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The U.S. Will Continue to Decline
After World War II we were dominant in EVERY category of agricultural and industrial production. A higher percentage of American teens were in school than any other country in the world. As late as the late 60's , 80 % of Americans graduated from high school. Now it is 65% and DROPPING.
Today, we lag behind every other major industrialized nation in almost every educational category. We are no longer producing enough citizens properly trained and educated to keep up with technological advances and trends.
Tempting though it is to blame the NEA and bloated public school systems, the primary causes for this decline are centered in American families sic.. Sociologists and child psychologists are able to predict with hearbreaking accuracy by the age of FIVE who will succeed and who will fail by looking at their home environment. Single mothers ; fathers in jail or otherwise absent; English not spoken at home;
children not read to, too much T.V. all virtually guarantee social failure.
To his credit, Obama gets it. He has been speaking about the current situation and what needs to be done before he even ran for the Senate. Now that he's poking a few sacred liberal cows he has to listen to threats of mutilation from the likes of Jesse Jackson. McCain and the Republicans can only meekly squeak about expanding "school choice" .
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Re: The U.S. Will Continue to Decline
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Eric Stoner
Tempting though it is to blame the NEA and bloated public school systems, the primary causes for this decline are centered in American families sic.. Sociologists and child psychologists are able to predict with hearbreaking accuracy by the age of FIVE who will succeed and who will fail by looking at their home environment. Single mothers ; fathers in jail or otherwise absent; English not spoken at home;
children not read to, too much T.V. all virtually guarantee social failure.
When I graduated, my friends brothers were only a few years old. Fast forward to a few years ago (when the first graduated at 19ish): the quality of the schools, the same schools I went to, was noticeably substandard. Heck, when they started elementary school in the early 90's, it sucked. They adopted Clintons 'no grades no whatever' for the students and we saw the drop.
20 years ago, my high school was a 9, when the first graduated a couple years ago (a couple years late) it was at best a 3.
And we all came from a traditional family structure.
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Re: The U.S. Will Continue to Decline
A. the primary reason that the US dominated post-WW2 agriculture / business / industry was that the rest of the world's assets were blown to hell and the rest of the world's governments owed the US billions of dollars as a result of lend-lease war materials purchases !!!
As to the declining education standard, don't forget to factor in US Supreme Court rulings on languages, moral hazard created by the Great Society social welfare programs, recent immigrants refusing to assimilate etc.
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Re: The U.S. Will Continue to Decline
ES: 1 out of 3 people fail to graduate from high school??? Where did you get those statistics, and what was demographics surveyed (Eg; All enrolled 12th graders, all 18 yr. olds, or some other group??). There's some "good" schools around with 90-95% or so graduation rates, which means that there's an appaling number with 50% plus dropout rates and/or a lot of "undocs" around. Even a 80% graduation rate isn't exactly something to brag about. The scary thing for the future is that in some industries the "good" jobs are overseas.
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Re: The U.S. Will Continue to Decline
on time graduation rates of 50 largest US school districts ... scary ^^^
Here are the graduation rates for the first 10 cities on the list
Detroit grad rate 21.7%
Baltimore grad rate 38.5%
New York City grad rate 38.9%
Milwaukee grad rate 43.1%
Cleveland grad rate 43.8%
Los Angeles grad rate 44.2%
Miami grad rate 45.3%
Dallas grad rate 46.3%
Tampa / St Pete grad rate 46.5%
Denver grad rate 46.8%
Memphis grad rate 48.5%
also, the 'distribution' of high school dropouts is far from uniform
(snip)"Using data from the U.S. Department of Education we are able to estimate the percentage of students who graduate high school as well as the percentage that finish high school ready to attend a four-year college. We are also able to produce these estimates by racial/ethnic group as well as by region and state.
Specifically, the study’s findings include the following:
Only 70% of all students in public high schools graduate, and only 32% of all students leave high school qualified to attend four-year colleges.
Only 51% of all black students and 52% of all Hispanic students graduate, and only 20% of all black students and 16% of all Hispanic students leave high school college-ready.
The graduation rate for white students was 72%; for Asian students, 79%; and for American Indian students, 54%. The college readiness rate for white students was 37%; for Asian students, 38%; for American Indian students, 14%.
