Will There Be A Double-Dip Recession?

There is an interesting (but depressing) editorial by Mortimer Zuckerman in U.S. News & World Report regarding the sad state of the Western European and US economies.  In his article, Mr. Zuckerman paints a particularly bleak picture of the US's debt burden because our children are not being educated - despite the US spending nearly twice what other countries spend - and will not be ready to take on the ever increasing debt that our and previous generations have left them through our irresponsible spending habits.

The author makes his point by way of the forecasts made by a German mathematician and philosopher of the early 20th century, Oswald Spengler.  Mr. Spengler had an intersting view of the rise and decline of western civilization and it closely mirrors what I have been thinking for a long time - I shall have to delve into Mr. Spengler's works to see what else he has to say.

Anyway, the article is highly interesting.  I recommend it highly.

New Jersey Schools Need To Face Reality

The following is a letter I wrote to my local paper in an effort to convince folks to vote down the upcoming school budget. It was published in the Examiner.

[Note: I just saw a documentary, "The Cartel: Education + Politics = $", that more eloquently makes the same points I was trying to make in this blog].  The documentary has an informative web site that provides some ideas on how parents can help make things better.]

According to the Examiner, Millstone’s proposed 2010-11 budget puts perpupil spending at around $13,000. That’s just a number. To understand whether we’re paying too much, that number needs to be put into context. According to the Census Bureau, the average spending per student in the U.S. in 2006 was around $9,138 and for New Jersey a whopping $14,630. Considering that the 2006 figures are higher than Millstone’s 2010-11 budget, and New Jersey ranks pretty high among the 50 states, it appears that we’re almost getting our money’s worth. Unfortunately, when our students graduate, they don’t just have to compete with other Americans. They have to compete with workers from other countries.
So let us compare that $13,000 spending to another highly developed country — Germany. This country spends about $7,700 per student in 2006 dollars. That’s nearly half of what New Jersey spent the same year and about $1,500 less than the average U.S. spending. Given that Germany outscores the U.S. in literacy, math, and science, things don’t look very favorable. Developing countries like China and India whose students score much higher than the U.S. in math and science spend a fraction per student of what the U.S. does.

So where does the money go? Looking at average teacher salaries for both Germany and the U.S. reveals that starting salaries in Germany are higher than in the U.S. So clearly the teachers in Germany aren’t being shortchanged. Having attended both German and U.S. schools, I suspect the money is wasted in “administration.” Germany, a country of 80 million people, doesn’t have 600 individual school districts as New Jersey does and, thus, it doesn’t have the expense of redundantly paying for the same administrative tasks 600 times. (Incidentally, if you look at another U.S. state, North Carolina, with the same number of students as N.J., you will find that that state only has 100 districts. Not surprisingly, their perstudent spending is much less than N.J.’s.)

Given the above, it is clear to me that the solution to New Jersey’s educational budget woes is not to keep firing teachers, laying off custodians, or firing bus drivers. The solution is to consolidate administrative functions across the school districts. Think about it. We have 600 superintendents making $200,000 each and they all do pretty much the same job. On top of that, thanks to Gov. [Jon] Corzine, we have another 21 county superintendents, which, ostensibly, were supposed to replace those 600 superintendents. If the 600 district superintendents were eliminated and we let the county superintendents do the job, it would save N.J. $120 million dollars per year. Many of these superintendents have their own personal secretaries. Eliminating those positions will probably save another $50 million. Those secretaries often have their own secretaries (also known as clerk typists) — more millions saved. Many, if not all the districts, develop their own curricula. Why? Can’t N.J. come up with a single curriculum for all its schools? Does every district need its own director of curriculum ($140,000)? Does every district need multiple curriculum advisers? There are probably another several hundred million dollars in savings to be had by consolidating curricula across the state. And all these savings can be had without firing a single teacher, without cutting a single academic program, without negatively affecting our children’s education.

I don’t know why school districts do not consider this alternative way of saving huge sums of money. I do know that I will not vote for tax increases until those obvious savings are taken. Tax increase proponents’ cries that a no vote is a vote against the children is a hollow one when those same individuals cut teachers and academic programs rather than redundant administrative functions.

Ways To Save America

Why is the US becoming a second-rate country? I think that this is the progression of any civilization: there is a youthful stage in which the ambitions and patriotism of its citizens and leaders allow the civilization to grow and prosper. But then, complacency takes hold - people begin to think of their privileges as inalienable rights rather than something to be worked for - and the civilization begins its inevitable decline.

