Month: October 2024

Nobel Prizes for 2024: It’s a Big Year for Artificial Intelligence. 

The Nobel Prizes for Physiology, Physics and Chemistry were announced over the week of the 7th of October and while the prizes aren’t supposed to have any kind of ‘theme’ to them this year the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) stood out as being of great importance. Not only were the physics and chemistry prizes awarded for work in developing or utilizing AI but several of the recipients warned about the dangers that uncontrolled AI are already having in our society.

Every day Artificial Intelligence is playing a bigger role in our daily lives. We can only guess what the future holds. (Credit: The Motley Fool)

But I’ll begin with the award for physiology or medicine because it was announced first and because AI played no role in the work for which it was honoured. The recipients of the 2024 Nobel Prize in physiology are Victor Ambros of the University of Massachusetts Medical School and Gary Ruvkun of Harvard Medical School. These two men were honoured for their discovery of microRNA along with how it functions in the cells of living creatures.

The 2024 Nobel Prize in Medicine went to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for their work in discovering MicroRNA. (Credit: X)

Let me take just a moment here to discuss the difference between DNA and RNA and how those differences are used in cells before I discuss why microRNA is so important. Both kinds of Nucleic Acids are composed of long chains of sugars; in RNA the sugar is called ribose while in DNA it is deoxyribose, which is just ribose without one oxygen atom. Attached to those long chains of sugars are nucleotide groups, adenine, thiamine, guanine and cytosine, A, T, G, and C for short. All life on this planet uses the sequence of the A, T, G, and Cs as a code for how to build a living creature, the famous genetic code.

Only a single oxygen atom, bottom right, makes a world of difference between the sugar Ribose and Deoxyribose. (Credit: Adobe Stock)

I remember back in the 1960s reading Isaac Asimov’s book ‘The Genetic Code’ in high school and at that time biologists didn’t know why living cells used DNA to store that code in their nucleus rather than RNA. It turned out that DNA is a more stable chemical than RNA, although both are actually very fragile chemicals, so DNA is used to store the genetic code long term.

The famous ‘Double Helix’ of DNA stores the code by which all living things are made. (Credit: Shutterstock)

It was also discovered however that cells used RNA to send information from the nucleus to those parts of the cell that need it in order to build proteins because it is less stable and can therefore be reused more easily. This is the famous messenger RNA or mRNA that is used in our Covid-19 vaccines and for which last year’s Nobel prizes in physiology were awarded.

To build a protein the DNA molecule builds a molecule of messenger RNA which then travels into where the protein is needed and manufactures it. (Credit: Deltec Bank)

So then what is microRNA? Well if messengerRNA is made up of thousands of nuclides in order to build a protein, microRNA has only a few dozen nuclides and it acts as the ON and OFF switches for the building of those proteins. In other words microRNA regulates how much of the various proteins our cells build. Thanks to the work of Drs. Ambros and Ruvkun we have taken one more step, and an important one, in our understanding of how life works!

If Messenger RNA contains the code to build a protein, then it’s the Micro RNA that turns on or turns off the process of building that protein! (Credit: Jacek Krol et al)

As I said above both this year’s Physics and Chemistry prizes deal with Artificial Intelligence (AI), a connection illustrating just how important AI has become to nearly every field of science, along with a growing importance in our daily lives. This year’s Physics Nobel Prizes were awarded to John Hopfield of Princeton University and Geoffrey Hinton of the University of Toronto for their work in the development of artificial neural networks that enabled computers to learn how to do things in a fashion very similar to the way we learn how to do things! What is known as machine learning.

This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics went to John Hopfield (l) and Geoffrey Hinton (r) for the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI). (Credit: Thereporteronline)

As important as those advancements are Doctor Hinton, who has been christened ‘the godfather of AI’ stole something of the spotlight by taking the opportunity to warn about the growing danger of unregulated AI in our society. “It will be comparable with the Industrial Revolution,” he cautioned. “Instead of exceeding people in physical strength, it’s going to exceed people in intellectual ability. we have no experience of what it’s like to have things smarter than us.” At the same time however Dr. Hinton also pointed out the enormous benefits that AI could bring in terms of increased productivity and economic efficiencies, again similar to the developments of the industrial revolution.

The real danger is what we can’t imagine at present. We’re entering a new world and what lies ahead is unknown, and the unknown is always a danger! (Credit: DataFlair)

So if this year’s Nobel in Physics were given to the scientists that led the way in the development of Artificial Intelligence then the Chemistry prize was given for utilizing AI. this year’s chemistry prize was given to David Baker of the University of Washington along with Demis Hassabis and John Jumper both of whom work at the DeepMind project a division of the Google Corporation.

