I think that we can all agree that Blacks have a problem and that problem has nothing to do with Whites or racism. If some group, like Blacks, have a problem, one of the best ways to correct that problem is to follow a group that does not have the same problem. Is that logical? If we have a problem with education why don't we look at what Canada does. They do a lot better job of education than we do? Again, logical. I have been researching on the internet to find good numbers for the income of Black and White families that are directly comparable, but it has been difficult. The following is the best that I could come up with.
The median family income for all the USA is about $48,000. In some data, they report $50,000, but this is close enough. When I try to get family median income or net worth by race, it becomes even more difficult. If we don't have good numbers, how can we tell if something is working or not? It maybe that no one wants to know the facts and that is even a bigger problem.
Median Black family income is about 50% of White family income. Now, if we look at the average family income of those below the median, we are looking at 50% of the population in this group. If the distribution of family income is a triangle then the average of the groups is "half" that of the median point. Got that? 4th grade math. The average family income for those Black families in the lower half of the population is about $20,000 while that of White families is about $44,000. Latinos are a little better at $22,000. None of these families in the above groups are pulling their own weight. If they did not have families above the median paying most of the taxes, their quality of life would look like third world. That is a fact, so get used to it.
Another point that most people miss is "net worth". This is what a family has left after they deduct all the loans that they owe. A home that is "under water" is one that has a negative net worth. Follow that? The average Black family has only 10% of the net worth as the average White family and Latinos are a little better at 12%. This is for "all" families, not just those below the median. The average White family is thus 10 times richer than the average Black family. That is the number that we should all be looking at. How much you earn is a factor, but net worth is an even bigger factor.
Now what is all this build up for? How do the Blacks and Hispanics fix their problem? What are the White families doing that the Blacks are not? What are the Canadians who beat us on all scores doing? Like most problems, the solutions are simple. If you are over weight, the solution is simple-- eat less!!! Blacks have to:
(1) Stop having kids out of wedlock.
(2) Have fewer kids per family and only when they can afford them.
(3) Finish high school and take the more difficult STEM classes.
(4) Go to college, but do not major in liberal arts.
(5) Stop killing each other and committing crimes.
(6) Stop claiming that they are a victims and take responsibility for their actions and decisions.
Notice that you don't need any government help to do the above nor do they cost anything. These are all free actions that are within each individual to do or not to do. If you look at Canada or other countries around the world who have their act together, they will all be doing the 5 things above. Blacks need to start following winners rather than continuing to follow losers and hate baiters.
PS---In prior blogs I pointed out that in an urban world a person has to have "special" technical and intellectual skills to compete. Now that the USA has gotten so urbanized, times have changed and will not change back. We all have to work on developing our skill set and making ourselves more productive and competitive. We now have to compete against the whole world. We are now in the big league. Sorry, but those are the facts for Whites, Blacks, Hispanics and all other groups.
PS----The problem for Blacks is not Whites here in the USA, they are getting beaten mostly by the rest of the developing world. People all over the world are beating Blacks for low skill low paying jobs. The Whites are having problems too, keeping up with the rest of the world, but Blacks are going backwards. Look at the numbers and the conclusion is clear. If the Blacks around the world don't get their act together they will continue to fall farther and farther behind. I believe that Blacks are just as smart as any other groups, but for some reason they don't seem to want to do what it takes to compete with the rest of the world. You can't help some one who does not want to help them selves. Sorry!
Monday, April 28, 2014
Saturday, April 19, 2014
Exactly What Is Fair?
I have heard so many time that this or that is not fair that I decided to blog my opinion on the subject. I remember when I was in Kindergarten the kids used to say that this or that is not fair and it seems that too many people are mentally still in Kindergarten. There is no time in human history when life for us humans was more fair. If you know when, let me know. In the old days your fate was determined by what family or class you were born into. It has very little to do with merit. If you did not own land, you were doomed to poverty. Most of the land was owned by the King and you had to kiss up to the King if you wanted food. The difference in wealth of the King and the people he owned was light years different than it is today. If Europe did not have slavery in the recent past, most of the people were actually owned by the King just like slaves. Enough on history.
