But We Won't Be Paying Teachers More Money

Matt Miller offers a well-intentioned thoughts on how to improve teacher quality:

What about starting salaries of $65,000 rising to $150,000 for teachers (and more for principals)?

Do we also have a shortage of principals? I recall hearing that suggestion a decade or so ago, but I've not heard anything lately. Or is the thinking here that principals have to be paid considerably more than the teachers in their schools, even if we have sufficient qualified candidates to fill open positions at present salaries?

What Miller is proposing is a massive increase in teacher salaries. If Miller looks at what the Republican Party is attempting to accomplish through its persistent attacks on teachers unions, as well as teacher compensation and benefits, he will find that his argument for increased teacher salaries is likely at best to be supported by only the Democratic Party. But if he looks at what his happening across the board, red state or blue, he will find that due to budget constraints teacher salaries aren't going up, teacher benefits are going down, and class sizes are getting larger. Even if we assume the necessary political will to increase teacher salaries, and even if we assume that there is a way to get the Republican Party on board, where will the money come from?

By way of example, Joanne Jacobs likes to post graphs from right-wing "school reformers" to argue that we've had massive increases in education costs over the pat four decades with only slight increases in student performance. While the argument she attempts to shorthand with the graphs is inherently (and I think intentionally) misleading, the fact is that education costs have risen significantly, and that the biggest part of that increase is in the form of increased teacher compensation - salary, benefits, and payment of pensions.

The early years are skewed by something Miller identifies, "Up through the 1970s, the quality of the teacher corps in the United States was, in effect, subsidized by discrimination", and part of the increase is attributable to teacher salaries rebounding from a prior decade of very low growth. But if the political right is already engaging in demagoguery over schools costing "too much", teacher salaries being "too high", and the like, does Miller truly believe they're going to get on board with a reform that is going to immediately add 20-30% to the cost of an average pupil's education? And can we admit up front, particularly if we don't change the scale for the Y-axis (change that scale and you can make that near flat line look like it's rocketing upward), the increased salary is not going to have a material effect on the ostensible graph of improvement in student performance?

The worst part is, I agree with Miller that present teacher salaries are not sufficient to draw additional, highly qualified students to the profession. The students currently entering teaching schools, and currently graduating from them, are the students who are attracted to the profession at present levels of compensation. I just don't see that there's any chance of significantly increasing teacher compensation in the present political or economic climate.

And federally funded “West Points” of teaching and principal training to model for the nation how it can be done?

Our nation has a lot of teacher colleges, many of which are state schools. For all of their faults, what would the federal government be bringing to the table? Is Miller speaking of stand-alone teaching schools and, if so, won't that in fact deprive student teachers of the opportunity to take challenging classes in the disciplines in which they intend to teach? If not, other than "more federal money", what will these "West Points" offer that other teaching schools do not? What secrets will the federal government uncover that are presently not known by teachers and teaching schools?

That is to say, this is an interesting proposed experiment, but I seen no reason to believe that it would be a wise or productive use of money.

And new federal cash for poor districts now doomed by our 19th-century system of local school finance, so they can compete in regional labor markets for the talent that today gravitates to higher-paying suburbs?

If Miller looks at the dollars, he will find that his concept of inner city schools "doomed" by low local property taxes are, for the most part, funded as well as their suburban counterparts, in some cases better. He will find that inner city schools that receive funding that far outstrips the national average still significantly underperform. He will find that the major differences are not in salary, but in administrative competence, quality of school facility, quality of teaching peers, and the nature of the student body - and let's not forget, unless you want to live in the inner city community you serve, more commute time - are all factors that will deter students from applying for or staying with inner city schools.

It's reasonable to point out that some highly qualified teachers choose to take a financial hit in order to teach at private schools because they find the work environment more attractive. There are teachers who choose to work in inner city schools, because they feel that's where they can make the biggest difference, and that's great. But unless you make inner city schools an attractive place to work, you're going to have to find a lot more money to attract teachers from better working environments, and even with higher salaries you may continue to struggle. Don't take it from me - take it from a recovering idealist.

And shrinking today’s 15,000 unwieldy, archaic local school districts (where we’re also an international outlier) to, say, a more manageable 60 — one in each state plus 10 big urban districts, as former IBM CEO Louis Gerstner has suggested?

