OVERVIEW
MANAGEMENT
PERFORMANCE
POSSIBILITIES
CAPITALS
ACTIVITIES
ACTORS
BURGESS
|
EDUCATION
CANCELLING DEBT This Is How Modern Societies Prosper, Unless You’re an Idiot ... Why Cancelling Debt Matters Even More Than You Think 
Image Credit: David McNew Original article: https://eand.co/this-is-how-modern-societies-prosper-unless-youre-an-idiot-4cba4c863546 Peter Burgess COMMENTARY Generally, the dialog about education in the USA is mainly wrong. It is far too simplistic by far. One of the big themes for the past many decades is that a '4-year university education' will be best for a lifetime of success. This is nonsense. Certainly it works for some, but maybe not for 90% of students. Sadly ... this idea works for 100% of universities, who are faced with unprecedented demand for their product, and in a 'free-market' world are able to market their product almost no-matter what the price. Though universities do not think of themselves as a business, nevertheless they do function much like a business in many ways. They make efforts to grow revenues and to reduce costs. Increased revenues comes from increased enrollment and higher fees and reduced costs comes from employment of 'adjunct professors' rather than more experienced educators who are going to be eligible for 'tenure'. In the end, this produces a mismatch between what the universities are delivering and what the economy and the society needs. When I went to university in the UK at the end of the 1950s, there were less than 5% of my age group that were going to university. I believe that number os now around 35% in the UK and around 55% in the USA. Certainly more should have been going to university 60 years ago than there were ... but it is not at all clear that what is going on at this time in history is optimum. My father was an educator ... for many years the head of a 'Secondary Modern School' in the UK ... essentially a school for students who had 'failed' the 11+ exam and were not going to go to the 'Grammar School'. My father recognised that passing an examination was a good measure of academic potential, but failing an 'academic' test did not mean that a student lacked all skills. With the right curriculum, my father believed that a relevant and practical education would set the stage for success in life in the real world. This is what was practiced at his school, with impressive outcomes. As a child, I passed the 11+ exam and went on to the Grammar School in our small town. I played sports as had my father, and it got very interesting when my Grammar School teams played against my father's Scondary Modern School teams. In the games where I was involved it was a battle royal ... especially for me. Mostly my father's school had better players and better teams ... and, not surprisingly, I was target of considerable (sportsmanlike) aggression. Bottom line ... my father's school delivered a better education to its students than modern education systems are delivering to their students. In theory modern schools are better, but in practice they are too regimented in all the wrong ways and unsuited to the diverse characteristics of all the pupils. As I draft this, I am reminded of my grandfather's educational experience. He left school at 14 with a very basic education ... but by the time I got to know him maybe 30 years later there was no evidence of a lack of education. From 14 on he had educated himself and in the process accumulated an impressive library of books ... and become an accomplished musician playing the piano and the organ and became choirmaster at a quite large church. He travelled to Canada before WWI and learned about the building practices used in North America. He returned to his family in the UK and started building houses using methods he had brought back from Canada. My mother got a very different education and eventually got a degree from the University of London ... and a generation later I got a degree from the University of Cambridge. I like to observe, that while I had an academic education early in my life, I have had the opportunity also have a deep continuing experiential education so that what I learned when I was 20 still had relevance now that I am in my 80s. I did not need 'debt forgiveness' after I completed my academic studies in the UK. Why not? In large part if was because the State that subsidised my university education by granting me a 'State Scholarship'. This scholarship was granted based on my school academic history and the results of the national 'O' level and 'A' level exams. The structure of the modern higher education ecosystem in the USA seems to have some of the characteristics of the US housing sector just before the banking crisis of 2008/2009. This should scare everyone. Unlike the banking crisis of 2008/2009, it would be good if the people most damaged by the dysfunctional education and financing system get to be made whole ... or at some level helped. The bad actors in the system need to be identified, called out and held to account ... whatever that involves. Peter Burgess | ||
|
This Is How Modern Societies Prosper, Unless You’re an Idiot ... Why Cancelling Debt Matters Even More Than You Think
