A colleague of mine has a different quote in his e-mail signature every few months. His current one is from Thomas Sowell:

The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.

I couldn’t help but think of that quote when I watched yesterday’s episode of 60 Minutes. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was talking about the state’s water shortages. Partially because of drought and partially because of environmental restrictions because of the Delta Smelt, California’s farmers are having to leave large swaths of their land barren. Almond trees that took 20 years to grow are being mulched because there simply is not enough water to go around.

Schwarzenegger seems to think that the way to fix the problem is to borrow $11 billion  to renovate dams (to increase water storage capacity) and many more billions to build a new canal to route water around the delta, saving the Delta Smelt. Nevermind that the new canal would be a larger project than the Panama Canal. In Schwarzenegger’s words: “I love cranes.” I can just picture the governor now playing with Tonka trucks in his sandbox. 60 Minutes correspondent Leslie Stahl asked the governor about the trade-offs that need to be made here between water for drinking and water for farming.

Leslie Stahl: There are people who say the southern part of the state is thirsty. They say that some of these farms should just go out of business, that they take too much water and people need that water.

Gov. Schwarzenegger: Yes, you know, of course, I, I, I totally understand that. But I look at the whole picture again. I tell you, I want it all! I love our farms!

Leslie Stahl: Yes, but is that realistic?

Gov. Schwarzenegger: Yes, it is realistic. Anything is realistic! It doesn’t mean that because it’s a desert that we cannot go and bring water in here and start growing things. All we have to do is deliver water and then we can grow anything we want!

Leslie Stahl: So much for the idea that the state is entering an age of scarcity.

The tone in Stahl’s voice as she delivers that last line is dripping with sarcasm. Good for her pointing out the obvious.

I guess it’s perfectly reasonable for a man whose career was made starring in movies with computerized special effects can think that anything is possible. As Avatar has now shown, anything is possible in movies these days. I mean, if  they can make us believe that the bus in Speed could actually jump a 100-foot gap in a freeway (Mythbusters test: not even close) and convince us that Maggie Gyllenhaal is anywhere close to attractive enough to substitute for Katie Holmes in The Dark Knight without us noticing, then what can’t those guys at Industrial Light and Magic do? Maybe Schwarzenegger has been around Hollywood so much that he can’t distinguish reality from CG fantasy.

I would like to think that Schwarzenegger’s proximity to Hollywood is the cause of his behavior. But, sadly, almost all politicians do this very thing. Pointing out that we cannot do everything for everyone without borrowing from someone else or sacrificing something is considered anti-American, unpatriotic nay-saying. We’re the greatest country in the world and we can do everything! USA! USA!

Since we can’t handle the truth, politicians don’t tell it to us straight. Because we don’t want to make sacrifices, the government gives us their only solution: spending more money. Nevermind where that money comes from or the long-term costs of borrowing money or the effect on jobs from raising taxes. Why, I’m sure we’ll just get the rich people to pay for it anyway. God forbid we try letting the market work, allowing the tighter supplies of food and water to cause consumers to conserve resources more so that there is more water to go around to its most valued use. Just give the government more money and they’ll fix all your problems.

Listening to Schwarzenegger talk and the enthusiasm with which he wants to borrow and spend so much money, you would never know the state is almost $50 billion in debt with a $21 billion annual budget deficit and the worst credit rating of any state in the nation. And you would also never know he has a degree in Business and International Economics from the University of Wisconsin–Superior.

It looks like Sowell was right.

P.S. Whether Schwarzenegger realizes it or not, there is always a sacrifice. The cost of the previous over-spending is the MC Hammer-like credit rating the state now has and the higher interest payments that result from it; as well as the lost tax revenues from people who have fled the state because it has the highest sales and income tax rates of any state in the nation. You can’t avoid the first rule of economics no matter how hard you try.

P.P.S. (For Benjamin’s comment): One’s cute, the other…not so much.

I’ve talked about student evaluations before on this blog. I take them very personally, probably too much for my own good. If someone doesn’t like the class, I want to know why — but usually it’s just a vague response that doesn’t tell me how I could improve. I could have 99 people say they loved the class and 1 person say they hated it and I’m going to focus on the 1 person who hated it and wonder what I could have done differently to reach that person. (I actually had one student this semester say that while they didn’t really like me as a person, they thought I was a great teacher — I’m glad that student could separate the two.) I hope that desire to reach everyone makes me a better teacher, trying to appeal to as many people as I can, but the fact is we can’t appeal to everyone. For every person who says “you should use Powerpoint” there are two people who say they love the fact that I don’t use Powerpoint. It’s the classic public goods problem: there is only one level of the public good and people have different preferences, so many people will be unhappy with what is provided. Some want more, some want less, and many people are not happy — the Senate Health Care Bill is a great example. Republicans think it goes too far towards government control, some Democrats don’t think it goes far enough, and the crucial 60 votes hangs by the narrowest of margins.

I bring this up because I just got a new rating on my Ratemyprofessors.com page. It’s for my Econ 201 class and it’s not good:

I can see why some people might like him but if you get on his bad side your done for in the class. And like others said he is pretty full of himself.

(As Ross from Friends would say: “Y-O-U-’-R-E means “you are.” Y-O-U-R means “your.”)

I’m not going to argue the personality criticism because there’s no point. If you don’t like the way I come across, I can’t help that. If you take my statement of facts and theory with assertion as arrogance, that’s your problem. The person I make fun of the most in my classes is myself, yet somehow I’m arrogant.

But what really irks me is the claim that I would give people anything other than the grade they deserve. (Quick question: does using the word “irks” make me arrogant?) That is an attack on my integrity as a professor and I thought I had to say something somewhere to defend myself. (Good thing I have this blog!) This student got a bad grade and assumes that it’s because I don’t like him/her. To be honest, I can’t think of one student in that class who was on my “bad side.” I have no idea who could have written this because I actually really enjoyed that class — the students in it asked great questions and we had good interactions. To be honest, the only students that I don’t like in any class are the ones who don’t come to class, don’t do assignments, and show me through their lack of effort that they don’t really care about the class. But even then, they don’t get on my bad side — they get on my indifferent side.

All of my grading in that class is blind. I grade all the in-class exercises without looking at names. All the exams are graded blind: I flip over the cover page and grade all the question #1’s, then I move on and grade all the #2’s, etc. I have no idea who anybody is until after I’m done and I’m adding up the scores on the individual questions. All the online work is up to the students — I have no control over that. If anyone gets a bad grade in that class, it is because they did not do the work or did not learn the material, plain and simple. Blaming it on getting on my bad side is a weak excuse.

Part of me wishes I didn’t care so much. My colleagues with more experience tell me that you can’t worry about students like this — you can’t please everyone anyway so you should just shrug off the criticism. I guess I’m not cynical enough to think that way yet. (Maybe once I get tenure — just kidding!) I hope there’s a way to become less sensitive to the criticism while still retaining the desire to do my best to reach every student, but I’m not sure there is.

Okay, it’s been a long semester and I have two weeks to get a bunch of online videos done to prepare for the next semester. Enjoy the rest of your break if you have one.