Congrats US Govt, you screwed us

I agree, but i didn't want to rip too hard on americans. I was just going by the world univeristy rankings which are based on research mostly.

yeah basically

If diplomas are shit, then we need better colleges.

My position on this is simple: China and the rest of the world is going to be surpassing us in manufacturing. American companies are out to make a buck, and if they can produce the same thing in China, say, for 90 cents less a part, they're going to do it. The only reason to keep manufacturing in America is that whatever you are making is cheaper to make here or can only be made here.

Cheaper isnt an option, not until China start paying its workers more than $1 a day.

That leaves us with subsidizing manufacturing (probably not a viable solution for every industry) or making stuff that can only be made here. I'm not talking about just manufacturing either, I'm talking ideas. Thats what college and higher education is good for, it gets you on the crest of current technology and understanding, and only then can you advance that and come up with new ideas and new shit. Take Google for instance. I cant see a company like that coming out of any of the other nations in the world, even now. Companies and jobs will come out of pushing technology, and the only way to create those companies and fill those jobs is to have an educated workforce. Google now employs a huge amount of people, not all college grads too, so educating just a few thousand can create companies and jobs for many many more. Thats our advantage nowadays over other nations and where we can do well, and thats why I think that we need to get more people into college and educate them better.

As to your Henry Ford point, sure, but that was in 1913. You arent going to have someone building shit in his backyard with no formal education discover the cure for cancer or develop a new quantum computer. Times change. And sure, there are always exceptions to the rule, I'm not claiming that dropouts like Einstein dont have the means to make tremendous change, but you cant have the Manhattan project without the thousands of other contributing scientists and physicists that learned their shit in college. The facts are that there are something like 16 million unfilled job positions in this country, most of which are unfilled because nobody is skilled enough to take them. And there are 60 million unemployed. This doesnt tell you that we need better training and education, that this is at least part of the problem?

we didn't charge them hardly any interest on the bailout money in hopes they would use it to give loans to small businesses. Too back they instead decided to invested in high risk hedge funds and ended up making record profits off the money we loaned them.

I agree. Fill Congress by random selection of the eligible population.  Doing this, you'll get an evenly represented slice of the American population.  If you pick a Fortune 500 CEO, well they should be paying it back to the country that helped them get there.  If you pick a high school dropout working for minimum wage, well I'm sure they'll be stoked for a six figure salary for a while.  You could argue that you'll get idiots in Congress this way, but isn't it already filled with them?

If random groups of people can decide if someone deserves to die, why can't they decide on our laws?

I understand where this idea is coming from, but there are some problems with it.
The big one, of course, is that the power will be with a single entity: whatever/whoever does the drawing. This is just bad in a lot of ways.
The second problem is that not all the people drawn will care enough to do the enormous amount of work required, or be capable of handling that responsibility. Many will simply act like bumps on a log, instead of actively governing and legislating.
The third problem is the backgrounds of these people. We have campaigns for a reason: to test the candidates to judge their fitness to serve and to try to get a good idea of their ideas and beliefs. Granted, this system has failed, but it can still function in that way.

The bottom line in all of this is that everything that is wrong with our government is our own fault. Somewhere along the line, people stopped caring, and that has been passed down ever since. Since we've stopped caring, we've stopped trying to educate ourselves and we've stopped paying attention. The only way things will ever truly change is if every person in this country gets involved.

the problem isn't necessarily that the government needs to stay out of the college education system, they have just been putting money in the wrong places. universities all over the country are losing federal research grants (hurting the quality of the university) while loaning money to any kid with a pulse that wants to go to college. the students then gets degrees in philosophy and humanities (perhaps because humanities classes tend to be much easier than harder sciences) and they graduate with no marketable skills, and the kid ends up buried in debt. the government then gets a bad return on its investment on the student as a future money maker and higher tax payer. meanwhile the harder sciences (which tend to be much more expensive to effectively teach, and yield more skilled workers) lose more and more of the federal money that has historically made them better (or at least competitive) with foreign universities. in other words, do give money to universities to better their programs, don't loan money to nincompoops with no ambition other than getting a degree. people will always want to go to college, and the ambitious people are going to find ways to make it happen. but if the university doesn't have as many kids with government funded student loans applying, then they don't have as much incentive to keep tuition high. then, the extra money that they get directly from the government (instead of through the student as a third party between the two) allows for the best research and education possible. if the government wants a good investment on the education of the populous, it needs to stop relying on the populous to choose a profitable field and start putting money directly where they know there will be a good return.

