The MFTF-B story – Fusion or conFusion?

The $1 billion MFTF-B fusion experiment was built, then dismantled before it was turned on — our first sign of the politicization of fusion.

Energy independence should be an issue important to everyone.  Instead, it  has been a p0litical issue in and out of the news for many years.  MFTF-B was a fusion test facility, built for nearly a billion dollars (inflation adjusted) located at the Lawerence Livermore National Laboratory in California.  It was dedicated in the mid-1980s and abandoned in place the very next day.

There have been a number fusion programs pregnant with new promise but smashed for national political reasons.  We discuss the MFTF-B program here.

Click on these links to jump straight to the section of interest:
The MFTF-B Story,     It’s the Economics, Stupid!.

The MFTF-B Story

Shortly after World War II, physicists though that  success with energy generation would be as easy as our fusion bombs that worked so well.  We had a number of ideas; we were pretty excited about them all.  Hubris.  Our success with mass killing devices made us overlook that bombs are very inefficient.

By 1980, the United States was one of the world leaders in fusion energy research.  This leadership had developed over a long painful period where our naive guesses were replaced by real mastery of ultra hot gases that are the kernel of fusion power generation.  There were many different paths being  considered.  The technique at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California was magnetic mirrors.

Fig 1:  TMX in 1982

Development of Mirror Coil Confinement
Of American mirror fusion devices, LLNL was the best funded, though other labs in the U.S. and around the world also worked on such devices. Click any figure for full resolution images.

LLNL developed a sequence of magnetic mirror test prototypes over the 20 years between mid 1950s (Q-Cumber) through the mirror-inside-a-mirror device TMX (Tandem Mirror eXperiment)  shown in Fig 1.

Fig 2:  MFTF-B in its building (artist concept, about 1984).  Note building extension.  Source:  LLNL

LLNL physicists began construction in 1977 of a very large tandem mirror device MFTF (Mirror Fusion Test Facility), prior to making TMX  fully operational and getting data from its tests.  This is same time TFTR  (Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor) at Princeton was built, and turned on.

In about 1980, TMX yielded good results which required a quick extension to the facility for the -B modification.  Construction was complete in 1986.

Figure 3 is a 2009 photograph of the MFTF-B building at LLNL (left); also (right) the building showing the location of  MFTF-B.

Fig 3:  MFTF-B at LLNL.  Left:  Bld 431 (2009 image). Right: Same, with scaled diagram above

Fig 4: Diagram of MFTF-B magnetic mirror coils showing sizes and control fields.

MFTF Physics
MFTF-B is diagrammed in Fig 4.  The top diagram is follows a 1982 diagram, the magnetic field and potential geometry diagrams are from a 1984 model by D. Grubb. This diagram is meant to show the evolved coil structures that were present and overall sizes of the device.

Key elements – a smooth magnetic field in the central solenoid coils, followed by extremely high magnetic intensity at either end in the choke coils, followed by  complicated coils at the ends.

The central magnetic well would be sufficient to hold most of the hot plasma in the center, where it could fuse to generate energy.

Fig 5:  Ying-Yang end coils being moved from the street into the machine vault for installation.

The ”electrostatic potential” marked in Fig 4 is high voltage developed at either end as a final block against the escaping electrons.

Fig 5 shows the ‘ying-yang’ confinement coil pair located at the ends of the device (Image source: LLNL). These complicated coils outside the choke coils are needed to keep the low percentage of electrons that escape the well from flowing right out the end pulling ions with them and draining the fusing central well of its fuel.

The MFTF Facility
Details of the installed device probably differed somewhat from these diagrams, but that is not important, now. The point is that, by the mid 1980s, MFTF-B  was the end result of detailed step-wise research program dating back to the 1950s.

Fig 6:  Part of MFTF-B team at the machine just after Ying-Yang coil installation.

Nearly $400 M was invested in the machine. Inflated to 2013, this would be $740 M. The coils were said to use most of the superconducting material in the world at that time.

Its vacuum tank was 190 ft (58 m) long, a bit less than the length of a skipjack attack submarine, and about 12 people wide (32.8 ft, about 10 m). Fig 6 shows the installed ying-yang end coils  during construction along with part of its team.  MFTF-B would have required 180 people to operate it.

MFTF-B was a major program in the then-dynamic American fusion energy effort.

Retrospective:   How well would MFTF have worked?  Hard to know; MFTF was being upgraded while is was being built – it was never turned on.  At the time, someone from the tokamak community started its spitball – all LLNL needed for mirror fusion was just another set of coils.  Cute. Quick sound bite full of innuendo to undercut opposition.  This is a well known social tactic. The phrase bubbled up as circular cross-section doughnut plasmas like TFTR were being replaced by elongated D shapes (DIII, Asdex, JET, DIII-D, Alcator C-mod) with complicated diverters to keep the walls from boiling off and  poisoning the discharge.  Such changes required additional coils, too.  Nowadays, tokamaks probably need yet another set of coils to make a “super diverter.”  (The SD came from the U of Texas; it looks good in concept and means more coils).  Note that chirping “more complicated coils” helped kill stellerators in the U.S., too.

Once a damning phrase is in vogue by the intelligentsia, it is hard to retract.  Here is a physicist who says that in the 1980s,  mirrors lost out to tokamaks due to performance comparisons.  I was a tokamak physicist back then; I have to say – that competition never happened.

Currently,  fusion failed has bubbled into vogue in right-wing America.  Think we can work past self-satisfied know-it-alls and secure an energy future?   Back to Top

It’s The Economics, Stupid!

The facility was dedicated on 1986 Feb 21.  Not a very happy celebration because MFTF-B was consigned to storage the very next day.  Science Magazine article here.

The machine was still in place in its darkened building when I last saw it in the 1990s. Certainly, by now, the valuable materials in the device have evaporated into other needy labs at Livermore

Why was MFTF-B built, then mothballed, never to be powered up?  The events went through the fusion professionals like a major earthquake.  They spent nearly 3/4 of a Billion U.S. Dollars (2012 value) to put it together and the politicians trashed the entire investment without even turning on the first power switch.

