> As pointed out by another commenter the NBER has never failed to declare a recession after two consecutive quarters of GDP reduction.
That isn't 100% accurate. There is 1 example from 1947 where we had two consecutive quarters of negative GDP, but positive jobs, positive industrial production and positive consumer spending and NBER doesn't consider it a recession.
2001 was the opposite. It was called a recession without consecutive 2 quarters of negative GDP growth. [1]
In the USA, "officially" a group of 8 economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research decides when a recession starts. I suspect other countries have their own definitions.
"The NBER's definition emphasizes that a recession involves a significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy and lasts more than a few months. In our interpretation of this definition, we treat the three criteria—depth, diffusion, and duration—as somewhat interchangeable. That is, while each criterion needs to be met individually to some degree, extreme conditions revealed by one criterion may partially offset weaker indications from another. For example, in the case of the February 2020 peak in economic activity, the committee concluded that the subsequent drop in activity had been so great and so widely diffused throughout the economy that, even if it proved to be quite brief, the downturn should be classified as a recession." [1]
Planet Money (podcast on NPR) did an episode [2] a little while ago about it that I recommend listening to. They talk with one of the 8 economists. It was honestly refreshing hearing the economist talk about it, I got the impression that it was a more neutral take on the circumstances rather than pushing a narrative.
In other words, if it looks like a recession and quacks like a recession then it might be a recession.
And yes it much more complicated - especially it also depends on how much outside pressure NEBR has. I think there is a large pressure not to declare recession since we still have a high inflation and feds needs to continue raising rates.
the reason for the weirdness is that it doesn’t look like a recession in the labor market. Layoffs have been almost exclusively limited to tech, and within tech pre-profit or highly speculative (cryptoshovels) companies. This is important because in the US economic system labor power drives income drives inflation. (This isn’t true in all countries.)
When the employment outlook changes, and I expect it will, we will be in a traditional recession.
I was under impression that unemployment is a lagging indicator. The last thing employers want to do is let people go - they will try to cut here, cut there, stop hiring etc.
All I gather from their description is that they basically just get a "feel" for it. That's why so many people choose to follow the two negative quarter thing - it's objective and clearly defined, but maybe less accurate (particularly in cases like now where unemployment is still really low).
You're approaching it from the standpoint that it's an exact science, but it's more of a social science and you can't really pin down exact specifics, but only best guesses. Unfortunately (and I fell into this camp for a long time) many people see economics and see the mathematical models and assume that it must be scientific or precise, but the marketing campaign to legitimize economics unfortunately confused many of us into that misconception.
It's helpful to think of economics as a field under the branch of political science, which itself isn't very scientific.
I like to think of it as not really one or the other, but as both. It’s like a venn-diagram intersection of finance and sociology. Some elements of economics are purely quantifiable, and some elements are purely human.
Both of those are up to the consensus of the group of economists. They regularly talk about it with each other and compare with historical data mostly. Keep in mind economics is a social science, not exact science.
It would strike me more as "feeling it out", but they are not in a rush to announce it is or is not a recession until they have a better feel. Everyone seems to be rushing to call it a recession as early as possible. The economist I heard talking had a "wait and see" attitude on the podcast which was refreshing to hear.
I'd say listen to the economists that are actually apart of the group and form your own opinion. I didn't get that impression personally. Although I'm sure there is some impact.
Economics is a social science. It is probably the most data-driven of the set, but it is inescapably human, and therefore ultimately comes down to judgment.
"And it’s rare for there to be two consecutive quarters of negative GDP without a recession. In fact, George Washington University professor Tara Sinclair said the only time on record appears to have been 1947."
Great question! Not that I'm aware of (EDIT:
sseagull provided a good example in 1947). To be fair, I can't think of any time where we've seen 2 quarters of negative GDP growth while maintaining "full" employment and wage growth. This is an unusual recession if it is a recession.
This is a recession. During a recession, the economy tends to lose 10% of its employment or more. Usually this is from loss of jobs. This time, inflation has cut everyone's pay by between 10 and 30% depending on who you ask. The CPI says 10%, but a lot of necessities, like energy and food, are up a lot more.
While there are certainly issues, the issues are more with the procurement process than the actual aircraft.
