Understanding Intelligence - Essential for a Rational World

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

(NOTE: Since I wrote this I discovered that Jeff Hawkin's excellent book, On Intelligence, is available on the internet here: http://ordorica.org/system/ebooks/On%20Intelligence%20-%20Jeff%20Hawkins.pdf so you can read it after reading my article below if you wish.)

What I really want to write about are the practical implications of a new theory of human intelligences, but this will have to wait. The problem is that emerging knowledge about the workings of our cerebral cortex has not yet been widely shared. It hasn't caught the attention of the popular press. Whenever I start to make some connection between an experience and how it relates to how our brain functions, I have to backtrack and offer an explanation of the new theory. Whatever point I was trying to make gets lost and my friends grow impatient.

What's needed are brief summaries explaining aspects of how intelligence works. The summaries need to be clear enough to spark interest and promote more understanding. I know I am hungry for this kind of knowledge. Understanding the brain is truly the last frontier of science. Our mind, with its trillions of neural connections, is the deepest mystery in the universe. Everything we know of the world outside ourselves is contained in this single organ. The research that I will try to summarize here relates only to human intelligence and not to other functions of the brain. It doesn't specifically relate to the mysteries of self-awareness or personality. And yet, understanding the workings of this thin, convoluted layer of cerebral cortex covering our more primitive brain is essential to solving the bigger mysteries of who we are.

Our Intelligent Brain

So, how does our intelligent brain work? There are some good and important books on the subject. The one I rely on here is called "On Intelligence", by Jeff Hawking's and Sandra Blakeslee. It is lay account of a theory on intelligence, but beware, some of its chapters are a bit technical.

Here is just one aspect of how the cerebral cortex works that I found interesting. Our intelligent brain is constantly detecting and anticipating patterns. The cortex is a pattern maker. It organizes sensory and worldly experience into patterns at every level of detail from the smallest sensory inputs to the biggest concepts of how the world works. It integrates these patterns into ever larger concepts or images until, at the highest levels, our brain creates an enduring image of the world around us. This image of the world, while enduring, is also malleable and responsive to new insights and information. Importantly, our intelligent brain is constantly predicting what to expect next from our sensory field.

Our brain anticipates everything that we see, feel, hear, taste or smell. It expects that similar circumstances will produce the same or similar sensory experiences. The strength of these expectations grows stronger the more they are reinforced by past experiences. Our brains also have a higher expectation of seeing certain patterns when these patterns are well integrated into the bigger picture of the world created in our brains. So strong are these patterns that even when we only see portions of them our brain recognizes the whole. For example, if we only see the eye and nose of a friend in a picture we recognize that person as our friend. If we see three dots on a page we might recognize that they form a triangle without seeing any lines between the dots. Seeing part of an image is enough for our brains to know what the whole pattern or image looks like.

The Intelligent Sub-Conscious
What's remarkable about brain pattern recognition is that most of it happens at the subconscious level. Here is a little experiment to demonstrate what I mean. Place your hand on a wooden door near you and then grabbed the doorknob. Nothing about this experience surprises you, right? It's just an everyday experience. And until I mention that the metal doorknob feels cooler than the door, you may not have noticed. That's because your brain expected that pattern. Your brain knows metal feels cooler than wood every time you touch them in a room. You might even know the scientific reason for this is that wood and metal have different rates of conduction. Your brain expected these to items to feel different, so there was no need to alert your conscious brain. If the doorknob had felt warmer or soft your brain would have alerted your conscious mind immediately.

During every waking moment our senses are continuously bombarded with stimuli. What we see, or hear is constantly changing and billions of impulses reach our brain every instant. If our intelligent brain had to analyze every electro-chemical pulse it would be overwhelmed with data. Instead, our brain only has to recognize challenges to the familiar patterns stored within our cortex. Computers, on the other hand, have to process every byte of informational every time it is presented or else it freeze.

How Our Cortex is Structured

At every scale of human experience, our brain expects certain patterns to emerge from our sensory field. To accomplish this our cortex is made up of seven distinct layers on a horizontal axis and billions of distinct, hierarchical columns on the vertical axis. Additionally, each vertical column is connected to other vertical columns by a neural network, and information super highway system. The seven levels of each neural column is also connected to each other by neural pathways. This makes our cortex massively interconnected. 

The first, or bottom layer of cortex only recognizes the electro-chemical patterns that come directly from the sense organs. The complexity of recognizable patterns grows with each ascending layer of cortex. For example, on the lowest level of the visual cortex area only specific geometric patterns will be recognized by particular columns. Combining this low level information from many nearby columns might cause the next level of cortex to recognize that these lower level patterns represent a human nose. At a subsequently higher layer of cortex the patterns represented by that nose and maybe an eye or other facial features recognized by still other columns might confirm that these patterns belong to the face of a friend. And so it goes until at the highest cortical levels our brain creates an enduring mental representation of the person we are visiting with, the room in which we are standing and all of the surroundings around us.

