Don Jon and the 'Demise of Guys'

I’m a fan of independent movies.  They don’t offer the escapist relief from daily drudgery that many

Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Don Jon

mainstream movies do.  But, they challenge your thinking and sometimes your sensibilities in ways that mainstream movies don’t.

Recently, we watched a movie written and directed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt.  TV buffs may remember him playing the youngest son on the hit series Third Rock from the Sun.  Since then, he’s demonstrated a broader range as an actor is such films as 50/50 and (500) Days of Summer.

His new movie, Don Jon, is a disturbing portrait.  Playing the title role, Mr. Gordon-Levitt also narrates the proceedings.  An avid fan of Internet pornography, his character confesses – or perhaps brags – that he would rather watch porn than have sex with a real woman. 

We’re so out of touch with what goes on outside our tidy suburban existence that we didn’t know what to make of it.  So, we forgot about it.

A few days later, I was poking at TED.com and came across a short talk titled “The Demise of Guys”.  The speaker, Phil Zimbardo, is a past professor of psychology at Stanford University and a past president of the American Psychological Association.

He outlines his case by citing statistics.  Girls outperform boys at every level of education.  Boys are more likely to drop out, more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD and more likely to be spending their time in front of a flat screen than with other boys. 

“Boys’ brains are being digitally rewired for change, novelty, excitement and constant arousal,” claims Zimbardo.  “That means they’re totally out of sync in traditional classes, which are analog, static, interactively passive.”

He doesn’t stop there.  He goes on to say that young men watch Internet porn an average of 50 times per week.  It seems they would rather watch porn than run the risk of having to relate to a real woman.

By now, I am beginning to think of Don Jon as a documentary not a work of fiction.

But, Zimbardo offers no solutions, just observations.  For solutions, I turn to David Altshuler.  David helps students and their families prepare for and apply to colleges.  A former teacher, he also holds advanced degrees in educational psychology.

Writing in his blog, David poses two alternative realities.  In one, parents spend time showing their young children how to create something edible in the kitchen, enjoy a day at the park or throw a Frisbee with the family dog.  They make messes, get dirty, get bitten by bugs and overhear adults utter a four-letter word from time to time. 

In the alternate reality, parents plant their children in front of the flat screen TV where they can watch shows about cooking, pets and nature.  No mess, no bother.

I am beginning to see a connection between the Frisbee and Don Jon. 

Lest you think that David’s theory is a bit melodramatic, he draws parallels between the flat screen watchers and an experiment performed by Harry Harlow.  Harlow was a psychologist famous for his experiments on social isolation.  Using rhesus monkeys as his subjects, he raised a generation of them in cages with no contact with others of their species.  Their behavior turned psychotic.  Moreover, they were irredeemable. 

As I said at the outset, we sometimes feel as though we are out of touch and, indeed, we have not had the experience of raising a child in the 21^st Century.  In the pre-smartphone era when the twins were young, we were anti-Disney.  We went on hikes, took ski trips, went white water rafting and spent hours in boats not catching fish.

Peter Calia on the bow and brother Dan, both age 12

Kids need the experience of scraping a knee, breaking a bone, contracting poison ivy and occasionally failing at something to grow up to be healthy adults.  That experience doesn’t come from connecting to friends via an electronic device.  Boys have a need to be with other boys.  It’s in their DNA – sports teams, clubs, even hanging out watching the game.  It’s Darwinian.  Kings who couldn’t raise armies lost their thrones.  Those who didn’t join armies lost their homes.

My posts to this blog usually focus on institutional LEADERSHIP.  But, parents are LEADERS too.  If you are a busy parent, it’s got to be tough to find the time to get your youngsters out of the house to experience nature or join their friends in an unsupervised activity.

But, it’s necessary to raise adults capable of healthy relationships and good citizenship.

WHO WILL LEAD?

On social mobility: confessions of a former Yuppie

My first Bimmer

Remember Yuppies?  In the early days of demographic stratification, I was classified as a Young
Upwardly-mobile Professional – a Yuppie.  But, I am no longer young or upwardly mobile; so, I don't qualify.

My Dad was a Yuppie, too.  No one was called a Yuppie in his day; but he was young and upwardly mobile.  He was also a businessman.  Today we would call him an entrepreneur.  He and two partners each deposited $2000 in the bank and started a company. 

