Category Archives: economics

Automobile power 2021: Batteries vs gasoline and hydrogen

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It’s been a while since I did an assessment of hydrogen and batteries for automobile propulsion, and while some basics have not changed, the price and durability of batteries has improved, the price of gasoline has doubled, and the first commercial fuel cell cars have appeared in the USA. The net result (see details below) is that I find the cost of ownership for a gasoline and a battery car is now about the same, depending on usage and location, and that hydrogen, while still more pricey, is close to being a practical option.

EV Chargers. They look so much cooler than gasoline hoses, and the price per mile is about the same.

Lithium battery costs are now about $150/kwh. That’s $10,000 for a 70 kWh battery. That’s about 1/5 the price of a Tesla Model 3. The reliability that Tesla claims is 200,000 miles or more, but that’s with slow charging. For mostly fast charging, Car and Driver’s expectation is 120,000 miles. That’s just about the average life-span of a car these days.

The cost of the battery and possible replacement adds to the cost of the vehicle, but electricity is far cheaper than gasoline, per mile. The price of gasoline has doubled to, currently, $3.50 per gallon. A typical car will get about 24 mpg, and that means a current operation cost of 14.6¢/mile. That’s about $1,460/year for someone who drives 10,000 miles per year. I’ll add about $150 for oil and filter changes, and figure that operating a gas-powered car engine costs about $1,610 per year.

If you charge at home, your electricity costs, on average, 14¢/kWh. This is a bargain compared to gasoline since electricity is made from coal and nuclear, mostly, and is subsidized while gasoline is taxed. At level 2 charging stations, where most people charge, electricity costs about 50¢/kWh. This is three times the cost of home electricity, but it still translates to only about $32 for a fill-up that take 3 hours. According to “Inside EVs”, in moderate temperatures, a Tesla Model 3 uses 14.59 kWh/100 km with range-efficient driving. This translates to 11.7¢ per mile, or $1170/year, assuming 10,000 miles of moderate temperature driving. If you live in moderate climates: Californian, Texas or Florida, an electric car is cheaper to operate than a gasoline car. In cold weather gasoline power still makes sense since a battery-electric car uses battery power for heat, while a gasoline powered car uses waste heat from the engine.

Battery cars are still somewhat of more expensive than the equivalent gasoline car, but not that much. In a sense you can add $400/year for the extra cost of the Tesla above, but that just raises the effective operating cost to about $1,570/year, about the same as for the gasoline car. On the other hand, many folks drive less than 50 miles per day and can charge at home each night. This saves most of the electric cost. In sum, I find that EVs have hit a tipping point, and Tesla lead the way.

Now to consider hydrogen. When most people think hydrogen, they think H2 fuel, and a PEM fuel cell car. The problem here is that hydrogen is expensive, and PEM FCs aren’t particularly efficient. Hydrogen costs about $10/kg at a typical fueling station and, with PEM, that 1 kg of hydrogen takes you only about 25 miles. The net result is that the combination hydrogen + PEM results in a driving cost of about 40¢/mile, or about three times the price of gasoline. But Toyota has proposed two better options. The fist is a PEM hybrid, the hydrogen Prius. It’s for the commuter who drives less than about 40 miles per day. It has a 10kWh battery, far cheaper than the Tesla above, but enough for the daily commute. He or she would use charge at home at night, and use hydrogen fuel only when going on longer trips. If there are few long trips, you come out way ahead.

Toyota 2021 Mirai, hydrogen powered vehicle

Toyota also claims to have a hydrogen powered Corolla or debut in 2023. This car will have a standard engine, and I would expect (hope) will drive also — preferably — on hythane, a mix of hydrogen and methane. Hythane is much cheaper per volume, and more energy dense, see my analysis. While Toyota has not said that their Corolla would run on hythane, it is supposed to have an internal combustion engine, and that suggests that hythane will work in it.

A more advanced option for Toyota or any other car/truck manufacturer would be to design to use solid oxide fuel cells, SOFCs, either with hydrogen or hythane. SOFCs are significantly more efficient than PEM, and they are capable of burning hythane, and to some extent natural gas too. Hythane is not particularly available, but it could be. Any station that currently sells natural gas could sell hythane. As for delivery to the station, natural gas lines already exist underground, and the station would just blend in hydrogen, produced at the station by electrolysis, or delivered. Hythane can also be made locally from sewer gas methane, and wind-power hydrogen. Yet another SOFC option is to start with natural gas and convert some of the natural gas to hydrogen on-board using left-over heat from the SOFC. I’ve a patent for this process.

