I already did a Blog on the "BP Oil Spill", but here is a little different slant. I did one on "AIG" too and I will try to show how these two significant events are connected. I don't content that I am an expert on either oil or insurance, but I do know a little about statistics and decison theory. It seems to me that it was these last two areas where all the parties were less than fully competent. First, the "BP Oil Spill".
In my first Blog on the oil spill, I said that I have know for at least 40 years that the zone BP was drilling into in the Gulf was very high pressure gas. All petrolium engineers knew this and for that reason were very cautious about drilling into the zone. They knew that at the depth of 5,000 feet there was a very high risk of a blow out and that at that depth it would be difficult to impossible to repair. The bottom line is that our government who controlled drilling authorization in this high pressure zone sold BP the rights to drill there. Now here is where the statistics and decision theory comes into play. If the people on both sides were competent, they had to develop all the possible senarios that could go wrong and assign both probability and cost to each. The way this works, you figure out a bad event that could happen. You then estimate the chances of that event happening. For this example, let's say that the chances are one in one thousand. This is the groups best estimate, 1/1000. Next they calculate what the cost and total damages would be if that even were to occur. Again, let's say that it was $5 billion dollars. The final step is to calculate the "expected" cost of this one possible event if the drilling goes foreward. You multiply the two numbers together and you get $5 million dollars. This tells you that it would be worth while to spend upto $5 million dollars to eliminate the possibility of this event.
Now here is where an insurance company like AIG might come into the picture. BP has calculated that if this event were to occur it would cost the $5 billion dollars and they would like for someone else to share the risk. This is where AIG steps upto the plate and proposes that they will sell them insurance for the event for $7.5 million dollars. AIG is expecting to make a profit and thus charges more than the "expected" cost. See how it works?
The problem with all this is that all possible bad events are "not" on the list and often the estimate of the chances of an event happening are too "low". The "fix" if an event were to occur also need to have their chances of success estimated too and these appear to have been estimated too "high". Now all this is based on "estimates" because these are future events and now can be exactly sure. We know from the AIG fiasco that they estimated the chances of a real estate down turn with price deflation way too "low" and it bankrupted the company. explained in my earlier Blog why I thought AIG estimated the chance too "low".
The reason that I have dug into all these details is to show how the decision making must have been done by all the parties including our own government. What we all need to look for are the documents that support the above. We need to see the "list" of the bad events that could happen and the estimates of those chances. We also need to see their estimates of the cost of each event and the estimates for the chances of "fixing" them if they happened. My guess is that we will never see these figures and if we do I am sure the estimates and costs will be far too low. Notice that we have not seen any documents from the actuarials from AIG. The other problem that I have with our elected officials is that I am not sure they even know that these documents exist or should have existed. Most were elected because of their nice smile and smooth talk, not their competancy.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Friday, May 28, 2010
Xanthan Gum
Did you notice that I am also interested in "Cooking"? I have not had a Blog in some time about "Cooking" so here goes. I read most of the labels on the food that I buy and have noticed that many contain a mystery ingredient called "Xanthan Gum". I had an idea about exactly what this stuff was, but did not really understand it completely. I think that Kraft Foods and Campbell's Soup are the two largest users. What his stuff does is to "thicken" water. A small amount in water makes it look like thick clear gravy or snot. If you look at any Kraft Foods product, you will see that in most the first and largest single ingredient is "Water". That is because "Water" is free. The problem with watering down a food product is that it looks "Watered" down. Salad dressing is one of Kraft Foods most important and profitable products and they want it to be cheap and to adding "Water" is the cheapest thing that they can find to use. By adding in as little as 0.5% Xanthan Gum, Kraft Foods can make the dressing look "thick" and "rich" when it is mostly just water and vinegar. When low calorie foods started to become popular, it was the greatest thing that ever happened to Kraft Foods. They could take out things like sugar and oil from their dressings and use Xanthan Gum to keep their dressing still looking "thick" and "rick". The USA Dept of Agriculture discovered Xanthan Gum back in the 60's and it has taken off as a "fake" food item.
Several years ago I proposed that we load a cargo plane with Xanthan Gum and fly it into a hurricane and dump the stuff to "thicken" the water in the hurricane into a "thick" soup that would cause the hurricane to "Die" from friction. As you might have guessed, the idea was not accepted by NOAA. My idea was not lost. It seems that the oil industry is now one of the largest users of Xanthan Gum. No, they don't put it in your gas. They put the stuff in the drilling mud to make it "thicker" so that it can carry drilling waste up and out of the well. If it were me, I would have just called in Kraft Foods and had them dump a tanker load of salad dressing down the well. My guess is that the, so call, heavy mud they are pumping down the well in the Gulf has a lot of Xanthan Gum in it.
I think you must have concluded that I am a home brewer since my handle is "Brewmaster". It seems that the action of yeast in the making of beer generates a small amount of Xanthan Gum as part of the process. This is one of the factors that give beer that nice mouth feel and keeps it from feeling like you are drinking a glass of plain water.
Next time you are at your grocery store, check the labels and see if they contain Xanthan Gum. If they do, then you know that they are trying to sell you a watered down product. You may also notice that when you are reading your grandmother's recipies that "none" call for Xanthan Gum. Oh, for the days before Xanthan Gum.
Several years ago I proposed that we load a cargo plane with Xanthan Gum and fly it into a hurricane and dump the stuff to "thicken" the water in the hurricane into a "thick" soup that would cause the hurricane to "Die" from friction. As you might have guessed, the idea was not accepted by NOAA. My idea was not lost. It seems that the oil industry is now one of the largest users of Xanthan Gum. No, they don't put it in your gas. They put the stuff in the drilling mud to make it "thicker" so that it can carry drilling waste up and out of the well. If it were me, I would have just called in Kraft Foods and had them dump a tanker load of salad dressing down the well. My guess is that the, so call, heavy mud they are pumping down the well in the Gulf has a lot of Xanthan Gum in it.
I think you must have concluded that I am a home brewer since my handle is "Brewmaster". It seems that the action of yeast in the making of beer generates a small amount of Xanthan Gum as part of the process. This is one of the factors that give beer that nice mouth feel and keeps it from feeling like you are drinking a glass of plain water.
Next time you are at your grocery store, check the labels and see if they contain Xanthan Gum. If they do, then you know that they are trying to sell you a watered down product. You may also notice that when you are reading your grandmother's recipies that "none" call for Xanthan Gum. Oh, for the days before Xanthan Gum.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Comprehensive Solutions
I think we have all gotten tired of hearing politicians claim that what is needed to solve the illegal immigration problem from Mexico is a "Comprehensive Solution" not what we are now trying to do. Sounds good on the surface, but what does it really look like in the details? First let's divide the USA population between Left and Right or Theoretical and Practical. We all know that when we were young and a product of the public school and college system that we were Idealistic. We wanted the best or 100% answers or solutions to every thing. We were young and uncompromising in our "Ideals". Does that sound familiar? It is kind of what we have now between the Lefts and Rights. Both seem to want to solve social and economical problems and make life better for the citizens of the USA and the World. The big difference is how the seem to be going about it. To my way of thinking, requiring a "Comprehensive Solution" to the illegal immigration problem only delays solving the problem. The Left wants to wait until we have a 100% solution plan before we start and the Right just want to get started now enforcing the laws that we have on the books knowing that it is not a 100% solution. That's is the stand off.
If you read the heading on my Blog page, you may have noticed that I am a gardener. Now as a gardener, I have to deal with illegal aliens too. In my case, they are not Mexicans, they are "weeds". That's right, old fashion weeds. I garden based on my right leaning political philosophy. You didn't think that gardening qualified for its own philosophy did you? It does and I can tell you from the start that it is "not" "Left leaning". I don't have a Comprehensive Solution for the weeds in my garden, but I do have a plan. Each morning or after a rain, I go out and start pulling weeds until I get tired. I do this day after day, but I have never gotten 100% of the weeds out of my garden. Now if I were an Idealistic Left leaning gardener who only accepted Comprehensive Solutions to weeds, I would not have pulled a single weed and my garden would have been over run with weeds in no time and thus no corn for my annual corn roast. You are lucky that I am not an Idealistic Liberal.
To some, the USA is the cause of the illegal immigration problem by "attracting" these Mexicans to come here for a better life. If the USA was as destitute as Mexico and as over run with crime, then Mexicans would not what to come here. If you want to go one step further, think of our banks with all that money in them. If they are not a problem waiting to happen, I don't know what is. It is all that money in those banks that causes poor bank robbers to want to steal it. What we need a Comprehensive Solution to bank robbing because what we are doing now is not working. We still have bank robberies. If these liberal lefties had there way they would take the locks off the banks since the locks were not a 100% solution. See what I mean?
Can you think of one single area in our social and economical system where there is a 100% Comprehensive Solution to anything? I don't think so. So why are the liberals getting away with their stupid argument for a Comprehensive Solution? It is because we are not calling them out on their stupid statements. We are not challenging them. I think there are over 20 million illegals in the USA right now. We don't need a Comprehensive Solution, we just need to arrest and deport them one at a time starting with the ones who have been here the longest. Did you ever get a ticket for speeding when almost everyone else on the road was over the limit? Why did the cop stop you and not all the others? He should have had a Comprehensive Solution, Right? He stopped you and gave you the ticket and every one else who was speeding slowed down a little. If they did not give out any tickets, the speed on the road would only keep increasing. Sounds like our border problem.
Next time you hear a liberal or any politician say that we need a Comprehensive Solution to something, shout at the top of you lungs "Bull Shit". Enforce the laws that we now have on the books. All this banking stuff is the same as immigration and say "Bull Shit" to it as well. We don't need any Comprehensive anything.
If you read the heading on my Blog page, you may have noticed that I am a gardener. Now as a gardener, I have to deal with illegal aliens too. In my case, they are not Mexicans, they are "weeds". That's right, old fashion weeds. I garden based on my right leaning political philosophy. You didn't think that gardening qualified for its own philosophy did you? It does and I can tell you from the start that it is "not" "Left leaning". I don't have a Comprehensive Solution for the weeds in my garden, but I do have a plan. Each morning or after a rain, I go out and start pulling weeds until I get tired. I do this day after day, but I have never gotten 100% of the weeds out of my garden. Now if I were an Idealistic Left leaning gardener who only accepted Comprehensive Solutions to weeds, I would not have pulled a single weed and my garden would have been over run with weeds in no time and thus no corn for my annual corn roast. You are lucky that I am not an Idealistic Liberal.
To some, the USA is the cause of the illegal immigration problem by "attracting" these Mexicans to come here for a better life. If the USA was as destitute as Mexico and as over run with crime, then Mexicans would not what to come here. If you want to go one step further, think of our banks with all that money in them. If they are not a problem waiting to happen, I don't know what is. It is all that money in those banks that causes poor bank robbers to want to steal it. What we need a Comprehensive Solution to bank robbing because what we are doing now is not working. We still have bank robberies. If these liberal lefties had there way they would take the locks off the banks since the locks were not a 100% solution. See what I mean?
Can you think of one single area in our social and economical system where there is a 100% Comprehensive Solution to anything? I don't think so. So why are the liberals getting away with their stupid argument for a Comprehensive Solution? It is because we are not calling them out on their stupid statements. We are not challenging them. I think there are over 20 million illegals in the USA right now. We don't need a Comprehensive Solution, we just need to arrest and deport them one at a time starting with the ones who have been here the longest. Did you ever get a ticket for speeding when almost everyone else on the road was over the limit? Why did the cop stop you and not all the others? He should have had a Comprehensive Solution, Right? He stopped you and gave you the ticket and every one else who was speeding slowed down a little. If they did not give out any tickets, the speed on the road would only keep increasing. Sounds like our border problem.
Next time you hear a liberal or any politician say that we need a Comprehensive Solution to something, shout at the top of you lungs "Bull Shit". Enforce the laws that we now have on the books. All this banking stuff is the same as immigration and say "Bull Shit" to it as well. We don't need any Comprehensive anything.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
National Debit and More
I think you have all heard that we now owe on the National Debit 13 trillion dollars. Do you have any idea how much that really is? I didn't think so. How many zeros are there after the 13? It is 12 zeros. How many legal citizens are there in the USA? Just over 300 million. How many zeros are there after the 300? Only 6. That's right, just 6. How many people in the USA actually pay federal income tax? You guested it at 50%. It actually works out to only 1/3 or 100 million actual tax returns. Now figuring based on the people who actually pay federal income tax, how much do they owe? People who voted for Obama mostly don't pay federal income tax. For the ones who mostly voted Republican, the 100 million, they owe $130,000 each. Now, the median income in the USA is only about $60,000 per tax payer, so this debit amounts to two years of their full pay. If we were to really tighten our belts, I feel we could pay, at most, 10% of our annual pay toward the national debit. Do you think we could pay more? Remember that only 50% of the people pay any federal income tax. Now at 10% toward the national debit, it would take more than 20 years to pay it off. But wait, it is growing at 9.2% now and for the foreseeable future and the interest is just under 4% That means that if the real tax payes pay only 10% we won't even stay even. It is that bad.
Oh, I forgot one important point. I must have aptitude for politics. That point is that much of what is owed is not show on any of the federal balance sheets. If all the "unfunded" liabilities were added, it is my opinion that the national debit would over twice as big. Add in social security, there is zero money in the bank for future payments. It is all being paid out of current and future tax revenues. Add in all the guarantees that our government has made. If you did not know it, AIG was small potatoes compared to the liabilities agreed to by our government. 95% of all real estate loans are guaranteed by the federal government as well as student loans and retirement programs for union workers. Had we not given billions to the GMC unions and GMC went out of business, we would have still had to pay 90% of the promised retirement for GMC workers. When our government made these stupid commitments, things looked rosie and many felt that they would continue for ever. Now we all know that much of the past success of the USA was a fluke and a piece of luck of being in the right place at the right time after WWII. That will not happen again. We were never as smart or as rich as we thought. I know you don't like hearing me say that, but it is true. Every time I read interviews with successful business people, the reason for their success is always their "unique" ability. Isn't it strange that they never say that they were lucky to have been in the right spot at the right time? Notice how few of these hot shots can't pull of the big win twice in a row and neither can the USA.
I have harped on the fact that only 60% of our kids graduate from high school and that we are dead last in math of the top 30 counties in the world. Do you really think that a country with this quality of players can compete in the world? If you do, you are on something.
Being in debit is not all bad, but the difference with the USA is where we spent the money that is now our national debit. Take a personal example. Is there a difference between borrowing money to buy a home or borrowing money to take a vacation to Las Vegas? In the case of the home, you can always get some or all of your money back if you were to sell the home. In the case of spending on the vacation to have a good time, there is now way to get any of that money back. In my opinion, that is exactly what the USA did. In the great society program of LBJ, we gave people money who did not work to buy food and drugs that they ate or injected and now we don't have anything to show for it. Student loans is one of my favorite areas of social expenditure. We go into national debit to send our kids to college to take majors that have zero economic value. We waste every ones time and money on these worthless investments. It is actually a complement to call most student loans "investments". I am not against increasing the national debit if it is really an investment, but I am not interested in spending tax money or going into debit for worthless expenditures. I have known people who borrowed money to take a vacation and I know for a fact that these people all ended up in the poor house. This is exactly what the USA has done. A lot of people have had a good time on the public dime and it has to stop.
In all investments, the objective is to get your monies worth and a return on the investment. Here in the USA, we spend tax money on "fuzzy feel good" things that have zero future value, only the future debit. When we look back we see that many of us had a good time and we did. Many had a lot better time than they deserved because they were spending money or value that they did not own. I think that home equity loans at the peak of the real estate boom are the perfect example of what i am talking about. Many people felt that they were rich and that they had made it. They felt like the equity value in the homes was the result of their very smart investing when, in fact, it was pure luck and being in the right place at the wrong time. When the real estate market went bust, I did not hear these same people saying how dumb they were. They and Obama were all saying that it was someone Elise's fault. See how it works? Business people are similar as I explained above. We as citizens of these USA also feel that our role in the world and our apparent wealth has been 100% the result of our smarts and hard work, but our "luck" is running out.
