Nine Shift

Ina Jaffe of NPR is Wrong on What to Call Seniors

A big issue for programs serving older adults what to call the 'new' seniors, the Baby Boomers.  

Ina Jaffe, an NPR journalist, keynoted the Osher Institute conference for programs providing classes for older adults and recommended seniors, followed by a few other senioristic terms. She is wrong.

My brilliant co-author Julie Coates is one of the foremost demographic experts in the country, and judging by the others, she must be THE foremost expert.  Cause the others all got it wrong. 

Julie says to call them - - me - - Boomers.  That's what we are.  That's the term we use, we know refers to us.  We are not seniors. We will probably never be seniors.  We don't answer to the term, we don't call each other seniors, we don't listen to anything about seniors. 

For our field of lifelong learning programming, Coates' recommendation is probably one of the biggest marketing and message recommendations of this decade.  It affects the class programming to millions of people.  Stay tuned.  Julie is never wrong. 

Photo: Julie in 1980.

 

Does Hilary Clinton Have Brown Eyes?

Does Hilary Clinton have brown eyes?  And what would that mean anyway?

At this month's Democratic 'debate' hosted by Rachel Maddow Secretary Clinton stated that two-thirds of the economy is consumer spending.  To which my brilliant co-author Julie Coates retorted, and two-thirds of NFL players have brown eyes. 

I used to think the "two thirds of the economy" rhetoric was ignorance.  Now I am wondering if it is corporation propaganda to mislead people about how the economy actually works.  

The Clintons are much more wed to corporate America than the Sanders and O'Malleys. On his final day in office, Wm. Clinton refused to heal wounds with Native America and instead pardoned a white rich corporate crook.  

We first heard the "two third of the economy" propaganda from NPR around the great recession, implying of course that consumers have to spend more to get us out of the recession.  Outraged and impulsive, I shouted to Julie "I bet two thirds of the economy in Bolivia is consumer spending."  She checked it out, and sure enough, just about every country's economy is two-thirds consumer spending.  

It is what business does - - spending, investing, hoarding, paying CEOs- - that drives the economy, up or down.  And yes, two-thirds of NFL players have brown eyes - - and that fact is as meaningless to football and Secretary Clinton's repetition of the myth that two thirds of the  economy is consumer driven. 

Fact Checking Liberals

After a recent GOP debate, the nth one I believe, I asked our 35 year old son in Kansas whether he had seen the debate.  

He replied No, but he did read the fact checking on the debate afterwards. 

Fact checking GOP Tea Party politicians is fair game. And to be quite honest, really funny.
But Gen Y is also going to fact check liberals. 

Liberals also have a whole set of obsolete false beliefs.  Watch out for Gen Y liberal Democrats. You will be next. 

U.S. Loses Another STEM Genius

The ending of the story was not the happy 'Clock Kid Gets Invited to White House.'  

No, the ending was the sad tragic fate of lots of smart boys - - they leave the United States.  Ahmad Mohamad and his family are moving to the Mideast where he will study.  

Isolated case?  No, we mentored Kentaro who came from Japan exclusively to gain a university degree in the United States.  Kentaro, another brilliant boy, was given a 2.2 GPA in high school, even though he was actually asked to teach the math class at high school.  He aced the SAT, but of course could not get into one research university in the U.S.  Kentaro left for the United Kingdom, where he obtained a university degree, married, and settled down - - costing America yet another job-creator.  

The war against boys continues, as America continues to self inflict its STEM and skilled worker shortage.

The War on Smart Boys Continues

One of the educational outrages of 2015- - there were many- - was when the police handcuffed and arrested a boy who brought a clock to school.  

What you need to understand is that this happens every day.  He was not the first, nor last.  

And the police were absolutely right when they were asked whether he would have been handcuffed and arrested if the boy was white.  The police said yes.  

The question should have been whether the child would have been handcuffed and arrested if the student was a girl.  

So we handcuff and arrest smart boys who want to go into STEM.  And then we have play STEM camps for girls pretending they will become engineers.  

As a result of the war on smart boys, in violation of Title IX, America has self inflicted the STEM shortage and skilled worker shortage on our country.

