Capitalism for the Cool Kids

In higher education capitalism is not cool. One is not thought of as suave or savvy when labeled a capitalist. This could be due to the strife between university business departments and the other departments because of the high salaries business Ph. D's command or it could be an emo cool wrist slitting high to be the poor man's best friend at the expense of their wealthier counterparts.

People really don't gather to protest social injustice on campus as much as they used to but they like voicing their utterly uninformed opinion. This fact of life is more prominent in humanities department where they spend their days and evenings reading fiction and writing thesis after thesis comparing James Joyce to Virginia Woolf only taking a break to scorn those who are motivated by profit.

Alas I say unto you, you.. YOU! In the humanities department glaring at me! You neither care about the poor nor want to be their friend! You would not spend a second embracing the average poor person's tiresome personality nor do you care enough to reason through how the random interventions into their life you propose will effect them. To you they are like cute puppies until happenstance somehow brings you within a mile of the squalor you helped create.

I do not say this without reason. Here are a few antics college students have done that has help destroy the lives of truly unfortunate people.

1. Protesting sweatshops. Thomas DiLorenzo writes a persuasive article that debunks the myth that sweatshops exploit poor people. DiLorenzo brings up the point that in Honduras people working in sweatshops average about $13.10 a day. This seems like a very low wage but compared to the $2.00 a day average the rest of the population lives on this is exorbitant. But hey, these people don't need jobs if they don't pay as much as union workers here in the United States… they much prefer begging and prostitution which what many of them formerly did and do now. Protestors who choose not to buy from these sweatshops and choose instead to buy from union based companies serve only to hurt poor foreigners more than help. This discourages foreign direct investment and "agglomeration economies" which DiLorenzo explains as shops and other industries being built around a "sweatshop."
   

   
   

   That being said some sweatshops ARE horrible and should be shut down. This is because the children or whoever works there is working there against their will. An example of this would be the bonded child laborers in Delhi India that were not being paid to produce clothing for a company GAP subcontracted.
   

   
   

2. Protestation of minimum wage. Simple economic analysis (don't cringe you literature theory major!) shows that an increase in minimum wage brings about a decrease in employment ceteris parabis. This hurts inner city minorities and teens disproportionately more than others. This is not only inhumane but racist.
   

   
   

3. Advocates of welfare. When you subsidize something you get more of it. This is true for everything ceteris parabis (if it is an economic good). People make decisions based on what they think they can or cannot do. If a person is rewarded for having children they cannot afford to support, well, they have no incentive to stop. Poor people are not the smartest bulbs in the knife drawer. We really do not need more of them. However, if you are never around them when they are screaming at each other or beating their children they seem a lot like puppies. If you aspire to an ivory tower this is a good place to love the poor.
   

   
   

Milton Friedman said it best when he claimed that socialists are only half educated. At the risk of not being cool just take an economics class. Economists not only study other countries and policies they enact but also how those policies help or hinder those it affects. Or you can go back to your Joseph Conrad and keep glaring at me from afar.