And What's Wrong With Having a Pension?

My father was a route salesman for a bread company. He drove a bread truck and sold bread, buns, and cupcakes to grocery stores and restaurants. He worked hard, and in return the company he worked for rewarded him and people like him with a pension plan. He paid in some money from each paycheck. The bread company matched his contribution. In time he was supposed to retire with a regular paycheck and would be able to live comfortably in his declining years.

Then the company he worked for was bought out by a larger company. He was a valued employee so the new bread company kept him on after the sale was complete. His pension did not survive the buyout. The new company's bottom line was more important than rewarding long-time employees. The money that he had in the pension plane was given to him, and he used that money to pay off some debts, but the prospect of having a regular pension check in his retirement was now history.

As a result, my father worked as long as he could, and when declining health forced him to retire, he put together a meager living as best as he could. He took his Social Security checks and added a few dollars here and a few dollars there from anywhere he could. He picked strawberries. He bought truckloads of watermelons that he sold from the back of his pickup. He did odd jobs at a warehouse that stocked gimme hats, Arkansas Razorback blankets, and assorted odds and ends that I usually dub "useless crap." He survived, but he worked until he absolutely could not work any more. Then his health went into a rapid downward spiral and he died. This was his reward for a lifetime of dedication and hard work with a company. He was loyal. The company was not.

Now I am the adult and I have spent the last twenty years of my life working in education. I am a teacher. I hold two BA degrees and a Master's degree plus 57 hours of additional graduate work. In the business community that comes with monetary rewards. In education, it means you make a little more than the run of the mill teacher, but still it is not as much as someone with similar credentials would be paid in private industry. In return I have been promised a pension. I pay a percentage of my paycheck into the pension every payday and the school system and the school system matches this with their own contribution. As a teacher and public employee, I do not pay into the Social Security System. The public pension is to be my retirement.

The trouble is that now there is a movement afoot to do to me and my colleagues in public employment what that bread company did to my father. They want to take away my pension, or at least reduce it seriously. Why? It's considered too expensive. Why? Nobody in the public sector gets this, why should you? Why? Part of it is funded through taxes and nobody wants to pay their taxes to fund somebody else's comfort. Frankly, part of it is a misery loves company impulse. We've gotten nothing from life and you shouldn't get anything either.

Ron Lieber, in a recent New York Times piece, calls it class warfare. Mr. Lieber, taking a cue from the Republican Party playbook has framed his argument by using Marxist terminology, only turning it on its head. Instead of the working poor as the have-nots and the bourgeoisie as the haves, he refers to all government employees with their pensions as the haves and the private industry sorts with their tanking 401-Ks as the have-nots. He goes further to suggest that it's about time that all of us overpaid and over-pensioned government employees should just suck it up because the politicians are going to shove smaller pensions or no pensions at all down our throats. He suggests that those of us who elected to take smaller salaries, who expected a retirement reward down the road are asking too much of the public to follow through on what they promised.

Let's get to the meat of the matter, though. A lot of what has precipitated this crisis is the shortfall in funding in government pension systems due to large numbers of baby boomers suddenly retiring coupled with a recession that has caused a shortfall in tax revenues. What caused this shortfall in funding of the pension systems? First and foremost, let us not say that it is because it was unrealistic in the first place. Everyone knew that there were going to be a lot of boomer retiring. The problem resulted because of massive mismanagement on the part of governmental units that did not hold up their end of the bargain. In the state of Illinois it has been routine practice to raid the money that should go to pension funds every time there is a fiscal crisis. Raise taxes to meet the budget shortfall? Heavens no! Legislators might lose votes in the next election if they did that. Instead, they chose to use money that was supposed to go to pension funds. And now, duh, there's a shortfall in the pension funds. Whose fault is that? That of teachers and other government employees? Not on your life. It's directly the fault of pandering legislators and of citizens who feel no responsibility to the society as a whole.

Now a whole generation of teachers, policemen, firemen, and various other government employees are in danger of losing their pensions because they entered into a contract with the government, and in most cases they won't even have the little income that Social Security offers because as a public employee who pays into a public pension fund you do not pay into Social Security. These are employees who worked their entire adult lives in good faith that if they did their parts, the government, representative of the public at large would do their part when the time came. Well now the time has come and the politicians and large numbers of people in the general public want to renege.