If you don't understand that the human race is going into a different state where smarts and intellect are more important than a strong back or a sharp eye, you can stop reading right now. I got these stats from a government web site for 2012 for the out of wed lock birth rate by different ethnic groups. Here is the data. Overall the rate for the USA is 40.7%. It is one of the worst in the world. For Blacks, the rate is 72.2%. That is down slightly from the peak about 15 years ago. Native Americans is high too at 66.7%, Mexicans or Latin Americans is 53.5%. Whites have gone down hill in the past 50 years and they stand at 25.4%. Asians are the lowest at 17.1%. We know that our children are our future and we are now living in that future. Did you ever wonder why so many companies here in the USA can not find qualified workers for their technical jobs? There are not any jobs for people who make shoes or thread looms like the old days. If you do not have the intellect or technical skills that will be needed in the future, I think that you can kiss you butt good bye in terms of earning enough for any kind of quality of life.
To make matters worse, look at the breeding rates for people in the USA. The very people who have made the worst choices in life, like dropping out of high school are the same ones who are having the most kids. Their kids are the feed stock of our future. It is possible for a kid born into that kind of mess to make it in life, but only if they are born with some intellect and enough drive to get thru high school and learn needed technical skills. Good looks might be enough if you are a prostitute, but not much else. Just how bad is it in terms of who is having all the kids? Remember that it costs the tax payers about $15,000 per year for each kid in school. Do you think these people who are having kids out of wed lock or kids they can not afford in the first place can pay their fair share of taxes to educate their own kids? I don't think so, but you never hear one of these people thanking the family down the street for paying the taxes to educate their kids. Interesting isn't it. Now, who is not fair?
Check these numbers. The high school drop out rate is about 40% nation wide and the median family income is just under $50,000. That means half of the families in the USA earn less than $50,000. If you take this group below $50,000 and calculate the average family income, it turns out to be only about $30,000. How many kids can a family expect to raise on that level of income and do a good job of it? Another stat is those people under $50,000 have twice as many kids as those above. The average income for that upper 50% is about $85,000. Now how does this work out per kid. I think you can do the math, but the numbers work out that those in the upper 50% have 5.67 times as much income per kid as those in the bottom 50%. For a simple minded one mover, they would think that some thing is not fair with all this. Exactly what is not fair? Was the person who finished high school and worked hard and had half as many kids doing some thing bad to the person who did just the opposite? Just who is doing what ever it is that is not fair?
The person who is not fair is the person who does not carry their own share of the load. That is the person who is not fair. To be a part of the team, the person needs to pay their share of the dues. We are all in this together and each player needs to accept the fact that charity is charity and is given by the person who worked hard, like the Little Red Hen, not stolen from the Little Red Hen at the ballot box. People who can not afford or who are not qualified to have or raise kids should not have kids or have far fewer. People should prepare themselves to shoulder their share of the load by finishing high school an learning technical skills. That sound much more like fairness to me. How about you?
If you don't understand that the human race is going into a different state where smarts and intellect are more important than a strong back or a sharp eye, you can stop reading right now. I got these stats from a government web site for 2012 for the out of wed lock birth rate by different ethnic groups. Here is the data. Overall the rate for the USA is 40.7%. It is one of the worst in the world. For Blacks, the rate is 72.2%. That is down slightly from the peak about 15 years ago. Native Americans is high too at 66.7%, Mexicans or Latin Americans is 53.5%. Whites have gone down hill in the past 50 years and they stand at 25.4%. Asians are the lowest at 17.1%. We know that our children are our future and we are now living in that future. Did you ever wonder why so many companies here in the USA can not find qualified workers for their technical jobs? There are not any jobs for people who make shoes or thread looms like the old days. If you do not have the intellect or technical skills that will be needed in the future, I think that you can kiss you butt good bye in terms of earning enough for any kind of quality of life.
To make matters worse, look at the breeding rates for people in the USA. The very people who have made the worst choices in life, like dropping out of high school are the same ones who are having the most kids. Their kids are the feed stock of our future. It is possible for a kid born into that kind of mess to make it in life, but only if they are born with some intellect and enough drive to get thru high school and learn needed technical skills. Good looks might be enough if you are a prostitute, but not much else. Just how bad is it in terms of who is having all the kids? Remember that it costs the tax payers about $15,000 per year for each kid in school. Do you think these people who are having kids out of wed lock or kids they can not afford in the first place can pay their fair share of taxes to educate their own kids? I don't think so, but you never hear one of these people thanking the family down the street for paying the taxes to educate their kids. Interesting isn't it. Now, who is not fair?
