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Wednesday, May 31, 2017

Trust Us, You Look Great

by John Stevenson

In my April 19 column “You Won’t Believe This One,” I described the removal of a scale from the gym at Canada’s Carleton University.  A student complained that the presence of the scale triggered her anxiety, presumably by reminding her she is not winning the battle with her BMI. 

The column described backlash and ridicule of the scale’s removal.  One student acerbically suggested banning mirrors because they could be equally distressing.  Well, it turns out that no trigger for emotional trauma (whether real or imagined and no matter how frivolous or dubious) is to be overlooked or discounted.  Thus the facetious suggestion to ban mirrors has come true.

Sabrina, an idealistic student at Laguna Hills High School, replaced mirrors in the girls’ restrooms with “signs of affirmation.”  Girls who look in the mirror see, instead of their reflection, messages like “You are beautiful” and “You are enough.”  Apparently the school had a “What if…..Week,” each day having a specific theme, one being “What if we showed more love?”  Sabrina, who made and posted the signs, told ABC News (this made the news) “I put the signs in the bathroom the night before so students would see them throughout the next day.”  So her affirmation-instead-of-mirrors effort was planned to last one day.

Sabrina’s project was certainly well-intentioned.  She wanted to make other girls feel loved and valuable.  But she overlooked that mirrors serve a purpose.  Girls don’t want to go through their school day with hair askew, spinach-teeth, cockeyed pussy hat, or smeared mascara.  A “you are beautiful” feel-good message does not help a girl to make it so.

So along comes an adult who might help Sabrina understand this.  Chelsea, the school’s activities director, told ABC News that Sabrina had “made it her goal for the semester to spread positive messages around campus.”  She also said that student reaction had been so positive that there were no immediate plans to take the signs down. 

As the adult in this scenario, activities director Chelsea---in addition to praising Sabrina’s desire to raise other girls’ self esteem---might also have helped her to understand that mirrors serve an actual purpose by reflecting reality and allowing people to make needed adjustments.

Well, it turns out that Laguna Hills High was not the only, or even the first, school to experiment with removing or covering mirrors.  A couple of months earlier, a dorm at Bucknell University covered its bathroom mirrors during “Self Love Week” and “Eating Disorder Awareness Day.” 

The signs said:  “Trust us you look great. Take a break from the mirror today and be good to yourself and your body, regardless of appearance. Know that you are much more than how you look. Celebrate your inner beauty today…” and so on.  How this promotes eating disorder awareness is unclear.  It would even seem to promote unawareness

I claim no expertise in this area, but it would seem logical that eating disorders are serious problems which require medical treatment or psychological intervention and cannot be wished away by covering a mirror with a message of affirmation and self love.

At first glance, removal of the gym’s scale and covering mirrors with signs of praise may seem silly or frivolous.  But in fact both acts represent the denial of reality.  Denial is in vogue on today’s campus and is being enabled---even encouraged---by school administrators and teachers.

Administrators and teachers tend to promptly give in to student demands and to the mindset that uncomfortable truths should be ignored, dissenting opinions should be silenced, and “safe spaces” should be provided.  These adults---in loco parentis---should be providing a dose of reality rather than reinforcing its denial.

In the world beyond graduation safe spaces are in short supply.  And denial will prove to have been an unhelpful lesson with unfortunate consequences.

Wednesday, May 24, 2017

And you thought that nuclear weapons were the problem?

by Chris James

     To me, George Will's recent column on the May 7 death of Dr. William Baumol at age 95 was an eye-opener.  Dr. Baumol was a well-known (by the cognoscenti, but not by me), well-respected economist - mainly for his pioneering work in incorporating the role of entrepreneurship into economic models.  He may have been almost equally well-known for what is now called Baumol's Cost Disease (BCD).

    In a nutshell, BCD attacks manpower intensive institutions, where it is difficult, sometimes impossible, to increase productivity, yet manpower costs associated with these sectors keep rising. Typically, qualifying institutions and businesses comprise the service sector of the economy; it is the largest component (some 70+%) of most developed economies. Therefore, BCD can be seen to be a serious problem, not so much that we've got the bug, but that we understand it, and that we try to find solutions to ameliorate its impact on society.

     How does BCD work?  Take a simple, whimsical example based on the old jocularity "how many (blank) does it take to change a light bulb?"  Let's say that back in the 1920's, it took three individuals.  These are your service providers.  Today, despite advances in light bulb technology, higher quality and faster production (all indicative of increases in manufacturing productivity), it still takes the same three service people to screw the light bulb into the same type of socket used in 1920.  In other words, services productivity has not increased to any extent over the years. However, the wages of today's light bulb service providers are 50 times higher than they were in 1920.