The winners of this year’s Chemistry prize are David Baker (l), Demis Hassabis (m), and John Jumper for their work on developing AI tools to study proteins. (Credit: Chemistry World)
Are we certain that we want a tool as powerful as AI to be in the hands of a corporation. We need our governments to start of process for regulating AI so that it’s used in the public, not private interest. (Credit: Reuters)

The awarding of a Nobel to a researcher from a private corporation is not all that unusual. Bell Labs, when it was a division of Bell Telephone Corporation received quite a few Nobels, as have chemical and pharmaceutical companies. I do believe however that this is the first time that a software / internet company has received a Nobel.

Researchers at Bell Labs received several Nobel Prizes, most notably for the invention of the transistor. 2024 is the first time that employees at a that a software company have received a Nobel, but probably not the last. (Credit: Computer History Museum)

All three of the recipient’s work dealt with applying machine learning techniques in order to better understand proteins. Proteins, which are constructed from long chains of about two dozen compounds known as amino acids, are the building blocks from which cells are made and are also involved in virtually all the chemical reactions that make up the cell’s metabolism. There are literally millions of different known proteins and it’s not just their chemical formula that determines how they behave but their shape as well. You see those long chains of amino acids bend and loop around on themselves forming complex three dimensional shapes that are often more important to a protein’s function than the atoms of which they are composed.

With Proteins it’s often the shape, more than the chemical formula, that determines its function. Here are just a few of the infinite number of shapes proteins can make. (Credit: BioRender.com)

Calculating the shapes of proteins used to take years but in 2020 Doctors Hassabis and Jumper released AlphaFold an AI that can calculate the shape of a protein in hours or even minutes. Thanks to this program researchers around the world are developing new medicines as well as proteins that may be able to break down plastics into materials that can be more easily recycled.

As more and more plastic waste gets into the environment the danger of microplastics getting into us grows. The work of Doctors Hassabis and Jumper may help to solve this problem. (Credit: IUCN)

Doctor Baker, who recently began using the AlphaFold Program in his own research, went further in developing a new class of proteins unlike any seen in nature. These new proteins have already been used in the development of new medicines and vaccines but there is also the possibility that they may find usage in the fields of nanomaterials and microscopic sensors.

The idea of using proteins as micro sensors is still just science fiction, but then AI itself was just science fiction 20 years ago. (Credit: Biofisica)

The pioneering work of Doctors Hopfield and Hinton, along with Baker, Hassabis and Jumper illustrate how computers, and especially the new Artificial Intelligences, are playing an ever greater part in the world of science. Together with Doctors Ambros and Ruvkun they are this year’s Nobel laureates in the sciences.

Election 2024: The Question of Climate and the Environment, part 2. 

In my previous post I recited a long and frankly depressing tale of weather disasters that have occurred around the world this past year. The cause of this extreme weather is the fact that our planet’s temperature has reached the 1.5ºC above pre-industrial levels due to global warming that scientists have been warning us about for decades. I could have gone on, I could have mentioned the droughts that are spreading across northern Africa, or the melting glaciers in the Himalayas. Surely anyone who isn’t convinced of the reality of climate change has simply made up their minds to ignore the evidence.

There are none so blind as those who will not see. Our Earth is getting hotter and we’re the cause. (Credit: Berkeley Earth)

So what have the various world governments done to try to eliminate, or at the very least reduce CO2 emissions? In particular in this election year, what has the US government done to mitigate global warming?

The nations of the European Union (EU) have managed to get their CO2 emissions under control. Why are we here in the US doing so little to solve this problem. (Credit: European Parliament)

Well, while he was President Trump did exactly nothing. Indeed, whereas most climate deniers like Ted Cruse or right wing Think Tanks have decided to lower their rhetoric and just oppose climate action more quietly, Trump has continued to claim without evidence that global warming is a “Chinese Hoax”. His numerous other falsehoods include claims that wind turbines and solar arrays cause cancer, again assertions without any evidence. Based upon these fictions throughout his term of office Trump strongly opposed any and all policies to fight global warming.

If Climate Change is just ‘a Chinese Hoax’ then why is China spending more than three times as much on renewable ‘Green Energy’ as we are? Did they fall for their own hoax or is Trump just a liar? (Credit: WeBuildValue)

President Biden on the other hand has boasted about his efforts to combat climate change. Those efforts have come mostly in the form of his signature ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ which was originally, and more accurately named the ‘Build Back Better’ act. In that legislation $663 billion were earmarked toward incentives for the development of wind and solar power farms while at the same time providing $521 million in funding for the installation of 9,200 charging stations for electronic cars. The money spent by the IRA represents the largest effort to combat climate change in US history and has been projected to reduce carbon emissions by the US to 40% below those in the year 2005.

