that actually is relevant to the matter under discussion. (smile)
Data.
The US Census Bureau collects tons of data. One of the items they collect – and regularly publish – is data concerning US median household real (e.g., inflation-adjusted) income.
Historical data regarding the top Federal income tax rate is also available from numerous sources. I located one that contained data for the same period.
Tables can be hard to interpret. Most people have a much easier time grasping what’s going on if the numbers can be presented meaningfully in graphical format. Luckily, common software (spreadsheets) today provide an easy way to do exactly that.
So, I did two things. I obtained the pertinent data for each item (top income tax rate and median US real household income) for the period 1967-2015. I then used common spreadsheet software to compare this data graphically. Let’s take a look at what the data shows.
Here’s a graph that plots US median household income, in real terms (e.g., after having been adjusted for inflation using the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ CPI-U-RS from 1977 on and the Census Bureau’s derived CPI-U-RS for the period 1967-1976) and the top marginal individual Federal income tax rate for the period 1967-2015. Data sources are indicated at the end of this article.
A larger version of the same image may be viewed here.
Important Concepts .
I’d like to emphasize a three key points before continuing.
First, the chart above shows income in REAL terms – that is, after having been adjusted for inflation using the Census Bureau’s version of CPI-U-RS. Thus figures from different years can indeed be validly compared.
Second, the chart used median household income – not average (mean). The median is defined as the midpoint of a given data set; half of the values in the data set fall above that value, and half fall below. It is NOT the average (mean). Its use is significant because the mean of a data set can be grossly distorted by a small number of “outlier” data points at the extreme end of the spectrum.
Don’t believe me? Let’s look at the mean (average) and median of a data set consisting of a large set of data with two huge outliers. Specifically, let’s look at a data set consisting of a thousand and one values, the first 999 being the integers from 1 to 999 – and the other two each equal to ten million. For this example data set, the mean is 20,479.02; in contrast, the median is 501. Therefore, for that data set the median is far more generally descriptive of the data than the mean, which has been grossly skewed by two outliers.
Income data is subject to similar skewing; one person who makes a killing in the market (e.g., several $M) or in real estate speculation in a given year can skew an entire town’s average (mean) household income for that year, but won’t markedly affect the median. Thus, using the median vice the mean is a better choice.
Third: an increasing median over time for a data set indicates that values of the individual data elements are in general getting larger. (Remember: median means half are larger and half are smaller.) A rising median real income is thus indicative of a general increase in purchasing power across the board. – or a situation where virtually everyone is getting better off, economically speaking.
Observations.
Inspecting the above chart yields some interesting results.
- From 1967 to 1980, the top US tax rate was 70% or higher (in 1981, it was just below 70% – 69.12%, to be precise.) That’s not quite the absurd post-World War II confiscatory top tax rates of 90+% in effect until the early 1960s, but it’s still very high. During this period, using the “eyeball” method the US median household income appears to have oscillated around a trend line of around (in real terms) $48,500. If there was any trend at all for an increase with time, it was barely increasing. It may have been decreasing slowly instead.
- In 1982, the top tax rate dropped to 50%. A year later, the median US real household income began rising. It remained generally rising, with the exception of the Gulf Crisis period and its immediate aftermath (1990-1993), until 1999.
- The US tax rate dropped again in 1987, to below 40% (38.5%). It has remained below 40% ever since.
- The temporary downturn in median US real household income from 1990-1993 coincides with both the buildup to and the Gulf War itself, along with two rises in the maximum US income tax rate. The first increase was by over 10%, to 31%, in 1991; the second was by over 27%, to 39.6%, in 1993.
- The end of the rise in median US real household income coincides with the “dot.com bubble burst” that occurred at about that time. This was exacerbated by the events of 9/11 and the war years following.
- In spite of the “dot.com bubble burst”, 9/11, and protracted war in Southwest and Central Asia, in 2004 median US real household income began to rise again. This occurred shortly after a reduction of approximately 11.6% in the top US income tax rate over the period 2001-2003 – from 39.6% to 35%.
- The collapse in 2007 of the US real estate “bubble”, attributable IMO largely to shortsighted and unsound lending policies mandated by the Clintoon administration, and the resulting follow-on Wall Street financial crisis of 2008 ended the short-term rise in median US real household income. The median US household real income has yet to recover to 2007 levels.
- The top US income tax rate was raised again in 2013, by roughly 13%, to 39.6%. Leading economic indicators indicate that US economic growth over the 12-month period ending in August 2016 appears to have been a paltry 1.1% – well under that generally accepted as required to sustain a rising standard of living. That’s troubling.
