Monetizing a Tertiary Education

And that made me laugh. Get back to me when you've read Smith.

 

Fair enough.

 

Revolutionary, me arse.

Historically, the DoD has been a boondoggle for BigBusiness, and since WW2 a waste of money that could be more usefully employed elsewhere.

The saddest "rip-off" is making our youth think they have to risk their lives in some foreign militiary action in order to get the DoD to pay for their Post-secondary Education. Whereas in Europe, for example, said education is free, gratis and for anybody who asks for it regardless of age.

Wakey, wakey! We are in the Information Age and manufacturing nowadays employs no more than about 12% of our current workforce! We must absolutely EDUCATE our people!

PS:
*From here: Is the F-35 a Trillion-Dollar Mistake?
*The point being this: The F-35 was supposed to be a do-it-all fighter for multiple services (Air Force, Navy, Marine). It does that job but at an expense far greater than, as in the past, individual aircraft for all three services (the traditional means) would have done the job just as well but much cheaper.
*The aircraft industry bamboozled Congress throughout the decade long process in order to maintain the program.
*The US has greater needs generally than an all-round fighter aircraft, and they are NOT in the realm of the DoD but the Dept. of Education!

 

Crackpot nonsense and not even worth a rebuttal ...

 

Is every single college graduate doing better economically than all non college graduates?

Are all college graduates earning more than the median of non college graduates?

Are you championing the idea that education is currently NOT worth the expense required to acquire it, and should thus be heavily subsidized?

My comment is not worthy of a rebuttal because you conceded the point.

 

The focus of course is on the average return. The interesting aspect is that education isn't necessarily a positive for the economy. For example, there's evidence that an increase in university education can actually reduce social mobility. Low quality middle class kids get a degree and then get jobs that high quality working class kids might have got.

 

The trillion dollar price tag associated with the F-35 is the cost of research, development, procurement, maintenance and operation over it's entire working life, which is assumed to be 55 years, including estimates on avionics and targeting upgrades along the way.

I can tell you, with almost absolute certainty, what it costs to build a given structure. That's what I've done every day for 11 years.

By their very definition, things that have never been done before can have no reasonable cost associated to them. What's it cost to build a laser that can shoot down a missile from 12,000 miles away? A tilt rotor aircraft?

Nobody knows.

What's truly sad is expecting an 18 year old to decide, and lock themselves into, a particular course with no real way of changing it if they decide they absolutely hate it.

 

Necessasily exaggerated by the military industrial complex, where risk is minimised by public-private kisschase.

 

That particular reply wasn't about averages. I stated that education for the sake of education, such as the goal to offer universal access to higher education, can not argue economic value, as education for the sake of education has no economic value whatsoever.

He replied that it was not worth the rebuttal, and I responded with a list that it was certainly not nonsense.

I did not go to college. I do much better than average. My wife is highly educated, and thinks that I should become a house husband. I'm well aware that education opens opportunities, but ultimately, in the United States, many graduates realize little to no benefit for the effort.

 

But that isn't true. The economic return is more than just about personal investment. There is no reference to the positive externalities. By referring to economic value, you've destroyed your comment.

Success without education is a great thing, but its just matter of fact to note that education investments benefit us all. Education is closer to a public good than, for example, military spending.

 

By definition the military industrial complex is not the free market.

There's a great number of projects that the private sector would have never touched(at the time DARPA did) due to incredible risk involved, if there wasn't a blank check from the government and a glut of men willing to die without liability to the developer.

The private sector will never take man to Mars unless the reward outweighs the risk. The one shortcoming of capitalism.

 

There is no free market. Its a concept used to manipulate the gullible.

 

The quest for "affordable" higher education by definition implies that higher education is not worthy of a personal investment. There are other arguments for it, but improving the economic lot of those receiving said public investment is not among them. That was my point.

As is current, in the United States, we receive an extremely poor return on the monumental investment we make in education, which makes me worry about being asked to pay for even more.

 

Or an amiable goal of a more evolved man. If government would get out of the damn way.

 

The point is that you're wrong straight away. Economic value will, by definition, be higher than accountancy value. By referring to economics (and the positive effects created, even if the personal investment is negative), you've attacked your own stance.

 

Without government, capitalism ends. I suppose you can be an anti-capitalist anarchist

 

Obviously I wasn't referring to anarchy, and I can not be referred to an anarchist, as that would put me in a very awkward position, much akin to a black Klansman. When someone in my city refers to "government", they are referring to me.

Public education, in the United States, has a remarkably poor track record. If we can not produce, on average, and at the minimum, functional citizens from our high schools, we can never expect any level of investment in further education to make positive results.

42% of my high school class failed to meet 8th grade levels for literacy and mathematics. Affordable college will do absolutely nothing for them.

 

Note that countries who invest more tend to do significantly better. Have you perhaps achieved too little because of right wing economic constraints?

 

Right wing economic constraints?

I was born into poor white trash and effortlessly worked a socioeconomic miracle.

Those who achieve little rarely are aware of the culinary genius of Thomas Keller

 

e.g. the stupidity of austerity.

Aren't we all?

 

I was raised in a German household. Austerity is my normal.

Since a refusal to embrace austerity is currently speeding the US towards bankruptcy, I can't see how austerity would have harmed me.

 

No it isn't. Austerity is macroeconomic stupidity. Unless your household is the economy, you're on a loser.

 

Some "things" should not be done at all.

The DoD sucks-out about half of all the Discretionary Budget in the US:



And to accomplish what exactly, pray tell? Defending what against whom requires that nearly half the Discretionary Budget be spent on just one government agency.

When there is a crying need in the nation to send our children through Tertiary Education to have the credentials to pursue a meaningful career that obtains a decent salary with which to bring up a family!

I, for one, would prefer to see our people obtaining free Tertiary Education, just as they have had a free Secondary Education. (Today, that portion is the measly red part of the above budget-pie.)

And when we really need the DoD, we'll ring its bell - but not until then. The nation has other far-more-important real priorities ... !

 

Yeah, right! That money is better spent by the DoD.

What BS ... !

 

First off, that red portion is tiny because the Federal government doesn't run education in the United States, as that's the jurisdiction of state and local governments.

We spend in equal measure on primary and secondary education as we spend on defense, except we get a vastly larger return from the DoD.