Speaking of supply network, I should mention the brown outs we’ve been having in Detroit. Electric cars are part of the stress to the electric grid, but I believe that, with intelligent charging (and discharging) the concern is more than manageable. The driver who goes 10,000 miles per year only adds about 2,350 kWh/year of extra electric demand. This is a small fraction of the demand of a typical home, 12,154 kWh/year.It’s manageable. Then again, hythane adds no demand to the electric grid and the charge time is quicker — virtually instantaneous.

Robert Buxbaum, September 3, 2021

A useful chart, added September 20, 2021. Battery prices are likely to keep falling.

Branson’s virgin spaceplane in context.

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Virgin Galactic Unity 22, landing.

Branson’s Virgin Space Ship (VSS) Unity was cheered as a revolutionary milestone today (July 10) after taking Branson, three friends and two pilots on a three minute ride to the edge of space, an altitude of 53.5 miles or 283,000 feet. I’d like to put that achievement into contest, both with previous space planes, like the Concorde and X-15 (the 1960s space plane), and also in context with the offerings of Elon Musk’s Space-X and Bezos’s, Blue Horizon.

To start with, the VSS Unity launched from a sub-sonic mother ship, as the X-15 had before it. This saves a lot in fuel weight and safety equipment, but it makes scale up problematic. In this case, the mother-ship was named Eve. Unity launched from Eve at 46,000 feet, about 9 miles up, and at Mach 0.5; it took Eve nearly 90 minutes to get to altitude and position. It was only after separation, that Unity began a one minute, 3 G rocket burn that brought it to its top speed, Mach 3, at about 16 miles up. What followed was a 3 minute, unpowered glide to 53.5 miles and down. Everyone seems to have enjoyed the three minutes of weightlessness, and it should be remembered that there is a lot of difference between Mach 3 and orbital speed, Mach 31. Also there is a lot of difference between a sub-orbital and orbital.

Concorde SST landing in Farnborough.

By comparison, consider the Concorde SSTs that first flew in 1976. It reached about 2/3 the speed of Unity, Mach 2.1, but carried 120 commercial passengers. It took off from the ground and maintained this speed for 4500 miles, going from London to Houston in 4.5 hours. While the Concorde only reached an altitude of 60,000 feet, it is far more impressive going at Mach 2.1 for 4.5 hours than going at Mach 3 for three minutes. And there is a lot of difference between 120 passengers and 4. There is also the advantage of taking off from the ground. A three minute ride in a space plane should not require a 90 minute ascent on a mother ship.

X-15 landing, 1962.

Next consider the X-15 rocket plane of the 1960s. This was a test platform devoted to engine and maneuverability tests; it turns out that maneuverability is very difficult. The X-15 hit a maximum altitude of 354,200 ft, 67 miles, and a maximum speed of Mach 6.72, or 4520 mph. That’s significantly higher than Branson’s VSS, and double the maximum speed. As an aside, the X-15 project involved the development of a new nickel alloy that I use today, Inconel X-750. I use this as a support for my hydrogen membranes. If any new materials were developed for VSS, none were mentioned.

The Air Force’s X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle at Kennedy Space Center, May 7, 2017.

Continuing with the history of NASA’s X-program, we move to the X-41, a air-breathing scramjet of the 1980s and 90s. It reached 95,000 feet, and a maximum speed of Mach 9.64. That’s about three times as fast as Virgin’s VSS. The current X-plane is called X-37B, it is a rocket-plane like the X-15 and VSS, but faster and maneuverable at high speed and altitude. It’s the heart of Trump’s new, US Space force. In several tests over the past 5 years, it has hit orbital speed, 17,426 mph, Mach 31, and orbital altitudes, about 100 miles, after being launched by a Atlas V or a Falcon 9 booster. The details are classified. Apparently it has maneuverability. While the X-37B is unmanned, a larger, manned version, is being built, the X-37C. It is supposed to carry as many as six.

Reaching orbital speed or Mach 31 implies roughly 100 times as much kinetic energy per mass as reaching the Mach 3.1 of Virgin’s VSS. In this sense, the space shuttle, and the current X-plane are 100 times more impressive than Virgin’s VSS. There is also a lot to be said for maneuverability and for a longer flight duration– more than a few minutes. Not that I require Branson to beat NASA’s current offerings, but I anyone claiming cutting edge genius and visionary status should at least beat NASA’s offerings of the 1960s, and the Concorde planes of 1976.

Bezos’s Blue Origin, and the New Shepard launcher.

