Tag Archives: number

Four Pictures and a Video

by lbxmtg Posted on May 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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Picture #1: On the Verizon website, the number of “agents” who are eagerly waiting for you to call is…a random number between 1 and 15. The wait time is also a random number.

Picture #2: Congratulations, particle physicists! You have finally isolated the rare glutino and packaged it for the masses. Who says basic science is useless?

Picture #3: Rejection letter to George Orwell for Animal House: “What was needed, (someone might argue), was not more communism but more public-spirited pigs.” So I’ve heard.

Picture #4: Sort of speaks for itself.

And a video: I’m not sure Hopper ever noticed what was going on.

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Four Pictures and a Video

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What’s So Great About 401(k)s, Anyway?

by AlexanderGladne Posted on May 22, 2016

Mother Jones

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After I wrote my Thursday post on 401(k) plans, I got a fair amount of pushback. Essentially it boiled down to “What’s so good about them compared to old-style pensions? Why not just get rid of them and expand Social Security instead?”

The answer to the second question is simple: 401(k)s are meant as supplements to Social Security. If we want to expand Social Security, that’s fine. But that’s no reason not have additional options to save privately for retirement.

Fine. But why 401(k)s? What is so good about them? The basic answer, of course, is that they’re set up to encourage monthly contributions in a hassle-free way and the money you contribute is tax-deferred. Beyond that, though, there are several advantages that a 401(k) plan has over a traditional pension. Here are five:

401(k) plans are portable. They begin accumulating immediately (or close to immediately) when you start a new job, and if you leave your job your 401(k) comes with you. This isn’t true of old-style pensions.

If you want, you can withdraw your 401(k) as a lump sum when you retire. This can be handy if you want to use a portion of your retirement savings for a single large purchase, like a house or a motor home.

If you die early, your kids will inherit your 401(k). They won’t get a dime from Social Security or an old-style pension. This may or may not be something you personally care about, but a lot of people do.

The main drawback of a 401(k) is that it’s risky: since you don’t know how long you’ll live, you can never be sure how much you can safely withdraw each year. But in 2014 the Treasury issued guidance that made it easier for 401(k) owners to allocate all or part of their contributions into an annuity fund that pays out steadily upon retirement.

Annuities are getting better, but it’s still true that you have to be pretty careful selecting one. Some are bad deals. But there’s another way to effectively annuitize your 401(k) without paying a dime: delay your Social Security retirement age. Here’s how it works.

More and more people are retiring at age 62, but this reduces your Social Security payment by about 20 percent compared to retiring at age 65. For example, a $2,000 monthly Social Security payment would be reduced to $1,600 if you retire at 62.

Instead, use your 401(k) to fund your retirement from 62 to 65. In this example, it would require a final 401(k) balance of about $72,000 or a little less. You’d draw out $2,000 per month and then, at age 65, switch over to your Social Security payout. You’ve basically guaranteed yourself a lifetime income of $24,000 per year instead of $19,200 without any worries about whether your 401(k) will last forever.

Nothing in life is perfect. There are also advantages to old-style defined-benefit pensions, as well as to a simple expansion of Social Security. And 401(k)s require workers to shoulder more responsibility for figuring out how to invest their savings. They also have to shoulder more of the risk of market downturns.

Nonetheless, 401(k)s aren’t bad. The 2006 Pension Protection Act improved them by allowing employers to sign up workers automatically (they can opt out if they want), and this has significantly increased the number of workers who participate. It’s especially raised the number of low-income workers who participate. The PPA also allowed employers to automatically increase the contribution rate over time (again, workers can opt out), which promises to make 401(k)s more substantial retirement vehicles. It also encouraged the use of low-fee lifecycle funds that make riskier investments when you’re young and slowly switch to safer investments as you get closer to retirement.

All of these things have improved the 401(k) landscape. The economic recovery has too: a lot of the scare stories about 401(k) plans were based on using data through 2011 or 2012, which meant choosing an end date literally in the middle of the worst recession since World War II. That’s cherry picking of the worst kind. 401(k) plans were bound to recover within a couple of years, and they did. If you look at data through 2014 or 2015, average 401(k) returns look pretty good. When it comes to retirement funds, you have to look at the long term, not just the best or worst years.

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What’s So Great About 401(k)s, Anyway?

