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Thursday, May 29, 2014
The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com

Thursday, May 29, 2014
The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com

15

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RELEASE DATE- Thursday, May 29,2014


Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
ACROSS 2 God with a 35 Skin So Soft 46 Send in
1 Chain namedlfor culture symbol teller 47 British nobles
two oceans 3 Diamond group 36 Babershop 48 Barbecue venues
6 Diet guru Jenny 4 Trial VIPs division? 49 Influence
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14 Patch plant 6 Walkon tiptoe 3 Traditional genre sea dmonster
15 Cuban dance 7 Like noses, at 41 Gives a tongue- 53 Bridge
16 'The Lead With times lashing 54 Blaze
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17 *Aperture 9Hebrew:Ben:: 45 One usually 58 Flowery
19u._ polloi Amabic - keeping to the composition
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21 Fit American to 11 *Part of a class ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
orbit Earth act
22Oakproduct...or 12Stockmarket B A H A M A S T E A B A G S
24*Words said 13Confdentwayto L E a A N N E M A N UwLEvG
between slove cmmswords LEBANON EMANUEL
courses 18Earnestly L 0 0 P R A F T R I A G E
26 Email again appealed S E Rt I Rt M N
29 ieperch 23GeyCuporg. T W I a S E R RO G O R P
30Seed-bearing 24"ShowBoat" R I N S O C E R E S R H O
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31Man a 25 Takesadvantage UNDER ALA TEBOW
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34Hiker'sreference 26It'softenskipped K E E L R O N O N S T A R
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commonly heard 32 Slippery, perhaps L A T E F E E L E T S S E E
39 Sean used in 33 Pothook shape xwordeditor@aol.com 05/29/14

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THESIS EDITING. LANGUAGE,
organization, format. All Disciplines.
734/996-0566 or writeon@iserv.net

Cynics and
X-Men
The first draft of this column
opened with a phrase resembling
the preachings of an unhinged
cultist or, more accurately, Rich-
ard Simmons: The Cinephile Ver-
sion. A TI-89
calculator, a
pompous lit-
tle notepad,
muted mum-
bling, giddy
giggling - all
sealed together
in a polished, AKSPAy
plastic coat of SETH
enthusiasm to
form: 'It's been
168 hours, 37
minutes and 12 seconds since
"X-Men: Days of Future Past"
debuted at midnight screen-
ings across America. Since Brian
Singer changed the world. Since I
became a man...'
It was bad. I hadn't just board-
ed the hype train - it had bar-
reled through me, screeched to
a halt, backed over my lifeless,
flattened corpse before sliding
open its doors to let Colossus hop
out of the conductor's cabin and
stomp me further into the ground
with his size 18, steel-clad feet.
Pancaked underneath this idyl-
lic state of fanboy fervor, I lay
there. I clung to fond memories
of Quicksilver waltzing through
blissful slow-mo, humming along
to Jim Croce's "Time In A Bottle",
until finally, A.O. Scott's unnec-
essarily massive forehead tun-
neled out of the earth to scrape
me off those train tracks and back
to reality.
I don't like A.O. Scott. He has
his moments; he's one of the
chief film critics at The New
York Times and holding that
job, he's thereby guaranteed a
significant chunk of haters who
consider him an extension of the
stuffy arrogance that has for so
long defined movie critic ste-
reotypes - a Harvard-educated
white dude leaning forward in a
cinema hall seat with Legal Pad
in reach. His mouth is agape, one
hand touching his forehead as
if in preparation to shoot some
Cyclops-style, face-melting rays
of critical thought. All the while,
of course, being paid to come up
with snarky remarks or comment
on a film's philosophical, formal-

