Degrees Of Insanity
Not so many years ago every high school had vocational classes. Students weren’t divided into fast track and slow track, although there were AP courses and regular courses. Everyone knew who the tough teachers were. And everyone knew that Joe was a good mechanic, Eddie a good math student, and Sue excellent in history. There were valedictorians, math awards, senior superlatives, and everyone knew that Johnny got a football scholarship to state. We also knew who was taking auto body and fender repair, wood working and similar skilled courses. There were courses for everyone, no matter their choices in life. High school was college for many; they learned something about using their hands for work and enough math, English and history to take care of their personal business. Not so today.
Some of those in position of influence decided everyone needed to go to college. So the vocational courses were scrapped. So it became if you weren’t going to college there was nothing in high school for you. If you wanted to do something with your hands, to be an HVAC mechanic or lay bricks, high school had nothing to offer. You were effectively encouraged to drop out, even as the bureaucracy and their supporters wrung their hands decrying the dropout rate. The bureaucracy and their idealism prevailed. Now, so many people have a college degree that there is a surfeit, with the result that many of those who have gone on to college do not have jobs or have taken one they could have gotten without the expense of paying a professor to teach them Psychology 301.
But this is only one part of the result of the inanity. There are a large number of students who dropped out, which means they are trying to run their lives without the support of a decent high school education.
Then there is the fact the economy is running along with too few people who are willing to get their hands dirty to do the things that actually make the world work. Who do you call when your car breaks down, your AC doesn’t work, a water pipe breaks or the toilet doesn’t flush? Whoever it is doesn’t need a college degree in history or education. Nor do they need one to build lawnmowers and drive buses and clean up before and after the Democratic National Convention (although the moneychangers might need a degree in propaganda to help deceive the people about the benefits of same).
Not to forget the cost of college, which has soared far beyond the inflation rate of everything else. Associated with that is the salaries of college professors and their bureaucracies which, my guess is, has a lot to do with why the people were sold this bill of goods to start with.
Here we have one example of the end result of allowing ‘do-gooders’ to influence decision-making in the market.
Not easily diverted from their goals, the do-gooders continue their vulgar rhetoric of pushing for more government interference in our lives. One need only read Paul Krugman to see the continued efforts to maintain this mistake of government.
Krugman opines that, “We should be expanding student aid …..we should reverse….the unprecedented cutbacks at the state and local level….” It is not enough to Krugman and his ilk that the people of the United States are in debt for about $17 trillion. It is not enough that deficit spending has been above $1 trillion for the past four years. A better idea of the problem we, the people, have is that government spending is 40% of the entire economy. Yet Krugman would have us go more in debt to solve our problems. One can only wonder when he would have us pay that debt off, because the bill is coming due.
This example of the advocacy for college education and the results of that is but one example of why government is the problem, not the answer. There was actually no demand in the market for that many college degrees, yet the people were sold on the idea and so have spent their money funding these misguided programs. The same is true in many other areas of our lives, where some do-gooder, an Advocate in the vernacular, decides we need to do something different, something better (according to her) than what the people would choose to do of their own accord. Something different than people free to choose would choose. And so they use the force of government to take from those who are working, to give to those who would tell you how to live.
College education for everyone is an example. Even as those with degrees can’t find jobs, are in debt they can’t legally absolve through bankruptcy – see government again – we continue to be told that those with a college education are better off than those without. Even as Krugman admits in one sentence that “…they’ll be graduating into an economy that doesn’t seem to want them,” he advocates more spending and debt to attain that unwanted position. One can only ask why?
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