South Gibson Star-Times

B-7 Tuesday, June 19, 2018 South Gibson Star-Times Minority View by Walter E. Williams Diversity and inclusion harm Heritage Viewpoint by Edwin J. Feulner No denying the economy's remarkable strength Pursuit of the Cure by Star-Parker Why can't we fix Social Security and Medicare? LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Signed copies of letters must be submitted by noon on Friday. In conversations with most college officials, many CEOs, many politicians and race hus- tlers, it's not long before the magical words "diversity" and "inclusiveness" drop from their lips. Racial minorities are the intend- ed targets of this sociological largesse, but women are included, as well. This obsession with diversity and inclusion is in the process of leading the nation to decline in a number of areas. We're told how it's doing so in sci- ence, in an article by Heather Mac Donald, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, titled "How Identity Politics Is Harming the Scienc- es" (http://tinyurl.com/y9g8k9ne). Mac Donald says that identity politics has already taken over the humanities and so- cial sciences on American campuses. Wait- ing in the wings for a similar takeover are the STEM fields — science, technology, en- gineering and math. In the eyes of the di- versity and inclusiveness czars, the STEM fields don't have a pleasing mixture of blacks, Hispanics and women. The effort to get this "pleasing mix" is doing great damage to how science is taught and evaluated, threatening innovation and American competitiveness. Universities and other institutions have started watering down standards and require- ments in order to attract more minorities and women. Some of the arguments for doing so border on insanity. A math education pro- fessor at the University of Illinois wrote that "mathematics itself operates as whiteness." She says that the ability to solve algebra and geometry problems perpetuates "unearned privilege" among whites. A professor at Pur- due University's School of Engineering Edu- cation published an article in a peer-reviewed journal positing that academic rigor is a "dirty deed" that upholds "white male heterosexual privilege," adding that "scientific knowledge itself is gendered, raced, and colonizing." The National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health are two federal agencies that fund university research and support postdoctoral education for physi- cians. Both agencies are consumed by diver- sity and inclusion ideology. The NSF and NIH can yank a grant when it comes up for renew- al if the college has not supported a sufficient number of "underrepresented minorities." Mac Donald quotes a UCL A scientist who re- ports: "All across the country the big question now in STEM is: how can we promote more women and minorities by 'changing' (i.e., low- ering) the requirements we had previously set for graduate level study? " Mac Donald ob- serves, "Mathematical problem-solving is be- ing deemphasized in favor of more qualita- tive group projects; the pace of undergradu- ate physics education is being slowed down so that no one gets left behind." Focusing on mathematical problem-solving and academic rigor, at least for black students at the college level, is a day late and a dollar short. The 2017 National Assessment of Ed- ucational Progress, aka The Nation's Report Card, reported that only 17 percent of black students tested proficient or better in read- ing, and just 7 percent reached at least a pro- ficient level in math. In some predominant- ly black high schools, not a single black stu- dent scored proficient in math. The academic and federal STEM busybodies ought to focus on the academic destruction of black young- sters between kindergarten and 12th grade and the conferring of fraudulent high school diplomas. Black people should not allow them- selves to be used at the college level to help white liberals feel better about themselves and keep their federal grant money. Mac Donald answers the question of wheth- er scientific progress depends on diversity. She says: "Somehow, NSF-backed scientists managed to rack up more than 200 Nobel Prizes before the agency realized that scien- tific progress depends on 'diversity.' Those 'un-diverse' scientists discovered the funda- mental particles of matter and unlocked the genetics of viruses." She might have added that there wasn't even diversity among those white Nobel laureates. Jews constitute no more than 3 percent of the U.S. population but are 35 percent of American Nobel Prize winners. One wonders what diversity and in- clusion czars might propose to promote eth- nic diversity among Nobel Prize winners. Walter E. Williams is a professor of econom- ics at George Mason University. "We Ran Out of Words to Describe How Good the Jobs Numbers Are." That's a real headline. And it appeared in The New York Times. No, that's not a misprint. The actual New York Times, which has published scathing criticisms of President Trump, was admit- ting in a June 1 article that the U.S. econo- my is strong beyond description right now. Words such as "splendid" and "excellent" certainly fit, according to reporter Neil Ir- win: "Those are the kinds of terms that are appropriate when the United States econ- omy adds 223,000 jobs in a month, despite being nine years into an expansion, and when the unemployment rate falls to 3.8 percent, a new 18 -year low." There's more. Average hourly earnings are up 2.7 percent over the last year, while unemployment has dropped. It's even low- er for black Americans — 5.9 percent, "the lowest on record," which we would count as 'great'," Mr. Irwin wrote. The unemployment rate is also near his- toric lows for Hispanics (4.9 percent) and for women (3.6 percent). "Employers are creating more jobs, lead- ing more people to work and fewer people to be unemployed, and leading wages to rise," Irwin added. All the numbers "affirm that the United States economy is in basi- cally sound shape, displaying neither the slightest warning signs of recession nor any clear evidence of overheating and in- flation risks." All of this is great news for workers. Em- ployers are really having to step up their game and compete to attract the best work- ers. That means paying more, of course. Average hourly earnings for all private-sector em- ployees have risen 71 cents over the last year, the larg- est 12-month