Does a growing federal debt
threaten the credit rating of the
U.S. government? Does the budget
deficit cause inflation? Will a
federal minimum wage of $10 an
hour reduce employment?
Should you think that economics
isa"hardscience,"Iremindyouthat
when I was an economics graduate
student at Michigan during the
second half of the 1960s you were
taught that the answers were (in
order) "no," "rarely" and "definitely
not." But today, the eponymous
economics student, obeying the
entreaty on the old graduate library
to "be still and learn," would enter
on his iPad, "very likely," "almost
always" and "yes."
In those bygone days of
yesteryear, Michigan economics
occupied the mainstream of the
discipline - even more, was the
bedrock of the mainstream -
Keynesian for macroeconomics and
neoclassical for microeconomics.
Michigan's particular twist on this
incompatible heterodox union was
to treat macro as the serious part
and micro as a hoop through which
the neophyte economist must jump.
The difference between neo-
classical economics and heterodox
economics both then and now is
how each defines the subject of the
discipline. For the neoclassicals
the "economic problem" is how to
allocate scarce resources in face
of unlimited demands. At Michi-
gan in the 1960s, I learned quite a
different definition of economics.
Before explaining the alternative,
let's pursue the implications of the
scarce resources paradigm for the
debate over the federal govern-
ment's budget deficit.
Because resources are scarce,
a country lives beyond its means
when its government runs deficits
and goes into debt. The debt mustbe
repaid from the scarce resources of
the future. This is the deficit crisis
in a nutshell; people and politicians
foolishly allowing the government
to mislead them into believing that
a free lunch can be found in budget
deficits. The world would be an eas-
ier place if resources were abundant
and needs limited, but we must face
reality. If we do not, the operations
of markets will bring the reality of
scarcity home to us. Markets guide
the allocation of scarce resources
to their best use and going against
markets is a fool's game.
A very large proportion of the
adult population of the United
States accepts this parable of scarce

means and unlimited needs even if
innocent of the underlying theory.
Isn't that what population growth
and a limited earth add up to poli-
cies of austerity, for households
or governments? Isn't it no more
than the consumption excesses of
humans coming home to roost?
Actually, no. As I learned in the
1960s when an undergraduate at
Texas and a graduate student at
the University, the scarce-means-
unlimited-needs story is not
reality. It's analytical construction
that contradicts reality. Resources
are not scarce. Economics is about
the allocation of scarce resources
among unlimited needs to the same
extent that astronomy is the study
of horoscopes.
The most important resource in
any society is the laboring ability of
its population. At the end of 2010,
one of every 10 members of the U.S.
labor force was unemployed, and by
the latest statistics unemployment
is still well above 6 percent. With
this level of unemployment, we
should not be surprised that
utilization of production capacity is
below 80 percent. Idle workers, idle
factories and offices, and homes in
Detroit and other cities standing
empty and abandoned. Resources
are scarce?
To put the matter simply, when
something is in surplus, it is not
scarce. I learned that bit of rock-
et science studying economics at
Michigan. The remote possibility
that resources could suffer from a
shortage in the future does not make
scarcity economics plausible. If soci-
ety does not use all of its resources,
there is no danger of running out. In
most countries in most years, labor
and the machinery to employ that
labor are not scarce.
So what is the central economic
problem in a market society? Not
how to allocate scarce resources;
we can be sure that is wrong. The
central problem is how to use pro-
ductively the resources available
to society. Unregulated markets
do not provide the solution to that
problem. What, then, is the eco-
nomics problem, in contrast to the
alchemy of scarce resources? Eco-
nomics is the study of how society
brings its available resources into
production, and distributes that
production among its members.
John Weeks is a University alumni
and Professor Emeritus of Economics,
School of Oriental & African Studies
at the University of London.

JOHN WEEKS
What is economics?

Trigger warning: mental health
issues and substance abuse
There are so many things I find
interesting
(read: down-
right strange)
about culture l
here in good
old America.k
The one that I
really struggle
with the most, VICTORIA
though, is our NOBLE
bizarre ten- _
dency to, for
lack of a better
word, baby young adults. It's a shel-
tering mechanism as far as I can
tell, which we use to protect youth
fromthe massive,terrible problems
of our world. But childhood isn't
all it's cracked up to be either, and
Americans kids have all sorts of
problems unique to their age group
and generation. Who should solve
those problems? Why the kids, of
course.
Too bad schools aren't letting
them. Instead of allowing
students to openly discuss,
the source of all truly decent
solutions, difficult problems
like adolescent mental health,
academic stress, substance
abuse and bullying remain
wholly unsolved and partially
unaddressed. Herein lies
the problem: all those adults
contemplating these issues
already made it through their
teenage years. No wonder so
many adults write them off as
"part of growing up." There's a
selection affect at work - those
suffering the most can't be part
of the solution when the adults
are in charge.
Madeline Halpert and Eva
Rosenfeld, two students at an Ann
Arbor high school, noticed that
despite the fact about one in four
American adults have a diagnosed
mental disorder, it's still difficult
for so many to talk about, especially
in high school. The absurd, illogical
and damaging stigmatization
silences personal stories on the
subject. So, disconcerted with the
absence of personal experience
in the mental health discussion,
Halpert and Rosenfeld strove to
use their positions as managing
editors at their high school
newspaper to change the nature
of the debate. The girls, with help
from other members of staff,
compiled the stories of several
students' mental health struggles
including"prescription abuse, drug

