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Spatial patterns and city size distribution

Digital Elixir Spatial patterns and city size distribution

Many large cities are found at locations with certain first nature advantages. Yet, those exogenous locational features are not the most potent forces governing the spatial pattern of cities. In particular, the (population) size, spacing, and industrial composition of cities exhibit a simple, persistent, monotonic relationship. Theories of economic agglomeration suggest that this regularity is a consequence of interactions between endogenous agglomeration and dispersion forces.

Size and spacing of cities

Cities typically exhibit a central place pattern in the country, in which larger cities are surrounded by smaller ones, and are more spaced apart. Figure 1 shows the relationship between the size si of each city i and the distance di to its closest city of comparable size or larger for the 450 Japanese cities in 2015.1 The correlation between them is as high as 0.67, unconditional on the topographical heterogeneity of city location. 

Figure 1 Size and spacing of Japanese cities in 2015

Size distribution of cities

It is well-known that city size distribution in a relatively self-sufficient economic region – typically a country – exhibits an approximate power law (e.g. Gabaix and Ioannides 2004). More specifically, if a given set of n cities satisfy a power law, the city size and their rankings have an approximately log-linear relation. Japan is an obviously mono-polar economy organised around Tokyo, and is a typical case in which the approximate power law for city size distribution holds at the country level.2

In Figure 2, Panel (a) shows the rank-size distributions of cities every five years from 1970 to 2015, where si indicates the share of city i in the national population. Panel (b) shows the change in the Zipf coefficient – the elasticity of rank with respect to city size – over these 45 years. One can see that the city size distribution exhibits an approximate power law in each year, although agglomeration towards larger cities has been accelerated. The variation in city size is remarkably large, as exhibited by the largest three cities – Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya – accounting for 45% of the national population.

Figure 2 Size distribution in Japanese cities for 1970-2015

Size and industrial composition of cities

It is well-known that the size and socioeconomic quantities (e.g. wage, education level, GDP, industrial diversity, numbers of patent applications) of cities exhibit strong correlations.3 The clearest such instance is industrial location. For the three-digit secondary and tertiary industries of the Japanese Standard Industrial Classification that are present in both 2000 and 2015, Figure 3 shows the relation between the number and average size of the cities in which industry i is located. The dashed curves indicate the upper and lower bounds for the average size, where the former is the average size of the largest Ni cities, and the latter is the average size of the smallest Ni cities.

Figure 3 Number and average size of cities in which an industry is located

The figure indicates two key relationships between industrial location and city size. First, the number and average sizes of the cities exhibit a strong and persistent power law, designated as the number-average size rule by Mori et al. (2008). Second, the average sizes are almost hitting their upper bound, meaning that the set of the Ni cities comprises roughly the largest Ni cities. Hence, a hierarchical principle à la Christaller (1933) roughly holds, i.e. an industry found in a smaller city is also found in all the larger cities.

Mori et al. (2008) have formally shown that the number-average size rule is indeed a consequence of the simultaneous presence of the power law for city size distribution and the hierarchy principle.

Theory for central place pattern

Akamatsu et al. (2018) have shown that a wide variety of the extant models of agglomeration, once extended to a many-region setup, can account for the basic mechanism underlying the central place pattern.4 Most existing theoretical models for city formation are static and involve a single type of mobile agent subject to the same degree of increasing returns (e.g. Krugman 1991, Beckmann 1976). In this context, they proposed a formal framework utilising a symmetric discrete racetrack geography to identify the spontaneous spatial pattern of cities that arises purely from agglomeration and dispersion forces. 

In particular, they have shown that the existing models can be classified into three reduced forms in terms of their spatial patterns of cities, despite the difference in their specific mechanisms underlying agglomeration and dispersion forces. Figure 4 depicts the two polar cases out of the three cases. The class of models incorporating only global dispersion force are able to account for the formation of multiple distinct cities (Panel a), whereas only one city can form in the other class of models incorporating local dispersion force without global dispersion force (Panel b). 

Formally, the dispersion force is global if it is dependent on, and local if it is independent of, interregional distance. An example of the global dispersion force is the demand for urban goods from dispersed consumers. Due to transport costs, urban producers are encouraged to locate near the dispersed consumers. As a consequence, multiple cities form so that firms in each city mainly serve their nearby markets. On the other hand, the local dispersion force accrues from, for example, locally scarce land for housing and congestion externalities. Since these dispersion forces are confined within a given city, and are independent of interregional distance, the local dispersion force pushes out mobile agents from inside the city. As a result, the dispersion in this case takes the form of spatial sprawl of a given city, rather than the formation of another city. The last class of models with both global and local dispersion forces can account for the formation of multiple cities, each with positive spatial extent. 

Figure 4 Multipolar versus monopolar agglomeration

To account for the central place pattern, the global dispersion force is essential. In this class of models, the mobile agents completely disperse over all locations for sufficiently high transport costs, and as transport costs decrease, the agglomeration proceeds in the form of spatial-period doubling bifurcation, until all mobile agents concentrate in one city. Hence, the central place pattern is a typical consequence in this class of model.5

Theory to account for hierarchy principle and city size diversity

To account for the large variation in size and industrial composition of cities, in addition to the central place pattern, models need to incorporate diversity in increasing returns. The straightforward extensions of the models with global dispersion force discussed above include Fujita et al. (1999) and Tabuchi and Thisse (2011) in the new economic geography framework, whereas Hsu (2012) proposed an entirely new spatial competition model of firm entry. In these models, the different degrees of increasing returns among industries result in the different spatial frequencies of agglomeration in them.

In these models, the mechanism underlying city size diversity is the spatial coordination of agglomerations among industries through inter-industry demand externalities that arise from shared consumers. Industries subject to larger increasing returns agglomerate in a smaller number of cities that are farther apart. Larger cities are formed at the location in which a larger number of industries co-locate to share consumers. This spatial coordination of industries leads to the positive correlation between the size, spacing, and industrial diversity of a city.

Figure 5 depicts an example of such a coordination of four industries, “red”, “blue”, “green” and “black,” in an economy with 16 locations. Each circle with a given color indicates the location of the industry corresponding to the color. Agglomerations of individual industries are equidistant, where the “red” industry is the most agglomerated, while the “black” one is ubiquitous. In the presence of inter-industry positive externalities, agglomerations of different industries coordinate spatially, and the hierarchy principle holds among cities6.

Figure 5 Spatial coordination of industries and hierarchy principle

Conclusion

The location, size, and industrial composition of cities in reality can be characterised in terms of the central place pattern, power law, and hierarchy principle, respectively, as illustrated for the case of Japan. Despite the multiplicity of equilibria, the regularity appears to be a natural consequence of the self-organisation of an economy with endogenous agglomeration and dispersion forces, whereas no evidence thus far is available for concrete exogenous (or historical) factors accounting for the regularity. It follows that a place-based policy targeting an individual region is necessarily constrained by this endogenous regularity, so that the relative growth of an individual region tends to imply a relative decline of another region in the maintenance of the regularity. This column thus urges regional economists and policymakers to see the theories of agglomeration that have been developed in the past quarter of a century in a fresh light. See, for example, the recent development of the framework for systematic numerical analysis based on the numerical and group-theoretic bifurcation theory (e.g. Ikeda et al. 2012, 2017). Their approach enables us to explore the models of endogenous agglomeration with asymmetric geography as well as two-dimensional location space in a many-region setup.

Authors note: This column is based RIETI Discussion Paper 18-E-053.

References

Akamatsu, T, Y Takayama, and K Ikeda (2012), “Spatial discounting, Fourier, and racetrack economy: A recipe for the analysis of spatial agglomeration models,” Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, 99 (11), 32-52.

Akamatsu, T, T Mori, M Osawa, and Y Takayama (2018), “Spatial scale of agglomerations: Theoretical foundations and empirical implications,” Discussion paper, no. 84145, Munich Personal RePEc Archives.

Allen, T, and C Arkolakis (2014), “Trade and the topography of the spatial economy,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 129 (3): 1085-1140.

Alonso, W (1964), Location and Land Use: Toward a General Theory of Land Rent, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Baldwin, R, R Forslid, P Martin, I P Ottaviano, and F Robert-Nicoud (2003), Economic Geography and Public Policy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Beckmann, M J (1976), Mathematical Land Use Theory, Lexington, MA: Lexington Books. 

Bettencourt, L M A, J Lobo, D Helbing, C Kühnert, and G B West (2007), “Growth, innovation, scaling, and the pace of life in cities,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 104 (7), 7301-7306.

Christaller, W (1933), Die Zentralen Orte in Süddeutschland, Jena: Gustav Fischer.

Combes, P-P, G Duranton, D Puga, and S Roux (2012), “The productivity advantage of large cities: Distinguishing agglomeration from selection,” Econometrica, 80 (6), 2543-2594.

Davis, D, and J I Dingel (2019), “The comparative advantage of cities,” Unpublished manuscript.

Gabaix, X, and Y M Ioannides (2004), “The evolution of city size distributions,” in J V Henderson and J-F Thisse (eds.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics Vol. 4, Elsevier Ch. 53, 2341-2378.

Glaeser, E L, and D C Maré (2001), “Cities and skills,” Journal of Labor Economics, 19 (2), 316-342.

Henderson, J V (1974), “The sizes and types of cities,” American Economic Review, 64 (4), 640-656.

Ikeda, K, K Murota, and T Akamatsu (2012), “Self-organization of Lösch’s hexagons in economic agglomeration for core-periphery models,” International Journal of Bifurcation and Chaos, 22 (8).

Ikeda, K, K Murota, and Y Takayama (2017), “Stable economic agglomeration patterns in two dimensions: Beyond the scope of central place theory,” Journal of Regional Science, 57 (1), 132-172.

Krugman, P (1991), “Increasing returns and economic geography,” Journal of Political Economy ,99 (3), 483-499.

Krugman P (1996), The Self-Organizing Economy, Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.

Lösch, A (1940), Die räumliche Ordnung der Wirtschaft. Eine Untersuchung über Standort, Wirtschaftsgebiete und internationalem Handel, Jena: Gustav Fischer.

Mori, T (2018), “Spatial pattern and city size distribution,” Discussion paper 18-E-053, RIETI.

Mori, T, K Nishikimi, and T E Smith (2008), “The number-average size rule: A new empirical relationship between industrial location and city size,” Journal of Regional Science, 48 (1), 165-211.

Redding S J, and D Sturm (2008), “The cost of remoteness: Evidence from German division and reunification,” American Economic Review, 98 (5), 1766-1797.

Turing, A (1952), “The chemical basis of morphogenesis,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 237 (641), 37-72.

von Thünen, J H (1826), Der Isolierte Staat in Beziehung auf Landwirtschaft und Nationalökonomie, Wirtschaft & Finan. 

Endnotes

[1] Throughout this column, a city is defined to be a contiguous set of 1km-by-1km cells with at least 1000 people per km2 and total population of at least 10,000.

[2] Not surprisingly, large countries often have multiple large cities, and one can see that similar power laws hold in a sub-region around each of these cities. Under the same definition of a city, for example, the US has two comparable subsystem of cities around New York and Los Angeles; China around Shanghai and Hong Kong; and India has three around New Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai.

