Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2010 February 2

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February 2

Economy Growth

I would like to find out an estimate of what a growth rate of an economy would be without government intervention. It seems to me that the portion of GDP used by the government is not going to yield a return or result in economic growth (e.g. spending 80 million to recover 9 bodies of Japanese fisherman one of our subs bumped into, not to mention having subs running around all over the place), and yet our economy still grows... My understanding is that the government spending accounts for something like 40 percent of GDP or so (cant find a wikiarticle) but if that is the case, than 60 percent of our economy is producing a 3 percent overall growth, so if you back out the economic resources that are not used on unproductive government spending, what would be a reasonable estimate of sustainable economic growth rate? I did some calculations and got 9 percent. Is this plausible? What was our economic growth rate earlier in the US history, when we had more economic freedom? And ALSO, have there been any studies done that show a correlation between levels of economic freedom and economic growth? XM (talk) 05:45, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

That is a naive assumption. There are many services that are necessary, but hard or impossible to privatize. Building of any kind of service infrastructure is essentially impossible without eminent domain. Without government-run law enforcement you are in a wild-west situation. Monopolies and trusts are major problems in a "free" free market. Government supports common measures and standards (what if the pound of beef you buy at Best Buy is the new and improved pound, now with 40% less calories (i.e. only 300 g)?). Governments support long-term and basic research that, in the end, fuel a lot of innovation, but in the short-term are prohibitively expensive for private investors. Who would protect the commons (e.g. water, air) without government? I see where you are coming from, but look at it this way: (Nearly) all the richest countries have fairly significant government sectors (say Norway, France, Germany, the US). (Nearly) all the countries without large governments are dirt-poor (Somalia, Haiti, Niger). Do you think this is a coincidence? --Stephan Schulz (talk) 08:30, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Correlation does not always imply causation. Perhaps only the rich countries can afford big governments. Maybe the small governments for a country like Haiti are more corrupt and results in a disproportionally high cost of government. Googlemeister (talk) 15:12, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Sure. I offer it as evidence, not as proof. It's somewhat surprising that the economically successful countries all seem to have a significant public sector, though. If another approach really is more efficient overall, why has nobody ever successfully implemented it? --Stephan Schulz (talk) 17:39, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

That last question is a slippery slope, Stephan. In an unrelated context, remember the "VHS or Beta" debate? -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 20:26, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Are you using this in the sense of slippery slope? If yes, I don't get it. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 10:08, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Scrub that then. I was just making the point that when there are 2 or more technologies competing for market dominance, the one that wins out is not necessarily the most efficient. It used to be widely claimed that Beta was "better" than VHS; but VHS became the market leader, by far, despite this. I'm not across the reasons. That's just one example where asking "If another approach really is more efficient overall, why has nobody ever successfully implemented it?" would lead one to the wrong conclusion. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 18:13, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Government consumption expenditure (GVT) is primarily comprised of salaries and consumables such as paper and other office supplies. Certainly, there is a lot that is outside these two categories, but for most economies those would be the majority of spending. Each dollar/yen/euro/peso/renminbi spent as salary goes into the economy as consumption, investment or savings. Each dollar spent on consumables generates business for the company supplying government. So, the basic assumption that GVT is unproductive is wrong.

Among 30 OECD economies, the maximum spent in 2000-07 was not 40% but 27.5% (Sweden, 2003) while the average ranged from a low 16.6% (2000) to a high of just 18% (2003, 2004, 2005 and 2007).

GVT in the US was 21.2% of GDP in the 1930s, rising to 43.5% in the 1940s and then slowing to 32.1% in the 1950s (the good old days?), 30.5% in the 1960s, 25.1% in the 1970s, 23.3% in the 1980s, 21.2% in the 1990s and 19.1% in the 2000s. So, the assumption that spending was a smaller share of the economy in the past is also wrong. DOR (HK) (talk) 05:57, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Is there a number for 1900-1910? Just curious. Also, this is federal only correct? Googlemeister (talk) 13:52, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Economists include government spending within calculations of GDP. It is probably unture to assert that growth comes only from the private sector. Government services grow with the population AND economy of a country. You have to remember that increased government expendiature means an increase in income for public servants which translates into an increase in their consumer spending. This increases the tax take which is, in time, likely to result in increased government spending. The government is part of the economy and can be a part of (or even fuel) its growth (see keynsianism and spending multiplier. Many argue that the government is genearlly less efficient than the public sector at creating wealth (due to both the inefficiencies of government and the disincentive provided by a taxation system, so trying to work out how much growth is "lost" you would really need to quantify those inefficiencies. The Economy of Singapore is a good example of low taxation, low government spending and high GDP growth, but a direct comparison with the US would be meaningless as the basis of each economy is very different and Singapore has done much of its growing much more recently.203.214.126.124 (talk) 08:17, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Bail Bonds companies

