Category: Political Science & Economics

College Advice

Category : Political Science & Economics
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Over Thanksgiving dinner, I talked with my neighbor, a smart high school senior, about where he wanted to go to college. But before we got too far in, he told me a number that shocked me: $20,000. That’s the cost of instate tuition, fees, books, and dorms at the University of Wisconsin. When I attended in 2004 for my freshman year, it was ~$14,000. He’s clearly smart enough to do the work at Wisconsin, but he’s doing the mental calculus and see’s he’ll save $20,000 over two years and end up with the same degree if he goes to a cheaper school and transfers in. That’s a tough decision.

Like most 17 year olds, he’s not sure what he wants to do in life. And there’s nothing wrong with that. At 27 I still don’t know what I want to do in life. But to go to school to figure out what he wants is now going to cost at least $80,000 for four years at a good school. If he were to go to a private school it’d cost upwards of $200,000 for four years. And with many students taking 5 years, he’s at between $100,000 and $250,000 in the hole as a 22 year old. That’s absolute insanity. Especially since college doesn’t guarantee you a job that will let you pay that debt back anytime soon anymore.

We are going through the biggest economic shift since 1750 when the industrial revolution reshaped our economies. That change took 100+ years. We’re 40 years into the new revolution today. Software and robots are eating the world. In the 1970s, low skilled jobs mainly filled by urban minorities were eliminated. Our economy didn’t need them anymore. Shamefully, pretty much nobody cared. In the 90s, computers, robots and outsourcing began to eliminate manufacturing jobs. People started to take notice, but many figured it was progress. We’re moving to a knowledge economy.

But that all changed in 2007-2009. That recession eliminated the last vestiges of the old manufacturing systems, leaning out the workforce via increased efficiency from robots and software. But the big change was the elimination of millions of middle management white collar jobs. Businesses fired managers, lawyers, spreadsheet jockeys and more. By 2012, businesses realized that they got along just fine with fewer managers. Most of those jobs are gone forever.

So what should someone like my 17 year old neighbor do? Where will the jobs be in our new economy? Is it even worth going to college? What majors are worth taking? And if you do go to college, how do you prepare yourself for success after graduation?

Our economy will have jobs in four major areas:

  1. High paid, high skill jobs like engineers, doctors, scientists, designers, technicians, health care, computer programmers
  2. High paid, high skill trade jobs like plumbers, electricians, mechanics, welders
  3. Working for yourself, with pay ranging from minimum wage to high wages
  4. Low paid, low skill service jobs in restaurants, hotels, stores

We’ll still have manufacturing, finance, business people and lawyers, but each company will need progressively fewer and fewer jobs as these jobs get mechanized and we squeeze out more efficiency from each worker and pay goes down because of increased competition.

If you go to college, go to a good public university and study hard sciences like engineering, physics, biology, astronomy, computer science, medicine, dentistry, nursing or elder care. But what if you don’t like any of those?

If you absolutely don’t like any of the hard sciences or health care and you plan on graduating with a poli sci, english, art history, women’s studies, psychology, journalism or another liberal arts degree, the days of waltzing through university, getting a degree and then getting a good job are over. And going to law school is not the fallback it once was: 55% of 2011 law grads didn’t have law related jobs and 28% were unemployed one year after graduation. You either need to be in the top 5% of all of these degree seekers in smarts, work ethic and perseverance or you need to develop skills outside the classroom. Preferably both.

You need to set yourself apart from the vast majority of your peers who will coast through college and emerge with a piece of paper, a pile of debt and no skills other than binge drinking. Get out in the world. Volunteer. Intern. Work. Start a small business. Take online classes outside of your university. Read books that you’re interested in. Meet people, join clubs.

But don’t do things to check a list or get the credentials like you did in high school. Do it because you think you might like it or to develop skills. The biggest (only?) benefit of taking a liberal arts degree today is that you’ll be exposed to smart, educated, motivated people who you can connect with for life as friends, business contacts, smart people to start a business. Don’t underestimate these benefits.

For example, if you think you might want to be an attorney, take a law and society class. Contact local attorneys to ask to shadow them for a day or intern in their office. You might love it, but you also might hate it. Finding out what you don’t like is just as important as what you actually do like. Learn to communicate, to write, to problem solve, to earn money on your own. To make things happen. Work hard. Figure out how to relate to people. Kill off any vestiges of shyness or timidity. Find something that you truly love to do. Because coming out with a paper degree guarantees you nothing but a huge pile of debt and a wasted four (or more) years of lost earning and learning potential. And avoid small, private, liberal arts colleges like the plague unless absolutely necessary.

Why I’m Still Voting for Obama

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Back in March, I decided to vote for Barack Obama for President. Today, I’m even more convinced.

