THE “THIRD WORLD” COMES TO BERKELEY, AND BEYOND

There is no darkness but ignorance. ~ William Shakespeare 

During the past week Pacific Gas & Electric Co. (PG&E) has again turned off the electricity for millions of its customers, including me.

I spent much of my professional career analyzing the electric power industry. When I was writing my doctoral dissertation about the industry’s dynamic performance I learned that in the 1950s and 1960s electric utilities were promoting their services as the most reliable form of energy. Their promotions were helped by Reddy Kilowatt, shown below, who was the utilities’ mascot and marketer. The industry claimed their customers were receiving kilowatt-hours (kWh) 98+% of the time. That’s an impressive number. Lesser-developed nations – aka, “the third world” – had far less reliable electricity distribution systems. We were king of the kWh mountain. 

Reddy Kilowatt  

    This remains true on a national basis. According to the US Energy Information Administration, the average US utility customer in 2017 experienced 1.4 interruptions including those caused by major events like hurricanes, tornados, winter storms (and firestorms). These interruptions averaged 7.8 hours (470 minutes). In contrast, Bangladeshi electricity customers experience a power outage in 249 days per year!

But guess what. This past week I and 2.8 million other Northern and Central Californians experienced our second, much longer period of widespread intentional electricity shut-offs “in the interest of public safety” due to strong, gusty winds and high fire danger.

These winds are called Diablo winds in the Bay Area and Santa Ana winds in Southern California. The dry, offshore winds blow every Spring and Fall due to weather patterns that have existed for millennia. They are not new news at all; Diablo and Santa Ana winds happen every Fall. They are always most dangerous in the Fall, when vegetation is driest.

For Berkleyans like me this shut off lasted for 42 hours. I was using a headlamp and lanterns in our dark, un-electrified home, and buying bags of ice to supplement our non-functioning refrigerator. My suitcase was packed in case I had to evacuate. The idea of 98+% reliability was pretense. These episodes reminded me of how much we take for granted the full-time availability of electricity. Hordes of Californians are still without electricity.

As PG&E has descended into bankruptcy, it has stunningly mismanaged its operations, its facilities and its customers. During our Fall Diablo-wind season, which happens every September to November, one portion of the third world is now visiting many in Berkeley and the rest of California: complete darkness after sunset. It’s not quaint.

Many folks here offer genuine feelings of endearment and support for the plight of third-world denizens. But in Berkeley, no one is happy when PG&E seems as unreliable as some utility across an ocean. Where’s Reddy Kilowatt when we want him? Our situation is not nearly as bad as in Pakistan, where customers endure with an average of 75 power outages per month. Nevertheless it’s still quite upsetting, as has been clearly illustrated in social media. When the winds blow, PG&E’s strategy of re-booting my and others’ electricity multiple times seems neither effective nor smart. But if you’re stuck with only a sledgehammer, everything looks like a formidable railroad spike.

Besides complaining, what can be done to avoid darkened lightbulbs and warming refrigerators in homes and businesses? There are two much-discussed technical possibilities; undergrounding lower-voltage (<34kV) electric distribution lines and microgrids. Each has promise and problems.

First, undergrounding. For decades, electric utilities have undergrounded their distribution lines in cities and urban areas. There are several advantages beyond the straightforward aesthetic elimination of ugly power poles carrying overhead lines. Underground lines are less subject to damage from severe weather conditions –lightning, freezing, hurricanes, tornados and other winds (like Diablos, Santa Anas and Siroccos). And perhaps more important for our part of the country, underground power lines provide decreased risk of fire. Overhead power lines can draw high fault currents from vegetation-to-conductor or conductor-to-ground contact, which result in large, hot arcs that can start fires like we experience every Falls-worth of Diablo/Santa Ana winds.

A significant disadvantage is that undergrounding is costly. A recent article in the NYTimes was written by Ms. Carine Hines who co-owns a farm in rural Yolo County, west of Sacramento. She, like many of us, was dealing with PG&E’s shut-offs. She believes “the most obvious solution” would be for the utility to underground its electric lines in rural areas like Yolo County.

It may be obvious, but it’s pretty expensive. The life-cycle cost of an underground distribution power cable can be two to four times larger the cost of an overhead power line. Higher-voltage underground power lines cost proportionately more. Is Ms. Hines ready to pay a substantial premium for the safety of her undergrounded electric lines? In our age of seemingly unlimited “free” stuff, I have my doubts.

Another disadvantage is that underground power cables are more subject to damage by ground movement – like earthquakes. The Capay Valley, where her farm is located, is riddled with nearby earthquake faults like many other places in California, including Berkeley. Two fault systems near the Capay Valley are the Rogers Creek Fault Zone and the Concord–Green Valley Faults. Repairing overhead electric cable breaks can be accomplished usually in hours; underground repairs can take days or weeks.

Second, microgrids. A microgrid (also termed “distributed generation”) is a localized, small-scale assemblage of electricity generation, low-voltage distribution and customer electric loads. Microgrids often operate connected to a traditional, centralized macrogrid. A single point of common coupling with the macrogrid can be disconnected, if need be. The microgrid can then function autonomously and thus strengthen grid resilience, and help mitigate centralized grid disruptions. If Berkeley had a functioning microgrid last week, it is likely our home wouldn’t have been darkened.

Creating systematic microgrids for PG&E’s entire 70,000 square mile service territory – from Eureka to Bakersfield – would require a major, pricey redesign of our centralized generation, transmission and distribution system.

Microgrid designs heavily depend on specific local conditions and defy cost generalizations. Microgrid experts have seen cost proposals as low as $250,000 to as high as $100 million. Local generating capacity typically accounts for most of the cost. Would the City of Berkeley consent to siting a local generation facility for its microgrid? Not likely, given its commitment to be carbon-neutral by 2045, and having no space for solar or wind power facilities (that will require additional off-peak backup power). I wonder how the City’s 2030 plan to be a Fossil Fuel Free city and become a net carbon sink will work when there may be no consistent, uninterrupted source of kWhs for all Berkeleyans and their mandated EVs.

How many microgrids exist in the US? They now represent under 0.2% of the nation’s overall generating capacity. Most microgrids are unconnected to a centralized grid and serve industrial facilities. Nevertheless, interest in microgrids is growing; and clearly there’s a lot of room for growth. Like undergrounding, there’s no agreement about how the considerable extra costs of designing and installing microgrids can be allocated among beneficiaries.

