Quotulatiousness

March 15, 2011

“Obesity crusaders” use “inherently flawed instruments, such as BMI and apple-body shapes, to misinform the public”

Filed under: Government, Health, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:50

Patrick Basham and John Luik address the manifest failings of the public health crusade against obesity:

Since the anti-obesity campaign is allegedly motivated by scientific findings, it would seem reasonable and prudent to make doubly sure that those claims are factual and trustworthy. Yet, we continue to find that the case against obesity is significantly flawed. Not only are the claims of an obesity epidemic often wildly exaggerated, but the science linking weight to unfavourable mortality outcomes is also frequently nonexistent or distorted.

[. . .]

As Danesh suggests, other researchers have suggested concentrating on a measurement of the waist alone, while many cling to BMI, which calculates obesity based upon a weight-to-height ratio. Because of its easy applicability, BMI is universally used in officially defining obesity, despite its manifest shortcomings. The BMI is wholly arbitrary and has no scientifically valid connection with mortality.

“Obesity crusaders” are what we call the individuals who manufactured the obesity-epidemic story in the first place and continue, through application of inherently flawed instruments, such as BMI and apple-body shapes, to misinform the public. They are a relatively small group of public-health officials in the US, the UK, the EU, and the World Health Organisation, assorted academics (very many with close ties to the weight-loss and pharmaceutical industry), the International Obesity Task Force, and a collection of so-called public-interest science groups.

How are these obesity crusaders reacting to the unambiguously good news published in The Lancet? Surely, they rejoice at the fact there is one less thing for a health-conscious population to fret over? No, they are not in celebratory mood. Quite the contrary. The obesity crusaders did not waste any time on the New Good News; after all, the Old-Time Religion continues to serve them so well.

It gets worse for the “fat=early death” meme:

There is little credible scientific evidence that supports the claims that being overweight or obese leads to an early death. For example, Katherine Flegal of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that in the US population there were more premature deaths among those who are normal weight than those who are overweight. Indeed, in this study, Americans who were overweight were those most likely to live the longest.

In the American Journal of Public Health, Jerome Gronniger found that men in the “normal” weight category exhibited a mortality rate as high as that of men in the moderately obese category; men in the “overweight” category clearly had the lowest mortality risk.

Shang-Jin Wei on the Chinese sex imbalance and its economic impact

Filed under: China, Economics, Government — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:19

China’s one-child policy not only intruded into the personal lives of Chinese couples, but it may also have been a key contributor to the economic bubble:

Could a reproductive policy have caused the financial crisis? Could it still be wreaking havoc with the world economy? During a lively discussion at the Council on Foreign Relations yesterday, Columbia professor Shang-Jin Wei said this could be the case. He claimed that the skewed Chinese sex ratio (there are more men than women) can explain much of global trade imbalances. Mr Wei reckons the Chinese sex ratio can explain the high Chinese saving rate, and this is what’s behind China’s current-account surplus.

China adopted the one child law in the early 1980s. It resulted in a skewed sex ratio because many couples preferred a male baby and aborted female fetuses. In 1980, 106 boys were born were born for every 100 girls. By 1997, it was 122 boys for every 100 girls. This means that today one in nine Chinese men will probably never marry and the situation is expected to get worse as time goes on. It’s been suggested that the large pool of single men with no marriage prospects can lead to social unrest. What that will mean for China’s political future is uncertain and potentially troubling. But the world may already be experiencing the economic impact of this policy. Trade imbalances, specifically the Chinese current account surplus and America’s current account deficit, are often cited as a cause of the financial crisis. They provided a glut of cheap, easy capital which fed the housing bubble.

[. . .]

The lack of a social safety net is often blamed for the high Chinese saving rate. Without welfare and government pensions the Chinese must save to self-insure themselves. But Mr Wei pointed out that even as the government has extended more social welfare programmes, the saving rate has continued to rise. He believes the uneven sex ratio can explain half of the increase in private saving between 1990 and 2005. He explained that the marriage market is becoming very competitive with so few girls. Chinese parents want to accumulate as much wealth as possible to ensure that their son can attract a wife. It is also important to provide sons with the best education possible. A competitive marriage market means that members of the disadvantaged gender must raise their game, which in China means greater wealth and education.

