This account of life there reads like something from the Soviet Union:
This is daft, certainly. Even funny, in a macabre way. But it also raises a serious point: the university experience in America is now not one that will adequately prepare students for real life. In real-life democracy, people disagree — and normally they don’t die or suffer emotional injury because of it. In normal life, there’s no reason not to like someone with whom you disagree politically. On campus, opinions are often ontology: you are what you think. But this is dangerous logic: if I hate what you think, I must hate what you are.
Who is going to want to hire these people?
[Update a few minutes later]
“American higher ed is rapidly becoming a worldwide joke. What if the high-dollar foreign students stop coming?”
[Update a couple minutes later]
This seems related: Video shows that Millennials support socialism even if it results in starvation.
There are limits though. If incomes are unequal enough you end up with places like what Venezuela used to be (there’s a reason why people like Chavez rose up in the first place) and Brazil. Rich people living in house fortresses right next to slums. Where the rich people can’t walk on the street without getting mugged, and always travel in armored cars everywhere.
Another case in point would be South Africa.
Did unequal incomes cause that? Perhaps there were other societal problems rather than just what people get paid?
Economic inequality is both a symptom and a cause for the problems. In countries like South Africa a lot of the natural resources are concentrated in the hands of few people. And yes without having some modicum of economic equality you’ll neither have a well qualified workforce, nor will you have a lot of safety on the streets. The only way those regimes can typically continue is with police repression. Is it that much of a surprise that the US has such a large prison population? I’ve been to both the US and the Czech Republic and I can easily tell you where I felt the safest walking on the street.
Unless you were walking in a sketchy neighborhood, I suspect your “feeling” of safety were based more upon pre-conditioning by “if-it-bleeds-it-leads” “journalism” and movies. There are some real bad areas in America for crime, just about all inner city and highly diverse, and nearly all long-time (decades) Democratic Party fiefdoms.
Why is it always wages and not costs that the left rallies against? Is it too much work to examine the rising costs of food, education, health care and real estate? Over-printing of money, over-expansion of credit, subsidies and regulations created by lobbyists for rent-seeking companies and organizations are just a few reasons for the rising costs. Taking away economic mobility is a key component of socialists, and it contributes to poverty. Margaret Thatcher knew that the unions had become corrupt and were a faction within the government that was hobbling economic prosperity for many.
Is it any wonder that England went from an economic giant to a mediocre nation concomitant with the rise of socialism?
Your description of poverty being the major cause of crime is flawed. Sixty years ago, before the rise of welfare, black neighborhoods (which were very Christian) were extremely safe. You can walk through very poor parts of Salt Lake City and not feel threatened.
No. England went from an economic giant to a mediocre nation because they lost their Empire after WWII. If anything Margaret Thatcher’s destruction of the British productive sectors like the automobile industry only hastened its downfall. While the economic recovery was more due to North Sea oil propping up the economy than anything else.
Compare the UK’s GDP under Thatcher to French GDP under a socialist Mitterrand government in the same timeframe:
http://www.edmundconway.com/2015/02/the-uk-germany-and-france-gdp-over-history/
Some miracle…
The socialists before and after the war had nothing to do with it?
Why do the English like warm beer? Because Lucas Electrics makes the refrigerators.
And your point is…what?
That Venezuela is better now than then?
In several regards (like education) yes it is. But Maduro needs to step down and let someone else take his place. You can’t solve the problems they have by imposing capital controls. He needs to let the market adjust to the new economic conditions. Unfortunately they are too dumb to realize that command economies don’t work.
The USSR had much the same problem when their oil production imploded. Putin was smart enough to prevent those problems this time around by creating a sovereign wealth fund and letting the ruble depreciate.
Unfortunately they are too dumb to realize that command economies don’t work.
They may be dumb, but they’re also evil.
Yes, Godzilla, it’s wonderful being able to read and yet be hungrier and poorer than ever before. Wow, the scales have dropped from my eyes.
