Category Archives: Economics

The technological transformation of education has wide-ranging political implications. Blended learning may not eliminate the need for classroom instructors, but it will reduce the numbers required. Over time, the reduction will significantly reduce the amount of dues raised by teachers unions—and therefore the influence of one of the most liberal constituencies within the Democrat Party. It will also reduce the manpower available at election time to canvass neighborhoods, cover phone banks and drive people to the voting booth in support of left-leaning candidates.

“The Hidden Revolution in Online Learning,” Lewis M. Andrews

We talk about the economy as if it were a force of nature, without any intention or direction or purpose. Jobs are “outsourced” or moved overseas and so on. In fact, the industries most impacted by these processes are by no coincidence the same industries– steel, automobiles particularly– that were most unionized. The Reagan revolution fought unions at the root: it dismantled entire industries sending everything to places where labor is cheaper.

This had horrific effects ranging from driving down wages and productivity and quality of life in the U.S. to weakening national security to the growing deficit. That was simply the price to be paid for increasing profits; capital has no morality or ethics. You can see the same sort of dynamic in the current debate over austerity: if it has any impact on the wealth of their masters the Republican right is willing to risk everything. Power is all.

The last bastion of the unionized economy is the public sector, especially the schools, which have long been under attack by the charter movement. Here, too, if the entire sector has to be dismantled to maximize profits and destroy unions, so be it. The crude economic motivations of these folks are rarely discussed as openly as Mr. Andrews does in this piece. Here we see the outlines of how online education will serve the right’s cause.

Arguably, the process is well under way in higher education, on both ideological and more practical fronts. The right is perhaps best served by a kind of ideological naiveté which believes that the liberatory potentials of online education outweigh its political import. The dismantling of higher education is well underway, too, with about 70% of the faculty now part-time adjuncts. As Andrews hints, the industry is ripe for the picking.

As income and wealth become ever more concentrated in America, the nation’s billionaire political investors will invest even more.

A record $6 billion was spent on the 2012 campaign, and outside groups poured $1.3 billion into political races, according to data from the Federal Election Commission and the Center for Responsive Politics.

That’s why Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission has to be reversed – either by a Supreme Court that becomes aware of the poison it’s unleashed into our democracy, or by constitutional amendment.

It’s also why we need full disclosure of who contributes what to whom.

And public financing that matches public money to contributions from small donors.

Most fundamentally, it’s why America’s widening inequality must be reversed.

“Why Billionaire Political Investors Will Keep Pouring Money Into Politics — Until They’re Stopped,” Robert Reich

Last night, with the help of more of these billionaires (in this case, the Koch brothers) Michigan’s legislature passed a right to work law, almost in full secrecy, and the governor signed it within hours, as if there was some danger that the ink would fade before he got his pen on it. The sneakiness is the point; these folks are afraid of their own constituencies. As always with the right, if the problem is democracy, dump the democratic process.

Or, perhaps, they are afraid of people more powerful than their citizens: those billionaires again. The right has been working on this for decades now, starting with the election of Reagan and the destruction of PATCO. The billionaires seed the state legislatures with right-wing legislation, written through ALEC, and they push astroturf Tea Party candidates to make sure they have the votes to get their laws passed. It’s a nearly ideal system.

We managed to stop one of them from becoming president, but that single presidential election, and even the gains in the Senate, or even in the Michigan legislature, can’t overcome the billionaires’ political machine, which rolls on, seemingly unaffected. As Riech says, they won’t stop until something makes them stop. He puts his faith in the Supreme Court, or a constitutional amendment. I think the only real hope lies in well-organized people.