Maggie's Farm

The President wants more college grads. As VDH noted in Triumph of Banality:

President Obama also promises historic new rates of high-school and college graduation. Again, he seems to think the present problem is the absence of money — as if brilliant, gifted, and motivated young people are ending up at McDonald’s rather than doing quantum physics because the bogeymen “they” raised the bar and didn’t give them enough college scholarship support.

Actually, Obama's goal is easily accomplished: just lower the bar. I happen to believe we need fewer college grads, and to make the High School diploma meaningful again. America needs more plumbers, electricians, handymen, mechanics, gunsmiths - and fewer Women's Studies majors.

Ferguson addresses Obama's Diploma Mill in The Weekly Standard. One quote:

The assumption here is that the way to make somebody a competitive worker is to send him to college, an idea that will astonish anyone who's ever been served in a restaurant by a waiter with a master's in art history. This is just the first of the confusions that dog the president's proposal, which for the moment exists only in hypothetical form. Another confusion comes from his hazy definition of what the problem is.

On re-reading my post the other day, and a few of our recent posts on education, I am beginning to think that our American "system" of "higher ed" is obsolete.

A Liberal Arts education was designed for gentlemen-scholars, the few who were driven by curiosity, towards careers in the clergy, or to produce new teaching professionals. Good citizenship, and the practical tools to function in the world were taught in the lower years. The basic furnishings of the mind, as reader MM would term it.

A Liberal Arts degree was never meant to be practical, yet 30% of Americans have Bachelor Degrees: degrees that could mean anything, or nothing at all.

The democratization of higher ed, via things like the GI Bill, turned higher ed into a job credential. These days, I seem many young people who enjoy and are inspired by college in the old-fashioned way - but a very large many who "just need the piece of paper" and who cheat, screw, and drink their way through it while avoiding anything difficult or challenging.

The social consequence is having masses of non-scholars living extended childhoods at a ridiculous cost to their parents. While enjoying the luxury to some extent, many are also frustrated by a yearning for independence and adulthood, and the desire to do something real. Famous college drop-outs like Bill Gates, Winston Churchill, Mark Twain, Noel Coward, Woody Allen, Warren Buffet, Charles Dickens (grammar school drop-out), Albert Einstein (high school drop-out), Robert Frost, J. Paul Getty, Horace Greeley (high school drop out), and Bob Dylan are among them.

This site lists many of the rich or famous who either dropped out of high school or college. In some cases, grammar school - when you used to be allowed to do that.

I'd like to see more of our high school grads out there working, and getting night course education in areas of expertise they might like to pursue. I'd like to see more apprenticeships too.

A relevant post at Phi Beta Cons asks "How does the military manage it?"

We keep hearing about all the jobs that "require" a college degree — as if the work were so hard that a bright high-school kid couldn't possibly learn to do it. But as the writer of this e-mail points out, the military has jobs that call for a great deal of training, intelligence, and responsibility and manages with young people who for the most part have never gone past high school in formal education...

If I had the time and brains, I'd redesign the entire thing with high school as the core, with a core mission. I'd expect each school board to decide what kids need to know to get a HS diploma. I'd also consider reducing high school to 3 years and liberal arts degrees to 3 years. Do our readers have any ideas?

Tigerhawk. Good vid by him about the "working affluent".

Related, from Kimball's The President's Shock and Awe:

The crucial thing to understand about that attack on achievement is that it is a histrionic, not an economic, gesture. Raising taxes on (while simultaneously cutting deductions for) top earners will not do much to improve the Treasury’s balance sheet. But it will cause pain among the affluent. It will also cause delight among the more than 43 percent of tax filers who pay no income tax. (Is that fair?) So the President scores two points: he punishes those whom he resents, and he panders to the crowd whose approbation he craves.

 

It's amusing to see the the Gore Effect afflicting James Hansen. Will his big climate-scare protest in DC tomorrow be snowed out by a late season blizzard?

If so, one might consider it to be Gaia's justice.

