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Uh, right. A handful of superstar profs do make great money if they're in the right fields, though we're really not talking CEO levels. However, even as regards the top universities academics make a smaller multiple of the median income than they did fifty, let alone one hundred years ago.
The point about disputes on such topics as the value of sexual abstinence, the role of religious charities in state-funded activities, the question of gay marriage, and the like, is that they are not framed to be resolved. Their political function is to divide the citizenry while obscuring class differences and diverting the voters' attention from the social and economic concerns of the general populace."
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Bullshit. They are no more or less designed to be resolved than economic issues. The fact that a part of the white population, particularly the white male and white southern one votes its racism, sexism, and homophobia is trotted out as an excuse to pander to those sentiments.
It should be noted that between a half and two-thirds of qualified voters have recently failed to vote, thus making the management of the active electorate far easier.
Not in presidential elections - the most recent one saw some sixty percent participation.
see US Elections Project
The figures may not be completely accurate, as they seem to be percentages of U.S. resident citizens, while voting figures include absentee votes. They seem to be aware of this problem, but so far haven't found a reliable way to apportion oversea votes to states, as the raw data is not available.
</snark>
- Jake Your representatives may not listen to you. But they do read your e-mail.
"A handful of superstar profs do make great money if they're in the right fields, though we're really not talking CEO levels."
Define top. The average (mean) saleries for full professors at the very highest paid private research universities are on the order of 150-160K. Non econ superstar profs at such universities earn around double that. That's good money, but by CEO standards it's outright pathetic. And the superstar econ profs who will be earning two to three times that amount can up their (very high) salaries by quite a bit by going into the private sector.
Nobody in their right mind goes into academia to earn money. If you can get into a top rated Ph.D. program you can also get into a top rated law school. Assuming you do at least average there your starting salary will be the same as that of a tenured full professor at an elite private research university. If you actually manage to achieve the equivalent level of success in your field as one of those profs - i.e. making partner at a good firm, you'll be making a very solid seven figures. Let's not even start at the relative level of compensation in the financial industry.
If their generally reasonable and non-hardship-inducing incomes are predicated upon their perpetual begging and groveling to the powers that be for grant and research money, and upon the production of a continuous stream of work that is considered "good enough" to be publishable, then one can see how they might be somewhat less antagonistic to the system then if they were in fact poor, and if their incomes were completely independent of the corporate power structure.
Or at least, that seems like the logical extension of his argument.
