So in my last article for BiggerPockets, I discussed a case of due diligence gone wrong. This time, I discuss a case of due diligence gone right. And it went right because I followed the checklist I laid out in my 5000-word article  "The Ultimate Guide to Due Diligence." The checklist, again, looks like this:

1. Pre-Offer Due Diligence
   1. Area Analysis
   2. Value and Financial Estimate
   3. Rehab Estimate
2. Post-Acceptance Due Diligence
   1. Physical Due Diligence
   2. Financial Due Diligence
   3. Legal Due Diligence
   4. Inspections
3. Retrading (if necessary)
4. Final Decision and Walking Away (if necessary)

​In this article I discuss a house we bought a few years ago. During our walkthrough, we found signs of termite damage and had an inspector look at it to confirm. Yup, it was termites. So,

Getting discounts on your price is one of the biggest advantages of well-done due diligence. (Although walking away from bad deals is the biggest). I also discuss comping out properties and more due diligence items you should look into. Check it out!

So my ongoing quest to make sure every real estate investor does proper due diligence continues. This time, I go over a due diligence disaster we had about six years ago with a house in Grandview, MO. Of the many problems I discuss, the biggest was my underestimation of how bad the basement was,

In the end, we ended up almost 70 percent over budget and upside down in the property!

So don't skimp on due diligence. Instead, follow the checklist I laid out in my article  "The Ultimate Guide to Due Diligence." The checklist, again, looks like this:

1. Pre-Offer Due Diligence
   1. Area Analysis
   2. Value and Financial Estimate
   3. Rehab Estimate
2. Post-Acceptance Due Diligence
   1. Physical Due Diligence
   2. Financial Due Diligence
   3. Legal Due Diligence
   4. Inspections
3. Retrading (if necessary)
4. Final Decision and Walking Away (if necessary)

Follow it, and you'll be OK. Don't follow it, and you could end up with a turd like the one I describe in my most recent article. If are interested in getting into real estate investment, please check both of these articles out.

What happened? In 2006, Tom Brady was pretty good, but then in 2007 he launched off the charts and was awarded the NFL MVP award, (given to whichever quarterback or running back on one of the top five teams has the best statistics). What happened was actually quite simple: before the 2007 season, the New England Patriots acquired superstar wide-receiver, Randy Moss, and the perennial possession receiver, Wes Welker. In 2007, Randy Moss had 98 receptions for 1493 yards, and an NFL record 23 receiving touchdowns. Wes Welker had an NFL leading 112 receptions for 1175 yards, and 8 touchdowns. (1) Do you think that may have had something to do with Tom Brady’s statistical explosion? Did Tom Brady really deserve the MVP for 2007 given the playmakers he was lucky enough to work with?

There are some sports, such as track and field or tennis, in which individual statistics are all that matter. Baseball is another sport where statistics would presumably show how good a player is in and of themselves, since, for the most part, it’s batter vs. pitcher. But even in baseball, statistics can be misleading.

And with the playoffs rapidly approaching, baseball is where we now turn, to the asterisk Roger Maris received after he broke Babe Ruth’s record of 60 home runs in 1961 (since broken twice, by steroid assisted performances from Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds).

Rarely does a record-breaking performance draw anything but applause, but that wasn’t the case for Roger Maris in 1961. Babe Ruth was obviously beloved in New York, so I can see why Yankee fans would be irritated by Roger Maris’ chase of history, except for the inconvenient fact that Roger Maris also played for the New York Yankees! What angered people so much, aside from their love of Babe Ruth, was that Roger Maris hit 61 home runs in a 162 game season, whereas Babe Ruth had only 154 games to hit 60. It got so ridiculous that Roger Maris and his family received multiple death threats during the season! (2) I’ve never understood death threats in sports… it’s just a game for crying out loud!

Major League Baseball wasn’t particularly happy with him either. Even before the record was broken, MLB commissioner, Ford Frick, announced that unless Ruth’s record was broken in 154 games, the record book would show the new record was set in 162 games. After 154 games, Roger Maris had but 59 home runs. Now, it’s true that Major League Baseball never actually put an asterisk by Roger Maris’ record; that is just an urban legend, probably invented by sportswriter Dick Young. (3) However, the nonexistent asterisk had about the same effect as a real one would have, as no one seemed to accept Roger Maris’ record as the ‘real’ record. In some ways, this seems to be a case of statistical justice; but in my humble opinion, Babe Ruth’s record should be the one with the asterisk (be it real or of the urban legend variety), not Roger Maris’.

It is true that Roger Maris had eight more games, and had Babe Ruth had those eight extra games, the statistical trend says he would have hit 63.1 home runs.* However, what does the asterisk actually represent? To me, it’s an attempt to show that Roger Maris had an unfair advantage setting his record; namely, eight more games. What this ignores is that Babe Ruth had a significant advantage, too: he didn’t have to play against a significant number of the best athletes.

