21 June 2011

College Daze

The head of PIMCO (Pacific Investment Management Company), William Gross, has just published a new 'Investment Outlook' piece criticising the American college bubble. I respect Mr. Gross and often see him with his attractive wife out and about in Newport Beach. His PIMCO partner, Mohamed El-Erian, and others, including some of the country's top property developers, are sometimes spotted smoking cigars and drinking rare whisky at The Ritz on Friday evenings. I know this, because I was there.

Too many Americans, according to Mr. Gross in his article, are going to college at a time when there are too few jobs. This makes sense. It is a position with which I fully agree. I have written about this before. In 1995, as a newly-hired analyst at a bank in New York City, fresh out of university, I was invited along with some colleagues to a meeting chaired by senior-level executives to solicit views on the university experience. My opinion then, as now, was that college is largely a waste of time and far too many people attend, when in fact most of them should be tending farm, managing shops, or working in factories. My remarks were greeted with silence. I was not invited back.

Mr. Gross claims subjects studied at college are not always relevant to the needs of the global economy, targeting in particular the liberal arts. He is barking up the wrong tree. According to a Georgetown University study, a mere 9.7% of university students in the US study liberal arts. It is hardly a problem worth writing about. Liberal arts graduates are essential. After all, the world will always need leaders, managers, visionaries, and creative geniuses. And we will always need educated individuals prepared to transmit the achievements of the West to future generations. If one is not studying the liberal arts (and maths and sciences), one does not belong at university. It is that simple. For the overwhelming majority of people, there are trade schools, apprenticeships, guilds, and technical-vocational colleges.

There is an enormous hole in Gross's analysis, and it is this: immigration. As he points out, only 1.8 million jobs have been created in the US over the last 10 years, while the labour pool has increased by over 15 million. How can this be? Like the housing bubble, I would argue, it is largely driven by mass uncontrolled third world immigration and its knock-on effects such as higher fertility of newcomers. The US faces a glut of foreign workers of dubious quality. Pushing them through college and vocational school will do little to remedy genetic and cultural deficiencies. When Gross laments the lack of jobs, unemployment rate, and poor skills of workers, however, while at the same time advocating skills-based education, government works programmes, and lower US labour prices to compete with the developing world, he is inadvertently excusing and promoting immigrationism. It is an extremist ideology to which liberal US elites have been addicted since the 1960s. Immigrationism has ravaged our communities, culture, and economy, planting the seeds of bloody conflicts to come. It is only going to get worse. Stay tuned.

It is time to face reality. Let us talk in plain terms. Gross warns of "long-term disconnects in employment." What he really means, I think, is that the US has become a third world country, inhabited by third world people, with a third world economy--and Americans had better get used to it. Indeed, the emerging picture of America portrays a declining high-IQ white majority steadily replaced by a hostile low-IQ non-white minority whose population growth shows no signs of slowing. In effect, says Gross and others like him, to compete with global sweatshops the US itself must become a third world sweatshop. This is the American future. Deal with it.

We have heard this line before and we can no longer tolerate it. Baby Boomers have spent decades emasculating and hollowing-out the US, and still they refuse to accept responsibility for their crimes. Would you pardon one if one were tempted to hit the motherfuckers hard in the face?

How do you solve a problem like Treason?

20 comments:

Anonymous said...

Take it further, sir. Offer your obviously thought out argument. Thanks in advance.

La Sombra Sofisticada said...

Your excellent text made me think of this old song by Merle Haggard:

Wish a buck was still silver.
It was, back when the country was strong.
Back before Elvis; before the Vietnam war came along.
Before The Beatles and "Yesterday",
When a man could still work, and still would.
Is the best of the free life behind us now?
Are the good times really over for good?
Are we rolling down hill like a snowball headed for hell?
With no kind of chance for the Flag or the Liberty bell.
Wish a Ford and a Chevy,
Could still last ten years, like they should.
Is the best of the free life behind us now?
Are the good times really over for good?

Anonymous said...

Sad but so true.

We are well on our way to becoming a third-world country with a trash culture that is always looking for the lowest common denominator. One small step toward recovery might be to re-focus our universities on drawing the best out of our brightest, rather than attempting to redress imagined social inequities.

Regarding squatters -- If the twelve+ million illegals here wore military uniforms, the USA would be considered to be a country in defeat and under occupation.

old said...

A timely well written tome, Admiral. We have been on a thirty years rights granting and responsiblity shedding orgy that has gravely weakened the USA strategically, morally and financially and socially. The same can be said for the advanced countries of Europe.

Sadly "The American Way of Life", once envied by rest of the world, is now a dumbed down trash heap.

Narcissism, substance abuse, greed, infidelity, outright corporate larceny and bastard whelping have become the new past-times. As Robert Kennedy Jr. stated on PBS the other evening, we are more obsessed with the misdeeds of Charlie Sheen and Britany Spears than ensuring the safety and prosperiety of the USA.

Things are grim but not yet hopeless. It's time to grab the bull by the balls and give it a couple of hard kicks in the ass to get it moving in the proper direction. Promising new US developed innovations in renewable energy, bio-tech, IT, advanced manufacturing systems and related fields auger a bright future for us if we take the initiative.

Styles Bitchley said...

