The Origin of Student Debt: Reagan Adviser Warned Free College Would Create a Dangerous "Educated Proletariat”
The Origin of Student Debt: Reagan Adviser Warned Free College Would Create a Dangerous "Educated Proletariat”
In 1970, Roger Freeman, who also worked for Nixon, revealed the right’s motivation for coming decades of attacks on higher education.
Education leads to empowerment and the ability to see through the right's tricks and false info to get votes. It's obvious why Reagan and now Dump want less education.
A society which charges its students to acquire knowledge values neither.
A healthy and broadly educated population, which feels safe and secure, is incompatible with, and toxic to, conservative ideologies.
How many more reasons do I need to add to my list of reasons to hate Reagan? List has grown by 2 reasons today.
Oh, look, another day, another thing Reagan fucked up. Sometimes I feel awake in the matrix when people are all "OMG REAGAN <3" in real life. It just doesn't seem real how people can like him so much when, in hindsight, he irreversibly fucked our country and so many others.
things I dislike Reagan for:
- ignoring HIV because he was okay with it just killing the gays (until straight people started getting it.)
- trickle-down economics (how we got the billionaire oligarchy)
- Iran-Contra.
- firing the striking air traffic controllers.
- doubling down on the War on Drugs.
things Reagan was kinda based for:
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actually wanting to eliminate nuclear weapons. everyone remembers SDI as a ridiculously expensive boondoggle (which it would have been tbf) or as a trap to get USSR to spend itself into bankruptcy (it wasn't imo, since the Russians realized they could build MIRVs), but I honestly think Reagan sincerely wanted a missile shield to have a missile shield. apparently he was hawkish on nuclear war until he watched The Day After, which terrified him and left him depressed for weeks and completely changed his thinking on nukes. he got so close to bilateral disarmament at the Reikjavik summit, but it fell apart because of his insistence on pursuing SDI.
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not being a raging egotistical jerk like Trump. he was respectful towards Carter and Mondale. he even respected the Soviet Premiers he met with, despite his anti-Communism. he had actual principles and ideals, even if I disagree with some of them.
when the USSR collapsed, Bush ignored Russia's pleas to help it restructure and rebuild, to secure its nuclear weapons stockpiles, to integrate its economy. so we ended up with a country with starving nuclear weapons designers trying to grow potatoes in their back yards, and a Mafia takeover, and massive distrust and antipathy towards the West. I think Reagan would have actually lent them a helping hand, and Putin wouldn't have happened.
Nuanced take. Nice to see it. Opinions online are so frequently black-and-white
That's a really good take. I didn't know about how close we came to bilateral disarmament, wow! And yeah, I always kinda knew we just let them fall apart on their own, but seeing it put that way is enormously frustrating. It's wild how the late 80's/ early 90's had a chance to put us on track for a really great future for almost no cost, and instead we looked at it, did a line of blow, and said "nah lol, I got mine, idiot"
As someone who survived the Reagan administration, this comment really sums the sensation up well. Like did you MFers have the same Reagan, I did? The one that was open and shameless about trickle down economics? Yeah, the wealthy get everything amd a little bit will trickle down to the vast majority of you (don't mind the urine smell of that trickle).
Hey, pee is a privilege
That's commie talk
If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.
Uneducated minds are great for a country. They do the jobs they are told to do, they elect those the media tells them to, they fight the wars they are told to, and they obey the laws they are told to do.
Education can bring critical thinking. It can make people question anything, from the shape of the universe, to complex math questions, to themselves. Questioning things is bad for governments, of all kinds and organizations. Questioning why you're doing something is bad for the company. Questioning why you're following orders is bad for the war effort. Questioning is bad.
Keep the people uneducated, struggling to pay for rent, medical bills, groceries, the children they were told to have by decades of media and governments having population issues from lack of immigration, they don't have time to question. They can only focus on putting in the hours to stay alive. It's work or starve. Work or be cold. Work or your children go hungry. Work or go bankrupt from debt.
If you give the workers enough meaningful distractions from their poverty, they won't want an education because it's too much of another burden. Debts, schooling, scheduling, studying, reading, taking tests and exams. It can often be worth it, just for socializing with your peers, even learning new interests, hobbies, even better carriers. But the workers who need the income the most barely have time for cooking and sleeping at home, living on money they haven't made yet.
