Facts Matter

I debate things on the net with a couple of conservatives. Mostly to keep up my language skills. I need to read and write in two languages. It is not worth my time otherwise. A couple of these conservatives actually are pretty good with life in general, so I can talk to them about practical matters.

These people see things through politics. Therefore science, global warming, EPA and vaccinations, those are things corrupted by the government, according to them. They might understand electrician work and auto repair, but those are things you can confirm with your own hands.

Looking a little deeper into this, it is actually a way of thinking about everything for these three or four guys, none of whom ever did research of any sort, science or otherwise. One is a businessman. Looking at a news item, the business person looks at it as a way to make profit. He wants to buy, sell invest. The product could be highly technical. If the work is about a technical innovation or a solution that requires R&D, the person is not interested.

They can vote, that is clear, but they cannot influence the outcome or the applications of science and technology in any way. Environmental issues only concern them if they can "feel" them. (A rise in temperature of 1C over 100 years cannot be felt by a person. Only a slight increase of warm days in your area). A cell phone is only interesting as a tool and looking at best plans for X number of people in Y areas. The device is looked at for price, features and is picked the next time by trial and error. Does the Samsung have a better battery, and do I need to bother learning to use it after the iPhone?

The way the phone works, the way the internet works, all that is irrelevant. Cost is all. If he is not going to write or mess with settings on software, pick the easiest software to use.

Global warming? It's not warmer here, I am cold right now. The ice caps have not melted yet. There is no desire to understand. Because politicians are involved. They fix all with taxes. No tax for me, don't spend my money investing in wind. There is plenty of coal. Also he read an article where the earth was cooling. Plus we were going to run out of gas. But these did not happen! Science was wrong! In this sort of ”casual” interest in matters of science, the actual facts are buried and only the headlines stay in memory. The TRUTH that the layman demands of science is not a foolproof truth, but often a well developed field has those truths. A lesser field, like climate science in 1975, had merely good guesses. It was in fact one paper that claimed an ice age coming. The main body of workers in the field did not see it as a reliable paper. The evidence was very little.

People have their areas of expertise where they act with confidence. Science only matters as a tool. The guy above, the lawyer, the local head of the Fed Ex unit. They have as little interest in science as possible. Possibly they will read a few articles if a health issue comes up. Even there, the wins and losses are calculated. Do I want to pay for dental implants or just get dentures?

Though they have slightly more life experience, their attitude to things they cannot influence is no different from teens in high school asking "why do I need to know that?" Modern life as consumers is pretty much that. After you have kids, daily chores are more important to do than teach your kid about simultaneous equations or ideal gas laws. even if you did remember them from high school. I rarely had use for the ideal gas law in the chemical industry, but I was still able to teach it to one teen at the age of 15-16. It is because it was within my expertise. Still, even in science, we know more and more about less and less. There are few generalists left. The high school science teacher may be one.

In the same manner as science, these people also reject all of sociology. It is of no interest to them to learn about gun laws, bike traffic in Amsterdam or any item they are unlikely to deal with personally. Politics outside of our country does not exist. Foreigners are only noted for trouble caused. All data collected with government funding is "fake" to many a layman. But for sure to all four of my common men.

Back to the science. I can't really imagine politics smearing any real science. I had two colleagues that continuously argued pretty much about everything. That did not prevent them writing a paper together on research that we all were assigned to do at the time.

If you still insist that science is wrong, there is a book you can look at, which does sort out the areas where science has been less than certain and sometimes wrong:

"Ben Goldacre has made a point of exposing quack doctors and nutritionists, bogus credentialing programs, and biased scientific studies. He has also taken the media to task for its willingness to throw facts and proof out the window."  Book: 

Bad Science: Quacks, Hacks, and Big Pharma Flacks published 2010 by Ben Goldacre.

Janesville, Wisconsin

The recent book by Amy Goldstein looks at American poverty close up. Janesville is a town where GM shut down a plant. Home of Paul Ryan. The county, unlike Wisconsin, went for both Obama and later Hillary. It did not even back Paul Ryan when he ran for vice president with Mitt Romney. The book looks at several families close up for 5-10 years.

The book can easily be read by anyone (Democrat, Republican, independent), as it does not really focus on politicians, other than highlighting their failures. Republicans in Wisconsin have consistently turned away federal money to help those in need. The jobs created came slowly to Janesville. No politicians were able to influence GM.

The review of the book in Amazon that got the most comments brought up NAFTA and free trade.  The topic is a favorite of nationalists and Trump supporters and also some Democrats. The nationalists have apparently believed Trump in that they they think free trade agreements favor foreigners. They do not have much to do with manufacture jobs. If your goods are too expensive to sell in low wage countries, you must sell them at home or in Europe. Protectionism is a thing of the past, it is not going to come back.