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Elizabeth Warren: 401(k) Plans Are Good, But They Can Be Better

by EmilBettencourt Posted on May 20, 2016

Mother Jones

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Elizabeth Warren gave a speech today that was focused on what sorts of workplace protections we should adopt in response to the rise of “1099 workers” (freelancers) and on-demand “gig economy” workers (Uber drivers). Before I get to that, though, a quick note: it’s not clear to me that there’s actually been much of a rise in gig workers, as you can see in the chart on the right. The percentage of full-time workers normally decreases during recessions and increases during recoveries, which is exactly what’s happening right now. We’re still about a percentage point away from our pre-recession average, but we’ll probably make that up within a couple of years.

Still, we might not get there. What’s more, whether the number of part-timers is increasing or not, they deserve access to standard employment benefits. Warren names a few, and suggests that both health care and retirement benefits should be portable: they need to belong to employees, not to employers, and should stick with them regardless of who they’re working for. I was especially interested in her remarks on retirement benefits:

One change would make a big difference: a high-quality retirement plan for independent contractors, self-employed workers, and other workers who have no access to retirement benefits to supplement their Social Security.

This plan should use best-in-class practices when it comes to asset allocation, governance structure, and fee transparency. It should be operated solely in the interest of workers and retirees, and they should have a voice in how the plan is run. Instead of an employer-sponsored 401(k), this plan could be run by a union or other organization that could contract investment management to the private sector—just as companies like General Motors contract with providers like Fidelity to offer 401(k)s in the employment setting. And, because of the amazing advances in online investment platforms and electronic payroll systems, individuals could set up automatic contributions. It’s time for all workers to have access to the same low-cost, well-protected retirement products that some employers and unions provide today.

Defined-contribution programs like 401(k)s tend to get demonized by liberals, but they shouldn’t be. As Warren says, if you want a pension plan to supplement Social Security, it needs to be portable. Old-style pensions tended to lock people into jobs because they took a long time to vest and the vesting was backloaded. If you switched jobs every five or ten years, they likely provided you with a pretty paltry retirement income. By contrast, 401(k)s start building as soon as you start contributing, and continue building regardless of how often you change jobs. And while it’s true that the Great Recession wasn’t kind to 401(k) plans, they’ve mostly recovered since their losses in 2009-10.

Still, they’re far from perfect. One problem, as Warren notes, is that employees don’t always have good options about how to invest their 401(k) contributions—though that’s slowly getting better thanks to changes in the law passed a decade ago. Another problem is that too few people sign up for their 401(k) plans, and that’s improving too thanks to the legalization of “nudge” style opt-out plans. This has especially benefited low-income workers, who need retirement help the most.

But we can still do better. We can set up better programs for freelancers, and we can mandate the best-in-class investment practices that Warren mentions: automatic increases in contribution amounts as workers age, as well as low-fee lifecycle funds that become less risky as retirement approaches. This should be done universally, not just for freelancers. These are modest proposals, but they’d go a long way toward making modern pension plans truly safe, reliable, and universal.

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Elizabeth Warren: 401(k) Plans Are Good, But They Can Be Better

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Donald Trump’s Feuds Now Span the Atlantic

by MarshallMattes Posted on May 16, 2016

Mother Jones

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Let’s be fair at the outset. British PM David Cameron has called Donald Trump’s Muslim ban proposal “divisive, stupid and wrong.” On Monday, a spokesman confirmed that Cameron stood by his comments. At the same time, newly elected London mayor Sadiq Khan said Trump’s views were “ignorant, divisive and dangerous.”

So: stupid, ignorant, dangerous, wrong, and divisive x 2. You have to figure that Trump won’t let that stand. You’d be right:

Asked about Cameron’s remarks, Trump said he didn’t care, but then added, “It looks like we’re not going to have a very good relationship. Who knows, I hope to have a good relationship with him but it sounds like he’s not willing to address the problem either.”

He continued: “Number one, I’m not stupid, okay? I can tell you that right now. Just the opposite. Number two, in terms of divisive, I don’t think I’m a divisive person, I’m a unifier, unlike our president now, I’m a unifier.“

….Trump also had words for Sadiq Khan, who became the first Muslim to hold the office of mayor of London when he was elected earlier this month….”Let’s take an I.Q. test,” Trump said Monday, adding that Khan had never met him and “doesn’t know what I’m all about.”

“I think they’re very rude statements and frankly, tell him, I will remember those statements. They’re very nasty statements.”

I recommend the Wonderlic test. It’s nice and short, and will also provide some idea of which man would make a better NFL quarterback.

