New book explores ... rise of the young, liberal "sell-out" and why the phenomenon hurts America

[marmar]

from the American Prospect:

The Freedom to I-Bank

Daniel Brook's new book explores who is to blame for the rise of the young, liberal "sell-out" and why the phenomenon hurts America

Adam Doster | July 23, 2007 | web only



The Trap: Selling Out to Stay Afloat in Winner-Take-All America by Daniel Brook (Times Books, 288 pages)

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Straight-laced business students aren't the only ones lining up at corporate career fairs on college campuses these days. Lately, lured by the enormous salaries and lucrative health benefits companies are offering, more and more left-leaning liberal arts students are flocking to the same stuffy events. What gives? Have all the millenials given up on working for social change to sell out?

According to a convincing analysis by journalist Daniel Brook, the "selling-out" cliché doesn't tell the whole story. Although once-idealistic college graduates have taken private sector gigs for decades, Brook shows in his new book, The Trap: Selling Out to Stay Afloat in Winner-Take-All America, that it has now become a financial necessity. And criticizing progressive graduates for their personal decisions misses the mark; conservative economic policies implemented over the last quarter-century have forced young people, who trend overwhelmingly to the left, to balance their principles with their bank accounts. In the end, many waste their talent and energy filling the coffers of the super-rich, an often-overlooked and troubling result of America's surging economic inequality.

Brook's polemic takes dead aim at the conservative economic consensus that has dominated U.S. politics since 1980, starting with the appropriation of a value central to American life. " Goldwater and his intellectual offspring redefined individual freedom as the power to spend more of the money you earn free from government taxation and regulation," he writes. "These policies, they insisted, would unleash the gifted and ambitious."

The laissez-faire philosophy grounded in the rhetoric of freedom, embraced by President Ronald Reagan and employed in different degrees since, has caused irreparable problems for the young and educated. By shifting the tax load away from the wealthy, openly busting unions, and eviscerating social programs aimed at the poor and middle class, the social safety net was ripped from underneath a generation coming of age after the struggles for equality 40 years prior.

Perhaps the most critical economic transformation was a drastic rise in the cost of higher education. To finance their superfluous tax cuts, Reagan and George W. Bush reduced funding to universities and shifted federal aid from need-based grants to loans. College was once a free public good, but students now graduate with an average $19,000 in debt -- almost three and a half times that of graduates just 10 years ago, according to the Center for American Progress. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_freedom_to_ibank

[laststeamtrain]

1. This looks like a good book. K&R.