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Wall Street's Collapse Is Computer Science's Gain
dcblogs writes "Thanks to Wall Street's implosion, the chairman of Stanford University's Computer Science Department says he is seeing more interest from students in computer science. Ditto at Boston College. Computer science enrollments crashed after the dot-com bust as students turned to hedge fund majors. And are computer science grads getting jobs? The professor at one university program that graduates about 45 students a year with CS degrees, wrote in a comment: 'Last year 87% of our seniors were employed before graduation. The median starting salary was $58,500. A majority of CIS students had multiple job offers. From where I sit, there is a huge demand for entry level IT professionals in IS and in CS.'"
hey where are my mod points?
I have enjoyed reading the opinions and expressed concerns regarding drug legalization, here tonight.
But, there are three main areas where drugs impact the Economy:
Costs of the drugs. I have bought kilos of coke in Bogota, and kilos of great weed in Mexico, and the price/cost differential between the source and the domestic, consumer Market, is astounding. The US produces many tons of codeine here. It's actually a by-product of one of the ingredients of Coca-Cola. And that means that the same source of the codeine, is also all about heroin, or the refined, less efficacious pain killer, morphine. The notion that legalization would divert the same bottom-line 'expenses' [In terms of 'street' consumption] to foreign criminals is absolutely false and misleading. Less-efficient morphine and 'alternatives' like 'Demerol' are only used in the US because the FBI criminalized heron in the Twenties (1926, I think, look it up, google Harry Anslinger). Heroin is far more efficient in pain management. That means a lower burden on Health Care expenses, also, if it were legally available in the US medical industry.
Law Enforcement. Okay, assuming we can ignore, for now, the notion that the War on Drugs is chiefly about establishing hegemony in the trade, and a steady source of for-profit incarcerated individuals for Wackenhut and other beneficiaries of the 'three-strike' laws, the savings in manpower, and other budgetary aspects, would be staggering. This would allow two things, besides real dollar savings: Diverting of manpower toward crimes with victims, and a huge resulting savings in incarceration. [The US taxpayer is underwriting the profits of private enterprise in the Prison Business, under the current paradigm.] As well, parts of the current law enforcement budget could be diverted towards intervention and treatment, which, besides being a necessary effort, would also lower the costs on the current Health Care system, and would allow the Churches to go back to preaching, and butt out of social policy.
Civil impact changes would be too broad for a quick summary like this. But, obviously, the lowered price of drugs, themselves, and the reality that drugs would be regulated insofar as content, purity and manufacturing safety are concerned, would lower the overall impact of drug use on total expendable income in the US by factors that might be difficult to imagine, at first. Drug legalization would involve the use of the same mechanisms of judicial and insurance realities, as well as the ability of individual States to regulate how, where and when they would be made available, as well as civil penalties for irresponsible usage, etc.
Is it a be all, end all? I seriously doubt it. I have been clean & sober for well over a decade. I don't recommend drug use. But I also don't recommend the criminalization of drug use, at all. It should be an individual's choice, with rights and responsibilities in the exercise of that choice. The 'right' being the ability to know that something is what it purports to be, and that help is available if someone needs to walk away from something they can't, apparently 'handle.' And the 'responsibility' is obvious: That the exercise of choice does not negatively impact others. Just my 2 cents, that's all.