I am deeply dismayed by the lack of attention to the long-range items that will determine the future of our nation. In the last several decades, we have become a more polarized nation focused on divisive social issues. We have taken identities as Republicans, Democrats, or Tea Partiers and lost sight of being Americans. Because of this myopia, issues clearly on the horizon that have huge significance are getting minimal attention. The cost of this oversight may be our global preeminence.
Let’s start with the fiction that “America is the greatest country on earth.” It was, and in some areas it still is. But, this is no longer an across-the-board truth. We can no longer pat ourselves on our collective backs for our past achievements. Where are we great today and where are we losing our claim to greatness?
Our freedoms, rights as citizens, and personal protections enforced through our government are as good as or better than any nation’s. In that we can take pride. In large measure, our sense of doing right for other peoples in other nations has little parallel. When there is a global disaster, the world looks to America to lead the way. Our military strength is still far above that of any nation. We have been blessed by abundant natural resources, water, arable land, and a temperate climate (all of which we have taken for granted). Despite the great recession, we have one of the world's strongest economies. I’ve traveled the world and I am always happy to come home to the USA. It has its flaws, but on balance it is still a great place to live.
Unfortunately, that great place is eroding. Egypt, Persia, Greece, Rome, France, Spain, England, China, the Incas and the Aztecs, all peaked and declined. We could follow them into history unless we end the magical thinking that our looming problems will get solved by ignoring them. Here are some nation-sized issues that must be addressed if we are not going to slide into history as a once-great nation.
National fatness.
Mediocre educational performance.
Sustainable future energy sources.
Water resources and utilization.
Climate change and sea level rise.
Deteriorating infrastructure.
Governmental fiscal discipline.
Needs of an aging population.
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
What Matters Most for America - Part 2 of 5: Fatness and Education
Let’s begin with the old expression “fat, dumb, and happy.”
As a nation, we are fat. We lead the world in obesity - 30% of us are obese and 40% of us are overweight. Obese people get sick more often driving up the need for health care services. What’s worse, obesity is plaguing our young people. How will these people take care of the rising number of old people? Clearly, a large segment of the population follows a lifestyle that is unhealthy. We have overindustrialized our food processing. We have put too much “fast food” on every corner. We have “upsized” our serving sizes and our waistlines. We are telling ourselves that being overweight is normal. Are we nuts?
We have created a culture of “death by convenience.” How ironic is it that everyday life has become less physically demanding to the point that we must drive to a gym to burn calories by walking on a treadmill? Physical activity inherent in daily living has gone down while emotional stress has gone up. The 30% of us who have a normal weight are able to live a more “fat free” lifestyle so it can be done. While fatness is a national problem, it can only be solved by individual resolve and action. The war on fat must be fought on the home front: in the grocery store, in the kitchen, on the playground, and by exercising in the neighborhood or gym.
The dumbing down of America has been going on for some time. Part of this is illustrated in how we have managed to simplify tasks to make it easier for less-educated people to do jobs (e.g., cash registers now calculate change). The test scores of our students compared to other countries have been sliding downward. We fall in the mid range for industrialized nations. An educated populace is a cornerstone of both democracy and global competitiveness. A nation with creeping ignorance falls prey to demagogues and its internal politics veer off track. A nation with creeping ignorance is unable to do the high-tech, high-skilled jobs that provide high wages. The result is an impoverished underclass who live in an affluent society while they compete against workers earning third-world wages. Education is an enabler of success and upward economic mobility and we are struggling to make it work for us in the modern age.
Education in America has long been a local matter. Local school boards make decisions about school financing and administration. Judging school performance was often a matter of making comparisons within the county, or maybe the state. Now there are national standards. Why? Because educational performance is a key to national strength. It’s no longer good enough to be better than the state next door. We must be better than every country on earth.
Every child is unique and we need a system that identifies that uniqueness and is tailored to it. We need the fortitude and the mechanisms that advance a child when he or she has mastered material, not when he is another year older. We need two parent homes where the parents read to their kids instead of single parents working second jobs to make ends meet. We need every household to instill the educational work ethic that produces scholarship, not mere attendance. Schools cannot do what parents will not do. Education begins at home. We need a national effort to drive that point home and facilitate its happening.
We need to afford education the priority and funding that we do our defense budget, because in the 21st century, a skilled and intelligent population will be our ultimate defense. If that sounds far fetched, it’s not. The military has already had to compromise its physical and educational selection standards because of the decline in both among young people. Without skilled labor to support skilled jobs and higher pay, our economy will falter. A failing economy means weaker tax revenues which means pressure on all forms of government spending, including the military. A country whose citizenry is physically and educationally weak is militarily weak as well.