It was too hard to understand at the time, but MFTF-B was an early casualty of a political fight that may actually be into its end game today,  since today’s budget sequestration just might finish dismantling what is left of U.S. fusion research.

Fig 7:  US ERDA 1976 projection of fusion success vs funding

Fig 7 is a graph from Wikipedia Commons and shows a series of projections by ERDA, the predecessor of our present Department Of Energy.

These were various time-to-power plant prototype projections.

The 1978 level (flat line) was added to the estimate that flat, then-current funding levels would lead to “fusion never” for a power producing device.

Funding history has been so small after 1978 that the actual funding curve is difficult to appreciate on a large graph.

FIg 8:  Fusion budget collapsed just as success happened, synched with turn-on of Pump transferring income to American ultra classes

Fig 8   has been used in other LastTechAge posts such as the American Income Pump.  The bright red foreground curve is the U.S. annual fusion budget in inflation-adjusted  2010 dollars.

Visible trends:  In the late 1960s, the Soviets made a major breakthrough (tokamaks) and shortly after this,  American labs verified the repeatability of their successes. A short time after our own tests,  the U.S. fusion research budget rose dramatically and jumped nearly a factor of 5 during the 1970s.  It reached a plateau about 1980 but began its precipitous fall about 1983 or ’84.

The pale blue background curve in Fig 8 shows a different trend. The background is the fraction of the total income earned in the United States that is taken in by the highest paid 10% of all workers.  In 1981, the earned fraction, which had been  constant, began a significant ramp upwards.  Since there is always a fixed 100% of  income being earned, this means that income started to flow from the lower-paid 90% of the population into the pockets of the highest-paid 10%.  The situation is actually worse than shown.  The demographic driving  the overwhelming rise in upper level incomes are actually those very few families  in the uppermost 0.01% of all earners whose share of the total did not just double (as shown in Fig 8),  but actually jumped by a factor or 5.   More about this American income pump in various posts, also in this page.

The drop in fusion funding did not raise the upper wage-earners’  income share, nor vice versa.  The two curves show correlated responses to some external forcing function that has been driving them both.  We delay further discussion about that background forcing effort to a future post.

Final Comments
MFTF-B was a wake-up call about the political influence on technology development.  The regime that took power in 1981 were determined to close DOE though they found that to be too difficult.  But they did reduce budget for one of the most promising technologies for safe high density power sources that exists.  Interesting that technology nowadays has come to mean computer toys and apps, not high-level hardware and clever design techniques.

In the 1990s, the Clintons made “It’s the Economy, stupid” a famous sound bite of current short-term earning capability vs. votes. The loss of American fusion energy support is not about the economy, it seems to be related to the economics of the acquisition of financial power.  The most positive thing that can be said  is the rest of the world has not abandoned the fusion power, just the U.S.

Note added in proof – National White House Petition, Fusion funding:  On 2013 Mar 23, Douglas Doucette submitted a White House Petition to raise U.S. funding of fusion power by $100 Billion over the next 10 years.  This is so clearly the right thing for our country to do that getting the 150 signatures to make it a real petition ought to be easy.  But 3 days in, not many have signed it.  This petition is discussed in Doucette’s good comment at the bottom our post Fusion Energy – Kill The Beast.  The ideal would be to achieve 100,000 signatures, but first goals first.   The White House deadline for all of this is April 23!

Please

follow the link to the White House site,
sign in,
click [Sign This Petition].

This is no scam, it is a true effort to re-establish a future for our children.

One more time:  link to Fusion Petition on the White House’s We The People site   http://1.usa.gov/109CvCW

……………………………….

Charles J. Armentrout, Ann Arbor
2013 Mar 26
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Reject Keystone XL. It is about US ecology, not global climate

The US State Department released its Keystone XL pipeline report.  Guess what?  It concluded that accepting or rejecting XL would have little affect on world climate.

XL – pretty small stuff.  The State Department report is right as far as it goes.  The XL proposal is for an  increase in  the carry capacity of the current Keystone line from about 500 M b/d to about 850 M b/d, an increase of about 70%.  But the current Keystone line is one of 10 or 12 that enter the US, most bringing in dilbit.

So XL’s effect on oil supply is diluted to a 7% increase in the stuff coming into the country.  This is what the weird-Right calls the solution to US energy security.   Just 7%  more and we will have solved everything!  Wonderful – F150 drivers  won’t worry every again about fuel fill ups!  Small increase in dilbit but huge profits for US investors.

Another way toward “pretty small.”   Suppose 100% of XL’s Canadian dilbit is refined and sold exclusively in the US.  In good times (2008)  US users accounted for 18 M b/d in oil and XL would add 350 k b/d.  (M = million, k = thousand).  About 1.9% of our oil use, not my  idea of what “energy independence” should mean. At $100/barrel, pipeline  owners share $33M/day.   These are big bucks to the few families that will share it; it’s the real reason the weird-Right want the thing.

Alternate ways for transport.  Rejecting XL  would not stop the flow of oil from Canada.  A report in the Washington Post discussed transport by rail that is being developed.  Read the report.  Rail is actually much safer than than pipeline, especially if the trackbed and rails are new and the tank cars  sturdy (like double bodied ocean-going LPG tankers.  Small chance of legislating that kind of rail car).

Stopping XL will not turn off Canadian dilbit production, no matter how hard we interdict their product.  But it might enrage Canadians to override First Nation activists and open the path through their reservation to Kitimat on  British Colombia’s Northwest shore. Or use the “Southern” path to Burnaby, near Vancouver.  My view, we should reject XL for our own protection and let the Canadians fight their own environmental issue.   XL threatens U.S. mid-continent water and we can influence that.  It is not about eliminating atmospheric CO2.

Real-world disasters are due to simultaneous events.   The likelihood of a spill along the path is 100%, since all lines currently entering the country spill.  All of the big disasters of our day have been due to multiple causes happening together, not the single event issues that are used in failure mode studies.  Pause and recall that the Fukashima disaster was due to a highly unlikely monster earthquake and tsunami events.  Core-melt disasters were rated as one incident every several thousand  years (per failure mode analysis); world-wide, 5 were unclassified during the last 40 years.  Recall that the US Space Shuttle system had a failure rating of 1/1000 launches (actual:  1/50).  The landscape of technology is littered with multiple improbable  events occurring together.

