The College Trap

College has been touted as a shortcut to success - by the media. 

 Are we being fed a pack of lies?

Many young folks today are graduating from college and wondering what the hell happened.   Saddled with tens of thousands of dollars in Student Loan debt, they find themselves unable to get a job, at least not in their field of study - if at all.

In a recent article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution about job prospects in Georgia, a young woman laments that her "dual degree" in "Journalism and Communications" isn't landing her a job, and that she may have to move somewhere else to get a job.

There is so much in that one short sentence that you could spend weeks parsing it all out.

To start with, let's address the whole "college is the key to life" bullshit mentality that has been sold to generations of Americans.   It is wrong on so many levels.   It is akin to the idea that "The American Dream" is one of home ownership not the idea of becoming successful based on your own merits.

The dream of a "college education" has been similarly bastardized by the media and politicians.   And usually, we are sold the same old line of bullshit:  Getting a college education means you will make more money in life, and surveys and statistics back this up.  There are a number of problems with this argument.  Well, actually a whole slew of them, but here are the main points:

1. When few people went to college, going to college was special:  College back in the 1950's marked you as above the norm, hence college graduates historically have been the cream of the crop of society.

2.  When everyone goes to college, college really loses its meaning and exclusivity.   We all can't be Bank Presidents or CEOs.   Most of us have to be Indians, not Chiefs.  The idea that we can all be trained in college to run things is idiotic on its face.   Huey Long tried to sell this idea - that "every man could be a king!"  He was a crook.

3.  Not all college degrees are equivalent.   Most are bullshit.   Degrees in Philosophy, Religion, Physics (undergraduate), Psychology (undergraduate), Pre-Law, Pre-Med, Business, Communications, Journalism, Sociology, Anthropology - and a whole host of others - are really worthless in the real world, in terms of training you for a job or providing real job experience.   The reason is twofold:  Some of these degrees are mere stepping-stones to a Master's program (the new College, since the old BA degrees are now worthless), others just are academic studies that have no corollary in the real world in terms of employment.

4.  Not all educations are equivalent.  In the UK, they have a grading system for college graduates.  Almost everyone gradates, of course, but only a few take a "first" in their course of study.  Most take a "second".  If you just showed up and didn't make too much trouble, you got a "third" or "ordinary" degree.   A friend of mine had one of these in Physics, and I didn't understand at the time why he didn't go into some technical career.   I learned later that the only Physics he actually learned was how to stack pint glasses into a pyramid at the local pub.   Degrees with low grade averages can be useless (although my GPA was a pathetic 2.5, due to the fact I flunked out of college).

5.  While it may be statistically true that college graduates make more money, you are not a statistic:   Statistics are backward-looking, so the data we see today is based on people who graduated from college in 1970.   Yea, back then, going to college was a big deal - and you were someone special who would make more money.   Today?  Everyone goes - or can go - and college grads are just not in demand.   Bear in mind that also college graduates are generally smarter than average, so it is no surprise that they would end up making more money - we should expect this.   This does not mean, however, that their success was due to college.  That would be confusing correlation with causation and no college grad worth their salt would ever do that, right?

Now, granted, if you graduate from Harvard with a 4.0 in advanced Bullshit, chances are you may find a job.   Why?  Because you really are the cream of the crop and the top of the heap.   On the other hand, a 3.0 in the same degree field from a State School may lead you to the unemployment line.

Historically, there were always companies that hired people like that.  Law firms in New York City trolled the top-name law schools for the top talent - those who graduated at the top of their class and were on law review.   In other words, the really smart people.

Well, what about the rest of us?   What, indeed?

Most, if not all, college graduates, end up in careers and fields far different from their fields of study.   And the main reason for this is that most college degrees don't really train you for a career at all.

Take our "Dual Degree Journalism and Communications" major.  Odds are, she will never find a job in the Journalism field or in Communications (whatever that is!).  Why is this?   Well, colleges graduate more people in this field every year than their are career positions, period.   Actually, one school, the Newhouse School of Communications at S.U., cranks out more "Communications" majors every year than there are total jobs in the field.   In other words, if every television newscaster, newspaper journalist, writer, producer, and director in the "News" business suddenly dropped dead one year, this one college could replace them all, with one graduating class - and still leave a number left over to work slacker jobs.

Of course, no one at the college bothered to tell anyone that when they signed up for tuition at $40,000 a year or more, right?