Are we happy about this? I hope not, but we seem to be almost stupified into accepting it as the status quo. At some point, the healthy and educated people are going to get tired of paying for the social benefits of the uneducated, underemployed, overweight, sickly people. We may ultimately see a societal split between the responsible have’s and the irresponsible have not’s. The have’s will want the have not’s to shape up and act responsibly. The have not’s will want the nicer homes and better incomes of the have’s and will seek to redistribute that wealth to themselves through government social programs. A nation does not lift itself up by pulling down those at the top.
As a nation, we are fat. We lead the world in obesity - 30% of us are obese and 40% of us are overweight. Obese people get sick more often driving up the need for health care services. What’s worse, obesity is plaguing our young people. How will these people take care of the rising number of old people? Clearly, a large segment of the population follows a lifestyle that is unhealthy. We have overindustrialized our food processing. We have put too much “fast food” on every corner. We have “upsized” our serving sizes and our waistlines. We are telling ourselves that being overweight is normal. Are we nuts?
We have created a culture of “death by convenience.” How ironic is it that everyday life has become less physically demanding to the point that we must drive to a gym to burn calories by walking on a treadmill? Physical activity inherent in daily living has gone down while emotional stress has gone up. The 30% of us who have a normal weight are able to live a more “fat free” lifestyle so it can be done. While fatness is a national problem, it can only be solved by individual resolve and action. The war on fat must be fought on the home front: in the grocery store, in the kitchen, on the playground, and by exercising in the neighborhood or gym.
The dumbing down of America has been going on for some time. Part of this is illustrated in how we have managed to simplify tasks to make it easier for less-educated people to do jobs (e.g., cash registers now calculate change). The test scores of our students compared to other countries have been sliding downward. We fall in the mid range for industrialized nations. An educated populace is a cornerstone of both democracy and global competitiveness. A nation with creeping ignorance falls prey to demagogues and its internal politics veer off track. A nation with creeping ignorance is unable to do the high-tech, high-skilled jobs that provide high wages. The result is an impoverished underclass who live in an affluent society while they compete against workers earning third-world wages. Education is an enabler of success and upward economic mobility and we are struggling to make it work for us in the modern age.
Education in America has long been a local matter. Local school boards make decisions about school financing and administration. Judging school performance was often a matter of making comparisons within the county, or maybe the state. Now there are national standards. Why? Because educational performance is a key to national strength. It’s no longer good enough to be better than the state next door. We must be better than every country on earth.
Every child is unique and we need a system that identifies that uniqueness and is tailored to it. We need the fortitude and the mechanisms that advance a child when he or she has mastered material, not when he is another year older. We need two parent homes where the parents read to their kids instead of single parents working second jobs to make ends meet. We need every household to instill the educational work ethic that produces scholarship, not mere attendance. Schools cannot do what parents will not do. Education begins at home. We need a national effort to drive that point home and facilitate its happening.
We need to afford education the priority and funding that we do our defense budget, because in the 21st century, a skilled and intelligent population will be our ultimate defense. If that sounds far fetched, it’s not. The military has already had to compromise its physical and educational selection standards because of the decline in both among young people. Without skilled labor to support skilled jobs and higher pay, our economy will falter. A failing economy means weaker tax revenues which means pressure on all forms of government spending, including the military. A country whose citizenry is physically and educationally weak is militarily weak as well.
Are we happy about this? I hope not, but we seem to be almost stupified into accepting it as the status quo. At some point, the healthy and educated people are going to get tired of paying for the social benefits of the uneducated, underemployed, overweight, sickly people. We may ultimately see a societal split between the responsible have’s and the irresponsible have not’s. The have’s will want the have not’s to shape up and act responsibly. The have not’s will want the nicer homes and better incomes of the have’s and will seek to redistribute that wealth to themselves through government social programs. A nation does not lift itself up by pulling down those at the top.
What Matters Most for America - Part 3 of 5: Energy, Water, and Climate Change
We are complacent about our energy supplies. We rely on fossil fuels for much of our energy. Every time there is a shortage of supply, we worry about energy. As soon as that particular situation resolves, we become complacent again. The advent of fracking to release natural gas, and the discovery of more oil beneath North Dakota, make it easy to feel comfortable today. The inescapable truth is that hydrocarbons are ultimately finite. Eventually they will be used up. It may take 100 years, but the day will come when the last oil well runs dry and the last gas well sputters out. The nation that prepares for that day will be the one that survives into the post hydrocarbon future. Long-term energy sufficiency is a strategic national issue. Only nuclear and renewable sources of energy will be available in the long run. We must increase these sources of energy and develop more efficient ways of using energy to match both supply and demand. It takes a national research and development effort to do so.
