Schiff on Economics

Peter Schiff can spout more common sense economics in a minute then most do all year.

Schiff's podcast

includes an explanation about the current mess and why savings is always what created growth, not spending.

Midlands Voices/2005

Nebraskans understand issues have more than two sides. This is certainly true of the current attempt of the Unicameral, supported by the education establishment, to force Nebraska’s hundreds of Class I school districts to merge with larger school districts. Right now the choice is black and white. The Class I school districts will surely resist and the outcome is unknown. But why not allow the parents of children attending Class I schools a third choice?
Nebraska’s constitution requires we educate our children but has no barriers to a Charter school fulfilling that requirement. What is a Charter school?
A school stands alone as a Charter school by guaranteeing students meet certain educational outcomes. The operators of the school, generally the teacher(s), sign the contract. Charter schools receive tax moneys for the children in attendance. Traditionally, it is much less than the state average spent per child and if outcomes are not met, the contract is pulled and the school closes.
An administrator in Bellevue told me of a sandhills school near North Platte that was closed. The ranchers purchased a trailer and the teacher now teaches their children in the trailer. The other difference is that the ranchers pay her salary. This is the perfect example of the benefit of a Charter school option. The need was there, the desire was there and the teacher was there. It was the legislative option that was missing.
Parents have an option of sending their children to a traditional public school or setting up a Charter school system. In this respect, it is a win-win situation. Parents choosing the Charter school elect a parental advisory board, and often expect to volunteer, help with maintenance, provide transportation, etc. The rural Charter school is much like those of our past. My mother taught in rural schools and answered directly to the parents. Parental control gets defused as control moves up the bureaucracy.
And Charters are not only for rural school choices. Here are other options to increase choices and extend outcomes for kids:
• To attract quality professional staff, a large medical facility provides day care. Extending this facility to a K-6 Charter school might serve the same purpose.
• An international engineering firm recruits engineers by giving them summer jobs during college. A highly challenging math and science curriculum taught to 17 and 18 year olds on site in a Charter school could serve the same purpose.
• A teacher promises to cut the drop-out rate in half if given a Charter school in an inner city neighborhood. If she succeeds, she keeps her school and her Charter. And, she saves some kids from certain poverty and lives of lower fulfillment.
Charter schools offer a choice for parents. They offer competition to the existing monopoly of public schools. Charter schools are public schools, too, but they are run by parents, not administrators or bureaucrats. If no parents send their children to a Charter school, it closes.
--> not included in newspaper: Running for the Unicameral taught me the power of the Education establishment. The teachers union can and does deliver votes. Their questionnaire for candidates is much more about finance and control and much less about improved student outcomes and choices. I’m pro-education for our kids and I want more choices, not less. Hopefully, LB 126 can be amended to include Charter schools as an option. School Charters can be co-signed by a mayor, a county board or a school district board.
Reagan said it best: "Our system freed the individual genius of man. We allocate resources not by government decision but by the millions of decisions customers make when they go into the market place. If something seems too high-priced, we buy something else. So resources are steered toward those things people want most at the price they are willing to pay." Today, too many of our education decisions are made by government not by the customers of education --the parents.

Define Progress

Progressive policymakers moved single mothers to projects like Cabrini Green's high rises [see below] and lumped them together by the thousands -- miles from the father and extended family-- left to foment for 20/30/40 years. Men called 'dad,' attempting to stay with their families, became 'cheaters.' When the drugs, crime and gang problem resulted, they bulldozed the site and scampered off to hatch a new plan to help the poor.

All the neighbors in the projects had failed at personal responsibility in one way or another. The children in this situation seldom if ever saw their father, their grandparents, or any individuals that might be classified as 'responsible,' and had only lonesome, dejected, and often depressed moms to raise them.

With hindsight, we should be able to see how this process, implemented across the US, destroyed the family structure for scores of millions of children over the years.

Why would anyone vote for progressives or for a way forward after observing social planners abject failures over the years.

a Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) public housing development on Chicago's Near North Side, ..At its peak, Cabrini–Green was home to 15,000 people,^[1] living in mid- and high-rise apartment buildings. Over the years, gang violence and neglect created terrible conditions for the residents, and the name "Cabrini–Green" became synonymous with the problems associated with public housing in the United States.