Mr Wei also reckons the sex ratio can explain capital accumulation in the corporate sector. The desire to accumulate wealth means that boys and their parents are more likely to become entrepreneurs, work more hours and take more unpleasant jobs. He found higher rates of entrepreneurship in areas with more skewed sex ratios.

This, of course, is the optimistic view of things. The pessimistic view involves those tens of millions of men who can never find wives and projects that into social unrest, civil disorder, and military adventurism. Let’s hope the optimistic view is closer to being correct.

DC residents get stiffed on their solar power subsidies

Filed under: Environment, Government, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:00

David Nakamura reports on some Washington, DC folks who are feeling ripped off by their local government over solar panel reimbursements that were promised but never delivered:

It isn’t easy going green, and it may also prove costly.

Dozens of District residents who installed solar panels on their homes under a government grant program promoting renewable energy have been told they will not be reimbursed thousands of dollars as promised because the funds were diverted to help close a citywide budget gap.

In all, the city has reneged on a commitment of about $700,000 to 51 residents, according to the D.C. Department of the Environment. The agency has pledged to try to find money in next year’s budget, its director, Christophe Tulou, said.

“It just doesn’t seem fair to go through a process with them and have them make investments in solar panels under the assumption they would be reimbursed,” Tulou acknowledged. “It’s really sad we are having these economic woes when we are.”

H/T to Radley Balko for the link.

March 14, 2011

Government debt: “U.S Treasuries increasingly look like Wile E. Coyote running in midair; they’ll keep selling only as long as nobody actually looks down”

Filed under: Economics, Government, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 16:17

To borrow a phrase from Monty at Ace of Spades HQ, here’s a hot steaming bolus of DOOM for you, courtesy of Eric S. Raymond:

Insolvency is no longer a sporadic problem, it’s become pervasive at all levels of government everywhere. This is why the recent brouhaha in Wisconsin was so surreal. The public-employee unions weren’t just rearranging the deck chairs on a sinking Titanic, they were fighting to preserve their right to bore more holes in the hull.

When these are the objective conditions, what point is there in arguing that the whole system is corrupt and that middle-class entitlements have to go on the scrap-heap along with every other big-government program? It’s going to happen anyway soon enough. A year ago the U.S. government was only taking in a third of what it needed to cover annual outlays; today it’s so much worse that individual monthly deficits are larger than the entire Bush administration’s. The money’s all gone. Our options are closing down to default or hyperinflation.

It’s going to get ugly out there. A lot of old people are either not going to get their pensions and Social Security at all or get them in hyperinflated dollars that won’t be worth anything. Anyone else dependent on government transfer payments will be similarly screwed. Urban poor, farmers, veterans, the list goes on. Imagine the backlash when that really hits — when it sinks in that the promises were lies, the bubble has popped, the Ponzi scheme is over.

Canadian in Japan claims government “providing no help” to him

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Japan, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:13

Phillip Ilijevski is shocked that the Canadian government hasn’t been providing him with personalized information on what’s happening near him:

A Toronto man living in Japan says the federal government is “providing no help” to Canadians wanting to know if they should leave the earthquake and tsunami-ravaged country, especially given the nuclear threat.

Phillip Ilijevski teaches English in Takasaki, about 100 kilometres north of Tokyo. He called Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade to find out if it’s safe to stay in Japan, but says the only advice they gave him was to watch the news.

I have no idea why the Canadian government is expected to have better information on what’s happening in Japan in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami than the Japanese government, but it must be Stephen Harper’s fault, right?

If Mr. Ilijevski was in a third world nation with poor communications and little infrastructure, it might be reasonable to assume that Canadian officials would be in a better position to provide advice than local government, but in this case there’s no reason — Japan is better equipped to handle this kind of disaster (and public information flow) than just about any other nation on earth.