Graduation rates in the Northeast (73%) and Midwest (77%) were higher than the overall national figure, while graduation rates in the South (65%) and West (69%) were lower than the national figure. The Northeast and the Midwest had the same college readiness rate as the nation overall (32%) while the South had a higher rate (38%) and the West had a lower rate (25%).
The state with the highest graduation rate in the nation was North Dakota (89%); the state with the lowest graduation rate in the nation was Florida (56%).
Due to their lower college readiness rates, black and Hispanic students are seriously underrepresented in the pool of minimally qualified college applicants. Only 9% of all college-ready graduates are black and another 9% are Hispanic, compared to a total population of 18-year-olds that is 14% black and 17% Hispanic.
We estimate that there were about 1,299,000 college-ready 18-year-olds in 2000, and the actual number of persons entering college for the first time in that year was about 1,341,000. This indicates that there is not a large population of college-ready graduates who are prevented from actually attending college.
The portion of all college freshmen that is black (11%) or Hispanic (7%) is very similar to their shares of the college-ready population (9% for both). This suggests that the main reason these groups are underrepresented in college admissions is that these students are not acquiring college-ready skills in the K-12 system, rather than inadequate financial aid or affirmative action policies"(snip)
from
^^^ note that this study was based on 2000 data showing a 70% graduation rate. It is indeed likely that the 2007 graduation rate has declined to 65% per Eric's post.
Additionally, the 2000 study showed that the graduation rate for black and hispanic high school students was hovering around 50%. This also correlates with low graduation rates in large city school systems which have a higher percentage of black and hispanic students enrolled.
There is no single reason which can explain this result. The 'tin foil hat' crowd will tell you that it is due to several factors ... among them past NEA / Teacher's Union policies in big city school districts (social promotion, ebonics etc.), past court rulings (unruly students are very difficult to expel or discipline), the Moral Hazard of social welfare programs (i.e. not working yields an equal standard of living vs. working at an unskilled high school diploma level job), cultural bias ( i.e. black students who excel academically are often treated as 'uncle Tom's' by many in their own community), etc.
It should also be pointed out that these statistics do not include private / parochial schools or the students enrolled in them. Graduation rates from private / parochial schools are far higher than for public schools. This is due to many factors as well, first among them a comparatively low percentage of private / parochial students who are black or hispanic. However, relative enrollment in private / parochial schools only amounts to a tiny percentage versus public school enrollment - probably because of the tuition cost factor.
In fairness, these statistics also do not include 'late' high school graduations or GED's. With 'late' graduations and GED's included, the overall graduation rate through age 25 (based on 2000 data) was around 81% versus 70% at age 18. Even so, this means that 19% of US 25 year olds (probably higher than 19% in 2007) are not qualified to do anything but 'menial' work ... which in today's global economy is arbitraged against Chinese / Indian / Vietnamese 'menial' labor rates of 2 dollars per hour or less ! Arguably, 19% of US 25 year olds represent a non-productive 'dead weight' around the neck of the US economy, and around the necks of the 81% who must 'subsidize' the standard of living of that 19%.
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Re: The U.S. Will Continue to Decline
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Eric Stoner
Tempting though it is to blame the NEA and bloated public school systems, the primary causes for this decline are centered in American families sic.. Sociologists and child psychologists are able to predict with hearbreaking accuracy by the age of FIVE who will succeed and who will fail by looking at their home environment. Single mothers ; fathers in jail or otherwise absent; English not spoken at home;
children not read to, too much T.V. all virtually guarantee social failure.
English is my second language. I grew up in a single parent home in the ghetto. I was latchkey kid and watched wayyyyyy too much TV, still do actually.
I guess I'm just doomed. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKXvHe5r2LQ
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Re: The U.S. Will Continue to Decline
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Sophia_Starina
English is my second language. I grew up in a single parent home in the ghetto. I was latchkey kid and watched wayyyyyy too much TV, still do actually.
I guess I'm just doomed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKXvHe5r2LQ
A Harvard University Study which, to date, has never been challenged or refuted in the slightest degree listed the social factors that predicted a life of poverty:
- Growing up in a one-parent household, REGARDLESS of whether or not that parent worked.
- Not graduating High School.
- A criminal record before age 21.
- Giving birth before age 21 in or out of wedlock.