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Donald Trump’s Feuds Now Span the Atlantic

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Here’s How Flint’s Lead Disaster Is Likely to Affect Its Children

by AkilahGregson Posted on May 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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I’ve been saying for a while that (a) the elevated lead levels in Flint were fairly moderate and probably didn’t cause a huge amount of damage, and (b) the water is now safe to drink. A reader wants me to put my money where my mouth is:

OK. The exact data I’d like to have doesn’t seem to be available, but I can provide a rough sense of the landscape. Between 2013 and 2015, the number of children in Flint with elevated blood lead levels (above 5 m/d) rose from 2.4 percent to 4.9 percent. If you plot this out, it suggests that the average increase in BLL was somewhere between 0.2 m/d and 1 m/d. Increases in BLL are approximately associated with a loss of one IQ point per m/d, so this corresponds to an average loss of perhaps half an IQ point. However, most studies are based on children with elevated BLLs throughout their childhood. The elevated blood levels in Flint only lasted for about 18 months, which suggests that even half an IQ point is probably high. It’s more like a quarter or a third of an IQ point. That’s not even measurable.

Now, this is cocktail-napkin stuff, and I’m not an expert. All I’m trying to do is give you a rough idea of the magnitude of the problem. Anyone who has better data and knows how to analyze it more rigorously is welcome to set me straight if I’ve made a mistake.

That said, it’s unlikely that I’m off by a lot. What happened in Flint was a horrible tragedy, but it’s unlikely to have a major cognitive impact on the city’s children. However, this is on average. It could have a major impact on individual children, and this is why parents should have their kids tested for lead exposure. This is doubly true in areas of Flint that are known to have had especially high water lead levels.

As for the question about drinking the water today, that’s easier to answer: thousands of residential tests confirm that lead levels in Flint’s water are below the EPA’s action level of 15 parts per billion. What’s more, blood testing confirms that elevated BLLs have returned to their 2013 levels. All of this is strong evidence that Flint water is now safe to use.

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Here’s How Flint’s Lead Disaster Is Likely to Affect Its Children

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Three Cheers for Monotasking!

by Aliza16Mcdje Posted on April 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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Is multitasking finally getting the reputation it deserves?

Multitasking, that bulwark of anemic résumés everywhere, has come under fire in recent years. A 2014 study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology found that interruptions as brief as two to three seconds — which is to say, less than the amount of time it would take you to toggle from this article to your email and back again — were enough to double the number of errors participants made in an assigned task.

….But monotasking, also referred to as single-tasking or unitasking, isn’t just about getting things done….“It’s a digital literacy skill,” said Manoush Zomorodi, the host and managing editor of WNYC Studios’ “Note to Self” podcast, which recently offered a weeklong interactive series called Infomagical, addressing the effects of information overload. “Our gadgets and all the things we look at on them are designed to not let us single-task. We weren’t talking about this before because we simply weren’t as distracted.”

Anyone who has coded—or worked with coders—knows all about this. They complain constantly about interruptions, and with good reason. When they’re deep into a problem, switching their attention is costly. They’ve lost their train of thought, and it can take several minutes to get it back. That’s not much of a problem if it happens a few times a day, but it’s a real killer if it happens a few times an hour.

Not all jobs require as much concentrated attention as coding, but it’s probably more of them than most people think. More generally, the ability to focus on a single task for an extended period is a talent that’s underappreciated—especially by extroverts, who continue to exercise an unhealthy hegemony over most workplaces. Sure, the folks who want to be left alone are the ones who actually get most of the work done, but they’re still mocked as drones or beavers or trolls. That’s bad enough, but now technology is helping the extroverts in their long twilight campaign against actually concentrating on anything. There are times when I wonder if we’re starting to lose this talent altogether. Probably not, I suppose—something like this probably can’t change all that appreciably over the course of just a few years, no matter what kind of technological miracles are helping us along.

But we sure are hellbent on helping it along. Open office plans, cell phones, constant notifications: these are all things that fight against sustained attention on a task. For some people and some tasks, that doesn’t matter. But for a lot of important work, it matters a lot. Smart hiring managers in the modern world should be asking, “How long can you concentrate on a task before you have to take a break?” I wonder how many of them do?

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Three Cheers for Monotasking!

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Raw Data: Illegal Immigration From Mexico

by EdytheGates Posted on February 28, 2016

Mother Jones

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Are unauthorized immigrants “pouring across the southern border”? Since Donald Trump said it, there’s automatically a strong chance that it’s a lie, and sure enough, it is.