Consolidating school districts into larger units, or even statewide districts, is an interesting idea. It clashes with some of the deeply rooted concepts of what issues should be handled at a local level, as opposed to the state or federal level, but the amount of top-down interference with public schools is forcing a certain uniformity so the change might not be as jarring as one might think. But if you look at school districts like Detroit's, it's difficult to see how management by the state is going to have a significant impact on its problems. The state financial takeover of the schools has not transformed them, nor have the many years of additional per pupil funding pumped in by the state. I'm not going to argue that the school board from which the state assumed control was at all impressive, but at a certain level we risk doing little more than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

But, no... it's not going to happen. Why not? Because wealthy, well-connected parents in quality school districts are not going to go along with a realignment of their districts into statewide districts with equal funding and resources. They're not going to go along with having their children's teachers transferred to other parts of the state where there is "greater need". And if you somehow force through the change, they're going to create local charters, lobby incredibly hard for vouchers, and lobby for changes in property taxes - if that money can't go to better local schools they'll want it to go to other local needs, or to have it stay in their pockets. You can call me cynical if you want but, go ahead, convince me that I'm wrong.

Let's also not forget something that is lurking in the background: the persistent attacks on teaching as a profession, and the persistent intrusion of "teach to the test" even in good school districts, is demoralizing. If a good student is inspired to consider teaching by virtue of a salary increase that makes the classroom more attractive, that student is still going to choose a different profession if they see that they will not have any professional autonomy or discretion as teachers. Good teachers are already leaving the profession, and leaving behind a population of teachers that is less competent, less involved, less engaged. It's difficult to see how anybody wins, even the demagogues.

With the Alternative to Medicare Being... What

Bryan R. Lawrence, a family investment fund manager,¹ argues - quite correctly - that Medicare costs are a threat to the long-term financial health of the nation. Alas, while he offers a diagnosis, he comes up short when it comes to prescribing a cure.

Lawrence's first point is that "retired Americans receive high-quality care but have virtually no idea what their Medicare benefits cost". I think we can say that pretty much every American who received high-quality care through insurance has virtually no idea what it costs. If I were getting my car fixed, I could get an up-front estimate and have a pretty good sense that it would be accurate. I could require additional authorization if new repairs were found to be needed, or if costs wee going to exceed an agreed amount. But if I go into the hospital, even if I have a ballpark sense of what the hospital charges for a procedure, I have no similar assurance. And when I get my bill, if I don't have insurance I pay a lot more than an insurance company would pay for exactly the same services. Meanwhile, medical billing can be ridiculously complex and confusing, and bills can be exceptionally difficult for an average patient to decipher. If you have insurance, no kidding you're going to defer to your insurance company to deal with those bills.

We can try to raise awareness of medical costs through copays and coinsurance, but the fact is that once you hit the cap on your contribution any associated incentive to keep costs down evaporates. People with the most expensive health conditions hit those caps quickly. (You also have to be careful, in setting those amounts, not to discourage people from seeking appropriate diagnostic care and follow-up care, assuming that you want patients to get the care they need to avoid higher costs down the line. If you think they're going to drop off of your insurance and onto the public rolls or to become uninsured by the time their health issues reach a crisis point, perhaps you want the cost share to be too high for your average insured.)

Also, what difference does it make to you if you know the cost of health care you need. Nobody is walking by a hospital, seeing a sign that says "50% Off All Organ Transplants" and making an impulse purchase. One patient, if asked, might tell you that a heart transplant costs, "I don't know, $5,000?" Another might say, "About $500,000 for the procedure, probably another $100,000 or so over the subsequent year, and given my health probably $300K per year for follow-up care and medication for the rest of my life, which may involve another heart transplant ten or fifteen years from now." But whether they thing a transplant is cheap or expensive, or believe Medicare is a rip-off or a windfall, both of them are apt to conclude with, "Can I have my heart transplant now, please?"

Further, with Medicare, some of the highest cost care is driven not by the patient, but by the patient's family. A patient can have a living will, and be begging to go to hospice, but family wishes can result in that patient's incurring significant, unpleasant, intrusive, and extremely costly medical treatments that the patient doesn't even want - and may even shorten the patient's life, while worsening its quality - because family members overrule the patient. Or the family may correctly tell the hospital about the patient's wish not to receive heroic care, but be unable to find and provide copies of the patient's advance directive or "do not resuscitate" request.

And let's not forget what happened when Congress proposed that Medicare pay for counseling between a patient and her doctor about end-of-life decisions, the sort of discussion that can help an elderly person receive the end-of-life care that will allow for the best quality of life while potentially avoiding costly medical procedures. Republicans demagogued about "death panels" under the principle that a lie told often becomes the truth, the media as a whole did a poor to abysmal job covering the trumped up controversy, and the funding was cut.

Lawrence observes that Medicare is heavily subsidized by taxpayers, past premiums falling well below the level necessary to support present benefits.

But those Medicare taxes, and interest on the program’s small trust fund, cover just 38 percent of the annual cost of the program’s benefits. Premiums paid by beneficiaries cover an additional 12 percent, but fully half of the program’s $549 billion cost last year was funded by federal income taxes on working Americans.

