(I am not sure where the thoughts below came from exactly – and they are not in any particular order: probably the answer is that there were multiple sources, including the writer thankfully.)

The high school student who is on a path to success is one who is proactive.

The people with whom they interact – guidance counselors, parents, mentors, siblings, friends –  are assistants or coaches or supporters, but —  they cannot do what you must do for you.

Therefore, High School students, here are some must-dos:

Practice self-discipline: distinguish between a need and a want; regard real reading as central, not peripheral; recognize that parties can happen anytime, unlike the required paper for school.

Take initiative: do research on college requirements, talk with everybody who can contribute to your understanding of the higher education or job world path, take the time to learn the basics of personal finance and begin to gain an understanding of college debt.

Pick five colleges and gather information on them.

When you are meeting somebody during a college tour or applying for a scholarship or interviewing for a job, arrive early and have some questions for the other person.  You gain more from a conversation than from a monologue.

Create class schedules, beginning in your freshman year, which are compatible with what you hope to study in college.

Get involved on a consistent basis with a school activity or an outside volunteering commitment.

Take responsibility: tell your parents if they are doing too much for you.

Know what these mean:  GPA, SAT, ACT.

Avoid being addicted to social media.

Understand that you are not alone: everybody is nervous about college: time management, becoming independent, roommates, money, homesickness, academics (!), networking, geographic adjustments.

Realize that these same students are like you: eager for new experiences, new friends, new environments, new levels of independence, new subjects of interest, new activities.

Being proactive helps you in two fundamental ways.

First, it means you are taking ownership of decisions which are yours to make. Second, it makes you better prepared for when you need to talk about important issues with those in your support group.

 BobHowittbooks.com/?page_id=22

Follow the trail: taxpayers, through the Federal Direct Loan program, lend money to higher education students, who then turn it over to colleges, who pay their professors and staff.  Upon graduation, students repay the taxpayers. Through the multiple years involved in this process, the only category stressed by the financial schematic is that of students. Conceptually, it is as if taxpayers gave the money to college/professors/staff, providing more than decent livelihoods to the majority of those involved, but then requested the lowest paid sector, newly graduated students, to pay them back.

Maybe this would be okay if the Pell Grant and the above low-interest federal loans covered the cost of college, as they did at the outset, and the early years, of the underlying legislation. Maybe it would be okay if there was a proportional approach of debt repayment to income.

However, in the past 25 years, the cost of college has increased at a rate more than double that of inflation. As a result, it takes a much bigger percentage of income for parents to send their child off to seek a diploma, which, to worsen the picture, only has a 50-60% chance of actually happening.

This escalation of costs does not, as it would in private industry, connote anything with respect to a bottom line. Graduation rates have not been enhanced. The only visible effects from the disproportionate increases in tuition, room and board, and required fees are: more college presidents earning over a million dollars, a sharp increase in administrative staffing, escalation in salaries of professors, and new dormitories which are marketed like fancy apartments but financially have the added attraction, to the school, of being required purchases at a fixed price for students who either choose or must dorm.

Behind this cost growth has been the willingness of the aforementioned taxpayers and other lenders (about 15% is from private creditors) to fund the system. This has produced ever increasing debt levels for students, who, upon graduation, cannot afford their debt repayments for a period of time.

(If STEM majors were up, one might argue that more expensive professors are required; however, STEM majors are down. And, contrary to private enterprise, there is no connection of college costs to something called “supply and demand.”)

And at no time has there been any real pressure on colleges to cut their costs. In fact, they brag when announcing tuition increases that are only slightly above inflation. Like a three card monte scam on the sidewalk, this irritating arrogance shifts attention away from steeper increases in both room and board and a laundry list of mandatory fees.

In the past (not sure what that timeframe might be; it would precede the Great Recession of 2006-08), the progression of at least four-year graduates to full participants in the real economy took place in a fairly predictable fashion. Now, high debt levels prevent this. Besides the rising preference of many young people for rental situations because of multiple non-economic factors, the ultimate non-historical economic outcome is now a sharp growth in rentals of homes, not apartments.

