Actually, it's because of such simplistic stereotypes about how rape victims are supposed to behave that so many sexual assaults still go unreported. Once you know that most rapes are committed by people the victim knew, you can understand why not all victims immediately go to the police. It's perfectly understandable that, if they had already had consensual intercourse before, the alleged victim would feel bad about what happened afterward if she did not agree to having sex without a condom but did not immediately report it. It's a common reaction and victims often need the help of their family or friends to fully understand what has happened to them and realize that it was rape. The fact that they "didn't seem phased" doesn't mean much, as there are many cases of rape victims dating and having subsequent intercourse with their rapist (clear-cut example: all those who were victims of marital rape).
The story of Einstein exhibiting poor performance when he was young is mainly myth. He did fail a university entrance examination when he was 16 but a) He was sixteen! b) He had excellent grades in physics and math c) He did go to college when he was 17, after completing his HS education with once again top grades in physics and math
Einstein didn't really "end up working odd jobs" either. By modern standards, his career is fairly normal. He did have a problem securing a teaching post at first (which is what he had trained for) but within one year of graduation, he had already published an article in Annalen der Physik and, during his time at the Patent Office, was actually working on his PhD thesis. He was awarded his PhD in 1905, his annus mirabilis, and was soon able to leave his job at the Patent Office. He was a full professor at 32, again fairly standard for an academic.
Absolutely not. They are a government body, which means that the incentive part has been fixed for them already. The basic argument for patents is indeed what you have stated: it is cheaper to copy than to innovate. Therefore, all companies have an incentive to wait for others to innovate, then copy what they have done. Therefore, there will be less innovation than socially optimal and we must have patents to give companies incentives. In others words, we allow inventors to internalize some of the positive externalities that innovations generate.
The main rationale for government-funding of research is exactly the same: innovation generates positive externalities and, by funding research, we also allow for the internalization of these externalities. In theory, there is no need for patents in that situation.
Assume that the taxpayers are paying you to take these pictures because it has been decided that it was important for art to be produced. Wouldn't it make sense to make these photographs available to all, without restrictions?
The problem is that this overlooks one of the major problems with the current drive to patent all that can be patented, even when it was found as part of a government research project. As soon as there is a possibility to directly profit from research findings, it becomes more likely that research will be directed toward what will maximize the likelihood that something patentable will be found. This reduces the difference between what government and what the industry will focus on, which undermines the rationale for having government research in the first place (i.e. to fill in a gap and allow for "pie-in-the-sky" research that, although interesting for theoretical, basic science reasons, has no immediate applications). If the government ends up researching the same things as industry does because they want to be the first to patent it, launch a spin-off and get bought out by the industry, it might be easier to just subsidize the industry.
I have seen it happen at my own institution. Several departments have now all but abandoned basic research and focus on applied endeavors that would be best done by private companies. Mostly recycling well-known solutions with minor, incremental changes rather than trying any "bold" new research that might or might not work but has the potential to fundamentally enhance our understanding of the world.
It's quite a significant departure from the traditional role of government and universities in research and also restricts the diffusion of knowledge. If something has been funded by public money, it belongs to the taxpayer and should be freely available. This is one of the important roles of government, to release things into the commons so that it can be used freely. If, as an offshoot of basic research, interesting information is released and allows companies to improve their products at a low-cost, then the taxpayer benefits from that (especially since, with no patent, all companies have equal access to this innovation and cannot leverage the exclusivity to charge more), probably more than if universities join in the patent thicket and start suing companies on the basis that they "invented" such things as predictive text (University of Texas).
Patents might still be useful in pharma, where the costs of developing a new drug (even when the basic research has already been done by a university) are very high and the marginal of the drug is close to zero. But in most other fields, it's just a nuisance.
As I understand it, she will make recommendations to the EU commission, who will in turn draft a Directive. If adopted, a Directive is binding on all member states, which have a few years to change their national legislation to reflect what the Directive says.
