The United States faces a severe shortage of college graduates in the fields of Science. Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM). Recently the CEO of Intel on Neil Caputo’s TV show lamented this shortage and stated it was a major reason for the lag in growth of jobs in the United States. In a January 2011 article in Scientific American Vnod Khosla, the most widely known investor in clean technologies, stated, “There is plenty of money but not enough breakthrough technologies. There are not enough PhDs in these fields. There is not enough technical talent to make large breakthroughs.” President Obama in his 2011 State of the Union speech claimed this is a “Sputnik moment”. Then added that we need to increase funds for education to become more competitive in a global economy.
The United States is second among the developed nations in the amount of money we spend on education which makes one wonder how spending more money would help. Moreover, we have about 3 million students in college each year which is about four times the number who attended college in 1955 about the time the Russians launched Sputnik into space. So why do we not have enough children becoming educated to become scientists, technologists, engineers or mathematicians? This Perspective will dare to seek the reasons.
The first thing to note is that the ratio of men to women attending our universities has shifted from about 80% male in the 1950’s to about 40% today. In other words, the boys are not going to college at the rate that they were in the ‘50s.
The second thing to note is that the number of females who major in the STEM subjects is significantly less than the males. A study sponsored by the American Association of University Women (AAUW) published in February of 2010, states: “Fewer women than men pursue STEM majors. By graduation men outnumber women in nearly every science and engineering field, and in some such as physics, engineering and computer science, the difference is dramatic with women earning only 20% of the bachelor’s degrees. Women’s representation in science and engineering declines further at the graduate level and yet again in the transition to the workplace.” Women graduate principally in law, political science, communication and medicine.
Since boys are the ones who will most likely choose science and engineering majors and the percentage of boys going to college has been cut in half, it stands to reason that we would have fewer science and engineering majors and thus fewer science and engineering graduates and thus fewer scientists and engineers to work on green technology and other high tech breakthroughs that industry leaders and investors claim we need.
For perspective, if we could increase the male population of colleges to the same percentage as the female population while keeping the percent that choose STEM the same, we could increase the number of science and engineering graduates by 33 %. If we could increase the male population to the same proportion as females and at the same time persuade the females to take STEM subjects at the same rate as the males, we could double the number of STEM students we could graduate per year.
So how did we get into this predicament? Why do boys not go to college? It certainly is not for lack of funding! Could it be that they can make more money in fields that do not require a college diploma? Yes, that was true during the past two decades, because many computer programming jobs did not require a college degree and they paid good money! Or are the boys turned off by school in general?
It certainly is possible that school turns them off. Consider what we have done to them in the past 40 years or so. First, and foremost, we have reduced or eliminated recesses in elementary schools. So, boys have to sit in class all day with no way to bleed off the testosterone energy. Then they may act out and disturb the class which is a no-no! The girls, meanwhile, lacking testosterone, sit quietly studying and rarely disturb the class. What to do? Draw attention to the poor behavior of the boys, and when that does not work, put them on Ritalin. If this means of controlling them goes on long enough, surprise, the boys begin to dislike school. They will want to get out of school as soon as they can. Certainly they are not motivated to go to college.
Exacerbating this situation is society’s desire to encourage girls to become whatever they want to become, and to compete fully with the boys in all areas from sports to all fields of academic achievement. This highly desirable goal places further pressure on the boys. It is true that in recent times the schools have begun to recognize the shortage of male students, and actions are finally being taken to ameliorate it. In the case of colleges, they are now actively recruiting boys in order to obtain a more equal balance of the sexes.
OK, so girls are motivated to go to college but tend to avoid taking STEM courses as freshmen. But why do girls who enter the STEM courses as freshmen, drop out in the following years? Let’s keep in mind that we are talking bell curve here. Obviously, there are girls who like and perform well in STEM courses and even go all the way to get PhD’s in those fields, but this is a small part of the female population.
A study at the University of Rochester attempts to answer this question. They have found that it is true that women who intend to major in science or engineering change their college major while they are in college. The study lists these major reasons:
Women feel that, in STEM courses, the instructional environment is confusing.
Women often lack positive feedback from instructors
Women feel isolated as one of only a few women in the class
Women feel there is a lack of peer support for pursuing a “male dominated” field
Women have less access than males to informal academic networks
Women may have difficulty reconciling the images of scientist and woman
Women may be victims of subtle sexism
Women may not feel comfortable with the style of aggressiveness and competition in STEM subjects
I was able to run my own experiment two years ago. While visiting in Burlington, Vermont. I encountered a young woman working in a sporting goods store during her summer vacation. She stated she just ended her freshman year at the University of Vermont. When asked what her major was, she stated: “Mechanical Engineering”. You can imagine how my ears perked up at that statement! I then asked her how many women in her freshman class were majoring in mechanical engineering. She responded that there were 30. I then asked how many were going into the sophomore class. The number she gave was 7. As a follow up I asked what she thought was the reason for the drop out, and she opined that the work was too hard, especially with the afternoon labs.
This anecdotal data seems consistent with what the University of Rochester has found regarding females dropping their engineering major after their freshman year
One might conclude that there is a genetic factor. In fact a study funded by the AAUW, alludes to a genetic factor by making this statement: “While biological gender differences, yet to be well understood, may play a role, they clearly are not the whole story.” However, we must be careful. Remember when Larry Summers, as president of Harvard University, lamented about the lack of female PhD scientists and engineers on his teaching and research staffs? Then, unfortunately for him, he stated that, among several reasons, one might be genetic. The mere mention of this possibility made the females on the Harvard faculty go berserk, and they had him fired.
On one key point he was correct, and the research is supporting him. That point is that the main difference is how boys and girls are socialized. The facts are clear that the girls are just as smart as the boys in math and science, but that they want different things and different out comes. One National study asked high school girls who were earning top grades in math and science whether they planned to study physics or engineering in college. They almost universally answered, no. By contrast, boys often answered, yes. In other words, the girls know that they are perfectly capable of doing physics or engineering, but they just don’t want to.
Further research is showing that the best way to teach boys physics and engineering is not the best way for girls. The University of Rochester study reports “With boys you start with kinematics, momentum, race cars accelerating, foot ball players colliding, etc. With girls, the best place to start is with a riddle involving the nature of things. For example, what is light; is it a wave or a particle? They then discover that it is made up of both waves and particles.” The accepted threory, wave and particle, is where the boys end up as well.
To focus on increasing the number of women in science University of Rochester set up an organization has called URWISE which stands for University of Rochester Women In Science and Engineering. The Rochester group has concluded that the best way to increase female participation in the sciences is to separate the genders in the class room. In that scenario they find the girls gravitating toward the sciences and engineering in greater numbers than would be the case in co-education.