Mr. Lieber in the recent New York Times article from the business pages suggested that we, as public employees were not thinking about the public at large and were being litigious. Well, Mr. Lieber, we contend that it is the public at large that is not thinking about us. We teach your children. We protect your streets. We put out the fires. We pick up your garbage. We manage your society. We gave of ourselves. We gave up the possibility of higher pay for a delayed reward. Now it is your turn to pay up. This was not a gentleman's agreement. It was a contract. We have rights and protections under a constitutional government. Should the government as a representative of the public at large choose to negate that contract, we will exercise our constitutional rights. We don't have 401-Ks. We don't have Social Security. What else can we do?

An Informed Populace Votes in Their Best Interest. The Others Aren't Paying Attention.

Funny how democracy works. There is the theory. There is the reality. In theory, informed citizens will vote in favor of their own best interest, based on facts. In reality, people vote for candidates based on sound bites on TV, based on bias, prejudice, and misinformation. People vote on the basis of ill-conceived notions of reality and dare I say it, ignorance.

Let's face it, anyone who has been paying any attention at least since I was born, and I was born in 1950, should know that the political party most likely to pursue policies beneficial to working class and poorer Americans is the Democratic Party. For all their foibles, the Democratic Party are the party of the majority of Americans, if you vote based on facts and an informed vision. We should also face the fact that the vision of the Republican Party is one that best represents the interests of money, big money. They are the party of less government, less regulation, less taxes, and less money in the pockets of working class Americans.

Social Security is designed to be a safety net for working class older Americans and for Americans who are unable to care for themselves. Wealthy Americans typically do not need Social Security and the Republican Party routinely tries to gut this program as being too expensive. They try to privatize it. Do you really want to trust Social Security to the Stock Market and the Wall Street types who precipitated this latest financial meltdown? They try to make it optional. Of course they do. They don't want to pay into a social safety net that benefits poor people and not themselves. Many of the people supporting the "Do away with Social Security" politics are also those who have stripped working Americans of their pensions to foster higher corporate profits. Let's see, the Republican Party, on the whole supports no Social Security and no pensions, and in many cases no minimum wage. What that suggests to me is that these are individuals who want to use ordinary Americans in the work force until they are used up and then discard them like so much trash going to the landfill.

In the latest clash between those who would help working class America and those who would help the minority of really wealthy Americans, there is the fuss over universal healthcare. Who benefits from universal healthcare legislation? Working class Americans. Wealthy Americans can afford their own health insurance. Who opposes universal healthcare? Republicans, the party of wealthy America. They don't want to pay to see that everyone can receive reasonable healthcare when they personally won't benefit from it.

The Republican Party likes to speak in terms of "class warfare created by the Democratic Party," as if we were one unified America, all equal, and engaged one big group hug. Class warfare? Of course there is class warfare. The Republican Party promotes it. They declared war on working class America a long time ago. The shameful thing is the pretense that what they propose will actually help all Americans. Please explain to me again, how cutting taxes one more time for the wealthiest Americans will shrink the budget deficit, create more jobs, and help all Americans. Somehow the logic escapes me.

So how is it that large numbers of working class and poorer Americans continue to support the Republican Party when they are so obviously making every effort to screw working class America? In my lifetime, the real trouble with the Republican Party started with Ronald Reagan. He brought back the idea of trickle down economics (Very popular in the 1920's until the stock market crashed in 1929.). More importantly, however, he brought in an element of jingoism. Make America safe from all enemies. Spend enormous amounts of money on the military and just kick anyone's ass that disagrees with us. Then he also allied himself with social conservatives.

As it turns out, those most likely to agree with a militaristic foreign policy and domestic policies that oppose abortion, gay rights, civil rights, women's rights, immigration reform and any number of other hot button social conservative issues are working class Americans. The Republican Party sold its soul to the devil and forged an alliance of the super wealthy, busy grabbing larger and larger portions of the pie, and the social conservatives, busy trying to return us all to a world that was in place before 1950. The sad thing being that these social conservatives support the Republican agenda wholesale, disregarding the fact that the Republican ideal screws most of them economically while pandering to them on social issues.

