from Atlantic Magazine.

Quote:Students don't seem to be getting much out of higher education.

How... can anyone call higher education wasteful in an age when its financial payoff is greater than ever? The earnings premium for college graduates has rocketed to 73 percent—that is, those with a bachelor’s degree earn, on average, 73 percent more than those who have only a high-school diploma, up from about 50 percent in the late 1970s. The key issue, however, isn’t whether college pays, but why. The simple, popular answer is that schools teach students useful job skills. But this dodges puzzling questions.

First and foremost: From kindergarten on, students spend thousands of hours studying subjects irrelevant to the modern labor market. Why do English classes focus on literature and poetry instead of business and technical writing? Why do advanced-math classes bother with proofs almost no student can follow? When will the typical student use history? Trigonometry? Art? Music? Physics? Latin? The class clown who snarks “What does this have to do with real life?” is onto something.

The disconnect between college curricula and the job market has a banal explanation: Educators teach what they know—and most have as little firsthand knowledge of the modern workplace as I do. Yet this merely complicates the puzzle. If schools aim to boost students’ future income by teaching job skills, why do they entrust students’ education to people so detached from the real world? Because, despite the chasm between what students learn and what workers do, academic success is a strong signal of worker productivity.

Suppose your law firm wants a summer associate. A law student with a doctorate in philosophy from Stanford applies. What do you infer? The applicant is probably brilliant, diligent, and willing to tolerate serious boredom. If you’re looking for that kind of worker—and what employer isn’t?—you’ll make an offer, knowing full well that nothing the philosopher learned at Stanford will be relevant to this job.

The labor market doesn’t pay you for the useless subjects you master; it pays you for the preexisting traits you signal by mastering them. This is not a fringe idea. Michael Spence, Kenneth Arrow, and Joseph Stiglitz—all Nobel laureates in economics—made seminal contributions to the theory of educational signaling. Every college student who does the least work required to get good grades silently endorses the theory. But signaling plays almost no role in public discourse or policy making. As a society, we continue to push ever larger numbers of students into ever higher levels of education. The main effect is not better jobs or greater skill levels, but a credentialist arms race.

Lest I be misinterpreted, I emphatically affirm that education confers some marketable skills, namely literacy and numeracy. Nonetheless, I believe that signaling accounts for at least half of college’s financial reward, and probably more. Most of the salary payoff for college comes from crossing the graduation finish line. Suppose you drop out after a year. You’ll receive a salary bump compared with someone who’s attended no college, but it won’t be anywhere near 25 percent of the salary premium you’d get for a four-year degree. Similarly, the premium for sophomore year is nowhere near 50 percent of the return on a bachelor’s degree, and the premium for junior year is nowhere near 75 percent of that return. Indeed, in the average study, senior year of college brings more than twice the pay increase of freshman, sophomore, and junior years combined. Unless colleges delay job training until the very end, signaling is practically the only explanation. This in turn implies a mountain of wasted resources—time and money that would be better spent preparing students for the jobs they’re likely to do.

.......

Arum and Roksa cite a study finding that students at one typical college spent 13 hours a week studying, 12 hours “socializing with friends,” 11 hours “using computers for fun,” eight hours working for pay, six hours watching TV, six hours exercising, five hours on “hobbies,” and three hours on “other forms of entertainment.” Grade inflation completes the idyllic package by shielding students from negative feedback. The average GPA is now 3.2.

What does this mean for the individual student? Would I advise an academically well-prepared 18-year-old to skip college because she won’t learn much of value? Absolutely not. Studying irrelevancies for the next four years will impress future employers and raise her income potential. If she tried to leap straight into her first white-collar job, insisting, “I have the right stuff to graduate, I just choose not to,” employers wouldn’t believe her. To unilaterally curtail your education is to relegate yourself to a lower-quality pool of workers. For the individual, college pays.

This does not mean, however, that higher education paves the way to general prosperity or social justice. When we look at countries around the world, a year of education appears to raise an individual’s income by 8 to 11 percent. By contrast, increasing education across a country’s population by an average of one year per person raises the national income by only 1 to 3 percent. In other words, education enriches individuals much more than it enriches nations.

