Exploring The Trap: On The Dark Side of El Vez, And The Well-Paid World of Once Well-Meaning Progressives
Hey, everyone should read this article by a great Philly journalist (Matt Blanchard), about a great Phillly writer (Daniel Brook).
Daniel's book, "The Trap"--which you should also read, you can borrow it from me once I've had the chance to pick it up from Robin's or Joe Fox--is about the huge pressures that push graduates away from civic and public service, and towards vastly more profitable corporate work. The problem is real (uh, speaking as a recent law school graduate), and the consequences to society are serious:
It wasn't always this way, Brook explains: "In 1970, someone starting at a big-city corporate law firm made just $2,000 more than a starting teacher in a big-city school. Today that salary gap is $100,000."
So when the under-30 crowd at El Vez decides to buy a house or educate their kids, the big-salary sellouts among them will drive up prices for real estate and private schools, Brook says, asserting that it's precisely this dynamic that has made middle-class life impossible in cities such as San Francisco and New York.
That $100,000 gap isn't just between big-city corporate lawyers and perpetually underpaid urban school teachers: it's between lawyers serving individual people without much resources, and lawyers serving those with money. The public service lawyers make close to what the school teachers do. Factoring in inflation, salaries for legal services lawyers here in Philadelphia (who serve the poorest city residents and make worlds of difference in the areas of predatory lending, mortgage foreclosures, family law, and so on) are less today then they were when Irv Ackelsberg started out.
Private sector salaries? $145,000 starting at the biggest firms here in town. Not that they keep young lawyers all that long (and not that that salary is incommensurate with the debt law school burdens you with). But the damage is done: the salaries are seductive, the gap is frightening, and you have whole classes of young lawyers spending their time learning the intricacies of skills that can only help companies make and keep more money, and absorbing the outlook that work requires.
Sigh. I can't wait to read the book and find out exactly who and what I should be mad at for all of this.
Only The Numbers And People Are New
Only the numbers and people are new in Brook's critique.
There has always been a great disparity in compensation between those who serve the rich and those who serve everybody else. In those limited circumstances where people have been able to make a good living serving the low income--some trial lawyers and medical service providers come to mind--conservatives have busied them with trying to discredit them.
In his campaign for the 1976 Democratic Presidential nomination, Jimmy Carter said something like 95% of all the lawyers serve 5% of all the people. That may have been a hyperbolic statement, but the basic point is real: every legal right of the wealthy is protected like the gold in Fort Knox, while the rights of the average citizen are subject to the whims of judges and elected officials.
There are plenty of lobbyists for just about every category of wealthy people, but darn few lobbyists for the average citizen and low income people. Legislators, judges, and executive branch officials have to be aware that the people they see day to day are not representative of the average citizen.
People have a basic choice as to the degree they want to spend their lives making money and the degree they want to spend their lives serving others and building a better society. There are some encouraging signs that the "Look Out For Number One" evangelistic mentality of the Reagan era has reached its peak, and people today are regaining an interest in how their life choices intersect with their social and political goals.
Those members of the Young Philly Politics community in the world of the elite law firms could undoubtedly add useful insights to this discussion. Any broad based social movement has people of diverse economic interests, and the challenge is always to be able to focus on useful goals without getting bogged down in this obvious fact.
The numbers are dramatic, though
I kind of want to stay away from my own thoughts and personal experience in discussing this, though I'd like to talk more later about the change in the size and sort of firms, and thus types of legal jobs, that exist.
But I think that there are specific ways the landscape has changed. The costs of undergraduate and graduate school have vastly increased; the government has not provided low-cost loans that match that increase. People are leaving law school with $150,000+ in debt, not counting undergrad, much of it in high-interest private loans.
For students that don't have the advantage of going to a well-endowed school with at least some loan repayment program for those going into public service, and don't have inherited wealth, it is hugely difficult, if not impossible, to take a 40-odd thousand dollar a year job at legal services or the public defenders.
What I'd like to discuss more below is how these facts affect the culture of legal education--how lawyers are being socialized to understand their role in society.
