Public Education

In preparation for the 2020 presidential elections, there is much discussion about expanding free education. In thinking about this I reflected back to things I have heard and read over the years on this topic. The earliest was the introduction to public education in China under Kublai Khan, a grandson of Genghis Khan, the founder of the Mongol Empire in the thirteenth century. The Mongols had a disdain for aristocracy and in China only children of the aristocracy were educated. In part to annoy them the Mongol conquerors made education available to peasants though I believe they were more interested in creating a larger pool of educated people to draw on to help administer China. They already were bring in administrators from different parts of their empire including Arabs, Tibetan monks and Hindus and Christians from neighboring areas. Genghis Khan recognized the value of education to his empire and along with doctors and clergymen; teachers were not required to pay taxes. Later, in the early seventeenth century England was expanding its empire around the globe and thus created an enormous challenge. To administrate these conquered lands they need a pool of people who could write clearly and add a column of numbers. To meet this challenge they instituted public education where the focus was primarily penmanship and basic math. Education’s primary goal has always been the development of a work force appropriately skilled to meet the challenges of the current times. As societies progressed with technologies becoming more complex and commercial and military interactions around the globe expanding, penmanship and basic math was insufficient. To meet the growing challenges, public education was expanded to teach more complex mathematics and a better understanding of the world and children are now being schooled for free from K through 12. Schools were set up to also teach various trade skills. And, by the way, while schools have the ear of the children why not also teach them to be better citizens of whatever political structure exists in their countries. But again, the main driver is still to the training of a workforce. So here we are. Technologies have advanced, the world’s population has grown and interactions became more complex. The current public education system does not adequately prepare the newly needed workforce. One argument is that free education is a gift is to those receiving it. Though there are benefits to them in that it allows them a better living and life. However, as in the past, preparation of this workforce is a benefit to the society as a whole and thus it was determined that the cost should be borne by the all. The challenge before us is to figure out how to prepare our workforce for the new skills required and what kind of education structure is needed and how to develop it. There is no question that the current K-12 is not adequate and I don’t believe extending it to include community colleges, as they stand, is enough. As in the past, whatever the structure, preparation of a workforce is a societal benefit and therefore should be paid for the society as a whole. I heard or read somewhere that the skills valued in the future will be interpersonal relations, problem solving and creativity. Some of these may be able to be taught but I believe some may just be inherent characteristics of individuals. Also one may still ague whether a liberal arts education is needed in the workforce. Certainly training for the providers of education and those who keep the workforce healthy is needed. And even if liberal arts is not directly required, that training still benefits the society in that people thus educated allow us to have facilities and services that make life more interesting and enjoyable and probably should also be paid for by the society as a whole.

Trump/Putin Bromance 2

Yesterday, having just finished writing the post on the Trump/Putin Bromance, I heard the news that we are expelling 60 Russian diplomats in retaliation for the poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter. Thinking about it I imagined being a fly on the wall during the last conversation between President Trump and Vladimir Putin. Hey Vlad, Congratulations on your reelection, really great for our cause. Listen, You know I have been soft on you, removing an anti-Russian plank from the Republican Presidential Convention and not messing with the finances of you’re and your guy’ moneys by the recent sanctions. In the sanctions we only targeted minor elements along with your chef. But the pressure is on me to do something so as not to lose my position. Vlad, what can you recommend I do? Well, Donald, that was quite a victory I won, huh? Had more people in my crowd than you did at the inauguration. I appreciate you being able to tone things down while letting there be a lot of noise about your new toughness on Russia. Here’s what I recommend. Throw out a big bunch of our diplomats. With our ability to hack with your systems their value has really diminished. This should keep the critics quiet for a while and not touch my or my friend’s finances. In response, I will make some blustering noises to satisfy my guys and to add to the effect at your end. Good hearing from you and lets not wait too long to get together and chat again. Call me any time you need some advice.

