4 - Tuesday, February 3, 2009
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The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
Edited and managed by students at
the University of Michigan since 1890.
420 Maynard St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
tothedaily@umich.edu
ROBERT SOAVE COURTNEY RATKOWIAK
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR MANAGING EDITOR
GARY GRACA
EDITOR IN CHIEF
Unsigned editorials reflect the official position oftthe Daily's editorial board. All other signed articles
and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.
Unstated rules
'U' must establish clear rules for judging residency status
Y ou might have a driver's license registered in this state.
You might pay taxes here. You might work here, live
here, get married here and say "pop" instead of soda. But
according to vague and inconsistent residency standards here at
the University, this doesn't mean you necessarily qualify for in-
state tuition. So what does? The truth is that, outside of the office
of the Registrar, no one really knows. The state of uncertainty
regarding residency status needs to change - the policy must be
standardized and widely publicized so that all prospective stu-
dents are aware if they qualify for in-state tuition.
He's coming out of jail like anyone else would:'
- Warren Evans, Wayne County Sheriff, on former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's
release from Wayne County Jail, as reported yesterday by the Detroit Free Press.
ELAINE MORTON URE CALLS E-MAIL ELAINE AT EMORT@UMICH.EDU
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. CS SIcsheOtr. o G -on iA es-Sc-irgsStOic.O, G-df rromSO-l- eDtos
Recession and depression myths
4
Last week, the Detroit News ran an arti-
cle about Keiva Shults, an Ann Arbor resi-
dent who has lived here, paid taxes here
and worked here for the past five years.
But when she applied to the University's
graduate program for nursing, she was
told that she was considered a Maryland
resident and would be charged out-of-state
tuition, regardless of the fact that she has
been living in this state for an extended
period of time. Shults fits the most basic
requirements to be qualified as a resident
of the state, yet she still was denied in-state
status. If Shults is not considered a resident
by the University, who is?
Unfortunately, situations like Shults's are
not uncommon. In fall 2007, the registrar's
office processed 1,941 residency requests
and denied 346. According to University
Regent S. Martin Taylor, who was quoted
in the Detroit News story, the University
judges these residency requests on a case-
by-case, "highly subjective basis." This is
especially concerning when taking into
account the fact that out-of-state under-
graduates pay about three times more in
tuition. And for many, residency status
could determine whether or not they can
afford to attend school at all.
Policies for determining residency at
the University need to be transparent and
available for any student with questions.
In order for this to happen, there needs to
be a standardized, fair and objective set of
guidelines in place to determine residency
status. What's more, students need to be
aware of this standard when making their
education plans.
The University might think higher
tuition is in its financial best interests, but
this campus will end up losing students
with great potential who just can't afford
the out-of-state bill. And since tuition
keeps rising while the availability of finan-
cial aid and scholarships steadily declines,
the University should be focusing as much
attention as possible on making education
affordable for everyone.
This is a problem that has existed, and
will continue to exist, until University offi-'
cials and the Board of Regents provide a
clearly defined system.
Most public universities share Michi-
gan's inability to explicitly explain what
qualifies a student's residency, but that
doesn't mean we should keep up the trend.
There is no reason for students to have to
wonder whether they will be classified
as in-state or out-of-state. It's up to the
Regents to put the question of residency
status to rest by establishing a rule that
makes sense, because making residency
decisions on a "highly subjective basis"
isn't good enough.
With the nation in the grips
of a failing economy, the
Obama administration is
prepared to step up
the government's
fight against a pos-
sible Great Depres-
sion II. The types
of solutions that
the government is
considering, how-
ever, are the exact
same mistakes that
caused and wors- VINCENT
ened the first Great PATSY
Depression, when
Herbert Hoover
and Franklin
Roosevelt turned an acute recession
into a chronic depression. The popu-
lar history of the Great Depression
goes as follows: the Roaring Twenties
were a period of unrestricted laissez-
faire capitalism, which naturally
became unbalanced, and the unwise
policies of quiescent Hoover caused
the system to fail and created a mas-
sive depression. The depression was
solved by Roosevelt's policies of gov-
ernment intervention into the econo-
my and the onset of World War II.
Thankfully, most of that tale is
completely false.
