Peggy Noonan is not a columnist I agree with on everything but she seems at times to have a knack of getting to the nub of a trend, a cultural shift, or however else one wants to call it. She has this WSJ ($) article out about the socialists now pushing – successfully it seems – to take over control of the Democratic Party. It means that the US will at some point face an unappealing choice if, say, JD Vance, who appears to be quite hostile on the free market, is the Republican Party nominee. (For what it is worth, that’s not a foregone conclusion in my view.)
A few paragraphs:
Socialism is not a passing thing but an arriving thing. It must be taken seriously as a factor in our politics and the Democratic Party. A CNN/SSRS poll issued this week reported 34% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning adults identify as “democratic socialists.” That number won’t be depressed by the success of Abdul El-Sayed, who won the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate in Michigan on Tuesday by racking up huge margins in progressive enclaves and university towns.
Socialism’s most enthusiastic promoters are quick and clever—comparatively well-educated, very online. Their talent lies primarily in media, having been immersed in it from birth—the internet, its apps, its entertainment and information flow. They know all about how people get and absorb a feeling, an impression; they know how to produce a sensation, as opposed to a thought. One of the great tricks in life is to have a talent suited to your times, and they do.
I am sorry to say these democratic socialists never strike me with their warmth, as, say, your great-uncle Billy was warm when he spoke about the Industrial Workers of the World. Today’s socialists strike me as colder, less human, fiercer and occasionally sociopathic. In general, they appear to have an idea of history rather than attachments to existing people and institutions. Most strike me not as people who love America and wish to make it better, but people ready to exploit its freedoms to build a movement that if successful would transform America’s fundamental nature. It will no longer be the freedom place but something else, and more common.
I think the lack of empathy and a sense of rootedness to the realities of most people is what will hopefully be fatal to these folk (consider that lout, Hasan Piker, with his apologetics and even open admiration for the Soviet Union, Mao and even N. Korea and his hatred of Israel). But the implosion of this trend is not a given. It has to be argued against, unpacked and exposed. My worry is that too few are doing it. (In Piker’s case, I see him as someone who is trying to be more and more disgusting and outrageous in pursuit of attention. However, there is a chance that he actually believes what he writes and says, and that he has gone psychotic, which is where I think the likes of Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens are now these days.)
Noonan identifies what she thinks are three causal factors behind this resurgent socialism, or at least a desire by socialists to proclaim that is what they are, rather than use euphemisms:
A voter who is 25 was in grade school during the 2008 economic crash, and saw everything—frightened parents, lost jobs. In the years after, he saw bailouts and no one on Wall Street paying a price. It lessened his allegiance to the free-market economic system.
A voter who is 25 also sees AI rising, and wonders if the economy as it exists today has a place for him. Will he be able to afford a house someday? Widespread home ownership brings a feeling of investment, of stability and satisfaction. What does its absence bring?
The Cold War has receded as a living memory. The enforced communism and socialism of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact was a disaster—shortages, drabness, economic lifelessness. Censorship, secret police, all the bad things big unaccountable governments bring. That was long ago. “Socialism” now is a dream of Scandinavia—national healthcare, generous benefits, equal enjoyment of resources.
As religion recedes, politics takes its place. The young have been educated within a general framework of assumptions and language of the left—structures of power, oppressor groups, critical theory, intersectionality.
Towards the end of the article Noonan (a former speechwriter for Reagan), has this:
It’s our view here that free-market capitalism is organic and flows upward from the human person—man wants to build, trade, invent, provide for and rise, and he erects laws and a way of economic being that allows the realization of those desires. Economic freedom works with human nature. The rules and regulations it produces, the economic framework it creates, are like what Churchill said of democracy: the worst system except for all the others. Socialism is a more abstract and ideological vision of justice that doesn’t flow up but must be imposed from the top down. It isn’t based on the natural, or on man as he is; it’s a construct that involves coercion.
