Previously education was mostly about "finding yourself" -- developing understanding of the world
and yourself, as well as developing those set of abilities that you was gifted most. Andinding what
you what to do in the future, Neoliberalism has changed that dramatically. Education now is just in
"investment" into your "entrepreneurial self" to increase your value as "human capital" holder and
this your value in the "labout market." (Symptomatic
Redness -Philip Mirowski - YouTube). That's bullsh*t, but people already brainwashed by
neoliberals from the middle school buy it uncritically.
In the current circumstances education is no longer the answer to rising inequality. Instead of serving
as a social lift it, at least in some cases, became more of a social trap. This is connected with neoliberal
transformation of education. With the collapse of post-war public funded educational model and privatization
of the University education students face a pretty cruel world. World in which they are cows to milk.
Now universities became institutions very similar to McDonalds ( or, in less politically correct terms,
Bordellos of Higher Learning). Like McDonalds they need to price their services so that to receive nice
profit and they to make themselves more attractive to industry they intentionally feed students with
overspecialized curriculum instead of concentrating on fundamentals and the developing the ability to
understand the world. Which was a hallmark of university education of the past.
Since 1970th Neo-Liberal
University model replaced public funded university model (Dewey model). It is
now collapsing as there are not that many students, who are able (and now with lower job prospects and
persistent tales of graduates working as bartenders) to pay inflated tuition fees. That means that
higher education again by-and-large became privilege of the rich and upper middle class.
Lower student enrollment first hit minted during dot-com boom expensive private colleges, who hunt
for people with government support (such a former members of Arm forces). It remains viable only in
elite universities, which traditionally serve the top 1% and rich foreigners. As David Schultz wrote
in his article (Logos,
2012):
Yet the Dewey model began to collapse in middle of the 1970s. Perhaps it was the retrenchment
of the SUNY and CUNY systems in New York under Governor Hugh Carey in 1976 that began the end
of the democratic university.What caused its retrenchment was the fiscal crisis of the
1970s.
The fiscal crisis of the 1970s was born of numerous problems. Inflationary pressures caused by
Vietnam and the energy embargoes of the 1970s, and recessionary forces from relative declines in
American economic productivity produced significant economic shocks, including to the public sector
where many state and local governments edged toward bankruptcy.
Efforts to relieve declining corporate profits and productivity initiated efforts to restructure
the economy, including cutting back on government services. The response, first in England under
Margaret Thatcher and then in the United States under Ronald Reagan, was an effort to retrench the
state by a package that included decreases in government expenditures for social welfare programs,
cutbacks on business regulations, resistance to labor rights, and tax cuts. Collectively these
proposals are referred to as Neo-liberalism and their aim was to restore profitability and autonomy
to free markets with the belief that unfettered by the government that would restore productivity.
Neo-liberalism had a major impact on higher education. First beginning under President
Carter and then more so under Ronald Reagan, the federal and state governments cut taxes and public
expenditures. The combination of the two meant a halt to the Dewey business model as support
for public institutions decreased and federal money dried up.
From a high in the 1960s and early 70s when states and the federal government provided generous
funding to expand their public systems to educate the Baby Boomers, state universities now receive
only a small percentage of their money from the government. As I pointed out in my 2005 Logos “The
Corporate University in American Society” article in 1991, 74% of the funding for public universities
came from states, in 2004; it was down to 64%, with state systems in Illinois, Michigan and Virginia
down to 25%, 18%, and 8% respectively. Since then, the percentages have shrunk even more, rendering
state universities public institutions more in name than in funding.
Higher education under Neo-liberalism needed a new business model and it found it in the corporate
university. The corporate university is one where colleges increasingly use corporate structures
and management styles to run the university. This includes abandoning the American Association
of University Professors (AAUP) shared governance model where faculty had an equal voice in the running
of the school, including over curriculum, selection of department chairs, deans, and presidents,
and determination of many of the other policies affecting the academy. The corporate university
replaced the shared governance model with one more typical of a business corporation.
For the corporate university, many decisions, including increasingly those affecting curriculum,
are determined by a top-down pyramid style of authority. University administration often composed
not of typical academics but those with business or corporate backgrounds had pre-empted many of
the decisions faculty used to make. Under a corporate model, the trustees, increasingly composed
of more business leaders than before, select, often with minimal input from the faculty, the president
who, in turn, again with minimal or no faculty voice, select the deans, department heads, and other
administrative personnel.
Neoliberalism professes the idea the personal greed can serve positive society goals, which is reflected
in famous neoliberal slogan "greed is good". And university presidents listen. Now presidents of neoliberal
universities do not want to get $100K per year salary, they want one, or better several, million dollar
salary of the CEO of major corporation (Student Debt
Grows Faster at Universities With Highest-Paid Leaders, Study Finds - NYTimes.com)
At the 25 public universities with the highest-paid presidents, both student debt and the use
of part-time adjunct faculty grew far faster than at the average state university from 2005 to 2012,
according to a new
study by the Institute for Policy Studies, a left-leaning Washington research group.
The study, “The One Percent at State U: How University Presidents Profit from Rising Student Debt
and Low-Wage Faculty Labor,” examined the relationship between executive pay, student debt and
low-wage faculty labor at the 25 top-paying public universities.
The co-authors, Andrew Erwin and Marjorie Wood, found that administrative expenditures at the
highest-paying universities outpaced spending on scholarships by more than two to one. And while
adjunct faculty members became more numerous at the 25 universities, the share of permanent faculty
declined drastically.
“The high executive pay obviously isn’t the direct cause of higher student debt, or cuts in labor
spending,” Ms. Wood said. “But if you think about it in terms of the allocation of resources, it
does seem to be the tip of a very large iceberg, with universities that have top-heavy executive
spending also having more adjuncts, more tuition increases and more administrative spending.”
... ... ...
The Chronicle of Higher Education’s annual
survey of public university presidents’ compensation, also released Sunday, found that nine chief
executives earned more than $1 million in total compensation in 2012-13, up from four the previous
year, and three in 2010-11. The median total compensation of the 256 presidents in the survey was
$478,896, a 5 percent increase over the previous year.
... ... ...
As in several past years, the highest-compensated president, at $6,057,615 in this period,
was E. Gordon Gee, who
resigned from Ohio State last summer amid trustee complaints about frequent gaffes. He has since
become the president of West Virginia University.
This trick requires dramatic raising of tuition costs. University bureaucracy also got taste for
better salaries and all those deans, etc want to be remunerated like vice presidents. So raising the
tuition costs became the key existential idea of neoliberal university. Not quality of education, but
tuition costs now are the key criteria of success. And if you can charge students $40K per semester
it is very, very good. If does not matter that most population get less then $20 an hour.
The same is true for professors, who proved to be no less corruptible. And some of them, such as
economic departments, simply serve as prostitutes for financial oligarchy. So they were corrupted even
before that rat race for profit. Of course there are exceptions. But they only prove the rule.
As the result university tuition inflation outpaced inflation by leaps and bounds. At some point
amount that you pay (and the level of debt after graduation) becomes an important factor in choosing
the university. So children of "have" and "have nots" get into different educational institutions and
do not meet each other. In a way aristocracy returned via back door.
Neoliberal university professes "deep specialization" to create "ready for the market" graduates.
And that creates another problem: education became more like stock market game and that makes more difficult
for you to change you specialization late in the education cycle. But early choice entail typical stock
market problem: you might miss the peak of the market or worse get into prolonged slump as graduates
in finance learned all too well in 2008. That's why it is important not to accumulate too much debt:
this is a kind of "all in" play in poker. You essentially bet that in a particular specialty there will
be open positions with high salary, when you graduate. If you lose this bet you are done.
As a result of this "reaction to the market trends" by neoliberal universities, when universities
bacem appendixes of HR of large corporations students need to be more aware of real university machinery
then students in 50th or 60th of the last century. And first of all assume that it is functioning not
to their benefits.
One problem for a student is that there are now way too many variables that you do not control. Among
them:
Will it be a sizable market for graduates for the given specialty in four years from now
(late specialization and attempt to get a job after bachelor degree might help here; in this
case the selection of the master degree specialization can become more realistic).
What will be the general health of national economy on the moment of graduation? Remember
about students who graduated in 2008.
The total price of education (and by extension the size of the debt you get on the day
of graduation from the college).
Whether you become a victim of rip offs sponsored by the university administration. Although
this is a slight exaggeration, but the working hypothesis for student a modern neoliberal university
should probably be "This is a hostile environment ! Beware financial rip-offs". That might
involve gentle pushing you into obtaining worthless specialty or other intricate ways to screw you
based on your lack of life experience, poor understanding of academic environment and natural youth
maximalism. Loading you with loans to the max is another dirty trick. In private universities this
is a new art that is polished to perfection and widely practiced on unsuspecting lemmings.
On the deep level neoliberal university is not interested to help you to find specialization and
place in life where can unleash your talents. You are just a paying customers much like in McDonalds,
and university interests are such they might try to push you in wrong direction or load you with too
much debt.
If there is deep mismatch as was with computer science graduates after crash of dot-com boom, or
simply bad job market due to economy stagnation and
you can't find the job for your new specialty
(or if you got "junk" specialty with inherent high level of unemployment among professionals) and you
have substantial education debt, then waiting tables or having some other MacJob is a real disaster
for you. As with such salaries you simply can't pay it back. So controlling the level of debt is very
important and in this sense parents financial help is now necessary. In other words education became
more and more "rich kids game".
That does not mean that university education should be avoided for those from families with modest
means. On the contrary it provides unique experience and help a person to mature in multiple ways difficult
to achieve without it. It is still one of the best ways to get vertical mobility. But unless parents
can support you need to try to find the most economical way to obtain it without acquiring too much
debt. This is you first university exam. And if you fail it you are in trouble.
For example, computer science education is a great way to learn quite a few things necessary for
a modern life. But the price does matter and prestige of the university institution that you attend
is just one of the factors you should consider in your evaluation. It should not be the major factor
("vanity fair") unless your parents are rich and can support you. If you are good you can get later
a master degree in a prestigious university after graduation from a regular college. Or even Ph.D.
County colleges are greatly underappreciated and generally provide pretty high standard of education,
giving ability to students to save money for the first two years before transferring to a four year
college. They also smooth the transition as finding yourself among people who are only equal or superior
then you (and have access to financial resource that you don't have) is a huge stress. The proverb say
that it is better to be first in the village then last in the town has some truth in it. Prestigious
universities might provide a career boost (high fly companies usually accept resumes only from Ivy League
members), but they cost so much that you need to be a son or daughter of well-to-do parents to feel
comfortably in them. Or extremely talented. Also amount of career boost that elite universities provide
depends on whom your parents are and what connections they have. It does not depend solely on you and
the university. Again, I would like to stress that you should resist "vanity fair" approach to your
education: a much better way is to try to obtain BS in a regular university and them try to obtain MS
and then, if you are good, PHD, in a prestigious university. Here is a fragment of an interesting discussion
that covers this topic (Low Mobility Is Not a Social Tragedy?, Feb 13, 2013
; I recommend you to read the whole discussion ):
kievite:
I would like to defend Greg Clack.
I think that Greg Clack point is that the number of gifted children is limited and that
exceptionally gifted children have some chance for upper move in almost all, even the most hierarchical
societies (story of Alexander Hamilton was really fascinating for me, the story of Mikhail
Lomonosov http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Lomonosov
was another one -- he went from the very bottom to the top of Russian aristocracy just on the
strength of his abilities as a scientist). In no way the ability to "hold its own" (typical for
rich families kids) against which many here expressed some resentment represents social mobility.
But the number of kids who went down is low -- that's actually proves Greg Clack point:
(1) Studies of social mobility using surnames suggest two things. Social mobility rates
are much lower than conventionally estimated. And social mobility rates estimated in this way
vary little across societies and time periods. Sweden is no more mobile than contemporary England
and the USA, or even than medieval England. Social mobility rates seem to be independent of
social institutions (see the other studies on China, India, Japan and the USA now linked here).
Francisco Ferreira rejects this interpretation, and restates the idea that there is a strong
link between social mobility rates and inequality in his interesting post.
What is wrong with the data Ferreira cites? Conventional estimates of social mobility, which
look at just single aspects of social status such as income, are contaminated by noise. If
we measure mobility on one aspect of status such as income, it will seem rapid.
But this is because income is a very noisy measure of the underlying status of families.
The status of families is a combination of their education, occupation, income, wealth, health,
and residence. They will often trade off income for some other aspect of status such as occupation.
A child can be as socially successful as a low paid philosophy professor as a high paid car
salesman. Thus if we measure just one aspect of status such as income we are going to confuse
the random fluctuations of income across generations, influenced by such things as career choices
between business and philosophy, with true generalised social mobility.
If these estimates of social mobility were anywhere near correct as indicating true
underlying rates of social mobility, then we would not find that the aristocrats of 1700 in
Sweden are still overrepresented in all elite occupations of Sweden. Further, the more
equal is income in a society, the less signal will income give of the true social status of
families. In a society such as Sweden, where the difference in income between bus drivers and
philosophy professors is modest, income tells us little about the social status of families.
It is contaminated much more by random noise. Thus it will appear if we measure social status
just by income that mobility is much greater in Sweden than in the USA, because in the USA
income is a much better indicator of the true overall status of families.
The last two paragraphs of Greg Clark article cited by Mark Thoma are badly written and actually
are somewhat disconnected with his line of thinking as I understand it as well as with the general
line of argumentation of the paper.
Again, I would like to stress that a low intergenerational mobility includes the ability
of kids with silver spoon in their mouth to keep a status close to their parent. The fact
that they a have different starting point then kids from lower strata of society does not change
that.
I think that the key argument that needs testing is that the number of challengers from lower
strata of the society is always pretty low and is to a large extent accommodated by the societies
we know (of course some societies are better then others).
Actually it would be interesting to look at the social mobility data of the USSR from this
point of view.
But in no way, say, Mark Thoma was a regular kid, although circumstances for vertical mobility
at this time were definitely better then now. He did possessed some qualities which made possible
his upward move although his choice of economics was probably a mistake ;-).
Whether those qualities were enough in more restrictive environments we simply don't know,
but circumstances for him were difficult enough as they were.
I stopped reading after that. I teach at a high school in a town with a real mix of highly
elite families, working class families, and poor families, and I can tell you that the children
of affluent parents are not obviously more gifted than the children of poor families. They
do, however, have a lot more social capital, and they have vastly more success. But the limitations
on being "gifted" are irrelevant.
According to an extensive study (Turkheimer et al., 2003) of 50,000 pregnant women and the
children they went on to have (including enough sets of twins to be able to study the role of
innate genetic differences), variation in IQ among the affluent seems to be largely genetic.
Among the poor, however, IQ has very little to do with genes -- probably because the genetic
differences are swamped and suppressed by the environmental differences, as few poor kids
are able to develop as fully as they would in less constrained circumstances.
All you said is true. I completely agree that "...few poor kids are able to develop as fully
as they would in less constrained circumstances." So there are losses here and we should openly
talk about them.
Also it goes without saying that social capital is extremely important for a child. That's
why downward mobility of children from upper classes is suppressed, despite the fact that some
of them are plain vanilla stupid.
But how this disproves the point made that"exceptionally gifted children have some
chance for upper move in almost all, even the most hierarchical societies"? I
think you just jumped the gun...
mrrunangun:
The early boomers benefitted from the happy confluence of the postwar boom, LBJ's Great
Society efforts toward financial assistance for those seeking to advance their educations, and
the 1964 Civil Rights Act which opened opportunities for marginalized social groups in institutions
largely closed to them under the prewar social customs in the US.
The US Supreme Court is made up of only Jews and Catholics as of this writing, a circumstance
inconceivable in the prewar America. Catholics were largely relegated to separate and unequal
institutions. Jews' opportunities were limited by quotas and had a separate set of institutions
of their own where their numbers could support such. Where their numbers were not sufficient,
they were often relegated to second rate institutions.
Jewish doctors frequently became the leading men in the Catholic hospitals in Midwestern industrial
towns where they were unwelcome in the towns' main hospitals. Schools, clubs, hospitals, professional
and commercial organizations often had quota or exclusionary policies. Meritocracy has its
drawbacks, but we've seen worse in living memory.
Of course bad things that happened to you during your university years are soon forgotten and nostalgia
colors everything in role tones, but the truth is that the modern university is a very cruel world.
Now more then ever.Here are some random observations of the subject (See also my Diploma Millspage about high education sharks for which
sucking you dry financially is the main goal ):
The number of talented teachers is very limited. Your chances to get one in a modern university
are pretty slim. And chances of personally interacting with one which in old time was tremendous
source of personal growth for university students are even slimmer. And level of salaries can change
this number only insignificantly as people with an outstanding talent to teach usually try to find
the way into teaching in any case. High salaries attract more careerists and psychopaths, so they
are mixed blessing. Differences of compensation do not automatically translates into differences
in quality of teaching. Please note that in the USSR the entry-level salary of a teacher was on the
same level as the salary of a casher in supermarket (in other words they were semi-starved) and still
the level of education provided was pretty decent. They were really poor by all standards. But social
status of teaching profession was very high and probably due to this people who get into teaching
were by-and-large very dedicated. So complete absence of money stimulus does not completely kills
inflow of good teachers. Moreover, after the USSR dissolved and new Russian state experienced huge
difficulties with paying salaries to government workers, most teachers did not get salary for half
a year or more and still almost 100% of them continued to teach students of daily basis.
The number of talented students is very limitedtoo. This numbercan't be
easily changed by monetary stimulus to teachers or students. Development of a talented student
only partially is dependent on the quality of the teacher and the school as a whole. They to
a certain extent are "self-propelled" and after initial "boost" (often when the interest to the subject
was sparked by contact with talented dedicated teacher in high school who loves his subject, recognized
their abilities and treated them accordingly) do not significantly increase or lower their results
on additional effort or money that are spent on their education. One interesting factor is that presence
of talented students in the class raises the level of other students and they often provide influence
similar to talented teachers.
While family support matters, excessive push typical, for example, for parents of South Asian
students can be detrimental. I attended a school for mathematically gifted children and they
pushed us so hard that none of the students became a professional mathematician, despite obvious
high natural abilities ;-). Most of us got an allergy to the mathematics for the rest of their lives.
The other extreme when student "is on your own" is also bad. Difficulties in college are substantial
and parents support matters a lot. It is a factor success.
There is also a certain number of students who do not respond well to educational effort no
matter how hard the teacher tries. So, paradoxically, requiring certain average level of achievement
for the class essentially redirects teacher effort from more talented students, who are fewer in
number but might benefit from these efforts, toward less capable and/or less motivated, but who are
more numerically significant part of the class and affect the average that is measured.
Motivation is a huge problem for certain social groups. I think tremendous level of family
pressure partially explains higher level of education success of Jewish, Asian and Eastern European
students. Parents, especially first generation emigrant parents often transfer very high level of
expectations typical for their native countries to the child. In Eastern Europe the level of educational
achievement of a child often serves as a stamp of social approval of the parents, so the pressure
can be excessive and hurt the child. Paradoxically, negative stimulus might work well too. One probable
reason that the level of education in the USSR was reasonably high despite overcrowded and poorly
equipped schools was the fact that those male students who failed entrance exam to the university
twice after the graduation from high school (year of the graduation and the next year) were drafted
to Red Army. For urban youth that was essentially a punishment for educational failure as by-and-large
they were pro-western oriented and were afraid to be drafted. For the same reason the fact that the
number of seats at the universities was limited and insufficient to absorb all high-school graduates
created huge competition when parents hired teachers to prepare students to the university entrance
exams spending often the last money they have.
All those attempts to quantify and measure the quality of a teacher are limited and pretty
controversial. Too much zeal in attempt to quantify teachers performance convert those metrics
into something completely opposite -- detrimental to the teaching bureaucratic fetish as most of
average teachers quickly redirected their efforts from teaching toward meeting those often completely
detached from reality criteria. "Number racket" can even kill incentives for better teachers up to
driving them out of particular "obsessed with measurements" school to other educational institutions.
US schools have huge problems with the quality of the curriculum. They are especially
acute in high schools. Attempts to meet demands of the lower half of student population and disadvantaged
students became so pervasive that in certain subjects students no longer get adequate education at
all (only advanced classes provide European level of exposure to physics, chemistry, biology
and history).
The US schools have pathological fear of failure of students. That depreciates the level
and effort of high achievers. SAT further complicates the picture as in no way it is equivalent to
two exams in math (one written and one taken by human examiners -- usually for an hour), written
composition skills exam and an oral exam in physics that is taken by human examiners (university
staff) which is the way students used to pass the entrance exam to the university in the USSR area.
Level of some teachers is really dismal. So dismal that I, as a university teacher, do
not understand how they managed to graduate from the university. I know a high school math teacher
who teaches at the local high school who was/is unable to solve textbook problems she assigned to
students and thus unable to see if the student solved the problem correctly if students' solution
differed from the provided in teacher's supplement to the textbook.
Unions always have negative aspects like any bureaucracy and any professional guild, but it
is less drag of the society then lobbyists for, say, investment banks. The problem of getting
rid of ridiculously bad teachers is solvable with unions. At the same time teacher union do provide
useful protection from the school administrators and litigious parents (there was a sad, but pretty
telling story that some family sued the school when their daughter was not selected as valedictorian
:-), who otherwise are completely unchecked, like old Greek tyrants.
Number of students who graduates from the university is much higher then the number of position
that require such level of education. That lead to devaluation of education with BS becoming
equivalent of high school diploma.
Computers do provide profound influence on education but this influence not always a positive
one. They greatly stimulated structured tests and "tele-teaching". The latter creates some interesting
possibilities and ability to reuse lectures and reach much broader audience (thousands of students
in case of lectures is not a problem). Also attempt to write lecture notes using computer usually
is less efficient then writing them in an old fashioned way with pen or pencil. IMHO transcription
of hand-written notes to computer notes should be a separate step. The main advantage of computer
notes is that they can be searched, but they have several drawbacks -- browsing is more difficult,
highlighting is practiced less consistently and usage became "less personal".
The personality of the teacher as a real human next to you with whom you can talk and real class
that meets each week are important factors in educational success. You lose those factors with tele-teaching.
It became more like tele-preaching :-). A huge drawback of distant learning based on telecommunication
is that personality of the teacher became sterilized and contacts with students way too formal. Essentially
teacher becomes a cartoon on the screen.
Also even one bright student in a physical class often does more then a teacher to stimulate
learning of others. This effect is completely absent in tele-audiences when everybody is
essentially an isolated, atomic unit. That also eliminate large part of fun of being student as network
of human contacts on campus, contacts that you acquire by attending classes together is a vital part
of student life. It also severe important link with teacher -- brightest students is one of the important
channels teachers learn new things :-)
Another important factor that limits the effectiveness of tele-learning is the feedback loop is
much weaker. For example, when with the audience, the teacher can adapt the presentation to the audience
in a way that is more difficult, more expensive or just impossible in tele-teaching environment.
That requires full duplex tele-presence which is a very expensive proposition, that eats quickly
any financial advantages of tele-teaching.
Yes another interesting aspect is that cheating and plagiarism became much more prominent.
There are two factors here.
First of all absence of physical contact lowers moral norms. It became more of a poker game.
And the second is the lure of possibilities created by distant exams: you can never tell who
is taking your remote exam and what they use in a process :-)
Cases when students from online class in real audience in later classes demonstrated C or D-level
of knowledge despite getting high grades in the remote course they just took are more common that
people think.
I can tell you that even for such ideally suited subject for tele-teaching as computer science,
it creates almost as many problems as it solves. So net might be neutral or negative.
Most teachers and Professors in the university are good, honest people who are trying to make some
contribution to science and teach students (difficult things to mix). But not all. One of the most dangerous
feature of neoliberal university are influx of people who represent a toxic mix of teacher, snake oil
seller, careerist and cult follower. They are not teachers but brainwashers, hired guns -- propagandists
masquerading as University professors. That is why we have witnessed such a corruption and politicization
of science and rising proportion of research and theories taught at the universities that are fraudulent.
Previously teacher was a person somewhat similar to a monk. A person who consciously traded the ability
to work in science to the possibility of acquiring material wealth, at least excessive material wealth.
As Ernest Rutherford once
reminded Pyotr Kapitsa "No
one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to
the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money." (Matthew 6:24)
But in neoliberal university way too many teachers/researchers took Faustian bargain when one trades
the academic independence for above average personal wealth, influence, for the power grab. And despite
popular image of scientists and university professors they proved to be as corruptible by money as Wall
Street traders ;-). This is because the sponsors of their research such as big business, non-governmental
organizations (NGO) and government vie to publish reports and results that put the sponsors in the best
light. Good example is relations of
pharmaceutical industry and academia
“The answer to that question is at once both predictable and shocking: For the past two decades,
medical research has been quietly corrupted by cash from private industry. Most doctors and academic
researchers aren't corrupt in the sense of intending to defraud the public or harm patients, but
rather, more insidiously, guilty of allowing the pharmaceutical and biotech industries to manipulate
medical science through financial relationships, in effect tainting the system that is supposed to
further the understanding of disease and protect patients from ineffective or dangerous drugs. More
than 60 percent of clinical studies--those involving human subjects--are now funded not by the federal
government, but by the pharmaceutical and biotech industries. That means that the studies published
in scientific journals like Nature and The New England Journal of Medicine--those critical reference
points for thousands of clinicians deciding what drugs to prescribe patients, as well as for individuals
trying to educate themselves about conditions and science reporters from the popular media who will
publicize the findings--are increasingly likely to be designed, controlled, and sometimes even
ghost-written by marketing departments, rather than academic scientists. Companies routinely
delay or prevent the publication of data that show their drugs are ineffective.
...
“ Novartis, stepped in and provided additional funding for development. In 1984, private companies
contributed a mere $26 million to university research budgets. By 2000, they were ponying up $2.3
billion, an increase of 9000 percent that provided much needed funds to universities at a time when
the cost of doing medical research was skyrocketing.”
Historically the scientific community is held together through its joint acceptance of the same fundamental
principles of conducting research (and teaching those results) and ethics. Scientific research is best
practiced in a voluntary, honest and free atmosphere. But this idyllic arrangement as well as scientific
ethics now belongs to the past (
The Corruption of Science
)
“It’s a long-standing and crucial question that, as yet, remains unanswered: just how common is
scientific misconduct? In the online, open-access journal PLoS ONE, Daniele Fanelli of the University
of Edinburgh reports the first meta-analysis of surveys questioning scientists about their misbehaviours.
The results suggest that altering or making up data is more frequent than previously estimated and
might be particularly high in medical research.
...There is immense pressure on scientists to produce results, to publish, to seek glory, or just
to get tenure. Scientists are human beings, after all, and sometimes they approach their field with
preconceptions or biases. Politics certainly comes into play; consider eugenics in the United States
at the beginning of the 20th century, or eugenics in Nazi Germany.
Now we can talk only about the level of political and economical pressure and corresponding level
of corruption on professors and scientists, not so much about presence or absence of corruption in science
and education. What really matters for students is that when they feel that a professor is a scum, they
nevertheless try to imitate. See for example
Harvard Mafia, Andrei Shleifer and the economic rape of Russia.
Historically the situation started to change even before neoliberal university became a dominant
educational institution. Previously, despite the fact that money for science were in short supply, scientists
maintained a self-discipline. That changed after WWII. Prior to World War II there was little government
financial support for science. A graduate student working on a Ph.D. degree was expected to make a new
discovery to earn that degree. And if somebody else came first he needed to find a new theme and to
restart his work.
But with the advent of NSF scientists started to "propose" directions of research to get funding.
And be sure this instill atmosphere of sycophantism and political correctness. This process accelerated
dramatically since 1980th with the ascendance of neoliberalism as a dominant USA ideology, when greed
became playing significant role in US universities. It should be understood that now the university
professor is no longer is a teacher and a scientist, but predominantly "grants provider" for the university
and that means that he/she is in the first place a political agent, a manipulator on a mission from
the external agent (typically the state via NSF or other agency, see
The
Corruption of Science in America -- Puppet Masters -- Sott.net)
For the unwashed masses University professor career still represents the ultimate carrier of truth
for a given discipline, so his opinion have a distinct political weight. And the architects of our neoliberal
world fully use this "superstition". Like we can see with neoclassical economics, economists have
turned into an instrument of cognitive manipulation, when under the guise of science financial
oligarchy promote beneficial to itself but false and simplistic picture of the world, using University
professors to brainwash the masses into "correct" thinking.
Professors literally became a religious figures, and cult members or even cult leaders. The first
sign of this dangerous disease of the modern university was probably
Lysenkoism in the USSR. In this sense one can say that Lysenkoism
represented a natural side effect of shrinking of freedom of the scientific community and growing influence
of political power on science. As by Frederick Seitz noted in his
The Present Danger To
Science and Society
Everyone knows that the scientific community faces financial problems at the present time. If
that were its only problem, some form of restructuring and allocation of funds, perhaps along lines
well tested in Europe and modified in characteristic American ways, might provide solutions that
would lead to stability and balance well into the next century. Unfortunately, the situation is more
complex, made so by the fact that the scientific establishment has become the object of controversy
from both outside and inside its special domain. The most important aspects of the controversy
are of a new kind and direct attention away from matters that are sufficiently urgent to be the focus
of a great deal of the community's attention.
The assaults on science from the outside arise from such movements as the ugly form of "political
correctness" that has taken root in important portions of our academic community. There are to be
found, in addition, certain tendencies toward a home-grown variant of the anti-intellectual Lysenkoism
that afflicted science in the Stalinist Soviet Union. So-called fraud cases are being dealt with
in new, bureaucratic ways that cut across the traditional methods of arriving at truth in science.
From inside the scientific community, meanwhile, there are challenges that go far beyond those
that arise from the intense competition for the limited funds that are available to nourish the country's
scientific endeavor.
The critical issue of arriving at a balanced approach to funding for science is being subordinated
to issues made to seem urgent by unhealthy alliances of scientists and bureaucrats. Science
and the integrity of its practitioners are under attack and, increasingly, legislators and bureaucrats
shape the decisions that determine which paths scientific research should take. There is, in
addition, a sinister tendency, especially in environmental affairs, toward considering the undertaking
of expensive projects that are proposed by some scientists to remedy worst-case formulations of problems
before the radical and expensive remedies are proven to be needed. They are viewed seriously
though they are based on the advice of opportunistic alarmists in science who leap ahead of what
is learned from solid research to encourage support for the expensive remedies they perceive to be
necessary. The potential for very great damage to science and society is real.
Unfortunately a large part of the textbook market in the USA has all signs of corrupted monopoly
infested with cronyism and incompetence to the extent that Standard Oil practices looks pretty benign
in comparison. As the site
MakeTextbooksAffordable.com
states on its font page:
The report found that even though students already
pay $900 year for textbooks, textbook publishers artificially inflate the price of textbooks by adding
bells and whistles to the current texts, and forcing cheaper used books off the market by producing
expensive new editions of textbooks that are barely different from the previous edition.
And some university professors are part of these scheme. Congressmen David Wu sites the opinion of
the publisher in his letter"If a student is paying hundreds of dollars for a book, it's because the professor has ordered the
Cadillac edition". But that might be true only for CS where any professor can easily find a cheaper
high quality substitute from publishers like O'Reilly (and students can do this too, see
Softpanorama Bookshelf actually about finding the best CS book
(and some other) at reasonable prices. In other disciplines like mathematics situation is a real racket:
The cost of a common calculus textbook is over $100 in the USA. This is a blatant, open
rip-off. Economics is probably even worse with some useless junk selling for almost $300 per book.
But here one needs to see a bigger picture: low quality of recommended textbooks and, especially,
the quality of university instruction makes it necessary buying additional textbooks. Also the ownership
of best textbooks often makes the difference between success and failure in the particular course. In
this sense additional $100 spending for books for each course makes economic sense as the common alternative
is to drop the course, which often means $1K of more loss.
There are several ways to save on additional textbooks that hopefully can somewhat compensate for
the low quality of tuition in a typical university. With some effort a student can often save approximately
50% of the cover price. Again my Links2bookstores page
contains more information.
At the same time if the instructor is weak, or, worse, belongs to "fundamentalists", a category of
instructors that does not distinguish between important and unimportant things and overloads the course
with "useless overcomplexity" additional books are one of few countermeasures against
this typical university-style rip-off. Dropping the course is a difficult maneuver that requires perfect
timing and problems with instructor and the course content usually do not surface during the first month
of the study when you can still do it for free or with minimal damage.
College textbook publishing became a racket with the growth of neoliberalism. And it is pretty dirty
racket with willing accomplishes in form of so called professors like Greg Mankiw. For instance, you
can find a used 5th edition Mankiw introductory to Microeconomics for under $4.00, while a new 7th edition
costs over $200. An interesting discussion of this problem can be found at
Thoughts on High-Priced Textbooks'
Tim Taylor on why textbooks cost so much:
Thoughts on High-Priced Textbooks: High textbook prices are a pebble in the shoe of many college
students. Sure, it's not the biggest financial issue they face, But it's a real and nagging annoyance
that for hinders performance for many students. ...
David Kestenbaum and Jacob Goldstein at National Public Radio took up this question recently on
one of their "Planet Money" podcasts. ... For economists, a highlight is that they converse
with Greg Mankiw, author of what is currently the best-selling introductory economics textbook,
which as they point out is selling for $286 on Amazon. Maybe this is a good place to point out
that I am not a neutral observer in this argument: The third edition of my own Principles of Economics
textbook is available through Textbook
Media.
The pricing
varies from $25 for online access to the book, up through $60 for both a paper copy (soft-cover,
black and white) and online access.
Several explanations for high textbook prices are on offer.
The standard arguments are that textbook companies are marketing selling to professors, not to
students, and professors are not necessarily very sensitive to textbook prices. (Indeed, one can
argue that before the rapid rise in textbook prices in the last couple of decades, it made sense
for professors not to focus too much on textbook prices.) Competition in the textbook market is
limited, and the big publishers load up their books with features that might appeal to professors:
multi-colored hardcover books, with DVDs and online access, together with test banks that allow
professors to give quizzes and tests that can be machine-graded. At many colleges and universities,
the intro econ class is taught in a large lecture format, which can include hundreds or even several
thousand students, as well as a flock of teaching assistants, so some form of computerized grading
and feedback is almost a necessity. Some of the marketing by textbook companies involves paying
professors for reviewing chapters--of course in the hope that such reviewers will adopt the book.
The NPR show casts much of this dynamic as a "principal-agent problem," the name for a situation
in which one person (the "principal") wants another person (the "agent") to act on their behalf,
but lacks the ability to observe or evaluate the actions of the agent in a complete way. Principal-agent
analysis is often used, for example, to think about the problem of a manager motivating employees.
But it can also be used to consider the issue of students (the "principals") wanting the professor
(the "agent") to choose the book that will best suit the needs of the students, with all factors
of price and quality duly taken into account. The NPR reporters quote one expert saying that the
profit margin for high school textbooks is 5-10%, because those books decisions are made by school
districts and states that negotiate hard. However, profit margins on college textbooks--where
the textbook choice is often made by a professor who may not even know the price that students
will pay--are more like 20%.
The NPR report suggests this principal-agent framework to Greg Mankiw, author of the top-selling
$286 economic textbook. Mankiw points out that principal-agent problems are in no way nefarious,
but come up in many contexts. For example, when you get an operation, you rely on the doctor to
make choices that involve costs; when you get your car fixed, you rely on a mechanic to make choices
that involve costs; when you are having home repairs done, you rely on a repair person or a contractor
to make choices that involve costs. Mankiw argues that professors, acting as the agents of students,
have legitimate reason to be concerned about tradeoffs of time and money. As he notes, a high
quality book is more important "than saving them a few dollars"--and he suggests that saving $30
isn't worth it for a low-quality book.
But of course, in the real world there are more choices than a high-quality $286 book and a
low-quality $256 book. The PIRG student surveys suggest that up to two-thirds of students are
avoiding buying textbooks at all, even though they fear it will hurt their grade, or are shifting
to other classes with lower textbook costs. If a student is working 10 hours a week at a part-time
job, making $8/hour after taxes, then the difference between $286 book and a $60 book is 28.25
hours--nearly three weeks of part-time work. I am unaware of any evidence in which students were
randomly assigned different textbooks but otherwise taught and evaluated in the same way, and
kept time diaries, which would show that higher-priced books save time or improve academic performance.
It is by no means obvious that a lower-cost book (yes, like my own) works less well for students
than a higher-cost book from a big publisher. Some would put that point more strongly.
A final dynamic that may be contributing to higher-prices textbooks is a sort of vicious circle
related to the textbook resale market. The NPR report says that when selling a textbook over a
three-year edition, a typical pattern was that sales fell by half after the first year and again
by half after the second year, as students who had bought the first edition resold the book to
later students. Of course, this dynamic also means that many students who bought the book new
are not really paying full-price, but instead paying the original price minus the resale price.
The argument is that as textbooks have increased in price, the resale market has become ever-more
active, so that sales of a textbook in later years have dwindled much more quickly. Textbook companies
react to this process by charging more for the new textbook, which of course only spurs more activity
in the resale market.
A big question for the future of textbooks is how and in what ways they migrate to electronic
forms. On one side, the hope is that electronic textbooks will offer expanded functionality, as
well as being cheaper. But this future is not foreordained. At least at present, my sense is that
the functionality of reading and taking notes in online textbooks hasn't yet caught up to the
ease of reading on paper. Technology and better screens may well shift this balance over time.
But even setting aside questions of reading for long periods of time on screen, or taking notes
on screen, at present it remains harder to skip around in a computerized text between what you
are currently reading and the earlier text that you need to be checking, as well as skipping to
various graphs, tables, and definitions. To say it more simply, in a number of subjects it may
still be harder to study an on-line text than to study a paper text.
Moreover, as textbook manufacturers shift to an on-line world, they will bring with them
their full bag of tricks for getting paid. The Senack report notes:
Today’s marketplace offers more digital textbook options to the student consumer than ever.
“Etextbooks” are digitized texts that students read on a laptop or tablet. Similar to PDF documents,
e-textbooks enable students to annotate, highlight and search. The cost may be 40-50 percent
of the print retail price, and access expires after 180 days. Publishers have introduced
e-textbooks for nearly all their traditional textbook offerings. In addition, the emergence
of the ereader like the Kindle and iPad, as well as the emergence of many e-textbook rental
programs, all seemed to indicate that the e-textbook will alter the college textbook landscape
for the better.
However, despite this shift, users of e-textbooks are subject to expiration dates, on-line
codes that only work once, page printing limits, and other tactics that only serve to restrict
use and increase cost.
Unfortunately for students, the publishing companies’ venture into e-textbooks is a
continuation of the practices they use to monopolize the print market.
JohnH:
My understanding is that there are cases where the professor requires the textbook he wrote
and for which he receives royalties...
In such cases, the publisher and the professor's interests align against the student, who pays
through the teeth.
djb:
good article but i have a real problem with introductory texts on economics
they are completely biased, mostly towards supply side of the debate
meaning, of course, they are wrong
if they just contained that which is undeniably true then ok, or if they presented it as this
school of thought says this and that school of thought says the other, ok,
The Raven:
A general rule of thumb: half the selling price of a book is spent before the first impression
is made on paper. Speaking as a very small publisher, I think the main problem is that the
texts are expensive to produce.
They take a lot of editorial and design effort, so the fixed costs of textbook production are
high, the production costs are often high, and textbook bestsellers are not common, so they
don't usually make it up on volume.
Now, one could, for standard freshman and sophomore texts, aim at lower costs and higher volumes,
but that's not academic publishing, and nothing is going to help with upper-level texts; the market
is just not that big.
Excellent! With a high elasticity of demand, the increase in quantity beats the drop in price.
Unless the marginal cost of printing books is higher than I suspect it is, Mankiw's publisher
is not a profit maximizing monopolist. I'm telling you the best economics is right here and we
don't charge $286!
You'd have to market a book *hard* to get that increase in demand, though. It's not a student-by-student
sale decision; the professors have to be marketed. The other thing about publishing economics
that people outside the industry don't realize: most books don't make much money, so publishers
rely on the good-sellers and the best-sellers for much of their profits. If you've got something
you're pretty sure is going to be in demand, *you mark it up,* because in William Golding's immortal
phrase, "Nobody knows anything."
Over the past 25 or so years, the consolidation of publishing has put the money types more
and more in control of the business. And the money types always want to only market best sellers.
This is sort of like Germany saying that everyone should make money exporting. "That trick never
works."
Now, if anyone wanted to bring the price of an Econ 101 book down, one could do a no-frills
book, small, soft-covered, and strictly monochrome, or perhaps an ebook. (But watch out—only some
ebook readers support mathematics well.) It might cost $50 or so (I'm guessing—I'm not a textbook
publisher.) It would not look impressive, and this might make a problem for marketing, but students
could still learn from it. And—who knows?—it might even sell.
T.J.:
The issue is that textbook publishers release new editions every couple of years. For many
subjects, including economics, this is absurd. Sciences don't change that quickly.
For instance, you can find a used 5th edition Mankiw introductory to Microeconomics for under
$4.00, while a new 7th edition costs over $200.
Has principles of microeconomics changed that much over the course of 6 years? No, but textbook
companies make a few changes on the margin and charge you hundreds of dollars for a new edition.
Many times, professors require online access codes to supplement their lecture. Therefore, the
student is forced into the newer edition, in which often there is no substantial differences or
major improvements in presenting the material.
When you have that sort of market power, it is easy to achieve economic rents.
pgl -> to T.J....
"Sciences don't change that quickly". One would hope those freshwater books changed after their
utter failures to predict the most recent recession. But they likely haven't.
cm -> to T.J....
There are errata, and some content that the author has in mind doesn't make it into the first
edition, or not at the intended quality/depth. Most people who have never published something
substantial have no idea how much work it is to get non-fiction scientific/technical stuff publication
ready. Not only on the author's part but also editing and proofreading/giving feedback at a collegial
level. (Not meaning to knock down fiction, that's a different set of challenges.)
Bill Ellis:
Two Ideas I would like to see combined. A period of Universal public service that earns a free
higher and or tech education. Something like the GI bill for all.
I think making universal public service a right of passage could help us be a more unified
society. If we have kids from inner city Detroit, rural West Virginia, suburban San Francisco
and the oil fields of Oklahoma working side by side it would open their eyes to each other in
ways that are never experienced by most American kids who are living in communities of institutional
self-segregation.
Having said that.. free education is a no brainer no matter what.
To cover everyone's tuition it would only cost us about forty billion more than the feds already
spend on higher ed. That's a rounding error in terms of our total budget.
We subsidize big oil and gas to the tune of about 50 billion a year.
The maddening thing is that the national debate is not even close to taking Free Ed seriously.
Instead Liz Warren is portrayed some kind of wild eyed radical for proposing a modest cut in interest
rates on student loans and some narrow way to get some forgiveness of debt.
John Cummings:
It is part of the educational industrial complex (which include vouchers and government backed
private school industrial complex)
Educational industrial complex
Military industrial complex
Medical industrial complex
Prison industrial complex
Fred C. Dobbs:
(Evidently, 'It’s Economics 101'.)
Higher education: Why textbooks cost so much
http://econ.st/1yzDU5Z via @TheEconomist
- Aug 16th 2014
Students can learn a lot about economics when they buy Greg Mankiw’s “Principles of Economics”—even
if they don’t read it. Like many popular textbooks, it is horribly expensive: $292.17 on Amazon.
Indeed, the nominal price of textbooks has risen more than fifteen fold since 1970, three times
the rate of inflation (see chart, at link).
Like doctors prescribing drugs, professors assigning textbooks do not pay for the products
themselves, so they have little incentive to pick cheap ones. Some assign books they have written
themselves. The 20m post-secondary students in America often have little choice in the matter.
Small wonder textbooks generate megabucks.
But hope is not lost for poor scholars. Foreign editions are easy to find online and often
cheaper—sometimes by over 90%. Publishers can be litigious about this, but in 2013 the Supreme
Court ruled that Americans have the right to buy and resell copyrighted material obtained legally.
Many university bookstores now let students rent books and return them. Publishers have begun
to offer digital textbooks, which are cheaper but can’t be resold. And if all else fails, there
is always the library.
How to Cut Your Textbook Costs in Half -- or More-Kiplinger
http://po.st/nCZsxY - August 2014
(By renting e-books, donchaknow.)
(Turns out Mankiw's Econ textbook, which
currently costs $289 in hardcover from
Amazon, can be rented in Kindle format
for a mere $173 - for 180 days.)
(Hardcover rental is $70, however.)
Fred C. Dobbs -> to Fred C. Dobbs...
(Wait a second. The Federales fixed
this problem back in 2008...)
Advocates say a new set of federal provisions, aimed at driving down the cost of college textbooks,
should help students this fall. On July 1, (2010) these rules took effect:
Publishers must give professors detailed information about textbook prices, revision histories
and a list of alternate formats.
Publishers have to sell materials typically bundled with textbooks -- such as CDs, DVDs and
workbooks -- separately so students don't have to buy them.
Colleges have to include in-course schedules with required textbooks for each class, including
the book's price and International Standard Book Number, an identifying tool.
The protections, included in the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008, are an attempt to
lessen student debt, said U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., on Wednesday.
"The cost of education is of concern not only to students and families but to the nation,"
Durbin said, explaining why the government got involved in textbook prices. "Students are emerging
with more and more debt."
Textbooks have been outrageously expensive for a long time, though some of the prices quoted
in this article were astonishing to me and I used to be in the business. Nothing much has changed.
The complaints and the defenses sound very familiar. Even in the 70s and 80s, publishers groused
about how the used trade hurt their sales and the suggestion was repeatedly made that one way
around the trap was to produce much cheaper texts and make up the difference on volume. Unfortunately,
the numbers never add up for that business plan since the major textbook publishers have huge
sunk costs in the big sales forces needed to support the current model. Anyhow, good cheap books
have long been available for many big undergrad courses if profs want to assign them and don't
mind producing their own tests and other teaching aids. A handful of profs do just that and were
already doing it thirty years ago, but they are a distinct minority.
About the revision racket: the funny thing is that old editions of textbooks are often better
than more recent editions. Market research makes good books worse in much the same way that it
eventually screws up software by the relentless addition of bells and whistles. I'm a technical
writer these days and keep copies of several old classics at hand when I need to brush up: Feynman's
lectures on physics; the first edition of Freeman, Pisani, and Purves on Statistics; the 2nd edition
of Linus Pauling's Intro Chem text; Goldstein on Thermo; and a real museum piece, Sylvaner Thomas'
Calculus Made Easy. Many of these books have been reprinted by Dover and are available for peanuts.
To be fair, the high price for textbooks makes more sense in some fields than in others. The
three or four year revision cycle is absurd for math books since the math remains the same decade
after decade, but texts in areas like molecular biology really do have to be revised frequently
and substantively, a very labor-intensive task. Which is why I give a pass to the Biology editors
and the folks who struggle to update the Intermediate Accounting books with the latest FASB standards.
Can you elaborate on the revision "paradox"? Surely not only in very new fields, the state
of the art progresses, or textbook authors see a need or opportunity to include new material (I
suspect somebody setting out to write a comprehensive text has more ideas what to write about
than can be finished at the required quality in the required time, for the first edition).
How would the subsequent editions be worse, if the new content is driven by the author and
not by external marketing considerations, unless the new material is at the expense of older material
(e.g. #pages limit)?
From my very limited experience, authors who are not in it for making a profit, and who write
for a small market (selling up to a few thousand copies per year is a small market) run into substantial
overhead costs for editing, marketing (i.e. making the existence of the book known to the target
audience), and distribution, and basically have to do the work for free. Some, and perhaps most,
certainly academic, publishers have "charity" programs where they publish small editions where
they at best break even or even cross-subsidize them out of "full rate" publications. Then people
complain about excessive prices for the latter.
Leading Edge Boomer:
Jeebus, $286 for a textbook, from an author who is often wrong lately? I co-authored
a graduate computer science text (low volume = higher cost) that retailed in the low two digits.
cm -> to Leading Edge Boomer...
I will not comment on the author's merit or lack thereof, but $286 is really in "WTF" territory,
for any textbook.
cm -> to Leading Edge Boomer...
I once contributed to a book, and the authors/editors decided to collectively waive their royalties
to hit an affordable price (and I suspect it was still a charity deal on the part of the largely
academic publisher). But I got my free copy.
At least for big market textbooks, the motive for revisions is generally financial and
that's as true for the authors as the publishers. In fact, the authors are often the ones
who push for new editions as their royalty checks steadily diminish. In cases where it's the authors
who are reluctant to revise for whatever reason, publishers often sweeten the deal with advances,
grants, or other goodies.
I don't mean to be completely cynical. Authors and editors certainly try to produce a better
product when they put out new editions, and it very often happens that the second edition is better
than the first. Especially in later cycles, however, the changes are usually pretty cosmetic.
The editor in charge of the project solicits advice from users and potential users and comes up
with a list of "improvements" in a process not entirely different than what happens when various
interests in Washington get their pet provisions put in a bill. If you think that professor X
is likely to adopt the text if you go along with his ideas and plug his contributions in the acknowledgements,
the idea is very likely to be irresistible.
The sales force also weighs in. They want feature they can tout; but since real improvements
are hard to come by, that usually means more and more pedagogy: boxes, pictures, computer programs,
and umpteen forms of emphasis. Let me assure you it takes desperate ingenuity to come up with
something new to add to an Intermediate Algebra textbook. "Now with a new way to factor trinomials"
isn't exactly a memorable pitch. Meanwhile, after three or four editions, the author, who
presumably would be the best source of serious innovation for a new edition, is generally bored
to death with the project.
As I said above, there are textbooks that really do need perpetually revision for substantive
reasons; but in most fields what Freshmen and Sophomores need to learn has been known for a long
time. My remarks on revisions also don't apply very well to upper level texts in smaller markets,
in part because students tend to hang on to serious books in their majors so the companies have
less incentive to beat the used book market with new editions.
From what I remember of my university days (in the long distant past), we didn't have text
books (that was for school kids). We had lectures and lists of reading materials (that if we were
lucky we could find in the library and photocopy relvant sections). I did have a copy of Samualson
(relatively cheap). But the emphasis was on a reading a variety of sources. What has changed,
and why?
My own biggest peeve concerns calculus textbooks, especially introductory calculus textbooks.