Just as energy is finite, so is water. We get that water from three sources: rainfall, groundwater, desalinization. Rainfall is irregular from year-to-year. Droughts can appear and last a decade or longer. The entire climate can swing through long cycles. While we have studied nature to see how the climate has changed over thousands of years, we only have records for a few hundred years. Climate and weather are complex systems that we are just beginning to understand. We tend to think that climate is a fixed feature of life, like the shoreline of an ocean. It is not. In a country that has been “settled” for less than 200 years, we have only a limited exposure to the climate swings possible in North America. How climate change will affect our rainfall and water supply is very much up in the air. We need to prepare for adversity, not prosperity. How climate is affecting Australia is worth noting because their present may be our future.
Lurking below the surface is a major water problem. We have been pumping groundwater out of our Midwestern aquifers faster than it is being replenished. We have been drawing down mother nature’s water savings account faster than she can make deposits. One of these days, those water wells will run dry. When that happens, a large section of America’s breadbasket will no longer be able to produce food as it does today. Less food and a larger population are not a good combination. A similar situation is occurring in California where winter snow accumulations are insufficient to supply water demands for agriculture and a growing population. How much of this problem is random or cyclical versus permanent is hard to know, but that is no reason to delay action. We need a long-term plan and investment in our infrastructure to ensure our water supplies and control their usage.
Climate change is an issue where opinions are divided, but not rationally so. To borrow from a famous historical document, “We hold these truths to be self-evident...” Hundreds of millions of years ago, nature sequestered carbon from the atmosphere into the bodies of plants and animals that were covered by sediments and compressed into coal or converted to oil and natural gas. This process took tens of millions of years. In a matter of a few hundred years, we will have released back into the atmosphere a significant portion of this stored carbon through the burning of fossil fuels. We are messing with mother nature. We have raised the carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere to what is considered to be a tipping point. That tipping point is where the earth enters a global warming cycle that will melt glaciers and the polar ice cap releasing more water into the oceans and exposing more ocean to the sun’s heat creating a self-sustaining rise in temperature. Once the snowball starts melting, we can’t stop it.
There is no debate that the greenhouse effect of CO2 gas is real. While the earth has gone through numerous cycles of warming and cooling (e.g., the ice age about 15,000 years ago) without man being the cause, it is foolish to ignore the impact of man’s activity on the planet. Regardless of what a person believes is the cause, the effect is the same - rising temperatures, rising ocean levels, agricultural disruption, and population migration. We face a crisis in coastal communities where millions of people may be forced to relocate as water levels rise. It will change housing, transportation, insurance costs, and personal fortunes as real estate literally goes underwater. The time to plan and prepare is now.
Just as energy is finite, so is water. We get that water from three sources: rainfall, groundwater, desalinization. Rainfall is irregular from year-to-year. Droughts can appear and last a decade or longer. The entire climate can swing through long cycles. While we have studied nature to see how the climate has changed over thousands of years, we only have records for a few hundred years. Climate and weather are complex systems that we are just beginning to understand. We tend to think that climate is a fixed feature of life, like the shoreline of an ocean. It is not. In a country that has been “settled” for less than 200 years, we have only a limited exposure to the climate swings possible in North America. How climate change will affect our rainfall and water supply is very much up in the air. We need to prepare for adversity, not prosperity. How climate is affecting Australia is worth noting because their present may be our future.
Lurking below the surface is a major water problem. We have been pumping groundwater out of our Midwestern aquifers faster than it is being replenished. We have been drawing down mother nature’s water savings account faster than she can make deposits. One of these days, those water wells will run dry. When that happens, a large section of America’s breadbasket will no longer be able to produce food as it does today. Less food and a larger population are not a good combination. A similar situation is occurring in California where winter snow accumulations are insufficient to supply water demands for agriculture and a growing population. How much of this problem is random or cyclical versus permanent is hard to know, but that is no reason to delay action. We need a long-term plan and investment in our infrastructure to ensure our water supplies and control their usage.
Climate change is an issue where opinions are divided, but not rationally so. To borrow from a famous historical document, “We hold these truths to be self-evident...” Hundreds of millions of years ago, nature sequestered carbon from the atmosphere into the bodies of plants and animals that were covered by sediments and compressed into coal or converted to oil and natural gas. This process took tens of millions of years. In a matter of a few hundred years, we will have released back into the atmosphere a significant portion of this stored carbon through the burning of fossil fuels. We are messing with mother nature. We have raised the carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere to what is considered to be a tipping point. That tipping point is where the earth enters a global warming cycle that will melt glaciers and the polar ice cap releasing more water into the oceans and exposing more ocean to the sun’s heat creating a self-sustaining rise in temperature. Once the snowball starts melting, we can’t stop it.
There is no debate that the greenhouse effect of CO2 gas is real. While the earth has gone through numerous cycles of warming and cooling (e.g., the ice age about 15,000 years ago) without man being the cause, it is foolish to ignore the impact of man’s activity on the planet. Regardless of what a person believes is the cause, the effect is the same - rising temperatures, rising ocean levels, agricultural disruption, and population migration. We face a crisis in coastal communities where millions of people may be forced to relocate as water levels rise. It will change housing, transportation, insurance costs, and personal fortunes as real estate literally goes underwater. The time to plan and prepare is now.
