Maybe today’s financial crisis has an unexpected upside

That, at any rate, is the view of Terence Blacker, writing for Britain’s newpaper The Independent (“Reasons to be cheerful about the credit crunch”).

He cites a number of potential upsides: people realizing once again that a house is somewhere to live, not an investment opportunity or a source of never-ending income; less constant yakking about making money; a sense of disgust at some of the incomes of top executives; less indulgence in conspicuous spending; even a greater appreciation of what we all have today. Continued

People may be born with intelligence, but that may not mean they keep it

Balmain Working Mens’ Institute
photo: J Bar

In the debate about what makes a country or a society competitive in the world, it would be interesting to know how much a decline in educational standards counts for. We tend to assume that children are usually better educated than their parents, since standards are rising constantly. What if this is not so in a country — say in the US?

Clive Crook, writing in the Financial Times reports this fact and is clearly of the opinion that it should be more widely reported and discussed than it has been so far:

A startling and profoundly important fact about the US economy has received surprisingly little attention. The educational quality of the country’s workers is starting to decline – not just relatively (because other countries are catching up and moving ahead) but also, for the first time, in absolute terms. Over the coming years, baby-boomers departing from the labour force will have better educational qualifications than the younger workers replacing them. If the ultimate source of an economy’s ability to grow and prosper is its human capital, the US is in trouble . . .

Between 1940 and 2000, the educational standard of people entering the US labor market rose markedly. While fewer than 5 per cent of the population had at least a four-year college education at the start of this period, more than 30 per cent did so by the end.

When the educated Baby Boomers retire

However, the children of the post-war Baby Boomers now have fewer post-graduate degrees than their parents’ generation. What happened? Have they lost interest? Does a good degree count for less in getting a job?

Whatever the immediate reason, there has been no such decline, it appears, in countries like South Korea, Japan, Canada and Russia. In fact, in many other countries, the proportion of people aged 25-34 with at least a college education is now as high as, or higher than, in the US — and still climbing. When the US Baby Boomers leave the labor force, as they are already starting to do, a good proportion of the educational attainments of the country will leave with them. Continued

Is the gap narrowing between TV reality-show fantasy and today’s economic activity?

Both current economic models and TV reality shows reward all-out competition driven by material self-interest. Both, as Lynne Truss described in her book “Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door,” consist of people being competitive, underhand, rude and aggressive towards one another in contrived and stressful situations.

How did it become entertainment to watch a rich guy with a seriously awful hairstyle fire people on camera? Maybe it’s the ultimate fusion between sport and the stockmarket: corporate life as a spectator event. Maybe people just enjoy seeing devious, smarmy, pushy and treacherous know-alls kicked in the teeth. Maybe it’s a symptom of an insane society.

Still, there it is. A big cheese showing off by firing small cheeses desperate to become bigger ones. In the past, being an apprentice meant signing your life away for years to serve and learn from a master of some craft. Now it means imitating a rich person with a dubious track-record and trying to knife your fellow contestants before they manage to knife you. Continued

McCain’s adviser had it about right

An important adviser to US presidential hopeful John McCain was reported last week as saying that the U.S. had become a nation of whiners. Naturally, there was a fuss and the guy’s remarks were disowned by McCain. And while that shows how politically inexpedient they were, it doesn’t prove that they were wrong.

If you follow the media and listen to people talking around you, I believe you’ll also come to the conclusion that the most typical sound in our society today isn’t muzak, or TV commercials, or the latest pop blockbuster. It is indeed whining.

We’re talking ourselves into a recession. Not just a ‘mental recession’ but a real one. One that will truly hurt a great many people. Some have already lost their jobs. Some have lost their homes. All this is undoubtedly real. But what got us here has mostly been a failure of intangible things: trust, confidence, willingness to offer credit, belief in the soundness of certain investments. In that sense, we are in a mental recession: a recession primarily caused, not by tangible problems of supply and demand, but by the panicky reactions of thousands of dealers and speculators in the world’s stock markets. Continued

Why the pundits are so often wrong

One of the more annoying aspects of modern life is the way we are subjected to the constant prognostications of various forecasters: the so-called experts who tell us what is going to happen — to the economy, in politics, in the world of technology, in fashion, and, it seems, just about anywhere else.

You can’t get away from these irritating nuisances. Turn on a news program on the television and you hear more about what is going to happen that what has just come about. The newspapers are the same: endless forecasts and speculations displace real news, let alone reasoned comment designed to help the reader understand the implications of current events.

That’s I applauded this brief article by Matthew Parris in the London Times newspaper (“The trick: forecast what happened yesterday”). As he says, “I suspect that economic forecasting owes more to a mirror held up to yesterday than a crystal ball held up for tomorrow. ” Continued