And that bring’s us to the current batch of non-governmental, space cadets. Elon Musk stands out to me as a head above the rest, at least. Eight years ago, his Grasshopper rocket premiered the first practical, example of vertical take off and landing booster. Today, his Falcon 9 boosters send packages into earth orbit, and beyond, launching Israel’s moon project, as one example. That implies speeds of Mach 31 and higher, at least at the payload. It’s impressive, even compared to X-37, very impressive.

Bezos’ offering, the Blue Origin Shepherd, seems to me like a poor imitation of the SpaceX Falcon. Like Falcon, it’s a reusable, vertical takeoff and landing platform, that launches directly from earth, and like Falcon it carries a usable payload, but it only reaches speeds of Mach 3 and altitudes about 65 miles. Besides, the capsule lands by way of parachutes, not using wings like the space shuttle, or the X-37B, and there is no reusable booster like Falcon. Blue Origin started carrying payloads only in 2019, five yers after SpaceX. There is nothing here that’s cutting edge, IMHO, and I don’t imagine it will be cheaper either.

Branson has something that the other rocket men do not have, quite: a compelling look: personal marketing, a personal story, and a political slant that the press loves and I find hypocritical and hokey. The press, and our politicians, managed to present this flight as more than an energy wasting, joy ride for rich folks. Instead, this is accepted as Branson’s personal fight against climate change. Presented this way, it should qualify as a tax-dodge. I don’t see it getting folks to stop polluting and commit to small cars, but the press is impressed, or claims to be. The powers have committed themselves to this type of Tartuffe, and the press goes along. You’d think that, before giving Branson public adoration for his technology or environmentalism, he should have cutting technology and have been required to save energy, or pollute less. At least beat the specs of the X-15. Just my opinion.

Robert Buxbaum, July 12, 2021

Are fewer people better?

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Part of the push to help the oppressed and save the plant is push to decrease the birthrate both in the developed and undeveloped world. Putting of childbirth is supposed to lead to a more meaningful life, while academic excellence is considered meaningful. Child-raising is considered male oppression of women, while writing mediocre poetry is, we’re told elevating, it’s finding your voice. It’s the new mood, at least in the developed world.

In the undeveloped world, political activism and wealth accumulation are presented as more meaningful, and fewer children is presented as a responsible route to wealth and happiness (see Indian advertisement below). My sense is otherwise, that children bring happiness and long term wealth. My sense is that the best two ways to change the world for the better is to work on yourself and to raise good children. And these Idas are connected; children are little mirrors, sometimes showing hidden flaws, sometimes revealing enthusiasm and greatnesses.

This month’s cover article of National Geographic includes economic justifications for fewer children and ecological justifications. Apparently we’re making life difficult for the polar bears. The assumption is that the bears like it cold, and their opinion is more important than that of animals that like it warm, like most humans.

There is also an assumption that there will be more jobs and better food if we have fewer children, or that people will be happier. Who are the “we” who are better off. I personally would not trade a billion randomly selected lives to lower the earth’s temperature 1 degree, or for the supposed happiness benefit of 1 million empty-nest households.

Robert Buxbaum, April 18, 2021. I like people more than polar bears, sue me.

A high minimum wage killed Detroit, perhaps Seattle and NYC too.

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In July, eitght years ago, Detroit filed for bankruptcy protection. The US was well into an economic expansion, but the expansion had largely bypassed Detroit. The Detroit area unemployment rate was 9.7%, and the Detroit city rate was 17%, among the highest in the nation. Tax income was not sufficient to pay retirement or current employees. The city was riven by corruption and crime, and attendance in school was dismal, less that 25% in some districts, about 55% as an overall average. Kids no longer saw a value in education. After bankruptcy, things started to improve dramatically.

Detroit area unemployment rate, 2005 to 2021.

The largest cause of the problem, and of the solution, in my opinion, was a high Detroit minimum wage that applied before bankruptcy and that was voided by bankruptcy. It was called a “living wage”. In 2013 it was $16/ hour and applied to any business that dealt with the city and did not offer health insurance (see more on the specifics here).The stated purpose was to insure that all workers could support a family of four in some middle-class standard, by one wage-earner working 40 hours per week. It was a view of Detroit family life and economic need that didn’t match Detroit reality. In practice most of Detroit were not 4 person, one wage-earner households. It meant that most Detroiters could not find jobs, since most companies worked in some way with the city. The only workers who could find jobs were those with special skills or political connections. The alternative was criminal business including drug sales, prostitution and burglary. The unemployment rate was 70% among Detroit’s teenagers.

