If every American were to have a chance to educate him or herself in whichever field he or she most desired - and by that I don't just mean the professorial classic adademics, but also pilots, EMTs, carpenters, and so forth - Is that the best way to realize the American dream? Does that give everyone an opportunity to pursue happiness? Is it a superior system to providing opportunities only to those who have money? If not, why so?
We do all have the opportunity to educate ourselves and that's what allows those of us from humble origins to succeed in attaining the Dream. What holds many back is baggage accumulated from prior poor choices, lack of ambition, misplaced priorities, and haphazard parenting.
I don't think a person needs money for a good education, unless they want a professional job like engineering, doctor, etc. There's enough info on the web so a person with ambition can learn about anything. A good education would definitely be better of course. But, I think the American dream may be had without being in debt forever.
Qft! If you can't afford to go to college something is wrong. When I did my taxes last year I found if I had not purchased weed and alcohol and energy drinks and fast food etc. I could have went to school. And that's with a kid to raise Americans are just spoiled and begging for socialism cause they are greedy -Yuri
This is completely ignorant when it comes to any professional scientific field like Chemistry, Engineering, Biology, physics, or any other kind of stem field for the most part. Good luck publishing research or getting your foot in the door at any major scientific job without a bachelors degree from a good university. I'm not saying you can't have a good education without college: I am saying it's very unlikely you'll have a very successful career in a a scientific field without some formal education and a good degree. I'm not saying that a degree is the only thing you need because you need a lot of stuff beyond that, but it is a definite requirement for most stem positions. It's a matter of what you want to do. If I wasn't so interested in Chemistry I would probably be going to a trade school for something so I didn't have to pay so much for school and still could end up with a decent job. Fortunately my grandparents are paying for most of my schooling, otherwise I'm not sure if I would be getting a Chem degree. Also, I can personally tell you that I would not be nearly as intelligent as I am today without a formal education in chemistry. It's true that a lot of resources are out there, but I will say that my professors have been able to give me context and insight that I would otherwise not have. There's countless times where I've read 5-10 different online sources about the same topic and still struggle with issue. Then I'll go to a professor and they will explain to me exactly why I'm making certain mistakes, which is something you cannot get from an online resource. In addition I have access to research and made connections in Chemistry that wouldn't have been possible without going to school so I think it is definitely a necessity for me. Personally, I think too many people go to college though who would be better off looking for low skilled- medium skilled employment instead of floating by in school or dropping out eventually.
I'm not greedy. I just want 80 billion to go to funding education instead of funding never ending wars and military expansion. If you combine the budgets for NSA, CSI, FBI, DOD, and all the branches of military, I guarantee there is 80 billion dollars worth of cuts we could make without causing a dramatic change in our ability to fight/defend the country. Just the other day I read a post from someone who was higher up in the military's financial management. They said there were countless of cuts that were being made in other departments that could easily be applied to military installations and they would save huge amounts of money. Things like privatizing the food vendors on military bases among other things which have basically been done in so many other departments. Closing down old and redundant military outposts which are costing us ridiculous amounts of money to keep open. Start to reduce the amount of troops we have stationed all over the world, especially places where there is very little conflict. Reduce spending on r&d and create more oversight so billions aren't wasted on projects that go absolutely nowhere, which happens more often than you think. In addition let's slow down the amount of drone strikes and hellfire missiles we buy/ launch into sovereign foreign countries. Let's curb the mass surveillance programs which have been proven to be ineffective down and start to close the massive secretive branches of private contractors hired by the NSA who are shitting on our constitution well costing us a shit ton of money that we can't even know cause the budget is secret. The point is the government has the means to fund college education much more if they were to allocate money more responsibly and raise taxes moderately. there's so many government programs that can be cut which wouldn't do as much good as universal education. We should fund public universities well simultaneously setting harder standards so people really have to earn the free education and we drive down the kids getting into these colleges to much more reasonable levels.
