My Rules or Else! Or "Lock Him Up?"

We live an era where too many of those who believe in privileged rule also believe in those entitlements that benefit rich incumbents over those in clearly different (and lower) economic strata. Farmers accepting massive federal farm subsidies, fund managers living with the carried interest rule (that often accords them a lower tax rate than their clerical assistants), businesses and rich individuals (including ultra-right-wing members of Congress like Marjorie Taylor Green) who slorped down federal pandemic relief, those who earned their degrees when tuition rates and inflation rates were still linked, etc. are among those conservatives railing against any forgiveness of federal student loans today.

This notion of a two-tiered legal (“entitlement”?) system has grown in popularity, particularly within the MAGA crowd, even when it applies to criminal liability. They use the words “entitlement” and “socialism” to oppose the very economic disparity they seem to enjoy and the words “patriotism,” “rigged,” “witch hunt” and “woke” when it comes to criminal accountability of rioters and political/cultural realties they despise. Immigrants are not poor people fleeing cartel-wars, from ultra-violent organizations which mostly generate income from US addicts and are built on illegally imported American guns… they are people that the Democratic Party is importing to “replace” White Christian Republicans.

While secretly, most elected Republicans find the sycophantic loyalty of the “base” to the whims of Donald Trump distasteful, most have discovered without blind obedience to Trump’s beck and call, their political careers are shot. Remember what GOP Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said after a GOP vote in lockstep failed to convict Trump of the House Articles of Impeachment? “There's no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day [the Capitol insurrection]… The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president, and having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories and reckless hyperbole which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth.” His take was that the impeachment path was not appropriate after a president left office. There were other, more appropriate forums for that criminal accountability, he maintained.

While House Minority Leader, Republican Kevin McCarthy only favored the possibility of congressional censorship, his words after the above Senate failure to convict were clear nonetheless: “The president bears responsibility for Wednesday's attack [1/6/21] on Congress by mob rioters. He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding.”

A little over a year and a half later, even as vast pools of additional evidence of Trump’s seemingly obvious criminal activity – from pressuring the Georgia Secretary of State to “find” enough votes to overturn the election results, his knowing failure to turn over all classified documents within his possession even after a federal subpoena (documents which only became clear after a warranted search of his home), his tax games in New York, etc., etc. – GOP candidates and elected officials are quite prepared to let Trump avoid any criminal accountability, joining in the “witch hunt” chorus that has not yet worn thin among GOP loyalists.

In July, Attorney General Merrick Garland seemed to suggest that the Department of Justice was finally ready to move against a former sitting president, by saying, ““We will hold accountable anyone who is criminally responsible for attempting to interfere with the legitimate, lawful transfer of power.” Really? On August 28th, LA Times editorial writer, Doyle McManus summarized the pros and cons of indicting and then trying Donald Trump. Here are some key excerpts:

“First, that it’s unseemly for a president of one party to prosecute a former president of the other. It would set a terrible precedent, making the United States look like a ‘banana republic.’… That’s a fair point — except failing to prosecute the author of an attempted coup would set a terrible precedent too.

“Second, prosecuting Trump would further inflame the nation’s division, even inspire violence. One of Trump’s lawyers has warned bluntly that an indictment would unleash ‘mayhem.’… That’s an even worse argument. It amounts to a rioter’s veto: Let our guy walk or we’ll burn the country down.

“Anti-Trump Republican Mona Charen recently offered a more nuanced version: Indicting Trump, she warned, could make it easier for him to win a second term in 2024. But that’s not how prosecutors are supposed to make decisions — even assuming they could predict the political impact of a trial.

“Finally, several former prosecutors have cautioned that winning a unanimous conviction is harder than it looks, and the case against Trump might not be a slam-dunk… If a single juror refused to convict, former federal prosecutor Paul Rosenzweig warned, ‘Trump would claim that as an acquittal.’… This argument is more persuasive. But it isn’t a case against prosecuting Trump under all circumstances; it’s an argument against bringing a shaky case.

“There’s still a big downside to a decision not to prosecute, another former prosecutor, Donald Ayer [former Principal Deputy Solicitor General during the final three years of the Reagan Administration. In 1989, he was appointed by President George H.W. Bush as Deputy Attorney General during 1989-1990 and Georgetown Professor of Law], told me. ‘If we have clear evidence, the message of failing to bring charges would be that we don’t stand up to people who try to overturn a legitimate election,’ he said.”

For me, there is one more big reason to indict and prosecute. The message for future American politicians would otherwise become the destruction of the last vestiges of democracy we could ever claim.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the very foundation of our nation was the rejection of an imperious ruler… it was King George III then, and it just might be King Donald Trump today.

Totally Growth’d Out?

“Every politician is in favor of growth, and no one speaks against growth or in favor of steady state or leveling off. But I think it’s an elementary question to ask: Does growth ever become uneconomic?” 

 Herman Daly, emeritus professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, a former senior economist for the World Bank and, along with the likes of Greta Thunberg and Edward Snowden, a recipient of the prestigious Right Livelihood Award

For all of those people trying to buy an unaffordable house versus homeowners who look at their house/condo as an appreciating asset, a de facto savings account, well, is buying a home finding a place to live or simply as asset play? Is it both? Is that good? If GDP (gross domestic product) is the proper metric of success, then government policies seem to reinforce growth as a social determinative goal. Growth in the aggregate… even if the number is overwhelmed by those at the top of the food chain, getting much fatter: GDP blends the mega-success of the billionaires at the top with the rest of us making much, much, much less. So, a solid GDP growth number does not reflect the rising income inequality gap; any downward “standard of living pressures” on those in the bottom 75% or simply, reality, is barely reflected. When growth is the driver of policy, the metric of political success, or is that a distortion of values or a valid measure?

We should all be aware that throughout most of history “growth” wasn’t remotely relevant. Until the Industrial Revolution, I doubt it was a national concern even here in business-driven America. The Gross Domestic Product metric was first developed by Simon Kuznets for a 1934 US Congressional report, but GDP as a modern concept behind macroeconomics only began to dominate in the 1940s. Today, it is fairly uniformly the competitive success measure among and within nations, the dividing line among first and second world nations and those “developing” nations at the bottom of the global economic ladder. But should it be? Is it time to reexamine how we measure national “success”? I’m certainly not against entrepreneurial wealth; getting rich is not a sin. But when our policies distort benefits and metrics that favor the rich, not factoring in essential costs, all to make our GDP look better, you have to question the relevancy of “growth” statistics.

The New York Times (July 18th) examined the issue noting: “Growth is the be-all and end-all of mainstream economic and political thinking. Without a continually rising G.D.P., we’re told, we risk social instability, declining standards of living and pretty much any hope of progress. But what about the counterintuitive possibility that our current pursuit of growth, rabid as it is and causing such great ecological harm, might be incurring more costs than gains? That possibility — that prioritizing growth is ultimately a losing game — is one that the lauded economist Herman Daly has been exploring for more than 50 years. In so doing, he has developed arguments in favor of a steady-state economy, one that forgoes the insatiable and environmentally destructive hunger for growth, recognizes the physical limitations of our planet and instead seeks a sustainable economic and ecological equilibrium. ‘Growth is an idol of our present system,’ says Daly.”

