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'K Joel Send a noteboard - 08/02/2010 01:22:12 PM
Let me say first though that reading this increasingly convinced me we're debating precision, not accuracy, especially when we start talking MARGINS of accuracy and saying the HDI isn't necessarily WRONG. I certainly agree it's not absolute, as its creators surely would, but even at the extremes it's significant if a country rises/falls relative to its own previous measure.
There's a lot there and I'd rather not jump around too much in my thinking, so I'll try to get to the early bits later, let's focus on the HDI for now with one caveat. I did not say other countries do not do research, I specifically say they do, but by it's very nature the country with the most funds, scientists, and infrastructure is going to do the lion's share, and in the case of medical research, we produce more per person. I am hardly unaware of things like CERN, and I would point out that I almost certainly am more aware of research being done here and abroad than probably 99% of the poulation of which ever country is actually doing it. I used the term 'drafting' for a reason, drafting on a vehicle does not interfere with there actions at all, but benefits the vehicle drafting, for a bicyclist on a team, one can draft the other and then the other passes and plays the same role, currently the US is the lead vehicle, and others draft primarily off of us, in a few cases we draft off them, again, CERN. Moving back to HDI...

Foreign research isn't limited to CERN; there's much foreign MEDICAL research America's not pursuing (e.g. the recent British research showing stem cells might halt or reverse degenerative nerve disease, research our government wouldn't fund till this year. ) This week's article on insulin producing research was medical, but not American. Also and once again, the first human heart transplant was in South Africa, not America. That's just off the top of my head and, in 2/3 cases, within the last six months. CERN's not the best example of drafting off us anyway; wasn't our last proposed supercollider cut from the budget in the early nineties as wasteful pork? Thus Europe now has the LHC, largest in the world (Wikipedia says the SSC would've had thrice the energy; oh, well... ) and our "newest" supercollider was built in 1987. It's older than some of the PhD physicists using it; in a few years time who'll be riding whose wake...?
That sounds a lot like saying you don't like the metric because of the results; Scandinavian countries tend to do better, and most objective social scientists would expect that, but it doesn't mean they cooked the books. It seems far more likely that those who say, "socialism has destroyed Europe, " will dismiss data saying the opposite BECAUSE it says the opposite.
No, I'm quoting an economics professor who made the quip while analyzing the flaws of HDI. They top it out, whereas the powers you'd expect come in lower, The US is 13, the UK is 21, Germany is #22 - the UK and Germany both have many of those polices that are highlighted by socialists as good and certainly have parallel infrastructure to the US. Japan, at number 10, is just a tiny decimal fraction above the US with the second largest economy in the world. I question the accuracy and relevance of any index which produces results that do not have them all higher, and uses arbitrary weighting.

I'd be more inclined to trust economics profs if they didn't so routinely and catastrophically err; indeed, my biggest concern with HDI is the same as with economics in general: The old saw that "the limit of engineering as GPA approaches zero is business. " But saying you don't trust the metric because countries aren't where you think they should be IS just an elaborate way of saying you dislike the results and thus the metric. For the sake of arguing it just shows how "Scandinavian" a country is though, the list has been published annually since 1990 and until 2001 the only Canada and the same Japan you mentioned earlier were ever number one; my guess would be the "Asian Flu" changed that. If we accept the economists claim that it measures "Scandinavianness" we must ignore that, as well as his founding premise that "a country of immortals with infinite per-capita GDP would get a score of .666 (lower than South Africa and Tajikistan) if its population were illiterate and never went to school." So, yes, we can accept that criticism; we just have to first accept the possibility of a country where people never die and have an infinite supply of money (though it's unlikely anyone else would have any money if the latter were true, and certainly unlikely the ENTIRE POPULATION of such a country would be illiterate. )

The UK is probably closer to our model than any other Western European country, and the Iron Maiden took it through it's own then-celebrated and since disastrous round of privatization and deregulation. They were dragged kicking and screaming into the EU for many of the same reasons our conservatives call European socialism a "failure" despite the strides it's made in individual incomes, education and healthcare over the last several decades (and probably also in part because many Brits consider the terms "British" and "European" mutually exclusive. ) Oddly, I don't know enough about Germanys socioeconomic structure to say whether it's closer to or further from pure socialism than the "Western European norm" (whatever that is) so I'm can't comment. Japan does seem odd, but with the highest life expectancy and high adult literacy I again point to the Asian Flu.

