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Yes, the poor are ignorant and should work hard, make money, buy property, then vote. It is far better than poor people voting themselves breads and circuses from the state coffer, which eventually destroys all democracies.Feudalism was a perfectly functional system for centuries.
So was theocracy accompanied by human sacrifice. I'm not sure I would appreciate all of its benefits, though.
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Yes, the poor are ignorant and should work hard, make money, buy property, then vote. It is far better than poor people voting themselves breads and circuses from the state coffer, which eventually destroys all democracies.Feudalism was a perfectly functional system for centuries.
it was perfectly functional for:
1-fending off vikings/magyars/Kings
2-keeping poor people poor and marginalized
3-keeping rich people rich w/o them having to work hard or change anything
other than that... not so great.
The functionality of a system depends not only on the country and the population, but the nearby countries and their systems. As it is, there is a very good example of feudalism: Russia. On top is the tsar, then below him are people awarded various important roles based on their loyalty to him. I believe the term is "roof", i.e. who will protect you from backlash when you do things that are illegal or someone wants to get rid of you. Functioning? Not really. The entire country is surviving by selling natural resources. They are on the verge of state bankruptcy even so. The infrastructure is not getting improved, indeed far less is happening now than in the late Soviet era. And on and on it goes. At least for that example, feudalism doesn't seem to be doing very well.
1-fending off vikings/magyars/Kings
2-keeping poor people poor and marginalized
3-keeping rich people rich w/o them having to work hard or change anythingother than that... not so great.
By his worldview, working great!
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Hurray for Public School !!
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My two-cents; take it for what you will:
My sister went to Duke; a scholarship paid about half the total cost, and she got loans to pay for the rest. She didn't even have to start paying on the loans until four years after graduation, by which time she was able to refinance the loan since she could now afford to treat it like a car loan rather than a mortgage. A few years ago she went to grad school at Harvard, and despite a very nice job with very good pay (around $70k), she paid about 10% of the tuition and they gave her a stipend!
I went to Cornell and Carolina in the 90s; the US Army paid for all of it, 100%.
I later went to Columbia; the government paid around 60% of that, and I paid the rest.
I spent a year at Yale; the government paid 100% of the cost and gave me a paycheck while I was there.
Both my sister and I have very nice jobs now, and I'm about a year out from retirement and a 50% pension, with COLA adjustments per annum, for the rest of my life.
My point is that college is expensive, but if you take the time to really dig into the cost, then you'll find that most people will not pay more than they would at a low-end state college.
Will you always get a job, especially right after graduation, that matches your degree? Maybe not, especially if your degree is in the humanities or arts and you don't want to be an academic. Nonetheless, some of the highest paying jobs with the best benefits and best pensions are only looking for evidence of education (naturally, I'm not including technical or professional jobs, like medicine, law, or electrical engineering)--college is supposed to do two things: chiefly, to develop you as a learned individual; secondarily, to train you in an academic specialty.
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It's not entirely clear when your sister went to college or exactly what the stipend/tuition break came from. I had a good chunk of grad school paid for by my employer until I was laid off. Pretty much killed that plan.
Joining the military is a traditional way to pay for college. Of course these days, you're much more likely to see active combat and either get injured or have other troubles adjusting back to civilian life.
It also seems like you stayed in government jobs afterwards, or perhaps in the Army itself?Things have changed. Even the 90s were ~20 years ago. Costs have risen and job prospects after graduation have fallen. It's easy for us to look back at our college experiences and assume they apply today, but in many ways they really don't.
[chagrin]Thanks for the reality check. [/chagrin]
She went back right after 9/11 (Wow! That's over a decade ago!--the fog of time clouds an elderly mind). A lot of PhD programs are fully funded and pay small stipends, especially at the bigger schools.
I'm retiring from the Army in about a year.
Wow...20 years ago. And, essentially, my employer has been footing my bills. I guess I'm too far removed to really remark on the current state of education. :-/
A nation that lets education fall seriously behind will not remain relevant other than as an obstacle to a better world for the future. Just sayin'.
