A Really Big Question, cont.

Last time I raised the big question of: even though the U.S. is much richer now than it was 40 or 50 years ago, why is it that we're missing so many of the basics that were part of our lives back then? Where did all the money go?

The nation's GDP, or Gross Domestic Product, is about $14 trillion today. GDP, which is the most widely used measure of a country's wealth, tells us how many goods and services are produced in a year. If we want to know how wealthy the average citizen is, however, we're better off looking at GDP per capita, or the amount of goods and services produced in a year, per person. Our GDP per capita is about $45,000 these days, which is one of the highest figures in the world.

By contrast, let's look at the year 1965, which in many ways was a high point for this country. The Vietnam war was not really a problem yet, inflation and unemployment were virtually non-existent, the U.S. was the unquestioned manufacturing giant of the world, and civil and generational upheavals were mostly a couple of years down the road still. All of these things would change quickly, but in 1965, the nation's real GDP (GDP that is adjusted for inflation) was about $3.5 trillion, or about a fourth of what it is today. GDP per capita, also adjusted for inflation, was about $18,000, or a bit more than a third of what it is today. So it's pretty fair to say that as a country, the U.S. is about 3 to 4 times richer today than it was in 1965.

Getting back to the original issue: why is it that today's much wealthier nation - 3 to 4 times wealthier than in 1965 - cannot provide many of the basic services that were a "given" back then? Why have police, firefighters, teachers, librarians, sanitation workers and other key public servants' jobs been eliminated, with many more cuts likely? Why are key government offices closed several days a month, and school years being cut, just when we need to focus more on education, not less? Why are our bridges and roads falling apart after decades of neglect? Why is medical care an unaffordable luxury for so many Americans?

As previously mentioned, one part of the answer is probably the nation's debt. The federal government owes about $15 trillion, while state and local governments, businesses, and individuals owe about another $60 trillion. Even after adjusting for inflation, that's a lot of money! The federal debt in 1965 was $261 billion, so today's federal debt is about 60 times greater than it was in 1965; neither inflation nor GDP have gone up that much since 1965! According to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, overall prices have increased about 600% since 1965, so the federal debt has grown almost ten times faster than overall prices. I'm guessing that state and local debts grew then also (for schools, for roads, etc), while business debt (for new factories, research and development, etc.) and individual debt (for homes, cars, college, etc) grew quite a bit as well since 1965.

Now debt's not always a bad thing. If you or I or a business or the government borrows money to make a sensible investment, then debt can be good. So if I borrow to pay for a solid college education, a business borrows to build a new factory, or the government borrows to build a better transportation system for the country, then those things are most likely going to pay me, the business, and the country back several times over in the long run. Similarly, if the government borrows to fight a necessary war, well - that's a necessity, isn't it? That's good debt.

On the other hand, though, if I borrow so I can take a high-end European vacation, the business borrows to pay its top executives un-Godly large bonuses, and the government borrows to pay for wasteful pork or an expensive war that perhaps was unnecessary, then all of us are going to end up with nothing to show for it down the road except a reduction in our net worth. That's bad debt.

I think the reality is that a lot of the borrowing that we saw in the 1980s was associated with a number of supply-side policies, and that it was "good debt". Starting in 1981, marginal tax rates for businesses and individuals were cut, giving them more incentive to work harder and invest. Regulations on businesses were cut back, making it easier and more profitable for them to operate and expand. More savings was encouraged by opening up IRAs and 401(k) plans to millions of Americans, helping to reduce the cost for businesses to borrow. The end result of all this was that more money went into research and development, into opening new businesses and expanding existing ones. All this investment (along with major developments in technology, communication, and trade) then set the stage for the explosive growth of the late-1980s and all of the 1990s.

To be sure, a lot of the borrowing of the 1980s, and especially the 1990s, went for silly, materialistic stuff as Americans became more and more interested in "having it all." I'm just guessing here, but my intuition is that a lot of borrowed money went into productive businesses, research, infrastructure, etc. in the mid-1980s, but the percentage going there gradually dropped as the '80s became the 90s, and then the 21st century. My guess is that more and more borrowed money went into replacing smaller cars and houses with bigger cars and houses, eating at home with eating out, sensible clothes with designer label stuff, and so forth. And more money on an endless variety of government programs and bureaucracies.

To whatever degree that is true, then the nation switched from focusing on a better future, to having a better now. This would be a reversal of countless generations of thought, where it was always: "I want my children to have a better life than I did." And to whatever degree this is true, then, the answer to "where did all the money go?" is that it went to the banks, the wealthy, and the foreigners who lent us the money. By borrowing, we basically got lots of stuff, and they got lots of IOUs that are now starting to strangle the country. Next time, we're going to take a closer look at this huge paradigm shift, this gonzo consumerism that came to characterize the United States in the 1990s and continues even today.

A Really Big Question

TIME magazine's cover this week is titled: Yes, America is in Decline. I guess their premise is pretty obvious, and it's one that would come as no surprise to readers of this blog. Take the essay posted here last week, for example. But here's the Really Big Question, and I've been wondering about it for quite a little while: "How come we're SO broke?"

