Overparenting Parents are Lazy and Selfish

 Let's say you're the parent of a high schooler. They overshot their procrastination and now they have a 5 page paper due tomorrow morning. In a panic, they tell you about it. And although you're furious at your child's complete lack of preparation, you tell them you'll write it for them. You burn the midnight oil and come up with a decent enough essay that gets them a 90+ on the paper.

An article came out in The Atlantic about a teacher's war stories about parents who do stupid things for their kids. But the writer talked about the psychological phenomenon of parents "overparenting". But let's set the record straight: when parents do things for their kids that the kids are supposed to do themselves, it's straight up selfishness and laziness.

 It's lazy and selfish to do the work meant for your kids. Not only does it rob them of valuable life lessons and skills (dealing with hardship, learning to procrastinate effectively, etc), but it also reflects poorly on you as a parent. If you did your job well as a parent, you shouldn't even have to contemplate doing your kid's work for them. But you're caught between a rock and a hard place:

1. You failed in raising your kid properly.
2. You don't want to jeopardize their future prospects.

The second point is why it's so hard for upper middle class parents to resist cheating on behalf of their kids because every parent wants to their kids to succeed in life. But upper middle class parents already have the decoder rings and know all the secret handshakes required for accessing and staying in the upper middle class.

They remember the agony of maintaining a certain GPA, and that means getting a certain number of As and Bs in their classes and also being aware of how a single bad grade on an important test or paper can make it so difficult to claw back into the A range or stay in the B range. And because they were too busy building their career or doing other things rather than staying at home with their kids and helping them the proper way, they decide to take a shortcut.

So what do they do? They take the easiest way out of their current predicament and do their kids work for them. They "know" their kid is good at heart and is intelligent enough to succeed, because their kids are their own flesh and blood, and they were good enough to make it. So they lie to themselves and say "just this once" and then enable their kids' laziness. Except "just this once" is just the start of a relatively slippery slope that ends up with the parents shielding their kids from every bad break and hardship in their life. And that ultimately ruins the child by not letting them grow as human beings.

This is why so many millenials are suffering from a sort of prolonged adolescence. Because their parents never taught them to become adults. Because part of becoming an adult is making mistakes and learning from them. The current generation of parents can't bear to see their kids struggle for an instant, but they never gave them the real tools and confidence they need to see them succeed.

Two years ago, an essay entitled "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior" ignited a furor across the country. The only reason why it garnered so much attention is because her parenting style was so vastly different from accepted American norms while it also seemed to be getting the exact results that upper middle class parents dream about. Here's an excerpt:

Western parents try to respect their children's individuality, encouraging them to pursue their true passions, supporting their choices, and providing positive reinforcement and a nurturing environment. By contrast, the Chinese believe that the best way to protect their children is by preparing them for the future, letting them see what they're capable of, and arming them with skills, work habits and inner confidence that no one can ever take away.

The writer, Amy Chua, was relentlessly criticized by many in the media. But she got the last laugh. Her older daughter played at Carnegie Hall at the age of 14 and currently goes to Harvard University.

Real Time With Bill Maher: Retrospective and Analysis (1/25/13)

Very good episode last Friday. All of the panel guests were well spoken (although at times, very grating in their toe-the-party-line PC speak) and there was some pretty substantive debate. There's no significant disagreement I've found with Maher on the show, so this is gonna be more of a retrospective and analysis.

1. The Politicians: The show had 2 active politicians on, and 2 inside-ball players and at times it got pretty unbearable when they were talking. I understand that they simply can't say what's actually on their minds and that they are more than aware that any awkward phrasing is going to end up on the news cycle and hurt their political star. But it makes for a boring show at times. Let me give a few examples:

Pelosi on what the Democrats can realistically achieve during President Obama's second term: Create jobs and reduce the role of money in politics. It's such a PC non-answer.

Tester on agricultural subsidies: We need to provide a safety net for farmers (the richest constituency in America, even ahead of bankers) and then root out waste and cut redundant and nonperforming programs. Oh, and cut corporate welfare too. I mean, who can honestly be against that kind of thing?

Pelosi on skewering the Republicans as not believing the government: They're against "clean air, clean water, food safety, public education, public safety, public transportation, public health...". We get it, you're a Democrat and you have to rile the base. But you're not at a political rally. Can we get some real dialogue? Obviously the Republicans believe in government.