Trump Putin Bromance

Yesterday I watched a history of Vladimir Putin on Fareed Zakaria. In the program one saw a parade of Russian Soldiers and demonstrations by Russian people. In viewing these scenes I imagined an Alt-Right individual watching the program (though as a practical matter most probably don't watch CNN) and thinking "boy these people look just like me, white and Northern European". During the program Fareed also happened to mentioned that part of Putin's program was to advance Christianity in Russia. Here the Christian Fundamentalists perked right up. There was noise on the news shows about Putin's anti-Semitism where, when asked about the hacking, he said that he had no control and it could just as well have been done by Jews. I watched the interview and what he actually said was that he didn’t know and it could have been done by Ukrainians, Tatars or Jews. Tatars for the most part are Muslim living in Russia for centuries. In Russia there are many Muslims and Jews so what Putin was really doing was dividing Russia by suggesting that Jews and Muslims, not being Christians, were not really Russians. Furthermore, Putin is attempting to outlaw homosexuality and abortion, real Fundamentalist Christian values. Back a number of years ago, Pat Buchanan, a former presidential candidate was quoted as saying that Putin was the last hope for global Christian values. During one of the meetings in Europe last year (I think it may have been NATO), our President said he wanted to fight for (he may have said protect) Western civilization (he may have said culture). In either case he is supporting the notion that there is a struggle between the West and “others”, a line playing right into ISIS’s propaganda. I know I’m now getting into the realm of "conspiracy theory". In pursuing the connection between our President Trump and Vladimir Putin, most are looking at financial ties, but what if the connection was a move to create a powerful alliance of white Christians against the brown, non -Christian world. This certainly would have the full support of all Trump voters. Maybe this is why there is very little issue with them about the President’s bromance with Putin.

Job Loss to Technology

Today it is pretty much accepted that technological development at an ever increasing rate has displaced and will continue to displace workers. Automation is replacing workers on the factory floor and artificial intelligence is replacing clerical, engineering, finance and management personnel. More and more mining is done by machines, assembly by robots and soon driverless vehicles will be transporting people and goods. The optimistic view is that as in the past, the new technologies will create new jobs. I’m not so optimistic. The loss of these jobs on the surface looks like something that will only affect the working classes. However, in reality, it will affect everyone. The profits will initially increase as the productivity improves but ultimately, without money in the hands of the population as a whole to spend on widgets manufactured at ever greater efficiency, profits will drop. (A teacher asked one of my ten year old grandson’s class what would they do if they had all the money in the world. To this my grandson replied that he would not want to have all the money because then people would not have money to buy the stuff they need to make the things he would want to buy.) I attended a seminar about 30 years ago headed by Edward Deming, the person who introduced statistical quality control to Japan and who, through that effort, made a significant contribution to Japans growth in the seventies and eighties. In his presentation he pointed out that automation only makes sense if there is a labor shortage or it improves quality. Across the globe today we are far from a labor shortage. The Conservative’s claim that a tax cut for corporations and the wealthy will create jobs reminds me of the mantra back not too many years ago calling for more money in the hands of “job creators”(the wealthy), as a way to create jobs. In my mind the real job creators are the customers of Wall Mart and the like, since their demand is what creates jobs. In all my experience running a manufacturing company I never had a banker or a potential investor ask what we paid for taxes but how are we going to grow our customer base and how will we differentiate our product and service. I have proposed a couple of solutions in previous posts like all workers in an enterprise sharing in its profits so that as efficiency improves so does their buying power. There is nothing sacred about the forty hour work week so also reduce hours as efficiency improves. Henry Ford, the father of the production line, recognized that it didn’t do much good to make cheap cars if the masses couldn’t afford to buy them and increased salaries on the production floor to get enough money into the hands of his employees to buy the cars they mass produced. Another post suggested instituting a universal draft and making a key function of the military, not war, but to do all the work that no one wants to do that is needed to make people’s lives better and more interesting and thus greatly reducing the amount of labor in the market, increasing the demand and raising its value. There is no question in my mind that technology will displace workers in manufacturing but significantly those in administrative, engineering and management jobs. Currently our administration is focusing on red herrings instead of the real issue. They want to renegotiate trade agreements, ignore climate change and increase coal mining just to name a few. Instead they should be working tirelessly on strategies for increasing money in the hands of the masses during a time when technology is rapidly improving efficiency and the world population is continuing to grow. To do this effectively will require cooperation with all our neighbors and not nativism and isolation. If not, we will solve the problem through massive world wars thus improving the labor market by building more weapons, increasing the size of military and loosing soldiers on the battle fields and civilians in their homes.