Other concerns
You should also think about the effect the disparity will have on the practice of law itself. High law student loans/interest rates, I predict, will in the future negatively impact not only the quality of the practice, but also individual attorney ethics as well. People will have to take on more and more clients just to make ends meet, but will they be able to serve all of those clients as diligently as they should? Also, when your student loan payments are about $1,000.00/mo, and your net income is only about $2-2,500, how tempting is it to dip into one's client accounts, just this one time...
I deal with a lot of low-income clients. I deal with a lot of attorneys who don't prepare for court, who double book and leave their clients stranded. And I know better than many attorneys that we've all got to eat. But I think law schools need to teach lawyers the very real impact their decisions will have on the idividuals that they serve - children being taken away, the loss of a home. These are real things to these people that can get lost in the rush to bill.
The Problem with Lawyers . . .
I don't know where my firm fits on the list of elite firms and it doesn't matter to me. Either way I'd like to opine on this issue.
The problem isn't legal education or how students are educated.
It is the cost of legal education. While significantly less expensive than medical education, legal education is not cheap. That is especially true for folks having high debt from undergraduate schools. If the legislature wants more public interest lawyers, more and better public attorneys they either have to more adequately fund public law schools and keep tuition rates in check or pay more money to those lawyers. Really, it is that simple. The state should carry this burden.
At the same time there is a small amount of personal responsibility involved, if someone wants to be a public interest lawyer, then perhaps racking up $150,000.00 in debt is an absurd first step. Perhaps night school or less expensive alternatives are the way to go. Or, a school with a great public interest scholarship program. But, the law school you choose and the apartment you live in during law school says a lot about what direction you want to go into. My situation was simple, I didn't know were I wanted to go and wanted to keep my options open. My debt is considerably less than $150,000.00 because of housing choices and school choices I made. While a move into the public sector could be tight, it is still practical for me. I don't mean to sound like one should sacrifice compared to others, but until the State decides to facilitate--even a little bit--the responsibility will solely fall on law schools and law students.
There is a grim reality, however, of the legal industry that must be understood. It is unfortunate that this is the case, but the world of legal services--while having a foot in the realm of public good (heck, we're licensed by the courts to uphold the law), it is almost entirely a private affair. It works out like this: someone has to pay me to perform work.
Fortunately, firms try more and more to make pro-bono time a requirement, but after working all day for demanding clients who are spending their own money, it is difficult to add another hour or two onto that day. Personally, I do not mind it. But, older lawyers, particularly those with young families do. And that is increasingly a struggle. Especially when you become an older associate and attracting business is your key to partnership or economic security.
Law is a service industry. We trade on our time and knowledge--and give a significant chunk of it too. Of course our services are offered to those who pay.
Law firm salaries are another story. It seems, only in this industry can you justify paying someone an inordinate amount of money who doesn't know the first thing about the profession.
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I agree and disagree,
I agree and disagree, Gaetano.
First, I definitely agree that the quickest way to get more people into public interest law is for public interest law salaries to at least be reasonable. Coming out of Penn, the typical big firm first year makes something like 130k, and the typical public interest law student makes about 38 or 40. Public interest lawyers have been known to take on small second jobs just to pay the bills. (And, salaries for support staff are similarly very, very low.) There is a movement in the state, spurred on by the bar and some good legislators, to give loan forgiveness to people doing public interest, and if that goes through, it will be a huge help.
But I disagree with your take that legal education is fine the way it is. I love Penn Law, and I am glad I went there. But, while I think I will hugely benefit from my time there, from interacting with other students and good professors (like Dave Rudovsky, Wendell Pritchett, Lou Rulli, etc.), there are huge improvements that could be made. As a small example, a lot of law schools at one point offered classes in poverty law, consumer law, labor (and really labor) law, etc. For the most part, those things are just not there any more. But, if you want a class on securities, or any number of classes to do with corporate law, you have your pick.