The material hasn't changed in at least 60 years, if not longer. If it weren't for the current
ridiculously long copyright terms people could just use old ones.
The last time I took the subject our professor went to some lengths to let us use the previous
edition, which was available used. The only real change in the next edition was in the problems.
That is, if a student was assigned "problem 8 in section xxx" having the most recent edition was
the only way to know what the problem was.
I don't see any redeeming value in this.
Bloix:
My son took an intro geology course a few years ago. The textbook price at the school bookstore
was about $125. He purchased the gray market (legal) "international edition" - word for word,
page for page the same, but with a different picture on the cover - over the internet for about
$50.
It's my understanding that this sort of price-differential is common. Mankiw's book appears
to be available in the "international edition" for $60 (soft cover).
"... John Gatto has traced the roots of western education back to the Hindu schools in India; teaching docility and obedience. His book, The Underground History of American Education, is superb. ..."
Only two continents for this one; and yes, critical thinking either not taught or
discouraged.
I have found Usaian's particularly lacking in this skill; especially the last 50+ years.
John Gatto has traced the roots of western education back to the Hindu schools in India;
teaching docility and obedience. His book, The Underground History of American Education, is
superb.
Posted by: V. Arnold | Aug 5, 2017 4:28:14 AM |
53
"... Common core math is indeed an abomination. It nearly destroyed my son's interest in math. I'm teaching him old school math. Of course, I am also supplementing his history lessons with alternative analyses and with a more comprehensive range of topics. ..."
"... Another thing – most teachers of common core math at my son's public school do not understand it themselves. I noted errors in homework assignments which only compounded the confusion among the students. ..."
"... One more thing – they are expected to learn from online videos and sloppily prepared study sheets – not a real math book. The school system is trying to make education paperless. This, to me, stunts the critical skills of eye-hand coordination, the ability to express abstract concept visually (e.g. making good sketches of ideas), etc. For example, mechanical drafting skills with the associated ability to visualize have been replaced by learning how to manipulate software. ..."
"... Perhaps these are cost-cutting measures but the results is that the US public education system, from my experience, is in free fall. ..."
Common core math is indeed an abomination. It nearly destroyed my son's interest in math.
I'm teaching him old school math. Of course, I am also supplementing his history lessons with
alternative analyses and with a more comprehensive range of topics.
Another thing – most teachers of common core math at my son's public school do not understand
it themselves. I noted errors in homework assignments which only compounded the confusion among
the students.
One more thing – they are expected to learn from online videos and sloppily prepared study
sheets – not a real math book. The school system is trying to make education paperless. This,
to me, stunts the critical skills of eye-hand coordination, the ability to express abstract concept
visually (e.g. making good sketches of ideas), etc. For example, mechanical drafting skills with
the associated ability to visualize have been replaced by learning how to manipulate software.
Perhaps these are cost-cutting measures but the results is that the US public education
system, from my experience, is in free fall.
Here is a tin-foil hat theory based on the linked article. If Bill Gates is promoting a method
of education that stunts learning among the masses while sending his own kids to private school
that does not use the same method, could this be a way help to create a society of dysfunctional
masses ruled by a well-trained elites?
When it comes to Math, I think the traditional textbook approach is the best. For History and
the social sciences, though, I would recommend replacing big textbooks with individual monographs
and other study materials focusing on specialized themes.
Reason being: For Math, there is a standard (finite) set of facts and techniques that need
to be mastered at the school level; whereas there is no such thing as a "standard" or finite sets
of historical facts.
Somebody else suggested they are trying to prepare kids to become programmers of digital computers
(like Bill Gates started out). But that doesn't make any sense either, because digital computers
do not use this method to subtract. Instead, they use a method called "2's complement addition".
This YouTube video explains quite clearly how it is done in binary computer registers:
https://youtu.be/vfY7bN_3VKw
Computers do use binary arithmetic, but for a human to do so, it involves converting from base
10 to base 2 and then subtracting. In order to convert from base 10 to base 2, you have to follow
a step-by-step procedure which involves the remainder.
That is just bizarre. One commenter suggested the methods might be geared toward more complex
problems where numbers do not represent real things, but concepts; but I just can't see that,
either. But then, I've never been good at math and was always afraid of it. Whatever the case,
I would have dropped out of school in Grade Three if I'd had to learn this way. It makes math
problems ten times more complicated than they need to be, and every time you introduce another
step you introduce another possibility of making a mistake.
Very true ! I am pretty good in math but this is still too much artificially
introduced complexity for me too. Still it would be a perfect way to work with roman numbers.
And that's BTW why Arabic notation is so much superior.
"... And this begs an obvious question: if customers complain about how banks let them down, why are the banks not concentrating on what customers are telling them is wrong with the products and services the banks provide already – rather than spending time and money on creating new supposedly innovative ones? The answer is, of course, that it generates profits for the banks to do things which customers find annoying (high fees, obscure product features and even bank errors which cause the customer to lose and the bank to win). Or else it costs money, such as to train staff and then retain that knowledge in their workforces or to have sufficient numbers of staff available in the first place, to fix the problem. ..."
"... In a digital world filled with choice ..."
"... choice, empathy and ease of use designed into every interaction they have with the bank ..."
"... For one thing, which may not be obvious to those outside the industry, working in finance is usually incredibly boring, frustrating, tedious and slow. While the outsized pay can and does attract intelligent and talented people, some of whom are quite creative, it is just about the worst place for those sorts of people to work. Systems and operations are convoluted and difficult to change because of their complexity. Banks are large bureaucracies with fiefdoms, turf wars, massive egos and driven by the need – in the cause of maximising shareholder value, the alter upon which many business have to sacrifice themselves – to implement the lowest cost solutions. ..."
"... It is not uncommon for the graduates and those recruited from the top performers in science and technology to join banks. They are lured by high pay and the promise of joining the Masters of the Universe. Sadly, they often find that the reality is form-filling, battles with nickel-and-diming accountants and internecine warfare. Boredom, for want of a better word, drives many of them to seek out vanity projects or resume-burnishing novelties such as fintech. ..."
"... There is no greater trojan horse to change an organization than design thinking,ť said Stephen Gates, head of Citi Design. " Especially with something where there are lawyers, regulators Part of what we had to do was change thinking, not behavior. If it's new behavior on old thinking, we didn't really change anything.ť" ..."
"... lawyers, regulators "ť ..."
"... Perhaps banking has killed off its most appealing aspects and left its minions filthy rich but with nothing stimulating to do. ..."
"... Automated decisioning has removed a lot of the skill and judgement for banks' credit officers. It has also removed a lot of credit officers! There's virtually no discretion available in retail credit policy and no-one empowered to override standard-model largely FICO derived lending decisions. As you say, a lot of local market knowledge helped banks and their lending teams make credit decisioning much more flexible in the past. ..."
"... It fascinates me how fascinated banks are with big data now. When banks were the first and ultimate big data company – just the data processors were people, not machines. Then they used the machines to streamline processes, seemingly w/o realisation that streamlining processes gets you commoditised (as its eminently copiable). So now banks are struggling to avoid a commoditization while working very very hard at it. ..."
"... I agree with Doctor Duck: the idea that because it's programmed, it's a better bureaucracy has really turned out to be a false promise. Just look at the financial crisis and reverse redlining (ie, predatory loans) was used as a financial weapon against minorities. ..."
"... Aside from racial injustices, it's pretty obvious that "the programming" is there to reify existing class divisions. There's no bureaucratic computer program that seeks to free people from the crushing bonds of class. Max Weber would have a field day. Bureaucratic technology ensures that there's no charisma appearing in the system. ..."
"... "On average", a college degree is an order acceptance and an endurance performance index within that order,thus, it is a cost efficient recruiting tool to exclude online non degree applicants from the very outset ..."
"... If you really want to get disgusted, look up "Learning Analytics". Venture capital is streaming into these startups that are aggressively data mining students. None of it ever passes through an ethics board and much of it violates FERPA, but the Department of Education seems to shrug their collective shoulders about it. Probably because many Dept of Ed personnel end up at those companies as advisors. ..."
"... And don't get me started on those tablets. Google hands out Chromebooks and swears up and down that they don't collect usage data. ..."
"... Well, see, arithmetic and maths and English and composition and Physics and Chemistry change so often that using paper textbooks would leave paper textbook students hopelessly behind students using tablets. OK, tablets cost on the order of 3 times what paper textbooks cost for the same usable time-span. But, hey! It's new! It's now! It's happening! (And also, too, rents.) /s ..."
"... One aspect you didn't cover, that I think may be more important than fighting off regulations (although that plays a role, I'm sure) is that I think execs are looking to get a piece of the silicon valley, techland infinite money-pile. They see Tesla worth more than Ford and they dream of where their stock price (and their stock options!) might go if they were thought of as tech companies instead of boring old banks. ..."
"... And part of it is fear. They are afraid of being the next Sears or local taxi company or whoever getting disrupted by the infinite silicon valley money-pile, either by the startups that can burn billions of dollars buying market share or by the big players who can leverage their entrenched monopoly positions in their core markets to spend billions trying to take over any market they feel like. ..."
"... The issue is that the banks have no incentive to address the 5 issues that you raised. They are a rent seeking cartel that does not care about the well being of the general populace at all. They certainly are not tech start-ups. I get the impression that most people think that tech startups are God, but in reality there are many bad start-ups too. ..."
"... Basically, their money is made screwing the general public over at this point. That's sad to say, but it is not far from the truth. What we need is a public bank and/or larger credit unions that can offer all the financial services of a big bank. ..."
The first paragraph states what may be obvious to those outside the finance industry bubble. Namely
that users of financial services mostly do not want or need so-called innovative financial products
or any new ways of using finance in their lives. Rather, they want banks to provide simple, easy-to-understand
basic financial products that work. According to the copious data available from the
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau which I've analysed, retail bank customers' top five sources
of complaint are:
Fees.
Poor customer service.
Unpaid checks or other bounced payments.
"Gotcha's"
hidden in product Terms and Conditions small print.
Bank errors (which were either not corrected,
took a lot of effort to get corrected or the corrections caused other knock-on issues).
I've worked in finance for nearly 30 years. The very first list I ever saw for complaints looked
exactly the same as this.
And this begs an obvious question: if customers complain about how banks let them down, why are
the banks not concentrating on what customers are telling them is wrong with the products and services
the banks provide already – rather than spending time and money on creating new supposedly innovative
ones? The answer is, of course, that it generates profits for the banks to do things which customers
find annoying (high fees, obscure product features and even bank errors which cause the customer
to lose and the bank to win). Or else it costs money, such as to train staff and then retain that
knowledge in their workforces or to have sufficient numbers of staff available in the first place,
to fix the problem.
Customers, even if we are supposed to be " In a digital world filled with choice " don't
need " choice, empathy and ease of use designed into every interaction they have with the bank
"ť. We want to not be ripped off and for the banks to act competently in our dealings with them.
It is too much of a stretch to expect that the banks, unprompted or without being cajoled by regulators,
will address structural issues around their business culture, executive conduct and outlandish profitability
ratio expectations. However, we should expect continued wailing and gnashing of teeth from the banks
about "innovation"ť and the need to be "competitive"ť in "the marketplace"ť. The latter is a complete
and immediately disprovable canard though, because the top 5 banks control nearly half of the
market .
So why, then, do the banks keep going, broken-record like, with their claims about the need to
innovate?
For one thing, which may not be obvious to those outside the industry, working in finance is usually
incredibly boring, frustrating, tedious and slow. While the outsized pay can and does attract intelligent
and talented people, some of whom are quite creative, it is just about the worst place for those
sorts of people to work. Systems and operations are convoluted and difficult to change because of
their complexity. Banks are large bureaucracies with fiefdoms, turf wars, massive egos and driven
by the need – in the cause of maximising shareholder value, the alter upon which many business have
to sacrifice themselves – to implement the lowest cost solutions.
It is not uncommon for the graduates and those recruited from the top performers in science
and technology to join banks. They are lured by high pay and the promise of joining the Masters of
the Universe. Sadly, they often find that the reality is form-filling, battles with nickel-and-diming
accountants and internecine warfare. Boredom, for want of a better word, drives many of them to seek
out vanity projects or resume-burnishing novelties such as fintech.
Lining up alongside a desire to do anything to relieve the monotony push, bank C-level leaderships
then adds a pull all of their own. A preoccupation with trying to escape regulatory and legal constraints.
For evidence, let's return to the Tearsheet post:
There is no greater trojan horse to change an organization than design thinking,ť said Stephen
Gates, head of Citi Design. " Especially with something where there are lawyers, regulators Part
of what we had to do was change thinking, not behavior. If it's new behavior on old thinking, we
didn't really change anything.ť" ( emphasis mine)
Superficially, this doesn't sound especially problematic. It could even be construed as plodding
old legacy businesses like banks trying to adapt themselves to the modern knowledge economy era.
Such superficial analysis would be wrong. Firstly, repeating a cliché of innovation and relying on
invisible hands that ceaselessly drive any and all businesses to discard everything they've done
historically and start afresh is just that, clichéd.
The notion that everything a business has learned and any intellectual property it possesses has
suddenly, somehow, been rendered obsolete by some vague notion of an immense technological development
is repeated so often that it's become part of our prevailing culture. But aside from a very small
number of breakout products, such as the personal computer, the internet and the smartphone, most
products you buy or services you use are only ever incremental improvements on what has preceded
them.
The same applies to banking. Without getting too bogged down in the technicalities, a bank's only
functions are to intermediate maturities and interest rates on deposits taken and loans made, plus
to offer some money transmission services. Within financial services, the only two true innovations
in the past 50 years or more which stand up to a scrutinizing of that term are the ATM and the credit
card. Changes to how customers are serviced such as the migration from the branch channel to the
telephone or the internet have shifted the "where"ť and the "how"ť banks interact with their customers,
but not the "what"ť of those interactions.
The line I highlighted in the Tearsheet article gave the game away. The participants who's thinking
purportedly needs to change are not the accountants picking through expense reports stripping
out costs (which usually means reducing headcount). Nor is it the thinking of executives to reduce
their outsized compensation packages. Nor is it in boards who will only look at changes through the
lens of a 5-year business case which must pay back within the shortest of short-term timeframes
and satisfy outlandish Return on Investment (ROI) targets. These ways of thinking have been
with us for at least 20 years or more, but apparently aren't in any danger of approaching a sell-by
date.
No, the thinking that needs to change is that of " lawyers, regulators "ť who are being
exhorted to change to embrace the latest design trends and technological innovations. But regulators
and lawyers are not and cannot be creative types who spend their time considering new colors for
logos and typefaces for websites. Their jobs are to enforce or provide advice and guidance on the
laws governing a corporation's products and services or to interpret regulatory frameworks which
have been enacted by regulators and lawmakers. Creativity, design thinking and behavior doesn't come
into it. Just because a bank wants to label a change as being innovative doesn't ! or shouldn't !
lessen the obligations on a bank's legal team or the regulators to comply with laws or existing regulations.
Gutting regulatory compliance and trying to side-step legal obligations aren't "design thinking".
They're the same connivances which would have killed the entire banking industry 10 years ago, had
we not all been coerced into bailing it out.
You can't blame the banks for trying it on. They are what they are and will continue to be so
until they are forced to change. You can, however, fairly and squarely blame regulators and lawmakers
for not pouring a lot of cold water on this craving for technological fervour. Making the banks tackle
their long-standing issues as evident in the CFPB's complaint data before they can try anything
fancy like fintech would be a start.
Survivor of nearly 30 years in a TBTF bank. Also had the privilege of working in Japan, which
was great, selling real estate, which was an experience bordering on the psychedelic.
A question from a total outsider: if modern banking is tedious and frustrating, could this
be related to the (often-mentioned here) move away from servicing credit needs to algorithm-driven
mechanics? If I think of the banker who sat in a front window of his bank on the main square of
my home town, he was surely engaged in figuring out who was mortgage-worthy, what businesses might
be good bets for loans, etc. It might have had its routine aspects, but it was engaged, integrated
into the town's life, and required complex skills including how to say no to the guy who would
sit next to your family at church. Perhaps banking has killed off its most appealing aspects and
left its minions filthy rich but with nothing stimulating to do.
Automated decisioning has removed a lot of the skill and judgement for banks' credit officers.
It has also removed a lot of credit officers! There's virtually no discretion available in retail
credit policy and no-one empowered to override standard-model largely FICO derived lending decisions.
As you say, a lot of local market knowledge helped banks and their lending teams make credit decisioning
much more flexible in the past.
I was though more referring here to the technology side of banks ! they are the antithesis
of what many attracted to enter the sector think it will be like. There's so many internal bureaucracy
hurdles, complexity constraints and cost-focussed management to work with, the people who unwisely
buy into the hype the recruitment consultants proffer end up frustrated and disappointed. It is
almost inevitable they go looking for glamour projects ! however unworkable they may be like a
lot of fintech ! to try to latch onto.
Of course the bad mortgages that were a big part of the RE bubble were approved by poorly thought
out algorithms. As were the ratings on the bonds created from them. Algorithms are really only
as good as the data that they are based on and the knowledge of the people who write them. And
when it is profitable in the short term to ignore the long term, rest assured that somebody will
figure out a way to make the algorithms do that.
That said, it's an interesting world out there, as banks do vary from country to country (having
had experience in a number of them, on both sides of the fence).
Say in NZ, I had a bank manager, and he had some (reasonably) ability to vary the interest
rate on my mortgage when I came asking. He could also offer special rates on deposits (over a
certain amount).
In the UK, I also had a bank manager. Who wasn't even told by the bank's credit card department
my CC application was rejected as I wasn't in the country for long enough, so he kep submitting
it in the belief it got lost.. To modify an interest rate on anything was impossible. And, most
recently it's even impossible to override the automated lending decision. Hurrah for automation!
It fascinates me how fascinated banks are with big data now. When banks were the first and
ultimate big data company – just the data processors were people, not machines. Then they used
the machines to streamline processes, seemingly w/o realisation that streamlining processes gets
you commoditised (as its eminently copiable). So now banks are struggling to avoid a commoditization
while working very very hard at it.
On the flipside, removing personal discretion from credit judgement calls also makes the process
more fair – less "redlining," and no denying credit based on personal prejudices (or approving
loans for friends and family)
That's a valid point ! it was too easy for a friends-and-family bias and even bribery to creep
in to human decisions before model-based credit decisions became the norm. The happy-medium was
when predefined scoring criteria were used as the foundation for a loan but you could appeal to
head/regional offices for an over-ride if you had good extenuating circumstances or other reliable
evidence to back you up.
The latter option is now no longer available, for the most part.
I agree with Doctor Duck: the idea that because it's programmed, it's a better bureaucracy
has really turned out to be a false promise. Just look at the financial crisis and reverse
redlining (ie, predatory loans) was used as a financial weapon against minorities.
Aside from racial injustices, it's pretty obvious that "the programming" is there to reify
existing class divisions. There's no bureaucratic computer program that seeks to free people from
the crushing bonds of class. Max Weber would have a field day. Bureaucratic technology ensures
that there's no charisma appearing in the system.
We've created machines in our image, with all our prejudices and all of our assumptions in
place, preserved in silicon forever.
Process more objective. The red lines are the ones written into the algorithms. I recall a
Ted Rall post about Dayton OH that described them demolishing empty historic buildings to get
their occupancy rate up. Banks algos wouldn't grand mortgage funds in areas with high un-occupancy
rates. This is death to Jane Jacobs' recommended city environment, where a range of available
rents, low-to-high, nourished every kind of development. A new-scale developer, blogging as
Granola Shotgun has
a lot
to say about this ! the linked posts and a lot before.
Actually, a recent study took a classic psychology evaluation used on humans to detect bias
and modified them to apply to so-called Artificial Intelligence and found that the same biases
pop-up. The authors conjectured that the training data – compiled by humans – introduced the humans'
biases into the system.
This reminds me of the statistical gender discrimination algorithms used in the past. Some
subindustries considered cost efficient to screen out women for employment because of the probability
of maternity leave-apparently there were other "average gender biased considerations too"-. This
excluded first, women who did not want to have any kids, and secondly-and independently from that-
diverse, able, capable and willing labor participants. Have you ever asked yourself why some jobs
which would not require a college degree by any stretch of the imagination screen out electronically
the non-college degree applicants? "On average", a college degree is an order acceptance and an
endurance performance index within that order,thus, it is a cost efficient recruiting tool to
exclude online non degree applicants from the very outset. This way the enterprise leaves out
that which the average does not include and which in certain cases could bring terribly needed
different approaches to a job .Yet, no one ever said enterprises were democratic, truly inclusive
and open to certain changes.
In regards to the financial theme, programmer 3 commented "removing personal discretion approving
loans from friends and family". Anyone who worked for a lending company in the past knows it was
a matter of policy that no employee could make loans to relatives or friends.
Remember that personal
discretion-as opposed to personal arbitrariness-acts within written and unwritten guidelines and
rules too. Also, what your stand alone algorithmic dictatorship does to how delinquencies are
currently managed by the mortgage industry it just simply has no name.
"On average", a college degree is an order acceptance and an endurance performance index
within that order,thus, it is a cost efficient recruiting tool to exclude online non degree
applicants from the very outset
.
These days, a college degree is also a prime indicator of life-controlling debt.
Not in South Africa, where race is big factor in determining the risk profile of the client.
As you can probably guess, the machines have been programmed to grant punitive interest rates
to black people
That is the worst example of this kind of thing I've ever seen! And we've seen plenty here
it deserves some kind of award, in the same vein as the anti-Academy Award "Golden Raspberries"
does for motion pictures. It might, Clive says hoping, be some sort of parody. Unfortunately,
I think it is for real.
To show my disconnect from the modern world, the linkedin article closes with "PI-shaped people"
I had to search for that, first suspecting it meant a person who levers their abilities by
3.14159xxxx
From what I found, there are T-shaped, PI-shaped and Comb-shaped people and the symbol's shape
is a sort of expertise indicator.
A T-shaped person has one area of expertise under their generalist/broad knowledge top hat,
a PI shaped person has TWO areas of expertise under their generalist/ broad knowledge top, while
a comb-shaped person has MULTIPLE expertise areas under their generalist/broad knowledge top.
Do people make a living coming up with this stuff?
From the list, the first one, fees, aren't going away given that the interest margins are so
narrow.
I've seen a number of banks partner with one of the non bank fintech's (even pre IPO fintech's)
to make the bank fintech savvy. To get their computer driven credit system? It will take a while
to see how that works out.
The agile design led stuff reminds me a lot of the TQM programs I went through in the 80's
/ 90's. Independent thinking within the group, commitment to the group to do the work, rolled
out in large scale. We're even moving away from the cube farm to the factory floor, with foosball,
xbox's and (sometimes free) coffee for all.
Likewise, the whole spinoff/startup thing was in vogue back in the early 90's when banks were
faced with e-commerce, this is just the 2017 version.
Legacy is, and in some ways should be, their issue. Systems of record for fin transactions
should have a long shelf life. With that comes people, process, costs and profits, all major drags
on change. They won't be able to have it both ways.
Me thinks that this kind of hype reaching banks and even politicians (the Danish government
has created a "Disruption-council") is a sign that things are not going so well inside the engine
room on the mother ship of the technopocalypse. Governments and Banks are kinda the very last
people on earth to discover anything. At All. When they are suddenly "getting the vibe" whatever
"the vibe" was about, is absolutely over :).
I think that Silicon Valley is leaking flim-flam merchants and "evangelists" because the money
is getting thinner, the sell is becoming harder, easy consulting opportunities are diminishing
and fewer are being procured by the real operators (Apple, Google, Facebook, CISCO .) to provide
their stunning insights and bold visions for the future. The accountants are ascending, ROI is
being scrutinised, exponential growth is levelling off so now there is time to do that.
The visionaries and evangelists still like to be paid (and the travel), so instead of canvassing
Silicon Valley harder with work better suited to the actual future, they spread out and seek new
markets for the same old stuff, kinda like what happened when Monsanto poured PCB into everything
plasticky when the market for oil-filled capacitors was tapped out.
I'd say, in only one-two years, there will be good "SPLAT!" in the .unicorn market.
Keeping score from recent battles among local demi deities, currently turf beats innovation,
and in a stunning reversal that may not last, cost cutting prevailed over turf. These battlefields
rather than the PowerPoint campaigns being where I observe corporate culture.
I'd add one innovation to the list though – smart sweep systems. That is, something that optimises
the costs of an account/accounts for a client. That could be just sweeps between saving/checking
accounts (not talking US here), to queuing transactions as to minimize costs etc.
But the banks that implemented this found very quickly that it led to a significant drop in
client profitability (namely overdraft fees collapsed, interest paid went up), so quietly canned
it.
But the story doesnt' end there – the smart ones figured out that optimization doesn't care
whether you do max or min, so used the technology to optimise the profit from the client – hence
things like applying debits before credits (to take you into overdraft) etc. Forunately, this
"innovation" went out too, but it took regulators to get it done.
Yes indeedey. My TBTF stopped allowing new sweeps / pooling arrangements which was a great
service for customers who wanted to keep money on deposit or even in a market-linked account but
didn't want to have to worry about constantly keeping an eye on what was in their current (checking)
account to make sure they weren't going to go overdrawn.
Simple to understand, easy to set up for both customers and the bank, worked flawlessly because
it was just a nightly batch job with easy-peasy logic ! what was there not to like? Erm unfortunately
for the customers, the hit on bank profitability.
Gaaa. Let me fix a bit of the Tearsheet intro: "In a digital world filled with choice, banks' customers need choice, empathy and ease
of use need sound information, good customer service and accurate accounting designed
into every interaction they have with the bank."
I use my bank as a utility, not as an exciting "experience."
Hey Clive, loved this piece. This really caught my attention:
For one thing, which may not be obvious to those outside the industry, working in finance
is usually incredibly boring, frustrating, tedious and slow. While the outsized pay can and
does attract intelligent and talented people, some of whom are quite creative, it is just about
the worst place for those sorts of people to work. Systems and operations are convoluted and
difficult to change because of their complexity.
I've worked in higher education and you see the same thing going on right now. Education, to
me, is a social process of imparting knowledge. Simple solutions to perennial problems in education
are: (1)Smaller class sizes (2) Better pay/benefits for teachers (3) Support systems for parents
to help them help their children do well.
But what happens in education? Well the same thing you mention above: technology is thrown
at these kids a mile a minute. Suddenly, the solution to problems in the classroom is monitoring
grades through centralized systems with their databanks on the cloud, where student's every move
is considered and they are flagged technologically for not living up to expectations. There's
a huge complex of technological charlatan/consultants infesting higher and primary education at
the moment.
Before long, the "boring" solutions are impossible. Why? As you say above, the technology becomes
ensnared in itself, taking on its own inertia. Before you know it, you can't afford to change
anything for the better because you have several legacy systems running simultaneously and weighing
down budgets.
It takes a lot to shock me, nowadays, but I was genuinely taken aback when an educator friend
of mine (in our equivalent of K-12) told me she'd been given a tablet with ! from what I could
tell, I didn't see it in action ! proprietary software used by the chain academy (charter school
as it would be called in the US) where she works which prompted her during lessons to capture
certain metrics (numbers of students voluntarily putting their hands up when asked certain previously
defined questions in class, time spent on a particular PowerPoint slide ! a PowerPoint slide I
thought for cryin' out loud ! which had been similarly predefined and "tagged for follow up" versus
the estimated "best practice" time slot for this classroom content, a teacher-subjective "score"
for student "engagement" and similar).
As a bit of a data nerd, I was appalled not just by the intrusion into territory where, surely,
experienced educators knew best what to do, how to pace lessons, how to make best use of classroom
time and so on but ! more importantly ! by the risible quality of the data being gathered. It
was what I call pseudo facts, things which sound like they might be telling you something
worth knowing but don't actually prove anything.
It all reminded me of those animal behaviour studies, the ones which come to conclusions like
"when a cat comes towards you and it has its tail upright, it is engaged with you and wants you
to interact with it". Sufficed to say when I tried out the theories on my mother-in-law's cat,
I got a scratched top of my hand for my trouble.
Love the cat analogy. Glad, or rather not glad, to know that it's reached across the pond.
If you really want to get disgusted, look up "Learning Analytics". Venture capital is streaming
into these startups that are aggressively data mining students. None of it ever passes through
an ethics board and much of it violates FERPA, but the Department of Education seems to shrug
their collective shoulders about it. Probably because many Dept of Ed personnel end up at those
companies as advisors.
And don't get me started on those tablets. Google hands out Chromebooks and swears up and down
that they don't collect usage data.
Well, see, arithmetic and maths and English and composition and Physics and Chemistry change
so often that using paper textbooks would leave paper textbook students hopelessly behind students
using tablets. OK, tablets cost on the order of 3 times what paper textbooks cost for the same
usable time-span. But, hey! It's new! It's now! It's happening! (And also, too, rents.) /s
Yeah, it's not like those old fashioned printed text books wouldn't go out of date (unless
there was a lot of needless curriculum churn) and not have a useable economic life, even allowing
for students' not-too-careful handling, of 5 to 10 years or so. Oh wait a minute
Example of what I like to the call the "If you want faster-than-light-speed travel tomorrow,
you have to let us commit fraud today" argument. Question is, whose eyes are they trying to pull
the wool over? Investors to be wooed by web 2.0 jibberish? The top brass, to justify their continued
employment and/or promotions? The public, as a horse and pony show to distract us from the bezzle?
Regulators, hoping that the innovation and tech talk will intimidate them from paying attention
to the man behind the curtain?
Good post Clive, as someone who's been in banking for a few decades now, the current moment
is very reminiscent of the late 90's, even down to some of the details.
Was on a call with some senior folks a while back rhapsodizing about how cutting edge neural
network models would revolutionize our business, and I turned to a colleague who also been around
the block and said, 'yeah we tried all that in the 90's, it didn't really make a difference' (vs.
the standard approach of using multiple regression for credit scoring), and he said to me, 'yeah
we tried that at my bank too, same result'
One aspect you didn't cover, that I think may be more important than fighting off regulations
(although that plays a role, I'm sure) is that I think execs are looking to get a piece of the
silicon valley, techland infinite money-pile. They see Tesla worth more than Ford and they dream
of where their stock price (and their stock options!) might go if they were thought of as tech
companies instead of boring old banks.
And part of it is fear. They are afraid of being the next Sears or local taxi company or whoever
getting disrupted by the infinite silicon valley money-pile, either by the startups that can burn
billions of dollars buying market share or by the big players who can leverage their entrenched
monopoly positions in their core markets to spend billions trying to take over any market they
feel like.
Wells Fargo tried that where they made account creation essentially click-bait for their workers.
It worked for a while until it didn't. It turned out that their account creation approach was
just a retread of the 1999 dot.com model, so they really were a tech start-up after all.
The issue is that the banks have no incentive to address the 5 issues that you raised. They
are a rent seeking cartel that does not care about the well being of the general populace at all.
They certainly are not tech start-ups. I get the impression that most people think that tech
startups are God, but in reality there are many bad start-ups too.
Basically, their money is made screwing the general public over at this point. That's sad to
say, but it is not far from the truth. What we need is a public bank and/or larger credit unions
that can offer all the financial services of a big bank.
Manhattan Beach-based PeerStreet closed out 2016 with a bang, raising a $15 million Series
A anchored by strong growth over the course of the year. The company developed a crowdfunding
platform that gives real estate investors access to high-yielding loans, with individual investments
starting from as low as $1,000.
Many of the examples cited apply (equally) to my former employer, Barclays. Having been shafted
by shysters from Wall Street, the bank jumped into the frying pan of (pseudo-)techies (often from
a particular part of the world). My current employer, the German twin of Barclays, is just the
same as the blue eagle.
There is an older abomination, known as outcomes based education, which was a scheme to destroy
the syllabus, while keeping teachers too busy with paperwork (recording "outcomes") to preserve
copies of the syllabus or properly teach.
It started in USA, was rejected there, got foisted on
South Africa and Australia, got rejected by 2008 in RSA, not sure when in Australia, then got
foisted on Canada, although opposition is building.
Seeing that high school teachers can see through
it and opposition precedes it, the OBE clowns changed tack!
Now Engineering colleges in North America
must follow this tomfoolery if they want to retain accreditation.
"... Common core math is indeed an abomination. It nearly destroyed my son's interest in math. I'm teaching him old school math. Of course, I am also supplementing his history lessons with alternative analyses and with a more comprehensive range of topics. ..."
"... Another thing – most teachers of common core math at my son's public school do not understand it themselves. I noted errors in homework assignments which only compounded the confusion among the students. ..."
"... One more thing – they are expected to learn from online videos and sloppily prepared study sheets – not a real math book. The school system is trying to make education paperless. This, to me, stunts the critical skills of eye-hand coordination, the ability to express abstract concept visually (e.g. making good sketches of ideas), etc. For example, mechanical drafting skills with the associated ability to visualize have been replaced by learning how to manipulate software. ..."
"... Perhaps these are cost-cutting measures but the results is that the US public education system, from my experience, is in free fall. ..."
Common core math is indeed an abomination. It nearly destroyed my son's interest in math. I'm
teaching him old school math. Of course, I am also supplementing his history lessons with
alternative analyses and with a more comprehensive range of topics.
Another thing – most teachers of common core math at my son's public school do not
understand it themselves. I noted errors in homework assignments which only compounded the
confusion among the students.
One more thing – they are expected to learn from online videos and sloppily prepared
study sheets – not a real math book. The school system is trying to make education
paperless. This, to me, stunts the critical skills of eye-hand coordination, the ability to
express abstract concept visually (e.g. making good sketches of ideas), etc. For example,
mechanical drafting skills with the associated ability to visualize have been replaced by
learning how to manipulate software.
Perhaps these are cost-cutting measures but the results is that the US public education
system, from my experience, is in free fall.
Here is a tin-foil hat theory based on the linked article. If Bill Gates is promoting a
method of education that stunts learning among the masses while sending his own kids to
private school that does not use the same method, could this be a way help to create a
society of dysfunctional masses ruled by a well-trained elites?
When it comes to Math, I think the traditional textbook approach is the best.
For History and the social sciences, though, I would recommend replacing big textbooks
with individual monographs and other study materials focusing on specialized themes.
Reason being: For Math, there is a standard (finite) set of facts and techniques that need
to be mastered at the school level; whereas there is no such thing as a "standard" or finite
sets of historical facts.
Somebody else suggested they are trying to prepare kids to become programmers of digital
computers (like Bill Gates started out).
But that doesn't make any sense either, because digital computers do not use this method to
subtract. Instead, they use a method called "2's complement addition".
This YouTube video explains quite clearly how it is done in binary computer registers:
https://youtu.be/vfY7bN_3VKw
Computers do use binary arithmetic, but for a human to do so, it involves converting from
base 10 to base 2 and then subtracting. In order to convert from base 10 to base 2, you have
to follow a step-by-step procedure which involves the remainder.
That is just bizarre. One commenter suggested the methods might be geared
toward more complex problems where numbers do not represent real things,
but concepts; but I just can’t see that, either. But then, I’ve never
been good at math and was always afraid of it. Whatever the case, I would
have dropped out of school in Grade Three if I’d had to learn this way.
It makes math problems ten times more complicated than they need to be,
and every time you introduce another step you introduce another
possibility of making a mistake.
Very true ! I am pretty good in math but this is still too much
artificially introduced complexity for me too. Still it would be a
perfect way to work with roman numbers. And that’s BTW why Arabic
notation is so much superior.
Over 33K people in US died of opiates overdoses in 2015 according to the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention.
Not only unemployed abuse opioids, but more and more college students and recent graduates
are abusing the opioids as well, according to a survey of 1200 college aged adults commissioned
the same year by Christie foundation.
Federal law does not require colleges to report drug death unless they are deemed criminal.
But fatal overdoses have been rising at schools nationwide underscoring and horrifying reality
of for administrators: in addition to binge drinking and marijuana, they have another crisis firmly
entrenched on campus.
Now losing 30K people in one year is like small scale civil war (like the one they have in
Ukraine) and in a way it is: war of wealthy and medical industrial complex against those in difficult
circumstances, with dreams crashed and, especially, unemployed.
CHICAGO (AP) - Accidental overdoses aren't the only deadly risk from using powerful prescription
painkillers - the drugs may also contribute to heart-related deaths and other fatalities, new
research suggests.
Among more than 45,000 patients in the study, those using opioid painkillers had a 64 percent
higher risk of dying within six months of starting treatment compared to patients taking other
prescription pain medicine. Unintentional overdoses accounted for about 18 percent of the deaths
among opioid users, versus 8 percent of the other patients.
"As bad as people think the problem of opioid use is, it's probably worse," said Wayne Ray,
the lead author and a health policy professor at Vanderbilt University's medical school. "They
should be a last resort and particular care should be exercised for patients who are at cardiovascular
risk."
His caution echoes recent advice from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, trying
to stem the nation's opioid epidemic. The problem includes abuse of street drugs like heroin and
overuse of prescription opioids such as hydrocodone, codeine and morphine.
The drugs can slow breathing and can worsen disrupted breathing that occurs with sleep apnea,
potentially leading to irregular heartbeats, heart attacks or sudden death, the study authors
said.
In 2014, there were more than 14,000 fatal overdoses linked with the painkillers in the U.S.
The study suggests even more have died from causes linked with the drugs, and bolster evidence
in previous research linking them with heart problems.
The study involved more than 45,000 adult Medicaid patients in Tennessee from 1999 to 2012.
They were prescribed drugs for chronic pain not caused by cancer but from other ailments including
persistent backaches and arthritis.
Half received long-acting opioids including controlled-release oxycodone, methadone and fentanyl
skin patches. Fentanyl has been implicated in the April death of Prince, although whether the
singer was using a fentanyl patch, pills or other form of the drug hasn't been publicly revealed.
Long-acting opioids remain in the body longer. The study authors noted that the body's prolonged
exposure to the drugs may increase risks for toxic reactions.
The remaining study patients had prescriptions for non-opioid drugs sometimes used to treat
nerve pain, including gabapentin; or certain antidepressants also used for pain.
There were 185 deaths among opioid users, versus 87 among other patients. The researchers calculated
that for every 145 patients on an opioid drug, there was one excess death versus deaths among
those on other painkillers.
The two groups were similar in age, medical conditions, risks for heart problems and other
characteristics that could have contributed to the outcomes.
The results were published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association .
The study involved only Medicaid patients, who include low-income and disabled adults and who
are among groups disproportionately affected by opioid abuse.
Ray noted that the study excluded the sickest patients and those with any evidence of drug
abuse. He said similar results would likely be found in other groups.
Dr. Chad Brummett, director of pain research at the University of Michigan Health System, said
the study highlights risks from the drugs in a novel way and underscores why their use should
be limited.
"... Until elites stand down and stop the brutal squeeze , expect more after painful more of this. It's what happens when societies come apart. Unless elites (of both parties) stop the push for "profit before people," policies that dominate the whole of the Neoliberal Era , there are only two outcomes for a nation on this track, each worse than the other. There are only two directions for an increasingly chaotic state to go, chaotic collapse or sufficiently militarized "order" to entirely suppress it. ..."
"... Mes petits sous, mon petit cri de coeur. ..."
"... But the elite aren't going to stand down, whatever that might mean. The elite aren't really the "elite", they are owners and controllers of certain flows of economic activity. We need to call it what it is and actively organize against it. Publius's essay seems too passive at points, too passive voice. (Yes, it's a cry from the heart in a prophetic mode, and on that level, I'm with it.) ..."
"... American Psycho ..."
"... The college students I deal with have internalized a lot of this. In their minds, TINA is reality. Everything balances for the individual on a razor's edge of failure of will or knowledge or hacktivity. It's all personal, almost never collective - it's a failure toward parents or peers or, even more grandly, what success means in America. ..."
"... unions don't matter in our TINA. Corporations do. ..."
"... our system promotes specialists and disregards generalists this leads to a population of individualists who can't see the big picture. ..."
"... That social contract is hard to pin down and define – probably has different meanings to all of us, but you are right, it is breaking down. We no longer feel that our governments are working for us. ..."
"... Increasing population, decreasing resources, increasingly expensive remaining resources on a per unit basis, unresolved trashing of the environment and an political economy that forces people to do more with less all the time (productivity improvement is mandatory, not optional, to handle the exponential function) much pain will happen even if everyone is equal. ..."
"... "Social contract:" nice Enlightment construct, out of University by City. Not a real thing, just a very incomplete shorthand to attempt to fiddle the masses and give a name to meta-livability. ..."
"... Always with the "contract" meme, as if there are no more durable and substantive notions of how humans in small and large groups might organize and interact Or maybe the notion is the best that can be achieved? ..."
"... JTMcFee, you have provided the most important aspect to this mirage of 'social contract'. The "remedies" clearly available to lawless legislation rest outside the realm of a contract which has never existed. ..."
"... Unconscionable clauses are now separately initialed in an "I dare you to sue me" shaming gambit. Meanwhile the mythical Social Contract has been atomized into 7 1/2 billion personal contracts with unstated, shifting remedies wholly tied to the depths of pockets. ..."
"... Here in oh-so-individualistic Chicago, I have been noting the fraying for some time: It isn't just the massacres in the highly segregated black neighborhoods, some of which are now in terminal decline as the inhabitants, justifiably, flee. The typical Chicagoan wanders the streets connected to a phone, so as to avoid eye contact, all the while dressed in what look like castoffs. Meanwhile, Midwesterners, who tend to be heavy, are advertisements for the obesity epidemic: Yet obesity has a metaphorical meaning as the coat of lipids that a person wears to keep the world away. ..."
"... My middle / upper-middle neighborhood is covered with a layer of upper-middle trash: Think Starbucks cups and artisanal beer bottles. ..."
"... The class war continues, and the upper class has won. As commenter relstprof notes, any kind of concerted action is now nearly impossible. Instead of the term "social contract," I might substitute "solidarity." Is there solidarity? No, solidarity was destroyed as a policy of the Reagan administration, as well as by fantasies that Americans are individualistic, and here we are, 40 years later, dealing with the rubble of the Obama administration and the Trump administration. ..."
"... The trash bit has been linked in other countries to how much the general population views the public space/environment as a shared, common good. Thus, streets, parks and public space might be soiled by litter that nobody cares to put away in trash bins properly, while simultaneously the interior of houses/apartments, and attached gardens if any, are kept meticulously clean. ..."
"... The trash bit has been linked in other countries to how much the general population views the public space/environment as a shared, common good. ..."
"... There *is* no public space anymore. Every public good, every public space is now fair game for commercial exploitation. ..."
"... The importance of the end of solidarity – that is, of the almost-murderous impulses by the upper classes to destroy any kind of solidarity. ..."
"... "Conditions will only deteriorate for anyone not in the "1%", with no sight of improvement or relief." ..."
"... "Four Futures" ..."
"... Reminds me of that one quip I saw from a guy who, why he always had to have two pigs to eat up his garbage, said that if he had only one pig, it will eat only when it wants to, but if there were two pigs, each one would eat so the other pig won't get to it first. Our current economic system in a nutshell – pigs eating crap so deny it to others first. "Greed is good". ..."
"... Don't know that the two avenues Gaius mentioned are the only two roads our society can travel. In support of this view, I recall a visit to a secondary city in Russia for a few weeks in the early 1990s after the collapse of the USSR. Those were difficult times economically and psychologically for ordinary citizens of that country. Alcoholism was rampant, emotional illness and suicide rates among men of working age were high, mortality rates generally were rising sharply, and birth rates were falling. Yet the glue of common culture, sovereign currency, language, community, and thoughtful and educated citizens held despite corrupt political leadership, the rise of an oligarchic class, and the related emergence of organized criminal networks. There was also adequate food, and critical public infrastructure was maintained, keeping in mind this was shortly after the Chernobyl disaster. ..."
Yves here. I have been saying for some years that I did not think we would see a revolution, but
more and more individuals acting out violently. That's partly the result of how community and social
bonds have weakened as a result of neoliberalism but also because the officialdom has effective ways
of blocking protests. With the overwhelming majority of people using smartphones, they are constantly
surveilled. And the coordinated 17-city paramilitary crackdown on Occupy Wall Street shows how the
officialdom moved against non-violent protests. Police have gotten only more military surplus toys
since then, and crowd-dispersion technology like sound cannons only continues to advance. The only
way a rebellion could succeed would be for it to be truly mass scale (as in over a million people
in a single city) or by targeting crucial infrastructure.
By Gaius Publius
, a professional writer living on the West Coast of the United States and frequent contributor to
DownWithTyranny, digby, Truthout, and Naked Capitalism. Follow him on Twitter
@Gaius_Publius ,
Tumblr and
Facebook . GP article archive
here . Originally published at
DownWithTyranny
"[T]he super-rich are absconding with our wealth, and the plague of inequality continues
to grow. An
analysis of
2016 data found that the poorest five deciles of the world population own about $410 billion
in total wealth. As of
June 8,
2017 , the world's richest five men owned over $400 billion in wealth. Thus, on average,
each man owns nearly as much as 750 million people."
-Paul Buchheit,
Alternet
"Congressman Steve Scalise, Three Others Shot at Alexandria, Virginia, Baseball Field"
-NBC News,
June 14, 2017
"4 killed, including gunman, in shooting at UPS facility in San Francisco"
-ABC7News,
June 14, 2017
"Seriously? Another multiple shooting? So many guns. So many nut-bars. So many angry
nut-bars with guns."
-MarianneW via
Twitter
"We live in a world where "multiple dead" in San Francisco shooting can't cut through
the news of another shooting in the same day."
-SamT via
Twitter
"If the rich are determined to extract the last drop of blood, expect the victims to
put up a fuss. And don't expect that fuss to be pretty. I'm not arguing for social war; I'm
arguing for justice and peace."
-
Yours truly
When the social contract breaks from above, it breaks from below as well.
Until elites stand down and stop the
brutal squeeze , expect more after painful more of this. It's what happens when societies come
apart. Unless elites (of both parties) stop the push for "profit before people," policies that dominate
the whole of the
Neoliberal
Era , there are only two outcomes for a nation on this track, each worse than the other. There
are only two directions for an increasingly chaotic state to go, chaotic collapse or sufficiently
militarized "order" to entirely suppress it.
As with the climate, I'm concerned about the short term for sure - the storm that kills this year,
the hurricane that kills the next - but I'm also concerned about the longer term as well. If the
beatings
from "our betters" won't stop until our acceptance of their "serve the rich" policies improves,
the beatings will never stop, and both sides will take up the cudgel.
Then where will we be?
America's Most Abundant Manufactured Product May Be Pain
I look out the window and see more and more homeless people, noticeably more than last year and
the year before. And they're noticeably scruffier, less "kemp," if that makes sense to you (it does
if you live, as I do, in a community that includes a number of them as neighbors).
The squeeze hasn't let up, and those getting squeezed out of society have nowhere to drain to
but down - physically, economically, emotionally. The
Case-Deaton study speaks volumes to this point. The less fortunate economically are already dying
of drugs and despair. If people are killing themselves in increasing numbers, isn't it just
remotely maybe possible they'll also aim their anger out as well?
The pot isn't boiling yet - these shootings are random, individualized - but they seem to be piling
on top of each other. A hard-boiling, over-flowing pot may not be far behind. That's concerning as
well, much moreso than even the random horrid events we recoil at today.
Many More Ways Than One to Be a Denier
My comparison above to the climate problem was deliberate. It's not just the occasional storms
we see that matter. It's also that, seen over time, those storms are increasing, marking a trend
that matters even more. As with climate, the whole can indeed be greater than its parts. There's
more than one way in which to be a denier of change.
These are not just metaphors. The country is already in a
pre-revolutionary state ; that's one huge reason people chose Trump over Clinton, and would have
chosen Sanders over Trump. The Big Squeeze has to stop, or this will be just the beginning of a long
and painful path. We're on a track that nations we have watched - tightly "ordered" states, highly
chaotic ones - have trod already. While we look at them in pity, their example stares back at us.
But the elite aren't going to stand down, whatever that might mean. The elite aren't really
the "elite", they are owners and controllers of certain flows of economic activity. We need to
call it what it is and actively organize against it. Publius's essay seems too passive at points,
too passive voice. (Yes, it's a cry from the heart in a prophetic mode, and on that level, I'm
with it.)
"If people are killing themselves in increasing numbers, isn't it just remotely maybe possible
they'll also aim their anger out as well?"
Not necessarily. What Lacan called the "Big Other" is quite powerful. We internalize a lot
of socio-economic junk from our cultural inheritance, especially as it's been configured over
the last 40 years - our values, our body images, our criteria for judgment, our sense of what
material well-being consists, etc. Ellis's American Psycho is the great satire of our
time, and this time is not quite over yet. Dismemberment reigns.
The college students I deal with have internalized a lot of this. In their minds, TINA
is reality. Everything balances for the individual on a razor's edge of failure of will or knowledge
or hacktivity. It's all personal, almost never collective - it's a failure toward parents or peers
or, even more grandly, what success means in America.
The idea that agency could be a collective action of a union for a strike isn't even on the
horizon. And at the same time, these same students don't bat an eye at socialism. They're willing
to listen.
But unions don't matter in our TINA. Corporations do.
Most of the elite do not understand the money system. They do not understand how different
sectors have benefitted from policies and/or subsidies that increased the money flows into these.
So they think they deserve their money more than those who toiled in sectors with less support.
Furthermore, our system promotes specialists and disregards generalists this leads to a population
of individualists who can't see the big picture.
Thank you Gaius, a thoughtful post. That social contract is hard to pin down and define – probably
has different meanings to all of us, but you are right, it is breaking down. We no longer feel
that our governments are working for us.
Of tangential interest, Turnbull has just announced another gun amnesty targeting guns that
people no longer need and a tightening of some of the ownership laws.
One problem is the use of the term "social contract", implying that there is some kind of agreement
( = consensus) on what that is. I don't remember signing any "contract".
I fear for my friends, I fear for my family.
They do not know how ravenous the hounds behind nor ahead are. For myself? I imagine myself the same in a Mad Max world. It will be more clear, and perception shattering, to most whose lives allow the ignoring of
gradual chokeholds, be them political or economic, but those of us who struggle daily, yearly,
decadely with both, will only say Welcome to the party, pals.