As jonkay said in a Twitter update: “As usual,when disaster strikes abroad, TStar’s #1 focus is finding a Canuck to bitch about how Ottawa isn’t helping him”

March 11, 2011

Examining externalities

Filed under: Economics, Government, Liberty — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:54

Predrag Rajsic looks at the economic case for governments to address externalities:

Some theorists claim that externalities are probably the most legitimate reason for state intervention in human interactions. The ethical case for intervention is that it can presumably increase overall economic efficiency. This article demonstrates that, even if one accepts this ethical principle, the usual choice of externality-generating actions that are believed to justify state intervention is purely arbitrary.

In fact, according to the definition of actions with external effects, any human action in a multi-individual society would qualify for regulation under the banner of improving economic efficiency (i.e., internalizing externalities). However, the nature of human existence renders this internalization impossible. Thus, we end up with a paradoxical situation where every action inevitably fails the ethical criterion we have put in front of ourselves.

[. . .]

Government intervention is commonly believed to be the correcting mechanism. In the cases where too much of an action is being performed, the government should coercively limit the externality-creating action (regulations, taxes, penalties, quotas, etc.) Alternatively, actions that result in positive externalities should be encouraged using the means available to the government (i.e., subsidies).

These government interventions are supposed to move the economy to the output mix as close as possible to the mix supposedly predicated by the model of perfect competition. In this sense, the model of perfect competition is adopted as a measuring stick for determining the ethical validity of individual action. According to this principle, one ought not act without taking into account the effect of his or her actions on all other individuals within the economy.

Reason.TV: Should governments subsidize alternative energy?

Filed under: Economics, Government, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:48

March 10, 2011

Stephen Gordon: “business groups are pro-BUSINESS, not pro-MARKET”

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 13:01

Stephen Gordon provides a useful reminder about not conflating “business” interests with “free market” interests: they’re often in conflict.

This is something that should always be kept in mind in economic policy discussions: business groups are pro-BUSINESS, not pro-MARKET.

It is especially important to keep this in mind when we read news items such as this, in which several of Canada’s largest banks voice their opposition to the proposed TMX-LSE merger.

It is true that business groups will often make use the language of markets, and it is obviously in their interest to portray themselves as defenders of markets.

But they are a lobby group like any other, and cannot be relied upon to defend the general public interest.

This point is sometimes hard to see, especially since many business groups have the reputation of favouring such pro-market policies such as free trade. And so they do, but for precisely the wrong reason: as a way of increasing exports.

This is why you can often find big business working hand-in-mailed-gauntlet with regulators to shut down competitors and make it harder for new competitors to enter their markets: corporations do not naturally favour free markets. Corporations exist to maximize profit for their shareholders, not primarily to serve customers. Serving customers is one way to accomplish that end, but in a regulated economy it may not be the best way to do it. If you can get the naked force of government to muscle in and suppress other businesses, that leaves more profit for you (as long as you co-operate with the government, that is).

Small businesses don’t have the ability to cosy up to government in the same way big corporations can, so even if they band together in trade groups, they won’t have the ability to capture and direct the regulators in the way big businesses often can.

Time to audit the Federal Reserve?

Filed under: Economics, Government, USA — Tags: — Nicholas @ 10:51

March 8, 2011

Canadian banks forced to enter 21st century

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Economics, Government — Tags: — Nicholas @ 12:27

In a long-overdue move, the Canadian government is putting pressure on the banks to improve their glacial cheque-clearing time:

Ottawa is cutting the amount of time banks can hold cheques up to $1,500 to four business days from seven for consumers and small- and medium-sized businesses.

The measures detailed today, part of last year’s budget, will also give consumers “immediate access” to the first $100 deposited by cheque. There will be a 30-day period for comment.

“Lower-income seniors, Canadians without significant balances in their accounts, younger Canadians who do not have a long banking history, and people who receive cheques from newer employers or clients are often subject to longer cheque hold periods,” the Department of Finance said. “These are often the Canadians who most need quick access to their funds.”

This is great news for me personally: I’m self-employed. I bill my clients directly for a month’s work, they take time to process my invoice and issue a cheque, then I deposit it into my business account. Seven business days later after that, I can actually get some of that money into my personal account. It’s amazing how long seven business days can seem when you’re juggling the mortgage, property tax bills, utilities, and all the other things that can’t be postponed to a time when the bank lets you get at your own money.