I actually know of people who borrowed money to take a vacation and in all cases these people have ended up in the poor hours. It is the same for the USA with the national debit. The best example the situation that the USA is in is the "home equity" loan. I know people who thought they were so smart and felt that they were rich due to the rise in their "home equity" as a result of home price inflation. They thought that inflation was an easy way to actually make money. They have all found out that his was not real "earned" money, it was "funny money" and now it is not so funny when they have to pay it back out of "earned money". Our own government encouraged this type of conduct thru refinancing programs that through the federal agencies made this whole thing possible. Now we have the "unfunded" liability of these home loans that were garranteed at the height of the real estate inflated prices. It has given the concept of being "under water" a whole new meaning right along with "flipping". Sounds like the old TV show "Flipper". Flipping was skill and now being under water is some one else's fault.
I don't have the answer to all this, but I know that we were not as smart as we all thought we were nor were we really as hard working. It was luck and being in the right place at the right time and now it seems our luck has run out and we will have to return to real honesty. My mother used to always say that "Honesty was the best policy". Maybe my mother had the answer all along.
Oh, I forgot one important point. I must have aptitude for politics. That point is that much of what is owed is not show on any of the federal balance sheets. If all the "unfunded" liabilities were added, it is my opinion that the national debit would over twice as big. Add in social security, there is zero money in the bank for future payments. It is all being paid out of current and future tax revenues. Add in all the guarantees that our government has made. If you did not know it, AIG was small potatoes compared to the liabilities agreed to by our government. 95% of all real estate loans are guaranteed by the federal government as well as student loans and retirement programs for union workers. Had we not given billions to the GMC unions and GMC went out of business, we would have still had to pay 90% of the promised retirement for GMC workers. When our government made these stupid commitments, things looked rosie and many felt that they would continue for ever. Now we all know that much of the past success of the USA was a fluke and a piece of luck of being in the right place at the right time after WWII. That will not happen again. We were never as smart or as rich as we thought. I know you don't like hearing me say that, but it is true. Every time I read interviews with successful business people, the reason for their success is always their "unique" ability. Isn't it strange that they never say that they were lucky to have been in the right spot at the right time? Notice how few of these hot shots can't pull of the big win twice in a row and neither can the USA.
I have harped on the fact that only 60% of our kids graduate from high school and that we are dead last in math of the top 30 counties in the world. Do you really think that a country with this quality of players can compete in the world? If you do, you are on something.
Being in debit is not all bad, but the difference with the USA is where we spent the money that is now our national debit. Take a personal example. Is there a difference between borrowing money to buy a home or borrowing money to take a vacation to Las Vegas? In the case of the home, you can always get some or all of your money back if you were to sell the home. In the case of spending on the vacation to have a good time, there is now way to get any of that money back. In my opinion, that is exactly what the USA did. In the great society program of LBJ, we gave people money who did not work to buy food and drugs that they ate or injected and now we don't have anything to show for it. Student loans is one of my favorite areas of social expenditure. We go into national debit to send our kids to college to take majors that have zero economic value. We waste every ones time and money on these worthless investments. It is actually a complement to call most student loans "investments". I am not against increasing the national debit if it is really an investment, but I am not interested in spending tax money or going into debit for worthless expenditures. I have known people who borrowed money to take a vacation and I know for a fact that these people all ended up in the poor house. This is exactly what the USA has done. A lot of people have had a good time on the public dime and it has to stop.
In all investments, the objective is to get your monies worth and a return on the investment. Here in the USA, we spend tax money on "fuzzy feel good" things that have zero future value, only the future debit. When we look back we see that many of us had a good time and we did. Many had a lot better time than they deserved because they were spending money or value that they did not own. I think that home equity loans at the peak of the real estate boom are the perfect example of what i am talking about. Many people felt that they were rich and that they had made it. They felt like the equity value in the homes was the result of their very smart investing when, in fact, it was pure luck and being in the right place at the wrong time. When the real estate market went bust, I did not hear these same people saying how dumb they were. They and Obama were all saying that it was someone Elise's fault. See how it works? Business people are similar as I explained above. We as citizens of these USA also feel that our role in the world and our apparent wealth has been 100% the result of our smarts and hard work, but our "luck" is running out.
I actually know of people who borrowed money to take a vacation and in all cases these people have ended up in the poor hours. It is the same for the USA with the national debit. The best example the situation that the USA is in is the "home equity" loan. I know people who thought they were so smart and felt that they were rich due to the rise in their "home equity" as a result of home price inflation. They thought that inflation was an easy way to actually make money. They have all found out that his was not real "earned" money, it was "funny money" and now it is not so funny when they have to pay it back out of "earned money". Our own government encouraged this type of conduct thru refinancing programs that through the federal agencies made this whole thing possible. Now we have the "unfunded" liability of these home loans that were garranteed at the height of the real estate inflated prices. It has given the concept of being "under water" a whole new meaning right along with "flipping". Sounds like the old TV show "Flipper". Flipping was skill and now being under water is some one else's fault.
I don't have the answer to all this, but I know that we were not as smart as we all thought we were nor were we really as hard working. It was luck and being in the right place at the right time and now it seems our luck has run out and we will have to return to real honesty. My mother used to always say that "Honesty was the best policy". Maybe my mother had the answer all along.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
The Rule Of Law, Allende vs Obama
How many times have you heard someone comment about "The Rule of Law"? Exactly what do you think they mean? Most seem to feel that "The Rule of Law" protects their rights and it does. The "Law" defines our rights and the enforcement of those "Laws" is how our rights are protected. Seems simple doesn't it? It is, but it seems that thing as simple as this one can still get screwed up and perverted even here in the USA. On the News, there was a report that the person in charge of ICE, John Morton stated that he was not going to deport Mexicans who were arrested under the new Arizona law. This means he is not going to "Enforce" the laws of the USA unless he and Obama agrees with the law. That means he does not accept the basic concept of the USA that we are a society of "The Rule of Law". If the executive branch of government can reject the laws passed by the other branches, then we might as well not have a democracy at all. This is not a minor point. It strikes at the foundation of this country and every thing that everyone before us has worked and died for. It is a very big deal and we all need to wake up.
I have a little story that shows how critical "The Rule of Law" is. This might be a repeat, but with this new information, I think it just might need repeating. Back in the late 60's and early 70's, I lived in Argentina and traveled all over South America. Many people view South America as a bunch of Banana Republics where there is no "Rule of Law", only never ending corruption. That is partly true. The one bright spot in South America was Chile. They had an operating democracy that dated to about the same time period as the USA. They were very proud of this fact and were confident that they did not need to worry about any group taking it over. As it turned out, Salvador Allende was elected by a plurality as President in the early 70's. Looking back now, he was just like our Obama, a real socialist radical who wanted to do much the same things as our Obama. I recognized this before Allende actually took office and told my Chilean friends my opinion. They said that they were not worried because he was limited to only one 6 year term by law and he really could not change things that much because of their congress and senate. I listened to them, but continued to be skeptical. Since Allende did not get a majority of the votes, the congress had to chose the winner and validate the election. If they had required a run-off, it is my opinion that Allende would not have been elected. Chile had a historical tradition of accepting the person with the most votes, even if they did not have a majority so that is what they did.
Every thing started out with the typical honey moon, just like with Obama. It was not until a few weeks later that changes started to happen. What Allende did was to "Selectively Enforce the Laws". In affect, he rejected the whole concept of "The Rule of Law". Allende just enforced the laws that went along with his socialist philosophy, just like Obama and this John Morton. Consider how many laws are on the books in the USA and how complex they are. Complexity is just what someone like Allende or Obama wants. As they selectively enforce laws they like, they can hide behind complexity. The other side of this is the courts. We all know how long it can take to get to court or to the Supreme Court. During all that time the executive branch of our government has control of you and your property. You or your business could be tied up for years before you had your day in court where you could be found innocent of anything. This is exactly what happened in Chile under Allende and we know how it all ended up. Allende shot himself in the White House, right?
A short time after Allende was elected, some of his community organizers came to one of our ITT plants in Chile and asked us to hire a bunch of their friends and we said no. We did not need any more workers. The former community organizers were now from the equivalent of the OSHA under Allende. They asked us to reconsider and that they would be back in a week. They did come back and when we said that we still did not need to hire anyone from their list, the OSHA inspector went into our plant and found a violation and "Red Tagged" our plant. We had to shut down immediately and send everyone home. We had the violation fixed in 10 minutes, but they left without removing the "Red Tag" and thus we were shut down until we could get them back in a week. They came back in a week and removed the "Red Tag" and we were back up running. When we told them that we still would not hire the people on their list, they arrested our plant general manager and threw him in jail for obstruction. By this time the courts were over loaded with complaints and cases to the point that getting anything into court was much worse than ever. Our GM stayed in jail for several weeks as the Chilean legal system ground its way along. This same thing could happen right here in the USA with the way Obama is doing thing. I know that you are just like the people of Chile were before they had their wake up call. It couldn't happen here. Chile was some kind of Banana Republic and that is why they had such a problem. Do you really think so?
I have a lot of other stories of how Allende selectively enforced the laws and "Changed" the whole country in no time at all. Do you remember the Black Panthers who were intimidating voters during the last election? If you do, do you remember what Obama's Black Attorney General did? He did just what Allende did, he dropped the charges. If that was not a clear case of selective enforcement, I don't know what is. Remember, in Chile the way that Allende was removed from office was that he shot himself and the military took over for a while and cleaned things up. Now Chile is the success story of South America. The fact is that Chile has always been a success story until Allende became President. If you don't believe me, you should do your own research and I am sure you will come to the same conclusion.
I have a little story that shows how critical "The Rule of Law" is. This might be a repeat, but with this new information, I think it just might need repeating. Back in the late 60's and early 70's, I lived in Argentina and traveled all over South America. Many people view South America as a bunch of Banana Republics where there is no "Rule of Law", only never ending corruption. That is partly true. The one bright spot in South America was Chile. They had an operating democracy that dated to about the same time period as the USA. They were very proud of this fact and were confident that they did not need to worry about any group taking it over. As it turned out, Salvador Allende was elected by a plurality as President in the early 70's. Looking back now, he was just like our Obama, a real socialist radical who wanted to do much the same things as our Obama. I recognized this before Allende actually took office and told my Chilean friends my opinion. They said that they were not worried because he was limited to only one 6 year term by law and he really could not change things that much because of their congress and senate. I listened to them, but continued to be skeptical. Since Allende did not get a majority of the votes, the congress had to chose the winner and validate the election. If they had required a run-off, it is my opinion that Allende would not have been elected. Chile had a historical tradition of accepting the person with the most votes, even if they did not have a majority so that is what they did.
Every thing started out with the typical honey moon, just like with Obama. It was not until a few weeks later that changes started to happen. What Allende did was to "Selectively Enforce the Laws". In affect, he rejected the whole concept of "The Rule of Law". Allende just enforced the laws that went along with his socialist philosophy, just like Obama and this John Morton. Consider how many laws are on the books in the USA and how complex they are. Complexity is just what someone like Allende or Obama wants. As they selectively enforce laws they like, they can hide behind complexity. The other side of this is the courts. We all know how long it can take to get to court or to the Supreme Court. During all that time the executive branch of our government has control of you and your property. You or your business could be tied up for years before you had your day in court where you could be found innocent of anything. This is exactly what happened in Chile under Allende and we know how it all ended up. Allende shot himself in the White House, right?
A short time after Allende was elected, some of his community organizers came to one of our ITT plants in Chile and asked us to hire a bunch of their friends and we said no. We did not need any more workers. The former community organizers were now from the equivalent of the OSHA under Allende. They asked us to reconsider and that they would be back in a week. They did come back and when we said that we still did not need to hire anyone from their list, the OSHA inspector went into our plant and found a violation and "Red Tagged" our plant. We had to shut down immediately and send everyone home. We had the violation fixed in 10 minutes, but they left without removing the "Red Tag" and thus we were shut down until we could get them back in a week. They came back in a week and removed the "Red Tag" and we were back up running. When we told them that we still would not hire the people on their list, they arrested our plant general manager and threw him in jail for obstruction. By this time the courts were over loaded with complaints and cases to the point that getting anything into court was much worse than ever. Our GM stayed in jail for several weeks as the Chilean legal system ground its way along. This same thing could happen right here in the USA with the way Obama is doing thing. I know that you are just like the people of Chile were before they had their wake up call. It couldn't happen here. Chile was some kind of Banana Republic and that is why they had such a problem. Do you really think so?
I have a lot of other stories of how Allende selectively enforced the laws and "Changed" the whole country in no time at all. Do you remember the Black Panthers who were intimidating voters during the last election? If you do, do you remember what Obama's Black Attorney General did? He did just what Allende did, he dropped the charges. If that was not a clear case of selective enforcement, I don't know what is. Remember, in Chile the way that Allende was removed from office was that he shot himself and the military took over for a while and cleaned things up. Now Chile is the success story of South America. The fact is that Chile has always been a success story until Allende became President. If you don't believe me, you should do your own research and I am sure you will come to the same conclusion.
Friday, May 21, 2010
What Smart House?
Have you heard all the talk about the so called "Smart House"? Listen and you will hear about it. It is some kind of idea that came out of the "Green" movement. Why not? Isn't the "Green" movement going to save all of us from ourselves? Us normal tax payers need help from all the real smart people in the "Green" movement. We don't have enough smarts to know how to spend our own money. We need the "Green" people to tell us how to do it right, or is that "Left"?
As I understand it, the idea is to have a "Smart House" that is "Green", what ever that means, and saves energy, water and does not pollute. Oh, it also has to be cheap so that people who do not have jobs can afford to buy and maintain one. To me that sounds like a very tall order. I have listened to people who have been drinking the cool aid about all the features and I come away dizzy. If you have driven around any modern neighborhood of new homes, you will notice that everyone in the USA must have at least 10 kids because the homes are so big and have so many rooms. Am I wrong? The fact is that most of these people only have 1.7 kids and thus only need, at most, three bed rooms. Notice that they all have at least three car garages. With only two drives, they must get tired driving the same car all the time and want to switch off. Notice that the garage is built of the same quality as the home and thus costs about the same per square foot. As a kid, our garage not connected to the house. You got to it by the alley. It did not have heat or plumbling or even lights in most cases. Most could only hold one car and a bike. The cost of those garages were less than 25% of the cost of the car that you put into it. Now the attached garages cost twice that of the cars that are stored in them. Figure that one.
I am not going to go into the list of the bright ideas that these "Green" people have to create the "Smart House", but you can be sure that they have little to do with economics. They use the word "Save", but never do you hear "Pay Back" period. I can tell you from my own personal analysis that "None" will pay back in the life time of the owner. In a nut shell, 99% are stupid ideas. If we have a social goal of saving energy or being true "Green", we only need to make our homes "Smaller". That is right, just "Smaller". Now take property tax. That is the way that we penalize people who have big homes and we already know that most of us have homes that are really too big. Homes should be taxed based on their square footage, not how much it cost to build. The tax should also be based on the number of baths or bed rooms and again, not the cost to build. It also should be taxed based on the number of people who live in the home. If you have 10 kids, you should pay more. Oh, you ask why? Well, all you have to do is to check what they flush down the toilet and you will get the "Green" idea.
In the old days we had very small homes and the cost for fuel was small. It takes a lot less to heat a small home compared to a large one. Most homes now have 200 amp 220 volt power service while in the old days, they had 100 amp or even 50 amp service. If you what a home to be "Green", restrict the electrical service to only 100 amps or less.
Take the food people eat. If you like frozen food vs canned, you are "not" "Green". If you buy frozen, think of all the high quality energy that has gone into it and has to continue to go into it to keep it frozen. Homes should not be allowed to have freezers bigger than about 10 cubic feet. You can put a can of corn on the shelf for 10 year and it is still good, but the same frozen corn will be sucking juice for the same 10 years. The tin can is 100% recyclable while the plastic and foil pack of the frozen corn is not. Hey, if you want to go down this path it would seem to me that all is fair.
In the old days, we had bunk bed is small bed rooms where several kids could sleep. Now we seem to think that every kid needs his "own space" or room. These old small homes were cheap to heat and maintain, not like the big homes we seen these days. Also back then, we lived in homes that we could pay for, not like now where we expect to live in homes that are beyond our ability to pay for or maintain. FHA and the other government programs should limit both the size and cost of homes that they will subsidize. That would solve our problem and we would not need the BS of any, so called, "Smart Houses". I think that in a prior Blog that I said that the first step in saving or efficiency was to "Eliminate". I don't think these "Green" people are really interested in saving or efficiency because if they were they would have started by "eliminating" 90% of what has added to the cost of homes in the last 50 years.