Jackie Robinson is often celebrated for breaking down baseball’s racial barrier in 1947, and he deserves to be. (4) What is rarely discussed is the affect this had on the game before 1947. If we were discussing the NBA, every Hall of Famer from the previous era should probably just be thrown out. With baseball, maybe we can be a little more forgiving. Still, the Negro Leagues had a host of great players, including Josh Gibson, who some credit with hitting as many as 800 home runs from 1931 to 1946. (5) Babe Ruth hit his 60 home runs in 1927, comfortably avoiding integration of the leagues and thereby, the best black pitchers in the country. Roger Maris hit his 61 in 1961; 14 years after the color barrier had been broken.
​
In 2008, 10.2% of professional baseball players were African-Americans. (6) We cannot assume the same numbers would have applied when Ruth was playing, but we can assume the percentage would have been above zero. How many bad, white pitchers did Babe Ruth hit a home run off of, that he wouldn’t have hit if a better, black pitcher had been allowed to play? There’s no way to know. So maybe, instead of erasing the record, we should just put a little asterisk next to it, so everyone knows the advantage Babe Ruth had.

Furthermore, Babe Ruth also avoided the large influx of Latin-American players. While Hispanics were not prohibited from playing in the MLB, like African-Americans were, it’s well accepted that the color barrier was enforced in a de facto way against Hispanics. There were certainly very few Hispanics in the league when Ruth was playing. However, by 1951, four years after integration, both Venezuelan-born Chico Carrasquel and Cuban-born Minnie Miñoso were elected All Stars. (7) Today, almost 30% of the players in the MLB are Hispanic. (8) It wasn’t as high of a percentage in 1961, but it was much higher than in 1927, when Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs.

The point isn’t to blame Babe Ruth for anything; he didn’t make the rules. But then again, Roger Maris didn’t add eight games to the schedule either. The lesson is that statistics, be they sports or economics or whatever, can be very misleading. And in this case, if Roger Maris deserves an asterisk for the advantage he had (eight extra games), then Babe Ruth should have one for his advantage (not having to play against many of the best players). And while we’re at it, let’s give Barry Bonds an asterisk for his advantage (anabolic steroids, HGH, eight more games than Ruth, etc.).
______________________________________________________________________________________________________
Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics Series
Part 1: A Primer
Part 2: Income Stagnation
Part 3: All Fiat Currencies Fail
Part 4: Iraq War Casualties
Part 5: Female-Male College Gap
Part 6: Male-Female Wage Gap
Part 7: Roger Maris’ Asterisk
Part 8: Women Do All the Work but Men Keep All the Money
Part 9: The BMI
Part 10: A College Degree is Worth One Million Dollars
______________________________________________________________________________________________________
*You could argue that the NFL should do this as well for many records, since the schedule was changed from 14 games to 16 games in 1978.
(1) NFL Player Receiving Statistics- 2007, ESPN.com, retrieved September 28, 2009, http://espn.go.com/nfl/statistics/player/_/stat/receiving/sort/receivingYards/year/2007/seasontype/2
(2) Stephen Borelli, “Remember Roger Maris,” USA Today, January 17, 2002, http://www.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/comment/borelli/2001-10-04-borelli.htm 
(3) “Roger Maris: 1961,” Wikipedia.org, Retrieved September 28, 2009, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Maris#1961
(4) For more on Jackie Robinson, see James Lincoln Ray, “Jackie Robinson’s 1947 Season,” Suite101.com, April 4, 2007, http://baseball.suite101.com/article.cfm/jackie_robinsons_legacy_part_one http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h3778.html
(5) Larry Schwartz, “No joshing about Gibson’s talents,” ESPN.com, Article not dated, http://espn.go.com/sportscentury/features/00016050.html
(6) Alden Gonzales, “Study: Percentage of blacks in MLB rises,” MLB.com, April 15, 2009, http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20090415&content_id=4280320&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb
(7) See “Baseball: Rise of Ruth and racial integration,” Wikipedia.org, retrieved September 28, 2009, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball#Rise_of_Ruth_and_racial_integration
(8) Matt Simpson, “Number of American blacks playing baseball declines,” East Valley Tribune, April 15, 2007, http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/story/87851

And here is the next article in my series for SwiftEconomics on "economics lies and statistics," this time on the wildly misinterpreted wage gap between men and women. (I expanded on this topic for The Mises Institute here as well.)

