Category: <span>Economics</span>

Labor and Education

September 7, 2009 5:00 am \ Leave a Comment \ by Ray Watkins

The AFL-CIO report, “Young Workers: A Lost Decade,” shows that not only have young workers lost financial ground over the past 10 years—they have also lost some of their optimism.

* More than one in three young workers say they are currently living at home with their parents.
* 31 percent of young workers reports being uninsured, up from 24 percent without health insurance coverage 10 years ago.
* One-third of young workers cannot pay the bills and seven in 10 do not have enough saved to cover two months of living expenses.

Based on a nationwide survey of 1,156 people by Peter D. Hart Research Associates for the AFL-CIO and the AFL-CIO community affiliate Working America, “Young Workers” examines young workers’ economic standing, attitudes and hopes for the future. It also draws a comparison with findings from a similar 1999 AFL-CIO study, as well as with attitudes of workers older than 35.

Labor Day 2009

To many people, the labor movement is all about the bling. In education, this means better salaries for teachers, pensions, and health care. Labor Day, though, ought to be a reminder that the labor movement has never been so narrow and that even the seemingly narrow goals often have a wide ranging and unpredictable impact. A shorter work week creates the weekend, but it also creates the leisure time necessary for all sorts of political organizing and change.

In education, the labor movement represents an attempt to democratize knowledge in several senses. A strong union would correct the imbalance of power in which administrators can override teachers, employees, students, and parents. Administrators should administrate, not govern. The current imbalances won’t be addressed until the union movement extends from kindergarten to graduate school and beyond. As the AFL-CIO suggests, a strong union movement would ensure that education is widely available.

The reactionary mind says that “college education” isn’t for everyone. That may or may not be true. It is not up to us to decide who will benefit from an education. In a democracy we decide for ourselves. That’s why restricting educational access through testing or financing is undemocratic and dysfunctional. An educated culture would not eliminate jobs that were once only taken by the uneducated, either. It would transform those jobs in ways we can’t predict. That’s why Labor Day is important.

Posted in: Economics, Professional, Union, Writing

History Repeated, this Time as Farce

August 21, 2009 5:00 am \ 1 Comment \ by Ray Watkins

“The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money”-Margaret Thatcher.

With a projected $1.8 trillion deficit for 2009, several trillions more in deficits projected over the next decade, and with both Medicare and Social Security entitlement spending about to ratchet up several notches over the next 15 years as Baby Boomers become eligible for both, we are rapidly running out of other people’s money. These deficits are simply not sustainable and they are either going to result in unprecedented new taxes and inflation or they will bankrupt us.

Health Care Reform, by John Mackey, August 14, 2009

I am not sure what to think about John Mackey, health-food billionaire, starting his piece with a quote from Margaret Thatcher. Either he is utterly ignorant of Thatcher’s violent regime or he means to call up an image of her reactionary politics, a kind of mindless mean-spiritedness, as the guiding spirit of his vision of the future. Who needs enemies if this is our friend?

I remember Mackey’s Whole Foods Market from its earliest days in Austin, Texas. Mackey’s genius, if you want to call it that, was to privatize the ideas of the local food cooperatives. The best known of these coops was Wheatsville Coop. (It still exists.) What Mackey did was to remove the democratic structures of these coops and replace them with individual greed.

Even more cleverly, he used the dietary philosophy of the coops as a kind of combination smoke-screen/ rationalization for this personal aggrandizement. He wasn’t just getting rich, he was helping to build a better world. Mackey was and is a master of this sort of new age euphemism. Like Wal-Mart, he doesn’t hire ’employees’ he hires ‘team members.’ He gets rich; ‘team members don’t need unions.’

Mackey rehearses all of his long-standing themes here, too, especially the notion that government should just get out of the way and let the health care industry fix itself. He also repeats the myths of shortages and long lines supposedly attributable to socialized medicine. I think anyone interested in education ought to pay close attention to this kind of argument.

It’s not just a good teaching moment for talking about the way market ideas become market fanaticism, and the way market fanatics often feel the need to falsify information in order to defend the indefensible. It’s also an good example of the arguments we will surely see as we try to defend the public school system against continued privatization. It’s just not funny anymore.

