Good
morning.
I
just love stumbling across this kind of stuff.
German and Spanish researchers with the Fraunhofer Institute for
Production Systems and Design Technology IPK are devising a way to automate picking
cucumbers. It seems that the cost of
manual labor to harvest German cucumbers is driving cucumber farming to India
and elsewhere (because of the high cost of labor). The idea is to create a robot that do the
work, thus reducing the cost and keeping cucumbers growing in Germany.
There
are a number of technical problems to overcome to make the robots worth
developing. It has to identify ripe
cucumbers, pick them without damaging them or the plant, store them while
picking, and must pick more than 13 cucumbers per minute (the rate that humans
can do so).
High
success rate It is a considerable challenge to design autonomous systems
capable of optical and tactile sensing, assessing and evaluating. The challenge
is only compounded by cucumber harvesting: a robot must identify green objects
camouflaged by green surroundings.
The
robot is in development and being tested.
Perhaps Mr. Trump would like to lend U.S. support to the effort. He could then claim he was reducing illegal
immigration of farm workers by automating the work. I'm sure he would personally contribute to
the development of the robot, thus making it one of the greatest inventions in
history.
* * *
Washington
University researchers, reporting in the Journal
of Retailing, tell me that "most
shoppers—a whopping 83 percent—regularly visit between four and nine chain
stores within a year to purchase groceries." They inform us, in "Polygamous Store
Loyalties: An Empirical Investigation," that "a consumer could be
loyal to store A in category one while at the same time be loyal to store B in
category two. We name this consumer
behavior polygamous store loyalties."
A study in one metro area, it covered a period of over a year and 14
retail grocery chains. Even though only
one city, I'd bet it's generalizable; American metro areas can't be that
different in their grocery-buying habits.
Apparently
these results were somewhat of a shock to grocery retailers; there has long
been an assumption in the industry that customers are loyal to a store or chain. Of 1,321 families in the study, only 12—the number
12, not 12%—shopped at a single store.
About 51% went to five to seven stores, and 86—the number 86—went to 10
or more stores. People buy different stuff
at different stores.
Two
findings were of interest to me.
-- Family size predicted store loyalty—larger
families tended toward Fry's or a Walmart Supercenter. (Ugh.)
-- Income was a somewhat surprising predictor,
in that households with higher incomes were more likely to "budget shop"
at a Costco. The need for a large house
with a large basement in which to store bulk products could explain this. (I have sometimes wondered about this. We do not have a large house with a large
basement but we do shop at Costco; what we euphemistically refer to as the "pantry"
in the basement always seems to have enough paper products to last a decade.)
Kathy and I fit neatly into the
data. We shop at six different grocery
retailers, although three of the ones we go to aren't in the "chain"
category: Seward Coop, Longfellow Market
(a neighborhood independent grocer), and Von Hansen meats. As the study concludes, we shop different
places for different categories of goods.
I
wonder how the study results would have been affected had they included the
smaller retailers. They might have
learned that people shop at even more places than they found.
* * *
"People
walk around with this idea in their head that if you work hard, play by the
rules, you can get ahead," [Gary] Evans said. "And that's just a
myth. It's just not true." His work
was published in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences.
Professor
of environmental and developmental psychology at Cornell, Evans found that "childhood
poverty can cause significant psychological damage in adulthood." It almost seems like this would be one of
those "well, duh" findings, but it isn't; it's a novel finding in
social science research. It's already
known that growing up poor leads to physical problems in adulthood; what Evans
found is that "Impoverished children in the study had more antisocial
conduct such as aggression and bullying, and increased feeling of helplessness,
than kids from middle-income backgrounds. . . .
Poor kids also have more chronic physiological stress and more deficits
in short-term spatial memory." So, "if you're born poor, you're on a
trajectory to have more of these kinds of psychological problems."
The
cause is stress. Low-income families
have greater stress than more affluent ones.
The children are exposed to it and there's a cumulative risk
factor. What's also important is that
many of these kids stay in poverty; according to the numbers, "there's a
40 percent chance that a son's income will be the same as his father's income."
