Our Costliest Hysteria

How could we let this happen?

Never in its 231-year history has our entire country been shut down. You would think that COVID-19 must be the greatest threat we’ve ever faced. You would think that there must be overwhelming justification for such unprecedented action.

Of course, if you thought that you would be mistaken.

The whole country has been abruptly derailed with absolutely no debate and with no clear end in sight. Doubters and skeptics have been shamed into silence. Expressing any doubt shows you are a cold, heartless person who couldn’t care less about anyone dying.

We have casually taken leave of our most fundamental principles. The First Amendment has never been so ignored. Public officials are enforcing laws that do not exist. Politicians are arrogantly making Solomon-like decisions about which jobs are essential and which aren’t.

We’ve been breathlessly advised that we absolutely have to “flatten the curve,” the only justification being to avoid overwhelming hospitals with an unmanageable upsurge of virus patients. That upsurge has not materialized.

This pandemic in no way represents the worst threat the country’s ever faced. It’s not worse than the War of 1812, the Civil War, the 1918 flu epidemic, tuberculosis, or the polio epidemic. The last was particularly tragic because it primarily afflicted children.

COVID-19 is highly correlated with age, overwhelmingly impacting the elderly.

But the reaction to the pandemic hysteria has been the greatest one-size-fits-all error in history: treating all age groups the same.

To have the same policies and recommendations for all age groups is insane. Stopping virtually the entire population from working, and from living their lives, has been an error we will long regret.

People under age 50 with no underlying health problems, such as asthma, diabetes, or hypertension, should stop worrying about ending up in intensive care or dead. For them the probability of those outcomes is infinitesimal. Their probability of dying in a vehicle accident this year is much greater than dying from COVID-19.

Those under 50 should stop worrying about social distancing from one other. Nevertheless, it’s possible they are contagious without knowing it, so they should still keep their distance from the elderly.

The strongest country in the world has been stopped in its tracks by half-baked theories and by policies based on “worst-case scenarios.” We have placed far too much faith in “models” and “experts.” We should know better. How many times do we need to see that any “model” of a complex situation will lead us into a costly failure? Will we ever wise up?

It’s sad to watch how easy it’s been to create so much fear of this threat in so many people, especially in light of how low the probabilities actually are. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “Events are in the saddle and ride mankind.” That’s still true, but we should now add that fear is also riding mankind. ____________________

◼ Our Costliest Hysteria April 25, 202

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

Will Run for President for Food

Why all these dismal Democrat offerings?

Democrat debate in Charleston, South Carolina, Tuesday (YouTube screenshot)

◼ Will Run for President for Food - Ron Ross.American Spectator

The Democrats’ nomination saga has been pathetic. You may have detected a pattern developing over the many months. In the beginning there were more Democrat presidential candidates than anyone could keep track of. You couldn’t tell the players without a program. They had an embarrassment of riches and were nothing if not diverse — black, brown, white, Asian, male, female, gay, straight. They included both the oldest and youngest presidential candidates in U.S. history. What could possibly go wrong?

Predictably, excitement about each new candidate spiked. Then, inexorably, as their ranks dwindled, hope evaporated. One after another, as more was learned about the candidates, enthusiasm petered out. Now, with bodies of candidates strewn over the battlefield, the lineup’s initial diversity is history.

One by one they have been exposed as empty suits — no real accomplishments, no charisma, no likability.

Even the candidates still in the race have suffered from vetting. To know them is not to love them. They are a pitiful collection of losers.

The 24-hour news cycle pretends the battle still matters. The media have to promote as much drama and suspense as possible. As usual they behave more like fight promoters than reporters.

But no one in the remaining bevy of candidates has a prayer of defeating Donald Trump. Which of them “wins” the nomination makes not the slightest bit of difference. It’s just a question of which one ends up in Trump’s wood chipper.

How many times do the pundits have to be wrong about some loser being a winner? In their monomaniacal quest to unseat Trump, the Democrats have stooped to propping up dead donkeys. Ironically, their monomania is rational. For them the specter of another Trump term is even more horrific than catastrophic climate change. One term has already fried their brains, and another will drive them over the edge, just like Thelma and Louise.

To make matters worse, the Democrats’ monomania has prevented them from promoting what their party stands for. Like nature, politics abhors a vacuum. Into that vacuum have entered people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders. The Democrat Party has become pathologically socialist by default.

