Minnesota million dollar homes: Marker for a new aristocracy?

MN Star Tribune 8/23/03: More people are buying homes that cost a million dollars or more

They're popping up all around the Twin Cities: Atop the hills of Medina; along Lake Minnetonka's shoreline; facing the Minneapolis skyline from its hills and lakes, and along the Mississippi River. And, of course, in Edina, the original exclusive suburb.

Big, fabulous houses. Houses with walls of windows, acres of landscaped yards, kitchens to die for. Million-dollar houses, multimillion dollar houses. Rare in the Twin Cities 25 years ago, now they're all over. Where do they come from? Who buys them?

As recently as five years ago, million-dollar home sales were a rarity in the Twin Cities market. Today, there are more than 300 for sale, maybe more -- the 300 are just those listed through a Realtor...

A combination of skyrocketing land costs and soaring labor expenses has dovetailed with an insatiable appetite for luxury and the richest generation the United States has ever seen. As an estimated $2 trillion to $11 trillion dollars moves from one generation to the next in inherited wealth, baby boomers are looking for a place to sink their new-found riches. ....

"Why not live in your bank?" asked Minneapolis architect Garth Rockcastle, and some boomers are. Many are expressing an increasing willingness to invest a greater share of their wealth in real estate.

"We're looking at a period of prosperous times," said Tom Jones, a real estate agent with 25 years' experience in upper-end homes. "In the last five or six years, more people are interested in spending significant amounts of money to restore or enhance old classic houses or to build new residences at that same structure and construction level."....

That's no longer true. Thanks in large part to a healthy economy and the lowest mortgage interest rates in history, more than 75 percent of the households in Minnesota own their homes.

Many who buy million-dollar houses are immune to interest rates -- they often pay cash -- low rates combined with rising income have caused an incredible surge in demand for all housing during the past decade....

Baby boomers -- those born between 1946 and 1964 -- comprise the largest sustained population growth in the history of the United States. And they're now in their peak earning -- and spending -- years...

According to the Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors, during the past year 182 houses sold for more than $1 million. That doesn't include new houses and those not listed through the Regional Multiple Listing Service. Five years ago there were only 59 and a decade ago only 25 (adjusted for inflation)....

This is an interesting article. The Bush Estate Tax repeal will accelerate a dynamic of wealth concentration that seems to have picked up in the 1970s and has been driven by the 20th century economic boom, the lifespans of those born between 1920 and 1940, and the unprecedented expansion of "winner take all" economic marketplaces. [1]

What will our society look like in 20 years? Will it look like the egalitarian mythos of 20th century America, or more like post-industrial England? I'm betting on a powerful and ascendant aristocracy, with a lot of openings for governesses, chefs, groundskeepers, athletic trainers, tutors, travel aides, butlers, etc.

Well, tutoring the gen-elite children of a the aristocracy will probably pay better than bagging groceries (which will be done by robots anyway ....).

john

[1] Winner take all economics has been a popular research domain in the past 20 years. It applies to CEOs, sports superstars, ace programmers, and in many other domains. I think most economists expect network effects to continue to amplify this trend.

Safari Slowdown Fix, and other problems

The tip below is a good one, but Safari really needs an update. The bug that gives me the most pain is that copying and then pasting Safari text often includes chunks of html, style sheets, text encoding, etc. This bug was first acknowledged about two months ago.

Safari got off to a great start, but it's not living up to its promise. (A bit of a trend with some of Apple's software; iCal, iPhoto and maybe iSight are other well known examples.) Apple seems to be in a trend of great beginnings with a failure to follow through. This wouldn't be so bad, except Apple's great beginnings are knocking all competitors off the Mac platform.

If Apple is going to be the dominant Mac OS X application vendor, they need to fix their products faster. Maybe a widely available "beta" program?

---

Apple - Discussions - Safari slowdowns: quick & easy fix

My Safari 1.0 suddenly became very slow to launch, and started giving beachballs a lot... The fix I finally found is easy--and several other people have said it works for them too. You could try it even if you don't know you have a problem--I've been told it has helped people who didn't even know Safari could be faster.

