At the beginning of the year, I anticipated posting about once a week, and for the last six weeks, I’ve fallen far short. I’ve been slow to post for a few reasons, but hope to pick up my pace in November. I’ve been posting infrequently because I’ve been occupied with other distractions in my personal life that should lead to new post ideas in the future.
To hold myself honest, I’m writing one sentence ideas below, inspired by recent events, that will link to the full posts in the future:
Zillow is not trying to help you
All vehicles should report engine hours like miles
Fantasy football reminds me why I will never be a data scientist
Tim Minchin is our David Foster Wallace (in appearance and work) (I probably won’t write this one–see last post)
Tim Minchin’s new TV show, Upright, is available for US consumers on the Sundance channel. The show is a modern, Australian, take on John Hughes’s Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Although I am only one episode in, I highly recommend the series. Within the first few scenes, it’s clear that Minchin’s character is starting a transformative journey.
The casting of Minchin as Lucky Flynn, the protagonist, wasn’t an immediately obvious choice. Minchin has never been known as a series-leading actor. However, Minchin’s career has been defined by transformation.
Do you agree that the magic of Kate Moss Tim Minchin lies in her history…the informality of her early shots compared to this stuff, so you just always know that, despite the high fashion, she’s still just that cheeky normal naked girl on the beach
About Time
Minchin first made a name for himself as a musical comedian specializing in bleak humor and dark satire. His comedy is critical of conservative religion, hypocrisy, and idealistic views of romance, and is rarely suitable for children.
Minchin on relationships (safe-ish for work)
Minchin has, at least, four recorded comedy specials (two currently on Netflix) full of his critical wit. As his comedy career was approaching his Zenith, Minchin co-wrote Matilda the Musical. The show was nominated for 12 Tony awards and toured on Broadway for 4 years.
The move from Broadway to musicals suited for young audiences was actually a return to Minchin’s original career aspirations. After college, Minchin planned to write “serious” music and act on stage.
Minchin’s autobiography
If a successful comedy career afforded Minchin the ability to write Broadway musicals, then the success of his Broadway musicals (Minchin co-adapted Groundhog Day as well) afforded him the notoriety to make the “serious” songs he initially planned.
At 45, Minchin is set to debut his first studio album in November of this year. Like his comedy, the singles he released deal with the darker aspects of human existence. Still he rejects the idea of an idyllic relationship, although he approaches the subject with more vulnerability:
Minchin’s second single
Maybe Minchin was the obvious choice. From “serious” songwriter, to comedian, to Broadway, back to singer, and now to starring in a TV series, Minchin had his own Planes, Trains and Automobiles journey. Who better to portray an adaptation on TV?
We do not yet know the full impact of COVID-19 and its associated policies will have on American businesses. At present, tech, home improvement, and logistics companies are creating record profits. On the other end of the spectrum, airlines, entertainment, and foodservice are struggling.
The long-term status of these industries aren’t quite as clear. No one knows how long COVID-influenced policy and public behavior will disrupt business. The combination of government stimulus, work from home, and consumer spending changes has caused the stock market to soar through much of the pandemic, while many businesses suffered and unemployment spiked.
Seven months into the pandemic, economists struggle to quantify even the current state of the economy. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported an .4% inflation rate during the month of August; however the inflation rate, which is a proxy measurement for the increase of decrease of the purchasing power of currency, requires a predetermined bundle of items whose price is tracked each month. That bundle does not reflect the consumer spending habits of 2020, and the inflation rate that consumers experience is not .4%, but the true rate is unknown. Similarly, studies that measure average income have been less accurate than usual in 2020. Based on the 2020 Household Pulse Survey, 25% of Americans expect a loss of household income within the next four weeks; however, median weekly earnings increased in Q2 2020. Together, these factors make it difficult to evaluate the status of the economy.
If given the opportunity to open any business now, I would open a crepe food truck. With the projections of restaurant failures and the decreased popularity of eating at a restaurant, food trucks will represent a better value proposition for entrepreneurs.