increase since 2009. Many companies re- acted to the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in De- cember by hiking pay and giving their employees gen- erous bonuses. (For more than 600 specific examples, check Americans for Tax Reform's web site, which has a running list of which com- panies have ponied up and by how much.) "To date, over 4 million Americans have received a pay raise and/or a bonus be- cause of tax reform," writes The Heritage Foundation's Timothy Doescher, "This is not just employers being altruistic, it's a market-driven response to a need to at- tract and maintain workers—enabled by the government taking less money away from businesses." And it's not just pay — employees are also getting better benefits. Perhaps the most notable example is Wal-Mart. It's not only boosted salaries — it has added ma- ternity and paternity leave for its employ- ees, and introduced a college-tuition pro- gram. Will the economy stay strong? Two things would greatly increase our chanc- es. One is making the tax cuts permanent. They've given the economy a solid shot in the arm, no question, but like so many past cuts, they're set to expire. Making them permanent would give companies some much-needed certainty — and allow them to better plan for fu- ture growth. The second thing is to em- brace free trade and stop lev- eling needless tariffs. Take the steep new tariffs on Canadian lumber imports into the U.S. They've contributed to a 66 per- cent increase in lumber prices in the past year. We're not just hurt- ing a valuable trading partner — we're hurting ourselves. Sure, U.S. lumber mills may embrace these new levies, and plan to add more jobs. But as higher prices depress the homebuilding industries, will they be cheering for long? Or consider the tariffs on steel and alu- minum that were added in March. Suppos- edly it was done to combat Chinese over- production. But as trade expert Tori Whit- ing recently noted, most of our steel and aluminum imports come from U.S. allies. China accounts for only about 2 percent of our steel, and 7 percent of our aluminum. Not surprisingly, the price for both com- modities has spiked recently. Again, we're hurting ourselves. So let's make the tax cuts permanent and scrap the new tariffs. Maybe then we can keep the prosperity rolling — and econom- ic reporters reaching for their thesauruses. Ed Feulner is founder of The Heritage Foundation (heritage.org). Each year, the trustees of Social Securi- ty and Medicare issue their report deliver- ing the news, invariably dismal, about the financial condition of the nation's two larg- est entitlement programs. This year, in the report just issued, it's worse than usual. Last year, the trustees forecast that So- cial Security and Medicare's hospital in- surance would have to start dipping into their trust funds by 2022 and 2023 in or- der to finance their obligations. They re- port now that the situation has deteriorat- ed such that both need to start dipping in this year. The HI trust fund will be depleted by 2026, and Social Security's trust fund will be depleted by 2034. In the case of Social Security, in 2034, just 16 years away, if no action is taken now, either benefits must be cut by 21 percent or taxes will need to be raised 31 percent, to meet obligations. Analysts have been writing about the grave fiscal problems of Social Security for years. Yet nothing gets done. Why? Social Security is the largest spending program in the U.S. budget. Ninety per- cent of Americans 65 and older get Social Security benefits. Any government program, once it gets rooted in our culture and Americans start getting benefits, becomes almost impos- sible to change. President George W. Bush tried to bring fundamental changes to Social Security. He was a Republican president whose party controlled both the Senate and the House. And he still couldn't get to first base. Social Security was signed into law in 1935 — 83 years ago. Although the scope of the program is much, much bigger today, it's basic struc- ture is exactly the same as it was then. Benefits of retirees are paid for through the pay- roll taxes of those currently working. How many businesses to- day operate exactly like they did 83 years ago — or even 10 years ago? The Dow Jones average, an index of the nation's most influential corporations, has changed 51 times since it was founded. The reason our economy works is be- cause it is flexible. The world is changing all the time. Businesses are constantly al- tering their products and the way they do business to accommodate new market re- alties. But not so in government programs. And there couldn't be a better reason why we should keep government out of our private lives. The basic premise of Social Security, and of Medicare, enacted some 33 years after Social Security, was that we could tax the young and working to pay for the re- tired and elderly. But in 1950, we had a little over 16 peo- ple working for every retiree. Today it is less than 3. Life expectancy in 1940 for a 65 year old was 14 years. Today it is 20 years. Meanwhile, we're not having children. Last month, the Cen- ters for Disease Control and Pre- vention reported that the U.S. fertility, the number of babies birthed for every 1,000 women of childbearing age, was the low- est in history in 2017. Most Americans think they are entitled to defined Social Security benefits because they paid tax- es. It's not true. In a Supreme Court case in 1960, Flemming v. Nestor, the court ruled "A person covered by the Social Security Act has not such a right in old-age benefit payments. ... To engraft upon the Social Se- curity system a concept of 'accrued prop- erty rights' would deprive it of the flexi- bility and boldness in adjustments to ev- ery-changing conditions." This means the government can change your benefits anytime it wants. Who would do business with a company like this? It's great that President Donald Trump has got our economy steaming ahead again. But as we recover, we need to take on the challenges of Social Security and Medicare. Star Parker is an author and president of CURE, Center for Urban Renewal and Edu- cation. Contact her at www.urbancure.org. sponsored by boat angel outreach centers STOP CRIMES AGAINST CHILDREN w w w.boatangel.com "2-Night Free Vacation!" Donate A Boat or Car Today! 800 700 BOAT - - (2628)

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