The Latest Social Security Internet Hoax Letter

Each month we all get forwarded several emails from people, who diligently forward emails saying "FORWARD THIS TO EVERYONE!" These normally are designed to scare people with hoaxes or less-than-truthful political commentary.  Below is one I just received about the US Social Security system, and I decided to take a few minutes to provide some commentary on the dozens of mistakes contained in the email.  Snopes.com covered this, but didn't do a detailed job on it, so, here I go to try to fill in some gaps and do a few calculations, providing references for people wanting to look at the numbers themselves. The original email is in Italics, and my text is non-italicized.
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KEEP PASSING THIS AROUND UNTIL EVERY ONE HAS HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO READ IT... THIS IS SURE SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT!!!! THE ONLY THING WRONG WITH THE GOVERNMENT'S CALCULATION OF AVAILABLE SOCIAL SECURITY IS THEY FORGOT TO FIGURE IN THE PEOPLE WHO DIED BEFORE THEY EVER COLLECTED A SOCIAL SECURITY CHECK!!! WHERE DID THAT MONEY GO?
It is unclear what "available Social Security" means here, or what government calculation this might be referring to. In any case, people who die are factored in to the actuarial calculations.  Where that money "goes" is to other beneficiaries. Social Security was never designed as a retirement investment account, but a social insurance program in reaction to so many old people in poverty in the 1930's. The current correct name is "Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance" program (OASDI, for short). What you are paying is a TAX, not a deposit, though you could properly think about it as paying a non-voluntary insurance premium (like ObamaCare? ☺). If someone dies, then their survivors get benefits (spouse, children under 18 or 19 depending on details, and disabled children over 18).  Also, many disabled people get OASDI-- around 5% of the US population aged 19-64 right now is on this disability program!(citation). Right now (2013) almost 63 million people are getting OASDI benefits (source), compared with 142 million who are actually working (source). That means that there are only two people with jobs paying for each person getting benefits. THERE is what you should be e-mailing everyone about!

Remember, not only did you and I contribute to Social Security but your employer did, too. It totaled 15% of your income before taxes. If you averaged only $30K over your working life, that's close to $220,500. Read that again.
Here we are making the unreasonable assumption that the average person works for 49 years straight (from 16 to 65). The average person spends a lot of this time in school, unemployed, taking care of children, or disabled, and not working and paying in benefits.

Did you see where the Government paid in one single penny? 
That is just silly- the Government has no money except for tax money from workers (and borrowing, future tax money).

We are talking about the money you and your employer put in a Government bank to insure you and I that we would have a retirement check from the money we put in, not the Government.
This money does not get put into a government bank. The system has always been self-funded-- enacted in 1935, it began paying benefits in 1937 as money was just being raised in taxes to pay these benefits. There has never been a pool of money sitting there that people paid in (until the last few decades, when they purposefully started taking in more than they paid out to prepare for the Baby Boomers' retirement.  This money was invested in government bonds-- more on that in a minute.)

Now they are calling the money we put in an entitlement when we reach the age to take it back. If you calculate the future invested value of $4,500 per year (yours & your employer's contribution) at a simple 5% interest (less than what the Government pays on the money that it borrows), after 49 years of working you'd have $892,919.98.
5% is not less than the government pays on money it borrows-- as we all know, interest rates are very low, and the average rate paid right now on all US debt is 2.5% (source). Using this rate, your hypothetical total would be $423,589.82.  However, this number is meaningless-- if you want to start saving $4500 per year when you are 16 so you can end up with $423K at 65, I encourage it!  But the government is not your bank, or your IRA.  Plus, you have to take into account inflation.  People retiring now who are making $30,000 were not making $30,000  in 1964 when they were 16 years old. US Per capita income was $3,423 back then (source), so you weren't paying in the $4,500 per year you are assuming, especially given that the tax rate was only 3.625% then (source), unlike the 7.65% now (double it for the employer match, of course).  So, you didn't pay in nearly as much as you think.

Let's take someone who did work every year, and made the Per Capita Income in every year from 1964-2013 (from 3,423 to $50,000), 50 years of work, and they and their employer paid in the OASDI rate at the time.  With no interest at all, you'd have paid in $169,317.50 if you worked every year constantly from age 15 through 65, earning exactly the per capita income.  Suppose we did deposit this money in a bank every year, and earned 5% on it, beginning with the $248.17 we saved in 1964, and so on.  We would end up with $397,843.10 at the end of 2013. So, $400,000 is probably an overly generous figure, since most people do not work from age 15 to 65 with no breaks, and earning 5% constantly won't happen for most people. (My spreadsheet numbers are at the bottom of this blog post, so you can look at them to see what is going on, if you wish).

If you took out only 3% per year, you'd receive $26,787.60 per year and it would last better than 30 years (until you're 95 if you retire at age 65) and that's with no interest paid on that final amount on deposit!
Nothing is "on deposit", as mentioned previously. Using the more realistic number of $400,000, 3% would be $12,000 per year.

