We all keep hearing about the "housing market" as though it was some fixed concept that just kept running on and on all by itself. Most politicians look back at the past 10 or so years like is was "normal". Building millions of homes while the basic population growth rate was much less did not seem to bother anyone. Further, building homes that were far larger and more expensive than those built in the past, also did not seem to raise many eyebrows. Didn't the word "flipping" alert anyone that there was a big chain letter type game going on in the housing industry? Look what happened when the music stoped? In reality, we have two problems caused by the run up in the housing industry. First is the over stocked and over priced homes that were built and second the normal healthy industry that was neglected while most of our wealth went into homes that were not needed. What we have is a double loss here. Now, what is the solution?
First, we have to accept the stupidity of most of us who allowed the real estate chain letter to get started and go as far as it did in the first place. Our housing market is bankrupt and like a company that is bankrupt, it has to go thru some hard times and restructuring to get back on its feet. Getting back to normal is not going back to the levels that we were at. Those levels were stupid. Future levels will have to keep pace with population and correct for the over sized and over priced homes that we built in the past. The market will be many times smaller than it was in the past and that is just a fact so we all need to get used to it. We are looking at a double or triple whammy in the housing market due to having to correct for the stupidity of the past.
Second, what should we have doing instead of the feeding frenzy of the past 10 years real estate market? That is the question. We lost over 10 years of what we should have been investing our wealth and time in. That is a very big piece of pie and it will take at least twice as long to dig out as it did to dig ourselves in. If it took 10 years to get in the hole it might take 20 do dig out. This all assumes that while we were digging our hole, our competitors were building their bank rolls and basic industries. It is like a foot race, it you ever get very far behind, it can take a very long time to catch up if that is even possible. We had a WWII where most of our competitors were bombed to rubble and we were there to easily pick up the pieces. There is not a WWII to allow us a special advantage digging out of this one. Think about it? What do you think the USA would look like today if most of the rest of world were not bombed into rubble? Well we are going to find out because in this one, we all seem to be starting off even. The question is what we are really made of not the special picture that emerged after WWII of us that we all like to lay claim too.
Look in the mirror and tell me what you really think and next time you hear someone talking about the "Housing Industry" remind them that is was all smoke and mirrors and that the real "Housing Industry" of the future will be a very different thing.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Green What?
I just drove across the USA and had a chance to view the affects of the Green Movement. First, my gas mileage with Ethanol was down by a higher percentage than the amount of ethanol in the gas. The savings from ethanol were worse than zero. If the stuff were free, it would not be worth adding to the gas. This is just one example, but my real point is about the people who are pushing all this Green stuff.
First, as I drove across this great land, I noticed that as family sizes have gone down, the size of homes has gone up. The worst thing is that the very well off people who are pushing all this Green stuff are the ones who are building the biggest homes. Many have more than one home. The point is that these bigger homes require more resources and more energy to build and maintain. To my way of thinking, this goes against the very idea of Green. These are the people who are making me put ethanol in my gas tank while at the same time they are eating up our energy and resources at an accelerating rate. How is that?
I see homes that are over 5,000 sf that only house two or three people. I remember when I was a kid, we had a house with about 1200 sf that worked fine for 4 people. What if rather than making me put ethanol in my tank that we made people who have a home with more than 500 sf per person pay aa Green tax? If we had this, Al Gore would have a very big tax bill on his home. We have other areas where we use a lot more energy than we really need.
I drove thru the Tahoe area of California and the Vail area of Colorado. Both are nice ski areas, but what about the amount of energy these people are using in proportion to the fun they seem to be having? Notice how so many of the people who what you and me to put ethanol in our tanks are the same ones who are doing all the down hill skiing. How much energy do you think it takes for a person to slide down a snow covered hill for a day? It is a lot and at the end of the day, what to we have to show for it? I don't have any problem with snow shoeing or cross country skiing, but I do with fun and games that appear to use up far too much energy.