I still believe Obama hasn’t done a good job as President. He’s been a weak leader. He’s outsourced many of his major policy decisions to unpopular, hard left Congressional Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. He hasn’t done what he said he would. Even in the face of extreme opposition from Congressional Republicans sticking to fundamentalist positions, it’s no excuse. A leader must lead.

But I’m still going to vote for Obama because I believe a Romney Administration and Republican rule would be a disaster.  For a long time I’ve argued that both parties were the problem, that they did the same things. Much to my friend Erik’s chagrin, I refused to believe that the Republicans were really worse than the Democrats. The last six months have proven that he was right and I was wrong.

The Republicans have become dogmatic, anti-science and anti-thinking on the economy, national defense and social issues. They’ve become the party of fear. And fear leads to anger, which eventually leads to knee-jerk, dogmatic decisions, which many times leads to violence. Republicans are making policy based on dogma, religion and their gut.  Many Republicans seem to want to put us into a moral theocracy, an individualistic Ayn Randian dream world of the 53%, all the while increasing military spending. That’s a scary mix.

On the economy, the Republicans view any dollar that goes out of a government account as bad. They don’t differentiate between spending and investment. But anyone with a brain knows that it’s a completely different thing to borrow money to buy a new house (an asset) or borrow money to take a Caribbean vacation (an expense). The Republicans equate investing money in roads, bridges, schools, high speed internet or alternative energy with spending money on worker’s salaries, pensions, social security, health care, food stamps and other government services. That is just plain wrong.

I am extremely worried about our national debt and runaway spending and believe we have to make big changes to get our financial house in order. But Republican austerity for social programs while spending an extra $2T on defense that the Pentagon isn’t even asking for, at the same time cutting taxes, will destroy us just as continued runaway spending from a Democratic administration will bleed us to death. We need massive changes and at least an Obama administration will look at the facts and try to make policy, even if I don’t agree with it completely.

We are in the biggest period of economic structural change since the industrial revolution. Unlike other periods of rapid change, this time we are destroying many more jobs than we’re creating. Software is eating the world. It’s replacing jobs that people used to do with computer programs or robots. A factory that would have employed 50,000 people in 1950 would likely only employ 5,000 people today and produce way more.

We are shedding jobs at an unprecedented rate, not just in manufacturing, but also in white collar and middle management. In journalism. In government. The only sectors that are growing are highly skilled professional jobs, highly skilled service jobs like plumbers and nurse practitioners and low skilled service jobs like Walmart or Starbuck workers.

I used to lean Republican because I agreed with their stance on the economy and defense, but now that the party has moved so far right and embraced too many hard line, litmus test, far right ideas, I can’t support them anymore. Even though I believe that many Democrats are wrong on how to fix our economy, they at least have the social issues right, defense mostly right and at least know the difference between spending and investment.

I would have voted for the Mitt Romney who was the Governor of Massachussets. The pragmatic centrist in a liberal state who did what he thought was right after looking at the facts. But now that the entire Republican party has moved right, so has Mitt. He’ll do anything to win this election, even if it means pandering to the religious and economic fundamentalists that have more in common with the Taliban than they would like to think. If elected, he’ll continue to do the same.

We need massive change, a real leader. Someone to tell it like it is, not just try to get reelected. I’m voting for Obama because he might just grow a spine and say, “fuck it, it’s my last term, I’m going to lead and do what’s right.” Doubtful, but I know Romney won’t. He’ll just do what he thinks he needs to do to get reelected. An Obama win gives us a chance with a rejuvenated Obama and a Republican party that can push out the hard right, religious, anti science, fear mongering, anti-thinking conservatives and come back in four years with a real game changer.

Decriminalizing Drug Usage in the US

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In 2001, Portugal decriminalized all forms of drugs. If you’re caught using drugs, instead of being punished and sent to jail, you’re forced to appear in front of a judge, a psychologist and doctors who create a mandatory treatment plan. Portugal uses a holistic approach that treats drug users as patients, rather than criminals. Ten years on, they’ve seen incredible results.  From Business Insider:

  1. 50% reduction in drug addicts
  2. Drug usage is among the lowest in EU
  3. Drug related health problems like overdoses and STDs are down even more than usage rates

Government officials believe they’ve seen these incredible results because drug users are more willing to seek help because they’re not scared of going to jail. Users go to the doctor more often and are given more opportunities to get into programs to get off drugs. It’s still illegal to sell drugs and Portugal punishes dealers, but simple drug use is treated as a public health issue.