If you bought an annuity and it paid 4% per year, you'd have a lifetime income of $2,976.40 per month. 
$1,333.33 per month.

Another thing with me.... I have two deceased husbands who died in their 50's, (one was 51 and the other one was 59 before one percent of their social security could be drawn. I worked all my life and am drawing 100% on my own social security). Their S.S. money will never have one cent drawn from what they paid into S.S. all their lives.
If this person has two dead husbands, then she is eligible for survivor benefits as early as age 60.  Click HERE for more information.

THE FOLKS IN WASHINGTON HAVE PULLED OFF A BIGGER PONZI SCHEME THAN BERNIE MADOFF EVER DID. Entitlement my foot, I paid cash for my social security insurance! Just because they borrowed the money for other government spending, doesn't make my benefits some kind of charity or handout!!
My red highlighting here-- see, is it insurance, and not a savings account!  The word "entitlement" simply means a guaranteed benefit by law.  It does not mean "handout" or "charity".

Remember Congressional benefits? --- free healthcare, outrageous retirement packages, 67 paid holidays, three weeks paid vacation, unlimited paid sick days. Now that's welfare, and they have the nerve to call my social security retirement payments entitlements?
I actually take the unpopular opinion that congressmen are underpaid, for someone to quit their job, and keep one house back home and a house (apartment, whatever) in Washington, DC.  They certainly don't get paid enough for ME to consider running, think of the huge sacrifices these people make. Even people without skeletons in their closets sometimes have their lives ruined by lies made up by their campaign opponents.  That doesn't mean that I LIKE politicians or anything, far from it.  But, if you want the best and brightest to run the country, how about offering enough to attract them (like some qualified accountants!)?  What do these "paid holidays" and "paid vacation" mean? It just isn't true. These guys must constantly campaign, network, and deal with constituents.  Just because you aren't on the floor of the House doesn't mean you aren't working-- but even if you aren't-- don't people deserve to go home, possibly 3,000 miles away, to see their families and constituents?

We're "broke" and we can't help our own Seniors, Veterans, Orphans, or Homeless. They call Social Security and Medicare an entitlement even though most of us have been paying for it all our working lives, and now, when it's time for us to collect, the government is running out of money.
The word "entitlement" simple means a guaranteed benefit by law.  It does not mean "handout" or "charity".  In any case, what is the rant about?  The government is running out of money, so... what? They are still paying your benefits, and will continue to do so.

Why did the government borrow from it in the first place? It was supposed to be in a locked box, not part of the general fund.
Well, it isn't part of the general fund. Most of the money is spent on benefits to current retirees-- there is just no other way to do it when a program starts paying money to people when the program starts, without having a pool of money that these people paid in.  Plus, it IS insurance-- remember those disabled people? They are around 25% of the total-- these people might pay in just a couple of years, and get benefits from age 25 through 95.  Extra money, called the "Social Security Surplus" is invested in government bonds and held in the Trust Fund (source), which today has almost $3 Trillion in it. Given the steep increase in people claiming disability, this isn't a whole lot of money, but it is about $50,000 per current beneficiary to put it into perspective.

Sad isn't it.  99% of people won't have the guts to forward this. I'm in the 1% -- I just did. 
99% of people aren't brave enough to try to correct the mistakes.  I just did!

Now, let me say again for those that didn't hear it the first time-- None of this means that I love politicians, trust the government, or think that Social Security doesn't have problems. It is just that nothing in this email relates to any of those problems. The real problem is too few people paying in compared to too many people taking out. SIMPLE to understand. Some people are paying in for under 30 years, then expecting benefit from age 65 to 95, getting out more than triple what they paid in. Let me briefly describe a REAL problem that you probably haven't thought about-- how unfair this system is to Black Men (BM) compared to White Women (WW).

Suppose that a BM and WW worked at the same job, got the same pay, for the same years. Whereas 87% of women make it to age 65, only 64% of black men do.  Doesn't that seem a bit unfair?  How about we suppose that 100 BM and WW made it to 65 and then retired.  Well, after 13 years half of the BM would be dead, but only 27% of the WW would be.  And yet, we pay the same monthly benefit to both people, even though we know that the WW will be paid MUCH MORE in benefits than the BM over their lifetimes (or White Males, for that matter).  At age 85, 25 of these 100 BM would still be alive, compared with 47 of the WW. Shouldn't benefits be paid out more fairly?  I leave it up to you.  (Calculations based on the CDC Life Tables)

See my videos on "Death Probabilities" for more information on these kinds of calculations:
Video 1
Video 2

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Spreadsheet of calculations is below, for your reference.