There is a problem with the Noonan article, however, which slightly taints it. I would dissent from saying that capitalism, or open market economy, is the “worst possible system except for all the others”, to borrow from Churchill, because I think that concedes too much to those who want to tap into the idealism of youth. That sort of perspective does not appeal to people with ideological fire in their belly. It also sells free market capitalism and several private property short. “The free market“ is a term that covers the idea of people using their skills and talents to obtain their wants and goals in voluntary interactions with their fellows, recognising that ownership of property – an extension of the of idea of humans as owning their own lives. This is not just the “least-worst” state of affairs. It is a positive, glowing, glorious good set of values to set out and defend. Defenders of the classical liberal tradition, to use that term, need to stop the throat-clearing urge to half-apologise for this worldview before getting going. When they do that, they’ve already lost people.
There is intriguing paragraph, regarding a biography of the French political figure Andre Malraux, about whom a biography has been written:
At a Gaullist campaign rally in 1968, Malraux put his finger on a weakness of conservative economic thought. “ ‘Capitalism’ does not carry us in its heart,” he said. By inference, it’s also hard to carry capitalism in your heart. It isn’t a great belief, only an economic system. Socialism is a belief, and it summons feeling. Capitalism is a thing of reason, a disadvantage in an age of sensation.
Definitely one of the better articles on what has been going on in the US, in my view.
All this thoughtful analysis of the insightful thinking of the younger voter overlooks one over-riding factor which both mrs llamas and I have noticed more and more over the last few years – many Americans under the age of about 25 appear to be fantastically, floridly ignorant – about everything. But especially about almost-anything to do with financial matters. They can’t do the simplest math, they don’t understand concepts like interest, compounding, depreciation, the time value of money, or much of anything else that has a $ sign in front of it. And their concepts about money – who has it, who does not, what profits (or losses) are made in different endeavours, who pays what taxes and where the money goes – are generally completely-divorced from reality.
I suspect some of this may be down to the vast educational deficits due to Covid. Whatever the case, this broad and deep swath of ignorance is fertile ground for the idiocies of ‘democratic socialism’. A charlatan like Abdul El-Sayed can gleefully promise ‘Medicare for All’, a Green New Deal, free college for everyone, free childcare for everyone, all paid for by taxes on billionaires, and large numbers of the voters simply don’t have the basic knowledge to understand the sheer impossibility of his claims. Mayor Mamdani’s promises of cheap grocery stores throughout the city are another fine example – many New York voters, superbly-educated when it comes to pronouns and the iniquities of slavery, simply don’t have the skills and knowledge to grasp that it’s all a bunch of hogwash, all dressed up to go to meeting. And, if it does come to pass, and they go to the government store and see the empty shelves, the lack of choice, the poor quality and the rampant corruption, they won’t be able to understand why – and so the next round of stories of kulaks, wreckers and hoarders will be just-as-easy to sell them.
llater,
llamas
Llamas: many Americans under the age of about 25 appear to be fantastically, floridly ignorant – about everything.
Unfortunately, this is not confined to N. America.
I remembered reading an Atlantic Monthly article bemoaning how some university/college undergrads for liberal arts courses had not ever read a book cover-to-cover. It was not a spoof or culture war rage bait. It was openly acknowledged and verified, several times over.
Ray Bradbury saw this shit coming half a century ago. The consequences are playing out on our news headlines.
And the entire politico-media circus was allowed to get away with blaming that system, despite precious little market freedom being in evidence either before or during the crisis. “The bankers were given free rein, so they lent money willy-nilly to people who couldn’t pay it back” never made a lick of sense. Who in his right mind would do that? They were told to, against their better judgement, with assurances of those bailouts “if” it all went tits up, by the very politicans who now simply want to steal it from them under the banner of socialism.
Llamas is right: the young seem to be, in general, ignorant about a great deal. But they’re particularly ignorant about this. And if they know anything about it at all, they know a lie. If your opinion of the free economy is based on a calumny, then of course you’re going to turn against it.
