Tag Archives: business

Either 35, 36, or 39 Percent of Psychology Results Can’t Be Replicated

by AltonDeyoung Posted on August 28, 2015

Mother Jones

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The Washington Post informs me today that in a new study, only 39 out of 100 published psychology studies could be replicated:

I wonder if I can replicate that headline? Let’s try the New York Times:

Huh. They say 35 out of 100. What’s going on? Maybe Science News can tell me:

Now it’s 35 out of 97. So what is the answer?

Based on the study itself, it appears that Science News has it right. It’s 35 out of 97. Using a different measure of replication, however, the answer is that 39 percent of the studies could be replicated, which might explain the Post’s 39 out of 100. And it turns out that the study actually looked at 100 results, but only 97 of them had positive findings in the first place and were therefore worth trying to replicate. But if, for some reason, you decided that all 100 original studies should be counted, you’d get the Times’ 35 out of 100.

So there you go. Depending on who you read, it’s either 35, 36, or 39 percent. Welcome to the business of science reporting.

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Either 35, 36, or 39 Percent of Psychology Results Can’t Be Replicated

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See how 5 ocean garbage gyres form over 35 years in this visualization (Video)

by Myrna Posted on August 24, 2015

Using data from over a period of three and a half decades, this sobering visualization shows how far, wide and persistent our garbage patch problem has become. Read article here:   See how 5 ocean garbage gyres form over 35 years in this visualization (Video) ; ; ;

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See how 5 ocean garbage gyres form over 35 years in this visualization (Video)

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Trumpmentum Has Been Losing Steam Ever Since the Debate

by DonnieWhited Posted on August 20, 2015

Mother Jones

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I hopped over to RealClear Politics this morning to take a look at their latest poll averages, and it shows something interesting: Donald Trump may have hit his ceiling. On August 5, he hit a peak at 24.3 percent. He then plateaued for a few days and has been falling ever since. He now stands at 22.0 percent.

Not all poll averages show the same thing. I also took a look at Pollster, and they show Trump’s climb starting to slow down, but not quite peaking yet. Even there, though, it looks like Trump is going to hit a ceiling soon.

At the risk of making a hard prediction that will soon look foolish, it looks to me like Trump has peaked at about 25 percent. Even among the Republican base, his blustery showmanship only gets him so far.

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Trumpmentum Has Been Losing Steam Ever Since the Debate

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I Read Scott Walker’s Health Care Plan So You Don’t Have To

by RobynKirwin Posted on August 18, 2015

Mother Jones

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It’s health care day for Scott Walker. Today he released “The Day One Patient Freedom Plan,” a title that’s apparently designed to give the impression that his plan would start on Day One of his presidency. Yuval Levin comments that Walker’s proposal “will be familiar to health wonks,” and it’s true. It’s the usual conservative mish-mash of HSAs, high-risk pools, tax credits, interstate insurance sales, tort reform, and block-granting of Medicaid.

Oh, and Walker’s plan won’t require any tax revenue. This is….a little hard to believe since a quick swag suggests that the gross cost of Walker’s tax credits will run about $200 billion per year. I figure the net cost, once you account for the end of Obamacare subsidies and other current outlays, is still in the neighborhood of $100 billion or so.1 That’s a lot, so I assume Walker explains pretty carefully how he’s going to pull this off without any new taxes.

Indeed he does. Here’s the answer: “We would simplify and reform how the federal government helps people access health insurance.” Gee, I wonder why no one’s thought of that before?

So far, there’s nothing very interesting here. Every Republican candidate is going to release a plan very similar to this. But there is one other thing I was curious about. It turns out that protecting people with pre-existing conditions is really popular, and this means that Republicans all feel like they have to support the idea. But how? Apologies for the long excerpt, but I want to make sure you see Walker’s whole answer:

No individual should fear being denied coverage, or face huge premium spikes when they get sick and then try to change jobs or insurance plans. My plan would address these concerns. It would make additional reforms to insurance coverage laws to ensure individuals with pre-existing conditions would be protected, not only when moving from employer-based plans to the individual market, but also when switching between plans. This would make insurance coverage more portable, permitting individuals to own their coverage, regardless of how or where they purchase it.

Provided individuals maintain continuous, creditable coverage, no one would see their premiums jump because of a health issue or be shut out of access to affordable health insurance because of a new diagnosis or a pre-existing medical condition. Newborns, as well as young adults leaving their parents’ insurance plans and buying their own, would have these same protections. Unlike the ObamaCare approach, my plan would protect those with pre-existing conditions without using costly mandates. By relying on incentives rather than penalties, individuals would be free to choose.

