I’m all for helping out the urban areas, but not if the tradeoff is throwing good money after bad at the Detroit automakers, a veritable black hole of funding.
Suffering urban areas need decent jobs, and decent jobs require thriving companies- which the Big Three automakers are absolutely not. Any bailout that allows them to stay in business in any way resembling how they are now just delays the inevitable, and throws our tax dollars away.
Whether it’s due to mismanagement, poor product planning or exorbitant union benefits (my guess is “all of the above”), the Detroit automakers simply are not competitive. Why should consumers who chose better, cheaper cars now have to subsidize the losers?
Some have suggested the government put Detroit companies into receivership. I can’t think of any other entities less fit to run auto manufacturers than the Big Three– except perhaps the federal government. The government’s role is to look after the public interest; the automaker’s role is to sell cars. We don’t need a government-run auto industry looking to appease social interests; we need well-run auto companies looking to appease consumer interests. Let’s avoid the American Yugo, shall we?
I say let the Big Three seek bankruptcy protection, restructure themselves, their product lines and renegotiate their contracts to do business in the 21st century. If they still can’t hack it, then let the Japanese companies come in and run Detroit for a while. At least they seem to know what they’re doing.
In the Huffington Post article Larry Summers’ True Record on Women, Sheryl Sandberg writes an otherwise glowing review of Lawrence Summers’ (former short-term Treasury Secretary and ex-Harvard president) record on women. There was one bit I had to take issue with, however:
To conclude that he communicated poorly — and even insensitively — is fair.
Summers raised some points of consideration with regard to why women and men choose certain careers disproportionately. He offered his opinions and personal insights in good faith, and suggested further study.
This inflamed the insecurities of certain people who hold fast to an ideological belief that, when it comes to education and careers, men and women must by necessity start out perfectly equal, and so any imbalance must be caused by social factors. That’s a fine theory to hold, but only if you can support it with evidence instead of ideology. Summers’ detractors on this point are afraid of any competing theories, perhaps because they know their own is on such shaky ground.
The fact is, if you really want to increase the representation of women in fields like math and science (or, conversely, the representation of men in the humanities), you need a firm and grounded understanding of what motivates them to enter certain fields. Social factors no doubt play a role, but if that’s all you focus on, I believe you’ll be sorely disappointed with your results.
Rather than being strung up, Summers should have been lauded for his willingness to enter into the conversation honestly and express points that most in academia seem too cowed to.
For those of you who think that crunches would be fun, were it not for all that effort spent having to sit up: finally, the exercise equipment for you!
First 100 orders come with a free gallon of ice cream.
I admit, I kind of stopped following Mortal Kombat when they moved away from the arcade fighting format. Or was it I who moved away from the format? At any rate, I don’t really know how many console-only MK titles there have been or whether they suck or not, but I do know this: Mortal Kombat has taken a turn for the lame:
