Last week, Zach Schuster’s column on the elitism perpetuated by unpaid internships (“Unpaid internships enforce elitism,” April 21) may have had a point about the extra opportunities afforded to the wealthy. However, the approach he and the Obama administration take to the issue is indicative of the jealousy-driven, flawed approach that underlies so many positions taken by those on the left.
The supposed underlying problem with unpaid internships is that because of financial concerns, companies only present an opportunity to those students with the financial luxury to not require a paycheck. The Obama administration takes a slightly different approach, arguing unpaid internships for for-profit companies violate existing labor laws — an interesting argument coming from an administration that was propelled into office due in small part to untold thousands of unpaid volunteers. I guess it’s OK to use unpaid workers to gain power, though, just not money.
More importantly, though, from Schuster’s perspective, the problem is that there are opportunities presented to the wealthy that are unavailable to those less financially endowed. The problem with this is not the opportunity gap, rather the focus on taking opportunities away from the advantaged, rather than a focus on providing them to the disadvantaged. The Unites States arguably comes much closer than most other societies to achieving anything close to equal opportunities for all of its citizens, so this is not a choice between a method that works and one that doesn’t. It is a choice between a method that punishes people for succeeding, or at least for being the offspring of those who have succeeded, and one that focuses on allowing everyone to succeed.
Examples of this approach can be seen on issues as wide-ranging as our nation’s tax policy to University of Wisconsin tuition. In setting the top marginal income tax rates, there comes a point when they become so high that revenue from the tax declines due to reduced incomes. Clearly, reduced government income doesn’t help any of our nation’s poor, other than potentially alleviating the jealousy that may be induced while watching MTV’s “Cribs.” If you really want to help the impoverished, doesn’t maximizing the amount of government revenue available for funding schools or Medicaid make the most sense?
When it comes to UW-Madison tuition there are those with an attitude that says tuition needs to be affordable to everyone no matter what the cost of the quality of our education here. Wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t have to make that decision? Yes, but given that we don’t and likely won’t ever have that luxury, it makes more sense to try to allow those who can afford a world-class research university education to pursue one at a public university.
I know not everyone will agree on what and how much we need to do as a society to provide opportunities for those less fortunate among us, but I certainly disagree with many left-leaners about the obligation and involvement of the government in that process. However, I think it is pretty reasonable to agree that we should focus those efforts on helping those at the bottom be pulled up, whether by their own bootstraps or with a pair you’ve given them, rather than trying to tear down those at the top. That attitude, whether applied to unpaid internships, health care or college tuition, is oddly reminiscent of that 4-year-old somewhere out there, maybe in one of my mom’s preschool classes, who just broke someone else’s toy and would agree that if he can’t play with it, no one else should be allowed to either.
On the other hand, while I am certainly a believer that many on the left are stunning examples that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, there is something to be said about having good intentions in the first place, which is more than can be said for some of those on the right.
Patrick McEwen ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in nuclear engineering.
