Let’s talk about alcohol.
We have this really trashy wine in Australia called Goon.
It’s boxed wine and it “may contain traces of egg and fish”, it’s supposed to
be for “fining” purposes. It does make people look “fine”. Goon is $7 USD for
4.5 liters, the cheapest gasoline in Aus. It’s supposed to be the first boxed
wine in the world, invented by an Aussie in 1965.
Beer here is ridiculous. A six pack of crap beer is $12 and
of decent beer is $20. I’ve been digging to find some really cool beer here.
I’ve actually been called a beer snob (Sorry I know the word “hops”). Despite
my best efforts my fav beer is still Blue Moon, which they have here and I’ll
save for a rainy day.
Aus is really for the winos and I’ll usually spring for the bottle-shelf-but-good
$5 bottle of wine. If you’re gonna drink you should enjoy it right?
Which is why I don’t get drink snobs. Like I understand Blue
Moon is an “entry-level” and semi feminine craft beer, but it’s what I like, so
stay off my sack. And I don’t like Jack
and I don’t like whiskey, but why throw me into gendered group of “pussies”.
Like grow up and realize people like different things.
Just like enjoy what you do. I like Smirnoff, get over it.
So while having a drink with some Europeans, a German guy
was talking about education. He says “It’s really good, that in Germany you can
move” (meaning in economic class) “because you can go to University for free”.
Everyone here says University instead of college, and will often shorten it to
Uni.
So I was thinking, hey that’s a lot like the American dream,
which people like to say is dead. Which is like, could you be any more college?
“The American Dream is dead man.” I saw that scribbled in a bathroom once. Who
are trying to impress? Or influence? Do you think you’re being profound? You’re
pooping!
So if being able to freely move around economic classes is
the American Dream, as Billy Joel says “Every child had a pretty good shot, to
get at least as far as their old man got”, I dunno that seems pretty reasonable
now.
If the American Dream is supposed to be a rags to riches
story, well that still happens right? Every other day I hear about some kid
who’s doing cancer research at 16. Maybe it’s less than that, but how about the
handful of under 30 millionaires? Pretty much any app you have was designed or
at least employed a bundle of young people, and if you have it plenty of others
do as well. Sure some were pretty well off at first, but the point is people
that are lucky and work hard still can get rich. Americans didn’t stop
inventing world changing things.
Maybe the lucky part wasn’t emphasized. I mean it’s a ton of
luck. And if you can read this you’re insanely lucky. You have access to a
computer and a network that enables you to communicate across the world! And
you don’t even know how it works! You entitled prick! Go learn something!
But luck was always something that I thought was a big part
of America. Like you work really hard on your big revolutionary idea, and it’s
great no matter what. It’s an objectively good idea, and then you take it to
the Big American Slot Machine and you pour your idea and effort in the slot and
you pull the big red lever. And then the tickers spin. And sometimes you get
rich and sometimes you don’t.
If you think that just working really hard would be enough
to get rich (Assuming that’s the American Dream, and I think we’re getting
wishy washy now), well you can still do that. You can go to school to be an
accountant and work for the Big 4 for a few years. Or you can be a doctor. There
are still ways.
I briefly considered separating myself legally and
financially from my family before I went to college. And apply for the FAFSA on
my TJ Maxx income. To see if it is still possible to do the American Dream.
Obviously that’s not a scientifically valid experiment and I still had all the
support from them growing up. But just to see what would happen, if you had a
near zero income and wanted to go to college.
I don’t think the American Dream is dead, I just don’t think
it’s the same dream. Less people want the steady income and white picket fence
and 2.5 kids. They already did that, they were the 2.5 kids.
I guess to me, saying the American Dream is dead is just
cynically stupid. It’s more like the financial mores that applied in the 1950s –
1970s don’t apply now. And if you say it like that then it’s like “well yea
duh”. And if that’s how you want to define dead then I guess that’s where
you’re measuring the glass of water at the meniscus and I’m measuring it at the
adhesion point.
(PSA: you should always measure from the meniscus, that’s
how science is done and we need standards to make experiments repeatable so we
get accurate data.)
So that’s how I read graffiti.
Back the German American dream though. Jan said “But nobody really takes advantage of
it, since education is free, there is no reason to go to work”. It’s like the
grad school complex on like a whole nother level. Sometimes people go to grad
school just because they can’t find work or they’re afraid of the “real world”.
But in Germany education is free! So you don’t even have to worry about the
money! So yea! Why not go back to school and pick up another bachelor in
biology. It’s all free!
The obvious problem is that you might end up with no work
force at all. School can be fun and it might be easier than working so why not!
If your education is free it literally has no value. No price tag at least, and
with no debt, no financial incentive to start working.
Of course that’s not what actually is happening. Germany the
strongest economy in the EU, perhaps even too strong, some
countries are getting mad at them cuz they’re inflating the currency ya know?
And their unemployment is at like 4.8% and we’re at 5.7% (Trading Economics).
And I only bring up unemployment rate because it’s directly
linked to people being employed. Sometimes people like to say an economy is
better because the unemployment rate is lower. But that’s just being
boneheaded. Employing more people doesn’t make an economy stronger. If you can
employ one person for $10 an hour or two for $5 each an hour (your variable costs
are the same), and with one person you can make 10 sandwiches an hour and for
whatever reason, with two people you can still only make 10 sandwiches. Well
you’ve lowered your unemployment rate but you haven’t raised GDP.
And then you can get more complicated and say employing more
people costs more and then look at a living wage and if $5 is too much and even
if you’re producing more sandwiches, then is there even a demand for more
sandwiches? If you’re just making sandwiches and having them pile up then your
GDP isn’t a valuable tool either.
That’s why I like statistics. They’re like the liars, actors
and shape shifters of the mathematics world. You can twist em and make them do
what you want. And when you hear one you should probe it with a stick and ask
it what it really means.
But I still think it’s interesting that he mentioned free
education as a problem.
However, I would guess that the better you can educate your
public then the better your country will be.
