June 2006

Reality testing (Thursday, 6/29/06)
In a democracy with stable and firm institutions, politicians occasionally lead, but usually spend more of their time following public opinion. It means that large numbers of individuals as well as most institutions can easily be left far behind during a period of rapid change. This is particularly the case now, given the synergistic interaction of the related but nonetheless distinct knowledge and high-technology revolutions.

Not so long ago, many major politicians were speaking and working in support of the slavery institution, at least in part because they had to satisfy their constituencies in order to remain in office. Now, though, both major political parties and virtually all major politicians are reflecting changed popular realities in the United States in their respective ways. According to polls, only a few years after it was rare for black Americans to appear in the popular mass media at all, TV star and self-made billionaire Oprah Winfrey is the most admired woman in America. Moreover, both current and immediate past Secretaries of State are African Americans, and they're also Republicans. Times are changing.

Race-based politics haven't disappeared entirely, of course, and many Americans continue to hold beliefs about race that are not supported by the best available scientific evidence. The knowledge revolution has left most Americans behind in other areas as well. For instance, Americans commonly believe that the U.S. makes more generous foreign aid contributions than any other country; but, as USA Today reports, the facts don't support this widely-held belief.

Who's going to be leaving a lot of money to their kids? (Tuesday, 6/27/06)
Not the world's richest people, and not most baby boomers either, but for different reasons. Actually, this requires some clarification.

Omaha's Warren Buffett, who, except for Bill Gates, is the richest person in the world, has indicated that he wants his three children to have enough so that they can do anything they like, but not so they and their descendants can do nothing. Similarly, Bill and Melinda Gates, who are a generation younger than Buffett, but who also have three children, have indicated that they don't believe in simply dumping great wealth on their kids, thinking that it's likely to be destructive, not only for society but for their children as well.

While it's unlikely that either the Buffett or Gates children will ever have to apply for food stamps, Mr. Buffett and the Gates have been making both news and history by essentially doubling the size of what was already the world's largest Foundation.

In his book, All the Presidents' Children, Doug Wead documents how poorly so many of the children of presidents have made out in life. Similarly, many people who have been born into great wealth have had major difficulties too. Poverty certainly isn't good for people, but there are also "diseases of affluence," as well, and wealth also can be hazardous to personal well-being.

Not all children of wealth have led disastrous or unproductive lives. For instance, Minnesota's Senator Mark Dayton financed his own campaign for the Senate and has deflected his Senate salary for other than personal use.

Similarly, a half-century ago, the Kennedy family controlled one of America's biggest fortunes, so the younger generation was taught that it would be a waste of their time and talents either to dedicate their lives to making money or to spending their father's. Old Joe Kennedy aspired to putting a son in the White House, and, even though it wasn't the one he planned on helping to make president, his aspirations were fulfilled. Over the years, the fairly reckless but also very unlucky family produced many people who had never known not being rich and who dedicated their lives to public service rather than money.

Bill Gates, who was born in 1955, is a member of the baby-boom generation, and, unlike most of his fellows in the huge boomer cohort, has plenty to give. Most boomers, on the other hand, aren't likely to have anything of consequence left to leave either to their children or to charity. Here's more from USA Today on how longer lives and larger health care costs are reducing inheritances.

Meanwhile, Mindy Fetterman tells about how retirement has gotten more complicated as life beyond work has been extended from a few years to decades. In fact, many people will go through five stages, she says.

What corn and gold may have in common, in addition to color (Monday, 6/26/06)
The New York Times reports on the ethanol boom that is changing the economy of the American plains. Factories that "spin" corn into fuel that can be used by specially-configured gasoline engines are sprouting up all over.

The long-term consequences for the animal and human food supply of diverting large amounts of corn and farmland to energy production are still in question. Also, the consequences for energy independence and national security, as well as for the environment, may be more limited than enthusiasts currently expect, unless increased efficiencies can be brought to the ethanol production process. Presently, it appears that it requires about 1 unit of energy from other sources, such as oil, to produce no more than 1.4 units of ethanol. The net gain remains fairly small; some analysts say that there is even a net loss of energy. We'll see.