2. Howard Dean: I wish more Democrats who went on the show were like this guy. The guy has to parrot some talking points and get his applause lines in, but he could have a reasonable debate and come to an agreement or a respectful disagreement. The dude can definitely be a blowhard, though. He tended to dominate certain parts of the show by engaging in long winding monologues designed to be catnip for the audience. But I'd rather have him on than, say, Rachel Maddow.

3. Karen Soltis: She was on the show one time before and I wish she was a regular. She's a Republican pollster who is intelligent, well spoken, and is obviously one of the Republicans who's frustrated with the state of the party and with many of the idiots and wackos found in it.

When Howard Dean went on a rant on abortion and how it degrades the status of women, she brought up a very good point on how many people view abortion as not solely about the woman. There's also another life to consider as well. Her point about not focusing on polar extremes and trying to come to a consensus in the middle (which, while very PC, was actually apropos given the fact that up until that point, Maher and Dean were talking about extreme cases) was dead on.

Oh, and she's quite easy on the eyes. Yes, it had to be said.

4. David Avella: One word: fake. And he got completely called out by Maher when he couldn't come up with any real instance of name calling by the President, instead lamely insisting that "right wing" is name calling.

5. Contract law and GMO seeds: I really hated Jon Tester on this subject because he simply picked an unpopular target (Monsanto, which is essentially the Third Reich in the eyes of Democrats) and then slung a populist attack at them. What he ignored is that he always has the choice not to do business with Monsanto. That's the real issue at stake here.

Also, the sidebar about labeling GMO products is disingenuous. There is no deleterious effect that GMO crops have in the human diet. Requiring them to label food products as such is nothing more than a panacea to the left wing health nuts. It's very similar to the Republican obsession with voter ID laws.

6. The percentage of crackpots in each party: This was a crowd favorite, but let's get real. Dean was underselling the amount of embarrassing people that his party contains. Yes, there are tons of really dumb Republicans out there who believe outrageous things, but I would say the proportion is pretty similar over on the Democratic side. But since the most popular media outlets (with the sole exception of talk radio) heavily favor the Democrats, you don't get the same kind of media exposure for morons within their party.

Everybody wants to believe that their ideology is where all the cool kids are. But the reality is every smart person has to rub shoulders with a bunch of morons in order to get elected to political office. That's true regardless of what political party or ideology you are affiliated with.

7. The 23.5%: This is something where I think Republicans and Democrats can eventually come together on. I'm glad Bill Maher raised the subject of people on Social Security disability because it is a serious issue. The growth of the disability rolls has exploded since the Great Recession for obvious reasons: unemployed people who still can't retire on Social Security apply for disability because they never saved enough when they were young, healthy, and gainfully employed.

The worst part is that, despite the massive delta between taxes paid and benefits gained from Medicare and Social Security, it's so hard to convince Americans that they don't "deserve it". When Soltis brought up the point about people seeing their pay stubs and looking at the FICA deduction, she hit yet another nail on the head.

The wagon is getting full and heavy. If a few more people get on it, then we will have become a European style social democracy. Say hello to chronic 8% employment and perennially terrible job markets for young people.

8. Apparently both Maher and Pelosi are morons: It's called "plurality". Look it up. Whites will no longer be a plurality in California sometime this year.

Real Life Intervenes

I planned to have some things written up this weekend, but my real life job had me working 22 hours over the weekend and I'm just completely exhausted. But our project go live is successful and I'll be churning out stuff like clockwork this week.

The Metamorphosis of the Lumpenproletariat

During the years that the Greatest Generation fought in the cities of Europe and the sands of the Pacific, the average American family was living in absolute squalor, comparable to the worst part of the Great Depression. Everything of economic value was rationed. Almost no new houses were built during this time and even fewer cars. Farms sent their food to the GIs overseas. Ford and GM's factories were retooled to build Jeeps and Shermans. And the government encouraged the American people to grow Victory Gardens to help reduce farm output allocations for the home front.

When the boys arrived back home, all of that pent up consumer demand was unleashed. Combine that with the surviving veterans' pay (forced savings on behalf of the war effort) and the deceased veterans' insurance payouts, the majority of America was lifted into middle class comfort over the course of the 50s and 60s. Arguably the biggest beneficiaries of the return to a regular economy, the American auto industry was born anew and entered its golden age.

This period saw Michigan, home of the auto capitol of the world, become the richest state in the union. Teenagers would complete high school (or drop out) and then get a factory job with one of the auto companies based in Detroit and get paid wages that could support the economic needs of an entire family. GM, Ford, and Chrysler were the titans of American industry and the biggest companies in the biggest, most profitable market in the world.