Within a narrow range I'm actually inclined to agree that the metric isn't too precise, though I think it's because it's too broad and has two few variables more than anything else. There's something to be said for precision in numbers they DO use, though; Wikipedias article also notes a "statistical update" for 2008 that moved America from 12th to 15th, and while I haven't dug into it enough to know how justified that correction was, the effect in the rankings was enough to move America three slots while altering its numerical rating almost not at all.
The irony is that from all I've heard on both sides of the Atlantic, postsecondary education benefits are probably underestimated for the States, because European degrees are, from what those holding them say, far more narrowly focused on a major. The assumption seems that anyone whose grades and tests can get them into university (usually the sole admissions factor in Europe) knows enough math to function as an English professor without taking more math, and vice versa. Contrast with America, where a minimum amount of prereqs in non-major disciplines is required to ensure you don't graduate PhD basket weavers who can't do integer math (btw, underwater basket weaving IS a UT class, but ONE class teaching how to weave wicker baskets by softening the dried textiles in water first, and not a major by any means. ) I don't think the "public ed bias" noteworthy; maybe you were an exceptionally blessed autodidact (it happens) but people who learn more on their own than from formal texts and multiple experienced instructors are definitely the exception rather than the rule, and that's all the "bias" reflects. If you simply mean you were home schooled, unless accreditation has changed DRAMATICALLY I don't see how the HDI will undervalue that relative to standard public education.

I am, of course, using basket-weaving as an analogy so as not to mention by name other majors I consider less valueable at the baccalaurette level. I've no more problems with a wicker class as a 1 hour pass/fail elective then I do billiards, bowling, winetasting or fencing.

I think I phrased this badly, my learning more post-college has much to do with having learned how to learn during college. Pre-college and post-elementary there was nothing I could not easily learn from a book. Interest as opposed to formal education governs most early learning. At any level of knowledge, one reaches a point where formal instruction produces diminishing returns, that is why we have no degree beyond the Ph.D., and most formal classwork stops after the first two years of grad school, even by then, professors expect one to fill deficiencies by checking out the book and it becomes an easy matter to learn in a weekend of reading what would normally be a freshmen or sophomore level class. A poetry appreciation course is just that, an initital exposure, to both major works and terminology, after which by and large a person can continue on their own if they have the interest without too large a difference between them and someone who continued formal schooling on the matter and both spend roughly equal times learning. For the other point, I have a GED, I am a high school dropout on account of returning to school for three weeks in the 9th grade after skipping grades, and all that was required by law at my location was that I take the ninth grade proficiency course, there was no accreditation. While I do not see a large scale alternative to public education, yet, I do tend to feel that everyone is an autodidact and formal education has a bad habit of suppressing this tendency in areas where we consider it important. There is little difference between memorizing a pack of baseball cards and the chemical periodic table, except the one is viewed as fun and the other is not. The prupose of this point is not to point out exceptions to the rule exists, or that exceptions to a rule typically indicate a fundamental flaw in the concept. It is that non-standarized systems do not compare well to each other, and inaccuracies remains where glossed over. A school system that teaches from 9-5 all year round likely produces a higher rate of literacy than 8-2 180 days a year for the same duration, this is not factored into HDI, and while that is obviously understandable, understandable or not, the inaccuracy remains.

Learning to think is something that should be taught in primary education, and there's no good reason it isn't. Unfortunately the same folks who insist the only way you get anything of value is to pay for it seem to think quality teachers will work for table scraps when they could make far more at private schools (not to mention it's hard to learn much useful history from a textbook printed in 1970. ) In most other developed countries you don't HAVE to be an autodidact (and pray you have access to good books; the internet was in its infancy when I was a kid) or attend private school to learn those skills, because good teachers know it's part of the job, and good teachers can be easily found in well equipped public schools. Expanded access to self education is certainly a net gain for the US, but they don't give GED PhDs yet.

That said, that you got your GED and then went to college (very well done on both, btw ) doesn't mean the HDI ignores you; they counted your literacy and college enrollment. The issue here, and this is what makes Europeans and Canadians chuckle at Americans who can't name all fifty states or confuse Austria with Australia, is that many Americans haven't managed to get GEDs, either because they've been so heavily prejudiced against learning itself, lacked or lack access to the necessary data or simply don't have time between their eight hour shift at McDonalds and their six hour security job to feed their kids, sleep AND get an education. It's not much of the rest of the developed world faces, and it's the only problem I think might be a bigger national crisis than healthcare. Yes, even ahead of personal and national deficits; if we fix the other two we WILL fix those, but eliminating the deficit with an unhealthy illiterate workforce will be difficult, if not impossible. We've already reached the point where when we say, "It's worth it to pay more for American goods because our smarter better trained workers make better goods" people, even Americans, just stare at you like you said the moon's made of green cheese.
Yeah, the thing is, none of the three factors is completely independent of the others. In fact, you probably just cited the very reason why adult literacy is considered: It impacts both life expectancy and earning (and in Europe, where most Western democracies lie, income is largely irrelevant to education, though education is VERY relevant to income. ) Life expectancy will have a minimal impact on literacy, and outside the US the same is generally true of income, but education has a direct impact on both of those, so maybe it's weighted as it should be.

