Gdanning
2yr ago
Ok, but did the Trumps produce evidence that properties in the area often sell for 10x their assessed value? And you are ignoring the reference to the claimed value ignoring the restrictions on development. That is pretty bad, if true.
Regardless, remember the point is not that the judge is correct; it is that the claim that his decision can only be the result of corruption or ignorance does not seem to be consistent with the facts.
Gdanning
2yr ago
No, it was the court that said it was conclusory, not me. And, are you sure you are familiar with the law on what constitutes a conclusory expert opinion under Florida law? Because the fact that you consider the identity of the expert relevant to that question suggests that you might not be.
Most importantly, note that the issue now is precisely that: Was the expert's opinion sufficiently nonconclusory to be entitled to weight under Florida law? I would think you would be sufficiently uncertain of the answer thereto to be a little less sure that the decision must be the product of corruption or incompetence.
Gdanning
2yr ago
is the judge really ordering the dissolution of multiple billion-ish dollar LLCs as a pre-trial judgement?
It is a summary judgment. Final judgments are issued pursuant to summary judgment all the time. In such cases, the parties agree on the relevant facts (ie, the facts necessary for judgment on way or the other), so there is no need for a trial, because the purpose of a trial is to resolve disputed issues of fact. All that is needed is for the court to apply the law to the facts. Note that both sides moved for summary judgment in their favor.
Gdanning
2yr ago
According to the decision, signed a deed which restricted use of the property for anything other than a social club, including surrendering the right to subdivide the property and build homes thereon. Yet, in its filings, the Trump Organization submitted a valuation that ignored those land use restrictions, and claimed a valuation 2300% higher than the assessed value. And, the only evidence presented to the court to support the higher valuation was a conclusory affidavit from an expert, which, being conclusory, is of essentially no evidentiary value under established Florida law, and indeed established law pretty much everywhere.
So, what basis do you have for saying that only a corrupt or ignorant judge would reach the conclusion he did?
Gdanning
2yr ago
I think there's nothing in the US Code that explains what the punishment for forcing you to shelter and feed a soldier is
Shelter would probably constitute illegal entry under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, section 929(b). Food would seem to be theft or wrongful appropriation under section 921, or, depending on the facts, robbery under section 922
Gdanning
2yr ago
I think your hypotheticals perhaps obfuscate more than they clarify. The reason the penalty was unclear in those hypotheticals is because, in each, there rules were new (in the soccer example) or had rarely been adjudicated (in the pine tar incident), so there was no existing body of law for the adjudicator to turn to to determine the penalty. In contrast, re criminal law, the penalties are always stated in the statutes, and in civil litigation, the body of law re remedies is large enough that law schools offer entire classes on the subject
As far as I know, the universities have not been penalized or ordered to compensate their victims in any way – if this is incorrect, I would be open to being corrected.)
You are not correct, or if so are only very technically correct in that I do not know if there has been a remedy announced yet. When a trial court rules against a plaintiff, as the trial court did in the Harvard and UNC cases, but the decision is reversed on appeal, the case goes back to the trial court for further proceedings. The precise further proceedings depend on whether the appeal conclusively decided the case for the defendant*, but if it did, the lower court would conduct proceedings on remedies. See, eg, the football coach school prayer case, which settled 9 months after the Supreme Court's decision
And, note that sometimes plaintiffs do not seek damages (or only nominal damages, like $1), but rather only an injunction. I don't know that any damages were sought in Brown v, Board of Education, for example. That was not the point of the lawsuit.
*If the case was dismissed at an early stage, it might still be unclear whether the plaintiff's case has merit.
Gdanning
2yr ago
The only reference I made to impossible was
Oh, I meant to refer to your initial statement that "the only way that's mathematically possible"
If the actual biological component were 3 years as opposed to 5 years, we end up understating female privilege; the same could very well hold in the opposite direction if the actual biological difference were 7 years, as in Japan
Again, this seems to be an argument the difficulty in achieving perfect accuracy, which we have talked about before. We know the biological component is not zero, but to pretend that it is zero simply because it is impossible to know precisely what it is does not seem conducive to assessing policy outcomes.
It does, though. ... On the contrary
Sorry, I was distracted by my hypothetical, and by being a bit imprecise. In my hypothetical, there is no reason for the male and female means to be the same, because the average of a five point deduction was not derived from the underlying data. And of course you are right, because if you deduct the average difference from the higher gender, the resulting means will be the same?