What I mean is, the U.S. in the 1950s and 1960s was MUCH less wealthy, even after adjusting for inflation. And yet, where I grew up, a lower-middle class town ..... Nearby state and national parks were fully staffed and fully serviced; open all the time. Every school had a full-time librarian, a full-time nurse, and at least a part-time music teacher that taught virtually every kid to play an instrument. New roads and bridges were constantly being created, and existing ones were kept in decent condition. All government offices were open five days a week. Almost every kid was in scouts or played Little League, or both. School class sizes were modest, school supplies and books were never in short supply. College was located just next door to free. Cities ran smoothly, and nobody talked about draconian budget cuts. Nobody even thought about health insurance; everybody could afford to go to the doctor.

Nowadays, when even after our recession and whatnot the U.S. is still much wealthier than it was 50 years ago, many parks are shut down and/or have limited services. School librarians, nurses, and music teachers are endangered species. Roads and bridges are old, worn out, and not being fixed. State offices are closed several week days a year. Scouts and Little League are too expensive for a lot of people. Schools are laying off teachers, class sizes are growing, teachers often buy their own supplies or do without. Even state colleges are starting to be beyond many students' ability to pay. Cities are going bankrupt or slashing staff and services. Health care is almost a luxury. Why is that???

I can think of a number of possible answers, and will explore these here over the next few weeks. Most likely culprits include: the huge government debts built up over the last 40 years; Wall Street and corporate greeders that have raped the country for countless billions; the insane, mindless consumerism of the past 30 years; the wars of the last 40 years; and...... perhaps the reality that things really AREN'T worse than 50 years ago, the natural tendency to remember the past more fondly than it really was.

So stay tuned and check back once in awhile.

The Party's Over, and People Don't Get It

That's what I wrote on the board in one of my classes the other day, as we were watching the story about Wisconsin's budget problems. Like other states, voters there are reluctant to raise taxes, and this leaves the state with no other alternative than to cut spending, including areas where they'd really rather not. One of the places Wisconsin would prefer not to cut is in education; another is from the pensions of public employees who've worked so hard to get a decent income in their retirement years. To do so would just be so wrong! But as I often ask: What's the alternative?

Not much, it seems. Mostly we just hear that Wisconsin can’t do that, without hearing what they CAN do. I don't know if reducing the power of unions, and reducing public employee salaries and pensions are the only way or even a good way to deal with these daunting state deficits, but I do know this: The financial problems that the states, and the federal government, face are .... absolutely disastrous. Probably worse than in the Great Depression; perhaps the worst this country has ever seen. And people just don't get that yet. You explain how THERE'S NO MONEY, and drastic cuts HAVE to be made; they listen, shake their heads in agreement and then go "yeah, but what's this got to do with me? where's my raise? why can't I retire at 55?"

Most Americans hear about the $15 trillion dollar federal deficit, California's $26 billion deficit, and the like, and just sort of say "Well so? Fix it! Cut government waste, tax millionaires more, you know - just fix it!" Or else they figure the "problem" is just a phony one, or will just sort of go away by itself.

But it's not even remotely that simple, and there are no fixes that won't involve serious amounts of pain for almost all Americans, for many years to come. The bottom line is that almost all of us are going to have to live with smaller paychecks and smaller pensions, work longer, and get less in the way of government services and support. No use whining about it or marching around with tired old 60s-era “hey, hey, ho, ho, government cuts have got to go” chants, because that’s just the way it’s going to be. Here are a couple of reasons why this is inevitable.

First is politicians’ decision to kick the can down the road for 40 years or so. I remember back in the mid-1970s when I started in the investments business; conservative analysts were alarmed by the federal government spending more than it took in, year after year. The nation's debt was rising at a then-alarming rate, while the value of the U.S. dollar was rapidly eroding. We have to stop this now, they said, or else our children and their children will pay a heavy price down the road! Congresses and Presidents came and went, but nothing fundamentally changed. To fix the problem required raising taxes and/or cutting government spending - two equally unacceptable policies. Anyone who pushed either option would likely be voted out of office by angry voters: "You raised my taxes!" "You cut spending on my favorite program!"

So Congress borrowed more money instead, kicking the can down the road, letting the next Congress deal with the problem. Disturbing annual deficits in the tens of billions of dollars in the 1970s became shocking deficits of hundreds of billions in the 1980s and 1990s (except for a few surplus years in the late-1990s), and then insanely high deficits that eventually exceeded $1 trillion a year by the late-2000s. Each time, as Congress refused to make the tough decisions (cut spending and/or raise taxes), everybody said: "If we don't fix this now, it's today's children who will pay the price." Nobody pretended to not understand that their inaction would put the burden of their decisions on the back of future generations; the presumption was always "well, we didn't fix it this year, but next year we will!"

But it was a cruel hoax, a deceit. Most politicians knew in their heart of hearts that they couldn't solve the problem, that they didn't have the nerve to take the tough actions needed to do so. And besides, by the time the problem got totally out of control - they'd be long gone. Someone else's problem!

Well, the shell game is winding down and the future is now. The debt is so big, the economy so unable to deal with it using conventional means, that the party, the game of musical chairs, is about over. Today's Americans, especially the young ones, are getting presented with the bill for all the living high off the hog of the past 40 years. Not right away. Not all at once. Not always in obvious ways. But it's clear that it's happening; it has to happen. And most people don't get it.