What Matters Most for America - Part 4 of 5: Infrastructure, Fiscal Discipline, and the Aging Population
The infrastructure of the country is deteriorating. We have enjoyed the benefits of an interstate highway and air transportation system that are barely more than 50 years old. Our sewer and water systems are older. These things are the underpinnings of modern commerce and living. They are decaying. Just as we can enjoy a new house without making repairs for years, we have enjoyed the benefits of these new modes of transportation. Unless we reinvest in updating and upgrading them, we will be living with a century-old infrastructure that will break down leaving us gridlocked and uncompetitive. Maintenance isn’t glamorous, just necessary. We need to reinvest in the shared assets that make America run. Most of these are managed by government.
The imbalance of spending versus tax revenue and the resulting growth in deficits and total debt for the United States is a festering long-term problem. Fiscal collapse is an intangible issue. Unlike easily seen potholes in a deteriorating highway, fiscal rot only is visible on an accounting ledger. Governments can get away with spending beyond their means longer than individuals, but not forever. As spending for social programs (Social Security, Medicare, Affordable Care Act) increases with an increasing older population and the additional of new beneficiaries, the pressure to continue deficit spending will continue.
We are funding the present by borrowing from the future. The big problem with that future is the number of people available to pay the bill relative to those getting benefits is going in the wrong direction. It is a very tough decision to make, but to provide at least a minimal safety net for the most vulnerable, government spending must be curtailed. There are hard fiscal priorities that we must determine and live by. Financial responsibility has to become our government’s top priority, otherwise all its other programs cannot be sustained. The government may not go out of business, but it may inflate its way out of trouble by paying old debts with cheaper, inflated dollars. It saves itself at the expense of its citizens by using inflation as a hidden form of taxation. It’s time to “Just Say No” to about 30% of today’s spending and to say “Yes” to about a 10% increase in taxation in order to balance our budget and reduce our debt. We have been fiscally lazy and paying the price only gets more costly with each passing day.
The aging population is a problem that we have seen coming for a long time. It was once a long-range problem that is now becoming a current problem. As the baby boomers enter their golden years, the costs for Social Security and Medicare will rise. Demands on the health care system will increase when the number of medical professionals may actually shrink. Alzheimer’s patients requiring constant care will increase. And, because many seniors have not managed their finances sufficiently to prepare for retirement, demands for increases to Social Security are likely to arise. There may come a time when America wishes its old people would just die because they cost too much to keep alive.
We need to develop today more economical ways for seniors to live and to get inexpensive health care. We need to prepare for a society where, instead of the kids moving back in with the parents, the parents are moving back in with the kids. We need to determine how health care dollars will be allocated so that we spend less on end-of-life treatments in order to fund care for active lives. A healthy workforce is more essential to the nation than healthy retirees. In the future, we will come face-to-face with an inter generational conflict for health care services and benefits. It will force us to look at euthanasia as an option for those beyond medical help. Such a debate will rival that of abortion and take many years to resolve. The time to begin that discussion is now.
The imbalance of spending versus tax revenue and the resulting growth in deficits and total debt for the United States is a festering long-term problem. Fiscal collapse is an intangible issue. Unlike easily seen potholes in a deteriorating highway, fiscal rot only is visible on an accounting ledger. Governments can get away with spending beyond their means longer than individuals, but not forever. As spending for social programs (Social Security, Medicare, Affordable Care Act) increases with an increasing older population and the additional of new beneficiaries, the pressure to continue deficit spending will continue.
We are funding the present by borrowing from the future. The big problem with that future is the number of people available to pay the bill relative to those getting benefits is going in the wrong direction. It is a very tough decision to make, but to provide at least a minimal safety net for the most vulnerable, government spending must be curtailed. There are hard fiscal priorities that we must determine and live by. Financial responsibility has to become our government’s top priority, otherwise all its other programs cannot be sustained. The government may not go out of business, but it may inflate its way out of trouble by paying old debts with cheaper, inflated dollars. It saves itself at the expense of its citizens by using inflation as a hidden form of taxation. It’s time to “Just Say No” to about 30% of today’s spending and to say “Yes” to about a 10% increase in taxation in order to balance our budget and reduce our debt. We have been fiscally lazy and paying the price only gets more costly with each passing day.
The aging population is a problem that we have seen coming for a long time. It was once a long-range problem that is now becoming a current problem. As the baby boomers enter their golden years, the costs for Social Security and Medicare will rise. Demands on the health care system will increase when the number of medical professionals may actually shrink. Alzheimer’s patients requiring constant care will increase. And, because many seniors have not managed their finances sufficiently to prepare for retirement, demands for increases to Social Security are likely to arise. There may come a time when America wishes its old people would just die because they cost too much to keep alive.