Start with XL’s  extra thin walls, extra high pressures, extra high fluid flow.  XL will leak at least as much as every line. Now, add a tornado with massive river flooding, plus  an earthquake  – the confluence at low probability of simultaneous disasters.   XL represents a monster disaster-in-waiting.

Environmental issues are real.   Global warming is an issue that will have massive impact on the lives of the babies born this year; it will dominate the working lives of their children.  It is hard to overstate the consequences of (1) a 5, possibly 7  °C increase in the global average,  (2) energy prices that will have risen out of the reach of normal people, and (3) loss in water availability as human populations continue to grow.  In mid-America, XL might make clean safe water nearly impossible to get, but India, Russia, Australia (etc) would hardly feel an effect.  Unpopular conclusion  →  In fact, none of these three changers of world reality can be remediated the by canceling XL.

Climate activists think they can beat Canadians into submission. This would be a tidy way to close Alberta strip mining sites and forget about the whole thing.  Wrong way to approach it, guys.  LastTechAge is very sympathetic with the goal, but to do more than feel-good events that satisfy our inner child, we must do more.  Close our own Earth-ripping shale oil extraction sites. Push for new, demanding emission requirements at the refineries.  Set automatic triggering of fines that force pipeline backers (TransCanada and the Koch brothers) to fully compensate every penny of loss for every spill; these fines should be paid – if the companies go bankrupt, the managers should be personally held responsible.  After these easy things are accomplished, U.S. activists could stand with those Canadians who look with horror at their own monster tar sand activities.  Canadian activists are the ones who will make the difference in Canada.   This has been the topic of many of LastTechAge posts about XL,  here, most recently.

XL approval vibes are not good.   Obama might announce his decision this summer (up from this winter/spring).  Because of the freely flowing money, he must be given solid U.S.-based reasons to turn it down.  I suspect those in the US who will personally be enriched are currently optimistic.  I hope that Pres Obama will make the right decisions.

« Added in final draft: » Joe Nocera released another blast against the XL resistance.  In the earlier one,   Nocerea supported the XL build with a wry comment on an interview with James Hansen, an early climate-change scientist whose 1980′s climate data projections were seen in 2008 to be accurate, if a bit too optimistic about our atmosphere’s resistance to change.  In his 2013-Mar04 column, Nocera dropped references to XL and went into direct attack mode against Hansen.  This is a smart move by the weird-Right:  Assassinate the bad-news messenger, all will be happy.

This latest New York Times column was cherry-picked  by another w-R blog with the modified title that called Hansen a Junk Scientist something Nocera never did.   Clearly, the end moves have started in the XL chess game.  The trolls are roaming about the countryside, and the rancid commentators are prancing about their TV stages.   Plenty of money to burn, and the smell of blood is in the water.  

……………………………….

Charles J. Armentrout, Ann Arbor
2013 Mar 05
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Keystone XL is not about climate change, Joe Nocera

The argument against the XL pipeline is based on US interests, should not be about climate change.

Joe Nocera published a column in the Feb 19 (2013) print edition of the New York Times. He explains why we must support the XL proposal because climate protesters have it all wrong.  In the process he brings up a lot of non-climate boiler-plate used to promote XL.

Joe Nocera, 2013

We agree with Nocera’s headline: How Not To Fix Climate Change.   As we (LastTechAge) have said before, using climate damage from the extraction process as an argument against XL will only cause Canadians to circle their wagons for protection against U.S.A. savages.

Most Americans don’t realize that US-Canadian history is a lot different from Canadian-US history; same facts, much different spins.  Yes, shale/tar-sands oil is extraordinarily destructive but we must close down our own facilities before we  go a-preach’n.

Joe’s Climate-Change Argument

Dr. James E Hanson

Nocera  says: “the strategy of activists … who have made the Keystone pipeline their line in the sand, is utterly boneheaded.” His reason for this statement seems to be that activists like the respected Dr. James Hansen are fighting monster moneybags like the Koch brothers.

Since it is not possible, for any reason, to expect Hansen and crew to win over the long run (a multi-decade timeframe), it is plainly unreasonable to try.  Climate damage is a very real and  Dr. Hansen has long history with  early predictions of the developing problem that have proven accurate.  Our issue is that the efforts to embargo products to force Canadian behavior patters could generate strong Canadian push-back.

LastTechAge Argument

Keystone XL route

The real argument against is XL is that there are at least 10 different pipelines already are bringing dilbit into the US, including the brand new Keystone, which opened in February 2011 and transports 500,000 bpd.  The XL proposal,  formally introduced in 2011, increases flow to about 850,000 bpd (less than a factor of 2 increase).

This is our 5th post on XL.  Here is the  map we presented earlier.  Click to enlarge.  Also, check out a succinct recent summary, XL Primer.

The XL in the original proposal is shown on our map as a red dotted path. Recently, the northern end was rerouted to bypass some of the the Ogallala aquifer.

What’s Not To Like About Dilbit Pipelines?
3 issues matter to U.S. citizens: Energy security, pipeline safety, generation of good, lasting jobs.

• XL would not supply all that much oil (compared to total inflow) and is not for U.S. use, by design.

Currently, about 10 pipelines  ship dilbit from Canadian tar sand fields (Athabasca is the biggest in Alberta) to the U.S.  Right now, Keystone accounts for maybe 10% of the total.  

Keystone currently goes to refineries in Illinois. It is also delivered to Cushing Oklahoma, where WTI oil pricing is set.  Incoming stuff forms an overload glut in the end locations and is dumped into massed ranks of storage tanks.
Question: Why so? Why not expand the current refineries to process the dilbit?

Charles(L) David(R) Koch

Answer:   The Koch brothers,  who have a control over a fortune with joint net worth of about $50 billion ($50 thousand million), have announced their intention to open the line to the coast where dilbit can be refined and shipped.  The oil glut is very temporary, per the Kochs.  If you owned one of the refineries, would you would waste the tens to hundreds of millions of dollars needed for upgrades?

