USA Politics (redux)

[André]

This is true. We don't have minimum wage laws here in Nordic countries. It's assumed people who work full time should be payed decently. However, since the US is too oligarchic and corrupt politically to become a well organized, transparent and democratic society in the near future, $15 living wage is an important "temporary" solution to avoid wage slavery.

Indeed, Nordic countries have no minimum wage laws - just like Somalia, Egypt, Myanmar... I don't know what you're trying to prove. Countries that have minimum wage laws - like Germany, the Netherlands, France, UK and the rest of Europe, Australia, New Zealand etc are oligarchic, corrupt and practice wage slavery ?? 


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_minimum_wage

[Fëanor]

In addition to wage slavery we also have rent slavery and debt slavery.

Credit card debt is the new peonage.

[Fëanor]

     The notion that higher pay is bad for business is conservative defeatism. Your workers are my customers and my workers are your customers. Raising the bottom rate creates new jobs from higher demand while it loses others. It's a positive sum trade. Otherwise the whole country would be racing to the bottom and Mississippi would be the Land of Opportunity.

Macroeconomics is not intuitive and one doesn't understand its precepts without a certain amount of education on the subject.  (It's a little easier the quantum physics I suppose.)

[71 dB]

In addition to wage slavery we also have rent slavery and debt slavery.

Well, those even apply to the Nordic countries I am affraid... 

Indeed, Nordic countries have no minimum wage laws - just like Somalia, Egypt, Myanmar... I don't know what you're trying to prove. Countries that have minimum wage laws - like Germany, the Netherlands, France, UK and the rest of Europe, Australia, New Zealand etc are oligarchic, corrupt and practice wage slavery ?? 


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_minimum_wage

I am not trying to prove anything. I'm just saying the Nordic countries don't need minimum wage laws because people are payed more or less enough anyway. The existence of minimum wage laws isn't be all end all. The end goal is to have people payed enough to get by. How that is achieved is quite irrelevant.

[greg]

In addition to wage slavery we also have rent slavery and debt slavery.

I'm not sure about rent slavery?...
But for debt slavery, I wonder if it were possible to prevent students from getting loans for college majors that won't get people a job, if that would help.

Since from high school you are always bombarded with the message that you must go to college, so people take out massive loans to get into huge debt and choose a career path that they would prefer, but there's no jobs (or only low-paying ones). And only provide Pell Grant and loans to students majoring in stuff like STEM, health care, etc.

College is for getting a well-paying career, not for having fun learning stuff. Only the rich get that luxury. But so many people don't see the practical reality of that. And widespread debt slavery is the result.

[SimonNZ]

College is for getting a well-paying career, not for having fun learning stuff.

False.

[T. D.]

https://sports.yahoo.com/oklahoma-high-school-basketball-norman-announcers-expletives-racial-slurs-broadcast-kneel-national-anthem-protest-193448980.html

An announcer calling an Oklahoma girls high school basketball game on Thursday night hurled racial slurs and expletives directed at a team when players kneeled during the national anthem.

The Norman girls basketball team took a knee in protest — something that has become commonplace in sports across all levels — ahead of their quarterfinals matchup with Midwest City on Thursday night.

The announcer was calling the game for an online broadcast on the NFHS Network. When he started seeing the protest, the announcer took offense and started slamming the team — though appeared to not know that his microphone was still on.

They're kneeling?" The announcer said. "F***ing n******. I hope Norman gets their ass kicked ... F*** them. I hope they lose.

"They're going to kneel like that? Hell no."

The announcer, Matt Rowan, was hired by the Oklahoma Secondary Schools Activities Association. He could be heard using the racial slur twice during the anthem before the broadcast returned.

Announcer blames racism, in part, on blood sugar

Rowan put out a statement on Friday afternoon apologizing, though actually tried to blame his comments in part on spiking blood sugar and his Type 1 Diabetes.

"I made inappropriate and racist comments believing the microphone was off, however let me state immediately that is no excuse such comments should have never been uttered," Rowan said in a statement, in part. "I am a family man. I am married, have two children and at one time was a youth pastor. I continue to be a member of the Baptist church. I have not only embarrassed and disappointed my family and friends.

"I will state that I suffer Type 1 Diabetes and during the game my sugar was spiking. While not excusing my remarks it is not unusual when my sugar spikes that I become disoriented and often say things that are not appropriate as well as hurtful. I do not believe that I would have made such horrible statements absent my sugar spiking."

Apologies to Yahoo for excessive quoting. This s**t was just too funny.

[greg]

False.

False only if you're rich and have 50k+ to blow.
Otherwise, you can teach yourself many subjects online for free, without classes. Only reason I got my degree was because employers demanded it.
I could have learned the subject online, just as I have learned the most recent subject I've learned, online.

[BasilValentine]

I'm not sure about rent slavery?...
But for debt slavery, I wonder if it were possible to prevent students from getting loans for college majors that won't get people a job, if that would help.

Since from high school you are always bombarded with the message that you must go to college, so people take out massive loans to get into huge debt and choose a career path that they would prefer, but there's no jobs (or only low-paying ones). And only provide Pell Grant and loans to students majoring in stuff like STEM, health care, etc.

College is for getting a well-paying career, not for having fun learning stuff. Only the rich get that luxury. But so many people don't see the practical reality of that. And widespread debt slavery is the result.