- At worst, the US median real household income appears to have reached a new stable level, albeit at a significantly higher stable level than before. At best, the end of the current recession will return the US to continued real median household growth.
Analysis.
In reviewing the above the following becomes quite evident.
- The top income tax rate has been at or below 50% every year since 1982. Prior to 1981, it was 70% or higher. (The top tax rate in 1981 was 69+%, but below 70%.) It’s been below 40% every year since 1987.
- Prior to 1982, the median US real household income seems to have been relatively stagnant, oscillating around a trend line with value of around $48,500.
- Starting in 1983, the median US real household income began general rise lasting 16 years. Unfortunately, major perturbations caused by the burst of the “dot.com bubble”, 9/11, and the 2007-2008 financial crises ended this expansion. Household income in real time appear since 1999 to have reached a new stability, a trend line in the neighborhood of $55,000 (and perhaps significantly more) after 1999.
- Alternately, the 2007-8 financial crisis and policies since that date may still be depressing real household income growth. US employment is still grossly depressed (see the current US labor participation rate) vis-à-vis 2007 levels, so the latter is indeed a distinct possibility.
- Between the low point of 1982 and today, median US real household income has increased by more than 19.5%. Every year since 1984 has had a higher median US real household income than the pre-1982 “eyeball” trend line of $48,500.
- Since we’re dealing with median real US household income, the fact that the median has risen since the implementation of supply-side income tax cuts in 1982 implies that far more than half of US households are indeed better off today than they were prior to 1982. Indeed, it is reasonable to conclude that virtually everyone who is able (or willing) to work – and who isn’t a total jerk – is almost certainly better off to some degree. Only those who are unwilling or unable to perform gainful work (or unable to keep a good job due to personality or other issues) are likely no better off.
- Time lags in response to changes are the norm for any large dynamic system. The US economy is nothing if not a large, complex system. This explains, at least in part, the usual one to two year lag seen between tax cuts and tax cuts.
And, finally, we have
- Since the top Federal income tax bracket only affects those who have incomes that make them “wealthy”, that means that the “wealthy” received the bulk of the tax cuts. But guess what? Over time, it certainly looks like virtually everyone ended up with a bigger real household income anyway. So regardless of who got the benefit first, in relatively short order everyone benefited. And those benefits appear to be permanent gains.
Conclusions.
When the top US income tax rate was cut substantially in 1982, this was an implementation of supply-side economics through tax policy. After a short lag (about 1 year) US real household incomes – which had been stagnant in the long term, and had been in a multi-year decline during the years immediately before 1982 – began rising. And if/when they stabilized some 17 or so years later (if indeed they’ve stabilized), real US household incomes stabilized at a substantially higher level than the previous norm. The new level was roughly 20% higher, minimum, that the apparent previous norm; the new median may resume growth to even higher levels if the US median real household income is indeed still temporarily depressed by the 2007-2008 financial crises and resulting recession. A resumption of real growth is indeed possible. Finally, deviations from growth since 1982 appear to have an external cause unrelated to tax policies (Gulf War, “dot.com bubble”, 9/11, and 2007-2008 economic issues).
In short: yes, supply-side economics does work. And in particular, the Reagan-era tax cuts do appear to have materially benefited everyone – not just the rich. In other words: the benefits of those tax cuts “trickled down”, to everyone’s benefit.
The data above shows that quite clearly – unless you’re wearing ideological blinders, of course.
Assuming they’re seaworthy in the first place, a rising tide really does lift all boats.
. . .
That’s all for today. The next article will address the Left’s misrepresentation that “wealth distribution is inequitable”, and “the Reagan era tax cuts are making the rich richer and the rest of the US poorer”.
Author’s Note: Data used in this article was obtained from the following sources.
http://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/demo/tables/p60/256/table3.xls (data used is for all races with one of the entries for 1988 omitted).
