US Competitive Edge

[BrianH]

Or...we could make all college education free and really get some bang for our bucks.

I am for educating people, but the only problem you have with everyone being able to go to college for free, is a bunch of people who want more buck for their bang after they have a degree. You'll have less people wanting to do lower paying jobs, and more people wanting more money for the jobs that they do. It really could be a disaster economically. We already have millions of jobs being filled by illegal immigrants because even the uneducated don't want to do the labor that illegals do...could you imagine a country filled with highly educated people? You'll have 300 million people all competing for a more limited job base and all of the lower paying jobs would be vacant for illegals. It's a great idea, but I can foresee real problems.

 

[Toro]

I don't think we should make college education free. That's subsidizing the better off.

On average, people with a college degree make ~70% more than those without. And since about two-thirds of the population does not have a degree, that those obtaining a degree will earn more money over their lifetimes, and those getting a degree generally come from better off families, perhaps we should be raising tuition and lowering taxes used to subsidize education. Either lowering taxes or increasing scholarships for the poor.

 

[BrianH]

I don't think we should make college education free. That's subsidizing the better off.

On average, people with a college degree make ~70% more than those without. And since about two-thirds of the population does not have a degree, that those obtaining a degree will earn more money over their lifetimes, and those getting a degree generally come from better off families, perhaps we should be raising tuition and lowering taxes used to subsidize education. Either lowering taxes or increasing scholarships for the poor.

Exactly

 

[Gungnir]

End the Federal Derpartment of Education.

Make State/County/Municipal Schools pay-per-entree. Do not restrict Homeschool or Private School.

Emphasize electrical vocation, networking technology, software programming, Organic and Inorganic hard sciences, mechanics, and mathematics. There is no reason why 16 year olds should not be doing basic calculus. Switch to a trimester School Year.

Clearing up the patent situation should help.

Enact the Fair Tax ©.


That article sucks; why emphasize foreigners so much and give one sentence to improving failing conditions at home? TREASON! If we can't produce enough local talent at home, should we deserve the top spot?

This is also a good reason to mandate Junior Militia Officer Training Corp (JMOTC) in all government schools. JMOTC covers PT, team sports, community activity, host of other things, and teaches the field crafts that we will need for the coming wars with Asia's Billions.

 

[editec]

I am for educating people, but the only problem you have with everyone being able to go to college for free, is a bunch of people who want more buck for their bang after they have a degree. You'll have less people wanting to do lower paying jobs, and more people wanting more money for the jobs that they do. It really could be a disaster economically. We already have millions of jobs being filled by illegal immigrants because even the uneducated don't want to do the labor that illegals do...could you imagine a country filled with highly educated people? You'll have 300 million people all competing for a more limited job base and all of the lower paying jobs would be vacant for illegals. It's a great idea, but I can foresee real problems.

Perceptive response.

Yes, that IS true.

In fact, that is one of the reasons I scoff at those libertarians, liberal, conservatives and starry-eyes idealists whose kneejerking suggestion is that the reason people aren't making it in America is because they don't have enough education.

In fact, this generation of Americans are better educated (and I mean in real terms, not just having meaningless pieces of paper) than any generation in our history.

Yet even highly educated Americans are still, in many cases, tragically underemployed.

But what I see happening to the younger generation now, really troubles me.

When I went to school, there were grants available to most of my generation.

And while many of us borrowed some money to go to school, what many kids are facing right now is graduating with staggering debt loads that virtullay assure that they will be paupers for many years while they pay back those debts.

And, if the investment capital isn't there to create new jobs for them, and if the native industry is offshored such that managment types can't get jobs because there is a dwindling class of workers to manage, then what we have is a formula for poverty that moves up the socio-economic ladder, slowly but inevitably and at an excellerating rate as the problem becomes more critical, too..

In fact, that is exactly what I think IS happening right now.

Did you guys know that the recent college grads are now the class with the highest incidence of unemployment?

The root source of poverty in America isn't a lack of skilled or ambitious workers, it is a darth of investment into prduction here in the USA to employ skilled AND unskilled workers.



We have created what I think is a vicious cycle of poverty that is sucking more and more of us into the morass of helplessness that comes of not being able to find a decent job, and not having enough money to invest to create our own incomes, either.

The working classes (which includes most professionals by the way) are in effect, the collatoral damages of a what I have come to think of as a covert class war.

 

[Gungnir]

So what is causing the need for so much debt?

 

[Toro]

So what is causing the need for so much debt?

Lack of financial discipline.

 

[Gungnir]

For university students? Not just tuition?