Now, if our future depends upon science and engineering, we need to take actions promptly to increase the number of those who have these skills. Here some ideas:
Make school more attractive to boys so they want to go to college
If we believe that girls are just as smart and trainable as boys, then find ways to make them want to become scientists and engineers
We can and should take the needed actions to make school more attractive to boys for more reasons than just to increase the number of scientists and engineers, so we should get on with this immediately. But let’s face it, re-socializing girls so that they enjoy and prefer engineering is a task that society will probably be unwilling unable to undertake. Moreover, such a course of action would take a generation or more to affect any significant change in the number of engineers we need.
.
Therefore, to obtain the engineering breakthroughs we need in the time available, we need to take a more radical approach. One way would be to increase the quotas for foreign trained scientists and engineers who want to come to and become citizens of the United States. In addition, we should entice foreign students who are in our universities taking STEM courses to remain and become citizens of the United States. These actions can be taken quickly and we could expect results quickly, as well. If the large number of lawyers in our federal government understood anything about what we are talking about, they could make this happen.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Monday, January 24, 2011
Perspective: The Tucson Event
Perspective on The Tucson Event:
We just witnessed how the media of this country and our politicians continue to misinform us. On Saturday January 8th Jared Lee Loughner shot 20 persons, killing six of them... Immediately after the event, however, Paul Klugman, the mainstream media and even Sheriff Clarence Dupnik breathlessly claimed that what caused Loughner to perform this heinous deed was the extreme use of military terms in the political rhetoric expounded by Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Sara Palen, the Tea Partiers and the republican right. Within a few short days we learned that his motive was to kill Congresswoman Gabby Giffords to avenge her allegedly slighting him in 2007.
By Thursday, five days after the shooting, everyone who paid attention and could think rationally knew that the root cause of the problem was a mentally ill person who held a grudge against the congresswoman. It unequivocally was not heated political rhetoric. The most logical fit of all the information that has been developed about Loughner is that he is a paranoid schizophrenic.
Forty years ago or so, our nation decided that it was not necessary to institutionalize persons suffering from psychotic disorders. Rather they could be treated with drugs as out patients. We are told that about one percent of the population is schizophrenic. That is 3 million persons. Of these about a third are happy, a third are depressed and a third are angry and confused enough to do serious harm. This means that about one million deranged schizophrenics are probably untreated. Worse a large portion of them are roaming our streets with the homeless. Schizophrenics get no help when they obviously need it. Nothing is done to prevent their doing serious harm while they are in a deranged state of mind, even when irrational behavior typical of the deranged mind is observed. Oh yes, we can do something after they do harm! And they do harm innocent persons over and over again. Have we already forgotten about Columbine and Virginia Tech?
How sad it is that our elite media who were so supportive of the new health care law, wasted so much time on the wrong issue. Instead, the media could have used the event to burn into our brains that we need to take immediate action to treat the mentally deranged. We could have been reminded that the six persons killed, especially the little girl, Christina-Taylor Green, need not have died in vain. In fact the media could have called for a meaningful mental health care program in the name of Christina as part of the public’s wish to fix Obamacare.
An alternative to trying to fix this the problem is to do nothing. The risk that one would be killed in one of these paranoid schizophrenic rampages is about equivalent to being stuck by a lightening bolt. Both are random events.
Finally, as regard heated political rhetoric, do we really think that this is some new malady? Moreover, do we really think that we can change it by adopting Rodney King’s phrase, “Can’t we just get along?” We somehow think that we have only recently become uncivil in this country, and that it is a new phenomenon. Perhaps we have forgotten that our founding fathers had major disputes. If we still taught history as a subject, instead of burying it in Social Studies, perhaps students might recall that the founding fathers had many heated discussions about politics. There were pamphleteers, the “bloggers” of their day, who wrote some nasty stuff. And there were duels, the most famous of which was when Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton. Moreover, military terms such as aim, target, beat, defeat, bulls-eye and the rest have been an integral part of the English language forever.
The problem at the root of the current debate is that we have more government employees than there is revenue from the private sector pay for them. Considering the prospect of increased taxes and shrinking profits, private entrepreneurs are leaving the country in droves, which makes the situation worse. You can bet that the discussion of how to fix this will become heated. The street riots in Greece and some other European countries reflect how government employees probably will react to government program cutbacks.
So, in the meantime to assuage those who feel we must become more careful with our language, what kind of namby pamby language should Politians use to describe their plan to defeat an incumbent? How about, “I am praying that the person I am competing against does not win; please join me in this prayer?”
.
We just witnessed how the media of this country and our politicians continue to misinform us. On Saturday January 8th Jared Lee Loughner shot 20 persons, killing six of them... Immediately after the event, however, Paul Klugman, the mainstream media and even Sheriff Clarence Dupnik breathlessly claimed that what caused Loughner to perform this heinous deed was the extreme use of military terms in the political rhetoric expounded by Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Sara Palen, the Tea Partiers and the republican right. Within a few short days we learned that his motive was to kill Congresswoman Gabby Giffords to avenge her allegedly slighting him in 2007.
By Thursday, five days after the shooting, everyone who paid attention and could think rationally knew that the root cause of the problem was a mentally ill person who held a grudge against the congresswoman. It unequivocally was not heated political rhetoric. The most logical fit of all the information that has been developed about Loughner is that he is a paranoid schizophrenic.
Forty years ago or so, our nation decided that it was not necessary to institutionalize persons suffering from psychotic disorders. Rather they could be treated with drugs as out patients. We are told that about one percent of the population is schizophrenic. That is 3 million persons. Of these about a third are happy, a third are depressed and a third are angry and confused enough to do serious harm. This means that about one million deranged schizophrenics are probably untreated. Worse a large portion of them are roaming our streets with the homeless. Schizophrenics get no help when they obviously need it. Nothing is done to prevent their doing serious harm while they are in a deranged state of mind, even when irrational behavior typical of the deranged mind is observed. Oh yes, we can do something after they do harm! And they do harm innocent persons over and over again. Have we already forgotten about Columbine and Virginia Tech?
How sad it is that our elite media who were so supportive of the new health care law, wasted so much time on the wrong issue. Instead, the media could have used the event to burn into our brains that we need to take immediate action to treat the mentally deranged. We could have been reminded that the six persons killed, especially the little girl, Christina-Taylor Green, need not have died in vain. In fact the media could have called for a meaningful mental health care program in the name of Christina as part of the public’s wish to fix Obamacare.
An alternative to trying to fix this the problem is to do nothing. The risk that one would be killed in one of these paranoid schizophrenic rampages is about equivalent to being stuck by a lightening bolt. Both are random events.
