November 2007

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Clued in or Clueless? (Monday, 11/26/07)
A marketing expert lists ten things that so-called "millennials" don't know or find surprising. If accurate, the things that young Americans don't know about marketing might be seen as mirroring what they don't know about themselves or their world.

Incidentally, if American young people expect jobs to be plentiful and life to be easy, get most of their news from a TV comedy show, and don't think technical occupations are "cool," this is not to say that young people in general have these and other kinds of "entitlement" attitudes.

It's important to keep in mind that the American population now makes up approximately 4.5 percent of the world's population--more than 95 percent of the world's people do NOT live in the United States--and young people throughout much of the world are positioning themselves to take the jobs, incomes, and lifestyles to which many Americans have long felt entitled.

Smith is still number 1, but Garcia and Rodriguez are gaining (Tuesday, 11/20/07)
America's increasing diversity is evident in the distribution of surnames in the U. S. population. According to the U. S. Census Bureau, "Smith" is still the most common name in the United States, but "Garcia" and "Rodriguez" are now in the top 10.

Not so long ago, African Americans made up the largest minority in the U. S., but no longer. Hispanics are now the largest, and it is expected that Caucasians of Western European ancestry will no longer be in the majority sometime later this century.

Instead, America is becoming a nation of minorities, but also of mixtures, as an increasing number of Americans marry persons of a different race, producing children of mixed ancestry.

In fact, there is some chance that one of these will be the next president of the United States. Incidentally, he has said, hyperbolically, that his father's skin was "black as pitch," while his mother's was "white as snow." Quite literally, Senator Obama is "African-American," but his ancestry is as much white as it is black. The fact that he's usually referred to as "black" brings to mind the old South Africa and suggests that racism still influences American perceptions, even when they're positive.

Overt racism in the United States has destroyed millions of lives over many centuries and limited millions more. However, even if it were not an unqualified evil, from a modern perspective, it's hard to imagine how any notions could be more stupid. Believing that membership in a given group is determined by such a superficial attribute as skin tone and that members of that group are inherently inferior seems about as smart and well-informed as believing that there is a rhinoceros in your neighbor's bathtub.

Fortunately, ethnicity or skin tone don't seem to be as salient to members of younger generations now, so we may finally be moving beyond "race-based politics" and the categorical thinking that has contaminated relationships so long in the regions of the Americas now occupied by the United States.

But, wait, isn't "race" a bogus concept in the first place? DNA gets closer to what we're made of, and, if you look at a person's DNA, you can't tell what "race" s/he is. For sometime, the evidence has been growing that "race" is more conceptual than biological. This always has been the case, even though our ancestors didn't realize it. When variability within categories is as great or greater than between categories, it calls the reality of the categories themselves into question.

It all relates to issues that we have discussed for years and which will be among those central to our NewWorld Trends project: What does it TAKE to be right about something? What does it TAKE to be sure about anything?

Both are issues that some members of humanity have learned a lot about during recent history. Study the latest versions of what philosophers for centuries have called epistemology if you are interested in the first question. Study social psychology, cultural anthropology, and related disciplines if you are interested in the second.

Overall, we can say that the conditions for belief are far less rigorous than the conditions for truth.

Waddhe say? (Friday, 11/16/07)
When Alan Greenspan was Federal Reserve Chairman, he often left his listeners scratching their heads when he described the American economy or government policy. Apparently, he spoke "in code" because he was very much aware that the world was listening, and he could not make descriptive statements without influencing things. He was fearful of setting off a "stampede."

However, Bloomberg News' Craig Torres reports that the current Fed Chairman, Ben Bernanke, apparently wants more transparency.

Here's one billionaire who wouldn't mind paying more taxes (Friday, 11/16/07)
The Republican mantra about "cutting taxes" implies that nobody wants to pay higher taxes, and that society will be better off if as much money as possible is left in the private sector to do its work. However, it appears that some things are best and most efficiently done collectively. For instance, if our taxes were eliminated all together, none of us would be able to build a new bridge in Minneapolis to replace the one that collapsed four months ago.

It doesn't even appear correct to assume that all the wealthy people in society favor government policies that will enable them to hold on to as much of their money as possible. For instance, multibillionaire Warren Buffett frequently points out that he wouldn't at all mind paying a larger share of his income in taxes. In fact, he told Congress the other day that the estate tax should be retained. Here's more from the New York Times.

The economics of happiness (Thursday, 11/15/07)
It may seem ironic that many of the ideas supporting the American Revolution came from English thinkers. For instance, Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the first draft of the Declaration of Independence, did a slight modification of British philosopher John Locke's phrase, when he put "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" in the Declaration.

