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Paul Krugman and others have taken note of an ominous about-face in the attitudes of the Republican presidential candidates towards the education of American citizens. Historically it's been unheard-of for a political party to downplay the need for an educated workforce in this country. Up until very recently, recognition of the value of an education in moving the nation forward has been close to universal. The fact that the Republican candidates for President have both expressed views denigrating not only the educational system but the innate value of education in general marks a dramatic departure from normalcy. But, as hinted by Krugman in his column "Ignorance is Strength," and now fleshed out by James Kwak in the Atlantic, this departure is no mere anomaly. It represents a dramatic testament to the evolution of a Republican Party that no longer has any pretense of representing American citizens.
Republican presidential candidates have aimed their guns at higher education. This assault was highlighted by Rick Santorum's fantastical claim that colleges and universities are "indoctrination mills." But perhaps more disturbing is the ever-sober Mitt Romney's advice to high school seniors considering college: shop around, try to save money, and don't count on government help. In other words, you're on your own.
You're on your own.
We will not help you. Because the forces that run the Republican Party simply
don't need you any more.
We have bigger fish to fry.
Oh, they still want your vote. And they'll drum up hot-button social issues that they don't have the slightest interest in changing until you're livid with rage at your neighbor, or the people across the river, or in the next town, but after you trudge down to your church or school and pull that lever? They'll have absolutely no use for you.
Mitt Romney, their likely standard bearer this year, has absolutely no use for you. Speaking to a group of his addled, cheering supporters in Michigan, he clearly articulated the prevailing GOP attitude towards higher education:
It would be popular for me to stand up and say I’m going to give you government money to pay for your college, but I’m not going to promise that,” he said, to sustained applause from the crowd at a high-tech metals assembly factory here. “Don’t just go to one that has the highest price. Go to one that has a little lower price where you can get a good education. And hopefully you’ll find that. And don’t expect the government to forgive the debt that you take on.”
No grants, no aid. In other words, he's not running for office (for Pete's sake!) to help you or anyone else to actually
get ahead in life. He doesn't view it as the responsibility of government to help its citizens improve their economic status. That salaries for recent graduates of those "lower-priced" colleges have
stagnated or diminished is beside the point for Mr. Romney:
After adjusting for inflation, starting salaries for most graduates have remained essentially stagnant for several decades, while those at the bottom of the group have actually declined. Only the highest-paid graduates have enjoyed significant salary growth, and among those a very thin slice at the top has seen truly spectacular increases.
Because of the bitter competition for those premium salaries, elite educational credentials are often a precondition for even landing a job interview. With so many applications for every vacancy, many consulting firms and investment banks, for example, now consider only candidates from a short list of top-ranked schools.
For all their mantric incantations about about "jobs, jobs, jobs," neither Romney nor the rest of the GOP have made any pretense that they're interested in American workers receive better educations, or even seeing that Americans remain continuously employed in the first instance. That's why they they haven't advanced a single credible initiative in two years that would have created any jobs whatsoever. That's why they they felt no compunction about sabotaging the recovery. The continued livelihood of the American worker, and by extension, the continued livelihood of the vast majority of Americans, is no longer driving the GOP agenda.
As Kwak points out in his article, that raises a profoundly serious question:
Since when does the supposed party of business not care about the educational level of the American workforce?
Kwak believes this palpable shift in Republican priorities is a consequence of
globalization and
anti-tax fervor. He makes a good case for both factors, noting that from a political standpoint, both lead to the same end result--the emergence of a Republican Party whose members are driven (read: bought) by the financial interests of an enormously wealthy coterie of multinational corporate leaders whose allegiance to the economic security of the United States has essentially devolved to an afterthought. As the effect of U.S. companies offshoring their plants and manufacturing operations overseas has slowly, surely, diminished the need for educated American workers to maintain corporate productivity, the Republican Party no longer needs to confront the subject of education of the American workforce. Whether ordinary Americans advance their own individual economic status (through education or otherwise) is simply not their concern. They are, in effect, serving a different master than the "American people."