Certainy GDPpc effects LE both directly and indirectly, as it gives money for treatment and medical infrastructure. Vive-versa, the gross income of someone over their life is likely to be far higher for someone who leads a long and healthy life, education should impact both and be impacted by both. We've no diagreement there. I object to arbitrarily making them all equal, they obviouysly are not except perhaps coincidentally. Weighting each to one third is inaccurate. Complex systems having numerous factors, typically causing both positive and negative feedbacks, but just because you do not know does not mean you should arbitraily treat them all as equal. A materials boiling and melting points vary on three things, temperature, pressure, and the individual properties of the substance(s) in question. You can not arbitrarily say they all have equal weight. Double the temp and remove all the pressure and you won't get the same melting point, you will get no melting point at all, liquids can not typically exist in a vacuum and things pass directly from solid to gas. Most substances have a triple point, at which a given pressure and temp all of the quanttiies can exist, as opposed to a double point (a glass of ice water or a pot of boiling water) treating it arbitrarily as equal weighting you will not predict this effect, your results will be utterly meaningless, ultimately the HDI is acceptable only because it contains important factors and produces results that seem vaguely relevant.

As to the example, I don't think doubling one factor and ELIMINATING another are exactly equal changes. Pardon if I missed something, but saying, "the ratio between the pressure-volume product and the temperature of a system remains constant" sounds an awfully lot like treating each equally; change one and the rest change by comparable degrees to maintain the constant (system equilibrium, yes?) We actually DID do this in HS chemistry: If I double a gas' temperature in a sealed container pressure will automatically double EXACTLY without me doing anything else. Again, correct me if I'm wrong but if I remove the pressure completely the only thing holding together a substance in any state is gravity and van der Waals forces, so it's just whether the kinetic energy is more than that of comparatively weak hydrogen bonds (I'm betting a molecules kinetic energy is always higher than the gravitational attraction of its neighbor, outside an event horizon. ) It flies apart or doesn't, but "fluid" is off the table, because you didn't just change a factor, you removed it, and the only "equal" way to alter another is remove it, too. Anyway....

One of the chief supposed advantages of socialism is that the correlation between medicine or education and GDP/capita is much closer. You don't have wealthy countries asking why Johnny can't read and blaming overpaid teachers (despite the emphasis on personal responsibility in other arenas. ) Indeed, it's interesting that none of the countries where "public education" is considered oxymoronic complain about teachers unions the way we do; they must have much more restrictive laws governing their unions. I wouldn't say the weighting used is arbitrary; they didn't just pick numbers at random, they recognized that each was significant, but they also realized that not only is the precise significance of each hard to measure, but that that significance can vary from country to country. Hence weighting them equally was a normalizing factor that favors none and allows us to compare apples to apples.
Only because it actually is.
Prove that statement.

Obviously I can't prove it definitively; social sciences naturally tend to be far more inexact than physical ones. In the final analysis, however, education is at least as important as income and life expectancy because it's alone of the three guarantees aid to the others. Particularly in the developed world income doesn't guarantee unmotivated or inept students a good education, but education does guarantee a BETTER income than otherwise available. Likewise longer lifespans don't guarantee knowledge acquisition, but knowledge acquisition does enhance survivability, both for oneself and by producing more knowledgeable medical providers. Ultimately education (for lack of a better word) is what the HDI attempts to measure rather than literacy. It's clear that a country with more people who are functionally literate doesn't necessarily have more college grads, and the education index reflects that.

Ultimately, I'd ask what metric you prefer, because PPP GDP/capita is the only place we're above our 13th ranked HDI (Norway's still ahead, largely due to the oil fund, I believe. )

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita

In education, we're tied with Lithuania for 19th: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_Index

In life expectancy, we're 38th: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy

Note that Norway is 6th and 14th, respectively, so it sounds less like the HDI measures how Scandinavian a country is than it does that HDI balances Americas tremendous monetary edge over nearly everyone against the real educational and longevity advantages of other countries. The weighting may need some adjustment for added precision; Australia is 1st in education and 5th in life expectancy, but because it's PPP GDP/capita isn't higher than 14th in any ranking and Norways is never lower than 4th, Australia is second in HDI and Norway is first. Conversely, Qatar and Luxembourg, despite being near the top of PPP GDP/capita, have far lower HDI rankings because of correspondingly lower life expectancy and education indices (average longevity in Luxembourg is only six months more than here, and I can't even find Qatar on the education index. )

HDI does seem to correlate with the degree of socialism, and it seems notable that while democratic countries tend to rank higher, they can do so with more active governments IF they are socialized. The Scandinavian countries are known to be more socialized than most, but the HDI measures socioeconomics, not geography. If there's a consistent correlation between socialism and HDI (and there is, even within the 50 states) your choices are to either accept that socialism is more beneficial or object to the model itself, and it seems to me most opposed to socialism on principle have done the latter. Considering that the only common metric by which non-socialist states do better is PPP GDP/capita implies to me the bias is the other way. I already knew many people opposed to socialism also believe whoever dies with the most stuff wins. I do, however, feel a higher calling.
It actually IS science; it's just that social science isn't usually as precise as physics. It's not like they just pulled numbers out of thin air and selected for the ones that made their favorite countries look good (even if some wish to believe that when THEIR favorite country isn't #1. )

