If the Clinton’s did anything at all for American political life it was proving that once you had divested yourself of a sense of shame or any impulse to tell the truth then the world was your oyster. For instance:
“There is something wrong when the top 25 hedge fund managers make more than all the kindergarten teachers in America combined.” —Hillary
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) October 25, 2015
This is nothing more than garden variety class warfare and it is hypocrisy on stilts.
Let’s take the class warfare attack first.
Kindergarten teachers are public employees. They may or may not provide a useful function besides being dutiful soldiers in the various public employee unions. Kindergarten is mandatory in 43 states but the trend towards mandatory kindergarten is less than 40 years old. Quite honestly, kindergarten is simply a part of the public day care spectrum that is striving to take children from the home at age 3 or 4, via pre-K, and mold them into nice little socialist workers. The nation did very well before the spread of mandatory kindergarten and would do just as well without it.
From a wage standpoint, though, kindergarten teachers are paid pretty much what they are worth to the communities employing them. When you look at the entry requirements and workload of a kindergarten teacher you can see they are actually paid at a premium in relation to similarly credentialed and experienced peers. More to the point, kindergarten teachers, for the most part, work in that field because either a) they feel a particular calling to work with young children or b) it was their best offer.
I have my gripes with the financial industry but hedge fund managers are only paid a lot of money if they they make a lot of money for the funds they manage — that would be private money voluntarily given to them rather than tax money extracted at gunpoint. There is training and education that is required to achieve entree into that industry and drive, ambition, and determination are a prerequisite to being successful.
The most loathsome part of the argument is that Hillary is feigning some connection with parents and with middle class parents. Hillary is a horrible example of motherhood and I feel sorry for Chelsea for never being anything more than a vanity child conceived to make the Clinton marriage look less pathological. Hillary has relentlessly vacuumed cash from every position she has held and she has been nothing but a leech on society since the late 1980s, sucking up tax dollars and donations to non-profits while doing nothing. Hillary Clinton could fund a battalion of kindergarten teachers herself but she has made no effort to do so.
And, of course, Chelsea is married to a hedge fund manager.
Kindergarten teachers and hedge fund managers occupy a different place in American society and economic life. I’m not all that sure that either are huge value-adds but they exist and they are compensated according to what their employers think they are worth. Clinton’s statement is supposed to represent some kind of compassion and insight but in reality it is a call to greed and covetousness on the part of others and effectively ignores the huge smoking log in her own eye.
xx
Join the conversation as a VIP Member