My wife and I were in Mission Valley the other day, and couldn't believe the parking lots. They were all full, with people waiting for someone to leave so they could park. In this bad economy. When Internet shopping is taking more and more business away from physical stores. Still - stores were packed. People were buying stuff right and left; lots of it overpriced, frivolous stuff. Paying $11.50 to watch a movie, and then $13 for a large Coke and popcorn.

Many of these same people will quickly tell you how the economy sucks right now: prices are up, jobs are hard to find, and government is cutting its services. But they've still got their cells with unlimited texting, their $30,000 SUVs that get crappy mileage, still eat out twice a week, still consider shopping at the mall a sensible hobby. These people don’t get it.

Meanwhile, there is the other America; the 10% or 20% or 30% of Americans whose lifestyles have already taken a huge hit. They lost their jobs, lost their homes, lost their meager savings, don’t have health coverage, and after a couple of years see no light at the end of the tunnel. Or they’ve got a job, a home, lousy health insurance, but no pension to look forward to and are just barely scraping by. They don’t understand all this talk of the economy improving, don’t understand how the stock market has almost doubled in the last two years, don’t understand how so many others have money to just throw away at the malls.

So here’s the second thing. Many of those people are part of the old economy. Despite all the calls for Buy American, the old ways are gone. If you used to work at a lumber mill or a manufacturing plant; if you used to earn a good living with just a high school education and a skill set that isn’t really needed anymore; if you had a non-essential job and somebody found a way to get by without you, then you’re a casualty of the new economy. Globalization changed things, and there’s no putting the genie back in the bottle.

The changes in the American workplace were inevitable and, in a way, we should be happy about how things are working out. Because if you think about it, a big reason that Americans were able to live so high on the hog, even after we started getting a little lazy and feeling entitled, was because we were still one of the Big Dogs, benefiting from old colonial and imperialist realities.

We had lots of military and political muscle, long-standing commercial arrangements the world over; bargaining advantages of many types that gave us a huge edge over so many other countries. We had the U.S. dollar, trusted basis of the entire world’s financial system. We had good education, great inventions, good roads and hospitals and phone systems. Free markets and strong laws to protect entrepreneurs and foster civic strength. Meanwhile, the majority of people elsewhere lived in the third world, in desperate poverty, with little or no education, no military or political muscle – nothing. Or they lived in communist countries, essentially dictatorships where their futures were seldom promising.

So it was relatively easy for us to live off the fat of the land (the world) during the 60s, 70s, and 80s. But that really started changing about 20 or 25 years ago, with the fall of communism, with China’s adoption of free market policies, and with advancements in technology, communication, and transportation. Now, everyone can see what life is like in rich western countries – and they want that. Now, everyone has access to technology and information and can use them to level playing field after playing field. Now everyone has an incentive to work hard, to create, to build wealth. The Chinese work harder and much, much cheaper than Americans, so they make everything. Meanwhile, the Indians work harder and cheaper than Americans, so they’re starting to do everything (think: call centers, surgery centers, accounting services). Meanwhile, they, and other parts of the former third world, are jumping ahead of us in education, in modern infrastructure, in the things that will allow them to inevitably catch up and perhaps even surpass us.

We should be happy for them, shouldn’t we? Shouldn’t we feel bad that for decades we had the great lifestyles, at least in part because of policies that exploited poorer countries? We won the Cold War; we brought down communism! Shouldn’t we be proud that – with our help in many cases – many countries are now following our lead, and catching up? Shouldn’t we be glad that they’re now starting to have decent lifestyles, even if it means that we’re living a little less high on the hog? Hmmm…. I don’t think most Americans are quite that gracious about it.

But shouldn’t they be? I mean, the poorest Americans still aren’t starving to death. Most of them still get a decent education, have a roof over their heads, have personal freedom and a chance to make something of themselves, are free from having to worry about ethnic cleansing and bloody revolutions. So what if our GDP per capita (basically – average income per person, per year) falls from $45,000 to $35,000? We’re still well off; still in better shape than 95% of the world’s population. Can we really begrudge other people in the world the chance at bettering themselves? Do we really think that all those high paying jobs are our God-given right, for perpetuity - that nobody else should be able to take them from us?

I think the answer is yes. Americans had it all, for so long that they think that having it all is their natural right. We benefited from our world dominance, and from the buy now/pay later philosophy of our government for so long. It’s a lot harder to give up the good life when that’s all you’ve known. Americans, proud and hard-working for so long, now feel, more than anything else, entitled. But the party’s over. And that sense of entitlement is going to make it harder for people to accept what is essentially inevitable.

Amendments Two and Fourteen - similarities?

This originally appeared a few months ago. Now, with the recent shootings in Arizona and Tea Partiers again bringing up changing the 14th Amendment, this is a pretty relevant topic.