It Depends

A couple weeks ago I was playing golf on a nine-hole cow pasture with a few guys from the Old Man’s League. After the round we sit around for a bit and chat. Somehow we got on a subject that prompted a Marine veteran of the Vietnam War to mention an interview he saw on TV of a guy who deposed a half dozen or so German Gestapo who participated in the horrific gassing of Jews during the Second World War. The interviewer commented that he must have been “looking into the face of evil” to which he replied “no I was looking into the faces of men”. This conversation prompted me to think about another comment I heard month ago made by a conservative congressman. The topic was torture and when torture was criticized, the Congressman not only approved of it, but proclaimed that the men doing the torturing on behalf of our country are heroes. The sixths of the Ten Commandments, given to Abraham by God which all three Abrahamic religions; Jews, Christians and Muslims, subscribe to, says “thou shalt not kill”. This seems rather straight forward and unambiguous. In Wikipedia the sixth commandment is listed as using the word “kill”. However, in some Biblical sites on the Net I looked at, ”kill” becomes “murder” which opens the door to killing under many circumstances where under law, it is not defined as murder. Though In some religious groups, “thou shalt not kill” is taken as a command from the Lord. The Christian Quakers and some Sufi Muslim sects take this commandment literally. There are also other sects, including the Non-Abrahamic Jane of India, that have a prohibition against killing under any circumstances and the Jane even takes it a step further prohibiting the killing of anything. Let’s, for the sake of argument, say that the Lord really meant “murder” and killing of our fellow man under some circumstances is condoned. For instance, killing an enemy in war, wrongdoers as defined by a given society or to protect one’s family and property is acceptable in most cultures. In some cultures killing for honor, homosexuality and adultery is acceptable. Ending suffering through euthanasia is becoming more widely accepted in Western Countries. It gets more complicated because it is not the act and circumstance but who is doing the killing. A soldier on our side who kills hundreds of enemy soldiers is a hero while a soldier who kills hundreds of our soldiers is a demon. A murderer is a monster but the executioner taking the murderers life is only doing their public duty. About a month or so ago President Trump (not a fan) was being interviewed about Russia. When the interviewer brought out the fact that Putin kills, he responded something like “so do we” .The acts of our “special” units from the CIA, Special Forces or Navy Seals are heroic, whereas the same acts perpetrated by operatives from Soviet’s KGB or Germany’s Gestapo were heinous. We watched the killing of Osama Bin Laden on TV and cheered while others cried. We watched the beheadings by ISIS in horror while its followers celebrated. We rightly criticize the interference of the Russians in our politics but don’t blink an eye when Israel, through the American Israeli Political Action Committee becomes the strongest lobby in Washington with great influence on our policies as they relate to the Middle East. The Quran has an explicit prohibition against killing of innocent civilians but radical Muslim groups like ISIS somehow find within the same Book justification for doing just that. Leviticus 20:10 says “If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death”. There are other sections of the Old Testament that get into more detail of punishment depending on circumstances such as was the woman a slave and was she your slave. The one I like is the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus, when seeing a woman about to be stoned for adultery, says “let you who are without sin cast the first stone” The philosophical question of whether morality is absolute or relative leads to questions about the nature of evil. Immanuel Kant, a German 18th century philosopher, argued that there is a set of moral values that apply to everyone. The examples cited above indicate that our society as a whole, obviously does not subscribe to Kant, and even the Scriptures support the notion that everything is relative.

