Spending Our Way to Prosperity
Apparently the United States is trying to “go it alone” and isn’t listening to its allies in the G-20 who want to cut public debt rather than try and spend their way to prosperity. It’s unilateralism like this that is going to be the death of us. (Don’t worry, the tongue is firmly in cheek!)
The Wall Street Journal featured an opinion piece a couple of days ago, and reviewed the last several years of Keynesian economic theory in practice.
Like many bad ideas, the current Keynesian revival began under George W. Bush. Larry Summers, then a private economist, told Congress that a "timely, targeted and temporary" spending program of $150 billion was urgently needed to boost consumer "demand." Democrats who had retaken Congress adopted the idea—they love an excuse to spend—and the politically tapped-out Mr. Bush went along with $168 billion in spending and one-time tax rebates.
The cash did produce a statistical blip in GDP growth in mid-2008, but it didn’t stop the financial panic and second phase of recession. So enter Stimulus II, with Mr. Summers again leading the intellectual charge, this time as President Obama’s adviser and this time suggesting upwards of $500 billion. When Congress was done two months later, in February 2009, the amount was $862 billion. A pair of White House economists famously promised that this spending would keep the unemployment rate below 8%.
Seventeen months later, and despite historically easy monetary policy for that entire period, the jobless rate is still 9.7%. Yesterday, the Bureau of Economic Analysis once again reduced the GDP estimate for first quarter growth, this time to 2.7%, while economic indicators in the second quarter have been mediocre. As the nearby table shows, this is a far cry from the snappy recovery that typically follows a steep recession, most recently in 1983-84 after the Reagan tax cuts.
The response at the White House and among Congressional leaders has been . . . Stimulus III. While talking about the need for "fiscal discipline" some time in the future, President Obama wants more spending today to again boost "demand." Thirty months after Mr. Summers won his first victory, we are back at the same policy stand.
The difference this time is that the Keynesian political consensus is cracking up. In Europe, the bond vigilantes have pulled the credit cards of Greece, Portugal and Spain, with Britain and Italy in their sights. Policy makers are now making a 180-degree turn from their own stimulus blowouts to cut spending and raise taxes. The austerity budget offered this month by the new British government is typical of Europe’s new consensus.
To put it another way, Germany’s Angela Merkel has won the bet she made in early 2009 by keeping her country’s stimulus far more modest. We suspect Mr. Obama will find a political stonewall this weekend in Toronto when he pleads with his fellow leaders to join him again for a spending spree.
Meanwhile, in Congress, even many Democrats are revolting against Stimulus III. The original White House package of jobless benefits and aid to the states had to be watered down several times, and the latest version failed again in the Senate late this week. (See below.) Mr. Obama is having his credit card pulled too—not by the bond markets, but by a voting public that sees the troubles in Europe and is telling pollsters that it doesn’t want a Grecian bath.
Government spending has yet to create prosperity. The question is, are we learning anything from this?
Ghidotti Early College High School a huge success
If I had to rank all of my hundreds of votes as a Sierra College Trustee, my vote to create the Ghidotti Early College High School, in partnership with the Nevada Union High School District, is bound to be in the top five.
The Union did a great job reporting on the success of the school’s first four years, and talking to a few members of its first graduating class of seniors – 9 of whom graduated from high school with a college degree!
The seniors at Ghidotti Early College High School readily admit that, as 14-year-olds on a community college campus, they acted, well, 14.
There was some horseplay; there was the occasional plunge into the ornamental pond at the center of campus.
But four years after the start of the educational experiment — in which students take college and high school courses simultaneously — seniors say they’re older, wiser and well-positioned for their next steps in higher education.
“It makes you more mature,” said senior Tiffany Craddick. …
Some seniors say they felt like guinea pigs, as school administrators worked out the kinks in the unconventional program.
They wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Small and tight-knit, Ghidotti is “like a family.”
“When I first went to high school, it felt exactly like middle school,” said senior Matthew Ames, who started out at the much larger Bear River High School. “There was one class after the other.”
Then, a friend told him about Ghidotti, which this year reached its maximum enrollment of about 160 students.
“I was very impressed,” Ames said. “You get to know each other well. It’s like a family environment.”
Ghidotti is one of about 15 early college programs in California and among 200 nationwide. Funded by a start-up grant of $400,000 from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, early college programs are an effort to blur the line between high school and college, where students tend to fall between the cracks.
After Ghidotti, “college is a lot less daunting,” said Anders.