Year	Nominal PCI	FICA Rate	"Saved"	In "Account" at 5%
1964	$3,423	3.625	248.17	248.17
1965	$3,665	3.625	265.71	526.29
1966	$3,972	4.2	333.65	886.25
1967	$4,152	4.4	365.38	1295.94
1968	$4,491	4.4	395.21	1755.94
1969	$4,803	4.8	461.09	2304.83
1970	$4,998	4.8	479.81	2899.88
1971	$5,360	5.2	557.44	3602.31
1972	$5,836	5.2	606.94	4389.37
1973	$6,462	5.85	756.05	5364.90
1974	$6,948	5.85	812.92	6446.06
1975	$7,517	5.85	879.49	7647.85
1976	$8,297	5.85	970.75	9000.99
1977	$9,143	5.85	1069.73	10520.77
1978	$10,225	6.05	1237.23	12284.03
1979	$11,302	6.13	1385.63	14283.86
1980	$12,180	6.13	1493.27	16491.32
1981	$13,526	6.65	1798.96	19114.85
1982	$13,933	6.7	1867.02	21937.61
1983	$15,000	6.7	2010.00	25044.49
1984	$16,539	6.7	2216.23	28512.94
1985	$17,589	7.05	2480.05	32418.64
1986	$18,427	7.15	2635.06	36674.63
1987	$19,394	7.15	2773.34	41281.70
1988	$20,703	7.51	3109.59	46455.38
1989	$22,039	7.51	3310.26	52088.40
1990	$23,038	7.65	3524.81	58217.64
1991	$23,443	7.65	3586.78	64715.30
1992	$24,411	7.65	3734.88	71685.95
1993	$25,327	7.65	3875.03	79145.28
1994	$26,578	7.65	4066.43	87168.97
1995	$27,559	7.65	4216.53	95743.95
1996	$28,772	7.65	4402.12	104933.26
1997	$30,282	7.65	4633.15	114813.07
1998	$31,687	7.65	4848.11	125401.84
1999	$33,332	7.65	5099.80	136771.73
2000	$35,082	7.65	5367.55	148977.86
2001	$35,912	7.65	5494.54	161921.29
2002	$36,819	7.65	5633.31	175650.66
2003	$38,225	7.65	5848.43	190281.62
2004	$40,292	7.65	6164.68	205960.37
2005	$42,516	7.65	6504.95	222763.34
2006	$44,623	7.65	6827.32	240728.82
2007	$46,349	7.65	7091.40	259856.66
2008	$46,760	7.65	7154.28	280003.78
2009	$45,305	7.65	6931.67	300935.63
2010	$46,612	7.65	7131.64	323114.05
2011	$48,112	7.65	7361.14	346630.89
2012	$50,000	7.65	7650.00	371612.43
2013	$50,000	7.65	7650.00	397843.05
		Total	169317.464
The last two PCI are 50,000 by assumption-- 2013 isn't over yet,
and I just chose a simple, reasonable number.

Microsoft gives up on some of its Windows 8 Nonsense: Introducing Windows Blue!

Recently a new update to Windows 8 has been leaked online. Dubbed "Windows Blue", it marks the first official recognition that Windows 8 is a screwed up mess, and needs a major overhaul sooner, rather than later.  Blue is a major update of Win8 due out later this year (2013), and will likely be called "Windows 8.1" upon release.

One improvement in the leaked release is that "apps" are not restricted to run only in full-screen — you can "snap" several running apps side-by-side. They have also reportedly included quite a few other ways allow customization in the layout.

Of course, there are many other important problems with Windows 8, and it will take some time to figure out which of those problems are going to be effectively addressed in this new release. There are some other little tweaks here and there, but keep in mind that this is just a pre-release that is not in beta yet, so there are undoubtedly still a lot of changes yet to be made.

This Summer we should get a glimpse of most of the new changes, when most people believe a public preview release will be announced.

Here are a few links to get you started so that you can read up on the latest news:
The Verge 1
The Verge 2 (About the public preview of Blue)

Wall Street Journal (About how Blue is part of a change in strategy die to Win8's sales flop)

Windows 8... What a horrible thing. How to get your desktop and start menu back.

I just built another new computer to be my main home PC (link to my videos on how to build a PC), and decided to go with Windows 8.  I would have gone with Windows 7, but it is now extremely overpriced as Microsoft forces people to go with Windows 8.  Plus, I had read that even though Windows 8 is a nightmare, there are some 3rd party programs that can make it usable.  For a funny (but true) Windows 8 review, see Brian Boyko's Animated Review.  Rather than duplicate his comments, I will add some of my own observations.

Rather than install these apps that make WIN8 easier to use right off the bat, I thought I might as well try to figure out how to use Windows 8 for a little while first.  I consider myself an all around, jack-of-all-trades computer expert.  I am the guy people call when something goes wrong with their printer, networking, computer, or anything.  I can build and repair PCs, have used just about every computer program and platform at one time or another, and can do some light programming.  I taught myself how to program in Basic and how to use DOS, Lotus 1-2-3, and lots of other programs when I was 10-12 years old.  I have figured out every other computer in 30 minutes or less, and figured I could handle Win8. So, I actually did 15 minutes of reading about the Windows 8 interface to prepare beforehand, installed it, and jumped right in.

