New Year, Old Thoughs

The New York Times today has a front page story asking if the Fed can be trusted to spot the next bubble. Why are we relying on economists for this. Look, if we pay people $1 per day to make $5,000 televisions and $10 an hour to crank out $30,000 cars then who exactly is supposed to buy these things? When wages for tactile work are down and corporate profits are up, that, my friends, is a bubble. For sustained growth you need lower profit margins and that will not be acceptable until we fundamentally overhaul corporate boards, not just through regulation, but law. We need clearer definitions of acting in the share holders interests, and restraints on same. If corporations are legally citizens, which they are, they need to be held accountable to society at large, not just owners. Just like the rest of us.

A new study shows, once again, that girls do not have any inherent weakness in math. http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2010/01/gender-math.aspx
My brain jumps from this study to a thought I had as I was talking to a friend. I was relating the growing percentage of graduate students and post-docs at our nation's finest research labs who are from China and India and who will be returning home. This was my thought - women. Women, if able to advance here are much more likely to stay. We are still, despite all our rolling backwards these past years, light years ahead of China and even India in women's integration in the culture as equal human beings and citizens. If women, instead of being subtly discouraged in Chemistry and Physics labs, are actively encouraged we may be able to snag some of the brightest minds from China and India.
This is important not because we do not also have bright minds, but because science is a glamor profession in these nations. They watch the Nobel Prize ceremonies on TV. (essay coming soon related to this.) We are, in fact, a bit lazy. We are no different from Sweden or England or any other nation who used to pump out incredible science and scientists. We have taken our supremacy for granted and so few want to work on it, to rise to the challenge.

I do wonder to how excite Americans about education in general. Like democracy, we tend to take it for granted. What we take for granted we can lose to easily. In Sweden I mentioned this to a couple of people, the problem I have with our kids being taught that the U.S. is a democracy rather than being taught that it's citizen's continually make the democracy. It intrigued me that a concept I have trouble getting across over here was immediately seized upon there. The clarity of distance? But how do we get our children to feel that school is not a burden but a gift? I do not mean which method of education, because, frankly, it's pretty rote in places where kids walk miles to school and put up with practically no resources but a place to call school and a dedicated teacher. I am not dissing educational styles here. I am only saying that this is not that question, but a more fundamental one. Ideas are most welcome.

Bikes not Bombs, people!