This is literally a non-answer. We do know a couple of things: (a) if you let your insurance lapse, you’re screwed, and (b) Walker will somehow prevent insurance companies from raising your rates if you maintain continuous coverage. He provides no clue just what kind of insurance regulation would accomplish this, and for a good reason: I doubt there is one. Obamacare accomplishes it via community rating, which requires insurance companies to cover all comers at the same price, but Walker surely rejects this approach. What he replaces it with remains a mystery.

One other thing worth noting: Walker’s tax credits would, at best, pay only for catastrophic coverage. Maybe not even that. Nor will his plan cover everyone. Nor is it likely to cost nothing. Nor does it have any concrete proposals to reduce the cost of health care. If you think that’s OK, then Walker is your guy. If you think everyone should be able to receive affordable routine health care, and you’re willing to pay for it honestly, you might want to stick with Obamacare.

1Don’t worry about the numbers. They’re just illustrative guesses on my part. I’m sure experts will weigh in eventually with better estimates.

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I Read Scott Walker’s Health Care Plan So You Don’t Have To

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We Are All Fans of Self-Deportation

by MichellQka Posted on August 18, 2015

Mother Jones

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Ezra Klein has read Donald Trump’s immigration plan and finds it even worse than he expected. I didn’t feel that way: it read to me like a pretty standard right-wing take on illegal immigration, with just a few added Trumpisms (Mexico will pay for the wall, we should force companies to hire Americans, etc.). But two things in Klein’s piece struck me enough to want to comment on them:

The plan would be a disaster for immigrants if enacted. But even if it’s not enacted, the plan is a disaster for the Republican Party, which is somehow going to need to co-opt Trump’s appeal to anti-immigration voters, but absolutely cannot afford to be associated, in the minds of Hispanic voters, with this document.

….When Mitt Romney embraced “self-deportation” in 2012, it was considered an awful mistake….But self-deportation is Trump’s plan, too. And Trump’s insight here is that the best way to drive unauthorized immigrants out of the country isn’t to target them. It’s to target their children and families.

On the first point, I think this ship sailed a long time ago. Maybe the Trump publicity juggernaut will aggravate things further, but I honestly don’t see how the Republican Party could appeal to Hispanics much less than it already does. The anti-immigrant rhetoric from leading Republicans has been relentless for years, and Trump is merely adding one more voice to the chorus. Will Trump’s bluster about making Mexico pay for the wall really make things any worse?

The second point is a little trickier. It’s true that Mitt Romney blew it in 2012 with the infelicitous phrase “self-deportation.” But the uproar that followed elided an important point: every immigration plan involves putting pressure on illegal immigrants in order to motivate them to (a) leave or (b) not come in the first place. There’s a sliding scale of pain involved, and liberals tend to want less while conservatives tend to want more. But both sides make use of it.

The easiest way to think of immigration control is like this:

  1. Figure out how many illegal immigrants you’re willing to tolerate.
  2. Ratchet up the the cost of illegal immigration and ratchet down the cost of legal immigration.
  3. Eventually, you’ll figure out the right combination of costs that gets you to your number.

Nobody talks about immigration like this, but it’s the thought process behind every immigration plan. Both Republicans and Democrats support E-Verify, for example, which makes it harder for immigrants who lack legal documents to get jobs. But what is this, other than a way to use economic pressure to persuade illegal immigrants to go back to Mexico? Likewise, both Democrats and Republicans support border security. Republicans may generally want more of it than Democrats, but Democrats are nonetheless willing to use increased security to raise the cost of crossing the border.

In the end, everyone uses this calculus,1 whether consciously or not. The amount of pressure—or cruelty, if you prefer—that you’re willing to employ depends on just how low a number of illegal immigrants you’re willing to tolerate. But no matter what that number is, if you put any pressure at all on illegal immigrants, you’re exploiting the power of self-deportation. Just don’t say it out loud, OK?

1The exception, I suppose, are the people who advocate completely open borders. But they’re a very tiny minority.

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We Are All Fans of Self-Deportation

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Happy Families: Let’s Just Call It a Tie Between Democrats and Republicans

by JaimeMcElhaney4 Posted on August 17, 2015

Mother Jones

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Who’s got happier families, Democrats or Republicans? David Leonhardt reports on a new study that says it’s Republicans:

Among married people between the ages of 20 and 60, 67 percent of Republicans report being “very happy” with their marriages….That gap shrank when the researchers factored in demographic differences between parties….But the gap did not disappear. Even among people with the same demographic profile, Republicans are slightly more likely than Democrats to say they are happily married. The seven-percentage-point gap that exists between Republicans and Democrats without any demographic controls shrinks to three percentage points with those controls.

OK, so three percentage points. And since this study was done by Brad Wilcox of the right-wing Institute for Family Studies, you have to figure it’s as friendly toward Republicans as possible. But even Wilcox admits that causality might work in the opposite direction:

The GSS data and our earlier research suggest that an elective affinity—based on region, religion, culture, and economics—has emerged in the American electorate: married people are more likely to identify as Republican and unmarried people are more likely to identify as Democratic.