Meanwhile, the plethora of candidates and debates has befuddled the Democrats. Each successive debate gets uglier. So many debates cause overexposure. The rules about which candidates are eligible change arbitrarily. Democrats are known for falling in and out of love almost instantaneously. They have the attention spans of pubescent Valley girls.

After most of the debates even the mainstream media say that Trump was the real winner. If he wins without even being there, what’s going to happen when he’s there?

_________________

Democrats Are Dying From Exposure And so are their chances in November.

The Democrat Party has turned hard left. By doing so, the party has unintentionally exposed itself. Ambiguity and obfuscation are the Democrats’ stock in trade. They distort words, and they abuse the English language. They use words and phrases that sound good but are impossible to define — for example, environmental justice, intergenerational justice, climate change, and sustainability.

Such deception is crucial for the party’s survival. But the deception has become harder to sustain.

More than anyone else, Donald Trump is responsible for exposing the Democrats. They detest him and his achievements so much that their judgment has been annihilated. With new clarity, their reactions say far more about themselves than him. He is causing them to take leave of their sanity.

They hate Trump so much that they can’t celebrate his accomplishments. They even demeaned the killing of an evil and savage terrorist, Qassem Soleimani. But their insane hatred has put them in a bind.

Donald Trump has set up camp inside their brains. They should not have let him do that. They will live to regret it.

The phrase “driven to distraction” applies to what’s happening to the Democrats. “Distraction” is defined variously as lack of concentration, confusion, extreme mental or emotional disturbance, frenzy, and madness.

Donald Trump distracts the Democrats from concealing what they are. That makes him a threat to everything they hold dear. His spirit alone scares the hell out of them. He’s the greatest menace they have ever faced.

One revealing jolt to what’s left of the Democrats’ masquerade occurred at the recent Golden Globe awards ceremonies. The emcee, comedian Ricky Gervais, told the attendees, in no uncertain terms, what an out-of-touch, self-important bunch of phonies they all are. He told them, “You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world.”

Gervais was only stating the obvious. It was an “emperor’s new clothes” moment if there ever was one.

Gervais’s observations were both brilliant and simple. They were so obviously true they were impossible to deny. He let the puffed-up Hollywood elites have it right between the eyes. Someone suggested recently that it may be comedians who rescue our culture.

Trump Derangement Syndrome has ensnared the Democrats. Even their misbegotten impeachment fiasco has morphed into one big exposé of themselves. All such frantic attempts to drive Donald Trump from office have only made him more popular. They are making fools of themselves, for all the world to see.

Who, upon seeing the Democrats clearly for what they are, can still support them?

____________________

◼ Democrats Are Dying From Exposure February 13, 2020

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

What Joe Biden’s Poll Numbers Are Saying

They’re saying his Democrat rivals are even more awful.

It’s fascinating how eager the Democrat Party’s leadership and base are for a late entrant into the 2020 presidential race. One problem is there is nobody waiting in the wings who is any better than the announced candidates.

There is a poverty of leadership in the Democrat Party. That poverty has been developing for decades — Jimmy Carter, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, Bill Clinton, John Kerry, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Nancy Pelosi.

True, Barack Obama was elected and reelected. But after just three years there is almost nothing left of his legacy. Hillary Clinton was a disastrous candidate. Amazingly, she was actually the best the Democrat Party had to offer. Since she lost, she has been reminding everyone just what a detestable person she is.

From the time he announced his 2020 campaign, Joe Biden has held the lead among Democrats in national polls. That fact says more about the other candidates than about Biden.

This is Joe’s third try. His earlier ones were in 1988 and 2008.

An issue in the current campaign is his age — 77. In his other runs, his age was not an issue.

Just how well did Joe do in those earlier tries? He did not last long in either one. In the 1988 campaign, Biden didn’t make it to the Iowa caucuses. It was discovered that he had plagiarized a campaign speech, plagiarized a law school term paper, and exaggerated his class ranking in law school. He threw in the towel on September 17, 1987, before even reaching the starting line. Joe was a bad candidate.

In the 2008 campaign, Biden did make it to the Iowa caucuses, but he got less than 1 percent of the vote, placing fifth after Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards (remember him?), and Bill Richardson. Biden’s loss was so crushing he immediately dropped out of the race. Joe was a bad candidate.