So all you want to do if you want an education is to risk being sent to invade somewhere for haliburtons bottom line, shot, killed, or pooping into a bag for the rest of your life while the VA defers your treatment a few months.
Nope, nothing wrong here...
She went back right after 9/11 (Wow! That's over a decade ago!--the fog of time clouds an elderly mind). A lot of PhD programs are fully funded and pay small stipends, especially at the bigger schools.
I'm afraid this is the elderly mind remembering again. Even a decade ago, maybe thirty percent of the Ph.D. students at top/bigger schools were fully funded. The percentage has dropped since then. It also depends strongly on the field one is studying -- it's much easier to get a fully-funded Ph.D. in systems engineering than it is in Russian literature or developmental psychology. But today "much easier" is still often twenty-percent or less.
Will you always get a job, especially right after graduation, that matches your degree? Maybe not, especially if your degree is in the humanities or arts and you don't want to be an academic. Nonetheless, some of the highest paying jobs with the best benefits and best pensions are only looking for evidence of education (naturally, I'm not including technical or professional jobs, like medicine, law, or electrical engineering)--college is supposed to do two things: chiefly, to develop you as a learned individual; secondarily, to train you in an academic specialty.
This, again, is the elderly mind remembering. The world has changed, and there are so many programs out there and so many new specialties that weren't there in the 90s that employers have the luxury of picking from someone with the specialty they're looking for. A friend of mine, for example, works as a senior safety and reliability engineer, based on a degree in operations research. She couldn't get an entry level job in that field today, as "safety engineering" has become a degree-granting discipline in its own right.
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So all you want to do if you want an education is to risk being sent to invade somewhere for haliburtons bottom line, shot, killed, or pooping into a bag for the rest of your life while the VA defers your treatment a few months.
Nope, nothing wrong here...
Exactly, and as horrible as that sounds, if I could go back in time and do exactly that I would knowing how badly my body has been beat-up doing manual labor (construction, carpentry, maintenence) and never making enough to make it worthwhile. I have friends who went into the service that retired after 20 years, got free educations and massive amounts of training in their fields, and who after retiring got great jobs in the outside the military making great money. I think I probably would risk all the bad for that type of life and that's sad.
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Now that I think about it, I've managed to live my entire adult life under the wing of the very socialism most Americans detest, thanks to a decision 23 years ago to enter military and government service: food, housing, medical care, education have simply always been there; I've honestly never had to worry about those things.
Both my sister and I received degrees in the humanities. My half-sister, who lives in Sweden, paid absolutely nothing for university and just received her PhD last year, though she's a scientist.
I'm of the notion that education can be had in the US, and that most graduates aren't likely walking away with actual bills that exceed the average US mortgaged home--maybe their education fully cost $100,000 or more, but after grants and scholarships, etc, does it really, truly, receipt so highly to them, personally? But I'm saying that with no real data to go off of; and trying to remember that my personal lens is over two decades old, and quite muzzy.
Jobs after college? How much of the dearth is really a problem of location? Is it possible that there are jobs but graduates aren't willing to move, or aren't willing to live, for a potentially long time, in a personally undesirable city or region?
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Now that I think about it, I've managed to live my entire adult life under the wing of the very socialism most Americans detest, thanks to a decision 23 years ago to enter military and government service: food, housing, medical care, education have simply always been there; I've honestly never had to worry about those things.
I feel much the same way, but mine starts from birth thanks to my father retiring from the Air Force. I always went to the base hospital growing up, and going into the Army after high school just continued the trend unbroken.
Exactly, and as horrible as that sounds, if I could go back in time and do exactly that I would knowing how badly my body has been beat-up doing manual labor (construction, carpentry, maintenence) and never making enough to make it worthwhile.
And if you were sitting here with one leg and traumatic brain injury you'd be envying the guy with a busted back and wishing you'd gone into carpentry.
