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America, The Ignorant

Back on February 19, 2008, I wrote a post that talked about how Americans are in serious intellectual trouble. One finding by the National Science Foundation that I noted in that discussion and which really disturbed me was that one in five American adults think the sun revolves around the Earth. Now I know why we love “reality” shows so much. Well, it’s time to revisit the topics of intellectualism and knowledge among Americans. On April 22, op-ed columnist Bob Herbert of the New York Times talked about a recent survey of teenagers by the education advocacy group Common Core, which found:

• One-quarter of teenagers could not identify Adolf Hitler
• One-third did not know that the Bill of Rights guaranteed freedom of speech and religion
• Fewer than half knew that the Civil War took place between 1850 and 1900
• One-fifth did not know who the United States fought during World War II
• Eleven percent thought Dwight Eisenhower was the president forced from office by the Watergate scandal, while a similar percentage thought it was Harry Truman

At this point, I won’t bore you with some long treatise as to the virtues of intellectualism and knowledge. Rather, I’ll leave you with this. Meaningful discussions on public and economic policy cannot take place when one or more parties are communicating from a platform of ignorance. It would be surprising if anything worthwhile could emerge from such a situation. Let me put it this way- would you believe a person who thinks the sun revolves around the earth? This is why knowledge and intellectualism are crucial to our country’s future.

However, it appears that anti-intellectualism and ignorance are winning the day. Herbert wrote:

We don’t hear a great deal about education in the presidential campaign. It’s much too serious a topic to compete with such fun stuff as Hillary tossing back a shot of whiskey, or Barack rolling a gutter ball.

The nation’s future may depend on how well we educate the current and future generations, but (like the renovation of the nation’s infrastructure, or a serious search for better sources of energy) that can wait. At the moment, no one seems to have the will to engage any of the most serious challenges facing the U.S.

An American kid drops out of high school every 26 seconds. That’s more than a million every year, a sign of big trouble for these largely clueless youngsters in an era in which a college education is crucial to maintaining a middle-class quality of life — and for the country as a whole in a world that is becoming more hotly competitive every day.

Ignorance in the United States is not just bliss, it’s widespread.

We’ve got work to do.

Wise words (thankfully).

Source:

“Clueless in America”
Bob Herbert
New York Times, April 22, 2008

New Report Confirms Labor Market Shedding Jobs

In a post from yesterday, I talked about how some economists are predicting a deteriorating U.S. economy will take a significant toll on employment (6% jobless rate; 2 million lost jobs). Today, Kelly Evans wrote a post in the Wall Street Journal’s Real Time Economics blog that discussed the findings of the latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) from the U.S. Department of Labor, which showed that the rate of hiring by American businesses continues its downward trend (nearly two years now), and job openings have slowed over the last six months. Looking at job openings, manufacturing and construction showed considerable weakness, as did professional and business services, which had the largest monthly decline. However, openings in education and health services grew. Overall, the JOLTS data showed that there were a seasonally-adjusted 3.8 million total job openings in February, compared to 4.1 million a year ago at the same time. The “quits rate” also slowed from a seasonally-adjusted high of 61 in December 2006 to 56 in the latest report. Hirings continue to slow as well. In February there were a seasonally-adjusted 4.6 million hirings, compared to 4.8 million a year earlier. Evans wrote:

The JOLTS data confirm the signals from other employment reports that the labor market is slowly shedding jobs. On Friday, the government’s monthly payrolls report found the U.S. economy lost 80,000 jobs in March, following losses of 74,000 each in February and January. Meanwhile, claims for unemployment insurance benefits jumped in the week ending Mar. 29 to their highest level in more than two years.

Source:

“Job Openings, Hirings: The Slowdown Continues”
Kelly Evans
Wall Street Journal (Real Time Economics blog), April 8, 2008

Economists Predict 6% Jobless Rate, 2 Million Lost Jobs

Earlier today I read an interesting article that discussed the U.S. employment outlook and which jobs may or may not be good bets in a deteriorating economy. Martin Crutsinger of the Associated Press wrote:

While the downturn is expected to be short and mild, economists are still forecasting the unemployment rate, which jumped to 5.1 percent in March, will climb much higher before the nation’s job engine sputters back to life.

