I think it was Megan McArdle who pointed out that the thousands of low paid postgrads and Ph.Ds slugging it for the diminishing number of tenure positions are actually damaging to capitalism and fiscal conservatism. They haven’t experienced anything different and assume that, if they’re working 70 hours p/week for $30,000 p/a, then it must be even worse in the private sector. These are, by, and large, the people teaching the impressionable 18 year olds.
Thanks for the link to the McArdle post — it’s worth reading. I don’t remember where I saw it this week, but somewhere I read that one of the attractions of big government for highly educated Leftists is that it provides them with bureaucratic jobs that provide them with the power, income, status and security they believe should be the natural and inevitable result of their intelligence and credentials. This means a good deal of their push for planned economies springs from their narcissism. They fear games whose outcome they can’t rig for their pre-determined benefit. I have a visceral grasp of the desire for a certain, positive outcome, but I am an entrepreneur at heart and I’m willing to bank on my ability to make something out of nothing. Fiscal conservatism will prosper more as a political philosophy the more we help people to believe in themselves and support the economic system that rewards invention, creation and taking risks.
Please get the frack out of my office.
*snork*
I think it was Megan McArdle who pointed out that the thousands of low paid postgrads and Ph.Ds slugging it for the diminishing number of tenure positions are actually damaging to capitalism and fiscal conservatism. They haven’t experienced anything different and assume that, if they’re working 70 hours p/week for $30,000 p/a, then it must be even worse in the private sector. These are, by, and large, the people teaching the impressionable 18 year olds.
Found it:
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/05/why-does-academia-treat-its-workforce-so-badly/56829/
Liz,
Thanks for the link to the McArdle post — it’s worth reading. I don’t remember where I saw it this week, but somewhere I read that one of the attractions of big government for highly educated Leftists is that it provides them with bureaucratic jobs that provide them with the power, income, status and security they believe should be the natural and inevitable result of their intelligence and credentials. This means a good deal of their push for planned economies springs from their narcissism. They fear games whose outcome they can’t rig for their pre-determined benefit. I have a visceral grasp of the desire for a certain, positive outcome, but I am an entrepreneur at heart and I’m willing to bank on my ability to make something out of nothing. Fiscal conservatism will prosper more as a political philosophy the more we help people to believe in themselves and support the economic system that rewards invention, creation and taking risks.
Cynthia
This is an interesting take on why intellectuals oppose capitalism.
http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/cpr-20n1-1.html
It has to be hard, to go from being the belle of the ball in school to having to compete with their scholastic inferiors in the real world.
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