There's this filmmaker named Michael Moore. He's famous for making bold documentaries challenging government actions and other controversial topics like terrorism (Fahrenheit 9/11), gun violence (Bowling for Columbine), and health care (Sicko). But his main focus is on economics - namely, the downfall of the American economy.
Today, I watched his most recent documentary, Capitalism: A Love Story. It followed Moore as he examined the effects of a money-driven society on people's lives - specifically, what happens when you can't pay back bank loans. Answer: they take your house. Or whatever it is you have left. But the real kicker came in after we watch a family clean out their house and take their things to the local dump (the bank could have the house stripped for them, but they offered the family $1,000 to do it themselves). After they had burned the last few wooden armoires, the son remarked that at least he still has his hobby - flying. He aspires to be a pilot - something I've always viewed as an honorable profession. However, almost as a cruel stroke of irony, Moore's documentary goes on to confess that pilots are some of the lowest paid workers in the US. Which is absolutely ridiculous, considering the about of pressure placed on their profession. But they're seriously only paid a starting salary of around $20,000 a year; it's common for rookie pilots to live on food stamps for a while. It takes years to reach the high 20ks.
I always thank pilots at the end of a flight just because it's polite. I'm going to start shaking their hands.
Anyway. That was just a side fact, no one's clearly to blame. But a couple of other things addressed in the documentary caught my attention. Like, there was a woman who decorated cakes at Wal-Mart - she suddenly died of a severe asthma attack. Her family, of course, was left with hospital bills and funeral expenses - and was infuriated to find out that Wal-Mart had taken out a life insurance policy on her, but named themselves as the beneficiaries. Wal-Mart got $81,000. The family got more bills. This same situation happened to a family in Houston - the husband worked for Amegy Bank and was diagnosed with cancer. Amegy got over $1.5 million when he died. And it's perfectly legal. Something called "Dead Peasants" policies that corporations take out on their employees - some even estimate what percentage of their workers will die every year and factor it into the annual budget.
And then there's the thing with the government. On September 18, 2008, there was this huge financial crisis. Before then, everything was fine, nothing out of the ordinary. But all of a sudden, that Thursday morning, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson gave Congress a five-page document demanding a $700 billion bail-out plan, or all hell would break loose. The White House was quick to encourage Congress to sign the plan immediately - which conveniently included a clause saying it was not to be reviewed against any legal measures to save time. Eventually, a deal was cut.
A few things are wrong with what happened that day. First, I don't know about you, but I had no idea that happened. As far as I was concerned, 9/18/08 was Bailey's 17th birthday. It was a Thursday. I must have even watched the news that evening at dinner like I do every other night. But I definitely didn't hear about this. Actually, here are the headlines that ran that day on a democratic news site. I've only been able to find a couple of very carefully worded headlines on very specific sites. You'd think that news of a national crisis would have made it to the general public. However, the government keeping information from the public, I can understand - they're in a position of power. But the government keeping information from themselves? I mean, Congress was straight blindsighted by that bailout plan.
This probably isn't the way things are supposed to work in the US. So here's what I think: obviously, we're supposed to have a democracy - meaning the people have power. And the government knows this, as well as the big-shot corporations. And so they'll do anything to keep the public from being educated on behind-the-curtain actions - if we don't know there's anything wrong, we won't try to change anything. But not everyone here is bad - some of the people involved in these actions are as in the dark as we are. Moore interviewed someone in the government banking industry who said that there's pretty much a "don't ask, don't tell" policy in place. They don't ask the government what they're going to do with the money, and so the government doesn't tell them.
When Franklin Roosevelt was in office, he proposed a "Second Bill of Rights" in a State of the Union address. It has also been called an Economic Bill of Rights. It outlines basic "rights" - I put that in quotations because, while they're such basic things, there are people who unjustly live without them. Things like a job, health care, adequate income, and education. FDR died a year or so later, and no action was ever taken on his proposition.
Showing posts with label economy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label economy. Show all posts
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions
Recently, the University of Notre Dame's Facebook page (yes, I follow their fan page) posted several articles regarding the "worth" of a college diploma. Of course, they chose articles in which they were featured and spoken of in a good light. But anyway, the first article that caught my eye was from PayScale. They determined the worth of a school's diploma based on the average net return-on-investment (ROI) after thirty years (Notre Dame ranked 9th, MIT took 1st). The ROI is basically how much money you make after graduation in comparison with how much you paid for your education. Also on the Top 10 were the California Institute of Technology, Harvey Mudd College, and of course, the usual Ivies.
