191–200 of 374 posts
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What if we just like... paid for school with taxes like literally every other country? (Trust me, it shouldn’t cost as much as it does to get a degree. I promise it can be and, in fact, used to be affordable.)
In many ways taxes do pay for it. For example around 50% of state school tuition is paid for by taxes. Yet sky-high, emphatically unpayable debt persists and is getting worse.
It was probably 30% the price of Penn State and the fact that no one has heard of the school outside of the state hasn't affected me since graduation.
I can't imagine a private school that charges upwards of 50k per semester all in. However, that was the norm around the area I grew up in.
It's a damn shame we've let this crisis reach this scale. Along with healthcare, climate change, the debt, our inauguration, and so on, we've been essentially frozen for most of my life as politicians concern themselves more so with existential power struggle. The right wants to bring us back to the gilded age, the left makes headlines but is barely relevant, and the center is trying to squeeze bandaid solutions whil…
I often wonder how many problems would be fixed by adding a 2 term limit to the House and Senate.
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I can't express how wrong this response is. Term limits are necessary, there should be no such thing as a "career politician". A politician should be required to have actual skills, and not just a nice smile. Experience with politics is meaningless, there should be NO establishment. It is always the new guy who reveals the truth to the people, which is a good thing. Experience only results in being able to lie to the…
> Experience only results in being able to lie to the public, to further the establishment. This is not the case in other fields such as Engineering, Medicine, Education, or Law. More experienced engineers, doctors, lawyers, and educators tend to be better at their craft. Failing to keep up with new methodology/technology is also a problem. It's almost like the quality of the person is more important than their age o…
Student loans fuel retirement accounts for old people.
Lack of upward mobility helps old rich people.
Tax cuts for the rich by and large help old people.
We have a nation governed by geezers who only care about geezers.
Perspective (anecdote) from a high school student: There is a real push for college. It's an unstated assumption that you're going to go, and the topic of debt seems to be passively avoided ("Don't worry, it'll all work out!"). We receive a grade for the college application process, so you can't not apply. College is still probably a good deal the majority of the time I think, but I wish there was some acknowledgemen…
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That's absurd, you're much better off going to a reputable school, working hard, grinding leetcode, completing internships, and then getting a $150k+/yr TC job to start. You'll come out far ahead by going to a good school. If you're able to start at Google while you're still in high school, that's a different story.
"$150k+/yr TC" ... is that considered an average/expected comp coming right out of college these days?
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I can't express how wrong this response is. Term limits are necessary, there should be no such thing as a "career politician". A politician should be required to have actual skills, and not just a nice smile. Experience with politics is meaningless, there should be NO establishment. It is always the new guy who reveals the truth to the people, which is a good thing. Experience only results in being able to lie to the…
This is such a strange sentiment to me. You would never hire an amateur Carpenter to work on your house. You would never hire an amateur DBA to build your company's key data architecture. But you want the people who run the country to be amateurs?
Our system was originally designed specifically to avoid professional politicians. The initial articles of confederation included term limits. It was only removed after substantial debate. An anonymous essay penned in response to this decision suggested that people who were elected for long periods of time would become "inattentive to the public good, callous, selfish, and the fountain of corruption" continuing with,"Even good men in office, in time, imperceptibly lose sight of the people, and gradually fall into measures prejudicial to them." It's a shame they did not sign their name to the writing as I think we could label this view as fundamentally and absolutely correct. It's perhaps ironic that term limits were likely stripped from the articles not in good faith, but by those earliest 'special interests' who longed be the first professional politicians. The same interests that perhaps drove those stating truth-hoods to do so under the guise of anonymity.
And that problem is endemic to the whole system of professional politicking. Rather than focusing on 'the mission' politicians end up focusing on themselves and getting elected again. In an ideal democracy that would mean they have to work to appease the people. In reality, most of the electorate is grossly uninformed or misinformed. Generally all that matters when getting elected is money. And where does money come from? Not from the masses, it comes from special interests and top dollar donors. An issue only compounded, though not inherently caused, by the variety of ways to avoid any donation limitations such as messaging through 'independent' politician action committees.
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None; absolutely none. Term limits are a terrible idea because to gain experience with politics and credibility within the establishment requires years. Institute term limits lobbyists gain all the power as they are the only ones who have the clout to get legislation passed. You'd need to institute campaign finance reform and ban lobbyists before you could start terms limits. But these are just both band aids on Amer…
I can't express how wrong this response is. Term limits are necessary, there should be no such thing as a "career politician". A politician should be required to have actual skills, and not just a nice smile. Experience with politics is meaningless, there should be NO establishment. It is always the new guy who reveals the truth to the people, which is a good thing. Experience only results in being able to lie to the…
They don’t prevent people from becoming a “career politicians”, they just make it so that the career is less predictable or stable: new careerists are constantly being churned up from local politics and put into important committee chair jobs (etc.) where they have no relevant competence or experience, the top legislative leaders only last for a couple years, and the most experienced legislators get dumped out the top, often to become paid lobbyists. This encourages short-term legislation including bills mashed together that don’t make sense. Civility/comity is undermined, because legislators don’t need to keep working together years into the future.
To compensate legislators have to lean a lot more on their staff (who are the only people around with some clue about the context). The executive branch gains power at the expense of the legislature, because (a) executive officials are often more experience, (b) the executive can outlast an uncooperative legislative leadership by just waiting a couple years, (c) term-limited legislators have a more precarious career and might be looking for an appointment to a next job.
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> Experience only results in being able to lie to the public, to further the establishment. This is not the case in other fields such as Engineering, Medicine, Education, or Law. More experienced engineers, doctors, lawyers, and educators tend to be better at their craft. Failing to keep up with new methodology/technology is also a problem. It's almost like the quality of the person is more important than their age o…
I think the biggest counter argument to why we need experienced people in government is that the tide has turned where old people have their interests represented but young people do not. Student loans fuel retirement accounts for old people. Lack of upward mobility helps old rich people. Tax cuts for the rich by and large help old people. We have a nation governed by geezers who only care about geezers.
You can consider this in a really simple, but also regular and real, scenario. You're faced by a decision. One choice you think is bad for the country but is strongly supported by various special interest groups who will likely run major positive advertising and other positive 'propaganda' for you, if you go that route. The other decision is good for the nation but vehemently opposed by these same interests. You can expect negative advertising and other consequences should you go this route. It's not hard to see which decision a "professional" politician is going to pick, regardless of whether they're 20 or 90 years old.
Ideally this would all be a nonstarter since you stay in office by getting elected. So do what's good and you get elected again, right? But this goes out the window when people are so easily swayed by the media and misinformation. A very large chunk of people don't measure the results of the nation independently, just based on what they hear in the media or by easily exploited emotional responses.
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I often wonder how many problems would be fixed by adding a 2 term limit to the House and Senate.
I often wonder how many problems could have been avoided if we required 2/3 majority. Byzantine generals have to work together.