You Have to Given Them Credit

On the 24^th of August, 2022 United States President Joe Biden put forward a plan to provide a 10,000 USD relief for student loan dept; an additional 10,000 USD is available for some if conditions apply. Buying votes has long been a part of politics and so this move is not a novelty, unfortunately this is a case of where the cure is more awful then the disease and will most likely backfire as a political move simply due to the maths.

 

In the United States, the money expected to be allocated to this loan forgiveness program is at least $300 billon USD. Of course the big problem is that Joe Biden doesn’t have the $300 plus billion and so Pres. Biden, like all politicians, has to go to the public purse and this is where the math comes in because the number of people off of the student loan roster is larger then the number on it.

 

Here are some of the people not eligible for any form of relief under this bill; people who have already paid off their student loan, people who took out a private loan to attend school, people who took out a loan to buy a truck so they could get to and from work as they learned a trade. This bill will demand that the people listed above will be paying off the debts of those people benefiting from the bill. While not a pretty metaphor, this bill is a band-aid placed on the previous band-aid, which was put on an earlier now festering band-aid, that was placed an itch that over scratched.

 

Looking back…

If the higher education systems around the West are not righted the education system and by extension the countries these institutions are in, will collapse. While human history goes back thousands of years there are certain moments which can be noted as a ‘fixed point in time’ for certain events. To see how we got here we certainly don’t have to go all the way back to the university of al-Qarawiyyin, which was established in 859 AD in Morocco or to The University of Bologna which was established in 1088 and so the starting point for this article will begin circa 1966, the year of birth of this author.

 

While the act of providing student loans and grants was already in place in the US since the mid 1800s it wasn’t until the mid 1960s that the United States Federal Government entered into the process by guaranteeing the loans that the students signed an obligation to repay their loan. Previous to the 1960s, the Federal Government mainly provided grants via the GI-Bill and a bill related to STEM degrees after the USSR won the space race against the US and that was the beginning of the journey to where the United States stands today.

 

The university administrators didn’t instantly embrace the new system though within five years it became obvious that many of the institutions were onboard and this was made evident by the significant rise in tuition fees. The Federal Government’s intervention in the student loan process shifted the focus of the educational institution administrators away from a ‘capitalist system’ to a ‘system based on capital’.

 

 Since the Government introduction to the student loan system the price of a higher education has increased drastically. The table below shows a sampling of data from a much more comprehensive table: 

Annual Cost of College Tuition & Fees

Year	Public 4-Year	Private 4-Year	Priv. 4-Year Adjusted	Inflation Rate
2019-20	$9,349	$32,769	$32,769	1.23%
2009-10	$6,717	$22,269	$26,430	1.64%
1999-2000	$3,349	$14,616	$22,208	3.36%
1989-90	$1,780	$8,396	$17,010	5.40%
1979-80	$738	$3,225	$10,686	13.55%
1969-70	$358	$1,562	$10,636	5.72%

 

Within the course of the fifty years from 1970 to 2020 the annual cost of collage tuition rose 26.11 times for public institutions and 20.97 times for private institutions both figures are based on the unadjusted rate. The increase in cost for attending a private institution, under the adjusted rate, is 3.09 times or 208% in just fifty years.

 

NOTE: During the same fifty year span, a push was on to ensure that many jobs which were previously ‘walk in jobs’ would now require a collage degree. This practice regardless if it was coordinated with the schools or not has turned many of the high-school only graduates into wage slaves. This stifled general economic growth and upward economic mobility for those individuals; the days of working one’s way up from the bottom has died.

 

 

You can’t turn back the clock

The student loan system arrived at its current state a little bit at a time; a tweak here and a tweak there coupled with the reaction of those involved. Therefore, a return to a sensible educational environment will have to be done in the same way.

 

A high level plan to providing a sustainable higher education system is outlined below:

1) Independent third party audit and actuary analysis of the higher-education pipeline.