The Roaring Twenties was not a
period of unrestricted, laissez-faire
capitalism, mainly because the Fed-
eral Reserve and other central banks
around the world poured in tons of
easy credit. Much like the current cri-
sis, when any central bank expands
credit (lowers the interest rate), it
causes disturbances for investors who
then misallocate capital into unprofit-
able investments or malinvestments.
The malinvestments usually occur in
the stock and real estate market, and
would not have been undertaken if it
were not for the interest rate expan-
sion. When the central bank attempts
to slow the pace of the credit expan-
sion, like the Federal Reserve did in
1928, the bubble bursts and causes a
stock market crash, a decline in real
estate prices and a general financial
panic. Artificial credit expansion
throughout the Roaring Twenties led
to phony prosperity not as a result of
laissez-faire capitalism, but rather
because of government interference
into the market.
Electedin1928,HerbertHooverand
his policies were the most interven-
tionist in U.S. history. His program to
end the Depression included keeping
food prices and wages artificially high,
propping up weak firms, construct-
ing massive public works (ever heard
of the Hoover Dam?), implementing
monetary expansion and enforcing
protectionism as evidenced by the
Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. These types
of policies have become standard pro-
cedure by the federal government
during recessions, so this has become
what people view as laissez-faire capi-
talism. But the free-market position
on recessions is to stop inflating the
bubble by raising interests, decreasing
the size of government and allowing
malinvestments to become liquidated.
Only by following this path will the
recession be eliminated and not just
papered over.
Comparable in size to the stock
market crash of 1929 and the result-
ing monetary contraction, the 1839-
43 Depression also saw a rise in
consumption (21 percent) and Gross
National Product (16 percent). In the
1839-43 Depression, there was no
"federal response" and the economy
healed much faster. But during the
1929-33 contraction, with Herbert
Hoover's proto-New Deal policies in
place, there was a decrease in con-
sumption (-19 percent) and GNP (-30
percent).
Franklin Roosevelt merely expand-
ed the Hoover playbook and with
similar results. FDR not only failed
to solve the Great Depression, he also
doubled the public debt. In 1932, FDR
inherited an unemployment rate of
25 percent - in 1938, it was still 19
percent. His plans never worked at
solving the crisis for a simple rea-
son: government cannot produce
new resources; they can only employ
resources that are already produced.
By taxing and spending, the govern-
ment shifts resources from private
usage to public usage. All that the
New Deal programs accomplished
was a shift of resources from one
group of taxpayers to another.
The last aspect of the Great
Depression Myth is the belief that
World War II "got us out of it." This
makes even less sense than believing
in the success of the New Deal - at
least New Deal programs did not
destroy resources. When we built
massive fleets and sent them into the
middle of the Pacific to get destroyed,
as we did in World War II, we did not
create jobs. This was an economic
Gov't intervention
wasn't the answer
then or now.
waste, with labor and material being
emiployed for purposes other than
usage by the general public. We are
now worse off because that steel and
electronic equipment is at the bottom
of the ocean and not part of trains,
radios or consumer goods.
The Depression ended because of
the destruction of most of the world's
industrial base, a repeal of most New
Deal-era programs and a return to
normal production following the
war. Recessions cannot be cured or
fought, but are just the result of an
earlier phase of malinvestments that
need to be liquidated.
So now we are left with the unfor-
tunate situation where the federal
government is determined to stop the
Second Great Depression by repeat-
ing the same interventionist mistakes
that they committed in the 1930s. But
perhaps this time we can convince
them to allow the market to heal
itself, and not begin a decade long
economic slump.
Vincent Patsy can be reached
at vapatsy@umich.edu.
4
4
4
CHRIS KOSLOWSKI
Drawing complaints
4
This viewpoint was submitted as a rebuttal
to last week's Letter to the Editor by Alexander
Vilagosh (Daily acted irresponsibly by running
cartoon, 01/29/09).
In response to Elaine Morton's recent cartoon
(Nature Calls, 12/08/2008), it was irresponsible
and dangerous for the Daily to publish a cartoon
that anthropomorphized Christmas trees; this
gives a false representation of the issues behind
protecting the environment.
Christmas trees still lingering in the homes
of Ann Arbor's environmentally unconscious
were purchased from a tree lot or cut from the
pristine wilderness. Thus, these trees had no
potential of ever being "human" - no more so
than any tree you might stumble upon while
taking your dog or significant other for a walk
through our beloved Arboretum. By anthro-
pomorphizing the trees, the cartoon implied
that they have the feelings and emotions of
a human. After one to five years of growth
(the point at which many pine trees are cut to
become Christmas trees), this is simply not the
case.
