Op-Ed Columnist - We’re No. 1(1)! - NYTimes.com. from Tom Friedman's op-ed column on 9/12/10:
There is a lot to Samuelson’s point — and it is a microcosm of a larger problem we have not faced honestly as we have dug out of this recession: We had a values breakdown — a national epidemic of get-rich-quickism and something-for-nothingism. Wall Street may have been dealing the dope, but our lawmakers encouraged it. And far too many of us were happy to buy the dot-com and subprime crack for quick prosperity highs.
I wonder whether we might consider the possibility that students are perceiving that the rewards to honest labor -- and even the opportunities for same -- are increasingly limited, and that with this in mind feel there is little reason for them to exert themselves.
Get-rich-quickism and something-for-nothingism. How about "becoming wealthy off others' labor"? See also rent-seeking. Wall Street is certainly a piece of this, but I doubt that Mr. Friedman is going to identify the real estate part of the FIRE sector as also sucking up -- quite legally -- a disproportionate share of America's productivity. (His father-in-law is a beneficiary of this, and I suspect he is not going to challenge the structure that produces that effect. Nor are Eliot Spitzer or Richard Blumenthal, both good people on many important issues, but respectively son and son-in-law of real estate magnates.)
When some reap what they don't sow, others don't get to reap what they did sow. It doesn't come out of thin air. And that excessive reaping contributes mightily to income concentration, to wealth concentration, to human misery, and to a wide range of societal effects that a just and wise people should seek to avoid.
Are we a just and wise people?
Maybe. But first we need to recognize that we are generally ignorant on the subject of land economics, and that our ignorance has been reinforced by the economics departments of most of our major universities, which simply don't teach their students how land economics impact ordinary people. (I can't say whether the Real Estate Institutes at, say, Penn or Harvard teach their students this explicitly or not; I suspect they don't. All they know is that this system, like Aleve, works for them, and they learn how to make it work a little better in our academies.)
An aphorism comes to mind ...
He who knows not and knows not he knows not: he is a fool - shun him.
He who knows not and knows he knows not: he is simple - teach him.
He who knows and knows not he knows: he is asleep - wake him.
He who knows and knows he knows: he is wise - follow him.
How do we reduce the popular ignorance of land economics? Well, you could start by reading a bit of Henry George. He knew, and knew that he knew. Start with one or more of his speeches:
(If your frame of reference is not theological, don't be put off by the language; the points he makes don't require acceptance of God-language to make sense.) And then move on to "Progress and Poverty," either in the original unabridged, or in a modern abridgment. You can read a very short version here.
We can create a society in which our young people will regard themselves as stakeholders, or we can continue to uphold the structures which funnel nearly 3/4 of our net worth into the pockets of just 10% of us, and wonder why the vast majority of our young people "aren't motivated."
When our best and brightest were motivated and incentivized to use their talents in basic research, in medicine, in civil engineering, etc., they used them to serve society as a whole. Today, our best and brightest seem to go into finance and consulting, and get to skim the cream that ought to be homogenized for the good of all of us. That leaves less for the rest of us to share, and less opportunity for the vast majority of our young people.
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