Blaming men for failing to acquire imaginary jobs

Updated below

I have a piece in The Week about one aspect of Paul Ryan’s “culture of work” remarks that hasn’t gotten much attention:

Ryan’s inner city men, who have never “learned the value and the culture of work,” are therefore not merely failing, but failing specifically as men, by failing to provide for their families.

The problem with this neat little morality tale is captured by what ought to be some startling statistics. Note that another unstated assumption behind comments such as Ryan’s is that the American economy actually produces enough decent-paying jobs to allow a reasonable number of Americans to have such jobs, as long as they embrace “the culture of work.”

To say this isn’t the case is an understatement. What is a “good” job, financially speaking? One which pays $50,000 per year? $40,000? $30,000? The latter figure, which represents take-home pay of less than $2000 per month, and which is only twice the minimum wage (which itself has declined sharply in real terms since the 1960s), is an extremely generous definition of what constitutes a decent-paying job.

But let’s use it anyway, to determine how many Americans of working age have such jobs. If we make a couple more unrealistically optimistic assumptions — that nobody under 18 or over 69 is working, and that no one has more than one job — the answer is: three out of 10.

Nearly 70 percent of American working-age adults do not have jobs that pay at least $30,000 per year, because there are only three such jobs for every 10 American adults between the ages of 18 and 69. In other words, the vast majority of working age Americans cannot possibly acquire decent-paying jobs, even if one defines a decent-paying job extremely broadly, because there aren’t nearly enough such jobs, not because people fail to embrace “the culture of work.”

Update: Some correspondence included for its potential sociological interest:

19 March 2014

Prof Paul F. Campos
University of Colorado
School of Law

Dear Prof. Campos,

Your criticism of Rep. Paul Ryan was a bit harsh to say the least. He does have a point regardless of you voluminous statistical presentation. Permit me to reflect upon certain demographic of the Black population. Why is it that, since the lack of jobs seems to be an equalizer and issue for everyone, Blacks have a far higher unemployment rate then non-Blacks? Why do Blacks have an astronomically higher crime/illegitimacy rate then non-Blacks? Why is it that Blacks are far more prone to create slums then non-Blacks? Why is it that Haiti, which has been under Black rule for over 200 years,is the economic basket case of the Western Hemisphere? Why is it that Black Africa is the most economically backward region of the world? Despite the false media hype of Blacks, why is it that rarely does one see Blacks in elite military units? The Special Ops unit that killed Bin Ladin did not have one single Black in it and most don’t. We’ve had decades of multi-$trillion minority programs and all sorts of preferential accommodations for Blacks and I might add Hispanics and the results are, to say the least, dismal! It is quite obvious that Blacks are not up to the job of constructively participating in a civilized society without a plethora of costly assistance programs;that American society can do without! The Black population, over the decades, has sufficiently demonstrated that it is more of a burden then an asset and clearly of no redeeming value! None! It is time to admit reality,as Rep. Ryan has done,and stop pretending!

Sincerely,

Roderick Spode*

*Name changed to protect the guilty

Suppose They Gave a Hate Rally and Nobody Came?

A few links for your Wednesday morning…

• I have no doubt that this tumblr blog, cataloging an “impressive” record collection, is cute and amusing. So why did I cringe when I read about it? Oh, right. It’s because I’ve been a serious music lover since I was six. I won’t even get into the whole ” you must have an encyclopaedic knowledge of music to really be a music lover” chestnut. (Will be blogging more about this soon.)
• I want to find this funny, but knowing that fartfaces like this still exist is actually pretty depressing. More depressing? None of these asshats know what the word “genocide” means. Being porked out of existence is not genocide.
• Joan Walsh calls out Paul Ryan. Angry Joan Walsh? I like it. It’s a good look on her.
• This is just insane.
• Reason had a similar article about the Koch brothers awhile back, but with  more leather jacket and South Park. Shorter Charles CCH Pounder C. W. Cooke: “Ha ha!! Libs are so stupid–they don’t know that the Kochs are actually awesome liberals, even though later in this article I’ll admit they donate millions to defeat Democratic candidates and causes. Ha ha!! Suck it!”

My laptop–on which I did most of my blogging–went kaput. I’m waiting for my new one to come in so I can bring you more stories of derp unicorns and people who fart through their mouths. And, no, not every entry will be about Charles C. W. Cooke. Stop being a smartass.