Adding insult to the injury being inflicted on student borrowers is that five years ago, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke encouraged investment firms to buy up houses, and Fannie Mae, which is government controlled, is guaranteeing the debt of the private company that is doing the purchasing (WSJ: 1-25-17). “Fannie Mae’s involvement signals a belief that home ownership will remain out of the reach for many Americans.   As an additional layer of angst, the record on evictions of basically anonymous Wall Street homeowners reportedly is more negative than that of small landlords who, in many cases, have eyeball relationships with their tenants.

So taxpayer money has been transferred to colleges and to Wall Street, courtesy of a debt repayment system which is stacked against the very individuals supposedly being helped by the former to create economically viable lives.

Seems like a big mismatch.

It could be rectified by the federal government (a) basing their indirect funding of colleges (particularly loan monies) on some algorithm that includes graduation rates (initial attempts in this direction have been met with heavy resistance by, guess who, the leaders of colleges), inflation, and average earnings after graduation, and, simultaneously, (b) redesigning the student debt repayment schedule along the lines already in place in various countries. [Note that states are already moving in the direction of (a).]

For example, in Australia, repayments do not begin until the student borrower is earning over $40,000 (American equivalent). Then, the repayment is 4-8% of income, accomplished through a conventional withholding approach. The policy assumption is that 20% or so of total debt will never be collected, for one of three reasons: (1) the student’s earnings never reach the threshold amount, (2) the student passes away before full repayment, or (3) the student leaves the country and his earnings are not subject to the Australian withholding process.

Student debt defaults/delinquencies under the current American system are on pace to exceed the Australian assumption, without two of the three reasons being relevant. Subpar earnings are obviously a factor behind financial problems for student debtors in the United States, even though there is no legislated connection of income to repayment, except on a delayed, long-term basis under one of the multiple, complicated federal repayment programs.

Numerous organizations in the United States have put together their own proposals for revisions in the student debt repayment situation. Perhaps now, with economists and politicians scratching for incremental growth in GNP, there is an opportunity for reworking a system which has become a drag on productive economic activity.

Calculating the offsets of homebuilding/rental activity to any incremental slowness in debt repayment beyond the existing high rate is beyond my pay grade. Somehow, though, a transfer of money from newcomers to the labor market to those who have assisted in the higher education process, i.e., taxpayers, and those who are profiting from the financial mismatch, e.g., Wall Street firms, seems contradictory to the oft-expressed desire for greater, more balanced expansion of incomes.

 

 

 

The young people who are the main characters in this modest essay are verbal, articulate in a somewhat narrowly defined way, with energy and positive personalities. Within their cohort, they are seen as high-achieving, blessed with attractive combinations of talent and grit. With the help of non-profit organizations and EOP or similar programs, each committed to assisting individuals who often will be the first in their family to pursue a college degree, these young people are introduced to the culture of college before they have set foot in a completely real higher education classroom.

All to the good, for sure.

However, all too frequently – after a few weeks of college, these young people discover they have a competitive deficit in their knowledge bases. Their high schools simply were neither comprehensive nor rigorous enough to provide the academic preparation which is the necessary, although not sufficient, requirement for four-year college success. The step up to the educational challenges of college is a geometric change, not arithmetic: abrupt and steep … and often demoralizing. (And the inadequacies of their high school guidance counseling are equally more clearly revealed.)

At the same time, colleges want these very students, often minority and financially challenged young people who are not well represented on the rolls of private universities in particular. They offer major financial assistance, and are willing to put aside as not a substantive impediment, the adverse comparison of the student’s SAT results and the average SAT level at the institution they are attending.

In contrast, the leader of an atypical high-performing public school serving this same constituency insists that “academic preparation is the best path to college scholarships” …and to graduation, I would add.

What should be affixed to this statement is that if a scholarship is not dominated by academic accomplishment (leaving aside athletic or special skill based scholarships) but instead is primarily predicated on a combination of soft inputs—passion, motivation, campus support services—many times that financial aid will be at risk when the deficit in content knowledge becomes apparent.