Pretty good advertisement, right? Well, yesterday they posted something from The Chronicle entitled "Are Colleges Worth the Price of Admission?". At first, I had problems accessing the article, so I decided to research the topic on my own. The best article I found was the one I posted on my Facebook, "Some Debt-Laden Graduates Wonder Why They Bothered With College" from abc News. It addresses the common belief that the best way to make money is to start off with the best education. But today's economy offers a limited number of jobs to all of these well-educated college graduates. So what does that mean? Not all of them are going to get good jobs. And so we see an increase in the number of people who took out loans to pay for college, only to graduate and find that they don't have enough income to pay it back. A Bachelor's degree will still get you more than a high school diploma - but it'll also set you back more as well.
Of course, the ever present question still stands: why is college so expensive? CNN's Money Magazine offers a few answers: supply and demand, marketing strategy, and a "luxury arms race".
The luxury arms race is the most obvious - schools are using the money to build state of the art dorms, classrooms, fitness centers, etc., essentially competing with other schools in an "arms race" of who has the more attractive campus. Personally, this doesn't really bother me since the students are the ultimate beneficiaries.
The other two, however, while understandable and clever, can also qualify as devious and avaricious if you ask me. I remember a while ago, Katy said that if it's becoming more common for people to want to get a college degree these days, why don't they make said education more affordable? Answer: because they know that people want education - and so they'll charge whatever they want knowing that someone, somewhere is willing to pay it. It's kind of like that concept about expectations we learned in economics: when a natural disaster is expected, the prices of flashlight batteries and bottled water will increase just enough to make a profit on public hype.
Additionally, comes the idea of strategic pricing. This is one I never really thought about. Obviously, the Ivy League schools are a bit pricier than say, state schools. But while the quality of education remains without a definitive price tag, people still have a subconscious respect for universities that charge more for tuition. CNN referenced Ursinus College in Pennsylvania who increased their cost of tuition and fees by 17.6% and were met with 200 more applicants than the previous year. Within eight years, the freshman class was 56% larger. It's like profiling - the way you would judge a person by just by looking at them. Stereotypically, racially, culturally, etc. - making assumptions without exchanging a word. The same goes for colleges; prospective employers will generally look at a Harvard diploma with admiration and a community college diploma with apprehension. Obviously, other things would be taken into account in a job interview, but you can't doubt that in the back of his/her mind, they're making a judgement - despite who may be better qualified in the end.
Pretty good advertisement, right? Well, yesterday they posted something from The Chronicle entitled "Are Colleges Worth the Price of Admission?". At first, I had problems accessing the article, so I decided to research the topic on my own. The best article I found was the one I posted on my Facebook, "Some Debt-Laden Graduates Wonder Why They Bothered With College" from abc News. It addresses the common belief that the best way to make money is to start off with the best education. But today's economy offers a limited number of jobs to all of these well-educated college graduates. So what does that mean? Not all of them are going to get good jobs. And so we see an increase in the number of people who took out loans to pay for college, only to graduate and find that they don't have enough income to pay it back. A Bachelor's degree will still get you more than a high school diploma - but it'll also set you back more as well.
Of course, the ever present question still stands: why is college so expensive? CNN's Money Magazine offers a few answers: supply and demand, marketing strategy, and a "luxury arms race".
The luxury arms race is the most obvious - schools are using the money to build state of the art dorms, classrooms, fitness centers, etc., essentially competing with other schools in an "arms race" of who has the more attractive campus. Personally, this doesn't really bother me since the students are the ultimate beneficiaries.
The other two, however, while understandable and clever, can also qualify as devious and avaricious if you ask me. I remember a while ago, Katy said that if it's becoming more common for people to want to get a college degree these days, why don't they make said education more affordable? Answer: because they know that people want education - and so they'll charge whatever they want knowing that someone, somewhere is willing to pay it. It's kind of like that concept about expectations we learned in economics: when a natural disaster is expected, the prices of flashlight batteries and bottled water will increase just enough to make a profit on public hype.
