tcf.org · Domains · Slashdot Mirror

Re:Value for money by sjbe · 2018-12-04 01:09 · Score: 1 · on Who'd Go To University Today? (spiked-online.com)

Much of the increase has been traced to sinecure positions, a word coming from the old school church where the church created paid positions "without care" to the core mission of soul saving. I.e. graft.

I think you have no idea what universities spend their money on because the data doesn't support your position at all. Growth in tenured positions has been falling and salaries of professors barely keep pace with inflation in recent years. There are reasons for increasing college costs but not the ones you seem to believe.

Here, it is without care to the core mission of teaching.

What makes you think the core mission of every university is teaching? For some that is certainly true but it's definitely not true for a lot of big research universities. The teaching is almost just a little side hustle for them and only accounts for about 30% of costs. Universities are a lot more than some classrooms and blackboards.

Congress can stop these increases overnight by refusing to guarantee any loans for universities that increase spending more than inflation.

That's an idiotic idea for reasons almost too numerous to enumerate. I don't think you understand what inflation is. The rate of inflation has nothing to do with what causes university costs to increase or decrease nor is it a useful benchmark in most cases. There are perfectly legitimate reasons to increase costs more than the rate of inflation, some of which are not under the control of the university.

Re:Plenty of low-wage jobs to go around... by hey! · 2016-12-02 03:07 · Score: 1 · on US Economy Added 178,000 Jobs in November; Unemployment Rate Drops To 4.6 Percent (washingtonpost.com)

Well, if you want data, according the social security adminsitration the average wage has gone up by about $8000 since 2010; however the median wage has gone up by something more like $3000.

This pretty much tells you what you'd expect under trade liberalization: it helps higher wage workers with specialized skills more than it does commodity labor.

The key to understanding data like this, as a sociology professor once told me, is to disaggregate it. If you do you'll see that while the averages and even median that looks fairly rosy over the last thirty years, the picture for median and below has been almost flat for a generation.

That doesn't sound too bad. Sure the wealthy and the well-to-do are getting richer, but nobody (at least no economic slice -- geography tells a different story) is doing worse. But even that result has to be disaggregated. On one hand you have only a modest increase in the overall cost of consumer goods (thanks free trade!); this modest increase along with modest compensation increases produces no growth or loss of purchasing power below median income.

On the other hand if you break out just health incurance, medical care and college tuition, median purchasing power has collapsed in the last thirty years or so.

What this means is that median income people can buy a lot more TVs and home entertainment crap than they could in the 70s, but as that stuff has become cheaper paths to upward mobility have been closing and paths to downward mobility have been opening.

Re:Girls only by AthanasiusKircher · 2015-12-07 01:35 · Score: 2 · on Google Santa Tracker Is Back

The point about graduation rates is not percentages, it's that everyone who wants to has an opportunity to do so. It seems like boys could do with a little more encouragement in some areas, but then again so could girls in others.

It's also important to note that both sexes are graduating college at the highest rates EVER in the U.S. (See, for example, graphs here and here, showing percentages of young people with bachelor's degrees over the past few decades.)

It's true that the growth in women's graduation rates has gone up faster than men's, and now women do graduate at greater rates than men. But men are still graduating at higher rates than EVER before.

So, we can debate what these numbers mean and whether they are a disturbing trend. Maybe men need more motivation. Or maybe women realize that a pay gap still exists -- for whatever reason. Even if that pay gap is mostly because women don't tend to like to work ridiculously long hours and because they take off a few years from careers to raise kids or whatever... even IF that's the reason for the pay gap, women still have an incentive to try to earn more, and college degrees are known to help with that.

So, maybe both sexes are making rational choices here? Maybe men are going to college at greater rates than ever, because they realize the opportunities it provides. But perhaps more men are willing to have a go at a career without the degree, figuring that they can make up for it with long hours and hard work, etc. Whereas women have a stronger incentive to pursue the degree, since it allows them a better start and a greater chance of overcoming the pay gap (no matter what the cause of that pay gap is).

Maybe. I'm not saying this is the explanation, but it's one way to look at it. Or maybe we should be concerned about the fact that men's graduation rates aren't growing as fast as women's. But one thing we need to recognize is the BOTH SEXES are graduating at higher rates -- it's just that the men's growth is slower.

It's too complex a subject to be boiled down to a sentence.

Agreed. And that goes for many of the issues in GP's rant. For example, regarding women getting custody of children in divorces, it used to be the case that there was something called the tender years doctrine where courts would award custody to women by default (particularly for young children).

But the vast majority of states have now passed laws requiring parents to be treated equally. The problem in most divorces is the same one GP mentions about "working long hours." Courts are predisposed to assure continuity for kids. If the mother has been the primary caregiver and the father has basically been absent except for a couple hours on weekends, it's harder to argue that the children should be forced to go with the father.

Is this "fair"? Maybe not in some cases. But there is a logic to saying that if a father hasn't been there for his kids for years, that expecting him to raise them by himself may be more difficult both on him and the kids.

