Parents Can't Get No Respect!

Have you noticed how hard it is to find well-mannered young folks with deference to authority?

On our daily walk, my wife and I were discussing some incidents we had observed. Most recently, she had been working with a group of preschoolers for which she is a volunteer reader. Certain members of her group repeatedly attempted to tell teachers what to do and when. They showed absolutely no patience for delayed gratification.  I don't think that's uncommon anymore.

Maybe it's an artifact of the modern two-earner family, where parenting is squeezed in-and-around job responsibilities and whatever social enjoyments young parents may be able to keep up.

Maybe it's an artifact of the modern one-parent household, where a single parent attempts to act as both, as well as maintain a job and a home.

But I've got another idea: maybe it's an artifact of modern humor!

When my kids were small, Brenda and I read to them constantly. One of their favorite series was The Berenstain Bears. I remember grouching that anytime the little bears needed a bad example, all they had to do was observe their dad. Papa Bear eternally exhibited heedless behavior which Mama then had to gently correct and thus show the young bears how they should behave, in situations ranging from keeping a tidy room to withholding negative judgments on bears who were not well-liked.  As a dad myself, I didn't like the use of Papa Bear as a frequent negative example.

Now, I've not studied the topic scientifically, but... after talking on our walk, I came back, unfolded the comics in today's paper (which in our town are a measly single page!), and wrote down this list of daily comic strips that routinely portray the family father as the clueless, shiftless, feckless, thoughtless, or silly one of the family: Blondie, Marvin, For Better or Worse, Dustin, Sally Forth, Baby Blues, Hagar the Horrible, Snuffy, and Zits. If you want to include mothers of that description, some of those and perhaps one or two more would qualify.

Why do we find parents (especially fathers) behaving badly (or uncool) funny?  When did that trend start?

And what are we teaching kids about having respect for their parents?

Trim the 1%

Incensed about the "1%?" Think they own too much of the money and don't pay enough tax? Stop paying them!

While certainly not accounting for all of the moneyed class, the sports stars you idolize are included in it. Their fortune is totally due to the voluntary transfer of wealth from the sports-consuming public to them. They play games you played for free as a kid. But through your purchase of tickets, branded merchandise, endorsed products, and cable TV coverage, they get billions every year.

It's so crazy that even non-players get rich. Dabo Swinney is something of a minor god here in northern SC (in spite of Clemson being squashed in the Orange Bowl). I haven't heard a word in the media regretting his salary and bonuses, which run somewhere around $2 million. Per. Year. Heck, the coach of Boise State just got a RAISE of $375K. The members of the State Board of Education in Idaho, who granted the raise, almost certainly don't make that kind of money themselves. Seven people could comfortably have been employed for that much money, but the Board regarded it as important to get Petersen up to $2 million. Like Swinney.


Need I point out that Swinney and Petersen coach teams of AMATEUR sportsmen?

As a very sad postscript to this story, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) put out a press release in January, 2011, grading Idaho's four public universities which the State Board oversees. Here is part:

It offers a Pass or Fail grade in four key areas: what a college education costs, how the universities are governed, what students are learning and whether the marketplace of ideas is vibrant.
Cost & Effectiveness: F
Governance and Board Accomplishments: Pass/Incomplete
General Education: F
Intellectual Diversity: F
The report finds:
• Undergraduate tuition and fees in the state of Idaho have been outpacing inflation in recent years and taking an increasing bite out of the average household’s income. Meanwhile, retention and graduation rates remain below national averages.

So, Idaho - you're getting failing grades on your colleges, but, by God, you're getting a hell of a football team! Hope you like the trade-off!

In the pros, you get people like Albert Haynesworth, whose $100 million contract made him think he could dictate the defensive scheme to his coach and ended up suspended for the season. Oh yeah, and this is the guy who in 2006 removed an opponent's helmet and stomped on his head.  Now, there's a winner of a 1-percenter! When pay scales are based on satisfying a player's ego as a top practitioner of his position, there is NO upper end except the amount the consuming public wants to pay for its sports addiction. And salving monster-size egos is not a reasonable method for income distribution.

Think your "Occupy" movement will transform matters? Your "Occupy Stadium/Arena" movement is part of the problem! Want to reform the 1%? Start by pushing sports idols out of it; if we can do that, then we'll go after the bankers!

Tax Me!

