"A Good Education Has Never Been More Important"

The photo is one I found on the internet, which I thought pertinent to the subject of this essay.

It is never fun watching markets dissolve, but I still believe that Israel and the U.S., in confronting Iran, have done the right thing, especially as we have been joined by most of the Arab states. With their continued work on an atomic weapon and with missiles capable of hitting Diego Garcia 2500 miles away, that means Iran could as easily hit Vienna or Athens. They do represent a threat to world peace. They need to be stopped.

 

This essay represents something I have been thinking of for some time.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“A Good Education Has Never Been More Important”

March 28, 2026

 

“The objective of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives.”

                                                                                                                Attributed to Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899-1977)

                                                                                                                Former Chancellor & President, University of Chicago

 

There is an old Chinese proverb that is appropriate in this age of AI, increased dependency on government, wokeism, and at a time when education needs a re-boot: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” While we all are dependent on others, especially for love and companionship, a free individual is not one dependent on the state except in the case of dire and exceptional need. Reason and soundness must replace foolish ignorance.

 

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It is not simply artificial intelligence that makes our age unique and so badly in need of the ability to reason logically and to think independently, it is also the fact that extremism has kidnapped our politics, and that ignorance and foolishness have laid waste to common sense and made our cultural heritage something to shun rather than to celebrate. 

 

If Mark Ziuckerberg needs a robotic assistant, what about us? Do we need some piece of machinery to remind us to send flowers on Mother’s Day, book lunch on Tuesday, and reply to this morning’s e-mails? That might simplify our lives, but are not personal connection and human empathy important? How much of our personal lives do we want to lay off on a piece of software that might be hackable? Will our AI assistant, to get in our good graces, heap false praise on what we have done or are about to do? Or will it provide the analytic criticism needed to improve our performance? Efficiency without empathy does not necessarily lead to a happy life. Will we lose our ability to sense emotion and to think critically if we rely on artificial intelligence? These are questions best considered when one has read widely.

 

Without a classical liberal arts education that includes biology, we are at risk of accepting as fact that men can be woman (or vice versa) if they so choose – that one’s sex is not a matter of science but of choice. Consider who benefits from such allegations. It is not only certain male athletes, but clinics willing to perform gender-affirming surgeries. Skepticism is a bi-product of a good education. Remember how Paul Ehrlich amassed a fortune, stating as fact that millions would die because of a planet unable to feed its population. In the years since 1968, when The Population Bomb was published (and which sold over two million copies in its first three years), the world population has more than doubled, while the percent of the population suffering from hunger has declined. Millions of people accepted his conclusions without questioning.

 

And think of climate wars. It was in elementary school that we were first taught of how Earth had warmed and cooled over the millennia – from the Tyrannosaurus Rex during the Cretaceous Period to the Wooly Mammoth during the Pleistocene Epoch. That is not to say we can ignore our environment or changes in climate. The Earth does not sit still, and man has a responsibility to all forms of life and to the planet he lives on. Yet we are scolded by supercilious tree-huggers if we drive a gas-powered vehicle, use more than a gallon of water to flush the toilet, or fail to re-cycle the plastic yogurt cover. Personally, I am conscious of the environment and I re-cycle, but I don’t like to be scolded by a bigot who scoots off in his private jet, or on their 200-foot yacht. A good education teaches one to differentiate between a policy based on facts and prescriptions based on ideologies.

 

Political extremism has become ubiquitous. In both parties, extremists control the message. A few minutes spent listening to a speech by President Trump or a response by Senator Chuck Schumer reminds one of the lament that starts Rudyard Kipling’s Ballad: “Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.” The one exception to this polarization appears to be the Supreme Court – the only adult branch of government. Thus far in the 2025-26 term, which began in October 2025, the Court has released 20 opinions, five of which were 9-0 decisions. If Ketanji Brown Jackson and Clarence Thomas can agree 25% of the time, why can’t Congress?

 

Over the long-term extremism never succeeds – there are simply not enough extremists. But we also know from Iran that extremists in government can persevere for many years. Forty-seven years of rule by fanatic mullahs have caused millions to suffer and tens-of-thousands to die. It is the study of history that provides perspective. In a recent issue of The Spectator – in an article titled “Those Who Believe in Liberalism Must Now Fight For It” – Adrian Wooldridge wrote: “The best resource we have in preventing a return to the 1930s is the memory of the 1930s.” The best way to understand the present is to read of the past.

