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Shrinking Native-born Professional Work Force?
Saturday, February 6, 2010 - I've read several articles in which the quality of young people entering the work force has been lamented. Criticisms cover a wide range of deficiencies: being unable to fill out a job application accurately or correctly; submitting resumes that bear little resemblance to reality; arriving at an interview sporting tattoos or piercings; arriving at an interview wearing inappropriate clothing; being consistently late; not showing up for work and not calling in or having a legitimate excuse; being unable or unwilling to follow a series of instructions; etc. I have encountered young people who actually became irate when they were expected to do a job that was physically demanding or that entailed getting dirty. I could speculate for the rest of this entry over the reasons for the younger generation being so poorly prepared to enter the job market - not required to do chores at home, unreasonable opinions of their value to an employer, laziness, a poor attitude, etc. - but it's enough to say that it is a fact. Again, I am not talking about all young people, just a growing segment of them. At the same time, there are thousands of jobs that have been filled by young immigrants, jobs in warehouses and distribution centers, jobs in a wide variety of manufacturing and assembly plants, jobs that were paying decent wages, but that expected a decent day's work in return. I've been in facility after facility in which the main operating language was other than English - Spanish, Portuguese, Cantonese, Tagalog, etc. The same shift is taking place at the professional level- engineering, medical fields, technical trades. It seems that not enough native-born Americans want to take the "tough" courses, the maths and sciences, that are necessary to prepare for the professional-level careers. I've read that up to 50% of the students in many engineering and medical programs are non-Americans. You can see the results for yourself if you visit most any American hospital or the engineering departments of major manufacturers - professionals from Africa, India, the Philipines, South America, etc. I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I think, "Isn't it great that people from all over the world can come here and succeed." On the other hand, I think, "Why don't more American kids get off their butts and do something worthwhile with their lives." I have no answer. Comment at comments@mikiemetric.com (cut and paste into your e-mail program.) |
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Will the U.S. Have Enough Qualified Workers When the Economy Does Recover?
Friday, February 5, 2010 - The United States is beginning to pay the price for the decades of under-educating and over-protecting our younger generations. (Before I go any farther, I want to qualify my remarks. There are now and always have been many young people who study hard, work hard, have acquired good values and work ethics, and are a tribute to their families, their neighborhoods and their country. The problem is that the percentage of young people who fit this description is getting smaller and smaller. Kids who turn out this way seem to have become the exception rather than the norm.) The primary cause for the decline in educational achievement, competitiveness and productivity seems to be the education establishment itself.
I was all set to get into an analysis of the federal, state and local education establishments, but then I realized I was not that knowledgeable about any of it. I was going to try the same thing I used to do on essay tests in school - Use a lot of words and a few facts and a fair amount of BS and hope somebody was impressed. Instead, I will only give my impressions of what I know.
In many school districts around the country, common sense seems to have fallen by the wayside. Because of the excessively-publicized incidences of violence in a few schools, and because of a few ridiculous court cases involving disgruntled over-protective parents, now school districts every where have instituted "Zero Tolerance" systems. This has led to students being suspended for giving a friend with a headache a Tylenol, for bringing fingernail clippers to school, for drawing a picture of a gun on a sheet of tablet paper, for hugging a friend who was crying over home problems, and many similar incidents. It has gotten so bad in some places, that the good kids feel like they are in jail instead of school.
As part of the educational establishment's goal of protecting every child from every possible physical and psychological harm, these steps have been taken in various schools: any playground activity that has any chance of causing a child to be hurt, including tag and all running, has been banned; any competitive games that involve someone being IT and possibly having his or her self-esteem damaged have been banned; sports games such as kickball, soccer, baseball are not allowed to keep score so no-one will be a loser. How in the world can life like this prepare children for the real world? More later.
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What If the Doom-Predictors Are Right?
Tuesday, February 2, 2010 - During the past week, I have heard or read comments from many different people - radio talk-show personalities, economists, politicians, etc. - regarding the mid-term economic future of the United States, like through the end of 2011, and according to most of them, the situation seems rather bleak. Right now, the situation seems to be improving. The stock market is edging upward, unemployment seems to have peaked out, and a lot of people are buying, entertaining, and living as if the worst is over. Many of the experts have a different view of matters.