So -- here's a bit of advice for fathers. I've seen a lot of bad divorces happen among friends, family, colleagues, etc. Spend time with your kids. Seriously. If you love them, take the time and do stuff with them while they're small. You may think that "if I just work a little longer tonight" or "if I just come in on Saturday" then you'll get the promotion and get more money and whatever. Guess what? Most kids just want to see their dad. The extra money you might get rarely makes up for being gone all the time.

And if you

Re:Girls only by AthanasiusKircher · 2015-12-07 01:35 · Score: 2 · on Google Santa Tracker Is Back

The point about graduation rates is not percentages, it's that everyone who wants to has an opportunity to do so. It seems like boys could do with a little more encouragement in some areas, but then again so could girls in others.

It's also important to note that both sexes are graduating college at the highest rates EVER in the U.S. (See, for example, graphs here and here, showing percentages of young people with bachelor's degrees over the past few decades.)

It's true that the growth in women's graduation rates has gone up faster than men's, and now women do graduate at greater rates than men. But men are still graduating at higher rates than EVER before.

So, we can debate what these numbers mean and whether they are a disturbing trend. Maybe men need more motivation. Or maybe women realize that a pay gap still exists -- for whatever reason. Even if that pay gap is mostly because women don't tend to like to work ridiculously long hours and because they take off a few years from careers to raise kids or whatever... even IF that's the reason for the pay gap, women still have an incentive to try to earn more, and college degrees are known to help with that.

So, maybe both sexes are making rational choices here? Maybe men are going to college at greater rates than ever, because they realize the opportunities it provides. But perhaps more men are willing to have a go at a career without the degree, figuring that they can make up for it with long hours and hard work, etc. Whereas women have a stronger incentive to pursue the degree, since it allows them a better start and a greater chance of overcoming the pay gap (no matter what the cause of that pay gap is).

Maybe. I'm not saying this is the explanation, but it's one way to look at it. Or maybe we should be concerned about the fact that men's graduation rates aren't growing as fast as women's. But one thing we need to recognize is the BOTH SEXES are graduating at higher rates -- it's just that the men's growth is slower.

It's too complex a subject to be boiled down to a sentence.

Agreed. And that goes for many of the issues in GP's rant. For example, regarding women getting custody of children in divorces, it used to be the case that there was something called the tender years doctrine where courts would award custody to women by default (particularly for young children).

But the vast majority of states have now passed laws requiring parents to be treated equally. The problem in most divorces is the same one GP mentions about "working long hours." Courts are predisposed to assure continuity for kids. If the mother has been the primary caregiver and the father has basically been absent except for a couple hours on weekends, it's harder to argue that the children should be forced to go with the father.

Is this "fair"? Maybe not in some cases. But there is a logic to saying that if a father hasn't been there for his kids for years, that expecting him to raise them by himself may be more difficult both on him and the kids.

So -- here's a bit of advice for fathers. I've seen a lot of bad divorces happen among friends, family, colleagues, etc. Spend time with your kids. Seriously. If you love them, take the time and do stuff with them while they're small. You may think that "if I just work a little longer tonight" or "if I just come in on Saturday" then you'll get the promotion and get more money and whatever. Guess what? Most kids just want to see their dad. The extra money you might get rarely makes up for being gone all the time.

And if you

Re:Cheap labor versus automation by TubeSteak · 2014-05-30 12:00 · Score: 3, Interesting · on How LEDs Are Made

--American unions are changing their priorities. Appliance Park's union was so fractious in the '70s and '80s that the place was known as "Strike City." That same union agreed to a two-tier wage scale in 2005--and today, 70 percent of the jobs there are on the lower tier, which starts at just over $13.50 an hour, almost $8 less than what the starting wage used to be.

--U.S. labor productivity has continued its long march upward, meaning that labor costs have become a smaller and smaller proportion of the total cost of finished goods. You simply can't save much money chasing wages anymore.

Your article glides over this very quickly, but it's worth discussing further.
Management has essentially halted the growth of wages for decades and this has allowed all the productivity gains to accrue to business profits.
The knock on effects have ripped through the economy, from skewed stock valuations to screwed workers' debt loads.

http://tcf.org/assets/images/blog_images/20120814-graph-of-the-day-does-productivity-growth-still-benefit-the-american-worker.png
You can find other graphs that break down the wage growth by percentile (20th, 50th, 95th) and it's pretty much exactly what you'd expect.

Re:Job limit. by TubeSteak · 2014-01-13 20:55 · Score: 3, Interesting · on If I Had a Hammer

Only if the wealth is shared.

http://jim.roepcke.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/we-grew-apart.jpg
http://tcf.org/assets/images/blog_images/20120814-graph-of-the-day-does-productivity-growth-still-benefit-the-american-worker.png

The wealth doesn't need to be shared.
Instead, the workers need be payed what they are worth.

