Academia's Poverty Professionals

Misery seems to be the ultimate growth industry everywhere I go. From the war tired areas of the middle east to the post industrial former factory towns of the mid-west. There have always been profiteers of poverty, but lately pretending to care about the poor has also become it's own industry.

Poverty's new profiteers are not neo-slave dealers, rather faux abolitionists claiming they desire to free the poor. Like many ridiculous groups, their nexus is at the top of the Ivory tower. American academia pays most of it's workers poverty wages, but not to worry, there is a new crop of academics to raise consciousness about those suffering from low wages. UNC Law Professor Gene Nichol runs the “Poverty Center” at the school for more than $200k each year. U. C. Berkley pays Robert Reich 240,000$ to teach a single class on income inequality. In his defense perhaps receiving such a large paycheck for such little labor while his coworkers, adjunct professors, make about 10% of his salary for 500% of his workload makes him an expert in the creation of inequality. Nonetheless, something quite unfortunate is happening as Universities invest in such inequality leadership. Those of us at the bottom of the pyramid are being led by the metaphorically blind.

People who make six figure base salaries with additional benefits worth more,  can not comprehend the world of most Americans in 2014. I have experienced such social-reality-blindness firsthand amongst members of the medical profession. A few years ago when an incompetent doctor lost a test result of mine, a colleague could not understand why I had a problem. "It only costs $1000 for the test...just go get another one" he advised me. I guess medical school did not put people into six figures of debt back when he finished. I wish I could say he was an isolated example, but he is the norm. The wealthy have become a different species. Asking the rich to produce important work in poverty is akin to asking men to describe the process of giving birth from a personal perspective. It simply doesn't make sense. Yet the rich are the self appointed leaders of most organizations working against poverty.

I personally see the dismal outcome of such well heeled leadership in my own involvement in civil society. Nothing made me think the fight against student debt peonage was more hopeless than a moment when I saw an older Professor tell young students that debt refusal would have no real consequences for them. Obviously, the man hadn't looked for a job in the last quarter century, or he would have realized that at present debt refusal is financial suicide.

I believe at some point a reversal will come over the situation before us. Sheer population numbers will push the wealthy into a new social role; and that role will not include robbing the taxpayer blind pretending to care about poverty. Until then, I believe one of the best thing we can do is amp up the social disdain for such hypocrites. We don't need leaders and scholars of poverty and inequality who do nothing but perpetuate it.