Quotulatiousness

June 6, 2019

New paper on minimum wage effects is bound to be mis-used

Filed under: Economics, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In the Washington Examiner, Tim Worstall explains why a new well-researched paper on the minimum wage will be misunderstood and then used to “prove” things it doesn’t actually say:

None of this changes the standard intuition that when there’s a heavy such bite then there will be ill effects. What it does do is then lead us to trying to calculate what is a wage that does have that snarl, that bite? What is a minimum wage that is “too high” in the sense of having an excess of those ill effects upon employment? This is where I predict — no, not fear, not posit, nor surmise, but predict — this paper will be misused.

Our thinking is that the effects come from the relationship between the minimum and median wages. If we insist that wages cannot be lower than more than we already pay half the people, then we really are going to have problems. A minimum wage of 100% of the median wage isn’t going to work, that is. That ratio is called the Kaitz Index. This paper shows us that there are few to no such bad things happening up to 0.59 on that Kaitz measure. We can have the minimum wage at 59% of the median wage and know that we’ll have the good effects and only trivial amounts, at worst, of the bad.

You can see what’s going to happen next, can’t you? The Economic Policy Institute tells us that the median wage is about $22 this year, and 59% of that is $13. A bit of rounding and some aspiration, and why not go for a $15 minimum wage?

Except there are two median wages. Part-time and seasonal wages tend to be lower than full-year and full-time ones. The Economic Policy Institute is using that higher full-time one. The one for all jobs is quite a bit lower, $18.58 per hour. Take 59% of that and you get a rather lower level of $10.95 an hour. That’s around and about what McDonald’s, Walmart, and similar establishments pay as entry-level wages, which does seem about right, doesn’t it?

So, the new research paper, from esteemed researchers, published in the world’s top English language economics journal, tells us that minimum wages up to a certain level cause few to no problems. They’ve shown this for up to 59% of median wages. But which median do they mean? Dube himself told me they mean that lower one — specifically, the “median wage of all workers, not just for full time.”

But we all know how this is going to be used, don’t we? As proof that $15 an hour won’t cause any problems — which isn’t what the paper shows at all. Rather, it says that a $10.95 an hour minimum wage shouldn’t cause any problems of note.

The new paper is good empirical work. The fault is in what people will argue it says, not what it does.

On D-Day what did the Germans know?

Filed under: Britain, France, Germany, History, Military, USA, WW2 — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Military History Visualized
Published on 28 May 2019

When it comes to D-Day and the German perspective there are a few bits out there, but the sources are sometimes lacking. So, for this, we will be looking at some proper sources namely, the situation report of Operations Staff of the Wehrmacht and the war diary of the 7th German Army.

Cover design by vonKickass.

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» SOURCES «

Mehner, Kurt (Hrsg.): Die geheimen Tagesberichte der Deutschen Wehrmachtführung im Zweiten Weltkrieg 1939-1945. Band 10: 1. März 1944 – 31. August 1944, Biblio Verlag: Osnabrück, 1985.

Schramm, Percy E.: (Hrsg.): Kriegstagebuch des OKW 1944-1945. Teilband I. Eine Dokumentation. Bechtermünz: 2005.

Lieb, Peter: Unternehmen Overlord. Die Invasion in der Normandie und die Befreiung Westeuropas. C.H. Beck: München, 2014.

Horst Boog, Gerhard Krebs, Detlef Vogel: Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg. Band 7. Das Deutsche Reich in der Defensive – Strategischer Luftkrieg in Europa, Krieg im Westen und in Ostasien 1943 bis 1944/45, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 2001.

Germany and the Second World War. Volume 7. The Strategic Air War in Europe and the War in the West and East Asia 1943–1944/5. 2006.

Citino, Robert M.: The Wehrmacht’s Last Stand. The German Campaigns of 1944-1945. University Press of Kansas: USA, 2017.

Fennell, Jonathan: Fighting the People’s War. The British and Commonwealth Armies and the Second World War. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK, 2019

Harrison, Gordon A.: Cross-Channel Attack. United States army in World War II. Center of Military History, United States Army, Washington D.C., 1993

Blumenson, Martin: Breakout and Pursuit. United States army in World War II. Center of Military History, United States Army, Washington D.C., 1993

Messenger, Charles: The D-Day Atlas. Anatomy of the Normandy Campaign, Thames & Hudson: London, 2014 (2004).

Penrose, Jane (ed.): The D-Day Companion. Leading Historians explore history’s greatest amphibious assault. Osprey Publishing: Oxford 2009 (2004).

