The Awful NP Cycle

A very discouraging thread on idealist.com: Entry-level position impossible? Highly qualified people can't find NP jobs. The most obvious reason for this is that NPs have no money. And NPs have no money because the gov't cuts taxes and shifts billions to the "defense" budget. This means NPs can't hire anyone to do the work of lobbying the government and society more generally to value (and fund) NP work. So NPs have no money. And NPs have no money because the gov't cuts taxes...

What a brutal cycle. And this is what I'm talking about when I second-guess my desire to go into NP work: this kind of BS would just piss me off daily and make me perpetually frustrated. The appeal of law is that I'd be higher on the "food chain," so to speak, and would be more likely to be in a better position to address these kinds of structural, public policy issues. That's what I'm thinking, anyway, but am I just deluded to think that having a JD will put me in a better position to effect real change on a macro level?

Posted August 13, 2002 12:18 PM | law school