Next in Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics Series: Part 7: Roger Maris’ Asterisk
Previous in Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics Series: Part 5: Female-Male College Gap
______________________________________________________________________________________________________
Now we turn from the mostly meaningless college gap to the mostly nonexistent wage gap. It is quoted ad-nauseum that women make 75 cents for each dollar a man makes for the exact same work (it used to be 59 cents, now it ranges from 75 to 80). In response to this, Nancy Pelosi helped push through congress the Fair Pay Act. (1) Furthermore, April 20th, 2010 not only represents a day we should all get stoned out of our gourds, it’s “Equal Pay Day.” This holiday (of sorts) symbolizes how far into 2010 a woman would have to work to make what a man makes in 2009 alone. (2) Obviously this is a sign of discrimination; as Jessica Valenti, founder of Feministing.com, states rather bluntly, “the wage gap is like a big f*ck you to women.” (3)

​Unfortunately (for Jessica, fortunately for every other woman in the country), even a faint knowledge of business or economics should immediately raise a degree of skepticism about this dubious claim. I’ll let John Stossel ask what should be the obvious question:

Many people seem to believe that businessmen, (I mean businesspeople, sorry), care about nothing other than making money. However these same people also seem to believe businesspeople discriminate against everyone but white, Protestant, straight men with no handicap and well parted hair. So apparently, businesspeople do have values other than making money: they are racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, Christian fundamentalists. Well, at least they have some principles, right?

The truth is that businesspeople discriminate in favor of the color green; money. Market economies discriminate mightily against those who discriminate. If it were true that men make approximately 33% more for the same work, companies that predominantly hired women would crush companies that predominantly hired men. Ask any business owner what would happen if he or she could decrease his or her labor expenses 25% and he or she would tell you he or she would soon be hiring his or her competitor’s employees (as his or her competitor’s employees would be unemployed, because his or her competitors got crushed).

Discrimination assuredly exists, but for such a large wage gap to be present, there are really only four options for someone to believe: 1) There is an all-encompassing agreement among business owners throughout the entire country, both male and female, to discriminate against women, thereby preventing any one business from undercutting another by hiring only women at 75 cents on the dollar. To believe this puts you in the company of the wildest conspiracy theorists. 2) Profits are not particularly important to a business, so business-humans can hire based on just about anything they want. This would make you one of the dumbest people on the planet. 3) Women aren’t as productive as men and therefore, while doing the same job, women provide less output (approximately 25% less) than men do. This would make you a pretty run-of-the-mill sexist. 4) This statistic is wrong.

Before continuing on, I should note that this discussion will not deal with discrimination that may occur with regards to hiring or promoting. Glass ceilings and pink ghettos will not be discussed. The fallacy here is that men and women are paid vastly different amounts for doing the exact same work. As you will soon see, the “same work” has a very flexible definition indeed.

What we need to recognize is that having the same job, (or the same type of job, as these statistics are often based on), does not infer that one does the “same work” and should be paid equally. For example, there is a much greater demand for business professors than history professors, so business professors will be paid more. Furthermore, the longer someone’s had a job, the more they will usually get paid. And obviously, the more hours they put in, the more they will get paid. And when the position is paid by commission, any discrimination that occurs would be by the consumer, not the business-homosapiens who employ them.

Once we recognize these things, we can start to come to grips with what is actually happening. First, we cannot assume that men and women have the same career aspirations in the aggregate. Second, we have to look at what happens when men and women get married, namely, we must investigate the marital asymmetry hypothesis.

Let’s start with the types of jobs men and women seek. As mentioned with regards to the college gap, men and women tend to seek different professional aims and career goals. Men are much more likely to take on dangerous positions, as evidenced by the fact that 93% of workplace fatalities are men. (5) Hazardous conditions usually come with hazard pay. Men are also more likely to take jobs in uncomfortable conditions, which brings a premium as well (if you ever watch an episode of Dirty Jobs, you’ll quickly notice there aren’t a lot of women on the show).

Professor James T. Bennett compiled 20 major reasons for the wage gap, which include some of the following:
​

• Men go into technology and hard sciences more than women.
• Men tend to take more stressful jobs that are not “nine-to-five.”
• Men are more likely to work longer hours, and the pay gap widens for every hour past 40 per week.
• Women are nine times more likely than men to drop out of work for “family reasons.” Less seniority leads to lower pay.
• Men work more weeks per year than women.
• Women place greater value on flexibility, a humane work environment, and having time for children and family than men do. (6)

None of these things are either right or wrong, they just represent different choices. What it does mean, though, is that we cannot say women are paid less for doing the same work when men typically work longer, less flexible hours in more dangerous and uncomfortable positions. Warren Farrell’s calculations highlight the difference between the average hours worked, concluding that men who work full time work an average of 44 hours per week, while women who work full time average 41 hours per week. This represents a bigger difference than you’d immediately think, as a person who works 44 hours a week makes approximately 100% more than someone who works 34 hours a week. Warren Farrell concludes that this accounts for 70% of the wage gap in and of itself. (7)
​
Furthermore, some of the explanations Professor Bennett discusses represent the single biggest difference between the genders when it comes to wages: marital asymmetry. In other words, marriage tends to increase a man’s earning potential and reduce a woman’s earning potential. Regardless of whether it’s right or wrong, women typically take up more responsibilities at home than men do. Since women usually spend more time at home, they have less time to work, and thereby their earning potential is reduced. Since men have many of their domestic responsibilities taken care of for them, they have more time to work and thereby their earning potential increases. Economist Thomas Sowell elaborates:

So my due diligence tour continues. This time I go into detail with Ryan Dossey on due diligence as we go over my almost 5000-word "Ultimate Guide to Due Diligence." If you're looking to get into real estate investment, I think you'll find this very helpful:

And check out Ryan's Youtube channel while you're at it. He has lots of good stuff on real estate and entrepreneurship.