Nonetheless, those increased efficiencies may be coming soon, given the enormous productivity increases in agriculture itself over the past several decades because of mechanization and the recent application of high-technology. In fact, American farmers have become victims of their own success to some extent, given that they have made such effective use of technology and did so earlier than people in many other economic sectors.

Doctors' helpers (Monday, 6/26/06)
For many years, the medical profession has been trying to cope with rising health care costs by moving as many medical services as low in the skills/cost hierarchy as possible. That is, you wouldn't want to have to pay for a specialized surgeon's time in order to have him/her measure your blood pressure. Better to have a less costly person who is perfectly competent for the job do that. Some services require more costly levels of training than others. Medicine now operates on some version of a "need to know" basis.

As a consequence, many patients now to go clinics to consult with professionals who can legally write prescriptions and who wear stethoscopes around their shoulders, but who are not physicians. Some of these are nurse practitioners, and others are physician assistants.

Are Gates and Buffett going to accomplish things that the world's governments have been unable to do? (Monday, 6/26/06)
Before long, it may very well be that Warren Buffett will no longer be the second-richest person in the world, but it will be for all the right reasons. He has committed the bulk of his multibillion dollar fortune to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The Buffett billions will be used to seek cures for the world's top diseases and to further education.

Buffett is a generation older than Bill Gates, but he and Gates have become very good friends. It's clear that Omaha's richest man is impressed with how the Gates are running their foundation and the fact that they are sufficiently young that they will be able to direct it for many years to come. Buffett has stipulated that his yearly contributions be distributed during the years in which they are given to the Gates Foundation, which means that the Foundation will be distributing about twice as much money as it has been doing each year so far.

It remains to be seen whether other wealthy entrepreneurs will follow the Gates/Buffett lead. However, it's clear that this is a way for brilliantly gifted and highly successful people to contribute in multiple ways--first, by benefitting the economy with their work and creating large numbers of jobs; then, by using their resources and brilliance to become effective philanthropists on a scale that really can make a difference to the entire world.

Meanwhile, the UK's Tony Blair says that the G8 hasn't been sufficiently forthcoming in following through on its commitments to fight global poverty. The Prime Minister would like to see more action.

Big year for the U.S. population (Sunday, 6/25/06)
Demographers are forecasting that this will be the year when America's population will reach 300 million. Could our forebears ever have anticipated such a thing?

Well, yes, it's clear that many of America's founding folks expected their democratic experiment to result in something that would eventually dwarf England, which, at that time, had not yet become a global imperial power. In fact, many 19th century American politicians expected the U.S. eventually to cover all of North America. Of course, some of these were interested in expanding the number of slave states and, thus, permanently cementing the slavery institution in the United States.

Lincoln was not one of these, incidentally--he opposed the so-called Mexican War of the late 1840s--and even expected the American population to grow to 300 million by several decades ago. It was about one-tenth that size during his administration, smaller than the population of California now.

Efficiency hits doctors offices (Sunday, 6/25/06)
An increasing number of American physicians are feeling competition from walk-in clinics and other such organizations, and, as a consequence, are making fuller use of technology and other resources in order to increase their efficiencies and better meet the needs of patients who don't want to get a lot older while waiting to see their doctors. Here's more from Milt Freudenheim of the New York Times.

Is your CEO worth more than 260 times as much as you? (Friday, 6/23/06)
A new report from the Economic Policy Institute finds that American Chief Executive Officers earn 262 times as much as the average worker.

That may not seem fair, and, in fact, it may not be, depending on whether the people paying out the money are making fully free and informed decisions. In a market economy, fairness has nothing to do with it, because something is "worth" what somebody is willing to pay for it. If corporate stockholders really want to pay CEOs this much, and feel that they have to do so for the good of their companies, that's really up to them. It's their money.

Problem is, as we've said before, these things often do occur without the fully informed consent of the company's owners, and, when this is the case, there is a serious problem. However, it has nothing to do with how MUCH chief executives are paid, because only those persons directly involved in a transaction are in a position to agree on a price.

