Marana (my wife) and I recently returned from a cruise vacation to the Bahamas, the purpose of which was to celebrate the completion of the Ph.D. that I started back in the fall of 2000. Fantastic experience (the cruise, that is); ready to go back. One afternoon a small advertisement on the wall of the men’s room caught my eye: “Money won is twice as sweet as money earned.” Of course Royal Carribbean’s great hope was that I’d pay a visit to the on-board casino, and perhaps even gamble my way through few rolls of quarters in the one-arm bandits—perhaps more if I got into it enough. The irony of such a solicitation at that particular moment was that the day before, on deck 10 of the ship I had just finished reading Arthur Brooks’s book The Battle: How the Fight Between FREE ENTERPRISE and BIG GOVERNMENT Will Shape America’s Future (Basic Books, 2010). Brooks is currently the president of the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., a think-tank dedicated to free enterprise.
Back to the point, namely why money won (unearned) isn’t sweeter than money earned and why the project of educating towards a virtuous citizenry matters now more than ever: Lottery studies have shown that money won is negatively correlated with long-term happiness about life in general (see Brooks, pp 75-81). If this is true, then the current generation of college students is being sold a bill of goods about how this economic mess will get fixed once and for all. Brooks argues that “If money without earned success does not bring happiness, then redistributing money won’t make for a happier America” (81). I agree with him. But redistribution has been the underlying (although often an unspoken term by its advocates) strategy to counteract the recent evils of Wall Street. So what? What bearing does all this have on educating the millennial generation? Brooks points out that a majority of late teens to early thirty-somethings tend to be quite comfortable with socialist policies. A 2010 Gallup poll proves it.
I’m simultaneously concerned and not concerned about these stats. Not concerned because it won’t take long for millennials to understand the hollow promises of an increasingly socialist-leaning government. Concerned, because once we start down this road as a country, it’s really hard to right the ship. Earned success increases overall happiness about one’s life, unearned success doesn’t, and those of us who have been in the working world for longer than a few years know it. If higher education has anything to do with helping young bearers of the imago dei to flourish in the deepest sense, then can we really afford to continue educating on this issue in the smorgasbord-kind-of-way that has become the norm?
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I recently heard a friend from Switzerland observe that education seemed to be taken more seriously in North America because students had a greater stake invested in it than where he was from (where education is nearly free). Perhaps this comes down to the same principle you are getting at?
Congrats on finishing! Hopefully this will put an end to Dr. Barnett’s harassment.
Excellent post, John. My Grandfather used to say that an earned dollar blesses a man three times: the sweat of his brow cleanses; the exercise of his muscles relaxes, the shade tree and the rest refreshes.
He told me this many times, sitting under the shade tree in our own backyard, after cutting grass. Best two bucks I ever earned in my life.