Why it’s better to study in America (or is it?)

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“A minefield of drunken gropings and sexual assaults.” That’s the picture painted of American universities, and it’s partly true, says Amanda Foreman. But there’s something even more striking about US campus life: it’s “jaw-droppingly luxurious”. To take two examples: the University of Missouri boasts an indoor beach club, modelled on one in the Playboy mansion, with its own waterfall and grotto; while Texas Tech has a two-acre water park. The fact is, US colleges are far richer than British ones; and they compete in an “amenities arms race”. Cambridge, our richest university, has almost £5bn ($7.5bn) in endowments; by contrast, Harvard and Yale have $32bn and $20bn respectively. US colleges also offer students another enviable luxury – “total freedom of intellectual exploration”. In the UK, students have to specialise: there, they can select courses from a range of disciplines. As an undergraduate in the US, my studies included philosophy, music and chemistry. Leicester University is now switching to this more flexible system: let’s hope others follow. If we can’t give our students water slides, let’s at least give them a rounded education. (Amanda Foreman, The Sunday Times).

The problem with this interpretation is that there is an arms race among American universities to provide amenities that are (excuse me, Ms. Foreman) quite unnecessary to actual education and which push up the cost to students and their worried parents.  The Great Further Education Bubble involves chasing the increasingly fewer people who can afford them.  If and when some of these outfits go bust they cannot use the facilities for anything else – there is no “resale value” to a college campus.  Yes, I like the more rounded educational possibilities (in theory), and wish I had not specialised as much in my time.  But at $50-60,000 a year, (unless you get a scholarship  and depending whether we are talking about public or private colleges), then yes, the American system is great;  if Mum and Dad have the money; if you don’t mind lectures given graduate students and part- time, underpaid adjunct teachers;  and if you seldom even see a professor, let alone hear words of wisdom from him or her.  No quite as attractive as Ms. Foreman makes out!

Thought for the day

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President Trump visited the memorial wall of the CIA operatives who lost their lives in the course of duty, ignored the dead and spent his time complaining about the reports in the media about the size of attendance at the inauguration.  Attendance in person, mind you, not total world- wide viewers on the  media.  Side by side photos of the inauguration on the Mall in 2009 (Obama) show the whole huge area chock full of people.  At this recent inauguration the place was about one third full, if that.  Does  it matter? No!  What can we deduce from this? Well, the emotional age of the new President, for one thing.  Any guesses?

You choose!

(An incident like this is quite likely to happen almost every day for the next four years. I promise I won’t report the daily Presidential stupidities on every possible opportunity, but this is particularly pathetic).

Does America need another baby boom?

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As if America didn’t have enough to worry about, the US Census Bureau has just released data highlighting a troubling fall in the rate of population growth. The US population grew by just 0.7% last year – the lowest figure since the Great Depression years of 1936 and 1937. Although the US is still faring better than Europe, where some nations are actually shrinking, the trend is worrying given the dampening effect it is likely to have on the economy.

The Great Depression was partly caused by a rapid decline in the birth rate, which fell further as a result of the crash. It was the postwar baby boom, and the consumer demand it thereby created, that helped turn things around. New figures showing that the number of young people living with their parents (or siblings) is at levels not seen since 1940 suggest that no such baby boom is on the cards today. “But at least the US still has immigration, right?” Not if Donald Trump carries out his promised crackdown. If he does, Trump will need a new slogan to save the country from decline: “Make America mate again”.  (Stephen Mihm,  Bloomberg)

Is the economy all that matters?  Is not a population of 7 billion enough for this small planet?  Growing population is essential to capitalism, but capitalism needs to be utterly reformed if it is to be viewed positively ever again.  In recent years it has revealed itself to be, not the best option in a lot of poor options, but actually malevolent in so far as it has produced truly grotesque gaps between rich and poor, throwing massive amounts of bribe money at politicians, lobbyists and think- tanks to keep it that way.  It needs to be reformed and to live within the means of us all.  This implies adjusting to permanently low growth and reviewing its method of operation.  By this I mean that it has to be more efficient, and that can be brought about by decent treatment of workers so that they are motivated,  Living in America it is clear that far too many employees are badly trained and indifferent to the customers and the running of their companies.  The bosses waft above it all , planning how to increase their pay and moaning abour government regulations intended to  temper their greed.

No baby boom , thank you!

