Wealth Distribution In America

A friend recently shared a link to a video exploring how wealth is distributed in America. There are a lot of different ways of presenting the same information or related information. We can look at income inequality. Over time, income inequality becomes wealth inequality.

Just this week, the stock market reached a new high. That has increased the wealth of some Americans at the top of the economic scale. Meanwhile, middle-class income has stagnated for forty years.

Here is a video examining wealth.

I will look for one that reveals income inequality and post the best one I find.

Then there is the issue of economic mobility.

We're number one, right?

As it turns out, countries in Western Europe and Northern Europe have more equal distribution of wealth, greater economic mobility and even higher levels of creation of small business than does the U.S.

Not to mention less expensive health care with better outcomes.

Americans need to get out more. Visit other countries. Keep an open mind. Might learn something.

Pamlico County Superior Court March 4

Just a quick report. Both sides in my complaint against the Town of Oriental presented their arguments. The Town argued for dismissal. I argued against dismissal. The judge remained pretty impassive and promised a decision later this week.

I thought the Town made some valid points, but also made some very specious arguments.

What really counts is what the judge thought.

We'll know later.

Seventy Years Ago: New Guinea And Bismarck Sea

They called it "The Battle Of Bismarck Sea," but it wasn't much of a battle.




Following the loss of Guadalcanal, Japan shifted their focus to New Guinea. The plan was to reinforce their airbases at Salamaua and Lae.

A Japanese convoy of eight destroyers and eight troop transports with an escort of approximately 100 aircraft – assembled and departed from Simpson Harbour in Rabaul 28 February. They planned a route along the north coast, to avoid Allied air cover. Allied air attacks on the convoy at this point would have to fly over New Britain, allowing easy interception from Japanese air bases. But the final leg ran the gauntlet of the Vitiaz Strait.

Allied cryptanalysts decrypted Japanese communications revealing the plan. More than 6,000 Japanese troops were on their way to reinforce Lae. General MacArthur, concerned that the reinforcements would make it impossible for the Allies to advance in New Guinea, ordered General Kenney, Commander of the Fifth Air Force, to attack the convoys.

Beginning March 2, 1943, Allied Air Forces began attacking the Japanese convoy with a mix of light, heavy and medium bombers specially converted and trained to attack shipping, accompanied by 54 fighters.

By end of the day March 4, the Allies had sunk 8 transports and five destroyers, destroyed twenty Japanese aircraft and prevented all but 1200 Japanese soldiers from reaching Lae.

Many of the attacking aircraft flew over the Owen Stanley range from Port Moresby. My father, serving at Port Moresby in the 27th Air Depot group, was subjected to nightly air raids by Japanese aircraft flying from Lae and Salamaua. During the day he put US aircraft back together for new missions.

Going To Court

Last minute preps for tomorrow's hearing at Pamlico Court House. Town has filed three motions to dismiss.

I'm trying to protect the public's interest but the issues seem complicated to them. Why am I doing it? I'm not sure.

Maybe it's like climbing the mountain because it's there.

Right now it feels more like Sisyphus rolling the stone up the hill.

I'll know more tomorrow.

Oriental Land Swap - Or Is It?

Anyone curious about what I have been up to lately can get a good idea by reading today's article in Town Dock. I think it's a fair summary of the whole issue, starting several years ago.

My role in the Town's lawsuit against a local landowner was actually modest. The Town decided in 2002, nearly four years before I moved here, to file the suit. Much of the information in the Town's complaint was researched by Grace Evans, a local citizen and former member of the Town Board and many other boards, who uncovered records in the Town minutes and actually caused those minutes to be preserved.

The case goes before Judge Alford at the Pamlico County courthouse Monday morning, March 4th, to hear motions by the Town to dismiss my complaint and an amendment thereto. The court will open at 10:00 to hear motions.

Congressional District Size

Awhile back, I suggested we could improve the responsiveness of Congress by increasing the size of the House of Representatives to the same ratio of Representatives to population as existed when we arrived at the present size of 435.

There is an unratified amendment, the first of the original twelve submitted in 1789, of which the first ten became the Bill of Rights. The eleventh to be adopted became the 27th Amendment, adopted in 1992. The sole remaining amendment is muddled because of a scrivener's error when the amendment was engrossed. As intended by the Congress, it would require a House of Representatives of 6,000 members today. As printed and sent to the states, it would if adopted have no effect on the size of the House.

This comes to mind in light of Nate Silver's recent post on the Electoral College.

The number of citizens represented by each member of the House was a big issue in 1787.There was a widespread belief that the number represented by each member should be no more than 50,000.

Having large districts with long terms of office was thought to be a way to favor the interests of "property" and "respectable" citizens. A smaller number of citizens per representative with shorter terms was thought to favor the common people.

