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"Most of LANL’s best-paid employees are hired from elsewhere, which benefits the region — uh, how, on a net basis?"
Uh, like they spend money on things. This like saying most people that ski in Aspen are not from Aspen, so what economic benefit would they have to Aspen.
"Meanwhile, LANL’s blue-collar jobs are unavailable to many of the people who most need them. It’s a world apart"
False. LANL's blue-collar jobs are a great resource to Northern New Mexicans, thousands of them.
"LANL’s high-income households save, rather than spend, a much higher fraction of their income than other households, and their spending is less local"
Is there any evidence for this? You still have to buy stuff so they are spending. So having no lab means they will spend zero. Again I cannot seem to follow his logic.
"LANL salaries are very high, especially for the region. Aside from making LANL a potent engine of inequality, which has very negative economic and social effects, this creates fewer jobs per dollar than other federal spending, while sucking in precious local talent like a black hole."
Uh what. So precious local talent should have no jobs or less paying jobs rather than getting high LANL salaries. How is having more people working and making money a "negative economic effect"? He seems to really really not understand inequality and how it relates to economics. Suppose Microsoft moves to Haiti, in Mellos world that would make Haiti worse since it would create more wealth inequality. Sure on average more people would have more money but if all you care about is inequality than this is somehow worse. So if everyone had no money then everyone would be equal and that is better.
"LANL was built on the Pajarito Plateau primarily because the site was isolated and “scenic.” LANL’s isolation and “scenic” topography are now intractable challenges to its grandiose plans. Better regional transit — essential regardless — will not overcome LANL’s isolation. To grow as planned, thousands of additional housing units are required in Los Alamos itself. Is Los Alamos ready for that?"
So LANL wants to move the improve regional transport. So Mello says that is bad, but then says we should do it anyway? But if they only way to do that is with LANL than is it not still the best thing to do?
Someone needs to build all those new houses which will be economic boost, stores will have to made, people will have to make money in order for these things to come about. Maybe new housing tracks will made in Espanola which will improve the funding to local schools, improve the roads, etc. I guess Mello hates Espanola.
LANL was not built nor is it funded today to benefit New Mexico. Local benefits are incidental and secondary at best, and they come with heavy costs."
Just as Facebook, Wallstreet, and Microsoft where not built to benefit the California, Washington or New York, yet they do so in secondary way. In Los Alamos case it is with thousands and thousands of jobs, contracts and people spending money.
What is the "heavy cost", can Mello give one example of a heavy cost? He never does and he never will.
"Most of the reasons LANL hasn’t and won’t create economic development derive from its raison d’etre as a nuclear weapons facility. Only a few percent of LANL’s budget goes to unclassified civilian projects (in which LANL’s competence and relative value are doubtful, to say the least)."
The problem is LANL does and has created economic development by definition of creating jobs at LANL and also the numerous spin off jobs, as well as people who have left to create there own local business including the few high tech corps in New Mexico.
LANL unclassified budget is close to 15%, but again this is not even a fair evaluation become many of the high tech innovations from classified work have ended up in unclassified work and technologies and LANL has a whole lot of those if you care to check. Also LANL is still in the top 15 institutes in the United State in terms of basic science which can be checked easily by lookin at its publication output, the faculty positions that their postdocs get every year, the faculty positions that some LANL staff leave for every year, the faculty from Universities all over the world that come to work LANL. There hundreds of Phd students from all over the United States doing their thesis work at LANL. Sorry Greg but you are flat out wrong on this, these numbers of have been provided in detail over and over again this and other blogs over the years and you know this.
" An “aura of apartheid” dominates the region, even in tony Santa Fe. Where’s the “thriving?”"
New Mexico is not South Africa, there is no aura of Apartheid, do you even know how Apartheid operated?
"LANL’s hinterland remains highly unequal and poor,"
Take LANL away and it will become both poorer but probably more equal. I doubt that is what we New Mexicans want.
"what does the region have to show for the money and talent poured into LANL? What has been built for people? For New Mexico?"
Uh, like the thousands and thousands of Northern New Mexicans that have gotten a good job and made a nice life in New Mexico as opposed to having to leave or have no job? I think people count for something, Greg does not.
"Besides permanent pollution and more than 1,600 federally documented occupational deaths"
WTF? In 75 years that would mean 20 people at year are dying at LANL? You would think someone might have heard about that. I think the last death at LANL was like 25 years ago with an electrical accident.
Sorry Mr Mello but when you say crap like this it just makes me dismiss everything else you have to say.
His use of the term Apartheid makes no sense, as Apartheid which was a South African political systems was based on a set of LAWS that treated people differently on race. There are no such laws at LANL and anyone can work at LANL including anyone from New Mexico or the United States.
He also is very confused about wealth inequality. Unequal wealth is not a driver of poverty, unemployment is the driver. You can have a very wealthy community with everyone in the upper and middle class but still have large inequality just as you can have community where everyone is in poverty but there complete equality. Mello has no knowledge of economics whatsoever.
Mello has a poor understanding of economics. To be more precise he seems to know a little but is incapable of understanding the next level of sophistication and is outstanding example of the Dunning-Kruger effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
"the Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people assess their cognitive ability as greater than it is. It is related to the cognitive bias of illusory superiority and comes from the inability of people to recognize their lack of ability."