The founding fathers had an ideal of a republic where an informed populace would vote in its own best interest, and the great issues of the day would be debated, not just on the floors of Congress, but in the press, and on the streets of America. Thomas Jefferson founded the University of Virginia with the idea that the best and brightest would be able to go there and receive a world class education regardless of income. He had that informed and competent citizen thing in mind. Competent governance requires competent citizens. If ever there were an argument for public education, it is this. Now if we could only get Americans to take their education seriously, and take time out from obsessing over American Idol and what's up with Lindsey Lohan long enough to read some serious news, and think about it.

I guess my advice to the American people at this point can be summed up in two short words, "Pay attention!" If you're paying attention, you're less likely to have the wool pulled over your eyes. Have a wonderful weekend.

Where Have All the Teachers Gone?

Once more into the breach it would seem. As a teacher in a public school in a large urban district I find myself routinely annoyed at the bad things said about us in the press, on the TV, by the politicians (federal, state, and local), by the local Board of Education, and most often, by the administrative officials who oversee the schools in the district. So I read something. I get annoyed. I write something in response. Seems as if it's a never ending cycle, a cycle informed by underlying political motives and misinformation.

There are a lot of factors that go into this ongoing argument. The American people don't want to pay the taxes necessary to legitimately support public education. A lot of the people with power to make things happen in America really don't care about the fate of public education because poor people's kids go to public schools. Rich and powerful people send their kids to private schools. It becomes a sort of "Let them eat cake," kind of situation. "We pay out of our own pockets for the education of our children. Why on earth should we pay for the education of their children. Let them pay for the education of their own."

Public schools are now, as they traditionally have been, funded by property taxes. Some communities rake in more in property taxes than others. Some school districts have more to spend per student than others. All districts are not equal. By the same token, some students have more advantages than others. Some have parents with college degrees and kids benefit mentally, socially, and economically. All of these factors play into how well the student does in school. Some students have parents who dropped out of high school, some have disabilities, and some have to deal with gangs, crime, and ghetto mentalities run amok just getting to and from school every day. Some of them are successful in spite of all this. A great many are not, and are condemned to life in the neighborhoods that are seen on the news when there has been another shooting.

To make things more complicated, school districts like the one in Chicago offer magnet schools, schools for the gifted and talented, college preparatory schools, and schools for kids with special interests. The best and the brightest are siphoned off from the neighborhood schools to attend these special schools. They are held up in the press as shining examples of how to achieve success in education. Well duh! Give me a school full of kids in the 99th percentile and I suspect they are all going to succeed. The kids left in the neighborhood schools are kids who never did particularly well academically. Then the teachers get blamed for the failure of these kids when in reality they are working their butts off trying to help these kids succeed.

With the constant budget crisis, and the so-called crisis of failing schools, there is a lot of pressure placed on school districts to improve success rates and to cut costs one way or another. Everybody has an idea about how to improve schools and how to cut costs. Very few of these people with ideas have ever worked in a school. A great many, for whatever reason, hold up the American business model as something to be emulated in public education. I'll go on record here as saying this is insane.

This is an American business community where corporations go broke, but executives get million dollar bonuses and golden parachutes. This is an American business community that responded to responded to a 2% shrinkage of profits by laying off 6% of their workers and telling the remaining workers that there would be no raises forthcoming in the near future and by the way, you have to take care of your own healthcare and retirement henceforth. Profits soared. Stockholders benefited. Unemployment remains at 10% for the nation, and with that many people out of work purchases of things that keep the economy chugging along lag. Eventually the whole thing comes tumbling down. As my mother always said, "The rich get richer and the poor get poorer." The American business model would appear to be a recipe for civil unrest, not a shining example for school systems to emulate.

This brings us to the efforts to "reform" the schools. Frankly, a lot of the reforming of the schools involves "reducing expenditures" not any real reform that could result in more students being successful and becoming productive citizens. A lot of the efforts have actually tried to emulate the business model. They have tried to squeeze as much as possible out of the educators with as little cash as possible. Charter schools and privatized schools partially funded from public coffers are both business answers to public school problems. What has been discovered is that charter schools that have selective enrollments (much like the magnet schools mentioned above) achieve wonderful results. Others do not. They all save money, however, because they operate outside the normal union restrictions on hours, salaries, and benefits. What? They pay people less, require them to work extra hours for no extra pay, and they slash benefits packages. Are these better schools? No, just cheaper, with employees who are left to fend for themselves when it comes to vital issues like retirement.

