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Debating Memes: Silhouette Man
Scandinavian countries are awesome. At least that’s what all of my liberal friends tell me. These countries are virtual socialist utopias of equality and happiness, as well as a model for a progressive America. As one who remembers the meaning of the word utopia (no place), I am innately skeptical of such claims. The left wing meme generation machine ™ does not share my skepticism however, and has created a comic strip of sorts that explains why Americans are stupid for not giving “free” college education to all of our students. Meet Silhouette man.
The brain is not involved in many decisions made in socialist countries. I don’t see why their implementation of higher education would be any different.
Liberal arts degrees are the “ultimate” investment in the future? Perhaps investment is used here to mean spending money for any purpose, much the same way democrats in Washington use it. We “invest” in cowboy poetry festivals. We “invest” in solar companies that our actuaries predict will be out of business a year later. I “invested” in some new golf clubs earlier this year, and a double baconator for lunch today.
This particular vision of investing in higher education fails to draw any distinctions between useful areas of study for a future trade and the useless degrees that make up the bulk of those handed out at modern universities. Or as Iowahawk said it:
"Go to college" is to education what "put stuff in your mouth" is to nutrition.
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) May 5, 2014
With the exception of a few specialties, most members of the human race work in jobs to which college provides little applicable knowledge or skills. Most people would be better served in a program that gave them an on-the-job apprenticeship, where the actual skills of their career could be learned.
Or they can get a degree in gender studies. Whatever works.
You don’t say…
Silhouette Man is suggesting that Scandinavian countries are paradises where equality and happiness rule the day. The truth is a tad murkier then this.
Denmark, for instance, consistently polls as boasting the happiest citizenry on the planet. This does, however, conflict with their status as the highest per capita users of anti-depressants in Europe.
In Finland, the leading cause of death for men is now alcohol, which is surely a sign of a healthy work and social life. This must be the stability that Silhouette Man is referring to.
I’m mostly thinking about whether or not the awkward abbreviation of obscenities is taught in Scandinavian universities, or if the debating style of Silhouette Man is primarily informed by Twitter. I suspect the latter.
Would it blow your mind if I told you that “free” education in Sweden isn’t free at all?
Swedish colleges and universities are free. Yep. Totally free.
But students there still end up with a lot of debt. The average at the beginning of 2013 was roughly 124,000 Swedish krona ($19,000).
Even if this education truly were free to the students, it is being paid for by existing workers who are being saddled with these massive college costs. When these students obtain work, their tax dollars will be paying the costs of the free education for new students, meaning all they have done is delay their payment for college until after they graduate. How this is dramatically different from the American system of low interest loans is a question Silhouette Man leaves unanswered.
If we had gone to real “schools” we would have learned the evils of profits.
Release most of our prisoners to save the money for education. Noted. You’re a good idea machine, Silhouette Man.
And people wonder why Americans grow weary of protecting Europe. Some naked self-interest from Europeans would be refreshing on the topic of American defense spending. Something along the lines of “Thank God you’re spending this money to protect Europe, because we’re not going to do it.”
This idea that we spend more on the military than we spend on education is complete nonsense. It continues as a liberal talking point because of the laziness and overall gullibility of those who have presumably been educated in “real,” not-for-profit schools.
In 2012, the Pentagon’s budget was $645 billion. The United States, meanwhile, spent $941 billion on education in the same year from all sources, governmental and private. Of course, therein lays the distinction: Spending doesn’t count unless it was done by the government. I eagerly await Silhouette Man’s explanation of why this is the case.
Unlike Sweden, a country that had only one effective political party until very recently — a party largely controlled by a couple of its wealthiest industrialist families.
Don’t think too hard my featureless friend. It doesn’t seem to be working out for you.