 

None of us can predict the future. Change is coming, but that has always been true. The best way to deal with the world we face is with a good education – whether its change wrought by AI, dealing with (sometimes well-intentioned but always misplaced) wokeism, or political extremism. Sadly our public schools, especially those in inner cities, are governed by unions more interested in growing membership than in the students they are supposed to educate, and too many of our universities, with costs having risen about three times the rate of inflation over the past fifty years, are more focused on diversity than on excellence. 

 

A good education is a life-long pursuit, and it is the encouragement of that, as Mr. Hutchins is quoted in the epigraph, which should be the job of schools, universities and parents. We should never stop learning. An educated individual understands the risks of open borders, as well as the primacy of legal immigration. She or he realizes and perils of mercantilism and socialism, while recognizing the advantages of capitalism. They know the differences between equality and equity, and between diversity and assimilation. Years ago Sy Syms developed his iconic marketing slogan: “An educated consumer is our best customer.” An educated electorate is the best defense of democracy.

 

My argument in favor of education is not because I believe a university degree will assure a higher paying job. It may or may not. It is because I believe a liberal arts education will make one a more informed citizen, one better able to navigate disruption caused by technology or anything else, to make sense of polarized political views, and to appreciate our history, our form of government, and our cultural heritage.

"The Demographic Conundrum - An Existential Threat"

 The photo was taken on Tuesday. While snow can be a nuisance when driving or walking (at my age), it is also beautiful, and when the sun emerged the sky was a delight!

 

Sydney M. Williams

swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“The Demographic Conundrum – An Existential Threat”

February 27, 2026

 

“If we are unable to address our fertility crisis, the U.S. will face an

existential economic crisis driven by a steep decline in fertility rates...”

                                                                                                                                Jesús Fernández-Villaverde

                                                                                                                                Nonresident Senior Fellow

                                                                                                                                The American Enterprise Institute

                                                                                                                                February 11, 2025

 

The term “existential” is used with abandon. Many threats, from global warming to offending transgenders, are deemed existential. They are legitimate concerns but pale to the economic consequences that stem from a decline in birthrates, and an aging population with its attendant healthcare costs.

 

The scale of the threat is larger than most appreciate. The global total fertility rate (TFR)[1] has roughly halved over the past seventy-five years, from five in 1950 to an estimated 2.4 in 2025, according to the International Monetary Fund. In the U.S., the number is expected to be 1.6 for 2025 versus 3.1 in 1950. Europe’s TFR has fallen to 1.43 from 2.7 in 1950. Israel is the only member state of the 38-member OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) with a TFR above replacement. Over the next few decades, populations are set to decline in most of the developed world. It is in sub-Saharan Africa and in Middle East nations like Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria where birthrates remain above replacement.

 

As to the causes behind the decline, there are many but two worth mentioning. One reflects progress – improvements in birth control, particularly the oral contraceptive pill first approved by the FDA in June 1960, which allowed women to enjoy sex without the worry of pregnancy. As well, in January 1973, with the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, abortion moved out of the shadows and into legal healthcare. The second cause reflects cultural changes, which include everything from women’s desire to find fulfilling careers, to decisions about family size. As well, in 1968 Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb. His popular book warned of a 1970s global crisis driven by over-population. He predicted mass starvation. Instead, as we now know, world population growth peaked five years earlier, and annual global deaths from starvation declined from over a million in 1970 to about 40,000 today.

 

Demographics is a subject I have written on in the past, most recently two years ago. Fewer children and an aging population suggest changes for Social Security and Medicare. In that essay I wrote: “But there is no way to avoid an aging population with ever-higher costs of healthcare for the elderly. Robots and computers do not pay taxes. People do.” According to data from the Mercatus Center, in 1950 there were 16.5 workers for every one person receiving Social Security. Today that ratio is 2.8 to one. In April 1970, Apollo 13 may have had a problem, but today we have a problem, one largely ignored by politicians from both parties. The astronauts on that Apollo flight resolved their problem. Will we solve ours?

