It turns out that the "index" considers only three elements: Life expectancy at birth, Adult literacy and education, and a variant of GDP per capita. It turns out that the first two of these are so uniform across the 50 states as to be negligible, making the last the main determinant of the ranking. Additionally, Mississippi's .799 makes it just barely fit into the arbitrary color breakdowns, making it appear to those looking at the map to be massively less "developed" than West Virginia and Louisiana, at .800 and .801, respectively.
What Gelman does not add is that "the natural logarithm of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita at purchasing power parity (PPP) in United States dollars" is actually a rather poor measure of "standard of living" given that it's not normalized for local housing prices.
Does anyone really think that there's a significantly different level of "development" between North and South Carolina? Or that Michigan is better off than Missouri?
Joyner adds: "This is yet another instance of a trend that I've long found aggravating: the ordinal ranking of relatively similar bodies to create the illusion of substantial disparity. We usually see it in the form of international comparisons, which have the United States ranked 35th on some attribute despite being essentially the same as the country ranked 1st. "
Blue states are indeed richer. But presumably the liberals who gave this map link love don't think per capita GDP is actually a really good measure of human development.
Blue states aren't richer, Megan. They merely have more dollars... which translates to inflation.
"When everyone is a millionaire, nobody is a millionaire anymore."
I'd venture that the hourly wage at a Manhattan Burger King is close to what a lot of John Deere line workers make.
The JD workers can afford a house (or at least a mobile home), a car, etc.
The BK workers can barely afford to share an apartment in Queens - particularly since he's also paying a lot more taxes.
Economists have struggled with normalizing this for a long time, and I haven't heard of any globally accepted way of doing it.
Richard Florida, over on Andrew's blog, provides a link to the real measure.
Distance from Canada.
"Blue states are indeed richer. But presumably the liberals who gave this map link love don't think per capita GDP is actually a really good measure of human development."
Perhaps, but I nonetheless can't imagine moving to Mississippi (despite having numerous family ties to the state).
Does anyone really think that there's a significantly different level of "development" between North and South Carolina?
I do.
RobM:
Richer people generally do have more dollars... coincidence.. I think not!
I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that when you compare standards of living between certain places, you also have to compare their costs of living.
The big "blue" cities tend to be amongst the most expensive places to live in the USA. San Francisco, New York, Boston, etc. - very pricey.
We just spoke here about that writer for the NYT that makes $120,000/year. Many people here voice opinions that $120,000/year is barely a living wage in NYC. Depends upon your lifestyle, but the point is still valid.
It's also valid to say that if you can make $120,000 in rural Texas, you'll live very comfortably. If all you're using to compare quality of life betwen locations is dollars, you're not getting a solid result.
Isn't deflating for cost of living also problematic? Sure, things are more expensive in NYC than rural Texas and so part of the income difference is illusory. But not all: a 500 square foot apartment in rural Texas is not the same commodity as a 500 square foot apartment in a good neighborhood in Manhattan, so adjusting for cost of living is going to exaggerate the standard of living in places where the marginal consumer would rather not live.
Yes, it's all fairly problematic. Living in a nice downtown you can go and see more shows, whether music on Broadway. But if you don't care about that (and can buy everything you want online), it's not worth it to you. So no one is going to agree on a single metric.
That's why I find that overall domestic migration statistics are pretty good as a first approximation, with the caveat that it only explains the average person's preferences.
It's also another reason why these sorts of statistics boiling down complicated preferences to one number should be avoided. It ignores the diversity of preferences. Yet somehow they're beloved of a certain kind of bean-counting "liberal."
John Thacker,
Using the values of the marginal consumer doesn't bug me too much; isn't it how we do everything (including prices)? I'm just concerned about the "more problematic problem" (pardon the horrible construction) of comparing the standard of living across US locales. It's not clear to me why adjusting for cost of living is necessarily a better estimate.
Curious how such a study would be received if it used income per capita to assert a higher level of development for a different races or religions or genders rather than states.
Heh, or level of education.
Curious: do you believe that there are different levels of development? And, if so, what proxies would you use to measure them?
Not really.
It seems that "levels of development" is measuring conformity to societal norms. Which will tend to favor those in power.
Lies, Damn lies, and Statistics
1. Index to cost of living and you will understand why there is a net flow of people from blue states to red states.
2. Don't forget realignment. It used to be that New England voted Republican and the South voted Democratic. Now they have flipped flopped so the trends are reversing. Red States have more economic freedom and faster growing economies.
Great points. As a libertarian I'd point out that it's not only the cost of living that is driving people out of the blue states - it's also over-regulation.
When you can't own a canoe without having to go through the hassle of visiting the DMV to "register it," there's something very wrong...
Regarding North Carolina vs South Carolina
As someone who has lived a good chunk in multiple places in both states; I put the development rankings (my own personal observations on education, roadwork and public utilities, laws restricting individual freedom, and wealth adjusted for cost of living) as:
1. research triangle
2. south carolina
3. north carolina - research triange
with each being significantly more developed than the one beneath it, though I cannot quantify how much, seeing as how it is my own personal subjective observations.
In particular, if anyone has ever taken I-95 through both states, crossing the border seems like going from night to day (South of the Border notwithstanding).
Amusingly, I took said trip just yesterday and didn't really note such a thing. I would agree that Research Triangle is more "developed" than the rest of the Carolinas, just as NoVa is more "developed" than the rest of Virginia but that's an artifact of a local hub to attract external elites. Both of the Carolinas, just like most states, have hubs of excellence and relative poverty.
I've lived in both states.
As usual, though, the big difference is metro vs. non-metro, with the coastal and mountain resorts complicating that somewhat.
Metro quality of life is roughly comparable in NC and SC. Charlotte, Columbia, Raleigh, Greenville, Wilmington, Charleston...all have plenty of wealth and good quality of life.
Rural life is probably best in the Piedmont of either state, roughest in the coastal plain, and somewhere in between in the mountains.
We usually see it in the form of international comparisons, which have the United States ranked 35th on some attribute despite being essentially the same as the country ranked 1st.
Not only that, even the small difference is illusory. We already know life expectancy is not comparable between countries, as the OECD itself has said different measures are used for infant mortality, which has a large impact on life expectancy calculations, as well as the clear number-fudging happening in Japan and Hong Kong.
The more governments run things, the more the statistics tend to get bent toward making them look good. Of course, if you followed the Cold War, you already knew this, unless you believed the Soviets' agricultural problems really were the result of 70 years of bad weather.
This is a pretty silly objection. In one class I taught last semester, the cutoff for a C- was a straight 60% - 600 points out of 1000. What happens to someone who gets only 590 points? They receive a D+. There's some wiggle room in there, but not much; basically a change of just 0.1% can determine whether you pass or fail. And this is important, because for some people, this is the difference between ticking off a requirement, and having to take the class again.
Is this in some sense 'arbitrary'? Yes it is. But bear in mind that some people will have to take this class over, no matter what the exact placement of the demarcations happen to be. In other words, you can haggle a bit about the exact value of the cutoffs, where the lines are drawn, what color to use in a particular data representation. But you can't escape the fact that the line has to be drawn somewhere, if not here, than there.
As I said, a silly objection.
I am perpetually, ceaselessly astounded by these alogical leaps into the wild blue yonder. The way I have seen the issue phrased is that if you want to use per capita GDP as the metric for the relative success of failure of a set of economic policies, then the blue states look better. Note the essential character of the if-then construction.
There is a freightload of such alogical reasoning. I've had one poster say with a straight face - honestly - that to question the truth of a proposition is equivalent to stating that the negation of the proposition must be true!?!?!?!?! I've had others say that to question the process of reasoning that leads to an assertion is the same as questioning the assertion itself!!!!
Does anyone seriously think that to question an existence proof of God implies that one automatically believes that God does not exist? One such famous proof went something like:'Sir, since it is a mathematically irrefutable fact that e^(pi*i)=-1, it follows automatically that God exists!' Huh?
Does anyone seriously believe that questioning the 'proof' that two odd numbers sum to an even because 3+5=8, an even number, is the same as believing that it is not necessarily true that two odd numbers sum to an even?
It strikes me sometimes that certain people have been ill served by their post-high school educations, if they habitually make elementary blunders of this type.