Posted in: Economics, Online Places

Education Costs: Pot, Meet Kettle

August 17, 2009 5:00 am \ Leave a Comment \ by Ray Watkins

In today’s tough economy, more people are questioning why colleges cost so much. Many blame administrative bloat and inefficiency. Over the past 20 years, as enrollment has grown by 40 percent, the number of support-staff members on campuses has doubled, according to a report from the Center for College Affordability and Productivity.

But we must place higher education in context. It’s important to recognize that growth in support staff compared with enrollment reflects a set of natural responses to shocks that are broadly affecting many other industries as well.

As defined in the center’s report, “support staff” comprises many job categories. Two of the important ones are computer specialists and workers in business and financial operations. Both types of employees occupy an increasingly important role in colleges and in the economy as a whole. They also represent highly educated workers.

College Administrations Are Too Bloated? Compared With What?, Robert B. Archibald and David H. Feldman

I don’t want to pretend that I know these guys’ work; I don’t. They apparently have a book coming out about college costs, and it’s hard to be critical before the book’s done. But when someone seems to try to justify the rising costs of education by comparing it to the rising cost of dentistry, red flags go up.

On the other hand, the comparison may be apt in ways not explored in this piece (and potentially explored in the book). One reason, for example, that public health care systems are cheaper is that they don’t have so many administrative costs. And one of the most important of those administrative costs are the high salaries of administrators.

I think the authors are right to suggest that at least some of the rising costs of education has to do with all of the new things we expect education to do. Like medicine (and presumably dentistry) technology is driving up the costs. Like medicine, too, if we keep letting the costs of education rise, we will pay an enormous price. I don’ think education costs have to keep rising.

Like private health care, I think the salaries of administrators and, too often, academic stars, are absurdly inflated. Too often, universities now work as public funded research wings for all sorts of industries. The costs of education, like the costs of medical care, are marbled throughout the system, and it’ll take trimming to get it out. I hope the books shows us how.

Posted in: Economics, Writing

The Apollo Aliance and That Vision Thing

August 10, 2009 5:00 am \ 2 Comments \ by Ray Watkins

Residents of Kankakee County, Illinois are ready for the new clean energy economy. Inspired by the calls for more green jobs during the 2008 presidential campaign, a local group of business, education, and government leaders is working to make green-collar jobs a reality in their region. They recognize the potential for green-collar jobs to transform the local economy while also benefitting the country and the environment. They also see investment in wind energy as the wave of Kankakee’s clean energy future.

Vision Energy’s $1 Billion Wind Bet in Illinois, April 21, 2009, Mac Lynch, Apollo News Service

I am really trying not to be Mr. Education-Politics Party-Pooper. These are horrible times for education, with cuts at all levels in every state. Much of that is due to the economic slowdown, although no doubt the right will not let this crisis pass without chipping away at educational autonomy in one way or the other. The real loss will access; tuition is like a tax without regulation.

We are on the verge of a real boom in education, once the economy recovers and the Obama administration gets past the health care debate. (I will avoid the obvious Dickens reference.) The highway robbery of the student loan system will probably end, releasing all sorts of money for education. The worst of the “No Child Behind” debacle is probably over, even if its effects remain.

There’s a close link between the Obama administrations’ economic stimulus package, the greening of energy, and the community colleges, too. It’s hard to complain about that, either. The community college system is probably one of the most accessible educational systems ever created. More of that is always good. But here’s where I start feeling that sharp pinch of liberal limitation.

It’s great that they are putting windmills up in Kankakee (about 2 hours north of here) and it makes sense that the community colleges would work together to try to provide the training. But it bugs me that they feel they have to do this in such a narrowly vocational way. Where’s the vision? The community colleges do much more than just train workers.

We need people who know how to work on windmills, but we also need windmill workers who have the critical and intellectual skills needed to accelerate the ongoing expansion and refinement of democracy here in the U.S. I don’t mean to disparage community college teachers. I bet they will add the critical thinking elements wherever they can. But it should be a part of the rhetoric, too.