If you look at the numbers, Medicare does pretty well at self-funding when it coms to hospital care (part A), but not so well when it comes to non-hospital care (Medicare as a traditional health insurance plan) (Part B) or G.W. Bush's unfunded prescription drug benefit (Part D) - you know, the one passed back when deficits didn't matter and running up huge deficits was overt Republican policy. In a sense we're lucky, because the relatively low number of new blockbuster drugs has resulted in Part D being less expensive than initially feared. We should also acknowledge that part of the reason Medicare Part D is as costly as it is, is because the Republican Party chose to prevent Medicare from negotiating for discounts with pharmaceutical companies - something that a private insurer would do as a matter of course - instead passing along an unnecessarily higher cost to the taxpayer.

If you listen to the doctors, Medicare pays ridiculously low amounts to care providers and should find ways to increase payments and allow doctors to spend more time with patients. I don't want to digress into the economics of medical practice - suffice to say, it's difficult to believe we can squeeze down physician costs for Medicare Part B without risking a shortage of participating physicians. (Hence the periodic "doctor fixes".)

Lawrence correctly points out that Medicare results in a massive transfer of wealth, from young to old:

An American man retiring in 2011 could expect to receive Medicare benefits worth $170,000 (in 2011 dollars). If he had worked from age 22 at the average U.S. wage each year, he would have paid Medicare taxes (plus interest) worth $60,000 (also in 2011 dollars). So the average male worker retiring in 2011 will receive benefits worth almost three times what he paid in. And the transfer to that retiree will be $110,000 from younger Americans, perhaps including his grandchildren.

If that average worker had a wife who didn’t work, she would receive $188,000 worth of benefits, despite having paid nothing in. So the couple’s benefits are six times what was paid in, or a $298,000 transfer from younger generations.

If we're going to look at it in those terms, though, is it not fair to respond that the average worker has paid property taxes, as well as various other state and federal taxes, throughout his life, contributing to the support of the schools from which the current generation of taxpayers graduated? If the average K-12 education costs $120,000, a wealth transfer from the older and more established to the young, there's a lot more balance to the picture than Lawrence suggests. Also, what about the taxes that person contributed to services he never used - should we regard them as a complete loss to him? And who is Lawrence to suggest that stay-at-home moms don't work - is he paying no attention to Republican demagoguery? Seriously - if we as a society are going to take the position that it's good, even advisable, for women to stay at home to raise their children instead of entering the workplace, it's not reasonable to turn around and accuse them of leeching off of the rest of us.

I'm not arguing that we should ignore the economics of Medicare, or that we don't need to find a way to reduce healthcare inflation and stabilize funding - I'm stating that you shouldn't segregate a single government benefit, divorced from the greater tax and societal context, and use it to argue that a given individual or class of taxpayers is receiving a windfall - the issues and economics are more complex.

The closest thing Lawrence offers to a solution is his apparent belief that, if informed of the cost of their care versus the amount of their direct contribution to Medicare, they will use fewer services. I suspect that, to the contrary, they will conclude, "Wow, I got a really good deal," and continue on as if nothing has changed.

Lawrence also argues,

Other countries spend far less on health care and have better health outcomes. Reform of our health-care system would dramatically reduce the cost of future Medicare benefits and reduce the tax burden on future generations.

True, but only relevant if we're willing to examine and emulate their cost-savings models. To date, we're not willing to do that. And while neither party is even close to innocent, Republican demagoguery on the issue is especially irresponsible. The Republicans expressly reject every solution that has helped suppress health costs in other developed nations, and argue that the present reform effort - an approach that protects private health insurers, originated in a right-wing think tank, was suggested by the Republicans as a possible alternative to President Clinton's unsuccessful reform effort, which was enacted by a Republican governor in Massachusetts, and which pretty much ignores what has worked in the rest of the world in favor of trying to spackle over and preserve the status quo - is "socialist". Yes, the Democrats smothered the "public option" in its crib, but at least they were willing to discuss such an option.

Lawrence continues,

But Americans are angry with their elected leaders, and they lack the information critical to understanding the need for change.

Whose fault is that? Leaving aside the "Keep your government hands off my Medicare" crowd, and those who get ginned up over lies about "death panels", where would the majority of Americans turn to learn about solutions that may work to keep costs down, particularly in relation to care for the elderly? When the relatively modest and eminently sensible Independent Payment Advisory Board was created, Republicans demagogued against it as a "rationing board" and "having government bureaucrats tell your doctors what care you can get." If Republicans successfully lie and gin up massive popular opposition to sensible baby steps, and a pliant or partisan media goes along with the lies, we have no chance of implementing meaningful reforms prior to our reaching a crisis point. We could make sensible spending decisions, but thanks largely to the Republican Party what we get instead is insanity.