Now, in 2020, Joe Biden is leading the pack. How weird. Has something happened in the last 12 years to cause his popularity to skyrocket? Was he the best vice president ever? No, it’s the same Joe Biden, and he’s still a bad candidate. He can barely structure a complete sentence, let alone a complete thought, and he is more scandal-ridden than ever. What has changed is the stature of his rivals.

Looking at Biden’s competitors, it’s hard to imagine a more boring lineup of contenders. There isn’t a drop of charisma in the entire lot. None of them are presidential material. They’re a motley collection of dead candidates running.

What Joe Biden’s poll numbers are saying is that his rivals are even worse candidates than he is.

Come November, even voters who do not like Trump will have difficulty voting for whichever Democrat is nominated. Instead, those voters may just stay home.

If Donald Trump didn’t love campaigning so much, he probably wouldn’t bother. ____________________

◼ link January 15, 2020

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

The Lure of Predictions

Your guess will be as good as Paul Ehrlich’s, and that's without even trying.

We now commence a new year and a new decade. Such occasions tempt us to make predictions.

Our attitude toward the future is ambiguous and inconsistent. Sometimes we want to know an outcome before it happens. But knowing the outcome of a sporting event takes the fun out of watching it. Absent uncertainty there is no point in running a horse race.

History is replete with examples of persons and devices that predict the future — fortune tellers, soothsayers, seers, oracles, prophets, psychics, crystal balls, tarot cards, and tea leaves.

The success rate of a person’s predictions is an indication of that person’s insight and judgment. Consider, for example, predictions about whether or not Donald Trump would win the 2016 election. Three notably correct calls were by Ann Coulter, Scott Adams, and Salena Zito. They each foresaw that he would win when almost everyone else said there was no way that could happen.

Examples of those who got it wrong even up to the very last minute include every commentator and pundit in the mainstream media. Furthermore, they were absolutely certain Trump could not possibly win the presidency. They were all dead certain and dead wrong. None of them have confessed or shown the slightest bit of embarrassment.

In the first act of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Macbeth and his companion Banquo come upon three witches. One of the witches says, “All hail Macbeth, thou shalt be king hereafter!” Hearing this Banquo says to the witches, “If you can look into the seeds of time and say which grains will grow and which will not, speak then to me.”

Banquo recognized that being able to see the future could be extremely valuable. The manner in which he phrased his question (“If you can…”) indicates he was skeptical of anyone’s ability to predict correctly. He knew that predicting can be a source of power, but that doing so accurately is very difficult.

The witch’s prediction does, of course, come true. Macbeth becomes king of Scotland, but it does not turn out the way he or Lady Macbeth thought it would. In literature, knowing the future is usually a curse, not a blessing.

If it were possible to reliably predict stock prices, you could have all the money you might ever want. Bets on stock prices (i.e., on which stocks will go up faster than the overall market) are wrong as often as they’re right. There are mountains of evidence showing that predictions of stock prices are no more accurate than guesses or throwing darts at a stock listing.

Be suspicious of anyone claiming an ability to “beat the market.” Keep in mind the famous question, “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?” If someone could beat the market he would not be wasting his time hawking his priceless wisdom.

All the concern about catastrophic climate change is prediction-based. The specific method used to derive the predictions is called modeling. The models input many factors that are known to influence the atmosphere and climate, but even the most complex models include only a small fraction of the countless variables that affect the atmosphere and climate. These models supposedly tell us what, for example, global temperatures and sea levels will be several decades in the future.

Climate models are nothing more than computerized wild guesses. They actually have track records worse than wild guesses, and worse than predicting that the future will be roughly the same as the past.

Also, some people have an apocalyptic mindset. There is even a word for it — eschatology: “Of or relating to the end of the world or the events associated with it.” We’re told almost daily that we’ve got only 12 years to change our evil carbon-emitting ways or “the planet is doomed” and half of all species will become extinct.

We don’t know all we need to know about the present. We know even less about the future. But placing faith in models of complex systems is foolish. There has never been one accurate long-range prediction generated by such models.

In perhaps his most famous article Milton Friedman argued that “The ultimate goal of a positive science is the development of a ‘theory’ or ‘hypothesis’ that yields predictions about phenomena not yet observed … the only relevant test of the validity of a hypothesis is the comparison of its predictions with experience.” In other words, the acid test is predictive success.

There are numerous hypotheses that totally fail in regard to predictive success but which continue to be widely popular and influential.