Now the current worldwide economic crisis has shrunk tax receipts significantly and the money available to operate public school systems has shrunk with those tax receipts. The answer to the budgetary woes is to fire more teachers, replace experienced teachers with inexperienced teachers who won't have to be paid as much, and to raise classroom size. In the ongoing clash between teachers and administrators, the mantra of the administrators has routinely been "If you were a good teacher, you could teach a class with 40 kids." Really? I dare you to try. The simple truth is that kids learn better when the student to teacher ratio is lower. The Chicago Public Schools recently made a big deal about the rising standardized test scores. Now they want to can experienced teachers, replace them with less expensive, younger teachers, and make them teach classrooms with 35 kids/class.

Is this a recipe for continued success? I think not. Kids are not a packaged, mass-produced product. A school is not a factory. The success of the kids depend on well-trained, caring educators who are not so overtaxed by sheer numbers of students that they have no time for individual students. The success of schools depends on appropriate management of those schools, and that means that the lean and mean model of the business world should not be followed. This is the future of our nation and the world. Write your Congressman. Call your Alderman. Descend on the Board of Education at their next meeting. Let them know that there is a crisis in education. It is a crisis of vision, of management, and of money. Want better schools? Save teachers' jobs.

Whatever Happened to Civility?

When I was a child my mother taught me a few things about behaving civilly when interacting with others. "Always respect your elders. If you don't have anything good to say, don't say anything at all. Don't swear in public. Don't swear at all if you don't absolutely have to. Never hit a girl. Open doors for ladies. Be polite with others. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Admittedly, over the years I may have had trouble at times with the "if you don't have anything good to say" thing, but for the most part I internalized these life lessons and have spent a lifetime being civil with other human beings. Most people I grew up with did likewise. It made life easier. It made co-existence with others more tolerable. Treat others well and with respect and they tend to reciprocate, though not always.

The trouble is that as time has gone by, it appears that the number of people who live by these rules and behave by basic rules of civility have declined drastically. Examples of very public conflict and egregious disrespect abound. Whence the source of this breakdown?

Yesterday afternoon Babs and I went over to a public tennis court a couple of blocks away. You hang a racket from two posts marked even or odd and reserve a court for yourself in hour increments. We had the five o'clock (odd) time slot on one of the courts. Somewhere about 15 minutes into our hour some guy with an oversized ego and a seriously oversized sense of self-importance comes in the gate and interrupts our game. "Are you going to play the entire hour?" He was very impatient. Admittedly I am not very good at the game, but who the hell is this pushy guy coming in and tacitly suggesting that we should wrap it up early so real tennis players could have the court? Babs informed him we would indeed be using our entire hour and he could come back at six o'clock.

Not to be picky but the guy and his partner came waltzing through the gate at 5:59, walked over and started unpacking his gear. Hey I have another minute here buster! Taking Mother's lesson to heart Babs and I picked up our tennis balls and before we could even get everything packed up and ourselves off the court this guy and his partner are on the court. (And it still was not six o'clock by my watch, by a few seconds.) Pushy, presumptuous, self-involved, and absolutely sure his time was worth more than that of the old guy and his wife. Remember that "if you don't have anything good to say" thing? I had a really hard time with that one about that time.

On another occasion, a few years back, Babs and I were going to a video rental store in a very busy strip mall. One usually had to wait your turn for a parking spot and a rent a cop patrolled the area for those who dared park in a spot not designated as a parking spot. One end of the lot was clearly marked ENTRANCE. One end had a sign clearly marked EXIT ONLY! After waiting about 5 minutes for an open parking spot, someone came out and left. I started the car and began pulling toward the parking spot. At this point, some guy in an SUV swerved in the EXIT ONLY opening and gunned it, trying to get the parking spot I had so diligently waited for.