Ultra ETFs are double leveraged. Bullish? Ultra Long ETFs. Bearish? Ultra Short ETFs. They are trading tools: volatile and fun to play with.

Short-term winning strategy? Short the Dow before every Obama or admin. speech.

David Leonhardt explains in the NYT how Obama's budget sweeps away Reagan.

How nice. Back to the 1970s, or the 1930s. Reagan wanted everybody to get wealthy. The old way is to reduce prosperity. It's very easy to do: just take their money away from them, take the gummint cut, and hand it to somebody else.

The history of the United States economy over the last 70 years can be roughly divided into two periods: the decades immediately after World War II, when inequality plummeted, and the past three decades, when global economic forces and government policies caused it to soar. Mr. Obama is setting out to begin a third period that looks more like the first than the second.

That agenda starts with taxes. Over the last three decades, the pretax incomes of the wealthiest households have risen far more than they have for other households, while the tax rates for top earners have fallen more than they have for others, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

She Who Must Be Obeyed has already warned me: If this goes through, I am working 4 days a week, not five. She would prefer my company to my working at 50 cents on the dollar (with CT income tax) for the government - and she mostly handles the financial affairs. Fortunately for me, I enjoy her company too. I can easily help to reduce income inequality by being less productive. I love to work, but I love to have fun too. And there is nothing I wish to buy...besides vacations and trips.

A repost from 2007:

Today during lunch I read the piece by Tyler at Tangled Web about Dawkins, who is hopeful that a "final scientific enlightenment" will destroy religion on earth. Dawkins thinks it might require that elusive "theory of everything" to do the job.

Tyler correctly notes that the "theory of everything" will never address mankind's eternal questions.

Then I followed a link in one of his commenters to an essay by physicist Stanley Jaki, who makes the case that the "Theory of Everything" must be subject to Godel's Theorem. Very interesting essay, but I cannot cut and paste from it. Read it. He discusses Stephen Hawkings' epiphany, after many years of championing the quest, that a "theory of everything" is impossible.

Then I went over to Wikipedia to refresh my vague recollections of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, which has nothing in common with Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. That Wikipedia entry was good, but there was some rough sledding in it.

And that led me to the entry on The Liar Paradox.

The Liar Paradox is the old "Nothing I say to you is true,"  and the many variations thereof.

Is the Liar Paradox a true paradox, or an artifact of symbolization? I think the latter, but that reveals my bias of expecting consistency from reality. If you're curious about the approaches to the puzzle, the Wikipedia entry seems to do a good job with it.

Thus passed a very enjoyable Tuesday lunch break for this dilettante. (The Escher image is perfect, Bird Dog - thanks.)

Update: Here's a piece that takes you deeper into the Liar Paradox. Thanks, BL

Obama's proposed cap and trade will cost business billions, for no purpose whatsoever. I think this is psychotic - unless the goal is to destroy American business. But then who will pay the taxes? (Meanwhile, scientist forces Al Gore to back down.)

I doubt that even Congress is this crazy.

Related: Obama proposes one trillion in new taxes. That's for "the rich," of course. Around here, that's a teacher married to a cop, or the guy who owns the dry-cleaner.

The "best" students are often the most diligent and dutiful, but not necessarily the most passionate about learning or the smartest. Fairly or not, women and Asian students are often viewed in that light. The University of California reputedly sets limits on their Asian student acceptances.

Profs often find the "best" students boring to teach. Tom Wood at the NAS discusses. One quote:

Some years ago a friend mentioned that a professor at Berkeley he knew had either left for another teaching job or quit teaching altogether (I can’t remember which). The professor had no complaints about the salary, his opportunities to do research and writing, or his department colleagues. In most respects, he was quite happy at Cal—except for the students. And in fact, his complaints about the students were quite limited and specific. He had told my friend that the students were very, very good academically. They could and did do the work. They kept up with the course material, and did well on tests. But they were boring. They weren’t passionate. They weren’t engaged. And because the students were boring, he had come to find teaching boring. So he gave up his tenured position for some other place in academe, or perhaps outside academe altogether.

