"The global incidence of extreme poverty has gone down from almost 100% in the 19th century, to 10.7% in 2013. While this is a great achievement, there is absolutely no reason to be complacent: a poverty rate of 10.7% means a total poverty headcount of 746 million people." https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty/
This progress wasn't made with Communism or dictatorships or street demonstrations, and it won't continue by taxing wealthy countries more to fight a mythical climate problem when that money could be going to address poverty problems today instead of sea level in 10 decades. We should have learned from the Rachel Carson debacle which killed millions of African and Asian children with still no solution for malaria while trying to protect birds and insects.
There are genuinely hungry people in the world and the USA, but what has lifted most people out of hunger and poverty isn't government programs, but innovation, technology, creative use of fossil fuels, the green revolution in agriculture and entrepreneurship. Someone living below the "poverty line" in the USA today has more material luxuries than the wealthy of the 19th century. Refrigeration, indoor plumping, flush toilets, healthy food, education, health care, sanitation, even smart phones automobiles and computers. Yet, the SJW only care about the gap.
People do make bad choices--we eat too much, exercise too little, smoke, drink, and are promiscuous. Government isn't going to change that. That's the job of the church to address moral and spiritual failings. Read the definition of "food insecure." Hunger in the USA isn't even relevant and is a meaningless word. The number of people living in extreme poverty fell by more than 1 billion since 1990, from 1.85 billion in 1990 to 0.76 billion in 2013. On average, the number of people living in extreme poverty declined by 47 million every year since 1990 (or 130,000 every single day). Violent crime is also down dramatically since the Omnibus Crime Bill. Who is driving the narrative that this is an awful, horrid place in need of more government control? I can think of at least two. 1) Democrat party, 2) the media.
Monday, May 15, 2017
Monday Memories of Kindergarten and Alameda
I'm looking at my kindergarten photo from Webster Elementary school in Alameda, California. I used Google to see if it still exists, but it closed in 1958 having served the Webster Housing Project, opening in 1944. I assume that project was all military family housing. I remember it as a wonderful, racially mixed neighborhood with people from all over the country and many nationalities. Families came there uprooted with fathers off to strange lands.
Looking at the photo more closely I begin to see the differences (all white children in my class although there were blacks in the school) and memories come to mind of the families who were terribly poor. No lunch programs in those days, but we did get free milk which tasted wretched. Wonder what was in it, because I liked milk. The school was a one floor plan with canopies outside joining the buildings to shade the sidewalks. There were African American and Filipino children in my school and I’d never seen either, being from rural Illinois. Recess was on concrete instead of grass. Right from the beginning I loved school, except nap time on little rugs we brought from home. How boring.
My earliest Christmas memory is 1944 in Alameda, California. Dad was in the Marines and Mother had driven across the country in our 1939 Ford with four small children and my Aunt Muriel to find housing, schools, new helpful neighbors, and what I thought was a very exciting life. My recollection is singing carols in the fog--recalling that it wasn't like Christmas in northern Illinois. The community got together at a school to sing carols. Money was so tight, but Mom did her best. Not sure what the gifts were, but one was a little white glass cat which I still have.
Strange that with so little and living in constant fear of attack, we were all united then. Material riches certainly did not bring Americans any peace, even if we did win that war.
Looking at the photo more closely I begin to see the differences (all white children in my class although there were blacks in the school) and memories come to mind of the families who were terribly poor. No lunch programs in those days, but we did get free milk which tasted wretched. Wonder what was in it, because I liked milk. The school was a one floor plan with canopies outside joining the buildings to shade the sidewalks. There were African American and Filipino children in my school and I’d never seen either, being from rural Illinois. Recess was on concrete instead of grass. Right from the beginning I loved school, except nap time on little rugs we brought from home. How boring.
My earliest Christmas memory is 1944 in Alameda, California. Dad was in the Marines and Mother had driven across the country in our 1939 Ford with four small children and my Aunt Muriel to find housing, schools, new helpful neighbors, and what I thought was a very exciting life. My recollection is singing carols in the fog--recalling that it wasn't like Christmas in northern Illinois. The community got together at a school to sing carols. Money was so tight, but Mom did her best. Not sure what the gifts were, but one was a little white glass cat which I still have.
Strange that with so little and living in constant fear of attack, we were all united then. Material riches certainly did not bring Americans any peace, even if we did win that war.
Advancing technology vs. advancing age
Although I spend a lot of time reading, composing, listening to and watching programs and lectures on the computer, I’m a number of years behind on the technology—always have been since I got my first e-mail about 25 years ago. I’m so long at this I can remember when a colleague in TN asked the other Vet Med Librarians about 20 years ago to take a look at Google as a search engine, which was very new. Long before I had a blog I wrote several times a day on several Usenet groups, particularly one for writers. There were mean and nasty people then too, and trolls trying to destabilize the group and friendships. So the down side of social media goes way back.
But I took a HUGE leap forward yesterday. I looked at my little Mother’s Day package and wondered how my daughter could fit a new outfit into that! (Love it when she buys my clothes) But it was a Roku stick. Looking forward to new challenges. As I understand it (it's still in the box because I'll need her help in setting it up) anything I can watch on my computer I can now watch on TV, plus 4,500 other channels. Horror movies, old TV westerns, documentaries, fashion shows, religious programing. Then I can take the stick out and take it to the Lake and watch my stuff there.