How is this possible? Credential inflation: As the average level of education rises, you need more education to convince employers you’re worthy of any specific job. One research team found that from the early 1970s through the mid‑1990s, the average education level within 500 occupational categories rose by 1.2 years. But most of the jobs didn’t change much over that span—there’s no reason, except credential inflation, why people should have needed more education to do them in 1995 than in 1975. What’s more, all American workers’ education rose by 1.5 years in that same span—which is to say that a great majority of the extra education workers received was deployed not to get better jobs, but to get jobs that had recently been held by people with less education.

As credentials proliferate, so do failed efforts to acquire them. Students can and do pay tuition, kill a year, and flunk their finals. Any respectable verdict on the value of education must account for these academic bankruptcies. Failure rates are high, particularly for students with low high-school grades and test scores; all told, about 60 percent of full-time college students fail to finish in four years. Simply put, the push for broader college education has steered too many students who aren’t cut out for academic success onto the college track.

The college-for-all mentality has fostered neglect of a realistic substitute: vocational education. It takes many guises—classroom training, apprenticeships and other types of on-the-job training, and straight-up work experience—but they have much in common. All vocational education teaches specific job skills, and all vocational education revolves around learning by doing, not learning by listening. Research, though a bit sparse, suggests that vocational education raises pay, reduces unemployment, and increases the rate of high-school completion.

For that, and having some connection to the Theory.

Historians have described different phases, or eras/ages of civilization.  With the last turning of the Millennial cycle, we appear to be coming to the end of an era.

Why is it that all the Boomers who have attained high office so far (Trump, Clinton, Bush, etc) seem to only display the very worst tendencies and traits of their archetype (narcissism, impulsive behavior, ruthlessness) rather than the best (creativity, moral vision)? Why at this point have we not seen a Boomer leader who has the characteristics of a Lincoln or FDR? Are all the good Boomers too decent to get involved in politics and are instead artists, musicians, teachers, etc?

What are your favorite films from each turning going back to World War I and Prohibition era? Here are five favorite films of mine from each turning:

Great Depression and WWII (4T)

The Wizard of Oz
It Happened One Night
Bringing Up Baby
Citizen Kane
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

American High (1T)

All About Eve
The Searchers
To Kill a Mockingbird
12 Angry Men
Psycho

Consciousness Revolution (2T)

Halloween
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
The Deer Hunter
E.T.: the Extra-terrestrial
Taxi Driver

Culture Wars and Long Boom (3T)

Back To the Future
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Pulp Fiction
Kill Bill Vol. 1 & 2
Toy Story

Millennial Crisis (4T)

Drive
Logan
La La Land
Frozen
The Dark Knight

Do you think Strauss & Howe and their theory on generational cycles are now tainted by their association with an ultra-right racist like Steve Bannon? Should Howe be doing more to distance his ideas from Bannon and the toxic worldview he represents?

I hope that this does not seem shrill or panicked. I consider myself as rational as anyone can be while remaining human. I am not given to conspiracies, as I usually find that they require too many leaps of thought. Yes, JFK was killed by a lone assassin who was alienated, confused, angry, and devoid of any loyalties. Yes, the UFOs have often proved to be weather balloons, strange aircraft, marsh gas, mirages, or even the planet Venus (which on occasion is visible in broad daylight). The Loch Ness monster never existed. Strange things go on at Area 51, to be sure, but it is a testing ground for secretive military aircraft. Nostradamus? Revelation? Ho-hum!

I can now see this as the most dangerous time so far in the Crisis of 2020, and the most dangerous time in American history since the American Civil War. At least during the Second World War, the fascist pigs Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Hideki Tojo were far from the American mainland, and America was as tigh5tly united as any democracy could be. Today the fascist pigs are in Congress, the White House, and several Governors' mansions.

Yes, this is America, and military coups just do not happen here because this is America. But I look at the unpopularity of the President and Congress and its willing to do extreme legislation such as a tax cut that is a huge giveaway to a small fraction of the population and a great sacrifice for everyone else. Within five years, most Americans will feel great pain. One of the provisions is that rebated tuition that comes from endowments at colleges will be taxable income to college students. Student loan interest will no longer be deductible. If one recognizes that the Republican party seeks to punish people for being in a demographic that recognizes the President and the Republican Party as frauds, it makes sense. This is a bare minority that has no willingness to do what makes democracy possible -- lose elections that end its power.

