Danny Crichton

How will our generation adapt to the decline of America? That will be the question of our country, and indeed, of the world as we progress through the twenty-first century. On both an economic and political level, America has lost the ability to think with vision and with force. Perhaps it was hubris, but this country used to be the destination for success. Today, that success is altogether fleeting.

In economic terms, we will grapple with higher unemployment, greater income inequality, more contingent labor, lower living standards and ultimately less fulfilling careers. The source of these problems are numerous. The lack of quality public education for a large part of the population is my top culprit. Our economy has become more technical over time, yet we cannot increase the number of scientists and engineers coming from our schools (or for that matter, change a culture that ridicules the math and science abilities of its youth). Other sources of problems include a declining civil infrastructure and an aging population.

If our problems were exclusively economic, America's future would be secure. This is the country that leads in economic reinvention and entrepreneurship. No, the other problem is one of politics.

The level of dysfunction in American government is simply breathtaking, and it will only get worse with new trends like the rise of corporate campaign contributions in the wake of the Citizens United case. Public trust has reached such an abysmal low that no politician - I repeat, no politician - can possibly govern effectively in the face of the factional politics that divide us. What politician can ask for the sacrifices needed if no one believes them?

What will America look like in two decades? Take a look at today's New York Times, where Martin Fackler discusses the two decade decline

In an article in the NYTimes, Nicholas D. Kristof discusses the changing experience of Oman over the past few decades. Once fundamentalist, the country has modernized at a breathtaking pace, and today is one of the most open and tolerant societies in the Arab world. Two years ago, I wrote a paper on this very topic for a class at Stanford (the paper also happens to be the first research paper I wrote in college, so apologies in advanced for some less-than-lucid writing).

The theory of deliberative democracy remains very controversial, since the Western tradition generally focuses on rule of law as a critical element of any democratic society. While it remains to be seen if Oman will continue to modernize under future sultans, its gains today should be lauded and encouraged throughout the Middle East.

Polarization has reached a feverish pitch in American politics. It seems that every fringe group knows how to massage its media message to great effect - just witness the firestorm over the recent Burn a Quran Day idea initiated by Florida pastor Terry Jones. The media, once controlled by the hands of elite gatekeepers, has now been democratized, and every person has a voice.

At the same time, there are growing concerns that students lack the ability to critically analyze and judge sources for quality and bias - in short, to evaluate the information they read (for some discussion, check out the Project Information Literacy group at the University of Washington on key skills for the digital age). This raises enormous problems when coupled with the lack of editorial judgment displayed by the new media. As I have written about before, people can find websites to match any political point of view, making it difficult to find common ground.

It is here that I feel that high school newspapers offer tremendous positive skills, and why I believe that increasing funding for them is crucial if America is not only to weather these massive changes in the media landscape but also to increase the written communication skills of our workforce.

My story may shed some light on this value. I applied to join the newspaper staff in eighth grade, under recommendation from my English teacher. The decision was not easy, since my high school uses block scheduling and newspaper was considered a full-block class (which means that a quarter of my schedule would be used up). I chose newspaper over orchestra because it sounded interesting, and I liked to write.

I would stay with newspaper throughout high school (with a one year sabbatical of sorts my junior year). I rose from

This has certainly been China Week for both the domestic and international press. On the domestic side, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was grilled by the House Ways and Means Committee about China's currency exchange rates, in which the yuan is essentially pegged to the U.S. dollar. That panel is voting on legislation that would punish Chinese goods with tariffs ("countervailing duties", as described in this AFP article). Such a tariff would almost certainly result in some sort of trade war, the severity of which would likely be determined by the capability of Obama's diplomats and trade representatives. While the bill may not come to a vote given Congress' schedule before the midterms, few politicians will waste the opportunity to get behind such a populist initiative.

China was even more in the news on the international front. The week was filled with stories surrounding the Japanese arrest and continued detention of Zhan Qixiong, the captain of a Chinese fishing boat which collided with a Japanese patrol vessel near the disputed Senkaku Islands (Diaoyu Islands in Chinese). The immediate crisis abated on Friday when prosecutors released the captain, indicating that Japan was ready to concede on the basic issue (while also vowing not to apologize to the Chinese).

More ominously, China threatened (then apparently backtracked) to block the export of rare earth metal to Japan. Despite their name, these metals are exceedingly common on Earth, but few places produce them in any quantity besides China. These metals are crucial for modern technology, ranging from cell phones to the Toyota Prius, and ultimately Japan is dependent on these Chinese-sourced metals for much of its economy.

