Category Archives: Economics

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Space

The Safety Culture

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Some cogent thoughts from Mollie Hemingway:

Many parents just can’t accept the reality that we’re not in as much control of our children as we wish. Last week my nephew went to an outdoor camp in Colorado with the rest of his 5th-grade class. They were supposed to stay just one night. Floods hit the region, the roads washed out and filled with boulders. There was nothing anyone could do. After being stranded for three days, the parents heard about plans to airlift the kids out via Chinook helicopter. That plan was halted when some parents complained it was too dangerous. Who knew that helicopter parents would be threatened by actual helicopters?

Never mind that riding on a Chinook would be the adventure of a lifetime for a 10-year-old. Perhaps because there were no other reasonable options, the airlift commenced the next day. Every child survived and my nephew reported that “No one ever had so much fun in a natural disaster.”

Look, I’m a mother. I care deeply about my children’s safety. But safety is just one important thing to teach our children. And it’s not even anywhere near the most important thing. Keeping your kids from dying or getting hurt is of secondary importance to teaching them how to live. Safety isn’t even a virtue. If you’re teaching your kids more about safety than you are about honesty, kindness, respect for others, responsibility, gratitude, integrity, cooperation, determination, social skills, enthusiasm, compassion and manners, you’re doing it wrong.

That’s the kind of culture that breeds the hypersafe culture of spaceflight that my book is all about.

And then there’s this:

My neighborhood is in Northern Virginia, an area that has been rewarded for playing it safe and going after government cash. Many of my neighbors are government employees, lawyers and lobbyists. Many of them have found success regulating other people’s businesses out of existence, destructive acts all too frequently predicated on fears that somebody somewhere might get hurt. It’s not surprising, in that context, that my neighbors would call for regulation of the lemonade stand or lawn mowing business run by the kids next door.

The fact is that America is now run by people who profit from keeping everyone else from taking risks. It’s lucrative work if you can get it. Six of the ten richest counties in the country are next to Washington, D.C., for good reason. [“It’s where the money is.” — Willie Sutton] But this isn’t a recipe for prospering culturally or politically.

Yup.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

A Denunciation Of President Obama

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By Senator Barack Obama:

In remarks on the Senate Floor on March 16, 2006, Sen. Obama said the need to raise the Debt Limit was “a sign of leadership failure.”

Sen Obama said the need to raise the Debt Limit was another reflection of the “Government’s reckless fiscal policies.”

The[n], Sen Obama also denounced the rising National Debt as “a hidden domestic enemy” robbing cities & states of “critical investments.”

Denouncing the ever-increasing National Debt, then-Sen. Obama told the Senate he would oppose an increase in the Debt Limit.

Pwned.

It goes without saying, of course, that Mark Knoller is a racist.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Economic Recovery

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What economic recovery?

…why is the current recovery so weak? It is not because of the aftermath of the 2007-08 financial crisis. U.S. Financial markets began to recover in late 2008, more than four and a half years ago. Moreover, research by Michael Bordo of Rutgers University and Joseph Haubrich of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland show that US recoveries following financial crises are typically faster, not slower, than average.

Recent research by us and other scholars analyzes the chronically slow economic recovery from a very different perspective. Specifically, our view is that poorly designed and implemented government policies have impeded capital and technological investments and hiring, and that bad government policies – not underlying problems with the U.S. market economy – are the primary reason why the economy has not recovered.

And the low-info voters voted for four more years of it last fall.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

The STEM “Crisis”

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…is a myth:

“If there was really a STEM labor market crisis, you’d be seeing very different behaviors from companies,” notes Ron Hira, an associate professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology, in New York state. “You wouldn’t see companies cutting their retirement contributions, or hiring new workers and giving them worse benefits packages. Instead you would see signing bonuses, you’d see wage increases. You would see these companies really training their incumbent workers.”

“None of those things are observable,” Hira says. “In fact, they’re operating in the opposite way.”

And even if there was, the notion that NASA would help it is ludicrous. Particularly if anyone thinks it’s going to do so by building rockets to nowhere.