How about golf? I went to a big party at the San Jose Country Club over the weekend and noticed that there were only about 20 golfers on the whole course. The course was nice and green and they players all rode around in electric golf carts. Green carts. Like snow skiing, I think golf must be about the next most energy consuming sport for the amount of fun people get out of it, so why are the Greenies not complaining about golf courses instead of making me put ethanol in my tank.
I think that you can see where I am going with this. I don't have a problem with not wasting energy, but these Green people are not honest and seem to know what is good for me and my car. Can you figure out how crushing a perfectly good car that has thousands of miles left in it and building a new one saves energy? If you can, you are a lot smarter than me. Next time you hear one of these Greenies shooting off their mouths ask them about their golf game, the size of their home or how the snow was on the slope.
First, as I drove across this great land, I noticed that as family sizes have gone down, the size of homes has gone up. The worst thing is that the very well off people who are pushing all this Green stuff are the ones who are building the biggest homes. Many have more than one home. The point is that these bigger homes require more resources and more energy to build and maintain. To my way of thinking, this goes against the very idea of Green. These are the people who are making me put ethanol in my gas tank while at the same time they are eating up our energy and resources at an accelerating rate. How is that?
I see homes that are over 5,000 sf that only house two or three people. I remember when I was a kid, we had a house with about 1200 sf that worked fine for 4 people. What if rather than making me put ethanol in my tank that we made people who have a home with more than 500 sf per person pay aa Green tax? If we had this, Al Gore would have a very big tax bill on his home. We have other areas where we use a lot more energy than we really need.
I drove thru the Tahoe area of California and the Vail area of Colorado. Both are nice ski areas, but what about the amount of energy these people are using in proportion to the fun they seem to be having? Notice how so many of the people who what you and me to put ethanol in our tanks are the same ones who are doing all the down hill skiing. How much energy do you think it takes for a person to slide down a snow covered hill for a day? It is a lot and at the end of the day, what to we have to show for it? I don't have any problem with snow shoeing or cross country skiing, but I do with fun and games that appear to use up far too much energy.
How about golf? I went to a big party at the San Jose Country Club over the weekend and noticed that there were only about 20 golfers on the whole course. The course was nice and green and they players all rode around in electric golf carts. Green carts. Like snow skiing, I think golf must be about the next most energy consuming sport for the amount of fun people get out of it, so why are the Greenies not complaining about golf courses instead of making me put ethanol in my tank.
I think that you can see where I am going with this. I don't have a problem with not wasting energy, but these Green people are not honest and seem to know what is good for me and my car. Can you figure out how crushing a perfectly good car that has thousands of miles left in it and building a new one saves energy? If you can, you are a lot smarter than me. Next time you hear one of these Greenies shooting off their mouths ask them about their golf game, the size of their home or how the snow was on the slope.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
High Speed Rail
Did you hear? The latest from Obama is High Speed Rail. He really seems to like infrastructure. As you might have guessed, I don't think that investments in infrastructure or High Speed Rail are the answer to anything. They are just more cases of our country making bad investments. I personally don't know a single person who would benefit from High Speed Rail or a new culvert under a road that floods once every 5 years. We have a problem with people with no job, but these kinds of expenditure of tax money from those who have jobs is not the answer. First off we should make against the law to have any kids if you don't have a job. I can tell you for a fact that most of the people without jobs were born to parents who did not have jobs when they were born. Sad, but true. How does a person who has never had a job expect their 6 kids to land jobs? Now High Speed Rail.
If High Speed Rail is so good, we have to ask, what is so bad about normal speed rail. We had trains that ran 100 mph almost a 100 years ago. Now we are talking about High Speed Rail than can go as fast as 200 mph. Great! Based on 200 or more years of experience with trains, if rail transportation of people was such a great idea you would have thought we would all be riding the train. We experimented with Amtrak and what did we learn? It has lost money from the first day and there is no end in sight. Now back to speed. It seems that the new buzz word is speed. If so, then how does "speed" make this whole thing work?
