Maybe There Isn't a Simple Answer

           As a kid growing up I really liked math, because to me it made sense, as there was only one simple definitive answer.  For example 2 + 3 = 5. 5 is the simple definitive answer.  It isn’t maybe 4 if the stock market goes down or maybe 6 if unemployment decreases.  The answer to that equation is 5 on Monday, it is 5 on Thursday, it was 5 in 1927, and it will still be 5 in 2027.  The answer is simple because it is definite, and because it is definite it is fact.  You can easily prove the answer is 5 by taking 2 pens and then taking 3 more pens and counting 5 pens.  Now this is kindergarten math and very simple but it even works when the numbers are bigger.  10,000 x 10,000 = 100,000,000.  Now I don’t have enough pens to illustrate this equation and it may not be simple enough for you to do it in your head, but the answer is still simple because it is definite.  No matter what the same answer will always solve this problem.

            Too often in life we try to find the same type of simple definite answer to the more complex problems we come across.  The only trouble with this is that unlike the mathematic equations listed above the answer is not simple and certainly is not definite.  Yet we try to solve these problems with opinions that we state as if they are a matter of fact.

            Cancer is a very big problem in our society and that cannot be argued.  I unfortunately, as do you know many people who have lost parents and other relatives to this most horrible disease.  Personally my mother, grandmother and grandfather are all cancer survivors.  Like many other people I not only want the answer to the why, I want the solution.  The fact is cancer kills many people every day and another fact is that no one knows what in essence causes this horrible disease.  Everyone has heard a theory but no one comes back with scientific evidence that what they are saying causes cancer does in fact cause cancer.

            Everyone has heard a bunch of theories on what causes cancer.  Microwaves can cause cancer don’t stand in front of them when they are on.  Cell phones can cause cancer don’t put the phone to your ear when you talk on it.  We all have microwaves and cell phones.  That means we should all have cancer.  If microwaves and cell phones cause cancer do you think standing to the side and talking on speakerphone would prevent you from getting it?  My point being that we need to stop being lazy and looking for the simple answer to complex problems.

             

            I do not support Mr. Obama, yet I still have this crazy belief that everyone should have the access to health care.  Call me a communist, but I just don’t believe that you should have to die or go bankrupt because you were one of the unfortunate ones to get sick.  The premise of the popular show “Breaking Bad” starts out with a hardworking middle class man getting diagnosed with lung cancer and at first he chooses just to die rather than put his family in financial distress.  He later resorts to selling meth so that he can afford to be sick.  We are supposed to live in the greatest country in the world, yet not everyone can get the best treatment for deadly diseases?

            Now all the people come out with their pitchforks and burning torches raving about socialism and that capitalism doesn’t allow for this.  We’re not talking about a car here; I’m not saying everyone should be able to drive a Ferrari, so those that can’t afford one get one pro bono.  I just believe that the American public deserves access to the best treatment possible against diseases like cancer, regardless how many commas their bank account balance shows.  

            The simple solution of forcing everyone by law to have healthcare is not the solution.  Unfortunately as Obamacare seems to be showing us all, that once again we cannot solve the complex problems of the world with a simple answer.

  Just because Obamacare is shaping up to be one of the greatest failures in this country’s history doesn’t mean that what the law was attempting to do is wrong.  Everything isn’t black or white or more famously in this country Republican or Democrat.  There isn’t just two simplistic ways to solve a problem. 

 By saying that universal healthcare goes against what is supposed to happen in a capitalistic society is just lazy and shuts down all thought process.  Instead we should be asking how could we make this work in a capitalistic society?  This forces our brains to work at trying to find a solution.  The “capitalist” were not talking about how the bailout was in fact socialistic, and they never will.  When you talk about taxing the rich to give to the poor it is socialism, but when you take the taxes the poor and middle class pay and use it to bail out failing companies it isn’t?  The same companies that cried socialism when the government was trying to regulate them cried for money and that they needed a bailout to survive. 

 They used the term Laissez-faire and talked about the invisible hand and how it corrects and controls the market beforehand.  However, when the invisible hand turned on them and told them it was time to fail they didn’t want to accept it.  Capitalism is a very simplistic ideal, the market sets the price through supply and demand.  If you raise your price too high it gets corrected to the accurate price by the market’s unwillingness to pay that price.  It also forces the company to be efficient and not wasteful as that leads to lower cost which leads to higher profits.  This is in turn the invisible hand.  If the corner deli wants to charge you $10 for a 8 ounce cup of coffee after one day of not selling a single cup the owner knows that he has to lower his price. This is the principle of the invisible hand correcting the market.  