Not only that, but from day one, there is a constant push of students into big firms. First, law schools give out their firm placement statistics as a USNews type of report on how well they are doing. But, as one professor said, you don't exactly hear my school, for example, touting the number of Skadden Fellowships they placed.
From about ten days into school, the push was on for big firm placements. Every day, I got an email from a big firm that was coming, and would be hosting an event (free, of course) at an upscale place in Center City. The recruitment process itself heavily pushes people into big firms. Part of that has nothing to do with the school, and everything to do with the fact that Dechert and a bunch of other firms can afford to hand out free bagels and coffee at finals, while CLS would be killing its budget.
But, part of it is the direction of law schools, and in talking to lawyers from different generations, it is pretty clear that the focus of law schools everywhere have changed. I strongly believe, as I know you do, that law schools should be training people who want to do good in society. And, I think law students, alums and everyone else need to push law schools more towards being partners in a civil society that values people who want to do good with their work.
As for pro bono, I think on a macro level it is useful on appellate type stuff (like your work on the Casinos), but on a more 'poor peoples' type level, I think law firms would do better for the world if they just helped to make sure that there were enough public interest lawyers to go around.
Good Points, Dan.
I think the problem has more to do with the law students than the law schools. There is often a push for classes like securities and corporate law because there is a demand for those classes. At Temple, the public interest crowd (as judged by those who I worked with on the Student Public Interest Network) was considerably smaller than those who wanted to be business or trial lawyers. In fact, I recall trial and transactional programs being offered heavily. But, many law students came to Temple to learn to be trial lawyers or to take the Transactional Practice integrated program.
Perhaps the problem is one of--who wants to be lawyers and law schools being increasingly geared towards those people. More and more, law schools compete for talent and students, and offer what those people want. So maybe a bit more will-power on behalf of deans to ensure a good curriculum is in place would be a good start, but unless it is done globally, it will be hard to continue. Law students are a certain type of person, and often that person is driven by the notion of "success"--equating to economic success.
You do make an excellent point about law school competitiveness and the want for high-dollar placements. The recruitment process is scary too, as well as rankings and the race for the best and brightest students. Again, however, college, graduate and professional degrees are seemingly being caught up in this materialism/consumerism vacuum where the educators are being driven by those being educated, not the good of institutions and people, more generally.
The most fundamental things law schools should do is educate ethical and moral attorneys who take the profession seriously. Not lawyers who want to make a lot of money and ask questions later. Only then will you see service to the poor be a priority among lawyers.
One lawyer here has been a member of the bar since 1954. He is a former chancellor of the bar association and, I believe, a co-founder of VIP. I look up to him and hopefully he will be around for a few more years. I was happy to have him admit me to the Eastern District. Those are the kind of lawyers we need to be and/or make. To many do the profession harm.
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Dan is touching on what I
Dan is touching on what I meant to allude to with the "culture" of legal education (at least at schools like ours).
Causally, it's probably simple. The "best" (highest-paying) jobs are with big, consolidated, corporate firms; this is good for US News rankings as well as endowment donations. So tons of resources (much of them directly from the firms) and attention are directed towards putting students in those jobs and providing curriculum that fits them.
The consequence of that is legal education that pushes a lot of people away from public service and into the corporate world, and which doesn't really give the people who would have ended up in the corporate world anyway much perspective on how law affects the lives of the vast majority of (relatively poor) people in America.
N.b., I'll always remember the night I met Damon Roberts at a Tony Payton fundraiser. He was telling me about his time at Howard Law School, and the first thing he said in describing the education he got there was that the school didn't just expose its students to the idea that lawyers have a role to play in remedying injustice--it expected every graduate would embrace that role. He spoke of it as a sort of social pressure to give back to society.
What shocked me when I entered my law school was the total lack of that expectation that lawyers have a responsibility to give back. It shocked me that thirty-odd years after law students fought to get classes like the ones Dan describes--consumer law, worker-side labor law, clinical education on legal issues facing poor people--much of that has been stripped from the curriculum, which is essentially conservative in all meaningful ways, despite the "liberal" politics of most of the professors.