Anti-illegal immigrant groups have been talking about changing the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, so that when people who are in the country illegally have children, those children are not U.S. citizens. As with anything else related to illegal immigrants - "undocumented residents", if you're more sympathetic to their plight - this is a very controversial proposal. It's also unlikely to get very far any time soon, which even its supporters admit. Still, I think it makes a lot of sense. Further, it reminds me of the situation with another controversial Amendment: the Second, which protects (or not, depending on your beliefs) the right to individual gun ownership. Here's what I mean.

Everyone agrees that illegal (undocumented) immigrants are a big problem. The disagreement mostly centers around whether we need to make it easier for people to enter and stay in the country - essentially an immigrant-friendly view, or that we need to make it harder for them to illegally enter and then stay in the country - the anti-illegal immigrant view. Please note that nobody claims to be against immigrants coming here legally, although Americans have long tended to not welcome foreigners of any status, and that tendency doesn't seem to have disappeared yet.

Among the problems that the anti-illegal immigrants ("antis" from now on) point to is how many illegals have children here who, under our Constitution, are automatically U.S. citizens. This creates all kinds of problems, not the least of which is: if mom and dad are deported, what happens to their U.S. citizen kids? The scale of the problem is huge, as many pregnant women apparently sneak into the country specifically so that their child is born here, gaining that prized U.S. citizen status. The Pew Hispanic Center recently reported that one in every twelve children born in this country was born to a mother who is in the country illegally, and other groups, including the antis, agree that number is about right.

But you can't change the 14th Amendment, top lawmakers say. Citizenship for those born in the U.S. is among the most sacred of our constitutional rights, and if we start fiddling with that right, which other rights will be next? Those proposing a change to the Amendment, they say, are merely playing politics, trying to win the antis' votes.

I'm not convinced.

When contemplating the Constitution and its Amendments, a crucial element is always: what did its authors have in mind? The related, implied consideration is: given what they had in mind, would they have written it the same way today as back then? The Second Amendment illustrates that point. Whether or not the Founding Fathers meant it to protect individual gun rights or merely the right of militias to own guns, as the two sides argue endlessly these days, the fact is that today "the right to bear arms" is a much more complicated proposition than it was 220 years ago.

As a strong supporter of the right to gun ownership by individuals, I nevertheless agree with the need for reasonable limitations on that right. Machine guns, grenade launchers, shoulder mounted surface-to-air missiles - could the Fathers ever have imagined such heinous weapons? If so, would they have felt that everyone - every one of us - should have unlimited access to those? Even convicted violent criminals? Avowed terrorists? Mentally unstable postal workers? What would the Founding Fathers think about people going into a McDonald's or a school or their workplace and shooting up innocent people with automatic weapons? What would they think about what happened in Oklahoma City in 1995 or on 9/11 in 2001? Could they have even imagined all the types of "arms" available today, and the horrific ways that twisted people use them?

It is reasonable, IMO, to think that the Fathers would have written the Second Amendment differently if they were to write it today. Or at least, since they tended to keep the Amendments short and simple, agree that the courts could clarify that certain limitations do not violate the Amendment's intent. Limitations on certain types of weapons that Joe Everyman can own, restrictions on certain types of people having access to guns - it seems to me that they would have wanted that in today's world. I don't think such limitations go against what they had in mind, even while I recognize my more conservative friends' fear that once you limit certain types of gun ownership, you're on a slippery slope that can lead to a near total gun ownership ban. They've got a point, but I still think the responsible and rational course of action, consistent with what the Founding Fathers had in mind, would be to have some limits on the right to bear arms. We do, after all, need laws that deal with the realities of today, not of those 220 years ago.

Let's consider the Fourteenth Amendment from a similar perspective. Following the Civil War, the states ratified the proposition that "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States." This, of course, was primarily about making former black slaves, as well as Native Americans (Indians), U.S. citizens. There was no such thing as an "illegal-immigrant" in the U.S. at that time. In 1868, when the Amendment was added to the Constitution, huge swaths of the country were still unpopulated and immigrants were actively encouraged to come to America with few if any restrictions. In fact, the first immigration law in the U.S. wasn't even passed until 1875. Obviously, the implications of granting citizenship to the children of people who had illegally entered the country was the farthest thing from anyone's mind back in 1868.

Fast forward to modern times and ask yourself: would the Amendment's authors, and the state legislators that ratified it, have wanted it to be abused the way that it is today? If those legislators could see the situation today, with all the problems of illegal immigration and with people purposely breaking the laws of the U.S. in order to have their child born here, do you think they would want that child to be rewarded with U.S. citizenship? Obviously, I don't.

I still have mixed feelings about what to do with illegal immigrants overall, as my earlier writings on the topic indicate. But on this one small issue, it seems like there is an obvious and simple answer. Why should we not adjust the Amendment to reflect our modern realities? As with the right to bear arms, our government has an obligation to operate under laws that make sense given today's realities, not in the world as it was 150 years ago. We do, after all, pride ourselves on being a nation of laws; requiring that someone be here in line with our laws in order to get citizenship - how is that a problem? Perhaps something as simple as adding the word "legally" in front of the phrase "born" in the Amendment, although it would probably have to be more like "born to a mother who was legally in the country at the time" - or whatever.