The high minimum wage bought loyalty for Detroit’s political bosses; they gave out jobs for kickbacks, and some went to jail, including the mayor. Most Detroiters could not find jobs, though, and this especially hurt those looking for their first job: the job that would demonstrate that math and spelling were important; that you had to show up on time, dressed clean, and that you were not to insult the customers. High unemployment meant low tax revenue, made worse by high city employment costs for basic services: janitors, secretaries, and mail room personnel. The city was a mess.

When Detroit went bankrupt, among the first changes was to eliminate the $!6/hour living wage for employees and others doing business with the city. This helped bring the city budget into balance, and it brought in residents, businesses, and developers. By January 2020 Detroit’s unemployment rate had fallen to 6%, and Detroit metro unemployment had fallen to 4.2%, the lowest rates on record. Employment gives a motivation to stay in Detroit and to stay in school: there are jobs to be had for those who could add and spell. I covered these improvements here.

Seattle are unemployment rate 2015 to 2021. Seattle’s unemployment rate is now higher than Detroit’s.

Meanwhile, Seattle voted to raise their minimum wage to $15, with the change law taking effect in stages. The law fully came into effect three months ago, in January, 2021. New York voted for similar changes more recently. It is hard to be sure of the effect of the high minimum wage but already it seems to have hit employment. By the latest data, Seattle’s unemployment rate has risen to 6.9%. That’s higher than in Detroit, a real reversal. While unemployment in New York City has yet to rise much, they have seen a drop in rent rates while Detroit has seen a rise. New York’s are also moving to be more out of balance, something that leads to corruption and bankruptcy. We’ll see how this works out.

Robert Buxbaum, March 25, 2021. Among my first blog posts were complaints about Detroit’s high “living wage”, see here for example. As Puerto Rico slid into bankruptcy, I complained about the same thing.

Billionaire Democrats and union Republicans

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In the last presidential election, the largest billionaires in the US were vocal Democrats, and two billionaires, Yang and Bloomberg were candidates. Bloomberg had been an anticrime Republican when he ran for mayor but in 2020 he spent $!B of his own money on anti Republican ads, and paid the debts of thousands of Florida felons who he thought would vote his way. It’s a strange new world.

Other vocal Democrats include: Jeff Bezios, majority owner of Amazon and The Washington Post, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook, Bill Gates, founder and largest owner of Microsoft (just today blasting the Republicans over global warming — Is that logical — is cold better?), and Warren Buffett who likes to note that he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary does (IMHO that’s because he games the tax system and pays no social security tax). Meanwhile union workers and white middle class folks were mostly Republicans in 2020.

Union leadership are still Democrats, but the last few elections saw union workers voting R. These were called “The basket of deplorables, unredeemables” by candidate Clinton. R support among black people is less than 50%, but growing too. it’s quite a lot higher than two decades ago. Many showed up at MAGA rallies, you’ll see plenty in videos at “the insurrection”. The only person shot and killed at the insurrection was a white woman, unarmed, shot in the face by Capital police — no charges filed, but the liberal press, who usually hate such things, was silent. Almost to the man, they sided with the police over the mob.

I notice that the Black Lives Matter rallies are populated with the well off and the well educated. A Princeton lawyer was photographed driving around with a box of Molotov cocktails, and his co-worker, another lawyer tossed a lit fire bomb into a police car. It used to be that Princeton lawyers didn’t do that, at least not in person.

Portrait of a Democrat. From the New Yorker.

It’s not like the platforms have reversed. The Democratic party was always for high taxes, high regulation, and for soft money that they could give away. They still are. In 1900 the call was for “free silver“, now it’s “stimulus money.” It used to be that rich people didn’t like this. They would point of that printing money didn’t add to wealth, but just redistributed it from those who had savings to those who did not. Now they uniformly blast anyone who doubted the wisdom of printing 1.9 trillion in new money ($6000 per person, of which $1400 is given to you), and going on to blast anyone who doesn’t like additional oversight to prevent the systemic racism they see in the less-well-off.

One reason these richest billionaires are no longer Republicans is that they are no longer involved industrial manufacturing in the US. Thus the regulations they favor don’t apply to them. In the olden days, rich people made steel or cars. Regulations were annoying. Rich industrialists had money in US banks. For them inflation was theft. Now rich people own intangible industries that largely operate outside of the country. What money they earn is earned off-shore, tax free. As individuals, they live on US debt, and possess little or no hard cash. Inflation helps them pay off their debt, and high taxes don’t hurt them. Buffett can be down-home and pro environment. He flies private jet to meetings on global warming while investing in overseas petroleum.

