In a busy society there are a lot of things which have extrinsic benefits and costs. The most popular example is pollution: in a laissez-faire world, a company can dump whatever it wants into the environment. If the company were living in a closed environment (think of a space station), it would have to deal with this pollution itself, but for centuries, they were allowed to pollute the (seemingly infinite) atmosphere, wetlands and waterways. During the 1970s it started to become clear that these were far from infinite and governments instituted various measures to force the companies to clean up. The companies resisted, of course. Now that it's becoming clear that CO2 is such a problem with particularly dire consequences, the polluters are resisting again.
Not all extrinsic effects are negative. Public transit is a benefit to everybody, but especially to the companies and their employees whose riders use it to commute to and from work. Many communities installed transit in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, generally subsidized by real estate developers. For a few decades, the fares collected from riders were sufficient to pay for operating costs, but as demands for expansion and maintenance grew, these became insufficient. Generally, city fathers have been farsighted enough to subsidize them from the broader tax base, but in the cases where they have cut back, the loudest complaints have been from corporate executives: employees can't get to work! They're getting the benefit, but not paying for it--very much like what was happening with their ability to pollute. Ultimately, society has to be taxed.
As a society, we need to face these extrinsic costs and benefits and be willing to pay to make them work as well as practical. There are lots of them--road construction and maintenance, public safety such as police and fire, building inspection, bank regulation, the postal service, lots more. These things are necessary. They don't always have to be government run: for example, most road construction and maintenance is done under government contract by private businesses, although a lot of emergency services--snowplows, sanding, pothole repair--are government workers. When it's practical, we can charge user fees to put as much of the costs as we can onto the people using the facility the most. Gas taxes and bus fares are good examples of this.
But we must not let the fact that some of the costs can be paid this way confuse us into thinking that these are like private businesses. They are not; they are public utilities. These fees should be the highest they can be without discouraging use, but no higher. Bus fares for poor people getting to work should not eat significantly into their take-home pay. To the contrary, we want to encourage people to use it, by making it cheap and desirable.
06 December 2012
28 November 2012
Going Halfway
Someone1 once said "There is nothing so useless as half of a bridge. You've wasted resources that could have been used on something useful, and you still can't get across the river." There are a lot of things which are like bridges, and are worse than useless if you don't finish them. But there are a lot of things that are worth starting even if you can't finish. If you're starving, it's worth eating a little, even if you can't afford a full meal. Likewise, if you've got a federal deficit, raising taxes on rich people will reduce the political pressure to resolve the problem and not hurt the economy in any way that is borne out by economic history, even though it won't completely solve the problem.
There are lots of cases where going halfway is a lot worse than finishing the job. The space shuttle was conceived as a much bigger project, with more, larger vehicles. Cost cutting reduced the efficiency of the ultimate design to the point that the total cost of the program was 450% (correcting for inflation) of the predicted cost of the more ambitious program delivering less than 10% of the projected payload to space. Most experienced engineers have been involved in projects where cutbacks intended to reduce development time or costs had the effect of increasing them--while damaging the product more than could possibly be made up by reduced costs2.
When deciding to cut back a project, be it a small engineering project or a national health care system, it's important to try to decide if you're saving money or producing half of a bridge. The evidence is pretty overwhelming--single payer healthcare, such as US medicare or the British national health, is far cheaper and produces better outcomes than piecemeal "market based" systems. People must have adequate health care. Cutbacks to medicare and medicaid will either make healthcare more expensive, or kill thousands.
1 I think this may have been the military strategist Karl von Clausewitz, but I haven't been able to find the reference.
2 My own experience with this was Microsoft C6. We'd planned an 18 month development cycle, but about 4 months in, this was shortened to 6 months. Three years later, we finally shipped a vastly inferior product to the one we'd have built on the original schedule, at perhaps triple the cost, to great loss of market share and prestige, and provoking most of the technical talent to leave the team.
There are lots of cases where going halfway is a lot worse than finishing the job. The space shuttle was conceived as a much bigger project, with more, larger vehicles. Cost cutting reduced the efficiency of the ultimate design to the point that the total cost of the program was 450% (correcting for inflation) of the predicted cost of the more ambitious program delivering less than 10% of the projected payload to space. Most experienced engineers have been involved in projects where cutbacks intended to reduce development time or costs had the effect of increasing them--while damaging the product more than could possibly be made up by reduced costs2.
