George Rebane
Factory workers now starting to require college degrees – ‘American Factories Demand White-Collar Education for Blue-Collar Work’. We saw this coming some years back in these pages and described the process in some graphic detail (here). Given the acceleration of technology in general and AI in particular, that was not a hard prognostication for those of us in the field. The million plus manufacturing jobs added since the recession are tilted definitely to those with “the most complex problem-solving skills”. Numeracy as a requirement is understood, and that’s just the start of advanced skill sets required on today’s factory floors. Correspondingly, the jobs requiring the least skills have declined during this same interval. (more here)
University of California is sued by leftwing activists to drop SAT and ACT admissions tests. (here) From the battery of available standardized tests for high schoolers, SAT and ACT both remain as the most reliable predictors of college and post-college success. But this is discriminatory according to the plaintiffs because “According to College Board data from this year, 45% of white students who took the SAT in California scored at least a 1200 out of a possible 1600, and 55% of Asian students did, compared with only 9% of African-American students and 12% of Hispanic students.” So going along with the remainder of the Democrats’ program to destroy America’s public education institutions (more here), we now have a full court press on our colleges and universities to drop academic merit as an admission requirement. Instead, institute the double-dummy quota system so everyone can get a college degree. (Why not make it a civil right and have government mail everyone a bachelor’s degree on their 18th birthday?) Digest this news in light of the previous item above.
[11dec19 update] California is now as it ever was, that is the case former NC superintendent of schools Terry McAteer makes in the 11dec19 edition of The Union with his ‘Yes, Californians are different; history proves it’. For our lightly read, this is an unabashed whitewash of California’s headlong plunge to the bottom. Mr McAteer’s “critical look” at the “reasons why we are different from the rest of Americans” limits its purview to the bygone golden days when the state indeed was the siren song and mecca for those seeking opportunity and willing to work hard and take risks to achieve their goals (Rebanes included). Our former educator fails to inform his innocent readers about what today makes us so “different from the rest of Americans”. Nowhere does he even hint of our sky-high taxes and fees, reasons for our catastrophic housing shortage, of our educational system in the toilet, of our eco-insane laws and regulations that stifle business and increase all costs of living, of departing corporations, of the exodus of middle-class workers, of shithole cities with sidewalks and underpasses filled with the tents and offal of the homeless, addicts, and insane, of a government that is broke and lies about it, of criminally neglected public infrastructure, of succoring handouts and a welcome mat out for the illegals and indigents, and of a metastasizing state government on steroids that evermore micro-manages the lives of its productive citizens. He ends his delusional paean with “Finally, we continue to attract some of the most eclectic citizenry (I’ll say!) who each come to pursue their individual dream. As the Mamas and Papas would sing, ‘California Dreamin’’ is alive and well.” Mr McAteer is not known as an ignorant or deceitful man, then why seek membership in the legion of loyal leftwing lackeys who perniciously promote what ain’t so?
[13dec19 update] Elizabeth Warren is a certifiable idiot in many fields, economics being the most prominent of her intellectual deficits. There she is so far off the rails that the question which now begs, re her becoming president, is when does her profound ignorance become a social evil for the country in which she seeks the penultimate position of power. The danger for America today is that most light thinkers and people who don’t pay attention gloss over her insane proposals to increase taxes, specifically her proposed taxes on assets. In the 13dec19 WSJ Messrs Hank Adler and Madison Spach present a detailed analysis of the impact of her new ‘tax plan’ (here). At a minimum, putting it into effect would tank the economy, and smart money would bet on blood in the streets. The authors conclude – “Ms. Warren proposes a trifecta of tax increases: a confiscatory and unsustainable wealth tax that does not consider income taxes in the calculation of revenue, an annual capital-gains tax on asset appreciation at tax rates two times current capital-gains tax rates, and a massive increase in the corporate tax rate. In short, an economic cataclysm.”
[14dec19 update] The above 'McAteer Scattershot' is published in today’s print edition of The Union (here). I am regularly criticized by the Left for criticizing California smothered under decades of Democrat mismanagement. These progressives can only point out that the state’s economy ranks 7th or something like that in the world. And that’s about all that they can claim, while totally glossing over what I have listed above, and that the enterprises (e.g. high tech, agriculture, entertainment) that give rise to their celebrated industrial largess are the same ones that out of the other side of their mouths the same worthies dun for contributing to our large income and wealth inequalities. These are the industries that their socialist candidates promise to terminally cripple with their planned soaring income and new asset taxes once they’re in office. Our lamestream never mentions that California is the welcoming home to a third of the nation’s welfare recipients, has an unemployment rate about 15% higher than the national average, and a Gini (income distribution) Index in the top three states – income inequality is higher only in New York and Connecticut. Note that it is overwhelmingly the liberal states which most significantly separate their rich and poor.
[15dec19 update] Former FBI director Comey revealed another of the Dems’ big lies on FN’s Chris Wallace interview program. He forcefully claimed almost total ignorance of what was going on with the Russia collusion investigation and the Carter Page FISA application to spy on an American citizen and a political candidate’s campaign. He told Wallace that as director, he had lots of other things on the fire at the time and over 35,000 FBI people to oversee, so he wasn’t able to be even sufficiently briefed on what his senior underlings were doing. Now we all recall that every Dem of note was screaming that Trump disrupted the FBI’s investigation and obstructed justice when he fired Comey. Schiff even claimed to have evidence of both Trump’s Russia collusion and the structure and content of the FBI’s FISA surveillance application, when in fact he had neither. (And no one to date has thought to ask him what evidence did he claim to have had at that time.) The main point here is that Dems are trying to walk both sides of the street now with Schiff’s ‘evidence’ of obstruction and Comey’s claim of vindication since he apparently did nothing at the FBI that could possibly be obstructed.
[16dec19 update] 'We don't need to see the tax returns of the wealthy before they became public servants; but we do want to see the tax returns of public servants who became wealthy while 'serving the public'. This thoughtful bagatelle came from a correspondent, and deserves a lengthier treatment starting with the list of politicians who enjoyed impressive internal rates of return (IRR) on their assets during their tenure in office. I know that my political bias is in play here, but I'd like to see the in-office IRRs of worthies like Pelosi, Feinstein, Waters, Clintons, …, and, of course, Obama. Our progressive compadres are invited to lengthen this list with Republicans.
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