The Second Amendment

“Amendment II A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right to bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Since the recent tragic shooting in Las Vegas and a new push from progressives to improve gun control, I am reviewing my understanding of the gun issue. One often hears comments from the Left about not needing automatic weapons, silencers or armor piercing bullets to shoot “Bambi”. The Right argues that the Constitution guarantees our right to own guns. In reality I think the pro and anti-gun control people are talking past each other and not understanding what actually is at issue. The progressives have a very naive view of gun ownership while conservatives have a more nuanced one. If one takes a careful look at the second amendment there is not even the slightest hint of hunting or even gun ownership per se. It talks about “bearing arms”. Hunters don’t “bear arms, they “carry guns”. Combatants “bear arms”. Basically the amendment says that the bearing of arms may be needed to ensure a free state and thus this right cannot be abridged. Michael Lerner, a progressive San Francisco Rabi wrote a book entitles “The Left Hand of God”. The basic premise is that there is a continuum we all stand on and at the right end of which there sits a vengeful, thunderbolt wielding God smiting sinners, while at the other end there sits a loving, gentle God, forgiving sinners and caring for the needy ( the “Sermon on the Mount” God). Our general view of the world and our politics depend on our position on this continuum which in part may be influenced by our physiology and definitely our culture. At the right end we tend to be pessimistic, thinking everyone is grabbing all they can get and if we don’t get in and stop them or grab our share we will have nothing. At this end, politically we are conservatives. At the other end we view our fellow man as, for the most part, good with a few bad apples here and there, and tend to be progressive. People on the right end of the continuum, worrying about their fellow man’s aggression, want to have a gun in the house to protect themselves. People at the left end, being optimists, tend not to feel the need for this protection and think guns are more of a danger than a protection. Let me get back to bearing arms. From the right hand side of the continuum, the country is always under threat; from the Commies in the fifties, the Godless hippies in the sixties, the Blacks always, the Hispanics at the end of the last century and since 9/11, the Muslims. The government is always in danger of being overtaken by one of these groups and even it does not fall to any of them, it may be weakened and unable to protect us from them. In this case we need to be able to arm ourselves and form militias to not only protect ourselves but our very freedom. In fact, even as we speak, there are militias arming, training and organizing for just such an event. Given this outlook, it is only rational that the “arms” need to be military grade and not hunting rifles. Armor piercing bullets, automatic weapons, silencers and more are necessary. Even the argument of restricting weapons based on government screening to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people is a threat. A corrupt government could wrongfully claim certain citizens are not mentally stable and deny them the right to guns. (The Soviet Union had mental hospitals full of dissidents put into institutions instead of jails so as not to put them on a stand and give them an opportunity to voice for their arguments) Another move to protect ourselves is to militarize our police forces, getting retired heavy military weaponry into local control. Back a couple of years ago I read about a sheriff somewhere down South creating a posse armed to the teeth to protect their community from the oncoming Muslim plight. In pictures of this posse I saw trucks with heavy machine guns mounted on their beds, all proudly flying our stars and stripes, demonstrating their patriotism. (My gut reaction at the time was to think “what kind of a patriot are you when you think your country is so weak as to not be able to protect us and you from a bunch of guys in robes riding camels and carrying automatic weapons”.) Indeed each side thinks it is patriotic. The Right displays its patriotism by wanting to protect our freedom with arms if necessary while the Left with its faith that our government and democracy is strong, resilient and, as it had in the past, able to withstand foreign assaults (War of 1812) and local insurrections (Civil War). So the real discussion should not be what guns and what regulations but how do we ensure our freedom through our institutions and ensure that our government works for us, all of us, and not only for a small portion of the population.

Supply and Demand

Following the recent hurricanes there has been discussion on the radio about “price gouging”. In an unfettered free market, there is no such things, as the market is by definition driven by “supply and demand”. Ergo the term “free”, allowing market forces to dictate price (demand) based on availability (supply). One question raised on the talk shows was whether a gas station in an area about to be devastated with long lines of cars evacuating and where there is a severe shortage of gasoline, should charge more than 10 times the pre-catastrophe price. Most callers into the shows said it was somehow wrong and profiteering. One caller with a small tree service business in New Jersey said that following the devastating storm which hit the Charleston area a few years ago, he drove his truck down there and was selling his service for up to twice the normal price. He felt he was not doing anything wrong and many callers agreed. In both cases “supply and demand” was at play. The gas station owner sold the limited supply in his hands for as much as he could get. Though he did not create a monopoly, his business indeed was a monopoly, given that there was no supply of gas elsewhere in that market. The tree guy saw a strong demand for his service and traveled to provide it. However, the tree guy as did many others saw a demand for his service and traveled to where the demand was. Certainly he incurred additional expenses in travel costs, hotels, time lost during travel just to mention a few. There is also the non-monetary cost of being away from friends and family. This, if he just wanted to maintain his profit margin, would have required a much higher price to make the trip worthwhile in an economic sense. (I know, I know, economists would tell me cost doesn’t enter into the equation when it comes to a free market except to indicate a lowest price possible.) In both cases there was a benefit to people in the devastated areas. In the case of providers traveling to the areas there may even be a level of altruism prompting the action. In the case of the gas station owner there was nothing but greed driving the action. One might argue that one was a noble act whereas not the other.