First, let's go back and look at what happened with air travel. In the beginning we all thought that building airports would take for ever and be far too expensive so most early passenger planes were seaplanes. Any place you had a lake or large body of water, you had an ready made airport. That is the way it started, seaplanes. The beauty of the whole thing was that the route between the lakes or bodies of water was "Free" and ready made by Mother Nature. If you want to see how significant this is draw connecting lines between multiple city locations. If you only have two cities, you only have one route. If you have three, you have three routes, but if you have four cities, you now need six routes. Now add a few more cities and see how many route line you have? Get the idea? This is the basic problem with rail roads. To give any kind of real service, we will need thousands of routes and this is just when it was clearly economical to abandon railroad routes. By any measure, in the limit, air travel kicks butt on rail travel at any speed. Passenger railroads are for Christmas presents for the kids. Smaller of course.
Now take a look at a typical High Speed Rail trip. First, you have to adjust your schedule to that of the High Speed Train. If you want to travel at 1:00 o'clock and the train does not depart until 2:00 o'clock, you just waited one hour of your time. Now if the train goes 200 mph for a one hour trip, you only averaged 100 mph. Now further if you needed to be there at 4:00 o'clock, you will have to kill another hour waiting. Seems to me that all that speed turned out to be kind of slow. It will the same on the return. Even in air travel, I have found that I almost always waste a lot of time on my return trip because a meeting got out early or later than planned. Notice how cars don't have this problem?
Getting on and off the train is only part of the problem. The only place to get on or off is a railroad station and most of these are in the middle of town, while most businesses are in industrial parks outside of town. How do you get from these central stations to where you want to be? I have always wondered why we never hear anyone pushing High Speed Rail mention this problem and its cost? Where to you park you car when you take the High Speed Rail? How much does it cost? Will your car be vandalized like Jesse Jackson's was in Detroit? I know a couple who were going from Wisconsin the Nevada by rail and had to drive their car to Chicago and have a friend drop them off at the station and store their car at their house. Who has enough good friends in all these places where we will be traveling too. When I travel, try not to leave or arrive in the middle of the night, but how can you do this with High Speed Rail having to deal with their schedules.
Another point, is that you have to ask why people are traveling in the first place. I am making a trip to California to see friends from one end of California to the other. Plus, I have all these gifts that I want to take along to give to them. How do I do this? Renting a car on the other end will help, but what do I do about all the things that my wife wants to buy?
One of the first considerations when I bought my first house was how close was it to my job. Don't people think like this anymore? If they did, they would not need to ride High Speed Rail, they could walk or ride a bike. It seems that factory jobs are going out of style and office jobs China, you would find that they have a lot of factory jobs that make something. We need to make office jobs more difficult and factory job easier, not the other way around. Now regular rail roads bring in the raw material for factories and seem to be doing a good job of that. Just think how much more competitive the USA would be if we could bring the raw material in on High Speed Rail. If you ever saw a container ship being unloaded, you would be amazed at the efficiency. The ship goes about 40 mph and carries at least 1,000 containers. That is more than 10 time what any train can carry. The ship uses far less fuel per ton compared to a train of any speed. If the ship goes 40 mph and carries 10 times the cargo as a train, a train would have to go 400 mph to be competitive on volume even though the train would cost several times as much per ton of cargo. Isn't it interesting that you never hear about how much fuel these High Speed Trains will use compared to regular trains or buses? Hey, what is wrong with a good old bus? Not cool. Notice how a bus can connect between thousands of cities and efficiently detour in case of a bridge out, but not a train.
This is getting long and a little off the target, but I think you get the idea. When people say that you have to look out 50 years or more to understand the economics of High Speed Rail, you know a scam is coming down the pike.
