Over at The Upshot, Neil Irwin wrote an interesting but very annoying article, How Is the Economy Doing? It May Depend on Your Party, and $1. It’s about how people’s opinions about the state of the economy are highly dependent upon who is in the White House. Ask a Republican right now and they will say it is terrible. Ask a Democrat back in 2005 and they would have said that it was terrible. But this is just a matter of political signaling — nothing more. Let’s start with the the the more general issue and then get into the details.

How the economy doing is doing not a concrete thing. If you asked me how the economy was doing, I would say so-so. Yet the unemployment rate is 5%! The unemployment rate was 4% at the beginning of 2000 and I would have said it was great. What’s the difference? Well, the employment-to-population rate for people between the ages 25-54 was roughly 82% in 2000 and it is barely over 77% today. That represents roughly 5 million people. There are a huge number of people who have given up. Claiming that Republicans are just being partisan when they say the economy is not doing well is questionable.

The crux of Irwin’s article has to do with recent studies that gave people cash when they got answers right. So whereas a Republican might normally say that unemployment is worse today than when Obama came into office, if you give him a buck for being right, he’ll correctly say that unemployment is lower. Now this is presented as good news for democracy and bad news for polling. This is nonsense.

What’s going on is that the partisans (Democrat or Republican) are signaling in the uncompensated case that they really don’t like the people in power. And why shouldn’t they?! We have the statistics on the unemployment rate. We don’t need to ask people what they they think it is; they can just surf over to the St Louis Fed and get whatever information they want. Do half of Republicans really think that Obama is a Kenyan Muslim terrorist? Not really. But they are signalling that they really really don’t like him. And that and not the state of the economy is what they are going to be voting based upon.

Similarly, we already know that polling is a highly questionable tool. Remember back in the 2012 presidential campaign? In the first debate, Obama didn’t shine. Romney came off pretty good. (I still thought he was an idiot, of course.) And his poll numbers surged. But as I wrote at the time, that wasn’t because Obama voters had switched over. It was because conservative voters who in the end were already going to vote for Romney suddenly felt confident enough to switch form “undecided” to “Romney.” If you look at the polls of the time, you will see that Romney’s numbers went up; Obama’s did not go down. What was going on was political signaling. Before, conservatives were signaling that they weren’t that keen on Romney.

Look at the unfortunate Eric Harwood. He’s totally wrong about the “billions and trillions of dollars” that we spend “illegal aliens” and refugees. But it wouldn’t matter if he knew the facts. For all I know, he does know the facts. But he’s just angry. He’s involved in an act of political signaling that those liberals don’t care about people like him and that conservatives like Ted Cruz and Donald Trump do. It’s not just politicians who engage in political theater.

So who cares that deep down most people know the facts. They don’t vote to save the world from global warming. They don’t vote to make sure that veterans get healthcare. Their votes are an act of political signaling that they are for the “right” kind of people. And in the case of working class conservatives, they’d better hope that they don’t get their way.

I remember when I sent out my first book to a publisher. I got a very positive letter back, but the publisher took exception to my referring to police officers as stupid. She pointed out that a lot of police officers read their books and that she knew a lot of them and they weren’t stupid. I ended up just writing a different book for her. And I didn’t argue the point. I had only written for small weekly newspapers and had not developed the charming pugnacious personality that is on display each day seen here at Frankly Curious. Plus, I really wanted to publish my first book.

There are a few points to note. First, I never wrote that police officers were stupid. I wrote that they “are not the brightest lights in the house and their lack of knowledge could act as a damning indictment of our educational system.” I went on to relate an example of an officer not knowing what the word “courtesy” as in “courtesy of the American Legion.” I don’t think that police officers are stupid and I never had. But compared to me, they are. Compared to most of the people I know they are. But that doesn’t make them bad at their jobs.

Indeed, courts have concluded that it is okay to not hire an officer because they are too smart. The truth is that police work is incredibly boring. There is a high attrition rate among them. Actual tests of police officers find that they are of average intelligence and that’s just fine with me. My problem with the police is that they tend to be bullies and tribalistic and self-impressed. What they should be is damned grateful that given their limited skills and abilities they have an easy job that pays really well. Instead, they go around acting like they couldn’t be replaced, which just isn’t the case at all.

