I feel like the next generation will be living in a real life Matrix with the machines replaced by the government. People going about their lives with no control in false happiness unaware of what is really going on.
They already killed our “One” last generation in Martin Luther King Jr, who will be next??
sarah palin
You guys better hope I don’t get superpowers.
You already have the greatest superpower of all!
The ability to vote!
/patriotism
Yeah, suddenly me saying Canadians have no footing to to speak on American issues seems a whole lot better, now doesn’t it?
Christ, did you fail out of high school English?
What? Capitalists are evil! It’s because of their evil money making ways that I can’t afford a house, car and health insurance as an artist. In this stupid system of theirs I’m forced to have a job that I go to 40 hours a week.
Japan is a beautiful, rich culture that can do no wrong. The Japanese have an amazing sense of humor and they are a very socially evolved people. Just look at their Anime, the plots are always deep and the wide variety of unique character personalities keeps it fresh.
That’s your response? “You’re not from here so you can’t talk?” Jesus man, your “points” (a stretch of the imagination is required to call them that) have usually been weak but this is just a whole new level.
Can’t think of anything bright to say? Attack his spelling.
Yet another new level.
What are these rankings? Where do they come from?
And higher education costs money no matter where you go in the world. If your bringing up the poor ghettos with over populated schools, lets fairly compare those to other countries poorest and overpopulated and see how they stack up.
And what are you talking about when you say a national education tax? Public schools are funded off of taxes.
I am actually a “victim” of this, I guess you could say. I went to an underfunded school where most of the people were from the ghetto and graduated with only 57 people in my class. I graduated towards the top but as soon as I got to college, 1) I didn’t get enough to cover my entire tuition in terms of scholarships and aid, especially because I’m white (and yes this is a big part of it, classmates of mine had this happen to them to, the only white kid who got full aid and all that was a Mormon going to BYU) and 2) I got to college and fell apart. High school prepared me in no way for college, the workload, or even the kind of work. My math foundation is so shitty it’s not even funny and I’m an engineering major.
You can imagine how much of a headache it is just getting through an assignment that is a little calculus (the easy part) and mostly algebra and little tricks I wasn’t taught because we were too busy being taught state standards and not anything real and I was already above the state standard so for most of my high school time, I sat around while everyone else had to catch up. I’ve had friends go to college and quit or take longer to get through because none of us were prepared, and most of them were honor students by our school’s standard.
American colleges may offer the best education in the world, but the high schools on the other hand are far from it. Not everyone is given the same opportunity and now high schools, especially like mine, aren’t even preparing people for college, they’re preparing them to take standardized tests (Fuck you “No Child Left Behind”) just to get a little more money for whatever programs.
We rank 19th. Being born in the United States has become a disadvantage. Especially when a place like CUBA BEATS US. No diss to Cuba though, they do some things right that we dont. I also didnt say they do everything right.
but hey, we beat Kazakhstan
as far as poverty?
Id much rather live in Sweden or Norway while being poor. Higher education is FREE, or ALMOST FREE. At least there they help people out, at least there they dont have dysfunctional republicans, libertarians and Ayn Rand worshipers who couldnt make a convincing argument about reality if they absolutely needed to.
"And what are you talking about when you say a national education tax? Public schools are funded off of taxes."
What? I want a national education tax so everyone in the country has a good chance at education. Our education is funded by PROPERTY taxes, which are LOCAL. not NATIONAL. Therefor, certain people dont get opportunities that others get.
In the area I live, theres a town I grew up in that became pretty rich (so rich that I couldnt afford to live in the poor section anymore) and I had to move to a town that was only like 5 miles away(lets call it townB). TownB had mostly apartments, and because of that the local school all the kids went to received LESS funding. Is there any surprise that theres a fairly high crime rate in that area(swamped with drugs at a much higher rate than townA)? Theres bound to be some asshole whose going to try and say “but…minorities etc” but townB was nearly 100% white. It was a polish town, just like the town I grew up in. 5 miles apart, seems like a different freaking world. Education is what makes the world go round, without it we would all be praying to our employer for the day off so we can rest because our blacklung is too overwhelming.
Yep, it’s pretty well-known that if you want to send your child to a good school you better move near some rich properties.
I hate to admit it, but it’s true. Went to a Ghetto Misery school for 4 years before moving to Florida, and then coming back to NYC. The two Middle Class schools I went to were like a revelation to me. I used to think things like decent school lunches and teachers that cared about their student were just bullshit made for TV.
For everyone hating on socialism I would like to point this out:
Public debt as a percentage of GDP:
Sweden: 43.20
Norway: 60.20
Damn! Sure must be tough living under those tax and spend liberals!
Those are not the only alternatives. Small, green economies would be infinitely preferable to either socialism or capitalism as they’re currently thought of today. Unfortunately, society is so bloated and entrenched in the ways of large, centralized economy that any kind of significant change is practically impossible.
Or even getting rid of wealth altogether. Oh, man, that would be sweet. Like wearing a kilt with no underwear.
that’s nice, but it’s harder to do that on a large scale. it’s like living in uber-capitalistic Hong Kong is fantastic.
sweden and norway have like 15million people combined. we have 300+. systems don’t always scale.
and a little tip for people who think raising taxes is always the answer: it’s possible (and has happened before) that you can raise taxes and see revenue decrease. there is a percentage of tax that is optimal for revenue and it isn’t necessarily always higher.
one of the best ways we could increase tax revenue would be to fund the IRS better and help stop rich people from using so many loopholes and legal dodges to avoid paying their fair share.
When will people stop comparing social services to full-blown socialism?
How DARE you bring logic to this discussion. Don’t you know that Obama just has to sign a “higher tax on the rich” bill and everything will be magically fixed?
Never mind the ghettos and trailer parks are full of kids being raised by single drug addicted mothers. Never mind the gangs that roam around the streets looking for someone wearing a different color bandanna to shoot. Just forget that acts of violence against someone else in these areas are glorified and therefore strongly encouraged.
No, the only problem is that rich people aren’t taxed enough and if the schools in these areas were more funded the all the real problems would magically disappear.
You watch too much TV.
THANK you for mentioning that. I’ve been saying that for years on other sites…every time the subject matter of who pays what comes up, people start protesting “Oh, the rich pay more than anybody…they pay around 96% of the taxes, and everybody else makes up the rest”, then, without fail some asshat comes up with a sob story about how their parent earns 3 million a year running their own business and have to pay a fuck-ton of taxes every year, and whines about the unfairness of it all, that they should have to pay taxes.
Well, weeks just pretty much answered this for me. In my last post I was going to write "well, all those rankings compare us to small, homogenized European countries with 1/15 our population, so the comparison is frankly BS to begin with. " but I didn’t want to be a jerk.
if your saying our education sucks compared to these countries, its really like comparing a D1 high school with 3000 kids to a small D4 school with less than 1000. Of course the smaller school will have more hands on attention and focus. When your comparing a country with 300 million to 15 million, the one with 300 million is bound to have a wider range of results. In the meantime however, we have the best colleges in the world and we are able to provide free education to those 300 million people.
I don’t agree a national education tax would fix everything either, but I do think our teachers should be paid more. In all honesty, 90% of the teachers in high school are teaching really basic, simple material, and that’s why they are underpaid. If we paid them like cops or fireman though, and their salaries were raised, I think the positions would become more sought after and the competition would create better teachers.