Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Is It Worth It?
The dead-enders who still support Bush's war in Iraq often say that we can't afford to leave now and have Iraq dissolve into chaos. Early on, advocates of the war often argued that if the US succeeds in planting the seeds of democracy in the Middle East the price will have been "worth it".
The problem with these statements is that no one demands that they be supported by empirical evidence. More and more I find myself wishing that there was a band of super heroes who I will dub The Math Defenders. I imagine the Math Defenders charging on to the scene a la The Spanish Inquisition sketch in the old Monty Python's Flying Circus television show. The Math Defenders would appear from the shadows when wild unsubstantiated claims are made as if they are fact. These intrepid super heroes would be wearing caps and gowns and would push blackboards on wheels in front of them demanding that the hapless claimants show their work. "If you cannot show your work you cannot get credit." they'd harmonize.
The focus should be on the word "worth". When someone claims, "It was worth it" in order to judge the merits of the claim it is helpful to pose "it" and "worth" in terms of a mathematical equation. If "it" is an ice cream cone then "worth" would be expressed in the simplest example as the monetary cost of the ice cream, i.e. $2.50.
To demonstrate this mathematically one could draw a nice picture of an ice cream cone followed by a >= to symbol and then $2.50 (US). While it may be difficult to prove mathematically that this equation is correct at least it provides the necessary information to judge the statement. Listeners to the claim could look at both sides of the equation and form some sort of opinion as to it's merit and perhaps ask for additional information such as:
1) How much money do you have?
2) Are you lactose intolerant?
3) Are you morbidly obese?
prior to issuing a verdict.
The potential additional information puts me in mind of the beauty of Algebra. Math geeks will remember that if you have 3 equations and 2 unknowns you can always figure out the unknowns.
There are 15 people on a bus. Some are boys and some are girls. There are twice as many girls as boys. That is 3 equations and 2 unknowns.
Bus Riders = 15 (Known)
Boys (B)+Girls(G) = Bus Riders
2 x B = G
So now we can just replace G with its equivalent, 2B, and change the second equation to B+2B = 15 or 3B = 15 which yields B = 5 which means you need to double that to get G = 10 so there are 5 boys and 10 girls and that adds up to 15 so we know we are correct. Golly this is fun.
Astonishingly no would be Math Enforcers seem to hold positions within the main stream press because this sort of showing your work never, ever happens! Oh Math Defenders save us!
So instead we are told earnestly, on a daily basis that in essence Ice Cream Cone >= infinity. Then we are told that to believe otherwise is criminally insane. Afterall, what kind of an asshole doesn't like ice cream?
Thus it is with the Iraq war. Victory in Iraq is worth any price scream the wise molders of public opinion.
Victory in Iraq >= infinity
Wait a minute the detractors say. Victory in Iraq has not been achieved yet and so far we have over 3,000 dead on our side, 20,000 seriously injured on our side, we have spent about $600 billion dollars and no one can seem to agree on how many Iraqi's are dead but we know millions have fled their homes.
The dead enders say. Doesn't matter because:
3,000 dead US soldiers + 20,000 seriously wounded soldiers + $600 billion US + infinity dead Iraqis + 2 million refugees < = Victory In Iraq. Of course their calculation is helped by the bizarre, deeply felt belief that the $600 billion part need not be counted at all since we just borrowed that. It is not as if we actually absorbed this cost yet. In Accounting this is referred to as cost recognition. Say you are running an ice cream parlor and you have $20,000 of ice cream on your books as inventory. There is a power outage effecting only your walk in freezer that contains all but $80 of your ice cream. You know that as soon as you open your freezer all of that melted gloop will flow over your shoes and you will have to write off $19,920 of ice cream because it is now worthless. The problem is that you are in the final stages of negotiating a loan with your bank so you don't want to "recognize" this loss just yet. The Iraq War cheerleaders argue that real leadership demands that the freezer be sealed and the press kept away. No one should tell the children that there will be no ice cream. Eventually the children will grow up and the leaders will be dead. The recognition of the fact that the ice cream is inedible can be safely dealt with at a later time when the children are not quite so passionate in their love of ice cream. The ice cream isn't lost until we recogize that it is lost. Only an asshole would want to spoil the childhood of so many children by destroying their hope that there just might be ice cream for desert tonight. The perpetrators of the Victory in Iraq >= infinity hoax are helped in their stubborn non-recognition mania by a related conviction in the truth of these two mathematical assertions:
"Deficits do not matter, Ronald Reagan proved that." - Dick Cheney
and, "Lower taxes result in higher government revenues. " - Every Republican math flunkee since the Reagan Administration.