Virtually every single aircraft program has been flogged by the press for being too expensive and less capable than the aircraft it replaced. This included the F-111, the C-5, the F-14, the F-15, the B-1, the F-16, the A-10, the F-18, the C-17, the B-2, the V-22, the F-22, and now the F-35. Overall the track record for these aircraft turned out to be outstanding, far exceeding the capabilities of their predecessors.
The actual track record for the F35 has been very positive. Most the reports I've seen from pilots are generally very positive [1].
Other countries continue to buy it over other platforms [2].
Most the major complaints are around costs compared to the aircraft that are being replaced, but this isn't a fair comparison.
As for the cost to fly the F-35, a unit measure the Air Force terms “cost per flying hour,” today the F-35 costs around $35,000 per flying hour. Comparative aircraft in this class are generally in the mid $20,000s, a target the F-35 is slated to hit by 2025. However, it must also be remembered, as the F-35 pilot’s above comment highlights, far fewer F-35s can accomplish far more with fewer aircraft than legacy aircraft types. It does not require a math major to understand this yields far lower real-world total costs to achieve a particular mission result. [3]
The F-111 was a capable strike aircraft once they worked out the intake issues, but failed as a Navy interceptor and was inadequate as a strategic bomber
The C-5 suffered expensive wing cracking issues early in its life and even after that was fixed it had the lowest reliability of any Air Mobility asset
The F-18 was short on range and bring-back payload compared to its predecessors and had to be redesigned mid-life into a basically new aircraft
The B-1 was cancelled once and brought back as a less capable but horrifically expensive-to-maintain aircraft that failed to replace its predecessor
The F-14 was cursed with inadequate engines that hampered its flexibility and it had crippling maintenance requirements
The C-17 is one of the most expensive methods of moving payloads ever invented, since it is compromised by tactical requirements that aren't relevant to its actual role
And those are just off the top of my head.
So much in invested into so few platforms these days that they simply have to be made to work to a tolerable level. The fact that they remain in service is more a reflection on need rather than merit.
And in case of F-14, it was politically motivated penny pinching that led to TF30 engines being used - when they were supposed to only be temporary option to make testing quicker and cheaper.
When it comes to sensor fusion, there isn't a fighter jet out there that's better than the f-35!
The issue is that the f-35 program failed to deliver a low-cost replacement for the f-16, and the program used a couple of practices (concurrent delivery/development, and shared components between airframes) that have a sketchy history in defense contracting. IMO, it's a great plane, but built in a time where near-peer pressure isn't as strong as it is now, and some very contractor favorable terms crept in.
Does sensor fusion even work? Last time I've read about it the story stated pilots turn off all but one relevant one to actually get targets because it messes everything up.
Wow, the F-14, F-15, F-16, and F-18 were all first flown in the 70's. The F-35 was 2006. It's easy to see some of the motivation for the F-35: there were a silly number of fighter models built in that decade.
"Many of the F-16's past problems are mirror images of the issues we see in the F-35. According to the article, the Air Force expected the F-16's research and development costs rose by some $7 billion to reach $13.8 billion by 1986.... The fly-by-wire mechanism of the F-16, in which an aerodynamically unstable but highly maneuverable aircraft was tamed by computers to keep it flying, was an expensive problem that was eventually solved. Like the F-35, the F-16 had problems with its engine and also had to be modified to placate U.S. allies who wanted a fighter capable of air-to-ground missions, a real multi-role fighter. " [1]
Almost all of them have similar stories from what I've seen. To be fair, most of these were developed before I was born so I certainly could be missing some context from that time period.
If you read the source article, that's not what it actually says. What it says:
>Program costs—originally estimated at $4 billion for the United States — increased by $7.7 billion last year with $6.3 billion of this resulting from the addition of 73 F‐16B two‐seater aircraft to the program. The Air Force believes it can justify the addition of the other $1.4 billion.
So... it increased $7.7B with $6.3B of that being additional planes ordered.
That's a FAR cry from the F-35 costs which increased... because increase. Not because more orders were placed.
The F-35 program is at $1.8 TRILLION dollars, the F-16 would have needed to be $360 BILLION to be equivalent waste. They're not even in the same universe.
No, you're not. You're not accounting for inflation. You're not accounting for capability. You're not accounting for length of service times number of planes. You're not accounting for sales. You're not accounting for a host of relevant factors.