I was very interested in a recent article at Vox by Dara Lind, Police Are Solving a Lot Fewer Murder Cases Than They Used To. But that’s not a great headline. What’s really going on is that since 1990, the murder rate has been cut roughly in half. Yet the percentage of these murders that ended in arrest (Not conviction!) has been flat at roughly 65%. So if you murder someone, you you have a one in three chance of never being arrested.

Lind presents this as the effect of people not trusting the police. Despite all our new technologies and all the super keen stuff you see on cop shows on television, most murderers are caught because someone saw the murder — or something else close enough. (This is also the reason that a lot of people go to prison for murders they didn’t commit, but we’ll leave that for another time.) People in high crime areas don’t trust the police because instead of helping, they murder people when called to deal with depressed teens. I don’t know. I suspect that people unwilling to talk to the police is a part of the problem. But it’s a very small part of the problem.

I think the issue is quite simple. Roughly two-thirds of murders are easy. A great many of them are something along the lines of things got out of control at a family gathering and son shot uncle. There is no investigation required. In one-third of the cases, it isn’t clear. It is not the case that, “They know who did it…” I’ve never met a police officer who didn’t claim to know that whoever he arrested was guilty. And even after DNA evidence exonerates someone, those same officers still “know” that the arrestee was guilty.

There are two critical things about the police that make them so bad at cracking cases: their middling intelligence and their general laziness. Have you ever watched one of those shows where some police officer cracks a case years later? First, those represent exceptions. Second, the “brilliant insight” that cracks the case are always obvious. For example, in one case, a guy murdered his wife and then left the air conditioner on at full blast to screw up the the determination of time of death. That’s pretty clever. But it took the officers forever to figure it out. It doesn’t take Monk to figure this stuff out — just someone with a strong work ethic and an IQ over 104.

Add to this that the police don’t really care. Most of the people who are murdered are poor. There’s no pressure on them to solve the cases. It’s certainly true that if the police didn’t act like such jerks and make everyone hate them, it would be easier to do their jobs. But it’s going to take a lot more than this to solve more murders. And I don’t see the police moving toward fixing their jerk problem.

My country ’tis of thee. That’s what I was taught in grammar school: our country. But there are are those so filled with privilege and hatred that they think the United States is whatever they say it is: their country ’tis of them. And the roving gang of terrorists who sport their pocket Constitutions and took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters in Oregon yesterday should be captured, tried for treason, and spend the rest of their lives in a federal penitentiary.

The main men involved are Ammon and Ryan Bundy (sons of Cliven “I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro” Bundy), Jon Ritzheimer, Blaine Cooper, and Ryan Payne. But they are only men in a biological sense. In the truest sense of the word, these are boys who want to play Revolutionary War. They like to pretend that they are living under tyranny. Rather than prison, they would be better punished by having to live the rest of their lives in Saudi Arabia.

And they aren’t locals. This isn’t their fight. They just rove the nation looking for fights to get into. And they are often unwelcome, as they are in this case. That’s one of the sad things about this. The Bundy Traitors are making this all about them. But the cause that underlies this is at least somewhat just.

Back in 2012, Dwight Hammond and his son Steven were found guilty of arson. They twice set fire to federal land. According to the Hammonds, they did this to stop invasive species from encroaching on their land. I don’t believe that. Not for a minute. But even if it were true, it is wrong. If I have a tree that is growing onto your land, that doesn’t give you the right to set my yard on fire.

But the Hammonds were found guilty and they were punished with one year in prison and $400,000 in restitution (which they paid). But then federal prosecutors found that they could apply the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, and so now the Hammonds are supposed to spend up to five extra years in prison. I hate this nonsense. I hated when civil trials started being a big thing when criminal trials failed. There are all these squirrely ways to get around our justice system when we don’t think it works. The Hammonds did something wrong, they were punished, that should be the end of it.

Of course, the roving gang of terrorists isn’t really interested in this case. They just think that federal land should be theirs to use. The Hammond lawyer has been very clear that the Bundy boondoggle does not speak for his clients. And that’s understandable because the Hammonds are no doubt trying to extricate themselves from this legal issue; they aren’t trying to start the second Revolutionary War.

