Why Not Attend a Technical School?

Misleading data about the financial advantage of attending a formal college is skewing the career choices of too many kids today. Numbers thrown out by what I call the educational enthusiasts in college institutions, are usually faulty.

In most instances these professional educators compare apples and oranges. They never make comparisons with high-paying non-college jobs such as electricians, plumbers, or computer techies, for example. They will use samples including day laborers and the like.

You are successful because of yourself. not a framed piece of paper from a college. Get a marketable skill. Whether it comes from a college or a technical school.

Many technical school graduates earn far more than college grads.

The Caliber of Teaching at Colleges

Over 4,000 colleges and universities enroll over 17 million students. It’s a huge industry that has become a boondoggle with little oversight.

One example: Colleges are in the business of acquiring students, differing in their approach to marketing. Some do so as research centers. They may boast professors with science awards and Nobel Prizes. These can be very appealing marketing devices. Such esteemed faculty also attract grants and endowments as well as students.

The truth is, very few undergraduate students have celebrity professors. They often are taught, instead, by graduate students.

Parents and taxpayers cough up billions of dollars to the nation's colleges and universities. Schools make money whether students learn or not, whether students graduate or not, and whether they get good jobs after leaving, or not.

Colleges and universities engage in "bait and switch," confer fraudulent degrees and engage in other practices that would bring legal sanctions if done in any other business.

Dumb College Kids

A 2006 Pew Charitable Trusts investigation showed that 50% of college seniors failed a test that asked them to understand a table about exercise and blood pressure, or understand newspaper editorials, or compare credit card offers.

About 20% of college seniors did not have the ability to estimate whether their car had enough fuel to get to a gas station. According to the National Assessment of Adult Literacy, the percentage of college graduates’ ability in literacy has declined from 40% to 31% in the past decade. Employers say many college graduates lack basic skills of thinking and writing.

I repeat what I said in my previous posting: The college system often does more for colleges, their teachers and staff, on balance, than it does for a large portion of their consumers, the students.

Is College Worth It for its Students?

Colleges have strong financial motives to admit poor high school students. One example: The U.S. Department of Education statistics show that three quarters of students who graduate in the bottom 40% of high school classes, attend college, yet never graduate. Though they may spend as much as eight and a half years in school.

Worse, they often leave carrying thousands of dollars in debt.

To make matters more serious, few wind up with a job that ever required a college education. They had wasted all that time and money.

As for students prepared for college, only 40% of two million freshmen graduate in four years; 45% never graduate.

The only conclusion can be that the college system often does more for the colleges, teachers and staff, on balance, than it does for a large portion of their consumers.

Will the USA Continue to be Economically Self-Sufficient?

Americans created farmland out of forests, swamp and deserts. They built dams and canals for irrigation. They produced the world's most widespread and inexpensive agriculture.

Today the population is growing by leaps and bounds by natural and immigration means. Yet many hundreds of thousands of acres of productive land is going out of use. At the same time we have chronic water shortages, particularly west of the Mississippi River.

This has not stopped environmentalists from doing what it is they have been organized to do. They stop irrigation wherever they can, to save threatened species of fish and other organisms they see on the same level with human needs.

The upshot? We are taking too much productive farmland away from our food supplies. As well as making food we do have more expensive.

What is more, the trend continues in the face of current economic hardship.

Inflated College Grades

I can tell you from my personal experience, a college education isn’t what it used to be. In fact a high school education isn’t what it once was.

You can call it educational inflation. And it has distinct reasons for being:

One: When it becomes too easy to enter college you are bound to get a diminution of educational principles. Educators dumb down courses to appeal to the lowest common student's innate ability.

Two: Affirmative action is the order of the day and not just for conventional minorities. It is there for any group that is not equally represented on school attendance roles.

Three: Schools must market themselves by appealing to the baser instincts of their students. The idea is to fill the attendance charts by making it easier to attend.

Students therefore tend to wind up in the easiest courses, That’s why so many graduates are unable to find real, practical jobs. Or why we have so many with easy-to-get law degrees and so few who are doctors and scientists.

And if truth be told, students go to Ivy League schools because of the auras about them, and the contacts they afford. The vaunted Ivies are not tough once you are admitted.

At the College of the City of New York during World War II, students getting deferments because they were science and engineering majors had many of their classes “marked on a curve.” This was comparable to making the cut in PGA professional golf. The lowest 10% to 15% of each class flunked, no matter what mark they got. Classmates competed against each other.

In the toughest college in the city, open only to the top high school graduates. A student with one class failure immediately lost that army deferment.

Compare that to the Ivy League standards of today!