Another feature of our cerebral cortex is that it has more neural feedback connections then uptake, or feedforward connections. That means there are more neural connections from higher layers of the cortex to the lower layers of the cortex. This structure enables the higher levels of the cortex to tell lower levels what patterns they should expect to emerge from the sensory field. When columns in the lower cortex see an anticipated patterns, they signal back that they are satisfied. But when the lower levels of the cortex see something unexpected, they pass this additional information up the line to the next higher level. If that level of the cortex can't resolve the pattern conflict, it passes these signals on to the next higher level, and so on, until some higher level of the cortex can make sense of the information. Most of these pattern conflicts are resolved subconsciously, but occasionally they pop into our highest executive level, which is our conscious mind. Our attention will suddenly focus on this unexpected thing that has disrupted our stream of conscious thoughts.

Intelligence and Consciousmess

As we move through the day our brain alerts our conscious self to only those things which need our attention. For example, we might slip on an old pair of shoes and walk around without thinking much about how they feel, but if a pebble suddenly gets caught in our shoe we become aware of the new sensation. ("Excuse me, self, but a pebble may have entered your shoe.") If we put on a new pair of shoes we notice how differently they feel until we get use to them. If they don't fit correctly we are annoyingly aware of them until we take them off. But for the most part we are not conscious of the millions of patterns, large or small, that our intelligent brain processes every day. Most of our intelligence activity is at work in our subconscious mind.

This ability to expect and process normal pattern activity without having to attend to everything we see or hear allows our brain to focus attention on the rapidly changing information that is most important to our survival. It allows us to listen and process what someone is saying while ignoring a passing car. It allows us to assess traffic movements at an intersection without being distracted by the radio. This is important because our capacity for consciousness is a limited resource. Our intelligent brain must conserve this executive function and use it for only the most salient and important aspects of our sensory field.

Introspection and Intentionality
But we are also able to focus attention on patterns of thought or behavior that are not otherwise calling for our conscious attention. We can introspectively direct our focus to examine the patterns and associations stored in our cortex. We are not a passive audience to our senses. We have a conscious mind with which we can look inwardly to examine our intelligent brain. We can learn things about how the real world is structured from the patterns created in our cortex. We can also rearrange or re-associate these patterns when we find errors in the way they have formed (cognitive therapy being one dramatic example). We can perceive gaps in our knowledge of things and direct our own behavior to gather more information.

Implications for Conscous Thoughts

Our brain forms patterns from sensory input whether we are aware of it or not. This leads me to one of the major implications that I would like to discuss further in a future post. Our intelligent brain is forming patterns and associations based on what we may be seeing or hearing even when we aren't paying conscious attention. We know that repetition strengthens patterns and associations. 

Advertisers and marketers know this as well. They choose words and images to invoke associations most favorable to their purposes and use repetition to reinforce and strengthen those associations within our cerebral cortex. The marketing of ideas and products is effective even when we aren't paying conscious attention to the ads. Think about that the next time you are wandering around a supermarket. Think about it in connection with our political campaigns and the public dialogue we watch on TV or listen to on the radio.

When we commonly think about intelligence we usually limit our discussion to our conscious problem solving ability. We usually don't consider that most of our brains intelligent activity happens at the subconscious level. We are not aware of the extent to which false patterns of information can subconsciously form to subsequently influence our conscious choices and opinions. In a future posting I hope to expand on this topic. I believe we can inoculate ourselves against propaganda and false advertising, but only if we have a better understanding of how our intelligent brain operates.

Propaganda Works - We Are Vulnerable and Here's Why

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

How do you feel about yellow?  

What do you think of when you see the letter C,

Or the number 69? 

Ask these questions of most people and they will think you are crazy for asking, of course, but in that split second before they say so they will have experienced a feeling or association evoked by the question. That's because nearly all sensory stimuli are evocative of experencial associations and emotional content. This's how our brains work. No matter how silly or out of context the question it still alters our mental state in some subtle ways that can be verbally described. 

 While the description of our changed mental state requires consciously rational thought, the actual mental state being described does not. It was evoked by the question or sensory stimuli. This points out a significant truth... our verbal communication process may be rational but the impressions we report on are evoked reactions that preceded conscious thought. We tend to confuse matters by assuming our impressions are rational thoughts even though "rational thinking" was not what evoked the experience.