We need to develop today more economical ways for seniors to live and to get inexpensive health care. We need to prepare for a society where, instead of the kids moving back in with the parents, the parents are moving back in with the kids. We need to determine how health care dollars will be allocated so that we spend less on end-of-life treatments in order to fund care for active lives. A healthy workforce is more essential to the nation than healthy retirees. In the future, we will come face-to-face with an inter generational conflict for health care services and benefits. It will force us to look at euthanasia as an option for those beyond medical help. Such a debate will rival that of abortion and take many years to resolve. The time to begin that discussion is now.
What Matters Most for America - Part 5 of 5: Who Will Act?
Who will address these issues?
National fatness.
Mediocre educational performance.
Sustainable future energy sources.
Water resources and utilization.
Climate change and sea level rise.
Deteriorating infrastructure.
Governmental fiscal discipline.
Needs of an aging population.
It isn’t likely to be the politicians to whom we entrust the leadership of our nation. The political parties might rise to the occasion and champion some of these issues if they weren’t so busy worrying about fund raising and the next election cycle and how to stymie the efforts of the other party. With this level of leadership for government, the bureaucracy below may send up warning signals, but isn’t likely to act on its own. Government is fiddling while the country heads toward multiple crises. The nature and scale of those crises are such that the government’s typical crisis management problem solving will be inadequate to handle them. We will be overwhelmed.
It is not likely to be the capitalists. Capitalism has no national allegiance. It’s driving force is the creation of wealth for the owners of the capital. To the extent that individual capitalists have a sense of national pride and concern, they will guide their industries to help America. Unfortunately, most large corporations are global enterprises with institutional stockholders. Because of this, there is no driving force to make a firm an “American company” looking out for our national interests. Small businesses may have patriotic positions, but they lack the leverage needed to command the stage and move the country. We can compare this situation in America with that of China. In China, business, industry, and government are coordinated as a single national force. It may not produce the quality of personal life and liberty that the American system does, but it is making China a more effective international competitor for trade and resources. As the Chinese economy gets larger and is fueled by its own domestic demand, it will become less dependent on exports to America, more self-confident as a nation, and militarily stronger. It will challenge America for world dominance. It will be helped down that road by capitalism that sold it the technology it needed to overtake America.
Only we, the citizens, can get these issues addressed. For some issues, this will be done by individual action in our personal lives. For other issues, we must copy the special interest groups who lobby the legislatures and finance political campaigns to get what they want. They seem to have the influence that makes the system work. The problem is getting everyday people to band together to work on these long-range issues when we are confronted by so many near-term problems in our personal lives. Only when groups dedicated to solving long-range problems get involved in the political process, by preparing and financially supporting worthwhile candidates, can action begin. It happens now for near-term and emotional issues like gun control and abortion. While those are meaningful, they won’t mean much in a country that fails to address its larger problems. In the meantime, the clock ticks on toward our days of reckoning.
National fatness.
Mediocre educational performance.
Sustainable future energy sources.
Water resources and utilization.
Climate change and sea level rise.
Deteriorating infrastructure.
Governmental fiscal discipline.
Needs of an aging population.
It isn’t likely to be the politicians to whom we entrust the leadership of our nation. The political parties might rise to the occasion and champion some of these issues if they weren’t so busy worrying about fund raising and the next election cycle and how to stymie the efforts of the other party. With this level of leadership for government, the bureaucracy below may send up warning signals, but isn’t likely to act on its own. Government is fiddling while the country heads toward multiple crises. The nature and scale of those crises are such that the government’s typical crisis management problem solving will be inadequate to handle them. We will be overwhelmed.
It is not likely to be the capitalists. Capitalism has no national allegiance. It’s driving force is the creation of wealth for the owners of the capital. To the extent that individual capitalists have a sense of national pride and concern, they will guide their industries to help America. Unfortunately, most large corporations are global enterprises with institutional stockholders. Because of this, there is no driving force to make a firm an “American company” looking out for our national interests. Small businesses may have patriotic positions, but they lack the leverage needed to command the stage and move the country. We can compare this situation in America with that of China. In China, business, industry, and government are coordinated as a single national force. It may not produce the quality of personal life and liberty that the American system does, but it is making China a more effective international competitor for trade and resources. As the Chinese economy gets larger and is fueled by its own domestic demand, it will become less dependent on exports to America, more self-confident as a nation, and militarily stronger. It will challenge America for world dominance. It will be helped down that road by capitalism that sold it the technology it needed to overtake America.