Published in General
I have spent considerable time in Denmark. They nearly all stay in college until they are 27. Why not, they get paid to do it. Then the spend the rest of their lives paying for it with 50% income taxes, and 180% taxes on luxuries like cars. At one of our company functions, a young engineer won a free laptop computer. She had to turn it down because she couldn’t afford to pay the taxes on it. They ride they bikes in the worst weather because they have to. Their unemployment is about 25%, and nearly 40% for young workers. When the come to the U.S. they love to do 2 things; shop because everything here is cheaper, and shoot guns, because they could never do that back home.
Do most of these countries not also have fairly difficult entrance exams to get into college? We could very easily make college free for everyone in this country if all we had to do was pay for those students who had demonstrated some academic ability during high school. As it stands, the state and the universities collude to prey on the fantasies of young people and their parents.
Also, say what you will about the for-profit schools, they still charge less by far than even public universities, do they not? I honestly haven’t looked into this–has anyone else here?
Denmark also encourages its citizens to narc on their neighbors if they think they “living beyond their means”. Yup, just the kind of enforced social conformity I want.
There is also the issue (touched on years ago by Milton Friedman) that the Scandanavian system works on the implicit trust in the work ethics of… other Scandanavians. In other words, it all “works” there because of a very high degree of social, ethnic, and (about to use a verbotten word here) racial uniformity.
Took an online course through U Phoenix recently. Was $2000 for 3 credit hours. Figuring about 150 hours required for a degree, that would be $300,000. I guess they assume you’re going to transfer in credits from other sources to get to your total.
Not sold on that option being “cheaper”. Was just more convenient.
An MBA from UoP will cost you 23700 over 18 mos. Utah Valley University about 21000 resident about 45000 non. So okay.
I went to AMU and made about $700/month using the G.I. Bill full time. If I recall correctly it was $750/semester hour, but books were included, so that knocked off a ton of cost.
Good take down Frank.
What those occupiers don’t understand is that many of the Scandinavian countries, in particular Sweden, have started reforming away from democratic socialism and more towards democratic capitalism because it wasn’t working. Also, Sweden has one of the best school choice programs of any country, that allows parents and students great flexibility to develop their own learning experiences.
What makes the Scandinavian countries the egalitarian and apparently happy places they are is that they are full of Scandinavians. If you look at places in the US that have heavy Scandinavian descent like Minnesota and North Dakota you find very similar outcomes and attitudes.
I recently heard that about half of Swedish households have only a single occupant. Sweden may well be the most atomized society in the history of the world. But yay! Who needs human relationships and communal life?
Jeez, my MBA is going to cost me $91,225 by the time I am done with it.
I don’t understand. So the taxpayers are paying young people to go to college and it’s a good investment because they will graduate and be highly-skilled and be able to jump right into a high-paying job so that their taxes can help support the system. A person in a low-paying job pays little in taxes, so it’s to everyone’s benefit to get everyone a better job. But if this system results in a society with many more people making more money than in a lousy country like the U.S., shouldn’t their tax rate be lower than ours? If the Scandinavian system is so economically beneficial, why are the tax rates higher? A foolish, non-college educated person might conclude that when a politician tells you that more spending will save you money, they are full of BS.
Thank you very much for going in and doing all the work to rebut this. I see things like this on the internet all the time, and sometimes I respond, and sometimes I just think “I just don’t have time to wade into this.” I need to bookmark your post for future reference.
There are 3 rules of social science:
1.) Sometimes it’s this way, Sometimes it’s that way.
2.) Except in the South
3.) And you can get anything to work for a while with Swedes.
There may be some things worthy of mimicking from Sweden, though a quick glance at Wikipedia reveals 3 important things:
1.) Sweden tracks students. To get that free university education, you have to take a specific course and orientation in gymnasieskola (High School -sort of). Their higher education system is also radically different than ours, treating engineering, law, and medicine as vocational (ie, you don’t get a BA and then go to law school there).
2.) If I’m doing the math right, 22% of Swedes have a college degree (though recall, their degrees are different from ours -I’m using the numbers for “3 years or more of post-secondary education”). The equivalent number in the US is 34%.