It's becoming clear to me that there are reasons, good reasons, why we have massive deficits being run up by the Federal Government.  Quite frankly, over time, it has been trying to become the candy shop for just about every demographic... and we, as a nation, have been noticing and changing our behavior.

Is it reasonable to think that you can call for drastic budget cuts and NOT run into interests that have been relying on government help/largess/handouts/bailouts?

Programs (and people) that have the ability to fund themselves have been lulled into accepting government dough for so long that their own budgets are built from the bottom up on HOW MUCH the government is going to give them.  They count on it. And when it looks like it won't materialize some year - they squawk, loudly.

Politicians are human and want to be the nice guys who come with baskets of money, making people happy.  They do not want to be the guys to say, "Sorry, the cupboard is bare."  Then they would become the Bad Guy, and legions of people would yell for them to cut someone else's funds, because, by golly, what WE do is too important to touch!

The local paper frequently carries hot-tempered letters to the editor that deride politicians who just-don't-get the benefits of some program that is being considered for cutbacks.  "Johnny will never learn to read if you take dollars out of this program, and kids are the future, right?"

I confess to having a leaning in that direction myself, when I read what space programs NASA would have to abandon or never launch to meet its projected cuts.  Mea culpa.

So what is the answer?  Let's take this question aside from the usual political process of "kicking the can down the road" (think: Social Security).

The answer, according to people of a certain mindset, is to shake down the rich.  "Tax cuts for the rich!" was one of the most toxic phrases tossed around Washington during the Bush administration.  The people who averred we should tax them more ignore (at least) two important points.

Forbes says the world has 1210 billionaires.  The world, not America. They have a total net worth, collectively, of about $4.5 trillion.  Here's a sobering exercise: go visit http://www.usdebtclock.org/ and watch for a few seconds.  If you emptied their vaults, confiscated their yachts, and took even the last fine Havana cigar from every one of these rich people, you haven't come halfway to paying down the existing Federal debt. We're going to post more than $1 trillion of red ink just this year!

So the first point is: the "rich" don't have enough money to fix the problem.

I would bet that the vast majority of "boomers" (of which I am one) were taught by their parents to stand on their own two feet, to make their own decisions, to accept responsibility for themselves. We learned to want never to appear "needy" - requiring someone's charity just to make ends meet.

The government has been busy undermining that.

For Tax Year 2009, reported in April, 2010, 47% of American earners paid no Federal income tax... or actually received a tax "rebate" (rebate? for taxes not paid?).  According to consulting firm Deloitte Tax, a family of four with two kids under age 17 owed no Fed tax for incomes up to $50,000.  The center cut of the middle class - that is, the middle 20% of households - had incomes ranging from $35,400 to $52,100. This illustrates that even very solidly middle-class earners had no Fed tax liability.

I'm not forgetting payroll taxes for Social Security and MediCare. I'm just talking Federal Income Tax here.  Now, how and why did we reach this point, where nearly half of US households do not contribute to the general pot that funds much of our government? Our legislators are responsible.  They have cut taxes to curry favor, AND they have handed out money for causes they consider "worthy" to curry more favor or to salve their charitable  inclinations.  And everyone who has benefited from this largess has gotten used to it.

I'm under no illusions. The country cannot afford to provide benefits that are not paid for by revenues. (That's why Congress annually raids the Social Security Trust Fund and replaces real money with IOUs. A metaphor I heard recently makes the import of this action clear: If I owe you $10 and you ask for payment, do you care whether I reach in my left or right pocket? What if I label my left pocket "Social Security" and my right pocket "General Revenues"?  No, you just want your $10.  If all I have is $6, I've gotta get a loan somewhere for the rest, because the IOUs from my right pocket that were "paid" to my left pocket can't be used to pay you.  And that's exactly what the country is doing.)

Point Two is that the combination of tax reduction and benefit increase which has resulted in our colossal debt has rendered many of us otherwise patriotic and responsible citizens dependent on the government continuing business as usual.

I realize that after doing taxes this year, we're part of the problem. As a household with two retired people and one college student, by totting up one pension, one Social Security benefit, various dividends and bond interest, occasional work as a Census employee and a commercial audiobook narrator, and capital gains on 401K funds cashed in to provide living funds, we barely creep into the center cut.  And our tax liability this year? Zero.

So the TechSmiths get all the advantages of the Federal government, including defense and highways and... you name it... and they aren't paying for a bit of it. Since our earned income is very low, we've paid next to nothing for Social Security this year... but we're receiving a benefit. (I know that we paid into the fund all those years we worked.)

