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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   30266 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024

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What do you think will happen with regards to the department of education in the US depending on the results of the election?

For my part it seems like the left would just keep watering it down, more of the same etc. There doesn't seem to be any acknowledgment of issues over there.

I’m also not optimistic that the right will do much either though, republicans have tended to be very Ham fisted in the past with this sort of reform.

Anyone have interesting or different perspectives here?

Can someone steelman the value of the Department of Education?

What if we literally just removed it? I'm a little confused why the federal government is involved at all. And, if they are involved, then surely they deserve to be disbanded for the horrible failures in places like Chicago and Baltimore.

I don't know the answer to your question, but I did visit their website and I noticed that one of their menu options is labeled "Birth to Grade 12 Education", which strikes me as some creepy NWO-style language ("the education of a diverse global citizen begins at birth").

They use the same rhetoric where they want to educate homogenous nationalistic citizens, if that makes you feel better.

...

I actually cannot. Most of the functions it could serve are best handled at the state level anyway.

The university 'systems' were functioning well for decades before DoE was even created.

There don't seem to be any collective action problems or market failures that it exists to solve.

Maybe it could be the department in charge of gathering and publishing various metrics on a national level, but that could be spun off to some other agency. Likewise I'd say it could be in charge of testing student aptitude, but the SAT existed for 50 years before DoE was created.

I'm at a loss. I despise agencies like the ATF and the FDA more than the DoE, but I can manage to justify the existence of those on some tangible grounds.

What if we literally just removed it?

Presumably there would be much wailing and gnashing of teeth at the sudden loss of ~billions of dollars in grants, student loans, and subsidies handed out by the Department of Education to schools and individuals. Having said that, if the Department were phased out gradually and/or its money spigots moved into other arms of the federal government, I don’t think anyone would notice much difference. As it is, control over K-12 education is almost entirely at the state and local level in the US.

For what it’s worth, Canada has never had a federal Department of Education, but seems to have done just fine given its heritage and demographics.

I really don’t think I can defend the DoEd as a cost-effective educator. I do think it has value as a floor on provided education.

Most of its expenditures date back to 1965 Great Society programs. However, they’ve been consistently refreshed and revisited by both parties, because no one wants to turn off the firehose assume the burden themselves. Poor states don’t have a better plan waiting; slashing their only source of funding makes their options strictly worse. That may or may not be worth the tiny percentage of federal budget you’d save.

I know you're trying to steelman (and I've upvoted accordingly) but the floor ain't working. Places like Chicago and Baltimore are graduating huge numbers of illiterate and innumerate kids. I wouldn't be surprised if black reading levels are actually worse today in Chicago than in 1950s Alabama.

And of course Chicago spends like 24k per year per student, among the most of any city.

Unfortunately, educating students isn't as simple as spending money. In fact, there's little correlation between money spent and results. Cutting budgets probably wouldn't effect student outcomes at all. Certainly, raising budgets hasn't increased standards.

It’s an interesting question. This suggests a 6.2% illiteracy rate in Alabama in 1950. Even assuming that was completely segregated, which was certainly not true, that would get us 132 out of 979 thousand, or 13.5%.

Meanwhile, searching Chicago gets breathless results about 25% “functional” illiteracy…and 20% for the whole state! That’s ridiculous unless the standard of illiteracy in 1950 was much lower. But exceeding Alabama’s 6% or even 13% seems completely plausible.

As for the floor—it’s not actually the cities I was thinking of. It’s the small rural districts across the South and Midwest. I think taking the federal funding from, say, Mississippi shutters a lot of schools. I’m not sure if the budgets back this up, though. If cutting all of the DoEd only cuts marginal state budgets by 10 or 20%, it might be worth it.

A major challenge for comparing literacy (or illiteracy) rates across time or different countries is that the measurements are very different. In US, "functionally illiterate" means you can cipher and sound it out, but if it's a sufficiently complex sentence you can't understand it. (For example, some instructions on tax forms.) In developing countries, "illiterate" means you cannot cipher the alphabet (or kanji, as the case may be).

A while back, a student in my Liberal Arts Math class did a deep dive comparing the literacy statistics for US vs. Bangladesh, because some statistics she found suggested that US was doing worse. Turned out that the US stats were for "functional illiteracy" while the study in Bangladesh asked its participants to sound out a few written words.

Not the same thing.

The way it is explained in the UK context is that "functional literacy" is the ability to read a story in a "quality" newspaper like The Times or The Guardian and understand it well enough to answer questions about what happened. That is a much higher standard than just being able to read.

Back in the day, literacy was assessed by self-report. The census taker would ask you "Can you read?" and write down the answer.

It’s an interesting question. This suggests a 6.2% illiteracy rate in Alabama in 1950. Even assuming that was completely segregated, which was certainly not true, that would get us 132 out of 979 thousand, or 13.5%.

Meanwhile, searching Chicago gets breathless results about 25% “functional” illiteracy…and 20% for the whole state! That’s ridiculous unless the standard of illiteracy in 1950 was much lower. But exceeding Alabama’s 6% or even 13% seems completely plausible.

It's entirely possible that Chicago is just uniquely bad, as well.

Poor states don’t have a better plan waiting

Do we still have any of those? Mississippi looks like it's still way down at the bottom of the list of US states, but the bottom of the US list is now at like $53K GDP per capita, which even if we use PPP for the nation as a whole still puts them ahead of such hellholes as Belgium, Canada, France, the UK, South Korea, Japan...

Edit: perhaps GDP per child is the right metric to use here? Mississippi is probably behind a few of the countries I just listed on that score, though I can't quickly find numbers and I still doubt the distinction would be large enough to matter.

You know, I’m really not sure. Mississippi isn’t exactly the poster child for income inequality, so it’s not like the per capita numbers are all skewed by one city.

Elsewhere I was seeing some evidence that title I funds were less than 10% of Mississippi’s education funding. If so, maybe all our states really can afford to take up more slack.

On the other hand, there’s got to be some sort of logistic curve. At some point you have to close sites and drop some people from the system entirely. If federal funding covers that cliff, I think removing it would be pretty serious.

As with other deep southern states, geographic income variation is not the right way to measure economic inequality/inequality of opportunity- the racial income gap is.

Even if you have within-state income inequality, that can be solved at the state level. You need whole states who can't pay for their kids before you need a solution from a federal ...

Oh my. I was going to write "Dep. Ed." because "DoE" is ambiguous with Energy, but I decided to look it up and apparently the official abbreviation, at www.ed.gov, is in fact ED? "Son, I'm afraid you've got ED. I'm prescribing the Tenth Amendment, but be sure to call us immediately if you get a school board election lasting more than four hours!"

If federal funding covers that cliff, I think removing it would be pretty serious.

In theory, you could just make up for it with the extra state taxes that everyone can afford once the taxes which paid for the federal funding are reduced. In the short term, it could be a hell of a transition in the meantime. In the long term, I suspect the question of budget changes stemming from federal debt problems will dwarf budget changes stemming from how much interstate redistribution we do for schools.

I don't think anyone would conflate the Department of Education with Erectile Dysfunction as you imply.

One is an irritating and frustrating affliction most men would love to eradicate for good. The other is erectile dysfunction.

ED—especially when primed by a discussion on education-related administration, bureaucracy, and government transfers—more reminds me of those with "Doctorates" in Education (although Eating Disorder gets a nod). It's like Stolen Valor: They're trying to co-opt the prestige of PhDs, especially STEM PhDs, to lend themselves some notion of being sophisticated Experts on the right side of Science. This has not gone un-Noticed even among the general normie population, hence the "Excuse me! It's 'Doctor'!" versus "Call me Bob" meme.

I don't think anyone would conflate the Department of Education with Erectile Dysfunction as you imply.

One is an irritating and frustrating affliction most men would love to eradicate for good. The other is erectile dysfunction.

Just an aside, but is there a name or term for this particular variety of joke?

I’d call it a switcheroo joke, a species of paraprosdokian phrase. There may be a more precise technical term, but even Bing’s GPT-4 believes it to be the latter, citing a stand-up comedy site.

