What a Fool Believes, Part I

Originally I was going to call this post "What I've Learned from Life" but that title doesn't actually fit what I've learned from life; the title of the great Doobie Brothers song does. As a jazz player, I shouldn't really like this tune but I love it.

What A Fool Believes:

• You should send people bad news in emails. Never, never, never ever send bad news in emails. Even a phone call can sometimes be misinterpreted. If at all possible, show up in person, let them see you, let them ask questions. Also, never put anything in an email that you wouldn't want broadcast all over the Internet. Emails are not private forms of communication. Public humiliation is as close as some unhappy recipent's send button.
• Always advertise yourself, let people know of your accomplishments and how great you are. No, never promote yourself, never. I learned this lesson from Arnold Palmer and blogged about him here. Palmer, arguable one of the all-time great golfers and an individual who had wide impact on all of sports (founded the Golf Channel, first to do celebrity athlete endorsements, founded the first sports management group, IMG, etc. etc.) claimed he "didn't win much" and didn't "hit his irons very well". Really? Arnold Palmer? He taught me never to brag about my golf shots or anything else for that matter. Whether you like Arnold Palmer or not, he knew that other people's opinion of him (or you) will never be based on any piece of puffery he (or you) broadcasted in public (but see the next point).
• People love to hear you talk and ramble on about yourself. No, there is nothing more boring than hearing people ramble on talking about themselves. Never talk about yourself unless asked and then think carefully about why you are being asked. Most people, on the other hand, love to be asked about themselves and will typically ramble on while you can think about something else at a party. If you must, be brief and be humble when asked about yourself.
• Make fun of other people, they love it. Never, never make fun of other people. The best jokes you will ever tell are on yourself. I find my own life hilariously funny, the lives of other people not so much.
• Never do anything you can't make money on.  Making money is fine, but do what you really love for fun. Get a good education. Find a stable, solid job you can count on for employment and income. Make sure the job doesn't consume your life. In my high school yearbook, I was supposed to be an artist. I would have starved and now really hate worrying about money. Doing what you love for free gives you great "freedom"!
• It's always about exactly what people are saying. No, it is never about what people are saying. Especially, when things seem weird and irrational, it's never about what people are saying. For example (I've sanitized this a little), I was trying to put a committee together. I was getting all sorts of push back from people, lots of irrational reasons that made no sense. Finally, I figured out it was about hatred of one potential member on the committee (something that could not be mentioned publicly). When things don't make sense it's about hatred, envy, jealousy, sexual urges (Sigmund Freud's contribution), racism, xenophobia, hatred of people who are different, etc. etc. People are smart enough to know that their real motivations cannot be nakedly expressed in public, so they always come up with rationalizations.
• Always follow the crowd. Never follow the crowd. They are always wrong for you. You are an individual. Think for yourself. Follow your dreams and creative ideas, even if it doesn't make money.

To continue with the song (lyrics here):

But what a fool believes he sees
No wise man has the power to reason away.

Of course, there must be more that a fool believes. That will be reserved for Parts II, III, etc. (Fools are a gift to bloggers that keeps on giving).

A Look Back at the Kennedy-Nixon Debates After 56 Years

Tomorrow night, the US will have it's first Vice Presidential debate of this political season moderated by the first Asian-American woman moderator. After watching the first presidential debate last week (here) and the merciless parody done on Saturday Night Live this weekend (here), I thought it might be interesting to look back at the first televised presidential debate between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960. It was the first presidential debate I ever saw since it was on TV and it shaped the rest of my life. Kennedy was articulate and serious. Nixon was sweating (middle image above, wiping sweat off his upper lip) and shifty (last image on the right).

You can watch the entire Kennedy-Nixon Debate here, watch the highlights here, read commentary (here, here and many other places) or read the transcript (here), depending on how much patience you might have with history.

EXAM QUESTIONS

1. Horse Race Who won the debate?
2. Compare and Contrast On the basis of other Presidential debates you have seen, how would you compare this one?
3. Impact Given what you now know of the political history of the US from 1960 to the present, how would you evaluate the effects of the debate?
4. Lessons If you were advising a presidential candidate, what advice would you give them based on your review of the Kennedy-Nixon Debate?

EXTRA CREDIT

1. Does it help to understand history?
2. Do you think any of the current presidential (or vice presidential) candidates have learned anything from this debate?

The Importance of Grit and Early Childhood Reading

PBS Nova recently ran a feature on the School of the Future (preview above). The documentary confirms everything I have learned from teaching at the college level (I'll summarize a few below) and provides a few other ideas I wish I had stumbled on myself, trying to develop a teaching approach the hard way.

