2012 conventions 2012 election 2013 session 2013 special election arts arts and culture author ballot measures basketball bomb books boy scouts budget bullying business charlie hales children clackamas climate change coal college courts crime culture culture club democrats drugs economy education environment family film fluoride food gay rights guns handguns health health care health insurance high school history housing immigration international internet kitzhaber law legislature lgbt literary arts living marijuana marriage media medicine mental health military minor parties mohamed mohamud movies music native americans news newspaper obama olympics oregon our town parenting pers photography police politcs politics port portland portland business journal president prevention public safety religion republicans rnc romney rural salem sam adams sandy hook schools science shooting sports suicide supreme court taxes technology television terrorism theater third parties transportation union university of oregon washington wildfire women

As a parent of children that my wife and I struggle to keep bilingual in both English and Mandarin, I feel you left out the importance of the parent's attitude in determining the children's language skills.  If the parents value the children speaking in a language other than that used at home they need to convince their children how important it is.  I constantly tell my 5 and 6 yo kids how many more opportunities they will have if they are fluent in Mandarin when they grow up. We also use "tricks" to make language study appealing, such as restricting about half of their television to Mandarin movies we own on DVD.   (This worked beautifully in reverse with English while we lived in China.)  Of course these concepts need to be reversed in the case of ESL.  But I believe that to be most successful in second language acquisition, parents need to give up some amount of communication with their kids to help them improve in the language the parents do not speak.

posted 3 years, 4 months ago
view in context

orangelady -- No confusion here - Actually it sounds like you agree that when more people retire than enter the workforce (for whatever reason -- lets say due to a decling birth rate) there are economic problems.  Now let's say that we have an economy with a labor force and a real gdp growth rate larger than the growth rate of the population, for whatever reason.    More jobs are being created than there are people being added to the economy to fill them, even if everyone in the country worked.  Exactly what problem is caused by older workers in this economy not retiring?

If you can give us some references to journal articles by some of these "respected economicsts" that describe these problems, that too would be enlightening....

posted 4 years, 2 months ago
view in context

I was quite surprised by the comments in fear of non-retirees plugging up one end of the "employment pipeline" so that younger people do not have jobs to enter into.   The study of economic growth tells us that as long as an economy grows, jobs will continue to be created. When countries grey to the point where more people are retiring than entering the workforce, like Japan, that's when there are problems.  Not the other way around.  The US is in the envious position of having had steady growth in recent decades and the ability (to some extent at least) of turning on or off the flow of immigration to take up any slack.  As long as these continue, we will have jobs for all who want to work.  Please dont let the current but transient reshuffling in the job market validate comments that dont make economic sense.

(Of course there are unusual conditions, like huge and sustained spikes in productivity that could mean fewer jobs in an economy.  But that would affect everyone regardless of who is retiring, or not.)

posted 4 years, 2 months ago
view in context