Elon Musk seemed like a Republican during the Trump administration, but not so much now. He still makes stuff in America, but has moved to manufacture abroad. In January, he said he was fired up for Biden. He has put a significant chunk of his wealth into bitcoins. Its a protection from the inflation caused by printing money, and it’s a bet that’s paid off handsomely. I expect that we’ll have billionaire Democrats and union Republicans for the foreseeable future.

Robert Buxbaum, March 14, 2021. It’s pie day. Eat a pie at 1:59:27. (Edited Apr. 28, 2021)

Chinese billionaires keep disappearing with facebook twitter’s help. Alibaba’s Jack Ma is the latest.

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Jack Ma, disappeared billionaire owner of Alibaba.

Every 25 years or so, for the past 1500 years China gets a new dictator who rounds up the rich and famous for loyalty trials, imprisonment. and worse. This was true of Li Ping following Tianamin Square, and Mao Zedong who killed some 75 million as part of his 10,000 flowers, great leap purges. The current dictator, Jenping Xi. Like, has been rounding up anyone he worries about, and that’s basically anyone he might worry about. The latest is Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, China’s version of e-bay and Amazon. Until his disappearance, he was the richest person in China.

Ma had not been seen in public since October 2020, when he and two top lieutenants of Alibaba were called to meet with regulators. He reappeared months later in a 40 second video (some say a hostage video) to say he is more rested now, and that he is positive that China’s regulators do not stifle innovation. As typical for China, there is no information about his whereabouts. What’s novel is that US media companies are involved helping Xi to trace potential opposition and keep questions out of the press. This includes Google, Twitter, and Facebook, as well as US media outlets.

71st Cannes Film Festival - Screening of the film "Ash Is Purest White" (Jiang hu er nv) in competition - Red Carpet Arrivals - Cannes, France, May 11, 2018. Fan Bingbing poses.
China’s biggest starlet, Fan Bingbing, vanished from sight and the internet for months. She may have said something critical, but has reappeared and recanted it.

In the past the news and social media would have been full of negative comments about China, and Ma’s detention , both from within and without. Now there is hardly anything and what little there is, is mildly positive about Xi. For three months there have been no e-mail or published tweets or Facebook posts from Ma or his lieutenants. Similarly, there is no room for negative speculation within China, and little within the US. The company’s planned IPO was cancelled, one that could have been the richest in history, but this fact got virtually no press, not in China, not in the US. Regulators cancelled it just two days before the start of trading. You’d expect screams from inside and outside China; instead, the story has been covered only briefly by CNN and the Financial Times, generally putting a pro-China spin on it. They stress the importance of regulations and avoiding monopolies, and don’t mention that Alibaba competes with Amazon, e-bay and Walmart. The expectation is that Ma and his higher-ups will be found guilty of monopoly trading and abuse of power. Under Xi, these crimes that have sent corporate leaders to prison for 12 to 20 years.

Ren Zhiqiang, missing billionaire, sentenced to 18 years.

Consider the fate of Ren Zhiqiang, the 69 year old chairman of Huayuan property conglomerate. It was one of the largest property groups in China, but Ren vanished in March 2020 after being heard to have complained about how the government was handling COVID-19. He was expelled from the communist party, and in September 2020 sentenced to 18 years in jail for “taking bribes and abuses of power.” There was hardly a trial, and as with Jack Ma, Facebook and Twitter helped the party silence Ren and his supporters. The result is that he had no recourse to the court of public opinion. About a month later, Facebook and Twitter did the same to Donald Trump, banning him for life from Facebook, Twitter. All other platforms joined, these included Snap and Reddit. As in China they also banned his main lieutenants and his main supporters, including the my-pillow man. The internet services also closed (deplatformed) Parler, the only competing web-service that allowed Trump and his supporters to post.

It can help to have public outcry, as Xi found after he disappeared China’s most popular movie starlet, Fan Bingbing in July 2018. Fan is a star of Chinese TV and movies and appears in Iron Man II and X-Men. As with Ma and Ren, Facebook and Twitter removed all posts, comments, questions, and complaints about Fan, releasing only the official statement that she was under investigation and taking a break. Unlike Ren, Fan reappeared a year later, April 2019 with no official charges filed. Nor has there been any official report. She has apologized for misdoings. and is supposed to have paid some $150 million, but she’s free. My guess is that the pressure of 100 million Chinese fans is what helped Ms Fan to un-vanish.

