Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Sometimes the world just tells you your cat is here.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

Celebrate the fucking wins.

I would try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Today’s gop: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Petty moves from a petty man.

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

You are here: Home / Politics / Education / The American Enterprise Institute Identifies the Problem

The American Enterprise Institute Identifies the Problem

by | 78 Comments

This post is in: 

A lobbyist for the American Enterprise Institute finally acknowledges income inequality:

I’m all about solutions, “what works” as they say in the punditry trade, so I read this entire fable to get to the solutions offered by the American Enterprise Institute. I’m a self-taught student of our fake-debate on “ed reform” so I know every failure of the business, punditry and political class is blamed on public schools- I was looking for it and this AEI shill does not disappoint:

But today that opportunity is in peril. Evidence is mounting that people at the bottom are increasingly stuck without skills or pathways to rise. Research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston shows that in the 1980s, 21 percent of Americans in the bottom income quintile would rise to the middle quintile or higher over a 10-year period. By 2005, that percentage had fallen by nearly a third, to 15 percent. And a 2007 Pew analysis showed that mobility is more than twice as high in Canada and most of Scandinavia than it is in the United States.
This is a major problem, and advocates of free enterprise have been too slow to recognize it. It is not enough to assume that our system blesses each of us with equal opportunities. We need to fight for the policies and culture that will reverse troubling mobility trends. We need schools that serve children’s civil rights instead of adults’ job security. We need to encourage job creation for the most marginalized and declare war on barriers to entrepreneurship at all levels, from hedge funds to hedge trimming. And we need to revive our moral appreciation for the cultural elements of success.

Those dastardly second grade teachers want to get paid, AGAIN. Is there nothing they won’t stoop to to ruin America? Apparently teachers unions were invented on or around 1982, and once that happened, we were all screwed.

No mention of what actually occurred beginning in 1980: deregulation, privatization, disinvestment in public institutions and infrastructure, a deliberate and careful campaign to destroy labor unions and collective bargaining, writing a tax code to favor wealthy people, the absolutely astronomical compensation that now goes to the people at the tippy-top, no, none of that had anything to do with it.

It was (as it always is) public schools that destroyed this country, specifically, public school teachers, who inexplicably and ridiculously apparently entered that profession in order to violate the civil rights of children.

But, take a bow, class warriors. If they’re defending on income inequality, and they are, they know it’s a political problem. That’s good news. Shifting blame for income inequality to public schools and public school teachers means they think they have to explain income inequality away somehow, and they are casting around for an excuse that doesn’t implicate conservatives, conservatism, or anyone who is at all wealthy or powerful in government or the private sector.

This is a major problem, and advocates of free enterprise have been too slow to recognize it.

Let the excuses begin!

You have to love the logic that says a problem that was partially caused by the deliberate and careful dismantling of any rights, protections or leverage for workers will be solved if we take away rights, protections and leverage from the small group of middle class workers who retain them, like teachers. That’s just brilliant. No wonder he makes the big bucks.

Reader Interactions

78Comments

  2. 2.

    EriktheRed

    They shut down the comments for the article you sourced and at first I saw “Comment closed” at the bottom of this post and thought, “WTF??”

  4. 4.

    Nicole

    So now job security is a bad thing, too? It’s very hard for me to keep up with the Right’s moral worldview. Maybe I’d be better able to understand if my public school teachers hadn’t been working so hard to deny me my Civil Rights.

  5. 5.

    Derelict

    “Barriers to entry” = any kind of regulation that keeps business from defrauding workers and investors.

    And WTF, exactly, does revive our moral appreciation for the cultural elements of success mean? What is “moral appreciation?” And what aspect of modern culture does not appreciate success?

    Oh, I know: Modern culture does not appreciate success because we expect successful people to contribute to society by paying taxes.

  6. 6.

    Baud

    from hedge funds to hedge trimming

    Not about schools, but this was my favorite line. I picture Mitt Romney in his mom jeans taking a hedge trimmer to the tax code.