According to them, business has picked up recently because businesses are ordering goods to replace inventories that had been depleted during the down-turn last year. Once the stocks are replenished and the warehouses are full, the bottom will fall out of the economy because there are not enough people working and buying to sustain any kind of reasonable growth. Companies do not want to take the gamble and expand because of the unsureness of the political situation - will cap and trade be passed? will financial institutions make loans available? Will this administration's environmental policies make building or enlarging businesses feasible? Will some reasonable moves be made to ensure the availability of low-priced fuels?
Predictions being made include unemployment figures even higher than we've seen so far, the housing market, which seems to have improved a bit lately, to hit even greater depths, more businesses to fail or move over-seas. And all this is expected if the government does everything right, makes the correct moves to fix the situation, because the fix is expected to take several years. If, on the other hand, the Obama administration continues to take actions that run counter to what is needed to repair the economy, it could take many years to rebuild. On that cheerful note, I think I'll drown my sorrows in a glass of iced tea.
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The Fictional Nature of the State of the Union Speech
Thursday, January 28, 2010 - I had the television set on and tuned to Obama's State of the Union speech last night, but I have to admit that I didn't listen to every word. So much of it seemed to be a repeat of speeches I had heard before, and was describing events and a country that I had trouble recognizing. Several times during the speech, I caught a statement that caused me to raise my head from the task I was involved in and say to my girlfriend, "That's just not true!" I don't need to get into specifics, because this has been dealt with over and over on many web sites, in the post-speech commentaries as well as in the Fact Checks done by several sources. My main objective is to express my wonderment at how a person who has obtained the top political position in our country can remain so clueless and out of touch with the values and attitudes of a majority of the population.
Is President Obama so aloof and self-centered that he thinks it doesn't matter what the citizenry believes if it runs counter to his goals and aspirations? Or is the President kept insulated from the bulk of the disagreements and controversy by the people who are "handling" him? No matter how much his disapproval figures grow, no matter how much disagreement with his policies is remarked on by the media, he continues to doggedly plow forward towards Universal Health Care, towards a socialist-style "nanny state" in which the government will handle all the problems the citizens might encounter. In spite of his multitude of speeches giving lip service to bi-partisanship and upholding the values of freedom, capitalism and entrepreneurial spirit, his actions give the lie to his words.
The State of the Union speech was just the latest example of Obama's blaming all the country's problems on the Bush administration, and how the problems were so large that even HE has been unable to undo all of them yet. In last night's speech, the President commented on how bad things had been during the past decade and saying that he couldn't undo 10 years of wrong decisions in one year. It seems that he forgot that the economy was booming, the stock market climbing, unemployment at the lowest level ever, tax revenues soaring (in spite of tax cuts by Bush), until late in 2007. This was hardly the "past decade".
I had the impression that the President's speech was written by someone who had been out of town for the past year and just zoomed into town to write the speech based on what he remembered of Obama's mesmerized followers last year and the biased political updates fed to him by insider hacks. The words coming from the teleprompter just didn't seem to match the reality of the world around us.
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How Careful Do I Have to Be to Stay Gluten-Free?
Wednesday, January 27, 2010 - Another morning of gas, minor explosions and loose stools. Why? I was foolish enough yesterday afternoon to put half a packet of old, dried miniature marshmallows in the cup of hot chocolate I had for a snack. I knew that modified food starch was listed among the ingredients on the bag of miniature marshmallows my girlfriend opened last week, but the packet I had was old, left over from Christmas. The little pieces of candy were shriveled and dried out. Besides, maybe they were made by a different company, one that didn't use modified food starch. Such was the way my mind handled the situation. Guess I was wrong.
Breakfast today was good. After eating a navel orange, I thawed out two berry-flavored frozen waffles, toasted and buttered them, while frying two eggs, which ended up with hard yokes. All in all, it was a decent breakfast.