Our associated impressions include what we have seen or heard and all the feelings, impulses, physical states and cognitions related to that experience. Impressions are formed by an automatic brain process that doesn't require conscious thought. Because of this, impressions often bypass our cognitive, conscious brain filters.

Once formed, our impressions become powerfully influences over our behavior, with or without our awareness. Most social chatter revolves around sharing impressions of people and events. We seldom consider how these impressions formed. Most daily behavior is driven by subconscious impressions and the associated feeling.  When asked about a choices we made, we can describe our chain of "thoughts" (cascading impressions) that lead to the decision,  but this level of conscious scrutiny seldom precedes our behavioral choice. Impressions are not subject to the same rational filtering when we are problem solving or critically evaluating something someone has said or wrote (as you are doing now).

So here is the point, we must all become more aware of the extent to which our impressions are subject to manipulation.  Advertizing, marketing, branding, messaging, talking points, optics, framing, imaging, push polling, astro-turfing, these all refer to techniques that bypass our rational brain to manipulate our  ever forming impressions.

The science of propaganda has advanced farther and faster than most of us know. The word "propaganda" itself was once synonymous with persuasion but these two words parted ways. Each now defines entirely different processes. Persuasion is associated with the art of presenting rational and fact based arguments to sway opinion. Propaganda refers to the art of altering opinions by manipulating the formation of an individual's impressions.  We all like to think that we are too intelligent and rational to be manipulated by marketing or advertizing, but if that were true there would be no reason why companies and political organizations spend billions of dollars a year on marketing. The truth is it works so well we don't even know we are affected.

How do we inoculate ourselves against being manipulated by others through propaganda?  To begin with, we need to recognize marketing efforts when exposed to them. We need to be aware of the word choices, the catchy phrases used, the coupling of provocative images to create intentional emotional associations. We need to be aware of whether what is being said is based on assumption or verifiable assertions. If we hear a message that alters our mood, we need to pay attention to it to see how it is constructed. In short, we need to train ourselves to turn on our rational filters and engage in critical thinking when an experience or a forming impression is be under the planned influence of others. 

We engage in this sort of critical thinking in educational settings because we are encouraged to do so. We don't do it when we are relaxing by listening to music on the radio or watching TV. When our rational filters are down we are more vulnerable to propaganda and advertizing.  Not paying attention to ads doesn't help. We are still forming impressions designed by others for their own ends. What we need to do is either limit our exposure to marketing messages (not helpful when you need to be informed about current events) or engage in critical thinking whenever anyone is advertizing or marketing to you. 

Obama to Expand Executive Authority, Says Ezra Klein

by Brian T. Lynch - January 30, 2014

Yesterday evening Ezra Klein spoke at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey, as their guest lecturer. Ezra Klein is a journalist, blogger (Wonk Blog), political analyst and occasional guest star on MSNBC's news opinion shows. At age 29 he is one of the most influential journalists in Washington, and he is currently creating his own internet news organization in collaboration with Vox Media.

Klein focused his remarks on the broad structures of modern American politics that explain the context for President Obama's State of the Union address the night before. The President's address, he started, was notable for what it didn't contain. It didn't contain any reference to getting any big new initiatives passed in Congress.  President Obama has conceded that anything he proposes would be blocked from passage. Instead, Obama proposed plans to accomplish what he can through executive orders. He is using, and perhaps expanding his executive powers. The other remarkable feature of the President's address was the specificity and scope of these executive plans. Klein spoke to both of these issues.

By objective measures, according to Klein, the U.S. Congress is the most polarized it has been in a long time. He pointed out that polarization is not synonymous with rancorous debates or disagreements. Polarization is a measure of the overlap between two political parties, the less overlap, the greater the polarization. He pointed out that in the 1950's and early '60's the Democratic party was comprised of moderates, liberals from the North and conservatives from the South. The Republican party was also a blend of conservatives, liberals and moderates. Under these conditions there were pitched debates both between and within both parties. There were also ways to forge compromises between like minded representatives within each party.

The dynamic that blended the two parties this way was race, according to historians Klein cited. Once the civil rights act was passed and progress was made in racial integration, the Democrats lost the South and the two parties began reshuffling. Liberals moved into the Democratic Party and conservatives moved into the Republican Party. This resulted in less overlap and lead to the polarization we have today.  In Klein's view, the most conservative Democrat today has less in common with the most liberal Republican in that party, and vice versa. There is so little overlap that compromise is nearly impossible to achieve.

