While I also have various ideological preconceptions about the source of the economic problems in the US and elsewhere, I would observe that when someone like the CEO of Apple is expressing an opinion about what makes a factory easier to open in China than in the US, someone who has actually been the guy-who-can-say-yes to actual factories for which that decision was actually made, it's probably worth listening to that opinion. Even if you can somehow prove he's objectively wrong on the merits, his perception would still be a useful data point.
On the other hand I wouldn't expect any particular insight into our school problems from him, beyond what any reasonably skilled businessman could present.
There is a good reason regulation makes it more expensive to open factories in the US: our regulations force companies to internalize the negative externalities their businesses create. China effectively subsidizes industry by forcing its citizens to bear the costs of pollution, injuries, etc, inherent in such activities. US regulation forces companies to bear some of these costs (hardly all of them).
In its retrospective study on the 1970 Clean Air Act, the EPA estimated that the benefit of pollution control over the 20 year period was on the order of $22 trillion. Relative to the "so-called 'no-control' case, an additional 205,000 Americans would have died prematurely and millions more would have suffered illnesses ranging from mild respiratory symptoms to heart disease, chronic bronchitis, asthma attacks, and other severe respiratory problems... the lack of Clean Air Act controls on the use of leaded gasoline would have resulted in major increases in child IQ loss and adult hypertension, heart disease, and stroke." Meanwhile, "the actual costs of achieving the pollution reductions observed over the 20 year period were $523 billion, a small fraction of the estimated monetary benefits."
What's good for business isn't necessarily good for the economy. The things that businessmen push for: deregulation, limitations on tort liability, etc, create more in costs to society then they create in benefits to businesses. Indeed, our measurements of things like GDP are so fundamentally flawed that they encourage politicians to adopt such measures. If a factory's poisonous emissions causes you to have lung problems, that doesn't count against GDP, but when you seek medical attention for those problems GDP goes up!
But in practice the EPA is hardly a disinterested party when it comes to publishing studies on its own cost effectiveness. It exists to increase its budget and scope, just like all other agencies, but has no check on its behavior. Its officials are not elected, cannot be fired, and are effectively invisible to the public. Moreover, opposition to EPA malfeasance/corruption is often caricatured as opposition to clean air and clean water itself.
As an example of regulatory pathology, consider that the EPA is giving grants and instruction manuals to NGOs, telling them how to sue the agency into expanding its powers.
m.yahoo.com/w/news_america/epa-funds-greens-sue-221700941.html?orig_host_hdr=news.yahoo.com&.intl=us&.lang=en-us
The EPA even tacitly encourages such suits, going so
far as to pay for and promote a "Citizen's Guide" that,
among other things, explains how to sue the agency
under "citizen suit" provisions in environmental laws.
The guide's author — the Environmental Law Institute —
has received $9.9 million in EPA grants over the past
decade.
And, to top it off, critics say the EPA often ends up
paying the groups' legal fees under the Equal Access to
Justice Act.
What's going on? "The EPA isn't harmed by these suits,"
said Jeffrey Holmstead, who was an EPA official during
the Bush administration. "Often the suits involve things
the EPA wants to do anyway. By inviting a lawsuit and
then signing a consent decree, the agency gets legal
cover from political heat."
This sounds bad in a soundbite, but this is the way the system works.
Consider this loose example: suppose 2 people get into a fight. One guy really beats up another guy, and the cops are called. If the recipient refuses to press charges, the cops can't do anything.
Similarly, a lot of government agencies can't proactively do something, until someone sues them. By getting sued, they get to act on the complaint, and the legal opinion can be used to justify similar action elsewhere.
There is no nefarious purpose here; it is disingenuous to claim so. Yes, government agencies have issues galore; but by conflating the necessary with the rest, we fail to identify the real problems.
$22T/20 years is over $1T/year. US GDP in 1990 was under $6T. US GDP in 1970 was just over $1T.
> the lack of Clean Air Act controls on the use of leaded gasoline would have resulted in major increases in child IQ loss
Oh really? Why would leaded gas in 1980 cause more problems than leaded gas in 1950?
> Meanwhile, "the actual costs of achieving the pollution reductions observed over the 20 year period were $523 billion, a small fraction of the estimated monetary benefits."
Just as the benefits are not limited to the money not spent on medical care, the money spent on pollution controls are not the only costs.
Larger population and rising wages lead to more cars on the roads and hence more pollution?
Externality estimates and valuations are notorious for reflecting the biases of the estimators.
Estimates that are a large fraction of GDP are very suspicious.
Do you seriously believe that the clean air act "saved" 1/6th of the US economy?
Reduce the "defense" budget. I wouldn't be surprised if you did the calculations and found out that schools could be open 24/7 with minor tweaks to the budget allocation.
It is not a matter of funding, it is only a matter of priorities. Education and research should be first on the list.
I believe Jobs was right, once again.
Canadian schools also spend more than $3000 per student per year on average than American schools.