Next time you hear the word "Smart House", think again, it is all "Green" smoke.
As I understand it, the idea is to have a "Smart House" that is "Green", what ever that means, and saves energy, water and does not pollute. Oh, it also has to be cheap so that people who do not have jobs can afford to buy and maintain one. To me that sounds like a very tall order. I have listened to people who have been drinking the cool aid about all the features and I come away dizzy. If you have driven around any modern neighborhood of new homes, you will notice that everyone in the USA must have at least 10 kids because the homes are so big and have so many rooms. Am I wrong? The fact is that most of these people only have 1.7 kids and thus only need, at most, three bed rooms. Notice that they all have at least three car garages. With only two drives, they must get tired driving the same car all the time and want to switch off. Notice that the garage is built of the same quality as the home and thus costs about the same per square foot. As a kid, our garage not connected to the house. You got to it by the alley. It did not have heat or plumbling or even lights in most cases. Most could only hold one car and a bike. The cost of those garages were less than 25% of the cost of the car that you put into it. Now the attached garages cost twice that of the cars that are stored in them. Figure that one.
I am not going to go into the list of the bright ideas that these "Green" people have to create the "Smart House", but you can be sure that they have little to do with economics. They use the word "Save", but never do you hear "Pay Back" period. I can tell you from my own personal analysis that "None" will pay back in the life time of the owner. In a nut shell, 99% are stupid ideas. If we have a social goal of saving energy or being true "Green", we only need to make our homes "Smaller". That is right, just "Smaller". Now take property tax. That is the way that we penalize people who have big homes and we already know that most of us have homes that are really too big. Homes should be taxed based on their square footage, not how much it cost to build. The tax should also be based on the number of baths or bed rooms and again, not the cost to build. It also should be taxed based on the number of people who live in the home. If you have 10 kids, you should pay more. Oh, you ask why? Well, all you have to do is to check what they flush down the toilet and you will get the "Green" idea.
In the old days we had very small homes and the cost for fuel was small. It takes a lot less to heat a small home compared to a large one. Most homes now have 200 amp 220 volt power service while in the old days, they had 100 amp or even 50 amp service. If you what a home to be "Green", restrict the electrical service to only 100 amps or less.
Take the food people eat. If you like frozen food vs canned, you are "not" "Green". If you buy frozen, think of all the high quality energy that has gone into it and has to continue to go into it to keep it frozen. Homes should not be allowed to have freezers bigger than about 10 cubic feet. You can put a can of corn on the shelf for 10 year and it is still good, but the same frozen corn will be sucking juice for the same 10 years. The tin can is 100% recyclable while the plastic and foil pack of the frozen corn is not. Hey, if you want to go down this path it would seem to me that all is fair.
In the old days, we had bunk bed is small bed rooms where several kids could sleep. Now we seem to think that every kid needs his "own space" or room. These old small homes were cheap to heat and maintain, not like the big homes we seen these days. Also back then, we lived in homes that we could pay for, not like now where we expect to live in homes that are beyond our ability to pay for or maintain. FHA and the other government programs should limit both the size and cost of homes that they will subsidize. That would solve our problem and we would not need the BS of any, so called, "Smart Houses". I think that in a prior Blog that I said that the first step in saving or efficiency was to "Eliminate". I don't think these "Green" people are really interested in saving or efficiency because if they were they would have started by "eliminating" 90% of what has added to the cost of homes in the last 50 years.
Next time you hear the word "Smart House", think again, it is all "Green" smoke.
Education, Let's Get Serious, Chapter #11
Seems like a long time ago that I started this series of Blogs about our educational system, yet I still have more. Having lived thru most of the last century, I think that I have a reasonable perspective on the last one and a basis for prediction on the one that we are now in. If the last one was the "Technical Century", then this one has to be the "Super Technical Century". As with most things, the first part is the easiest and that was true of this last century. We did not have all the technically trained people that were needed, but we did OK with what we had. The USA used the "Brain Drain" to collect the best brains from around the world from about 1935 on and thus were able to take advantage of the "Technical Century". Now we are entering the "Super Technical Century" and won't have the help of the "Brain Drain", so what are we going to do? It is a serious question and it bears directly on the quality of our technical education. Nothing could be more clear and we have to admit that we have not been keeping up and, in fact, we have been falling behind.
I don't pretend to have all the answers, but I do have some ideas. Enrollments in engineering and the sciences have been declining in our colleges and universities while the total number of students going on to college has increased. Test scores in both math and science have declined in our high schools over the past 50 years when they should have been going up. These are leading indicators that we will be in even worse trouble in the future when these school aged citizens become the main part of the work force. You could say that the hand writing is already on the wall as to what the future holds for the USA and our children. It does not look like a very prety picture if these trends continue. It could already be too late, but to give up is not in the vocabulary of the people who built this country, so here goes my idea.
I have seen all kinds of science fairs and programs to push math and science and most have fallen flat in their tracks. The reason is that our kids are just not interested or motivated to study math and science. This whole business about "Green" at first seemed to be a possible step in the right direction, but it has turned out to be directed and maned by people who have very little knowledge or appreciation of real science. It is all "Fuzzy Feel Good" stuff and our kids have fallen for it. What we need to do is to change how our schools teach. Notice how they have integrated "Green" into almost every class? It has worked. Our kids are thinking "Green" and are motivated, but for the wrong reasons. What we need to do is a similar thing with true math and science and integrate these into every class just like the "Green" advocates have done. The "Green" theme was easy, because any unqualified union teacher could get on the band wagon and promote "Green" and not have to know or understand anything about math or true science. Science was just a buzz word without any true weight. We need to get math and science into every class just like they did with "Green" and here is how.
Let's start with history. When we teach history about how the Spanish Armada tried to invade England, we need to teach why they failed. It was not that the fleet met a big storm off the coast of England as I was taught. It was because the Spanish did not have a good clock and did not know that the ocean had strong currents much like a river. As a result their ships ran into land during the night and during fog. It was not storms, it was the lack of the understanding of science and math.
How about this one? Why did England after the war with the Spanish suddenly gain control of the seas and most of the world. Prior to the war with Spain, England was just a small island without much of a navy. How did Captain Cook sail around the world and map all the areas and claim them for England? The clock, and a very good one at that. Who invented this accurate clock that had such a major impact on the history of the world? We would not be speaking English here in the USA had it not been for this one individual. His name was John Harrison. He perfected the most accurate clock that had every been made and it made possible the determination of Longitude any place in the world. Ships no longer had to worry about running into land at night or during fogs. They knew exactly where the were at all times. This was the GPS of its time. The quality of clocks or time keeping has continually improved with changing technology and without those improvements little of what we have today would be possible including statilites, computers, cell phones, ect. It was technology and most people have no appreciation of who these people were that we owe so much too.
How about the transistor? Do we teach in our history classes who and where the transitor was invented? No we do not. Is that because we don't care? Who invented it? Was it a single person or a company? Did it come out of one of our universities? Was it done at a private company or corporation? Yes, a corporation. Now where do you think that corporation is now? It is closed down, but why? The company was Bell Labs, a division of Bell Telephone. The problem was that they got too big and sucessuful and Bobby Kennedy as Attorney General under his brother Jack Kennedy attacked them as being a monopoly and broke them up into a bunch of small companies. These small companies "never" again developed anything significant. Rather than doing the research and manufacturing here, they purchased almost all their technology and hardware over seas. I think you know the results. We let the Kennedys kill the goose, pure and simple.
What was the root cause of the "Industrial Revolution" in Europe? Did some King or Queen do something to make it happen? Did some polititian pass some kind of law? No. If not, then what do our kids get taught about what caused the "Industrial Revolution" in Europe? Some kind of made up BS, that's what. The "Industrial Revolution" in Europe was stalled due to a lack of workers for the factories. It took too many people on the farms just to grow enough food to feed themselves and thus they did not have any extra for factory workers. It was corn and the potato from the New World that allowed the "Industrial Revolution" in Europe to go forward. For the first time there was a food source where a few farmers could grow enough food for themselves and have some left over for the factory workers. The potato was so productive that fewer kids were needed on the farm so they could move to town and work in the factories. You will not find the history of the potato being taught in our schools.
What ended World War II with Japan? The atomic bomb, that's what. Wasn't that the work of science? It sure was not some King or Queen or a politician. Who were the key players in the invention of the Atomic bomb? Can any of our kids name more than one scientist? Who was Madam Curie and what did she do? What is heavey water? Our kids need to know these things and they should be part of history, not just in science and physics classes. What did Pastur do or Galelio?
I think I have more than enough examples, but I feel you see the point. If these significant people and events were integrated into history and language classes like "Green" has been integrated, I feel we would be starting to change our schools and our educational system in the right direction.
I don't pretend to have all the answers, but I do have some ideas. Enrollments in engineering and the sciences have been declining in our colleges and universities while the total number of students going on to college has increased. Test scores in both math and science have declined in our high schools over the past 50 years when they should have been going up. These are leading indicators that we will be in even worse trouble in the future when these school aged citizens become the main part of the work force. You could say that the hand writing is already on the wall as to what the future holds for the USA and our children. It does not look like a very prety picture if these trends continue. It could already be too late, but to give up is not in the vocabulary of the people who built this country, so here goes my idea.
I have seen all kinds of science fairs and programs to push math and science and most have fallen flat in their tracks. The reason is that our kids are just not interested or motivated to study math and science. This whole business about "Green" at first seemed to be a possible step in the right direction, but it has turned out to be directed and maned by people who have very little knowledge or appreciation of real science. It is all "Fuzzy Feel Good" stuff and our kids have fallen for it. What we need to do is to change how our schools teach. Notice how they have integrated "Green" into almost every class? It has worked. Our kids are thinking "Green" and are motivated, but for the wrong reasons. What we need to do is a similar thing with true math and science and integrate these into every class just like the "Green" advocates have done. The "Green" theme was easy, because any unqualified union teacher could get on the band wagon and promote "Green" and not have to know or understand anything about math or true science. Science was just a buzz word without any true weight. We need to get math and science into every class just like they did with "Green" and here is how.
Let's start with history. When we teach history about how the Spanish Armada tried to invade England, we need to teach why they failed. It was not that the fleet met a big storm off the coast of England as I was taught. It was because the Spanish did not have a good clock and did not know that the ocean had strong currents much like a river. As a result their ships ran into land during the night and during fog. It was not storms, it was the lack of the understanding of science and math.
How about this one? Why did England after the war with the Spanish suddenly gain control of the seas and most of the world. Prior to the war with Spain, England was just a small island without much of a navy. How did Captain Cook sail around the world and map all the areas and claim them for England? The clock, and a very good one at that. Who invented this accurate clock that had such a major impact on the history of the world? We would not be speaking English here in the USA had it not been for this one individual. His name was John Harrison. He perfected the most accurate clock that had every been made and it made possible the determination of Longitude any place in the world. Ships no longer had to worry about running into land at night or during fogs. They knew exactly where the were at all times. This was the GPS of its time. The quality of clocks or time keeping has continually improved with changing technology and without those improvements little of what we have today would be possible including statilites, computers, cell phones, ect. It was technology and most people have no appreciation of who these people were that we owe so much too.
How about the transistor? Do we teach in our history classes who and where the transitor was invented? No we do not. Is that because we don't care? Who invented it? Was it a single person or a company? Did it come out of one of our universities? Was it done at a private company or corporation? Yes, a corporation. Now where do you think that corporation is now? It is closed down, but why? The company was Bell Labs, a division of Bell Telephone. The problem was that they got too big and sucessuful and Bobby Kennedy as Attorney General under his brother Jack Kennedy attacked them as being a monopoly and broke them up into a bunch of small companies. These small companies "never" again developed anything significant. Rather than doing the research and manufacturing here, they purchased almost all their technology and hardware over seas. I think you know the results. We let the Kennedys kill the goose, pure and simple.
What was the root cause of the "Industrial Revolution" in Europe? Did some King or Queen do something to make it happen? Did some polititian pass some kind of law? No. If not, then what do our kids get taught about what caused the "Industrial Revolution" in Europe? Some kind of made up BS, that's what. The "Industrial Revolution" in Europe was stalled due to a lack of workers for the factories. It took too many people on the farms just to grow enough food to feed themselves and thus they did not have any extra for factory workers. It was corn and the potato from the New World that allowed the "Industrial Revolution" in Europe to go forward. For the first time there was a food source where a few farmers could grow enough food for themselves and have some left over for the factory workers. The potato was so productive that fewer kids were needed on the farm so they could move to town and work in the factories. You will not find the history of the potato being taught in our schools.
What ended World War II with Japan? The atomic bomb, that's what. Wasn't that the work of science? It sure was not some King or Queen or a politician. Who were the key players in the invention of the Atomic bomb? Can any of our kids name more than one scientist? Who was Madam Curie and what did she do? What is heavey water? Our kids need to know these things and they should be part of history, not just in science and physics classes. What did Pastur do or Galelio?
I think I have more than enough examples, but I feel you see the point. If these significant people and events were integrated into history and language classes like "Green" has been integrated, I feel we would be starting to change our schools and our educational system in the right direction.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Education, Let's Get Serious, Chapter #10
Hey, I have another chapter. This one is about "Conflict of Interest". You probably think, what does "Conflict of Interest" have to do with our educational system? Well, it has a lot more to do with it than you might think. This Blog will look at our educational system from slightly different angle. First, just what is a "Conflict of Interest" and how does it affect our educational system? A "Conflict of Interest" is any situation where a person is in a position to make a decision that requires unbiased objectivity and they arrive with a bias toward one party or another. You see this on TV all the time where a judge would excuse him or her self if they were required to over see a trial involving a person that they had a prior relationship with, such as a wife or business associate. How would you like to be arrested by the sheriff because of fight with his brother? The cards would be stacked against you and we know that would not be fair. Right? So here we go.
In the case of our school system, 99% of school administrators were former school teachers. As former school teachers 99% belonged to and paid union dues and qualify for union retirement programs. These same people as administrators are responsible for negotiating pay and other compensation programs with the union teachers on behalf of us tax payers. Now look at this situation. Do you really think that we have a "Conflict of Interest" here? What is the incentive for the former teacher and union member to negotiate, hard nosed, with the teacher's union? Given that he is covered by the same retirement program as the teachers who he is negotiating with? Is the pay of the administrator affected by how the negotiations go? In most cases it is not. But wait. It is affected. In almost all cases the pay of the administrator is based on the number of teachers and the size of the budget. The administrator is thus incentivized to have the greatest number of teachers and the biggest budget. You would not of thinking of paying more for managing a fewer number of teachers would you? See what I mean. There is a clear "Conflict of Interest" here.
It is even worse if you want to look back where the teachers came from. 90% of all college professors are unionized and pass this mind set along to their students. In the case of our teachers, they see this unionization as "Normal" and don't have any problem with it. They have been brain washed from the time they were in unionized public schools for the past 12 or 13 years and the 4 or 5 years they were in a teacher's college. Now when we add the top dog or administrator to the mix and he or she is a product of this same mind set, we have a "Conflict of Interest" and us tax payers are the ones who pick up the tab.
Now look at other industries where they are unionized? I am not going to go into the fact that in all of these cases, these are the least competitive industries in the USA. Isn't that just like our public schools? The point that I want to make is that 99% of the administrators in these industries have never belonged to a union. This is just the opposite of what we have in our public schools. The point that I want to make is that when it comes time to negotiate labor contracts or enforce existing contracts that in unionized industries there is a chance of holding the line against the unions. In our public schools there is no chance due to the clear "Conflict of Interest".
Most people would say, "What are we expected to do, you need someone with teaching experience to manage our schools". On the surface, that looks like a good point. The problem is that it is a clear "Conflict of Interest" and in total, it might be better to have a person who did not have "Teaching" experience, and who did not have a "Conflict of Interest". Notice in our military that 99% of the officers have never been an "enlisted man" or non-officer. The military like most industries seem to do OK with their arrangement so why not our public schools? Think about it. How does a manager manage welders, if they themselves has never been a welder? It is not all that hard. How many football coaches do you know of who either did not play football or who were not very good football players? One comes to mind, Vince Lombardi.