When deciding to cut back a project, be it a small engineering project or a national health care system, it's important to try to decide if you're saving money or producing half of a bridge. The evidence is pretty overwhelming--single payer healthcare, such as US medicare or the British national health, is far cheaper and produces better outcomes than piecemeal "market based" systems. People must have adequate health care. Cutbacks to medicare and medicaid will either make healthcare more expensive, or kill thousands.
1 I think this may have been the military strategist Karl von Clausewitz, but I haven't been able to find the reference.
2 My own experience with this was Microsoft C6. We'd planned an 18 month development cycle, but about 4 months in, this was shortened to 6 months. Three years later, we finally shipped a vastly inferior product to the one we'd have built on the original schedule, at perhaps triple the cost, to great loss of market share and prestige, and provoking most of the technical talent to leave the team.
12 October 2012
Social Security Viability
It's a common theme of the right that Social Security will collapse if we don't do something to cut back on the terrible problem of giving money to people who earned it. The right have been fighting Social Security since it was first proposed (although a few Republicans did vote for it in 1935), and many have been trying to privatize it ever since. Just last night, Paul Ryan claimed that "Social Security [is] going bankrupt. These are indisputable facts". Well, no. Social Security is fully funded for at least another 25 years if we do nothing. But there are some trivial things we can do to make it viable for much longer. For example, raising the contribution cap can bring in a lot of money: if the cap were eliminated entirely, it'd bring in about $130B a year, enough to pay $6K a year to every beneficiary, or add about 50 years to the viability of the trust fund. (current revenues are about $500B) The people who would be paying, for the most part, don't really need social security, nor is the cost a big part of their income. That they don't need it is often used as an excuse for them to not pay, and a rationale for "means testing", meaning they wouldn't be eligible. This is wrongheaded. There's a big group who need social security a little bit. Although they have other income, SS helps them. This group is the largest share of the contributors.
So how is it that the supposed actuarial problems of dramatically increasing life expectancy and the baby boom are not eating up the entire trust fund? Well, they are, a little. But only a little. It turns out that life expectancy increases have taken place in two broad areas: firstly that life expectancy for children is dramatically higher than it was in 1935. This actually adds to the labor force. It means that all those kids who were dying of whooping cough, smallpox, polio and all the rest, aren't anymore, and are are helping to pay for it all. Life expectancy for oldsters has gone up too--but not much. The demographic that matters: average life expectancy of a 65 year old has increased from about 14 to 18 years. This is a lot of new seniors for sure: in 1935 there were about 8 million people over 65, and today there are about 40 million: a factor of 5. but wait: there were fewer than 30M people paying payroll tax in 1935, but today there are almost 150M--coincidentally a factor of 5. So it all balances.
So how is it that the supposed actuarial problems of dramatically increasing life expectancy and the baby boom are not eating up the entire trust fund? Well, they are, a little. But only a little. It turns out that life expectancy increases have taken place in two broad areas: firstly that life expectancy for children is dramatically higher than it was in 1935. This actually adds to the labor force. It means that all those kids who were dying of whooping cough, smallpox, polio and all the rest, aren't anymore, and are are helping to pay for it all. Life expectancy for oldsters has gone up too--but not much. The demographic that matters: average life expectancy of a 65 year old has increased from about 14 to 18 years. This is a lot of new seniors for sure: in 1935 there were about 8 million people over 65, and today there are about 40 million: a factor of 5. but wait: there were fewer than 30M people paying payroll tax in 1935, but today there are almost 150M--coincidentally a factor of 5. So it all balances.