We have GPS and ankle bracelets, why do we still have a Bail Bond system? XM (talk) 08:51, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Assuming you're talking about the U.S., those two aren't mutually exclusive. Bail is set before conviction, in fact before trial. These individuals are suspected but have not been convicted. Almost all of these individuals will receive a hearing as to bond/bail. Those that receive it may do so under the supervision of the court they're before. That might include electronic monitoring. But remember these individuals haven't been convicted. Monitoring is a pretty high burden to place on an individual that hasn't been convicted. As to the Bail bondsman question specifically, some states have excluded them from their territory, but the vast majority of American states have allowed them for over 150 years. Shadowjams (talk) 09:50, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I find the question interesting. An ankle bracelet is a pretty high burden, but so is "lending" the court tens of thousands of dollars until your case is resolved. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:02, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

There was an NPR story a few weeks ago about how bail bondsmen have been lobbying to curtail alternative release programs: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122725849 -- AnonMoos (talk) 20:54, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I remember listening to this on NPR and it was what made me start thinking about this. I have actually been wanting to listen to it again, thank you for the link XM (talk) 10:40, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Where do the intelligent/ well-informed people get their news?

For all the people who disapprove of mainstream media, where do you get your news (econmy, internal and world affairs, etc.)?161.165.196.84 (talk) 12:46, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

What do you mean by "mainstream"? Is Fox News mainstream? Is BBC News Online mainstream? Is The Huffington Post mainstream? Is Perez Hilton mainstream? Is Clarté mainstream? Gabbe (talk) 13:01, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Idle gossip? Your definition which excludes "mainstream media" therefore excludes news sources. I think you must mean people who disaprove of downmarket popular tabloid journalism. 89.242.39.49 (talk) 13:05, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

BBC [1] for me, but even that I find to be excessively mawkish. If there's one thing the British seem to enjoy, it's a good tragedy to get all weepy over. Really, truly interesting news stories appear on a monthly or even yearly basis, so I consider news a curiosity, rather than something I really need to keep apprised of. Vranak (talk) 13:54, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

People who disapprove of mainstream media are generally not the intelligent, well-informed kind. It's a red flag for idiocy if someone (on their blog, or wherever) claims the mainstream media are false and that his sources (blogs, forums, politically charged organisations, youtube videos) are right. The intelligent, well-informed people know where and what kind of information should be taken with a grain of salt, and when things can usually be trusted. In other words: finding good information is about news-reading skills, not finding different sources. User:Krator (t c) 13:56, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

What about NPR? It avoids sensationalism for the most part, if that's what you're trying to avoid (and if you're in the US). —Akrabbim^talk 13:57, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

To return to the first response, what you define as "mainstream media" is largely going to determine what you turn to. The people who watch Fox News think of themselves as not watching "mainstream liberal media". The people who read the New York Times think of themselves as being above most "mainstream media". --Mr.98 (talk) 14:01, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Also in reply to the original request: Multiple sources, preferably. BBC and NPR are both good. A major newspaper like the NYT, or the International Herald Tribune is good. If you read foreign languages, there are many European papers with a great tradition of journalism (Le Monde, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Die Zeit, the Corriere della Sera, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung - The Times has gone down a bit). Nowadays, for actual news you can often shop online. But it's well worth it to occasionally go through a full paper for a larger perspective. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 14:18, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I echo the above, multiple sources are great. I used places like the BBC, CNN and other large news providing organisations as a starting point before digging around to find more information from other viewpoints. As well as this, news aggregator sites are very very useful (and often very funny, see Fark). Nanonic (talk) 14:50, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I guess I should also point out that if you like specific topics, there are usually specialized sources of news that are better than anything "mainstream". I get a lot of my news on security and cryptography from Bruce Schneier's Crypto-Gram, for example. By itself, these types of sources are, of course, not enough, but they supplement the kinds of reporting I see elsewhere quite well. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:59, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

This 2008 study from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press is interesting. The media with the highest percent of "high knowledge" people among their users were highbrow magazines such as The Atlantic, The New Yorker and Harper's, followed by NPR, Hardball and Hannity & Colmes. (A "high knowledge" person could identify the British prime minister, U.S. secretary of state and majority party in the House of Representatives.) The media with the highest percentage of college grads were business magazines, highbrow magazines, NPR, Hardball and news magazines. The media with the smallest percentage of "knowledgeable" people among their users were the National Enquirer, celebrity-news TV shows, CBS News, religious radio and the Weather Channel. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 00:26, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

MicroWarehouse and Felix Dennis

When did Felix Dennis end his ownership of this company? 89.242.39.49 (talk) 13:34, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Scientific misconduct in social science