And everybody benefited. But not everybody benefited equally. For Americans with less than a college degree, a factory job was the best job to have. The people who didn't have them were left doing things like tending shops and restaurants, mopping floors, and doing other menial jobs. You know, townie jobs.

But the rest of the world rebuilt from the ashes of WWII. Tariffs were reduced. Prejudices (that prevented Americans from buying German and Japanese cars) softened. And suddenly we were thrust into a brave new world of globalization.

You know how the story ends. Factory jobs become less numerous and paid less. Workers were laid off and gained jobs in other industries that didn't pay as well. And, according to the CPI, median wages for workers have remained stagnant since 1964. And this new round of globalization, combined with high tech robots that can replace manual labor, and software developers (like me) looking to replace jobs that used to require a reasonably intelligent brain with computer algorithms, is scheming to send the rest of society into menial job land.

This is the story that many in academia and journalism love to tell. It also happens to be wrong. Because the majority of American people never had career-track jobs nor menial jobs that paid like career-track jobs. Even in 1950, the heyday of the factory worker, only 1/3 of the non-farm workforce (back during a time when there were still a lot of people who worked on farms) worked in a factory. And a bean canning factory job didn't pay nearly as well as a car manufacturing factory job.

In the 50s and 60s, most of the south was still extraordinarily rural and dirt poor. In the 50s and 60s, most people on the east coast still lived in the city and made their living working in shops and warehouses. And while the high paying factory job is gone, others have taken its place. Government workers are now a bigger percentage of the population than ever, and for the first time ever, their average compensation and benefits now outstrip that of the average private sector worker.

Jobs that didn't even exist in 1950, like software development, have created a new class of high earners (if you need proof, just look at how the purchasing power of software developers have completely upended the San Francisco real estate market) while certain professions in established industries (mostly finance and insurance) experienced tremendous growth in wages due to the changing nature of the economy.

The story of a collapsing middle class is partially true due to the decline of pensions and the gross mismanagement of the retirement vehicles that replaced them (401ks and IRAs). But the rest of it is just overhyped by journalists who are suddenly feeling the very same economic pressures that downsized the American factory worker. Print journalism is collapsing and online journalism doesn't come close to offering the same wage, benefits, and job security that most journalists and reporters were accustomed to in the pre-internet era.

Fundamentally, the lumpenproletariat never really changed. But now a non-STEM college degree is the new high school diploma, student loans aren't dischargeable in bankruptcy, and a large portion of society's opinion-shapers are feeling the squeeze.

Welcome to the suck, journalists.

The Ivy League Analysts

I wonder what it's like to be a journalist or a pundit. You write about stuff, make proclamations, and form strong opinions on things that you barely know about. And once you get to nationally read publications, it seems like every other editor or writer has an undergrad degree in journalism from a various Ivy League or top-20 school.

The end result is a bunch of nonsense spewed out as if it were fact. This article is one particular example I want to showcase:

It's a very provocative and confident proclamation. But here's the rub, it describes a future occurrence that may or may not happen. And it very well could happen, but at this point, it's a way safer bet to assume that this isn't going to happen. But why does Mr. Manjoo think otherwise?

If you read the article, he cites a few things. Amazon has plans to spend 1.6 billion dollars on new distribution centers, bought a company that specializes in shipping robots for 775 million dollars, and notices that he very often gets next day delivery on his 2-day delivery purchases. That's it. And that's after he acknowledges that Amazon is going to lose a big pricing advantage (when they roll out distribution centers, they have to collect sales tax in that state).

The end result is that we're all supposed to buy the things we want online at Amazon and have it arrive at our doorstep sometime right before we come back from work. Now maybe he knows he's stirring the pot and that he doesn't really believe what he says. But based on the writing, it's hard to believe that. 

It's very hard to believe that any company could "destroy local retail" with a 2.4 billion dollar investment. Not only that, but it's very hard to believe that Amazon can succeed at beating local retail at its own game, especially giants like Wal-Mart, who spends much more than Amazon does when it comes to improving their own logistical operations.

But all of that pales in comparison to the financial situation that Amazon finds itself in:

See that? Look at the part where it says P/E (price to earnings ratio). The number next to that is 3583.4. What does that mean exactly? It means that if Amazon remained as profitable as it currently is and returned all of its profits back to its shareholders, it would take 3583.4 years to recoup the initial investment if an investor bought its stock today.