Math Enforcers, attack!!
"If you cannot show your work you cannot get credit. Here are four blackboards and we can bring in more. Show us convincingly in mathematical terms that you are not completely full of crap." The Math Defenders sing in perfect harmony.
All of this makes me wonder how the mathematical symbols would flip if the Democrats insisted that from here on out all war funding requests would come with an immediate increase in the federal income tax rate designed to cover the cost. This increase could be in the form of a new Federal War Tax.
So when the President requests $50 Billion for Iraq Congress divides the number of prior year tax filers by $50 billion and raises the new War Tax by the amount requested by Bush. In 2005 there were 134,462,537 tax filers according to the IRS (See Table One - math geek heaven in the form of a spreadsheet). If each of these tax returns, which of course include individuals and joint returns, paid an equal amount they would have to pay $372 each to raise $50 billion.
Do you think the war defenders would continue to say that it is worth it? I doubt it. For some reason I think if the formula changed from:
Victory in Iraq >= infinity to:
Victory in Iraq = Hey you with the ribbon on your car, cough up $372 right now
The answer would be a deafening, "No Way!"
Here's hoping that the Democratic Party acts as the Math Defenders. Only they should ask the President how he wants to spread the $50 billion tax burden that he insists is "worth it". The President is hell bent on not raising taxes. He wants to leave that burden to a future President. The Democrats can force him to choose between the war and actually paying for it to find out once and for all how he really judges the equation:
Victory in Iraq >= infinity.
The dead-enders who still support Bush's war in Iraq often say that we can't afford to leave now and have Iraq dissolve into chaos. Early on, advocates of the war often argued that if the US succeeds in planting the seeds of democracy in the Middle East the price will have been "worth it".
The problem with these statements is that no one demands that they be supported by empirical evidence. More and more I find myself wishing that there was a band of super heroes who I will dub The Math Defenders. I imagine the Math Defenders charging on to the scene a la The Spanish Inquisition sketch in the old Monty Python's Flying Circus television show. The Math Defenders would appear from the shadows when wild unsubstantiated claims are made as if they are fact. These intrepid super heroes would be wearing caps and gowns and would push blackboards on wheels in front of them demanding that the hapless claimants show their work. "If you cannot show your work you cannot get credit." they'd harmonize.
The focus should be on the word "worth". When someone claims, "It was worth it" in order to judge the merits of the claim it is helpful to pose "it" and "worth" in terms of a mathematical equation. If "it" is an ice cream cone then "worth" would be expressed in the simplest example as the monetary cost of the ice cream, i.e. $2.50.
To demonstrate this mathematically one could draw a nice picture of an ice cream cone followed by a >= to symbol and then $2.50 (US). While it may be difficult to prove mathematically that this equation is correct at least it provides the necessary information to judge the statement. Listeners to the claim could look at both sides of the equation and form some sort of opinion as to it's merit and perhaps ask for additional information such as:
1) How much money do you have?
2) Are you lactose intolerant?
3) Are you morbidly obese?
prior to issuing a verdict.
The potential additional information puts me in mind of the beauty of Algebra. Math geeks will remember that if you have 3 equations and 2 unknowns you can always figure out the unknowns.
There are 15 people on a bus. Some are boys and some are girls. There are twice as many girls as boys. That is 3 equations and 2 unknowns.