At a time when austerity is the word of the day and cuts are being made all over the place, I wonder whether "superfast broadband" in rural areas is the best way to use limited resources. Presumably, people choose to live in rural areas because they derive benefits from that (clear air, outdoors, less crime, community, etc.). Good for them! But why should city dwellers subsidize their rural lifestyle? If you choose to live in a rural area with low population density, you have to accept that perhaps your internet connexion will not be as fast as if you lived in bustling city.
You're making it sound as if these politicians have an epiphany and change their opinion for good reasons. What really happens is that they look at polls, realize that the position that they had been arguing for/against doesn't chime that well with the voters (for instance because, after primaries, they now have to appear to the median voter and "moderates"), so they shamelessly switch positions and now argue as vehemently the exact opposite of what they had been saying before.
When you have been on both sides of an issue and back and the guiding principle seems to be which way the wind blows, you're not someone who is good at adapting to new circumstances. You're just a cynical liar.
Indeed, it's not as if it had anything to do with slavery. It was all about states' rights! Of course, the first thing the Confederacy did was make the preservation of slavery a constitutional mandate. Doesn't sound much like a resounding proclamation of states' rights to me.
I don't think anyone is preventing pressure groups from publishing reports about the nutritional contents of food. The question is whether Apple should be mandated to disclose information about working conditions and whether consumers should be shown pictures of their device being assembled in China.
My understanding is that, if consumers are really concerned about nutrition, then they will tend to get that information. Nowadays, most places already provide this information and use it as a selling point (you can eat healthy at $fast_food_joint). If you choose to go to a place that doesn't make this information available, then it's your decision and it must mean that you don't care all that much about nutrition.
That might have been the case a few decades ago but, nowadays, it is quite easy to check beforehand. Most chains tend to have the information online. If they don't you're free to complain and choose not to patronize them. I for one do not go to any restaurant that doesn't post a full list of allergens on their website because I don't want accidentally find out that there was something I can't eat in the food (trip to the ER? Not thank you!).
Now, I don't think it's that big a deal if restaurants were mandated to post this information. Most of them do it anyway and it seems like good business to me. For one thing, they wouldn't lose the custom of people like me. But even if they don't, the choice is still yours: if you're starving and you don't want to drive, then you've made your decision and, apparently, you don't value this information all that much.
Same in the UK. You can get a pap smear within a day as well, as long as you're willing to go private. You'd have to pay for it, unless you have insurance , but you'd still get your pap smear. It'll cost you about £200 (~$320) and they also measure your cholesterol, perform a breast exam, etc.
At any rate, what does your anecdote prove? That someone, somewhere, might have been harmed by rationing? You can find such horror stories in all systems. I'm sure I can find someone in the US who was concerned about their health and didn't go to a doctor until it was too late because they didn't insurance and didn't want to pay hundreds of dollars. In the meantime, when you have a public system, it's important to make sure that resources are not misused. That means making tough choices: is the risk of misdiagnosis and false positives (which will bring up costs, not to mention scare some people to death) greater than the risk of missing some cancers? You could potentially screen everyone for cancer every year or even every month. Would that make any sense? Of course not, so screening is targeted based on evidence about who would benefit the most from it. I say that's the best way to design a system that has to make the best use of the limited resources that it has at its disposal.
The whole thing about death panels has never made any sense to me. Why on earth are *Republicans* complaining that the government is spending *less* money and reimbursing *fewer* procedures? That's their whole platform: less government spending! If their caricature were correct, the UK system would be amazing: a very bad, stingy system for the hoi polloi (a little like showing up at the ER in the US), which means that government will not spend too much on healthcare, and a very generous private system as long as you're willing to pay for it. Isn't it what they should want if they really cared about small government rather than pandering to the "get your government hands off my medicare" crowd.
Which attack on Iraq? If you're talking about the 2004 invasion, Fukuyama actually publicly came out against the invasion and the overambitious objectives of the Bush administration.
I wonder how many of those who criticize Fukuyama on this thread have actually read his books.