Finally, as regard heated political rhetoric, do we really think that this is some new malady? Moreover, do we really think that we can change it by adopting Rodney King’s phrase, “Can’t we just get along?” We somehow think that we have only recently become uncivil in this country, and that it is a new phenomenon. Perhaps we have forgotten that our founding fathers had major disputes. If we still taught history as a subject, instead of burying it in Social Studies, perhaps students might recall that the founding fathers had many heated discussions about politics. There were pamphleteers, the “bloggers” of their day, who wrote some nasty stuff. And there were duels, the most famous of which was when Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton. Moreover, military terms such as aim, target, beat, defeat, bulls-eye and the rest have been an integral part of the English language forever.
The problem at the root of the current debate is that we have more government employees than there is revenue from the private sector pay for them. Considering the prospect of increased taxes and shrinking profits, private entrepreneurs are leaving the country in droves, which makes the situation worse. You can bet that the discussion of how to fix this will become heated. The street riots in Greece and some other European countries reflect how government employees probably will react to government program cutbacks.
So, in the meantime to assuage those who feel we must become more careful with our language, what kind of namby pamby language should Politians use to describe their plan to defeat an incumbent? How about, “I am praying that the person I am competing against does not win; please join me in this prayer?”
.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Perspective: Does Ethanol as an Automotive Fuel Make Sense?
Perspective: Does Ethanol as an Automotive Fuel Make Sense?
The short answer to this is a resounding NO!
The principal reasons given for using ethanol as a fuel in our internal combustion engines
are, namely, the reduction of our dependence on foreign enemy produced oil and the
reduction of harmful emissions, including carbon dioxide. These do not pass the laugh
test. First, 50% of our oil is supplied by Canada and Mexico and the rest is supplied about
equally by friendly Saudi Arabia and the United States. Secondly, no one believes that
the energy generated from ethanol as a fuel exceeds the fossil fuel energy required to
create it, thus it is hard go believe that emissions would be significantly reduced. You can
judge this for yourself by reviewing the steps required to plant, harvest, and process
ethanol.
Ethanol (ethyl alcohol) found in alcoholic based beverages such as wine and rum is
derived from the natural fermentation of the sugars in grapes, sugar beets and sugar cane.
By contrast starch from corn and other grains must first be converted to sugar before it
can be processed to ethanol.
The key steps to manufacture ethanol from corn include:
· Preparing the soil for planting
· Planting and weeding the corn
· Harvesting the crop
· Shipping it to an ethanol refinery.
· Chopping, pulverizing and separating the starch
· Converting the starch to sugar.
· Fermenting the sugar to about 10+% ethanol
· Separating the ethanol/water from the non-fermentable residue
· Distilling the ethanol to a concentration of 96%
· Drying the ethanol\water to achieve ethanol at 99+% required for use in gasoline
· Shipping the ethanol by truck to a gasoline refinery
Each of these steps consumes energy to run the: (1) tractors to till, plant, weed, and
harvest the sugar and starch bearing crops, (2) trucks to ship the crops to the ethanol
refinery, (3)motorized equipment at the ethanol plant to pulverize the materials and pump
them into fermentation tanks, (4) boilers to distill the ethanol, (5) pumps to remove the
ethanol from the drying agents, (6) trucks to haul the ethanol to the gasoline refinery, and
(7) the pumps in the refinery to mix the ethanol with gasoline.
When you combine all these steps, you realize that an awful lot of fossil fuel-derived
energy is required to produce a fuel that is less efficient than gasoline. Therefore, it is
hard to believe that there is a net increase in energy.
Moreover, from a monitory standpoint, corn can only compete with fossil fuel if the
farmer and refiner are subsidized by the taxpayers, you and me. Billions of dollars of
subsidies are paid farmers to grow corn for this use, and the current tax law being
PDF Created with deskPDF PDF Writer - Trial :: http://www.docudesk.com
considered in Congress extends those subsidies. By contrast, ethanol manufactured in
Brazil from sugar cane and sugar beets, is less expensive than U.S.corn derived ethanol,
but tariffs our government applies to Brazilian ethanol erase that inherent economic
advantage.
Now, our government wants to increase the ethanol concentration from 10% to 15% in
gasoline. This presents additional problems. Foremost are more expensive stainless steel
tanks and/or Teflon lined fuel lines needed to withstand the steel corrosion problem
indigenous to ethanol. Additionally, because the energy derived from ethanol is about
34% less than gasoline, the engine compression will need to be increased to boost the
octane level of ethanol. This will require a variable turbocharger
If you take into account that the world is running into a shortage of arable land from
which to produce food as well as water to irrigate the crops, why in the world would you
risk real life food and water supplies to deal with the theoretical idea that global warming
is man made?
Now, if we really want to convert our trucks and cars to fuels that would decrease our
dependence on oil, burn cleaner in our engines and produce less carbon dioxide, we
should convert them to liquefied natural gas (LNG).When combusted, natural gas
produces the least amount of carbon dioxide and none of the noxious hydrocarbon and
benzene effluents. Moreover, the United States has huge reserves of shale-derived natural
gas that are being tapped as we write.
We doubt that there would be sufficient savings converting from gasoline to a LPG fuel
system, so it is likely that it would have to be subsidized. Setting asside why we should
change from gasoline at this time in the first place, if we did decide that this is a good
idea, why not subsidize the conversion to natural gas instead of converting to food-stuff
derived ethanol. Conversion to LNG would have the added advantage of creating new
jobs required to produce the gas, compress it for delivery, modify the transportation
vehicles to use it and modify the gas stations to deliver it,
In summary, it’s time to get the government out of this foolhardy venture! The idea of
using food-based material to replace fossil fuel is economically unsound, and subsidizing
the program to boot is absurd considering our burgeoning national debt. More
importantly, it is morally wrong! There is a significant and increasing number of persons
on this planet who are living at starvation levels due to the shrinking supply and
increasing price of food. This is a problem here and now, versus the uncertain and
threoretical impact that man-made global warming may have at some future date.
PDF Created with deskPDF PDF Writer - Trial :: http://www.docudesk.com
The short answer to this is a resounding NO!
The principal reasons given for using ethanol as a fuel in our internal combustion engines
are, namely, the reduction of our dependence on foreign enemy produced oil and the
reduction of harmful emissions, including carbon dioxide. These do not pass the laugh
test. First, 50% of our oil is supplied by Canada and Mexico and the rest is supplied about
equally by friendly Saudi Arabia and the United States. Secondly, no one believes that
the energy generated from ethanol as a fuel exceeds the fossil fuel energy required to
create it, thus it is hard go believe that emissions would be significantly reduced. You can
judge this for yourself by reviewing the steps required to plant, harvest, and process
ethanol.