What can be done to avoid defensive power shut-downs in California? Shut-downs will certainly be in our future because the Diablo/Santa Ana winds will continue to blow. Depressingly, no one really knows what to do; ignorance reigns. Governor Gavin Newsom has expressed interest in Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway making a bid for PG&E. This is Gavin’s empty-winded political doggerel. Is that all he’s come up with? OMG.

The legislature isn’t in session now, so no insightful words of wisdom are forthcoming. Although if it was in session, I’m not sure it would be any different. The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), the state’s utility regulator, has yet to inspire any stakeholders that its providence includes actual remedy. And PG&E? Surely, you jest. It’s the deserving, convenient scoundrel for public leaders to heap accusations upon. But these same leaders haven’t bothered to state what they believe actually needs to be done to solve California’s electricity/wildfire calamity.

     So for the near future, I’m keeping my bag packed, headlamp and lanterns ready and ice-chest filled. The “third world’s” electricity availability could be staying here at least until the first rain storms miraculously appear from the Pacific. 

FANTASYLAND OR FRONTIERLAND

I was happiest between the waves. ~ Gertrude Ederle 

Have you ever spent holiday time at a Disney theme park? I expect so. Disney’s two US theme parks, Disneyland in California and Disneyworld in Florida, are the most-visited vacation resorts in the world. Last year, 76.9 million folks attended one of these parks. That’s close to twice the total number of people living in California, the nation’s most populous state. When I first visited Disneyland in 1962 on a family vacation as a teenager I was thoroughly captivated, especially by Fantasyland and Frontierland. Tomorrowland wasn’t far behind.

Disneyland opened in 1955 as the Happiest Place on Earth. It pioneered being an all-encompassing family resort where both kids and their parents have enjoyed its four created “lands,” Fantasyland, Frontierland, Tomorrowland and Adventureland. Customers have happily made 726 billion visits to Disneyland since it opened. Disneyworld opened in 1971 and features two water parks and four theme parks, including EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow) and its spherical Spaceship Earth exhibit. When we visited, EPCOT was my favorite. Disneyworld has three times the number of annual visitors of Disneyland.

For a while there have been some new visitors to Fantasyland and Frontierland who are seeking their own happiest place on Earth. These folks’ hoped-for happiest place isn’t on Disney’s iconic Mainstreet USA in California or in Florida. It’s at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

These visitors are the aspiring candidates for the 2020 Presidential election, that’s still in the distant future. At the moment there are 7 Dems out of the 19 remaining who RealClearPolitics shows as having average poll numbers exceeding a measly 2%. Several of these “leading” Dems’ rank very high on my Fantasyland Indicator – Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Andrew Yang.

My Fantasyland Indicator heuristically accounts for each candidate’s approach to solving their signature issue(s). The higher a candidate’s Fantasyland Indicator is, the lower I believe is the candidate’s likelihood of passing real, effective policies – based on those they’re promoting as a candidate – implemented across the US, not just in Fantasyland. The indicator’s maximum value is 10.

I recognize that reality – an opposite of fantasy – by itself has hardly ever won an election. Politicians must instill hope, belief, trust and aspirations through their campaigns and programs in order to win. One of candidate Barack Obama’s successful slogans was "Change We Can Believe In." I did believe in his wished-for changes; some of which like the ACA actually became the law of the land. As a voter I seek candidates whose proposed policies can, if implemented, offer improvements to our lives. These policies need some realistic foundation and some likelihood of political and economic success, not a utopian ideal that sounds fantastic but isn't practically achievable.

I also recognize that my need for some real, pragmatic possibility for these candidates’ proposed plans doesn’t square with many primary voters. Oh well. But to not have some measure of reasonableness simply allows the candidate’s policies and plans to become empty verbal bait designed to catch targeted segments of voters. Vote for me because I’ll offer you 100% student-debt forgiveness, “free” healthcare and a “green” or a “great” America whether or not I can actually make it happen as president. The higher a candidate’s Fantasyland Indicator, the less likely I think her or his stated policies can actually become the law of our land.

Bernie Sanders.  Sen. Sanders’ signature issues – health care, inequality and college tuition – will be remedied by his Democratic Socialist, revolutionary policies that will significantly change both the structure and performance of our entire economy. His revolution appeals to people other than me. Ironically, given that Bernie suffered a mild heart attack last week, that he announced belatedly, people now may be more concerned about his health and stamina rather than his single-payer Medicare for All (M4A) plan.

As I’ve mentioned here, important parts of his M4A plan will disturb large numbers of already-insured folks, including over half of people under 65 years old (158 million) who are insured through their employers. That doesn’t bother Bernie. But at the least, creating the required new and increased taxes to fund M4A and devolving the nation’s existing healthcare system will be highly contentious and disliked. The US healthcare system employs almost 17 million people – roughly 1 in 10 US workers. Under Bernie’s M4A many of them will be dislocated and looking for new work. It is the rare citizen who gladly pays more taxes, especially new ones, or enjoys having to find another job. His free college tuition plan, like Elizabeth’s, and his total student debt forgiveness plan could offer benefits to one of his important constituencies, young people, but also will increase some folks’ taxes (guess who). They also will increase the non-tuition costs for public colleges to successfully provide ever-more entering students with an A.A. or B.A. My Fantasyland Indicator for Bernie is 9.8.

Elizabeth Warren.  Senator Warren’s signature issues include income and opportunity inequality. Her “I have a plan” candidacy includes 45 different plans listed at her website, but curiously not one for comprehensive healthcare. Her wealth tax, which she initiated before Bernie’s version, would provide some funding for several of her plans, including student debt annulment, free college, universal child care, the opioid crisis and green manufacturing.

Virtually any Dem candidate that’s to the left of Attila the Hun has subscribed either wholly or partially to her “2₵” wealth tax. It’s become a de rigueur keystone of most progressives’ funding plans. Although it’s a reasonable idea for effecting wealth redistribution, it will create several basic challenges including a Constitutional one, an enforcement one, a compliance one and a capital flight one. No matter. She has consistently staked out plans and policies that would face a host of practical issues if she succeeds in winning the White House. The breadth of her plans impressively exceeds even Bernie's. 

Passage of her plans (or of any other successful Dem candidate) would require the Dems in November 2020 to produce a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate as well as maintain their control of the House.   

