SAVVY CONSUMERS OF MINDING YOUR SOCIAL CASTE

Posted on | by Ed

The Onion needs to hire a good intellectual property attorney and slap a lawsuit on the Cato Institute. It seems that the latter is blatantly copying the satirical newsweekly's comedy format under the thinly-veiled guise of "policy papers."

Lots of college students can barely afford their education. Lots more don't go at all because they can't afford it. Do you know why that is? Well, this cocksucker does. It's because the government is too generous in handing out student loans.

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"Why have government loans when these kids could just ask their parents for the money?"

Yes, Professor Gary Wolfram of "Hillsdale College" (I had to look it up too. It's actually accredited, and it's in Michigan.) has written a neat little Cato policy paper explaining to all of us dumb liberal whiners that the reason education is expensive is not because states are slashing educational funding and schools have to make up the deficit by raising tuition and/or accepting morons they wouldn't otherwise accept. No, that's not it at all. It is, like everything in the neoconservatives' childish and monochrome dream world, a simple matter of supply and demand. The solution is, ironically enough, also the same one they give for every problem from Social Security to pollution: the free market will take care of everything somehow.

Quoth Professor Wolfram: "Anyone who has taken a remedial economics course knows that if you subsidize something, more people want it."

Thanks, "Professor," for that quick Econ 101 tutorial. But anyone who has taken a remedial course in not being a cocky, reactionary asshole understands that there is a fundamental difference between skills, such as education, and the other types of "goods" to which your condescending statement applies. The fact that someone has to sit down and explain to people like this that more people wanting, pursuing, and obtaining an education is a good thing is the reason that stress balls and punching bags were invented. The idea that reducing the number of tuition-paying students attending school will somehow decrease tuition is so ridiculous on its face that I can't believe that Cato would even publish this. Even by their standards, this is asinine. Not to mention the fact that the "excess demand" that would be removed would be, you know, people who can't otherwise afford college.

Prof. Wolfram responds: "That's OK, Ed. Here at Hillsdale College, we find that not having any negroes or poor people around really increases efficiency. It allows us to devote more attention to our student base of rich kids who weren't smart enough to get into Michigan State."

The implication that we can remove a concept from Econ 101 and replace the word "cars" or "widgets" with "education" makes it patently obvious why this guy is a loser at some glorified high school that advertises links to William F. Buckley content and a speech by Zell Miller on its home page. Thank you, Gary Wolfram, for proving that getting a PhD in Political Science from a top five University (Cal-Berkeley) doesn't mean your career can't be an utter failure. With a degree like that you'd assume he would be at Ohio State or Yale. And he would be, if not for the minor fact that he is a fucking idiot.

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