A debate has been raging for a number of years about "putting Christ back in Christmas." The debate posits that Christmas is a religious holiday versus those who believe that Christmas is basically a commercial holiday. If the past is prelude to the future, commercialism will win.
First, while Christmas has for centuries been an observance and celebration of Christ's birth, it also has it roots in pagan Winter celebrations and harvest rituals. Therefore, Christmas co-opted earlier celebrations. Second, at least for the last century in the US, Christmas has been celebrated as both a religious and commercial holiday. So why the big debate now?
I believe there are a number of issues at play. First, the evangelical movement has generally had more influence over American life for a number of decades. The push to re-establish Christmas as fundamentally a religious holiday is consistent with that movement. Second, as non-Christian religions continue to become increasingly present in American life, it is a natural reaction that Christians would want to hold on to their specific holidays. Indeed, the Easter holiday in the Spring is also undergoing a similar change. Third, non-Christians feel left out of what can only be considered a joyous time. Some have created or have emphasized their own religious days falling around the same time in an effort to participate. Racial groups have done the same thing. By commercializing the Christmas holiday season, it enables all religions and other similarly inclined groups to participate.
Indeed, the commercialization of Christmas is driven as much by our capitalist nature as anything else. It seems that stores are changing over to Christmas sales right after Labor Day rather than Thanksgiving. In turn, Thanksgiving marks the period when prices are reduced to drive even more sales. The day after Thanksgiving is now Black Friday (deep discount prices), and the Monday following Thanksgiving is Cyber-Monday (deep online discount prices). The week after Christmas is gift card sale week. And the first week of the New Year is inventory reduction sale week.
My prediction is that within 10 years, Christmas sales will be approaching the end of July. Retail will divide into before-Christmas and after-Christmas only. These sales periods will only be slightly interrupted by graduation sales in May, back-to-school sales in August, and Halloween sales in late September and early October.
It is another example that capitalism and religion don't exactly mesh.
What say you?
Friday, November 28, 2008
Monday, November 24, 2008
The Future of Education
I was watching a television program on political campaigns the other day and the Truman/Dewey election was discussed. What stood out about that show was the focus on education and how our US education system needed improvement. This was 1948.
I started thinking about that statement and my experience with subsequent presidential elections including the one just finished. All of them address how a XXXXX (put candidate's name here) administration will address the looming educational issues head-on and "fix" the problem. You can count it--Truman/Dewey, Eisenhower/Stevenson, Eisenhower/Stevenson again, Kennedy/Nixon, Johnson/Goldwater, Nixon/Humphrey, Nixon/McGovern, Ford/Carter, Carter/Reagan, Reagan/Mondale, Bush I/Dukakis, Bush I/Clinton, Clinton/Dole, Bush II/Gore, Bush II/Kerry, and now Obama/McCain. Education was a key election issue. In that time, the Federal government has stepped in to desegregate schools, force teaching school in multiple languages, restricted disciplinary action that can be taken with students, debated religion in schools, debated creationism in schools, debated prayer in schools, closely monitored what can be included in textbooks, and significantly expanded extra-curricucular activities. We've added a formal Kindergarten year to our system. We've added advanced placement classes, computer labs, and a variety of physics experiments to the courses. We've created a totally dedicated cabinet-level position--the Department of Education. Virtually every school system has an elaborate series of achivement or competency tests that students must navigate to progress. In many cases, the testing system has become the object--teachers teach to the test. And we've funnelled countless billions of dollars into the educational system to improve it.
With all this activity over the last 60 years, we have progressed our system so that it produces functionally illiterate people for our workforce. We have graduates who cannot write a coherent sentence. We have workers who cannot make change without the cash register doing the arithmetic for them. We have adults who cannot tell you how many states there are, or the name of the current president. We have adults that cannot tell you the difference among the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. We have people who cannot tell you which countries are in the North American Free Trade Agreement. I suspect this is an infinite list of examples.
In many cases, it doesn't get any better in college. At the graduate level I have seen students unable to write an intelligible sentence. At the undergraduate level I have seen students who should rather argue that the material is not adequate to complete an assignment when they haven't bothered to read the assignment.
There is good news. I have also seen individuals who have just managed to scrape by on high school who are well-read, informed, and keep up with changing technology. The problem is these people do not possess the resume to get ahead. The result is they sit quietly in the background while those less qualified move ahead and set policy for companies, institutions, and country.