If you want to see just what I mean, there’s a US podcaster called Caleb Hammer who looks at financial situations and offers advice. Ignore him – he’s a click-hungry blowhard. Look at his subjects. Sure, they’re selected to maximise views, so they’re a little extreme. But they’re not that far from the norm, and he seems to be able to find a new subject every day, each apparently dumber than the last.
llater,
llamas
Feelings don’t care about your facts, especially when a tweet can generate an instant endorphin hit, and you don’t know or don’t understand the facts.
“In the years after, he saw bailouts and no one on Wall Street paying a price. It lessened his allegiance to the free-market economic system.”
To expand on Sam Duncan’s point above….bailouts and “no one…paying a price” is NOT the free market economic system.
It’s crony capitalism where the government gets to decide who’s “too big to fail” and use other people’s money to prevent them from doing so.
In a free market economy, people who make good, financially sound decisions, generally succeed, and those who don’t, generally pay the price.
If there’s no price, there’s no incentive to make good decisions. That’s not a free market system.
Let’s see…the government takes money from one sector of society and decides what other sector of society to “redistribute” that money to. Hm. That sounds more like socialism than any sort of “free market” don’t you think?
In other words, turning to Socialism/Communism because crony capitalism (essentially socialism lite) failed spectacularly is going 180 degrees in the exact wrong direction.
Ludwig Von Mises explained long ago that the logical end of interventionism is socialism – if ever bigger government is good (is “Social Reform”) then government controlling everything is the ultimate good – especially as, in real life, government intervention makes things worse-than-they-otherwise-would-have-been thus leading to demands for ever-more-statism.
For example, government backed “student loans” lead to an explosion of tuition costs – leading to demands for “free college”.
And government interventions in health care (for example Medicare and Medicaid – but also licensing, which happened long before) lead to an explosion of health care costs – leading to demands for “free health care”.
And if Corporations provide the “free” services – then they will rip off the taxpayers (or course they will) – so that leads to demands for the government to directly control, health, education, housing (the housing benefit scam is an outrage – so, of course, there are demands for more Council Houses – Public Housing) food (yes food as well) – and-so-on.
As for individual persons – many of the New Dealers were, at least in private (and sometimes in public statements) supporters of either Fascist Italy or the Soviet Union – they were Collectivists, and that was 90 years ago. “Philip Dru: Administrator” is a book from the early 1900s – it is totalitarian, yet President Woodrow Wilson (who himself wrote a book called “The State” – and it is a deeply evil work) agreed with the book and his “other self”, Colonel House, wrote it (he was the author). In the 1880s Edward Bellamy wrote “Looking Backward” another openly totalitarian work – he and his cousin Francis Bellamy openly supported “National Socialism” (saluting hands and all – before Mr Hitler was even born) – yet the Bellamys were intellectuals-in-good-standing – and they wrote the Pledge of Allegiance – ever wondered why it does NOT mention the Constitution of the United States, it is because the Bellamy cousins hated the Constitution.
The flag companies loved the Bellamys – as making children swear allegiance to “the flag” (NOT the “capitalist” Constitution) meant that every school had to buy flags.
“The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them” said “Lenin” (a fake name for a Russian aristocrat and traitor) – and the Bellamy cousins knew that as well. “Who cares that the Bellamy cousins are socialists who want to cut our throats – by cooperating with them, we will sell a lot of flags!”
Nor is “democratic socialism” in any way new – the 1934 Act set up this system on the Indian Reservations, resources (including land) would be owned in-common and under the control of democratically elected Tribal Councils.
Such places as the Pine Ridge Reservation are Democratic Socialist – right now, and have been for almost a century.
In the 1960s such senior academics, who advised on the creation of the Great Society programs, such as the husband and wife team “Cloward and Piven” openly stated that their objective was to destroy “capitalism” – by creating an ever growing class of dependents.