- Getting married before age 21.
- Not being English proficient.
- Not being read to as a child
- Not having books in the home
- Not having a Library card or access thereto.
Just one of the aforementioned increased a subject child's likelihood of falling below the Federal Poverty Line by age 21. Obviously, some factors like not
graduating high school were more determinative than others. Having more than one of these factors made poverty virtually certain and having at least three
drove the probability close to 100 % !
However, just avoiding the first four: graduating H.S.; staying out of jail; not giving birth and not getting married before age 21 were virtual guarantees of a life OUT of POVERTY. More importantly, the quality and location of schools attended did NOT make the list i.e even graduating from a "lousy" H.S. and avoiding factors "2, 3 and 4" virtually guarantees a life ABOVE the Poverty Line.
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Re: The U.S. Will Continue to Decline
You gotta admit, the stats you just posted are a little more dire than the ones you first brought up. (below)
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Eric Stoner
Single mothers ; fathers in jail or otherwise absent; English not spoken at home;children not read to, too much T.V. all virtually guarantee social failure.
P.S. Those harvard eggheads would create a failure litmus test that is so biased. I think that on SW, especially, you could see that education and family situations are not necessarily linked to success. I'm sure you could find plenty of examples, on this board alone, in which the person has come out of really BAD circumstances and prospered despite those circumstances.
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Re: The U.S. Will Continue to Decline
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Sophia_Starina
You gotta admit, the stats you just posted are a little more dire than the ones you first brought up. (below)
P.S. Those harvard eggheads would create a failure litmus test that is so biased. I think that on SW, especially, you could see that education and family situations are not necessarily linked to success. I'm sure you could find plenty of examples, on this board alone, in which the person has come out of really BAD circumstances and prospered despite those circumstances.
There are INDIVIDUAL exceptions; some absolutely inspiring; but the overall data
and probabilities have NEVER been challenged let alone disproven.
Here's some more cheery data. California's overall drop-out rate is 24%.
Nationwide,14.6% of 1st generation Hispanics are high school drop outs vs. 4.6% of non- Hispanics. Worse yet, 15.9 % of SECOND generation Hispanics drop out compared to 8.2 % for non-Hispanics. 28% of Mexican immigrants aged 15-17 are NOT enrolled in high school. For immigrants who arrived as teenagers it is 40 %. Contrast that to Jamaican, Haitian and other West Indian immigrants who drop out at about 3% which is similar to the Asian immigrant drop out rate which is less than 3%. (From the journal DEMOGRAPHY )
As of 2005, according to the U.S. Dept . of Ed. ( the most recent year for which these stats are available : the Black drop out rate is 11.6 % ; for Mexicans 25.5 %; for Puerto Ricans 16.9 % ; for Central Americans ( Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Panama ) it is 32.6% but for South Americans it is only 9.1%. For Asians it is less than 3 %.
The answer is not race because Jamaican, Haitian, West Indian and African immigrant children do not drop out more than Asian children do. It DOES show the failure of bi-lingual education and the importance of stable and complete family units. Asian, immigrant Black and South American immigrant children usually live in TWO parent households and are encouraged to get as much education as possible and LEARN English. Crime and out of wedlock birth are DISCOURAGED in all three immigrant blocs.
Contrast that with recent studies that show that 3rd and 4th generation Mexican children are NOT attending college and NOT graduating high school at higher rates than the generations before . The best explanation that sociologists have come up with is that work is favored over education and that children are encouraged to work and help support the family rather than go to college.
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Re: The U.S. Will Continue to Decline
My first thought when I read the original post was "Dayyyyum, why you be hatin' on us immigrant TV watchers?" :P
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Re: The U.S. Will Continue to Decline
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Sophia_Starina
My first thought when I read the original post was "Dayyyyum, why you be hatin' on us immigrant TV watchers?" :P
I'm not "hating" on anyone. Just pointing out some unpleasant truths pointing to a very disturbing and undesirable future.
Currently we attract uneducated and unskilled immigrants while raising a healthy crop of our own. The rest of the world has accelerated its development and we are slowing down.
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Re: The U.S. Will Continue to Decline
Quote:
Currently we attract uneducated and unskilled immigrants while raising a healthy crop of our own.