If High Speed Rail is so good, we have to ask, what is so bad about normal speed rail. We had trains that ran 100 mph almost a 100 years ago. Now we are talking about High Speed Rail than can go as fast as 200 mph. Great! Based on 200 or more years of experience with trains, if rail transportation of people was such a great idea you would have thought we would all be riding the train. We experimented with Amtrak and what did we learn? It has lost money from the first day and there is no end in sight. Now back to speed. It seems that the new buzz word is speed. If so, then how does "speed" make this whole thing work?
First, let's go back and look at what happened with air travel. In the beginning we all thought that building airports would take for ever and be far too expensive so most early passenger planes were seaplanes. Any place you had a lake or large body of water, you had an ready made airport. That is the way it started, seaplanes. The beauty of the whole thing was that the route between the lakes or bodies of water was "Free" and ready made by Mother Nature. If you want to see how significant this is draw connecting lines between multiple city locations. If you only have two cities, you only have one route. If you have three, you have three routes, but if you have four cities, you now need six routes. Now add a few more cities and see how many route line you have? Get the idea? This is the basic problem with rail roads. To give any kind of real service, we will need thousands of routes and this is just when it was clearly economical to abandon railroad routes. By any measure, in the limit, air travel kicks butt on rail travel at any speed. Passenger railroads are for Christmas presents for the kids. Smaller of course.
Now take a look at a typical High Speed Rail trip. First, you have to adjust your schedule to that of the High Speed Train. If you want to travel at 1:00 o'clock and the train does not depart until 2:00 o'clock, you just waited one hour of your time. Now if the train goes 200 mph for a one hour trip, you only averaged 100 mph. Now further if you needed to be there at 4:00 o'clock, you will have to kill another hour waiting. Seems to me that all that speed turned out to be kind of slow. It will the same on the return. Even in air travel, I have found that I almost always waste a lot of time on my return trip because a meeting got out early or later than planned. Notice how cars don't have this problem?
Getting on and off the train is only part of the problem. The only place to get on or off is a railroad station and most of these are in the middle of town, while most businesses are in industrial parks outside of town. How do you get from these central stations to where you want to be? I have always wondered why we never hear anyone pushing High Speed Rail mention this problem and its cost? Where to you park you car when you take the High Speed Rail? How much does it cost? Will your car be vandalized like Jesse Jackson's was in Detroit? I know a couple who were going from Wisconsin the Nevada by rail and had to drive their car to Chicago and have a friend drop them off at the station and store their car at their house. Who has enough good friends in all these places where we will be traveling too. When I travel, try not to leave or arrive in the middle of the night, but how can you do this with High Speed Rail having to deal with their schedules.
Another point, is that you have to ask why people are traveling in the first place. I am making a trip to California to see friends from one end of California to the other. Plus, I have all these gifts that I want to take along to give to them. How do I do this? Renting a car on the other end will help, but what do I do about all the things that my wife wants to buy?
One of the first considerations when I bought my first house was how close was it to my job. Don't people think like this anymore? If they did, they would not need to ride High Speed Rail, they could walk or ride a bike. It seems that factory jobs are going out of style and office jobs China, you would find that they have a lot of factory jobs that make something. We need to make office jobs more difficult and factory job easier, not the other way around. Now regular rail roads bring in the raw material for factories and seem to be doing a good job of that. Just think how much more competitive the USA would be if we could bring the raw material in on High Speed Rail. If you ever saw a container ship being unloaded, you would be amazed at the efficiency. The ship goes about 40 mph and carries at least 1,000 containers. That is more than 10 time what any train can carry. The ship uses far less fuel per ton compared to a train of any speed. If the ship goes 40 mph and carries 10 times the cargo as a train, a train would have to go 400 mph to be competitive on volume even though the train would cost several times as much per ton of cargo. Isn't it interesting that you never hear about how much fuel these High Speed Trains will use compared to regular trains or buses? Hey, what is wrong with a good old bus? Not cool. Notice how a bus can connect between thousands of cities and efficiently detour in case of a bridge out, but not a train.