Extreme capitalists, themselves wildly rich within the spectrum of American economics, decry the very notion of steady state economics as a threat to social stability, even as that steady state defined humanity for millennia. In that Times piece, Daly reminds us that infinite anything, even growth, is a physical impossibility: The global “economy, like everything else on the planet, is subject to physical limitations and the laws of thermodynamics and as such can’t be expected to grow forever. What’s less obvious is how our society would function in a world where the economic pie stops growing. I’ve seen people like Peter Thiel, for example, say that without growth we would ultimately descend into violence...

“The question is, Does growth, as currently practiced and measured, really increase wealth? Is it making us richer in any aggregate sense, or might it be increasing costs faster than benefits and making us poorer? Mainstream economists don’t have any answer to that. The reason they don’t have any answer to that is that they don’t measure costs. They only measure benefits. That’s what G.D.P. is...

“What I call the empty world was full of natural resources that had not been exploited. What I call the full world is now full of people that exploit those resources, and it is empty of the resources that have been depleted and the spaces that have been polluted. So it’s a question of empty of what and full of what. Is it empty of benefits and full of cost? Or full of benefits and empty of cost? That gets to that point of paying attention to the costs of growth… But limits to growth are there.” Daly tells us that his own influencers asked more relevant questions:

“I recall that [University of Colorado Professor of Economics and President of the American Economic Association, the late Kenneth Boulding] said there are two kinds of ethics. There’s a heroic ethic and then there’s an economic ethic. The economic ethic says: Wait a minute, there’s benefits and costs. Let’s weigh the two. We don’t want to charge right over the cliff. Let’s look at the margin. Are we getting better off or worse? The heroic ethic says: Hang the cost! Full speed ahead! Death or victory right now! Forward into growth! I guess that shows a faith that if we create too many problems in the present, the future will learn how to deal with it.” I call it “kick the can down the road and let future generations deal with the consequences.”

Where are the heroes? How are environmental and ecological cost factors included into the GDP statistic? Simply, they are not. If the societal value is “more is necessary,” we have to ask, “more to whom?” What’s ecological cost of “more,” and who pays for that? When does “enough” kick in?

As long as we worship “growth” and the GDP metric, we cannot accurately reflect the true economic picture of our world. For example, the permanent loss of non-renewable resources, deplete of habitats, and the “stuff of climate change” are not taken into account… neither is the economic suffering at the bottom of the economic ladder when compared to the top. These essential realities are simply not encapsulated in GDP. That fiction of success, created before WWII, is no longer a metric that 21st century nations need to reflect a functional and sustainable planet.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I learned whatever metric you pick for success will determine how people subject to that metric will behave; it’s time to abandon “GDP” almost entirely.

Meanwhile, as the United States Struggles with Droughts, Fires & Flooding, the Mediterranean….

If even only a few species of plants and animals die off from excessive temperature rises, the entire food system, the ecosystem of the impacted region, ripples with change, death and destruction as nature struggles to adapt. But if the relevant temperature changes are particularly significant, disruptions resonate well beyond the immediately impacted area. We’ve seen wildfires consume increasing areas of continental Europe, after record-breaking heatwaves:

“The total number of wildfires in the European Union since the beginning of 2022 is almost four times the 15-year average for the same time period, according to Copernicus, the bloc's Earth observation program…. Copernicus said that 1,926 wildfires had scorched EU nations from the beginning of the year up to July 23. In comparison, the average number for the same period of year, calculated with data from 2006 to 2021, was 520.” CNN.com, July 27th. Many of these have been massive blazes, mirroring mega-wildfires in the United States and Australia.

But what might seem like a pleasant day at the beach in nations around the Mediterranean Sea, warm waters and blue skies, conceals literally what lies beneath. Marine biologists and climatologists are discovering what is being labeled a “massive mortality” of sea life. “From Barcelona to Tel Aviv, scientists say they are witnessing exceptional water temperature hikes ranging from 5.4 to 9 degrees [Fahrenheit] above the norm for this time of year… Water temperatures have regularly exceeded 86 degrees on some days… Extreme heat in Europe and other countries around the Mediterranean has grabbed headlines this summer, but the rising sea temperature is largely out of sight and out of mind.

“Marine heat waves are caused by ocean currents building up areas of warm water… Weather systems and heat in the atmosphere can also add degrees to the water temperature… And just like their on-land counterparts, marine heat waves are longer, more frequent and more intense because of human-induced climate change…

“About 50 species, including corals, sponges and seaweed, were affected along thousands of miles of Mediterranean coastline, according to [a study of heat waves in the Mediterranean Sea between 2015 and 2019], which was published in the Global Change Biology journal… The situation in the eastern Mediterranean basin is particularly dire… Some of the most affected species are key to maintaining the functioning and diversity of the sea’s habitats. Species like the Posidonia oceanica seagrass meadows, which can absorb vast amounts of carbon dioxide and shelter marine life, or coral reefs, which are also home to wildlife, would be at risk…

“The waters off Israel, Cyprus, Lebanon and Syria are ‘the hottest hot spot in the Mediterranean for sure,’ said Gil Rilov, a marine biologist at Israel’s Oceanographic and Limnological Research institute, and one of the paper’s co-authors. Average sea temperatures in the summer are now consistently higher than 88 degrees… These warming seas are driving many native species to the brink, ‘because every summer their optimum temperature is being exceeded,’ he said.

“What he and his colleagues are witnessing in terms of biodiversity loss [about 10% of the species on Earth] is what is projected to happen farther west in the Mediterranean toward Greece, Italy and Spain in the coming years… [Joaquim Garrabou, a researcher at the Institute of Marine Sciences in Barcelona] says the mortality impacts on species were observed between the surface and around 150 feet deep, where the recorded marine heat waves were exceptional. Heat waves affected more than 90% of the Mediterranean Sea’s surface…

“According to the most recent scientific papers, the sea surface temperature in the Mediterranean has increased by 0.72 of a degree each decade between 1982 and 2018… On a yearly basis, it has been rising by about 0.09 of a degree over the last decade without any sign of letting up… Even fractions of degrees can have disastrous effects on ocean health, experts say… The affected areas have also grown since the 1980s and now cover most of the Mediterranean, the study suggests.

“‘The question is not about the survival of nature, because biodiversity will find [a] way to a survive on the planet,’ Garrabou said… ‘The question is if we keep going in this direction, maybe our society, humans, will not have a place to live.’… Garrabou points out that seas have been serving the planet by absorbing 90% of the Earth’s excess heat and 30% of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere by coal, oil and gas production. This carbon-sink effect shields the planet from even harsher climate effects… This was possible because oceans and seas were in a healthy condition, Garrabou said.” Associated Press, August 18th. But this benefit is rapidly eroding. Further, as weakened species struggle to survive, parasites and other infectious agents can rise to feast on impacted sea life, exacerbating an already dire situation.