Additionally, comes the idea of strategic pricing. This is one I never really thought about. Obviously, the Ivy League schools are a bit pricier than say, state schools. But while the quality of education remains without a definitive price tag, people still have a subconscious respect for universities that charge more for tuition. CNN referenced Ursinus College in Pennsylvania who increased their cost of tuition and fees by 17.6% and were met with 200 more applicants than the previous year. Within eight years, the freshman class was 56% larger. It's like profiling - the way you would judge a person by just by looking at them. Stereotypically, racially, culturally, etc. - making assumptions without exchanging a word. The same goes for colleges; prospective employers will generally look at a Harvard diploma with admiration and a community college diploma with apprehension. Obviously, other things would be taken into account in a job interview, but you can't doubt that in the back of his/her mind, they're making a judgement - despite who may be better qualified in the end.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Arm Yourself, Because No One Else Here Will Save You
One of my longest-running obsessions is lifestyle experiments - where you adopt a lifestyle completely different from your own in order to learn about how other people live. I think my interest started with Morgan Spurlock when he did Super Size Me and ate nothing but McDonald's for a month to see what would happen (answer: bad things). And then Spurlock launched the series 30 Days, where he did various things like give everything up and live on minimum wage, incarcerate himself in jail, or otherwise take another person and put them in a situation opposite to how they live their own lives (i.e., a pro-choice activist lives with a pro-life family; a homophobic lives in a gay community, etc.).
Anyway, 30 Days was cancelled about two years ago, and my interest gradually died down (I actually never noticed that it ran a third season before it was cancelled). But two weeks ago, I got my wisdom teeth out and - in a Lortab-induced sloth like state - exhausted the On Demand function on my cable box and watched everything that caught my eye, namely other lifestyle experiment shows. Mostly BBC, Planet Green, and Discovery Health, to name a few channels - I could go on for pages about the different shows, but I'll spare you that. Anyway, the BBC is rather innovative and audacious with their experiments - they'll go all out on ridiculous things, like doing various crash diets in hopes of achieving a size 0, or smoking lots of marijuana to see what it does to you (see Super High Me).
But there were also more realistic ones that were more inclined to seeking a moral from the experience. Blood, Sweat, and Takeaways (and Blood, Sweat and T-Shirts) took six people and made them work in sweatshops (slaughtering animals and producing textiles, respectively), also requiring that they live under the same conditions as the people who spend their lives there. They have to do dirty, back-breaking, degrading work for very little pay and still have to find a way to make enough to provide for their families. I've always heard the phrase "cheap labor", but I never really thought about how everything works - basically, fast food and chain-store clothes are sold so cheap because the distributors are saving a heck of a lot of money on labor. While I don't see how that's ethical in any way, I'm sure many people will tell me things like "life isn't fair", or "free market capitalism". To each their own opinion.
Speaking of ethics; here's a touchier subject that's been on my mind today: how much of your body is marketable? Legally, and ethically. For example, you can go to a blood center and donate blood plasma for about $35 or so twice a week, which is the least taboo of everything I've researched. And I've known that guys could go to a sperm bank and sometimes receive a monetary compensation for their donation - something significantly easier, doesn't even involve needles, and will get you about $200, maybe. Unfortunately, women don't have the luxury of that ease. But something that's recently become popular is women selling their eggs to infertile couples. This is substantially more difficult than either of the other procedures - interested parties must pass rigorous physical as well as psychological exams in order to be deemed fit. About 10% of women will pass on to the next step. If a woman is approved and chosen by an interested couple, she must then go on a hormone regime, which involves taking a daily hormone shot in the lower stomach to stimulate the ovaries (normally, one egg is released every month, but with hormones, you'll get maybe 10-25). Then, she'll go in for an outpatient procedure to have the eggs extracted by a needle and a suction tube. When she recovers, she'll be rewarded with anywhere from $3,000 to $15,000, depending on a variety of factors.
Sounds slightly terrifying, right? And it has all kinds of downsides, from minor inconveniences to health risks - some of which haven't even been fully investigated - and everything in between. But what reporters are postulating is that in the declining economy, people will do anything to get themselves out of debt. And that is why young, healthy female college students who are suffering from student loans and credit card debt are the prime target.