  7. 7.

    Violet

    You fixed the commenting problem! What was the solution?

    Seems like an appropriate thread for Pope Francis “Marxists are good people” comments today:

    “The ideology of Marxism is wrong. But I have met many Marxists in my life who are good people, so I don’t feel offended,” Francis was quoted as saying. Defending his criticism of the “trickle-down” theory of economics, he added: “There was the promise that once the glass had become full it would overflow and the poor would benefit. But what happens is that when it’s full to the brim, the glass magically grows, and thus nothing ever comes out for the poor … I repeat: I did not talk as a specialist but according to the social doctrine of the church. And this does not mean being a Marxist.”

  8. 8.

    MattF

    I have the strong suspicion that AEI’s solution to income inequality is to pay teachers (and other unionized workers) less. Yeah, there’s the little problem of changing the meanings of the words ‘more’, ‘less’, and ‘income’ into their opposites– but AEI has met such challenges in the past and, I believe, will continue to do so in the future.

  9. 9.

    Sophist

    And a 2007 Pew analysis showed that mobility is more than twice as high in Canada and most of Scandinavia than it is in the United States.

    Now let us studiously avoid noticing what those countries have in common.

  10. 10.

    Linnaeus

    AEI is in the intellectual vanguard of neofeudalism. The right wing think tank network has been fertilizing the soil, so to speak, for it for 40 years.

  11. 11.

    Violet

    From the article:

    And we need to revive our moral appreciation for the cultural elements of success.

    WTF? What does this even mean? We need to revere rich people even more than we already do? Huh?

  12. 12.

    Ruckus

    Projection. Always projection. Well that and misdirection.
    They know they are doing the wrong thing and they know, just know that the other side is worse so they must be doing the same wrong thing. It’s Mad Men, liars poker, gross stupidity, and just plain meanness all rolled into a political party.

  13. 13.

    dp

    Greedy teachers, hoovering up all the income for themselves, leaving barely enough for hedge fund managers and job creators.

  15. 15.

    Elizabelle

    @Violet:

    Haven’t read the article yet, but maybe they cribbed that line from David Brooks? Or he ghost-edited, humble guy that he is?

  16. 16.

    JPL

    Who would have thought that you cut funding to education enough, you might hurt the schools. I really have no respect for the fuckers who write for AEI.

  17. 17.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Violet:

    We need to tug our forelocks upon seeing them on the street, and we should give them titles of nobility (fuck the Constitution on this!) in recognition of their obvious moral superiority above us mere serfs.

    These fucking people NEED tumbrel rides.

  18. 18.

    Groucho48

    @Derelict:

    I’m guessing it means dumping on folks who aren’t successful and blaming them for being poor. Being successful is a natural product of being moral. The rich and successful should be celebrated for being moral paragons and the poor should be shunned for their turpitudness.

  21. 21.

    scav

    Security in jobs or health care, etc has zip, nada, nothing, nothing to do with fostering enterprise and risk-taking in general or in fostering peoples’ ability to climb through and up the sacred economic ladder law-of-the-jungle gym. Greasing the higher rungs while pretending to do it in order to foster the snowflakes’ civil rights and climbing abilities. Their ability to charm is undiminished.

  22. 22.

    BGinCHI

    We need to encourage job creation for the most marginalized and declare war on barriers to entrepreneurship at all levels, from hedge funds to hedge trimming.

    I was going to deconstruct this sentence but I just give up.

    Can anyone really be this genuinely fucking stupid?

  25. 25.

    Chris

    @Derelict:

    And WTF, exactly, does revive our moral appreciation for the cultural elements of success mean?

    If it’s what I think it is, it means going back to crediting white people’s whiteness for the fact that they’re successful, and black people’s blackness for the fact that they’re not.