My proposal is that we "not" hire public school administrators who have ever belonged to a teacher's union, period. You might have noticed my Blogs where I praise home schoolers because they do, on average, a better job than our public schools. Almost every country in the world does a better job of educating their kids than does the USA. Based on that fact, I think we could afford to start thinking about making some changes. If someone argues that having administrators who have no teaching experience could hurt our schools, my answer would be, "How ?" We are already dead last when it comes to education so how could we make it worse? In another Blog, I attached janitors and now I am on to former union member administrators. What next? We have to get our educational system straightened out and it is up to us to do it.
In the case of our school system, 99% of school administrators were former school teachers. As former school teachers 99% belonged to and paid union dues and qualify for union retirement programs. These same people as administrators are responsible for negotiating pay and other compensation programs with the union teachers on behalf of us tax payers. Now look at this situation. Do you really think that we have a "Conflict of Interest" here? What is the incentive for the former teacher and union member to negotiate, hard nosed, with the teacher's union? Given that he is covered by the same retirement program as the teachers who he is negotiating with? Is the pay of the administrator affected by how the negotiations go? In most cases it is not. But wait. It is affected. In almost all cases the pay of the administrator is based on the number of teachers and the size of the budget. The administrator is thus incentivized to have the greatest number of teachers and the biggest budget. You would not of thinking of paying more for managing a fewer number of teachers would you? See what I mean. There is a clear "Conflict of Interest" here.
It is even worse if you want to look back where the teachers came from. 90% of all college professors are unionized and pass this mind set along to their students. In the case of our teachers, they see this unionization as "Normal" and don't have any problem with it. They have been brain washed from the time they were in unionized public schools for the past 12 or 13 years and the 4 or 5 years they were in a teacher's college. Now when we add the top dog or administrator to the mix and he or she is a product of this same mind set, we have a "Conflict of Interest" and us tax payers are the ones who pick up the tab.
Now look at other industries where they are unionized? I am not going to go into the fact that in all of these cases, these are the least competitive industries in the USA. Isn't that just like our public schools? The point that I want to make is that 99% of the administrators in these industries have never belonged to a union. This is just the opposite of what we have in our public schools. The point that I want to make is that when it comes time to negotiate labor contracts or enforce existing contracts that in unionized industries there is a chance of holding the line against the unions. In our public schools there is no chance due to the clear "Conflict of Interest".
Most people would say, "What are we expected to do, you need someone with teaching experience to manage our schools". On the surface, that looks like a good point. The problem is that it is a clear "Conflict of Interest" and in total, it might be better to have a person who did not have "Teaching" experience, and who did not have a "Conflict of Interest". Notice in our military that 99% of the officers have never been an "enlisted man" or non-officer. The military like most industries seem to do OK with their arrangement so why not our public schools? Think about it. How does a manager manage welders, if they themselves has never been a welder? It is not all that hard. How many football coaches do you know of who either did not play football or who were not very good football players? One comes to mind, Vince Lombardi.
My proposal is that we "not" hire public school administrators who have ever belonged to a teacher's union, period. You might have noticed my Blogs where I praise home schoolers because they do, on average, a better job than our public schools. Almost every country in the world does a better job of educating their kids than does the USA. Based on that fact, I think we could afford to start thinking about making some changes. If someone argues that having administrators who have no teaching experience could hurt our schools, my answer would be, "How ?" We are already dead last when it comes to education so how could we make it worse? In another Blog, I attached janitors and now I am on to former union member administrators. What next? We have to get our educational system straightened out and it is up to us to do it.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
My List
(1) A stitch in time saves nine.
(2) A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
(3) Everything that glitters is not gold.
(4) A lick and a promise.
(5) Don't count your chickens before they hatch.
(6) You can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar.
(7) Can't teach an old dog new tricks.
(8) Never look a gift horse in the mouth.
(9) Never buy a pig in a poke.
(10) A fast nickle beats a slow dime.
(11) Never draw to an inside straight.
(12) Fish or cut bait.
(13) Don't ride the saw.
(14) If you see a man talking to a mule, it is hard tell which is the mule.
(15) You can grow more corn on a crooked row.
(16) Quiet water runs deep.
(17) The nail that sticks up gets bent over.
(18) Cream always comes to the top.
(19) A tree is the only thing that you can cut down and cut up.
(20) It always pays to aim high.
(21) Don't cry over spilled milk.
(22) Don't put all your eggs in one basket.
(23) What is good for the goose is good for gander.
(24) You reap what you sew.
(25) The chickens will come home to roost.
(26) Why own the cow if the milk is for free.
(27) Half a loaf is better than no bread at all.
(28) You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.
(29) You can't make a silk purse out of a pig's ear.
(30) Like water under the bridge.
(31) When hell freezes over.
(32) When pigs fly.
(33) A fool and his money soon depart company.
(34) You can fool all of the people some of the time but not all the people all of the time.
(35) A spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down.
(36) Beauty is only skin deep.
(37) Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
(38) Spare the rod and spoil the child.
(39) Pride comes before the fall.
(40) Sucking hind teat.
(41) Haste make waste.
(42) A clean desk, a clean mind.
(43) There is no free lunch.
(44) All things in their time.
(45) It is darkest just before the dawn.
(46) Too many cooks ruin the soup.
(47) The straw that broke the camel's back.
(48) Play with fire and you will get burnt.
(49)
These are just a few of the ones that I can remember. How about adding yours?
(2) A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
(3) Everything that glitters is not gold.
(4) A lick and a promise.
(5) Don't count your chickens before they hatch.
(6) You can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar.
(7) Can't teach an old dog new tricks.
(8) Never look a gift horse in the mouth.
(9) Never buy a pig in a poke.
(10) A fast nickle beats a slow dime.
(11) Never draw to an inside straight.
(12) Fish or cut bait.
(13) Don't ride the saw.
(14) If you see a man talking to a mule, it is hard tell which is the mule.
(15) You can grow more corn on a crooked row.
(16) Quiet water runs deep.
(17) The nail that sticks up gets bent over.
(18) Cream always comes to the top.
(19) A tree is the only thing that you can cut down and cut up.
(20) It always pays to aim high.
(21) Don't cry over spilled milk.
(22) Don't put all your eggs in one basket.
(23) What is good for the goose is good for gander.
(24) You reap what you sew.
(25) The chickens will come home to roost.
(26) Why own the cow if the milk is for free.
(27) Half a loaf is better than no bread at all.
(28) You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.
(29) You can't make a silk purse out of a pig's ear.
(30) Like water under the bridge.
(31) When hell freezes over.
(32) When pigs fly.
(33) A fool and his money soon depart company.
(34) You can fool all of the people some of the time but not all the people all of the time.
(35) A spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down.
(36) Beauty is only skin deep.
(37) Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
(38) Spare the rod and spoil the child.
(39) Pride comes before the fall.
(40) Sucking hind teat.
(41) Haste make waste.
(42) A clean desk, a clean mind.
(43) There is no free lunch.
(44) All things in their time.
(45) It is darkest just before the dawn.
(46) Too many cooks ruin the soup.
(47) The straw that broke the camel's back.
(48) Play with fire and you will get burnt.
(49)
These are just a few of the ones that I can remember. How about adding yours?
Don't Count Your Chickens Before They Hatch
I think that you have all heard this expression before and know what it means. I am going to use it here to point up a serious problem with the real estate crash. I read several years ago about a man in South America who had the winning number for a multimillion dollar lottery. He live way out in a rural area and when he found that he had the winning number, he chartered a plane to fly into the Capital to collect his winnings. The pilot and owner of the plane extended credit to the guy on the basis that he had the winning number. When they got to the state lottery office, he found out that there were an additional 154 people who also had the winning number. The multimillion dollar pot had to be split between these 154 other winners and he ended up with only a fraction of what he thought he had won. The lesson here was that he, "Counted his chickens before they hatched".
Many people here did almost exactly this same thing when the took out "home equity" loans and spent the money on frivolous thing. They thought that when they sold their house they would pay off the loan out of the "profit". The reason that they took this big step was that, like a chain letter, they knew people who had done this very same thing and came out smelling like a rose. Their problem was that they, "Counted their chickens before they hatched". In this case the eggs did not hatch and the value of their home actually went down to the point that they owed much more than their home was worth. They found themselves "under water".
During this same period when the stock market was going up faster and higher than it had ever done, many state and local governments caved in to union demands for fat retirement programs and agreed to them. If they were thinking and I don't think that many were, they felt that the growth in the stock market would be adequate to cover the future promises that they had made. As it turned out, what went up for no good reason, could also go down for the same reason and it did. That is why most of the local and state governments find themselves in their current state. With the recent gains in the stock market, many of the state and local governments are not in as bad a shape as they were. This does not mean they are out of the woods, but it is clear that they, "Counted their chickens before they hatched".
There is another expression that could also apply here and that is, "Success has a hundred fathers and a failure is an orphan". Now that we have this big failure on our hands, it seems that no one can be found who will admit to being the "father". Isn't that interesting? I am a farm boy who grew up on these types of expressions and feel that they contain a lot of wisdom. Why is it that you seldom hear these anymore? My grandfather who never went past the 4th grade had hundreds of these and used to say them all the time in different situations.
If you recall any of these expressions that might apply to our situation, attach them and share them with others. We all need as much help as possible.
Many people here did almost exactly this same thing when the took out "home equity" loans and spent the money on frivolous thing. They thought that when they sold their house they would pay off the loan out of the "profit". The reason that they took this big step was that, like a chain letter, they knew people who had done this very same thing and came out smelling like a rose. Their problem was that they, "Counted their chickens before they hatched". In this case the eggs did not hatch and the value of their home actually went down to the point that they owed much more than their home was worth. They found themselves "under water".
During this same period when the stock market was going up faster and higher than it had ever done, many state and local governments caved in to union demands for fat retirement programs and agreed to them. If they were thinking and I don't think that many were, they felt that the growth in the stock market would be adequate to cover the future promises that they had made. As it turned out, what went up for no good reason, could also go down for the same reason and it did. That is why most of the local and state governments find themselves in their current state. With the recent gains in the stock market, many of the state and local governments are not in as bad a shape as they were. This does not mean they are out of the woods, but it is clear that they, "Counted their chickens before they hatched".
There is another expression that could also apply here and that is, "Success has a hundred fathers and a failure is an orphan". Now that we have this big failure on our hands, it seems that no one can be found who will admit to being the "father". Isn't that interesting? I am a farm boy who grew up on these types of expressions and feel that they contain a lot of wisdom. Why is it that you seldom hear these anymore? My grandfather who never went past the 4th grade had hundreds of these and used to say them all the time in different situations.
If you recall any of these expressions that might apply to our situation, attach them and share them with others. We all need as much help as possible.
Social Conduct Incentives
Incentives are the driving force behind all human and animal conduct. Do you believe that? Did you ever try to get your dog to sit without some kind of positive incentive? Did it work? I did not think so. Did you notice that your pet cat is not interested in chasing mice right after he or she has eaten? When you see a cat out hunting, it is because of a simple incentive, hunger. It is exactly the same with people. What we need are some incentives in our society that encourages positive social conduct. I wrote a Blog on "Peer Pressure" where we as individuals put "Peer Pressure" on people who are misbehaving to encourage them to act responsibly. What has happened to the USA is that there are fewer and fewer incentives to act socially responsible.
If you see or know of someone who smokes pot, do you say or do anything about it? Most of us don't. The result is that criminals from Mexico and the USA are killing each other and others in order to supply the pot to the smokers. These smokers did not kill anyone, but they indirectly did just that. Why don't we make pot smokers pay because they are just as responsible for the murders?
I was on a jury many years ago where two young men stole a car. One got in the stolen car and steered it while the other one pushed the car with his car. On the stand the kid in the pushing car claimed that he did not steal the car, he only pushed the stolen car. We convicted both kids for exactly the same crime. How can a person think that just because they were not in the stolen car that they were not just a guilty? This is just what is wrong with many of us.
Have you ever seen a crime on TV where there are two dead people on the sidewalk with 4 or 5 gun shots in them and 50 people standing around and non of the even heard a shot? This is what I am talking about. I would arrest everyone there for obstruction of justice.
I have a special problem with the high percentage of high school drop outs. It is 40% nation wide and higher in many areas. We have all kinds of free benefits that I think need to be "means" tested. If you did not graduate from high school, you should not be able to vote. How about that one? I think it would both go a long way to clean up politics and encourage our kids to graduate high school. I would carry it even further and not provide public medical care money for "extreme" procedures like transplants of any kind for people who did not graduate from high school. I would even extend this to anyone convicted of a felony. These people do not deserve to slop at the public trough due to their irresponsible social conduct. The need an incentive to be socially responsible. If it were up to me, I would extend these types of restrictions all over the place and significantly reduce government spending.
Anyone under 18 who is knocked up and not married would have to identify the father of the child or they would be forced to have an abortion. If the father of the child did not take care of the kid, he should be treated just like the high school drop out. I would do the same for people who tested positive for illegal drugs of any kind. Anyone with AIDS should have to identify how the go AIDS in the first place to get any medical help. They should have to wear radio collar and identification that they have AIDS so that they don't infect someone else. If we just did a few logical things, we could have eliminated AIDS 40 years ago and saved millions of lives.
Would you have a problem with social incentives being used to qualify for eating out of the public trough? How about larger down payments for FHA loans for people who did not graduate from high school or were felons or drug users? In some states, if you served in the Armed Services you qualified for a lower home loan interest rate. This was an incentive for serving in the military, so why not other kinds of incentives? See what I mean. Now it is just a big give away and dead beats are all over the place gaming the system that was intended to help people in trouble. It has been perverted and I would like to see and end to it. How about you?
If you see or know of someone who smokes pot, do you say or do anything about it? Most of us don't. The result is that criminals from Mexico and the USA are killing each other and others in order to supply the pot to the smokers. These smokers did not kill anyone, but they indirectly did just that. Why don't we make pot smokers pay because they are just as responsible for the murders?
I was on a jury many years ago where two young men stole a car. One got in the stolen car and steered it while the other one pushed the car with his car. On the stand the kid in the pushing car claimed that he did not steal the car, he only pushed the stolen car. We convicted both kids for exactly the same crime. How can a person think that just because they were not in the stolen car that they were not just a guilty? This is just what is wrong with many of us.
Have you ever seen a crime on TV where there are two dead people on the sidewalk with 4 or 5 gun shots in them and 50 people standing around and non of the even heard a shot? This is what I am talking about. I would arrest everyone there for obstruction of justice.
I have a special problem with the high percentage of high school drop outs. It is 40% nation wide and higher in many areas. We have all kinds of free benefits that I think need to be "means" tested. If you did not graduate from high school, you should not be able to vote. How about that one? I think it would both go a long way to clean up politics and encourage our kids to graduate high school. I would carry it even further and not provide public medical care money for "extreme" procedures like transplants of any kind for people who did not graduate from high school. I would even extend this to anyone convicted of a felony. These people do not deserve to slop at the public trough due to their irresponsible social conduct. The need an incentive to be socially responsible. If it were up to me, I would extend these types of restrictions all over the place and significantly reduce government spending.
Anyone under 18 who is knocked up and not married would have to identify the father of the child or they would be forced to have an abortion. If the father of the child did not take care of the kid, he should be treated just like the high school drop out. I would do the same for people who tested positive for illegal drugs of any kind. Anyone with AIDS should have to identify how the go AIDS in the first place to get any medical help. They should have to wear radio collar and identification that they have AIDS so that they don't infect someone else. If we just did a few logical things, we could have eliminated AIDS 40 years ago and saved millions of lives.
Would you have a problem with social incentives being used to qualify for eating out of the public trough? How about larger down payments for FHA loans for people who did not graduate from high school or were felons or drug users? In some states, if you served in the Armed Services you qualified for a lower home loan interest rate. This was an incentive for serving in the military, so why not other kinds of incentives? See what I mean. Now it is just a big give away and dead beats are all over the place gaming the system that was intended to help people in trouble. It has been perverted and I would like to see and end to it. How about you?