At first, it wasn't that bad. I had read people say how hard it was to get to the traditional "desktop", but I figured that out pretty easily.  I will call that main, ugly screen the "Metro Screen", for lack of a better term.   To get to something like the old "Desktop", click the Metro icon for "Desktop" on the left hand side (the block with the flowers in it, above).  But, the longer I have worked with Windows 8 (about a week now), the worse it has gotten.  It turns out that the learning curve is steep and downhill.

As long as I can stay on the desktop, I am fine.  But, since they removed the start button... or rather, even worse, the thing they call "Start" takes you to the Metro screen, it is difficult to run programs.  Oh, sorry Microsoft... "Apps". However, for some reason, Win8 thinks it is cute to open some things in some horrible full-screen mode (I guess this is the wonderful thing they call "Metro"?).  In this full screen mode, there are no menus, no way to minimize or adjust the window size,  and NO way to close it.  None.  Once you open one of these "Apps", it is there to stay, apparently.  For example, if you want to watch a video of your kid, you might click on the Metro Icon called "Video".
This takes you to an extremely stupid screen that says "XBOX Video".  I don't have an XBOX, and don't want one.  Why in the world would you call it "XBOX Video?"

Now, if you are lucky enough to actually find your file of your kid you want to play (these are in the 4  tiny unhelpful light gray rectangles along the left side, I think...).  Once you start playing one of the videos, you can't close it or re-size it. You can only pause, or hit a left-arrow, which seems to be Metro's "take me back to the previous place I was" option.  Hit that, and your video keeps playing, you just can't SEE it! But, the noise just keeps on happening.  Your only option seems to be to figure out how to get back to the still-playing video and pause the video, and leave it paused until the end of time.  Actually closing a program appears to be nearly impossible, without using Task Manager.  And, they broke the task manager interface so badly that it is much more difficult to use, as well.  The only way I have figured out to get out of these stupid full screen programs is to hit the Windows key repeatedly, which takes you to the stupid Metro screen, where you can get back to the desktop.  But, apparently every program you open stays open forever.

Another horrible thing in Windows 8 is the scroll bar.  It is light gray and dark gray, with no lines or shading of any kind.  In fact, no buttons have lines or shading, making them very hard to find.  But it used to be clear which part of the scroll bar you need to click on to drag it, but now it is very confusing.  Look at the scroll bar on the right of the picture below.  Should you try to drag the light gray part, or the dark gray part?

(Answer: The Dark Gray Part)   Additionally, the redesigned icons representing different file types are very hard to figure out... I can't tell a jpg from anything else.

The Metro Screen somehow randomly decides which applications should be accessible there, and which should not.  By randomly trying things I figured out that, you can get a list of all of your applications, if you right click in the metro screen, and click on the tiny "All Apps" thingy that appears.  See the red line I drew below to help you find it.

Click this Icon, and the most horribly-designed menu comes up.  After only one week, my list of all programs covers TWO 1920x1080 monitors.  I have only installed perhaps one third of my programs... errr, Apps yet!  This is going to get much worse very fast. Have a look so far...  What a confusing MESS!

What is even better, there seems to be no way to rearrange this mess, as you could do with the old "Start...All Programs " listing.

As others have written, Microsoft has done an extremely incompetent job of stapling a tablet on top of a computer, and it is determined not to allow you to peel off the tablet to actually use the computer underneath.  A tablet is not designed for doing work, but for playing and watching content.  They have made it almost impossible to DO things and CREATE things.  They also disabled many productivity-enhancing features of windows-past, like the task switcher.  They have created a different task switcher that might be better for phones, but we are not all on our phones all day!

I get the philosophy, I really do.  They are trying to catch up with Google's vision of "Many screens, one platform", so that on your phone, tablet, computer, and ... washing machine... you have the same information and the same experience.  But, for those of us that WORK for a living, we don't want to be stuck typing on a PHONE all day, when we are trying to do database management and data analysis!  All they need to do is have one button that switched back and forth between the dumbed-down phone platform and a real computing platform. Please don't hamper us by attaching a tablet-and-chain to our legs, or people who work for a living will be FORCED to switch to Linux.

How to Get Your Desktop and Start Menu Back
Addendum: After giving up on "Straight Win 8" I downloaded "Classic Shell"- it is a true open source, free program at SourceForge: Download Here.  It does a great job of bringing back the Start Menu. However, until the Metro Desktop can be disabled, Win 8 is still annoying.  I have tried to reset the default programs away from all of the default "Apps".  Another good finding is that when you use multiple monitors, the annoying Metro screen only appears on one of theme, leaving you a regular desktop view on the other.  See picture below with two monitors: While you can have the traditional desktop on both monitors, here I show you what it would look like to have Metro on one, and traditional desktop on the other.  On the right monitor, see the little "Start button at the bottom left, courtesy of "Classic Shell".

