L.e.a.r.n.i.n..g...

April 17 2002 was my first day at my first job. I have completed 23 years of having a software programming job last week. I have been employed all along these 23 years pretty much. It has been a good run overall and I'm most refined now, than I have ever been. 

Was thinking about my work life and my life prior to when I was a student.

 

When I was in School and in Engineering college, I would be sitting in the class room during lectures. I realized then and I remember now - I didn't understand what they were talking - no matter what subject it was. Sometimes - I probably listened to the first 5 to 10 minutes may be, then got distracted to think about something else. I was just merely sitting there, but mentally I was far away thinking about something else. I wondered if everyone around me are just pretending to listen or even they are lost like me. At least they were good to pretend. I do not consider myself smart amongst my class mates. Just an ordinary student who will just make it through the exams. Over time - I have come a long way and even when in School, I realized I am good at reading myself and understanding. In fact all my exam preparations was fresh new reading from the books. I was appalled when reading it during the exam season - The lecturer who tutored us on that topic really didn't make it interesting even though the concepts I just read and found out wasn't that bad. So during exams, I just read 60-70% of it and also I wrote in my own words. I remember while writing in exams - I try to quote the book sentence and not satisfied with that explanation - I explain more in different way in the next sentence - so that its crystal clear. I always liked how I told it better than how the book explained it. It was my understanding that stood apart. Indian examiners expect everything to be quoted from books, and it is not a surprise I didn't score well in any exams. But I was always happy to "know" things from the book and had my own understanding on key technical topics. Programming was one such thing - I have been earning a living of that for the past 23 years. I am not super smart in programming - But I am very perfect on whatever I do in it. I have seen my colleagues who are not doing that. So the school and college didn't make any difference to my intellect. Whatever I learnt - I learnt it myself "outside" of the class room. The influence of any of the lecturers was not minimum, but zero in my case. That is a true statement.

 

Long back, the process of learning was to going to a Gurukul and staying with a Guru. The guru taught you everything and you stayed with him 24 hours - all day. You learn by close collaboration. If you wanted to cut hair for a living - you work for an established barber in the town. You see how he operates, he teaches you his approach, then gives you smaller tasks, then he allows you to experiment in his full view - corrects you, refines you and you stay with him for years to understand everything about the skills. After sufficient training - with his consent & blessings, you move on to do it yourself. This was kind of how it used to work for any profession. This method of a "learning" - we know works. The training is extensive and over a long period of time. It was a working model. The disadvantage being - only some people can be trained this way. The count is very less.

 

Modern School teaching - is a "mass learning". Instead of a personal trainer - the tutor will stand in front of a group of students mostly 50+ people will lecture the whole thing. It is up to the students to capture what all the lecturer says. From what I know - 80% of what was taught in school that day is forgotten by that evening. Words flew from the teachers mouth into the student's ears - only to be evaporated in the air. Learning needs re-enforcement of knowledge repeatedly over multiple days for the students to remember. A casual explanation - in whatever way isn't going to stick the intellectual knowledge to the listeners. Moreover not all students are captured by the same words. Each one needs to be told in a different manner, so that they get their head around that. Most often - the teachings are wrongly understood. One day i told my wife and daughter - Imagine there is a cow here in the living room. I gave them a minute to imagine and asked them to write down what they saw in their imagination. I wrote my own small list. We reviewed all our list afterwards. The color of the cow didn't match. Whether it was sitting or standing didn't match. What side its looking at didn't match. How big was the animal didn't match. Turns out - all three people were imagining completely different things even though we are attempting the same thought. This happens every day all day - even on brand new topics. Just as the first step gone wrong- anything that follows goes bizarre there after. The new learning doesn't happen - most of the time. Say a tutor teaches programming to a set of students - it turns out, the student is hearing that for the first time. It is absolutely important that he absorbs the basics right - without fear of it and with clarity. Usually if the first learning scares the student out - and he is unable to recover for years. Many Engineering graduates are afraid of programming - because it was not introduced to them in an interesting way. They create a permanent fear in their mind and unable to sustain in jobs that need  hi-tech engineering and mathematical skills. Fear is the baseline how schools and colleges operate. Only with the fear they can control 50+ students. You talk in class - you meet the principal. You score less marks in exams - you are asked to bring your parents to meet the teachers. The whole thing operates by creating fear in the minds of the students. With fear - no learning can happen in its true sense.

