Fix Who? COVID-19, universal healthcare, and the American savings rate

Instead of focusing on universal healthcare, should the United States be focused on increasing the savings rate?

CALIFORNIA—If Chris Martin and Guy Berryman could mass-produce more bone-igniting lights, that might be able to fix a lot of people.  As COVID-19 continues to terrorize and decimate the limbs and lifeblood of the economies and healthcare systems around the globe, much attention is being paid to the availability of hospital supplies and the loss in productivity stemming from a sudden massive attack to industries and sectors across the board.  Social media is awash in exhortations for individuals to donate personal protective equipment (PPE) to hospitals that are in short supply and follow instructions from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Being careful not to engage in the post-hoc-ergo-propter-hoc fallacy for leap projections, particularly when discussing political and cultural trends, it’s important to recognize how the government response to this virus could not only affect the election, but in a best-case scenario could be the catalyst for systemic cultural change of healthcare finance.  Systemic change might be necessary.  The current global death toll is over 50,000 people.  The United States provided 6,059 of those, and how many of them didn’t get enough care due to monetary reasons is unclear.

2020 is an American presidential election year, and a focal point for the Democratic party (the non-incumbent) is universal healthcare.  The recent legislation from the White House providing emergency financial relief for those suffering greatly has caused both rejoicing and concern for what the government will look like when the imminent dangers posed by the novel sickness have abated.  State power expands during crises.  It does not tend to shrink again afterwards.

Would that be a bad thing?  Providing universal healthcare would mean that government takes the authority to do that.  A talking point that comes up often in the pro-universal healthcare argument camp is that it is wrong for anyone to need to choose between basic sustenance and an unexpected medical expense.   Whether rectifying that wrong through extending or reducing government control is currently up for contention.  Less up for contention is why that choice would arise in the first place.  While the sudden need to spend a lump sum of several hundred dollars would put a strain on almost anyone, let alone the ill and pained, the fact that so many American people do not have enough savings for such an event warrants another look.

Two countries that have both been dramatically affected by the virus, have nationalized healthcare coverage, and have a healthy savings rate are China and Italy.  China has been working on its healthcare reforms with projects such as Healthy China 2020 and Healthy China 2030, but the giant failure of Mao’s “iron rice bowl” (state provision for employment, healthcare, housing, etc., etc.,) has led generations to value thrift.  China’s savings rate is reported to hover at 20%, and out-of-pocket spending for healthcare measured as a percentage is 36.1%.  Nationally subsidized healthcare leaves citizens with affordable care through underfunded public hospitals.  This breeds its own problems, but generally, people can pay for the care they need with the money they have.

Italy, the second epicenter of the disease, also has a high savings rate at 22.6%, which might play into why it is not listed on the “affected by catastrophic health spending” graph presented by the World Health Organization.  It is also not on the graph which maps incidences of unmet need due to cost, distance, or waiting time.  The out-of-pocket healthcare spending percentage hovers at 23.5%, and anything other than basic mandatory care will accrue some sort of fee.  In general, the healthcare system in Italy is esteemed to be affordable and in good functioning order.

The United States has a personal savings rate of 5.7%.  The healthcare out-of-pocket percentage is also already very low, at 11%.  Now confirmed with the most COVID-19 cases, the attitude of the current government toward managing this healthcare crisis has led more people to view the Democratic proposals of universal healthcare as favorable.  However, based on the enormous population size, geographic anomalies, and income disparity within the United States, trying to implement universal healthcare that would satisfy the needs of such a diverse population would be a Sisyphean task.  The examples of China and Italy show that nationalized healthcare is still not always completely free or adequate, and that the responsibility to shoulder additional healthcare expense to some extent still falls to the consumer.  As such, making universal personal financial prudence possible deserves policy-level attention as well.

If the future president attempts to put in place robust universal health care in the United States without critically thinking about how this kind of government spending might affect other aspects of the production economy, the United States might be in danger of getting what it wants and not what it needs.  If that happens, all the light we can see still won’t fix anyone.