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The truth is it is hard to find a job. But not because the system is broken or rigged in some way. We as a society have become too used to instant gratification. We currently are in the middle of many years of slow economy. That stinks and makes jobs precious. So you get what job you can. Don't wait for your ideal job. Work hard. Prove yourself. Advance.
Our grandparents are rolling in their graves listening to us. They didn't expect to like their jobs they expected to work and get paid. They did so without government safety nets like long term unemployment, insurance and retirement. We have it easy by comparison.
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Exactly, and as horrible as that sounds, if I could go back in time and do exactly that I would knowing how badly my body has been beat-up doing manual labor (construction, carpentry, maintenence) and never making enough to make it worthwhile.
And if you were sitting here with one leg and traumatic brain injury you'd be envying the guy with a busted back and wishing you'd gone into carpentry.
I agree. I know the devil that is here though. I also had a few friends in construction that are no longer here due to the job. Others I know have had horrible falls from roofs resulting in relearning to walk or losing various body parts. A friend of mine 4 years or so ago fell off of a ladder while climbing onto a one story high roof and hit his head just right and died after a week in the hospital and removal of half of his skull. My father had knee surgeries, shoulder surgeries, back surgeries and ended up dieing at 63, 5 years after going out on a partial-retirement with a huge cut in the money he would have gotten at 65. You pretty much work until you die or your health forces you to get out early with a very small retirement.
Construction is hard, dangerous work full of accidents and the work itself almost always leads to injuries to the joints. I am sure that the military is also and probably much, much more dangerous, but the perks for one far outweigh the other. Also hedging my bets would be picking the navy or air force to go into instead of being army and tossed into the thick of it all the time. I can't work 20 years in a Union and retire with any significant retirement(most of the manual labor unions use age as a guideline and lasting to 60+ is really hard to do) , military I could.
Exactly, and as horrible as that sounds, if I could go back in time and do exactly that I would knowing how badly my body has been beat-up doing manual labor (construction, carpentry, maintenence) and never making enough to make it worthwhile.
And if you were sitting here with one leg and traumatic brain injury you'd be envying the guy with a busted back and wishing you'd gone into carpentry.
And PTSD, don't forget that one :(
The truth is it is hard to find a job. But not because the system is broken or rigged in some way. We as a society have become too used to instant gratification. We currently are in the middle of many years of slow economy. That stinks and makes jobs precious. So you get what job you can. Don't wait for your ideal job. Work hard. Prove yourself. Advance.
Our grandparents are rolling in their graves listening to us. They didn't expect to like their jobs they expected to work and get paid. They did so without government safety nets like long term unemployment, insurance and retirement. We have it easy by comparison.
My great grandparents would probably be disappointed that I'm not engaging in unionization efforts enough. They were shot at because they were trying to fix a broken system. A system that still hasn't been fixed. We need to protest and work to change the system harder. America spends twice what Canada does per capita on health, yet Canada has fully funded socialist medic. Why is that? It's because of leeches all over the system, people who are actively breaking it. Unfortunately every person who claims to want to remove these sort of people doesn't seem to identify them correctly. They continuously claim that it's poor people that are the problem when it's insurance companies price fixing and engaging in monopolist practices.
Every single study has shown that "instant gratification" talk about younger generations was shit. You know how people generations ago totally waited for good things by snorting cocaine by the bucket full, given that drug use of all illegal substances beside pot has been falling consistently every year since the 80s.
Seriously your position is stupid and based either already being born into good living conditions or willful ignorance.
Paying lawyers out of the damages instead of by the hour gives rise to two radically different systems. Health care always has to deal with unhappy people, but if they risk getting sued for a thousand billion dollars for the slightest infraction means the threat of getting sued will be the primary problem for the health care system, which builds a market for legal insurance, which raises costs all over, and so on and so forth. So, yes, you WILL spend more on health care than Canada does, no matter what you do. And by the way, in Canada, lawyers are paid by the hour, as I understand.
