In the videos, YAF members approach their classmates with a petition calling for the redistribution of student GPAs. “It would make it so that all students have an equal opportunity to go to grad school,” University of Oregon YAFer Kenny Crabtree explains. Students with bad grades would therefore be entitled to points earned by straight-A students.
Their classmates are flabbergasted.
“Is that, like, a joke or something?” one guy responds.
“Why would you take points from people who are higher up and give them to people who didn’t meet the requirements?” another asks George Mason University YAFers. But when asked if he supports Obama’s wealth redistribution schemes, he says “yes.”
Shocking? Not really. As I pointed out in my March 30 column, most college students are economically illiterate. When quizzed by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute about basic concepts, such as supply and demand, the average student’s score was 53 percent. And since most don’t work or pay taxes (only 46 percent of full-time students have jobs), they simply have no idea how capitalism works.
The economic illiteracy being promulgated by our educational system is quite depressing. It’s almost like it’s part of a grand scheme.
A brilliant scheme, that one.
But, I hate to disillusion anybody, socialism has reached its tentacles into grades already. It’s called “grade inflation.”
When everyone who “tries hard” gets a B, instead of a gentleman’s C, what does that do to the value of an A? The answer is obvious.
This, incidentally, bears more than a passing resemblance to how The New Obama Deal is going to succeed, if it is. That dose of mega inflation waiting in the wings for the economy to pick up a bit? You think Team Obama is just stupid, doesn’t realize that’s coming? Maybe not. Could easily be part of the Master Plan.
See, what inflation does is three related (and from OHQ’s point of view equally useful) things:
(1) It destroys private capital in favor of public capital. That you’ve saved a million bucks matters a whole lot less than that you can, through taxes, raise a million bucks. The power of hedge fund managers declines, the power of Congressional aides increases.
That’s because your saved $million gets ravaged by inflation while you’re saving it, while the power to raise $1 million automatically adjust for inflation. (The anger you trigger by raising taxes is determined by the fraction of people’s income you steal, not the absolute amount, so it’s like your maximum politically-viable tax increase automatically increases with inflation.)
(2) It transfers economic power from savers to borrowers, because the value of savings as well as the cost of borrowing decline, since dollars saved or borrowed today are worth less when they’re paid back. You always want to be a borrower in an inflating economy.
Well, who are the savers and who are the borrowers? The savers include the old, small and moderate-sized businesses, management, those who live particularly self-sufficiently and thriftily, e.g. conservatives. The borrowers include the young, big business, the government (state and local as well as Federal), unions, new immigrants, and those who don’t manage their lives very conservatively and don’t mind depending on the welfare of others to get by, i.e. liberals.
(3) Perhaps best of all, it automatically ratchets up tax rates, without any unpopular action by Congress. It’s called “bracket creep” and was well-hated in the 70s. If you earn $50,000 today, and pay 20% tax, then inflation might take you to $100,000 tomorrow, and a 35% tax rate — but since your expenses have inflated along with your salary, your living standard (how “rich” you are) hasn’t budged, while your taxes have been automatically cranked up. Sweet!
If Team Obama contemplates inflation at all, I am confident they regard it with equanimity, as a possible feature, not a bug.
I am loathe to believe in conspiracies that have bubbled up over decades, but it’s getting harder and harder each day to not see all this as being awfully convenient to their cause.
They created the conditions that triggered this “crisis” and got enough voters whipped up enough to bring in their golden boy to clean up the mess. And he has no doubt been ruminating for years on just the right way to bring all their favorite ideas to pass, while not making it look like fascism.
At least, to people who either aren’t paying attention or don’t understand what true fascism is. Gee, back to that conspiracy theory…it sure helps if enough voters aren’t educated enough to know, doesn’t it?
A corollary to Mr. Pham’s thesis…drive up inflation enough while simultaneously keeping stock values low by discouraging investment, and it becomes awfully cheap to buy up entire industries and nationalize the private sector. Say, when the entire economy is about to collapse under Wiemar-ish inflation?
Stock up on the 3G’s now: groceries, gold, guns. Can’t believe I’m saying this but none of this seems beyond the pale anymore.
Personally I’m going to get fitted for my tin-foil hat before the black helicopters come…
PS…yes, it appears I misspelled “loath”. I’m trying out for Whittington’s job…
The economic illiteracy on display is the YAF members’ notion that grades are like money.
Maybe they should have had a petition to allow parents to give children their grades. My retired doctor dad could give me his med school grades and residency board scores and I could start practicing without the hassle of going through all that school and training!
The economic illiteracy on display is the YAF members’ notion that grades are like money.
A representation of accomplishments, whose value varies wildly, and occasionally cheating is used to acquire?
No, no possible metaphoric value there.
John:
Money is transferrable; grades are not. Grades are not an economic good, and to use them in an economic metaphor is terribly dense. They might as well use fluency in speaking Chinese or toned biceps.
I wonder if the students think that the money someone earns is really a part of them, like their accomplishments. Maybe they don’t realize that money isn’t a personal characteristic at all — it’s a social construct, created to facilitate economic activity in order to serve the greater good. The whole point of money is that it can be exchanged; the whole point of grades is that they can’t.