There is a disturbing trend in many circles over the last ten years to not trust the police due to lynching of Black people, primarily but not exclusively men. It is right to be disturbed by this. Police who shoot unarmed civilians should be tried for murder. They then take things to an extreme and …
Category Archives: Uncategorized
It’s a Palm World After All
It’s a fluke of history that Apple turned into the world’s most profitable company. It didn’t have to be this way. PDAs have been around since the 1980s, but they were clunky and had small screens until the Apple Newton in 1993. The Apple Newton lasted until 1998 and was replaced with the far inferior …
Climate priorities
You can choose to increase specific carbon free technologies, or choose to reduce emissions, but you cannot do both. With a carbon tax or a good cap and trade you directly choose how much carbon emissions will be reduced by. But you do not have control on how much of the reduction will be from …
How to bring down inflation
There is a lot of talk about how to cover inflation from both Democrats and Republicans. We are seeing various ideas like price caps, scrapping social security taxes, child tax credit, and more options. How do each of these stack up? To find solutions, we have to divide the economy into sectors. The sectors with …
Maximum benefit trilemma
When it comes to maximum benefit pensions, like exist in most developed democracies, you can pick two of the three when your population is not growing fast enough to cover future benefits: Stable currency High benefits Low taxes (yes, really) If you choose to keep benefits high and not increase taxes, you will need to …
Why Harris will win
Kamala Harris is going to be the next president of the United States. She consistently leads in the polls, between 3 and 9 points. In the betting odds, her odds are -106 versus Trump’s +118. She is going to win, and it is not a surprise. The Keys to the White House is essential to …
Paid leave is family values
I was taking my walk today when I thought about how my company should offer four weeks of paid vacation. To an average American, this might seem excessive, but in reality, most highly developed countries provide this by law. Twenty days is the minimum paid leave for all workers in the European Union. Regardless of …
End of an era
Remember a few months ago when every pundit from the NY Times to the Nation called Ukraine to do a ceasefire? Russia is now losing territory as Europe has allowed Ukraine to attack the Russian military. The rest of NATO has chosen to completely bypass the leadership of the United States, openly supporting Ukraine to …
Two lanes and only two
Many cities in the US have built their transit systems around their highway networks because all they need to buy are vehicles, and they can quickly have reasonably competitive transit services up and running for cheap. This brings us to West Seattle. West Seattle has numerous buses that go downtown; they all go along the …
The border issue
Republicans are trying to make the Mexican border a political issue this election. Let’s investigate how to make a stable situation: The main causes of people crossing the border illegally is the following: There are few legal pathways for Mexicans to work in the United States. There are more low-skill jobs (which means you don’t …