The other side of the equasion should be mentioned as well. Spending reductions, including a $31 billion cut in spending in 1981, close to 5% of the federal budget then, or the equivalent of about $175 billion in spending cuts for the year today. In constant dollars, non-defense discretionary spending declined by 14.4% from 1981 to 1982, and by 16.8% from 1981 to 1983. Moreover, in constant dollars, this non-defense discretionary spending never returned to its 1981 level for the rest of Reagan’s two terms! Even with the Reagan defense buildup, which won the Cold War without firing a shot, total federal spending declined from a high of 23.5% of GDP in 1983 to 21.3% in 1988 and 21.2% in 1989. That’s a real reduction in the size of government relative to the economy of 10%. Reagan also deregulated many things. This allowed market pressures to adjust the price of many things that had been falsely elevated by government price controls. Deregulation, which saved consumers an estimated $100 billion per year in lower prices. Reagan’s first executive order, in fact, eliminated price controls on oil and natural gas. Production soared, and aided by a strong dollar the price of oil declined by more than 50%. These economic policies amounted to the most successful economic experiment in world history. The Reagan recovery started in official records in November 1982, and lasted 92 months without a recession until July 1990, when the tax increases of the 1990 budget deal killed it. This set a new record for the longest peacetime expansion ever, the previous high in peacetime being 58 months. During this seven-year recovery, the economy grew by almost one-third, the equivalent of adding the entire economy of West Germany, the third-largest in the world at the time, to the U.S. economy. In 1984 alone real economic growth boomed by 6.8%, the highest in 50 years. Nearly 20 million new jobs were created during the recovery, increasing U.S. civilian employment by almost 20%. Unemployment fell to 5.3% by 1989. But, we still have people who say none of Reagan policies worked. As… Read more »
Excuse me, but: ‘or unable to keep a good job due to personality issues’. This may be applied to more than just one person or one sort of person.
In regard to Reagan-era tax cuts, the effect was immediately felt on payday by me and everyone I worked with. It did make a real-world difference, providing more disposable cash. Most of us kept paycheck stubs until W-2s were distributed in January the following year, and were therefore able to make the comparison in actual figures, not just theory.
Is it correct to assume that the figures you use are gross income before taxes (FICA and SS/Medicare)?
I would have to add that before I retired, my annual raises averaged 4.5% per year, so over a period of 15 years alone, the raises may have totaled 67.5%, but the actual figures were calculated on the current year, not including any overtime or bonuses.
I’d like to add that while what you produced is accurate and correct, it’s going to confuse someone who does not understand what you’re saying in plain English.
Confused? You damn right I’m confused. Too many charts/graphs, numbers, acronyms, percentages and decimal points for my feeble mind to comprehend.
All I know is that when I see “Supply Side”, this comes to mind:
I got it. You want it? Let’s negotiate.
Better yet, go home and bring back the wife/girlfriend and then we’ll dicker.
Pretty sure the Census Bureau data is gross income, not net.
FWIW: if you averaged a 4.5% increase in salary per year for 15 years, the final salary is far more than 67.5% greater. It’s over 93.5% greater, meaning your final salary would have been nearly twice what you were making 15 years earlier.
Compound interest/gains are a wonderful thing indeed – provided they’re greater than the average inflation rate over the same time. Because both are compounded and thus reinforce themselves over time.
You can calculate either easily using the formula
F = S (1+a) ^ n
where
F is the final salary
S is the starting salary
a is the average annual raise or inflation, expressed as a decimal fraction
^ represents exponentiation
and n is the number of years
The same formula gives you the cumulative effects of inflation over the period in question. To do that, you replace S with 1. Doing that tells you how many dollars at the end of the period are needed to equal one dollar at the beginning.
If you don’t have the average value, you can do the same by repeating the calculation for each year, then using that value as the starting point for the next. A spreadsheet is great for that, if you know enough to set up the spreadsheet formulae necessary to do so.
The difference in real terms is the ratio between the two, final salary divided by final inflation. (You calculate both over the period in questionand then divide final salary by cumulative inflation). If that’s greater than one, you’re better off than you were when you started. If not, you’ve lost ground. The amount above or below 1 tells you how much you’ve gained or lost with respect to inflation.
Actually, when I did the year-by-year calcs, it was slightly over 110%, because OT and bonuses are not included. However, at the end, adding the annual bonus (same $$ each year) and the limited seasonal OT (mostly year-end for estimated year-end invoices to clients), it does work out to that, because OT was calculated on hourly rates, which increased each year.
The ‘Rule of 72″ can be your friend. Embrace it, one and all. Bwhaa
The era of Ronaldus Maximus was one of prosperity in spite of adversity. The left hates that, hence the revisionism.
It’s very simple: if your income stays the same, and the price of everything you buy goes down, your buying power has increased, as has your wealth. If your income increases, but so does the price of everything, you haven’t gained a damned thing, possibly even lost some (this is why Minimum Wage increases never work). During the ’80s, most people made MORE money while the cost of almost everything DECREASED. What’s the word for that? Oh, right, “PROSPERITY.”