04 October 2012
There You Go Again
I think the largest reason Obama seemed overwhelmed by his opponents aggressive, lying attacks in last nights debate was because he was afraid of one line: Ronald Reagan's quip "There You Go Again". It was dishonest in 1980 (Carter argued that Reagan had fought medicare and was fighting Carter's plan, which was true, but Reagan claimed he had an alternative, which he didn't), but that didn't seem to matter. Over and over, Romney lied about Obama's policy and his own proposals, or blamed him for things which were clearly not his fault. For example, a few days after he was inaugurated, Obama promised to halve the deficit. This was done before the magnitude of the collapse was understood and when TARP was still expected to be used to buy toxic assets and minimize foreclosures instead of subsidizing banks. Nevertheless, he has brought the deficit from $1.5 to $1.2T and is on course for $900B in 2014. (fy 2013 has already started). Why has this happened? Almost entirely, republican obstructionism.
Ending the Bush tax cuts on schedule after 2010 would have subtracted about $400B from the deficit, but it's an article of faith for republicans and some democrats that this would have sent the fragile economy into a dive. Many economists disagree but lets ignore that. Obama wanted to end the cuts only for incomes over $250K--about 2% of tax filers, but about 30% of all income. The 2010 "deal" added about $80B a year to the deficit instead of ending the Bush tax cuts on schedule--subtracting almost $500B had nothing been done or $230B had we done what Obama wanted. Had the Bush cuts expired, and nothing else been done, the deficit would be half what the president inherited, just as promised, and had Obama's plan been used, it'd have been about 2/3rd. instead, it's about 5/6ths.
What's going to happen after the election? Panic about the "fiscal cliff", which was caused by this foolishness and the even more foolish debt limit fight last year, will probably push all of this off another few years. What should happen? Abandon the "sequester". Rescind the Bush cuts for high incomes, keep them for low incomes. Rescind the payroll tax cap completely and restore rates to their pre 2010 level (6.2%. It's now 4%) for incomes over $100K.
Had the original House health care plan (the one with the public option, which oddly, Romney endorsed last night) been passed, it would have already been in effect, saving $200B or more, while the most important parts of ACA for the budget, the mandate and the exchange, don't go into effect until 2014 and won't have much impact for some years to come. Add this to the Obama tax hike for millionaires plan, and we'd have been almost to the half he promised. But the republicans filibustered this, with help from a couple of right wing democrats. (the democrats sort of had 60 votes for about 3 months. Franken wasn't seated until Kennedy was out of the picture, and the time that Kennedy's substitute (Kirk) and Brown's election was the only period when the Ds might have had enough votes to override a filibuster. But Lieberman and Ben Nelson sided with the Rs on health care.)
Romney had the gall to blame all of this on democrats refusing to to work with republicans. All night he was baiting Obama to blame the republicans for their extreme obstructionism. But he never fell for it, but he was intimidated into not fighting with the facts, which are completely in Obama's favor. He had the gall to accuse Obama of lying, "using his own facts", which was exactly what he himself was doing.
Romney is right, that congressional democrats work with republican presidents much better than republicans work with democratic presidents. This is not the fault of the democrats. The fact is, the deficit is almost entirely the fault of irresponsible republican policies and maintained by irresponsible republican obstructionism.
Ending the Bush tax cuts on schedule after 2010 would have subtracted about $400B from the deficit, but it's an article of faith for republicans and some democrats that this would have sent the fragile economy into a dive. Many economists disagree but lets ignore that. Obama wanted to end the cuts only for incomes over $250K--about 2% of tax filers, but about 30% of all income. The 2010 "deal" added about $80B a year to the deficit instead of ending the Bush tax cuts on schedule--subtracting almost $500B had nothing been done or $230B had we done what Obama wanted. Had the Bush cuts expired, and nothing else been done, the deficit would be half what the president inherited, just as promised, and had Obama's plan been used, it'd have been about 2/3rd. instead, it's about 5/6ths.
What's going to happen after the election? Panic about the "fiscal cliff", which was caused by this foolishness and the even more foolish debt limit fight last year, will probably push all of this off another few years. What should happen? Abandon the "sequester". Rescind the Bush cuts for high incomes, keep them for low incomes. Rescind the payroll tax cap completely and restore rates to their pre 2010 level (6.2%. It's now 4%) for incomes over $100K.