It's not so much that I think the Democrats want an honest discussion of the issues - the deals made in advance of the healthcare reform debate suggest that they prefer the illusion of a debate to an honest discussion of the most effective and economically prudent reforms - but you can't blame the impasse on voter anger without acknowledging that the anger largely results from Republican mendacity, and you can't blame the rest of the problem on lack of information if the Republican Party chooses to be a constant fount of misinformation. The angriest voters on the left want an honest debate and feel let down by the President. The angriest voters on the right appear to be reacting to partisan fabrications and demagoguery, and appear to be largely ignorant of the facts.

You want to talk about misinformation? Partisan politics? Special interests buying the system? Dubious government accounting? Short-term thinking? Tell me something I don't already know. Like... how to get past any of that and actually address the nation's problems. Sorry, but providing additional personalized information to Medicare recipients is going to accomplish absolutely nothing.
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1. To clarify, that's a fund that manages the wealth of his family and its business partners. I have no problem with that - we should all be so lucky - but want to clarify that the editorial is not written from the standpoint of somebody who is advising average families how to plan for their future financial and medical needs.

Don't Go to Law School....

Just don't.

Okay, if you're admitted to one of the twenty or so "top ten" schools and are in the upper half of your class, or if you're admitted to one of the ten or so "top five" schools, even better Harvard or Yale, although your future is not assured there's a good chance you'll end up getting one of those @70 hour/week, $150,000 jobs that everybody supposedly wants. But... are you sure you want that? And if you don't, how well do your wishes line up with your projected debt load? That job or career you want - is there another way to enter the field or to get a job that's "close enough" to being a lawyer that doesn't require the law degree? Because if we're talking public service, a lot of those jobs don't pay lawyers much (or any) better than they pay non-lawyers who perform similar tasks.

Back when I started law school, my very first classroom experience was an 8:00 AM contracts class with Professor J.J. White. To put it mildly, not all of the students in my section liked Professor White. But if half of my professors had inspired me to work as hard, I would have learned about five times as much law by the time I graduated, he tested based on knowledge of the law and legal principles as opposed to your ideological alignment, and he seemed to put more effort into preparing for his classes than most of the students. He was also a tremendous platform speaker and, when I first passed by him in a hall, I was surprised that he wasn't a foot taller. I had the opportunity to briefly work with him on a CLE course, about ten years after I graduated, and he displayed a level of passion and perfectionism that not only exceeded that of a typical top speaker, I think his passion significantly exceeded that of the lawyer who was planning the course.

Professor White would at times share his wisdom with us. "You are all fungible", he advised, noting quite correctly that most law firms view and treat associates as a commodity. He liked to tease the "limousine liberals" among us that although they were sure that they would be working public interest jobs after law school, for most that notion would be end after their first, highly paid summer associateship. I had a couple of friends who, over the course of their first summer, shifted positions from, "Maybe other people will chase the money, but not me", to "He was right". That was twenty years ago when law school only seemed expensive. Now, if you're a typical law school graduate, it seems that the choices are to put your hands out straight in front of you to be fitted for the golden handcuffs or, if you can't find a highly paid job, be grateful that we don't have debtors prisons in this country.

Paul Campos, a law professor and critic of what has happened to law school education - with costs spiraling up, job opportunities limited, and many law schools seeming to be intentionally misleading incoming students about placement and probable salaries - describes reality for a current law school graduate:

In any case, let’s consider what’s going on not just in the American economy as a whole, but in the legal sector. Over the last twelve months the legal sector has added a total of 4,800 jobs. Keep in mind that at best perhaps 70% of these jobs have been filled by attorneys, since the sector includes all support personnel (paralegals, administrative positions etc.). So we can estimate that there are about 3,000 more attorneys employed in America today than there were a year ago.

Now a certain number of people who were working as attorneys a year ago aren’t today, because they’ve died, retired, moved into other lines of work, or have simply become unemployed. The BLS estimates the total annual “outflow” from the profession to be about 13,000 people at present. So that means that about 16,000 lawyer jobs have been filled over the last 12 months by people who weren’t working as attorneys at the time they moved into these jobs.

Note this does not mean that 16,000 new law graduates got real legal jobs, since some unknown number of these jobs were filled by unemployed attorneys who moved back into the legal work force. It’s true that the 2011 NALP stats claim that 25,654 of the nation’s 44,258 2010 law graduates had a full-time job requiring a law degree nine months after graduation. For quite some time now I’ve been trying to explain why that (atrocious) 42% functional unemployment rate for new lawyers is actually seriously understated.

Campos links to an ad for a full-time associate position, expected to pay $10,000 for the first year of work - and that the ad elicited "32 applications from law school graduates within 24 hours of being posted on a law school’s web site". I recall a few years ago, having a lawyer tell me that when she needs complex issues briefed she posts an ad on craigslist and can often find experienced lawyers who will take the work as independent contractors at $15/hour. Campos notes, "23% of barred attorneys in Alabama made less than $25,000 [!] last year".