And here is the next article in my old series from SwiftEconomics on economic statistics and their misuse, this time on the college enrollment gap between men and women.

Next in Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics Series: Part 6: The Male-Female Wage Gap
Previous in Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics Series: Part 4: Iraq War Casualties
____________________________________________________________________________
In recent years there has been growing concern by some college administrators, public policy analysts and men’s rights groups, over what has been termed the “college gap.” The college gap represents a major reversal in college admissions between men and women. In 1970, men made up about 57% of college students, whereas in 2007, the situation had completely reversed as women accounted for almost 57% of the college population. (1) The following chart reveals the trend has been almost constant for the past 40 years:

Oh… my… God! Our despotic, matriarchal society is emasculating young men to serve the interests of the Femi-Nazi elite! Very soon, we’ll have little more than droves of blue-balled nice guys serving mindlessly at the behest of their corporate executive wives, after a long day of cleaning toilets or flipping burgers.
​
And when I say the statistic is completely accurate, it may lend at least some credibility to a slightly less hyperbolic version of the previous paragraph. Today, women earn far more Bachelor’s and Associate’s degrees as well as slightly more Master’s and Doctoral degrees than men. (2) Fortunately for men like myself, there is a major flaw in how this data is interpreted. When you look at this chart, what is the first thing that comes to mind? In all likelihood, if your thought was similar to mine, it was that more women are going to college and fewer men are than in the past. Or in other words, women are going to college instead of men. However, it is wrong to assume that because men make up a smaller percentage of college students today than they did in the past, that women must be taking spots previously held by men. The pie is not static; it got bigger, a lot bigger. College admission has exploded since 1970: the number of men in college has actually increased substantially and the percentage of men going to college is greater now than it was in 1970.

In 1970, there were 7.4 million college students and the United States population was just over 200 million: just under 4% of the population was enrolled in college. In 2007, almost 18 million Americans attended a university out of a population of just over 300 million, or 6% of the population. College admission has increased almost 150% in absolute terms and 50% in relative terms in just less than 40 years. In 1970, 4.4 million men attended college, or assuming the population is 50% male (it’s about 49%), 4.4% of men were attending college. In 2007, 7.8 million men attended college, or about 5.2%. Male enrollment has actually increased 18% since 1970. What makes this statistic look so alarming is that female enrollment skyrocketed from 3 million to 10.1 million, or 3% to 6.7%, a 125% increase. (3)

So what are the most probable inferences we can draw from this? What we have to realize is that, by social construct, biology or almost certainly a mix of the two, men and women tend to seek different professional ends. Traditionally, men have been the ones to go to work and little has changed in that regard. What has changed is that women work much more frequently than in the past. In 1973, 78.8% of men over the age of 16 participated in the labor force. By 2008 it was 73%; a small, but notable drop, probably due to the fact that being a stay-at-home father is no longer considered something akin to castration. For women, the percentage increased from 44.7% to 59.5%. (4) So what we are witnessing is not a drop off in men attending college, but a massive increase in women attending college. Just as we are seeing not a drop off in the number of men working, but a massive increase in the number of women working. And going to college appears to be the way that women tend to pursue a career.
​
Even in 1970, the number of women in college compared to the number of women in the labor force was proportionally higher than the number men in college compared to the number of men in the labor force (6.71% to 5.58%), a male/female ratio of 0.83. By 2008, that proportion had fallen to 0.63, however, this doesn’t say anything of itself as women have become more career oriented in the last 40 years and thus the widening gap makes sense. (5)

​From the above chart, we can also see that the percentage of women in college is fairly volatile compared to the percentage of women in the labor force. If we take a moving average of the percentage of women in college and then run a regression, the R2 = .9546, almost perfectly correlated.* We can also see that the trend lines run in similar directions for each time period. In 1996, women made up about 46% of the labor force and that a similar ratio has maintained ever since. (6) In 2000, women made up about 56% of college students and that percentage has also remained relatively constant. While correlation proves nothing in and of itself, such a high correlation would seem to indicate that female labor force participation is the prime driver in the college gap.

So what have men been doing all this time? Well it looks like they’re doing the same thing as before. It is true that men are more likely to drop out of high school, as well as more likely to enter the workforce right after high school. I’ve seen these statistics thrown together as evidence of a general problem, however they shouldn’t be. Dropping out of high school certainly puts one at a disadvantage; however, skipping college is not necessarily a bad idea. High school is paid for by taxes: usually you have to pay for college yourself, making it an important financial decision. And as we all know, college tuition has increased at over twice the rate of inflation for the last few decades. (7) So while the jobs available to college graduates pay more, there is a massive opportunity cost attached to going to college. Four or five years of work experience and income have to be sacrificed and often tens of thousands of dollars of debt are piled on top of that. Thus, it is not necessarily a good financial decision to spend four or five years at an institution of higher learning.

