Joe Therrien, a New York City public – school drama teacher, wasn’t satisfied with neither the educational system nor his life, so he decided to pursue his lifelong dream: he went to the University of Connecticut to earn a MFA… in puppetry.
Apart from metaphors and Metallica seminal albums, I didn’t realize there were actual degrees mastering the intricate discipline of puppetry. It has to be one, at least. Otherwise, how could you create such gems as Thunderbirds, Team America and yes, Sesame Street and the Muppets?
So, Mr. Therrien discovered after dropping everything to pursue his dreams, that the job market wasn’t so hot for his new, highly specialized skills, and feeling painted into a corner, he did what was expected for a person in those circumstances: he took to the streets and joined the #ocuppywallstreet movement. Not surprisingly at all, Therrien’s puppeteering expertise has found a proper outlet to thrive.
Therrien personal demands go as this: he wants the US Government to forgive his student loans and land him a more steadier job than he currently has (Apparently, NYC cannot hire him with the same conditions as before). And why not? If the Obama administration bailed out Wall Street from its repeated fiascoes, why not trying to bail out its individual citizens? Are they less deserving of a bailout?
That’s the downside of current system: as the great Frédéric Bastiat once pointed, “the State is the great fiction through which everyone endeavours to live at the expense of everyone else”. The whole banking and stock system can mess day in and day out its shenanigans, knowing that they are “too big to fail” and someone else (i.e., the taxpayer) will pick the tab. Fairly logically, people like Mr. Therrien, that make bad choices with their careers can expect and demand the caring touch of the government and keep on living at the expense of the taxpayers.
If we want to get out of the deep hole we dug us into, the fancy notion that CEOs must get paid by the company’s stock performance, instead of its growth, must disappear for good. That model is completely unsustainable. Payment of high bonuses, even when companies fail, only because there is some bailout money handed by the government, is downright roguish. That said, it would become clearer to see that New York City’s taxpayers owe Mr. Therrien absolutely nothing, and he’s still stuck with $ 36.000 that anyhow is going to remind him that his plan to get paid an additional yearly $ 10.000 in the city’s school system, is still backfiring the big time.
What’s baffling me is the uncanny ability of the big education racket to pass completely unnoticed in its pretentions to provide “knowledge” that translate into big, shiny, beautiful diplomas but not a serious chance to land their owners a job (unless the government makes an opening). A Master of Fine Arts in Puppetry? How? The big education racket answers these questions if you cross its palm with US$ 36.000, what costs about 90 to 130 puppet camps entry fees.
Almost four years ago, Joe Wurzelbacher, an unemployed plumber who dream big, confronted the presidential hopeful Barack Obama, who patronized him by telling that it was necessary to “spread the wealth”, specially if he decided to make it big pursuing his entrepreneurial dreams and earn more than $ 250 K a year. Now we know why: to pay both the Wall Street fat cat banker’s bonuses and (hopefully for him), Joe the Puppeteer.
