Yes, that’s career advice courtesy of New York’s Michael Bloomberg: the Big Apple’s media mogul-turned-billionaire mayor who recently led an unsuccessful campaign to ban oversized sugary drinks in his city. Now after making a name for himself as the nanny of Manhattan, Mayor Bloomberg is apparently already considering another career change — this time as guidance counselor.During his weekly radio show on Friday, Bloomberg shared some words with listeners looking for career advice. It’s no secret that jobs are hard to come by nowadays, and the amount of debt brought on by unpaid college loans now surpasses what Americans owe on their credit cards. Mayor Bloomberg offered his input on the issue during last week’s show, and said students who aren’t destined for the top of the class should consider another option that’s not so costly.“The people who are going to have the biggest problem are college graduates who aren’t rocket scientists, if you will, not at the top of their class,” Bloomberg said. “Compare a plumber to going to Harvard College – being a plumber, actually for the average person, probably would be a better deal.”“You don’t spend … four years spending $40,000, $50,000 in tuition without earning income,” the mayor added.Later, Bloomberg explained that some vocational jobs — like plumbing — won’t ever been outsourced overseas or replaced by machines.“It’s hard to farm that out … and it’s hard to automate that,” he said.One day later, the mayor had similar words for the graduating class of Ohio’s Kenyon College. According to Fox News, Bloomberg told graduates on Saturday that “I know that today’s job market is not easy,” and acknowledged, “…today, if I interview a recent college grad who tells me he or she spent the summer curing cancer, bringing peace to the Middle East, and writing the Great American Novel – I’m impressed.Again, however, the mayor said dreams of being successful shouldn’t be dashed just because college isn’t in the cards. “I’m more likely to hire the person who spent his or her summer working days, nights, and weekends for an auto-body shop or a construction company in order to pay tuition or help with family bills,” Bloomberg told the crowd.According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median pay for a manual worker like a plumber in 2010 was roughly $47,000, a good $15,000 a year annually more than other occupational workers pull in. And as MSN pointed out, recent college grads aren’t guaranteed much more than hefty student loans: for 2011 graduates, the average debt went up 5.3 percent from the year before. Bloomberg, on the other hand, was estimated to be worth $27 billion as of this year. … Read More
US suicide rates surge, surpass road fatalities
From 1999 to 2010, the suicide rate among US citizens between the ages of 35 to 64 soared by about 30 per cent, to 17.6 deaths per 100,000 people, a jump from 13.7. In 2010, there were 33,687 deaths from motor vehicle crashes and 38,364 suicides. Although suicide has been traditionally viewed as a problem among the youth and elderly, the recent study, published in Friday’s issue of its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, shows a marked rise in the number of suicides among middle-aged men and women. The suicide rate for men aged 35–64 years jumped 27.3 per cent, from 21.5 to 27.3 per 100,000, while the rate for women increased 31.5 per cent, from 6.2 to 8.1. Among the male population, the greatest increases were among those aged 50–54 years and 55–59 years, (49.4 per cent, from 20.6 to 30.7, and 47.8 per cent, from 20.3 to 30.0 respectively). Among females, suicide rates tended to increase with age. The largest percentage increase in suicide rate was observed among women aged 60–64 years (59.7 per cent, from 4.4 to 7.0).Men were more likely to take their own lives than women. The suicide rate for middle-aged men was 27.3 deaths per 100,000, while for women it was 8.1 deaths per 100,000.Suicide rates from 1999 to 2010 “increased significantly” across all four geographic areas and in 39 states. The state of Wyoming recorded the highest increase in suicides with a 78.8 per cent jump (31.1 per 100,000), while even the sunny state of Hawaii witnessed a 61.2 per cent increase (21.9 per 100,000).As shocking as the newly released data on US suicide rates are, many believe the numbers are too low since many deaths are not treated as actual suicides.“It’s vastly under-reported,” Julie Phillips, an associate professor of sociology at Rutgers University, told The New York Times. “We know we’re not counting all suicides.”Baby Boomer crisis CDC officials emphasized that the Baby Boomer generation is witnessing the highest increase in suicides (A Baby Boomer is a person who was born post-World War II, between the years 1946 and 1964, when the annual birthrate increased dramatically in the US).“It is the Baby Boomer group where we see the highest rates of suicide,” CDC deputy director, Dr. Ileana Arias, told the New York Times. “There may be something about that group, and how they think about life issues and their life choices that may make a difference.” The rise in suicides among this group may be connected with the recent downturn in the global economy and the challenges the Baby Boomer generation must now confront.“The increase does coincide with a decrease in financial standing for a lot of families over the same time period,” Arias said. In 2010, the first year of economic comeback following the 2009-2010 recession, 93 per cent of all pre-tax income gains went to the top 1 per cent of the American population, which in that year meant any household earning more than $358,000.Is financial crisis spurring suicide? Is the rash of suicides across a broad spectrum of the American population a direct result of the wealth hoarding by the top income earners in the United States? In a letter to The Lancet medical journal, scientists from Britain, Hong Kong and United States said an analysis of data from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicated that while suicide rates increased slowly between 1999 and 2007, the rate of increase more than quadrupled from 2008 to 2010, Reuters reported.”There is a clear need to implement policies to promote mental health resilience during the ongoing recession,” said Aaron Reeves of Britain’s University of Cambridge, who headed the research and submitted it in a letter to The Lancet.Reeves even suggested the Democrats and Republicans are partially to blame for not throwing a spotlight on the issue during the latest presidential campaign.”In the run-up to the US presidential election, President Obama and Mitt Romney are debating how best to spur economic recovery, [but] missing from this discussion is consideration of how to protect Americans’ health during these hard times,” Reeves warned.Meanwhile, preliminary research suggests that the risk for suicide will unlikely subside for future generations.