That is also what the de facto Open Borders policy (under the puppet “Joe” Biden) was for – increasing the number of dependents, people dependent on government who would vote (legally or illegally) for the Dems.
All that is happening now is that the mask is coming off – the Dems are showing in public what, in private, many (many – NOT all) of them have long been.
On J.D. Vance – without his advise both the Marxist regime in Cuba and the Islamic regime in Iran would have fallen months ago.
But this advice does not appear from nowhere – Vice President Vance gets it from his advisers, for example the son of Tucker Carlson – yes the Tucker Carlson who supports Mr Putin and a whole series of anti American regimes (including the Islamic Republic of Iran).
It is a bizarre situation – President Trump despises Mr Carlson, and the hatred is mutual, yet the President trusts the Vice President – who is advised by the son of Mr Carlson (and the son is on good terms with the father).
I am reminded of the British situation long ago – where even after it became clear that Harry St John Philby was a traitor, his son “Kim” Philby was trusted – even though the son was on good terms with his traitor father (or course he was – because “Kim” was also a traitor).
Yes the situation is farcical – but it is also incredibly dangerous.
The Vice President of the United States is getting advice (and passing on that advice) from people who support the enemies of the United States, and of the Western world in general.
I must stress that I am NOT saying the Vice President is a traitor – but he is only one step removed from someone who very clearly is a traitor, and he is getting advice (indirectly) from that traitor – and passing on that advice as his own opinions.
This is clear in the public statements of the Vice President – for example he claimed, on the Joe Rogan show, that the Islamic Republic of Iran regime must NOT fall – as if the regime fell “95 million Iranians would flee to Europe” – he got that piece of nonsense (indirectly) from Tucker Carlson, who got it from the Islamic Republic of Iran and its allies.
In short regimes such as the Marxist regime in Cuba, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mr Putin’s regime in Russia (and so on) have a de facto (de facto – not official) ally – in the Vice President.
This is very unfortunate – as the Vice President is NOT a bad man, he is just getting very bad (false) information and advice.
As for J.D. Vance “history” – “all wars are ended by negotiations” – no they are not, most wars end in the defeat of one side or the other (especially ideological wars).
“Alexander Hamilton protected the American worker” – no he did not, the policies of Mr Hamilton, a National Debt and a High Tariff, were about tying in rich-men to the government – they RIPPED OFF ordinary people.
“Teddy Roosevelt created the middle class by anti trust” – no he did not, and “anti trust” is a nonsense, a harmful nonsense.
And-so-on.
The “history” he (the Vice President) comes out with is just wrong – and it comes, indirectly, from Mr Carlson and people close to Mr Carlson.
Remember that Mr Carlson does not care what “historian” he follows – as long as that “historian” is against the West.
He will, one week, have on a pro Adolf Hitler “historian” – and call the man “the most honest historian in America”.
Another time he will have on a pro Soviet or pro Islamist “historian” – and praise them as well. Blaming the Cold War on the United States, or whitewashing Islam.
As long as you are an enemy of the West – you are a friend of Mr Carlson.
Again – not new.
Harry St John Bridger Philby – or “Jack Philby” or “Sheik Abdullah” (or various other names), supported BOTH Islam and socialism – just like Mayor Mamdani and so many other Democrat politicians now.
Logically Islam and socialism are not compatible – but a lot of people support both (they do not care about logical compatibility).
“Is such-and-such-a-thing against the West?” yes it is – “then I support such-and-such-a-thing – and everything else that is against the West, even if it is not logically compatible with such-and-such-a-thing”.
But we are told that such people can not be traitors – because they are “nice, decent, people” from “good families”.
“good” meaning wealthy and connected.
