Recession cure: the economic double standard
Ever notice how consumers are urged to spend their way out of the recession?
Ever notice how businesses are urged to stockpile their money?
What’s good for the goose must be good for the gander.
If you are a business, there does not appear to be a recession. I went to the airport recently, getting one of the last parking spaces in the lot before it filled up. Waiting in the security line, I overheard one guy look around the crowded airport and tell his colleague, “There’s no recession in the airport.” For business people, there’s no recession.
And if businesses invested some of their huge stockpiles of money in their future, the rest of us wouldn’t be experiencing a recession either.
The reason there is a recession is because business is not investing in the economy (infrastructure, technology, training, nada). A great story by Diana Henriques in the NY Times confirms this. I figured it out one day, the next day her story appeared (she wins). The story headline: "Unlike consumers, companies are piling up cash."
The media always blames the consumer (you and me), saying consumers are two-thirds of the economy. But what about the other third?
That must be business. And business has plenty of cash. Too much. And they are just hoarding it, not giving pay raises, not buying technology, not hiring, not training.
Businesses could (should, must) invest in their own future, and in doing so, get us out of the recession (win-win).
In a major keynote address before the
Association for Test Publishers annual conference, Nine Shift co-author Wm.
Draves outlined the future of testing in the 21st century.
Testing will become even more important in this century than in the last one, he noted.
But the current system of testing is obsolete, meant to prepare students for the factory rather than knowledge work.
A few big tests given infrequently will be replaced by testing that:
As a result, there will be thousands of different tests, almost all of them administered online, that respond to individual student testing styles.
Just like 100 years ago, today’s transition from one economic age to a better one will help narrow the gender pay gap. But will it close the gap?
Women earn about 73% of men. There were steep advances in pay for women for most of the 20th century. But the current 73% glass pay ceiling has not cracked for the past several decades.
The web will narrow the gender pay gap for these Nine Shift reasons: 1) when women work from home, they can spend more time with their family with less sacrifice to work. 2) when men work from home, they can spend more time with their family with less sacrifice to work. 3) women working from home, like men, will find a global knowledge workplace, where employers at a distance pay based on output, not office or gender politics.
Will the Internet close the gender pay gap? Tell us what you think.
The Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), a leading education association, has attacked boys again in another attempt to decrease the percentage of males graduating from higher education.
Its latest effort is to urge faculty to replace multiple choice tests with essay exams. As males do better on multiple choice tests than essays, and females score significantly better on essays than males, the impact would be to further bias grading against males, widening the GPA gender gap.
Why males do better on multiple choice tests and females do better on essays is a function of neurology and has been documented for decades. In a follow up interview with Wm. Draves, College Board testing officials confirmed there is “tons of research and evidence” that multiple choice tests are a legitimate form of testing.
The AAC&U recommendations come from a study of only 300 employers, none of whom were reported to have any knowledge or expertise in testing. Asked to provide the survey questions, the AAC&U refused. The lead researcher, f Peter Hart Associates, initially offered to provide the survey questions, and then ominously fell silent online and did not follow up on her offer.
Boys currently learn as much as girls in higher education, but receive much worse grades, are flunked at a higher rate, and forced out without graduating at a higher rate than females. While males have the same level of academic achievement as females, colleges allow a decreasing percentage of graduates to be male, now below 40%. Colleges have kept males as a minority of graduates for almost 30 years now. The AAC&U gender policy is a major cause of the scientist shortage, food supply veterinarian shortage, and computer scientist shortage.
Some great new evidence about Gen Y and their demand for authenticity.
Four out of 10 young people watch the actual candidates (Obama, Clinton, McCain) speeches, substantially higher than older people, according to a Pew study quoted in NYT March 27.
Some 50% of older people (50 and up; 39% of people 30-40) watch tv news, listen to commentators, and read "about" speeches. But only 25% of Gen Y watches campaign coverage; instead they listen to the actual campaign speeches.
Co-author Julie says is part of their demand for authenticity and "realness." In a related topic, Julie says that when fake YouTubers (e.g. lonelygirl15) are outed, that Gen Y shuns these fakers. Fascinating.
Everyone on laptops, all logged onto the Internet.
Could be the seminar of the future.
Was the first time when the presenter's PowerPoint slides took a back seat (old car term) to showing web sites in real time and having everyone else logged onto either the same site, or their own site, or another site.
Yes, some of them were also checking email and doing who knows what. Maybe the equivalent of daydreaming. Kinda exciting. (Photo of other participants at eMarketing seminar in Columbus Ohio last week. I was an attendee). Is this the seminar of the future? What do you think?
Sitting in Kansas City, Minneapolis, Seattle
or just about any other city in America, the future of trains looks dim. They only go to two cities, one this way, one
the other way. Leaving and arriving only once a day.
Sitting in Chicago, sitting in the waiting room at Union Station in Chicago to be precise, the future of trains looks much brighter.
Trains depart all the time. And they go everywhere. From Chicago you can go to New York, Washington DC, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Seattle, St. Louis, Kansas City, Denver, Ohio, Detroit, Milwaukee, and lots of other cities. Just in Illinois, you can go to about 30 different cities.
Will your train depot look like Chicago in the future? The answer is Yes, just don’t ask me when. Hopefully before all our smart kids move to Europe. (Photo: waiting room in Chicago Amtrak station looks just like a busy airport)
Thursday. Daddy,who has been asleep for weeks but can hear and knows what is going on, rose up and gave his daughter Julie a kiss in a dual symbol of love and good-bye. He then refused to eat or drink for the first time, and Julie informed him it was his choice. The wild cat, that only comes around for food but nobody can touch, came and sat on the porch window by his bedside. Julie continued to play mountain music and old hymns, Daddy's favorite music.
Friday. Julie stayed up most of the night with him, going to bed at 4 a.m., and was awakened by the care giver Valerie at 7:30 a.m. Julie was with Daddy when he stopped breathing, quietly and in no pain, with his loved ones around him. Fitting, Julie said, for him to leave on Good Friday.
He fought many battles throughout his life, from Pearl Harbor to helping migrant children in North Carolina get an education. And win or lose, and he must have lost many, the most important thing was to do the right thing, to battle with care, honesty, and giving. In that, he won every time.
Julie had been going through his belongings, and among the many awards of thanks for his Boy Scout, church and other charity work, there was a homemade trophy by a mother who wrote on it, "Thank you for treating Austin like your own son." An extraordinary gentleman of whom the world has and knows too few, he gave to everyone. His life was treating everyone like family. Thank you Y.A. Taylor.