Heatwaves on land spread into the sea, but most policymakers are unaware of the linkage. Efforts to curtail fishing in areas of the Mediterranean that have been particularly hard hit only begin to address the damage. “[M]arine heat waves could also have serious consequences for the countries bordering the Mediterranean and the more than 500 million people who live there if it’s not dealt with soon, scientists say. Fish stocks will be depleted and tourism will be adversely affected, as destructive storms could become more common on land.” AP.

As rising generations watch their incumbent elder politicians waffle and succumb to special interests dedicated to opposing necessary climate change containment, as nations blame each other, will they be condemned to levels of misery we cannot even contemplate today? Isn’t there enough current misery to push governments around the world to do what must be done? Nature does not care if we don’t want to fight back.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the number of de facto “dead canaries” in the coalmine of planet earth is anything but a subtle reminder of how we are killing ourselves and everything around us.

Stand-Back & Stand-By for the Biggest Tax Increase in American History, a GOP Gift to America

Government estimates put the expected cost of climate change at $2 trillion (in today’s dollars) per year by the end of the century. Who cares? What a terrible way of selling the need to contain climate change now! In a nation where kicking the can down the road and pretending that technology will ultimately solve it all are our embedded national “crisis management tools,” talking about stuff that will occur in three quarters of a century from now is beyond frustratingly stupid. How about looking at the trillions of dollars that we have already spent dealing with the ravages created by global warming? Compared to what our hard dollar costs are absolutely going to be and have been, the $369 billion Inflation Reduction Act, the White House’s climate bill, is chump change.

Not one Republican Senator voted for the above act, claiming the bill represents reckless government spending. Republican Senators Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul watched large sections of their home state washing away as they voted against legislation aimed at preventing such disasters. And no, that’s not a picture of the Kentucky devastation above. It’s a highway in Philadelphia after Hurricane Ida in 2021. The GOP continues to maintain that climate change is just a hoax or exaggerated by Democrats seeking to kill business and impose their “distorted” vision of the future on average Americans. The problem is that we are getting closer to more horrible numbers today. Can-kicking, a GOP favorite, is downright exorbitantly expensive.

An August 12, 2020 report by the Environmental Defense Fund expresses the costs this way: “Billion-dollar weather disasters fueled by climate change are becoming more frequent and more devastating to state and local economies…The report, Climate Fueled Weather Disasters: Costs to State and Local Economies, quantifies the economic cost of specific extreme weather disasters on Americans today, including in specific states, as well as likely future costs if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated and global temperatures continue to climb. Each of the weather events detailed in the report caused damages equaling or exceeding $1 billion in states such as Texas, Florida, North Carolina, and Iowa, among others…

“According to the report, which consolidates information from leading journals, government datasets and other key sources, both the incidence and cost of extreme weather events are on the rise. Since 1980, the United States has seen a four-fold increase in the annual number of severe weather disasters, including hurricanes, floods, wildfires and other events examined in this report. Those costs are putting a growing strain on the ability of federal and state agencies to respond to disasters at the same time that they are fighting to prevent the country from plunging further into a long-term, deep recession. The U.S. Government Accountability Office estimates that since 2005, the federal government, including FEMA, has spent at least $450 billion on disaster assistance.” Some of these events cause a billion or more dollars each. And remember, this report was issued before the escalating level of wildfires – some larger than entire US states – floods and searing, killing heat.

Writing for FastCompany.com (August 15th), Steven Bingler (CEO of Concordia: Community Centered Planning and Design, which was responsible for planning and managing the Unified New Orleans Plan for the recovery after Hurricane Katrina) and Martin C. Pedersen (executive director of the Common Edge Collaborative, a website dedicated to architecture, design, urbanism, and public engagement) explain: “For exploding climate-related costs, it’s instructive to look at Steven’s home state of Louisiana, the proverbial canary in the coal mine. Following the devastating damage of Hurricanes Katrina, the financial impacts became so acute that policymakers were forced to consolidate all climate change planning and budgeting under a single Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA), charged with identifying the most critical coastal restoration strategies and mitigation projects into a comprehensive Coastal Master Plan that is now updated every five years. To date more than 60 miles of barrier islands and berms have been constructed, 365 miles of levees improved, and 55,000 acres of wetlands revived. Going forward the CPRA is slated to spend $1 billion every year on mitigation projects, with the expectation that the program will continue at the same cost (or likely more) for at least another 50 years. For the imperiled state of Louisiana, this is not optional spending.

“In addition to these costly government programs, additional financial burdens have fallen on the private sector. Four major insurance companies along with a handful of smaller ones have declared bankruptcy since Hurricane Ida, and others have decided to either pass the burden on to existing insurees or leave the state in the wake of accelerating rates of risk associated with storm damage. These private sector failures have long been backed up by federal and state insurance programs, but these programs are now reaching the limits of their political efficacy, leaving many local citizens facing personal bankruptcy and a painful migration to higher ground (or out of state completely)…

“But Louisiana is hardly alone. The costly impacts of inland flooding, wildfires, and, perhaps most unforgiving of all environmental challenges, drought, are taking their toll on increasingly large swaths of the country. For example, more than half of Texas is currently experiencing extreme drought, and according to drought.gov, this year will be the sixth-driest year in the past 128 years. Meanwhile, it is August, the waters in the Gulf are heating up, and Houston, Galveston, and other vulnerable coastal cities are bracing once again for another active storm season. (Note that the price tag for rebuilding New Orleans and Houston, after Hurricanes Katrina and Harvey, was more than $250 billion, or more than half of the cost of the climate bill, for just two storms)…

“This is only the beginning of a future that will leave our children and grandchildren to pay many trillions for environmental mitigation and restoration, due solely to the utter failure of our current generation to plan for these impending costs. And while our political leaders are haggling with what the fiscal watchdogs call ‘nice to have’ or ‘like to have’ legislation that gets them through the next election cycle, it is important to understand that the ‘must have’ costs of climate change will be much less forgiving.” And exactly who is going to pay for all this damage? Just the big corporations whose unending greenhouse effluents are untaxed and insufficiently regulated? Like the fossil fuel giants who tripled their profits in our inflationary oil shortage? Or all of us, directly or indirectly… by the trillions and trillions of hard dollar costs!

I’m Peter Dekom, and it seems that common sense has left the GOP building and bolted the doors towards an obvious solution closed.