 

The tutoring itself is second-hand knowledge. The teacher needs to understand the book and explain to the students. The student gets "second hand" information first - usually its half-baked, badly explained, includes missing information, uninteresting and vague. Because it is second hand information - it cannot be articulated well enough. Also people who end up as teachers are those who didn't succeed in getting real-world jobs. The only use value of their acquired knowledge is to teach it to another student. It doesn't trigger curiosity. A good lecture must create curiosity amongst the listeners - even days/years later.

 

I read books and I often repeat them particularly the ones that deal with trading. When I repeat my books - I realize that the first time I read a book - I become aware. The next time I read - I begin to understand. The next time I read - is where I truly learn. Being merely aware is not enough. It might help with written exams in schools - but really the intention is to truly learn. A job really needs true learning. A lot of people manage by just being aware. In those cases - expertise is acquired by repetition rather than real understanding. This takes longer in time.

 

True learning is to know the unknown (you didn't experience it before), be aware of it consciously and then allow the understanding to percolate to the unconscious/subconscious, in the process become a newer version of yourself and operate at a different level. This can be articulated while we learn a new skill that we didn't know already like - swimming, driving an automobile or trading. The very first time, you were learning swimming., you go into the pool and at every second you are conscious not to drown, stay above, breath as needed and put an effort to float, move your arms & legs. You are always afraid of drowning. As you practice more - you do the same thing, not consciously but unconsciously. Similarly while driving for the first time - you are always watching around for vehicles, seeing the side mirrors and vigilant all the time. As you drive more and more, those things happen at the unconscious level. This is true learning. It is not that the dangers don't exist anymore but you are able to deal with them with ease. You have become a different person - to encounter the new changes overcoming the fear which you used to have. 

 

When you repeat the books, the learning introduces you to the new things. It is not they didn't exist when you read it the first time, it was there all along. Actually you have become refined and you are able to absorb the information because you have refined/changed yourself since the time you first read it.

 

Class room teaching is successful in making more graduates but it hardly does anything in the area of true working knowledge. It is often left to the student to DO the learning after he leaves college. He usually does it himself at home. Resulting in continuous learning to be contributing at work. In most cases - it takes YEARS to learn enough to contribute in real work. It takes more time than the Gurukul set-up. Sometime the learning that didn't happen during the school happens all through life, and in most cases - the learning never happens. We see graduates in accounts - not knowing anything about accounting. We see graduates in science - doing an insurance sales job. Those people lost valuable years, by sitting in class rooms.

 

I believe - the current way of "learning" through schools and colleges has had disastrous results. More people are unemployed and unemployable after exiting that system. Some people become successful still, in this kind of set-up - that is not because of the system but in spite of the system. The whole set-up needs to be revamped. There are smart parents who have already figured out this and put their children in home schooling. At least their learning is first-hand and has more probability to succeed. Education, as is currently practiced, is not the answer to all problems. It's critical thinking and self learning. Critical thinking is needed at the individual level. Only that can liberate the self. Only by the liberation of the self, can the society be changed.

Liberation day

Trump announced Liberation day on April 2nd - History would come back to see this as a self-inflicted crisis that exposed the sorry state of the unproductive US economy. 

 

Normally in a war the fighting armies try to kill people on the opposite side. But in a trade war, When the battle starts armed soldiers turn around and start shooting their own people. Winner of the war is decided by how much damage they do to their own people. It is very funny to see that when the United States announces tariff against Chinese goods the US markets goes down. When China announces retaliatory tariffs, the Chinese market goes down. So it is obvious In a trade war you only harm your own citizens. one thing to note is that China Tariff in the USA is paid by the US citizens and NOT the Chinese people. On the other hand the tariff announced by the Chinese Govt against the US Is essentially a tax on the Chinese people. It makes things costly for its citizens. A 100% tariff on $1000 imported iPhone., will make the price go up to $2000 right away. If you excuse the name tariff - it is new additional tax for the consumer. Saying it to be a Chinese tariff is just to feel good. Chinese people are not involved at all. 

 

The budget deficit and the trade deficit often referred to the twin deficit has been an often overlooked metrics in the economic discourse in the US. In fact these numbers were actually paid close attention to decades back. One of these caused the black Monday crash in the market in October of 1987. They fell out of the economic radar a long time ago. President Donald Trump is absolutely right about paying attention to the twin deficit. The budget deficit indicates that the US government is spending more than it takes on in tax payer dollars. The trade deficit on the other hand says imports exceeds the exports. In fact US having a big trade deficit and a huge budget deficit is a symptom of a problem - Conveys the lack of economic productivity of the US people.