Everyone has the choice of whether to live in Christ, or not to. I am grateful that I have the choice of whether to accept that offered gift, or to refuse it. 

I once thought that living in Christ just sort-of happened when one deliberately accepted the gift, but I think differently now. I no longer think that I can be aligned with God on autopilot, as Augustine said he, or we, could. Maybe he could.

I need a discipline, both internal and external, to partake of the blessing of the Christian faith and of a life in Christ because sometimes I am there, but sometimes I am far away.

I have been thinking about the old-fashioned virtue of "self-command" recently, and about our cultural values - "authenticity," "genuineness," "follow your heart and emotions" and things like that. Why isn't "self-command" and "self-discpline" as much a part of our selves as anything else? Are our precious selves were so splendidly worthy and wonderful when on autopilot? If anybody is that wonderful, God bless 'em. I am not.

Internal discipline is about self-command. How good am I at commanding myself? And how often, like a bad parent, do I fail to be a good Chairman and CEO of myself and let things slide that should not slide, and permit leeway where there is no leeway? To let myself play in the street, as it were?

My discipline muscles need constant exercise. I have a few planned for this Lenten season.

Even the "best" Christians are sometimes prone to overlooking the beam in their own eye while noting the motes and beams in others'. We are taught to "hate the sin but to love the sinner." Readers know that I do not believe that Christianity is mainly about morality, but about faith. However, I believe that a deliberate living in Christ requires a discipline. Like when your Dad gives you a car for your birthday, the joy is contingent. Getting to that "life in abundance" isn't meant to be easy, but it is probably the definition of success that I value most highly for myself.

I judge others constantly, not from a high place but mainly for self-protection. I judge myself at least as judiciously, and likely far more harshly. Usually at 4:30 AM. The conscience I am stuck with tolerates little or no compromise with normal exigencies. At the same time, I know my conscience isn't necessarily God's voice. Sometimes it's my own, and some of it is my moral vanity.

In my mens' Bible study last week we wandered into a discussion of sexual temptation, and how we each deal with it. It's safe to say that each one of us has a deep appreciation for appealing females, and are fun-loving fellows who enjoy the pleasures of life. We aren't a "holy" bunch. We also agree that our word is our bond. It's discipline and self-command. Of course, anyone can make whatever choices one decides to, and live with that. That's fine, as long as you do not ask me to be responsible for guiding your choices.

I am meandering towards the subject of external discipline. If we are to enjoy the blessings of a life in Christ, most of us need that. I need my brethren to help keep me on track. Otherwise, I'll be off on my own track, and there is nothing too wonderful about that. "My track," I am ashamed to say, is probably all about me and all about gratification - and as instant as possible. OK, call me an obsessive if you want to: it's probably correct. I need and want to be judged. I do not want to be an animal.

Editor's note:  I stumbled onto a sermon by Rev. Norman Koop, Pastor of the First Congregational Church of Woodstock, VT, yesterday. I thought it relevant to my "House Church" meeting on Sunday afternoon where the topic was confronting evil and sin (in self and others). Intolerance. Pastor Koop makes the case, via Paul, that it is our unpleasant duty to confront and address the sin of our church brethren because, as Congregational Church members, we have made a solemn committment to the well-being of eachothers' souls. Paul's letter was a tough message for the Corinthians - and we are the Corinthians. The sermon is here (try "Listen now using the flash player").

No time for thinking today. A few cocktail-hour links:

Hopey-changey means Realpolitik. No more of that Republican freedom malarkey.

Not a coward: talking back to Eric Holder. Am Thinker

Palin: an unbalanced MSM tried to destroy me. Indeed. Unbalanced is the right word. She did seem to drive people crazy.

A billion American dollars to "rebuild Gaza." Is that "stimulus" too? What Gaza needs are some liquor stores, strip joints, and casinos.

Yet another new name for it: Climate Disruption. I guess that means whenever it's not nice and sunny out...or when it's too sunny too.