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
The Good, The Bad And The Ugly
I was watching the news and realized that almost all politicians are some kind of "Do Gooder". The reason that I say this is that when you look at what they want to do it is mostly "Do Good" and then try to get credit for it. Look at the world for a second as a combination of "Good" and "Bad". We make laws to control "Bad". If a person is "Bad", they are punished in some way. We leave "Good" alone and let "Good" take care of its self. If you take this concept to the limit, and eliminate all the "Bad", all you are left with is "Good". Does this seem logical to you? I think that this is the way that government in the USA was intended to work. The problem is that we have a bunch of "Professional" politicians who have changed the rules. I just heard the new nominee to the Supreme Court described as a loyal "Public Servant". What we don't need are "Public Servants". This is code for "Do Gooder" and we all know that we don't need anymore "Do Gooders" using our tax money to "Do Good" for their friends and then claim credit for giving them our hard earned money.
What "Do Gooders" want to do is to create more "Good". The problem is that it is the job of each of us citizens to "Do Good" of our won free will with our own money and time. It is the job of government to get rid of the "Bad". I think we can all agree on that. We have all heard the statement, "I'm from the government and I am here to help you". The reason that this scares the hell out of most people is that we all know that this is a bald face lie. Anyone who is here claiming to want to help you is here to try to "Do Good" and get personal credit for it. Ask them if this is being paid for with their own money and the answer will be a resounding, "NO".
Have you ever heard this one? These people are all, "Paid volunteers". How can you be a volunteer if you are being paid to do what ever you are doing? If you look at many of the Obama programs, they are maned by "paid volunteers". These are "paid volunteer" "Do Gooders". They can't wait to tell all their friends how they "Did Good" in the "Hood".
Think about it the next time you hear any of these self appointed political "Do Gooders" talk. Read between the lines and you will see exactly what I mean. What we need are people in government who are interested in eliminating and punishing "Bad". Sealing our Mexican border is a clear case of eliminating the "Bad" and you notice how none of the politicians what to pick up the hot potato. If most of the "Bad" were eliminated, what a nice place this would be. We need to stop trying to do "Good". "Good" can take care of itself. Punish the "Bad" and most of our problems would be solved.
PS, I think we should change the names of our politicians from "Public Servants" to "Paid Volunteer Do Gooders", because that is what they have all become. It will be interesting to see the post audit of Dave Obey's finances and see how much money he walks away with as a result of being in the House of Representatives for over 40 years. They need to "present worth" all the future benifits that he will also get. I think that we are going to be talking about millions. Little old Oklahoma and Wisconsin boy makes good.
What "Do Gooders" want to do is to create more "Good". The problem is that it is the job of each of us citizens to "Do Good" of our won free will with our own money and time. It is the job of government to get rid of the "Bad". I think we can all agree on that. We have all heard the statement, "I'm from the government and I am here to help you". The reason that this scares the hell out of most people is that we all know that this is a bald face lie. Anyone who is here claiming to want to help you is here to try to "Do Good" and get personal credit for it. Ask them if this is being paid for with their own money and the answer will be a resounding, "NO".
Have you ever heard this one? These people are all, "Paid volunteers". How can you be a volunteer if you are being paid to do what ever you are doing? If you look at many of the Obama programs, they are maned by "paid volunteers". These are "paid volunteer" "Do Gooders". They can't wait to tell all their friends how they "Did Good" in the "Hood".
Think about it the next time you hear any of these self appointed political "Do Gooders" talk. Read between the lines and you will see exactly what I mean. What we need are people in government who are interested in eliminating and punishing "Bad". Sealing our Mexican border is a clear case of eliminating the "Bad" and you notice how none of the politicians what to pick up the hot potato. If most of the "Bad" were eliminated, what a nice place this would be. We need to stop trying to do "Good". "Good" can take care of itself. Punish the "Bad" and most of our problems would be solved.
PS, I think we should change the names of our politicians from "Public Servants" to "Paid Volunteer Do Gooders", because that is what they have all become. It will be interesting to see the post audit of Dave Obey's finances and see how much money he walks away with as a result of being in the House of Representatives for over 40 years. They need to "present worth" all the future benifits that he will also get. I think that we are going to be talking about millions. Little old Oklahoma and Wisconsin boy makes good.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Greek Bail Out?
What do you think about the USA helping in the Greek bail out? If you have an opinion, what do you base that opinion on? Think about it, you have to base your opinion on something. Is it that old "fuzzy feel good" thing that they teach in our public schools, or is it something more logical and thought out? I'm going to base my position on my favorite economic principle. I think you recall what that is.
First, there seems to be a fear that the general economy will decline if something is not done to help Greece. If your reason for helping Greece is so that you can be the "good guy" with the "white hat", think again. My position is that we should take the action that creates the "most" economic activity in "total". The optimum strategy to create wealth is to invest in the "winners" not try to made money investing in "losers". Recall that principle? In the case of Europe, it seems crystal clear that Greece is a loser and thus why should we invest there and help them continue to be a loser. Everyone needs to cut their losses and "not" help Greece. Rather than take all this money from the hard working countries, the money should stay in the hard working countries where it can create additional wealth. Isn't that the name of the game. Taking all this money away from the hard working countries will only make the hard working countries weaker. I think that I showed before that when a group is in a life boat, you don't give your last water or food to a dying member since they are going to die anyway. You save the ones that are savable and that is what we need to do here. The changes that are needed in Greece for them to be economically viable are so great that what they need is tough love, not a bigger allowance.
Think about it. Many people think that we should give our last penny to help someone even if in the process it puts us at risk. They feel that money from rich people is unlimited. Everything is limited so why do so many people have this strange idea that things are unlimited? I don't know and can't understand. I have said this before about politicians. They all seem to have a mind set as "do gooders" and want to use their position to help people with someone else's money. They just don't seem to understand "tough love" and the fact that the tax payers do not have unlimited money. When I was a kid, I found a young bird that had fallen out of its nest. I took it home and fed it the best that I could, but it finally died a slow death. I cried because I could not save the baby bird. Now looking back, why did I cry? If I understood the situation from the start, I should have known that I could not save the baby bird and should have taken the responsible action of putting the baby bird out of it's misery and buring it. In the case of Greece, only they have the ability to cure their problem. What do they do at the zoo when an elephant is down and can't get up? They don't do anything. If the elephant can't get up on its own, that's the end. He is so big that no one can really help him, the elephant has to help himself. These are the facts of life and we all need to get used to them. We have to try to stop "do gooders" from going around trying to help those who can not be helped. It might make them feel good, but I don't want my money used by a "do gooder" to make himself feel good. He could do more good by getting an job an paying taxes instead.
When you step back and apply this universal economic principles to an emotional issue like bailing out Greece or an auto company, the right answer is simple.
PS, Officially, we have contributed at least $60 billion toward helping Greece. That amounts to about $200 from every man, women and child in the USA and we know that only half of the people pay any tax so for those who really pay taxes, it is twice that at $400 each. Think about it. 90% of those who voted for Obama will not have contributed anything to help Greece. It was with the other guy's tax money. Look at it another way. Greece has about 10 million people so the $60 billion dollars amounts to $6,000 for every man, women and child in Greece. How would you like for Japan or China to give each memeber of your family a check for $6,000? For a Greek family of four, that would be $24,000 per family and that is just the amount of money that we in the USA put in. It does not count the money that came from the rest of the EU members. Facts talk!!!!
First, there seems to be a fear that the general economy will decline if something is not done to help Greece. If your reason for helping Greece is so that you can be the "good guy" with the "white hat", think again. My position is that we should take the action that creates the "most" economic activity in "total". The optimum strategy to create wealth is to invest in the "winners" not try to made money investing in "losers". Recall that principle? In the case of Europe, it seems crystal clear that Greece is a loser and thus why should we invest there and help them continue to be a loser. Everyone needs to cut their losses and "not" help Greece. Rather than take all this money from the hard working countries, the money should stay in the hard working countries where it can create additional wealth. Isn't that the name of the game. Taking all this money away from the hard working countries will only make the hard working countries weaker. I think that I showed before that when a group is in a life boat, you don't give your last water or food to a dying member since they are going to die anyway. You save the ones that are savable and that is what we need to do here. The changes that are needed in Greece for them to be economically viable are so great that what they need is tough love, not a bigger allowance.
Think about it. Many people think that we should give our last penny to help someone even if in the process it puts us at risk. They feel that money from rich people is unlimited. Everything is limited so why do so many people have this strange idea that things are unlimited? I don't know and can't understand. I have said this before about politicians. They all seem to have a mind set as "do gooders" and want to use their position to help people with someone else's money. They just don't seem to understand "tough love" and the fact that the tax payers do not have unlimited money. When I was a kid, I found a young bird that had fallen out of its nest. I took it home and fed it the best that I could, but it finally died a slow death. I cried because I could not save the baby bird. Now looking back, why did I cry? If I understood the situation from the start, I should have known that I could not save the baby bird and should have taken the responsible action of putting the baby bird out of it's misery and buring it. In the case of Greece, only they have the ability to cure their problem. What do they do at the zoo when an elephant is down and can't get up? They don't do anything. If the elephant can't get up on its own, that's the end. He is so big that no one can really help him, the elephant has to help himself. These are the facts of life and we all need to get used to them. We have to try to stop "do gooders" from going around trying to help those who can not be helped. It might make them feel good, but I don't want my money used by a "do gooder" to make himself feel good. He could do more good by getting an job an paying taxes instead.
When you step back and apply this universal economic principles to an emotional issue like bailing out Greece or an auto company, the right answer is simple.
PS, Officially, we have contributed at least $60 billion toward helping Greece. That amounts to about $200 from every man, women and child in the USA and we know that only half of the people pay any tax so for those who really pay taxes, it is twice that at $400 each. Think about it. 90% of those who voted for Obama will not have contributed anything to help Greece. It was with the other guy's tax money. Look at it another way. Greece has about 10 million people so the $60 billion dollars amounts to $6,000 for every man, women and child in Greece. How would you like for Japan or China to give each memeber of your family a check for $6,000? For a Greek family of four, that would be $24,000 per family and that is just the amount of money that we in the USA put in. It does not count the money that came from the rest of the EU members. Facts talk!!!!
Monday, May 10, 2010
Insurance Observations
First off, I am not an expert on insurance, but I don't think that Obama is either. On that basis, I think that my observations are as good as his. You have heard how Obama has been bad mouthing insurance companies lately. He seems to feel they are the cause of the high cost of medical services here in the USA. To understand what is going on, you first need to get a basic understanding of exactly what insurance companies do.
The insurance on my home is from a local "Mutual" insurance company. Now what is a "Mutual" insurance company? It is owned by the policy holders and is just a big group of people who get together and promise to pay for any damage that occurs to one of the member's homes. The chances of something bad happening to a members home is small, but the consequences to that single individual is great. The idea of the insurance is to pay a little when "nothing" happens to your home so that if something big happened, you would not be totally wiped out. It is "not" a free lunch. It is a little like gambling. If the chances of your home burning down is one in a thousand and your home is worth $100,000, your expected or average loss would be $100 per year. If a thousand "Mutual" members put in a $100 each year, there would be $100,000 in their pot to pay for the average home that burnt down each year. That is all insurance is. It is the same for medical and works the same way. As you would expect, there are administration costs that any insurance company would have and they would have to be added in. Also, they would expect to make a profit.
My point with this Blog is to call attention to all the insurance that is out there and the ones that the government is involved in. The insurance business is "not" controlled on a national basis. It is a state by state activity, like speed limits and drinking age. The national government is involved in insurance and here are a few of the places. Home financing is one of the biggest with Fannie Mae and Fannie Mac being the two largest. What they do is provide insurance on the mortgage notes so that investors will purchase them "from" the government at low interest rates. The government assumes "all" risk of the mortgage note going bad. The original bank who made the loan is insured or off the hook if the loan goes bad. They call it "non recourse", but it is the same thing as insurance. If the loan goes bad, the government, us tax payers, make good on the loan to the investor. Us tax payers have trillions at stake and have had to come up with hundreds of billions since Obama has been President to pay off investors 100% on the dollar.
AIG got into the "same" insurance business as our government by writing insurance policies just like those of our government so that marginal loans notes could be sold to investors as low interest rates. The rates that AIG charged were so low that when a bunch of notes went bad, they did not have enough money in reserve to pay off the bad notes as they had promised. Now insurance companies are regulated at the state level which meant that the state of New York should have been looking at the AIG books and making sure they had enough reserves for the amount of risk they were taking. Can you imagine a local insurance agent going around an writing "cheap" insurance policies and pocketing the money and not really having any reserves to back up what he was selling? That is what AIG did and so did Fannie Mae and Fannie Mac. In the case of the government, they did not want to charge a high enough price for their insurance or require larger down payments because they wanted to encourage everyone to be able to live in an expensive home.
Farmers have had crop insurance written by the government for years. Before a farmer plants corn, he figures that he has to make 100 bushels to the acre to break even and if he gets below 75 bushels per acre he will be out of business and lose his farm. To protect from this risk, he buys crop insurance from the government for 90 bushels per acre. If it goes below 90, the government pays him the value of the difference. If it is over 90 bushels per acre, the farmer does not get anything. I'm just trying to show that our government is highly involved in the insurance business.
How about medical insurance? Both the federal government and every state government have some kind of medical insurance systems. It is every place. The bottom line is that insurance is a "good" idea. If we did not have insurance systems, each individual would have to take a lot less risk in their lives and businesses. The result would be a much slower economic system because no one would want to assume much risk in any business adventure.
In the Amish community, they have insurance too. If their home or barn burns down, all the Amish in the area come together and build them a new home or barn. They have an "after the fact" mutual insurance system. How about the Church helping or the Red Cross? All of these groups provide insurance for things that don't happen very often. They just provide it in different ways. My wife is active in the Hos pis program in our area. It is a type of insurance too provided by volunteers.
When Castro took over Cuba and the ITT telephone company, ITT had an insurance policy with the USA government that paid ITT the value of the telephone company stolen by Castro. Most people have no idea that us tax payers paid ITT for the loss of their telephone company. When a German company tried to buy the old ITT telephone company from the Cuban government, our USA government stepped in and stopped the deal. Do you recall that and wondered why it was such a big deal for our government? Well, now you know.
Next time you hear Obama shooting off his mouth against insurance companies, remember that insurance is needed for our economic system to work. If we did not have insurance, after a time the lucky ones who did not have any claims would end up with all the property and wealth. All the smaller under capitalized players would go bust and be out of the game. Insurance allows all of us little people to play with the big boys. Remember that.
The insurance on my home is from a local "Mutual" insurance company. Now what is a "Mutual" insurance company? It is owned by the policy holders and is just a big group of people who get together and promise to pay for any damage that occurs to one of the member's homes. The chances of something bad happening to a members home is small, but the consequences to that single individual is great. The idea of the insurance is to pay a little when "nothing" happens to your home so that if something big happened, you would not be totally wiped out. It is "not" a free lunch. It is a little like gambling. If the chances of your home burning down is one in a thousand and your home is worth $100,000, your expected or average loss would be $100 per year. If a thousand "Mutual" members put in a $100 each year, there would be $100,000 in their pot to pay for the average home that burnt down each year. That is all insurance is. It is the same for medical and works the same way. As you would expect, there are administration costs that any insurance company would have and they would have to be added in. Also, they would expect to make a profit.
My point with this Blog is to call attention to all the insurance that is out there and the ones that the government is involved in. The insurance business is "not" controlled on a national basis. It is a state by state activity, like speed limits and drinking age. The national government is involved in insurance and here are a few of the places. Home financing is one of the biggest with Fannie Mae and Fannie Mac being the two largest. What they do is provide insurance on the mortgage notes so that investors will purchase them "from" the government at low interest rates. The government assumes "all" risk of the mortgage note going bad. The original bank who made the loan is insured or off the hook if the loan goes bad. They call it "non recourse", but it is the same thing as insurance. If the loan goes bad, the government, us tax payers, make good on the loan to the investor. Us tax payers have trillions at stake and have had to come up with hundreds of billions since Obama has been President to pay off investors 100% on the dollar.