Several of Elizabeth’s plans could have difficulty convincing moderates and others that they don’t reside just in Fantasyland perhaps even with middle-class tax increases she refuses to ponder. Such plans include her $150 billion (B) per year plan to expand Social Security benefits – an immediate $200 boost in monthly benefits for each of the 64M Social Security recipients. Social Security’s finances are already shaky. Last year the negative cash flow for Social Security’s retirement and disability programs was $80B. Would the FICA tax need to increase to help pay for her plan? Perhaps. Another of her plans would cost at least $1.25B/year to offer free-tuition for public colleges, like Bernie’s, and cancel most student debt. Her education plan contains a fair amount of fiscal caprice, as does her $100B program to resolve the opioid epidemic.

Her climate plan, which is adopted in large part from Jay Inslee’s plan, includes quite imaginative timescales and costs. Gov. Inslee dropped out of the race in August.

Sen. Warren wants to eliminate planet-warming emissions from power plants, vehicles and buildings by 2030, that’s only nine years after she hopes to start living in the White House. Her goal is praiseworthy, her timing is Fantasyland. Her plan would shut down each of the 219 operating coal-fired power plants that account for 30.1% of US electricity generated. The plan also seeks to achieve zero emissions from passenger vehicles and medium-duty trucks and buses by 2030. In 2018, zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) represented just 1.9% of US vehicle sales. ZEV percentages now are even lower for trucks and buses. Getting to zero emissions in less than a decade is Fantasyland.

Do Elizabeth’s plans contain laudable objectives? Yes, in most cases; but they’re not practically achievable in her proposed timeframes or costs. My Fantasyland Indicator for Elizabeth is 9.5.

Andrew Yang.  Andrew Yang’s tour-de-force policy is his Universal Basic Income (UBI) plan, a favorite of progressives and even a few conservative movers and shakers. It is the central focus of his campaign. Like Donald Trump before he became #45, Mr. Yang has no prior government experience. His UBI plan would provide $1,000/mo. for every citizen older than 18 years. Their “freedom dividend,” as Andrew calls these unconditional payments, regardless of income or employment status. Andrew’s program, unlike all others, would truly be universal, with everyone covered. All other UBI pilots to date have been offered only to low-income folks.  

Andrew’s national program would be funded by the federal government by creating a 10% national value-added tax, much like a sales tax. Using our current population and the number of people over 18, my and others’ estimates for his UBI come to around $3 trillion per year. That’s a large heap of money.[1] In fiscal year 2018 the Federal government spent $4.1 trillion. If enacted, Andrew’s UBI would increase federal spending by a massive 73% in one fell swoop, although he says that some existing welfare plan payments could be “consolidated” with the UBI payments. Such an increase in government spending would push the US up to levels seen in France and Scandinavian social democracies. This is fiscal Fantasyland.

A UBI plan’s costs have always been a substantial impediment to implementation. One of the largest UBI projects was undertaken in Finland. In 2017, the Finnish government created and tested the program, giving 560 Euros (~$616) to 2,000 unemployed Finnish citizens per month, with no requirement to find a paying job. By 2019, Finland scrapped their entire UBI “experiment” principally due to its cost that totaled $22.7M. Preliminary results indicate there was no significant improvement in employment by participants. Their actual benefits were in terms of “fewer problems” with health, mood, concentration and stress. The Finnish government has no plans to undertake other UBI projects. Ontario, Canada launched a UBI test in April 2017 involving 4,000 low-income people. The program was axed in early 2018 due to the “extraordinary cost for Ontario taxpayers.”

Concerns about such projects’ costs along with uncertain benefits have led critics to characterize UBI as a solution searching for a problem. Harvard professor Laurence Summers stated, “A universal basic income is one of those ideas that the longer you look at it, the less enthusiastic you become.” Because of the problematic nature of UBI and Andrew’s naïve expectation that Congress would pass a national value-added tax along with his UBI program, my Fantasyland Indicator for him is 9.3.

Pete Buttigieg.  Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s campaign has focused on generational change; he is the youngest Dem candidate, and only left-hander. He has endorsed expanding the number of Supreme Court justices may be a progressive crowd-pleaser, but it chiefly resides in Fantasyland. He has offered several ideas: increase the number of permanent Supreme Court justices to 10 from the current 9 that’s been in place since 1869, along with 5 others rotating in who could be seated only by unanimous consent of the first 10. Pete is also considered having appellate court judges serve rotating one-year terms on the court. Franklin D. Roosevelt undertook the last attempted “packing” the Supreme Court; it failed in 1937. Any of the mayor’s changes for the Supreme Court would require passing new Congressional legislation and winning subsequent legal skirmishes. He also believes students shouldn’t have to take on debt to go to college, by substantially increasing aid. He’s in favor of a carbon tax and a single-payer healthcare system modeled on M4A. My Fantasyland Indicator for Pete is 8.6.

Kamala Harris.  Senator Kamala Harris’ positions on some of the increasing number of progressive Dem litmus-test issues like M4A, taxing the wealthy and allowing convicted criminals to vote have changed over time, creating uncertainty about her beliefs. She seems interested in straddling the wide Dem expanse between leftish progressives (that the NYTimes now oddly labels just liberals) and mere moderates. Kamala has yet to master this balance-beam exercise’s difficult poising. She calls herself somewhat puzzlingly a “progressive prosecutor.” My Fantasyland Indicator for Kamala is 8.1.

Beto O’Rourke.  Former Representative Beto O’Rourke’s campaign seems to have stalled. His principled stands on immigration and gun violence are well-reasoned but unfortunately unlikely to result in new policy – e.g., “Hell yes we’re going to take away your AR-15.” If only. He’s in favor of a national cap-and-trade program to reduce emissions. If only, one more time. Like most of his candidate colleagues, he’s taking the high road by favoring the national legalization of marijuana. My Fantasyland Indicator for Beto is 8.5.

Joe Biden.  And last but not least, Joe Biden. His campaign is founded on amending Dem policies to be more relevant for today’s world, not revolutionizing them. As such, he’s the Dems’ elder monarch of moderates. Little fantasy shines on Joe’s policy stars although his verbal meanderings can indeed be fantastic. He’s far more in favor of modifying the ACA, passed when he was Vice President and listening to LPs on his record player, rather than creating a brand-new M4A healthcare system. He seems much more politically-practical than most of the other Dem candidates, which befits his appreciation of the Obama era. Fantasyland and Joe aren’t that chummy.

