Letters to the Editor
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College Costs
Since only about a quarter of all Americans get a college degree, and since most politicians come from the upper 1% of income, I don't think there are enough financially squeezed middle class college graduates to force politicians to do something about college costs.
Look at Hillary Clinton. All she wants to do is suck up to uneducated white voters. If she, and other politicians, can make a living with these voters (as the GOP has for the last 30 years), there will be no impetus to listen to the concerns of college graduates. Even though the long term fortunes of our country are tightly tethered to how productive educated adults are.
Besides more money for loans and scholarships, the whole college thing needs to be rethought. Major universities are too sprawling and costly to meet the needs of most young adults seeking an education. Why should my tuition money be going to subsidize foundering acting and dancing programs, art, sociology, or classics programs that can't make it on their own? Don't get me wrong, I like the classics, but who wants to spend his middle age years making monthly payments so a class of 4 students can read Homer? I read Homer too -- after I graduated.
We need a new model for universities. Online schools are a good start, but lack the face-to-face interaction so important to education. I think what we need is community-based universities. A big school like, say, Brown, creates a four year program for a degree. Brown determines the textbooks, the coursework, and offers extensive online support. Then Brown franchises 20 people in say, Nashville, to teach the curriculum to students. The teachers contract with maybe 300 students to teach them the curriculum. There would be no school buildings or stadiums or cavernous libraries. The teachers would hold classes in their own homes to keep costs low, or use local public facilities. A chemistry teacher, for example, could rent space at a local high school or community college. An English teacher would use Brown's online reference library, the local public library, and Amazon.com to meet the students needs.
Such a program would not work for students who want to study nursing or rocket science, but for the average liberal arts student or business major, it would work just fine. At the end of the four years the student would get a diploma that says he or she graduated from a Brown-approved college program. It would not carry the prestige of the full university, but in time, as more people graduate from such schools, the value of the degree would appreciate.
I would be willing to bet such programs would cut costs in half, if not more. Schools would be smaller and more intimate, and students would get what they need from college education, without having to pay for all the extraneous stuff that busts the wallet and is of no long term benefit.
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Don't look to my generation
As a spokesperson for middle class persons in their twenties, I hate to say it but we aren't going to be staging any revolts anytime soon. We would rather play Wii or Xbox and watch The Office and American Idol. We can't stand the grave seriousness of things like Democracy Now or Bill Moyers, but by golly that Jon Stewart is a funny dude. We enjoy watching him poke fun at the establishment from our comfy chairs. We like to eat out, go to bars, and download MP3s to our iTunes. Class struggles aren't part of our vocabulary. We can't remember the last time we read a book. When we switch jobs, our profit-sharing and 401k accounts are raided to take trips and pay off credit cards. We get married and rush into having kids because its what everyone else is doing. This talk of the shrinking middle-class is vaguely discomforting and a little pretentious if you ask us.
(These statements can be applied to almost every single peer that I work with and a lot of my friends)
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Strikes
Electro Robot comes riding to the rescue of the rich again.
Some strikes win and some strikes lose. The main thing is that you 'play the game' to win. "Lavish" is probably quite an exageration, especially considering the source. Trying to deal with the corporations without organizing in some way with other people, i.e. making your way alone, or just as a family, is a recipe for failure.
At some point, striking or slowing down work, or negotiating as a group, or any of hundreds of other ways to deal with employers and governments, is going to be necessary. I.E., like the environment, we will have no choice. Even for white-collar people. I myself would probably be fired at this point for trying to organize against my company, so I don't. I don't absolutely have to ... yet. And my compatriots are very few ... right now.
The laws are against people, the union leaderships are many times weak, and the political parties represent - not the poor, or workers, or the white collar 'middle class' but the rich. Welcome to freaking America. Land of the wage slave - home of the fearful.
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Deja vu vu
I've argued since my economist days in the late 1980s that the USA was becoming or had become what once was politically termed a "third-world nation." All we lacked then was the dictator. Well, 2000 fixed that. Funny that Mooney should mention the 1920s; every time --every -- concentration of wealth has progressed into too few hands in this country, economic hard times have followed. Would love to see the CEO's outsourcing all that work required to take the kind of pay most company heads in India or China (minus rake-offs) must live with. And make 'em live over there. One or two typhoons and a case of avian flu will have 'em screaming to get back here. Nope, not unless you bring those jobs back with you. Too bad we're not the sort of people we were in 1774 (pre-Adam Smith).
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Baby boom backlash
I was born at the end of the baby boom and never could understand why I was lumped in with such a large group that had changed so much over the years that I had nothing in common with them. In the remarks in the letters I'm reading here I see so much being blamed on this group, but I haven't benefitted. I have no retirement because I have been scrambling to catch up with what early boomers have already taken advantage of. The best I can do is work hard, avoid debt and hope that I can help my kids graduate college with a minimum of debt. I expect to work until I die or am disabled and I fully expect social security to be gone when I need it. My only hope is that my kids will be successful enough to grant me a small space in their home(s), so that maybe I can help them avoid high childcare costs as well. To think that younger generations will resent me for working to provide for myself and my family is scary. What are we comming to?