Increasing population, decreasing resources, increasingly expensive remaining resources on
a per unit basis, unresolved trashing of the environment and an political economy that forces
people to do more with less all the time (productivity improvement is mandatory, not optional,
to handle the exponential function) much pain will happen even if everyone is equal.
Each person
does what is right in their own eyes, but the net effect is impoverishment and destruction. Life
is unfair, indeed. A social contract is a mutual suicide pact, whether you renegotiate it or not.
This is Fight Club. The first rule of Fight Club, is we don't speak of Fight Club. Go to the gym,
toughen up, while you still can.
"Social contract:" nice Enlightment construct, out of University by City. Not a real thing,
just a very incomplete shorthand to attempt to fiddle the masses and give a name to meta-livability.
Always with the "contract" meme, as if there are no more durable and substantive notions of
how humans in small and large groups might organize and interact Or maybe the notion is the best
that can be achieved? Recalling that as my Contracts professor in law school emphasized over and
over, in "contracts" there are no rights in the absence of effective remedies. It being a Boston
law school, the notion was echoed in Torts, and in Commercial Paper and Sales and, tellingly,
in Constitutional Law and Federal Jurisdiction, and even in Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure.
No remedy, no right. What remedies are there in "the system," for the "other halves" of the "social
contract," the "have-naught" halves?
When honest "remedies under law" become nugatory, there's always the recourse to direct action
of course with zero guarantee of redress
"What remedies are there in "the system," for the "other halves" of the "social contract,"
the "have-naught" halves?"
Ah yes the ultimate remedy is outright rebellion against the highest authorities .with as you
say, " zero guarantee of redress."
But, history teaches us that that path will be taken ..the streets. It doesn't (didn't) take a
genius to see what was coming back in the late 1960's on .regarding the beginnings of the revolt(s)
by big money against organized labor. Having been very involved in observing, studying and actually
active in certain groups back then, the US was acting out in other countries particularly in the
Southern Hemisphere, against any social progression, repressing, arresting (thru its surrogates)
torturing, killing any individuals or groups that opposed that infamous theory of "free market
capitalism". It had a very definite "creep" effect, northwards to the mainstream US because so
many of our major corporations were deeply involved with our covert intelligence operatives and
objectives (along with USAID and NED). I used to tell my friends about what was happening and
they would look at me as if I was a lunatic. The agency for change would be "organized labor",
but now, today that agency has been trashed enough where so many of the young have no clue as
to what it all means. The ultimate agenda along with "globalization" is the complete repression
of any opposition to the " spread of money markets" around the world". The US intends to lead;
whether the US citizenry does is another matter. Hence the streets.
JTMcFee, you have provided the most important aspect to this mirage of 'social contract'. The
"remedies" clearly available to lawless legislation rest outside the realm of a contract which
has never existed.
The Social Contract, ephemeral, reflects perfectly what contracts have become. Older rulings
frequently labeled clauses unconscionable - a tacit recognition that so few of the darn things
are actually agreed upon. Rather, a party with resources, options and security imposes the agreement
on a party in some form of crisis (nowadays the ever present crisis of paycheck to paycheck living
– or worse). Never mind informational asymmetries, necessity drives us into crappy rental agreements
and debt promises with eyes wide open. And suddenly we're all agents of the state.
Unconscionable clauses are now separately initialed in an "I dare you to sue me" shaming gambit.
Meanwhile the mythical Social Contract has been atomized into 7 1/2 billion personal contracts
with unstated, shifting remedies wholly tied to the depths of pockets.
Solidarity, of course. Hard when Identity politics lubricate a labor market that insists on
specialization, and talented children of privilege somehow manage to navigate the new entrepreneurism
while talented others look on in frustration. The resistance insists on being leaderless (fueled
in part IMHO by the uncomfortable fact that effective leaders are regularly killed or co-opted).
And the overriding message of resistance is negative: "Stop it!"
But that's where we are. Again, just my opinion: but the pivotal step away from the jackpot
is to convince or coerce our wealthiest not to cash in. Stop making and saving so much stinking
money, y'all.
and there's the Karma bec. even now we see a private banking system synthesizing an economy
to maintain asset values and profits and they have the nerve to blame it on social spending.
I think Giaus's term 'Denier' is perfect for all those vested practitioners of profit-capitalism
at any cost. They've already failed miserably. For the most part they're just too proud to admit
it and, naturally, they wanna hang on to "their" money. I don't think it will take a revolution
– in fact it would be better if no chaos ensued – just let these arrogant goofballs stew in their
own juice a while longer. They are killing themselves.
When I hear so much impatient and irritable complaint, so much readiness to replace what we
have by guardians for us all, those supermen, evoked somewhere from the clouds, whom none have
seen and none are ready to name, I lapse into a dream, as it were. I see children playing on the
grass; their voices are shrill and discordant as children's are; they are restive and quarrelsome;
they cannot agree to any common plan; their play annoys them; it goes poorly. And one says, let
us make Jack the master; Jack knows all about it; Jack will tell us what each is to do and we
shall all agree. But Jack is like all the rest; Helen is discontented with her part and Henry
with his, and soon they fall again into their old state. No, the children must learn to play by
themselves; there is no Jack the master. And in the end slowly and with infinite disappointment
they do learn a little; they learn to forbear, to reckon with another, accept a little where they
wanted much, to live and let live, to yield when they must yield; perhaps, we may hope, not to
take all they can. But the condition is that they shall be willing at least to listen to one another,
to get the habit of pooling their wishes. Somehow or other they must do this, if the play is to
go on; maybe it will not, but there is no Jack, in or out of the box, who can come to straighten
the game. -Learned Hand
Here in oh-so-individualistic Chicago, I have been noting the fraying for some time: It isn't
just the massacres in the highly segregated black neighborhoods, some of which are now in terminal
decline as the inhabitants, justifiably, flee. The typical Chicagoan wanders the streets connected
to a phone, so as to avoid eye contact, all the while dressed in what look like castoffs. Meanwhile,
Midwesterners, who tend to be heavy, are advertisements for the obesity epidemic: Yet obesity
has a metaphorical meaning as the coat of lipids that a person wears to keep the world away.
My middle / upper-middle neighborhood is covered with a layer of upper-middle trash: Think
Starbucks cups and artisanal beer bottles. Some trash is carefully posed: Cups with straws on windsills, awaiting the Paris Agreement Pixie, who will clean up after these oh-so-earnest environmentalists.
Meanwhile, I just got a message from my car-share service: They are cutting back on the number
of cars on offer. Too much vandalism.
Are these things caused by pressure from above? Yes, in part: The class war continues, and
the upper class has won. As commenter relstprof notes, any kind of concerted action is now nearly
impossible. Instead of the term "social contract," I might substitute "solidarity." Is there solidarity?
No, solidarity was destroyed as a policy of the Reagan administration, as well as by fantasies
that Americans are individualistic, and here we are, 40 years later, dealing with the rubble of
the Obama administration and the Trump administration.
DJG: My middle / upper-middle neighborhood is covered with a layer of upper-middle trash:
Think Starbucks cups and artisanal beer bottles. Some trash is carefully posed: Cups with straws
on windsills, awaiting the Paris Agreement Pixie, who will clean up after these oh-so-earnest
environmentalists.
Yes, the trash bit is hard to understand. What does it stand for? Does it mean, We can infinitely
disregard our surroundings by throwing away plastic, cardboard, metal and paper and nothing will
happen? Does it mean, There is more where that came from! Does it mean, I don't care a fig for
the earth? Does it mean, Human beings are stupid and, unlike pigs, mess up their immediate environment
and move on? Does it mean, Nothing–that we are just nihilists waiting to die? I am so fed up with
the garbage strewn on the roads and in the woods where I live; I used to pick it up and could
collect as much as 9 garbage bags of junk in 9 days during a 4 kilometer walk. I don't pick up
any more because I am 77 and cannot keep doing it.
However, I am certain that strewn garbage will surely be the last national flag waving in the
breeze as the anthem plays junk music and we all succumb to our terrible future.
Related to this, I thought one day of who probably NEVER gets any appreciation but strives
to make things nicer, anyone planning or planting the highway strips (government workers maybe
although it could be convicts also unfortunately, I'm not sure). Yes highways are ugly, yes they
will destroy the world, but some of the planting strips are sometimes genuinely nice. So they
add some niceness to the ugly and people still litter of course.
The trash bit has been linked in other countries to how much the general population views the
public space/environment as a shared, common good. Thus, streets, parks and public space might be soiled by litter that nobody cares to put away
in trash bins properly, while simultaneously the interior of houses/apartments, and attached gardens
if any, are kept meticulously clean.
Basically, the world people care about stops outside their dwellings, because they do not feel
it is "theirs" or that they participate in its possession in a genuine way. It belongs to the
"town administration", or to a "private corporation", or to the "government" - and if they feel
they have no say in the ownership, management, regulation and benefits thereof, why should they
care? Let the town administration/government/corporation do the clean-up - we already pay enough
taxes/fees/tolls, and "they" are always putting up more restrictions on how to use everything,
so
In conclusion: the phenomenon of litter/trash is another manifestation of a fraying social
contract.
The trash bit has been linked in other countries to how much the general population
views the public space/environment as a shared, common good.
There *is* no public space anymore. Every public good, every public space is now fair game
for commercial exploitation.
I live in NYC, and just yesterday as I attempted to refill my MetroCard, the machine told me
it was expired and I had to replace it. The replacement card doesn't look at all like a MetroCard
with the familiar yellow and black graphic saying "MetroCard". Instead? It's an ad. For a fucking
insurance company. And so now, every single time that I go somewhere on the subway, I have to
see an ad from Empire Blue Cross/Blue Shield.
The importance of the end of solidarity – that is, of the almost-murderous impulses by the upper
classes to destroy any kind of solidarity. From Yves's posting of Yanis Varoufakis's analysis
of the newest terms of the continuing destruction of Greece:
With regard to labour market reforms, the Eurogroup welcomes the adopted legislation safeguarding
previous reforms on collective bargaining and bringing collective dismissals in line with best
EU practices.
I see! "Safeguarding previous reforms on collective bargaining" refers, of course, to the 2012
removal of the right to collective bargaining and the end to trades union representation for each
and every Greek worker. Our government was elected in January 2015 with an express mandate to
restore these workers' and trades unions' rights. Prime Minister Tsipras has repeatedly pledged
to do so, even after our falling out and my resignation in July 2015. Now, yesterday, his government
consented to this piece of Eurogroup triumphalism that celebrates the 'safeguarding' of the 2012
'reforms'. In short, the SYRIZA government has capitulated on this issue too: Workers' and trades'
unions' rights will not be restored. And, as if that were not bad enough, "collective dismissals"
will be brought "in line with best EU practices". What this means is that the last remaining constraints
on corporations, i.e. a restriction on what percentage of workers can be fired each month, is
relaxed. Make no mistake: The Eurogroup is telling us that, now that employers are guaranteed
the absence of trades unions, and the right to fire more workers, growth enhancement will follow
suit! Let's not hold our breath!
The so-called "Elites"? Stand down? Right.
Every year I look up the cardinal topics discussed at the larger economic forums and conferences
(mainly Davos and G8), and some variation of "The consequences of rising inequality" is a recurring
one. Despite this, nothing ever comes out if them. I imagine they go something like this:
"-Oh hi Mark. Racism is bad.
-Definitely. So is inequality, right, Tim?
-Sure, wish we could do something about it. HEY GUYS, HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT MY NEW SCHEME TO BUY
OUT NEW AND UPCOMING COMPANIES TO MAKE MORE MONEY?"
A wet dream come true, both for an AnCap and a communist conspiracy theorist. I'm by no means
either. However, I think capitalism has already failed and can't go on for much longer. Conditions
will only deteriorate for anyone not in the "1%", with no sight of improvement or relief.
"Conditions will only deteriorate for anyone not in the "1%", with no sight of improvement
or relief." Frase's Quadrant Four. Hierarchy + Scarcity = Exterminism (From "Four Futures" )
Reminds me of that one quip I saw from a guy who, why he always had to have two pigs to eat
up his garbage, said that if he had only one pig, it will eat only when it wants to, but if there
were two pigs, each one would eat so the other pig won't get to it first. Our current economic system in a nutshell – pigs eating crap so deny it to others first.
"Greed is good".
Don't know that the two avenues Gaius mentioned are the only two roads our society can travel.
In support of this view, I recall a visit to a secondary city in Russia for a few weeks in the
early 1990s after the collapse of the USSR. Those were difficult times economically and psychologically
for ordinary citizens of that country. Alcoholism was rampant, emotional illness and suicide rates
among men of working age were high, mortality rates generally were rising sharply, and birth rates
were falling. Yet the glue of common culture, sovereign currency, language, community, and thoughtful
and educated citizens held despite corrupt political leadership, the rise of an oligarchic class,
and the related emergence of organized criminal networks. There was also adequate food, and critical
public infrastructure was maintained, keeping in mind this was shortly after the Chernobyl disaster.
Here in the US the New Deal and other legislation helped preserve social order in the 1930s.
Yves also raises an important point in her preface that can provide support for the center by
those who are able to do so under the current economic framework. That glue is to participate
in one's community; whether it is volunteering at a school, the local food bank, community-oriented
social clubs, or in a multitude of other ways; regardless of whether your community is a small
town or a large city.
" Yet the glue of common culture, sovereign currency, language, community, and thoughtful and
educated citizens held despite corrupt political leadership, the rise of an oligarchic class,
and the related emergence of organized criminal networks."
None of which applies to the Imperium, of course. There's glue, all right, but it's the kind
that is used for flooring in Roach Motels (TM), and those horrific rat and mouse traps that stick
the rodent to a large rectangle of plastic, where they die eventually of exhaustion and dehydration
and starvation The rat can gnaw off a leg that's glued down, but then it tips over and gets glued
down by the chest or face or butt
I have to note that several people I know are fastidious about picking up trash other people
"throw away." I do it, when I'm up to bending over. I used to be rude about it - one young attractive
woman dumped a McDonald's bag and her ashtray out the window of her car at one of our very long
Florida traffic lights. I got out of my car, used the mouth of the McDonald's bag to scoop up
most of the lipsticked butts, and threw them back into her car. Speaking of mouths, that woman
with the artfully painted lips sure had one on her
Happily, an alternative exists to the billion dollar "don't blame kids" approach, one that has
historically proven itself and will cost far less than $16,000 per pupil to impart adequate academic
skills. It is simple: pressure laggards to shape up and punish those who disrupt the learning of
classmates. Just return to an earlier era when students themselves were held responsible for learning
their lessons.
Junk the Rousseauian fantasy that children naturally have a thirst for acquiring knowledge so
"educators" need only let nature take its course. Yes, Homo sapiens relish learning, but youngsters
are not innately disposed to sit quietly for long periods and dutifully suffer failure. Learning
may be natural; schooling is not. The corollary is that school for the cognitively weak will be the
most painful. Thus, for many African Americans cultivating self-esteem is anathema to academic
achievement.
Fortunately, the repertoire to impose this necessary discipline is well-known and requires only
modest skill to implement. High-priced rocket science it is not. This is almost forgotten educational
world of shame, stigma, humiliation, dunce caps, browbeating even corporal punishment where teachers
forcefully exert authority over the little savages who refuse to learn while impeding the progress
of others. Further require teachers to impose clear, grammatically correct English to those
with slurred speech and reflexively use profanity. If the teacher's efforts fail, the little miscreants
can immediately be sent out for discipline to be monitored by a wicked witch. Conceivably, some retired
discipline-skilled Nuns from Catholic schools or a retired Marine drill sergeant could offer three-day
workshops on how to manage the classroom
Students can practice sitting still and being quiet for longer and longer times, marching in step
when changing classes, mastering polite conversation when addressing authority figures ("Thank you
Mr. Smith" not 'hey teach'") memorizing famous orations, and build the habits of punctuality, restraint
and patience.
I run a large AP program in a what is euphemistically called a "priority" neighbourhood in
a major Canadian city. Although most of our students are East Asian and South Asian and come from
outside our catchment area, the majority of the local community is black.
After twenty years of our program offering completely subsidized AP exams, after-class tutorials,
and massive promotion efforts emphasizing the advantages of taking AP directed to our black students,
still less that 5% of the population of our AP classes consists of blacks.
And we have never had a black AP National Scholar. Not one. The local school board would LOVE
to see such an event, and I can't imagine it ever happening
Are you suggesting that our alien, Third-World, clan-based minority populations adopt the
values of discipline, accountability, punctuality, and rule-following typical of the majority's
beyond-kin, altruistic-based culture from northern Europe in the hope of achieving similar
social, academic, technical, and economic outcomes?
There's an extent to which this does work. Parochial schools with strict discipline
policies have always gotten more out of black students than public schools. African students,
who do not typically have a race card to play and are products of Euro-colonial school systems,
in my experience are nearly always better students than black Americans.
Imagine a Venn diagram, in which one circle represents cognitive ability (IQ) and the other
circle represents discipline and culture. The overlapping area represents "educational achievement."
The overall black cognitive ability circle, by itself, will always be smaller than a corresponding
white circle, but it is possible to gain more achievement with more structure and discipline.
There is a limit to how far you can go with this approach, but you can make some gains.
Of course, public schools and colleges practically kiss blacks on the ass for misbehavior rather
than discipline them. Blacks are fully aware that the black teachers and administrators are incompetent
frauds, that liberal whites are easily pushed around or manipulated, that they can always play
the "racism" card, and that Afrocentric curricula is pure bullshit and that it was the white man
who invented their iPhones, space flight, etc.
One aspect of the black personality is that blacks respond to, and generally respect, a show
a force. You see this in sports, for instance, in prison, and the military. Some of the most competent
and useful blacks you will encounter are in the military, where there is a set of expectations,
a white chain of command, and punishment for failure.
Blacks wouldn't necessarily become geniuses if you applied a military structure to education,
but you'd see some improvement.
Can every child receive a good education? With school choice and competition, yes. The problem?
Powerful teachers unions oppose school choice. Rebecca Friedrichs, a public school teacher who
took her case against the teachers union all the way to the Supreme Court, explains why school
choice is the right choice.
@Njguy73 There's no need to racially segregate schools. The solution has already been implemented.
It's called having a school district where the housing prices do the discrimination, so the schools
don't have to. An awfully expensive solution that consigns white working class children to the
tender mercies of the snarling black underclass.
The plight of black students in black schools became especially dire when the education establishment
and the media pulled a slight of hand and started labeling lazy ( a personal fault) students as
unmotivated (and therefore the fault of society not motivating them.)
What hasn't been pointed out is while public schools in poor areas have been failing for decades,
Catholic schools located in the same areas have continued to turn out hundred of thousands of
literate, well behaved black students.
The real tragedy is that these very productive ghetto Catholics schools have been closing at
an increasing rate despite their successes because of economic problems. Vouchers would help them
to stay open,
THE ACLU however, would make sure that they wouldn't get them.
I'm always impressed by the quality of my black African postgrad students, who mostly come
from lower middle/upper working class backgrounds in cities like Laos. They are clearly decently
educated, by methods the exact opposite of what is advocated in the USA – strict discipline, uniforms,
regulation, a decent amount of rote memorisation (but not the passivity of the Middle East/South
Asia).
US educationists could learn a lot from Nigeria, or even Jamaica, but are clearly far too arrogant
to do so.
Testing and teaching are incompatible to one another, less tests and more teaching.
Primary school is NOT the most important time, a few essential skills, a wide and rambling
exposure to general knowledge, and some actual fun will do.
Primary school should produce a student capable of writing coherent sentences, reading 80-120
words per minute (well written texts only with unusual words), general knowledge of science,
the general framework of modern world history, and enough maths to do simple algebra - anything
more is a bonus, but not essential to secondary school.
Secondary school is the secondary level of knowledge - it has nothing much in common with
Primary education.
Secondary school is about the development of concepts in different subjects - and the study
of literature (a self-contained concept), is foundational to all the other higher subjects.
Literature is about concepts, not morals, slogans, good behaviour or anything else. They
are complete, honest works supremely well written world view of the author. The quality of
literature is it most important feature - the best and only the best.
The conceptual integrity of literature, not a particular style of language is critical.
Literature should not be chosen because it is reverent, but because it is good and great. Confession
I hate reading Jane Austin, a girly book of all girly books, but when I finish her work I understand
the world were being good is not just a virtue, but an aspiration. For many reasons she was
one of the most read authors in the trenches of World War I.
The quality of text books (books of text not pictures) is ESSENTIAL there is no choice in
this, no leeway. They must be coherent, the work of the best minds in the subject, comprehensive,
and clearly written - only a true expert can make things simple without also making it stupid.
Text books of quality do not have to be up-to-date, but they have to be conceptually complete
and clear - a good textbook is not necessarily a recent one.
Textbooks are the last resort, which is the reason they have to be good - it is where the
student goes to understand what they do not understand - that is always hard and they need
a reliable source material - only the best textbooks will do.
Textbooks are not teaching material, they are reference material.
Standard tests are rubbish, written examinations twice a year are best - this is why text
books are important - hitting the books is not easy, I say it again, they therefore need to
be the very best - not the normal US textbook - which is CRAP.
The best mark of a substantial work should be the grade, not the average mark - students
who learn have to be brave and need to push things - a good student tries and fails long before
they try and succeed (the order is sometimes in the reverse).
A student's progress is marked by their best mark, their highest achievement that counts,
all the rest are run-offs. A student can be lazy, a student might rest on their laurels, that
does not matter, what they achieved, not how they went about it is what examination should
do.
It does not matter what a teacher is called by students, but that teacher actually knows
their area, is enthusiastic about their knowledge, is supported by the school, encouraged to
do more and occasionally make mistakes in trying.
Micro-management, in fact management in general, and good teaching are incompatible.
School discipline is simple and only breaks down because of mismanagement.
Heads and deputies are not there to attend meetings, they must be seen, patrol the halls,
greet the students and be known.
Teachers need only have a disruptive student leave the class room and stand in the hall.
The deputies need to take them to detention where they sit and do nothing until the next lesson.
Do not trap students behind files of bad behaviour. Boys especially do stupid things, often
and repeatedly, only the mean acts should be recorded in detail.
Stop trying to get kids to apologise, girls will do it, and the better boys won't.
Make sure the kids get food, and have fun exercise (competitive sport should be an elective).
Running education is not hard, the fundamentals have been known for hundreds of years. What
exists now has been made, it is a policy of de-education and it is working all too well.
If diversity represents sort of "reverse racial discrimination", academic achievements be damned?
Notable quotes:
"... is the notion of "diversity" that is being aimed at supposed to replicate among faculty the current demographic breakdown of our country as a whole? ..."
"... Conversely, if the goal of diversity is compensatory, i.e., seeks to make up for past social injustices and the demographic disequilibrium they have produced, then here too we must be explicit about the point of reference that is to guide our remedial efforts. ..."
"... is diversity pursued under that principle to amount to a retroactive balancing of sorts, an open-ended institutional "reparation" for past injustices and inequities? ..."
"... Leaving aside logistical difficulties, to which one may certainly be sympathetic, why exclude any number of other descriptors from our conception of diversity, such as social class, ethnic background, veteran status, political views, religious belief, childhood trauma, aesthetic preferences, dietary philosophy, dance and gardening skills, past struggles with mental disability, etc.? ..."
"... 'Diversity' was always at best a racket and at worst a knowing stage – a mere stage – in the war to replace Western Civilization. ..."
The recent controversy surrounding my colleague and friend, Paul Griffiths, Warren Professor of Catholic
Theology in the Duke Divinity School (DDS), has been widely covered. Countless op-ed pieces, fueled
by
Rod
Dreher's online publication of internal memos and public emails at The American Conservative
, as well as prominent editorials in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times
, have reached many readers.
... ... ...
Unfortunately, that dialogue remains more elusive than ever. Instead, for quite some time now, the
word "diversity" has served two distinct and equally problematic purposes: the magical and the litigious.
Some university administrators, particularly those less loyal to the job they have than to the one they
covet next, have embraced "diversity" as a professional talisman of sorts, a term that, if wielded frequently
and with conspicuous reverence, will magically unlock doors higher up on the professional ladder. Conversely,
to faculty members craving moral ascendancy over colleagues whose superior achievements they may regard
with a mix of dread, inadequacy and envy, there is no more powerful weapon than to charge the target
of their resentment with opposition to diversity, which in the present order of opportune allegations
ranks just below that of the child molester. To put it in Platonic terms, contemporary academia has
been mirroring our country's deteriorating civic discourse by supplanting knowledge with opinion, and
by weaponizing our opinions, rather than understanding them as something for which we bear great responsibility.
1) Is the notion of "diversity" to be understood as a mimetic or compensatory endeavor? That is,
is the notion of "diversity" that is being aimed at supposed to replicate among faculty the current
demographic breakdown of our country as a whole? Or is the objective to compensate for the extreme
dominance of a certain type of faculty-white, Caucasian, male, and (putatively) heterosexual-as it undeniably
prevailed well into the 1990s at many institutions of higher learning?
2) Supposing, then, that higher education understands itself to be committed to a mimetic conception
of diversity, then what is to serve as our point of reference? Is diversity, as currently affirmed by
institutions of higher education, to be modeled on the overall demographic breakdown of the population
in the United States-say, as captured by the most recent national census? Or is the university's conception
of diversity aimed at some other norm of proportionate representation of minorities, say, one prevalent
in academia as a whole or as endemic to specific disciplines?
3) Conversely, if the goal of diversity is compensatory, i.e., seeks to make up for past social
injustices and the demographic disequilibrium they have produced, then here too we must be explicit
about the point of reference that is to guide our remedial efforts. Is the objective to compensate
for a historical lack of diversity that for many decades prevailed inside the academy? And, if so,
is diversity pursued under that principle to amount to a retroactive balancing of sorts, an open-ended
institutional "reparation" for past injustices and inequities? Here it ought to be kept in mind
that, to cast the matter in sacramental terms, there can be no atonement without forgiveness. Hence,
if diversity is understood as compensation, then not only must past wrongs in this regard be clearly
identified, but any institutional acknowledgment of past injustice must also be met by, and conclude
with, an act of comprehensive forgiveness. Otherwise, institutions would remain forever caught up in
a downward spiral of moral recrimination and self-abasement, respectively.
4) Assuming that these questions can be openly deliberated and satisfactorily answered (which in
the present climate is to assume a great deal indeed), more intractable issues yet will arise. For regardless
of whether the modern research university opts for a mimetic or compensatory approach to diversity,
it is by definition an inherently selective, elite institution. Thus, one must wonder whether institutions
of higher education can balance their highly selective practices of faculty recruitment-practices directly
related to the goal of the university as such, viz., advancing knowledge-with a demographically representative
notion of "diversity" such as it exists outside of academia?
5) Finally, we should ask why currently prevailing assumptions and practices concerning "diversity"
are conceived in such peculiarly narrow, not to say non-diverse ways. We know that empirical demographic
studies, including the national census conducted by the U.S. government every decade or so, rely on
many categories and descriptors and, consequently, yield a far more inflected and robust conception
of our society's diverse composition. That being so, what justifies higher education's conception of
"faculty diversity" being mainly restricted to the categories of race and gender? Leaving aside
logistical difficulties, to which one may certainly be sympathetic, why exclude any number of other
descriptors from our conception of diversity, such as social class, ethnic background, veteran status,
political views, religious belief, childhood trauma, aesthetic preferences, dietary philosophy, dance
and gardening skills, past struggles with mental disability, etc.?
Notwithstanding my agreement with the author, this article is very poorly
written and filled with academic jargon, each sentence representing the very antithesis of Churchill's
observation that there is nothing more powerful in the English language than a simple, objective sentence.
"'Diversity' is turning into idolatrous worship of empty notions"
The above statement is false because the verb tense is wrong. This is not something new. 'Diversity'
was always at best a racket and at worst a knowing stage – a mere stage –
in the war to replace Western Civilization.
Professor Pfau: Did you stand up and defend the Duke lacrosse team and its head coach? Did you condemn
colleagues such as Leftist Houston Baker.
"... Tutition used to be free in the UK. Then they decided that those lazy students needed to have some skin in the game and suddenly tuition was 1000 pounds. Then a few years later it was 9000 pounds and all the college grads there now have US-level student debt. ..."
"... A big reason Corbyn's a commie is because he wants to abolish tuition to bring the UK back to its communist past of 1997 and give young people the same deal all the people in charge had. ..."
No actual figures, but presumably there was big yute
turnout in the UK Everyone will now claim that a non-commie
Labour leader like that nice Ed Miliband would OF COURSE have
done as well as Joseph Stalin Lenin Marx Corbyn, and in fact
BETTER, but that's bullshit.
That nice Ed Miliband couldn't
do in 2015, and I'm not sure who the "unnamed generic normal
Labour candidate" would otherwise be. Theresa May's
incompetent evil helped, but Corbyn staved off what was
supposed to have been a Labour extinction election and while
there will still likely be a Tory-led government, it will be
pretty fragile. A coalition with a bunch of bigoted religious
nutters from Northern Ireland who aren't on board with May's
Brexit plans.
Labour went after The Kids Today and got them
to the polls. Wasn't enough to win, but the polling outfit
predicting a likely hung parliament was considered to be
"insane" even just a few days ago.
Tutition used to be free in the UK. Then they decided that
those lazy students needed to have some skin in the game and
suddenly tuition was 1000 pounds. Then a few years later it
was 9000 pounds and all the college grads there now have
US-level student debt.
A big reason Corbyn's a commie is
because he wants to abolish tuition to bring the UK back to
its communist past of 1997 and give young people the same
deal all the people in charge had.
In 2015, Miliband said he'd cut them. To just SIX THOUSAND
POUNDS. Maybe if he'd gone all the way...
Middlebury College just completed its final round of
disciplinary hearings
for students involved in March's violent disruption of a lecture by Charles Murray, the
influential but controversial social scientist.
This toothless response reflects a deeper rot.
Middlebury, like many prestigious colleges, has steadily gravitated away from its core
educational mission and now serves primarily as a sort of finishing school for the
ruling class. Professors and administrators alike are simply expected to shower students
with affirmation-and then hand over a degree securing smooth entry into America's elite.
College has become four years of expensive fun. This is what parents and students now
demand.
This change-from institutions of learning to
institutions of affirming-threatens the nation's future as colleges foster a vicious
strain of anti-intellectualism.
At over $60,000 a year, Middlebury's tuition buys much
more than books, lodging, and classes. Students also get a
campus-wide square dance
,
dining halls that host culinary "
world
tours
," lavish fitness facilities, and
an annual winter carnival
complete with fireworks, a hot chocolate bar, and snow sculptures.
Rob Montz is a fellow at the Moving Picture Institute. Find his work at: RobMontz.com.
Check out his interview with TAC executive editor Pratik Chougule at Fearless Parent Radio:
http://fearlessparent.org/free-speech-controversy-us-elite-universities-episode-104/
"... Weinstein argues that the GUI agenda (inspired by Reaganomics) sought to prevent these salary increases. He contends that the legislation that enabled this oversupply was the Immigration Act of 1990 that expanded the H-1B nonimmigrant visa program and instituted employment-based immigration preferences. ..."
"... As I show in my book Sustainable Prosperity in the New Economy? , the beginning of the end of CWOC was the transformation of IBM, the world's leading computer company, from OEBM to NEBM from 1990 to 1994. In 1990, with 374,000 employees, IBM still bragged about its adherence to the CWOC norm (calling it "lifelong employment"), claiming that the company had not laid off anyone involuntarily since 1921. By 1994 IBM had 220,000 employees, and, with senior executives under CEO Louis Gerstner themselves getting fired for not laying off employees fast enough, CWOC was history. Over the course of the 1990s and into the 2000s, other major Old Economy companies followed IBM's example, throwing out of work older employees, many of them highly educated and with accumulated experience that had previously been highly valued by the companies. ..."
"... The salaries of S&E employees tended to increase with years of experience with the company, with a defined-benefit pension (based on years of service and highest salary levels) in retirement. These types of secure employment relations, and the high and rising pay levels associated with them, were the norm among established high-tech companies in the mid-1980s, but, as exemplified by IBM's transformation, started to become undone in the early 1990s, and were virtually extinct a decade later, as Old Economy companies either made the transition to the NEBM, or disappeared.8 The culprit in the weakening in the demand for, and earnings of, S&E PhDs from the early 1990s was the demise of CWOC-a phenomenon that Weinstein (and Teitelbaum) entirely ignore. ..."
"... As exemplified by IBM in the 1990s and beyond, a company's stock price could be raised by laying off expensive older workers and using the resultant "free" cash flow (as the purveyors of MSV called it) to do stock buybacks. 12 ..."
"... "But the company is "returning" capital to shareholders who never gave the company anything in the first place; the only time in its history that Apple has ever raised funds on the public stock market was $97 million in its 1980 IPO." ..."
"... During that period, the only job market for native PhD STEM students became the American Defense and Intelligence agencies, because they required security clearances and US Citizenship. I found myself driven in those directions too. ..."
"... Technology for the most part is just increasing complexity and increasing complexity has diminishing returns. With energy becoming less available, we probably need a lot less complexity. ..."
"... I wouldn't say that there is a lack of R&D - it just isn't done in-house any more. Gone are the Bell Labs and the Xerox PARCs; welcome to the brave new world of university partnerships and non-profit R&D shops (most famous: the Southwest Research Institute). ..."
"... Basically the rich are waging class war. That's the problem no matter how you slice and dice this one. This whole "New Economy" has been one big war on wages. I mean look at the collusion too between Google, Apple, and Intel to keep wages low. ..."
"... Basically it comes down to, the rich are really greedy. The issue right now for the rich is that they are desperate to keep the looting from happening, while people are increasingly aware that the system is against them. Bernie Sanders got a lot of support in the Valley and while it is a very Democratic leaning area, I cannot imagine that Trump's anti-H1B and L1B stance would have been opposed by the average employee. I think that the rich are not going to concede anything and that there needs to be some sort of solidarity union amongst all workers. ..."
"... Is there a single person here who has worked on Wall Street (writ large) who can convince us that his job or his company had an overall positive effect on the US and/or world economy over five years, ten years, or twenty-five years? ..."
"... Its not just PhDs. I know several Engineers who advise their children to do something else. It's just not worth the amount of effort that is required to be put into it and there is no future hope of a turn around. As bad as it is for graduates today, it's only going to get worse. ..."
"... They're catching up with us arts and humanities majors. Sad! ..."
"... I am a civil engineer and one of my daughters is studying to become a structural engineer. I would not have advised her to go into engineering because of the problem with the H-1B visas. ..."
"... But who am I to advise? Who can know the future? The world is just changing too fast now to really be able to advise our children on what careers to take. Besides, one of the advantages of studying engineering as you can work anywhere in the world. ..."
"... Post WWII labor overplayed its hand by the 1970's. Corporations and their decided they had had it. Corps and management proceeded to change the rules of the game on everything -- courts, trade, taxation and regulation. These countermeasures have had disastrous long term consequences. Corporations now run the country in a fascist manner. Government capture has created myriad problems beyond financialization, only one tool in the corporate quiver. Oligopolies across most to all industries comes to mind. Rail, air, health insurance, banking, defense, telecom, entertainment . ..."
"... Not sure about the labor part overplaying their hand. They just wanted an even wage and productivity rise. It is capital IMO that has overplayed its hand and the rise of neoliberal economics which has led to declines in public R&D spending. There isn't anything like the Space Race anymore. ..."
"... Frankly, labour underplayed its hand. At one point it had capital by the throat, and should have finished it off then. If peace is not an option, you should utterly and permanently destroy your enemy. ..."
"... Labor did NOT overplay its hand after WW2 - Taft-Hartley was a HUGE smack-down to labor after the privations of the Depression followed by the war effort. The decent wages during the post-war period were part of a concerted effort to convince workers that they didn't need unions and to be complacent. ..."
"... Labor leadership certainly became corrupt from all the money sloshing around without global competition due to war devastation of Europe and Japan, the Cold War, and the death throes of colonialism, but this was not due to "overplaying" their hand. ..."
"... Contrary to popular belief, in aggregate U.S. corporations fund the stock market, not vice versa. Note that almost all of the buybacks in the decade 1976-1985 occurred in 1984 and 1985 after in November 1982 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission adopted Rule 10b-18 that gave license to massive buybacks, in essence legalizing systemic stock-price manipulation and the looting of the U.S. business corporation. ..."
"... Actually though, watching the train wreck that is the outlook for the youngest generation today, provides some grim amusement. For instance noting that the "bubble-driven" economy composed of companies desperate to prevent their stock becoming "badly diluted" by having fire sales on capitol and expertise that probably took their predecessors decades to build can really only have one outcome. Depression, misery, socialism. Maybe we skip the Mao route this time, maybe not. ..."
"... Gregory Peck: "The Robber Barons of old at least left something tangible in their wake - a coal mine, a railroad, banks. THIS MAN LEAVES NOTHING. HE CREATES NOTHING. HE BUILDS NOTHING. HE RUNS NOTHING. And in his wake lies nothing but a blizzard of paper to cover the pain. Oh, if he said, "I know how to run your business better than you," that would be something worth talking about. But he's not saying that. He's saying, "I'm going to kill you because at this particular moment in time, you're worth more dead than alive." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJRhrow3Jws ..."
"... IBM. Poster child of everything wrong at the executive-level and the shareholder-level. ..."
"... Yes, the IBM reference is interesting.The author gives an ordinal lead to IBM as a mover from the OEBM to NEBM. I ask myself if, from a mere one large corporation managing perspective, this was IBM's 11th hour response to the by then devastating rise of its competitors like Apple & Microsoft. ..."
"... Also the irony that it did not help IBM at least in the midterm. So, IBM was the prime mover to initiate some aspects of a model change -change which every major player adhered to- in response to a new technological disadvantage vs. competitors, and in turned did not seem to do much for IBM in the immediate years. Although, if I recall well, IBM was immersed in many political battles and internal problems, legal and otherwise. Nevertheless, I doubt there was a historic inevitability on IBM's ordinal force. Outstanding work by Lazonick ..."
"... "IBM is the poster child for shenanigans. Last month, IBM reported its 20th quarter in a row of declining year over year revenues .. a 13% drop in earnings, profit margins that declined in every business segment ( much worse than expected ), free cash flow that plummeted over 50% year over year and an earnings "beat" of 3 cents per share. How could this "beat" happen? .. a negative tax rate of -23% . This is why they pay the CEO Rometti the big bucks ( estimated at $50 to $65 million last year)." ..."
"... And this is one of the Bluest of the Blue Chip companies in the world. ..."
"... Amazon has lost money every fucking quarter for the last 20 fucking years, and that Bezos motherfucker is the king. ..."
"... In addition, the rise of 401(k) based investing, in which workers are tax-incentivized to buy in to the corporate stock scheming, but lack the normal shareholder voice in corporate governance, has taken the chains off the looters as well. ..."
"... The impact on the Grads was secondary a byproduct of a larger agenda which included the transfer offshore and consolidation of "IP" of the entire American, EU and Asian industrial economies along with the withdrawl of capital, while at the same time intentionally sabotaging future innovations with the handicap of diversity. Who got the loot and capital? Usual suspects. ..."
At the outset of his paper, Weinstein argues that:
Long term labor shortages do not happen naturally in market economies. That is not to say that
they don't exist. They are created when employers or government agencies tamper with the natural
functioning of the wage mechanism.
The contention, written from the perspective of the late 1990s, is that in the first half of the
1990s an oversupply ("a glut") of science and engineering (S&E) labor that depressed the wages of
PhD scientists and engineers was primarily the result of the promotion of a government-university-industry
(GUI) agenda, coordinated by the National Science Foundation under the leadership of Erich Bloch,
head of the NSF from 1984 to 1990. Beginning in 1985, the NSF predicted a shortfall of 675,000 S&E
personnel in the U.S. economy over the next two decades. According to a study by the NSF's Policy
Research and Analysis (PRA) division, quoted by Weinstein, salary data show that real PhD-level pay
began to rise after 1982, moving from $52,000 to $64,000 in 1987 (measured in 1984 dollars). One
set of salary projections show that real pay will reach $75,000 in 1996 and approach $100,000 shortly
beyond the year 2000.
Weinstein argues that the GUI agenda (inspired by Reaganomics) sought to prevent these salary
increases. He contends that the legislation that enabled this oversupply was the Immigration Act
of 1990 that expanded the H-1B nonimmigrant visa program and instituted employment-based immigration
preferences. Given that most of these foreigners came from lower-wage (Asian) nations, it is
assumed that they were attracted to work in the United States by what for them were high wages, whereas
Americans with S&E PhDs began to shun S&E careers as the salaries became less attractive.1
There is a lot missing from Weinstein's perspective, which is also the perspective of demographer
Michael Teitelbaum, who Weinstein cites extensively and who was at the Sloan Foundation from 1983
to 2013, rising to Vice-President in 2006. Weinstein and Teitelbaum view the salaries of scientists
and engineers as being determined by supply and demand on the labor market ("the natural wage rate"
and "the natural functioning of the labor market"). From this (neoclassical) perspective, they completely
ignore the "marketization" of employment relations for S&E workers that occurred in the U.S. business
sector from the mid-1980s as well as the concomitant "financialization" of the U.S. business corporation
that remains, in my view, the most damaging economic problem facing the United States. This transformation
of employment relations put out of work large numbers of PhD scientists and engineers who previously
had secure employment and who enjoyed high incomes and benefits as well as creative corporate careers.
The marketization of employment relations brought to an end of the norm of a career with one company
(CWOC)-an employment norm that was pervasive in U.S. business corporations from the 1950s to the
1980s, but that has since disappeared. 2 The "financialization" of the corporation, manifested by
massive distributions to shareholders in the forms of cash dividends and stock buybacks, undermined
the opportunities for business-sector S&E careers.
The major cause of marketization was the rise of the "New Economy business model" (NEBM) in which
high-tech startups, primarily in information-and-communication technology (ICT) and biotechnology,
lured S&E personnel away from established companies, which offered CWOC under the "Old Economy business
model" (OEBM). As startups with uncertain futures, the New Economy companies could not realistically
offer CWOC, but instead enticed S&E personnel away from CWOC at Old Economy companies by offering
these employees stock options on top of their salaries (which were typically lower than those at
the Old Economy companies). The stock options could become extremely valuable if and when the startup
did an initial public offering (IPO) or a merger-and-acquisition (M&A) deal with an established publicly-listed
company.
The rise in S&E PhD salaries from 1982 to 1987, identified in the NSF study that Weinstein quotes,
was the result of increased demand for S&E personnel by New Economy companies, with some of the increase
taking the form of stock-based pay, which in the Census data drawn from tax returns is lumped in
with salaries.3 Competing with companies for S&E personnel, the rise of the NEBM in turn put pressure
on salaries at Old Economy companies as they tried to use CWOC to attract and retain S&E labor in
the face of the stock-based alternative. By the last half of the 1980s, this New Economy competition
for talent was eroding the learning capabilities of the corporate research labs that, in many cases
from the early twentieth century, had been a characteristic feature of Old Economy companies in a
wide range of knowledge-intensive industries. 4
The CWOC norm under OEBM had provided employment security and rising wages from years-of-service
with the company and internal promotion of S&E personnel (significant proportions of whom in science-
based companies had PhDs). As I show in my book Sustainable Prosperity in the New Economy?
, the beginning of the end of CWOC was the transformation of IBM, the world's leading computer
company, from OEBM to NEBM from 1990 to 1994. In 1990, with 374,000 employees, IBM still bragged
about its adherence to the CWOC norm (calling it "lifelong employment"), claiming that the company
had not laid off anyone involuntarily since 1921. By 1994 IBM had 220,000 employees, and, with senior
executives under CEO Louis Gerstner themselves getting fired for not laying off employees fast enough,
CWOC was history. Over the course of the 1990s and into the 2000s, other major Old Economy companies
followed IBM's example, throwing out of work older employees, many of them highly educated and with
accumulated experience that had previously been highly valued by the companies.
Already in the early 1990s, the marketization of employment relations was responsible for a precipitous
decline of employment at the corporate research labs that had underpinned the twentieth-century growth
of Old Economy high-tech companies, of which IBM was an exemplar. In 1993, a conference held at Harvard
Business School decried the "end of an era" in industrial research, with papers from the conference
appearing in a volume Engines of Innovation , published in 1996.5 In the introductory chapter,
entitled "Technology's Vanishing Wellspring," conference organizers and volume editors Richard Rosenbloom
and William Spencer argued that industrial research (as distinct from product development) of the
type that had been carried out by corporate labs in the "golden era" of the post- World War II decades
"expands the base of knowledge on which existing industries depend and generates new knowledge that
leads to new technologies and the birth of new industries." In the more competitive environment of
the 1980s and 1990s, however, in the new industries of "biotechnology, exotic materials, and information
products (and services based on them)", Rosenbloom and Spencer observed that it was more difficult
for companies "to keep new technologies fully proprietary", and hence "research activities have been
downsized, redirected, and restructured in recent years within most of the firms that once were among
the largest sponsors of industrial research." 6
There is little doubt that S&E PhDs were major victims of this transformation. But the problem
that they, along with most other members of the U.S. labor force, have faced is not simply the marketization
of employment relations. For reasons that I have fully described in my publications cited above,
the transition from OEBM to NEBM was accompanied by the "financialization" of the U.S. business corporation
as, from the last half of the 1980s, U.S. boardrooms and business schools embraced the ideology that,
for the sake of superior economic performance, a business enterprise should be run to "maximize shareholder
value" (MSV). Instead of retaining employees and reinvesting in their productive capabilities, as
had been the case when CWOC had prevailed, MSV advocated and legitimized the downsizing of the company's
labor force and the distribution of corporate revenues to shareholders in the forms of both cash
dividends and stock repurchases. 7
With the demise of CWOC, older employees were the most vulnerable, not only because they tended
to have the highest salaries, but also because the shift from OEBM to NEBM was a shift from proprietary
technology systems, in which employees with long years of experience were highly valued, to open
technology systems that favored younger workers with the latest computer-related skills (often acquired
by working at other companies). Under CWOC, older employees were more expensive not because of a
"natural wage rate" that was the result of supply and demand on the S&E labor market, but because
of the internal job ladders that are integral to a "retain-and-reinvest" resource-allocation regime.
The salaries of S&E employees tended to increase with years of experience with the company, with
a defined-benefit pension (based on years of service and highest salary levels) in retirement. These
types of secure employment relations, and the high and rising pay levels associated with them, were
the norm among established high-tech companies in the mid-1980s, but, as exemplified by IBM's transformation,
started to become undone in the early 1990s, and were virtually extinct a decade later, as Old Economy
companies either made the transition to the NEBM, or disappeared.8 The culprit in the weakening in
the demand for, and earnings of, S&E PhDs from the early 1990s was the demise of CWOC-a phenomenon
that Weinstein (and Teitelbaum) entirely ignore.
With the rise of NEBM, companies wanted employees who were younger and cheaper , and that
was the major reason why at the end of the 1980s the ICT industry pushed for an expansion of H-1B
nonimmigrant visas and employment-based immigration visas. It is not at all clear that an influx
of PhDs from foreign countries via these programs was undermining the earnings of S&E PhDs in the
early 1990s. Most H-1B visa holders had Bachelor's degrees when they entered the United States. At
the same time, large numbers of non-immigrant visa holders entered the United States on student visas
to do Master's and PhD degrees, and then looked to employment on H-1B visas to enable them to stay
in the United States for extended periods (up to seven years).9 It was in response to the availability
of advanced- degree graduates of U.S. universities that in 2005 an additional 20,000 H-1B visas were
added to the normal cap of 65,000. Without the influx of foreign students into U.S. S&E Master's
and PhD programs, many of these programs would not have survived. Through this route, the H-1B visa
program has made more foreign-born PhDs available to corporations for employment in the United States.
But I posit that it has been the demise of OEBM and rise of the NEBM, not an increased supply of
foreign-born PhDs, that has placed downward pressure on the career earnings of the most highly educated
members of the U.S. labor force.
Besides giving employers access to an expanded supply of younger and cheaper high-tech labor in
the United States, the H-1B visa along with the L-1 visa for people who had previously worked for
the employer for at least one year outside the United States have another valuable attribute for
employers: the person on the visa is immobile on the labor market-he or she can't change jobs-whereas
under NEBM the most valued high-tech workers are those who are highly mobile. This mobility of labor
can boost the worker's pay package but is highly problematic for a company that needs these employees
to be engaged in the collective and cumulative learning processes that are the essence of generating
competitive products. Under OEBM, CWOC was the central employment institution for college-educated
workers precisely because of the need for collective and cumulative learning. But it was the rise
of NEBM, not the Immigration Act of 1990, that undermined CWOC. The growing dominance of NEBM with
its open systems architectures then led employers to make increased use of H-1 and L-1 visas in the
1980s, prompting them to get behind an expanded cap for H-1B visas in the Immigration Act of 1990.
10
Once OEBM was attacked by NEBM, with its offer of stock-based pay, these corporations became fertile
territory for the adoption of the ideology that a company should be run to "maximize shareholder
value" (MSV). This momentous transformation in U.S. corporate governance occurred from the late 1980s,
legitimizing the transition from a "retain-and-reinvest" to a "downsize-and-distribute" corporate-
governance regime. In the 1990s and beyond, this corporate-governance transformation laid waste to
CWOC across corporate America, knowledge-intensive companies included. 11 With corporate research
eroding as high-tech personnel responded to the lure of stock-based pay from NEBM companies- including
not only startups but also those such as Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, and Cisco Systems
that during the 1990s grew to employ tens of thousands of people, most of them with stock- based
pay-senior executives at the Old Economy high-tech companies began to see their company's stock price
as not only key to the size of their own stock-based pay packages but also as an instrument to compete
for a broad-based of high-tech personnel. As exemplified by IBM in the 1990s and beyond, a company's
stock price could be raised by laying off expensive older workers and using the resultant "free"
cash flow (as the purveyors of MSV called it) to do stock buybacks. 12
As I have documented in detail, over the past three decades this legalized looting of the U.S.
business corporation has only gotten worse. As shown Table 1, driven by stock buybacks, net equity
issues by U.S. nonfinancial corporations were, in 2015 dollars, minus $4.5 trillion over the
decade 2006-2015. In 2016 net equity issues were minus $586 billion. Net equity issues are new stock
issues by companies (in this case nonfinancial corporations) minus stock retired from the market
as the result of stock repurchases and M&A deals. The massively negative numbers in recent decades
are the result of stock buybacks. I have calculated net equity issues as a percent of GDP by decade
to provide a measure of the value of buybacks done relative to the size of the U.S. economy. In both
absolute inflation-adjusted dollars and as a percent of GDP, buybacks have become a prime mode of
corporate resource allocation in the U.S. economy. Contrary to popular belief, in aggregate U.S.
corporations fund the stock market, not vice versa. Note that almost all of the buybacks in the decade
1976-1985 occurred in 1984 and 1985 after in November 1982 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
adopted Rule 10b-18 that gave license to massive buybacks, in essence legalizing systemic stock-price
manipulation and the looting of the U.S. business corporation.
