New Study Is Bad News For President Obama’s Neoliberal Trickle Down Economic Message – Student Tracking Finds Limited Learning In College.
We already knew there is limited learning in college - our politicians, Wall Street and especially Ivy League education programs espousing junk science-based fictional finance are prime examples of this. And our President is apparently caught in the dream of a completely false economic belief system as well. (I discussed the foundation for this delusion in our 2009 post comparing President Obama to Herbert Hoover - a very valid historical comparison that was later picked up by Portfolio or Vanity Fair. I can’t remember which.)
I love this quote below. It definitely applies to this post and to the vast majority of Washington politicians from both parties. Frankly, it applies to our last post on disasterous American foreign policy as well. Okay, let’s be frank. It applies to the times in which we live across just about any conceivable topic.
"The 20th Century was a horrible litany of absurd experiments and atrocities committed by intellectuals, or by elite groupings that claimed a higher knowledge. (President Obama’s declaration of a college education being the saving economic grace for Americans is a prime example of this absurdity.) Simple folk usually have enough common sense to avoid the worst errors. Sometimes they need to take very stern action to stop intellectuals leading us to ruin." - Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Ahem. I could probably just end the post right now. But then I wouldn’t have the chance to discuss the ego-driven belief system that more education is the answer to our economic crisis. (Let me clarify something here before we get started. Knowledge is a beautiful thing and not all morons are college-educated. And college education is not always a source of moronic thinking that is often confused to be learning. BUT, our society only listens to college-educated morons.)
The problem with politicians is they speak sound bites in a vacuum using the bully pulpit. Most are never required to nor able to explain their positions to a level of detail which actually shows they know what they are talking about. And therefore, society should consider what they have to say. That means their ideology is never challenged. Political “advisors” or handlers keep politicians well removed from any environment where we would come to understand the emperor has no clothes. Instead, our politicians deliver 30 second propaganda sound bites rather than truth.
Our President’s view of the economy, as well as that of other politicians from both parties, is generally nonsense at best and voodoo at worst. We need an economic constitution that keeps politicians from meddling in affairs they clearly don’t understand. There should be basic economic truths that are self-evident. Things like a living wage, equal access to capital, a democratic banking system and certain economic regulations that are never to be touched. We need an economic constitution to protect us from the state just as our constitution protects our natural rights from the state.
Since President Obama has gained control of the microphone, we have remarked a few times on his ridiculous and nonsensical remarks that a college education is the method through which Americans can compete in the global economy. That statement by implication is that we have a skills mismatch in America that is causing high unemployment. That is a con perpetuated by neoliberal dunces from both parties and their pliant mainstream media as the economists at this link clearly articulate.
The only skills mismatch we have is in our political structure where greedy and corrupt politicians, lobbyists and political parties have destroyed our economic self-determination and our economy under the influence of bribes over the decades. In its place these mindless (but highly schooled) automatons doing the will of their corporate masters have created a massive bubble where skills needed to run our economy are no longer available and replaced them with a bubble of completely worthless administrative or financial skills. On some level we have just the opposite issue of what our President believes – we need college-educated administrators to quit dictating to the rest of the people what their economic skill set should be. This fraud will reveal itself before this crisis is over.
First of all, self-determination is a hallmark of our constitution. Economic self-determination should fall under this same protection. Education in a democratic society where people are economically self-determined would come in many forms. That includes self-education as has been very popular with entrepreneurs and self-employed since this country was first founded. It includes on-the-job training, a once dominant method when America was actually economically self-determined. It includes skilled trades programs as was once popular when we actually had an economy. (That was decades ago) It includes two year degrees and on and on. A four college degree or advanced degree is really quite unnecessary for the vast number of people. And much of the curriculum of four year+ degrees is arbitrarily unnecessary. But it pads the wallet of academia. Maybe that arbitrary curriculum provides a more well-rounded experience but who determines if this is even appropriate because it surely is not necessary. Why of course, that would be the people sending students the bill - academia. That said, I’m not too bent on that last statement because it’s generally nit-picking. My point is the broader one made in this paragraph. That is, the President and his neoliberal buddies are flat wrong.