Ethanol (ethyl alcohol) found in alcoholic based beverages such as wine and rum is
derived from the natural fermentation of the sugars in grapes, sugar beets and sugar cane.
By contrast starch from corn and other grains must first be converted to sugar before it
can be processed to ethanol.
The key steps to manufacture ethanol from corn include:
· Preparing the soil for planting
· Planting and weeding the corn
· Harvesting the crop
· Shipping it to an ethanol refinery.
· Chopping, pulverizing and separating the starch
· Converting the starch to sugar.
· Fermenting the sugar to about 10+% ethanol
· Separating the ethanol/water from the non-fermentable residue
· Distilling the ethanol to a concentration of 96%
· Drying the ethanol\water to achieve ethanol at 99+% required for use in gasoline
· Shipping the ethanol by truck to a gasoline refinery
Each of these steps consumes energy to run the: (1) tractors to till, plant, weed, and
harvest the sugar and starch bearing crops, (2) trucks to ship the crops to the ethanol
refinery, (3)motorized equipment at the ethanol plant to pulverize the materials and pump
them into fermentation tanks, (4) boilers to distill the ethanol, (5) pumps to remove the
ethanol from the drying agents, (6) trucks to haul the ethanol to the gasoline refinery, and
(7) the pumps in the refinery to mix the ethanol with gasoline.
When you combine all these steps, you realize that an awful lot of fossil fuel-derived
energy is required to produce a fuel that is less efficient than gasoline. Therefore, it is
hard to believe that there is a net increase in energy.
Moreover, from a monitory standpoint, corn can only compete with fossil fuel if the
farmer and refiner are subsidized by the taxpayers, you and me. Billions of dollars of
subsidies are paid farmers to grow corn for this use, and the current tax law being
PDF Created with deskPDF PDF Writer - Trial :: http://www.docudesk.com
considered in Congress extends those subsidies. By contrast, ethanol manufactured in
Brazil from sugar cane and sugar beets, is less expensive than U.S.corn derived ethanol,
but tariffs our government applies to Brazilian ethanol erase that inherent economic
advantage.
Now, our government wants to increase the ethanol concentration from 10% to 15% in
gasoline. This presents additional problems. Foremost are more expensive stainless steel
tanks and/or Teflon lined fuel lines needed to withstand the steel corrosion problem
indigenous to ethanol. Additionally, because the energy derived from ethanol is about
34% less than gasoline, the engine compression will need to be increased to boost the
octane level of ethanol. This will require a variable turbocharger
If you take into account that the world is running into a shortage of arable land from
which to produce food as well as water to irrigate the crops, why in the world would you
risk real life food and water supplies to deal with the theoretical idea that global warming
is man made?
Now, if we really want to convert our trucks and cars to fuels that would decrease our
dependence on oil, burn cleaner in our engines and produce less carbon dioxide, we
should convert them to liquefied natural gas (LNG).When combusted, natural gas
produces the least amount of carbon dioxide and none of the noxious hydrocarbon and
benzene effluents. Moreover, the United States has huge reserves of shale-derived natural
gas that are being tapped as we write.
We doubt that there would be sufficient savings converting from gasoline to a LPG fuel
system, so it is likely that it would have to be subsidized. Setting asside why we should
change from gasoline at this time in the first place, if we did decide that this is a good
idea, why not subsidize the conversion to natural gas instead of converting to food-stuff
derived ethanol. Conversion to LNG would have the added advantage of creating new
jobs required to produce the gas, compress it for delivery, modify the transportation
vehicles to use it and modify the gas stations to deliver it,
In summary, it’s time to get the government out of this foolhardy venture! The idea of
using food-based material to replace fossil fuel is economically unsound, and subsidizing
the program to boot is absurd considering our burgeoning national debt. More
importantly, it is morally wrong! There is a significant and increasing number of persons
on this planet who are living at starvation levels due to the shrinking supply and
increasing price of food. This is a problem here and now, versus the uncertain and
threoretical impact that man-made global warming may have at some future date.
PDF Created with deskPDF PDF Writer - Trial :: http://www.docudesk.com
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Perspective: The November 2, 2010 Election
Thank God for the Tea Party Movement!! They have put We the People back in charge. The
Media is still in shock and still does not get what happened on Tuesday. Moreover, most of the
members of Congress still do not get it, and based on his press conference after the election, the
President does not get it.
The Constitution begins with this phrase: We the People, in order to form a more perfect Union,
establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the
general Welfare and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity do ordain and
establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
In recent years the members of our Congress as well as the President have forgotten that their
boss is us, We the People. And that what We the People want from the Federal Government is a
small number of things which are enumerated in the Constitution.
The current Administration and the Congress have not only forgotten this, but they think that they
know better what We the People need and want. They have enacted laws and programs that we
distinctly told them we did not want. To correct this insubordination, We the People, their boss,
have fired as many of these as we could. And if those that remain do not do what we want,
We the People will fire them in two years.
The Tea Partiers held their first gathering on April 15, 2009. That was the beginning of
We the People organizing a rally to protest the plans being promulgated by the Administration
and the Congress as they began to “Transform America”. When the Stimulus Legislation was
rammed through Congress, loaded as it was with Pork, followed by the House of Representatives
passing “Cap and Trade” legislation in July of 2009 and then followed by the plan to create and
pass what has disparagingly been dubbed, “Obamacare”, the Tea Partiers swarmed the Town Hall
events to voice their objection to these power grabs. Gradually and step by step the Tea Partiers
and their supporters expanded their numbers, their activities and put their money where their
mouth is. This ground swell of resistance kept expanding until it reached a crescendo where voice
and action combined to fire as many of the members of the House and Senate as was possible.
Now, the Tea Party could have become a “Third Party” movement. If so, nothing would have
changed last Tuesday. No, this group decided to place their energy with the Republicans
this time. This is smart! You see, neither the Democrat nor the Republican parties have enough
strength in numbers to win without those who choose whom they want to elect. These folk are
mostly independent, are not tied to either the Republican or the Democrat party, and they have
never organized before. However, their philosophy is conservative as regards the Constitution;
and therefore, they tend to be right of center where the polls say most of us are.
When this group is polled as to what they want, we paraphrase their response as:
· Smaller Government
· Fiscal Responsibility
· Common Defense
· Support for Private Industry Job Creators
Does this list remind you of the list in the Constitution?
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Now, the Media and the left will pound on the Republicans whom the Tea Partiers supported to
change the direction that the Obama Administration has been taking us. The big question will be
“what is your plan”? They will denigrate each and every Republican who votes to reverse or
delay many of the actions taken by the previous Congress. They will be called the “Party of NO”,
Obstructionists, Favoring the Rich and so forth.