So, how did this all happen?

Well, as I noted before, the middle class has been struggling to hold on to what little it has.  And parents of middle-class kids are paranoid about their children "not going to college" and thus will pay for a college education - any kind of college education - on the thin promise that it will lead to their child getting a career and not living in their basement until they are 30.

And I see this all the time.  A friend tells me that little Junior has been accepted to State School, where he wants to study "Anthropology" as the coursework seemed easier than all that hard Math and Science stuff - and thus would interfere less with his partying.  Junior has had a charmed life, of course, being given whatever electronic toy he wanted his whole life, and a brand-new car once he achieved that impossible milestone of graduating from High School.  So after college, he is like deer-in-the-headlights when no one wants to hire him to be Indiana Jones and jet off to Borneo to study primitive tribal cultures.

Late adolescence is a very difficult time for people.   Making the transition from School to Life is hard - and hard to conceive for most people.   School is all about staying inside the lines and checking off the boxes - following pre-set rules and getting minimal rewards.  There is no cost-benefit analysis of your work value.

The job world is a different place.  A company - even a government - has to see bang-for-the-buck.  People cannot be just hired willy-nilly on the basis that they are really smart college kids and deserve a job.   They have to generate more income for the company than their salary (and benefits and overhead) cost.

Sadly, most of the kids today fail to get this.   And lacking any real-world experience, they are not readily employable.   So the conundrum sets in - how do you get experience when no one hires you?   If no one hires you, you cannot get experience to get hired.   And so forth.   It is a vicious circle.

And many in this group today decry their fate - as if it never happened to anyone else.   But that is, of course, not true.   Legions of college graduates have sallied forth from our Nation's leading educational institutions in years gone by, only to find they were suited only for restaurant work.  It ain't just you.

I dropped out of school in 1980, when unemployment was over 10%, inflation was over 10%, home mortgages were 14% and they were only selling gasoline on alternate days.   Sorry if I don't think your situation is unique or worse than I had it.

So what did I do?   Based on what education I had (in industrial engineering) I landed a $4-an-hour minimum-wage job assembling hydraulic hose fittings for a local Aeroquip distributor.   With my princely salary of $8,000 a year, I was able to rent an apartment and feed myself - and still manage to squander most of my dough on beer and pot.   But I kept looking, and eventually landed a nice job with Carrier, for the staggering sum of $8 an hour - plus generous benefits that at the time I really didn't appreciate.   And one of those was tuition reimbursement to go back to college.

In-between, I worked as a teamster for United Parcel, a pizza delivery man for Domino's, and even as an assistant sex educator for Planned Parenthood (talk about the blind leading the blind!).  The common denominator was that I wasn't afraid to work - to take crap jobs, even if they were just to pay the bills.  And also I was able to leverage my skill set to get better paying jobs.   Being able to program an Apple II computer might not seem like much, but back in 1982, people thought it was genius.

Sadly, many college grads today are "struggling" as they believe that (a) if they don't take a job in their career field, they have somehow failed, and (b) if they take a job outside their career field, it will hurt their job prospects later on.  But the reality is, as a recent college grad, without experience, your chances of getting a job in your field of study (if indeed, such jobs even exist) are very, very slim.   Waiting around for your dream job to materialize is just not a viable option.

A better approach is to take stock of your inventory of skills - as well as your life.   If you are still boozing it up and smoking pot like a college student, chances are, that is a good first place to start.   It was for me, at age 25 when I realized my life was going nowhere fast - and that my po-thead friends were all driving their cars off a cliff.

A second place to start is to catalog your existing skills and interests.  While I did not have an Engineering degree, my background in Plant Engineering and Hydraulics landed me a job with the Aeroquip distributor, which was a springboard to other jobs later on.   I learned to write (and to type) and those skills helped me later get a job with the Patent Office, and later get into Law School.   It was not that I was without talent, but that I had not applied my talents properly.

And for some folks, this may take them in a very tangential directions.   I recounted before about the foreign car repair shop in Arlington, Virginia.  The founders were all philosophy majors at a local University, who, being poor college kids, bought used Alfa Romeos and Fiats when they were in college (rusty Italian cars could be had cheaply back in the 1970's).  Out of necessity, they learned how to repair these notoriously difficult cars.   By the time they graduated, they discovered there was little demand for philosophy majors, but that local sports car enthusiasts were demanding their services.   They set up shop and discuss philosophy while adjusting valves on old Alfas.