 

 

 

American carnage

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We are asked to believe that a bunch of elderly billionaires, mostly with some very dubious and illiberal aspects to their backgrounds, are really going to give the power back to the people, work for social justice, create jobs at above minimum wage, offer a rational health scheme to replace Obamacare, get rid of all the poor Latinos who the rich depend on to get richer, and end endless wars.

Give me a break!  What this is is a cementing into place of the oligarchy we all know we live under, but which people don’t like to admit because they are brought up wedded to the idea of ” democracy”. The latter would be a good idea, by the way.

Trump’s inaugural speech was ungracious,  and any kind of olive branch to those who oppose him sadly lacking. By undoing most of the rules that protect the workers and the public, and by spending huge sums Trump will probably succeed for a time in producing an (over-heated) economy, which, I forecast, will crash, as per 2008.  Around 2020? Anyone like a bet?

And the poor, jobless and dispossessed, who are now de-skilled and many  unsuited to many jobs in the new economy, these people will be no better off.  They will just see even more immigrants brought in to do skilled jobs, more will lose their homes owing to unbridled banking, civil protections will have disappeared, and there will be more and richer billionaires.   And Trump? He will blame Congress, Obama and the Washington elite and persuade his base to re- elect him, because the ability to persuade the poor to vote against their best interests is one of the true miracles of the American system.

I fear this is a rant.  It is a rant because I follow Epicurus in advocating moderation, cooperation, working things out with people and treating them with respect and thoughtfulness.  So far, there has been no sign of anything approaching these values. Thus, one cannot stand by and retreat into one’s shell, hoping it all goes away.  It won’t.

 

We misunderstand the word “elite”

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“Words change. When Donald Trump, Arron Banks or Nigel Farage rail against ‘the elite’, they don’t mean rich, powerful men like themselves. They mean liberals. They mean middle-class, degree-educated, city-dwelling progressives; the do-gooders, the tree-huggers, the PC brigade. And that is the definition their audiences hear. They know who Trump and Farage are talking about. People who think they’re so damn smart. Who think they know so much better than the rest of us. Who look down their noses at the rest of us. The swots. The know-alls. The teachers’ pets. That’s what Hillary Clinton looked like to the anti-elitists. The biggest swot in school.”  (Michael Deacon in The Daily Telegraph)

Actually, they refer to the very people, the “elite” baby boomers mainly, who  installed neo-liberal policies, monetarised every thing in sight, encouraged the gig economy, promoted globalisation, made money while factory workers lost their jobs, pared down the social services, ran everlasting wars, presided over the 2008 financial debacle, talked a good game about racism and sexism, but ignored the  jobless and the poor.  Unfortunately, the best candidate in the US election, Bernie, didn’t make it, but he got the message right.  Not all the “know-alls” know/knew nothing, but too many of the “elite” had it coming to them.

Today we see the outcome. Personally, I shall be working at home, ignoring all the hullabaloo and trying to be peacefully quiet.

What you may not know about Mattis

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In 2011, when Iranian-backed insurgents in Iraq, using Iranian-supplied rockets, were killing American troops, Marine General James Mattis,  head of U.S. Central Command, grew increasingly incensed. As a result, he formulated a plan, which made it to (and was rejected by) the Obama White House, to launch a direct American “dead-of-night” attack on Iran either to take out a power plant or an oil refinery. This “World War III scenario” — the willingness to take a chance, that is, on sparking a regional conflagration — and the urge to act preemptively (including against “Iranian swarm boats” in the Persian Gulf) finally led to his being replaced as CENTCOM commander five months early. ( extracted from an article by Greg Jaffe and Adam Entous, Washington Post).

This, dear Reader, is the man billed as one of the ” grown-ups” in the new Trump Administration.  If this is a serious, thoughtful member of the Cabinet, then we are in dire trouble.  Epicurus might well  appoint psychological councillors for the whole lot of these bomb-throwers and sentence them to intensively growing cabbages in his Garden for two full years.

Seriously though, this points up the reason why the American system puts control of the military in civilian hands – under normal presidencies.  Trump has chosen several military people in place of civilians, to control key aspects of national security and the military.  Why is this being allowed?  Where is judgment?

Britain up for sale

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Britain runs a big trade deficit. The last time there was a surplus was in 1984, when it was modest 0.3% of GDP. The current rate is 6%. Leaving the effect of Brexit aside, the government is temporarily averting a balance of payments crisis by selling the country’s gold and silver – the basic infrastructure.