Does Global Warming Really Exist?

Astrophysicists are waiting to see what the sun will do next, and how the Earth's climate might respond. The sun has been the least active in decades. Actually, it’s in its dimmest phase in a hundred years.

This is causing some scientists to recall the Little Ice Age. That was an unusual cold spell in Europe and North America, and lasted from about 1300 to 1850. The coldest period of the Little Ice Age was between 1645 and 1715. It was linked to a deep dip in solar storms known as the Maunder Minimum.

During that time, access to Greenland was largely cut off by ice. Canals in Holland routinely froze solid. Glaciers in the Alps covered whole villages, and sea ice increased so that no open water flowed around Iceland in the year 1695.

For hundreds of years scientists used the number of sunspots to trace the sun's roughly 11-year cycles of activity. Sunspots indicate intense magnetic activity on the sun's surface. Solar storms send bursts of charged particles hurtling toward Earth.

Changes in the sun's activity affect earth in other ways, too. Research has developed a case that the sun has a bigger influence on earth's climate than many theories have predicted.

That throws the theories of the sky-is-falling-down climate pessimists who are anti-autos, anti-industry, and anti-industrial development into a cocked hat. Along with the cap & trade movement.

Are We Repeating The Tax Factors Behind the 30’s Great Depression?

Tax increases were an integral part of Roosevelt’s New Deal, along with an extended expansion of political controls and taxes started by President Herbert Hoover. Their combined actions devastated the American economy in the 1930’s.

All this central planning around open and hidden taxes is where we are headed today under the present Obama administration. Yet, with all that financial history out front for us to see, we are not learning from the practical lesson the 1930’s Great Depression ought to have taught us.

The Obama administration is attempting to tax the U.S. out of a recession, right into a deeper one, and possibly, stagflation. One suffering from a lack of decent, private-industry jobs, and higher prices.

What Can You Expect From College Professors?

Surveys at major schools show that close to 80% of faculty voted for Democrat John Kerry In 2004, About 1% voted for Ralph Nader, while only 20% voted for President Bush. Social science professors, gave Ralph Nader about 20% of the 2004 vote, as large as that for President Bush.

This indicates the balance you get from those teaching college kids. But it gets more slanted when the study delves into specific areas.

Liberals outnumber conservatives by 11-1 among social scientists and 13-1 among humanities professors. As many as 25% of those who teach sociology actually consider themselves Marxist.

Surprise: Business school professors who are believed to be primarily conservative, actually voted 2-1 for Kerry.

At major, graduate schools offering Ph.Ds, over 60% of faculty are Democrats, 30% are independents and 10% are Republicans.

This demonstrates the problems in attempting to educate college students, particularly those who become our future teachers, community leaders, and members of the media.

Why Companies Hire Consultants

I often wonder: Why do companies with experienced staff, having experts with years of background in the intricacies of their business, hire consultants, whose staffs are rife with youngsters just out of school?

After all, companies already have their own experts who know their business intimately. They can study their operations from every and any angle, and do so on an ongoing basis.

My conclusion has always been that these wet-behind-the-ears-consultants have always been a form of business insurance. Even though their so-called :”fresh look” can be amateurish.

Much the way investment bankers are called in for advice. Yet, they, too, are often relatively inexperienced. They may know Wall Street lingo and take down huge income, but have little knowledge of the business in which they poke their fingers.

The business insurance rationale behind all this? When confronted by plaintiff lawyers, you can always say you tried. You have recognized that fact in that you have taken adequate precautions in your duties as a manager. How? By using consultants.

The Success of Mall Medical Offices

I started and ran a successful multi-office nursing service in the past and thus have a practical observation to offer.

A mall medical service is designed to accommodate everyday, urgent medical problems that arise, where patients want to immediately know how serious their illness may be. The idea is to avoid the horrendous conditions that often prevail in hospital emergency facilities. ERs are there for specific purposes, other than routine general health evaluations.

Mall medical offices can also be made adjuncts to actual shopping department stores, as well as be independent companies. Many already are in operation. They are supervised by licensed nurses on staff, while overseen by licensed physicians. Doctor referrals are made when required, by those nurses.

The different states have varying regulations, depending on pressure from interested groups, many of whom would prefer not to have this form of competition.

These facilities do represent a step in providing a cheaper form of reliable, private choice, low-cost, health care coverage.

The Booming Climate Control Industry

The booming economic aspect of the climate control industry gets little publicity. If it did, folks would doubt the intent of many of its adherents. Who are they?

There are its true coreligionists. They treat climate control as a religion and thus have no doubt the earth is warming and the proof is there for all but the blind to see.

