we’re not hearing any of these sorts of demand-side solutions from the White House. In seeking Republican votes, Obama is putting forth Republican supply-side ideas – lowering the employer costs of hiring, cutting corporate taxes – that have nothing to do with this demand-side crisis. He may attract some Republican votes for these, but what’s the point if they’re irrelevant to the real problem?WTF is wrong with Obama, Democrats, and our elected officials?
Obama and his advisors mayd believe supply-side polices are optimal at this point, in which case I just want to throw up my hands and give up. And he may believe that negotiation over the policies would simply delay getting needed help to the unemployed without changing the policy in the end. On the last point, the fact that the administration waited until there was little time to negotiate when so many people were urging them to tackle the unemployment crisis months, if not years ago is their own fault (and the time crunch seems to be more about getting re-elected than helping struggling families anyway). Perhaps if the administration hadn't wasted so much time figuring out how to cut make the emplyment problem worse by cutting the deficit and had targeted unemployment instead, they would have had the time to negotiate properly.Paul Krugman notes after reading "Zachary Goldfarb’s deeply depressing piece on Geithner’s role in the internal economic debate:
Also, when I read this from the Goldfarb piece:Progressive? Progressive Democratic? There are only two parties in the country: Republican and Republican Lite!
The economic team went round and round. Geithner would hold his views close, but occasionally he would get frustrated. Once, as Romer pressed for more stimulus spending, Geithner snapped. Stimulus, he told Romer, was “sugar,” and its effect was fleeting. The administration, he urged, needed to focus on long-term economic growth, and the first step was reining in the debt.I get really depressed. Whether he knew it or not, Geithner was making the Mellon-Schumpeter-Hayek argument that any effort to push up demand was somehow artificial and unsound. Not what anyone should be saying in the modern world, least of all a top official in an allegedly progressive Democratic administration.
Years ago I preferred clever people. There was a joy in beholding a mind bearing thoughts quickly translated into words, or ideas expressed in a new way. I find now that my taste has changed. Verbal fireworks often bore me. They seem motivated by self-assertion and self-display. I now prefer another type of person; one who is considerate, understanding of others, careful not to break down another person’s self-respect. My preferred person today is one who is always aware of the needs of others, or their pain and fear and unhappiness, and their search for self-respect. I once liked clever people. Now I like good people."V" sent me this because we are beginning to realize this same bottom-line, despite the enormous differences in the professional and geographic contexts within which we live and work.
Thanks for teaching this class; I really enjoyed it and was challenged to learn surprisingly more than I do in most other classes. And it's true, I still have no idea where you stand on all of these issues."W" and most other students are always left wondering where I stand on most pressing issues of the day because for the most part all I end up doing in class is to ask as many probing questions as I can, perhaps even as the metaphorical devil's advocate. And I tell them not to worry about what my own bottom-line is.
The vast majority—more than sixty per cent of the total in Iraq—aren’t hired guns but hired hands. These workers, primarily from South Asia and Africa, often live in barbed-wire compounds on U.S. bases. A large number are employed by fly-by-night subcontractors who are financed by the American taxpayer but who often operate outside the law. The wars’ foreign workers are known, in military parlance, as “third-country nationals,” or T.C.N.s. Many of them recount having been robbed of wages, injured without compensation, subjected to sexual assault, and held in conditions resembling indentured servitude by their subcontractor bosses.
... thousands of third-country nationals have tried to make their grievances known, sometimes spectacularly. Previously unreported worker riots have erupted on U.S. bases over issues such as lack of food and unpaid wages. On May 1, 2010, in a labor camp run by Prime Projects International (PPI) on the largest military base in Baghdad, more than a thousand subcontractors--primarily Indians and Nepalis--rampaged, using as weapons fists, stones, wooden bats, and, as one US military policeman put it, "anything they could find." ...And, to top all these off:
At one point, as many as fourteen hundred men were smashing windows, hurling stones, destroying computers raiding company files, and battering the entrance to the camp where a large blue-and-white sign reads "Treat others how you want to be treated ... No damaging PPI property that has been built for your comfort." ...
Three military policemen under sergeant Trvett's supervision that night later received Army Achievement Medals for their role in quelling the rampage.We do all these and more in the name of fighting a war!
As a kid growing up in a fairly traditional/religious family, I recall memorizing the "Bhajagovindam" verses that were rendered as music by the late MS Subbulakshmi. But, I don't recall reading along with a translation of what those Sanskrit words meant. So, it was more a rote memorization of 1,200 year old verses by Adi Shankara!यावद्वित्तोपार्जनसक्तः
तावन्निजपरिवारो रक्तः ।
पश्चाज्जर्जरभूते देहे
वार्तां कोऽपि न पृच्छति गेहे ॥- भजगोविन्द स्तोत्र
As long as you are earning money,
your family loves you.
When you stop earning and the body becomes weak,
no one in the house want to hear about you.
- Bhajagovinda Stotra
It is hard to be a stranger. A traveler may have no power, no influence, no known identity. That is why a traveler needs optimism and heart, because without confidence travel is misery. Generally, the traveler is anonymous, ignorant, easy to deceive, at the mercy of the people he or she travels among. The traveler might be known as “the American” or “the Foreigner,” and there is no power in that.It is quite easy to stay in our respective villages and feel connected and important, and not be a stranger. "Where everybody knows your name" as Cheers told us. But, then it is a huge world, and it will be awful not to find out more about it. By ourselves. As strangers.
Oregon universities recently proposed an average 7.5 percent increase in tuition for undergraduates, and no community in Oregon is without debate on what to do with their schools and lack of funding. Even with rising costs and school closures, most parents and educators are still touting the value of higher education as the only option to success.
In debating education reform, little has been discussed on the value that vocations play in our schools and economy. Higher education and attaining a degree have been pushed on our youth as an economic panacea, while "lesser" forms of education that highlight practical skills are swept into the corner. Schools have turned into a one-size-fits-all factory with few options for those who cannot afford the outrageous price of college, those struggling with high school, or even individuals who dare question the efficacy of a degree in today's world.
In elementary school, I was told by my teachers that attaining a college degree would allow me to earn a million dollars more than my high school-only counterparts. That sounded like a lot of money back then. In middle school, disdain for practical skills couldn't be more apparent, where the transformation of a wood shop in the sixth grade became a computer lab by eighth grade. In high school, little was discussed about trades for students who don't care about college or simply have a difficult time plugging into school, where learning welding part time might allow that student to flourish.
Like so many graduates, I am closer to 30 than 20, I have a five-year degree from a university, attained in 2009. I have been sparsely employed with no real career to speak of, and I live with my parents. What hurts most is that I have no hands-on skills to fall back on.
Heed my advice: Don't go to college if you don't need to, and learn a trade instead. Don't cast aside education, but make yourself useful in the labor market by learning a skill. As for the educators and politicians who have hindered skilled labor with the idea that higher education is the only answer to prosperity: Please wake up from your delusional thoughts, as recent graduates seeing little in return from their degrees are growing in numbers.
This is not a warning message or a feel-good essay. This is a call to order that we need to fundamentally change the way we think about education and work in America. Oregon should take note and lead the way in pushing for trade schools as a solid option, or we can keep having this perpetual discussion as to why schools are barely graduating half of their students on time, or wonder in amazement that college is not returning what it originally promised.