According to The Oregonian, the local people are mostly like me: they think that the Hammonds are getting a raw deal, but that the terrorists at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge are extremists. Of course, no one is calling them terrorists because, you know, they are white. One of the terrorists is an ex-Marine who hates Muslims and posted a video that indicates he plans to die at this standoff.

I don’t want anyone to die in this. I want these terrorists caught, convicted of treason, and spending the rest of their lives in prison. And I hope that the Hammonds manage to get their sentences reduced, even if they aren’t the most sympathetic of people. At least they are Americans who respect what the country stands for.

So I finally got around to getting on the Obamacare exchange here, which is called Covered California. It was a remarkably easy thing to do. I think it took me about a half hour. And I make so much money that my monthly premiums for Kaiser Permanente are $1. It seemed like a joke. It reminds me of those idiots on Fox and Friends who were calling for everyone to have to pay at least something in income taxes so that they had “skin in the game.” (It was pretty clear that if this happened, they would only want more to the point where everyone payed the same amount — but that’s a topic for another time.)

A new feature of Covered California this year is dental insurance. I was able to sign up with Delta Dental for $13.95 per month. I picked it because when I managed a dental office, Delta of California was by far the best insurer. You may not know this but about 80% of managing a dental office is fighting with insurance companies. And Delta was very good about paying without a lot of fuss. And when I saw that the co-pay on root canals wae only $300, I was hooked. (Now if I can just find a regular dentist who is up for doing a couple of molar root canals, I’ll be set.)

I feel like I died and woke up in Canada. I’ve always been positive about Obamacare. But not like this. This seems to me very much like universal care. And I very much wish that I had had this back a decade ago when I almost died and ended up owing over a $100,000 in medical bills. But more than that, I’m just looking forward to going in and getting a physical and a checkup and starting the process of my dental triage.

But think about this. Obamacare is something that conservatives think is evil. But these are the same people who think that unions are evil. And that the minimum wage is evil. And that forcing employers to provide healthcare is evil. They are the big proponents of the “gig economy.” Well folks, I am the poster boy of the gig economy. I’m self-employed. I get money from a number of different sources. And if it weren’t for Obamacare, I’d be screwed. I’d be forced to join the Freelancers Union, which I have mixed feelings about politically and which is mostly just a for-profit insurance company that offers far more expensive insurance and (as far as I can tell) no dental.

It’s weird. The American conservative movement is mostly made up of a bunch of people with cushy jobs that are more like what people did in the 1950s with employer provided healthcare and retirement plans. In fact, I know people like this. My brother-in-law has a great union job, but has this attitude the young people are lazy. But it’s the young people who are out hustling to make a living. His father got him the job he has had for decades. All he has to do is show up and do his work, which is a great advantage compared to what people like me have to do in the modern economy.

So the fight against Obamacare continues on. But for the people of California it seems we are now living at least on the outskirts of civilizations. I could hardly ask for anything more. I feel very lucky indeed. It is like I died and woke up in Canada.

Matt Bruenig wrote, The Story of Eric Harwood. It’s a very sympathetic telling of the story of a 47-year-old working class man who now finds himself disabled with difficulty getting SSI because of some understandable mistakes. It’s very sad and I do hope the whole thing works out for him. He deserves to get disability insurance and live a dignified life.

I’ve written a lot about this kind of thing in the past. Every time some politician starts going on about fraud in government programs, I know what the net result will be: loads of people who clearly deserve help won’t get it just so we can stop a handful of people who probably don’t. But this is the conservative way, is it not? It’s better to let children starve than allow an able bodied surfer to eat lobster at government expense. Or, in another area, it is better to stop millions of people from voting rather than allow one ineligible person to vote.

It turns out that Eric Harwood is an ultra-conservative. He’s hoping that the Republicans will nominate Ted Cruz and Donald Trump; he doesn’t care which one of them is on the top of the ticket. Now I am very tired of hearing liberals complain that conservatives don’t vote in their own best interests. They do vote in their own best interests — as they see them. And Harwood is an entirely typical conservative. I run into them all the time.

Let’s suppose that Eric Harwood gets his SSI — as he clearly should. He will then almost certainly spend a great deal of time watching Fox News and listening to hate radio. He will continue to rail against all those undeserving people sucking off the tit of the American tax payer. The fact that he is doing exactly the same thing will cause no cognitive dissonance in him. And that’s because he is one of the deserving ones. He isn’t some libertarian who thinks the government shouldn’t exist. He just thinks that it should take care of the people who deserve it.