Farm Here to Eternity

 

Even with desertification, sustained drought, water shortages and the opposite – heavy flooding – American farming has transitioned into the world of “precision agriculture,” a data-based, increasingly automated, system of optimizing food production. According to sciencedirect.com, “Precision agriculture (PA) (also known as ‘precision farming,’ ‘site-specific crop management,’ ‘prescription farming,’ and ‘variable rate technology’) has been developing since the 1990s, and refers to agricultural management systems carefully tailoring soil and crop management to fit the different conditions found in each field. PA is an information and technology-based agricultural management system (e.g., using remote sensing, geographic information systems, global positioning systems, and robotics) to identify, analyze, and manage soil spatial and temporal variability within fields for optimum profitability, sustainability, and protection of the environment.” Huh?

OK, try this: Sophisticated computers and on-the-ground robotic “tractors,” using both historical data (local and regional) and real-time satellite tracking (“telemetrics”), literally control big farm production, field-by-field, crop-by-crop and even livestock organization and control. GPS systems literally “drive” tractors as well as all forms of farm equipment in every activity from plowing, fertilizing, planting, hydration to pest control and harvesting. Processes from ordering supplies, tracking market pricing, and coordinating shipping are also severely automated. Academic degrees in agricultural fields are highly mathematically and scientifically based. Modern farmers often have these advanced degrees from state colleges and universities, all rising in prestige and relevance as the knowledge required to optimize farming increases in complexity.

In short, American agriculture is very much dependent on the Internet of things, requiring sophisticated linkage and control between individual farmers and all those data and control data systems necessary to maximize farming productivity. Americans are very good at creating and operating these systems, and our farm productivity has expanded accordingly. That is our agricultural strength. But aside from the ravages of climate change-related damage, there is another major enemy to American agricultural dominance and productivity. As good as our farm technology might be, there are malign actors, mostly foreign, able to hack into those systems, wreak havoc, disrupt our food supply chains, and generate massive ransomware demands.

Writing for the August 8th The Conversation, two assistant professors from the University of Nebraska (Omaha) – George Grispos (cybersecurity) and Austin Doctor (political science) – explain the changing landscape in this evolving arena of rising agribusiness cyber-risks: “Unlike other critical industries such as finance and health care, the farming industry has been slow to recognize cybersecurity risks and take steps to mitigate them. There are several possible reasons for this sluggishness.

“One is that many farmers and agricultural providers haven’t viewed cybersecurity as a significant enough problem compared with other risks they face such as floods, fires and hail. A 2018 Department of Homeland Security report that surveyed precision agriculture farmers throughout the U.S. found that many did not fully understand the cyberthreats introduced by precision agriculture, nor did they take these cyber-risks seriously enough.

“This lack of preparedness leads to another reason: limited oversight and regulation from government. In 2010, the U.S. Department of Agriculture classified cybersecurity as a low priority. While this classification was upgraded in 2015, the farming sector is likely to be playing catch-up for years. While other critical infrastructure industries have developed and published numerous countermeasures and best practices for cybersecurity, the same cannot be said for the farming sector…

“Cyberattacks against agricultural targets are not some far-off threat; they are already happening. For example, in 2021 a ransomware attack forced a fifth of the beef processing plants in the U.S. to shut down, with one company paying nearly $11 million to cybercriminals. REvil, a Russia-based group, claimed responsibility for the attack.

“Similarly, a grain storage cooperative in Iowa was targeted by a Russian-speaking group called BlackMatter, who claimed that they had stolen data from the cooperative. While previous attacks have targeted larger companies and cooperatives and aimed to extort the victims for money, individual farms could be at risk, too.”

While domestic terrorism has risen to the top of our “major threat risk,” as the United States increases frictional confrontation with major foreign powers, its critical vulnerabilities face new terrorist risks from our foreign foes and their surrogates. At a time when food prices are soaring as a part of a global trend, the ability of those with sufficient technological sophistication to disrupt our healthcare and financial systems, our power grids and massive cloud databases now includes the food we eat.

I’m Peter Dekom, and as we increase our mutual internal hatred, polarization we have not witnessed since the Civil War, we are distracted and leaving our most vulnerable necessary industries increasingly open to malign actors enjoying our self-inflicted damage.

STEM-ing the Tide of Education Mythology

 

You really should re-read my August 21st Screw the Rising Generations! blog if you think younger generations never had so good. When you combine explosive college tuition and rising housing costs with the fact that pay levels have not remotely kept up with the cost of living, as my blog points out, corrected for inflation these younger workers have 86% less in real buying power than did Boomers at the same age.

We are also woefully short of skilled graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). The National Association of Manufacturing and Deloitte report that the United States will have to fill 3.5 million STEM jobs by 2025, with more than 2 million of them going unfilled today because of the lack of highly skilled candidates in demand. And according to a study by the University of California (Davis), one job in the high-tech sector leads to 4.3 jobs in local goods and services industries. Hmmm.

With just over 6% of our workforce in STEM fields, about 20% of our college grads have STEM degrees. About 5%+ of our total university enrollment is made up of non-resident aliens – about one million all told. Of that million, a little over half (of which over 60% are Asian) are enrolled in STEM fields, accounting for 5% of STEM bachelor’s degrees and over 20% of STEM doctoral degrees. Fortunately, over 70% of those foreign doctoral grads stay in the United States!!!

Why are so many foreign students in STEM? Is it at the expense of US students? Because, according to the most recent standardized PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) test, among the 35 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which sponsors the PISA initiative, the U.S. ranked 38th in math and 24th in science… hardly the academically qualified applicants for STEM degrees.

So, the United States is hideously expensive when it comes to university-level education, still maintaining most of the most highly ranked STEM universities, but we are not particularly kind to our own young students. We aren’t too kind to the companies that cater to these younger buyers either, but with fewer disposable dollars, our recent grads are not only postponing major purchases, they are also postponing marriage. Oh, the jobs are out there, but our public primary and secondary schools seem increasingly concerned with “woke censorship” than in turning out graduates for highly paid STEM careers. We don’t even have enough applicants sufficiently prepared to complete a STEM degree! All this combined with alarming outstanding student loans!

If you think having the levels of student debt that we have, $1.75 trillion (well over the aggregate of credits card debt), is healthy, that forgiving all or part of student loans for degrees costing triple (in inflation corrected dollars) over what Boomers paid, is an inflationary giveaway as the Republican Party claims, you probably have not done the math. Getting an education is much too expensive today. And the slam to our economy by taking that money away from young people starting their lives to pay for that over-priced tuition is bad for all of us.

In an August 17th article – Canceling Student Debt Would Increase Wealth, Not Inflation – by economists Mike Konczal and Alí Bustamante released by the Roosevelt Institution, explain: “From energy to trade policy, there are many difficult administrative policy questions that could impact inflation over the next year. Student debt cancellation is not likely to be one of them. While a recent blog post by the [GOP] Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) argues that canceling $10,000 of student debt would ‘consume nearly ten years of deficit reduction’ of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), and ‘wipe out the disinflationary benefits of the IRA,’[their math is simply wrong…]

“CRFB treats their $230 billion cost estimate of canceling $10,000 in student debt as if it is incurred over the next 10 years in order to compare that against the IRA’s deficit reduction in that same time period. They treat both as if they are on the same cash accounting standard. But this is not the case; per budgeting rules associated with credit programs, student loan cancellation is treated as if the foregone principal and interest payments over the entire lifetime of the loan all occur immediately.