While many would try to draw links between
this debate and the global warming debate,
they are two completely separate issues. It
is unknown whether pine trees, or any type
of tree for that matter, develop emotions to a
level at which they can be considered human
and have a right to life. But that point certain-
ly does not occur within the one to five years
before they are cut for the Christmas season.
Of course there is also the fact that a tree could
never "be human" anyway, though I do not
believe the cartoonist was going for scientific
accuracy.
Using artificial trees and turning off Christ-
mas lights after the celebration of the Epiphany
on Jan. 6 might quell the onslaught of climate
change. But research on these issues requires
the support of the general population so that
appropriate funding can be allocated to these
environmental programs. The good that can
come from this research far outweighs the bad.
Making Christmas trees have human charac-
teristics - even in a cartoon - could influence
understanding of the issue without factual
basis. While I do not believe this was the inten-
tion of Elaine Morton, the cartoon's potential
effect on public perception should have been
considered.
Chris Koslowski is a Daily cartoonist.
E-MAIL JASON AT MAHAKIAJ@UMICH.EDU
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR:
Readers are encouraged to submit letters to the editor. Letters should be less than 300 words and must
include the writer's full name and University affiliation. Letters are edited for style, length, clarity and
accuracy. All submissions become property of the Daily. We do not print anonymous letters.
Send letters to tothedaily@umich.edu.
4
SEND LETTERS TO: TOTHEDAILY@UMICH.EDU
Foreign languages an essential
part of college education
simply do not nece
English. But it is
and reputation of
to instill in its stu
cultures and in wa
essitate fluency ina language other than
obvious that a school with the merit
the University of Michigan should try
dents an interest in the world, in other
ays of thinking that are foreign and pos-
fortable. It is frightening to think of a
ll-educated" people who are frustrated
e thought of committing themselves to
n something as benign and beneficial as
;e.
{
JASON MAHAKIAN
§ (vi
,I
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OR ER?
-d
TO THE DAILY: sibly even uncom
The viewpoint expressed by Edward McPhee (For- nation full of "we
eign Language Frustration, 02/02/2009) was one of the and angered at th
most sophomoric and stereotypically "American" I have a course of study i
ever heard. While I understand that the foreign language a foreign language
requirement at the University is intense and time-con-
suming, its value in both academia and the world cannot Caitlin Clarke
be overemphasized. Learning a foreign language teaches LSA senior
the brain to think differently about the world and express
thoughts through new avenues. Foreign language study
not only expands one's ability to communicate cross-cul- Daily com
turally and understand global processes, it also increases
one's understanding of the structure and syntax of one's publishing
native language.
The United States is one of the very few nations that
does not automatically produce bilingual or multilingual TO THE DAILY:
citizens as a natural fact of culture and adulthood. This I find a lot at
reflects poorly on us in international relations and global distance relations
communications. The author naively suggests that "it break to a climax,
seems as if everyone speaks English already." However, es vulgarity for c
expanding globalization suggests that more people need reputable paper t
to speak more languages - not that McPhee can function sex and relationsh
on the world stage with only the English language, a pass- tion on an airplan
ing grade in Italian 232 and American ways of thinking. clearly slapstick h
I have been to many places in which English is not only ism. The line in w
not a primary language - it is not understood at all. If the like something an
United States has laws against English-only workplaces, first found out abs
which it does, then it follows that the United States should for making me los
have laws against producing English-only citizens. I take reporting and you
into account that some students have genuine learning
differences that make learning a foreign language exceed- Andrew Heffler
ingly difficult. I also understand that some fields of study LSA freshman
promised standards by
Spring Break article
fault with the article regarding long
hips over Spring Break (Bringing your
02/02/2009). The article clearly utiliz-
heap laughs. I thought the Daily was a
hat could tackle serious issues such As
hips with some integrity. But masturba-
e? Lube in three-ounce bottles? That is
umor with no intention for real journal-
hich "come" is changed to "cum" seems
n eighth-grade girl would do when she
out the word. Good job, Michigan Daily,
se a lot of respect for the quality of your
r paper.
11 Y 1 f :,!Zft i