Showing posts with label mood of the times. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mood of the times. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Joe Queenan on the Money

Joe Queenan has perfectly encapsulated the mood of our times. See WSJ, 5/15/10, "A Lament for the Class of 2010":

Never mind that in order to pay back the $200,000 it's going to cost you to go to law school, you'll need to land one of those plum legal jobs at Goldman Sachs or AIG or one of those other firms that are no longer hiring because they owe so much to the lawyers they already did hire to defend them from lawsuits brought by the government's lawyers, public prosecutors who only took those jobs because Goldman Sachs and AIG weren't hiring. Good luck getting your parents to pay for that one...

Today, even the idiots have college degrees. And the idiots have seniority.

This is what happens when educational standards decline, and high schools and colleges become diploma mills. Until we add law, symbolic logic, and economics to our required curriculum, starting from elementary school, our current state of affairs will not change. I have met too many adults with degrees and high school diplomas who lack a basic understanding of subjects essential to a functioning democratic republic, such as state vs. federal governments, taxes, supply-and-demand, and the potential dangers of executive power.

Next are two questions that will show most of you that your high school education was inadequate:

1. Which parts of government most impact your life on a daily basis? Federal, state, presidential, judicial, etc.? Obama, Reid, the school board, etc.?

2. What functions do cities provide their residents, and what is usually the most significant expense in a city's budget?