From a cost perspective, food trucks are possible to bootstrap. The start up costs of a food truck can be kept between 50 and 100 thousand dollars. For comparison a restaurant will cost, on average, $250,000. Crepe batter requires only three ingredients: Milk, eggs and flour. Fuel remains relatively cheap. The cost per serving will depend on the style of crepe and selected toppings.
From a revenue standpoint, the argument for food trucks is pretty strong right now. A number of cities have started to close streets to vehicles, to allow pedestrians more room for socially distanced dining. Food trucks are the perfect vehicle to capitalize on the closures in the short-term. Food trucks allow for socially distanced dining, delivery on app-based delivery services, and high throughput. These are key in a socially-distanced world.
Of course, the restaurant industry will come back eventually and people will be willing to eat inside. Will the food truck industry be in a stronger position in that time than it was prior to COVID?
Yes.
The industry has two primary drivers of potential growth accelerated by COVID. Food delivery is growing in the United States. COVID accelerated the growth, but the industry is here to stay. Food trucks can capitalize on this trend by moving to central locations of suburbs (which normally would not be popular) and sell both in-person and delivery orders. Food trucks will no longer be limited by population density of foot-traffic in the immediate vicinity. The other driver accelerated by COVID is the growth of civic outdoor space (hinted above). At least some of the streets converted into pedestrian walkways during COVID will remain that way. The increase in pedestrian areas will result in an increase in opportunity for the trucks.
Food trucks might be a good idea, but why crepes?
Crepes batter is easy to prepare. A crepe griddle is cheap compared to many cooking implements, training to make a crepe is incredibly easy, and crepes offer immense flexibility. If I were to make an October crepe menu, it might have the following items:
In the summer, my menu would play to the in-season fruit. For a morning event, the crepe truck would have all of the classic bagel options of a deli. For special events, a design your own option would be available. The crepe offers a more distinctive identity than a sandwich truck, but much more flexibility than an ethnicity- or ingredient- specific truck.
Everybody hates the Electoral College. Vox claims to have found the ‘Definitive Case against the Electoral College‘. The institution is undemocratic. Five times, the Electoral College prevented the candidate who won the popular vote from ascending to the presidency.
Nate Silver’s presidential forecast estimates a greater than 10% chance of Donald Trump losing the popular vote for a second time, but winning the election over Joe Biden. In fact, a scenario where Biden wins the popular vote by 2-3%, Trump is favored to win the election. The Electoral College may, for the second consecutive election, award the presidency to a candidate who did not win the popular vote.
Attacks on the Electoral College traditionally fall into one of a few categories:
The Electoral College is an antidemocratic institution
The Electoral College favors Republicans and enables a form of Gerrymandering
The Electoral College disenfranchises all but the “battleground states”
There is an obvious element of truth to each claim (at least when applied to recent elections). However, none are compelling enough to warrant abolishing the institution.
The Electoral College is a body of 538 electors who directly elect the president of the United States. Each state, and the District of Columbia, are awarded an allocation of voters based on population recorded in the last Census. The allocation of voters for the 2020 election are based on the 2010 Census, the allocation of voters for the 2024 election will be based on the 2020 Census. A candidate must win a majority of votes from the College to win the presidency. If no candidate wins a majority, the Congress will choose the president and vice-president.
Too often, the word democracy is used as a value positive term. When we say something is “democratic” we mean to say that it is just; conversely, when we label something as “antidemocratic”, we mean to say that it is corrupt orcommunist. The critique that the Electoral College is antidemocratic, is not a critique, its a fact. It, like the Senate or Supreme Court, was designed to protect the country from direct democracy. The political parties of our founding fathers were Federalists and Democratic-Republicans, not Direct-Democrats:
The second and third common critiques of the Electoral College center on disenfranchisement and the value of a single vote. It is true that the Electoral College values individual votes differently. A single Electoral College vote in Washington DC contains half as many citizens as a single vote in Texas. This means that each Texas voter is half as important as a voter in Washington DC (Wyoming/California has the widest gap).