The practice of law is a tough profession to enter. Your first job will likely have a strong influence on the rest of your career. If you get a coveted clerkship or are hired by BigLaw, you're probably okay. If not, no matter how good a lawyer you are, your upward mobility is likely going to be limited by your ability to bring business to a prospective employer. And even if you have an impressive client list, if it's in thew wrong practice area you may find yourself limited to an "of counsel" relationship (although it does seem that in recent years more large firms have softened on the notion of which areas of law they "won't practice"). It doesn't matter how good you are as compared to lawyers who work in the firm, or that you match or exceed their potential, if you have the wrong pedigree you're going to be on the outside looking in.

If you have a family full of lawyers and know what the practice entails, you can enter law school with your eyes open. If they are going to guarantee you a job and salary when you graduate, all the better. If your notion of legal practice comes from watching TV shows, even though you "know" that the depiction is romanticized, you may want to try working at a law firm in some capacity before you choose to attend law school. You will likely find that law is a lot less glamorous, interesting and lucrative than you believe. And you may find your passion (subject to the aforementioned caveat that, if you can pursue your passion for a similar salary without paying for a law degree, you should consider that alternative path). But law school is now far too expensive for you to attend a middle or lower tier school simply because you don't know what you want to do with your life, or because law "sounds interesting" or you believe you'll be entering a prestige profession.

I told my brother not to go to law school. He wasn't really listening, went anyway, and through some good luck and timing ended up working at a defense firm with a pretty good salary. You too are entitled to roll the dice. What I'm really saying is, consider your alternatives and proceed with your eyes open. With about 16,000 true law jobs available for about 44,000 new law school graduates, and (as the numbers make inevitable) a lot of last year's grads still trying to find work, consider your drive, your connections, and the likelihood that you'll actually enjoy a real-life legal career. You have a lot of options before law school, but afterward the odds are you're going to be weighed down by your significant debt load (not to mention three years of opportunity cost).

The End of Google Shopping as a Price Comparison Service

Back in the earlier days of the Internet, a clever guy came up with an idea for a directory made up of nothing but ads, based up a pay-per-click model with advertisers bidding against each other for prime placement. The website and associated patents were acquired by Yahoo!, and were licensed by Google shortly before its IPO for... a ton of money. Google's subsequent history suggests that, as much as it paid, it got the better half of the bargain.

Now it seems that history is coming full circle, with Google transforming its frequently renamed and reinvented price comparison service into what amounts to a directory or search service for ads (and nothing but ads). I have to say... I'm a bit disappointed. Not because I don't see Google as having a right to charge merchants to promote themselves through a shopping service, or that I think such a service is free or easy to run - in fact, I can see how paid inclusion could help ensure that merchants keep their listings current and accurate, diminish the number of fraudulent and misleading entries, and make the service much easier to manage. My disappointment is that I use the product to comparison shop, and if merchants choose not to participate or those offering better deals don't have the budget to compete with better capitalized but more expensive competitors, the service won't fill my needs. Not even close. Not even in the same ballpark.

I don't mind paying a premium for a better product or service, but I don't want to have the good deals hidden behind mediocre vendors with large advertising budgets. I hope that Google's reinvented service turns out to be a lot more sophisticated, and useful, than the announcement and present commentary suggest.

Unemployment at a Glance

For those who don't already know, Calculated Risk routinely posts updated graphs showing the impact of the financial industry meltdown and slow recovery on the unemployment rate, and comparing job losses from the present recession to those of past recessions. The latest update is here.

What if the Facebook Phone... Isn't a Phone

What if it's a takeover?

You'll find lots of explanations about why it would be a bad idea for Facebook to develop and market its own cellular phones. And it's hard to argue with that. But what if Facebook has a different plan in mind? An Amazon-style plan, forking Android, pushing its own app store to the forefront, then cutting deals with cellular phone manufacturers to use Facebook's flavor of Android instead of Google's version on their already-compatible hardware? The change could be made pretty much invisible to the average consumer, but with Facebook driving traffic through its own browser, pushing out more of its own display ads, baking in new features like its camera and perhaps instant discounts, "buy with Facebook" allowing you to use your phone as a charge card, and the like?

If Google ever gets tired of carrying the weight of its competitors and changes the way it licenses Android, Amazon and Facebook will still have its latest edition of Android as a foundation for their own cellular operating systems.

"You'll Get Used to It"

Microsoft's response to complaints about its tablet OS:

The company's answer to this kind of criticism can be found in a post from Jensen Harris, director of program management and formerly a key member of the Office 2007 Ribbon UI team - a project that also ran into user opposition.

Harris describes how every new version of Windows has had vocal opponents, but that users are won over in time. "Although some people had critical reactions and demanded changes to the user interface, Windows 7 quickly became the most-used OS in the world," he says. Clearly Microsoft believes that history will repeat; though Harris conveniently forgets the warm reception Windows 7 won even in preview.

