Bound for Absurdity

Posted on January 13, 2003 in Social Justice

I don’t think I can explain it any better than wKenShoW has:

According to a survey conducted by Time magazine, 19% of Americans believe that they are in the top 1% of earners. Another 20% believe that they will be in that top 1% soon. That means 39% of Americans think that they are or will be among the wealthiest 1%. Even with my poor math skills, that hardly seems possible.

Land of the Dream. I know I am no where near the top 1% and won’t be there unless there is a massive infusion of especially poor immigrants or the annexation of large portions of the poorest parts of Latin America or Africa. (And with the administration’s New Age manifest destiny ideology, I don’t entirely rule this out. Still….)

A recent article in Skeptical Enquirer suggests that when you rate American education overall, we’re not quite so stupid as some pundits suggest. Where Europeans enjoy more depth in a few subjects, Americans tend to be more broadly trained: we’re generalists. Our adult population, thanks to continuing education, may be the most knowledgeable in the world. This may be true, but wKenShow and the New York Times have seen the flaw: We collect a lot of facts, but we don’t think things through. Consequently, our nation is well on its way to following Argentina into the class of dangerous has-beens — countries that run themselves almost entirely on pride and negligibly on common sense and the interests of the community as a whole.

We’re bound for absurdity, not glory.