     There are many internet examples of BCD in real-life action.  Here is a smattering.  The Arts are one of a multitude of service components of the economy, as is medicine.  From the Arts, a classic case.  Today, it still takes about the same number and types of instruments to perform Beethoven's 7th symphony as it did when he wrote it.  Over the decades, symphonic musicians' salaries have escalated healthily (thanks, in part, to a robust Musician's Union).  Ergo, BCD.

     Medicine is a fecund source of germane anecdotes.  Classic: A retired octogenarian doctor of some repute was asked how many interns he took on his rounds back in the day.  He replied 10 to 12. He was then asked how many interns do the (hideously more expensive) rounds today.  Guess his answer.  Medicine is a rich source of services infected with BCD.  Examples: Can a doctor examine two patients simultaneously with the same care that he would give to a single patient?  Could a technician draw blood simultaneously from two patients at the same level of efficiency as with one patient?  Doubling effective treatments in the same time that it takes to provide single patient treatment would increase productivity 100%.  The practicality of such a strategy?  Puh-lease!

    So, how does a manpower intensive industry cope with the inevitability of BCD?  Well, business owners or institutional bosses could, ahem, terminate some of those on the firing line and then beat on the remaining employees to work twice as hard to pick up the resulting slack.  On paper, productivity up; in reality, nobody wants to work there anymore.  Alternatively, bosses could beat on workers to spend less time with each customer and, thereby, cram more people into their schedules.  On paper, productivity up; in reality, because of lousy service, nobody goes there anymore.

     Another approach is to cut costs other than those of manpower.  Such as those of processing time.  And, it is here, that the service industry was thrown a life-saver.  The computer.  Not only did data manipulation, storage and communication improve by leaps and bounds in terms of its cost cutting (time) impact but, for many, productivity improved - that it is to say, with access to this technology (to speed things up), a single employee could cover more work in a single day than before.  But, as every manpower-intensive, service provider scrambled aboard the life-boat, and the new technological stimulus became routine, the gains eventually ran out of steam.

     Now what?  Answer: The simplest antibiotic of all with which to fight BCD is to Raise Prices.  In any given service industry group, some participants will raise prices less than others (it's called competition, and is an essential driver of a capitalist society).  But, the fact remains that price increases are mandatory, if BCD is to be - not defeated - but contained.  So, for the average Joes and Janes out there, much of your grumble about the cost of living going up all the time is embodied in this largest sector of the economy.

     All very nice and neat.  But what happens when prices, designed to combat BCD, get riotously out of hand?  In other words, when the proletariat rises up against the prices that they have to pay for certain manpower intensive services become devastatingly high.  For this condition to be significant, the sector at fault would have to be a large one.  Let's see - anybody know of a real-life example?  Well done!  Of course, health care.

     As in any sector of manpower intensive business, when molecular-sized increases in productivity - if any - get bludgeoned by blatantly public price increases, there's gonna be trouble.  What can the beleaguered sector do about it when all other - usually feeble - curative options have been inadequate or have failed?  You knew it was coming, didn't you?  Turn to the government!  That all-knowing, all-seeing institution; in reality that knows very little about next to nothing, especially about the play in which they are about to perform.  

     Well, the government can't do anything about health care productivity, so that leaves using its power to artificially beat down prices (aka bullying).  But, STOP!  The government is also sole possessor of the magic fairy dust that will make health care "affordable" for everyone and - productivity be damned - cure BCD once and for all.  Subsidies!        

     Subsidies cost money.  Yours.  Case in point.  California, in its whack-job socialistic wisdom, wants to divorce itself from whatever else is going on out there in the world of U.S. health care.  An independent study has calculated that it would cost the State, as a single payer insurance system, around $400 billion a year.  The financial wizards in the California legislature have budgeted $140 billion out of the General Fund for this, so far, whimsical purpose.  Where is the rest going to come from?  Dum-de-dum-taxes-tumpty-tum.  But, of course.  And you thought that health care was your God-given right, and therefore "free."

    What we have here with BCD is a classic case of a vaporous manipulation that is the life-jacket for most politicians at all levels.  Namely, the rallying cry that "although we cannot solve it, we can manage it and contain it indefinitely."  Sure you can.

Wednesday, May 17, 2017

The Python Hunters

by John Stevenson

Want a job?  The South Florida Water Management District is paying people to hunt and kill Burmese pythons. 

Everglades National Park and its surroundings are overrun by the non-native snakes which have decimated some and even eliminated other native species.  Rabbit and fox populations have disappeared.  Raccoons, opossums, and bobcats are nearly gone. 

At the top of the food chain, the pythons have no predators.  They have upset the eco-system, depriving the native predators---alligators and panthers---of their chow.