This is getting long and a little off the target, but I think you get the idea. When people say that you have to look out 50 years or more to understand the economics of High Speed Rail, you know a scam is coming down the pike.
Friday, September 3, 2010
Fresh Look At Economics
These days everyone is throwing around the term Economics and some people even claim to be Economists. This word, for me, has lost what ever meaning that it had if it ever really had a specific meaning. I am not going the dictionary on this because I know I will just get more gobble-d-goop. To my way of thinking Economis must have degrees, like good and bad. I would assume that we would like to have good economics rather than bad. Like a lot of things, I don't think that good is the absence of bad. It has to be more than that. Here is my definition of good economics.
High quality of life with a confidence that that quality will continue. Now just how does one get or deserve this high quality of life. I am an old Industrial Engineer and I think that it requires a society that is efficient. That is, we don't waste, we make good investments and we are all productive. If this is the way, then how are we doing? First, are we efficient? The best way to determine that is to see how much something costs and if it is a good buy and if some other society is doing it better.
Take medical. How are we doing? We spend much more than anyother country in the world, yet we do not live longer or have the lowest infant mortality. The only conclusion that I can draw is that we are not very efficient and seem to be making some very bad decisions compared to other players in this world. I guess that we have to give our medical system a low grade on both efficiency and value for the buck. This is a big number and we can not expect to have a very high quality of life for very long as a society if we continue what we are now doing.
Take legal. Some think we have the best legal system in the world, but we also have the highest cost legal system in the world. It costs us more than anyother country in the world to convict a criminal and to punish them in our jails. Oh! We don't punish, we give criminals "time outs" like we now do with our kids. Our legal system also feeds back into our medical system making it cost even more. It also feeds back into our private companies and makes every thing they do cost more. It looks to me like a strike two. Our legal system is not very efficient and is not a very good value.
Take our public schools and universities. We also spend more per capita on these than any country in the world, yet we are near the bottom when it comes to results. We spend more and get less. Here again we are not efficient nor are we getting good value for the buck. Do I sound like a broken record?
Take our homes. We spend more public money on our homes than any country in the world and the result is that about 25% of our people can't really afford the home they are living in. Our society has made a very poor decision on homes and we will have to be paying for it for the next 50 years. If you as an individual makes bad investments, you know what happens and it is the same when the whole country does the same thing. We are talking about trillions of dollars of our countries net worth being put into a bad investment. It is not efficient and we are not getting a good value for the buck.
Take public workers. Our public workers don't produce anything, yet they make almost twice what the same job would pay in the private sector. Talk about efficiency, this area is the worst. First we have too many public employees and they make too much on top of that. Our government at all levels has made bad investments regarding public employees and we will be paying for it for the next 50 years.
Take the military. Many think that we have the best army in the world and the most sophisticated. We spend the most per capita in the world except for Isreal. Isreal has a good reason to spend so much, but not us. What are armies supposed to do? Kill people and distroy property. That is what they do. The problem is that it costs us about 1000 times as much to kill and enemy than it does for the people we are fighting. That means to keep even, they only have to spend 1/1000 as much. Almost any country in the world can afford to do that, so are we efficient? I don't think so. Are we getting good value for our investments? No on that one too.
You might ask if the USA is so screwed up, then how did we do so well upto this point? That is a good question. About 300 years ago a bunch of Europeans showed up here with guns and killed off most of the indians and took over the rich resources that were here for almost nothing. During those 300 years many of the smartest people from all around the world came here and took advantage of the situation. Most of the competitors in the world were busy with wars or lacked resources, so we were able to grow even if we made poor decisions. At one time we were the largest producer of steel and oil in the world. Why not now? We are not even second. The largest steel producers don't have 1/10th the natural resources that we have. What is going on?
