Marty Nemko's Blog, page 303

A Journal Entry About Rumination: A short-short story

My PsychologyToday.com contribution today is a short-story about a ruminator.

"Who Am I?" How I help clients find a career...and themselves

Today, a career counseling client started our first session by asking me, “How do I know who I am?”

As my PsychologyToday.com contribution today, I offer a fleshed-out version of my answer.

Coaching Highly Accomplished People

Much has been written on counseling and coaching in general but far less on coaching highly accomplished people. Such people are my practice's core clientele and so, in my PsychologyToday.com article today, I share what has been most helpful in working with high achievers.

Compensation Negotiation for Employees

I distill my previous articles on negotiating compensation into my PsychologyToday.com article today.

Will Humans Be Necessary?

I explore some of the implications for people in an ever more automated world. That's my PsychologyToday.com article today.

Closing: A short-story story about aging, luck, and hypocrisy

My latest short-short story tells of an attempt at a last hurrah. It's my PsychologyToday.com contribution today.

Norma: A short-short story about the ethics of stealing from the powerful.

When is it ethical to steal from the powerful and perhaps even undeservedly powerful. I explore that in a short-short story that's my PsychologyToday.com contribution today.

16 Tweets on Relationships

I've grown to believe that short helps more than long. To that end, my PsychologyToday.com contribution today consists of 16 of my tweets that are about relationships.

My Favorite Tweets on Education

We spend billions to improve education yet we're legalizing pot, which now is proven to damage brains. (Don't trust the activists, which are heavily funded by Big Tobacco. See the  new National Academy of Sciences metaevaluation.)

In the name of rigor, courses focus too much on the hard and arcane, with too little weighing of whether that’s the best use of student time.

Most people would rather be entertained than educated. So sugar-coat.

How-to books that claim “It worked for me, it can work for you” aren’t helpful because typical readers aren’t as smart and driven as are book authors.

You’ll likely learn more of enduring value from an hour of wise googling than from any course. 

Banks are forced to modify, that is, take a loss on mortgages but colleges, which don't disclose risks, wring every penny even from its many unemployable grads.

College tuition up 1,200% since 1978, That’s four  timesthe inflation rate. There’s little learning—36% grow not at all in critical thinking.  44% don't graduate even if given six years, and 1/2 are un-underemployed. Crazy.

I read these aloud on YouTube.

Tweets on My Political and Economic Views

These tweets summarize my political and economic views:
Ever wonder whether the other side might be right? Worth considering.
The large conversion of full-time benefited jobs to gigs occurs largely because government mandates have made it cost-prohibitive to hire an American.
Can there ever be enough jobs for America's 250 million, 1/2 with IQ of under 100? That’s unlikely in an information-based, global economy.
Half the U.S. isn't working or working at a lower-level than they could. And millions more dislike their job. I see revolution possible.
Ironic that we derive our views on how to improve the world mainly from two groups that have opted out of the real world: professors and journalists.
Ever more news commentators are not experts but entertainers.
It is dangerous to read only current thought. It's too reflective of today’s zeitgeist, e.g redistribution vs merit.
It’s remarkable that with so many lenses through which to view the world, colleges and the media so focus on just the Marxist three: race, class, and gender
Social scientists tend to be more activist than scientist. Wrapping ideology in statistics doesn't make social "science" science.
Why is democracy the sacred cow when the majority in the U.S. read below 8th grade level, don't know government’s three branches, and believe in angels?
Government can't claim to care about the poor when it creates lotteries and casinos that prey mainly on the poor, who can least afford loss.
It’s jingoistic that politicians sing "Buy American!" The foreign worker who “takes" a U.S. job improves his life more than the American loses.
Seeing an individual’s pain causes irrational policy decisions as well as personal ones.
I've just had yet another client who won't look for work until all the unemployment checks run out. Is that what our tax dollars should be for?
An article in TIME: “Debt is growing at four times the rate reported by government. We are already bankrupt."
Laws, policies, and practices that further equality over merit are short-term feel-goods and long-term stabs into society.
I fear we’ll keep trying to make everything equal until everyone has nothing.
We continue to ignore the devastating drop in boys' achievement and well-being, an unfair double-standard.
If girls are “underrepresented” in STEM—massive redress. But men die 5 years younger and there’s much more money for women’s health. Huge double-standard.
The double standard: If a statement favors redistribution, it gets praised. If favoring meritocracy, it's usually censored and/or censured.
We are in a censorious era: Say or write something politically incorrect and you're censured or fired, McCarthyism from the Left, and far more pervasive. Not all wisdom lives left of center.
I read synopses of the 50 top-rated movies for adults & kids. Nearly all push redistribution to Have-Nots. In reality, most Haves earned it.
Our resources have been so heavily reallocated to the intractable: inequality and climate change. The unbiased science indicates that the money and effort could be more wisely spent.
Every medic knows that limited resources do the most good when spent not on the sickest but on those with the greatest potential to profit.
Not withstanding Temp Trump, whom I don’t believe will finish his term, we're becoming an autocratically intolerant Leftist idiocracy.
We are in a leftward era. So to avoid more wasted effort, conservatives and libertarians today should  reallocate time to activities that will encounter weaker headwinds.
Society's having replaced merit with redistributive priorities has led me to spend most discretionary time on classical music, growing flowers, etc.

HERE is a YouTube of me reading these aloud.