Table 1: Net equity issues of nonfinancial corporations in the United States, 1946-2015, by
decade, in 2015 dollars, and as a percent of GDP
Decade
Net Equity Issues,
2015$ billions
Net Equity Issues
as % of GDP
1946-1955
143.2
0.56
1956-1965
110.9
0.30
1966-1975
316.0
0.58
1976-1985
-290.9
-0.40
1986-1995
-1,002.5
-1.00
1996-2005
-1,524.4
-1.09
2006-2015
-4,466.6
-2.65
Source: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Federal Reserve Statistical Release
Z.1, "Financial Accounts of the United States: Flow of Funds, Balance Sheets, and Integrated Macroeconomic
Accounts," Table F-223: Corporate Equities, March 9, 2017, at
https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/current/
.
Over the years 2006-2015, the 459 companies in the S&P 500 Index in January 2016 that were publicly
listed over the ten-year period expended $3.9 trillion on stock buybacks, representing 53.6 percent
of net income, plus another 36.7 percent of net income on dividends. Much of the remaining 9.7 percent
of profits was held abroad, sheltered from U.S. taxes. Mean buybacks for these 459 companies ranged
from $291 million in 2009, when the stock markets had collapsed, to $1,205 million in 2007, when
the stock market peaked before the Great Financial Crisis. In 2015, with the stock market booming,
mean buybacks for these companies were $1,173 million. Meanwhile, dividends declined moderately in
2009, but over the period 2006-2015 they trended up in real terms.
Among the largest repurchasers are America's premier high-tech companies. Table 2 shows the top
25 repurchasers over the decade 2006-2015. Among the companies that one would expect to employ large
numbers of S&E PhDs are Exxon Mobil, Microsoft, IBM, Apple, Cisco Systems, Hewlett Packard, Pfizer,
Oracle, Intel, General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips. We do not know the
historical numbers of S&E PhDs at these companies, but I hypothesize that numbers would be much higher
than they are if the companies were not financialized. Many of America's largest corporations
routinely distribute more than 100 percent of net income to shareholders, generating the extra
cash by reducing cash reserves, selling off assets, taking on debt, or laying off employees.13 As
I have shown, the only logical explanation for this buyback activity is that the stock-based pay
that represents the vast majority of the remuneration of senior corporate executives incentivizes
them to manipulate their companies' stock prices, leaving most Americans worse off. 14
Table 2: The 25 largest stock repurchasers among U.S.-based corporations, 2006-2015, showing
net income (NI) stock buybacks (BB), and cash dividends (DV)
Source: Calculated from data downloaded from Standard & Poor's Compustat database.
The Weinstein-Teitelbaum focus on a GUI design to expand the supply of S&E PhDs ignores the
transformations of corporate governance and employment relations that have decimated career employment
for this group of workers over the past three decades. At the same time, the channeling of trillions
of dollars of value created in U.S. nonfinancial corporations to the financial sector has opened
up jobs on Wall Street that can provide quick income bonanzas for highly-educated members of the
U.S. labor force, many of whom might have otherwise pursued S&E careers. Among the wealthiest
of these Wall Street players are corporate predators-euphemistically known as "hedge-fund activists"-who
have billions of dollars in assets under management with which they can attack companies to pump
up their stock prices through the implementation of "downsize-and-distribute" allocation regimes
and, even if it takes a few years, dump the stock for huge gains.15
In the case of Apple, we have shown how Carl Icahn used his wealth, visibility, hype, and influence
to take $2 billion in stock-market gains by buying $3.6 billion of Apple shares in the summer of
2013 and selling them in the winter of 2016, even though he contributed absolutely nothing of any
kind to Apple as a value-creating company.16 Apple CEO Tim Cook and his board (which includes former
U.S. Vice President Al Gore) helped Icahn turn his accumulated fortune into an even bigger one by
having Apple repurchase $45 billion in shares in 2014 and $36 billion in 2015-by far the two largest
one-year stock buybacks of any company in history. Imagine the corporate research capabilities in
which Apple could have invested, and the S&E PhDs the company could have employed, had it looked
for productive ways to use even a fraction of the almost unimaginable sums that it wasted on buybacks.17
From 2011 through the first quarter of 2017, Apple spent $144 billion on buybacks and $51 billion
on dividends under what it calls its "Capital Return" program. But the company is "returning" capital
to shareholders who never gave the company anything in the first place; the only time in its history
that Apple has ever raised funds on the public stock market was $97 million in its 1980 IPO. 18
A number of "hedge-fund activists"-Nelson Peltz of Trian, Daniel Loeb of Third Point, and William
Ackman of Pershing Square are among the most prominent-have been able to put up one or two billion
dollars to purchase small stakes in major high-tech companies, and, with the proxy votes of pension
funds, mutual funds and endowments, have been able put pressure on companies, often by placing their
representatives on the boards of directors, to implement "downsize-and-distribute" regimes for the
sake of "maximizing shareholder value."19 In the summer of 2013, Nelson Peltz's Trian Fund Management
bought DuPont stock worth $1.3 billion, representing 2.2% of shares outstanding. In May 2015 Peltz
lost a proxy fight to put four of his nominees on the DuPont board, but in October 2015 DuPont CEO
Ellen Kullman, who had opposed Peltz, resigned, and the new management began to implement Peltz's
plans to cut costs and hit financial targets, to be done in the context of a merger with Dow Chemical,
which had fallen into the hands of another corporate predator Daniel Loeb. Meanwhile, in October
2015, Peltz bought 0.8 percent of the shares of General Electric (GE), and began to pressure another
iconic high-tech company to cut costs and increase its stock price. GE was already a financialized
company that had done $52 billion in buybacks in the decade 2006-2015 (see Table 2)-a massive amount
of money for the purpose of manipulating its stock price. Undoubtedly responding to additional pressure
from Peltz, during 2016, GE, with profits of $8.0 billion, paid out $8.5 billion in dividends and
spent another $22.0 billion on buybacks. This financialization of U.S. high-tech corporations undermines,
among other things, the employment of S&E PhDs.
We need research on this subject to quantify its impacts. I submit, however, that such a research
agenda must focus on transformations of regimes of corporate governance and employment relations.
Relying on the neoclassical economist's notion of a "natural wage rate" determined by the interaction
of supply and demand, Weinstein, a mathematician, and Teitelbaum, a demographer, missed the transformations
in corporate governance and employment relations that marked the late 1980s and early 1990s-and beyond-and
as result, in my view, failed to understand the changing fortunes of S&E PhDs in the marketized,
globalized, and financialized New Economy. Given the dominance of what I have called "the myth of
the market economy"20 in the thought processes of economists, Weinstein and Teitelbaum were by no
means alone in erroneously focusing on supply and demand on the PhD labor market while failing to
recognize the centrality of corporate governance and employment relations in determining the earnings
and career prospects of S&E PhDs. It is time for new economic thinking on these critical questions.
Footnotes
1 The Weinstein paper appears to have been published prior to the adoption of the American
Competitiveness and Workforce
2 William Lazonick, Sustainable Prosperity in the New Economy? Business Organization and High-Tech
Employment in the United States, W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, 2009; ; William
Lazonick, "The New Economy Business Model and the Crisis of US Capitalism," Capitalism and Society,
4, 2, 2009: article 4; William Lazonick, Philip Moss, Hal Salzman, and Öner Tulum, "Skill Development
and Sustainable Prosperity: Collective and Cumulative Careers versus Skill-Biased Technical Change,"
Institute for New Economic Thinking Working Group on the Political Economy of Distribution Working
Paper No. 7, December 2014, at
https://www.ineteconomics.org/ideas-papers/research-papers/skill-development-and-sustainable-prosperity-cumulative-and-collective-careers-versus-skill-biased-technical-change
; William Lazonick, "Labor in the Twenty- First Century: The Top 0.1% and the Disappearing
Middle Class," in Christian E. Weller, ed., Inequality, Uncertainty, and Opportunity: The Varied
and Growing Role of Finance in Labor Relations, Cornell University Press, 2015: 143-192.
3 Almost all gains from exercising employee stock options and the vesting of employee stock
awards are taxed at the ordinary income-tax rate, not at the capital-gains tax rate, with taxes
withheld by the employer at the time that options are exercised or awards vest. Hence these stock-based
gains are reported as part of "wages, tips, other compensation" on IRS Form 1040.
5 Rosenbloom and Spencer, Engines of Innovation . Richard Rosenbloom was David Sarnoff
Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, while William Spencer was CEO
of SEMATECH.
6 Ibid., pp. 2-3.
7 William Lazonick, "Profits Without Prosperity: Stock Buybacks Manipulate the Market and
Leave Most Americans Worse Off," Harvard Business Review , September 2014, 46-55; William
Lazonick, "Stock Buybacks: From Retain-and-Reinvest to Downsize-and-Distribute," Center for Effective
Public Management, Brookings Institution, April 2015 at
http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2015/04/17-stock-buybacks-lazonick.
8 Lazonick, Sustainable Prosperity , ch. 3. For an important case study that includes
the fate of the once renowned Bell Labs, see William Lazonick and Edward March, "The Rise and
Demise of Lucent Technologies," Journal of Strategic Management Education , 7, 4, 2011.
9 Lazonick, Sustainable Prosperity , ch. 5.
10 Ibid., ch. 2. Note that the H-1 visa for workers in specialty occupations was renamed the
H-1B visa in 1990 after the H-1A visa was created specifically for nurses.
11 Lazonick, "Stock Buybacks"; Lazonick, "Labor in the Twenty-First Century."
12 Lazonick, "Profits Without Prosperity"; Lazonick, "Stock Buybacks."
13 Lazonick, "Labor in the Twenty-First Century": William Lazonick, "How Stock Buybacks Make
Americans Vulnerable to Globalization," Paper presented at the Workshop on Mega-Regionalism: New
Challenges for Trade and Innovation, East-West Center, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, January
20-21, 2016, at
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2745387
14 Lazonick, "Profits Without Prosperity."
15 Rachel Butt, "Here are some of the 10 biggest activist money managers and some of their
most impressive bets," Business Insider , June 17, 2016, at
http://www.businessinsider.com/top-10-biggest-activist-investors-2016-6. Matt Hopkins, William
Lazonick, and Jang-Sup Shin are engaged in research on the methods and gains of these predatory
value extractors.
19 With Matt Hopkins and Jang-Sup Shin, I am involved in project on how the U. S. SEC has
accommodated and even encouraged the corporate value extractors who call themselves "shareholder
activists" or "hedge-fund activists."
20 William Lazonick, Business Organization and the Myth of the Market Economy , Cambridge
University Press, 1991
It was indeed a tough article to read to the end, but this nugget near the end was worth it:
"But the company is "returning" capital to shareholders who never gave the company anything
in the first place; the only time in its history that Apple has ever raised funds on the public
stock market was $97 million in its 1980 IPO."
As one who actually lived this process, I can tell you that the premise of this article must
be basically true.
Back in the early '90s I set out to fill in the gaps of my own computer science background
(I'm actually an astrophysicist). And my classes were filled entirely by people from Asia, except
for myself and one other Anglo. Job ads in the journals were already beginning to ask for PhD
level CompSci with emphasis on, e.g., voice recognition, for a pay rate of $26K (1992 !). That
was definitely appealing to the foreign students and unappealing to American STEM students.
During that period, the only job market for native PhD STEM students became the American
Defense and Intelligence agencies, because they required security clearances and US Citizenship.
I found myself driven in those directions too.
Now, after many years doing my own thing, I look around at the STEM marketplace and I am shocked
to find large numbers of compatriots being pressured into the GIG Economy, and pay rates are appalling
by former standards. There is a serious lack of expenditure on research and development today.
There is a serious lack of expenditure on research and development today.
From another perspective this is just over investment in education. Technology for the
most part is just increasing complexity and increasing complexity has diminishing returns. With
energy becoming less available, we probably need a lot less complexity.
"American Defense". hmmm, wonder if sending the jobs and know-how to China and India in the
belief both will always be the US's willing subcontractors is such a good idea (from a US national
defense point of view).
I wouldn't say that there is a lack of R&D - it just isn't done in-house any more.
Gone are the Bell Labs and the Xerox PARCs; welcome to the brave new world of university partnerships
and non-profit R&D shops (most famous: the Southwest Research Institute).
Basically the rich are waging class war. That's the problem no matter how you slice and
dice this one. This whole "New Economy" has been one big war on wages. I mean look at the collusion
too between Google, Apple, and Intel to keep wages low.
Considering how slap on the wrist this was, what incentive is there to not do it again? They
know they can get away with this. Not to mention, this H1B and L1B program has become a way to
keep wages low in the technology sector. In many sectors, there really isn't a "shortage" of Americans.
Oh and for all the talk of these companies being "innovative", if they are prioritizing money
on stock buybacks over R&D, that's not really innovative as much as it is trying to boost salaries
by capitalizing on the huge cash reserves they get for being the dominant companies in their sector.
Same could be said about Exxon. Not much being spent on R&D means that they are more about rent
seeking rather than innovation. Perhaps not yet as blatant as those patent trolls, which are little
more than shell companies that sue other companies over patents, but that is their ideal business
model.
I think that at the end of the day, even though many engineers in the tech companies are in
the top 10% in terms of income percentile, their interests are closer aligned with working class
people. The other issue is that I bet when many of these engineers turn into their 40s, they are
going to witness first hand the very real age discrimination that exists in the technology industry.
Basically it comes down to, the rich are really greedy. The issue right now for the rich
is that they are desperate to keep the looting from happening, while people are increasingly aware
that the system is against them. Bernie Sanders got a lot of support in the Valley and while it
is a very Democratic leaning area, I cannot imagine that Trump's anti-H1B and L1B stance would
have been opposed by the average employee. I think that the rich are not going to concede anything
and that there needs to be some sort of solidarity union amongst all workers.
Is there a single person here who has worked on Wall Street (writ large) who can convince
us that his job or his company had an overall positive effect on the US and/or world economy over
five years, ten years, or twenty-five years?
I'll go first: three investment banks under my belt and one was a giant financial and moral
sucking machine called Citi. The other two were wannabe's but certainly did not add value.
While "maximizing shareholder value" is the huge problem wrecking our economy, having watched
the genesis of New Economic Paradigm through the experiences my wife and most of my friends going
through the Silicon Valley start-up Tulip-mania from the mid-'80's through the first decade of
th e 2000's, the author is hitting important points while over-simplifying and missing other equally
important points, such as the role of the "Peace Dividend" in the collapse of aerospace and research
funding, and the role of the Reagan and Clinton "tax reforms" in driving stock-based compensation
systems.
Early on, the use of stock-based compensation drove down wage-based compensation and increased
the role of financial speculators. Today, the speculators get the stock, but wages remain suppressed
and only foreign workers will accept them. The author is correct: the causes are complicated,
but the result drove down wages and job security for STEM workers.
I got my Ph.D. in biology in 2000. It was absolutely the worst decision in my life. In fact,
it actually destroyed my life, reducing me to near homelessness and starvation because-GASP--regular
employers (like office jobs, retail etc.) will not hire Ph.D.s. There there is the lovely student
debt that has grown exponentially, as my wages could not make the smallest dent. Convicted felons
make more that I do. So to make a long story short, I started a small on-line business 9 years
ago and got the FFFFF OUT of the rotten POS United States and moved to Ecuador, one of the most
progressive countries in the world. I cannot believe how the US abuses its national treasures-is
is truly a POS and I do not miss it for one day. I hope the US crashes and rots in hell.
Its not just PhDs. I know several Engineers who advise their children to do something else.
It's just not worth the amount of effort that is required to be put into it and there is no future
hope of a turn around. As bad as it is for graduates today, it's only going to get worse.
I am a civil engineer and one of my daughters is studying to become a structural engineer.
I would not have advised her to go into engineering because of the problem with the H-1B visas.
But who am I to advise? Who can know the future? The world is just changing too fast now
to really be able to advise our children on what careers to take. Besides, one of the advantages
of studying engineering as you can work anywhere in the world.
I bought houses for each of my children and told them if they wanted to go to college they
could trade the house in for the education. I personally think they should have considered keeping
the house and working minimum wage jobs that they enjoy. But both of them are pursuing educations,
my son to be history teacher!
Post WWII labor overplayed its hand by the 1970's. Corporations and their decided they
had had it. Corps and management proceeded to change the rules of the game on everything -- courts,
trade, taxation and regulation. These countermeasures have had disastrous long term consequences.
Corporations now run the country in a fascist manner. Government capture has created myriad problems
beyond financialization, only one tool in the corporate quiver. Oligopolies across most to all
industries comes to mind. Rail, air, health insurance, banking, defense, telecom, entertainment
.
But this paper is also lamenting a lack of business capex, which is directly correlated to
public investment. When you decided to offshore manufacturing and fail to invest in infrastructure
you get a double whammy that hits business capex. Increasing regulation and taxation on small
and midsize companies has lead to consolidation. Approximately 5000 public companies have likely
been consolidated. Sarbanes-Oxley added millions to compliance costs making it highly uneconomical
to be a public company with less than $300 million in revenue. Dodd-Frank has created increases
in cost for financial firms that had nothing to do with the crisis. In fact, the big banks have
benefited enormously from implementation of this legislation.
Not sure about the labor part overplaying their hand. They just wanted an even wage and
productivity rise. It is capital IMO that has overplayed its hand and the rise of neoliberal economics
which has led to declines in public R&D spending. There isn't anything like the Space Race anymore.
Frankly, labour underplayed its hand. At one point it had capital by the throat, and should
have finished it off then. If peace is not an option, you should utterly and permanently destroy
your enemy.
Labor did NOT overplay its hand after WW2 - Taft-Hartley was a HUGE smack-down to labor
after the privations of the Depression followed by the war effort. The decent wages during the
post-war period were part of a concerted effort to convince workers that they didn't need unions
and to be complacent.
Labor leadership certainly became corrupt from all the money sloshing around without global
competition due to war devastation of Europe and Japan, the Cold War, and the death throes of
colonialism, but this was not due to "overplaying" their hand.
The trends described in the post predate by decades the communist tyranny [/s] imposed by those
bills.
The wholesale closing or offshoring of corporate research labs already started in the 1980s,
driven in part by corporate raiders like Milken, Pickens and Icahn.
IBM, GM, Kodak, Xerox, GE they all had labs that provided jobs to STEM graduates
and a stream of discoveries and inventions to generate more jobs.
Now these are largely gone or substantially off-shored.
What has happened to corporate R&D shouldn't be used as an excuse to make life easier
for the Wall Street culture largely responsible for it.
Yes, any burdens imposed by Sarbanes Oxley are the fault of numerous unethical business executives
over recent decades, and not the fault of people in government.
When I was a student in IT, the shining stars at the firmament of industrial computer science
and engineering R&D were Xerox PARC, DEC SRC, ATT Bell Labs and IBM Yorktown Heights.
Contrary to popular belief, in aggregate U.S. corporations fund the stock market, not
vice versa. Note that almost all of the buybacks in the decade 1976-1985 occurred in 1984 and
1985 after in November 1982 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission adopted Rule 10b-18
that gave license to massive buybacks, in essence legalizing systemic stock-price manipulation
and the looting of the U.S. business corporation.
See Lazonick's footnoted paper for many loving particulars. Especially note the details of
how Rule 10b-18 offers no protection from abuse and (no news to NC readers) is a pillar of general
corporate asset-stripping .
Engineering long-term career arc has been an issue since at least my father's generation (those
born during WWI). Longer tenure (mid to late mid career) engineers were being eased out for young
grads. When I was in a ChemE program in the 70s, advice was to follow the engineering degree with
either law or a business degree because the odds of a long career doing engineering was not great.
No one advised going for a PhD in engineering.
When I asked him why he got the degree, which didn't seem necessary for someone who spent much
of his career in industrial R&D, he said, "I'm like Mallory climbing Mount Everest. I got that
degree because it is there."
So, there you have it. My old man getting that degree because he wanted to. And because my
mother was willing to support both of them while he worked on it.
"Many of America's largest corporations routinely distribute more than 100 percent of net income
to shareholders, generating the extra cash by reducing cash reserves, selling off assets, taking
on debt, or laying off employees the only logical explanation for this buyback activity is that
the stock-based pay that represents the vast majority of the remuneration of senior corporate
executives incentivizes them to manipulate their companies' stock prices "
This not only applies to the STEM sector, but nearly every large corp. in America. "Earnings
quality" (i.e stock price) takes precedence over everything else leading to the crapification
of products & services and devaluation of employees.
Thank gawd this type of thinking wasn't around when Jonas Salk was working on the polio vaccine.
" In November 1982 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission adopted Rule 10b-18 that
gave license to massive buybacks, in essence legalizing systemic stock-price manipulation and
the looting of the U.S. business corporation. "
How can you have "looting" without lootees? The stockholders aren't complaining. If any party
is being disadvantaged by borrowing to fund stock buybacks, it's existing bondholders. As David
Swensen describes in an extended example in Pioneering Portfolio Management , managers
compensated by stock options tend to treat corporate debt holders quite shabbily by piling on
more debt, compromising the interest coverage ratio.
High tech companies use stock buybacks to offset their widespread granting of stock options
which - absent Rule 10b-18 - would badly dilute existing stock holders over time.
Trying to paint the well-disclosed practice of stock buybacks as "looting" is histrionic ax
grinding on Lazonick's part. Over-leveraged companies are going to regret it in the next recession.
But that's a lamentable social phenomenon in a bubble-driven economy. Those who disagree with
it are free to sell short over-leveraged stocks - perhaps a more meaningful way of expressing
dissent than scribbling academic screeds.
Well Jim, ponzi schemes work pretty well for those at the top. I suppose we shouldn't worry
about it until we start getting complaints..
Actually though, watching the train wreck that is the outlook for the youngest generation
today, provides some grim amusement. For instance noting that the "bubble-driven" economy composed
of companies desperate to prevent their stock becoming "badly diluted" by having fire sales on
capitol and expertise that probably took their predecessors decades to build can really only have
one outcome. Depression, misery, socialism. Maybe we skip the Mao route this time, maybe not.
Here's some related "histrionics" of your channeling D.D . an excerpt of a debate about "creative
destruction" (emphasis mine) from 1991(context), chronologically, roughly following the tandem
of Ronnie and Maggie.
Gregory Peck: "The Robber Barons of old at least left something tangible in their wake
- a coal mine, a railroad, banks. THIS MAN LEAVES NOTHING. HE CREATES NOTHING. HE BUILDS NOTHING.
HE RUNS NOTHING. And in his wake lies nothing but a blizzard of paper to cover the pain. Oh, if
he said, "I know how to run your business better than you," that would be something worth talking
about. But he's not saying that. He's saying, "I'm going to kill you because at this particular
moment in time, you're worth more dead than alive."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJRhrow3Jws
Danny Devito: "Let's have the intelligence, let's have the decency to sign the death certificate,
collect the insurance, and invest in something with a future "Ah, but we can't," goes the prayer.
"We can't because we have responsibility, a responsibility to our employees, to our community.
What will happen to them?" I got two words for that: WHO CARES? Care about them? Why? They didn't
care about you. They sucked you dry. You have no responsibility to them. For the last ten years
this company bled your money. Did this community ever say, "We know times are tough. We'll lower
taxes, reduce water and sewer." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62kxPyNZF3Q
Yes, the IBM reference is interesting.The author gives an ordinal lead to IBM as a mover
from the OEBM to NEBM. I ask myself if, from a mere one large corporation managing perspective,
this was IBM's 11th hour response to the by then devastating rise of its competitors like Apple
& Microsoft.
Also the irony that it did not help IBM at least in the midterm. So, IBM was the prime
mover to initiate some aspects of a model change -change which every major player adhered to-
in response to a new technological disadvantage vs. competitors, and in turned did not seem to
do much for IBM in the immediate years. Although, if I recall well, IBM was immersed in many political
battles and internal problems, legal and otherwise. Nevertheless, I doubt there was a historic
inevitability on IBM's ordinal force. Outstanding work by Lazonick
"IBM is the poster child for shenanigans. Last month, IBM reported its 20th quarter in
a row of declining year over year revenues .. a 13% drop in earnings, profit margins that declined
in every business segment ( much worse than expected ), free cash flow that plummeted over 50%
year over year and an earnings "beat" of 3 cents per share. How could this "beat" happen? .. a
negative tax rate of -23% . This is why they pay the CEO Rometti the big bucks ( estimated at
$50 to $65 million last year)."
And this is one of the Bluest of the Blue Chip companies in the world.
I read IBM spent a fortune at that time defending itself against monopolistic claims litigation.
This was happening while Microsoft and Apple were clearly consolidating their oligopolistic empires.
I read reports stating Oracle initial breakthroughs were taken from IBM's research work.
Not sure if anyone watches "Silicon Valley", but here is a quote that seems fitting:
Season 2 – Bad Money
Richard: Once we get a few customers and start a subscription-revenue model.
Russ: What? Revenue? No, no, no, no, no. No. If you show revenue, people will ask "How much?"
And it will never be enough, but if you have no revenue, you can say you're pre-revenue. You're
a potential pure play. It's not about how much you earn, it's about what you're worth. And
who's worth the most? Companies that lose money. Pinterest, Snap chat No revenue. Amazon
has lost money every fucking quarter for the last 20 fucking years, and that Bezos motherfucker
is the king.
Just wanted to point out that there is one more link in the chain to be followed: the financiers
would not have such an easy time playing Nero with our economy, if the banking sector were still
properly constrained by a gold standard (=limited supply of printed credit), the risk of bank
runs by outraged consumers, the Glass-Steagall separation of commercial from investment banking,
personal rather than corporate punishment for fraud and abuse, antitrust enforcement, etc.
In addition, the rise of 401(k) based investing, in which workers are tax-incentivized
to buy in to the corporate stock scheming, but lack the normal shareholder voice in corporate
governance, has taken the chains off the looters as well.
It's time to end the impunity. The government has been corrupted by the corporations, so only
a populist uprising will produce reform. The uprising will require sacrifices of time, income,
security. It will require boycotts of products that people like, but whose producers and vendors
are evil. The products will not disappear while demand persists – but the producers and vendors
must be brought to heel.
Consider the following inductees into the Corporate Hall of Shame:
Wells Fargo – customer abuse
United Airlines – customer abuse
UBER – employee abuse; legal system abuse
Mylan (Epi Pens) – Monopolistic price abuse
Hewlett Packard (spyware on laptops) – customer abuse
pick an industry, you'll find a Hall of Shame candidate. Hit them all in the wallet until they
reform.
The impact on the Grads was secondary a byproduct of a larger agenda which included the
transfer offshore and consolidation of "IP" of the entire American, EU and Asian industrial economies
along with the withdrawl of capital, while at the same time intentionally sabotaging future innovations
with the handicap of diversity. Who got the loot and capital? Usual suspects.
"DeVos's decision to reverse some of her work "with no coherent explanation or substitute" effectively
means that the Trump administration is placing the welfare of loan contractors above those of student
debtors"
'Trump's education secretary wants to limit costs at a time when more than 1 million Americans
are annually defaulting'
by Shahien Nasiripour...April 11, 2017...2:46 PM EDT
"Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Tuesday rolled back an Obama administration attempt to reform
how student loan servicers collect debt.
Obama issued a pair (PDF) of memorandums (PDF) last year requiring that the government's Federal
Student Aid office, which services $1.1 trillion in government-owned student loans, do more to help
borrowers manage, or even discharge, their debt. But in a memorandum (PDF) to the department's student
aid office, DeVos formally withdrew the Obama memos.
The previous administration's approach, DeVos said, was inconsistent and full of shortcomings.
She didn't detail how the moves fell short, and her spokesmen, Jim Bradshaw and Matthew Frendewey,
didn't respond to requests for comment.
DeVos's move comes a week after one of the student loan industry's main lobbies asked for Congress's
help in delaying or substantially changing the Education Department's loan servicing plans. In a
pair of April 4 letters to leaders of the House and Senate appropriations committees, the National
Council of Higher Education Resources said there were too many unanswered questions, including whether
the Obama administration's approach would be unnecessarily expensive.
A recent epidemic of student loan defaults and what authorities describe as systematic mistreatment
of borrowers prompted the Obama administration, in its waning days, to force the FSA office to emphasize
how debtors are treated, rather than maximize the amount of cash they can stump up to meet their
obligations.
Obama's team also sought to reduce the possibility that new contracts would be given to companies
that mislead or otherwise harm debtors. The current round of contracts will terminate in 2019, and
among three finalists for a new contract is Navient Corp. In January, state attorneys general in
Illinois and Washington, along with the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB, sued
Navient over allegations the company abused borrowers by taking shortcuts to boost its own bottom
line. Navient has denied the allegations.
The withdrawal of the Obama administration guidelines could make Navient a more likely contender
for that contract, government officials said. Navient shares moved higher after the government released
DeVos's decision around 11:30 a.m. New York time. Navient stock ended up almost 2 percent.
The Obama administration vision for how federal loans would be serviced almost certainly meant
the feds would have to increase how much they pay loan contractors to collect monthly payments from
borrowers and counsel them on repayment options. Already, the government annually spends around $800
million to collect on almost $1.1 trillion of debt. DeVos, however, made clear that her department
would focus on curbing costs.
"We must create a student loan servicing environment that provides the highest quality customer
service and increases accountability and transparency for all borrowers, while also limiting the
cost to taxpayers," DeVos said.
With her memo, DeVos has taken control of the complex and widely derided system in which the federal
government collects monthly payments from tens of millions of Americans with government-owned student
loans. The CFPB said in 2015 that the manner in which student loans are collected has been marred
by "widespread failures."
DeVos's move "will certainly increase the likelihood of default," said David Bergeron, a senior
fellow at the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank with close ties to Democrats.
Bergeron worked under Democratic and Republican administrations over more than 30 years at the Education
Department. He retired as the head of postsecondary education.
During Obama's eight years in office, some 8.7 million Americans defaulted on their student loans,
for a rate of one default roughly every 29 seconds.
Former Deputy Treasury Secretary Sarah Bloom Raskin worked on student loan policy during the latter
years of the Obama administration, in part over concern that borrowers' struggles were affecting
the management of U.S. debt. DeVos's decision to reverse some of her work "with no coherent explanation
or substitute" effectively means that the Trump administration is placing the welfare of loan contractors
above those of student debtors, she said.
In a statement Tuesday, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, who is suing Navient, agreed:
"The Department of Education has decided it does not need to protect student loan borrowers." libezkova -> im1dc... ,
April 11, 2017 at 05:24 PM
"... As with any major reform movement, the corporate backlash was predictable. In Neo-classical
Economics, Gaffney reveals that this backlash took two main forms. The first was the Red Scare (1919-1989),
overseen by J Edgar Hoover as Assistant Attorney General and later as FBI director. ..."
"... The second was more insidious and involved the deliberate reframing of the classical economic
theory developed by Adam Smith, Locke, Hume, and Ricardo as so-called neoclassical economics. ..."
Why do American children study Karl Marx, the villain we love to hate, in school? Yet Henry George,
whose views on land and tax reform gave rise to the Progressive and Populist movements of the
1900s, is totally absent from US history books.
During the 1890s George, author of the 1879 bestseller Progress and Poverty, was the third
most famous American, after Mark Twain and Thomas Edison. In 1896 he outpolled Teddy Roosevelt
and was nearly elected mayor of New York.
In Neo-classical Economics as a Stratagem Against Henry George (2007), University of California
economist Mason Gaffney argues that George and his Land Value Tax pose a far greater threat than
Marx to America's corporate elite.
America's enormous concentration of wealth has always depended on the inherent right of the
wealthy elite to seize and monopolize vast quantities of land and natural resources (oil, gas,
forests, water, minerals, etc) for personal profit.
Adopting an LVT, which is far easier than launching a violent revolution, would essentially
negate that right. What's more, every jurisdiction that has ever implemented an LVT finds it works
exactly the way George predicted it would. Productivity, prosperity, and social wellbeing flourish,
while inflation, wealth inequality, and boom and bust recessions and depressions virtually vanish.
When Progress and Poverty first came out in 1879, it started a worldwide reform movement that
in the US manifested in the fiercely anti-corporate Populist Movement in the 1880s and later the
Progressive Movement (1900-1920). Many important anti-corporate reforms came out of this period,
including the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890), a constitutional amendment allowing Americans to elect
the Senate by popular vote (prior to 1913 the Senate was appointed by state legislators), and
the country's first state-owned bank, The Bank of North Dakota (1919).
The Corporate Elite Strikes Back
As with any major reform movement, the corporate backlash was predictable. In Neo-classical
Economics, Gaffney reveals that this backlash took two main forms. The first was the Red Scare
(1919-1989), overseen by J Edgar Hoover as Assistant Attorney General and later as FBI director.
The second was more insidious and involved the deliberate reframing of the classical economic
theory developed by Adam Smith, Locke, Hume, and Ricardo as so-called neoclassical economics.
The latter totally negates Adam Smith's basic differentiation between "land", a limited, non-producible
resource. and "capital", a reproducible result of past human production. Smith, Locke, Hume, and
Ricardo all held that individuals have no right to seize and monopolize scarce natural resources,
such as land, minerals, water, and forests. They believed that because these resources are both
limited and essential for human survival, they should belong to the public.
Neoclassical economics, which first developed in the 1890s, was based on the premise that growth
and development can only occur if a handful of rent-seekers are allowed to monopolize scarce land
and natural resources for their personal profit. Henry George, who publicly debated the early
pioneers of neoclassical economics, claimed the science of economics was being deliberately distorted
to discredit him. Gaffney agrees. Because George's proposal to replace income and sales tax with
single land value taxed is based on logical concepts of land, capital, labor, and rent advanced
by Adam Smith, Locke, Hume, and Ricardo, they all had to be discredited.
Gaffney believes neoclassical economic theory undermines George's arguments for a single Land
Value Tax in two basic ways: 1) by claiming that land is no different from other capital (ironically
Marx made the identical argument) and 2) by portraying the science of economics as a series of
hard choices and sacrifices that low and middle income people must make. Some examples:
If we want efficiency, we must sacrifice equity.
To attract business, we must lower taxes and shut libraries and defund schools.
To prevent inflation, we must keep a large number of Americans unemployed.
To create jobs, we must destroy the environment and pollute the air, water, and food chain.
To raise productivity, we must fire people.
Gaffney's book traces the phenomenal public support Georgism enjoyed before the tenets of neoclassical
economics took hold in American universities. In addition to inspiring the Populist and Progressive
movements, an LVT to fund irrigation projects in California's Central Valley made California the
top producing farm state. In 1916 the first federal income tax law was introduced by Georgist
members of Congress (Henry George Jr and Warren Bailey) and included virtually no tax on wages.
In 1934 Georgist Upton Sinclair was almost elected governor of California.
Gaffney also identifies the robber barons whose fortunes financed the economics departments of
the major universities who went on to substitute neooclassical economics for classical economic
theory. At the top of this list were
Ezra Cornell (owner of both Western Union and Associated Press) – founder of Cornell University
John D Rockefeller – helped fund the University of Chicago and installed his cronies in its
economics department.
J. P Morgan – investment banker and early funder of Columbia University
B&O Railroad – John Hopkins University
Southern Pacific Railroad – Stanford University
The final section of Gaffney's book lays out the tragic economic, political, and social consequences
of allowing the Red Scare and neoclassical economics to stifle America's movement for a single
Land Value Tax:
Economic Consequences
The corporate elite has privatized, or is privatizing, most of the public domain (including
fisheries, the public airwaves, water, offshore oil and gas, and the right to clean air) without
compensation to the public.
The rate of saving and capital formation continues to fall rapidly. This is the main reason
there is no recovery.
Although profits soar, corporations have no incentive to invest in expansion and jobs. Instead
they invest their profits in real estate, derivatives, and commodities speculation.
American capital is decayed and obsolete. The US has lost much of its steel and auto industries.
Power plants and oil refineries are ancient and polluting. Most public capital (infrastructure)
is old and crumbling.
The number of American farms has fallen from 6 million in 1920 to 1 million in 2007.
The USA, once so self-sufficient, has grown dangerously dependent on importing raw materials
and foreign manufacturers.
The US financial system is a shambles, supported only by loading trillions of dollars of bad
debts onto the taxpayers.
Real wage rates have continued to fall since 1975,
Unemployment has risen to chronically high levels.
Inequality in wealth and income continues to increase rapidly.
Political Consequences
The corporate elite has nullified all the Progressive Era electoral reforms by pouring money
into politics and "deep lobbying," at all levels of government, including our institutions of
higher learning and our public schools.
The corporate elite continue to pour ever more of our tax money into prisons.
Social Consequences
Homelessness has risen to new heights, in spite of decades of subsidies to home-building and,
favorable tax treatment of owner-occupied homes
Hunger is rampant.
Street begging, once rare, is everywhere
Americans have experienced a sharp loss of community, honor, duty, loyalty and patriotism.
In the shadow world between crime and business there is now the vast, gray underground economy
that includes tax evasion, tax avoidance, and drug-dealing.
The US which once led the world in nearly every endeavor, has fallen far behind in infant survival,
in longevity, in literacy, in numeracy, in mental health.
American education no longer leads the world. Privatized education in the form of commercial
TV has largely superseded public education.
David Glasner discusses how essential Professor Thoma's blog
is to the Econosphere... Funny given that the web
address for Uneasy Money refuses appear in Typepad.
A Tale
of Three Posts
by David Glasner
March 30, 2017
Since I started blogging in July 2011, I have published
521 posts (not including this one). A number of my posts have
achieved a fair amount of popularity, as measured by the
number of views, which WordPress allows me to keep track of.
Many, though not all, of my most widely viewed posts were
mentioned by Paul Krugman in his blog. Whenever I noticed an
unusually large uptick in the number of viewers visiting the
blog, I usually found Krugman had linked to my post, causing
a surge of viewers to my blog.
The most visitors I ever had in one day was on August 7,
2012. It was the day after I wrote a post mocking an op-ed in
the Wall Street Journal by Arthur Laffer ("Arthur Laffer,
Anti-Enlightenment Economist") in which, based on some
questionable data, and embarrassingly bad logic, Laffer
maintained that countries that had adopted fiscal stimulus
after the 2008-09 downturn had weaker recoveries than
countries that had practiced fiscal austerity. This was not
the first or last time that Krugman linked to a post of mine,
but what made it special was that Krugman linked to it while
he on vacation, so that for three days, everyone who visited
Krugman's blog found his post linking to my post, so that on
August 7 alone, my post was viewed 7885 times, with 3004
viewing the post on August 8, 1591 on August 9, and 953 on
August 10. In the entire month of August, the Laffer post was
viewed 15,399 times. To this day, that post remains the most
viewed post that I have ever written, having been viewed a
total 17,604 times.
As you can see, the post has not maintained its popular
appeal, over 87 percent of all views having occurred within
three and a half weeks of its having been published. And
there's no reason why it should have retained its popularity.
It was a well-written post, properly taking a moderately
well-known right-wing economist to task for publishing a
silly piece of ideological drivel in a once-great newspaper,
but there was nothing especially profound or original about
it. It was just the sort of post that Krugman loves to link
to, and I was at the top of his blog for three days before he
published his next post.
...
But over the past six months, suddenly since October, a
third post ("Gold Standard or Gold Exchange Standard: What's
the Difference?"), originally published on July 1, 2015, has
been attracting a lot of traffic. When first published, it
was moderately successful, drawing 569 visits on July 2,
2015, which is still the most visits it has received on any
single day, mostly via links from Mark Toma's blog and Brad
DeLong's blog. The post was not terribly original, but I
think it did a nice job of describing that evolution of the
gold standard from an almost accidental and peculiarly
British, institution into a totem of late nineteenth-century
international monetary orthodoxy, whose principal features
remain till this day surprisingly obscure even to well
trained and sophisticated monetary economists and financial
experts.
...
The other amazing thing about the burst of traffic to this
post is that most of the visitors seem to be coming from
India. Over the past 30 days since February 28, this blog has
been viewed 17,165 times. The most-often viewed post in that
time period was my gold-exchange standard post, which was
viewed 7385 times, i.e., over 40% of all views were of that
one single post. In the past 30 days, my blog was viewed from
India 6446 times while my blog was viewed from the United
States only 4863 times. Over the entire history of this blog,
about 50% of views have been from within the US. So India is
clearly where it's at now.
...
PS I realized that, by identifying Paul Krugman's blog as
the blog from which many of my most popular posts have
received the largest number of viewers, I inadvertently
slighted Mark Thoma's indispensible blog (Economistsview.typepad.com),
which really is the heart and soul of the econ blogosphere. I
just checked, and I see that since my blog started in 2011,
over 79,000 viewers have visited my blog via Mark's blog
compared to 53,000 viewers who have visited via Krugman. And
I daresay that when Krugman has linked to one of my posts,
it's probably only after he followed Thoma's link to my blog,
so I'm doubly indebted to Mark.
At the end they have a good discussion about NGDP
targetting.
I really don't understand why progressive economists don't
get behind this more. The more mainstream economists seem
more interested in promoting the Democrats' policy agenda and
defending it from the left and from the right.
Economists could/can help social movements push policies
like a higher minimum wage, UBI, guaranteed jobs,
unionization/economic democracy and an NGDP target for the
Fed.
Seems like Progressive [center-left] economists are more
interested in defending the Federal Reserve except for DeLong
who criticizes it in an indirect, oblique manner. They're in
a defensive crouch all of the time.
"The comments should never be confused with the posts and
posted links"
That's wrong ! There is a strong
interdependency.
Professor Thoma has the unique ability to pick up
interesting links. I wonder where he finds time to read all
those articles, as probably to post a dosen of links, as he
often does, you need to read at least twice more articles.
Probably much more the twice.
I think that this quality attracts a lot of people.
And I noticed that on average, his "Links" posts attract
more comments that regular posts. Probably by the factor of
two on average. Most Links posts attract over 100 comments
with high number around 300.
It might also be that commenting on "Links", commenters
often post their own findings and quotes, which sometimes is
of high, or very high value and add to the value. Anne is one
such persons.
Another interesting feature of this blog is that the
"core" group of commenters is reasonably stable with many
commenting for five years or more. I belong to "episodical"
commenters, but I follow the blog for a long time and after a
couple of years I start recognizing probably 80% of names and
even now has some vague information about their personal
histories.
And some of the members of the core group systematically
produce a number of high quality comments almost each day.
That also attracts people.
Discussions, when two commenters have opposite views of
the subject to me is the most interesting part. Despite
occasional shouting matches.
So it is the quality of links and posts attracts quality
commenters, which in turn, further enhance the quality of the
blog.
Absolutely! I was originally attracted to this blog by the
quality of the comments even more than the quality of Prof.
Thoma's selections.
It's ironic that paine seems to be
arguing that comments are relatively unimportant. His posts
are always thought-provoking and foster good discussions, and
one of the reasons I became a regular reader.
Ivy League alumni like the illuminatis Clinton and Bushes are prepared and vetted
to run Goldman Sachs, the White House and the justice system etc. A merry go
'round, this for that but at the end rather than creating personal foundations
they should be creating foundations for their alma mater instead of their library
mausoleum. Clinton foundation raised over $1.2 billion to be run by daughter.
Sick.
Flawed, sensationalistic report, clickbait for jealous masses who can't make the
cut into the ivy league.
Most of the $ comes from research grants. Wouldn't you
expect the best schools in the country to get research grants? Look at all the
top state schools, they also attract loads of federal $.
As for endowment income being non-taxable for universities, that's a good thing
IMO. Would you rather have the endowment funds for all other nonprofits taxed too?
Think about hospitals and churches as examples.
The Ivy League universities are also prolific H-1B abusers, and they use
tax-free "scholarship" endowment fund earnings to advance their liberal
causes.
Time to tax them properly and stop the scam of 'scholarships' and
H-1B abuse.
The US has 1,000 Generals. Count 'em. We have 33 brigade combat teams, who
comprise in battalions, companies and platoons, roughly 1,000 combat platoons.
Do the math. We have so many excess Generals, each General could partner with
an LT leading a platoon into battle. That's FU. Let's cut that number back to
33, one per BCT, and find KP duty for the 967, until they find the
$6,000,000,000,000 of our last life savings that the Pentagon 'lost track of'
and is now forever MIA.
The US has 1,000 Admirals. Count 'em. We have 430
fighting ships, if you go all the way down to fuel barges, PT boats and LSTs.
Do the math. We have so many excess Admirals, each Admiral could partner with
an LT leading an LST onto the beach, and still have 570 Admirals to wade ashore
and declare the beachhead secured. That's FU. Let's cut that number back to 7,
one per fleet, and find KP duty for the 993, until they find the
$6,000,000,000,000 of our last life savings that the Pentagon 'lost track of'
and is now forever MIA.
Somebody knows where our savings went! There are over 1800 unnecessary
Admirals and Generals who could defend America and earn their $250,000 a year
salaries for life, by ferreting out the moles, rats, leeches and gribbles at
the Pentagon, clean house, right-size the armed forces, re-fund yhe VA, then
hang all the MIC lobbyists from the yardarms for treason.
It's worse. From having relatives inside the Pentagon budget process, I've
been made aware for decades that at least 1/3 of our military manpower
exists not because there is any rational need for those troops, OTHER than
having sufficient forces to justify retaining and promoting more
high-ranking (and highly-paid) Brass.
The hierarchical structure of the military assures that there are
relatively few pay billets at the top. This means that officers sitting on
promotion boards are constantly faced with the demand to "pass over" and
thus doom to early separation/retirement fellow officers who are perfectly
competent at their jobs, just not needed by the numbers.
In the immediate post WWII era, service leaders were nervous about
letting good talent go and get settled in civilian life, only to need them
for the Next Big One in a few years' time. Those few years have since
become six decades, and the system of holding onto popular people by
"creative" billeting has become institutionalized. The Armed Forces DON'T
need AT LEAST 1/3 of their personnel, especially in the higher ranks. But
the higher the rank, the more personal favors are owed to them, and the more
likely that a new job will be created requiring even more stars, in order to
assure that they stay employed at least until they can collect retirement.
The Pentagon is the world's one and and only truly functional socialist
system.
"... And that's the reason UK economics students revolted: "Few mainstream economists predicted the global financial crash of 2008 and academics have been accused of acting as cheerleaders for the often labyrinthine financial models behind the crisis. Now a growing band of university students are plotting a quiet revolution against orthodox free-market teaching, arguing that alternative ways of thinking have been pushed to the margins. ..."
"... why economists failed to warn about the global financial crisis and for having too heavy a focus on training students for City jobs. ..."
"... But the answer to their question is very simple. Neoliberals are in power and they dictate what is to be taught in Economics courses. They also promote and sustain "willing charlatans" like Mankiw, who poisons and indoctrinates students with neoclassical junk. ..."
So true; "SWL has never addressed what is happening in the real world."
And that's the reason UK economics students revolted: "Few mainstream economists predicted
the global financial crash of 2008 and academics have been accused of acting as cheerleaders for
the often labyrinthine financial models behind the crisis. Now a growing band of university students
are plotting a quiet revolution against orthodox free-market teaching, arguing that alternative
ways of thinking have been pushed to the margins.
Economics undergraduates at the University of Manchester have formed the Post-Crash Economics
Society, which they hope will be copied by universities across the country. The organisers criticise
university courses for doing little to explain why economists failed to warn about the global
financial crisis and for having too heavy a focus on training students for City jobs."
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/oct/24/students-post-crash-economics
But the answer to their question is very simple. Neoliberals are in power and they dictate what is to be taught in Economics courses. They also promote and sustain "willing charlatans" like Mankiw, who poisons and indoctrinates
students with neoclassical junk.
"... Ironic that Krugman is cited as a voice for reform - he represents the neo-Keynesian hell we've got stuck in. ..."
"... I'm an economics student at the University of Glasgow, in second year as part of a compulsory course we were taught about alternative economic theories in comparison to Neoclassical models. ..."
"... The course has only been running for a few years but in response students have set up a very similar society to promote alternative thinking on economics. Even just half a semester on Post-Keynesian Economic theory has really opened our eyes to the alternatives within economics. ..."
"... I studied neoclassical 'economics' (it really isn't economics, just garbage) for five years. Began to take my graduate degree in the autumn of 2008 when everything was falling apart and I had no idea why. No clue whatsoever. After my masters degree in neoclassical 'economics' I still had no clue what had happened. ..."
"... Orthodox economics: Ignore money. Hence, ignore debt. Let the overall leverage of the economy increase until Ponzi finance fails and financial crisis begins. The debt deflation that follows means money gets even more concentrated towards the financial/political elite than before the crisis. Neo-feudalism makes way - finally war. ..."
"... Orthodox economists don't understand capitalism. They can't. The long time failed axioms underlying everything else in their theories don't allow them to do that. ..."
I'm an economics student at the University of Glasgow, in second year as part of a compulsory
course we were taught about alternative economic theories in comparison to Neoclassical models.
The course has only been running for a few years but in response students have set up a
very similar society to promote alternative thinking on economics. Even just half a semester on
Post-Keynesian Economic theory has really opened our eyes to the alternatives within economics.
I studied neoclassical 'economics' (it really isn't economics, just garbage) for five years.
Began to take my graduate degree in the autumn of 2008 when everything was falling apart and I
had no idea why. No clue whatsoever. After my masters degree in neoclassical 'economics' I still
had no clue what had happened.
Then I stumbled across Post-Keynesian economics and it took me about six months to dismiss
the neoclassical garbage. If I hadn't studied that garbage for five years it would have taken
me a few days.
Orthodox economics: Ignore money. Hence, ignore debt. Let the overall leverage of the economy
increase until Ponzi finance fails and financial crisis begins. The debt deflation that follows
means money gets even more concentrated towards the financial/political elite than before the
crisis. Neo-feudalism makes way - finally war.