How, exactly, would this modification detract from the Constitution, the rights of legitimate American citizens, etc? It's a huge stretch, IMO, to say that such a minor, simple, and logical change sets a precedent for weakening our Constitution and our constitutional rights. Similarly, the answer to those who say: well, if we change this Amendment, what happens to those who were born here under illegal circumstances before the change? That's a simple one: they are grandfathered (exempt from the change), just as people are usually grandfathered when any new law changes the rules.

As this site's title reminds us, things usually aren't as simple as we think they are. So maybe I'm missing something here. One problem may be that we really don't want to start tinkering with the wording of Amendments; changing Amendments is a serious and difficult process. Well fine; just as with the Second Amendment, we could simply allow the courts to rule that not granting citizenship to children of parents of illegal status doesn't violate the intent of the Amendment. Because, if it's OK to tweak the 2nd Amendment to fit the times, then why doesn't the same apply to the 14th? What's good for the Goose.... as they say.

Less Spending on the Elderly?

Like most people, I really love my mom and dad. Every morning, as part of my daily prayers, I give thanks for the great parents that they were. Mom stayed at home to take care of us, was deeply involved in our Boy Scout and Girl Scout activities, and was PTA president, for example. Dad was a gentle giant, strong but quiet. The outdoors and baseball - those were his two great interests, and he did his best to teach me about them, and much more. From both mom and dad, we learned values: honesty, hard work, thriftiness, respect, the importance of education. We didn't have much money, but we wanted for nothing that really mattered. Mom and dad did everything a person could have expected from good parents.

Dad passed away a few years ago, after an ugly battle with lung and brain cancer that - in the end - had him in diapers and constantly saying cruel, hurtful things. He was in great pain, mentally and physically. That wasn't the real him, and not the way we wanted to remember him. Mom's 85 now, and not doing so well. Dad really spoiled her, always took care of everything, always looking out for her. With dad gone, mom's gradually gotten worse. Her physical problems have increased, and now she's having a lot of mental issues. She's become rather childlike in some ways, more selfish, but also more paranoid, stingy, and very, very forgetful. It's getting more and more difficult to care for her, even as she refuses to go into a retirement home or get full-time help in her own home.

It's not a pretty picture in other words, and my sister and I wonder how we're going to deal with it all if she lives another 2 or 3 or 5 or 10 years. Surely it won't get much easier.... The other part of this, though, is the realization that we're heading in that direction ourselves. Looking at what happened to dad and is happening to mom, we can't help but wonder: "is that us in a few more years?". Yikes! We all want to go out like my grampa did: 86 years old, sitting on a bench waiting for the bus to take him to my cousin's house for some fresh pies she just made. Apparently he had an aneurysm or something, and just plopped over dead. Until then, he'd been living on his own, healthy and with his wits about him. But based on mom and dad's experiences, we know that we can't count on such a pleasant passing.

So it's not that I'm unaware of the problems that old people have. Nor am I someone who doesn't value the elderly and their contributions to society. And finally, at age 58, I'm on the cusp of elder-hood myself, and obviously have a personal interest in what happens to senior citizens. But I think we pay way too much money on their (and soon - my) health care, and that's a huge problem for our country. It's a problem because the U.S. is in terrible financial shape and it's getting worse, a big portion of the problem is tied to spending on the elderly, and if we don't do something drastic - and soon - we may well end up with something that makes the Great Recession of 2008-2010 look like the good old days. Mostly, it'll be the young who suffer the most from all this.

Our federal government's deficit will approach $15 trillion in the next year or so, a number so huge that we can scarcely comprehend it. Interest payments on that amount, which is certain to rise even more in future years, is around $600 billion per year. That's $600 billion that can't be spent on education, defense, better roads, health coverage, etc. - each year. Yet even $15 trillion doesn't tell the whole story, as state and local governments, corporations, and individuals are in debt by another $45 trillion or so (http://grandfather-economic-report.com/debt-nat.htm). Total annual cost for all U.S. debt? Something like $3 trillion in interest, per year. Problem is: those numbers are headed higher and are reaching the point where the U.S. system as we know it may no longer be viable. You think unemployment, outsourcing, outdated infrastructure, home ownership, and the cost of a college education are bad now? Stick around.

The elderly's role in this, which by the way is NOT the same thing as saying their blame for this, is based on a number of factors that all result in them getting a larger and larger share of the national "pie". According to the Cato Institute, spending on the elderly was about 24% of all federal spending in 1980. Twenty years later, it was 35%, and is estimated to be 43% in 2010. As Cato puts it "The elderly will elbow aside all other citizens as they seize the bulk of the federal budget" (http://www.heartland.org/custom/semod_policybot/pdf/13279.pdf) Just to be clear what this means, they also said that "High consumption by the elderly (will be) funded by the young". Now the Cato Institute is a libertarian think tank with its own bias and agenda, but everybody else seems to say much the same thing on this issue.

Most of this spending on the elderly is on health care and/or is a result of improved health care over the decades. Because of better living conditions and greatly improved (and very expensive) health care, people are living much longer now. Because of that, they're surviving long enough to receive many more years of Social Security payments, and have many more years to benefit from Medicare and Medicaid than those programs were designed to support. Meanwhile, overall health costs have soared astronomically, so those additional years of health care for elders get increasingly more expensive. Cutting back on elderly health care spending won't solve the nation's debt problems, but along with limiting other old age benefits, it's a good and absolutely necessary start.