The schools can't change the market or reverse the massive consolidation of firms that has resulted in tons of independent smaller, more diverse firms being eaten by corporate behemoths. But as Duncan Kennedy very polemically recognized years ago, legal education is a massive socialization process. Even given the big uptick in firm commitment to pro bono, you now have generations of law students from this class of schools graduating with little to no exposure to the ways the law affects most normal Americans (because they're not companies).
Things like fighting tooth and nail to get universal loan repayment assistance, and for increased funding for public service law jobs like those at CLS, are absolutely necessary first steps. People who care about this also I think need to exert ceaseless pressure on school like Penn to try to fight the tide somewhat and try to create a culture that encourages students to consider a range of alternate placements--government, public service, small firm.
The Answer
Pressuring the individual schools, unless done by students and alumni, will have no real affect on what you are talking about. The true organization to work to this end is the ABA, who accredits law schools. Also, State Supreme Courts and Bar Associations.
I'm not entirely sure if I buy this: "Even given the big uptick in firm commitment to pro bono, you now have generations of law students from this class of schools graduating with little to no exposure to the ways the law affects most normal Americans (because they're not companies)."
How do you know this? Do you have data on recent law graduates and company centric thought? You should note, there are so many lawyers representing companies because business create so much legal work. Typically, that is a good thing and I for one am happy about that. In fact, my one business client generates 100X the work of one of my individual clients. Clearly the poor and indigent need legal representation, but representing companies does not necessarily equate to being ignorant of the plight of every day people. Rather, it represents that the vast majority of legal work in this nation is on behalf of businesses and corporations who make deals, litigate cases and need regulatory advice on a much higher level of volume than say my parents who have been to court one time.
And, what affect are we looking at? Are we talking about legal rights and obligations and ramifications for certain behaviors (torts, breaching of contracts, criminal law)? Or are we talking about something a bit more fuzzy?
If the former, I do not think it is difficult for law students and recent law graduates to learn how the law affects most normal Americans. Firm pro bono commitments, which in some case are mandatory, will ensure a knowledge about this subject. Further, it is difficult to get through law school (at least from my perspective) without learning something like this. As in the Duncan Kennedy article, you learn that the law can screw normal folk when you express outrage over a coal company not having to restore damaged land.
If the latter, I ask that you more thoroughly explain yourself and why you think this is the case.
But, I believe this comes back to what I said above--law school curriculum is student-focused. Until we realize that educational standards should not be dictated by the caprice of students, we'll never have anything more than a reflection of what they want. That is scary.
Most law students are not like Dan UA, Jennifer or even me. They are not in law school to be bothered with taking classes like consumer law or to be government employees. To many, the law is seen as a comfortable profession. But, even that dreamed is dashed by the grim realities of firm practice.
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Yeah I'll admit up front
That my perspective, and by extension my comments, is totally limited to my school. My school is far more company- and NYC-centered than yours, from what I can tell.
And yes, when I talked about pressuring the schools I meant prospective and current students, alumni, and people in the nonprofit sector or more civically engaged people in the private bar. A group of us had a conversation with the head of CLS, touching on this topic, and how to ensure that the huge Toll Bros. donation just given to the law school is used strategically to really change the role and culture of public service at the school.
The tide is against that. For example, the clinic system--something that students interested in poverty law pushed for in the 60s and 70s, and still where students can meet Philadelphia public interest giants like Lou Rulli--is having the new funds that go into it dedicated to more business-law-oriented programs like our evolving and growing "entrepreneurship"-focused clinic.
Here are our numbers for '05
Sorry the formatting's lame.
Category -- % Employed / Median Salary / Minimum Salary / Maximum Salary
Business -- 1.96% / $69,250 / $43,500 / $95,000
Government -- 3.27% / $47,500 / $37,000 / $65,000
Judicial Clerkships -- 12.42% / $51,828 / $42,000 / $61,000
Private Practice -- 79.41% / $125,000 / $52,000 / $175,000
Public Interest -- 1.96% / $50,000 / $35,000 / $57,600
Yeah so there you go: 1.96% public interest, 3.27% government. '04 was 2.4% public interest, 1.2% government.