The Chance to Try: How India is Rethinking Education

In 2018, Bollywood produced a film called Hindi Medium, a comedic, heart-warming take on class issues in Indian education.  Centering around a young, upwardly mobile family, the plot thickens as the parents do all that is humanly possible to secure a place for their child in a private school.  They are adamant that their daughter continue to climb the ladder to high society, which hinges on not being subject to the sub-par education that a public school typically affords.

It was a fitting release for that year, as a tri-partite public-private partnership to develop the labor force needed for the next decades was formally established that fall.  A problem highlighted in a report published by the World Economic Forum was that India’s workforce faced a huge skills gap—a problem that loosely translated into not reaching the potential of economic growth.

In June of 2017, the Economist ran an article about the impressively mediocre education system in the world’s largest democracy, pointing out that “primary school enrollment is nearly universal…[W]hile learning is not.” According to this article, a handful of participants in the 2009 PISA exam had scores that showed five years of learning gap between other nations in East and Southeast Asia.

While inequality in education has an inextricable tie with opportunity and upward mobility, perhaps the first discussion and policy plan for Indian education needs to be addressing quality of learning.  In fact, a 2019 editorial discussing Modi’s most pressing policy preferences listed those concerns as environment, education, and administration.  According to this report, despite overall improvement in school facilities and a small uptick in learning levels, less than half of the students were reading at grade-level, and of the entire surveyed demographic, less than a third were able to do basic mathematics.  The World Economic Forum correlates the lack of employment skills with an education system that prioritizes theoretical and conceptual work over tangible and practical knowledge gathering.  In early October of 2018, the World Economic Forum, in conjunction with Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship of India and the Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Infosys launched a public private task force to not only measure learning outcomes, but also to increase the efficacy of processes.  More data on the task force remains to be seen.  “It is easy to ascribe such poor outcomes to low government spending on education…[A] disproportionate share of that, too, has gone to higher education, to ensure that India has a trained elite to run the country,” declares the Economist.  Yet economists and academics alike believe that throwing money at the problem will not address the root culture and structure of education, which, like the US, is exam-focused.

In the film, the principal of Delhi Grammar school gives an almost insensitive speech about education rights, just after the protagonist parents are revealed to have placed their daughter in the class fraudulently.  Assuming the juxtaposition in this climactic moment hasn’t been lost on the audience, Modi’s policy effectiveness will be closely monitored in his tenure as prime minister.  A member of another BRIC national on exchange to the United States sums up Modi’s position entirely:

“We need schools, we need hospitals…Our country needs to give everyone the chance to try.”

Julia Robinson Math Festivals: Making Math Cool Again

As the mission of Yours Humanly is to “empower underprivileged children in underserved communities around the world by providing access to educational programs and resources,” what could be better than an educational program that bolsters engagement from those very communities?  So today, we’ll be talking about the Julia Robinson Mathematics Festival, and how it’s attracting more people to math. 

It is a great pity that the very idea of “math” conjures visceral dislike.  Often associated with confusing formulas, endless proofs of the obvious, and buckets of tears, one observer casually (and a bit sarcastically, perhaps?) mentioned that “there are three kinds of people in the world.  Those who can count, and those who can’t.” 

The Julia Robinson Math Festival (JRMF) is erasing those smudged ideas.  With a focus on hands-on solving—think cutting paper and counting edges or building with coins and golf balls—the festival offers a plethora of mind bogglers and puzzles that anyone can enjoy.  Here’s a sample problem by Martin Gardner, author of the Mathematical Games column for Scientific American:

Four golf balls can be placed so that each ball touches the other three.  Five half-dollars can be arranged so that each coin touches the other four.  Is it possible to place six cigarettes so that each one touches the other five?  The cigarettes must not be bent or broken.

A recap article from a recently held festival offered a bite-sized introduction to the history and focus of the festival.  “Founded in 2007 by Silicon Valley native and math puzzle enthusiast, Nancy Blachman, JRMFs are collaborative, community-friendly mathematics festivals intended to serve as an alternative to competitions for getting students — especially girls and underrepresented minority students — and their surrounding communities engaged in mathematics.” 

The woman for whom the festival is named, Julia Robinson, was an exceptional mathematician and former professor at the University of California, Berkeley.  Nominated to the National Academy of Sciences and former president of American Mathematical Society, Robinson is famous for her contributions to solving Hilbert’s Tenth Problem.  Hilbert’s Tenth Problem was an infamous puzzle that perplexed the best and brightest since the question was posed in 1900. 