What we have to do is get more efficient and individually more productive. That sounds like working harder. Some say that we have to work smarter. That too, but smarter and harder are really the same thing in the end. Look around and you judge wheather we are efficient and then think about what we have to do to become efficient.
One last point. Jobs alone is not the answer. In Russia, everyone had a job, but they did not have a very high quality of life. Notice how government, no matter what kind, is not efficient and efficiency is what I am talking about here.
High quality of life with a confidence that that quality will continue. Now just how does one get or deserve this high quality of life. I am an old Industrial Engineer and I think that it requires a society that is efficient. That is, we don't waste, we make good investments and we are all productive. If this is the way, then how are we doing? First, are we efficient? The best way to determine that is to see how much something costs and if it is a good buy and if some other society is doing it better.
Take medical. How are we doing? We spend much more than anyother country in the world, yet we do not live longer or have the lowest infant mortality. The only conclusion that I can draw is that we are not very efficient and seem to be making some very bad decisions compared to other players in this world. I guess that we have to give our medical system a low grade on both efficiency and value for the buck. This is a big number and we can not expect to have a very high quality of life for very long as a society if we continue what we are now doing.
Take legal. Some think we have the best legal system in the world, but we also have the highest cost legal system in the world. It costs us more than anyother country in the world to convict a criminal and to punish them in our jails. Oh! We don't punish, we give criminals "time outs" like we now do with our kids. Our legal system also feeds back into our medical system making it cost even more. It also feeds back into our private companies and makes every thing they do cost more. It looks to me like a strike two. Our legal system is not very efficient and is not a very good value.
Take our public schools and universities. We also spend more per capita on these than any country in the world, yet we are near the bottom when it comes to results. We spend more and get less. Here again we are not efficient nor are we getting good value for the buck. Do I sound like a broken record?
Take our homes. We spend more public money on our homes than any country in the world and the result is that about 25% of our people can't really afford the home they are living in. Our society has made a very poor decision on homes and we will have to be paying for it for the next 50 years. If you as an individual makes bad investments, you know what happens and it is the same when the whole country does the same thing. We are talking about trillions of dollars of our countries net worth being put into a bad investment. It is not efficient and we are not getting a good value for the buck.
Take public workers. Our public workers don't produce anything, yet they make almost twice what the same job would pay in the private sector. Talk about efficiency, this area is the worst. First we have too many public employees and they make too much on top of that. Our government at all levels has made bad investments regarding public employees and we will be paying for it for the next 50 years.
Take the military. Many think that we have the best army in the world and the most sophisticated. We spend the most per capita in the world except for Isreal. Isreal has a good reason to spend so much, but not us. What are armies supposed to do? Kill people and distroy property. That is what they do. The problem is that it costs us about 1000 times as much to kill and enemy than it does for the people we are fighting. That means to keep even, they only have to spend 1/1000 as much. Almost any country in the world can afford to do that, so are we efficient? I don't think so. Are we getting good value for our investments? No on that one too.
You might ask if the USA is so screwed up, then how did we do so well upto this point? That is a good question. About 300 years ago a bunch of Europeans showed up here with guns and killed off most of the indians and took over the rich resources that were here for almost nothing. During those 300 years many of the smartest people from all around the world came here and took advantage of the situation. Most of the competitors in the world were busy with wars or lacked resources, so we were able to grow even if we made poor decisions. At one time we were the largest producer of steel and oil in the world. Why not now? We are not even second. The largest steel producers don't have 1/10th the natural resources that we have. What is going on?
What we have to do is get more efficient and individually more productive. That sounds like working harder. Some say that we have to work smarter. That too, but smarter and harder are really the same thing in the end. Look around and you judge wheather we are efficient and then think about what we have to do to become efficient.
One last point. Jobs alone is not the answer. In Russia, everyone had a job, but they did not have a very high quality of life. Notice how government, no matter what kind, is not efficient and efficiency is what I am talking about here.