- Immiseration: Marx wrote about immiseration, the poor getting poorer, etc. in the mid-19th century. Are we supposed to say that he was right that "real wages would fall, and working conditions deteriorate" between then and now? Ever tried working for a 19th-century wage in a 19th-century factory? On both these counts, workers are now much better off than they have ever have been (excluding the effects of the current recession/stagnation). And the historical trend has been for real wages to increase. Maybe not as much as productivity, but that is a red herring: the point is that the poor have not gotten poorer, virtually everyone has been getting richer. Real wages have been stagnant? Maybe (although you also have to look at total compensation including benefits), but since virtually everything has been getting cheaper, people have still been getting richer: http://myslu.stlawu.edu/~shorwitz/Good/myths.htm
- Crisis: see the previous point for the claim that workers would be paid less and less. Which also contradicts what the author himself has said since we have moved from mere stagnation to a decrease in real wages (these are not the same thing). I don't understand what he means by overproduction, etc. If anything, there was too much demand (not too little) for many goods such as housing. There is also something strange about the idea that too little demand, rather than making prices fall to the lower equilibrium price, would lead to indebtedness. Too little demand (whatever that means) should lead to lower prices, and hence to lower levels of debt.
- Stagnation: seems plausible. But one should also mention that Marx's explanation for the TRPF, which was based on his labour theory of value, should be discarded along with the labour theory of value.
- Alienation: is there any evidence that workers are feeling more alienated now than before? And, even granted that Marx was correct about this, what should we do about it? Is there any system of production that does not result in either some degree of alienation or massive poverty due to a great lack of productivity. I, for one, would take some alienation at work 40h per week if it means that I can go back to my confortable home with all my gizmos, rather than having to work 7 days a week on my farm to barely scrape by.
- False consciousness: completely untestable since we have to assume that people are being exploited in the first place.
The problem is that it costs a lot of money for uncertain outcomes. This money could maybe be better spend and, if having laptop in classrooms does not seem to improve learning outcomes, then we might want to use the money on more effective things.
Maybe nobody will look back 10 years from now and say this was a bad idea. But it would be more a testimony to the power of inertia and of a sense of entitlement than proof that it was a good idea in the first place.
There is no hard and fast rule that says that schools should adopt every single new technology. At the root, a school is a place to learn, not a place to showcase the latest gizmos. Technology is good, but only insofar as it helps schools perform the task that they were created for: teach children. I don't see why not keeping up with technology would cause test scores to go down. Will students become worse at maths if we stick to the tried-and-true blackboard? Will they stop being able to diagram sentences unless they get a smartboard?
What is true of course is that test scores don't capture everything. Maybe, as in TFA, the students learn just as much about Shakespeare AND have more fun with their laptops. But to me, it sounds a lot like what we used to do 10 years ago in the computer lab. No need for a smartboard, expensive laptops, etc., and certainly no need to do it every single period.
In fact, TFA illustrates how all the hype often makes us forget that teachers have been doing similar things without fancy technology for years. For instance, I don't think that the story about the civil war quiz on p. 4 would have been "unimaginable" 10 years ago. 10 years ago, teachers already asked us our opinion by show of hand and then drew us into a conversation about the answers. Filming a skit instead of doing a live presentation (p. 5)? Did it in fifth grade, back in 1996.
Why should it matter whether Amazon could manufacture a Kindle in the US? Is there any rule that says that every country MUST specialize in everything (which means that the country will specialize in nothing?). New York also specializes in financial services, Houston in the energy business, the SF Bay in high-tech companies, etc. Is it a such cause of concern? Why is it that everyone is very concerned about that when it comes to countries? Specialization is good, this is what makes us all more wealthy.
If you study economic history, you'll see the same progression everywhere. First, people are virtually all employed in agriculture. Productivity in that sector is low and output barely sufficient to feed everyone. Then, an industrial sector arises and expands. Productivity keeps on rising in the agricultural sector and fewer and fewer people are needed. Doomsday prophets tell us that it's horrible, it will forever change the country, etc., but we just keep ignoring them. At one point employment in manufacturing also peaks (there is only so much stuff you can buy and we keep getting better and better at producing things economically); services become more and more important. This is happening everywhere in the world. In fact, even if you consider the earth as a whole, the share of services in world GDP also keeps on rising. And, no, this is not due to trade with other planets.