[3] Among others, see, for example, Glaeser and Maré (2001), Bettencourt et al. (2007), Combes et al. (2012), Davis and Dingel (2019).

[4] Their approach originates from Turing (1952) and its application to regional economics by Krugman (1996, Ch.8), and then its formalization by Akamatsu et al. (2012).

[5] Among the existing models, these include Krugman (1991), Puga (1999), Forslid and Ottaviano (2003) and Pflüger (2004), whereas the models with only local dispersion force include Helpman (1998), Redding and Sturm (2008), Allen and Arkolakis (2014).

[6] In fact, Hsu (2012) has shown the formal condition under which all of the central place pattern, hierarchy principle, power law for city size distribution, and hence, the number-average size rule for industrial location holds.

Spatial patterns and city size distribution

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Lion King Cast Reveal Their Favorite Scenes

Digital Elixir Lion King Cast Reveal Their Favorite Scenes

  The most anticipated big Disney remake yet, The Lion King, arrives in theaters Friday, promising fans a visually stunning reimagining of one of their favorite tales. Ahead of the movie’s release, Rotten Tomatoes’ editor Jacqueline Coley sat down with director Jon Favreau and the cast to talk about how they put a new spin on the classic film as well as their favorite scenes from the original movie. Want to know which Lion King moments make Donald Glover, Seth Rogen, Billy Eichner, Alfre Woodard, and Chiwetel Ejiofor laugh, cry, and drop their jaws? Check out the video interview above.

  Donald Glover and ‘The Lion King’ Cast Reveal Their Favorite Scenes from the Disney Classic

  Lion King Cast Reveal Their Favorite Scenes

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MIB: Danny Blanchflower

Digital Elixir MIB: Danny Blanchflower

This week, we speak with Danny Blanchflower, Professor of Economics, Dartmouth College, former member of the Monetary Policy Committee at the Bank of England, and author of Not Working: Where Have All the Good Jobs Gone?

Blanchflower discusses the details of the current employment situation: If we really are at full employment at 3.7% unemployment, then wage pressure should be sending salaries much higher. Instead, there is widespread underemployment, which is pressuring wages to the downside. This is why he believes wage increase have been so soft, barely keeping up with inflation at about 2%.

Blanchflower explains why he believes unemployment could bottom at 2.5%. He believes economists are under-estimating the odds of a recession, and the Fed should be cutting rates at this point in the cycle.

His favorite books are here; A transcript of our conversation will be available here.

You can stream/download the full conversation, including the podcast extras on Apple iTunes, Bloomberg, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Overcast, and Stitcher. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here.

Next week, we speak Josh Wolfe, co-founder of Lux Capital. The venture firm was set up to support scientists and entrepreneurs who pursue counter-conventional solutions to the most vexing puzzles in physical and life sciences.

        Danny Blanchflower’s Book

Not Working: Where Have All the Good Jobs Gone? by David Blanchflower

  Danny Blanchflower Favorite Books

  The Works of William H. Beveridge: Full Employment in a Free Society by William H. Beveridge

  One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  Unemployment As A World Problem by John Maynard Keynes

MIB: Danny Blanchflower

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Links 8/10/19

Digital Elixir Links 8/10/19

Yves here. I am getting some popups. This may be happening to you. Apologies if so. This is not supposed to happen. I have told our ad service to get rid of them and I hope this will be remedied pronto.

New research shows that elephants and other animals can suffer from PTSD CBC

Mysterious, Ancient Radio Signals Keep Pelting Earth. Astronomers Designed an AI to Hunt Them Down. LiveScience

Increasingly Frequent Marine Heatwaves Can Kill Coral Almost Instantly, Study Finds BBC

Dark Matter May Predate the Big Bang, New Math Suggests Science Daily

The Gulf Stream is slowing down. That could mean rising seas and a hotter Florida PhysOrg (David L)

In Russia’s Wildfires, Climate Change Is to Blame Bloomberg (UserFriendly)

Climate change is making it more dangerous to eat certain fish Grist

No One Understands Lyme Disease Bloomberg

China?

Trump Says It’s ‘Fine’ If September China Talks Are Canceled Bloomberg

Peter Navarro says US will take strong action against China if it devalues yuan to ‘neutralize tariffs’ CNBC

US hits back at China for targeting diplomat in Hong Kong Guardian

North Korea

North Korea tests ‘short-range ballistic missiles’ BBC

Donald Trump gets ‘beautiful’ letter from North Korea’s Kim Jong Un DW. Two can gaslight.

Kashmir

Kashmir: Moscow for resolving issue in accordance with Shimla, Lahore pacts The Hindu (J-LS)

‘Double standard’: A hard right American political conference spreads its wings in Sydney Sydney Morning Herald. Kevin W: “The real story is in the names of the people attending – a real nest of vipers. Alternate article on this story at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/09/when-tony-abbott-and-peta-credlin-share-billing-with-radical-far-right-figures-we-should-be-concerned

Brexit

UK economy contracts for first time since 2012 amid Brexit worries France 24

No 10 cancels staff leave, hinting at likelihood of snap election Guardian

Simultaneous wind farm and gas-fired power station failures are blamed for one of Britain’s worst power cuts in years as millions are hit by blackouts – with homes, airports, trains and even traffic lights going down Daily Mail

Russia Admits Mysterious Missile Engine Explosion Involved A Nuclear ‘Isotope Power Source’ The Drive

Italy’s Matteo Salvini calls for fresh elections as coalition fractures Guardian (UserFriendly)

Syraqistan

U.S. Sanctions Turn Iran’s Oil Industry Into Spy vs. Spy New York Times (Kevin W)

Withdrawal of US troops in Syria strengthened ISIS resurgence, DOD watchdog says MSN (resilc)

Turkey to annex northern Syria with US blessing Asia Times (Kevin W)

California School District Agrees to Desegregate After State Investigation New York Times (Kevin W)

Big Brother is Watching You Watch

Oh my God: If you let anyone other than Apple replace your recent iPhone’s battery, expect to be nagged by iOS The Register (Kevin W). Apple probably thinks they are being super nice by refraining from bricking your phone.

Trump Transition

Roseau feels the strain as Minnesota-Canada border hassles take a toll MPR News. Chuck L: “Collateral damage”

I Can No Longer Justify Being a Part of Trump’s ‘Complacent State.’ So I’m Resigning. Washington Post (furzy)

The FBI Told Congress Domestic Terror Investigations Led to 90 Recent Arrests. It Wouldn’t Show Us Records of Even One. ProPublica (UserFriendly)

Most Latinos Now Say It’s Gotten Worse For Them In The U.S. FiveThirtyEight (resilc)

Trump administration authorizes ‘cyanide bombs’ to kill wild animals Guardian (furzy)

DNC Chair’s Latest Resolution Could Torpedo Climate Debate Push, Activists Fear HuffPost (UserFriendly)

Republicans are becoming economic populists again. That’s a good thing Guardian (UserFriendly)

2020

In Shift From 2016, Bernie Sanders Shares More Personal Tales Wall Street Journal (UserFriendly)

Biden in Iowa Says ‘Poor Kids’ Are Just as Smart as ‘White Kids’ Bloomberg

Tulsi Gabbard on Syria, Iraq, Kamala Harris and the 2020 Primary – Rolling Stone (furzy)

AOC’s voting bloc looks to its next targets in New York Politico (UserFriendly)

Court Upholds North Dakota Law Stripping Voting Rights From Native Americans TruthOut (furzy)

Gunz

Trump flirts with action on gun control The Hill. Gaslighting.

President Bill Clinton: Reinstate Assault Weapons Ban Now Time. UserFriendly: “Look who wants to have one tiny bit of his legacy not be in tatters.”

L’affaire Epstein

Jeffrey Epstein documents show how girls were lured into his life Miami Herald (Chuck L). Ugh.

Epstein, or How Your News is Cooked Ilargi

CEOs Who Cheat In Bedroom Will Cheat In Boardroom, Study Shows Bloomberg. Erm, not quite. Ashley Madison people were actively looking to cheat and find fellow purposeful cheaters. Some “cheaters” have a single indiscretions or fall into an affair (get attracted to someone when their marriage is going through a bad phase), so it’s not clear to what degree these finding apply to less purposeful cheaters. Sp worth further study.

Our Fabulously Free Press

Trump is reportedly planning an attempt to regulate Facebook and Twitter over alleged political bias Business Insider (Kevin W)

Revealed: how Monsanto’s ‘intelligence center’ targeted journalists and activists Guardian (furzy)

‘The Family’: Netflix Series Investigates America’s Secret Theocracy Rolling Stone (furzy)

Malaysia Indicts 17 of the “Untouchables” at Goldman Sachs Wall Street on Parade (UserFriendly)

How the Supreme Court Is Rebranding Corruption Pro-Market

‘Global Economy is Probably in Recession’ Reuters

Class Warfare

The Descent Into Cruelty Current Affairs (UserFriendly). Filed here because IMHO this sort of conduct can be rationalized by the perps and the people who gave the orders by virtue of seeing the people as lesser.

Elderly couple found dead in murder-suicide left notes that they couldn’t pay high medical bills Daily Mail (J-LS)

Antidote du jour. Margarita: “This little guy performed almost an instantaneous costume change – as soon as he spotted me admiring him – and probably thought “‘let’s see if you can do this!’”

And a bonus (Chuck L):

This bird just discovered that golf balls bounce on concrete and he’s absolutely loving it. pic.twitter.com/rXQVgWZXu7

— Jesus Chrysler (@JesusChrysler15) August 2, 2019

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.

Links 8/10/19

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Austerity Has Made People Less Prepared for a No Deal Brexit

Digital Elixir Austerity Has Made People Less Prepared for a No Deal Brexit

Yves here. Most commentary on the economic impact of Brexit has focused on the effects on trade, commerce, investment, the financial sector….with comparatively little on how it will affect ordinary people.

By Duncan Exley, author of The End of Aspiration? Social mobility and our children’s fading prospects(Policy Press 2019) available here at a 20 per cent discount. He is the former Director of The Equality Trust. Originally published at openDemocracy

The government is keen to reassure us that it is preparing the UK to withstand an — increasingly likely — no-deal Brexit scenario. Fridges are being bought to stockpile medicines, and arrangements made for troops to camp outside Kent’s prisons in case prison officers are prevented from getting to work by traffic gridlock.

But the government isn’t preparing ordinary working families for the “short-term disruption” that even the most ardent Brexiters say we’ll experience before the “countervailing opportunities” arrive.

A sudden and substantial change to the prices and practicalities of international trade will inevitably cause some companies to lose contracts. (Non-UK businesses who want to avoid sudden rises in costs and logistical disruptions will already be looking for alternatives to their UK-based suppliers). Workers will lose jobs or working hours, the self-employed will lose clients. Some of those affected won’t have known they were part of the relevant supply-chain and therefore won’t have anticipated the consequences.

The government has, in fact, spent almost a decade making us lessprepared for sudden income shocks. If you lose your job tomorrow you’ll now have to wait five weeks until any Universal Credit payments arrive. As a result of (baseless) propaganda about ‘benefit scroungers’, the payments will be very low. If you have a third child born after 6 April 2017, you’ll receive no Universal Credit payments to cover their costs (which will, apparently, be your own fault for failing to anticipate a no-deal Brexit in family-planning decisions you made before the Brexit referendum ever happened).