EDIT: Found it. It’s a bait-and-switch joke. Cognitohazard: here’s a list of them on TVTropes: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BaitAndSwitchComparison

It’s a jobs program, like much of the federal government, and without it ISD’s might do things like get their spending under control or teach effectively, which you can’t have.

There's a pretty straightforward steelman for a Department of Education:

  • There are significant economies of scale, many of which are hard to exploit at the county or even state level. Curriculum, IT, large bulk purchasing orders, software development, so on. There are dangers to overoptimizing here -- putting all your eggs in one development basket means a lot of vulnerability where errors pop up -- but it's not unreasonable.
  • There are likely to be mismatches between jurisdictions with higher tax bases and those with large numbers of people who are seeking education. While I'd rather fix the parts of the Richmond Fed philosophy that has made the disparity as large as it's gotten, we demonstrably aren't doing that, so having some way to keep primary education funding from going bonkers or depending on a million local levies has both practical and political benefits.
  • If you're doing federal funding of higher education, you want some level of oversight to prevent it from getting used for absolute garbage, either in the sense of schools that teach nothing, or in the sense of degrees that have no value when learned.

The trouble is that's not really what our DoEd does.

What does the DoEd do in practice?

Attach strings to accepting federal student loans.

By dollar, the DoEd's main job (185b in 2024) is offering scholarships, grants, loan guarantees, and other higher education funding. It directly measures students. Measurements of school and program value overwhelmingly come through college accreditation, which is kinda a clusterfuck: the DoEd establishes reporting requirements and rules for accrediting bodies to follow, but those accrediting organizations themselves are technically 'private' organizations and have only begun acting against the worst-performing colleges in very recent years, and the threshold is both staggeringly low and readily gamed.

Charitably, these groups focus on process; less charitably, they're a deniable way to mandate a variety of rules that are politically costly or legally impermissible otherwise. Either way, they're not doing the job, and the DoEd isn't even the ones not doing it, just telling people to do other stuff instead.

((Colleges do not technically need accreditation to operate, but a college without accreditation is unable to receive most federal or federally-guaranteed funds and has very wide restrictions on its ability to transfer credit hours.))

For primary education, the DoEd has significant expenditures and grants (40b in 2024), but this is largely focused on perceived deserts, not on local funding availability. In some rare cases these overlap -- the Office of Indian Education has a bad reputation for other reasons than having difficulty finding poor kids -- but it's at least part of the reason that all the stories about racial education spending has a big asterisk about 'before public funding', and, more critically those schools still suck even as they often vastly outspend far better schools.

For curriculum, it's mostly just a mess. The DoEd sets up grants for individual assessments and projects, but it's neither a major focus nor really done at larger scale, for better or worse (eg, CommonCore is technically a National Governor's Association baby).

I'm not sure I can steelman it but my sister is a fairly high-level employee there (GS 13 or 14--I should probably know). She works specifically with the adult education department (which is never mentioned nor considered when people complain about DoE, IMO) and doesn't have a ton to say about K-12. Everything that follows is my understanding of what she's told me, not heavily researched data.

She points out that most of what the DoE does, I think she said 1/3-1/2 of the budget(?) is managing FAFSA. Most of the K-12 stuff is state level with recommendations from DoE with few hard requirements. Another major part of what they do is fund research programs that either focus on specific groups and methodologies, or collect data for analysis. She's pretty adamant that what people think they hate about the DoE is not really what the DoE does. She also claims that were the DoE disbanded, half of the people would go to the Dept. of Labor (where DoE originated from) and others would go to places like Dept. of Health and Human Services. That removing the DoE wouldn't really do anything except push bureaucrats around.

I mused out loud that maybe it wouldn't be the end of the world if it were disbanded and it nearly destroyed our relationship. She complains bitterly about being passed over for promotions and the ineptitude of her co-workers. She seems bitter and resentful, so as her brother I wonder if there isn't a better job out there for her to be doing. Her position is that it's an easy job she almost literally phones in (she's on the phone constantly with researchers and other DoE people) and it allows her to donate half her money to charities (not much of an exaggeration) and time for volunteering. She's deeply motivated to help the less-fortunate, but also seems like the exact type of bureaucratic cat lady people are complaining about.

To me, it seems to me that Dept's of Ed belong to state level bureaucracies. It makes sense to keep it federated and the states in light competition with each other. However, I also see some value in the FAFSA. The government providing some funds and low interest loans to students who may want to go to universities anywhere in the US seems fine to me. It's at least using taxes to put some money back into some peoples' hands. But that's fairly weak support as I'm not certain university degrees aren't overvalued in the first place nor can I attest to any fraud waste or abuse inherent in the system. (There are DoE programs for jobs programs and The adult education angle is interesting to me because we really do have a problem with under-educated adults in the US, either those who failed out of crummy schools, the chronically unmotivated or those who arrived here without the ability to read or speak English, etc. But I'm still not sure why this shouldn't be a state or even municipal level organization.)

It's a strange superposition: I'm not inclined to save it but I also doubt that it's the pernicious institution others are convinced of. It definitely looks like a make-work program when I hear about the morons my sister has to deal with on the daily, but it also doesn't seem like it's nearly as powerful as the people who hate it claim. I'm mostly indifferent and probably bend a little toward keeping it for my own peace of mind and QoL.

She also claims that were the DoE disbanded, half of the people would go to the Dept. of Labor (where DoE originated from) and others would go to places like Dept. of Health and Human Services. That removing the DoE wouldn't really do anything except push bureaucrats around.

I don't think is the argument she thinks it is. All that does is paint a target on two more departments that should probably be axed as well. The point is not to push bureaucrats around, it's to have fewer bureaucrats. As Milei has put it, afuera!

She's deeply motivated to help the less-fortunate, but also seems like the exact type of bureaucratic cat lady people are complaining about.

Yes, exactly this. This kind of bureaucrat should not be paid by the taxes of productive people. If they were actually providing value, they would be remunerated in private enterprise by people who need to produce products or services in exchange for revenue, and their remuneration would be constrained by the revenue they could generate.

Two of my in-laws are a pair of public school teachers, and I think the same thing about them. If they were truly valuable, they would be working in private schools where the school itself must generate revenue by performing valuable functions, not simply awarded money by the state which is extracted from captive taxpayers. Thus, they are not valuable, and are instead parasitic.

It's not a very nice way to think about your relatives, but it's the inescapable conclusion I come to.

It's at least using taxes to put some money back into some peoples' hands.

The people, in this case, being the administrators of the institutions that end up receiving these funds. I say administrators, because that is what has seen the growth in employment in the last two decades.

If they were truly valuable, they would be working in private schools where the school itself must generate revenue by performing valuable functions, not simply awarded money by the state which is extracted from captive taxpayers. Thus, they are not valuable, and are instead parasitic.

This is highly confounded by the fact that public spending has greatly crowded out the private school market. If your option is a public school which costs (after taxes and fees) nothing vs. a private school of about the same quality and costs thousands of dollars a semester, it would be irrational to take the latter option. If public schools didn't exist at all, there would undoubtedly be more private schools, needing to hire more teachers.

Yes, the distorting effect of government is one of its worst features.

Yes, but those private school teachers would be (and are) more liable for results, as a teacher failing to teach would result in parents pulling their kids. Same thing with administrators, as they’re strictly a cost center.

That is in stark contrast to what we have now, where they’re functionally impossible to fire consistently for anything less than literally fucking the students.

One reason why it's best to fire en masse and then rehire as needed.

No (wo)man, no problem.

Fortunately for the statistically average bureaucrat, we have an aversion to physically removing them as ancient societies would do (since they’d all be men).

Unfortunately for the average bureaucrat, they’ll be financially ruined. Career prospects for former welfare recipients are not great- good thing they didn’t import a ton of workers that don’t even make a minimum wage too slim to support a decent lifestyle through a cost disease they pushed for… oh wait, that’s exactly what they did.

The Progressive party machine is, quite literally, their only lifeline. And they know it only exists so long as they continue tricking young women into thinking they’ll get a permanent paycheque out of [young] men if they keep voting for it in a pyramid scheme even larger than Social Security.