          The invisible hand was doing its job when it was about to slam the “too big to fail” companies into the ground.  They broke one of the rules by not being efficient in giving ARM loans to everyone, thus increasing the demand of home buyers which drives up the price of homes since the supply stayed about the same.  When they had to foreclose on a bunch of the unqualified people they lent money to, they had all these homes that were overvalued that no one could afford to buy.  The price of homes was inflated to a price that the market was unwilling to pay and the invisible hand had to correct it.  The bank doesn’t want your home; they are not in the real estate business they are in the loan business.  They now had all these homes, that were overvalued, that they didn’t want and couldn’t sell and now were in big trouble.  

        Using capitalism as an excuse is just lazy as we could see with the bailout, we can bend the rules in certain situations.  Using a simple solution like forcing everyone to have health insurance is also too simplistic to solve such a complex problem.  How about giving out government funded incentives to doctors the higher percentage of their patients that they help stay healthy?  How about a bailout type extreme circumstance health insurance, where the government steps in over a certain dollar amount?  The answer isn't simple, definite or even just one idea, complex problems take much more to be solved correctly.

            The facts are right in front of us. Yet we still keep going back to the idea that we can solve complex problems with simple solutions.  After the Sandy Hook tragedy the most common solution that was talked about was taking away the personal right to bear arms, again looking for the simple solution.  Drugs are illegal, but people still get them, in essence the solution we are endorsing is sort of like turning away and looking in the other direction.  On the surface it would seem that outlawing all firearms would be solving the problem and all the politicians would go on CNN and MSNBC and gloat about how they got this done and the difference it will make.  All they would have accomplished would be sweeping the problem under the rug.

            The problem is bigger than just someone getting access to a firearm and using it to murder innocent people, we need to dig deeper and be preventive.  People are resourceful and just like people who want to get high get access to illegal drugs; if guns became illegal they would be able to get access to them as well.  This is a reactive mentality instead of taking a proactive approach, but this is how we are trained to act.  

            We put criminals in prison and lock them away and forget about them instead of learning how to stop the next generation of criminals from becoming criminals.  We focus on finding cures for diseases, instead of finding out how to prevent people from getting sick.  We put band-aids on cuts that need stitches and wonder why they never healed.  We get flat tires and leave the donut on and eventually that donut wares out and we are in much worse shape then we were at the beginning.  There is a price for always using the quick-fix method as is evidenced by our astonishing national debt that is ever rising.  Using simple answers that are not definite only sweeps problems under the rug and makes us think we did something better, only to find out that we are in worse shape down the road then when we started.

How College Failed Me

I’m not a psychiatrist; I’m not a psychologist; hell I’m not even a writer; I’m just a regular guy who has a regular guy’s opinion.  As a kid you could dream anything and truly believed that one-day in the real distant future when you grew up that you could achieve that goal. Unfortunately we then actually grow up and “reality” sets in, you get to do one crappy job that you went to college for till you retire or die, whichever comes first.  Only a very lucky few get to hit homeruns or score touchdowns to pay the bills.  The overwhelming majority of us are forced to, as Tyler Durden in the movie Fight Club put so elegantly, “Work jobs we hate to buy shit we don’t need.”

In high school we are pressured by college advisors to decide what we want to be for the rest of our lives at 16-17 years old, this way we could pick the school that would in turn determine our futures.  We would hopefully get into this school by how well we did on some four-hour test, that tests you on exactly zero things that will matter in the real world.

Now suppose you are one of the lucky ones who scores high enough to get into the college you want to attend.  Being accepted into the college allows you the privilege to send them tens of thousands of dollars per semester for the honor to go to their school.  The money you spend on tuition is an investment into your future, but this investment does not guarantee you a single thing.  If you brought the investment of a college education into the shark tank Mr. Wonderful would laugh in your face and say “But how am I going to make my money back?"

         Society makes us believe that only people who receive college degrees can be "successful" and get a good job.  Tell society that you are supposed to be successful when you have six figures worth of debt and are underemployed.  Can you ask for a refund on your tuition?  Can you get the four years, and in some cases more, added back on to your life? That is what we call opportunity cost which is never properly taught through the many years of education we are put through before we are lucky enough to go to college.

Opportunity cost is simple it is what you need to give up in order to do something else.  For example you can work at McDonalds full time for $7.75 an hour for four years or go to college for $25,000 a year.  One will earn you $64,480 and the other with cost you $100,000.  That means your opportunity cost to go to college over working in McDonalds is $164,480. And who knows within that four years you might work your way up to assistant manager.

         In all seriousness a 16-17 year old doesn’t look at it as a business decision or as in the example above a $164,480 decision, because they aren’t trained to think that way.  You know why they don’t think that way, because they were never taught the concept of money.  Sure they know that a pack of cigarettes cost $12, but they’ll still buy a loosey from someone for $1 without knowing they are giving that person an amazing 67% return on their investment. 

