291–300 of 497 posts
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A good ZIP code is a great start. https://talkpoverty.org/2015/12/17/american-dream-zip-codes-...
What made those zip codes good?
We had a computer lab with 8 Apple II's in my public elementary school in 1983. We also had a few TRS-80s.
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Making education debts dischargeable in bankruptcy sounds good in theory, but against what collateral do you take out a college loan? Most bankruptcy includes collateral liquidation. What's to stop someone from obtaining a useless degree that doesn't contribute to the nation's economy, and then discharges the debt in bankruptcy? I think a big part of the problem is that debt is so readily issued for degrees that over…
> What's to stop someone from obtaining a useless degree that doesn't contribute to the nation's economy, and then discharges the debt in bankruptcy? Nothing, and that's exactly why education debts need to be dischargeable like anything else. Dischargeable loans makes loan companies have actual responsibility and consequences in deciding who to give loans to. Otherwise, they blindly give out loans (why not, there's n…
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> Nothing is a guarantee of a good life. But lack of things and capital will never get you a good life. If you are starving, no matter what you put in or how kind you are to others, you cannot have a good life. If you are home insecure, you cannot have a good life. Period. I'm going to define "good life" to mean food, housing, and health security. While you're right that nothing is guaranteed, the wealthier you are,…
Is anyone in the USA actually starving? That's a common thing brought up, but calories are so cheap in the US that most poor people are actually morbidly obese, not starving. Even if you were starving, you could easily subsist panhandling at some traffic intersection. How long does it take to panhandle $10? An hour or two? And with that you could buy a 15 pound bag of rice which is like a months' worth of carbs. Star…
The US is huge, some people would have to hitchhike quite far to get to a high-traffic area. There's also no guarantee of receiving any handouts at all, so I'm not sure I'd use the word "easily" (or even "possible"). And after hitchhiking and begging all day, praying for a few bucks to buy rice, you're not actually going to want to buy rice. You're going to want alcohol, or something fatty and sugary, or just plain drugs.
Your framing of this problem trivializes a terrible, dehumanizing experience, and is out of touch with the reality of the impoverished middle-American.
There's so much potential in a better university/college. Imagine that in society we pooled our resources to make the best video/online courses for a variety of subjects. The best CS courses. The best history courses. The best biology courses. We could focus on making the courses accessible and translated. We could make the best assignments and projects, iterated and experimented on with a population of millions. Hec…
The four years I spent at my university were four of the best years of my life. I grew academically, socially, and career-wise in ways I just never would have without going to school. However, I have plenty of friends that never went to any higher education than high school, or who dropped out of college early on, and it's not like they're unsuccessful or maladjusted. It seems pretty clear that different paths work f…
Yeah, as much as I hate the university as an institution, they're still necessary for a large amount of people (in practice) These threads tend to be filled with comments that assume everyone is a developer and / or should be. Unfortunately many, if not most high paying jobs will still require higher education, particularly the stereotypically well paying ones. You aren't going to become a doctor, engineer (non softw…
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Middle school alone would be sufficient for most jobs. Also don't forget most learning happens outside school.
I've tutored a lot of tech school kids. College Algebra is required to enter a lot of trades. And not just because it's a requirement for the AS, but also because you actually do need to be able to understand the material in order to work in many trades. The students I tutor often fail college algebra, move on to their subject courses thinking they can tick off that useless stuff later, then realize they need a colle…
- Which aspects of algebra do the students have the most trouble understanding?
- What are some good examples of tables, graphs, and functions the students need to interpret?
The article spends a little time, in the middle on the headline assertion "College does not guarantee Happiness" But spends more time on an anecdote about the author's son to demonstrate that "Happiness is possible without College", which is a different matter entirely. And one would hope the latter is true, since 2/3 of the US population does not attend college.
Not to mention the vast majority of humanity! One can get a lot out of a "college education," but there is a lot more to life than that.
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I'm talking about the fact that hiring managers expect applicants to have 100% of the listed skills for any position because their corporations would rather spend money on stock buybacks than employee training.
Maybe this is one area where legislation can help enforce a social norm. Corporate training used to be practiced at prior generations of generations- IBM, GE, HP, etc. With corporate profits at the levels at they are today, Big Tech can afford to spend a little more on expanding internship and training opportunities.
Personally, when I look for a job, I'm not willing to commit to 30-40 years. I think that part would have to change as well.
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> Nothing is a guarantee of a good life. But lack of things and capital will never get you a good life. If you are starving, no matter what you put in or how kind you are to others, you cannot have a good life. If you are home insecure, you cannot have a good life. Period. I'm going to define "good life" to mean food, housing, and health security. While you're right that nothing is guaranteed, the wealthier you are,…
Is anyone in the USA actually starving? That's a common thing brought up, but calories are so cheap in the US that most poor people are actually morbidly obese, not starving. Even if you were starving, you could easily subsist panhandling at some traffic intersection. How long does it take to panhandle $10? An hour or two? And with that you could buy a 15 pound bag of rice which is like a months' worth of carbs. Star…
- the rice cooker
- electricity to cook the rice
- potable water for the rice
- storage containers for the leftover rice
- refrigeration or other means of preserving the prepared food
- a secure place to store your month's food supply from other hungry people and/or cleaners
- mental health while you eat the same plain rice with bare your hands for a month and society judges you for "not pulling yourself up by your bootstraps."