Economists are forecasting a jobless rate that will peak at around 6 percent, but probably not until early next year, several months after the recession is expected to end. Analysts said as many as 2 million people could lose their jobs in the current downturn.

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com, said:

All the indicators suggest that we will see even larger job declines in coming months. Businesses are getting nervous and pulling back.

“Safe” Jobs:

• Healthcare
• Education
• Farming
• Some manufacturing (airplanes, heavy machinery)
• Government

“Unsafe” Jobs:

• Other manufacturing (automakers, housing-related like appliances, furniture)
• Construction
• Housing-related industries (real estate agents, mortgage brokers)
• Wall Street firms
• Discretionary services (tourism-related)

Source:

“Job winners and losers in hard times”
Martin Crutsinger
Associated Press, April 7, 2008

Why Americans Should Worry

Let me tell it to you straight. The. Math. Politicians. Sell. Does. Not. Work. And if we don’t start dealing with the truth soon, this country could face dire consequences.

-David L. Walker, Comptroller General of the United States, October 2007

On February 15, David M. Walker, Comptroller General of the United States, announced his resignation as head of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). Since November 9, 1998, Walker has served as the nation’s chief accountability officer, leading the GAO in its mission to help improve the performance and accountability of the federal government for the benefit of the American people. Back on February 15, Richard Cowan wrote in Reuters that:

Walker repeatedly urged Congress to waste no time in reforming massive government programs, such as health care for the elderly, which will grow significantly as the U.S. population ages.

“The picture I will lay out for you… is not a pretty one and it’s getting worse with the passage of time,” the blunt-talking Walker told Congress more than once.

Despite those warnings, Congress and the White House have yet to begin cooperating on how to tackle the huge growth in health care and retirement benefit costs.

Back on December 18, 2007, I wrote:

On Monday, the Bush administration released its Financial Report of the United States Government for the 2007 budget year. And guess what? The U.S. government is promising $45 trillion more than it can deliver on Social Security, Medicare, and other benefit programs, according to the Associated Press yesterday…

Even worse, when the gap in funding social insurance programs (Social Security, Medicare, Railroad Retirement, and Black Lung Program) is added to other government commitments, the total shortfall as of September 30 increases to $53 trillion, up more than $2 trillion in just a year, according to the report. Comptroller General David M. Walker, who serves as the head of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), said Monday that, “Our government has made a whole lot of promises in the long-term that it cannot possibly keep.”

Yesterday, Bill Donoghue from MarketWatch had this to say about Walker’s departure:

Facing indifference on the Hill and unrealistic spending promises, Walker is resigning with five years still remaining in his term to head the newly formed Peter G. Peterson Foundation. Peterson, senior chairman of The Blackstone Group and Commerce secretary in the Nixon administration, has pledged an astounding startup budget for the foundation of $1 billion.

That money will attack what the foundation considers “the most substantial economic, fiscal and other sustainability challenges of our current age” — including federal entitlement programs, health care, unprecedented trade and budget deficits, low savings rates, mounting foreign debt, soaring energy consumption, an uncompetitive educational system, and the proliferation of nuclear warfare materials. Maybe Congress will listen this time.

The departing Comptroller General told Reuters:

As Comptroller General of the United States and head of the GAO, there are real limitations on what I can do and say in connection with key public policy issues, especially issues that directly relate to GAO’s client — the Congress.

My new position will provide me with the ability and resources to more aggressively address a range of current and emerging challenges facing our country.

MarketWatch’s Donoghue lamented:

This sounds to me like the ultimate sell signal on America…

When the nation’s best-informed watchdog resigns and few are acting on his recommendations on his “Fiscal Wake-Up Tour,” it’s time to reconsider over-optimistic domestic stock investments and look elsewhere, or bet against the U.S. market.

