Taleb calling someone else an entertainer is a bit rich, sort of like a clown telling someone to have dignity. I have no opinion on Silver whatsoever, but Taleb is a bloviating ass who has gone from popular milquetoast observations, to climbing fully up his own backpassage. That this all began with the likes of Dinesh D’Souza doesn’t help.
I realize that Black Swan is popular here, but it was horrendous. A single essential premise which, instead of support, rested for chapter after chapter on assertions. That’s not evidence, it wasn’t an argument, it was the sound of someone having one good idea and then realizing they lacked the capacity to support it.
Quantifying the current voter sentiment makes you a entertainer? If anyone should be accused of "entertainment", I'd imagine it's the guy known for writing mass-market books.
GP doesn't even have Silver’s model right (he describes the “nowcast”, which was never the headline forecast model), so if he is right that that is what Taleb is referring to, that would be a pretty damning indictment of Taleb’s critique.
Am I alone in not seeing the problem here? Cities went into this with their eyes open, no? It was a bidding war to attract a major employer to the city.
Amazon's employees will pay taxes, buy property, and spend money, all of which enrich the local economy and government. That's why they're willing to offer tax breaks.
Any subsidies Amazon could have received from a city, but chose not to would amount to a gift to the city. Why would they do this? City governments are not the first place I would think of when giving to charity.
The article is asking what is the point? Why make cities compete for your presence. Amazons presence in a city brings along with it all the good things you mention above, as the richest man in the world and one of the richest companies in the world, the article is asking why be greedy and make cities grovel at your feet for the "good" you can bring, why doesn't Amazon just be an agent of good and bring good to the city? Not only because it is the ethical thing to do (doing good and not asking for repayment) but because in the future it will have positive repercussions for Amazon, rather than having people strike "bad" deals with Amazon cause Amazon has the upper hand now but then later on someone else uses it (The deal) as a campaign point to witch hunt Amazon cause the city made a bad deal. He is asking Bezos to Just be generous, everyone will gain.
I got what the article was saying. The point just makes no sense to me. Amazon got $2.4B in subsidies. To say, "it's unethical to ask for that" is functionally equivalent to saying "the only ethical thing is for Amazon to donate $2.4B to the cities."
And if the argument is Amazon shouldn't take the subsidies because it's bad PR, well you'll have to weigh the cost of that bad PR against the $2.4B savings they've negotiated for themselves.
You assume it's a "bad" deal. But Amazon says they'll spend $5B on construction costs and upwards of $5B per year paying their employees for years and years to come. Seems like a smart deal for the city on the face, assuming maximizing tax revenue is a goal.
I think what is trying to be said is that Amazon doesn't need a handout. They are fully capable of picking any city in the US to set up shop. What would have happened if nobody bit on the whole scheme anyway? Would have they just picked some random Townsville,USA and paid full price? Without the subsidies, Amazon wouldn't have been "donating" $2.4B, that's just the extra cost of doing business there. Amazon will be great for wherever they go but the money, in my opinion, is better spent on other things.
This sort of argument is the ultimate dead end. Shall we have no legislation on anything which isn't universally considered beneficial?
Besides which, choosing no legislation is a choice in itself. Having no law on speech isn't a middle-ground, it's an extreme. It's an understandable extreme, and though I disagree with it in limited fashion I don't think it's an unreasonable case to make. But it is nevertheless not the balanced middle-ground choice you're presenting it as.
This sort of argument is not a dead end but the very essence of government. Asking how much power should be given to a government is vitally important to the citizens and is certainly not a dead end.
I'm not disagreeing with the idea that speech legislation should be debated. I'm disagreeing with the conclusion that, since there is no consensus, it's best that there is no legislation at all.
Well now you've raised a very deep point. We need some laws and regulation, but not too much. How do we decide? We have a Constitution and a political system, including judiciary where we can all fight it out.
Conservatives are more on the side of limited government power. Progressives think the government should do more. And on and on it goes...
From the article: "The study looks at people who were 35–40 in 1987 and then looks at how they were doing 20 years later, when they are 55–60. The median income of the people in the top 20% in 1987 ended up 5% lower twenty years later. The people in the middle 20% ended up with median income that was 27% higher. And if you started in the bottom 20%, your income doubled. If you were in the top 1% in 1987, 20 years later, median income was 29% lower."
In other words, regression to the mean. Of course the poorest people are more likely to gain in income -- when you start at the bottom, there's really only one direction you can go.
You can still have regression to the mean among individuals while society itself is becoming horrifyingly unequal.
"Of course the poorest people are more likely to gain in income -- when you start at the bottom, there's really only one direction you can go."
But doesn't this claim in itself refute the thesis that all the income gains are going to the top? If we find people at the bottom gaining income far faster than people at the top, which is what my quote claims, isn't that evidence that we live in a just society, not an unjust one?
Firstly as pointed out in other comments they were measuring income. People at higher incomes in the 80s were probably more likely to retire early or "on time". A more representative number would be wealth which I would imagine is probably horrifying in the vein that the parent and grandparent meant. People living hand to mouth in the 80s were probably doing the same in 2014. People who could save probably weren't.
Even just from the numbers presented imagine the lower percentile person who was making say 10k in constant dollars in the 80s. They're making 20k (100% increase) in same dollars in 2014.
Imagining the person in top was making 1,000,000 dollars in constant dollars they dropped 29% so they're now "only" making 750kish.
No, because what you’re measuring is rate of change vs volume. If you made $1 and now you make $2, that is 100% growth in income. If you made $1M and now make $1.2M that is 20% growth, but in absolute dollars you make way more.
Inequality isn't a problem.
Fairness is the problem when it comes to economic growth. People want to have a fair chance, not just one half taking all the benefits.
The fact that inequality exists is not the problem, it's the severity of the inequality that is the problem.
Take an extreme example - out of a population of 1000 people you have 1 person owning 99% of the wealth, with the other 1% distributed to the other 999. Does that seem like an efficient, properly operating economy to you?
Obviously there is some balancing needs to happen, the trick is figuring out where the fulcrum should sit for the most efficiency.
Inequality is great really. It incentivizes people to give extra effort for a reward. But gone too far, the efficiency of humanity will drop. There needs to be (and there probably is) shifts in wealth to keep things moving. Let's get those moon bases going.
Not from the article: people who were in the top quintile or 1% in 1987 are far more likely to have retired early than those in middle or bottom quintile. Tell me about their wealth, not their income.
I just subscribed to HBO through Amazon for this reason. It's really great. Amazon user experience and streaming capabilities seem better than HBO. But HBO is the only place you can get Game of Thrones. Win-win :)
Fixed mindset is the belief that qualities like intelligence are fixed and can't change. Growth mindset is the belief that these qualities can be grown through effort.
Dwecks research shows that a) kids with a growth mindset do better in school, especially in math, and b) kids can learn to have a growth mindset through relatively small interventions like reading and discussing a short article about the brain.
I think point a) is obvious, but point b) was not until Dwecks research.
(b) is not only not obvious, it also has some rather absurd implications due to the size of the effect and doesn't seem to replicate to the real world. Both of which imply it's bunk.
I love it. I go the movies all the time. I wish you had a way for me to put my email address in so I could get an email every Friday to remind me this site exists. Cool idea and implementation. Keep going!
Taleb's aim is something like predictive rigor. God knows why he cares about Silver. I think everyone gets that Silver is doing entertainment.