QUO VADIS? We are clearly living today in a "political mess". Where, ever, did it come from in a nation as smart as ours, I keep asking. Where did the political-pedantry and avarice start? With Reckless Ronnie and a couple of "differences-of-opinion" that led to war-situations. We, as a nation, have a knack for the latter - it justifies a massive DoD budget that consumes more than half budgeted Discretionary Spending. (See here.) Both the problem and challenge have been with us a long, long time. Since way before the beginning of the 19th century, and the start of the Industrial Age. Which was the moment at which truly gigantic Wealth was brought about by the Industrial Age. Nothing has changed, except the "ages". We are leaving the Industrial Age (at a rate accelerated by the arrival of China as a major exporter) for the Information Age. If we were a "smart people", we'd be thinking seriously about the consequences. Because we are electing the wrong people to lead us through the Information-Age thicket. A "thicket". Whazzat? It is the mess that profound economic changes brings upon a nation. For instance, the advent of the Industrial Age sparked massive movements of labor from Agriculture to Industry. Which was compensated by the fact that Industry developed and replaced horse-drawn devices with engine-mounted mechanisms to allow farmers to double, triple and quadruple their output. People were obliged to learn new competencies, since farming-skills were hardly adaptable to an industrial manufacturing-line. My own mother slapped together glass-frames to make "Raybans" most of the latter part of the last century. Where has all that manual labor gone to? One guess. WITHER GOEST THOU? Total manufacturing jobs (according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics) are now down to just 12% of the population, down from about half the total working population. And how did that happen? Not particularly Chinese ingenuity - but the much lower pricing of their basic goods that western-nation consumers bought willy-nilly. China, now 30-years later, is having the same problem. It's middle-class has all the pots-'n-pans and refrigerators that it needs - and its middle-class (younger than ever) is looking willfully at other personal horizons. The way forward for western-societies is clear, and some are more prepared for that evolution than others. Meaning this: our advance in "Ages" as mentioned above requires a much more developed work-force. Even manufacturing production-lines now employing robots heavily need smart people to assure continuous production processes. Let's face the challenge described by two bits of factual evidence: *The US is a nation where the average college graduate has a $35K debt to repay because tertiary-educational costs are hallucinatory. *The US is graduating only 43% of its high-school students with tertiary-level (vocational, 2- or 4-year) diplomas. (See here.) For which, *The US has had for decades about 12/15% of its population incarcerated below the Poverty Threshold (which is a mean annual wage of $24K for a family of four). The percentage of individuals with tertiary-level diplomas by country: Not bad, the US. But not nearly good-enough either! And why? Because though secondary-schooling percentages are improving, the post-secondary completion rate is not ... ! And how do we solve that problem? By means of what Bernie and Hillary had promised: A tertiary-education federally-subsidized for families earning less than $100K à year (which is a family with both parents earning the average-wage of about $54K annually!
Isn't it funny how $600 billion on defense, which employs 5 million people and directly supports 10% of US manufacturing, not to mention lifts 500,000 disabled Americans out of poverty, is too much, but the trillion we spend on education is just not going to cut it. Government runs education in America. That's why it's failing.
Nope, not amazing at all. Governments run education in all of the EU, a country with a population TWICE THE SIZE of the US. Kids go to a post-secondary education course that costs rarely more than $1000 a year (and not $20K as in the US). Vocational training is often free, gratis and for nothing - with the students actually apprenticing with a small salary. (In Germany, 95% of apprenticed students move into permanent jobs.) You are quoting comparative costs as if they were the only true means of comparison. They aren't. You are overlooking the key idea. A nation that was smarter would NOT NEED a massive defense organization. Go and live in Switzerland. It defends itself, people live safely and harmoniously, guns are not allowed. Nobody (except tourists) have invaded Switzerland since the 17th century. The US is different? Not really ...
What imaginary "trillion we spend on education" would that be? The chart provided by the OP shows only $73 billion.
It should read $0.4T. The trillion comes from the actual cost today of sending 20 million American kids into Tertiary Education programs. Multiply 20 million students by an average of $20K per year per student and that is what the Dept. of Education numbers help me predict as the annual total cost of post-secondary education in America. NB: 20,000,000 x $20,000 = $400,000,000,000 (or 400 Billion Dollars or $0.4T), the total GDP is $18.5T.