This is a pretty silly objection. In one class I taught last semester, the cutoff for a C- was a straight 60% - 600 points out of 1000. What happens to someone who gets only 590 points? They receive a D+. There's some wiggle room in there, but not much; basically a change of just 0.1% can determine whether you pass or fail.
You're missing the point; it's not the cut-off, it's range.
The proper analogy would be if the grading went like this:
1000 - A
999 - B
998 - C
997 - D
0-996 - F
With all due respect, this argument misses the point entirely. Life is not like passing a class. There's no cutoff level. You don't WIN if you live exactly 70.1 years but FAIL if you only live for 69.9 years.
And surely you can agree that moving from he point number to a grade reduces the amount of information, and in certain cases can be used to obscure, not illuminate? Ordinal rankings can definitely obscure.
Do you believe that it makes sense to rank everyone in your class rather than give grades? If your top student made 999, second student made 998, and third best student made a 950, would it give more information to simply rank them as 1, 2, 3, or to note that the top two students were really close, with a significant gap to the third?
I believe the heart of Megan's discussion is "what is the right proxy to measure a human being's development?"
There's a lot of talk here about URBAN development, or INFRASTRUCTURE development, but those aren't the same things at all.
Was Thurston Howell more developed than the Skipper? Was the Professor more developed than Thurston Howell?
Was Mary Ann instrumental in my own, personal, development?
These are the questions at hand...
;)
Ah, a Mary Ann fan. For four decades, the Mary Ann/Ginger war has been waged.
And for all these years I thought it was the Professor/Skipper/Gilligan war.
Here's a perfect example of life in a "rich" blue state - New York; specifically Long Island.
From the Multiple Listing Service website - one house for sale in my thoroughly mixed blue/white collar area.
Ranch, 1 Family $341,500
5.0 Rooms
3 Bedrooms, 1.0 Baths
Garage: 1.0 Att
Annual Taxes: $9,300
N. Merrick School District
Year Built: 1952
Lot Size: 70X90
A crappy little ranch house on a crappy lot - TAXES ARE $9,300 per year. This is the norm, not the exception. The resident has to come up with almost 800 bucks per month just to pay taxes.
Here's one in a neighboring community - a "minority" area.
Colonial, 1 Family $135,000
10.0 Rooms
4 Bedrooms, 2.5 Baths
Garage: 1.0 Det
Annual Taxes: $6,811
Freeport School District
Year Built: 1927
Lot Size: 60 X 100
An 80 year old dump in a truly crappy area (with crime & schools that would make you cringe) with taxes of $570 PER MONTH
On top of that you can add the 8.75% sales tax, the 7% income tax, the 20% "gross receipts tax" on your utilities, and every other tax known to mankind.
Yeah! New Yorkers might make a few (not many) more bucks than people in Tennessee but everything just goes to feed the worthless, greedy public employee union pigs that keep the Dems in power here.
"At Purchasing Power Parity" implies that it is indeed referenced to cost-of-living already, and even if not adjusted for housing specifically, to a basket of goods that should at least somewhat correlate. From what I can tell, however, the map is not based on an index that includes GDP per-capita (as Gelman claims), but on census figures for mean income. Gelman states that he couldn't figure out the methodology, but two minutes of Google got me to
http://measureofamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/ushdi-background-paper-l-6_10_08.pdf
which explains the methodology in detail. It turns out that Joyner's criticism is accurate (Cost-of-Living is not factored in), but that most of Gelman's are addressed. The choice of components and weightings is based on a desire to be consistent with the standard methodology for comparing development between countries, which has subsequently been widely applied within countries elsewhere.
The economist who analyzed the data believes that other data would be relevant, but not always helpful:
"adding indicators risks problems of colinearity or double-counting. Measures related to poverty, unemployment, or housing are vulnerable to problems of colinearity with the income index. Similarly, a measure of health insurance would be vulnerable to some overlap with both the health and the income indices. Two areas of capabilities, however, seem more distinct from the traditional HDI components in their connection to well-being: environmental quality and inequality of well-being."
...
"While the USHDI methodology that I propose follows the UNDP’s HDI closely in terms of which capabilities it represents, I strongly recommend the presentation of a wide range of other indicators in the American HDR. These measures would include socio-economic and environmental indicators, as well as measures of vertical inequality within groupings by gender, race/ethnicity, and geographic area."
So fine, decry the widespread dissemination of the map out of context, but criticizing the methodology based on blog postings about a map is just as unwarranted as drawing conclusions from the map.
Is a tapeworm more developed than us? It is certainly more specialized, and exactly as much evolution went into making it as went into making us.
Is it any surprise that the old industrial heartland of the country has a higher GDP per capita, and that the traditional agricultural areas have lower per capita incomes? People left the farm and went to the city to make more money and live better. Some of our traditional industrial areas have lost industries and population, and a lot of places that were very poor (and therefore unattractive targets for migration) for many years have started to catch up. But there's still a hangover from what used to be a very large gap in living standards.
Trying to pin the phenomenon onto blue states vs. red states and contemporary economic policy is getting it backwards. Blue states are blue because of urbanization and industrial development. It's not that being liberal by the standards of 2009 gets you the benefit a long legacy of urbanization and development.
You could also explore whether the blue states are blue because the higher productivity allowed for more net takers of tax revenues. That is, a state with only low productivity agriculture for the period of 1850-1970 would have less money to employ state and local government workers and fund wealth transfer programs. Thus, you could expect fewer "blue" voters who tend to result from such jobs and wealth transfers.
The relatively more productive and wealthy areas, stemming from the industrial production, could support more such government workers and wealth transfer beneficiaries. Hence, more sprang up, and more blue voters were created, leading to states more blue than the less industrialized states.
Not saying what is cause and what is effect, but you could see how the ability to support more government workers and beneficiaries is required for such cohorts to exist. And once they exist, those voting cohorts have an effect on the state politics relative to places that could not afford such cohorts.
Another objection to the map is more obvious: New York, Taxachusetts and California (for instance) have geographically-derived economic advantages, as compared to, say, Oklahoma. I don't see how that can be held to be a success of their economic policy, except inasmuch as their economic policy was to locate the state near large bodies of water.
I can't make any sense out of what you're saying. I suspect it doesn't make any sense at all.
And btw, stop with the different definition of births nonsense; it's been refuted many times, and I know you were a participant in those discussions.
I can't make any sense out of what you're saying.
Heh. Well, you didn't understand Megan's post, either, so I can't say I'm surprised.
Joyner's point was not that the cutoff is arbitrary, but that the difference between all values measured is so small it measures nothing useful (like the grading system I posted above).
And btw, stop with the different definition of births nonsense; it's been refuted many times
Really? Perhaps you can inform the OECD, they seem to feel differently. No doubt Ashley Coales would also appreciate benefitting from your enlightenment.
TallDave, I agree with SoV that this dispute as already been settled, and not exactly in you favor. Nimed wrote two pretty extensive mails about this. Maybe you should re-read them.
http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/05/the_patients_are_the_problem.php
About this OECD strudy, Nimed wrote:
So, even according to the OECD study you keep citing, the U.S. has a lower IM even in countries with the same criteria. Let's face it: worst values in the U.S. are not due to discrepancy in criteria. When you cling to these small differences you're missing the bigger point. And you keep misinforming other people about this.
TallDave, I agree with SoV that this dispute as already been settled, and not exactly in you favor.
Really? I have an 2007 OECD study that says different standards are used. I have a 2006 USNEWS article that says different standards are used. I have an Ashley Coales study that says different standards are used.
The counterargument was a cite no one has actually read, which some anonymous Wikipedia author claims says the countries adopted the WHO standard in the 1980s and 1990s, which even if ture says little about whether indivdual hospitals are actually applying it.
That sure sounds like it resolves in my favor.
So, even according to the OECD study you keep citing, the U.S. has a lower IM even in countries with the same criteria.
It doesn't say anywhere in the OECD study that those are the only discrepancies. They just happened to mention that one. USNEWS mentions others. Probably still others exist that are not mentioned (such as the Japanese/Hong Kong one).
