Month: October 2016

U.S. Parents Are Sweating And Hustling To Pay For Child Care : NPR

The average cost of day care in the U.S. — $9,589 per year — edges out the average cost of in-state college tuition at $9,410, according to a recent report from New America, a think tank in Washington, D.C., in collaboration with Care.com, an online resource that connects families and caregivers.

In four states — Kentucky, Montana, Oregon and Wisconsin — average child care costs exceed median rent. In 11 states — Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, South Dakota, Vermont, Washington — and the District of Columbia, the average cost of full-time day care is more than 90 percent of median rent.

Average cost of child care as a share of median household income (U.S. average: 30.8 percent)
Source: New America Foundation: The Care Index (2016)
Credit: Alyson Hurt/NPR

Brian Hickey of Raleigh, N.C. … “At the end of the day, I can lose my house, my job, my car, you can replace those,” he says. “You can’t replace your kids.”

Source: U.S. Parents Are Sweating And Hustling To Pay For Child Care : NPR

Google Has Quietly Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking – ProPublica

Google is the latest tech company to drop the longstanding wall between anonymous online ad tracking and user’s names.

The practical result of the change is that the DoubleClick ads that follow people around on the web may now be customized to them based on the keywords they used in their Gmail. It also means that Google could now, if it wished to, build a complete portrait of a user by name, based on everything they write in email, every website they visit and the searches they conduct.

Source: Google Has Quietly Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking – ProPublica

Can a Corporation Have a Soul? – The Atlantic

A business that earns nothing but money is a poor business.

— Henry Ford

 

The Dodge brothers were frustrated that Ford had declined to distribute the company’s surplus funds to shareholders, and instead planned to expand the company’s manufacturing capacity, hire more workers, and reduce the prices of its cars. … the Dodge brothers argued that Henry Ford believed that after ensuring shareholders had earned a reasonable return (which the Dodge brothers certainly had), a company should devote its resources to improving society. From Ford’s perspective, this meant producing better products at lower prices and employing more people at good wages.

the Michigan Supreme Court permitted Ford to go through with his plans as he pleased. … It acknowledged that its judges were “not business experts,” and for that reason deferred to Ford and the rest of the company’s board, permitting them to set forth on whatever strategy they deemed fit. After all, the court noted, Ford Motor’s previous strategies had already been extremely successful.

As long as there is some sort of connection to boosting long-term earnings, boards can essentially do as they please, as Ford’s court battle demonstrated. If they choose, directors can imbue a company with a purpose beyond distributing money to shareholders. … The question, then, is not what boards and executives must do, but what they will elect to do.

Source: Can a Corporation Have a Soul? – The Atlantic

Is the Self-Driving Car Un-American?

Our republic of drivers is poised to become a nation of passengers.

The experience of driving a car has been the mythopoeic heart of America for half a century. How will its absence be felt? We are still probably too close to it to know for sure. Will we mourn the loss of control? Will it subtly warp our sense of personal freedom — of having our destiny in our hands? Will it diminish our daily proximity to death? Will it scramble our (too often) gendered, racialized notions of who gets to drive which kinds of cars? Will middle-aged men still splurge on outlandishly fast (or, at least, fast-looking) self-driving vehicles? Will young men still buy cheap ones and then blow their paychecks tricking them out? If we are no longer forced to steer our way through a traffic jam, will it become less existentially frustrating, or more? What will become of the cinematic car chase? What about the hackneyed country song where driving is a metaphor for life? Will race-car drivers one day seem as remotely seraphic to us as stunt pilots? Will we all one day assume the entitled air of the habitually chauffeured?

the dialectic between the old-fashioned automotive freedom and the newfangled freedom from cars.

What exactly is that freedom worth? In answering that question, we as a society will schism in curious ways. For those of us who see driving as a kind of imprisonment — which, spatially speaking, it quite literally is — an extra hour to work or play (or eat, or read, or meditate, or fix our hair and do our makeup) will be cherished. But for those who see driving as a physical expression of freedom — which, spatially speaking, it also quite literally is — the end of driving will feel like confinement.

The question will become even more complicated once it becomes entangled in the sticky web of partisan politics, which it inevitably will be — another sign of just how loaded the car is as a pack mule of American symbolism.

Source: Is the Self-Driving Car Un-American?

 

To a large extent I deplore its passing, for as a basically old-fashioned machine it enshrines a basically old-fashioned idea — freedom.

— novelist J. G. Ballard

Ease of Online Applications Hurts Low-Income Students – The Atlantic

Students—especially those who are economically disadvantaged—and universities are hurt by how simple it is to apply to schools online.

The concern for colleges is that selectivity and national reach aren’t the only metrics that matter. Just as critical is “yield”—the share of accepted students who actually enroll. It’s what colleges use to project their revenues and manage their finances, and miscalculations can be fatal. Too few students—too low a yield—can spell shortfalls that lead to budget cuts, fewer classes, or even faculty layoffs. … On the other hand, too many enrollments could mean not enough student housing or financial aid.

Most schools, however, are having trouble finding the right students. In fact, despite the online application boom, schools are in crisis around yield. NACAC’s State of College Admission survey found that the average four-year college yield rate was 35.7 percent in 2013—down from 48.7 percent in 2002.

Of course, most students have no idea that this is how colleges are judging them. Some do, however, because they have the means to hire private educational consultants who can explain the rules of the current admissions marketplace. “One way to tell that the market is dysfunctional is if you have to hire a guide,” says Roth, from Stanford.

Source: Ease of Online Applications Hurts Low-Income Students – The Atlantic