“So while the actual reduction in government revenues from cancellation would be small in each year and spread over decades, something like $13 billion per year, it is budgeted as if all those years are all happening immediately. This means that student loan payments that would have been collected past the first decade are instead treated as lost revenue immediately within the first year.

“To truly compare the two, you would need to look at the deficit reduction of the IRA over at least two decades. CRFB has found that the IRA reduces the deficit by $1.9 trillion over two decades ($1.1 trillion with ACA subsidies extended), largely driven by prescription drug savings in the out years. This is far larger than the cost of any student loan cancellation.”

In short, with a fairly basic analysis, what is a federal budgetary blip of marginal consequence for that 10% student debt reduction, it leaves in place those aspects of the IRA that really reduce the deficit while plowing serious funds, that would not have made their way into the economy, into the pockets of those younger stressed recent grads. Further, President Biden’s announcement of that loan forgiveness program on August 24th comes with a qualifying annual income cap to prevent rich borrowers from thus reducing their debt.

We don’t seem to be able to keep students of any age safe from military assault weapons. We don’t seem to be able to provide the majority of public primary and secondary students with an education that is both good for them and even better for jobs creation and our overall economy. We don’t seem to prioritize making our children globally competitive just to make sure billionaires pay severely reduced taxes. And what’s worse, we really do not seem to care. 

I’m Peter Dekom, and I have not witnessed this level of American self-destruction in my fairly long lifetime… and it only only seems to be getting worse.

OMG, Freshmen Are Finally Going to Real Classrooms!

 

“Time and time again, I think you’ve seen ideology placed over data and evidence… They will constantly try to shift because they will never admit that their ideology was incorrect…. That’s very, very dangerous. And that’s a problem with our society that we’re grappling with in ‘woke corporations,’ classrooms, and other politically charged venues… What I’ve said is that the state of Florida is the place where woke goes to die. We’re not going to let this state descend into some kind of woke Dumpster fire.” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis presenting a new set of school “guidelines” on August 17th in implementation of the recently passed Individual Freedom Act.

“We have so many students who are going on to college academically malnourished… There is no way they are going to be academically prepared for the rigor of college.” Allison Wagner, head of a Milwaukee college scholarship program.

“I feel like I didn’t really learn anything.”

A recent high school grad on her COVID-driven virtual classes

With approximately 13,000 public school districts in the United States, according to the US Census Bureau, we spend only 60% of the aggregate school budgets on day-to-day classroom support. Not only does this mass of little bureaucracies suck money from genuine classroom instruction, but a dramatically large number of such school districts are more consumed with political, religious and social issues than in the quality of the level of education furnished to their students. Teachers are routinely underpaid, placed into political pressure cookers in overcrowded classrooms, often lacking modern computers and the latest drafts of mandatory textbooks.

To compound the educational quagmire, textbook publishers tend to follow the requirements of larger school districts when it comes to academic restrictions in order to simplify and standardize their major publications. Hence, textbooks are driven by states like California, New York, Texas and Florida… with the lowest common denominator of “acceptable material” becoming the national standard.

The pandemic has also taken a major toll on students, deprived of classroom experience and relegated to virtual schooling, a system that works for some but is frustrating, isolating and ineffective for many others. As many recent high school graduates are learning, what passed for 11th and 12th grade education, particularly with generous grading, has left them short of required basics. As the bottom two quotes above illustrate, “Hundreds of thousands of recent graduates are heading to college this fall after spending more than half their high school careers dealing with the upheaval of a pandemic. They endured a jarring transition to online learning, the strains from teacher shortages and profound disruptions to their home lives. And many are believed to be significantly behind academically.

“Colleges could see a surge in students unprepared for the demands of college-level work, education experts say. Starting a step behind can raise the risk of dropping out. And that can hurt everything from a person’s long-term earnings to the health of the country’s workforce.” Associated Press, August 12th. The notion of catch-up puts a strain on so many students, frustrated and anxious enough with the explosive complexities they never faced before. Is there a solution?

“Researchers say it’s clear that remote instruction caused learning setbacks, most sharply among Black and Latino students. For younger students, there’s still hope that America’s schools can accelerate the pace of instruction and close learning gaps. But for those who graduated in the last two years, experts fear many will struggle.

“In anticipation of higher needs, colleges from New Jersey to California have been expanding ‘bridge’ programs that provide summer classes, often for students from lower incomes or those who are the first in their families to attend college. Programs previously treated as orientation are taking on a harder academic edge, with a focus on math, science and study skills.” AP

But instead of facing these pragmatic realities, particularly given that nationally, there is a shortage of at least 300,000 teachers in our nation’s public schools, there is a rising red state priority to emphasize a non-existent “problem” that is best expressed as “culture wars,” a new cause célèbre within the Republican Party. The battlelines against teaching subjects, like slavery and racial strife, are led by two GOP governors with obvious presidential aspirations: frontrunner, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis against distant second place culture warrior, Texas Governor Greg Abbott.

Florida, which boasts the fourth worst paid teachers (in a state that is not exactly inexpensive to live in) in the country, has moved its focus to promulgate right-wing White evangelical values, rather openly, through a series of statutes. The most recent contribution, beyond the earlier “don’t say gay” legislation was signed into law by DeSantis on April 22nd, which goes into full swing in the current school year. It’s misleadingly labeled the Individual Freedom Act (H.B. 7), also known as the Stop the Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees (W.O.K.E.) Act, which prohibits schools and businesses from presenting or teaching the idea that “an individual, by virtue of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.” It was passed along party lines. Yet, DeSantis is quite willing to allow a cadre of “temporary” teachers, many without undergraduate degrees, to teach in Florida public schools.

On August 17th, announcing a new set of public-school educational guidelines based on the above statute, DeSantis made the above statement. Those guidelines are being offered to be taught virtually or in person to teachers, who receive $700 for the effort. These new rules, thinly disguised White Christian Nationalist goals, explain that the Constitution must be interpreted in accordance with the intention of the Founding Fathers (applying 18th century expectations in a world of muskets, flintlocks, horse power and a society that was 94% agricultural), unaffected by modernity. “Originalism,” a right-wing legal precept that is hardly the way most constitutional scholars interpret that document.

The guidelines also say that slavery was a reluctant and temporary practice, opposed by the leaders who themselves owned slaves, and the kind of separation of church and state that is our new normal was never intended. DeSantis knew that this law and his guidelines would not pass judicial muster… at least at the trial court level. But with the new right-wing Supreme Court reversing serious civil and personal rights legislation, he sees hope.