This wouldn’t be too much of a problem if we all had sufficient savings to tide us over the ‘short term disruption’ until the ‘countervailing opportunities’ arrive, but we don’t. As a Resolution Foundation reportfound this month, “the sluggish recovery in incomes endured over the last decade has likely left low-to-middle income households more exposed to the effects of recession today than they were heading into the 2008 downturn… nearly 60 per cent of those on low-to-middle incomes report having no savings at all, up from just over 40 per cent just ahead of the financial crisis in 2007. There also appears to be less opportunity than there was previously for lower-income households to respond to an income shock by cutting back on spending… [because] the proportion of consumption allocated by that lower-income group to ‘essentials’ was 8 percentage points higher than prior to the financial crisis by 2017”. A financial shock is about to hit a country with worn-out shock absorbers.

Some of the implications of this are obvious. Large numbers of people will go into debt, or default on existing debts. Tenants will be evicted. Mortgagors will have their homes repossessed.

Other consequences aren’t so obvious. Advocates of Brexit promised us that >“cutting bureaucratic red tape would unleash entrepreneurialism” and the disruption would administer “a big kick up the arse”, that prompts us to “”. This school of thought (‘when the going gets tough, the tough get going’) is akin to that which become part of the mythology of the American Dream – with its tales of great businesses founded in the Great Depression. But as I discovered through researching my book (The End of Aspiration?) the mythology is largely a myth. The number of start-ups fell during the Depression, and later research showed that financial shocks actually reduce entrepreneurialism and our ability to grasp opportunities, with effects lasting for decades:

The effect of the 1920s and 1930s on most people was not a positive one in terms of mental attributes usually associated with upward social mobility. Economists who studied the financial behaviour of people who lived through the Depression found that the long economic trauma had made them less confident about the future, more risk-averse and less opportunity-seeking. This effect is especially strong on younger people, but the effect persists as they age.

The End of Aspiration? asks why the average Brit is more likely to be in a lower-status job than their parents had at the same age than they are to have a higher-status one, despite being better educated, and less likely to get a home to call their own. It draws on the experiences of people who have beaten those odds to achieve ‘ideas above their station’, and found that they “in their early years at least, overwhelmingly did not experience the feeling of being in financial free fall that traumatised people in the Great Depression… Some of my interviewees’ families experienced periods of unemployment, but the social security system in place at the time limited the financial distress”. Numerous academic studies show a similar phenomenon: we are much more likely to develop and pursue ambitious aspirations if we have stable household incomes and stable housing tenures.

The prime minister talks of “the opportunities of Brexit”, but even if these opportunities do materialise, the policies of the last decade have left us without the financial and psychological resilience necessary to grasp them.

Austerity Has Made People Less Prepared for a No Deal Brexit

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Bleak Financial Outlook for US Fracking Industry

Digital Elixir Bleak Financial Outlook for US Fracking Industry

Yves here. Some astute financial commentators were early to point out that fracking was uneconomical and depended on access to cheap funding. For instance, we cited the Financial Times’ John Dizard in a 2014 post:

John Dizard at the Financial Times (hat tip Scott) gives a more intriguing piece of the puzzle: the degree to which production is still chugging along despite it being uneconomical. The oil majors have been criticized for levering up to continue developing when it is cash-flow negative; they are presumably betting that prices will be much higher in short order.

But the same thing is happening further down the food chain, among players that don’t begin to have the deep pockets of the industry behemoths: many of them are still in “drill baby, drill” mode. Per Dizard:

Even long-time energy industry people cannot remember an overinvestment cycle lasting as long as the one in unconventional US resources. It is not just the hydrocarbon engineers who have created this bubble; there are the financial engineers who came up with new ways to pay for it.

But with Uber as an example of how long a money pit can keep going….

By Justin Mikulka. Originally published at DeSmogBlog

In early 2018 when major financial publications like the Wall Street Journal were predicting a bright and profitable future for the fracking industry, DeSmog began a series detailing the failing business model of fracking shale deposits for oil and gas in America.

Over a year later, the fracking industry is having to reckon with many of the issues DeSmog highlighted, in addition to one new issue — investors are finally giving up on the industry.

Billionaire oil CEO Harold Hamm — who has been touted as a “Shale King” — made comments this week reflecting how weak investment interest is in oil and gas fracking, going so far as to say that it wasn’t worth being a publicly traded company. “In today’s market, we don’t see a lot of value in it,” he said on his company’s earnings call.

A similar sentiment has appeared in The Financial Post, which this week reported how “unloved” by investors the Canadian tar sands industry — which DeSmog also has highlighted as a financial disaster — currently is.

“General investors are saying, ‘To heck with energy,’” Jennifer Rowland, an oil and gas analyst for Edward Jones, told The Financial Post.

After years of patience as the fracking and tar sands industries continued to pile up losses, investors are understandably tired of losing money.

$XOP, the key ETF for #oil and #gas producers, is at its lowest point since inception, in 2006. Lower than the depts of the great recession. Lower than after the price crash of 2014-2016. #Shale is literally eating this sector alive. pic.twitter.com/xrfM6w3mAB

— Clark Williams-Derry (@ClarkWDerry) August 7, 2019

2019 Quickly Becoming Another Financial Disaster of a Year

2019 was supposed to be the year that shale oil and gas producers finally reined in spending, with the goal of funding all new development from free cash flow. And just like every other year, it didn’t take long for those plans to unravel.

An analysis of 40 U.S. shale oil companies by Rystad Energy, an independent research organization in Norway, revealed how badly things had gone in the first quarter of 2019: “The gap between capex [capital expenditures] and CFO [cash flow from operating activities] has reached a staggering $4.7 billion. This implies tremendous overspend, the likes of which have not been seen since the third quarter of 2017.”

In other words, the capital expenditures, or money spent drilling oil, outpaced the cash flow from operating activities, or the money made by selling oil, by nearly $5 billion, in the first quarter of 2019 alone.

And the announcement of second quarter results brought no better news, with many shale companies suffering major drops in value.

A very bad day for two tight oil companies.#OOTT #oilandgas #oil #WTI #CrudeOil #fintwit #OPEC pic.twitter.com/5eqq0KLbix

— Art Berman (@aeberman12) August 2, 2019

New Dire Warnings About Peak Shale

Undeniably, the so-called “shale revolution” has produced record amounts of oil, with steady growth over the past decade. The dual techniques of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, are very effective at producing large amounts of oil and gas, but that production has resulted in chronic industry overspending by approximately a quarter trillion dollars over the last decade.*

Investors have been told to wait for the industry to figure out how to produce the oil and make a profit, but a new problem looms that could complicate those plans: Shale companies are running out of the “good rock” that produces plenty of oil.

In the past, shale producer Pioneer Natural Resources has been criticized for its overly optimistic forecasts for increased oil production, but company CEO Scott Sheffield has been singing a different tune lately. Sheffield now is warning that most of the oil from so-called “sweet spots,” or “tier 1 acreage,” has already been extracted.

“Tier 1 acreage is being exhausted at a very quick rate,” Sheffield told analysts on a call about second quarter results.

A similar warning is found at oil and gas industry news site Rigzone.com under the headline, “Is the US Shale Boom Winding Down?”

“New well flows are not what they used to be, since wells are drilled further away from sweet spots or placed too close to each other in order to make the most of all that very expensive acreage,” notes the story.

And financial industry site Seeking Alpha recently echoed all of these concerns, including the “growing scarcity of tier 1 acreage.”

PERMIAN WATCH: America’s Hottest Shale Play Is Slowing Down – Bloomberg https://t.co/aKfpnlxV2l pic.twitter.com/qvI2mZIMjl

— GPPOil_Gas (@GPPOil_Gas) August 5, 2019

The messages coming from energy analysts, the financial industry, and the fracking industry all lead to the same conclusion: The U.S. shale industry has been a financial disaster for investors, with producers piling up huge amounts of debt despite extracting copious volumes of oil from disappearing sweet spots. Now, shale companies are under mounting pressure to pay back that debt by producing oil from lower tier acreage. If past performance is any indication, this approach is a major long shot.

General investors are finally catching up to the bad deal that fracking represents, but the question is: What took them so long?

Bleak Financial Outlook for US Fracking Industry

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Financial constraints and the diffusion of technology

Digital Elixir Financial constraints and the diffusion of technology

Recent debates about the global productivity slowdown point to a large and increasing productivity gap between firms operating at the global technological frontier and those trailing behind. This column analyses whether better access to bank credit can accelerate technological diffusion and narrow the productivity gap between leading and lagging firms. Using data from a large emerging market – Russia – it shows that while bank loans can encourage firms to adopt new technologies and become more productive, long-run benefits vary substantially across industries and regions.

Firm-level innovation in emerging markets often involves imitation – firms adopt ‘Western’ products and processes and adapt them to local circumstances. The speed with which technologies diffuse varies greatly from country to country and can explain up to a quarter of the total variation in national income levels (Comin and Hobijn, 2010). Despite this central role of technological diffusion in determining wealth, the mechanisms that underpin the spread of new products and production processes remain poorly understood.

In a recent paper (Bircan and De Haas 2019), we focus on one such mechanism: the role of credit constraints for technological adoption. Schumpeterian growth models predict that credit constraints can limit technological adoption because external inventions, which are typically context specific and involve tacit know-how, are costly to integrate into a firm’s production structure (Aghion et al. 2005). 

To test whether credit constraints impede firm-level absorption of foreign technologies, we employ rich data from a regionally and sectorally representative sample of 4,220 Russian firms. We know the geographical location of each firm and have detailed survey-based information on their innovation activities, including the adoption of products and technologies that are new to them. By matching this information with panel data on these firms’ performance, we can also study whether adoptive innovation goes hand-in-hand with various productivity metrics.

To analyse the link between local availability of bank credit and firm-level technological adoption, we collect information on the location of over 45,000 Russian bank branches. This gives us an extensive and granular picture of Russia’s current banking landscape. The local density of bank branches and access to credit is likely to be endogenous to credit demand and other local characteristics. Our identification strategy therefore uses spatial heterogeneity in branch density induced by the top-down Soviet approach to economic planning as a source of exogenous variation in the present-day local supply of credit. To do so, we hand-collect and digitise historical data from archives in London, Kiev, and St. Petersburg to reconstruct a detailed spatial footprint, at the local level, of Soviet-era Gosbank (state bank) branches. We have made these new data publicly available and summarise them in the left-hand side of Figure 1 (with a focus on southwestern Russia). We also create a second historical banking instrument, using data from Berkowitz et al. (2014) on historical variation in the regional presence of spetsbanks. This variation reflects bureaucratic power struggles just before the collapse of the Soviet Union and has proven unrelated to past economic conditions.

Figure 1 Gosbank branches (left) and railway networks (right) in southwestern Russia

    Note: The Gosbank data refer to 1979 and the railway data to 1989. Source: Bircan and De Haas (2019) for data on Gosbank branches and the Vernadsky State Geological Museum (Moscow) and the US Geological Survey (2001) for geographical data on railway networks. 