What I wish I could find was the set of statistics that shows firm size: it's essentially all very large firms.
More to unpack
Again, there are a lot of issues to unpack in this thread. I will comment on Jennifer's numbers based on a recent conversation I had with a Harvard law grad (I assume, Jennifer, that you also go to Penn). She explained to me that the reason she went to practice at a firm was because it was easy, the firms did all of the work for her. Public interest and government employers are the last to hire. Their application process is tedious and cumbersome (anybody fill out an app for a federal job lately - like 15 pages!). And the firms came to her school; if she’d wanted public interest, she would have to travel to interview – something not lightly done for law students who don’t come from wealthy backgrounds. That is likely why your numbers look the way they do.
Also, as an aside, I think a lot of law students are under the impression that they will make the “median” income of all lawyers combined, which is heavily skewed by law firm salaries. Very few people go to law school with not only the expectation but the hope of earning $30K when they get out.
Regarding Gaetano’s comment about whether law school graduates understand the impact of the law on individuals, I have to say, no, I really don’t think they do. I don’t even think for the most part they understand what small firm and solo and public interest lawyers deal with on a day to day basis. And this is dispite pro bono work and clinics, both of which aren't as numerous as one might think. And trust me, all the case law in the world doesn't prepare you for the harsh reality of practice, especially a practice serving individual clients.
By way of example, I'll offer a debate I have been having with another friend of mine who works at a big firm about who works harder: She works about a 60-65 hr work week in a safe, clean office building. I spend my days explaining basic social and public policy to clients with questionable educational and criminal backgrounds and with obvious hygiene issues. Last week alone I had a client with TB, and another I don’t think was quite competent who had brown stains all over his paperwork. I think she had to pull an all nighter on a memo. An angry partner v. touching a paper that may have human feces on it; I think I win.
I understand that perhaps by perspective is skewed. I know that my clients may not be “average Americans,” but I can definitely say that they are average Philadelphians. Most law students do not come from impoverished backgrounds, have likely never had their heat turned off or slept in their car for a few weeks in a row. My clients aren't Pfaltzgraff; they deal with law on the most fundamental level – do they qualify for workers comp or unemployment benefits, social security. It’s checking boxes, not quasi-in rem jurisdiction. We all leave school with big arguments and bigger words, but in my humble opinion few leave with the humility and desire to "help people".
Yes and yes
Yes, Penn, I finished in May.
You are absolutely right in describing the application processes that way. But I do think the schools can start trying to counterbalance that. The MOST interesting statistics I ever saw on our job placement compared Penn's numbers for public service, government, big, medium, and small firm jobs against the national averages. We just don't send people to anything but big firms. That's four or five people doing public interest in classes of 240. You'd think pure variation would give you more.
Anyway, the timing of the interviews is big. To do public interest, you have to gamble on jobs that sometimes don't yet exist (because of funding) when you decline to interview for private firms in the early fall. My second year (when the big interviewing takes place) the career office actively advised public-interest-oriented students to take big firm jobs just for that summer, because those summer jobs are perceived as a ton of basically free money (you make about $3000/wk).
Supposedly they've moved somewhat away from this advice, though most students still follow it. But that interviewing takes a lot of time, and does do a lot to shift your perspective on what legal practice is. I know I changed all my classes during that period to more "practical" and business-oriented ones because I suddenly realized that my ideas about the sort of practice I wanted had no place in the kinds of firms that were coming to my school. None.
I think that the schools have to pressure the firms to change the interview and compensation structure. This is not impossible; much about the interview process is dictated and coordinated through NALP, a unified body.
The timing could change to sync better with public interest hiring. And the ridiculous fall-of-Rome aspect to summer legal jobs with big firms should end. You are stuffed with $80 lunches almost daily, taken on boat cruises, broadway shows, given the flashiest most interesting projects to work on in the few minutes that aren't filled with eating or cocktail party-ing.