In several regards (like education) yes it is.
BS. All the reports about Venezuela’s regionally great education date back to 2010 or later. Sure that includes the totalitarian rule of Chavez, but it doesn’t mean it got better.
More recent news tells a different story:
Reuters: “Education is no longer a priority for many poor and middle-class Venezuelans who are swept up in the all-consuming quest for food amid a wave of looting and riots.
Between 30 percent and 40 percent of Venezuelan teachers fail to show up at school each day, mainly because they are standing in lines for food or medicine, their biggest union estimates.”
NBC News: “More than 700 of the 4,000 professors in the well-known Central University of Venezuela in Caracas have given up their positions within the last four years.
…
Professors started to quit when the government froze wages in 2010 and are left to face inflation. Professors now make $35 which is not even double that of the minimum wage of approximately $18. ”
He needs to let the market adjust to the new economic conditions.
That’s an incredibly idiotic statement. The Market IS adjusting to the new economic conditions.
Yeah, and they have excellent healthcare in Cuba.
When will people ever learn that claims made by totalitarian states are the exact opposite of reliable?
$35 vs. $18? Income equality! *snicker*
With Venezuela being “Post-Democracy,” the only way Madero is stepping down is feet-first like Stalin, possibly with “a little help from his friends.”
Amazon has a 6 episode mini-series called, Comrade Detective. Its pretty funny.
It is pretty amazing how people who view themselves as elite and superior are so unwittingly, and wittingly, embracing communism.
What disgusts me is not the lumpenproletariat enforcing these rules, but the legislatures that allow it to happen, at least in the red states. Aren’t there more republican-run states today than there has been since the 1920s? Where are the legislatures to remove funding from state institutions for this bigotry and hatred?
What makes you think this isn’t taking place?
They can’t do this all at once because Joe R. Assemblyman has a neighbor whose kid wants to go to the U to study Electrical Engineering.
But it is taking place, nice and slow, how Mr. Kim is reputed to deal with his close relatives conspiring with China to take his job. http://hotair.com/archives/2017/08/24/hmmm-kim-assassination-operation-response-china-backed-coup/
Either you’re responding to an entirely different comment (and post), or you’ve truly and completely lost the thread, Paul.
I was remarking that Jon was wrong — whereas governments in Red States have constituents to answer to, who want their kids to attend their state university to study majors such as Electrical Engineering, which remains a rigorous subject where high standards are maintained, where graduates can get well-paying jobs.
I also suggested that Red State governments are cutting or restricting funding to their public universities to send a message. Maybe my analogy to North Korean torture executions was lost on you? Maybe “economic sanctions on Russia over Ukraine, Crimea and election interference” is a better one?
Paul, I hope you’re right. I think though that it would be a simple matter to explain to Joe R. Assemblyman’s neighbor that the legislature is cutting all of the hyphenated American curricula along with feminist courses and leaving calc, diff eq and engineering alone. That’s what I mean, and I don’t see it happening.
Ami’s little “survey” video is unsurprising given that it was shot entirely in the East Village. It has nothing particularly to do with Millennials, in general, and everything to do with the lefty hipster monoculture of places like the East Village.
“This seems related: Video shows that Millennials support socialism even if it results in starvation.”
I really doubt if any of those Snowflakes have ever had to involuntarily go without eating for even a single day. They don’t know genuine hunger.
I had trouble at times at the University also. I am a social liberal and to some that automatically mean’t anti capitalism so why are you studying economics.. Sorry, I am a gun totin’ liberal and a die hard capitalist. “How can you be liberal and not be in favor of gun control?”
I would answer “gun control means being able to hit your target”
sighs…
never liked my humor ..
“This seems related: Video shows that Millennials support socialism even if it results in starvation.”
There’s Heinlein’s “bad luck,” right there!
Godzilla–still bending and speading for Der Staat.