Will he and his candidacy be wounded as collateral damage from the Dems’ Impeachment Inquiry on #45? Irony abounds. The Inquiry is focused, for the moment, on the president’s conversation with the Ukrainian President. It’s way too early to tell if Joe will survive, but it certainly can’t help to have his and his son’s names repeatedly used in the growing swarm of media stories about potential impeachment. My Fantasyland Indicator for Joe is 5.7.

My Fantasyland Indicators, shown in the chart below, for Joe, Kamala, Beto and Pete, have values lower than Andrew’s, Elizabeth’s or Bernie’s.

    Fantasyland Indicator by Person

    The higher the indicator’s score, the more fantasy-like the person’s rating.

So let’s bid adieu to Fantasyland and hitch our wagon to Frontierland. Disney’s Frontierland recreates the romanticized, wondrous, long-ago pioneer times along America‘s frontier. Never mind the realities of life in the 1800s; when life expectancy was only 40 years, one-half what it is now, and maternal mortality was 35 times greater than it currently is.

Instead, envision cowboys gallantly herding steers to market across the plains or homesteaders straining to grow corn on their 160-acre parcel. The appeal of Frontierland goes back to the good ol’ days when men were … Marion Morrison. Marion had a wondrously alliterative name, but Hollywood VIPs didn’t like it, so they changed this actor’s moniker to John Wayne. Just like they did with Danlielovitch Demsky who became Kirk Douglas and Archibald Alexander Leach who became Cary Grant. Talk about old-time diversity suppression. As Franklin P. Adams aptly stated, nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a bad memory.

My Frontierland Indicator accounts for the person’s approach to solving key issues, this time with our historic frontier as his frontispiece. The higher a candidate’s Frontierland Indicator is, the more fond he is of the good old days and the lower I believe is the candidate’s likelihood of passing actual effective, implemented policies in the present-day US, not just in long-ago Frontierland. The indicator’s maximum value is -10.

Donald Trump.  Among the current posse of presidential candidates one stands out as the numero uno denizen of Frontierland, Donald Trump. Every Trumpian acolyte who wears one of his MAGA hat subscribes to his rants to get back to a former, but more “great” era, even if it never ever actually happened. His so-far silent, obsequious Congressional comrades are similarly culpable for #45’s ruinous antics that are founded on an imaginary past.

In this sense, President Trump genuinely lives in Frontierland’s yesteryears. His faint policy record since he was inaugurated has been grim and depressing. Now that the Dems are understandably and singularly focused on their Impeachment Inquiry, I hope they surmount the challenges to convince enough of the public, not only Dem stalwarts, that their quest is both appropriate and can be successful. They’d better remember, and side skirt what happened to the Repubs when they over-reached in their effort to impeach President Clinton two decades ago.

My Frontierland Indicator for #45 is a -9.9; who knows what actions he’ll take next that raise his rating to a maximum 10, or beyond. The possibilities seem horribly endless.

Andrew Johnson.  For comparison’s sake with #45, I’ve also included that of #17, Andrew Johnson, in the Frontierland Indicator chart below. In April, 1865, six weeks after he was elected Vice President, Mr. Johnson ascended to the presidency when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. He presided over the end of the Civil War and favored quick restoration of the 11 seceded Southern states back into the Union. His policies did not provide protection to former slaves. Andrew’s obstinate interactions with the Republican-controlled Congress ended with his impeachment in the House. [Sound eerily familiar?] The Senate acquitted Andrew by a single vote. Based on numerous surveys of US presidential rankings, obstreperous Andrew Johnson’s average ranking is 37th out of the 45 US presidents. His historical ranking places him solidly in the bottom fifth of all presidents. I give Andrew a Frontierland Indicator score of -8.7.

  

    Frontierland Indicator by Person

  The larger the indicator’s score, the more frontier-like the person’s rating.           

So, what will it be a mere 391 days from now in our presidential election, Fantasyland, Frontierland or something else?

If such prospects seem disheartening, here’s a smidgeon of completely non-political news that may provide a smile and some relief. More importantly, this event confirms that despite the obsessions of the inside the DC Beltway crowd, the actual world thankfully still functions.

I’m referring to the just-completed World Stone-Skipping Championship. As reported in The Economist, the contest again happened on Easdale Island, a jaunty 3-hour drive out of Glasgow Scotland, plus a ferry ride. This island is a small protuberance in the Firth of Lorn off the west coast of Scotland with a permanent population of about 60 resilient souls. It seems an unlikely place to hold a world championship, perhaps as much as Doha, but these hardy Scotts think otherwise. [FYI, the average daily high temp on the island in Sept. is 60^oF, a whopping 42^o less than Doha.] On September 29 Easdale Island held its 22nd World Stone Skimming Championships. Contestants skim their slate stones across the surface of a flooded quarry. The winner is the skimmer who achieves the greatest cumulative distance with their 3 throws. 

Peter Szep of Hungary repeated his 2018 victory and threw an impressive 189 meters (620ft) this time around. Wow. Each skim must bounce off the water at least twice. As in other sports, success in stone-skimming requires maintaining good technique under pressure. It’s all in the wrists as they say. Researchers have found that a stone is most likely to skim if it hits the water at an angle of around 20 degrees, if it is spinning and if it travels at more than 2.5 meters a second. It’s both remarkable and gratifying that individuals have actually devoted time researching what optimal slate stone skimming techniques should be. Clearly Peter has this down. So bend your knees, flick your wrist – as shown in the picture – and toss it with focused power to get ready for next year’s world championship on the island. Onward…

Visualization assistance: Cody I. Smith

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[1] $3 trillion is so large a number that it defies understanding. Here’s a more comprehensible way to think about the size of this huge sum, its length. How long is $3T? If one horizontally crams together Ben Franklin $100 bill packs, $3 trillion’s worth of Ben Franklins would be about 1,860 miles long; approximately the distance from Berkeley CA to Ft. Smith, AK. That’s a 26hr drive, motoring along each and every one of those Ben Franklins.

A BUG AT THE BANK? SAY IT ISN’T SO

We don’t have the gold standard. It’s not because we don’t know about the gold standard, it’s because we do. ~ Allan Meltzer    

Gold has been used by humans as a symbol of value and prestige since antiquity. Its purest 24 carat form is a bright, reddish-yellow dense, soft metal. Gold occurs as nuggets in rocks, in underground veins and alluvial (loose sediment) deposits. So-called “gold bugs” – people who reverently believe gold is the ultimate standard of value – have occupied positions of societal power and influence for a very long time, but not recently. Gold bugs haven’t sat at the citadels of US public authority for almost 90 years; that may soon change if #45 gets his way. Oh my.

