Global Warming?

              

The sun has been its least active in decades. It’s in its dimmest phase in a hundred years.

                       

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

                       

Access to Greenland, at that time, was largely cut off by ice. Canals in Holland routinely froze solidly. Glaciers in the Alps covered whole villages, and sea ice increased so that no open water flowed around Iceland in 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. Research has developed a theory that the sun has a bigger influence on earth's climate than others have predicted.

                       

That throws the global warming pessimists who are anti- auto, anti-industry, and anti-industrial development, into their usual dilemma. (See the Earl J. Weinreb NewsHole® comments and @BusinessNewshole at Twitter.)

Poor College Student Everyday Abilities

                    

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

                       

Graduates are less adept today, from more recent test scores being reported.

                       

Employers say many college graduates lack basic skills of thinking and writing. This is not surprising.

                       

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 had declined from 40% to 31% in the past decade.

                       

Colleges do more for their teachers and staff, than for a large portion of their students.(See the Earl J. Weinreb NewsHole® comments and @BusinessNewshole at Twitter.)

The Small Business Optimism Index

                   

If you want an idea of where the economy is heading and what the chances are for a brightening in the picture for more jobs, you will want to know small business optimism

numbers.

                       

The National Federation of Independent Business periodically issues its Small Business Optimism Index. That, better than any political pronouncement from the White House, will tell you how small business folk are prepared to speculate with their hard-earned money, to create needed jobs that the government can only gab about.(See the Earl J. Weinreb NewsHole® comments and @BusinessNewshole at Twitter.)

Colleges’ Grading in the Ivies

                   

I’m providing this example of what goes for so-called college grades today.

                       

At the College of the City of New York during World War II,

students were admitted only if they had the highest grades in local schools.

                       

If they were getting armed forces draft deferments because they were science and engineering majors, they had many of their classes marked on a “curve.” This was comparable to having to make the cut in 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, perhaps the U. S., open only to the top high school graduates, a student with one class “failure” immediately flunked out.

                       

Compare that to the Ivy League college standards of today!

                       

Students go to Ivy League schools because of the aura, and the contacts they afford. The vaunted Ivies are not tough once you are admitted. If anything, they are overrated. We see their products in Wall Street and government. (See the Earl J. Weinreb NewsHole® comments and @BusinessNewshole at Twitter.)

How Jobs Are Really Created

                 

The administration would love to improve the job picture, but continues to overlook how job creation really works.

                       

It does not work by handing out one-time tax credits or benefits. It does help by improving the psychology for hiring. That means providing a clear understanding of the ground rules for business. Those ground rules must be pro-business.

                       

Enterprise requires less cost of doing business, with no future prospects of a choking increase in taxes. And no higher minimum wages for unskilled, questionably-needed labor. (See the Earl J. Weinreb NewsHole® comments and @BusinessNewshole at Twitter.)

Crumbling College Standards

                  

College has become a huge growth industry. Over 4,000 colleges and universities enroll over 17 million students.

The industry has also mutated negatively, with far too little oversight of quality.

                       

As an example: Colleges appear to be primarily in the business of acquiring students, differing to a degree in their approach to marketing.

                       

Some do so as research centers. They may boast professors with science awards and Nobel Prizes which are very appealing marketing devices. Such faculty also attract more grants and endowments.

                       

But few undergraduate students have these celebrity professors. They often are taught by graduate students.

                       

Parents and taxpayers pay billions of dollars to colleges and universities. Yet, schools make money whether students learn or not, whether students graduate or not, and whether they get good jobs after leaving school, or not.

                       

Colleges and universities thus engage in "bait and switch;" conferring what are actually deficient degrees, and engage in other practices that would bring legal sanctions in any other business. (See the Earl J. Weinreb NewsHole® comments and @BusinessNewshole at Twitter.)

Meaning of Pareto Efficiency

                 

Pareto efficiency, or Pareto optimality, is a concept in economics. Named after Vilfredo Pareto, the term is used in engineering, game theory, and social sciences.

                       

Pareto used his theory in studies of economics and income distribution. He claimed that a change from one allocation to another could make one individual better off, without making another worse off. This is referred to as a Pareto improvement. The allocation is called Pareto efficient or Pareto optimal.

                       

The 80/20 Efficiency concept, so often used in management, is his reasoning. For example, 20% of your sales force may contribute 80% of your sales.

                       

I bring it up because the political left would do well to

reconsider some of their anti-business tirades when trying to create jobs. Contemplating the Pareto principles would help their efforts. (See the Earl J. Weinreb NewsHole® comments and @BusinessNewshole at Twitter