It’s a faction of Amway ladies.

And they know it only exists so long as they continue tricking young women into thinking they’ll get a permanent paycheque out of [young] men if they keep voting for it in a pyramid scheme even larger than Social Security.

What trick? The bureaucracy is only expanding.

I don't hate the federal government as much as most people here do, and I think we could live without the DoE. To the degree they do anything useful, it's what your sister described: managing funds, financial aid, etc. That doesn't require an entire department of the government.

GS 13-14 isn't particularly "high level," btw. It's relatively late career (lots of people retire as a 13 or 14), but it's not someone with significant decision-makiing or policy-shaping authority. That starts at 15 and the real high level people are those who make it to the Senior Executive Services.

She also claims that were the DoE disbanded, half of the people would go to the Dept. of Labor (where DoE originated from) and others would go to places like Dept. of Health and Human Services. That removing the DoE wouldn't really do anything except push bureaucrats around.

This seems to be a strange hypothetical where the DoE is axed but its full budget is reallocated to the most similar departments. It seems like anyone who would actually axe the DoE would either be looking to shrink the federal government's budget or would at least move the money into very different departments.

It depends on what you mean by "disbanding" the Department of Education. Its abolition has supposedly been a top priority of Republicans more or less from the day it was established, yet I think its nameplate budget and the implication that Federal bureaucrats are meddling in what is supposed to be a local concern create a perception of it that doesn't square with reality. So it largely means whether you're talking about a symbolic reorganization wherein the Department's functions are simply divided among other government agencies, or elimination of the actual programs the Department administers.

We can easily dismiss the first option, since it wouldn't result in any substantive changes other than the huge bill involved for administrative costs relating to the reorganization. At the very least, I'd need to see some sort of comprehensive study suggesting that the cost savings of such a reorganization would justify the cost of doing it. If we're talking about the second option, we need to look at what the Department actually does.

60% of the Department's budget is related to higher education assistance, split roughly evenly between direct loans and Pell Grants. I imagine we'd both agree that the student loan system in this country is fucked up and probably responsible for the massive cost increases schools have been experiencing for decades, but this isn't something we can just eliminate overnight. I've seen statistics that suggest Federal student loan and tuition assistance accounts for about 18% of revenue for 4-year public universities. At first glance, no institution can afford to lose 18% of revenue overnight. But it's actually more than this. The same statistics show that 28% of revenue comes from "sales and services". This theoretically includes everything from profits made from the bookstore to t-shirt sales, but the vast majority of this is revenue from university-associated hospitals. While this technically counts toward the entire institution's revenue, I'd imagine that hospital fees subsidize education about as much as tuition covers the costs of the hospital. In other words, these are functionally separate entities whose only real overlap is that the hospital is a teaching hospital for the medical school, so I'm keeping this separate. Doing that, Federal support now accounts for up to 25% of revenue. As I said earlier, I'm all in favor of forcing costs down, but a 25% across the board cut will likely result in the kind of emergency cost-cutting measures that are likely to throw the entire higher education system into crisis. Not to mention the fact that a lot of existing students will find themselves with debt from unfinished degrees they can't afford to complete. I'd prefer a system that makes eligibility for federal funding contingent on cost-control, but such a system would require more Federal oversight, not less. This, of course, doesn't even account for all the existing loans that the Department services.

Beyond that huge chunk of the budget, about 15% each goes to Title I grants and special education grants. Title I grants are grants to schools with low-income students to pay for remedial reading and math services. While this may give the impression that the funding goes to low-income school districts, pretty much every school qualifies for some level of targeted funding. Again, the result will be that these programs will be cut entirely or simply replaced by state or local funding, which may be difficult in some areas.

So now we're down to the 10% of the budget that accounts for miscellaneous items like compiling certain statistics, administrative costs, etc. I'm sure there's stuff here that can be cut, but eliminating an entire cabinet-level department in order to trim out a little fat seems like an inefficient way of doing things. Unless we're willing to make some serious changes to education funding and the student loan system in the United States, and talk of eliminating the Department of Education is nothing more than a buzzword that shows we're Serious About Doing Something, so long as that something doesn't actually do anything. If the goal is to eliminate student loans or remedial and special education funding entirely then that's the discussion we should be having, not some red-herring thing where eliminating a department will magically eliminate 200 billion dollars from the budget.

I'm all in favor of forcing costs down, but a 25% across the board cut will likely result in the kind of emergency cost-cutting measures that are likely to throw the entire higher education system into crisis.

As of the end of FY 2021, American college and university endowments totaled over $927 billion, up 34% from $691 billion at the start of the fiscal year. That slightly outpaced the S&P 500's growth during the same period, which was only up 26%. Even if FY 2022 and 2023 weren't quite as bumper years, the tertiary education system in the U.S. undoubtedly has at least $1 trillion in the bank, not to mention that most of the top research universities are also state institutions, with direct support from state-level taxpayers.

There's plenty of money to go around.

Endowments aren't piggy banks that schools can raid whenever they need quick cash. They consist of donor-restricted funds that have strict guidelines on how they can be spent and invested; the purpose of the underlying donations is to fund specific things in perpetuity. If a wealthy donor gives you 5 million to fund the George V. Hamilton Professor of East Asian History (who will be making 200k/year), you can't just fire the professor and spend whatever's left in the endowment. If, for whatever reason, you wanted to end the professorship, you'd have to follow whatever procedures were specified in the original donation to end the endowment, usually under the supervision of the state attorney general. Yeah, these numbers are huge. But they're meant for funding things that are, by definition, already funded.

If a wealthy donor gives you 5 million to fund the George V. Hamilton Professor of East Asian History (who will be making 200k/year), you can't just fire the professor and spend whatever's left in the endowment.

How true is this? At some point, rules against perpetual trusts must surely apply. And if they don't apply well.. they should.

It's unconscionable for huge chunks of the economy to be tied up by the wishes of long dead people.

It's time to tax the endowments.

The law is excruciatingly clear that perpetuity limits don't apply to charitable donations, or charitable trusts, for that matter. Technically speaking, the Rule Against Perpetuities only applies to contingent remainders and executory interests, and charitable donations have neither. Practically speaking, courts and legislators are reluctant to invoke perpetuity limits on charities as a matter of public policy. I'm on the board of a nonprofit, and large donations to the general fund are rare. You can get this money from annual fundraising events, membership fees, and small donations, but if someone is looking to drop serious cash they're going to want to know in advance what projects you have coming up that it can be used for. If your projects consist of ongoing expenses, like salaries or scholarships, you'll need to raise about 20 times the annual cost and invest it so the money is always available. The alternative is that people just don't donate because they don't want their money going into a black hole. Sometimes you can get out of it, but usually only in extraordinary circumstances, and even then you'll need court approval and have to notify the AG. There's a lot of fuckery surrounding charitable orgs as it is, and removing restrictions without good reason only encourages that kind of fuckery.

Dang. It's worse than I thought. Thanks for the color. Your posts are always very informative.

I wonder what percentage of wealth is controlled by dead hands at this point?

Of course, in reality, it's often worse than dead hands. It's very live hands with a radical agenda and no accountability. Imagine if Henry Ford could see what his foundation is up to today. These endowments simply must be taxed. I'm always blown away by how much wealth they control, and how it's controlled by a group of elites who have almost no checks and balances. (The whole OpenAI fiasco shined a light on non-profit boards that way).

There are random foundations all over the country with billion dollar endowments. For example, the Kellogg foundation in Battle Creek Michigan has $8.8 billion.

Some endowment donations are subject to that tight of a restriction, sure. However, there are also unrestricted donations which may be put towards general educational purposes, and donations whose restrictions are much more flexible (for example, a donation restricted to the support of a school's history department generally could likely be used for just about anything - professor salaries, administrative support, facilities maintenance, student scholarships/grants, archival and research purchases, etc.)

Of course, far more common is a restriction that the principal of an endowment can't be spent; only the profits flowing from investment of that principal, which makes endowment absolute numbers a bit deceptive. Given the speed with which endowments have been growing recently, I'm not that worried about this.