Then the cycle starts again.
Orthodox economists don't understand capitalism. They can't. The long time failed axioms
underlying everything else in their theories don't allow them to do that.
"... This has echoes of a protest by students in 2011 at Harvard when a group of students walked out of the lectures by Dr Gregory Manilow. What has happened to them? ..."
"... Good for them. The economics profession has been dominated by neoliberal theoreticians for far too long. It needs bringing back to the real world. ..."
"... i went to the LSE to study maths and statistics with a sprinkling of economics (my first taste of it at the time). after a few months i was of the opinion it is based on terrible assumptions. e.g. the needs of the average consumer, which are then blown up into fantastical macroeconomical proportions which only led to flawed arguments. The subsequent financial crisis only backed this up. ..."
What a ghastly indictment of Manchester, and other economics departments - obviously being
very economic with their subject. Sounds a bit like the Natural Sciences departments being run
by creationists.
This should be the first class for the whole students in economics.
What are the limits in ecology ecosystem? And what are the needs/capacities for human flourishing?
Adventures in New Economics 2: Donut Economics, Kate Raworth
This is an open/complex map with a compass in values that I've built trying to go through both
main concepts. It's valid for personal development / companies / communities / nations / whole
planet.
This has echoes of a protest by students in 2011 at Harvard when a group of students walked
out of the lectures by Dr Gregory Manilow. What has happened to them?
I personally have observed in other disciplines that teaching tends to be a generation behind
current thinking, Particularly when it has more to do with ideology than science.
Some ten years ago, a movement called the Post-Autistic Ecomoncs Movement had a considerable
influence in Europe but has no doubt disappeared in the face of the greed which is central supporting
feature of today's neoliberalism.
i went to the LSE to study maths and statistics with a sprinkling of economics (my first
taste of it at the time). after a few months i was of the opinion it is based on terrible assumptions.
e.g. the needs of the average consumer, which are then blown up into fantastical macroeconomical
proportions which only led to flawed arguments. The subsequent financial crisis only backed this
up.
I commend this thinking by the students but if I was one of their parents forking out 27k i
would probably tell them to pass the exams they need to and get out and start earning.
LSE is a godawful uni also, unless you have given spawn to gordon gekko dont bother with it.
Alternative theories and models??? Well they are currently practiced by North Korea and these
students will be more than welcomed by the Kim family to ply their trade there.
Actually, "alternative theories" were practiced by South Korea, which has been quite a success
story. It's not either the status quo or state communism, you know.
For an understanding of how we came to have thrust upon us the "Dismal Science" of neo-classical
economics, which took shape in the 1880's - 1890's, I recommend reading "The Corruption of Economics"
by Mason Gaffney.
Essentially, economic thinking was hijacked by the robber barons who through building and funding
universities were able to subvert the teaching of economics to suit their own agenda. Classical
economics with a sound basis of three factors of production was replaced by voodhoo economics
which reduced the three factors of production to only two. Whereas once "land" was a factor of
production in its own right alongside "capital" and "labour", it was magicked away to be incorporated
as "capital" for the purpose of the land owning robber barons.
As anyone with a few braincells would know, "land" is a distinct factor of production in its
own right, and not only that, it is the primary factor since neither "capital" or "labour" would
exist without it. But "land" can exist without both the other two factors which makes it unique
and makes it primary and yet voodhoo economics has managed to hide this fact so well through the
employment of clever mathematics to create an illusion of being a solid discipline.
Neoclassical economics is the idiom of most economic discourse today. It is the paradigm
that bends the twigs of young minds. Then it confines the florescence of older ones, like chicken-wire
shaping a topiary. It took form about a hundred years ago, when Henry George and his reform
proposals were a clear and present political danger and challenge to the landed and intellectual
establishments of the world. Few people realize to what a degree the founders of Neoclassical
economics changed the discipline for the express purpose of deflecting George, discomfiting
his followers, and frustrating future students seeking to follow his arguments. The stratagem
was semantic: to destroy the very words in which he expressed himself.
To most modern readers, probably George seems too minor a figure to have warranted such an
extreme reaction. This impression is a measure of the neo-classicals' success: it is what they
sought to make of him. It took a generation, but by 1930 they had succeeded in reducing him
in the public mind. In the process of succeeding, however, they emasculated the discipline,
impoverished economic thought, muddled the minds of countless students, rationalized free-riding
by landowners, took dignity from labor, rationalized chronic unemployment, hobbled us with
today's counterproductive tax tangle, marginalized the obvious alternative system of public
finance, shattered our sense of community, subverted a rising economic democracy for the benefit
of rent-takers, and led us into becoming an increasingly nasty and dangerously divided plutocracy.
Not one economics graduate have I met that has heard of Henry George but yet they have all
heard of Karl Marx. The robber barons and their useful idiots have certainly achieved what they
set out to do.
As clarification the two paragraphs in italics are excerpts from the "Corruption of Economics"
by Mason Gaffney. The link to Henry George's "Progress and Poverty" is,
http://www.henrygeorge.org/pcontents.htm
"... Then Economic History was virtually withdrawn from university Economics and other courses so that only the"lies" would be taught backed up by unquestioned (i.e. purely deductive) Mathematics. It is an academic crime ..."
If a viable economic solution emerged from the universities - one which remedied the classical
models and trumped the broken neo-liberal systems, how would we recognise it?
To provide some context - and I am in no way qualified to discuss this topic really but, the
first machines to produce logic emerging from Bletchley park were not fully recognised for their
potential - the computer revolution took place elsewhere. The UK is absolute rubbish at recognising
innovation!
Good luck to the students. I hope many more get involved in this debate.
I taught Economics for forty years and over 30 of those to Singaporean scholars destined to
Oxford, Cambridge and Ivy League universities; in all those years I was aware of the lies I had
to teach in order to pass university entrance exams.
I attempted to follow the thesis that every economic theory however old or new was attempting
to answer a unique contemporary economic problem and therefore only Economic History was of relevance
in understanding a theory be Adam Smith or Keynes or even (unacademically) Thatcherism.
My students found all such information useless to passing Economics exams but interesting for
"life".
Then Economic History was virtually withdrawn from university Economics and other courses
so that only the"lies" would be taught backed up by unquestioned (i.e. purely deductive) Mathematics.
It is an academic crime.
"... Neoliberal economics not only led to the crash of 2007/8 it is continuing to wreak havoc. A
good current example is pension schemes - something we will depend on one day. They are valued using
the purest form of free market thinking: the efficient markets hypothesis - the idea that asset markets
always perfectly embody all relevant information. It is akin to belief in magic. ..."
"... It is amazing to read how narrow economics education is in modern Britain. It is not only intellectually
unenlightened and literally dangerous, given the power many economics graduates can wield, amplified
by the extraordinary sums and resources they manage, it also does a great disservice to people who are
entitled to a proper education which, clearly, they are not receiving in this monotheistic model. ..."
"... It reminds me precisely of the so-called "religious education" I received in Ireland which
was nothing of the sort. All I got was instruction in Catholic doctrine and ethics; there was no instruction
in the beliefs of any other Christian sects, let alone what goes on in the other major world religions
such as Hinduism, Judaism, or Islam. What I know about them I taught myself in later life. ..."
"... It seems that the same shameful parochial narrowness, intellectual provincialism, and "one
true religion" ethic prevails in British economic so-called "education". ..."
"... On another matter, the revelation that economists "ignore empirical evidence that contradicts
mainstream theories" destroys any notion that economics is a science, a silly claim I have always opposed.
All that it reveals is that economists have no idea what science is. ..."
Neoliberal economics not only led to the crash of 2007/8 it is continuing to wreak havoc.
A good current example is pension schemes - something we will depend on one day. They are valued
using the purest form of free market thinking: the efficient markets hypothesis - the idea that
asset markets always perfectly embody all relevant information. It is akin to belief in magic.
Yet many professionals who run pension schemes and the government regulator all support it's
use because it suits them - it deflects responsibility from them while they continue to be paid.
It's effects on society are disastrous as it leads us to believe are insolvent. The government
and actuarial profession accepted all this and enshrined it in law.
A topical example is the universities pension scheme the USS which BBC Newsnight and Radio
4 have just told us has a 'black hole' of a deficit.
Many of us thought that the EMH would ditched after its spectacular failure but no. Zombie
theories continue on their path of destruction.
It is amazing to read how narrow economics education is in modern Britain. It is not only
intellectually unenlightened and literally dangerous, given the power many economics graduates
can wield, amplified by the extraordinary sums and resources they manage, it also does a great
disservice to people who are entitled to a proper education which, clearly, they are not receiving
in this monotheistic model.
It reminds me precisely of the so-called "religious education" I received in Ireland which
was nothing of the sort. All I got was instruction in Catholic doctrine and ethics; there was
no instruction in the beliefs of any other Christian sects, let alone what goes on in the other
major world religions such as Hinduism, Judaism, or Islam. What I know about them I taught myself
in later life.
It seems that the same shameful parochial narrowness, intellectual provincialism, and "one
true religion" ethic prevails in British economic so-called "education". Intellectuals ought
to be utterly ashamed to propagate such blinkered views. Anyone who has never heard of Keynes
is culturally illiterate; that an economics student, in particular, has never heard of Keynes
is a disgrace.
On another matter, the revelation that economists "ignore empirical evidence that contradicts
mainstream theories" destroys any notion that economics is a science, a silly claim I have always
opposed. All that it reveals is that economists have no idea what science is.
Delong is a typical neoliberal stooge, not that different from Mankiw, or Summers
Note that the terms "neoliberalism", "neo-classical economics" and "financial oligarchy" were
never used...
Notable quotes:
"... "DeLong's takeaway is that economists do need to recognize that they operate in a political environment (the sewers of Romulus) in which their work will be seized upon by interested groups, with real practical outcomes. " ..."
"... UE's conclusion is that mainstream economics needs to be taken down several notches, which would open more space for alternative approaches to economics and, indeed, alternative approaches to policy that place more weight on human outcomes, broadly understood, than the formalistic criteria of efficiency, etc. ..."
"... Simon-Wren Lewis (SWL) and Chris Dillow have both recently argued that criticising economics for the 2008 financial crisis distracts from the real source of the blame, which is banks, and therefore undermines the progressive cause. While I don't disagree that the banks deserve blame, I want to push back a bit on their argument that economics as a discipline has little to do with regressive ideas. ..."
"... Consider the case of monopoly. The economics textbooks may be against monopoly, but this is largely on the grounds that it reduces consumer welfare by increasing prices. Building on this logic, the Chicago School of anti-trust regulation has shifted the focus of anti-trust law to lowering prices for consumers. As this recent article on Amazon details, this has hidden other forms of monopoly abuse such as predatory pricing, market dominance and reduced bargaining power for workers, consumers and smaller companies. ..."
"... Or consider Reinhart and Rogoff's famous '90% debt threshold', where their statistics purportedly showed that after a country reaches 90% of sovereign debt, its growth would stall. This was used by many politicians, including George Osborne, to justify austerity - until it was revealed to be based on 'statistical errors'. Sure, R & R received a fair amount of flak for this, but they have been incredibly stubborn about the result. Where was the formal, institutional denunciation of such a glaring error from the economics profession, and of the politicians who used it to justify their regressive policies? Why are R & R still allowed to comment on the matter with even an ounce of credibility? The case for austerity undoubtedly didn't hinge on this research alone, but imagine if a politician cited faulty medical research to approve their policies - would institutions like the BMA not feel a responsibility to condemn it? (Answer: yes, even when the politician was in another country). ..."
"... There are many more examples like this, such as Andrei Shleifer, who despite being prosecuted for fraud in post-Soviet Russia was awarded the John Bates Clark medal, probably the second most prestigious prize in the discipline, was subsequently allowed to publish papers in respected journals about how well privatisation went in Russia, and was eventually bailed out of the case by his incredibly wealthy university to the tune of $26 million. This is not to mention the disastrous Russian privatisation as a whole and the role of certain economists/economic ideas in it. ..."
"... Even worse were the Chicago boys, who advised Augusto Pinochet's horrific economic policies (and no, they were not just humble advisors, they were knee deep in the absolute worst excesses of the regime.) Without any substantive ethical code and without procedures for weeding out corrupt, dishonest or discredited work, the profession creates an environment where people can act like this and get away with it, all under the banner of the intellectual credibility 'economics' seems to confer on people. ..."
"... Mainstream economists have used mathematics to hide ideology. ..."
"... They have cherry-picked mathematical constructions with highly restrictive, idealized properties and then wedged-in economic parameters to fit their purposes. That is the case with the neoclassical production function and with the Arrow-Debreu general equilibrium model. The objective was to "prove" that economies free from government control were "natural" and best. They have been sophists from their first emergence. ..."
"... Science is not capable of devising a theory that adequately explains all the human elements and serendipitous effects of an economy - and may never be capable. However, humans are capable of organizing a society according to their needs and wants. They do it on a corporate scale all the time. It isn't perfect but it works pretty well. ..."
"... Mainstream economists have fought against a managed economy because it would reduce the influence of themselves and their plutocrat sponsors. ..."
"DeLong's takeaway is that economists do need to recognize that they operate in a political
environment (the sewers of Romulus) in which their work will be seized upon by interested groups,
with real practical outcomes. "
Economics: Part of the Rot, Part of the Treatment, or Some of Each?
Is mainstream economics, with its false certitudes and ideological biases, one of the reasons
for the dismal state of policy debate in countries like the UK and the US, or are its rigorous
methods an important antidote to the ruling political foggery? That's being debated right now,
live online.
Our starting point is a post on Unlearning Economics, dated March 5, which argues that the
flaws of mainstream economics contribute to lousy policy on several fronts: downplaying the role
of monopoly, cheerleading for the shareholder value imperative in the corporate world, knee-jerk
support for trade agreements under the banner of comparative advantage, and regressive macroeconomic
policy, among others. A particularly pointed paragraph brought up the Reinhart-Rogoff 90% affair
and accused the economics profession of dereliction of duty by not taking action to rebuke the
wrongdoers:
Where was the formal, institutional denunciation of such a glaring error from the economics
profession, and of the politicians who used it to justify their regressive policies?
UE's conclusion is that mainstream economics needs to be taken down several notches, which
would open more space for alternative approaches to economics and, indeed, alternative approaches
to policy that place more weight on human outcomes, broadly understood, than the formalistic criteria
of efficiency, etc.
Simon Wren-Lewis responded by arguing that UE has it exactly backwards. Restricting himself
to UE's critique of macroeconomics, SWL says, yes, reactionary politicians have invoked "economics"
to support austerity, but "real" economists for the most part have not gone along. True, there
were a few, like Reinhart and Rogoff and those in the employ of the British financial sector ("City
economists") who took a public stand against sensible Keynesian policies in the wake of the financial
crisis, but they were a minority, and, in any case, what would you want to do about them? Economists,
like professionals in any field, will disagree sometimes, and having a centralized agency to enforce
a false consensus would ultimately work against progressives and dissenters, not for them. Let's
put the blame where it really belongs, says SWL-on the politicians and pundits who have brushed
aside decades of theoretical and empirical work to promulgate a reactionary, fact-free discourse
on economic policy.
Yes-but, adds Brad DeLong. He largely agrees with SWL, but delves more deeply into the Reinhart-Rogoff
affair. He shows that, even without the famed Excel glitch, a cursory look would reveal that R-R
were trumpeting nonexistent results:
The 90% debt cliff was an artifact of the way R-R set up their bins. Replace binning with
a continuous relationship between growth and debt and the cliff disappears.
The correlation between growth and debt supported no particular causal interpretation,
and R-R provided no other evidence to support their particular causal argument.
The correlation itself was so weak that the practical implication of R-R's claim was nil.
Fiscal stimulus that could make or break a recovery was being rejected on the basis of future
economic growth effects that would be too small to measure.
So the R-R claim that fiscal consolidation was necessary and urgent was unfounded from the
get-go, and these two were both respected mainstream economists, so what can we infer? DeLong's
takeaway is that economists do need to recognize that they operate in a political environment
(the sewers of Romulus) in which their work will be seized upon by interested groups, with real
practical outcomes. In this situation, the profession as a whole has a responsibility to assess
high profile but dubious work. Although he isn't explicit, my reading is that DeLong wants some
sort of professional quality control, but not institutionalized in the way UE seems to call for.
"reactionary politicians have invoked "economics" to support austerity, but "real" economists
for the most part have not gone along. True, there were a few, like Reinhart and Rogoff and those
in the employ of the British financial sector ("City economists") who took a public stand against
sensible Keynesian policies in the wake of the financial crisis, but they were a minority, and,
in any case, what would you want to do about them? Economists, like professionals in any field,
will disagree sometimes, and having a centralized agency to enforce a false consensus would ultimately
work against progressives and dissenters, not for them. Let's put the blame where it really belongs,
says SWL-on the politicians and pundits who have brushed aside decades of theoretical and empirical
work to promulgate a reactionary, fact-free discourse on economic policy."
Simon-Wren Lewis (SWL) and Chris Dillow have both recently argued that criticising economics
for the 2008 financial crisis distracts from the real source of the blame, which is banks, and
therefore undermines the progressive cause. While I don't disagree that the banks deserve blame,
I want to push back a bit on their argument that economics as a discipline has little to do with
regressive ideas.
But firstly, it is my view that criticising economics needn't have an ideological motivation.
Many critics, myself included, simply believe that neoclassical economics has severe shortcomings
and that in order to understand the economic system properly we need better ideas. In many cases
criticisms of neoclassical economics are so abstract that it's not even clear to me what the political
implications of either side would be (e.g. the fact that Arrow-Debreu equilibrium might be unstable
has no bearing on my view of whether capitalism itself is). I respect both SWL and Dillow immensely,
but taken alone I consider this line of argument a rather feeble attempt to shut down an important
scientific and philosophical debate.
Despite this, the point has some force to it: why devote so much intellectual effort to criticising
economics when we could be devoting it to getting the big banks and other corporate wrongdoers?
And here I think SWL and Dillow both paper over the extent to which economics has served those
in power, as I will try to illustrate with a number of examples. To be clear, I'm not 'blaming'
economists for all of these occurrences, but I do think the discipline seems to eschew responsibility
for them, and that progressive economists have a blind spot when it comes to the practical consequences
of their discipline.
Economics in Practice
I've always acknowledged that economists themselves are probably more progressive than they're
usually given credit for. Nevertheless, the absence of things like power, exploitation, poverty,
inequality, conflict, and disaster in most mainstream models - centred as they are around a norm
of well-functioning markets, and focused on banal criteria like prices, output and efficiency - tends
to anodise the subject matter. In practice, this vision of the economy detracts attention from
important social issues and can even serve to conceal outright abuses. The result is that in practice,
the influence of economics has often been more regressive than progressive.
Consider the case of monopoly. The economics textbooks may be against monopoly, but this
is largely on the grounds that it reduces consumer welfare by increasing prices. Building on this
logic, the Chicago School of anti-trust regulation has shifted the focus of anti-trust law to
lowering prices for consumers. As this recent article on Amazon details, this has hidden other
forms of monopoly abuse such as predatory pricing, market dominance and reduced bargaining power
for workers, consumers and smaller companies.
Similarly, textbook ideas about profit maximisation and rational agents responding to incentives
featured prominently in the promotion of shareholder value by Milton Friedman and other economists,
which has been dominant over the past few decades and has been instrumental in increasing inequality
and corporate short-termism. The potential macroeconomic impacts of corporate concentration have
also been ignored by discipline until very recently - a consequence, perhaps, of the narrowing
of particular subfields and the neglection of more critical systemic analysis (something similar
could perhaps be said for the 2016 Prize in contract theory, though I am no expert in this area).
One type of institution which is dominated by economic ideas is central banks, yet many of
their policies have had regressive elements. For instance, SWL praises economists at the Bank
of England for implementing Quantitative Easing, but forgets that the Bank itself admitted that
this has disproportionately benefited the wealthy. This problem goes even deeper: as J W Mason
has argued, inflation targeting - a key central bank policy across the world - in practice results
in workers' wages being kept down and their jobs being made more insecure in the name of combating
inflation. In both cases what is painted as a relatively benign process - reducing interest rates
and managing inflation, respectively - actually has quite serious social consequences, which generally
aren't discussed in class or by policymakers.
In the realm of international trade, economists have been all too inclined to support trade
deals - often quite vociferously - on the basis of simple ideas like comparative advantage, while
ignoring (a) the actual details of the trade deals, which as Dean Baker frequently points out,
tend to favour the rich and corporations and (b) their own more complex economic models, which
as Dani Rodrik frequently points out, do imply that trade will harm some people while benefitting
others. Uneven and unfair international trade has been a key element of the harm to workers over
the past few decades, and was undoubtedly a factor in the election of Trump.
Global trade institutions like the IMF and World Bank have been dominated by economics since
their inception, and using economics they inflicted massive pain through their free market 'structural
adjustment' policies, which can only be described as regressive but which were fundamentally based
on context-free neoclassical ideas about markets. True, these institutions may have softened somewhat
in recent years, but that doesn't undo the harm they have caused. In fact, even their more recent
'bottom up' policies such as microcredit and Randomised Control Trials - both inspired by economic
ideas - often seem to have benefited global and local elites at the expensive of the poorest.
As Jamie Galbraith once noted in the context of the financial crisis, the discipline just has
a blind spot for how ideas interact with power to produce unfair outcomes, sometimes taking the
form of outright abuse and fraud. Which leads me nicely to my next argument.
Abusing Economics
Economists may complain that economic ideas have been misused by vested interests, and that
this isn't their responsibility. But a huge problem with the discipline of economics is that it
has virtually no institutional shields against mistakes and wrongdoing. Merton and Scholes won
the biggest prize in the profession for their model of financial markets - which had become commonly
adopted in options trading - in 1997. A year later those same economists required a hefty bailout
when the use of their model was implicated in the collapse of the hedge fund Long-Term Capital
Management, where they were both partners. Was the prize revoked? No. Were they discredited? No.
Actually, even the model is still widely used, despite massively underestimating fat tails and
therefore being implicated in a number of other financial crises, including 2008.
Or consider Reinhart and Rogoff's famous '90% debt threshold', where their statistics purportedly
showed that after a country reaches 90% of sovereign debt, its growth would stall. This was used
by many politicians, including George Osborne, to justify austerity - until it was revealed to
be based on 'statistical errors'. Sure, R & R received a fair amount of flak for this, but they
have been incredibly stubborn about the result. Where was the formal, institutional denunciation
of such a glaring error from the economics profession, and of the politicians who used it to justify
their regressive policies? Why are R & R still allowed to comment on the matter with even an ounce
of credibility? The case for austerity undoubtedly didn't hinge on this research alone, but imagine
if a politician cited faulty medical research to approve their policies - would institutions like
the BMA not feel a responsibility to condemn it? (Answer: yes, even when the politician was in
another country).
There are many more examples like this, such as Andrei Shleifer, who despite being prosecuted
for fraud in post-Soviet Russia was awarded the John Bates Clark medal, probably the second most
prestigious prize in the discipline, was subsequently allowed to publish papers in respected journals
about how well privatisation went in Russia, and was eventually bailed out of the case by his
incredibly wealthy university to the tune of $26 million. This is not to mention the disastrous
Russian privatisation as a whole and the role of certain economists/economic ideas in it.
Even worse were the Chicago boys, who advised Augusto Pinochet's horrific economic policies
(and no, they were not just humble advisors, they were knee deep in the absolute worst excesses
of the regime.) Without any substantive ethical code and without procedures for weeding out corrupt,
dishonest or discredited work, the profession creates an environment where people can act like
this and get away with it, all under the banner of the intellectual credibility 'economics' seems
to confer on people.
And this leads me to my last point, which is the rhetorical power that invoking 'economics'
has in contemporary politics. 'You don't understand economics' is - rightly or wrongly - a common
refrain of those attacking progressive policies such as Ed Miliband's proposed energy price freeze,
the minimum wage, or fiscal expansion. As with the above abuses of economics, those such as SWL
complain (perhaps correctly) that these are inaccurate representations of the field.
But these same economists then invoke 'economics' in a similar way to justify their own policies.
In my opinion, this only reinforces the dominance of economics and narrows the debate, a process
which is inherently regressive. The case against austerity does not depend on whether it is 'good
economics', but on its human impact. Nor does the case for combating climate change depend on
the present discounted value of future costs to GDP. Reclaiming political debate from the grip
of economics will make the human side of politics more central, and so can only serve a progressive
purpose.
Think about how Republicans use "Science" and scientists fight back against their misuse. In recent
decades Republicans have left the field and now "scientist" has become a bad word for them.
Mainstream economists have used mathematics to hide ideology.
They have cherry-picked mathematical constructions with highly restrictive, idealized properties
and then wedged-in economic parameters to fit their purposes. That is the case with the neoclassical
production function and with the Arrow-Debreu general equilibrium model. The objective was to
"prove" that economies free from government control were "natural" and best. They have been sophists
from their first emergence.
In the 1950s, Arrow and others proved a theorem that, many economists believe, put a rigorous
mathematical foundation beneath Adam Smith's idea of the invisible hand. The theorem shows --
in a highly abstract model -- that producers and consumers can match their desires perfectly,
given a particular set of prices.
In this rarified atmosphere of "general equilibrium," economic activity might take place efficiently
without any central coordination, simply as a result of people pursuing their self-interest.
It's an insight that economists have used to argue for de-unionization, globalization and financial
deregulation, all in the name of removing various frictions or distortions that prevent markets
from achieving the elusive equilibrium.
Yet the theorem trails a dense cloud of caveats, which Arrow himself recognized could be more
important than the proof itself. For one, it worked only in a perfect world, far removed from
the one humans actually inhabit.
Equilibrium is merely one of many conceivable states of that world; there's no particular reason
to believe that the economy would naturally tend toward it. Beautiful as the math may be, actual
experience suggests that its magical efficiency is purely theoretical, and a poor guide to reality.
Remarkably, academic macroeconomists have largely ignored these limitations, and continue to
teach the general equilibrium model -- and more modern variants with same fatal weaknesses --
as a decent approximation of reality.
Economists routinely use the framework to form their views on everything from taxation to global
trade -- portraying it as a value-free, scientific approach, when in fact it carries a hidden
ideology that casts completely free markets as the ideal.
Thus, when markets break down, the solution inevitably entails removing barriers to their proper
functioning: privatize healthcare, education or social security, keep working to free up trade,
or make labor markets more "flexible."
Those prescriptions have all too often failed, as the 2008 financial crisis eloquently demonstrated.
The result is widespread distrust of economic experts and rejection of globalization.
In his recent book "Economism: Bad Economics and the Rise of Inequality," James Kwak credits
conservative think tanks funded by corporations and the wealthy for spreading the oversimplified
belief in markets as wise machines for producing optimal social outcomes. He certainly has a point,
yet such propaganda stemmed from an intellectual model that had been lurking at the center of
economics all along -- and remains there now, still widely revered.
This perversion isn't Arrow's fault. He merely helped to prove a mathematical theorem, and
was no blind advocate for markets. Indeed, he actually thought the theorem illustrated the limitations
of capitalism, and he was prescient in understanding how economic inequality might come to impair
the workings of democratic government.
Perhaps it would be best to use his own words: "In a system where virtually all resources are
available for a price, economic power can be translated into political power by channels too obvious
for mention. In a capitalist society, economic power is very unequally distributed, and hence
democratic government is inevitably something of a sham."
Comment on Simon Wren-Lewis on 'On criticizing the existence of mainstream economics'
There is no such thing as economics, there are FOUR economixes and they are constantly played
against each other. First, there is theoretical and political economics. The crucial distinction
within theoretical economics is true/false, the crucial distinction within political economics
good/bad. Economics exhausts itself since 200+ years in crossover discussion, that is, by NOT
keeping science and politics properly apart. As a result, it got neither science nor politics
right.
Heterodox economists say that orthodox economics is false and in this very general sense they
are right. Heterodox economists have debunked much of Orthodoxy but this has not enabled them
to work out a superior alternative. The proper task of Heterodoxy is not the repetitive critique
of Orthodoxy but to fully replace it, that is, to perform a paradigm shift: "The problem is not
just to say that something might be wrong, but to replace it by something ― and that is not so
easy." (Feynman)
Because Heterodoxy has never developed a valid alternative it advocates pluralism, more precisely,
the pluralism of false theories. The argument boils down to: if Orthodoxy is allowed to sell their
rubbish in the curriculum, Heterodoxy must also be allowed to sell their rubbish. Economics is
not so much a heroic struggle about scientific truth but about a better place at the academic
trough.
The fact of the matter is that neither Orthodoxy nor Heterodoxy has the true theory and that,
by consequence, the political arguments of BOTH sides have NO sound scientific foundation.
Traditional Heterodoxy knows quite well that it has nothing to offer in the way of progressive
science and therefore argues for dumping scientific standards altogether and to focus on politics
pure and simple: "The case against austerity does not depend on whether it is 'good economics',
but on its human impact. Nor does the case for combating climate change depend on the present
discounted value of future costs to GDP. Reclaiming political debate from the grip of economics
will make the human side of politics more central, and so can only serve a progressive purpose."
This is a good idea, economists should no longer pretend to do science but openly push their
respective political agendas, after all, this is what they have actually done the past 200+ years.
Neither Orthodoxy nor traditional Heterodoxy satisfies the scientific criteria of material and
formal consistency. So, both, orthodox and heterodox economists have to get out of science because
of incurable incompetence.
It was John Stuart Mill who told economists that they must decide themselves between science
and politics: "A scientific observer or reasoner, merely as such, is not an adviser for practice.
His part is only to show that certain consequences follow from certain causes, and that to obtain
certain ends, certain means are the most effectual. Whether the ends themselves are such as ought
to be pursued, and if so, in what cases and to how great a length, it is no part of his business
as a cultivator of science to decide, and science alone will never qualify him for the decision."
Both, orthodox and heterodox economists violate the principle of the separation of science
and politics on a daily basis. Economics is what Feynman famously called cargo cult science and
neither right wing nor left wing economic policy guidance has a sound scientific foundation since
Adam Smith/Karl Marx. It is high time that economics frees itself from the corrupting grip of
politics.
Science is not capable of devising a theory that adequately explains all the human elements
and serendipitous effects of an economy - and may never be capable. However, humans are capable
of organizing a society according to their needs and wants. They do it on a corporate scale all
the time. It isn't perfect but it works pretty well.
Mainstream economists have fought against a managed economy because it would reduce the
influence of themselves and their plutocrat sponsors.
"The story of inequality they tell is also one which is essentially technology based (IT and
outsourcing), as they find that inequality is almost entirely driven by changes in between firm
inequality. They deserve credit for presenting an interesting set of facts.
However, while intriguing, I'm not yet totally convinced this is the key to understanding inequality.
Macromon [sic] also had an excellent discussion of this research awhile back...
...
I took issue with this comment "Since 1980, income inequality has risen sharply in most developed
economies". As my blog readers know, income inequality has not risen dramatically in Germany,
France, Japan, or Sweden according to Alvaredo et al.. Thus, this comment threw me: "This means
that the rising gap in pay between firms accounts for the large majority of the increase in income
inequality in the United States. It also accounts for at least a substantial part in other countries,
as research conducted in the UK, Germany, and Sweden demonstrates." Right, but the increases in
inequality in Germany and Sweden have been quite minor relative to the US, and are also associated
with changes in top marginal tax rates. So, between firm inequality isn't actually explaining
much is what I'm hearing.
"the profession as a whole has a responsibility to assess high profile but dubious work."
As in that awful paper by Gerald Friedman. Peter Dorman ripped it. I ripped. And yes the Romers
ripped it.
That is what economists are suppose to do. But you have whined about this for the last 14 months.
Reply Monday, March 27, 2017 at 07:47 AM
Yes it was a priority to demonize Friedman b/c he was coming from the left and was supposedly
supporting Bernie Sanders. It was a way for the center-left to discredit Bernie Sanders and call
him "unPresidential" and "unserious" as Hillary did.
Meawhile PGL continuously name-drops Mankiw as if he has a man crush on him.
"... You don't need to look very far to see the neoliberal ideal; it is all around us: everything a commodity, including human beings; massive differentials in life chances; sweat shops for producers juxtaposed with unimaginable wealth for the owners of capital; everybody on their own, the rolling back of collective provision and no such thing as society. ..."
"... Instead, the neoliberals talk of freedom and choice, but in reality it is freedom for the few to exploit the many and the choice to take whatever crumbs are offered to you or starve. ..."
"... Agree, but it's not that they don't talk about it. The use mathematics as a way to underscore what is essentially an ideological position. It gives them an aura of objectivity, impartiality and scientific truth which, given their prepositions about utility maximization and unbounded growth, they frankly don't have. ..."
Keynes viewed economics as a branch of philosophy. At its heart are two questions - What is
the nature of man? and What sort of society should we create? The focus on mathematical models,
based upon free-market theories, has long been a victory for ivory towers over reality. Sure,
they have an important role to play, but when they are at the centre of what is taught at universities
something has gone wrong.
The neoliberals also have strong views on the kind of society they would like to create, but
they don't talk about it often, because very few people would vote for it.
You don't need to look very far to see the neoliberal ideal; it is all around us: everything
a commodity, including human beings; massive differentials in life chances; sweat shops for producers
juxtaposed with unimaginable wealth for the owners of capital; everybody on their own, the rolling
back of collective provision and no such thing as society.
Instead, the neoliberals talk of freedom and choice, but in reality it is freedom for the
few to exploit the many and the choice to take whatever crumbs are offered to you or starve.
Agree, but it's not that they don't talk about it. The use mathematics as a way to underscore
what is essentially an ideological position. It gives them an aura of objectivity, impartiality
and scientific truth which, given their prepositions about utility maximization and unbounded
growth, they frankly don't have.
"... Few mainstream economists predicted the global financial crash of 2008 and academics have been accused of acting as cheerleaders for the often labyrinthine financial models behind the crisis. Now a growing band of university students are plotting a quiet revolution against orthodox free-market teaching, arguing that alternative ways of thinking have been pushed to the margins. ..."
"... Our starting point is a post on Unlearning Economics, dated March 5, which argues that the flaws of mainstream economics contribute to lousy policy on several fronts: downplaying the role of monopoly, cheerleading for the shareholder value imperative in the corporate world, knee-jerk support for trade agreements under the banner of comparative advantage, and regressive macroeconomic policy, among others. A particularly pointed paragraph brought up the Reinhart-Rogoff 90% affair and accused the economics profession of dereliction of duty by not taking action to rebuke the wrongdoers: ..."
"... Simon Wren-Lewis responded by arguing that UE has it exactly backwards. Restricting himself to UE's critique of macroeconomics, SWL says, yes, reactionary politicians have invoked "economics" to support austerity, but "real" economists for the most part have not gone along. True, there were a few, like Reinhart and Rogoff and those in the employ of the British financial sector ("City economists") who took a public stand against sensible Keynesian policies in the wake of the financial crisis, but they were a minority, and, in any case, what would you want to do about them? Economists, like professionals in any field, will disagree sometimes, and having a centralized agency to enforce a false consensus would ultimately work against progressives and dissenters, not for them. Let's put the blame where it really belongs, says SWL-on the politicians and pundits who have brushed aside decades of theoretical and empirical work to promulgate a reactionary, fact-free discourse on economic policy. ..."
So true; "SWL has never addressed what is happening in the real world."
And that's the reason UK economics students revolted: "Few mainstream economists predicted
the global financial crash of 2008 and academics have been accused of acting as cheerleaders for
the often labyrinthine financial models behind the crisis. Now a growing band of university students
are plotting a quiet revolution against orthodox free-market teaching, arguing that alternative
ways of thinking have been pushed to the margins.
Economics undergraduates at the University of Manchester have formed the Post-Crash Economics
Society, which they hope will be copied by universities across the country. The organisers criticise
university courses for doing little to explain why economists failed to warn about the global
financial crisis and for having too heavy a focus on training students for City jobs."
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/oct/24/students-post-crash-economics
pgl is a classic example. He regularly preaches what theory says but is clueless to explain
what's really happening.
Economics: Part of the Rot, Part of the Treatment, or Some of Each?
Is mainstream economics, with its false certitudes and ideological biases, one of the reasons
for the dismal state of policy debate in countries like the UK and the US, or are its rigorous
methods an important antidote to the ruling political foggery? That's being debated right now,
live online.
Our starting point is a post on Unlearning Economics, dated March 5, which argues that
the flaws of mainstream economics contribute to lousy policy on several fronts: downplaying the
role of monopoly, cheerleading for the shareholder value imperative in the corporate world, knee-jerk
support for trade agreements under the banner of comparative advantage, and regressive macroeconomic
policy, among others. A particularly pointed paragraph brought up the Reinhart-Rogoff 90% affair
and accused the economics profession of dereliction of duty by not taking action to rebuke the
wrongdoers:
Where was the formal, institutional denunciation of such a glaring error from the economics
profession, and of the politicians who used it to justify their regressive policies?
UE's conclusion is that mainstream economics needs to be taken down several notches, which
would open more space for alternative approaches to economics and, indeed, alternative approaches
to policy that place more weight on human outcomes, broadly understood, than the formalistic criteria
of efficiency, etc.
Simon Wren-Lewis responded by arguing that UE has it exactly backwards. Restricting himself
to UE's critique of macroeconomics, SWL says, yes, reactionary politicians have invoked "economics"
to support austerity, but "real" economists for the most part have not gone along. True, there
were a few, like Reinhart and Rogoff and those in the employ of the British financial sector ("City
economists") who took a public stand against sensible Keynesian policies in the wake of the financial
crisis, but they were a minority, and, in any case, what would you want to do about them? Economists,
like professionals in any field, will disagree sometimes, and having a centralized agency to enforce
a false consensus would ultimately work against progressives and dissenters, not for them. Let's
put the blame where it really belongs, says SWL-on the politicians and pundits who have brushed
aside decades of theoretical and empirical work to promulgate a reactionary, fact-free discourse
on economic policy.
Yes-but, adds Brad DeLong. He largely agrees with SWL, but delves more deeply into the Reinhart-Rogoff
affair. He shows that, even without the famed Excel glitch, a cursory look would reveal that R-R
were trumpeting nonexistent results:
The 90% debt cliff was an artifact of the way R-R set up their bins. Replace binning with
a continuous relationship between growth and debt and the cliff disappears.
The correlation between growth and debt supported no particular causal interpretation,
and R-R provided no other evidence to support their particular causal argument.
The correlation itself was so weak that the practical implication of R-R's claim was nil.
Fiscal stimulus that could make or break a recovery was being rejected on the basis of future
economic growth effects that would be too small to measure.
So the R-R claim that fiscal consolidation was necessary and urgent was unfounded from the
get-go, and these two were both respected mainstream economists, so what can we infer? DeLong's
takeaway is that economists do need to recognize that they operate in a political environment
(the sewers of Romulus) in which their work will be seized upon by interested groups, with real
practical outcomes. In this situation, the profession as a whole has a responsibility to assess
high profile but dubious work. Although he isn't explicit, my reading is that DeLong wants some
sort of professional quality control, but not institutionalized in the way UE seems to call for.
"... It was an eye opener that Universities are teaching only the neo-liberal model as the core syllabus. This is not education but indoctrination. Fair play to the group then who were passionate about the need for change and realise that it is up to them to effect that change. Good luck to them, I hope that they are successful in re-claiming education as a means of furthering understanding through questioning prevailing orthodoxy. ..."
"... Good luck. You may need it. You will be surprised at how much opposition you encounter and how remorseless and relentless it is. Look up the book "Political economy now!", about the experience at the University of Sydney. ..."
"... Economics is so discredited a subject that even students who have barley started studying realise that - with a few exceptions like Stiglitz or Schiller - it is total fabricated bullshit paid for by people with enough money to benefit from the lies it spreads. ..."
"... One of the biggest lies ever told the free market, as its never ever been a reality. ..."
"... Economists, like scientists and the rest of us, are always employed by someone and therein lies the problem: the conflict between what we believe to be the truth and what we are paid to do (or teach) to keep our job. Many economists (like investors & politicians) knew the crash would burst at some point but only those who enjoyed a seat outside the system would benefit from its prediction. ..."
Few mainstream economists predicted the global financial crash of 2008 and academics have been accused
of acting as cheerleaders for the often labyrinthine financial models behind the crisis. Now a growing
band of university students are plotting a quiet revolution against orthodox free-market teaching,
arguing that alternative ways of thinking have been pushed to the margins.
Economics undergraduates at the University of Manchester have formed the
Post-Crash Economics Society ,
which they hope will be copied by universities across the country. The organisers criticise university
courses for doing little to explain why economists failed to warn about the global financial crisis
and for having too heavy a focus on training students for City jobs.
A growing number of top economists, such as Ha-Joon Chang, who teaches economics at Cambridge
University, are backing the students.
Next month the society plans to publish a manifesto proposing sweeping reforms to the University
of Manchester's curriculum, with the hope that other institutions will follow suit.
Joe Earle, a spokesman for the Post-Crash
Economics Society and
a final-year undergraduate, said academic departments were "ignoring the crisis" and that, by neglecting
global developments and critics of the free market such as Keynes and Marx, the study of economics
was "in danger of losing its broader relevance".
Chang, who is a reader in the political economy of development at Cambridge, said he agreed with
the society's premise. The teaching of economics was increasingly confined to arcane mathematical
models, he said. "Students are not even prepared for the commercial world. Few [students] know what
is going on in China and how it influences the global economic situation. Even worse, I've met American
students who have never heard of Keynes."
In June a network of young economics students, thinkers and writers set up
Rethinking Economics , a campaign group
to challenge what they say is the predominant narrative in the subject.
Earle said students across Britain were being taught neoclassical economics "as if it was the
only theory".
He said: "It is given such a dominant position in our modules that many students aren't even aware
that there are other distinct theories out there that question the assumptions, methodologies and
conclusions of the economics we are taught."
Multiple-choice and maths questions dominate the first two years of economics degrees, which Earle
said meant most students stayed away from modules that required reading and essay-writing, such as
history of economic thought. "They think they just don't have the skills required for those sorts
of modules and they don't want to jeopardise their degree," he said. "As a consequence, economics
students never develop the faculties necessary to critically question, evaluate and compare economic
theories, and enter the working world with a false belief about what economics is and a knowledge
base limited to neoclassical theory."
In the decade before the 2008 crash, many economists dismissed warnings that property and stock
markets were overvalued. They argued that markets were correctly pricing shares, property and exotic
derivatives in line with economic models of behaviour. It was only when the US sub-prime mortgage
market unravelled that banks realised a collective failure to spot the bubble had wrecked their finances.
In his 2010 documentary Inside Job, Charles Ferguson highlighted how US academics had produced
hundreds of reports in support of the types of high-risk trading and debt-fuelled consumption that
triggered the crash.
Some leading economists have criticised university economics teaching, among them Paul Krugman,
a Nobel prize winner and professor at Princeton university who has attacked the complacency of economics
education in the US.
In an article for the New York Times in 2009,
Krugman wrote
: "As I see it, the economics profession went astray because economists, as a group, mistook
beauty, clad in impressive-looking mathematics, for truth."
Adam Posen, head of the Washington-based thinktank the Peterson Institute, said universities ignore
empirical evidence that contradicts mainstream theories in favour of "overly technical nonsense".
City economists attacked Joseph Stiglitz, the former World Bank chief economist, and Olivier Blanchard,
the current International Monetary Fund chief economist, when they criticised western governments
for cutting investment in the wake of the crash.
A Manchester University spokeman said that, as at other university courses around the world, economics
teaching at Manchester "focuses on mainstream approaches, reflecting the current state of the discipline".
He added: "It is also important for students' career prospects that they have an effective grounding
in the core elements of the subject.
"Many students at Manchester study economics in an interdisciplinary context alongside other social
sciences, especially philosophy, politics and sociology. Such students gain knowledge of different
kinds of approaches to examining social phenomena many modules taught by the department centre
on the use of quantitative techniques. These could just as easily be deployed in mainstream or non-mainstream
contexts." Since you're here
we've got a small favour to ask. More people are reading the Guardian than ever, but far fewer
are paying for it. Advertising revenues across the media are falling fast. And unlike many news organisations,
we haven't put up a paywall – we want to keep our journalism as open as we can . So you can see why
we need to ask for your help. The Guardian's independent, investigative journalism takes a lot of
time, money and hard work to produce. But we do it because we believe our perspective matters – because
it might well be your perspective, too.
If everyone who reads our reporting, who likes it, helps to support it, our future would be much
more secure.
I particularly like: Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite
world is either a madman or an economist. and
Economists are like computers. They need to have facts punched into them.
But my favourite is Mathematics brought rigor to Economics. Unfortunately, it also brought
mortis.
Good luck to this group. They are on the right lines.
Agreed, but they are fighting an uphill battle. Just look at how few (accademic) heterodox economists
actually work in economics departments. I think almost every heterdox economist I know works in
an non-economics school/faculty (i.e. schools/facultues of the environment, sustainability, sociology,
land use etc).
I spoke with some of the Post Crash group at a Peoples Assembly meeting recently. It was an
eye opener that Universities are teaching only the neo-liberal model as the core syllabus. This
is not education but indoctrination. Fair play to the group then who were passionate about the
need for change and realise that it is up to them to effect that change. Good luck to them, I
hope that they are successful in re-claiming education as a means of furthering understanding
through questioning prevailing orthodoxy.
Well said that man. Very well said. Unquestioning indoctrination has led us (all countries in
the world be they active participants or 'victims) to this sorry pass.
Basic economics should include the very basic idea that money is no more and no less than a
tool. If you strip money / the tool away from folk then they will either try and take your tool
from you or, if life becomes savage enough, they will fall by the wayside.
Does this generation and successive ones really want to walk over the bodies of others?
Without a profound readjustment and realignment of economic thinking, that is precisely what
is in store. Indeed, it is what has been set in motion already. Time for an urgent re-think before
more bodies litter the highways.
I heard recently about one man who had had such a re-think.
He was an American financial executive who was asked why he was taking early retirement and
going off to live in a little valley in the hills.
He replied: "Well, it is a lovely property with great scenery, fertile land and its own microhydroelectricity-----but
the really big attraction is that it puts 300 miles of armed hillbillies between me and the nearest
city"!!.
I do hope the chap in question doesn't end up regretting that he has deliberately placed himself
into a situation where there are 300 miles of armed hillbillies between himself and the nearest
city.
Good luck. You may need it. You will be surprised at how much opposition you encounter and
how remorseless and relentless it is. Look up the book "Political economy now!", about the experience
at the University of Sydney.
Exactly - the clue is in this statement from the University authorities...
It is also important for students' career prospects that they have an effective grounding
in the core elements of the subject.
Or in other words...
Students should be familar with the free market fair tales thrown up by rich, greedy bankers
and the right wing in order to earn money pandering the "correct" line
Economics is so discredited a subject that even students who have barley started studying
realise that - with a few exceptions like Stiglitz or Schiller - it is total fabricated bullshit
paid for by people with enough money to benefit from the lies it spreads.
One of the biggest lies ever told the free market, as its never ever been a reality.
Restrictions or prejudices ensure this, so such a philosophy deserves tearing up just like
their supporters who believe community and care are bad ideals. They call it socialism but it
is far from being a dirty word as it is about looking after all people on a more equal level,
so as to ensure the most vulnerable people in society are not left in a helpless and hopeless
position.
I heard recently about one man who had had such a re-think.
He was an American financial executive who was asked why he was taking early retirement and going
off to live in a little valley in the hills.
He replied: "Well, it is a lovely property with great scenery, fertile land and its own microhydroelectricity-----but
the really big attraction is that it puts 300 miles of armed hillbillies between me and the nearest
city"!!.
Thatcherist 'Reaganomics' was their response to the hissy fit Maggie threw at the 'grubby little
terrorist' Nelson Mandela when he started to put the kibosh on the elites cash cow of South African
apartheid, 4 decades of 'starving the beast' and media complicity in pushing the benefits of supply
side while pruning demand to the core by cutting back public investment which is the only source
of high velocity currency in a debt based economy where cash is simply printed to commission public
gods, services and infrastructure for a civilised society and withdrawn through tax to mitigate
inflation.
Only as we approach their ideology of fiscal apartheid do the courtiers perceive that without
demand a bleak future awaits everyone but the very few already excessively wealthy.
Economists, like scientists and the rest of us, are always employed by someone and therein
lies the problem: the conflict between what we believe to be the truth and what we are paid to
do (or teach) to keep our job. Many economists (like investors & politicians) knew the crash would
burst at some point but only those who enjoyed a seat outside the system would benefit from its
prediction.
"... $32K to hear Snooki speak at the Rutgers commencement? Are the administrators nuts? ..."
"... the Post and the legislator have certain attitudes, ideological biases if you will, towards public universities in general, and college students and the terms of their crushing college debt. ..."
"... And there was some thought that some elements in the legislature were perturbed that Rutgers did invite author Toni Morrison to speak at commencement, and did pay her $30,000 for it. And God knows what they payed Mr. Obama. ..."
"... Thank God they did not invite Hillary. ..."
"... For my son's Rutgers graduating class of 2014, the University had engaged Miss Condoleezza Rice, of Bush Administration State Department fame, to speak at that their commencement. For a $35,000 by the way. ..."
"... The professional class tends to defend the prerogatives of their own, sticking to their 'no consequences' principle for themselves and the acts of their peers, including the financiers. ..."
"... In the case of Secretary Rice, the students and faculty thought that it was hypocrisy to award an honorary law degree to someone who had consciously worked to circumvent the law, encouraged an aggressive war on contrived evidence, and helped permit the use of torture in violation of our nation's long standing principles. ..."
"... Rice signed off to give the CIA authority to conduct their torture tactics for gathering information from detainees as well. These are clearly human rights issues. By inviting her to speak and awarding her an honorary degree, we are encouraging and perpetuating a world that justifies torture and debases humanity ..."
"... I found it highly hypocritical of the Republican legislator and the arch-conservative Post to phrase their own stand against high commencement fees in such an incorrect manner, and dare I say false news . The Post and the politician knew better. They just did not give a damn in making their point. ..."