One glaring and long-lived example is Malthusianism. Robert Thomas Malthus’s Essay on Population was first published in 1798. It famously predicted bad times ahead for humanity. He wrote that “Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio and subsistence in an arithmetical ratio.” He predicted mass starvation and hunger. The only question was how soon it would happen.

Malthus was perhaps the first to reduce complex reality to a simple formula. His mistake was to underestimate the complexity of reality and overestimate his ability to digest and encapsulate that reality.

People who think they can reliably predict complex systems are people who don’t know their limitations. Malthus was one of a long line of prophets who suffered from a toxic mix of simplemindedness and arrogance. Rarely has anyone been more in error and more influential for a longer time than Malthus.

Nevertheless, the Malthusian mindset is still very much with us. Its most famous proponent is Stanford professor Paul Ehrlich. In his 1968 book, The Population Bomb, Ehrlich wrote, “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.”

But hundreds of millions of people did not starve to death. The “world death rate” decreased and continues its decline. In today’s world obesity is a far greater contributor to premature death[

Paul Ehrlich is just regurgitating Malthus. The fact that Malthus was wrong never penetrates the thinking of fanatics like Ehrlich and his acolytes. You may wonder why anyone so thoroughly disproven still has one iota of believability. He ought to hide his head in shame. Instead he remains a professor at Stanford and continues to be a highly paid public speaker.

Virtually none of the famous predictions of the past were anything close to being objective. Why then did they persist? Heavily corrupted by confirmation bias, as well as by political, social, and psychological biases, they were predictions with a purpose.

Predictions, then and now, are simply biased guesses about the future. Beware of them!

Power Mad: The Worst of the Left

Conservatives know the Left destroys everything it touches. That destruction takes many forms. The worst is obliterating the strength of individuals in order to grow a population of weaklings.

Photo from article: Antonio Guillem/Shutterstock.com

Safe spaces, trigger warnings, and microaggressions are just a few of the ways the Left encourages weakness. Evoking fear is another. For fear to be an effective tool, the Left needs its followers to be fragile and helpless.

Although the Left’s crusade of making individuals weaker may be succeeding, mainly it shows that the Left will do anything, stoop to any level, to gain control.

The first three words of the classic The Road Less Traveled by Scott Peck are, “Life is difficult.” He then writes, “This is one of the great truths, one of the greatest truths.” It is a great truth, he explains, “Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.”

If life is difficult, what’s the best response?

A difference between the Left and Right is this: the Left believes in societalresponsibility; the Right believes in individual responsibility. The Left promises that government, your protector, will always come to your rescue and make your life easy. It’s a lie. Nothing will make your life easy.

Leftists say if you fail you’re not to blame. They have zero expectations of you. They resent any ability you may have to deal with your own problems. They’re secretly pleased if a lack of self-reliance leads you toward weakness, cowardice, and dishonesty. Dishonesty suits them; honesty does not. Like life itself, honesty is difficult.

If you’re a conservative and life hits you with a low blow, you handle it. Self-reliance takes strength, courage, and honesty.

The best teachers and coaches have high expectations of individuals. They don’t tolerate excuses. They aren’t particularly sympathetic. An observer might see them as mean. Yet they are the ones whom we look back upon with gratitude.

Victimhood is a creature of the Left spawned by weakness and fear. Victims are easy to manipulate; defining yourself as a victim is an invitation to misery.

To foment fear, the Left does not rely on real problems. It invents them — catastrophic climate change, voter suppression, ubiquitous racism, toxic masculinity, white privilege, mass extinctions, peak oil, evil corporations, hate speech, and Donald Trump. Women should fear all men. Every severe weather event is proof of far worse things to come. The Left has fabricated fear after fear, all of which in retrospect were wasted worries and destroyers of happiness.

The Left makes people fear their own words. They can’t be honest with one another. They’re afraid of humor. They’re afraid of freedom. They’re afraid of the future.

Leftists don’t care one iota about the damage their policies cause. They’re not the least bit concerned if all their promises are hollow. Conservatives know that leftists simply stay hyper-focused on their ultimate goal: power.

Democrats Eat Trump’s Dust

One more reason for all their resentments.

In spite of brazen attempts by Democrats to fabricate, exaggerate, distort, sabotage, and cheat, Donald Trump has worked economic wonders.

The U.S. unemployment rate has reached its lowest level in half a century. That’s rare historically and rare relative to what’s happening in the rest of the world.