Science is science, I do not discard social science, but I do expect them to obey the rules of science, just because their circumstances do not permit much accuracy doesn't mean they get a get out of jail free card. Arbitrarily weighting each equally was done because there was no alternative, that lack of alternatives does not mean the flaws isn't there. I honestly think you are confusing wrong with inaccurate - the HDI is not an accurate measure, I know no scientist who would say that it is accurate to 2%, except in terms of the internal data being self-consistent, and that is where all the leftist arguemnts based on HDI come from, they do not argue that the HDI is higher, they use the HDI to argue that the standard of living is higher and that it is higher as a result of certain policies, in that regard the HDI is simply not accurate to prove that statement. I don't think many would disagree that all three of those factors should be weighted in at somewhere between 10-50%. But I can not think of any legitimate way to refine those values scientifically. Those who are pro-european-socialism abuse this index, as you have done, as many do, because it's real point is as a measure of developing countries. It's goal was to produce a good benchmark into which clearly developed countries would all sit on the upper spectrum, to be used as a gauge for developing nations. Literacy is very important for developing nations, because you can not realistically develop a tech infrastructure without a decent junk of your pop knowing how to read, again, realistically, a 50% literacy rate is probably sufficient, but with specific social barriers (X class or gender does not receive public ed) you are unlikely to get that value, it will either be fairly low or make up the majority of your pop.

"Wrong" IS "inaccurate" so, no, I'm not confusing them. In fact, the first definition Merriam-Webster lists for the adverb "wrong" is "without accuracy. "

http://www.merriam-webster.com/netdict/wrong

It doesn't help that the Free Online Dictionary (which I use because it's quick and easy) defines "inaccurate" as "imprecise" but to say "Mars is in the Solar system" is 100% accurate yet incredibly imprecise. If debating the HDIs precision all the points you raise about significant figures and weighting are highly relevant, and there's definitely reason not to assume Norways living standard is higher than ours just because their HDI is 0.015 points higher without some reason to believe it's meant to be that precise (though I think I can show we have such reason. ) In fact, the closer I look the more I think I may have overreached a bit, because our 2008 HDI rose more than theirs, which seems more relevant than just comparing the countrys current levels.
You are literally using statistical margins of error to justify things, so whereas I consider the HDI a decent benchmark for developing countries, I must tell you it is simply scientifically absurd to use it as a comparison of economic and governmental policy. It lacks the singiifcant digits, I do not knw why they give three figures, that is by the way absolute proof of it not being scientific, because there is now way to justify anything on there to even ten percent accuracy, let alone two whole order of magnitude higher.

Look, if I measure nine things down to eight decimal places, and another to three, and all those figures factor in to my final result, any digit beyond three is fanciful nonsense, reagardless of accuracy of the other values. The values are all given as three digits, to merit that, every single value in the works must be at least three digits, or it is not true, yet it disprove itself in it's own math because it use 75% for ALI, not 75.0, and ofcourse that is clearly an arbitrary value, 3/4 does not tend to result as an answer much. They do it with 25 and 85 too. Now, they do it even worse with 1/3 as the weighting, by definiton the study is only accurate to 1 significant figure, making it an order of magnitude result - that is acceptable and IMO valid. THe HDI is useful as effectively an order of magnitude scale, 1-10, after that, it only serves as accurate for comparing a country to itself, and then you needn't bother with the HDI, just compare those three things to previous values, then you don't even need to try to weight them.

You answered most of this below: They reduced it to a 0-1 range (hence life expectancy and PPP GDP/capita look funky; the EI is ALREADY on a 0-1 scale, but not the other two. ) They didn't arbitrarily choose 85 for the life expectancy denominator, but for scaling (like all the coefficients) because the highest national average life expectancy in 2008 was 84.36 (according to the CIA; note the number of sig figs. ) I am curious where they got the 25, since I don't see it (average 2008 global life expectancy was a little >67 and the lowest was about half that, so neither adding nor subtracting 25 from any measured value yields another. ) If it's supposed to be minimum average, it looks like it should be 31.62 (the life expectancy of a male Swazilander. )

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2102.html

In the case of EI, that, once again, is already a value measured to three sig figs; the article on HDI just shows how it's calculated and weighted: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_Index

For completeness, the PPP GDP/capita list (again: ) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita

The limiting factor's surely EI, for reasons you state: The CIA measures life expectancy to 4 sig figs, PPP GDP/capita is measured to 5, and EI is measured to 3, so no more precision is possible.

I can see how some of measurements might be (truly) inaccurate or deceptive (Wikipedias article on life expectancy notes counting many infant deaths as stillbirths may inflate Japans life expectancy) but defining them vaguely seems impossible. It's easy to divide the literate/school attending populace by the total populace to get a percentage. The biggest (and probably only major) arguments are with PPP GDP/capita, the one area strongly favoring the US over nearly everyone without 60% of a huge oil reserve and a population just under five million.
It's junk, utter garbage, they meant well and probably think they did well, but this index is constantly cited by people when it is so much arbitrary trash. When all three factors are equally weighted at 33%, arbitrarily, to point out any difference of around 2% has all the validity of flipping a coin six times and claiming it's weighted because it comes up heads every time is foolish, flipping a coin six times and getting heads each time is, incidentally, going to happen about 2% of the time.
I don't think it's arbitrary at all; they intentionally didn't weight one over the other so that a nation that excelled in one area and lagged in others wouldn't end up on top.