    Ever since the R word fell out of favor, they’ve switched to “culture” as their substitute, saying that while blacks are not genetically predisposed to be less successful than whites, they’re culturally predisposed that way because the culture most of them grow up in teaches them to glamorize gangbangers and single parenthood and drugs and the N word… “oh, it’s not racist, you understand. Not all black people are like that (my black friends aren’t like that (did I mention I have black friends??))”

    But yeah – it’s a huge thing in their world to credit their success to the fact that they, as an ethnic/sectarian group, are special (cue “American exceptionalism,” “traditional values,” “Christian country founded on Christian values”) and they wish people would simply go back to teaching kids that. Instead of all that economic and sociological stuff that talks about impersonal forces like income inequality, lack of opportunity, lack of infrastructure, and all that other boring stuff that implies that life isn’t a morality play with themselves as the heroes and people with darker skin as the villains.

  27. 27.

    Ash Can

    @Violet:

    “But what happens is that when it’s full to the brim, the glass magically grows, and thus nothing ever comes out for the poor”

    And with that statement Francis demonstrates that he’s both smarter and more honest than the vast majority of economists and pundits.

  29. 29.

    Ruckus

    Could someone check the mod filter?
    I’m sure I used a word that somehow causes consternation to someone or maybe it’s just my FYWP comment in a prior post.

  31. 31.

    Baud

    Kay, you missed the best line.

    It doesn’t entail “anything goes” libertinism, but self-government and self-control.

    Stop playing with yourself, liberals, and get back to work!

  32. 32.

    scav

    Economic populism is polling well, as is economic inequality, and so they need to co-opt the vocabulary and borrow the glitter. Sizzle will waft out and attract the crowds required for publicity and votes, while eating the steak still kept to those already at the table.

    Speaking of which, Italy’s got I Forconi wandering about, no word on their state of rustiness. Unfocussed grumpiness, in the streets, forming unpredictable usually cross-political-group-bonds, they might do well to worry. Text and Photos

  33. 33.

    Ruckus

    AEI identifies problem.
    What they don’t have any mirrors, they had to come up with this bullshit?

  37. 37.

    danielx

    We need schools that serve children’s civil rights instead of adults’ job security.

    This is AEIspeak for “education should be privatized, because once it’s put on a for-profit basis with rewards and punishment for teachers, it will become more efficient (whateverthefuck that means) and provide better outcomes”.

    And all that stuff about how once education is put on a for-profit basis, the emphasis will become profit rather than education, well, pay no attention to Adam Smith or economic theory, because AEI knows what’s best for your children.

    @Violet:

    And we need to revive our moral appreciation for the cultural elements of success.

    Why, it means that we are insufficiently appreciative of our betters – you know, job creators like this one.

    Fuck them. Why? Because fuck them. Sideways. Repeatedly. Without lubricant.

  38. 38.

    RobertDSC-iPhone 4

    When I hear the words “encourage job creation”, I want to break out my Predator drone and fire missiles at people.

    The federal (and state) government can directly hire millions of people to do work. It takes a lot of people to keep a nation as large as ours running smoothly.

    Imagine what a fully funded EPA, NASA, or any other agency could do. But heaven forfend we talk about that.

  48. 48.

    The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge

    @PeakVT:

    And yet, here in the Puget Sound area, we just got the ORCA card (One Regional Card for All) that works on: King County Metro, Pierce Transit, Snohomish County Community Transit, Everett Transit, Kitsap Transit, Sound Transit, Puget Sound Light Rail, Washington State Ferries, and…Oh yeah, the Waterfront Streetcar. I’m probably forgetting something, but at least nine different systems. And it works a treat.

    But it should probably be privatized for maximum entrepreneurial goodness.

  50. 50.

    scav

    @Sophist: Is the communative property communist? I think I was trying to work out some deeper meaning using 10 –> IO –> I/O but the 9 + 8 stumped me (well, now I’m getting vibes of the joining of male to female, only now that combined with the I/O has gone totally off-piste from where I wanted to be heading . . . ).

