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I had a feeling this sentence would cause some disagreement.  But it's odd that a professor that was lecturing in 1950 to Johnson (not a young guy himself) would be so out of touch with academia and it's changes.
"A handful of superstar profs do make great money if they're in the right fields, though we're really not talking CEO levels."

Did he not say top professors? and reference a beginning CEO?
Personally, I don't know.
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.

But is this not his point? They are all morphed into diversion, entertainment, --either petty conflicts elevated to the level of headlines, or really important issues either disappeared, or trivialized into oblivion, as a part of "managing" the discourse.
"Manufacturing consent" - Chomsky and Herman.
Where's the bullshit? Sounds like you guys agree on this at least.


Useful talking follows experience, the more experience the better. Talking that precedes experience is known as bullshit.
by geezer in Paris (risico at wanadoo(flypoop)fr) on Sat May 17th, 2008 at 07:06:57 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Did he not say top professors? and reference a beginning CEO?
Personally, I don't know.

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.

by MarekNYC on Sat May 17th, 2008 at 02:42:37 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Perhaps you're right- I am neither, nor do I wish to be, so it's outside my competence.
His point, however, is not outside my area of expertise. I haven't read the book- only the review- so I don't know more about it than Chalmers Johnson has said--but it's on my short list.

Useful talking follows experience, the more experience the better. Talking that precedes experience is known as bullshit.
by geezer in Paris (risico at wanadoo(flypoop)fr) on Sun May 18th, 2008 at 02:28:34 AM EST
[ Parent ]
I don't think it matters whether these people are really obscenely rich, though.

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.

by Zwackus on Mon Jun 16th, 2008 at 06:49:27 PM EST
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