However, the inequality of Electoral College simply mirrors that of Congress (1 voter per Senator/Representative) and I don’t hear the same concerns with Congressional allocation. Surely, there is something worse than the Electoral College vote allocation that causes the level of disenfranchisement in US presidential elections. Or is it that the Electoral College always benefits one party? In the case above, I presented a scenario that generally benefits Democratic candidates (D.C is blue and Texas is generally red) over their Republican opposition. Because the elector allocation is based off of Census population, the bias changes over time. In ’92, ’96 and ’04 the Electoral College favored the Democratic candidate.
The Electoral College only determines how votes are allocated and the process for directly electing the president. States determine how elections are conducted by their populations. Currently, 48 of 50 states and the District of Columbia require that all Electoral College votes go to the candidate that won the state or act as a “faithless Elector” (where allowed).
If 3 million people vote for the Republican candidate in Pennsylvania and 2.9 million vote for the Democratic candidate, the Republican wins 20 votes and the Democrat wins 0. The Electoral College, as an institution, does not create this outcome, the state of Pennsylvania does. When only Maine and Nebraska allow for split votes, voting for the US president begins to feel like an exercise in futility.
Abolishing the Electoral College and moving to a national popular vote would resolve the problems in the winner-take-all nature of presidential elections, the national popular vote loses some of the Electoral College benefits. Additionally, abolishing the Electoral College isn’t politically viable.
Abolishing the Electoral College requires an amendment to the Constitution that both abolishes the institution and sets a new standard for electing the US president. The last amendment added to the Constitution, a single line preventing Congress from passing their own pay increase, was ratified in 1992. Nothing has been ratified in the 25+ years since.
A policy compromise is in order. The state legislatures should form a pact to abolish their own winner-take-all rules. Asking the states to undo these laws is not unprecedented, nor is it naïve. Sixteen states, and the District of Columbia have already signed a compact to award their Electoral College votes to the winner of the national popular vote, once the compact has over 270 votes in its constituency. If 36% of the Electoral Votes are already pledged to this contract (which violates the promise of both the Electoral College and local elections), it is not unthinkable that 50% of entities would agree to abolish their winner-take-all elections.
I’ve labelled this post “A defense of the Electoral College,” and so far have not defended it. The Electoral College is an institution, like many in the US government, designed to protect smaller interests and add efficiency to an inefficient process. Allow me to provide a few scenarios where the Electoral College is beneficial:
The candidate who wins the popular vote falls ill, or dies, between the election and inauguration.
The candidate who wins the popular vote falls victim to scandal that leaves her unfit for the office of the presidency
Election tampering or voting error in one state prevents the national election from being able to record the popular vote in that state through November.
None of these cases are particularly far-fetched. Especially when looking at an election rife with scandal of two septuagenarians. The Electoral College’s 538 voters are able to vote closer to the inauguration (because their votes can be easily counted and they cannot be tampered with) and react to critical changes without looking to millions of people (where allowed by their state). If one state cannot determine the popular vote (cough…..cough Florida), the Electoral College can still elect a president.
In a typical election the Electoral College helps protect diverse interests. Often this is phased as the Electoral College bolsters small states at the expense of larger ones. I content that the more densely populated an area, the more similar their needs from a national government. The Electoral College overvalues areas with sparse populations (with the exception of DC) who have more individualistic needs of a national government in terms of infrastructure, educational policy, financial incentives, environmental policy). While a few cities would not control the national popular vote, states such as Wyoming, Montana, Hawaii, and Alaska who have diverse needs, would be irrelevant.
The president has unilateral authority in certain arenas. To prevent Congress from being dominated by a minority of states, the Constitution awards Senate votes equally. Why should the president, who also has some unilateral governing authority, be exempt from the same voting concerns?
Polly Wanna Math 