Good Will Kindling

Stay with me, but I have a point later.   There's a cool moment in the otherwise self-indulgent male fantasy by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, Good Will Hunting, where the main character, a Boston townie of super-hero like genius, lectures a Harvard snob that he could have gotten a great education at the public library for a couple of bucks in late charges, rather than blowing $150,000 on a Harvard diploma.  



This has new resonance nowadays, when more and more people are realizing that a college education may not be worth the investment.   This "higher education bubble" has been the subject of a lot of recent discussion on the blogosphere, notably on Glenn Reynolds' great blog, Instapundit, which links to articles on the bursting of the bubble on an almost daily basis.   For instance, see here; and here.   And I have become increasingly convinced that, except for the serious sciences and engineering, and perhaps economics, most of what goes on in college could just as easily be done online, practically for free.   For instance, I have noted for some time with wonder the availability of college-level courses on the Internet at places like the Open Yale Courses site, where you can take Professor Donald Kagan's Greek civilization course for free, or a class on Milton from Professor John Rogers, or a class on the Civil War from Professor David Blight, all of them first-class and nationally-renowned scholars, authors of important works in their fields, etc.   Why would you want to pay for courses from lesser lights at Podunk U?   The same thing is available at MIT:  you can take their freshman physics class from a world-class physicist on-line for free.   Again, why would you want to take a freshman physics lecture anywhere else and pay for the privilege of getting someone who couldn't get a job at MIT?

I was thinking about this last night when I was setting up my wife's new Kindle, which I bought for her.... well, just because she's a great wife and she deserves something nice now and again (particularly since she can't get a do-over and start fresh with a new husband).   Anyway, I managed to download for her in about 15 minutes:

• the complete works of Jane Austen
• the complete works of George Eliot
• the complete works of Leo Tolstoy
• the complete works of the Bronte sisters (Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, etc.)
• the complete works of Thomas Hardy

So, without putting too fine a point on it, she now has what would be a decent class in the Nineteenth Century novel, or at least the reading for it, all for about $6.   That's right, because these are all in the public domain and not best-sellers, the download price from Amazon is minimal.  

In law and economics, one of the concepts underlying monopoly power (such that antitrust laws might apply) is the concept of "barriers to entry."   If a particular industry, say, auto manufacturing, has a high barrier of entry (it costs billions to set up plants and distribution networks, it costs billions to research and develop a car, etc.), then the companies in that industry can more easily develop monopoly power.   For years colleges and universities have had monopoly power because they were the only places you could go to get educated (or so they told us), and because the barriers to entry for accessing books and professors and course materials were so high.  You had to go there to get it -- where the professors were, where the libraries were, etc.    Now... not so much.   It's only a matter of time, and quickly accelerating at that, before American parents start thinking to themselves that they can lay out a course of study for their children for practically nothing that will give them the same education they could get for $150,000 or $200,000.   Homeschooling for college... a movement I am predicting will begin to take hold, and very soon.  

More Gloom, and a Prescription for the Antidote

Here's the lede from an article by Michael Walsh in the New York Post:

Private-sector job growth is ane mic, new jobless claims are still well over 400,000, the unemployment numbers are grim, manufacturing has slowed to a crawl, home prices are falling again, the dollar keeps sinking, 44 million people are now on food stamps, layoffs continue, consumer confidence has hit the skids and the stock market lost 280 points Wednesday and 38 more yesterday.

Welcome to Recovery Summer II.

Ouch.   Walsh goes on:

For what it's worth, Moody's is warning that, absent some agreement to avoid short-term default, it may downgrade the nation's credit rating. "We are on the verge of a great, great Depression," charged analyst Peter Yastrow.

And where was President Obama as this disastrous week began? Just back from a European mini-vacation, he was out on the links again on Memorial Day, playing his 70th round of golf since he took office. Leading from behind, anybody?

Double ouch.   Look, here's what we need:

1.  Lower individual tax rates to where they were after the Reagan tax cuts in 1988, with two brackets of 15% and 28%, period.  

2. Lower capital gains tax rates to 10% to encourage investment.   The maximum amount the federal government has ever received from capital gains tax collection has been around $120 billion, when the rates were 20%, and the stock market was roaring at the end of the tech bubble in 2000.   That seems like a lot, sure, but in terms of the federal budget as a whole, it would pay for about 3% of our total spending.   That's not enough to offset the drag on the economy created by hamstringing investors and capital.

3. Enact a five-year moratorium on new federal regulations unless they directly and demonstrably impact public health.

4. Repeal Dodd-Frank (Obama's financial reform package).

5.  Repeal Obamacare.

6.  Permit and encourage offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific off California.   Permit and encourage drilling for oil and natural gas everywhere in the continental U.S., including in Alaska's National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).