Written by Umair Haque Aug 26th, 2022 It’s rare to see a litmus test that lights up a bright blinking red for how foolish people really are. Idiot alert. Lucky for us, or maybe unlucky for us, these days, we have one. Joe Biden cancelled $10k of student debt for millions of Americans, and America’s pundits and professors erupted. Now, I wrote about this a little bit recently, but I want to talk about it a little bit more. Because this issue really is a litmus test: it teaches us whether people — people in positions of power, especially, like pundits and intellectuals — actually understand a goddamned thing about the modern world at all. If I sound irritated, that’s because I am, and well, you should be too, or at least blackly amused. Firestorm. Catherine Rampell is one of America’s better columnists. I’d give her a D in an economists seminar, instead of an F. That’s a sign of how dire America’s discourse really is, and that matters, because there’s now a huge, huge gap between what pundits and intellectuals proclaim, and the average person just sighing and asking themselves: “are these people idiots?” Even she committed the egregious, laughable error of calling cancelling student debt “a version of trickle down economics.” Wait, what? How is…forgiving debts young people have for getting educated…anything…anything…like…tax cuts for billionaires? Is this person actually a columnist for one of America’s biggest newspapers? And yet that’s far from the worst takes out there, of which there’s a veritable tsunami. It’s unforgivable, this level of ignorance. You see, all this really is a stand-in for whether or not people understand how a modern society actually works. But I’m going to come back to that. Let’s think about the idea that “cancelling student is like trickle-down economics.” In other words, a fantasy, which is going to lead to all kinds of bad outcomes, from inflation to inequality to poverty (by way of higher prices.) Is any of that really true? You might think: well, we can’t know! It’s too complicated! Actually, there’s nothing simpler in the world — in the world of social science, anyways — than figuring out the answer to the question: “is cancelling student debt bad?” All it takes is literally…wait for it…a glimpse at the modern world. Just one tiny glance. (How is it that Americans columnists and pundits and intellectuals who are paid fortunes to…think…can’t even do that much, anyways?) All we have to do…all we have to do…is take a look at the entire rich world, in which education is far, far cheaper than it is in America, thus incurring far, far less debt. And compare. No need to even run a statistical analysis, really, because the answer is going to leap out at us, so obvious is it, and smash over the head with obviosity, and yes, that’s a word now that I made it up. In fact, to be really precise, we could look at a country like Denmark. Why? Because Denmark pays young people to go to college. “Every Danish student receives about $900 (5,839 Danish krones) per month under a scheme known as SU (Statens Uddannelsesstøtte).” That’s the diametrical opposite of student debt — being paid to go to college. All we have to do — all — is just ask the incredibly simple question: hey, how’s Denmark doing as a society? Did this idea of paying young people to go to college…cause ruinous waves of inflation? Did it make Denmark the world’s most unequal society? Are young people now doing incredibly badly there? Are their job prospects shattered? Did this “handout” have “ugly social justice consequences,” like leaving rich students (LOL) the overlords for life of poor ones? Wow, hold on, let me take a minute to puzzle all this through. In fact, it appears to be the case that Denmark is one of the world’s most strikingly successful societies. Among the most equal, trusting, happy. With a stable social structure, relatively good rates of growth, even counterbalanced by a pretty good profile when it comes to saving the planet. In short, Denmark is the kind of society most of the rest of the world dreams of being — and that’s despite all its growing problems, a kind of xenophobia that’s sweeping the world infecting it, too, rising nationalism, extremism, fanaticism, and so forth. Still, none of the consequences that America’s pundits and columnists and so on warn of happening — none of them — happened. Denmark wasn’t afflicted by super high inflation, the moment it began paying students to go to college. It didn’t suddenly become a dystopia of inequality. Lives didn’t fall apart. The economy didn’t crater, and no, “rich” students” didn’t end up being the Great Winners. “A widely cited report by OECD found that inequality and a lack of access to education had held back economic growth in most developed countries from 1990 to 2010. Denmark, though, had faced nearly no negative economic consequences, contrary to nearly all other examined countries.” So it appears to have been a thoroughly wise policy to undertake. Everyone was better off. Not a single negative consequence occurred, really — only good things did. Why is that? Because investing in people is at the heart of a modern society. It is what modernity is. It’s how prosperity happens. There is nothing, and I mean nothing, more important than investment. It’s what makes a society modern. It creates hospitals and town squares and universities and research and development, all of which lead to jobs and trust and happiness, all of which add up to higher living standards. And yet American pundits and intellectuals trot out the same old tired, idiotic refrains they always do when it comes to investing in anyone or anything. Inflation! Recession! Inequality! But they never, ever glance at the entire modern world. America’s the nation which was afflicted by all the problems above — and the rest of the modern world, far, far less so. Inflation? It’s in America where everything from education to healthcare to retirement went through the roof, indenting people for life, growing worse through the generations. It’s America whose inequality is higher than ancient Rome, a Bezos rich enough to heat an entire country like Britain, and still have more money left over than he can ever, ever spend. America’s the country that’s long been afflicted, serially, fatally, by the very problems its intellectuals and columnists keep on warning of happening if something’s done.