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Perhaps the reader has seen this meme floating around Facebook. I would like to discuss the economic and sociological underpinnings of this meme, as well as existential issues of how Americans value the meaning of a life based on a person’s income.
The title of this blog is in reference to a famous essay by Jonathan Swift written in 1729, ‘A Modest Proposal.’ Swift argues satirically that the children of the poor in Ireland should be used as food. It is on a subject my favorite American author, Kurt Vonnegut, writes of often; not cannibalism, but what do we do as a society with our ‘surplus population?’ What is meant by the term ‘surplus population?’ one might come to ask. Isn’t all human life immeasurably valuable? Transcendentally, a priest or moral person might make that argument, but to an economist, life is measurable by its financial exploitability in relation to a very quantifiable metric looking at the person’s contribution to the GDP. To quantify the value of life may lead one down a dangerous path describing the economic state of whether a person is necessary by working and feeding into the GDP, but honestly, it is somewhat necessary for a capitalistic setting. For example, what is one’s financial ration they can expect for health care considering the finite limitations of our economic GDP? Now one might be asking themselves, “What is the GDP, and is this guy just trying to sound smarter than he really is?” GDP stands for the ‘Gross Domestic Product’ of the United States. According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, it is “The value of the goods and services produced in the United States,” and yes, I am a bit grandiose. I will eventually argue the need to quantify a value to the lives of individuals, and I’m pretty sure I’m screwed unless I can peddle this drivel for a little money. In the end, this compilation of intellectual excrement will take a little razzle-dazzle if I am to avoid being euthanized by the VA when I am old and they determine me no longer useful.
Currently, there are more job openings than unemployed persons, thus there is said to be a ‘labor shortage.’ Unfortunately, many of those job openings require certain skill sets, and many of the unemployed do not have the proper training to perform those jobs. Thus there is an abundance of persons like myself who don’t know how to do anything useful and a shortage of people in the trades and medical community. As a therapist once told me inpatient in the VA before I graduated in college with a degree in criminal justice and a bevy of mental health issues, we don’t need more people with no actual skills or pragmatically useful training. I chose my major poorly, but on top of it, I am going to make a mind-blowing argument here that the entire educational system is currently dysfunctional for our needs as a nation to the point of rather becoming a national security threat. Didn’t that just rock your world? Mine either, though my dog passed a nauseatingly raunchy toot as I wrote it. Seriously. I have to change his dog food. Anyway…
A large part of our social conundrum on the labor shortage boils down to an educational system that doesn’t prepare people for careers. Kids don’t even want to learn. Primary school teachers spend an exuberant amount of time merely socializing kids and trying to control behavioral problems. They are graded by testing that largely measures a kid’s ability to memorize and regurgitate information. There is even big public outcry against kids being taught how to analyze why math works the way it does, because the parents can’t assist their children on the homework and largely feel stupid. Unfortunately, the truth is, and this includes me, we largely are.
The public unwisely refuses to fund an educational system that actually meets the needs of the current job market, and colleges have become diploma mills that work with a rather predatory higher educational loan racket. My experience at one university was that the students largely did D work in the hopes of being curved to a C or even a B, because the professor couldn’t fail the vast majority of the class. The students basically held the professor and the entire educational system hostage, and there is no real rigor in many university departments. The result is that nobody wants to really deal with the problem properly of a skilled labor shortage. Many people, especially on the more conservative wing of the political spectrum, have concerns about ‘consumers’ who don’t significantly contribute to domestic production. The ideology of conservatives is that non-contributing consumers should feel some hunger in their bellies so that they become motivated to join the workforce and/or become a ‘job creator’ or at least ‘self-employed.’
These non-contributing consumers are the surplus population because our nation appears to function fine without them in the workforce. Members could easily include myself currently, so I am somewhat to the left of center in the spectrum of political ideology. A large part of this is because I disagree with conservatives on whether college loans are the appropriate way to finance a higher educational system that is proving to be of critical need. It makes more sense to make college an extension of the public primary school system IF it were completely restructured in how it intakes for necessary subject matter, functions, and screens out those who can’t handle the rigor. However, screening out those who can’t handle the rigor currently creates a huge gamble for anyone willing to take the risk of a student loan. There is really no fail-safe in society to encourage risk-taking by giving some level of reprieve if the educational gamble fails. The fact we in America are more into looking at our economy as a game, rather than an investment in humanity is rather nihilistic in what it implies about our values and social psychology as a nation. It is made worse by the belief that one needs to borrow against a bank insane amounts of money with interest to have any chance of success in life and if it goes wrong, one is permanently indentured to debt collection.