               A product of American cultural values such as creativity and novel pedagogical applications, the festival measures success by how long a participant sticks with a problem, and how deep they go into their explorations.  Success can also be measured by how quickly and how broadly the ideas of the festival have taken off in the most diverse of places.  “Fun math” can and should be widely accessible, and this festival is making every effort to stand behind that belief.  Anyone can host and organize a festival, and the director of festivals, and resources are readily provided, stretching the reach of the festival far beyond the affluent areas of its birth.  Dr. Hector Rosario, festival director, recently edited a book about mathematical outreach, a collection of papers describing situations where he and his colleagues were able to bring math to unlikely places and communities. 

We at Yours Humanly hope to empower more students to attend these festivals! 

Check out the Julia Robinson Mathematics festival here:

https://www.jrmf.org/history

Check out Brianna Donaldson’s article on one of the Bay Area festivals here:

Julia Robinson Mathematics Festivals

Check out some math puzzles—including the one above!

Gardener, Martin My Best Mathematical and Logic Puzzles 1994, Dover Publications

Check out how Yours Humanly is supporting education:

Who We Are

Multi-lingual education in Singapore

Singaporean education is world renowned, but what makes it such a great place?  And what would be the first step to re-creating that system anywhere?

Let’s look at only one facet of Singaporean education—mandatory mother tongue instruction.  One of Singapore’s greatest strengths lies in its cultural diversity that stretches back to its roots.  This particular 719 square kilometres has been subject to colonialism by no less than three different colonizers over its 193-year-old modern history.  As such, the light motif of multi-culturalism has inextricably woven itself into the fabric of the nation’s collective consciousness. 

The government, in a laudable effort to maintain this legacy, introduced a policy mandating bilingual education.  Passed in 1966, English would be one of two languages taught, but not necessarily the medium of instruction.  Due to enrollment numbers dropping for non-English medium schools, English became the normal medium of instruction, with courses for Mandarin, Tamil, and Malay offered according to their heritage. 

Singapore’s approach to language planning in the education context followed an instrumentalist theory—language is an instrument, and features can be objectively evaluated to determine the situations in which they would maximize potential. Dr. L. Quentin Dixon, associate professor at Texas A&M wrote in a paper delineating Singapore’s exceptionalism as pertaining to implications for second language acquisition that “a nation can successfully implement widespread education through a non-native medium starting at an early age with little home-language development and achieve good academic results.” 

While this policy was started with the best intentions, it is not without criticism.  A child born in Singapore to Malay parents is ethnically Malay, therefore, they register as Malay and they will have Malay lessons.  If he would prefer to learn Tamil or Mandarin or something else, he won’t be allowed to take that until later in his schooling.  Furthermore, linguistically speaking, English is the mother tongue for many Singaporeans.  Highly respected linguist Dr. Tan Ying Ting has posited that if a governmental policy saying that English is a bona fide mother tongue, “there would no longer be a need for anyone to be tied to an ethnic mother tongue…One can envisage many different alternatives to making language policies more viable in Singapore, and more reflective of our linguistic nuances.”

But perhaps most telling about Singapore’s multilingual approach comes from the citizens themselves.  As cultural tides shift, multilingualism, once seen as burdensome and unnecessary by some, has made a comeback in popularity.  Alvona Loh Zi Hui and Ashton Ng Jing Kai, both Singaporean nationals, wrote for TodayOnline that “bilingualism is essential for confidence in our cultural identities.”

Singapore’s current multi-lingual education stems from its cultural history, its practical sensitivities, and its forecasting of the value of strong cultural identity in the future.  The first step then, in creating an effective multilingual education system, is prioritizing it.  It’s clear that having a multi-lingual society is very important in Singapore, and that they demonstrate that value through enacting real policies that promote this. 

Curious? Want more?

https://www.todayonline.com/voices/no-longer-practical-singaporeans-neglect-mother-tongues  Original op-ed by Alvona Loh Zi Hui and Ashton Ng Jing Kai

https://www.todayonline.com/commentary/what-our-singaporean-mother-tongue?fbclid=IwAR1Tj46duiVJztsqRl6uRIHR3ElrdNiL69bExeBSNDXgvD8VuXYsw0aARnY Original op-ed by Dr. Tan Ying Ting

http://www.lingref.com/isb/4/047ISB4.PDF Original paper published by L. Quentin Dixon, The Bilingual Education Policy in Singapore: Implications for Second Language Acquisition

Field Report: Reading

I’ve been volunteering for an educational non-profit by writing for them. This article originally appears on their website. To learn more, click the link at the bottom of the page!

“Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope. It is a tool for daily life in modern society. It is a bulwark against poverty, and a building block of development, an essential complement to investments in roads, dams, clinics and factories… Literacy is, finally, the road to human progress and the means through which every man, woman and child can realize his or her full potential.”
― Kofi Annan, former Secretary General of the United Nations

Welcome to the Bay Area, California, USA.  This expanse of 10,189 square miles is home to the headquarters of no less than thirty-four Fortune 500 companies, three of America’s best universities, and innumerable pennant-winning sports teams.  It is also home to mind-boggling income disparities, commute times, and educational challenges.  Focusing in on a small corner of this microcosm, today we are looking at literacy efforts in an underserved community within the Bay Area.  Located in the largest city in the largest county of the eastern portion of the Bay Area, the Monument Corridor is almost synonymous with the all-too-real struggle in chasing the American dream. 

To get a better flavor for what challenges are arising in the reading arena, I asked Josue Monterrosa, an educator who practices in the Monument Corridor.

“The parents of these children need to spend a lot of time working.  That limits the time that they can interact with their children.  This limits the amount of words that the children learn in the early years. A limited vocabulary in return limits their literature comprehension. If we compound, and this is not true for all the families, that their academic level might be low, the quality of the conversations at home might also be very basic. Parents are unable to help with homework because of time or knowledge,” he shared over email. 

Most of his students have improved their reading during their first trimester, which is a significant milestone.  “All of the students that improved read at home…All of the students that improved had an adequate improvement.  Sometimes the students in affluent schools improved in spite of having bad teachers. And sometimes the students in our schools have modest improvements not because we are bad teachers or we are not working with them, but because by the time they came to us they were already many years behind. So, some parents consider affluent schools as good schools based on the scores when it might have nothing to do with the school’s efforts to improve the learning of their students.”

As Henry Ward Beecher poetically put it, “we should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.”  Yours Humanly is committed to providing more resources for schools like Josue’s, so the distance to academic excellence does not become unattainably long.  We hope you will join us for the ride. 

To get involved, give us a call or send us an email!

http://www.yourshumanly.org

Startup Grind Report about Jan Smejkal

BEIJING, China—The Startup Grind Beijing community outdid themselves once again, this time hosted in Naked Hub’s newest Da Wang Lu space.  Jan Smejkal, Startup Grind’s APEC director made an appearance and shared some insights on his specialty—building global startup-friendly communities.

Known on LinkedIn as “Your China Guy”, Jan kicked off the evening by sharing his China entrance story.  He opened an import business with a university colleague, with most of the suppliers in Shenzhen.

“We were doing everything by Skype, WeChat…But I knew. I had to go to China,” he concluded.  Jan came to China as an exchange student, and thus began a love affair with Asia that continues to this day.

As for how he got into Startups, “I don’t know, maybe I had bad luck with all my internships in big companies, my bosses and stuff, but I just didn’t like the atmosphere in the company, I wanted to do something myself.”

After moving to China permanently, Jan sold his share in his Czech company and began to “freelance” his way around China, working on various startups and projects.  He first got involved with Startup Grind Shenzhen as a volunteer.

“Then I went to a global leaders conference in Silicon Valley,” he noted.  The rest is history. The Startup Grind heads in SV asked him to spearhead the APEC region, and now he spends 95% of his time connecting people.

Jan further discussed Startup Grind’s growth and the importance of having a collaborative mindset.  He shared some of his goals for connecting more chapters within China and the APEC region.

Showing that he truly “walks the walk,” Jan spent the evening happily and patiently replying to the substantial number of people who wanted to get a word in with him personally.

From February 2018

Left Unsaid: Report on WeBelong Sustainability Conference

The 2017 WeBelong conference in Beijing was an excellent opportunity to re-familiarize with some of the leaders in the global environmental sustainability campaign, however, the format and content of some presentations as well as the prescribed social agenda left a lot wanting.

“I think we have moved past the stage where information gathered from websites will engage people.  People want to see innovative ideas as well as visual stimulation,” wrote Lim Zi Hui, a Singaporean exchange student at Peking University.  While there were several of these engaging and innovative presentations such as philanthro-prenur Bunker Roy’s touching presentation of the Solar Mama concept and designer Dan Roosegaarde’s stunning exhibition of cutting edge light designs to create a cleaner, greener Amsterdam, the two-day event also had a lot of promotional filler, and more than one unprepared speaker.  During the Produce and Consume Consciously axis of the program, one of the presenters was not only unprepared, but also significantly exceeded her speaking time.

Many presentations were very similar, if not repetitive.  There were four different media groups, all focused on “spreading awareness” of various issues in a myriad of topics.  Spark News focused on collecting and curating inspiring stories of social justice, while VegPlanet encouraged people to adopt a vegan lifestyle.

“At this point in the sustainability game, do we really need to focus efforts on spreading awareness?  I think most people are at some baseline, aware of the macro issues and some of the more obvious solutions.  Whether or not they care enough to do anything is a different story.  We don’t need to spread awareness, we need to make more people care,” wrote another Peking University exchange student.

A question brought forward by commercial promotions including Vegea Leather, Club Mediteranee, and Naked Resorts was why, in almost a decade of pitching the environmentally friendly lifestyle, it remains financially out of reach for many people.  The issue keeps being pushed aside on too many “large player” domestic political agendas, for example, the United States, and therefore, a truly environmentally friendly lifestyle is still unfortunately regarded as a frivolity by many.

The Beijing-based sustainability director of L’Oreal gave a lukewarm presentation culminating in a short promotional video with a panda, bringing up questions of who should take the lead in sustainability in mainstream business.  The current narrative reads that demand side is more potent than supply side.  In a hypothetical situation where the demand side has no interest in or information about sustainability practices, but does have brand awareness, the supplier can still be focused on sustainability in the supply chain, making the product more sustainable.  “But they don’t really care about this,” Lou-Anne Petite, another student reporter said softly.  “They only care about their PR.”

While event CEO Nathalie Bastianelli’s event planning and management skills are rightfully lauded, there were many more questions begging answers that unfortunately for now, are left unsaid.

Afternoon Fireflies

In late 2009, Tan Son Nhat International Airport in Ho Chi Minh City welcomed her visitors into a cramped, dusty, and sweltering terminal with a single creaky luggage carousel.  Eight years later, arrivals were greeted in a spotless air-conditioned room with a slew of tourist services among the multiple humming metal baggage rings.  The airport is also slated to complete an additional terminal.  Poised as Asia’s fifth tiger, the last decade has seen an emphasis on infrastructure development, with many global investment partnerships, especially with Japan.  Ideally located as a gateway to the Southeast Asia Economic Corridor, Vietnam is a key production center for Japanese companies. 

The dynamic relationship between Japan and Vietnam has never been more exciting to watch.  Japan International Cooperation Association (JICA), and the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) have been major sources of funds for infrastructure such as the Saigon East-West highway and the Saigon River tunnel.  Now, the Ho Chi Minh City metro, a mega-project with six planned lines and two under construction, is a testament to maintaining and deepening relationships via foreign direct investment. Japan is not only sending aid, they are providing technical know-how and project management techniques.  Line One is under construction under the supervision of Shimizu Corporation and Maeda Corporation.  Hitachi is the supplier of the subway carriages.  Despite multiple delays and estimated prices ballooning exponentially, the metro under Japanese supervision has not had a single fatality.  In contrast, a similar project in Hanoi managed by Chinese companies has had two accidents during its construction, strengthening anti-China, pro-Japan sentiment.