However, Metro takes over your Primary Screen... which is more annoying.  But, since you can have your Classic Shell start menu at the bottom of BOTH screens, this is a little helpful.  It just might be possible to integrate the annoying Metro desktop into a useful work life if you have say, three monitors.  Two for work, and one for Metro.  I doubt it... but it might be possible.  However, now after over a month, I have found absolutely no use for any of these Metro Apps. There is no excuse for designing a program with the inability to re-size, minimize, or close it.  If I could destroy and remove it all, I would. Make sure to install alternatives, like VLC media player for music and video files, and a good, free alternative for viewing photos (Picasa is OK). Below, see how "Classic Shell" brings back the traditional Start...Programs menu, helpfully separating the "Apps" from the real programs.  You can fully customize these menus, just as you would expect (from Windows before they went Bats@&% crazy).

One final example of rude stupidity on Microsoft's part is the removal of "Safe Mode" from Win8.  While they didn't totally remove it, they did make it impossible to boot into safe mode without first booting into normal mode.  This shows a complete lack of understanding about the purpose of safe mode!  You boot into safe mode when something goes wrong, say a driver conflict that prevents Windows from booting up.  In previous versions, you would hit F8 while booting, and you could choose to boot into safe mode (which doesn't load most drivers) and fix things.  While in some pre-release verisons of WIN8 you could hit Shift-F8 to boot into safe mode, most people say it has been removed, and I have not been able to get it to work. I have yet to figure out what one is supposed to do when Windows fails to boot.  I guess I will start doing daily images of everything... but this is a huge waste of time.

Where is the Honor is Fake Degrees and Honorifics?

In life, it is necessary to have tough, yet realistic goals.  It is necessary to have winners and losers, and to reward and honor those who achieve greatness.  It is just as necessary to shun those who lie, cheat, and steal to pretend that they have achieved greatness, and pretend to deserve honor.

The dishonorable attempt to buy or lie about honor is of course an old game, but that doesn't make it any more appetizing.  Even more troubling is the attempt by policy makers to water down and cheapen degrees, using the wrong-headed logic that "If a degree helps people earn more money, then we should make it very easy for everyone to have a degree, so everyone will earn more money!"

But, of course this will not work.  A degree is valued and respected BECAUSE it is hard.  And, where degrees are easy to get, they are not valued at all.  There is a movement in the US to open “early college programs”.  From one of the proponent's websites:

Since 2002, the partner organizations of the Early College High School Initiative have started or redesigned 240+ schools serving more than 75,000 students in 28 states and the District of Columbia. The schools are designed so that low-income youth, first-generation college goers, English language learners, students of color, and other young people underrepresented in higher education can simultaneously earn a high school diploma and an Associate’s degree or up to two years of credit toward a Bachelor’s degree—tuition free. www.earlycolleges.org

In short, the program is taking students from groups that often struggle to obtain a high school diploma by age 18, and are often underprepared for a college curriculum, and are awarding them both a high school diploma AND a two year college degree by age 18. 

While it is clear that there is an unacceptable education gap, and that preparing everyone in the world with more rigorous, thoughtful, and demanding education should perhaps be our highest priority… these programs appear to do the opposite. Attempting to “cram” two years of college into the existing high school curriculum of even the brightest students seems to be a destructive exercise.  These students would benefit from MORE years of serious study, not two fewer years and a piece of paper asserting a falsehood.  To attempt to do such “cramming” to the least prepared high school students is  misguided. Because a two year degree by definition is supposed to demonstrate two years of additional preparation after high school, these programs are likely to make two year degrees worthless for all, and put these at-risk students in jeopardy of being unable to complete a 4-year degree at a University. The well-meaning government officials might then decide that these students should be awarded a Masters Degree at age 18.  Instead, I would rather we pay these underprivileged kids to actually spend the extra two years studying to improve their skills-- but more importantly, to teach them to VALUE hard work in education, rather than fakery and credentialization.

Signaling and screening can work to communicate information, but only if one is careful to make sure that the signals and choices represent REAL information. In the end, the reward for a degree is proportionate to either how much valuable learning took place, or how difficult it was to obtain. So, if an online university tells you that they will award you a degree in only a year, or that you can get a Ph.D. by working only a few hours per week for a year or two… you should not expect people to place a large value on something that takes a small effort.  Let me say it clearly: A Ph.D. is the highest degree, designating you as an expert capable of doing cutting-edge research in a field.  This is NOT something that can or should be done on-line, even if the online college charges you a lot of money.  In fact, it sends the opposite signal to savvy employers.  I feel similarly about master's degrees.  I know that this is the 21st century, but Universities are collections of learned people and resources-- much of the learning happens outside the classroom, but within the "learning environment"-- especially at a high level-- you need to have daily face to face interactions with extremely smart people in order to learn complicated information.

