"Obama's Socialism" - A college professor's experiment

IS THIS MAN A GENIUS?

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had decided to distribute grades the way that wealth is distributed under the current Obama administration, which could as easily be considered “Obama’s Socialism” as it could be considered an unfettered free market, given that the current state of affairs in the U.S. is a quasi-hybrid blend of socialism and capitalism.  This professor, unlike his hypothetical and notably popular friend at another college, actually understands the difference between communism and socialism, as well as the fact that economic distribution policies under the current administration are, well, not much different from past administrations.  Whatever. 

Anyways, the professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on ‘Obama's plan.’” All grades will be a proxy for wealth, representative of the general population in America.

The class was made up of 100 students, and the grades A-F were representative of a diminishing scale from 1 to 0.2% of wealth in equal increments.  The top student in the class received 34 A’s that semester, which he touted was a reflection of his hard-work and intelligence, even though the odds are overwhelming that he inherited most of these grades from his family.  Still, I agree that it’s hard to argue that he should be punished for his grandparent’s success.  The teacher allowed him to continue to be first in line to accumulate even more A’s, so long as he paid a nominal tax on his returns designed to help the less fortunate students in the class, which even that he vehemently opposed as burdensome and found several loopholes around this.  While investing more of his grades into personal luxuries and investments that would yield even more A’s, he defended the system because his successful grades would somehow trickle down to the rest of the students, as they all wanted the American dream he was living.  He offered a few programs in which students could receive better and more grades, which were generally available only to the students closest to him in the class ranks, and were only available when he felt that he could benefit just as much, if not more.  Especially when not many tests were scheduled for the near future, and thus, there were few opportunities for more A’s, he hunkered down and refused to divest any grade resources to others.  When times get tough, his priorities trumped the priorities of others, and he saw himself get more A’s while most students saw depreciations in whatever grades they had. 

The next 4 students in the class had a combined 27 A’s, which they weren’t complaining about.  While 3 of these students came from similar inheritance backgrounds as the first student, one had risen from the bottom of the class and she was quite proud of her accomplishments.  Regardless, these students actually watched the teacher take a slightly higher percentage of their A’s away from them to invest back into the class, because these students did not have as much influence over the teacher as the first student did.  Still, they had quite a few A’s, although they all wished they had a few more.

The next 5 students had a combined 11 A’s, and next 10 students had a combined 12 A’s, the next 20 students had a B each, and the next 20 students had an F each.  Finally, the final 40 students in the class shared one F amongst themselves.  It’s possible a few of these students weren’t particularly hard-working, while a few others maybe were not particularly bright. One student had a severe disability due to a car accident caused by a drunk driver several years ago. However, the vast majority of these students had skills that weren’t as highly economically-valued in America, or they did indeed have such aforementioned skills but were hoping to enter professions that are not as highly valued in economic terms as professions like: Acting, professional sports, banking, law, medicine, or certain business position.  They hoped to be musicians and teachers, artists and social workers, local business owners and non-profit employees. 

It turns out that 33 of them were incredibly hard-working and contributed a great deal to the class.  The other 7 were so continually berated and denigrated by the class as “moochers who were looking for free D’s” that the teacher was unable to distinguish which ones even wanted to show up on test-day, assuming the top students in the class would even allow them the opportunity to take a test.  We have no idea how hard they’ve studied or what scores they’re even capable of, because our system at best gives them a dried up pen for their scan-tron tests at a remote testing site on the other side of the state. Meanwhile, the other students in the class spend several hours a week talking about how lazy these kids are, without ever making any sort of investment into helping them better themselves.  Most of the top students have never even talked to the students at the bottom of the class; they simply lament how offensive it is to see them talking on an iPhone or wearing nice shoes, since there is no way the worst students in the class should have such modest luxuries, never mind even considering the notion of how they came to acquire such things.  The few students at the bottom of the class should be humble and fortunate for the generosity of the more “successful” students, exhibit a quiet, docile humility, and exude at all times a silent obedience to whatever draconian double-standards are stipulated upon them. 

All 100 students continued to take classes together for the rest of their lives, and a few students managed to receive more A’s, while a few students actually lost some A’s, or an A, or a C, or whatever grade they started off with.  However, the overwhelming majority see no fluctuation, as social mobility in the U.S. is one of the lowest amongst developed countries in the world.   60% of the class continued to have, at best, an F they could call their own.  So much for the American Dream. 