I will need to buy groceries today. I have a list started- meats, frozen veggies, fresh fruit, celery, milk, and various non-food items. I will look for a brand of baked beans that doesn't contain wheat in one form or another. I like to keep beans on hand for a quick meal - I cut up hotdogs in the beans and heat them, since I can't eat the dogs on bread or a roll as I used to do. My cereal is fine for now - a store-brand chex type and gluten-free Cheerio-look-alikes that taste nothing at all like real Cheerios. I would like to get some pasta, but the gluten-free stuff costs about $3.79 for a 16 oz. package. Maybe I'll get one, just to try it out. I would also like to get some frozen entrees, if I can find any in the "real" food department that don't contain some form of gluten. Last week my friend bought me a gluten-free frozen package of macaroni and cheese (using rice pasta) which tasted okay, but it cost well over three dollars for about 8 ounces of food. I'll have to think about that.
Should I buy canned soups, I
wonder. The last two cans I tried were not that good. I've
noticed that manufacturers tend to double and triple up on the
"healthful" aspects of their foods. Not only are foods
"low in sodium" , with "50% less fat" and claim to be
cholesterol-free, some of them also state proudly that they are
"gluten-free". In fact, many of the products have
eliminated so many of the potentially harmful elements that the taste has
been eliminated, too.
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The Fun of Being Gluten Intolerant
Monday, January 25, 2010 - When I was told the results of the blood tests came back negative, that there were no gluten antibodies in my blood, I had mixed feelings. On one hand, it would be simpler if I had a recognized condition to hang my symptoms on. On the other hand, Celiac disease carries with it a lot of potentially bad garbage. I figured it was time for more on-line research.
I read that up to 15% of people have gluten sensitivity to one degree or another, while only about 1% of the population actually had Celiac Disease. That sounded good to me. I would rather be sensitive than have a disease. It didn't really change anything for me, however. I still had to try to eliminate wheat products and other sources of gluten from my diet, and in the process, try to figure out just how sensitive I was. I had read that people at the extreme end of the sensitivity scale have to avoid foods that have been processed on machinery or equipment that might have processed wheat sometime in the past. I had a chance to eliminate that possibility for myself when I consumed chocolate covered raisins and nuts and roasted almonds over the holidays that came with that particular warning on the package. I had no adverse reaction.
From time to time, I will have one or two trips to the bathroom that are less than ideal - gas, looseness, outright diarrhea - and be unable to pinpoint what I might have eaten or drunk that would have caused it. I suppose it's possible for such irregularities to occur for reasons that have nothing to do with gluten. Other times, I can come up with a probable reason, like the time last week that I ate one piece of cream-filled chocolate candy from a Whitman's Sampler box, in spite of the label saying the contents contained modified food starch. The following morning I experienced one explosion and three watery BM's before it ran its course.
Maintaining a tasty, interesting, safe diet has proven to be a hassle. I made some home-made pizza the other night, using pre-baked, gluten-free pizza shells. Two 8" shells cost $8.99. I added shredded mozzarella cheese, bottled pizza sauce and slices of pepperoni. When they came out of the oven, they were edible, but nothing like the very thin crusted pizzas I used to buy from an area shop. On a brighter note, one morning last week I made pancakes and eggs for breakfast, using a gluten-free baking mix. Not bad at all. It gives me hope.
This morning I had more unsatisfactory trips to the bathroom and am unable to remember anything I might have eaten that could have caused it. During the search for a reason, however, I found out that the Jujubes that I've been snacking on for the past year contain modified food starch, BUT after this disclosure on the candy box, the word potato in parentheses was included, which means they are safe for me.
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Celiac Disease or Just Gluten Sensitivity? - A Special Report
Wednesday, January 20, 2010 (53) -
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A Practical Solution to Health Care
Friday, January 15, 2010 (52) - I've heard bits and pieces of the proposed Health Care Bill read or discussed on various talk shows. I've also read newspaper or magazine articles on the same topic. I know that this minimal exposure to the two thousand plus pages in both the Senate and the House bill was just enough to tickle my curiosity bone. Yet, the whole issue could be handled by 5 or 10 pages of carefully worded prose that would be understandable by the average citizen without an attorney as translator.