The only reason why investors buy companies with high P/E ratios is if they think the company's profitability will grow incredibly fast. But a P/E of 3583.4 is astronomical, and the company has had a P/E over 500 for a couple of years now. Amazon's best year was last year and it made 700 million in profit. By comparison, Microsoft made 16 billion in profit that same year, 23 times as much, and only has a P/E of ~15.

Investors seem to think Amazon will turn into a huge retail monopoly that will be able to charge monopolistic prices to the consumers held captive by its business model. It absolutely baffles me how ridiculous Amazon's stock price is. Everybody is looking at revenue growth and assumes profits will eventually grow at the same rate. I'm highly skeptical that this can happen. But at the same time, billions of dollars a day are traded on that assumption. I have no idea why Wall Street collectively decided that Amazon was going to be the company to pull a feat like this off.

On the back of all this, Mr. Manjoo thinks that higher prices due to sales tax is more than a fair price for a consumer to pay? Would Amazon be such a great deal if all of its goods cost 20% more (roughly the amount that Amazon would cost consumers if investors treated it like a mature company plus the collection of state sales tax)?

Now, things could turn out much differently and maybe both Mr. Manjoo and Wall Street will be right and I'll be wrong. But I'm willing to admit as much. There is almost no doubt in Manjoo's writing, and it's that kind of attitude that you find in the opinion pages of almost every national publication. It bothers me a lot. And I haven't even begun to talk about the breathless arrogance implied by Slate's You're Doing It Wrong segment. But that's for another day.

I have a segment of my own called Predicting the Outcome. I make a simple prediction and then I keep a running tally of how many I got right and wrong. So far I'm 1-1 with the jury still out on 2 others. I just wish the Ivy League analysts at all these journals and newspapers did the same thing.

Real Time With Bill Maher: Counterpoints (1/18/13)

Sorry for the late counterpoints. Usually I like to have them up right after the show or the following morning, but I just couldn't get around to it. Anyways, let's get to it.

1. Defense cuts: In the show, Maher goes on his usual rant against defense spending. And the reason why he can get away with it is because of two unavoidable truths:

1. The US spends more on defense than the next 10 countries combined
2. There is extraordinary waste in the defense budget

Personally, I'm torn on the subject. There is growing evidence that, given the current structure of the budget, there is not enough money to replace/maintain our aging fleet of aircraft and naval vessels. But we are also the most powerful military in the world, and the only country with armed forces capable of deploying overwhelming force anywhere in the world (with the possible exception of the UK).

Force projection is our military's sine qua non. Following that is the exceptional training, readiness, and experience of our combat personnel. All of that costs money to build and maintain. And building from scratch is much more expensive than providing for the current state of affairs. While there is extraordinary waste in the budget, a lot of that comes from the appropriations process that Congress loves to manipulate. Every Congressman has to get their own piece of the defense pie, and that means a bloated procurement process.

And there is also the legitimate quandary that other countries could soon decide to spend more on defense if they perceive the US to retrench from its commitments. History has shown that the periods of greatest conflict occur when the dominant power shows increasing signs of weakness, which emboldens upstart powers to challenge that status.

2. Giving the crazy a voice: In the show, Maher referenced some stupid Glenn Beck idea and an outrageous comment from a now-obscure former Republican official and wanted the panel to condemn the ideas. But instead, the panel called him out on hit, saying that these sorts of people are instigators who want to create controversy in an attempt to draw attention to themselves.

I'm glad that the panel called him out on it because all too often, the right-wing publicity whores (Beck, Limbaugh, Coulter, etc) are trotted out by the Democratic leaning media as examples of the extremism and ridiculousness of the Republican Party. Because the intelligent and well informed Republicans (if you rolled your eyes after those words, you're part of the problem) don't confirm the media's preconceived ideas of stupid Republicans, they are much more obscure and their ideas and statements don't get the same kind of coverage.

 There's a lot less separation between the actions of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party than people think there are. But because we attach so much importance to symbolism and speech, we use that as an excuse to create wedges between various portions of the electorate.

3. Boiling frogs - gun control edition: What Martin Short advocated on the show, incremental gun legislation with the aim for the near-eradication of universal individual firearm ownership, is the goal of many self described progressives and "hardcore" Democrats.

This is modus operandi of every non-democratic politico out there: we know that our end goals are impossible to implement if presented wholesale to the public, but surreptitious and incremental advances can achieve our end goals over the course of time.