 

A few days ago, in a talk about CCRCs (continuing care retirement communities), we were informed that Connecticut’s population ranks as the 7^th oldest in the union, with 19.1% of population over sixty-five. That number, expected to grow by 57% between 2010 and 2040, implies that over 30% of Connecticut’s population will be over 65 in fourteen years. While the numbers suggest increased demand for CCRCs, those numbers scared the hell out of me. Will Social Security recipients equal the numbers of people paying into the system? What do those numbers say about the viability of Social Security and Medicare? Who will support a growing number of senior citizens?

 

There are no clear answers as to how to halt declining birth rates. Pronatalism does not receive wide-spread support. Greece, Poland, Japan, Russia, Germany, Italy, France and China are among more than fifty countries whose populations are expected to decline in 2026. As populations shrink, the median age rises. In China, for example, the median age is double what it was fifty years ago. In the U.S., while our population is still growing, the median age has risen from 30 in 1950 to 39 today.

 

Those trends, both here and abroad, are likely to persist for the next several years. People my age are unlikely to be affected by a declining workplace and a surging retiree base. But unless something drastic is done to address Social Security and Medicare our children and grandchildren will face an existential problem. Starting in 2033, Social Security will not be able to make full retirement payments unless Congress intervenes. Tough choices confront us: raise the age of eligibility, increase taxes, or reduce payments. None are attractive alternatives. As former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors Herb Stein famously said: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” Increases in legal immigration may provide a short-term solution – one that should be pursued, in my opinion – but with world population growth slowing, it is not a long-term answer. 

 

Nevertheless, a response to these concerns might well emerge from left field. At the risk of sounding Panglossian, I took comfort in a recent op-ed in The Wall Street Journal by columnist Holman Jenkins. He wrote about some of the foolishness associated with “green” politics. He ended: “A paradox of our time is a media with hair on fire about everything, yet democratic societies so complex, weighty and built on the emergent order of millions of people acting on their own information and initiative...tend to right themselves. They find a sensible course...” His words could apply to this population challenge – that we and the West will find our way out of this demographic maze before it becomes an existential crisis. I pray that we do.

 

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[1] The TFR is a measure that represents the average number of children a woman is expected to have over her lifetime. A number of 2.1 is needed for population stability

"The Boy Who Cried Wolf"

 Two lessons come with Republican Glenn Youngkin’s victory in Virginia: One, Republicans should stick to issues, such as education, which are more important to voters than personalities, and two, endorsements by Donald Trump are fine, as long as he does not campaign in the candidate’s district.

 

New Jersey, as I write, is still too close to call.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“The Boy Who Cried Wolf”

November 3, 2021

 

“Once you abandon strict adherence to what science tells us, once you

start arranging the truth in a press conference, then anything is possible.”

                                                                                                       Michael Crichton (1942-2008)

                                                                                                       American author & filmmaker

                                                                                                       Michelin Lecture, Caltech, January 17, 2003

 

The moral of Aesop’s fable of the boy who cried wolf is that false cries for help mean real calls for help will be ignored. A climate apocalypse has been forecast for years, sometimes by the well-intentioned but naïve looking to do good, but often by the cynical seeking political or personal advantage. 

 

Two years ago, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, recognizing that global temperatures are indeed rising, compiled a list of dire climate predictions that did not happen. Here is a sample: In 1969, the Nobel winning German scientist, Paul Ehrlich predicted that everybody would “disappear in a cloud of blue steam.” In 1974 Time Magazine warned that “space satellites show new Ice Age coming fast.” The New York Times in 1978 reported that an “international team of specialists” feared the world would experience a never-ending “cooling trend in the Northern Hemisphere.” Over the next ten years, Cassandras changed their forecasts from cooling to warming: An Associated Press headline from 1989 read, quoting UN officials: “Rising seas could obliterate nations.” And who could forget Al Gore’s 2006 movie, An Inconvenient Truth, in which he predicted that Artic ice would be gone in seven years. Today, doomsayers blame every forest fire, drought and hurricane on anthropological-caused climate change.