In addition, the rates for women and minorities are the lowest ever recorded — ironic accomplishments for a president whom the Democrats have repeatedly branded as a racist and a sexist.

These are achievements of enormous importance, but there has been surprisingly little celebration or even notice. One who recognizes their significance is President Trump himself. He has proclaimed numerous times that the economy has never been better. That’s not an exaggeration. As the baseball great Dizzy Dean famously said, “It ain’t braggin’ if you can do it.”

A job is a major boon to happiness. It provides a purpose in life and an income, and it makes a person a contributor rather than a burden to society. On-the-job training is the most tried and true way to enhance a person’s market value and make future raises likely, and it is especially important given the sad state of public education in America.

Low unemployment doesn’t just happen. It is the product of robust economic growth.

Why has our economic growth rate doubled since Donald Trump took office? He simply believed greater economic growth was possible. Barack Obama did not. Optimism works.

Economic growth inevitably leads to higher incomes. We are currently experiencing the first real increases in average incomes in several decades. Government welfare programs help people far less than robust economic growth.

Trump’s main contribution to all this has been to get out of the way of the creativity, innovation, energy, optimism, risk-taking, and ambition of the American people. Like Ronald Reagan, Trump’s objective has been to get government “off people’s backs.” Dealing with big government and excessive regulations is like trying to run through knee-deep mud. Like Reagan, Trump knows that the key is to do less, not more.

Donald Trump also knows that the source of economic growth and prosperity resides in the private sector, not the government. Democrats accuse him of being power-hungry, but the opposite is true. He recognizes the limitations of the presidency.

Economic growth has always been the exception, not the rule. Throughout most of human history it was nonexistent. It only started in earnest about 250 years ago.

Never has there been a setting as conducive to ambition and talent as is the United States of America today. It’s probably the main reason why so many want to immigrate here. The U.S. is the wealthiest nation in history because it is the best environment for creativity and wealth creation. That environment can be made even better, allowing even faster economic growth. That is just what Donald Trump would like to do.

In most societies, individual creativity and ambition have been suppressed rather than unleashed. Three current, extreme examples are Cuba, Venezuela, and North Korea. The economies of these socialist countries are shrinking, not growing.

Why with a booming economy aren’t we seeing more inflation? One factor is that the U.S. economy is more competitive than ever before. The competition for consumers’ dollars, the array of choices available, has never been so great, and the availability and accessibility of information are wider than ever.

A market is any setting where buyers and sellers connect and allow voluntary exchange to happen. The internet has expanded the ways buyers find sellers, and sellers find buyers — eBay, craigslist, Uber, and Airbnb, just to name a few. Uber and Lyft represent the first real competition taxicabs have faced in a hundred years. Anyone wanting to get from point A to point B now has faster, cheaper alternatives. The technology used by such companies puts their hidebound competitors to shame.

The number of ways people have to spend their money has increased exponentially. With consumers having much easier access to information about prices and alternatives, it’s much harder for vendors to raise prices.

Another major contributor to stable prices and economic growth has been the greater supply of oil and natural gas, primarily due to fracking and horizontal drilling, both of which are American innovations. They have increased energy abundance around the globe (but not in New York state, where fracking is outlawed).

Energy prices are equivalent to a “super-price” that reverberates throughout the economy. Low energy prices benefit the bottom line of virtually every enterprise and ease the budget of every consumer.

During Bill Clinton’s first presidential run, his campaign manager, James Carville, often proclaimed, “It’s the economy, stupid.” The Democrats must hope it’s no longer true, but there’s no reason to think it isn’t.

Although they can’t admit it, the Democrats have now put themselves in the strange position of hoping for a recession; they camouflage their hope as a prediction. There is not a single compelling indication, however, that a recession is on the horizon. Predicting anything as massive, decentralized, and complex as the U.S. economy is impossible.

Democrats can’t allow themselves to celebrate the deaths of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his second-in-command because they happened while Donald Trump was commander-in-chief, and they can’t mention the historic good health of the American economy for the same reason.

The Democrat Party has become an agglomeration of Debbie Downers. Their debates have been spectacles of gloom and pessimism. The Trump rallies are the exact opposite — happy, enthusiastic, and fun, with twice as many people wanting to attend as can be admitted even at a large venue.

This Thanksgiving, just be thankful you’re not a Democrat! ____________________

◼ link November 2, 2019

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.