The right is already tossing around Bobby Jindal and Marco Rubio as potential US presidential candidates in 2016. Are they presidential material? Each has shown up recently in the news and offered us some insight into that very question. Today I would like to further examine the remarks of both Jindal and Rubio, the former on the fiscal cliff, the latter on young earth creationism.
Author: Benjamin Studebaker
Fiscal Cliff Ignorance
I’m back in the United States for a month, so it’s only fitting to write an American piece. There’s a statistic out there that should put fear into the hearts of those of us who practise, either professionally or as a hobby, the art of statecraft. The implications of this statistic are vast for the health of the American economy and the American democracy.
How to Fix the Education System
By all accounts, the public education systems in western countries are not performing to the level that we are collectively demanding. There are fundamental structural problems with our schools that inhibit good outcomes for students. Western countries have become obsessed with universal student attainment of minimum academic standards measured by test scores and maximisation of enrolment rates at universities. I propose that this is flat out the wrong goal for our education system, that rather than try to teach everyone the same material at the same kinds of schools in the same kinds of ways, our education system should be more personalised to get the most out of each individual’s talent set, and I have a plan for how to do it.
It’s a Trap!
In the rush to come up with a plan of spending cuts and tax hikes, both democrats and republicans have missed the essential detail that makes our current economic circumstances different from any we have previously experienced since World War II–it’s a trap. A liquidity trap, that is, and it’s going to make any spending cuts and tax hikes the US government enacts mean serious pain for millions of people.
The Lottery and Reverse Redistribution
I recently read a Salon article by Natasha Lennard drawing attention to the statistical tendency for lottery tickets to be purchased in quite disproportionate numbers by the poorest in society. The article brings up several interesting statistics–households that earn $13,000 or less in the United States spend an average of 9% of their income on lottery tickets, people who feel poor buy twice as many lottery tickets as those who do not, and those earning less than $40,000 in South Carolina make up 54% of the state’s lottery players despite only constituting 28% of its total population. This brings forward to my mind the question of whether or not it is ethical to permit the poor to voluntarily give significant portions of their income to the government so that statistically negligible numbers of them might get extremely lucky and hit it rich.
Benjamin Studebaker 