But, who cares? When I said, "The whole point of the GDI is to try to figure out what the difference would be, were the biological effect zero," I meant the difference in each country. And when I said, re my hypothetical, "Are you saying that the result would not likely be a more accurate representation of the actual scores than was my original list?", I meant each score.
I think I now understand that your statistical arguments have been about global numbers, while I have been talking all along about scores within individual countries, because that is how the GDI is used: individual GDI scores are compared with individual HDI scores.
Gdanning
2yr ago
the adjustment the school makes improves the accuracy of the official grades, but the point is that you're assuming they know the mean bias.
But, were you not arguing that it was impossible, even we knew the mean?
assuming that it was entirely due to teacher bias, and then adjusting the boys' distribution to have the same mean as the girls'.
Except that neither the hypothetical nor the GDI assumes that the difference is entirely due to the factor being controlled for. The whole point of the GDI is to try to figure out what the difference would be, were the biological effect zero. And in neither the hypothetical nor the GDI is the outcome that the male and female distribution have the same mean.
if you're going to add an arbitrary fudge factor
You keep using this term, "arbitrary," despite it clearly not being arbitrary. It is based on observations of relevant data. It might nevertheless be , or too high, or too low, or based on assumptions that are subject to dispute. But they are not arbitrary.
But, we have already discussed that. The only thing I don’t understand is why you think that it is mathematically impossible to make the adjustment.
Gdanning
2yr ago
It's simply impossible to separate the biological component from the gender inequity component with only observations of the sum
So suppose I am a teacher, and I am biased against men. So here is how I grade essays: First, I grade them blindly. Then, after removing the blinds on the names, I enter the grades in a spreadsheet. Next, I reduce the scores of male students by an average of five points, with a distribution identical to the distribution of differences in earnings by gender. I enter the new scores in my grade book. After the scandal is revealed, the school adds five points to every male's score. Are you saying that the result would not likely be a more accurate representation of the actual scores than was my original list?
the GDI doesn't cite any data sources in its methodology to justify the 5 years.
??? How do you know this? Are you privy to the no doubt voluminous documentation that has doubtless been generated over the years? Have you perused the numerous papers available on Google Scholar which discuss the GDI to see if any assess the methodology in question?
There's a certain vacillation here. On one hand, the GFI is a highly technical, synthetic metric only to be used by experts in conjunction with the HDI in measuring temporal trends and doing international comparisons. If that's the case, though, why apply the unevidenced fudge factor? If it makes some countries look like they favor women, why try to correct for it at all? Experts would know that it's driven by the difference in male and female life expectancy.
Or, you could do what they do, and those same experts, and outsiders who use the GDI, are free to delete the adjustment if they want to. As I have said several times, if including the adjustment results in an index which more accurately reflects actual conditions than an index using unadjusted numbers, then that is a good reason to use it.
Gdanning
2yr ago
Yes, we should correct for it. Though I doubt that the physical weakness factor plays much of a part in differences in earnings in all but the most underdeveloped countries. And note that the GDI is a measure of development (because the GDI is an adjustment to the HDI), and development implies that fewer and fewer jobs in a country require physical strength, so the contribution of differences in physical strength to differences in income should decline at higher and higher levels of development, which means that total difference in earnings should decline as countries develop. So, it sounds like difference in earnings between men and women is a pretty good metric of development.
As for differences in personality, surely there are also personality traits more common to men which tend to reduce their earnings. We would have to adjust for them, as well.
Gdanning
2yr ago
Did you look here? https://www.gov.uk/browse/visas-immigration/work-visas
Policy affects murder rates and accidents. Change policing/education/punishment/lead exposure/choose your own adventure, and you get different crime outcomes. Choosing certain sets of policies that disproportionately disadvantage men damages gender equity and should be included in any metric attempting to represent it.
- We are talking about trying to estimate the biological effects on gender differences in life expectancy, precisely so we can figure out the effects of policy.
- It is only after that is done that the data can be used to figure out whether a problem exists. If women in your country are living 2 years longer than men, and you spend time and resources trying to figure out how your policies are harming men, you are probably wasting your time and should be looking in the other direction. But if men are lagging by 8 years, then your policy probably isn’t harming men.
You're assuming your conclusion: Iceland has achieved perfect gender equity, therefore it has achieved perfect gender equity.
