“What are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?”

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At this point, McCain should be embarrassed to even say that tax cuts for the rich help the economy. Tax cuts for the rich help the rich, they don't help the economy. It's that simple.

This economic catastrophe was many years in the making. There is no painless way to recover from the collapse of the housing bubble and the correction from an over-valued dollar. We do know that Senator McCain's plan to keep giving the rich more money is not a road to prosperity because that is exactly what we have been doing.

We can't know exactly how Senator Obama will address the economy's problems if he takes office in January in part because we don't know exactly where the economy will be. However, a plan that focuses on supporting ordinary workers and promoting clean technologies, is likely to produce much better results than policies that are focused on redistributing even more income to the wealthy.

CEPR – The Whiner’s Recession, Dean Baker.

This piece could be subtitled, “Or why continuing the Bush/McCain class war is not a good idea.” Or maybe that Einstein quote about the definition of insanity as repeating the same thing again and again and expecting new results. I keep thinking, too about that “Drill Baby Drill” chant at the Republican Convention.

My immediate family, most of whom live on the Texas and Louisiana coasts, have been emailing in all weekend, reporting on everyone, talking about who had to leave for shelter and how long it might be before the electricity comes back. My mother was particularly scared by the Tornado warnings Friday night, in Lake Charles.

Meanwhile gas prices shoot up and giant financial institutions collapse. I can’t help but wonder if people are connecting all of the dots. We can’t blame global warming for a storm, although we might blame it for the ferocity. We can blame so-called free market capitalism, though, for destroying wetlands, which make the storms worse.

The Republican party, starting with Reagan, have consistently dismissed alternative energy and refused to provide capital and leadership. The gas hikes from Ike are a result of the disruption of domestic refineries and supplies. Unless we want to relocate our refineries in a bunker somewhere, Gulf Oil will always be unreliable.

Posted in: Autobiographical, Economics, Writing

The Real Class War Again: In Class

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Nearly every child in America hopes to become a college graduate. Her ambitions are at least partly realistic—rates of high school graduation and college-going are very high. But the chances she will succeed in college are more modest: Less than 60 percent of students entering four-year institutions earn bachelor’s degrees, and barely one-fourth of community college students complete either associate’s or bachelor’s degrees within six years of college entry.

Students from socioeconomically disadvantaged families are even less likely to realize their college ambitions. Only 40 percent of beginning college students from low-income families complete a two- or four-year degree within six years. Rates of degree completion are much higher among high-income students (62 percent). Focusing on the most lucrative undergraduate degree, the baccalaureate, there is a 40 percentage point gap in completion rates between individuals from the bottom and top income quartiles. Since future economic and social success is largely predicated on holding a college degree, this low chance of college success among the poorest students perpetuates growth in income inequality.

A Federal Agenda for Promoting Student Success and Degree CompletionBy Sara Goldrick-Rab, Josipa Roksa | August 12, 2008, Center for American Progress.

Here’s more data from the real class war; this time, on the specific mechanisms that make class mobility more difficult than many believe. Or, rather, one of the mechanisms. It’s also the cost of college, from tuition to room and board, and the drying up of student loans, among other things.

What’s interesting about this report is that it focuses on the “lower-class” of the university system, arguing that more money and attention ought to be paid to “the most accessible but under-resourced schools.” The report’s authors want, in effect, to make mobility among schools easier.

I’m not sure I completely agree with the report, in part because it’s proposals rely so heavily on education sociology jargon– “value added evaluation” and the like. I like the idea, though, of making so-called non-traditional college careers easier to manage.

I did poorly the first time I went to school, and only one of my parents had a degree. I took a non-traditional path through community college, and it took five years overall to get my undergraduate degree. My sisters and most of my cousins have similar stories. Mobility isn’t a straight line.

I took seven years off between my M.A. and then my PhD and I won’t pay off these degrees until retirement. It’s easy to imagine anyone stopping at one of these points, or for any number of financial or individual reasons. Making the nuts and bolts of the system work together more smoothly couldn’t hurt.