It’s about energy security, stupid … or is it?
(A) If our friends in the North want to dedicate this stuff to US usage, why are they not pushing facility enlargements in Wood River, Patoke and Cushing? They could start off-shoring their profits today.  No.  This stuff is not intended to help pitiful pickup drivers throughout the US.
(B) XL does not represent much of a jump in current US access to non-USdilbit.  XL is only about 7% of the total flowing in today (70% more than the baseline Keystone, which is about 10% of the inflow amount).   So why will energy skies fall if it is turned down?

• XL would be more leak-prone than any of the other current 10 lines  shipping between Canada and the US.  The pumped fluid is diluted bitumen (dilbit), bitumen fluidized with solvents (proprietary, but naphtha, benzine, and toluene are among those mentioned).  Compared to good ol’ Texas crude, dilbit is more acidic,  heavier, and more frictional.  It needs higher temperatures and pressures to push it down the pipe.  Dilbit it is more aggressive on pipelines than Texas crude.
  Note: For its XL upgrade, TransCanada is requesting

– larger diameter pipes for more volume flow – higher profitability
– thinner walled tubing – lower installation price
– fewer monitoring stations – lower installation price and operating costs.  

If pipelines did not leak, there would be no issue. But Keystone (thicker walls, lower pressures and more frequent monitoring stations) has already  had a flock of leaks. Compare the 12 during the first year of operation to 1 leak in 7 years they were promising.  

Some pipelines are worse. When the Enbridge dilbit pipeline 6B  ruptured 3 years ago in Michigan (Kalamazoo River, near Marshall), the bitumen sank to the bottom of the river; the solvents wreaked havoc with the soil; the fumes damaged human health.   2013 – remediation has not yet been completed.  Flow rates in the thicker walled Enbridge  6B were much slower.   XL has to be a worse problem.  

The higher pressure in thinner pipe screams environmental disasters around the edges of the mid-continent aquifer.  One must have imagination to envision the toxic geyser that would/will follow a XL rupture.  I suppose we are about to discover if Obama has such a good imagination (a.k.a. “vision”).  Check a good reason to reject XL:  after “geyser”,  add “into the mid-continent ground water”. 

• XL will not create lots of  permanent jobs contrary to the pro argument. This non-issue is due to a huge TransCanada mis-statement early on and was exposed by independent investigators at Cornell University.  This has been debated and debunked  over and again.  Another round here will not change anyone’s mind.  Curious about actual permanent job benefits?  go google it  yourself.

Meanwhile, the XL preparations move forward

TransCanada has nearly completed its land grab from US owners.  All kinds of legal tools have been employed along the route, including eminent domain takeovers.

This is not necessarily driven by Canadian masters, the Koch Brothers are key players in the new line. Their involvement is one of the reasons our Joe N thinks Resistance Is Futile. Who could stand up to the Borg brothers?  The new XL layout  sort-of misses the Ogallala water source, but actually would be along the edges.  Anyone aware of studies of the propagation of low density petroleum solvents through soil and fractured rocks?  Pipe rupture is a when issue, not an if one.

Energy security, pipeline safety, employment

Nocera has nothing to add that has not been discussed over the past 2 years.  In fact, nothing has changed, no one has anything new that can change the situation.  but the tools of folks like the TransCanada owners and their partners like Charles and David Koch continue their attempts to destroy U.S. future.  

Nocera recycles the same ol’.  Does smoke from constant repetition make a fake fire more real?   Stopping dilbit transport via XL is not about climate change; this is really a U.S. issue based on our own criteria.

……………………………….

Charles J. Armentrout, Ann Arbor
2013 Feb 24
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Greg Mankiw and the real Middle-Class

An article by N. Gregory Mankiw in the New York Times’ Sunday Business section (2012 Dec 30 paper) attempts to compare the current tax paid by the “top” 1% of the workers, that fraction who earn the most income (the rich, as he calls them) with what the “middle class” currently pays.  He used 2009 data, saying that no later data exist at the end of 2012, and deduced that the Bush-era tax structure was pretty progressive.

This post as been updated with an Appendix

Jump to  Comments , Conclusions ,  Appendix-Progressive/Regressive Taxes

Gregory Mankiw

Dr. Gregory Mankiw is the Robert M Beren Professor of Economics at Harvard University and Chair of the Econ Department.  He is author of several widely used college text books and a conservative commentator in news media.

He was Chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers 2002-2005 as Bush developed the economic and political reasons for the Iraq invasion. As we all know, the economic justification was about as meaningful as those awful WMDs.   Most recently, Dr. Mankiw was Mitt Romney’s Economics adviser during the recent campaign, when Mitt developed his argument that he was a true Job Creator, because he did not close every company Bain acquired, and therefor must have been responsible for their success.  That argument is a great resume builder, Greg.   The Wikipedia site (link on his name, above) describes the 70 students that walked out of his intro Econ class (of about 750) because of alleged bias in his class topics.  Understand, he was praised for the unusual (for Harvard) thrust of the same course, too.

Excerpt  from Mankiw’s NYT Sunday Business article.

In 2009, the most recent year for which data are available, the richest 1 percent of Americans paid 28.9 percent of their income in federal taxes, according to the Congressional Budget Office. (That includes income taxes, both individual and corporate, and payroll taxes.) Members of the middle class, defined as the middle fifth of households, paid 11.1 percent of their income in taxes.

Some of this difference in tax rates is attributable to temporary tax changes passed in response to the recent recession. But not all.  In 2006, before the financial crisis, the top 1 percent paid 30 percent of their income in taxes, compared with 13.9 percent for the middle class.

He continues with the comment that the tax rates look progressive to him, not regressive.

Comments

The fraction paid by the huge middle class was about 1/3 of that paid by the few really rich guys.  Sounds not too bad, unless we sit and think about it.

One of the issues in analyzing this statement is that different ways of compiling the information generate different values.  For example, Family income differs from Household income and the Census bureau has a course-grained listing of both.  We would get different median incomes, even income brackets, depending on which table we look at.   Saez, and Piketty use tax records (as does Mankiw) that, as of Autumn 2012, were current through 2010.  Mankiw does not use the same data sets and his values will not agree exactly with any of the other reports.   This does not mean any of the data are wrong, just that data methods are different. Expect small differences.