Another friend of mine couldn't find work after college and got a job working for a local carpenter, who was a cabinet-maker.  He got paid bubkis, and mostly hauled heavy wood around and helped sweep the floor.  Today, he is a master furniture maker and an artist in his own right.   Was it the career he set out to do?  No.  But few of us have a story arc like that in life.

Everybody eventually finds something.  No one remains permanently unemployed for 30 years.

(Of course, this does not mean you are guaranteed a corner office and a huge salary.  No one is - college degree or not.   And yea, the admissions department at Party U. failed to mention that to you.   But smart college kids should be able to figure that out ahead of time.)

For some, this may mean going back for a graduate degree.  For others, it may mean taking a job - any job - that leads to another field.   It also may mean moving to an area of the country where there are jobs.  But it involves doing something rather than nothing.  You can't wait for the world to come to you - you have to go seek it out.

Of course, there is one difference between today's youth and those of years gone by.  Today, many kids today graduate with a lot of student debt.   And this is a shame - but it gets right back to the issues raised above - where kids, at age 18, are herded into college without any real idea as to how it is supposed to prepare them for life, and whether in fact it is worthwhile.

For some, this burden of debt is overstated.  Some OWS protesters are complaining about $25,000 in student loan debt - a pitiful amount of money that barely buys a nice car these days.  For them, the real beef is that student loan payments are cutting into their lifestyle.   Others, with $100,000 of debt or more, are often studying in fields that at least nominally, should lead them to employment down the road (being a Doctor, for example).  Of course, there is a third group - who took on tons of debt with no prospect of a job at the end of the pipeline.  I am not sure what to say to that group, but if you are considering entering college, think carefully of the costs and benefits involved.

After all, your future employer is going to evaluate you on a cost/benefit analysis.  Why shouldn't you do the same with college?

The Grass is Always Greener....

Sometimes we might think we have it pretty bad.  But others might see it differently.

While attending this law conference, I realize that my career has been a little unconventional, to say the least.   Most of the Attorneys in the room were the type who were on student council in High School, got good grades and good SATs, went to a good undergraduate school, and then on to Law School, where they clerked for a big-name firm.  After Law School, they went to work for the same firm as an Associate, worked their way up the ladder, and then became Partner.

In other words, the typical "story arc" of life that the television and society sells you.   Of course, if you start picking at the edges of this story, it might have a few flaws, but most people see themselves as following this sort of path - or think that is how "normal" people live.

My life, on the other hand, is one major fuck-up after another - if you want to view it that way.  I was tossed out of Prep School, flunked out of College, worked a series of slacker jobs, and graduated from Law School after 14 years of college.   I never went on the "partnership track" and today I make less money annually than I did as a law clerk when I was in Law School.

Sounds pretty messed up, no?

Yet, when I talk with old friends from my Law School days, they tell me I have it made.   Some say they wish they could trade places with me.   Why is this?

Well, they are making $250,000 a year as a Partner in a big firm.  But they work 60 hours a week or more, and they spend nearly every penny they make.   Sure, they have a big house and a new Acura.   They are also on their second wife and have two sets of children to put through college.   When they go on vacation, they spend tens of thousands of dollars - but precious little time - jetting off for a long weekend, at best, and then returning to the grind on Monday morning.

I may not be "successful" in that way.   But I do take at least three month's vacation every year - perhaps more (does goofing around all day long count as vacation time as well?).    I may not be very wealthy, but I can afford to retire, at age 53, and already live on a retirement island.

And maybe best of all, I don't have to get up every morning, put on a tie, fight traffic, and then attend "meetings" in conference rooms.   And I think that is where my "successful" friends are somewhat jealous.

It is funny, but I was talking with some friends about this phenomena.   And it is funny, too that most of my close friends have the same sort of lifestyle - self-employed or structured so that they don't "need" money so desperately that they have to jump to someone else's tune.   So living a life that is your own - and not someone else's - is a very possible thing to do.   And the common denominator is not having to "need" money for status and toys in your life.  Once you unchain yourself from the money train, a lot of things are possible.

Your life is like a small work of art.  It is a blank canvas on which you can paint.   You can color-by-numbers and do what society "says" is "normal" - or what your parent's say is best for you (many people, well into their 50's and 60's still do this!).    Or you can paint your own abstract, funky painting.   It may not win any awards or be auctioned at Sotheby's for millions, but it is your own work of art - and ultimately more satisfying that something bought off-the-rack.