On August 19th, in his 44-page decision, US District Judge Mark Walker ruled that the Republican-backed Individual Freedom Act is unconstitutional, writing that it ‘discriminates on the basis of viewpoint in violation of the First Amendment and is impermissibly vague in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.’ As we watch our high schools fail to prepare an increasing number of students for more complex subject areas, manufacturing issues that are actually detrimental to producing and effective and educated workforce, the rest of the world is smiling. We do not produce enough STEM college graduates remotely to fill the jobs that need to be done. Instead, the United States is simply stepping aside, deprioritizing a competitive education in our public schools, to let nations that have upped their commitment to real learning pass us by.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I wonder if those states emphasizing culture wars over academics understand what a huge competitive advantage they are ceding to the rest of the developed world.

Where Have All Big Bucks Gone, Long Time Passing?

 

With an unemployment rate hitting prepandemic law of 3.6%, workers are doing better than they have in years. “Some 4.4 million Americans quit or changed jobs that month, according to a report released Wednesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, using their leverage in an economy where job openings still outnumber job seekers by close to 2 to 1… Employers reported hiring 6.6 million people in April. Layoffs, meanwhile, fell to an all-time low of 1.2 million, as businesses sought to keep the workers they did have.” Washington Post, June 1st. OK, there is that “inflation” thang that stings like a bee!

Working from home, they may have saved the commute but “since going to remote working during the COVID era, 54 percent of workers reported an increased workload, new research found.” Industrial Safety and Security Source, 11/1/21. Folks with skills, particularly educated Millennials, are making more money than ever, although generally the shortage of workers gives them significantly more tasks that they had contemplated, particularly disheartening to those who left for a better work/life balance. But that “making more” is a relative term. 

For America’s Fortune 500 CEO’s, the ratio of their pay and that of the average for their employees, according to the Economic Policy Institute, has skyrocketed 1,322% since 1978. That was last year’s news. Soaring inflation is today’s headline, but when you make 361 times the pay of your average worker, it isn’t even a tiny bump in the road. In fact, you might even be benefiting from cost-plus mark-up pricing to make even more money. Stan Choe, writing for the May 30th Associated Press, notes the vast widening of the disparity between top bosses and their workers: 

“The typical compensation package for chief executives who run Standard & Poor’s 500 companies soared 17.1% last year, to a median $14.5 million, according to data analyzed for the Associated Press by Equilar. The gain towers over the 4.4% increase in wages and benefits netted by private-sector workers through 2021, which was the fastest on record dating to 2001. The raises for many rank-and-file workers also failed to keep up with inflation, which reached 7% at the end of last year.

“CEO pay took off as stock prices and profits rebounded sharply as the economy roared out of its brief 2020 recession. Because much of a CEO’s compensation is tied to such performance, the compensation packages ballooned after years of mostly moderating growth… In many of the most eye-popping packages, such as Expedia Group’s, valued at $296.2 million, and JPMorgan Chase’s $84.4 million, boards gave particularly big grants of stock or stock options to recently appointed CEOs navigating their companies through the pandemic or to established leaders they wanted to convince to hang around. 

“The CEOs often can’t cash in on such stock or options for years, or possibly ever, unless the company meets performance targets. But companies still must disclose estimates for how much they’re worth. Only about a quarter of the typical pay package for all S&P 500 chief executives last year came as actual cash they could pocket.

“Whatever its composition, the chasm in compensation between CEOs and the rank-and-file workers they oversee keeps widening. At half the companies in this year’s pay survey, it would take the worker at the middle of the company’s pay scale at least 186 years to make what their CEO did last year. That’s up from 166 a year earlier.” 

Even as the stock markets drop, for too many senior managers, the pay just keeps rolling in at the same rate. In fact, if you narrow the list to the 300 publicly traded US corporations “with the lowest median wages, the gap between what CEOs and median-wage workers earn has grown to a ratio of 670-to-1, according to a new report [from the Institute for Policy Studies]—up from 604-to-1 in 2020.” FastCompany.com, June 7th. But those at the top seem also to be subsidized by “the rest of us.”

Remember that 2017 GOP-led tax cut for corporations? It was supposed to “trickle down” and create new, well-paying jobs… which in turn would generate more income tax to pay for that massive tax reduction (from 35% to 21%). It didn’t. Instead, it produced stock buybacks and dividends, which benefitted folks with a lot of stock. Like CEOs. What that tax cut did produce instead was trillions of dollars of deficits which continue into the present day. Deficits which burden all taxpayers, not just the ones who took those savings and invested them to make more money. Think that either political party has a near-term plan significantly reduce inflation? Easy to blame. Easy to suggest solutions that sound good (like build new pipelines and open more oil leases). But very, very difficult to fix.

I’m Peter Dekom, and oh, if you think that Big Oil pumping out of Texas or Oklahoma will give Americans a huge discount below global oil pricing, think again.

Lazy Americans Just Don’t Want to Work?

 Vancouver, Canada’s New Medical Research Center 

     Funded by Djavad Mowafaghian, an Immigrant

Four-day 32-hour weeks, 40-hour weeks, long weekends, Americans prefer government support to working, Americans are lazy, impoverished and uneducated immigrants from Mexico and points south are taking our jobs… these are the litany of messages that have lambasted our purported work ethic for well over a century. That there are two jobs currently available for every jobseeker, that we have one of the lowest unemployment rates in our history, are just numbers to us.

A pretty typical statement: “It’s become apparent nobody wants to work in these hard times.” But Jo Constantz, writing for the August 11th Los Angeles Times, tells us that this quote “comes from an editor of the Rooks County Record in Stockton, Kan., lamenting coal mines shut down by strikes in April 1894. But it echoes recent sentiment: A Forbes story published in January, for example, cites a poll of executives that found 1 in 5 agreed with the statement ‘No one wants to work.’” But with rampant inflation, caused by an unfortunate confluence of events that no politician, on either side of the aisle, can stop in the immediate future, the issue is no longer getting a job; it’s whether you can make a living.

The last time Congress increased the minimum wage was over two decades ago… to $7.25 per hour effective July 24, 2009. That number is completely absurd, even at double: “A $15 hourly wage no longer cuts it for most workers in terms of covering basic expenses, especially as housing costs surge… ‘Ten years ago, when the fight for $15 began, it seemed like Nirvana,’ [Joseph McCartin, a labor historian at Georgetown University] said.

“Now, the living wage for a family of two working adults and two children is $24.16 per hour, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Living Wage Calculator. To make a living wage, a single parent with two kids earning the federal minimum wage of $7.25 would need to work 235 hours per week — almost six full-time minimum-wage jobs… Although wage gains remained strong last month, raises aren’t keeping pace with inflation.” LA Times. This as income inequality rages, as CEOs of Fortune 500 companies earn more that three hundred times the earnings of their average employees. According to the Economic Policy Institute, “CEO-to-typical-worker compensation ratio (options realized) was 20-to-1 in 1965 and 58-to-1 in 1989.”

