Dear Bernie. I’m Sorry I Am the Problem with America
medium.com
medium.com
- because he had to go through this experience, should everybody? would it be better if we had, say, government-paid college? more opportunity? maybe he could have studied something he wanted?
- do we really want a society where you pretty much have to choose between entrepreneurship or starvation? No poets? physicist? Teachers?
- college is far less affordable now then when he or I went to school (didn't read the cite at the end, sorry, but the fact is there regardless of who's responsible)
- Our society has unquestionably become more economically savage in the last few decades. Out of work? good luck on your health care, sucker. Do we really want a society where everybody has to give up everything to strive to be wealthy because that's the only safe harbor?
So it absolutely does need to be expensive, because scarce resources such as an education have an inverse relationship between degree value and number of degree holders. Otherwise it will be soon enough that our advanced engineering degrees are worth much less than before. Software Engineering average salary doesn't even keep up with inflation any more so in my opinion we are already seeing these effects.
Also I would argue a lot of the worthless degrees we see today are worthless due to both the volume of the holders of those degrees as well as the fact that they are premised on a field which doesn't have much practical value but if they were scarce they would be worth much more in the job market.
Note, however, that's why Bernie is careful to use multiple messages: a more equalitarian message for some, "we aren't getting just desserts, because the system is rigged" for others -- a statement that happens to resonate with Charles Koch (often a negative focal point of Bernie's campaign), https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-koch-this-is...
It does seem to work, as Sanders captures some voters that consider liberty as an important moral consideration (perhaps he's the straw that broke the back of Rand Paul's campaign?): http://righteousmind.com/presidentialprimaries/, surprisingly (or not so surprisingly, as most agree that his legislative program will fail, yet his views on other issues are more liberty-friendly than HRC's).
It's not clear if the author directly addresses Bernie's (and Charles Koch's point): corporate welfare does exist and not everyone amongst the wealthiest is technical entrepreneur; individual hard work won't end subsidies for energy-extraction and farming industries, nor will it improve the criminal justice system. The author focuses on how the "rigging" affected by existing wealth is something one can outcome (yet, a male protestant could overcome a non-noble birth in 18th century England: it doesn't automatically follow that there was no merit in newly formed US abolishing titles of nobility at independence.) A more fruitful approach would be to make the case that Bernie's policies would A) significantly increase regulatory capture B) relative to other candidates, fail to improve ability of the audience (and who is the audience for the article?) to get ahead by virtue of hard work, thrift, and through existing products thereof.
On the other hand, there's something to be said about T.S. Elliot's observation that if were indeed to have [what most believed to be] a meritocracy, the the well off would have much less "noblesse privilege", attributing others misfortunes to personal moral failure. Yet people aren't blank slates: presently the markets tend to reward personality traits such as intelligence, conscientiousness, empathy, and (at least outside of our own field!) extraversion; while none of those traits are wholly innate and immutable, one usually isn't at liberty to make themselves as arbitrarily smart/personable/hard-working (yet, I suspect this knowledge wouldn't alter people's existing views in regards to whether or not a theoretical meritocracy would be fair or desirable..)
(For the record, I am not a fan of many of Sander's policy proposals -- despite being less repelled by him than by other candidates likely to make it to the general election -- for reasons that are pointless to go in to here, but if I didn't already hold that opinion, the article wouldn't change change my mind.)
"But the wonderful thing about America is that if you are willing to make the right sacrifices, you can achieve whatever you want."
Except this is patently false for a large, growing portion of people, those that get denied opportunities because of their race, their class, their names, their lack of funds.
The whole rhetoric of "I gritted my teeth and pulled up my sleeves and became a millionaire and you can too!" is so hollow and facetious in its victim-blaming that it's insulting.
So yes, Rob May, I do think you are part of the problem. Not because you are a millionaire or worked hard, but because you are myopic and unsympathetic to anyone who is not like you.
It is not "patently false" that a large population will not achieve what they want through hard work because they lack a certain racial or socioeconomic edge. It is true that they will have to work harder, but it does not mean they are barred from trying. Why do you think that people are victims of their skin colour and heritage? Why does that make them a second class citizen?