But where do you draw the line between taboo and just plain wrong? Generally, things like hair, plasma and sperm are socially acceptable to be traded for money, mostly because your body can make more. However, women only have as many eggs as they're born with, yet paid egg donation is completely legal. And while you're born with two kidneys, you really only need one - yet you can't be monetarily compensated for donating the other. And livers will grow back if you donate a part of it, but that's only accepted as a donation as well (disregarding that most donations are between family members who wouldn't dream of charging one another a penny).
I'm not even going to try to address black market organ rings, or anything like that, simply because it's late, and trying to figure that stuff out makes me sad.
A last few things:
1) I finished A Clockwork Orange. Notes to come.
2) I have a reading plan for all the time I have to wait on my dad at the University in between classes: Finished ACO, check. Now to finish The Hunchback of Notre Dame, which I abandoned two months ago for happier books. Then The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Anyway, 30 Days was cancelled about two years ago, and my interest gradually died down (I actually never noticed that it ran a third season before it was cancelled). But two weeks ago, I got my wisdom teeth out and - in a Lortab-induced sloth like state - exhausted the On Demand function on my cable box and watched everything that caught my eye, namely other lifestyle experiment shows. Mostly BBC, Planet Green, and Discovery Health, to name a few channels - I could go on for pages about the different shows, but I'll spare you that. Anyway, the BBC is rather innovative and audacious with their experiments - they'll go all out on ridiculous things, like doing various crash diets in hopes of achieving a size 0, or smoking lots of marijuana to see what it does to you (see Super High Me).
But there were also more realistic ones that were more inclined to seeking a moral from the experience. Blood, Sweat, and Takeaways (and Blood, Sweat and T-Shirts) took six people and made them work in sweatshops (slaughtering animals and producing textiles, respectively), also requiring that they live under the same conditions as the people who spend their lives there. They have to do dirty, back-breaking, degrading work for very little pay and still have to find a way to make enough to provide for their families. I've always heard the phrase "cheap labor", but I never really thought about how everything works - basically, fast food and chain-store clothes are sold so cheap because the distributors are saving a heck of a lot of money on labor. While I don't see how that's ethical in any way, I'm sure many people will tell me things like "life isn't fair", or "free market capitalism". To each their own opinion.
Speaking of ethics; here's a touchier subject that's been on my mind today: how much of your body is marketable? Legally, and ethically. For example, you can go to a blood center and donate blood plasma for about $35 or so twice a week, which is the least taboo of everything I've researched. And I've known that guys could go to a sperm bank and sometimes receive a monetary compensation for their donation - something significantly easier, doesn't even involve needles, and will get you about $200, maybe. Unfortunately, women don't have the luxury of that ease. But something that's recently become popular is women selling their eggs to infertile couples. This is substantially more difficult than either of the other procedures - interested parties must pass rigorous physical as well as psychological exams in order to be deemed fit. About 10% of women will pass on to the next step. If a woman is approved and chosen by an interested couple, she must then go on a hormone regime, which involves taking a daily hormone shot in the lower stomach to stimulate the ovaries (normally, one egg is released every month, but with hormones, you'll get maybe 10-25). Then, she'll go in for an outpatient procedure to have the eggs extracted by a needle and a suction tube. When she recovers, she'll be rewarded with anywhere from $3,000 to $15,000, depending on a variety of factors.
Sounds slightly terrifying, right? And it has all kinds of downsides, from minor inconveniences to health risks - some of which haven't even been fully investigated - and everything in between. But what reporters are postulating is that in the declining economy, people will do anything to get themselves out of debt. And that is why young, healthy female college students who are suffering from student loans and credit card debt are the prime target.
But where do you draw the line between taboo and just plain wrong? Generally, things like hair, plasma and sperm are socially acceptable to be traded for money, mostly because your body can make more. However, women only have as many eggs as they're born with, yet paid egg donation is completely legal. And while you're born with two kidneys, you really only need one - yet you can't be monetarily compensated for donating the other. And livers will grow back if you donate a part of it, but that's only accepted as a donation as well (disregarding that most donations are between family members who wouldn't dream of charging one another a penny).
I'm not even going to try to address black market organ rings, or anything like that, simply because it's late, and trying to figure that stuff out makes me sad.
A last few things:
1) I finished A Clockwork Orange. Notes to come.
2) I have a reading plan for all the time I have to wait on my dad at the University in between classes: Finished ACO, check. Now to finish The Hunchback of Notre Dame, which I abandoned two months ago for happier books. Then The Picture of Dorian Gray.
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