Only we, the citizens, can get these issues addressed. For some issues, this will be done by individual action in our personal lives. For other issues, we must copy the special interest groups who lobby the legislatures and finance political campaigns to get what they want. They seem to have the influence that makes the system work. The problem is getting everyday people to band together to work on these long-range issues when we are confronted by so many near-term problems in our personal lives. Only when groups dedicated to solving long-range problems get involved in the political process, by preparing and financially supporting worthwhile candidates, can action begin. It happens now for near-term and emotional issues like gun control and abortion. While those are meaningful, they won’t mean much in a country that fails to address its larger problems. In the meantime, the clock ticks on toward our days of reckoning.
Thursday, July 25, 2013
Election 2012 - How Overland Park, KS cost Romney the presidency
How did one of the following places win the 2012 election for Barack Obama and cost Mitt Romney the presidency?
Overland Park, Kansas, or
Rancho Cucamonga, California, or
Fort Lauderdale, Florida, or
Tuscaloosa County, Alabama
And, why these places?
While the presidential election of 2012 is behind us now, it is worth looking at the less-than-obvious math behind what it takes to win. First, let’s look at the reported numbers.
Electoral college results: Obama 332, Romney 206.
Popular vote: Obama 65,910,437, Romney 60,932,795. A difference of 4,977,642 votes.
Popular vote: Obama 51.07%, Romney 47.21%. A 3.86% margin of victory.
The Electoral College results suggest that Barack Obama won by a wide margin, and even the popular vote totals would suggest a comfortable victory. But is that really true?
What was the real margin of victory? Turns out it was about 166,500 votes or 0.136%. That is a much thinner margin than the ones above. Where did 0.136% come from?
The secret to winning is to collect enough Electoral College (EC) votes. Doing that requires carrying enough states to reach 270 EC votes. By analyzing the states with the smallest margins of victory for Barack Obama, then prioritizing them according to their electoral votes, it is possible to calculate how many voters in each state had to switch from Obama to Romney to give that state’s EC votes to Romney. Romney needed to get 64 more EC votes (206 + 64 = 270). This would simultaneously remove them from Obama’s total (332 - 64 = 268).
Here’s the math. (numbers rounded to nearest 10,000 from results shortly after the election)
Florida has 29 EC votes and a winning margin of 73,000 votes.
Ohio has 18 EC votes and a winning margin of 103,000 votes.
Virginia has 13 EC votes and a winning margin of 116,000 votes.
New Hampshire has 4 EC votes and a winning margin of 41,000 votes.
Total EC votes = 64. Total popular vote margin = 333,000.
Number of voters needed to switch = 333,000 / 2 = 166,500 voters.
If only 166,500 people in these four states had voted for Romney instead of Obama, the winning total of EC votes would have gone to Romney and he would have won.
What percentage of victory is 166,500 votes? It is 166,500 divided by the 121,745,725 votes cast. That is 0.136% of the total votes cast. Or, about 1/7 of 1%. That is a razor thin victory.
So how did Overland Park, KS, or Rancho Cucamonga, CA, or Fort Lauderdale, FL, or Tuscaloosa County, AL make all the difference in the election? As individual locales, they did not. However, each of these locations has a population just over the 166,500 needed to change the outcome of the election.
One vote really does count when the margin of victory is so close.
Overland Park, Kansas, or
Rancho Cucamonga, California, or
Fort Lauderdale, Florida, or
Tuscaloosa County, Alabama
And, why these places?
While the presidential election of 2012 is behind us now, it is worth looking at the less-than-obvious math behind what it takes to win. First, let’s look at the reported numbers.
Electoral college results: Obama 332, Romney 206.
Popular vote: Obama 65,910,437, Romney 60,932,795. A difference of 4,977,642 votes.
Popular vote: Obama 51.07%, Romney 47.21%. A 3.86% margin of victory.
The Electoral College results suggest that Barack Obama won by a wide margin, and even the popular vote totals would suggest a comfortable victory. But is that really true?
What was the real margin of victory? Turns out it was about 166,500 votes or 0.136%. That is a much thinner margin than the ones above. Where did 0.136% come from?
The secret to winning is to collect enough Electoral College (EC) votes. Doing that requires carrying enough states to reach 270 EC votes. By analyzing the states with the smallest margins of victory for Barack Obama, then prioritizing them according to their electoral votes, it is possible to calculate how many voters in each state had to switch from Obama to Romney to give that state’s EC votes to Romney. Romney needed to get 64 more EC votes (206 + 64 = 270). This would simultaneously remove them from Obama’s total (332 - 64 = 268).
Here’s the math. (numbers rounded to nearest 10,000 from results shortly after the election)
Florida has 29 EC votes and a winning margin of 73,000 votes.
Ohio has 18 EC votes and a winning margin of 103,000 votes.
Virginia has 13 EC votes and a winning margin of 116,000 votes.