Empty out the Icons folder in your user's Library/Safari folder. (I left the folder there, but threw out what was inside.)

Start Safari up and all should be well. No need to throw out prefs, Reset, repair permissions, or re-install Safari. I've heard some very painful fixes for this problem--and they usually include throwing out a lot more than necessary.

The culprit seems to be a bug regarding the favicons (the little icons on bookmarks). That Icons folder stores the favicons of the places you've visited. It can grow to several MB--but whether that's what triggers the bug I cannot say.

Side-effect: After doing this, your bookmarks will have generic icons. But don't worry, as you visit your bookmarks, each icon will return. Use this tip at your own risk, but it seems pretty harmless.

Franken is Fair and Balanced.

Making Light: Federal judge denies Fox's request for injunction

One of the three legs of American government is still working. One hopes Fox is stupid enough to appeal. This is too much fun to end now.

NEW YORK A federal judge on Friday denied Fox News Channel’s request for an injunction to block humorist Al Franken ‘s new book, whose title mocks the Fox slogan “fair and balanced.”

U.S. District Judge Denny Chin said the book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right is a parody protected by the First Amendment.

“There are hard cases and there are easy cases,” the judge said. “This is an easy case. This case is wholly without merit, both factually and legally.” ....

Franken called the ruling a victory for the First Amendment and satirists everywhere “even bad satirists.”

“In addition to thanking my own lawyers,” Franken said, “I’d like to thank Fox’s lawyers for filing one of the stupidest briefs I’ve ever seen in my life.”

The ruling opened the door for lawyers for Penguin and Franken to file a motion to dismiss the suit altogether. In addition to denying the injunction, the judge took direct aim at Fox for bringing the case.

“It is ironic that a media company, which should be protecting the First Amendment, is seeking to undermine it,” Chin said.

...

Franken’s book went on sale nationally Thursday, moved up from its September rollout date because of publicity from the lawsuit. Penguin added 50,000 copies to the original run of 270,000 after the suit was filed.

George Bush: The Economist has buyer's remorse?

Economist.com | Lexington

The Economist was infatuated with George Bush. Before his election they were uncritical cheerleaders, after his "victory" they sang his praises. By the end of year one they seemed a bit nervous. By July of this year, it looks like they've got buyer's remorse. In this July 5th column by Lexington they even praise Clinton. Emphases mine.

... These [medicare] bills point to two conclusions that are worth pondering by people who don't give a fig about co-payments. The first is that the Republicans are mighty shrewd when it comes to short-term political manoeuvring. The second is that they are almost completely indifferent to the basic principles of sound finance...

... Republicans are already bragging that Mr Bush's embrace of Medicare reform is the same as Bill Clinton's embrace of welfare reform back in 1996 -- manoeuvre that magically transforms a liability into a strength.

There is, however, one tiny difference. Welfare reform was an admirable policy that led to a sharp reduction in welfare rolls. Medicare reform is lousy policy. The Republicans have given up any pretence of using the new drug benefit as a catalyst for structural reform. They are doing nothing to control costs or to target government spending on people who really need it. They are merely creating a vast new entitlement programme -- programme that will put further strain on the federal budget at just the moment when the baby boomers start to retire.

This might be tolerable if the Medicare boondoggle were an isolated incident. But it is par for the course for this profligate president. Every year Mr Bush has either produced or endorsed some vast new government scheme: first education reform, then the farm bill, now the prescription-drug benefit. And every year he has missed his chance to cut federal pork or veto bloated bills.

As Veronique de Rugy of the Cato Institute points out, federal spending has increased at a hellish 13.5% in the first three years of the Bush administration ("he is governing like a Frenchman"). Federal spending has risen from 18.4% of national income in 2000 to 19.9% today. Combine this profligacy with huge tax cuts, and you have a recipe for deficits as far ahead as the eye can see...

... Mr Bush seems to have no real problem with big government; it is just big Democratic government he can't take. One-party rule, which was supposed to make structural reform easier, also looks ever less savoury. Without a Congress that will check their excesses, the Republicans, even under the saintly Dr Frist, have reverted to type: rewarding their business clients, doling out tax cuts and ignoring the fiscal consequences.