addiction, insomnia ... an
depression," Halpert sai
interview with The Daily.
Awesome right? Here
girls working to combat o
deadliest problems faci
demographic. However
school administration d
The dean of the scho
support the project, Halpe
"She didn'twanttorisk
safety in any way. Our d
that she talked to a ment
professional, who said tha
about depression could
trigger another occurren
she said.
Apparently they've
heard of trigger w
Halpert and Rosenfeld'
opinion piece discussi
own struggles with de
and their school's refusa
the stigma associatedN
disorder, which the N
Times decided to publisl
Halpert and Rosenfe
in their op-ed that th
"shocked" by their dean's:
but I can't say
that I really am.
When I was in I
high school,
a piece that I mor
wrote was met
with similar
disapproval.
The article

d mainly called for: opening the discus-
d in an sion about difficult student health
issues. The American media has
are two a gross tendency to wrap the high
.ne of the school experience up in pretty
ng their paper, marketing partying cliches
, their to the public. But, for many stu-
isagreed. dents, this could not be further
ol didn't from their felt reality. The disso-
rt said. nance between what students feel
student's at, or caused by, school and what
lean said they are shown by countless media
al health messages can make students feel
t reading even more depressed, abnormal
possibly and alone.
ce of it," Because the propensity to
misrepresent is so large, student
never media has the obligation to correct
'arnings. the inaccurate characterizations
wrote an of their experience. High school
ng their is different for everybody, yet, in
pression a way, common threads - both
. to fight light and dark - run through the
with the student experience. If a student
ew York athlete were injured on the field, I
h. doubt that administrators would
ld wrote forbid the school newspaper from
ey were covering it. But if that same person
response, were to reveal they suffered from
depression?
The quotes,
-gh school is anecdotes and
emotion would
'e than academic be severely
restrained at
preparation. my old high
school and so
many others

Empowering student journalists

40 Call off
41 Underground
anchors
42 Taming pert
43 Mine find
45 Uke sime
partner
46 *It can be a
palnful reminder
51 Atelier fixture
52 Mission where
Jim Bowiefell
53 Hub WNW of
LAS
56 Mohawked
muscleman
57 'Sister's symbol
60 In the infirmary
61 Holdwater
62 Maydlin
63 Lao-
64 Irritabie
65 Fast-growing
sthool's need,
perhaps
DOWN
1 Seaman
descriptor

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By David Steinberg 05129114
(c)2014 Tribune Content Agency, LLC

chronicled the
explosive riseinstudentuseofK2,a
formerly legal synthetic marijuana
substance that can cause severe,
violent reactions in some users. I
interviewed a student who gave a
personal account of being high on
the drug. I later found myself in the
principal's office, and eventually
removed pieces of the article
linking the student, and effectually
the school, from the substance
abuse problem. A year before I
joined my high school's paper, the
same principal directed writers to
remove personal accounts from a
story about student depression.
Prior review and restraint
is more common than many
realize. Supreme Court decisions
on Tinker v. Des Moines and
Hazelwood v.Kuhlmeier expressly
allow school administrators the
option of prior review and prior
restraint. But, by overextending
this power, school officials are
silencing student voices,
I identify with Halpert and
Rosenfeld. They tried to do what
educators, public health advocates
and even this opinion section have

like mine.
Throughthisdoublestandard,high
school officials contribute to the
horrifying mental health stigma
that their students have their
courage and will to solve.
More importantly, schools
need to prepare students to think
independently and challenge the
tenants of society. Prior review
obliterates student responsibility,
their ability to challenge power
relations and lead discussion on
issues at their school. If we don't
allow and encourage this type
of engagement in high schools,
what kind of adults can we expect
these students to become? Student
journalism is undeniably a venue
for promising discussion. It's
an important outlet to open and
set the tone for so many other
forums. High school is more than
academic preparation. Students
should graduate with deepened
understanding and empathy for
the broad array of difficulties that
others may face.
- Victoria Noble can be
reached at vjnoble@umich.edu.

MICHICANDAILY.COM