    While I’m totally off topic, there’s this new slave narrative from the antebellum North that sounds interesting. Prison narrative found in Rochester, that strange attractor of NY. NYT or Yale for those w/o cheap access to the tattered lady.

  52. 52.

    Ruckus

    @The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge:
    I like that people in government get paid to get things done. Generally they do an OK to good job, sometimes even great. But people in business get paid to put in time and make money for the boss/owners. They do a shitty job when it is only about the money, mainly because they seem to get so little of it. Companies that pay well and treat their employees well seem to get great work out of people. Funny how that works.

  54. 54.

    rikyrah

    Rachel Maddow Highlights AP Story Showing Red States Sabotaging the Uninsured
    By: Justin Baragona more from Justin Baragona
    Friday, December, 13th, 2013, 3:37 pm

    On The Rachel Maddow Show Thursday night, Rachel discussed an AP story that was published earlier in the day showing that the rate of participation in the online insurance marketplaces was much higher in Democratic leaning states that are running their own online exchanges and have expanded Medicaid compared to Republican controlled states that have refused both to run their own exchanges or accept additional Medicaid funds. Below is an excerpt from the AP story:

    ………………..

    To those who have been paying attention, this should come as absolutely no shock. From the get go, Republican governors and state legislatures have played ball and made sure to follow lockstep with GOP leaders in Washington by making it as difficult as possible for the uninsured in their states to get coverage through the ACA. By refusing to create their own exchanges, they forced the federal website to handle far more visitors than was initially expected. Meanwhile, by refusing to expand Medicaid, they have heartlessly allowed the working poor in their states to continue to go without health insurance when they could easily be covered through virtually no cost to the states.

    What is really remarkable here is that a VAST majority of the 1.2 million that have been able to obtain coverage in the first two months of the ACA’s rollout come from a small percentage of the states in this country. Below is a chart that Rachel used on her show Thursday night showing that wide disparity between blue and red states:

    What is truly remarkable is just how hard certain states are fighting to prevent their citizens from obtaining health insurance for purely ideological reasons. Missouri, for instance, has made it illegal for the state to actually create an online marketplace, when they quietly put a confusingly worded initiative on the ballot during last year’s Presidential elections. Texas, which has the the nation’s largest population of uninsured residents, has actively pushed against the ACA from the outset, led by outgoing Governor, and laughably bad 2012 Presidential candidate, Rick Perry. In the hugely populated state, only about 14,000 have signed up for an insurance plan through the end of November and less than 17,000 have been deemed eligible for Medicaid.

    The one huge point that needs to be hammered home again and again and again is that that millions and millions or Americans would already be signed up for insurance or be covered by Medicaid if Republicans would have just accepted the law instead of trying to sabotage it at every turn. The fact that 1.2 million got coverage by the end of last month is miraculous when you consider the roadblocks that were laid in place. The sad fact is that if you currently live in a state that is mostly controlled by Democrats, it is quite easy to get covered. If you are in a state controlled by Republicans, it is much more difficult for you to get coverage for no other reason than the people governing your state, as well as the majority of citizens occupying it, just plain hate the President.

    http://www.politicususa.com/2013/12/13/rachel-maddow-highlights-ap-story-showing-red-states-sabotaging-uninsured.html

  56. 56.

    Mike in NC

    Evidence is mounting that people at the bottom are increasingly stuck without skills or pathways to rise.

    “I’m Mitt Romney, and I approved this message!”

  57. 57.

    katie5

    Always worth remembering that the 1% is also trying to destroy universities with MOOCs and what a success story MOOCs have been. Not.

  58. 58.

    TriassicSands

    Imagine my shock to read that the AEI’s solution to inequality in the US is to go after teachers’ unions. If we could just eliminate the unions and pay teachers minimum wage (with no retirement or other benefits), we’d solve this problem practically overnight. Thank goodness the solution is so simple and the AEI is available to steer us in the right direction.