Just a rhetorical question, but how many uneducated and unskilled immigrants - as well as disinterested American high school dropouts - would there be in the USA if the going pay rate for their 'menial' labor was only $3 an hour, and if the American social welfare system were not providing then free medical care / free food / subsidized rent / subsidized utilities etc. ?
A cardinal rule of economics is when you subsidize something you get more of it, and when you tax something you get less of it. At the moment America / individual states are heavily subsidizing uneducated and unskilled people (thus attracting more of them), and at the same time heavily taxing highly educated highly productive people (thus motivating many of them to either be less productive or to leave the state / country). The end result isn't surprising at all.
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Re: The U.S. Will Continue to Decline
The US is crumbling away while new industries like china, india and russia once more grow into modern super powers, also, europe will pwn the US anytime, anywhere these days.
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Re: The U.S. Will Continue to Decline
Eric is looking at those statistics in a very black and white manner. Those things predict/correlate with a life of poverty, they don't guarantee a life of poverty.
There's no money in blue-collar jobs anymore, so now everyone has to be pushed through the educational system in order to make a decent living and compete with people overseas. So, our schools are packed and there's grade inflation.
Some of those graduation rates are really sad considering how fucking low the American educational standards are (for K-12) in the first place. :-\
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Re: The U.S. Will Continue to Decline
You are only presenting half the picture, ES. The other edge to this sword is the increase in the cost of living without any increase in earning potential forcing both parents to work. You first saw the result of the two income family in the 80's with the phenomenon of street kids and gang formation in the suburbs.
When it is beneficial for the older children to go to work then you see the dropout rate go up.
How many families in the post WW2 era had two working parents? There has also been a marked decline in good paying blue collar work available in America. A father could take a factory job and afford to support his wife and children, buy a house and a car and a new fangled TV set. Today the blue collar jobs have all been sent to other countries, and a high school diploma doesn't mean shit to employers.
I imagine that some kids can't afford to stay in school, and the idea of a college education so beyond their wildest dreams, financially speaking, that a "why bother" attitude would be easy enough to adopt.
What the US needs is a return of decent paying lower skilled jobs where a person with a high school diploma could hope to earn $35-40,000 a year plus benefits. Those jobs are getting pretty darn rare, these days. Most jobs that pay in that salary range require a 4 year degree, minimum.
How are we going to accomplish that? My only suggestion is offering free college tuition to students that qualify. That would give kids at least hope of bettering their lives, and motivation to work harder when in secondary school. Most of what drove the economic boom in the post WW2 era was the vast amount of education available to Americans at no or very low cost.
Did you know that in 1947 a student could attend Harvard for $455 a year? That is equal to $4,260 a year in 2008 dollars. So, was it that much cheaper to teach a student in 1947? No, the government picked up the rest of the bill. Somehow America got off track and stopped investing in it's own future. This is the result of massive funding cuts of public works programs like colleges.
It is really quite sad to see how far we've fallen. And we aren't done yet.
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Re: The U.S. Will Continue to Decline
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Paris
How are we going to accomplish that? My only suggestion is offering free college tuition to students that qualify. That would give kids at least hope of bettering their lives, and motivation to work harder when in secondary school. Most of what drove the economic boom in the post WW2 era was the vast amount of education available to Americans at no or very low cost.
Did you know that in 1947 a student could attend Harvard for $455 a year? That is equal to $4,260 a year in 2008 dollars. So, was it that much cheaper to teach a student in 1947? No, the government picked up the rest of the bill. Somehow America got off track and stopped investing in it's own future. This is the result of massive funding cuts of public works programs like colleges.
:worship: God Bless you!
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Re: The U.S. Will Continue to Decline
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Paris
<<snip>>
What the US needs is a return of decent paying lower skilled jobs where a person with a high school diploma could hope to earn $35-40,000 a year plus benefits. Those jobs are getting pretty darn rare, these days. Most jobs that pay in that salary range require a 4 year degree, minimum.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^
What the US needs is business owners/CEO's willing to pay that kind of $$ for those kinds of jobs, and/or put "national interest" ahead of the bottom line. Idealistic??--- NOT???
How are we going to accomplish that? My only suggestion is offering free college tuition to students that qualify. That would give kids at least hope of bettering their lives, and motivation to work harder when in secondary school. Most of what drove the economic boom in the post WW2 era was the vast amount of education available to Americans at no or very low cost.
