Employment-Population Ratio - a scarier way to look at unemployment

The Bureau of labor Statistics compiles a stat called the Employment-Population Ratio that is the number of people working of the available workforce, defined as people 16 and over. I am sure some of those folks are not working because they wouldn't otherwise, but in the current climate many have no choice. As has been reported repeatedly, the 9.2% unemployment underestimates the number of people unemployed because after a long enough time people just leave the workforce and are not counted in the number. The chart below shows the current ratio is 58.2%, that's the lowest Employment-Population ratio since 1984.

A longer time series shows the history since 1948.

It's been lower in the past, but that is a generation ago. I personally would like Congress and the President to start working on jobs now.

(Unstable Isotope at Delaware Liberal got me thinking about this)

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Osama Bin Laden is dead

It's all over the news today, I am not sure you need my links to it. Osama Bin Laden was killed my US special forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Finally.

I am not sure how important he was to al-Quada anymore, but he certainly was a symbol. Perhpas this sucess, along with the democracy fueled protests across North Africa and the Middle East signals a positive change.


My favorite coverage was @ReallyVirtual in Abbottabad, who apparently was live tweeting it and didn't know it.

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US Religious Knowledge Survey and Quiz

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released a new survey of religious knowledge on Tuesday. From the summary:

"Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons are among the highest-scoring groups on a new survey of religious knowledge, outperforming evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants and Catholics on questions about the core teachings, history and leading figures of major world religions.

On average, Americans correctly answer 16 of the 32 religious knowledge questions on the survey by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life. Atheists and agnostics average 20.9 correct answers. Jews and Mormons do about as well, averaging 20.5 and 20.3 correct answers, respectively. Protestants as a whole average 16 correct answers; Catholics as a whole, 14.7. Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons perform better than other groups on the survey even after controlling for differing levels of education."

There is a quiz you can take to test your religious knowledge. I got 15 our of 15 even with the last question being a very difficult one that I didn't quite know the answer to, but I knew the subject matter so I was able to eliminate answers that couldn't have been correct. The average on the quiz is 50%, which I think is abysmal. Results of quizzes for 3412 nationally representative adults are below.

When I reviewed the number correct for different religious affiliations I realized that people were not even getting the 33% correct that would be expected from random guessing. This means people think their incorrect answers are the right answers for the questions. Are they being taught incorrectly? That needs to be fixed. It might be important to know that a country is predominantly Muslim or the religious holidays of a group that has a disproportionate affect on foreign policy.

Why doesn't Pew ever call me? After the poll they should tell the people the correct answers so they learn something.

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You are reading the polls and this chart incorrectly

TYWKIWDBI presents a chart aggregating polls from Pollster.com which seems to indicate that the Democrats and Republicans are losing voters who are becoming independent. Here is TYWKIWDBI's repost of the Pollster chart:


That conclusion can only be made if you actually ignore the points (besides the fact the the X axis labels are lost). Pollster has plunked a solid line which appears to be the average of the data from all of these polls. That's all well and good, but the points that the average is made from are all over the place. here I have replotted the polls and included the 90th and 10th percentile of the last 20 polls for each of the party affiliations. The heavy solid lines are the average of the last 20 polls, red for Republicans, blue for Democrats and green for Independents, the lighter solid lines are the 90th and 10th percentile of the last 20 polls. The points are the individual polls plotted on the ending date of the poll period. The data is all right under the chart at Pollster.com.

Close examination (click on the chart above for a large version) of this very cluttered chart reveals that you could draw lines which trend up or down or stay the same for any any of the affiliations and not leave the area between the between the 90th and 10th percentile lines. Print it out and try it or replot it yourself.

The most you can confidently say about this chart is, "wow, there is a lot of scatter in these poll results." I don't think that you can state with confidence that there has been a statistically significant change in Democratic or Independent affiliation. I am not even sure there is a decrease in Republican affiliation. Shame on you Pollster.com for putting in those average lines, and shame on you TYWKIWDBI for reposting it with your faulty conclusions. Bad statistics, bad presentation (including my cluttered chart).