According to Pew Research, the population of unauthorized immigrants from Mexico peaked in 2007 at 6.9 million and has been dropping ever since. Currently it stands at 5.6 million. As the chart on the right shows, net migration from Mexico has been negative every year since 2008. But maybe the ones that are here are disproportionately murderers and rapists, as Trump also says. Nope. The number of unauthorized immigrants in US prisons is relatively small, and the bulk of the available research suggests that they’re incarcerated at lower rates than US citizens. It’s just another lie.

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Raw Data: Illegal Immigration From Mexico

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Here’s the Latest on Flint’s Water

by LemuelForster5 Posted on February 23, 2016

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How is Flint doing these days? Here’s the most recent report from Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services:

Blood lead levels tend to be seasonal, going up in the summer thanks to old lead in the soil getting kicked up during dry weather. As you can see, those summer peaks have been higher than normal since 2014 thanks to the ongoing contamination of Flint’s water supply. However, the 2015 summer peak was below the 2014 peak, and the Q4 level for 2015 is below the Q4 level for 2014. This suggests pretty strongly that Flint’s water pipes are returning to their pre-crisis state.

And how many houses still have lead concentrations above the EPA’s “action level” of 15 parts per billion? According to the residential testing report through Sunday, 786 out of 11,785 homes tested had levels above 15 ppb. That’s 6.7 percent. About 140 homes had levels above 100 ppb and 19 were above 1,000 ppb.

This is….sort of normal, actually. The number of homes with very high lead levels is unusual and needs to addressed immediately, but the overall number of 6.7 percent above the action level is well within the federal limit of 10 percent. Flint’s water appears to be in fairly good shape, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the 2016 summer spike is no higher than it was before 2014.

But nobody trusts the EPA or the Michigan DEQ, so probably none of this matters. If I lived in one of the 11,000 houses in Flint that tested below 15 ppb, I’d drink the water. But it’s hard to blame the residents for feeling otherwise.

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Here’s the Latest on Flint’s Water

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Obamacare Enrollment Up About 15 Percent This Year

by Dorcas8538 Posted on February 5, 2016

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Open enrollment for Obamacare is over, and HHS announced yesterday that 12.7 million people signed up via the exchanges plus another 400,000 via New York’s Basic Health Program. So that gives us 13.1 million—up from 11.4 million last year. And since HHS is getting better at purging nonpayers, this number should hold up better throughout the year than it did in 2015. Charles Gaba has more details here.

Add to that about 15 million people enrolled in Medicaid thanks to the Obamacare expansion, and the total number of people covered this year comes to 28 million or so. This means Obamacare has reduced the ranks of the uninsured from 19 percent to about 10 percent. Not bad.

Obamacare’s raw enrollment numbers remain lower than CBO projected a few years ago, but that’s partly because employer health care has held up better than expected—which is a good thing. The fewer the people eligible for Obamacare the better. More on that here. Generally speaking, despite the best efforts of conservatives to insist that Obamacare is a disastrous failure, the truth is that it’s doing pretty well. More people are getting covered; costs are in line with projections; and there’s been essentially no effect on employment or hours worked. The only real problem with Obamacare is that it’s too stingy: deductibles are too high and out-of-pocket expenses are still substantial. Needless to say, though, that can be easily fixed anytime Republicans decide to stop rooting for failure and agree to make Obamacare an even better program. But I guess we shouldn’t hold our collective breath for that.

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Obamacare Enrollment Up About 15 Percent This Year

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The 7 Must-Watch Moments From the Democrats’ New Hampshire Debate

by HallieMcGruder Posted on February 5, 2016

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Explosive would be an understatement. Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton didn’t waste any time in Thursday’s Democratic presidential debate in New Hampshire before jumping into a heated exchange over whether Clinton is a true progressive—a subject that continued to emerge in various forms for most of an hour.

The stakes going into this debate were high, particularly for Clinton, with polls showing her far behind Sanders in the New Hampshire just four days before the first-in-the-nation primary. Clinton eked out a very narrow win in the Iowa caucuses on Monday, but underperformed her polling there, setting up what could be a long slog for the Democratic nomination.

The debate itself was the product of a dramatic back-and-forth between the two campaigns and the national Democratic Party over the number of debates scheduled. The tensions that went into scheduling it were evident in the fiery debate.

Here are the must-watch highlights:

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The 7 Must-Watch Moments From the Democrats’ New Hampshire Debate

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