People should start thinking of medical insurance as being more like car insurance. Do you file a claim when you get a flat tire fixed or when you have the oil changed? Do you expect the car insurance company to foot the bill when you have a new alternator belt installed? Of course not. And yet, you and most people expect their medical insurance to pay at least part of the bill for routine office visits, a dental filling, a new pair of glasses, a generic prescription and so on. I used to think I deserved that because of the premiums I was paying - $33 per week plus office visit co-pays plus a huge $2500 deductible for more serious matters. My weekly payments alone added up to over $1700 a year. How much routine care would that provide for the average fairly healthy person?
So that's my idea - Instead of people and employers paying hundreds of dollars a month for medical insurance that covers every service under the sun, why shouldn't people pay for their own routine care? This would include the yearly medical exam, treatment for a bad cold or minor work injury, having a tooth filled or a routine extraction, generic prescriptions, normal non-designer eye glasses, etc. On average, the money people saved on health insurance would pay for this routine care. In fact, if a person were healthy, he could save money over a year's time. Medical insurance, a much smaller premium paid for by employers, individuals or the government, would then be used for catastrophic expenses such as automobile accident injuries, major operations, and so on. In the mean time, with people paying for their own routine medical care, they would be a bit more judicious with their trips to the doctor, might be encouraged to live a healthier life style, and would be in a position to price shop to find the most reasonable costs for the services they needed. In this situation, doctors would be forced to compete with other doctors, like most other businesses do, and would be under pressure to provide the best services for the most reasonable prices or they would lose patients and their livelihood.
The best thing about this whole idea is that the medical industry would not have to be remade and the government would have little or no involvement in the process. It would be the free market forces that would bring it about.
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None are so Blind as those Who Refuse to See.
Monday, December 28, 2009 (49) - I understand that people have different ways of looking at and interpreting the same events. The disparity of accounts that police receive from witnesses to a crime or accident attests to that. What I don't understand is how people can be exposed to facts and expert evaluations that point to a particular reality, and still deny that reality because it runs counter to their preconceived ideas. The two topics about which this phenomenon is most obvious are the Global Warming debate and how successful Obama has been in fixing the US economy.
I've read many accounts of the events that have led some scientists to become convinced that the Earth COULD be in the midst of a warming trend that MIGHT HAVE BEEN exacerbated by man's activities, and that, if continued at the current levels, MAY cause the Earth's temperature to rise, which WILL PROBABLY bring about extensive melting of glaciers and the ice caps, which will MOST LIKELY cause ocean levels to rise, flooding coastal areas around the world. I have also read other interpretations of the same environmental data by equally competent scientists who say that, at worst, man's activities might have had a slight influence on the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, but not enough to bring about any notable changes in world-wide temperatures. In addition to that, world-wide temperatures have been falling, not rising, for almost the past decade. Does information like that change the minds of any of the die-hard Global Warming supporters? Not in the least. They know what they believe and don't want the situation cluttered with facts, especially facts that don't support what they already "know" is correct.
The same kind if pig-headed persistence of belief is demonstrated by those who are convinced that Obama is the best thing that ever happened to the United States and his decisions are well on the way to fixing the previously badly broken US economy. Does it matter that past recessions or depressions healed themselves with normal market adjustments within 9 months on average, except when the government intervened to "fix" things, in which cases the depressions lasted several years? Does it matter that every reputable economist on earth has stated that the way to stimulate business and create new jobs is to cut taxes on businesses and free up investment, yet Obama has taken step after step to raise taxes on businesses and add restrictions on how business is conducted? Does it matter that job creation is the single most important factor of healing a foundering economy, and yet Obama has spent his time and attention on everything but jobs for almost the first year of his administration? For his supporters, none of those things matter because their support is more religion than common sense. It is that blind, unreasoning belief that will drag the country down the one-way path to Third-world-hood if we allow it.
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