 

After the Liberation Day the market became volatile. The equity Market had a huge fall, a scale witnessed only during a financial crisis or a pandemic like event. But this one was a US govt made crisis. US announced tariffs on all its trading partners overnight. China taking the largest of all. This created panic and uncertainty. White house sound of early strong stand on not going back - only made it worse. The equity market going down was expected because of the uncertainty what the us government did not expect was the volatility in the bond market and the us dollar market. Usually during a crisis there is a flight to the US dollar and the bond market rallies pushing the yields down . Even though it happened initially, after couple of days of panic, investors started selling the dollars. At one point the 10 year Treasury yield moved up from 3.87% to 4.51% in a matter of few hours and this scarred the White house. Moves like these are unprecedented. The US Treasury market - the so called safe-haven bond market was behaving like a developing country debt market.  President Trump didn't have an option - but to put a pause on the Tariffs for 90-days. The whole thing looked like a misadventure on the part of the US government. It had to save face by initially saying - it's to reduce the twin deficits, then to create American jobs, then to earn tariff income to balance the budget and finally to uniting the world against China with respect to world trade. Most likely the 90-day tariff suspension is gone forever and its almost certain that the 10% tariff on other countries is definitely not going to go up.

 

President Trump's should be appreciated for the effort to solve the long pending twin deficit problems. But the radical solution for it in imposing tariffs on foreign countries has really back-fired.

 

If the countries agrees on zero tariffs and practice free trade., the US doesn't have much to give to the world - this point is not discussed to the level it should be discussed. Rest of the world have a competitive advantage over the US in manufacturing goods. The world offers US manufactured goods, but the US has nothing to offer to the world. It has agriculture produce that it can give like corn and Florida Oranges. Believe me - the oranges and corns grown locally here in my place is lot sweeter than the ones from the US. There is no natural demand for them. One other thing the US can offer the world is energy - like oil and natural gas. But not at the current market price. Oil is trading around $60 now. US has lot of oil, but most of them are under water and within rocks - uses expensive technology called deep sea oil wells, fracking to take it out. Saudi Arabia on the other spends less than $6 to get a barrel of oil out of the ground. Oil extraction from fracking can cost as much as $70-$80 per barrel. So at its current price, US cannot export economically. US has bulk of AI products - those things are to be frank no one in the world needs. At least not at the price they are being sold. They may eventually become a need but definitely not at the moment.

 

Americans had been having a sweet deal all along. They got all they consumed from the rest of the world and stopped being productive a long time ago. Americans bought things that they don't need, they can't afford, overpriced and don't work, with the money they don't have, as George Carlin put it a long time ago. The post-pandemic era exposed a dysfunctional economy. During the Covid-19 lock downs, things didn't get produced and didn't get exported and the only way the US government could save the people was to send them checks which people spent to avoid their addiction of shopping. Because there were no house hold savings for the rainy day - the US government didn't have an option. They gave grants (funny they call it PPP loans) to business people so that they don't lay off people, they paused on student loan repayment, rent and mortgage repayment. Lot of student loans were then eventually written off. Meaning paid by the US government to those Universities and educational institutions. This caused huge budget deficits - record deficits that are completely unsustainable. The interest on the past debt burden of exceeding $36 trillion coming to 25% of tax income in the last year of Biden Presidency.

 

The April 2025 experience so far - has demonstrated how much the US is vulnerable economically. US needs the rest of the world more than the rest of the world need the US.

 

Since the 2000s - the US solved all its problems (including foreign wars) by creating huge trade and budget deficits - meaning it prints its way out of problems. The equity market rise is because of that. While it is possible to deal these problems with printing new money - with the US dollar being the world's reserve currency - they cannot solve bond market problems with the same technique. It's all about the credit worthiness of the nation. With close to 10 trillion dollars set to mature this year - the US needs someone to loan all that money. 

 

As an alternative - Instead of hitting other countries with tariffs, Trump should really make America more productive. It can be done by less spending from the Government, removing more regulations - make US population work harder and become productive. These are difficult things politically. Individuals can change fast, but the people of a country cannot radically change. But that is the only option. Peter Schiff says - not rising the debt ceiling any more is first step. I completely agree with it. Instead of threatening the world - US should work closely with them - and over time make things in America, create American jobs - being really productive. The $36 trillion debt is a huge obstacle in that way. At some point - the debt needs to be re-negotiated. It is mathematically not possible to pay them all in value dollars. Americans have to go through lot of pain to over come the twin deficit problems - they are entirely solvable. But how much economic pain is tolerated is the real question. As Trump says - the medicine is not pleasant but it needs to be taken sooner rather than later.