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Open thread August 18, 2015

Dan Crawford | August 18, 2015 4:15 am

Tags: open thread Comments (8) | Digg Facebook Twitter |
8 Comments
  • bkrasting says:
    August 18, 2015 at 8:14 am

    An interesting (to me) report from CBO yesterday. This is a bit wonkish. It is a discussion of how long-term forecasts are made for SS.

    Read through this and you might conclude that the process is flawed. (the Monty Carlo Variation is factor in this???)

    Consider slide 16 that looks at the changes in the long term outlook from just one additional death in 2015.

    For those who follow SS go to slide 22. 14 out 100 simulations conclude that the SS shortfall is equal to 4.35% of taxable payroll. 100 out of 100 simulations conclude that the range in the shortfall is > than 4% and < than 4.5%.

    100 out 100 and SSA is telling us it is only 2.8%…….

    The CBO report:

    https://www.cbo.gov/publication/50736?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzEmail&utm_content=812526&utm_campaign=Hourly_2015-08-17_17%3a00

  • Denis Drew says:
    August 18, 2015 at 10:08 am

    Re: Rick Nevin: Lead Poisoning and Crime: Why the Pipeline to Prison is Running Dry

    Message from Earth on crime – non-lead caused:

    Have no idea about lead. Doesn’t seem likely to have turned multitudes into mindless zombies or into the kind of multiple mad killers British detective dramas make out their population to be. But really have no idea.

    Takes a powerful economic urge to put 100,000 Chicago youth in street gangs out of my guesstimate something like 200,000 gang age, minority males. (Al Capone would drool.) Where have all the American born taxi drivers (like me) gone? Did we inhale too many leaded gas fumes for too long (starting 1976 in the Bronx for me) until we quit and went Zombie?
    http://www.cbsnews.com/news/gang-wars-at-the-root-of-chicagos-high-murder-rate/

    Or is American born labor of all colors simply unwilling to work for sub-LBJ minimum wages? (Chicago’s meter now 50 cents a mile below 1981 when I started, subways built to both airports, unlimited limos opened along with 40% more cabs added.)

    These days I’m putting the riots in Ferguson and other places down to what I call Lilliputian law enforcement. Not for killing who must have been one of the craziest police assaulters on record – but for telling him and others not to walk down the middle of the street on their on suburban back block and like purposeless intrusions – multiplied ten thousand and one. In New York they call it Broken Windows policing. Zombies with ticket books driving everyone to distraction (can’t cross between NYC subway cars anymore). Black everyday lives matter most (Lilliputians may be coming to your multi-color neighborhood – cops getting fussy about riding wrong way on one-way street lately?).

    Getting everyone on the same economic plane would probably heal the divisions most practicably — identify too much with each other.

    To end street gang violence (and the bulk or remaining street crime) we have to go in the opposite policing direction in the labor market: make something that is not even a ticket now into a big, big felony: union busting.

    Forcing employees to bargain only on their worth compared to other employees — as in today’s American market cul-de-sac — rather than testing labor’s worth to the ultimate paymaster, the consumer, via an effective ability to withhold labor for its best price is the most unfair of all predatory economic distortions.

    State violations would invoke federal RICO prosecution (33 states have their own RICO statutes).

  • Denis Drew says:
    August 19, 2015 at 12:57 pm

    http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2015/08/musing-on-right-wing-affinity-fraud-in-politics-and-economics.html

    “Note, however, that by “self-deportation” I do not mean what Mitt Romney meant by the phrase: make life so unpleasant for undocumented immigrants in the United States that they decide to leave. What I mean by “self-deportation” is candidates adopting policies that would deport themselves.Note, however, that by “self-deportation” I do not mean what Mitt Romney meant by the phrase: make life so unpleasant for undocumented immigrants in the United States that they decide to leave. What I mean by “self-deportation” is candidates adopting policies that would deport themselves.

    “Piyush Jindal’s parents were Indian citizens in the United States on student visas. Ted Cruz was born in Canada to a Cuban-citizen father. Both of Marco Rubio’s parents were Cuban citizens when he was born. Columba Bush–wife of JEB! Bush–was born a Mexican citizen in Mexico, and Wikipedia at least claims that as of her wedding she did not speak English.”

  • Bruce Webb says:
    August 19, 2015 at 8:16 pm

    Krasting considering that the title of the presentation is:

    Investigating Monte Carlo Variation in a Dynamic Microsimulation Model

    I suspect “Monty Carlo Variation is factor in this”. In fact the thrust of the piece is a critique of the methodology and the often large errors that can result. I certainly did not read it as an outright endorsement of those 100 runs.

    That said I am not a statistician and from your remarks (and odd spelling/typo of “Monty”) you are not either. But I don’t think this is a big hammer in the ‘beat SSA with CBO tools’ discussion.

  • Warren says:
    August 19, 2015 at 9:14 pm

    Incorrect, Dennis. Jindal’s parents were here with green cards, as permanent legal residents.
    http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2011/05/gov_bobby_jindal_releases_his.html

  • Warren says:
    August 19, 2015 at 9:19 pm

    Cuban immigrants (refugees) have a special status by law, 8 U.S.C. § 1255. As such, Cruz’ parents were also here legally as permanent residents, and were under the jurisdiction of the United States. Thus, Cruz is a citizen.

  • Bruce Webb says:
    August 20, 2015 at 10:14 pm

    Warren “permanent legal” doesn’t equate to “citizens”.

    And all residents on U.S. soil except accredited diplomats are “subject to the jurisdiction” of U.S. law. The claims that “jurisdiction” in this context include “legals” but exclude “illegals” needs a lot more support than Birthers like to present.

    Are diplomats immune from most provisions of American law unless that immunity is waived by the country they are accredited to? Well yes they are. Are tourists or people on student visas immune from that “jurisdiction”? Well no they are not.

    Sorry the law just doesn’t slice the way people need here. “Jurisdiction” properly defined means “subject to the law sayers”. And there is no basis for drawing that line between people with “papers” and people “undocumented”. That is all special pleading after the fact. There is no sphere of law that subjects the former and exempts the latter that would support the idea that that “illegals” were not subject to “jurisdiction”. Indeed the whole idea is an oxymoron, if these folks are not subject to the “jurisdiction” of American law how could they be “illegal”?

  • Warren says:
    August 21, 2015 at 8:41 am

    Permanent legal resident status means that they are staying here and intend to become citizens. In the normal course of things, that is the first step in an immigrant’s becoming a citizen. Since illegal immigrants have not gone through the legal steps toward becoming U.S. citizens, they are still subject to the laws of their own country.

    Let’s turn the tables around a little. We have just re-opened relations with Cuba. If an American citizen has a child while she is in Cuba, would you say that that child is subject to Cuban law, and cannot leave?

    Let me ask another question. Let us say that a teenager, 15 or 16 years old perhaps, born in the United States to illegal immigrants from Mexico, is charged with a capital crime, should he be allowed to request legal assistance from the Mexican consulate?

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