It was quite an accomplishment given where he started.  When I was born, he was collecting Aid toFamilies with Dependent Children (AFDC, a federal/state financial aid program).  Thank God for the safety net!

Later in life, Dad sold his business to retire.  He would never have been described as wealthy; that was not his goal.  His goal was to be secure in retirement and he achieved that. 

Dad also achieved something I never did.  He transcended his socio-economic class.  He started poor and became upper middle class.  I started upper middle class and became – well – upper middle class. 

Dad worked hard and played by the rules. 

In the context of today’s debate about social mobility, he would be a success story.  He relied on government assistance when he needed it but paid it back many times over by paying his taxes when he was economically successful. 

A Harvard study published last year indicates that there has been little change in social mobility since my Dad’s day.  Still, we are having a debate – which is bound to affect policy, the budget and, eventually, taxes – about how to help those in need move up the economic ladder.  The study pointed to geography as the most important factor in social mobility.  Areas where there was less segregation, more stable families and better education tended to have greater mobility.

Michele and her family

Yet, the debate seems to be about raising the minimum wage.  How will that provide the stable environmental factors that will enable people to move up the economic ladder?

So, I am confused.  We lionize hard working Americans and say we want to help people move up the economic ladder; but, the prescription has nothing to do with hard work.  It is to unilaterally hand more money to people for the same amount of work. 

I support the concept of a social safety net.  My Dad took advantage of it when he really needed to.  But, he succeeded perhaps more than most of his day because he worked hard and made tough choices about how to live his life and support his family.  His success was self-made.  It was not the result of the government reapportioning wealth.

Perhaps, the best perspective I have read on this topic came from my cousin’s daughter, Michele (my first cousin, once removed, if you’re keeping score).  She and her husband are raising three boys on Long Island.  They’re working hard and playing by the rules.  Here is what she said on her Facebook Timeline:

“I usually don't do this on FB but can't help it because it's too irritating. Fast food workers are striking because they want minimum wage to be increased to $15 an hr.?? So after I pay my student loan bills and taxes they will make the same as me??? … So that's what we do now? Protest to make more money?? What happened to making more money based on merit and how good u are? Ok I'm done now:)”

So am I.

WHO WILL LEAD?

Can the Nation's Mayors Save the Federal Government from Itself?

The press has planted a phrase in our heads – dysfunctional government.  It’s hardly a phrase the man on the street would invent.  Yet, it has overtaken the economy as voters’ biggest concern.  Sounds like a problem we should try to solve, doesn’t it?

There’s a central truth to this issue that most are missing.  The government was designed to be dysfunctional.  If you were designing a system to function efficiently, would you come up with this?

Indeed, if one were to design a government system to function efficiently, one might choose the British Westminster system.  In the UK, elections can be called at irregular intervals to throw the bums out and the leader of the party who achieves a majority appoints the ministers (from among those elected) who run the bureaus of government.

No separation of powers, no process of advice and consent, no oversight committees or any of the other nonsense that clogs up the works in D.C.

In the midst of all this federal Sturm and Drang, many states have stepped into the breach.  And, why shouldn’t they?  In a nation that is geographically larger than all of Europe, it makes sense that we would have diverse cultures with different values.  Continental Europe certainly does.

Former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels forged a new path by selling some of the state’s assets – including highways -- to pay down their debt and balance their budget without raising taxes.  It was a bold move.  What can we learn from Indiana’s experience?

In California, new/old Governor Jerry Brown chose a different direction.  He raised taxes on the wealthy to address the state’s budget issues. Unlike Indiana, California benefits from thriving entertainment and technology industries and geographically important seaports like Long Beach and Oakland.  A recovering economy has boosted state revenues and balanced the budget.  The very wealthy haven’t abandoned the state to move to Indiana or even to Arizona or Texas.

Texas pursues a different model.  A no-income tax state, it benefits from a booming energy industry and low costs of living and doing business.  Want to move from high-tax states like California, Illinois or New York?  No problem.  You’ll be welcomed. 

That Texas and California can pursue such different models and both thrive is an expression of the diversity of our economy.  There’s no need for the federal government to be involved.

Last June’s Supreme Court ruling allowed each state to make its own decision about gay marriage.  And, each state is doing so.  Easy?  For some yes and for others no.  But, the decisions made at a local level are more likely to reflect local values.