Iceland was your example, was it not? And, no, I am not. Were I making that argument, I would have said that the estimate should be 3. The point is that we don’t know, so the issue is, given what we know today, what is our best estimate of the average biological component across countries, races, etc? Our best estimate isn't zero, nor particularly close to zero.
What error, exactly, do you think is being minimized?
The usual: the extent to which changes in the metric reflect actual changes in what the metric is attempting to assess. Both false highs and false lows, but of course there is usually a tradeoff between them. Were the data binary, using something like the area under the ROC curve. The data here is continuous, and supposedly there is an analogous method for use with continuous variables, but I don't know enough about the topic to say if area under the ROC curve is appropriate here. I know that many other methods exists, but that is all I know about them.
You can't even say that large sum deviations from 5 years hint at large social inequity values, because it could be driven entirely by biological deviations.
Of course you can say it hints at large social inequity values, and of course it could be driven entirely by biological deviations. Those are not mutually exclusive statements.
As for the rest, I really don't understand your point. Perhaps I misunderstand you, but wouldn't your logic be the same using 4 years, rather than five? And 3 years? And 3 months? Indeed, everything but zero, which we know is incorrect? If your argument leads to the conclusion that the only legitimate estimate is one that we know is wrong, it seems to me that something has gone awry. I also think you might be using a number that is meant to be an average across countries, and assuming that it claims that that is the average in every country.
Also, suppose you saw a country in which women lived 10 years less than men. Would you not stroke your chin and say, "hm, I suspect that something is amiss in that country, because women usually live longer than men"? Isn’t 5 years a rule of thumb for when you should start scratching?
Finally, I think we are losing sight of the point of the GDI, which is to ensure that progress on the HDI does not cause people to overlook the fact that sometimes such progress is not shared as broadly as it could be.
Gdanning
2yr ago
It's perhaps plausible (though, as far as I can tell, unevidenced) that different racial groups have different biological lifespan gaps between the sexes. For the sake of argument, let's take that as a given. That still wouldn't justify the UN's approach here: it would be penalizing Iceland and other European countries for having a lower biological gap in life span than other countries. Why should the GDI take that smaller gap and massage it into a claim that the Icelandic health care system is more inequitable against women than countries with a larger gap? Pakistan manages to achieve a 4.8 year gap, and thus is considered by the GDI to have better health equity for women than Iceland, presumably thanks to its well-known dedication to and prioritization of women's well-being and health.
- Again, your option of making no adjustment will also "penalize" countries, but different ones
- You are making unwarranted assumptions about how the index is used. The index is used, as a whole, not in parts, to compare with the HDI. The individual components are not necessarily used to assess anything, and certainly not the health care system, because it is meant to be a rough measure of inequality in general, including all of the factors which contribute to lifespan. More to the point, it is simply meant to assess the extent to which countrywide advances in human development, as measured by the HDI, are shared by members of both genders.
0 years.
Why would we do that, when we know it is incorrect?
If men's shortened longevity is due to greater vulnerability to exposure to disease, toxins, and just wear and tear on the body than women (or, indeed, due to lower risk aversion), society should make policy choices to increase men's longevity.
- No one has said otherwise.
- See my response to your other response.
Gdanning
2yr ago
If we make social choices
As I understand it, reducing maternal mortality is less a function of social choice than it is of economic development; at higher levels of income, societies can afford to provide goods (clean water, medicine, fully staffed and equipped hospitals) which reduce mortality. That is not so much the case for murders and especially not for accidents; in fact, it seems to me that in some ways more affluent societies often = more opportunities for reckless guys to kill themselves (automobiles, etc). Accidents were the #4 cause of death in the US in 2021. And thus, although rates of accidental death have declined a great deal in the last 100 years, they certainly have not declined as much as maternal mortality has (from about 100 per 1000 live births in the nineteen-teens (see page 46 here) to about 17 or 18 per 100,000 in 2007-2016.
If every country has a different "natural" gap in lifespans between men and women, why have it as part of the index at all?
Because lifespan is a standard metric re economic development, and because the GDI is meant to be a supplement to the Human Development Index, which includes lifespan.
Assuming a universal, constant 5 year natural gap adds zero information over a universal, constant 0 year gap (or, for that matter, a 10 year gap, or 20 year gap, etc.); it just benefits those countries whose actual gap is close to the constant at the expense of those that happen to be far from the constant.