Medical Cost & The Math Word Problems
I just heard on the morning news that, per Kaiser Medical, the average family pays $4,000 per year for their health care. That is an increase of 14% over last year, while the share paid by employers has only gone up by 7%. The employer still pays 75% of the family health care. Now for the average family to understand all this, they need to know 4th grade math and have the ability to solve "Math Word Problems".
Now using my 4th grade math, here is what the numbers above really look like. Many families now have two workers, so I am going to use 1.5 as the number of workers in a family. $4,000 looks high to me, but I'll use the number. If the amount paid by the average family has gone up by 14%, exactly how much is that. Using 4th grade math, that works out to $560 over the prior year. If an average person works 2,000 hours per year and 1.5 people in the family have jobs, they work 3,000 hours per year. Now the $560 works out to $0.19/hr. The average worker makes about $19.25/hr so they have to pay 1% more of their pay. If they get a 3% raise, 1/3 has to go for additional health care cost.
The employer still pays 75% of the health cost so if $4,000 by the employee is 25%, then the total health care cost works out to be $16,000 per year. Now going back to the 3,000 hr per year worked by the family, $5.33/hr for health care. The amount paid by the employer is $4.00/hr. The employer could just as easily pay the $4.00/hr to the employee and have him take care of his own health care cost. The family would be paid $23.25/hr. The $5.33/hr for health cost would then work out to be 23% of the family pay check. Big number.
See what happens when our kids know 4th grade math and the ability to solve simple word problems. They might even start to understand the significance of our universities only graduating 40% of all new medical doctors. Notice that most of our students have electronic calculators that can do all the math, but can't solve word problems. If our kids did not have electronic calculators and had to learn and understand basic math, it is my opinion that they might be a lot better at solving word problems, which was the objective of math education in the first place.
Just another case of where our public school teachers let us and our kids down and undermined the economic future of our country.
Now using my 4th grade math, here is what the numbers above really look like. Many families now have two workers, so I am going to use 1.5 as the number of workers in a family. $4,000 looks high to me, but I'll use the number. If the amount paid by the average family has gone up by 14%, exactly how much is that. Using 4th grade math, that works out to $560 over the prior year. If an average person works 2,000 hours per year and 1.5 people in the family have jobs, they work 3,000 hours per year. Now the $560 works out to $0.19/hr. The average worker makes about $19.25/hr so they have to pay 1% more of their pay. If they get a 3% raise, 1/3 has to go for additional health care cost.
The employer still pays 75% of the health cost so if $4,000 by the employee is 25%, then the total health care cost works out to be $16,000 per year. Now going back to the 3,000 hr per year worked by the family, $5.33/hr for health care. The amount paid by the employer is $4.00/hr. The employer could just as easily pay the $4.00/hr to the employee and have him take care of his own health care cost. The family would be paid $23.25/hr. The $5.33/hr for health cost would then work out to be 23% of the family pay check. Big number.
See what happens when our kids know 4th grade math and the ability to solve simple word problems. They might even start to understand the significance of our universities only graduating 40% of all new medical doctors. Notice that most of our students have electronic calculators that can do all the math, but can't solve word problems. If our kids did not have electronic calculators and had to learn and understand basic math, it is my opinion that they might be a lot better at solving word problems, which was the objective of math education in the first place.
Just another case of where our public school teachers let us and our kids down and undermined the economic future of our country.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Math In Our Schools
You my recall that wrote a Blog on New Math and now have a few more comments on the subject. Recall that when New Math was introduced the math test scores in the USA schools started to go down and continue to go down farther. Now our USA kids are among the least competent in the world. Given the value and need for competency in math in this modern world we are dead last.