The premise of the article is also wrong. There is nothing irreversible about this trend. If the US were to unilaterally erect trade barriers, it would once again be profitable to make whatever the author thinks should be made in the US. It's not as if the Chinese and Taiwanese all have some sort of secret technology that no US person could ever replicate or approximate. Especially since in many cases it is US companies that provide the specs and designs that are made in those foreign factories. It would of course be very wasteful, but it'd be possible.
The journal article on which the column is based is also bizarre. First, it's already a bad sign when you talk about "competitiveness". See for instance Krugman's article "The Myth of competitiveness" (http://www.pkarchive.org/trade/MythCompetitiveness.html). Second, weekly wages are not a good metric. Total compensation (including benefits) is what really matters. Third, please provide figures and be precise. It just won't do to say that the US "has lost or is in the process of losing the knowledge, skilled people", etc. that it needs. This makes it an unfalsifiable statement as it is much too vague. It also seems strange to argue that the US is losing the knowledge it needs when people from all over the world come to the US to study in order to acquire this knowledge. Fourth, it almost seems to border on xenophobia at times. Why should it matter if something is designed in Tokyo or Chicago? Do American designers have a higher worth, matter more than Japanese or Korean designers?
Well, they tried when people were peddling import substitution. Then they realized that it was costing a whole lot of money, that what was being made was of poorer quality and more expensive than what was available abroad. And the whole world eventually learned good economics and saw that it was not a good idea to try to manufacture everything at home. So, now, people in Africa are quite happy to buy what the Chinese sell them and actually put their resources to good use. Which means that they typically don't try to create their own technology.
Neither do the Chinese by the way. Most of the heavy lifting in still done in other countries (primarily USA and Europe). The Chinese still by and large take existing designs and build them to order, assemble things that were manufactured elsewhere, and make shoddy copies that are touted as great innovations for nationalistic purposes (the Loongson CPU for instance).
To be fair they're trying to move up the value chain. They've been spending a lot on R&D, but we'll have to see how that translates into results that can be profitably put on the market. But they're still very far from the technological frontier. They're having a good run with catch-up growth and it's smart to prepare for the future but, for now, China's comparative advantage will still be manufacturing for the foreseeable future. I'm skeptical that China's current political environment can sustain the kind of dynamics that are very useful to get innovation. Somehow it doesn't seem very conducive to innovation to have to worry about what the Thought Police thinks you're up to, to have to deal with bureaucrats and a very top-down style of economic policy, not to be able to freely communicate with others (including foreigners) or move about your own country, etc.
If I understand what the Treasury is saying correctly, S&P would still have made a mistake in that they took the reduction relative to the first baseline and applied it to the second model, which started from a different baseline. Which is indeed a mistake since, relative to that other baseline, it was more like a $4 trillion cut. Using either baseline is defensible but you have to remain consistent. Pick one and stick to it.
The difference is that, as far as I know, taxpayers don't spend millions on dollars on "Jesus toast" research and teaching. People don't get grants and cushy salaries so that they can find the image of Jesus on thousands of toasts over a period of 40 years or teach people how to better spot Jesus on toasts and clouds.
This is why most people don't take literary analysis seriously. There is a real human being who took the pain to write a 400-page long book. Presumably, he wanted to convey *something*. But apparently, we have to act as if the book came down from heaven and we can't try to discover what the author wanted to say?
The worst manifestation of this is when some literary theorists seem to argue that *even the author* cannot interpret what he wrote better than anyone else. He's just another reader!
This sounds ridiculous to me. Even if the author writes an essay saying "this is what I meant when I wrote this", we're supposed to ignore that and simply focus on the words of the work because this is all that matters in literary criticism?
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Actually, it's because of such simplistic stereotypes about how rape victims are supposed to behave that so many sexual assaults still go unreported. Once you know that most rapes are committed by people the victim knew, you can understand why not all victims immediately go to the police. It's perfectly understandable that, if they had already had consensual intercourse before, the alleged victim would feel bad about what happened afterward if she did not agree to having sex without a condom but did not immediately report it. It's a common reaction and victims often need the help of their family or friends to fully understand what has happened to them and realize that it was rape. The fact that they "didn't seem phased" doesn't mean much, as there are many cases of rape victims dating and having subsequent intercourse with their rapist (clear-cut example: all those who were victims of marital rape).