Here is a way to understand where we are and what we need to do. Imagine you are on a bus that
swerves back and forth on the road and goes faster than you feel is safe. You, as an individual
find out that the driver has never driven a bus before, in fact has never driven any vehicle before.
You try to give him a few pointers, but you are told to sit down and shut up. As the bus lurches
forward placing the riders into ever greater jeopardy, the other riders become vocal and yell to the
driver to stop. Still refusing to pay attention or heed their pleas to change, the riders finally rise up
en-masse, turn off the key and pull the driver out of the seat.
That is where we are. We want the bus stopped! Period! And yes, we do not have a specific plan
to restart the bus. What we want is for it to stay stopped until we can regain our composure and
settle our nerves. If there is “grid lock” we will welcome it and praise it to high heaven.
The Tea Partiers are the key to how we go forward. They represent We the People and they
know what we want. After we develop some new “Bus Drivers” we can then decide where we
want to go. In the meantime, each rider will be free to decide to stop for a while and maybe while
stopped the riders will purchase something or invest in a business.
In other words if new regulations stemming from Obamacare, “Cap and Trade” and the new Bank
Regulations, as well as tax increases and anything associated with “Transforming America” can
be halted, entrepreneurs will overcome their fear of the uncertainty caused by the actions and
plans of this Administration. They will begin to move the cash that has been on the side and
invest it. Jobs will be created as a result. Thus the final point the Tea Partiers have been
promoting will be achieved. Jobs will begin to be created by the private sector of the economy.
What should we as individuals be doing? Support your local Tea Party, stay informed about what
the Administration and Congress, your employees, are doing, and be prepared to fire those who
do not follow the principles enunciated in the Constitution.
Remember We the People wrote the Constitution, and We the People are the boss!
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Media is still in shock and still does not get what happened on Tuesday. Moreover, most of the
members of Congress still do not get it, and based on his press conference after the election, the
President does not get it.
The Constitution begins with this phrase: We the People, in order to form a more perfect Union,
establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the
general Welfare and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity do ordain and
establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
In recent years the members of our Congress as well as the President have forgotten that their
boss is us, We the People. And that what We the People want from the Federal Government is a
small number of things which are enumerated in the Constitution.
The current Administration and the Congress have not only forgotten this, but they think that they
know better what We the People need and want. They have enacted laws and programs that we
distinctly told them we did not want. To correct this insubordination, We the People, their boss,
have fired as many of these as we could. And if those that remain do not do what we want,
We the People will fire them in two years.
The Tea Partiers held their first gathering on April 15, 2009. That was the beginning of
We the People organizing a rally to protest the plans being promulgated by the Administration
and the Congress as they began to “Transform America”. When the Stimulus Legislation was
rammed through Congress, loaded as it was with Pork, followed by the House of Representatives
passing “Cap and Trade” legislation in July of 2009 and then followed by the plan to create and
pass what has disparagingly been dubbed, “Obamacare”, the Tea Partiers swarmed the Town Hall
events to voice their objection to these power grabs. Gradually and step by step the Tea Partiers
and their supporters expanded their numbers, their activities and put their money where their
mouth is. This ground swell of resistance kept expanding until it reached a crescendo where voice
and action combined to fire as many of the members of the House and Senate as was possible.
Now, the Tea Party could have become a “Third Party” movement. If so, nothing would have
changed last Tuesday. No, this group decided to place their energy with the Republicans
this time. This is smart! You see, neither the Democrat nor the Republican parties have enough
strength in numbers to win without those who choose whom they want to elect. These folk are
mostly independent, are not tied to either the Republican or the Democrat party, and they have
never organized before. However, their philosophy is conservative as regards the Constitution;
and therefore, they tend to be right of center where the polls say most of us are.
When this group is polled as to what they want, we paraphrase their response as:
· Smaller Government
· Fiscal Responsibility
· Common Defense
· Support for Private Industry Job Creators
Does this list remind you of the list in the Constitution?
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Now, the Media and the left will pound on the Republicans whom the Tea Partiers supported to
change the direction that the Obama Administration has been taking us. The big question will be
“what is your plan”? They will denigrate each and every Republican who votes to reverse or
delay many of the actions taken by the previous Congress. They will be called the “Party of NO”,
Obstructionists, Favoring the Rich and so forth.
Here is a way to understand where we are and what we need to do. Imagine you are on a bus that
swerves back and forth on the road and goes faster than you feel is safe. You, as an individual
find out that the driver has never driven a bus before, in fact has never driven any vehicle before.
You try to give him a few pointers, but you are told to sit down and shut up. As the bus lurches
forward placing the riders into ever greater jeopardy, the other riders become vocal and yell to the
driver to stop. Still refusing to pay attention or heed their pleas to change, the riders finally rise up
en-masse, turn off the key and pull the driver out of the seat.
That is where we are. We want the bus stopped! Period! And yes, we do not have a specific plan
to restart the bus. What we want is for it to stay stopped until we can regain our composure and
settle our nerves. If there is “grid lock” we will welcome it and praise it to high heaven.
The Tea Partiers are the key to how we go forward. They represent We the People and they
know what we want. After we develop some new “Bus Drivers” we can then decide where we
want to go. In the meantime, each rider will be free to decide to stop for a while and maybe while
stopped the riders will purchase something or invest in a business.
In other words if new regulations stemming from Obamacare, “Cap and Trade” and the new Bank
Regulations, as well as tax increases and anything associated with “Transforming America” can
be halted, entrepreneurs will overcome their fear of the uncertainty caused by the actions and
plans of this Administration. They will begin to move the cash that has been on the side and
invest it. Jobs will be created as a result. Thus the final point the Tea Partiers have been
promoting will be achieved. Jobs will begin to be created by the private sector of the economy.
What should we as individuals be doing? Support your local Tea Party, stay informed about what
the Administration and Congress, your employees, are doing, and be prepared to fire those who
do not follow the principles enunciated in the Constitution.
Remember We the People wrote the Constitution, and We the People are the boss!
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Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Perspective: The Impact of the Kindle on Jobs
The transistor was discovered by researchers at Bell Labs in 1947and marked the
beginning of digital technology. This remarkable and transforming development has led
to such commercial applications as the PC computer, the cell phone, the I-phone, the
CD and DVR, the digital camera and the recent conversion of the rabbit-ear TV, just to
mention a few. In other words most of the modern communication gadgets we have
learned to love. The rate of adoption of this new technology is exponential, and we have
not seen anything yet.