Two other points about learning success outside the classroom struck a very personal chord for me. First, early childhood reading with a parent (before grade school) is extremely important. This a period of rapid brain development for children (specifically, Broca's area and Wernicke's area). Second, children need to develop grit, the ability to persist in learning regardless of failure. It's my personal observation that persistence is far more important than raw intelligence, at least at the college level with entrance exams that select student who are all quite intelligent enough. It is also my experience that many students have no passion for learning and no persistence when the going gets the least bit tough. It breaks my heart to have to say this because there is no time for me to teach this at the college level (even if I had any idea how to teach grit, which I don't).

The personal aspect of early childhood learning, for me, was that my mother taught me to read and write before I entered grade school. This was a mixed blessing. In the public schools I attended, students were not accelerated based on their current level of learning. Until well into high school and not until college, I was completely bored, had stopped paying attention and seldom studied. On the other hand, I was quickly able to catch up in college. I attribute that to my strong reading skills, love of books and to the last trait I somehow learned from my father: grit. At his funeral, my father was describe by the people who knew him longest as "a fighter, never a quitter". I had never really heard much about my father's childhood and he never talked about grit and persistence but somehow I absorbed it. He did tell me I was a quitter and maybe I have just been on a long journey to prove him wrong.

Parent's! Read to your children when they are young. Do whatever you can to improve, develop and encourage persistence, passion and grit. Read Angela Lee Duckworth's book Grit: the power of passion and persistence and/or listen to her TED talk (here).

Teachers! Lectures are dead, even at the college level. I have known a handful of great lecturers. I am not one of them!  But it doesn't matter. Students love learning-by-doing in groups and on teams. Teachers love teaching these classes because they are easier to teach and more effective. Give a 15 minute quick lecture on the topic of the day and then let students go at the material. I taught Computer Science and Statistics where it is easy to give exercises that can be started in class and finished later, outside the class room. The approach can be done on any topic. Never give homework! Students are overloaded and not getting enough sleep. Let them have a life outside of the classroom. Give them time to pursue their passions. At the end of the week, do a quick, ungraded mini-quiz on the week's topic.  It nails down the learning experience and improves retention.

If you don't believe any of this and even if you do, watch the full NOVA documentary Schools of the Future.

Three Choices of Political-Economic Philosophy in the US Presidential Election

There are a lot of confusing issues swirling around in the current presidential election: gay marriage, abortion, gun rights, immigration, police brutality, racism, women's rights, financial regulation, healthcare costs, foreign wars, social security, money in politics, climate change, etc. etc. All these issues (and new ones that will certainly be introduced to stir the debate) resolve into a choice of three political-economic philosophies. Understanding the philosophies can help you evaluate the political rhetoric and inform your voting.

The three political-economic philosophies that are being offered to US voters are:

• Neoliberalism: The current political-economic philosophy which has been in play since the 1980s but which started to unravel during the Bush II years.
• Neoconservativism: The philosophy of the Republican Party, dominant during the Bush II years.
• Social Democracy: The current version of Embedded Liberalism, the philosophy that dominated US politics from the end of WWII until the 1970s.

If you understand these philosophies, make a decision about which one you support and place the candidates in the philosophy they support, your decisions will be a lot easier. First, follow the links above to understand the philosophies (if this is new territory) then use the following cheat sheet to classify candidates:

The Embedded Liberalism of the post-WWII era failed during the 1970's in the US after a period of stagflation. Neoliberalism ran from the 1980s until the Financial Crisis of 2008. Follow the graphs below to see why Neoliberalism began failing after 2008. The choices are to continue with a political-economic philosophy with this track record (a don't-kill-the-golden-goose strategy for some), re-ignite the Neoconservativism of the Bush II years that ended in Financial Crisis or return to Embedded Liberalism, possibly with some Social Democratic updates. 

These are the political-economic philosophies that seem to be in play in the current US presidential election. Inform yourself, understand the choices, locate confusing issues within the philosophies and it will be easier to motivate support of a candidate and voting. Think of the different philosophies as strategies that might, if pursued, either benefit or not benefit you, the US and the World (not necessarily all the same thing). Vote and support your political-economic interests. To me this is the essence of Democracy since we do not all have the same political-economic interests.

THE TRACK RECORD OF NEOLIBERALISM

Neoliberalism emerged in the 1980's and started failing after the Financial Crisis of 2008 as a result of internal contradictions (Harvey, 2005). Neoliberalism was originally sold on the basis of widely accepted economic theory, a theory used to advise governments on policy. In practice, Neoliberalism did not perform as predicted by it's theory.

The most important consequence of Neoliberalism in the US has been an increase in Income Inequality as measured by the GINI index, plotted in the graph below. Notice that income inequality in the US is approaching levels not seen since then end of the 1920s. During the 1980's, Neoliberalism was sold on the basis of trickle-down theory: policies that benefited the wealthy would benefit everyone. 

If you are a wealthy person or come from a wealthy family, then Neoliberalism has been a great success for you and you should be interested in seeing it continue. If not, your political-economic interests may be elsewhere.

