And smoking meat.

PEBKAC: Problem exists between keyboard and chair – The acronym I’m used to.

I don’t even like basketball

In the US system, you can receive various certifications, called “degrees” indicating how much education you have received. Most US teenagers attend “high school” until about 18 years old, which completes primary education. Then, some go on to secondary education, called university or college in the US.

Most universities offer several degree programs. Typically, a 2 year “Associates degree” for trade work, 4 year “Bachelors degree” programs for white collar work. And then longer “Masters” degrees for advanced topics and even longer “Doctorate/Doctoral” programs for getting into academic research.

An MBA is a Masters of Business Administration. Typically, a 2 year program on top of a 4 year Bachelors degree in some business field like accounting, finance, management of information systems (MIS), etc. The stated purpose of an MBA program is to educate a person in the many facets of successfully running and operating a business.

However, in the US, our education system is deeply stratified by loans, and also just broken. Each higher tier of education is almost exponentially more expensive than the previous, so only fairly well off people can afford the time and money to get an MBA. And/or they go deeply into debt on loans to finance the degree. In addition, universities (which are all now run as for-profit businesses) are seen less as institutions of learning and more like indoctrination centers for training up workers while also infusing them with American business values.

This is most prevalent in Economics, which is treated like a hard science of business but is nothing of the sort. It used to be Keynesian economics, which at least has grounding in statistics, but now actually teaches a very specific interpretation of economics called Modern Monetary Theory. In this way, almost all American middle managers are indoctrinated into this, who are by that point either in deep debt and thus beholden to the MMT system, or are already wealthy and thus defenders of that system.

This has created an economic crisis in the US where MBAs are taking over companies and then applying these theories to cut labor costs, over-leverage debt, sell off assets; all to boost short term profit. All of this is at the expense of the business’ long-term viability but MMT is all an elaborate con to ensure wealth (profit) is funneled to owners while systematically pushing the costs onto the public.