The financial crisis of 08-09 put hundreds of thousands of homes into foreclosure and up for auction. Speculators (like Steve Mnuchin) bought them up, benefiting from government programs in taking them over and then renting them out, sometimes to the very people who had lost their shirts on the ballooning mortgages. Historically, and more obviously, redlining of real estate and denying mortgages to minorities forced many to live in prescribed inner city neighborhoods where rents were perennially artificially high because the slum lords had a clientele with systemically limited options.   

[T. D.]

If not paywalled (I'm a subscriber), the following are interesting reads:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-03-09/racial-inequality-broken-property-tax-system-blocks-black-wealth-building

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-03-10/america-s-tax-code-leaves-black-people-behind-dorothy-brown

[Karl Henning]

False.

Indeed.

[DavidW]

College is for getting a well-paying career, not for having fun learning stuff.

So anyone that enjoyed their time in college you would assume are just lying to themselves??  Maybe get out of your head for a change and think about other perspectives.

It is true that it is becoming more and more a necessity to have a college degree to have any sense of upward mobility, and that is chaining a whole generation to loan debt that is mostly too high (I have former students that pay $70k per year for college).  But that doesn't mean that college is not enlightening, educational, transformative and downright fun.  It can be all of those things.

[Karl Henning]

So anyone that enjoyed their time in college you would assume are just lying to themselves??  Maybe get out of your head for a change and think about other perspectives.

It is true that it is becoming more and more a necessity to have a college degree to have any sense of upward mobility, and that is chaining a whole generation to loan debt that is mostly too high (I have former students that pay $70k per year for college).  But that doesn't mean that college is not enlightening, educational, transformative and downright fun.  It can be all of those things.

It certainly was for me.

[Karl Henning]

It certainly was for me.

As I posted minutes before:

No great surprise, with the warming weather, I've now listened to this disc three times in two days:

Stravinsky
Le sacre du printemps (1947 version)
L'oiseau de feu (1919 version)
Jeu de cartes
LSO
Abbado

When I was in the music program at the College of Wooster, hearing the Rite for the first time (I hadn't yet seen Fantasia, for instance) changed my musical life forever and made permanent imprint on my compositional sensibility. For no particular reason, I return to it relatively seldom, but it is evergreen for me. A great, Protean piece for which my ardor never cools.
Before I was graduated from "Woo," I heard the Clevelanders play it live in Severance Hall I still remember climbing up to the "nosebleed seats." What a great night that was!

[greg]

So anyone that enjoyed their time in college you would assume are just lying to themselves??  Maybe get out of your head for a change and think about other perspectives.

No, I don't mean that it can't be that also. Just that that is a secondary thing. If people also have fun with it, then that's great.

It is true that it is becoming more and more a necessity to have a college degree to have any sense of upward mobility, and that is chaining a whole generation to loan debt that is mostly too high (I have former students that pay $70k per year for college).

Yeah. You can't afford to be idealistic when you are young, you'll either starve or become a lifelong wage slave. Only rich people can afford to do that. Poor and lower middle class people have to think practically, and they make up the majority of college students (since they are a majority of the population). So that defines what the primary purpose that college is for (not what it should be for). Fun is just a bonus.

[SimonNZ]

It surprises me that you say you have a degree. Because I think of my university education as invaluable in teaching me how to use a research library and evaluate data and sources in a highly guided and focused way rather than the haphazard way I'd previously been doing as a constantly learning self-educator. And you seem to somehow think that a bunch of Youtube bobbleheads are all one needs for information and dismiss serious journalism or scholarly research and go so far as saying we should give "equal time" to the current equivalent of flat-earthers..

[milk]

I'm not sure about rent slavery?...
But for debt slavery, I wonder if it were possible to prevent students from getting loans for college majors that won't get people a job, if that would help.

Since from high school you are always bombarded with the message that you must go to college, so people take out massive loans to get into huge debt and choose a career path that they would prefer, but there's no jobs (or only low-paying ones). And only provide Pell Grant and loans to students majoring in stuff like STEM, health care, etc.

College is for getting a well-paying career, not for having fun learning stuff. Only the rich get that luxury. But so many people don't see the practical reality of that. And widespread debt slavery is the result.

Education is different than training. I see a dark future without education. But education can become decadent and irrelevant too as a society drifts. That's not to devalue how important training is as well.

[Herman]

It surprises me that you say you have a degree. Because I think of my university education as invaluable in teaching me how to use a research library and evaluate data and sources in a highly guided and focused way rather than the haphazard way I'd previously been doing as a constantly learning self-educator. And you seem to somehow think that a bunch of Youtube bobbleheads are all one needs for information and dismiss serious journalism or scholarly research and go so far as saying we should give "equal time" to the current equivalent of flat-earthers..

This has been obvious for a long time.

The self-congratulatory tone is, of course, the effect of being locked up in a self-affirming info-bubble.

[The new erato]

Higher education is for self improvement, growing up and understanding. With that, usually a career. If you go for it the other way round you will never grow up. QED in this thread it seems.

[Fëanor]

Higher education is for self improvement, growing up and understanding. With that, usually a career. If you go for it the other way round you will never grow up. QED in this thread it seems.

I would never knock the value of higher education.  I would attribute my own to giving me a basic understand of macroeconomics, (for example), a subject that isn't especially intuitive.  On the other hand my knowledge of history and political science is mostly self-learned.