Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Reelya]

I can't help but LOL that the guy who's talking about Muslims not being an integral part of the community is named Emil Sremchevich. I'm guessing the Sremcheviches didn't come over in chains from Old Mother England.

Funnily enough, when you add up all the people who actually came " in chains from Old Mother England" and compare to non-convict settlers, even in the same time period (let along 20th century), the amount is best described as "not many".

Though it's exceeding trendy to claim (one) convict ancestor in old-money families.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convicts_in_Australia

Over the 80 years more than 165,000 convicts were transported to Australia.[...]The number of convicts pales in comparison to the immigrants who arrived in Australia in the 1851-1871 gold rush. In 1852 alone, 370,000 immigrants arrived in Australia. By 1871 the total population had nearly quadrupled from 430,000 to 1.7 million people.

Even the population by 1850 was 405,000 which is more than double the number of total convicts. And there was a large influx of immigrants after World War II from all over Europe, and Asia, etc.

So the odds of any particular person in Australia being able to claim a convict ancestor is surprisingly low, even for those who's family has been here 6 generations or more.

[Truean]

I was on board with that article up until it explained how everything was the government's fault, and while I can't say federal policy is entirely free of blame, I think it's kind of dishonest to talk about how the result was inevitable and therefore it's the fault of government subsidies, as if the institutions exploiting them are some sort of inevitable force of nature, free of blame.

Ditto. The article (assuming you're talking about mine) should be mostly cited for the facts rather than the theory. First, it is monstrously difficult to discharge student loan debt in bankruptcy. Second, many bankruptcy attorneys in the trenches of this shit feel it isn't really fair based upon their personal practice experiences. Third, student loan debt is a huge bubble that will have larger consequences when/if it bursts, which given that there practically are no jobs (nowhere near enough) might be sooner rather than later.

The theorizing about causes, the blame, etc, that isn't supported by a cogent argument with any cohesive logic. To say "the facts presented prove theory X. Rather the facts are dead on, but the causation to the proposed theory doesn't follow. Said theory may or may not be the case, but what they have proven is that there is a problem. They have not proved the cause of said problem is "the government."

[penguinofhonor]

I was on board with that article up until it explained how everything was the government's fault, and while I can't say federal policy is entirely free of blame, I think it's kind of dishonest to talk about how the result was inevitable and therefore it's the fault of government subsidies, as if the institutions exploiting them are some sort of inevitable force of nature, free of blame.

Hey, that sounds like what my dad says. Education is expensive because of the government getting involved in it (fun fact: apparently before equal opportunity there were actually more minorities in higher education because the free market or something) and right now there's an education bubble that's going to pop. Ron Paul predicted it or somesuch.

[GlyphGryph]

I think its the government's fault, but not because of the subsidies, no.

Rather by insuring that students won't be able to bankrupt their way out of the debt.

Loaning money to students is all about "I will give them the money to do this that that will increase their income, and in exchange they will give me back more money later." Built into it is this assumption that if they don't make more money later, you won't get a return on your investment, and suddenly there's all sorts of incentive to make school GOOD.

The government has, however, removed that. Now it doesn't MATTER if the school fulfills any of its promises, the lenders still get their money back. No risk.

It's the lack of risk - this sureness that no matter how much shit private industry spews out the government will pick up whats leftover or force the worse off to pay for it, so industry doesn't need to worry about quality so much as finding as many suckers as possible to take their dangled carrot.

[Truean]

I think its the government's fault, but not because of the subsidies, no.

Rather by insuring that students won't be able to bankrupt their way out of the debt.

Loaning money to students is all about "I will give them the money to do this that that will increase their income, and in exchange they will give me back more money later." Built into it is this assumption that if they don't make more money later, you won't get a return on your investment, and suddenly there's all sorts of incentive to make school GOOD.

The government has, however, removed that. Now it doesn't MATTER if the school fulfills any of its promises, the lenders still get their money back. No risk.

It's the lack of risk - this sureness that no matter how much shit private industry spews out the government will pick up whats leftover or force the worse off to pay for it, so industry doesn't need to worry about quality so much as finding as many suckers as possible to take their dangled carrot.

Yes. It's also old political backlash from urban legends. Seems that some time ago people started getting angry about some manufactured bullshit about "kids getting out of paying for college by declaring bankruptcy." So they made it nearly impossible to do that....