I have the impression that there are much more cases of scientific misconduct been reported in empirical sciences than in social sciences. Is that true? If yes, what is the reason? Are social scientists a more descent kind of people?--Quest09 (talk) 17:34, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Some would say that there are relatively few objective and replicable results in the social sciences, so that if results are falsified, often there's little way to know, unless other people have access to the basic source data. AnonMoos (talk) 17:39, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Also, have you looked at the absolute size of social sciences vs. natural sciences? --Stephan Schulz (talk) 17:48, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I think the premise is probably false unless one could actually provide a study which showed it. It's probably due more to reporting biases or observer bias (you remember the cases of hard science misconduct more, even if their are equal rates in both hard and social sciences). I think that, unless we have a hard study on the matter, we cannot make even the presumption that the premise of the question is correct. --Jayron32 17:49, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Quick, commission a report to study this! Oh, wait, such an endeavor is a social science. Never mind. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:01, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

See the article Cherry picking, on selective citing of supportive data.--Wetman (talk) 18:15, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

What do you mean by cherry picking? I was not cherry picking cases of scientific misconduct of empirical scientists vs. social scientists. Actually, I simply cannot remember the same number of cases in both fields. --Quest09 (talk) 18:28, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Nothing to do with Quest09, of course: the selective citing of supportive data is the most familiar technique of scientific misconduct.--Wetman (talk) 16:52, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

We don't have any kind of systematic data for how much scientific misconduct is out there in either the natural or social sciences—the number of cases that have been "caught" is surely far less than the total. There are some instances of accusation of manipulation of data in the social sciences, though, if you look for them. See, e.g. Cyril Burt, 1983 ISIS Survey, etc. But a few sensational cases does not data make. I think we can throw out straight away that social scientists are somehow more "decent" than natural scientists, which seems a little preposterous on the face of it. Decency seems to have little to do with scientific fraud, anyway. Personally I would put "medical sciences" in its own category—it seems to have its own, somewhat different misconduct problems relating to its role in pharmaceutical research/funding. People do seem to draw more attention to incidents in the natural sciences, though, for somewhat obvious reasons: the natural sciences are always being more held up as the paragons of truth and research and all that, so when something goes wrong, it is a matter of attention. When it turns out that English professors are saying things that are dumb or nonsensical, it is just a comment on how pathetic the modern academy is, not an attack on the foundations of research itself. --Mr.98 (talk) 18:32, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Because the social sciences do research on people (as opposed to things) universities and research institutes usually have stringent guidelines about research aims and methodologies. you can understand that as a fear of getting sued or as a general worry about harming people merely for the interests of science, as you choose. As a result, misconduct in social sciences research is usually caught by an oversight board before the research is approved, and so it never makes it to the research stage, much less the publication stage. --Ludwigs2 19:21, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

But there's no reason that data couldn't be massaged or fudged to get the result you wanted. (I'm not saying there couldn't be systemic reasons why you would have less, I just don't totally buy that the institutional review boards are going to catch a lot of what goes under "misconduct.") --Mr.98 (talk) 19:39, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Fobana

Last year, the Bangladeshi-American community in Houston was hosting the Fobana Convention to celebrate its bangladeshi culture and the mayor of Houston said that Houston has the third-largest Bangladeshi population in U.S. after New York. Is there any cities in the U.S. that has largest Bangladeshi community? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.14.116.220 (talk) 19:45, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

The mayor must have meant that New York is #1; this NYU page agrees that it is the New York metropolitan area. Our article Bangladeshi American does not rank them, but says, "New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Miami, Houston, and Dallas" have "notable" Bangladeshi communities. Comet Tuttle (talk) 19:49, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

The U.S. Census Bureau (www.census.gov) should be able to tell you how many Bangladeshi-born people lived in each large city or metro area in 2000, the year of the last census. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 00:16, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Writer of book (or article) falsely reporting Iraq War atrocities by US troops

We once had an article about a US soldier, or claimed soldier, who wrote such a book or article. As I recall, his work was initially met with great acclaim by the media but was later debunked. Does anyone recall his name? Thanks, CliffC (talk) 23:08, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

If it helps to jog anyone's memory, I recall there was at one point a photo of the writer in uniform – the photo was also debunked, due to some sort of mismatch (maybe the hat?) with the proper uniform for his claimed branch of service. --CliffC (talk) 23:25, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present

Hello,

A 2010 edition of Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present was scheduled to be released on July 20, 2010 according to Amazon.com. Since Howard Zinn's death, I have seen no evidence of this on Amazon.com or anywhere else on the internet. Can anyone solve this mystery?

Thank you, John —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.209.18.7 (talk) 23:52, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I have no specific knowledge of this author or work, but speaking as a former academic bookseller and publisher's editor, it seems to me very likely that if a new edition were scheduled for publication in July 2010, the author's work on amendments and updates of content, and corrections in proof, would normally still be in progress now and for at least couple of months more. Zinn's unexpected death on 27 January 2010 would therefore cause unavoidable major delays to the book's publishing schedule, and possibly even its abandonment. If you remember or can find out the publishers of this intended new edition (I'd guess at HarperCollins), I'm sure a direct query to them would be answered. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 09:46, 3 February 2010 (UTC)