5/10/20

Why so many people lost jobs - overexploitation

One number strikes most - the rate of participation in the labor force dropped to the level of the earlier 60s (60.2%) and much larger unemployment problems for females. What actually happened in the 60s and 70s was the increase in the participation of females, who entered the labor force mostly in the service sector of the economy. It was the time when females started to do accustomed homework (e.g. child and personal care, accommodation and food)  for money. Before that happened, this extremely important work was not paid-up by money. When it happened, females entered the world of money and ... now have to pay taxes. Moreover, they now work for capital, which takes approximately 60% of the income (the current share of capital income in the total personal income).  It seems to be kind of overexploitation of unessential workers who suffer first because their work can be easily stopped without any essential harm to people life unlike energy and water supply, food production (remember extraordinary measures to protect meat factories),  medical services, security like police and army, and so on.
Economically, one could count the homework as a part of GDP as applied to imputed rent, which is never paid as such (various imputations give ~15% of the US GDP with the imputed rent of ~6%). However, the loss of tax and profit, in this case, would be a large part of the Gross Domestic Income. It is clear that the temporarily stopped services will restart soon and the tax and profit will be regained by the state and capital. But the COVID-19 epidemic highlighted many problems in economic theory and real economy. The best time to learn something important for laypeople and scientists. For example, it is clear that some economic definitions and measurements are biased. 

4/14/20

Covid-19 and progress in economic theory

There are numerous competing economic theories, all of which lack empirical proof. With the slow evolution of main economic parameters like GDP, unemployment, inflation, etc. it is very hard to find real drivers behind the evolution and most popular theories are based on a stochastic approach - the future is not predictable, which small addition of real economic parameters. Even the largest 2008 economic crisis did not give any clear understanding of the actual economic reasons causing the slump. This is likely due to the dominance of endogenous factors of the economic crises. Despite its cruelty, the COVID-19 pandemic is a great driver of exogenous impact on the global and national economies. The strength of economic problems varies between countries and gives a large number and diversity of structural responses to the COVID-19 external impact - the actual links between various economic parameters have to be revealed. This is an excellent opportunity to test all economic theories, conventional and non-conventional, and the theories matching actual behavior of the economies (winners) have to survive and be praised. 

It is a chance for everybody to prove their models/theories. The failure of economics as a science in 2008 gave birth to a broader discussion on the role of data, theories, and models for a better understanding of the global economy. After a decade of re-thinking, its time to explain (i.e. predict)  the immediate reaction to the sudden and unprecedented fall in employment. 

Our model shows that the drop in the labor force in the USA will be followed by a deflation period. This result does not depend on the trillions of dollars poured into the US economy. The deflation effect lags behind the drop in the labor force by approximately two years. It is worth noting that the previous 4 trillion pushed into the US economy after 2008 did not affect the low inflation rate.  

4/12/20

Rich and poor

The future is hard to see ... But we can say for sure that rich is a relative notation. One cannot be rich when nobody is poor. The society of the full economy automatization can only exist when wast majority gets all they need to survive for free (no job is available). An alternative is the absence of poor people as such. In both cases, wealth loses the main benefit - exploitation - the poor can add nothing at all.   

Поздравляю с Днем космонавтики! Юрий Гагарин - первый космонавт!

Поздравляю всех с Днем космонавтики!

Особые поздравления и самые теплые пожелания здоровья и успехов для
- сотрудников ОКБ завода им. Хруничева, где в 60е годы работал мой отец,  теперь это  ФГУП «ГКНПЦ им. М. В. Хруничева»
- всех знакомых и незнакомых космонавтов и сотрудников институтов и заводов в космической отрасли
- сотрудников, выпускников  и студентов факультета агрофизики и космических исследований  МФТИ


4/10/20

Again and again : Qu'ils mangent de la brioche !

When life shrinks to 4 walls and one screen many processes hidden in the speed of the global world become clear and painful. We see ourselves from within and suffer real feelings. Most of us have nothing to do at home as if we are not individuals but parts of one mad machine. Naked nerves are so sensitive that we feel the weakest signs of false nuances in news, videos, smells, and sounds of the outer world. And we start to hate some people who say something like Maria Antoinette said 330 years ago about hungry French people demanding bread for their children - Qu'ils mangent de la brioche. (Let them eat cakes.)  Her death (guillotine) on October 16, 1793, was terrible. The whole history of misunderstanding between rich and poor repeats again and again.

4/8/20

European Union is strengthening


There is a broader discussion on the EU future after the pandemic. It is related to the problems with cooperation and trust between European Union countries. The lack of joint efforts and help to most suffering countries is considered as the reason for the EU break back into national states or smaller blocks. However, the logic of union growth suggests that such problems are an incredible driver of the strengthening. Nobody will like to meet the next pandemic or any other global crisis in weak and vulnerable national quarters. The real discussion now is the set of measures needed to prepare for a joint reaction to future challenges. They will come anyway. The EU has a strong push to the next level. Do not miss the opportunity to join these efforts.

4/2/20

Coronavirus: nuclear explosion vs nuclear reactor approach


The epidemic is a chain reaction process. One person (nucleus) produces virus-full-droplets (neutrons), which infects (induce fission process) at least one further person (nucleus) and so on. There are two quite different trajectories in a chain reaction - uncontrolled and controlled. The former one is a nuclear explosion or epidemic with mild (or inappropriate) protection of citizens (e.g., season flu). Some countries have chosen almost uncontrolled chain reaction and the daily number of newly infected/deaths increases exponentially (like 20% per day). The chain reaction will naturally stop when all (related) people/nuclei went through reaction.   The latter case is a nuclear power plant generating a stable amount of energy under the strict control of absorbing rods or the current strict measures of self-isolation and quarantine in some countries.
What is the main difference between these two trajectories? Most important, the controlled chain reaction allows 1) to decrease the number of people/nuclei passing through illness/fission; 2) to lower and smooth the released energy/stress for the medical system is and does not crush surrounding media/social connections..
About self-isolation and quarantine. In order to start explosive chain reaction one needs to dramatically increase the density of fission material (e.g., uranium, plutonium). It highly increases the probability for a spontaneously (i.e. in natural radioactive decay) generated neutron to be absorbed by another nucleus. For this purpose, chemical explosives are used. Another possibility is to create a very large plutonium sphere and it will explode by itself at some point. (Do not store your plutonium in large buckets!) Therefore, in order to avoid nuclear explosion one just needs to keep fission material in non-compressed form. For the epidemic, the fission material density is the same as the physical distance between people. What we observe now, people gathering in  larger groups create conditions for explosion trajectory. Unfortunately, this process is spontaneous and probabilistic. For corona-virus, people are already contagious when they have no visible illness-specific features. Hence, any crowd may play the role of the nuclear explosion igniter. Stay safe!

Now on arXiv.org "Effects of stochastic and natural seismic noise on the performance of waveform cross-correlation used to recover low-magnitude seismicity prior to the July 29, 2025, Kamchatka earthquake"

arXiv.org link :  [2607.16226] Effects of stochastic and natural seismic noise on the performance of waveform cross-correlation used to reco...