Party polarization and the inability to compromise leads directly to congressional stalemate (which Klein begrudging called "gridlock").  Under current conditions, when a minority party helps the majority pass legislation it makes the majority party look strong and effective, thereby improving their chances of being re-elected. Conversely, when the minority party obstructs the majority, it makes the majority party look ineffective and powerless causing voters to switch allegiances and elect the minority party.  This, according to Klein, explains why the current congress is unable to act.

Without structural changes, such as the rise of a third party, Klein sees little hope for improvements in congress. The most powerful branch of government, the legislative branch, is at an impasse. According to Klein, that doesn't mean nothing will be getting done. As he sees it, when congress can't exercise its powers, the authority and power of the other two branches of government grows to fill the void.  This isn't necessarily a bad thing (but it does seem to require greater vigilance on our part). This brought Klein to his second observation about Obama's State-of-the-Union address; the detailed account of where the Administration would be taking actions without the Congress.

The first two years of the Obama presidency saw the passage of more huge and important pieces of legislation than at any other time since the Lyndon Johnson administration. These are game changing initiatives with far reaching implications for American society. For example, the ACA has many little noticed, but broadly stated provision that will eventually re-invent (and improve) how treatment of common illnesses will be approached by doctors in the future.  

Klein pointed out that most laws are written in general legalese that still requires Executive Branch interpretation and the creation of rules and policies to create an operating administrative framework. The 2,000 page Affordable Care Act, he said, has already generated tens of thousands of pages of rules, regulations and policies in a still unfolding process actuating the law. It is the creation of policy and administrative regulations that gives chief executives in state and federal government their most effective way to exercise power. 

President Obama just announce that this is exactly what he intends to do. I will uses his executive powers to permanently shape  the policies and interpretations of the legislation he got passed in his first term. He intends to accomplish the goals for which he was elected through the constitutional powers he has as the administrator-in-chief of the federal bureaucracy.

(Note: Once in place, the rules and administrative codes created to animate laws are, by intentional design, hard to alter. This is actually the role and purpose of a bureaucracy, to be a bulwark against the capricious dictates of power or transient swings of populist politics. Bureaucracies are often maligned for being cumbersome and slow to change, yet this is also their greatest contribution towards stable and coherent governance. This fact is little understood and seldom appreciated.)

Much of the beltway media has interpreted the President's address as an admission that he is already a lame duck president, but nothing could be further from the truth. Klein believes that the rest of his term will produce enormous changes and benefits through executive actions. Because these changes will be happening in the nitty-gritty of agency bureaucracies it will be difficult for the beltway press to report on the changes. The Washington media, according to Klein, has a structural bias towards the much easier reporting on Congress. The legislative branch is centralized, accessible and filled with characters and conflicts that sell the news. Administrative law is dry, decentralized and much less accessible. Still, this is where Klein sees the real action over the next few years. Perhaps this is where he intends to focus his attentions as he moves to create his new internet news venture with Vox Media. Time will tell.

WORLD MOVING FROM ECONOMIC CLASS TO CASTE SYSTEM

WORLD MOVING FROM ECONOMIC CLASS SYSTEM TO ECONOMIC CASTE SYSTEM

Oxfam: World's Richest 1 Percent Control Half Of Global Wealth

by SCOTT NEUMANJanuary 20, 2014 3:04 PM

Just 1 percent of the world's population controls nearly half of the planet's wealth, according to a new study published by Oxfam ahead of the World Economic Forum's annual meeting.

The study says this tiny slice of humanity controls $110 trillion, or 65 times the total wealth of the poorest 3.5 billion people.

Other key findings in the report:

— The world's 85 richest people own as much as the poorest 50 percent of humanity.

— 70 percent of the world's people live in a country where income inequality has increased in the past three decades.

— In the U.S., where the gap between rich and poor has grown at a faster rate than any other developed country, the top 1 percent captured 95 percent of post-recession growth (since 2009), while 90 percent of Americans became poorer.

"Oxfam is concerned that, left unchecked, the effects are potentially immutable, and will lead to 'opportunity capture' — in which the lowest tax rates, the best education, and the best healthcare are claimed by the children of the rich," the relief agency writes. "This creates dynamic and mutually reinforcing cycles of advantage that are transmitted across generations."

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/01/20/264241052/oxfam-worlds-richest-1-percent-control-half-of-global-wealth?sc=tw&cc=share

Oxfam: World's Richest 1 Percent Control Half Of Global Wealth

npr.org

The relief organization says it fears that growing income inequality will lead to social unrest.

Can U.S. Business Afford Raises or Higher Minimum Wages?

Question... In these hard times, do American corporations have enough cash on hand to offer their workers, especially their lower paid workers, a decent raise? Can they even afford a bump in the minimum wage without hurting their business? The single graph below answers the question better than words can say.