Check these numbers. The high school drop out rate is about 40% nation wide and the median family income is just under $50,000. That means half of the families in the USA earn less than $50,000. If you take this group below $50,000 and calculate the average family income, it turns out to be only about $30,000. How many kids can a family expect to raise on that level of income and do a good job of it? Another stat is those people under $50,000 have twice as many kids as those above. The average income for that upper 50% is about $85,000. Now how does this work out per kid. I think you can do the math, but the numbers work out that those in the upper 50% have 5.67 times as much income per kid as those in the bottom 50%. For a simple minded one mover, they would think that some thing is not fair with all this. Exactly what is not fair? Was the person who finished high school and worked hard and had half as many kids doing some thing bad to the person who did just the opposite? Just who is doing what ever it is that is not fair?
The person who is not fair is the person who does not carry their own share of the load. That is the person who is not fair. To be a part of the team, the person needs to pay their share of the dues. We are all in this together and each player needs to accept the fact that charity is charity and is given by the person who worked hard, like the Little Red Hen, not stolen from the Little Red Hen at the ballot box. People who can not afford or who are not qualified to have or raise kids should not have kids or have far fewer. People should prepare themselves to shoulder their share of the load by finishing high school an learning technical skills. That sound much more like fairness to me. How about you?
PS---Given that the upper 50% of families have 5.67 times the income per kid as the lower 50%, rather that keep taking money away from those in the upper 50% and giving it to those in the lower 50%, why don't those in the lower 50% just have half as many kids? It would seem to me that the kids of those in the lower 50% would be a lot better off and it would not put in risk the whole USA economy. The problem is that it would require Blacks and Latin Americans to be much more responsible and no liberal could handle that. Is there any hope?
Thursday, April 10, 2014
Bigger Is Not Better
Most of you have heard that "Bigger Is Better", but I am here to tell you that "Bigger Is Not Better" when it comes with raising children. I don't think that I have to tell you that kids today are much different than kids historically, and that difference is not better. It has happened on our watch and I am here to tell you what I think is the root cause. Like most things, when you stumble onto the correct answer, it is not very complicated. Here goes.
As I see it, there are two basic elements that impact the development of our children. The first is their parents and the second is other children. I have blogged on the impact of parents on their children and the importance of time the parents spend with their children. What parents do in that time is important, but not as important as just the number of hours. I think that we can all agree that the number of hours parents spend with their kids has been going down for some time. There are all kinds of reasons for this that I am not going to go into here. Just focus on the number of hours kids today spend with their parents compared to human history. I contend that we now spend fewer hours with our kids today than in all of human history and it has had an impact on how our kids turn out. Look at the groups within our society who spend the most time with their kids and look at the difference in how their kids turn out. Look at Asians, Jews, Mormons and Rural compared to other urban groups and tell me what you think of their children? Urban is "bigger" and worse.
There has been a trend for sometime to close or consolidate small schools all over the USA. Most people feel that "Bigger Is Better". They see offering more different classes as a big plus, but do not see any down side. It is a human trend to only focus on what is "Better" about something and not what is "Bad". I give you Obamacare as proof of this point. Here is just one way that bigger schools are bad and having smaller class size does not cancel out the bad aspect. Think about this mathematically. Let's say that 1% of the kids are a bad influence within the school and if you kid is associated with this bad kid, it will rub off on your kid. If your kid goes to a small school with only 50 kids, the chances of going to a school that has a bad kid in it is only 50-50. That means half of all kids who go to school will not encounter a bad kid. I see this like a infectious disease where there are a few carriers who can infect the whole population. To minimize the possibility of infection we isolate the disease carrier, we don't allow them to circulate in large groups of people. I think it is the same with our schools. We see this in clothing trends and what is happening during spring break on the beaches. It only takes a few bad apples to infect our schools and colleges and you know it.