- Except we know that the genetic component is not zero. And even Iceland, at 3 years, is closer to 5 than to 0. Zero makes no sense.
- Either option will overstate some countries and understate others. The question is which one (5 or zero) will minimize errors. I don't know for sure what the answer is, but neither do you.
Gdanning
2yr ago
And what of the ability of society to reduce the risk from male-specific pathologies?
Like what? Murder and accidents? As noted previously, the propensity to get murdered or die in accidents is part of the biology of being a young male.
As I mention elsewhere, people in the top 1% in the US have a gap of 1.5 years.
In addition to what I mentioned re your other response, that is exactly what you would expect, given that the biological propensity of males for risk-taking fades with age.
Entire countries have a gap of 3 years.
Those almost entirely countries with quite low life expectancy overall, or very small and/or racially homogeneous countries? Yeah, there are probably subgroups where the biological differences are smaller. And some where they are larger. HBD is supposedly a thing, is it not? But the index can't have a different adjustment for every country, so it tries to come up with a global average.
In fact, the income gap in the US has been stable for at least two decades
- The linked graph actually shows a slow growth over the last 20 years
- More importantly, the graph does not show income; it shows hourly wages; moreover, it excludes self-employed persons. For data on income for all person, see the database entitled "Table P-9. Age—People by Mean Income and Sex" at the Census Bureau website, you will find the following:
2002 Mean Income in 2022 dollars: Male $63,720, Female $36,660 (57.5 pct of male)
2012 Mean Income in 2022 dollars: Male $61,980, Female $38,950 (63 pct of male)
2022 Mean Income in 2022 dollars: Male $70,340, Female $48,550 (69 pct of male)
So, it does not seem that the income gap has been stable for 20 years.
Gdanning
2yr ago
So, the idea is that we know that the average globally is 5 years, and therefore it's impossible to get below 5 years
I am not sure why you chose to omit the first part of my discussion, but regardless, no, that is not my understanding of the idea. My understanding is that the idea is to come up with the best estimate of the contribution to the genetic contribution to the difference, across all racial groups.
To say nothing of other groups: the gap is strongly correlated with income. You can hypothesize mechanisms by which people with different biologies would self select into those groups
- Well, if you are referring to the US, income is indeed correlated with race, is it not?
- It is not surprising that wealthier men have the resources to stave off the effects of their genetic inferiority (relative to women) longer than poorer men. Nor is it surprising that, at the very high ages to which affluent people live, genetic advantage of women over men fades a bit, since disease in caused in part by environmental exposure, which can accumulate over time.
- At lower incomes, the larger gap seems to be driven mostly by low life expectancy for men (see, eg, data for France here and for US here) which is exactly what you would expect, given the greater risk in lower income neighborhoods inherent in the (biologically driven) high degree of risk taking among young men.
But, I am curious, what should the adjustment be for the genetic contribution to the gender difference in life expectancy?
Gdanning
2yr ago
What's your justification for going with 5 years?
Bearing in mind that it was not I who came up with the number, I do see that the difference at the population level in the US (a giant, genetically diverse country, unlike Iceland, and hence not likely to be an outlier) has been about five years for decades, ever since the [risk of death in childbirth was reduced)(https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3511335/) (and the ability of society to reduce things like mortality in childbirth is one of the reasons we care about "development" at all). And the fact that 5 years is the global a average adds to the inference that 5 is about right.
You're just stating "there's gender inequality in lifespan, so we need to correct for it in the index measuring gender inequality."
No, I am saying that there is a biological component to gender inequality in lifespan, so in order to determine the social/cultural/political component of lifespan differences, we need to control for the biological component. Isn’t that obvious?
Why not do the same for, for instance, labor force participation? Take the global average labor force participation of each gender,
Because we know that there is a biological basis for some of the differences in lifespan between genders, because we have an understanding of some of the biology that renders men more susceptible to certain pathologies. And, we have some idea of how big the difference is, as discussed above. In contrast, we don't know how much of the difference in labor force participation is biological, do we? And, how much does labor force participation deviate from the mean, compared to how much lifespan differences deviate?
Gdanning
2yr ago
I don't understand how you would do that. The lifespan adjustment is not speculative. We know that there is a biological basis for some of the differences in lifespan between genders, because we have an understanding of some of the biology that renders men more susceptible to certain patologies. And, we have some idea of how big the difference is; for example, it seems to have been about 5 years in the US for decades, ever since the risk of death from childbirth was substantially decreased (and, of course, the ability of a society to reduce the risk of death from childbirth is precisely the type of thing that is meant by "development").
