Thor’s Hall

I have been trying to stay way from Presidential politics since the election.  I haven’t been 100% successful but, the goal was to provide some opportunity for the administration to find their way.  Set forth a plan that perpetuated the values that this country was founded on.

Unfortunately, we have (and continue) to see:

a.)  Missteps from the executive branch

b.)  Exploitation from the Congressional branch

c.)  Degradation in the principles, and values that helped this nation achieve an unparalleled level of success and way of life.

It is time to weigh in on some of these issues.  It is time to start swaying opinions, and start preparing for the next set of elections.  Many of the folks in office today are not seeing the reality of life, or the consequences of their actions.  Why is it that so many on the outside are able to quickly point out the risks and issues inherent in the proposals on the table.

Road Trip!!

Somehow it was funnier in Animal House…I want to stay home.

Recently Scott Adams took a cursory look at the economics of Nuclear Energy in the US, and he rasied some great points.  Ultimately the issue is much larger than just building plants, and disposing of the waste material.  Go take a look here.  The best thing about Scott’s posts are the discussion that it generates.  There are a lot of intelligent folks that get opinionated in the comments section.

Gotta love the conclusion though:

The U.S. nuclear power debate usually gets characterized as a wrestling match between irrational scaredy cats and clear-headed rationalists, refereed by a comically incompetent government. The only thing I know for sure is that no one can understand the economics of a 40-year investment.

I was just looking for .45 ACP at Midway for grins…0 in stock. Incredible!

So, I recently wrote a post about one possible redirection of the bailout funds.   In it I tried to put some scale to the numbers that we are talking about.  Then I reposted some work that was done to help put the physical prescence of the dollars that we are talking about into context.

Today, I present to you this picture to help put things in greater context.

President Barack Obama has repeatedly claimed that his budget would cut the deficit by half by the end of his term. But as Heritage analyst Brian Riedl has pointed out, given that Obama has already helped quadruple the deficit with his stimulus package, pledging to halve it by 2013 is hardly ambitious. The Washington Post has a great graphic which helps put President Obama’s budget deficits in context of President Bush’s.

This has been making the blogging and e-mail rounds for a while now.  But, it is always a good perspective.

A billion here, a billion there. Pretty soon we’re talking real money =-)

A billion dollars…

A hundred billion dollars…

Eight hundred billion dollars….

One TRILLION dollars…

What does that look like? I mean, these various numbers are tossed around like so many doggie treats, so I thought I’d take Google Sketchup out for a test drive and try to get a sense of what exactly a trillion dollars looks like.

We’ll start with a $100 dollar bill, currently the largest U.S. denomination in general circulation. Most everyone has seen them, slightly fewer have owned them; guaranteed to make friends wherever they go.

A packet of one hundred $100 bills is less than 1/2″ thick and contains $10,000. Fits in your pocket easily and is more than enough for week or two of shamefully decadent fun.

Believe it or not, this next little pile is $1 million dollars (100 packets of $10,000). You could stuff that into a grocery bag and walk around with it.

While a measly $1 million looked a little unimpressive, $100 million is a little more respectable. It fits neatly on a standard pallet…

And $1 BILLION dollars… now we’re really getting somewhere…

Next we’ll look at ONE TRILLION dollars. This is that number we’ve been hearing so much about. What is a trillion dollars? Well, it’s a million-million. It’s a thousand billion. It’s a one followed by 12 zeros.

You ready for this?

It’s pretty surprising.

Go ahead…

Scroll down…

Ladies and gentlemen… I give you $1 trillion dollars…

Notice those pallets are double-stacked, and the little guy (That’d be you and me, the lowly taxpayer!) in the left corner is still there for “perspective.”

So the next time you hear someone toss around the phrase “a trillion dollars”… that’s what they’re talking about.

So let’s take this idea and explore and validate it:

Dear Mr. President,

Patriotic Retirement:  There’s about 40 million people over 50 in the work force.  Pay them $1 million dollars apiece Severance Pay with these stipulations

1) They leave their jobs. Forty million job openings – Unemployment fixed.

2) They buy NEW American cars.  Forty million cars ordered – Auto Industry fixed.

3) They either buy a house or pay off their mortgage - Housing Crisis fixed.

I am below this age cutoff but that’s ok.  So I take my household, spending levels, saving levels etc.   Keeping the numbers round… let’s say I spend 100K a year (really it is much less).  I payoff the mortgage, buy a new car for cash, and save the balance.   So let’s say that’s 800K in the bank.  My annual spending has dropped, I am retired so my savings “expense” is gone.  So let’s say that I am down to about 65K yr in spending now.

At the same time, I start a small home based business to keep from going insane and generate 30K / yr from that.  In addition I earn 5% return annually on my 800K investment.  Between the two I am back to 70K in spending money for the year which covers my expenses.

If I ask my wife to go back to work, and she winds up making 50% of her pre-kids salary.  Let’s call that 40K / yr.  Nice chunk of change to put in the college fund for the kids, but the important part is that we now have health and dental insurance.

So, simple example and yeah I think it could be a valid solution.  So let’s do the math:

40 Million individuals x 1,000,000 USD = 40 million spent.   Versus how many trillion in stimulus????

Let’s even be more generous.  Let’s expand the age range and say we were able to attract 50 million takers.  Additionally, we increase the allowance to 10 million per person.  By my math, if I do not earn (but not lose) any thing on investments (just keep the cash under the mattress) I could spend 200K / yr and not run out of money for 50 yrs.