If I had to describe progressivism in one sentence, it would be this: the advocacy of ideas which are currently anathema to the majority of people that will eventually become acceptable/desired in the future. In this case, the progressives are the agents of history. And they get to be the "good guys" whereas those that obstruct the march of progress (Strom Thurmond is probably the poster boy for this archetype) are condemned to infamy in the history textbooks.

It's the fantasy of just about every serious Democratic politico out there. Bill Clinton, who knows how to rile up a crowd, famously said in 2008:

It didn’t work in 1992, because we were on the right side of history. And it won’t work in 2008, because Barack Obama is on the right side of history.

It is this obsession with being on the right side of history that keeps the progressives going. And the numerous reality checks they get in the present don't deter them, because they know, in their hearts, that this too shall pass. And their goals will be realized in time, and then it's on to the next cause.

That is the kind of self satisfaction is what drives certain Republicans (and me, although I am NOT a Republican) crazy. Because it is true, the endgame for Republicans and Democrats are different. For Republicans, it's the continued dominance, now and forever, of the United States. For Democrats, it's about an egalitarian society in which everybody is entitled to a "comfortable" standard of living and has near-unlimited individual freedoms in the social sphere.

There is obvious friction between those two ideologies. And Democrats are mad that most Americans subscribe to the former (hence their endless, obviously frustrated, proclamations that "the US is still a center-right country"). But, according to their ideology, that too, shall pass.

4. Rula Jebreal is crazy attractive, and crazy annoying: In my mind, Rula Jebreal is the prototypical progressive. She is forthrightly self-righteous and loves to champion the cause of the underdogs. Progressive climate change policy and Palestine are the two perennial losers of the political world, and thus the most endearing to progressives. But it's the way she carries herself about these issues that makes her grating.

When Bill Maher moved on to the Manti Te'o controversy, she interjected something to the effect of "why are using your show, an incredible political platform, to talk about trivial bullshit?" And that was when I realized that, although it is the politically correct stance to acknowledge that the controversy is trivial in the Grand Scheme of Things™, she's being a self righteous prick. It behooves me to quote Adam Smith:

Be assured, my young friend, that there is a great deal of ruin in a nation. 

Change that to "the world" and you get my meaning. This is a planet of 7 billion people. There will always be a ton of tragedies, unfortunate circumstances, and general unpleasantness. It's simply unavoidable. And now it's time to quote House: 

If we were to care about every person suffering on this planet, life would shut down.

Sorry, but sometimes having an endless parade of bad things brought to our attention puts us in a bad mood. Why are you, Rula Jebreal, wearing makeup when you could have used that money to donate to starving kids in Africa? Why are you, Rula Jebreal, wearing expensive looking clothes when you could have used that money to give antibiotics to poor people in Indochina?

So fuck you, Rula Jebreal, in your self righteous asshole. You may be able to get away with it because you're ridiculously hot, but trust me, if you weren't, you'd be ostracized until you finally figured out that we simply don't have the capacity to use our undivided attention to care about every single bad thing that goes on in the world.

5. Michelle Caruso-Cabrera got cheated on: You can just tell in the way that she said "he's lying. He's lying. He's lying" as if she felt compelled to say it three times in a row.

A Journalist Who Thinks He's So Smart

James Fallows, a writer for The Atlantic, wants to believe that the news side of the Wall Street Journal is going increasingly conservative, likely under the direction of Rupert Murdoch. This is his latest proof.

Because the Journal doesn't editorialize in its headline, it is somehow less objective and more partisan than the New York Times and the Washington Post? Gimme a break, man. Oh, and if you bothered to read the first friggin' paragraph, it says this:

House Republican leaders Friday proposed extending the federal debt limit by three months, marking a significant shift in GOP strategy that could reduce the market-rattling risk of the U.S. running out of cash to pay its bills.

 Sorry, dude. But sometimes it's to get to the most important part in the headline (that the Republicans wanted to raise the debt ceiling) and then leave the analysis within the article itself. Your smugness is overwhelming, James Fallows. But if that weren't the case, you wouldn't write for The Atlantic (which, in all fairness, is my favorite daily outside the WSJ).

The Wall Street Journal is simply letting their readers know the most important part. The "reversal" doesn't matter. The fact that the debt ceiling will be raised is the important part. That's what investors and executives, the readership of the Journal, care about. You can argue about politics on your free time. But when you're on the clock, it's all about who, what, when, where. The why is for chumps.

That's what news is about. The fact that he sees this as a failure on the Journal's part reveals more about his own prejudice than the integrity of the Journal.