What we often forget is that income is secondary when it comes to measuring financial health. Net worth is king; always has been, always will be. Financial columnist Jack Hough created a hypothetical scenario with two people: one chooses college and one enters the labor force. Hough then uses the average cost of college as well as U.S. Census Bureau data for the average income of college graduates and non-graduates, adjusted for age. He assumes both save 5% of their income each year. By the age of 65, how does the net worth of each look?  The guy who didn’t go to college has $1.3 million in savings, the guy (or gal, in all likelihood) who attended college has just under $400,000! (8) Now admittedly, the 5% savings rate is extremely generous for both college graduates and non-graduates alike. Regardless, it shows that going to college is not necessarily a good financial decision. This doesn’t mean that college is a bad idea; it opens up doors to a lot of careers that are much more fulfilling, it’s just not the best financial decision for everyone.

Furthermore, entering the workforce or going to college are not the only options after high school. One option is apprenticeship programs, such as those for electricians, plumbers, contractors, auto mechanics, etc. The number of people in apprenticeship programs in the United States is difficult to find, but the breakdown in Canada for 2001 was 197,500 men and 20,060 women, or just over 90% men. (9) In the United States, women make up only about 6-7% of apprenticeship programs. (10) In 1999, men comprised 98.5% of carpenters, 98.5% of auto mechanics and 97.8% of electricians. (11) Men also make up the vast majority of police officers, firefighters and military personnel: positions that don’t necessarily require a college degree, but can be a very solid career path. In 2009 for example, 10% of male high school graduates who did not attend college were in the military at the age of 21. (13) Again, whether by social construct, biology, or undeniably a mix of the two, men tend to favor manual labor more than women. So it is no surprise that these fields have been and continue to be dominated by men.

Finally, there’s good, old-fashioned entrepreneurship. According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, “[in the United States] the early-stage entrepreneurship activity prevalence rate in 2007 was 12.0% for men and 7.3% for women.” (13) Many entrepreneurs go to college, but many do not. Some start a business right after high school or even before they graduate, or work for a while after high school and then start a business. Men, again by social construct, biology, or a mix of the two, tend to be more willing to take risks. (14) Risk taking is value neutral in itself. It can be bad in the case of say: “hey, there’s a cliff, let’s jump off it and see what happens,” or good in the case of entrepreneurship.

So what does this all mean? It simply means that when women enter the workforce, which they have done en masse since the 1970’s, they tend to pursue different professional aims than men. I am by no means saying that women aren’t risk takers or are unwilling to do manual labor, just in the aggregate, they are less likely to do so than men. Just like in the aggregate, men are less likely to seek higher education as a method of career advancement. All this elucidates is that women are becoming more active in the workforce and have chosen the types of professions women presumably prefer, whereas men continue to do what they have been doing for a long time and presumably prefer as well.

We need to get over this idea that men and women are the same other than women having an innie and men having an outie. And yes, men and women can be different and still be equal. Men can be 1+3 and women can be 2+2 or something cheesy like that. I mean honestly, wouldn’t it be boring if we were exactly the same (it would certainly make sex rather, oh I don’t know, gay**). I personally remember them telling me to celebrate diversity when I was in college.

