data

I read somewhere once that all of the gold reserves in the world could fit inside a normal-sized suburban home. So let’s test this:

There has been 165,000 tonnes of gold mined in history.

A tonne (metric tonne. Which is actually a megagram) is 1,000 kilograms.

A cubic meter of gold weighs 19,300 kg.  165,000 * 1,000 / 19,300 gives us 8,549 cubic meters.

How big of a cube is that? The cube root is 20.43.

So a 20m by 20m by 20m cube would do it.

Ok, let’s say the average house has two floors and 2,000 square feet total. That’s 1,000 per floor, which is 92.5 square meters per floor.  Let’s say there are 2.75m ceilings. This gives us a cube of roughly 10m x 10m x 5.5m

550 cubic meters. Not even close.

You’d need more than 15 houses to do the trick.

From Felix Salmon:

Sorry, Felix, this chart is unhelpful and misleading, no matter what your political predisposition.

Let’s imagine you’re a lefty. You look at this chart and think it’s great, but ONLY because you think it will help you convince ‘conservatives’ or ‘tea-partiers’ that taxes can/should go up. I would argue you have absolutely no idea whether this chart supplies a useful way to think about politics or economics. You’re thinking with your debating hat on, not your scientist hat. That means that you’re looking for something helpful and not something true.

Ok, so let’s say you’re not a lefty (not the same thing as being a righty and easily in the majority). You look at that chart and don’t give a crap. Peoples’ reaction to tax rate changes have nothing to do with sober analyses of what share of revenue the government can/should get in a society. It has to do with whether people feel like they can afford to pay more taxes or not.

This makes the chart misleading because it doesn’t address peoples’ real concerns and unhelpful because it distracts lefties from arguments that might actually work. If there are any.

The only chart that’s less useful than the one above is this doozy (or something like it):

Again, a bias-confirming, load of garbage aggregate measure. Inequality is about how you feel you stack up to your neighbors. This chart does NOTHING to convince anyone that they stack up less well to anyone they know.

Populist movements arise when people feel like others are getting stuff they aren’t entitled to. That’s unfair. That’s inequality.

And right now, for whatever reason, public-sector-supported left-wing sacred cows are the poster children for getting a free ride.

My landlord is offering me a 12% rent increase to renew. A laughable deal and I will be moving, I expect.

Why? Margins are thin and increasing revenue is virtually impossible in the short term.

Unlike a government, I have the advantage of just choosing a cheaper apartment. If markets are efficient and I need to accept a lower standard of living, I can take that.

What politician gets re-elected after choosing a lower standard of living, no matter how justified? Doesn’t work in Greece.

Consider the news today. Revenue isn’t going up on its own any time soon and we can’t all just move to a cheaper apartment.

Ugly.

There’s a great discussion of the costs of Air Conditioning for soldiers on MR. Here’s the original story.

Here’s the boogeyman soundbite:

The amount the U.S. military spends annually on air conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan: $20.2 billion.

That’s more than NASA’s budget. It’s more than BP has paid so far for damage during the Gulf oil spill. It’s what the G-8 has pledged to help foster new democracies in Egypt and Tunisia.

What is a cost? I am reminded of an accounting prof of mine who once said: “give me some public accounts and I can turn a $5m profit into a $5m loss for a company and get every accountant in Canada to agree with me”.

So that’s an interesting bit.

Another interesting story is how people argue.

In the comments on MR (best around), there are a few analytical folks (“let’s look at the seasonal variation in running costs and adjust for stuff”), some hierarchical brown-nosers (“it’s a super-high ranking dude who said this so it HAS to be right”), and die-hard cynics (“I expect the number 20 billion comes under the category of “too good to check.”).

The number is probably BS, sure. But that doesn’t mean it’s “wrong” in a technical sense.

And none of that is going to stop a heated Internet discussion from swiping employers’ time all across the nation.