These days, many people are making LESS money (at best their income has remained the same), while prices have been increasing. That would be the opposite of prosperity.
I don’t suppose Comrade Dickless has ever offered an excuse as to why Keynesian economics, i.e. the perpetual liberal fallback of “Just print more money” has failed every time?
I don’t know, but Venezuela has been cranking out paper money by the ton and it is worthless. It is one of the reasons that China will no longer loan money to the Venezuelan government, even if Maduro pays them by shipping oil to them on a daily basis. The Chinese can build their own offshore platforms and they know it, and they have untapped resources on possibly the same level as Russia.
Actually, TOW, during the 1980s prices did not decrease. They increased substantially (particularly from 1980-1982, when inflation was obscene), pretty much across the board. However, incomes increased even faster from 1983 to 1989.
When both cost of living and incomes increase, the general standard of living rises if incomes increase faster than the cost of living. It decreases if the cost of living rises faster than incomes.
The Reagan-era tax cuts appear to have reversed the late 1970s/early 1980s trend of wage increases lagging behind price increases. For that, the US owes the Reagan Administration huge thanks. Otherwise, our standard of living would soon have declined to that of the early 1960s/late 1950s. Relatively good times when compared to the rest of the world – but as a nation we’re far better off today, economically speaking, than we were then.
TOW: I’ve noted over the years that the liberals/Dummycrats are reluctant to criticize President Reagan.
Someone is going to get the “vapors” over your series, Hondo… probably consulting with one of the many Socialist profs at Bezerkley, looking for Marxist/Leninist/Maoist theories to back up his beliefs of a socialist utopia.
How much do you or anyone else, want to be he has a copy of Mao’s “Little Red Book” by his bed?
Does it come with child porn? Mao was a documented pedophile, after all
He’ll have to leave his safe space, before he can look up the prof.
That median income chart is not inflation adjusted. This one is. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N The median income spike in the 90s was not due to tax cuts. It was due to a massive growth in an entirely new industry due to the tech boom. That boom was not built off of private investment dollars in research. It was built off the 30-40 year investment the US government put into computer technologies, satellite communications, cellular communications, GPS and the internet all of which payed off at around the same time due to the synergy of these technologies. This synergy was not accidental. The government had been trying to build a military that had integrated global data communications with synced in geospatial location. This technology not only gave our armed forces and exceptional advantage on the battlefield it led to our being the initial global leaders in computer technology, internet communications, cell phones, and GPS technology. Though we have since lost some of that competitive advantage due to lack of continued long term investment in emerging technologies. Pretty much every significant market shaping technological development in the last 80 years was due to GOVERNMENT investment in research. Companies have 2-5 year investment horizons. Governments can take high pay-off 20-40 year investment horizons. Things like cell phones, GPS, computers, the internet, most medical technologies, jet aircraft etc all from GOVERNMENT not private investment. Not to mention government investment in education which made all of it possible and separates modern industrial societies from non-industrialized societies. This is not to say private investment is not vital in our economy. Only to say government investment tends to be the higher payoff investments. Private firms are forced to focus on short term profits due to the highly competitive nature of a free market. Shifting revenue into 20 year technological research is almost never possible because their competitors could instead lower their prices and undercut them in the market putting them out of business before that 20 year investment pays off. Since the Reagan era tax cuts most private innovation has actually been in developing new investment mechanisms and schemes… Read more »
Oh, and the banks did not pay us back for the bailout. That is a lie built on a fraudulent accounting trick. When the collapse happened banks were holding more than 1.2 trillion in mortgage backed securities. Since these securities were slices of bundled mortgages from several markets they were assumed to be foolproof because the economic assumption at the time is you could not have a nationwide decline in housing values since population growth maintained an increase in demand and any decline in one market area would be offset by increases in others as people moved to new housing markets. Because they were seen as such secure investment vehicles banks could hold them as ASSETS and use them as part of their capital requirement under the federal reserve system to increase their lending. Since much of this lending also resulted in additional mortgage back securities they could significant increase the amount they lent out by exchanging their MBS’s with the MBSs from other banks and each hold these MBS as capital to lend out more money. However, that was all built on a false economic assumption. Since mortgage backed securities were investment vehicles and housing markets were rising due to the increase in lending due to structural changes in capital requirements they became investment vehicles for any fund that wanted a “secure” vehicle that also payed off well due to accelerating housing market values. So countries, pension funds, university funds, municipal funds, hospital funds, every single fund you could imagine was buying them up. Driving up demand. Causing banks to generate more mortgages to meet the demand for these investment vehicles. The increase in mortgage lending led to higher housing prices. Driving up the value of MBS, leading to more demand for MBS, leading to more mortgages, leading to more demand in the housing market…. However, the economic assumption that there could never be a nationwide decline in the housing market did not take into account the now highly speculative nature of the market and the fact that housing values were being driven by speculative investment markets and not… Read more »
Nice bit of obfuscation based on a completely irrelevant non sequitur. We’re discussing supply side tax policy, not the 2007-2008 financial crisis.
