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"We can't afford it" as a rhetorical device in public policy cannot possibly die a slow or painful enough death. Economic "realities" were created by political
by superuser2 11y ago
"We can't afford it" as a rhetorical device in public policy cannot possibly die a slow or painful enough death. Economic "realities" were created by political power and they can (often should) be unmade by political power.
We can afford to give every American child a university education, but to do so we'd need to raise taxes or cut other spending, and we aren't willing to do either of those things. Saying that we can't afford it pretends it's out of our collective control, not our responsibility, which is a plain lie. We choose not to. We make a choice that the defense sector getting absolutely everything it can dream of is more important. We make a choice that subsidizing employers' payroll expenses (keeping their minimum wage workers alive on welfare) so that they can sustain their profit margins is more important.
I'd argue these are wrong choices, but the politicians saying so don't poll too well. They are simply the choices we've made.
You're right though, expecting students to pay for it themselves is unreasonable. But it ought to be a burden shared by society, not restricted to the rich. Elementary education too was once a luxury for the children of aristocrats; that we've expanded it is progress.
- vinceguidry 11y ago> "We can't afford it" as a rhetorical device in public policy cannot possibly die a slow or painful enough death. That's what politics is. If you can't understand the concept of a political reality, then your views will forever remain the domain of the idealist, talked about, in the same tenor that one yaks about science fiction premises, but never implemented. Sure, Star Trek has a cool economy. How many Senators watched TNG? Political realities are stronger than actual realities. It takes real people to change things, these people are beholden to other people and not your whims.
- superuser2 11y agoFunny thing, though, it's always the side that shares your values that's being realistic. GP claims equal access to education is impossible, like FTL travel or perpetual motion. The political reality is that it's just something not enough people care enough about. Public opinion is a great deal more malleable than physics. We could care, and then it would stop being impossible. So it is not impossible at all.
- vinceguidry 11y agoI am the GP. I think you need to study geopolitics a bit more. These things are not unpredictable. You just have to think a little bigger than what you wish was. The current US election cycle is an excellent test of how far one person can influence the news cycle. Donald Trump has steam, but he's pandering to a base that can't elect him by itself and he's making too many enemies to be able to muscle his way through. Candidates who don't come up through the current political establishment all have the exact same handicap. Obama couldn't have gotten elected as an independent.