This opportunism may win Mr Bush re-election next year, but sooner or later it will catch up with his party at the polls. The Republicans are in danger of destroying their reputation for managing the economy -- something that matters enormously to the "Daddy Party" (which sells itself as being strong on defence and money matters). The Democrats can point out that Bill Clinton was not only better at balancing the budget than Mr Bush. He was better at keeping spending under control, increasing total government spending by a mere 3.5 % in his first three years in office and reducing discretionary spending by 8.8%.

The Republican Party's conservative wing stands to lose the most from this. Some conservatives credit Mr Bush with an ingenious plan to starve the government beast: the huge tax cuts will eventually force huge spending cuts. But this is rather like praising an alcoholic for his ingenious scheme to quit the bottle by drinking himself into bankruptcy...

I'd say the love affair may be over.

The Alabama monument: Marker for the new Christian Nation?

CNN.com - Judge suspended over Ten Commandments - Aug. 22, 2003: "Asked on CNN whether he would support an Islamic monument to the Koran in the rotunda of the federal building, Moore replied, 'This nation was founded upon the laws of God, not upon the Koran. That's clear in the Declaration (of Independence), so it wouldn't fit history and it wouldn't fit law.' "

Apparently Moore considers "God" to be the Deity of the Republican Right. Since the God of the Koran is the God of Abraham, the Republican Right may even have problems with the Old Testament. (The religious right, of course, has no real connection to the New Testament).

This is a potentially historic event. The Religious Right feels this is the time to formally declare that the United States is a "Christian" (Old Testament variant) nation. They think that Bush was sent by God to make this declaration.

Perhaps it's the influence of millenial thinking.

This is very tricky for Bush. If he lets them down they may react like a jilted lover. Karl Rove will be desperate that this be handled at the state level.

Bush/Ashcroft and Civil Rights: A pattern of deception.

INTEL DUMP

Phil Carter, a former marine and law student, has written an excellent summary of Bush/Ashcroft's post 911 actions limiting civil rights. I've never before seen them listed in one place; it's an impressive list.

These actions, various prevarications about tax cuts and economics, the pattern of deceit prior to invading Iraq, the suspicion that the Bush administration has been actively concealing a record of pre-911 hijack warnings, the semi-fraudulent smallpox immunization program (which was part of the case for invastion), Bush's many environmental whoppers, suppression of reports from federal scientists on climate change ... it's quite a collection.

Even if most people don't get the overall picture, they get the gradual impression. Bush is slowly acquiring a very substantial credibility problem. Either he's delusional, or he and his team really feel that the public can't handle anything close to the truth, or he fears political defeat if he speaks the truth.

And people thought Clinton was truth challenged.

Globalisation: It's working for most -- but not all (The Economist)

In Memory of Rudi Dorbusch: Archive Entry From Brad DeLong's Webjournal

Brad DeLong quotes more of the article than I'd dare to (I'm an Economist subscriber, so I can read it on their web site). I need to update my web page on poverty with this information.

The graph DeLong shows really is fascinating. I will quote the Economist's conclusion:

... the more closely one looks at the charts, the stronger the case for globalisation seems. The real question—at least so far as reducing global poverty is concerned—is not whether globalisation is a good thing, but why some countries (and in Africa's case an entire region) find it so difficult to participate. The answers, as Mr Fischer relates, are complicated. Rich- and poor-country governments alike are partly to blame.

America and the European Union both maintain trade restrictions that hurt the developing countries. They have been promising reform for years, but the world is still waiting. Mr Fischer calls for “significant increases” in aid, though he acknowledges that aid will need to be more selective if its patchy record of success to date is ever going to be improved.

But governments of the poorest countries themselves bear much of the responsibility. Many of the world's highest trade barriers are those imposed by poor-country governments on trade with other poor countries—to say nothing of the failure to provide security or stability, or of the enormous sums (including money received as aid) squandered on vanity public projects or luxuries for the ruling circles and their chums. For countries with governments like this, globalisation is always going to be difficult to achieve.