How the IRA invests in green energy. The energy we derive from solar and wind requires an investment but once it’s paid for the energy is all free!! (Credit: Evergreen Action)

Unfortunately, even while working hard to increase the amount of energy the US produces by renewable sources Biden has also helped the petroleum industry increase its production. So much so that currently the US is again the world’s leading producer of oil and natural gas, more barrels per day than ever in history. Biden did this primarily to lower gas prices and thereby reduce inflation but those cheap gas prices also make old fashion CO2 emitting cars look more attractive than Electric Vehicles (EVs), increasing emissions and therefore contributing to global warming.

For Biden inflation has been a more immediate problem than Global Warming and since gas prices effect the cost of almost everything, he worked hard to bring the price of gas down by increasing oil production! (Credit: Stanford Report – Stanford University)

So what are the proposed policies that Trump and Harris are offering to implement if they become president. Well, it’s easy to tell what Trump will do; he still insists that climate change is a hoax, despite the mountains of evidence. Because of that he has no plans to do anything to reduce our country’s CO2 emissions. Indeed, Trump promises his supporters he will “Drill baby Drill” in order to lower gas prices even further as a way to spur the economy. However it is worth noting that the oil companies will probably not want to work harder to produce more oil, which will lower gas prices further so that they actually get fewer profits. So Trump’s energy plans may actually be perversely opposed by the oil industry!

If you think about it gas companies don’t really want gas to be too cheap. After all it costs them a certain amount to get the oil from the ground, then it has to be refined before it can be shipped to your local gas station. All that costs money so if gas is too cheap the oil companies can’t make a profit no matter how much we “Drill Baby Drill”. (Credit: NPR)

Kamala Harris’ plans for mitigating climate change are harder to discern. During her time as a senator from California Harris was always in the forefront of the fight against climate change, supporting any and all legislation that would reduce CO2 emissions. As Vice-President Harris cast the tie breaking vote that got the IRA passed. At the same time however she has had to be a team player in the Biden administration so she also supported Biden’s efforts to increase oil and gas production.

In order to get elected Kamala Harris has had to shift her position on fracking. An object lesson on how politics can get in the way of doing what’s actually necessary! (Credit: YouTube)

As a candidate for President Harris has had to trod an even trickier path because she needs votes from oil and gas producing states. So on the campaign trail she has usually talked more about increasing the amount of energy we get from solar and wind rather than talking about reducing the amount of energy we get from oil and natural gas.

The democrats would prefer to talk about growing more ‘green energy’ rather than discuss getting rid of oil and natural gas. That may not be possible. (Credit: EnTech Solutions)

This is particularly true in my home state of Pennsylvania where the process of fracking provides many jobs and a great deal of money to areas that were hard hit by the manufacturing exodus of the 1990s. Pennsylvania is also the biggest of the ‘swing states’ and many pundits are predicting that whoever wins Pennsylvania will become the next President so its understandable that Harris would rather not talk about opposing fracking.

Fracking for natural gas is a big business in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. It also causes health problems, pollutes the environment and of course leads to the emission of large amount of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. (Credit: Maps on the Web)

Fracking is controversial not only because it rejuvenates old used up oil wells but because it produces a lot more environmental damage than normal oil and gas drilling does. In fact fracking has actually been definitely linked with generating earthquakes thanks to the damage it does to rock strata deep underground. See my post of 12 August 2017.

The State of Oklahoma never had earthquakes, it’s one of the most geologically stable places on Earth. Or at least it used to be before we started fracking! (Credit: Washington Post)

One thing that can be said for certain is that Harris will continue Biden’s policies of investing in renewable energy production. Whether that effort will be enough is doubtful, and remember any large climate change action she proposes will have to get through a congress that over the last decade or more has been unable to come to an agreement on much of anything.

Partisanship, postering and just outright distrust have made it impossible for our congress to get anything done. (Credit: Pew Research Center)

So there you have it, the need for action by the US government to reduce our nation’s CO2 emissions is clear. The entire world is tittering on the brink of extreme weather conditions never before seen in human history so every nation must reduce their emissions. What’s not so clear is what our candidates can or will do to prevent such an eventuality. Kamala Harris at least can be counted upon to try to fight climate change while Trump blindly refuses to see the danger coming right at us.

Election 2024: The Question of Climate and the Environment. 