You want to blame someone for that fiscal fiasco, blame Clintoon. He set that up 10+ years previously, when his forced changes in bank lending policy began the US real estate bubble that burst in 2007.
And if you want to blame someone for the economic stagnation that’s now lasted around 7 years, blame the current Idiot in Chief and his cronies. If they had a freaking clue regarding how to manage a damn thing, that stagnation would have ended before the 2012 election.
I see that the “shotgun” approach to discussing issues is alive and well at Bezerkley… try to discuss the subject, then throw six other subjects into the discussion to make yourself look “educated”.
Lars, ask for a refund for your tuition and find another school…
“It was all a wealth transfer and the absorption of private debt by the US taxpayer.”
I think you must be talking about welfare and the food stamp program.
Sigh:
Part one- https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo-Sk
Part two- https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GTQnarzmTOc
Who exactly has it been that has been consistently arguing for a greater government role in the economy (well not just the economy-society as a whole-but the economy has been a focus) for the last century or so?
Then, like Captain Renault, lefties are “shocked, shocked I tell you” to find corruption occurring. Gee Lars, the idea that power corrupts is hardly Earth shattering. What exactly did you think would happen? ,
Ooohhh Zika Poodle, you are SO properly named, you run in circles yipping and yapping just like one of those obnoxious damned miniature “Boot Dogs”.
Learn how to read, you damned ignorant and mendacious leftist tool.
The median chart above IS INDEED INDEXED FOR INFLATION. A quote from the source of the data used, which obviously you didn’t bother to read. It’s really hard to find; it’s on the third or fourth line of the Census Bureau spreadsheet containing the data. And for your benefit: yes, I’m being sarcastic as hell about the “really hard to find” part.
How about you just keep your freaking mouth shut instead if you’re going to do nothing but make false statements – through either ignorance, laziness, or deliberate lying – when you comment here. And if you ever actually decide to start trying a bit of due diligence before running your poodle-esque yap, ask someone to explain things to you if you’re not smart enough to comprehend the words you encounter while performing that due diligence.
Now, be a good little Leftist a-hole and go play in traffic. After you GFY, of course.
false statements – ignorance, laziness, or deliberate lying.
Hmm… difficulty choice, but considering everything, I’d vote for all three, depending on the subject matter at hand.
Why HONDO…I am so proud of you. I knew you had it in you.
I held back, actually. I try to avoid getting really coarse in articles and comments here, and I think I stopped short of getting too coarse above.
But dealing with damnfoolery and damnfools too lazy to fact check before waxing ignorant – and who act like they’re freaking omniscient and infallible when in reality they’re merely parroting the Leftist bullsh!t they’ve been spoon-fed – gets pretty damn old after a while.
I’m right because I said so! You guys are wrong if you disagree with me! Wahhaaaaaaahaaaaa!
Your Superior
Major Commissar’s Narcissism
Commissar Poodle
My superior? Please. That’s not even a good joke.
If the “good Major” really thinks that, the “good Major” can French kiss my bung hole.
HEY Zika Poodle, do you enjoy getting your ass kicked after running your mouth at Mach 3?