Absolutely true, but until someone of influence in Washington has the courage to stand up and state the obvious the insane downward spiral will continue. I never dreamed America would be destroyed from the inside like this while paradoxically defending itself from outside "threats to our security." Madness. Unfortunately, opposition to immigrationism is equated with "racism" -- because the people coming in are of inferior quality and need to be defended by liberals (ACLU, the media, etc.)I don't see any solution except by open racial violence -- which isn't too far off.

Anonymous said...

I believe Ann Coulter refers to the college experience in America today as "socialist camp". Having sent a daughter to SMU of all places I think this is true. When I hear the controversies about droppong certain non-incoming sports I always think the better choice would be to drop the political science departments.

w. adam mandelbaum esq. said...

Wonderful piece. However, I would beg that your followers would allow some of us baby boomers to stay alive. Some of us did not support the drowning, downing and indiscriminate browning of America. Some of us tried and still try to uphold the values and principles upon which this nation was founded upon--not those in which it has now floundered upon. You can thank the spineless politicians of several generations for the mess this country is in. On the bright side, the job picture will improve once the Indians and Pakistanis start exporting customer support positions to the United States. Anybody here speak Urdu?

Anonymous said...

100% agreed.

I must say though, degrees are losing their value rather quickly. I graduated with a Major in history and a minor in writing and communications. I wanted to teach, I wanted to write. However, no one is hiring. Friends of mine who majored in the same field that graduated years ahead of me are *still* looking for employment.


In fact, it has become so bad that I intend on entering into a trade school next year. I'd rather be employed in a valuable trade rather than waiting aorund for years on end begging for employment. I should have done what I intend on doing YEARS ago.

Anonymous said...

Your observations are very acute and well stated. America's worship of political correctness and distain for tradition coupled with scorn for academic rigor over vocational training is creating the worlds biggest getto. Standards of discipline, education, dress, manners, individual achievement and respect for the family unit have all but disappeared for not wanting to appear to be racist. We have done it to ourselves and continue to do it. We are seeking the lowest common denominator and will soon find it. WHY, is the question.

Reggie Darling said...

Most so called colleges in this country are glorified normal schools. Paul Fussel has some interesting and perceptive commentary on this very subject. Reggie

2Stoics said...

The people crossing the borders are mostly Indians. Their culture was displaced by Spain and they became an underclass. They're so desparate to feed their families that they're willing to cross the border under very harsh conditions for the chance at decent work.

I'm not saying that should be allowed, but I don't blame them a bit for trying. Ever seen Ciudad de Juarez? The place is a hole.

Anonymous said...

Ciudad de Juarez is a shit hole. Why? Sloth...lack of ingenuity and an inability to see past the next week. Oh, and let us not forget the premium that their culture places on education.

Anonymous said...

Wowzers.......Well you could just round them up and put them in camps. But the Nazis tried that and it didn't work out like they planned. There is also the South Africa option.

Anonymous said...

Thank you, Anomymous at 5:12, for bringing up the Nazis and Apartheid. Brilliant work. Just the sort of Marxist bullshit that one came to expect from noted cross-dresser Anthony Weiner. Please refrain from posting a photo of your 3.75 inch member.

Anonymous said...

Funny that you've written on this subject, I just recently saw a piece on the "trade" of for profit universities. Big business, very big, huge in fact.

A lot of these people are coming out to find that there is no job to be had, also on the flip side. A lot of these students are not even finishing because they can't afford to live and go to school.
Some of these universities are even signing up the homeless in order rake in the funds. It matters not to them that the student hasn’t the where with all too even attend. Just sign on the dotted, and who cares what you do from there. In the end we have a country filled with people who have these massive amounts of debt for an education, and haven't set their ass in the chair. Most aren't even being paid back.

Again, just when I think I don't like you, you come up with a good story.

Osbert II said...

Those running these for-profit "schools" are just sucking off the government teat. In a more enlightened era, they would be tarred and feathered. Today, they make political contributions and spend nights in the Lincoln Bedroom.

initials CG said...

The bar has gone up...folks. It's just that simple... Simple demographics:
we all "need" an expanding economy. And the rest of the world want your lifestyle, your car, your women. And they will get it.

Lower taxes, founding new companies producing real things... Real specualtion behind solid exploitation of resources... The chinese are better prepared, hungrier, and cheaper too! That's it.

Just watch what we're watching on TV and what we're doing in our spare time and you'll realize NO ONE READS anymore! Alas, we need to get tough...not on others, but ourselves.
I'm for keeping the system as is

Laguna Beach Fogey said...

Anon @ 5:12 ~ Who said anything about putting them in camps? I suggest we line the motherfuckers up against a wall and shoot them. But then again I'm a bit ruthless in such matters.

Initials CG ~ We need to get tough--on one another (see my response, above). Stop blaming the Chinese, Turks, Jews, blacks, Mexicans, etc. The problem is at home, amongst our own people, the Baby Boomers, the '68 Generation,' the SWPLs, the people currently in charge, the present elite. The struggle therefore must begin at home.

Scott said...


The chinese are better prepared, hungrier, and cheaper too!


Not to mention operate without scruples.

Laguna Beach Fogey said...

Scott ~ Nonsense. China is a massive bubble beset with corruption, mismanagement, dire demographics, and poverty. Remember, only a few decades ago the Chinese were eating one another.