The burden of proof is on those who are claiming the standards are the same everywhere. Frankly, I doubt standards for live birth are even the same here in the U.S., between, say, Kansas (where most people consider abortion a mortal sin) and New York (where abortion is a sin comparable to public flatulence).
Finally, even after all that, different countries are going to have different propensities to abort children with birth defects, which is going to make their statistics meaningless in terms of being a measure of health care quality.
Thanks for saving saving me the trouble, Jaspel and SoV. I'm not sure I would have bothered.
Jaspel wrote
Why Jaspel, it's almost as if TallDave is not acting in good faith! Sorry, couldn't resist that one...
Not good enough? I also have a perinatal study, in which WHO explicitly says births are being recorded differently, and that perinatal statistics are only order of magnitude estimates.
http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2006/9241563206_eng.pdf
It is likely that the decision whether to classify a delivery long before term as a spontaneous abortion or as a birth, which must be registered, may be affected by the circumstances in which the birth occurred and by the cultural and religious backgrounds of the people making the decision, as described for the past (15). For example, a stillbirth at 22 weeks of gestation must be registered as such: at 21 weeks and six days, registration is not required.
...
Given these differences in recording the fact of death, it is not surprising that there are even greater
differences in the way in which causes of stillbirths and neonatal deaths are recorded.
...
Country estimates should thus be understood as indicating orders of magnitude rather than precise figures.
And another study finding problems in perinatal statistics.
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119025613/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0[
So there is a mountain of evidence against comparability. If the pro-socialist crowd wants to argue socialism results in better outcomes, they're going to need some better statistics.
Why Jaspel, it's almost as if TallDave is not acting in good faith! Sorry, couldn't resist that one...
Nimed, your behavior has been so despicable and your reasoning so poor I am not sure communicating with you further has any benefit.
About the only time I see this sort of thing is when 'conservatives' run on and on about the obvious superiority of their economic prescriptions and policies. So it's not to prove that blue states are better off than red states; it's to disprove the notion that certain economic theories and their corollaries are superior to other theories that purport to explain the same set of phenomena.
So it's not to prove that blue states are better off than red states; it's to disprove the notion that certain economic theories and their corollaries are superior to other theories that purport to explain the same set of phenomena.
But it doesn't disprove that. If M.C. is right, then economic growth comes from industrialization, which is more likely to occur under a laissez-faire policy than under heavy regulation or attempts at central planning. That is, M.C. is suggesting that blue states are coasting on capital built up before they became "blue," like a Al Gore going "carbon neutral" with family money that is the product of substantial environmental harm.
I don't know if this is right, it is not clearly and obviously wrong.
Of course economic growth comes from industrialization. Sometimes you can get rich off very good farmland or particular natural resouces, but most people can only get rich by turning natural materials into something more useful. The bigger the scale on which you do this, the richer you get. With "you" in this case being countries or regions, not just individuals.
As for red vs. blue policies -- if you start with just one guy on a vast piece of land, you don't need any particular rules. He can do whatever he wants without bothering anyone else. If you put 50 people on that same land, you do need some rules for the occasions when they interact. But those interactions won't be constant, so you can probably solve most individual disputes as they come up.
But if you put 2 million people on that same piece of land, you end up with a different class of problems. Somebody has to organize things so that some people don't discharge raw sewage upstream from where other people get their drinking water. You have to allocate parking spaces in Adams Morgan. Houses are close enough together that the things you do in one (for example, light it on fire by accident, or let trash pile up until it attracts vermin) can have serious effects on others. And so you gradually develop a bias in favor of blue state-type regulatory policies. Some of which are necessary for civilized urban living -- I don't dispute that. But some of which really do seem to be counterproductive and ripe for challenge.
Read the article again:
She's talking about coloring a map(The other issue is how accurate or useful the ratings formula really is in this case.) And since she's only talking about a map, not suggesting in any way that policies are based off the colorings of this map, I'd suggest that you have read the article incorrectly.
On another note, yes, ordinal rankings can definitely obscure.[1] But aside from graphics like this one, we usually go with interval or ratio data whenever possible. And this would be the case here, I would imagine; map graphics are one thing, but actually allocating dollars and manpower would probably be a bit more, um, numerical.
[1]Otoh, sometimes that's all you've got, e.g., the common example of taste testing Coke, Pepsi, Dr. Pepper, etc.
Why does the map exist at all, that it should need to be colored?
The map was obviously somebody's attempt to present a certain type of data. But if the methodology for doing so obscures variations rather than clarifying them, it's useless for the intended purpose. This is 2009; a color gradient scheme isn't a hard thing to produce.
Methodologically, it's not so different than presenting a bar graph that isn't zero-scaled, without explicitly noting that the scale was deliberately cropped for the specific purpose of emphasizing difference at the margins. At best, it's an amateur misuse of good charting methods. At worst, it's deliberate propaganda.
This is all just part of the liberal narrative - Liberals are so much smarter/evolved/"with it" as compared to conservatives. The message is relentlessly pounded into out heads over and over again by academic studies, comedians and the mass media. It is a basic recruiting tool - Who wants to be part of the dunce club? And yet virtually every engineer and entrepreneur is a conservative.
"And yet virtually every engineer and entrepreneur is a conservative."
That's just a tiny bit hyperbolic, don't you think?
Anyway, the liberal/conservative difference is evidenced by what you specifically picked out here. The reason entrepreneurs vote Republican is for economic reasons, the same reason union workers and the poor vote for Democrats: because each group is self-interested and votes for who will increase the amount of money they have.
That being said, it is quite clear from looking at the data that postgraduates, aka the "really smart ones", are largely Democrats, and that evangelical Christians, aka the "really dumb ones", are largely Republicans. I leave it to you to determine where to categorize someone who uses the kind of rhetoric, oversimplifications, and hyperbole that you do.
"Economic reasons" translates to one group votes to have the state take the other group's money away and give it to them.
The alignment of really educated and really smart isn't perfect. There is a faction of highly educated fools running around. Also, uneducated geniuses. And, the concept of the rational voter who votes for his economic interests (or other interests) is increasingly suspect. Voters don't necessarily have the time or the background with which to truly understand the economic, international, and social policies for which they are voting when they vote for a candidate (to the extent that any candidate is honest about those policies). Thomas Frank and Bryan Caplan have explored the topic from the left and the right.
That being said, it is quite clear from looking at the data that postgraduates, aka the "really smart ones", are largely Democrats, and that evangelical Christians, aka the "really dumb ones", are largely Republicans. I leave it to you to determine where to categorize someone who uses the kind of rhetoric, oversimplifications, and hyperbole that you do.
The irony in that paragraph is so dense that it is about to implode on itself, creating a supermassive black hole from which no drivel can escape. For your sake, I hope it was deliberate, and that the appearance of complete self-unawareness was merely a proofreading error.
"That being said, it is quite clear from looking at the data that postgraduates, aka the "really smart ones", are largely Democrats, and that evangelical Christians, aka the "really dumb ones", are largely Republicans. I leave it to you to determine where to categorize someone who uses the kind of rhetoric, oversimplifications, and hyperbole that you do."
To support this, it seems like you could just produce a study comparing IQ to voter identification and voting practices. Can you?
and the conservative narrative is that conservatives are so much more moral and prudent.
Both have some fact and some fiction.
As far as 'every engineer and entrepreneur' it's as much a fact/fiction as the above. Some are conservative, some are liberal. Some wear lab coats, some fur pelts.
That being said, it is quite clear from looking at the data that postgraduates, aka the "really smart ones", are largely Democrats, and that evangelical Christians, aka the "really dumb ones", are largely Republicans.
It will take more than mere assertion to convince me that a PhD in Diversity Studies qualifies one as meaningfully "smarter" than someone with a firm belief in the divinity of Christ.
I find it unlikely that the gaps in adult literacy and education from state to state are "so uniform... as to be negligible." My recollection is that the disparity is significant, and correlates closely to the pattern of human development outlined on the linked map.
McArdle, you have kind of a weird point about income. You should be aware that the "state" HDI has the same definition as the standard international HDI. Also, the cut-off points are indeed arbitrary, but they are the same as in this map:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_development_index
Furthermore, HDI is already "liberal" in you sense: differences in per capita GDP are treated as having a relatively low weight, since GDP is in log scale (instead of any other normalization transform that would put it in the range of the other 2 indices used).