The earlier reference to bigger piece of the pie is a way to refer to the basic truism of economics: there's not enough for everybody to have everything they want, so society needs to make choices. It would be an over-simplification to say that we can spend either on the young, or on the elderly. But sadly, that's kind of what it boils down to. I say the elderly have had their turn, and we ought to focus less on extending their lives even more, and spend our money more on other things. And remember - I say this as a loving son of an elderly woman, and someone who will be elderly himself in a few years.

* * * * * * * * * *

The other part of this is there's a ton of money being spent on keeping sick old people alive longer than Nature intended or, in many cases, they themselves want. As a result, we get people who are 80 or 90 years old who've had great lives, but are just falling apart physically; it's their time to go. But we don't let go and instead insist on trying every medication, procedure, or operation to keep them going another month, another year. Billions spent every year just on that kind of medical care; billions that, if we had unlimited money and the elderly themselves wanted it, would be great to spend. But we don't, and in many cases, they don't.

My wife's mom Katy is a good example. Katy was a truly wonderful woman and an even better mother. She made it into her 90s and, naturally, started having more and more medical problems. A nurse in her younger years, she knew a lot about various conditions, treatments and so forth. In her final years, she didn't like getting hauled off to the hospital, getting poked and prodded, awakened every hour throughout the night, etc. She'd say "please don't take me to the hospital; I'm tired, just let God take me if he wants me." But nobody listened, and so Katy did live an extra few years. Years that were full of pain and hospital stays, years that cost many tens of thousands of dollars. She was so happy when the doctors said there was nothing else they could do. Katy knew she could finally be at rest; they gave her heavier and heavier doses of morphine, and she just peacefully slipped away. Finally.

I don't want to go out like that. Or in constant pain, wearing diapers, with no hope of recovering. I don't want to shuffle around in an old-folks home either, just waiting to die. But yet that's what I probably have to face, with our current attitude that it's quantity (number of years) that matters more than quality (of life). Not that I advocate the old Eskimo solution: give an old person a little food and then just leave them in the wilderness to die of cold. But at least in that model, society could use their resources where they'd do the most good (on the young and the strong), and any suffering was short-lived - in some ways a more humane and sensible solution than what we do now, IMO.

My wife and I, we're in perfect agreement. Neither one of us wants to end up in diapers, stuck in a hospital bed, or shuffling around drooling in an old folks home. We've made a pact; if one of us gets to that point (or ideally, before that point), the other has to take them out. Yup. Drive them up to the mountains and finish them off. Then finish themselves off, because society doesn't condone assisted suicide yet, and neither of us is going to spend their last years without the other, and in prison to boot. But don't get me wrong: we love life and really hope we have another 20 or 30 years of good living ahead of us. But if not...we've each had nearly 60 wonderful years of life, and if we were to die tomorrow, we're OK with it; we've had a great ride!

Of course as a society we're much too civilized to do anything like what the Eskimos did now, or what the Streblers have promised each other. Besides, lots of people want to live as long as possible, no matter what.

I'm not offering any specific solutions. It's a very, very messy business indeed, deciding how to cut back on health care for old people so that younger people have their chance at a decent life. But I'm saying we need to start thinking about this; it shouldn't be a taboo subject that nobody will consider. Because if we don't, the country's entire future is in grave danger.

Job Loss in America

This essay is basically an update or addition to "America Reaps What it Sows", written a couple of years ago and archived on this blog. What's new, and the focus of this particular blog, is the plight of upper-middle class Americans who've lost their jobs in our Great Recession.

A great many educated, skilled, upper-middle class Americans have lost their jobs in the last couple of years, and are having a hell of a time finding anything even close to as good as their previous jobs. The TV show "60 Minutes" did a heart-wrenching story on this recently. Here are people in their 40s, 50s, and 60s who did everything right. They got college degrees, even Masters' and PhDs, and went to work for big, prospering companies, and moved up the ladder over the years. These folks were experienced professionals, middle managers earning $100,000, $150,000, $250,000 a year - and they had earned it!

They also earned the lifestyle that came with the territory. The 2500 sq. ft. house in a good neighborhood, the nice cars and SUVs, dining out a couple of times a week, kids going to expensive colleges, regular vacations to Hawaii and Europe - the good life. And now they're losing it all because after many months of unemployment, where a job at Target is the best they can find, their savings is gone, they're about to lose their homes, and they don't know what to do. And it's not their fault; they did everything right!

Or did they? I think maybe not. My thesis is that probably 80% or more of these folks bear a fair share of responsibility for their current situation. The vast majority, I contend, could have and should have done things differently, and wouldn't be in this pickle if they had. And this is more than just "Monday morning quarterbacking", where you look back with hindsight and smugly predict the past.

It is only prudent to live within your means, to save 10% or more of what you earn. This is not revolutionary thinking, this is common advice and has been for many generations. I'm willing to bet that most of these people didn't do that and instead - like most Americans - spent nearly 100% of their growing incomes, if not 105% or 110% (by racking up debt on their credit cards and borrowing against the value of their homes).

