Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Magic Is Gone

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Thoughts on the obsolescence of Barack Obama:

It was canonical to this administration and its functionaries that they were handed a broken nation, that it was theirs to repair, that it was theirs to tax and reshape to their preferences. Yet there was, in 1980, after another landmark election, a leader who had stepped forth in a time of “malaise” at home and weakness abroad: Ronald Reagan. His program was different from Mr. Obama’s. His faith in the country was boundless. What he sought was to restore the nation’s faith in itself, in its political and economic vitality.

Big as Reagan’s mandate was, in two elections, the man was never bigger than his county. There was never narcissism or a bloated sense of personal destiny in him. He gloried in the country, and drew sustenance from its heroic deeds and its capacity for recovery. No political class rode with him to power anxious to lay its hands on the nation’s treasure, eager to supplant the forces of the market with its own economic preferences.

Obama never understood that the notion of a leftist or “progressive” Ronald Reagan was an oxymoron.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Why They’re Not Hiring (Part 2)

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More thoughts on this post from yesterday:

The flat truth is no one is going to hire new employees unless there is some reasonable promise that the additional cost of the employee will be recovered through increased profits resulting from the new employee’s work. That’s not “greed”, it is bare survival in tough economic times. And all the recent additions to per-employee costs aren’t alone. There is a seemingly endless well of new possible costs coming, including new environmental regulations, the possibility of a massive new “carbon tax”, and “card check” that promises to raise labor costs even further with exactly zero (at best) increase in productivity. Vague gestures towards a few thousand dollars of tax credits to stimulate job growth don’t even begin to cover the risks.

On top of it all, if you happen to be an oil worker on the Gulf Coast, your job is politically verboten. Sorry about that. Or not.

Only a crazy person would be eager to start large-scale hiring in this political environment. Yet many anti-corporation zealots profess themselves outraged that the Evil, Greedy Corporations won’t get with the business of economic recovery.

The country’s in the very best of hands.

Education

Two More Reasons

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…that college isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be:

…many young people who could profit from a college education are more likely to do so if they don’t go straight to college from high school. My wife, who formerly taught English literature at Rutgers, was just the first of many college faculty to bring this to my attention. The students who have come to college after a hitch in the military or working for a few years know why they are in college, why they are taking a particular course, and what they want out of it, in ways that kids fresh out of high school seldom do. Apart from that, quoting my wife, “Henry James wasn’t writing for nineteen-year-olds.”

I’ve probably told this tale before, but I not only didn’t go to college from high school, but I didn’t even take the SATs in high school (I never did). I worked as a VW mechanic at the local dealer for a few months until I got laid off in the 1973 recession (which hit Flint particularly hard — over 20% unemployment at the time). After that, I was ready for school. I attended Mott Community College (which was just across the street from my house — the shortest walk I had to school in my entire career, including elementary), taking math and science courses in preparation for a transfer to an engineering school, but never got the associates degree. I transferred to Ann Arbor after two years, and from stories I heard from my fellow upper-classpeople, I got a better grounding in the basics than they did in their giant lecture courses (my physics class had ten people in it).

I think that the academic bubble is not far from bursting.

[Update a few minutes later]

More on the expanding bubble.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!