By imposing artificial caps of 0-1 they already prevent this. A LE of 95 and ALI of 0% scores lower than an LE of 85 and a ALI of 1%

Also, yes, this weighting is absolutely arbitrary. Each of those three factors is not, and they are the only three factors I can think of that can realistically be measured. 'Personal Freedom' is not something you can really measure. The reason they don't say it's arbitrary is the same reason they don't say 'may have errors from false reporting', it's obvious, or should be.

It's moot anyway because highest average life expectancy in 2008 was 84.36 (Macau) and a nation of illiterates is EXTREMELY unlikely to ever beat that. Typically "don't eat raw pork" goes with being able to READ "don't eat raw pork. " But, yes, I believe that was the idea behind scaling everything 0-1; the problem is when dealing with at least three different variables you have to do it to EACH ONE before combining, so they did. Depending which estimate used PPP GDP/capita can be from $9-$87,717 to $200-$122,100; logarithmic scale make more sense now? If we simply do it the standard way extreme highs and lows will basically be 1 and 0, because the variance will be less than three sig figs.

I still dispute the weighting is arbitrary; absent any compelling reason to elevate or denigrate one over the others they didn't. That may not increase precision, but the weightings weren't determined randomly or by preference (indeed, the latter was consciously avoided. ) Like any model it is just that, subject to refinement as warranted (e.g. as I noted above, Australia is in the top five in 2/3 categories, but not #1 because Norway's in the top 15 for both and their PPP GDP/capita is even higher than ours. )
Actually, it's the purchasing power parity per capita GDP, so undeveloped nations don't automatically lose out to developed ones just because the price of a car in the first wouldn't buy a sandwich in the second. Essentially you're saying the same old thing: Western Europeans MUST be miserable because their taxes are so much higher. Which probably explains why they're still choking Ellis Island like they did in 1900--oh, right. My fiancee is SCARED to live here (though part of that is that you can count the annual gun murders in Norway on the fingers of one hand. )

You can practically count the population of Norway on one hand. Yes, PPP is important to factor in, of course, PPP itself tends to be a dubious figure. No one is saying (well, some do and for good reasons) that PPP or HDI are deliberate distortions, only that their accuracy is limited and should not be used for the political purposes that it is used for. Honestly, PPP is no more accurate than the Big Mac Index the Economist puts out. It all depends on the 'basket' and even like items are often vastly different in quality. PPP also does very poorly as a guide in place that subsidize or tariff/tax items, thus using PPP for a GDP sustitute is not necessarily very valid.

No one is saying it, but some do and for good reason? That's a reversal, not a qualifier. I'm not sure why taxes and tariffs impact PPP GDP/capita; most places with high levels of either or (usually) both have correspondingly high wages partly for that reason, the sort of thing at which PPP GDP/capita aims (Norway DOES have one of the highest costs of living, largely due taxes and tariffs; I've joked about bootlegging out of SWEDEN if that tells you anything, but the wages reflect it, too. ) Subsidies seem like they'd work the opposite way, but I know even less about that aspect (apart from the fact subsidized farming in the developed world has a brutal effect on Third World farmers) so can't really say even in general.
Let's carry this analogy further, ALI. This is what? The measure of literacy of presumably the primary language. How well does this compare to bilingual countries? Does this factor in relative complexities of languages? Does this acknowledge that knowing how to read English is more advantageous at this time than knowing other languages? If you come form a country of 1 million with a distinct language, is this as valuable to your life as knowing English in and English speaking country is?

The Wikipedia article on literacy rates quotes in part from page 171 of the 2009 UN Development Programme Report:

"Many high-income countries, having attained high levels of literacy, no longer collect basic literacy statistics and thus are not included in the UIS data. In calculating the Human Development Index (HDI), a literacy rate of 99.0% is assumed for high-income countries that do not report adult literacy information.

"In collecting literacy data, many countries estimate the number of literate people based on self-reported data. Some use educational attainment data as a proxy, but measures of school attendance or grade completion may differ. Because definitions and data collection methods vary across countries, literacy estimates should be used with caution. "

The big thing that leaps out at me from the list here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_literacy_rate

is every wealthy country not reporting data is 19th, since 18 others report percentages>99. It seems obvious to me that if you arbitrarily cap the number (EXACTLY what they did here) it should be at or above the highest reported rate (as with life expectancy. ) That's a real flaw, but I'm not sure how much inaccuracy a difference of no more than 0.8% in 2/9 of the HDI for 18 countries creates. Slovenia and Barbados probably get a bump, maybe Poland and Cuba, but that looks like about it.
Meanwhile, it seems a given that GDP, even PPP per capita GDP, will cover a MUCH broader range than life expectancy or adult literacy. Average linear adjusted life expectancy is pretty much limited to a range of sixty (if I can conveniently write it as one word, it probably doesn't need to be a log scale. ) What's the range on adult literacy? Twelve or thirteen years of K-12 plus the time for a doctorate or two? Maybe there's a REASON they used a logarithmic scale for the five digit numbers and used a linear one for the two digit numbers. Social science IS a science, and that means you don't just make up numbers and throw them at the UN. Y'know, unless your professional credibility has become wearisome.

