[lit-ideas] Re: The Digital Death Rattle of the American Middle Class
- From: Andy Amago <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 7 Jul 2004 07:27:14 -0400 (GMT-04:00)
-----Original Message-----
From: Scribe1865@xxxxxxx
Sent: Jul 6, 2004 11:53 PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] The Digital Death Rattle of the American Middle Class
While GOPers and DEMs hate each other, education becomes more expensive and
jobs go offshore. Who benefits? -EY
From:http://www.ctheory.net/text_file.asp?pick=402#_edn15
The Digital Death Rattle of the American Middle Class:
A Cautionary Tale
____
.... another trend may well be defining the future of U.S. intellectual
labor. As U.S. states suffer from revenue shortfalls, and burgeoning college
and
university enrollments, large tuition increases are often bundled with
escalations in class size, reduced course availability, and shrinking financial
and
infrastructural resources. Combined with the concurrent neo-liberal political
redefinition of higher education as a private rather than a public good,
"sticker
shock" one-year increases (of up to thirty-nine percent at the three public
universities in Arizona, forty percent in the California State System, and
thirty-two percent in the University of Texas System) may well signify that
elites
are no longer willing to subsidize American public higher education, once
they have gained global access, via digital communication networks, to cheap
and
competent intellectual labor.
This essay explores the links between these two defining moments of early
twenty-first Century America, with an eye on the possibility that affordable
public higher education, and its attendant importance as a vehicle of social
mobility, may soon be thought of as an artifact of the Twentieth Century. If
so, we
are witnessing the digital death rattle of the American middle class, and an
escalating and intensive restratification of the American class system.
A.A. Bush's vouchers for private school instead of supporting public schools
fits right in here. It's one more example of the government's privatizing
services, including efforts to privatize Social Security, discussed previously.
At the same time, the tax burden on the wealthiest Americans is
reduced/eliminated and handed to the middle class. More bankruptcies today
than heart attacks, and so on.
Speaking of privatizing Social Security, I heard a discussion on the myth of
the 401(k). A comparable investment into a 401(k) vs. Social Security will
return, best case scenario, $120,000 in a 401(k), or about six years at
$20,000, while Social Security lasts until death. This business of making a
million dollars in a 401(k) was started by employers who didn't want to fund
pensions, so they created the myth of the 401(k).
Andy
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