Consider first some golden history.

The seemingly eternal allure of gold obliged our ancestors to find it. People have mined gold for at least 7000 years in what’s now eastern Europe and the Caucasus, as well as China, India, Mesoamerica, Spain, Ireland and Wales. Because gold served as the primary medium of exchange within the Roman Empire, they developed and used ground-sluicing methods on a large scale to extract gold. Historians believe the Roman invasion of Britain in the first century AD was principally motivated to expand their supplies of this prized metal.

The first precious-metal coins were used as money in several places about the same time, around 600-500 BC; in the Yellow River valley in northern China, in the Ganges River valley of N.E. India and by the king of Lydia in western Asia Minor (modern Turkey). The Lydian coins, shown below, were made from electrum – an alloy of gold and silver. Officials stamped images on bean-sized lumps of electrum that helped guarantee the value of each coin, and discourage counterfeiting. If only.

Lydian coin

Following the lead of Lydia, most nations have employed gold specie to conduct commerce for centuries. During the Middle Ages, Byzantine gold coins were used throughout Europe and the Mediterranean. Twenty-two carat Spanish Doubloons were widely used in Europe and the Americas from the early 16th to mid-19th centuries. During its primacy, the Doubloon served as a multi-nation de facto gold standard, a monetary system in which the standard unit of currency is based on a fixed quantity of gold. The US formally adopted the gold standard in 1873, using its $10 gold eagle coin as the nation’s primary currency unit. The US mint produced gold coins of various denominations from 1872 through 1933. Like many other nations, our country effectively abandoned the gold standard in 1933 during the depths of the Great Depression. It finally and officially severed the link between the dollar and gold in 1971. The image below shows our “lady liberty” gold dollar coin first issued in 1849.

US Lady Liberty gold dollar coin

The late 1840s ring a very special chime in the golden history of the US.

The California Gold Rush began in January 1848 when James Marshall found a placer nugget in a river at Sutter’s Mill in the Sierra Nevada foothills almost 50 miles northeast of present-day Sacramento. Proclamations of his discovery created such a popular incentive for people also wanting to “strike it rich” that over 300,000 people soon headed for California from nearby and far-away places. They came from each of our then-30 states and every territory. They also arrived with the gleam of gold in their eyes from around the world, including the Sandwich Islands (aka Hawaii), China, Latin America and Europe. Because of gold’s draw, California rapidly became a state in 1850 without first being a territory, unlike any other western US region.

There turned out to be a lot of gold in the Sierra Nevada. By the end of 1848, the first year of the Gold Rush, $10 million in gold had been produced. The biggest nugget ever found was a bit larger than a shoebox and weighed nearly 200 pounds. By 1865, $785 million worth of gold had come out of the ground in California, probably making the difference in which side won our Civil War. This multi-million dollar mountain of gold represented 60% of the total US budget in 1865. It significantly contributed to keeping Union soldiers clothed, fed and paid, and bought much-needed guns, bullets and armaments. This massif of gold would be worth $12.9 billion in today’s dollars. Very, very little of this gargantuan sum stayed in miners’ pockets; merchants like Leland Stanford and Mark Hopkins became far richer. Notwithstanding putting California on the US map, the Gold Rush also decimated numerous indigenous Native American communities. Untold environmental damage accompanied the mining, especially the hydraulic variety that used 30,000 gallons of water each minute.

Where did all this lustrous California gold come from? Not from fairy dust. According to John McFee’s superb Assembling California that intertwines the state’s geological and human history, the Sierra’s deposits of gold were precipitated 150 million years ago when the third and last giant (10,000 square mile) island-arc fragment of the Pacific plate – the Smartville Block – accreted into the westernmost North American plate near where Auburn, California is now. The Smartville Block not only doubled the width of what is now California, but created its bountiful Mother Lode as well. California’s Mother Lode has produced more gold than any other state – more than 106 million ounces since 1848. In modern times about 38% of gold is used for jewelry; coins and official government uses, 22%; electrical and electronics, 34%; and other uses, 6%.

Now that we’ve scratched the surface of the history and source of most of the nation’s gold, let’s return to the present time and Judy Shelton, who adores gold.

Dr. Shelton has recently been nominated by #45 to fill a vacancy on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Although her nomination may not be as far-fetched as the president’s previous attempt to install the totally unqualified Herman Cain on the Board, she is quite controversial. She belongs to the justifiably much-endangered, very conservative tribe of modern-day gold bugs. Like her fellow bugs, she wants to reverse President Nixon’s decision to drop the gold standard and re-adopt it now. She has publicly praised #45’s tax cuts and deregulation policies. She approves of the president’s misguided trade war with China as a means of forcing it to “play by the rules.” As I’ve mentioned before, no one's won this war. So far the president’s tariffs have cost us taxpayers $28 billion. That’s what the Trump admiration has paid the farmers they wounded, with no end in sight. Nice call, Judy. 

Virtually all knowledgeable monetary economists believe returning to the gold standard would harm the economy and its citizens. The Federal Reserve’s principal means of influencing the macroeconomy is by increasing or decreasing the nation’s money supply depending on expected economic conditions. It increases the money supply if a recession is expected, thus reducing interest rates to spur loans and investment. The Fed decreases the money supply causing interest rates to rise, towards the end an expansion, if higher inflation is expected.

Monetary policy is hardly an exact science, but it would be significantly constrained under a gold standard. Why; because our money supply would essentially be determined by how much gold is produced.

Dr. Shelton has stated, “we make America great again by making America’s money great again” through returning to the gold standard. That’s patently absurd. Dean Baker, a macroeconomist who was one of the first to identify the 2007–2008 US housing bubble that lead to the Great Recession, likened returning to the gold standard as prescribing chemotherapy for someone who doesn't have cancer. An apt diagnosis Dr. Baker.

Turning the economic clock back and re-adopting the gold standard, as Dr. Shelton and Mr. Trump have fantasized, would link the money supply to gold production. If they actually thought through this fundamental relationship imposed by the gold standard, they would not at all be pleased. I don’t believe they’ve thought about it at all; it’s simply a sporadic gesture memorializing the unfamiliar “golden days” of the past. It would not please #45 one single golden leaf to learn that China is the world’s largest gold producer. 