Had the original House health care plan (the one with the public option, which oddly, Romney endorsed last night) been passed, it would have already been in effect, saving $200B or more, while the most important parts of ACA for the budget, the mandate and the exchange, don't go into effect until 2014 and won't have much impact for some years to come. Add this to the Obama tax hike for millionaires plan, and we'd have been almost to the half he promised. But the republicans filibustered this, with help from a couple of right wing democrats. (the democrats sort of had 60 votes for about 3 months. Franken wasn't seated until Kennedy was out of the picture, and the time that Kennedy's substitute (Kirk) and Brown's election was the only period when the Ds might have had enough votes to override a filibuster. But Lieberman and Ben Nelson sided with the Rs on health care.)
Romney had the gall to blame all of this on democrats refusing to to work with republicans. All night he was baiting Obama to blame the republicans for their extreme obstructionism. But he never fell for it, but he was intimidated into not fighting with the facts, which are completely in Obama's favor. He had the gall to accuse Obama of lying, "using his own facts", which was exactly what he himself was doing.
Romney is right, that congressional democrats work with republican presidents much better than republicans work with democratic presidents. This is not the fault of the democrats. The fact is, the deficit is almost entirely the fault of irresponsible republican policies and maintained by irresponsible republican obstructionism.
13 September 2012
Cell Phones on Airplanes
It's against FCC regulations to use a cell phone on an airplane. Most people seem to think the reason is that they're afraid it'll interfere with the navigation of the airplane. Here's the FCC's policy statement on the subject. Note in particular the second statement: they're worried about interference with the ground.
To understand this, it's important to understand how a cell phone works. Each phone has a radio transmitter/receiver, aka transceiver. It's capable of being tuned to any one of (depending on protocol) dozens or hundreds of channels. Whether it's digital or analog, 3G, 4G, TDM, packet, etc., what exactly constitutes a channel is immaterial to the issue. What's important is that there are a limited number of them.
The ground part of this consists of a network of transceivers mounted on poles or other high places, called cell towers, which can tune to the same channels. They are organized into cells, which is a region on the ground using wires or microwave links to connect to each other and the rest of the phone system. Each cell tower can use, at most, the number of channels in the protocol. Phones are low power radios and they actually reduce power so that they can't be heard by more than one or two cell towers at once. Because any bandwidth a phone uses must be reserved by every cell tower that can receive the signal. (this is not strictly true--there's some collision recovery in several of the digital protocols--but collisions reduce bandwidth, so the essential problem remains. for simplicity, let's pretend it's all channels and ignore packets and collisions and such)
Most of the time, most phones are not in use--they have a handshake with their local tower so the system knows which phone to ring, but this doesn't take much bandwidth. Phones that are in use use a lot of bandwidth. If an area has a lot of phone traffic--a big building for example, they'll put extra towers in to adapt.
But it's important to recognize the two dimensional design of the network. Most of the time you're fairly close to the center of a cell. you use two cells only when you're near the border of both. But if you're up in the sky, you're a lot farther from the closest cell, and the second closest might be only a little farther yet. Worse, there might be several others that are still close enough that any bandwidth you use on your phone must be reserved for all the cells. In a dense city and a plane at 10,000 feet, this could be a hundred cells or more.
Now imagine that a plane is flying over our group of cells, carrying 100 passengers who simultaneously want to call their spouse or client or whatever, telling them the plane is about to land, time to come pick me up at the airport. They've used 100 channels in every cell within range--which could be a band 10 or 15 miles wide and 50 miles long, under the landing pattern, which is usually in a big city. Not only that, there's another plane coming along a minute or two later doing the same thing, with an effect that's overlapping the first plane. Two or three such planes could exceed the entire capacity of the entire group of cells.
So they ban it. If one or two people call, it's no big deal; it's stealing those two channels from all those cells, but they have enough capacity they can handle it. If half of them leave their phones in ground mode by mistake, there's so little bandwidth used it hardly matters. It's only if a lot of them are using a lot of bandwidth simultaneously that it's a problem. Adding more cell towers doesn't solve it: they'd be in range too. what does solve it is a cell repeater on the airplane, which uses a different protocol to talk to the ground. FCC is happy to have people think it'll cause interference with the airplane they're on, because that'll keep them from cheating.