I'm saying that although our income is not especially opulent, we have money to meet our obligations, fund charities as we wish, and could afford (with good management) to pay taxes. I know that because the government deducted $3,500 from our various income sources and we made-do without it. Then we filed our taxes and got it all back.  Woohoo! Party!

But should I exult in a nice refund? I expected to be taxed and I wasn't.  I feel I should have been taxed: my family consumes services and they have to be paid for.  Why shouldn't I pay?  But I'm like you - just one citizen. If I let the government keep the $3,500 it won't hold back a tenth of a second on the Debt Clock. It's only if all the people like me, in their millions, each pay the $3,500 that we can arrest the Debt Clock (for a little while, at least.)

So, TAX ME!!  I deserve it!

Another Reason We Fail to Educate

OK, we've all discussed the usual culprits out the ying-yang: Not all kids are adequately prepared for school,we're trying to mainstream too many special-needs kids, parents don't stay connected with their kids' schooling, "No Child Left Behind" makes everyone teach to the test (and doesn't award 'E' for effort), the teacher's unions make it impossible to fire poor performers, there's never enough money provided by government... Did I miss any?


Here's a new wrinkle that occurs to me: we're preventing our teachers from leaving.

Without an explanation, you could read any of a number of things into that, but here's where I'm coming from - Many people find out "when they grow up" that they really want to be doing something else. Maybe their profession was a poor pick from the start, or maybe, their interests have ripened and matured and lead in another direction.  Or they retire early, and then discover they want to try something completely different, just to keep their hand in, make some money, and stay relevant.

I've seen this in my own family. My mother trained as an RN and worked half a career at it. Then she went back to school for a library science degree and was a school librarian until she retired. My dad was a civilian engineer in the Engineer Research & Development Laboratory at Ft. Belvoir, VA. He retired early, and a couple years later satisfied an old itch to try surveying by taking a job in a county surveyor's office, until he died just before he turned 61. I spent a career in chemical research and manufacturing, retired early, and am now seeing about starting a second career in recording audio books.

I know lots of the movement between jobs/careers is driven by technology advances and market forces. How many lamplighters or trolley conductors are employed these days? And how many textile mill workers have had to retrain as something else as a result of the industry disappearing offshore?

But how about teachers? Teaching is the ultimate portable profession, because everywhere you go, short of the South Pole (and maybe there!) people are needed to teach/instruct/train/educate other people. So teaching is a good choice if you want to work in a specific place, or want to work wherever you find yourself. It mates well to a spouse with an itinerant profession, like the military, or one that restricts its practice to only certain places, like mining. And although we improve classroom technology with smart boards and such, we still rely on humans to carry much of the load of teaching.

"Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach." Forget that old saw! Plenty of capable people take up teaching for the reasons above, or because they love working with kids, or - any of a bunch of reasons. But here's our little gotcha: when you decide to become a teacher, we make it darned tough to change your mind.

While the rest of the country was enduring downsizing, re-engineering, and the change from the traditional pension to 401K's - we insulated our teachers from most of it. If they were bright enough to survive X years of teaching at the early end of their career, they were swept into systems of tenure or into teacher's unions where only the direst circumstances would threaten their jobs. They were promised and awarded valuable benefits that had virtually disappeared from the working world outside of government. Work thirty years and get a pension. Get health care for life. Get opportunities for massively increased pay, if you choose to work more after retirement; I know where you can pick a year's salary for 30 days work post-retirement (I have a family member who enjoys that perk).

Most thoughtful persons agree that we undervalue teachers with respect to pay. As direct shapers of the next generation of workers, teachers have a huge impact on our country, yet we usually don't pay them as if they did. Part of this is explained away by the fact we continue to live with the vestiges of America's agricultural past, where children had to be released from their studies in the summer to help their parents get the crops in. In spite of our urbanized present, we still stick (largely) to this old practice of making education a 9-month-a-year endeavor. There is no doubt that students AND teachers like and appreciate a 3-month break from seeing each other. But paying a 9-month salary means that too many teachers need a second income in the family to live at a middle-class level.

We've added and kept the end-of-career perks noted above to retain teachers in the profession. My opinion is that we can no longer afford to use that device to aid retention. Various states are already flirting with reneging on their contracts with teachers (NJ comes to mind) because they are unsustainable. The accumulated promises far outweigh the money set aside to pay them. (Why? That's politics - and perhaps the focus of a future post!)