In the US, Russia[1], and elsewhere, fake degrees have been around for a long time… so long that it is fairly easy to figure out if a degree is fake (or semi-fake), if an employer wants to.  Now China is having a problem with fake universities—both the American ones and over 100 Chinese ones.  As reported in The Economist, some people have the attitude that “A diploma is worth actual money, whereas an education is not.”[2] Smart businessmen should have the opposite opinion: Reward your employees for skills and productivity, not for pieces of paper.

The Honor of Fake Honorifics?

Recently the Supreme Court of the US ruled that lying about having won a military medal is "Free Speech" .  OK, granted.  People are free to say anything they want-- but they should be shunned for doing so-- treated like garbage.

There are many other, milder forms of self-aggrandizement.  For example...  If you become a lawyer, PLEASE don't put "Esquire" after your name.  It doesn't mean anything.  OK, so it actually does mean something, but it means that you are the servant of a Knight.  Why it is that lawyers in the US think this is cool is beyond me.  If you think it is cool, then please call yourself Esquire BEFORE you get your law degree, too, since having a law degree and being an "Esquire" are totally unrelated!

You might as well call yourself a Colonel as well, just like "Colonel Sanders".  He wasn't a Colonel, but it is a fake honorific used by some old, self-appointed southern gentlemen, just like the fake Esquire honorific. If you want to be really fake, then you can also form a sole proprietorship ( I have, all it takes is to say "I am a sole proprietor!"), then call yourself the Chairman and CEO. And, while you are at it, start calling yourself Reverend!  Yep, there is no requirement except to start using it.  Now, you , John Smith, can introduce yourself as:

     Reverend Colonel John Smith, Esquire, Chairman and CEO of Smith Enterprises, Ltd.  
 
If you are desperate to impress people, then please... GO AND DO SOMETHING HONORABLE!!!  The world needs you to achieve greatness. Words are cheap. When you lie, cheat and steal to fake honor, you cost yourself more than you know.

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[1]Economics of corruption in doctoral education: The dissertations market, http://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecoedu/v31y2012i1p76-83.html

[2] July 7^th, 2012 Fake Degrees: A Quick Study, The Economist.

How The Grinch Stole Greensboro's TubaChristmas

When I was young, I played the Trumpet, Tuba, and Euphonium (a small tuba, in the same range as a trombone, but with a beautiful sound, and valves, see mine above).  In Junior High and High School I would go to UNC-Greensboro one Saturday in Early December to practice Christmas music with 150 other tuba, euphonium, and baritone (very similar to a euphonium) players.  Then we would all truck over to Four Seasons Town Centre (the Mall) and play a half hour concert for the shoppers.  This event is called TubaChristmas, and is repeated all over the world every year.

Last January, I bought myself a used Euphonium, after not having one for 20 years.  I have been practicing, with my goal to be ready for TubaChristmas this year.  However, there won't be any TubaChristmas in Greensboro in 2012.  The closest one will be in Winston Salem.  I am so sad!

It seems that since the Four Seasons Mall went bankrupt and was sold recently, that the new mall owners (General Growth Properties) were giving the organizers a hard time about trying to have TubaChristmas at the mall.  What a great way to welcome yourselves to the community-- destroy an over 30 year old Christmas tradition??? Dr. Dennis Askew, at UNC-Greensboro, had been organizing this even for many years.

Here are some YouTube clips from Greensboro TubaXmases past:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJSSzybiiAQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCgGn9T7gDE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hNCf1gMK-c

There is an event in Winston-Salem, but the information on this one still seems pretty sketchy to me - according to TubaChristmas.com-

WINSTON-SALEM - SATURDAY, DECEMBER 8 - TIME: 6:00 pm
LOCATION: Lawrence Joel Veterans Memorial Coliseum
REGISTRATION: 11:00 am, Winston-Salem State University, K.R. Williams Auditorium
REHEARSAL: 1:00 pm, same
PARKING: University and Colliseum <sic> lots
CONDUCTOR: Brent Harvey
COORDINATORS: Brent M. Harvey 336-750-2526, Bart Collins 336-456-2359

Why the coliseum?  What is going on?  It looks like it is going to be played 1 hour before a basketball game?  Does my family need tickets to the basketball game to watch?  What a sad end to a LOOOONG Greensboro tradition-- I played it in 1983 and 1984 that I am sure of, and a few after that, I think.  I took my 3 year old to see it last year, and told him that Daddy would be there playing next year.

I hope that TubaChristmas can come back to Greensboro next year.  I might have to scavenge up a brass quatrtet, and go sit in a parking lot somewhere to play some Christmas music.  Any takers?