In contrast, income differences afaik have not reached a steady state for decades. So, again, how do we know how much to adjust for? There might be a way, but it is not obvious to me what it is.
Gdanning
2yr ago
The vast majority of the earned-income gap between men and women in the modern West is due to men's and women's life choices differing. ... Correcting for one and not the other is, well, a double standard*.
But, how can one even measure differences in life choices, especially in countries that are not highly developed (ie, most of them)? (And, since this is a development index, those who created it are mostly concerned with less-developed countries. Where btw differences btw male and female earnings are less likely to be due to preferences).
It seems to me that we have an index with three components, at least two of which are confounded (lifespan by biology, and income by preferences). The former can easily be adjusted for (albeit imperfectly, as is always the case), while the other cannot easily be adjusted for. Why would you refrain from adjusting the one that you can adjust for? Isn't an index with one confounded measure likely to be more accurate than one with two confounded measures?
Gdanning
2yr ago
For pensions? Not food stamps, or other poverty alleviation measures, but pensions? Where is your evidence for that?
Gdanning
2yr ago
It would be very easy to construct a better index.
You don't know that unless you test the alternatives, right?
I don't understand what you are trying to say. But it seems to me that you are in principle unwilling to consider the possibility that UN made a mistake. So I don't think any further discussion makes sense.
I agree that further discussion doesn't make sense, but it is because you claim to not understand that different people sometimes use words in different ways.
You are mistaking anonymous quote from wikipedia with evidence
Again, there is a citation in the Wikipedia article. If it is that important, you are free to look it up.
Gdanning
2yr ago
"women ought to live 5 years longer than men" thing does strike me as a bit of a double standard,
Well, it does seem that woman naturally live a big longer than men, all else being equal. Certainly life expectancy at birth tends to be lower for men, in part because of a greater propensity for risk-taking among young men and resulting higher rate of accidental death, and in part because of that pesky exposure to added risk from recessive genes because of the whole Y chromosome thing.
So, if you are looking at a country and trying to assess the effects of policy/society/culture/whatever, on life expectancy by gender, of course you are going to control for the natural tendency of women to live longer.
Gdanning
2yr ago
- Once again, you are assuming that the index is not at all trying to measure economic independence.
- Given the challenges inherent in obtaining accurate data, are you not open to the possibility that an index that made the adjustments you suggest would actually be a less reliable measure of what it purports to represent?
Gdanning
2yr ago
Yes, but the problem is that that is all it is: A claim, with no evidence.
And, it is hardly surprising that few countries are above 1. In how many countries does the average female income exceed that of men? (Note that that is an empirical question, not a normative one, and not a commentary on the causes of any differences).
All you do here is start with a vague premise "Western countries are currently biased in favour of women", then simply assume that every data point that you incorrectly believe* seems to refute that assumption must have been manipulated.
*The GDI is not a measure of bias, and it does not measure 90% of the types of things that make up the pro-female bias that is commonly complained of.
The issue is not "is the judge's valuation correct?" (In part because the judge did not make a factual finding; that does not happen on a motion for summary judgment) It is whether the judge's finding that the undisputed facts show that the value claimed by Trump was higher than the actual value is so unreasonable that it can only be the product of corruption or stupidity.
And, the problem with your discussion of the amount the Mar A Lago "should" have appreciated, is that, as the court emphasizes, subsequent to Trump's purchase, substantial land use limitations were attached to Mar A Lago. Which obviously is going to reduce the value of the property. Note also that the decision says that from 2011 to 2021, the assessed value of the property ranged between $18 million and $27 million, which is indeed substantially more than inflation (the BLS inflation calculator tells me that $18 million in Jan of 2011 was equivalent to just under $23 million in Dec of 2021)
Edit: Note also that Trump's attorneys were free to submit evidence that the County's assessment was inaccurate. Did they? There is no evidence that they did.
And while 500 Regents Park Rd might be listed at $40 million, Zillow tells me that it sold in March of 2020 for $7.5 million, compared to its assessed value of at the time of $3.2 million. And that is the relevant time period: The time when Trump et al filed documents claiming what Mar A Lago was worth (again, the decision says that the time period in question was 2011-2021).
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