I joined the army before I turned 17 and was in boot camp one week after my 17th birthday. I didn't finish my junior year of high school before joining. Since then, I took three community college courses paid for with cash. The rest of my education has been online. With a hell of a lot of effort, I landed a job that ended up paying six figures with a global fortune 50 company as a software engineer. 16 years of that and I quit to work for myself as an artisan craftsman doing work that I also learned all about on the Internet. The Internet has changed the world and there isn't any excuse for ignorance today. And yet, ignorance seems always with us. For people who are willing to work, the Internet provides unlimited possibilities for people to be productive, learn new skills and even market them. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
You are out there bad calling this ignorant. Not only did the person that you are insulting agree with you that for many professional positions a degree may be necessary, but it is possible to work into highly technical careers and jobs without a formal degree. It might not be easy but it is absolutely possible. Thirdly, the Internet is changing things by the day and what was true last year may well not be true next year. Not only is the Internet changing things but it is changing them very very quickly. Some pimple-faced weenie with taped glasses and a stupid role–playing game today can be a billionaire in 5 years with a great idea and the passion to make it reality. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
I was fascinated by this response. The use of the word owe, in particular. If I have your patience: Is this how you view all such public matters, including healthcare? If a fellow American is down on his luck, and say gets injured, say, and cannot afford medical bills or putting his/her children through education - is that then just too bad, I don't owe you anything, work harder? That person is outside your sphere of caring, despite being the same nationality as you? I have some personal experience with this - I dated a lovely, intelligent Oregonian exchange student in my early 20s who had to disband her engineering education and go back to USA to help pay for her mother's medicine bills. She's a receptionist, now, but could easily have been a well-paid engineer, and may be so yet. Is your argument contrary to her case that she should work harder, and be more innovative if she wants to both get an education and keep her mother alive at the same time? This experience colors my view, of course, and I freely admit to having both a strong socialist bias (since it works so well here), and a lack of deep knowledge of American culture. Personal responsibility seems to be a virtue beyond all comparison in America. You are the smith of your own destiny, and hard work is the technique to get anything. This is how you get a Michael Jordan, or a Dr. Dre, or a Donald Trump. You are not expected to give a helping hand to your countrymen, and you are also not to expect any helping hands from your countrymen. Taxes are not public funds for the good of the nation, taxes are a kind of tolerated theft. Is this an accurate observation? If no, why not? If yes, could you expand on that? Which consequences do you think it has on society to have that cultural mindset? Does it have any relevance to the current state of the nation, or not, and in either case why?
I have a further curiosity, and am very interested to hear from any American: Is it viewed as far too expensive to have publicly funded education and health care? Or is it viewed as morally wrong to pay for compatriots?
how about instead of redirecting that money we stop confiscating it from the economy. Why do you think people can't pay for school? Is school too expensive? Or are people poor? -Yuri
America has a lot of factors that will make it hard to have completely universal education but that doesn't mean there isn't a need for reform. In America we have a very large issue of the "my kid is a genius" mindset. Parents are so blinded by wanting their kid to succeed that they don't realize their kid can't handle it and isn't suited for college. This is what leads to so many kids going to school and completely failing out or just floating by. These kids take up space/time and make the system so inflated that the problems become much harder to deal with and costly. Universities have become so inflated and massive that they are hard to maintain without constantly increasing funding. Another major issue is American students unrealistic wants for a school. Schools are increasingly spending much more on administrative staff, facilities maintenance/expansion, and recruiting/advertising to new students. Schools have to spend a fortune more than they use to in these departments to actually attract kids to their colleges. As a result, college prices are going up because now all this bullshit is being so heavily funded just to get kids to go to the school and it has nothing to do with the quality of education. What we need to do in my opinion is making the requirements much stricter for public educations and greatly subsidize the cost where it's something much more reasonable, say something like 1-5000 depending on the area you live in. Essentially what you do is you have a direct federal assistance program that bypasses states. So states will still have a lot of control over schools and students will be given funds that can only be used towards school similar to how the fafsa system already works except everyone would receive aid, maybe with some reductions for really poor students. Most people estimate that full paid for free tuition would cost about 80 billion per year in the United States which is pricey for sure, so this plan would probably be much closer to 40-50 billion per year since it's not fully paid for free tuition but largely subsidized. By greatly increasing the standards for admission this will increase the quality of public universities since it will attract more people inevitably but has higher standards. I believe raising the standards across the board would also drive down the number of kids seeking a college education since they would realize that they could not get into a public education, and maybe would be more likely to go to a trade school, especially since it would be subsidized by part of the 80 billion. I also think that this would be very beneficial for people who are poor in the long run because it sends the message to poor kids that they can get a college education if they work hard enough. Currently, for many people in poverty there is very little motivation to work towards a college degree because they know it's not feasible. I don't believe this would magically turn around inter city schools or stop poverty but I think would help increase social mobility and possibly close a little bit of the major wealth gap that has been occurring over the last decade+. It would be tough to ever enact a plan like this in the U.S. because it can have many unintended consequences. First, it could ironically raise prices for schools when there is a massive influx of capital regardless of whether or not a kid is successful so state schools will spend recklessly. This is why I think any public funding increase has to go hand in hand with a massive raise in the standards for admission and possibly a modest reduction in the size of enrollment. This would hopefully decrease the amount of kids who go to school and do nothing of value with their degree. In addition this money could come with some limits on how these schools spend their money which could drive down costs and sounds very reasonable. Unfortunately, in the U.S. we have a bunch of states who would much rather deny money than make any changes to their policies even if it would most likely be overwhelmingly beneficial to the population. They do this often so that they can go to their base and say look I'm fighting for states rights which wins them political points. This is something you must understand about American politics, it is very hard to enact sweeping change on a national scale. This is why it would be impossible to get every state to comply, even if you get a large majority to support it. In addition, a large percent of Americans have a vitriolic loathing for higher education and intellectualism. You would be surprised at the shocking number of people who don't believe that "liberal" universities offer anything of value and are corrupt organizations who lie about things like Israel Palestine. There is a very real percent of our population who dislikes what they perceive as elite academics spewing an agenda, and wouldn't want their money going towards those schools. Ironically most of these places that are known for being controversially liberal are private universities, but this wouldn't stop dumbasses from complaining about their tax dollars going to liberal swine pools. You have to realize that only half our country votes really. A very large percent of these people who frequently vote are very conservative people who believe in less government, lower taxes, and often are the same group who have a distaste for higher education. It's a simple fact that very conservative people tend to show up to the polls more than very liberal people, especially when it's not a presidential election and its congressional state or local elections. This means the people who actually would be able to fund this, congress, and the people who would be able to enact it, governors, know that it would virtually be a political death wish to pass universal higher education. The reason is because the conservative base will be whipped into a frenzy by this and will show up to vote out people who voted for or enacted universal higher education, which goes against much of what they believe. I hope I've helped you to understand many of the factors as to why economically and politically it is much harder to enact universal higher education in the U.S. than other places. Hopefully, people come to their sense and see that 20-30 thousand a year for a college education is not reasonable and the only real feasible solution is more government intervention, but I don't know if that will ever be the case.
