Saying stuff like that… is just dishonest. Allow me a couple observations I realized over the last few years.
The middle class had metrics for success:
– House ownership
– College education
– Nice cars
But the above metric, doesn’t necessary mean you have the skill set to be middle class. The brutal truth: given these metrics doesn’t ensure you are successful.
Milton Friedman made a brilliant observation: we want equality at the starting line while the proverbial “they” want equality at the finishing line.
– Enter the Community Reinvestment Act. What was the end result, equality at the finishing line, everyone gets a house.
– College, blue ribbons, and the New Class; college just is; blue ribbons the millennium hover mom gen; New Class being the groups that form in post-modern-industrial societies for their pursuit of political and social goals (protesting boomers, OWS, PETA types).
There are really no longer any barriers to a college education. Anyone who wants it can get credit and attend. Everyone gets blue ribbons, ahem a degree anymore.
If you don’t want to pursue a math, science, or business degree for whatever reason, you have a choice of traditional academia or now a New Class degree. Both being overwhelming dependent on gov’t funds to float their industry.
Academia gets somewhat of a free pass as we want educators (although I would like to see schools be 100% for-profit with no moneys received from state or federal gov’ts, and school vouchers used to ensure schools try to capture competitive advantages). And I’ll add academia was usually reserved for the intellectual class however watered down with ideology it is today, it still has respect.
But the New Class, their degrees offer a professional path to learn how to 1.) Use gov’t to appropriate funds from wealth producers, 2.) How to access these funds (via grant) in the pursuit of political and social goals.
The Stimulus was a masterful play and execution of this type thinking by the New Class. May I coin a term – professional volunteerism.
– Another facade being sold is believing that having a degree equates an entitlement to earning a living for the rest of your life. You have blue ribbon, everyone has blue ribbon, try selling “everyone’s blue ribbon” on ebay.
– Cash for Clunkers. Destroying Capital Assets for pure cosmetics and what-not. If it wasn’t a useful asset, the “clunker” would have been discarded and replaced well before hand.
The premise that C4C was an environmental plus is ludicrous. Someone will celebrate the fact the people could trade a 15mph suv for a 20mph one; I’d lament it was more a subsidy for the car companies we just nationalized than an “environmental win reduce our dependence on oil” type slogan.
Also again, hey guys, golden stars & blue ribbons all around – you all get to upgrade to nicer cars too. Stimulus!
What was once earned by people who could pull themselves up is now readily accessible because of regulations.
Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Student Loan Industry are more or less nationalized by the gov’t. GM nationalized, unions preferred over bond holders.
The metrics for participation in the middle class has been artificially adjusted by pols. Results… Obama saying our economic model has failed.
But hurdles were legislatively lowered/enforced and the red-flags were much ignored by said pols. Entrance was much easier, yet it is still failure.