What American schools need is more quality, not more quantity.
story: A couple of decades ago I used to work on grants and educational programs. One group came to ND to give a lecture on risk factors. In Minot ND, they told the crowd that "firearms" automatically means more violence. "It has been proven in studies" they said. One member of the crowd asked how many people in the room owned firearms. The poll came back at about 90% with many (40%) owning 3 or more. No history of violence in that crew. They were all social worker types who liked to hunt or in the case of one, target shoot. I got ahold of their source data for studies and found two things. A specific firearm study was never done and all the data came from CA or NY cities.
The USA is a large and diverse place, I am a little cynical of best practices taken from urban environments and applied to suburban and rural areas without add research and being a little more specific on why stuff seems to be working.
Its not the guns or any other object, its the conditions and attitudes that make a place dangerous. Dangerous people will use the weapons they have or improvise weapons (IED) if they have none.
Calling them prisons implies the entire population of students would commit said crimes.
I think the bigger problem is that teacher's unions have created a calcified public education system that is risk and change adverse. Hard to experiment with new ideas in that environment.
Child from the 80s here. I've had just about every teaching method crammed down my throat through the 90s. This includes more homework, more lectures, socratic desk arrangements, independent study, peer review, group work, class review, and many others I care not to remember. I have never heard any teacher say, "my union asked me to do this." And, usually, it was some teacher or principal working on their MA or Ph.D that had to invent a new teaching method.
So far the only thing that works consistently is listening intently, sitting down quietly and banging out the work, and raising a hand for assistance when your stuck.
And that is how it's been done for 100 years. It may seem calcified to you but the rest of the world uses it while the US tried all types of new-age teaching methods.
I would wager the bigger problem with schools is bad, obnoxious students. The classroom bully that disrespects the teacher, disrupts the students and gums up the educational experience for everyone. They used to be kicked out of school but that became illegal, then they were put in detention, but a chaperone costs money. Now it's left to the teacher to be educator and babysitter to some asshole.
In fact if anything, my personal impression is that the teaching method itself is among the least important factors; if everything else is in order, kids are going to learn no matter what teaching method you employ.
This article [1] provides a succinct explanation: "With Chinese wages rising at about 17 percent per year and the value of the yuan continuing to increase, the gap between U.S. and Chinese wages is narrowing rapidly… Products that require less labor and are churned out in modest volumes, such as household appliances and construction equipment, are most likely to shift to U.S. production...Support from state and local governments can tip the balance.”
[1]http://www.bcg.com/media/pressreleasedetails.aspx?id=tcm:12-...
I do like his idea about breaking up teacher unions, but I think the root cause of all of that is very low salaries for teachers.
Its a simplistic idea. Principals weren't hired because of their ability to build a successful team of teachers. They are administrators. Why does anybody think they can suddenly (successfully and equitably) cast judgement on teachers? If you want to transform how teachers are hired, managed, and evaluated, to be more similar to a private business, you have to start at the top.
You don't have to use what he makes, but if you want genius, and why else would you want Jobs and his team to design an ad, you ask politely and then get out of the way.
Edit: Somewhere online I read an article about Jobs getting Paul Rand (edited from Milton Glaser) to design the logo for NEXT. Can't find with a quick Google search, but it was a fascinating read.
Edit: the video has the quote I was thinking of, but what I read was an article. From the video (Jobs talking):
> I asked him if he would come up with a few options. And he said, ‘No, I will solve your problem for you, and you will pay me. And you don’t have to use the solution — if you want options, go talk to other people. But I’ll solve your problem for you the best way I know how, and you use it or not, that’s up to you — you’re the client — but you pay me.’
FYI: Jobs had Paul Rand do the NeXT logo.
If you want your schools open until six, take it up with your school board, not the freakin' president.
(That's not to say that I think this (good) idea could ever be implemented in the USA, though.)
The federal government has no policy-making authority w/r/t education in the United States. And if such authority did exist at the federal level, the appropriate place to start would be Congress, not the executive branch.
In reality, of course, you'd never be able to create a universal policy to reflect your particular vision of how education ought to work, and that's a good thing.
There's lots of resources available in school which could be useful; you can offer some activities (but please, not an additional 5 hours on top of 7 hours of school), or help with homework (dito), and generally offer an environment that's hopefully more conducive to learning in the broadest possible sense than some of the worst home/street environments.
I think it would be better to focus on making schools better rather than just telling students to spend more time at them.
Or have the students there for 40 hours a week, but ban homework. Use the extra time to get it done at school.
Then students will actually do it, and they don't have to worry about it at home anymore. Plus you don't have kids going to school for 40 hours then being expected to do an extra hour of homework at night.
Sounds great, how do you fund it?
>keep school in session 11 months out of the year
Ditto.
>let principals hire/fire based on merit
Seems legit, do we really have to BREAK the unions to do that? The teacher unions have many legitimate reasons for their existence regardless of some of their negative attributes.
>relax regulations on building factories
Is that really what's holding manufacturing back here? It's not the cost of labor and providing benefits to workers? I can see how the additional costs of creating factories here might make it slightly harder to manufacture things in the U.S., but I find it highly dubious that Apple would suddenly start manufacturing its machines here even if all zoning/health/environmental laws were scrapped.
>turning Jobs down on making campaign ads
Crazy. Seriously. David Axelrod is a schmuck.