 

I am not a climate change denier. In fact, I know of no one who is. The term is used by climate disciples to belittle heretics who dare question the dogma that man alone is at fault for a warming planet. They are ruthless in their treatment of those skeptical of their professed causes of a changing climate. In National Geographic’s film Before the Flood, Bjørn Lomborg is listed as one of the ten most prominent “climate deniers.” Mr. Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center and, in my opinion, the most reasonable voice on the subject. He begins every interview by repeating that he believes the Earth is warming. His sin is that he uses empirical evidence, logic and common sense to demonstrate that claimed apocalyptic consequences are more hyperbole than factual, which he explains in his 2020 book False Alarm. Fostering panic over climate change gets Progressives elected, sells books and movies and abets corporate welfare for renewable sources of energy. But for the rest of us, it does more harm than good.

 

Nobody really knows the costs of climate change, but it is not cheap. “Analysts,” according to an article in last weekend’s Wall Street Journal, “say as much as $150 trillion is likely needed over the next three decades to fund renewable energy projects, upgrade electric grids, mothball fossil fuel plants, seed new agricultural technologies, and pay for damages tied to climate change.” The questions have always been: What are the economic and social costs of doing nothing versus the economic and social costs of holding the rise in temperature below two degrees Celsius? And, is that possible? Regardless, funds will be needed. The job of convincing the world’s banks of the urgency of adjusting their loan portfolios to accommodate what politicians are calling for has fallen to Mark Carney, former head of central banks in Canada and the UK, and now the United Nation’s point man on climate-change finance.

 

It was the Industrial Revolution, which raised living standards for all fortunate to live in countries affected, that caused man-made emissions of CO2. And it has been that wealth over the years that has enabled the problem to be addressed. Assuring future economic growth is the best antidote to the problems of climate change (and of poverty). Policies that hinder growth, such as raising the cost of energy, whether in developing or developed nations, will harm living standards. We should all take responsibility for how we live our lives, which means being environmentally sensitive. But leaders must avoid fomenting a class war. We must recognize that the poor, whether individuals or nations, need affordable sources of energy to improve lives. Feel-good corporate welfare, in contrast, funds favored businesses in exchange for political support and boondoggles that are more spectacle than substance. 

 

A meeting of the G-20 in Rome last weekend preceded the United Nations’ 26^th Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow. Leaders of five countries (China, Russia, Mexico, Japan and Saudi Arabia) failed to show up. Those five countries represent just over 40% of all CO2 emissions, according to worldometer. The meeting in Glasgow brought together between 20,000 and 25,000 politicians, officials and businesspeople from about 140 nations, fifty fewer than met in Paris in 2015. Nevertheless, London’s Daily Record estimated on Sunday that “more than 400 private jets will blast 13,000 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere…which will produce more global warming gas than 1600 Scots burn through in a year.” 

 

In Rome, President Biden brought with him seven cabinet officers, including Secretaries of State, Treasury, Interior and Transportation. He traveled in an 85-car motorcade for a one-on-one meeting with the Pope. All vehicles had been shipped to Italy, with some shipped on to Scotland before heading back to the U.S. Perhaps such grandeur was felt necessary, but it seemed excessive and insensitive when the subject was man-caused climate change. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams would have united in condemning such a monarchial display by the President.

 

With the exception of a trade agreement with the EU on steel and aluminum, most news reports said the Rome meetings failed to live up to expectations. In an interview with the Associated Press, Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa said of the G20 meeting in Rome: “The world’s biggest economies comprehensively failed to put climate change on the top of the agenda ahead of COP26 in Glasgow.”

 

On the Glasgow conference’s opening day, Jeremiah’s continued with dire predictions. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who hosted the meeting, likened the challenge to a James Bond “doomsday,” saying time was running out to save the world from global warming: “this is not a movie – and the doomsday device is real.” He warned that, in the worst-case predictions, cities like Miami, Alexandria and Shanghai could be lost “beneath the waves.” Johnson was followed by Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General of the UN. He said we are “digging our own grave.” The Prince of Wales, told the world leaders that “time has quite literally run out.” At some point, doomsayers will be right. The Earth had a beginning. It will have an end. Scientists have estimated that that time is probably a billion or two billion years in the future, based on a six or seven-billion-year life.  A changing climate is a prospect for which we must be prepared. But rather than giving a false sense of hope that we can forestall the inevitable, we should focus on adaption. What happens if we hit net zero in terms of CO2 emissions and climate continues to warm…or cool? Those who issue calls of doom would be wise to re-read the story of the boy who cried wolf.