But there are many things Americans could do to stave off this decline. Here is my list:

1. Take Responsibility For Your Action Or Inaction. Americans, by in large, have become a bunch of whiners. Every day, I meet people complaining about the government, their jobs, their neighbors, their spouses, and on and on. Everything is someone else's fault - never ones own. For example: Americans are lamenting that their jobs are lost to countries like China. China, with its near-slave-labor wages is to blame! Never mind that Americans are buying Chines goods, knowing full well under what conditions said goods are made!
2. Tort Reform. Huh? Let me explain: since Americans think everything is someone else's fault, they feel justified in trying to extract payment for these wrong-doings. So they spend their time suing each other. Why else, do you think the US has only 5% of the world population, yet 95% of the world's lawyers? Most lawyers in the US perform no useful function other than to encourage, facilitate, and profit from this behavior. Eliminating frivolous lawsuits would allow American companies and individuals to produce goods more cheaply - since they would not have to spend so much time and money defending themselves in court. As a side-benefit, liability insurance rates would go way down. One proposed reform is to simply ask the suing party to pay for the defendant's court costs if the suit is decided in the defendant's favor. Seems fair, doesn't it? Well, guess what powerful lobby is against this ever passing? The lawyers, of course.
3. Respect. Kids are not taught to respect their elders. Why did I (in Germany) and my wife (in China) grow up respecting our teachers? Because our parents taught us to be respectful and because when we weren't respectful, either the parens or the teacher would smack us! In the US (because of parents not taking responsibility and lawyers eagerly waiting to help parents OR children), teachers would not dare touch a child. Heck, even parents dare not physically punish their child in public for fear of being visited by an overzealous social services department.
   
4. More Logic and Less Emotion. When deciding who our political leaders are, Americans too often use their hearts rather than their brains. A friend voted for Bush because he was "pro-gun" and my friend likes to bear arms. It never even occured to him to vote for a President based on what was best for the country. Americans get (and believe!) everything fed to them by the biased news media. They should try to see things through the eyes of other countries by, perhaps, getting some of their information from non-US news sources! A better education would be helpful too.

That's all I can think of. Opinions are welcomed.

Education and Americans

Lately (well, more like for the past 10-20 years), American parents, politicians, etc. have spoken of a crisis in the American educational system. Indeed, American kids are woefully behind in academics (especially math and science) compared to children from other nations (e.g. Asia and Europe). Much time and money has been spent on improving K-12 education - with what appears to be only limited success.

One has to ask oneself whether it is really the educational system that needs fixing? Are our teachers really that much worse than teachers in other countries? Are our kids just dumber than those of other countries? I have experience with both the European and American school systems (I went to German schools from K through 7th grade and to American schools from 8th grade through graduate school; my daughter is currently in 4th grade in a US elementary school) and I feel comfortable saying the answer to both questions is NO.

So, what is the problem then?

I think the answer lies in a sense of entitlement that has been growing in Americans since the early days of the country. The US has always been a country rich in natural resources. With the industrial revolution, exploiting those natural resources became inreasingly easy and, as a result, people didn't have to work quite so hard at succeeding. Even without working too hard, there was enough wealth being created that some of it could be passed from generation to generation. Parents not only passed their wealth on to their children, but they also became less demanding of their children: after all, why demand so much from your children when you no longer depend on them to take care of you in your old age? So each successive generation became a little "softer" than the preceding one.

This was fine in the more-or-less closed system that was the US market place. If your fellow American was just as "soft" as you were, you could compete with each other on an even footing. But in the late 80s and early 90s, we increasingly began to live in a global economy. Suddenly, Americans who, for generations, have grown to believe that their education, work ethic, and way of live were the best began to face competitors who grew up in truly cut-throat environments (e.g. Chinese university graduates - who grew up tough because the parents demanded excellence and competition from a billion others did as well).

Americans are simply not equipped to compete. Sure, we can try to improve our schools. We can equip them with the latest tech toys. But the problem is the mindset of the student as well as the parent. American parents don't know how to demand more of their children. And American children have not been taught to be emotionally strong and, thus, can't deal with the tough road ahead of them.

The sad truth is that most Americans don't even realize how weak they have become. It is endemic in American society to blame others. Nobody wants to take responsibility. Not even for their own children.

The only way for this to change is for the next generation of American kids to realize that their standard of living has become less than that of their peers in other countries, and they will then teach their children to be more competitive.