I would like to say that my mother's lessons in civility kept me on the higher ground at this point, but the truth is I put the pedal to the metal and beat the guy into the parking spot while mouthing "No way asshole." Apparently the asshole was really good at reading lips. He slammed on the brakes, stopping right behind my car. Babs and I exited the car, locked it up, and started toward the video rental store. Meanwhile this guy, who stood all of 5'5" on a tall hair day comes right on our heels screaming at the top of his lungs, "Asshole! Asshole! You're the asshole! Hey mother fucker! I'm talking to you!" He followed us, engaging in this tirade all the way to the entrance to the store. Where was the rent a cop when you needed him? Taking a break I guess. Certainly nowhere in sight. I did show some restraint. I ignored him rather than confronting him and making the situation even worse and possibly violent. Not sure, but I believe being ignored made him even more belligerent and uncivil. As Babs suggested at the time though, "A man that crazy probably has a gun in his car." Point taken.

Life is full of these little stories. There are the women who walk right in front of you when you've been waiting in line patiently for 5 minutes at Starbucks. These sorts seem somehow convinced that being young and pretty means never having to wait in line. They usually seem convinced that all the men in the world owe them free meals, free drinks, and endless attention.

There are the people, both male and female, who in rush hour traffic on the expressway cannot wait their turn. You know the scenario. There is a line of cars slowly merging into one lane and most people patiently, or not so patiently, waiting their turn. Inevitably there is some clown much too important to wait like everyone else so he or she drives down the breakdown lane on the right and at the last possible moment cuts in front of someone else, causing everyone in the line to stand on their brakes. Very uncivil behavior that usually elicits some uncivil behavior (although warranted in my humble opinion) from the people who were cut off. Usually this consists of words your mother told you not to say, and the ubiquitous American one finger salute. This scenario also plays out at stoplights where a driver who wants in front of you pulls up on your right in the parking lane, waiting for the light to change so they can gun it and cut in front of you before hitting the parked car looming ahead. Hitting your brakes, screaming obscenities, giving the finger usually ensue and then you end up at the next light immediately behind this person.

There are the herds of people in groups walking down a busy city sidewalk oblivious to the fact that they are but a few of the millions who need to traverse this sidewalk so they spread out 3, 4, and 5 abreast making anyone walking the other way step aside to let them pass or step out into the street risking life and limb from taxis, buses, and assorted drivers who think they're in the Indy 500. Share the sidewalk people. You're not the only persons in the universe nor are you the most important. Believe me. You're not. If your were, you'd get a police escort. I've met the important sorts before. They're usually a great deal more civil.

Six billion is the number of people currently residing on this planet and that number grows by the minute. There's not a lot of room for all that incivility. It tends to cause confrontation and violence. It makes people stressed out. It invites eventual heart attack. On occasion it causes death by road rage or just plain old, "You pissed me off so I'm shooting your ass." On a larger scale nations go to war over incivility on a large scale. There is a lot to be said for civility. It makes life a lot calmer. It makes life a lot safer. It invites life to last a lot longer. Next time you find yourself in a situation where incivility has run amok just remember your mother and imagine what she would say. "Just keep a civil tongue in your head young man (young lady)."

Racism, Here, There, and Everywhere

Racism is a very ugly thing and having grown up in the American South, I have seen some of it at its very ugliest. Let's face it, Southern rednecks can display some of the most in your face stupidity regarding race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, and various lifestyle choices and not think a thing about it. Then I moved north. I thought maybe I'd escape all the conservative b.s. but what I discovered was that there are ignoramuses everywhere you go.

The point is that racism and bigotry are always based on ignorance. There is a lot of ignorance everywhere and the moment you think you've escaped it, it will seek you out to smack you up the side of the head and remind you of its presence. Furthermore, in my travels about the country of my birth I soon discovered that this ignorance and bigotry is not confined to one racial group. Ignorance, racism, bigotry, discrimination, and prejudice are facts of life that know no boundaries. Black people are as likely to be biased toward other races as are white people. Latinos, ditto. Asians, ditto. Gay people, ditto. People of differing religious inclinations, ditto, ditto, ditto. Let's get that straight. We cannot go pointing fingers at one particular group and lay all of this at their feet. There's plenty to spread around.