Contrast Portugal’s amazing success to the huge problems we face in the US.  Some stats from Time’s Fareed Zakaria:

  • There are more people under ‘correctional supervision’ than were in the Gulag under Stalin
  • The US has 760 prisoners per 100k citizens. Japan, 63, Germany 90, France 96, South Korea 97, UK 125, Mexico 208, Brazil 242.
  • US makes up 5% of world population but 25% of world’s prisoners
  • In 1980 prison population was 150 per 100k citizens. Now it’s 760.
  • Drug convictions 1980, 15 inmates per 100k. 1996 148.
  • 50% of federal inmates are drug related convictions
  • 1.66m arrested in 2009 for drug charges. 80% are for possession only.
  • It costs California $45,000 per year to house a prisoner

The war on drugs has been a colossal failure. We’ve spent trillions of dollars, imprisoned millions and wrecked the lives of many more. And it doesn’t even work! In 2010, we had the highest drug usage rate in years.  And that’s just in the US. The war on drugs has caused incredible violence in Mexico, where over 50,000 people were killed since the latest drug crackdown.

There’s something wrong with a society when 760 out of every 100,000 people are in prison.  When we punish people rather than finding solutions and let people suffer as drug addicts rather than helping them. It’s morally wrong and cannot be justified by public safety, economics or any other measurable data.  The only reason we’re still on this path is that people say “drugs are bad, lets punish people as a deterrent.” This argument does not hold water.

It’s time to stop treating drug users as criminals and get them the help they need to get off drugs. Let’s stop wrecking families by sending a drug user off to prison. Lets have some compassion and treat drug use as a public health issue, a disease, rather than something that should be punished. It’s amazing what happens when you treat the source of the problem, rather than punishing the consequences. If we even have half the success that Portugal had with its policy, the USA will be much better off.

What do you think?

It’s Time to Have a National Conversation on the 2nd Amendment

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In the aftermath of the Aurora mass shooting, NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg demanded that President Obama and Mitt Romney tell us their plan to stop gun violence in the US.  He’s right.  Although it doesn’t touch the vast majority of US citizens, it’s a major problem.  It’s time for a serious national conversation. Without the hyperventilated rhetoric from both sides, but especially from gun owners.  I’m not really sure what I believe yet, but I think it’s an issue that deserves some serious thought and open conversation.

Some data, per year from 2000-2007:

  • 52,447 deliberate non fatal gunshot victims
  • 23,237 accidental non-fatal gunshot victims
  • 12,632 gun murders
  • 17,352 gun suicides
  • 1,240 accidental gun killings
  • 31,224 firearm-related deaths
  • ~106,000 gun related injuries and deaths in the US each year
  • About 35% of US households own guns
  • 25% of family violence and robberies are committed with guns
  • Robberies and family violence committed with guns are 3x more likely to result in deaths than other weapons

Gun violence in the US is mostly the problem of the poor.  It only touches the middle and upper class when someone like the Aurora killer snaps and goes on a killing spree, or a middle class guy grabs a gun and slaughters his family. Or when someone commits suicide.  These killing make big news and bring gun violence to those who normally don’t experience it.

All my life, I’ve had strong feelings that citizens need to have the right to bear arms.  I liked the idea of being able to protect ourselves from crime and that guns are a check on government power.  I always thought that bad people committed gun crimes and the rest of us should have the right to have a gun to combat bad people. If there were gun laws, only bad people would have guns and that wouldn’t be a good thing. But my opinions are starting to change.

Gun Violence is a serious problem

Even if it doesn’t directly affect middle and upper class people, it is. Foreigners always tell me “the US is so dangerous, I can’t imagine living there.”  Or “are there really gun fights in the streets in the US?”  My response has always been to use my home town of Milwaukee, a city with a metro area of about 1.7m people, as an example.  From 2008-2011, 297 people were murdered in Milwaukee, with at least 204 shot to death.  Add in thousands of shootings and its a big number.

My response is aways, “yes, but its actually really safe. All of the gun violence takes place in a four square mile area in one part of the city and a smaller area on the south side. If you don’t go there, you’ll never see violence. In my 26 years being in Milwaukee, I’ve never seen gun violence firsthand.”  It’s the truth.

I was always been ok with this justification until Thursday.  I watched the documentary The Interrupters (watch it), a heartbreaking chronicle of a year on Chicago’s South Side. It followed former gang leaders who are now working in the streets to “interrupt” and diffuse situations from leading to gun violence. As I watched interview after interview with children as young as 7 who have to live in gun infested neighborhoods, my opinion started to change.

We’re also seeing an increase in mass shootings, whether they’re at schools, movie theaters, malls, the office or at home. Someone can’t take it anymore, grabs a gun and starts shooting. Innocent people are slaughtered and lives change in an instant.

Guns Make Deadly Violence Too Easy

Guns make ending a life as simple as pulling a trigger.  Whether its your own life, a murder or even an accident, simply pulling a trigger has huge, immediate and deadly consequences.

