How People Get Smarter Over Time

From Ajah Shah's blog, a post on changes in the computer world:

In the 1980s, software came with fat manuals. Users actually sat down in training classes. A remarkable feature of the new world is how the manuals and training are gone. Software is incredibly capable but there are no manuals. Google maps or Amazon or Apple Mail are very powerful programs, but the fundamental assumption is that a reasonable person can just start tinkering with them and learn more as he goes.

The modern office worker gets no formal training in software all his life. The modern knowledge worker learns major tools (e.g. a programming language) and often puts in enormous effort for these. But for the rest, the ordinary flow of day to day life, where new software systems come up all the time, is done without formal training.

 One of the puzzles of life is the Flynn effect, which says every generation is smarter than the previous one.  Personally I think we drastically underestimate the effect of the learning which floats in the environment, which Mr. Shah's observation implies.

SSA a Model for Online Operations at FSA

Social Security Administration wanted to have 44 percent of retirees sign up for SS payments online.  That was their announced goal:

The actual percentage who filed online was 41 percent, states the SSA Performance & Accountability Report for Fiscal Year 2011.

I applaud SSA for setting the goal and announcing it, even more for the followup report.  If and when USDA aims to have farmers to do more stuff online with FSA, I'd like to see USDA specify what the goals are and what the results are.

7000 Pounds of Milk

Post has an article on a Virginia farmer selling Holstein bulls to Russia. Two paragraphs:

Russian farmers are trying to improve dairy herds that produce an average 7,000 pounds of milk per cow each year, said Valery Osipenko, who co-owns Vistar Farms of Mechanicsville, which sold the bulls to Russian farmers for an undisclosed amount. Top-quality American Holsteins produce an average of more than 20,000 pounds of milk per year.

Instead of raising dairy cattle for milk and beef cattle for meat, Soviet collective farms had “dual-use” cattle, which would be milked for a while, then killed for meat, Osipenko said. Those one-size-fits-all cattle may have embodied an egalitarian ideal, but both milk and meat were mediocre, said Osipenko, a native of Ukraine who recalled his mother boiling beef for hours in a fruitless attempt to tenderize it.

Random thoughts: back in the 50's, we were averaging something over 10,000 lbs, maybe more, so Russia is really backwards.

Of course, back in the 1700's dual purpose cattle were the rule in America.  I wonder about the evolution of the industry.  In the 50's we had "registered" Holsteins, tracking the ancestry of our cows.  Used artificial insemination and choose the bull based on the production records of his progeny.  Now Darwin writes about how humans have changed domestic breeds by their selection, but I don't recall he used cows as an example.  I'm vaguely aware Washington and Jefferson imported animals based on their qualities: is it possible sheep can be "dual-purpose" (wool versus mutton)?

If we assume that US dairymen were, in the 19th century, trying to improve the productivity of their herds, then maybe it's also reasonable to assume the same was true in Russia.  So what might have happened? Perhaps the Russian Revolution and the arrival of collective farms meant the freezing of the drive to improve productivity?  Meaning for 70 years the Russian dairy industry was frozen?

Still surprising to me that they haven't progressed faster in the 20+ years since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Lower Crop Prices in the Future and the Farm Bill

That's what the CBO is projecting. according to this Bloomberg piece.  Corn cash prices down to $4.54?  That's not going to help farm bill prospects: some people will worry about lower prices, others (urban) will point to past high prices.

Meanwhile, FSA's friends over at the Farm Bureau are worrying about implementation--from Farm Policy:

“We have serious concerns about the other proposals floating around, which dictate different rules, different crops and different payments. Not only would such programs be a nightmare for local Farm Service Agency offices to administer, but farmers would have the ability to cherry-pick which program works best for them. Because of distortions in price, we’d have a system of farmers deciding what to produce based on government payments rather than market signals.”

Incarceration Rates

Mr. Coates blogged about drug policy and incarceration today, which caused to me check our history.  Incarceration jumped from 338,000 in 1980 to over 2 million by the 2000's, a 6-fold increase.

FSA Office Closings

I have a Google Alert set up for "FSA".  These days as you might expect there's lots of hits on the proposed closures of FSA offices; some are just reporting the proposal, some report meetings held to protest the possibility.  Google "USDA FSA closing" to see some of the reports.

There's probably no way to do a "BRAC"  commission for these proposals as has been done for closing military bases..

Innovation and the Small

Innovation often comes from the small, the small business, the individual entrepreneur.  But innovation often disadvantages the small, the established small farmer, the small store owner, the small theater.

One example is the change from film to digital in movie theaters, which the Rural Blog posts on here.

It reminds me of when our farm went from horses to a tractor, turned out we needed to invest in other implements, all of which required capital.  Those who can't access or accumulate the money can get left behind.

(Having said that, the local Reston theater is under new ownership and is renovating, including all digital projections.  We saw "War Horse" there, which has great cinematography, and the experience was great. )

Communitarian Liberalism as Zero Sum

Ross Douthat in the NYTimes sets up a strawman, communitarian liberalism, on his way to attacking the Obama administration.

But there are trade-offs as well, which liberal communitarians don’t always like to acknowledge. When government expands, it’s often at the expense of alternative expressions of community, alternative groups that seek to serve the common good. Unlike most communal organizations, the government has coercive power — the power to regulate, to mandate and to tax. These advantages make it all too easy for the state to gradually crowd out its rivals. The more things we “do together” as a government, in many cases, the fewer things we’re allowed to do together in other spheres.

Sometimes this crowding out happens gradually, subtly, indirectly. Every tax dollar the government takes is a dollar that can’t go to charities and churches. Every program the government runs, from education to health care to the welfare office, can easily become a kind of taxpayer-backed monopoly.

 His specific point is the rule providing that health care facilities which offer healthcare insurance must include contraception, etc. among the benefits.  This is particularly offensive to those facilities run by the Catholic church.

What he fails to acknowledge in his lead-in are the ways in which the government encourages those "alternative expressions of community".  For example, contributions to religious and charitable organizations are tax-deductible; property owned by such organizations is tax-exempt.  From my point of view, rather than there being a zero-sum game played between government and NGO's, there's a complex interweaving of interests, sometimes symbiotic, sometimes parasitic, among all the players.

His argument would be more effective if he offered an example of a government monopoly in education, in health care, in welfare.  I can't think of one.  

Why James Stewart's Production Is Down

James B. Stewart, the prize winning author, and NYTimes columnist sat down with a calculator to compute his tax rates and reports here.  The results:

I paid 24 percent of my adjusted gross income in federal taxes and 37 percent in combined federal, state and local income taxes. I paid 49 percent of my taxable income in federal income tax, and 74 percent of my taxable income in combined federal, state and local income taxes. My totals include federal payroll and self-employment taxes.

 No wonder his productivity over recent years has been down--he pays too much in taxes--that's the logic conservative economists would use.  His picture reflects his self-employment and living in NYC.  I'm too lazy to check but I think the usual figure for comparison is the AGI percentage (i.e., Gingrich paying 30+, Obamas 25+, Romney 14+).

This led me to a thought though: Mr. Stewart may well have slowed down some recently, but is that more the effect of incentives/taxes or is it the effect of aging. Much discussion of the impact of taxes on incentives omits any correction for age.

[updated: corrected typo]

GHWBush Shows Age

No, George W. Bush's dad isn't greying much, particularly when you realize he was born in 1924, but he is in a wheelchair according to this picture of him and son Jeb with Obama this weekend.