Chairman of Anbang Insurance Group Wu Xiaohui attends the China Development Forum in Beijing, China
Had Wu Xiaohui, former chairman of Anbang Insurance Group, and owner to the Waldorf Astoria.

A less positive outcome is when there is no outcry. When Wu Xiaohui, chairman of the Anbang Insurance Group, and the owner of New York’s Waldorf Astoria hotel vanished for two years. When he reappeared, he faced a quiet trial that sentenced him to 18 years in prison. The usual charges: fraud and abuse of power. Wu’s mother claimed she had no access to her son for those two years. Anbang, once one of the largest insurers in China, was taken over by its insurance regulator who has applied to liquidate the company. Why liquidate? Probably because it’s the easiest way to remove potential Wu loyalists.

In the US, there are some claims that Facebook, Twitter, Reditt and a few other companies have too much control of public discourse. Others claim that these companies exercise too little control. These companies claim the right to silence opinion they consider untrue, or inflammatory, and they have been allowed to deplatform their competition. Congress is moving to be in charge of who they silence. I’ve found they don’t like pro-Israel sentiments. While they don’t put words in my mouth, I don’t like it that they take words out of my mouth. As a result, I’ve cut back on my use of these platforms.

Jack Ma reappeared after 3 months in this 40 second video, shot from an unknown location. To me, it looks like a hostage video, “I’m well and being well treated …” Biden has argued that now is the time to move closer to China.

As I write this, Trump is impeached for the second time. The charge is inflammatory speech. Like with abuse of power, there is no way to prove you didn’t do it, especially after the internet giants silence you and anyone stupid enough to support you. Among Biden’s first acts is to undo Trump dictates that kept China from providing the technology underlying the US power and water system. Clearly Biden feels it is important that China should have a hand in this. I surely am not going to suggest that the bribes Biden is supposed to have received from China played any role. I will say that, when I ran for water commission, one of my goals was to help make the water system more resistant to cyber attack.

Dr. Robert E. Buxbaum. February 8, 2021. As an update, I see that Jimmy Li was arrested. He’s the founder of Hong-Kong’s most popular newspaper, Apple daily. No comment in the US, or from the Vatican. Li is Catholic, and the Vatican used to chime in when prominent Catholics were arrested.

New York and San Francisco rents fall, Detroit rises for now.

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Rents in New York and San Francisco are far less expensive than before the pandemic. It’s been a boon for the suburbs, the south and the midwest, one that’s likely to continue unless Biden steps in. Before the pandemic, rent in San Francisco for a one bedroom apartment averaged over $3700 per month. New York rent was similar. People paid it because these cities offered robust business and entertainment, the best restaurants and bars, the best salons and clubs, the best music, museums, universities, and theater. New York was Wall Street, Madison Avenue and Broadway; San Francisco was Silicon valley and Hollywood. These cities were the place to be, and then the pandemic hit.

Post COVID-19, the benefits of big city life are gone, and replaced by negatives. The great restaurants are mostly gone; the museums, theaters, and salons, shut along with Hollywood. Wall Street and Madison Ave have gone on-line, as have the universities. If you can work and study from anywhere, why do it from an expensive hotbed of Corona.

People of means left the big cities with the first lockdowns. Wall Street moved on line, with offices in New Jersey, and many followed, along with college students, and hotel and restaurant workers. New York’s unemployment rate increased from 4-5% to over 9.5% today, among the highest rates in the nation, 9.5%. It would be higher if not for the departures. Crime spiked; the murder rate doubled. To keep people from leaving, landlords have lowered rents and many will now forgive a month or two of rent to keep apartments full with some rent coming in and an illusion of exclusivity. This is good for tenants, but tough on landlords.

Detroit rent history, 2014 to January 2021. Rents fell a lot on election day, maybe because of Biden, or because we think the pandemic is over.

As things stand, the suburbs and smaller cities are the beneficiaries of the exodus. Among the cities benefiting the most are cities in the south and mid-west: states that are more open and are relatively low cost: Phoenix, Oakland, Cleveland, St. Petersburg, and even Detroit. Detroit’s rents were already moving up as auto manufacturing returned from Mexico, see chart. Between early 2017 and October 2020, they went from $500/month to $1250/month for a 1 bedroom apartment, according to Zumper. Detroit rents fell after election day, but are still up 20% on the year. The influx of wealthier working folk to Detroit is welcome to some, unwelcome to tenants who find their rents are raised. I think it’s is a sign of a healthy economy that people follow life-quality, and that rents follow people. Our landlords are happy, but there are a lot of Detroit renters who are not

Joe Biden has promised to step in to make things right for everyone. He promised to have the government pay people’s rent so they don’t get evicted. I presume that means paying about double to people in NY and SF as to those in Detroit. He claims he will shutter smokestack industries too, and create the good jobs of the future in computers and high tech. It’s a nice claim. I suspect it’s a bailout of big city landlords, but what would I know. I suspect that the US would be better off if Joe just sat back and let New York rents fall, while allowing Detroit to gentrify. Detroiters need not worry about rents getting too pricy here. We’ve1500 shootings per year, that 15 times more than NYC, per capita. Unless that ratio changes, Detroit will continue to be the lower rent city.

