Well, it made my blood boil after all

Overworked America:12 Charts That Will Make Your Blood Boil

I read quite a bit on the internet, and most of what I read is, well, useless.  The internet has become, unfortunately, a world of trolls, people who only write things to get a rise out of their readers.  And unfortunately, a lot of people think this sort of drivel is news.  The above-linked article is as good an example as any.

The title of the article tells us that after reading this article our blood should be boiling.  And it appears that most of the readers, at least the readers who comment, agree.  But, I'm not so sure that whatever the author is going to say is worth getting all worked-up over.  And it doesn't take long before I see that I'm right.

From the first paragraph:

"In the past 20 years, the US economy has grown nearly 60 percent. This huge increase in productivity is partly due to automation, the internet, and other improvements in efficiency. But it's also the result of Americans working harder—often without a big boost to their bottom lines. Oh, and meanwhile, corporate profits are up 20 percent."

So, wow, huh.  There's some real data in there, and luckily for us, not too much, cuz numbers make for some dull reading.  Just enough to start getting our blood to simmer.  Too bad they left out a key data point: how much does the author think would be a "big boost" to a worker's bottom line?

Well, it doesn't much matter what the author thinks.  First, think about this: If the economy grew by 60 percent, and corporate profits grew by 20 percent, where did the rest of the economic growth go?

As it turns-out, I may have a sort of answer.  The government, vile as it is, does offer a wealth of economic data these days.  I don't necessarily trust them, but I also don't think they're smart enough to completely pull the wool over everyone's eyes for long, so I'm going to use some of that questionable government data to see if I can find where all that money went.

Here's part of a table from the Census.gov website:

Granted, the top 5 percent have seen greater gains than the rest of us, which almost makes my blood boil since, as far as I can tell, they really haven't done anything to warrant getting a bigger piece of the pie.  Still, even the lowest fifth of households saw their incomes increase by far more than corporate profits have.  And one thing to note here: the author doesn't say whether the figures they used are adjusted for inflation in any way; these figures are in constant dollars.  If they were in nominal dollars, the changes would be greater.

Then there's the bit about increasing GDP being some sort of measure for increasing productivity.  Hmm.  Well, as it turns out, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has some data relevant to that topic.  Here's a graph showing how the labor force has grown over the last twenty years:

Screen clipping taken: 6/25/2014 4:47 AM

So, over the twenty years in question, the actual size of the workforce has increased substantially, to the tune of right about 20 percent.  The author mentions somewhat offhandedly that this "huge increase in productivity is partly due to automation, the internet, and other improvements in efficiency."  While not explicitly stated, this statement leads people to believe that these things are a small part of the huge increase in productivity.  I beg to differ.

To put the technology advances in perspective, let's look at some things about tech in 1994.  Netscape and Yahoo were founded that year.  Prodigy began pioneering dialup connections, which were, as I recall, at the blazing speed of 14k baud, or some such thing as that (does it show I'm not a real computer geek?).  Commodore 64s were still selling, although the company did go bankrupt that year.  It was called 64 because it had 64k of memory.  How much memory is in your phone today?  Probably about 32,000 times that much, or more.  The processor ran at about 1 Mhz.  Compare that to today's processors.

The point is, that technological advances over this period have been remarkable to say the least, and I think, if anything, they show that Americans don't work as hard as they did 20 years ago, although I'm sure I could do a survey and find that everyone works way harder than they did back then.  I know I do.

Now, I'm not saying that I'm happy with the way things are here in the U.S., but that's not the point of this post.  One thing we don't really need more of these days is internet trolls, and yeah, I think the author of the linked article is just a troll, and probably too busy playing with his phone and calling it work related communication to be bothered actually finding some real stuff for the rest of us to get angry over.  And Mother Jones has the gall to ask me for money to read that stuff.  Maybe I should send them a donation, cuz after all, they provided me with the target of this post.  Then again, I'm not getting paid for this, so, as it turns out, I am, in fact, sharing the wealth I have derived from their article.

Well, mission accomplished, Mother Jones.  My blood is boiling, just not for the reason that you think it should be.

Crazy

Quite a few years ago I went to see a psychiatrist.  When he asked why I came to see him, I said, "I think I'm going crazy."  His response was that I wasn't going crazy since crazy people never think they are crazy.  I left his office hugely relieved that I wasn't crazy after all.

It didn't take long before I then realized that since I didn't think I was crazy, I might very well be crazy.  But then I realized that thinking I might be crazy because I thought I wasn't crazy meant that I in fact wasn't crazy because I thought that I might be crazy.

Still later, I started thinking I might be going crazy, which then lead to the idea that I might just be thinking that so that then I could convince myself that I wasn't going crazy because, since I thought I was going crazy, I clearly was not.  Which lead inevitably to think that therefore I was crazy and just playing mind games with myself to convince myself that I wasn't crazy, but since I thought that last bit, I was not crazy.

Well, to cut to the chase, I just want to thank that psychiatrist from decades ago for virtually assuring that I would never be totally convinced of my own sanity, and through doubting my own sanity, I can rest assured that I am, in fact sane.  That is, unless I am only telling myself that I think I may be crazy in order to reaffirm my hope that I am, in fact, not crazy.  Either way, I'm probably okay.  Unless I'm not, that is.

Unquotable: Nietzsche

For my second post on this subject, I've chosen a well-known, and apparently hated, quote from Nietzsche: "That which does not kill us makes us stronger."

First, let me say this: I've never read anything at all by Nietzsche, so it's entirely possible that I've got it all wrong.  I did download Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, but haven't managed to get past the Introduction.  Some things are too dry even for me.

I'm not sure why, but this quote appears to be hated, maybe even loathed, by a lot of people on the internet.  In looking around, I didn't see anyone who quoted it for it's intended purpose, which I take to be some kind of motivational thing to get people to do something they don't really want to do, but which will somehow make them stronger.  Something like doing homework, or going to the gym, that sort of thing.  And, of course, most of the time doing that stuff doesn't make one feel particularly strong, and so we get resentful of the fool that first uttered those words.  I actually like it though, as it gives me an excuse to eat another Twinkie.  I guess in that regard, it might actually be making me stronger, as in, it is empowering me to do something I want to do, but think I shouldn't.

So, if your intent is to actually motivate someone, this is probably not a good choice.  It seems that everyone has already heard it, and will either: 1) argue the senselessness of the quote, or 2) twist the meaning to empower themselves to do what they really want to do.  

So, I was thinking about making this into a much more intellectual discourse, but while searching the internets, I found these two articles:

So Nietzsche WAS right: What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, scientists find

What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Weaker

Strangely, both of these articles say similar things, but according to the titles, arrive a opposite conclusions, which convinced me that there really wasn't much point in trying to intellectualize this at all.  And then, I happened on another Nietzsche quote that pretty much made any discussion of this quote moot: "There are no facts, only interpretations."  I really got the impression that the first quote was supposed to be, in some way, a fact, and yet Nietzsche himself said there are none.  But wait, if there are no facts then isn't that in itself a fact?

Okay, so I don't really buy the whole "There are no facts" thing.  I think there is at least one fact, and possibly around four or five.  The other millions of "facts" that you think you know are not really facts at all.  But what I do like about "no facts" is that it validates my own twisted interpretation of the original quote.  And so, feeling thus empowered, I think I'll end this and have another Twinkie.  Thanks, Mr. Nietzsche!