Is all this history of failure down the memory hole? Didn't we learn anything? I hear day after day, young voters asking for a 'way forward' and 'progress' from their elected representatives.

Unless they look back at what prior social engineers created with their good intentions, before listening to current plans from politicians, they will risk more unintended consequences.

The Fourth Turning, Headed Our Way

When the first Bush was President, Brian Lamb hosted followers of possible effects of Fourth Turning in America and I bought the book. The authors are careful not to predict events but only to show based on history how 4 generational archetypes following in succession 20-25 years apart identify trends based on history. The book predicts we jump from WWII hero generation, Reagan/Bush, to Boomer generation, Clinton/Bush which we did.
You can learn more by purchasing the book but this article also lays out what could very well be our short term future:

William Strauss and Neil Howe published The Fourth Turning in 1997. This was before the internet bubble, before the housing bubble, before 9/11, before the two wars in the Middle East, and before the financial collapse of 2008. They made a strong case for their generational theory of history. Everything that has happened since 1997 supports their theory. We are currently in the early stages of the Fourth Turning. In the last two chapters of their book, they describe the possibilities during a Fourth Turning. In the last section of the book they provide guidance on how to prepare responsibly for a Fourth Turning. Without preparation, the Fourth Turning is much worse. Below is a description of Fourth Turning possibilities, the preparations that were recommended by Strauss & Howe, and my assessment of how prepared we are as a country.

"What will America be like as it exits the Fourth Turning?

History offers no guarantees. Obviously, things could go horribly wrong – the possibilities ranging from a nuclear exchange to uncurable plagues, from terrorist anarchy to high tech dictatorship. We should not assume that Providence will always exempt our nation from the irreversible tragedies that have overtaken so many others: not just temporary hardship, but debasement and total ruin. Since Vietnam, many Americans suppose they know what it means to lose a war. Losing in the next Fourth Turning, however, could mean something incomparably worse. It could mean a lasting defeat from which our national innocence – and perhaps even our nation – might never recover.

If America plunges into an era of depression or violence which by then has not lifted, we will likely look back on the 1990s as the decade when we valued all the wrong things and made all the wrong choices."

"However sober we must be about the dark possibilities of Crisis, the record of prior Fourth Turnings gives cause for optimism. With five of the past six Crises. it is hard to imagine more uplifting finales. Even after the Civil War, the American faith in progress returned with a new robustness. As a people, we have always done best when challenged. The New World still stands as a beacon of hope and virtue for the Old, and we have every reason to believe this can contine.

By the middle 2020s, the archetypal constellation will change, as each generation begins entering a new phase of life. If the Crisis ends badly, very old Boomers could be truly despised. Generation X might provide the demagogues, authoritarians, even the tribal warlords who try to pick up the pieces.

History is seasonal, but its outcomes are not foreordained. Much will depend on how tall we stand in the trials to come. But there is more to do than just wait for that time to come. The course of our national and personal destinies will depend in large measure on what we do now, as a society and as individuals, to prepare."

Preparations Needed (1997–2006)

In their chapter on preparations for the Fourth Turning, Strauss and Howe essentially tell Americans to grow up. Give up the bad habits that had become part of our life during the Unraveling. We needed to prepare as if a blizzard was headed our way.

"Reflect on what happens when a terrible winter blizzard strikes. You hear the weather warning but probably fail to act on it. The sky darkens. Then the storm hits with full fury, and the air is a howling whiteness. One by one, your links to the machine age break down. Electricity flickers out, cutting off the TV. Batteries fade, cutting off the radio. Phones go dead. Roads become impossible, and cars get stuck. Food supplies dwindle. Day to day vestiges of modern civilization – bank machines, mutual funds, mass retailers, computers, satellites, airplanes, governments – all recede into irrelevance. Picture yourself and your loved ones in the midst of a howling blizzard that lasts several years. Think about what you would need, who could help you, and why your fate might matter to anybody other than yourself. That is how to plan for a saecular winter. Don’t think you can escape the Fourth Turning. History warns that a Crisis will reshape the basic social and economic environment that you now take for granted."

... Finish the article