Paul Marks:
Concerning the Pledge of Allegiance: We pledge allegiance not just to the flag, but “TO THE REPUBLIC FOR WHICH IT STANDS.” Got it? Implicit in this is the idea that the flag is a symbol, a thing that stands for and represents the nation as a whole, the nation writ large: i.e. the people . . . the Union of the States . . . the Republic. Even as a five-year-old kid in 1955 reciting the Pledge at the start of every school day I understood this, and so did all of my classmates, even the the dim ones. Only the very dumbest Americans don’t understand this. I don’t care if the Bellamys crafted the Pledge for the purpose of selling flags — I have no idea if this is true — but if they did, then good for them, say I. That’s what I call good ol’ American entrepreneurship in action, IOW free enterprise — capitalism — at work. I see nothing wrong, or cynical about that. And neither would most Americans, apart from today’s dumbass know-nothing college kids and a growing percentage of dumbass Democrats.
Have you ever been to America, Paul? New York City, Miami, and Los Angeles don’t count. I mean have you traveled through it, driven on its back roads and byways, visited its small towns, cruised along on its blue highways and wandered around its wide open expanses? If you have, you would surely have noticed the ubiquity of American flag flying our porches, in front of our schools, our factories and office buildings, etc.
And if you haven’t, you don’t know America, not really. Hardly at all.
As I write this, Old Glory is flying from my front porch. I know very well what it means, what it stands for. We all do. To repeat: it’s a symbol. I like reciting the Pledge for that very reason. Always have. Same goes for singing the “The Star-Spangled Banner. As for the people who make and sell those banners, ideally for a profit, I say: more power to them.
Hope I cleared that up for you.
And the real, physical world does not care, in any way, about anyone’s feelings.
IrishOtter49
I have already told you who wrote the Pledge of Allegiance and why they wrote it. You should not have needed me to tell you – but even after I have told you, you still do not seem to understand.
And “Republic” is not the same as “Constitution” or “Bill of Rights”. Again – you should not need me to tell you this. You should be able to work this out for yourself. The scumbag judges (2026) today all say they support “the Republic” – they also say they support the Constitution (which they do not).
We both know that the judges (and justices) do not even care when elections are rigged – whether against President Trump, or Spencer Pratt, or anyone else. They will not defend honest elections – they allow the tidal wave of “mail-in-ballots” and other fraud.
As for America in general – outside the major cities which you “do not count”.
As far back as 1933 the Federal Government ordered the violation of the gold clauses in all contracts, public and private, and went further – stealing privately owned monetary gold (wedding rings and so on they allowed people to keep). The Supreme Court upheld this in 1935.
So the establishment do not give a damn about the Constitution of the United States – they showed that more than 90 years ago.
And the people?
They responded by reelecting Franklin Roosevelt, by around 60% of the vote, in 1936.
Yes, there were areas that rejected all this – indeed some areas have always rejected all the treason, for example Wayne County Tennessee (which also rejected both Woodrow Wilson and “Teddy” Roosevelt) in 1912.
But they get out voted by the cities you say are not important.
IrishOtter49 – now I am not in such a rush (one job over – another about to start)…..
I agree with you about a nice definition of the word “Republic” – you are defining that word the same way that John Wayne does in the film “The Alamo” (1960) – it is a great speech, connecting the word “Republic” to individual freedom – and, yes, David Crockett himself would have used the word that way.
But this is NOT how must people use the word “Republic” – to most people it just means “no King”, the totalitarian Bellamy cousins would have said they believed in a “Republic”, so would Woodrow Wilson – so did the the French Revolutionaries back in the 1790s, even as they murdered hundreds of thousands of people (mostly quite ordinary people in the Provinces – see William Doyle’s history of the French Republic).
Most Republics in the world are horribly repressive, state dominated places – Mayor Mamdani (and co) would approve.
Going back to Llamas’ first comment, I often see YouTube shorts which are just snapshot of a social media post where someone moans about the iniquities of modern America in the most moronic way possible, demonstrating zero grasp of economics, history or financial reality. Very often the ire is focused on ‘boomers’ who had it easy or exploitative ‘billionaires’. Both terms seem to be euphemisms for anyone older or even slightly richer than the poster. These idiocies get thousands of positive comments and tens of thousands of ‘likes’.
many Americans under the age of about 25 appear to be fantastically, floridly ignorant – about everything
They are as ignorant as their professors. They know what they have been taught in the universities. They have been taught things that ain’t so.