AIG got into the "same" insurance business as our government by writing insurance policies just like those of our government so that marginal loans notes could be sold to investors as low interest rates. The rates that AIG charged were so low that when a bunch of notes went bad, they did not have enough money in reserve to pay off the bad notes as they had promised. Now insurance companies are regulated at the state level which meant that the state of New York should have been looking at the AIG books and making sure they had enough reserves for the amount of risk they were taking. Can you imagine a local insurance agent going around an writing "cheap" insurance policies and pocketing the money and not really having any reserves to back up what he was selling? That is what AIG did and so did Fannie Mae and Fannie Mac. In the case of the government, they did not want to charge a high enough price for their insurance or require larger down payments because they wanted to encourage everyone to be able to live in an expensive home.
Farmers have had crop insurance written by the government for years. Before a farmer plants corn, he figures that he has to make 100 bushels to the acre to break even and if he gets below 75 bushels per acre he will be out of business and lose his farm. To protect from this risk, he buys crop insurance from the government for 90 bushels per acre. If it goes below 90, the government pays him the value of the difference. If it is over 90 bushels per acre, the farmer does not get anything. I'm just trying to show that our government is highly involved in the insurance business.
How about medical insurance? Both the federal government and every state government have some kind of medical insurance systems. It is every place. The bottom line is that insurance is a "good" idea. If we did not have insurance systems, each individual would have to take a lot less risk in their lives and businesses. The result would be a much slower economic system because no one would want to assume much risk in any business adventure.
In the Amish community, they have insurance too. If their home or barn burns down, all the Amish in the area come together and build them a new home or barn. They have an "after the fact" mutual insurance system. How about the Church helping or the Red Cross? All of these groups provide insurance for things that don't happen very often. They just provide it in different ways. My wife is active in the Hos pis program in our area. It is a type of insurance too provided by volunteers.
When Castro took over Cuba and the ITT telephone company, ITT had an insurance policy with the USA government that paid ITT the value of the telephone company stolen by Castro. Most people have no idea that us tax payers paid ITT for the loss of their telephone company. When a German company tried to buy the old ITT telephone company from the Cuban government, our USA government stepped in and stopped the deal. Do you recall that and wondered why it was such a big deal for our government? Well, now you know.
Next time you hear Obama shooting off his mouth against insurance companies, remember that insurance is needed for our economic system to work. If we did not have insurance, after a time the lucky ones who did not have any claims would end up with all the property and wealth. All the smaller under capitalized players would go bust and be out of the game. Insurance allows all of us little people to play with the big boys. Remember that.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Indian Doctors
Wait, I am not talking about Indian Doctors from the "Reservation", I'm talking about doctors from India. Per the "Scientific American" magazine in about 1975 we crossed over the 50% point with the importation of our medical doctors. Given that we had a large inventory of American doctors in 1975, most people did not realize just how many foreign doctors we were importing. Now, when you go to the doctor, you will be getting an Indian doctor most of the time. The latest number is that we import 61% of our doctors. That mean that the best our kids and our expensive universities can do is to only produce 39% of the doctors that we need. Here in the USA, we have an unemployment rate of over 10% while we are importing 61% of our doctors. We also have the highest medical costs in the world. It seems everyone is concerned about importing just over 50% of our oil and don't seem to be concerned about doctors. In the case of oil, our government seems to be proposing that we spend 10 times as much for our energy as we do now in order to import less oil. Is this crazy or what? Why don't we take the money that we are spending in our universities teaching our kids worthless degrees like Political Science, Communications, Psychology, English and History and graduate more doctors?. None of these degrees will make energy or our medical costs go down. You figure it out.
While at the airport last week picking up my wife, I parked next to an Indian doctor and we talked for a few minutes while he waited for his family to arrive. He graduated from a medical school in India that cost 10% of what it would have cost for medical school here. He borrowed the money and promised that he would move to the USA and quickly earn enough money to pay his loan back and he did. He now sends money back to India to care for his family and a few family friends. He earns enough money here and has a good credit rating so that he could afford to buy a large motel and restaurant in the near by city. I have to remind you that most of the earnings of the doctor is actually tax payer money from Medi-Care and similar government programs. See what is happening? Since we and our kids are so dumb, foreigners are able to "game" our system and come in here and take food right out of our mouths and we don't even know it. Many of you brag about how good your Indian doctor is without even understanding what is happening to us economically. That is the problem.
I was talking with another friend who was saying that if you had any kind of major elective surgery that it would be cheaper to buy a plane ticket and fly to India for the surgery. They have hospitals there that are as good as ours and you can still have the same India trained doctor that you would have had here. If that is not a sick story, I don't know what is. Do you really think there is any hope for us the way we are going?
Most of the Indians here in the USA stick together much like the Jews. They favor helping other Indians, not their American hosts. It has been a one way street in my view. We seem willing to help them and extent every courtesy, but it does not seem to go the other way. Have you ever noticed that? When was the last time you sat for dinner in the home of a transplanted Indian? Never. That is the answer from most people. This is just the way Indians and Jews are, but the real problem is you and me and our kids. We and our kids are so dumb and lazy that we can be "gamed" by Indians and Jews. It is our fault. You can't really blame them.
I leave it to you to do some research into what percentage of the gas stations and motels are owned by Indians here in the USA. Keep your eyes open and see how many Indians you see behind the counters compared to how many you see out on the street. If you look, you will be amazed. It won't be long before America is owned by someone who is not an American. In some countries, it is against the law for a non-citizens to own land. It might have to get to that point here if we want to keep our country. Indian doctors are just the first wave. We know the cure if we just had the will.
While at the airport last week picking up my wife, I parked next to an Indian doctor and we talked for a few minutes while he waited for his family to arrive. He graduated from a medical school in India that cost 10% of what it would have cost for medical school here. He borrowed the money and promised that he would move to the USA and quickly earn enough money to pay his loan back and he did. He now sends money back to India to care for his family and a few family friends. He earns enough money here and has a good credit rating so that he could afford to buy a large motel and restaurant in the near by city. I have to remind you that most of the earnings of the doctor is actually tax payer money from Medi-Care and similar government programs. See what is happening? Since we and our kids are so dumb, foreigners are able to "game" our system and come in here and take food right out of our mouths and we don't even know it. Many of you brag about how good your Indian doctor is without even understanding what is happening to us economically. That is the problem.
I was talking with another friend who was saying that if you had any kind of major elective surgery that it would be cheaper to buy a plane ticket and fly to India for the surgery. They have hospitals there that are as good as ours and you can still have the same India trained doctor that you would have had here. If that is not a sick story, I don't know what is. Do you really think there is any hope for us the way we are going?
Most of the Indians here in the USA stick together much like the Jews. They favor helping other Indians, not their American hosts. It has been a one way street in my view. We seem willing to help them and extent every courtesy, but it does not seem to go the other way. Have you ever noticed that? When was the last time you sat for dinner in the home of a transplanted Indian? Never. That is the answer from most people. This is just the way Indians and Jews are, but the real problem is you and me and our kids. We and our kids are so dumb and lazy that we can be "gamed" by Indians and Jews. It is our fault. You can't really blame them.
I leave it to you to do some research into what percentage of the gas stations and motels are owned by Indians here in the USA. Keep your eyes open and see how many Indians you see behind the counters compared to how many you see out on the street. If you look, you will be amazed. It won't be long before America is owned by someone who is not an American. In some countries, it is against the law for a non-citizens to own land. It might have to get to that point here if we want to keep our country. Indian doctors are just the first wave. We know the cure if we just had the will.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Green Energy and the Learning Curve Myth
If you have been following discussions on "Green Energy", you have heard advocates tell you that the price of "Green Energy" will go down due to the "Learning Curve". I can tell you that 99% of these people have no real idea what the, so called, "Learning Curve" is. Try this question. Ask them, "Why is it called a "Curve"? and they will have no answer. If they answer that it is possible to "Fit" a second order exponential equation to most learning curves, you might be in trouble, but don't worry. It won't happen. The history of most "Learning Curves" is that every time the number of items produced is "doubled" the time to make one decreases by between 5% and 10%. Where the Myth comes in is that not all of the cost elements are affected by the, so called, "Learning Curve". The second error is determining the starting point for the number produced. Here is an example.
Ann is baking cakes and the cost of ingredients is $5 and it takes her one hour to bake the first cake. She feels that she is worth $10/hr, so she calculates that the total cost of the cake is $15. With me so far. Her son is in college and told her to use the "Learning Curve" to project her future cost of baking cakes. He tells her that she should use a 10% learning curve. 10% means that every time she doubles the number of cakes she makes, her time will go down by 10%. She now wants to figure out how much the 128th cake will cost. She is amazed that the 128th cake will cost her $9.78. This 128th cake will only cost about 2/3 of her "first" cake.
Here is the problem with her calculations. She has already baked a lot of cakes and is already getting good at it. Let's assume that she has already baked 64 cakes before she decided to try to sell cakes. Now when she uses the 10% "Learning Curve" that her smart college son told her about she finds that the 128th cake will cost her $14 and not the $9.78 she thought. This is where wind power gets off the track. The technology of building wind mills is over 500 years old and there have already been millions built. Most of the wind mill is made of raw materials that have been produced for the last 1000 years. These items are all subject to efficiencies due to a "Learning Curve", but to get a 10% reduction in cost we are going to have to make many millions more of them.
If you take something like the transistor, it did not exist before about 1945, nor did most of the technology to make them. We have thus seen a very significant reduction in their cost. When the "Learning Curve" efficiencies are combined with continual technological performance increases, the net cost has gone down even faster. The problem with all this "Green Energy" stuff is that it is old technology and thus requires very large volumes to make a significant difference in cost. The Lithium Ion battery was invented in 1904. It is not really new technology like the transistor. If you are following this, I think you can see that someone is trying to pull the wool over our eyes.
Take the automobile. Has the "Learning Curve" made the cost of cars go down? Look at the numbers. In 1950 you could buy a basic Chevrolet for $2,000 and now you can buy the same car for about $30,000. Back in 1950 you made $1.50/hr or $3,000/yr. Now 60 years later you make $80,000. Back in 1950 it took 66.7% of your annual pay to buy a car. Now it only costs you 37.5% of your annual pay. Conclusion, the "Learning Curve" on cars has caused the affective cost to go "down". Right? No! You forget one key factor. You are not back in 1950 with only the skill and earning power that you had then. You are smarter and more experienced and thus worth more. Think about how much you would make today if you were doing the same job that you were doing back in 1950. That job would pay about $45,000 today. So the new car would still cost you 66.7% of your annual pay. People forget that they have not been standing still over time while other things change around them.
Right now the cost of electricity from a wind mill has a cost that is almost 10 times that from coal. Based on the above, do you really think that wind power will ever be economical? Think about it. Even when the cost of coal power goes up, there will a be a positive feed back of cost into the cost of wind power because of all the inputs required to build and maintain the wind mills due to the cost of coal and oil energy. You can't hold one element constant over time and just consider what happens to your favored element. It does not work that way. As the cost of coal powered energy goes up, so does the cost of wind power and solar. The gap might change a little, but not by much. This is the "Myth" and it seems to be going down with the cool aid.
Ann is baking cakes and the cost of ingredients is $5 and it takes her one hour to bake the first cake. She feels that she is worth $10/hr, so she calculates that the total cost of the cake is $15. With me so far. Her son is in college and told her to use the "Learning Curve" to project her future cost of baking cakes. He tells her that she should use a 10% learning curve. 10% means that every time she doubles the number of cakes she makes, her time will go down by 10%. She now wants to figure out how much the 128th cake will cost. She is amazed that the 128th cake will cost her $9.78. This 128th cake will only cost about 2/3 of her "first" cake.
Here is the problem with her calculations. She has already baked a lot of cakes and is already getting good at it. Let's assume that she has already baked 64 cakes before she decided to try to sell cakes. Now when she uses the 10% "Learning Curve" that her smart college son told her about she finds that the 128th cake will cost her $14 and not the $9.78 she thought. This is where wind power gets off the track. The technology of building wind mills is over 500 years old and there have already been millions built. Most of the wind mill is made of raw materials that have been produced for the last 1000 years. These items are all subject to efficiencies due to a "Learning Curve", but to get a 10% reduction in cost we are going to have to make many millions more of them.
If you take something like the transistor, it did not exist before about 1945, nor did most of the technology to make them. We have thus seen a very significant reduction in their cost. When the "Learning Curve" efficiencies are combined with continual technological performance increases, the net cost has gone down even faster. The problem with all this "Green Energy" stuff is that it is old technology and thus requires very large volumes to make a significant difference in cost. The Lithium Ion battery was invented in 1904. It is not really new technology like the transistor. If you are following this, I think you can see that someone is trying to pull the wool over our eyes.
Take the automobile. Has the "Learning Curve" made the cost of cars go down? Look at the numbers. In 1950 you could buy a basic Chevrolet for $2,000 and now you can buy the same car for about $30,000. Back in 1950 you made $1.50/hr or $3,000/yr. Now 60 years later you make $80,000. Back in 1950 it took 66.7% of your annual pay to buy a car. Now it only costs you 37.5% of your annual pay. Conclusion, the "Learning Curve" on cars has caused the affective cost to go "down". Right? No! You forget one key factor. You are not back in 1950 with only the skill and earning power that you had then. You are smarter and more experienced and thus worth more. Think about how much you would make today if you were doing the same job that you were doing back in 1950. That job would pay about $45,000 today. So the new car would still cost you 66.7% of your annual pay. People forget that they have not been standing still over time while other things change around them.
Right now the cost of electricity from a wind mill has a cost that is almost 10 times that from coal. Based on the above, do you really think that wind power will ever be economical? Think about it. Even when the cost of coal power goes up, there will a be a positive feed back of cost into the cost of wind power because of all the inputs required to build and maintain the wind mills due to the cost of coal and oil energy. You can't hold one element constant over time and just consider what happens to your favored element. It does not work that way. As the cost of coal powered energy goes up, so does the cost of wind power and solar. The gap might change a little, but not by much. This is the "Myth" and it seems to be going down with the cool aid.
Friday, May 7, 2010
Education, Let's Get Serious, Chapter #9
I'm up to #9, how is that? As you can tell from my Blogs on "Education" that I have a very serious interest in education and am very concerned about the future of the USA that our decline in the quality of education predicts. I think that most of you would agree with me that education is a "Life Long" activity, not just something for public school. When you graduate from high school, that is not the end of your education, it is just the beginning. Even if one does not go onto college, it does not mean that your education has ended. This just might be on of the most serious problems with our whole education system. In a past Blog, I mentioned how getting sports out of our public schools would actually help education. Here is a point that needs to be made about switching sports from public schools to "Club Sports". If organized sports were "Club Sports" kids would not be disenfranchised from sports when they graduate from high school. For 99% of kids, the last time they played football or basket ball was in high school. In countries where they have the "Club Sports" system, you will see people of "All" ages still engaged in organized sports, but not here in the USA. Just as sports can continue after high school, I think we can all agree that education should also continue thru life. So here goes.
If continued learning and intellectual growth is important, it should be promoted in our public schools. I hear kids talking about taking the minimum number and easiest classes in high school in order to graduate and get out and through with school. They seem to want to "End" the learning requirement. Since we seem to agree on the merit of continued education, we should "Put our money where our mouth is", and this should apply to our public school teachers. Continued education allows a person to grown and move toward higher paying and more productive jobs. Think of it as climbing a career ladder and "Optimizing" your productive capacity. Can't argue with that can you?
Now back to our public school teachers. If we want them to promote this idea, they will need to practice what they preach. To encourage this behavior, I recommend that teachers be limited to teaching in our public schools for no more than 10 years in a row. During that 10 year period, they should continue their education so that they can move to a higher paying job outside of public schools system. We know that most home schooled kids do better than most public school kids and are mostly taught by mothers and fathers who are "not" graduates of teachers colleges. This means that our public school teachers didn't learn all that much in teachers colleges and to grow to their full productive value they need to continue their education toward a better job. If they are unable to grow to a better job and career, it would appear to me that they are not made of the stuff needed to be a good teacher in the first place. Getting rid of them after a 10 year trial period would seem like the right idea.
