We may not know it, but we are in a great position. In a Jan. 6 Washington Post piece, columnist James K. Glassman notes that America's booming economy has brought us to an era in which we can turn our attention away from politics and war and toward art, in the broadest and best sense of the word.
Not to wring hands unduly, but as I watch many of my classmates line up at Wall Street investment firms and white-shoe law practices to cash in on their four-year, high-yield Ivy League investment known to many as Dartmouth College, I am struck by how far from what Glassman terms the art of living these pursuits really are.
In this time of economic prosperity, the attraction to Wall Street seems obvious, but before we reflexively jump into $50,000-plus investment banking jobs, we should first take a hard look at what drives us there. In many cases, we could do a lot better for ourselves by abstaining from the money market madness.
In a 1780 letter from John Adams recently resurrected by Glassman, the great patriot wrote: "I must study politics and war, that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy ... in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain."
Today, fellow students, we are the beneficiaries of this chain. Indeed, we should honor our predecessors by taking advantage of an amazing opportunity.
U.S. inflation is at its lowest rate in 32 years, even despite an astounding growth rate, and the Dow is sky high. We may even have a federal budget surplus this year, and we're faced with the problem of what to do with it. Times are certainly good.
But we also learned last month that college civic apathy is at record highs. The University of California at Los Angeles survey says we're bored in class, care too little about politics and do too little about what we do care about.
The survey is probably dead right. For me at least, many are the classes missed, thoughts unthought and deeds undone. While I do feel a bit of remorse for these facts, they seem the logical result of our times.
In times as good as these, it is easy to feel that there is little to care about -- if it ain't broke, why read the manual? A better term for apathy, say some, may indeed be satisfaction. After all, there is certainly a cost-benefit analysis that happens every time the alarm goes off for an early class.
When the problems presented seem small and remote, as they often do in times of prosperity, the tools for solving them found in the classroom just aren't as attractive. In short, the alarm clock loses and we go back to bed. Sometimes there are good enough reasons not to go to class, says one friend who likes me believes a nice day is often one of them.
But what happens when we don't care about the macro-picture? Apparently, in the presence of soaring corporate profits and high investment dividends, we go straight to the money.
To be bored by politics or an occasional class is not necessarily wrong. What should sound bells and flash lights, though, is the route on which this apathy is leading many of us. In an unprecedented time in American history when due to a forceful economy we college students truly have the liberty to follow whatever idiosyncratic whim we have, we are instead opting for the omnipotent, and in these times omnipresent, dollar. For the most part, we at Dartmouth are not only abandoning activism but we are also bypassing the Ph.D. for the NYSE, plays and paintings for pinstripes and portfolios.
This is a sorrowful by-product of the current American economic juggernaut. Maybe the reason for this trend is that in our current economic boom we've tasted the societal ambrosia of prosperity and can now hardly imagine anything different. There is today indubitably a lot of money to be made on Wall Street, and in some cases that money is doing a lot of good.
In 1997, the average compensation for a Wall Street banker was $280,000. Not only is that a heckuva lot of money, it's also a full $120,000 or 75 percent more than the average compensation in 1996. Surely the temptation to push our current personal and societal prosperity indefinitely into the future is a strong one.
We must, however, consider our history before we envision our future. To their credit, our generational predecessors like Alan Greenspan, Bill Clinton and the Republican Congress have shaped a blistering economy. But as soon-to-be-graduates in this era, we have a responsibility to ensure that money is not a self-perpetuating societal goal.
One Wall Street moneyman in a Washington Post article recently likened handing out six-digit annual bonuses to distributing food on a life raft. If ever there was a telltale sign of monetary dependency! I think there are 12-step programs for other dependencies of that scale.
We should take care to see that as a society we value happiness and not the mercurial monetary means by which it is sometimes achieved. If we continue on the path that led our current leaders to grace us with our present gift -- and indeed that is what our current economy is -- their work will have been for naught.
Past politicians and economists did not dedicate their lives to grandiose visions of American economic prosperity to burden their descendants with the same task.
They did so for us to enjoy it. Just ask John Adams.
Fellow students, seize this fortunate opportunity. It may never come again.
We now have the fruits for which our fathers and grandfathers toiled. Free America from the dangerous burden of dollar-worship and do them the pleasurable favor of eating heartily.