@llamas
many Americans under the age of about 25 appear to be fantastically, floridly ignorant – about everything.
Although the covid deficit is very real, I am going to have to say that my experience is that most people regardless of age are pretty ignorant about a shockingly large number of things including the most basic ideas about money. I mean consider social security — something we need because a disgraceful number of people live beyond their means and are unable to save a dime for retirement. And that’s been going on since the 1930s.
In the early 2000s I started a start up and had my first experience managing a non trivial number of people. For the most part all with technical degrees from decent universities. Their inability to do the most basic of things was just shocking to me. The one that I really remember jumping out at me is how utterly dreadful their English grammar was. I’d get copied on these emails to our customers with dreadful errors and was just gobsmacked as to what these people thought was appropriate professional communication. I remember explaining to someone how to solve a simple math problem by the application of Pythagoras’ theorem, and it was as if I was explaining advanced calculus or something. I also remember we were doing a budget, so we had an excel spreadsheet up and punched in the line items for the cost of each item. I asked the guy to get me a total, and he literally got out a pocket calculator to add up the numbers. However, some of the guys and gals who worked for me were real rock stars.
It is easy to dis the young, but there are plenty of shockingly ignorant and disturbingly stupid people a lot older than 25. And I also have to say in defense of the young some of the things these people can do with modern technology is VERY impressive. For example, those guys who can produce amazing, complex and beautiful videos by leveraging technology like adobe products and AI, or so many young people setting up YT based businesses where they create lots of excellent content, and create and manage their own businesses, do complex video editing and market research. Of course there is plenty of crap too, but hasn’t that always been true?
Again, every generation has talked about how foolish and unwise the next generation is, “damn kids can’t do long division or write in cursive”. The reality is that every generation is 80/20, with 80% not contributing much beyond producing the next generation, and 20% doing amazing things that change the world. I’m not sure this one is any different, certainly the ones I know give me a lot of hope for the future.
If people are ignorant – it is, at least in part, the fault of the education system – the schools and universities.
Yes a person can, with great effort, educate themselves (my father educated himself – he left school at 14 years of age), but this is very difficult – and people have reasonable expectation that their teachers and university academics will actually teach them things – train them in basic skills and guide them towards the truth.
But, tragically, that reasonable expectation is often not met – the young people are betrayed.
For example, what chance has a young person in Chicago got?
The government schools are terrible (as recently as the 1950s they were good), in spite of vast amounts of money being spent upon them.
Private schools?
Mostly Catholic schools – and Catholic schools have gone from being inexpensive (indeed free for the poor) in the 1950s, to being very expensive today.
And, just like in Britain, private schools in the United States (yes – even the Catholic schools) often teach the Collectivist distortions and lies as the government schools.
The children are betrayed – even in the very expensive private schools.
@Paul Marks
If people are ignorant – it is, at least in part, the fault of the education system – the schools and universities.
Although I mostly agree with everything you said, I think there is one missing piece — namely that the reason why this is the case is because parents have delegated almost entirely the education of their children to the state. And It is worth thinking a lot about why that is.
FWIW, the private school system is quite different here than in Britain. There are a LOT of private schools, certainly catholic schools, but also many other religious schools for protestant denominations and many secular private schools. Near where I live (which is admittedly a large city), looking only at secular schools, there are hundreds of elementary private schools (perhaps dominated by Montessori) but also dozens at the middle school level and close to a dozen at the high school level. And of course there is a very wide choice of colleges. Many of these colleges do toe the line for the woke agenda but there are many that do not.