A University/Collage degree, for the purpose of employment, must be considered an investment and every money lender needs to keep this in mind. The audit would perform a review of each discipline and sub-discipline providing real numbers on job placement and salary expectations.

 

2)  Shift the social narrative away from the idea that the word ‘job’ is a dirty word.

Identify fields of work that do not ‘need’ a collage degree in order for the worker to be successful. Many of the people with a University/Collage often complain that it is takes them days to get a trades person for a repair or renovation and that the prices are unreasonable; perhaps a course on how supply and demand sets prices should be included as part of ‘Lesbian Interpretative Dance’ degree.

 

3) Reduce the minimum wage.

The minimum wage is a poorly planed exercise in futility. The prices of everyday run of the mill goods and services are based on the costs incurred to provide said good or service and typically the greatest portion of that cost is payroll. The reader should imagine the amount of consideration that goes into the price of a Big Mac sandwich, does the reader truly believe that the MacDonald’s Corporation does calculate each ingredient down to at least two decimal points from which each of their sandwiches.

 

When the cost of payroll goes up, so goes the price of the Big Mac; these are truths, these are facts. Sticking with the sandwich example, MacDonald’s will have to balance between market appeal coupled with a little bit of profit for the investors and stakeholders. Deviating from this ever vigilant position will risk the survivability of the organization.

 

4) Place limits on foreign student attendance.

Foreign student attendance is an easy way for schools to bring in cost covering cash as these students typically get charged extra and are not eligible for loans backed by the US government. While the numbers can be sorted out later, the baseline, will for the point of argument will be set at 10% with 5% being an open and unrestricted door, while the remaining 5% is based on countries that receive international aid with the recipient of the grant/aid being bared from US citizenship for a period of no less than 10 years, thus reducing the potential for brain drain on thus improving the source country.

 

The reasoning behind this thinking is easily explained. While Universities and Collages purport to be the spreaders of knowledge and best practices the question comes down to who are the beneficiaries of this spread; the reader must recall that the named purpose of government is to benefit the citizenry that have given them the privilege to lead. By allowing 5% of the foreign students to be of any origin those students support the school both financially and are in line with the schools purpose. By using part of the international aid package(s) for the other 5% the schools will benefit source countries, which will have the opportunity to help themselves through the application of good STEM practices. This policy would limit aid based students to STEM related fields.

 

5) Place limits on interest rates.

This policy point is a reflection of policy number one at the top of this list. These schools must once again be put on the hook for their product. Recalling that education is an intangible asset the rate and the risk of investment must be weighed by all parties and as such these people need to conduct themselves accordingly. Interest rates and insurance premiums have long been the measuring sticks for risk, which was abandoned starting in the 1980s in favour of governmental assurances.

By limiting bonded interest rates the schools would have to pick and choose which loans will be accepted into their schools and when the school wants to accept the risk for un-bonded students, that choice will be on the purse of the school.

 

6) Repeal bankruptcy denial.

Currently it is nearly impossible to escape student loan debt and any accrued interest charges tied to it. This created a dogged pursuit for money by the schools backed up by the power and weight of the government thus creating the perfect storm for a money grab.

 

By allowing graduates to once again seek bankruptcy the schools would be forced to rethink the admission process and once again align course offerings and costs with expected earnings. 

Safety First:

Somewhere within the 1960s and 70s is when this author believes the term ‘Safety First’ was brought into the public domain. Safety was outside of the human experience from the beginning of mankind, though death by starvation or exposure has been ever present.

 

Once the Western World adopted ‘Safety First’ in the workplace that catchphrase spread to the general population and polluted the minds of the many. The greatest advancements achievements made by mankind didn’t come under the rubric of ‘safety’. The most obvious example of this is international competition, be it in a war or a space race.

 

Soldiers and Astronauts took risks and achieved goals; sometimes those goals were not always well measured and yet the risks were still taken and the goals achieved, sometimes. Race car drivers don’t put safety first and yet some people still win races. Construction work comes with risk and for that the workers get compensated for that risk and the riskier the work the greater the compensation. In 2021 an Ontario underwater welder could make $101,130 CAD which is $77,584.12 USD.

