Year after year colleges and universities in the United States churn out hundreds of thousands of students well versed in supply side economics and Thomas Friedman’s the world is flat thinking. The majority of these students, particularly those at institutions that carry the nefarious and simultaneously proud (it depends on who you are talking to) moniker HBCU scarcely realize that after four, five or six years of schooling they know less about economics than their great grandmother who placed her money under a matress instead of blindly hand it over to something called Wall Street.
Well maybe during the easy-money, prosperity laden 1980s and 90s it was okay to believe the crock in your economics textbooks and the drivel being dished out by some economics or political science professor. Hey afterall you could be dumb and still have money in those days.
I have noticed a lot of college students recently putting forth the rallying cry of change for contestants vying for the White House in 2008. But how can the political-economic landscape in the U.S. change and be taken back from the hucksters (e.g. big business, greedy politicians, lobbyists, left/right wing fanatics) on Capital Hill and the Beige House, if today’s students are fed and taught the same old stuff? I can’t say that I agree with everything that Hilary Clinton says but she did have the gall to say “SPR” Strategic Petroleum Reserve to the Bush White House/oil cartel. That is release some of the trillion gallons of petroleum holed up in our reserves as a way to bring our soaring gas prices down. Political posturing by Bill and Hillary? Maybe. But to have the audacity to say it when most voters have never even heard of it is a feat within itself.
I doubt if few business professors teach their students about those not overly prosperous/not overly poor Danes and Norwegians populating Scandanavia with their 26-hour work weeks and $10.00 an hour minimum wage jobs. The Scandanavian economic model may not be perfect but it sure seems to be doing better than the U.S. economic system. Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez seems to be a fan of the Scandanavian model.
So, what should business, economic and finance majors in the U.S. be reading these days? Why not start out with Loretta Napoleoni’s “Rogue Economics”
Come on uniformed college students and John Q. Public living in the U.S. It is time to read and think for a change. Now that is real change: reading and thinking!