Robert Buxbaum, January 17, 2021.

1500 people shot in Detroit, 4/5 survive; some thoughts.

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There are two remarkable things about shootings in Detroit. One is how many there are. About 1500 Detroiters last year, about 0.2% of the city’s population. The other remarkable tidbit is that only about 1/5 of them died. More specifically, there were 1173 non fatal shootings. There were also 327 criminal homicides, but many shooting deaths in Detroit are non-criminal, as in self-defense, or police interventions, and there are also many criminal homicides that are done with knives or poison. Put this together and it seems that only about 1/5 or those shot, perhaps 327 out of 1500 total. The headline from June 21, 2020 reads: 1 fatal, 11 non-fatal shootings in Detroit overnight. You almost feel like getting these guys marksmanship lessons, but there seems to be more at play.

Even in photography, a fair percentage of shooters miss simple head shots.

The number of shootings are way up this year, and drugs – alcohol is to blame, here and in other cities. People have lost their jobs to COVID and globalization, more in Detroit than in most cities, but the government has offered checks that are used for alcohol and drugs. Most Detroit shootings begin as arguments that turn violent. There is also some gang shooting, enhanced by a bout of prison releases, because of COVID.

Drugs and alcohol help explain the low death rate. It’s hard to shoot straight when you’re drunk or stoned, and hard even if you’re not, as Alexander Hamilton found. In Detroit, many of these hit were hit in non-vital areas (I tell folks to avoid those areas :). But another part of the low death rate is lower caliber bullets. Military caliber bullets were in short supply this year, and as best as I was able to tell, a fair number of shootings were with 22 and 25 instead of the military cartridges, 9mm and bigger that were popular years ago. A 9mm cartridge is shown as the center picture below, between a 22lr and a 45. Big bullets make for big holes and high death rates.

Per capita, the Detroit shooting rate is about 15 times that of New York City. New York saw roughly the same number of shootings as Detroit, 1,531 in a city 15 times bigger, and 462 criminal homicides The cause does not appear economic. but social. When Detroit’s unemployment rate fell, the murder rate did not. Thanks to COVID, Detroit’s unemployment rate is lower than New York’s. My only thought is that the culture is the difference, that the culture in New York is such that arguments do not turn violent as regularly.

Size comparison; 22, 9mm, 45. Big bullets leave big holes.

Stricter gun laws will not help, I think. Michigan’s gun laws make it hard to own pistols with barrels less than 16″ long. The net result is that most crime in the city is done with illegal guns. In general, countries with strict gun laws have more violent crime, not less. I would like to encourage private citizens to choose smaller bullets for self defense though, 22 or 32, and not military grade, 9mm. As a private citizen, you have to bring in the criminal, or storm a building. Your only goal is to get the criminal to stop without harming yourself. A 22 will get the criminal to stop. It will killl too, just less often. A 22 caliber bullet killed Bobby Kennedy, and Reagan was nearly killed with one. A small caliber bullet is less likely to kill you in an accident, or to kill people standing behind the target. This year, some 11 police forces came to a consensus report on use of the minimum of force necessary; read it here. For a private citizen, that’s a 22. Besides, speaking from my own limited experience, I find it easier to aim a small bullet.

Robert Buxbaum, January 10, 2021

China keeps building coal-fired plants so we can close ours.

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Part of the mandate to the 2020 election was to join with Europe and the rest of the western world in agreeing to stop the use of coal. It’s a low cost way to generate energy. Of course we still like to buy things, and we’ve largely turned to China, a country that still burns coal, and thus makes things cheap. The net result of this shift to Chinese goods is that China keeps building coal-fired plants while we shut ours. As it happens, China is worse than the US in terms of CO2 per output, but at least when China pollutes, we don’t see the smoke directly, and we don’t see their new coal plants at all. So we feel better buying things from China than from the US. Besides, slave labor is cheap.

From th eEconomist, December 2020.