To others it’s political. A cause that creates a road to office and helps to keep them there.

To others in government, it’s a subterfuge or mask, for quietly, indirectly raising taxes on consumers as well as industry.

And for still others, it’s Big Business. Especially when you can buy and sell cap & trade credits (one Numero Uno Democrat Bigwig in this category owns a large intermediary in this field.)

Or you can market Green Philosophy in any variety of industrial and consumer products you choose to develop for fun and mostly profit.

So, how do you stop this movement made up of marketing dreamers and Utopian fantasists, when an ignorant media is on their side?

It’s difficult. But eventually you will find out the climate promoters can be grouped with the types who used to tell us the world would come to an end by a certain date. When that never occurred we just forgot about the quacks.

Government Always Competes with Unlimited Capital and Operating Funds

Every time the government proposes an operation to be done by private industry, remember that you, the taxpayer, will be contributing the capital and operating funds.

And, of course, taking all the risks. In private industry, that is taken on by the stockholders.

In addition, you will be responsible for the ensuing losses, which are bound to happen under government operation.

I like to hear government-operation fanatics get enthusiastic about non-profit entities who rant about profit-making businesses. The so-called non-profits can lose fortunes for their backers, while the for-profits can make pennies-on-the-dollar of sales. Yet, the government-operation fanatics remain committed to their deception.

It is impossible for private business to compete for long, whether it be the insurance business, health care, energy source production, etc., if taxpayer funds are grabbed by government for capital and operating capital needs.

Forget About Government Fostering Competition

The Post Office will not give up its first class mail handling privilege. It knows it cannot compete on its own if it has competition.

Other forms of non-first class package shipping is handled by private shippers. Quite efficiently and at low cost. (Incidentally, these private carriers would love to carry first class mail. But the Post Office maintains its first class monopoly).

The Post Office says it provides service to areas no private carrier will service. Not true, as evidenced by cutbacks the Post Office constantly imposes. And destinations to which private carriers go.

But the Obama administration’s so called “public option” or “co-op” health care suggestion will have a slightly different twist. It will be as inefficient and have the poor service as the Post Office, but will be supported in a different way. More indirectly, yet still by the public. And in a manner to make sure there will eventually be no private competitors.

Government never fosters competition. It can cut out competition when it is permitted to write rules to have taxpayer money undercut the pricing of the products or services of private producers.

Special Health Insurance Malpractice Courts

We already have special courts for bankruptcies. Assigned judges handle complicated creditor and debtor claims, tax liens, workers compensation and other complex matters.

One of the complications that prove costly in the health care picture today, that requires change, is malpractice procedure and its extremely high cost. The latter problem is attributed primarily to the outrageous amounts of lawsuits against providers. And the extent of fraud that permeates the system.

The upshot of all these suits: The high cost of defensive medicine and doctor malpractice insurance premiums.

There is a practical solution: Arbitration courts made up of judges who are trained in science and medicine. That would eliminate awards attributed to “junk science.”

The courts would also eliminate huge attorney cuts of the award proceeds and would put a cap on outrageous sums that ordinarily come from ignorant jurists. While seeing that patients are amply compensated for actual malpractice. The courts would be financed from MD insurance premiums.

Problem: Lawyers now give well over 90% of their political dollars to the Democrat party in Congressional control of health insurance reform.

How Government Mismanages Business

Leftists always insist that governments do a better job than corrupt “capitalists.” Here is just one recent example of how government manages because politicians then get involved.

General Motors decided to close some dealerships after the government takeover. Dealers being closed contacted their congressmen and senators and before long there was enough pressure to stop original orders. Corrections were made to suit the demand brought on by that pressure.

So valid business decisions become arbitrary political decisions. The exact opposite the Obama administration promised would never happen, when it first took over GM control.

In essence, politicians need voters, To get them they must resort to voter pressures. That means employees lose real jobs over time. Not pick and shovel jobs. Not sit-on-chair- and move-paper-around political jobs.

Business people need profits and do what they must to get them, or they go bankrupt. When they do go bankrupt, the problems are remedied immediately. Problems do not fester for years at taxpayer cost because they are never truly corrected.

Journalist Responsibility and Economic Meltdowns

Journalists do have a responsibility for economic happenings. That’s because media have a direct relationship to the effects of the economy on the public. They do affect public knowledge and all-important public sentiment.

We know media influence in print, as an example. The Dow Jones Economic Sentiment Indicator actually tries to gauge the U.S. economy by weighing the balance of sentiment in articles published by 15 major American newspapers. The Indicator analyzes stories published. They look for key words that indicate changes in economic sentiment.