Here's how James Madison explained it:

Should Experience or public opinion require an equal and universal suffrage for each branch of the Government such as prevails generally in the U.S., (then) a resource favorable to the rights of landed and other property, when its possessors become the Minority, may be found in the enlargement of the Election Districts for one branch of the Legislature and a prolongation of its period of service. Large districts are manifestly favorable to the election of persons of general respectability, and of probable attachment to the rights of property, over competitors depending on the personal solicitations practicable on a contracted theater. And although an ambitious candidate, of personal distinction, might occasionally recommend himself to popular choice by espousing a popular though unjust object, it might rarely happen to many districts at the same time. The tendency of a longer period of service would be, to render the Body more stable in its policy, and more capable of stemming popular currents taking a wrong direction, till reason and justice could regain their ascendancy. Should even such a modification as the last be deemed inadmissible, and universal suffrage and very short periods of elections within contracted spheres be required for each branch of the Government, the security for the holders of property when the minority, can only be derived from the ordinary influence possessed by property, and the superior information incident to its holders; from the popular sense of justice enlarged and by a diffusive education; and from the difficulty of combining and effectuating unjust purposes throughout an extensive country; a difficulty essentially distinguishing the U.S. and even most of the individual States, from the small communities where a mistaken interest or contagious passion, could readily unite a majority of the whole under a factious leader in trampling on the rights of the Minor party.

Drones, War and Moral Hazard

There has been a lot of discussion by talking heads and writing (by writing heads?) recently about drones. And not just against terrorists. It almost sound like our domestic airspace will soon be full of drones.

Let's give some thought to what we are about. I'm not sure that dressing game console operators up in flight suits, paying them "incentive pay" (we used to call it flight pay), calling them "pilots" and giving them hero medals is what we should be doing.

What I think I'm hearing is a lot of relatively naive talk about "killing the bad guys" though it might be couched in more sophisticated verbiage.

In the popular imagination, war is about killing as many of our opponents as possible. In the professional imagination, Karl von Klausewitz was closer to the mark when he explained that "war is politics by other, namely violent means." What he means, is that there must be a point to what we do beyond killing "the bad guys."

War is not completely separate from diplomacy, either. I think presidential scholar Richard Neustadt got it about right a half century ago when he described the task of diplomacy as to convince enough people and the right people on the other side that what you want is what they also want, in order to further their own interest.

Some sources of human conflict are best moderated with deterrence, some with "compellance," and some with negotiation. Wisdom lies in knowing when. And to what end.

Violence, in the long run, is not a way of resolving human conflict. In international affairs, it is at best like the two by four the farmer hits the mule with. "That's to get it's attention," the farmer explains.

Once you get the opponent's attention, maybe it's best to sit down and reason together.

Back to the subject of drones. And moral hazard.

Let me repeat some earlier thoughts.

Economists talk about "moral hazard." This refers to a situation where there is a tendency to take undue risks because the costs are not borne by the party taking the risk. Like financial wizards who take in enormous bonuses just before the crash and leaves it to the rest of the country to pick up the pieces. We should extend the concept to war.

In 1941 and 1942 the attacking forces faced at least as much risk as those being attacked. This was true at Pearl Harbor, at Bataan and Corregidor, in the Coral Sea,  at Midway, and countless other battles.

It is usually not true of the political leaders who order a country to war. They do not bear the risks that face the military forces.

The equation of risk becomes distorted forever when attacks are conducted from halfway around the world by skilled gamers who sit in front of computers and direct robotic drones to destroy targets and people. It is the inhabitants of target areas who bear the risk.

Is this a kind of moral risk we are willing to take?

As a professional military officer, I always wanted to minimize the risk to my own sailors. At what point does this kind of planning cross a moral divide?

Apart from moral considerations, we may need to think about the message we convey. Is the message that our cause is not worth risking an American life? If so, we should say so. But we need to ask ourselves the question - if a cause is not worth dying for, is it worth killing for?

Does The US Need A Different Layout Of States?

Today's New York Times web site posted a very interesting analysis of the electoral college by Nate Silver on his blog, Five Thirty-Eight. The article's headline, "Did Democrats Get Lucky In The Electoral College?" doesn't convey the depth and innovation of the analysis.

The most interesting component of the analysis is a map of the United States redrawn into fifty states, each with equal population. The point of the map is to illustrate the effect such redrawn boundaries would have on the outcome of the electoral college.


Nate Silver's discussion  of the electoral college and the associated issues of reapportionment and redistricting is among the best I have ever read. I like the map, but also like a table in the article showing the distribution of population within each state into urban, suburban and rural. Not unsurprisingly, Wyoming is the most rural state in the union. Vermont is the least urban, followed by Mississippi with only 4% urban population.

As I looked at the map, I was also struck by its resemblance to a concept put forth by George Kennan in his 1993 book "Around The Cragged Hill." In short, Kennan believed the United States was so big as to be ungovernable. He proposed that a better scheme would be to split the country apart into what amounted to city-states.

Years later, others picked up on Kennan's idea and began pushing a movement to promote the idea of states seceding from the Union. Then again, maybe they didn't even know about Kennan's ideas.