I have said this before about our schools and that is that our kids have to understand exactly why they are in school and why the subjects that they are required to take are needed. I don't think our kids or their parents understand why their kids are in school and why graduation is so important. Now for Math. This might sound strange to you, but the reason that our kids need to know math is to solve, "Word Problems". Do you remember those old word problems? Many of our kids who seems to do well on math and got good math grades were very poor in solving word problems. The only reason to learn the different types of math is so that our kids can solve word problems. I am 70 years old and the only type of math problems that I have had to deal with during those 70 years have been word problems. How about your self?
In our high schools, our kids normally have to take four years of math. The subjects are Algebra I for freshmen and Geometry for Sophomores and Trigonometry for Juniors and finally Algebra II for Seniors. Some schools who seem to want to do a better job in math offer a Calculus class for advance placement Seniors. I think that our schools are making a big mistake in offering Calculus courses. The reason is that most high school kids don't have the skill to solve real life word problems. I would offer Probability and Statistics before any Calculus class. In my 70 years, I have used Probability much more to solve real life word problems than I have Calculus. For most parents, they see the word "Calculus" as some kind of buzz word for their kids being smarter than the rest of the kids. If we go back to the reason for math in our schools and agree that it is so our kids can solve word problems, I think you can see why I hold the views that I do.
Did you ever hear of anyone who was more able to solve a word problem because they took New Math in school? In my 70 years, I have never heard anyone or seen a situation where the so called New Math contributed in anyway to the solution of a word problem. I have seem many cases where well educated people failed to get the correct answer to a word problem because they did not have a grasp of Probability.
I have heard more than one student claim that they were very good at math, but had problems solving word problems. To my way of thinking, if they can't solve word problems, then they have to admit that they do not have a good grasp of basic math. They can't have it both ways. The bottom line in math is the ability to solve real life word problems. Next time you hear a student making some kind of excuse about their inability to solve word problems, confront them that they really don't understand math.
Like I said, you have to have a reason for doing anything and if you don't understand the reason why for something, you are never going to be able to do your best, period.
I have said this before about our schools and that is that our kids have to understand exactly why they are in school and why the subjects that they are required to take are needed. I don't think our kids or their parents understand why their kids are in school and why graduation is so important. Now for Math. This might sound strange to you, but the reason that our kids need to know math is to solve, "Word Problems". Do you remember those old word problems? Many of our kids who seems to do well on math and got good math grades were very poor in solving word problems. The only reason to learn the different types of math is so that our kids can solve word problems. I am 70 years old and the only type of math problems that I have had to deal with during those 70 years have been word problems. How about your self?
In our high schools, our kids normally have to take four years of math. The subjects are Algebra I for freshmen and Geometry for Sophomores and Trigonometry for Juniors and finally Algebra II for Seniors. Some schools who seem to want to do a better job in math offer a Calculus class for advance placement Seniors. I think that our schools are making a big mistake in offering Calculus courses. The reason is that most high school kids don't have the skill to solve real life word problems. I would offer Probability and Statistics before any Calculus class. In my 70 years, I have used Probability much more to solve real life word problems than I have Calculus. For most parents, they see the word "Calculus" as some kind of buzz word for their kids being smarter than the rest of the kids. If we go back to the reason for math in our schools and agree that it is so our kids can solve word problems, I think you can see why I hold the views that I do.
Did you ever hear of anyone who was more able to solve a word problem because they took New Math in school? In my 70 years, I have never heard anyone or seen a situation where the so called New Math contributed in anyway to the solution of a word problem. I have seem many cases where well educated people failed to get the correct answer to a word problem because they did not have a grasp of Probability.
I have heard more than one student claim that they were very good at math, but had problems solving word problems. To my way of thinking, if they can't solve word problems, then they have to admit that they do not have a good grasp of basic math. They can't have it both ways. The bottom line in math is the ability to solve real life word problems. Next time you hear a student making some kind of excuse about their inability to solve word problems, confront them that they really don't understand math.
Like I said, you have to have a reason for doing anything and if you don't understand the reason why for something, you are never going to be able to do your best, period.
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