Hazards of Handing Out Hurricane Sandy Funds

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

The Hoboken mayor was disappointed by the small amount of federal funds received after Hurricane Sandy. Looking at how Mitigation Grants were distributed I don't blame her. These funds were spread out a mile wide and an inch deep. 

It's common sense. When limited funds are received to prepare for future storms, the money should be targeted to do the most good. Here was an opportunity to help save our coast from a rising ocean.

Hoboken sits on the tidal estuary of the Hudson River.  Over a thousand buildings were seriously damaged by tide waters laced with sewerage, yet Hoboken received the same funding as East Hanover, a town 23 miles inland. 

Dover is even smaller and further inland. Storm damage was far less severe, yet it received nearly as much funding as Hoboken.  This made no sense until I remembered the shocking endorsement of Christie for Governor by Dover Democrats. Could it be related?  Should we be looking into whether Sandy Relief funds were influenced more by political calculations than storm related issues?

A state executive said funds were distributed in a "methodical way with stakeholder input." How were these stakeholders chosen?  Was it based on future storm hazards or future political ambitions? I have questions.

RELATED DOCUMENTS

• Full list of 146 grant recipients through the energy program

Hoboken storm funding: The programs at the center of the controversy

The Star-Ledger January 21, 2014

By Erin O'Neill

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2014/01/hoboken_storm_funding_the_programs_at_the_center_of_the_controversy.html

The governor’s office claims nearly $70 million in disaster relief has funneled into Hoboken since Hurricane Sandy.

Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer says her flood-ravaged city has been awarded only $342,000 in recovery aid.

Both are right.

They’re right because they’re talking apples and oranges.

The mayor is referring to money that has been awarded to the city’s government. The governor’s office cites the large pool of federal money directly given to businesses and residents.

The back and forth between the mayor and the state highlights the confusion over the billions of dollars flowing into New Jersey in Sandy’s wake. There are no fewer than 50 state-administered recovery programs, along with big federal programs that have provided the bulk of the aid. [snip]

Read more at the link above.

1. Dover mayor, 5 aldermen latest Democrats to endorse Christie

   www.dailyrecord.com/article/20131018/NJNEWS/310180052/‎
   

   
   

   Oct 19, 2013 - Chris Christie campaigns in Dover: Gov. Chris Christie was in Dover on Friday Oct. 18 to collect endorsements from Democratic Mayor James ...
2. 
   

   Governor Chris Christie Nets 58th Democrat Endorsement | The ...

   

   savejersey.com/.../chris-christie-governor-democrat-endorsemen...‎
   

   
   

   by Matt Rooney - in 39 Google+ circles

   Oct 18, 2013 - Governor Christie welcome the endorsement of Mayor James Dodd (D-Dover) along with all five Dover Township Democrat Aldermen (yeah, ...

Victims of the Third Column of American Politics

BLOGGER'S COMMENTARY

He has been a friend of mine for years. We worked well together on school projects when both are children attended the same high school and our families socialized together. Outside of politics we have a lot in common, yet in the past five or six years we have become estranged. It isn't our fault. We are victims of the rising tide of political partisanship.

It's a damn shame that the billionaire puppet masters pumping money into politics to create divided, dysfunctional government have also driven a political wedge between him and me. I suspect there are many other friendships that have fallen victim to divisive politics. I tried to repair our friendship by explaining that the politics dividing us is actually a result of a third party attack on democracy, a third column, as I see it. But my friend is too firmly embedded in conservative doctrine to trust my arguments.

The larger truth is that there is a third column in American politics. It is the hidden hand of unprecedented wealth and corporate ownership. The only force in the world big enough to control corporate power  is civil governments. The power elites don't what to be told what they can and can't do, especially by one person, one vote majority rule. They are accustomed to corporate governance which boils down to one dollar, one vote. Their intent is to cripple civil control over our democracy and make government do its bidding. They have already overwhelmed most states and many countries around the world. Whether you are conservative or liberal, Democrat or Republican, it is the ultra privileged elite that is controlling the media and writing the scripts. THIS really is the big picture. What was once the conservatives/ liberal continuum was ruptured and is now this great divide. We were never so different before, my conservative friend and I. This is all a grand scheme and we are all caught up in it.

The wealthy oligarchs donate to the Republican Party in a ratio of at least 2 to 1 over Democrats. Moreover, their strategy with the two parties is very different. On the Democrats side they only support targeted seats and spend money on targeted issues. They buy specific votes when they need to kill or pass legislation important to them (making Democrats look sleazy in the process). This appears like the traditional way we think about lobbying and government, and both sides to it. This targeted strategy also happens leaves room for Democrats to champion other popular causes that don't harm the oligarchs interests. This helps to preserve the facade of a democratic republic.

