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Educated Fools

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Re: Educated Fools

#261

Post by dragonwriter »

rayiner wrote: post #16
toasterlovin wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Democratic Party is driving a wedge between itself, FWIW. The talking points around political correctness could not be better designed to alienate working and middle class white people.

Or middle class people of any race: https://www.politico.com/news/2019/11/05/trump-latino-poll-0... > But according the Telemundo poll, nearly two-thirds of Latinos said they wouldn't vote for a candidate who describes himself as a “socialist.” Sanders identifies as a democratic socialist.

On the other hand:

https://www.npr.org/2019/12/20/790319860/polls-show-sanders-...

Abstract preference questions often don't predict preference for specific candidates, because they don't capture subtleties in the area of preference being polled or how it is weighted against other concerns.

Re: Educated Fools

#262

Post by toasterlovin »

jayd16 wrote: post #260
humanrebar wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recent headlines? Latinx, drag queens as family friendly content, overreach on dilution and removal of gendering (no more daddy/daughter events), politicizing sports, politicizing popcorn movies, censorship of standup comedians, social media bans, student loan forgiveness pitches. Anything that looks like a bailout to the rich and upper middle class, including for homeowners.

With the exception of maybe loan forgiveness, none of those are party or candidate talking points. The rest are social issues and mostly gender issues so I don't really understand what middle class or white hat has to do with it. Was that just code for social conservatives?

Who do you think the social conservatives are? Because they’re certainly not the highly educated, urban whites who make half of the white Democrat constituency. Then you might argue that this has nothing to do with whites, specifically, but as the article’s author notes, probably the only reason that this hasn’t completely alienated black and Latino voters is because they’re already used to being alienated and don’t see the republicans as a viable alternative. But whites don’t have the same things tying them to the democrats.

FWIW, I think there’s a good chance the republicans will start figuring out to flip Latino and Asian voters by appealing to social conservatism.

Re: Educated Fools

#263

Post by llamataboot »

gumby wrote: post #246
TeMPOraL wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm thinking: because it gives people a strong, active, positive goal to pursue. Members of each class want to migrate to the higher one, or at the very least, have their children break into the higher one. If you're discriminated or treated unfairly by a group of people, the natural reaction would be to separate yourself from that group of people, not fight it. But if for some reason you really want to join that gro…

> I'm thinking: because it gives people a strong, active, positive goal to pursue. Your statement comes from your philosophical stance. As it happens I share your view about my own motivations. Despite that I recognize that most people do not. Also: your position sounds American (are you?). The idea of “class” and most of the literature around it is European, where class is not something that people can typically cha…

In fact, the US has some of the lowest class mobility in the industrialized world. It's the first and most basic fact that anyone who argues that US-style corporate capitalism is "meritocratic" should have to contend with.

Many European countries have far more class mobility, especially ones with strong social welfare systems like the Scandinavian ones

https://www.epi.org/publication/usa-lags-peer-countries-mobi...

Re: Educated Fools

#264

Post by eli_gottlieb »

IIAOPSW wrote: post #146

I'm going to break slightly with the authors opinion here and say we do solve every problem with "be more like us" but that doesn't always mean college. Other solutions involve "why don't you just move", better mass transit / fewer cars, some form of retraining (not college per se) etc. There's a whole basket of diverging "elite" values such that even if they stopped telling people to go to college tomorrow they woul…

>Maybe I am being one of those dastardly, snobbish, grating coastal elites. But if you don't like me and my solutions, what else is there? There is literally nothing I could suggest to help the lower class which can't be construed as "just be more like me".

I'd bet money you're not in a trade union.

Re: Educated Fools

#265

Post by growlist »

te_chris wrote: post #205
paganel wrote: post #10

> This all fits the claim of the French geographer Christophe Guilluy about his own country in his 2016 book The Twilight of the Elites: Prosperity, the Periphery, and the Future of France. +1 for Christophe Guilluy's book, it's really eye-opening, even more so considering that he wrote/published it even before the "gilets jaunes" movement started. Not sure there's a solution for this "periphery" problem, but I see i…

God it’s rampant in the UK, completely bisected between London and the rest of the country.

Not much more than 100 years ago, 40% of world trade passed through Liverpool: 40%! It's staggering how quickly things can turn around, and I find it just unfathomable how the wealth somehow just leached away to other places over time.

Re: Educated Fools

#266

Post by growlist »

I think the title is appropriate. I read more and more content (in what used to be considered the more intelligent news sources) that I could pull to shreds line-by-line, yet the publications are successful and apparently this content is being lapped up. Their seems to be just enough sophistry, pretentious verbosity and reinforcement of existing beliefs to make the reader believe they have read an accurate and objective appraisal of the situation, and to feel confident to regurgitate this speciousness on command as if it's the truth. I'll read some obvious rubbish and can almost predict point-for-point exactly how someone's words will proceed - and these are educated people, supposed to be able to distinguish. It's depressing.

