What Starts Here Changes the World: Tips for Life Success

The following are the remarks by Naval Adm. William H. McRaven, ninth commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, at the University-wide Commencement at The University of Texas at Austin, TX on May 17. An inspiration no matter what your age or career focus:

Is college worth it?

A recent issue of The Economist addresses the issue of return-on-investment for major US universities.  The summarize the research of PayScale, a research firm, has gathered data on the graduates of more than 900 universities and colleges, asking them what they studied and how much they now earn. The company then factors in the cost of a degree, after financial aid (discounts for the clever or impecunious that greatly reduce the sticker price at many universities). From this, PayScale estimates the financial returns of many different types of degree (see chart):

As well, there is a link to a page with an interactive graph that allows you to selected various criteria for analysis.

Dozens of Planes Have Vanished

Some 83 aircraft have been declared “missing” since 1948, according to data compiled by the Aviation Safety Network. The list includes planes capable of carrying more than 14 passengers and where no trace — bodies or debris — has ever been found.  Bloomberg created a useful graphic illustrating numbers and locations.

A look at US Public Spending

A wonderful group called the National Priorities Project has taken some time to graphically illustrate items such as where our taxes go and what is the relative priorities of national spending.  Using projections from 2015, an interesting picture emerges.

First, let's look at overall spending.

At first cut it is obvious that a big portion of money is spent on two major social programs, over 60%.  These are mandated by law and so Congress has no ability to reduce these expenses within the budget process.

Given the interest component on the national debt (currently at 6%), this only allows for 30% discretionary spending.

As

As you can see above, much of this is spent on Defense items (over 60% when we include Veteran Benefits).

So, when it is all said and done, all the political posturing often focused on these other issues (education, energy, science, transport, etc.) is really about 12% of the budget.

The most dangerous element of this mix is the interest on the debt.  With interest rates the lowest in decades, at less than 1% for short term treasury bill and notes, it is still at 6%.  If interest rates were to only double, which they will surely to at some point, the expense suddenly leaps above 10% of spending. If interest rates move to historical rates of 5% or 6%, then the payment on interest will overwhelm any discretionary and much military spending.

*****
Another way is to view this from the point of view of how are taxes spent.  This National Priorities chart below takes the above illustrations (from 2013) and shows it in a slightly different fashion.

It’s no secret that the world’s population is on the move, but it’s rare to get a glimpse of where that flow is happening. In a study released in today’s Science, a team of geographers used data snapshots to create a broad analysis of global migrations (diagram below) over 20 years:

 An article on Quartz by Nick Stockton provides a bit more analysis by country. 

 Migration data is counted in two ways: Stock and flow. “The stocks are the number of migrants living in a country,” says Nikola Sander, one of the study’s authors. Stock is relatively easy to get—you just count who is in the country at a given point of time. Flow is trickier. It’s the rate of human traffic over time.

While the results of the migration study aren’t particularly groundbreaking, there are two interesting insights:

+

1) Adjusted for population growth, the global migration rate has stayed roughly the same since around  since 1995 (it was higher from 1990-1995).

+

2) It’s not the poorest countries sending people to the richest countries, it’s countries in transition—still poor, but with some education and mobility—that are the highest migratory contributors.

+

“One of the conclusions they make in the paper, is the idea as countries develop, they continue to send more migrants, and at some point they become migrant-receiving regions themselves,” says Fernando Riosmena, a geographer from the University of Colorado, who did not contribute to this research, but is collaborating with one of the authors on a future paper.

+

A few other noteworthy results:

+

1) The largest regional migration is from Southeast Asia to the Middle East. This is largely driven by the huge, oil-driven, construction booms happening on the Arabian Peninsula.

+

2) The biggest flow between individual countries is the steady stream from Mexico to the US. (In fact, the US is the largest single migrant destination)

+

3) There’s a huge circulation of migrants among sub-Saharan African countries. This migration dwarfs the number leaving Africa, but the media pay more attention the latter because of the austerity-driven immigration debates in Europe.

Simple mathematics and the human race

A truly stimulating (and eye-opening) presentation by Dr. Bartlett on the simple impact of various types of growth over time, especially as we look toward major issues in front of humankind.

Just watch for the first 15 minutes and learn some amazing (but obvious) implications of even low rates of consistent growth.  You may disagree politically with his recommendations, but it is hard to refute the arithmetic...

Why Not Be An Idea Expert?

The Population Circle

Global Birth / Death Map

This interactive simulation, posted recently by Atlantic Magazine, gives an eerily omniscient vantage of real-time birth and deaths on the world as it fills.

Just think, in 1950, there were 2.5 billion humans. Today there are just over 7 billion. In another 30 years, according to U.S. Census Bureau projections, there will be more than 9 billion.  

Brad Lyon, who developed the map, has a doctoral degree in mathematics and does software development. He wanted to make those numbers visual. Last year he and designer Bill Snebold made a hugely popular interactive simulation map of births and deaths in the U.S. alone—the population of which is on pace to increase 44 percent by 2050. 

With this version, Lyon now takes on the world.  Below is just a snapshot - click this link to go to the interactive map.

"The visualizations here, while pulling together some numbers," Lyon said, "are still qualitative because we of course don't know what the pattern is really like. However, we do know where the numbers end up, so they must get there somehow."