It depends on what you're trying to find out. This is only true in the sense that the states are very homogeneous compared to African countries. I happen to think that a 3 year difference in mortality or a 3% difference in ADL says a lot when comparing two states. But of course both states will be much, much better than Zaire.
On the whole, I would say that this post doesn't ad anything compared to the original Andrew Gelman brief critique of the map. Of course, he is a professor of statistics at Columbia U., so that's quite alright.
No, it's wrong; you've added another - and unproven - assumption(which you have to prove), along with some soft definitions. And even if true, all you're doing is reshuffling the categories; you'd still have to do another analysis.
Finally, it seems that you seem to be under the misapprehension that disproving one claim means that one has proven another; not so. In no way does the disproof of a 'conservative' theory imply that the traditional one is right. Indeed, assuming that it's industrialization that is the true driver, or the relative age and urbanization of the state, then this would be orthogonal to both theories. As a more specific example, disproving that low taxes increase increase the overall quality of life does not mean that high taxes do.
the appearance of complete self-unawareness...
I saw a far more serious example yesterday, and yet we're still here.
No, it's wrong; you've added another - and unproven - assumption(which you have to prove), along with some soft definitions. And even if true, all you're doing is reshuffling the categories; you'd still have to do another analysis.
I don't actually disagree with this paragraph. My point was that M.C.'s point--which was a methodological one of the sort you should like--is relatively sound. If somebody asserts "Low-tax and low-regulation governance is good for the economy," and somebody else comes along and says "But 'blue' states are richer than 'red' states, so you're wrong," the second person must account for M.C.'s point, namely that "blue" states have a long history which underlies their present-day wealth but which predates modern political coalitions and assumptions. (The first person has a lot of accounting to do too, obviously.)
That is to say, nobody has proven or disproven anything here.
But presumably the liberals who gave this map link love don't think per capita GDP is actually a really good measure of human development.
Heh, since most of democratic-socialist Western Europe is considerably poorer than us on a PPP per-capita basis (and Eastern Europe is still much poorer from decades of even stricter Soviet socialism) you can bet that criterion isn't going to pop up very often.
The fact this debate even goes on anymore is sort of bizarre. The reasonable socialist argument is that some degree of economic damage is worth not having people starve in the streets, and there's definitely considerable merit to that argument. The notion socialism has an economic benefit... well, once upon a time that might have been plausible enough to get Walter Duranty a Pulitzer, but we have vastly more empirical evidence today.
There's an old B.C. cartoon Where Thor says to Peter, "Hey, I've examined 1,000,000,000,000 snowflakes, and no two are alike. What do you say now?" And Peter says "Hey, it could just be a coincidence".
Iow, nope . . . you're wrong :-) More specifically, the first person makes the specific claim that 'conservative' policies are better for the economy. The second person looks at the blue state/red state data and points out that these figures have falsified the claim.
The assertions after that are new ones. Now the claim is that due to 'conservative' economic policies in the past, the blue states are better off than the red ones. I don't know why this is with you, but you time and again make the same mistakes: in this case, you are conflating a very general - and concomittantly, hard to prove - claim, with a very narrow and specific one. Note also that you have the burden of proof requirements switched around; if the first person wants to amend his claim, it's up to him to prove it - not on the other person to show that it's not true. Mississippi was more regulated and had higher taxes than New York in 1850 is a claim that you would have to prove, not I. Along with your other assertion about the relative suitability of each environment for industrial development.
A similar pattern has emerged over at AngryBear in regards to ecomomic policy under Democratic and Republican administrations. Turns out that on a whole slew of economic indicators, it appears that Democrats outperform Republicans. So why the disparity between theory and practice?
Let me close by going back to your original 'not proven':
Technically, one can always fall back on this one. But after a while, the defense rings pretty hollow. And if there was ever a policy formulated that depended on no two snowflakes being alike, well, after having examined 1,000,000,000,000 and finding no twins, you could claim that it's not proven, that it's all just a coincidence. But the policies won't be decided by what you think.
Just replace "1,000,000,000,000" by "8", then your analogy might be useful.
After a while (i.e., after you have a statistically useful amount of data), the defense rings hollow. But we are very far from that point.
"More specifically, the first person makes the specific claim that 'conservative' policies are better for the economy. The second person looks at the blue state/red state data and points out that these figures have falsified the claim."
Then the second person has made an erroneous statement to argue against an unsupported claim. At least the first person has not proven he's an idiot yet.
"'On the whole, Republicans are either the victims of incredibly bad luck, or lousy economic policy. But either way, they are not the Party of growth.'"
"'But either way, [Republicans] are not the Party of growth.'"
I don't think most people are concerned about the effect that the letter behind the president's name has on growth. They're probably more concerned over what effect different policies have on growth.
The bureau of economic analysis (BEA) is developing an experimental spatial price index that compares the cost of living in the major cities and states.
Using this to compute the real gdp adjusted for differences in the cost of living real per capita gdp in North Carolina is 112% of the national average while in South Carolina it is 91%.
I for one think there is a major difference in the living standards between North and South Carolina and have the data to back up my opinion. Data on education, and a host of other variables show North Carolina to be significantly better off than South Carolina.
On the other hand real adjusted per capita gdp in MI is 102.7% and in MO it is 109.2% of the national average. So Missouri has a significantly higher standard of living by this calculation than Michigan-- just the opposite of what the map shows.
On balance, the criticisms of the chart are valid, but they do not show that the people doing the criticizing know much more.
for more info go here:
http://angrybear.blogspot.com/2008/05/spacial-price-index.html
No TD, I'm talking about this data, which I've posted a number of times:
Nobody seems to think much of your good faith, TD[1]. Why is that, I wonder?
[1]And I think your math skills are abysmal. But that's another story.
For some figures, take 99 people who live to be 80 and one person who dies aged one; the average age then is 79.2 years instead of 80. Since the differences in life expectancy are usually greater than one year, this objection, even if true, lacks force.
This argument lacks any sense. No one ever claimed infant mortality was supposed to explain the whole difference. It's just one example of error in the statistics. Others include lifesyle, culture, etc.
Nobody seems to think much of your good faith, TD[1]. Why is that, I wonder?
I think because the facts aren't on their side, socialists like to attack people's credibility. Shrug.
TallDave wrote
See? To deny the overwhelming evidence of several indicators consistently pointing in the same direction (that the U.S. has a higher infant and perinatal mortality than other developed nations), our dear TallDave is forced to say that you can't compare anything! You can't even compare one state to another. Statistics are worthless. Except, I suppose, the ones that show "socialists" are bad people. He trusts those.
For instance, he himself cited an article that showed European countries didn't have the same definition of perinatal mortality. But the same article shows that differences in definition between countries account for discrepancies of less than 5% on average. So you can trust the numbers up to a relatively small margin of error. Of course, he ignores this.
As you said before, he even denies he, as Jaspel put it, was caught with his pants down.. TallDave is basically a true believer. He starts with a conclusion, and proceeds to ignore and cherry-pick evidence. So he'll constantly ignore some of your arguments, repeat already debunked assertions, etc. It's pointless to try to engage in a serious conversation with him.
On the other hand, I find insulting him is quite rewarding. You should definitely try it.
One pearl of irony from TallDave
I'm not much a fun of Freud and his disciples, but I often find it hard to deny projection. One must wonder if TallDave is a closet socialist.
For instance, he himself cited an article that showed European countries didn't have the same definition of perinatal mortality. But the same article shows that differences in definition between countries account for discrepancies of less than 5% on average. So you can trust the numbers up to a relatively small margin of error.
Dear God, did you even read the perinatal study? It specifically says you can only trust them to AN ORDER OF MAGNITUDE. I've cited this three timeS now!
Once again, you make incorrect assumptions, and then spend half your posts attacking me personally. It's childish and sad.
TallDave, the 5% on average thing Nimed is talking about is this one
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119025613/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0[
The absolute maximum difference between 2 countries was 17%. But this is the maximum. Most of them had very small differences in adjusted perinatal mortality (of less than 5%).