By ensuring that only those with decent enough of an income can afford higher education, it ensure those with more money can think for those with less money. The people who went to school for media training can now use it to propagate the new person to hate this month to drive the votes for something batshit insane, never thought possible before.
It's a good thing for this system to have uneducated people, because they won't ever question what they're doing, they're just following the orders their boss and government told them to do.
Reagan is truly the worst. he fucked up the US so far beyond repair on so many fronts, they never reeled from the consequences. Straight up evil piece of shit.
As a general rule, if you want long-term wealth inequality, make sure your people are about as dumb as they are poor.
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I beg to differ mate, if I'm paying by providing you with my E-Mail address which you're going to use for god only knows what. No thanks.
Trickle down was originally called the Horse and Sparrow theory, because the idea was that if you feed the horse more oats, they'll be more grain for the sparrows to pick out of its shit.
Almost as bad as the worst interpretation of "trickle down economics" I can think of.
Though it's interesting to note that the whole concept does not get better however you try to describe it.
I believe the horse and sparrow theory is what the Roman's did. Clearly that empire is strong today right?
It's always been a tounge-in-cheek or derogatory description, like pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, meant to cut through distracting rhetoric: Either make economic policy for the many, or the few will instead horde all they can and pee and poop on the many.
"There's no proletariat if there's no Marx"
- Reagan, probably
“If not,” Freeman continued, “we will have a large number of highly trained and unemployed people.”
It did turn out that way anyway right
It did, but now they're in debt and can be used as wage slaves.
I'm calling dibs on the band name "The Dangerously Educated Proletariat"!
This guy again. He really sucked
Reagan Ruin Everything.
Whenever the 'smother Hitler as a baby' topic comes up, my first instinct is generally, 'can we do Reagan too'?
Also Putin, right?
And Trump and Gingrich.
The problem wasn't really Reagan, though, it was all the wormtongues whispering in his ear. If it wasn't Reagan, they'd have found some other useful idiot.
A class of jetski dealers desperately trying to create the conditions necessary for no one to be able to afford jetskis
Interesting though the article is from 2022. Germany has free education and a resurgent far right, so IDK what effect the educatioin there has had.
Germany doesn't have free education, it just costs less than in the US. And unlike the US we actually have a school system divided into 3 different skill levels after 4th grade, and only the ones finishing the highest level of school education qualify to go to university. Today that's about 50% of school students, but it used to be way less
All of Europe has a resurgent far-right. And in many countries it's currently at ~20%, compared to 50% in the US. So there's one big difference.
In other countries the far-right is already governing the country, fully (Italy, Hungary) or partly, unlike in Germany (dodged a bullet this time but let's not get complacent).
There's also other aspects besides education that lead to far-right voting, like unemployment and general Strukturschwäche, i.e. lack of all kinds of infrastructure, prevalent in the Eastern part of Germany. Where most AfD voters come from.
And - though by no means comparable to the US - many European countries do have a problem with education.
30% of Americans voted for Krasnov, and not even all Krasnov voters are far right, and thats even assuming he didnt cheat in any way. America is not 50% far right.
It's a result of growing inequality. Check out Gary's economics on YouTube. We need to tax wealth, not work.
Even in Germany, far-right sentiments are pretty strongly related to people's level of education and economic opportunities.
Also the entire driver of the European far right is racism against immigrants. That's the entire motivation, which is why they're turning on their far right now that it's clear they're firmly are aligned with the Donald Trump-vladiator Putin axis of Evil. There are nationalists who want to be racist against Muslims they don't want to be annexed by Russia
Counterpoint: US doesn't have free education but far right pop up like a mushroom anyway.
How dare our slaves be educated and want a revolt over us.
High student debt and employer healthcare is a "very useful motivator" to obey "Fuck you and do what I tell you" orders.
It makes sense. They were dealing with lots of protests during the 1960's and 70's. They definitely don't want more dissidents.
They also started designing college campuses to be socially inhospitable as possible so that it would be difficult to form protests
Trump: Problem solved! What's next?