What we need to do is to consider both the good aspects of changes and the bad aspects. We did not do this with Obamacare and we have not done it with the changes that we have made in our schools. I have blogged on why I fell that Head Start is a bad idea because it reduces the time the kid spends with their parents and increases the time that the kid spends with other children. What ever people felt we got from Head Start, it was canceled out by the bad aspects. Why is that people feel that untested changes are better than the proven things that got the human race to this point? It is better to do nothing than to do the wrong thing. Remember that!
As I see it, there are two basic elements that impact the development of our children. The first is their parents and the second is other children. I have blogged on the impact of parents on their children and the importance of time the parents spend with their children. What parents do in that time is important, but not as important as just the number of hours. I think that we can all agree that the number of hours parents spend with their kids has been going down for some time. There are all kinds of reasons for this that I am not going to go into here. Just focus on the number of hours kids today spend with their parents compared to human history. I contend that we now spend fewer hours with our kids today than in all of human history and it has had an impact on how our kids turn out. Look at the groups within our society who spend the most time with their kids and look at the difference in how their kids turn out. Look at Asians, Jews, Mormons and Rural compared to other urban groups and tell me what you think of their children? Urban is "bigger" and worse.
There has been a trend for sometime to close or consolidate small schools all over the USA. Most people feel that "Bigger Is Better". They see offering more different classes as a big plus, but do not see any down side. It is a human trend to only focus on what is "Better" about something and not what is "Bad". I give you Obamacare as proof of this point. Here is just one way that bigger schools are bad and having smaller class size does not cancel out the bad aspect. Think about this mathematically. Let's say that 1% of the kids are a bad influence within the school and if you kid is associated with this bad kid, it will rub off on your kid. If your kid goes to a small school with only 50 kids, the chances of going to a school that has a bad kid in it is only 50-50. That means half of all kids who go to school will not encounter a bad kid. I see this like a infectious disease where there are a few carriers who can infect the whole population. To minimize the possibility of infection we isolate the disease carrier, we don't allow them to circulate in large groups of people. I think it is the same with our schools. We see this in clothing trends and what is happening during spring break on the beaches. It only takes a few bad apples to infect our schools and colleges and you know it.
What we need to do is to consider both the good aspects of changes and the bad aspects. We did not do this with Obamacare and we have not done it with the changes that we have made in our schools. I have blogged on why I fell that Head Start is a bad idea because it reduces the time the kid spends with their parents and increases the time that the kid spends with other children. What ever people felt we got from Head Start, it was canceled out by the bad aspects. Why is that people feel that untested changes are better than the proven things that got the human race to this point? It is better to do nothing than to do the wrong thing. Remember that!
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
How To Understand Liberals
For many years, I have been trying to understand liberals will out much success. For the first time, I think that I may be starting to make some progress. Here is what I think.
I asked a good friend who is a liberal what he thought about our Attorney General not enforcing the laws. He said that he did not see a problem. His defense was based on two points. The first was that prior Republican Attorney Generals did not enforce "all" the laws either. His assumption was that it was OK to not enforce the law if some prior Attorney General did not enforce "all" the laws either. This is a concept that permeates the thinking of many liberals. If you have noticed, liberals almost always argue that what they are doing is not bad because someone like a Republican has done a similar think before. They do not what to defend that the Liberal Attorney General is or is not doing, but only want to deflect the discussion to some historical event. They are like kids who were raised by parents who caved in to the wishes of their kids when the kids told them that "other" kids were doing this or that. They do not seem to have ever experienced mature parenting where parents were willing to use "tough love". As a result of Spock, there are millions of kids who are now voters who were raised by incompetent parents.
Another point is that if "most" of the people do not like a law, it is OK not to enforce the law. Liberals seem to be over focused on the "majority" as the basis of what is right or legal. Obama got over 50% of the popular vote so he feels that he only has to represent the 50%+ who voted him into office. When I asked this same person about the purpose of the Constitution, he said that it was to guarantee our "basic rights" and nothing much more. I don't think that Liberals have any idea that the purpose of the Constitution is to protect the rights of minorities from abuse by the majority. Most Liberals never thought about themselves as a minority and thus never saw the significance of the Constitution. Their only focus was "winning" and the "ends justified the means". In the case of Obama, not prosecuting illegal emigrants was OK, because most of the people who voted for Obama agreed with him.