3.) Finns are not Scandinavian. They are Uralic. I know its a small point, but if you’re going to be pedantic, do it right.
I’ve never understood the whole “America needs to be more like Europe” argument. It seems to me that if you’re American and want to live more like a European, there’s an extremely simple solution – move to Europe.
Many of us very emphatically do not want to “be more European”. If you change America into Europe, where are we supposed to go?
Hard to get in.
Like.
I actually agree with several points.
1) Our military spending is way too high. We need to get out of NATO and Europe amoung other places and let them take care of themselves.
2) Our prison expense is way too high and what I hear from my European friends inhuman. I think instead of locking up the worse offenders we need to exile them to other countries that understand how to handle criminals better and do not have the death penalty.
3) I understand that education is free in Europe and done better than in the good old USA. I believe that we should send our young abroad to be educated. This will give them both world experience and save us money.
EJ beat me to mentioning Malmö.
As a Finn I could write a book about this for ricochet. That would be too annoying.
Scandinavian countries has been able to make it, because the population density is not that high. Finland is around same size as Texas with 5 milloin people. Newsweek ranked Finland as a best country in a world a couple years ago, without understanding that population density is not as important issue when you compare Finland and Switzerland, as when you compare Finland and Bangladesh.
Of course there is good things in Scandinavia, but countries have to rethink their education system as well. Maybe Scandinavians has been able to spend more money in education than in military, because Usa can secure Scandinavians with their high spending.
Finnish education does not help young people necessarily. Here is very high youth unemployment rate, and depression rate. People are terrified with their future, and young people have done few mass murders, we might beat USA in school shootings without “bad gun culture”. Alcohol is our gun culture, if you live in sobriety you are treated like you were child molester. This is a cause for high violence as well.
We already have an extremely successful program that has been doing that for years.
It’s easy to overestimate changes when visiting foreign countries. Were you by any chance in Copenhagen? Danish average years of education are similar to American numbers (the same for men, an extra year for women).
Finland does less well, clocking in as equal to America. That said, the quality of the education matters as much, or more than, the quantity. So, how does America rate compared to Denmark and Finland? This is probably the most extensive survey of general education quality. America comes in third, after Norway and Australia. Denmark clocks in at 15, Finland at 21.
In general, American k-12 education could stand to improve somewhat, but American higher ed is fantastic. Silhouette Man notes that Finland spends more per capita on education, but neglects to note that they get less for it. Part of the problem he would face in exploring this is that the area that works better in America than in Finland is not single payer, and the area that works worse is single payer. He might find this undermined his pro-single payer argument.
Well done. This kind of idiocy needs its balloon popped at every turn.
Silhouette Dude happily passes by the decades of spending avoided by these countries on their own defense, since the unthinking and hapless United States was footing the bill. For example:
Sweden’s armed forces don’t have enough staff or equipment to defend the country, according to an April report by the National Audit Office. Supreme Commander Sverker Goeranson in 2012 said that the military can only defend a limited area for about a week without outside help. Sweden has cut the budget of its once-formidable armed forces after the end of the Cold War, opting to focus on international missions in countries including Afghanistan, Sudan and Kosovo.
Will mandatory Russian language courses be taught at the “free” colleges in Sweden?
Going to college is to education, as putting stuff in your mouth is to nutrition.
Double Baconater…..answers the question on how to improve the standard baconater, MORE BACON! lol
Yeah, but those are the good ones. We need to send the ones that aren’t quite so motivated.
You get higher prevalence of depression/alcohol use the farther north you go. Darkness, seclusion, and Vitamin D deficiency are not friends of the brain.
I think maybe the all time dumb left-wing meme I’ve seen was Captain Picard asking me “Why the f— do prison inmates get free lunches and schoolchildren don’t!?”
My reply – “Um, prisoners are locked in jail cells, and if you don’t feed them they will starve.”
Stop feeding inmates works for me. If they want to eat let their family members supply the money for their food.