Mello often fixates on wealth inequality but fails to understand that that metric alone is useless without taking into account other variables like overall wealth, ergodicity, local versus national wealth distributions. There is not a single economist that believes wealth inequality alone creates poverty, it is just a "tad" more complex than that and strongly depends on the situation. Joseph Stiglitz is a Nobel prize winning economists who studies just this topic. I would strongly suggest you read his book "The Price of Inequality" in which many of these issues are raised and he discusses the subtleties of inequality which you need to understand and how it has to be taken with other measures. Time and time again this and other books point out that you also have to take into account net wealth creation ect and that you can have even large wealth inequalities and wealth creation for more people. In the case of New Mexico LANL, the labs and the bases are clearly an example system which benefit the community in terms of employment for more people but at the same time can create more economic inequality (locally), there are all sorts of examples of this and Stiglitz points this out. In fact Stiglitz would argue that having the labs and bases in New Mexico is example of system which creates more equality overall because instead of having high tech jobs all concentrated in certain places in California or Mass, it allows for them to be in places like New Mexico. Mello does not understand the difference between local, national and global inequality and Stiglitz makes this point very clear. For example if you remove the labs from New Mexico, you in fact create more wealth equality in New Mexico, but you actually create more wealth inequality for New Mexico in comparison to the US since New Mexico would be even poorer than other states, and whatever state that the lab moves to will be richer, so that New Mexico becomes more unequal to the rest of the nation. Mello simply does not understand "inequality" in the way that it is used in economics which is way he comes to such contradictory conclusions.
Have you ever seen those shows about people who believe the earth flat. These folks are not completely stupid people, they have understand just a few things but not others. They may understand the concept of centrifugal force and say that we should flying off the earth. Or they get that water stays level thus they assume that water is always flat so it cannot curve. With that they go on to create highly elaborate stories that make no sense and cannot be dissuaded of their ideas even when presented with data or numbers. They just keep going back the same few but wrong points that they think they understand.
Greg Mello is an economic version of a flat earther.
Ok, maybe I have been too hard on Greg. He is not the most ignorant person in New Mexico when it comes to economics since that honor has to go to some guy named Erich Kuerschner who also seems to be associated with the LASG. I don't know anything about the guy but he sure as hell is no PhD holder in economics if you know what I mean. Some of his stuff is hilarious. Take these little gems from the Santa Fe New Mexican.
"It would be VERY helpful if the paper could report on whether LANL contributes to raising or lowering or lowering median household income."
Well there is this thing called addition and division. (Money brought in by LANL + New Mexico Money)/N_pop > New Mexico Monay/N_pop. Ok lets do it with real numbers just for fun, we will keep it real simple for you ( 1 + 1)/1 > 1/1 or 2 > 1. Ok Erich, get it now. Yes having more money increases the "average" household income. I think the paper just assumed everyone understood that.
"that increase of the few comes at the expense -is theft from. as DDE put it) the rest of the population. "
This is true of say bank robbers, but how on earth is this true of Los Alamos? LANL creates jobs for people of New Mexico and pays them. Los Alamos is not sending people on horseback to rob banks in Santa Fe. Theft has an actual meaning Erich, look it up in the dictionary some time.
,"but as economic reasoning suggests (all the way back to Adam Smith, one of the first to recognize that it is productive OUPUT, not money or job that is the source of wealth,) "
This IS NOT what Adam Smith said. Adam Smith was trying to understand how to quantify wealth and trade, his point was that money is a measure of productive output along with many other factors, that is why just printing money will not work. (Many others going back to ancient Chinese understood this well before Smith, but Smith started to show how these ideas could be understood in quantifiable way). Adam Smith also understood that a nations productive output also depended on it being stable against military threats. Money spent by the nation on Los Alamos provides for that security that allows for the economic stability and growth of the nation. Los Alamos is even more unique in that it can be argued that NW have actually created stability on the global level which can be seen by the fact that there has not been a war between any of the earths major powers since WWII. This stability has reduced poverty not just in the United States but all over the world. In some ways the money invested in Los Alamos can be argued to have led to the some of the most productive outcomes ever.
Sorry,you forgot that N_pop would greater with LANL than in its absence. D+
12/05/2019 2:39 PM
Props to you for actually checking/thinking about these numbers ;) We need more of this
Anyway
N_pop + expsilon can be approximated as N_pop.
I suppose if you LANL added like 200k people who make less than minima wage than you could in fact have situation where it actually lowers the average income of Northern New Mexico. However it adds 12k who make a wage far above the average so it is still a net gain. The 12k in turn spend money which circulates the wealth. Mello somehow says LANL people spend less but gives no data for this. They spend on all the standard things like food, plumbing, maintenance ect. I think Mello is confused about data on debt. It turns out that most households have average of 8k they owe to credit cards ect. If you have an income of 100k that is like 8%, while if you have in income 40k that 20%, so these think that someone means people with 8% spend less, when in fact they could be spending more. Once again Mello simply has no understanding of statistics, economics or debt.
From what I can gather his argument is that New Mexico is a poor state, LANL is in New Mexico therefore LANL makes New Mexico poor. He never provides the data that would show any kind of cause or effect. Road runners live New Mexico, New Mexico is poor therefore road runners make New Mexico poor. Again no cause or effect.