For a long time it has been popular in the African-American community to claim that they cannot be racist because racism denotes power of one group over another. In this nation, the center of the capitalist universe, money is power and as a poverty-stricken group the African-American community has none. There is a gaping hole in this argument. Not all African-Americans are poor. This nation has given rise to a black middle class. We have a black President, black Supreme Court Justices, black Congressmen, black CEOs, and highly placed African-Americans in every walk of life. Furthermore, there is poverty aplenty in other racial groups as well. I'm not just talking about Latinos. There is a plethora of Spanish speaking people living in poverty in America, but the fact that gets swept under the table is the size of the poverty-stricken white community in rural America.

What we have to recognize is that often class and socio-economic status are bigger problems than race. Believe me that rich white guy across town does not want his daughter having anything to do with the son of a truck driver, even if he is a white boy. That wealthy black man living in a wealthy suburb does not want his daughter hooking up with a young black boy whose residence is in the seedier parts of the large city.

However, I digress. It has been fashionable in other parts of the industrialized world for a long time to deplore the racist element to American society. Honestly, people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Have you ever checked out how Japanese treat Koreans who immigrate to Japan for work? Have you ever checked out how the Chinese treat ethnic minorities? I don't even need to mention the ongoing ethnic warfare that continually plagues Africa.

Instead, let's look at Europe. It is in Europe where many of the most egregious acts of blatant racism have occurred and continue to occur. I may disagree with conservative Muslims penchant for putting women in a secondary role and keeping them there. I personally think women covering themselves head to foot and showing nothing but their eyes in public is a pretty dumb custom. It is, however, their custom and if you think it is necessary I don't find it too threatening, on the whole. Now there are movements across Europe to outlaw this practice. The French have been the most vocal on this point, though Belgians are not far behind.

In the U.S. ethnicity is an obsession. You can't apply for a job, do your income taxes, or fill out any minor survey without divulging the ethnicity you identify with. We have African-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Asian-Americans, and Native Americans. Ask any white person of European derivation what they are and they don't tell you American. They tell you Italian, Irish, English, Russian, or whatever. Meanwhile in France, they are in denial. Everyone is just French if they live there, possess citizenship, or work permits. As it happens, they once had a colonial empire that included a lot of Islamic nations and well have experienced a lot of Islamic immigration as a result. They're all just French, and the French expect them to look, act, and dress French. Learn fluent French while you're at it, non? They use statutory law to enforce this. To not live up to the whole package is not French and deserves discrimination, apparently.

Now, in the latest assault on ethnic minorities, the French government has made moves to make it legal to expel gypsies. The French government claims that large scale immigration of the Roma from Eastern Europe has occurred and is illegal and that these illegal gypsy immigrants are causing crime, child abuse, prostitution, you name it. The legal standards being used are reminiscent of the recent laws passed in Arizona that allow anyone's legal status to be questioned if you fit the profile. Just in case you thought this anti-gypsy sentiment was new, let me remind you that during the Vichy French governance during World War II, the French rounded up gypsies for extermination just as enthusiastically as they did Jews.

Does this end here. Ever heard of the British pastime of Paki bashing? What about German antipathy for Kurdish immigrants? The list goes on and on. The U.S. certainly has its litany of problems regarding racism, but it is certainly not alone. Coca Cola once had an ad campaign in which they expressed the desire to "teach the world to sing in perfect harmony." Well I think I'd like to take the whole world to an extensive ethnic sensitivity workshop and teach everyone how to behave sensibly toward one another.

How Green Is Your City?

For a long time now I've had a love affair with cities. I grew up in a suburban environment and it just didn't suit me. It's not a place that truly encourages a creative life. People drive down the block to the grocery store. Restaurants are located in strip malls and in the big parking lots of really big shopping malls. People live on streets that are lined with houses that all look the same and there's a lot of pressure for everyone there to act the same, live their lives pretty much the same, and yes, think the same. Never was for me. My life doesn't adhere closely enough to the middle.

