Current Economics

The economy is in the dumps.  That much is certain.  The question is what can be done, and is anyone out there willing to do it?

First, we need some form of universal health care in this country.  Employer-based insurance has become a disaster; due to insurance cost on the private market, insurance is no longer a benefit, but is a necessity for an employer to provide for its workstaff.  Small firms cannot afford a large group plan (which is cheaper) and so are at a major disadvantage.  Workers as well - one cannot threaten to quit one's job if the pay, conditions, etc are not good enough for fear of losing health insurance.  This lowers bargaining power for employees, and bargaining power is something that is necessary for the labor market to work properly.

"Workshare" would also be an upgrade.  Reduce the regular work week to 30 hours and hire more employees to cover the difference.  This is in fact what should be happening as we become more efficient - everyone works less hard and spends more time on other activities.  Automation is good for everyone - we should embrace it and understand its positive consequences.

Also, cut bloated management salaries and use the money to hire younger workers.  Youth unemployment is a major problem because younger people are not gaining necessary experience - work, life, etc - and in 10-15 years this will mean nobody qualified to fill management positions that open up as people retire.  Also the fact that younger people cannot make enough money to save, afford housing, afford starting families, will lead to prolonged economic (and emotional) depression. 

More ideas in my head, too little time and space to write...

47%

Remember when Mitt Romney disrespected nearly half of the country, calling them lazy moochers?  It was difficult to hear, for me, as someone who for a while (grad school) paid no income taxes but still had ambitions, worked hard, etc.  The ambitions were not necessarily to make money, but that's a different topic.  Most people I interact with regularly are in the same boat - which confirmed my thought that Romney had no clue what he was talking about.  However, I now realize it is not that simple.  Living in Boulder, and overhearing some conversations in coffee shops, bars, etc, has mad me realize some things.  There are plenty of people out there with no ambitions, no desire to learn new things, no respect for science and knowledge, etc, who hang out in bars talking about garbage and slowly destroying their livers.  Yet they still want their smartphones, cheap and abundant food, etc (hint: these things are not possible without scientific breakthroughs).  And I've come to realize that this subset of the population significantly outweighs the portion that I consider myself to be part of.  And I'm kind of disturbed by this.

Elitism

In grad school, many people seemed intellectually curious.  Here, it seems, siggnificantly less so - and it is kind of disturbing.  Researchers, with PhDs in physics, really shouldn't complain about news coverage for the Higgs boson, and really shouldn't say that such research is pointless.  We should celebrate all scientific achievements and understand that the microcosms that we choose to work on (or are coerced into working on by whatever circumstances) are not more important than some other microcosm.  Not everybody can directly work on everything, but everyone should be aware of what is out there and what remains to be discovered, especially for the bigger-picture items.  That's part of being a good scientist.

Sounds from the visible underground

I went to a fundraiser for a group that supports economic justice last night. Some highlights of the conversations (names changed for anonymity) (mostly paraphrased - I don't remember the exact wordings):

"[Rob] is like the smartest guy I've met."
"I don't know, I have a high threshold for 'smartest person...'"

"I bid on your military history lunch thing. I can't wait to discuss the Battle of Teutoberg Forest's impact on the unification of Germany."
"I don't really do unification of Germany ... I mostly do World War 2, some Civil War."
"Sumerian Civil War?"
"Nothing ancient."
"Oh."

"It would have been nice to have the money to go to grad school."
"My grad school was fully funded - I actually saved a small amount of money."

Sure, like everyone else, I don't like wasteful government spending. But how does one define waste? Surely bombing Afghanistan back to the stone age after we've killed the guy we're there to capture is wasteful. Or doing the same in Iraq years after the maniac we went in there to depose has been deposed. Or sending helicopters to see who's growing cannabis in their backyard or the country's backyard (national forests). But no, government waste these days includes funding for science, public education, law enforcement, guaranteeing a clean food supply, etc.

Elections, version Y2008

We've overcome one major civil rights hurdle with Barack Obama being elected president. However, with the passage of Calif Prop 8, Flo Prop 2, and various others (all except Calif 8 by huge margins) we still have much to do. One of the more interesting (awful?) facts is that 70% of African-Americans voted for Prop. 8, which was enough to tip the bill to the pass side (it would have failed, barely, had African-Americans voted 50-50 for-against) . This is a higher correlation than Christians (about 67% voted for) and the second highest correlation overall (90% of nonreligious people voted against). One would think a group with such a history of discrimination would vote vehemently against discrimination for other groups. This is apparently incorrect - nobody likes to be discriminated against, but people also, apparently, enjoy discriminating against others. Not surprising, as history has shown time and again.


Complete Prop 8 exit polls: http://media.sacbee.com/smedia/2008/11/05/18/prop8.source.prod_affiliate.4.pdf

Science

I haven't posted in a while, but I came across this http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science the other day. It's not so much about women in science (it starts out with the Larry Summers thing, and discusses a little bit about opportunity costs being greater for women), but more science careers in general. Excerpt: "Adjusted for IQ, quantitative skills, and working hours, jobs in science are the lowest paid in the United States." This is true, especially for young scientists, i.e. graduate students and postdocs. I could be making $50,000/yr with benefits and the possibility of raises while working 40 hours/wk in industry instead of the $20,000/yr with benefits for working 50-70 hours/wk right now. However, would I be any better off? I don't live below my means and can still live a middle-class lifestyle, and I have access to wonderful resources like the university library and have stimulating colleagues with whom to converse on a regular basis. Graduate school offers much more freedom in terms of working hours/places (if I want to work from midnight to 10 AM every day nobody would care as long as stuff got done, "work" can be defined as reading or writing or editing papers at Starbucks). If monetary reward is is all that someone wants, and a person is indifferent about intellectual stimulation, then sure, careers in American science, at least in academia, can be considered unwanted. The problem is that science is necessary for society to advance, and we need some nontrivial segment of the population doing science.