As we here in the US approach our Presidential election I have decided to take several posts to discuss the issues from something of a scientific viewpoint. To that end I spent the last three posts reviewing the state of our economy and the plans of the two major party candidates for dealing with the economy.

In every Election it seems that the State of the Economy is the most important Issue that Voters care about. But ask yourself this, how good can our Economy be if we destroy the Environment we live in? (Credit: Investopedia)

In this and my next post I will be discussing the environment and climate change in particular and again the plans that both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have for dealing with the environment and the growing threat of climate change. In today’s post I will review the current state of environmental issues in the US with an emphasis on climate change and steps that are being taken to contain it.

If this is the price of a strong economy, is it really worth it? (Credit: The Green Page)

Last year, in 2023 the world experienced the hottest year ever recorded. Strengthened by the Pacific weather phenomenon of El Nino the world’s average temperature came so close to the 1.5º Celsius that scientists have been warning us about for decades that we may just as well as reached it. 2024 hasn’t been any better; in fact the first seven months of the year were each the hottest of that month ever recorded. In other words, February of 2024 was the hottest February ever, April the hottest April ever and so on until July, which was the hottest month of any kind, ever. Indeed, it was on July 21st of 2024 that the Earth’s hottest ever temperature was recorded, beating a record set just the day before.

It’s not a joke anymore. The world is getting hotter and we’re the cause. Things are only going to get worse if we don’t fix the problem. (Credit: The Weather Channel)

Locally high temperature records throughout the United States have been shattered. Phoenix, Arizona for example has endured a staggering 113 consecutive days of temperatures above 100ºF (37.8ºC). Las Vegas, Palm Springs and many other southwestern cities also saw record shattering, long duration heat waves. Indeed the record heat pressed as far north as Oregon and Montana. So the last two years have been the hottest years ever measured and in fact the ten hottest years ever recorded have all been in the last ten years, a trend that shows no sign of abating, indeed there is every reason to expect global warming to continue for as long as we keep dumping CO2 into the atmosphere.

One Hundred and Thirteen consecutive days of temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. How can anybody live in that? (Credit: The Weather Channel)

As a consequence of this historic heat the death toll due to heat related causes has also risen. Meanwhile that extreme heat has also contributed to the massive wildfires have been raging across the western parts of both the US and Canada.

Wildfires are raging around the world adding even more CO2 to that which we are dumping into the atmosphere. (Credit: Inside Climate News)

The eastern US hasn’t been spared either with massive outbreaks of tornadoes throughout the spring ranging from Texas and Oklahoma to Georgia in the south and up into Ohio and Indiana. Then, even as tornado season was easing the tropics began to stir bringing first hurricane Beryl to devastate Louisiana then a succession of tropic systems including hurricane Helene that spread destruction from Florida’s gulf coast right up into North Carolina and beyond. Florida’s ‘Big Bend’ region has seen three strong hurricanes in just the last two years causing so much devastation that the people living along the coast haven’t had enough time to recover from one storm before the next hits them. Even as I write these words Hurricane Milton is approaching the Florida coast as a Category 5, another major hurricane that will surely cause enormous damage to areas still recovering from Helene.

By the time you read this Hurricane Milton will have slammed into Florida. The full extent of the destruction won’t be known for days but this is the third hurricane to hit Florida this year! (Credit: NBC Chicago)

Additionally, even as the damage caused by Helene is still being assessed it is clear that the western portion of North Carolina suffered some of the worst devastation. That is despite North Carolina’s being more than 700 kilometers from the part of Florida where the storm came ashore. Clearly the stronger hurricanes and tropical storms that are now being generated by global warming are a threat to communities farther inland than ever before.

Half of the roads in an entire state are closed, many suffered severe damage that could take years to completely repair. All told the destruction caused by Helene is estimated at more than 47 billion dollars. It’s the destruction caused by Climate Change that is the real threat to our Economy! (Credit: The Weather Channel)

Despite all their violence the occasional storm to hit coastal communities only highlights the ever increasing threat from sea level rise. Along the Atlantic coast from Maine to Florida and then around the gulf to Texas land is disappearing and taking homes, often very expensive homes, with it. Cities like Miami, Charleston and Galveston are seeing entire neighborhoods flooded during so-called ‘King Tides’. The state in greatest danger however is Louisiana where it is estimated that one football field’s worth of land is being lost every hour.

Even before hurricane Helene came ashore the town of Cedar Key Florida experienced periodic flooding caused by rising sea levels! (Credit: The weather Channel)
Beachfront homes, often very expensive homes are being washed into the sea due to rising sea levels. (Credit: Sky News)

Such tides are also turning the groundwater beneath coastal neighborhoods salty and therefore undrinkable. Meanwhile septic systems in the tidewater region of Virginia and parts of Florida are overflowing as sea water again permeates the ground.