My wife Babs grew up in a small town in Iowa with a population of 1,000 people. Oh my. What do you say about places like that? Everybody knows everybody else. Everybody talks about everybody else. It's perfectly safe to walk anywhere in such a place, but nobody does. Because these places are so small, there isn't much to offer in the way of restaurants, entertainment, or culture. You have to drive long stretches of highway to get to places that do. Go to the grocery store in these places and the selection is extremely limited. Once again you have to drive long stretches of highway to get to someplace that has a good grocery store. Want entertainment that isn't available on TV? Get on the highway. Do something the least bit out of the ordinary and people begin to wonder "What's gotten into him? Thinks he's better than the rest of us. Hrrmmmphh!" Norman Rockwell may have made it look lovely, but frankly most kids with a little smarts and drive can't wait to leave. Exceptions? Sure. Your father may own the local bank or a major business in town and you're going to inherit that if you stick around. Otherwise, see you later alligator. And as for me, I don't think there small town America can afford to support the lifestyle to which I've become accustomed. They pay me more in the city and I don't have to spend all my time driving someplace where there are things I want.

When I was in college I met a few kids who came from serious rural areas. I knew a few kids I'd grown up with who fantasized about "getting back to the land" (Did I say that I grew up with the Woodstock Generation?) and decided to live a more natural life in rural America. Build your own house. Grow your own food. Be self-sufficient. Fall off the grid. Frankly, that's a lot more hard work than it's cracked up to be, and even more difficult to sustain. Not really economically viable in modern America. For the record, the USA is the largest agricultural producer in the world, but most successful farmers are Corporate Farmers. Do I need to repeat that? Go big or go home. One other thing about rural America. There's a lot of poverty. Ever wonder why most of the crystal meth in America is produced in rural areas? At any rate, most kids who grow up in farming leave it. A measly few get big enough to survive. Big brain drain here just as in small town America. And when you get really rural, a lot of wing nuts go there so as not to be noticed by the cops, FBI, and other assorted enforcers of law and order. Not a place for such as I.

At any rate, I migrated to a city, and then a larger city, and then an even larger city. Turns out now there is one more reason to like the city. Your carbon footprint is, for the most part, smaller in the city. What's that? Yes, cities, for the most part, are greener than are suburbs, small towns, and even rural areas. How's that possible? Well hang tight a moment and I'll tell you. And for the record, global warming is real! Deny, deny, deny all you corporate interests who benefit massively in dollars and cents from policies that allow you to raise global temperatures and melt the ice caps. Still doesn't alter the fact that it's real. We recognize that your competing scientific studies are funded by your corporation and the facts are a bit skewed.

Turns out people in the city are closer together and generally occupy fewer square feet. Lots of people like to move out of the cities because you can buy a bigger house, but that bigger house costs more to heat and cool and uses more energy per person. Turns out there is easy access to public transportation in the city and fewer people need to drive their own vehicles. They can get anywhere they want using buses and trains (that are electric, for the record) and end up polluting the air by fewer parts per million than those persons in non-urban areas who have to drive everywhere. Just need a car every now and then? There are companies that specialize in renting small, energy efficient vehicles for use on an as-needed basis. Then there is the fact that, in the city, it is possible to walk most places. Neighborhoods have sufficient numbers of businesses to support the surrounding populace and people walk to stores, to restaurants, to parks, and sometimes just to enjoy a summer evening. Let's get real. There are a lot of people who still drive in the city, but because parking is at a premium and gasoline is expensive more people in cities drive small energy efficient vehicles. They just make sense expense-wise and they're easier to park.

In another case of "I forget just where I read it" I read an article last week about a study that showed that life in the suburbs was actually more expensive than life in the city. People in the burbs pay more for their houses' upkeep, utilities, and energy because they are generally larger. They have to drive more and end up paying more in gasoline and upkeep on their vehicles. Large numbers work in the city and have to spend inordinate amounts of time driving or taking the train into the city and back. That cheap house with the big yard ends up costing more in the long run.

There are obviously cases where people in suburbs, small towns, and rural areas reduce their carbon footprint by installing solar collectors, by taking any number of steps to make themselves concerned citizens who wish to preserve our planet. They are the exception rather than the rule. A lot of people are scare to death of the large cities. There are an awful lot of Americans who glorify the cleaner air, the space to move and breathe, the lack of crime. Yet I enjoy a lakefront with miles and miles of freedom to run, to bike, to swim. I live within blocks of the greatest restaurants in the world and walk to them. I still use more energy than I should and have a carbon footprint that is too big, but I daresay I'd put my footprint up against that of 98-99% of Americans. Chicago or the North Woods? No contest. I'll take Chicago and pollute less in the bargain.