New Hampshire has 4 EC votes and a winning margin of 41,000 votes.
Total EC votes = 64. Total popular vote margin = 333,000.
Number of voters needed to switch = 333,000 / 2 = 166,500 voters.
If only 166,500 people in these four states had voted for Romney instead of Obama, the winning total of EC votes would have gone to Romney and he would have won.
What percentage of victory is 166,500 votes? It is 166,500 divided by the 121,745,725 votes cast. That is 0.136% of the total votes cast. Or, about 1/7 of 1%. That is a razor thin victory.
So how did Overland Park, KS, or Rancho Cucamonga, CA, or Fort Lauderdale, FL, or Tuscaloosa County, AL make all the difference in the election? As individual locales, they did not. However, each of these locations has a population just over the 166,500 needed to change the outcome of the election.
One vote really does count when the margin of victory is so close.
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
America and Guns - Part 3 of 3
Resolving the Gun Issue
To find a resolution to the debate between the pro-gun and anti-gun populations requires understanding gun ownership and gun usage. Part 2 looked at gun ownership. Let's tackle gun usage with some genuine statistics.
A personal firearm in the home is 22 times more likely to be used for a purpose other than self defense. In other words, there is a less than 5% chance the weapon will protect your family and a 95% chance that it will hurt your family or someone else when it is used. How do guns go wrong? They are used almost entirely for suicides and homicides including spouse killing (mostly women). Very few are accidents of the "I didn’t know it was loaded" type, or the toddler shooting. Odds of 95/5 are not good. Most people would not make a bet on those odds (Powerball aside). This statistic makes gun ownership look very unsafe.
Sources for the 22x statistic: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/opinion/sunday/dangerous-gun-myths.html?_r=0 and http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9715182
Abstracts of original gun studies at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=Kellermann%20AL%5BAuthor%5D&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=3713749
However, the 95/5 statistic is misleading and is questioned by gun advocates. The statistic applies to instances where a firearm is used. It does not count all the non-events that never occur. When does the threat to use a weapon prevent its actual use? On a larger scale, the question is "Of the more than 200,000,000 firearms in possession, how many cause bodily injury each year?" The answer can be derived from CDC information on gun deaths for 2009. The answer is that about 30,000 people die each year as a result of a firearm (9.8 deaths per 100,000 people). That is about 1.3% of the 2.25 million deaths from all causes. Of the 30,000 gun deaths, about 18,000 are suicides and another 12,000 are homicides. Accidental shootings are a tiny fraction of the total. That means that 0.01 percent (one one-hundredth of 1%) of all guns each year are used to kill someone, and roughly two thirds of those deaths are self-inflicted. Viewed another way, you would need to remove 30,000 guns from all gun owners to statistically prevent two suicides and one homicide. Of the 12,664 murders reported in 2011 by the FBI, 68% involved a firearm. Of the total, 49% were commited using a handgun, 5.3% with a rifle or shotgun and 13.3% with some other type of firearm. One-third of all homicides were caused by other means.
The CDC data that was the source for this analysis is on the internet at:
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6106a1.htm?s_cid=ss6106a1_w
The FBI data is at: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/table-20
The 200,000,000 guns in possession is a very rough estimate based on gun production since 1899. http://web.archive.org/web/20071214215005/http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/guic.pdf
Applying the 5% self-protection statistic to the 30,000 gun deaths each year would suggest (not prove) that of the 200 million guns in households, only about 1,500 each year are used in self-defense. So the odds of using a gun for self defense in any given year are about .00075% (less than 1 in 100,000). Unless a person lives in a high-threat environment, or works in that type of occupation, gun ownership for self-protection is largely illusory.
The evidence would indicate that when gun owners act responsibly by keeping their guns and ammunition safely stored and using them under proper conditions, the likelihood of a firearm killing anyone is tiny. It is the mentally disturbed, the violence prone, and criminals who create the scary statistics. How do we separate these people from the responsible gun owners so as to protect society while honoring the right to own a firearm?
Suggested Solutions
One approach is to control who purchases guns. That’s a good start. Barring felons and mentally unstable people from buying a gun helps. It is however, not a complete defense. Felons will still buy guns from the black market or street dealers. People who are mentally stable when they buy a gun can become mentally unstable years later, or they have access to one owned by a friend or family member. Short of requiring every gun owner to periodically reapply to own a gun (like a driver’s license), there is only a limited defense against keeping guns away from people with mental health issues. So, background checks for gun purchases can help, but they are not a total solution by a long measure. And, they are fatally flawed unless those checks are required for all gun sales including private seller transactions - a fragmented market that could be as hard to police as policing garage sales would be. If the government wishes to impose the background check requirement on all sellers, then it is incumbent upon the government to make it easy and inexpensive for the seller to perform the check for the solution to be practical.Another approach is to limit the lethality of weapons. That is what the assault rifle ban and magazine capacity limits would do. That helps, but not much since only 2.3% of homicides involve more than one victim (or 230 cases a year). Assault rifles have virtually no practical use that could not be met with a different rifle. Aside from fueling a fantasy of annihilating enemies as portrayed in video games, assault rifles aren’t really necessary. While there are many things in life that aren’t necessary (exotic sports cars, skydiving, supersized soft drinks), they do not pose the lethal hazard that assault rifles do. A similar argument can be made for high capacity magazines. Aside from allowing a longer firing period before reloading at a shooting range, high capacity magazines are not a necessity for civilians. If you can’t hit what you are shooting at after nine shots, a bigger magazine is not the answer.