 

This author would like to put forth the ideal that money should be placed ahead of safety and safety be returned to being an individual effort. Much like affirmative action or other hiring quotas this action by President Biden will create a cohort of people who will have any and all faith in them stripped away.

 

 

Sources:

·         https://lendedu.com/blog/history-of-student-loans

·         https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college-by-year

·         https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/inflation-rate-cpi#:~:text=U.S.%20inflation%20rate%20for%202020,a%200.31%25%20increase%20from%202017.

·         WWW.EATTHIS.COM/BIG-MAC-COST (Archived @ https://archive.ph/ZxBZN)

·         https://www.payscale.com/research/CA/Job=Underwater_Welder/Salary

 

Single Sided Coins Abound

Words of wisdom passed down from generation to generation stated ‘a coin has two sides.’ While there are many ways this saying may be interpreted, this author primarily subscribes to the idea that ‘every situation can be looked at in more then one way.’ This article will show the myopic and self-serving nature of the people who are championing the many topics making up the current social conversations.

 

Gender Obscuration:

For many years the terms man/male and woman/female were for the most part interchangeable within their own group; outside of the medical world and within the application of the law. Over the course of the last few decades the terms sex and gender, which were once publically blurred, have been uncoupled thus leading to some very flexible arguments.

 

When these arguments and talking points on gender are concatenated, a number of holes rise to the surface of the over all messaging. For example; when ‘gender is a spectrum’ is couple with ‘toxic masculinity’; whichever gender is masculine adjacent must be 90% toxic on a scale from one to ten, and the next one is 80% toxic and so on. This author finds it most interesting that none of the multiple genders on this spectrum are willing to take up their position along that spectrum line between man and woman.

 

Perhaps, the gender spectrum is just a poor description for gender pigeons where everyone is jockeying for their own pigeon hole, so as not to be on the outside of the flock, thus leaving only normal men and women out on the edge.

 

Sex Muddling:

Typically the word sex is used to describe the difference the male and the female of each species that exchange some spermazoa and some form of egg(s) for the purpose of reproduction.  Sex, still under the noun genre is also the generic term given to the act of copulation. Moving on sex as a verb, the word sex is used to describe the act of determining what the ‘sex’ of an animal is.

 

Historically speaking, in times of revolution, the degendering of the population has been used to homogenize or obscure the sex/gender of the individual. This was done during the French Revolution (1789-1799), the Russian Revolution (1917-1923), China’s Great Leap Forward (1958-1960), and The Khmer Rouge uprising (1975-1979). The reader should note that as time progressed, both communications and travel improved with each passing revolt.

 

After the Khmer Rouge uprising, everyone in America was on guard against the infiltration of Communism. Of course by that time it was too late for America as the path towards Marxism had already been set. The next step in explaining the current cultural chaos is that America did what America does best - exporting its culture; for it is said that when the USA catches a cold, the whole world sneezes.

 

Marxism Mixing:

Das Kapitial – Critique of Political Economy, a book by Karl Marx published in 1867, is understood by most to be the founding document for Communism. This book is critical of capitalism as it was understood at the time. The reader should recall that in the 19^th century, the most prominent form of Capitalism was the age of the Robber Barron capitalists. This author can understand how Marx was critical crony capitalism as Marx was seeing the eventual installation as the Robber Barons as a new ruling class.

 

Many of the small but highly vocal groups entrenched within Western society at the time of this writing claim to be Marxists. Yet time and time again it can be noted that the leaders of these groups take the donations and live out their lives in excess. The irony of the current implementation is that these modern day Marxists are accepting monies and asking for favours from the current day Robber Barons such as Twitter, Face Book, Alphabet, and Amazon.

 

Perceived Power:

Nature abhors a vacuum and human being’s understand that power is part of every society’s hierarchy and that hierarchies are inevitable is every society. Power can be real or perceived and typically the same goal of having power can be reached. Additionally, many people are claiming that the hierarchy has to be dismantled though inevitably it is only the patriarchies being called into disrepute all the while the matriarchies are typically left out of these conversations.  