Table 1

Table 1 shows the numbers on various income groups.  Mankiw’s middle class (MMC ) is the 20% of all earners whose income straddles the 50-50 point (where half all workers make less than this and the rest make more).  This 50-50 point, called the median income, is very close to $50,000.  In statistics, the MMC is called the 3rd Quintile, and some of the different data sets place this between the upper $40 thousands through lower $70 thousands.  Since the median stays the same, the higher range indicates more families at the lower end than at the higher.

We can make a few comments just on this.

(A)  Mankiw’s example is NOT progressive.   People in the MMC make about $50k, those in the top 1% make an average of about $500k, 10 times more.  But those richies pay only 2.6 times more in taxes than the Mankiw’s “middle class.”

If it were flat, the tax ought to go up in step with the earned income.  A tax is regressive when the rich pay much less than the scaled values of the lower levels.

Sorry Greg, this does not sound like anything “progressive.”  But it might, if I thought closing down American manufacturing jobs and offshoring our factories were “progressive.”

(B) Who can afford to pay less taxes?   People earning near the $50k mark see life quite differently than those earning about 10 times more (the mean value for the Top 1%).  Few MMC people can afford a $100-$300/hr tax accountants to find tax loopholes or to set up accounts in Bimini as the Mankiw’s rich can and do.

Question for you who make over $352k:   Is your question ever “should I get my 5 year old chevy fixed or should I spend it on a day’s worth of an accountant’s time?”    I truly doubt it is yes.  (I also doubt whether the time is only a single day.)

The MMC folks might go to H&R Block.  In my one and only experience with these guys (when I was young and naive), I wound up teaching my H&R expert about Schedule G, because she was clueless; then I paid her fee.  That is what to expect in such places.  No one at the 1% level of income would go near such a place.

(C) Will the real Middle class please stand up?   To Tell The Truth broadcast from 1956 through 2002 and asked this question after a fun show where 3 people claimed to be the same person.  The real question here, though, is … just what do we mean when we talk about the “middle class,” its society and its economics?

The awesome thing is that I have not been able to get a good definition in any American discussion of inequality.  Not Krugman, nor Stiglitz, nor Faux; not at any reasonable blog.  I suspect this is because name carries emotional baggage – nearly everyone wants to think of themselves as middle class.

Middle Quintile:  Mankiw should be thanked for proposing the middle 20% as the middle class.   But a good definition should cover all social examples.  Try this one:  In the European feudal days around 1100 AD, one found

• the ultra rich who ruled over nearly everything
• the sickened, starving serfs who watched their babies die, and themselves die early.
• the middle class bourgeoisie, the thin buffer of tradesmen and shopkeepers standing between the other two.

Mankiw’s proposal cannot work.  The  MMCs would have been part of the serfs.

Advertizing rule:  In the ’50s and ’60s, when I was young and learning the ropes, middle class seemed to be those who the TV ads aimed for, the folks who could afford to buy things advertized without going into impossible debt.

Using the advertising rule.   Certainly, everyone ought to be Middle Class (MC).  But, with the ad rule, and without assuming a killing debt:  the advertising MC family must be able to … buy their own home and 2 cars (every 2 years), afford to send their 3.5 children to college without pain, and along the way afford a 48″ LDC TV, the latest in cell phones, and the most recent tablet computers.

I suspect advertising MCs must be at least in the upper 5% of the earning population, nowadays.  Below this level, families struggle with killing debt that would en-serf them as individuals when the oligarchs call in the debt.  Below the 5% segment, people who try for these things can sink ever-deeper into debt.   Either the advertizing rule does not work, or the American rich and poor are more separated than we want to admit.

The take-home message is that middle class may not be a meaningful phrase anymore.

Final Comments

Mankiw’s argument   He tries to indicate that the tax trends of the past 30 years are what any reasonable person should say were fair and equitable.  We point out that comparative tax rates are much smaller than comparative earning rates.  And the difference is much more pronounced depending on how close to the survival level the income is.  If you support a family of (2+3.5 =) 5.5,  and make $38,000/yr (at the bottom of the middle 20%), your daily decisions on whether to spend even $200 on bills or on groceries could mean that you and your children might go without extras toward the end of a pay period.  If the income were $10k less, you all might be skipping meals.  If you earn at the bottom of the top 1% range,  $200 is pocket change. You could easily spend that on tax accountants or lawyers with one phone call.

Middle Class has become an emotive meaningless phrase.  A reasonable definition must be valid for any social structure.  Mankiw uses his Middle Class to make the past 30 years of tax restructurings (especially those since 2001) sound reasonable. Class appears synonymous with personal worth and seems to be used only when manipulation is intended.  (Including, of course, LastTechAge’s use of ultras to group the 1-family-in-every-10,000 (0.01%) that earns the very most in America.)

So Mankiw’s business section article must be just another salvo in the class warfare that the upper earners have waged against the rest of us over the past 4 decades.  We are to realize that – really – becoming serfs is not so bad.

There are other comments to be made on his opinion blast … progressive taxes, excess entitlement programs, etc.   See the letters to the NY Sunday Business page, 2013 Jan06.

Fig 1: Fraction of total income earned by the 20% of the population who earn near median income. (light blue, top earning 10% of the population)

Inequality This is LastTechAge, after all, so we cannot close without discussing how Mankiw’s group has fared in the Zero Sum Game of inequality.

Fig 1 shows the iconic history of the upper 10% (pale blue background) – a fairly constant share of the pool of all earned income from WW-II through about 1981.  From 1981 through 2010, their share of the income pool grew by about 48%.

The dark blue line shows that the middle 20% of all earners lost about 19% of their share of the income pool between 1970-2010.  Click for larger graph.

We will not go further with Fig 1 data, but it does show that the median 20% of all American workers have not been treated equitably by those in power.

Appendix – Progressive and Regressive taxes

Added due to discussions after initial posting . Progressive taxes raise the tax rate substantially as the taxable income increases from the poverty level, whereas regressive taxation applies little tax rate increases, or even reduces the rate to reward the self-styled Job Creators, those who earn at the top most levels.