A different approach, not using gun control, is to increase the presence of armed security officers - "The way to stop a bad guy with a gun is by a good guy with a gun." This solution is limitless in its applicability which makes it highly flawed. The knee jerk reaction to school massacres is to put police in the schools. The cost of prevention must be weighed not only against the horror of lost life, but against the reality of limited resources and realistic risk. Would it be better to have one more guidance counselor working with students every hour rather than adding a police officer whose time is spent patrolling corridors?
There is a difference between a tradegy and a catastrophe. A single death can be tragic. School shootings are certainly tragic, but they are not catastrophic. A 9.0 earthquake in San Francisco is a catastrophe because of the enormous loss of life and property.
The need for preventive actions is based on two criteria: the probability something will happen and the damage to life and property if it does. Preventive actions are prudent for tragic events with high probabilities and for catastrophes with even low probabilities. There simply are not enough resources to take preventive actions for tragedies with low probabilities. It is not the emotional response to tragedy that prevents future problems; it is the rational calculation of probability and extent of damage and injury that offers the best protection.
The Newtown school shooting was a tragedy, but it was in one school of 130,000 schools. In Newton, 27 people were killed. Twenty-seven deaths is horrific in one event, but it is .000034% of the 80,000,000 students in schools and universities. The odds of being struck by lightning in your lifetime (1/10,000 odds) are much greater than being involved in a school shooting. Policing schools has its place, but that solution is more psychologically satisfying than practically effective because the tragedy is so random and infrequent. The first thing any planful school shooter in the future would do is ambush the lone school officer at the start of a shooting spree. For every measure of protection, there evolves a counter-measure of offense. While it is prudent to have officers in high-crime and violence prone areas and the schools they serve, in other situations it is not.
Protecting schools is admirable, except people congregate in many other places and are just as vulnerable. Schools have our attention because school shootings are senselessly tragic and in the news. Fortify the schools and deranged gunmen will go to the movies (already happened), the mall, a freeway overpass, a downtown corner, a sports stadium, a metro station, etc. Short of turning the nation into a police state, we must accept there will be some risk that we must live with. That does not mean we cannot be prudent and improve school security and security at other public venues, but we must not delude ourselves into believing that it solves the problem. The security problem it aappears to solve, means diverting tax dollars from education or other purposes to pay for police protection. That diversion of funding may lead to other problems elsewhere.
Banning all guns is an extreme alternative, but not without precedence elsewhere. In the USA, it would require the repeal of the second amendment - part of the "Bill of Rights." As opponents to this approach point out, the first ten amendments are about "rights," not "restrictions." Persons seeking total gun elimination need to channel their efforts into legislation to repeal the second amendment since a regular law would currently be unconstitutional. Given the history, popularly, and widespread existence of gun ownership, as a practical matter it is unlikely confiscating and eliminating firearms will succeed. The second amendment is not likely to go away. Its protections do need to be regularly clarified by the Supreme Court to make them applicable in 21st century America. Pursuing that path might be more productive for anti-gun activists.
Let's recap some of the solutions under discussion. Limits on the types of guns can be imposed without hurting the legitimate needs of conscientious gun owners. Better screening of purchasers can reduce the likelihood of guns getting into the wrong hands. More professional security positioned wisely can limit the severity of a gun attack. However, none of these provides complete protection. Criminals will not cease to exist. A black market for weapons can be reduced, but not eliminated. Safer weapons (handgrip technology) can help, but there are already hundreds of millions of guns in homes that will last for many years. Mentally unstable people can be hindered in acquiring a gun, but a desperate person can still circumvent a system. Police can man our schools, but other venues of opportunity for killers are plentiful.
In the end, it becomes a matter of balancing the reduction of risk with the rights of all citizens to be safe and free from fear. Free from the fear that "I can’t protect myself" and free from the fear that "Someone with a gun will do me harm." One fear drives gun ownership, the other gun control. One coin, two sides, both valuable viewpoints. The issue of guns in America also means balancing how we allocate our scarce resources of tax dollars between policing and other social needs. In a democracy, debate is how we settle those matters. Debate we will.
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