On the other hand, in the world of cellular phones where consumers have had a choice between a clumsy Microsoft interface and a competitor's superior product, the competitors dominate. I wonder if Google is confusing its power as a monopoly ("We design what we want and our customers eventually get used to it") with a viable business model for markets in which they're presently an also-ran.

Mobility vs. Portability

A CNET column, speculating on the future of Facebook and its theoretical successors, comments,

The company doesn't get mobile -- never has. Young as he is, Mark Zuckerberg was raised on the Web, on computers. Remember him saying in 2010 that the company didn't have an iPad app because the iPad "isn't mobile, it's a computer"? Facebook just plain missed it.

I think there's a language disconnect here. A notebook computer is "mobile" in the sense that you can take it with you and use it from remote locations. Zuckerberg wouldn't argue with that - he just might use a different word, like "portable". While it's fair to point out that an iPad uses iOS, an operating system designed for mobile devices, due to the much larger screen size the experience of using apps on an iPad can be quite different than the experience on an iPhone. Facebook's platform and profits come from the browser, not the app. If Facebook produces a half-hearted app, inspiring people to use their browser to get a full or even adequate experience, Facebook makes more money both through advertising and by the advancement of its platform. If it allows you to take full advantage of the social world of Facebook via an app, but cannot effectively monetize the app or support social gaming through the app, it's harming itself.

That is to say, Zuckerberg is correct to be concerned about Facebook's becoming "just another app", when he needs to to be a platform.

Recent rumors of Facebook's interest in acquiring Opera may relate to its difficulty gaining traction on tablets and mobile devices. Opera doesn't have much traction on the desktop, but it might be feasible to create a heavily Facebook-flavored browser that would take the place of a hobbled Facebook app on mobile devices, including tablets. If you get people to spend 20% of their online time in your proprietary browser looking at your own content, and get them used to accessing the rest of the Internet through your browser instead of the default browser that comes with the device, you are much better positioned to monetize mobile traffic than if you're "just another app".

Meanwhile, a generation of kids my son's age and older are living their lives solely on mobile devices -- tablets and phones and whatever iterations the future holds. For them, Facebook will be something their parents do, and it's still fundamentally a Web-based experience. It's likely to hold little appeal to them -- and somewhere out there, entrepreneurs thinking along the lines of, say, Dave Morin at Path (ironically, a former Facebooker) are working on products that are born mobile, that skip the Web entirely, that live in the world the next generation lives in.

It makes no more sense to pretend that the entire world is mobile than it does to pretend that the entire world is sitting at a desk in front of a traditional, desktop computer. A big part of Facebook's success has been its ability to be inclusive - getting people who barely even use a computer to sign up in order to see photos of distant friends and relatives. No doubt, being the next, big, hot idea among the younger generation or on the mobile platform can translate into profit and success. We've all heard about Instagram. But a future with a hundred "Instagrams" vying for your attention on mobile devices is one of fragmented social media, something quite different than what Facebook offers.

I expect that the actual business plan behind apps "that skip the Web entirely" is to go the way of Instagram, to get snapped up by one of the giant players for a quick, significant profit, not to reinvent the online social world as a mobile-only environment. My guess is that no small number of them will let you register and log in through your Facebook account - in no small part because they're apps and Facebook is a platform.

One last thing,

Simply put: the world is going mobile, it's hard to make money on mobile, and no one is feeling that more painfully than Facebook.

But someone will figure it out. Someone always does, and there's always money to be made where the people are. It just won't be Facebook.

Am I the only person who has a problem with the conceit that someone "always" figures out how to monetize online information? If an edition of a newspaper is worth $2 in print, 5 cents when read via a browser, and a cent when read via a mobile device, is the proper conclusion that the newspaper "figured out" how to monetize its online and mobile content, or would it be more accurate to say that some types of content cannot be monetized in the online world at a level that sustains their historic business model? The reality is this: when faced with new business realities some businesses and industries find ways to evolve and make money, others go the way of the stagecoach company and village blacksmith.

The Grass is Always Greener....

You know what's amazing to Michael Gerson? That the Republican saviors of the party who ran for office and tore each other apart, often revealing themselves in the process to be deserving of little more than rubber noses and clown paint, no longer look as good as the wunderkind who haven't yet gone through the wringer.

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush, Sen. Marco Rubio, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Sen. Rob Portman are among the more accomplished, knowledgeable, ideologically balanced political figures in American politics. The same could not be said of Rick Perry, Herman Cain or Michele Bachmann.

Gerson is smart enough to acknowledge that it's "easier to appear qualified and dignified" when you're untested, but fantasizes,

But there is more at work in this obvious stature gap. Part of the explanation is structural. Presidential candidates are largely self-selected, which favors ambition and self-regard above, well, all other traits. A vice presidential field results from a party’s consensus on talent and competence.