You're simply taking two numbers, looing at the nominal values, and doing a simply multiply, then concluding these are equivalent waste. You ignored so many relevant factors that it makes this simplistic "comparison" irrelevant.
I can't tell if you're just accusing me of what you've done or not actually reading any of the posts.
>No, you're not. You're not accounting for inflation.
Where exactly do you think the $1.8 Trillion >> $360 Billion number came from? Hint: it's accounting for inflation.
> You're not accounting for capability.
Capability is irrelevant to the discussion of gross cost overruns.
>You're not accounting for length of service times number of planes.
I literally am. The F-16 has been in service for almost as long as the projected F-35 which I stated in the post you were replying to. Except nobody actually believes there's any planet that the F-35 will ever be in service 50 years.
>You're not accounting for sales.
Again, I am. The F-35 will never EVER reach the sales numbers the F-16 has. Period.
>You're not accounting for a host of relevant factors.
I welcome a list of those factors. Everything you've mentioned so far has been accounted for by me, but apparently not you.
>You're simply taking two numbers, looing at the nominal values, and doing a simply multiply, then concluding these are equivalent waste. You ignored so many relevant factors that it makes this simplistic "comparison" irrelevant.
I didn't do that at all, and if I had it'd still be more than you appear to have done.
You started with a quote from what you called the source article, then concluded "So... it increased $7.7B with $6.3B of that being additional planes ordered."
Here's the source article [1] for your quote. From May 1, 1977. So try again to your values are inflation adjusted. They're not. The numbers you started with are 1977 nominal dollars. They had no idea you'd be quoting them in 2021 so there's no way they would have written those 1977 values in 2021 dollars for you to quote today. The other numbers for future F-35 costs also are not inflation adjusted. Track down the source and check; I did. They're nominal figures, added from each years budget. You're just making these claims up as you go.
Since you claim things that are so demonstrably untrue, apparently assuming I'll just believe you, it's not worth continuing.
The NYtimes article quotes a GAO report, which is THE SOURCE. The $360B quotes was what $1.8Trillion would equate to in 1977 dollars, inflation.
You have yet to provide a single number or source to your claims despite continuing to insist I have no idea what I'm talking about, until you do actually show up with some numbers to back up your claims I'm done with the conversation and will assume at this point you're just arguing for the sake of being a troll.
Stealth coatings have proven to not be able to survive the real world on at least three major recent aircraft: B-2, F-22, and F-117. Stealth is nice, but a plane you cannot fly in the rain without destroying it's outrageously expensive coating is not really very practical.
> Um, what? F22 program cost about $334 million per aircraft and is roughly $60k per hour of flight.
> F-35 is a comparative bargain at $95 million and $35k/hour.
But that might not be a fair comparison. IIRC, the F-22 project was ended far earlier than originally planned, so development costs were amortized over far fewer planes.
The big complaint now about the F-35 (and the goalposts keep shifting) is the cost per flight hour. This should get better as the Air Force trains more maintainers, and LockMart actually starts to provide the level of parts/supplies they are contractually obligated.
1. Taking a shot in the dark - Maybe check your ethernet cables? Not all ethernet cables are the same. If it's a cheap / old ethernet cable then it might not be rated for the same kinds of speed as your wifi. There is a chart on this page labeled "Ethernet Cable Performance Summary" with some stats for different ethernet cables.
2. Yes, although in my experience this is very minor. On my network - good wifi has a 3ms latency and good ethernet has a .3ms latency. While that is a 10x improvement, in the scheme of things I don't notice 3ms of latency. I live in a high rise condo with lots of interference in a major city and can't say it's caused me any issues.
Just curious, what would it take for you to get on a 737-Max?
European and American regulators have gone over it with a fine tooth comb at this point and allow it to fly. There is always gonna be people that will say the plane shouldn't fly. Arguably the amount of attention this plane has gotten will probably make it one of the safest in the industry going forward.
Nothing more than approval by relevant authorities. Once I use a different treshold than that, it becomes very difficult to fly at all.
I mean all else being equal (Two planes to London leaving at almost exactly the same time and exactly the same cost) then perhaps I'd prefer the A32X. But the point is all else isn't equal. It becomes a matter of how many hundred you want to spend to fly the Airbus. Or how many hours you want to spend at the airport waiting for the non-Max flight. And I'll happily take the MAX if it saves me 30 minutes or $20. And I'll take my family along too without hesitation.