 

The majority of people alive who have grown up in the Western World were raised to be accepting, kind, respectful, and tolerant. There is though just so much most people will give when it comes to acceptance, kindness, respect and tolerance before all of those spigots run dry; especially when there is a lack of acceptance, kindness, respect, and tolerance being reflected back towards them. The general population is starting to show that many people have had enough of this one way street.

 

Governments have been creating bias laws for quite some time. While legal justice should be swift, the drafting of and implementation of said laws can drag on for years; for the Law needs reflect the will of the people. For example, in 1896 the US Supreme Court upheld the Jim Crow laws, and yet those same laws were overturned in 1964, given those laws only a 68 year run. It needs to be noted that any law that places any legally recognized personal characteristic before merit is by definition a biased law.

 

The recent and up and coming elections, throughout the West, will be the metric of just how much discontent has sunk in to the general population. To the politicians, talk to your potential constituents and find out what their concerns are and make them one of the planks that make up your platform. To the voters, find a politician whose values match as closely to your own and vote your conscience as the parties have all changed.

 

 

Finally, remember that those people who tell you there are only ‘their truths’ must by both principle and practice be lying to you.

Incitement to Violence?

Section of 319(Section 1) of the Canadian Criminal Code (https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-46/section-319.html) states:

Public incitement of hatred

319 (1) Every one who, by communicating statements in any public place, incites hatred against any identifiable group where such incitement is likely to lead to a breach of the peace is guilty of

(a) an indictable offence and is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years; or

(b) an offence punishable on summary conviction.

The page has been linked above, so the reader can review the description along with the parameters for defense. The standards set the Canada Criminal Code Section 319 are going to be used as the standard for the rest of this article, although some of the situations below occurred in other jurisdictions and other laws.

This article seeks to identify situations in which public figures have incited hate and suffered no legal consequence. This work is simply an opinion piece and intends to have the reader consider take what they are being told with the proverbial ‘grain of salt’ thus safeguarding the reader from becoming a mark.

Historical note: When dishonest carnival game operators found someone who they could entice to keep playing their "rigged" (slang term: "gaffed") game, they would then "mark" the player by patting their back with a hand that had chalk on it. Other game operators would then look for these chalk marks and entice the individual to also play their rigged game.

 

Many statements that incite hate likely to lead to a breach of the peace are based on lies. Of course a proper truth can also lead to a breach of the peace; instances of sports teams losing or the wrong person becoming President of the USA come to mind and as such we will focus on the lies.

 

Lies, damn lies and statistics

A lie comes in many forms; below is a simplified list of common lie tactics and how they can be recognized:

1) Bold-Faced Lie – When someone makes a factually wrong statement that is known to be wrong.

2) Lie of Fabrication – When someone makes a statement of fact on a topic the recipient(s) is/are uncertain.

3) Lies of Deception – Also known as ‘lie by omission’, this type of lie provides an impression because some facts are left out.

4) Lying in Exaggeration – When someone overstates a fact and possibly some other falsehoods to

Statement#1: The Gender Wage Gap persists in Ontario, no matter how it is measured.

Response: The GWG is the mathematical averaging of men’s and women’s wages across many industries, many positions, working hours, investments made, risks taken and personal desires. This author is perplexed at how anyone can demand an equal output when there is no consideration towards equal input; this comes across as expecting equal air pressure regardless of altitude above sea level.

Another perplexing aspect of this line of thinking is how would this proposed equalization work? There are a number of solutions available, with the following ideas rising to top of this author’s top of mind:

A) force companies to raise the pay of those women with a similar job description to men regardless if those women work less hours or are less productive than their male counterparts, though that would be fascism which would be private ownership under government control.

B) the government fills in the gap with tax payer monies; this would be a redistribution of wealth which would be communism.

C) the government could legislate, that men mimic women by not striving, by working less, not investing or not taking risk; this would result in a suppression of economic growth though that could come across as reverse slavery.