So, with the great "progress" we have seen in education since Truman's day 60 years ago, what is the answer and what does the future hold for US education? The future doesn't look good.
I started thinking about that statement and my experience with subsequent presidential elections including the one just finished. All of them address how a XXXXX (put candidate's name here) administration will address the looming educational issues head-on and "fix" the problem. You can count it--Truman/Dewey, Eisenhower/Stevenson, Eisenhower/Stevenson again, Kennedy/Nixon, Johnson/Goldwater, Nixon/Humphrey, Nixon/McGovern, Ford/Carter, Carter/Reagan, Reagan/Mondale, Bush I/Dukakis, Bush I/Clinton, Clinton/Dole, Bush II/Gore, Bush II/Kerry, and now Obama/McCain. Education was a key election issue. In that time, the Federal government has stepped in to desegregate schools, force teaching school in multiple languages, restricted disciplinary action that can be taken with students, debated religion in schools, debated creationism in schools, debated prayer in schools, closely monitored what can be included in textbooks, and significantly expanded extra-curricucular activities. We've added a formal Kindergarten year to our system. We've added advanced placement classes, computer labs, and a variety of physics experiments to the courses. We've created a totally dedicated cabinet-level position--the Department of Education. Virtually every school system has an elaborate series of achivement or competency tests that students must navigate to progress. In many cases, the testing system has become the object--teachers teach to the test. And we've funnelled countless billions of dollars into the educational system to improve it.
With all this activity over the last 60 years, we have progressed our system so that it produces functionally illiterate people for our workforce. We have graduates who cannot write a coherent sentence. We have workers who cannot make change without the cash register doing the arithmetic for them. We have adults who cannot tell you how many states there are, or the name of the current president. We have adults that cannot tell you the difference among the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. We have people who cannot tell you which countries are in the North American Free Trade Agreement. I suspect this is an infinite list of examples.
In many cases, it doesn't get any better in college. At the graduate level I have seen students unable to write an intelligible sentence. At the undergraduate level I have seen students who should rather argue that the material is not adequate to complete an assignment when they haven't bothered to read the assignment.
There is good news. I have also seen individuals who have just managed to scrape by on high school who are well-read, informed, and keep up with changing technology. The problem is these people do not possess the resume to get ahead. The result is they sit quietly in the background while those less qualified move ahead and set policy for companies, institutions, and country.
So, with the great "progress" we have seen in education since Truman's day 60 years ago, what is the answer and what does the future hold for US education? The future doesn't look good.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Now is the time to tax oil
I filled up my car this morning and it occurred to me that gas prices are about half what they were in June at the height of the latest gas-price spike. To a large extent, the increased gas prices have contributed heavily to our downward spiralling economy--resulting in increases in everything from gasoline to milk, virtually anything that has oil fuel as a component in manufacture or distribution.
During the summer, with oil prices high, the country (indeed, the whole planet) has had a long overdue discussion on our over-dependence on oil, oil's impact on our environment, the funding of hostilaties against us in oil-producing regions where we are not particularly liked, and the instability it creates in our economy. Unfortunately, a lot of TGIF discussion is beginning to die down now that oil prices are coming back down to levels seen before the latest spike. And that is the problem.
We have short-term memories. Assuming the financial crisis is resolved and credit begins flowing again, people will flock to the sharply reduced over-sized, gas guzzling SUVs--at least they will until the next gas spike. And that's the problem, our short-term memories get in the way of developing good, long-term behavior. There is a solution.
Taxes. I know it is an obscene concept, but taxation can play a very pivotal role in the transition to a non-oil-based economy. The problem is two-fold. First, as long as oil is incrementally cheaper than alternatives, there is little incentive to innovate alternatives. However, the point at which oil costs permanantly exceed alternatives, the impact will be devistating until such time as alternatives and the infrastructure are developed to deliver them. This is where taxation can play a positive and constructive role.
Increasing taxes on oil can level the competitive market allowing alternatives to be developed more rapidly. This would be done by two forces: first, taxes on oil would make oil consumption less attractive, resulting in higher tax revenues per gallon of fuel consumed and providing money that could be used to subsidize fledgling alternative fuel sources until they can gain economies of scale. A second benefit results from reduced consumption which in turn results in reduced demand, which in turn results in reduced oil prices. Keeping taxes on oil at an artifically high level basically means that oil producing nations help subsidize our development of alternatives. As the cost of alternative fuel production falls, subsidies can be lifted and oil taxes can be reduced, allowing natural market forces to take over.