Are we about to amend Jefferson's reference to the "pursuit" of happiness as a matter of government policy? The New York Times' Eduardo Porter says that "the era of laissez-faire happiness might be coming to an end."

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Miller NAWSA Suffrage Scrapbooks, 1897-1911 (Thursday, 11/15/07)
It doesn't appear that political demagoguery was quite so much of a problem during America's early days as it is now; but, then, of course, during its first years, the United States was an oligarchy, not really a democracy. Only white, male, landowners could vote or hold office, and these male aristocrats typically had a monopoly on education and other critical resources, as well. It's why our first several presidents seem to have been remarkable individuals, while the last dozen or so have included both remarkable and not-so-remarkable persons.

Nonetheless, despite the demagoguery, as America became more democratic, it clearly became a more successful society. Among other things, increasing democratization meant a broadening of the franchise to non-landowners, African Americans, women, and, most recently, to persons between eighteen and twenty-one years old.

It may seem more than interesting to realize that, while American slaves were freed more than 140 years ago, women finally got the right to vote within the memories of persons who are still living. Here's much more from the Miller NAWSA Suffrage Scrapbooks, 1897-1911.

A gift from Uncle Rupert? (Wednesday, 11/14/07)
Much to the apparent surprise of the WSJ's editors, apparently, Rupert Murdock has said that he wants to make access to the Wall Street Journal's web site free, which could cost his company as much as $70 million per year. At the moment, the Journal charges a subscription fee of its Web readers, but seems to have a lot of them anyway.

Incidentally, it is true that Mr. Murdock made his original fortune from tabloid newspapers and still owns quite a few, as well as TV's "fair and balanced" Fox News. However, if you assume that this means that the esteemed Wall Street Journal will soon take on a tabloid flavor, your assumptions might be a bit premature. For instance, The Australian is widely regarded as Australia's best newspaper, and Murdock owns it too. He also owns Harper-Collins, an upscale publisher of university textbooks. For a major portion of American history, the Wall Street Journal has been a distinguished brand, and there is no good reason to assume that Mr. Murdock wants to destroy it.

At the very least, we can say that Mr. Murdock is complicated and a highly sophisticated businessman who is not entirely predictable. For instance, most observers agree that television's Fox News tilts hard-right, but, by itself, this does not necessarily imply that Rupert Murdock has a political agenda. In fact, a look at his history suggests that, while he is quite "conservative" economically, he typically has not allowed politics or much of anything else to get in the way of business.

Commercial television is about attracting audiences, not only because of the cable fees, but also because of advertising revenues. If Rupert Murdock believes that there would be a larger American audience for a left-wing television news channel, Fox News might tilt hard-left at this point instead.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (Wednesday, 11/14/07)
We still like the old joke about how Shakespeare really didn't write all those plays; instead, it was another guy by the same name.

Presumably, something similar can be said about the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation named for the first president of the Johnson & Johnson company, founded in the mid-1880s. Actually, the company could have been called Johnson & Johnson & Johnson, because three brothers were involved at the beginning, not just two.

At any rate, the Foundation arose out of a concern with the training of hospital administrators, but now has broader health and health care concerns.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: FORA.tv (Tuesday, 11/13/07)
Today is the one-year anniversary of the day when Google closed the deal to buy YouTube for $1.65 billion, so this seems an appropriate time to examine a major media trend that seems to be accelerating.

Before long, most of television is likely to be "on demand," and we might also expect that most video content will be distributed on the Internet. An increasing number of media distribution organizations are offering "movies on demand" now, and major newspapers and television news organizations already give visitors to their web sites opportunities to watch individual video news stories whenever they like. Moreover, many people now get most of their news from relatively new Internet organizations such as Yahoo!, which weren't regarded as journalism sites at all until very recently.

A few years ago, there was speculation that Brokaw, Jennings, and Rather might be the last evening network TV anchors. This turned out to be slightly premature, although most of the commercials on evening network TV news programs seem to be aimed at older people. There are many other indications that younger people aren't watching these programs, just as they aren't reading newspapers, so one might expect TV news audiences to fade over the years directly ahead.

First, there was the VCR, then Tivo-like devices, then YouTube, now FORA.tv, which provides Internet access to hundreds of conversations, interviews, and the like, whenever you want to see them. You will notice that the latter two in our list above differ from the first two in that YouTube and FORA.tv do not store content locally in your home. Instead, it can be stored virtually anywhere in the world until the moment you wish to see it.