[Nadaka]

There is an education bubble. But it isn't caused by the government (not directly, though they do contribute).

It is caused by people saying "we don't have enough people to fill positions in X field, gotta get more people with degrees for X" when the truth is closer to "we don't have enough people to fill positions in X field at the slave wages we want to pay them, better sucker them into an expensive education in field X so they feel they can't do anything but X but are desperate enough to accept slave wages".

[Truean]

There is an education bubble. But it isn't caused by the government (not directly, though they do contribute).

It is caused by people saying "we don't have enough people to fill positions in X field, gotta get more people with degrees for X" when the truth is closer to "we don't have enough people to fill positions in X field at the slave wages we want to pay them, better sucker them into an expensive education in field X so they feel they can't do anything but X but are desperate enough to accept slave wages".

There is a massive mismatch between what we are told the "value of education" is, and what it actually is in the working world. It's become where the cost of becoming X Job is greater than the pay from X Job even assuming you can get any job after graduation, at all.

They fill these kid's heads with stuff about college = a job and then deny it. They're told from the time they're small to "study hard, get good grades, go to college and get a good job." Also there's, "you don't wanna end up flipping burgers, do you?" along with a million other phrases you hear.

We then act astonished and say "we never promised you a job." Yes, yes they did, from the time they were children. We also say, "today's kids are lazy and too stubborn to flip burgers." That job has been demonized and degraded and we wonder why people don't wanna do it? Society makes fun of people who do this and tells people to go to college so they don't have to do it.... That's wrong....

This isn't as hard as people are hopefully only pretending it is.

[Dutchling]

I'm not sure Dutchling means what he says. I've never heard of religious public schools either. Private schools, sure, we have them here too, but never public.

Iirc, the dutch socialists gave their support for public religious schools so the christian parties gave their support for a law that allowed more (poorer) people to vote.
This was like a hundred years ago, but there are certainly still a lot of christian and sone muslim/jewish public schools.

[Strange guy]

I'm not sure Dutchling means what he says. I've never heard of religious public schools either. Private schools, sure, we have them here too, but never public.

I went to a Church of England primary school which was a public school (actually in the UK public school is usually used to refer to private schools- wikipedia says because they were open to any member of the public who paid, and back when the term was coined when most other schools were church or guild).

[Sirus]

So there were a bunch of anti-abortion activists at school today. Giant gruesome images and all.

I didn't go up to the booth they had set up, and the guy wandering around with pamphlets didn't even offer one to me, but I loitered nearby in between classes. By far the most idiotic statement I picked up came from Pamphlet Guy, who insisted that a woman did not have the right to her own body:

PG: You do not have the right to kill children. No one has that right.
Woman: I have the right to make choices about my own body.
PG: No you do not. That's not a right, that's a wrong. Because it's legal.
Woman: *walks away*
PG: Come talk to me later.

[Truean]

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/cutline/rush-limbaugh-calls-national-organization-women-nags-204036024.html

Really? He just keeps on goin' doesn't he....

[Urist Imiknorris]

He really wants to get rid of all his financial support, doesn't he?

[Sirus]

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/cutline/rush-limbaugh-calls-national-organization-women-nags-204036024.html

Really? He just keeps on goin' doesn't he....

Dem comments, man...I'm assuming for my Faith in Humanity Meter(tm) that at least half of them are trolls.

[scriver]

He really is an idiot. He might have been able to get away with stuff like that in usual times, but keeping at it while the opinion is against him? Poor fool doesn't even have a pr sense.

[Reelya]

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/cutline/rush-limbaugh-calls-national-organization-women-nags-204036024.html

Really? He just keeps on goin' doesn't he....

Dem comments, man...I'm assuming for my Faith in Humanity Meter(tm) that at least half of them are trolls.

Sorry, to burst your bubble, but look at the politics board of Yahoo Answers :-

http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/index?link=list&sid=396545450

Not trolls, at least not in thr way you think.

"Who are Obama's top adiviser " TO BOMB SYRIA "...... ALL jEWS .... OR MAJORITY jEWS?"

"What r the % of Jews on the Federal Reverse + Supreme Court + Presidential Advisers?"

etc

Comments on the news section of Yahoo don't phase me, they're normal compared to Yahoo Answers / Politics