Yes, Britain is for sale. Its infrastructure has gradually been sold off since the days of Thatcher. One third of all energy, water, transport and travel infrastructure has already been sold. The water Brits drink is supplied by a French company, the National Grid gas pipelines are being sold to a consortium of foreign Chinese and Qatari investors led by the Australian investment bank, Macquarie. Macqaurie owns the biggest car parking company, National Car Park, along with Glasgow, Southampton and Aberdeen airports The state-owned green investment bank will soon be owned by them as well. A French firm, using Chinese funding, is building a new nuclear power station. Three quarters of the rail franchises in the UK are foreign-owned, the companies concerned using the profits earned to keep down the travel costs of people in Holland, Germany etc. Power distribution is dominated by French, German and Spanish companies. Add to all this the fact that the car, steel, cement and most of food processing is owned by foreigners, and even aerospace industry is succumbing.

The City of London makes huge commissions out of the sales, making profits now and hoping for the best for the future. When the government organise trade delegations overseas they are not encouraging inward investment; they are flogging off assets paid for over decades by the British taxpayer. Every time a big piece of infrastructure is sold it has, until Brexit at least, increased the value of the pound sterling, and thus made exporting products that much more difficult. The situation now is that the UK-owned assets, lumped together, are worth less than UK assets owned from overseas. And as a result, there is now a net out flow of interest, dividends and profits from the UK that cannot go on much longer without having serious economic effects.

Britain is unique in being totally open to foreign ownership, in contrast to almost every other country. Others can block takeovers deemed not to be in the interest of their countries (for the record the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US makes decisions on what is and is not in the nation’s interest). Only carelessness or a short-sighted ideology on the part of conservative government could explain the utter stupidity of the policy. One has to wonder who, apart from the bankers might be profiting?

Thought for the Day

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The following is a quotation from the Vatican documents on Epicureanism:

S. 17. It is not the young man who should be thought happy, but the old man who has lived a good life. For the young man at the height of his powers is unstable and is carried this way and that by fortune, like a headlong stream. But the old man has come to anchor in old age as though in port, and the good things for which before he hardly hoped for, he has brought into safe harbor in his grateful recollections.

The bloated Pentagon

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Not only has the United States failed to win a war in recent years, not only is it inefficient and over- staffed – it hides up the facts.

Recently the Pentagon buried an internal study that exposed $125 billion in administrative waste. The study found that almost a quarter of the defense budget is spent on “business operations”, meaning admin, and $580 billion on overhead in general – accounting, human resources, logistics and property management. It pays no less than 1,014,000 contractors, civilians and uniformed personnel to fill back- office jobs far from any front line. Military contractors number 199,661, according to McKinsey, thus exceeding the combined civil workforce of 7 other Federal departments. The purchasing function alone employs 207,000 people; property employs 192,000 and human resources 84,000 people.

The top people at the Pengagon have claimed for years that the armed forces are starved of funds, which is  nonsense – there is no incentive to be efficient. The warriors in Congress can usually be relied on to keep shoveling money in their direction, regardless of the poor performance. But recently, with these revelations, the top brass are worried that Congress, which holds the purse- strings will now make cuts. They rely on the new Trump people to stew up the fear of terrorism to ensure that no cuts are made.

In any case, the internal study was hidden up and the data that proved the waste was made secret. A 77 page summary report on the scandal was removed from the Pentagon website.  If you want to hide up your incompetence you have reports stamped “classified”, which is what happened to most of the report last year into CIA torture.  Mind you, this is what most governments do  – the British are masters of this sort of thing.

The US Defense Department is the “world’s largest corporate enterprise”, and is notable for not analysing its own efficieny. The technique has been, when faced with inquiries, to wait out the studies with a “this too will pass” attitude. McKinsey estimated that the overhead cost between 15 and 20% of the Pentagon operation, but basically threw their hands up and admitted they really had no idea.

Spending gigantic sums of money on sophisticated weaponry does not prevent terrorism.  What you need to do is have human spies (“assets”) with their ears and eyes wide open.  Mass electronic spying on everyone in sight has proved ineffectual.  My wife and I met a recently retired secret service officer who told us precisely this years ago.   The truth, also, is that the Pentagon is not there just to prosecute never-ending war – it is there to plan for and pay for the development of weaponry that can be sold to countries like Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Living in the past