See for references to published research: http://www.ndaa.org/pdf/pub_victim_responses_sexual_assault.pdf
The story of Einstein exhibiting poor performance when he was young is mainly myth. He did fail a university entrance examination when he was 16 but
a) He was sixteen!
b) He had excellent grades in physics and math
c) He did go to college when he was 17, after completing his HS education with once again top grades in physics and math
Einstein didn't really "end up working odd jobs" either. By modern standards, his career is fairly normal. He did have a problem securing a teaching post at first (which is what he had trained for) but within one year of graduation, he had already published an article in Annalen der Physik and, during his time at the Patent Office, was actually working on his PhD thesis. He was awarded his PhD in 1905, his annus mirabilis, and was soon able to leave his job at the Patent Office. He was a full professor at 32, again fairly standard for an academic.
Absolutely not. They are a government body, which means that the incentive part has been fixed for them already. The basic argument for patents is indeed what you have stated: it is cheaper to copy than to innovate. Therefore, all companies have an incentive to wait for others to innovate, then copy what they have done. Therefore, there will be less innovation than socially optimal and we must have patents to give companies incentives. In others words, we allow inventors to internalize some of the positive externalities that innovations generate.
The main rationale for government-funding of research is exactly the same: innovation generates positive externalities and, by funding research, we also allow for the internalization of these externalities. In theory, there is no need for patents in that situation.
Assume that the taxpayers are paying you to take these pictures because it has been decided that it was important for art to be produced. Wouldn't it make sense to make these photographs available to all, without restrictions?
The problem is that this overlooks one of the major problems with the current drive to patent all that can be patented, even when it was found as part of a government research project. As soon as there is a possibility to directly profit from research findings, it becomes more likely that research will be directed toward what will maximize the likelihood that something patentable will be found. This reduces the difference between what government and what the industry will focus on, which undermines the rationale for having government research in the first place (i.e. to fill in a gap and allow for "pie-in-the-sky" research that, although interesting for theoretical, basic science reasons, has no immediate applications). If the government ends up researching the same things as industry does because they want to be the first to patent it, launch a spin-off and get bought out by the industry, it might be easier to just subsidize the industry.
I have seen it happen at my own institution. Several departments have now all but abandoned basic research and focus on applied endeavors that would be best done by private companies. Mostly recycling well-known solutions with minor, incremental changes rather than trying any "bold" new research that might or might not work but has the potential to fundamentally enhance our understanding of the world.
It's quite a significant departure from the traditional role of government and universities in research and also restricts the diffusion of knowledge. If something has been funded by public money, it belongs to the taxpayer and should be freely available. This is one of the important roles of government, to release things into the commons so that it can be used freely. If, as an offshoot of basic research, interesting information is released and allows companies to improve their products at a low-cost, then the taxpayer benefits from that (especially since, with no patent, all companies have equal access to this innovation and cannot leverage the exclusivity to charge more), probably more than if universities join in the patent thicket and start suing companies on the basis that they "invented" such things as predictive text (University of Texas).
Patents might still be useful in pharma, where the costs of developing a new drug (even when the basic research has already been done by a university) are very high and the marginal of the drug is close to zero. But in most other fields, it's just a nuisance.
As I understand it, she will make recommendations to the EU commission, who will in turn draft a Directive. If adopted, a Directive is binding on all member states, which have a few years to change their national legislation to reflect what the Directive says.
At a time when austerity is the word of the day and cuts are being made all over the place, I wonder whether "superfast broadband" in rural areas is the best way to use limited resources. Presumably, people choose to live in rural areas because they derive benefits from that (clear air, outdoors, less crime, community, etc.). Good for them! But why should city dwellers subsidize their rural lifestyle? If you choose to live in a rural area with low population density, you have to accept that perhaps your internet connexion will not be as fast as if you lived in bustling city.
Perhaps someone should have mentioned to them that Uganda is not in Central Africa? It's considered part of East Africa.
