A politicized college student: Your fondest hopes? Or worst nightmare? My cousin introduced me to her son (let’s call him “Andre”), a newly politicized college student (finished his 3rd year) and off for the summer. I’m supposed to be giving him summer job advice, since his internship applications all came to naught (investment banking was the desired position). In the course of “my dinner with Andre”, he imparted the following wisdom to me.

1. He has begun reporting for the campus conservative newspaper, “the counterweight”. Normally I would consider this a bit of good news, but the political motivation behind this orientation appears facetious: he desires to live off campus his final year, and the university will not grant him permission because it must fill all its on-campus beds to keep costs from soaring beyond the $40,000 a year it already charges. So far so good: he has detected - and resents - the tyranny of regulatory interference with market pricing and supply/demand. However, his reasons for wanting to live off campus are specious. He objects to the fact that campus police have the right to enter his dorm room and determine if his candles present a fire hazard, or if he’s hoarding alcohol or pot. Does he really think that legitimate police, off campus, won’t hassle him because of health and safety issues?
2. He, like so many other people who have never voted before, is a strong Obama supporter. At first I had little difficulty reconciling this position with his professed conservatism, since Obama IS a stirring public speaker. But unfortunately the student prince had identified an actual Obama policy which energized him: free health care. He thinks its wrong that 40 million residents (please don’t call them all citizens or Americans, Andre) are uninsured, and wants to tax “the rich” to give them free health care. When I asked what tax rate would be appropriate, he thought the federal tax rate on rich people should be raised to “35 or 40 percent”. An expression of genuine disbelief was produced when he found out rates were already that high, but he had a ready comeback: “tax the Bill Gates and other billionaires of the world 90% - nobody needs that much money”. The student prince, after some explanation, did appear to grasp the concept that confiscatory taxes simply force the wealthy – including entrepreneurs – to move to a lower tax country. The winning example was when he was told this was why the Beatles had incorporated their music business in America. Yes – he had heard of the Beatles, and knew THEY were (once) rich too.
3. Andre is majoring in economics. As such he pays lip service to the principles of free markets and floating currency exchange rates. But he believes all the subprime borrowers should be bailed out – until you ask him about the ones who were buying vacation homes, or were investing in properties hoping to flip them 6 months later for a $100,000 profit like they do on TV. And he also, after a few moments of dialogue, was willing to exclude the people who made up fictitious income numbers on their loan applications, or deliberately sought a “no documentation loan” after getting turned down for a conventional loan due to low income. But his conclusion after all this reflection was that “somebody has to be punished” for all the misery, and its probably the real estate agents who steered people to homes they could never afford, and mortgage brokers who didn’t quit their jobs en masse when the first “no documentation liar loan” forms were gingerly tested in the marketplace. In the fantasy world of the young and inexperienced there must be a villain behind every imperfect outcome, and that villain must punished to make the innocent feel better, even if the innocent aren’t actually innocent, and should be shown no relief for lying on their loans.

Oh, and a few pieces of errata. Andre feels that a $95 speeding ticket he had to pay for himself is highway robbery. (His daddy pays his $2,500 a year in car insurance). And college life is so stressful that he has to unwind with 5 or 6 beers (and who knows what else) each evening.

Have no fear, Andre . .. the real world awaits you in 12 short months (unless you’re on the 5 year plan). Then you will find out that college life is nothing but a dreamy 4 year vacation, and that you’re a spoiled rich kid who doesn’t know the first thing about the way the world works. But your real education begins soon enough . . . actually, the fact that all the investment banks are going broke and can’t pay you for doing next to nothing this summer could be considered “real world 101”, even . . .

today's subject line is a quote from the lyrics of "the mighty sam mcclain". a mutli time "w c handy" and grammy award winner. my favorite album of his is "soul survivor" <link>

for his hometown for the Summer, landscaping & picking up trash in the town/city parks. He'll earn $ 9 - 11/ hr depending on where he lives and he just may learn something about the real world, too. Maybe up to $ 13/hr if it's a high-end suburb on the East Coast? When the investment banks start doing better & can pay him again, they just may appreciate one real world entry on his high-class, upper-end resume. :-)

When he graduates next year, just get him a CARD -- no check! OR a daily subscription to an actual newspaper.That should be a good starting point. And his parents should not be paying all his car insurance, at this point. They should have done a graduated 'pay-down' plan as I did with my son: I paid 100% / yr for senior year of H.S., then 75% freshman year of college (Stanford, don't ask...), 50% the next, & NONE by junior and senior year. You know, like weaning a baby off breast milk? (And I told him that at the beginning of freshman year, a couple of months or so before he turned the corner of the suburban/almost country road on which he had been raised in a nice used car I gave him and waved bye-bye. It's only fair to warn them, so they don't feel tricked.

Your cousin's not a nightmare, balto, just an overly sheltered upper middle class kid who has a lot to learn about the real world. My son would probably laugh now if I quoted to him, some of the obnoxoius, know-it-all, conservative AND overly liberal pap he was fed at S'ford, on both sides. After a few years off-campus & in the real world, they do come around, amazingly. Four years as a shipboard Navy officer didn't hurt, either. Good luck!

I prefer reading poignant accounts of your gradually intensifying disillusionment and quiet desperation, BA, rather than your campaign to re-animate Reagan’s mouldy puppetmaster. Nevertheless I – wait, I’ve already read this shit on DP ! What a gyp.