Forum Post: The Washington 1% - The real culprits
Posted 11 years ago on June 19, 2012, 10:17 a.m. EST by john23
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The Associated Press recently reported that half of all new college graduates are either unemployed or underemployed. These fresh-faced bachelor-degree holders are finding themselves opting for waiting tables and serving coffee just to pay off a trillion dollars in student loans. They are coming to grips with a lie perpetuated by university professors, faculty unions, and politicians that deluded them into thinking college by itself was the golden ticket to success.
Meanwhile, the rest of America is still muddling through years of high unemployment. The jobs connected to Alan Greenspan's housing bubble are gone and will likely never return. Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke met the financial crisis with an unprecedented amount of monetary-base expansion, which has failed to significantly affect the unemployment rate. President Obama and his allies in Congress threw $800 billion at the economy to no avail and have been running federal deficits to the tune of over $1 trillion for three years now. This orgy of money printing and spending has done little for the residents of Main Street but has done wonders for Wall Street and other politically connected interests.
Last fall's Occupy campaign was representative of a growing distrust of the American economic system. Although many occupiers were misled into believing capitalism is the culprit behind the sluggish economy, the protest's focus on income inequality was not wholly inaccurate. Of course the inequality in income that is a byproduct of an unhampered market economy is not something to demonize. As Ludwig von Mises wrote in Economic Freedom and Interventionism,
Inequality of wealth and incomes is an essential feature of the market economy. It is the implement that makes the consumers supreme in giving them the power to force all those engaged in production to comply with their orders. It forces all those engaged in production to the utmost exertion in the service of the consumers. It makes competition work. He who best serves the consumers profits most and accumulates riches. Today, no Western, industrialized country operates under genuine capitalism. What passes for the free market in the context of mainstream political debate is actually a fascist-like partnership between big government and big business. The dynamic, cost-cutting competition that defines the uninhibited market has been stifled by Washington's endless decrees of regulation...................................
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Simple law of economics: if you subsidize something, you'll get a lot more of it.
Just like health care, the govt's mindless need to "help" has done anying but. It has raised the cost exponentially while providing ZERO discernible benefits. In the case of college, tuition increases greatly outpace inflation, the CPI, and any other measure. Add social promotion and the self-esteem movement, and you have the educational disaster we see today.
The govt must be neutered severely. We need good regulation, not more revolving door bullshit.
As always, the Left is on the wrong side of yet another example of economic insanity.
Interesting read. I agree but I also think that the promise of the golden ticket from college became a lie two decades ago. It took this long for the damage to manifest: massive college debt, low wags, foreign competition for goods AND jobs. Now, it's become a class game....the only ones who don't have the debt also have insider advantage getting the scare jobs. That leaves the majority of college grads as "intelligent" servants. Soon, the elite will require a piece of paper for the people who make their burgers. Not because they NEED it, it's just another socio-economic constriction that keeps the feelings of hopelessness alive.