Bah Humbug?

The Death of the Berkeley Electronic Press Journals

Maybe I'm the last one to figure it out, but the Berkeley Electronic Press journals have shut down and been sold for a year! I found it pretty hard to find information about this topic, so here is what I was able to find out. I discovered that Joshua Gans also made some great comments on his blog.

Background: Back in 1999 a bunch of professors got together and founded the "Berkeley Electronic Press". they had some really great ideas to try to combat some of the problems in the publishing industry.  The three most important ones that most economists bought into were:
1) a guaranteed fast decision on submitted articles, or your money back
2) much cheaper rates for University subscriptions
3) papers were published on a rolling basis, so as soon as a paper was accepted and formatted (by the author) the paper was put online-- no delay!

This is in a time when publishers were jacking up subscription fees to libraries to astronomical rates, and many journals were taking six months to a year before giving any feedback on submitted papers.  This kind of behavior can be deadly to an academic career, when tenure-track professors only have six years to not only get articles published, but also to demonstrate that they are being read by these papers getting cited.  However, if it takes three years before your article gets published, supposing that someone reads it right then, cites it and submits their paper to be published on the same day, it might take three years for that paper to get published.  This ridiculously slow process was supposed to be sped up because when you submitted a paper you had two choices:
A) pay a submission fee
B) agree to provide two reviews of papers that will be sent to you in the future very quickly; if you are slow, you get charged the fee

I am sure that most people who were involved with editing these journals, and most people who submitted papers to these journals did so because they bought into the idea that "we can do this better".  Also, this system made the research more widely available, since more libraries could afford to subscribe to the collection, and individuals could access the content for no monetary cost ( by filling out a nagging form).  I supported the enterprise, by submitting a paper there and having it rejected.  But the point is, they rejected it quickly!

I must be way behind the times, but I just discovered that the Berkeley Electronic Press sold their 60 journals (in September 2011) to a company called De Gruyter.  From all appearances, things don't seem to be going well since the transfer.  One year later, it it seems like many journals are not really publishing any more (For example, it appears that  BEJEAP has published ONE article since January, 2012... but it is hard to tell).  Also, there are some comments on their site, from people claiming that their submitted article has disappeared into the nether, or submission fees have been lost, or other complaints.  For example:

How can I get a response from the journal? I submitted my manuscript more than 5 months ago, sent two emails to the journal. Unfortunately, have not heard back. posted by: Zaz on 2012-08-18 07:00 PM (Europe/Berlin)

On RePEc the publisher for all of these journals is still listed as "Berkeley Electronic Press", e.g. see here. Also, the website seems to be very poorly organized, and very uninformative.  For example, I was looking at the "Journal Policies" for the B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy, and it takes you to a generalized "Copyright Agreement".  When you go to submit an article, the submission system still refers to the "Berkeley Electronic Press" for some reason, and they still have the old language on the website: they are still pretending to give you the option between reviewing or paying a submission fee, but when it comes down to it, they demand $75 in cold, hard cash.  they also still have the language on the site guaranteeing:

" you quality peer reviews, an editorial decision, and publication of accepted manuscripts within 70 days."

Now, since I don't see articles being published for many, many months at a time, I'm not sure what this means.  Either they are not accepting any articles at all, or they are refunding a lot of submission fees, because one cannot accept and publish articles within 70 days, with gaps of 9 months.  After browsing around quite a long time on their website, it is very unclear what's going on. Note to  De Gruyter-- your websites are very hard to navigate and look like something that even I could throw together (see their home page to see what I mean, and compare it to something I DID throw together (but with loving care, I assure you!)).  If someone from the company wants to reply, I would love to hear what's really going on.

In any case, the "BEPress" guys say that now they are focusing on "Open Access Services", whatever that means, and they still have their "SelectedWorks" pages, where I have a page.  See here for some less than clear information.  After spending some time trying to understand what happened and why, I am still very lost. Until something major happens, both of the journals under their new ownership, and the old BEPress guys are dead to me. I am also seriously considering shutting down my SelectedWorks page, because I really don't understand what it is at this point if it is not associated with economics journals anymore.  RePEc seems to be a much more useful network of sites.