The result of this combination – good support financially but a sobering realization on the academic side, is that the student may feel the need to downshift his major,  here defined as going from a more rigorous sector, e.g., engineering, to one with less demanding specific requirements, e.g. business administration.

The assumption (perhaps misguided) when a freshman indicates an intended major is that meaningful thought has gone into his or her selection, leaving aside the dilemma that, despite having filled out those career interest sheets, sometimes the student simply does not know what skill sets are associated with a particular major. (Note that this identification of a major should not be confused with that of a much younger student who, when asked by an adult what he or she wants to be, answers with readily recognizable careers like doctor, pro athlete, lawyer [maybe less true today], rock star. Then the adult pats the kid on the head and says, “great,” while inside the former is saying, “lots of luck” or maybe, “you will change.”

Downshifting of majors once a student has had his or her initial immersion in college and its academic rigor becomes a way to hopefully maintain that crucially important scholarship support and avoid the multiple difficulties of transferring to another school to pursue the new major.

The growing use by colleges of predictive analytics (New York Times, “Will You Graduate? Ask Big Data”, February 2, 2017) will bring more attention to this issue, which might be labeled “the right major for the right student” even though that sounds like the match is more knowable than is possible in reality. Schools using analytics have found that certain grades in certain courses are above-average predictors of success and vice-versa; e.g., if a student gets below a B in a “foundational course” in their major, their chances of graduating plummet. (I wonder if the same colleges have run any academic outcome correlations relevant to professors who do little actual teaching, instead mostly telling their students to look up course-related information on the internet.)

Colleges who are using predictive analytics are adding large numbers to their academic adviser rosters. The hope is that in doing so, they will be quicker to catch situations requiring remedial action: signing up for the wrong courses, reluctance to seek tutorial assistance, difficulties with time management — each of which can be connected to identification of the right major for the student.

Again, all to the good, for sure.

At the end of the day, however, it is a struggle to envision well-meaning colleges – analytically oriented or not– and student supportive organizations being able to systemically overcome inadequate high school academic preparation. The efforts of the young people, the contributions of those who are assisting along the way, and the positive intentions of the colleges are a collective effort to patch up the broken legs of subpar high school systems with elaborate band-aids. Success becomes anecdotal, not the outcome of a structurally better preparation for higher education.

 

 

Deep breath – an attempt, before tonight’s speech,  at a dispassionate appraisal of President Trump’s actions regarding immigration.

GOOD: he has kept DACA in place so far. Of course, if you are one of the “deplorables” who believed he should follow through religiously on every campaign vow, you are disappointed.

GOOD: his priority will be to deport the estimated 700,000 illegal immigrants who happen to be felons. Uh, Obama had the same priority, so Trump gets no incremental credit. But it would be nice if immigration advocacy groups applauded the removal of criminals; after all, they adversely affect the optics of the overall immigration situation.

Similarly, advocates might convey an understanding of what is more than a nuance, namely that rates of change affect attitudes, e.g. if the Hispanic percentage rises gradually in a particular locale, there is not the angst that occurs when the proportion climbs sharply. There is an adjustment in the former instance: there is real, everyday human interaction as opposed to ill-informed sloganeering about who is taking which jobs.

BAD: the border wall idea – a lousy return on investment; better, if greater enforcement is the goal, to put money into people (which he is doing as well actually) and technology, not bricks and mortar. Even better, relax a touch, there has been no net immigration from Mexico in the past few years.  That is not to say that the criminality aspect itself is of no consequence.  According to the “Economist” (2-24-17) Latin America and the Caribbean, representing 9% of the world’s population, account for one-third of all murders. There are some 20 million individuals in what the Brits call the “NEET” category: not employed or pursuing education or being trained. Not good.

REALLY BAD: Through multiple actions, telling illegal immigrants that they are not safe in this country, even if they have been here for years. If there was a dragnet pick-up and deportation of ten+ million hard-working people (who often occupy jobs that the rest of us would not take on a bet), inflation would spike and real economic growth would decline, the opposite of what Trump’s economic expansion agenda is intended to accomplish.