Sure. The Democratic Party is obviously more friendly toward non-married couples and the Republican Party is more dedicated to the proposition that (heterosexual) marriage is important. So the survey difference could be due to the fact that Republicans are simply less likely to admit to an unhappy marriage. As Wilcox says, “Perhaps Republicans are more optimistic, more charitable, or more inclined to look at their marriages through rose-colored glasses.”

Personally, I’d be happy to put this whole subject to rest. The differences are small no matter how you slice the data, and really, who cares? Republicans generally report higher happiness levels overall, which is understandable at one level (conservatism doesn’t challenge your comfort level much) but peculiar at another (if they’re so happy, what’s the deal with the endless anger and outrage?). But whatever the reason, if they’re generally happier they’re probably also happier with their marriages.

As for generally dysfunctional family behavior (teen pregnancy, divorce rates, etc.), I suspect that has a lot more to do with social factors like race, age, religion, and so forth. Party ID doesn’t seem likely to play a huge role as a causal factor. Unless someone comes up with some genuinely blockbuster results, I’m willing to just call this a tie and move on.

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Happy Families: Let’s Just Call It a Tie Between Democrats and Republicans

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What Happens When a Small City Raises Its Minimum Wage?

by EloisaDesaillly Posted on August 17, 2015

Mother Jones

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When a big city raises its minimum wage to $15 per hour, local businesses probably won’t lose too much business. A few will lose business to online companies, and a few on the border of the city will lose business to competitors right over the city line, but overall losses will probably be modest. It will be a few years until we know for sure, since most cities doing this aren’t phasing in the full $15 rate until 2016 or later.

But what happens if a small city does this? Emeryville is a tiny place nestled in between Oakland and Berkeley that recently raised its minimum wage to $14.44, the highest in the country. Vic Gumper runs a pizza place there:

All workers now earn $15 to $25 an hour as part of an experimental business model that also did away with gratuities and raised prices, making meals at all five locations “sustainably served, really … no tips necessary.”

….Gumper has also earned kudos from patrons for his innovation, but some have recoiled from paying $30 or more for a pizza. He has seen a 25% drop in sales over the last few months and has had to eliminate lunch hours at some locations.

“The necessity of paying people a living wage in the Bay Area is clear, so it’s hard to argue against it, and it’s something I’m really proud to be able to try doing,” he said. “At the same time, I’m terrified of going out of business after 18 years.”

Obviously this wouldn’t be a problem if the national minimum wage went up—though robots might be—but it’s a problem in Emeryville even though its neighboring cities also have pretty high minimum wages.

I don’t have any conclusions to offer here. This is just raw data. We’ll be getting a lot more like this as additional cities join the $15 club and economists eagerly collect data to see what happens. In the meantime, anecdotes like this are all we have.

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What Happens When a Small City Raises Its Minimum Wage?

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Maryland Official: Lead Poisoning Is the Royal Road to Riches

by TanjaMarston Posted on August 16, 2015

Mother Jones

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Technically this has nothing to do with lead and crime, but since I’m Mother Jones’ senior lead correspondent it’s up to me to put up this outlandish little item from Maryland:

Gov. Larry Hogan’s top housing official said Friday that he wants to look at loosening state lead paint poisoning laws, saying they could motivate a mother to deliberately poison her child to obtain free housing.

Kenneth C. Holt, secretary of Housing, Community and Development, told an audience at the Maryland Association of Counties summer convention here that a mother could just put a lead fishing weight in her child’s mouth, then take the child in for testing and a landlord would be liable for providing the child with housing until the age of 18.

Pressed afterward, Holt said he had no evidence of this happening but said a developer had told him it was possible. “This is an anecdotal story that was described to me as something that could possibly happen,” Holt said.

I’m pretty sure this wouldn’t actually work, but that hardly matters. It’s just another example of the peculiar Republican penchant for governance via anecdote. They’re all convinced that someone, somewhere, is trying to rip them off, but they can never find quite enough real examples of this. So instead we get Reaganesque fables about stuff they heard from some guy who heard it from some other guy who said, you know, it could happen.

By the way, if you’re tempted to do this, please don’t. Licking a lead fishing weight once probably won’t actually cause a detectable rise in blood lead levels, but it’s still a really bad idea.

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Maryland Official: Lead Poisoning Is the Royal Road to Riches

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Labor Shortage? Have You Tried Paying More?

by HuldaC56ykc Posted on August 13, 2015

Mother Jones

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The Washington Post informs us today of yet another looming labor shortage:

There’s a growing problem that chefs and restaurateurs are talking about more these days.