Like many people I've become a bit less of an advocate of globalisation than I once was, and less than the writer of this piece still is, but I'm still a strong advocate. Ever since I spent a day in 1981 at a Dakka glass factory, I've believed that trade and commerce was a far better approach to reducing poverty than conventional aid programs.

I must note that The Economist has also nuanced their support of globalisation. A recent survey of capital markets emphasized the profound injury that unrestrained capital markets caused many poor nations, and many middle-tier nations, in the 90s. Greed and corruption is universal and must be a part of any analysis of poverty reduction.

All that being said, I still see globalisation as the only way to substantially improve the well being of most of the world. I think for globalisation to suceed we do need to put some significant shock absorbers in place. Poor nations can be whipsawed by capital flows and the displacement of the country-side, rich nations by the political and personal shock of industry transitions. A substantial piece of the US IT industry is moving oversease. Conventional trade theory says that this economic opportunity will be replaced by new possibilities -- but a 45 yo Java guru cannot become a world class violinist or a high earning butler overnight. Humans don't adopt that quickly.

Because humans can't adopt so quickly, we experience significant periods of disequilibria. Disequilibria causes widespread economic, social, and political strains. If, as some expect, change will accelerate worldwide, so too will disequilibria and its consequences.

Look for Nordic-style socialism to make a comeback, even as globalisation must and should continue.

Sobig, Spam, and the Demise of Email ... but there is a fix.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Sobig is biggest virus of all

The debut of sobig (see my early encounter) may be acknowledged as the day the original internet email model (SMTP) died.

I'm having trouble contacting business partners because of network disruptions from Sobig and other (seemingly) unrelated viruses. It turns out a large percentage of Chinese PCs run without patches or virus protection, many of them are now infected and are pumping out Sobig emails. Many will never get patched. [1]

Supposedly the Sobig distributed SMTP server will start pumping out spam this weekend. If that really happens, based on what we're seeing now, this will be a historic episode. Network effects may bring down both a large part of the North American electrical grid AND the Internet itself.

The sad thing is there's a simple and affordable technical fix for spam. It's a bit subtle in how it works, but I believe over time it would take care of the problem. Essentially it's variable filtering by the receiving service (IMAP, POP, etc) based on the reputation [2] of the sending service (SMTP), with optional user preferences.

I think 3 to 5 levels of filtering would do the trick. Messages from an authenticated sending service with a good reputation (low spam output) would not be filtered. No messages would get deleted. Today most legitimate corporations and some ISPs fall into that category.

Messages from an average reputation sending service (many ISPs, most academic servers, etc) would experience fairly severe filtering; some valid messages would be erroneously deleted. Filtering does that, sorry. If you think filtering is perfect, you don't understand positive predictive value. Little or no spam would get through and no Sobig messages.

Messages from a poor reputation sending service, or a sending service with no reputation (that would include all the Sobig messages, Sobig is its own sending service) would experience severe filtering. A lot of valid messages would be deleted. No spam would get through and no Sobig messages.

There are several optional variations on this approach. Advanced users could set their own preferences for how different sending services are handled, or implement filters on their own mail clients. Digitally signed email might be handled differently; this is how legitimate marketers could reach people who WANTED marketing material.

This is a sneaky approach. It doesn't work all at once, though it helps a lot immediately. Fairly quickly users would understand that their email is basically "first class" or "third class" based on their ISP or sending service. They would push their ISP/sending service to improve its reputation, or they would switch. They want their email to get through. End user management becomes the domain of the sending service; they can apply approaches that work best for their clients.

It's not a super high tech solution. It's sneakier than it sounds at first. I think it would work.

john


[1] I've long thought that Microsoft benefitted from its insecure software in several perverse ways. One of them I described earlier. Another is that once Microsoft stops providing security patches to an OS it really should no longer be exposed to the Internet in any way. The latter turns out to be a two edged sword -- those insecure machines can then be turned into weapons that attack Microsoft (and the rest of us too.) Microsoft may not be able to stop patching their legacy OSs.

[2] This is a variation of reputation management. Reputation management implies authentication. There are several ways to authenticate sending services, I think that is manageable.

