401–410 of 548 posts
A lot of people here need to talk to some entrepreneurs. It doesn't matter how good, or how well funded, the school system is: if the family is poor, you're not going to be able to float rent on the storefront you need, or purchase initial inventory of whatever you're making, much less soak up a few false starts, much less take out a bank loan to do any of these things. Period. This does not in ANY WAY mean there sho…
Agreed. Bill Gates was smart, but: 1) He had access to a computer via his prep school in 1968 . This is way ahead of the vast majority of people in the world. Money bought him 5-10 years of advance knowledge. 2) Gates' mother had direct access to the IBM CEO 3) Gates' father could cut a sudden check to the tune of $50,000 to back his son's business venture Kildall was just as smart as Gates, but didn't have the advan…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I looked it up, it was fully in place by summer 2018. P.S. I didn't say "dramatically". I said "zero" improvement. Doing better than zero is as low a bar as possible . I fail to see that as unreasonable. There isn't even a plan for success.
What exactly were you expecting? I assume you aren't an educator. Education is a process with a decade long pipeline. Simply doubling the budget doesn't turn into 2x brighter kids.
I said zero progress. Something greater than zero should be achievable in 1.5 yeras.
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Europe doesn't create Ubers because it doesn't have the capital. its not to do with innovation. VC as a model requires huge markets and huge amounts of financing. It doesn't require home grown innovation.
Europe has enormous, deep pools of capital. The culture though is to fear loss rather than fear loss of upside. Capital is deployed differently in the US and China.
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>What is something the rich have done with the intent to destroy the middle class? Vigorously target labor unions. Lobby for substantial decreases in state and Federal taxation, reductions that have in turn necessitated major reductions in education spending and substantial tuition increases that hit middle class families [1]. Attempt (so far unsuccessfully) to privatize social security. Strongly oppose healthcare re…
Those examples aren't really "the rich". Business tax cuts benefit shareholders, and globally there has been a race to the bottom to pit locations against each other to try to drive profit margins. These things have largely affected manufacturing - manufacturing itself being marginalized in the greater business landscape as other more profitable industries have gained favor. Note that "the rich" are not all that inte…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. Bill Gates was smart, but: 1) He had access to a computer via his prep school in 1968 . This is way ahead of the vast majority of people in the world. Money bought him 5-10 years of advance knowledge. 2) Gates' mother had direct access to the IBM CEO 3) Gates' father could cut a sudden check to the tune of $50,000 to back his son's business venture Kildall was just as smart as Gates, but didn't have the advan…
It's not clear what Gary Kildall has to do with this argument. He had a Ph.D. in computer science and developed one of the first successful operating system for microcomputers. It's really hard to see him as disadvantaged. The legend of course is that he whiffed one of the biggest business opportunities in the history of computing, but lots of people have blown it in business. [1] The IBM story was interesting becaus…
Kildall couldn't break the IBM logjam with CP/M because he couldn't call the IBM CEO directly.
A lot of people here need to talk to some entrepreneurs. It doesn't matter how good, or how well funded, the school system is: if the family is poor, you're not going to be able to float rent on the storefront you need, or purchase initial inventory of whatever you're making, much less soak up a few false starts, much less take out a bank loan to do any of these things. Period. This does not in ANY WAY mean there sho…
Max Stirner made this point in 1844:
"Free competition is not “free,” because I lack the things for competition. Against my person no objection can be made, but because I have not the things my person too must step to the rear. And who has the necessary things? Perhaps that manufacturer? Why, from him I could take them away! No, the State has them as property, the manufacturer only as fief, as possession."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>What is something the rich have done with the intent to destroy the middle class? Vigorously target labor unions. Lobby for substantial decreases in state and Federal taxation, reductions that have in turn necessitated major reductions in education spending and substantial tuition increases that hit middle class families [1]. Attempt (so far unsuccessfully) to privatize social security. Strongly oppose healthcare re…
Those examples aren't really "the rich". Business tax cuts benefit shareholders, and globally there has been a race to the bottom to pit locations against each other to try to drive profit margins. These things have largely affected manufacturing - manufacturing itself being marginalized in the greater business landscape as other more profitable industries have gained favor. Note that "the rich" are not all that inte…
If you want a concrete example of this in a modern, western country you only need to look to Australia to see the paralysis that has occurred over climate and carbon policies. Every time we get close to making some progress on curbing our coal producers, a political ruction occurs. This happened again just days ago when the rump/conservative/rural voter party (The Nationals) replaced their leader with a coal industry supporter - simply because the leader of the majority conservative party in their coalition publically mooted a potential change to net zero emissions by 2050. It's like clockwork and ordinary people can do exactly zero things about it.
How does this destroy the middle class? Big companies need educated workers but they don't like the wage bill associated with it. Decimating the middle class via automation and flooding the market with educated people ensures a long term supply of poor-but-educated. That's the end goal of this project and the measurable difference in wealth inequality proves that it is working extremely well.
The oped touches on one thing I noticed during my time at the University of Cambridge. Almost everyone I talked to there had parents who invested heavily in them either monetarily (hiring nannies, intensive pre-school/after-school care/private school) or time wise from a young age. Increasing access to early child education as argued for by the author seems like no-brainer to bridge some of the gap between children o…
Improving access to education is not enough. You have to improve opportunity. For example, I grew up extremely poor, and went to a small school. The most my parents knew about college was that I was going to go to one. Now I had the intelligence to get into just about any school I wanted, but I had no idea what/where those schools were. I also was unaware of how scholarships worked, or that I could have afforded most…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was fully implemented in the summer of 2018. See my cite.
You cannot produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant. Summer of 2018 is too late for the 2018/2019 year. That gives them 2019/2020 (half messed up due to the pandemic) and 2020/2021 (half messed up and ongoing). Since this seems to be yet another issue of a state screwing low income districts, one wouldn't expect any change in high income districts, either.
There is no detectable progress.
I confidently predict that the pandemic will be the go-to excuse for zero progress for at least the next decade, and probably two.