Now intuitively one would think adding higher paying jobs to a region that otherwise would not have them would increase income on average. This makes sense and is how literally every state and city approaches income. Now one could argue that LANL is paid with taxpayer money, however this the nationwide taxpayer base not just New Mexico, additionally since New Mexico is poorer they pay less anyway, so the net effect is still more money into New Mexico that it otherwise would not get. As for the argument that New Mexico is poor, one can always say that taking LANL away would make it even poorer. Mello seems not to understand bounds either. I guess the argument would go, New Mexico is ranked 50th in terms of wealth, therefore if we further reduce the income by New Mexico by 50% it would still be ranked 50th so nothing has changed? Well yes something did change you just made everything much worse.
Again I am not sure if Mello simply does not understand these things are deliberately tries to deceive people is not clear. He is also incorrect or dishonest about the amount of science done at LANL and just well ranked LANL is in terms of science, which can be measured in terms of awards, publications, postdoc, student placement, where people at LANL speak, and so on . LANL is a top scientific presence in the US systems when actually metrics are used which again Mello refuses to do.
Mello can argue about the ethics of LANL and what it does but he should at least try to be honest and accurate about all aspects of the lab. Even on the ethics side there are plenty of arguments that LANL is actually a force for good and has reduced conflicts and saved lives.
N_pop would greater with LANL than in its absence.
I guess you are saying that all 13K of the workers are all from out of state and just moved to Los Alamos?
Of the 13 thousand people who work at LANL more than 60% are people born in New Mexico. Only 19% or LANL workers have a Phd, at best 20% additional workers come from somewhere else. Even of the 19% Phd's about 15% of these are from New Mexico or people who where born from New Mexico and where educated elsewhere and came back. I would guess 2/3 of LANL workers are born and raised in NM, maybe even more.
The idea that a majority of LANL workers come from out of state is just false. Another Mello falsehood.
I never realized how many esteemed economists are working at NNSA labs. Perhaps another Nobel is in store!
12/07/2019 5:53 AM
I always realized the number of economists working for the Los Alamos Study Group is zero. By the way LANL has long history in studying nonlinear dynamics, chaos and complexity. In fact many of the advances in this field came out of LANL. Ever hear of Mitchell Feigenbaum, who did his greatest work at LANL which in fact was relevant to economics and was consistently considered as a possible Nobel prize winner. If you had ever bothered to check you have seen that many papers for LANL on complex system that actually study models of economics, network science, complexity, mathematics and social models. So yes there are a number of LANL people that actually understand not only economics and applied mathematics but have actually had an impact in the field.
Are you the same guy who said LANL has only 0.007 budget dedicated to energy science? Do you know about all the work done on smart grids, power grid networks, nonlinear dynamics done by LANL in this fields, all the work on solar cells, fluid dynamics the very recent high profile awards given out to LANL people just this past week in the field of energy. What about all that work on climate modeling, ocean modeling. What about the hundreds of faculty that come to LANL every year to collaborate LANL? Of these people that come to LANL, guess what it also includes economists. What about the hundreds of PhD students who are doing their thesis work at LANL on energy, complexity, biology, physics, network science, and yes even economics. You claim yet another Nobel prize is in store, I take you have no idea that LANL has in fact done Nobel prize work. Ever heard of neutrinos.
You simply have no idea what is done at LANL, how science is done, how economics connects to other fields of science and applied mathematics.
"I never realized how many esteemed economists are working at NNSA labs"
You seem to be just a tad unaware of LANL's role in complexity science and its impact on economics. You may have heard of this thing called the Santa Fe Institute (SFI), it has a large component in economics and was started by people at Los Alamos, in fact at SFI right now are people that came from Los Alamos and still work with Los Alamos. Another name you might know is Doyne Farmer who was a head of a complexity group at LANL, guess he is now a professor of....Economics at Oxford. Los Alamos also has the Center for Nonlinear studies where they work on many of these things. In a simple 1 min search I found just these papers from Los Alamos related to economics and trade. They also have the Advanced Network Science Initiative
Correlations and Clustering in Wholesale Electricity Markets T Cui, F Caravelli, C Ududec Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2018How production networks amplify economic growth J McNerney, C Savoie, F Caravelli, JD Farmer arXiv preprint arXiv:1810.07774 Emergent inequality and self-organized social classes in a network of power and frustration B Mahault, A Saxena, C Nisoli PloS one 12 (2), e0171832 Scaling in tournaments E Ben-Naim, S Redner, F Vazquez EPL (Europhysics Letters) 77 (3), 30005 On the structure of competitive societies E Ben-Naim, F Vazquez, S Redner The European Physical Journal B 49, 531 Dvijotham, K., Chertkov, M., Van Hentenryck, P., Vuffray, M., & Misra, S. (2017). Graphical models for optimal power flow. Constraints, 22(1), 24-49. Dorfler, F., Chertkov, M., & Bullo, F. (2013). Synchronization in complex oscillator networks and smart grids. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110(6), 2005-2010.
"I never realized how many esteemed economists are working at NNSA labs."
Has it ever occurred to you that there are a lot things you don't realize or understand about the NNSA labs, how classified and unclassified research are done, how it fits in NNSA labs and national security. I take you don't realize how much research done Universities is also tied into national security work. There is a whole lot to the world of science you don't understand.
Funny how numbers get twisted to fit one's beliefs.
12/07/2019 2:07 PM
Can you name a single "number" that the Mello has ever used back up his narrative that was actually relevant. Numbers and data actually mean something in science and economics just as certain concepts and relations have exact and clear meaning. I am not sure what you are really talking about but LASG has stated things that are provably incorrect. This has nothing to do with twisting anything. If the get even the most basic things wrong it casts doubt on anything they have to say.
