Elections and Money

One thing is clear from the case of billionaire Michael Bloomberg who won the election for mayor of New York City after spending over $102 million ($175 per vote), outspending his opponent, City Comptroller William Thompson, Jr., 10 to 1—elections can be and are often bought. The media see to that. A candidate gets media time and media attention by buying the time, by spending more than anyone else. And that’s what wins the election; it’s as simple as that. And it’s scary and it’s frightening to think that our political leaders—who make decisions that affect our everyday lives--are not necessarily the best qualified, the most intelligent, the most credible, the most noble; they’re simply the richest.

So what do we tell our students about the relative importance of knowledge versus money? Clearly, if you want to be a politician in the United States money is the more important—at least that’s what got lots of others elected. But here’s the really frightening thing: we put these people in office. We did and do what the media tell us to do.

Yes, to paraphrase Pogo who said it a long time ago, we have met the enemy and it is us.

The Misuse of Money

I see that David Rockefeller has pledged to give $100 million to Harvard University, a university that has an endowment of $28 billion and that spends only an infinitesimal part of this endowment (rumored to be about 5%) while it earns interest in the double digits (close to 17% in 2006). Education is surely a worthy cause and I’d be the last to suggest that education is not the place for philanthropy. And I think it’s a good thing that a large part of this $ will go to cultural studies. But couldn’t that money have been better spent on colleges and other educational institutions that really need it? Does a university with an endowment of $28 billion really need another $100 million? I think not. And I think that donations like this should not be viewed positively (as does the press and, I fear, the general public) but rather as the poor use of money that it is.