The whole thing has been badly handled. The FAA/EU agencies should have declared at the very outset that airlines will need to bear the cost of retraining the pilots who will be flying this. It was the attraction of not having to retrain pilots that was the biggest incentive for Boeing to pull the shortcuts they did. At a bare minimum the aviation agencies should have pulled that benefit away.
No it is not. No regulators has yet been prepared to certify a fixed-wing aircraft that is intrinsically unstable, even after decades of proven fly-by-wire development.
The 737 Max has different yoke force during pitch-up than predecessor 737 models, such that at higher angles of attack it does not natively require increasing yoke force to continue to pitch up. That doesn't mean it would pitch up uncontrollably. MCAS was designed to provide pitch-down force in these high-AoA cases so that yoke forces would be equivalent to 737 NG models and minimal training would be necessary to fly both.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relaxed_stability#Unstable_air... indicates that the MD-11 (which regulators certified) is aerodynamically unstable. (That plane has a compensation system, similar to the 737-MAX.) Is "intrinsically unstable" different from "relaxed stability" in some subtle way?
And while military planes are quite different from commercial planes, many (most at this point?) military jets are aerodynamically unstable.
There are different kinds of "relaxed stability", largely depending on which axes of the aircraft are affected, and the magnitude of the instability.
Longitudinal stability is something of a special case, in that essentially all swept-wing aircraft are vulnerable to "Dutch roll" instability and are generally fitted with yaw dampers. Since such stabilizers are, practically-speaking, omnipresent, regulators are OK with using them in what is now a well-understood domain. While it can be unpleasant, all of these aircraft can be flown with a failed yaw damper - notably the 707 family has a particular proclivity for yaw instability, and while almost all civilian users opted for the yaw damper, the largest fleet user, the USAF, did not fit their KC-135s with dampers until well into their service life.
For good reason, pitch instability is a much more serious issue, and there has been very little interest in trying to bring to market a transport aircraft that required active pitch stabilization. Many, if not all, modern clean-sheet airliner designs are fly-by-wire due the the safety, performance, and efficiency improvements to be had, but they are all safely flyable in an "alternate law" (or equivalent) fallback mode.
Combat aircraft, generally speaking, aren't certified aircraft (they have no need be), for good reason - if you're flying a modern fighter and the FBW computers die on you, it's over, you eject. Understandably, that's not an option in a transport aircraft.
Aerospace controls engineer here - while the airframe might not be passively stable (as is common for civilian aircraft), dynamically unstable aircraft have been stabilized with control software since the 70s [0]. If you've flown on an MD-11, you've flown on an 'aerodynamically flawed' aircraft. Most real systems are dynamically unstable without some kind of controller (implying software) in the loop.
Ah - I didn't say Boeing's ability to write and test that control software was particularly good (in fact, I think their current track record says exactly the opposite.) I just hate when non-domain experts make judgements about things being 'fundamentally flawed.'
Insufficiently tested and documented? Sure. Bad UI/UX? Most definitely. Irredeemable 'because of aerodynamics' according to some private pilot that flew a 737 once in sim? Absolutely not.
But yes. MCAS was put in place due to concerns over aero. If that was just to avoid the need for extra pilot training then it should have been scrapped since new training will be required now anyway. But since great effort has been made to fix MCAS we can conclude that the root problem is aerodynamic.
Can aerodynamic issues be compensated for with software? Sure. I need to read up on the final hardware/software/instruction solution before passing Judgement.
You're completely ignoring that flying the 737 MAX without MCAS is not an automatic death sentence. Meanwhile a malfunctioning MCAS is actually an automatic death sentence.
The big flaws are in the software, not in the hardware. So stop focusing on that.
It’s “atypical” because it’s a 30+ year old superseded model and there are more efficient designs available. KLM, a flag carrier, was flying them up until just a few years ago. If it’s certified for carrying passengers, it’s certified. There are no special concessions made to airworthiness regulations for aircraft that sell few in number.
The MD-11 has been certified for air transport since it was introduced, was flying in revenue service until 2014, and as far as I know, that certification has never been revoked.