The President acts much like a dictator. He is no better than the absolute monarchs who ruled Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, or Turkey just before the First World War. We all know how that war went. Just imagine a leader like Wilhelm II with nuclear weapons! That's Emperor Donald I for you. Lobbyists have a steel grip on the legislative process, and with a Presidency aligned with those lobbyists, we have but a shell of democracy.

We need remember that a highly-unpopular leadership with a radical agenda and a desire for entrenching itself has often shown the willingness to abolish democracy when forthcoming elections seem likely to reject such leadership. Make no mistake: Donald Trump decides, and you don't, what "Make America Great Again". That's likely a cheap-labor, low-service government that privatizes everything on behalf of rapacious monopolists -- most likely the people who got the tax-cut giveaway. After all, there will be a deficit to pay off, and the most effective way is to give away the public sector to greedy monopolists who can then take everything. Class privileger does not yield willingly., It has shown more willingness to murder people than to accede anything.

I expect workers to lose the right to unions. I expect welfare, Medicare, and Social Security to vanish. But Donald Trump is indeed Making America Great Again -- if you use the standards of a plutocrat of the 1920s.

But Coolidge wasn't so bad? Coolidge was a pussycat as a leader. He governed in accordance with the playbook of the Gilded Age. I am thinking of Mussolini.

Sure, it is no longer a full year until the next Congressional election. I sincerely hope that this one will be fair. I encourage people to treat that election as if it is the most important election in American history. If it goes badly, then elections in America will be as meaningless as those in 'socialist' states. We could end up with a political system that better resembles that in the People's Republic of China than what we are accustomed to.  Power is split about 60-40 between the Leading Force and everyone else who know their subordinate place.  Maybe our leaders will be wise enough to not win elections with "100% of eligible voters participating and 100% voting for the Party list" as one sees in reports of the sham elections in North Korea.

I am too old to start over elsewhere. I can easily see myself not surviving this Bad New Age should it be as bad as it is even if I have a longevity that gets me to 90. I have found that I am not the sort to suffer with a smile. I can endure much grief, but don't ask me to put up a facade of cheerfulness or consent.

One thing that many learn in a Crisis Era that there are worse things than death.

Give me liberty or give me death -- Patrick Henry.

This forum is for prominent persons fired, removed under pressure, or otherwise disgraced for sexual harassment.

One pattern of a Crisis Era is that certain behaviors that used to be sloughed off in an Awakening Era or an Unraveling Era are no longer tolerated. We had Bill Cosby a couple years ago; NBC, which was contemplating production of a new show with him, stopped production. The less said of Jerry Sandusky and Dennis Hastert, the better. Roger Ailes and Bill O'Reilly got dumped at FoX Propaganda Channel.

But the heads seem to be falling from the chopping block, so to speak. Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Charlie Rose, Sylvester Stallone, John Lithgow, Matt Lauer, Garrison Keillor. Roy Moore, should he be defeated in the polls, would qualify then, as he would if expelled from the Senate. Political figures Al Franken and John Conyers hang onto political office by a thread. All so far are male and most are comparatively old. For some, their careers may have been over (Sylvester Stallone had retired from film acting). This may be one way for younger executives to advance, the time-honored practice of greasing the skids for an older boss who isn't up to the task.

I have yet to see giant firms in commerce cast people off for such... no investment bankers or oil barons yet. Such companies are more secretive about decisions to hire and fire. I have yet to se any prominent college professors or heads of non-profits dumped (aside from PBS and NPR which are non-profit media), either.

Don't get me wrong. Sexual harassment is not a perquisite of high office in commerce, academia, politics, or media. People are being ruined as if they were exposed as Commies during the Red Scare of the 1950s. But there seems to be more documentation now.

I suggest that we have some documentation.

We are now less than a year away from deciding what sort of Congress we shall have in 2018. Nate Silver has some topical analysis.

Democrats have a marked edge in the Congressional ballot -- nearly 10% at times. That is huge. Are Re0publicans likely to reduce that margin significantly?


(Nate Silver, at 538.com)

Quote:The generic congressional ballot, even more than a year before a midterm, has historically been quite predictive of what will eventually occur in the following year. It was predictive in April, and it’s even more predictive now. You can see this phenomenon in the chart below. The chart shows the margin by which the presidential party leads on the generic ballot in an average of polls in October1 a year before the midterm compared with the national House margin in the midterm election. Every midterm cycle since 1938 is included, with the exception of 1942 and 1990, for which we don’t have polling at this point in the cycle.