[Added free trade note] Free trade agreements between countries allow free trade, that is clear. What they do is eliminate import taxes. Neither party pays a tax. You have to export something to Mexico, for example, to get a benefit from it. No giant SUVs from Janesville are ever going to Mexico. But we do in fact gain from free trade. We export a lot of food to Asian countries, particularly Japan, as they can no longer raise all their food. If a country wants to keep growing some crops locally, like rice in Japan, those products are then left out of the free trade agreement. The free trade agreements are essentially lists of goods not covered by the agreement. You can be protectionist about some goods and still benefit from trade.

Back to the book. The book focuses on families barely getting by. One dad laid off from the GM plant has endless short term jobs. He ends up in the end driving a fork lift in a warehouse near Madison, an hour away. No more 25-30 dollar per hour auto worker wage. Warehouses and distribution centers also move into Janesville. One drug company with very perishable products moves in, as Janesville is a short drive from O'Hare from where the drugs are shipped by air freight.

Teenagers are working two or three jobs to bring in family income. Curiously they then get fewer offers of college scholarship as the income is lumped towards family income. Three of the four working may get the 160 dollars worth food stamps a month, all four working low wage jobs is too much income. No food stamps. They are stuck paying a mortgage on their home as the home is not sellable. Those stuck in too small houses or renting when the recession came are luckier.

Over 4000 jobs were lost and the city remained a Democratic city and county. Part of this was due to the little help Republican politicians were able to offer. Neither did they bring jobs. Governor Scott Walker promised 250 000 jobs and never delivered. Yet the state legislature remains in Republican hands.

The book is in journalistic style. In the end is a set of tables that are more sociology than journalism. We find that training laid off auto workers in community college for two years did not get them more job offers. Finding a job directly after layoff was more successful. A few examples in the book got two women jobs at the prison.

All in all, this will be the future of many small cities. Bigger cities will escape a lot of this fate if they already are no longer dependent on manufacturing jobs. If your city is considering the "hosting" (tax breaks) of a company with 4000 possible jobs or three insurance companies with 500 jobs each, take the three companies. They are not likely to go bankrupt all at the same time.

Trump and the forgotten people: white men and other fringe types

Back in 2016 we had an election. many white people held a grudge against Obama for a couple of things. But I think the working and lower middle classes had a couple of things in mind while voting.

1 the poor are getting something from the government I’m not getting
2 the poor are getting more, even if I got something, in some way I was not aware of
3 the poor are just lazy bums and should find work

The last for sure is not correct. Most of the poor work, but one cannot survive on minimum wage.

All that alone would have caused these white working class males to vote Republican or even Libertarian. Then Trump brought the "foreigners" theme into the election. Foreigners are getting stuff too! The forgotten men then got excited. "We can show those lazy liberals! Take this! We are not happy!"

It's quite a group of disgruntled people he finally collected.

What I’m reading about white working class folks is that they are ”authoritarian.” The male is the authority, whether the father or Trump. Trump simply repeating things about Mexicans or Muslims made them true in the minds of his followers. They do not question the chosen leader.

The person of Trump seems to have collected behind him pretty much all the Alex Jones fans and all the right wing people who spend their spare time listening to AM radio. Or making Youtube rants. One divorced middle aged man I call the Red Pill and Blue Pill man. He is obsessed with women controlling men through sex. Many are discussing their pet issues on a website called Free Republic. Freepers they call themselves. It is the playground of people disgusted with minorities, feminists and political correctness. Conspiracies are all over the place:

The curious thing is, many Republicans thought these things as well. Women belong in the kitchen, abortion should be banned, illegal aliens are using up all our government benefits (they are not).

The issues are familiar to these groups and all Trump had to mention is some code words. The word American has entirely different meaning when Trump says it than when Obama said it. Brown skinned people are not necessarily included. Make America Great Again meant take all the special rights away from any fringe groups or minorities that are just like you or me but may get some special treatment such as when applying to college.

Aside from Democrats in general, the group aside from feminists that the Freepers oppose is Social Justice Warriors. Minorities and white people standing next to them trying to adjust prejudice and inequality. All the people marching against Trump this year.

Why do all this? How does it connect to right wing politics? "He speaks how I feel," said the voters that were polled after the election. Trump had to say all these things so that many right wing people on the fringe got angry enough to come and vote. They were willing to go with all that follows. Trump is a man who does not spend any time among these common people outside his rallies. But he gave them a voice. All that was secondary to political goals such as cutting taxes. The things Trump does always go with the bigger player. He favors corporations over workers, corporations over EPA and government agencies. Always Goliath over David. None of that matters. The poor white people will just go from working for one corporation to another. None of them are entrepreneurs other than the simplest and lowest earning  level of making cash from a business. Roofing contractors, lawn service. Those with no office, just a cell phone and an occasional accountant for help.

A minor point I will give to these simple rural and small town folk. The federal government is not very visible in many places in America. You go to a small town anywhere, and it is the state, city and county that take care of things. The US highway or the Interstate may be a hundred miles away. In this sense, they really do not see much benefit from the federal government. Unless you sign up for the military and then use the education credit later, you may not deal much with the government. But you pay federal tax.