Buying Chinese goods is good for the importers, and for the non-manufacturing consumer, at least in the short term. It has the effect of exporting jobs though, and eventually we have to support the displaced workers. It also means we don’t keep up our manufacturing technology. Long term, that affects innovation, and that starts to displace other industries. Antibiotic production has already left the US and along with it semiconductors. Still, we feel good about it since the Chinese don’t let us see the slave labor camps. We do get to see the haze of the pollution.

The Chinese expect this pattern to continue. China is building new coal-fired plants at a furious rate. Presently China has most of the world’s coal-fired power plants. Mostly these are only 4 to 12 years old, far younger than our forty year old plants China plans to build more, and keeps encouraging us to shut down ours. Even 10 years ago, China lead the world in CO2 output. And their fraction of the CO2 keeps climbing.

China is popular with the press. In part, I expect, that’s because they pay the international experts. lAlso, writers and editors are consumers industrial products, but not manufacturers. Consumers benefit from slave labor, or maybe not, but displaced American workers certainly suffer. Also, of course, the news requires pictures and personal stories to keep viewer interest. If you can’t get pictures of young protesters, like Grey Thunberg, you can get an interesting story. Our Chinese pollution is out of sight, and not in the press.

Robert Buxbaum, January 6, 2021. BTW, if we wanted preserve jobs and stop CO2 pollution, we’d go nuclear.

MI hunting: You can arm bears; you just can’t buy bullets.

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Large chunks of Michigan shut down for the prime days of hunting season, from the middle of October to early November. About 8% of the state gets a hunting license each year, some 800,000 people, all trying to “Bag a buck.” Michigan is an open carry state for rifles and holstered pistols, something seen recently in the state capitol, I’d say this was an illegal example since there is also a brandishing law, but it gives a sense of things here. About 29% of the state owns at least one gun, and usually more. There are about as many guns as people. Getting bullets, on the other hand, is near impossible, both for handguns and for most rifles, shotguns excluded.

A lot of the attraction of hunting is that you get to eat what you kill. Mot people do this or donate it to a food back. Hunting is also cheaper than golf. Rural farmers also hunt to protect their crops from crows, squirrels, rabbits, rats, snakes, and raccoons. This is legitimate hunting, in my opinion, even though you typically don’t eat crow. Some people do hunt bear, but that’s a different story (I like to be dressed). It’s possible that the bullet shortage is just a hiccup in the supply chain, “supply and demand” but it’s been going on for 12 years now so I suspect it’s here to stay.

Michigan, was once a Republican, pro-gun stronghold. It has swung Democrat and anti-gun for the last few years. Bulletes have been scare for about that long, at least since the Obama election or the Sandy Hook shooting. Behind this is a general trend of urbanization and class-action law suits. At this point, few sporting stores carry guns or bullets, and those that do, tend to hide them in a back room. Amazon carries neither bullets nor guns, and the same holds at e-bay, Craig’s list, and Walmart on line. Dunhams still sells guns but the only bullets, when I visited today were, 17 caliber, 227 and duck-hunting, shotgun shells. Gone were normal handgun calibers: 22, 25, 32, 38, 45, 357, and 9mm. The press seems OK with duck or moose hunting; not so OK with anything else.

The salesman at Dunham’s said that he had moved to bow hunting, something that’s becoming common, but it’s incredibly difficult even with modern bows. I can rarely hit a non-moving target at 50 feet on the first arrow, and I can only imagine the frustration of trying to hit a moving target after sitting in a cold blind for days waiting for one to appear whose distance and placement is unknown, and that might disappear at any moment, or attack me then disappear.

Part of the problem is that arrows travel at only about 250 ft/s, or about 1/6 the speed of a bullet. Thus, an arrow fired from 50 yards takes about 0.6 seconds to hit. In that time it drops about 6 feet and must be aimed 6 feet above the deer if you hope to hit it. A riffle bullet falls only about 2 inches, about 1/36 as much. Whaat’s more, though an arrow is about three times heavier than a hunting bullet, its slow speed means it hits with only about 1/10 the kinetic energy, about the same as hunting with a 22 from a handgun.

There are those who say the bullet shortage will go away on its own because of supply and demand. That’s true until the government steps in in the name of public safety. Though recreational marijuana and moonshine are both legal, government regulation means that prices are high and supply is limited, with a grey market of people buying high and selling higher. I’m seeing the same with ammunition; there is tight supply, a grey market, and a fair number of people trying to reload spent ammunition using match-tips for primers. Talk about white lightning.

R. E. Buxbaum, December 24, 2020.