On the Republican side the Oligarch's mostly own the whole party. They have put together an unlikely coalition of fundamentalist Christians, libertarians, small and large business owners, conservative special interest groups, neo-confederate separatists and anyone else who harbors antipathy towards the federal government. In fact, antipathy towards the federal government is the common thread that hold this coalition together. 

To gain support of the fundamentalist Christians, who oppose secular government, the elite ruling class spends lots of money ginning up social conservative causes, like abortion or same sex marriage. To libertarians they serve up small government rhetoric, incite Second Amendment fears and promote "big brother" narratives. To businessmen they rant about government regulations and pro-labor policies. To white cultural warriors they attack immigration, welfare queens and exploit racial animus. To neo-confederates they clamor for stricter interpretations of the constitution and direct verbal animosity towards the federal system. To hold on to bread and butter Republicans they demonize liberals and the Democrats to raise fears about voting for them. To all of these groups they rail about taxes, but the whole time their real goal is to control the levers of power for their own gain. There is no longer any room left in the Republican Party for politicians who loves government and wants it to succeed in improving the lives of ordinary Americans (i.e.: moderates).

In the end, the wealthy power elite are neither Democrats nor Republicans, neither conservatives nor liberals. They are out for themselves and their own financial interests. This is the third column of American politics and the hidden hand behind the growing dissatisfaction with our system of government.

Time for Workers to Re-Organize!

ORGANIZED LABOR?

Regardless of what you have been lead to believe about the evils of unions, there is no question that organized labor is responsible for creatiing the middle class and the good life as we know it today. But all that is in decline as anti-union sentiment grew in response to organized business interests in the 1070's. I say this because I don't see anyone else point out these facts. Here is another graphic view of how middle class income has declined in lock step with union membership over the years. Also, you will see that the savings in employee wages have gone directlty to the top 1% creating the huge income and wealth disparity we have today. Check it out:



It is clear to me, at least, that the heart of our economic woes is due to 40 years of wage suppression. This results in a declining middle class, a growing number of people falling into poverty, a decline in federal income tax revenue and an added burden on government to support a growing number of poor, working poor and unemployed Americans. You can't separate chronically lower wages from our declining consumer spending. Regardless of what the economists say, if people don't have money to spend the economy slows down and jobs disappear. Stocks are doing so well because so much of our financial sector is based on even more depressed foreign labor, yes, but also on depressed wages here at home. 

If corporations what to stimulate consumer spending here, and make America attractive to foreign investors, they need to raise wages. They won't do that because they personally benefit, financially, by keeping labor costs down. Their corporations benefit from the artificially cheap US labor pool created by government aid to the working poor for housing assistance, WIC, food stamps, daycare, etc. And then these bastards making all the money have the nerve to pit us against each other by promoting the lie that the working poor are somehow less worthy, or that they are stealing from us. If corporate leaders don't see the light then the only alternative is for the work force to re-organize itself and demand higher wages.

Graphic Truths about Debt and Deficits

NATIONAL DEBT?
Republican's increase our public debt by lowering taxes on the wealthy, raising corporate welfare and starting wars. If you are surprised by this bar graph then you then you need to shop around for a more reliable news source.

WAR SPENDING?

CORPORATE WELFARE?

Corporate Welfare Grows to $154 Billion even in Midst of Major Government Cuts

Editor’s Note: Even as the federal government executes major cutbacks, it’s giving huge subsidies in the form of tax breaks to industry, a fact legislators rarely acknowledge. The Boston Globe recently published a thorough and eye-popping report detailing the nature and extent of these breaks. We think it’s a must-read. 

By Pete Marovich
First published in the Boston Globe

WASHINGTON — Lobbying for special tax treatment produced a spectacular return for Whirlpool Corp., courtesy of Congress and those who pay the bills, the American taxpayers.

By investing just $1.8 million over two years in payments for Washington lobbyists, Whirlpool secured the renewal of lucrative energy tax credits for making high-efficiency appliances that it estimates will be worth a combined $120 million for 2012 and 2013. Such breaks have helped the company keep its total tax expenses below zero in recent years.

The return on that lobbying investment: about 6,700 percent.