Banks and technological diffusion: Main findings

Our analysis provides three main insights into where and how access to credit can help facilitate technological diffusion:

Our data demonstrate that firms are more likely to use bank credit in local markets where – for historical and exogenous reasons – the number of bank branches is higher. We then show that better access to credit promotes technological upgrading as it helps firms to produce new products and implement new production processes. This increased innovation in deeper credit markets occurs through cooperation with foreign clients and suppliers (in the context of product innovation) as well as the licensing of new technologies and hiring of business consultants (in the context of process innovation). We document that firms engaging in such innovation experience higher total factor productivity (TFP) and labour productivity growth than firms unable to innovate due to financial constraints. These findings speak to recent model calibrations of how financial frictions in emerging markets distort technology adoption decisions and hamper productivity growth (Midrigan and Xu 2014, Cole et al. 2016). We provide direct micro evidence from Russia in support of such models.

We uncover substantial geographical variation in the impact of bank credit on technology adoption by firms. Russia’s geographical and institutional breadth allows us to assess under which conditions the availability of bank credit encourages firms to adopt new products and technologies. We show that firms located closer to R&D centres established during the Soviet period, and firms with easier access to foreign markets (as proxied by distance to railway networks: see right-hand panel of Figure 1), are more likely to adopt new products and technologies due to deeper credit markets. Moreover, access to credit only appears to stimulate firm innovation in regions with relatively high-quality institutions.

We also uncover substantial sectoral variation in the impact of bank credit on firm-level technology adoption. Based on recent insights from Schumpeterian growth theory, we exploit assorted important dimensions of sector heterogeneity. We find that the link between bank lending and innovation is more pronounced in industries located further from the technological frontier; are more exposed to import competition; and export a larger share of their production. That is, the effect of branch density on technological adoption and TFP growth is stronger in industries and regions where the returns on innovation are high.

Conclusions

Our findings indicate that better access to bank credit can facilitate the diffusion of new products and production methods in an emerging market. Without access to credit, firms may remain stuck in a pattern of low productivity and weak growth, even after other businesses in the same country have managed to upgrade their operations.

Our data also allow us to demarcate more precisely when bank credit can help firms move closer to the technological frontier and when it cannot: to observe the limits of lending. We find that the relationship between bank credit and adoptive innovation is neither automatic nor universal. Instead, and in line with recent Schumpeterian models, financial constraints interact with market incentives to determine technological adoption and long-run growth.

References

Aghion, P, P Howitt, and D Mayer-Foulkes (2005), “The Effect of Financial Development on Convergence: Theory and Evidence”, Quarterly Journal of Economics 120: 73–222.

Andrews, D, C Criscuolo, and PN Gal (2015), “Frontier Firms, Technology Diffusion and Public Policy: Micro Evidence from OECD Countries”, OECD Productivity Working Paper 5.

Berkowitz, D, M Hoekstra and K Schoors (2014), “Bank Privatization, Finance, and Growth”, Journal of Development Economics 114: 93–106.

Bircan, C and R De Haas (2019), “The Limits of Lending? Banks and Technology Adoption across Russia”, Review of Financial Studies, forthcoming.

Cole, H L, J Greenwood and J M Sanchez (2016), “Why Doesn’t Technology Flow from Rich to Poor Countries?”, Econometrica 84: 1477–521.

Comin, D and B Hobijn (2010), “An Exploration of Technology Diffusion”, American Economic Review 100: 2031–59.

Midrigan, V and D Y Xu (2014), “Finance and Misallocation: Evidence from Plant-Level Data”, American Economic Review 104: 422–58.

Financial constraints and the diffusion of technology

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Lizzo: NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert

Digital Elixir Lizzo: NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert

NPR:

Lots of musicians cut corners during sound check. It’s a time to make sure everyone’s in tune and in balance, everyone’s blocked properly for the cameras, and every piece of recording equipment is doing its job the way it’s supposed to, but it’s not as if anyone’s rolling tape for posterity. Sometimes, Tiny Desk artists do their sound check in shabby street clothes before ducking into the green room to don their fancy performance wear. It’s standard procedure, and no big deal at all.

But from the second Lizzo entered the room, fresh off a long interview with Fresh Air’s Terry Gross, she was on: all charm, vibrant and gracious, dressed to the nines and ready to sing her face off. In rehearsal, Lizzo belted out “Cuz I Love You,” the title track from her wonderful new album, with nothing off her fastball; if you were standing six feet away at the time, you’d swear the gale force of her voice was blowing your hair back. She was the star and the mayor rolled into one, at once ingratiating and commanding, as an audience of maybe 25 milled around and prepared to let in the crowd.

  Lizzo: Tiny Desk Concert

Source: NPR

  Lizzo: NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert

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Succinct Summation of Week’s Events 8.9.19

Digital Elixir Succinct Summation of Week’s Events 8.9.19

Succinct Summations for the week ending August 9th, 2019

Positives:

1. Jobless claims fell 8k w/o/w from 217k to 209k. 2. Home mortgage refinance apps rose 12.0% w/o/w, up from previous increase of 0.1% 3. Same store sales rose 5.1% w/o/w, greater than the previous increase of 4.5%. 4. PPI-FD rose 0.2% m/o/m, meeting expectations. 5. PMI Services Index rose from 51.5 to 53.0 m/o/m, higher than the expected 52.2.

Negatives:

1. Home mortgage purchase apps fell 2.0% w/o/w, following the previous decrease of 3.0% 2. Job openings fell 0.5% m/o/m from 7.384M to 7.348M. 3. Consumer credit rose to $14.6B in June, below the expected $16.0B. 4. Wholesale inventories remain unchanged m/o/m, below the expected increase of 0.2%. 5. ISM Non-Mfg Index fell 1.4 points m/o/m from 55.1 to 53.7

Thanks, Matt

Succinct Summation of Week’s Events 8.9.19

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2:00PM Water Cooler 8/9/2019

Digital Elixir 2:00PM Water Cooler 8/9/2019

By Lambert Strether of Corrente

Trade

The Japanese-Korean trade war seems serious. Thread:

Another report that says Samsung Electronics is cutting all Japanese components from all of its product lines. Not just semiconductors, but smartphones and home appliances as well. | [단독] 삼성, 日소재 부품 빼기 ‘반도체,스마트폰, 가전’ 모두 추진 https://t.co/AcB1UxSrk0

— T.K. of AAK! (@AskAKorean) August 9, 2019

Politics

“But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?” –James Madison, Federalist 51

“They had one weapon left and both knew it: treachery.” –Frank Herbert, Dune

“2020 Democratic Presidential Nomination” [RealClearPolitics] (average of five polls). As of August 7: Biden down to 31.0% (31.6), Sanders down to 15.8% (16.6%), Warren flat at 15.5% (15.6%), Buttigieg flat at 5.5% (5.4%), Harris down at 8.3% (9.4%), Beto separating himself from the bottom feeders, interestingly. Others Brownian motion.

* * *

2020

Biden (D)(1): “Biden’s Newest Advisor Is a George W. Bush Appointee Who Supported the Iraq War” [GritPost]. “Nicholas Burns, who joined the Biden campaign as a foreign policy advisor this week, was an avid supporter of the Iraq War during his time in the George W. Bush administration. CNN reported Monday that Burns — who was the Under-Secretary of Political Affairs at the U.S. State Department during Bush 43’s administration — had joined Biden’s 2020 campaign for the presidency to drive the former vice president’s foreign policy agenda. Burns also served on the National Security Council in both the Bill Clinton and George H. Bush administrations, and is a professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, according to his LinkedIn profile. According to The Intercept, Burns is a senior counselor at the Cohen Group, which the outlet describes as ‘a global lobbying and influence firm’ that ‘represents weapon-makers and other companies with interests in the U.S. and overseas.’” • So what’s the issue?

Biden (D)(2): “President Joe Biden? First, he’d need to answer for his record on drug prices” [Stat]. Full of horrid detail. Here’s a good one: “After leaving office, Biden claimed that he would seek a ‘more rational way of paying‘ for expensive treatments, whatever that means. By hiring a former Pfizer executive to run his charity, count me as skeptical that Biden is about to do anything that really challenges the pharmaceutical industry.”• “Hiring”? Looks more like a pay-off, to me.

Biden (D)(3): “Don’t Blame Black Voters for Supporting Joe Biden” [Medium]. “But it takes more than just being Obama’s first mate to secure the African American vote. It all comes down to beating Trump. If Warren, Sanders, or Harris show and prove that they can take on the president, they might siphon black voters from the Biden camp. For the well-meaning, far-left white progressive contingent looking to change the minds of African American voters who view Joe Biden as the only option, here’s a little advice: Prove that someone else can knock Trump on his ass. And that starts by not going after the record of the most popular Democrat alive today (Obama).”

Buttigieg (D)(1): “Buttigieg ramps up outreach to Democratic superdelegates” [Associated Press]. “Pete Buttigieg (BOO’-tuh-juhj) is ramping up his outreach to Democratic Party superdelegates with a phone call to them outlining the scope of his 2020 presidential campaign. The outreach suggests Buttigieg’s campaign is looking beyond the early primary states to the possibility of a convention fight for the nomination. Superdelegates, who include Democratic National Committee members, elected officials and other party dignitaries, have historically held an outsized influence over the nominating process.”

Gabbard (D)(1): “Tulsi Gabbard’s daredevil act” [Politico]. “Gabbard delivered a piercing, if inaccurate, appraisal of Kamala Harris’ law enforcement record — then turned it into a misleading, yet effective, online ad push.” • That’s all Politico says. I heard what Gabbard said, when she said it, and could have backed up every line of it with links. Gabbard was even nicer than she could have been, because she left out Mnuchin. I wish I could say this article was shocking, but it isn’t.

Sanders (D)(1): “Bernie Sanders killed it on Joe Rogan” [Boing Boing]. “Bernie Sanders’ appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast was a gamble; the show has dabbled with some pretty reactionary politics in the past, but it has a vast audience (the Sanders episode has had nearly 5m views), and Rogan gave Sanders the space to expound both on policy specifics and wider “vision” questions, and Sanders nailed it…. The vast dark matter of the electorate is at the core of any political campaign, and that’s who Sanders is speaking to in this hour-long interview, and judging from the comments, he’s reaching them.” • Yep.

Trump (R)(1): “This Week Has Already Produced Three Bad Signs for Trump’s Reelection” [Bloomberg]. “The president needs to keep suburbanites, rural voters, and industrial states on his side for 2020, and the last few days have been bad for all of them…. The mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio—and Trump’s reluctance to push strong gun control measures—is likely to exacerbate collapsing Republican support among suburban voters… Trump owes much of his electoral victory to his strength in farm states. Many are already suffering from retaliatory tariffs imposed by China. On Monday, their plight worsened when the U.S. trade rival said it would suspend all imports of American agricultural products. Of all the groups in Trump’s coalition, falling support among farmers may be the least costly in electoral terms, since they hail from such deeply red areas.”

Warren (D)(1):

So why did you applaud a white supremacist

Bernie didn’t applaud the white supremacist pic.twitter.com/hkPZkyIVex

— Yusuf: “Tweets aren’t enough, get out and protest” (@yusufsaysbernie) August 9, 2019

Opportunism knocks time after time.