Becoming Wonky   How to adjust tax rates with these definitions is left to the reader, as we say in physics courses (when teacher may not know how to do the tough stuff himself).  The following uses the numbers, not as values, but as trends.

We take ratios of the same type values (we divide them)  and get a value that indicates a trend, independent of the original magnitude.  This is due to our rule: big numbers do not convey much, discussed in  Lies of Large Numbers.

The real issue with Mankiw’s analysis is that he chose two groups to compare that sounded reasonable but, in actuality were far apart in impact that the income difference makes on their personal lives.

Good/Bad thresholds exist   From our point of view too high a taxation is like too high a bathtub temperature. Water feels tepid to cool at about 70ºF (21ºC). Water at 80ºF (27ºC) would is warmer, but water at 104ºF (40ºC) is for hot tubs. There is nothing magical about the 70º threshold, but one feels cool, swimming at a lower temperature.

Income is similar.  Let us define freezing income as the poverty line (PL ), as in the box shown here (Currently, the U.S. minimum wage is about 62% of PL).

Table 2: distance from the Poverty Line for the start of selected income groups

Income Freezing Line:   Use $23,320 as the survival threshold and compare how hot an income is compared with the PL ‘s freezing cold value. Table 2 uses values from Table 1 in the text, Mankiw’s Middle Class (MMC ) starts at $38,000, the top 10% group starts at $108,000 and so on.

Table 3: Class distances

From Table 3 , the 1%ers are 2.3 times farther from the PL freezing point than then 5%ers. This is similar to the fractional tax rate increase of 2.6 (= 28.9/11.1) that Mankiw thought fair and equitable.  Here is the key: The 1%ers are nearly 9 times farther from the PL than MMCers.

Fair and Equitable taxation – our main point .  Idiologues, both left and right, would agree that taxes should be fair and equitable.   How to use this thought, though, is subjective.  Here are my thoughts: The similar ratio between the top 1% and the top 5% is one of the reasons we said that perhaps the Middle Class should be identified with the top 5%, not the middle 20%.  Mankiw’s analysis is far out of balance with the distance to the kill point (the PL) that exists between the median earner and the rich 1%.

……………………………….

Charles J. Armentrout, Ann Arbor
2013 Jan 07
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How and When Should Science be Supported?

The US threatens to terminate scientific research because of a man-made “fiscal cliff.”  We should intensify our support, not eliminate it.

The previous LastTechAge post  brought up the issues that Americans are within days of potentially wiping out our unmatched base of scientific capability.  Here we pick up with when and why should we should provide national support, when is the appropriate time.

We present part 2 of this issue which was started in An Open Letter to the DOE where a portion of was originally presented.

First, why  national support of science research?

This is a topic that has been covered a number of times here, but never goes stale.  The Ideological Right believes that if something is done by private industry, it is not worth doing.  Our focus is in the loss of fusion energy research, but the scope of the discussion is all research that is threatened.

On the contrary, corporate research must be done to support the goals of a company.  And, companies are held to a 3 to 6 month timeline for their vision, as least in the USA.  Development of new manufacturing techniques are appropriate if results can flow from the research group within this tight timeline. Longer term (a year or 18 months) are appropriate if the results lead to new products.

America has offshored much of its basic manufacturing,  and research capability has been severely restricted to small startups, companies alive by the grace of venture capitalists. (VCs typically demand a 5× return on investment within 5 years, with promises that, if this is not met, they will tear the startup apart and sell components for what they can get.  Sort of a modern deal with the devil.)    Nothing without a well defined end product with a net worth that an accountant can calculate can be considered.

Fusion energy research and most physical research tasks have a timeline such as transistor development.  Certainly we would never have developed power reactors, if the government had not made them first for nuclear submarines.  The HTGR was developed by a General Atomics (slightly different name in the 1970s, but it nearly went under when unforeseeable issues arose with its prototype HTGRs. This is the reactor design that provides true intrinsically safe operation). Too bad GA was private.  Our power companies are still trying to implement intrinsically dangerous reactor technologies that have layers of complicated technology that all must work if it to be safe.

The consequences of much of physics research cannot be quantified at this time.  What use was NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) research, or sold state band-gap physics?  What possible use is superconductivity? Or even its high temperature forms that are behind much of research?  Why mess with high-brow stuff like General Relativity? Or atomic force microscopes, or studies of avian habitats or of plant pathogens – why should I care about such things anyway? The list continues for all scientific endeavors.

You might be surprised at what all these pure research programs have done and could yet do, especially as times become ever harder.  No single company would have supported such items without a product in mind, but such studies have provided the core of many products are either in use or will be within the next 20 years.  The highly trained scientists understand, but no accountant would, not before a product is on the horizon.

Programs such as safe fusion power or safe gas cooled reactor design must be done by a government.   This goes “in spades” for wind energy, solar power etc.  U.S. firms without government subsidies cannot compete with those supported by governments such as China.  We Americans must either support the effort or loose the ability to do the job.

So – Why do we have to it now, why not wait a while?

Healthy cows mean good times

Question 1: When is the best time to prepare for bad times that are as inevitable as a starvation following a drought? answer… During the relative good times, of course.

Starving cows mean tough times

My personal bible-background makes me recall Joseph (Genesis 41:46 …) who interpreted a dream (now days “who analyzed data“) of 7 healthy cows followed by 7 starving ones. He decided that it meant years of good crops would be followed by terrible times of famine. So during the abundant years, he directed the government of Egypt to build huge granaries to store readily available crops. People knew he was an awful waster of money, certainly resources. But, we know the rest, of those next 7 bad years and of the granaries that saved people’s lives

Question 2: Why not wait until later, when it costs more resources to extract oil than to burn it? answer… We will no longer have the ready energy needed to save ourselves when the inevitable oil price sky-rocket launches across the globe.

If we are to survive as a technical free society, we must follow Joseph’s lead. Right now, the cows are in declining health, but relatively well.