One illustrative thing: among all these outings, the firms send you to glitzy charity event after charity event. You have posh lunches and dinners and gift bags, and you hear all the fuzzy things the legal community is doing for poor and afflicted people. But you have those tickets because all the lawyers are too busy billing class action defense work to come.
This world is some kind of perverse bubble.
And thank you for this
That is really well-put.
Another of many things I had no idea about (like, when I heard Morgan had a big labor practice I just assumed that meant, um, pro-labor) was that none of the firms that come to my school have people as clients. Just companies. I know this makes a big difference in all the ways your comments touch on.
I think you are absolutely right: law students and large firm practioners have some exposure to pro bono--a landlord tenant case here or a death penalty appeal there--but these experiences are contextualized in a day-to-day practice that thoroughly insulates them from the larger realities and implications of those cases.
Like everything else I've said, this is just based on my experience at my school and among my peers there. Temple puts a lot of people in the courtroom, the DA's office, the defenders, and medium and small firms, as well as putting people like Gaetano in larger firms.
Actually, I summered and
Actually, I summered and started at a mid-sized firm then moved to a larger firm. So, I have no idea what the $80.00 a day lunches are like and the only time I've been to a Broadway show I paid out-of-pocket at some discount ticket place in Times Square.
Jennifer's point is well taken that there may be insulation re pro-bono. But, again, there are so many lawyers representing corporations because corporations create so much legal work--and (sometimes) pay. Corporations are also required to have counsel in litigation matters. It isn't anything more than that. The industry I work in, construction, is a prime example. A large construction law case can easily keep 2 partners and 1-2 associates busy from pre-filing through trial. At times, there is enough for work 2-3 more associates and a few paralegals (particularly in the lead-in to trial). Imagine having 6-7 of those cases. They must be staffed and done properly. Same thing with large real estate transactions, corporate deals and bankruptcies. Mass tort litigation keeps entire departments busy related to one or two clients.
Compare that with a person who, assuming in his/her life time has one criminal matter, a civil matter and a workers compensation matter. Let's throw in an estate matter. Those are 4-5 cases. I've worked with clients who have had 300 open matters at one time!
To the extent we are having this conversation, we have to realize, this work doesn't just go away. If my firm or Jennifer's firm were to turn down work, it would easily go somewhere else. The result is, a demand for new lawyers and over-working associates.
No firm wants to lose business. Law firms are in the business to make profit for the partnership. Any suggestion you make must keep this in mind. That is why pro bono commitments from firms are an easier sell to executive committees. They only slightly cut into the overhead and profit and may actually work to their advantage in public relations. This does not make big firms "bad guys", but practical.
If the goal is to have more talented lawyers in the public sector and in public interest firms, the objective must be the costs of law school and the salaries and funding schemes for those things. The burden must also be placed on law schools to produce ethical and moral attorneys.
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It's like America: What Went
It's like America: What Went Even Wronger?
The Flip Side
Everyone knows I agree. The other side of it that totally strikes me, though, is what it was like back in the day going into public interest. Listening to the old school CLS lawyers tell it, they knew they'd come out with some debt, but nothing like y'all face now. I guess the rationale in most cases is, "Well, who cares? They're going to make six-figures coming out the front door." Which I guess is true for some young lawyers, but what about the next generation of Irv Acklesburg's? I mean, they are there (howdy Kerry and Nadia!), but they give up so much more (anyway, that's what Irv and Alan and those guys tell me.
I also can't help but think access to credit is kind of a problem, too. Credit effectively increases the money supply. Whereas once upon a time it was possible for a family to skrimp and save and buy a house with cash, now it's impossible without credit. I can't help but think that credit has effectively driven up the price of homes, automobiles, appliances and other big ticket items in a way that's not good for anyone, but only sustainable for high earners.