>Why do you think that people are victims of their skin colour and heritage?
Because studies have shown that people with "black" or "ethnic" names are often passed over in favor of more European/Christian names. Because an entire generation of minority fathers were systemically targeted by police as part of the misguided War on Drugs. Because nearly fifty percent of the wealth gained by blacks was wiped out in the housing crisis because they were the victims of predatory loan practices.
>Why does that make them a second class citizen?
In America, if you don't have money you are a second class citizen. If you are black, in many areas you are a second class citizen. I wish more than anything this was not the case but it is a reality that I've witnessed and that many have to fight through.
Just saying "hey, sorry things are broken and you are at a huge disadvantage, guess you'll have to work harder!" is a pathetic redress to the economic realities of today.
Mark Zuckerberg is ~$50 billion (I'm sure theres an exact number somewhere). This means he is likely to be around 1000x richer than the person writing this article. Did he take larger risks or work harder or was he 1000x more effective at his job?
Wall street trading is a high value job and many PHDs are hired to work in the field. It produces almost nothing of value. We have a system that provides incentives for the brightest people to do something that provides no value and hides all their innovations (trade secrets!).
Then there's the question of economic stratification's impact on the market itself; it's largely agreed on that reducing the difference is better (and that everyone equal is equally silly). Billionaires just don't spend the majority of their money or bother putting it back into the economy because they don't have to.
I also want 'free' college. Investing in education tends to pay off for everybody who can hack it. These people contribute more to society (even as artists) and are much more likely to be out of poverty, make more money, advance society and generally be good citizens. Having the government pay 100% gives them more leverage over what the colleges spend money on and may actually reduce the costs (but IANAE). If a productive person has more time in college to explore their interests, might they be more productive overall? Most unskilled service jobs add very little to society; instead of working a job, he could have been building his company or saving that money to put towards his company.
Bernie's rallying cry is politics; it vilifies people instead of the system that they naturally take advantage. This works well as a narrative, but the people aren't villains. I'd much rather have as many productive people as possible take advantage of systems that create the most progress in society overall.
"I find it interesting that you don’t mention the fact that you’re a VP of Datto, which just happens to be one of the companies under investigation by the FBI for Hillary Clinton’s classified email debacle. I think most people would think that it is a conflict of interest that you write against the candidate possibly preventing her becoming president, since her being president of the united states would probably take a lot of potential stress off of you and your company… especially since we still don’t know who had access to those classified emails." - Ryan
I was taken aback by a lot of statements made in the article, which seemed to essentially state "I worked hard and it's not fair if other people don't have to, too" but in light of this his stance on the matter makes a lot of sense.
If you want to talk about "problems with America", well one of them is this notion that we only two choices and they are one extreme or the other.
He descends into bitter resentment towards "people like the smart Yale student who majors in something useless, travels the world, and then graduates with $100,000 in debt that people like me should pay off via higher taxes." People much like "(...) many of the college students [he's] hired in the last few years. They study what they love — philosophy, political science, art, regardless of whether or not they have good job prospects. They travel. Mostly they seem to go to Vietnam and Cambodia. They eat out a lot more than [he] did at their age. They know all the trendy restaurants and hot bars."
Author's experience exclusively reflects of class envy in the Northeast United States: trust fund babies vs. hard-working self-made entrepreneurs, old money vs. new money, liberal arts majors vs. business majors, carefree (careless) people vs. an adversarial 'the world is rigged against me' work ethic. He unironically suggests "Unfortunately, we've come to believe that achievement should be easy. Changing that attitude is the first step towards making yourself more successful." His worldview is framed along this dichotomy; if you're not one, you must be the other. In his view, socioeconomic background has two discrete states: rich by birth and not-yet-rich, race and gender are not considered, and attitude is paramount.
This is either a cheapshot or a fundamental misunderstanding of Sanders' vision. Sander's policy proposals are designed to benefit the middle class and he isn't even proposing any changes to federal income tax for those households earning under $250k (which is plausible for the author becoming a millionaire over 15 years.) It seems more fair to debate the viability of his policies, than the goals.