Also, if the $1.65 billion that Google paid for YouTube seems like a lot of money, consider that Dan Rather's boss for the past year at HDNet, 49-year-old Mark Cuban, and his partner sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo! in 1999 at the height of the dot-com-all-ye-faithful period for more then $5.5 billion. The more precise amount has been variously reported as $5.7 billion and $5.9 billion. We don't know which is more accurate, but, what's only a couple of hundred million dollars if you're a billionaire?

Twenty-five years ago, Dan was about the same age as Mark is now, already a famous millionaire, and anchoring the CBS Evening News, while Mark was working as a bartender in Dallas.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: A Case of Population Collapse (Monday, 11/12/07)
Are they the "canaries in the mine?" Are the marine iguanas try to tell humanity something? They have been disappearing from the Galapagos Islands, where Darwin gathered so many specimens in the middle of the 19th century. Conrad Toepfer of Kentucky's Brescia University has been studying the Disappearing Marine Iguanas: A Case of Population Collapse.

Feeling good about your decisions can be fairly easy (Sunday, 11/11/07)
More than forty years ago, Leon Festinger's research in social psychology demononstrated that people tend to feel good about those things for which they have paid a lot or for which they have suffered. We can see examples all around us, and Meredith Small looks at some of them. For instance, she tells "why your decisions are always right."

Foreign rescue? (Saturday, 11/10/07)
Stephen Bernard in New York writes about how foreign investors may jump-start the U. S. housing market and also stimulate the American economy.

For those who are nervous about increasing foreign ownership of American resources and the possibility of a declining American standard of living, there may be more to worry about, particularly for Americans who still believe that they live in the most prosperous nation in the world.

A new study conducted by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development rates America's after-tax per capita income as fifteenth in the world. Of course, as is the case with any study, the results depend on the methods used for obtaining those results, which is why we believe that it is so important that opinion leaders, including professionals in journalism, learn more about methodology. WHAT we know depends entirely on HOW we know it.

Still, there are multiple indicators that the American standard of living is slipping and may sag more over the years ahead, and not just because Americans, both individually and collectively, have been living beyond their means and borrowing so much money for consumption for so many years.

Also, given a future that is likely to be based in hi-tech , China and India are producing far more scientists and engineers than the U. S. at the same time that national polls are saying that many American young people aren't drawn to technical occupations because they don't feel that they are "cool." Speaking of hi-tech, fast "broadband" Internet connections in the United States really aren't all that fast, when compared to what people in several other countries have been able to take for granted for years.

Nonetheless, like braggadocian barroom drunks, many Americans insist on proclaiming that theirs is the "greatest country in the world." There's reason to suspect that many are comparing their life in the United States with what they see on television of life in places like North Korea or Somalia, but how does this boast sound to people in countries such as Canada, Australia, Switzerland, Germany, Japan, or England, which comes out on top of the new OECD survey, incidentally?

Why do so many Americans have to feel that their country is the "best" in the first place, unless they are living examples of what psychologists and psychiatrists call "overcompensation?" There are plenty of reasons to feel patriotic without implying that these feelings must be at somebody else's expense. America has played and continues to play an important role as a modern "carrier" and defender of democracy in the world, helping to insure that it will not, as Lincoln said, "perish from the Earth."

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: American Election Returns, 1787-1825 (Saturday, 11/10/07)
If you've ever walked around Pompeii near Naples, you may find it difficult to regard the United States as very old, and, in fact, it is only the brevity of the human life span that sometimes makes it seem so. In fact, if you're used to thinking in terms of geologic and galactic times scales, even that fateful eruption of Mount Vesuvius in August CE 79 is very recent history.

If you would like to get into the details of elections during America's earliest years-about "a week ago Thursday" on most realistic time scales-here are the returns from its first third of a century or so.

Pain ahead? (Tuesday, 11/6/07)
Many experts are seeing something other than glorious times ahead for the American economy, or, for that matter, the world's. For instance, Mike Peacock writes that both former and present central bankers around the world have been issuing fairly grim forecasts about America's immediate future. Along similar lines, John Poirier says that people running Wall Street firms are expecting a recession in the United States, and George Sorros expects the American economy to undergo a "serious correction" after years of borrowing and spending too much.

Meanwhile, the man who used to be the world's second-richest individual but who seems to be number 3 now--in part because of the rapid rise of Mexican telecommunications whiz Carlos Slim and also the fact that the former number 2 has been giving away a lot of his money--has been worried about the U. S. dollar's decline for a long time. Warren Buffett been in Asia during the past few days, presumably looking for additional investment opportunities outside the United States.