Admittedly, this is not proof that there is not a problem. It only reveals that there are a host of lurking variables to unravel before concluding that the gap is even noteworthy. We’d have to conduct a very careful study to determine whether or not there was any “excess” in the gap between men and women. And it’s reasonable to conclude that if there is an excess, it is quite small. It could possibly even be that the proportion should be even greater than it currently is and women are getting the short end of the stick. What is important to note here is that this alarming statistic tells us very little on its own and is probably completely meaningless. All it says for certain is that the laws of supply and demand on college campuses have tilted significantly in men’s favor.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics Series
Part 1: A Primer
Part 2: Income Stagnation
Part 3: All Fiat Currencies Fail
Part 4: Iraq War Casualties
Part 5: Female-Male College Gap
Part 6: Male-Female Wage Gap
Part 7: Roger Maris’ Asterisk
Part 8: Women Do All the Work but Men Keep All the Money
Part 9: The BMI
Part 10: A College Degree is Worth One Million Dollars
_______________________________________________________________________________________
*The raw data is as follows:
The correlation between the percentage of women in college and the percentage in the labor forces:
95% confidence interval
R2 = .9352
Standard Deviation = .0297
Correlation using a moving average for the percentage of college women:
95% confidence interval
R2 = .9546
Standard Deviation = .0270
**Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
(1)  Table A-6. Age Distribution of College Students 14 Years Old and Over, by Sex: October 1947 to 2007,” U.S. Census Bureau, School Enrollment, http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/school.html
(2) “Degrees conferred by degree-granting institutions, by level of degree and sex of student: Prepared in June 2007, Selected years, 1869-70 through 2016-17,” IES National Center for Education Statistics, http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_258.asp
(3) For college population see “Table A-6. Age Distribution of College Students 14 Years Old and Over, by Sex: October 1947 to 2007,” U.S. Census Bureau, For U.S. population see “Statistical Abstract of the United States 2008, Section 1,” U.S. Census Bureau,  Pg. 7-8, http://www.census.gov/prod/2007pubs/08abstract/pop.pdf
(4) “Employment status of the civilian noninstitutional population 16 years and over by sex, 1973 to date,” Bureau of Labor Statistics,  ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/lf/aat2.txt
(5) Author’s calculations, based on Ibid and U.S. Census Bureau, For college population see “Table A-6. Age Distribution of College Students 14 Years Old and Over, by Sex: October 1947 to 2007,”
(6) “Employment status of the civilian noninstitutional population 16 years and over by sex, 1973 to date,” Bureau of Labor Statistics
(7) Jonathan Glater, “College Tuition Rising at More Than Double the Inflation Rate,” The New York Times, October 23, 2007, http://tech.mit.edu/V127/N48/tuition.html
(8) Jack Hough, “Is a College Degree Worthless?” MSN Money, July 2, 2009, http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/CollegeAndFamily/CutCollegeCosts/is-a-college-degree-worthless.aspx
(9) Don McIntosh, “AFL-CIO survey says pay equity top concern of women,” Northwest Labor Press, http://www.nwlaborpress.org/2002/3-17-00Women.html
(10) “Registered apprenticeship training programs,” The Daily, November 20, 2003, http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/031120/dq031120b-eng.htm
(11) “Evidence From Census 2000 About Earnings Detailed Occupation for Men and Women, U.S. Census Bureau, Pg 10 and 16, May 2004, http://www.census.gov/prod/2004pubs/censr-15.pdf
(12) “America’s Youth at 21: School Enrollment, Training, and Employment Transitions between Ages 20 and 21, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, January 23, 2009, http://www.bls.gov/news.release/nlsyth.nr0.htm
(13) Ivory Phinisee, I. Elaine Allen, Edward Rogoff, Joseph Onochise and Monica Dean, 2006 – 2007 National Entrepreneurial Assessment for the United States of America, Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, Pg. 14, Babson College and Baruch College, Copyright 2008
(14) See Brian Cronk, “Gender Differences and Their Influence on Thrill Seeking and Risk Taking,” Bronson M.E. & Howard E. Department of Psychology MWSC, http://clearinghouse.missouriwestern.edu/manuscripts/365.php

My latest article for BiggerPockets is up and it is, again on due diligence. This time I focus on the due diligence we performed on a 74-unit apartment we had a contract. After performing due diligence we found that there were all sorts of problems such as recalled electrical panels, deferred maintenance, higher vacancy and one less unit. So in the end, we decided,

And remember, this is all based on our due diligence process, which I discussed at length in "The Ultimate Guide to Due Diligence." And of course, we went through our checklist, which looks like this:

1. Pre-Offer Due Diligence
   1. Area Analysis
   2. Value and Financial Estimate
   3. Rehab Estimate
2. Post-Acceptance Due Diligence
   1. Physical Due Diligence
   2. Financial Due Diligence
   3. Legal Due Diligence
   4. Inspections
3. Retrading (if necessary)
4. Final Decision and Walking Away (if necessary)

​If you're interested in real estate due diligence, you should definitely check out both articles. 

My latest article for The Mises Institute is up. This one is on a topic I have touched on a few times before, the growing danger from "Big Tech;" namely Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook and to a lesser degree, Twitter, Microsoft, Patreon and Yahoo. And let us not forget payment processors such as Stripe and Paypal.

I take on Big Tech from a libertarian perspective arguing that not only are they incredibly biased, but "these tech firms wield enormous power, are not as private as many would believe and benefit from a very unique form of corporate welfare." For example, I note that regulation has made competition very difficult, particularly in the payment processing industry,

And of course, I make the case that these firms are acting as publishers while being treated by the government as platforms. And they should have to pick a side. Check it out!

This article in my series of economic lies for SwiftEconomics.com is more of a war lie, which is fitting since it's about the Iraq War and that entire catastrophe was sold a little else than lies. 

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Next in Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics: Part 5: The Female-Male College Gap
Previous in Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics: Part 3: All Fiat Currencies Fail
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Statistics about non-economic matters can be manipulated as well. One of the most disturbing regards war casualties from Iraq. The government has a great incentive to downplay the number of Americans who have died in Iraq as to make the cost of the war look smaller and not surprisingly, they’ve taken full advantage of it.

The primary way they’ve done this is to disaggregate the figures. In other words, official war casualty statistics are given out in pieces, instead of a whole, to make the actual number of deaths look smaller than it really is.

