Namita Bhasin

I was just about to make my last tuition payment ever - about $3800 - and I got to thinking how (while I definitely will not miss that part of college) it really wasn’t a bad deal at all for the kind of education I’ve gotten. My 4 years at Berkeley are worth much more than the dollar value I paid for it.

I consider myself a relatively successful product of the public education system and a very ardent supporter of it. I’m going to be that hokey alumnus that donates to her elementary school and visits her first grade teacher until she retires. Of course, this has a lot to do with the fact that my parents had the foresight to move to Cupertino for its awesome school district before housing prices tripled overnight. I’ve gotten some of the best that public education has to offer, so I guess I’m a little biased. That doesn’t stop me from wholeheartedly supporting the idea, though. Education is a fundamental necessity, a huge leveler of the playing field, and that’s something the government ought to make a priority above many other things.

Right now funding for education sucks. I’m not impractical enough to suggest that it top the List of Important Things We Really Ought to Pay For (see my rant on healthcare) but it definitely deserves more attention than it’s getting in comparison to things like felons’ expenses or the size of chickens’ cages (sorry). You know, if the American public as a whole was smarter, a lot of dumb issues wouldn’t even come up in the first place. Just saying.

Don’t expect priorities to shift around with the miraculous surplus that everyone is waiting on the edge of their seat for Obama to deliver. Californians, don’t hold your breath for anything Arnie says, we’re way too far out of money. This is how it’s going to happen: one day, China and India will finally, effectively, scare the crap out of the US. We will fear losing our intellectual superiority to these quickly rising powerhouses and will begin throwing money into education - probably into math and science - just like we did during the Cold War with Russia, when it was imperative to our security and much more that our weaponry and space-exploring abilities were better than theirs. To be fair, education had also expanded from 1910-1940, but my interpretation of a primary reason for that is the lack of employment during the Great Depression and the hope that more education would better chances to find some. The next time it will be more refined than an international pissing contest but still bear traces of desperation - it will be a fight for economic power and respect.

(Disclaimer: I need to do more research into this; I’m going off of what I know but haven’t looked up the facts) When my dad went to IIT Kanpur from 1978-81, a semester at one of the most prestigious engineering institutes in the world cost basically next to nothing. India subsidizes education heavily, and this opens up opportunities for numbers of brilliant young people that would otherwise never be able to afford the luxury of college education, let alone one of such quality. This has led to the unfortunate (for India) consequence of brain drain. For the US, though, it has provided a substantial and free boost to the economy, as waves of immigration to this country are historically inclined to do. Again, I know my perspective is biased, but a giant segment of Silicon Valley can thank the Indian education system for its very existence. However, I believe that this pattern will begin to change in the next generation or two. India is an evolving, fast-growing country, with a huge market eager to adopt new things and a pleasantly rising GDP per capita. Soon enough, the outputs of places like the IITs will not be tempted to seek their fortunes a hemisphere away from everything they know because the opportunities and the quality of life will be plenty good enough at home. The government has begun to step in to assist in that realization (I don’t know much about this; please post any links you may have on the subject). The smart people will stay at home, benefiting the places that put forth the resources to educate them, and the US will lose a big source of its brains/innovation/growth.

Once things begin to slow down around here, I am quite confident that the freaking out will begin - and that is when education will once again be a priority in America.

The Senate rejected the auto bailout bill (which had no trouble getting through the House) tonight.

I think I would support an auto industry bailout. At least the version in my head.

Features of my fantasy plan:

- rigid environmental-impact goals (stuff about emissions, electric-not-hybrid engines)

- research, research, research: into alternative energy sources, better production methods, any form of evolution-prompting science (the US always benefits from scientific exploration!)

- educational provisions for workers to learn more skills, in order to spur innovation from those closest to the work as well as give them overall career security

- swift innovation goals: new features/capabilities/improvements at a rapid pace (of course this calls for  organizational changes that would allow it)

- limits on executive pay in the form of modest base salary + performance-based bonus

- revised procedures for negotiating with unions

- maybe other stuff. I forget for now

There are two reasons I’d support a bailout with those features.

1) 1 in 10 Americans works for the auto industry or something related to it, and our economy cannot handle that scale of unemployment. Disposable incomes and therefore consumption is contracted so much already and the federal government is already too far in the hole to pay out more unemployment/welfare.

2) Pouring money into the Big 3 has the potential to create huge long-term gains for the US. If the auto industry in this country evolves - and evolves quickly - we can once again be competitive on the global market (which I don’t believe we have been in many many years). Early establishment of comparative advantage in a newly developing field would create long-run economic growth. More money, more jobs, more prestige for our inflated egos.

Let’s see what happens with this. I’m pretty sure some kind of aid will be delivered; the bankruptcy option isn’t really an option because the US doesn’t often let shit of that magnitude hit the fan. I don’t think this situation is quite entirely different from anything we’ve seen before… but of course we’ll see.

I recently found this article on Twitter, which I use to narrow down my daily reading. I forget who tweeted it, but thank you VERY much for bringing it to my attention.

Healthcare is an issue I feel incredibly strongly about. My own family has been ridiculously burdened with insurance battles my whole life and now, as I begin to seek employment, my single largest concern is finding adequate coverage. Prescriptions and co-pays and specialized treatment and equipment are so expensive, and that isn’t even the end of it. Monthly premiums (whether paid by employers or not) are a huge and constant expenditure. It would be a horrible feeling to have to choose between buying medication and funding your retirement, or buying your groceries.

I knew the numbers (I forget them now, but you can find some here): Americans spend far more on healthcare as a portion of GDP than any other nation and that amount is rising. This is economically inefficient - those dollars could be going elsewhere, investing in expanding our economy, increasing trade with other nations, saving the world - but instead we are spending them on something that a lot of other modern nations have already taken care of. I won’t pretend to know a lot about the English economy, but my guess is it’s handling the cost of universal healthcare without taking too much of a hit or pissing off too many people. Please do tell me if I’m wrong.

I have never understood why employers are the conduit of healthcare in our society. It makes very little sense, as far as I can see. It discourages entrepreneurship and other independent pursuits, which I have always assumed to be a positive thing for American culture and economy. It is incredibly restricting and incredibly unfair to those whose jobs provide only the crappiest of coverage. Why should they be entitled to fewer benefits than others? Since when did wealth or things similar to wealth determine a person’s right to be healthy?

I believe health is an inalienable right. I do not think any external entity deserves to control it in any way. Only he can choose to take away his own health (and if he does, he is a damned idiot, but we won’t go into that today). Therefore, a person’s status - whether that be his social standing, income, his job, or his very state of employment - does not sensibly have any links to that person’s right to have the best treatment possible. Especially given this economic climate, it is unfair to further disadvantage those who have already lost their jobs. They should not have to worry about losing their healthcare too.

I have run out of steam for tonight, but I think I said most of what I wanted to say. I sincerely hope the incoming administration will act on this vital issue. They are in a position to do so, what with the major overhaul of so many other economic policies, and this one would cost so much less than the others. History has proven that running a deficit - even an inconceivably huge one - is the right thing to do when the nation is suffering, because those expenditures can have lasting positive effects on the lifestyles and mindsets of the American people. After all, how can you even consider worrying about anything else if you can’t be sure of your own health first?