But I took a HUGE leap forward yesterday. I looked at my little Mother’s Day package and wondered how my daughter could fit a new outfit into that! (Love it when she buys my clothes) But it was a Roku stick. Looking forward to new challenges. As I understand it (it's still in the box because I'll need her help in setting it up) anything I can watch on my computer I can now watch on TV, plus 4,500 other channels. Horror movies, old TV westerns, documentaries, fashion shows, religious programing. Then I can take the stick out and take it to the Lake and watch my stuff there.
"Roku devices are simple to set-up and easy-to-use. They come with a simple remote, and powerful features like Roku Search which makes it effortless to find what you want to watch. Roku devices give you access to 450,000+ movies and TV episodes from top free and paid channels, so you can stream almost anything: Roku How it Works "Our son works in the automotive repair field, manages a shop for a major auto dealer, and for some time I've been dropping hints about how the automotive industry is changing. Good article in Atlantic about the Uber/Waymo (Google) wars, but it introduces the novice and elderly to the other players in the self-driving auto changes to come. The author argues that self driving cars will probably change the world--fundamentally. "Mass adoption would create and destroy entire industries, alter the way people work and move through cities, and change the way those cities are designed and connected." Billions are at stake in personal profits. Big winners and losers.
Sunday, May 14, 2017
Really nice day
Mother's Day. We had a wonderful worship at Upper Arlington Lutheran Church with Jeff Morlock preaching, and then back to our house for a nice surprise gift--a Roku stick. I'd like to explain what it is, but I don't know much about it except we'll be able to stream programs on our TV and then take the stick with us to the Lake house and use it there. Then it was off to J. Alexander's Redlands Grill in Worthington for a most delicious meal which included a piece of Key Lime Pie to bring home because I was too full. Lunch menu.
Malware alert
"So far, over 213,000 computers across 99 countries around the world have been infected, and the infection is still rising even hours after the kill switch was triggered by the 22-years-old British security researcher behind the twitter handle 'MalwareTech.'"
http://thehackernews.com/2017/05/wannacry-ransomware-cyber-attack.html
There is now a 2.0.
http://thehackernews.com/2017/05/wannacry-ransomware-cyber-attack.html
There is now a 2.0.
Saturday, May 13, 2017
Liberals have made things worse for blacks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9wWF1_YFBA
In "Please Stop Helping Us," Jason Riley examines how well-intentioned welfare programs are in fact holding black Americans back. Minimum-wage laws may lift earnings for people who are already employed, but they price a disproportionate number of blacks out of the labor force. Affirmative action in higher education is intended to address past discrimination, but the result is fewer black college graduates than would otherwise exist. And so it goes with everything from soft-on-crime laws, which make black neighborhoods more dangerous, to policies that limit school choice out of a mistaken belief that charter schools and voucher programs harm the traditional public schools that most low-income students attend.
Between 1940 and 1960 before the Great Society programs and the voting act, and at a time when black political power was nearly nonexistent -- the black poverty rate fell from 87% to 47%. Yet between 1972 and 2011 the implementation of Great Society programs -- it barely declined, from 32% to 28%, and remained three times the white rate, which is about what it was in 1972. Drug offenses are not driving the incarceration rate--violent crime is. It's a red herring to claim it's drugs. When everyone from the president (Obama) on down buy into the Black Lives Matter myth of cops killing young black men, we'll never be able make headway, and the solutions won't come from Washington, but from black people. (paraphrase) Affirmative action and quotas helped primarily the black middle class, not the underclass--it actually lost ground. (paraphrase).
The civil rights movement has become an industry. Liberalism has succeeded in convincing blacks to see themselves as victims.
In "Please Stop Helping Us," Jason Riley examines how well-intentioned welfare programs are in fact holding black Americans back. Minimum-wage laws may lift earnings for people who are already employed, but they price a disproportionate number of blacks out of the labor force. Affirmative action in higher education is intended to address past discrimination, but the result is fewer black college graduates than would otherwise exist. And so it goes with everything from soft-on-crime laws, which make black neighborhoods more dangerous, to policies that limit school choice out of a mistaken belief that charter schools and voucher programs harm the traditional public schools that most low-income students attend.
Between 1940 and 1960 before the Great Society programs and the voting act, and at a time when black political power was nearly nonexistent -- the black poverty rate fell from 87% to 47%. Yet between 1972 and 2011 the implementation of Great Society programs -- it barely declined, from 32% to 28%, and remained three times the white rate, which is about what it was in 1972. Drug offenses are not driving the incarceration rate--violent crime is. It's a red herring to claim it's drugs. When everyone from the president (Obama) on down buy into the Black Lives Matter myth of cops killing young black men, we'll never be able make headway, and the solutions won't come from Washington, but from black people. (paraphrase) Affirmative action and quotas helped primarily the black middle class, not the underclass--it actually lost ground. (paraphrase).
The civil rights movement has become an industry. Liberalism has succeeded in convincing blacks to see themselves as victims.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
Posts