H/T to Elizabeth for the link.

“El Neil” goes to town on the United Nations

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Government, Liberty — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:07

L. Neil Smith isn’t fond of the UN. I mean really not fond of them:

The UN was conceived in 1939, a brain-child of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his buddies, who had failed to understand the lesson to be learned from the collapse of its ludicrous predecessor, the League of Nations, that the people of a war-weary planet, fed up to here with self-important bloviating cretins in funny hats ordering them around, were not interested in a world government, or anything even resembling one.

Instead, all the really important people — the equivalents, in 1945, of Barack and Michelle Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank — got together in one meeting after another, and without so much as a nod at voters and taxpayers forced at gunpoint to support this gaggle of worthless preening parasites, established the UN in its now-crumbling headquarters on the Hudson River.

Its single all-important mission? To succeed where Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Adolf Hitler had all failed: at the involuntary expense of individuals who actually worked for a living, try to take over the world.

Since the ignominious collapse of the Soviet Union, the new world nerve center for socialism is the UN, which is no less an enemy of everything worthwhile in the western world than Hitler and Stalin were. The UN has been at the very hub of the global warming hoax since the conspiracy began. It has done everything it can to limit American industrial technology and reduce us all to a prehistoric standard of living. It demands the authority to reach into otherwise sovereign countries and extract and punish those who fail to comply with its edicts. The UN admits openly that it wishes to obliterate the American Constitution — especially the Bill of Rights — with an hysterical emphasis on the Second Amendment. And now we’re beginning to have a clearer idea what it wants to substitute in place of those ideas and institutions.

[. . .]

The nearest equivalent to what the UN has in mind for all of us is the infamous Highland Clearances” of the 18th and 19th centuries, when English “landowners” evicted the Scots they had conquered, by the hundreds of thousands, burning whole villages and forcing the Scots to leave their crops rotting in the ground, compelling a people who had been cattlemen for generations to harvest seaweed on the cold and rocky coast — or emigrate to the Americas — so aristocrats could “ride to hounds” and replace their displaced victims on the land with sheep.

March 7, 2011

Your energy consuming future

Filed under: Britain, Economics, Government, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 11:00

Britain is facing a very different future, from the point of energy consumption, according to Steve Holliday, CEO of National Grid:

Because of a six-fold increase in wind generation, which won’t be available when the wind doesn’t blow, “The grid is going to be a very different system in 2020, 2030,” he told BBC’s Radio 4. “We keep thinking that we want it to be there and provide power when we need it. It’s going to be much smarter than that.

“We are going to change our own behaviour and consume it when it is available and available cheaply.”

The more of your electricity that is produced from wind power, the more there will be very noticeable peaks and valleys in available electricity. Not only do you need more sources, you need over-capacity in some areas to generate sufficient power to supply to areas which are becalmed.

Under the so-called “smart grid” that the UK is developing, the government-regulated utility will be able to decide when and where power should be delivered, to ensure that it meets the highest social purpose. Governments may, for example, decide that the needs of key industries take precedence over others, or that the needs of industry trump that of residential consumers. Governments would also be able to price power prohibitively if it is used for non-essential purposes.

Perhaps it’s just the libertarian in me that finds the term “highest social purpose” to be very disturbing: just who the hell is going to be making that determination? And on what basis will the new high priests of the lightnings be making that call?

Smart grids are being developed by utilities worldwide to allow the government to control electricity use in the home, down to the individual appliance. Smart grids would monitor the consumption of each appliance and be capable of turning them off if the power is needed elsewhere.

Like the idea that someone at your local electrical board can decide that you don’t really need to run that TV set or that toaster right now? If the control freaks at the utilities manage to foist this off on us, we’ll be techno-peasants who are only allowed to run electrical devices that meet “social purpose” guidelines.