The one that talks about comparability only on the orders of magnitude is a WHO study of world perinatal measures.
http://www.who.int/making_pregnancy_safer/documents/9789241596145/en/index.html
It includes lots of developing countries with very poor statistics. That's the one in which the "orders of magnitude" argument apply. And this argument is valid to those developing countries in which the article had to make strong assumptions about the distribution of missing data. It most certainly does not apply to either Western Europe or the U.S. Stop taking the orders of magnitude out of the original context.
But I'm certainly surprised that, after expressing my opinion on this, suddenly I join the ranks of the "pro-socialist crowd".
And I think Nimed is quite right on your double standard. You mentioned that, although some European countries have a higher nominal GDP per capita, they tend to have a lower GDP per capita PPP. Well, PPP tends to balance the cost of living by adjusting it through a basket of goods. And a national basket of goods is much more variable, and hence less comparable, than either IM or perinatal mortality.
So you commonly find that international measures favorable towards the U.S. are comparable, and that measures against the U.S. incomparable.
Jaspel,
TallDave, the 5% on average thing Nimed is talking about is this one
Yes, I know. But they're talking about the same data, more or less.
The absolute maximum difference between 2 countries was 17%. But this is the maximum. Most of them had very small differences in adjusted perinatal mortality (of less than 5%).
Depends on the method.
Sorry for the broken, I trust you canf igure it out. Dinner calls!
Here I am threadjacking again.
TallDave,
Maybe this is the source of confusion.
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119025613/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0[
This describes common shifts to all countries by applying 2 very stringent criteria that almost no country follows (28 weeks and 1 kg). This is done just to make all data comparable. It doesn't describe relative changes. See Table 3.
Table 4 and figure 1 describes relative changes by applying a common criteria. They are, by and large, very small: countries with high perinatal mortality remain so after adjustment, and the same holds for low mortality countries.
No, it isn't. USNEWS and OECD articles refer to infant mortality rates. This is perinatal mortality rate.
And I call your attention to the world "slightly". Perinatal deaths in the U.S. are, on average, 30% higher than in Western Europe. That's hardly "slightly". Remember that adjustment change the relative PM by 5% on average and 17% maximum. Also, The U.S. applies the same criteria as many countries in Western Europe to classify perinatal death (>28 weeks), so there's no reason to believe, unlike in the IM case, that perinatal death in our country is relatively overreported when comparing to Western Europe.
Now, you certainly have a strong case that lax IM (but not PN) criteria in the U.S. exacerbates the difference between U.S. and Europe. IM differences are ~45% in IM and just 30% in PN. But ascribing these diferences solely, or even mainly, to measurement differences just doesn't fit the data.
First of all, differences aren't much larger than 5% in both IM and PM. But you missed the main point: nominal GDP is certainly not comparable between countries, but it's much more objective than PPP GDP.
That's because, to calculate PPP you have to select a national basket of goods. Now, a national basket of goods is much more subjective and variable between countries than either measure used in the PN study (weight and age). What do you put in the basket? Bread? Housing? Meat? A computer? Consumption and relatives prices of each of these goods vary from country to country.
From Wikipedia
A more technical source is here
In spite of all these problems, economists accept GDP per capita adjusted by PPP because it gives a better measure than nominal GDP. It's a rough meause, but it's not meaningless.
TallDave, surely you can see your European counterpart arguing that GDP per capita PPP comparisons are meaningless, because countries are essentially not comparable. The U.S. ranking of 4th, 6th or 8th in the world (IMF, WB or CIA) doesn't really mean anything. And, according to your notion of comparability, he's right. European TallDave could further ad that European countries are somehow more honest in the constitution of their baskets of goods, give a bunch of dubious reasons (we have healthier food and our cities are nicer), and claim that anybody who disagrees is obviously a laissez faire hack.
In sum:
a) You can allow for some variation, but slight differences of criteria do not invalidate comparability altogether, especially if differences between countries are greater than the normal variation you get from adjustments. This is true both for IM, PM and GDP per capita PPP
b) You can't have it both ways. Either you accept or reject international comparability in these measures. I personally think we should accept it, but if you don't agree, you should reject it for buth favorable and unfavorable measures.
But you missed the main point: nominal GDP is certainly not comparable between countries, but it's much more objective than PPP GDP
Sure, great, but the discussion was about comparability, not objectivity. Your claim of a "double standard" on that basis is nonsensical.
This describes common shifts to all countries by applying 2 very stringent criteria that almost no country follows (28 weeks and 1 kg).
You're not paying attention to the relevant facts here. Remember the USNEWS article?
The United States counts all births as live if they show any sign of life, regardless of prematurity or size. This includes what many other countries report as stillbirths. In Austria and Germany, fetal weight must be at least 500 grams (1 pound) to count as a live birth; in other parts of Europe, such as Switzerland, the fetus must be at least 30 centimeters (12 inches) long. In Belgium and France, births at less than 26 weeks of pregnancy are registered as lifeless. And some countries don't reliably register babies who die within the first 24 hours of birth. Thus, the United States is sure to report higher infant mortality rates.
So thanks, I guess, for pointing out no one uses our even MORE stringent measure. I trust we can all agree now that the statistics are not comparable.
Either you accept or reject international comparability in these measures. I personally think we should accept it, but if you don't agree, you should reject it for buth favorable and unfavorable measures.
I'll accept there are margins of error for both, but remember PPP is deliberately tuned to produce maximum comparability. When different countries use different IM standards, they are doing the opposite -- making them less comparable. It's a source of error, which is why OECD and WHO mention it in their papers.
That's not to say there aren't sources of error in PPP per capita GDP too, but economists go to enormous lengths to correct them.
Hrm, actually I suppose the USNEWS thing isn't really comparable, since it's not clear whether the standard would be the same for perinatal birth.
But this is interesting:
To calculate an adjusted perinatal mortality rate, we used two relatively high cutoff points which could be applied to all the countries in the analysis: a lower gestational age limit of 28 weeks and a lower birthweight limit of 1000g for all births. These are also cutoff points which have been recommended for international comparisons by the World Health Organization (WHO).
So once again the WHO standard isn't being followed.
And their overall conclusion is pretty clear:
Conclusion These quantitative results confirm that international differences in countries' published perinatal mortality rates partly reflect differences between countries' criteria for registration and publication of perinatal deaths.
...
We conclude that differences between Western European countries in perinatal mortality rates are biased by differences in criteria for registering and publishing perinatal mortality, and that more should be done to harmonise perinatal mortality rates before they are included in international overviews
This is why WHO trims off the decimals and says they're order of magnitude estimates
TallDave wrote
Huh? Subjectivity makes them incomparable. Come on, how much clear can this get? There are very different goods in the basket by country, and their relative prices change. Hence, they're incomparable.
Sorry, but this is inaccurate. The USNEWS is about IM, this is about PM. The following paragraph you wrote is not based on the assumption that this is PM.
Even if the quote referred to IM, which it didn't, the U.S. has a more lax criteria, not a more stringent one. For PM, which is what that quote was refers to, everybody has a more lax (less stringent) cut-off than what the WHO proposes for comparability, not just the U.S. Hence the 14% to 40% adjustment, not between countries, but for all countries in Table 3.
Let's not give points for effort. Baskets of goods are much more inherently incomparable, and way more difficult to adjust. The "sources of error" in the OECD and WHO countries are much more easily corrected. IM and PM adjustments are in weight and age, not in croissants or muffins, relative energy, transportation, and housing costs, etc.
Economists deal with this by coming up with other measures and checking their mutual consistency. If they all point to the same conclusion, then there's probably a difference. This consistency is the reason why I trust GDP per capita PPP.
We've been here already. Of course the authors conclude they should be harmonised to increase comparability. There were differences of up to 17% in the adjusted values, and some European countries changed ranking position in consequence of this.
But the U.S. has, in average, a difference of 30% to the European countries in the study. That outside even the maximum range of 17%, and the U.S. doesn't have a more lax criteria in PN than most European countries. In PN, not IM, ok? The criteria for PM in the U.S. is ">28 weeks", which some European countries also adopt.
No, it isn't. Again, countries other than the U.S. and Western Europe (mostly developing nations) have extremely bad data - bad hospital records, poor archives, missing data, etc. The investigators had to assume distributions for this missing data, as well as unreliable estimates estimate parameters for the distributions. This is the reason for the order of magnitudes argument.