There are a lot of jobs in our economic system that are "starter" jobs. Flipping burgers at McDonald's is not a "Living Wage" job and was never intended to be. It is only a "Starter" job equal to the abilities of the individual at that point in their economic careers. I feel that the job of a public school teacher is a "Starter" job for a person who only has a degree from a teachers college. They should be encouraged to continue their career growth and education so that they could move up to a better job. If we were to do this, we would "grow" many more qualified and productive workers in our society and not plug up the path up the career ladders of our economy. I have not even dealt with the savings that this would have by not having to pay retirement cost out of public tax money. Retirement cost would be paid by private companies out of the productivity of the teachers second career.
If you want to optimize the productive capacity of an economy, you need to make sure that every individual is as productive as he or she can be and that is exactly what I am proposing. Individuals would make more and have a higher standard of living because they were more productive. How is that? If everyone took a job that was below their potential and then use labor unions to extort higher and higher pay for those jobs without a corresponding increase in productivity, you would have the formula for economic disaster. Isn't that what we have now? We need to put our money where our mouth is in regard to continued education and it should start by example with our public school teachers. What do you think?
PS, The smartest public school teachers are already doing the above so that what is left in our public schools are the least career motivated people. Our kids are being taught by over paid "Dead Enders" and we need to do something about it. Take the simple example of a high school with 1000 kids. What if only 1% of the best football players decided to go to a different high school, how do you think it would affect the quality of the old high school's football team? That is what has been happening in our public schools for years. It is a silent decay. Oh! Isn't that the same as "Rot"?
If continued learning and intellectual growth is important, it should be promoted in our public schools. I hear kids talking about taking the minimum number and easiest classes in high school in order to graduate and get out and through with school. They seem to want to "End" the learning requirement. Since we seem to agree on the merit of continued education, we should "Put our money where our mouth is", and this should apply to our public school teachers. Continued education allows a person to grown and move toward higher paying and more productive jobs. Think of it as climbing a career ladder and "Optimizing" your productive capacity. Can't argue with that can you?
Now back to our public school teachers. If we want them to promote this idea, they will need to practice what they preach. To encourage this behavior, I recommend that teachers be limited to teaching in our public schools for no more than 10 years in a row. During that 10 year period, they should continue their education so that they can move to a higher paying job outside of public schools system. We know that most home schooled kids do better than most public school kids and are mostly taught by mothers and fathers who are "not" graduates of teachers colleges. This means that our public school teachers didn't learn all that much in teachers colleges and to grow to their full productive value they need to continue their education toward a better job. If they are unable to grow to a better job and career, it would appear to me that they are not made of the stuff needed to be a good teacher in the first place. Getting rid of them after a 10 year trial period would seem like the right idea.
There are a lot of jobs in our economic system that are "starter" jobs. Flipping burgers at McDonald's is not a "Living Wage" job and was never intended to be. It is only a "Starter" job equal to the abilities of the individual at that point in their economic careers. I feel that the job of a public school teacher is a "Starter" job for a person who only has a degree from a teachers college. They should be encouraged to continue their career growth and education so that they could move up to a better job. If we were to do this, we would "grow" many more qualified and productive workers in our society and not plug up the path up the career ladders of our economy. I have not even dealt with the savings that this would have by not having to pay retirement cost out of public tax money. Retirement cost would be paid by private companies out of the productivity of the teachers second career.
If you want to optimize the productive capacity of an economy, you need to make sure that every individual is as productive as he or she can be and that is exactly what I am proposing. Individuals would make more and have a higher standard of living because they were more productive. How is that? If everyone took a job that was below their potential and then use labor unions to extort higher and higher pay for those jobs without a corresponding increase in productivity, you would have the formula for economic disaster. Isn't that what we have now? We need to put our money where our mouth is in regard to continued education and it should start by example with our public school teachers. What do you think?
PS, The smartest public school teachers are already doing the above so that what is left in our public schools are the least career motivated people. Our kids are being taught by over paid "Dead Enders" and we need to do something about it. Take the simple example of a high school with 1000 kids. What if only 1% of the best football players decided to go to a different high school, how do you think it would affect the quality of the old high school's football team? That is what has been happening in our public schools for years. It is a silent decay. Oh! Isn't that the same as "Rot"?
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Education, Let's Get Serious, Chapter #8
Hey, I've got more. What is the purpose of lifting weights? I think we can all answer that one, but how about education? Aren't they basically the same? One is to develop strong muscles that can be used in ports or physical work and the other one is to develop your mind and install information that can be used to solve problems later in one's life. Seems simple to me. We all know that the heavier the weight and the harder it is to lift, the more "Good" it is doing for you. If you used some kind of machine to lift the weight, we can all see that the "exercise" would not do your muscles much good. Isn't it the same with your mind? No one would feel that you could get good at playing the piano by listen to or playing piano music on your I-Phone. See what I am getting at? Education is work and we need to put work back into school "Work", so here goes.
I recommend that we get rid of all computers in our schools with the exception of those in the Library that are only used to search for information. I know that many of you feel strongly that our kids should have the latest computers in our schools so that they would know how to use them when they graduate from high school. I know that many parents are very impressed with how well their very young kids can "work" their computer. Think about it a second. If a kid 6 or 7 years old can "work" the computer, it must not be a very big deal to learn. If it is not a big deal to learn, then why are we spending so much time and money on it? Notice how the things that they should really know are a lot more difficult to learn. At 7 most kids can not do Algebra or Trig, yet they can "work" the computer. See what I mean. Some of you will say that my kid doesn't need to know any Math because I gave him or her a hand held calculator for his birthday and he already knows how to "work" it. It would be like the guy who bought his son a baseball pitching machine for the back yard so that his kid could develop his pitching skills. When I was a kid, we had a thing called a "Medicine Ball". It wasn't a big cough drop like you think. It was the size of a basketball filled with rags and extra weights. We would toss that around to build up our muscles and strength so that we could make long shots in basketball. We made things more difficult so that our strength would be greater than the minimum needed to shoot a standard basketball. See how it works now? This is the type of thing we need to start doing in our schools.
Have you ever asked a kid these days a simple math question and they immediately looked for either a calculator or pencil and paper? 90% of normal math problems can be and should be solved in your head with out the need for any kind of computer. Doing simple and progressively harder math problems in one's head has been the classic way that people over the years have "developed" their ability to quickly solve simple math problems. It is cheaper and faster than any computer. You can do most math problems in your head faster than you could ever punch the keys. If one works at it, it can be amazing how good you can get at it. This is the thing that we need more of, not computers and aids that make getting answers to problems easier. I don't know who the Greek guy was, but he wanted to become an great orator so he put small stones in his mouth and went to sea shore to speak over the sound of the waves. Isn't this just the kind of thing that I am talking about here?
Writing is one of the areas where I feel we have really fallen behind. The reason is that it is easier to teach someone to read and then ask simple questions about what was read to see if the kid actually read the material and understood it than to read and correct writing. When I was a professor, I made the mistake of assigning my whole class the job of researching different complex topics and writing a complete report on them. The stack of papers was approximately 4" think. It took me longer to read and grade their work than it did for me to give the lecture for the whole semester. I know why teachers don't want to teach kids to really write. It is a lot of work and teachers, just like the kids, are looking for the easy way out.
Getting rid of computers and calculators would be my first step in making school "work" more difficult and thus more affective. If you think your kid knows anything about computers other than "working" one, ask him or her what programing language that they use to write most of their programs. You'll find that they "don't" write programs, they just "work" programs written by Indians and Chinese programmers. It is like thinking you knowing all about cars because you can "drive" one down the street. They would be better off if they had to "walk" down the street using their own legs. Teachers in the USA have been looking for years for the "Free Lunch" in regards to education and I am here to tell you and them that there is no "Free Lunch" when it comes to education. Education requires "work" and the sooner we accept that the sooner the USA educational system will start to turn around.
I recommend that we get rid of all computers in our schools with the exception of those in the Library that are only used to search for information. I know that many of you feel strongly that our kids should have the latest computers in our schools so that they would know how to use them when they graduate from high school. I know that many parents are very impressed with how well their very young kids can "work" their computer. Think about it a second. If a kid 6 or 7 years old can "work" the computer, it must not be a very big deal to learn. If it is not a big deal to learn, then why are we spending so much time and money on it? Notice how the things that they should really know are a lot more difficult to learn. At 7 most kids can not do Algebra or Trig, yet they can "work" the computer. See what I mean. Some of you will say that my kid doesn't need to know any Math because I gave him or her a hand held calculator for his birthday and he already knows how to "work" it. It would be like the guy who bought his son a baseball pitching machine for the back yard so that his kid could develop his pitching skills. When I was a kid, we had a thing called a "Medicine Ball". It wasn't a big cough drop like you think. It was the size of a basketball filled with rags and extra weights. We would toss that around to build up our muscles and strength so that we could make long shots in basketball. We made things more difficult so that our strength would be greater than the minimum needed to shoot a standard basketball. See how it works now? This is the type of thing we need to start doing in our schools.
Have you ever asked a kid these days a simple math question and they immediately looked for either a calculator or pencil and paper? 90% of normal math problems can be and should be solved in your head with out the need for any kind of computer. Doing simple and progressively harder math problems in one's head has been the classic way that people over the years have "developed" their ability to quickly solve simple math problems. It is cheaper and faster than any computer. You can do most math problems in your head faster than you could ever punch the keys. If one works at it, it can be amazing how good you can get at it. This is the thing that we need more of, not computers and aids that make getting answers to problems easier. I don't know who the Greek guy was, but he wanted to become an great orator so he put small stones in his mouth and went to sea shore to speak over the sound of the waves. Isn't this just the kind of thing that I am talking about here?
Writing is one of the areas where I feel we have really fallen behind. The reason is that it is easier to teach someone to read and then ask simple questions about what was read to see if the kid actually read the material and understood it than to read and correct writing. When I was a professor, I made the mistake of assigning my whole class the job of researching different complex topics and writing a complete report on them. The stack of papers was approximately 4" think. It took me longer to read and grade their work than it did for me to give the lecture for the whole semester. I know why teachers don't want to teach kids to really write. It is a lot of work and teachers, just like the kids, are looking for the easy way out.
Getting rid of computers and calculators would be my first step in making school "work" more difficult and thus more affective. If you think your kid knows anything about computers other than "working" one, ask him or her what programing language that they use to write most of their programs. You'll find that they "don't" write programs, they just "work" programs written by Indians and Chinese programmers. It is like thinking you knowing all about cars because you can "drive" one down the street. They would be better off if they had to "walk" down the street using their own legs. Teachers in the USA have been looking for years for the "Free Lunch" in regards to education and I am here to tell you and them that there is no "Free Lunch" when it comes to education. Education requires "work" and the sooner we accept that the sooner the USA educational system will start to turn around.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Politics and Religion
We all know that Politics and Religion don't mix, but did you ever really look into just why that is? I did not think so. Well as you might have expected I do have some opinions on the subject, so here goes.
First consider the fact that Religion has been around here a lot longer than Politics. Based on that simple fact, one should start from the position that it just might be because Religion has is right and Politics does not. We all thought that Democracy was the ultimate summit of politics and that Democracy has finally gotten it right. Well maybe not. You might notice that those most committed to Democracy are also the ones who are the strongest against Religion. Why is that? You would think that Politics would realize that since Religion has been able to survive all these years that they might have something to teach. Well, they do. Notice that Religion promises everything just like Politicians. In that regard, they are the same. Both seem to want power over the unwashed and both seem to have it. Look deeper and you will find a big difference. I think that I have your interest now and you want to know exactly what the difference is, right?
Like most things in life, when you finally understand them, they are very simple. I have said before that I have never seen anything that was very complicated or difficult to understand and Politics and Religion are not different, so here it is. Notice how Religion has promised a better life in the future and so has Politics. At age 65 in the USA we can retire and get social security and free health care. Isn't that great? The problem is that with Religion, you don't get the benefits until you die. That's right, you have to die first and there are thus no refunds. Now with Politics, they made similar promises but failed to understand that they had to be paid "before" the person died. It did not seem like such a big point at the time, but now it has come back to be the whole ball game. I know what you are thinking. The Politicians thought that they themselves would be dead before the bills had to be paid and many were right. Now that we are living longer many of these bills are coming due while the Politicians are still in office. It was never supposed to be that what. Think about it. Roosevelt died before hardly a Penny had been paid out on social security, so he went to his grave with the thought that he did a great thing for the USA. I am sorry, but that will not be the same for our current Politicians.
Next time tell you Politician friends that they should not make promises that have to be paid for while the voters who put time in are still alive. They need to tell voters that an benefits will not be paid until they are dead at least 90 days. The time period could be increased if necessary, but I think 90 days should do the job. Again, I ask, "It really is simple isn't it?"
First consider the fact that Religion has been around here a lot longer than Politics. Based on that simple fact, one should start from the position that it just might be because Religion has is right and Politics does not. We all thought that Democracy was the ultimate summit of politics and that Democracy has finally gotten it right. Well maybe not. You might notice that those most committed to Democracy are also the ones who are the strongest against Religion. Why is that? You would think that Politics would realize that since Religion has been able to survive all these years that they might have something to teach. Well, they do. Notice that Religion promises everything just like Politicians. In that regard, they are the same. Both seem to want power over the unwashed and both seem to have it. Look deeper and you will find a big difference. I think that I have your interest now and you want to know exactly what the difference is, right?
Like most things in life, when you finally understand them, they are very simple. I have said before that I have never seen anything that was very complicated or difficult to understand and Politics and Religion are not different, so here it is. Notice how Religion has promised a better life in the future and so has Politics. At age 65 in the USA we can retire and get social security and free health care. Isn't that great? The problem is that with Religion, you don't get the benefits until you die. That's right, you have to die first and there are thus no refunds. Now with Politics, they made similar promises but failed to understand that they had to be paid "before" the person died. It did not seem like such a big point at the time, but now it has come back to be the whole ball game. I know what you are thinking. The Politicians thought that they themselves would be dead before the bills had to be paid and many were right. Now that we are living longer many of these bills are coming due while the Politicians are still in office. It was never supposed to be that what. Think about it. Roosevelt died before hardly a Penny had been paid out on social security, so he went to his grave with the thought that he did a great thing for the USA. I am sorry, but that will not be the same for our current Politicians.
Next time tell you Politician friends that they should not make promises that have to be paid for while the voters who put time in are still alive. They need to tell voters that an benefits will not be paid until they are dead at least 90 days. The time period could be increased if necessary, but I think 90 days should do the job. Again, I ask, "It really is simple isn't it?"
Education, Let's Get Serious, Chapter #7
You didn't think that I had another Chapter in me did you? Well, I do. I am not going to go into teacher pay because we all know that the amount that one spends on education is not related to how well our kids are educated. I am not going to go into teacher education because we all know that home schooled kids do better than public school kids when the parents of home schooled kids are not even college graduates. If that is the case and we want better educated kids, what is left to do? Believe it or not, there are still a lot of significant things we can do to make our schools better.
Get rid of the school janitors. You might ask, what the school janitors have to do with the quality of our schools? If you look around the world at school models, you will find that most require the students to do the janitorial duties. That's right, the students sweep the floors and erase blackboards. Did you know that a janitor costs as much as a qualified teacher and any student can do what they do. Why not save money by using the students. There is a lot more to it than just saving money. If the kids have to start taking care of their school, they will start to have a lot more respect for the school and you will see an end to gafiti on the walls because the kids who have to do the cleaning will not stand for it and put "Peer Pressure" on the bad actors to stop. Starting to see how it works. Let's go back to the Army and the Drill Sargent. Do you think the Army provides janitorial service for the barracks? No! The recruits have to clean their own barracks and do their own laundry. This is all to teach them respect and dicipline, the very thing that we seem to be missing in our schools. Do you think it is better for our kids to go out and sit around in groups gossiping on the play grounds than cleaning the school. I think you will agree that it is cleaning the school.
I was reading an article several years ago about BYU. I think we all know about BYU and the Mormons. One interesting point was that they had large lawns at the university and it was accepted that "No One" cut corners and walked on the grass. We have all seem schools and public places where people had cut the corner at the junction of two sidewalks and killed the grass at the corner. It looks like hell and we all seem to accept the fact without further thought. Well, they don't at BYU. If a student were to see a kid cutting the corner, they would step forward and stop him or her on the spot. Now that is true pride and that is what I am talking about. This is the kind of thing that i am talking about.
