Quote of the Day
Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Unknown
Is the 20-Month-Old Obama Recovery Gaining Traction?
What's to argue about nonfarm payroll employment going up by 192,000 last month and the unemployment rate breaking 9% to 8.9% for the first time in almost 2 years? Well, among other things, if we look at Table A-1. we see in the seasonally adjusted data that the change of people not in the labor force is double the amount added to the employment numbers--while the labor participation rate has gone from 64.8% to 64.2% over the past year: a 27-year low. In other words, more people are giving up on finding a job than there are people finding work... I suspect that even if hiring picks up, we'll see the unemployment rate sticky high with discouraged people reentering the labor force looking for work.
Veronique de Rugy, "Losing the Brains Race": Thumbs UP!
In yesterday's post, I embedded Reason's tongue-in-cheek video showcasing the underlying incivility of the Democrats and union protesters putting teachers students first in Wisconsin's attempt to get its budget under control. Ms. de Rugy, whose work I have referenced in the past (i.e., Congresswoman Wasserman-Schultz's provocative use of jobs data in comparing the Bush and Obama presidencies), has written an interesting post on international K-12 education comparative performance and costs; related statistics were presented in the video.
There are a few points I want to emphasize from the post, based on my perspective: (1) the issue is not the amount of public spending on education but its effective deployment; (2) the local public school monopoly is guaranteed funding, regardless of performance; (3) parents exercise little effective control over public school options, funding or decision-making; (4) there are barriers to entry and exit of the teacher profession, regardless of performance.
We see Barack Obama, as usual, call for "additional investment" due to the worrisome comparative test score statistics for math and science. Of course, there is no explanation for how the US spends a third more than Finland does on a per-student basis, but Finnish students on average outscore American students on basic tests. (I'm sure that American teachers would complain that Finnish teachers are "teaching to the test"...) This is the familiar progressive response to everything; if the US spends more on health care, there's not a problem with counterproductive public policies: let's just expand enrollment into unsustainable public programs. The public education crisis goes beyond math and science scores; Obama, Bush and others have failed to make a legitimate case for expansion of the federal government into a traditional state/local responsibility. One of the top Democratic priorities over the last several years is to lower the student-teacher ratio, which of course has a union-desired objective of increasing their membership; we have not heard politicians and unions explain why in other countries or in private schools there have been far larger class sizes with better student performance. If we are getting mediocre math and science student test scores, maybe that reflects suboptimal teacher performance. What are other substantive approaches? For example, perhaps one approach would be to expedite the use of voluntary or retired scientists, engineers, actuaries or accountants to teach high school math or science classes.
Public teacher unions fight authentic educational choice (unless they can co-opt it, e.g., require a charter school to use unionized teachers). In fact, they fought to control the disbursements made under the 2009 stimulus plan. If you were going to spend federal money on education, why not use it to lower the cost of parents to choose a better private school for their children? The public schools would have to reform in order to maintain their student funding.
Political Humor
"Mexico's president arrived in Washington. He's here to do the work that American presidents won't do." –Jay Leno
[The president lashed out at bureaucratic rivalries between ICE, DEA, and the CIA and called for reform. President Obama responded by saying he would take Mexican President Calderón's comments under advisement.]
An original:
- Charlie Sheen claims to have "tiger blood" coursing through his veins... Remember when Tiger Woods crashed his car into a tree in the middle of the night? That's right: "sheen blood".
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
The Bee Gees/Andy Gibb, "Desire". The last of Andy Gibb's string of initial 6 Top 10 hits, this song, co-written by the Brothers Gibb, was featured on a best-selling Bee Gees' album listing Andy as guest vocalist with the Bee Gees' distinctive harmony (and Barry's falsetto) all over the track. Andy, don't tell me you lip-synced the performance here...