Why don't teachers worn out by the succession of education "initiatives" like "No Child Left Behind", worn out by budget cuts for basic supplies they feel compelled to purchase out of their own pockets, or just plain worn out from all the abrasion of dealing with unruly, parents-don't-care kids, leave and take a "real job" somewhere else? Why, when teachers feel a need to start a fresh career doing something else, do they suck it up and stay?

It's because we have too thoroughly given them incentive to stay.

They have "so many" years toward their thirty that they feel they can't afford to throw away all the promises. Even when the promises may well turn out to be hollow.

Remember the beginning of this post? People often change course, make a fresh start, rejuvenate their flagging enthusiasm with a mid-life career change... except in teaching. Teachers are trapped by the promises. Even if they desperately want "out!" of the classroom, those promises stick their feet to the floor. And there is no corresponding incentive to draw in mature workers from the outside, so it is imperative that experienced teachers be retained.

What is my solution?

• Make teaching a year-round job, so that it commands a 12-month salary. (Do that any way practical! Do away with summer vacations, if necessary, or stagger school sessions on a 4-session per year schedule so that teachers can work even if the students get 3 months off.)
• Evaluate teaching at all the various levels against productive work in the private sector. 
• Establish a competitive market salary for someone doing equivalent work at an equivalent level of experience and personal education.
• PAY at the competitive salary rate.
• GIVE BENEFITS in accord with private norms.

This will allow the free flow of talent out AND IN to teaching. Retraining to take up a new profession is normal, so you can still expect a midlife changer to get education credentials to become a teacher. But paying the 12-month salary makes teaching a desirable profession for someone who is tired of the routine in industry or commerce. And getting seasoned people who have invested half a career in another field gives new emphasis in schools, because these people have seen what works and what doesn't work.

That's it in a nutshell, folks. We get better, more motivated people in charge of our kids' education when we put teaching on a par with other professions, and don't stack on inducements that only kick in after 30 years!

The Business of College Athletics

The news is rather shocking.

Not too long ago, the newspaper reported that only about 20% of NCAA football programs paid for themselves. That is, their ticket sales, booster club contributions, TV cut - all that didn't meet their costs. The reason is clear: everyone is trying to keep up with the Joneses.

As a local example, USA Today reported in March that the Clemson University 10-man coaching staff compensation increased 56% (http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/football/2010-03-09-coaches-salaries_N.htm) despite running a deficit and taking state-ordered furloughs. That was before Head Coach Dabo Swinney got his bump-up from about $800K to $1.75million this year.   From the best data I could winkle from Google, that's about SEVEN times what Clemson's President, James Barker, makes. And that's just the guaranteed money; he can earn bonuses like the half-mil he landed last year.
Swinney's pay doesn't take him up but to about the median of big-school salaries for head coach.

Why are we paying the head jocks like this? A University is an institution of higher learning, but it seems that it is becoming an annex of the NFL.  The usual defense for expenditures like these are hard to quantify. The University of California-Berkely says its sports program "adds to campus spirit and unity, provides free advertising for the campus, helps in branding, and provides a link and outreach to alumni."  Woohoo. Here I was thinking that people attend U-CAL to get a degree and that its record in producing peer-respected graduates is what attracts new students. This pap about "branding" says the Marketing School is taking itself too seriously!

USA Today (as printed in The Greenville News) asserts today that colleges are meeting their deficits in the sports programs by instituting and raising mandatory student fees. "Students were charged more than $795 million to support sports programs at 222 Division I public schools during the 2008-9 school year."  Six schools in Virginia each charged over $1,000 per student per year in fees to support athletics.

And athletic programs are so fond of dumping scholarships on skilled athletes that the NCAA has found it necessary to institute minimum standards for the percentages that actually achieve a degree. Does anyone need to be told: scholarships are funded by other people's money?

To my mind, it's not surprising that other countries are producing more of the people who will make the world run than the US these days. We seem to be going for a lock on entertainment.

Everlasting Growth

Today I read an article in the newspaper revealing that American births declined last year. With a birth rate of 13.5 per 1,000 (the lowest in the last century; in fact, in 1909 it was 30 per 1,000), the article expressed concern lest we slip into "choked growth" similar to that suffered by Japan.

The economy is disappointing all the economists - growth is too low, < 2% per year.  Seems the US consumer is actually trying to conserve cash, since jobs are iffy.  Credit is tight for consumers and businesses - the bad debts of the past year have resulted in the purse strings at lending institutions being drawn shut. So we can't get enough money moving to "unstick" the engines of growth. And growth we've gotta have.