The other story of note is that the People's Liberation Army and the U.S. Army are prepared to reopen bilateral discussions after they were

This series of blog posts explores the experiences in my background that led to an admission to Stanford. Inspired by Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, I began thinking about how my own circumstances and chance encounters shaped who I am today. This is the first of five parts.

Developing competence in computer programming and software design is a process of exploration as well as trial and error. It takes time to learn common programming idioms (for example, to test whether an integer is even - take the variable mod 2 and check if it equals 0).

In one chapter of Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell discusses the background of the current computer titans such as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Both were placed in environments that allowed them to explore technology at an early age (high school and college). For instance, Steve Jobs lived near Bill Packard of Hewlett-Packard fame, and would ask him questions about his work. Gladwell argues that their future success is a function of this early exploration along with serendipity that the computer revolution was timed just right for their ages.

On my first reading, I thought about how nice it would be to have such opportunities, forgetting the many opportunities that I had to develop my computer abilities along the way.

The first computer I actively explored was in kindergarten - a Macintosh Performa. The computer was used mostly for game playing (X-Wing, Titanic), but it began to solidify my understanding of basic user interface components of the computer like folders and hard disks (back then, I only had 300MB, and I had to constantly switch which programs were installed in order to play what I wanted).

However, the first critical milestone took place in second through fourth grade when I began to use my elementary school's computers.

My Stanford friend Andrew Linford spent the last year studying abroad in Poland, India, France, South Africa, United Kingdom and Japan. Be sure to check out his blog at http://www.discoveringsociety.info/ - Danny Crichton

"The Chinese are taking over the world. We should all just learn Chinese." Have you ever heard a statement like this one? Should we all just learn Chinese for this reason? Learning a foreign language takes time and commitment. Without both together, you will not be able to fully learn a language. So, when does it actually make sense to put in the time and effort, and when does it pay off?

As Americans, we are incredibly lucky to learn the lingua franca of the world as a primary language of the country, enabling us to communicate with many people globally without the effort to learn a second (or even third language). But the facility by which we can communicate with others does present a barrier to Americans, as it presents a situation in which language learning can seem particularly useless. Although Spanish may be a very important language, it is nowhere as important as English. However, all high schools and many colleges do require that we spend time learning a foreign language in order to graduate. Considering how much can be learned in one year of classes at a high school, does that extra year of a foreign language make sense in terms of opportunity cost?

The following are guiding principals I have come up with to decide when an American taking the time to learn a foreign language makes sense:

1. Your family speaks that language. For me, it makes complete sense to me that one should really be able to speak with all close family members at least decently well

Human beings have a tendency to hold onto perceptions far longer than evidence allows. This cognitive bias infects much of our decision-making in politics and in life. Once we learn something, we tend to hold on to that knowledge, even when the knowledge itself has changed. This is why professors who learn their field in the 1970s and 1980s can find it difficult to update their classes with the most recent advances. In politics, policy change can be wrenching precisely because the best course of action is different than a politician's previous experience.

Today, most people's perception of law school is vastly out-of-date. Once the ticket to the upper middle class and prestigious careers in cosmopolitan cities, a legal education is increasingly entering a grey zone: for some it can be helpful, but for too many, there is a mismatch between desires and reality. This post analyzes the current trends.

Law School Economics

Understanding the changes that have happened to the legal career path requires a basic understanding of law school economics. The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that there are 759,200 lawyers in the United States in 2008, and that growth should be around 13% over the next ten years, in line with the general growth in employment for the nation.

The number of graduates of law schools has increased in recent years as well, even over the highs of the late 1990s. According to the American Bar Association, in 1999-2000 there were 39,071 law school graduates compared to 43,588 in 2008, a growth rate of about 11.5%. Thus, the growth in the number of graduates is lower than the growth in the number of positions.

What is the problem then? Let's look at those numbers again. The number of legal positions is expected to

From the Wall Street Journal:

"Americans owe some $826.5 billion in revolving credit, according to June 2010 figures from the Federal Reserve. (Most of revolving credit is credit-card debt.) Student loans outstanding today - both federal and private - total some $829.785 billion, according to Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of FinAid.org and FastWeb.com."

Unfortunately, much of that debt goes to programs that fail to provide employment for their graduates (see recent stories of for-profit universities and the controversy surrounding income versus debt levels).

It is also important to note that student loan debt paralyzes recent graduates from taking risks in their early 20s. America needs more of its bright students to undertake entrepreneurial activities, but it is difficult to see how they will do so given the levels of debt they take on. A re-envisioning of this entire system seems well overdue.