The generic ballot polls a year from the election and the eventual House results are strongly correlated (+0.90). Importantly, past elections suggest that any big movement on the generic ballot from this point to the midterm tends to go against the president’s party.2 That movement explains why the Democrats lost ground in 2010 and 2014 in the generic ballot polls when they controlled the White House, while they maintained their lead in 2006 when Republicans held the White House. (With a similar set of data, I used the generic ballot to forecast Democratic problems early on in the 2010 cycle.)

Indeed, recent election outcomes show that Republicans should be worried about what the generic ballot is showing. The results in Tuesday’s gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey were called perfectly by the generic ballot once we control for the partisan lean of each state. The special election results this year have also been in line with a big Democratic lead on the generic ballot.

New study reaches a stunning conclusion about the cost of solar and wind energy
Building new renewables is now cheaper than just running old coal and nuclear plants.

JOE ROMM
NOV 20, 2017, 11:34 AM

thinkprogress.org/solar-wind-keep-getting-cheaper-33c38350fb95/
https://thinkprogress.org/solar-wind-kee...38350fb95/



In one of the fastest and most astonishing turnarounds in the history of energy, building and running new renewable energy is now cheaper than just running existing coal and nuclear plants in many areas.

A widely-used yearly benchmarking study — the Levelized Cost of Energy Analysis (LCOE) from the financial firm Lazard Ltd. — reached this stunning conclusion: In many regions “the full-lifecycle costs of building and operating renewables-based projects have dropped below the operating costs alone of conventional generation technologies such as coal or nuclear.”


Lazard focused on the cost of a power for a plant over its entire lifetime in North America, and how the “increasing economic advantage of renewables in the U.S.” will drive even deeper penetration of solar and wind here. But Lazard also makes a key global point: It’s more expensive to operate conventional energy sources in the developing world than it is in the United States. So the advantage renewables have over conventional sources is even larger in the rapidly growing electricity markets like India and China.

https://thinkprogress.org/renewables-pro...70e3792df/

Forget coal, solar will soon be cheaper than natural gas power
Renewables to capture three-fourths of the $10 trillion the world will invest in new generation through 2040.
https://thinkprogress.org/renewables-pro...70e3792df/

[color=#000000][size=large][font=tk-aktiv-grotesk, aktiv-grotesk, sans-serif]Since power from new renewables is cheaper than power from existing coal and nuclear, it’s no surprise that the lifetime cost of new renewables is much cheaper than new coal and nuclear power. And that gap is growing.


Lazard notes that in North America, the cost for utility scale solar and wind power dropped 6 percent last year, while the price for coal remained flat and the cost of nuclear soared. “The estimated levelized cost of energy for nuclear generation increased ~35 percent versus prior estimates, reflecting increased capital costs at various nuclear facilities currently in development,” the analysis found.

Indeed, as Lazard shows in this remarkable chart, while solar and wind have dropped dramatically in price since 2009, nuclear power has simply priced itself out of the market for new power.



The lifecycle cost of electricity from new nuclear plants is now $148 per megawatt-hour, or 14.8 cents per kilowatt-hour, while it is 5 c/kwh for utility scale solar and 4.5 c/kwh for wind. By comparison, the average price for electricity in United States is 11 cents per kWh.

So it’s no big shock that there’s only one new nuclear power plant still being built in the United States — or that even existing power plants are struggling to stay competitive.

Indeed, over half of all existing U.S. nuclear power plants are “bleeding cash,” according to a Bloomberg New Energy Finance report released earlier this summer. Even the draft report from the U.S. Department of Energy staff for Secretary Rick Perry conceded that coal and nuclear are simply no longer economic.

Coal and nuclear are uneconomic — more bombshells from Perry’s draft grid study
“High levels of wind penetration can be integrated into the grid without harming reliability.”
https://thinkprogress.org/draft-doe-stud...1a62afefd/


Right now, as the chart above shows, new solar and wind are actually cheaper than new gas plants. The variability of solar and wind still give new gas power an edge in some markets. But with the price of electricity storage, especially lithium-ion batteries, coming down sharply, the future of renewable energy is sunnier than ever.