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Old 02-20-2013, 07:11 PM
 
Location: Dublin, CA
3,807 posts, read 4,304,046 times
Reputation: 3989

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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ringo1 View Post
Yeah, you're right. Only the wealthy should obtain higher education.

Blame those so-called 'job creators' on their insane demands for working at McDonalds.
Nope. Not at all. I'm not wealthy, yet I've sent 2 of my 3 children to college and paid for it myself. No loans, grants, etc. All out of my own pocket and you want to know how? Wait for it...I planned for it. Wow, novel concept huh? I didn't ask one single tax payer in this country, to pay more money in taxes, to send my children to school. Not one. And before all you limp wristed liberals start: Nope. They went to private schools their entire lives; no public schools.

See, if people who have children PLAN, you know some forsight, and not just spread their legs and pull it out, we wouldn't have the problems and issues we have now. So, because you cannot plan or think, why penalize me and others? Why should I pay more money in taxes, so your children can go to college? You had them, you pay for them. Its a very simple, easy, concept liberals cannot wrap their heads around. They have them alright, and WE pay for them.
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Old 02-20-2013, 07:39 PM
 
7,300 posts, read 6,785,980 times
Reputation: 2916
Quote:
Originally Posted by pantin23 View Post
Thanks to conservative free trade politicians, all of the jobs that don't require one were sent to China.
Exactly, and right wingers seem to want more of that.
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Old 02-20-2013, 07:42 PM
 
7,300 posts, read 6,785,980 times
Reputation: 2916
Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil306 View Post
Nope. Not at all. I'm not wealthy, yet I've sent 2 of my 3 children to college and paid for it myself. No loans, grants, etc. All out of my own pocket and you want to know how? Wait for it...I planned for it. Wow, novel concept huh? I didn't ask one single tax payer in this country, to pay more money in taxes, to send my children to school. Not one. And before all you limp wristed liberals start: Nope. They went to private schools their entire lives; no public schools.

See, if people who have children PLAN, you know some forsight, and not just spread their legs and pull it out, we wouldn't have the problems and issues we have now. So, because you cannot plan or think, why penalize me and others? Why should I pay more money in taxes, so your children can go to college? You had them, you pay for them. Its a very simple, easy, concept liberals cannot wrap their heads around. They have them alright, and WE pay for them.
And you did all that on a minimum wage job? Wow. I love the way right wingers bang their chest about everything as if only right wingers had done something in their lives lol

By the way, it's spelled foresight.
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Old 02-20-2013, 07:42 PM
 
Location: Midwest City, Oklahoma
14,845 posts, read 8,306,050 times
Reputation: 4590
As the article says, the problem is degree inflation. Basically, a very large percentage of the population has degrees, but only a certain percentage of jobs are technical jobs that require a degree in the first place.


I used to have this argument with my uncle all the time, because he believed that every single person in America should have a college degree. And effectively, if you don't acquire a degree, then you deserve absolutely nothing.


So I would reply, lets pretend that every single person had a degree. Then who would work at McDonald's? Who would work at the gas stations? Grocery stores, retail stores, you name it.

The vast majority of jobs do not require a formal education, because the vast majority of jobs are effectively unskilled jobs, and do not require any sort of education above being able to read and to count money(and many don't even require that).


So the problem is, lets pretend you are an employer, and you have a large number of people applying for a job. Well, if a large percentage of the people applying have a college degree, even if the job doesn't require a degree, you are probably only going to hire the people with the college degrees. Thus, anyone without a degree probably won't even be able to find even the most unskilled job(at least in certain job markets). Thus, a college degree only becomes necessary because there are so many people with a college degree.


The question of course is, why are there so many people with college degrees in the first place? And is it a good thing to have so many people with college degrees? And at what expense?



Lets not even discuss college for a moment. Lets just discuss K-12 education for a minute. In Washington D.C. they spend nearly $30,000 a year

D.C. Public Schools Spend Almost $30,000 Per Student


Lets pretend that instead of spending $30,000 a year for 13 years to send kids from kindergarten through 12th grade. They instead, took the $30,000 a year, and put it in an investment account netting 5% interest. By the time the kid would normally graduate, he would have $536,648 sitting in his account.