This is a letter posted in the Santa Fe newspaper.
Recently, The New Mexican’s fine opinion page contained a My View by Greg Mello (“LANL expansion offers more false hope,” Dec. 1). Although I share a skepticism towards Los Alamos National Laboratory with Mr. Mello, I disagree with his premise that everything LANL does is sinful, evil and negative.
I think his disdain of the lab is based on pacifism, an enlightened concept that believes violence is unnecessary and all disputes should be settled peacefully. Nuclear weapons built at the lab are, by definition, the opposite of this concept.
Is there a middle ground in these contradictory concepts? I’m optimistic there is, and I hope I’m not alone, but no one has found this elusive middle ground. Perhaps LANL with its seemingly endless resources and money could find it. The question is: Are they looking?
"I think his disdain of the lab is based on pacifism, an enlightened concept that believes violence is unnecessary and all disputes should be settled peacefully"
I am not sure this is an "enlightened" concept. Although desirable, it is fairly clear that there are situations in which ultimately things cannot be settled peacefully. In any case very few American believe we should give up nuclear weapons. I would also add that way more than 50% of Europeans also wish the United States to maintain an arsenal. Heck even Japan wants us to maintain an arsenal as counter to China. You can argue this point all you want but the reality is NW are going to continue to be part of the United States and the vast majority of the people want that.
Arguing the morality of NW is interesting and if one has a issue with it on a moral ground one should stick with that issue.
The problem with Mello is and the LASG is that they go outside of making moral arguments and make out and out false claims. For example (1) is that LANL is part of apartheid, this is completely false by definition. (2) That LANL does not benefit the local economy. Again this is simply false sort by definition but there are even studies showing just how much impact LANL has on New Mexico. There is NO study whatsoever saying LANL does not have a positive impact on the local economy. (3) LANL only does NW weapon. This is just false and is easily checked by looking up publications for LANL, awards, and so on. It also leaves out serval other important points, like for example LANL does research on chemistry related to waste storage and aging. This work is actually part of the LANL research and even if we got rid of all NW's would have to be done to clean of legacy materials in New Mexico and elsewhere, I would assume even LASG wants this cleaned up. There are may other examples of this. (4) Mello also makes the charge that somehow LANL science is not science or not good science. Again this is simply nonsense and could be refuted by simply asking any professor of science at a any research University where LANL stands in terms of science. Also all one has to to is look into the number of papers published at LANL and compare it other DOE labs and major Universities.
A final point that is well known any historian of science is that any time cutting edge research has to be done at extremes even for weapons, detection, surveillance, or evasion, in always leads to other work and breakthroughs well beyond the initial objective. LANL already has long history in this in terms of radiation detectors, earthquake monitoring, fluid dynamics, materials at extremes, nonlinear response and science, as well as high performance computing.
LASG and Mello have made so many false statements that makes one wonder if they simply are that ignorant or that they are lying. I tend to think they are just dishonest, this can be seen in the way they phrase things. The most obvious one is the apartheid characterization, even Mello must know that this wrong. Over the years we have see many examples of this. What makes it so odd is that if the LASG really has a problem with LANL on a moral ground you would also think they would have a problem with morality of lying. Of course the other possibility is the Mello is not even a pacifist but an opportunists who is somehow is profiting in terms of money or ego but could really care less about the morality of NW. I know that last part is harsh characterization but con artists have a tendency to lie and eventually get caught. I think we are starting to see the tide turn on the LASG and even people in Santa Fe are becoming rather uncomfortable with them.
NM’s leading Dems want you to love plutonium, Abq Jr Dec 2
"It’s quite a mistake to identify nuclear weapons, or plutonium, with “innovation” or “economic development.” That’s decades-old corporate propaganda, which for far too long has taken the place of a strong, sustained focus on building resilient communities that care for a living landscape."
This is a claim made with no data to back it up. Like it or not NW have been involved with a huge amount of innovation in science, computing, chemistry, geophysics, plasma, space science, rocket science, guidance systems, propulsion, accelerators and materials science. In fact weapons science across the board has lead to huge innovations. Name some random high tech device and odds are it was initially funded by the military in some form or another.
As for economic development, yes there NW also leads to economics development, be it form the jobs it creates or the spin off innovations that have have come out of it. We can go through these innovations if you like.
"Many of these well-intentioned people do not realize that without strong restraint right now, this toboggan will go far and fast down a very steep slope with a cliff at the bottom. We and our children are on it."
Mello makes this off the wall claim again without any discussion of how it could possibly be true.
You argue about the morality of NW and you can even argue if we need new pits, the number of new pits and can LANL actually do the job. Those are all good questions, however saying nonsense like NW does not lead to innovations if false, saying NW have not lead to economic development again is just false.
"I think we are starting to see the tide turn on the LASG and even people in Santa Fe are becoming rather uncomfortable with them. 12/08/2019 10:36 PM"
What evidence is there to support this claim? My belief is that ignorance of science is an inexhaustible resource in Santa Fe.
23 comments:
Mello hates the people of New Mexico, he looks down on them and sees them as sources to bolster his ego. Mello has always hated New Mexicans.
"Most of LANL’s best-paid employees are hired from elsewhere, which benefits the region — uh, how, on a net basis?"
Uh, like they spend money on things. This like saying most people that ski in Aspen are not from Aspen, so what economic benefit would they have to Aspen.