When a friend who makes a quarter-million a year, tells me that I am "lucky" and that he envies my lifestyle - when I make less than his Secretary - that says a lot to me.   Life is about more than being a "success" and getting the corner office and a new Acura every three years.   And since that sort of lifestyle happens to so few people, chasing after it is often a fruitless task, anyway.

The grass is always greener, it seems.

Are College Rankings and Accreditations Killing Colleges?

U.S. News and World Report is an Idiotic Magazine.

Why do people trust their college rankings?

And have college rankings killed colleges?

I am at a law conference in Atlanta, and I'll say one thing for being a lawyer - you get to meet a lot of interesting and very smart people.   If there are any "secrets" to how the world works, Lawyers get to know them, not by choice, but by default.   It is very hard, in our line of work, to live in a fantasy world all of the time.

One of the speakers was a law school professor who spoke about how the cost of law school (and college in general) has skyrocketed.   And in his analysis, the culprits were college rankings and college accreditation agencies (for law schools, the ABA).

Why is this?

College rankings, he argues, are based on inputs, not outputs.   Colleges are not ranked based on how many graduates get good jobs, or how successful they become, or whether they become the movers and shakers of the world (i.e., the outputs).   Rather, they are based on SAT scores of incoming freshmen, the grade averages of incoming freshmen, the student/faculty ratios, and how much time the professors spend on publishing academic treatises and the like, as well as the size of facilities and the like.   And all of these input criteria are very expensive to obtain.

For example, if you want to move up the rankings of Stupid News & World Report, you have to increase the GPA of your incoming freshmen, as well as the average SAT (or LSAT) scores.   So you go out and offer scholarships to smart students with good grades and good SAT scores.   This is expensive, as you are now competing, like baseball recruiters, for the top talent.  And price wars erupt, as some schools will offer full scholarships to bright students.

This is wrong, for two reasons.  First, these bright students are more likely to come from wealthier families who can actually afford college.  A young friend of mine, for example, with a 4.0 GPA and top LSAT scores, turned down a full-scholarship offer for law school, to go to Georgetown instead.   Her parents were rich and could afford one of the most expensive law schools in the country.  Law schools chased her with full-boat offers, which she didn't really need!  Sadly, she graduated  during the recession, and there were no lawyer jobs to be found, and she is now a public defender - with a $200,000 law school education.   Lucky for her, her parents have money.

But others are not so lucky, and since academic scholarships are used to attract the best and brightest (just as football scholarships are used to attract the best football players) the number of merit-based scholarships (based on income) are being crowded out.   Some kid from the ghetto, who in years past may have gotten a scholarship to school (despite his only "above average" grades and SAT scores) is now left out.

This also means that in order to pay for all the "free rides" for the scholastic super-achievers, the "standard" tuition for mediocre students (who make up the bulk of the classroom) has to be jacked up - at a rate 2-3 times that of inflation.  Suddenly, a Law School, or even undergraduate education, costs more than a house.

But the schools feel they have no choice.  If they don't play the game, their incoming freshman SAT and grade averages drops, and the almighty school ranking drops, which in turns leads to fewer people applying (in an era where school admissions are dropping) which spells doom for the school. 

Some brave college Deans have suggested eliminating these false discounts (by way of scholastic scholarships) which is a great idea, until you realize that unless the other schools go along with the idea, you are utterly screwed.  It never pays to be the first to try new, radical, ideas.

And these school rankings?  Brought to you by the same conservative know-nothings that brought you "no child left behind"!

I might make an aside here, that I never thought these school rankings were worth a damn.   Stupid News and World Report has consistently posited the obscure Franklin Pierce Law School in New Hampshire as the best school for Patent Law, in the country.   Again, this is an input-based ranking, based on the number of courses the school offered in the field.   But in terms of output, most Patent practitioners went to other schools, and very few in the field who are very successful are Franklin Pierce graduates.   If you want to get into the Patent business, Washington DC is where it is at, not the woods of New Hampshire.

(I get inquiries, regularly, from Franklin Pierce graduates, about how to get a job.   And I tell them that while having a Law and Engineering Degrees are nice, what you need is experience, and you can't get that in school.   A better approach to entering this field is to work at the Patent Office and learn the business, rather than try to learn it from a book.  Many respond that they felt it was "faster" to go to a three-year law school in the woods of New Hampshire than to spend four years working at the USPTO and going to night school.  That may be true, but if you are unemployed once you graduate, what's the point?)

