Angry Germans!

From the New York Times:

 

They are called “Wutbürger.” And they have become the bane of every political party in Germany.
Loosely translated as “enraged citizen,” the Wutbürger has stepped outside the classical political and parliamentary system by organizing demonstrations and town-hall meetings, protest marches and sit-ins.
“It’s as if the post-1945 consensus of Germans accepting the status quo and the conventional structures of the main political parties is coming to an end,” said Andrea Römmele, a professor at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. “These new trends should be seen as a strength, not as a threat to democracy,” she added.
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You Say Crick, I Say Creek

Actually, it seems like not very many Americans use either of those terms, according to this study by Derrik Watson, who traced the geographic distribution of names for contiguous flows of water in the United States. It’s certainly an interesting look at the lasting differences in the way that various regions of the country describe things.

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Click on the picture for a better view.

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Breakdowns Versus Foreshocks

The most thorough look at this issue from the perspective here is Thomas Homer-Dixon’s The Upside of Down. He argues “that our circumstances today are surprisingly like Rome’s in key ways. Our societies are also becoming steadily more complex and often more rigid. This is happening partly because we’re trying to manage-often with limited success-stresses building inside our societies, including stresses arising from our gargantuan appetite for energy…. Eventually, as occurred in Rome, the stresses may become too extreme, and our societies too inflexible to respond, and some kind of economic or political breakdown will occur…. “People often use the words `breakdown’ and `collapse’ synonymously. But in my view, although both breakdown and collapse produce a radical simplification of a system, they differ in their long-term consequences. Breakdown may be serious, but it’s not catastrophic. Something can be salvaged after breakdown occurs and perhaps rebuilt better than before. Collapse, on the other hand, is far more harmful…. “In coming years, I believe, foreshocks are likely to become larger and more frequent. Some could take the form of threshold events-like climate flips, large jumps in energy prices, boundary-crossing outbreaks of new infectious disease, or international financial crises.”” Homer-Dixon argues that foreshocks and breakdowns can lead to positive change if the ground is prepared. “We need to prepare to turn breakdown to our advantage when it happens-because it will,” he says.24 Homer-Dixon’s point is critically important. Breakdowns, of course, do not necessarily lead to positive outcomes; authoritarian ones and Fortress World are also possibilities. Turning a breakdown to advantage will require both inspired leadership and a new story that articulates a positive vision grounded in what is best in the society’s values and history.

-James Gustav Spaeth, The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability (2009)

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The Hedonic Treadmill

A second factor is what is called habituation or the hedonic treadmill. People adapt or habituate to their new incomes. Layard explains this in Happiness: “When I get a new home or a new car, I am excited at first. But then I get used to it, and my mood tends to revert to where it was before. Now I feel I need the bigger house and the better car. If I went back to the old house and car, I would be much less happy than I was before I had experienced something better…. Once your situation becomes stable again, you will revert to your `set-point’ level of happiness. “The things that we get used to most easily and most take for granted are our material possessions-our car, our house. Advertisers understand this and invite us to `feed our addiction’ with more and more spending. However, other experiences do not pale in the same way-the time we spend with our family and friends, and the quality and security of our job.”

–James Gustav Spaeth, The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability (2009)

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Is An Excellent Instructor Worth $400,000?

 Good ol’ Eric Hanushek says she just might be:

Over the course of a school year, a good teacher produces $400,000 more in future earnings for a class of 20 students than an average teacher. What’s more, replacing the worst-performing five to eight percent of teachers with average teachers could catapult the U.S. to near the top of international math and science rankings, padding GDP by $100 trillion and generating returns that dwarf “the discussions of U.S. economic stimulus packages related to the 2008 recession ($1 trillion).”

These are the findings of a National Bureau of Economic Research study by Stanford’s Eric Hanushek, which investigates the interplay between teacher effectiveness and the economic impact of higher student achievement, specifically in terms of test scores. 

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