Similarly, the flight attendants don't have the time to figure out which electronic device might cause ground interference and which is harmless. The fact is that most are harmless, although there is a tiny chance that one of them might cause a bunch of RFI, and a real problem, either because it's non FCC compliant or because it's malfunctioning. The one they don't recognize might be the one that causes the problem. Simpler and safer to have a single rule and ban them all.
To understand this, it's important to understand how a cell phone works. Each phone has a radio transmitter/receiver, aka transceiver. It's capable of being tuned to any one of (depending on protocol) dozens or hundreds of channels. Whether it's digital or analog, 3G, 4G, TDM, packet, etc., what exactly constitutes a channel is immaterial to the issue. What's important is that there are a limited number of them.
The ground part of this consists of a network of transceivers mounted on poles or other high places, called cell towers, which can tune to the same channels. They are organized into cells, which is a region on the ground using wires or microwave links to connect to each other and the rest of the phone system. Each cell tower can use, at most, the number of channels in the protocol. Phones are low power radios and they actually reduce power so that they can't be heard by more than one or two cell towers at once. Because any bandwidth a phone uses must be reserved by every cell tower that can receive the signal. (this is not strictly true--there's some collision recovery in several of the digital protocols--but collisions reduce bandwidth, so the essential problem remains. for simplicity, let's pretend it's all channels and ignore packets and collisions and such)
Most of the time, most phones are not in use--they have a handshake with their local tower so the system knows which phone to ring, but this doesn't take much bandwidth. Phones that are in use use a lot of bandwidth. If an area has a lot of phone traffic--a big building for example, they'll put extra towers in to adapt.
But it's important to recognize the two dimensional design of the network. Most of the time you're fairly close to the center of a cell. you use two cells only when you're near the border of both. But if you're up in the sky, you're a lot farther from the closest cell, and the second closest might be only a little farther yet. Worse, there might be several others that are still close enough that any bandwidth you use on your phone must be reserved for all the cells. In a dense city and a plane at 10,000 feet, this could be a hundred cells or more.
Now imagine that a plane is flying over our group of cells, carrying 100 passengers who simultaneously want to call their spouse or client or whatever, telling them the plane is about to land, time to come pick me up at the airport. They've used 100 channels in every cell within range--which could be a band 10 or 15 miles wide and 50 miles long, under the landing pattern, which is usually in a big city. Not only that, there's another plane coming along a minute or two later doing the same thing, with an effect that's overlapping the first plane. Two or three such planes could exceed the entire capacity of the entire group of cells.
So they ban it. If one or two people call, it's no big deal; it's stealing those two channels from all those cells, but they have enough capacity they can handle it. If half of them leave their phones in ground mode by mistake, there's so little bandwidth used it hardly matters. It's only if a lot of them are using a lot of bandwidth simultaneously that it's a problem. Adding more cell towers doesn't solve it: they'd be in range too. what does solve it is a cell repeater on the airplane, which uses a different protocol to talk to the ground. FCC is happy to have people think it'll cause interference with the airplane they're on, because that'll keep them from cheating.
Similarly, the flight attendants don't have the time to figure out which electronic device might cause ground interference and which is harmless. The fact is that most are harmless, although there is a tiny chance that one of them might cause a bunch of RFI, and a real problem, either because it's non FCC compliant or because it's malfunctioning. The one they don't recognize might be the one that causes the problem. Simpler and safer to have a single rule and ban them all.
06 September 2012
Rainbows and Green Flashes
I've seen the "green flash" three times--all at sunset, from west coast beaches: Once from Cannon Beach, in Oregon, Twice from Pajaro Dunes, in California, all in the winter. There's a reason for this, as I'll get into later. Many people are skeptical that it's a real thing. It is, but things have to line up just exactly right to be able to see it:
You need to have clear viewing all the way to the horizon and past it--no clouds, no haze, especially no mountains. Typically these conditions happen only when it's been raining and it's cleared up just an hour or two before sunset. it helps if there's a little bit of haze right at the horizon, but not much.
The water needs to be warmer than the air. This is why it tends to be a winter phenomenon. The green flash is a member of the broad class of optical phenomena called "mirage", which results from layers of air being heated differently, resulting in them refracting different colors differently. The bottom level of air needs to be quite a bit warmer than the air at eye level, which really can only happen if it's being heated by water. Because blue and green are scattered more than red, sunsets tend to look red. But there's a moment that the red light is all passing above your eye while green is coming your way.