The professor giving the lecture also brought this up - the idea that a school can teach a specialty in a field simply by deciding to do so.  And many law schools are doing this - declaring themselves to be "expert" in dubious fields like "International Law."   Academics cannot teach how to become a lawyer.  As explained to me in Law School, they can only teach you how to think like a lawyer - the day-to-day practice has to be learned on the job.  Experience is not taught in college.

Acreditation agencies are the second half of the equation here.  One would think that having real lawyers and judges come in and teach students would be a great way to actually learn how to practice the law.  But accreditation agencies frown on such "adjunct faculty" and prefer to have academic professors, whose expertise is rated on the number of impenetrable scholarly articles they publish.   So forget real "hands on" experience - college is going to teach you academic theories, not harsh realities.   And colleges that try to do otherwise will be punished severely, by both accreditation agencies and the almighty ranking system (promulgated by one obscure right-wing news magazine!).

Worse yet, by relying on full-time academic professors (who are often forbidden to do outside work in their fields) the cost per credit-hour jumps.   An adjunct professor who actually works in the field he teaches in, can be had for less money than a full-time tenured professor.  And since that full-time professor has to "publish or perish" he may teach as few as five classroom hours a week (!).

Pretty screwed-up system, ain't it?

And this is why you should be skeptical of such rating systems - in general.   We seem to be entering an age of credentialism and expertism.  Blithering idiots spout utter nonsense, but since they are from "a top-ranked school" their opinions not only matter, they are unassailable.   And what is really queer about this trend is that it is being supported by the far right - the first to decry expertism - through rankings like this.  They decry the rise of credentialism, and then at the same time, demand more and more student testing, as an indicia of the value of education.  Of course, this sort of schizophrenia is common among both the left and right.

So what is the solution?   Our brave law school professor had some startling ideas that would work, if anyone could be persuaded to try them.   I doubt anyone will - as the first college to get off the hamster wheel of chasing rankings will go bankrupt.   And watch for it - it will happen in this era of declining enrollments!

His ideas were pretty simple, and yet mirrored my own education experience:

1.  Reduce the number of scholastic scholarships and increase merit scholarships.

2.  Allow for more adjunct professors with real-world experience, to provide real hands-on training and also reduce costs.

3.  Allow students to get credits for internships and other work experiences in their fields - and in fact, require it, in their later years of school.

4.  Re-work ranking systems based on outputs, rather than inputs.  Survey who is most successful in their field, and then figure out which colleges they went to.  Basing school rankings on your high school grade averages (or undergraduate grade averages) makes no sense at all.

5.  Encourage professors to work in their fields, rather than merely publish scholarly articles.

These are pretty radical "reforms" and I doubt they will be implemented anytime soon.

However, as I worked my way through college, I sort of had this kind of educational experience, and I can say, it was very rewarding.   At GMI, we had to work in a GM factory half the year.   And our professors had actual experience in their fields, not just theoretical academic experience.  And at S.U., some of my best professors were engaged in actual research in Electrical Engineering (with outside companies), and they provided the best educational experiences.  Not much ivory tower, here!

At George Washington University Law Center, I took courses from a Chief Judge of the Federal Circuit, as well as from the Assistant Commission for Patents (take that, Franklin Pierce!).   Talk about "hands on" experience from people in the field!   (In Georgia, it is illegal for a sitting Judge to teach in a law school - go figure!).

But mostly, my "hands on" education took place in the factories of General Motors, and in the laboratories of United Technologies Carrier, and at the Patent Office and in a Patent Law Firm - where I did real work, and got paid for it.   Being a Teamster, Pizza Delivery Driver, Tutor and Sex Educator were also useful experiences, if not directly related to my degree (it all fits in, somehow).

As I told the professor, after the lecture I attended here in Atlanta, "College was the best 14 years of my life!"

Sadly, few see it that way - as an experience that is part of an overall life experience.   To many, if not most, college is just another set of tests and tasks to be performed, so that one can check off yet another box on a long list of "credentials."  It is little more than a stack of boring textbooks and boring courses to be plowed through on the way to a "job" on the outside.

