Paul Krugman argues in Send in the Clueless that in order for a Republican to win the nomination, one must either be cynical and fake cluelessness, or actually be clueless. This is in part due to the fact that they must denounce current government policies even though many of those policies have their roots in former Republican policies. He gives as example President Obama’s national healthcare reform which is identical in many respects to Massachusetts’ healthcare reform that Mitt Romney had introduced. They must also attack big government while defending big government practices such as Medicare and Social Security, as older voters were key to Republican success last year. This calls to mind the belief that many Americans hold: there is great social mobility in the US. However, although this may have held true, today the data suggests mobility in the US is actually lower in comparison to Europe. There may be a growing gap between what we hold to be true and what we actually support and what is actually true. In order to affect change, we may have to begin reassessing our current opinions and values so that they align better with reality.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Crackdown on independent candidates in China
There has been a recent string of crackdowns on independent party candidates participating in neighbourhood People’s Congresses in China. Although largely powerless, the increase in interest in these congresses and the alarm shown by the Chinese government may indicate a greater desire for democratic participation. With the increase in access to higher education has come a desire for greater political participation. Previously in the Americas, areas with more income equality allowed for greater access to education and more general suffrage rights. In China, it seems that education may be leading to growing interest in the political process and democratization in general, suggesting that any field equalizer, such as income equality or access to education, will lead to the desire for mass participation in government. However, these congresses have little power, and interest in them may not lead to anything more significant. In the event that they do though, they are worth watching.
Graduation Rates Declined
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jul/17/local/me-dropout17
Can You Put a Number on Education?
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/business/yourmoney/11view.html
Gender Gap: Men Still Outearn Women
Kuznet’s Second Stage?
As we learned in class, the Kuznets curve is the graphical depiction of Simon Kuznets' hypothesis that economic inequality increases over time while a country is developing, and then after a certain average income is attained, inequality begins to decrease. In class we saw that the Kuznets curve suggested that income inequality rose from the founding of the country up until the last 19th century, when inequality began to decline sharply until 1940. Kuzent argued that this decline was caused by government intervention in the form of income redistribution and the provision of education. From 1970 till present day however, the United States and other developed countries have experienced huge increases in inequalities levels. Many people believe that we are currently in a “second stage” of the Kuznet cycle and that inequality will begin to decrease once governments decide to do more to redistribute wealth. Even so, the recent financial crises may have limited the government’s ability to respond. A new report by the OECD demonstrates that the gap between rich and poor has grown ever wider in wealthy countries over the past three decades. The question therefore is not whether or not we are in a period of rising inequality, but rather how long and severe it will be.
Ricardo Johnson
Is Education the Next Bubble?
As the world economy continues to recover (slowly) from the subprime financial crisis and the housing market crash that hit in 2007/2008, many academics and economists have begun to predict what the next major bubble will be. Interestingly enough, some have come to believe that higher education has become an unsustainable bubble that is bound to burst any second. Their main argument is that that the price of attending college has risen dramatically in recent years while the returns to education has fallen drastically (the reason for this may be an increase in skilled workers or a decrease in demand for them). Nevertheless, people continue to pay these high prices because they have unfounded and unrealistic expectations that they will get the job of their dreams after college. Rather than basing their decisions on economic realities, it appears as though individuals choose go to college simply because they think that is what they are supposed to do: “People are not getting their money’s worth, objectively, when you do the math. And at the same time it is something that is incredibly intensively believed; there’s this sort of psycho-social component to people taking on these enormous debts when they go to college simply because that’s what everybody’s doing.” On the other hand, the author presents evidence that suggests attending college is still beneficial, partly because it is one of the few routes to higher salaries. While there may be a case of education inflation, college degrees are still correlated with higher income and employment opportunities. Even though current evidence suggests that there are still high returns to education, it may be possible that those returns may soon begin to decrease. Furthermore, higher college tuitions in the near future may mean that investment in education will be too costly for the average American. This in turn may increase income inequality.