One of the latest applications for digital technology is the Kindle. This is an electronic
book introduced by Amazon on November 19, 2007. They named it Kindle as in kindling
a fire. Figuratively speaking, it has done just that! In a blog I wrote last April I speculated
that one of the books that could be downloaded onto the Kindle at some future date
would be students’ text books. Well, guess what? The town of Clearwater, Florida bought
2200 Kindles for their 2100 high school students for the current school year. All of the
texts to be used have been down loaded into the Kindle. The students can also download
novels, take notes on and highlight portions of the texts. The Kindles can also read the
text aloud.
With such a dramatic and significant development you would think that every news
organization in our Nation would have put the story on the front page. But have you read
or heard about this on the evening news? I doubt it. I heard about it via a tip I got from
Facebook. Then a Google check led me to an article about it in the September 16, 2010
issue of Tampa Bay Online. The Tampa article claims that the Clearwater school wanted
to tap into the students’ love of technology, and that it cost less do download a text than a
traditional book. And, moreover, not only are these devices capable of holding all of a
student’s text books, but each book can be kept up to date on a continuous basis.
Now, skeptics will claim that the kids will lose, destroy or sell the e-book. The article
tells what Clearwater has done to protect against that:
· Students are responsible for lost or stolen Kindles, the same as they are for paper
texts.
· Students can buy insurance to protect against damage of lost Kindles
· The school working with Amazon can track each Kindle and shut it down if it is
stolen, shows up at a Pawn shop or appears on e-bay.
The development and application of the e-book is comparable to the creation of the
Guttenberg printing press, and surely this is the beginning of the end of paper books as
we know them.
Our government and our media are finally beginning to focus on jobs and expect them to
return when the current recession ends, but they are wrong. Digital technology, as applied
to the e-book is eliminating traditional jobs faster than new ones can be created. Consider
the impact on jobs of the application of the e-book to the book publishing industry.
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Here is a list of jobs that will be eliminated:
· Harvesting trees for paper
· Gigantic mills that convert the trees first to pulp and then to paper. (These mills
are capable of producing paper at nearly a mile a minute)
· Ink manufacturers
· Printers to apply the ink to the paper
· Book binders to assemble the books
· Book Stores to display and sell the books
We are talking about the loss of thousands and thousands of jobs. And at the pace that
this technology is being commercialized by Amazon, and their competitors, these jobs are
likely to cease before the end of the decade. It is true that there will be some new jobs
such as those who convert the author’s work into digital form suitable for downloading
onto the e-books, and there will still be sellers of downloadable books and there will be
jobs to create and produce e-books that compete with the Kindle. The extreme of this
trend will be the author creating his or her own digital books for downloading onto the ebooks,
thus eliminating even the publisher.
The application of the new digital technology such as employed in the Kindle is as huge
and drastic as to make the industrial revolution of the nineteen century look like a walk in
the park. The last to catch on are our government and the media. These people, who are
predominately educated as journalists and lawyers have little if any knowledge how
capitalism and business work. Consequently, they have no experience such as Kodak
management has had when the digital camera destroyed their silver-based film business,
virtually overnight.
It behooves “we the people” to see that our representatives, who are after all “our
employees”, have practical experience so that they may possibly be able to understand
these new trends and be able to create sensible laws, regulations and educational
programs that are compatible with the free-market energies that are creating the trends.
PDF Created with deskPDF PDF Writer - Trial :: http://www.docudesk.com
The transistor was discovered by researchers at Bell Labs in 1947and marked the
beginning of digital technology. This remarkable and transforming development has led
to such commercial applications as the PC computer, the cell phone, the I-phone, the
CD and DVR, the digital camera and the recent conversion of the rabbit-ear TV, just to
mention a few. In other words most of the modern communication gadgets we have
learned to love. The rate of adoption of this new technology is exponential, and we have
not seen anything yet.
One of the latest applications for digital technology is the Kindle. This is an electronic
book introduced by Amazon on November 19, 2007. They named it Kindle as in kindling
a fire. Figuratively speaking, it has done just that! In a blog I wrote last April I speculated
that one of the books that could be downloaded onto the Kindle at some future date
would be students’ text books. Well, guess what? The town of Clearwater, Florida bought
2200 Kindles for their 2100 high school students for the current school year. All of the
texts to be used have been down loaded into the Kindle. The students can also download
novels, take notes on and highlight portions of the texts. The Kindles can also read the
text aloud.
With such a dramatic and significant development you would think that every news
organization in our Nation would have put the story on the front page. But have you read
or heard about this on the evening news? I doubt it. I heard about it via a tip I got from
Facebook. Then a Google check led me to an article about it in the September 16, 2010
issue of Tampa Bay Online. The Tampa article claims that the Clearwater school wanted
to tap into the students’ love of technology, and that it cost less do download a text than a
traditional book. And, moreover, not only are these devices capable of holding all of a
student’s text books, but each book can be kept up to date on a continuous basis.
Now, skeptics will claim that the kids will lose, destroy or sell the e-book. The article
tells what Clearwater has done to protect against that:
· Students are responsible for lost or stolen Kindles, the same as they are for paper
texts.
· Students can buy insurance to protect against damage of lost Kindles
· The school working with Amazon can track each Kindle and shut it down if it is
stolen, shows up at a Pawn shop or appears on e-bay.
The development and application of the e-book is comparable to the creation of the
Guttenberg printing press, and surely this is the beginning of the end of paper books as
we know them.
Our government and our media are finally beginning to focus on jobs and expect them to
return when the current recession ends, but they are wrong. Digital technology, as applied
to the e-book is eliminating traditional jobs faster than new ones can be created. Consider
the impact on jobs of the application of the e-book to the book publishing industry.
PDF Created with deskPDF PDF Writer - Trial :: http://www.docudesk.com
Here is a list of jobs that will be eliminated:
· Harvesting trees for paper
· Gigantic mills that convert the trees first to pulp and then to paper. (These mills
are capable of producing paper at nearly a mile a minute)
· Ink manufacturers
· Printers to apply the ink to the paper
· Book binders to assemble the books
· Book Stores to display and sell the books
We are talking about the loss of thousands and thousands of jobs. And at the pace that
this technology is being commercialized by Amazon, and their competitors, these jobs are
likely to cease before the end of the decade. It is true that there will be some new jobs
such as those who convert the author’s work into digital form suitable for downloading
onto the e-books, and there will still be sellers of downloadable books and there will be
jobs to create and produce e-books that compete with the Kindle. The extreme of this
trend will be the author creating his or her own digital books for downloading onto the ebooks,
thus eliminating even the publisher.
The application of the new digital technology such as employed in the Kindle is as huge
and drastic as to make the industrial revolution of the nineteen century look like a walk in
the park. The last to catch on are our government and the media. These people, who are
predominately educated as journalists and lawyers have little if any knowledge how
capitalism and business work. Consequently, they have no experience such as Kodak
management has had when the digital camera destroyed their silver-based film business,
virtually overnight.