Might be a good time for the Mafia to go public.

States' Rights! It's about freedom.

Easy to forget that America is a voluntary federation of states: it's in the Constitution - if that means anything any more. I am advised that that is ancient history, and irrelevant. Not to me.

Elected tyrannies are commonplace in history. The wise ancient Greeks warned us about that. Politics is about the accumulation of money and power. Period.

I would break that surveillance camera if I were a Brit today. Government monitoring my wine? If I recall, that government was not at Cana.

American Idle. Money! The more irresponsible you are, the more the gummint works for you. Related: What Obama/Reid/Pelosi have planned for you next. This is overreaching, I think, but they are going to do it so fast that nobody can react.

However, the conservatives are coming back to life.

A good time to buy stuff. Everything good is cheap. Will Wilkinson bought a diamond ring. I am buying some stuff too.

Stop the presses. Global warming will create mental health problems in Tasmania. 

Where is Octodad? And who needs Dads anyway? h/t, Dr. Helen. A quote:

Out-of-wedlock birth rates in the U.S. are now 38%; among African-Americans the figure is 70%. Fathers of children living with single mothers are far less involved with their children than are married fathers; about a third of all children in single-mother families have not seen their father in the previous year. Yet decades of social science have made it clear: Children who grow up without their fathers experience more poverty, have more problems at school, more trouble with the law -- and more single motherhood in the next generation.

In recent years, medical science has also raised doubts about our frequent desire to wish fathers away. Every week, it seems, science confirms just how much genes matter. Everything from eye color, to propensity to high cholesterol, to a rotten disposition, to talent at math or tennis is encoded, to some degree, in the genetic material passed on from our two biological parents.

Kaus:

...why should taxpayers fork over $30 billion so that UAW workers can continue to make $28 an hour as opposed to, say, $26 an hour or even $24 an hour, which would still be a reasonable wage these days? Or so that GM's bondholders don't have to take a bigger loss? It's not as if other workers--even at companies way more successful than GM broke--aren't taking big wage cuts. ...

"The world is nuts. The country is nuts. The government is nuts." Eat a Sea Kitten. Heck, eat two of 'em. Halibut is my choice.

Certification. It will replace much of "higher ed." Good idea. Plato, sad to say, is not for everybody. There is a natural aristocracy of mind - and I do not claim to be part of it.

The Tea Party is growing. Good fun. Why should moonbats be the only ones to protest? It's patriotic, right?

How Spring Break could pay off the entire US deficit

Oh no! Not a penny for Katrina! Never mind about that Katrina scam. Game over.

A VDH mini-rant. A quote:

Mr. Biden, there is no reason to set the reset button on foreign policy, as you promised all those Europeans. None at all. Tell that resetting stuff instead to Ahmadinejad, Chavez, that Korean nut, Putin, and all the other thugs who kill and cause misery, but not to our America that saves and feeds and helps. Mrs. Clinton, it’s now your turn. We are not impulsive as you told the world. So you can stop apologizing for America’s recent behavior—unless you think the world would be a better place with the Taliban, and Saddam and his two boys in power. Or maybe Europe should have Schroeder and Chirac back, or Libya with nuclear weapons, or Khalid Sheik Mohammed freed from Guantanamo. Or maybe America shouldn’t have given that $15 billion for AIDs relief in Africa, or helped with earthquakes in Pakistan and tsunamis in Indonesia. Now all that was sorta impulsive.”

As he thinks about this apology business, the battered American always gets a little angrier, “And another thing. Mr. Holder, I’ve never said or done a racist thing in my life, not one. Always supported equal opportunity, always will. So don’t call me a “coward” or my countrymen “cowards,” not when you’re my Attorney General. You are The Attorney General of the United States of America, so please, no more playing Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson, leveling the latest shake-down charge on television.

AP analysis: Dems self-destructing over ethics

Courts full of junk science. Can that be fixed?

Is it the dawn of a Newt Age? I hope so.

It's only 5 states with foreclosures. h/t, Insty

Our Socialist friend Stumbling defends bonuses.