From Jeri-Lynn Scofield over at Naked Capitalism who picked up this piece in the NY post:
Snooki inspires legislation to limit state university speaker fees NY Post. Moi: Speaking
as a born and bred Jersey girl, I applaud the state legislature's action. Nice to see the state
of my birth lead the way in something other than corruption or toxic waste. And about time–
$32K to hear Snooki speak at the Rutgers commencement? Are the administrators nuts? And
the proposed $10k cap is too high. Why should any speaker receive more than expenses and a modest
honorarium, e.g., $1K– which incidentally, anyone with any class would immediately donate back
to the university.
I don't normally read the Post, except perhaps for financial pieces by John Crudele, so I was glad
to see this at a site where I do read on occasion.
This is no knock on Jeri-Lynn whose major point remains intact, that commencement fees may be
far too generous.
And as an old fogey, it seems to me to be a correct sentiment about paying far too much money
and attention to these reality tv stars, our current President notwithstanding.
Except that this even with Snooki never happened, at least not in the way that the NY Post and
the state legislator Republican Assemblyman John DiMaio portray.
And I suspect strongly that they carelessly framed the story the way in which they did, because
the Post and the legislator have certain attitudes, ideological biases if you will, towards public
universities in general, and college students and the terms of their crushing college debt.
Miss Nicole Snooki Polizzi, of Jersey Shore fame, never spoke at the Rutgers commencement,
or any commencement that I could find. And she was not paid any money by the University administration
for anything. Period.
She was paid $32,000 for two evening's 'performances' of a reality show nature for student audiences
by the student run entertainment committee, which is an autonomous organization controlled by students.
They book over 140 events per year. While the University does collect the money which in this case
amounted to roughly 90 cents per student from a pool of general fees at the very large New
Brunswick campus.
In other words, Snooki, who back in 2011 apparently had a following amongst the younger set, was
a hired entertainer engaged by the students themselves without active involvement of University officials.
And unless we wish to try and legislate the entertainment which college students may employ with
their own money, and not allow it to be an issue for student government, I don't think that the esteemed
GOP legislator's and the Post's points apply.
Rutgers University officials made no apologies today for Snooki's $32,000 appearance at a pair
of student-run events on the Piscataway campus. The "Jersey Shore" reality TV star was invited
and paid by students, who are allowed to select their own entertainment, a campus spokesman said.
"The students use funds designated for student programming. The university does not censor
the speakers students choose to invite to campus," said E.J. Miranda, a Rutgers spokesman.
I remembered this incident quite well, because my number one son was a student there at the time,
and I kidded him about it. He pretty much shrugged it off to the liberal arts and music school crowd
over the other side of the river, himself being ensconced at the Livingston and Bush campuses for
engineering, business and medical/pharmaceutical students.
And there was some thought that some elements in the legislature were perturbed that Rutgers
did invite author Toni Morrison to speak at commencement, and did pay her $30,000 for it. And God
knows what they payed Mr. Obama.
But it seemed snarky to attack that indirectly by throwing Snooki in, albeit falsely, thinking
it played better with those who think that all public projects are foolish wastes of money, and students
deserved all the bad fortune they may incur.
Thank God they did not invite Hillary. Those sort of stratospheric speaking fees are
the domain of private enterprise, like the boys on Wall Street, who exercise their private judgement
more precisely to get the most for their hard earned dollars. And as I recall they are also paid
by the for-profit private education institutions, which have been generous with fees and sinecures
for certain politicians, for example.
Let's face it. A certain amount of foolishness is a part and parcel of the coming of age rite
that is a college education, or the period between high school and family life, for most participants
Sowing a few wild oat when one is young is hardly an alien concept.
As I recall, I spent a huge sum on foolishness in my college career. I was a commuting student
who worked as an auto mechanic three or four days a week throughout. But I hate to see what my total
beer tab amounted to during that four year period.
I seem to recall consuming rather heroic volumes of beer at the school student 'mixers, and local
college beer dives, with quaint names like The Downunder, Agora, and Rathskeller while
in pursuit of good times and companionship of the female persuasion.
For my son's Rutgers graduating class of 2014, the University had engaged Miss Condoleezza
Rice, of Bush Administration State Department fame, to speak at that their commencement. For a $35,000
by the way.
But I was grateful to be spared sitting through that on a hot day because of widespread objections
to her honorarium from the University community, both faculty and students. And the faculty involvement
in this was notable. And it angered our NJ Republican politicians, very much.
It also
disappointed Barack Obama , by the way, who in his own subsequent commencement address to take
the students to task at a later commencement address but that is another story. The professional
class tends to defend the prerogatives of their own, sticking to their 'no consequences' principle
for themselves and the acts of their peers, including the financiers.
And granting our betters public venues where the common people are forced to listen, but not allowed
to answer back, is hardly an open sharing of ideas. I think the political parities had a close and
personal organizational experience that in the recent elections.
A one-way commencement address is one thing, a debate with various viewpoints is quite another.
And so the University community did what people in a weaker position always tend to do when confronted
with the unspeakable- they protested against it. And far too often, protests against what the public
views as outrages are crushed. That is what happened to Occupy Wall Street.
And now the out of power liberal establishment asks, why are so few protesting? Duh.
In the case of Secretary Rice, the students and faculty thought that it was hypocrisy to award
an honorary law degree to someone who had consciously worked to circumvent the law, encouraged an
aggressive war on contrived evidence, and helped permit the use of torture in violation of our nation's
long standing principles. Condoleezza
Rice Declines to Speak at Rutgers after Student Protests.
" Rice signed off to give the CIA authority to conduct their torture tactics for gathering
information from detainees as well. These are clearly human rights issues. By inviting her to
speak and awarding her an honorary degree, we are encouraging and perpetuating a world that justifies
torture and debases humanity ."
I found it highly hypocritical of the Republican legislator and the arch-conservative Post to
phrase their own stand against high commencement fees in such an incorrect manner, and dare I say
false news . The Post and the politician knew better. They just did not give a damn in making
their point.
And it also fits their own political bias against public works, like Universities, and any thought
of relief for students who are being crushed by debt at rates significantly higher than their parents
just provided to Wall Street to bail those contemptible jokers out.
"... Lately certain unrepentant members of that disgraced profession, some of whom claim to be the consciences of the liberal establishment, have been expressing concern about the disrepute of the 'experts' and the need to allow the technocrats to take control of policy and the economy. ..."
"... Brad DeLong, by the way, banned me from his site comments noting, 'Alan Greenspan never made a decision with which I disagreed.' Since then even Alan Greenspan has admitted he does not agree with some of his decisions, in a sniveling and sneaky kind of a non-apologetic way. ..."
"... But the specific factual point from Brad's piece that got me going was this: ..."
"... "Merton and Scholes's financial math was correct, and the crash of their hedge fund did not require any public-money bailout" ..."
"... I think it is less than trivial to know where and how the B-S risk model fails as math, as illustrated so well by Benoit Mandelbrot in his book The Misbehaviour of Markets. The math fails in its selection choice of variables and assumptions. Naseem Taleb has made a cottage industry and a personal fortune understanding this error. ..."
Ok I have to admit that the title alone got me into a cranky mood. Lately certain unrepentant
members of that disgraced profession, some of whom claim to be the consciences of the liberal establishment,
have been expressing concern about the disrepute of the 'experts' and the need to allow the technocrats
to take control of policy and the economy.
Granted, they may look like the lesser of two evils in some cases, as in the current nascent administration,
and in their own minds. But their policy consensus and economic recommendations of the past
thirty years or so, starting with the Fed chairmanship of Alan Greenspan at least, only look good
in their own selective memories. Brad DeLong, by the way, banned me from his site comments noting,
'Alan Greenspan never made a decision with which I disagreed.' Since then even Alan Greenspan
has admitted he does not agree with some of his decisions, in a sniveling and sneaky kind of a non-apologetic
way.
For everyone else this cycle of growing inequality, policy skews to the wealthy few, and asset
bubbles and bust that serve as wealth transfer mechanisms has been particularly trying.
But the specific factual point from Brad's piece that got me going was this:
"Merton and Scholes's financial math was correct, and the crash of their hedge fund did not
require any public-money bailout"
Yeah, right. Let's put aside the nicety of a Fed brokered bailout of LTCM by Wall Street money
as technically not requiring public bailout money, in order to save the financial system from an
epic overleveraged mispricing of risk based on that correct math.
I think it is less than trivial
to know where and how the B-S risk model fails as math, as illustrated so well by Benoit Mandelbrot
in his book The Misbehaviour of Markets. The math fails in its selection choice of variables
and assumptions. Naseem Taleb has made a cottage industry and a personal fortune understanding this
error.
And what makes it most egregious is that the error hs been known among those with mathematical
minds for some time. I myself read Mandelbrot's book in 2001 and said, 'holy shit.'
Let's be clear. This was not some dumb error on the part of these fellows, or some sneaky
trick. They could not resolve their math without making a certain assumption, and they did
it openly and consciously. And as the write of the essay below notes, there has not been anything
better produced yet to his knowledge.
It is not the theory itself that is 'bad.' It is the use and misuse to which it is put by
opportunists and financial predators in misrepresenting it.
But the people who use the assumptions on risk contained in the model don't care. Like
the efficient market hypothesis, it is an intellectual fig leaf that covers an epic era of
looting and plundering bases on what is essentially a con game. If you assume that risk is a rare
event, you can persuade the regulators and the very important people to let you run on leverage at
extreme levels, especially if you can use other people's money.
Like some of the other accepted truths from the turn of the century greed is good crowd, it is
a meme with which to silence the protests and permit the widespread mispricing of risk in order to
reap enormous short term profits for a very few wealthy insiders. This had been going on for
so long that it is almost accepted as a normal way of doing business.
Here is what an essay in
Criticality had to say about the Merton-Scholes math. I suppose that the sophist would
say that the math was indeed right. It was just the assumptions they used to construct the
model was wrong. So 3+5 does equal 8. Its just that in the real world case there
were three more factors that were tossed aside and ignored because they messed up the path to the
more easily determined and reassuring result.
"This implies that rather than extreme market moves being so unlikely that they make little contribution
to the overall evolution, they instead come to have a very significant contribution. In a normally
distributed market, crashes and booms are vanishingly rare, in a pareto-levy one crashes occur
and are a significant component of the final outcome.
It has taken years for this to be taken
seriously, and in the mean time financial theory has gone on using the assumption of normally
distributed returns to derive such results as the Black-Scholes option pricing equation, ultimately
winning an Nobel Prize in Economics for the discoverers Scholes and Merton (Black having already
died), not to mention Modern Portfolio theory (also winning Nobels). That modern finance ignored
Mandelbrot's discovery and went onto honor those working under assumptions shown to be false has
clearly annoyed Mandelbrot immensely and as mentioned previously he spends much of the book telling
us of his prior discoveries and how he was ignored.
It is like allowing tobacco companies to widely distribute their products while a bevy of hired gun
experts and media pundits and PR organizations promote the theory that tobacco is not a highly addictive
substance that causes a wide range of debilitating diseases, including cancer. They know
damn well that it is and it does, but they do not give a damn as long as the money is rolling in.
And pity the fool who tries to stand up and tell the truth.
And so to has it been with the Banks.
Indeed, the PR campaign and political donations they handled through their intermediaries during
the 1990s to deregulate and overturn Glass-Steagal has to be one of the great propaganda accomplishments
of the twentieth century. And the follow on campaign for the US to invade Iraq in retribution
for 9/11 is not far behind it for the twenty first.
The greater point is not that the B-S model is based on faulty assumptions that greatly diminish
the potential risks. Rather it is how such 'laws' of economics are so often of a dodgy, optionated
and theoretical nature such that taking them as a given in forming public policy is a huge mistake
in judgement.
Why? Because they may embody assumptions about what is true, and what is a priority, and
what our principles and objectives may be, and propagate those assumptions (biases) into a general
policy of our society that ends up causing great harm to many innocent participants. Indeed,
as Obama said, there is a great need to discussion and understanding. It is just that it cannot
be monopolized by a particular group of insiders who adhere to certain assumptions and professional
courtesies of their own, dare I say it, class.
So there are my two corrections to the mainstream media and their writing of the public record-
to suit themselves and their wealthy patrons. It seems like modern America spends an
enormous amount of its intellectual capital and time on finding ways to scam the public. If
we could somehow reorder the paybacks on financial corruption to even a third of what it is today
we could probably cure cancer in five years or less. That is what it would take to 'make
America great again,' for real and not just in the funny papers.
I would like to again stress that I am not finding fault with either of the two bloggers involved,
both of whom I enjoy and admire for what they do. Mark Thoma is a class act, and even when
he disagrees is very fair and open minded about it. And he keeps this site in his blogroll
despite some special interests who have argued for its removal. That is more than I can say
for some others.
Rather, I am trying to correct a couple of things from the broader media that seem to be factually
wrong, purposely, and further, to help caution the reader that things that appear in the mainstream
media written by bona fide members of the certified and qualified professional establishment
cannot always be taken at face value.
The deterioration of the quality of the news is startling. I think it has a lot to do with
the takeover of the media by a relatively few number of large corporations (thank you Slick Willy)
Yeah, there is a lot of nutty stuff on the internet and in blogs. I spend a lot of time assessing
it and avoiding it where I can. But to say that the mainstream is somehow authoritative, objective
and pure is self-serving baloney at best, and a thin veneer for official propaganda when it serves
the purpose at worst.
"The fall of Empire, gentlemen, is a massive thing, however, and not easily fought. It is dictated
by a rising bureaucracy, a receding initiative, a freezing of caste, a damming of curiosity-a hundred
other factors. It has been going on, as I have said, for centuries, and it is too majestic and massive
a movement to stop." –
Isaac Asimov, Foundation
"Any fool can tell a crisis when it arrives. The real service to the state is to detect it in
embryo." –
Isaac Asimov, Foundation
I read Isaac Asimov's renowned award winning science fiction trilogy four decades ago as a teenager.
I read them because I liked science fiction novels, not because I was trying to understand the correlation
to the fall of the Roman Empire. The books that came to be called the
Foundation Trilogy (Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation) were not written
as novels; they're the collected Foundation stories Asimov wrote between 1941 and 1950. He wrote
these stories during the final stages of our last
Fourth Turning Crisis and the beginning stages of the next High. This was the same time frame
in which Tolkien wrote the
Lord of the Rings Trilogy and Orwell wrote
1984 . This was not a coincidence.
The tone of foreboding, danger, dread, and impending doom, along with unending warfare, propels
all of these novels because they were all written during the bloodiest and most perilous portion
of the last
Fourth Turning . As the linear thinking establishment continues to be blindsided by the continued
deterioration of the economic, political, social, and cultural conditions in the world, we have entered
the most treacherous phase of our present
Fourth Turning .
That ominous mood engulfing the world is not a new dynamic, but a cyclical event arriving every
80 or so years. Eight decades ago the world was on the verge of a world war which would kill 65 million
people. Eight decades prior to 1937 the country was on the verge of a Civil War which would kill
almost 5% of the male population. Eight decades prior to 1857 the American Revolution had just begun
and would last six more bloody years. None of this is a coincidence. The generational configuration
repeats itself every eighty years, driving the mood change which leads to revolutionary change and
the destruction of the existing social order.
Isaac Asimov certainly didn't foresee his Foundation stories representing the decline of an American
Empire that didn't yet exist. The work that inspired Asimov was Edward Gibbon's multi-volume series,
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire , published between 1776 and 1789. Gibbon saw Rome's
fall not as a consequence of specific, dramatic events, but as the result of the gradual decline
of civic virtue, monetary debasement and rise of Christianity, which made the Romans less vested
in worldly affairs.
Gibbon's tome reflects the same generational theory espoused by Strauss and Howe in The
Fourth Turning . Gibbon's conclusion was human nature never changes, and mankind's penchant for
division, amplified by environmental and cultural differences, is what governs the cyclical nature
of history. Gibbon constructs a narrative spanning centuries as events unfold and emperors' successes
and failures occur within the context of a relentless decline of empire. The specific events and
behaviors of individual emperors were inconsequential within the larger framework and pattern of
historical decline. History plods relentlessly onward, driven by the law of large numbers.
Asimov described his inspiration for the novels:
"I wanted to consider essentially the science of psychohistory, something I made up myself. It
was, in a sense, the struggle between free will and determinism. On the other hand, I wanted to do
a story on the analogy of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, but on the much larger scale
of the galaxy. To do that, I took over the aura of the Roman Empire and wrote it very large. The
social system, then, is very much like the Roman imperial system, but that was just my skeleton.
It seemed to me that if we did have a galactic empire, there would be so many human beings-quintillions
of them-that perhaps you might be able to predict very accurately how societies would behave, even
though you couldn't predict how individuals composing those societies would behave. So, against the
background of the Roman Empire written large, I invented the science of psychohistory. Throughout
the entire trilogy, then, there are the opposing forces of individual desire and that dead hand of
social inevitability."
Is History Pre-Determined?
"Don't you see? It's Galaxy-wide. It's a worship of the past. It's a deterioration – a stagnation!"
–
Isaac Asimov, Foundation
"It has been my philosophy of life that difficulties vanish when faced boldly." –
Isaac Asimov, Foundation
The Foundation trilogy opens on Trantor, the capital of the 12,000-year-old Galactic Empire. Though
the empire appears stable and powerful, it is slowly decaying in ways that parallel the decline of
the Western Roman Empire. Hari Seldon, a mathematician and psychologist, has developed psychohistory,
a new field of science that equates all possibilities in large societies to mathematics, allowing
for the prediction of future events.
Psychohistory is a blend of crowd psychology and high-level math. An able psychohistorian can
predict the long-term aggregate behavior of billions of people many years in the future. However,
it only works with large groups. Psychohistory is almost useless for predicting the behavior of an
individual. Also, it's no good if the group being analyzed is aware it's being analyzed - because
if it's aware, the group changes its behavior.
Using psychohistory, Seldon has discovered the declining nature of the Empire, angering the aristocratic
rulers of the Empire. The rulers consider Seldon's views and statements treasonous, and he is arrested.
Seldon is tried by the state and defends his beliefs, explaining his theory the Empire will collapse
in 300 years and enter a 30,000-year dark age.
He informs the rulers an alternative to this future is attainable, and explains to them generating
an anthology of all human knowledge, the Encyclopedia Galactica, would not avert the inevitable fall
of the Empire but would reduce the Dark Age to "only" 1,000 years.
The fearful state apparatchiks offer him exile to a remote world, Terminus, with other academic
intellectuals who could help him create the Encyclopedia. He accepts their offer, and sets in motion
his plan to set up two Foundations, one at either end of the galaxy, to preserve the accumulated
knowledge of humanity and thereby shorten the Dark Age, once the Empire collapses. Seldon created
the Foundation, knowing it would eventually be seen as a threat to rulers of the Empire, provoking
an eventual attack. That is why he created a Second Foundation, unknown to the ruling class.
Asimov's psychohistory concept, based on the predictability of human actions in large numbers,
has similarities to Strauss & Howe's generational theory. His theory didn't pretend to predict the
actions of individuals, but formulated definite laws developed by mathematical analysis to predict
the mass action of human groups. His novel explores the centuries old debate of whether human history
proceeds in a predictable fashion, with individuals incapable of changing its course, or whether
individuals can alter its progression.
The cyclical nature of history, driven by generational cohorts numbering tens of millions, has
been documented over centuries by Strauss & Howe in their 1997 opus The
Fourth Turning . Human beings in large numbers react in a herd-like predictable manner. I know
that is disappointing to all the linear thinking individualists who erroneously believe one person
can change the world and course of history.
The cyclical crisis's that occur every eighty years matches up with how every Foundation story
centers on what is called a Seldon crisis, the conjunction of seemingly insoluble external and internal
difficulties. The crises were all predicted by Seldon, who appears near the end of each story as
a hologram to confirm the Foundation has traversed the latest one correctly.
The "Seldon Crises" take on two forms. Either events unfold in such a way there is only one clear
path to take, or the forces of history conspire to determine the outcome. But, the common feature
is free will doesn't matter. The heroes and adversaries believe their choices will make a difference
when, in fact, the future is already written. This is a controversial viewpoint which angers many
people because they feel it robs them of their individuality.
Most people don't want to be lumped together in an amalgamation of other humans because they believe
admitting so would strip them of their sense of free will. Their delicate sensibilities are bruised
by the unequivocal fact their individual actions are virtually meaningless to the direction of history.
But, the madness of crowds can dramatically impact antiquity.
"In reading The History of Nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and
their peculiarities, their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do.
We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object and go mad in its pursuit;
that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till
their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first." –
Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
Many people argue the dynamic advancements in technology and science have changed the world in
such a way to alter human nature in a positive way, thereby resulting in humans acting in a more
rational manner. This alteration would result in a level of human progress not experienced previously.
The falsity of this technological theory is borne out by the continuation of war, government corruption,
greed, belief in economic fallacies, civic decay, cultural degradation, and global disorder sweeping
across the world. Humanity is incapable of change. The same weaknesses and self- destructive traits
which have plagued them throughout history are as prevalent today as they ever were.
Asimov's solution to the failure of humanity to change was to create an academic oriented benevolent
ruling class who could save the human race from destroying itself. He seems to have been well before
his time with regards to creating Shadow Governments and Deep State functionaries. It appears he
agreed with his contemporary Edward Bernays. The masses could not be trusted to make good decisions,
so they needed more intellectually advanced men to guide their actions.
"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses
is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society
constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed,
our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard
of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized.
Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly
functioning society. In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or
business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small
number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they
who pull the wires which control the public mind." –
Edward Bernays – Propaganda
In Part Two of this article I will compare and contrast Donald Trump's rise to power to the rise
of The Mule in Asimov's masterpiece. Unusually gifted individuals come along once in a lifetime to
disrupt the plans of the existing social order.
" He seems to have been well before his time with regards to creating Shadow Governments and
Deep State functionaries. It appears he agreed with his contemporary Edward Bernays. The masses
could not be trusted to make good decisions, so they needed more intellectually advanced men to
guide their actions."
The masses aren't the ones begging to start all of these wars. They are the ones TRYING to
make a few good decisions. The Shadow Government and Deep State however, are hell bent on getting
us all killed. Who exactly is the problem here??
Asimov was a good writer and created some great fiction. That's as far as it goes.
Huxle LetThemEatRand •Mar 27,
2017 10:50 PM y is the one who predicted the current state of affairs. Orwell gets honorable
mention. You could also throw in some biblical passages for the mark of the beast, though the
best part was clearly written about Nero.
Received a "new academic programs" missive from my alma mater in today's
mail, containing the following:
How to Make Innovation Happen in Your Organization
The Certified Professional Innovator (CPI) program is intended to develop
the competency of high potential leaders in the theory and practice of
innovation. It is rooted on the principle that innovation can only be
learned by doing and through many short bursts of experimentation.
The certification is comprised of a 12-week curriculum with specific
syllabus and assignments for each week, including videos, workbook
assignments, and reports. During the program, participants, functioning as a
cohort, communicate and collaborate with each other and faculty through a
series of webinars and discussions. The program culminates in project
pitches.
"It is rooted on [sic] the principle that innovation can only be learned by
doing and through many short bursts of experimentation" - OK, fine there, but
it is also rooted in the notion that such creativity can be taught in a formal
academic setting, here monetized and condensed into a 12-week program. As for
me, I'm gonna hold out for the following surely-in-development mini-courses:
o Certified Professional Serial Disruptor (CPD)
o Certified Professional Innovative Thought Leader (CPCTL)
o Certified Professional Smart Creative (CPSC)
I love the smell of money-greased credentialism in the morning.
"... His book Animal Farm was a satire on Stalin and Trotsky and 1984 * gave readers a glimpse into what would happen if the government controlled every detail of a person's life, down to their own private thoughts. (*online bio). The battles in Europe were life and death with the goal of survival. ..."
"... We are now programed (propagandized) from pre school to the home for the elderly. We are initially taught as children, continue through college, and are forever conditioned by media such as TV, Movies, Radio, Newspapers and Advertising our entire lives. The younger generations are not taught to think independently or critically but instead indoctrinated with pre packaged knowledge 'propaganda' while older generations assess outcomes from a different perspective. There is as a result, a clash within the society which we are experiencing today. ..."
"... 1984 was about controlling the news and airwaves. Farenheit 451 was about burning history. The two go hand in hand. ..."
"... The similarity of the major networks evening "news" programs has given rise to a report that, each day, a list of ten or twelve "acceptable" news stories is prepared by British Intelligence in London for the networks, teletyped to Washington, where the CIA routinely approves it, and then delivered to the networks. ..."
"... The "selectivity" of the broadcasters has never been in doubt. Edith Efron, in "The News Twisters," (Manor Books, N.Y., 1972) cites TV Guide's interview with David Brinkley, April 11, 1964, with Brinkley's declaration that "News is what I say it is. It's something worth knowing by my standards." This was merely vainglorious boasting on Brinkley's part, as he merely reads the news stories previously selected for him. ..."
"... "REMEMBER THE MAINE!" That false flag headline is over a century old. ..."
"... Next time you are in a Best Buy.. go up to the Geek Squad guy and say... "So how does it feel to work for the CIA " ..."
"... Fuck the Washington Post. As Katherine Austin Fitts has suggested, it is essentially the CIA's Facebook wall. The same could be said of the NYT as well. ..."
"... James Rosen from Fox, he was at a state dept briefing with that little weasel Kirby, and Kirby stated that the negotiations over the Iran "deal" were all overt and "above the table." He remembered, tho, a briefing years earlier from the witch Psaki, who stated that sometimes, in interests of expedience, aspects of the negotiations are not made public. ..."
"... Rosen goes back to state dept video archives, finds out that his whole exchange with Psaki has been erased. Weasel Kirby, when asked how this happened, who did it, who ordered it, blames it on a "technical glitch." ..."
Snowflakes should also learn the depressing fact that Orwell's 1984 was not a complete work
of fiction, but a successful blueprint for full statist control.
Orwell was dying of tuberculosis when he wrote "1984" and passed away after its publication
in 1949. Once you have their attention and they have read the book, it is time to show snowflakes
the MANY obvious parallels between Orwellian concepts and modern society.
NEWSPEAK AND THOUGHT CRIME
You can start with soft targets like Newspeak (today's examples include gems like cis-gender
labels and other politically correct BS).
Now move to the "thought police" and thought crime in general.
Explain how thought and speech crime keep the globalist model alive and ticking by discouraging
independent thought and discussion.
Explain how state-financed institutions seek to implant these concepts at an early age and
onwards into university education.
Provide real-life newspeak and double-think examples, such as "police-action" "regime-change",
"coalition of the willing" and "collateral damage". Show how these are really just PC euphemisms
for "wars of aggression" and "murder". If you have a picture of a droned wedding party handy,
now is the time to use it.
Also mention people who have been silenced, prosecuted or even killed for committing "hate
crimes" or other political blasphemies. Explain how this often occurs while they are standing
up for or using their constitutionally protected human rights.
Name some of these people: Randy and Vicki Weaver, David Koresh, Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders,
Julian Assange, William Binney, Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning
Show them how this trend is ongoing both in the USA and abroad, and is primarily being deployed
against populist politicians who promote more individual rights and reduced state control over
citizens. Ask them whether or not they can see a pattern developing here.
Above all, d on't waste time with cheap shots at identity politics and its absurd labelling.
This will just polarize the more brainwashed members of your audience. Stick to the nitty gritty
and irrefutable facts.
And be very careful here, because if they have insufficient vocabulary to understand or critique
what you are saying, you will lose them. Which was the whole point of Newspeak. Of course you
can use this failed learning opportunity to demonstrate just how successful the Newspeak program
has been.
TELESCREENS
Tell them about the real life "Telescreens" that can now listen to you, even when turned off.
Name one of their known manufacturers: Samsung and users: Central Intelligence Agency
Show them how these same telescreens are used to pump out constant lies from the MSM whenever
they are turned on. Name some of these organizations: CNN, BBC, MSNBC, FOX, etc.
MASS SURVEILLANCE and the "PANOPTICON"
Talk to them about the modern surveillance state and how it will always be abused by corporate
globalists and corrupt elites.
Describe how mass-surveillance service providers (MSSPs) and MSM stooges have become obscenely
rich and powerful as the real-life proles (who were 85% of the population in "1984") struggle
to put food on the table, pay their debts, find a decent job or buy a home. Tell them to find
out how much wealth is owned by 8 very wealthy people relative to the poorest half of the world,
and how this trend is accelerating. Name a few of them: Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Carlos Slim,
etc.
Show how the previously enacted, totalitarian US policies, programs and laws have been extensively
deployed, lobbied for, used and abused by the very Big-Brothers (Clinton and Obama) they so adored.
Even George W is swooning progressives again.
Name some of these policies, programs and laws: Patriot Act, SOPA, US Telecommunications Act,
FISA, Echelon, PRISM, and Umbrage
Explain why this whole surveillance system, its operators and proponents must be completely
dismantled and reined in or imprisoned, unless we wish all whistle blowers, dissidents and normal
citizens to end up like Winston Smith.
ETERNAL WAR AND THE BROTHERHOOD
Explain how eternal war keeps the proles from getting too restless and questioning their leaders.
How it leads to modern strategic idiocies like "Osama Bin Laden and the Mujahedeen are steadfast
allies against Russian totalitarianism, which is why the CIA needs to give them Stingers" (aka
Operation Cyclone). Or the illegal provision of arms and funds to countries with questionable
human rights records (KSA, Iran, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Israel.....)
Explain how this leads to, nay requires, state-propagated lies like WMD to justify illegal
military actions against sovereign nation states like Iraq, Libya and Syria.
Show how 9/11 was used to target a former-ally Osama and his Taliban brotherhood and prepare
the terrain for eternal war, even though the real criminals were actually in DC, Riyadh and other
world capitals. Explain how letting Osama escape from Tora Bora was all part of this intricate
plan for the PNAC, until he finally outlived his usefulness as a bogeyman. If they disagree, ask
for their counter-argument and proofs.
Explain how these same criminals then made a financial killing when our real life Oceania went
to war bigly with Eastasia. How this resulted in over a million civilian deaths (half of them
children), around 80,000 terrorists and perhaps 10,000 uniformed soldiers/contractors. Show them
videos where US officials justify this slaughter as "worth it", unimportant or irrelevant. Ask
what kind of individuals could even say these things or let them happen. If they can't answer,
name a few: Madeleine Albright, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
At this point, you may need to take a break as listeners will soon have trouble distinguishing
between real-life events and those in Orwell's book.
WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
Next, explain how real, imagined or simulated terrorist outrages can be manipulated to influence
electorates. This is done by creating or allowing atrocities that frighten citizens into seeking
"safety". These citizens will then vote in corrupt, globalist leaders who promise to keep them
safe. These same leaders can then curtail freedoms in their previously democratic, freedom-loving
nation states. New terrorist threats can always be used to justify more restrictions on free movement
and state-mandated invasions of personal privacy.
If your snowflakes don't agree with this, name some leaders responsible for bad laws, policies
and the ensuing restrictions on civil liberties:
Tony Blair, George W Bush, Angela Merkel, Theresa May and Francois Hollande.
Name some events as well: Oklahoma City, 911, 7/7 Sandy Hook, 11-M
Also mention that the USA has not waged a single legal, constitutional, Congress-declared war
since 1945. But that the USA has been involved in hot or cold wars for all but 5 of the past 71
years.
HISTORY AND BACKGROUND
Tell them that Orwell's original book title was actually "1944" (already past), but that his
publisher vetoed this choice saying it could hurt sales.
Then explain how 1944-45 was actually the perfect crucible for the divisive, right-left political
paradigm we live in today and many of the concepts presciently described in Orwell's chilling
masterpiece.
EPILOGUE
Tell them everything, until their brains hurt, their eyes water and their ears bleed.
Eventually even the iciest snowflakes will get it.
Of course, some will cry, and some will have temper tantrums and meltdowns.
But a few might just wake up, start reading real books and get a proper education.
This is when the healing can begin.
Those thinking a career in gender-diversity-issue management is still the way forward may figure
it out later, God help them. Until then, we should just pity them.
Ira Levin's "This Perfect Day" (1970) is from the same dystopian mold. In the late Eighties,
my then teenage daughter kept reading it, till it literally fell apart.
How technology has "advanced"! People in this phantasy had to wear bracelets with which they
checked in and out of buildings and areas. Reality always seems to surpass the imaginative powers
of SF-writers.
Your government is not populated by reptilians from outer space. The politicians and the bankers,
lawyers are YOUR sons and daughters. You gave birth to them, you educated them, you taught them
their values.
YOU pull the trigger when the government says KILL! YOU vote Democrat or Republican EVERY TIME.
Yet you have the temerity to blame them when you don't get what you wanted.
Scum,
Hitler didn't kill anyone as fas as we know, in WWII. People [YOU] killed people. You blame
the Jews because the wars they incite you to fight result in blowback to you. Why do you blame
them because YOU jumped when they said JUMP! YOU are the ones flying the fighter jets and firing
the tank shells against foreign populations living 10,000 miles away from your land, and who have
not attacked you. NO ONE does anything unless they wanted to, in the first place. In any case,
YOU are responsible for YOUR actions. This we all know.
Even your own money the US dollar is illegal according to your own US Constitution (Article
1, Section 10) yet you commit mass murder and mass torture throughout the world in order to impose
it on everyone?
The liberals are promoting the book (Nineteen Eighty-Four). IMO, that's great! Orwell's book
is a classic and accurately describes features in our current society.
The downside is that the liberals won't understand it . They are promoting the idea that Trump
is a fascist. They don't see that they themselves are fascists (albeit a different brand of fascism).
Ironic that the book could help them see past the indoctrinated haze of their perspective, but
it won't. The future, from my perspective, is a boot stamping on a human face forever.
I read 1984 in 1960 as a freshman in HS. Spent the next 24 years waiting. I don't remember
details but I do remember it was upsetting at the time to picture my future as depicted by Orwell.
It might be more interesting to me now to go back to the publishing date and study the paradigm
that Orwell lived under to get a perspective of his mindset. He wasn't a US citizen. He was born
in India, moved to England with his mother, had little contact with his father, was sickly and
lonely as a child and suffered from tuberculosis as an adult, served in Burma for five years as
a policeman, fought Soviet backed Communsts in the Spanish Civil War, fought Facism, believed
in Democratic socialism or Classless socialism.
His book Animal Farm was a satire on Stalin and Trotsky and 1984 * gave readers a glimpse into
what would happen if the government controlled every detail of a person's life, down to their
own private thoughts. (*online bio). The battles in Europe were life and death with the goal of
survival.
The European cauldron produced or nurtured, IMO, the seeds of most social evils that exist
today. In Orwell's era society was changing and reacting to the Machine age which was followed
by the Atomic age, the Space age and to the current Information age. He died in 1950 but in his
environment, the Machine age is where he related. The forces (of evil) at work in his era still
exist today with the additions of the changes brought by the later ages. We don't contend with
the physical (at least not initially) conquerors such as the Genghis Khan, Mohamed, Alexander,
Roman conquest etc. of the past but the compulsion of others to control our lives still exists
just in different forms. We as a society react or comply and have the same forces to deal with
as did Orwell but also those that resulted in the later eras. 1984 was actually the preview of
the information age that Orwell didn't experience.
We are now programed (propagandized) from pre school to the home for the elderly. We are initially
taught as children, continue through college, and are forever conditioned by media such as TV,
Movies, Radio, Newspapers and Advertising our entire lives. The younger generations are not taught
to think independently or critically but instead indoctrinated with pre packaged knowledge 'propaganda'
while older generations assess outcomes from a different perspective. There is as a result, a
clash within the society which we are experiencing today.
Through the modern (at least recorded) ages the underlying force no matter what era humans
lived through was the conflict of...religion. In the name or names of God and whose god is the
true god and which god will rule. Even in the most 'godless' societies it is the underlying force.
There are many who do not believe in god or a god and by extension should or do not believe in
satin. Good vs Evil? It's always there, although we are encouraged not to mention it?
Can't say I need another go at 1984 from Costco but I do need another indoor/outdoor vacuum
and right now they have one with a manufacturers discount of $5. See you there!
1984 is really just a knock off of Evgeny Zemyatin's "We," which is frankly a better account
of dystopian authoritarianism from someone who wrote shortly after the Russian Revolution.
This is not true. Orwell's book touched on major points, such as the destruction of people's
ability to communicate real ideas by perversion and simplification of language, that are not discussed
elsewhere. It is a unique and disturbing view of totalitarian regimes.
The similarity of the major networks evening "news" programs has given rise to a report that,
each day, a list of ten or twelve "acceptable" news stories is prepared by British Intelligence
in London for the networks, teletyped to Washington, where the CIA routinely approves it, and
then delivered to the networks.
The "selectivity" of the broadcasters has never been in doubt. Edith Efron, in "The News Twisters,"
(Manor Books, N.Y., 1972) cites TV Guide's interview with David Brinkley, April 11, 1964, with
Brinkley's declaration that "News is what I say it is. It's something worth knowing by my standards."
This was merely vainglorious boasting on Brinkley's part, as he merely reads the news stories
previously selected for him.
Fuck the Washington Post. As Katherine Austin Fitts has suggested, it is essentially the CIA's
Facebook wall. The same could be said of the NYT as well.
Bezos has no problem selling "1984" on Amazon.
https://tinyurl.com/hdmhu75 He's collecting the sales price and sticking it in his pocket. He's not making a joke out of
it. Bezos is a lunatic. The Washington Post is full of shit. End of story.
James Rosen from Fox, he was at a state dept briefing with that little weasel Kirby, and Kirby
stated that the negotiations over the Iran "deal" were all overt and "above the table." He remembered,
tho, a briefing years earlier from the witch Psaki, who stated that sometimes, in interests of
expedience, aspects of the negotiations are not made public.
Rosen goes back to state dept video archives, finds out that his whole exchange with Psaki
has been erased. Weasel Kirby, when asked how this happened, who did it, who ordered it, blames
it on a "technical glitch."
It's a slippery fuckin slope. Only now the progressives are finding relevance in 1984?
"Next time you're at Costco, you can pick up a jumbo bag of Cheetos and a copy of '1984.' Doubleplus
good!"
That's how the Washington Post opened its quick little
entry on Wednesday. Continuing, Ron Charles, editor of Book World for the Post , wrote:
"The discount store is now stocking Orwell's classic novel along with its usual selection of current
bestsellers."
If the significance of the fact that a dystopian masterwork can now be purchased alongside a three-ton
bag of cheese puffs instantly strikes you, it should. Strangely, though, Charles and the Post don't
seem to see it.
In fact, it seemed to be a joke to them. The entry closed in the manner it opened. With humor:
"Appropriately, Costco is offering a reprint of the 2003 edition of '1984,' which has a forward
by Thomas Pynchon. That reclusive satirist must love the idea of hawking Orwell's dystopian novel
alongside towers of discounted toilet paper and radial tires. SHOPPING IS SAVING."
In the one and only instance Charles even approached something that could be considered commentary,
he linked the surge in the book's sales to "alternative" news items :
"Last month, amid talk of 'alternative facts' from the Trump administration, Signet Classics announced
that it had reprinted 500,000 copies, about twice the novel's total sales in 2016."
Note Charles was certain to use the word "alternative" when mentioning Trump. Why? Very clearly,
"fake news" is the man's go-to phrase when speaking of the media. So why go with "alternative" instead?
Hell, the Post
itself was the driving force behind the "fake news" frenzy in the first place.
I could go on about how this is the Washington Post , corporate media juggernaut, attempting,
rather pathetically, to poison the notion of "alternative" in the minds of its readers - or, I should
say, what's left of them - but that's not really what this is about.
What it's really about is journalism. The fact that "1984" is being sold at Costco, the fact that
demand for the classic tale has
skyrocketed , is significant. It's societal. And journalists are supposed to write about things
like that.
And what does the Post do? They make a joke of it.
This is an organization that, as recently as January, has been
busted publishing false news stories. You would think that with its credibility among a growing
division of society hanging on by a thread - at best - the Post would turn an event like this into
social commentary. This was an opportunity to speak about a changing world.
But instead, the Post went for laughs.
Let it sink in, friends. George Orwell's "1984," a dystopian tale about a society being crushed
under the boot of authoritarian regime, is, once again, flying off bookshelves. To the extent that
you can now get it at Costco. Let the significance of that truly dig in deep.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post is talking about Cheetos and toilet paper.
It is truly Orwellian that the sheep only take interest in Orwell when someone challenges Big
Brother. If I had a Facebook account, I'd post this article straight away.
It is truly Orwellian that the sheep only take interest in Orwell when someone challenges Big
Brother. If I had a Facebook account, I'd post this article straight away.
Well, after all the shit is going down, White House is definitely in distress. Trump gets a
taste of his own medicine as he's grabbed by the pussy from all intelligence agencies directions.
Read 'Little Heroes' by Norman Spinrad. It's like the dude had a trip to the future which is
our present, a completly broken society dominated by corporations exploiting the masses of hedonist
mindless snowflakes. In my humble oppinion perfect companion to Orwell's 84.
[...
In the future the class divide between capitalist and worker will have widened to become a
virtually unbridgeable chasm. In HG Wells' The Time Machine (1895) this division has become so
extreme that humanity had split into two species.
The way to keep the underclass under control is to feed them mass-produced pseudo-culture.
If - as in Orwell's 1984 (1949) - the technocratic ruling class can get some kind of computer
or machine to generate this product, so much the better.
In the future, 20th century entertainment forms like TV and movies will have been superseded
by more direct experiences that, ideally, feed directly into the brain or, at least - as with
the 'feelies' in Huxley's Brave New World (1932) - stimulate more senses than simply the visual
and auditory.
And now, here's a book that uses all these themes in one hit, and builds on these classic foundations
by adding rock & roll to the mix.
Set in the early years of the 21st century, it shows us an America decimated by devaluation,
where unemployment is commonplace and rock music is firmly in the grip of accountants and electro-nerds
producing synthesized superstars to keep the proles contented.
Once they notice you, Jason realized, they never completely close the file. You can never get
back your anonymity. It is vital not to be noticed in the first place. -- Philip K Dick
"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control
the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words."
P.K.D., How To Build A Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later
Philip was spot on decades before the advent of the CIA's infestation of cell phones and other
electronic devices.
"There will come a time when it isn't 'They're spying on me through my phone' anymore. Eventually,
it will be 'My phone is spying on me'." Philip K. Dick
"The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above
the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within
the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There
was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often,
or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was
even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in
your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live-did live, from habit that became instinct-in
the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement
scrutinized."
As usual, the face of Emmanuel Goldstein, the Enemy of the People, had flashed on to the screen.
There were hisses here and there among the audience. The little sandy-haired woman gave a squeak
of mingled fear and disgust. Goldstein was the renegade and backslider who once, long ago (how
long ago, nobody quite remembered), had been one of the leading figures of the Party, almost on
a level with Big Brother himself, and then had engaged in counter-revolutionary activities, had
been condemned to death, and had mysteriously escaped and disappeared.
That's actually a waste of time at this point. If anything read Anthony Suttons Wall Street
series for free on the internet, or stay here. You already know more than Orwell will teach you
at this point. Unless your a mouth breather or blind from herpes of the eyeball. Apparently that
is something contracted at birth.
All wars are bankers wars. You can sum 1984 up to that. Actually they didn't even cover that.
They just covered mechanisms. Actually they didn't even cover that, just symptoms.
You're fine. Their lists don't have enough enforcers to do jack shit. By the time the first
raid occurs, all hell would break loose and they'll all die.
The ones most relevant in my mind are the logistics and support as well as the "action" guys
(using that term very loosely).
The military, the CIA and a few other agencies have trained combat arms types that are effective.
The rest are at various stages of competency. In any event, they still don't have enough competent
troops by a long shot. The logistics tail is also very wide and vulnerable.
Longtooth :
March 16, 2017 at 08:08 PM
While I think primary education especially has suffered
tremendously in the US, education is a terribly necessary but
far from sufficient solution to the problems.
The far
greater problem, imo, is the distribution of incomes which
create the divergences in primary & secondary education..
which is a direct outgrowth of educational funding by school
districts, which is differentiated by the tax base, which of
course then determines the quality of the education. Add this
to poorer lower and lower middle class neighborhoods where
both parents work (mostly) in low wage and low benefits jobs
and the environment rubs off directly on the kids.
Why do we promote divergence in neighborhood wealth? This
is a direct result of and part of income inequality so it's
not just the 1% that are the problem.. they're just a popular
and clear-cut indicator of it. We create these ghetto-like
islands by a political and belief system that promotes
"individualism", that believes if you've got a good high
paying job that it's because you "earned it" yourself and
therefore "deserve it".
Education will not solve the upward mobility issue we now
have in spades and which spirals to less mobility by
feed-back loops.
That's the title of
my latest piece
in Inside Story. The crucial para
The term "credentialism" is used in many different ways, some of them
contradictory, but the implication is consistent: too many young people are
getting too much formal education, at too high a level. This implication was
spelt out recently by Dean Ashenden, who contends that "education has not
just grown to meet the expanding needs of the post-industrial economy, but
has exploded like an airbag." The claim that young people are getting too
much education, and the supporting critique of credentialism, is pernicious
and false.
The suffix "-ism" hits my hot button- unless it's optimism. It denotes the
ossification of of an idea that may once have been dynamic.
I tend to look at ideas through the prism (oops!) of life-cycles. There's a
time, perhaps, at the "mature" stage, where codification becomes the norm.
After that- particularly when organisations become corporatised in an attempt
to revitalise them (eg Trumpism)- codification becomes essential for the
masses, but discretionary for the bosses. Luckily, it tends to be
contemporaneous with the development of new systems, as you indicate, where the
activity hasn't matured sufficiently to be credential-ivied.
I'm trying to tackle this in a book on "Concepts in Innovation and Change"-
first 8 chapters for free download and feview at my website
http://www.thepicketline.net/innovation.
"The stress on formal credentialism – the specific requirement for an
educational qualification to be a member of a defined profession – is a
phenomenon whose time has passed."
I'm in the "yes, but" camp.
First, credentialism may be well-established in primary and secondary teaching,
but that doesn't mean it isn't a problem. There is a significant shortage of
secondary STEM teachers, and a fair surplus of 40-year old engineers and
military types, many of whom are skilled at dealing with the young. But they
lack formal ed training, which can be a significant barrier in many districts.
Second, much advanced education in universities does not go on in classrooms. I
got my Ph.D. in chemistry. The first year was classrooms and picking a research
advisor. The next 3-5 years were all in the lab: pure apprentice work. When we
got out, nobody was interested in our classroom grades.
Third, although I'd be the first to admit that general higher education skills
are very useful in the workplace, I'm very skeptical about any classroom
teaching of specific job-oriented skills. Apart from accounting, what skills
does an MBA acquire in a classroom? Every law firm thinks their rookie lawyers
are completely untrained, and the second and third years of law school are a
waste. (Indeed, Yale Law School turns this into a point of honor: barely trying
to teach law.) Medical training is two years of classroom and interminable time
in the hospital wards. Engineering may be the exception.
I agree very strongly with the second part on education not being a panacea for
inequality.
I don't think credentialism has to imply 'too many young people
are getting too much formal education, at too high a level'. I see it as
pathology of managerialism in hiring practices which sets irrational
requirements for candidates for jobs. It doesn't have to mean formal
credentials and is perhaps more typically years of experience in a specific
role. (To be a barman you two years experience of bartebding etc). Unpaid
internships and gap year/CV-boosting stuff maybe also qualify.
Imo credentialism is a real problem and it's also a problem that the
expansion of higher education (which I agree is a good thing) has gone hand in
hand with the tightening grip of a brutally instrumental view of the purposes
of education, as a process that socialises nascent wage-labourers for a life of
wage labour. So I don't think it's too jaded to see the vaunted expansion of
'educational opportunities' in the last couple of decades as little more than
an arms race for access to an ever-dwindling number of marginally privileged
positions within an increasingly exploitative system of production funded by a
burgeoning debt burden on workers.
It doesn't have to be this way! But I fear that equating credentials (i.e.
formal or informal qualifications explicitly demanded by employers for a
specific economic role) with education (study, reading, learning, the life of
the mind, ) may not be conducive to progress here.
If a lurker may comment: I hate to say this, but I completely disagree. I am a
person with quite a lot of education who none the less works in a low-level
accounting position, and I am completing an accounting certification.
Things I've observed:
1. Accounting for most lower level roles is best learned on the job. None of
the formal accounting that I've studied has very much to do with the actual
work I do. Most of what I do is highly specific to the place I work, and had to
be learned bit by bit on the job.
2. I started getting my accounting certificate because although I had
"apprenticed" with someone up the ladder and had learned enough to move on, I
was informed that without a certification I could never be hired, no matter
what experience I had.
3. My accounting certification program requires a long, long list of
"information science 101"-style classes which are the most godawful, banal,
fraudulent, pro-corporate things I've ever seen. "Read this short article about
self-driving cars"-level terrible. We often receive actively misleading
information. This is in a nationally known program which boasts of its
connections to fancy accounting firms.
4. I only got into my current job by a fluke – it's not classed as a regular
accounting gig, so they were willing to hire me based on .my experience of
accounting. Experience I'd acquired in my previous not-formally-accounting job
by volunteering to learn new stuff.
5. My employer has terrible trouble hiring skilled people, because they
require a great deal of certification for entry-level jobs and don't pay that
much. People with accounting certifications, for instance, nearly always start
out earning about $25,000 more than my employer pays entry level workers. But
instead of hiring people who are trainable and have relevant but unspecific
experience, my employer holds out for the credential. As a result, we have a
lot of churn.
6. On another note: I've spent much of my work life in pink collar jumped-up
file clerk occupations. On no occasion did I need college level training for
"database management", using MS Office, etc. That's not how working with
databases goes at the file clerk level. What happens is that you're hired and
then socialized into your employer's specific use of databases. (Also, the kind
of "database management" that you need to do as a file clerk is maybe
creating some kind of Filemaker or Access database – I was allowed to do this
rather than kicking it over to IT because I was an enterprising young person,
but this was not typical of file clerk jobs.)
Most pink collar work is deskilled. You work with databases, but in a very
restricted way that they try to make as idiot-proof as possible. You work with
MS Office, but doing mostly a short list of predetermined things – even if some
of them are obscure, the list itself is short.
I sometimes think that professional class people, because they lack
experience of the day to day of pink collar work and "business" education, are
a little bit vulnerable to talk of new technologies, etc.
I was brought up short by the discussion around "It Takes a B.A. to Find a Job
as a File Clerk".