Septic Systems in many coastal communities from Florida to Virginia are failing and overflowing due to rising ground water levels caused by sea level rise! (Credit: Lyttle Company)

All of this damage to property is causing insurance companies to raise their rates for homeowner’s insurance. That’s if you can find an insurance company willing to insure your home, thousands of homes along the US gulf coast are now considered to be uninsurable. The same is also true for many homes in California and Oregon but out west it’s because of wildfires, not flooding.

As the number of billion dollar disasters have increased so has the average cost of homeowners insurance. Doesn’t that hurt our economy? (Credit: Union of Concerned Scientists)

That litany of disaster is only from North America; the rest of the world has seen even more extreme weather. Flooding in Central Europe has been the cause of dozens of deaths and entire towns being submerged when a super moist air stream moved north from the Mediterranean and dumped its water on Austria, Poland, Romania and the Czech Republic. Meanwhile in Asia Typhoon Yagi brought flooding and landslides to Vietnam causing the death of 127 people before moving into Myanmar where it caused an additional 110 deaths. Finally in Africa seven days of non-stop rainfall in northern Nigeria and Chad have resulted in the deaths of hundreds, a dam to burst and the displacement of over a million people. A UN investigation has estimated that in total the countries of Africa are losing about 5% of their economies to flooding every year.

Zoo Elephants escaping from recent flooding in Thailand. Many of the World’s poorer countries are suffering worse from Climate Change that we are here in the US. That can only lead to even more migrations as people try to escape Climate Change like these elephants are. (Credit: CNN)

And this is only the start; a report published by the CICERO Center for International Climate Research in coordination with the University of Reading in the UK has forecast that in twenty years 1.5 billion people, 20% of the world’s population will be subjected to extreme changes in climate even if CO2 emissions are cut drastically enough for global temperature to remain below 1.5ºC above pre-industrial levels. That’s the best-case scenario, in the event that carbon emissions continue to rise the number of people who will see drastic changes to their climate rises to over 5 billion, 70% of the world’s population.

Many scientific organizations are predicting future climatic conditions. The future doesn’t look pretty! (Credit: RealClimate)

Faced with such a dire future the world’s governments need to do everything in their power to more than just reduce, virtually eliminate CO2 emissions. In my next post I’ll discuss what the Biden administration has done to help reduce CO2 and what plans both Harris and Trump have for controlling Climate Change.

The Economy and the 2024 Election: Trump’s and Harris’ Proposed Tax Plans and Economic Vision

In the first two installments of this series of posts I have discussed our nation’s economy over the last 7½ years in an effort to determine whether President Trump or President Biden have done a better job of handling our nation’s economic growth. What I think we have discovered is that neither President’s policies were as important as the impact caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

At its height the Covid pandemic overwhelmed hospitals and caused major disruptions in the lives of every American. The effects of Covid on the economy will last for years! (Credit: Sky News)

In this post I will take a look at the proposed policies of both Trump and Kamala Harris who has succeeded Biden as the Democratic nominee. As can be expected during an election cycle both candidates are promising tax cuts but in almost every other aspect their economic visions for America are very different.

At their only debate Harris and Trump talked a great deal about the economy. The one thing that was obvious was how different their ideas and policies were. (Credit: Investopedia)

Trump’s proposals are centered around the concept of lowering taxes for everyone, but mostly for corporations and the rich while making the rest of the world pay for it through tariffs on goods imported into the US from abroad. As far as taxes are concerned Trump intends to make permanent the tax cuts on corporations he succeeded in getting past congress in (2018).

This is the tax cut that Trump succeeded in getting passed by congress in 2017. The richest 1% of Americans got nearly 2/3rds of the money. These cuts are due to expire in 2025, but Trump intends to make them permanent. (Credit: itep.org)

Those cuts lowered the corporate tax rate to 21% from 35%, an estimated savings for corporations of $4 trillion dollars that have mainly been spent in stock buybacks that have done nothing more than make stock prices rise. In addition to making his first term tax cuts permanent Trump has also floated ideas about eliminating taxes on tips and overtime although many economists are convinced that the bookkeeping required by such ideas would be complicated and difficult to police properly. In general however, Trump’s tax plans are just ideas with few details about implementation.