When the United States tightened its immigration policies at our southern border, farmers languished as their crops rotten on trees and in their field with no one to implement a harvest. Offers of $100/day to legal residents and citizens, a number that only pushed food prices higher, failed to produce the required stoop labor to gather those wasting crops. At the other end of the labor spectrum, finding sufficiently educated STEM workers, our colleges and universities have proven to be completely incapable of generated sufficient numbers of qualified graduates. There are literally millions of unfilled jobs in those fields. And as qualified applicants for US work visas were turned down, Canada and the UK opened their doors to such exceptional STEM labor, forcing many American companies to relocate their research facilities outside the US. We have managed to shoot ourselves in the foot with our immigration policies and continue to ignore that these immigrants are NOT taking jobs that Americans either want or are qualified to do.

The hard facts remain: housing is increasingly unaffordable to what used to be a working middle class, educational loans are imposing killer burdens on workers just trying to survive, food costs are soaring as oil companies rake in two or three times the profits that they generated just a year ago. Employers lament the lack of workers; McMartin notes: “‘You find a lot back in, say, the 1870s. There was a recession in 1873 and there was a ‘vagabond scare,’ they called it at the time: People were hitting the road to avoid a working life and trying to sort of bum around the country,’ he said. ‘Really what was happening is often these are migrant workers looking for work elsewhere, but in the public imagination at the time, there was this idea that there are people that just don’t want to work.’

“In the same way, McCartin said, tropes about today’s labor shortages in sectors such as trucking, healthcare and service become linked to the idea that people don’t want to work… ‘But that sidesteps the key issue, which is that a lot of jobs, for the amount of wear and tear and the hard labor involved — they just don’t pay enough,’ he said. ‘Very often what this kind of rhetoric, whether it’s people don’t want to work or there’s a labor shortage, what that often speaks to is that wages simply aren’t attractive enough for workers.’” LA Times.

But those rising cost-of-living factors are also a product of our social policies and rather old world, conservative political choices. Women were slammed by the childcare requirements that settled mostly on them during the pandemic. Unlike most of the rest of the developed world, the United States borders on being a third world country when it comes to childcare and paid maternity leave. Workers (mostly women) are often not paid enough to justify leaving the home, which requires their paying exorbitant childcare costs if they can find it (with woefully underpaid childcare workers). Our lack of universal healthcare also finds millions of Americans still falling into the cracks in our patchwork Affordable Care Act… with opt-in options that few red states will accept.

Mythology has pushed us to this unfortunate place. A rising tide has never been able to float all boats, and social programs that keep workers safe are not remotely hallmarks of “socialism.” Americans work more hours than most workers in the developed world. Emily Rose McRae, senior director of research at consulting firm Gartner, seems to have summarized the issue best by saying (in the LA Times): “The second part of the sentence often goes unsaid: Nobody wants to work — for what I want to give them.”

I’m Peter Dekom, and we seem consistently to bury our collective heads in the sand ignoring that simplistic solutions and sophomoric slogans NEVER… work even if they sound so soothing and right.

How Hot is Too Hot?

According to the Guardian UK, July 7, 2021, “More than 5 million people die each year globally because of excessively hot or cold conditions, a 20-year study has found – and heat-related deaths are on the rise… The study involving dozens of scientists around the world found that 9.4% of global deaths each year are attributable to heat or cold exposure, equivalent to 74 extra deaths per 100,000 people.” Even in the United States, air conditioning is not everywhere, and those living below the poverty line face new increasing levels of summer heat that been imposed on them by insufficiently mitigated climate change.

According to a June 19, 2020, report from our CDC, “Deaths attributable to natural heat exposure, although generally considered preventable, represent a continuing public health concern in the United States. During 2004–2018, an average of 702 heat-related deaths occurred in the United States annually... During 2004–2018, a total of 10,527 deaths resulting from exposure to heat-related conditions were identified. Approximately 90% (9,757) of these deaths occurred during May–September.” Heat waves in 2021 and 2022 show temperatures rising even higher.

“The CDC report also noted that “non-Hispanic American Indian/Alaska Natives had the highest rate of heat-related deaths (0.6 per 100,000 population)… Non-Hispanic blacks had the second highest number of heat-related deaths (1,965) and rate ( 0.3 per 100,000 population). Across various levels of urbanization… the highest heat-related mortality rates were observed among persons living in noncore nonmetropolitan (0.3 per 100,000 population) and large central metropolitan counties (0.3 per 100,000 population).”

So an impressive array of academics at Penn State, led by W. Larry Kenney, professor of physiology, kinesiology and human performance and including geographer-climatologists, addressed the question of “When will it get too hot for normal daily activity as we know it, even for young, healthy adults?” There’s no one, fixed number which reflects a clear and absolute dividing line. The health conditions of the people subjected to heat, air movement and importantly, humidity. Their study notes that “Heat waves are becoming supercharged as the climate changes – lasting longer, becoming more frequent and getting just plain hotter…

“Scientists and other observers have become alarmed about the increasing frequency of extreme heat paired with high humidity, measured as “wet-bulb temperature.” During the heat waves that overtook South Asia in May and June 2022, Jacobabad, Pakistan, recorded a maximum wet-bulb temperature of 33.6 C (92.5 F) and Delhi topped that – close to the theorized upper limit of human adaptability to humid heat.

“People often point to a study published in 2010 that estimated that a wet-bulb temperature of 35 C – equal to 95 F at 100% humidity, or 115 F at 50% humidity – would be the upper limit of safety, beyond which the human body can no longer cool itself by evaporating sweat from the surface of the body to maintain a stable body core temperature… It was not until recently that this limit was tested on humans in laboratory settings. The results of these tests show an even greater cause for concern…

“[The] combination of temperature and humidity whereby the person’s core temperature starts to rise is called the ‘critical environmental limit.’ Below those limits, the body is able to maintain a relatively stable core temperature over time. Above those limits, core temperature rises continuously and risk of heat-related illnesses with prolonged exposures is increased.

“When the body overheats, the heart has to work harder to pump blood flow to the skin to dissipate the heat, and when you’re also sweating, that decreases body fluids. In the direst case, prolonged exposure can result in heat stroke, a life-threatening problem that requires immediate and rapid cooling and medical treatment… Our studies on young healthy men and women show that this upper environmental limit is even lower than the theorized 35 C. It’s more like a wet-bulb temperature of 31 C (88 F). That would equal 31 C at 100% humidity or 38 C (100 F) at 60% humidity.” Theconversation.com, July 6th. So how can people copes with extreme heat?

“Staying well hydrated and seeking areas in which to cool down – even for short periods – are important in high heat… While more cities in the United States are expanding cooling centers to help people escape the heat, there will still be many people who will experience these dangerous conditions with no way to cool themselves… Even those with access to air conditioning might not turn it on because of the high cost of energy – a common occurrence in Phoenix, Arizona – or because of large-scale power outages during heat waves or wildfires, as is becoming more common in the western U.S.