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Lefty Homilies
Beyond law school
I have not had a chance to read Daniel's book yet, but I am looking forward to picking it up. (I've got to finish Deer Hunting with Jesus first, which is a great read about rural poverty and class identity.) I want to move this discussion away from law school and lawyers with some insights from my own experience.
I graduated from college in May and now work for a real estate development company in Northwest Philadelphia. Before graduating, I looked extensively at jobs with non-profits and advocacy organizations. Most of those jobs offered minimal salaries (low to mid $20s) and no benefits. I really wanted to work in the social justice field, but it simply wasn't possible. For me, the most important thing was having comprehensive health insurance. Entry-level jobs on the left simply do not provide those kinds of benefits.
That said, I am really pleased with the job I wound up getting, but it's not necessarily where I imagined myself even six months ago. I think it's ultimately detrimental to the long-term health of the social justice movement to not provide decent paying entry level jobs.
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Good point, Ben. This is
Good point, Ben. This is not an issue that is entirely law student-law graduate focused. A number of people, both on this site and outside want to work in the social justice, and even the political world, but it is not an easy decision to make based upon what you say above--decent entry level jobs and health care costs. Also, above, Jennifer makes a point about funding.
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It's also definitely hard
as post-graduate education is the norm, that most masters programs are largely unfunded and students pay out of pocket and through loans.
It is not lawyer's, it is the system
This is very thoughtful and interesting thread and I commend you all on resisting the typical lawyer-bashing that is all too common in political and other circles.
I think the problem is not just with lawyers, since people involved in all types of public service must make a conscious decision to make far less than those in the private sector. For those, like me, who have worked in both the public and the private sector, the lure of the higher salaries is too much to resist, especially when the issue of providing for a family is factored into the equation.
The reality is that our market based system encourages the top talent to gravitate toward the private sector-since it is where the money is. This is true in ALL professions. The only way for the public sector to attract (and keep) good lawyers is to keep up with the private sector, which is extremely difficult. I am becoming more and more disillusioned with our market based system as I go and feel there needs to be a renewed examination of the ills that go along with a market based economy. I am not advocating communism mind you, but a more compassionate view towards the more altruistic careers like teaching, public interest and public service positions, etc. And I think that our pseudo-religious adherence to capitalist and market based principles needs a thorough re-examination.
Excellent Point
It really isn't about representing corporations, or knowing about people, or even disliking public service work, it is about a lifestyle. And, when you want to have a family and a house and a car, etc., you soon realize that the private sector is the most viable alternative.
But, with lawyers, it is low paying public interests jobs and student loans keeping the talent away. Plus, the financial lure and rewards of partnership are significantly greater than that of public sector life. I'm not talking about satisfaction, but having things (tanglible things), putting kids through school and leisure time.
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the hypocrisy of the right-wing (It's not the system)
It's too bad that "our pseudo-religious adherence to capitalist and market based principles" are never applied to things like the military-industrial complex or agribusiness.
The right-wing is happy to invoke market based principles to criticize policies like universal healthcare or universal education, but god forbid we ever apply the same critique to "universal cheap oil."
Right-wing zealots are happy to advocate anti-market policies (purchase of smart bombs, stealth bombers, etc) to guarantee our country's access to cheap oil. Because the price of gas does not include the price of all the airplanes and bombs and Haliburton happy meals, we end up with all sorts of market distortions (e.g., Wal-Mart and the suburbs) that would never exist (let alone be profitable) if the true cost of a tank of gas was actually born by end users.
The sad part about it is we're not even willing to spend our oil subsidies on the soldiers we send to the Middle East to fly all those planes and drive around all the Hummers and what not.
The way I see it, the right-wing "market-based" ideology basically boils down to "As long as corporations are getting rich, screw the market."
If we spent as much money on education as we do on bombs, the "market failure" described by Bulworth would not exist. Problem is, us lefties never call bullsh*t on the right-wing zealots.
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Phillyville
Exactly
Right-wingers also conveniently ignore the Iraq war no-bid contracts to Halliburton. Is that a market-based system?
A propos of this
From the Inquirer: Giving In To The CEO Model