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According to reports, nearly $350 billion has been spent on our country's financial bailout so far. Feel better?
I'll grant that maybe this was the unimportant $350 billion – and that the next $350 billion will really knock our socks off. But on the off chance that I'm wrong, I'd like to ask a question: What happens if it doesn't?
And not just that $350 billion – what if the extra $200 billion we may send to support Detroit's Big Three doesn't help? And what about the $500 billion we spend after that?
What if, when we've finally bankrupted ourselves saving the economy, we come to the conclusion that the government CAN'T save the economy, that it is as helpless in the face of macroeconomic forces as the rest of us?
What then?
It's a terrifying thought, because the first duty of a government is to protect its citizens, but it strikes me as disturbingly possible -- if not this time, than the next.
The reason is an unprecedented social shift made possibly only by a combination of aggressive capitalism and elite education: During the 20th century, the American educational system struggled to create a meritocracy. All well and good. But it was big business, not the government, that was able to recruit the best and brightest that the meritocracy produced: the highest-achieving graduates, by large margins, went to work for investment banks rather than regulators; went to work for hedge funds rather than the IRS; went to law firms that protect the rich instead of federal service that protects the taxpayers.
The institutions that have now sent us into capitalism's death spiral profited enormously from America's historic investment in education – while the institutions that support the common good profited only a little.
America's unprecedented 20th-century investment in higher education – ranging from affordable public colleges to tax-free private ones, from the G.I. Bill to the Pell Grants – had no corresponding investment in public service, and so Americans effectively paid for people to make the financial system too complicated for the government to regulate.
Operating under the mindset that there is more honor in being a multimillionaire venture capitalist than a $60,000-a-year government servant, we let too many bright kids be lured into careers in which risking other people's money, rather than safeguarding it, is the way to get ahead. Forget billions -- by now we've spent trillions teaching people how to be the scientists, engineers, teachers, artists, and innovators our society needs, only to see them grabbed up by companies who employ them to poke holes in the system that protects us. As a result, the ability of corporations to screw the economy advanced miles ahead of the government's ability to preserve it. We shot ourselves in the head with the educations we paid for. Suicide by diploma.
According to reports, nearly $350 billion has been spent on our country's financial bailout so far. Feel better?
I'll grant that maybe this was the unimportant $350 billion – and that the next $350 billion will really knock our socks off. But on the off chance that I'm wrong, I'd like to ask a question: What happens if it doesn't?
And not just that $350 billion – what if the extra $200 billion we may send to support Detroit's Big Three doesn't help? And what about the $500 billion we spend after that?
What if, when we've finally bankrupted ourselves saving the economy, we come to the conclusion that the government CAN'T save the economy, that it is as helpless in the face of macroeconomic forces as the rest of us?
What then?
It's a terrifying thought, because the first duty of a government is to protect its citizens, but it strikes me as disturbingly possible -- if not this time, than the next.
The reason is an unprecedented social shift made possibly only by a combination of aggressive capitalism and elite education: During the 20th century, the American educational system struggled to create a meritocracy. All well and good. But it was big business, not the government, that was able to recruit the best and brightest that the meritocracy produced: the highest-achieving graduates, by large margins, went to work for investment banks rather than regulators; went to work for hedge funds rather than the IRS; went to law firms that protect the rich instead of federal service that protects the taxpayers.
The institutions that have now sent us into capitalism's death spiral profited enormously from America's historic investment in education – while the institutions that support the common good profited only a little.
America's unprecedented 20th-century investment in higher education – ranging from affordable public colleges to tax-free private ones, from the G.I. Bill to the Pell Grants – had no corresponding investment in public service, and so Americans effectively paid for people to make the financial system too complicated for the government to regulate.
Operating under the mindset that there is more honor in being a multimillionaire venture capitalist than a $60,000-a-year government servant, we let too many bright kids be lured into careers in which risking other people's money, rather than safeguarding it, is the way to get ahead. Forget billions -- by now we've spent trillions teaching people how to be the scientists, engineers, teachers, artists, and innovators our society needs, only to see them grabbed up by companies who employ them to poke holes in the system that protects us. As a result, the ability of corporations to screw the economy advanced miles ahead of the government's ability to preserve it. We shot ourselves in the head with the educations we paid for. Suicide by diploma.
Maybe the reason the bailout isn't working is that -- after 100 years of this -- too many holes have been poked for economically weakened, politically crippled, understaffed public agencies to plug. Especially when the same financiers, corporations, and industries that poked them in the first place are now seeing the bailout as one more investment in their ruinous work.
The bailout can't work if it's being spent on the system that put us into this mess. Instead it should be spent as a massive investment in public goods.
National infrastructure projects, high-quality teachers, public health initiatives, public transportation, renewable energy, a strengthened SEC, IRS, and attorney general's office, put thousands more police on the streets, train hundreds of new diplomats in foreign languages, create venture capital funds in struggling cities -- all of this will stimulate the economy as much or more than investing in private companies that can't keep afloat without government assistance, and when we've spent all our money, we'll have something concrete to show for it, too.
Meanwhile, our public investments in education must be understood as investments in the public good: Schools that send too many kids to investment banks and lobbying firms and too few to inner-city schools, poor hospitals and government service are not worth the tax dollars we spend on them. Serving the American people cannot be viewed as an alternative for the also-rans.
Understanding this dynamic is crucial to the American government -- and culture's – long-term survival. Meritocratic education cannot only serve the market, it must be yoked to public service – and big government bailouts should go directly to the public good. Doing this not only stands a good chance of pushing us out of this economic mess, it will short circuit the dynamic that put us here.
A stronger civil service and better public transit are likely to last much, much longer than the Big Three and Goldman Sachs – no matter how much money we throw at them.
Daily Messenger