TX: “Yes, the GOP Should Worry About Texas” [RealClearPolitics]. “Most importantly, one has to ignore the nature of political coalitions in the Age of Trump. Trump has generally improved GOP fortunes in rural American and in the towns, and in states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio, all of which has generally helped the Republican Party. But there is little doubt that the GOP has suffered substantial losses in the suburban areas that once formed the backbone of the party while doing little to advance its cause in the major cities. Once one realizes that these urban/suburban areas cast a supermajority of the vote in Texas, one realizes quickly that the rural and small-town areas can’t keep the Republican Party afloat in Texas forever. I wouldn’t bet the farm, or the cattle ranch if one prefers, on Texas turning blue this cycle. But the state is not safe for Republicans in 2020 either, and it will likely be very competitve.” • I do have the feeling that Texas suburbanites really like their guns, however.

El Paso and Dayton Shootings

This is a bad take (1):

We must treat this violent racism like the security threat that it is. That means investing in law enforcement resources to combat the growing population of white nationalists who are engaging in violence. 4/4

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) August 4, 2019

Ferguson aside, one keeps reading law enforcement stories like this.

This is a bad take (2):

Just like the hateful terrorism of Al Qaeda & ISIS, domestic right-wing terrorism & white nationalism is completely incompatible with our American values. It is a threat to American safety & security, & we must not tolerate it in the United States.

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) August 4, 2019

Holy gawd, I can hear the national security establishment and the intelligence community licking their chops from here!

This is bad take (3): “Who Should Fight the War on White Nationalism” [Bloomberg]. • Please name the “War on ____” efforts that have succeeded since, oh, 1980.

All these efforts read like they were pulled out of the drawer, not written for the occasion. Of course, there may be only bad takes to be had.

Impeachment

“Nadler presses ahead with impeachment probe as Pelosi keeps door open” [CNN]. “The House Judiciary Committee is now engaged in a full-blown investigation and legal fight with the goal of deciding whether to recommend articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump by the end of the year, according to Democratic officials involved in the effort…. ‘This is formal impeachment proceedings,’ Nader told CNN’s Erin Burnett Thursday on ‘OutFront.’ The committee’s argument that it’s effectively conducting an impeachment inquiry already comes after months of House Democrats slowly growing in numbers backing the formal opening of an impeachment inquiry…. But the committee is now arguing that the Democrats’ calls for an impeachment inquiry are unnecessary… Democrats argue that the forthcoming committee hearings will be clearly linked to their impeachment deliberation.” • So, who knows.

“Clinton’s advice for impeachment inquiry: Don’t pursue for ‘trivial partisan political purposes’” [CNN]. • [puts head in hands].

Realignment and Legitimacy

How Soviet:

Abandoned Presidents Heads in a rural Virginia field pic.twitter.com/6F9WRYSMAr

— 41 Strange (@41Strange) August 8, 2019

“Insulin” [Eschaton]. “One reason I am very pessimistic about the possibilities for the current dominant democrats is that if they can’t even take on insulin… [T]his is the ultimate low hanging fruit and the “oh people want to talk about kitchen table issues” crowd can’t even fix this.” • Maybe Chuck and Nancy should hold a presser and promise to “fight for” it.

“Exclusive: Critical U.S. Election Systems Have Been Left Exposed Online Despite Official Denials” [Vice]. “The top voting machine company [Election Systems & Software] in the country insists that its election systems are never connected to the internet. But researchers found 35 of the systems have been connected to the internet for months and possibly years, including in some swing states.” • The only reason I can imagine, besides corruption, for election officials to buy these things is that they want the capability to fix elections, and that goes for both parties.

Stats Watch

Producer Price Index, July 2019 (Final Demand): “A swing higher in energy prices held up producer prices in July which otherwise were very soft” [Econoday]. “Personal consumption measures…are very soft. Overall, personal consumption prices managed only a 0.1 percent increase on the month.”

Banking: “Goldman Sachs, bank of the rich and powerful, is dipping into subprime lending with Apple Card” [CNBC]. “‘I was absolutely shocked I got it,’ said one early user with a FICO score of 620.” • Everything is fine.

Energy: “For Pipeline Builders, a Long Road to Understanding Rust” [Undark]. This is a really interesting article! The bottom line: “It’s easy to forget how newfangled our constructions are. The first successful pipeline was built in 1862. Corrosion theory wasn’t laid out until 1938. Smart pigs, dreamed up in the 1950s, weren’t especially useful until the 1990s. Though our history is rife with technological hiccups, we expect infrastructure to last, and forget what Stuart Eynon and Alyeska know well: the best maintenance starts with surveillance.” • Sounds like we don’t understand soil, either.

Transportation: “Public Transit Projects Cheaper Than Uber’s $5.2 Billion Q2 Losses, Ranked” [Jalopnik]. “Uber announced a $5.2 billion loss last quarter, bringing the company’s total losses to $16.2 billion since 2016. In completely, totally unrelated news, here are some public transportation projects currently under construction in the United States that cost less than $5.2 billion individually…. Combined, these seven major public transportation projects are projected to cost $16.89 billion, or about four percent more than Uber’s cumulative losses since 2016.” • So much capital sloshing about, so little good sense about where to invest it. (Unless you want to increase traffic and hurt public transportation, which Uber’s funders are doing.)

Tech: “Tech Companies Want Out of the Censorship Business” [Bloomberg]. “Decentralized platforms represent the resilient communications system that the internet was intended to be. As a result, obnoxious opinions don’t simply disappear when they’re removed from mainstream service providers. As undesirables are removed from social networks, they find like-minded individuals in darker corners of the web. Gab.com is often described as a “safe haven” for right-wing extremists, even though its founder emphasizes that the site welcomes dissidents of all stripes. The people who seek refuge in Gab tend to be those who have been banned from Twitter, and it just so happens that a lot of them represent the far right. Similarly, 8chan gained traction as a haven for those who had been censored on 4chan, which had previously served as a refuge for those who had been banned by SomethingAwful, a rather dark site to begin with. Facebook moderators have told of the mental distress suffered after viewing relentlessly awful content. This must be what it’s like to be an 8chan user. If society wants to reform radical extremists, it’s probably not a good idea to force them into a cesspool with other radical extremists.”

* * *

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 27 Fear (previous close: 25, Extreme Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 36 (Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Aug 9 at 12:38pm. • Restored at reader request. Note that the index is not always updated daily, sadly.

The Biosphere

“Interactive: How climate change could threaten the world’s traditional dishes” [Carbon Brief]. “From the US hamburger to South Korea’s kimchi, Carbon Brief explores how some of the world’s most iconic traditional dishes could fare as the world warms…. Canada’s most well-known dish is poutine – a combination of french fries, cheese curds and gravy…. The country currently sources the majority of its potatoes domestically…. Canada’s potato crops face threats from extreme weather…. Another key ingredient of poutine is cheese curds, which are made from curdled milk. Canada’s milk industry is concentrated in Quebec and Ontario which, together, are home to 82% of the country’s dairy farms. A study published in 2015 found that dairy cows in Southern Ontario are increasingly dying as a result of heat stress. Poutine’s final key ingredient – gravy – can be made from various meats, but chicken is often used. A government report found that poultry farming in Quebec is “particularly sensitive” to heat stress.”

“Gone” [California Sunday]. “In the mid-1970s, Jane Dolan, who was raised in Chico and became the student-body president at the local state college, decided nothing would change until the makeup of the Butte County Board of Supervisors was changed. She had watched Paradise go from a rustic outpost, where her father took the family every Father’s Day for a spaghetti dinner at Tony’s, to a full-blown city with no governance. The four men and one woman who sat on the board acted as little more than minions for a handful of developers, builders, and realtors. None was more compliant than Supervisor Bob Lemke, a big, bearded man who represented Paradise and could be found inebriated and slapping backs at the annual Gold Nugget Days celebration. ‘The reason Paradise had no infrastructure is Lemke and the rest of the board wouldn’t consider charging the developer fees to pay for any,’ Dolan said. ‘As crazy as it sounds, there was no zoning on the ridge. They had these categories, A-1, A-2, A-3, but they meant nothing. We called it zoning by septic tank.’” • A good long read.

“Sometimes the road to discovery starts with a walk in a local marsh” [Stanford Engineering] (original). “Without touching and without electrical or chemical signals, individual Spirostomum can coordinate their ultrafast contractions so closely that groups of them appear to shrink simultaneously — a reaction to predators that makes them release paralyzing toxins in sync.” •.I know I get a little “Wonders of Nature”-y in this section, but the story of this discovery, and the discovery, are both wonderful.

Our Famously Free Press

Too bad, I liked Pacific Standard:

Today is an extremely difficult day, the worst day—and I’m heart-broken and devastated. We learned this morning, without any warning, that our primary funder is cutting off all charitable giving and that our board is shutting down @PacificStand, effective next Friday.

— Nicholas Jackson (@nbj914) August 7, 2019

Turns out capricious squillionaire funding wasn’t the best model.

Too bad, I liked Governing:

Today is an extremely difficult day, the worst day—and I’m heart-broken and devastated. We learned this morning, without any warning, that our primary funder is cutting off all charitable giving and that our board is shutting down @PacificStand, effective next Friday.

— Nicholas Jackson (@nbj914) August 7, 2019

Two casualties on the same day!

Black Injustice Tipping Point

“Mysterious Deaths Leave Ferguson Activists ‘On Pins and Needles’” [Rolling Stones]. Re-upping from March: “Since the 2014 shooting, about six people connected to the protests following Brown’s death have died — some in violent, mysterious ways, the Associated Press reports. While police say there is no evidence that foul play was involved in the men’s deaths, those within the community report feeling as if they are “on pins and needles,” Rev. Darryl Grey said. The prominent African American leader added that he has received anonymous threats, and that he recently found an unmarked box containing a 6-foot python in his car.” • Nice.

Class Warfare

“Low-Wage Legacies, Race, and the Golden Chicken in Mississippi: Where Contemporary Immigration Meets African American Labor History” [Southern Spaces]. From 2013, a story about the ICE raids the other day in Scott County, MS: “In Scott County’s seat of Forest, population six thousand, there are five large-scale poultry processing plants dominating local industry. Local high school football teams compete for the “Golden Chicken” trophy.4 Typical for poultry-producing areas, many of Scott County’s residents struggle to make ends meet, and nearly half of Forest’s households earn less than $25,000 per year. Just under 50 percent of Forest’s population is African American, approximately 30 percent is white, and almost 25 percent self-identifies as “Hispanic.”5 Scott County, then, differs from some areas of the US South that have attracted large numbers of Latin American immigrants in the past twenty years. Here, these new arrivals have joined workplaces and communities where the largest demographic group is African American rather than white.” • Hmm.

News of the Wired

“The Harvard Professor Scam Gets Even Weirder Six other men describe their encounters with the same mysterious Frenchwoman.” [The Cut]. • I don’t even know where to file this. Cambridge has changed since my day.