‘First, the chart above shows income in REAL terms – that is, after having been adjusted for inflation using the Census Bureau’s version of CPI-U-RS. Thus figures from different years can indeed be validly compared.’ – re: chart illustrating the article. First of all, the chart used to illustrate the article starts in 1967, and is specifically described as adjusted for inflation. Second, Commissar, you incredible moron, the chart you’ve provided, which starts in 1985, is identical to the chart above, minus the years 1967 through 1984. But YOU didn’t see that because your stupid ass inflated ego got in your eyes again. Anyone with reasonably functioning eyesight and a working brain cell can see that. I am absolutely astonished at your sheer stupidity and lack of comprehensive skills, but it does explain a lot about you, especially when you intentionally ignore what I just said: that THE TWO CHARTS ARE IDENTICAL STARTING IN 1985. Hondo’s chart simply goes further back. But that’s you in spades. You ignore FACTS because they simply don’t fit your ideology. At the same time, you don’t even do your own homework when you present something. You just throw something into the mix and say ‘because I said so’. If you had bothered to read the article at all, you’d realize that in using one USGOV source (your link) against another USGOV source (CPI-U-RS) with EXACTLY THE SAME FIGURES AND RESULTS, YOU JUST MADE A COMPLETE ASS OF YOURSELF ALL OVER AGAIN. Nothing you say is valid. It has no basis in reality. Your statements are drivel. Go live in Venezuela. Their economy has imploded. People are starving to death because food supplies are inadequate or non-existent, all entirely due to the blatant incompetence and sheer stupidity of two communist assholes named Chavez and Maduro, who depended on bubble prices for money and thought the magic carpet ride would last forever. They found out the hard way that, just like the housing bubble, the source of which you don’t understand at all, nothing lasts forever and ALL BUBBLES IMPLODE. I keep thinking of the Dutch… Read more »
Lars can’t be bothered to actually research. That would take time and he has a very busy schedule. It’s not easy defending Scocialism and Communism when you’re unemployed and in between college semesters…
Yeah, apparently he’s too f**king lazy to bother to actually, you know, follow a link and read the first three or four lines of what’s found at the link.
Well, either that or he’s an ignorant ass who doesn’t have a clue what “CPI-U-RS” is. Or he’s deliberately lying.
Fak’heem.
“and”
Always consider that “and” might explain it.
11B-Mailclerk, Ex-PH2: point taken. Should have used “and/or” vice “or” in the last sentence of the 2nd para.
I agree with 11bmailclerk.
Said so right here. http://valorguardians.com/blog/?p=68217&cpage=1#comment-2906875
You are correct, Ex-PH2. Had Commissar Poodle (now apparently sans dick) bothered to actually follow the links to the data I provided, he’d have seen full well that the data is indexed to CPI-U-RS 2015. He either didn’t bother or is lying through his teeth.
Nothing new from Poodle. But it gets old after a while.
Well, Hondo and swormy, I glanced at his offering, returned to the illustrative chart at the top of the page, did a simple comparison and it’s basically apples-to-apples, which means he simply cannot be bothered to do any research or real-time work.
This is more annoying than anything else, especially when it is followed by more drivel about the housing bubble, which traces its roots to the Clinton administration in the late 1990s. If you remember the pure tomfoolery with money during the Savings & Loan scandal, that was followed by a nonsensical lending business called subprime mortgages, which started during Clinton’s administration. In reading some of the popular books about the city of Chicago, I found one chapter describing an identical housing bubble in 1926, a building boom which produced numerous apartment buildings (I lived in two of them) and rampant speculation for the 2.5 years preceding the Crash in 1929, which is when everything ground to a screeching halt, including housing construction. I saw those same things – subprime mortgages, shady lending practices, interest-only mortgage loans – starting in the late 1990s and on into the 2000s, during which the price of housing inflated so abominably that the idea of putting too much money into one in what was an agitated bubble machine just turned me off. And I was right. It has taken 8 long years for the housing market to begin to recover and while interest rates are low, prices are still inflated beyond belief when they should not be. I was right: my sister paid far too much for her house and has whined to me that she’ll never get her money back.
It’s worse when you realize that the poodle not only has no dick, he also has no understanding of how basic economics works. And yes, it does indeed get quite old.
Ditto: Had a stats prof (U of Arkansas, Fayetteville) tell us that often the ‘extremes’ were discarded to arrive at a value. He noted the extreme values could unduly influence an outcome.
Anyway, I was told there would be no maf on TAH.
Thanks Hondo. Excellent presentation. And I see that the poodle doesn’t have a clue about what you said. That, of course, was to be expected. Looking forward to the next part.