Some 41% of Latinos overall now “have serious concerns about their place in America” (Pew Research Center, 2-24-17). A survey from the same source indicates that only 5% of Americans believe that diversity makes the country worse (the number is 10% among conservatives). Both figures, which are counterintuitively below what they were only six months ago, are stunningly low when contrasted with the anti-immigrant energies being deployed by the Trump administration to accomplish something that apparently cannot move the needle much on attitudes.

The United States has capital; it needs to import, not export, people if it wants to have the economic growth level that just might reduce tensions a tad.  Putting billions into an additional 5,000 border patrol and 10,000 ICE agents, adding immigration judges and asylum officers for what purpose? Economically, older people (who skew white) need more younger workers (who skew non-white) to fund the social security coffers which otherwise will run dry.  According to the “Wall Street Journal” (2-23-17), the number of retirees per 100 workers, now 27, will be 48 by 2065. With no immigration, the latter is 56.

In summary, everything Trump has proposed regarding immigration, save maintenance of DACA, works against his desire for faster economic growth.

P.S. Hate does not defeat hate. Civility has been on the decline in the USA for decades; now it is in free fall. Everybody comes armed with an agenda, neatly circumscribed by the size of a poster or the length of a tweet. Productive discourse is minimal. Want to blame Trump – be my guest. The trends were already in place as the country becomes more and more geographically and politically balkanized.

The inability to have dialogue at public gatherings will simply drive even more planning/plotting to closed door deliberations. (Hard to believe in the current environment, but I once picketed a Humphrey rally [Google him—he was an important man] and when he saw me, he smiled and came over, extended his hand, which I shook in a friendly manner.  Full disclosure compels me to add that the person behind me said I was a fascist and tore off a corner of my poster, so it was not perfect civility.)

There is a saying,” liberals love humanity, it’s people they can’t stand.” The latter are not a tidy philosophical construct; they are individuals with their own combinations of beliefs. A person may be against Trump’s position on immigration, in favor of states making their own rules about transgender bathroom access, against further excursions into the Middle East, for a two-state solution regarding Israel and Palestine, and in favor of an economic policy which keeps more jobs in this country. They may applaud diversity while living in a community that scarcely has any. They might think that learning rudimentary English should be a requirement of anybody coming to the USA to stay.

So what! “Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.” (Emerson)

 

 

 

You will not have read this expose in the “New York Times,” as neither their controlling shareholders nor their staffers have their children in the affected schools, but –

FOR MANY DECADES, financially challenged urban African-American and Hispanic kids have had virtually no choice but to attend local schools noted for low academic standards and minimal preparation for higher education. Instead, they are being trained to be eager consumers (see John Taylor Gatto’s unreadable book –“The Underground History of American Education — that nonetheless makes the prior valid point) and they learn the finer points of how to get low-paying service jobs in industries importantly catering to the whims and alleged needs of affluent white suburbanites.

Of course, they are not tutored in the particulars of said jobs, like “at will” employment versus being involved in a union contract, or the vagaries of health insurance.  Why would “we” spoil a good thing. We do not want real change, but the guilt part of our psyche does mean that money has been poured into the above schools, with, uh, no discernible impact.

The affluent have always had school choice – it is a function of the thickness of their wallets.  They simply pick up and move to districts offering better educational opportunities. Those with lesser financial resources have been rendered vote-less.  Some “volunteer” to become additionally impoverished — the double whammy of taxes and parochial school tuition. Later, they discover that the first priorities of these schools are “values” and safety, not academic rigor.

Adding to the fraudulent aspect of their schools, the overworked (absurd caseloads) guidance counselors in urban America are not well-versed on that many colleges. Often they resort to default options, like suggesting local two-year colleges or low-cost state schools, which may or may not be appropriate (and would never happen in an affluent area).

In this overall education environment, I am not chagrined to see adverse publicity about various voucher programs, which in aggregate involve a handful of students nationally.  Negative feedback will bring changes in their modus operandi or they will disappear.  In contrast, the neighborhood school down the street in urban America can be under-educating its kids for decades and it lives on, providing nice employment for the adults.