The free program is not limited to high achievers: Ghidotti accepts students of all academic backgrounds, as long as they commit to working hard.
The philosophy behind early college is that even underachieving students can succeed when they’re challenged by rigorous courses and supported in a small, personal environment.
For the past three years, Ghidotti has posted higher scores in the California Academic Performance Index than Nevada Union or Bear River high schools.
Students start the day by checking in with a teacher and taking a study skills course called AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination).
In other high schools, AVID targets a small group of disadvantaged students. At Ghidotti, everyone participates. The program supports students as they transition from middle school to college, and helps them plan out a schedule combining core high school subjects and college courses.
School days look more like college. Rather than seven back-to-back periods, students have open blocks during the day.
“There’s more responsibility,” said Craddick. “There are all these open periods, so we have to discipline ourselves.”
The moral of this story? You can take kids (many of whom are the first in their family to attend college courses), expect great things and they will respond to the challenge.
I know resources are tight, but we need to do more of this all over California and America.
Photo Credit: The Union / John Hart
Why Developing World Poverty Exists…and Persists
This post is part of a series on the cause of orphan care, adoption and social change that I hope to make you as passionate about as I am. You may want to start from the beginning if you’re just joining us.
When was the last time you heard of anyone starving to death in the United States? Or dying of a mosquito bite for lack of drugs on the shelf of a California hospital? I’m not saying it never happens, but it almost never does.
In the United States, we mitigate the effects of poverty, and we’ve built the tools to allow most people to pull themselves out of poverty if they want to.
We mitigate the effects of poverty through a safety net of welfare, food stamps, emergency health care, a progressive income tax and public housing. We give people tools like all-but-free access to education, and access to the most coveted and vibrant free enterprise system in the world. Yes, we have challenges and problems, but we have it pretty good in the USA.
The third world has a very different kind of poverty.
Because the effects of poverty aren’t mitigated, and there are few tools to pull yourself out of it, even relatively prosperous middle class families can suddenly plummet into the depths of poverty when just one thing goes wrong: a family member falls ill, a cart overturns and destroys food that was to be sold, or weather destroys crops before they are harvested.
Think about living without reliable access to clean water, or working electricity. Without access to opportunities in education or employment. Without a governmental system that promotes justice and equality (ours isn’t perfect, but it’s among the best).
Let’s imagine, for a moment, a family living next door to Achiro, Yusuf and Kalu.
Their family cow died a few years ago, and there is no money to replace it. The family survives on the small amount of food they grow behind their shanty, or what little they can buy when they sell their surplus produce at market.
The mother spends most of her day with the baby strapped on her back, walking the two hours to a clean water spring with a group of women in her village, and then walking the two hours back while carrying the day’s water supply. The father walks several hours a day as well, so that he can earn about 20 birr – a little over $1.50 – helping a land-owning family to harvest their crops. Because of this, these dedicated parents manage to keep their three older children in school.
Then the mother falls sick. The needle that delivered a coveted vaccine five years ago seems to have delivered something else as well: a silent HIV infection. (Other common methods of infection may be infidelity on either spouse’s part, or being the victim of a horrific assault.)
Now, several years later, she has full-blown AIDS. Without access to antiretroviral drugs, her health will steadily deteriorate until she dies of a minor malady made great only because there is no immune system to stop it. Most likely, the years that she lived with this silent infection means that her husband is positive as well. The same fate will eventually befall him. And for all they know, the baby might be infected from breastfeeding.
When the mother dies, school becomes impossible for the children. At least one is needed to care for the baby and fetch the day’s supply of water. But HIV/AIDS is still misunderstood by many, so fear is likely to keep the others shunned from school as well.
At least the father and his four children still have a place to live – if he had died first, the entire family might have become instantly homeless, since ancient traditions in many African countries don’t give women the right to own or inherit property.
When these four lose their dad, there are only so many options available to them. They might just stay where they are, and the twelve year old becomes the new parent – “kids raising kids” as they call it. Or perhaps they end up in an orphanage if one exists nearby and has room.
Relatives might take them in, if they can be found. Yet many relatives will refuse – what if the baby is infected as well? And many are simply unable. How can they bring in four new mouths to feed when their own children already go hungry some nights?
The other options are unspeakable, especially for girls: slavery, prostitution, human trafficking.
I’m not being overly dramatic. This is not an atypical story in many parts of Africa right now. Take this scenario and multiply it by thousands of families, and you begin to see the problem.