So... J. Danforth Quayle, George H.W. Bush, Dick Cheney... no ambition or self-regard, simply the best their party had to offer (like Spiro Agnew). If Gerson believes the same holds true in both parties, I wonder if he's still crying in his coffee about Al Gore's disappearance from the national stage, or if he dreams of an alternate universe in which John McCain had not picked the stellar, non-self-promoting Sarah Palin and had instead picked the stellar, non-self-promoting Joe Lieberman as his running mate.

Gerson is engaging in a typical sort of wishful thinking, never mind the actual facts, in which we can easily predict which of a party's rising stars will be a presidential candidate four years from now. Because four years before-the-fact everybody knew that Bill Clinton and Barack Obama would be their party's nominees. If, that is, "everybody" means "nobody". Just like four years before-the-fact everybody knew that Jeb Bush would run for President, but he lost his first run for governor, his brother won in Texas and.... Yep, it's all 100% predictable.

Gerson hopes that, of all people, Mitt Romney chooses Chris Christy as his running mate. Odds are that, if he's not muzzled, by the end of the campaign they would be measuring him for the clown suit and rubber nose that Romney's primary competitors worked so hard to earn. Gerson likes Christie's bombast, and the fact that he's not a moron:

At the same time, Christie would represent a move to the ideological center. He is not a global warming skeptic. He supported an assault weapons ban in his state. He is an immigration moderate and has friendly relations with New Jersey’s Muslim community.

Actually, support for an assault weapons ban puts Christie not in the center, but to the considerable left of Obama. Acknowledging science, that immigration has both pro's and con's, and that not all Muslims are evil? It merely means that his IQ is at or above room temperature. Gerson's damning his party of choice with faint praise.

What other choice would cause Republicans to pray for 10 vice presidential debates?

They can pray for ten, they would get one. With Joe Biden, trademark bemused smile on his face, not getting even slightly ruffled by Christie and calling him out on such things as... his mediocre jobs record and the massive deficit his state now faces. And even if we were to fantasize that Christie would somehow "put Biden in his place", in the same manner that Lloyd Bentsen put Dan Quayle in his, remind me what impact that debate had on the Presidential contest again? Oh yes... absolutely none.

How Facebook Might (or Might Not) Life Up to the Hype

Once upon a time there was a company called AOL that had a proprietary platform, something of a walled garden, and had many thousands of paid subscribers. It took down the walls, introduced its subscribers to the larger Internet, went public, got an insanely high stock valuation, merged with Time Warner and... the rest is history.

Once upon a time there was a company called Facebook that created a walled garden, invited many thousands of free subscribers to join, played games with the height of its walls - low enough to get search engine traffic, high enough to keep members from exporting their data to use on competitors' sites - but was primarily interested in pulling its members away from the larger Internet in favor of devoting most or all of their attention to its proprietary platform, went public, got an insanely high stock valuation (and yes, despite it's being a "flop" that valuation remains insanely high) and....

Will history repeat itself?

Today, with his portrait on the opposite side of the electronic page from a box that encourages his readers to log into the site using Facebook, and which touts content that is popular on Facebook, Ross Douthat complains that Facebook is an "illusion". He makes some good points about Facebook and the illusion of online community, although he often does so in a way that's reminiscent of my personal feelings somebody who doesn't "get" the appeal of constantly reviewing a Facebook wall for updates. Douthat seems to have forgotten his own personal history as a blogger. The best inference is that Douthat understands the Internet as a vehicle for the exchange and discussion of ideas, and even for self-promotion (as long as there's a quid pro quo), but doesn't "get" the frivolous side.

Douthat focuses on companies that bring the old world into the electronic age,

It’s telling, in this regard, that the companies most often cited as digital-era successes, Apple and Amazon, both have business models that are firmly rooted in the production and delivery of nonvirtual goods. Apple’s core competency is building better and more beautiful appliances; Amazon’s is delivering everything from appliances to DVDs to diapers more swiftly and cheaply to your door.

He's derisive of companies, no matter how successful, that are largely or purely electronic:

Twitter is not the Ford Motor Company; Google is not General Electric. And except when he sells our eyeballs to advertisers for a pittance, we won’t all be working for Mark Zuckerberg someday.

Never mind that one of the companies that is most often cited as digital-era success is Google. Were Douthat to spend a bit of time wondering what it is that Amazon, Apple and Google have in common, and what Facebook hopes to achieve, a concept mentioned above, the platform, might come to mind. Google, Apple and Amazon are engaged in a pretty intense battle to capture the mobile and tablet market, to push their own interfaces for the rental and purchase of electronic entertainment, and to grab as much market share as they can. The goal is not to sell "our eyeballs to advertisers for a pittance" - it's to dominate the future market for the rental and sale of electronic information, entertainment and software, and to get a healthy cut from each sale.

