The second paragraph of the United States Declaration of Independence starts as follows: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
If true, and if free market capitalism was a just and moral system, then education and job skills would be essential to all citizens of the Unites States of America in order for them to reach their full potential and achieve the ever popular American Dream that anyone running for office is obliged to refer to in their stump speech.
Only is’t not true.
The truth is that education and job skills only matter if one is a member of the working class. To illustrate my point, I need point to no further than our current president and his brood. Does anyone cling to the notion that Mr. Trump’s wealth and that of Ivanka and Donny Jr. and the rest is the result of the level of their education and skill set? If you do, I have a college course to sell you at Trump University. To be fair, I can say the same for Chelsea and Marc Mezvinsky. They were born into wealth and privilege. They will be wealthy for their entire lives, without having to rely on a sheepskin or skill set for their daily bread.
And that’s the point I make, over and over and over again when I say that “education and jobs skills” ain’t the cure for the gross wealth inequality that plagues the United States of America and with that inequality come a tsunami of social ills ranging from crime rates, to divorce, to suicide, drug addiction, and increased levels of ill heath, both mental and physical.
Yes, education and skills training are important but only as an economic factor if one is born into the working class. Sadly, this paradigm has pushed the costs of a higher education to stellar levels as members of the working class compete harder and harder for the fewer and fewer crumbs being left for us by the ownership class. Sadly too, this has reduced education to being simply the means to wealth, not personal fulfillment or enjoyment.
So where do we go from here? We start with the millionaires tax, the fight for $15, paid leave, four seeks (minimum) vacation, and when we get those, we push for more. What we don’t do is believe in the myth that the hammering of the working class (to paraphrase Senator Elizabeth Warren) is because of their lack of education and job skills.
Let me see if I follow your argument.
I presume you’re ok with expanding your first paragraph to include women as well as men, so let’s stipulate that the framers actually meant “people”.
There are two parts to your second paragraph. The first is an attempt to conflate “free market capitalism”, “just and moral system”, “education and job skills”, and tie all of that to the assurances of the first paragraph. I don’t think the four concepts have much, if anything, to do with each other.
I do, however, think that the premise of the aspirational language of the Declaration played a significant part in the decision of the US government to provide publicly-funded education — a radical idea for its day that in fact originated here in Massachusetts.
Nobody claims that the wealth and power of Mr. Trump and his family are the result of their education and skill set. It is worth noting, parenthetically, that Mr. Trump does hold a BS degree from the Wharton School. I also note that the school says that it currently costs about $75,000/year to attend. That’s not something accessible to working-class families.
What is claimed instead is that:
– Nearly all wealthy men and women have at least a bachelors degree
– Men and women without education earn significantly less than men and women with education
– The disparity in lifetime earnings is significantly greater for men and women of color.
– The disparity in lifetime earnings is significantly greater for women than for men.
The bottom line is that a poor black, Latino, or Hispanic young woman who does not attend college has much steeper lifetime hill to climb than a wealthy white young man. If you want to draw a lesson from Mr. Trump, I suggest that this is more apparent.
I get that you “make the point over and over again” of your fifth paragraph. And you relentlessly refuse to admit that nobody makes this argument. The motivations for making education available to working class family is NOT to address wealth and income concentration, and never has been.
The point is, instead, to provide a path out of poverty for the millions of boys, girls, men, and women who can thrive and prosper in college if given a chance. Providing that path out of poverty won’t help solve the wealth and income concentration issue. It will, instead, make life a little easier for those who suffer the most today.
Your sixth paragraph begins with a circular argument. There is no “economic factor” at play for providing education for the wealthy. They don’t need the money because they are already wealthy. So while your first sentence is true, it is true because it is a tautology.Weight-loss diets matter most to those who are overweight. So what?
The costs of education are not skyrocketing because too many working class families are trying to send their kids to college. The costs are skyrocketing because:
– The government is not funding R&D
– Private industry is not funding R&D
– There is a limit to the amount of money that colleges can collect from athletic programs
– Wealth concentration is causing alumni contribution rates to decline
– College students and their families demand more and more expensive facilities.
– College payroll costs continue to climb
So far as I know, you are the only person “hammering the myth” that you cite in your concluding sentence.