It behooves “we the people” to see that our representatives, who are after all “our
employees”, have practical experience so that they may possibly be able to understand
these new trends and be able to create sensible laws, regulations and educational
programs that are compatible with the free-market energies that are creating the trends.
PDF Created with deskPDF PDF Writer - Trial :: http://www.docudesk.com
Monday, September 20, 2010
PERSPECTIVE: WHAT IF THE JOBS DON’T COME BACK?
1
PERSPECTIVE: WHAT IF THE JOBS DON’T COME BACK?
By Wayne Pearson
In a blog written in April of this year, I stated that many of the private sector jobs that
have been lost will not come back because of the new technologies in communication,
robotization and the impact of globalization. Every recession provides businesses the
opportunity to implement new tools and technologies that will increase productivity, and
that is exactly what is happening during this recession. Unfortunately, these new
programs usually eliminate jobs, and this time the brunt of this change is being born by
those who are in the fifth decade of their lives. What is so sad is that our Government and
the Main Stream Media seem to have no clue about this pending crisis.
These persons who are in their fifties are not ne’re-do-wells. They were managers,
technicians, excellent knowledge workers or skilled workers in manufacturing, and they
are in their prime. Sadly, however, most of those who are in their fifties are under trained
to compete with the new way their old companies will be operating, and are over trained
for the menial jobs that might be available
Many of these out of work have stopped looking for work! It is a joke to read and hear
constantly that the unemployment rate is just under ten percent, when everyone knows
that it is closer to twenty percent because so many persons have dropped out of the work
force or are working part time. We are told that there are 26 million of these people.
Even if new jobs develop as the economy recovers, it will be more attractive for
businesses to hire younger workers than to re-hire the 50 year-olds. The fact is that the
youth have a far superior grasp of the new communication and robotization technologies.
Many have been using the computer since kindergarten. On the other hand, the fifty year
old is out of date and struggling to grasp the technology let alone master it. Moreover, the
20 year old can be employed at half of the salary and bonuses as the 50 year old.
Coinciding with this trend in new technology and globalization is the fact that the private
business community fears the impact the Obama Administration’s programs will have on
business. Pertinent to the issue being discussed here is the cost of medical insurance and
who has to be covered. In this atmosphere of uncertainty business leaders and their
bankers cannot determine the risk. Consequently, they are reluctant to make any
investment in personnel. In fact, if they had their druthers, they would have as few
permanent employees as possible.
For nearly two years this Administration had done virtually nothing to deal with the
problem of how to re-employ the 50 year-olds. Moreover, for all practical purposes
everything that they have done actually exacerbates the problem. The enactment of
Obamacare and the new Wall Street regulations along with bail outs and out right
takeovers of private enterprise such as we saw with General Motors along with the threat
of ‘cap and trade’ legislation” do nothing to solve this unemployment problem. Then the
Administration dilly dallies with the question of the so-called Bush tax cuts and talks
constantly about “taxing the rich”, which further obfuscates the issue. Increasing the tax
PDF Created with deskPDF PDF Writer - Trial :: http://www.docudesk.com
2
on dividends, for example, increases the cost of capital. If you cannot afford to pay for
the capital to expand a facility, you just don’t expand. Is it any wonder the business
community is locked into inaction?
Why our government has acted in such a casual and nonchalant way is not only a mystery
but an absolute outrage. A clue was provided by Obama in a very recent interview with
Brian Williams of NBC. Obama actually stated that he was not concerned about the
problems of today or even those that might affect the election of 2012, but rather he was
concerned about changing the country and the world so that it becomes a wonderful one
for the children and grandchildren. In other words, to hell with the 50 year olds, full
speed ahead for the transformation of America Obama promised during the campaign.
Who among us is smart enough to know how to construct the country 30 or more years
from now so that it is perfect? Only an egotistic narcissistic personality who has the
absolute determination to transform this country into a socialist state would even make a
statement such as that let alone be serious about taking the actions to bring this about.
However, our President and his aides are operating on the premise that they should take
advantage of any crisis to enact their ideological agenda.
This problem is about to become a crisis. Many of these persons have been collecting
unemployment insurance for nearly two years and there is no end in sight. But what
happens when our financially strapped government has to cut off these payments? Do we
think that these persons will just shut up and go away?
Now, I will be the first to say that the solution to the unemployed 50 year old is going to
be hard to find, and maybe harder to implement. But here are a few ideas.
First and foremost, in no case should the person be permitted to continue to collect
unemployment insurance beyond what has normally been permitted in past recessions,
which is about 26 weeks, and no person should be paid for sitting at home doing nothing.
We should give them one of three choices:
· Go back to school to be retrained
· Perform work in community service, for work we need but which is not currently
being funded.
· Become a contract employee.
Back to School: Some of the 50 year-olds could benefit from additional schooling, such
as, for example, becoming a nurse or nurse practitioner. The cost of school should be
supported by low cost loans. They should be paid the same amount as their
unemployment insurance as long as they receive acceptable grades for their school work.
Community Service: Persons performing community service should be paid the same
amount as unemployment insurance even if the work is menial and below the person’s
skills.
PDF Created with deskPDF PDF Writer - Trial :: http://www.docudesk.com
3
Contract Employee: The idea of becoming a contract employee should be promoted.
Companies still need the skills of the 50 year olds, but they do not want to be obligated to
cover health insurance, F.I.C.A. payments for Social Security, pension set asides and
want to avoid the hassle from government agencies if the work the contract employee is
performing is no longer needed. Arrangements would be “arms length” which means that
when the contract is completed the relationship ends, period! The Commerce Department
aided by the Department of Education should be able to provide the needed information
as to how to become a self-employed person. The National Association of Self Employed
(NASE) would be a good place to learn how to set up an ‘arms length’ contract.
These concepts are not flushed out in considerable detail, but all would be superior to
having these people sit idly at home doing nothing while feeling frantic over what to do
for themselves and families. Moreover, as they perform useful work, they are more likely
to feel better about themselves.
Before everyone gasps at these ideas, we need to consider what is likely to happen if we
do nothing. Doing nothing means that we have to pay unemployment insurance
indefinitely or decide to cut off unemployment insurance and let the unemployed 50 yearold
to fend for him or her self. The former is a plan for the Country’s going bankrupt. The
latter is a plan for chaos. We need only to look to Greece and the rioting in the streets to
see what likely will happen if we cut them off. We could and probably would have
rioting in our streets here in the United States with all the adverse consequences.
We must do something! But the first step is to have the government get its priorities in
the right order. The first priority is not to worry about and spend time and money to
create a new world 30 years from now, but to act today to fix the critical unemployment
problem.
