Radical Politics INEVITABLE As College Grads SCREWED

TL;DR

College graduates face stagnating wages and crushing debt despite following promised paths, radicalizing them toward labor organizing and left-wing politics like Zohran Mamdani's coalition.

Key Points

• 1.A massive expectation gap has radicalized college graduates. AP enrollment rose tenfold from the early 80s to 2010s, yet degrees became less valuable precisely as more students earned them, leaving grads with declining real wages after debt service.
• 2.Universities operated extractively by overpromising outcomes they couldn't deliver. The video game design degree example shows schools admitting students into programs with minuscule job markets — like Dylan Burton, who took a $18/hour testing job after $70,000 in debt — while government subsidies removed any accountability.
• 3.Fallback employer jobs at Apple and Starbucks also degraded simultaneously. Kaia Barrett, a communications grad from Towson University, watched her 'Creative' role at Apple — already a compromise — devolve into ordinary iPhone sales, making her a leader in the first Apple store to unionize in the US.
• 4.Historical precedent links elite overproduction to political revolution. The book 'End Times' attributes the Bolshevik revolution to over-educated elites locked out of livelihoods; similar dynamics triggered student riots ransacking Tory HQ in the UK after David Cameron raised tuition fees around 2010–11.
• 5.Zohran Mamdani's NYC campaign is the clearest current political signal. He won 84% of college-educated voters under 30 by framing his campaign around affordability and economics, demonstrating the electoral potency of a broad coalition spanning non-degreed and college-educated working class voters ahead of 2028.
• 6.AI is an accelerant to radicalization, not yet the primary cause. Most job stagnation described is pre-ChatGPT; however, the 2023 Hollywood writers strike showed AI's emotional potency, and software engineers — told 'learn to code' as a golden ticket — are now adopting worker-solidarity language as AI threatens their own jobs.