Pay discrepancies are even greater in other lines of work. For instance, according to Forbes magazine, Tom Cruise's income was approximately $67 million during 2005. How does this compare to the members of crews, say, who have worked with him on film projects? We don't know either, but we would be surprised if he has earned "only" 262 times as much as the majority of people on film production teams.

A-list stars of Cruise's caliber are guaranteed tens of millions of dollars to do a film, and production typically lasts only about four months. Of course, Tom Cruise has a reputation as an extremely committed and conscientious actor who may spend many months preparing for a role--e.g., learning to become expert in Japanese sword fighting for his recent Samurai picture. Still, most actors are involved on a daily basis only during a film's shooting, not during the long periods of preproduction or post-production. Major stars, then, can earn tens of millions of dollars for only a few months work.

Why is Tom Cruise paid far more than any of the world's heads of state, while a grip, say, may earn about as much as s/he would on any ordinary job outside the film industry? Because the film is sold as a "Tom Cruise picture," and few people would pay to see it if he were not leading its cast. The people who negotiate with big stars can decide that it is perfectly rational and in their best interest to pay people like Cruise far more than they themselves or top studio executives earn. Major entertainment and big-time commercial sports are two industries in which some of the workers are paid far more than their bosses, but, of course, most of the workers aren't.

It's also said that David Letterman earned about $40 million last year. It's quite likely that this is many dozens of times more than any of the 150 or so people that it takes to get his television show on the air several times per week. Is that fair? Well, considering that the other people probably would have no jobs at all if he were not headlining the show, it probably is. A truly good business of any kind is one in which everyone who is touched by it benefits, but it will never be to the same extent. Supply-demand relationships determine the price of anything in a truly open market economy in which something as nearly as possible resembling "perfect competition" ensues.

If there is fraud or collusion or price fixing, that's another matter entirely, and these are the things that should concern us, not the prices of products or services themselves. It may or may not be the case that there is open competition for the services of some American corporate CEOs. However, even when there is, CEOs are likely to make a lot of money. The CEO seems to be a critical factor in determining the success or failure of a company. People who can perform at high levels in this sort of role continue to be scarce, and scarcity drives up prices.

Still dominant, but how much longer? (Wednesday, 6/21/06)
Fareed Zakaria appears on American television a lot. He's a perfectly legal immigrant with a Harvard Ph. D. who was so impressive when he was young, that he was made editor of the prestigious Foreign Affairs journal when he was only 28 years old. He's still not very old and he's still very impressive.

In addition to his own television program on PBS, as well as a regular panel slot on ABC News' "This Week With George Stephanopoulos," he's editor of the international edition of Newsweek magazine. We don't know how many languages he speaks, but it has to be at least two, because English, in which he is fully expert at the post-doctoral level, is not his native language.

All of this is to say that, unlike most Americans, Dr. Zakaria has had broad experience outside the United States and has a global perspective that makes him very much worth listening to. For instance, also unlike most Americans, he recognizes that America's dominant economic, scientific, and military preeminence are not birthrights and won't necessarily last. He recognizes that much of the rest of the world is rapidly catching up to the U. S. in many areas, and several societies already have pulled out ahead in some.

Fewer American workers are using illegal drugs (Wednesday, 6/21/06)
The number of workers testing positive for illegal drug use has fallen to its lowest level in nearly 20 years. We'd like to think that it's because more workers have realized that using substances like methamphetamine is like sticking blowtorches in their ears, but that may not be the reason. Stephanie Armour and Del Jones write in USA Today report that experts are saying that it's more likely because of a combination of several other things, including more vigorous drug testing.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: NOAA Ocean Explorer (Tuesday, 6/20/06)
Climate change isn't simply affecting that thin layer of atmosphere surrounding the earth, but also the upper layers of the world's oceans. For instance, as the oceans get warmer, tropical storms become more numerous and more severe. For this reason and others, you may want to get into closer touch with your world's oceans, and the NOAA Ocean Explorer can help. Incidentally, NOAA is the government agency that is responsible for those weather radios that can alert you in the middle of the night if tornados or other deadly storms are brewing in your area.

iSweatshop? (Monday, 6/19/06)
Life is not at all comfortable for the multitudes of Chinese people who don't have the money to pay off corrupt government officials in order to get things done. The Chinese government does its best to make life easy for foreign tourists and investors, as well as its new entrepreneurial class that is driving China's big economic boom. But, for the hundreds of millions of people who have no alternative but to seek out low pay jobs under sweatshop conditions or even conditions of near slavery, life can be very grim indeed, particularly when their government provides no protection.

