There are things people do without having verbalized or consciously accepted their intention to do them. The lack of conscious planning, however, doesn’t make the consequences of these actions any less devastating and doesn’t relieve anybody of the responsibility for them.
The elites – politicians, journalists, public figures – are probably not saying to themselves, “Let me thin out the competition that my children will be facing by holding back as many of their peers as possible.” President Obama was surely not thinking, “The joke is on you, losers” as he made impassioned speeches about the “mistaken” belief that a college degree was necessary to get a good job, all the while planning to send his daughter to Harvard. And it’s not like anybody is doubting that she won’t stop at a single degree either.
Nobody, I’m sure, is cynical enough purposefully to feed people crippling lies about the possibility of reversing the changes that have taken place since the 1970s. But the sad truth is that there is a whole class of people who are gaining huge economic advantages from perpetuating these lies. And I’m convinced that there is an unacknowledged, unconfessed desire to keep these advantages that lies at the root of the reluctance to say, “Folks, this party is dead. Time for you to move on because I already have.”
I don’t believe that anybody who is not saying this genuinely wants to reduce inequality. I feel queasy every time I see yet another weepy article about inequality whose author reaps the benefits of feeling all moral and caring while doing everything possible to ensure that inequality grows.
Clarissa's Blog 
President Obama was surely not thinking, “The joke is on you, losers” as he made impassioned speeches about the “mistaken” belief that a college degree was necessary to get a good job, all the while planning to send his daughter to Harvard. And it’s not like anybody is doubting that she won’t stop at a single degree either.
Eh. The reality he’s denying is certain groups of people are better buffeted from the need to have a college degree than others and now it’s coming to them and they deny it. Seriously no immigrant or child of immigrants believes that a college degree is unnecessary to get a good job. I walk into the local gas station and the woman behind the counter is very quick to let me know she has one daughter in college and the other is going to med school. I once had a date setup with an adjunct lecturer who used his time to boggle at the number of black state employees who were going back to school to pick up a master’s or a bachelor’s degree. There wouldn’t be an explosion of for profit online colleges being advertised on television if no perceived need existed to be taken advantage of.
I think a lot of politicians pitch this message at people who they perceive wouldn’t be able to switch gears to accommodate this new reality and would just get angry about it even if they got assistance. The “traditional college age” population is comprised largely of people who are not old enough to vote.
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In the US, you can vote when you are eighteen, which is the age of most traditional freshmen. Now whether this cohort actually registers and votes in large numbers, that I do not know.
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Eighteen-year-olds got the right to vote in the U.S. in 1971, when the 26th Amendment to the Constitution was passed.
There was a large “youth vote” in the 1972 election (Nixon vs. McGovern), but in most of the Presidential elections since then, the percentage of voters under age 25 has been consistently low. The exception was in 2008, when a high percentage of young people voted for Obama’s first term.
This time around, young voters seem to be quite enthusiastic for Bernie Sanders. But since he isn’t going to be the Democratic nominee, it remains to be seen whether they’ll turn out for Hillary Clinton.
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Yes. These are crucial observations, Shakti. This is precisely why we are seeing so much anti-immigrant rhetoric.
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