Did you know that in 1947 a student could attend Harvard for $455 a year? That is equal to $4,260 a year in 2008 dollars. So, was it that much cheaper to teach a student in 1947? No, the government picked up the rest of the bill.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
That "bill" would be the GI Bill. Many returning WW2 Veterans attended college in post WW2 era. They "paid their dues" by their military service to their country. What sort of "qualifications" would you envision for todays aid recipients? What quid pro quo dues paying??
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Re: The U.S. Will Continue to Decline
Quote:
Most of what drove the economic boom in the post WW2 era was the vast amount of education available to Americans at no or very low cost.
again it's necessary to separate fact from fantasy. There are TWO reasons that an economic boom occurred in the USA (and to some extent globally) after WW2
#1 - the production facilities of every foreign competitor, from Mitsubishi to Mercedes to Telefunken to Focke-Wulf to IG Farben were blown to shit as the result of US / Allied bombings. This eliminated foreign competition against US products on a global basis.
#2 - the US, via the Marshall Plan, did exactly the same thing that the Japanese and Chinese are doing today ... we lent huge sums of money to our defeated WW2 'enemies' and 'allies' alike which they in turn spent a large percentage of to purchase American export products !
The 'problem' of course was that by the time the 1960's rolled around, our WW2 'enemies' and 'allies' alike had rebuilt their destroyed industries - and had also paid back much of the money they had borrowed from the US. At the same time, the US had chosen to start spending money like water ... both on Lyndon Johnson's 'Great Society' social welfare programs and on the Vietnam war. With this huge increase in US government spending, by the early 1970's the USA had borrowed so much money to enable this spending that we became a debtor nation ... which then led directly to Nixon having to break the US dollar's currency value tie to gold in 1973 and opened the Pandora's Box of fiat currency / inflation.
As unpopular as this sounds, this is NOT about education at the root of the matter. There are tens of thousands of people in China and India who have doctorates that are paid less than a New York City sanitation worker. What this is about is 'American Empire' ... the benefits of which we have been enjoying for the past 50 years, but which is now all but gone. The 'wealth' America built in the 50's and 60's was NOT due to Harvard Graduates, it was due to UAW employees at GM and Machinist Union employees at Boeing and similar 'blue collar' workers at thousands of companies from Dow Chemical to Caterpillar to GE to Frigidaire to Philco - few of which had more than a high school diploma.
Let me try putting this another way ... the very high standard of living that 'average' Americans achieved in the 50's and 60's is a historical abberation. The only other time in the past 150 years that such levels of prosperity were obtained by 'average' Americans was the roaring '20's. In both cases, this prosperity resulted from the (literal) destruction of foreign competition via the damage inflicted during WW1 and WW2. In the 1930's, the prosperity of 'average' Americans was allowed to return to the 'mean' i.e. a more or less equal standard of living to 'average' citizens of other developed countries.
However, in the 1970's, as the effects of America's post-WW2 de-facto monopoly began to fade, America refused to allow this arguably natural readjustment of living standards to take place. Instead, the US embarked on hugely expensive programs to artificially maintain 1950's-esque standards of living -via social welfare programs, via union / gov't wage dictates, etc. Also, at an individual level, 'average' Americans were given access to cheap credit they didn't deserve, but promptly accepted and spent ! As such, the artificially high standard of living that has existed from the 1970's right up into the mid-2000's has NOT been the result of American productivity ... it has been the result of inflation of the currency, liquidation of assets and assumption of huge amounts of debt at the government, business, and individual levels. Well, access to that cheap credit is now being cut off for the US gov't, for US businesses, and for US individuals. As a result, the artificially high standard of living for 'average' Americans can no longer be maintained - pure and simple. No amount of 'rearranging the deck chairs' is going to prevent this Titanic from sinking !
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Re: The U.S. Will Continue to Decline
[quote=Melonie;1645341]Just a rhetorical question, but how many uneducated and unskilled immigrants - as well as disinterested American high school dropouts - would there be in the USA if the going pay rate for their 'menial' labor was only $3 an hour, and if the American social welfare system were not providing then free medical care / free food / subsidized rent / subsidized utilities............