Joel, social science is a science, but that does not mean it can pull accuracy out of nowhere, math is math, you can only be as accurate as your least accurate value. Again, by stating one-third as the weight, it is accurate to a single digit, one, uno, the number after zero. Unless you want to show me where they have measured or dervied these values to 0.333 each, then they can not yield a final value more accurate than .9 or .5 or .6, they made up one-third. They're open about it, the just say 'we gave them all equal weight', but that doesn't change anything. Franky, I do not think they can measure ALI to three digits. It is a nice and not arbitrary scale of measurement. They're not trying to use the percentage of people who own a hyena as a measurmeent of development. The weighting is what is arbitrary.

Last I checked 1/3 was a repeating decimal, so you can multiply it by a number accurate to three sig figs and always get a number accurate to three sig figs. Education index, life expectancy and PPP GDP/capita are all at least that precise, so there seems no problem in treating the HDI that way. I am glad we finally agree it's not arbitrary though.
It is not capitalist tendecnies that make people like to use GDPpc and LE as guages for SoL, it is that they can be easily measured and it is hard to distort them, they can be falsely reported, but all measurements can and that is unavoidable. Both have a direct and common sense connection to SoL, but we do not say they are SoL, we say they 'indicate' a higher SoL, as they obviously do. There are no countries where there is a massive difference between LE falsely indicates one has a higher standard of living, nor GDPpc. Are they accurate measures for gauging SoL between near-parallel countries? Of course not, because they only indicate, the correlation is not 100%.

Problem is the Scandinavian countries toward which HDI is supposedly biased all have higher life expectancies than us; maybe the bias is less than some suggest. UN rankings 2005-2010 are:

Iceland 3 Sweden 7 Norway 14 Germany 23 Finland 25 Denmark 36 Cuba 37 US 38

In other words, if you trust Castros reporting Cuba has a higher life expectancy than we do.

2009 CIA reports say:

Sweden 9 Iceland 13 Norway 23 Germany 32 Finland 37 Denmark 45 US 49

Yea. We made the top fifty. Barely. Now, if you want to look at it that way, now that we've dug into the meat of the HDI a bit more, we can say a few things:

Americas PPP GDP/capita is among the highest on Earth (no lower than eighth, and nearly all those above us are petro-states, which, believe it or not, largely includes Norway. )

Americas literacy is arbitrarily assumed to be among the highest as well, and treated as equal to every developed nation.

Our life expectancy lags most of the rest of the developed world.

From this we can draw one or both of two possible conclusions:

1) We're taking a big hit in HDI because of disproportionately lower life expectancies and/or 2) Since I can't find a listing of countries by school enrollment, we may be taking a big hit there.

Some might take this to mean that unless the HDI is BADLY flawed we should take steps to improve our healthcare and education before the rest of the developed world leaves us in its dust. Now, I didn't prejudge this; I try not to do that, and I wavered in a number of directions as I took a closer look at the data I could find without a months research, and I wrote as I went (you may recall me saying above that I "might have overreached a bit" ) but in the end what I perceived, rightly or not, is that the major difference between us and our fellows is in life expectancy (again, unless there's a similar difference in school enrollment, in which case we need to do something about education as well, and I doubt it's below the secondary level, where it's compulsory. )
Yet, and once again, as you noted yourself "adult literacy" isn't literally confined to Fun with Dick and Jane (if you're going back on that academics are no longer favored over longshoremen. ) I think most people who know wtf is going on derive pleasure from that over and above income and life expectancy. Though I must admit there are times when ignorance does seem like bliss.

Knowing wtf is going on is not directly correlated to reading. Heck I listen to most books on audio rather than read them, and most peoplew catch or listen to their news, not read it. Considering you can acquire 'readers' that will read of text on your computer or even hand-held (though expensinve) scanners that will do the same, literacy is arguably less important in that context. But I am not disputing it's importance, I am disputing claiming it is 33.3%, when 333.4 or 33.2 or 25 or 50 all seem equally valid and equally unproveable - and more importnt than unproveable is unproven. It may be possible to measur eit's effect, however, this was not done nor the origin of 33.3% on the HDI.

I believe you'll find that most people who pay attention to what's actually happening, on the street, in business and in their government, rather than just flipping on the Simpsons or American Idol, know how to read. Particularly the ones who don't get their news from John Stewart or Rush Limbaugh (which nearly PRECLUDES knowing wtf is going on anyway. ) They aren't the ones turning out for Sarah Palin even though Mike Huckabee represents all the same values more sincerely, eloquently and effectively. And yes, we're conceding the claim that spoiled aristocrats who can afford to have things read for them so they needn't bother are a statistically insignificant anomaly. If you're going to include education in the HDI though, you have to give it a weight of some kind, and since I do think it highly relevant to human development the only reasonable thing I see to do is to give it a weight no more nor less than any other factor. If anything needs to be altered, it's treating school enrollment as only 1/3 of 1/3 when they ASSUME all developed nations have 99% literacy. Again, literacy is required to build a nuclear reactor, but it isn't sufficient. The irony is that the thing you seem to object to most is treated as equal for pretty much the entire developed world, and so CAN'T throw off comparisons within it.
I doubt many countries let people die in the streets from cholera because they're spending too much teaching people who can't or won't learn to read. Guess which one's more likely to cause riots.

