Lower Standards – Who Wins?
For years I have been a big fan of “American Excellence.”
That concept was one where Americans strived to be the best at just about everything. We took exceptional pride in a system that produced the best products and the best organizational and individual performances when compared to others. We knew our freedoms coupled with a free market was the way things worked, and worked out, in the U.S.A. We could outproduce and outperform anyone on the world. We won two world wars protecting our freedom to excel and proving we could do it.
That sense of excellence was part and parcel to our lives. ‘If it’s worth doing it’s worth doing well.’
We define excellence as consistently superior performance that surpasses requirements and expectations without significant flaws or waste. At least we used to.
We accept and love a freely chosen world of competition for organizations and companies/corporations that all start with the individual. And we expect our government to encourage, support and protect an individual’s right and ability to compete on a level playing field.
Most of us realize that excellence doesn’t just happen. That it’s the result of hard work and determination. At the same time, if an individual is focused on excellence, it’s OK if failure happens to him/her along the way, as long as the person will pick him/herself up after not succeeding in whatever endeavor.
Certainly, no individual or society in general expects anyone to excel at some endeavor when that person has neither the aptitude, training nor experience to do so. We’ve never believed an individual who has trouble with math would be a successful engineer or be a successful health professional with low grades in biology/anatomy classes. Not everyone is cut out to excel at everything. So, we pick and choose our quests for excellence based on our interests and abilities.
So, what is happening to diminish American excellence.
First, it’s the idea of being a victim. Many Americans have been sold a bill of goods that absolves them from trying for excellence. People cannot pursue excellence if society has oppressed them. When they’ve been discriminated against because of their race, their gender, or their gender identity. Oppression that covers more than one category of victimhood suffers from “intersectionality” – multiple victimhood.
Second, we’re told by our leaders that the most important thing we can do now is exercise and celebrate DEI – diversity, equity and inclusion. There’s never an allusion to excellence – or even competence. If your government or your company/organization doesn’t “look” diverse or inclusive enough it’s a bad thing – and you need to fix it. One of the acceptable things you can do to fix it is employing “equity” to accomplish the quotas you’re expected to meet on the diversity and inclusion fronts. Never mind competence or merit.
DEI is a poor substitute for the pursuit of excellence.
Would we not expect an airline to employ pilots who meet high standards? Do we not expect our medical professionals to pass a high bar of knowledge in that field? What about judges, schoolteachers, and electricians? And so on.
When DEI is used former high standards for employment and advancement in every job, every profession, must be lowered.
And that’s exactly what’s happening. Any group of rocket scientists must look like our society. Roughly 50% of people are women. The concept of “diversity” requires the representation and relative size of different racial and ethnic groups, and genders within the population, and all groups represented reflect equivalent shares of the population.
Our Census Bureau now uses something called a DI – a diversity index.
So, your group must be 50% women, 13.6% black, 18.9 % Hispanic, and 6% Asian. You can avoid being judged on those numbers by employing a certain number of transsexuals.
But you are no longer able to put excellence in the mix because other factors/characteristics trump it.
Many universities no longer require an acceptable score on the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT), the American College Test (ACT), or the Classical Learning Test (CLT). It’s more important to them the student body, and the faculty, meet the new standards of DEI. We could cite many other examples like airlines that have lowered the standards for pilots, medical schools across the country have drastically lowered their admissions standards to attract the proper quotas for incoming students, our military and police departments. More and more K-12 schools report students aren’t meeting their grade’s minimum standards. And that’s OK now.
Any time a company or school initiates quotas, you can be sure standards will be lowered in the interest of equity.
Excellence has been at best been compromised by equity. At worst, it’s a rush to mediocrity, even incompetence – and frankly, a threat to public safety in some instances.
Rewarding, much less recognizing excellence is no longer on many people’s radars. The best and the brightest are lost in a losing race to equity – to DEI. It’s especially true in the current federal administration where equity is king.
Who wins in this new scenario?
No one.
Excellence is an ignored word.
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Have a great and prosperous week.
Hug somebody.
References:
https://asq.org/quality-resources/organizational-excellence
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045221
https://www.coursera.org/articles/college-entrance-exams
SPIDER Bites
This week’s trivia question: How many bytes are in a gigabyte? (Answer to last week – sport in which the American’s Cup is awarded? – Sailboat racing.)
In an apparent effort to make our energy and inflation situation worse, the Biden administration last week blocked indefinitely 16 million acres of Alaska from fossil fuel development.
I guess I should have known but didn’t. The Biden administration last month added washing machines to its growing list of consumer regulations – all in the interest of climate change, of course. The new standards for washing machines require longer cycles and less water. Manufacturers complain the standards will reduce cleaning performance and increase the cost to the consumer because the machine will run longer. Sounds like a no-win plan.
A charge by about a thousand waiting immigrants on an El Paso check point last week was quelled by border control and the Mexican military. If you think things are getting a little out of hand along our southern border, you’re late in that recognition.
The February CPI report indicated inflation at 6%, down 0.4% from January. Let’s see, in February 2021 the CPI was 1.7%, the number for February 2022 was 5.5%. Add them up and we’re paying 12.7% more for the same things we bought 3 years ago. Has your income increased a similar amount? If so, you’re even. If not, you’re poorer. If you look at the value of your retirement accounts, you’ll see you’re even poorer. The stock market doesn’t know what to do. Meanwhile, Meta (Facebook) announced another 10,000 layoffs.
Here we go again. President Biden assured depositors in the two banks that failed last week that the government would cover all deposits. In the case of SVB, most deposits exceed the FDIC’s $250,000 insurance. Like 2008-09, banks apparently have no down-side risk and can only make money regardless of and despite lousy decisions and management. There’s something very wrong with this picture. BTW, Moody’s put six more banks “on review” last week. That puts our Federal Reserve Bank in an even bigger dilemma – keep raising the interest rates to fight inflation and risk recession. Now add, keep raising the rates and risk widespread bank insolvency and recession. The expected scenario has changed the last week from one where the Fed would raise rates by as much as .5% to one of not raising rates at all this week. It’s a downward spiral, vicious circle, created by government.
The CA legislative State Task Force on Reparations, established several years ago, appears poised to recommend each black state resident receive $360,000 in reparations for slavery. Meanwhile San Francisco’s own reparations group is recommending $5 million to each black adult, the elimination of personal debt and taxes, a guaranteed annual income of at least $97,000 for 250 years, and homes in the city for the purchase price of $1. Non-black residents would obviously fund this reparations largess.
The Security Exchange Commission is on the cusp of issuing a regulation requiring publicly held companies report how their operations affect climate change.
Our expanded, twice the size, IRS agency reminded taxpayers last week to report illicit income on Schedule C. So, if you made money off illegal drugs, stole property, took a bribe, or experienced kickbacks you now know how to report it. Isn’t it great to have a helpful IRS? Meanwhile Congress will deal with a proposal to initiate a federal sales tax. It’s called the FairTax Act. You know who would pay that one.
BTW, as we either complete or prepare for paying 2022 income taxes, know the US tax code consists of 3.8 million words covering 6,871 pages. There have been 4,428 changes to the tax code in the last 10 years. Instructions for Form 1040 are now 189 pages long. There are 1,999 different publications, forms, and instruction sheets you can download from the IRS website. It’s a monstrosity. When the U.S. government first implemented a personal income tax back in 1913, the vast majority paid a rate of just 1 percent and instructions covered 2 pages. Now the top tax rate is 37%.