“The boomers had great expectations for what their life might look like, but I think perhaps it hasn’t panned out that way,” Phillips said.“All these conditions the boomers are facing, future cohorts are going to be facing many of these conditions as well.” The study pointed to the increased usage of prescription painkillers, like oxycodone, which can be particularly deadly in large doses.There was a significant jump in poisoning deaths, which include intentional overdoses of prescription medication. During the 10-year period, poisoning deaths were up 24 per cent over all, while death by suffocation, (including hangings) was up 81 per cent.Robert Bridge is the author of the book, Midnight in the American Empire, which discusses the dangerous consequences of excessive corporate power in the United States. … Read More
The pleasures of hate-reading GOOP
If the experts at People magazine are to be trusted, then Gwyneth Paltrow is currently the most beautiful woman in the world. Happily, this means that beauty now comes with a comprehensive instruction manual. Thanks to her lifestyle newsletter, GOOP, it’s possible for us mere mortals to follow Gwyneth’s own advice on how to be exactly like her—that is, perfect.According to its website, GOOP (cheerily named after Paltrow’s initials) is “a digital media and e-commerce company.” Its free weekly newsletter includes style tips, recipes, vacation recommendations, and miscellaneous words of wisdom from Paltrow’s rich and famous friends. The writing style is particularly intriguing—primarily first-person Paltrow, with occasional additions from a mysterious editorial “we” whenever Gwyneth wants to interview herself.Continue Reading… … Read More
Poland and Germany fall out over who was more antisemitic during WWII
The lead story, published in Poland’s best-selling weekly news magazine, the conservative Uwazam Rze, was provoked by a high-budget World War II miniseries called Our Mothers, Our Fathers filmed and broadcast last month by state-owned station ZDF.Although the €14 million series claimed to put human drama ahead of politics, it has aroused anger in Poland for the portrayal of Polish resistance fighters as anti-Semites. In one scene a partisan says “we drown Jews like rats”, and in another, upon intercepting a convoy of prisoners destined for Auschwitz, the underground fighters let it proceed, once they discover the prisoners are Jews.”We are angry with this film’s message,” Taduesz Filipkowski, spokesman for the International Home Army Association, a veterans’ organization, said when the first episode was broadcast.”We believe it to be evil slander and an attempt to justify Nazi crimes by setting them against the alleged antisemitism that existed in Poland before the war. Our government should not ignore this attack on our reputation.”The authorities duly obliged.”The image of Poland and the Polish resistance against the German occupiers as conveyed by this series is perceived by most Poles as extremely unjust and offensive,” wrote Jerzy Marganski, Poland’s ambassador to Germany.Uwazam Rze claims that the series also tries to share the responsibility for antisemitism between all parties involved, while absolving many ordinary Germans of wartime atrocities, and equating their suffering with that of their victims. Symbolically, in the climax of the story, a German woman is executed, trying to save her Jewish lover, who survives.So far, Germany has been diplomatic but firm, refusing to apologize for the series, by saying Our Mothers, Our Fathers is meant to start a “national conversation” on a subject that was taboo for decades.Producer Nico Hofmann has said the depiction of Polish resistance fighters “is based on historically vetted material”, noting that rights for the widely-watched series have been purchased by multiple broadcasters around the world.But Polish media has not let the issue die down, and the tone has only become more confrontational.Ironically, in the past week German Chancellor Angela Merkel has also been depicted as a Nazi with a Hitler mustache during a series of anti-austerity rallies in Greece and Cyprus. … Read More
Watch Stossel Tonight, With Bjorn Lomborg and Matt Ridley Talking Green Tyranny
Tonight’s
Stossel on Fox Business channel is dedicated to discussing
“Green Tyranny” – the idea that many environmental regulations are
either counterproductive or overly restrictive.
Among the guests are a couple of folks we discuss quite a bit at
Reason.com: Bjorn Lomborg,
author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and Cool
It!, and Matt
Ridley, author of The Red Queen and The Rational
Optimist. ; ;
Stossel airs at 9pm ET on Thursdays. For more info,
go
here.
And read John Stossel’s weekly columns at
Reason.com. … Read More
Inspired by “Veronica Mars” success, Zachary Levi has faith “Chuck” movie can happen
“Chuck” star Zachary Levi has been talking to network executives about the possibility of a movie for the 5-season long NBC spy comedy ever since it ended. He recently told Entertainment Weekly: “I went to both [executive producer] Chris Fedak and [Warner Bros. Television president] Peter Roth at the very end of the fifth season and said, ‘Hey what if we made an online movie and just sold it directly to fans? We could keep this going. It could be fun.’”Executives rejected his pitch, but the unprecedented success of the “Veronica Mars” project–which raised $2 million through a Kickstarter campaign in less than 12 hours–has renewed Levi’s faith in the project:[embedtweet id=311981803068084225]“We are entering into the wild west of entertainment where essentially everybody can do what only studios could do for the last 70 years,” said Levi.Continue Reading… … Read More