Looking at this map from a recent publication, there seems to have been more cases of monkeypox in the US than in Uganda: http://wellcometrust.wordpress.com/2012/03/01/developing-the-atlas-of-human-infectious-diseases/monkeypox/
But, hey, it's "Africa", right.
You're making it sound as if these politicians have an epiphany and change their opinion for good reasons. What really happens is that they look at polls, realize that the position that they had been arguing for/against doesn't chime that well with the voters (for instance because, after primaries, they now have to appear to the median voter and "moderates"), so they shamelessly switch positions and now argue as vehemently the exact opposite of what they had been saying before.
When you have been on both sides of an issue and back and the guiding principle seems to be which way the wind blows, you're not someone who is good at adapting to new circumstances. You're just a cynical liar.
Indeed, it's not as if it had anything to do with slavery. It was all about states' rights! Of course, the first thing the Confederacy did was make the preservation of slavery a constitutional mandate. Doesn't sound much like a resounding proclamation of states' rights to me.
Back in the 18th century, when mercantilism and beggar-thy-neighbor were debunked. Of course, not everyone got the memo.
Have a read: http://www.pkarchive.org/trade/MythCompetitiveness.html
I don't think anyone is preventing pressure groups from publishing reports about the nutritional contents of food. The question is whether Apple should be mandated to disclose information about working conditions and whether consumers should be shown pictures of their device being assembled in China.
My understanding is that, if consumers are really concerned about nutrition, then they will tend to get that information. Nowadays, most places already provide this information and use it as a selling point (you can eat healthy at $fast_food_joint). If you choose to go to a place that doesn't make this information available, then it's your decision and it must mean that you don't care all that much about nutrition.
That might have been the case a few decades ago but, nowadays, it is quite easy to check beforehand. Most chains tend to have the information online. If they don't you're free to complain and choose not to patronize them. I for one do not go to any restaurant that doesn't post a full list of allergens on their website because I don't want accidentally find out that there was something I can't eat in the food (trip to the ER? Not thank you!).
Now, I don't think it's that big a deal if restaurants were mandated to post this information. Most of them do it anyway and it seems like good business to me. For one thing, they wouldn't lose the custom of people like me. But even if they don't, the choice is still yours: if you're starving and you don't want to drive, then you've made your decision and, apparently, you don't value this information all that much.
Same in the UK. You can get a pap smear within a day as well, as long as you're willing to go private. You'd have to pay for it, unless you have insurance , but you'd still get your pap smear. It'll cost you about £200 (~$320) and they also measure your cholesterol, perform a breast exam, etc.
At any rate, what does your anecdote prove? That someone, somewhere, might have been harmed by rationing? You can find such horror stories in all systems. I'm sure I can find someone in the US who was concerned about their health and didn't go to a doctor until it was too late because they didn't insurance and didn't want to pay hundreds of dollars. In the meantime, when you have a public system, it's important to make sure that resources are not misused. That means making tough choices: is the risk of misdiagnosis and false positives (which will bring up costs, not to mention scare some people to death) greater than the risk of missing some cancers? You could potentially screen everyone for cancer every year or even every month. Would that make any sense? Of course not, so screening is targeted based on evidence about who would benefit the most from it. I say that's the best way to design a system that has to make the best use of the limited resources that it has at its disposal.
The whole thing about death panels has never made any sense to me. Why on earth are *Republicans* complaining that the government is spending *less* money and reimbursing *fewer* procedures? That's their whole platform: less government spending! If their caricature were correct, the UK system would be amazing: a very bad, stingy system for the hoi polloi (a little like showing up at the ER in the US), which means that government will not spend too much on healthcare, and a very generous private system as long as you're willing to pay for it. Isn't it what they should want if they really cared about small government rather than pandering to the "get your government hands off my medicare" crowd.
Electronic payments work pretty well in most countries. You'd just send your friend your account number and they'd transfer the money.
Which attack on Iraq? If you're talking about the 2004 invasion, Fukuyama actually publicly came out against the invasion and the overambitious objectives of the Bush administration.
I wonder how many of those who criticize Fukuyama on this thread have actually read his books.