Walaika Haskins reports that Apple Computer Corporation is looking into allegations in a London newspaper that its phenomenally successful iPod is being manufactured under sweatshop conditions in the world's most populous country.

Is Bill Gates leaving an unsettling wake? (Saturday, 6/17/06)
Stephen Foley writes from New York for The Independent about what could turn out to be upheaval at Microsoft set off by Billionaire Bill's decision to concentrate more each day on giving money away than on making it.

Meanwhile, the Chicago Tribune's Michael Baron reports that there hasn't been much reaction from Wall Street to Bill's career-change plans. It suggests that Microsoft has grown successfully beyond being simply an extension of Bill Gates. Years ago, it's unlikely that he could have left the company or sold a large block of stock without setting off a stock-selling frenzy that could have made him instantly something less than the wealthiest individual in the world. Now, though, Microsoft is more than Bill Gates and probably could continue without any involvement from him at all.

On the other hand, Apple Computer Corporation probably hasn't reached that point yet. When longtime Gates adversary Steve Jobs developed cancer awhile back, it is said to have sent shock waves through the company and the investment community, at least among those persons who knew about it. Apparently, Mr. Jobs is cancer-free now, though.

At any rate, it's much easier to imagine a Microsoft without Gates than an Apple without Jobs.

Guess what's about the same age as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs (Saturday, 6/17/06)
If you said "the Interstate Highway System," you're entitled to the coveted NewWork News handshake award. It's pretty much agreed that the national highway system for which President Eisenhower is given much credit changed America and certainly changed American business. As the San Francisco Chronicle reports, it's just turning 50 years old.

When career soldier Dwight Eisenhower was suspecting that he would spend his entire military career in an office and probably never advance beyond, say, Lt. Colonel, if that, he volunteered in 1919 to be part of an experiment to see if it was possible--POSSIBLE--to drive military vehicles across the United States. The whole effort was given enormous publicity, including the many photographs of Army trucks being pulled out of the mud by horses.

In addition to getting Eisenhower out of the office for a while, the experience seemed to have had quite a lot to do with convincing the future president that the United States needed a national highway system. Seeing Germany's autobahnen once he got to Europe seemed to solidify the idea, and the memories galvanized him once he became president.

Incidentally, Dwight Eisenhower needn't have worried about his own career. In record time, he was promoted from Lt. Colonel to Five-Star General once the Allies needed the organizational and diplomatic genius that he had exhibited over so many years in Army offices.

Bill and the biggest (Friday, 6/16/06)
Bill Gates has been the richest individual in the world for at least a dozen years after building the largest software company in the world. He also established the largest charitable foundation in world history.

He announced yesterday that, within two years, he will be giving his fullest attention to giving away his great wealth through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Some people believe that Bill's impact on the nature of philanthropy itself may be as great as his impact on the high-technology revolution. Finally, Todd Bishop writes in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that Mr. Gates' much reduced role in the company he founded might be good for Microsoft Corporation as well.

Interestingly, we chose to focus on the Gates Foundation and its founder yesterday as our NewWork News Web Tip many hours before the Gates announcement. We posted our piece, then, once the announcement was made, we added a few words to one paragraph to reflect that news that we were sure would be on the next day's front pages throughout the country.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (Thursday, 6/15/06)
Bill Gates finally turned 50 last year, even though it seems as though he's been around forever. Actually, he WAS helping to change the world when he was still in his teens, and he's been the wealthiest person in the world since at least his thirties, maybe his twenties, which may give hope to college dropouts everywhere.