Töppel, Roman: Kursk 1943. The Greatest Battle of the Second World War. Helion: Warwick, UK: 2018.

Document for June 6th: D-day statement to soldiers, sailor, and airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force, 6/44 https://www.archives.gov/global-pages…

The Invasion of France, June 6, 1944, House of Commons https://winstonchurchill.org/resource…

iTunes is dead – “There will be no funeral, because it had no friends”

Filed under: Business, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

I use iTunes because I have to, not because I particularly want to. Apparently that’s not uncommon among iPhone users:

iTunes, Apple’s Frankenstein’s monster of an MP3-player-cum-record store-cum-video-store-cum-iPhone-updater-cum-random-task-performer, a piece of software which opens on your computer whenever it wants and which seems to require you to download an updated version every eight hours, was pronounced dead on Monday. It was 19 years old. There will be no funeral, because it had no friends.

Apple CEO Tim Cook announced that in its future operating systems, iTunes will be replaced by three separate programs: One for music (Apple Music), one for podcasts (Apple Podcasts) and one for video (Apple TV). Updating your phone — which never had anything to do with music, podcasts or video — will now be a function of the operating system. This sounds promising. It sounds normal.

But the mystery remains how Apple, of all companies, found itself sullying its machines for so long with iTunes’ wretched presence. By the end iTunes wasn’t just bad, it was fascinatingly bad — a “toxic hellstew,” as programmer Marco Arment put it in 2015. It was a master class in bad user experience from a company whose brand is excellent user experience: Put your trust in Apple’s machines and its native apps and everything will just work. There are no viruses, no blue screens of death, no pre-installed junkware popping up all over your brand-new desktop. Things just show up where they’re supposed to be. Mac’s user interface is so vastly superior to Windows’ that it seems ridiculous even to compare them. They’re both operating systems in the sense that the stick-shift on a Yugo and the flappy paddles on a Ferrari are both transmissions. Yet by 2015 one of Apple’s essential apps wasn’t just horrid to look at and baffling to use — it couldn’t even store and play people’s MP3s properly.

I never experienced the horror stories myself; [lucky bastard!] the idea of buying music from Apple and, because of its aggressive digital rights management, not even getting an MP3 file with which I could do what I liked always struck me as daft. But the Internet is full of tales of woe from people who entrusted their music collections to Apple and got royally screwed. iTunes would make curatorial decisions all by itself: If you bought Neil Young’s 1977 compilation album Decade, but already had On the Beach in your library, it might just decide not to include Walk On and Tired Eyes on your version of Decade. Or it might delete them from On the Beach, depending on its mood.

This was presumptuous and annoying, but at least somewhat explicable: iTunes consumers were far more singles-focused than album-focused. (Indeed the app is widely credited with ending the “age of the album.”) Less explicable were reports of Apple Music replacing people’s legacy music collections — songs they had ripped from CDs and entrusted to iTunes — with new downloads. People spoke of entire collections being corrupted or lost overnight. People reported that their libraries looked nothing alike on their various Apple devices. At one point, apparently under the impression that not many people loathe U2, Apple famously went ahead and beamed one of the band’s new snorefests onto everyone’s iTunes without asking.

My experiences with iTunes have been mostly of the minor irritant variety: disappearing songs, paid-for tracks that refused to play on certain devices, and songs showing up in playlists that they don’t belong to, for example. But at least — most of the time — the non-Apple songs were not randomly deleted from my library. Not too often, anyway.

Bloody Normandy: Juno Beach and Beyond – Part 1

Filed under: Cancon, France, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

canmildoc
Published on 17 Sep 2011

Part 1 of 5

Documentary “Stories from the Second World War: Bloody Normany”.

Juno or Juno Beach was one of five sectors of the Allied invasion of German-occupied France in the Normandy landings on 6 June 1944, during the Second World War. The sector spanned from Saint-Aubin, a village just east of the British Gold sector, to Courseulles, just west of the British Sword sector. The Juno landings were judged necessary to provide flanking support to the British drive on Caen from Sword, as well as to capture the German airfield at Carpiquet west of Caen. Taking Juno was the responsibility of the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division and commandos of the Royal Marines, with support from Naval Force J, the Juno contingent of the invasion fleet, including ships of the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN). The beach was defended by two battalions of the German 716th Infantry Division, with elements of the 21st Panzer Division held in reserve near Caen.