Ultimately, colleges and universities are known for being masterful in manipulating bureaucratic processes to achieve their desired results, no matter what the black letter law may say (see, e.g. the lengths administrations have gone to in order to enshrine race-based preferences in admissions). I'm confident that they'd find a way to put that money to real productive work if they had to.

This is a great steelman and I really appreciate the comprehensive reply.

This is a great example of how the federal bureaucracy uses funding to weave itself into every fiber of an education system that should be, in theory, nearly completely independent of the federal government.

The argument for getting rid of the department, I suppose, hinges on the belief that it will never be easier to expunge than it is right now. In another 20 years it will just be that much harder.

And if we take a targeted and incremental approach, it will be argued about for 4 years, something minor will happen, and then all the changes will be undone the next time there is a political shift in the wind. Instead of cleaning the barnacles from the stuffed pipe, better to remove the pipe entirely, even if it's disruptive.

But obviously this is wishcasting, and we're likely just stuck with more barnacles forever.

but this isn't something we can just eliminate overnight.

Why not? It seems rather simple to me to just declare that the offices will be closing and programs will all be ending on such-and-such date.

I've seen statistics that suggest Federal student loan and tuition assistance accounts for about 18% of revenue for 4-year public universities. At first glance, no institution can afford to lose 18% of revenue overnight.

So what? If anything, this 18% isn't big enough.

Doing that, Federal support now accounts for up to 25% of revenue. As I said earlier, I'm all in favor of forcing costs down, but a 25% across the board cut will likely result in the kind of emergency cost-cutting measures that are likely to throw the entire higher education system into crisis.

And what's so bad about that? Besides, that is, that it doesn't go far enough. The "entire higher education system" doesn't need "thrown into crisis"… it needs to be burned down — somewhere between Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries and Qin Shi Huang's burning of books and burying of scholars (including the executions).

May I ask what it is you do for a living?

May I ask what it is you do for a living?

As I've said repeatedly here on this very board, I'm a worthless welfare parasite leaching off of hardworking American taxpayers — in other words, I'm on SSI and state public assistance for disability. (My state's Division of Vocational Rehabilitation also ruled me effectively unemployable.)

I'm wondering where you were trying to go with that question; I can picture several possibilities.

this isn't something we can just eliminate overnight

Why not? It seems rather simple to me to just declare that the offices will be closing and programs will all be ending on such-and-such date.

This is a general point that I'm not aiming at you in particular @Rov_Scam but I've noticed that people (on all sides) use "can't" to mean "shouldn't". The "can't" is hiding an unspoken "because X consequences will result". Sometimes this happens because X is literally unthinkable for the speaker, or because they consider it too obvious to need saying, or because they haven't thought their response through all the way. Sometimes (from professionals) it's a manipulative rhetorical tactic.

You actually elaborate more later, saying that we can't abolish the Department of Educator overnight because it would throw higher education into crisis, and strand students with unfinished degrees. But so many people don't. They say things like, we can't halt immigration, we can't withdraw from green treaty requirements, we can't ignore calls for reparations. I would urge people to write/demand the full argument whenever they find "can't" being used for something that isn't actually physically impossible. I think it encourages more rigorous thinking and more clear lines of debate.

It's not just in political discourse either....

If the entirety of the funding of the Department of Education was instead given as a block grant to the state-level organizations things would get marginally better, if only for the fact that dumb progressive fads thought up by PhDs who never taught in a classroom can't be imposed from the top-down anymore.

That this approach would be true for every policy-creating federal organization is the great secret of politics.

The dumb progressive fads aren't coming from the federal agencies, they're coming from the education schools.

If it came with a total nuke of common core, most americans would consider the swap of the guard a success.

What is so bad about common core? From what I've seen, it's a boring inoffensive educational standard.

From my experience with it, Common Core is the attempt to make people do "mental math". Instead of multiplying 12 x 13, you instead multiply (10 x 13) + (2 x 13).

The problems with it are:

  1. The teachers don't really get it (I was tutoring a child who got a question wrong because they did (3 x 12) + (10 x 12) instead of the above. I've seen numerous examples where the answer key has it broken down differently than I would've, and the teacher has dogmatically marked it wrong even with the right answer.
  2. Parents (many of whom hated math) now feel that they can't help their children with their homework.
  3. It doesn't actually make people better at mental math (my experience was that it was just more steps for the average kid, not something that they applied outside the classroom).

I'd describe it as similar to communism - in a world where everyone behaves well and knows what they're doing, it's superior. In reality, you get a mess.

It can't be the only thing wrong with Common Core. No one would get riled up that much if the only problem was constrained to a single subject and to a specific operation. Also, how else would you multiply two double-digit numbers if not by breaking one down?

I mean, it's obvious to you that this is the exact same thing as "old school" multiplication - I don't think it's obvious to the average person (including teachers!)

A lot of people really just don't "get" math. Back in high school, I remember noticing at one point that 9 x 7 was one less than 8 x 8, 8 x 6 was one less than 7 x 7, etc. I remember going through a bunch of examples trying to figure out why this was - and ended up discovering the x^2 - 1 = (x + 1)(x - 1) equality that had been taught to me like 3 years prior. It hadn't even occurred to me that the equality represented something real - they were just symbols to manipulate. And I was considered to be really good at math!

So for someone who half-remembers their old math lessons, the new stuff just looks insane.

I'm also not stating this is all that's wrong with it - this just happens to be what I'm familiar with

The amount of energy being expended over Trump's recent visit to a McDonald's is kind of interesting to me. It seems to have generated an extraordinary amount of media and online attention. On the supporter side, they are hailing it as a brilliant and deeply meaningful activity, simultaneously trolling Harris and celebrating the dignity of unskilled labor, and generating deeply Americana visuals. On the detractor side, they decry it an illogical and bizarre stunt, that it was fake because the store was not actually open, and compared it to Dukakis in the tank. Some have even doxxed the owner who wrote to the state to complain about labor regulations.

Meanwhile, McDonald's corporate HQ sent what I think is a very good memo to franchisees explaining the value of their goal of political inclusivity and how that manifests as allowing visits from anyone who asks and being proud of being important to American culture.

I think this is interesting because symbolically, it's something that cleaves much more at the red tribe/blue tribe dichotomy than the Democrat/Republican one. I think a lot of blue-tribers disdain McDonalds and consider it trashy, but can't really say so too loudly because the poorer members of their political coalition enjoy it. Trump has been mocked in the past for having the poor taste of actually liking McDonald's food as well as catering a White House dinner with it, widely seen as trashy and disrespectful. The imagery of Trump looking for all the world like a store manager from 3 decades ago I think also triggered some nostalgia - or perhaps post-traumatic stress - about the current state of customer service.

I don't have too much more to say and offer no predictions. It just seemed interesting as one of those things that seemed to trigger something unexpected in people for reasons that go way beyond the substance of the actual event, and figuring out what's resonating with people in either a positive or negative way, and possibly why, seems like a good path towards predicting future trends.

that it was fake

Duh, he's a politician on the campaign trail. There's something "It's Okay To Be White" about this, where most of the propaganda value of the stunt is in the reaction. A lot has been said about Trump's decline, and I agree, he's not the same man he was in 2016, but either he, or someone running his campaign, still seems to have the touch.

He seems kind of on fire lately TBH -- he may not be quite as sharp as 2016, but he's gotten back into the 'generate free advertising by trolling the MSM' groove finally.

I fully expect to be well entertained for the next couple of weeks.

There's something "It's Okay To Be White" about this, where most of the propaganda value of the stunt is in the reaction.

I think it speaks to the "red tribe/blue tribe dichotomy" described by the OP and the notion of "Protestant work ethic" brought up by others downthread.

There is a real sense that the blue side seems to view hard work (and service/menial service work in particular) as beneath them. Work is something to be suffered through when neccesary and avioded if possible. Whatever you're work is, it's not something your supposed to be smiling about or celebrating. One might almost be forgiven for thinking that "Flipping Burgers" was some sort of PMC euphemism for a fate worse than death given the spit that often accompanies those words. (as an aside The Menu was a pretty good movie).