At this point, I feel we're going in circles here. I think one can be pretty confident of mortality differences between the U.S. and Western Europe, but it seems I'm not able to convince you. I don't know if there's much to be gained in continuing the discussion.
As you said before, he even denies he, as Jaspel put it, was caught with his pants down..
As I explained at the time, NO. You incorrectly assumed the omitted sentence implied a cause and effect relationship, and then attacked me personally, as you are doing now.
Grow up.
Except, I suppose, the ones that show "socialists" are bad people. He trusts those.
Heh, you do seem intent on proving that:
On the other hand, I find insulting him is quite rewarding. You should definitely try it.
Sigh. I suppose I should just ignore you, like children or homeless people who yell obscenities.
Hi, Spencer. I keep trying subtley and and so subtley to direct people over to AB. But the nibbles from Megans blog seem to be neglible.
P.S. using my spatial price index to estimate real standards of living leads to the surprising conclusion that there is no significant difference in the real per capita gdp between blue states and red states.
This surprising results appears to stem largely from the point that the upper mid-western states like Montana, North and South Dakota and Nebraska vote republican and have very low cost of living and high real living standards while New York and California have very low real standards of living.
Is this discrepancy explained by population over time exploiting natural resources?
If one can find the data, we can find what Americans actually think of living standards in the different states based on their immigration patterns. The census bureau certainly should have what we need, but we already know a lot from just population changes over the last 40 years.
I'm always very leery of these sorts of estimates. What I would like to see are urban to urban and rural to rural comparisons for each state; I suspect that intrastate differences like these exhibit greater variability than state to state measurements. I'd also like to correct for differences in housing costs due to speculation, or, failing that, a separate index that leaves out housing in COLA comparisons. Finally, I wonder how much simple geography figures into these estimates? [1] I'm not suggesting that these extraneous factors should be used as an excuse to disregard the actual living costs, but I do find your observation that there is no real difference in per capita GDP between the states intriguing . . . and more than a little plausible.
[1]There's been some talk on this subject over at Calculated Risk, but I'm having trouble finding the relevant posts.
More specifically, the first person makes the specific claim that 'conservative' policies are better for the economy. The second person looks at the blue state/red state data and points out that these figures have falsified the claim.
Except that they haven't, anymore than you can "prove" jogging has no health benefits by pointing to an obese diabetic who died of a heart attack while being chased by a vicious dog. You can disprove only a narrow (and patently ridiculous) claim that a state's presidential vote instantly determines its economic prospects for the next 4 years. Even bringing it up is less productive that a straightforward "Oh yeah? Prove it!" which has the virtue of being harder to misunderstand. (That disparagement of the second person's argument does not imply that the first person has accomplished anything in the way of proof, which he hasn't).
In addition, while your allocation of the burden of proof in this and other cases is logically defensible, it is also often tiresome. This is neither a court of law nor a thesis defense. The goal is not to force one side or another to prove something, it is to persuade others of your correctness. Allocation of burdens is not useful for that purpose.
More broadly, I agree that you are correct, from a strict logical point of view, that saying "X is not true" is distinct from saying "Not-X is true." However--and I have been at pains to point this out before--normal people do not speak (or type) with that level of precision. The only people who routinely make that distinction you insist upon are 1) mathematicians and 2) people taking the LSAT. Anyone else wishing to deny X's truth without asserting not-X will say something like "X is irrelevant." As in, say, the libertarian who asserts that there is no meaningful difference between Democrats and Republicans. Therefore, the inference that denying X amounts to asserting not-X, while incorrect logically, is perfectly reasonable from the standpoint of ordinary English usage.
It would be easier for you to conform yourself to the sometimes-illogical conventions of ordinary speakers than to try to convince the rest of the world to adopt a degree of precision which is both unnecessary and beyond the capacity of a significant number of people. Then we could stick to arguing about substance.
Finally, this whole business of D v. R presidents and the economy is ridiculous. The choices presidents make have implications stretching out for decades, or even centuries. FDR and LBJ may have had better growth than Nixon or Reagan, but that doesn't mean that Social Security and Medicare (or the EPA and Soviet Collapse) don't have monstrous social, fiscal, and economic implications.
Actually, from a strictly logical point of view saying X is not true is equivalent to saying not-X (~X) is true. It is in natural language that we allow for some elbow room.
The pattern of red and blue states didn't change that much in the last 20 years. I agree with SoV that being a blue state (or a "bluer state") at least doesn't seem to lead to poorer economic outcomes. I would also agree that it would be more interesting to see the correlation with rates of urbanization.
And I really like M.C.'s hypothesis - you tend to get blue as externalities pile up:
Nimed, I may have phrased that badly in an effort to be subject-matter neutral. Let me try again: Saying "Republicans are not good for the economy" is NOT equivalent, logically, to saying either "Democrats are good for the economy" or "Republicans are bad for the economy."
However, it is highly likely that someone who says the first believes one of the latter two and intends to be understood that way. So SoV shouldn't chide others for drawing that inference (because logic and rhetoric don't match exactly), and anyone (like, say, SoV) whose intended meaning is "Republicans are neutral for the economy" or "Inadequate data supports the notion that Republicans are good for the economy" should say so in exactly those words.
The pattern of red and blue states didn't change that much in the last 20 years.
Neither did the patterns of industrialization or the location of saltwater harbors.
Hey, sure - I was shamelessly nitpicking. What you meant was perfectly clear.
Maybe the language wasn't too explicit, but I interpreted SoV's arguments up until now as your 2nd sentence - "Inadequate data supports the notion that Republicans are good for the economy". In other words, it's increasingly difficult to make a claim that Republican economic policies are better than Democratic policies on purely empirical grounds. And you tend to hear that quite a lot around these parts.
Exactly. As I said, I'm fond of M.C.'s hypothesis.
Here's an example of rankings where the U.S. SHOULD be ranked 35th and instead we are ranked 15th:
http://www.fifa.com/worldfootball/ranking/lastranking/gender=m/fullranking.html
I don't know why FIFA does that. We aren't better than Ghana (ranked 31st).
Sigh. Rob, as a general principle, it's very hard to prove/disprove anything but narrow, well-defined claims. Especially in the softer sciences. Otherwise you get, 'Well, did you control for variable x(n)?', with n being a number in the hundreds or thousands, or even higher. I disagree with your last sentence, btw; I would the say proposition that has been disproved to be that over the last fifty years or so, states following broadly 'conservative' economic policies have fared better than states that haven't.
There's an 80 lb. anvil of irony for you. Talk about lack of self-awareness!
Huh!?!?!?!?! That's 100% wrong! And you're a lawyer? Of course 'X is false' -> 'not-X is true'. But not necessarily all of not-X :-) To say that 'conservative' economic policy has been falsified does not imply that 'liberal' economic policy must be true; there could be other types of economic policies that are not 'liberal' but also not 'conservative'.
See above. In my experience Rob, yes they do talk with that sort of precision, and yes, again, to deny X is to assert not-X. But not-X can be composed of many things. Let me try another example. You know the trick for testing divisibility by 3? Sum the digits of the number, and if the result is divisible by three, so is the original number? Say I do this on the number 647. I find, using the test, that 647 is not divisible by 3. Can I then conclude that it must be divisible by 5? After all, 5 is not 3. Or would I be way off base in doing so? To put it another way, saying that a number is not divisible by three implies that it is divisible by some other number. But saying that a number is not divisible by three does not mean that it must then be divisible by five.
Point one, I disagree with what you call the norm. That's simply not been the case with the overwhelming majority of my personal interactions, both face to face and online. For example, I don't think many of the regular posters at Obsidian Wings or AngryBear would agree with you. Point two, I don't think you really believe this: if someone told you that 3+5=8, therefore the sum of any two odd numbers is an even number, and you questioned their logic, am I seriously to believe that you don't think the sum of two odd numbers is an even? I think you're just hanging on to this one, the same way you hang on to 'veganism is a religion' or 'environmentalism is a religion'. Point three, I've already explicitly done what you've asked for. Your continuing calls for 'clarity' are starting to sound robotic.