Re:Already happening by dkleinsc · 2013-07-25 01:38 · Score: 1 · on Door-To-Door Mail Delivery To End Under New Plan

the facts are they have used it just as much over the years

No they haven't: Filibusters since 1963

Re:Change we can believe in by BasilBrush · 2010-09-30 23:41 · Score: 1 · on White House Pressuring Registrars To Block Sites

Are you aware that every time anyone has done a study of millionaires in the U.S. they find that the majority are self-made, first generation?

I don't know what particular pice of propaganda you got that from, but it obviously comes under the lies, damn lies and statistics category. You've been fooled.

A generation is about 25 years. Inflation over the last 25 years has been approximately 100%. So someone classed as a millionaire today is the equivalent of someone who had $500,000 for the last generation.

As a result it takes far less than 25 years for the number of millionaires to double. With far more than twice as many millionaires this year than last, then logically most millionaires cannot have had parents that were millionaires. It could not be otherwise. You don't need any studies to show that truism. But it says absolutely nothing about privilege.

What IS meaningful is that the strongest correlation for the wealth of a son is the wealth of his father. Accidents of birth are the primary driver for how wealthy a person will be.
http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequality/ragrichrc.pdf

Do you not know that the idea that there is some privileged demographic and if you're not part of that demographic then you can't succeed is bullshit?

That's just a straw man. Nobody here said an unprivileged person can't succeed. Everyone knows there are some exceptionally wealthy people that are self made from humble backgrounds. But they are the exception rather than the rule. Privilege of birth is what accounts for most wealthy people.

Singapore does better than Canada by mcwop · 2009-06-20 11:34 · Score: 1 · on US House Democrats Unveil a Health Care Plan

I like Singapore's system, and would prefer to start there. We already have people using Flex Spending Accounts, and could gradually shift there over a 3-5 year period. http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2008/01/singapores_heal.html
http://takingnote.tcf.org/2008/07/health-care-in.html

Re:meh... by pileated · 2008-08-19 03:42 · Score: 1 · on Photoshop Allows Us To Alter Our Memories

So you're saying that everyone is biased the same way at any given newspaper? That's not the case and anyone who ever set foot in a newspaper would know this. I will gladly admit that at times I've been embarrassed by the liberal bias that I've seen on occasions. But a newspaper is a collection of strong willed and strongly opinionated people. Those who think differently still speak up and their views are heard. The idea that newspapers are an idealogical monolith is one based on wishful thinking rather than analysis. It's a great idea to bandy about, and it gives a convenient enemy to those looking for enemies, but it has little basis in reality.

That said I came upon this story today that offers another perspective on the plight of newspapers. Count me among the pessimists mentioned in the article.

Re:It won't matter if they pass it or not by Telepathetic+Man · 2007-07-12 16:29 · Score: 1 · on A Flawed US Election Reform Bill

If someone does not have a photo-ID, there should be secondary options at a minimum, i.e.: in Minneosta they allow a phone bill addressed to your current address. Provisional ballots are often issued in these cases as well. Requiring a photo-ID has been suggested to disenfranchise a voter and seems like a serious enough risk to avoid the requirement. A study by the U.S. Department of Justice indicated that a study showed, "African-Americans in Louisiana were 4 to 5 times less likely to have government-sanctioned photo ID than white residents."

With all the new technology, however, one would think that with a valid photo ID with a magnetic stripe, a registered voter could go to any polling place in the nation, swipe his or her card, and see the ballot on the machine in front of them that would be presented to him as if he had gone to his primary polling place. The vote would be registered and counted. No need for absentee ballots, unless you travel outside of the country.

This idea seems like a dangerous step, it could easily lead to tracking of what should be an anonymous vote. Having more than one way of "officially" counting a state vote seems like a better step to me. So that you can have more than one official count and be able to see if they match up.

Re:That really sucks by ObsessiveMathsFreak · 2006-10-11 01:12 · Score: 2, Interesting · on Hans Reiser Arrested On Suspicion of Murder

Is this for real? I don't get it. Here in Finland there are ballot boxes in prisons on election days... do convicted criminals lose their vote for life automatically in the US, or does it only apply in some states?

After the 15th Ammendment was passed, which made it illegal to deny anyone voting rights based on race, millions of black Americans were enfranchised. Southern whites, being quite racist, took exception to this and sought ways to legally re-disenfranchise black voters. Alongside a determined effort to convict more and more black people, criminal disenfranchisement laws were passed which ensured that once convicted for a crime, no matter how petty, a black voter would be forever disenfranchised. As noted above, this extends itself outside of the original state in some cases.

Here's a link with more info. Personally, I doubt the committment of many American states, especially southern ones, to the principles of democracy. And my own personal opinion on voting rights for criminals, is that they are one of the groups in society for whom the right to vote is most important.

Re:Now to get the Photo ID bill passed by dontknowman · 2005-11-12 06:16 · Score: 0 · on WI Assembly OKs Voting Paper Trail

That's easy for someone who already has a photo id to say. What about the people who have no driver's license? Like the elderly or the people in the inner city? Here's a couple of articles you should read, before you are so quick to codemn anybody that wants equal access to voting for ALL citizens.
article 1
article 2