So to summarize, I and my family could live well with in our means and in an improved lifestyle if we wanted and probably not run out cash in my lifetime.  If the government were to say, I have 500 million dollars to give away to 50 million people that meet these criteria.  In order to receive this stimulus you must:

A.  Quit your current job and not take a job at another employer.  However, you may start a new business if you like.

B.  Purchase a new vehicle from a specified list of automakers and vehicles.  The criteria for the list is that over 50% of the vehicle and it’s components must be fabricated and assembled in the United States.

C.  You either payoff your current mortage or if you do not have a mortgage you must purchase either a second home or a replacement home.

At the end of this effort the government has put forth 500 million USD in stimulus to individuals who will in turn generate market forces in industries that have been directly impacted by the current economic “crisis”.  Corollary forces will come into play as these families purchase private health insurance, and increased consumer spending across several sectors takes place.  Additionally, jobs that were held by these individuals are opened up for other individuals to fill either through promotions or through new hires.  Bottom line, the unemployment market is suddenly impacted by a huge opportunity sweeping through multiple sectors.  In turn, businesses will have an opportunity to fill the open positions with (possibly) less expensive employees.  This will be particularly true in unionized industries where the experience and tenure scales will be shifted.

$500 million vs.  How many trillion???  Just to put this in perspective we could run 2000 of these stimulus packages for $1,000,000,000,000 (1 trillion) dollars.

Somewhere the math (and direction) in DC has lost it’s perspective in reality.

Or maybe it’s my math that’s off.

Evidently our friends at the UN are holding a “Global Warming” summit in Copenhagen this week.  Ok, that’s good.  So, the wonderful folks in the media start an article on this event as:

The worst-case scenarios on climate change envisaged by the UN are already being realised, say scientists at an international meeting in Copenhagen.

OK – I think we know where this conference is going.  Folks have their mind made up and all 2500 of them are just going to spend our money to rattle off our sound bites.

In a statement outlining their six key messages to political leaders, they say there is an increasing risk of abrupt or irreversible climate shifts.

Even modest temperatures rises will affect millions of people, particularly in the developing world, they warn.

—————————–

The meeting was also addressed by Lord Stern, the economist, whose landmark review of the economics of climate change published in 2006 highlighted the severe cost to the world of doing nothing.

He now says the report underestimated the scale of the risks, and the speed at which the planet is warming.

He urged scientists to speak out and tell the politicians what the world would be like if effective measures against global warming were not taken.

He said that if the world was to warm by 5C over the next century there would be dramatic consequences for millions of people. Rising seas would make many areas uninhabitable leading to mass migrations and inevitably sparking violent conflict.

“You’d see hundreds of millions people, probably billions of people who would have to move and we know that would cause conflict, so we would see a very extended period of conflict around the world, decades or centuries as hundreds of millions of people move, ” said Lord Stern.

“So I think it’s very important that we understand the magnitude of the risk we are running.”

So here’s the deal, in my simplified engineer’s mind.  Climate change has been with this planet since it’s inception.  It is incredibly arrogant of humans to believe that we are the cause of climate change.  AND it is potentially disastrous for us to believe that we can change the cycle.  The bulk of the scientific community is in a circular argument that is based completely on terrestrial events and approaches.

There really is not a damn thing we can do about extra terrestrial events (solar activity, etc) that could be a major cause of climate change.  But if the cause is not human activity then why would we try and change human activity to solve the problem.  Hence, the scientists tend to make the data say what they want it to say and they do not look at data that says, “Yo, the SUN has a major contributing factor here”.

Message 1:

• Don’t treat the symptom, find the cause and treat it.  If not treatable, cope with the situation and implement gradual change.

In my professional life, Organizational Change Management is a key to success.  I look at events like this climate conference and I see a disaster.

Message 2:

• Guys if you want to implement change come up with a realistic plan that takes measured steps that show verifiable improvement.  Implement those steps, then communicate the results build enthusiasm by showing success.  Getting on the grand political stage and calling a natural climate cycle a catastrophe is not a recipe for success.

Oh, by the way, what happened to that Ice Age that we were on the brink of in the 70’s.  Did I fall asleep and miss something?

BBC article is here

Over at Anarchangel – Chris Byrne has the best, and clearest crystal ball for this economic mess that I have seen.  BTW I agree.

Short term? Not too bad. Unemployment and the credit crunch are going to creep up a bit more; but for the most part the recovery has actually already started.

Though, if the government (Democrat and Republican) continue their spending spree, they could double hump this recession…. actually, I think it’s likely at this point.

Go read the whole thing here.  It is the clearest piece of fortune telling I have seen on the topic.

A lot has been said about “bailing out” the traditional Big 3 auto makers in the US.  I am looking at some of this, and thinking… nope, wouldn’t be prudent.    Bottom line, they have it figured out.  They NEED to restructure.  Take a hard look at the photos of this plant in the video.  Then compare it to what you have seen in Detroit, or Cleveland, or Chicago.  No exhaust stacks, clean and well lit assembly areas, etc.

The problem is not so much with the companies, it is with the structure of the processes.  Let’s provide them with the opportunity to address the problem in their business, not provide them with an opportunity to perpetuate the same culture and approach that has gotten them to where they are today.