For a brief period several years ago before the bursting of the dot-com-all-ye-faithful bubble and before courts ordered the breakup of Microsoft Corporation into several "Baby Bills," Billionaire Bill's net worth was estimated at $100 billion, which, for readers in parts of the world that use the word "billion" differently, means one-hundred-thousand-million dollars. To put things into perspective, that number of $1 dollar bills, laid end-to-end, would extend about 380 times around the Earth, or, about 20 times the distance from the Earth to the Moon and back again.

The breakup of Microsoft never happened, but protracted court battles and attendant publicity helped to drive Microsoft stock values down. More recently, Forbes magazine estimates Mr. Gates' wealth at about $50 billion in 2006 dollars, which still puts him several billion ahead of Number 2, Omaha's Warren Buffett.

During the late 1990s, when Ted Turner announced that he would donate a billion dollars to the United Nations, criticism of Bill Gates arose because he hadn't given away much of his money yet, even though he had announced that he would eventually give away nearly all of it, because he doesn't believe in simply dumping it on his kids. As Senator Mark Dayton's father often told him when he was growing up, "There's nothing worse than a rich bum." However, Bill's response at the time was, "Look, I'm still only about 40 years old."

Nonetheless, Mr. Gates apparently was sufficiently embarrassed by all the publicity, that he quickly established a foundation in his wife's and his own name, which now gives away about as much money each year as fellow-billionaire Oprah Winfrey has altogether. At the beginning, Bill's father, William Gates, Sr., a noted and recently retired Seattle lawyer, was put in charge of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, with emphasis on the supporting of worldwide health and learning initiatives.

The richest individual in the world is now one of several co-chairs of Earth's largest foundation, which gives away enough money each year to make a really significant difference in the condition of peoples throughout the world. In fact, Bill Gates has announced that he is giving up his day-to-day responsibilities at Microsoft in order to concentrate his attentions on the foundation.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: The Apollo Alliance (Tuesday, 6/13/06)
During the hot old days of the Vietnam War, the New Yorker magazine ran a cartoon showing a concert pianist in tails standing beside his grand piano saying, "Before we begin, I have a few remarks about American foreign policy."

Such bait-and-switch techniques have been used by many entertainers over the years who have the power to attract attention for reasons having nothing to do with their ideas or lack of them. Recent examples may be Tom Cruise and the "Dixie Chicks," but there have been lots of others. Many people--not just entertainers--can easily come to "believe their own press releases," in a sense, and assume that, because they have been successful in a particular line of work, they necessarily know something about unrelated issues, or that "everybody else has a right to their opinions," whether or not they ask for them, and whether or not they're told ahead of time that this is what they will get for the price of a ticket.

After all, publicity, self-promotion, and hype are the lifeblood of commercial entertainment. Without a lot of noise, nothing happens, and it has become an increasingly noisy environment in which the ability to stand out and get noticed has resulted in noisy escalations.

Of course, entertainers are citizens too, and they have a right to be politically active and a right to speak, but not a RIGHT to be heard. That is, they don't have a RIGHT to our time or a RIGHT to be taken seriously. Those things must be earned. It all has to do with WHAT IT TAKES to be right about anything, and many of the noisiest individuals who have the ability to attract public attention to their political or religious opinions typically don't have a clue.

However, those who do their homework may very well become expert so as to earn our time and attention. Becoming a successful artist doesn't preclude the possibility of excelling in other areas as well. For instance, Goethe was one of history's greatest writers and also one of its greatest scientists. The current Secretary of State is a very good pianist who once aspired to making her living on the concert stage. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan once was a Julliard student and played in traveling orchestras.

Robert Redford has the ability to become the center of attention by simply walking into a room or in front of a camera, and he has used his celebrity to attract attention to various causes in which he has been active for many years. However, he doesn't live in Beverly Hills and has done his best to disconnect himself from the Hollywood culture in many ways. Even though he was born in Santa Monica, he hasn't lived in California for decades.