Since the 1950′s at least, we have known that society would experience a CRUNCH in the mid-to-late 21st century when the word expensive will be defined by oil. This is not a 7 year issue with a few deaths that Joseph delt with, but one that will last forever on our planet. For fusion energy development, we should have continued the 1970s’ funding rise through the 1990s, at least. Times were “hard” then, but only if you looked at back with the eyes of “then.” Actually, those were the good days.

Question 3: We are facing a fiscal cliff, we cannot afford such spending now, so why not wait a decade, then start? answer… The US has passed across its cheap oil cliff and during the next decade, our experts will have evaporated away.

Most jobs are changing to the service economy with low wages. Single wage-earner families were the norm prior to the 1980s (see Fig 4, income inequality); but not now. Tech development will become ever more expensive, not easier.

Whose Fault?

Rush Limbaugh, man-of-the-people, ultra rich

Currently, it is nice that gasoline dropped back to $3.30/USgallon. Over the past 25 years, rich reactionary radio/TV right wingers (rich Rush Limbaugh for one) have been continuously stirring up anger over rising gasoline prices. Why not scream at the ocean because of hurricane damage?

Pres George H W Bush

30 years ago, when the price exceeded $1, it was taken as the end of the world — the fault of the lib-ruls. (Wish I could write using George H W Bush’s fake Texas accent!) 10 years from now we will recall today as the good ol’ days.

We may be within several weeks of permanently discarding of our key scientific resources (trained young professionals).

Now is the time to increase funding to technology not reduce it. Yes, it is hard, much more so than 2 generations ago (1980). But every year of delay in getting high energy density power sources makes it that much harder to start.

Everyone else in the world is building the ITER fusion test facility for their own national security. The US is an uncertain, unreliable partner in this, and even though we are currently contributing, the US is losing influence because our support is below what is expected (and needed). The world remembers that U.S. ITER support was an on-again/off-again thing during the Bush/Cheney years.

Question: if we destroy our home-based fusion research laboratories, and discard our home-based expertise, why bother with a thing like ITER?

Details in Twilight of the Gods.

End of Science

The threat looming over us in the next several weeks is not simply the end of fusion energy research. Currently most innovative technical programs are likely to be stomped from our country.

The US Department of Energy is facing an implosion of its budget. I wish I could be upbeat about the letter from the 63 fusion professionals, but the OFES is pretty helpless.

Its The Politics, Stupid!

Protecting our historic innovation might rest on whether we contact our Senators and Representatives. Such personal initiative might well help!

But … right now, Congress does not have much effective influence on the issues, I think. The final decisions will be achieved during sub rosa talks between Pres. Barack Obama and Rep. John Boehner. Boehner is a savvy old pol focused on the protection of the wealthiest families in the US. Obama has at least 2 strikes against him: (A) he has no gut feeling about the role of science and technology in society, and (B) based on his performance during his first 4 years, he is probably the worst negotiator (check out comments from Rbt Kuttner) of any leader over the past 100 years.

……………………………….

Charles J. Armentrout, Ann Arbor
2012 Dec 21
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Open Letter to the OFES of the DOE

63 young fusion energy research professionals plead with the D.O.E to not end fusion research in America.  The American Physical Society pleads for public support of physics research in general.  The fate of American research will be decided in the next several weeks by 2 politicians in secret discussions over the budget. 

American energy science is in crisis at this moment.  Reactionary forces want to finally complete the destruction of our technical infrastructure began more than 3 generations ago.  Fusion energy science, serving its usual role as the canary in the mineshaft, is about to succumb to the poisonous fumes in Washington DC.  This is a warning about a serious impending threat to our future.

The immediate threat is the attempt to strangle government support for anything other than the finances of the richest families.  The goal is to establish fiscal austerity during this time of near-depression recession economy.  Every week for the past 3 years, nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman has warned that this is the wrong action for our depression economy.  For a variety of reasons (recent Krugman articles: 2012-Dec07, and 2012-Dec17),  the strategy to bring a nation out of depression is to vigorously fund, now,  programs that will help the future, provide current jobs, and keep workers fed, housed and healthy — not the reverse of each of these.  This applies to energy research – it is key to our success as an industrial nation.  In light of falling oil reserves, global warming, crop failures, our future has changed from what we once projected. Preparation is required to avoid the collapse every past human civilization has experienced.

This month, a group of fusion physicists published this Open Letter to the US Department Of Energy’s Associate Director for the Office of Fusion Energy Sciences (OFES).  This is an important plea from people who are in their career-building years, most are not yet well known.  We repeat it in its entirety, but it is available here.  Click to jump to our discussion, past the letter.     Click any figure for its full image.

The Open Letter to the Office of Fusion Energy Sciences

Fig 1: DIII-D ca 1990, International user facility, 1 of 3 operating

We are early-career research scientists and professors, all under 40, who work in plasma and fusion science.  We are concerned about the proposed fiscal year 2013 budget for the Office of Fusion Energy Sciences (OFES) in the Department of Energy’s Office of Science and about the future plasma and fusion science funding trajectory it represents.

The current US administration has affirmed its “worldclass commitment to science,” with the goal of attracting more US students to science and engineering now, and to ITER, the international tokamak fusion project, as it reaches full operating capacity 15 years from now. Those commitments should be applauded, and they should be acted on sensibly to maximize the return on investment for US taxpayers
in today’s tough fiscal environment.

Fig 2:  NSTX (Princeton) 2nd of 3 in US. Closed for upgrades 2013

With a price tag upwards of $20 billion, ITER is the cornerstone of the world’s fusion energy program. It represents a leap forward on the path to a viable fusion reactor. Yet ITER is more than an engineering project. It will have to create, confine, and control a self-sustained, burning plasma. The challenge of studying that plasma state is matched by the anticipation of what we will learn. We have theories of how a burning plasma will behave and how associated heat loads and energetic particles will impact the ITER wall materials. And there is one thing we know: ITER is discovery science, and a burning plasma will produce plenty of surprises once we get there.

Some surprises may be advantageous, others will need to be mitigated. US plasma and fusion scientists must be in a position to understand and expand on those new physics insights. The vibrant domestic program must be maintained and nurtured, so that today’s graduate students and postdocs can become experienced scientists and leaders 15 years from now.