Whatever it is that journalism schools teach about journalism, they don’t teach enough economics. That’s if they have any decent economic study at all. Because that would entail a balance of conservative as well as liberal thinking on the subject. The results of the work of their graduates show a deficiency.

There are about 50,000 newspaper journalists in the U.S. alone, with thousands of published articles daily, Economics are integral to the news, especially finance and its effects on politics.

It shows that schools do not teach news balance. To enable journalists to know enough to screen what has worked and not worked economically in the past. And to avoid passing along political pap about the subject without critical oversight.

Phony Job Additions or Savings.

The Obama Administration has come up with lots of creative numbers because few critics in the media are around to point out the facts.

One example is the matter of creating a “jobs saved” number to report when actual “job lost” numbers are in abundance. They are merely estimates of the “coulda, shoulda and if” variety, that cannot be truly measured.

In a way, it is a brilliant concept. That is because such figures cannot be proven wrong and are believable if you are dumb enough to take them as statistically bonafide,

They periodically reappear in another phantom guise.

Medicaid and Medicare Are Failed Projects.

If you understand how government works you can understand why any state operated business cannot work well.

Congress created both Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. Politicians being who they are expanded benefits, all the while talking about controlling costs. But costs keep skyrocketing.

This cannot happen in private business because there is always the specter of bankruptcy. But government intervention does prolongs this event and makes matters much worse and terribly expensive. That is when taxpayers come in to pay the bills.

Eventually enormous amounts have to be paid, that bankruptcy would have reduced once and for all, by making the required remedies early on.

The same government-failed approach, to prevent the skyrocketing cost of fraud-infested Medicare and Medicaid, is popular with those who feel Universal Health care run by government will be a health insurance solution.

Universal Health Care Myths About Making Americans Healthier

This is an additional health insurance idea on which I have some comments.

An Institute of Medicine study estimates that about 40% of premature deaths in this country are due to bad behavior. Only about 10% owe to poor medical care that can be improved.

Social and physical environments contribute 20% and genetics 30% to premature deaths. So why in the world take a chainsaw to remedy what can be done with a small butter knife?

Give people without insurance who cannot afford it free insurance. And see to it that everyone gets insurance despite being currently not insurable?

And put a cap on insurance payoffs by having malpractice reform.

Give Individual Tax Breaks for Buying Health Insurance

Another health insurance comment I would like to share:

Tax employer-provided health-care benefits but return this money to employees, in the form of tax deductions, to buy their own medical insurance. After all, they buy their own home and auto insurance.

It automatically makes your insurance transferable and does not keep workers glued to jobs just to hold onto coverage.

The health-care benefit exemption to industry hinders health-insurance security and portability and personal independence.

Also we should eliminate the prohibition on buying health insurance across state lines. That would add even more competition among about 1500 insurance carriers.

These steps would certainly lower health insurance costs. Government health insurance never will. Nothing the government does is truly cheap, except quality, when you total direct and indirect costs.

Private Insurance for the Non-Insurable is Doable

Another of many health insurance ideas on which I have some pertinent comments.

Private insurance for all is doable, if the pool is large enough. To do so, states and the federal government must break down the barriers they place on insurance companies. Here are some suggestions:

One: Permit the sale of health insurance across state lines.

Two: Make sure health insurance groups are large enough to spread risk.

Three: Permit risk distinctions, so that high-risk individuals get insurance.

Four: Immediately institute tort reform, including mandatory arbitration by special courts of patient claims, and the elimination of legal fees.

Tort Reform and Health Care

This is another of many health insurance ideas on which I have some pertinent remarks.

Malpractice law suits create defensive medicine that does no medical good, but costs a fortune for insurance companies and their clients.

A Massachusetts Medical Society study found that five out of six doctors order procedures and referrals that amount to about 25% of total medical costs, as a means of MD protection from lawsuits. According to the Pacific Research Institute, such defensive medicine wastes more than $200 billion a year.

The entire medical-malpractice system thus has to be changed. There ought to be a form of no-fault system, a pool to reimburse those injured from medical errors or accidents. Judges would be medical experts, not inexpert juries, swayed by trial lawyers who get one third of the lottery-sized proceeds.

The no-fault pool would be funded by a small tax on health-insurance premiums.

There is a major problem, however, to this otherwise simple solution, of making some remedial corrections to health insurance. Over 90% of tort lawyer political contributions go to the Democrat party. This accounts for the fact tort reform is never one of the reforms Congress mentions.

Government Spending is Climbing to War-Time Levels

During World War Two, government spending as a percentage of GDP was about 45%. Understandably. It is over 20% right now, with the Obama administration on a spending tear. And that percentage is rapidly on the way up, headed much higher, as bailouts and additional programs are proposed.