Mississippi will never have it.  Vermont always will.

Contrast that to the 40-year-old Supreme Court ruling on abortion.  Proponents and opponents are still marching in the streets. 

Enter the nation’s mayors. 

More than 80% of the population now lives in or near a big city.  So, our mayors are likely to have an increasing impact on society.

Many focus on economic development.  Denver has established a Business Incentive Fund that has attracted large national companies like Southwest Airlines to its environs.  Raleigh, NC has a well-educated workforce and has attracted financial companies like Fidelity, Credit Suisse and MetLife.  Seattle benefits from a resurgent Boeing and has also attracted technology companies like Amazon and Google to build new operations there. 

But, it’s not all about economics.  Cities may also serve as laboratories for social experiments. New York’s new mayor, Bill de Blasio, ran on a platform of taxing the rich to fund universal pre-K.  If he receives the necessary support of the state government, we’ll get to see if that experiment works before liberals in Washington take a crack at it.  Will Wall Street big shots relocate their HQ’s to White Plains, Princeton or Greenwich?  It will be interesting to find out, won’t it?

Seattle’s city government considers raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour.  Will the rise in incomes lift local businesses and cause the city to thrive or will it drive out local employers who reckon they can’t carry that burden? Will Seattleites be buying Tex-Mex from Taco Bell or from Burrito Box?

Conservatives point to the first principles of economic freedom as drivers of prosperity.  The elected governments of California and Seattle have chosen a different direction.  Liberals see the divergent incomes at the top and bottom of the economic ladder as a challenge they must address directly.  The elected governments of Indiana and Texas have chosen a different direction. 

I don’t know about you.  But, I would rather see how these many experiments work on a small scale before imposing them on the entire nation. 

The accretion of special interest lobbying and its impact on the federal taxes and regulations violate Americans’ sense of fair play.  The decentralization of American governance can only serve to make elected officials more responsive to the electorate and the results better aligned with our values and beliefs.  The folks in Washington will not endeavor to slow the momentum of our central government.  Change must be driven from outside the system and it’s more likely to be driven by political, social and economic forces at play in our states and cities than by those who pretend to represent us in Washington.

WHO WILL LEAD?

If you can't score a touchdown, move the goal post

Have you bought any food lately?  How about gas?  Have you filled up your tank?  Of course you have.  And, it’s getting a bit more expensive, isn’t it? 

Take a look at this chart of inflation over the last 70 years.

So, why do we keep hearing that inflation is under control? 

Listen carefully the next time you hear it.  They’ll say, “Core inflation excluding volatile food and fuel prices” is under control or something like that.

If you can’t score a touchdown, move the goal post. 

There’s more.  The chart above shows the Consumer Price Index (CPI) which is the measure of inflation we have all grown up with.  However, the boys and girls over at the Federal Reserve have decided to use Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE)as a measure of inflation (starting in 2000).   Here’s how the two compare.

So, what’s the difference?  In simple terms, the CPI measures the change in prices of a fixed set of goods and services – bread, clothing, gasoline, etc.  The PCE fiddles with that calculation a bit.  For example, if you bought a new computer a few years ago for $800, you got a certain amount of processing power, memory, ports to plug stuff into and so on.  If you spend $800 today for a new computer, you would get more of all that stuff.  Or, to put it another way, buying the same processing power etc. today as you did a few years ago costs less.  PCE averages that lower cost of the same features into its index holding down this particular measure of inflation. 

The Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act of 1978 established two goals for the Federal Reserve:  reducing unemployment and reducing inflation.

If your goals included holding down inflation like the Fed Chairman, wouldn’t you prefer to use PCE?

If you can’t score a touchdown, move the goal post. 

In fairness, a lot of economists think PCE is a better measure inflation.  But, out here in the real world where the cost of gasoline and food has been moving up steadily over the past five years or so, I don’t really care what they think.

So, what should we make of all this?

Perhaps the best perspective is provided Dylan Grice, author of the Edelweiss Journal.  He tells us “inflation is not measurable”.  He tells policy makers that “trying to control a variable you can’t measure (inflation) with a tool you don’t fully understand (money) in a complex system with hidden, unobservable and non-linear interrelationships (the economy) is a guaranteed way to ensure that most things which happen weren’t supposed to happen”. 

And, when was the last time the government’s forecast for economic growth came true?

WHO WILL LEAD?