Duluth Superior Bike Map

Duluth-Superior Bike Map - PDF:

Impressive! It's a 3MB PDF. I love it when maps are distributed as true vector-based PDF rather than (yech) JPEG. In addition to being a bike map, it's a great Duluth map as well.

BLOGGER gives Safari a Lo-Fi interface, but at least tech support is eager!

BLOGGER - Knowledge Base

Safari gets the Lo-Fi interface, unless you use the debug feature to spoof IE/Mac. Then you get the Mozilla interface. I complained about this to BLOGGER's new support group. I didn't expect a reply, but their support people are rabid. Here's what they wrote me:

Thanks for writing in about Safari. Please read this weblog post by Dave
Hyatt, one of Safari's developers:
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/hyatt/archives/2003_06.html#003564

Blogger uses tricky/advanced javascript and dhtml to render its interface,
and unfortunately Safari doesn't support what we need (yet). We assume
Safari will continue to evolve (as will Blogger's interfaces), and we hope
the needed support will eventually be added to it.

Many of us here are Mac/Safari users, and prefer using LoFi; it's a
quicker, slimmer interface, and is fully-featured.

-Eric

Not fully convincing, since I wasn't looking for the DHTML interface, only the Mozilla interface. Still, it's something that they do have Safari users and they respond to feedback. I use both the IE and Lo-Fi interfaces, the IE is much more efficient.

Probably worthwhile for Safari users to submit a comment to BLOGGER.

Health Costs Compared

Health Costs Compared

" BOSTON, Aug. 20 — A comparison of health care costs has found that 31 cents of every dollar spent on health care in the United States pays administrative costs, nearly double the rate in Canada.

Researchers who prepared the comparison said today that the United States wasted more money on health bureaucracy than it would cost to provide health care to the tens of millions of the uninsured."

This isn't new, but it's an update on old data. It actually sounds like administrative costs in Canada are higher than they used to be, probably because of more private insurance in some provinces. I think they used to be only 10%.

The study I found MOST interesting was done about a year ago. It got very little press. That study showed that for common serious acute illnesses, Canadian's had better outcomes than comparable Americans. Everyone knows that Canada does better with infant mortality, prenatal care, immunizations, preventive care, hospice care, etc etc -- but the presumption was that the US system did better with heart attacks and appendicitis. Not so, Canada still has better results. The studies don't address why; it may be the two groups were not really comparable. For example, we know ethnicity affects outcomes even when healtchare seems identical and wealth is controlled for.

Still, these studies put a lot of pressure on those who argue that the US has "the best healthcare system in the world". That's BS. We don't, not by a long shot. We have areas of true excellence, particularly for the wealthy, but we're overall second rate.

Update on addiction from the Director of the NIDA

A Scientist's Lifetime of Study Into the Mysteries of Addiction: " The co-morbidity of depression and smoking is close to 90 percent. Do you know what percentage of schizophrenic patients take cigarettes or take drugs? Eighty-five. "

In addition to my medical training, I have a longstanding special interest in addiction. So I was kind of annoyed to learn so many interesting things in this brief news story. I should have come across this material in my medical journals!! This says something about the way information is distributed, and how it fails to get separated from noise.

Addiction is fascinating. I personally think free will, and thus "responsibility", is an illusion; that which gives me a somewhat different perspective on addiction. (I'm hoping our historical concepts of responsibility will whither and die in the next 40 years. Assuming we're still around, something a bit more thoughtful may replace it.)

There's a note at the end of the article that should set sirens off:

"When we look at the brains of young methamphetamine abusers, they look like the brains of people 40 to 50 years older. So what drugs are inducing in your brain is aging. "

The only thing that will rescue our economy in 20 years is to slow the aging of the human brain. She's claiming we know of a drug that accelerates brain aging. So, DARN IT, we have the opportunity to experiment with brain aging in rats and see if we can find an agent that slows brain aging with metamphetamine exposure. Then we can see if the agent gives us clues to slow brain aging without metamphetamines.

Happily this probably occurred to a lot of people a long time ago.