Over 1,000 people applied, of which 25 were selected to hunt the pythons.  The hunters are given special access to python infested publicly owned land.  While this work seems dangerous and even terrifying, it pays handsomely: $8.10 per hour---which is Florida’s minimum wage.

But there are bonuses.  In addition to the extravagant minimum wage, successful hunters get $50 for snakes up to four feet long.  Longer snakes fetch an additional $25 per foot.  So a 10-foot python, for example, would bring $350---provided the hunter survives to collect his check.

There is periodically an effort to increase the national minimum wage (now $7.25).  Raising the minimum wage was a rallying cry in the 2016 presidential campaign.  Fast food workers even mounted a strike last year, demanding $15 an hour.   A $15 national “living” wage was central to Bernie Sanders’ candidacy. 

California’s minimum wage is now $10 ($10.50 if the employer has over 25 employees), and is scheduled to rise to $15 in January 2022.

The argument that minimum wage is not a living wage is probably correct.  But minimum wage jobs typically are filled by unskilled workers, by youngsters entering the workforce, or by students and others working part-time.  Hopefully they will have moved on to better paying jobs before they buy a BMW and need a living wage.

The argument against an increase is that businesses employing low-skilled workers are typically operating with very low profit margins.  Forcing them to pay higher wages will in turn make them raise their prices or hire fewer workers.  Some will automate where possible, as is happening in the fast food industry.  Either way, unskilled workers lose out because of fewer jobs, higher prices, or both.

There is certainly a wide range of low-paying jobs.  There are burgers to be flipped, hotel rooms to be cleaned, cars to be washed, and crops to be picked.  But in the array of minimum wage jobs, we’ve probably found the toughest.

Regardless where you stand on the issue of raising the minimum wage, it sure seems easier to sympathize with the python hunters over the other typically low-wage workers.

Would you rather bus tables or hunt pythons in the Everglades?  If I had to make the choice it would be easy.  I would chose anything rather than be hunted by pythons.  Especially pythons large enough to earn bonus points. 

Wednesday, May 3, 2017

Depravity and Brutality

by John Stevenson

St. John’s College (not the Johnny-come-lately St. John’s University) is the third oldest college in the United States.  Four of its founders actually signed the Declaration of Independence.  Distinguished alumni include Francis Scott Key.  Presidents George Washington and Dwight Eisenhower visited the Annapolis, Maryland campus.  A second campus, in Santa Fe, New Mexico was opened in 1964---with 81 students in its first freshman class.

Imagine St. John’s venerable ivied halls and the idyllic campuses.  You might picture a serene and harmonious academic community.  Sadly, not so.  Apparently the ugly faces of racism and misogyny plague the Santa Fe campus. 

Apart from its official courses, St. John’s (Santa Fe) has extracurricular “study groups.”  Typically, the study groups each meet for several sessions. Students and faculty are invited to participate in these informal studies of important topics.  Recent groups have explored “Islamic Texts” and the economist Francis Fukuyama. 

The study groups are announced via email to the campus community.  A campus-wide March 2 email announced a study group to tackle the issue of racism.  Here’s what it said:

“We will read about and discuss the privilege of white people (especially white males), patriarchy, sexism, and racism in the neoliberal capitalist empire of the United States.”  And how might participants benefit from this study?  “This is a group where those who most often exhibit racist and sexist behavior---white males---can begin to be self-critical of the very dangerous, brutal, and depraved hierarchical pathologies of superiority, supremacy, and inferiority handed down to us by white Euro-American institutions ….The main topic for discussion will be an ongoing one: How do we deal with the depravity of whiteness and the brutality of masculinity?  How can we get to the root of the problem.” 

So there you have it.  The evil of our American evil empire and the evil of whiteness.  Especially evil male whiteness.  And the invitation to white males to come on down and take a verbal and psychological whipping.  To be administered by their betters: the practitioners of love, peace, and tolerance.

The watchdog group campusreform.org obtained a copy of the email announcing this apparently open-minded and inclusive study group.  They sought to get more information by contacting St. John’s.  In response, the college’s only interest in dialogue was “…how did you obtain a copy of an email sent in-house?”

Do you think the white males of St. John’s showed up in droves, anxious to “get to the root of the problem,” their own depravity and brutality?  And what about their parents, footing the bill for a private school education?  Well, except for the efforts of campusreform.org, the parents would probably remain blissfully unaware of the self-loathing being taught to their progeny at their expense.

And what about the four St. Johns’ signers of the Declaration of Independence?  What about Francis Scott Key, who wrote our national anthem?  What about George Washington, who did more than any other to establish our Nation?  And what about Ike, who led us in defeating the Nazis?  What might they think of what is going on at this once esteemed institution that, in its unenlightened past, did not teach self-loathing to white males and hatred of them to the rest of the campus community.