December 29, 2013

The irony of this statistic is that it was uncontroversial when being used in a "girl power" sense

as in "Rush Limbaugh! Sense the power of our collective anger!"

Then you begin to see it used (apparently seriously) in contexts like this: "Women control 60% of the wealth? When will men stop oppressing us?"

I think it's reasonable for readers to see that and have a bit of a "hold up there" reaction. At that point it apparently became "MRA bullshit".

I don't know where 60%, 70% or 80% come from. My guess is they were pulled out of various ad executive's asses to justify an ad campaign for products like chick beer.

So, based on a link provided by Hfojvt to the census bureau, I crunched the numbers they collected (number of male, female and married households, the percentage of which are within various tiers of wealth and the average wealth within that tier), and it indicates that, rounded to three significant digits, women control 51.9% of the wealth.

There are probably a bunch of ways of computing a result. The census bureau is the one I used.

So, 60% is wrong. "Most" is not.

Does that shoot a large enough hole in marketing executives arguments to get them to stop selling trucks painted "mango tango pearl"? I hope so.

December 14, 2013

Cost of a 1 pack a day habit, by state, at 100% of FPL

December 6, 2013

Blackstone's formulation

Is a fundamental principle of our system of justice; to protect its legitimacy, it's better to err on the side of caution and not punish the innocent even if some guilty people may go free.

Blackstone was a judge in England in the 1700's. He wrote:

"It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer"

He wasn't the first though... that basic principle had been in place since the 1400's. In fact, the Salem witch trial judge, Increase Mather said, "it were better that ten suspected Witches should escape, than that one innocent Person should be Condemned.", and &quot I) would rather judge a Witch to be an honest woman, than judge an honest woman as a Witch,"

Ben Franklin was of the opinion that the proper ratio was 100:1. John Adams described the reason for this; '(if)it is immaterial to (a person) whether I behave well or ill, for virtue itself is no security.' And if such a sentiment as this were to take hold in the mind of the subject that would be the end of all security whatsoever". In other words, If justice is unjust and simply a matter of luck and caprice, there's no reason to respect laws at all.

On the other end of the spectrum are utilitarians who would say that it doesn't matter, so long as the mass of people are content, or authoritarians like Bismarck and Pol Pot (better to see 10 innocent convicted than one guilty go free) or totalitarians like the founder of the Soviet secret police ("Better to execute ten innocent men than to leave one guilty man alive." - because "When you cut down the forest, woodchips fly."). How about this from modern Columbia; "Better to condemn an innocent man than to acquit a guilty one, because among the innocent condemned there may be a guilty man."?

So, what's your personal "Blackstone's number"? How many guilty should go free to prevent injustice to innocents?