I'd trade a massive "defense" budget cut for healthcare and college in a second. too much money to be lost in cutting that stuff though.. which is why it will never happen unfortunately. big reason why guys like ron paul and bernie sanders can't get elected.
Thank you, that was a comprehensive and well-formulated post. From the whole of it, I gather that privatization seems to be a factor. How do you feel about the privatization of public services in USA, such a prisons, hospitals and education? To us in Europe, it's mind-numbingly bizarre to run those things as businesses, to be frank, and most of us don't comprehend it (which is why I'm in here asking around). There are massive economic and societal advantages to a well-educated population, and this is well documented! So, regarding privatization - as a whole, what effect do you think it has to privatize public services? Is it acceptable in some cases, such as prisons, and unacceptable in others, such as the police? To boil it down to something really simple - is it better to have a wasteful government that works inefficiently, or a private industry that cares only about the bottom line and not about the people involved? Is that even a legitimate question?
Both. College is way too expensive in many areas. For example, in NJ it is about 27k a year for state university. Think about that logically for a second. There is zero chance that any one can work off their college payments without a job that basically already requires a college degree. What's the best paying job you can reasonably get well going to school? Probably like 10-15 an hour. Let's say 12/hr which is a pretty high paying job for someone that is still in college, which is closer to about 10 when you include federal taxes. Divide 27,000 by 10 and you get 2700 hours of work. To get a sense of how much you would need to work in a year divide 2700 by 52 and you would end up with 51 hours a week. This means that in order to pay for college a student would need to simultaneously work 51 hours a week and still go to school, which is basically almost physically impossible. This means that really the only way you can feasibly get a degree is to take on a huge amount of debt, or have a family member with a large amount of money to pay it for you. This is where I believe a major problem arises. We have a system where in order to get a good paying job especially in many fields you need at least an undergrad degree. In order to get that degree a large percent of people need to take on a serious amount of debt, which often have ridiculously high interest rates. This is problematic because young people now have major financial issues that didn't once exist on the same scale. Young people aren't making major purchases like new cars, houses, etc because they need to work to pay off their student loans before they can even think about buying those things. This leads to a drop in consumption, especially of major items, which has very negative consequences for the economy. Until this problem is addressed structural issues like kids moving back to their parents house will get worse. Secondly, this creates an extreme disadvantage for impoverished people. That being said we already have things like fafsa which help to tip the scales but they don't go far enough. There is very little motivation for impoverished kids to aim for a college degree when they know it's financially not feasible for them. If you have public universities that are modestly priced then you send the message to people that they can achieve higher education even if they aren't wealthy, which is the exact opposite of the message we send kids now. Also think about this for a second. Kids will bust their asses in the hopes of getting a sports scholarship. Imagine if we raised the standard for universities well simultaneously making them much more affordable. It's essentially like making academic scholarships much more readily available for students. I believe this will drive kids to push themselves harder in academics so that they can get into the schools which are heavily subsidized. Obviously I don't think universal higher education would fix everything or be without its problems. I just think that it is better than the alternative of letting the problem continue to go on and doing nothing.
As an anarchist I believe any taxation and spending of that tax is immoral and theft. I am NOT a cold hearted bastard that does not care for my fellow man. I am the type of person who if asked would give you the shirt off of my back if you need it but that is a voluntary transaction. Taxation is not voluntary therefore if a person chooses not to participate they are ostracized by society or locked in the cage. This is immoral and wrong. I am on my phone right now so it is hard to type the full response that I would like to give you or to link to the video that I want you to see but I would like you to go to youtube and look at Stephan Molyneux's video on the drug of socialism. Also look at a lot of his other videos he is a wise man in my opinion and I have found very little that I disagree with him on.