Highland High School’s biggest graduating class of 181 was born in 1963 and graduated in 1981. In 1964 the people of Highland and elsewhere began using the birth control pill. In the 1970s, all school districts experienced a decline in enrollment as couples starting in 1964, started having less children. In the late 1970s, in a lot of classes, teachers, were retiring and were not being replaced. During that timeframe the worst profession to seek to enter was teaching. 

Now the class of 1981 and classes that followed them are having fewer children. Today’s generation of parents are not replacing itself, and there are not enough children being born to replace the Baby Boom generation as it retires. Where are the workers coming from?  IBM had been getting students from India and other Asian countries to come here with visas, stay three or four years, and become citizens. Highland has had a large number of Asian students become the top students of its graduating classes.

Trump decided that they were taking away jobs from American kids and has stopped giving visas to these future IBMers. But IBM needed these Asian students now. If it could not get them, it would ship manufacturing to one of its overseas plants. IBM employs a lot of Indians at its plants in India.

Also replacing jobs at IBM are robots. The employment world as we know it, has been changing.

Arvind Krishna is making changes at IBM
Arvind Krishna, IBM’s new CEO, apparently is making changes at Big Blue, which has got the attention of stock market analysts who are giving him positive reviews. He is a tech person, always an IBM employee, but radically different than Rometty and Palmesano, who were money people. Krishna previously started IBM’s cloud program.

I am not recommending the stock, but suggest you study it and keep studying it. I get updated information on IBM at the Seeking Alpha website or TD Ameritrade’s search site.

Losing my social security
President Donald Trump plans to end the payroll tax. Money from it funds Social Security and Medicare, or in my case my Social Security and Medicare as it does for people over 65/aka Senior Citizens.

In three years Social Security/Medicare will run out of funds and all seniors will lose both. If Joe Biden defeats him for reelection, this plan will not go into place, and I will not have to depend on welfare and Food Stamps to survive.

I am voting for Joe Biden. I was going to anyway, but this is another reason to vote for him. Trump would cut the payroll tax as a tax cut, which in turn would assure that the next generation of Americans would not receive the dual benefits. Franklin Roosevelt started the program in 1936 to provide income protection for senior citizens once they reached 65. In 1936 the United States was in the Depression.

I will be voting by mail
 The Federal Government placed an announcement on the internet that the United States Post Office  would send me an absentee ballot if I filled out the form on my computer monitor. I did. It included my name, address, and the reason I wanted it. My reason was Covid 19 virus. I was particularly interested because SUNY Oneonta campus had opened and will have streamed in classes as already it had over 400 virus cases. Because of this I feared that if I voted in person at my New Paltz polling place that I could get the virus. At age 78 this would be a death warrant.

I will mail in the ballot as soon as there is early voting in New York State.