To their great surprise, the professor told them that while socialism communism would ultimately fail because when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed, a purely unfettered free market will also ultimately fail, as social mobility becomes a pipe dream, monopolies grow rampant, and that eventually the discontents of the majority of the students who are not even invited to test day will revolt against the few students with all the A’s, even if the top students continue to argue this system is the most just.  He then showed them a video on the French Revolution, and then he noted that a free market system is just above a caste-system aristocracy in terms of equality. 

The top students, when asked to defend their unfettered free market views, fiscal austerity, and emphasis on deregulation, pointed to the conservative nation of Pakistan, in which social redistribution is minimal, and social programs like universal healthcare and education is scoffed at.  Instead, the rich need not rely on power grids because they purchase generators, they send their kids to private school because they can afford to educate them, and they travel to other countries with socialized or quasi-socialized medicine, because healthcare is a obviously a commodity, not a right.  For the 60 students that can’t afford such luxuries, well, sorry but that’s the price we pay for societal justice. 

These are possibly the 5 best sentences you'll ever read and all applicable to this experiment:

1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.  Actually, you can.  See Rawls, John.  Besides, no one is calling for Communism.  Not even close.  Most people on the left are slightly left of center, not an equidistant antithetical tea party. 

2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.  This is a terribly myopic view, and is more applicable to the top student in the class than it is to the bottom 40.  If we are to perpetuate the war on welfare, it should have the same implications for the rich as the poor.  Handouts for the rich are a thievery of arguably even higher proportions. 

Also, by the same logic, childhood education should be for only those that can pay, cops only protect the rich neighborhood, firefighters only put out fires in the houses that sign up for the premium fire protection package, and our ER’s rearrange their wait-time priorities based on who has the best medical insurance plans.  If you don’t work, you don’t receive- education, national security, paved roads, an ambulance ride etc.  Sorry.  The constitution says nothing about letting your kids go to elementary school or receiving medical care in life-threatening situations.  And Hey! you can’t legislate morality!

3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.  Also not true.  The government prints money out of thin-air all the time.  Probably not the best example.  And definitely a discussion for another day.  But a very simple refutation.

4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!  Actually, this is the basis for accruing more wealth, such as where I divide my wealth upon other people in exchange for services, and they in turn prosper, which in turn allows me to prosper, since my wealth is meaningless if there is no one around me doing well enough for me to buy their services.  It’s the basis for microlending, and loans in general.  My divided portfolio is actually accumulating large dividends right now. You see, I divide it up, give it to other people, and then it comes back to me as more money..usually.

A better statement reads, “You cannot multiply wealth by allowing one person to have all of it, so that he can have a 2^nd private jet to take to his private island.”  Or, in the spirit of our inequality-riddled classroom, “You cannot multiply wealth by allowing five students to have a monopoly on the scan-trons, number two pencils, books, laptops, labs, school-buses, keys to the classroom, and interests of the teacher.”

5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.  Last I checked, unemployment in America was about 7%, which is not half.  It’s not even close to half.  In fact, it’s pretty close to 7%.  Number inflation this dramatic, while convenient, is simply erroneous and is dangerous, disingenuous polemic political rhetoric, substantially unrepresentative of reality.  Further, only one student in the entire class is actually on welfare, and it’s asinine to believe that even a majority of that one percent thinks that they don’t have to “work.” (Especially considering the five year limitations under the TANF program.. Hence the “T” for “temporary”).  When did having a job that pays a fraction of what your boss makes become synonymous with “I don’t like hard work?”  Because this is suggesting that 157 million American’s have the idea that they don’t have to work (135 million of which have jobs..I'm sure at least a few more have a will to work). 

Class Standings:

1 à 34 A’s

2- 5 à 7 A’s each

6 – 10 à 2 A’s each

11 – 20 à 1 A each

21 – 40 à 1 B each

41 – 60 à 1 F each

61 – 100 à 1/40^th of an F each.  

Can you think of a reason for not sharing this?

Neither could I.

What polled Americans thought the ideal and estimated wealth distribution in America is.  Top line shows the actual distribution of wealth.