Howard Fuller, the well-known African American education reformer, had it colorfully right more than twenty years ago, “it (changes in our approach to educating those with limited financial resources) ain’t about the research, it’s about the will.”

P.S. High-performing charter schools begin with that will, the passion to deliver a quality education to all students, regardless of their particular backgrounds.

 

 

Welcome!

Take your seat and put your emotions on hold. You are about to hear things you never expected, not in a dream, nor in a nightmare.

It is January 21. President Trump has been widely praised, except by the bicoastal media elites of course, for yesterday’s inaugural address, in which he promised both to be the president of all the people and to uphold those attributes of the United States which have contributed to its unique place in the world.

*President Trump and the Executive-Director of the National Immigration Law Center are at the podium.

Trump: I realize that the majority of Americans want a positive program of immigration reform. I too want such an outcome, although my methods may differ.

NILC: Immigration advocates undoubtedly disagree with you on many, if not virtually all, of your electioneering statements concerning immigration. At the same time, NILC is in complete agreement that it serves all of our interests to deport the estimated 800,000 criminals who are undocumented immigrants. We also acknowledge that we have hurt the perception of our cause when we made excessive demands and when we marched under the flag not of the USA, but of our prior home country.

Trump: Thank you. We are all immigrants; we simply came at different times and under different rules. I am announcing that there will be no change in the DACA program; it will continue to roll forward on its two-year time-frame. Growth in the American economy must be stimulated and these young, educated individuals are becoming important contributors to that growth. I know that Canada has recognized this and has liberalized its rules regarding international students and immigrants alike.

Upon the advice of people expert in construction and surveillance, I am reconsidering how to best protect America from those who simply walk into the country. It may be that a different approach to technology utilization and cross-border cooperation will be a better combination than an expensive new wall separating us from our important trading neighbor, Mexico. Be assured that the safety of Americans is my prime concern.

*President Trump and the Executive-Director of the American Muslim Center are at the podium.

Trump: For sure, I am guilty of overstatement during my campaign. For that I apologize.

AMC: On our part, we have been negligent in not speaking out more regularly and aggressively about the damage being done to the Muslim diaspora by the criminals of ISIS. We call on Muslims everywhere to disassociate themselves from those who distort the teachings of the Koran.

Trump: Thank you. America was built by people from all nations, with wide variations in culture and religious beliefs. At present, I am nervous about people entering the USA from the seven nations listed by former President Obama as fostering state terrorism: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. That they happen to be Muslim nations does not mean that I am anti-Muslim. And it does not mean that other Muslim and non-Muslim countries have not been the source of terrorists. I realize that those wanting to distort what I am going to do will do so; that is uncontrollable.

While the AMC will disagree with the policy to be implemented, and I respect that, for the next three months, people entering from the countries former President Obama named will be detained at the airport and subjected to extensive questioning. This does not apply to those holding American green cards or specialized visas such as H-1B work authorizations.

*Trump is now solo at the podium.

I was elected on the basis of two primary promises: stronger economic growth and a safer America.

The actions outlined above speak to these pledges. In fact, immigration reform is essential for economic reasons. Among other factors is that the country is aging and the ratio of working people to retirees has dropped significantly, which puts social security in jeopardy if we do not have higher employment. It may be that importing labor is essential to moving our economic growth rate up, but this only makes sense if (1) we are assured that citizens will not take the relevant jobs, (2) we are satisfied that our education system is producing capable employees, and (3) we are able to adequately vet those newcomers to America.

Globalization itself is tied to immigration. Over half the companies started in Silicon Valley have immigrant founders. These are some of our most dynamic enterprises, and their energies must be protected. This can be done with an expanded H-1B program, which does not contradict the steps outlined above to more closely scrutinize those entering the USA from certain countries.