And sadly, these same folks, today, wonder why they cannot get a job and why no one wants to hire them.   Without real skills and real life experiences, today's college graduates are pretty worthless, regardless of the ranking of their school or their GPA.  Sure, the top students from the top schools may find jobs.  But the bulk of graduates, who don't have 4.0 GPAs, are going to find it hard to find work.

Our College system is broken, to be sure.   But as my haphazard educational experience illustrates, you can get a good education, not spend a lot of money, and be successful in your field.   It takes looking at things in a different light, however.   Viewing education as an experience, and not merely a credential, is a good start.

And realizing you do have choices is the way to do this.  Because waiting for the educational system to reform itself, is not an answer.  Maybe, perhaps, if more college students made different choices, the colleges would be forced to change how the game is played.

Poverty is not a Disease

Poverty isn't something you "catch" from others, including your parents.

It isn't a destiny or in your DNA, either.

On National People's Radio this morning was a story about a book written by a professor in Boston about "Scarcity".   I found it hard to take seriously, as the set-up for the story was how the professor procrastinated about getting his car inspected and as a result was driving around with an expired inspection sticker, and taking detours to avoid cops and thus being late for appointments.   His conclusion was, apparently, that the scarcity of time in his life made him make poor choices.

My conclusion is that he is a bonehead professor from Boston who can't get his shit together.  The world (at least the USA) is full of idiots like this - people who say they are "so busy" all the time, but in reality, just clog their own schedules with nonsense, and thus create this "busy" mentality, which I think fuels their feelings of self-worth and self-aggrandizement.   After all, if you are so "busy" all the time, you must be an important person - like a college professor!

But, alas, that is just bullshit.   Poor time planning is just poor time planning, not a "scarcity" of time.

What irked me further (and as you can see, I get irked a lot) was the next argument.   He argued that scarcity of time and scarcity of money work the same way, and when something is "scarce" it causes people to act in different ways - psychologically - and thus make poor choices (in every sense of the word) like our bonehead college professor failing to get his car inspected (because he doesn't have enough time).

They go on to say that "the poor make poor choices in life," apparently as a result of this "scarcity."   At that point, I had to get out of bed and shut off the radio.   I'll say this for NPR - it is so annoying it always gets me out of bed in the morning.

There are two problems with the statement "the poor make poor choices in life."   First is that it puts the cart before the horse.  The poor are poor because they make poor choices in life.   And it starts at an early age.  You may come from a poor family and be born into poverty.  But often the choices you make determine whether you stay there or work your way up.   And usually the first poor choice occurs in school, where a poor person trades off his education and his future in order to be popular with his peer group.   It goes downhill from there.

The poor remain poor because they get payday loans, and title pawn loans, and do drugs and get a girl pregnant in the 9th grade.   They buy bling rims and furniture on time and buy-here-pay-here used cars.  They pay $25 to cash a check at a check-cashing store.  They buy lottery tickets, $20 at a time.   They spend all day doing drugs or drinking beer.  They make one bonehead decision after another - which is what makes them poor.

And that brings me to the second point.  Being poor is not a disease or a natural condition.   The attitude of the article on NPR presupposed that there were just people who were poor, period, by accident or happenstance.   It was like a medical condition you catch, like polio or something and once you have it, well, there you are.  They talk about "the poor" as if it were an institution.

Being poor is not a disease or illness that you just catch.    You can't be "cured" by emergency treatment at the hospital.  "Quick, Nurse!  Another infusion of cash!  This patient is bleeding to death!"   It doesn't work that way.

Poverty is caused by a number of things, but perpetuated by poor life choices.  And I say this with some authority in that I made a lot of poor life choices - and saw my friends make poor life choices - which caused me to slip down the economic ladder.   I started making different choices, and well, I'm no longer in danger of being poor.  For the time being, anyway.

This is not to trivialize the plight of the poor, or to make it seem like not being poor is a simple matter of a few tricks and tips.  It isn't.  It is a struggle - a continual struggle - that lasts your entire life.  It is a struggle to make proper choices instead of bad choices.  It is a struggle to recognize when you've made bad choices, and rather than castigate yourself for them (and thus get depressed and believe that poor choices are what you deserve) to instead resolve to do better next time.

It is, in a way, like dieting.  The dieter looks for quick and easy fixes to lose weight - so they click on "one trick of the tiny belly" and hand over their credit card information to some odious internet operator.   Rather than do the hard thing and make hard choices, they try to take short-cuts to success - often shortcuts that lead then nowhere.   And when it all fails miserably, they feel dejected and low and find solace in a quart of ice cream.