It seems Trump holds a “BS” degree in a lot of things! (sorry – couldn’t resist)
Where did the wealth and power come from? Should we do something about it?
I do not dispute that there are inequities within the working class. My argument is another matter, specifically the inequities between the working class and the ownership class.
Oh, and by the way, the following four items do absolutely NOTHING to address wage and income concentration:
– Millionaire’s tax
– $15 minimum wage
– paid leave
– four weeks minimum vacation
Of the four, the only one that comes close is the Millionaire’s tax. Even if enacted, it takes a TINY bite out of handful of people with HUGE incomes.
Yes, we need to do all four. You left out two crucial things that we need to do:
– Enforce the equal-pay law
– Pass the ERA
All of those need to be done. None of those has anything to do with solving wealth and income concentration.
Citing these four in the fight against wealth and income concentration is like advocating cough drops to help fight lung cancer.
Yes, we need to do all four. You left out two crucial things that we need to do:
Assuming the ownership class maintains its current share of the wealth created in the USA and agrees to give no more to the working class, how do either of these help the entirety of the working class? The ownership class class can simply pay working class men less, and use that “savings” to pay working class women more. Nothing changes between the two classes. If my wife suddenly sees an extra $50 in her paycheck next week and I discover mine is lower by $50, tell me why we should celebrate a great victory?
The framers did not fight a war for economic equality the way you see it. They were extremely talented men deliberately held back from great power by the British.
They ended the practice of primogeniture and many of them, Jefferson and Franklin for example, supported the Estate Tax.
Equality without Christianity is you have, I take. I think the founders would have called practitioners shirkers, thieves and murderers. Gaining that kind of equality through stealing from the rich really solves nothing, because there is always going to be somebody with more who is envied by somebody with less. Justifying it is also the easiest thing in the world. Some people just believe that they are owed, they have been treated unfairly, and most of that belief in my experience is a matter of personality.
On the other hand I agree with you that education has become a tool for so-called meritocrats to separate themselves and their children from undesirable elements of society, whether undersirable races or those of low intelligence.
The arms race you outline is just another expression of the race for the exclusive thing, that we must all grasp for the valuable things, and seeing others grasp for them only makes them more valuable. The Christian message of “if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well” is the way to escape this. There is no escape by educating the lower class into equality. If you do it the upper class just presses down the accelerator to get away.
Please explain what you mean by
.
Every time you bring up equality you bring up somebody to go get from.
I never denied that the rich game the system. Besides the obvious cases though it’s very hard to know where it starts or ends.
If you ever get serious about seeking equality without revenge or theft of the past from the future, you’re going to have to give up all the pitchfork talk. So why not do it now?
….and how that person got it in the first place, a detail that you want to ignore.
You do every time you call taxation of the rich “theft”.
Our Revolutionary forefathers are an imperfect sources of guidance on equality. Eighteenth century capitalism was much different than industrial and post-industrial capitalism.
Early on, the colonies provided a level of economic equality that simply wasn’t possible in Europe:
Seascraper’s assumption is that the rich somehow gained their riches by earning it, not by inheriting it or by lobbying for laws that allow them to keep a larger share of their riches than the rest of us do. His assumption is that inequality is a “natural” phenomenon rather a series of choices made by government.
Yes, Your last paragraph summarizes the beliefs of many, including Democrats who look at “the market” as if its laws and actions were natural occurrences, like gravity and sunlight, actions that we have little power over. When I hear anyone tell me “Those jobs are not coming back”, it does not matter to me if they have an (R) or (D) after their name, their position is against the working class and in full support of the ownership class.
It’s not the jobs that were lost over the past four decades, it was the political power that was once more equitably shared and now resides only with the few, in both parties.
It brings back the statement made by John Walsh who wondered aloud why we, in Massachusetts, do not have a majority in our legislature willing to be in front of a $15 minimum wage, higher taxes on the rich, and Medicare for all.
These same people believe that citizens in occupations that pay so little but whose labor contributes so much to those at the top of their organizations are getting a fair share because “they have low skills”. While they continue to support the heavenly salaries and perks enjoyed by the top tier on the presumption that such individuals have heavenly skills and levels of education one hundred times more than the common worker.