We all know that our schools are loaded with "Greenies" who are out to save the planet and brain wash our kids. They want organize groups to go out into the community to collect trash and clean up the place. Isn't that what I am proposing here, but to do it right in school. If they want to pull weeds or plant flowers, why not do it in the school yard? Oh, isn't that what the janitors do? How about washing the school buses or sweeping them out? Why pay a janitor to do the work that any kid can do for free. When I was a kid, it was my job to fill the ink wells. Does anyone really know what ink wells are? Are they similar to "Oil Wells"? We also had a coal fired furnace in the basement of our country school that us older boys fired and maintained. Old was between 10 and 13.
How about the cafeteria? When I was in school many of the girls took Home Economics. Why not just have them work in the cafeteria? How about health and hygene? Have them run the school laundry rather than having the janitors do it or sending it out. All of what I am proposing builds pride and respect in the kids and prepares them for life after school. Some parents would ask, how can kids do all these things and still be expected to learn? Isn't this learning? We waste a lot more time than this on Bull Shit things now.
What I have done is just make a short list of items where I think we could improve the quality of our schools and save money at the same time. Why don't you make your own list and post them to this Blog?
Get rid of the school janitors. You might ask, what the school janitors have to do with the quality of our schools? If you look around the world at school models, you will find that most require the students to do the janitorial duties. That's right, the students sweep the floors and erase blackboards. Did you know that a janitor costs as much as a qualified teacher and any student can do what they do. Why not save money by using the students. There is a lot more to it than just saving money. If the kids have to start taking care of their school, they will start to have a lot more respect for the school and you will see an end to gafiti on the walls because the kids who have to do the cleaning will not stand for it and put "Peer Pressure" on the bad actors to stop. Starting to see how it works. Let's go back to the Army and the Drill Sargent. Do you think the Army provides janitorial service for the barracks? No! The recruits have to clean their own barracks and do their own laundry. This is all to teach them respect and dicipline, the very thing that we seem to be missing in our schools. Do you think it is better for our kids to go out and sit around in groups gossiping on the play grounds than cleaning the school. I think you will agree that it is cleaning the school.
I was reading an article several years ago about BYU. I think we all know about BYU and the Mormons. One interesting point was that they had large lawns at the university and it was accepted that "No One" cut corners and walked on the grass. We have all seem schools and public places where people had cut the corner at the junction of two sidewalks and killed the grass at the corner. It looks like hell and we all seem to accept the fact without further thought. Well, they don't at BYU. If a student were to see a kid cutting the corner, they would step forward and stop him or her on the spot. Now that is true pride and that is what I am talking about. This is the kind of thing that i am talking about.
We all know that our schools are loaded with "Greenies" who are out to save the planet and brain wash our kids. They want organize groups to go out into the community to collect trash and clean up the place. Isn't that what I am proposing here, but to do it right in school. If they want to pull weeds or plant flowers, why not do it in the school yard? Oh, isn't that what the janitors do? How about washing the school buses or sweeping them out? Why pay a janitor to do the work that any kid can do for free. When I was a kid, it was my job to fill the ink wells. Does anyone really know what ink wells are? Are they similar to "Oil Wells"? We also had a coal fired furnace in the basement of our country school that us older boys fired and maintained. Old was between 10 and 13.
How about the cafeteria? When I was in school many of the girls took Home Economics. Why not just have them work in the cafeteria? How about health and hygene? Have them run the school laundry rather than having the janitors do it or sending it out. All of what I am proposing builds pride and respect in the kids and prepares them for life after school. Some parents would ask, how can kids do all these things and still be expected to learn? Isn't this learning? We waste a lot more time than this on Bull Shit things now.
What I have done is just make a short list of items where I think we could improve the quality of our schools and save money at the same time. Why don't you make your own list and post them to this Blog?
Gulf Oil Spill & Science
I don't think the big oil spill in the Gulf is as big of a deal as the media is making out and here is why. You all know that I am a man of science and like to use fact and science to support my positions. The Gulf oil spill is no different. Check this out.
Most people think of crude oil as the thick black stuff that was sticking to sea birds after the spill from the tanker in Alaska. The crude oil in that tanker had been partially processed to remove 99% of the water before it was pumped into the tanker. Why would anyone want to ship water from Alaska around the world? The point is that crude oil has a lot of water in it and dissolved gases. In the case of the Gulf spill, the well head was down about 5,000' where the pressure is about 2,500 psi. In your beer bottle the pressure is only about 10 psi. Have you ever opened a warm beer and had it all turn to foam? Consider this happening at a pressure a thousand time that of your warm beer. Deeper in the well the pressure is even higher. What difference does this make? At high pressure, gas dissolves into the crude oil (oil/water/gas mixture) in great quantities and is in equilibrium in the well. When the crude oil comes out of the well and goes from high pressure to atmospheric pressure of about 14 psi, all the gas expands like a balloon. There a millions of molecules of gas per drop of crude and as each expands to thousands of times its original size, it turns the crude oil in to microscopic foam like whipped cream with even smaller bubbles. This stuff starts to rise from the bottom of the Gulf from 5,000' down and as it does it keeps expanding and mixing with the sea water until when it hits the surface, it is just brown water that looks like "weak" tea. From an airplane the stuff can form an oil sheen that can reflect sun light and give the impression that there is a real big mess out there when it is just a few molecules thick.
Think about the volcano in Iceland. The dust is really solid rock that was molten deep under ground with high pressure gas dissolved in it just like this crude oil. When the ash came up out of the volcano, the gas expanded to such a degree that it formed micro small rock particles that were lighter than popcorn or Styrofoam that could float all the way to Europe. This dust is pure rock. Think about how expanding gas can do something like that.
Exactly what is oil? It is mostly hydrogen and carbon, a hydrocarbon. Now the crude in the gulf is in very small particles as small as only a few molecules each. These very small particles have a tremendous surface area compared to a drop of oil on the floor of your garage under your car. Due to this very high surface area, the hydrogen and carbon are exposed to oxygen that wants to chemically combine with them to form Water, H2O and carbondioxide CO2. The water can mix back with the sea water because it is just the same as sea water without salt. The CO2 is just what plants in the Gulf want to grow with the help of sun light. My prediction is that when this is all over we will look back and finally understand that this was not the big crisis that the media made it out to be.
Isn't it amazing how a person can apply high school chemistry and physics to understand a totally new situation? That is just one more reason why we need to make sure that our kids know Math, Chemistry, Physics and Biology. With a simple understanding of these four subjects we can feel confident that can understand what is going on around us and make the right decisions. Do you find this amazing?
Most people think of crude oil as the thick black stuff that was sticking to sea birds after the spill from the tanker in Alaska. The crude oil in that tanker had been partially processed to remove 99% of the water before it was pumped into the tanker. Why would anyone want to ship water from Alaska around the world? The point is that crude oil has a lot of water in it and dissolved gases. In the case of the Gulf spill, the well head was down about 5,000' where the pressure is about 2,500 psi. In your beer bottle the pressure is only about 10 psi. Have you ever opened a warm beer and had it all turn to foam? Consider this happening at a pressure a thousand time that of your warm beer. Deeper in the well the pressure is even higher. What difference does this make? At high pressure, gas dissolves into the crude oil (oil/water/gas mixture) in great quantities and is in equilibrium in the well. When the crude oil comes out of the well and goes from high pressure to atmospheric pressure of about 14 psi, all the gas expands like a balloon. There a millions of molecules of gas per drop of crude and as each expands to thousands of times its original size, it turns the crude oil in to microscopic foam like whipped cream with even smaller bubbles. This stuff starts to rise from the bottom of the Gulf from 5,000' down and as it does it keeps expanding and mixing with the sea water until when it hits the surface, it is just brown water that looks like "weak" tea. From an airplane the stuff can form an oil sheen that can reflect sun light and give the impression that there is a real big mess out there when it is just a few molecules thick.
Think about the volcano in Iceland. The dust is really solid rock that was molten deep under ground with high pressure gas dissolved in it just like this crude oil. When the ash came up out of the volcano, the gas expanded to such a degree that it formed micro small rock particles that were lighter than popcorn or Styrofoam that could float all the way to Europe. This dust is pure rock. Think about how expanding gas can do something like that.
Exactly what is oil? It is mostly hydrogen and carbon, a hydrocarbon. Now the crude in the gulf is in very small particles as small as only a few molecules each. These very small particles have a tremendous surface area compared to a drop of oil on the floor of your garage under your car. Due to this very high surface area, the hydrogen and carbon are exposed to oxygen that wants to chemically combine with them to form Water, H2O and carbondioxide CO2. The water can mix back with the sea water because it is just the same as sea water without salt. The CO2 is just what plants in the Gulf want to grow with the help of sun light. My prediction is that when this is all over we will look back and finally understand that this was not the big crisis that the media made it out to be.
Isn't it amazing how a person can apply high school chemistry and physics to understand a totally new situation? That is just one more reason why we need to make sure that our kids know Math, Chemistry, Physics and Biology. With a simple understanding of these four subjects we can feel confident that can understand what is going on around us and make the right decisions. Do you find this amazing?
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Education, Let's Get Serious, Chapter #6
Hey, I've got a lot more when it comes to education. As you can see, my position is that education should be for education. Novel idea these days. Education is not fun and games. It would be nice if it were possible to learn all the things that our kids need to know to Survive, Compete and Defend in the world that they will after graduation from high school, find themselves in. As parents, we are passing much of our responsibility over to the public schools to prepare our kids for life. That is what we are doing. Education is our responsibility and the public school system is supposed to help us do that. The basic problem that I have is that our public schools are not doing the job nor are they giving us our monies worth. So let's get going on another chapter.
In my last Blog, I pointed out that "Distractions" are a serious problem in our public schools and that they need to be reduced or eliminated if we are going to expect our kids to graduate with what they need to know. Here it is. Sports are the biggest distraction in our public schools. How could I say that? I know that you played football and had all kinds of fun and learned life long skills from your participation so how could it be bad and should be eliminated? All those things that you claim were the result of sports in the public schools system could have been provided out side of the public school system for a lot less money without distracting attention in public school form its basic mission. How about a short story first?
When I lived in Argentina, my kids went to the public school there. I asked my kids if they were going to learn to play soccer or go out for the team? They said that they did not play soccer at their school. I asked why not? They said that school was for learning and sports were for sport clubs outside of school. My first impression was that Argentina was all screwed up when it came to sports. It was no wonder that the USA earned the most medals in the Olympic Games with our superior healthy sports programs in public schools. When I looked into the situation further, I found that the USA were the ones who were screwed up not the Argentines. It just happens that Argentina has the highest literacy rate in the Western Hemisphere while spending a fraction of what we spend on education. How could that be? Fewer distractions. They wear uniforms in school and don't have any sports. Those are the facts.
But wait, what about the Gold Medals in the Games? As it turns out Argentina who does not have sports in their public schools won the Gold Medal for Basket Ball in the Olympic Games over the USA all star, all Black team. None of the Argentine players were Black and all could read and write.
If we were to eliminate sports from our public schools, it would not mean the end of organized sports. It would mean that organized sports in the USA would be the same as organized sports the world over. Club sports have many advantages over the USA system where we have them in our public schools under the control of the labor unions. Think about it, we could eliminate all the PE majors in our colleges. Think about how big a savings that would be. The PE majors could get regular non-public jobs and pay into the tax pool rather than taking money out. If PE teachers did such a great job, then why are our kids the most over weight in the world and in the worst physical condition?
If you played football in public school, ask yourself exactly how much difference did the coach really make? Did he or she advise you on eating habits or exercise programs. I don't think so. He ran around with a whistle tied around his or her neck and worked with the best "natural" athletes in the school. It is the same in our colleges. No player was ever really better because of the coach. It was 99% natural ability and the coaches job was to go out and get the best athletes, not take average kids and make them into great athletes. When you look at the real facts, you see that the coach does not really contribute much. Every winning coach will take credit for the wins, but it is really the natural ability of the players who make the wins possible not the coach. Am I right?
Teachers do the same thing. They all want to take credit for the naturally smart and motivated kid who does well. Did you ever hear a teacher brag about making an average kid a little bit better? You never will because that is not how it works. When kids have to pass some kind of standardized test you will hear teachers complain all over the place because it exposes the fact that the teacher is not teaching the average kid all that much. I only brought this up to show that sports and teaching suffer from the same basic problems and that we need to get distractions out of our schools.
I was reading the local new paper and found that there were six pages devoted to sports of all kinds. They gave the names of the kids and how many baskets or hits they had gotten. I guess the public had a need to know. I did not find any coverage of the real function of public school and that was to teach the kids something. Why didn't they put the names in the paper showing the grades the kids got in each class or the number of days missed? If it is so important to show names and facts about sports, why not about real education? Seems fair to me. Are you starting to see how sports screws things up? I think that I covered this in the past about limited resources where the kids have a limited amount of time and energy and much of it is being wasted on things like sports that are unrelated to real education.
Honestly think about sports and how they distract from real education and let me know what you think.
In my last Blog, I pointed out that "Distractions" are a serious problem in our public schools and that they need to be reduced or eliminated if we are going to expect our kids to graduate with what they need to know. Here it is. Sports are the biggest distraction in our public schools. How could I say that? I know that you played football and had all kinds of fun and learned life long skills from your participation so how could it be bad and should be eliminated? All those things that you claim were the result of sports in the public schools system could have been provided out side of the public school system for a lot less money without distracting attention in public school form its basic mission. How about a short story first?
When I lived in Argentina, my kids went to the public school there. I asked my kids if they were going to learn to play soccer or go out for the team? They said that they did not play soccer at their school. I asked why not? They said that school was for learning and sports were for sport clubs outside of school. My first impression was that Argentina was all screwed up when it came to sports. It was no wonder that the USA earned the most medals in the Olympic Games with our superior healthy sports programs in public schools. When I looked into the situation further, I found that the USA were the ones who were screwed up not the Argentines. It just happens that Argentina has the highest literacy rate in the Western Hemisphere while spending a fraction of what we spend on education. How could that be? Fewer distractions. They wear uniforms in school and don't have any sports. Those are the facts.
But wait, what about the Gold Medals in the Games? As it turns out Argentina who does not have sports in their public schools won the Gold Medal for Basket Ball in the Olympic Games over the USA all star, all Black team. None of the Argentine players were Black and all could read and write.
If we were to eliminate sports from our public schools, it would not mean the end of organized sports. It would mean that organized sports in the USA would be the same as organized sports the world over. Club sports have many advantages over the USA system where we have them in our public schools under the control of the labor unions. Think about it, we could eliminate all the PE majors in our colleges. Think about how big a savings that would be. The PE majors could get regular non-public jobs and pay into the tax pool rather than taking money out. If PE teachers did such a great job, then why are our kids the most over weight in the world and in the worst physical condition?
If you played football in public school, ask yourself exactly how much difference did the coach really make? Did he or she advise you on eating habits or exercise programs. I don't think so. He ran around with a whistle tied around his or her neck and worked with the best "natural" athletes in the school. It is the same in our colleges. No player was ever really better because of the coach. It was 99% natural ability and the coaches job was to go out and get the best athletes, not take average kids and make them into great athletes. When you look at the real facts, you see that the coach does not really contribute much. Every winning coach will take credit for the wins, but it is really the natural ability of the players who make the wins possible not the coach. Am I right?
Teachers do the same thing. They all want to take credit for the naturally smart and motivated kid who does well. Did you ever hear a teacher brag about making an average kid a little bit better? You never will because that is not how it works. When kids have to pass some kind of standardized test you will hear teachers complain all over the place because it exposes the fact that the teacher is not teaching the average kid all that much. I only brought this up to show that sports and teaching suffer from the same basic problems and that we need to get distractions out of our schools.
I was reading the local new paper and found that there were six pages devoted to sports of all kinds. They gave the names of the kids and how many baskets or hits they had gotten. I guess the public had a need to know. I did not find any coverage of the real function of public school and that was to teach the kids something. Why didn't they put the names in the paper showing the grades the kids got in each class or the number of days missed? If it is so important to show names and facts about sports, why not about real education? Seems fair to me. Are you starting to see how sports screws things up? I think that I covered this in the past about limited resources where the kids have a limited amount of time and energy and much of it is being wasted on things like sports that are unrelated to real education.
Honestly think about sports and how they distract from real education and let me know what you think.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)