Nine Shift

Television is dead

Great story in NY Times Dec 4 by Brian Stelter. Here's the lead paragraph.

"As she prepared her daughter for college, Anne Sweeney insisted that a television be among the dorm room accessories.
   'Mom, you don't understand. I don't need it,' her 18 year old responded, saying she could watch whatever she wanted on her computer, at no charge.
   That flustered Ms. Sweeney, who happens to be president of ABC Television Group.
   'You're going to have a television if I have to nail it to your wall,' she told her daughter. 'You have to have one.'  But she does not, actually."

 

The fight over sending kids to college

We are now in the midst of another 21st battle, the battle to send more kids to college.

The government, colleges and many schools are bent on providing "sub-baccalaureate" education to our nation's kids. Nine Shift knows that 50% of our kids, eventually more, require a four year undergraduate degree to become knowledge workers and support the rest of the work force.

I gave the keynote at the Alabama Association of School Boards conference in Birmingham, AL, last week, and got a very open and friendly reception.  Told them the new mission of K-12 was not to produce high school graduates (that was last century) but to prepare children to successfully complete college.

Photo: high school honor guard at the opening session.

Is WalMart a force for good or evil?

Overall, ethically and morally, has WalMart been a force for good or evil?  Vote now!

EVIL.
-Has destroyed Main Street and small business in the USA.
-Has lowered wages in the US.
-Bums off the government to help pay its own workers health insurance.
-Did not invent cheap disposable goods to fill dumps and landfills and destroy the environment, but arguably has perfected it.
-Could be blamed for accelerating the move of manufacturing and jobs overseas.
-And as an obscenely profitable company, hoards money and fails to distribute it to the rest of society.

GOOD.
-It has almost single handedly increased the standard of living for 25% of the world's population (the Chinese), boosting a quarter of the world's population (give or take) from peasant poverty status to factory worker industrial age car buying apartment purchasing levels, roughly ten times the standard of living as before.

Photo: Huge ocean going freighter bringing tennis shoes and lead-based toys from China to the U.S. I took the photo last month at our conference in Savannah. This is the amazing view out the window from the Savannah Convention Center. Click on it to enlarge.

OK, your turn. Just hit "Comments" and Vote now!

The True Cost of Automobiles

The true cost of driving automobiles is staggering.

Forget the fuzzy social costs, air quality, lung cancer and all that.  Just look at the hard numbers costs, both to each of us as individuals, and to government.  I was at a train meeting when Wisconsin Assemblywoman Penny Bernhard Schaber asked what the cost of highways is.  Someone in the audience mentioned the book Asphalt Nation.  So I read it.

Then I did my own math, based on the most recent statistics.  Here's what I get.

My conservative, low-balling estimate:  $1 Trillion a year cost that each of us pays directly for gas, insurance, maintenance, cars, etc.   PLUS  $500 billion a year government spends on highways, state police and other "concrete" verifiable costs.

If you want breakdowns, or do your own math, or see a higher estimate, see CommuteSolutions.org  They put the numbers closer to $3 Trillion a year.

People think trains are expensive. Now I'm beginning to understand trains are cheaper than cars.

The Fear of Losing One's Identity

I just love writing "losing one's identity" and "identity theft."  It sounds so ridiculous.

The BBC recently interviewed a young man who spent two months performing random acts of kindness. Most people were suspicious when he volunteered to help them.  He reported many asked him if he was trying to steal their identity. 

I am bothered by my bank which makes me change the password to my own online account, and then does not recognize the new password and thus locks me out of my own account so I don't know the state of my finances.  Maybe I am naive, but I can't spend any money accessing my online account, and I don't understand how someone else could either. So what is the point of these constantly changing passwords?  Photo: Gogebic County Fair.

Is fear of losing one's identity a 21st century phobia or legitimate fear? 

Are You Bothered by Black Friday?

My brilliant co-author was outraged that taxpayers had to pay for police protection for Black Friday, the big American shopping day after Thanksgiving.

Is Black Friday another sign of American's decay?  Public radio announcers tell guests "Happy Black Friday." The day seems like a holiday, and America's devotion to material consumerism appears undiminished. This despite the obvious dysfunctionality of material consumerism in light of the knowledge work society, the need to produce intangibles rather than consume tangibles, and the mandate to save the environment and pollute less.

OR is this a positive vistigial sign of a past consumerism? Some economists are saying frugality here to stay. Gen Y is successfully moving society to less materialism.  Malls are shutting down. Retail space diminishing. And just the word "Black" Friday, because stores are in the red until Thanksgiving, a good omen.

Are you bothered by Black Friday?

New Nine Shift speech gets great reception

Thanks to everyone at the LERN Savannah conference who stayed to hear the closing session on Nine Shift for 2010: The Transition Begins.

We'll have coverage here of the new speech, and a free webinar. Last year over 300 people heard the webinar.   

Photo: Me and a big ocean freighter in the Savannah harbor.  Savannah is the nation's fourth largest port, and the huge vessels came and went right outside the window of the Savannah Convention Center.

How Suburbs Can Survive

There's new data suburbs continue to be in decline. But there's also an example of how suburbs can survive and then thrive in the 21st century.

Shift Five in Nine Shift is that suburbs are replaced by dense communities. Like our other predictions of 10 years ago, this one is coming true as well.

In an article last week, USA Today reported that suburbs continue to decline.  "Twenty-four of the 53 cities of 100,000 or more that grew by at least 10% every decade since 1970 lost population in the last two years."

Then the article cited the city plan for Irving, Texas. Irving will build a train line to the Dallas airport, with connections to the rest of Dallas.  That's the only way a suburb will remain viable, transitioning into a dense community around the train station. 

Cars: It is time to defund highways

It is time to defund highways.

Government spends an estimated $350 billion to $500 billion a year supporting highways.
People and business spend another staggering $1 Trillion dollars a year on driving.
It's no wonder there's a money squeeze on funding trains and light rail.

But with train ridership bursting, and cities begging for more light rail, we will shortly understand that America cannot financially support two infrastructures at the same time. We will have to choose. Actually, we have already chosen: trains.   

We could easily pay for $100 billion a year in trains, by starting to defund highways.  The first step: stop third lanes on highways, stop building expensive overpasses, and stop any more four lane construction.

Photo: Kids at the Gogebic County Fair, U.P. Michigan.

Breaking news: Nine Shift scoops NY Times!

The New York Times finally has done a story reporting that Americans might not WANT to buy cars.

Nine Shift scooped the NYTimes on this by a couple of years, but we welcome their story. Unfortunately, the story provides little new data or statistics, and is mainly a collection of interviews and opinions.  Meanwhile, we continue to add new data to our report, The Evidence Gen Y is Switching to Trains.  You can get it by emailing me at draves at lern.org