Pro-Japan sentiment is strongest in Indonesia, however, which has seen a more significant portion of overseas development assistance (ODA) loans from JICA and JBIC. No less than nine infrastructure projects have been funded by JBIC in Indonesia, the most recent one being the Jakarta MRT, scheduled for completion in 2020.  Myanmar, another Southeast Asian destination with a large land mass and considerable opportunities, has not received nearly as much ODA funds or press coverage.  Myanmar is significantly larger than Vietnam, and it is the starting point of the Indian “Look East” initiative, intended to bolster India’s relationship with the ASEAN bloc.

With the Jakarta MRT, an Indian high-speed rail, and the yet-untapped potential of Myanmar, what motivated Japan to get involved with this particular project?  Are there any specific mutual benefits for Japan?  Funding infrastructure projects in the developing world is one of the central purposes of JBIC and JICA, and the Ho Chi Minh City metro is a desperately needed solution to a growing urban jungle.  Simultaneously, Vietnam is helping to ease Japan’s labor shortage by sending people through industrial trainee and technical internship programs, and industrial companies like Katzden Architec are keen to hire more.  There is also the delicate political climate with China to consider, where a stronger alliance between Japan and Vietnam could possibly become more critical.  

5G Challenges Japan’s Tech Leadership

Japan, formerly the reigning tech king, seems willing to relinquish its throne in the mobile communication arena by its demonstrated lack of interest in creating a 5G friendly wireless ecosystem.  Historically taking a protectionist approach to its technology, by setting its own standards without regard to the international community, their compatibility has been compromised and seems destined to flame out.  According to the 2018 McKinsey report on Japanese telecom and media, domestic service vendors and ageing infrastructure, Japan is ill-equipped to service the future of consumer tech, much less remain one of its leaders.  Analysts might not be surprised then, that earlier this year, SoftBank withdrew its original investment funds for Japan’s adaptation of 5G networks.  This move has shocked other players, including KDDI, Rakuten, and NTT Docomo.  There is much speculation about SoftBank’s reasons for decreasing the investment value.  Softbank still has an extremely high monthly average revenue per user combined with a low monthly churn, but a laser-focus on upgrading existing hardware to be compatible with internet of things (IoT) capabilities, as well as the long-awaited 5G data network systems.  The existing 4G network system in Japan is showing signs of taxation, and with a focus on providing an increasing amount of services through mobile equipment, Japan is at a critical point for its telecom development. 

The McKinsey report recommended three actions for Japan to take should it wish to remain a tech leader.  Japan needs to limit its customization of telecom hardware, as this is causing stagnation on vendor-side provisional ability.  Playing by global standards will also help defray rising costs.  In that vein, equipment vendors need to be more strategic in building alliances and refocusing portfolios.  Finally, the government of Japan will need to be involved more heavily with service providers to set new industry standards with the onslaught of 5G.

Beyond The Chosen: EdTech and Employment

A new partnership between Microsoft and the European-based OpenClassrooms was announced last week in Paris. Specifically addressing the skills gap in artificial intelligence (AI), it is hailed as a “cost efficient pipeline” to meet employment needs in the tech sector. Hailed as “revolutionary,” the OpenClassrooms project-based, mentor-mentee relationship approach is further sharpening the cutting edge of online education.
A rose by any other name, correspondence lessons have made a mammoth breakthrough in the form of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC). Giants such as Coursera, Udacity, and edX were founded in 2012, the high point in the bell curve of MOOC availability. Designed with the purpose of bringing quality higher education to the masses, the statistics are quite good. In 2013, Coursera had upwards of five million registered users, and edX had reached 1.3 million.
The most unique feature of OpenClassrooms is the emphasis placed on employability after completing one of their courses.  The founders believe that satisfying careers should not be for a chosen few, but available to all.  The OpenClassrooms career path is not only backed by the French state, it also comes with a time estimate of how long it will take to find a new job upon completion of the program. The connection between education and employment is of central interest to CEO and co-founder Pierre Dubuc, who has written several articles about skills gaps seen from employer-side. While Coursera encourages users to flaunt their new skills and certificates on LinkedIn, courses come with no guarantee of enhanced employment circumstances and governments provide no recognition.

Current completion statistics aren’t spectacular for Coursera or any of the other content providers. Improved employment statistics remain unknown as well.  This might change as the next wave of improvements sets into MOOC and more project partnerships such as the one with Microsoft continue to expand.  The future shows promise.