These are the sort of returns that have attracted growing swarms of corporate tax lobbyists to the Capitol over the last decade — the sorts of payoffs typically reserved for gamblers and gold miners. Even as Congress says it is digging for every penny of savings, lobbyists are anything but sequestered; they are ratcheting up their efforts to protect and even increase their clients’ tax breaks. [snip] http://reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate-welfare-tax-breaks-subsidies/

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Here is how the rise of corporate welfare looks in my state of New Jersey, and note in particular how it has grown under Gov. Chris Christie: 

Does Higher Taxes Hurt Job Growth? Answer: NO

In his State-of-the-State address, Governor Chris Christie stated and often repeated claim that increased taxes hurts job growth. But is that true? What does the actual data suggest? 

Below is an abridged (not a Christie pun) answer to this question. It may be that other economists can point to other contradictory data, but when GDP growth is plotted against higher marginal tax rates for the rich, the resulting correlation strongly suggests that higher taxes on the rich are associated with expanding GDP and job growth. Please visit Mark Thoma's excellent Website, "Economists View", and read Ethan Kaplan's article in full.

Brian T. Lynch, MSW

Does Taxing the Wealthy Hurt Growth? (ABRIDGED)

by Ethan Kaplan

http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2012/10/does-taxing-the-wealthy-hurt-growth.html (original article in full)

Much of the argument over tax policy in the United States is focused on whether the rich should be taxed at a higher or lower rate than they are today. The argument against higher rates is that raising taxes on wealthy would disincentivize the people most likely to create economic growth and thus jobs. This debate, however, is largely based on ideology rather than evidence. Unfortunately, it is quite difficult to figure out the impact of taxation on growth.

Nevertheless, looking at the raw correlation between top marginal tax rates and growth can be helpful for getting a rough sense of the likely impacts of higher taxation on growth. One recent paper by Pikkety, Saez, and Stantcheva looks at the correlation between top marginal tax rates and growth and finds the growth is higher when top marginal tax rates are higher. I restrict myself to the historical experience of the United States and go back to 1930. In particular, I took real chained per capita GDP growth from 1930 to the present from the Bureau of Economic Analysis' (BEA) website. The correlation over this period between the top marginal tax rate and output growth is strong and positive as can be seen below:



While we cannot say that there is a robust significant positive relationship between tax rates and growth, it is still interesting that regardless of when we start the sample, higher top marginal tax rates are associated with higher not lower growth. 

Moreover, a narrative reading of postwar US economic history leads to the same conclusion. The period of highest growth in the United States was in the post-war era when top marginal tax rates were 94% (under President Truman) and 91% (through 1963). As top marginal rates dropped, so did growth. Moreover, except for 1984, a recovery year, the highest per capita growth rates since 1980 were all in the late 1990s, after the top marginal tax rate had been increased from 28% under President Reagan to 31% under the first President Bush and then 39.6% under President Clinton.

... it seems likely that if raising top marginal rates did have a large negative impact on growth, we should be able to see it in the correlations. Thus, it also seems silly to argue that higher taxes on the rich have a large negative impact on growth, given that historically growth is, if anything, positively correlated with the top [higher] marginal rate.

What does this mean for public policy? ... if the historical evidence tells us that it is unlikely that taxing the wealthy has a large negative impact on growth (and it might even have a positive impact), shouldn't we increase rates on the wealthy from their current top rates of 35%?

p.s. the data used to analyze the time series is available on my website: econweb.econ.umd.edu/~kaplan

November was the Hottest on Record

Here are some fun facts to keep you warm during this nasty cold snap:

Global November average temperature highest on record; Year-to-date global average temperature ties for fourth highest on recordhttp://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2013/11/

Global Highlights

Global Highlights

• The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces for November 2013 was record highest for the 134-year period of record, at 0.78°C (1.40°F) above the 20^th century average of 12.9°C (55.2°F).
• The global land surface temperature was 1.43°C (2.57°F) above the 20^th century average of 5.9°C (42.6°F), the second highest for November on record, behind 2010. For the global oceans, the November average sea surface temperature was 0.54°C (0.97°F) above the 20^th century average of 15.8°C (60.4°F), tying with 2009 as the third highest for November.
• The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for the September–November period was 0.68°C (1.22°F) above the 20^th century average of 14.0°C (57.1°F), the second warmest such period on record, behind only 2005.
• The September–November worldwide land surface temperature was 1.08°C (1.94°F) above the 20^th century average, the third warmest such period on record. The global ocean surface temperature for the same period was 0.52°C (0.94°F) above the 20^th century average, tying with 2009 and 2012 as the fourth warmest September–November on record.
• The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for the year-to-date (January–November) was 0.62°C (1.12°F) above the 20^th century average of 14.0°C (57.2°F), tying with 2002 as the fourth warmest such period on record.