If we examine college, its a little more difficult to know a good number, because local property taxes subsidize the colleges. Plus, there are grants, and financial aid, and scholarships that can drastically reduce the price. But I'll use this guide from the University of North Carolina as a general template to the costs of college.

Tuition and fees


If we look at only the things necessary for the college degree(tuition, books, fees, and maybe health insurance). That is a little over $31,000 a year. And that is assuming that you don't take out any loans at all to pay for college. If you are going to school in-state, the difference in price is about $21,000 a year, paid for by state taxes. On top of that, most people will qualify for some sort of assistance. Which means the actual out-of-pocket costs might only be a few thousand, but the real cost to taxpayers might be as much as $30,000 a year or more(pell grants, etc).

Thus, as a general rule, we can probably tack on another $30,000 a year for four years of college education to the original sum from the 13 years of K-12. And the actual sum after 17 years would then become, $781,603, that effectively the state has paid out(if you factor in what would be interest on the money over the same period).

If you were then to argue that, many of those years while they were in high-school/college, that they could have been working. Even at minimum wage. The total real cost of school to taxpayers, to individuals, and to the economy, could add up to over $1 million.


And lets not even discuss the fact that Biden wants every child to start attending preschool. As well as the assistance that already exists for sending children to preschool.



If you contrast all of this with say, home-school. Which on average costs something like $150 a year. And on average has far better outcomes. And the availability of information through the internet, should be transforming education and making it cheaper. But its not. Because the truth is, education is a racket. There is just too much money to be made right now in education, and they have convinced people that the government should continue to funnel money into a system that is to a large extent unnecessary, and in many ways, harmful.

The reason we do it, isn't because it helps our economy. The reason we do it, is because of our obsession with equality. There is the belief that, if the government didn't spend huge amounts of money in education, that it would perpetuate certain groups to stay forever at the bottom, and other groups(who can afford higher education), to forever stay at the top. I'm not convinced that that is true in an absolute sense, but I can understand why people would feel that way. I mean, without affirmative-action for instance, Obama would not be the president of the United States of America. What would he be doing instead? Probably living a relatively meager existence. Maybe climbing as high as the manager of one of the nicer hotels in Hawaii.

Last edited by Redshadowz; 02-20-2013 at 07:53 PM..
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Old 02-20-2013, 08:03 PM
 
2,732 posts, read 3,601,948 times
Reputation: 1982
Quote:
Originally Posted by no1brownsfan View Post
I truly think that the way it is currently set up is a racket!
It is a racket. Why? Because "the powers that be" prolonged the education so that people graduate later in life. College could be done by 18, or even younger. It's crazy, you have people still in college in their 40's and they have never been anywhere or lived life.

Hell, look at the letters people wrote to each other in the 1800's. Many of those people never went to college, but they write much better then people today who went to college and have a degree in English.


Quote:
Originally Posted by no1brownsfan View Post
And I will be the first to say that college isn't for everyone. Not everyone is cut out to be a doctor, or lawyer...ect...ect...

It's not just that, but in order for a modern civilization to function, you NEED plumbers, roofers, auto mechanics, home remodelers, and other blue collar tradesman.

Unfortunately, pretentious status seeking parents these days steer their kids away from blue collar jobs that are largely unaffected by outsourcing, are relatively stable, and cost hardly nothing to get into (free if you become an apprentice) compared to shelling out 200k to become a doctor.

Last edited by calicali01; 02-20-2013 at 08:15 PM..
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Old 02-20-2013, 08:35 PM
 
Location: 500 miles from home
33,942 posts, read 22,752,464 times
Reputation: 25817
Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil306 View Post
Nope. Not at all. I'm not wealthy, yet I've sent 2 of my 3 children to college and paid for it myself. No loans, grants, etc. All out of my own pocket and you want to know how? Wait for it...I planned for it. Wow, novel concept huh? I didn't ask one single tax payer in this country, to pay more money in taxes, to send my children to school. Not one. And before all you limp wristed liberals start: Nope. They went to private schools their entire lives; no public schools.