"Meanwhile, LANL’s blue-collar jobs are unavailable to many of the people who most need them. It’s a world apart"
False. LANL's blue-collar jobs are a great resource to Northern New Mexicans, thousands of them.
"LANL’s high-income households save, rather than spend, a much higher fraction of their income than other households, and their spending is less local"
Is there any evidence for this? You still have to buy stuff so they are spending. So having no lab means they will spend zero.
Again I cannot seem to follow his logic.
"LANL salaries are very high, especially for the region. Aside from making LANL a potent engine of inequality, which has very negative economic and social effects, this creates fewer jobs per dollar than other federal spending, while sucking in precious local talent like a black hole."
Uh what. So precious local talent should have no jobs or less paying jobs rather than getting high LANL salaries. How is having more people working and making money a "negative economic effect"? He seems to really really not understand inequality and how it relates to economics. Suppose Microsoft moves to Haiti, in Mellos world that would make Haiti worse since it would create more wealth inequality. Sure on average more people would have more money but if all you care about is inequality than this is somehow worse. So if everyone had no money then everyone would be equal and that is better.
"LANL was built on the Pajarito Plateau primarily because the site was isolated and “scenic.” LANL’s isolation and “scenic” topography are now intractable challenges to its grandiose plans. Better regional transit — essential regardless — will not overcome LANL’s isolation. To grow as planned, thousands of additional housing units are required in Los Alamos itself. Is Los Alamos ready for that?"
So LANL wants to move the improve regional transport. So Mello says that is bad, but then says we should do it anyway? But if they only way to do that is with LANL than is it not still the best thing to do?
Someone needs to build all those new houses which will be economic boost, stores will have to made, people will have to make money in order for these things to come about. Maybe new housing tracks will made in Espanola which will improve the funding to local schools, improve the roads, etc. I guess Mello hates Espanola.
LANL was not built nor is it funded today to benefit New Mexico. Local benefits are incidental and secondary at best, and they come with heavy costs."
Just as Facebook, Wallstreet, and Microsoft where not built to benefit the California, Washington or New York, yet they do
so in secondary way. In Los Alamos case it is with thousands and thousands of jobs, contracts and people spending money.
What is the "heavy cost", can Mello give one example of a heavy cost? He never does and he never will.
"Most of the reasons LANL hasn’t and won’t create economic development derive from its raison d’etre as a nuclear weapons facility. Only a few percent of LANL’s budget goes to unclassified civilian projects (in which LANL’s competence and relative value are doubtful, to say the least)."
The problem is LANL does and has created economic development by definition of creating jobs at LANL and also the numerous spin off jobs, as well as people who have left to create there own local business including the few high tech corps in New Mexico.
LANL unclassified budget is close to 15%, but again this is not even a fair evaluation become many of the high tech innovations from classified work have ended up in unclassified work and technologies and LANL has a whole lot of those if you care to check. Also LANL is still in the top 15 institutes in the United State in terms of basic science which can be checked easily by lookin at its publication output, the faculty positions that their postdocs get every year, the faculty positions that some LANL staff leave for every year, the faculty from Universities all over the world that come to work LANL. There hundreds of Phd students from all over the United States doing their thesis work at LANL. Sorry Greg but you are flat out wrong on this, these numbers of have been provided in detail over and over again this and other blogs over the years and you know this.
" An “aura of apartheid” dominates the region, even in tony Santa Fe. Where’s the “thriving?”"
New Mexico is not South Africa, there is no aura of Apartheid, do you even know how Apartheid operated?
"LANL’s hinterland remains highly unequal and poor,"
Take LANL away and it will become both poorer but probably more equal. I doubt that is what we New Mexicans want.
"what does the region have to show for the money and talent poured into LANL? What has been built for people? For New Mexico?"
Uh, like the thousands and thousands of Northern New Mexicans that have gotten a good job and made a nice life in New Mexico as opposed to having to leave or have no job? I think people count for something, Greg does not.
The real question is why this paper continues to publish his uninformed garbage. At some point, he must have lost all credibility.
"Besides permanent pollution and more than 1,600 federally documented occupational deaths"
WTF? In 75 years that would mean 20 people at year are dying at LANL? You would think someone might have heard about that. I think the last death at LANL was like 25 years ago with an electrical accident.
Sorry Mr Mello but when you say crap like this it just makes me dismiss everything else you have to say.
His use of the term Apartheid makes no sense, as Apartheid which was a South African political systems was based on a set of LAWS that treated people differently on race. There are no such laws at LANL and anyone can work at LANL including anyone from New Mexico or the United States.
He also is very confused about wealth inequality. Unequal wealth is not a driver of poverty, unemployment is the driver. You can have a very wealthy community with everyone in the upper and middle class but still have large inequality just as you can have community where everyone is in poverty but there complete equality. Mello has no knowledge of economics whatsoever.
Mello has a poor understanding of economics. To be more precise he seems to know a little but is incapable of understanding the next level of sophistication and is outstanding example of the
Dunning-Kruger effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
"the Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people assess their cognitive ability as greater than it is. It is related to the cognitive bias of illusory superiority and comes from the inability of people to recognize their lack of ability."