"Someone seeking a job as a file clerk, for instance, would
be well advised to acquire a knowledge of computer programs such as Microsoft
Office, and an understanding of database management. This is likely to be done
more efficiently in a classroom setting than by osmosis in a busy office."
It is no doubt true that a recent university graduate is guaranteed to have
acquired "a knowledge of computer programs such as Microsoft Office" (not, in
general, of database management). Some of them – hopefully not many! – may even
have waited until university to acquire this knowledge, through some
regrettable failure of their high schools. But spending years at university,
and thousands of dollars in tuition fees, to learn this is massive overkill.
You could learn to use MS Office in a dedicated course in a week or two – or on
your own even faster, depending on your personality. The other 95% or so of the
time and money you've spent on your university training is going to be
irrelevant to your job as file clerk. Even if we grant that it's OK for the
employer to pass the financial burden of training entirely on to job-seekers –
which is kind of the crux of the problem here! – how is it reasonable for an
employer to discriminate against someone for taking the obvious shortcut and
learning all the skills that are going to be relevant to the job without
passing through university?
More broadly, there's no automatic contradiction between jobs now requiring
greater skill and employers demanding unnecessary or excessive qualifications.
Suppose a job that used to need high school levels of achievement now needs
extra skills equivalent to a year's worth of university-level study. There's no
such thing as a 1-year university degree (rightly), so the easiest solution for
employers is to demand a university degree for the post – 2 years of which
would be superfluous to their requirements. That requires would-be employees to
spend thousands of dollars extra of their own money.
When people complain about credentialism, the typical assumption is that many
jobs could be learned on the job, just as well or better as in a class. And
that's often true, even for many fairly difficult and prestigious jobs. But the
second, implicit, assumption is then that on the job training is free. So
people compare the high costs of formal education, and start complaining about
credentialism, or the high wages of teachers etc.
The point is of course that
good on the job training is expensive. It consumes a lot of time of senior
people, and organisations are hesitant to provide too much of it. Higher
education grows not because it is the best way to learn jobs, but because there
is not enough serious on the job training available.
Doctors are the prime example – they are in short demand and highly paid in
most countries, with very different medical systems. Even though many seemingly
qualified people want to be doctors. The bottleneck is never the classroom
education – it's the required apprenticeships and assistent-doctor positions.
People who complain about credentialism are really asking that more job
markets resemble that for doctors, even though they often use the doctors as
the prime example of credentialism gone wrong.
I am quite sure conservatives hate the idea of a more educated population,
since it is harder for them to sell their snake oil. On the other hand, there
really are a lot of jobs now that expect, if not actually require, applicants
to have some college, but where that is not actually needed for the job.
To me the core of what people are talking about with "credentialism" is the
vicious cycle of increased educational requirements for jobs and increasing
average levels of education. Having more educational credentials helps people
get jobs, so people get more credentials, so the level of credentials a given
job asks for rises. Assuming that productivity doesn't actually rise
proportionally with education (which I think is pretty inarguable) it just ends
up meaning an ever-increasing amount of time and resources goes to the
credential-seeking game without accomplishing much.
It seems to me that the usual complaint about credentialism is not that
education is a bad or superfluous thing, but that the credentials presently in
use don't have a lot to do with the work they are supposed to reflect, and are
mostly an artefact of the education industry and the class structure of the
surrounding society. One or more horror-lite anecdotes upon request.
The relative prestige associated with certain degrees from certain schools
implies they are a better indicator of capability, but grade inflation and
cheating scandals in the Ivy League suggest that rather than being held to a
higher standard, students there are often given more leeway to skate by. The
degree is treated with reverence, but in effect can often be little more than a
gold-embossed acceptance letter.
This is exacerbated by the idea (and often reality) that jobs demand
qualifications for applicants that they don't utilize. It doesn't matter if you
didn't learn the things your resume says you learned in college if your
employer doesn't actually need you to do the things they say they need you to
do once you're hired.
Compared to people accumulating mountains of student loan debt and struggling
to find decent jobs, this is a really petty complaint, but: credentialism also
makes higher education worse for students who are interested in more than
getting that degree to unlock the game progression to "a good job."
I
attended a SLAC around the turn of the millennium. I picked that school instead
of a cheaper state school because I bought into the "life of the mind" campus
tour messaging. My professors and fellow students would be personally engaged
with interesting questions across many disciplines! It was true of the
professors, actually. It was also true in smaller elective courses that nobody
attended simply to fill requirements. But in mandatory courses or
"easy-looking" electives there were a lot of seatwarmers who'd complain outside
of class that history or philosophy or whatever was never going to be useful
for a job, so we shouldn't have to take these boring useless courses. I
thought: yes, I too would be happier if you all weren't attending these classes
that just bore and annoy you.
It wasn't until graduate school that I felt like my fellow students were
there primarily due to a thirst for knowledge. It reminds me of the aphorism
that a master's degree is the new bachelor's degree.
Much has already been said, but I assume we're all comfortable with the idea
that spending time at an institution and leaving with a piece of paper is not
the same as education: it's increasingly just a measure of social control,
since you have to pay a fortune to get the piece of paper which probably
over-qualifies you for the job you get. I've heard, incidentally, that
recruiting consultancies (another parasitic life-form) now have software which
automatically scans job applications and rejects all those that don't have very
precise qualifications in the right boxes.
I can't help thinking of my father who had no qualifications of any kind (he
left school at 14 as was normal then) and whose first job after the War was as
a wages clerk in a factory. OK, there was no Microsoft Office then, but he was
expected to work out wages by hand in pounds, shillings and pence, with the aid
of a ready-reckoner. I wonder how many people could do the contemporary
equivalent, even with higher educational credentials. And credentials are
pointless anyway unless they actually reflect genuine abilities that your
education has given you.
Maybe the purpose of a ceredential is not that it's owner knows what is needed
for the job you are offering, but is evidence of a certain level of displine
and intellectual capability. So the odds of hiring someone for whom on-the-job
training doesn't stick, -or who lacks basin self-discipline are greatly reduced
by requiring the credential.
Specifically on databases: there's a number of subtleties on proper database
design [normal forms] that are pretty much impossible to learn on-the-job
because very few people without formal training knows about them.
One more example for the vicious cycle of educational requirements. The
organization my wife spent a fair bit of her career working for had a mixture
of graduates and non-graduates doing the same roles. The graduates were simply
younger – hired when HR mandated (because they could due to the rise in
university education) a degree. While the job was pretty skilled, she never
noticed any difference in ability.
Another example would be that of clerks,
where computerization has reduced the skill level required. File
keeping, tracking orders and book keeping without computers is bloody hard.
@Zamfir: Doctors are the prime example – they are in short demand and highly paid in
most countries, with very different medical systems. Even though many seemingly
qualified people want to be doctors. The bottleneck is never the classroom
education – it's the required apprenticeships and assistent-doctor positions.
Actually the bottleneck in the US and UK is that the doctors' guilds keep
training numbers down. Other countries (i.e. Germany) don't allow them to do
this, and have plenty of doctors as a result. And doctors pay in the US is
anomalous – it's nothing like that in the rest of the world
Third, although I'd be the first to admit that general higher education
skills are very useful in the workplace, I'm very skeptical about any classroom
teaching of specific job-oriented skills.
The Engineering profession will
not allow you to become a full engineer until you have completed a certain
number of years in the workplace.
Count me in with DrDick, Frowner, engels, and the others with their pushback.
In fact, I'll go one step further: I would say that this: "The term
"credentialism" is used in many different ways, some of them contradictory, but
the implication is consistent: too many young people are getting too much
formal education, at too high a level." is, if not a strawman, definitely
straw-adjacent.
Education is a good thing! People getting more education is a good thing.
The term in no way implies what John says it is implying, and I don't often
encounter the argument that we, as a populace, are over educated. This argument
is absurd on its face and easily knocked down. John does a great job of
knocking it down, which would be excellent work if it were, you know relevant.
What I encounter far more often with regards to the term "credentialism" is
basically thus: people have been sold the idea that educational credentials are
the ticket to a good life, a life of economic security where you can have a
good job and raise a family and not constantly worry about the wolf at the
door. However, while there is real absolute value in the education those
credential signal their possessors having, a lot of that value is also relative
and has to do with scarcity. The more people who possess those credentials, the
less they're worth in the job market, which is the reason you got them in the
first place.
And as a result of that you get employers establishing arbitrary and
ever-increasing credential requirements for jobs that absolutely don't require
those credentials, as a way of weeding out the riff-raff. Sure, that position
doesn't require a masters, but if you can advertise it with a masters
and still get forty well-qualified applicants, why wouldn't you do
that?
And this masks the underlying problem, which is that, basically, there
aren't enough good jobs to go around to everyone, and we've constructed a lot
of bullshit hurdles ("Education! Education is the silver bullet!") to avoid
having to deal with that. Education is great. I think post-secondary education
should be available publicly free of charge, like primary and secondary
education is. But even if the college graduation rate were 100% well, someone
has to flip our burgers and work our cash registers, and right now those jobs
aren't considered respectable and they're sure as hell not compensated
respectably.
I will say this: the argument that young people are getting too much
education does hold water if you add a "because" with a good reason after it.
What immediately springs to mind is Paul Campos' ongoing war against law
schools; he advises young people not to go to law school because they'll get
"too much education," but because they'll assume life-destroying mountains of
debt and that the return on that investment won't be worth it.
I sometimes think that professional class people, because they lack
experience of the day to day of pink collar work and "business" education, are
a little bit vulnerable to talk of new technologies, etc.
The example of
this that drives me crazy is computer programmers. The reality is that most
computer programming jobs are not difficult – many of them could be carried out
(and sometimes are) by a smart high schooler. Generally when graduates do these
jobs – they use nothing that they learnt at college to do them. They're carried
out by business, or English, or (sometimes) science/maths graduates.
Now there are definitely exceptions to this. There are computer programming
jobs that are very hard, and for which you do need a Computer Science, or Maths
degree, and a lot of technical skill. But these are the exception. The 'App
economy', and the corporate IT world, largely consist of mediocre programmers –
who are astonishingly ignorant of basic Computer Science concepts, but muddle
through creating mediocre software.
Just want to add that I very much endorse engels' comment above:
"I fear that
equating credentials (i.e. formal or informal qualifications explicitly
demanded by employers for a specific economic role) with education (study,
reading, learning, the life of the mind, ) may not be conducive to progress
here."
From the employer side, though, the choice is often between five candidates who
have the BA, and twenty who don't. Since it's more likely that the BA
candidates will be capable employees, it makes some sense to eliminate the less
credentialled immediately (because interviewing people isn't free any more than
on the job training is). I have been part of a hiring process where we got
hundreds of applications every time we advertised, and had to grind through
them looking for that one unicorn-like candidate who was worth hiring.
Immediately binning anyone who didn't follow the instructions or possess the
requisite qualifications was simply essential to save time. As it was we spent
probably $20,000 of staff time filtering ~600 applications down to 15
interviewees, then interviewing the 10 who turned up.
With the "modern careers" like programming, there's usually a huge gap between
people who have the credentials and those who don't. It's not so much in the
one job they have, it's their ability to keep working as a programmer through
their life. University demonstrates possession of the "how to learn" skill in a
way that learning on the job doesn't. There are more than a few non-graduate
programmers who are locked into that one job they got somehow, and they can't
leave. Or they can leave, but they'll be working as a greeter at a box store if
they do.
There is, though, a lot of cross-over with ageism in general and in
tech jobs particularly. It doesn't matter how skilled you are if the employer
is willing to hire a recent graduate for less than you can afford to accept.
I'm reminded of the many article on open plan offices – too many employers
accept lower productivity from cheap staff/overcrowded offices etc because it
never occurs to them that paying more might get a better result. Or they can't
get that thought through the internal bureaucrazy. Or worse, it doesn't survive
the next arbitrary "cut staffing costs by 23%" edict.
Related is the Paper Qualifications Syndrome, which was of such great concern
to some in the 1980s that the ILO spent money studying it. The PQS was the
trend by employers to favour recruits with formal qualifications over those
without, even when those without may have had relevant work experience.
One reason employers may favour graduates for low level office jobs is that
employers know that technology is no longer static. It is not merely that file
clerks need today to know how to run databases, but also that such employees
will need an entirely different set of technical office skills in 20 years
time. Graduates, having learnt how to learn, are generally better able to cope
in this environment than people whose formal education ended at 18.
There is a related phenomenon which the UK academic mathematics community has
noted. Increasingly, employers no longer need people with only a first degree
in mathematics, because much routine math work can be assigned to machines. But
some sectors, eg finance, national security, still need original math to be
done, which means they need recruits with PhDs in mathematics. The demand for
math PhDs used to be a small percentage of the demand for math graduates. If
teachers are excluded from the demand figures, this is likely to be reversed:
More PhDs are needed than plain graduates. This phenomenon has important
implications for education policy.
I'm all for more education, of all sorts. The problem we have now with some
types of education is that it's thin, delivered in the same way all the way
from maybe Grade 3 to post-secondary, and is starting to NOT signal anything to
potential employers. This is especially true for several post-secondary majors
like Communications, Marketing, Family Science, etc. And there are other majors
that graduate far more young people than the economy can absorb - Graphic Arts,
Education, Hospitality, etc. Yes, it signals that the student had enough
self-discipline (and money) to persist, but is this really enough?
Dismal Voucher Results Surprise Researchers as DeVos Era
Begins
By Kevin Carey
The confirmation of Betsy DeVos as secretary of education
was a signal moment for the school choice movement. For the
first time, the nation's highest education official is
someone fully committed to making school vouchers and other
market-oriented policies the centerpiece of education reform.
But even as school choice is poised to go national, a wave
of new research has emerged suggesting that private school
vouchers may harm students who receive them. The results are
startling - the worst in the history of the field,
researchers say.
While many policy ideas have murky origins, vouchers
emerged fully formed from a single, brilliant essay *
published in 1955 by Milton Friedman, the free-market
godfather later to be awarded a Nobel Prize in Economics.
Because "a stable and democratic society is impossible
without widespread acceptance of some common set of values
and without a minimum degree of literacy and knowledge on the
part of most citizens," Mr. Friedman wrote, the government
should pay for all children to go to school.
But, he argued, that doesn't mean the government should
run all the schools. Instead, it could give parents vouchers
to pay for "approved educational services" provided by
private schools, with the government's role limited to
"ensuring that the schools met certain minimum standards."
The voucher idea sat dormant for years before taking root
in a few places, most notably Milwaukee. Yet even as many of
Mr. Friedman's other ideas became Republican Party orthodoxy,
most national G.O.P. leaders committed themselves to a
different theory of educational improvement: standards,
testing and accountability. That movement reached an apex
when the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 brought a new focus
on tests and standards to nearly every public school
nationwide. The law left voucher supporters with crumbs: a
small demonstration project in Washington, D.C.
But broad political support for No Child Left Behind
proved short-lived. Teachers unions opposed the reforms from
the left, while libertarians and states-rights conservatives
denounced it from the right. When Republicans took control of
more governor's mansions and state legislatures in the 2000s,
they expanded vouchers to an unprecedented degree. Three of
the largest programs sprang up in Indiana, Louisiana and
Ohio, which collectively enroll more than a third of the
178,000 voucher students nationwide.
Most of the new programs heeded Mr. Friedman's original
call for the government to enforce "minimum standards" by
requiring private schools that accept vouchers to administer
standardized state tests. Researchers have used this data to
compare voucher students with similar children who took the
same tests in public school. Many of the results were
released over the last 18 months, while Donald J. Trump was
advocating school choice on the campaign trail.
The Role of Government in Education
By Milton Friedman
The general trend in our times toward increasing
intervention by the state in economic affairs has led to a
concentration of attention and dispute on the areas where new
intervention is proposed and to an acceptance of whatever
intervention has so far occurred as natural and unchangeable.
The current pause, perhaps reversal, in the trend toward
collectivism offers an opportunity to reexamine the existing
activities of government and to make a fresh assessment of
the activities that are and those that are not justified.
This paper attempts such a re-examination for education.
Education is today largely paid for and almost entirely
administered by governmental bodies or non-profit
institutions. This situation has developed gradually and is
now taken so much for granted that little explicit attention
is any longer directed to the reasons for the special
treatment of education even in countries that are
predominantly free enterprise in organization and philosophy.
The result has been an indiscriminate extension of
governmental responsibility.
The role assigned to government in any particular field
depends, of course, on the principles accepted for the
organization of society in general. In what follows, I shall
assume a society that takes freedom of the individual, or
more realistically the family, as its ultimate objective, and
seeks to further this objective by relying primarily on
voluntary exchange among individuals for the organization of
economic activity. In such a free private enterprise exchange
economy, government's primary role is to preserve the rules
of the game by enforcing contracts, preventing coercion, and
keeping markets free. Beyond this, there are only three major
grounds on which government intervention is to be justified.
One is "natural monopoly" or similar market imperfection
which makes effective competition (and therefore thoroughly
voluntary ex change) impossible. A second is the existence of
substantial "neighborhood effects," i.e., the action of one
individual imposes significant costs on other individuals for
which it is not feasible to make him compensate them or
yields significant gains to them for which it is not feasible
to make them compensate him-- circumstances that again make
voluntary exchange impossible. The third derives from an
ambiguity in the ultimate objective rather than from the
difficulty of achieving it by voluntary exchange, namely,
paternalistic concern for children and other irresponsible
individuals. The belief in freedom is for "responsible"
units, among whom we include neither children nor insane
people. In general, this problem is avoided by regarding the
family as the basic unit and therefore parents as responsible
for their children; in considerable measure, however, such a
procedure rests on expediency rather than principle. The
problem of drawing a reasonable line between action justified
on these paternalistic grounds and action that conflicts with
the freedom of responsible individuals is clearly one to
which no satisfactory answer can be given.
In applying these general principles to education, we
shall find it helpful to deal separately with (1) general
education for citizen ship, and (2) specialized vocational
education, although it may be difficult to draw a sharp line
between them in practice. The grounds for government
intervention are widely different in these two areas and
justify very different types of action....
Huxley had deeply felt apprehensions about the future the developed world might make for
itself. From these, he made some warnings in his writings and talks. In a 1958 televised
interview conducted by journalist
Mike Wallace
,
Huxley outlined several major concerns: the difficulties and dangers of world overpopulation; the
tendency toward distinctly hierarchical social organisation; the crucial importance of evaluating
the use of technology in mass societies susceptible to wily persuasion; the tendency to promote
modern politicians to a naive public as well-marketed commodities.
[32]
away humility and restraint. It fosters a sense of
entitlement.
Chris G
said...
February
24, 2017 at 04:48 AM
On the Crooked Timber piece: Quiggin makes a very astute
observation about 'propertarians' and Divine Providence in
his concluding paragraphs. If one takes it as a matter of
faith (religious or secular) that human activity inherently
leads to good outcomes that'll be a huge influence on how you
engage with the world. It blows away humility and restraint.
It fosters a sense of entitlement.
RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to
Chris G
...
Yep. All roads lead to scapegoating. The anti-social
capabilities of base desires and greed are often paled in
comparison to those of detached indifference supported by
abstract high-mindedness. For example, both sides can blame
the robots for the loss of decent blue collar jobs.
RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to RC AKA Darryl, Ron...
Not sure that there are "both sides" any more in elite
circles. There are at least two types though. There is very
little presence among elites on the progressive side.
Reply
Friday, February 24, 2017 at 04:58 AM
Chris G
said in reply to RC AKA Darryl, Ron...
Hard to call this related but worth reading, Why Nothing
Works Anymore -
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/02/the-singularity-in-the-toilet-stall/517551/
Reply
Friday, February 24, 2017 at 05:11 AM
RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to
Chris G
...
[THANKS! This was LOL funny:]
"...When spun on its ungeared
mechanism, an analogous, glorious measure of towel appears
directly and immediately, as if sent from heaven..."
[This was highly relevant to today's lead article "The
Jobs Americans Do:"]
..."Precarity" has become a popular way to refer to
economic and labor conditions that force people-and
particularly low-income service workers-into uncertainty.
Temporary labor and flexwork offer examples. That includes
hourly service work in which schedules are adjusted ad-hoc
and just-in-time, so that workers don't know when or how
often they might be working. For low-wage food service and
retail workers, for instance, that uncertainty makes
budgeting and time-management difficult. Arranging for
transit and childcare is difficult, and even more costly, for
people who don't know when-or if-they'll be working.
Such conditions are not new. As union-supported
blue-collar labor declined in the 20th century, the service
economy took over its mantle absent its benefits. But the
information economy further accelerated precarity. For one
part, it consolidated existing businesses and made efficiency
its primary concern. For another, economic downturns like the
2008 global recession facilitated austerity measures both
deliberate and accidental. Immaterial labor also
rose-everything from the unpaid, unseen work of women in and
out of the workplace, to creative work done on-spec or for
exposure, to the invisible work everyone does to construct
the data infrastructure that technology companies like Google
and Facebook sell to advertisers...
[This was very insightful into its own topic of the
separation of technology "from serving human users to pushing
them out of the way so that the technologized world can
service its own ends," but I would rather classify that as
serving owners of proprietary technology rights.]
...Facebook and Google, so the saying goes, make their users
into their products-the real customer is the advertiser or
data speculator preying on the information generated by the
companies' free services. But things are bound to get even
weirder than that. When automobiles drive themselves, for
example, their human passengers will not become masters of a
new form of urban freedom, but rather a fuel to drive the
expansion of connected cities, in order to spread further the
gospel of computerized automation. If artificial intelligence
ends up running the news, it will not do so in order to
improve citizen's access to information necessary to make
choices in a democracy, but to further cement the supremacy
of machine automation over human editorial in establishing
what is relevant...
[THANKS! It was an exceptionally good article in places
despite that it wandered a bit off into the ozone at times.]
It hits on one of the reasons
why I am less skeptical than Darryl that AI will succeed, an
soon, in all kinds of fields: it may remain stupid in some
ways, but we will adapt to it.
Consider phone answering services. Its simple speech
recognition, which was once at the forefront of artificial
intelligence, has made them ubiquityous. Yet Dante would need
a new circle for a person who said "I just heard you say
5...3...7...is this correct?"
Some of these adaptations subtract from our quality of
life, as the article nicely describes. Some add to it, e.g we
no longer spend time at the mall arranging when and where to
meet if we get separated. Some are interesting and hard to
evaluate, e.g. Chessplayers' relation to the game has changed
radically since computers became good at it.
And there is one I find insidious: the homogeneization of
human activity and even thought. The information we ALL get
on a subject will be what sorts to the top among google
answers; the rest might as well not exist, much like
newspaper articles buried in a back page.
On the political front, Winston will not be necessary,
nobody will click through to the old information, we will all
just know that we were always at war with Eurasia.
And on the economic front, the same homogeneization, with
giant multinationals and crossmarketing deals. You'll be in a
country with great food, like Turkey, get into your rented
Toyota, say "I want dinner", and end up at a Domino's because
they have a deal with Toyota.
The middle third of the twentieth century was hysterical
about the totalitarian state
And the erasure of micro scale cultural heritage
That seems laughable since at least 1965 as lots of old
long dormant memes
Revived in these frightfully "totalized " civil societies
The Motions of human Society reveal underlying dialectics
not mechanics
Reply
Friday, February 24, 2017 at 09:55 AM
Paine said in reply to Paine...
"1984 " is way past it's sell by date
Much like Leviathan and the declaration of independence
Reply
Friday, February 24, 2017 at 09:59 AM
cm said in reply to
Julio
...
There was probably more than one movie about this topic -
people not happy with their "peaceful" but bland, boring, and
intellectually stifling environment.
Remember that one? It was about as weird as it gets. A meme generated out of the voluminous hacked
John Podesta emails that some conspiracy connoisseurs cooked up into a tale of satanic child abuse
revolving around a certain chi-chi Washington DC pizza joint. I never signed on with the story, but
it was an interesting indication of how far the boundaries of mass psychology could be pushed in
the mind wars of politics.
Sex, of course, is fraught. Sex and the feelings it conjures beat a
path straight to the limbic system where the most primitive thoughts become the father of the most
primitive deeds. In our American world, this realm of thought and deed has turned into a political
football with the Left and the Right scrimmaging ferociously for field position - while the real
political agenda of everything important other than sex lies outside the stadium.
The Comet Pizza story was understandably upsetting to Democrats who didn't like being painted
as child molesters. Unfortunately for them, it coincided with the bust of one Anthony Weiner - and
his infamous laptop - disgraced former "sexting" congressman, husband of Hillary's top aide and BFF,
Huma Abedin. The laptop allegedly contained a lot of child porn.
That garbage barge of sexual allegation and innuendo couldn't have helped the Hillary campaign,
along with all the Clinton Foundation stuff, in the march to electoral loserdom. I suspect the chthonic
darkness of it all generated the "Russia-did-it" hysteria that cluttered up the news-cloud during
the first month of Trumptopia. The collective superego of America is reeling with shame and rage.
On the Right side of the spectrum stood the curious figure of Milo Yiannopoulos, the self-styled
"Dangerous Faggot," who has made a sensational career lately as an ideological provocateur, especially
on the campus scene where he got so into the indignant faces of the Maoist snowflakes with his special
brand of boundary-pushing that they resorted to disrupting his events, dis-inviting him at the last
moment, or finally rioting, as in the case at UC Berkeley a few weeks ago.
Milo's battles on campus were particularly ripe because his opponents on the far Left were themselves
so adamant about their own brand of boundary-pushing along the frontier of the LGBTQ agenda. The
last couple of years, you would've thought that half the student population fell into one of those
"non-binary" sex categories, and it became the most urgent mission of the Left to secure bathroom
rights and enforce new personal pronouns of address for the sexually ambiguous.
But then Milo made a tactical error. Despite all the mutual boundary-pushing on each side, he
pushed a boundary too far and entered the final dark circle of taboo: child molesting. That was the
point were the closet Puritan hysterics went in for the kill. This is what he said on a Web
talk radio show:
What normally happens in schools, very often, is you have an older
woman with a younger boy, and the boy is the predator in that situation. The boy is like, let's
see if I can fuck the gym teacher, or let's see if I can fuck the hot math teacher, and he does.
The women fall in love with these nubile young boys, these athletic young boys in their prime.
We get hung up on the child abuse stuff to the point where we're heavily policing consenting adults,
grad students and their professors, this arbitrary and oppressive idea of consent, which totally
destroys the understanding many of us have about the complexities, subtleties, and complicated
nature of many relationships. In the homosexual world particularly, some of the relationships
between younger boys and older men, the sort of coming-of-age relationships in which these older
men help those young boys discover who they are, and give them security and provide them with
love . [Milo is shouted down by his podcast hosts]
So that was the final straw. Milo got bounced by his platform,
Breitbart News
, and went
through the now-routine, mandatory, abject ceremonial of the televised apology required by over-stepping
celebrities - though he claimed, with some justification I think, that his remarks were misconstrued.
Anyway, I'm sure he'll rebound on his own signature website platform and he'll be back in action
before long.
His remarks about the "coming-of-age" phase of life prompted me to wonder about the boundary-pushers
on the Left, on the college campuses in particular, who are encouraging young people to go through
drastic sex-change surgeries, at an age before the development of that portion of their frontal lobes
controlling judgment is complete. Who are these diversity deans and LGBTQ counselors who lead confused
adolescents to self-mutilation in search of some hypothesized "identity?" Whoever they are, this
dynamic seems pretty reckless and probably tragic to me. There ought to be reasonable doubt that
an irreversible "sexual reassignment" surgery may not lead to personal happiness some years down
the line - when, for instance, that person's frontal lobes have developed, and they begin to experience
profound and complicated emotions such as remorse.
Our sexual hysteria has many more curious angles to it. We live in a culture where pornography,
up to the last limits of freakishness and depravity, is available to young unformed personalities
at a click. We stopped protecting adolescents against this years ago, so why should we be surprised
when they venture into ever-darker frontiers of sexuality? It was the Left that sought to abolish
boundaries in sex and many other areas of American life. And yet they still affect to be shocked
by someone like Milo.
I maintain that there is a dynamic relationship between our inability to act on the truly pressing
issues of the day - energy, economy, and geo-politics - and our neurotic preoccupation with sexual
identity. The epic amount of collective psychic energy being diverted from what's important into
sexual fantasy, titillation, confusion, and litigation leaves us pathetically unprepared to face
the much more serious crisis of civilization gathering before us.
*
Postscript
: This item from
The Stanford
[University]
Daily
newspaper
puts a nice gloss on the stupefying idiocy in the campus sex-and-identity debate.
Single-occupancy Restrooms Convert to All-gender Facilities
: "Single-occupancy
restrooms on campus will soon all be converted to gender-neutral facilities due to new California
legislature and ongoing administrative efforts. The Diversity and Access Office (D&A Office) has
been spearheading the campaign to convert all single-occupancy restrooms ."
Here's what I don't get: if a single-occupancy restroom is going to be used by one person at a
time, what need is there to officially designate the sex of any person using it? And why are officials
at an elite university wasting their time on this?
routersurfer
February 24, 2017
at 9:44 am
#
I agree totally this perverted national pastime of pin the genitalia on the
mass of confused youth is a waste of time and energy. Anyone who reaches for
the scalpel and plastic surgery before 25 has not been served well by the so
called adults in their lives. Nature makes mistakes. Look at the Royals of Europe.
But wait until the body is formed before the Medical Industrial Complex steps
in. Now back to real problems. I heard on Bloomberg radio The Fed may offer
50 and 100 year T notes. Can someone explain how that fits into our system of
accounting scams??
If "Inadequate Skills" Is Preventing People from Being Hired in Manufacturing, It's Among the
CEOs
The Associated Press ran a story * that told readers:
"Factory jobs exist, CEOs tell Trump. Skills don't."
The piece presents complaints from a number of CEOs of manufacturing companies that they can't
find the workers with the necessary skills. The piece does note the argument that the way to get
more skilled workers is to offer higher pay, but then reports:
"some data supports the CEOs' concerns about the shortage of qualified applicants. Government
figures show there are 324,000 open factory jobs nationwide - triple the number in 2009, during the
depths of the recession."
The comparison to 2009 is not really indicative of anything, since this was a time when the economy
was facing the worst downturn since the Great Depression and companies were rapidly shedding workers.
A more serious comparison would be to 2007, before the recession. The job opening rate in manufacturing
for the last three months has averaged 2.5 percent, roughly the same as in the first six months of
2007, which was still a period in which the sector was losing jobs.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, average hourly earnings of production and non-supervisory
workers in manufacturing has risen by 2.4 percent over the last year. This means that manufacturing
firms are not acting in a way consistent with employers having trouble finding workers. This suggests
that if there is a skills shortage it is among CEOs who don't understand that the price of an item
in short supply, in this case qualified manufacturing workers, is supposed to increase.
Young people who have watched
the stampede of manufacturing jobs out of the US may reasonably believe that they would be
unwise to commit to developing any scarce skills currently needed in domestic manufacturing.
Working in Illinois and Wisconsin, I know many skilled manufacturing technicians and engineers
whose situations went from comfort to poverty in the space of a few years. Why would a young
person today believe that manufacturing skills developed now will not be offshored the next
time political winds shift? One of the reasons Trump got elected was by promising to protect
the manufacturing jobs that are left, something that neither the Clintons, Bushes, nor Obama
were willing to attempt.
I believe Trump is wrong to try to wreck NAFTA, but PNTR for China has been a disaster for
the US working class. This was initiated by Clinton and neither Bush nor Obama did anything
to mitigate its effect on working people in the Midwest.
Even without that aspect, most
of the "skill" and experience has to be acquired on the job - into which they will not be hired.
What most business managers are looking for is trained up people for whose training and hands-on
skill somebody else has paid for. They don't want to be that "sucker" themselves.
I suspect it is not purely selfishness (though poaching has always existed), but this mindset
has evolved in the past decades where business could draw on a large overhang of sufficiently-skilled
labor at home and globally. It was possible to dial down training and still find enough qualified
workers. This is one of those things where the downward path is easier than upward. In parallel
corporate pensions and unions were eliminated or reduced, both things that promote worker retention;
and corporate/public rhetoric shifted to make it clear that you will only have your job as
long as you are useful to the company, and maintaining that is up to you. Well, that's a two-way
street.
One possible solution to the
training problem has been practiced in Germany - the government passes out training quotas
or subsidies to companies; it is basically "either you train them or you pay a no-training
'fee' and we train them for you". Most large companies have training programs, but they often
exceed their demand for new workers (or they can find qualified workers or temps elsewhere),
and not everybody will be hired after graduating. That part such programs cannot address.
One possible solution to the
training problem has been practiced in Germany - the government passes out training quotas
or subsidies to companies; it is basically "either you train them or you pay a no-training
'fee' and we train them for you"....
International science collaboration growing at astonishing rate: Cross-border studies more
than doubled in 15 years
OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY
BOSTON - Even those who follow science may be surprised by how quickly international collaboration
in scientific studies is growing, according to new research.
The number of multiple-author scientific papers with collaborators from more than one country
more than doubled from 1990 to 2015, from 10 to 25 percent, one study found. And 58 more countries
participated in international research in 2015 than did so in 1990.
"Those are astonishing numbers," said Caroline Wagner, associate professor in the John Glenn
College of Public Affairs at The Ohio State University, who helped conduct these studies.
"In the 20th century, we had national systems for conducting research. In this century, we
increasingly have a global system."
Wagner presented her research Feb. 17 in Boston at the annual meeting of the American Association
for the Advancement of Science.
Even though Wagner has studied international collaboration in science for years, the way it
has grown so quickly and widely has surprised even her.
One unexpected finding was that international collaboration has grown in all fields she has
studied. One would expect more cooperation in fields like physics, where expensive equipment (think
supercolliders) encourages support from many countries. But in mathematics?
"You would think that researchers in math wouldn't have a need to collaborate internationally
- but I found they do work together, and at an increasing rate," Wagner said.
"The methods of doing research don't determine patterns of collaboration. No matter how scientists
do their work, they are collaborating more across borders."
In a study published online last month in the journal Scientometrics, Wagner and two co-authors
(who are both from The Netherlands) examined the growth in international collaboration in six
fields: astrophysics, mathematical logic, polymer science, seismology, soil science and virology.
Their findings showed that all six specialties added between 18 and 60 new nations to the list
of collaborating partners between 1990 and 2013. In two of those fields, the number of participating
nations doubled or more.
The researchers expected astrophysics would grow the most in collaboration, given the need
to use expensive equipment. But it was soil science that grew the most, with a 550 percent increase
in the links between research groups in different countries in that time period.
"We certainly didn't expect to see soil science have the fastest growth," she said.
"But we saw strong increases in all areas. It appears that all the fields of science that we
studied are converging toward similar levels of international activity."
The study found that virology had the highest rate of collaboration, with the most countries
involved. "They aren't working together because they need to share expensive equipment. They're
collaborating because issues like HIV/AIDS, Ebola and Zika are all international problems and
they need to share information across borders to make progress."
Wagner has started a new line of research that attempts to determine how much nations benefit
from their scientific work with other countries. For this work, she is looking at all the scientific
articles that a nation's scientists published with international collaborators in 2013. She is
looking at each article's "impact factor" - a score that measures how much other scientists mentioned
that study in their own work.
"How much recognition a study gets from other scientists is a way to measure its importance,"
Wagner said.
She compared each nation's combined impact factor for its international collaborations to how
much money the same country spent on scientific research. This is a way to determine how much
benefit in terms of impact each nation gets for the money it spends.
The United States has the highest overall spending and shows proportional returns. However,
smaller, scientifically advanced nations are far outperforming the United States in the relationship
between spending and impact. Switzerland, the Netherlands and Finland outperform other countries
in high-quality science compared to their investment. China is significantly underperforming its
investment.
Wagner said this isn't the only way to measure how a country is benefiting from international
science collaboration. But it can be one way to determine how efficiently a country is using its
science dollars.
In any case, Wagner said her findings show that international science collaboration is becoming
the way research gets done in nearly all scientific fields.
"Science is a global enterprise now," Wagner said.
Certain center-left Hillary fanboys like yuan, EMichael etc will point out that exit polls
show how the poor voted for Hillary (as if that somehow proves that she's great for the poor.
PGL would always point to how the poor blacks of the south were voting for Hillary in the primary.)
Probably has something to do with the large populations of poor and working poor in metro areas.
And Republicans aren't great for the poor.
But exit polls said Hillary did much better with the educated. The more educated voted for
her, the less educated voted for Trump.
Also Hillary won the "high-output" counties, not the poor counties:
"Last week, as my colleague Sifan Liu and I were gnawing on some questions asked by Jim Tankersley
of The Washington Post, we happened upon a revealing aspect of the election outcome. While looking
at number of influences on the presidential vote outcome, we found that in a year of massive divides,
one particular economic split stands out.
Our observation: The less-than-500 counties that Hillary Clinton carried nationwide encompassed
a massive 64 percent of America's economic activity as measured by total output in 2015. By contrast,
the more-than-2,600 counties that Donald Trump won generated just 36 percent of the country's
output-just a little more than one-third of the nation's economic activity."
The high-output and educated will continue with globalization thanks in part to the Internet
and globalization while the religious and less-educated turn inwards and try to turn back the
clock.
We need fair trade and for globalization to mean shared prosperity and progress not corporate
rule for the one percent.
There needs to be an International of the Sanders supporters, and the supporters of Corbyn
and Benoit Hamon.
Those wallowing in the center-left need to decide whether they support barbarism or socialism.
Which is the lesser evil?
"... By Henry Heller, a professor of history at the University of Manitoba, Canada and the author of The Capitalist University. Cross posted from Alternet ..."
"... The following is an excerpt from the new book ..."
"... by Henry Heller (Pluto Press, December 2016): ..."
"... Inside Higher Education ..."
"... The University, State and Market: The Political Economy of Globalization in the Americas ..."
"... New Left Review ..."
"... The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature ..."
"... Letters from the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher ..."
"... Anti-Communism in Twentieth-Century America ..."
"... Marxism is still regarded with suspicion in the United States. ..."
"... As if on cue, sociology, psychology, literature, political science, and anthropology all took sides by explicitly rejecting Marxism and putting forward viewpoints opposed to it. History itself stressed American exceptionalism, justified U.S. expansionism, minimized class conflict, and warned against revolution. ..."
How Universities Are Increasingly Choosing Capitalism Over Education
Posted on
February 7, 2017
by
Yves Smith
Yves here. Some further observations. First, the author neglects to mention
the role of MBAs in the reorientation of higher education institutions. When
I went to school, the administrative layer of universities was lean and not
all that well paid. Those roles were typically inhabited by alumni who
enjoyed the prestige and being able to hang around the campus. But t
he
growth of MBAs
has meant they've all had to find jobs, and colonizing
not-for-profits like universities has helped keep them off the street.
Second, this post focuses on non-elite universities, but the same general
pattern is in play, although the specific outcomes are different.
Universities with large endowments are increasingly hedge funds with an
educational unit attached.
By Henry Heller, a professor of history at the University of
Manitoba, Canada and the author of The Capitalist University. Cross posted
from
Alternet
The fact that today there are over 4,000 colleges and universities in the
United States represents an unparalleled educational, scientific, and
cultural endowment. These institutions occupy a central place in American
economic and cultural life. Certification from one of them is critical to
the career hopes of most young people in the United States. The research
produced in these establishments is likewise crucial to the economic and
political future of the American state. Institutions of higher learning are
of course of varying quality, with only 600 offering master's degrees and
only 260 classified as research institutions. Of these only 87 account for
the majority of the 56,000 doctoral degrees granted annually. Moreover, the
number of really top-notch institutions based on the quality of their
faculty and the size of their endowments is no more than 20 or 30. But
still, the existence of thousands of universities and colleges offering
humanistic, scientific, and vocational education, to say nothing of
religious training, represents a considerable achievement. Moreover, the
breakthroughs in research that have taken place during the last two
generations in the humanities and social sciences, not to speak of the
natural sciences, have been spectacular.
But the future of these institutions is today imperiled. Except for a
relatively few well-endowed universities, most are in serious financial
difficulty. A notable reason for this has been the decline in public
financial support for higher education since the 1980s, a decline due to a
crisis in federal and state finances but also to the triumph of right-wing
politics based on continuing austerity toward public institutions. The
response of most colleges and universities has been to dramatically increase
tuition fees, forcing students to take on heavy debt and putting into
question access to higher education for young people from low- and
middle-income families. This situation casts a shadow on the implicit
post-war contract between families and the state which promised upward
mobility for their children based on higher education. This impasse is but
part of the general predicament of the majority of the American population,
which has seen its income fall and its employment opportunities shrink since
the Reagan era. These problems have intensified since the financial collapse
of 2008 and the onset of depression or the start of a generalized capitalist
crisis.
Mounting student debt and fading job prospects are reflected in
stagnating enrollments in higher education, intensifying the financial
difficulties of universities and indeed exacerbating the overall economic
malaise.[1] The growing cost of universities has led recently to the
emergence of Massive Online Open Courses whose upfront costs to students are
nil, which further puts into doubt the future of traditional colleges and
universities. These so-called MOOCs, delivered via the internet, hold out
the possibility, or embody the threat, of doing away with much of the
expensive labor and fixed capital costs embodied in existing university
campuses. Clearly the future of higher education hangs in the balance with
important implications for both American politics and economic life.
The deteriorating situation of the universities has its own internal
logic as well. In response to the decline in funding, but also to the
prevalence of neoliberal ideology, universities-or rather the presidents,
administrators, and boards of trustees who control them-are increasingly
moving away from their ostensible mission of serving the public good to that
of becoming as far as possible like private enterprises. In doing so, most
of the teachers in these universities are being reduced to the status of
wage labor, and indeed precarious wage labor. The wages of the non-tenured
faculty who now constitute the majority of teachers in higher education are
low, they have no job security and receive few benefits. Although salaried
and historically enjoying a certain autonomy, tenured faculty are losing the
vestiges of their independence as well. Similarly, the influence of students
in university affairs-a result of concessions made by administrators during
the upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s-has effectively been neutered. These
changes reflect a decisive shift of power toward university managers whose
numbers and remuneration have expanded prodigiously. The objective of these
bureaucrats is to transform universities as much as possible to approximate
private and profit-making corporations, regarded as models of efficient
organization based on the discipline of the market. Indeed, scores of
universities, Phoenix University for example, have been created explicitly
as for-profit businesses and currently enroll millions of students.
Modern universities have always had a close relationship with private
business, but whereas in the past faculty labor served capital by producing
educated managers, highly skilled workers, and new knowledge as a largely
free good, strenuous efforts are now underway to transform academic
employment into directly productive, i.e., profitable, labor. The knowledge
engendered by academic work is accordingly being privatized as a commodity
through patenting, licensing, and copyrighting to the immediate benefit of
universities and the private businesses to which universities are
increasingly linked. Meanwhile, through the imposition of administrative
standards laid down in accord with neoliberal principles, faculty are being
subjected to unprecedented scrutiny through continuous quantified evaluation
of teaching and research in which the ability to generate outside funding
has become the ultimate measure of scholarly worth. At the same time,
universities have become part of global ranking systems like the Shanghai
Index or the Times Higher Education World University Rankings in which their
standing in the hierarchy has become all important to their prestige and
funding.
Several intertwined questions emerge from this state of affairs. In the
first place, given the rising expense and debt that attendance at university
imposes and declining employment prospects especially for young people, will
there continue to be a mass market for higher education? Is the model of the
university or college traditionally centered on the humanities and the
sciences with a commitment to the pursuit of truth compatible with the
movement toward converting the universities into quasi- or fully private
business corporations? Finally, what are the implications of changes in the
neoliberal direction for the future production of objective knowledge, not
to speak of critical understanding?
Universities during the Cold War produced an impressive amount of new
positive knowledge, not only in the sciences, engineering, and agriculture
but also in the social sciences and humanities. In the case of the
humanities and social sciences such knowledge, however real, was largely
instrumental or tainted by ideological rationalizations. It was not
sufficiently critical in the sense of getting to the root of the matter,
especially on questions of social class or on the motives of American
foreign policy. Too much of it was used to control and manipulate ordinary
people within and without the United States in behalf of the American state
and the maintenance of the capitalist order. There were scholars who
continued to search for critical understanding even at the height of the
Cold War, but they largely labored in obscurity. This state of affairs was
disrupted in the 1960s with the sudden burgeoning of Marxist scholarship
made possible by the upsurge of campus radicalism attendant on the anti-war,
civil rights, and black liberation struggles. But the decline of radicalism
in the 1970s saw the onset of postmodernism, neoliberalism, and the cultural
turn. Postmodernism represented an unwarranted and untenable skepticism,
while neoliberal economics was a crude and overstated scientism. The
cultural turn deserves more respect, but whatever intellectual interest
there may be in it there is little doubt that the net effect of all three
was to delink the humanities and social sciences from the revolutionary
politics that marked the 1960s. The ongoing presence in many universities of
radicals who took refuge in academe under Nixon and Reagan ensured the
survival of Marxist ideas if only in an academic guise. Be that as it may,
the crisis in American society and the concomitant crisis of the
universities has become extremely grave over the last decade. It is a
central contention of this work that, as a result of the crisis,
universities will likely prove to be a key location for ideological and
class struggle, signaled already by the growing interest in unionization of
faculty both tenured and non-tenured, the revival of Marxist scholarship,
the Occupy Movement, the growing importance of the Boycott, Divestment, and
Sanctions movement, and heightening conflicts over academic freedom and the
corporatization of university governance.
The approach of this work is to examine the recent history of American
universities from the perspective of Marxism, a method which can be used to
study these institutions critically as part of the capitalist economic and
political system. Despite ongoing apologetics that view universities as
sites for the pursuit of disinterested truth, we contend that a critical
perspective involving an understanding of universities as institutions based
on the contradictions of class inequality, the ultimate unity of the
disciplines rooted in the master narrative of historical materialism, and a
consciousness of history makes more sense as a method of analysis. All the
more so, this mode of investigation is justified by the increasing and
explicit promotion of academic capitalism by university managers trying to
turn universities into for-profit corporations. In response to these
policies scholars have in fact begun to move toward the reintegration of
political economy with the study of higher education. This represents a turn
away from the previous dominance in this field of postmodernism and cultural
studies and, indeed, represents a break from the hegemonic outlook of
neoliberalism.[2] On the other hand, most of this new scholarship is
orientated toward studying the effects of neoliberalism on the contemporary
university, whereas the present work takes a longer view. Marxist political
economy demands a historical perspective in which the present condition of
universities emerged from the crystallization of certain previous trends. It
therefore looks at the evolution of the university from the beginning of the
twentieth century, sketching its evolution from a preserve of the
upper-middle class in which research played almost no role into a site of
mass education and burgeoning research, and, by the 1960s, a vital element
in the political economy of the United States.
In contrast to their original commitment to independence with respect to
the state up to World War II, most if by no means all universities and
colleges defined their post-war goals in terms of the pursuit of the public
good and were partially absorbed into the state apparatus by becoming
financially dependent on government. But from start to finish
twentieth-century higher education also had an intimate and ongoing
relationship with private business. In the neoliberal period universities
are taking this a step further, aspiring to turn themselves into quasi- or
actual business corporations. But this represents the conclusion of a
long-evolving process. The encroachment of private business into the
university is in fact but part of the penetration of the state by private
enterprise and the partial privatization of the state. On the surface this
invasion of the public sphere by the market may appear beneficial to private
business. We regard it, on the contrary, as a symptom of economic weakness
and a weakening of civil society.
The American system of higher education, with its prestigious private
institutions, great public universities, private colleges and junior
colleges, was a major achievement of a triumphant American republic. It
provided the U.S. state with the intellectual, scientific, and technical
means to strengthen significantly its post-1945 power. The current
neoliberal phase reflects an America struggling economically and politically
to adapt to the growing challenges to its global dominance and to the crisis
of capitalism itself. The shift of universities toward the private corporate
model is part of this struggle. Capitalism in its strongest periods not only
separated the state from the private sector, it kept the private sector at
arm's length from the state. The role of the state in ensuring a level
playing field and providing support for the market was clearly understood.
The current attempt by universities to mimic the private sector is a form of
economic and ideological desperation on the part of short-sighted and
opportunistic university administrators as well as politicians and
businessmen. In our view, this aping of the private sector is misguided,
full of contradictions, and ultimately vain if not disastrous. Indeed, it is
a symptom of crisis and decline.
The current overwhelming influence of private business on universities
grew out of pre-existing tendencies. There is already an existing corporate
nature of university governance both private and public, as well as an
influence of business on universities in the first part of the twentieth
century. In reaction there developed the concept of academic freedom as well
as the establishment of the system of tenure and the development of a rather
timid faculty trade unionism. This underscores the importance of private
foundations in controlling the development of the curriculum and research in
both the sciences and humanities. In their teaching, universities were
mainly purveyors of the dominant capitalist ideology. Humanities and social
science professors imparted mainly liberal ideology and taught laissez-faire
economics which justified the political and economic status quo. The
development of specialized departments reinforced the fragmentation of
knowledge and discouraged the emergence of a systemic overview and critique
of American culture and society. There were, as noted earlier, a few Marxist
scholars, some of considerable distinction, who became prominent
particularly in the wake of the Depression, the development of the influence
of the Communist Party, and the brief period of Soviet-American cooperation
during World War II. But the teaching of Marxism was frowned upon and
attacked even prior to the Cold War.
The post-1945 university was a creation of the Cold War. Its expansion,
which sprang directly out of war, was based on the idea of education as a
vehicle of social mobility, which was seen as an alternative to the equality
and democracy promoted by the populism of the New Deal. Its elitist and
technocratic style of governance was patterned after that of the large
private corporation and the American federal state during the 1950s. Its
enormously successful research programs were mainly underwritten by
appropriations from the military and the CIA. The CIA itself was largely
created by recruiting patriotic faculty from the universities. Much of the
research in the social sciences was directed at fighting Soviet and
revolutionary influence and advancing American imperialism abroad. Marxist
professors and teaching programs were purged from the campuses.