Paying lawyers out of the damages instead of by the hour gives rise to two radically different systems. Health care always has to deal with unhappy people, but if they risk getting sued for a thousand billion dollars for the slightest infraction means the threat of getting sued will be the primary problem for the health care system, which builds a market for legal insurance, which raises costs all over, and so on and so forth. So, yes, you WILL spend more on health care than Canada does, no matter what you do. And by the way, in Canada, lawyers are paid by the hour, as I understand.
Something you're forgetting is price fixing by insurance multiplying American hospital bills by 10 to 20 times that of other first world countries.
The biggest problem we have is nonproperty owners voting. Biggest mistake we ever made. I don't care if they are black, jew, muslim, martian, and/or gay.you're an equal opportunity oligarch.
Darn Tootin!
The problem with government is that is very easy to take and waste money that other people earn.
-The problem has been pointed out by several economists. We live in a world where labor intensive low paying jobs can not be outsourced, but neither will they pay a living wage...at the same time STEM type jobs still exist and pay handsome. What does not exist, in the west, is the middle class manufacturing jobs, in the numbers it once did.
-China, where I live, is crowded with workers who migrate from rural poor areas (and I mean POOR less than $200 a month salaries) to work in death traps making your mobile phones and other goods for 4-5000RMB a month ($800). Considering the utter hell they live, if the Chinese weren't culturally obsessed with money, and paying for their children and parents at the same time, they'd all stay in the country.
-In addition, the military option, although fine for the individual is largely insane, the US in NOT North Korea, and requiring individuals to go through the army simply gives us a bloated military.
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The problem with government is that is very easy to take and waste money that other people earn.
Yes, yes. Taxation is theft, sweat of your brow, so on and so forth.
Here's the thing...the problems associated with having NO GOVERNMENT are much, much worse.
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The problem with government is that is very easy to take and waste money that other people earn.Yes, yes. Taxation is theft, sweat of your brow, so on and so forth.
Here's the thing...the problems associated with having NO GOVERNMENT are much, much worse.
but.....but.....but....anarcho-capitalism?
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So was theocracy accompanied by human sacrifice. I'm not sure I would appreciate all of its benefits, though.Yes, the poor are ignorant and should work hard, make money, buy property, then vote. It is far better than poor people voting themselves breads and circuses from the state coffer, which eventually destroys all democracies.Feudalism was a perfectly functional system for centuries.
I forget the /sarcasm
Paying lawyers out of the damages instead of by the hour gives rise to two radically different systems. Health care always has to deal with unhappy people, but if they risk getting sued for a thousand billion dollars for the slightest infraction means the threat of getting sued will be the primary problem for the health care system, which builds a market for legal insurance, which raises costs all over, and so on and so forth. So, yes, you WILL spend more on health care than Canada does, no matter what you do. And by the way, in Canada, lawyers are paid by the hour, as I understand.If you have to pay lawyers by the hour, rather than out of the damages, poor people can't sue.
And various attempts at tort reform have had negligible effects on the cost of either healthcare or health insurance.
Exactly. Then people can't sue. And in the rest of the world, we would consider that a GOOD thing. The effects of a lot less people suing others would be dramatic and largely positive. Still, Americans usually have a blind spot right there. They usually can't even think the thought that this might be a good thing. I guess it's the everpresent dream of being able to sue McDonalds for eight million dollars for having too hot coffee.
If this was instituted, lawyers could still work pro bono, right?
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Exactly. Then people can't sue. And in the rest of the world, we would consider that a GOOD thing. The effects of a lot less people suing others would be dramatic and largely positive. Still, Americans usually have a blind spot right there. They usually can't even think the thought that this might be a good thing. I guess it's the everpresent dream of being able to sue McDonalds for eight million dollars for having too hot coffee.
If this was instituted, lawyers could still work pro bono, right?
Before you go any further about the mcdonalds hot coffee case, you might want to educate yourself about the matter rather than making yourself look stupid.
people don't have to pay a ton for a four year degree.
go to community college for two years (it's cheap!) get your associate's degree. then, transfer to a state school for your last two years.
presto, you just saved HALF of your costs, and got the best part of the college experience.
also, and here's something to think about: major in something that will get you a job. Sciences, math, engineering, medicine. the stuff people are hiring for. yeah, the economy sucks in general, but there are plenty of sectors and regions there there is growth. put yourself THERE and you'll probably do better than most kids, who don't ever think about what life is going to be like after they graduate.