Thank you for the clarification. Having had to pay for my own daughter's tertiary education I suspect that your figure is on the low side but it is sufficient as a basis for discussion on this topic. That tertiary education is now a given for everyone to have a living wage today means that it must be affordable. Not to derail the topic but I see a parallel with healthcare. It was literally bankrupting Americans and thus it became inevitable that some form of affordable healthcare options needed to be provided. The same applies to students who are struggling with college debts. They are not even allowed to declare bankruptcy either and it effectively acts like a fiscal ball and chain preventing them from getting anywhere.
So a nation that's smart would do absolutely nothing to stabilize the world? We should decommission our aircraft carriers, and tell the Philippines the next time theirs a hurricane to pound sand and figure out how to restore power and potable water on their own? The Swiss are smart though. Compulsory military service and no minimum wage? Paradise
My trillion dollar reference is the total public expenditure for education in the United States. Public primary and secondary schools cost $634 billion, while public universities and community colleges clock in at $330 billion
Switzerland has [for Europe] relatively high gun ownership. There are no official statistics kept, and estimates vary considerably. The Small Arms Survey of 2016 placed Swiss gun ownership 24.45 per cent.
I've lived in Switzerland.There is no need to own a gun because there is very little crime. The gun-ownership is not "ownership" for the most part. Soldiers are allowed to keep their automatic weapons at home "just in case" of invasion. Yes, gun possession is high, but that's government Defense Policy.
https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66 https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-education-spending-tops-global-list-study-shows/
If they were members of the National Guard, yes. Otherwise, no. And when members leave the National Guard, they surrender the weapon ... Iow: You want to play with an M16? Join the National Guard!
Nope. I suspect they are not constitutionally valid. Only the central government has the right to form and run an "army" for purposes of defense. A state militia is defending the state from "what"? Unless overseen by a central-government a state-militia is tantamount to a private-army under the command of a state governor. If not, then it is just a private "army". Either of which is illegal according to the Constitution. From Wikipedia, here: (Trying to secede from the union, are we ... ? ;^)
From the National Center for Education Statistics (here): Unfortunately, there is no number for "Total Post-secondary" degree. Meaning that of the three numbers shown, there is no aggregate number comparable to High-school Completion - so we do not know how many: *take a "skills degree" (cooking, carpentry, truck-driving, etc.), and *do not move on to a further degree. One's chances in the job-market is highly dependent upon "competencies" and in fact these cover the range from skills (cooking, carpentry) to professions (like lawyer, or doctoring). So, it is not possible to understand how many students simply have no recognized "competence education"; and thus perhaps make an effort to shift them in to skills-degree courses so they have at-the-very-least those recognized competencies with which to pursue a career. Anyway, having toyed with the NCES-database for some time, I see no information regarding "skills-based degrees" (as indicated above for courses taken beyond the high-school level that will obtain them a job). And yet, many of these lead to permanent work-life vocations ... *Which means 8% of all students have no skill or job-competency training and are therefore destined for a life below the Poverty Threshold and "on-the-dole". That number should be, as a national target, 1%.
Careful, you may be interfering in the diabolical "Information Loop" that furnishes the energy for Replicants to flounder consistently in this forum. Some will never learn, even if one pushes the facts into their faces ... PS: If one wants to spout statistical data to support their argument - and they are very welcome to do so - they should indicate the information-reference.
I specifically cited the Federal agency responsible for the total tally. K-12 Public Education-$634 billion Post Secondary Public Education-$330 billion Followed by Federal and State incentives, such as various state grants for veterans and their families at private universities. One could agree that a sizable portion of the $330 billion spent at public universities is funded via tuition, but the lion's share is taxpayer dollars and private donations from alumni. If a claim can be easily found, such as Googling "how much does the US spend on education?", I tend to not cite a source, unless I am referencing the exact particulars of that spending, such as the actual amount the US spends on health care services, as opposed to the often misquoted total health care expenditure.