That's as may be. But you've still got to explain why the economy seems to do better in general when we have Democratic administrations as opposed to Republican ones. Note: just in case you want to say that I am claiming that Dem stewardship is better than Rep control, I will say again that I am not; merely that it is Republicans and 'conservatives' who say that they are better on the economy, and this seems to indicate otherwise.
So why is this the case then? Just luck? Is that your story, and you're sticking to it? Because, per what you say above, you're not being very persuasive, in fact, I don't see that you're trying to be persuasive at all.
Exactly correct. I hope that you're not a mathematician or studying for the LSAT :-)
And again, from Nimed:
Got it in one. And you know, that's probably how most people do interpret it. I think there's a dynamic going on here that is particular to libertarians and 'conservatives'. My theory is that they in general do a very lousy job of defending their ideas, and don't really have the stomach for it any way. What they'd much rather be doing is attacking someone else's assertions. So why not manufacture one and attribute it to the person questioning your words?
'How do you explain the fact that laissez faire policies over the last thirty years have not worked as advertised?'
'Why do you think that Socialist polices have worked at all? How do you justify the millions of people murdered in the name of Socialism?'
'But that's not what I -'
'Oh, a liar too, eh?'
People who do not let them get away with this trick tend not to be looked upon very favorably by the tribe.
Sigh. Simply not true. Again here are the statistics for life expectancy at one year for the United States and Canada:
But according to TallDave, it's entirely possible that because of different ways of measuring the same outcomes, that life expectancy in the U.S. really is greater then Canada.
Another point in regards to comparability, again:
TallDave is apparently unacquainted with or explicitly rejects the idea of a weighted measure ;-) Iow, even if what he says is true (and I don't believe it, but let's accept if for the moment), he's still got to show that the difference is relevant. If these problematic births count for half of all births, he's have a point. but if they account for only one in hundred, or one in a thousand? Then these differences make a negligible contribution to the stats. I invite TallDave to perform the simple calculation of just what proportion of the total births these problematic cases must be to erase the differences in life expectancy. I assume, of course, that he can.
SoV
First off, you're right that I screwed up the X/not-X thing. I was trying to stay away from politically loaded examples and didn't get there. See my correction above.
I would the say proposition that has been disproved to be that over the last fifty years or so, states following broadly 'conservative' economic policies have fared better than states that haven't.
That may be correct, but of course you're going to have to do more than look at a recent red/blue map to identify states that have followed "conservative" economic policies for the last 50 years (assuming there actually are any).
So why is this the case then? Just luck? Is that your story, and you're sticking to it? Because, per what you say above, you're not being very persuasive, in fact, I don't see that you're trying to be persuasive at all.
Ironically enough in light of this exchange, I have no story to stick to, having made no claims about the relative stewardship of D v. R presidencies. So it turns out you're right, I'm NOT trying to be persuasive, at least not on that particular question. I am merely pointing out the fatuity of measuring century-long effects on a 4-year time scale. Just as, incidentally, M.C. was pointing out the foolishness of judging the policies of present-day politicians based on the effects of a couple centuries of history. M.C. and I are making just the sort of methodological points you would normally approve of.
Point one, I disagree with what you call the norm. That's simply not been the case with the overwhelming majority of my personal interactions, both face to face and online.
Am I to understand, then, that when someone walks up to you and says, "Pardon me, could you tell me the time?" you consult your watch, reply "Yes, indeed I could tell you the time," and walk away, content at having fully replied to the question? You might also keep in mind that you hang out with a lot of mathematicians; try using "generally" the same way they do in non-mathematician company and watch the confusion mount.
I'll be frank: most people are not logical and objective truth seekers. They are biased and ideologically blinkered primates. So it's fair to read their words in light of that reality, and it would be quite generous of you to forgive them if their flaws lead them to assume the same about you.
Point two, I don't think you really believe this
In the context of number theory, you're right, I don't. But when my wife asks if I saw my son eat any blueberries, I choose to clarify that I haven't been watching rather than risk an "alogical" misunderstanding by simply saying "no."
I've already explicitly done what you've asked for. Your continuing calls for 'clarity' are starting to sound robotic.
Then kindly stop talking (as you do above) about "alogical" people who warp your statements in unwarranted ways, and start politely correcting their misunderstandings of you without being patronizing.
Oh, and it was environmentalism, and I don't see any reason why I shouldn't stick to my opinion. I don't expect you to agree; that's why it's an "opinion."
I'll be frank: most people are not logical and objective truth seekers. They are biased and ideologically blinkered primates.
That explains a lot. Does it apply equally to the lab coats and the fur pelts?
Truth tell, I still prefer the proximity to the Canadian border. Because number of births/neonatal intensive care lives saved, etc., has very little bearing on what happens after surviving birth in a hospital.
But I'm obviously a blinkered primate, and proud of it.
And you know, that's probably how most people do interpret it.
That's how I understood it also. I'm mainly overreacting to your mini-diatribe about "alogical" reasoning by trying (robotically) to point out 1) that logic and rhetoric are not the same thing and 2) you can engage alogical people more productively by correcting their misinterpretations of your words without the patronizing "lessons" in logic or insults to mathematical ability.
Both both PPP and non-PPP statistics have their strengths and weaknesses.
I certainly prefer using statistics that do take purchasing power into account. Still, there are some limitations to per capita GDP statistics whether or not they're adjusted for purchasing power:
1) Leisure: If Europeans opt to enjoy more of their wealth in the form of leisure (and less, say, in wide screen TVs) their stats suffer in comparison to America's. There are advantages to having lots of stuff, but there sure are advantages to being able to enjoy seven weeks of vacation per year.
2) Inequality: Income and wealth are distributed less equally in the US. So, per capita statistics tend to get skewed upwards, and that tends to paint an overly rosy picture of typical American living standards. Remember the old joke about when Warren Buffet walks into the room, and all that...
3) Economic Mobility: The US is inarguably a very rich place by any reasonable standard, but among rich countries, it also inarguably is one of the poorest performers when it comes to economic mobility. It doesn't do much good living in a rich country when one's own chances of moving up the latter are weak.
The US is inarguably a very rich place by any reasonable standard, but among rich countries, it also inarguably is one of the poorest performers when it comes to economic mobility.
I've seen you say this before, and it's a very important point. But I've also seen the exact opposite asserted. What do you base this on?
So. You don't really have an opinion on the truth or falsity of the subject, you just have an opinion on the reasoning employed. Uh, Rob? Isn't this, buy your own rules, disallowed? And shouldn't you have said this from the very first - by your own rules? And if you're doing this sort of thing, doesn't this undercut your claim that this is not 'what most people do'?
No, I really don't think you believe what you've been saying.
No, you are not to understand this, and no, this is not what I said. Really, this is getting pretty lame. And at least one other person has said that what I have expressed is perfectly clear and intelligible, someone who is presumably not a mathematician and not studying for the LSAT.
You are aware, aren't you, that what you are saying here doesn't have much to do with what I was saying, right?
More mischaracterization of what I said. And watch where you snip. If I said that you can't modify an automobile engine to run on gravel, no one would think that this implied that I thought you could modify it to run on sand instead. If I said friction is caused by little demons pushing against moving things, and that's why cars will eventually roll to a stop, no one who thinks I am wrong about my explanation of friction must think that there is no such thing as friction. That's not math. That's the everyday world, and everyday usage.
Go back and actually look at the quote and see whether or not you used the word I said you did. Getting back to your somewhat lengthy polemic, I went back and looked at what has so provoked you. And you know, I spent all of three sentences on the topic:
Followed by two extremely short paragraphs of examples. It strikes me that you're spending an awful lot of time following this up . . . even though you casually and without thought committed the same sin(as I pointed out above) that is supposedly abnormal. I suggest that you give it a rest.
It is obvious that I am failing to make myself clear. Let me try again on a clean slate.
1) I have no objection to methodological arguments or arguments about the sufficiency of proof. I do not believe I have voiced any such objection.*
2) When such arguments are made in a context of binary choices (Say, R v. D, or Lib v. Con) they are subject to misunderstanding (that is, anti-R gets interpreted as pro-D). Such misunderstanding is far less likely in contexts without binary choices; sand is not the obvious opposite of gravel, for instance.