As with "It's Okay To Be White" what i think is happening here is that the media and the Democrats are being baited into expressing "true feelings" that they would otherwise conceal. ie "that it's not ok to be white" or in this case that "working and serving is for suckers" which naturally doesn't play well amongst people who actually work.

I don’t know if it’s because I’m getting older or if basic reasoning is actually at an all time low, but the “debunking” that the store preselected customers and that it was just for a photo op is absurd. (Top post on Reddit for the week is approximately that). Like yeah, of course they didn’t allow a presidential candidate with 3x attempts on his life to serve anyone driving by. Do they have any idea how risky it would be to do that, even if you scanned all the cars beforehand? Of course it was just for photos — do they think he was genuinely employed there? None of these debunk or detect an iota of the spectacle, but that they are shilled so hard signals that there really are low IQ Americans who are persuaded by this. The Reddit political propaganda in recent weeks has also been lots of “look at this photo taken at an inopportune moment that makes him look bad”, like the Elon Musk jumping photo. Yeah, if 20 photographers take 500 photos each, some are destined to make the subject look bad.

widely seen as trashy and disrespectful

I disagree. It was widely seen as awesome, including by those in attendance. It was narrowly seen as trashy by snotty rich progressives who don’t want to admit they enjoy the occasional fast food.

While Trump is making a correct move by being among his voters and not hiding in an ivory tower McDonalds isn't exactly a great brand to be associated with. Why associate yourself with unhealthy, bland consumerist food? Mcdonalds should represent the opposite of what the right stands for. It is the antithesis of tradition, beauty, culture, small business and family.

Why associate yourself with unhealthy, bland consumerist food? Mcdonalds should represent the opposite of what the right stands for. It is the antithesis of tradition, beauty, culture, small business and family.

I really can't get myself into the headspace of someone who doesn't understand what this stunt is about.

McDonnald's is low-status precisely for the reasons you point out, but people eat there because it's affordable, and they work there because they'll hire anyone right off the street. He's showing he's on the side of people dismissed as "low-status".

It's not affordable anymore though, so he's a bit late.

How are they not bankrupt? It was their only redeeming quality.

Couple of things-

  1. McDonald’s is not exactly cheap, but it is slightly cheaper than the competition. Some people actually want and like greasy fast food and McDonalds is on the affordable end.

  2. Poor people really like McDonald’s treats for whatever reason. Think frappes and the like. I think it has to do with the amount of sugar in it.

  3. McDonald’s offers a lot of deals and coupons and the like. I have no interest in minmaxing for cheap Mickey d’s, but someone who wants to can easily do so rather effectively.

  4. McDonald’s stores are owned by franchisees, and corporate makes their money by extracting rent from franchisees with only a limited effect from sales.

It can still be, it's just that they've tiered their offering to extract more money at the top of the market. They probably realized there's a lot of people eating at McDonald's who don't really go because it's cheap, and would be willing to pay over 10$ for a trio, so they added items for that market, but you can still eat what I'd call a full meal for around 5 US dollars.

It is, you just have to use the app.

If you ever find a mcdonalds app on my phone I'm already dead and robbed. :)

Late news. They pivoted back.

$6 now gets you a McDouble, small fries, 4 piece nuggets, and a small coke. Counting app rewards all-in cost is closer to $5. It's real cheap.

But they do screw people who order a la carte items now.

Senators Warren, Wyden, and Casey are on it and made a press release today:

https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/warren-casey-wyden-slam-mcdonalds-for-squeezing-customers-with-excessive-price-increases

Mcdonalds should represent the opposite of what the right stands for. It is the antithesis of tradition, beauty, culture, small business and family.

On the contrary, McDonald’s represents the true culture of the American proletariat. You may never have worked at McDonald’s, but you know someone who worked at McDonald’s. The elitist liberal media says that McDonald’s is unhealthy slop, but deep down, you know the truth. every blue-collar worker in America has done great things fueled by a quick stop at McDonald’s.

Interesting and... kind of true? I think it was Kerouac who presented roadside hamburger stands as the embodiment of the Great American Spirit (maybe On the Road, but could have been a more obscure book) and Steinbeck definitely raved about mobile homes in Travels with Charley. (in which he drives around in a camper-truck and does DIY veterinary interventions on his poodle in 60s USA)

The elitist liberal media says that McDonald’s is unhealthy slop, but deep down, you know the truth.

Yup. Very few people are deluding themselves that a McDonalds burger is healthy, but it's honest. Yeah, ground beef isn't the healthiest meat, white bread buns aren't the most nutritious either, but from remembering what I used to think when I was a liberal 15 years ago, it's as if McDonalds had an Underpants Gnome-like scheme that increased their profits from sneaking in toxic sludge inside their food and customer base.

Now, Portillo's Chocolate Cake Shake, that is one thing that on my last trip to the US that I couldn't allow myself to eat just from looking at the caloric intake it represented. That actually seemed like it was designed to bring ruination to a body.

While i do appreciate that mcdonalds uses real beef patties in their staple burgers, they also peddle a lot of weird stuff that kindof pretends to be something else. If you look at their website that describes a hamburger you may notice that the line where they say they dont use fillers/preservatives etc has an asterisk next to it. The asterisk is because this claim only applies to their nationally available permanent hamburger menu items. Chicken nuggets for instance do not adhere to a strict chicken and breading philosophy.

I agree that the hippyish mindset of mcdonalds being made of dead pig anuses is a fantasy, but i dont think the mc rib is what i would consider "honest" food. Their french fries contain Hydrolyzed Wheat, so a usually gluten free food is not gluten free at mcdonalds.

I guess my point is that while i dont hate mcdonalds i would be wary of lionizing them with the word "honest"

Trump is associating himself with working at McDonald’s, not with it as a cornerstone of the American diet. One in eight Americans have worked at McDonald’s- statistically, Trump is showing that he’s not too good for an incredibly common American experience.

Now obviously it’s a campaign stunt. But it’s a clever campaign stunt that plays into his Everyman image.

Note that Trump is already heavily associated with having McDonald's as a cornerstone of the American diet.

But it’s a clever campaign stunt that plays into his Everyman image.

Has Trump ever had an "Everyman" image? As far as I can recall, Trump has always represented a billionaire business tycoon. Maybe he acts the same way an average person would act if they won the lottery (gold plated toilets, supermodel wives, etc.) but I don't think he was ever a true "Everyman" in the same way Homer Simpson is.

Trump has always had a bit of a plebian sense of wealth. The expression a decade ago was that Trump lived like how poor people thought the rich lived, as opposed to how the rich actually lived. In that sense, he's the 'what the Everyman would see himself doing if he had Trump's wealth.'

Michèle Lamont, in The Dignity of Working Men, also found resentment of professionals — but not of the rich. “[I] can’t knock anyone for succeeding,” a laborer told her. “There’s a lot of people out there who are wealthy and I’m sure they worked darned hard for every cent they have,” chimed in a receiving clerk. Why the difference? For one thing, most blue-collar workers have little direct contact with the rich outside of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. But professionals order them around every day. The dream is not to become upper-middle-class, with its different food, family, and friendship patterns; the dream is to live in your own class milieu, where you feel comfortable — just with more money. “The main thing is to be independent and give your own orders and not have to take them from anybody else,” a machine operator told Lamont. Owning one’s own business — that’s the goal. That’s another part of Trump’s appeal.

Hillary Clinton, by contrast, epitomizes the dorky arrogance and smugness of the professional elite. The dorkiness: the pantsuits. The arrogance: the email server. The smugness: the basket of deplorables. Worse, her mere presence rubs it in that even women from her class can treat working-class men with disrespect. Look at how she condescends to Trump as unfit to hold the office of the presidency and dismisses his supporters as racist, sexist, homophobic, or xenophobic.

There is a lot to this. Upvoted and AAQC'd, but I wanted to put one of the resident motteizean blue collar workers on record as saying- I see this attitude every day. You want to know why working class voters of all races, especially white ones, are turning against the DNC? Because their politicians come off as our hired bosses- managers, not owner-men, and especially as the HR people and managers of whatever the fuck who get left to deliver bad news when the actual bosses don't want to-, and the GOP pols come off as people who worked to build their own businesses.