Redford is not simply a movie star, or even "simply" a noted actor, director, and film producer. He's also been a businessman and environmental activist, among other things. In the long-run, he may be most influential as an educator because of the Sundance Institute and Film Festival that he established, all of which may very well live on long after he's gone. Even though he has succeeded grandly in Hollywood's industry, he has great depth and sophistication, and he has given no indication of being self-obsessed or of having been romanced by his own publicity.

Recently, he's been calling a good deal of attention to the Apollo Alliance, an organization dedicated to reducing America's dependence on foreign sources of energy for both economic and national security reasons, as well as to the creation of the next generation of quality American jobs.

Along similar lines, three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has been pushing the need for a reorganization of the American economy based on clean, renewable sources of energy. His latest book, The World is Flat, has sold two-million copies in hardback, and he is featured in a new film called "Addicted to Oil," which will run on the Discovery Channel. At the same time, former Vice President Al Gore is featured in a new feature film called, An Inconvenient Truth. Even the Bush administration, which contains a number of major figures who seem to have close ties to the oil industry, now has a Secretary of the Treasury who is a committed environmentalist.

After many years of accumulating scientific evidence of climate change, something important finally may be happening in the political culture, which, typically follows and reflects changes in society at large. Former professional politician Al Gore is right in attempting to influence public attitudes, not simply attitudes among people on Capitol Hill or in the White House. It's a mistake to spend too much time agonizing over individuals, even the President of the United States. Attitudes held by millions of people WILL be represented in our political culture, if not by George W. Bush, then by somebody else.

Moreover, a change of public attitude and, thus, of public policy may not come a moment too soon. Gore indicates in his movie that climate changes may be occurring much more rapidly than previously believed. Yes, this does appear to be the case, and it's what Ray Kurzweil has been saying all along. Dr. Kurzweil has demonstrated that major changes often are perceived as linear when, with sufficient perspective, we can see that they are really geometric or "ogival."

An example is the number of humans on Earth, which remained fairly small for tens of thousands of years, increasing only very slightly over most of that period. Then, for the first time in human history, total world population reached one billion somewhere around 1840. Now, fewer than 170 years later, there are approximately 6 1/2 billion persons on the Earth.

In only 170 years, Earth has accumulated 5 1/2 times as many people as it took during all of Earth's history to accumulate up until about the time that the grandparents of some people still living were born. And, yes, it does appear that the same kinds of mathematical functions can be used to represent climate change.

Ray Kurzweil's latest book, The Singularity is Near, should be bought and read by each of the two million persons who have purchased Tom Friedman's latest book. They make good companion reads, and both are among the most important books of the past half-century.

It all comes down to what philosophers for centuries have been referring to as "epistemology." WHAT we know depends entirely on HOW we know it. There has been a lot of magical thinking in the Bush administration on many topics by people who don't yet understand WHAT IT TAKES to be right about anything. Problem is, the majority of the Administration's noisiest and most outspoken critics don't either, and the interacting knowledge and tech revolutions are leaving whole societies and their institutions far behind.

"What better time to pay taxes than after you're dead?" (Monday, 6/12/06)
Now that repeal of the estate tax has failed in the Senate, owners of small businesses have varied ideas about what to do. The quotation in our headline is from a Proctor, Minnesota businessman who expects his heirs to pay up.

In the psycholinguistics department, Republican pollster and strategist Dr. Frank Luntz recommended sometime ago that Republicans stop referring to the "estate tax" and start calling it the "death tax." This seemed to be related to a major turnaround in public opinion. When nearly everybody was calling it the "estate tax," the public seemed overwhelmingly against repealing it. After Republicans had been calling it the "death tax" for awhile, polls suggested an almost complete turnaround in public opinion. Suddenly, the majority of Americans seemed to favor the idea of repeal, even though only the very rich would be affected.

David Francis worries about what a repeal of the estate tax could mean for American democracy.

China's energy appetites are shaking the world (Sunday, 6/11/06)
For several years, China's economy has been booming at a rate that makes it double every seven or eight years. Its voracious appetite for energy has been increasing at a similar pace. As a consequence, China seems to have altered the global oil market permanently, perhaps even hastening the day when many of its competitors, including Europe and the United States, will no longer have economies based on fossil fuels. Peter Enav and Elaine Kurtenback report from Zhenhai, China on shifting oil consumption patterns throughout the world as a consequence of China's "thirst for oil."