Phrases like opportunity cost and return on investment will draw you a blank stare from the vast majority of high schoolers.  If you ask them what they expect the principle on their student loan for college to be they will be confused as to what their principal has to do with their student loan.  It seems right that when people are about to take out what most likely will be the second biggest loan of their life, that they have no idea about money and how it works.  They don’t know simple things like what compounding interest is and the difference it makes whether your loan compounds bimonthly or monthly. 

You all heard your parents and grandparents say it to you, go to school study hard get good grades so that one day you can get a good job.  The goal for everyone who goes to school is that when you are finally done going to school you can get a good job.  Regardless of what this job is or what field it is in this job will pay you money.  All the while kids can understand Pythagorean theorem and tell you that the c in a^2 + b^2 = c^2 is the hypotenuse, but they have not the slightest idea of what a 1031 exchange is and the tax benefits it provides.

I realized this one day upon getting close to graduating college when the safety net of being a student was about to be ripped out from under me; I haven’t been taught anything tangible that I can take with me to one day be a better man, better husband and better father.  That’s a horrible feeling to be feeling upon completing the supposed biggest accomplishment of one’s life.  I was then a pissed off college student and am now a pissed off college graduate.

The day I became a pissed off college student was during my last core class which was a science class.  I was zoning out thinking about how this stuff will never apply to me and how real little I knew about the real world and how to get ahead.  I was thinking about getting caught in a life living paycheck to paycheck and how would I ever make enough money.  I knew very little about money and how it works and I went to a school known for business and was graduating with a business degree.

I skipped my next class and walked to Barnes and Noble and made a pledge that I am going to spend most of my free time self-educating myself.  So I picked up a book titled “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” by Robert T. Kiyosaki and couldn’t put it down.  “Sometimes you win, and sometimes you learn” was a quote from the book.  That day was the biggest learning experience of my life, college teaches you how to be an employee not the boss.  College teaches you how to be a good soldier wake up early go to work put your 8 hours plus in and go home.  Get your paycheck spend the whole thing on a house, lease payments of cars you can’t afford and designer clothes.  You want more money work harder and make your boss more money and maybe you will be lucky enough to get a raise for a fraction of what you made him.

College specializes you into one small field and turns you into something that you must be for the rest of your life.  For example, if you go to school to be an accountant you are an accountant till the end of time.  You can’t just decide to be a teacher in a few years, you made your decision on what you would be when you were in high school.  But I thought college promised to make you a well-rounded individual? I did too. 

It actually did the exact opposite by specializing you into a distinct industry.  Instead of teaching you a little about a lot, it taught you a lot about a little.  Knowledge is power they say, correct, yet it is one of the easiest resources to obtain.  I am not an accountant yet I just hire an accountant to help keep my books in order and I have the knowledge of accountancy for a small percentage of what those accounts earn.  Having computer trouble I just hire a computer technician to help me with that.  If I want to know about anything, I can just pick up a book that someone else spent years researching on and read it in a week and have the same knowledge as them.  The most important knowledge you can have is knowing when to inquire the services of someone who knows more than you do.

Ignorance is not bliss, ignorance allows you to be taken advantage of and put into a never-ending cycle of never getting ahead.  People think that money is the answer to their money problems, but that is not true, “Money without financial intelligence, is money soon gone” – (Robert T. Kiyosaki). There is a reason why people who hit the lottery or get drafted in the NBA lottery go broke; because they have no idea how to handle the large amounts of money they receive due to ignorance.

The school system has failed us all; sure I am smarter and became smarter with each year of schooling but in what?  I put in countless hours of studying in Chemistry, Calculus and Shakespeare in the hopes of becoming what every college promises “a well rounded individual”.  School has failed me and continues to fail us all and keep us stuck in the middle class that gets further and further away from the rich. 

Think about it, who was the last big success that graduated college?  Bill Gates?  Steve Jobs?  Mark Zuckerberg?  Jenny Craig?  Michael Dell?  Ray Kroc? Henry Ford?  Walt Disney?  Andrew Carnegie?  They all did not graduate from college and I think they turned out okay.  Thomas Edison founder of a company that we all know today, General Electric, also did not graduate from college.  He was even called dumb and thought to be stupid by many of his teachers growing up. 

School takes the individuality out of us and makes us believe that mistakes are bad and that we are stupid for making them.  The greatest inventions in our lifetime have come from someone making mistake after mistake and learning from it.  We all learned how to ride a bike by making mistakes.  No one was taught to ride a bike.  There is no book you can read that will teach you how to ride a bike.  You simply need to make mistake after mistake until you finally learn how to ride a bike. 

Making mistakes and learning from them is what makes us human and brings out the best in each and everyone of us.  College teaches from the book and turns you into someone that doesn’t think outside the box because it is frowned upon.  Some of the best businesses came from outside the box thinking, but us college graduates will never be the owner of those businesses.  We will be stuck working for those outside the box thinkers for a modest wage and counting our pennies till the day we die because that is what college taught us to do.