Your intelligent career decisions won't insulate you from the under-educated voters putting a despot and charlatan into power. An educated populace is better for everyone.
Russia has 54% of people with higher education, compared to us at 44%. In fact, it's the most "educated" country in the world. Bet you didn't know that...
Look at how that worked out for them.
The value of education is greatly overstated. (and on the other hand people who claim education is soooo important for a good society conveniently pretend things like culture, religion, morals, etc don't exist).
You need quality education not just quantity. Degrees from some universities in some countries might not be worth anything because anyone can get them and many do just because they've been conditioned that having that piece of paper changes your life for the best, and so No-Name universities appear to cater to that market creating a "degree inflation" where too many people have degrees but they're worthless.
True, we need quality education. But efforts to expand the quantity of education and educators here in the US have resulted in lower quality everywhere. Look at the steep degradation of NYC public schools over the last hundred years despite receiving ever increasing funds and benefits. See Harvard and other higher ed dropping merit requirements at all levels and being embroiled in plagiarism scandals.
Sometimes less is more. What was originally meant to help the <5% of the non-elite youth who were intellectually gifted or uniquely driven has mutated into a destructive-for-all-parties incentive pushed on 50+% of the population to follow. Quality of output requires quality of input, so returning to merit standards is a must.
A handful of top universities in US are better than top universities in Russia, but I seriously doubt that there's a significant difference between average university in Russia and average one in US when it comes to quality. If you are believe that US does not have a problem with crap universities awarding worthless diplomas, you are very wrong.
That story seems like a smokescreen for a straightforward economic conflict: people with college degrees that don’t lead to valuable jobs want the government to take public money and give it to them. They vote for the guy who promises to do that. Voters without college degrees—who will pay for that policy one way or the other, either directly or through inflation—vote for the guy who promises not to do that. Marx would say that this is about class and economics.
I got a quote recently from a plumber that drove to my house in a $90,000 BMW. If he doesn’t want to pay off the student loans of some Starbucks barista with an ethnic studies degree, that’s entirely in his rational self interest. Just as it is in the interest of the barista to seek that policy. It’s pure self-flattery to pretend it’s about anything more than that.
Do you think anyone in the US acts in the interest of the country as a whole? I have very little problem with my tax dollars going to this as opposed to dropping bombs on some hapless country.
Do you think anyone in the US acts in the interest of the country as a whole
No, but that’s my point. It’s a basic economic issue between voters with different economic interests. Cash-poor college educated people want government subsidies, and non-college educated people with money don’t want to pay for that. People who make their living doing knowledge work see the value in subsidizing college, people who don’t do knowledge work often don’t see the value and don’t think the government should subsidize it. As Marx would say, each group votes according to its class and economic interests. It’s self-indulgent in the extreme to try and dress that up with some narrative about despotism.
Do you know any proles and how they think? For the most part, they don’t expect to become rich themselves some day. Rather, they have low confidence in the ability of government to improve anything, and high confidence that the government will make life harder for small business owners, or cause inflation, or other things that affect them.
Again, circle back to my plumber. He pays enough taxes to care what the government does with the money. And he’s quite reasonably persuaded that whatever the government does won’t help him, but will probably make his life harder.
Comments
Your intelligent career decisions won't insulate you from the under-educated voters putting a despot and charlatan into power. An educated populace is better for everyone.
Strongly disagree.
Russia has 54% of people with higher education, compared to us at 44%. In fact, it's the most "educated" country in the world. Bet you didn't know that...
Look at how that worked out for them.
The value of education is greatly overstated. (and on the other hand people who claim education is soooo important for a good society conveniently pretend things like culture, religion, morals, etc don't exist).
You need quality education not just quantity. Degrees from some universities in some countries might not be worth anything because anyone can get them and many do just because they've been conditioned that having that piece of paper changes your life for the best, and so No-Name universities appear to cater to that market creating a "degree inflation" where too many people have degrees but they're worthless.
True, we need quality education. But efforts to expand the quantity of education and educators here in the US have resulted in lower quality everywhere. Look at the steep degradation of NYC public schools over the last hundred years despite receiving ever increasing funds and benefits. See Harvard and other higher ed dropping merit requirements at all levels and being embroiled in plagiarism scandals.
Sometimes less is more. What was originally meant to help the <5% of the non-elite youth who were intellectually gifted or uniquely driven has mutated into a destructive-for-all-parties incentive pushed on 50+% of the population to follow. Quality of output requires quality of input, so returning to merit standards is a must.
A handful of top universities in US are better than top universities in Russia, but I seriously doubt that there's a significant difference between average university in Russia and average one in US when it comes to quality. If you are believe that US does not have a problem with crap universities awarding worthless diplomas, you are very wrong.
That story seems like a smokescreen for a straightforward economic conflict: people with college degrees that don’t lead to valuable jobs want the government to take public money and give it to them. They vote for the guy who promises to do that. Voters without college degrees—who will pay for that policy one way or the other, either directly or through inflation—vote for the guy who promises not to do that. Marx would say that this is about class and economics.
I got a quote recently from a plumber that drove to my house in a $90,000 BMW. If he doesn’t want to pay off the student loans of some Starbucks barista with an ethnic studies degree, that’s entirely in his rational self interest. Just as it is in the interest of the barista to seek that policy. It’s pure self-flattery to pretend it’s about anything more than that.
Do you think anyone in the US acts in the interest of the country as a whole? I have very little problem with my tax dollars going to this as opposed to dropping bombs on some hapless country.
Sadly, since we don't care about deficit spending, the bombs will be unaffected by this spending.
Yes.
No, but that’s my point. It’s a basic economic issue between voters with different economic interests. Cash-poor college educated people want government subsidies, and non-college educated people with money don’t want to pay for that. People who make their living doing knowledge work see the value in subsidizing college, people who don’t do knowledge work often don’t see the value and don’t think the government should subsidize it. As Marx would say, each group votes according to its class and economic interests. It’s self-indulgent in the extreme to try and dress that up with some narrative about despotism.
Given the ever increasing concentration of wealth towards the top, either Marx was wrong about this or the proles value something more than money.
Or, to change a phrase, if the proles have been convinced that they are temporarily embarrassed bourgeoisie.
Do you know any proles and how they think? For the most part, they don’t expect to become rich themselves some day. Rather, they have low confidence in the ability of government to improve anything, and high confidence that the government will make life harder for small business owners, or cause inflation, or other things that affect them.
Again, circle back to my plumber. He pays enough taxes to care what the government does with the money. And he’s quite reasonably persuaded that whatever the government does won’t help him, but will probably make his life harder.