The reason I think rainbows are similar is because they take a combination of several things to make them happen: it needs to be clear enough that the water vapor is well lit. But rainbows aren't very bright and it's hard to see them against a clear blue sky: there needs to be something behind. it's usually in front of clouds or something else that's darker than the sky. The primary rainbow is about 2 degrees thick and it's about 80 to 84 degrees wide. Rainbows are the result different colors of light being refracted differently by water, but all being reflected together inside drops of water. (To see all of it with a 35mm camera, you need a 19mm lens. usually you can't see all of it. to see all of a double rainbow, you need a 13mm lens.)
My favorite rainbow was when I was driving almost due north late on a winter afternoon. I was at the southern edge of a storm--behind me was well lit, but the hood of my car was in light rain. the rainbow appeared to be around the hood of my car. Todd Newman was with me and we both saw it, but we didn't have a camera convenient and it didn't last long.
You need to have clear viewing all the way to the horizon and past it--no clouds, no haze, especially no mountains. Typically these conditions happen only when it's been raining and it's cleared up just an hour or two before sunset. it helps if there's a little bit of haze right at the horizon, but not much.
The water needs to be warmer than the air. This is why it tends to be a winter phenomenon. The green flash is a member of the broad class of optical phenomena called "mirage", which results from layers of air being heated differently, resulting in them refracting different colors differently. The bottom level of air needs to be quite a bit warmer than the air at eye level, which really can only happen if it's being heated by water. Because blue and green are scattered more than red, sunsets tend to look red. But there's a moment that the red light is all passing above your eye while green is coming your way.
The reason I think rainbows are similar is because they take a combination of several things to make them happen: it needs to be clear enough that the water vapor is well lit. But rainbows aren't very bright and it's hard to see them against a clear blue sky: there needs to be something behind. it's usually in front of clouds or something else that's darker than the sky. The primary rainbow is about 2 degrees thick and it's about 80 to 84 degrees wide. Rainbows are the result different colors of light being refracted differently by water, but all being reflected together inside drops of water. (To see all of it with a 35mm camera, you need a 19mm lens. usually you can't see all of it. to see all of a double rainbow, you need a 13mm lens.)
My favorite rainbow was when I was driving almost due north late on a winter afternoon. I was at the southern edge of a storm--behind me was well lit, but the hood of my car was in light rain. the rainbow appeared to be around the hood of my car. Todd Newman was with me and we both saw it, but we didn't have a camera convenient and it didn't last long.
Bay States
When I moved to Massachusetts from the San Francisco Bay area, I thought it was funny that Massachusetts was the Bay State, while California, which has many more bays, is not.
A Bay is a broad inlet of the sea where the land curves inward. This could be quite a shallow inlet, or a deep one. Some bays are called harbors when they're confined enough to provide some protection. A sound is between two bodies and is open at both ends.
Here's a list of the Bay States:
Maine: The biggest is Penobscot Bay, but there are zillions of others.
New Hampshire, with a very short coastline, nevertheless has a number of bays.
Massachusetts has three main bays: Massachusetts Bay, Cape Cod Bay, and Buzzards bay. there are also a number of smaller bays and sounds.
Rhode Island is basically one big Bay: Narragansett Bay, with a bunch of penninsulas and islands in it.
Connecticut has many things that would be called bays, but most of them seem to be unnamed, or are called harbors.
New York has many bays: New York Bay, Jamaica Bay, several more, even not counting most of NY's shoreline on Long Island.
New Jersey: Sandy Hook Bay, Newark Bay, Delaware Bay, many others.
Delaware is largely defined by it's giant bay, which is the boundary between it and New Jersey.
Maryland is similarly defined by its giant bay, the Chesapeake, which continues on to Virginia
Virginia's Atlantic Seaboard is largely the Chesapeake bay, although there's a short section that has a few bays of its own, and there's an isolated part of Virginia on the Delaware penninsula.
North and South Carolina's Coastline consists of a series of large, wide bays.