Let your representatives know that focusing on job creation is their first and only priority,
And tell them that if they don’t get it, “we the people” will see that they, like the out of
work 50 year-olds, will be “fired”!
PDF Created with deskPDF PDF Writer - Trial :: http://www.docudesk.com
PERSPECTIVE: WHAT IF THE JOBS DON’T COME BACK?
By Wayne Pearson
In a blog written in April of this year, I stated that many of the private sector jobs that
have been lost will not come back because of the new technologies in communication,
robotization and the impact of globalization. Every recession provides businesses the
opportunity to implement new tools and technologies that will increase productivity, and
that is exactly what is happening during this recession. Unfortunately, these new
programs usually eliminate jobs, and this time the brunt of this change is being born by
those who are in the fifth decade of their lives. What is so sad is that our Government and
the Main Stream Media seem to have no clue about this pending crisis.
These persons who are in their fifties are not ne’re-do-wells. They were managers,
technicians, excellent knowledge workers or skilled workers in manufacturing, and they
are in their prime. Sadly, however, most of those who are in their fifties are under trained
to compete with the new way their old companies will be operating, and are over trained
for the menial jobs that might be available
Many of these out of work have stopped looking for work! It is a joke to read and hear
constantly that the unemployment rate is just under ten percent, when everyone knows
that it is closer to twenty percent because so many persons have dropped out of the work
force or are working part time. We are told that there are 26 million of these people.
Even if new jobs develop as the economy recovers, it will be more attractive for
businesses to hire younger workers than to re-hire the 50 year-olds. The fact is that the
youth have a far superior grasp of the new communication and robotization technologies.
Many have been using the computer since kindergarten. On the other hand, the fifty year
old is out of date and struggling to grasp the technology let alone master it. Moreover, the
20 year old can be employed at half of the salary and bonuses as the 50 year old.
Coinciding with this trend in new technology and globalization is the fact that the private
business community fears the impact the Obama Administration’s programs will have on
business. Pertinent to the issue being discussed here is the cost of medical insurance and
who has to be covered. In this atmosphere of uncertainty business leaders and their
bankers cannot determine the risk. Consequently, they are reluctant to make any
investment in personnel. In fact, if they had their druthers, they would have as few
permanent employees as possible.
For nearly two years this Administration had done virtually nothing to deal with the
problem of how to re-employ the 50 year-olds. Moreover, for all practical purposes
everything that they have done actually exacerbates the problem. The enactment of
Obamacare and the new Wall Street regulations along with bail outs and out right
takeovers of private enterprise such as we saw with General Motors along with the threat
of ‘cap and trade’ legislation” do nothing to solve this unemployment problem. Then the
Administration dilly dallies with the question of the so-called Bush tax cuts and talks
constantly about “taxing the rich”, which further obfuscates the issue. Increasing the tax
PDF Created with deskPDF PDF Writer - Trial :: http://www.docudesk.com
2
on dividends, for example, increases the cost of capital. If you cannot afford to pay for
the capital to expand a facility, you just don’t expand. Is it any wonder the business
community is locked into inaction?
Why our government has acted in such a casual and nonchalant way is not only a mystery
but an absolute outrage. A clue was provided by Obama in a very recent interview with
Brian Williams of NBC. Obama actually stated that he was not concerned about the
problems of today or even those that might affect the election of 2012, but rather he was
concerned about changing the country and the world so that it becomes a wonderful one
for the children and grandchildren. In other words, to hell with the 50 year olds, full
speed ahead for the transformation of America Obama promised during the campaign.
Who among us is smart enough to know how to construct the country 30 or more years
from now so that it is perfect? Only an egotistic narcissistic personality who has the
absolute determination to transform this country into a socialist state would even make a
statement such as that let alone be serious about taking the actions to bring this about.
However, our President and his aides are operating on the premise that they should take
advantage of any crisis to enact their ideological agenda.
This problem is about to become a crisis. Many of these persons have been collecting
unemployment insurance for nearly two years and there is no end in sight. But what
happens when our financially strapped government has to cut off these payments? Do we
think that these persons will just shut up and go away?
Now, I will be the first to say that the solution to the unemployed 50 year old is going to
be hard to find, and maybe harder to implement. But here are a few ideas.
First and foremost, in no case should the person be permitted to continue to collect
unemployment insurance beyond what has normally been permitted in past recessions,
which is about 26 weeks, and no person should be paid for sitting at home doing nothing.
We should give them one of three choices:
· Go back to school to be retrained
· Perform work in community service, for work we need but which is not currently
being funded.
· Become a contract employee.
Back to School: Some of the 50 year-olds could benefit from additional schooling, such
as, for example, becoming a nurse or nurse practitioner. The cost of school should be
supported by low cost loans. They should be paid the same amount as their
unemployment insurance as long as they receive acceptable grades for their school work.
Community Service: Persons performing community service should be paid the same
amount as unemployment insurance even if the work is menial and below the person’s
skills.
PDF Created with deskPDF PDF Writer - Trial :: http://www.docudesk.com
3
Contract Employee: The idea of becoming a contract employee should be promoted.
Companies still need the skills of the 50 year olds, but they do not want to be obligated to
cover health insurance, F.I.C.A. payments for Social Security, pension set asides and
want to avoid the hassle from government agencies if the work the contract employee is
performing is no longer needed. Arrangements would be “arms length” which means that
when the contract is completed the relationship ends, period! The Commerce Department
aided by the Department of Education should be able to provide the needed information
as to how to become a self-employed person. The National Association of Self Employed
(NASE) would be a good place to learn how to set up an ‘arms length’ contract.
These concepts are not flushed out in considerable detail, but all would be superior to
having these people sit idly at home doing nothing while feeling frantic over what to do
for themselves and families. Moreover, as they perform useful work, they are more likely
to feel better about themselves.
Before everyone gasps at these ideas, we need to consider what is likely to happen if we
do nothing. Doing nothing means that we have to pay unemployment insurance
indefinitely or decide to cut off unemployment insurance and let the unemployed 50 yearold
to fend for him or her self. The former is a plan for the Country’s going bankrupt. The
latter is a plan for chaos. We need only to look to Greece and the rioting in the streets to
see what likely will happen if we cut them off. We could and probably would have
rioting in our streets here in the United States with all the adverse consequences.
We must do something! But the first step is to have the government get its priorities in
the right order. The first priority is not to worry about and spend time and money to
create a new world 30 years from now, but to act today to fix the critical unemployment
problem.
Let your representatives know that focusing on job creation is their first and only priority,
And tell them that if they don’t get it, “we the people” will see that they, like the out of
work 50 year-olds, will be “fired”!
PDF Created with deskPDF PDF Writer - Trial :: http://www.docudesk.com
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