Mello often fixates on wealth inequality but fails to understand that that metric alone is useless without taking into account other variables like overall wealth, ergodicity, local versus national wealth distributions. There is not a single economist that believes wealth inequality alone creates poverty, it is just a "tad" more complex than that and strongly depends on the situation. Joseph Stiglitz is a Nobel prize winning economists who studies just this topic. I would strongly suggest you read his book "The Price of Inequality" in which many of these issues are raised and he discusses the subtleties of inequality which you need to understand and how it has to be taken with other measures. Time and time again this and other books point out that you also have to take into account net wealth creation ect and that you can have even large wealth inequalities and wealth creation for more people. In the case of New Mexico LANL, the labs and the bases are clearly an example system which benefit the community in terms of employment for more people but at the same time can create more economic inequality (locally), there are all sorts of examples of this and Stiglitz points this out. In fact Stiglitz would argue that having the labs and bases in New Mexico is example of system which creates more equality overall because instead of having high tech jobs all concentrated in certain places in California or Mass, it allows for them to be in places like New Mexico. Mello does not understand the difference between local, national and global inequality and Stiglitz makes this point very clear. For example if you remove the labs from New Mexico, you in fact create more wealth equality in New Mexico, but you actually create more wealth inequality for New Mexico in comparison to the US since New Mexico would be even poorer than other states, and whatever state that the lab moves to will be richer, so that New Mexico becomes more unequal to the rest of the nation. Mello simply does not understand "inequality" in the way that it is used in economics which is way he comes to such contradictory conclusions.
These comments should be in letters to the Editor of the New Mexican, not (just) on this blog.
Have you ever seen those shows about people who believe the earth flat. These folks are not completely stupid people, they have understand just a few things but not others. They may understand the concept of centrifugal force and say that we should flying off the earth. Or they get that water stays level thus they assume that water is always flat so it cannot curve. With that they go on to create highly elaborate stories that make no sense and cannot be dissuaded of their ideas even when presented with data or numbers. They just keep going back the same few but wrong points that they think they understand.
Greg Mello is an economic version of a flat earther.
Ok, maybe I have been too hard on Greg. He is not the most ignorant person in New Mexico when it comes to economics since that honor has to go to some guy named Erich Kuerschner who also seems to be associated with the LASG. I don't know anything about the guy but he sure as hell is no PhD holder in economics if you know what I mean. Some of his stuff is hilarious. Take these little gems from the Santa Fe New Mexican.
"It would be VERY helpful if the paper could report on whether LANL contributes to raising or lowering or lowering median household income."
Well there is this thing called addition and division. (Money brought in by LANL + New Mexico Money)/N_pop > New Mexico Monay/N_pop. Ok lets do it with real numbers just for fun, we will keep it real simple for you ( 1 + 1)/1 > 1/1 or 2 > 1. Ok Erich, get it now. Yes having more money increases the "average" household income. I think the paper just assumed everyone understood that.
"that increase of the few comes at the expense -is theft from. as DDE put it) the rest of the population. "
This is true of say bank robbers, but how on earth is this true of Los Alamos? LANL creates jobs for people of New Mexico and pays them. Los Alamos is not sending people on horseback to rob banks in Santa Fe. Theft has an actual meaning Erich, look it up in the dictionary some time.
,"but as economic reasoning suggests (all the way back to Adam Smith, one of the first to recognize that it is productive OUPUT, not money or job that is the source of wealth,) "
This IS NOT what Adam Smith said. Adam Smith was trying to understand how to quantify wealth and trade, his point was that money is a measure of productive output along with many other factors, that is why just printing money will not work. (Many others going back to ancient Chinese understood this well before Smith, but Smith started to show how these ideas could be understood in quantifiable way). Adam Smith also understood that a nations productive output also depended on it being stable against military threats. Money spent by the nation on Los Alamos provides for that security that allows for the economic stability and growth of the nation. Los Alamos is even more unique in that it can be argued that NW have actually created stability on the global level which can be seen by the fact that there has not been a war between any of the earths major powers since WWII. This stability has reduced poverty not just in the United States but all over the world. In some ways the money invested in Los Alamos can be argued to have led to the some of the most productive outcomes ever.
12/03/2019 8:23 PM
Sorry,you forgot that N_pop would greater with LANL than in its absence. D+
Sorry,you forgot that N_pop would greater with LANL than in its absence. D+
12/05/2019 2:39 PM
Props to you for actually checking/thinking about these numbers ;) We need more of this
Anyway
N_pop + expsilon can be approximated as N_pop.
I suppose if you LANL added like 200k people who make less than minima wage than you could in fact have situation where it actually lowers the average income of Northern New Mexico. However it adds 12k who make a wage far above the average so it is still a net gain. The 12k in turn spend money which circulates the wealth. Mello somehow says LANL people spend less but gives no data for this. They spend on all the standard things like food, plumbing, maintenance ect. I think Mello is confused about data on debt. It turns out that most households have average of 8k they owe to credit cards ect. If you have an income of 100k that is like 8%, while if you have in income 40k that 20%, so these think that someone means people with 8% spend less, when in fact they could be spending more. Once again Mello simply has no understanding of statistics, economics or debt.
From what I can gather his argument is that New Mexico is a poor state, LANL is in New Mexico therefore LANL makes New Mexico poor. He never provides the data that would show any kind of cause or effect. Road runners live New Mexico, New Mexico is poor therefore road runners make New Mexico poor. Again no cause or effect.