Another chart that displays a similar historical pattern is the share of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the Financial Industry, a measure of Financialization (the dominance of US Finance Capital or the power of Wall Street). There are the familiar "twin peaks" in both the inequality and the financialization graphs: one just before the Great Depression and another right before the Financial Crisis of 2008. The important enabling legislation: regulation that separated investing from banking, passed after the Great Depression (the Glass-Stegall Act passed in 1933), was eventually repealed during the Clinton Administration in 1999, nine years before the Financial Crisis of 2008.

If you work in or derive your income from the Financial Sector or live off the earnings of a Trust Fund, it will probably be in your interest to see Neoliberalism continue. If your only contact with the US Financial sector is through high-interest credit card debt and poor returns on savings accounts, your political-economic philosophy might not align with Wall Street.

Just to make clear the importance of the last two graphs graphs and one to follow, in an economic system where growth is "balanced" (a balanced-growth equilibrium or balanced-growth path in Neoclassical Economics), all variables should grow at a constant rate. Unbalanced growth is considered a failure of the economic system typical in "undeveloped" economies. Any policy derived from Neoclassical Economics should not produce unbalanced growth.

A final example of unbalanced growth is the comparison of worker productivity to hourly compensation. The graph below shows that the two started to diverge in the 1970s, again the start of Neoliberalism in the US. Neoclassical Economics, the theoretical foundation of Neoliberalism taught in all major US universities, requires that wages keep pace with productivity, that is, workers should receive their marginal product. 

Other economic theories can be used to explain constant wages or hourly compensation (see the Dual-Sector model of Arthur Lewis or Paul Samuelson's Dissection of Marxian Economics) but Marxian economics is not widely embraced in either Academia or the US Government. Breaking Labor Unions and exporting jobs to low-wage peripheral countries was supposed to benefit workers through trickle-down theory. In practice, the theory was flawed.

Another key part of the Neoliberal philosophy was the placement of all social services in the free-market private sector where competition can supposedly control prices. The result of free-market forces in health care has, for example, been opposite what was predicted. The US saw a large increase in the price of medical care commodities after the Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973 which was inspired by Neoliberal thinking. If you work in the health care industry and have benefited from these increases in prices charged to consumers, then you will want to see Neoliberalism continue. If you are a consumer of health care services and either have increasingly large co-payments or must pay out-of-pocket medical expenditures, you might favor a political-economic strategy other than Neoliberalism.

The result of market forces in higher education has been a steep increase in college tuition, again starting in the 1970s. If you work in higher education and have benefited from the increases in expenditures, then you would like to see Neoliberalism continue. If you are a college student, a family who wants to send their children to college or a lower ranking employee in Higher Education (non-star faculty and academic staff), you have not benefited from market forces in education and would probably prefer some political-economic philosophy other than Neoliberalism.

Finally, there has been an increase in gun ownership within the US. The trend started after 9/11 (the September 11 Terrorist Attacks on the World Trade Center) and was not a direct result of Neoliberalism. However, the personal freedom and responsibility emphasized by Neoliberalism looks at the trend positively. If you are a gun owner or are concerned about arming yourself defensively, you will probably find Neoconservativism attractive. If you are intimidated by armed citizens carrying loaded weapons in US streets and are inclined to favor gun control, then you will probably find Social Democracy more attractive.

The topic of gun ownership fits well with consideration of US military expenditures. The graph below shows that the US, by far, outspends the rest of the world on the military. It is a cost of being the hegemonic leader of the world system. If you think this level of expenditure is correct or should even be higher, you will be comfortable with Neoconservativism or Neoliberalism. If you think the expenditures are too high then you will probably favor Social Democracy. However, it is important to note that even during the period of Embedded Liberalism after WWII, a high level of military expenditure has always been part of US political culture. The question is whether that should change at this point in history.

EXERCISES

Where candidates fall on the three philosophies is somewhat difficult to determine. Especially if candidates are good politicians, they and their supporters will attempt to obscure their positions to gain votes. I have refrained from putting candidates in boxes for you. You will need to inform yourself on the political philosophies and do your best to make judgment calls. Here are some exercises that might help.

1. Using web sites that compare candidates on various issues (here, here, here and here), try to identify the political-economic philosophies of each presidential candidate (use the table at the beginning of this post).
2. Using candidate's own web sites (Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, etc.) and the party platforms (Republican Party, Democratic Party or a site that compares all party platforms here) test your understanding of their political-economic philosophies. Compare candidates to their parties.
3. Evaluate past presidents and their administrations (Reagan, Carter, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, and Obama administrations). How clear was their political-economic philosophy when they entered office? How did their political-economic philosophy change over time, if at all? How easy was it to predict their major decisions based on a political-economic philosophy?

Good luck!