A few things. First, I did precisely what you suggest and went to a community college (while working) for the first two years. Still put me about 7k in debt. At my state land grant school (which is, granted, a research one college and more expensive than the rest of the UW system save UW-Milwaukee) a semester's tuition is 5400, and that doesn't count room and board, books or other supplies. It's EASILY 25k a year to live and go to school in Madison, and that's not even a private college.
SHIT IS EXPENSIVE!
The idea that there are just droves of students getting degrees in underwater basketweaving is a HUUUUGE fallacy that the right like to bandy about without researching. In fact, the biggest major (by about double what the next biggest) is business.
The next biggest is social science and history, remembering that things like Economics, criminology, and pre-law are in that category (and all very popular, the Econ department is growing faster than any other at my school).
If you go into the hard sciences, you basically can't get a job doing anything more sophisticated than lab manager unless you have a graduate degree, most grants for hard sciences come from the feds, and the right keeps cutting said funding.
Even a graduate degree will probably only get you a 40-50k job, and if you're like my girlfriend, about 60k in debt.
I think the bigger thing to consider is that we have a bifurcation of postsecondary education. I see nothing wrong with going to school for the love of learning, and that's really what undergraduate degrees are all about; not job training, life training.
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Exactly. Then people can't sue. And in the rest of the world, we would consider that a GOOD thing. The effects of a lot less people suing others would be dramatic and largely positive. Still, Americans usually have a blind spot right there. They usually can't even think the thought that this might be a good thing. I guess it's the everpresent dream of being able to sue McDonalds for eight million dollars for having too hot coffee.If this was instituted, lawyers could still work pro bono, right?
I was once of a similar opinion, then I came across this documentary.
Which is the most important part here? That you get the health care you need, or that you can sue for damages, if you can't have both? Honestly, with an everpresent threat of being sued, the cost of health care rises sharply, so you probably will not have both.
And as for looking stupid, do I really need to find other examples of frivolous lawsuits? Really?
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Also not every job should require any schooling as there is absolutely no need for a degree for many of them, a bit of on the job training or something more like an apprenticeship could be plenty without a decade of debt. Then again some are more happy to demand we feed the beast even as they damn it for costing them.
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Which is the most important part here? That you get the health care you need, or that you can sue for damages, if you can't have both? Honestly, with an everpresent threat of being sued, the cost of health care rises sharply, so you probably will not have both.
And as for looking stupid, do I really need to find other examples of frivolous lawsuits? Really?
It'd be more relevant to the topic (or the derail, I guess) if you could find examples of frivolous lawsuits out numbering justified ones in malpractice cases. I see no reason to believe that accessible medical care and legal redress for malpractice are mutually exclusive. Am I wrong to assume the government of Sweden provides both?
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It would be a little odd to see libertarians jumping on the bandwagon if I actually believed libertarianism was actually a coherent system. After all, if the government can't regulate business and you can't turn to the courts when they screw up ...
Actually, libertarianism is a very coherent system. It's all about avoidance of consequences.
As a libertarian surgeon, I am free to practice medicine without any training, as no one has the authority to say i actually need to know anatomy. I can set my prices how I like because no one has the authority to set aside an unconscionable contract. I can choose my patients how I like because no one has the authority to hold me to any sort of professional ethical standard.
In the event that I screw up, malpractice is not a tort, so the courts have no authority to order me to make redress or to discipline me in any way.
However, when the families of the people that I have killed on the operating table realize that there is no way under Libertopian law of dealing with me, the goverment is obliged to step in to prevent them from "using force" against me. So I can do as I please, knowing that I am absolutely immune to any consequences.
The fact that this also makes me a clinical sociopath is not relevant. It's simply a common characteristic of libertarians.
The right for me to swing my arms freely ends at someone's body and/or property.