Meanwhile, China's coal mines are under increasing pressure to produce as well. This has meant that mine disasters are reported almost daily, and most don't seem to be reported at all. Mine safety still isn't much of a priority in China, at this point, but as James Carroll reports from Washington for the Louisville Courier-Journal, recent disasters have moved it to the front burner in the United States.

Finally, China's increasing energy consumption is also producing a world-class environmental problem within the country itself, and, as Keith Bradsher and David Barboza report from Hanjing, for the rest of the rest of the world as well.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Office of Vocational and Adult Education (Sunday, 6/11/06)
Why do professional researchers go to all that trouble and spend all that time on their projects? Because THAT'S WHAT IT TAKES, and if we don't do what it takes, we can't expect to be right about anything any more consistently than by flipping a coin. Of course, it's fairly easy to hold the same beliefs as most of the people who surround you, and, thus, be told you're right repeatedly, but that's not the same thing as being right.

The most fundamental purpose of educational institutions is to produce educated persons, not prepare people for jobs or careers. Education for living and education for citizenship are particularly important now that the tech and knowledge revolutions have resulted in a situation in which most people's beliefs about most things are, at least to some extent, simply wrong.

Still, people need to make a living in the revolutionary new world economy, and, the required skill sets for most jobs that pay well have been escalating significantly. Moreover, with the rapid rate of change in the economy, retraining seems necessary at an ever-increasing rate. Here's the U. S. Department of Education's Office of Vocational and Adult Education.

A setback for farm subsidies (Thursday, 6/8/06)
Congress has turned back efforts to beef up farm subsidies by $4 billion to cover increased fuel costs as well as the consequences of droughts and floods. Richard Wolf reports that it may mean a change of direction for American farmers.

Why subsidize farmers in the first place? Many economists believe that farming as a business--as opposed to subsistence farming, which seems to operate according to different principles--is inherently unprofitable in the long-run. But, if becoming too dependent on foreign sources of energy can be a threat to national security, think of what might happen if the United States were entirely dependent on foreign sources of food. The U.S. cannot afford to allow all of its farmers to go out of business.

Corruption and politics in China (Wednesday, 6/7/06)
China has the world's largest population as well as the fastest growing economy. Also, the Chinese recognize that their country once was the most advanced on Earth and many probably intend for it to achieve that distinction again sometime later this century.

However, it isn't at all clear what's going to happen or what's happening now. For one thing, corruption in China is legendary. For another, it appears that there were as many as 80,000 protests last year by people throughout the country who have not been benefitting from the current economic boom in some regions, to say the very least. Are social upheaval and disintegration on the Chinese horizon?

Also, how much effect does the central government in Beijing really have at this point on other booming regions such as Shanghai? For instance, the government has announced that most land acquisitions across the country have been illegal and intends to do something about it. So far, many of the people making the acquisitions seem unimpressed, suggesting that the distribution of power may be undergoing reorganization across the country.

Is the world undergoing "smithereening?" (Monday, 6/5/06)
Fred Weir is in Moscow where he reports on very small regions and collections of people that want to be regarded as independent states. The ultimate result of this "atomization" process might be the increasing isolation of individuals. However, it's not necessarily a new phenomenon. Long before several U.S. states broke away to form the Confederacy in the mid-19th century, there were people in early American who favored the secession of New York City.

On the other hand, we've been speculating about the future of the "nation-state," as we know it, which is one of world history's fairly recent geopolitical inventions. For instance, we've been wondering what may really be going on at the border which for many years now has separated Mexico from the United States, and what its future may be. Also, how about one of the longest international boundaries in the world--the one between the United States and Canada? It probably won't be possible to "lock it down" somehow, so, now what?

Overall, it simply seems that the world is reorganizing, and one of the principal sources of stress is that no one knows what the outcome will be, or, for that matter, if the process will stabilize, resulting in some new equilibrium, or if the churning will simply continue.