Re: Educated Fools

#267

Post by SSSDFRO »

tw04 wrote: post #184
overgard wrote: post #43

I totally agree with the article, but to me the saddest part of all of this is I'm unconvinced that a college education is actually even that useful. (I say that with a four year CS degree). Most majors, to be blunt, are pretty useless in terms of real world skills. The argument is "they teach you how to think". I don't know how you would even measure that, but it doesn't seem that true, especially since colleges are…

I think you’re missing the forest for the trees. Having grown up in a small town, I can tell you the difference between my classmates who went to college and those who didn’t is night and day. I’m not talking “intelligence” I’m talking world view. The folks who never left home just don’t seem to care what’s happening outside of their bubble. Massacre in Uganda? Meh, I’ve got bowling tonight. Assassination in Iran? We…

In other words, small town people are generally pragmatic while college educated individuals are opinionated.

Re: Educated Fools

#269

Post by jxramos »

wonderment wrote: post #2

I know it's maybe too political for HN but I found this article more interesting than expected. Its main idea is "the loss of social standing, social claims, the social assets that working people used to have, because, in our time, education is so much more decisive".

The authors point about having little meaningful intersection with the bulk of society's high school educated masses reminded me of David Brooks old piece: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/11/opinion/how-we-are-ruinin...

He details joining a friend of his with a high school education to lunch. He soon recognizes that they jumped a guardrail of sorts in how she was baffled by this fancy world created by elites caught in the microcosm of a gourmet Italian sandwich shop. He reads into the encounter pretty deeply, but backs up a bunch of other elite practices that make elite culture out of reach. It's a pretty interesting read.

Pretty shocking to read this Educated Fools piece where the author basically admits to what are more commonly called unintended consequences.

The authors bit about Trump embracing the poorly educated is interesting. It jibes with something I read once but can't find the source at the moment. It had something to do with his frequent dealings with construction workers and going out to speak and meet the people crafting his buildings. He as a developer supposedly developed a rapport and respect from those working class folks. Also being a landlord in his early days dealing with poor folk. I think I heard about that in this Japanese documentary bit https://youtu.be/rwNTjlEpJD0?t=443. Kind of interesting to see a Japanese perspective on the guy and how they craft stories. His crazy dealings with professional wrestling too and all that gaudy raucousness also intersects with that other class of people. Seems like its not a recent foray for him, he's been engaging with folks in other classes for sometime by the looks of it. That's probably something that went unnoticed for a long time till folks started to scrutinize what the heck happened.

Re: Educated Fools

#270

Post by yesenadam »

gen220 wrote: post #54
Despegar wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We took away your unions and safety net, but by golly, we'll protect your "dignity." Organized labor may not have been targeted explicitly like by Republicans, but Democrats haven't really been a friend to them either [1]. Both parties have been on board with the neoliberal agenda for 40 years. [1] http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/01/democrats-paid-a-huge...

Yeah, when you expand your scope of analysis to include the labor movements of other nations, it’s striking how anemic and disenfranchised organized labor has been in the US. Unions in other countries have historically been a voice of the people, and don’t have a lasting allegiance with any political party or movement. I have no idea why American unions collapsed; perhaps, it was justified in the moment, but the pres…

>I have no idea why American unions collapsed

I learnt a lot about that unknown history from Alex Carey's classic Taking the Risk Out of Democracy (1987). It was no accident but a huge and deliberate campaign. The story is pretty horrifying.

http://gen.lib.rus.ec/search.php?req=Alex+Carey&column=autho...

A small part of the story, from p31:

"The American Advertising Council represents large corporations and large advertising agencies. In April 1947 the council announced a $100 million advertising program which, over the next twelve months, would use all media 'to "sell" the American economic system' to the American people. The program was officially described as a 'major project of educating the American people about the economic facts of life'.

Daniel Bell, then an editor of Fortune, provides a perspective on both the scale and the anti-union and anti-New Deal purposes of these campaigns:

"It has been industry's prime concern, in the post war years, to change the climate of opinion ushered in by...the depression. This 'free enterprise' campaign has two essential aims: to re-win the loyalty of the worker which now goes to the union and to halt creeping socialism [i.e. the New Deal] ... In short the campaign has had the definite aim of seeking to shift the Democratic majority of the last 20 years into the Republican camp ..."

Bell sketches some of the resources, created to sell goods but now used in an overwhelming campaign to sell ideas. 'The apparatus itself is prodigious: 1,600 business periodicals, 577 commercial and financial digests, 2,500 advertising agencies, 500 public relations counsellors, 4,000 corporate public relations departments and more than 6,500 "house organs" with a combined circulation of more than 70 million. Of the opinion-shaping product Bell observes: "The output is staggering. The Advertising Council alone, in 1950, inspired 7 million lines of newspaper advertising stressing free enterprise, 400,000 car cards, 2,500,000,000 radio impressions ... By all odds it adds up to the most intensive "sales" campaign in the history of industry'

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