The invasion plan called for two brigades of the 3rd Canadian Division to land in two subsectors — Mike and Nan — focusing on Courseulles, Bernières, and Saint-Aubin. It was hoped that preliminary naval and air bombardment would soften up the beach defences and destroy coastal strongpoints. Close support on the beaches was to be provided by amphibious tanks of the 2nd Canadian Armoured Brigade. Once the landing zones were secured, the plan called for the 9th Canadian Infantry Brigade to land reserve battalions and deploy inland, the Royal Marine commandos to establish contact with the British 3rd Infantry Division on Sword, and the 7th Canadian Infantry Brigade to link up with the British 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division on Gold. The 3rd Canadian Division’s D-Day objectives were to capture Carpiquet Airfield and reach the Caen-Bayeux railway line by nightfall.

The landings initially encountered heavy resistance from the German 716th Division; the preliminary bombardment proved less effective than had been hoped, and rough weather forced the first wave to be delayed until 07:35. Several assault companies — notably those of the Royal Winnipeg Rifles and The Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada — took heavy casualties in the opening minutes of the first wave. Strength of numbers, as well as coordinated fire support from artillery and armoured squadrons, cleared most of the coastal defences within two hours of landing. The reserves of the 7th and 8th brigades began deploying at 08:30 (along with the Royal Marines), while the 9th Brigade began its deployment at 11:40.

The subsequent push inland towards Carpiquet and the Caen-Bayeux railway line achieved mixed results. The sheer numbers of men and vehicles on the beaches created lengthy delays between the landing of the 9th Brigade and the beginning of substantive attacks to the south. The 7th Brigade encountered heavy initial opposition before pushing south and making contact with the 50th Infantry Division at Creully. The 8th Brigade encountered heavy resistance from a battalion of the 716th at Tailleville, while the 9th Brigade deployed towards Carpiquet early in the evening. Resistance in Saint-Aubin prevented the Royal Marines from establishing contact with the British 3rd Division on Sword. When all operations on the Anglo-Canadian front were ordered to halt at 21:00, only one unit had reached its D-Day objective, but the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division had succeeded in pushing farther inland than any other landing force on D-Day. – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_beach

QotD: Reviewing Saving Private Ryan

Filed under: History, Media, Military, Quotations, USA, WW2 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

When Saving Private Ryan was released in America, I made a mild observation to the effect that its premise was a lot of hooey, and received in response several indignant letters pointing out that it was “based on a true story”, that of the Sullivan brothers. Er, not quite. The Sullivans’ story is stirringly told in The Fighting Sullivans (1942, directed by 42nd Street’s Lloyd Bacon): after Pearl Harbor, all five brothers enlist — and all five die aboard the [cruiser] Juneau at Guadalcanal. As a result, to avoid the recurrence of such a freakish tragedy, the United States changed its policy on family members serving together. Steven Spielberg’s film is not “based” on the Sullivans, except insofar as General George C. Marshall, the US Army’s chief of staff, mentions their fate to explain his decision.

Rather, the film is a kind of extension of the thinking behind the policy change: when three out of four Ryan brothers are killed in action, General Marshall orders a rescue mission to retrieve the sole surviving sibling, whose general whereabouts are somewhere behind enemy lines in Normandy — and all this a couple of days after D-Day. No such incident took place: no Allied commander would have thought it worth the risk in lives to assuage one distraught mother’s potential further bereavement.

Spielberg’s mistake is that, as one of the last remaining hardcore Clinton groupies, he’s thinking in Clintonian terms — about publicity, image, spin: the death of another Ryan brother would not “look good”. When Spielberg has General Marshall read out a letter from Lincoln to a mother whose sons all died in the Civil War, we’re certainly meant to find his consoling words — that they gave their lives in a great and noble cause — inadequate. It’s a measure of the gulf between 1944 and 1998 that The Fighting Sullivans was released during the war because it was thought the supreme sacrifice of one family would be inspiring. Alas, not to baby boomers.

So much has been written about the unprecedented “realism” of this film’s war scenes that the equally unprecedented unrealism of its thinking has passed virtually unnoticed. You’ve probably seen a zillion articles about the film’s prologue — a recreation of D-Day which lasts almost as long and doubtless cost a lot more — so I’ll say only this: yes, it’s impressive; yes, every shot of blood and tissue and body parts is underlined by adroit effects; yes, every moment is a testament to Spielberg’s command of cinematic technique; but that’s the problem — you react to it as technique, as showmanship. There’s one perfect shot after another: the silence underwater, with its dangerous illusion of respite; the pitterpatter of rain on leaves gradually blurring into rifle fire. The whole thing is oddly pointless: you’re not engaged by the predicament of the troops because you’re so busy admiring the great film-maker behind them. A film cannot really be “authentic” if all you notice is the authenticity.

Mark Steyn, The Spectator, 1998-09-12 (linked from SteynOnline).

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