New Book on Rise of Cities Gets it Wrong

It is not a subtle point. It is an important point.  Steven Schwartz gets it wrong again when he titles his book 'The Rise of Cities....."  

It is NOT the rise of cities.  It is the rise, as we phrased it in NineShift, the rise of dense neighborhoods. 

1.Cities grew in the last century.  They grew outward, becoming less dense with suburban sprawl. 

2.Within cities today, it is dense neighborhoods that are growing around light rail and train stations.

3.Small and medium sized towns will also grow, provided they have a train station.  
For example, the city of Merced, California, currently is economically deprived, the median income is only $42,000 compared to $61,000 for the US as a whole.  But watch it become prosperous once the high speed train arrives. 

The medium sized cities of Rochester Minnesota and Eau Claire Wisconsin also stand to gain. One or both will be on the high speed route from the Twin Cities to Chicago.  When the train station arrives, the population of the city will double or triple.  

 

 

New Book on Cars' Decline Gets it Wrong!

Fifteen years after NineShift accurately predicted trains replacing cars and driving, two new books this year are reporting the same thing.

But even when they 'get it right,' they get it wrong.  

One of the two books is "Street Smart: The Rise of Cities and the Fall of Cars.'' (Published by PublicAffairs.) The author is Samuel Schwartz.  According to his interview in the Chicago Tribune, sent to us by NineShifter Michael Garamoni (thank you Michael !!),

Schwartz says part or all of the reason young people are driving less is that they heard their parents complain about commuting.  This is ridiculous. This is wrong. 

A whole generation does not change the economy because of griping parents.  Yes, parents griped about commuting.  But those same parents did NOT gripe about living in suburbs - - they loved it.  The parents did not gripe about obtaining material things.  And yet Gen Y has also rejected both suburbs and accumulating material things - - despite their parents not griping.  

Schwartz is so wrong.  The reality is what NineShift noted 15 years ago.  One cannot work and drive at the same time.  Time is so precious knowledge workers in this century cannot afford to waste 2 hours a day, 25% of their productive time, driving.  

We Predict Building Boom in Big Nine Shift Speech Dec 5

NineShift does it again, with another big prediction.  This year we are predicting a huge building boom in the next decade.  

The prediction is the theme for this year's annual all-new NineShift presentation at the big LERN conference, this year in New Orleans December 2-5.  

Not only that, we will predict a school building boom, with the new model school replacing the old factory model schoolhouse for new schools.  

Another Depression Looks More Likely Today

Today, another depression looks more likely in the coming decades. 

Government today is doing exactly what government did 100 years ago - - let the banks and Wall Street 'off the hook' and not fixing our banking situation after the great recession of 2008-2010, itself a repetition of the great banking panic of 1907-1908.  

Here's startlingly ominous data from economist Robert Reich.  Before the great recession, when banks were "too big to fail" and needed government bailouts, the top 5 banks in the U.S. owned 25% of all banking assets.  Today, the top 5 banks in the U.S. own 45% of all banking assets, an even riskier situation than that at the time the big banks caused the great recession.

Last month the government weakly approved a regulation that the top banks would need assets to cover their losses, so taxpayers would not need to bail them out again.  But only 2 of the largest 8 banks have the required assets. 

We need a new financial infrastructure for the 21st century.  Just like 100 years ago we needed a new financial infrastructure for the 20th century.  But it took the depression in the 1930s to push government to finally do it.  Not a bright picture on that front today either.

 

Paul Ryan's Calls to Unify Means Moderation Ahead

It doesn't look like the Republican Party is becoming more moderate, but it is.  

The latest evidence, though hugely disguised in the last year of the Tea Party,  is Paul Ryan's calls to "unify" and for "unity" with House Republicans.  

Ryan, a solid conservative, nevertheless has to unify the GOP, and that can only mean moderation as the Party moves from its base of last-century old white high school graduates to this-century college graduates of different racial backgrounds.  

The 2016 Presidential election, in our view, continues to look like the last bell for the Tea Party. 

First snow this fall at the lake up north.