I don't think the flight safety record of the MD-11 bears that out[0] - most crashes of significance were either cargo flights (which are much more prone to dynamical issues than passenger flights) or flights in conditions that exceeded design specs (landing in typhoons). It sounds like most airlines sold it because it missed range/fuel burn targets, not because of safety issues.
My Dad was a frequent business traveller in the 1980s and 90's and I remember him commenting on the MD-11 and saying that he hated them because they were noisy and had lot of vibrations at the back from the center engine.
He said that was the the reason airlines switched to using them as cargo planes.
>Travis is unequivocal in his assessment of the Boeing 737 MAX. “It’s a faulty airframe. You’ve got to fix the airframe [and] you can’t fix the airframe without moving the engines” back and away from their current position.
>The root problem with the engine-forward design is “once this thing pitches up, it wants to keep pitching up,” said Travis. “That’s a big no-no,” he continued, because pitch-up on an aircraft increases angle of attack.
"Gregory Travis, a veteran software engineer and experienced, instrument-rated pilot who has flown aircraft simulators as large as the Boeing 757"
I know a few veteran software engineers that are instrument-rated and frankly I'm not sure I would listen to any of them over the FAA or aeronautical engineers. Probably good for some perspective, but not exactly a great source for determining if an airplane is "aerodynamically flawed by design".
That article, and Gregory Travis' assessment, offer zero actual evidence that the design is unstable. Lot of hand waving and "the engines are different so it must be dynamically unstable" but no actual evidence, which is obvious because no independent engineer/pilot is going to be able to effectively assess the upset aerodynamics of an airliner and come to a different conclusion than both the FAA and EASA about whether or not the aircraft is dynamically unstable.
He's somewhat right on other details, but that doesn't make his assessment of the aerodynamic issues correct.
I suppose it boils down to whether you have confidence in the FAA of 2020 to make a decision that would be strongly against the financial interests of Boeing and many US carriers.
I think the Max will crash again. Excuse me, the 737-8 will crash again.
If pilots can disable the malfunctioning MCAS during emergencies then this type of accident won't happen again. The 737 max might suffer from more emergency landings than usual though.
Different aerodynamics probably had a little impact but it's mostly just a much better power to weight ratio. It helps that you didn't launch a raspberry pi and battery :)
That's exactly it. This thing was pretty heavy with a battery, Pi, sensors, mounting components, etc. I used an Estes D12-5 engine, which is fairly powerful but there are wayyy more powerful model rocket motors out there that I'd like to try in the future with this.
If you’d like inspiration for something larger, check out a rocket[0] a friend and I designed/built/launched earlier this year. Basically a combination of a drone and a rocket, rocket part takes it up, drone part handles the landing. I can share a lot more photos, videos, and design characteristics if interested (contact info on my profile page).
Thanks for clarifying.
As a total noob I was staggered by those little sugar rockets, as soon as the thing left the ground I thought "uh oh, what have I done?"
Just curious, what would you have liked to see the U.S. do about Hong Kong? Arguably if anyone was gonna do something it should probably be the British being their agreement was broken. I'm sure the British would have U.S. backing them if they wanted to retaliate.
The U.S. started removing the extra trade agreements from Hong Kong (which arguably is a large part of what made Hong Kong what it is today) and sanctioned individuals in the Chinese government [1]. While this seems to be a "weak" response, I'm not sure what else I would like to see short of getting the military involved.
Given that agreement on Hong Kong independance was set to expire relatively soon, is difficult to justify serious intervention from a cost/ benefit perspective.
The original seisure of Hong Kong was an act of gunboat displomacy, and not exactly an exemplar of justice and law. Consider how its seen in donestic politics in China.
This does not mean that I approve of China's activity, just putting things in perspective.
>if anyone was gonna do something it should probably be the British
Except the UK has much bigger issues ATM like dealing with the social, political and economical fallout of Brexit and Covid-19.
To put it mildly, even if they wanted to, it's tough for them to help put out a fire in a far away village when they have a huge dumpster fire in their own back yard to deal with first.
Building relationships with our allies in the area (TPP), State Department diplomacy, etc. to pressure China effectively. I think TPP was dead regardless of who won, but that State is impaired right now.
It is hard to see what the US should do, but I think the west has a moral obligation to do something (even though it is technically an Anglo-sino agreement).
The UK is trying to welcome people from Hong Kong to the UK (passports left over from before the handover) which could hurt them where it actually matters if lucky.