For those who don't know how to live (Monday, 6/5/06)
People in other parts of the world who think the United States is just one big hospital of some sort may suspect that many Americans really have more need for getting in touch with basic realities than for "life coaches" to help them with their get-even-more-privileged skills. Nonetheless, Patrik Jonsson reports from Atlanta that even many of America's young are interpreting their own inability to delay gratification to mean that their life skills are deficient and that they are in need of coaching.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: The Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary (Saturday, 6/3/06)
In his autobiography, which puts his personal spin on his life's story only up to about age 50 or so, Benjamin Franklin tells about a very early trip to England where he got a glimpse across the room in a London coffee shop of a very old Isaac Newton, but didn't have sufficient nerve to go over and talk to him. Franklin doesn't say whether it was simply a matter of being "star struck," or if the great physicist's reputation for tearing people's heads off and handing them to them was behind Franklin's youthful reticence.

At any rate, among many other things, Benjamin Franklin often is identified as America's first entrepreneur. He was rich enough by the time he wrote his autobiography that he was free to concentrate full time on being remembered as a great physicist himself, and, of course, on the reasons that most Americans remember him three centuries after his birth: his key diplomatic activities as an old man which enlisted French assistance in winning a war against the strongest military power on earth. Here's an excellent site to help you celebrate Franklin's 300th birthday this year: The Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary.

"Whoops" doesn't seem to be quite enough (Friday, 6/2/06)
With hi-tech, fewer people can make more and bigger mistakes in less time than ever before, which means that world-class foul-ups like the loss of personal data on tens of millions of veterans probably should be included in the productivity statistics. Along similar lines, the University of Kentucky accidentally posted Social Security numbers for 1,300 employes on the Internet for several weeks.

We've been claiming for sometime that the synergistic interaction of the technology revolution and the knowledge revolution is leaving many individuals and most institutions hopelessly behind. During the past several years, we've seen the spectacular failure of many American institutions in a variety of ways. Other institutions are following suit, but many consequences of these failures won't become visible to the general population and many of their leaders for months or years.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Faces of the Fallen (Thursday, 6/1/06)
The Bush administration's policy is to do all it can to prevent the press from photographing caskets containing war dead, and high government officials, including the President, do not attend military funerals. Under these conditions, it may be easier to forget that each of the 2,416 American deaths in Iraq and the 292 American deaths in Afghanistan, as of May 31, 2006, represents a real person, most with grieving families who aren't likely to get over these deaths during their lifetimes.

Sometimes war is necessary--few Americans would claim that it was a mistake to bring down Germany's Nazi regime through the use of military force--but war is always a messy and very costly business that certainly shouldn't be forgotten. The Washington Post, in its online Faces of the Fallen section, enables readers to learn at least a little about each of the the persons whose lives have been sacrificed in the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to see most of their photographs.

On the other hand, it's useful to put America's current wars into historical context. For instance, it's been approximately 39 months since the U.S. invaded Iraq on March 20, 2003, with more than 2,400 American deaths. By comparison, it was approximately 45 months from the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor until Japan's surrender ended World War II in early September, 1945. During World War II, there were more than 400,000 American deaths. At the same time, during that great mid-20th century war, more than 450,000 people died in the United Kingdom, while more than 23,000,000 (sic) persons died in the Soviet Union.

Some of the numbers are likely to be disputed for years, just as Americans are likely to be arguing about the current War in Iraq a century from now. Clearly, there have been far more unknown soldiers than those buried at Arlington National Cemetery, but nobody is sure how many.

In this case, we're relying, in large part, on data from George Mason University's History News Network. In fact, for further perspective, here are the approximate numbers of American war dead so far, according to George Mason University historians:

American Revolution: 25,324
War of 1812: 2,260
Mexican War: 13,283
Civil War: 863,153
Spanish-American War: 2,446
World War I: 116,516
World War II: 405,399
Korean War: 54,246
Vietnam War: 56,244
Panama Invasion: 23
Gulf War (1991): 148

Incidentally, while more Americans died as a consequence of the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001 than at Pearl Harbor, several times as many Americans died in the Battle of the Bulge in World War II.