It is only prudent to be concerned about the possibility of an economic slowdown or depression, and to take steps to "recession proof" your career. Here's what I mean. Recessions happen, sometimes they're very ugly, and any educated person should know that. They should also know that some jobs are more secure than others. On the contrary, I suspect that the majority of these people felt their days of worrying about their careers ended long ago: they got the good jobs, now all they needed to do was put in their 30 or 35 years and then live happily ever after. But that wasn't very realistic.

In my own case, I left a lucrative career in the investments business years ago because, in part, I saw dark clouds in our nation's economic future and was willing to trade higher income for greater job security. So I became a teacher, taking a big pay cut, but knowing my job would always be there as long as I did what I was supposed to do. For years, lots of folks made fun of my decision as the economy kept moving forward and they raked in the big bucks, but you can imagine what has happened to a lot of those people in the last few years. He who laughs last....

Even more important is the concept of making yourself indispensable at your work site, the idea of - if your employer needs to let people go, make yourself the last person they're going to want to get rid of. How can you do that? From my years in the work world, and from what my wife - who was a manager with Union Bank - tells me, I know that many workers: show up late, call in "sick" too often, do the least amount of work they think they can get away with, do sloppy, low-quality work, don't care about serving the customer as much as they should, etc. In short, they act as if they are "entitled" to their jobs instead of grateful for them. Consequently, the rare employee who consistently does the opposite of these things tends to clearly stand out. He/she gets the promotions, will be the last one to be let go if times get tough and, should he/she have to be laid off, will likely get the most help finding a new job - "Hey Charlie, we're cutting back and I had to let Sue go, but if you're looking for a great employee, you should really hire her!"

Another way to make yourself indispensable is to keep growing professionally. Learn new languages, keep upgrading your computer skills, earn advanced credentials in your field, attend workshops to improve your interpersonal skills, etc. In my own case, I upgraded my Spanish skills in order to earn a bilingual teaching credential, became the first one at my school to earn national board certification, and the first to become an IB examiner. As a result, I'm a highly effective teacher, my students' test scores are impressive, I'm recognized in the school district for these things, and I'm confident that even without "tenure", my job is secure. If for some reason I was no longer needed at my school, I know that other schools would be more than happy to have me on their staff. People in other fields of work could have done the same kinds of things, making themselves ever-more valuable to their employers, increasing their "indispensability".

Do you imagine that most of those poor folks on "60 Minutes" - or most of the other Americans who lost their jobs and are now in a tough situation - had handled their money prudently, carefully chosen and/or modified their career choices and then done everything they could make themselves indispensable at work, in order to protect their future and that of their families? Again, and with apologies to those who did - I suspect that 80% or more did not and therefore, I'm not as sympathetic to their plight as most people are.

Creation vs. Evolution: We Can All Get Along!

According to a nationwide Gallup survey (reported in the SD Union Tribune on November 17th, 2007), nearly two-thirds of all Americans believe in the idea of Creationism. That is, in this modern age the majority of us think that the Earth was created and humans placed upon it, all within the last 10,000 years! Dinosaurs, if they existed at all, romped along the plains, forests, and seashores side by side with our ancestors. Just to make sure you got this – about twice as many people in the U.S. believe this as believe in evolution. Excuse me?

What’s behind this strange peek into the American mindset? It’s not that we’re a nation of flat-Earth believers who overall deny what science has discovered. For example, as the evidence for global warming has increased, so has our nation’s willingness to believe in that theory. Today, about 95% of the world’s scientists believe that global warming is happening and that it’s a serious issue. Something like 75% of Americans now believe the same thing. OK – so we lag behind the scientists, but we’re mostly on the same page and that 75% number keeps rising. Yet something like 99% of all serious scientists acknowledge that evolution is a reality. In other words, there are about five times as many scientists who question global warming as those who question evolution. Or to put it in legal terms, 99% certainty on the part of legitimate scientists (including many who are devout Christians) is the same as saying evolution is a fact, beyond a reasonable doubt. That's why in court case after court case, schools have been instructed to teach evolution, and have been ordered NOT to teach creationism, at least in science classes.

Of course, there are quite a few “scientists” promoting Intelligent Design (the sneaky new way to say Creationism). But those who are strict creationists, who believe that evolution played no part at all in the development of life forms, that the Earth was created by God a few thousand years ago just as it is today - they’re mostly pseudo-scientists, not really taken seriously by their peers and their “evidence” is easily discounted by those using legitimate methodology. In other words, you'd be hard pressed to find even a handful of respected scientists - people whose research and methodology is accepted by the scientific community - who don't think that plants and animals have evolved over millions of years

An example of the things you hear from strict creationists is that fossils and other ancient records that document evolution cannot be reliably dated. It’s like this: Archaeologist A dates pre-human primate bones at 2 million years old, archaeologist B dates them at 2.2 million years old, while archaeologist C dates them at 1.9 million years old, all using slightly different measuring procedures. “Aha” - says the evolution deniers! “You see how arbitrary those dating methods are? Surely, then, they could just as easily be only 6400 years old!” I'm sorry, but scientists disagree over differences of 5 or 10% in their measurements, yet the Creationists want us to believe that the scientists are off by 99% (virtually 100% wrong). Why in the world do 2/3 of Americans think this kind of reasoning makes sense?