Dating from medieval times, the curriculum of the universities was based
on a common set of subjects including language, philosophy, and natural
science premised on the idea of a unitary truth. Although the subject matter
changed over the centuries higher education continued to impart the
hegemonic ideology of the times. Of course the notion of unitary truth was
fraying at the seams by the beginning of the twentieth century with the
development of departmental specialization and the increasingly contested
nature of truth, especially in the social sciences in the face of growing
class struggle in America. However, the notion of the idea of the unity of
knowledge as purveyed by the university was still ideologically important as
a rationale for the existence of universities. Moreover, as we shall
demonstrate, it was remarkable how similarly, despite differences in subject
matter and method, the main disciplines in the humanities and social
sciences responded to the challenge of Marxism during the Cold War. They all
developed paradigms which opposed or offered alternatives to Marxism while
rationalizing continued loyalty to liberalism and capitalism. As if on cue,
sociology, psychology, literature, political science, and anthropology all
took sides by explicitly rejecting Marxism and putting forward viewpoints
opposed to it. History itself stressed American exceptionalism, justified
U.S. expansionism, minimized class conflict, and warned against revolution.
Indeed, this work will focus on these disciplines because they defended the
capitalist status quo at a deeper cultural and intellectual level than the
ubiquitous mass media. As Louis Althusser pointed out, the teaching received
by students from professors at universities was the strategic focal point
for the ideological defense of the dominant class system. That was as true
of the United States as it was of France, where institutions of higher
learning trained those who would later train or manage labor. Criticizing
the recent history of these disciplines is thus an indispensable step to
developing an alternative knowledge and indeed culture that will help to
undermine liberal capitalist hegemony.[3]
The approach of this work is to critically analyze these core academic
subjects from a perspective informed by Pierre Bourdieu and Karl Marx.
Bourdieu points out that the deep involvement of the social sciences (and
the humanities) with powerful social interests makes it difficult to free
their study from ideological presuppositions and thereby achieve a truly
socially and psychologically reflexive understanding.[4] But such reflexive
knowledge was precisely what Marx had in mind more than a century earlier.
Leaving a Germany still under the thrall of feudalism and absolutism for
Paris in 1843, the young Marx wrote to his friend Arnold Ruge that
reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form but,
if constructing the future and settling everything for all times are not
our affair, it is all the more clear what we have to accomplish at
present: I am referring to ruthless criticism of all that exists,
ruthless both in the sense of not being afraid of the results it arrives
at and in the sense of being just as little afraid of conflict with the
powers that be.[5]
His task as he saw it was to criticize the existing body of knowledge so
as to make it as reasonable as possible, i.e., to undermine its illusory and
ideological character and substitute knowledge which was both true and
helped advance communism. Such a project entailed deconstructing the
existing body of knowledge through rational criticism, exposing its
ideological foundations and advancing an alternative based on a sense of
contradiction, social totality, and a historical and materialist
understanding. It is our ambition in surveying and studying the humanities
and social sciences in the period after 1945 to pursue our investigation in
the same spirit. Indeed, it is our view that a self-reflexive approach to
contemporary knowledge, while woefully lacking, is an indispensable
complement to the development of a serious ideological critique of the
crisis-ridden capitalist society of today.
Marxism is still regarded with suspicion in the United States. As a
matter of fact, anti-Marxism in American universities was not merely a
defensive response to McCarthyism as some allege. Anti-communism was bred in
the bone of many Americans and was one of the strongest forces that affected
U.S. society in the twentieth century, including the faculty members of its
universities. An
idée fixe
rather than an articulated ideology, it
was compounded out of deeply embedded albeit parochial notions of
Americanism, American exceptionalism and anti-radicalism.[6] The latter was
rooted in the bitter resistance of the still large American middle or
capitalist class to the industrial unrest which marked the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries and which had a strong bed of support among
the immigrant working class. Nativism then was an important tool in the
hands of this class in fighting a militant if ethnically divided working
class. Moreover, the anti-intellectual prejudices of American society in
general and the provincialism of its universities were ideal terrain for
fending off subversive ideas from abroad like Marxism. Later, this
anti-communism and hostility to Marxism became the rationale for the
extension of American imperialism overseas particularly after 1945. The
social origins of the professoriate among the lower middle class,
furthermore, and its role as indentured if indirect servants of capital,
strengthened its position as inimical to Marxism. Just as careers could be
lost for favoring Marxism, smart and adroit academics could make careers by
advancing some new intellectual angle in the fight against Marxism. And this
was not merely a passing feature of the height of the Cold War: from the
1980s onward, postmodernism, identity politics, and the cultural turn were
invoked to disarm the revolutionary Marxist politics that had developed in
the 1960s. Whatever possible role identity politics and culture might have
in deepening an understanding of class their immediate effect was to
undermine a sense of class and strengthen a sense of liberal social
inclusiveness while stressing the cultural obstacles to the development of
revolutionary class consciousness.
This overall picture of conformity and repression was, however, offset by
the remarkable upsurge of student radicalism that marked the 1960s,
challenging the intellectual and social orthodoxies of the Cold War. In
reaction to racism and political and social repression at home and the
Vietnam War abroad, students rebelled against the oppressive character of
university governance and by extension the power structure of American
society. Overwhelmingly the ideology through which this revolt was refracted
was the foreign and until then largely un-American doctrine of Marxism.
Imported into the universities largely by students, Marxism then inspired a
new generation of radical and groundbreaking scholarship. Meanwhile it is
important to note that the student revolt itself was largely initiated by
the southern civil rights movement, an important bastion of which were the
historically black colleges of the South. It was from the struggle of
racially oppressed black students in the American South as well as the
growing understanding of the anti-colonial revolutionaries of Vietnam that
the protest movement in American colleges and universities was born. Equally
important was the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley. Indeed, it is the
contention of this work that the issues raised at Berkeley over democracy in
the universities and the free expression of ideas not only shaped the
student movement of that time but are still with us, and indeed are central
to the future of universities and intellectual life today.
At the heart of the Berkeley protest lay a rejection of the idea of a
university as a hierarchical corporation producing exchange values including
the production of trained workers and ideas convertible into commodities.
Instead the students asserted the vision of a democratic university which
produced knowledge as a use value serving the common good. It is our view
that this issue raised at Berkeley in the 1960s anticipated the class
conflict that is increasingly coming to the fore over so-called knowledge
capitalism. Both within the increasingly corporate neoliberal university and
in business at large, the role of knowledge and knowledge workers is
becoming a key point of class struggle. This is especially true on
university campuses where the proletarianization of both teaching and
research staff is in process and where the imposition of neoliberal work
rules is increasingly experienced as tyrannical. The skilled work of these
knowledge producers, the necessarily interconnected nature of their work,
and the fundamentally contradictory notion of trying to privatize and
commodify knowledge, have the potential to develop into a fundamental
challenge to capitalism.
Notes:
1. Paul Fain, "'Nearing the Bottom': Inside Higher Education,"
Inside
Higher Education
, May 15, 2014.
2. Raymond A. Morrow, "Critical Theory and Higher Education: Political
Economy and the Cul-de-Sac of the Postmodernist Turn," in
The
University, State and Market: The Political Economy of Globalization in the
Americas
, ed. Robert A. Rhoads and Carlos Alberto Torres, Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2006, pp. xvii‒xxxiii.
3. Perry Anderson, "Components of the National Culture,"
New Left
Review
, No. 50, July‒August, 1968, pp. 3–4.
4. Pierre Bourdieu,
The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art
and Literature
, New York: Columbia University Press, 1993, pp. 86–7.
Capitalism requires that total strangers be on the hook for student
loans? And if this is Capitalism then why didn't this trend emerge 100+
years ago? Why now?
Because a) the market for a college degree is vastly bigger today than
it was 100+ years ago b) tuitions were affordable so there was no way for
high-interest lenders ("total strangers") to game the system as they do
today.
Plus I wonder if the legal system or tax code would have let them get
away with anything like what they get away with today.
I agree with everything dude says, but the way he says it is so deathly
dull and needlessly technical . . .
it's a shame that someone so openly critical of the university system and
culture nonetheless unquestioningly obeys the tradition of: "serious writing
has to turn off 99% of the people that might be otherwise interested in the
subject."
Yes, his writing caused this reader to do a MEDGO ("my eyes doth gloss
over")
It was technical in its assertions, but has few metrics to quantify
the trends such as inflation adjusted administrative cost or inflation
adjusted government college funding now vs then.
There is a mention that the USA government has touted the "upward
mobility" or excess value, AKA "consumer surplus", of a college degree to
students and their families for years.
The US government further encouraged the student loan industry with
guarantees and bankruptcy relief de-facto prohibited.
The current system may illustrate that colleges raised their prices to
capture more of this alleged consumer surplus, a surplus that may no
longer be there..
If one looks at the USA's current political/economic/infrastructure
condition, and asserts that the leaders and government officials of the
USA were trained, overwhelmingly, over the last 40 years, in the USA's
system of higher education, perhaps this is an indication USA higher
education has not served the general public well for a long time.
The author mentions this important point "These so-called MOOCs,
delivered via the internet, hold out the possibility, or embody the
threat, of doing away with much of the expensive labor and fixed capital
costs embodied in existing university campuses. Clearly the future of
higher education hangs in the balance with important implications for
both American politics and economic life."
Maybe the MOOCs are the low cost future as the 4 year degree loses
economic value and the USA moves to a life-long continuous education
model?
And that rate doesn't even mention what scores they achieved.
MOOCs are hopeless especially since college is now less about
getting an education and more about a statement about a young
person's lifestyle or identity.
Now sure about the `now' bit. I maybe a bit cynical but I've
always thought, even when I was at one, that
colleges/universities major function was as a middle-class
finishing school for those unable to afford the real deal in
Switzerland.
I do not agree and it is deathly dull and needlessly technical. In
fact it remains me off the marxistic education I enjoyed growing up in
East Germany.
Maybe it is time to rethink after school education. Physical Labor should
loose its stain of being for loosers and stupid people. A whole lot of
professions could be better taught through apprentiships and technical
college mix.( many younge people would maybe enjoy being able to start
qualified work after only 3 additional years of education).
And do we really need 12 years of standard school education? There are so
many kids that do not function well in school.
Universities should be for the really eager and talented who want to
spend a big part of
their youth learning.
I guess we need a lot of new ideas to get away from the old paradigma (
anti- marxist or marxist)
I don't know how you read other works from academics if you think that
this
was dull.
Do you or anyone thinking this was "dull" have any examples of
academic essays or books that contain useful knowledge but also consider
them "shiny?"
Personally, I thought this was a very good essay as it explains some
things I've been thinking about American higher education and quite a few
things about my personal university education at a tier-1 research
school.
Basically universities have become a cog in the machine of neoliberalism.
Rather than anything resembling an institution for the public good, it
has taken on the worst aspects of corporate America (and Canada). You can
see this in the way they push now for endowment money, the highly paid
senior management contrasted with poorly paid adjuncts, and how research is
controlled these days. Blue skies research is cut, while most research is
geared towards short-term corporate profit, from which they will no doubt
milk society with.
I tremble when I think about what all of this means:
1. Students won't be getting a good education when they are taught by
adjuncts being paid poverty wages.
2. Corporations will profit in the short run.
3. The wealthy and corporations due to endowment money have a huge sway.
4. Blue skies research will fall and over time, US leadership in hard
sciences.
5. The productivity of future workers will be suppressed and with it, their
earning potential.
6. Related to that, inequality will increase dramatically as universities
worsen the situation.
7. There will be many "left behind" students and graduates with high debt,
along with bleak job prospects.
8. State governments, starving for tax money will make further cuts,
worsening these trends.
9. Anything hostile to the corporate state (as the article notes) will be
suppressed.
10. With it, academic freedom and ultimately democracy will be much reduced.
What it means is decline in US technological power, productivity gains,
and with it, declining living standards.
All of these trends already are happening. They will worsen.
I'd agree that a more readable version of this should be made for the
general public.
But your description suggests an inevitable bleak dystopic future – a
self-fulfilling prophesy. The future is not written – we can help
determine its course. It starts with grass roots movement building in
your neighborhood and community. And I can't think of a more rewarding
task then creating a better future for our children.
But perhaps my farmer's work ethic, my inclination to side with the
underdog and stand up to the bully capitalists, are notions that most
Americans no longer possess. Perhaps Cornel West is correct when he
states: "The oppressive effect of the prevailing market moralities leads
to a form of sleepwalking from womb to tomb, with the majority of
citizens content to focus on private careers and be distracted with
stimulating amusements. They have given up any real hope of shaping the
collective destiny of the nation. Sour cynicism, political apathy, and
cultural escapism become the pervasive options."
However, it is my observation that Trump's election has woken this
sleepwalking giant, and that his bizarre behavior continues to energize
people to resist. So why not rebel and help bring down the neoliberal
fascists. Is there any cause more worthy? And for those who won't try
because they don't think they can win, consider the words of Chris
Hedges: "I do not fight fascists because I will win. I fight fascists
because they are fascists."
I'm going to complain about your headline. A lot of stuff on this blog is
obviously relevant only to the USA, and when it's obvious it doesn't need to
be mentioned in the headline. But it's not at all obvious that this topic is
only about the USA (or North America, since the author is in Canada?), so
maybe you could edit the headline to reflect that it is in fact only about
the USA?
My observation of Australian universities is that they have similar
problems, although maybe to a lesser extent. But I doubt the same things
happen in all countries. I'd be interested to know more about mainland
European universities, and ex-Soviet-bloc universities, and Chinese
universities, and Third World universities.
As for "Universities with large endowments are increasingly hedge funds
with an educational unit attached", I think the rich universities in the UK
(i.e. the richer residential Oxbridge colleges, if you count them as
universities – Oxford and Cambridge Universities themselves are not
particularly rich – plus maybe Imperial College?) have very little invested
in hedge funds and a lot in property. Can anyone confirm or deny that?
In the past two decades, the UK's top universities, often called the
Russell Group after the Russell Hotel in Russell Square where they met to
form a sort of lobby group, have made money and started hiring rock star
academics. I don't know how much these academics teach, but they often
pontificate in the media.
Big business, oligarchs and former alumni (often oligarchs) donate
money, allowing them to build up their coffers. Imperial is developing an
area of west London.
Oxbridge colleges own a lot of property. Much of the land between
Cambridge and London is owned by Cambridge colleges. This goes back to
when they were religious institutions and despite Henry VIII's
dissolution of the monasteries.
London Business School has expanded from its Regent's Park base to
Marylebone as the number of students, especially from Asia, grow. I have
spoken to students from there and Oxford's Said Business School and know
people who have guest lectured there. They were not impressed. Plutonium
Kun has written about that below.
Oxford and Cambridge are British state universities as I understand
it. The Russell Group consists primarily of state institutions that
have assumed / been given / been restored to an elite role in the
British system of higher education, which is overwhelmingly public.
Oxford and Cambridge are at the peak of a relatively flat hierarchy of
elite public higher education. Higher ed's role in the constitution of
British elites is characterized by 3 features: association with an
institutional reputation and thereby access to a network, a financial
hurdle, and a meritocratic process of selection. Of these the
financial hurdle is the least problematic – tuition is still peanuts
compared to that at American elite institutions.
Things have gotten better – you no longer have to be a male member
of the church of England to get in – and the system is more democratic
than the French system of elite public higher ed, i.e. the ruling
elite in the UK can be penetrated by working people, e.g. Corbyn.
My son is half Japanese and half American and holds a passport with both
countries, he is still in elementary school, but my wife and I are
encouraging him to go to school in Japan or to Germany (ancestral home) and
seek his fortunes outside of the US as the crapification of the US roller
coasters out of control.
Japanese universities are still affordable compared to the US and it's
administrative layer, modestly paid, isn't run by MBAs, corporate hacks and
neoliberal apologists and others who would better serve the public by
decorating a lamp post somewhere with piano wire tightly wrapped around
their necks!
My niece attended Kyoto University, one of the best schools in Japan and
it cost her and her parents about 7500.00 a year. She commuted from Nara
City and Finished her degree in just under three years and had a job waiting
for her in the middle of her third year.
Now, I agree that Japanese universities have their fare share of problems
and insanity, but the thought of dealing with US universities nauseates my
wife and me.
The only school in the US that I would want my son to attend would be
Caltech, if he could ever successfully get accepted. They still do great
science there, much of it blue sky research. LIGO is still running!
https://eands.caltech.edu/random-walk-3/
An increasing number of British students are going to the Netherlands
and, to a lesser extent, Germany for courses taught in English and for
under EUR2000 per annum. Leiden and Maastricht are particularly favoured.
Apparently, some Spanish universities are cottoning on to that market.
Half a dozen years ago, a clown masquerading as a BBC breakfast news
reporter went to have a look and condescend. Her concluding remark was,
"The question is are continental universities as good as British ones."
The university system is not set up for education. it's a reward to
the conformists who studied 12 hours a day all through jr
high/highschool to pass the university entrance exams (which
notoriously don't test for any useful knowledge). The idea being that
if you waste your whole childhood studying for a phoney test, you
won't dare question the system once you're in the workforce, as it
would mean admitting your whole childhood was wasted!
Since college is viewed as a reward, rather than a challenge,
there's very little learning going on. it's about developing
relationships (and drinking problems) with future members of this
elite class.
So most Japanese corporations wind up having to teach the grads
everything on the job anyway.
A Japanese degree doesn't mean 'i know things' it means 'i have
already by age 20 sacrificed so much that i don't dare ever rock the
boat', which is exactly how the corporations and govt bureaucracies
want it.
You might say "oh but science! Japanese are good at that!"
But my wife, a nurse, says that it's considered rude to flunk an
incompetent student, providing she/he's respectful of the professor.
There are doctors who routinely botch surgeries, but firing them would
be rude. These doctors would have flunked out of regular (i.e.
non-Japanese) universities.
Having on more than one occasion suffered through management
restructuring organised by MBA's which did nothing other than reduce
productivity in favour of meaningless metrics and increase the power of
managers who had no idea how to actually do the job, I'm increasingly coming
to the conclusion that the MBA was a clever invention by an anarchist
determined to create a virus to undermine capitalism from within. At least,
thats the only possible theory that makes sense to me.
I agree . Putting it more bluntly the MBA is a clever con to get
would-be students to sign up in the belief it'll teach them something
that can't be taught – how to make money. I've said this on this blog
before – the ability to make money is a knack ; it doesn't matter what
the field is it's all akin to someone selling cheap goods on a market
stall .
Many UK universities are targeting foreign, especially Asian, students
for the purpose of profit, not education. Some universities refer to
students as clients.
Some provincial universities are opening campuses in London as foreign
students only want to study in London.
There are many Chinese would be students in London this week. Some
universities have open days at the moment. When the youngsters and their
parents are not attending such days, they go shopping at Bicester Village,
just north of Oxford. It's odd to see commuters arriving from
Buckinghamshire at Marylebone for work and Chinese and Arab tourists going
shopping in the opposite direction, and the reverse in the evening.
The targeting of rich Asian students, often not up to academic standard,
has led to a secondary school in mid-Buckinghamshire, where selective
education prevails at secondary / high school, to take Chinese students for
the summer term and house them with well to do (only) local parents. The
experiment went well for the "grammar" school, i.e. it made money. As for
the families who housed the kids, not so much. There were complaints that
the children could speak little or no English, which is not what they
expected, so the host families could barely interact with the visitors. The
school wants to repeat the programme and expand it to a full year. That is
the thin end of a wedge as the school will scale back the numbers of local
children admitted and probably expand the programme to the entire phase of
secondary / high school. It's like running a boarding school by stealth. The
school is now an "academy", so no longer under government control and
similar to charter schools, and can do what it wants.
Yves Smith,
I like your introduction to the article. "Universities with large endowments
are increasingly hedge funds with an educational unit attached" A recent and
very simple but eye opener interview on the subject-Richard
Wolff-http://www.rdwolff.com/rttv_boom_bust_for_profit_schools_are_making_money_but_failing_the_grade
As Henry Heller mentions Bourdieu, I can not find among his bibliography
much on the specific increasing dominance of the "free market" over learning
institutions. The Field of Cultural Production focuses mainly on the
opposition market/art,cultural field and the rules of art. Some of his other
works elaborate very well on the transformed reproduction of social agents
with different economic and cultural capital weights. His major works on
higher learning are The State Nobility and Academic Discourse, which are
about the homologies between the hierarchy of higher learning centers and
the market position occupiers which the latter produce. All of it within the
French context. The great late Bourdieu certainly denounced the increasing
free market ideology presence and dominance on "everything human"(i.e Free
Exchange, Against the Tyranny of the Market and elsewhere); yet not much in
that regard-to my knowledge-on the centers with the granted power to issue
higher learning degrees. I guess my point is that Heller's reference to
Bourdieu strikes me as a bit odd here.
Nevertheless, I like Heller's article. Just as incidental evidence: my
town's community college President is a CPA and MBA title holder, the
Economics 101 class taught does not deviate the slightest from economic
orthodoxy doctrine and I must add that, despite-or because of- a 75%
tutoring fee increase in the last eight years, the center has consistently
generated a surplus aided by the low wages from the vastly non-tenured
teachers.
The students from China, Singapore and the Middle East often live in the
upscale areas of London, often at home rather than rent. Parents are often
in tow. They also drive big and expensive cars.
It's amazing to see what is driven and by whom around University,
Imperial and King's colleges and the London School of Economics in central
London. This was remarked upon by US readers a couple of years ago. Parking
is not cheap, either.
A friend and former colleague was planning to rent at Canary Wharf where
he was a contractor. He put his name down and was getting ready to move in.
The landlord got in touch to say sorry, a family from Singapore was coming
and paying more. Apparently, Singaporeans reserve well in advance, even
before the students know their exam results.
A golf course was put up for sale near home. The local authority tipped
off some upscale estate agents / realtors from London. A Chinese buyer has
acquired the thirty odd acre property. Without planning (construction)
permission, the property is worth Ł1.5m. With planning permission, it's
worth Ł1m per acre. A gated community / rural retreat for the Chinese
student community is planned. Oxford, London, Shakespeare Country, Clooney
Country and Heathrow are an hour or less away.
My favorite line:
Marxism is still regarded with suspicion in the United States.
I love a good Marxist and I know that a totalizing perspective such as
Marxism requires a certain amount of generalization, but I found more to
criticize in this post than to recommend it. Apparently entire disciplines
have agency (
As if on cue, sociology, psychology, literature, political
science, and anthropology all took sides by explicitly rejecting Marxism and
putting forward viewpoints opposed to it. History itself stressed American
exceptionalism, justified U.S. expansionism, minimized class conflict, and
warned against revolution.
).
It is clearly true that the modern university is overly focused on
money-making – both the university enterprise itself and the selling of
higher ed to students – but, from my long experience with one big Tier One
and lesser knowledge of several others, it is wrong to say that the modern
university looks to operate as a business. Indeed, the top heaviness of
bureaucratic administration in the modern university is not very
business-like.
IMO what declining public funding has done is allow/force the modern
university to aim it's giant vacuum sucker in any and every direction. By
the way, if Wisconsin is any example, there are enough Chinese students
interested in American university degrees to keep it in business for quite a
long time.
But my biggest complaint is with the history. After first laying out an
ideal (but not very) historical vision of the utopian university, in
contrast with today's money grubber, he later admits that the mid-century
university was not all that open to leftism. Then the miracle of the 1960s,
which seems to spring from social protest alone. The real story of the 1960s
was the huge expansion of higher ed in the U.S., which led to considerable
faculty hiring, which allowed a lot of leftists to get hired in the 1960s
and early 1970s (often at second or third-tier schools) when they would not
have in the 1950s. This was always going to be a one-time event.
The author also seems to suggest that universities owe it to Marxists to
hire them if their analysis is good. This is a weird argument for a Marxist
to make, seemingly entirely oblivious to the overall political economy he
otherwise emphasizes. It ends up sounding more than a bit self-serving. I'm
not sure lecturing in History on the public dime is Marx's idea of praxis.
"... It is not just a matter of the author being able to afford Word and the equipment and other software to use it productively. E.g. how do you prepare your graphs and images? Also business partners accepting or returning the documents will have to buy into the "ecosystem". ..."
"... Academia is a highly collaborative venture, and one has to consider overall cost and productivity. ..."
"... Today there is PDF as a pretty established (readonly) document format, back in the day the standard in academia was Postscript. ..."
"... I used Word when writing my thesis in '94-95 - each chapter a separate doc, figures inserted by creating artwork separately and then using a high-end copy machine to integrate text and figures. It was an ugly process. ..."
The comparison comes 20 years late. In the 90's, MS Word was unsuitable for academic and scientific
writing, period. Even for short documents like a conference or term paper. It was geared entirely
to corporate users. In addition it was riddled with bugs and layout "quirks".
In reality, you also have to fiddle with Latex, and in the 90's embedding images was big PITA.
What I did not see in the comparison is price. I suppose one would need to compare legally-owned
copies of one product vs. the other.
It is not just a matter of the author being able to afford Word and the equipment and other
software to use it productively. E.g. how do you prepare your graphs and images? Also business
partners accepting or returning the documents will have to buy into the "ecosystem".
Academia is a highly collaborative venture, and one has to consider overall cost and productivity.
Today there is PDF as a pretty established (readonly) document format, back in the day
the standard in academia was Postscript.
>In the 90's, MS Word was unsuitable for academic and scientific writing, period... It is
not just a matter of the author being able to afford Word and the equipment and other software
to use it productively. E.g. how do you prepare your graphs and images?
I used Word when writing my thesis in '94-95 - each chapter a separate doc, figures inserted
by creating artwork separately and then using a high-end copy machine to integrate text and figures.
It was an ugly process.
> Also business partners accepting or returning the documents will have to buy into the
"ecosystem".
That's what led my employer to switch from WordPerfect to MS Word and from Lotus 1-2-3 to Excel
in the late '90s. Our customer, the US Govt, imposed a requirement that all reports and supplementary
material, e.g., presentations and spreadsheets, be submitted in MS Office formats.
> What I did not see in the comparison is price. I suppose one would need to compare
legally-owned copies of one product vs. the other.
Figure the business owns legal copies. Purchase price is one consideration, another is the
cost to maintain the software and keep staff trained in how to use it. The inertia - the tendency
to stick with what you've got - can be huge when taking the latter factors into account. In an
academic research group not only is there a mentality that you want to use the best available
tool for the job but there's constant turnover, which supports rapid adaptation and evolution.
Inertia is low. In contrast, turnover in (non-startup) business environments is comparatively
slow. Those businesses make cost-benefit assessments of adopting new software. The tendency is
to stick with what you've got until it's absolutely positively unsustainable to do so.
1. My experience with LaTeX vs Word is consistent with the study results - "We show that LaTeX
users were slower than Word users, wrote less text in the same amount of time, and produced more
typesetting, orthographical, grammatical, and formatting errors."
2. There's a guy in my group, the most talented applied mathematician I've ever known -incredibly
good at applying high level math to solve practical problems, who swears by LaTeX even though
we're standardized on Word at work. He's not any faster in preparing his docs than the rest of
us and they're not any better in terms of look and feel. He just prefers to use LaTeX. Getting
him to use Word has been like pulling teeth, i.e., entirely consistent with "On most measures,
expert LaTeX users performed even worse than novice Word users. LaTeX users, however, more often
report enjoying using their respective software." I will send him a link to the PLOS ONE article
first thing Monday morning;-)
"My experience with LaTeX vs. Word is consistent with the study results - "We show that
LaTeX users were slower than Word users, wrote less text in the same amount of time, and produced
more typesetting, orthographical, grammatical, and formatting errors."
You are wrong.
Such a statement signifies complete lack of understand of what the writing a book or dissertation
is about. And what problems the author faces and need to solve in the process (this is pretty
hard and time consuming job to write a sizable book - your book is a very harsh mistress ;-)
MS Word and TeX represent two different categories of writer's tool: the former is the tool
without direct access to raw representation of the document/book. The latter is a tool with full
access to such a representation. In this sense you can't and should not even compare them, unless
you want to looks like an incompetent.
Moreover on long documents (to say nothing about books) latest versions of MS Word all have
strange quirks. Sometime it change your formatting in a undesirable way. Microsoft software quality
really went downhill after, say, 2003.
Fixing those quirks including "spontaneous" changes in formatting can take a day or a week
of work even if you know MS Word perfectly well (which, unsurprisingly, very few people outside
programming community do), including the in-depth knowledge of styles and, especially, macro programming.
The latter is a must for writing any sizable book in MS Word. Or you need a good programmer to
help you.
Of course, if you expect that your book will be a bestseller you can hire a top level programmer
to adapt set of tools/macros for you, but that's a lot of money. You need approximately 3-5K lines
of macros to supplement MS Word for writing a sizable book (say, over 300 pages).
I do know a couple of authors who write their technical books using MS Word (Bruce Eckel the
author of "Thinking in Java" is one example). I view them as perverts, although being a programmer
is a distinct advantage in such a situation; you will need all your skills to make the job done
and you do not need to pay somebody else for such a help ;-).
Writing a large book is about managing revisions and a very precise formatting of chapters.
Which needs to be preserved (and verified with some automatic tools) over many iterations (which
can take several years) until the final draft of the book. Manipulating the set of styles you
use in the book is not easy in MS Word.
Here access to the raw representation of the text of the book is vital. If you need to check
your examples (like in case of writing programming books), access to raw text is a must (although
can be imitated in MS Word via macros). If you are writing geo science or any book with a lot
of mathematics – you better forget about MS Word.
The usual trick authors who write books in MS Word use -- storing each chapter as a separate
document -- makes it difficult to create cross references and such. Chapters became semi-isolated
and that negatively affects the quality of the book.
So for technical books and especially dissertations TeX has a huge (and I mean HUGE) edge over
MS Word. Only using HTML with styles (FrontPage 2003 or Microsoft expression Web) can compete
with TeX and only in case you do not use mathematical notation and equations extensively.
OK. word is faster. However there's nothing there about what the document looks like. Word
documents look like word documents, i.e. not very good. Perhaps that's a function of somebody
knowledgeable setting up templates. I find it really hard to believe that it's that much faster.
I find word completely bewildering.
People like latex it better because they can use their favorite text editor and get it done.
using word is completely and utterly annoying. That accounts for the enjoyment factor i think.
I respectfully disagree, but I see your point -- MS Word is much simpler to use for short papers,
especially in multi-author env. It requires less sophistication on users part.
Please understand that for LaTeX to work in multi-author environment you need Git or Subversion
(or similar version management system) to be installed and learned by all people in the group.
Even when just two people are involved (as often is the case with dissertations ) this is a must.
But from the point of view of achievable final quality of the product WordPerfect is better
as PGL pointed out.
Both are (unlike TeX) integrated WYSIWYG ("what you see is what you get") publishing environments
with a lot of sophisticated features (such as folding, macros, styles, creation of TOC, powerful
spellchecker, etc).
WordPerfect still is used by lawyers and some other professions who value precise layout:
== quote ==
Why do lawyers still love WordPerfect? One attorney answers with "Two words: Reveal Codes. At
one point about 10 years ago, I tried switching to Word. My secretary and I agreed we hated it
after only a few weeks."
== end of quote ==
I am surprised that so few people in the USA use Microsoft Expression Web (or FrontPage ) for
this purpose in corporate env.
I am also surprised how Microsoft being a huge company still managed to produce very complex,
professional tools like Ms Word and managed to push them to people who are definitely unable to
use even 10% of the features offered.
Few people understand that MS Word takes years of day-to-day usage (plus some programming abilities)
to learn on the expert level. In reality this is a complex publishing system.
I know some secretaries with almost 30 years day-to-day experience (starting PC DOS days with
MS Word 4, which was released in 1987) who still learn something new each month. Often because
they knew it a couple of years ago, but forgot :-).
BTW MS Word is one of the few applications for which viruses ("macro viruses") exist and were
a nasty problem in the corporate environment in 1996-2002.
Bill Gates took huge risk to bring "over-sophisticated" products like this to the market and
still managed to achieve a dominant position among regular users. In Bill Gates days Microsoft
was a "king of software complexity" in this product niche.
Kind of brings you back, doesn't it. I seem to recall a guy in the lab running LateX on a PDP
11/70 back in the early 80's - rather a boutique affectation even then.
libezkova -> Observer... , -1
TeX is a standard typesetting tool for the American Mathematical Society.
"... Another quibble, the defining of inequality by the single metric of share of income of the 1% is a bit reductive, though only a bit. ..."
"... Sometimes I think that the success of neoliberalism would be impossible without computer revolution. ..."
"... Bargaining power was squashed by neoliberalism by design. So this is not a "natural" development, but an "evil plot" of financial oligarchy, so to speak. In this sense dissolution of the USSR was a huge hit for the US trade unions. ..."
"... Education is now used as the filter for many jobs. So people start to invest in it to get a pass, so to speak. With the neoliberal transformation of universities it now often takes pervert forms such as "diploma mills" or mass production of "Public relations" graduates. ..."
"... Neoliberal transformation of universities into profit centers also played the role in increasing the volume -- they need "customers" much like McDonalds and use misleading advertisements, no entrance exams, and other tricks to lure people in. ..."
If the world were sane, this is the kind of thinking that would be taking place about inequality.
Rather than jumping to simple conclusions based on heavy priors (which is where too much of the
"debate" starts and stops), one starts with a broad, open minded and contemplative review that
seeks to identify primary causal factors.
That said ... there is a lot that could be quibbled here.
One, it's not always the case that identifying primary causes leads one directly to solutions.
Sometimes the solution has little to do with the cause. If, for example, changing climate causes
an increase in forest fires, we should consider that as another factor in our evaluation of climate
economics, but in terms of strategies for addressing forest fires, we have to find proximate solutions.
Although in practice, certainly we will often have a better understanding of what solutions
might be possible and might be effective when we carefully analyze causes. The endeavor of identifying
causes is absolutely worthwhile for that reason.
Another quibble, the defining of inequality by the single metric of share of income of
the 1% is a bit reductive, though only a bit.
Last note ... I notice international trade is not mentioned here. That doesn't mean it isn't
a primary driver, although as I've said many times, I don't think it is a primary driver, and
it appears Kenworthy didn't think it even worth mentioning.
Although my biggest quibble is that I think Kenworthy missed the big cause entirely: the effect
technology has had in making workers fungible.
IT has made communications almost free and made micromanagement of business systems ubiquitous.
As a result, firms are no longer dependent on long-tenured workers, or even teams of workers in
a particular place. Anything and anyone can be replaced and outsourced (in the broadest sense
of the term, not just offshoring to foreign workers), and when costs are high companies do this
aggressively.
This change has immeasurably changed the nature of work and the relative bargaining powers
of individual workers and even teams of workers. That, I believe, is why education is rising,
and doing so in the countries that are most adept and aggressive about business process solutions
implementation across many sectors. If I'm right, we will see this trend accelerate very soon
in countries that are laggards in this domain, as they finally start operating as resource planned
enterprises.
Because this effect is not measured and difficult to measure ... I think it gets overlooked.
But if I were a researcher in this field, I'd be looking at ERP adoption trends vs within firm
inequality trends and looking for correlations. This would get confounded by firm size but I bet
there are ways to tease out the effect.
"the effect technology has had in making workers fungible."
Yes, this is a very good point. Especially computer revolution and related revolution in telecommunications.
Starting from "PC revolution" (August 12, 1981) the pace of technological innovation was really
breathtaking. Especially in hardware.
Regular smartphone now is more powerful then a mainframe computer of 1971 which would occupy
a large room with air conditioning (IBM 360/370 series). So say nothing about early 1960th ("Desk
Set" movie with Katharine Hepburn, which was probably the first about displacement of workers
by computers, was produced in 1957)
"This change has immeasurably changed the nature of work and the relative bargaining powers
of individual workers and even teams of workers. That, I believe, is why education is rising..."
The nature of work in "classic" human fields (agriculture, steel industry, electrical generation,
law, etc) was not changed dramatically but the "superstructure" above them did.
Sometimes I think that the success of neoliberalism would be impossible without computer
revolution.
Bargaining power was squashed by neoliberalism by design. So this is not a "natural" development,
but an "evil plot" of financial oligarchy, so to speak. In this sense dissolution of the USSR
was a huge hit for the US trade unions.
Education is now used as the filter for many jobs. So people start to invest in it to get
a pass, so to speak. With the neoliberal transformation of universities it now often takes pervert
forms such as "diploma mills" or mass production of "Public relations" graduates.
Neoliberal transformation of universities into profit centers also played the role in increasing
the volume -- they need "customers" much like McDonalds and use misleading advertisements, no
entrance exams, and other tricks to lure people in.
So university education now is a pretty perverted institution too.
"... To insist that offshoring and illegal immigration were not partially responsible for the increase in US inequality is gross denial. As with the earlier moves to the southern states, the lives of the illegal immigrants and the workers in Mexico and Asia were improved, but US workers paid a dear price in wage loss. ..."
"... Another huge factor was the financialization that was occurring during this period (perhaps somewhat due the other changes and their effect on the nations politics). ..."
"... Most college grads are working jobs that do not require a degree. Indeed many jobs routinely filled by high school graduates when I was young now want a college degree. Melvin completely nails it. ..."
"... College degree now serves as a filter to cut off unnecessary applicants. That does not means that the college degree by itself is not worth it. There is a value in the college degree beyond job market prospects. In this sense huge inflation of the cost of higher education is a big injustice in itself. ..."
"... My last point would be that, with things like Dynasty trusts, it becomes much easier for the top .01% to maintain their place at the top of the income 'food chain', versus people born into families of more modest means. Those people in the .01% can send their children to the truly best schools in the country, whereas the rest of us go to whatever schools our parents can afford, or however much college debt we're willing to absorb. ..."
Why the surge in inequality?
Good question. When did this surge begin? What was going on that might have led to this surge?
Seems a lot of agreement on the 1970s as the beginning. What was going on in the 1970? Beginnings
of offshoring to Mexico and Asia (the movement of well paying 'rustbelt' union jobs to the cheap
labor southern states had begun earlier with questionable net in that southern labor gained and northern
lost), industrial automation began to take off (especially in auto manufacturing – car plants that
employed 5k in 1970 were producing more cars with 1.2k by the end of the 70s), but just as significant
– about this time, the US began to lose market share to European and Asian manufacturing.
The education thing is a canard. In the 1950s, Detroit employed millions of workers who had less
than a high school education; by the late 50s, they demanded a high school diploma; today, they can
demand an Associate degree. All apart of the selection process. Higher academic credentials help
the individual find a better paying job, but do not in fact create anymore jobs, let alone the well
paying assembly line jobs of before.
To insist that offshoring and illegal immigration were not partially responsible for the increase
in US inequality is gross denial. As with the earlier moves to the southern states, the lives of
the illegal immigrants and the workers in Mexico and Asia were improved, but US workers paid a dear
price in wage loss.
Another huge factor was the financialization that was occurring during this period (perhaps somewhat
due the other changes and their effect on the nations politics).
In toto, it was a convergence of: loss of market, automation, offshoring, illegal immigrant laborers,
this financialization that led to the surge in inequality.
The paper above references a book called "The Race between Education and Technology" that
provides a useful framing of the issue. Essentially:
"The book argues that technological change, education, and inequality have been involved
in a kind of race. During the first eight decades of the twentieth century, the increase of
educated workers was higher than the demand for them. This had the effect of boosting income
for most people and lowering inequality. However, the reverse has been true since about 1980.
This educational slowdown was accompanied by rising inequality. The authors discuss the complex
reasons for this, and what might be done to ameliorate it."
However, authors of the paper mentioned in the OP do dismiss education as a major cause
of inequality if we are looking at the 1% vs the 99% (rather than a more broad measure).
DrDick -> sanjait...
, -1
Most college grads are working
jobs that do not require a degree. Indeed many jobs routinely filled by high school graduates
when I was young now want a college degree. Melvin completely nails it.
"Most college grads are working jobs that do not require a
degree."
College degree now serves as a filter to cut off
unnecessary applicants.
That does not means that the college degree by itself is
not worth it. There is a value in the college degree beyond
job market prospects.
In this sense huge inflation of the cost of higher
education is a big injustice in itself.
I agree that I don't think there
was any one single thing which started driving inequality.
You pointed out 'Beginnings of
offshoring to Mexico and Asia (the movement of well paying 'rustbelt' union jobs to the cheap
labor southern states had begun earlier with questionable net in that southern labor gained
and northern lost)'. True, but implicitly those southern states were 'right to work' states
which is why the labor was cheaper.
Also, I believe in Thomas Pikkety's book 'Capital in the 21st Century' he pointed out that
the top .01% have so much wealth, they can't spend all the income they earn from dividends,
so that gets reinvested into more equities (stocks, bonds, et al) which then earn even more
dividends.
And when you point out automation, implicit in that is that the owners of the company (either
privately or stockholders) will increase their share of the 'pie', so to speak, which gets
split between the entrepreneurs and the workers, also increasing the inequality.
My last point would be that, with things like Dynasty trusts, it becomes much easier for
the top .01% to maintain their place at the top of the income 'food chain', versus people born
into families of more modest means. Those people in the .01% can send their children to the
truly best schools in the country, whereas the rest of us go to whatever schools our parents
can afford, or however much college debt we're willing to absorb.
"Other findings show that pen and paper have an edge over the keyboard.
Research by Princeton University and the University of California at Los
Angeles, published in 2014, showed that the pen is indeed mightier than the
keyboard. In three studies, researchers found that students who took notes
on laptops performed worse on conceptual questions than students who took
notes longhand. Those who took written notes had a better understanding of
the material and remembered more of it because they had to mentally process
information rather than type it verbatim" [BBC]. Wait. Computers make you
stupid?
Not surprising. The basic upshot is that computers encourage distraction and
even when that is controlled for they encourage people to type down what they
hear (i.e. transcribing) and not to encode, or distill it down to the important
concepts. This latter is important because it means you are listening at a
deeper level and thinking about what you are getting and are thus more likely
to recall and use the knowledge later.
As many of her critics have pointed out, DeVos is a case study in the nefarious ways that big money
shapes education policy in the United States. But she takes such criticism in stride. In 1997 she
wrote: "I have decided . . . to stop taking offense at the suggestion that we are buying influence.
Now I simply concede the point. They are right. We do expect some things in return."
In short, DeVos is arguably the nation's most powerful proponent of school privatization - and
now, even after
bumbling her way through her confirmation hearing, she's set to take the reins of the Department
of Education.
American public schools have some very serious problems. Spend time in the crumbling public schools
on the south side of Chicago and then venture over to the plush public schools in the leafy Chicago
suburbs, and you'll experience alternative universes. Schools all over the greater Chicagoland are
filled with committed and professional teachers, some quite excellent. But the students who attend
the city schools arrive at school with stark disadvantages, unlike their better-off suburban peers.
Discrepancies in school funding only exacerbate such class deficits.
Most of the problems with the public schools, in other words, are outgrowths of a deeply unequal
society. Yet the solution to this problem - the redistribution of wealth - is inimical to the interests
of billionaires like DeVos. The fact that she will soon be in charge of the nation's schools is a
sick joke. Make no mistake: DeVos is a serious threat to public education and should be treated accordingly.
Unfortunately, many Democrats have long supported the same so-called education reform measures
that DeVos backs. Often wrapping these measures in civil rights language, Democratic education reformers
have provided cover for some of the worst types of reforms, including promoting the spread of charter
schools - the preferred liberal mechanism for fulfilling the "choice" agenda. (Charter schools operate
with public money, but without much public oversight, and are therefore often vehicles for pet pedagogical
projects of billionaire educational philanthropists like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg.)
DeVos will not have to completely reverse the Department of Education's course in order to fulfill
her agenda. Obama's "Race to the Top" policy - the brainchild of former Secretary of Education Arne
Duncan, past CEO of Chicago Public Schools - allocates scarce federal resources to those states most
aggressively implementing education reform measures, particularly around charter schools.
Perhaps the most effective advocate of school choice is New Jersey senator Cory Booker, who many
Democrats are touting as the party's savior in the post-Obama era. Liberals swooned when Booker opposed
his Senate colleague Jeff Sessions, the right-wing racist Trump tapped to be the next attorney general.
But however laudable, Booker's actions didn't take much in the way of courage.
Booker's funders - hedge-fund managers and pharmaceutical barons - don't care about such theatrics.
They're more concerned that he
vote Big Pharma's way and keep up his role as a leading member of Democrats for Education Reform,
a pro-privatization group. They want to make sure he continues attacking teachers' unions, the
strongest bulwark against privatization.
Their aim is to undercut public schools and foster union-free charter schools, freeing the rich
from having to pay teachers as unionized public servants with pensions.
So in the fight against Trump and DeVos, we can't give Booker and his anti-union ilk a pass. As
enablers of DeVos's privatization agenda, they too must be delegitimized.
Public education depends on it. The beautiful school where I send my children depends on it.
"... three decades the national conversation about education has been held hostage by the anxiety-inducing metaphors that always accompany the neoliberal dismantling of public services. ..."
"... President Obama and his advisers have done little to resist this state of affairs, carrying out low-intensity warfare on teachers' unions and perpetuating harmful myths that the American school system is "life-saving" (because we live in a meritocracy), that it is "in crisis" (because test scores are falling behind globally), and that it can only be saved by the free-market fixes (competition, standards, accountability, and choice) originally advocated by conservative think-tanks like the Heritage Foundation and billionaire philanthropists. ..."
"... Of all the education initiatives with names that sound like spaceships (America 2000, Goals 2000) or battle cries (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, the Obama administration's signature contribution to the genre, may be the most successful assault yet in the sustained effort to destroy the democratic project of public schooling. ..."
In some languages, the words for "teach" and "learn" are the same, suggesting a view of
education as a cooperative activity, rather than as something that is done to students. Not
in English, and certainly not in the United States, where for three decades the national
conversation about education has been held hostage by the anxiety-inducing metaphors that
always accompany the neoliberal dismantling of public services.
President Obama and his
advisers
have done little to resist this state of affairs, carrying out low-intensity warfare
on teachers' unions
and perpetuating harmful myths that the American school system is
"life-saving" (because we live in a meritocracy), that it is "in crisis" (because test
scores are falling behind globally), and that it can only be saved by the free-market fixes
(competition, standards, accountability, and choice) originally advocated by conservative
think-tanks like the Heritage Foundation and billionaire philanthropists.
Of all the education initiatives with names that sound like spaceships (America 2000,
Goals 2000) or battle cries (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, the Obama
administration's signature contribution to the genre, may be the most successful assault
yet in the sustained effort to destroy the democratic project of public schooling. In 2009,
more than $4 billion of public funds were set aside for K-12 education as part of TARP,
representing a moment of enormous possibility for the president. The money could have been
used to equalize funding among schools (
which
is exceptionally inequitable in America
) or to incentivize states to make changes that
we
know
improve educational outcomes for poor children and children of color, like
reducing class sizes
and
promoting socioeconomic and racial integration
.
Instead, the Obama administration chose to use a series of competitive grants to push
the adoption of the Common Core standards, the linking of teacher evaluations to student
test scores, and the expansion of charter schools. These measures were deemed "innovative,"
even in the face of growing evidence that charter test scores are no better than those of
traditional public schools and that charters are
more
stratified by race, class,
special education status, and possibly language, than public schools.
Today, forty-two of fifty states are members of the Common Core Standards Initiative and
nearly
half
tie teacher evaluations to test scores, an enormous transformation in policy. Yet
test scores on the NAEP (known as "America's report card") have fallen for the first time,
and Race to the Top has
failed to deliver
even by its own paltry and unimaginative measures. Meanwhile, the
real crisis facing children
- a disgraceful level of poverty - has gone unnamed by
anyone but Bernie Sanders, let alone addressed.
It was nice that Obama called out the widening wealth gap during his farewell address,
but the ultimate legacy of his administration has been the deepening of that inequality
through the advancement of the agenda of the Broad, Walton Family, and Gates Foundations
over the demands of the American people for free, high-quality, and equitably funded
schools (a counsel for the education department even
once mistakenly referred
to the Obama administration as "the Gates administration").
Privatization efforts under Trump will be worse. Clearly, no one is going to give us
control of our schools. We're going to have to take it. In 2016, the Black Lives Matter
movement and the NAACP
called for a moratorium on charter schools
- it's a start.
"... students schooled in Home Econ would cast a jaundiced eye on financing a six-figure college expenditure with debt bearing exceedingly onerous terms. College debt is precisely the sort of scam that well-prepared young people learn to take a hard-nosed look at. ..."
Your practical insights used to be imparted to high school students in Home
Economics.
But Home Econ sounded too, errr, blue collar to the aspirational upper
middle class. As well,
students schooled in Home Econ would cast a
jaundiced eye on financing a six-figure college expenditure with debt bearing
exceedingly onerous terms. College debt is precisely the sort of scam that
well-prepared young people learn to take a hard-nosed look at.
So for the greater good of all, Home Econ had to be phased out, so that its
subversive truisms would not interfere with the vital missions of higher
education and consumer upselling.
May not be married but what % are living at home or with roommates? So
people are still cohabitating to reduce overhead.
I wouldn't pick up something by a dumpster, but I frequent thrift stores and
estate/yard sales. Once I'm done with my thrift store clothes, they get
recycled to other projects. Can even cut small strips to tie up peas and beans
in the garden.
I agree with the no debt. Don't do it or you're screwed. I have two kids .
we've been very clear, come to us before hand, we'll help if we can, otherwise
you go without and if you ever do debt, you're on your own.
Of course, we told both adults not to marry like us. They both did. One
ceremony at a park the other signed papers at our house but no
parties/weddings. We've made clear we can't afford kids. One has one kid, the
other is considering it.
Managing money, house repairs, land mgmt etc are all electives. Very few
take them.
Krzanich grew up in San Jose, California, just miles from Intel headquarters. He didn't go to an
Ivy League school: He got his bachelor's degree in Chemistry from San Jose State University. The
prestige of a college's brand on a résumé doesn't impress him.
"I've told my daughters this; my older daughter's about to go into college. It doesn't matter
what college you go to. The thing that was great about San Jose State was, I got connected with
some very good professors," he said.
He did research for their projects on the side. "When I went into interviews, I could talk about
real work that I'd done, not just textbook stuff," Krzanich added.
That informs how he deals with job candidates today. "I ask real simple questions that just tell
me, does this person know how to think?"
Krzanich had some more advice. "The other thing I tell my daughters is, I've had to terminate or
fire more people for being difficult to work with than being dumb."
... ... ...
Fortt Knox is a weekly podcast from CNBC anchor Jon Fortt. Previous broacasts of the
program
can be found
here
.
Rock
4 hours ago
What a bunch of morons !!!