Since the end of the last recession, US gold production has increased a meager 0.87% per year. This is why many economists believe that a re-imposed gold standard would act as a limit on economic growth. As an economy's productive capacity grows, then so should its money supply. But because a gold standard requires that money be backed by the metal, the scarcity of gold constrains the ability of the economy to produce more capital and grow. Thus a gold-standard based monetary policy could no longer be used to stabilize or grow the economy.

It’s likely that the Senate, under the imprudent leadership of Mitch McConnell, will confirm Judy Shelton. A single gold bug will then sit on the seven-member Federal Reserve Board. Her practical and institutional influence will be limited. But that’s one too many bugs at our central bank for anyone who wants an independent Fed to be a viable economic counterforce to #45’s feckless thrusts. Where’s the political Terminix when we need it?

IS #45 RELATED TO CTENOPHORES OR PORIFERANS?

Never look back unless you are planning to go there. ~ Henry David Thoreau

I’ve returned from another delightful, multi-state road-trip adventure through the Pacific Northwest seeing family and friends. It was downright refreshing to take many steps away from the on-going tribulations connected with all things political, especially our vulgarian-in-chief and our upcoming presidential election. I recommend hiking through forests and slopes and viewing gorgeous countryside gurgling with snow-melt fed, rushing brooks.

The myopic media-industrial complex makes it seem like we’ll be voting the day after tomorrow, thus every candidate’s quotidian words are vitally important; even though election day is a colossal 453 days away. Equally obscuring is the media’s 24/7 obsession with each uttered and Twittered syllable of #45. This only magnifies his coarseness, crudeness and deceit – and strokes his already over-colossal ego. Please stop, right now.

At the same time, obdurate progressive Dems keep acting as puritanical, self-righteous bluenoses and continue posing as the sole purveyors of certain Democratic victory, while trashing President Obama’s significant accomplishments. With friends like these, who needs enemies?

But I digress.  

Instead, I offer here a much longer perspective about life on this fine, though endangered planet that transcends far beyond the mere 243 years since the USofA was founded.

It seems naturalists have narrowed down the source of the very beginnings of our hoary Tree of Life. They have been wrestling – thankfully not at all in the WWE tradition– with identifying what living creatures are the closest, current counterparts to the first-ever multicellular animal that developed in Earth’s oceans well over half a billion years ago. Naturally, evolutionary biologists haven’t all agreed about which creature deserves this accolade; and represents every human’s (perhaps especially #45) very oldest ancestor. There are two (2) quite distinct animals fighting it out, as it were, in the biologists’ ring.

First, are the beautiful and seemingly fragile Ctenophores, also called comb jellies. As pictured below, they are usually soft, iridescent blobs wreathed by feathery cilia that are sometimes arranged in groups (“combs”). They inhabit many marine habitats around the world. Despite their seeming simplicity, they have central nervous systems, cilia/tentacles to capture prey, and mouths, throats and stomachs to digest their food. Virtually all ctenophores are predators. They can capture and eat krill, shrimp-like crustaceans and even each other. Adult ctenophores range from an inch to almost 5ft in size. Watching comb jellies swim around in the tanks at the Monterey Bay Aquarium is a delightful almost magical experience.

Comb jellies in action.

Second, the other existing animal-type that’s in the running for being most similar to the founder of Earth’s animal kingdom are Poriferans, aka sponges. Sponges come in all sizes, shapes and colors. They are stunning aquatic animals that mostly attach themselves to an underwater surface, often coral reefs, and remain fixed in place, as shown below. The great majority of sponges are marine salt-water species, living in all the oceans. Their habitat ranges from tidal zones to depths exceeding five (5) miles. Their bodies are full of pores and channels allowing water to circulate through them. Virtually all types of sponges are only able to passively eat tiny particles, like bacteria and other microscopic food from the water that passes through their skeletons. They have no nervous system but do have cells in their outer layers can move inwards and change functions. From afar, sort of like stem cells.

Sponges in inaction.

Over several decades evolutionary biologists and morphologists have sort of drawn a line in the sand (on an ocean beach) with regard to the founder of our animal Tree of Life. Some believe comb jellies should hold the crown; other scientists consider sponges to be the closest modern analogue to the first multicellular animal.

For many years, the common scientific wisdom was that sponges were the foundational animal. Then about a decade ago a study using genetic methods argued that comb jellies were the sister group (the closest relatives of another evolutionary branch) of Earth’s first animals. The comb jelly proponents were overjoyed. If they had them, their cilia were wildly fluttering; but it wasn’t to persist. Last week a new study was published that turns the tide and provides “very strong support” for the sponges-first hypothesis. 

It was a tough choice, but my vote goes for #45 having a spongier forbearer. Like them, he’s immovable despite factual reality and has no nervous system. In any case, we must make sure to send him back to the depths from whence he came in 453 days.

DRESSING DOGS ON THE 4TH

Some people want champagne and caviar when they should be having hot dogs and beer. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower 

No one – really, no one – can possibly eat a hot dog without dressing it. And I don’t mean adding a tutu or tights. Naked hot dogs aren’t natural. You should add mustard for certain, along w other tasty toppings. It turns out Emily Dreyfuss tastefully wrote a much-needed 4^th of July article in Wired, “Put down that ketchup and step away from the hot dog slowly.” Her story echoes my hot dog dressing protocol to a “D” (for dog, d’accord). She begins.

In my family, I grew up knowing that my parents would support me no matter the mistakes I made. Bad grades, underage drinking, becoming an English major? All could be forgiven. Unless, of course, I put ketchup on a hot dog. Then I’d be out on my ass.

In advance of the Fourth of July holiday, I emailed my dad to see if his opinions on hot dogs and ketchup had changed at all. "It is not that ketchup on hot dogs is inherently disgusting (although even the thought picture was enough for me to lose my appetite for breakfast)," he wrote back, before going into an intricate theory about why mustard is just better. My personal favorite way to eat a (preferably spicy) hot dog is with sweet relish, mustard, and pickled jalapenos, but that’s not for everybody. [This is, nevertheless, at my summit of hot dog dressings, as well. In a partial peace offering, I’ve been known to put ketchup on a dog when it’s mixed with tabasco or siriracha.]