    The American Enterprise Institute: A National Treasure.

  59. 59.

    Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937

    And we need to revive our moral appreciation for the cultural elements of success.

    Does that mrean anything? Maybe it sounded better in German?

  60. 60.

    Botsplainer

    Just now leaving the grocery, ostensibly ahead of some fucking 60 something exurban wingnut who was blocking the aisle while spewing magnificently at some female neighbor about how times have changed and that these damn kids won’t look him in the eye when he’s talking to them.

    It made me hate Obama for his lazy failure to set up that network of FEMA camps for the persecution of white Christian conservatives.

  61. 61.

    Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937

    And we need to revive our moral appreciation for the cultural elements of success.

    Does that mean anything? Maybe it sounded better in German?

  62. 62.

    The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge

    And we need to revive our moral appreciation for the cultural elements of success.

    When I hear the word Kultur, I reach for my Browning.

  64. 64.

    Mike G

    declare war on barriers to entrepreneurship at all levels

    One of the biggest barriers to entrepreneurship in this country vis-à-vis Canada and Europe is our screwed-up health care system, and the fact that it has been excruciatingly expensive if not impossible to get health coverage on the individual market. Corporations loved this system because it keeps the peons locked into their drone jobs, and the Freedom Enterprise of Murkan Freedom right-wing stink-tanks support it because they are really corporate tools rather than proponents of individual entrepreneurship.

    Obamacare may just improve this situation by developing a competitive and open individual insurance market, and free up thousands of people to pursue their business dreams without going bare-naked on health insurance; yet the AEI hypocrites have treated it like the bubonic plague. Because no matter what the problem, it’s NEVER the fault of the people with all the money and all the power making all the decisions.

  65. 65.

    rikyrah

    @JPL:

    I don’t know…I always DVR it..I love the White House at Christmas time.

    and this didnt start when the Obamas came to the White House..I’ve always loved it.

  66. 66.

    Kyle

    And we need to revive our moral appreciation for the cultural elements of success.

    Shorter AEI: To be rich is to be virtuous.
    Paris Hilton is a multimillionaire, therefore she is a paragon of moral character.

  71. 71.

    Napoleon

    Ron Fornier (sp?) is whining on NBC nightly news about lack of access to the President. What a bung of self important assholes.

  72. 72.

    Ken_L

    “We need to encourage job creation for the most marginalized …”

    Translation: we need to cut minimum wages or preferably get rid of the whole silly concept. Getting people into $2 an hour jobs will give them genuine incentive to be upwardly mobile.

  74. 74.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Napoleon:

    Ron Fournier needs to be cut off from all access to the media, period.

    Preferably by dropping something really heavy on him, like a sedan.

  76. 76.

    Cervantes

    Meanwhile in Chile:

    President-elect Michelle Bachelet vowed to reduce inequality in Chile by providing free education for all after winning the biggest majority in at least 40 years in yesterday’s vote.

    Bachelet will take office March 11 after obtaining 62 percent of the ballots, compared with 38 percent for ruling-alliance candidate Evelyn Matthei, the electoral service said. The 62-year-old who was president from 2006 to 2010 is the first to win a second term since the return to democracy in 1990.

    Bachelet promised $15.1 billion in extra spending after three years of protests over the quality of schooling pushed the popularity of President Sebastian Pinera to a record low. While Chile is the wealthiest country in Latin America, students said the cost of education was fueling the highest income inequality in the 34-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

    “Through the prism of education we have been able to dream of a fairer Chile,” Bachelet said in a speech to supporters last night. “Profit cannot be the motor of education, because education is not a commodity. Dreams are not sold on the market.”

  77. 77.

    pluege

    This is a major problem, and advocates of free enterprise have been too slow to recognize it

    little tough to recognize it when its the very advocates of [cough] free enterprise that caused it with their obscene greed advocacy.

Comments are closed.