WHY?

I'm perplexed, unhappy, and worried.  Anyone with a lick of sense can tell you where unbridled growth in the human population is going to take us.  At some point, we're standing shoulder-to-shoulder and sleeping while standing, as there's not enough room on the planet to lie down. (Now, I know we won't reach that point! Countervailing currents will take action before then, but that IS a mathematical certainty of unbridled growth in population.)

Some of the sense that we MUST increase population comes from the realization we haven't funded Social Security adequately to handle us Baby-Boomers. (Well, we tried... but Congress kept robbing the Trust Fund. That's another rant, for later.)

When I was in school, there was an organization called Zero Population Growth that advocated restricting births to the replacement level (assumed to be 2.1 children per woman). I see from a Google search that it still exists, as "Population Connection", today. That philosophy rang truly in my thoughts then and does now. We simply can't support (adequately, at least) an ever-expanding human population.  Population Connection says that the world has increased from 3.5 billion humans when the group started in 1968 to 6.9 billion now.  We're headed towards 11 billion by 2050.

The people in the Third World want to move up. That's understandable. I've read that just in China, economic expansion has forced them to bring a new power plant on-line every week. For those of you fond of the global warming panic - think of what "more humans" means to the planet.

It seems to me that the next thing economists ought to be doing is researching how we can operate a First World country in a no-growth mode. I've read horror stories about stagnation, deflation, and such - they seem to be bigger bogeymen than inflation, which to us Boomers is a big concern.  But do we HAVE to keep growing our business to be happy, well-fed, and supplied with enough personal electronics? Wall Street rewards companies that grow, but isn't there a case for companies that simply make the same healthy income every year?  It appears the answer to that is "NO" in the world as we know it.

I suggest we'd better find out how to make that answer "YES."

Social Justice

We are led to wonder, here at the TechSmiths' house, why entertainment pays so well?
You hear a lot about the high cost of gasoline, of food, clothing, mortgages, TAXES... but why do you hear so much less about the price of tickets to shows, admission to sports, or the price of beer and cheese fries at the local pub?
Are we out of line by wishing that people were paid according to their value to our society or country?

The NFL Draft is what is at issue right now. This evening, the first round began.  According to a story in The Wall Street Journal, based on last year's salaries for first-round picks, each of the first nine players will be offered contracts higher than the compensation received by the CEO of IBM, Mr. Sam Palmisano. Let's put that in perspective.
None of these young men has played in the NFL before, and based on past history, fully 50% of them are expected to bomb out. Mr. Palmisano is an experienced executive who has served high in corporate ranks for a considerable time. First point is experience and it goes to goes to the Businessman.
Mr. Palmisano is responsible for running IBM. None of these young men is responsible for doing more than playing his own position and there are ten other similarly-talented fellows playing alongside him. Second point, responsibility, also goes to the Businessman.
Mr. Palmisano has to be up on his game all year, although he can take a vacation. These draftees have to display their ability only four months a year, although they are expected to condition in the off-season. Third point is diligence, and Businessman wins it.
IBM's revenues for the first quarter of this year were $23 billion, surely quite a pot of money for Palmisano to be caretaker of!  The NFL has annual revenues now reputedly pushing $9 billion. But hey! There are 32 teams, and each of them has dozens of these over-muscled genetic outliers. What part of that $9 billion is Mr. College Hotshot responsible for generating? Fourth point is impact, and Businessman wins by so much you can't see even see Sportsman in the running!
So! WHY does the Sportsman get more than the Businessman?? 

We have to inform you - YOU are responsible for this miscarriage of social justice. It certainly is not we.  Although we are fans, we do not go to games, we don't have an NFL Ticket on our cable service and we don't buy branded merchandise. (OK, it's true we have a Washington Redskins trashcan in the house, but Mark got that as a gift about thirty years ago!) So we calculate our dollar contribution to the business of NFL football to be shy of single digits. And that means YOU are grinding away at your work, complaining about the poor pay, and then throwing way too much of your cash at your entertainments.

We think that a value system that pays NCAA head coaches more than the presidents of the universities where they work is a miscarriage of justice. We would rather have the professors get star pay than the jocks-in-charge. We think the educators are providing value to the community. The sportsmen are providing diversion.

And if enough people thought that way, the world would change. Start today - say "thank you" to a teacher!