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posted by mrpg on Tuesday July 11 2017, @04:55AM   Printer-friendly
from the Can't-fix-it dept.

In a shift from a mere couple of years ago, when a majority of Republican-Americans thought that higher education was a good thing, the majority of them now believe the opposite.

A Pew Research Center survey published Monday revealed voters have grown apart in their support of secondary education since the 2016 presidential election season, when a majority of Democratic and Republican Americans agreed the nation’s universities serve as a benefit for the U.S. Whereas 54 percent of Republicans said "colleges and universities had a positive impact on the way things were going in the country" in 2015, the majority now believe the opposite, with 58 percent saying such institutions negatively impact the state of the union.

Get the full story here.


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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 11 2017, @12:45PM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 11 2017, @12:45PM (#537563)

    Except that corporate greed has been around a long time through good times and bad. In particular, why is it more effective now than in the 1950s? What has changed?

    What changed? Corporations have become much greedier. The concept of "family" at companies is gone. It is now profit over all, including disposable labor.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 11 2017, @07:20PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 11 2017, @07:20PM (#537749)

    What changed is the rise of the philosophy that corporations have a preeminent responsibility to maximize shareholder value. Jack Welch popularized this, but later recanted to some extent. What we need to correct this problem is a federal law that states that failure to maximize shareholder value is acceptable, particularly when it is done for the benefit of the employees, customers, or community. This wouldn't eliminate the preeminence of shareholder value in making corporate decisions, but would take the legal edge off of it, possibly resulting in less brutal corporate behavior.

    • (Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Tuesday July 11 2017, @11:56PM (2 children)

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday July 11 2017, @11:56PM (#537853) Journal

      What changed is the rise of the philosophy that corporations have a preeminent responsibility to maximize shareholder value.

      No, that hasn't. That's been around as long as for profit corporations have been. Look, this isn't a case of someone's scientists putting enough light bulbs into discovering more advanced technologies of greed. We are ignoring the elephant in the room. Corporate greed has always existed and been as bad as it currently is. But corporate greed never has operated in a vacuum. It is always opposed by many other factors such as labor power, the interests of its consumers and vendors, government power, etc. Labor power has declined in recent decades due to globalization and badly aimed regulation. That's what's different.

      • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday July 13 2017, @09:37PM (1 child)

        by urza9814 (3954) on Thursday July 13 2017, @09:37PM (#538872) Journal

        What changed is the rise of the philosophy that corporations have a preeminent responsibility to maximize shareholder value.

        No, that hasn't. That's been around as long as for profit corporations have been. Look, this isn't a case of someone's scientists putting enough light bulbs into discovering more advanced technologies of greed. We are ignoring the elephant in the room. Corporate greed has always existed and been as bad as it currently is. But corporate greed never has operated in a vacuum. It is always opposed by many other factors such as labor power, the interests of its consumers and vendors, government power, etc. Labor power has declined in recent decades due to globalization and badly aimed regulation. That's what's different.

        I think you really could say that we *did* "discover more advanced technologies of greed" -- the MBA. The CEOs and management of companies used to be people who gave a damn about the reputation of the company. It used to be people who had actually worked in the lower levels of the company and understood the products or services they were producing. Now it's some business grad who doesn't look beyond their spreadsheets for how to maximize next quarter's profits, because that's what they've been taught. You don't become a manager at a mining company because you know a lot about mining anymore; now you become a manager at a mining company because you know a lot about the kind of greed required to quickly drive the stock price up a couple extra points.

        Look at a graph of wages vs productivity. They rose together until around the 60s, when wages started to go flat while productivity continued to rise. Now look at a graph of the number of MBA degrees, you'll see a rise that pretty well matches that wage/productivity gap. So while that obviously doesn't prove any correlation, it does demonstrate that this *is* a new phenomenon with just the right timing to potentially explain this problem.

        https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/US_productivity_and_real_wages.jpg [wikimedia.org]
        https://blogs-images.forbes.com/ronaldyeaple/files/2012/05/Trend.jpg [forbes.com]

        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday July 13 2017, @10:21PM

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday July 13 2017, @10:21PM (#538883) Journal

          I think you really could say that we *did* "discover more advanced technologies of greed" -- the MBA.

          You could say that, but what would make it more "advanced" in any sense?

          The CEOs and management of companies used to be people who gave a damn about the reputation of the company. It used to be people who had actually worked in the lower levels of the company and understood the products or services they were producing.

          Not at all. The current problem has been going on for centuries. There are plenty of examples of businesses that fell apart after they were taken over by people who didn't give a damn.

          Look at a graph of wages vs productivity. They rose together until around the 60s, when wages started to go flat while productivity continued to rise. Now look at a graph of the number of MBA degrees, you'll see a rise that pretty well matches that wage/productivity gap. So while that obviously doesn't prove any correlation, it does demonstrate that this *is* a new phenomenon with just the right timing to potentially explain this problem.

          Given on that graph that wages almost flatline after 1975, we have that MBA degrees correlate with the productivity increase (even before wages flatlined). Maybe spurious correlations are spurious? I'll note for a less spurious correlation that the gap between productivity and wages started right about the time Japanese car companies started to make serious inroads into the US market - namely, when foreign labor competition started to eat into core US businesses.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @03:17AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @03:17AM (#538535)

    What changed is that we cut taxes on the rich to the point where there's an incentive now to accumulate levels of wealth that wasn't previously possible. Back when the top marginal rates were between 70 and 90% there was no point in earning that much as the government would take most of it. The result was that they'd be more willing to pay employees sufficiently that the employees could afford to have the basic necessities and a few other things like a house. 2 cars and a nice vacation.

    But, since the tax rates were dropped, you've seen corporations going further and further to pick the pockets of the consumers and shaft their own employees so that the, mostly rich, investors could get money they hadn't earned and don't deserve.

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday July 13 2017, @10:50PM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday July 13 2017, @10:50PM (#538891) Journal

      Back when the top marginal rates were between 70 and 90%

      The theoretical rates were that high, but the actual rates were lower due to the many tax loopholes.