For these corporations (and the list is continually growing), the U.S. is no longer "home," nor is it the center of their profitability. As Kwak points out, the economic landscape has changed drastically since the mid-twentieth century (He might have added that with the information and technology revolution the practical means for offshoring manufacturing jobs has surged exponentially):
Imagine for a moment that the American political system is controlled by rich people. (That shouldn't be too hard.) In the mid-twentieth century, the United States had by far the largest economy in the world. American companies located most of their operations domestically; foreign direct investment was relatively difficult; and global securities markets were relatively undeveloped, making it hard to invest in foreign countries.
For these reasons, if American elites wanted to make more money, they needed American companies to become more profitable. Since American companies relied on American workers, they needed those workers to become more productive. In that situation, it made sense for the upper class to invest in education for the masses (via taxes and government spending on public education) so they could have a more productive workforce.
Those days are long gone. The globalization bug that took hold in the 90's has led to this:
Large American companies locate much of their operations overseas and can draw on talented labor all around the world, essentially free-riding off of other countries' educational systems--many of which are at least the equal of our own.
At the same time, economic development around the world has created many new investment opportunities for rich Americans, and the increasing depth and liquidity of foreign securities markets makes it easier than ever to invest in them. If you think that American companies will lose out to competitors in countries with better education, you can simply buy stock in those competitors--which is much easier than trying to improve our own educational system.
In other words, investing in domestic education is a losing proposition for the
multinational corporations that pull the strings of their Republican marionettes in Washington. An educated workforce just drains money that can better be spent overseas where whole populations have developed without the pesky sense of entitlement to higher wages that Americans exhibit. This goes a long way towards explaining why the Republican Party has no use for unemployment benefits, fiscal stimulus, or anything else that reams of economists both liberal and conservative
all say would put Americans back to work, or improve the American economy.
The health of the American economy is irrelevant to their backers, because they now can invest in foreign companies and foreign economies. It even explains why they would fight a middle-class payroll tax cut. That cut
wouldn't benefit their donors, unless those donors
hired American workers. And their donors are the only one's whose interests they
must serve. The fact that such a tax cut could serve to stimulate the economy by putting more money in middle-class Americans' pockets is simply not their concern.
Kwak believes the anti-tax philosophy that fueled the Gingrich era in Congress and has now given rise to the Tea party is a further symptom of of a Party whose interests and motives have drastically diverged from ordinary Americans. While Republicans have always been anti-tax, in the past that philosophy has always been couched in populist terms, such that taxpayers could "keep more of what they earned." (It's your money," etc). But the payroll tax debacle makes it clear that the interests of ordinary Americans in "keeping" their earnings is not what motivates the modern Republican Party. Their incessant focus on huge and perpetual tax breaks for the wealthy under the shibboleth of "job creation," compared to the pittance of economic gain that devolves to the middle class is just another illustration of the same point:
Again, imagine the country is controlled by rich people. On the one hand, they want their companies to make more money, but those companies are no longer reliant on American workers, so they have little incentive to invest in education. On the other hand, as rich people, they benefit the most from lower taxes. Between better education and a more skilled workforce or lower taxes and more money in their offshore bank accounts, the choice is clear: lower taxes.
Krugman hinted at this in his column last week:
But what about people like Mr. Romney? Don’t they have a stake in America’s future economic success, which is endangered by the crusade against education? Maybe not as much as you think.
After all, over the past 30 years, there has been a stunning disconnect between huge income gains at the top and the struggles of ordinary workers. You can make the case that the self-interest of America’s elite is best served by making sure that this disconnect continues, which means keeping taxes on high incomes low at all costs, never mind the consequences in terms of poor infrastructure and an undertrained work force.
And if underfunding public education leaves many children of the less affluent shut out from upward mobility, well, did you really believe that stuff about creating equality of opportunity?
Yes, and you can "make the case" that the interests of the extremely wealthy and the interests of the remainder of the American population must at some point become so antithetical to each other that both cannot survive and thrive. What Kwak shows is that the Republican Party has already, and perhaps irrevocably, chosen where its loyalty lies. One need only to look at their presumptive nominee's
skewed donor lists for proof. The Republican engine is perfectly capable of raising huge sums of money without recourse to ordinary Americans, and that's exactly what it's doing. And as a result, the interests of ordinary Americans have largely been abandoned.
What does it say about a Party that would willfully cut the throat of the American Dream for the current and future generations to satisfy the greed of a few corporate benefactors? It says that Party does not need Americans to sustain itself, nor does it want to be answerable to their needs.
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