If you look at Harwood’s life story, you can see how the government has helped him along the way. He went to trade school to become a locksmith. That’s great, but it almost certainly involved government programs that made it more affordable if not paying for it straight out. He apparently lost $30,000 in wealth when his condo was foreclosed on. Let’s consider that. I assume a condo in Nevada would cost about $150,000. So let’s say his mortgage was $120,000. In 2005, mortgage rates were around 6%. That comes out to roughly $7,000 per year that he got to write off. He only had the place for three years, so we can figure that roughly $7,000 of that $30,000 that he lost was a direct payment from the government. (Also, it is almost certain that the $30,000 is just what he paid over the three year, so it wasn’t wasted money; he would have had to pay that amount in rent if he hadn’t purchased the condo.)

I know that people don’t think about things like this. But when you slice and dice the world up into the worthy and the unworthy, you are going to find that other people place you in the unworthy category. So now he’s going to vote for Trump or Cruz, thinking that they will fix the nation in such a way that he gets everything he thinks he deserves and other people don’t get anything because he doesn’t think they are deserving. That’s what he’s voting for. He is very much voting in his own interest. It’s just that he’s foolish in thinking that the Republican Party’s platform puts him in the deserving camp.

But I hope liberal policy wins the day and Eric Harwood gets the help that he needs and deserves.

Noah Smith is one of those super smart guys who also often annoys me. On Tuesday, he wrote, Don’t Blame Uncertainty for the Slow Recovery. Now, I am in complete agreement with him on this issue. But it bugs me when people take clearly silly ideas far too seriously. And this is one of those cases, although I’m glad that Smith is out there setting the record straight for all the fools who believe such hogwash.

The “uncertainty” hypothesis is that businesses have not invested since the financial crisis because they are afraid of the uncertainty of government policy. By this silly idea, businesses were frozen in terror, not knowing if they should buy new equipment for fear that the top marginal tax rate might go up. So companies were just sitting on piles of case waiting until they were absolutely certain what the future would be. If this sounds absurd, that’s because it is.

There are a lot of economists who I greatly admire. And even the ones I disagree with are brilliant in their way. But most of them don’t have much of a clue what it is like to run an actual business. Growing up, my parents owned a gas stations then a convenience store and finally a construction company. In addition, I’ve had micro-businesses all my life. And I spent a year working a business at the San Jose full-time flea market — the closest you will ever come to a perfectly free market. All of these experiences have colored the way I see business.

Rule number one in business is that it is all about uncertainty. Running a business is a matter of dealing with uncertainty. If you are fretting about how quickly you will be able to depreciate a piece of equipment that you buy next year, you have too much time on your hands. Actual business people generally won’t buy anything or hire anyone unless they absolutely, positively have no other choice. And they certainly don’t think in terms of the taxes they will pay on profits they haven’t made yet. And it isn’t just little old me saying this. I’ve heard the same things from Nick Hanauer and Warren Buffett.

If business were about certainty, then wouldn’t everyone have a business? And it doesn’t get any less absurd if you focus on political uncertainty. We live in a democracy. Because of the way elections are staggered, we get changes every year. Even at the federal level, we get different congresses every two years and potentially new presidents every four years. Change is a given. What those who have spent the last seven years run around complaining about uncertainty are really talking about is that they don’t like the policies on offer. It wasn’t uncertainty that they were unhappy about. Obamacare was gradually put into place and it was very clear exactly what was going to happen and when. The real complaint was that the policy was going to destroy business, because they didn’t like that policy.

We all know why this recovery has been so slow. Paul Krugman put together the following graph that explains everything we need to know. It compares the number of government jobs that were created after the last two recessions: one under George W Bush and the other under Obama. Every other recession looks just like Bush, but under Obama — because of Republican intransigence — the government has made the recession worse. This is really an amazing graph. (Note: the spike is temporary workers for the Constitutionally required 2010 census.)

So I’m glad to see that there is actual data that shows that uncertainty is the hogwash it always obviously was. But the original work was only taken seriously because there were people who wanted to push the idea for ideological reasons. And this new paper won’t stop those people from continuing to claim that the problem is Obama and all his newfangled ideas.