In the past, the economy primarily depended on grade school education and trades offered in high school. This was a no-cost education that offered most students a decent living and a chance to actually amass some wealth. This prompted the funding of unions, workers rights, and even a push for more racial equality. However, a lot of those trade classes were moved over to community colleges and even full-fledged universities. This has created a huge upset in socio-economic and racial disparities in the employability of our population to fill job gaps.
Systemic racism is something I want to address in more detail later in an entry dedicated just to struggles with racism in America, but throughout this and virtually every blog on subject matter that divides America on Facebook, I would be remissed if I didn’t occasionally break from my argument point out where racism and sexism intersect with the subject matter being discussed in the topic at hand. Let’s take a moment to focus on how these socio-economic, racial and gender disparities lower our validity of America as a quasi-meritocracy where hard work and ingenuity pay off for some sense of equality in our extreme levels of personal financial resources.
By moving much of the trades out of high school vocational education into community colleges and/or higher universities, banks were able to send students into debt at an age many of them first start having mental disorders that may make education temporarily an unsound idea. There are also aspects of stress that can result in academic failure when students go from a supportive and no-cost learning environment to a more competitive college setting where there are some increasingly steep costs to living and for supplies, parking, and tuition. Financial stressors are a particular setback to people of a more impoverished background which disproportionally includes black Americans. The competitive nature of college, as well as some of the arguably somewhat natural tendencies of the disproportionally white male professors to spend additional time mentoring white males, also can harm both those who are stressed out by poverty, the radically different social dynamics of college, minorities, and women. The general disparities in academic success based on demographical information indicates that the college system isn’t exactly an environment that is easy to adapt to, especially when one feels they don’t fit in. Add to this college students who are unprepared for life outside home partaking in mind-altering substances as well as discovering mental disorders where the gene often doesn’t unfold until young adulthood, and the reader will see a few of the many complex issues that knock people out of college and into debt that one is legally forbidden to declare bankruptcy on. While there may be a huge pay off for successfully completing college, there is no safety net for those who can’t handle the rigorous, and often biased, environment.
College has also become a way of keeping people out of jobs who don’t want to go into debt, but can compete in competency and skill sets with those who didn’t go to what was often a complete diploma mill. College is of questionable validity in screening out many people for certain jobs, such as social worker or police officer. When a multitude of jobs suddenly start requiring one go in debt to qualify for the job, primary education becomes of almost no use as a means of anything but a job that, as the meme above points out, many feel should not pay a livable wage. This is much of the reason for the divide on Facebook. Should people be strong-armed into going into debt in America to get a job that pays a living wage? Traditionally we didn’t do that as Americans. Traditionally one could get a livable wage straight out of a free public education. The need to start one’s career in debt is kind of a new need and rather counterproductive towards arguing capitalism allows for equality in the current state of economic affairs. While many complain that people feel entitled to an adequate education, the people on the flip side feel entitled to having their burger on the dollar value menu. It’s kind of a messed up position to take and rather insulting to those who do not have many great opportunities available, even if it is due to the mistakes of having a criminal record or simply mental health stigma they can’t bury in their past.
I’m mentally ill. It makes getting employment difficult. It is generally unlikely I will make a living wage, even with a college education. I am glad I chose to be white though. Certainly one doesn’t want to be a black ex-felon, but merely working fulltime is being argued as not meritorious enough to make a living, so yeah, those who can’t turn to their family are forced to have a hussle that sometimes leads to a family dynasty, like Trump’s grandpa and pimping or the Kennedy’s and bootlegging. Don’t be black though. That’s a bad choice. They’ll take you from your kids and break you in prison with no opportunities afterward. “Do you want a job, or do you want a living wage?” Not everyone has family money to turn to for supplement in hard times. It’s not my struggle, but I’ve come to relate more than most. That though is a subject for later.
Joker's Wild 