Evans
drew two conclusions from his work. "First,
early intervention to prevent these problems is more efficient and more likely
to work. 'If you don't intervene early,
it's going to be really difficult and is going to cost a lot to intervene
later.'" This seems to be a
widely-accepted view and has been debated frequently in the Minnesota
legislature (mostly a debate over funding).
The
second conclusion is one that is not likely to receive widespread public
support in the U.S. at this juncture. "Increasing
poor families' incomes is the most efficient way to reduce a child's exposure
to poverty and, in turn, their risk of developing psychological problems." He believes the social safety net, like
supplemental income for the elderly and disabled, should be extended to poor
families. It requires a change of
attitude, "instead of blaming the person who is poor and -- even more
preposterous -- blaming their children," he said.
It will be interesting to watch the
experience of Finland, providing a guaranteed basic income to 2000 citizens (as
an experiment). The expectation is that
doing so will decrease social costs, both administrative and in employment
(those receiving the income will be able to look for jobs without risking the
income). The results could provide ammunition
for an argument for social security for poor children, except that the American
public would probably never support it.
Harvard University Press released a
book last March, Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a
Sane Economy, that was reviewed in the (England) Times Higher Education.
Written by a political scientist at the Université Saint-Louis -
Bruxelles and Louvain University and an economist at Université catholique de
Louvain who's also affiliated with Harvard and Oxford.
I'm only drawing from the book
review, not the book, but as presented, the authors maintain that the arguments
in favor of a basic guaranteed income have been growing in recent years. Why adopt one? "It has become clear to a still small
(but growing) group of people that with so many of us no longer able to earn a
subsistence income from the land, and with growing automation and ecological
limits to sensible consumption, social progress without a basic income cannot
be sustainable." It will not come
about in one big step, but rather as a series of changes to benefits
programs. In the U.S., that means
perhaps sometime after 2020.
There would be a decline in GDP as
measured, but production and entrepreneurship would increase in
households. The argument is that a basic
income would go a long way to reduce poverty and inequality. The authors suggest about $31 per day (at the
time the book was written), which would be nothing for the wealthy but for many
it would mean freedom to choose paid work they wished to do rather than work
they had to do. It would also provide a
bare minimum in food and lodging.
The
strongest argument against a basic income is that work is good for you and any
discouragement from taking any paid work is morally objectionable. A weaker form of this argument is that it is
not fair that people should be able to choose not to undertake paid work. However, for centuries we have tolerated many
of the very rich not working.
I
wonder how many of the very rich don't work.
Those in public life certainly work hard, as do even those who are the
subject of much joking (e.g., Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian). If their premise about people doing paid work
they want to do rather than what's available is correct, would not a basic
income drive up wages for jobs that people in general probably don't want to do
(e.g., fast-food server, garbage collector, custodian)? Because people would rather subsist on a
basic income than do work we all find unattractive? It might not be a bad thing for people doing
crummy jobs to be able to make more money.
The
advantage of the rich is that they may "work," but what they work at
is what they find fun—whether it be oil painting, investing in the markets,
writing books, running an inherited family business, whatever. They aren't engaged in activities that most
of us don't like.
The proposal for a basic income is
related to a theme about which I rant at predictable regularity. I make the assumption that
intelligence—however measured—is distributed normally in the population. That is, under a bell curve, ~68% of us are between
an IQ of 85 and 115 (about half of us are between 90 and 110). (For the statistics-oriented, one standard
deviation is 15 points; one SD from the mean includes 68.27% of the population.) Most people within that range, assuming no
major disabilities, can probably function reasonably well in society. That leaves ~32% on either end, either
markedly smarter or markedly less smart.
Assuming the 32% is split evenly, the 16% whose intelligence is on the
higher end will almost invariably do well.
The 16% who fall on the lower end of the spectrum will not and are the
ones about whom public policy assumptions are made that I suspect are just
wrong. (Census Bureau figures suggest
there were about 250 million adults in the U.S. in 2016, where adult is defined
as 18 or more years of age. If 16% of
that population is only barely capable of working, that's about 40 million
people. Low-wage/often hard labor jobs,
no health care, little luxury. . . .)