Who is to blame? Neither Dodd nor Frank. Course not.

Who was John January? Wow

ACORN breaking into homes, occupying them. Good grief. What are people thinking?

Dems keep trashing the past. It is unbecoming of them. Gentlefolk do not do things like that.

Even the horrible Soros agrees that letting Lehman fail was a big mistake. It was, but I also understand why it was done. I am in golf and cash. I meant gold and cash. And real estate, which changes in value but never disappears. that's why it is called "real."

The NYT omits one inconvenient truth. Yes, the world is getting colder. I can feel it every morning here.

When we release Gitmo creeps.

Jindal rejects gummint $. Good on him. Most state and local governments are acting like whores.

Has anyone seen Lie To Me? I wonder how it is.

As goes California, so goes the country?

California is in a French-like bind: unable to afford a welfare-type state, and unable to overhaul it. "The people say they want all these programs, then there's nothing they want to pay for," says Hector De La Torre, a Democratic assemblyman. "The schizophrenia in the legislature reflects the peoples'."

Train people to act like babies, and they will gladly do so. I have already been asked by many how to take advantage of the stimulus, and so we are working on it. Our clients pay taxes, and they want their piece of the action too. Why not? They will be paying for it, and they aren't stupid.

An excerpt from Vaclav Klaus' speech to the EU parliament last week:

The present decision making system of the European Union is different from a classic parliamentary democracy, tested and proven by history. In a normal parliamentary system, part of the MPs support the government and part support the opposition. In the European parliament, this arrangement has been missing. Here, only one single alternative is being promoted and those who dare thinking about a different option are labelled as enemies of the European integration. Not so long ago, in our part of Europe we lived in a political system that permitted no alternatives and therefore also no parliamentary opposition. It was through this experience that we learned the bitter lesson that with no opposition, there is no freedom. That is why political alternatives must exist. 

He is completely right, and the unelected EU mandarins don't want to hear it. More here at NRO. The EU has nothing to do with freedom.

The correct position is the one held by self-loathing intellectuals, like Isaiah Berlin, Edmund Burke, James Madison, Michael Oakeshott and others. These were pointy heads who understood the limits of what pointy heads can know. The phrase for this outlook is epistemological modesty, which would make a fine vanity license plate.

The idea is that the world is too complex for us to know, and therefore policies should be designed that take account of our ignorance.

David Brooks

David Brooks tries to make the case for showering money on "frauds and greedy idiots" (his words). He does a lot of "we should...for the good of all" talk.

But what he never says is "I, David Brooks, want to shower my own money on frauds and greedy idiots." Of course, he could do that today if he wanted to. All he'd have to do would be to phone a Merced, CA bank and offer to cover somebody's defaulted mortgage. One phone call. He can afford to do that, and so can multi-millionaires Obama, Hillary, Rahm Emanuel, John Kerry, Charlie Rangel, Ted Kennedy, etc. - and zillionaire Dems like Bill Gates, Bob Rubin, George Soros, etc.

Hence our proposal: If every caring Liberal in the USA would do that to the extent of their ability, problem solved. Plus they would get to feel good about themselves, and to prove that they care.

We just want to see some proof. Readers may have seen Jammie Wearing, who noted in our link this morning how MA taxpayers refuse to "help the children" with voluntary tax dollars when given an easy opportunity to do so: "the left wants to have at it with your money, not their own." (All you need to do is to look at all of the Dem tax cheats unearthed this winter. Now we have Al Sharpton too to add to the lengthening list of prominent Dem tax dodgers.)

But to get back to mortgages, it seems clear to me that government mortgage deals, while buying votes, will accomplish little to (artificially) support the prices of housing. After all, the government already does tons of things to distort and to artificially support and inflate housing prices: mortgage interest deductions*, the passing forward of cap gains from a sold house to a new one, the one-time 1/2 million free throw when you sell, etc.

And speaking of enabling dysfunctional behavior, here's a good use of stimulus $: Free housing for drunken bums. Save me a room, just in case.