But, FWIW, far and away the largest means of childhood education for kids outside of the public school system is home schooling of which there is a gigantic and thriving industry in the United States, as high as 6 or 7% and it is growing. This is governed by the states and there are surprisingly open laws about this here — and in places where you would not expect. For example, California and Illinois, two of the bluest states in the union, both have extremely liberal rules about homeschooling, but which I mean there is very little state supervision. I know many parents who homeschooled their kids, many through high school, and the kids are without exception in my experience, lovely, socially adjusted, extremely capable, and well educated. Well rounded education. They can do calculus AND carpentry, geometry and gardening, analyze a tax return and analyze a shakespeare play, and they can all play at least one musical instrument. One 14 yo boy I know was building robots that would be aspirational for a college senior in electronics engineering.
A few years ago my kids were in one of those Science Olympiads in the state final down at UIUC. There were about a hundred schools represented having gone through three levels of competition to qualify for the state championship. Many of the very best schools in the country were there. Some of them sent maybe 20-30 students, often from private schools with effectively unlimited time, resources and budgets and some of the very best teachers. However, the state championship was won by a group called Fox Valley Homeschoolers, a group of about a half a dozen families who homeschooled their kids and got together as a group to work on the science projects and enter the competition. They then went on to represent Illinois at the National Competition. I was a judge at the competition and although I did not judge any of this group’s projects I did judge about four others and they were at a VERY high level for high schoolers — kids performing real science with beautifully designed experiments and extremely articulate presentations of their work. So winning that competition was an amazing achievement.
So here, at least, sending your kids to a public school is a choice, and for sure the public school system is EXTREMELY variable in quality. My kids went to a public high school and got an excellent education with minimal indoctrination. So, in a sense, it is more a matter of poverty, and a matter of an economic system that requires two income families, and that is a whole complicated thing.
Although not a popular opinion, to me, parents are ultimately responsible for the education of their children, and delegating that to the government is a choice. I certainly agree often an economic choice, but our financial situation as well as the education of our children, are our responsibility, the cumulative result of the life choices we make.
I guess my original comment may have painted things a little too black. Maybe.
Building on what Fraser Orr writes, in my last gig but one, I was volunteered to be the engineering advisor to a team of public high-school students going into an elevated level (state or regional) final of a robotics competition. Like him, I was very, very impressed by the quality of their efforts, and they certainly seemed to me to be well educated all round. So it’s possible.
Similarly, I just watched a ‘Spectator’ interview with Katherine Birbasingh (sp?) who seems to be achieving spectacularly-good results with suburban-London high-school kids in an area where school performance is generally pretty-abysmal – so the skills and techniques to achieve are not lost entirely.
But I also recall a young engineer at my last gig who had his new car repossessed because he got behind with the payments – which were not particularly onerous or excessive, relative to his salary. He got another car, and blowed if that didn’t get repossessed as well, again for non-payment. To begin with, he could not grasp why he had so much trouble getting financed for the second car, and why the interest rate was so high – the dealer got the first car back, so they were all square as far as he was concerned, and it was grossly-unfair that the second dealer charged such a high rate on the loan. And then it was doubly-unfair that he got repossessed a second time – he honestly believed that repossession was random, like a slot machine, and the universe was dealing him an unfair hand by hitting him twice with repossession. And this was a graduate of a prestigious university. Well, you hear a story like that, where basic financial matters are seen as being equivalent to a roll of the dice – what can you say? Better luck next time?
llater,
llamas
llamas – I am not good with money (not at all), but the person you describe, who does not understand that he needs to pay his car loan payments – and that if he does not he will (rightly) be considered a bad risk – and have to pay much higher interest rates, is something else.
And this was an engineering graduate – so much for STEM teaching leading to Common Sense.
Fraser Orr – good points Sir, especially on Home Schooling.
With the rising cost of most private schools, and their ideological corruption, Home Schooling may be the only workable option for many people.
Financial ineptitude isn’t restricted to the poor and undereducated. You can be great at your line of work but still have a personality that makes you more likely to be impulsive and engage in risky behaviour.Plenty of well educated high earners who have severe gambling addictions for example.