I looked through all that drivel posted by Lars the Totally Ignorant Asshole and dug up information on one subject only that he claims was developed somehow by the US government. Note that he makes this statement without providing any backup. As it happens, the man who actually invented the modern cellular (cell) phone is Mary Cooper, an electrical engineer with a BS and an MS, both from the Illinois Institute of Technology, in electrical engineering. He served in the Navy during the Korean War and after the war, worked for Teletype Corporation, then subsequently worked for Motorola Corporation starting in 1954. Cooper worked on many projects involving wireless communications, such as the first radio-controlled traffic-light system, which he patented in 1960, and the first handheld police radios, which were introduced in 1967. He later served as a vice president and director of research and development (1978–83) for the company. – Source: Encyclopedia Britannica. He is, in fact, the guy who developed the Dynatac brick phone, that marvelous piece of cell equipment that weighed 2.5 pounds and required a back brace to just carry it and its battery. Remember that one? There’s more on Cooper’s bio here: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Martin-Cooper Before I go any further, I was in the Navy in the days when teletype communications were still in use. The USGOV bought teletypewriter equipment BY CONTRACT from Teletype Corporation. About halfway down this page there’s a closeup photo of a couple of plates attached to a teletypewriter, and if you look closely, you can clearly see the spot engraved ‘CONTRACT NO.’, meaning it was bought from Teletype Corp ON A GOVERNMENT CONTRACT. http://www.navy-radio.com/tty.htm IIRC, I think that RM was the rate that operated the teletype equipment, something that was open to WAVES at the time. I do know that RMs repaired the equipment, but it’s been a while. The FCC asked AT&T to expand its use of wireless into the UHF. Two Bell Labs engineers (Young and Ring) had already in 1947 proposed the idea of breaking wireless communication areas into cells. AT&T proposed the architecture of wireless cells that WE… Read more »
The inventor of packet communication, required for the Internet and for spread-spectrum radio?
Hedy Lamaar (actress) and George Antheil (musician)
During World War 2 they developed an absolutely -brilliant- method for guiding torpedoes by unjammable radio. it was 100% do-able with WWW2 technology.
The Navy (US Government) turned it down (!!!) and sat on it for over a decade.
It is the core of the current frequency-hopping radios we use, than the “packet” nature of the signaling is the core of the Internet I use to post this comment.
The US Government sent us to the moon.
And then what? -quit-
Business will put us there to stay, if it can be done. If it makes a buck or three, it will get done.
Sirius Satellite radio was delayed for about 5 years by various government hemming and hawing. (Most likely at the behest of AM/FM lobbyists)
Eh, not really. Lamar and Anthie “invented” neither packet switching nor spread spectrum radio. What Lamar and Anthiel did was apply a previously-existing concept (frequency hopping) to the control of torpedoes.
The concept of frequency hopping arguably traces to Tesla in the early 1900s, and was expanded on by a German physicist and EE in 1908. A practical method of using frequency hopping to transmit Morse code was patented over a decade previously to Lamar and Anthiel’s patent.
http://judgybitch.com/2015/11/09/did-hedy-lamarr-really-invent-frequency-hopping-communications-technology/
Further, the radio signals and data Lamar and Anthiel’s patent described using were analog, and the method they provided merely adapted existing analog radios to frequency hopping. Their work wasn’t the basis for packet switched data at all.
The concept of packet switched data was developed by three gentlemen named Kleinrock, Baran, and Davies in the early/mid 1960s. Of the three, Kleinrock’s work is generally regarded as having provided the mathematical foundation for modern packet-switched networks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packet_switching#History
The use of spread spectrum communications does not automatically equal digital communications. The former can be used for either analog or digital communications.
Could the work in the 60s be considered derivative of prior works such as Lamaar and Tesla?
Tesla came up with some really neat ideas. Not sure I want one of his power transmitters as a neighbor, though….
The point being, Government didn’t come up with spread-spectrum or packets.
No. Kleinrock’s work was in the mathematics of queuing theory. That provided the theoretical underpinnings required to prove that packet switching of digital data was more efficient than switching on a per-message basis. Without that, data networks as we know them today simply don’t happen.
Later work also confirmed that packet switching was also more survivable – I think that was the primary contribution of either Baran or Davies, but I could be wrong about that. All three were instrumental in demonstrating that a packet switched network (which is what the Internet is) would work, and work better than the available alternatives.
Tesla did a load of interesting and excellent work. But his was primarily EM theory and analog, not digital. Digital data transmission was effectively a theoretical curiosity until a guy named Nyquist discovered the digital capacity of an analog channel, publishing those results in 1924. Even then, it took Claude Shannon’s 1948 theoretical work in information theory to show how to make digital transmission of data the practical norm vice a lab curiosity or commercial “niche” sideshow.
OK, Hondo, I stand corrected.
Well, sure, why not? Marconi studied the works of Righi and Hertz while he was trying to build a wireless transmitter.
Thank you, 11B. I’d like to add that the Soviet Union put Sputnik into orbit in 1957, well ahead of anything we did, but Arthur Clarke n 1945 proposed the construction and use of geostationary communications satellites. RCA had a government contract to build them, but AT&T was working on it at the same time (don’t have the engineers’ names) without a government contract.
Sputnik was effectively a demonstration of ICBM capability.