- Immiseration: Marx wrote about immiseration, the poor getting poorer, etc. in the mid-19th century. Are we supposed to say that he was right that "real wages would fall, and working conditions deteriorate" between then and now? Ever tried working for a 19th-century wage in a 19th-century factory? On both these counts, workers are now much better off than they have ever have been (excluding the effects of the current recession/stagnation). And the historical trend has been for real wages to increase. Maybe not as much as productivity, but that is a red herring: the point is that the poor have not gotten poorer, virtually everyone has been getting richer. Real wages have been stagnant? Maybe (although you also have to look at total compensation including benefits), but since virtually everything has been getting cheaper, people have still been getting richer: http://myslu.stlawu.edu/~shorwitz/Good/myths.htm
- Crisis: see the previous point for the claim that workers would be paid less and less. Which also contradicts what the author himself has said since we have moved from mere stagnation to a decrease in real wages (these are not the same thing). I don't understand what he means by overproduction, etc. If anything, there was too much demand (not too little) for many goods such as housing. There is also something strange about the idea that too little demand, rather than making prices fall to the lower equilibrium price, would lead to indebtedness. Too little demand (whatever that means) should lead to lower prices, and hence to lower levels of debt.
- Stagnation: seems plausible. But one should also mention that Marx's explanation for the TRPF, which was based on his labour theory of value, should be discarded along with the labour theory of value.
- Alienation: is there any evidence that workers are feeling more alienated now than before? And, even granted that Marx was correct about this, what should we do about it? Is there any system of production that does not result in either some degree of alienation or massive poverty due to a great lack of productivity. I, for one, would take some alienation at work 40h per week if it means that I can go back to my confortable home with all my gizmos, rather than having to work 7 days a week on my farm to barely scrape by.
- False consciousness: completely untestable since we have to assume that people are being exploited in the first place.
The problem is that it costs a lot of money for uncertain outcomes. This money could maybe be better spend and, if having laptop in classrooms does not seem to improve learning outcomes, then we might want to use the money on more effective things.
Maybe nobody will look back 10 years from now and say this was a bad idea. But it would be more a testimony to the power of inertia and of a sense of entitlement than proof that it was a good idea in the first place.
There is no hard and fast rule that says that schools should adopt every single new technology. At the root, a school is a place to learn, not a place to showcase the latest gizmos. Technology is good, but only insofar as it helps schools perform the task that they were created for: teach children. I don't see why not keeping up with technology would cause test scores to go down. Will students become worse at maths if we stick to the tried-and-true blackboard? Will they stop being able to diagram sentences unless they get a smartboard?
What is true of course is that test scores don't capture everything. Maybe, as in TFA, the students learn just as much about Shakespeare AND have more fun with their laptops. But to me, it sounds a lot like what we used to do 10 years ago in the computer lab. No need for a smartboard, expensive laptops, etc., and certainly no need to do it every single period.
In fact, TFA illustrates how all the hype often makes us forget that teachers have been doing similar things without fancy technology for years. For instance, I don't think that the story about the civil war quiz on p. 4 would have been "unimaginable" 10 years ago. 10 years ago, teachers already asked us our opinion by show of hand and then drew us into a conversation about the answers.
Filming a skit instead of doing a live presentation (p. 5)? Did it in fifth grade, back in 1996.
The average American is worse off? Funny, I didn't see Iphones, PCs, drugs that actually work, etc. in the 1950s?
http://american-business.org/uploads/posts/2011-03/1301047846_work-time-in-minutes-required.jpg
Why should it matter whether Amazon could manufacture a Kindle in the US? Is there any rule that says that every country MUST specialize in everything (which means that the country will specialize in nothing?). New York also specializes in financial services, Houston in the energy business, the SF Bay in high-tech companies, etc. Is it a such cause of concern? Why is it that everyone is very concerned about that when it comes to countries? Specialization is good, this is what makes us all more wealthy.