Our President is one who believes we all need to go to college to compete in the global economy and has been quoted stating this many times, including the recent state of the union address. This neoliberal statist view of Orwell’s world is nonsense. Are we going to put 330 million people through college? And what, pray tell, are they going to do Mr. President? Push around paper in our financial system like your large political donors? Become life-long politicians or lobbyists living off the taxpayer dole? Those are the two dominant choices of today courtesy of politicians and Wall Street clowns who control the flow of capital and therefore determine what economic opportunity is possible. Mind you, both of these college-degreed positions are taxes on society. They consume capital rather than create it. Well, I would like to manufacture affordable shoes Mr. President, and your neoliberal compatriots have made that an unprofitable and impossible endeavor. Politicians have taken away my economic rights.
Every parent dreams of their child being the next Albert Einstein but let’s be realistic. Not everyone is going to be Albert Einstein. That’s not what our democracy is about anyway. All people in a democracy should be valued and afforded the opportunity for a living wage and a life of dignity. To send everyone to college so they can compete in the neoliberal’s Orwellian view of economics, presents quite a dilemma. We must either lower academic standards to push all students along (something we have already started to do) or we must genetically-engineer everyone for superior intelligence. Both would be favorite ideas for bureaucrats given their lack of appreciation for dissent and diversity of thought.
It may be an epiphany to our President and to other neoliberals, but many people don’t define economic success, economic freedom or happiness by sitting in the office cubicle at Citigroup pushing around paper. (Which, by the way, clearly does NOT require a four year degree. Banking is purely an administrative job as we have highlighted many times. I could train a monkey to manage banking as it should be. And in fact, it’s clear monkeys run our banking system.)
So, what is to become of those outside of the neoliberal statist view of economics who don’t go to college? Who don’t fit into the rigged economic model our President seemingly supports? Well, apparently there are four choices I am aware of. One, you live off of the crumbs that trickle down from those who do fit into the neoliberal statist view of economics as happens in today’s economic model. How’s that working out for you? Or, two, tough shit. You get to live in a tent, eat a 12 cent package of dried ramen noodles for dinner and spend every free nickel on our President’s corporatist health care mandate that lines the pockets of those who do fit into his idea of Orwell’s economic world. Or three, you live off of government handouts by necessity and open yourself up to constant statist Republican ridicule that you are either a drug addict or lazy. (Drug problem are often a function of economic problems. And the economic problems are caused by the Republican and Democratic parties.) Or four, you sell crack or heroine on the street corner as there are no other sources of income because you aren’t a Harvard-educated lobbyist. By the way, I’m not sure which of those last two is actually the more honest career choice.
The United States, as a sovereign nation, is easily capable of a market-based economy where every single individual willing to participate is able to earn a living wage and have access to affordable health care regardless of whether he or she fits into the mold of ideological drivel perpetuated by our President and other Harvard-educated pinheads. We could end this crisis tomorrow with proven and sustainable economics.
This ridiculous economic nontruth about education is perpetuated by many of the most learned idiots (college-educated morons) in society like Thomas Friedman, Ivy League-educated Wall Street carnival barkers and bought and paid for politicians who believe we are destined to compete against others making 10 cents an hour by becoming learned idiots in unproductive positions as they are. Our President speaks of intelligent-sounding drivel which has no basis in the search for truth or reality. We already have millions of productive college-degreed people who cannot find employment or have been underemployed for ages. We have countless scientists and science-degreed citizens who cannot find work in their field so they now work for Wall Street bureaucrats pushing around paper. Now our President believes even more should rack up endless education debt to work as a barista at Starbucks – one of the few places hiring college graduates who cannot find employment elsewhere.
I’d like to outsource our politicians because they aren’t worth that 12 cents that could be used to buy those ramen noodles. By the way, those who believe in this propaganda hooey are typically the most ill-equipped to compete at anything because they achieve success by deceit, fraud, cronyism, living off of productive people or rigging the system so they don’t have to compete.
I have an idea for a new reality show to highlight this truth - send these neoliberals like Dick Cheney, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Eric Cantor and Mitch McConnell to the streets of East L.A. with nothing but the shirt on their back and watch them compete in the real world they created for a month or a thousand. What education and skills would they bring to the real market other than talking? This is the market that real people have to compete in every day. To often just survive. (Politicians help create gangs and much of crime by their meddling and rigging in our economy and by denying citizens access to society’s capital. A major reason why we need a public banking system. One not controlled by political idiots and psychopaths on Wall Street.)
We could call the new show The Running Man Part Deux - Mad Max Meets the Neoliberal Pussy. Ratings would be the bomb! I wonder if Steven Spielberg would take my call? Hey, it’s a better idea than telling everyone they need to go to college to then find a job that doesn’t exist except in the mind of Orwellian statists.
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