As a physics problem, if you can loft a small satellite into low Earth orbit, you can drop a moderately heavy payload on a city on another continent.
The ICBM came first, then the satellite booster.
American planners decided it wouldn’t be cost-effective to build big rockets for the first generation nukes, so they convinced the DoD to hold off until we had little warheads. More economical, don’tcha know.
Stalin, on the other hand, told his people to build a big rocket, or else. He didn’t care if it was cost effective or not.
So while Von Braun was practically begging people to let him put up a satellite, the Soviets used the R-7 to put up Sputnik.
Yes . . . and no.
For the USSR, correct. The R-7 used to boost the Sputniks into orbit was indeed the same R-7 that was the USSR’s first ICBM.
For the US, no. The first two US satellites – Explorer I and Vanguard – did not use an ICBM-based booster. The former was based on the Redstone booster (SRBM, but with a payload capability similar to that of the R-7 at 6000lbs. Explorer I weighed about 50 lbs, so the Redstone was able to launch it into orbit. The Vanguard (originally to be the 1st US satellite, but the first launch failed) was based on a research rocket project by NRL.
The first US ICBM, the Atlas, didn’t make a full-range flight until November 1958.
FWIW – my father was a ham (amateur radio operator), CD volunteer and member of the Texas State Guard in the 1950’s when Sputnik was around. He and his fellow hams constructed an antenna and recorded the signals from Sputnik whenever it passed overhead, then forwarded their recordings to the Feds.
I went with him one evening to the radio shack and actually heard the signals real-time – not some recording later.
Kinda cool.
I think somewhere I have a photograph of him and a fellow ham with the setup in the field.
Yes. Yes, you can. Scared the crap out of the USGOV.
Haven’t seen anything from Zika Poodle lately, maybe he’s engulfed in his copy of “Masturbating to Marx” written by one of his UC Berserkely Profs?
Cutting to the chase, most lefties really want for us to turn over all our assets to them because they really believe they will make wiser decisions about their use than can any of us. The simple argument is this:
OK, let’s say that all personal assets are magically taken by the gubmint. Liquidating all that property (assuming it were even possible) would keep everything running for a while, but what do they plan to do next year?
Who is going to pay for my groceries?
And without my car (asset) how will I get to the grocery store? (Peapod doesn’t deliver in my area.)
Don’t worry about such mundane things PH! Those benevolent lefties will issue you what you need, as they define it. Because, you know, they know what is best for us.
“FROM each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs” with said “needs” being at the decisions and whims of bureaucrats. Ain’t that what libtards see as Utopia?
Oh, yes. I have 3 bedrooms. One is my bedroom, one is my library, and one is my workspace where I write and paint and fiddle with my photos. My cats hang out there, too. But I have enough room for four more people, right? So I won’t ever get any privacy or be able to do anything except sit and stare out the windows.
I think they’re all jealous of those of us who have worked hard to get what we have earned, but they don’t want to have to work to get it. They just want to steal it.
I keep telling myself (and others) that this quackery will stop some day when reality sets in.
It’s already done that in Venezuela. I would dearly love to send all the leftretards to a place like Venezuela, just to see how long they last on empty stomachs and no access to needed medicines or toilet paper.
Socialism is thinly disguised communism, period.
The dedicated Marxist (or whatever they may call themselves if still in the closet) believes that Socialism fails due to sabotage or lack of dedication in the trying of Socialism.
Oh, yes, because it cannot possibly an unworkable system, right? Right???
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fatal_Conceit
I suppose Lars justifies part of his rant based on the fact that the internet was based on ARPANET, which was to a degree a government-funded network of defense & university networks.
Interesting trivia: the ARPANET/internet packet system was designed to be multiply redundant in case of network degradation. Ironically enough the approach worked very well within the Iraq defense network before and during Desert Storm. The allies had a helluva time keeping the Iraq network down.
Other interesting trivia: Gore’s claim to have “invented” the internet is somewhat true. Gore was one of the sponsors of the bill which allowed the commercialization of USENET.
…I wonder how Lars explains Fidonet, which was a purely privately-run organization based on privately-developed software. Very big before the World Wide Web…
If it was packet-switched, it should have been survivable. One of the original design goals behind packet switched networks was survivability during a nuclear war – where presumably significant portions of the DoD’s communications networks would be “severely degraded”. (smile)
From a communications aspect, AFAIK ham signals with Morse code will still get through when nothing else will. If you can find someone who knows Morse code…
Still sorry they dropped that from the requirements for a ham license.
Eh, not always. Might want to read up on the nuclear test Hardtack Teak.