Everywhere, USA

I recently went to the movies with my daughter (I’m trying to get in as much daddy-daughter time as possible before the impending wilderness of the teenage years begins) and saw “McFarland, USA.”  

I enjoyed the film on a number of levels. As with most things Disney, it was entertaining.  It was also very refreshing to see a major studio actually make a movie that was centered on a group that makes up more than 16% of the population of the United States, and climbing.

More than anything, though, I was very pleased by the dignity and humanity that the film lent to the Mexican-American men, women, and children that it portrayed. It is incredibly disheartening to me when I hear or read about the “illegals,” the “aliens” or the much worse labels that are attached to many Hispanics in our country. We can and will continue to have debates about how immigration laws should be shaped and enforced.  But these epithets aren’t about policy; their only purpose is to ostracize and dehumanize.

“McFarland, USA” showed how the children of immigrants rose before dawn every day to do back-breaking agricultural work, then went to school, then practiced several hours for the cross country team of their high school (in the end winning the California state tournament). They demonstrated incredible grit, tenacity, desire to succeed, and a refusal to succumb to obstacles that looked insurmountable.

That sounds to me like the very definition of the qualities we ascribe to Americans.  And it describes the immigrant story that continues to this day.  We ask for the poor and the huddled masses because we know those are the people who will work until their fingers bleed and strive until they succeed - if not for themselves, then for their children - making whatever sacrifices are necessary.  Whether it be a woman who goes from selling funnel cakes to derivatives at Goldman Sachs or a guy who picked lettuce and became a brain surgeon, these are the people who are indispensable for a country that aspires to greatness.

It was great to see this inspiring story from McFarland. But similar stories take place everyday, everywhere in the USA. We just have to be willing to look - and to celebrate that such stories continue to unfold in America. 

Average Isn't Good Enough

Pew Research called this one of their most striking findings of 2014.

The graphic really does put things in perspective.  But we shouldn't be surprised.  Three years ago, Tom Friedman wrote in the New York Times that "the age of average is over."  As Friedman writes:

"Today, employers have access to cheap foreign labor, cheap robotics, cheap software, cheap automation.  The only way for the individual to succeed is to find their unique value contribution that makes them stand out in whatever is their field of employment.”

The unemployment rates listed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics for Americans over 25 years old make the Pew findings even starker: those with less than a high school degree are unemployed at a rate of 13.4%; those with a high school degree and no college, 8.3%; those with some college or associate degree, 7.7 %; those with bachelor’s degree, 4.5%, Master’s degree, 3.5%, and a doctorate, 2.5%.  The thing is, we are now competing for jobs not just with other people in our respective cities, but with people in Thailand, Norway, Australia, Russia, South Africa, the globe.

Of course, the earnings gap that Pew refers to is just one of the problems.  There have been abundant studies tying poor education to crime rates, family dysfunction, and a host of other societal ills. This is why education - for everyone - must be a top national priority, as important to us as defense spending.  How are kids going to have something "unique" to contribute if we as a nation are content to offer them, at best, an average education?

Average isn't good enough. If we believe in American exceptionalism and wish to preserve it, we must be concerned about the education of all children, not just our own.

The ER Shouldn't be About Convenience

I've been seeing more of these bill boards advertising wait times (or the lack thereof) at hospital emergency rooms.  I worry that these signs are portraying the ER as a place for one to access care immediately, and that's not what it's supposed to be.  An ER is just that - a place for emergency care.  For care that is urgent or necessary but not an emergency, the ER is an inappropriate place to get that care from both a cost and results perspective, not to mention the delays it might cause for people who truly have an emergency.  And yet use of the ER  has continued to increase, to approximately 134 million annual visits.

Hospitals may want to re-think the use of these signs.  The last thing we want to do is encourage even more use of the ER as a place to receive basic or primary care.  Our culture of convenience has already created lots of bad habits.  If we're concerned about resources and outcomes, we should avoid adding the emergency department to our addiction for expedience.

How Much is it Worth to You?

I got into an interesting Twitter exchange yesterday with Mark Reardon of KMOX.  He was upset that the new Manager for the Ferguson Commission was being paid $138,915.  Set aside whether one thinks that salary is appropriate for this particular job.  The issue I tried to raise with Mark is the knee-jerk reaction that if a non-profit person is paid well, it is a waste of resources (see also my post on this blog, “In Search of Sustainability”).  I don’t see anyone reacting that way when a corporate executive gets a large compensation package (much larger than you’re ever likely to see at any non-profit).  But when I said that to Mark, he scoffed.

 

Why?  If a corporate CEO is paid $10 million and the company delivers gains to shareholders, no one complains; in fact, the CEO is very likely to receive an increase in compensation.  So why do we so often react negatively if a non-profit professional is paid $100,000 to help solve an intractable problem?  That makes no sense to me.

No one would think of asking the CEO of a major U.S. company to accept $60,518 per year (the median salary of a non-profit ED in the U.S.) to run her organization.  Well, how much should we pay people who are tackling racism?  Or poverty?  Or homelessness?

The exact number isn’t important to me: the devaluation of non-profit professionals is. Surely the alleviation of poverty is at least as important as the release of the newest gadget. If so, that means holding non-profit professionals in the same esteem as their corporate counterparts and, like the for-profit sector at its best, compensating them well when they show results. At the end of the day, a person should not have to be put in the position of choosing between dedicating her talents to creating social good and having the resources to provide for her family.