The combined average temperature over global ...See More

Global Analysis - November 2013 | State of the Climate | National Climatic Data Center (NCDC)

www.ncdc.noaa.gov

a summary of global temperatures and precipitation, placing the data into a historical perspective

My Top 10 Blog Posts for 2013

DATA DRIVEN VIEWPOINTS

Top 10 Blog Posts of 2013

(in order of popularity)

1. A 99 YEAR HISTORY OF TAX RATES IN AMERICA
2. OUR VOTING RIGHTS - A State by State Analysis
3. TEA BAG FILTER PAPER CONTAINS PLASTIC
4. Abe Lincoln on Corporate Corruption
5. Teen Pregnancy and the Bible Belt
6. HOUSTON, TAKE DOWN THIS THREATENING MESSAGE
7. Media Silent on Fukushima Radiation Impact in US
8. FUKUSHIMA - An Unstoppable Slow Motion Disaster
9. Four Graphs on What's Hurting The Working Class
10. Capital Investment Income Drives Income Inequality These Days

Root of Our Economic Mess

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

Our federal government's problem is that we have a minority run government. Majority rule has been taken from us. Special interest groups with lots of money and ideologues with lots of organizational energy have taken control. Most of what the majority of Americans dislike about our federal government's policies are the result of minority influences.

As for family economies, real wages stopped rising abruptly between 1976 and 1980. They have been nearly flat ever since. Before that workers shared in America's GDP growth, but after that wages only rose with inflation. COLA's are adjustments, not raises. And such a sudden change in the U.S. wage structure can only result from willful planning by the business elite, An evolving economic process, as many economist claim, would not so suddenly appear.  So American wages have been suppressed for 40 years.

Then beginning in 1980 the progressive tax structure was dismantled and the riches 0.1% started paying the same tax rates as people making $100k or so. These two indisputable facts ARE the root cause of our present economic woes and the reason income disparity today is the worse it has been since the turn of the last century. I could go on, but enough for now. Suffice it to say we have to stop treating the government as an "it" and start treating it as an "us" again. [ Feel free to browse my blog at www.aseyeseesit.blogspot.com ]

In Defense of Government Bureaucracy

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

People often accuse the Federal  government of being an entrenched bureaucracy, which it is. They blame the bureaucracy for all of the government's problems, but the truth is a bit more complex. After all, it isn't the bureaucracy passing sweetheart legislation, it is our elected un-representatives. The bureaucracy may write the rules but it does not runs the show.

Believe me, having worked in the bureaucracy my entire career, I can tell you it isn't in charge. It is subject to enormous political pressures from elected executives, representatives and even the courts. No rules are passed without political sign off. Elected official send their political appointees deeply into the bureaucratic hierarchy to infiltrate and transform their missions. Politicians often say one thing and do another, using the bureaucracy as their cover. In truth, bureaucracies are only as good as the politicians we elect to run them.

Obamacare is a great illustration of this. In states where the chief executive wants it to work the bureaucracy has created workable systems and overcome large obstacles to make it work.  In states where the chief executive would like to see it fail the bureaucracy has made a hash of things.  I call it planned incompetence. The bureaucrats were given a mixed mandate to create a faulty system to prove the politicians position that Obamacare doesn't work and that government doesn't work.  Bureaucracies are tools that can be used for good or evil by people in power. Bureaucracies are the interface between ordinary citizens and political rulers.

Did you know that the modern bureaucratic government structure was established by an enlightened English King (one of the Henry's) to assure that his erratic, sometimes irrational sons could not, on a whim, destroy the good government administration he created to serve his people?  We don't think much about it today, but bureaucracy still serves a vital, useful purpose in assuring the smooth and planful administration of government. 

The very characteristic most often criticized, its slowness to respond, is also its primary benefit.  It methodically operationalizes the dictates of our political rulers to maintain continuity and order in government administration, not that it always succeeds. But if we didn't have it we would be subject to every impulse  of the chief executives and this would lead to real chaos in government services. So while I am quick and well experienced to criticize the bureaucracy, I am less inclined to condemn it.

Fukushima Radiation Hits the Beach in California

It would appear that radiation from Fukushima has reached the California coast and is beginning to build up in the riparian zone on San Francisco beaches. Here is a You Tube video someone made and posted on December 23, 2013. There is a lower lever, more nearly background level, at waters edge. This might be due to changes in currents or the tides. There is a background level of radiation before coming onto the beach, but the riparian zone on the beach is over three times the background level.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcQLxT49ZP0

L

I have written several blog posts about the threat to the US from the continuous unfolding of the Fukushima disaster. You can find links to them below.

http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2013/09/fukushima-unstopable-slow-motion.html

http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2013/07/fukushima-crisis-still-unfolding.html

http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2013/01/media-silent-on-fukushima-radiation.html