Chicagoans famously like to put a pickle spear in the bun and top the whole thing with celery salt like some seriously fancy patriots. The sugary red substance known as ketchup is OK, too, if it accompanies mustard. But on its own, ketchup on a hot dog is considered by my clan to be a sign of childishness and disrespect. Pretentious foodies agree. But does science? My dad's theory, though clearly right, is a mix of science, gut feeling, and mysticism. So I figured I should double check with the hard scientists [Is there any other kind?]

"There is no basis to this," wrote Richard Mattes, distinguished professor of nutrition science at Purdue University, when I emailed him for his thoughts. "Note the popularity of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Their appeal is sweet-salty combination."

So no, science is not on my side in the argument that mustard is objectively best. This time.

I agree with Emily, but just for today. After all, the Fourth of July is about celebrating this country’s common heritage and coming together for its 243rd birthday. I’m doing my best to rise to this [Francis Scott] key ecumenical occasion and dismiss any errant thoughts connected to tankification. Onward with stellar fireworks tonight…

Here’s to your having a wondrous Fourth of July – even with ketchup.

HARD HATS AND MORTARBOARDS: Forecasting the 2020 Presidential Election

The only function of forecasting is to make astrology look respectable. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith  

First Prediction: 500 days before the election.

Here it is just four days before the enigmatically -implemented first Dem candidates’ debate in Miami. I’ll bet you can hardly wait to hear all 23 of them struggling for airtime. Oops, it’s just 20 of our favs over 2 nights.[1] Finally, something (hopefully) real-ish will be happening election-wise. It’s round #1 of 81? After all, the election is practically right upon us. In this spirit, I’ve scurried way out on a thin bended limb of the electoral tree (a relative of the college) to offer my inaugural 2020 presidential election prediction. I’ll be updating my predictions periodically over the next 500 days.

My prediction today is that dystopia will continue after Nov. 3, 2020 when #45 was re-elected for another term. This ghastly result again demonstrates the alarming power of incumbency. How could this happen?

Trump was enthusiastically supported by the same solid slice of core voters – principally less-educated, less urban, more white, more religious, more conservative “working middle-class” men and women – with all too few defections from their MAGA voting in 2016. This unyielding core, who voted to KAG (Keep America Great), was preserved despite the Dems’ considerable efforts to peal some away from #45 and actually vote for their own economic self-interests with a Dem in the White House. It didn’t happen.

The Dems’ 2020 progressive ticket ultimately was determined behind a closed door session at their July 13-16 convention in Milwaukee. The initial voting rounds were deadlocked, and described as a nasty cat-and-dog fight between competing species of Dem progressives unwilling to negotiate. The expected complete transparency was suddenly clouded, to the dismay of many. Rumors were that the winning presidential nominee, Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), promised to faithfully become a modern-day FDR by adhering to an updated, democratic socialist agenda he would have favored. “Franklin Delano Roosevelt is my spirit totem,” Ms. Gabbard proclaimed in victory. She benefited from being both the first Samoan-American and the first Hindu member of the US Congress.

Unfortunately, as in the previous national election, neither Ms. Gabbard nor Andrew Yang (her VP candidate) could stitch together strongly enough their broad, multi-faceted quilt of adherents to actually vote sufficiently in all 50 states and produce an Electoral College victory. The Repubs’ brazen voter-suppression efforts certainly didn’t help. The Trump/Pence machine’s unsubstantiated characterization of the Dems’ policies as costly “extreme socialism” convinced enough anti-Trump voters in key precincts to cast their ballots for the Green Party ticket of Pete Buttigieg/Marianne Williamson.

After election-day there were no rainbows in Honolulu or any other blue locale; instead bleakness reigns. I need my support alligator, where could she have gone? The Dems also did not end up winning control the Senate and their plurality in the House was reduced to 29 from 37. The Repubs’ hard hats carried the day over the Dems’ mortarboards. L

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[1] These 20 Dem debate participants also do not include the other 141 minor Dem candidates running for president. Yup, that proverbial galaxy of folks has each duly filed their candidacy with the Federal Election Commission.

RISING TO THE CHALLENGE: MT. EVEREST AND COLLEGE

It’s not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves. ~ Sir Edmund Hillary 

There’s a straightforward relationship that explains both the horrendous end of Mt. Everest’s spring climbing season this year and the added challenges increasing numbers of students face of graduating from US colleges. These two trends in one sense display a victory for the marketing of these arduous “projects” to a larger, broader public that’s not completely ready for them. In cold economic terms, it’s consumer demand exceeding available supply. But at what cost? Deaths and drop-outs.

The recent deaths on Mt. Everest have once again peaked the media’s interest. The adventure media while berating the agonies of defeats and deaths fawns over the thrills of the quest each and every season.

Why has this season seen 11 climbers die on the mountain, the most since 2015 when at least 22 people perished due to avalanches? There were 5 deaths last year. For a change, it wasn’t this year’s weather or earthquakes or avalanches. It was because climbing Everest has for some time been commercialized and sold as something folks beyond just the hardest of hard-core, capable alpinists can successfully attempt. Nepal’s tourism ministry, seeking hard currency, issued permits to summit Mt. Everest to a record 381 climbers this season, at a cost of about $11,000 each. Beyond the permit, the trip itself can cost $45,000 or more.

That’s a very long way from Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay’s initial ascent 65 years ago. According to veteran mountaineers, this year there have been too many inexperienced climbers who have bought their way into attempting Mt. Everest who haven’t been adequately trained or supported. Dreadful results have precipitated. These results were created in no small part because of the sheer numbers of climbers attempting to simultaneously reach the peak, shown in the picture below. This is what it looked like last week when too many people (probably over 200) were waiting to capture their moment of glory on the narrow, cold (-13^oF) confines of the summit at 29,029ft. Fascinatingly, Mt. Everest continues to grow about 0.25” each year. With the extended wait, often two hours or more, unprepared climbers can run out of oxygen among other life-threatening challenges.

The summit jam at the top of Mt. Everest, May 2019.

Source: Getty Images via The Washington Post.

Meanwhile back in the lowlands, more than 16.8 million undergraduates traversed the academic slopes at colleges and universities last fall, representing a 27.8% increase since 2000. The number of US adults that have a B.A. or higher degree has increased 36.7% since 2000.