If you study economic history, you'll see the same progression everywhere. First, people are virtually all employed in agriculture. Productivity in that sector is low and output barely sufficient to feed everyone. Then, an industrial sector arises and expands. Productivity keeps on rising in the agricultural sector and fewer and fewer people are needed. Doomsday prophets tell us that it's horrible, it will forever change the country, etc., but we just keep ignoring them. At one point employment in manufacturing also peaks (there is only so much stuff you can buy and we keep getting better and better at producing things economically); services become more and more important. This is happening everywhere in the world. In fact, even if you consider the earth as a whole, the share of services in world GDP also keeps on rising. And, no, this is not due to trade with other planets.
The premise of the article is also wrong. There is nothing irreversible about this trend. If the US were to unilaterally erect trade barriers, it would once again be profitable to make whatever the author thinks should be made in the US. It's not as if the Chinese and Taiwanese all have some sort of secret technology that no US person could ever replicate or approximate. Especially since in many cases it is US companies that provide the specs and designs that are made in those foreign factories. It would of course be very wasteful, but it'd be possible.
The journal article on which the column is based is also bizarre. First, it's already a bad sign when you talk about "competitiveness". See for instance Krugman's article "The Myth of competitiveness" (http://www.pkarchive.org/trade/MythCompetitiveness.html). Second, weekly wages are not a good metric. Total compensation (including benefits) is what really matters. Third, please provide figures and be precise. It just won't do to say that the US "has lost or is in the process of losing the knowledge, skilled people", etc. that it needs. This makes it an unfalsifiable statement as it is much too vague. It also seems strange to argue that the US is losing the knowledge it needs when people from all over the world come to the US to study in order to acquire this knowledge. Fourth, it almost seems to border on xenophobia at times. Why should it matter if something is designed in Tokyo or Chicago? Do American designers have a higher worth, matter more than Japanese or Korean designers?
Well, they tried when people were peddling import substitution. Then they realized that it was costing a whole lot of money, that what was being made was of poorer quality and more expensive than what was available abroad. And the whole world eventually learned good economics and saw that it was not a good idea to try to manufacture everything at home. So, now, people in Africa are quite happy to buy what the Chinese sell them and actually put their resources to good use. Which means that they typically don't try to create their own technology.
Neither do the Chinese by the way. Most of the heavy lifting in still done in other countries (primarily USA and Europe). The Chinese still by and large take existing designs and build them to order, assemble things that were manufactured elsewhere, and make shoddy copies that are touted as great innovations for nationalistic purposes (the Loongson CPU for instance).
To be fair they're trying to move up the value chain. They've been spending a lot on R&D, but we'll have to see how that translates into results that can be profitably put on the market. But they're still very far from the technological frontier. They're having a good run with catch-up growth and it's smart to prepare for the future but, for now, China's comparative advantage will still be manufacturing for the foreseeable future. I'm skeptical that China's current political environment can sustain the kind of dynamics that are very useful to get innovation. Somehow it doesn't seem very conducive to innovation to have to worry about what the Thought Police thinks you're up to, to have to deal with bureaucrats and a very top-down style of economic policy, not to be able to freely communicate with others (including foreigners) or move about your own country, etc.
Hey, I can point it on the map just fine! It's where Obama was born, right?
If I understand what the Treasury is saying correctly, S&P would still have made a mistake in that they took the reduction relative to the first baseline and applied it to the second model, which started from a different baseline. Which is indeed a mistake since, relative to that other baseline, it was more like a $4 trillion cut. Using either baseline is defensible but you have to remain consistent. Pick one and stick to it.
The difference is that, as far as I know, taxpayers don't spend millions on dollars on "Jesus toast" research and teaching. People don't get grants and cushy salaries so that they can find the image of Jesus on thousands of toasts over a period of 40 years or teach people how to better spot Jesus on toasts and clouds.
This is why most people don't take literary analysis seriously. There is a real human being who took the pain to write a 400-page long book. Presumably, he wanted to convey *something*. But apparently, we have to act as if the book came down from heaven and we can't try to discover what the author wanted to say?
The worst manifestation of this is when some literary theorists seem to argue that *even the author* cannot interpret what he wrote better than anyone else. He's just another reader!
This sounds ridiculous to me. Even if the author writes an essay saying "this is what I meant when I wrote this", we're supposed to ignore that and simply focus on the words of the work because this is all that matters in literary criticism?