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In the November edition of (the British) Prospect magazine a Dutch author, Joris Luyendijk, wrote an article on the inflated sense of self-worth that pervades a small section of the political Right in Britain.  He writes that many English people have a superiority complex that prevents them being realistic about their country’s place in the world, a sort of collective clinical narcissism.  This rather disagreeable British attitude manifested itself most obviously in the Brexit campaign.  Some Remain advocates  argued that the UK should remain so that it could “run the EU”.  In the Economist Edward Lucas argued that “Britain’s size, experience and friends make us the continent’s natural leader”.  In the Spectator Toby Young opined that, once out of the EU Britain would become “the world’s third economy”.  Being special, other nations would rush to make deals with Britain, which needs the EU far less than the EU needs it.
These grandiose fools, encouraged by the tabloids and approximately two generations out of date, were, or should have been, put in their place by a recent State of the Union speech by Jean-Paul Junker: “Today Europeans make up 8% of the world population – and will represent only 5% in 2050 . By then you will not see a single EU country among the top world economies.  All the bluster and the  appeals to old people who recall the Empire and the red all over the map, do not conceal the fact that the whole EU, including the UK, are becoming irrelevant (Trump, who knows nothing, recognised that when he was dismissive of the British Prime Minister on the phone).
The case for the EU rests on the simple fact that, as Luyendijk writes, that seen from China or Brazil the difference between the UK and Belgium is a rounding error- 0.87% of the world population versus 0.15%.  The only hope for the UK would have been to stay in the EU and try to be constructive and positive, try and change the things that don’t work well, stop the crazy EU expansion policies and moderate, perhaps, some of the regulation-making. Tthe pity is that Labour and the Liberal Democrats have little hope of power, and this leaves the country in the hands of people who have a sense of bravado, who cannot accept criticism and whose quaint sense of “British greatness” is totally unrealistic and, by the way, offensive to others. No wonder Continentals have no wish to offer Brexit-Britain any special favours.

Light relief, courtesy of I know not who

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The flood of Trump-fearing American liberals sneaking across the
border into Canada has intensified in the past week. The Republican
presidential campaign is prompting an exodus among left-leaning
Americans who fear they’ll soon be required to hunt, pray, pay taxes,
and live according to the Constitution.

Canadian border residents say it’s not uncommon to see dozens of
sociology professors, liberal arts majors, global-warming activists,
and “green” energy proponents crossing their fields at night.
“I went out to milk the cows the other day, and there was a Hollywood
producer huddled in the barn,” said southern Manitoba farmer Red
Greenfield, whose acreage borders North Dakota. “He was cold,
exhausted and hungry, and begged me for a latte and some free-range
chicken. When I said I didn’t have any, he left before I even got a
chance to show him my screenplay, eh?”

In an effort to stop the illegal aliens, Greenfield erected higher
fences, but the liberals scaled them. He then installed loudspeakers
that blared Rush Limbaugh across the fields, but they just stuck their
fingers in their ears and kept coming. Officials are particularly
concerned about smugglers who meet liberals just south of the border,
pack them into electric cars, and drive them across the border, where
they are simply left to fend for themselves after the battery dies.
“A lot of these people are not prepared for our rugged conditions,” an
Alberta border patrolman said. “I found one carload without a single
bottle of Perrier water, or any gemelli with shrimp and arugula. All
they had was a nice little Napa Valley cabernet and some kale chips.
When liberals are caught, they’re sent back across the border, often
wailing that they fear persecution from Trump high-hairers.

Rumors are circulating about plans being made to build re-education
camps where liberals will be forced to drink domestic beer, study the
Constitution, and find jobs that actually contribute to the economy.
In recent days, liberals have turned to ingenious ways of crossing the
border. Some have been disguised as senior citizens taking a bus trip
to buy cheap Canadian prescription drugs. After catching a half-dozen
young vegans in blue-hair wig disguises, Canadian immigration
authorities began stopping buses and quizzing the supposed senior
citizens about Perry Como and Rosemary Clooney to prove that they were
alive in the ’50s.

“If they can’t identify the accordion player on The Lawrence Welk
Show, we become very suspicious about their age,” an official said.
Canadian citizens have complained that the illegal immigrants are
creating an organic-broccoli shortage, are buying up all the Barbara
Streisand CD’s, and are overloading the internet while downloading
jazzercise apps to their cell phones.
“I really feel sorry for American liberals, but the Canadian economy
just can’t support them,” an Ottawa resident said. “After all, how
many art-history majors does one country need?”