D) women could voluntarily work as men work though the problem here is that already they have that option in hand and yet most have not leveraged it.  Context is important.

Statement#2: In a settler colonial state like Canada, systemic racism is deeply rooted in every system of this country. This means the systems put in place were designed to benefit white colonists while disadvantaging the Indigenous populations who had lived here prior to colonialism.

Response:  In this article there is a section that describes ‘Systemic racism in Canada’ and it raises an interesting factoid, where ‘both Black women and men were less likely to obtain post-secondary education compared to women and men in the rest of the population in Vancouver, with a difference of about 10%.’ That statement leaves this author to wonder if those authors are asserting that black people can also be racist, if the reader takes the time to review the paper one might assume that black people can not be colonizers. Is this the bigotry of low expectation?

 

Another problem with this paper is subsection #2 near the bottom where the concept of ‘educate yourself’ is broached. He who controls the education controls the nation and so the question must be raised as to the source of the education to be sought out, for most people take on positions based on what they have been informed about, regardless if the understanding is derived from second, or third hand information.

 

Statement#3: WaPo stated that Donald J. Trump said ‘When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists’

 

Then Salon finished off the quote with ‘They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists, and some, I assume, are good people. But I speak to border guards and they tell us what we’re getting.’

Response:  While the Washington Post provided a message, though they did leave the ‘good people’ part out as noted by Salon. FPOTUS Trump is well known for his bombastic message delivery method, though does that make him wrong in even the WaPo message? This author says yes Trump was wrong, though he is well known for not having the most delicate of message delivery means, it wasn’t the Mexican government sending the illegal migrants. This assumes Trump knows something the rest of us don’t or Trump assumes that the cartels and people smugglers are the true power in Mexico, which is something believable.

 

Statement#4: A woman is anyone who identifies as a woman.

Response:  A woman is an adult human female. Full stop!

The first problem, for this author, is the circular nature of the argument because of the definition because it breaks the rule of never use the word in the definition that one is defining. Secondly, why is it that only along gender lines that self- identity can be made self- mutable and all other identification markers are non-mutable?

 

Conclusion:

Lying usually servers one of two purposes, a means to gain something or a means to avoid losing something. The former is typically called a scam, propaganda or a political speech, while the latter is most often performed by children and politicians to avoid punishment.

 

By leaving out some facts, the impression of the event is not what actually happened at the event. For example, there is the classic line from the CNN field reporter standing in front of a burning Wendy’s restaurant claiming at the time that he was in a ‘mostly peaceful protest’. By leaving out some facts around an event, the Media caused many people to become angry and riot; is this not a communication which leads to a breach of the peace?

 

Notes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveling_carnival (lookup the word mark)

Statement#1- https://www.payequity.gov.on.ca/en/LearnMore/GWG/Pages/default.aspx

Statement#2- https://vpfo.ubc.ca/2021/03/systemic-racism-what-it-looks-like-in-canada-and-how-to-fight-it/

Statement#3 - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/07/08/donald-trumps-false-comments-connecting-mexican-immigrants-and-crime/

-          https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2016/aug/08/tim-kaine/tim-kaine-falsely-says-trump-said-all-mexicans-are/

When a Want Becomes a Need

Human beings have two basic problems that are derived from our evolutionary path; the first is that humans are easily frightened and the second is that humans all too quick to normalize things.

 

Disclaimer: This author is not a psychologist, psychiatrist or a physiotherapist and all of the views expressed here are based only on 50+ years of life and human observation.

 

Normalization:

As someone once rightly observed ‘No one needed over-night delivery until it was made available.’ Humans have seen this throughout history since the dawn of history. One of the first remarkable sustainable efforts to improve the lives of mankind was the tool we call fire. Fire provides three basic solutions: warmth, light and cooking (which kills germs). Just reflect upon how far away from raw fire we have gotten a few thousand years later, much of the Western world shifted away from wood for heat and turned it into romance, in the western world light is no longer provided by wood or even candle, which has become electric, and in the western world most cooking has shifted away from wood, BBQ being the exception and now uses electric or gas. The Western world has been highlighted because in other parts of the world, wood and worse based fires are still a means of warmth, light and the ability to cook.