3) Such misunderstanding is logically incorrect, but often relatively reasonable. If you say "My engine doesn't run well on low-sulfer diesel," it is quite reasonable to assume you mean it does run well on high-sulfer diesel. It would be very weird indeed to make that statement about an engine that doesn't run well at all. And if the person making it is given to muttering imprecations about the damn tree-huggers and their damned ridiculous fuel-additive rules (as you are about stupid conservatives and libertarians), then it becomes not merely reasonable, but by far the most likely correct assumption. Few people who are not liberals spend as much time insulting conservatives as a class as you do (without corresponding insults to liberals).
4) When somebody makes this technically illogical argument, there's no need to be a jerk about it. It's just as easy to say, "I didn't mean that, I meant..." as it is to pompously expound on the rules of logic.
* What I objected to was burden-of-proof allocation arguments, which, unlike inadequate-proof arguments, are a total waste of time.
And yet, how many binary choice arguments are there? To use your example, there are not only R's and D's, but also independents and 'libertarians'(and that's just naming the more visible affiliations - what about the Greens, the Anarcho-Socialists, Anarcho-Capitalists, etc?) You'd have to go on a case by case basis, and I'll think you'll find that this sort of mistake is made far, far more often by an easily denoted group of people. Further, what you have wrote contradicts itself. Objecting to an argument, as you say, does not equate to rejecting the conclusion. And yet, this is often taken to be the case. You'd have to come up with some specific examples if you wanted to start making a case.
You'll have to come up with specific examples as well as context on this one. I agree that your interpretation of that statement is the reasonable one. Assuming the conversation is not about the presence/absence of sulfur.
You're kidding, right? When I go on about the bone-headed stunts my brother has pulled, no one is inclined to think I favor my sister because I never mention her adventures in stupidity. The fact of the matter is, 'liberals' simply haven't had the power or the opportunity to spectacularly fail, like the 'conservatives' have had for the last several years. Also, you can't decide for other people what they label themselves or consider themselves; most of the people I know are moderates. And quite a few of them are unhappy with the 'liberal' Obama (admittedly, for following some extremely non-liberal and non-moderate policies.) To be persuasive, you've got to actually come up with - of course - specific examples.
Finally, where do you get off on calling my opinions 'insults'? Waaaaaay uncool. Were you insulting veganism when you called it a religion (or cult or whatever?) Or 'Environmentalism'? Or were you just expressing an opinion, one furthermore, that you felt no need to defend?
Specific examples: that is a fair request which I do not have the time to satisfy at the moment. So I'll tell you what: I'll try to point it out if I see it in the future.
Were you insulting veganism when you called it a religion (or cult or whatever?) Or 'Environmentalism'? Or were you just expressing an opinion, one furthermore, that you felt no need to defend?
Once again, I do not recall saying any such thing about veganism. As for enviornmentalism, I didn't simply bust out with "All enviornmentalists are gaia-worshipping whackos." The context of the discussion was religious influence on legislation. I pointed out that for many adherents of the environmental movement, the trappings of religion were present: faith (few people really understand the science), a reliance on sacred texts written by a priesthood (popularizations by scientists), reviling of skeptics and heretics (AGW skeptics = Holocaust deniers), ascetic atonement rituals with little practical significance (composting, buying a Prius), and even the selling of indulgences for sin (carbon credits). My purpose was to challenge those who would declare any religiously-motivated legislation unconstitutional to define "religion" in a meaningful way. What's the difference between supporting something because the Pope said so and supporting something because Al Gore said so?
I explained all that at the time. If you consider that to be an improper insult and a refusal to defend my ideas, fine.
I find this extremely entertaining. Most particularly so since religion is often ancient science; the stuff that kept people safe.
Endlessly amusing.
The difference between the Pope sayin' so and Al sayin' so is about 6,000 years of scientific development.
(Notice that the pope's schools support science that's not supported by the pope's religion?)
Sigh. The point, Rob, since you didn't get it the third time, is that you don't get to be the arbiter of what is an insult, and what is an 'opinion', or 'well-considered opinion'. Oh, and here's the quote I mentioned:
And yes, looking back at that, it seems that several people were offended. But you don't insult, you offer opinions, whereas I don't offer opinions, I insult. Gotcha. There's a passage in the bible you might want to reference, something about planks and motes :-)
If car companies had put a governor in my car that they could set at whim, and if they had been tinkering with the settings not just for my parents, but for my grandparents and their parents as well, then, yes, it would be a reasonable supposition. Doubly so if my car did not have a speedometer and I had to guess at how fast to drive by looking at the people around me and my own previous experience.
Thank you, an excellent analogy.
But back to the banks and mortgages: you may be a bit on the young side to remember this, but yes, really and truly, back in the day, people really did think that banks using their superior expertise scrutinized the prospective buyers' finances and made their determination of how much to loan based on based upon the recipients ability to repay. The reasoning - as I've heard it myself many times - is that the bank would be crazy to make you a loan you couldn't repay. If they did, they'd take the hit themselves.
Guess when this stopped being true. And did the good people taking out those loans know that the bank was no longer holding on to the mortgage, that in fact it was being almost immediately sold and sliced and dices seven ways from Sunday? No, they did not.
Note, btw, that while I am not passing judgment on the people who did not manage their finances as well as they could, I agree - emphatically - that their budgeting skills are execrable. Remember that these are the people to whom I teach basic math skills :-( And without going into the should's and ought's and what's wrong with the world and the Kids These Days, don't you think we really should be making policy at the macro level based upon what is?
The point, Rob, since you didn't get it the third time, is that you don't get to be the arbiter of what is an insult, and what is an 'opinion', or 'well-considered opinion'.
I don't know why I shouldn't be the arbiter, at least in my own mind. You don't have to agree with me, of course.
And thank you for finding the quote (I had forgotten that I mentioned veganism); it's clear that I didn't call veganism (or environmentalism) definitionally either a religion or a cult; I said that some people had a religious devotion to it. That is quite different, and I think, quite true, and also quite in keeping with my point that defining "religion" for Establishment clause purposes is harder than some people would like to admit. I also see nothing derogatory about my statement at all, unless one assumes "religious" (or "non-traditional") is inherently an insult (I don't, obviously).
If all you've ever said about conservatives and libertarians is that "some" of them are idiots--which is more derogatory that saying "some vegans are religious," but also obviously true--than I retract everything and apologize.
don't you think we really should be making policy at the macro level based upon what is?
That depends on what the meaning of "is" is. Provided it's what really is, not what some idiot NYT reporter's anecdote makes it appear to be, the yes, absolutely, we should care more about doing it right in a world full of idiots than trying to reform the idiots so as to live in a perfect world.
Hi. Showed up late to the game. I just wanted to mention three things:
1)I live in FL which is around the 40th percentile in per capita income. We spend almost nothing on infrastructure. I have thought about moving but all my family and friends are here and I like my job. But I am very clear that when I retire, it will be difficult for me to retire to a state with a lower standard of living and live well. This, BTW, is part of your north-south mobility. Americans get old. They retire. They move to southern states with lower costs of living. They fight infrastructure investments that improve the ability of the state to continue to create and attract tech workers as opposed to burger flippers.
2)I think median income is actually a fair measure of how good the standard of living in a state is. Houses may cost more, but (assuming the value is retained, which is a whole other convo) you can recover the money and retask it at retirement. And outside of real estate, many other things are going to cost about the same in our internet economy. And if I'm making 60K in a blue state, vs. 40K in a red state, I can certainly buy a lot more (non-real estate) crap. My understanding is that most of the states end up hitting the middle class about equally in taxes. Here in FL we dont have an income tax, but we have a million little user fees. Good luck finding a highway that isn't a toll road for example.
But what about using % of kids recieving free/reduced lunch or % of population on medicaid as indicators?
3)Literacy and life expectancy are kind of retardedly similar across states for purposes of comparison. Is data on per capita associates degrees not available? That seems like a much better measure of educational efficacy. For health, what about per capita diabetes or heart disease? Both of those are age-linked though. With the south graying due to retirees, that would skew the data. Per capita diabetes in the 30-50 range?
I think you *can* compare the states and overall quality of life, and I would like to see how they stack up. Both sides of the lib-con argument could then beat each other up with the results.