Source: stock.xchng

The “Fiscal Wake-Up Tour” is a joint public engagement initiative by the Concord Coalition, the Budgeting for National Priorities Project at the Brookings Institution, and the Heritage Foundation, created for the purpose of explaining in plain terms why budget analysts of diverse perspectives are increasingly alarmed by the nation’s long-term fiscal outlook.

(Note: The author disclaims any personal liability, loss, or risk incurred as a consequence of the use and application, either directly or indirectly, of any information presented herein.)

A Nation Of Idiots?

Consider the one in five American adults who, according to the National Science Foundation, thinks the sun revolves around the Earth…

-Susan Jacoby, “The Dumbing of America”

On the heels of last Friday’s post, I happened to read an article last night from the Washington Post entitled “The Dumbing of America.” On Sunday, Susan Jacoby, author of The Age Of American Unreason, wrote:

Americans are in serious intellectual trouble — in danger of losing our hard-won cultural capital to a virulent mixture of anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism and low expectations…

Dumbness, to paraphrase the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, has been steadily defined downward for several decades, by a combination of heretofore irresistible forces. These include the triumph of video culture over print culture (and by video, I mean every form of digital media, as well as older electronic ones); a disjunction between Americans’ rising level of formal education and their shaky grasp of basic geography, science and history; and the fusion of anti-rationalism with anti-intellectualism.

An independent scholar who focuses on American intellectual history, Jacoby said first and foremost among the vectors of the new anti-intellectualism is video, accompanied by a decline in book, newspaper, and magazine reading. She cites a report from the National Endowment for the Arts last year which showed:

• In 1982, 82% of college graduates read novels or poems for pleasure. By 2002, this had shrunk to 67%.
• More than 40% of Americans under 44 did not read a single book (fiction or nonfiction) over the course of a year.
• The proportion of 17-year-olds who read nothing (outside of school assignments) more than doubled between 1984 and 2004. She noted that this same time period encompassed the rise of personal computers, Internet surfing, and video games.

Some could argue that the tremendous amount of information made available through new technologies compensates for the decline in reading print material. However, the former Washington Post reporter claimed that the manner in which this information is presented erodes our attention spans. Video consumers, she said, are becoming progressively more impatient with the process of acquiring information through written language. And, according to Jacoby:

…the inability to concentrate for long periods of time — as distinct from brief reading hits for information on the Web — seems to me intimately related to the inability of the public to remember even recent news events.

The author linked the shrinking public attention span fostered by video to what she claimed is the second important anti-intellectual force in American culture: the erosion of general knowledge. She cited a 2006 National Geographic-Roper survey which showed:

• Nearly half of Americans between ages 18 and 24 don’t think that it’s necessary to know the location of other countries in which important news is being made.
• More than a third consider it “not at all important” to know a foreign language.
• Only 14% consider it “very important” to know another language.

Source: HousingPANIC

Ms. Jacoby said that the third and final factor behind the “new American dumbness” is not a lack of knowledge, but arrogance about that lack of knowledge. Jacoby explained:

The problem is not just the things we do not know (consider the one in five American adults who, according to the National Science Foundation, thinks the sun revolves around the Earth); it’s the alarming number of Americans who have smugly concluded that they do not need to know such things in the first place. Call this anti-rationalism — a syndrome that is particularly dangerous to our public institutions and discourse. Not knowing a foreign language or the location of an important country is a manifestation of ignorance; denying that such knowledge matters is pure anti-rationalism. The toxic brew of anti-rationalism and ignorance hurts discussions of U.S. public policy on topics from health care to taxation.

Ms. Jacoby sadly concluded that, “There is no quick cure for this epidemic of arrogant anti-rationalism and anti-intellectualism… It is past time for a serious national discussion about whether, as a nation, we truly value intellect and rationality.”