Globalization is tied as well to the terms of trade. Not only do I have some skills in making deals, but several of my cabinet members have made their living in negotiating for their companies. Yes, you may see some unusual tariffs and some jawboning with countries having overvalued currencies, but there should be no hand-wringing that international trade is going to be suddenly stopped. I simply want better terms of trade, which on balance will mean somewhat less outsourcing and bring renewed job growth to our country.

Healthcare costs, which per capita are double those of neighboring Canada, are a restraint on economic growth. We will address this issue in a manner which does not mean the loss of insurance for low-income populations.

People know that I am emotional. I cannot help but be critical, sarcastic even, when the media is more concerned with “gotcha” questions than with unbiased give-and-take. Similarly, to have rich Hollywood types screaming from their multi-million dollar homes and gated communities about refugees that they would not give the time of day to, except perhaps as disposable servants, is really bad theater. Nor will debt-strapped, unemployed college students be taking refugees into their homes. Acceptance of refugees is a matter for all of us to decide, hopefully favorably, in line with our historical narrative. Right now the issue is safety first, a pause to make sure of credentials.

My third and final fundamental promise to the American people was that I would “empty the swamp;” what I meant in this admittedly overly dramatic verbiage was that it would not be business as usual in Washington. Thus, I am not at all taken back by the screams of wounded pigs who have supped at the federal trough for decades. I want the economic benefits of my changes not to be centered in Washington or in the 1%ers but to be felt in middle America, the people who were ignored by the opposition in the recent election.

Thank you.

 

The alert consumer discovers that she is not getting the same number of chips or ounces of edible stuff in the packages she routinely buys at the supermarket. The cost of the box is the same as before. The quantity is not. The company does not announce that it has raised prices.

Colleges do the same thing:

*the three hour course is now two and one half hours

*the obligatory fee formerly included in tuition is now a separate cost item on the bill without any reduction in the tuition
*advice on resume writing and interview techniques, formerly provided by the student’s advisor, now becomes a paid course

Okay, since I am complaining about higher education, let me toss in a few non-financial items:

*if a college is promoting the opportunity for a semester abroad, could it please inform students on how to juggle their prerequisite and major schedules so that the semester abroad does not screw everything up.

*when a student signs up for an in-class course, he expects physical presence, not on-line in his room. Of course, if the in-class presentation by the professor is exclusively power point, coupled with a request to not take notes, the student might as well be in his room.

*Do professors care whether tests are consistent with their self-written syllabi? Consistency in grading admittedly is a pipe dream. Years ago, when my daughter brought home a test on which she had received a 105, my reaction was “no way, 100 is the top mark.” Extra credits are like a virus, right up there with self-esteem t-shirts, ego stroking with scant evidence of substantive impact.

*An education leader of my acquaintance used to ask her professors: are you grading on the student’s life story, how hard they worked, or what they actually accomplished in the class?

The modified contemporary internalized questions of college graduates in many cases seem to be:  have you made a lot of friends, do you know how to network, is your resume current, will you contribute to the alumni association? Absent in many cases, but discovered by the professional interviewer, is a level of content knowledge that would make the student a prospective employee.

Graduates should keep in mind that a diploma guarantees nothing. Rather, it is a “ticket” which gets the graduate past the closed door and into the room for a discussion about employment. It is what happens in that conversation that tells the true story of the student’s higher education and preparedness for the real world.

 

 

As the Executive-Director of a foundation which for many years has assisted young people to attend college,
I have developed a distaste for the manner in which the purveyors of “higher education” conduct themselves
when it comes to … money! And there is no question that the vast percentage of “our”
students regard colleges with the same warmth as they view other businesses.

This snapshot is an outgrowth of that attitude.

We all know the college experience is special. One example is the innovation displayed by their accountants.
As shown, in their financial approach, they shun the absurd and highly irritating small item breakdowns favored
by their counterparts in the telephone and cable industries. Whoops, they actually are no better.