Posted in: Autobiographical, Economics, Professional, Writing

The Dream of (Canadian) Centralization

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A Gartner analyst thinks Canada’s natural resources and cooler temperature can help it take advantage of the growing cloud computing trend to provide services and Web applications.

The country has an estimated server installed base of more than one million units, and in the next five years, the market will demonstrate incremental growth typical of a mature market, said Jeffrey Hewitt, vice-president of research with Stamford, Conneticut-based Gartner Inc.

“But is there a way in Canada for that to be boosted beyond that standard incremental projection?” asked Hewitt.

He thinks the country’s years of investment in hydro electric power facilities and ambient temperatures will enable data centres to be powered and subsequently cooled. And, he said, the concerns around power and cooling are only getting bigger as Web content grows with video sharing sites like YouTube. Therefore, the country can take its hydro electric infrastructure to “another level” and extend it to the Web, said Hewitt.

Canada primed for cloud computing: Gartner | The Industry Standard, Kathleen Lau, ComputerWorld Canada.

I used to work at a school that dreamed the dream of centralization and not surprisingly, it was a disaster. This dream is a variant of the automated factory dream; the idea that one day we can get rid of all of those pesky, complaining, expensive workers.

I’m no Luddite. This dream has to do with the idea of a pure profit, divorced from human labor, not with technology. Technology is simply the dominant strategy of the dream in our time. In universities, the dream is as strong as anywhere else, maybe stronger.

Imagine a school without teachers and their pesky unions! Actually, though, the dream as I experienced it had to do with the expense of support people. We had a nightmare of a classroom computer system that needed to be updated. That was clear.

It was also clear that the reason the system was a nightmare was that there was not enough support personnel. Somehow, someone heard about “thin clients”– computers that were, in effect, nothing but a monitor and a box with some flash memory. The software lives on a central server.

It sounds so great. Obviously, the real problem isn’t a lack of support personnel, it’s those wacky students and teachers who keep messing up the system. The “thin clients” made sure that no one could change anything important. It made support almost unnecessary!

The dream was, of course, utterly wrong. In fact the new system was even more of a nightmare than the old, outdated computers. If one thing went wrong somewhere on the network, none of the computers would work. Another dream come true.

The idea of putting the servers in cold places is a good one, but I think it’s also important to think very carefully about cloud computing as the latest instance of the dream of centralization. It’s fine to put all our You-Tube videos in the same place. I’m not sure the same holds true for much else.

Posted in: Autobiographical, Composition, Economics, Professional, Union, Writing

Think Again RPCVs: Robert L. Strauss Revisited

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Most Peace Corps volunteer placements will be in soft positions where big steps towards progress are not feasible. I have sent some students into Peace Corps. One gave up after 6 months. The other stayed an extra year and when her project failed because of local government interference it broke her heart.

The idea of bringing high school students to rural Haiti is ridiculous. I have been with undergraduate and graduate students. They have to be mature enough to deal with what they have to live in. College grads are just barely mature enough to be away from home in a strange country.

Not to sound like I am a Pollyanna for the Corps, but I do think that Volunteers have a big impact. Maybe not all of us, but enough come back and teach, enter public service, run for office, conduct research. The rest of us understand foreign events better than the average citizen, who I might add could use a better international education here. I served with some of the best of the best. I wasn’t one of them, but I tried. I could enter a short list here, but I don’t want to embarrass anybody.

Avram Primack, in a comment on Think Again RPCVs: Robert L. Strauss, May 20, 2008

My hurt little ego aside, I think Mr. Primack is simply wrong; to me, his post represents a lack of imagination that seems particularly upsetting given that in less than five months we may have the first African American president of the United States.

There’s no guarantee that Obama will succeed, but this seems like a good time to dream big. I can’t set out a detailed proposal, given space limitations, but I can sketch out how a program such as the one I suggested might work, starting with the 9th grade.

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Posted in: Autobiographical, Economics, Online Places, Professional, Writing