Of course this is a false impression, and of course I have my own disagreements with democrat policies. But politics is vibes based.

Why is it a false impression though?

People who build their own business are more likely to be Republican than the PMC. It's not the whole story, obviously, but nothing is.

Nothing will turn a person Republican faster than owning their own business and seeing the heaping pile of shit that the government throws at you every chance they get.

It's a false impression because there are very few politicians of either description. Democrats running for office have mostly been in government service since they finished college and republicans running for office may have had careers beforehand, but usually as like, investment bankers and the like- few started businesses.

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The arrogance: the email server.

For a second I forgot about the specific Hillary context and reacted to this with, "What's wrong with Exchange admins!?"

The following is a transcript of a conversation I had with a friend which I think is relevant. I have recreated it as closely as possible.

clo: Work is shit. Humans can become accustomed to completely terrible conditions. Thrive in them, even. So why do people hate work? Why are there so many grifters, liars, cheats, when honest work seems, genuinely, easier? Because work is shit. People would rather debase themselves on Onlyfans or spend 18 hours editing some shitty yt video than work.

hv: arguably, it is working for a living. there's a streamer a mate watches, mainly does Resident Evil successful. chatter asks what it's like and how to get started themselves. his answer: "it's a job". he wakes up, has breakfast, maybe exercises, then plays Resident Evil for 12 hours, takes holidays, gets breaks, he's not in a cubicle, but yeah. that's work. I'd put money on guessing that most grifts are pretty fuckin' hard work too. people like to gloss over exactly how much effort and work things take because, yeah, it's ugly.

clo: Yeah but have you thought about why they did that. Over working. That's the question

hv: they are working, though

clo: not my question

hv: or are you drawing a line between working for themselves or someone else?

clo: Why did the guy choose to play RE for money, over say, getting a job? I refuse to believe there aren't jobs that pay more, especially now? Why would someone work for Rooster Teeth over like, I don't know, taking a minimum hours job in db admin.

hv: well in all these comparisons it sems to boil down to "working for yourself" or "working for someone else, who pays you"

clo: I've worked all through coof. I've had (counting) six jobs, and the whole thing reminds me, depressingly, of the replacement debate. People aren't honest because the honest answer is bad. They can say it's money or qualifications, and those are definitely factors. But I think it comes down to this: people hate work because modern workplaces are fucking dogshit for self respect. It's not the pay, it's not even the working conditions, it's the fact that you have to swallow your balls and watch as shit rolls over you from on top. that's literally it

hv: we agree on this, shit rolls downhill. why would anyone want to start climbing?

clo: I think this is all. And I wish it could be solved. Certain people do climb in this system and that's also why, you built a system that self selects for cowards and psychopaths. People say it's money, I don't think so. I've witnessed people turn down money to stay low. I've personally worked at two companies that were known for underpaying employees but treated their employees like human beings. They never had trouble retaining. In fact, people left and then came back. This is why someone would rather try and make pennies streaming Fortnite, than even take a mcjob for a couple months, because you'd have to swallow your pride for a half fucking second and just bend over and take it. You will be reminded of it every second of every day. And if you forget, the job won't let you forget. It's like being a prison bitch. Everyone knows. You know.

hv: yeeeeeah I think this is what got galvanized working at the last two places

clo: So that's why people are checking out. The depressing fucking thing is, working from home changed that. It gave people back a modicum of self respect

hv: AND THEY IMMEDIATELY TRIED TO TAKE IT AWAY LMFAO, YES

clo: it resulted in a flood of people quitting. In some case they don't come back even for 50% more salary, I've seen the numbers. So yeah, kids want to grow up to be a streamer. Being a streamer is pretty much objectively shit unless you are the 0.01%

hv: "content creator"

clo: You have zero job security and are dependent on algorithms and how much Twitch feels like losing. But people would rather do that than be a prison bitch, because you would know you were a prison bitch. People don't respond well to being told what to do. And to have your material existence and quality of life being used as blackmail against you to make you do as you're told - which, let's face it, is exactly what work feels like even though it's not what it actually is in a lot of cases, well... In the rumored words of Churchill, badly paraphrased, you already know you're a whore. The rest of it is haggling about the price. Wallstreetbets openly advertises how horrible it is to your financial well being, but people continue to yeet their life savings into it at warp speed. Why is that? It's because if they win, they're nobody's bitch

hv: Fuck You Money

clo: Now are you capable of finding your own path to money? Or are you a bitch?

hv: this plays into why people are finding it harder to get into relationships, doesn't it

clo: A relationship is work. We know it's not work for some people. We know because we see it and they tell us how great it is (or are lying). So why are we working for it? Fuck this!

He's definitely done the 'Boss swaps jobs with a worker' schtick before with good results.

The video of this was freely available until recently, but I've been trying to search for it in Youtube and it seemed to have been memory holed until I found it through external search engines.

Edit: Clip was from Oprah's show in 2011.

When I drive cross-country, McDonalds has the most reliably clean restrooms, and they don't insist on you buying stuff first. (The one exception to that I found was in a Denver suburb, where they had a sign on the bathroom saying "For customers only". I asked a worker to let me and the kids in, and she did without any questions, and without requiring a purchase. I guess that's to discourage the local homeless.)

The food is also fine. I don't subsist on it, but an occasional chicken sandwich isn't going to kill me any faster than anything else I can get quickly on the road.

(The one exception to that I found was in a Denver suburb, where they had a sign on the bathroom saying "For customers only".

This is pretty common IME in areas where crime and homeless are legitimate concerns.

The food is also fine. I don't subsist on it, but an occasional chicken sandwich isn't going to kill me any faster than anything else I can get quickly on the road.

Yeah, people exaggerate how unhealthy typical McDonald's food is. Their cokes are the exact same ones you can get anywhere else, their fries and burgers and nuggets contain more additives than elsewhere but have roughly similar macros, it's the 'treats'- frappes and mcflurries and deserts- that kill people there, and that's mostly just from McDonald's cornering the market. And even then, a bunch of this is really more like a starbucks drink, just to lower class clientele.

None of this is health food, but McDonald's is lower class and really common, so it makes an easy scapegoat.

Yeah, people exaggerate how unhealthy typical McDonald's food is. Their cokes are the exact same ones you can get anywhere else, their fries and burgers and nuggets contain more additives than elsewhere but have roughly similar macros, it's the 'treats'- frappes and mcflurries and deserts- that kill people there, and that's mostly just from McDonald's cornering the market. And even then, a bunch of this is really more like a starbucks drink, just to lower class clientele.

It's not unhealthy in relative terms, but it's still unhealthy. Fries, sauces, treats and non-diet coke are terrible. Nuggets are okay. Burgers are okay. But no one orders just a burger. If you have small fries with buffalo sauce, a small coke and a cone with your burger, the macros are not that bad. For a dinner. But if it's medium fries with ranch, a medium coke and a regular M&M's soft serve, it's many more calories than anyone who's not a miner or a lumberjack needs.

But if it's medium fries with ranch, a medium coke and a regular M&M's soft serve

Wait, I could have been getting fries with ranch or buffalo sauce all this time? Dang, maybe I do wish people would upsell me sometimes and not just offer me the pies (which I think have the highest calorie to dollar ratio of any fast food menu item ever).

But no one orders just a burger.

I was under the impression that everyone orders the standard meal. And if you do that, you're still coming in around 1K calories; you could go twice a day if you actually wanted to and be treading water, calorically speaking. Maybe if you get the mocha/lattes you'd be pushing 1400 but their coffee (that is not actually offered in the US locations, so maybe it doesn't apply as much) is good enough there's no reason to bother.

If I had to guess I'd say McDonalds optimizes its meals around 1000 calories specifically because these days it says so right beside the thing on the menu, where other places are usually pushing 1300-1400 for their default meal, which means your other meal now has to be smaller to compensate especially if you only eat twice a day and work a sedentary job.

Maybe if you get the mocha/lattes you'd be pushing 1400 but their coffee (that is not actually offered in the US locations, so maybe it doesn't apply as much) is good enough there's no reason to bother.