Too Simple?

Jeff Wise argues that theory on Flight 370 Paul discussed earlier today is probably wrong:

Goodfellow’s account is emotionally compelling, and it is based on some of the most important facts that have been established so far. And it is simple—to a fault. Take other major findings of the investigation into account, and Goodfellow’s theory falls apart. For one thing, while it’s true that MH370 did turn toward Langkawi and wound up overflying it, whoever was at the controls continued to maneuver after that point as well, turning sharply right at VAMPI waypoint, then left again at GIVAL. Such vigorous navigating would have been impossible for unconscious men.

Goodfellow’s theory fails further when one remembers the electronic ping detected by the Inmarsat satellite at 8:11 on the morning of March 8. According to analysis provided by the Malaysian and United States governments, the pings narrowed the location of MH370 at that moment to one of two arcs, one in Central Asia and the other in the southern Indian Ocean. As MH370 flew from its original course toward Langkawi, it was headed toward neither. Without human intervention—which would go against Goodfellow’s theory—it simply could not have reached the position we know it attained at 8:11 a.m.

To make a good theory, Einstein is said to have asserted, “everything should be kept as simple as possible, but no simpler.” Unfortunately, Christopher Goodfellow’s wildly popular theory errs on the side of too much elegance.

I don’t know enough to judge, but I’m still kind of hoping that Goodfellow’s theory turns out to be right if only because against immense odds it would mean something useful came out of Google Plus. Fallows sees the Goodfellow theory as plausible.

Flight 370 and Occam’s razor

Given the continuing absence of any evidence for more esoteric/sinister theories 11 days after the disappearance of FL370, this account seems increasingly plausible:

The left turn is the key here. Zaharie Ahmad Shah1 was a very experienced senior captain with 18,000 hours of flight time. We old pilots were drilled to know what is the closest airport of safe harbor while in cruise. Airports behind us, airports abeam us, and airports ahead of us. They’re always in our head. Always. If something happens, you don’t want to be thinking about what are you going to do–you already know what you are going to do. When I saw that left turn with a direct heading, I instinctively knew he was heading for an airport. He was taking a direct route to Palau Langkawi, a 13,000-foot airstrip with an approach over water and no obstacles. The captain did not turn back to Kuala Lampur because he knew he had 8,000-foot ridges to cross. He knew the terrain was friendlier toward Langkawi, which also was closer.

Take a look at this airport on Google Earth. The pilot did all the right things. He was confronted by some major event onboard that made him make an immediate turn to the closest, safest airport.

For me, the loss of transponders and communications makes perfect sense in a fire. And there most likely was an electrical fire. In the case of a fire, the first response is to pull the main busses and restore circuits one by one until you have isolated the bad one. If they pulled the busses, the plane would go silent. It probably was a serious event and the flight crew was occupied with controlling the plane and trying to fight the fire. Aviate, navigate, and lastly, communicate is the mantra in such situations.

There are two types of fires. An electrical fire might not be as fast and furious, and there may or may not be incapacitating smoke. However there is the possibility, given the timeline, that there was an overheat on one of the front landing gear tires, it blew on takeoff and started slowly burning. Yes, this happens with underinflated tires. Remember: Heavy plane, hot night, sea level, long-run takeoff. There was a well known accident in Nigeria of a DC8 that had a landing gear fire on takeoff. Once going, a tire fire would produce horrific, incapacitating smoke. Yes, pilots have access to oxygen masks, but this is a no-no with fire. Most have access to a smoke hood with a filter, but this will last only a few minutes depending on the smoke level. (I used to carry one in my flight bag, and I still carry one in my briefcase when I fly.)

What I think happened is the flight crew was overcome by smoke and the plane continued on the heading, probably on George (autopilot), until it ran out of fuel or the fire destroyed the control surfaces and it crashed. You will find it along that route–looking elsewhere is pointless.

If this theory is correct, it seems unlikely that the plane and its flight data recorder will ever be found. The search for Air France 447 suggests that it’s basically impossible to find the fuselage of a plane in the deep ocean unless searchers know almost exactly where the plane went down (Flight 447 was found 6.5 miles from its last known location two years later, after three previous failed searches). Any debris spotted at this point will be hundreds of miles from the crash site. Reconstructing the path of such debris along ocean currents might confirm or dis-confirm the autopilot theory, however.