College                                  Telephone                                              Cable

Activity fee 203.00                 Federal universal service charge 1.36   Basic fee 17.95
Tuition 21720.00                   Regulatory charge 0.21                          Box fee 10.00
Room 8153.75                      Administrative charge 1.23                     Broadcast tv surcharge 3.99
Meals 3575.00                      NJ 911 System fee 0.90                         Sports tv surcharge 4.97
Co-curricular fee 217.00       NJ sales tax 4.33                                    Preferred package 57.00
Health fee 361.00                 Smartphone line access 40.00               Sales tax 0.70
Internet fee 220.00               Wireless phone protection 7.15              Franchise fee 3.76
Course fee 5.00                   Monthly charge 40.00                             State regulation fee 0.08
Health insurance 2230.00    FCC user fee 0.08
College program fee 35.00
Athletic fee 287.50
Academic Excellence fee 187.50
University fee 62.50
Recreation fee 56.00
Academic Support fee 9.50
Academic Record fee 5.00
ID Card fee 5.00

Don’t you admire a college accounting staff that in a total cost environment of many thousands of dollars can
find another 50-75 cents to extract from the student. And the diligence with which they find a way
to isolate $5.00 for fees which the layman might assume were covered by tuition.

The telephone and cable industries should be pleased. Their bills are less complex than those of colleges. At
the same time, they should be chagrined because they get labeled as bad guys while colleges still have a
residual halo effect, though it is fast diminishing, in part because of these financial shenanigans.
BobHowittbooks.com/?page_id=22

 

 

When there are nine crazies at our Senior Center basketball outings, we have one team with five players, rotating them in order to play four-on-four. This is interesting, but irrelevant. Equally unimportant is that when we have a substitute because of the above situation, we play to 11 baskets instead of 8.

What is crucial to understanding that which I am about to describe is that we play loser’s out, as in regular basketball but also dissimilar from much of New Jersey playground ball.

Ok, to finally arrive at the particulars –

The fact that we had the single best player on our team at the moment seemed meaningless, even though he was on the bench watching when the opponents took a commanding 10-5 lead.

No way we could overcome such a deficit. It would mean at least six “stops” matched by an equal number of hoops scored by our side.  But the credo in such circumstances, no matter how dire looking, is “one stop.” And then the exhortation is repeated and repeated.

Steve, Lionel, Frank D., Tom D. (sub), and myself dug in our heels against Mark, Tom M., Frank C., and Danny.  We swarmed, we fought through picks, we had hands in every shooter’s face, we grabbed rebounds from erstwhile winning shots which fortunately fell off the rim.

And it magically became 10-10.

As Steve’s teammate, you know that he wants to take the last shot (and most of the others as well); of course, this is no secret to the other team either and they proceed to surround him.

I wander to the left corner, midway between the baseline and the foul line extended, hands ready for a pass.  With no breathing room at all, Steve double bounces a pass to me, and I loft the ball quickly as Frank C. is running at me like a man possessed.

Nothing but freakin’ net!!!

We win 11-10, culminating the greatest defensive performance seen at this court in many years.

bobhowittbooks.com/?page_id=22

 

Many critics of the American economic system have an inch-deep understanding of its history. At the same time, they always have a long list of political “devils,” those individuals with whom they are in disagreement and who, by definition, are behind all negative policy decisions.

In the 20^th century, the average standard-of-living increased many-fold and lifetime expectancy grew significantly. During this period, it is fair to characterize the American economy as being more capitalist than any other philosophy.

In assessing the role of capitalism in the much improved standard of living, these are the observer’s choices:

Capitalism had nothing to do with the demonstrated growth

It had everything to do with the growth

The growth was despite the capitalist philosophy

Capitalism was a factor, but not as important as other factors

It brought the growth, but the price was too high

Capitalism was by far the leading contributor to the growth

Obviously line six is the best answer. At the same time, one would be hard-pressed to define our current economic model as being remotely close to pure capitalism. The United States Code of Federal Regulations has 169,000 pages. And government spending is one-third of GDP, versus 7.5% a hundred years ago.

No, the overriding philosophy is consumerism, whatever it takes to create — more stuff.

P.S. While the above was written pre-election, there is no reason to change anything. Unconnected to the election is the logic of drilling down on choice number five above. Another time.

bobhowittbooks.com/?page_id=22