7.  Cut federal government spending immediately by 10% this year, and another 10% next year, and another 10% the year after that.   Put America on a path to a balanced budget within five years.  

In short, we need certainty for investors that their investments won't be taxed away or threatened by unpredictable regulatory confiscation; we need sobriety in our government spending to convince world markets that we are serious about our fiscal health; and we need energy independence.   Certainty, sobriety, independence.... those should be our watchwords, and our slogan ought to be "America Is Being Run By Adults, and Is Now Open For Business Again."

Remember When Democrats Used To Belittle "Burger-Flipping" Jobs?

Now, or so it appears, that's all we've got going for us:

According to the unemployment data released this morning, the economy added only 54,000 jobs, pushing the unemployment rate up to 9.1 percent. However, this report from MarketWatch suggests data is much worse than that:

McDonald’s ran a big hiring day on April 19 — after the Labor Department’s April survey for the payrolls report was conducted — in which 62,000 jobs were added. That’s not a net number, of course, and seasonal adjustment will reduce the Hamburglar impact on payrolls. (In simpler terms — restaurants always staff up for the summer; the Labor Department makes allowance for this effect.) Morgan Stanley estimates McDonald’s hiring will boost the overall number by 25,000 to 30,000. The Labor Department won’t detail an exact McDonald’s figure — they won’t identify any company they survey — but there will be data in the report to give a rough estimate.

If Morgan Stanley is correct, about half of last month's job growth came from the venerable fast-food chain. That is hardly the sign of a healthy economy.

Hat tip to The Weekly Standard.  

Birthdays Today

Somewhat mediocre birthdays today:

First, it's Jefferson Davis' birthday, born in 1808.   The President of the Confederate States of America, Davis ought by rights be viewed as a villain for helping put America through a horrific Civil War.  It is somewhat due to the genius of Lincoln, and the luck of America, that we chose largely to forgive and forget those sins.   Here is Ulysses S. Grant in his great Memoirs (possibly the greatest military memoirs ever), talking at the end of the war about the men who fought for the Confederacy:

I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse. I do not question, however, the sincerity of the great mass of those who were opposed to us.

By the way, the Grant memoirs are a must-read for any history buff.
















It's also the birthday of Paulette Goddard, the great actress of the 1930s, who starred with Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator, to whom she was then married.  Goddard later married Burgess Meredith and, later still, the author Erich Maria Remarque (All Quiet on the Western Front).   She accumulated a fortune, and, upon her death in 1990, gifted $20 million to NYU, among other charities.

Finally, it's the birthday of Tony Curtis, born in 1925.  Curtis was very good in light comedies, and brilliant in perhaps the greatest Hollywood comedy ever, Some Like It Hot.   Here's the original trailer:



But I happen to like him best in more serious roles, and particularly where he plays someone slightly sleazy, as in his best role in The Sweet Smell of Success:

Girl of the Day - More Pride and More Prejudice

Okay, so I generally don't think Keira Knightley's all that and a bag of cherries.  A little too angular for my taste, shall we say.   But she makes a nice Elizabeth Bennett, and I also liked her in a small part in Love, Actually.   (I have to confess I've never seen a minute of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.)  

Mechanical Analysis of Human Movement

This summer, I am teaching a new course called "Mechanical Analysis of Human Movement." It is basically a Clinical Biomechanics course designed for our students that plan on pursing a career in a health related profession or a graduate degree in exercise science. The students will learn how to apply biomechanics to evaluate movement, injury, disorders, etc. The class is taught over a three week period, and we just completed our first week. The students are doing very well and I am confident that they will be able to learn about Inverse Dynamics, which is a graduate level skill, by the end of the semester. I will provide an update on the class as well as inverse dynamics at the end of the semester. Also, I would be remiss if I didn't post an updated picture of Cameron. He is seven and a half weeks old and growing fast!! We just wish that he would sleep a little more.

Cameron Charles Knight

I apologize for the lengthy delay between blog posts, but our lives have changed a lot in the past two weeks. During the early hours of March 22, Amy and I welcomed Cameron Charles Knight into the world!! He weighted 4 lbs, 15 oz. and measured at 18.25 inches. Other than being a little small, he was a perfectly healthy baby. He has been eating like a champ and we have no doubt that our little guy will soon be much bigger. Despite the lack of sleep, we have had so much fun with him these past two weeks. The picture on the bottom is from the day he was born, and the one top is from yesterday. He is already starting to change before our eyes. I am sure I will have many more posts in the future relating to Cameron and his growth and development.