Raphael wrote:(Ironically, in some other contexts, such as fiscal policy, center-left people are perfectly aware that what works for individuals doesn't always work for entire societies.)
Indeed, but as you said, this situation personally benefits liberals in the establishment (AKA the elites). Because they are part of the elite, they believe the ideology (education(ism)) that got them there. Therefore, they have little sympathy for those that this system tramples on.
Raphael wrote:But the problem with that approach is that it's simply not possible for all people or even most people to make it to the top, because it's part of the very definition of "the top" that most people can never be a part of it.
https://youtu.be/hiGEh7UoMYg?si=rafJnpcP-kIKf5xq&t=35
Raphael wrote:So, yes, opportunities for upwards social mobility are important. But the most important priority of progressive policy should be to improve the lives of people who are not upwardly socially mobile.
But this would require liberals to identify with the poor, struggling, and uneducated instead of the rich, successful, and educated, so it's unlikely.
Zompist wrote:Dude, I've been ranting about the turn toward plutocracy for thirty fucking years.
So why do you keep defending and making excuses for liberals when they help plutocracy continue? Why won't you admit that (Bill) Clinton passing NAFTA hurt tens of millions of Americans? Why won't you admit that Obama alienated unions with his fetish for education and Wall Street? Why won't you admit that when (Hillary) Clinton said that she thinks that minimum wage workers deserve only 12$ / hour, she meant it? (I doubt that she's ever had to try to live on a part-time job making 12$ / hour.)
Zompist wrote:The general answer to your question is that there aren't enough liberals. Or progressives or democratic socialists or labor activists or whatever you like. See this Gallup chart: in 1994 the percentage of liberals in the Democratic Party was 25%. That means 1/8 of the whole electorate. Not a good basis for progressive policy.
Yes, and by helping attack organized labor over the years, liberals have decreased their own ability to win elections, yet they did it anyways.
malloc wrote:Education has benefits beyond getting better jobs, though. It makes people more open-minded and better at critical thinking and thus less receptive to conspiracy theories and far right ideology. There is a well-known correlation between higher educational attainment and leftward political alignment. It makes strategic sense for left wing politicians to favor higher education. You don't see many high school dropouts discussing LGBT rights or how to stop global warming, let alone with much sympathy. Humans in their natural state are basically bipedal chimps with all the cruelty and tribalism that entails. Education helps lift us away from that.
(1) This is a classist myth that liberals tell themselves to justify abandoning unions and working class people in general. ("They're all just bigots anyways, therefore we shouldn't try to help them, because helping bigots is equivalent to helping their bigotry. Therefore, we should focus on appealing to graduates with fancy degrees, because they already have the right views about LGBT rights (or whatever).")
(2) Maybe high school dropouts are too busy surviving (working multiple minimum wage jobs, caring for kids) to think about things that don't personally affect them.
(3) Uneducated workers are capable of supporting LGBT rights if it's framed correctly, making them realize they're both being crushed by the same boot:
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/a ... -interview
(4) Likewise, educated workers are capable of supporting republicans. Until very recently, more doctors were republicans than democrats:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/doctors-on ... 1570383523
(5) It makes strategic sense for left wing politicians to favor unions (
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/th ... ic-voting/ ), but Bill Clinton and Barack Obama had no qualms about picking on them and making their lives worse despite that. (Thus why I hesitate to call either of them "left" or even "center-left".)
torco wrote:but "just make education more accessible" is a way to provide opportunity for individual improvement instead of setting the conditions to actual collectivel improvement. I don't think liberals, democrats or the global 'center-left' has failed to consider this: maybe voters are fooled, but the nobles are AOK with loans that provide chances for individuals to do better while ensuring the same proportion of people remain poor: they, after all, often own the unis, the land the unis operate on, and a host of other ancilliary services to the diploma mills.
Indeed, it's quite the good con.
Zompist wrote:You have a point: education does not in itself create jobs (except educational jobs). This can be seen in a number of developing nations, where there are far more educated people than there are jobs. And humanities majors in the US are often in no better shape.
You don't have to look at the developing world to find a situation where there's more people with degrees than jobs:
https://www.businessinsider.com/big-tec ... ers-2023-5
Or to be blunter: college was intended to get people into the middle class. And it was foreseeable that the middle class was, in the future, all that would exist. (In the 1960s corporations were run by salaried managers, not omnipotent CEOs.)
Sure, college was
intended to do that, but was it
actually doing that? I think it was actually the unions doing the heavy lifting. (Also, keep in mind that even people that aren't in a union still benefit from mass unionization in a society from unions setting what is a high de-facto minimum wage.)
But it's a misapprehension that education is promoted to help people "get to the top". Oversimplifying, for the last century and a half the logic has been: 1. modern jobs require a full secondary education, and some need more; 2. premodern society did not provide this; 3. jobs in the future will require more rather than less education; 4. so education, especially technical fields, is always good.
[...]
The system worked fine as long as there was a steady stream of productivity increases and the people as a whole were getting richer— as was true from the 1800s up till Reaganism. Even now, the problem is not that there are no jobs— the unemployment rate is currently 4.1%, which would have been a good figure any time in the last half-century. It's that jobs are not, as the paradigm demands, getting better and requiring more education.
So, if the legs of education and unionization are the engine that keeps innovation going while ensuring that the workers get a share of their pie, how about liberals stop pushing education for a moment, and fix the leg of unionization that has been broken? Pushing education without unionization is just producing a population that is indebted, overeducated for many jobs, and hypercompetitive for the few good jobs.
Linguoboy wrote:Does all of this produce healthier, more well-rounded, and successful students? I think the jury is still out on that. I'm certainly not seeing a lot of evidence of that at my elite private institution, but I'm honestly not very familiar with the literature on the subject.
Another thought: Many of the classes that are required for a major are unnecessary. For example, I was required to take a class about classical music, even though my major was in STEM. I understand why the music professor thinks it's important that everybody take their class about classical music (because (1) they themselves like and care about classical music, and (2) it keeps them employed), but to the majority of students, it's useless, but they're forced to take it. IMO, general education things like this should be finished in high school. However, the university will never push for that, regardless of whether it's the right thing to do, because it benefits them to force students to take more classes.
I'm not sure how the requirements have evolved over time, but it seems like the kind of thing where requirements could have kept slowly accreting (like feature creep), until students have to devote two whole years just doing general education requirements that are irrelevant to their major.