First of all, we must note the total cost of the war to all involved. Our allies, or the “coalition of the willing,” have lost 318 troops in Iraq. (1) Much more distressing, however, is the number of Iraqis who have lost their lives. The official count varies, but according to the AP, the number is 110,600. (2) However, this is certainly too low, as keeping accurate records in the chaotic aftermath of the invasion has proven to be almost impossible. Survey results from the ORB Group concluded that over 1.3 million Iraqi’s had died, as a result of the war, by August 2007! (3)

That survey is controversial, but it corroborates a study by The Lancet that estimated there had been 654,865 deaths 14 months earlier, in June of 2006. (4) Regardless of the actual figure, it is disgustingly high. Most of these people were not terrorists, Ba’athists or insurgents; they were just normal Iraqis living under the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein. It’s certainly good he’s gone, but given Iraq had no WMD, nor a connection to Al-Qaeda, the cost has proven to be unbearably high.

The official number of U.S. casualties is 4335. (5) Now, this is an accurate statistic, it represents the number of American soldiers who have died in Iraq since the war started. However, it is very misleading because soldiers are not the only one’s to have died and Iraq is not the only place they have died.
Let’s start with the location. George Bush repeatedly referred to Iraq as part of the “War on Terror.” If that is the case, then why aren’t we including the deaths in Afghanistan as part of the total? During World War II, the United States fought two separate enemies: Germany and Japan. Yet, it was considered a war against fascism and the total deaths from both theaters—just over 400,000—were given as a whole. This is not the case with Afghanistan. So far, 802 American soldiers and a further 538 coalition troops have died there. (6) It was difficult to find estimates for the civilian casualties in Afghanistan, but the official numbers are in the tens of thousands. (7)

Barack Obama has thankfully dropped the term “War on Terror,” (how exactly do you launch a war on a tactic?), so perhaps separating the war casualties makes some sense now. However, his behavior has been extremely Bush-ian. His anti-war campaign rhetoric has given way to either dishonesty or cowardice, as he’s operating in Iraq under what amounts to the agreement Bush negotiated with Iraq prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki before he left office and Obama is actually increasing our military presence in Afghanistan.
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The next major segment overlooked by the statistics is American contractors. The United States military has privatized much of its non-military operations, things it used to do itself. For example, soldiers used to handle food services, now that is contracted out to companies like Halliburton. The United States has had well over 100,000 contractors in Iraq at any given time since the wildly premature declaration of “Mission Accomplished.” So far, 1395 contractors have been killed in Iraq. Many of these would have been American soldiers in previous wars, but regardless, they’re still people. Furthermore, 331 journalists and 423 academics have died in Iraq as well (although many of these journalists and academics were not American citizens). (8)

​When we combine the wars and add the contractors, (we’ll leave out the journalists and academics, since most weren’t American) we come to a total of 6532, over 50% higher than the official tally. Add in the journalists and academics and the total comes to 7281, almost 70% higher.

This still doesn’t represent the total human cost, unfortunately. While the Pentagon officially counts any soldier who dies from their wounds as a war casualty, regardless of when and where, this is hard to do in practice. If a soldier is wounded, comes home, has a brain hemorrhage and dies, did his injuries cause his death? In spite of the inherent difficulties in measuring this, it appears Pentagon tallies have been done sloppily or possibly dishonestly. In 2004, GlobalSecurity.org released a report that revealed that during the Vietnam War, the Department of Defense defined a war death as “all those occurring within the designated combat areas and those deaths occurring anywhere as the result or aftermath of an initial casualty occurring in a combat area.” (9) However, the current DOD Instructions (1300.18) are silent on this matter. The report continued by summing up the situation in Iraq as follows:

John Rutherford of NBC News asked the Pentagon why five specific deaths were not counted in the statistics, to which the Pentagon replied: “The Army has reviewed the deaths of these soldiers and determined that they did not die as the result of wounds suffered supporting OIF [Iraq] or OEF [Afghanistan].” Here’s the description of one of them, what do you think?

So far the official tally of wounded soldiers is 31,469 (although some estimates place it at over 100,000. (12) Many of their wounds are extremely serious, including some so severe that they are brain dead. These men are also NOT included in the death toll, despite their lives, for all intents and purposes, being over. (13) Many of the wounded who have fared better will still live the rest of their lives with brain damage, skin burns, amputated arms or legs, lost eyes or ears, as well as an assortment of other grotesque injuries. And many of those who don’t count as wounded still have to face the terrible psychological effects of combat.

The New England Journal of Medicine published a study which found that while 5-9.4% of U.S. veterans had post traumatic stress disorder, (depending on the strictness of the definition), before deployment, 6.2-19.9% had PTSD after deployment; a difference of 10.5% under the broad definition of PTSD. (14) This has possibly led to a disturbingly large number of suicides among U.S. military veterans.