When he made this comment at the debate Trump was specifically talking about replacing the Affordable Care Act but really it pretty much sums up all of his plans if he gets re-elected. (Credit: Tenor)

If Trump’s plans for taxes are blurry at least they’re not as crazy as his plan to make the rest of the world pay for them through tariffs, a notion that every economist knows is just flat out wrong. Somewhere back in his days as a student at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business he got the idea that the taxes we impose on foreign goods are paid by the manufacturer in that foreign country. In other words he simply doesn’t understand how tariffs work or why countries use them.

The intention of a Tariff is to make foreign goods more expensive so people will buy domestic goods instead. Anyone who still buys the foreign product pays a tax. The domestic consumer pays the tax, not the foreign manufacturer. (Credit: LinkedIn)

Let me describe a classic example of how a tariff works and why they are used, my example is whiskey! Back in the 19th century the US had a large whiskey producing industry that didn’t want to have to compete against whiskeys from other countries, particularly Scottish and Irish whiskeys from the UK. (By the way there is no such a thing as Scotch, it’s Scottish Whiskey!!!)

So let us toast John Barleycorn, each man a glass in hand. And may his great posterity Ne’er fail in old Scotland. (Credit: Robert Burns)

In order to get an advantage over foreign whiskey makers the whiskey industry here in the US got the Federal Government to impose tariffs, that is taxes as high as 50% on whiskey imported into this country. Now the whiskey manufacturers in Scotland didn’t pay that tax, they didn’t care whether their product got bought in the UK or the US, and certainly the US has no way of making a company in the UK pay any kind of tax. It is the importer, the person or company who brings the whiskey into the US that actually pays the tariff.

It’s the American consumer who will pay the actual tax on imported goods, raising inflation. That’s just one of the consequences of tariffs. if they start a trade war they can really damage both nation’s economies. (Credit: SlidePlayer)

However that importer isn’t going to just eat the cost of the tariff, he’s going to raise the price of the whiskey so he can still make a profit. So the price of the tariff finally gets passed along to the consumer here in America. The idea of the tariff is just that, to make foreign products more expensive so as to give manufacturers here in the US an unfair advantage. Because of that tariffs cause a decrease in foreign goods coming into our country by raising their prices, which is what the whiskey producers here in the US wanted. Nevertheless it is still the American consumer who actually pays the tariff.

Depending on just how far Trump is willing to go on tariffs this is quite possible! (Credit: Cagle.com)

 And by raising the prices of foreign goods tariffs actually increase inflation, worst still they can lead to trade wars between countries that hurt everybody’s economy. Nevertheless Trump thinks that tariffs are a way of getting other countries to pay us for the right to do business here and he’s gonna do them no matter how bad everybody else thinks they are.

Trump promises a lot but remember the wall, remember how Mexico was going to pay for it! (Credit: YouTube)

One other policy that Trump is advocating may not seem to be directly connected to the economy but will definitely do so and that is his determination to deport millions of the illegal aliens, Democrats prefer the term undocumented, currently living here in the US. Illegal or not those people are contributing to our economy, they are working, many in jobs Americans don’t want, and they are buying things. Depending on exactly how many aliens Trump succeeds in deporting our country’s GDP could decline by anywhere between 2% to 8%.

Mass deportations is a foundation of Trump campaign but remember those people are now a part of our economy, they have jobs and spend money. If we simply throw 20 million people legal or illegal out of our country we will instantly be in a recession! (Credit: AP News)

Additionally Trump intends for the government to jump start the economy by what he refers to as “Drill baby Drill”, that is to open up federal lands for exploitation by the petroleum and mining industries. In this way Trump hopes that cheaper gas prices will induce economic growth. However the US is already the world’s largest oil producer and it’s questionable as to whether the oil companies will actually want to work harder to pump out more oil in order to lower prices and therefore reduce their profits.

A huge amount of oil and gas produced by the petroleum industry already comes from Federal land. Trump intends to greatly increase that amount. (Credit: Reuters)

All in all the U of P Wharton School, that Trump attended remember, has estimated that Trump’s tax plans could add $4.1 Trillion, yes Trillion to our national debt while economists at Goldman Sachs estimate that his plan to remove all illegal / undocumented aliens would reduce GDP by about a half a percent in 2025 alone. Finally the Tax Policy Foundation calculates that Trump’s tariff plan could result in a tax on American consumers of $300 Billion a year. And those are all pretty conservative institutions. Again however, it’s hard to figure out exactly what Trump’s policies will do because he hasn’t really announced any concrete plans for economists to analyze.