(Ed:  I can’t find out where this originated. But from time to time you have to have a laugh.  Life is too serious by far)

He did say this

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“Some of these (illegal immigrants) are fantastic people.  I’ve been to the border. I was there a few days ago.  I met some people.  These are fantastic people, and they have great reputations within their communities………The bad ones, they’re gone. They never come back.  They’ll never get back into this country. But the good ones, of which there are many, I want to expedite it so they can come back legally.”
And then:
“The dreamers, it’s a tough situation. We’re going to do something…..I would get people out and then have an expedited way of getting them back into the country so they can be legal….A lot of these people are helping us …..I want to move them out.  I want to move them back in and let them be legal.” (Donald Trump)
63% of illegal immigrants would leave under this Trump policy if they were promised a path to citizenship, and 85% would do so if they were promised a path to citizenship.  So it isn’t at all impossible to implement this policy, known as “touchback”.  Indeed, although a similar idea was turned  down in the Senate in 2007, it could be resurrected, maybe successfully.
But this is not what Trump voters wanted when they voted for him.  They wanted Latinos gone.  What will they do when they find that the former illegals are back in the US for good? Of course, Trump will blame someone else, deny he ever said this about the illegals.  But, nonetheless, the Trumpeters will have been betrayed.

The opioid crisis in America

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In 2015 an all-time record of 52,404 people died from drug overdoses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, eclipsing even gun deaths.   80% of these deaths were the result of misuse of opioids: heroin, Fentanyl, Oxycontin and Vicodin. Prescription opioids accounted for 17,536 of these deaths, a majority.  Doctors are advised to prescribe in low doses, after non opioid alternatives have been tried.  They shouldn’t prescribe opioids concurrently with anti-anxiety and antidepressant drugs.  But 36% of patients told a survey conducted by the Washington Post/Kaiser Family Foundation that their doctors had never mentioned alternatives, a similar percentage said no mention was made of addiction.   50% were taking both opioids and antidepressants simultaneously, with the agreement of their doctors.  Many of the drugs are shared with others, and 34% said they often used opioids to get “high”, to relieve stress or to relax. This is a public health emergency.
According to what I heard during yesterday’s Senate hearings on the Rex Tillerson appointment to the State Department,  Fentanyl comes illegally from China and issmuggled into the United States via Mexico.
What is it about our fellow citizens?  Where is the outrage? They shrug at 30,000 gun deaths a year, and seem, in general, indifferent to the 52,000 people who are dying with these painkillers.  I hesitate to bring religion into this, but in view of the the self-proclaimed religiosity of a majority of Americans, perhaps they could take a long, hard look at their moral compasses and get up in arms about this loss of life.  Or is there something about modern christianity I don’t understand?  Educate me, someone!

Thought for the day. Have a cool one!

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Threats from the unexpected.  Now it is air conditioning and refrigeration. World-wide the demand for air conditioning is expected to rise by 33 times by the end of the century.  By 2050 the world population will use more electricity for cooling than for heating. This will make the planet hotter, because cooling requires the burning of fossil fuels.  Coolness is required in homes, for the longer life of food in supermarkets, for medicines and vaccines, and data centres. As demand for cooling goes up the amount of CO2  emissions will increase by 25% by the middle of the century, cancelling out any hoped-for improvements elsewhere (if they seriously materialize)!.

Double standards, or seeing us as others see us

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It is hard not to laugh at Americans’ indignation over Russia’s alleged meddling in the US elections. For at least a century, the US has done everything possible to influence the outcomes of other countries’ elections. After WWII, the CIA lavished money on Italy’s Christian Democrats, inventing sex scandals to discredit left-wing leaders. In Iran in 1953, the CIA launched a coup to overthrow the democratically elected Mohammad Mossadegh. In Chile in 1964, it spent $4m on ‘covert action projects’ to stop Salvador Allende winning an election, and [later] organised a coup to oust him. Americans should be thankful that they are unlikely to suffer a coup because, as the Latin American joke has it, there’s no US embassy in Washington.”
(Peter Wilby in the New Statesman)

He has a point. I would only add that to help to the US Presidency a man who is so manifestly ill-equipped for the job, and whose principal, maybe only,  interest is himself, is particularly galling to those of us who will now have sit and watch Trump make fools of the people who voted for him.

But Obama’s brilliant, stirring oratory during his farewell speech last night should encourage us to have faith in the basic goodness of our fellow citizens and guard and protect our basic freedoms which are fragile, and, if carelessly given away, are irreplaceable.  There is perhaps little this particular writer can do except continue to advocate kindness, consideration and understanding towards all fellow citizens, and moderation in all things.   Younger people can, I hope, be more proactive than he in standing up for our basic rights and freedoms. Epicurus eschewed politics and stayed in his garden.  No! Don’t do that – get involved. We have a crisis on our hands.