What? US McDonald's definitely serves filter coffee. It's very popular and there was even a notable lawsuit over it.

US McDonald's definitely serves filter coffee.

Yes, but it's fucking awful. It's coffee-inspired water by comparison.

It's not gourmet coffee, but it's approximately diner-quality, and is fast and cheap. It's definitely superior to the coffee at many other fast food places, not to mention gas stations and truck stops.

EDIT: Is this a Euro thing about not liking drip coffee?

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Maybe the right should be against it but I can't imagine going back a decade and telling people Trump's brand is incompatible with bland consumerism.

Why associate yourself with unhealthy, bland consumerist food?

The quarter pounder is one of the top 3 fast food burgers out there (especially in its double permutation) and is ubiquitously available. Wendy's has fallen off completely, Burger King has blown for more than a decade, and you need to cede a significant fraction of a minimum wage paycheck for Five Guys or Shake Shack, if you live near one.

The app performs reasonably well and you can actually get the food you order 90% of the time, unlike a bone-in-chicken place. It's really not that bad.

Because that's America's burger. Unhealthy, bland, consumerist food that takes advantage of a weird strategy to make money on real estate and not the actual burger is America.

That's America's president. America, as it exists today, is the antithesis of tradition, beauty, culture, small business and family. It has spent the last fifty years gleefully tearing down tradition and family, and when it's not actively hostile to small business it's trying to buy them out or crush them. It defines culture as being what the majority don't like and beauty as what the majority enjoy because they are stupid.

McDonalds is one of America's most successful cultural exports next to the Internet and pre-2020s Hollywood. Your opinion on McDonalds aside, it is an American institution, built by Americans, and is wildly successful.

This was a brilliant publicity stunt by the Trump team, and the unhinged reaction from Redditors proves why.

As I mentioned last week, Republican candidates need to "hack the media" in order to get coverage. This is a great example. Trump comes across really well in this appearance and amplifying it can only help his campaign. If, instead, he gave a speech to talk about entitlement reform or some other boring shit, he would have gotten almost no coverage (and the coverage he did get would be purely negative).

Most elections really do come down to who is the more likeable person. Trump is in his element here and seems like a genuinely nice guy as he hands out bags of greasy food.

The people who are seething that this stunt is fake, on the other hand, come off as really dumb. Trump has been the victim of two assassination attempts. Do you think the Secret Service is going to let randoms through the drive through? Next, they'll tell us that pro wresting is also fake.

And finally there's also the added benefit that Kamala Harris claims to have worked at McDonald's but is probably lying about it.

Of course, most people have already made up their minds. But when the sole plank of the Harris campaign is that Trump is a monster, these humanizing events really undermine the narrative. Trump is now up to 62.5% on Polymarket, the highest since Biden left the race.

these humanizing events really undermine the narrative

Do they?

Even dictators can do a good photo op.

They don't want to let it get to the "funny pic of Gaddafi or Putin shirtless on a horse" stage. They want it to stay at the "ominous devil figure" stage. The former implies some fatalism.

They've never made their peace with the fact that their country can elect someone like Trump and they don't want anyone else to either. Ironically, it's the "where my country gone?" meme they mocked for so long.

Even dictators can do a good photo op.

No, they can't. Their attempts to be cool are all cringe and gay.

Trump hit a real nerve here. People liked what they saw. The common touch is not easy to fake. Witness the multiple attempts by Harris proxies to do the same and fail.

Attack Trump for his policies all you want, but he can speak to the people in a way that few politicians can. He's not a phony.

The status dynamics are interesting. Having worked at McDonald's sometime in the past clearly isn't something that Democrats feel there should be shame over--regardless of the veracity of Kamala's work history, it's still something she thinks gives a boost to her resume. But the response is nevertheless unhinged.

Is it some kind of stolen valor? I'm imagining Trump stocking shelves at CostCo in a photo-op, and I doubt he'd even get any media attention. Or even doing the same exact thing at Burger King: despite being identical slop, the response wouldn't be nearly so vituperative.

It has to do with what McDonald's represents. Kamala worked at McDonald's, but it was something horrific she was forced to do, serving the lowest of the low so she could better herself. If her life is ever dramatized by Netflix, her last day there will depict her departure as she gives a soliloquy about the depravities of mass consumerist slop, corporate wage slavery, car-centric culture, and factory farming. Trump, by contrast, is not only going there voluntarily, but going there as if there were nothing wrong or shameful about going there. Anyone with his privileges doing something so declasse is breaking a code.

There's definitely a stolen valor angle. "Kamala had actually worked there while Trump never had a day of retail work in his life". Do you think upper PMC democrats are the ones posting on Reddit about the entire thing being a sham?

McDonalds is the most well-known public-facing minimum wage job, but I don't doubt there'd be stolen valor vitriol over CostCo too.

To me it looks like there's a huge disconnect between themotte's view of a typical democrat voter and reality. Just off the top of my head I'd assume there are more low socioeconomic class "that's why I shit on company time" democrat voters in the country than upper class "mcdonalds is too good for presidents" snobs.

There's definitely a stolen valor angle.

I'd be open to the possibility, but no one who's freaking out about it seems to be credibly approaching it from the "stolen valor" angle.

Do you think upper PMC democrats are the ones posting on Reddit about the entire thing being a sham?

I'm sorry what? Do you think /r/antiwork, or the entirety of Reddit for that matter, is in any way representative of a typical McDonald's worker?

To me it looks like there's a huge disconnect between themotte's view of a typical democrat voter and reality.

This isn't about The Motte. It's one of those things that has visceral resonance, and the more you push back against it, the more it will look like Trump had a point to begin with.

but no one who's freaking out about it seems to be credibly approaching it from the "stolen valor" angle.

No one? Not one single person on planet Earth? Well sure then.

What's your definition of "someone"?

Do you think /r/antiwork is in any way representative of a typical McDonald's worker?

Well no, I think a typical worker in service industry or any other low-paid job posts on TikTok, not Reddit. Of those service workers whose viewpoint I do see on Reddit, or for example on various discords, they're closer to /r/antiwork in their ideology than to "it's 'onest work".

This isn't about The Motte. It's one of those things that has visceral resonance, and the more you push back against it, the more it will look like Trump had a point to begin with.

Unfortunately, our visceral resonances seem to be at odds.

No one? Not one single person on planet Earth? Well sure then.

Most people on planet Earth have never heard about it. Most people who will see this will think "heh, that's kinda funny". Somewhere, out there, there might be some lonely indivuduals upset at the valor stolen from service workers, but they'll be drowned out by legions that are upset that Trump did something mildly appealing to the common folk.

Of those service workers whose viewpoint I do see on Reddit, or for example on various discords, they're closer to /r/antiwork in their ideology than to "it's 'onest work".

"Of those service workers whose viewpoint I do see on Reddit" had to pass through so many filters that it will bear no resemblance to any remotely normal person. Reddit is a propaganda platform.

Unfortunately, our visceral resonances seem to be at odds.

I know this will sound weird, but I don't know if I believe you. Kavanaugh being a rapist vs. not was a disagreement of visceral resonances, Rittenhouse being a murderer vs. an innocent kid was a disagreement of visceral resonances... but this? The only visceral feeling I get here from the progressive side is "Trump bad. This good for Trump, therefore this bad".

but they'll be drowned out by legions that are upset that Trump did something mildly appealing to the common folk.

Where are those legions who express the belief that it is unbefitting of Trump to appeal to the common folk (as opposed to saying it's wrong to falsely appeal)? I've linked mine.

"Of those service workers whose viewpoint I do see on Reddit" had to pass through so many filters that it will bear no resemblance to any remotely normal person. Reddit is a propaganda platform.

What's your platform that is not a propaganda platform?

The only visceral feeling I get here

Here on the Motte? If not, then where?

