There is a college called Clemson that plans to build a sports center for their football players worth $55 million(!) It includes a 9 hole golf course, sand volleyball courts, bowling lanes just for starters.  An “arms race” is on between American colleges to lure good football players with stellar athletic facilities  They don’t discuss academic rigor or good teaching. In 2014, according the the Washington Post, 48 colleges in the five wealthiest conferences in college sports, spent a staggering $772 million on the pampering of athletes, an 89% increase from the $408 million spent in 2004, adjusted for inflation. Football stadiums and basketball arenas are complemented by practice facilities,fancy locker rooms, players’lounges with HD TVs and video games.

Gradually disappearing is any discussion of academic rigor or good teaching.  Rigor means hard work and tough grading.  The important thing is to fill the college with full-paying students for financial reasons.  To be cynical, that allows the administrators to draw large salaries. The people who foot the bill for this are the students, deep in debt, and their parents, who help pay the fees, whether either are interested in sport or not.

This cannot go on indefinitely. The college industry is a bubble ready to burst.  What will cause it to finally implode burst, one suspects, is twofold: when industry starts to worry that job applicants with supposed excellent degrees are not very well educated; and secondly, when prospective students decide that being in debt for years, partly for the sake of college sporting reputation, and then being taught by poorly paid adjunct professors and teaching assistants instead of full professors – all this is not worth the cost.

An estimated $42 billion is tipped annually in restaurants and bars alone in the United States. Millions of US service-sector workers are paid below minimum wage and rely on gratuities.

Michael Lynn at Cornell University, who has made a career of trying to understand tipping, thinks he can explain it to some extent. Tipping starts, he argues, with a few people motivated by two altruistic notions and one self-serving: the desires to reward good service, boost income for low-paid workers and show off status through largesse. These people receive a mental reward from helping others and from raising their own status, and service staff devote more attention to them if they make a habit of it. Others, observing this, start to follow suit. As the numbers increase so does the social pressure to join in and a feedback loop results. Eventually the behaviour becomes so common that people look down on those who don’t do it, and shame afflicts those who defy the custom.

Are we doing this to help poorer people or just to avoid disapproval? Lynn suspects the latter, in most cases. Try to leave a restaurant or a taxi in a city like New York, and you can be chased down the street by irate servers or drivers. A wrinkle on this system is that black restaurant staff are tipped less than their white counterparts for the same level of service (maybe they don’t protest at small or no tips so forcibly). Subtle, possibly subconscious, discrimination seems to permeate the gratuity, says Lynn. “It’s a class action lawsuit waiting to happen.”

The obvious thing to do is to follow the lead of countries like France and Britain, where a fixed amount (usually around 12.5%) is added to bills in all restaurants. A fixed service charge is now required in France by law, and since 2008, it must be passed on to staff. This makes a meal so much more pleasant and relaxing. There are too many young waiters trying too hard, inserting themselves into your conversation and pretending to be your best mate. Quietly and efficiently seen and not heard should be the thing.

We have unprecedented ability to choose a job or profession, but down-sizing, temping and short-term contracts now mean that the average job lasts 4 years only.  If you have children and a mortgage this makes for a stressful and very un-Epicurean life.  Moreover, modern jobs are increasingly dull and unrewarding.  Studies have shown that two thirds of all workers are dissatisisfied with their jobs.  Automation and the digital revolution held out promise of more leisure and a higher standard of living.  Instead, work is taking up just as much of our time as ever, and increasingly uselessly. (Richard Cohen, The Washington Post)

Mankind has inhabited, and dominated, the planet for several thousand years, but is now no wiser than it was when it found its way out of Africa. We still have the ruthless, the selfish, the short-sighted, the violent, and the egotistical among us. Those who want to live simply, modestly and economically in thoughtfulness, kindness and empathy for others are, as ever, in the minority. But virtue is its own reward. We have to sigh, tolerate the unpleasantnesses, keep a sense of humour, and live the best lives we can, without regrets.