…about those very problems. Clearly, something’s very, very wrong with all this. These geniuses…are getting reality backwards. And Americans end up confused and baffled by it all, because these jokers are literally reversing cause and effect, so deep is their ignorance. Investing in people, things people need, society’s fundamental systems — none of that causes inflation or recession or inequality. If it did, well, guess what? Canada and Europe would be America — dystopian places with ultra high inequality, impoverished, beset by neo-fascist and theocratic movements, as the entire working and middle class collapsed. Instead, it’s America that’s like that, precisely because it never invests in anything, and a big reason it never does that is because every time anyone tries — even raises the idea — this chorus of idiots erupts in ignorant rage, reversing cause and effect, denying reality. Investing in people will cause inflation! Recession! Inequality!! Meanwhile, by investing in people, things they need, fundamental systems — societies like Canada and France and Germany keep on making quantum leaps in living standards, to the point where America and it’s junior cousin in collapse, Britain, are now closer to poor countries than to rich ones. Meanwhile, the very ills that these fools warn will happen if we are to invest… just keep on ripping through American life…because nobody ever invests…to the point that five generations of young people have each been more downwardly mobile than the last. And this fools game just goes on and on. Surely we can all see the problem here. Let’s come back to student debt now. How is cancelling student debt an investment — and how does that, in turn, make it a litmus test for whether or not a person really understands how a modern society works? Well, just think about it. There’s some young person, who’s spending a relative fortune, to get educated. What does education do? That’s right, it’s a public good, which benefits us all. But because they have to pay back the debt — usually at incredibly onerous terms — they’re far less capable of using that new public good, really employing it. So instead, of, say, going out and creating a new vaccine we might all need, or inventing a new form of clean energy, or just practicing as say, a therapist, or what have you…they’re usually stuck working at some dumb dead-end job for several years, to “pay back the debt.” That doesn’t benefit anyone. It doesn’t even benefit the people who hold the debt — which by now are usually hedge funds, in real terms — because even those guys would be far better off with vaccines or clean, cheap energy, or a Great Novel, or the therapist they so clearly need to deal with their issues of psychopathy, and so on. There is nothing — and I mean nothing — that a society can invest in to lift its fortunes further and faster than education. Think about the chorus of ignoramuses again — if what America’s columnists and pundits warned of was really true, then, well, the Stone Age would have been the end of human civilization. The moment we built a university — Oxford, back in 1096 — the economy would have been wracked by inflation, inequality, recession, and so on. Whoops, I guess that’s the end. Of course, that’s absurd, and I highlight it precisely because this entire “debate” is absurd. We should all know — each and every one of us — that education is the single most valuable investment a society can make. So incredibly crucial is it that actual research — reams of it — shows that, for example, educating girls and women is the key to transforming poor societies into richer ones. That denial of such a basic fact — Stone Age Ignorance — permeates American discourse is a big reason that America ended up where it did. Let me sum all that up. One: the most crucial thing a society can do is invest. In people, things they need, fundamental systems, like education, healthcare, retirement, food, energy. Because, two, that is what modernity is: societies like Western Europe and Canada are now light years more advanced than America and Britain — enjoying vastly higher living standards, from longevity to trust to happiness — because they invest at a far higher rate, and have done for decades. Three, even among investments, the single best one that can possibly be made, in all of human history, is education. If that weren’t the case, then of course progress would have stopped dead — maybe the Victorian Age would have been the grand finale, the apex of human development, the climax of it all or maybe the Feudal Era would have. But they weren’t, precisely because educating people is always — and I mean always — a good thing for a society to do. And because that’s true, cancelling debt — way, way past a mere $10K, but in fact right down to the point of paying kids to go to college — is the wise thing to do. Clear enough? Of course that’s not true for every kid or person — we’re speaking at a societal level. There should never be a time when a generation is less educated than the last. There should never be a time when education gets more expensive, either, precisely because all that knowledge is adding up, and it’s benefits are increasing, forever, too. What we have to learn is always growing, and it’s benefits are always piling up, and therefore, education is the truest thing we have to the Philosopher’s Stone — turning the lead of ignorance to the gold of wisdom. America’s pundits and columnists could use some of that themselves. Because education isn’t even just what happens in a classroom. You can educate yourself. Even just by looking at the world for a second, and asking basic questions. Me? I recommend doing it often, so your brain doesn’t turn into a block of lead…like most of America’s chorus of ignoramuses, who, unfortunately, are the ones angrily still trying to lead everyone else in a circle of folly, off the cliffs of despair. Umair August 2022
| The text being discussed is available at | https://eand.co/this-is-how-modern-societies-prosper-unless-youre-an-idiot-4cba4c863546 and |