March 5, 2011

Expanding the already expansive interpretation of the “Commerce Clause”

Filed under: Government, Law, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:51

Rich Lowry explains why the recent court decision by Judge Gladys Kessler has such wide-reaching implications:

The easy-to-grasp distinction between an activity and inactivity is one of the most powerful legal arguments of ObamaCare’s opponents. But they hadn’t yet run up against a jurist as ingenious as Judge Kessler. She brushes aside the activity/inactivity distinction because not doing something is a choice and therefore “mental activity.”

Why hadn’t someone thought of this before? The sophists in Eric Holder’s Justice Department must be embarrassed that they didn’t themselves dredge up this killer rejoinder.

[. . .]

Kessler writes, “It is pure semantics to argue that an individual who makes a choice to forgo health insurance is not ‘acting,’ especially given the serious economic and health-related consequences to every individual of that choice. Making a choice is an affirmative action, whether one decides to do something or not do something.”

[. . .]

Under the Kessler principle, there’s no nonconduct that the federal government can’t reach. Every day, most Americans engage in nonactivities that affect interstate commerce. If you decide not to buy a house, not to buy a Chrysler or not to buy a Snuggie, you’ve impacted interstate conduct through affirmative mental actions. We’ve gone from the Constitution giving Congress the power to “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes,” to regulating on the basis of the mental activities of individuals deciding not to do something.

If this precedent stands, the Commerce clause has effectively swallowed the bill of rights: there will be no sphere of human activity that the US federal government can’t regulate.

H/T to David Harsanyi for the link.

March 4, 2011

The complicated NFL labour situation

Filed under: Football, Government, Law — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 13:16

Update: Twitter rumours are now that the CBA will be extended for another week to allow further negotiations. New deadline is Friday March 11 at 5pm Eastern time.

A model of how government pension schemes work

Filed under: Economics, Government, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:04

It’s all so immense that it’s hard to understand, so Karl Denninger reduces it to an easy-to-comprehend model:

Let’s start with the model but take it into the real world. We’ll use you and I.

You set up a business. I’m a “trustworthy guy.” You have employee who you wish to provide a pension.

So every week when you pay them, you take out $100 from their paycheck. You have 10 employees (including yourself) and you come to me with your $1,000 every week and give it to me. I take it.

But instead of sticking it in an account somewhere with your name on it (as a trustee would) I instead give you a piece of paper. It says I owe you $1,000. But it’s not a debt security. You cannot negotiate it like a check, nor can you sell it to anyone else — it’s only valid if you bring it back to me. It says so right on the face. I promise that if you bring it back I’ll give you the $1,000.

Here’s the problem — as soon as you leave I call up my 10 stripper friends and the local liquor store and throw a party. Guess what I use for the money? Your $1,000.

Now here’s the rub — I don’t have any other money. At all.

In fact, I’m in hock up to my neck. I earn $100,000 a year but I spend $170,000. And how do I do this? Well, among other things I have people like you giving me money to “save.” I also have a bunch of credit cards, and everyone thinks I’m a great guy — kind of like an uncle (just call me “Sam”) and so they keep raising my credit limit.

It’s a wonderful life, isn’t it?

Well, maybe for a while.

But there is a problem with this model. First, this isn’t a “Trust.” A Trust can hold funds for someone, and can even invest them in something, but the funds cannot be converted to the trustee’s use. They must be held segregated and not inure to the benefit of the trustee. Further, the trustee must act solely in the best interest of the beneficiaries of the trust, not their own interest. That’s black-letter law.

Then there’s the second problem — I didn’t invest the money. I blew it, and all of the rest of my money.

One day you come and ask me to redeem one of your $1,000 IOUs. I don’t have any money, but I have a cash advance available on the credit card — or at least I think I do. So I go to the local bank and pull a $1,000 cash advance, giving you ten crisp $100 bills.

Notice what just happened: As soon as you showed up, your IOU, which in fact had no legal status as debt, had to be turned into actual debt at that point in time. Now there really is $1,000 in debt out there — it’s on the credit card.

This is exactly what happened with Social Security and Medicare since Reagan’s “reform” of the systems in the 1980s. Every single Administration since has taken all the money and immediately blown it. There is no money.

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