So, we can pay now or we can pay later for the transition from oil. The longer we wait, the higher the cost. Had we heeded President Jimmy Carter's warning, we would not be in this situation.
Your thoughts?
During the summer, with oil prices high, the country (indeed, the whole planet) has had a long overdue discussion on our over-dependence on oil, oil's impact on our environment, the funding of hostilaties against us in oil-producing regions where we are not particularly liked, and the instability it creates in our economy. Unfortunately, a lot of TGIF discussion is beginning to die down now that oil prices are coming back down to levels seen before the latest spike. And that is the problem.
We have short-term memories. Assuming the financial crisis is resolved and credit begins flowing again, people will flock to the sharply reduced over-sized, gas guzzling SUVs--at least they will until the next gas spike. And that's the problem, our short-term memories get in the way of developing good, long-term behavior. There is a solution.
Taxes. I know it is an obscene concept, but taxation can play a very pivotal role in the transition to a non-oil-based economy. The problem is two-fold. First, as long as oil is incrementally cheaper than alternatives, there is little incentive to innovate alternatives. However, the point at which oil costs permanantly exceed alternatives, the impact will be devistating until such time as alternatives and the infrastructure are developed to deliver them. This is where taxation can play a positive and constructive role.
Increasing taxes on oil can level the competitive market allowing alternatives to be developed more rapidly. This would be done by two forces: first, taxes on oil would make oil consumption less attractive, resulting in higher tax revenues per gallon of fuel consumed and providing money that could be used to subsidize fledgling alternative fuel sources until they can gain economies of scale. A second benefit results from reduced consumption which in turn results in reduced demand, which in turn results in reduced oil prices. Keeping taxes on oil at an artifically high level basically means that oil producing nations help subsidize our development of alternatives. As the cost of alternative fuel production falls, subsidies can be lifted and oil taxes can be reduced, allowing natural market forces to take over.
So, we can pay now or we can pay later for the transition from oil. The longer we wait, the higher the cost. Had we heeded President Jimmy Carter's warning, we would not be in this situation.
Your thoughts?
Sunday, November 16, 2008
A Different Perspective on Environment
Going green. Global warming. Environmental disaster. These are the discussions, whether it's a discussion of offshore drilling, drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, natural gas drilling in the Barnett Shell, wind farming in West Texas, solar power generation in Nevada, tidal power off the coast of Oregon, or coal mining in West Virginia. Or, the discussions could include the endangered Spotted Owl, acid rain, air pollution, water pollution, or melting ice caps. The argument is the same--human beings have severely damaged the environment and we are on the verge of destroying it.
There is only one problem with these arguments. Human beings may cause severe changes in the environment, we may pollute the environment so heavily that it becomes unlivable, and we may wipe out huge numbers of species. But, we won't destroy the environment. The environment will be here long after we are gone.
The question is whether we maintain the environment so that humans can survive. To do so will require us to treat the environment so that it supports huge numbers of diverse species. As Dr. W. Edwards Deming once stated, "Survival is not mandatory." we are not cleaning up the environment to be good stewards of Earth. We are doing it to survive.
There is only one problem with these arguments. Human beings may cause severe changes in the environment, we may pollute the environment so heavily that it becomes unlivable, and we may wipe out huge numbers of species. But, we won't destroy the environment. The environment will be here long after we are gone.
The question is whether we maintain the environment so that humans can survive. To do so will require us to treat the environment so that it supports huge numbers of diverse species. As Dr. W. Edwards Deming once stated, "Survival is not mandatory." we are not cleaning up the environment to be good stewards of Earth. We are doing it to survive.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Waxing Political (cont)
Now that the election is over and voters are beginning to think clearly again, I decided to get this blog back to thoughts about the future. Therefore, I have set-up a separate blog for political discussion. The blog, "Waxing Political" can be found at:
Waxing Political
From here on, any political commentary will be restricted to that blog. Feel free to read and comment.
Waxing Political
From here on, any political commentary will be restricted to that blog. Feel free to read and comment.
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