What is the use of running
when we are on the wrong road?
Bavarian proverb
Falling Birth Rates: Are We Following the Lead
of Japan, Europe, Russia and China?
According to National Journal:
The U.S. birth rate dropped to its lowest level since the beginning of the Great Depression, led by a drop among immigrants. Overall, the birth rate declined 8 percent from 2007 to 2010.
Hispanic women - both those born in and those born outside the U.S. - experienced larger birth-rate declines from 2007 to 2010 than other groups.In 2010, immigrants represented about 13 percent of the U.S. population while foreign-born mothers accounted for 23 percent of all births. Hispanics also experienced greater percentage declines in household wealth than white, black, or Asian households between 2005 and 2009, according to the report. Latinos also experienced a greater rise in poverty and unemployment than non-Latinos after the Great Recession began.An aging population has ominous implications for future economic growth. We need sweeping immigration reform (with reforms of quotas, temporary foreign workers, and a higher emphasis om merit vs. blood ties--including but going beyond the Latino issues): government needs to get out of the way of businesses getting the resources they need to produce goods and services..
Good Overview of Capitalism
The Class Warfare Kerfuffle
The fact that a term-limited President and a Dem-controlled Senate are, for the second time in 2 years, playing a game of political chicken over an economically-counterproductive class warfare tax hike by making the tax hike a nonnegotiable condition is really a calculation that the GOP will pay a political price for failing to renew the rest of the tax cuts (vs. calling Obama's bluff of vetoing a comprehensive renewal: in fact, Obama would pay a stiff price for a veto, and he knows that.)
We know progressives/social liberals are mathematically challenged--the CBO-estimated $82B or so in additional upper class tax revenue of expiring Bush taxes amounts to barely a down payment on trillion dollar deficits,
Let's face it the Bush tax cuts were not enough to result in robust economic growth. their reversal of course will dampen growth. Moreover, they were never permanent.
But the pressure is on the Dems to keep the 75% going to the middle class. If I'm Boehner, I'm going to make Obama pay for the remaining Bush tax cuts with spending cuts.
Entertainment Potpourri
This short film is available in a short story collection by the original author Elizabeth Silance Ballard from Google Books here; to license Mary Robinson Reynolds' adaption, see here; it is also available for online viewing here (there are several versions of the story on Youtube, and the story is replicated on the Internet (here, in 2 versions)).
Familiar readers may remember some of these anecdotes. My second nephew (sister #2) had grown up in the shadow of two overachieving older siblings, One day I saw him coloring pictures; I enthusiastically commented on his artwork, and I could tell that he was thrilled with the attention; he responded by creating and giving me a dozen originals over the remainder of the afternoon.
Then there was the time I as a professor in one of my last classes handed back my students' projects; I diligently graded them (on test essay questions or problems I would rank order responses to ensure grading consistency, and I worked hard on providing detailed, balanced feedback, although I suspected most if not all, would never go past the grade). Until this young man approached me with a look of disbelief on his face. "You read this yourself, not a grader; these comments are spot on. You understood everything." At first, I was annoyed that the student questioned my professionalism, hut I didn't interrupt him. He explained that he had worked so hard on this project and felt his hard work had been vindicated by the time and effort I had taken in reviewing it, that his own work was taken seriously and treated respectfully.
Two incidents in college particularly come to mind. My philosophy professor Sister Mary Christine had a way of ruining one's weekend. For example, if we had an exam scheduled for Monday, at the end of Friday's lecture she might hand out a list of 20-25 essay questions and suggest 3 or 4 of them might appear on the exam. And she rigorously graded essay responses on a 4-point scale. I usually did quite well, but I remember I didn't get rated a 4.0 on one question and I compared my answer with another student's, whom got a higher mark on his or her answer. I complained to Sister Mary Christine that I wrote a better answer, and to my surprise, she readily conceded the point. She explained that I as a gifted student was being held to a higher standard and she knew I was capable of better work. On the one hand, I thought it was unfair from a competitive standpoint, but it was awesome that she treated me respectfully as a gifted scholar and expected more from me.
Then I remember my saintly dissertation chair, Richard Scamell. (He once said if he hadn't pursued a career as a professor, he would have been a minister. I believe it: somehow he put up with my nonsense. I, of course, tended to be long-winded, and Scamell would tease that it takes me 20 minutes just to introduce myself.) But to give an example before the dissertation, I conceived a form of psychological scaling I called "triads" (I used a legacy scaling method for the dissertation, the semantic differential), and Scamell was openly enthusiastic. I wasn't one of those who published some offshoot of their chair's research program. The autonomy and self-confidence helped me as I started my career in "publish or perish" academia. As I've mentioned before I offered to put his name on my early papers, but he refused to take credit for my work. He is one of the most respected, popular professors in the history of the university. I only wished that he had prepared me for the Machiavellian politics of academia. I had a false Leibnizian expectation of "come, let us calculate" our differences.
[9/3/13: I noticed when I reviewed this post, which got an unusual number of hits yesterday, that the video I originally embedded was no longer on Youtube (copyright/fair use issues?) The original link to the story website still works. There are alternative versions on Youtube, one of which I've substituted below.]
Musical Interlude: Christmas Retrospective
Charlie Brown/Vince Guaraldi Trio, "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing"