“A recent study focusing on heat stress in Africa found that future climates will not be conducive to the use of even low-cost cooling systems such as ‘swamp coolers’ as the tropical and coastal parts of Africa become more humid. These devices, which require far less energy than air conditioners, use a fan to recirculate the air across a cool, wet pad to lower the air temperature, but they become ineffective at high wet-bulb temperatures above 21 C (70 F).” theconversation.com

As our power-generating infrastructure becomes increasingly taxed – representing a push-pull in the battle against greenhouse emissions – a power outage can kill. Cities and states are appointing “chief heat/climate officers” to monitor conditions, offer cooling (and warming in winter) stations where necessary, and helping local areas to plant shade trees, use lighter colors on rooftops to deflect heat and even requiring landlords to provide air conditioning even to impoverished tenants. For all those “I do not want to pay taxes” conservatives who simply state that the richest country on earth cannot afford to contain climate change, I know that they understand the real costs to all of us. You don’t even need advanced mathematical modeling to understand the trillions of dollars climate change is costing us. Grade school arithmetic is enough.

I’m Peter Dekom, and as mother nature is snarling at our arrogance and making us pay for our denial, the message is abundantly clear: “time’s up!”

Screw the Rising Generations!

Our legacy to our younger generations is abominable. We are leaving them with unaffordable housing costs, the worst impacts of exploding climate change, global conflict and domestic polarization and levels of debt that no prior generation has ever experienced, simply to pay so much in inflation-adjusted dollars for educated skills needed for a vastly more complex job market. Let’s look at inflation corrected buying power, comparing Boomers and the Z Generation. An August 10th ConsumerAffairs.com report provides these key takeaways:

• Gen Z has 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers when they were in their 20s. Americans have seen wages increase by 80% since the 1970s. However, the average Consumer Price Index has increased by over 500%.

• Housing prices and rental rates have shot up. Gen Z is paying almost 100% more for homes. Today, the average house is $309,400. In the 1970s it was $24,800, or $185,600 in today’s dollars. Similarly, the median rent is $2,000 per month, in the 1970s it was $800 per month in 2022 dollars.

• College tuition rates have skyrocketed. The average price of tuition at a public university has increased by 310%, while the price of a private four-year college has increased by 245%. Meanwhile, college graduates have increased by 254% since 1970.

• Gas rates are also shooting up. Gas currently costs 57% more than it did in 1970. It’s $4.70 per gallon, compared to $3.00 in 1970, in today’s dollars.

And if you live in just about any urban area, where the jobs are, the above costs are even higher! Today better jobs require better skills, more training and education. But with tuition rising five-fold since the 1980s, adding in the impact of the pandemic combined with a hot job market, these costs have forced demand for college degrees to moderate. Unfortunately, except for online-only education, tuition still continues to rise.

Universities also receive significantly less in state and federal support, increasingly relying on tuition to fund their operations. A decade ago, tuition covered a third of average college operating costs; today it is half. Facing austerity efforts, states implemented the biggest cutbacks as the federal government, particularly under Trump, also pulled back support.

In short, the cost of higher education today has gone up so much more than average family income. Go back a little farther, and the numbers are even more startling. Writing for last August’s Yahoo! Finance, Jordan Rosenfeld explains: “Paying for college is an expensive prospect for many levels of education, but it didn’t use to be that way — over time, college costs have risen quite significantly. College tuition and costs were once affordable, according to Guide2Research.com. In 1963 you paid only about $1,286 per year, at a four-year college (or about $10,555 when adjusted for inflation today). Now, those prices are exponentially higher.

“‘In constant 2018-2019 dollars, the [National Center for Education Statistics] reports average total tuition, fees and room and board for full-time undergraduate students at four-year colleges was $12,811 by 1985,’ said Nicole Hopler, lead marketing manager at Optimal, a higher education research publisher. ‘By the 2018-2019 year, [the cost] was $28,123, an increase of 119.5 percent after adjusting for inflation.’

“And you might be surprised to find out that public colleges and universities have had the steeper increase (by percentage) versus private colleges, she said. Between 2008-2009 and 2018-2019, prices for undergraduate public schools rose by 28%, versus just 19% at private institutions. ‘This is likely due in part to a decrease in public funding,’ Hopler said.” While some countries, like Germany and China, are finding ways to fund higher education other than through tuition, the United States is going in the other direction. As college becomes less affordable, particularly for the highly productive, job-creating STEM fields, we become increasingly reliant on importing those graduates from overseas.

The distortions to our overall economy are staggering. Sure, there are two jobs for every jobseeker today, but take a good look at the marketplace. We still do not have enough doctors and nurses graduating remotely to service our demands. Our other STEM jobs form an ocean of opportunity with a dearth of qualified applicants. We’re worried about mom-and-pop local hires – clearly important – but we should be more worried about filling those top-level STEM jobs that provide the best economic returns for the nation as whole.

Instead, we’ve layered in new levels of long-term student debt – $1.75 trillion (of which $1.62 trillion is federal debt), which exceeds consumer debt – so that the younger generations entering the workforce are slammed with a tsunami of contraction amidst in the most expensive era in American history. And now interest rates are rising; while starting out life with around an average of $40 thousand of debt may seem tolerable, it just may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

God help you if you have debt for post-undergrad degrees. Routinely, those earning professional degrees wind up with serious six figure student loans, often requiring decades to repay. While professionals stand to make more money – the standard argument for not forgiving or reducing their debt load – society winds up with huge staffing shortages in needed professions. While the United States responded to the 1957 Soviet era Sputnik satellite launchby investing massively in education at every level, that enthusiasm eventually waned. “Funding for higher education aid was greatly reduced as part of the Reagan administration’s broad cuts to social spending programs. Grant funding and other federal support has also not kept pace with the rising cost of tuition and educational expenses. The maximum Pell Grant, for instance, covered approximately three-quarters of in-state public tuition at its peak in the 1970s. By 1988, it covered less than half. Today, maxing out at $6,895, it covers less than one-third.

“In 1992, policymakers lifted the cap on Parent PLUS loans, allowing parents to borrow up to the full cost of attendance on behalf of their children. These loans are not subsidized, so interest on them begins to accrue from the moment they’re disbursed. They also often have higher interest rates and less favorable repayment terms than those for students, making it even harder for these borrowers to get out of debt.

“And then came the Great Recession: Between 2009 and 2019, student debt ballooned from about $772 billion to $1.6 trillion… During his 2020 campaign, President Joe Biden pledged to cancel at least $10,000 of students' individual loan debt, but critics say this would amount to doling out handouts to highly educated elites.” Julia Barajas in the August 4th Los Angeles Times.

We are more concerned with censoring classrooms – the product of an internal struggle over a manufactured “culture war” – than we are ensuring that we have enough STEM-educated workers to solidify our economy against rising global competition. Education should be free for all who want it. Perhaps we can configure our tax code to add higher rates for those who have benefitted from student loans. The system we have now does not serve any of us… or the nation as a whole. As we betray our rising generations, we are also screwing up economic hope.

I’m Peter Dekom, and somewhere along the way, America lost sight of what really matters.