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Rhetorical answer- Those UUI's & DAHSD's would either passively nod & accept that they're going to have to learn to live off the land & in a tin shack with no heating & electriciy OR
2) A rampant uptick in crime & seeds sown for a violent revolution. OP is probably hoping cutback in govt. programs would result in lower taxes (and more $$) in pocketbook, coupled with lower wages (complete repeal of minimum wage laws) would put yet more $$ in consumers pockets. Don't forget that unskilled workers can be consumers too.
The above paradigm shifts don't happen with the rapidity of a pen stroke, and desired results don't always follow. Who's to say that reducing 1 govt. program wouldn't result in increased spending in some other area? Or that the "pain" associated with paying down the deficit (assuming no increase in spending) would be borne equally by all parties. Transitional times require a certain ammount of transitional pain. If businesses could reduce wages by 50%, (Operating costs go down 5-20%), would savings be passed on to consumers, or would owners line their own pockets? What if not enough workers showed up for such low wages?? Opening this rhetorical ?? raises more ??'s than answers.
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Re: The U.S. Will Continue to Decline
Quote:
Originally Posted by
minnow
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
That "bill" would be the GI Bill. Many returning WW2 Veterans attended college in post WW2 era. They "paid their dues" by their military service to their country. What sort of "qualifications" would you envision for todays aid recipients? What quid pro quo dues paying??
First of all I wouldn't call it "Student aid". I'd call it an expansion of public education.
What would a student have to do to qualify to go to school? The same kind of qualifications that a k-12 student must meet. Showing that he/she has met educational goals and can complete the work of his/her grade level.
And the GI bill had nothing to do with the free college available in California to all California residents. That changed in the 1960's. The GI bill is wonderful, but event hat hasn't kept up with modern tuition costs.
We need to get our work force educated at the level of the rest of the world. That isn't going to happen if college tuition requires a stripping job to pay the bills.
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Re: The U.S. Will Continue to Decline
Quote:
Originally Posted by
TheSexKitten
Eric is looking at those statistics in a very black and white manner. Those things predict/correlate with a life of poverty, they don't guarantee a life of poverty.
There's no money in blue-collar jobs anymore, so now everyone has to be pushed through the educational system in order to make a decent living and compete with people overseas. So, our schools are packed and there's grade inflation.
Some of those graduation rates are really sad considering how fucking low the American educational standards are (for K-12) in the first place. :-\
No they don't guarantee a life of poverty but add up enough of them and a life of relative poverty is a virtual certainty. Avoiding them is a virtual guarantee that poverty will be avoided. Add in getting a college degree and poverty is almost certain to be avoided.
As for blue collar jobs, they are in decline in both numbers and wages paid pointing out why at least some college or post high-school technical training is essential. The major reason many such jobs have "disappeared" is that they are now done by ILLEGAL immigrants who also serve to depress wages and benefits. Melonie has documented this phenomenon in this forum many times.
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Re: The U.S. Will Continue to Decline
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Melonie
again it's necessary to separate fact from fantasy. There are TWO reasons that an economic boom occurred in the USA (and to some extent globally) after WW2
#1 - the production facilities of every foreign competitor, from Mitsubishi to Mercedes to Telefunken to Focke-Wulf to IG Farben were blown to shit as the result of US / Allied bombings. This eliminated foreign competition against US products on a global basis.
#2 - the US, via the Marshall Plan, did exactly the same thing that the Japanese and Chinese are doing today ... we lent huge sums of money to our defeated WW2 'enemies' and 'allies' alike which they in turn spent a large percentage of to purchase American export products !
The 'problem' of course was that by the time the 1960's rolled around, our WW2 'enemies' and 'allies' alike had rebuilt their destroyed industries - and had also paid back much of the money they had borrowed from the US. At the same time, the US had chosen to start spending money like water ... both on Lyndon Johnson's 'Great Society' social welfare programs and on the Vietnam war. With this huge increase in US government spending, by the early 1970's the USA had borrowed so much money to enable this spending that we became a debtor nation ... which then led directly to Nixon having to break the US dollar's currency value tie to gold in 1973 and opened the Pandora's Box of fiat currency / inflation.