- What happens when HIV/AIDS effectively wipes out an entire generation of moms, dads, doctors and teachers in a village or small town?
- What happens when sheer hunger prevents a father from being able to provide for his family?
- What happens when contaminated water or a mosquito bite brings a family to its knees, suffering from diseases conquered in the west years ago?
- And what happens when illiteracy and lack of any opportunity for education or employment makes it utterly impossible to change these realities?
This is the spiral that is poverty in the developing world.
Are you feeling “compassion fatigue” yet? Perhaps you’re thinking that you should pull back to the world you knew before? After all, what can one person do to change all of this?
I admit to having that thought cross my mind a couple of times.
But as William Wilberforce (the great British MP who led the abolition of slavery) once said, “having heard all of this, you may choose to look the other way, but you can never again say you did not know.”
So hang in there and don’t leave now. There’s one more post about the nature of poverty, but then we get to start talking about solutions. And I’m excited and passionate about the solutions that are developing to end poverty in our world.
“We can be the generation that no longer accepts that an accident of latitude determines whether a child lives or dies.” – Bono, U2 lead singer and founder of ONE campaign
Next Post: Changing the World Requires Sustainable Solutions
Photo: Aaron and Cacey Klein in Ethiopia
Emma Says Hi to Everyone in Blog Land!
TWO family posts today, but this was just too cute. Emma is really good at saying the names of each of her immediate family members (and herself). She’s growing up so fast!
(Mobile, feed and e-mail readers: the embedded video is above.)
Together for Adoption: October 1-2 in Austin, Texas
I’ve been talking a lot on this blog about one of the greatest responsibilities of the church: to fulfill the charge to “seek justice, encourage the oppressed and defend the cause of the fatherless.” If you’re a Christian, this isn’t a suggestion, it’s an instruction!
My Twitter friend Jason Kovacs is one of the leaders of Together for Adoption, an organization working to mobilize churches to engage in the cause of 145 million orphans worldwide. They will be holding a national conference on October 1-2 in Austin, Texas. (I so wish that I could go…but it’s not looking like my schedule will allow it.)
Some incredible speakers will be there. Matt Carter will speak on how churches should be taking the lead as the champion of social justice, Dave Gibbons of World Vision will talk about answering the foster care challenge, Dr. Karyn Purvis will be discussing the challenges at-risk children can present and how best to support them…and many more!
There’s an early-bird registration discount that expires June 30, so if you’ve been thinking about this conference anyway, let this be your reminder!
Elaine Reynoso in critical condition after car accident
Word reached me on Tuesday that my board colleague, Sierra College Trustee Elaine Rowen Reynoso, had been involved in a car accident while traveling in Virginia. Her husband, former California Supreme Court Justice Cruz Reynoso, was injured as well.
The first message didn’t have a lot of details, but an update that I just received indicates the situation is very serious and she remains in critical condition.
Elaine and I haven’t seen eye to eye on a number of issues, but it is moments like these when disagreements about public policy fade in importance. Our thoughts and prayers are with Elaine, Cruz and their families, and Cacey and I earnestly hope for a speedy recovery and return to their public responsibilities.
General McChrystal
There is a fundamental principle of the United States military that sets us apart from military-headed countries around the world: we have elected civilian leadership at the helm.
President Barack Obama is the duly elected commander-in-chief of that military. He deserves nothing less than the unvarnished truth from his generals behind closed doors, and nothing less than complete and utter respect in public.
That’s where General McChrystal failed, and it would be appropriate for the President to fire him.
But there’s a deeper issue here as well.
I’ve been a longtime fan of Patrick Lencioni’s work on teams, and his book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team is a great read.
In the model Lencioni developed, there are five dysfunctions many teams encounter:
- Absence of trust: if team members don’t trust each other, progress grinds to a halt
- Fear of conflict: good conflict is necessary to test ideas and let the good ones survive
- Lack of commitment: if we don’t care about the success of our team members, the team will fail
- Avoidance of accountability: shifting blame when the results aren’t there
- Inattention to results: caring more about individual success than the team’s results
General McChrystal didn’t exhibit every one of these dysfunctions, but the Rolling Stones article certainly demonstrated several of them.
- It appears that he didn’t trust almost every member of the team, from the President on down. The only fellow team member he appeared to trust was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton because she agreed with his point of view.