When it come to "Open Access Services", everyone should know about the Open Journal System (OJS), which is a free, open source journal management system that could be used for a pay journal, but seems to be used more for open access ones.  That is what I use for the regional science journal I co-edit. As a co-editor for an open access journal, one that charges NO fees to submitters, readers, libraries, or anyone else (see www.srsa.org/rrs), I am very disturbed by the demise of the BEP journals. Dozens of journals that seemed to be fairly well-run, well respected, and committed to inexpensive access and efficient operation have been thrown into chaos.  Below are the names of some of the well-known journals that have been affected:

Advances in Economic Analysis & Policy

Advances in Macroeconomics

Advances in Theoretical Economics

Asian Journal of Comparative Law

Asia-Pacific Journal of Risk and Insurance

B. E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy

B. E. Journal of Macroeconomics

B. E. Journal of Theoretical Economics

Basic Income Studies

Business and Politics

California Journal of Politics and Policy

Capitalism and Society

Contributions to Economic Analysis & Policy

Contributions to Macroeconomics

Contributions to Theoretical Economics

Economists' Voice

Forum for Health Economics & Policy

Frontiers of Economic Analysis & Policy

Frontiers of Macroeconomics

Frontiers of Theoretical Economics

Global Economy Journal

Journal of Agricultural & Food Industrial Organization

Journal of Business Valuation and Economic Loss Analysis

Journal of Globalization and Development

Journal of Industrial Organization Education

Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports

Journal of Time Series Econometrics

Peace Economics, Peace Science and Public Policy

Poverty & Public Policy

Review of Law & Economics

Review of Marketing Science

Review of Middle East Economics and Finance

Review of Network Economics

Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy

Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics & Econometrics

The B.E. Journals in Economic Analysis & Policy

The B.E. Journals in Macroeconomics

The B.E. Journals in Theoretical Economics

Topics in Economic Analysis & Policy

Topics in Macroeconomics

Topics in Theoretical Economics

Stop Calling me, CVS!

Contact your customers-- but don't annoy them to death!

There is a rule in most businesses that a small number of good customers provide a large share of the profits.  Businesses need to identify who these people are, and paper them.  CVS Pharmacy seems to be doing the opposite.  The more business you do with them, the more they hound you with repeated, annoying, deceptive calls!

I have finally had enough of CVS's telephone calls and other annoying marketing tactics.  It is time for me to switch.  A simple Google search reveals that I am not the only one who is sick and tired of what they are doing.  How can a corporation be so shortsighted that it annoys its customers to death?  I have had a lot of health problems in the last 10 years, so I am a VERY good customer of theirs.  However, they treat me like just another person to annoy.  Here are a few specifics in my case:

1) CVS added prescriptions to an "Automatic Refill" program without my consent. That means that every time they feel that I need more medicine, they refill it and call me 5 to 10 times to tell me to pick it up.  These include calls from a human being, calls to my cell phone, and robo-calls.  

2) Last week they called and left a message telling me that it was "very important that I call them right away".  The emergency was, that I had one of those auto-refilled prescriptions to pick up.  First, this is just blatant deception. Why not leave a message like the 1,000 before?  It WAS NOT very important to waste my time to call them back.  Second, I had just picked up a 3-month supply two weeks before!

3) They just called my home and my cell to tell me that I could pick up some more nose drops if I wanted.  Honestly. they left a message at home, again telling me that it was "very important for me to call right away".  They reached me on my cell, interrupting me at work… That is the only reason that I know about these extremely important nose drops.

4) The people who call you tell you that they are not allowed to stop calling you.  You have to call their corporate number in order to request that they stop calling you. Here is how to get CVS to stop calling you, at least in theory: Call 1-800-746-7287, and right after their answering system finishes telling you about language options, say "CALL".  Basically, keep saying "CALL" until it says that it is connecting you with the person.  Tell the person that you want them to stop all calls whether it is from a recorded message or a person and give them every phone number you have.  Even though the person on the other end of the line is "innocent", I don't think it would hurt to show them a little anger: CBS needs to understand how much this is angering some of us.

There are two big problems with this, aside from the obvious fact that annoying your customers with endless calls, and deceptive calls, will drive them away:

a) They are wasting their own money and time. I just picked up a 100 day supply of one medicine for example, and 25 days later they are calling me telling me that I have a refill ready.

b) This seems to be illegal. According to http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2008/08/tsr.shtm :

In 2008 an FTC Rule: "Expressly prohibit telemarketing sales calls that deliver prerecorded messages, whether answered in person by a consumer or by an answering machine or voicemail service, unless the seller has previously obtained the recipient's signed, written agreement to receive such calls".  

Now, there are a few exemptions and exceptions in the law that CVS might be hiding behind.  Businesses are allowed to call customers with which they have a relationship, and there is an exemption for purely informational messages ( e.g., your flight has been canceled). There is also an exemption for "healthcare-related prerecorded message calls that are subject to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act", but I cannot believe that the FCC had this nonsense in mind for pure telemarketing from Drug Stores.

Hopefully some lawyers will get involved and file a class-action suit against CVS. Normally, I am not in favor of all of the class-action suits out there, since they are usually settled in very little of the money ever reaches the consumers who are affected.  However, in this case, I just want it to stop!  over the next few weeks, I am going to begin transferring all of my prescriptions elsewhere, even though there really is no other pharmacy that is remotely convenient for me.  But, I have had enough!

Tell me about your experiences in the comment section below!  Anything more ridiculous than what I have experienced?