The coastal area of Georgia is made up of a bunch of low islands. Consequently, most of their inlets are sounds, not bays.
Florida has many famous bays: Tampa Bay, Biscayne Bay, Pensacola Bay, many others.
Alabama is a very short coastline, but it's basically all Bays. Mobile Bay is the biggest.
Mississippi also has a short coastline: Pascagoula Bay, Biloxi Bay, St Louis Bay are all on it.
The Mississippi Delta area of Louisiana has so many bays it's silly to try to count. I gave it a start and realized I was making mistakes around the time I got to 100.
Texas has quite a few too: Galveston Bay, Corpus Christi Bay, etc.
California starts at the south with San Diego Bay, Mission Bay, Alamitos Bay, Morro Bay, Monterey Bay, San Francisco Bay, Drakes Bay, Tomales Bay, Humbolt Bay. Lots more.
Oregon: Coos Bay, Alsea Bay, Tillamook Bay, Youngs Bay. Small Bays.
Washington: Willapa Bay, Grays Harbor, Discovery Bay, Puget Sound (which is really a bay with some big islands in it)
I won't try to do Alaska and Hawaii.
My ranking is based on how big a part of the state the bay or bays are:
#1 Rhode Island
#2 Delaware
#3: Maryland
#4: Massachusetts
#5 California
#6 Florida
If California didn't also have a bunch of big mountains and valleys, it'd be #1.
A Bay is a broad inlet of the sea where the land curves inward. This could be quite a shallow inlet, or a deep one. Some bays are called harbors when they're confined enough to provide some protection. A sound is between two bodies and is open at both ends.
Here's a list of the Bay States:
Maine: The biggest is Penobscot Bay, but there are zillions of others.
New Hampshire, with a very short coastline, nevertheless has a number of bays.
Massachusetts has three main bays: Massachusetts Bay, Cape Cod Bay, and Buzzards bay. there are also a number of smaller bays and sounds.
Rhode Island is basically one big Bay: Narragansett Bay, with a bunch of penninsulas and islands in it.
Connecticut has many things that would be called bays, but most of them seem to be unnamed, or are called harbors.
New York has many bays: New York Bay, Jamaica Bay, several more, even not counting most of NY's shoreline on Long Island.
New Jersey: Sandy Hook Bay, Newark Bay, Delaware Bay, many others.
Delaware is largely defined by it's giant bay, which is the boundary between it and New Jersey.
Maryland is similarly defined by its giant bay, the Chesapeake, which continues on to Virginia
Virginia's Atlantic Seaboard is largely the Chesapeake bay, although there's a short section that has a few bays of its own, and there's an isolated part of Virginia on the Delaware penninsula.
North and South Carolina's Coastline consists of a series of large, wide bays.
The coastal area of Georgia is made up of a bunch of low islands. Consequently, most of their inlets are sounds, not bays.
Florida has many famous bays: Tampa Bay, Biscayne Bay, Pensacola Bay, many others.
Alabama is a very short coastline, but it's basically all Bays. Mobile Bay is the biggest.
Mississippi also has a short coastline: Pascagoula Bay, Biloxi Bay, St Louis Bay are all on it.
The Mississippi Delta area of Louisiana has so many bays it's silly to try to count. I gave it a start and realized I was making mistakes around the time I got to 100.
Texas has quite a few too: Galveston Bay, Corpus Christi Bay, etc.
California starts at the south with San Diego Bay, Mission Bay, Alamitos Bay, Morro Bay, Monterey Bay, San Francisco Bay, Drakes Bay, Tomales Bay, Humbolt Bay. Lots more.
Oregon: Coos Bay, Alsea Bay, Tillamook Bay, Youngs Bay. Small Bays.
Washington: Willapa Bay, Grays Harbor, Discovery Bay, Puget Sound (which is really a bay with some big islands in it)
I won't try to do Alaska and Hawaii.
My ranking is based on how big a part of the state the bay or bays are:
#1 Rhode Island
#2 Delaware
#3: Maryland
#4: Massachusetts
#5 California
#6 Florida
If California didn't also have a bunch of big mountains and valleys, it'd be #1.
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