The cost of free Pre-K. Who takes the consequences for poor choices? And, because it's Friday, something you might ... resonate ... with.
Herein lies (one of) the problem when the government gets involved in private business.
When the government starts getting too involved in the market, expect problems. Even with the best of intentions, having the government intrude deeply into things, having them greatly prop up and subsidize certain things can't help but have negative consequences.
The government-funded preschool in Colorado is just such an example. There are more details in the article below, but the basics are pretty straightforward.
The state originally told preschools that they would be paid on the number of seats they would have open for universal pre-K, but now they're going back on that and saying that they'll pay per eligible child actually enrolled.
Let's say that you had a preschool with 100 seats for 4 year olds for pre-K, but so far only had 20 enrolled. In the original scheme, the state would have paid you 100 x 10 or 1000 dollars, but under the changed scheme they'll only pay 20 x 10 or 200 dollars.
Quite a difference.
Now you can argue the fairness, rightness/wrongness of either method (personally I'm for the pay by the actual child). That's not the main thing to take away from this in my opinion.
No, the main thing to take away here is the consequences of government interfering so much in the market.
Imagine you were a school and knew that juicy pre-K money was coming. I'm not even hinting at malfeasance either: it is perfectly possible that someone running a preschool would figure a huge jump in enrollment when the education becomes free to the parents (not to tax payers or smokers), and prepare their business accordingly.
Now, the state, finding out the demand is below what they figured, is yanking back on that and saying they'll pay by the child.
Sad for your school because you've already invested. You bought the desks. You may have expanded your building. You may have added staff.
Now, the money that was to fund that will not be there.
It would be a lie to say that this only happens because the government got so involved. Businesses mis-time and misjudge often. It happens. It happens organically (so to speak) but it happens.
But, I think it's important to remember two things.
One, businesses probably wouldn't have invested as highly had not expected a huge government payout.
Two, the government should not be in the business of picking (or making) winners and losers.
The perils of too much central planning and interference in the economy are just now starting to show as the policies of the Progressive Democrats who run this state come into full flower.
One wonders what unforeseen and unpleasant consequences will be next.
https://coloradosun.com/2023/07/26/colorado-universal-preschool-funding-changes/
Shifting the burden of poor choices ...
Let me start off this post with the following: there are predatory, skeevy tow companies out there. There are companies whose practices are shadier than a forest.
That being said, there ALSO exist on this planet people who don't behave well, who are thoughtless, and who make poor choices.
Knowing that both of these things can be true, I want to present you now with an article I read recently about an interesting provision of the state's new Towing Bill of Rights. It's linked below.
There's a lot more detail in the article, but the high spots are pretty easy to relate.
By our state's new law, if someone cannot (or I suppose says they cannot) pay a towing bill, they are allowed to make a token payment of either $60 or 15% of the bill and get their car back. They still owe the remainder, but they'll have their car.
Some towing companies were apparently making people sign up for a "high interest" (the article was not very specific on details of the interest rates and terms but did quote one as being up near 12%, so I'm going to put the phrase here in quotes to indicate what I feel is its speculative nature) loans for the balance of their tow bill before getting their cars back.
The Attorney General sent out a letter to towing companies telling them that the loan programs are not allowed under the law and the case is now in front of an administrative law judge who will decide on whether or not requiring a loan is allowed under the law.
So, those are the details of the current fuss. Step back a second, however, and consider the larger statement policy like this makes.
Who should bear the responsibility when you do something wrong? Who has to deal with the consequences?
To hammer the point home, let's take up the case of the man profiled in the article. His parking pass expired and his car was towed. That led to a cascade of problems (he had to take a hired car to the tow yard and was late for work, and is now facing a $374 bill).
I feel for this individual. He made a dumb mistake and now has a big problem to deal with. But, should we write into policy things like the AG's letter mentions (see screenshot 1 attached)? Should we be going so far out of our way to prevent negative consequences for those who don't pay their bills by trying to minimize things like late fees and bad credit reports (see screenshot 2)?