Fig 3:   Alcator-Cmod under installation. 3rd of 3 in US operating, scheduled for shutdown under current budget

Instead, the administration’s FY 2013 OFES budget redirects one-sixth of the FY 2012 domestic spending to the ITER project (see PHYSICS TODAY, June 2012, page 25). If that trend continues, within the next two years hundreds of scientists and engineers at premier US institutions will be laid off. Over time, those layoffs will lead to the permanent loss of some of the brightest young minds from the US plasma and fusion program, and likely from the academic and research communities altogether.

The fusion program has a public-image problem: It was supposed to deliver cheap and safe nuclear energy long before many of us young scientists entered the field. But the plasma and fusion program is much broader than energy research. It encompasses the study of supernovae explosions, solar coronal mass ejections, galaxy clusters, wakefield accelerators, the basic complexity of dynamical systems, and many other plasma phenomena.

Plasma science, with its enormous breadth, draws on many funding agencies, but the 2007 National Research Council report Plasma Science: Advancing Knowledge in the National Interest has called on the DOE Office of Science to take the stewardship role in guiding the multifaceted and exciting research field forward. The Office of Science must act on this deed of trust and enable us to capitalize on the public curiosity and interest in the 99.9% of the visible universe we call a plasma.

Fig 4:  International Tokamak ITER, under construction in Europe

The US Congress has consistently said that ITER funding should not come from the domestic fusion program, which is already underfunded, yet the contributions to ITER are threatening to consume the entire domestic OFES-funded program. The proposed FY 2013 US contribution to ITER is $150 million and is scheduled to double or even triple in the next few years. That makes us deeply concerned for the ability of the Office of Science to allow and encourage domestic plasma and fusion research to survive and thrive.

The under-40 crowd, those expected to lead our field in the ITER era, respectfully request that you not let the worldleading US plasma and fusion program weaken in comparison to our partners and competitors. Instead, let us capitalize on the taxpayers’ domestic R&D and ITER investments. Let us build a stronger and broader program to advance knowledge in basic plasma and fusion science and to prepare the scientific workforce of this country for the era of burning plasma.

In addition to the two of us, 61 other early-career scientists from 27 organizations across the country have signed this letter. The original version, with all its signatories, is available at http://fire.pppl.gov/under_40_letter_2012.pdf.

Vyacheslav Lukin,  US Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC
Anne White,  Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge

Discussion

LastTechAge has discussed this technical/social crisis that Lukin, White and 61 others discuss.  We have had a number of posts on the American fusion effort, easiest to find them using the INDEX tab, under the LastTechAge banner.  Most of these have additional images of the tokamaks.

Fig 5:  Fusion budget collapsed just as success happened. All synched with turn-on of Pump transferring income to American ultra classes

As a past fusion scientist and now into retirement,  I have one major quibble.  Lukin and White discuss the “fusion program public-image problem” as though it were an embarrassment that came up from physics overhype and self delusion.  Bluntly: Not So.

Fig 5 shows that the bottom fell out of the fusion budget just as H-mode confinement was discovered, the need for ‘D’ shaped containment was proven,  and requirements for a diverter were undestood. We also discussed this in our trilogy that included Kill The Beast.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

Also, on December 10, 2012, the American Physical Society (principal US physics organization) sent an emergency appeal to its physics members to contact congress members and halt the destructive shutdown in all research funding.  The text of this email can be read in our PDF Reference page:  APS requests help 2012 Dec.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

Not just physics and fusion research are endangered.  All such programs supported by the U.S. government are threatened.   Part 2 of this series discusses the why, how and when of the action we must do to retain American capability in the full range of sciences.

Update: 2012 Dec 21   At the urging of a reader (urging not from a Comment) the second half was moved from this post to an expanded Part 2.  How and When Should Science be Supported?

……………………………….

Charles J. Armentrout, Ann Arbor
2012 Dec 17
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Darkside of the Moon – or of American Society?

There is no Darkside for the moon, but maybe there is for American understanding of science.

Kenneth Chang, a respected science writer for the New York Times has an article in the 2012 Dec 14 issue called “Two Space Probes to Crash, Intentionally, on Dark Side of Moon“.  Mr. Chang has written many fine articles but this one pushes the reader into the thinking of 13th century Europe.   I though maybe that this was the product medieval minded headline writer, but the phrase is repeated in the body of the story.

There is no permanent “darkside” to the moon, just darkness that sweeps around it as night sweeps around the spinning Earth.  Click the image below for better view

Fig 1: Lunar nearside (always facing Earth) and farside (always away from Earth)

The story is actually about the planned crashes of NASA’s GRAIL lunar orbiters. The GRAIL craft orbited in formation and produced the highest resolution maps of lunar mass concentrations ever made (decades ago, these features were called called “masscons”). Fig. 1 is made from composite images by the Clementine Lunar orbiter (1994).

Perhaps Mr Chang was writing cutesy style so that grade school children do not have to strain to comprehend such complex ideas as a rotating moon?   But I have heard 7 year olds explain why a quarter moon is only half illuminated.  True, the rest of his article appears to be aimed at a target audience who think astrologers are science types who read tarot cards to tell them about the future, life and everything.

Fig 2: Moon at 1st Quarter.

The image in Fig 2 is students in my astronomy class, using the Alvan Clark 8″ telescope that used to be at Park College (Parkville, Mo).  No problem for students back 1970s to understand why half the face turned toward Earth was dark.

Actually, I suspect “darkside” replaces “farside” for much the same reason for the widespread computer use of icons instead of file maps like File Manager.  Why go to the trouble and learn reading and writing when you can communicate like monkeys in a lab can by just touching a screen?  It is probably another piece of evidence that we are slipping from an educated populace to one who will take their information unquestioningly from Experts.

I guess this the bad news is that we have yet another pointer to our slippage as an self determining society.   Flip side: Maybe the good news is that, this week, Michigan approved concealed carry of hand guns in schools.  (Passed by Republican representatives in their lame-duck session, so it must all good, right?)   This is written the same day that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooter “met or exceeded” the Michigan legislature expectations.

……………………………….

Charles J. Armentrout, Ann Arbor
2012 Dec 14
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