- It’s interesting to note that Ambassador Eikenberry appears to have engaged in “avoidance of accountability” with the leak of the cable that might allow him to later say “I told you so.” But it was General McChrystal who allowed that breach to fester into an even deeper absence of trust and lack of commitment.
- Finally, it’s pretty clear that there is a strong lack of commitment to the team. A true leader would have been able to say “I may not have fully agreed with that person, but we discussed it extensively and I support the decision the team made.” If he couldn’t say that, the right thing to do was resign and criticize from the outside.
Picture yourself in the shoes of any other member of the team that General McChrystal made those disparaging comments about. Ask yourself if you could trust and be committed to his success after those comments were made about you.
If General McChrystal was the first to decide he needed to resign, then he did the honorable thing. If the President was one who made that decision, I can’t disagree with his call. If we’re going to succeed in Afghanistan, we need a cohesive national security team that works together.
The Future of Journalism
The Slovers have been family friends for a long time (we attend the same church), so I was both surprised and excited to spot this press release from Sierra College.
Maggie Slover Awarded Jim Janssen Scholarship
ROCKLIN, Calif. – Maggie Slover developed a passion for writing at a young age. That zeal for writing is literally paying off for Slover, who is the 2010 recipient of the Jim Janssen Memorial Scholarship award.
The Janssen Scholarship is awarded to a promising journalism student at the Sierra College campus in Rocklin. Slover will receive a $750 scholarship in memory of Janssen, a longtime reporter at The Press-Tribune. Janssen worked at the Roseville newspaper for 43 years prior to his death in 2004.
A home schooled student, Slover grew up in Dutch Flat, a small town about 30 miles northwest of Auburn. She just completed her first year at Sierra College in Rocklin and is contemplating taking a journalism course and writing for the college newspaper in the fall.
“I’m very honored to receive this scholarship and want to thank Sierra College for the financial support,” Slover said. “I hadn’t heard of Jim Janssen, but after learning about him and his long career as a respected journalist, it makes receiving this scholarship even more meaningful to me.”
Slover, 19, has already established her own journalism career. She has written for a Dutch Flat newsletter the past five years and this spring has began writing freelance stories for The Colfax Record, which is part of the same group of newspapers that also includes The Press-Tribune, where Mr. Janssen worked. Slover has a goal of attending Stanford University as an English major.
“I’ve been passionate about writing my entire life,” Slover said. “I love creative writing and want to branch out with other forms of writing as well. I look forward to the challenge of writing for the Colfax Record and working with an experienced editor who will challenge me and improve my writing skills.”
The scholarship fund is made through the Sierra College Foundation, whose mission is to give members of the community an outlet to assist and invest in the development of quality educational opportunities.
“It’s wonderful to be able to support a student like Maggie who demonstrates a real love of writing,” said Kyriakos Tsakopoulos, President & CEO AKT Development Corp, who provided the leadership donation to establish the scholarship fund. “During his long career with the Press-Tribune, Jim Janssen always showed devotion to his craft and valued fairness and accuracy in his reporting. I’m happy to be connected with such a worthy scholarship and such a worthy student like Maggie Slover.”
The Janssen scholarship was established in 2004 when more than $12,000 was raised from a number of area donors. In addition to Mr. Tsakopoulos, other major donors include: Gold Country Media, publisher of The Press-Tribune in Roseville; Hewlett Packard; Halldin Public Relations; SureWest; Del Webb California; Westpark Associates; and Agilent Technologies.
For more information on how to make a charitable donation to the Sierra College Foundation, call 916 660-7020 or visit www.sierracollege.edu/foundation
Congratulations, Maggie! Keep working hard…journalism needs you.
Photo: Maggie Slover in the Colfax Record Newsroom
What if Your Child’s Future Was Up To a Lottery?
The average black or Latino 12th grader reads at the same level as the average white 8th grader.
Look at that statement for a moment and ask yourself: why is that?
It’s not something inherent to the student. It’s not physiological differences in the minuscule percentage of DNA that differs between races. It’s not because of culture.
It’s because of opportunity…to learn, to develop and to thrive.
To quote former New York City Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum, “the problem is a system that protects academic failure.”
The Lottery is a documentary film following the stories of four children and their families as they vie for a coveted place at Harlem Success Academy. I haven’t seen the film – it is apparently on a very limited theatrical run.
Yet the trailer is powerful and I can’t wait until it’s available on DVD. Take a look.
(Mobile, feed and e-mail readers: the embedded video is above.)
Thanks to my friend Ben for sending this my way!