(Let me emphasize, again, that IQ is
only a rough proxy for intelligence and that I am aware that IQ tests are
biased against certain groups in society.
I could call it LX, not IQ and not related to IQ tests, and my comments
would remain the same.)
The people who make political
decisions are, with a few exceptions, pretty smart people. They are surrounded by other smart
people—staff, lobbyists, journalists, and so on. I have the sense, from reading the news, that
there is often an implicit assumption that everyone out in society is just as
smart—or just about as smart—as they are.
(Or maybe they understand the point, but nobody wants to say so out
loud.) So if those people aren't working
or getting an education, they must be lazy.
What we tend to forget is that there is a group in society—any
society—whose abilities or intelligence or competence, call it what you will,
are significantly below average, people who can't benefit much from advanced
education and people who aren't going to qualify for any of the professions or
jobs that require a high level of talent or training of some kind.
It is for that group that I would be
the strongest advocate for a basic guaranteed income—and I'd be happy to have
my taxes pay for it. If one believes, as
I do, that a just and humane society will take care of those unable to take
care of themselves, then social provision of a basic income for those who can
only hold the most menial of jobs is an ethical mandate. Rather than assume all these people "on
welfare" are a bunch of lazy slobs, let's recognize that many of them
cannot do the jobs of all the people with whom we regularly interact socially
and professionally. Many, in fact, may
only barely be able to function in a fast-moving, highly technological society;
if they can have jobs suitable to their abilities and still have a decent
income (and, thereby, lifestyle), I'm all in favor of providing that income. If they can be treated with respect and
kindness in their jobs that many of us would wish not to take, they can be just
as successful as the wealthiest among us.
So ends my sermon.
I should note that the question of
whether "intelligence" is distributed "normally" in the
population is contested, although mainstream researchers in psychology believe
it to be. It's also not clear that those
outside the middle 68% are divided evenly between the high and low end of the
scale. It should also be noted that
those with a measured IQ of less than 70 typically have difficulty with basic
life functions, such as dressing, eating, and communicating. One would like to think that individuals in
that category are being take care of by the appropriate social service agencies
in concert with families. (I know, that's
not always true, depending on location in the U.S.) For my purposes here, it's really the people
who fall in the 70-85 or 90 range that are at great disadvantage in society.
* * *
Two of my
friends were quick to cite Gilbert and Sullivan in response to the report on
one reason why people may be conservative or liberal.
When all night long a chap remains
On sentry-go, to
chase monotony
He exercises of his brains,
That is, assuming
that he's got any.
Though never nurtured in the lap
Of luxury, yet I
admonish you,
I am an intellectual chap,
And think of things
that would astonish you.
I often think it's comical—Fal, lal, la!
How Nature always does contrive—Fal, lal, la!
That every boy and every gal
That's born into the world alive
Is either a little Liberal
Or else a little Conservative!
Fal, lal, la!
(Iolanthe, Act II)
One of
those friends, a retired faculty member, in response to my telling him that
Kathy and I attend the annual performances of the local Gilbert & Sullivan
Very Light Opera Company, reported that
My last year teaching, I quoted in
passing one of the operettas during a lecture, and then stopped to ask for a
show of hands: "How many of you
have ever heard of Gilbert & Sullivan?" Perhaps they were all embarrassed about bad
manicures, but no hand was raised. It is
the end of the world.
May you and your friends enjoy many
more annual G&S evenings before the apocalypse.
The other
friend who cited G&S also commented, surely correctly, that "I do
think that upbringing has quite a bit to do with it, although it can also lead
to rebelliousness, when children rebel against their parents' beliefs and go in
the opposite direction!" As I wrote
earlier, it's true that in general, the politically liberal have politically
liberal children and ditto for politically conservative parents. I doubt political views are genetic.
* * *
Morrill
Hall is the central administration building of the University of
Minnesota. It never would have crossed
my mind that with the Super Bowl in Minneapolis, the NFL would reserve
conference rooms in Morrill Hall for their meetings. Kathy tells me, however, that that's what
they did yesterday.
Gary
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