While pies grow or shrink from year to year, at any given time it is a certain size, any piece used for one thing can not be used for another. Money spent on vaccines and literacy is not spent on an X-box, we can say that one is more valuable than the other, but not having the Xbox or paying a larger percent of your net wealth to acquire it because taxes have taken more of the gross is still a loss in your standard of living, you may gain more as a culture by vaccines but that changes nothing, part of your pie has been removed for one purpose, leaving you less pie for the rest. If the average cost to teach someone to read is 10k, spending 15k for somone is is 5k more not spent on something else. Where the pie is limited, to say 60k, you have a choice between teaching 6 average or 4 below average. To teach all six below average means taking away 30k from something else. The merits of that 'something else' obviously vary, but whatever it is will now be less funded. The alternate case, let's say to go from 95% ALI to 96% ALI would require a 5% increase in education spending, is it worth it? IS 96 to 97% worth another 10%? You beign getting siminishing returns, less per dollar, same as you can't expec tto get double the rearch everytime you double the money but might get double the research by a 10% incrase in funding, as the pie is limited, you try for the latter not the former and don't increase the funding for the former.

Vaccines gain you more than just culture: They reduce infant and other mortality (at least theoretically; I'm not opening THAT can of worms at this point. ) In other words, they raise your life expectancy, which is 1/3 of HDI. Same with literacy; as you noted at the start, someone has to research those vaccines, preferably someone who can read and has some post secondary education. Again, I think if anything education index is UNDERVALUED, and the wrong parts of it emphasized. You always run into diminishing returns when spending money (someone needs to explain this to Congress, of course, and the pharmaceutical industry. ) But whether the money is spent on vaccines or an Xbox, it's still counted in PPP GDP/capita. The main difference, and I think it's a valid one, is that HDI will also indirectly count it again when the money sends more kids to college and/or is spent on vaccines, antibiotics, hospitalization, etc. that increase life expectancy. Again, distributing polio vaccines downtown might stop a riot; distributing Xboxes there tends to cause them.
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Why bipartisanship can't work: the expert view Roland00 - 01/02/2010 11:34:58 PM 864 Views
And a personal comment Roland00 - 01/02/2010 11:39:28 PM 600 Views
Re: And a personal comment everynametaken - 02/02/2010 01:16:53 AM 555 Views
Who's to say YOU really know what's happening in Washington, though? Aemon - 02/02/2010 01:41:20 AM 632 Views
*thumbs up* *NM* Ghavrel - 02/02/2010 01:50:45 AM 222 Views
Or should I say... ? *NM* Ghavrel - 02/02/2010 01:51:03 AM 245 Views
I Don't watch tv Roland00 - 02/02/2010 02:29:53 AM 592 Views
not to mention those who mistake knowledge for understanding random thoughts - 02/02/2010 10:41:14 PM 445 Views
Even so. Joel - 05/02/2010 05:45:54 AM 469 Views
Like the NYT? random thoughts - 05/02/2010 02:12:36 PM 502 Views
I don't believe the Times has ever conceded bias. Joel - 05/02/2010 06:03:02 PM 524 Views
and neither does Fox so I am not sure that matters random thoughts - 05/02/2010 06:40:15 PM 566 Views
Note that I didn't mention Fox (or anyone, for that matter. ) Joel - 05/02/2010 07:13:31 PM 498 Views
PBS is biased random thoughts - 05/02/2010 07:21:14 PM 470 Views
You're entitled to believe that. Joel - 05/02/2010 07:31:07 PM 600 Views
PBS has an obvious yet undeclared bias so does NPR random thoughts - 09/02/2010 04:47:53 AM 433 Views
Even were that true (which I dispute) my statement stands. Joel - 09/02/2010 09:50:36 AM 546 Views
so they wouldn't be biased becuas it could hurt them but you still argue republicans attack them random thoughts - 09/02/2010 02:19:53 PM 508 Views
Sometimes the truth hurts, though it doesn't hurt PBS. Joel - 10/02/2010 10:15:13 AM 592 Views
We have been for some time. Joel - 02/02/2010 03:31:10 AM 497 Views
I don't think that's the case Isaac - 03/02/2010 02:59:50 PM 477 Views
Universal healthcare was the primary plank in Clintons '92 platform. Joel - 04/02/2010 10:02:18 AM 461 Views
That does not mean his bare plurality was an endorsement of National Healthcare Isaac - 04/02/2010 02:09:32 PM 590 Views
I don't think he won by default, and that was his primary issue. Joel - 05/02/2010 08:09:50 AM 602 Views