Why does Amazon offer Prime content on its Kindle and not on its competitors' devices? Because it wants you to buy the Kindle. It wants to own the platform, not be an app on somebody else's platform. And that makes sense: why would you buy an app that you can only use through the interface of another app, when you can get the same app, optimized for the hardware you're using, for the same price through the OS-manufacturer's platform? When Facebook admits that it cannot get traction in the mobile market it's, in essence, admitting its failure (to date) as a platform. People will play Farmville, and the like, in their browsers and Facebook gets a cut of the virtual sales, but on a competitor's mobile device Facebook is "just an app" the use to check up on their friends.

A company that Douthat forgot to mention, once the giant of the computer world, is Microsoft. Another company that is struggling to capture a significant foothold in the mobile platform market, and pouring an incredible amount of money into entering that space. The "failed" IPO generated many billions of dollars for Facebook that can be used to help it try to better establish itself as a platform and to compete with the established platforms. But it's facing an incredibly tough environment in which its competitors have established products and track records, and in which despite many billions of dollars invested in software, search platforms, operating systems and the like, Microsoft continues to flounder.

Sometimes You Just Have to Wonder....

How many times can Tom Friedman say, in essence, the same thing without any apparent thought beyond, "If politicians do exactly what I think they should do, everybody will love them"? All Obama had to do was serve up Tom Friedman-endorsed entitlement cuts and austerity along with the stimulus program, drown out the right-wing media machine that deliberately distorts the facts and his record, and run a squeaky clean campaign that would make John Kerry's response to the Swift Boat liars seem effective, and... trust Tom Friedman, he'd win!

Given that he has all the answers to the nation's woes, and knows exactly how to persuade the people, get the opposition party to go along with his legislative initiatives, and win overwhelming electoral majorities, all I can say is that it's a darn shame Friedman is a pundit instead of the savior our nation so needs.

Accidentally Telling the Truth is Not a Gaffe

Or, at least, it shouldn't be. The reason the concept of the Kinsley gaffe, "A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth - some obvious truth he isn't supposed to say."[3]", resonates is that the media does an atrocious job of informing readers and viewers when a politician is lying.

A while back I took part of an online quiz on a "fact checking" site, in which they asked readers to estimate how many... Pinocchios, flaming butt cheeks, or something like that... they assigned to various statements by politicians. The pointlessness of the exercise was best illustrated by the rating of a statement by Rick Santorum as being mostly false. The statement was one of opinion. Had the scale been the "Chauncey Gardner" garden rake scale, the person doing the rating would have been free to editorialize that the comment was so dim-witted and disconnected with logic that it ranked as a "hit in the face with a garden rake so hard that your zombie head gets knocked off", that would be fine. One opinion against another. Even if the rationale is, "That's such a baseless opinion that I can't believe Santorum holds it," it remains your opinion that he's lying as opposed to being ignorant or obtuse.

When self-professed fact-checkers stop checking the facts and start assessing the degree to which a politician may be shading the truth, they're no longer engaged in fact-checking. It's a perfectly legitimate function of the press to point to a statement that neatly avoids key issues or problems and to point out that it's not the whole story, but that's a different tasks than fact-checkers claim to be performing. It's interesting to me, also, that fact-checkers will use "Pinocchio" scales or a "pants on fire" meter, but they shy away from actually using the term "lie". You don't have to bring it out for every nuanced statement, but when a politician tells a real whopper why not tell it like it is? Instead, we have gasbag commentators who don't hesitate to call up down and the truth a lie, when they're talking about the other side, while the mainstream media at times passively "reports" on the controversy.

Here, Charles Pierce catches Mitt Romney in a "Kinsley gaffe",

Halperin: Why not in the first year, if you're elected — why not in 2013, go all the way and propose the kind of budget with spending restraints, that you'd like to see after four years in office? Why not do it more quickly?

Romney: Well because, if you take a trillion dollars for instance, out of the first year of the federal budget, that would shrink GDP over 5%. That is by definition throwing us into recession or depression. So I'm not going to do that, of course.

So... by pumping a whole lot of money into the economy and propping up state governments, the stimulus did what, Mitt? Once you agree on the conceptual framework you need to provide something more than bombastic rhetoric - whenever the other party does something it's different... and wrong - and start explaining how you are being consistent in your positions. Or at least, that's what should happen. But it won't. And Romney knows it won't, which is how he manages to get away with saying, "Up" on Monday, "Down" on Tuesday, "Sideways" on Wednesday, and "I don't remember what I said on any prior occasion, but I agree with whatever it was" on Thursday.

Romney is a walking caricature of everything people say that they hate about politicians. And yet....

So how about this? How about having the mainstream media stop chuckling when a politician "tells the truth" and instead congratulate him for being honest about a difficult issue, and pushing him to state how the sudden introduction of reality into his rhetoric affects his stated policies and future plans?