I don't wish devastating consequences on anyone, but there's a sure way to avoid them: follow the rules. Make sure your parking pass is up to date. Make sure you parked in the right spot. Don't block other people. If you do get in trouble, pay your fines or make arrangements to do so and then keep your word.
This is something that I think is all too easily missed with the policy we've seen coming out of the Assembly lately. The feeling you get is that we, individual citizens, are hapless victims of circumstance. No more able to chart any of our own course in life than a bit of debris carried along by a river current.
I reject this and hope you do too. There are predatory companies and individuals out there, but that doesn't negate the fact that when I screw up, I am responsible. And I am the one who should face the consequences.
I feel weird making this case when it involves something as unsympathetic as a towing company, but that's precisely why we should be making this case. Today, it might be towing companies. Tomorrow, maybe landlords. Year after that, something closer to your heart or pocketbook.
https://www.cpr.org/2023/07/26/colorado-tow-companies-loan-agreements/
Resonance in a column of air.
This is the last one of the day (last one for a couple days actually--I'll be away from my computer tomorrow but back on Sunday), and you know what that means: something for fun, not related to politics.
I don't remember if I've mentioned this before, but there can sometimes be a little overlap between colloquial uses of a word and its use in physics. Often the everyday use is looser with physics being (as it should be) strict.
The word resonance would be an example.
Speaking with a friend you might discuss how an idea "resonates" with you. How it has a deep significance for you or touches you in some way.
When a physicist talks about resonance, it's almost always in the context that you are trying to push a physical system at its natural frequency. When you do that, there is a tremendous spike in the amplitude of the motion.
I have a real easy example to help you visualize. Imagine you're at a playground and pushing a child on a swing. Giving the kid a push and standing back to watch him go, you'll notice he moves at a frequency that depends on a fair number of things. How big the kid is, how long the chains are, etc.
Now imagine that he wants to go faster. How do you get a kid on a swing to go as fast as possible? You push in time with their swinging. Stepping in there to try and shove them faster by any other means will either deaden the motion or it will result in some pain for someone.
Almost every physical system (bridges, car suspensions, your limbs) has a frequency that, plucked or pushed and then left to its own devices, it prefers to move at. This is its "natural frequency". The value of this frequency depends on things like the geometry of the system, its mass, etc.
Almost every physical system will respond strongly when you push it at its natural frequency. If the wind is just right to vibrate the cables of a suspension bridge, the bridge responds by increasing the amplitudes of its swinging until it shakes itself apart (see the famous Tacoma Narrows, Galloping Gertie, bridge in the first video below). If you get a car with a loose front end suspension up to the exact right speed that would drive this suspension at its resonant frequency, you get a death wobble (something I can tell you from personal experience is a frightening occurrence--you have no control of the vehicle). An under the car video of a Jeep with a death wobble is second below.
The thing is, it needn't always be solid objects that resonate either.** A column of air can resonate if you drive it at its resonant frequency.
Church organs do it all the time and the frequency that you hear for any given pipe is (one of) the resonant frequencies for the length of that pipe.
Take a look at the screenshot attached. It gives the nomenclature for an organ pipe, but for our purposes it's enough to understand that air comes in at the bottom of the pipe and some of that air escapes out the mouth near the bottom.
That escaping air sets the column of still air in the standing pipe above to buzzing. If conditions are just right, the buzzing in the column will drive it at its resonant frequency and the organ pipe will produce a loud note (the pitch of which is set by the length of the pipe).
You can replicate this at home by simply blowing across the lip of a closed bottle. The blowing excites the air column in the bottle and sets it to resonating. The length of the pipe and how hard you blow determine how loud it can get.
I made a fun little video which I will be using in classes, but you guys get to see it here for the first time. It's linked last.
I don't think the computer mic does it justice; using my leaf blower on that pipe is really loud!
Have a happy end to the week and see you on Sunday!
**The idea of resonance is, in fact, quite a common and useful one in physics. Physicists often say that, for example, when a photon of radio energy from an MRI machine is absorbed by the proton in the nucleus of one of the water molecules in your body and causes it to "flip", it was resonant for that energy transition. That is the radio frequency the MRI machine puts out is exactly matching to the energy needed to cause that proton to flip.