and about your 6000 members of congress thing, thats a very Rouseauian idea and i just don't buy it. it would give citizens a closer voice in government, but it would also be 6000 people rabbling even more indecisively than they do now. seriously imagine 6000 (or 3001 people for the majority) agreeing on all the specifics of a piece of legislation. the inefficiency would be astounding. if indeed we really do want citizens closer to the congress then we need serious campaign finance reform, and step one of that is limiting the amount special interest groups and corporations can give to campaigns. the next steps are unclear but i think just about everyone can agree on that. also, we need to stop allowing the incumbent congressmen to allot the voting area and gerrymandering the shit out of our democracy. thats how we so frequently have politicians in power who didn't actually win the popular vote. i also think terms limits would be beneficial because most people who enter politics actually do want to change things, but then they have to play the game to get re-elected and lose their ability to act on good intentions.

i say all this while studying political theory lol. post graduate education here i come!

i hope this rant doesn't kill the thread but i have a feeling it will haha

I agree to a point. The problem is that the government issues loans based on whether or not your going to college, and how much you can adequately contribute up front for your education. Not based on what program you're entering. There's not so much a premium set on forcing an 18 year old to take a route into studying neuroscience or something as there is on just getting that student into school itself.

If we had a draft I'd bet we'd end our wars a lot quicker.

Lol. We'd NEVER allow it, because we'd have to draft women too. FEMINIST MOVEMENT BACKFIRE!

I think the main reason for avoiding the draft is that it reeks of Vietnam super hard. It's political suicide after the past 60 years of failed incursions. And I think that sentiment is correct. A draft should never be instated unless in a dire emergency. Maybe if we spent more resources on aid, education and had more farsighted and less reactionary diplomacy we wouldn't even need our military as much. It may only be a pipe dream sadly.

Also want to say, props to everyone in this thread for being really civil and thoughtful. This is the best political thread I've seen on NS so far. Keep it up guys.

All I'm saying is that if there was a draft, people would think a little bit more before backing a war.

I say we remove full lifetime healthcare benefits from federal congressmen. Eff dat sheit. If you're not going to have universal healthcare in this country, fine, but don't be a hypocritical fuckwad by having it yourself

/start of THAT debate.

glad someone finally brought this up.^^

Didn't read shit any of you posted, just adding this.

Turn the Heat (and latter AC) off in the Capital Building and the White House until the budget is balanced, and shit is back on track. Also freeze pay for all elected officials.

Design design design. An architect usually comes up with the plan and an engineer shows them how it needs to be built to be structural sound (at least in my department). If it needs to be done efficiently under certain parameters than it's straight to the engineer. Building it is the companies job who is hired. Thats why construction management is a degree.

so true. from the outside looking in, you cannot even believe how awkward that looks.

in europe, everybody is for higher taxes for the rich, whereas in the US a lot of middle-class and poor people are against that because they DOWNRIGHT EXPECT to be in the highest tax class at some point.

i'm not necessarily advocating that we force everyone into specific fields, i think there could be ways to avoid that and still save tax dollars or get better returns on student loans. the bigger point i'm trying to make is that we give grants directly to universities again to improve their respective departments (especially those in the harder sciences) and turn out kids with bachelors degrees that actually mean something again.

you are definitely right about it being a tricky subject of how to stop wasting taxpayer money giving loans to kids who are just getting art history degrees, but not force kids into specific fields because those loans are the only way they can pay for college. an educated populous is always a good thing, and who can definitively say what fields will yield the highest long term return for the government and society?

i'm taking the point of view that our mutually beloved woozy made in his peter schiff video, which is that colleges are jacking up their prices because everyone can find loans to go to school. the money-pool from the potential students is huge, and the schools are losing federal grants, so they respond by raising the price of tuition. if less kids can afford to go to college, colleges would start to lower the price to compensate, or else their classrooms are empty and they lose revenue. if, however, universities get federal grants for research and technology in the classroom to help them out, then they can keep or better the quality of their departments and the education they provide, while lowering the price for the students.

some people are afraid to just give more taxpayer money to universities, but historically that is what we have done and it has made us a creative, diversely educated and innovative nation.

taxing the rich isn't exactly working out for the EU....EU's debt to gdp percentage is nearly the same as the US.

even if the US taxes the rich, the middle class/poor won't see any significant increase in services...the government has pissed this money away YEARS ago. it doesn't actually solve the debt issue, it makes for good politics.

then we have different opinions on this one.

I fully agree that we should start reverting back to the federal grants that made our universities so well respected and so world-leading during the 1960's. I have said that for a long time, that instead of wasting all this money by throwing it into the toilet of federal financial aid, we should start allocating that taxpayer money directly into the state and public funded school system itself.