Trump is a graduate of the prestigious Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. His former professors however don’t think he learned much there. (Credit: Business Insider)

Kamala Harris’ economic plans could hardly be much more different, although like Trump’s they are also lacking in detail. The one tax initiative that Harris agrees with Trump on is his idea of eliminating taxes on tips. In general the Vice President intends to raise taxes on Billionaires and multi-Millionaires. Specifically her plan is to increase the corporate taxes from their current rate of 21% to 28% in order to fund tax cuts for the middle class. Those middle class tax cuts will come in the form of higher income tax deductions for children, childcare and small businesses.

For the last 40 years we’ve been concentrating on ‘Supply Side Economics’ where the rich get tax cuts and the money ‘trickles down’ to everybody else. Could that be why the middle class is in such trouble now? Just asking! (Credit: CBS News)

Another way in which Harris’ plans differ from Trump’s is that she fully intends to continue Biden’s policies of both rebuilding our nation’s infrastructure while also providing incentives to both companies and individuals to help promote a ‘Green’ economy, more solar and wind energy production along with more charging stations for electric vehicles. In addition Harris intends to provide the middle class with incentives for first time home purchases. In many ways however Harris’ economic ideas are adjustments to Biden’s policies.

President Biden picked Harris to be his running mate because they shared a vision of how to government this country. It’s only reasonable therefore that Harris’ policies will resemble Biden’s. (Credit: Slate.com)

Well, that’s about all I have to say. I hope these past three posts have given you some clear views about the current state of our economy as well as how much credit, or blame the last two administrations deserve for it. At the same time I have tried to give some idea about the economic plans that the two major party candidates have for how they will handle our economy if they are elected President. Throughout these posts I have tried to be fair to both candidates, whether I have succeeded or not I leave for you to decide.

We’d all like to think that we’re fair and balanced. Sometimes that’s not easy to do! (Credit: Faculty Focus)

The most important thing is for you to get out and vote this November, for you to make your choice based upon all of the information you can gather. After all that’s the way democracy is supposed to work!

The Economy and the 2024 Election: Part 2: Job Growth, GDP and Wage Growth. 

In the first installment of my review of the Trump versus Biden economy going into this election I began by discussing just how difficult it is to try to understand all of the claims made about the economy by the various candidates seeking office, especially the two candidates for President. It isn’t just the fact that each party only tells you the facts they want you to hear, and try to hide the facts they don’t want you to know.

Need I say more? (Credit: Imgflip)

There’s also the fact that economics is a pretty difficult subject to study even if economists didn’t measure some factors on a weekly basis, some on a monthly basis, some quarterly and some yearly. So I’m going to try to put it all together in some sort of sensible format for you to make up your own mind. I hope I’m going to be fair, at any rate I’m going to try; you’ll have to judge.

They say in sports if you don’t notice the umpires or referees during a game, then they did a good job! I hope that’s how you’re look at me after this post! (Credit: Baseball wiki)

Last time I described how inflation under Joe Biden hit a level higher than it had since the 1980s; this is the economic problem that the Republicans want you to remember. That high level of inflation however was really caused by the US coming out of the covid-19 pandemic, it lasted less than one year and inflation is now pretty much under control.

And it did! At the time democrats pushed through their Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) inflation was running at about 9% it’s now 2.5% so whatever the democrats did worked! (Credit: Senate Majority PAC)

At the same time I also described how Covid was responsible for Trump’s biggest economic failure, an unemployment rate that topped out at 15%, the highest unemployment since the Great Depression of the 1930s.  So it is that with respect to both inflation and unemployment the economic record of Trump and Biden are pretty equal, and that both of their records have been overshadowed by the effect of Covid, a disease that came out of nowhere to kill almost one and a quarter million Americans. The lesson to be learned here is that even the President of the United States has only so much influence over our economy, and that forces beyond the control of any President or party, like a pandemic, can wreck even the best laid plans of mice and men.

The Covid pandemic in the US between March of 2020 and February of 2021. This is all of the people who got sick not those who died. Of course this disaster had a major effect on our economy! (Credit: Johns Hopkins)

In this post I’ll continue to describe how both Trump and Biden performed on other economic factors such as job growth, wage growth, and GDP. Once again all of the economic numbers I’ll be using have been adjusted for inflation where appropriate.

Consumer Price Index (CPI), the most commonly used measure of inflation over the last 50 years. Although inflation did spike in 2022 it was nowhere near as bad as during the 1970s and 80s. (Credit: US Treasury Department)

The Democrats love to remind everyone of how President Biden has created more jobs than any President ever in our nation’s history while under Trump the US saw a net job loss. That’s literally true but again those facts are more due to the Covid pandemic than by any actions taken by either Trump or Biden. If you look at the Chart below it’s obvious that job growth was puttering along at about 200,000 per month under Trump until April of 2020, just as the pandemic began to rage. In that month 20 million jobs were lost, which is why the line for job growth drops out of the bottom of the chart.