The Omni Group - Applications - OmniOutliner - Extras

The Omni Group - Applications - OmniOutliner - Extras: "View your OmniOutliner documents on your iPod! Download this disk image file for two different scripts to either export outlines so that they show up in the iPod's Contacts menu, or in the Notes menu for newer iPods."

OmniOutliner now has a number of appealing "exras" that extend its functionality. I'm going to have to look at it again. It's no MORE 3.1, but it shows nice growth and development.

Slate: A strange, strange, strange universe

My So-Called Universe - Our cozy world is probably much bigger—and stranger—than we know. By Jim Holt

.... For instance, measurements of the cosmic background radiation (the echo left over from the big bang) indicate that the space we live in is infinite and that matter is spread randomly throughout it. Therefore, all possible arrangements of matter must exist out there somewhere—including exact and inexact replicas of our own world and the beings in it. The idea is a bit like that of monkeys in front of typewriters eventually typing out all of Shakespeare: Quantum theory says that nature is discrete, so the visible universe we inhabit is characterized by a finite amount of information; if space is infinite, this informational pattern is bound to repeat at vast enough distances. A back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that there should be an exact copy of you around 10 to the 10 to the 28th light-years away...

In 1980 or so, during a public lecture, I asked Kip Thorne what his wildest speculation was. As I recall, he wondered back then if it would be possible to travel back in time to a universe that had branched from our own. He laughed as he said this.

Fast forward a generation. All of cosmology has gone off the deep end. How deep? People far smarter and more focused than I talk seriously about infinite space, endless worlds, new universes aborning every fraction of a femtosecond, universes of unimaginable physics. The "hard science" in the science fiction of the past 10 years is almost unimaginably complex -- and that's the "non-fiction" part.

In this setting the idea of a Designed Universe is not so wild. Why not? In a multiverse there's room for a trillion trillion Deities. Heck, maybe a trillion Deities are born every passing second.

Some wilder types have noted there's no clear distinction between a Designed Universe and a simulation.

Ahh, for the good old days of the Big Bang.

Keegan on Iraq: Laying the neocon groundwork for more troops?

Telegraph | Opinion | Iraq is not another Vietnam, but the coalition needs more men

Keegan is a military historian favored by the Neocons. He makes a persusasive case that Vietnam was militarily a greater challenge than Iraq is today. Vietnam was a truly monstrous quagmire.

On the other hand the techniques of terrorism are more advanced nowadays, and the goals of the "insurgents" are varied. They do not appear to be so "rational" as the North Vietnamese. Some seem to be Islamic fundamentalists, who wish to destroy secular society in Iraq by creating maximal disruption of the foundations of a technologic civilization. Others are Baathists, who may hope to rule a portion of Iraq after the Coalition retreats and the country is partitioned. In both cases turning the Iraqi population against the Coalition is a prerequisite. That can best be done by terrorizing both the local populace and the Coalition, and increasing Coalition killings of incidental non-combatants.

I found parts of Keegan's article I found a bit condescending, and his ending statement of "The anti-war element in the Western media will be doing a service to no one, least of all the Iraqi people, if they allow their pleasure at the spectacle of post-war disturbance to undermine the coalition's efforts to establish a lasting peace" really degraded the quality of his essay. That parting comment is a cheap piece of rhetorical mud slinging. It's so lowbrow and irrational that it makes me question the rest of what's otherwise an interesting analysis.

Bush's mishandling of the UN and Turkey, and the failure of the neoCons to listen to listen rationally to the CIA and the State Department, has really put the US behind the 8 ball. On the other hand, I don't think things are hopeless, and I'm pretty sure the UN alone won't be able to patch things up; if the US/UK leave Iraq the country will be partioned. (I suspect Rumsfeld's strategy was always to partion Iraq between the Turks/Kurds/Iran and Kuwait, leaving a central Sunni portion without oil revenue.)

I don't know enough to say what should be done, other than the obvious (troop rotation, more troops, better relations with the UN, lean on Syria, etc). Keegan also calls for more troops. I wonder if he's laying the groundwork for the UK to press the US Neocons to ask for another Division.

The single thing that I'd like to see is Rumsfeld to be pushed aside. He had more than his chance and he blew it. Time to get someone who's bit less persuaded of their omniscience.