To a point, a weak dollar can be good for America, because it makes American products easier for people in other countries to buy. However, if its value slips too much in relation to other major currencies, like the world's richest model, people throughout the world won't want to hold dollars anymore or make loans that will be repaid in dollars, and that can be very bad for a country that depends greatly on the willingness of other countries to loan it money.

At present, at least, the United States still has the world's largest economy, which means that what happens in the U. S. influences the entire world. Steve Schifferes of BBC News reports that foreclosures have become epidemic in the U. S., while Sean O'Grady reports that banks around the world may be holding $1 trillion in debt that nobody will want to allow to touch them.

Here's history's first $1 trillion company, and it's not in the United States (Tuesday, 11/6/07)
Ying Lou reports that PetroChina Corporation's stock nearly tripled in value on its first day of trading, with the result that the Chinese government-controlled company's market capitalization was larger that those of Exxon and General Electric combined, larger than the value of the entire Russian stock market, in fact.

It's an indication of how investor's are willing to bet on China's growing influence in the world as well as on the Chinese economy's future. Still, observers remember the infamous dot-comedy of only a few years ago. With greatly inflated stock values, AOL bought--it's hard even to imagine this now--Time-Warner, and, in the process, managed to blow away $200 BILLION of stockholder value in only three years. It was the bloody merger of all time.

So, stay tuned.

Has Bill Gates really been the richest American in history? (Tuesday, 11/6/07)
Not even close. Edward Renehan, author of the new book called Commodore: The Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt says that Vanderbilt's net worth the day he died in 1887 would be equivalent to about $168 billion now, compared to Bill Gates' net worth in 2006 of about $53 billion. Moreover, it appears that Vanderbilt and Gates differ in other interesting ways too. According to Mr. Renehan, Cornelius Vanderbilt was the opposite of a philanthropist.

"It isn't easy being green" (Sunday, 11/4/07)
Isn't that what one of Jim Henson's muppets said one time? In this case, though, it could easily come from any one of the nation's mayors. Margot Roosevelt of the Los Angeles Times says that mayors all over the United States are finding that it isn't easy doing what public opinion increasingly expects and is demanding.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Quantifying Environmental Health Impacts (Sunday, 11/4/07)
It's important to put questions in a form that makes answering them possible, and that usually means formulating them in quantitative terms, such as "How many?" or "How much?" or "To what extent?" or "In what ratio or proportion?" If you're interested in how environments impact on health, you're faced with the same need. The World Health Organization knows this and their effort to quantify environmental health impacts has been highly praised.

How to run an army on volunteers, even when enough people aren't volunteering (Saturday, 11/3/07)
Hire lots of contractors, that's how--mercenaries and otherwise. And, borrow the money from China to hire them. Richard Lardner and Lolita Baldor report that the U. S. Army needs to hire another 1,400 people, despite the contracting fraud scandal.

Slavery's looooong shadow still affects children and their education (Friday, 11/2/07)
It has been 142 years since the Civil War effectively ended at Appomattox in April 1865, and the 13th Amendment to the American Constitution was ratified only about eight months later. Slavery had existed quite a lot longer in the Americas than we have been without it to this day, but it was abolished in the United States in 1865.

The North's victory in the Civil War destroyed the South's political as well as its economic system, and many generations of southern whites have remained poor over all the years since. Moreover, even though the slaves had been freed in 1865, many African Americans continue to struggle for economic parity with northern whites. The South has regained much of its political influence in recent years, and several southern economies have recovered as well, as northern whites have moved into the region.

Still, the effects of the South's history can still be seen in its institutions. S.A. Reid of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that majority of the students in the South's public schools are from low-income families.

Is business school really worth your time? (Thursday, 11/1/07)
Brandon Cornuke weighs in on the current controversy about the value of the MBA for those working in business.

Similar arguments go on in relation to much of the rest of higher education. For instance, game show host Pat Sajak often asks "Wheel of Fortune" contestants who are working on master's degrees in the social sciences or humanities what they "intend to do with all that education."

His remarks seem to betray a common attitude in the United States: that higher educational institutions are supposed to train people for jobs or careers, when, in fact, the principal function of educational institutions is to produce educated persons. This seems particularly important in a society largely filled with people whose beliefs about themselves and their world are simply untrue or, at best, unsubstantiated.

From a career standpoint, though, becoming a genuinely educated person seems very important too. Nearly everybody knows people who are building careers in fields that have little directly to do with their college majors. This is not evidence that higher education is not important; instead, it may be evidence that, so long as a person becomes educated, it really doesn't matter what s/he majors in. We know many successful persons from business, including successful entrepreneurs, who probably wouldn't be successful in their lines of work at all if they were not educated persons.