Financially, people work the same way.  They try to get ahead in life, but get distracted by "tricks and tips" that they think are shortcuts - convinced that working hard and saving money is just for chumps, and the folks "in the know" use shortcuts to success.   But those folks "in the know" are just selling the idea of shortcuts to success, and profiting wildly from the misery of the poor by dangling out this bait and then crushing their hopes.

So the poor person, who once again butts his head against the economic wall of life, decides that "getting ahead" isn't worth trying, and why not drown your sorrows in some rent-to-own furniture or bling rims?   Why not make yourself feel good today and forget about tomorrow?   It is the same shoe on a different foot.

And sadly, this college professor from Boston didn't get this.  He felt that the answer was that scarcity caused people to make bad choices - as if having only $10 in your pocket merely forced you to squander it even faster, rather than slower.  And the underlying presumption here is, that it is inevitable and cannot be helped.

And I have to disagree with this concept, as it negates the concept of human choice - and thus negates the entire concept of our humanity.  If we pre-suppose that nothing we do makes any difference in our lives - and hand our over our lives to to the fates - then we give up on living and give up on what it means to be human.   At that point, we are little more than cattle, being lead to slaughter.

This illustrates the dichotomy in the two views of our society - one view being that we are all "victims" of fate and our lives, and those "lucky" enough to "strike it rich" did so through sheer change or circumstance.   A second view is that, while fate plays a huge role in our lives, the choices we do make, do make a difference, and trivializing those choices trivializes our lives as a whole.

Or to put it succinctly, I may be Liberal, but I am not a wacky liberal.

The cause of poverty is not rocket science.   It is a psychological condition - a mindset if you will.   Once you start thinking poor, you become poor or stay poor.  Once you think, "this is all I deserve" it rapidly becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.

It's a Start...

Would you buy a used car from this man?

The FTC has cracked down on some fraudulent practices of car dealers.  It's a start.  Of course, you might ask, "what took so long?" and "what about the other dealers?"   And those are good questions.

The problem is, of course, that the FTC has a miniscule enforcement budget, and Republicans in Congress have tried to kill off the agency for years.  Their argument is that the FTC is "over-regulating legitimate businesses" like sleazy car dealers payday loan companies, and check-cashing stores.

The problem with this argument (besides the fact it is an outright lie) is that when we allow some companies to engage in fraudulent practices, it lowers the bar for competitors.  Other car dealers and companies then have to wallow in the gutter as well, just to stay competitive.

Operation Steer Clear identified a variety of fraudulent practices:

• Fake sweepstakes meant to draw buyers into the showroom to see if they won a big discount on a new car. But in one case the FTC targeted, Rich said, “not a single consumer, not one, won any of the listed prizes.”
• Hidden financing and other charges that could inflate the price of a car advertised at $15,000 by as much as another $5,000.
• Advertised teaser prices that didn’t make clear that payments would balloon substantially after a few months.

I wrote before about these antics - advertising cars for ridiculously low prices, offering "free gas for a year" or other nonsense.   Selling used cars for 50% over market value, at interest rates of 30% or more.   It's all been done.

It is possible to sell cars at a reasonable price and make a reasonable profit.  But of course, it is a lot easier to sell cars for a lot more money, particularly to the poor and minorities (often the same group).  And it is well known in the circles of car salesmen which minorities can be the most easily exploited in this regard.

It is racist, to be sure.   And it is part and parcel of the trend, in the last 20 years, of exploiting the poor by offering them the shittiest deals around, and neutering government agencies that police such practices.  

And it is one reason - perhaps THE reason, I think - that we have seen the middle class shrink in recent years, as the "rich get richer and the poor get poorer."  The poor are offered crappy deals today that would have been unheard of back in the 1960's and 1970's.

So, today, we see some of the worst excesses being reined in.   Congratulations, FTC.   Although I expect they feel a bit like the little Dutch boy, with his finger in the dike, when there is a massive flood going on.

The world is still full of bad deals and con artists.  And it behooves the consumer to do two things.  First, think skeptically - stop watching television and believing in something-for-nothing deals.

Second, stop voting for people who think payday loan companies are "legitimate businesses" that need to be protected from "over-regulation."

And you can pretty much figure out who that is.....