The vast majority of shootings and gun murders happen when either an argument or “another violent crime escalates and the offender goes into the crime without the intent to kill or be killed.”  The US has a similar robbery rate to Australia and Finland, but those countries have much lower levels of gun ownership.  The mass murderers can kill 12 people and injure 100s in 2 minutes.

I believe that in high crime areas, the vast majority of shootings are not gang related.  They start out as petty arguments, a perceived lack of respect, scuffing someone’s shoes, not saying excuse me or insulting someone’s girl. The aruguement escalates someone grabs a gun and the next thing you know, someone’s dead or wounded. The the victims family or crew retaliates. Then the cycle continues and more are dead.

Without the guns, these arguments would escalate to fist fights, baseball bats, or even knives.  But its much harder to kill someone with any of these weapons.  If there were no guns, these robberies, arguments, killing sprees and suicide attempts would still occur, but would likely end without nearly as many deaths.

The Second Amendment

The Second amendment guarantees US citizens the right to bear arms.  I’ve always thought it should be an inalienable right for law abiding, sane citizens.  I always thought bad people are going to have guns, so why limit guns to otherwise law abiding citizens? Why punish law abiding citizens? I’ve also always been comforted by the fact that an armed citizenry is a check on government power.  If the government knows that citizens own guns, they will be less likely to abuse their power.

Back in the 1700s, personal gun ownership made sense.  Life was dangerous.  There weren’t police forces or a large standing army.  People lived with in nature and hunted for a decent amount of their food.  Besides personal protection and hunting, the founding fathers wanted guns in the hands of people to check government power, and for the ability to raise an army if necessary.

Back then, a town militia equipped with muskets could defeat an army.  An armed citizenry made sense and was a real check on government power.  Gun ownership was a real check on tyranny.  But even still, the newly formed US government used the army to violently put down the Whiskey Rebellion in 1781.  Guns didn’t check government power, it just added to the body count.

A Check on Government Power in 2012?

As technology and policing has gotten more advanced, an armed citizenry is no longer the check on government power that the foundering fathers envisioned.  Even local police in small towns have assault rifles, shotguns, sniper rifles, body armor and other previously military only weaponry.  Police departments in big cities are basically para military equipped forces, with everything from full riot gear to advanced imagery, drones and intelligence devices. Look at Chicago during the NATO summit.

Armed citizens really have no chance against these forces.  Plus if there ever were the need for the citizenry the rise up and defend itself against the government, the government would call out the real army and crush any form of dissent, just like the Whiskey Rebellion.  Does an armed citizenry really check the government anymore? If not, can we really use it to justify gun ownership? I think the answer is likely no. But I still get a funny feeling in the back of my head when I try to envision a US without this check on government power.

Self Defense

What about personal protection? Studies have shown that gun ownership does not provide much self defense.  Guns are used by private citizens in self defense against violent crime in 6 out of 1000 incidents, or about 52,000 times each year.  Do these 52,000 instances of self defense justify over 100,000 shootings each year? It’s an incredibly difficult question.

In all of these mass shootings, there hasn’t been an armed citizen who’s taken out the killer. It almost always ends in suicide, arrest or the cops kill the guy.  In the Gabrielle Giffords shooting, there were multiple people carrying guns and they didn’t do anything.  In fact Joseph Zamudio, who eventually helped stop the shooting said he was “lucky” to not have shot anyone, because it would have been the wrong person. People who do not have police or military training don’t “drop the guy” when he starts shooting.

A significant amount of crimes escalate when the criminal gets scared.  If the criminal has a gun and so does the victim, it can actually make the situation more dangerous for the victim. Criminologists believe that if guns were less available, criminals would still commit crimes, but with other, less deadly weapons. Philip J. Cook found that “the level of gun ownership in the 50 largest U.S. cities correlates with the rate of robberies committed with guns, but not overall robbery rates.“

I believe guns provide significant self defense for those with police and military training, but for the rest of us, not much. And they may even make life more dangerous when confronted by a criminal with a gun.

What do we do?

I don’t have a full plan yet. But I do know some things for sure:

  1. Hunting rifles should be legal
  2. Assault rifles should be illegal. There’s no need.
  3. Most or all automatic and semi automatic weapons should be illegal
  4. Any rifle that serves no purpose for normal hunting should be illegal
  5. You shouldn’t be able to buy guns, armor and ammo over the internet

I’m also leaning toward more draconian gun control laws. I’m beginning to think that an armed citizenry really doesn’t provide any check on government power.  Self defense is a tricky one, but I’m starting to think that the ends do not justify the means and that neither argument holds water.

I want to hear what you think. What should we do about guns in the US? Why?