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Update on easing restrictions on raising chickens in New Castle County

I have received an e-mail last week from Nellie Manlove who is Council member Tansey's legislative aide, that the ordinance to ease restrictions on raising chickens in New Castle County will be discussed (.pdf agenda) at the Council's Land Use Committee meeting on Tuesday 9/15 at 3:00pm. This is open to the public and public comment is encouraged. It takes place in the 8th floor Council Conference Room of the City/County Building, 800 N French Street, Wilmington, 19801.

I expect to attend the Land Use Committee meeting tomorrow at 3pm, though I am not sure what to say or what is expected. I certainly can speak in support of the change to the ordinance. My concern is that I am not a Land Use professional so I am not sure what the objections to the change in the amendment are.

I stand by my earlier comments that the county ordinances already allow chickens (and other farm animals) on parcels of greater than one acre, and that this easing of the restriction is a small change addressed primarily at raising hens.

From a common sense perspective it seems that the council members might need to know the following to be swayed to adopt the easing of the restrictions to allow raising up to 4 hens (no roosters) on parcels of at least one acre no nearer than 25ft to property lines in New Castle County.

1.) Why was the first restriction against farm animals on parcels smaller than one acre first enacted.

2.) Is there a reason we cannot just discuss chickens (really just hens) and not open up the discussion to all farm animals.

3.) How many parcels in New castle County are one acre or more and could have chickens right now, and how many do have chickens right now. How many are a half acre or more, or would be added to the parcels allowed to have chickens? This would help us know the scope of the change and its effect. I suspect that there though there are probably a lot of parcels with 0.5 acre or more, we should consider only those that will be added as the change, and how many of those really have people that would want to raise hens. That is the new set of hens that anyone could raise an objection to.

4.) Are there other concerns. Health concerns, noise concerns, nuisance concerns, and doesn't New Castle County already have regulations for those. Thus should anyone who raises chickens and causes these issues can be addressed through existing ordinances.

5.) How many other counties or similar sized municipalities in the country have similar restrictions or ordinances? Is there something we can learn from them?

The ordinance should then come up for a vote at the 9/22 Council meeting, which takes place at 7:00pm in the 1st Floor Council Chambers, also in the City/County Building.

What do you say in support of an ordinance at a Council Land Use Committee meeting? Anybody gave any suggestions?

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Republican Robocallers ask for help against Health Care Reform

A Republican Robocaller found me last night. The recording asked me to record a message for my congressman telling him that I was against the Democratic plan to change the health care system. It used more alarming words than I can remember now. So when the message beeped and it was time for me to record I said extemporaneously (as I can recall now) :

"Congressman Castle, this is Richard Koehler of Wilmington and I fully support President Obama's plan to reform the health care system. Please give him and the plan your full support. The health care system needs to be reformed and more people need access to health care."

I think that the robot might have been expecting a different type of message from the priming that was given. I should disclose that I am on the list since I am a registered Republican, though lately that hasn't been how I vote. I just don't want to change now because I get all of these crazy messages and participate in all kinds of crazy surveys. My wife gets the Democratic ones, so as a household we are covered.

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Yet another politcal spectrum map

Howard reveals his political views with the Political Spectrum Quiz. I took it myself.

My Political Views
I am a centrist social libertarian
Left: 0.14, Libertarian: 4.64
















I have been moving over the years to a moderate position because I find I have less and less tolerance for black and white positions, though I suppose that in my moderation I should still tolerate people who have black and white positions. I do find that I like authority less and less, perhaps because I don't like what authority has been doing the past few years. At least they add an interventionist dimension and a cultural dimension.






I can't see how anyone could be interventionist (or neo-conservative as above) these days given our current obligations in Iraq and Afghanistan.








All of these quizzes fail to actually assess the complexities of defining a person's political tendencies. If one dimension, left to right, isn't enough to describe a person's political philosophy, why is two? Why is four, adding foreign policy interventions and "culture"?

We should ask thousands of questions to millions of people and then do conjoint analysis to find the dimensions of politics. It seems to me that politics is the subset of philosophy involved in how we deal with other people or set up governments to regulate our actions and we know how easy that is to categorize.

Add to this that the questions on the quiz are ambivalent and are reminiscent of traditional true/false questions, either answer seems to be right and wrong, depending on the wording and interpretation.

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