Number of jobs created each month in thousands for both Trumps and Biden. Notice how the dip and spike caused by COVID pretty much dominates the more normal time periods. (Credit: R. A. Lawler)

Then, during Biden’s first year in office the pandemic waned and companies started hiring back all of the people they’d laid off. That’s a big reason why job growth under Biden was about twice what it was even during Trump’s good years. So again with respect to job growth we have a strong economy no matter who is President and while it did take a big whack from Covid it has come back quite nicely.

Because of Covid many businesses were forced to close at least temporarily, laying off millions of workers. When the pandemic eased those businesses reopened and people got their jobs back. (Credit: New York Times)

Taking a quick look at the growth in our nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) we see much the same story. For the first three years of Trump’s term GDP growth was a stable and reasonable 5%, as measured on a quarterly basis. Then came Covid and the economy took a sharp drop, in fact the country was technically in a recession, which is defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth.

Or as we now know a pandemic. Technically a recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth. (Credit: Worksheets Planet)

When Biden took office things got dramatically better with the second quarter of 2021 actually having a growth of 17%! Thereafter things settled down again but GDP growth for Biden has remained above 5%. Still however we have to ask, were Biden’s good GDP figures due to our recovery from Covid. Taking away the effect of the pandemic both Presidents can claim to have had reasonable economic growth.

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for both Trump and Biden. Again the effect of the Pandemic on the Economy dwarfs everything else. (Credit: R. A. Lawler)
In standard Economic Theory Inflation almost always leads to a Recession. That hasn’t happened after the Inflation caused by Covid which means somebody is learning how to handle the Economy! (Credit: LinkedIn)

Finally I’d like to take a look at how wages rose, or fell during the Trump and Biden administrations. This is important because, as I said in my last post, if wages rise faster than inflation then people are actually better off but when wages don’t rise at least as fast as inflation that’s when everybody starts to feel the economic pinch.

Wage growth during both the Trump and Biden administrations. It looks like wages grew much faster during Biden’s term but remember inflation was higher as well. (Credit: R. A. Lawler)

Just looking at the chart by itself it certainly looks like wages increased a lot more under Biden than they did under Trump. Again however it must be remembered that inflation was also higher under Biden so was there really any great difference?

Wage growth versus inflation (CPI) over the last 15 years. Again, the disruption caused by Covid is obvious so that it’s difficult to say that any president’s policy had any effect. (Credit: Axios)

Really the one thing that can be said about the state of the economy under either Trump or Biden is that the performance or policies of any President have only a minor effect while things outside of their control, like a pandemic, can have a much greater effect. Now you may have noticed that I’ve been comparing Trump’s economy to Biden’s, but it’s actually Vice-President Harris who is the democratic nominee in 2024. Of course Trump has been tying Harris to every one of Biden’s problems in his efforts to make her look bad and certainly as Biden’s Vice-President Harris went along with Biden’s policies.

President Biden (r) and his Vice President Kamala Harris. It’s always a fair question to ask how responsible is the vice-president for the decisions of the president? (Credit: Pittsburg Post Gazette)

Still Kamala Harris is her own candidate. For that reason in my next, and last post of this series I’ll be taking a look at the proposed policies of the two candidates Trump and Harris so that you can make up your own mind whose economic vision is more in line with yours.

However you decide, VOTE! (Credit Harvard Gazette)

Before I go however let me just give a brief overview of our economy at just this moment a little more than a month before the election. Inflation in August was 2.5%, a little bit more than we’d like. Unemployment is at 4.2%, again we’d like that to be lower, but it’s really pretty good. GDP in the second quarter, April to June, was a sold 3% indicating strong growth in our economy. At present then the US economy is strong, true it could be better, but it could also be a lot worse!

So, if we want to get ahead as a nation, if we want our children to achieve the ‘American Dream’, then we need to provide a better education for them! (Credit: Pinterest)

Perhaps the best way to gage our economy however is to take a look at how the stocks markets have been performing so far this year. Since the end of September of 2023 the DOW Jones Industrials have climbed 26%, the Standard and Poor’s 500 has climbed 33% while the tech heavy NASDAQ has beaten them both with a 37% gain in just one year. Obviously our economy isn’t too bad!

Postscript: The latest job figures have come out for September. This will be the last data point for jobs before the November election. In September the US added 254,000 jobs, many more than economists had estimated. That’s a quarter of a million people who are now working! Because of that high job growth unemployment dropped to 4.1%, a very low value. All in all, it points to a very strong economy that has fully recovered from the pandemic!