Now intuitively one would think adding higher paying jobs to a region that otherwise would not have them would increase
income on average. This makes sense and is how literally every state and city approaches income. Now one could argue that LANL is paid with taxpayer money, however this the nationwide taxpayer base not just New Mexico, additionally since New Mexico is poorer they pay less anyway, so the net effect is still more money into New Mexico that it otherwise would not get.
As for the argument that New Mexico is poor, one can always say that taking LANL away would make it even poorer.
Mello seems not to understand bounds either. I guess the argument would go, New Mexico is ranked 50th in terms of wealth, therefore if we further reduce the income by New Mexico by 50% it would still be ranked 50th so nothing has changed? Well yes something did change you just made everything much worse.
Again I am not sure if Mello simply does not understand these things are deliberately tries to deceive people is not clear.
He is also incorrect or dishonest about the amount of science done at LANL and just well ranked LANL is in terms of science, which can be measured in terms of awards, publications, postdoc, student placement, where people at LANL speak, and so on . LANL is a top scientific presence in the US systems when actually metrics are used which again Mello refuses to do.
Mello can argue about the ethics of LANL and what it does but he should at least try to be honest and accurate about all aspects of the lab. Even on the ethics side there are plenty of arguments that LANL is actually a force for good and has reduced conflicts and saved lives.
N_pop would greater with LANL than in its absence.
I guess you are saying that all 13K of the workers are all from out of state and just moved to Los Alamos?
Of the 13 thousand people who work at LANL more than 60% are people born in New Mexico. Only 19% or LANL workers have a Phd, at best 20% additional workers come from somewhere else. Even of the 19% Phd's about 15% of these are from New Mexico or people who where born from New Mexico and where educated elsewhere and came back. I would guess 2/3 of LANL workers are born and raised in NM, maybe even more.
The idea that a majority of LANL workers come from out of state is just false. Another Mello falsehood.
I never realized how many esteemed economists are working at NNSA labs. Perhaps another Nobel is in store!
I never realized how many esteemed economists are working at NNSA labs. Perhaps another Nobel is in store!
12/07/2019 5:53 AM
I always realized the number of economists working for the Los Alamos Study Group is zero. By the way LANL has long history in studying nonlinear dynamics, chaos and complexity. In fact many of the advances in this field came out of LANL. Ever hear of Mitchell Feigenbaum, who did his greatest work at LANL which in fact was relevant to economics and was consistently considered as a possible Nobel prize winner. If you had ever bothered to check you have seen that many papers for LANL on complex system that actually study models of economics, network science, complexity, mathematics and social models. So yes there are a number of LANL people that actually understand not only economics and applied mathematics but have actually had an impact in the field.
Are you the same guy who said LANL has only 0.007 budget dedicated to energy science? Do you know about all the work done on smart grids, power grid networks, nonlinear dynamics done by LANL in this fields, all the work on solar cells, fluid dynamics the very recent high profile awards given out to LANL people just this past week in the field of energy. What about all that work on climate modeling, ocean modeling. What about the hundreds of faculty that come to LANL every year to collaborate LANL?
Of these people that come to LANL, guess what it also includes economists. What about the hundreds of PhD students who are doing their thesis work at LANL on energy, complexity, biology, physics, network science, and yes even economics. You claim yet another Nobel prize is in store, I take you have no idea that LANL has in fact done Nobel prize work. Ever heard of neutrinos.
You simply have no idea what is done at LANL, how science is done, how economics connects to other fields of science and applied mathematics.
Have a good day.
"I never realized how many esteemed economists are working at NNSA labs"
You seem to be just a tad unaware of LANL's role in complexity science and its impact on economics. You may have heard of this thing called the Santa Fe Institute (SFI), it has a large component in economics and was started by people at Los Alamos, in fact at SFI right now are people that came from Los Alamos and still work with Los Alamos. Another name you might know is Doyne Farmer who was a head of a complexity group at LANL, guess he is now a professor of....Economics at Oxford. Los Alamos also has the Center for Nonlinear studies where they work on many of these things. In a simple 1 min search I found just these papers from Los Alamos related to economics and trade. They also have the Advanced Network Science Initiative
Correlations and Clustering in Wholesale Electricity Markets
T Cui, F Caravelli, C Ududec
Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2018How production networks amplify economic growth
J McNerney, C Savoie, F Caravelli, JD Farmer
arXiv preprint arXiv:1810.07774
Emergent inequality and self-organized social classes in a network of power and frustration
B Mahault, A Saxena, C Nisoli
PloS one 12 (2), e0171832
Scaling in tournaments
E Ben-Naim, S Redner, F Vazquez
EPL (Europhysics Letters) 77 (3), 30005
On the structure of competitive societies
E Ben-Naim, F Vazquez, S Redner
The European Physical Journal B 49, 531
Dvijotham, K., Chertkov, M., Van Hentenryck, P., Vuffray, M., & Misra, S. (2017). Graphical models for optimal power flow. Constraints, 22(1), 24-49.
Dorfler, F., Chertkov, M., & Bullo, F. (2013). Synchronization in complex oscillator networks and smart grids. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110(6), 2005-2010.
Funny how numbers get twisted to fit one's beliefs.
"I never realized how many esteemed economists are working at NNSA labs."
Has it ever occurred to you that there are a lot things you don't realize or understand about the NNSA labs, how classified and unclassified research are done, how it fits in NNSA labs and national security. I take you don't realize how much research done Universities is also tied into national security work. There is a whole lot to the world of science you don't understand.
Funny how numbers get twisted to fit one's beliefs.