Of Education and Jobs and the American Dream

So I was reading Babs Ray's Blog about the Invisible Class and as it turns out only 30% of Americans have a 4 year college degree, and with the disappearing manufacturing base in this country that means that a lot of people are disappearing from the middle class. In addition, I was reading somewhere, that escapes me just now, that of 36 advanced nations the U.S. is #12 in college degrees held among citizens. Then I read an article by Hanna Rosin, in The Atlantic Monthly, called "The End of Men" in which she notes that more women are receiving degrees than men in America today, and are beginning to outstrip men in the job and earnings market.

So what's up with education in America? Is the country going to hell in a handcart? Is the future of this country one where a minority of educated Americans are living the high life in gated communities while the rest fight it out for what they can get on what is paid in jobs at McDonalds and Wal-Mart? Let's face it, this country needs some serious adapting? Our cultural values need some adjusting. Our economy needs some adjusting.

For one thing, there is a largish stream of thought in America that is anti-intellectual. We've all heard the stories someone tells about the genius who could think great thoughts, but who couldn't tie his own shoes. This is usually followed by a remark about "good common sense." Well let's all face it boys and girls, good common sense is called logic. Mr. Spock would be proud of you for preaching its virtues, but for the record I know a lot of really smart people and they all possess "good common sense." They can all tie their shoes. They change light bulbs and furnace filters and use screw drivers and wrenches as well as the next guy. It's just that if their jobs focus more on mental activities they don't get as much practice with the physical stuff and guys who do it all the time are a little better. Likewise, guys who don't use their heads for anything but a place to hang their hats don't do too well with the reasoning thing either.

The point is that there are a lot of guys out there who think it is somehow less manly to be a good student. It's OK to repair cars, fix broken chairs, and do things with your hands, but necessarily less macho to do things that require the use of the head instead. Speaking as a guy who has spent most of his life working in jobs that are dominated by women, i.e. healthcare and education, well I have a job and it pays OK. A lot of those guys who are anti-intellectual and want to work with their hands somehow, instead of working with their heads, well their jobs have disappeared and are continuing to do so at a rapid rate. It's OK to be smart Bozos. And if it motivates you, remember, guys with more money attract more girls, or for you gay guys, you'll attract more guys.

That being said, the age of women's liberation helped create a new woman, able to compete in the labor force and they have no problem with being smart and doing mental work and making more money as a result. Now they are finding themselves in a position where they don't really need you guys. No B.A.? No job? No woman? Or for the gay guys, see the above reference. Same thing. Somewhere down the line there has to be a cultural shift that allows boys to focus on being the smartest in addition to or in lieu of being the strongest and the fastest.

That being said, with manufacturing jobs being shipped by the millions overseas because corporations would rather pay someone in Asia $.30 per hour than pay an American $15.00 per hour plus benefits. What are all of those guys going to do who used to take factory jobs? Well we need to adapt, come up with new high-tech and green industries that can be done right here in America. Thing is though, most of these kind of industries will require fine motor skills and a little thinking skill rather than the brute force kind of labor we used to rely on in America. True, not all will require a college degree, but most will require some kind of training after high school. We cannot support a nation with all service industry jobs. Learn to operate a few computer programs, learn to use some basic algebra, learn what it takes to get and keep a job.

Into the mix is the fact that this country has the notion that keeps getting passed around that every kid can go to college. Every kid cannot go to college. Fully 40% of the kids who start college don't end up with a degree. So it's not just the attitudes of the guys in this country that have to change, it's an educational system that needs to adapt to give valuable job skills to those 70% of Americans who don't get a college degree. It's an economy that has to adapt to making things here in America that can keep us competitive in the world market, so all of our money does not continue to flow overseas where people do make useful things. The good news is that America still has the largest economy in the world. Overall we still have a high standard of living. The bad news is that if we continue on the track we're on, we risk becoming a poor backwater with a wealthy elite and a huge poverty stricken working class with no in between. Which do we prefer?