“AI felt like the next frontier” [It’s Nice That]. Composer Holly Herndon: “I think we should avoid training AI on existing canon. So far, instead of making new training sets, and instead of trying to take AI to a new place, a lot of work has been focussed on “let’s train it on Bach and then have new pieces of Bach forever.” I feel like that can really get us into like an aesthetic and creative cul-de-sac of rehashing and recycling ourselves. Culturally, we struggle with that anyway, a kind of retromania and nostalgia. Of course, we’re always building on a shared language, we’re never entirely starting from scratch, but I think it’s important that it continues to build and that we don’t get stuck in a loop.” • Herndon’s AI, an ensemble member, is named “Spawn.”

“The Fundamental Link Between Body Weight and the Immune System” [The Atlantic]. “Just as antibiotics are associated with faster growth in cattle, a decrease in diversity in the human microbiome is associated with obesity. As the usage of animal antibiotics exploded in the 20th century, so too did usage in humans. The rise coincides with the obesity epidemic. This could be a spurious correlation, of course—lots of things have been on the rise since the ’50s. But dismissing it entirely would require ignoring a growing body of evidence that our metabolic health is inseparable from the health of our gut microbes…. Because leanness and obesity seem to be transmissible through the microbiome, ‘metabolic disease turns out to be, in some ways, like an infectious disease,’ says Lora Hooper, the chair of the immunology department at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center… Seeing obesity as a manifestation of the interplay between many systems—genetic, microbial, environmental—invites the understanding that human physiology has changed along with our relationship to the species in and around us.” • So there’s hope! A lot of good research.

* * *

Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, (c) how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal, and (d) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. Today’s plant (JN):

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Readers: Water Cooler is a standalone entity not covered by the annual NC fundraiser.Remember, a tip jar is for tipping! So if you see a link you especially like, or an item you wouldn’t see anywhere else, please do not hesitate to express your appreciation in tangible form. Regular positive feedback both makes me feel good and lets me know I’m on the right track with coverage. When I get no donations for five or ten days I get worried. More tangibly, a constant trickle of donations helps me with expenses, and I factor in that trickle when setting fundraising goals:

Here is the screen that will appear, which I have helpfully annotated.

If you hate PayPal, you can email me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, and I will give you directions on how to send a check. Thank you!

2:00PM Water Cooler 8/9/2019

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Asset Managers With $74 Trillion on Brink of Historic Shakeout

Digital Elixir Asset Managers With $74 Trillion on Brink of Historic Shakeout

This is quite amazing via Bloomberg:

“The industry that gave rise to investing titans Peter Lynch, Bill Miller and Bill Gross is facing an existential crisis.

For years, mom-and-pop investors frustrated by high fees and subpar returns from big-name money managers have been shifting their savings into ultra-cheap funds that simply mimic the returns generated by benchmark stock and bond indexes. Passive investing, as it is known, was in. Active was out.

At first, few noticed the trickle of money out of funds run by star money managers into cheaper index products. But now, no one can ignore the flood. The exodus from active funds has sent fees inexorably lower, led to the loss of thousands of jobs and forced large-scale consolidation among firms. That’s pushing the industry, with $74 trillion in assets as measured by Boston Consulting Group, towards a shakeout where only the strongest will survive.”

  The graphic tells the story:

Source: Bloomberg

  Asset Managers With $74 Trillion on Brink of Historic Shakeout

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How Capitalism Exploits Our Fear of Old Age

Digital Elixir How Capitalism Exploits Our Fear of Old Age

Yves here. I don’t mean to be a nay-sayer, but having developed major orthopedic problems after an accident, I find it hard to be cheery about getting old. This article makes a passing mention of financial stress among the elderly. A new story in the Financial Times, adding to a 2018 study Greying of US Bankruptcy, chronicles the rising level of indebtedness. Key sections:

In 1991, over-65s made up only 2 per cent of bankruptcy filers, but by 2016 that had risen to more than 12 per cent, says Robert Lawless, one of the authors of the report and a professor at University of Illinois College of Law. (As about 800,000 households filed for bankruptcy that year, this works out as approximately 98,000 families or about 133,000 seniors, since many file jointly as couples, he adds.) Over the same period, elders grew as a percentage of the US adult population too, but only from 17 per cent to 19.3 per cent….

In 1989, only one in five Americans aged 75 or older were in debt; by 2016, almost half were, according to the most recent US Federal Reserve survey of consumer finances. The rise in senior debt comes at a time when the wealth gap between rich and middle-class or poor Americans is at an all-time high, according to a study last year by the Pew Research Center.

By 2016, the wealth of upper-income Americans had more than recovered from the post-2008 recession, but the wealth of lower- and middle-income families was at 1989 levels, highlighting the long-term rise in income inequality in the US.

As these low- to middle-income families age, many are being pitched into debt-burdened retirement by several structural trends, including the decline of trade unions, with their power to negotiate real wage increases, good pensions and retiree healthcare packages; the disappearance of defined benefit pension schemes; steep healthcare inflation; and a sharp rise in middle-class families helping to pay for children to go to college.

By Valerie Schloredt, the the books editor for YES! Originally published at Yes!; cross-posted from openDemocracy

So I’ll be out in public, maybe ordering coffee, and someone I don’t know will address me as “sweetie.” I’m a 60-year-old woman, and I look my age. Because people haven’t called me “sweetie” since I was about 5, I’m thinking this is an age thing. That seems more obvious when a stranger ironically addresses me as “young lady” in situations where “excuse me,” “hello,” “hey, you,” or “pardon me, ma’am” would do just fine.

Such micro-aggressions, conscious or not, don’t just target older women. A friend my age who sports a distinguished gray beard was sweating through the last stretch of a half-marathon when a young guy in the crowd yelled from the sidelines, “Way to go, old dude!”

For decades, ageism has been one of the “isms,” along with racism, sexism, and ableism, that are unacceptable in progressive discourse and illegal under U.S. anti-discrimination law – at least in theory. Yet ageism against older people remains the most unexamined and commonly accepted of all our biases.

Look at media, from advertising to news, that portray aging almost exclusively in terms of loss – of physical and mental abilities, rewarding work, money, romance, and dignity. That sad and often denigrating picture leads us to fear aging. To distance ourselves from our anxiety, we label older people, regard them as “the other,” and marginalize them, perhaps most obviously in casual, patronizing remarks to strangers.

I’m seeing ageism a lot more clearly now that I am subject to it. So I welcomed Ashton Applewhite’s encouraging new book, This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism. Applewhite, who has been speaking and blogging on the subject for several years, takes a particularly empowering approach by discussing ageism from the perspectives of both the personal and the political, debunking myths along the way. Take the “deficit model” of aging – the common assumption that getting older is all loss and no gain. In reality, we humans retain all sorts of qualities and abilities as we age.

We’re also adaptable. That’s a quality that can have unexpected benefits, like the “U-curve of happiness” described in a paper published by the National Bureau for Economic Research. The authors found that older people report being happier than do people in middle age. We deal with declines, of course, but we may actually get better at some things, like discarding superficial values, solving emotional problems, and appreciating life’s pleasures.

That bonus in emotional resilience may come in handy, because we’re aging in an economically, politically, and socially volatile era. According to Applewhite, poverty rates for Americans older than 65 are increasing and 50% of the baby boom generation feel they have not saved enough to create sufficient income should they live into their 80s and 90s. And while employment discrimination against older people (40 and up) is well known but difficult to prove, half of the boomer generation doesn’t see how they will be able to retire at all, Applewhite reports.

In her new book, Downhill from Here: Retirement Insecurity in the Age of Inequality, Katherine S. Newman looks at the current economic landscape for older Americans and concludes, “Retirement insecurity is an increasingly serious manifestation of the vast inequality that is eating away at the social fabric of America.” What is now a bad situation for many boomers could be even worse for Gen Xers and millennials when their turns come.

So here we are, becoming more vulnerable over the years in a system that already treats people as expendable. Applewhite, for all her good-humored tone, calls out that system as global capitalism, as when she critiques the intergenerational competition narrative. The image evoked is of greedy oldsters sucking up jobs and houses and Social Security and Medicare, leaving nothing for the next generation.

It’s easy to be pulled into the generation blame game, abetted by underlying ageism, and to forget that economic systems are not inexorable phenomena like gravity or time; rather, they are the result of choices. In fact, rather than regard older people as leeches, we should remember that economic interdependence is intergenerational. Older people are an intrinsic part of society. Most of them have supported younger and older people in whatever ways were available. And whether working or retired, they buy products and services and pay taxes and contribute labor, support, and finances to their families and communities.

Applewhite caps her manifesto with recommendations that strike me as parts of what could be a Great New Deal for Age. It could start with more flexibility in employment so people could have longer careers, with more time out for training, exploration, and family. Resources would be put into accessible design for public spaces, as well as programs to support mobility for people across the spectrum of age and ability. That would facilitate their inclusion in community, and they would be in good shape to take part because of improvements in health policy, clinical practice, funding, and research. And if, toward the end of life, more intensive care were needed, workers and family members doing paid and unpaid care work would be fairly compensated or supported.

The truth is that improving systems to include older people would improve access and prosperity and quality of life for everyone.

All that calls for a new movement against age discrimination and organizing to get socially responsible representatives and policymakers into office. It also requires the sort of consciousness-raising and agitation that is now going on around the issues of race, justice, climate, and gender. Waking up to the real harms of ageism and refusing to feed the beast with our words and actions is the first step. The good news? The job is open to anyone and everyone, regardless of age.

How Capitalism Exploits Our Fear of Old Age

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Social media polarization

Digital Elixir Social media polarization

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Social media polarization

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1968 Aston Martin DB6 Vantage

Digital Elixir 1968 Aston Martin DB6 Vantage

Strangely enough, the DB5 and DB6 came up in conversation this week. A friend grew up with the family that owned Aston in the 1970s. The nicest thing we can say about that era is it helped the company say afloat to usher in the modern Ford and post Ford era.

The Vantage had a 4.0L Vantage Inline-Six which made 325 horsepower, a very competitive output for the era. It was mated to a ZF 5-Speed manual transmission, and the combination was fast.

The 2 door, four seat fastback was one of the most handsome cars ever to come out of the UK. Gorgeous front grill, spectacular dashboard, a worthy successor to the DB5.

Strong DB6 Vantage from this era go from between $300k to $500k and up.

  Source: Classic Driver

1968 Aston Martin DB6 Vantage

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Links 8/9/19

Digital Elixir Links 8/9/19

DOT says Delta’s ban on pit bulls as service animals is not allowed Atlanta Journal-Constitution (J-LS)

Washington woman sent to hospital after posing with octopus on face Boston 25 News (J-LS). Darwin Award wannabe.

Endangered Killer Whale Pods Lose Three More Members Courthouse News (furzy)

Climate Crisis May Be Increasing Jet Stream Turbulence, Study Finds Guardian

Company Uses NASA Tech to Make Healthy Food ‘Out of Thin Air’ Using Only CO2, Water, and Solar Electricity Good News Network (Chuck L)

China?

Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg says alliance needs to address the rise of China South China Morning Post. Kevin W: “‘This is not about moving NATO into the Pacific’ said NATO’s Secretary General while in Australia.”