Bus Riders = 15 (Known)
Boys (B)+Girls(G) = Bus Riders
2 x B = G
So now we can just replace G with its equivalent, 2B, and change the second equation to B+2B = 15 or 3B = 15 which yields B = 5 which means you need to double that to get G = 10 so there are 5 boys and 10 girls and that adds up to 15 so we know we are correct. Golly this is fun.
Astonishingly no would be Math Enforcers seem to hold positions within the main stream press because this sort of showing your work never, ever happens! Oh Math Defenders save us!
So instead we are told earnestly, on a daily basis that in essence Ice Cream Cone >= infinity. Then we are told that to believe otherwise is criminally insane. Afterall, what kind of an asshole doesn't like ice cream?
Thus it is with the Iraq war. Victory in Iraq is worth any price scream the wise molders of public opinion.
Victory in Iraq >= infinity
Wait a minute the detractors say. Victory in Iraq has not been achieved yet and so far we have over 3,000 dead on our side, 20,000 seriously injured on our side, we have spent about $600 billion dollars and no one can seem to agree on how many Iraqi's are dead but we know millions have fled their homes.
The dead enders say. Doesn't matter because:
3,000 dead US soldiers + 20,000 seriously wounded soldiers + $600 billion US + infinity dead Iraqis + 2 million refugees < = Victory In Iraq. Of course their calculation is helped by the bizarre, deeply felt belief that the $600 billion part need not be counted at all since we just borrowed that. It is not as if we actually absorbed this cost yet. In Accounting this is referred to as cost recognition. Say you are running an ice cream parlor and you have $20,000 of ice cream on your books as inventory. There is a power outage effecting only your walk in freezer that contains all but $80 of your ice cream. You know that as soon as you open your freezer all of that melted gloop will flow over your shoes and you will have to write off $19,920 of ice cream because it is now worthless. The problem is that you are in the final stages of negotiating a loan with your bank so you don't want to "recognize" this loss just yet. The Iraq War cheerleaders argue that real leadership demands that the freezer be sealed and the press kept away. No one should tell the children that there will be no ice cream. Eventually the children will grow up and the leaders will be dead. The recognition of the fact that the ice cream is inedible can be safely dealt with at a later time when the children are not quite so passionate in their love of ice cream. The ice cream isn't lost until we recogize that it is lost. Only an asshole would want to spoil the childhood of so many children by destroying their hope that there just might be ice cream for desert tonight. The perpetrators of the Victory in Iraq >= infinity hoax are helped in their stubborn non-recognition mania by a related conviction in the truth of these two mathematical assertions:
"Deficits do not matter, Ronald Reagan proved that." - Dick Cheney
and, "Lower taxes result in higher government revenues. " - Every Republican math flunkee since the Reagan Administration.
Math Enforcers, attack!!
"If you cannot show your work you cannot get credit. Here are four blackboards and we can bring in more. Show us convincingly in mathematical terms that you are not completely full of crap." The Math Defenders sing in perfect harmony.
All of this makes me wonder how the mathematical symbols would flip if the Democrats insisted that from here on out all war funding requests would come with an immediate increase in the federal income tax rate designed to cover the cost. This increase could be in the form of a new Federal War Tax.
So when the President requests $50 Billion for Iraq Congress divides the number of prior year tax filers by $50 billion and raises the new War Tax by the amount requested by Bush. In 2005 there were 134,462,537 tax filers according to the IRS (See Table One - math geek heaven in the form of a spreadsheet). If each of these tax returns, which of course include individuals and joint returns, paid an equal amount they would have to pay $372 each to raise $50 billion.
Do you think the war defenders would continue to say that it is worth it? I doubt it. For some reason I think if the formula changed from:
Victory in Iraq >= infinity to:
Victory in Iraq = Hey you with the ribbon on your car, cough up $372 right now
The answer would be a deafening, "No Way!"
Here's hoping that the Democratic Party acts as the Math Defenders. Only they should ask the President how he wants to spread the $50 billion tax burden that he insists is "worth it". The President is hell bent on not raising taxes. He wants to leave that burden to a future President. The Democrats can force him to choose between the war and actually paying for it to find out once and for all how he really judges the equation:
Victory in Iraq >= infinity.
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