Good cooks are getting harder to come by. Not the head kitchen honchos, depicted in Food Network reality shows, who fine-tune menus, and orchestrate the dinner rush, but the men and women who are fresh out of culinary school and eager to earn their chops. The shortage of able kitchen hands is affecting chefs in Chicago….It’s an issue in New York as well….And it extends to restaurants out West, where a similar pinch is being felt. Seattle is coping with the same dilemma. San Francisco, too.

….One of the clearest obstacles to hiring a good cook, let alone someone willing to work the kitchen these days, is that living in this country’s biggest cities is increasingly unaffordable. In New York, for instance, where an average cook can expect to make somewhere between $10 and $12 per hour….

Let’s just stop right there. We’ve seen this movie before. What’s really happening, apparently, is that there’s a shortage of skilled people willing to work lousy hours and face long commutes in return for $10 to $12 per hour.

Offer them, say, $15 per hour, and who knows? Maybe there are plenty of good entry-level cooks available. This would raise your total cost of running the restaurant by, oh, 2 percent or so,1 but it’s not like restaurants are competing with China. They’re competing with other restaurants nearby that have the same problem. If the price of a good cook is going up, it’s going to affect everyone.

I tire of reading stories like this. Tell me what happens when employers offer more money. If they still can’t find qualified workers, then maybe there’s a real problem. If they haven’t even tried it, then maybe the problem isn’t quite as dire as they’re making it out to be.

1Back-of-envelope guess based on kitchen labor cost of 15 percent and entry-level cooks making up maybe a third of that. If 5 percent of your cost base gets a 30-40 percent raise, that’s about a 2 percent total increase.

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Labor Shortage? Have You Tried Paying More?

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Trump Talks Policy!

by BudHockaday Posted on August 13, 2015

Mother Jones

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A “friend” of mine forced me to read the transcript of Sean Hannity’s interview with Donald Trump earlier this week, and it was fascinating in a train wreck kind of way. After a few minutes, Hannity said it was time to get serious and talk policy. Trump says great, let’s do it. So Hannity then tries manfully to get Trump to explain how Mexico is going to pay for a wall on the border. No dice:

HANNITY: You talked about Mexico. How quickly could you build the wall? How do you make them pay for the wall, as you said?

TRUMP: So easy. Will a politician be able to do it? Absolutely not….

HANNITY: Is it a tariff?

TRUMP: In China — listen to this. In China, the great China wall — I mean, you want to talk about a wall, that’s a serious wall, OK….

HANNITY: Sure.

TRUMP: So let’s say you’re talking about 1,000 miles versus 13,000. And then they say you can’t do it. It’s peanuts. It’s peanuts….

HANNITY: So through a tariff?

TRUMP: We’re not paying for it. Of course.

HANNITY: You want to do business, you’re going to help us with this.

TRUMP: Do you know how easy that is? They’ll probably just give us the money….And I’m saying, that’s like 100 percent. That’s not like 98 percent. Sean, it’s 100 percent they’re going to pay. And if they don’t pay, we’ll charge them a little tariff. It’ll be paid.

Trump gets five chances to explain his plan, and all we get is endless bluster. It’s easy! Hell, the Great Wall of China cost more! We’re not paying for it! The closest Trump comes to an answer—after prompting from Hannity—is some kind of tariff on Mexican goods, which of course is illegal under NAFTA. Trump would have to abrogate the treaty and get Congress to agree. In other words, maybe just a wee bit harder than he thinks.

(Oh, and Mexico’s president says the entire idea is a fantasy. “Of course it’s false,” a spokesman told Bloomberg News. “It reflects an enormous ignorance for what Mexico represents, and also the irresponsibility of the candidate who’s saying it.”)

The whole interview with Hannity is like this. The fascinating part is Trump’s ADHD. He just flatly can’t stay on topic, and I don’t think it’s fake. He constantly veers off into side topics: how far ahead he is in the polls; how everyone says he won the debate; how good a student he was at Wharton; how he’d send Carl Icahn to China; etc.

And then there’s the Hannity/Trump math. In Texas, there have been 642,000 crimes by illegal immigrants since 2008. Obamacare premiums are up more than 40 percent this year. Unemployment is at 40 percent. The whole 5.4 percent thing is just a government lie.

I don’t even really have a comment on this stuff. On a lot of subjects—his replacement for Obamacare, for example—it’s obvious he’s just making up his policy on the spot. Um, health accounts! And, um, no more state lines! And catastrophic insurance, sure! And preexisting conditions! You bet. And then….an ADHD segue into Obama playing golf, and Hannity finally gives up and switches topics.

I understand that the second part of the interview is even better. If I’m bored enough, I’ll take a look at it when the transcript goes up. Like I said, kind of fascinating if you’re the sort of person who likes to gawk at car wrecks on the side of the road.

Link: 

Trump Talks Policy!

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