Liberals just do not seem to understand that for our democracy to survive, we need to make sure our laws are uniformly enforced. They all seem to understand why Lady Justice has a blind fold on and is holding a balance scale, but they do not also understand that the Attorney General or a local District Attorney has exactly the same responsibility. They also have to uniformly enforce the law. I know from first hand experience in Chile that a President who selectively enforces the laws can turn a country upside down and destroy a democracy. In the case of Chile, they had a working democracy for over 100 years before Salvador Allende was elected. He did exactly what Obama has done. In the case of Chile, Allende shot himself, but even with that, it took over 15 years clean up the mess that he had made in just 3 or 4 years. It will be the same for us after Obama is gone.
There are a lot of laws that I do not like, but it would be worse if all the laws were not uniformly enforced. It is the nature of a democracy for the making of laws to take a lot of time, but taking short cuts yields worse results. It is better to do nothing than to do the wrong thing. Slow progress is a lot better than going backwards in an attempt to go faster. That was the objective of the Constitution. It is a fact that the original 13 independent colonies would never have united had they not had the protection of the Constitution to assure that the basic "rules" were not going to be changed by a Liberal thinking majority at some future date. They were concerned about the future of their children. Isn't it interesting how really important things don't change over time. Liberals do not seem to understand our history or have little concern about the future of their children. They are very strange people!
I asked a good friend who is a liberal what he thought about our Attorney General not enforcing the laws. He said that he did not see a problem. His defense was based on two points. The first was that prior Republican Attorney Generals did not enforce "all" the laws either. His assumption was that it was OK to not enforce the law if some prior Attorney General did not enforce "all" the laws either. This is a concept that permeates the thinking of many liberals. If you have noticed, liberals almost always argue that what they are doing is not bad because someone like a Republican has done a similar think before. They do not what to defend that the Liberal Attorney General is or is not doing, but only want to deflect the discussion to some historical event. They are like kids who were raised by parents who caved in to the wishes of their kids when the kids told them that "other" kids were doing this or that. They do not seem to have ever experienced mature parenting where parents were willing to use "tough love". As a result of Spock, there are millions of kids who are now voters who were raised by incompetent parents.
Another point is that if "most" of the people do not like a law, it is OK not to enforce the law. Liberals seem to be over focused on the "majority" as the basis of what is right or legal. Obama got over 50% of the popular vote so he feels that he only has to represent the 50%+ who voted him into office. When I asked this same person about the purpose of the Constitution, he said that it was to guarantee our "basic rights" and nothing much more. I don't think that Liberals have any idea that the purpose of the Constitution is to protect the rights of minorities from abuse by the majority. Most Liberals never thought about themselves as a minority and thus never saw the significance of the Constitution. Their only focus was "winning" and the "ends justified the means". In the case of Obama, not prosecuting illegal emigrants was OK, because most of the people who voted for Obama agreed with him.
Liberals just do not seem to understand that for our democracy to survive, we need to make sure our laws are uniformly enforced. They all seem to understand why Lady Justice has a blind fold on and is holding a balance scale, but they do not also understand that the Attorney General or a local District Attorney has exactly the same responsibility. They also have to uniformly enforce the law. I know from first hand experience in Chile that a President who selectively enforces the laws can turn a country upside down and destroy a democracy. In the case of Chile, they had a working democracy for over 100 years before Salvador Allende was elected. He did exactly what Obama has done. In the case of Chile, Allende shot himself, but even with that, it took over 15 years clean up the mess that he had made in just 3 or 4 years. It will be the same for us after Obama is gone.
There are a lot of laws that I do not like, but it would be worse if all the laws were not uniformly enforced. It is the nature of a democracy for the making of laws to take a lot of time, but taking short cuts yields worse results. It is better to do nothing than to do the wrong thing. Slow progress is a lot better than going backwards in an attempt to go faster. That was the objective of the Constitution. It is a fact that the original 13 independent colonies would never have united had they not had the protection of the Constitution to assure that the basic "rules" were not going to be changed by a Liberal thinking majority at some future date. They were concerned about the future of their children. Isn't it interesting how really important things don't change over time. Liberals do not seem to understand our history or have little concern about the future of their children. They are very strange people!
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