Re: I don't think he won by default, and that was his primary issue. Isaac - 05/02/2010 03:52:23 PM 558 Views
[insert witty subject line here] Joel - 06/02/2010 02:15:21 AM 588 Views
Let me break this into multiple replies here Isaac - 06/02/2010 07:45:36 PM 568 Views
'K Joel - 08/02/2010 01:22:12 PM 552 Views
Probably time to go into 'summary mode' Isaac - 08/02/2010 07:34:55 PM 581 Views
Again, we're back to "how would you prefer to do it?" Joel - 09/02/2010 09:42:51 AM 605 Views
Any way that works, which currently probably is none Isaac - 09/02/2010 06:12:41 PM 544 Views
I think HDI is more accurate than nothing, though it certainly needs some fine tuning. Joel - 10/02/2010 11:03:08 AM 595 Views
Sorry for the delay... Isaac - 12/02/2010 11:40:21 PM 685 Views
NP, life happens. Joel - 15/02/2010 02:06:55 PM 680 Views
I'll play a bigger age card since it was my third election to vote in and he won because of Perot random thoughts - 05/02/2010 05:57:04 PM 483 Views
Let's put it another way: Why did Dems nominate him instead of, say, Gephardt? Joel - 06/02/2010 02:22:04 AM 553 Views
you don't get mandates from primaries random thoughts - 08/02/2010 02:12:29 PM 452 Views
No, but end of the day more people wanted healthcare than didn't. Joel - 08/02/2010 03:09:31 PM 464 Views
everyone want health care they just don't want congress runnig it random thoughts - 09/02/2010 04:56:44 AM 502 Views
Whom do you prefer? Joel - 09/02/2010 10:07:39 AM 524 Views
Sorry not a big fan of socialism I hear it big over in Europe though random thoughts - 09/02/2010 02:23:55 PM 425 Views
In other words you prefer the system we have; thanks for admitting it. Joel - 10/02/2010 10:05:38 AM 484 Views
I prefer Thomas Woods Jr's description of bipartisanship Cannoli - 02/02/2010 02:49:06 AM 486 Views
If only someone had stood up on 8 December, 1941 and said, "hey, you're not supposed to do stuff!" Joel - 02/02/2010 03:28:38 AM 634 Views
you're making a good job taking things out of context, Joel AgentOrange - 03/02/2010 12:47:57 PM 453 Views
Don't speak in absolutes and I won't read absolutes. Joel - 04/02/2010 10:08:43 AM 470 Views
Some qualifiers can be left unsaid for a clearer message. Or better delivery AgentOrange - 04/02/2010 10:26:56 AM 453 Views
Qualifiers are clarifying by nature. Joel - 04/02/2010 10:49:06 AM 586 Views
huh. That does make sense. I know malpractice is a big weight on the the system in the US. AgentOrange - 04/02/2010 11:58:37 AM 422 Views
Perhaps, but it's hardly the greatest weight, or even in the top three, IMHO. Joel - 05/02/2010 05:44:49 AM 574 Views
Pearl Harbor would never have happened to a classically liberal nation Cannoli - 05/02/2010 01:33:56 AM 477 Views
Maybe; Billy Mitchell might debate that were he alive. Joel - 05/02/2010 05:34:54 AM 590 Views
Wow - that was a dumb statement even for you! SilverWarder - 05/02/2010 04:22:59 PM 657 Views
I do generally agree, but I think the Washington Naval Conference is too often overlooked. Joel - 06/02/2010 02:33:51 AM 594 Views
Some information and a question JasonD - 02/03/2010 05:49:20 AM 994 Views
Politicians and pundits should stop calling things that happened in the last decade "unprecedented" Joel - 02/02/2010 03:23:27 AM 647 Views
Or the democratic party has shifted so far to to the left they can't even get all of the dems random thoughts - 02/02/2010 02:39:14 PM 455 Views
You didn't hear all the whining when Bush was in charge with a Republican Congress? Dannymac - 02/02/2010 08:50:05 PM 473 Views
I there was plenty of whining going on random thoughts - 02/02/2010 10:36:56 PM 399 Views
Is this you conceding that the GOP is being obstructionist? Joel - 08/02/2010 01:43:04 PM 430 Views
I agree they are obstructing the libs from doing whatever they want random thoughts - 08/02/2010 02:19:13 PM 359 Views
They've tried including Republicans in drafting bills. Joel - 08/02/2010 03:08:17 PM 517 Views
tyring to pcik off one republican is not including republicans random thoughts - 09/02/2010 05:03:44 AM 465 Views
So we've gone from "stop being secretive" to "no public meetings" eh? Joel - 09/02/2010 11:59:50 AM 474 Views
well it was your guy who was up in arms about private meetings random thoughts - 09/02/2010 02:29:34 PM 452 Views
Was it? I don't recall any Dem complaining about private meeting on healthcare. Joel - 10/02/2010 09:44:56 AM 605 Views
most liberals seem to foretting the "rhetoric" that Obama used to get elected random thoughts - 13/02/2010 06:54:34 AM 444 Views
Um... sorry, man.... Joel - 10/02/2010 11:06:22 AM 638 Views
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