I agree with other users that it's a clever publicity stunt, in that it will work with his base and the opposing base, naturally, is irrelevant to him. It's also bad, in my personal opinion, because it's transparently dishonest to associate yourself with menial work that you do not do and have never (in my knowledge) done. If Kamala is acting like her time at McDonalds was a nightmare, she's at least being honest even if she'll alienate the voters (likely red-voting anyway) who think menial work is always ennobling.

because it's transparently dishonest to associate yourself with menial work that you do not do and have never (in my knowledge) done

Yes, but associating yourself with them is the thing you have to do if you want to manage a company filled with the people doing those things regardless of whether you see yourself as above them or not (which you'll recognize as the stereotypical Karen mindset).

That is [one of] your job[s] in that position; Kamala is refusing to do that job.

(And that's completely ignoring the "leader is himself a servant" thing being... kind of foundational to the "Protestant" part of "Protestant work ethic".)

I don’t think republicans think menial labor is per se ennobling. Instead, it is admirable to work instead of take hand me outs. That is, I don’t want people to stay working at menial jobs but if they start there and work hard in an effort to move up — kudos!

Where are those legions who express the belief that it is unbefitting of Trump to appeal to the common folk (as opposed to saying it's wrong to falsely appeal)? I've linked mine.

It's the same link. You don't really expect people to outright say "damn that Trump, why is he so appealing?" even that's what they feel, do you?

What's your platform that is not a propaganda platform

We're running short on those these days. I guess you can still post anything you want on Substack.

It's also bad, in my personal opinion, because it's transparently dishonest to associate yourself with menial work that you do not do and have never done

I'd chalk it up to getting upset at Gillette's slogan again, except:

If Kamala is acting like her time at McDonalds was a nightmare, she's at least being honest

This is completely backwards. There is no evidence she has spent a single day working in McDonalds. It's Trump who's honest here because his "lie" is just advertising, and everybody knows how it works. Kamala is the dishonest one, because people (including you) actually believe she made a factual statement about herself.

This is also how we know people upset at this aren't upset at dishonesty or stolen valor. No one who is criticizing Trump for this will turn around to criticize Harris, when it's pointed out she didn't work for McDonald's.

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There's an angle, definitely. But my visceral response is that people would be much less angry at Trump doing a CostCo photo op than a McDonald's photo op. And, by the same token, there's a reason his campaign decided to do a McDonald's photo op over a CostCo photo op. The role McDonald's plays in the American imagination is key. Or, rather, in the two decidedly different American imaginations: one where it's symbolic of all the worst of American culture, and one where it gives fast convenient yummy oily treats.

I think Reddit is populated mostly by college age children of PMC parents or by failsons who were raised in a PMC family. So while the actual PMC democrats probably aren’t, the people posting on Reddit have been raised in PMC families and have those values. They’re more obnoxious about it mostly because they don’t have the wisdom to hide their PMC power level, or perhaps don’t have to care yet.

I haven't seen 'stolen valour' as an angle except from republicans trying to psychoanalyze their opponents. While this might be somewhat more likely to be accurate than the reverse, that's still a low enough bar to clear that it doesn't tell us much. I think most of the chatter is probably just TDS.

To me it looks like there's a huge disconnect between themotte's view of a typical democrat voter and reality. Just off the top of my head I'd assume there are more low socioeconomic class "that's why I shit on company time" democrat voters in the country than upper class "mcdonalds is too good for presidents" snobs.

Dramatically. The Democrats still win the lowest two income quintiles, it's just by a lot less than it used to be.

McDonalds is the most well-known public-facing minimum wage job, but I don't doubt there'd be stolen valor vitriol over CostCo too.

Costco notoriously pays above market and doesn't hire temporary workers, so it would have to be Walmart.

To me it looks like there's a huge disconnect between themotte's view of a typical democrat voter and reality. Just off the top of my head I'd assume there are more low socioeconomic class "that's why I shit on company time" democrat voters in the country than upper class "mcdonalds is too good for presidents" snobs.

They have both. Democrats dominate the people without income, people with extremely low income, and people with high income derived from sinecures.

They lose most of the rest.

Yeah, this seems to capture a lot of the feels.

Tucker Carlson has characterized this election as the people who talk down to others vs. those who are sick of being talked down to. And while that's obviously reductive, there's a strong element of truth there.

The Democrat says "Come with me and you won't have to go to NASCAR races and eat McDonald's any more. You can be just like me! Wouldn't that be great?". It shows a real lack of understanding about the working class and what they value. They don't do these things because they have to. They like McDonald's!

Trump, despite being raised rich, seems to get it. It's weird. I feel my own common touch fading away with every passing year.

Tucker Carlson has characterized this election as the people who talk down to others vs. those who are sick of being talked down to

And some guy called Shelly Wynter commented to outrage a week ago:

“Let me boil this election down in the African American community to a very simple — I’ll reference the great Malcolm X,” he said. “This race is between house African Americans and field African Americans, and field African Americans are voting for [Donald] Trump.”

And here I thought being in the party of racism supporters would more easily bring himself to quote that directly.

Of course, his massa(s) will beat his ass if he says it, which implies he himself serves in the house.

Black people certainly do have their own um... interesting versions of everything.

What Donald Trump has over Mitt Romney, J.D. Vance, and Ron DeSantis is that black people seem to genuinely like him. He's got swag. He's the second blackest President in history, trailing Bill Clinton but ahead of Obama.

But there are downsides. My elderly WASP relatives hate him. So disrespectful, so uncouth! Can't win New Hampshire with an attitude like that.

The Democrat says "Come with me and you won't have to go to NASCAR races and eat McDonald's any more. You can be just like me! Wouldn't that be great?". It shows a real lack of understanding about the working class and what they value. They don't do these things because they have to. They like McDonald's!

This reminds me of the narrative I bought into about 20 years ago, when the left was pushing the idea that everyone, including those in the Middle East, just wanted liberal democracy (even if they weren't aware of it). So once freed from the religious oppressive forces keeping them down, they'd gravitate towards such a system like in America. Same for immigrants from such cultures, whose kids would see how awesome liberal democracy is and thus adopt its values. I particularly recall a (more recent, but still like a decade old, I think?) 5-hour long conversation between Cenk Uygher and Sam Harris about this kind of stuff, where Cenk was smugly telling Sam about how suicide bombers and other similar Muslim terrorists could just be won over with the benefits of Western liberal values.

I think the amount of epicycles that have been required to explain the various failures and speedbumps that such a narrative has encountered in the past 2 decades shows that, no, it was rather that the people who pushed such a narrative largely just lacked the ability or willingness to appreciate the true diversity of thought there exists in humans. I don't put much weight to any sort of sociological study anymore, but I suspect that the findings that liberals in America have a hard time modeling how conservatives think in a way that doesn't exist in reverse might be pointing at something that's true. Likewise for the cliche that "liberals think conservatives are evil; conservatives think liberals are stupid."

I honestly think most people simply are not good at understanding the Zeitgeist of cultures outside of their own and perhaps nearby cultures that are fairly similar. We don’t really get the MENA region because most of us are generations removed from a culture that took religion seriously. To most WEIRD people, religion is just a personal preference, probably not much more important than other lifestyle choices. We don’t think of God in universal terms and not really as a thing to order society by. We would never ever suggest a state religion except in a nominalistic way— yes we’re Anglican, but it’s not like we take it seriously enough to seriously teach it or publicly acknowledge it or encourage its practice.

Comparing that to MENA, they’d be convinced that most of the West are atheists. They don’t allow the public display of religion outside of the state sect of Islam. They not only live by those rules themselves, and publicly so, but enforce those rules on everyone whether Muslims or not. The Quran bans homosexual behavior and they will teach gays to fly off skyscrapers. The mindset is that Allah is watching and allah is going to not only keep score but intervene in history and in personal life to enforce his will.

Now on the liberal conservative version, I think it’s the same thing. Liberals are farther along the path to practical atheism. Most have at best found churches that are liberal first and Christian second, if they bother to go. They’re much more down the path of chewing almost everything through the Post-Modern Neo-Marxist lens of oppression and global culture norms of not judging anything except traditional Western values. As such they simply cannot fathom that someone might take such things seriously.

MENA was a seriously different place from the west even when the west took religion seriously; endemic cousin marriage and segmentary lineage will do that