In 2007, CBS News investigated suicide among U.S. military veterans and determined that in 2005 alone, 6256 committed suicide! (15) The war has now been going for almost six and half years; if that number were held constant, (something we cannot assume), the total would now be over 40,000. Overall, the investigation showed the suicide rate for veterans, adjusted for age and gender, (young men are the most likely to commit suicide), was about twice as high as for non-veterans. A study by the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health corroborated these findings. (16)

It is important to recognize that these studies involved all military veterans, not just those of Iraq and Afghanistan. Furthermore, correlation does not equal causation. Other factors, such as gun availability, may be involved. Needless to say, given the high rates of PTSD among veterans and the despicably poor care veterans have received at military hospitals, such as Walter Reed, it is highly probable that many of these suicides can trace their way back to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It is also needless to say that the casualty figures tossed out by the Pentagon dreadfully understates the real toll of war. Thus, it is even more unfortunate that the anti-war movement seems to have come to a complete halt now that Barack Obama is in office, despite the fact he hasn’t changed much of anything regarding foreign policy. Given the extraordinary and underreported human cost as well as the fact the U.S. is basically bankrupt and we’ve done exactly what Osama Bin Laden said he wanted us to do, the very least we could do is get those protests going again.

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Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics Series
Part 1: A Primer
Part 2: Income Stagnation
Part 3: All Fiat Currencies Fail
Part 4: Iraq War Casualties
Part 5: Female-Male College Gap
Part 6: Male-Female Wage Gap
Part 7: Roger Maris’ Asterisk
Part 8: Women Do All the Work but Men Keep All the Money
Part 9: The BMI
Part 10: A College Degree is Worth One Million Dollars

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(1) Edited by Margaret Griffis, “Casualties in Iraq,” AntiWar.com, retrieved August 27, 2009, http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/
(2) Kim Gamel, “AP IMPACT: Secret Tally Has 87,215 Iraqis Dead,” ABC News, April 23, 2009,  http://abcnews.go.com/International/WireStory?id=7411522
(3) “September 2007 – More than 1,000,000 Iraqis murdered,” Open Research Business, September 2007, http://www.opinion.co.uk/Newsroom_details.aspx?NewsId=78
(4) Gilbert Burnham, Riyadh Lafta, Shannon Doocy and Les Roberts, “Mortality after the 2003 Invasion of Iraq: a cross-sectional cluster sample survey,” The Lancet, October 11, 2006, http://brusselstribunal.org/pdf/lancet111006.pdf
(5) Edited by Margaret Griffis, “Casualties in Iraq,” AntiWar.com, retrieved August 27, 2009, http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/
(6) Ibid
(7) “Civilian casualties of the War in Afghanistan (2001-present), Wikipedia.org, retrieved August 27, 2009, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_of_the_War_in_Afghanistan_(2001%E2%80%93present)
(8) Edited by Margaret Griffis, “Casualties in Iraq,” AntiWar.com, retrieved August 27, 2009, http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/
(9) “Notes on Casualties in Iraq,” GlobalSecurity.org, last updated June 13, 2007, http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iraq_casualties_notes.htm
(10) Ibid
(11) John Rutherford, “Fallen But Not Forgotten: Closing in on 4000 Casualties,” MSNBC, February 13, 2008, http://dailynightly.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/02/13/661451.aspx
(12) Edited by Margaret Griffis, “Casualties in Iraq,” AntiWar.com, retrieved August 27, 2009, http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/
(13) Karl Vick, “The Lasting Wounds of War,” The Washington Post, April 27, 2004, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44839-2004Apr26.html
(14) “Table 3. Perceived Mental Health Problems and Percentage of Subjects Who Met the Screening Criteria for Major Depression, Generalized Anxiety, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and Alcohol Misuse,” The New England Journal of Medicine, July 1, 2004, http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/351/1/13/T3
(15) See Mike Whitney, “Pentagon Cover Up: 15,000 or more US casualties in Iraq War,” Information Clearing House, November 17, 2007,  http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18737.htm, Armen Keteyian, “Suicide Epidemic Among Veterans,” CBS News, November 13, 2007, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/13/cbsnews_investigates/main3496471.shtml, and for the methodology, Pia Malbran, “Veteran Suicides: How We Got the Numbers,” CBS News, December 4, 2007, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/13/cbsnews_investigates/main3498625.shtml
(16) “Study: Suicide risk double among male U.S. veterans,” CNN, June 11, 2007, http://edition.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/06/11/vets.suicide/index.html

My newest article for American Thinker is up nothing that "Of Course a Wall Would Work" to stop illegal immigration. As I elaborate,

First, however, I obliterate a bunch of liberal and neocon "reasons" a wall is immoral or wouldn't work. Unfortunately, I had to cut some of them for space requirements. And those cuts had the best jokes! Like this one against Bill Kristol:

"Neoconservative Bill Kristol, for example, took a break from advocating for war with a various assortment of countries most Americans have never heard of to opine that,"

Bill is also aware, I’m sure, that locking someone out of your basement is different than locking someone in your basement.

Or this one:

​"So last, we’ll turn it over to The Washington Post’s Dave Weigel to put the nail in the coffin of the wallophiles,"

"Yes Dave, walls don’t work in science fiction, they only work in boring, old real life."

Oh well. The meat of the article is still there and I think it's pretty much indisputable. While the libertarian in me doesn't like the idea of a wall on the southern border, it would definitely work. Check it out!