For decades, post-high school academic education has been proclaimed by many authorities, including educators and politicians, as the very best way of ensuring career success. Students and their families have listened and acted on this advice. In 2018, 35% of US adults have received a B.A. or higher degree. This proportion of college-educated adults has never been higher, as shown in the chart below. College enrollment has been increasing for young adults for over a century. This is a very good thing because a more educated, skilled workforce is more productive and more engaged. This achievement reflects not just individual successes but collective ones that have benefited society.

Percent of US adults with a B.A. or higher degree

 Source: NCES.ed.gov 

This chart illustrates that the growth of adults having at least a B.A. degree follows a logistic curve during the nearly 90 years shown. From the 1970s through 2000, the percentage of adults with college degrees rapidly increased; it more than doubled. After 2010 the incremental increases in adults with a college degree are smaller than before. This is expected to continue. The total number of undergraduates enrolled in US colleges peaked in 2010, at 18.1 million.

There are certainly sound reasons why growing numbers of young adults have elected to follow the college pathway to hopeful success. One reason, beyond possessing increased knowledge, is being able to receive higher compensation at work. In his superb Kenyon College commencement speech, This is Water, David Foster Wallace offers a much different and appropriately broader perspective when he stated, "It is about the real value of a real education has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over: ‘This is water.’”

The median annual earnings of young adults with a B.A. were $50,000 in 2016. The college income premium is often used as a justification for those of us who are fiscally-focused. It offers a rationale for devoting the considerable time, effort and expense required to receive a B.A. Several studies that have examined the size of the college income premium have found that it has ranged from about 70% to 100% more than income earned by people without a college degree. This premium has neither grown nor fallen very much over the last two decades; it’s plateaued. Other studies imply that the premium may have started to decline for specific cohorts of college students.

What has grown are college tuition and fees, which have greatly climbed for two reasons. First, states have provided a much smaller proportion of public university budgets; and second, the demand for an A.A. or B.A. degree has increased significantly. It’s been a sellers’ market for a long time, especially at “selective” schools. Since 1978, college tuition and fees have increased more than three times as fast as consumer goods and services’ prices have. Student debt has consequently risen; 69% of all college students have taken out at least one loan; the average loan owed is $29,800; the median monthly payment is $222.

I don’t think this necessarily comports as a general, capital “C” Crisis that’s often mentioned in the media. Student debt has increased because a lot more students have chosen to go to college. It’s principally demand-driven. Student debt that enables earning a college degree eventually provides added value to each and every student who graduates, as mentioned above. But defaults on student debt are the highest by a large margin of any type of private debt, especially for students who don’t graduate.

Entering and thriving in college, like climbing Everest, is not for the unprepared. As more and more students are going college, more have found it difficult to summit the academic mountain facing them. According to one report, anywhere from 40% to 60% of first-year college students now require remediation in English and/or math. These remedial courses cost students crucial money – about $1.3 billion each year. Also, these courses don’t count towards graduation requirements. On-time graduation rates of students who take remedial classes are consistently less than 10%. Basically, remedial education in college represents a deep crevasse into which all too many students are unlikely to emerge. The “who’s responsible for this” fingers are pointed in many directions regarding why this increased level of needed remediation has occurred and, of course, who should pay for it. More remediation is needed.

Today’s first-year entrants into college are more broadly representative of all our young adults, rather than a much narrower slice of them in decades gone by. This breadth is requiring more support services on the part of colleges and secondary schools, and more determination on the part of these students. Students who have the required determination and available resources graduate. But a lot don’t.

The travails of our ever-increasing number of college attendees have also risen, with only 40.7% graduating within four years across all US post-secondary educational institutions. For-profit schools’ graduation rate is contemptibly much lower, only 17.6% which is less than one-third the rate for non-profits.

Interestingly, there were several for-profit colleges named after the Earth’s highest peak. Unfortunately, none of the Everest Colleges ever reached high-altitude academics. Their owner/operator, Corinthian Colleges Inc., was successfully sued by the State of California in 2016 for defrauding their students. Everest College graduates have legitimately expressed concerns that their Everest degrees are effectively worthless. If colleges like Everest have been offering worthless degrees, perhaps they should be removed from the education business.

Higher education in the US now is far different than it was even 20 years ago, let alone in the more distant past. When I graduated from college, just after the Iron Age, having a B.A. was quite extraordinary, just one-in-ten adults received a B.A. or higher degree.

Neither the industrial-education complex, nor politicians, nor young people will allow a return to even the 2000s, when just one in four young adults graduated with a B.A. Now it’s one-in-three, which sounds like a small change, but it most assuredly isn’t. Getting a college degree has never been so culturally and socially hard-wired into our successful futures. Some folks even believe it’s a right, rather than an option. Go figure. For now and forever-more, returning to the recent past isn’t going to happen in terms of college access, and shouldn’t. And there are consequences when college degree holders become ever more widespread and less extraordinary.

Student loans have always been subsidized, reflecting the positive externalities associated with being a college graduate. Recently, several Dem presidential hopefuls have proposed increasing these subsidies in several ways. I do not think we should adopt policies like free public university that consequently will incent even more high-school grads and others to enter colleges. Visually think of such programs’ aftereffects as similar to the above picture of the overly long queue of cramped climbers waiting for the momentary grandeur of summiting Mt. Everest. Instead, multitudes of additional college students will be waiting and waiting not only to get into already-filled classes, but also to find a place to sleep and eat. Will these additional collegians, who would not have otherwise applied if it weren’t “free,” be adequately prepared academically? I have my doubts.

Policies like those Bernie and Elizabeth have been pushing for “tuition-free” and “debt-free” college are a doomed fantasy without also dramatically increasing public colleges/universities’ federal funding for expanded faculty, facilities and especially for remediative programs. If such free college programs were to see the light of day, listen for the anguished cries of progressives who whine that such policies will end up subsidizing un-poor people, mon dieu how inequitable! Such expensive, expansionary programs are likely to devalue the worth of attaining a college degree and increase drop-out rates. An A.A. or B.A. would become less exceptional and more normal. More eateries, and other businesses, would begin requiring wait-person jobs to have a post-high school degree. At best, smaller wage premiums would be willingly paid for such normality, just like when high-school degrees became ordinary starting in the 1970s; 55.2% of US adults had a high-school diploma in 1970. So, regarding “free college;” be careful what you wish for.

As Sir Edmund stated, it’s not a real adventure when you have to pay for it. Nevertheless, here’s to prepared adventuring in high places and higher education.