US Holds Off On Huawei Licenses As China Halts Crop-Buying Bloomberg

Japan steps back from South Korean trade war Asia Times (Kevin W)

Berlin’s Popular Shopping Streets Will Go Car-Free CityLab

The South Asian women trafficked to Kenya’s Bollywood-style bars Al Jazeera (resilc)

Kashmir

In Kashmir, Clampdown on Movement and Communication Fuels Anxieties The Wire (J-LS)

No policy change on Kashmir, says U.S. The Hindu (J-LS)

To Stave off Potential Global Concern, India Accuses Pakistan of Being ‘Alarmist’ The Wire (J-LS)

woahh – Centrelink contractors were ranked on a big board in their offices based on how many debts they could rack up. What the hell??https://t.co/s98HC0Jp8c

— Angus Livingston (@anguslivingston) August 9, 2019

Big Brother is Watching You Watch

Facebook Loses Facial Recognition Technology Appeal, Must Face Class Action Euronews

Imperial Collapse Watch

Mom Of Four Goes To SERE School, Gets Amazing Sleep Duffle Blog (Kevin W)

U.S. Foreign Policy: This Is Us LobeLog (resilc)

Trump Transition

The last few weeks of the Trump Show have been more awful than usual but also inadvertently revelatory @ Trump’s coalition.If you’ve paid attention, you’ve suspected this stuff for a long time,but bc T says the quiet parts out loud,a lot of GOP masks have definitively dropped: /1

— Robert E Kelly (@Robert_E_Kelly) August 8, 2019

Trump: El Paso shooting patients being treated at hospital ‘refused to meet with president’ Independent. Resilc: “I would have met with him so I could have spit on him, but that’s me, retired US diplomat.”

Trump plays the victim while visiting victims MSNBC (furzy)

Trump Hurt, Confused Over Insufficient Praise For El Paso Trip Vanity Fair. Resilc: “IF he loses we’ll have a 24/7 shadow president burning up the twitterverse all day, every day with a review of the next president’s daily actions. It only stops when he’s dead.”

Andrew McCabe sues FBI over firing, alleges plot by Trump to oust those disloyal to the president MSN (furzy)

The Persistent Myth That Trump Opposes War Caitlin Johnstone

Trump Hamptons Fundraisers Put Donors Like Stephen Ross in Bind Bloomberg (Kevin W)

Six charts on the immigrants who call the US home BBC (resilc)

“Don’t Look Away”: Videos and Images of Weeping Children and Loved Ones Spread as ICE Arrests 680 in Mississippi Common Dreams (Kevin W)

US immigration: ICE releases 300 people after Mississippi raids BBC

A Navarro Recession? Wall Street Journal and White House economic adviser calls Wall Street Journal a communist paper after it names next recession for him Raw Story (furzy). Accountability is Communist?

Ivanka Trump’s mask slips: What her Chicago canard reveals Salon (furzy)

Why New Laws Against White Supremacist Violence Are Not the Answer Intercept. Resilc: “You can bet if they were black guys killing white golfers at a Trump course they would be ISIS-like terrorists.”

A Term of Change on the Supreme Court National Conference of State Legislatures (UserFriendly)

Police State Watch

An Open Invitation to Tyranny Paul Craig Roberts. Pre-crime is here.

2020

Joe Biden Is Coming for Your Legal Weed Vice

Black Injustice Tipping Point

How a criminal investigation in Georgia set an ominous tone for African-American voters Yahoo (UserFriendly)

Gunz

Global Human Rights Movement Issues Travel Warning for the U.S. Due to Rampant Gun Violence – Amnesty International USA (J-LS)

What Americas gun fanatics wont tell you MarketWatch (David L)

Document Shows NRA Money Helped Its Chief Search for a Personal Mansion ProPublica (UserFriendly)

Domestic Terrorism and the Trump Defense Vanity Fair. (resilc)

Our Fabulously Free Press

An offer they can’t refuse? Facebook offers mainstream news millions in licensing fees RT (Kevin W). As we’ve said, if your business depends on a platform, you don’t have a business.

The Harvard Professor Scam Gets Even Weirder New York Magazine (J-LS)

The Worst Is Still To Come In Energy Markets OilPrice (Kevin W)

Uber Investors Expected to Shrug Off Estimated $5 Billion Loss Bloomberg. Um, so much for that take….

Uber lost over $5 billion in one quarter, but don’t worry, it gets worse The Verge (David L)

Exponential growth is a pipe dream Financial Times (David L). Ya think?

Class Warfare

‘It’s crazy’: Chase Bank forgiving all debt owed by its Canadian credit card customers CBC (resilc)

Can’t Afford a Vacation? Get Another Credit Card! FAIR (UserFriendly)

Amazon Under Fire Again as China Factory Hires Teenage Interns Bloomberg (UserFriendly)

Antidote du jour (furzy):

And a bonus (guurst):

9 kittens born. I was taking pictures, trying to capture them all. Decided to make a video instead pic.twitter.com/PMpJRQQyfr

— Awwwww (@AwwwwCats) June 6, 2019

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.

Links 8/9/19

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Why I Hate Houses

Digital Elixir Why I Hate Houses

I have had, up till now, the good fortune to live in apartments, ranging by urban standards from nice to really very nice. I now live in a house that most would likely consider to be somewhat better than mere “nice”. It’s on a ridge, with nearly a full acre plot, in quiet tree-filled neighborhood with reasonable amenities all a short driving distance away, including a well-kitted out gym and quite a few good restaurants. Bonus points for it being only 15 minutes from the airport. Nearly all the routes take you past other pleasant-looking-to-glam houses, or the country club, or the golf course, or twee shopping areas.

I’ve discovered that I hate the house part of this equation, as in dealing with the day-to-day time demands of home ownership. I find it stressful and unrewarding. And it’s made worse in my case by finding that this house has a lot that needs to be addressed pretty soon, to the degree that that plus moving-related tasks (like plenty of boxes yet to be unpacked) is cutting into my blogging time.

There are bona fide reasons to have problems with this way of living, namely the environmental cost. Free-standing buildings take more energy to heat and cool than multi-unit structures. Car ownership is pretty much unavoidable, since even in those few suburbs with decent public transport, it’s designed for going in and of the city center (as in for commuting), not for provisioning, transporting kids, or running other errands. And if you decide to fit in, as a recent post pointed out, “Lawns, in general, are pretty much the enemy for healthy insect habitats.” And don’t get me started on leaf blowers.

Now I could pretend to not like houses out of reasons of conscience, or a preference for living in high-density areas (which I do have). But my big reason for not liking houses is the inefficiency and time sink of maintaining them.

There’s a reason that biggest-single-family-home owner in the US, Blackstone’s Invitation Homes, is widely regarded as an upscale slumlord by virtue of not doing adequate maintenance on its properties and even failing to deal promptly with problems that will clearly damage the house, like leaks. Keeping up free-standing homes doesn’t scale. And that imposes a big tax on the time of owners.

Think about it. As a tenant or owner in a condo or co-op, the building is responsible for taking care of the public spaces, the heating, plumbing, and electrical systems, and sometimes even cleaning the outside windows. Maybe you have to provide your own air conditioner. Maybe you make a lot of improvements and some of them don’t work so well (like using a stylish bar sink in a bathroom and having to regularly have it snaked because the drain pipe is a bit narrow). But the general point is if Something Happens or Something Needs To Be Done, you can call a superintendent who knows the conditions in your unit and either is required to fix the problem or can refer you to someone (“the building’s electrician”) who may not necessarily be the cheapest or the best, but is probably fairly priced (to get repeat business from the tenants in that building) and actually can be efficient in how he goes about his work because he knows the conditions in that apartment complex.

The fact that a building manager is responsible for core systems and has incentives to minimize costs over a long-term horizon means (unless they are stupid property owners or self-conscious slumlord types), they’ll do at least an adequate job of maintenance.

By contrast, as an individual homeowner, unless you are the sort that likes carpentry or plumbing or other stereotypically manly tinkering, maintenance is a time and cost sink. My brief experience is it is far more frustrating trying to deal with various home upkeep pros, first because there seem to be so many to deal with, and unless you have a service under contract, they are usually dealing with the particular conditions at your site afresh. That is less efficient from a macro perspective (more one-off or somewhat customized work), plus it can also leave the homeowner wondering whether the service professional was giving you the straight scoop (did you really need that mini-rewiring job, or was he taking advantage of the fact that you couldn’t determine that all you needed was a new socket?)

The individual homeowner also has greater incentives to defer maintenance because upkeep is a nuisance and entails outlays.

I am more acutely aware of this than I’d like to be because I am having to deal with a maintenance backlog, including replacing rotten wood under the gutters, investigating electrical issues, having two stoves that only kinda-sorta work fixed (they broil but won’t bake at higher than 350 degrees), getting the carpets cleaned, and fixing a sink and counter ruined by a home health care aide (the last also ruined my day).1 And there are other reminders of what as an former urbanite feels like excess….like the necessity of having a yardman.

I imagine many of you detest apartments for good reasons: you lived in one or more as a young person and they were cramped and noisy. From what I saw in Manhattan, the stock of rental apartments was markedly inferior to the ones for purchase, and in most cities, you have more rented than owned units, meaning most of what is out there is skanky. But that is a function of how we do housing in the US, and not of the inherent merits of apartments. It’s perfectly possible to have more generously proportioned apartments with decent height ceilings and heavy enough walls so as not to hear your neighbor’s music. It’s also possible to have very clever designs. I was struck, for instance, with how much good layout mattered when I became a volcano refugee in London and a planned two-day stay with Richard Smith turned out to be a twelve day visit. He lived in an 800 square foot apartment in the Barbican. Yet even though his wife was also there a fair bit of time, it never felt crowded even when all three of us were there.

Now I am sure many of you have defenses for owning homes, such as:

Kids needing a yard. Maybe, but that is a less compelling argument than when I was a child and kids were allowed to have unstructured time playing with other kids nearby. With children now shuttled to and from school and to their activities and play dates, yards seem way less useful

Gardening. There are urban gardens and we could have more of them, but for some reason, this practice hasn’t taken hold in America.

Necessity. Where you work doesn’t have decent apartment stock.

Fear of or distaste for urban living.

Wanting to be close to the countryside. A strong reason if you love the activities like hiking and water sports.

Nevertheless, I encourage you to think hard about the time cost of your house, if you have a free-standing house, and how much more leisure time you could spend on your favorite activities if you didn’t have the millstone of property maintenance. Unless, of course, you are rich enough to have staff to do this sort of thing for you.

____

1 This is what happens when you have people in the house and you can’t watch them all day, particularly since you also aren’t supposed to, as in they should stick to their job duties and not play amateur professional.

One of the bathroom sinks was draining slowly. The home health care aide came back from the grocery store with a bottle of Drain-O. I told her not to use it, the pipes in the house are old and we already had one serious problem with them. I had her boil a big pot of water and pour it down the sink. She did that twice and the drain seemed fine after that. I noticed nothing amiss with the drain the next AM when I turned in late.

When I got back up (mid PM, so the home health care aide was on a new day), I went into the bathroom and saw the sink about 1/3 full of black, and I mean black, water. I stupidly stuck my hand in to see if there was an obstruction and got burned. I then went and got paper towels to sop up the water and put the wet paper towels in a steel pot.

The water was so caustic that it stained the steel. It had also stained the sink, which was beige resin and part of the bathroom counter (as in it had been fabricated as a single unit). The grey marks were bad enough that I thought it needed to be replaced, although one could make a case for living with the eyesore.