Why should this be? Why can Americans accept global warming, space travel, the existence of sub-atomic particles that can't be seen, computers that do a billion calculations a second - but not evolution? What explains the blind spot in these people’s logic and world view? Of course it’s mostly about religion. Part of it is that folks in the U.S. are more likely to be conservative Christians than other people worldwide. "The Bible says God created man in His image, and that's that." Most European Christians, on the other hand, are perplexed and a bit embarrassed by their American cousins' rejection of evolution. In Europe, evolution is commonly seen as a fact, and most Christians there don't see why that should be a problem. But unlike most European Christians, many Christians in the U.S. basically feel that by questioning Creation you question the Bible and therefore their faith. So they won’t hear of it. Interestingly, most Jews (whose religion is based on the Old Testament) don’t seem to share this curious interpretation, but then Conservative and Reform Jews are noted for their respect of science, and for being open-minded.

What it boils down to for so many is a choice: either the Bible or scientific evidence. Refined further still, it’s either science OR religion. Choose one or choose the other; you’re either with me or you’re against me – no middle ground. And that, unfortunately, is a terrible and absolutely unnecessary choice to have to make. Perhaps the greatest scientist of all time, Albert Einstein, said that “Science without religion is lame.” He also said that “Religion without science is blind”. So – what if we really DON’T have to choose between the two?

Well, that’s the very compelling case Dr. Francis Collins makes in his 2006 book The Language of God. Collins is an interesting individual. As a devout, born-again Christian, he most definitely believes in God, Jesus Christ as humanity’s savior, and of course the Bible. Yet as the former head of the prestigious Human Genome Project, he is one of the world’s top experts in the field of genetics (so important to the understanding of evolution) and a scientist of unimpeachable reputation. The thesis of Collins’ most interesting book is that evolution may disagree with the literal reading of a small part of the Bible, but otherwise it meshes just fine with Christian religious beliefs.

It's this very literal reading of the Bible that causes so much trouble, by the way. 3000 years ago, when Genesis was written and humans understood so little of the natural world, could God really have explained how He created the universe with a Big Bang 6 billion years ago? How He caused sub-atomic particles to interact with the various cosmic forces emanating from dark holes, multiple-dimensions, and all the esoterica of astro-physics that we have trouble grasping even today? Seriously - how could the Bible have talked about this stuff 3000 years ago? So does it really lessen the value of the Bible and religion to think that the writers of Genesis used wording and analogies that the people of the time could understand - rather than only writing what was strictly, literally, verbatim true? Not really, a rational person might conclude.

But back to Collins and his book: Evolution is a fact beyond any reasonable challenges, and shouldn’t be a problem for believers, he argues. Put another way, there is no conflict between science and religion, between being a faithful Christian and a believer in the facts of evolution. Collins painstakingly addresses the most common arguments that Creationists and Intelligent Designers proffer, debunking each of them with cold, hard, convincing facts. Convincing, that is, to anyone with an open mind. In his view, incidentally, God gave humans a mind and wants us to use it to help understand the world He has created and, thus, to know Him. Collins goes on to show why God exists, and how He must have been the original source of life, which then changed over time via evolution. Whether you believe that part or not; whether you’re a fervent Christian, a firm evolutionist, an atheist, or somewhere else in between, you should at least read what Collins has to say. But the bottom line is that this fight – evolution vs. religion – is really needless.

What makes this even more needless is that in 1996 Pope John Paul II proclaimed that Evolution is “more than just a hypothesis” and that it is compatible with Christian faith! Probably no modern Pope was more loved and respected than John Paul II. And whether you're a Catholic or a Protestant (or even if you're not a Christian at all), can you think of anyone more knowledgeable about Christianity and the Bible than the Pope? The Pope, most European Christian leaders,and most Jewish leaders believe is that the Old Testament is beyond question - EXCEPT in matters involving science, which of course has broadened our understanding of things immensely over the centuries. Evolution's not just a theory; evolution (a scientific fact) doesn't conflict with Christianity. So said the Pope, traditionally the leader of the Christian world! Even if they're not Catholics, why would 2/3 of Americans think that the Pope lacks faith in the Bible, or isn't a good Christian, or any of the other claims made of those who believe that evolution is a reality?

So just what are we arguing about? Most Jews (who wrote Genesis, incidentally), most European Protestants, and the leader of the Catholic church believe in evolution, so obviously you don't have to sacrifice your religious beliefs in order to think the same. This isn't 1256 or 1803, when such an idea would have been unthinkable, just as space travel, computers, and atomic bombs would have been unthinkable - blasphemous! We've learned SO MUCH; we have endless examples of irrefutable proof. Why won't the strict creationists look at this proof with open minds? How in the world are they going to attract the agnostics of the world, those who WANT to believe in Christianity, but aren’t sure? If American Christians' position on something as clear cut as evolution is one of denial, why should people follow their beliefs on matters of (non-verifiable) faith alone? Honestly, strict Creationists: let's limit the debate to whether God created life on Earth, or whether it arose all on its own - THAT's the only part of the evolution issue where there's any reasonable doubt.