12/07/2019 2:07 PM
Can you name a single "number" that the Mello has ever used back up his narrative that was actually relevant. Numbers and data actually mean something in science and economics just as certain concepts and relations have exact and clear meaning. I am not sure what you are really talking about but LASG has stated things that are provably incorrect. This has nothing to do with twisting anything. If the get even the most basic things wrong it casts doubt on anything they have to say.
This is a letter posted in the Santa Fe newspaper.
Recently, The New Mexican’s fine opinion page contained a My View by Greg Mello (“LANL expansion offers more false hope,” Dec. 1). Although I share a skepticism towards Los Alamos National Laboratory with Mr. Mello, I disagree with his premise that everything LANL does is sinful, evil and negative.
I think his disdain of the lab is based on pacifism, an enlightened concept that believes violence is unnecessary and all disputes should be settled peacefully. Nuclear weapons built at the lab are, by definition, the opposite of this concept.
Is there a middle ground in these contradictory concepts? I’m optimistic there is, and I hope I’m not alone, but no one has found this elusive middle ground. Perhaps LANL with its seemingly endless resources and money could find it. The question is: Are they looking?
A couple of points in the letter.
"I think his disdain of the lab is based on pacifism, an enlightened concept that believes violence is unnecessary and all disputes should be settled peacefully"
I am not sure this is an "enlightened" concept. Although desirable, it is fairly clear that there are situations in which ultimately things cannot be settled peacefully. In any case very few American believe we should give up nuclear weapons. I would also add that way more than 50% of Europeans also wish the United States to maintain an arsenal. Heck even Japan wants us to maintain an arsenal as counter to China. You can argue this point all you want but the reality is NW are going to continue to be part of the United States and the vast majority of the people want that.
Arguing the morality of NW is interesting and if one has a issue with it on a moral ground one should stick with that issue.
The problem with Mello is and the LASG is that they go outside of making moral arguments and make out and out false claims.
For example (1) is that LANL is part of apartheid, this is completely false by definition. (2) That LANL does not benefit the local economy. Again this is simply false sort by definition but there are even studies showing just how much impact LANL has on New Mexico. There is NO study whatsoever saying LANL does not have a positive impact on the local economy. (3) LANL only does NW weapon. This is just false and is easily checked by looking up publications for LANL, awards, and so on. It also leaves out serval other important points, like for example LANL does research on chemistry related to waste storage and aging. This work is actually part of the LANL research and even if we got rid of all NW's would have to be done to clean of legacy materials in New Mexico and elsewhere, I would assume even LASG wants this cleaned up. There are may other examples of this. (4) Mello also makes the charge that somehow LANL science is not science or not good science. Again this is simply nonsense and could be refuted by simply asking any professor of science at a any research University where LANL stands in terms of science. Also all one has to to is look into the number of papers published at LANL and compare it other DOE labs and major Universities.
A final point that is well known any historian of science is that any time cutting edge research has to be done at extremes even for weapons, detection, surveillance, or evasion, in always leads to other work and breakthroughs well beyond the initial objective. LANL already has long history in this in terms of radiation detectors, earthquake monitoring, fluid dynamics, materials at extremes, nonlinear response and science, as well as high performance computing.
LASG and Mello have made so many false statements that makes one wonder if they simply are that ignorant or that they are lying. I tend to think they are just dishonest, this can be seen in the way they phrase things. The most obvious one is the apartheid characterization, even Mello must know that this wrong. Over the years we have see many examples of this. What makes it so odd is that if the LASG really has a problem with LANL on a moral ground you would also think they would have a problem with morality of lying. Of course the other possibility is the Mello is not even a pacifist but an opportunists who is somehow is profiting in terms of money or ego but could really care less about the morality of NW. I know that last part is harsh characterization but con artists have a tendency to lie and eventually get caught. I think we are starting to see the tide turn on the LASG and even people in Santa Fe are becoming rather uncomfortable with them.
Mellos at it again
NM’s leading Dems want you to love plutonium, Abq Jr Dec 2
"It’s quite a mistake to identify nuclear weapons, or plutonium, with “innovation” or “economic development.” That’s decades-old corporate propaganda, which for far too long has taken the place of a strong, sustained focus on building resilient communities that care for a living landscape."
This is a claim made with no data to back it up. Like it or not NW have been involved with a huge amount of innovation in science, computing, chemistry, geophysics, plasma, space science, rocket science, guidance systems, propulsion, accelerators and materials science. In fact weapons science across the board has lead to huge innovations. Name some random high tech device and odds are it was initially funded by the military in some form or another.
As for economic development, yes there NW also leads to economics development, be it form the jobs it creates or the spin off innovations that have have come out of it. We can go through these innovations if you like.
"Many of these well-intentioned people do not realize that without strong restraint right now, this toboggan will go far and fast down a very steep slope with a cliff at the bottom. We and our children are on it."
Mello makes this off the wall claim again without any discussion of how it could possibly be true.
You argue about the morality of NW and you can even argue if we need new pits, the number of new pits and can LANL actually do the job. Those are all good questions, however saying nonsense like NW does not lead to innovations if false, saying NW have not lead to economic development again is just false.
"I think we are starting to see the tide turn on the LASG and even people in Santa Fe are becoming rather uncomfortable with them.
12/08/2019 10:36 PM"
What evidence is there to support this claim? My belief is that ignorance of science is an inexhaustible resource in Santa Fe.
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