* The mortage interest deduction raises the price of housing just as the availablility of student loans and scholarships raise the price of college tuition. These things are not favors to us: they are favors for the greedy housing and greedy academic industries, disguised as favors for us.

Photo via Tiger's amusing series of photos from the Denver protest. Me? Unlike The NJ, I don't want a pony. Already have enough equines. I just want a free one-week trip to Siena. Make that 10 days, so I can cover a little more ground.

Sowell: How government legal threats created the sub-prime mortgage market. Naturally, they didn't want to hold on to that junk, so they packaged it up, and sold it to willing buyers. Totally logical. If you think there aren't people out there who want to buy junk, just check out eBay some time. They once had a booming market in Beanie Babies. Caveat emptor.

Ed. notes:

Related from neoneo: Bubbles and the Tragedy of The Commons
Related from Dino: Grifters get a second chance

While understanding that Putin is a tricksy Russian who, like all national leaders does not always say what he means and who always - correctly - has his own nation's interests at heart, we do agree with almost everything he said at his Davos opening speech on January 28. One quote:

...the state's increased role in times of crisis is a natural reaction to market setbacks. Instead of streamlining market mechanisms, some are tempted to expand state economic intervention to the greatest possible extent.

The concentration of surplus assets in the hands of the state is a negative aspect of anti-crisis measures in virtually every nation.

In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made the state's role absolute. In the long run, this made the Soviet economy totally uncompetitive. This lesson cost us dearly. I am sure nobody wants to see it repeated.

Nor should we turn a blind eye to the fact that the spirit of free enterprise, including the principle of personal responsibility of businesspeople, investors and shareholders for their decisions, is being eroded in the last few months. There is no reason to believe that we can achieve better results by shifting responsibility onto the state.

And one more point: anti-crisis measures should not escalate into financial populism and a refusal to implement responsible macroeconomic policies. The unjustified swelling of the budgetary deficit and the accumulation of public debts are just as destructive as adventurous stock-jobbing.

As Mark Levin noted tonight, he sounds more free-market than Obama. The notion that the State knows best is insane. Our admin's instincts now appear to be to the left of both Russia and China. Read the whole thing.

Black AG working for black President says Americans need to make "racial progress" and to deal with race better by somehow becoming more race conscious. I always thought the goal was color-blindness - to deal with individuals, not skin colors. It's not hard to do that, because there seem to be about a thousand different skin tones in the US.

I think we ought to speak - and think - less about race. It's a stupid subject.

The giant private equity fund Cerberus, which owns Chrysler, wants another 5 billion from the taxpayers to stay in business.

But Cerberus itself refuses to invest further funds into Chrysler. Chrysler, sad to say, is dead. Bury it.

Bloomberg on Merced, CA. I don't know what the big deal is about one's house being underwater. Heck, when you take out a car loan on a new car you are immediately underwater too, paying off a now-used car at a new car price. Nobody promised that housing prices can only go up. The extent of subprime lending still amazes me though, and the willingness of supposedly prudent fiduciary institutions to buy that crap amazes me too. One quote:

U.S. homeowners lost an estimated $3.3 trillion in house value last year, real estate valuation service Zillow said. In California, the state with the most foreclosure filings, the share of underwater owners will rise to a third of all mortgage holders by the end of the year, according to data provider First American LoanPerformance of Santa Ana, California.

Merced, located about 110 miles southeast of San Francisco in California’s agricultural Central Valley, became a housing boom town in the early part of the decade as buyers with subprime loans sought affordable property within commuting distance of Bay Area job centers, said Jeff Michael of the University of the Pacific’s Eberhardt School of Business in Stockton.

Median home prices in Merced rose from $150,000 in January 2002 to a peak $382,750 in December 2005, according to MDA DataQuick, a San Diego-based property research firm. In December 2008, the median stood at $120,500, down 52 percent from a year earlier, as four out of five resales involved properties that had been foreclosed on in the prior 12 months.