See, if people who have children PLAN, you know some forsight, and not just spread their legs and pull it out, we wouldn't have the problems and issues we have now. So, because you cannot plan or think, why penalize me and others? Why should I pay more money in taxes, so your children can go to college? You had them, you pay for them. Its a very simple, easy, concept liberals cannot wrap their heads around. They have them alright, and WE pay for them.
WTF are you talking about? The topic of THIS THREAD is the requirement of a college degree.

Yet, here you ago, another Tepublican Gynecologist, spouting off about spreading my legs.

I probably make more than you ~ you freak.
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Old 02-20-2013, 08:37 PM
 
Location: 500 miles from home
33,942 posts, read 22,752,464 times
Reputation: 25817
Quote:
Originally Posted by calicali01 View Post
It is a racket. Why? Because "the powers that be" prolonged the education so that people graduate later in life. College could be done by 18, or even younger. It's crazy, you have people still in college in their 40's and they have never been anywhere or lived life.

Hell, look at the letters people wrote to each other in the 1800's. Many of those people never went to college, but they write much better then people today who went to college and have a degree in English.





It's not just that, but in order for a modern civilization to function, you NEED plumbers, roofers, auto mechanics, home remodelers, and other blue collar tradesman.

Unfortunately, pretentious status seeking parents these days steer their kids away from blue collar jobs that are largely unaffected by outsourcing, are relatively stable, and cost hardly nothing to get into (free if you become an apprentice) compared to shelling out 200k to become a doctor.
Yah. So they can get those great manufacturing jobs that are unionized and pay good money. Oh wait.
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Old 02-20-2013, 08:44 PM
 
Location: NJ
18,665 posts, read 20,104,409 times
Reputation: 7315
Quote:
Originally Posted by calicali01 View Post
Unfortunately, pretentious status seeking parents these days steer their kids away from blue collar jobs that are largely unaffected by outsourcing, are relatively stable, and cost hardly nothing to get into (free if you become an apprentice) compared to shelling out 200k to become a doctor.
True, we eliminate most of our blue collar spots due to robots, not outsourcing now. One of our subsidiaries, which is even better than most in terms of efficiency, makes more product now with 90 production people than 360 made at the same corp in 1983.

We will eventually be able to bring that to 75, without reducing output.

Mfg output has been very stable, but not the headcount. I'm on the mgmt side, and truthfully, to stay employed in mfg for even 1 or 2 decades today, you better be amongst the top 20% of staff regarding training, certification, productivity, work ethic, and still the pay, while better than a McJob, will be lower than even the most menial, staff level white collar job at the facility.
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Old 02-20-2013, 09:24 PM
 
Location: Alameda, CA
7,605 posts, read 4,885,352 times
Reputation: 1438
Quote:
Originally Posted by middle-aged mom View Post
I thought all liberals were on the dole.
I also know a lot of liberals who are doing quite well financially because of their dedication to their careers; many of whom have benefited from a quality college education.
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Old 02-20-2013, 09:51 PM
Status: "You have two ears and one mouth for a reason" (set 14 hours ago)
 
Location: Metro Detroit, Michigan
30,337 posts, read 25,437,575 times
Reputation: 29038
Quote:
Originally Posted by bobtn View Post
Mfg output has been very stable, but not the headcount. I'm on the mgmt side, and truthfully, to stay employed in mfg for even 1 or 2 decades today, you better be amongst the top 20% of staff regarding training, certification, productivity, work ethic, and still the pay, while better than a McJob, will be lower than even the most menial, staff level white collar job at the facility.
Hard to say. We've successfully shoveled most of the smart kids into college halls where their instilled with the "liberal way". Parents told them honest work isn't a noble pursuit, so whose going to be programming, maintaining, servicing, installing and building these robots? Engineers are good at drawing stuff. Depending on their willingness to "enter the trenches" and get their hands dirty, many are terrible at troubleshooting issues, let alone getting the most out of their very expensive equipment. It's hard to pay your white collar staff well when your robots aren't cranking out enough widgets to cover their expense, or match the competition. Without actually having a production background, they have a lot of catching up to do in the way of reaching peak productivity. Plenty of run of the mill floor rats pull quite a nice buck because they know the field inside and out and make their bosses rich. But we'll keep that a secret from the parents and young people. Let them enjoy their time studying philosophy and stuff... Real world applications of hard skills are for the peasants.
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