As unpopular as this sounds, this is NOT about education at the root of the matter. There are tens of thousands of people in China and India who have doctorates that are paid less than a New York City sanitation worker. What this is about is 'American Empire' ... the benefits of which we have been enjoying for the past 50 years, but which is now all but gone. The 'wealth' America built in the 50's and 60's was NOT due to Harvard Graduates, it was due to UAW employees at GM and Machinist Union employees at Boeing and similar 'blue collar' workers at thousands of companies from Dow Chemical to Caterpillar to GE to Frigidaire to Philco - few of which had more than a high school diploma.
Let me try putting this another way ... the very high standard of living that 'average' Americans achieved in the 50's and 60's is a historical abberation. The only other time in the past 150 years that such levels of prosperity were obtained by 'average' Americans was the roaring '20's. In both cases, this prosperity resulted from the (literal) destruction of foreign competition via the damage inflicted during WW1 and WW2. In the 1930's, the prosperity of 'average' Americans was allowed to return to the 'mean' i.e. a more or less equal standard of living to 'average' citizens of other developed countries.
However, in the 1970's, as the effects of America's post-WW2 de-facto monopoly began to fade, America refused to allow this arguably natural readjustment of living standards to take place. Instead, the US embarked on hugely expensive programs to artificially maintain 1950's-esque standards of living -via social welfare programs, via union / gov't wage dictates, etc. Also, at an individual level, 'average' Americans were given access to cheap credit they didn't deserve, but promptly accepted and spent ! As such, the artificially high standard of living that has existed from the 1970's right up into the mid-2000's has NOT been the result of American productivity ... it has been the result of inflation of the currency, liquidation of assets and assumption of huge amounts of debt at the government, business, and individual levels. Well, access to that cheap credit is now being cut off for the US gov't, for US businesses, and for US individuals. As a result, the artificially high standard of living for 'average' Americans can no longer be maintained - pure and simple. No amount of 'rearranging the deck chairs' is going to prevent this Titanic from sinking !
~
All true BUT you ignore the positive effects of the G.I. Bill that almost doubled the number of Americans with college and advanced degrees. It served to enable us to take the lead in many industries such as medicine and computers where we still have an edge.
What we had then that we are atarting to lack now, is a cadre of NATIVE- BORN Americans ready,willing and ABLE to take advantage of such opportunities.
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Re: The U.S. Will Continue to Decline
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Paris
First of all I wouldn't call it "Student aid". I'd call it an expansion of public education.
What would a student have to do to qualify to go to school? The same kind of qualifications that a k-12 student must meet. Showing that he/she has met educational goals and can complete the work of his/her grade level.
And the GI bill had nothing to do with the free college available in California to all California residents. That changed in the 1960's. The GI bill is wonderful, but event hat hasn't kept up with modern tuition costs.
We need to get our work force educated at the level of the rest of the world. That isn't going to happen if college tuition requires a stripping job to pay the bills.
We already have a system of subsidized tuition. State Universities plus financial aid and a host of grants and scholarship programs.
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Re: The U.S. Will Continue to Decline
If we want one earner families so Mom or Dad can stay home and raise the children; so children can get an education instead of having to work; then it's time to look at the ever growing tax burden on working families. Federal, state and local taxes have grown and grown since the 50's.
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Re: The U.S. Will Continue to Decline
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BUT you ignore the positive effects of the G.I. Bill that almost doubled the number of Americans with college and advanced degrees. It served to enable us to take the lead in many industries such as medicine and computers where we still have an edge
I would argue that this isn't really pertinent anymore in terms of 'wealth' building. Ask Motorola how their cell phone development is helping current profits versus Samsung. Ask Amana how their microwave oven development is helping current profits versus LG. In fact, the only areas where your assumption is really true are in industries where the US gov't has allowed a monopoly to exist i.e. Microsoft, Intel, Big Pharma. And these companies are now getting 'stung' by successful lawsuits in the EU and elsewhere.
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What we had then that we are atarting to lack now, is a cadre of NATIVE- BORN Americans ready,willing and ABLE to take advantage of such opportunities.
Again, Moral Hazard strikes. If you run the numbers on 6-8 years with no income as a full time college student, plus $100k+ in debts due upon graduation, plus available pay rates in the USA versus other countries, minus progressive income tax rates which apply in the USA versus other countries, it's not too hard to figure out that either the 6-8 year investment isn't worth it, or the new graduates are better off starting their working careers in Dubai !