 

If the reader is young enough, you are requested to consider which appliance in your kitchen you can not do without, then go and ask the same question of your mother and then your grandmother; the reader might be surprised by the answers they give back.

 

This author has noted that in recent years racism and gender-ism have returned to many societies, and yet the long standing societies which embrace racism or gender-ism are not being equally tasked to change and are being invited into Western societies and given a pass on change.

 

COVID-19 was and still is a classic example of normalization. For many people the virus was not much of a thing while for others it was a big thing; for this author this is and was not a bad thing. Throughout the course of the ‘pandemic’ it was eventually noted that those at risk were those with a weakened immune system. The list at high risk was the old, the obese, people in areas away from the equator, those with cancer, and a plethora of others on a case by case basis depending on their specific condition or disease. People at high risk or those who cohabitate with people at high risk are strongly encouraged to maintain situational awareness; though the same could be said about the flu.

 Normalization is not limited to just the tools we use; normalization is also noticeable within the social mores of a culture or society; the social zeitgeists as it were. The reader is reminded that while progress can’t happen without change, change does not necessitate progress. Change for the sake change may lead to either progress or regress as is being witnessed in many Western countries at the time of this writing.

Fright:

The means taken to address the emergence of COVID-19 and the reaction to those means is indicative of how quickly some people will leap to fear and follow the directed path provided. Many people leapt upon the ideas of masking, isolation, vaccination, schooling, unemployment and the closing of small businesses; with a total disregard toward any concerns towards; mental health, economic consequence, scholastic progress, and an honest assessment of the medical health industry. The buy in to these lines of thinking was both deep and wide.

 

It use to be that a man afraid to leave his cave or hut only had one option left and that was to watch his children starve to death first and then his wife and eventually himself. Another man may have a sense of community and will give the formally mentioned man some leftover food to him and his family. The moment there are both the brave and the protected; hierarchy is inevitable to sort out how things are managed; this all happened way back when mankind began seeing the start of marriages, villages, fiefdoms, and eventually royal families.  

 

Fear has a contagion like aspect especially in times of uncertain; times such as conquest, famine, war and death. This contagious nature of fear multiplies with the level of uncertainty and the governmental reaction to the ‘pandemic’ bread nothing but uncertainty with those ever shifting rules. The rules were deployed coupled with the ‘you want grandma to die’ narrative. Of course most people don’t like to be afraid alone and so there wasn’t just governmental pressure for people to comply, there was also interpersonal pressure between the fearful and the hesitant to trust the governmental entities.

 

President Donald Trump’s project Warp Speed skipped over many of the safety measures put in place in years gone past at the time of this writing. Many other governments followed suit and not only rushed to distribute the vaccine, which is now referred to as a therapeutic, those governments also infringed upon the rights of the citizenry.  The people then had a choice to make; run the risk of getting the infection and possibly killing grandma, or suffer the restrictions being imposed upon them by both companies and the government(s). This zero sum game imposed upon the people by governmental entities is not a comfortable place to live and so, many people sought solace within their peer group,

 

The solace being sought was expressed in two basic formats: a) adapt to the consensus or b) try to increase the consensus already in play, thus applying more public pressure to the dissenters hoping that those dissenters would acquiesce just as they themselves had, therefore making a larger majority and thus fostering the feeling that they themselves picked the right path due to an agreement from the mob. People can be smart and are mobs rarely so.

 

What concerns this author is what happens when the current list of assumed needs reverts back to being a list of wants due to a lack of availability and what happens when the consequences of the haste everyone cried out for comes to light?

 

Fear addresses matters of survivability, while normalization addresses matters of productivity and only through a healthy balance of both can one remain both safe and prosperous - for when one stifles the other, there be dragons and monsters.