So, you see where the government-centrist planners envision their left-leaning philosophical opening in this country? And what it means for business? Particularly those who cannot compete with the big company competition?

Remember: Government spending displaces funds available for the private sector. When that occurs, the smaller firms seeking funds are less likely to get them. Yet, they are the entities who mainly create jobs.

Costs of Health Care

This is another of many health insurance ideas on which I have some comments.

The Obama administration seems intent to make the United States more like the rest of the world when it comes to government-enhanced health care.

Presently, Germany leads the pack in universal care. As of 2008, 52% of employee costs went to their government for social services and health care. France was right behind at about 49% and Italy at almost 47%.

That tells only part of the story. Health care operated in a competitive market can be a growth industry, and highly productive. Not so, when operated by government, as in Europe,

The rest of the story involves rationing of services that keep costs within the described levels. And the number of doctors supplied for that demand.

Another Health Care Idea

This is but one of many health insurance ideas on which I will have future cogent comments.

Break up a source of potential administrative nightmares, if you must have some sort of government system enforced as public health care. At least have each state administer its own system.

You can have a central data bank for important medical information, but each state would enforce what it wants for its own citizens. That would be in direct response to what its voters want and for what they might want to be taxed.

Ideally, however, the health care system ought to remain entirely private. No Trojan Horse public plan of any sort. Changes in small steps should be made with regard to tort reform, policy portability and the coverage of presently uninsurable citizens.

How Creative Entrepreneurs Can Lose Their Business

Periodically I watch sad sagas of highly creative entrepreneurs who build a business from scratch and do extremely well very quickly, expand rapidly, and then watch the business fall apart.

The reasons? Three. Many are poor planners from the very start. They often lack an efficient business plan which can guide them in their financial planning.

And the lack of sufficient funds, which they probably were unaware of early on. Because of poor planning many entrepreneurs are clueless about how short of capital they are eventually going to be.

And three, unfortunately, they are incapable of managing a business, or getting a manager who can.

The Worst Time to Increase the Minimum Wage

You can gauge how wise a politician is when he or she proposes an increase in the minimum wage. Because research shows minimum wage increases always cost jobs of entry level workers.

Those at lower levels generally leave for higher wages or get raises with time. It’s usually not the same worker remaining at that lowest level. A fact that proponents conveniently overlook.

But minimum wage increases do cost jobs. Employers must think twice in estimating the value and affordability of their workers. Especially small businesses who are responsible for the bulk of American employment.

The minimum wage is a ploy of powerful unions whose contracts are automatically revised up from minimum wage levels.

What is more, it is almost criminal to impose higher minimums during a recession or depression That stymies the possibility of stimulating any increase in job opportunities.

Having a Baby Needs Regular Health Insurance?

This is but one of many health insurance ideas on which I have cogent comments.

A distinction ought to be made when buying insurance between the need for catastrophic insurance and buying coverage for a probable event. You buy insurance should you have an automobile accident and not for the purchase of gasoline you will definitely need for the auto.

In the same way, you buy health insurance in case you get an illness worse than a common cold. If you get married and intend to have several kids, you are not getting sick. You are anticipating having kids and need coverage for that. It’s not anticipating a catastrophe such as being in an accident or getting very sick. Unless childbirth evolves into a medical emergency. Routine childbirth costs can be reduced under competitive conditions much lower then they are today, without government interference.

There ought to be means of separating these two kinds of costs.

On top of all this, malpractice suits have gotten out of hand, especially with maternity awards. That affects this absurd situation much further. The reason why I mention the childbirth factor.

These two coverage-path distortions are now thrown together into a common health insurance package by left-leaning politicians that skew the numbers even more.

There is a health insurance solution . Take the problem apart in steps. Revamp present tax incentives. Guarantee coverage. Consider the childbirth factor.

By keeping government hands out of a one-plan-fits-all solution. By having the ability and competition of almost 1500 private insurers compete nationally.

We Can Do a Better Job of Measuring Unemployment

Unemployment figures by themselves can be very misleading. For one thing, they can be adjusted after publication because of errors and short-term conditions that may occur.

Then other considerations must be part of the picture for the analysis. Job creation is getting smaller. Look at that number, alongside the unemployment figure. Other factors ought to always be considered as well:

One: The length of time people are unemployed is now longer than since 1948.

Two: Employees are taking unpaid leave in larger numbers.

Three: People have given up looking for work. Some may have actually taken early retirement.

Four: The average work week is getting smaller.

All these factors affect what we see as unemployment.