The home health care aide was out taking my mother to get her hair done and pick up lunch. I was ripshit and assumed the home health care aide had used the Drain-O contrary to my instructions (she’d been muttering about putting some in the sink after the boiling water treatment despite that having looked like a success). I was also dumbfounded that she’d left the black water in the sink to corrode it. I called the service to complain.

The home health care aide got back much later than usual. I suspect she was trying to avoid me and having my mother see the damage she had done. I chewed her out. She said she hadn’t used Drain-O and found the bottle to show me it was full.

She had instead gone to the Dollar Store and gotten….drumroll… a sink plunger.

In all my years of living in different apartments and more than occasionally having stopped up the drain, no super every used anything like a plunger on a sink or bathtub. They always snaked them out. This sink, had the health care aide bothered to look, had the classic S-curve pipes underneath. No way would this itty bitty shallow plunger be able to create enough pressure to move an obstruction through that curve. I could not believe what an obviously bad idea this was, compounded by the fact that “plumbing” was not part of her job spec.

It gets worse.

The home health care aide disappeared (she does that an awful lot) and then came back and reported she’d used “Lysol towels” on the sink, as if that had reduced the grey stains. I started to think that maybe this wasn’t as bad a train wreck as I’d thought.

I went back shortly thereafter, which was also after she’d left, and found the sink again 1/3 full of black water. I nearly hit the ceiling. This was not the result of it backing up but her running the water from the tap and doing God knows what else (pouring Lysol down the sink, perhaps?)

I again sopped up the water. The sink was now extensively and badly stained. It has to be replaced. And the plumber is coming in four and a half hours, so I am sure to be cranky and sleep deprived.

But I had to go back to the service and withdraw my complaint because my mother had given a go-ahead to this bad idea. And that means we’ll have to eat the likely $1000+ cost of a fix, which would also never match the rest of the bathroom well. Plus finding the contractor and working through the choices would fall on me, when I don’t have time for distractions like that. And on top of that, this was the best home health care aide my mother had gotten from the service (despite her tendency to disappear way too often, she at least would clean the kitchen and bathrooms well). I can guarantee she’s going to do something like this again (she falls in the category of “stupid and industrious” which in the schema attributed to German General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord is dangerous). That means we’ll need to get rid of her. That likely means the service will get rid of us (they already regard us as unreasonably demanding by virtue of expecting health care aides to do more than sit next to my mother when the service advertises that they will run errands and do light housekeeping and cooking), which will create another round of stress and time sinks. Welcome to the joys of home maintenance.

Why I Hate Houses

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New IPCC Report Warns of Vicious Cycle Between Soil Degradation and Climate Change

Digital Elixir New IPCC Report Warns of Vicious Cycle Between Soil Degradation and Climate Change

This Real News Network interview with Greenpeace’s Diana Ruiz discusses the new IPCC Climate report, “Climate Change and Land,” which issues a dire warning about how climate change and destructive land use reinforce each other, leading to serious threats for soil quality and hence human survival.

MARC STEINER: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Marc Steiner. Good to have you all with.

The IPCC, which is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released a new report. The last report showed us the dangers of a 1.5 Celsius degree rise in temperatures, and what that could do to us, what it is doing to us. This new report, called “Climate Change and the Land,” shows the disastrous results of how two very complicated issues intersect to endanger our future. It focuses on how our use of the land contributes to climate change, and how climate change affects the land. As climate change makes farming more difficult, our methods of farming also devastate the wetlands, forests, rainforests, which exacerbates and increases the intensity of climate change itself. The end of the report offered some solutions, but we’ll explore what all that means in this conversation with our guest, Diana Ruiz.

Diana Ruiz is the Senior Palm Oil Campaigner for Greenpeace USA. She’s based in DC, and she’s leading the work to make zero deforestation in Indonesia a reality. No easy task. She has worked to make change and hold United States corporations accountable in countries including Indonesia, India, Peru and Ecuador. And Diana focuses on the range of issues that draw from industrial chemicals systems to pesticide regulations, climate mitigation and adaptation, which means that she’s a very busy woman and took time to talk to us today. And Diana Ruiz, welcome. Good to have you with us.

DIANA RUIZ: Yeah. Thank you for having me.

MARC STEINER: So let me begin by showing this clip that actually from the IPCC report itself, when they offered the report, and this is one of the co-chair’s report, giving her overview of what the report is.

VALERIE MASSON-DELMOTE, IPCC CO-CHAIR: The way we produce food and what we eat contributes to the loss of natural ecosystems and declining biodiversity. When land is degraded, it reduces the soil’s ability to take up carbon, and this exacerbates climate change. In turn, climate change exacerbates land degradation in many different ways. Today, 500 million people live in areas that’s experienced desertification. People living in already degraded or desertified areas are increasingly negatively affected by climate change.

MARC STEINER: So that was the Co-chair of the IPCC. And so let’s talk a bit about what she was saying. This was the overarching look at the report because it does something that I think that has been very hard to do. I understand the report had over 170 people in the 7,000 research projects they put together to come up with this report. But showing the interaction between the earth itself and climate change and how they interact is something that most people have not yet really considered in terms of looking at what we face for the future.

DIANA RUIZ: Yes. The, the IPCC land report really exposes the reality facing the world’s forests, and how we use our land for key agricultural commodities that are used in everything we consume and also in beauty products. For example, palm oil is one of those key drivers of deforestation that is putting a lot of stress on lands, especially in Southeast Asia. And soy is another key agricultural commodity along with the production of meat and dairy.

MARC STEINER: One of the things—What you just said to me is one of the glaring pieces. On the one hand you have this report talking about palm oil production, and production that has nothing to do with eating or the food that we consume, but is completely corporate-driven in terms of what they’re trying to sell to the world like palm oil, devastating rain forests to build these giant plantations.

But even here in the United States, the report shows that, I think they said we had 591 million acres in cropland, but only one fifth of that land is used to grow crops that feed human beings. The rest are soy and corn for industrial use to feed livestock like pigs and cattle. So it really, in many ways, we can talk about the desperation of people and what they’re trying to farm around the world, but in many ways, this problem is being driven, it seems to me, by corporations, the need for profit, what to sell us.

DIANA RUIZ: Well, you bring up a good point when you look at the United States. What we’re seeing now is more of an increase and it’s not just the United States. You’re seeing it in Brazil. You’re seeing it in other parts of the world. But the intensity and the increase of, for example, soy and palm oil that is being produced to feed cattle or poultry as part feed, and it’s that part of that sick system of the way agricultural production for these types of commodities is aggressively converting land. We’re at a critical point where we face a limited amount of land. That is having huge implications on the security of the future of the production of food.

MARC STEINER: I mean, so not only does the deforestation of our planet to create these plantations create greater pollution because of the methane and everything else that it releases. And when you destroy wetlands, I was surprised to see how much more in gigatons that it releases in the atmosphere, on top of what’s happening with our fossil fuels to get us from place to place. That’s something else that I think don’t really put their hands around yet – is the extent to which how we farm and what we farm actually does contribute to the pollution that we’re facing.

DIANA RUIZ: Yeah, absolutely. Agriculture is one of the… It is the leading driver of deforestation together with forestry and other land use. It represents 23% of human greenhouse gas emissions.

MARC STEINER: So the question is—Well, let’s take a look. This is an interesting clip. This has to do with soil devastation, and that came out this report. This is a British scientist and we’ll watch what she has to say.

KAREN JOHNSON, DURHAM UNIVERSITY: Life is at risk ultimately and that’s because all the things that we take for granted, resources that are more at the top of people’s minds like water and air, healthy air, et cetera, are related to healthy soils. Unfortunately, because we’ve not been looking after soils, we’ve been taking out more than we’ve been putting in. But if we year on year don’t return 30% of all organic matter that we take out of the soil, we don’t return it to the soil, then we see soil degradation because that organic matter is the glue that holds the little bits of rock, the minerals together.

MARC STEINER: So, and that was Sarah Johnson—Karen Johnson, excuse me, who’s professor of environmental engineering. But so what she describes here has a couple of – really attacks things in a couple of ways. I want you to comment on this. One has to do with what they’re doing to the soil itself, and what that’s releasing into the atmosphere, but also destroying the soil so we can’t grow things. But B, one of the things that side bars all this, and a major one, it forces migration because people aren’t going to sit around and just starve to death. They’re going to go somewhere to find food. So it hits the earth and our countries in more than one way.

DIANA RUIZ: Yeah. It increases the conversion of more land for agricultural use. And the issue raised around soils, it just underscores the importance that forests play in regulating our climate, as forests are a safety net for humans and for all living beings. Forests breathe in carbon. They’re able to absorb carbon. They end up regulating our atmosphere. And there’s some forests that are very carbon-rich; for example, peatland forest. And peatland forests are an ecosystem that is being threatened by palm oil plantations.

And you see the similar situation in Brazil with the savanna grasslands, known as the Cerrado, that also has rich, carbon rich soils that is also being cleared for cattle grazing. That’s part of the story of how we’re getting to desertification of these lands. Because essentially with forest areas that are very carbon-rich like peatlands, you’re essentially detonating a carbon bomb when you drain those peatlands, and then you clear that land for agricultural production.

MARC STEINER: What was also shocking on top of that and part of that is to raise cattle and to raise other livestock, that what I think I read in the report was that it was equivalent to releasing as much methane in the air as 600 million cars released in the air. Not methane, but—So that to me, those are shocking numbers. So the question becomes, the end of the report, they really tried to wrestle with what to do and how to mitigate this and how to change this.

But I must say that having read the last part of the report, it didn’t leave me in a really good mood, nor very sanguine about what the future might hold because what it will take to stop this is a major change in our culture and not just the corporate world, but our culture, the way we eat, the way we think what we need, that corporations keep pushing on us about what they think we need. This is real. And I think it’s something that we don’t understand, I think, the depth of danger we’re facing.

DIANA RUIZ: Yes. No, we agree completely. I think what the report underlines is the consequences and the urgency. I think everyone has a role to play. I think as consumers, we have a role not just in terms of shifting our consumption pattern, but we also have a role of putting pressure on these companies. Because as long as you are a company that is making multi-billion dollars off of snack foods where the key ingredient is palm oil, then you need to change course. And what changing course means is you need to change your business model so that you’re operating under environmental boundaries, that you’re taking the needs of the planet into consideration now because time is running out. It’s about stopping deforestation, but it’s also about forest restoration.

MARC STEINER: Right. I think it also clearly shows that there has to be some fairly radical measures on this planet if we’re going to save ourselves and the earth that we live on. And I think that’s part of what we’re going to be facing in all those elections taking place here in the United States, across the globe. And it’s increasingly a really serious matter. I deeply appreciate the work you do, by the way, at a Greenpeace, Diana Ruiz. Thank you so much for taking your time with us today. I look forward to talking to you a great deal more as we explore this report in greater depth.

DIANA RUIZ: All right. Thank you so much.

MARC STEINER: Thank you so much. And I’m Marc Steiner here for The Real News Network. Good to have you with us. Please let us know what you think. Give us some of your ideas. Take care.

New IPCC Report Warns of Vicious Cycle Between Soil Degradation and Climate Change

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