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When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carry a cross.... Sinclair Lewis
The GOP under Bush and the evango-fascist far right would like to take us back to the Berlin of the latter 1930's - all white and all pure. In the past 8 years we've come perilously close to that disgraceful model of humanity.
Yep, sometimes going to college means that you put in the extra effort, that you learned a specific thing really well, that you expanded your horizons. While you do not need to be a college graduate to be successful, it is a ridiculous thing to be calling them elitists for doing their best. Yes, I want to go to an accountant for my taxes, and a plumber for my plumbing, and a doctor for my medical advice. In the same way I want my politicians to be really good at managing and communicating with people, understanding all sides and facets of complex issues,a basic knowledge of the political processes they will be involved in, as well as foreign processes. All these things are important and no, Joe or Sarah Six Pack might not be able to handle it.
Is such a pattern discernible? No. The nation with the lowest levels of poverty and income inequality in the EU, as well as the lowest rate of long-term unemployment, is Denmark - a country with competitive product markets and some of the least restrictive labour laws. Countries with the worst social outcomes (Greece, Italy and Portugal) all have restrictive product and labour market laws. Liberalisation, it seems, no more threatens social justice than regulation guarantees it.
In short, inequality in the UK seems to have more to do with high drop-out rates from upper secondary education than with the country's privatised rail system, liberal labour laws or levels of social transfers. If this analysis is correct, it suggests that the British government faces an uphill task trying to reduce inequalities through the tax and benefits system. It also suggests that countries in which drop-out rates are high are the most exposed to increases in income inequality resulting from globalisation and technological change.
Education has long been an important determinant of countries' wealth. As China and India become more integrated in the world economy and the international division of labour proceeds apace, it is also having an increasingly important influence on social cohesion. The European countries most at risk of rising social inequalities are those with underperforming education systems.
Education levels increased in every state from 2000 to 2005. Nationally, the share of adults 25 and older with at least a high school diploma increased from 80 percent to 84 percent. The share of adults with at least a bachelor’s degree increased from 24 percent to 27 percent.
Every state is getting older. Nationally, the median age — the one at which half the population is older and half is younger — went from 35.3 in 2000 to 36.4 last year.
Hispanics increased their hold as the country’s largest minority group, at 14.5 percent of the population, compared with 12.8 percent for blacks.
Hispanic is a term for people with ethnic backgrounds in Spanish- speaking countries. Hispanics can be of any race, and most in the U.S. are white. When demographers talk about the shrinking percentage of white people in America, generally they are talking about whites who are not Hispanic.
Such whites are a minority in four states — Hawaii, New Mexico, California and Texas — and the District of Columbia. The share of white people fell below 60 percent in three other states — Maryland, Georgia and Nevada. Nationally, non-Hispanic whites make up about 67 percent of the population, down from 70 percent at the start of the decade.
The very thing that helped make America great is the aspiration of each generation to make things better for the next generation. Parents without an education worked hard to give their child a high school education. Parents with a high school education worked hard to give their child a college education. This was true whether your political leanings were Republican or Democrat. Unions were formed to provide the working people the protection and wages that would allow them to become a part of the American dream and create the middle class.
BUT, with these improvements for the majority of citizens, there were fewer people willing to work for substandard wages under substandard conditions and the Corporate Owners were unhappy. So the lobbiest went to work. First they did away with AFDC so that unskilled, undereducated young parents were forced into the workforce and, being unskilled, they were willing to fill the Owner's needs. But they were fewer in number than was needed and some of them actually went ahead and became skilled and educated so more bodies were needed. So suddenly our borders became poreous and undocumented workers poured across the borders. Because they had to live in the shadows they had no choice but to take the jobs others were unwilling to take. But the Owner's knew this was a solution with a limited time frame because, sooner or later, it would become too great a political liability if nothing were none to halt the flow.
Now come the Neo Cons who have accomplished what would once have been unthinkable. They built an entire political movement by convincing working people that education was bad...was elitist....was dangerous...would turn their children into "one of those people" and destroy all their values. WE NOW HAVE THE FIRST GENERATION IN AMERICA'S HISTORY IN WHICH FEWER CHILDREN ARE GRADUATING HIGH SCHOOL THAN THE PREVIOUS GENERATION. And the Owners have now very, very large number of people who will have no choice but to work for substandard wages in substandard conditions. Congratulations. The rich, that have actually brainwashed you into believing that if you don't pay their share of the taxes you will lose your freedom, are sitting in their countryclubs this afternoon laughing their butts off at you. And you still don't get it, do you?
Brilliant. I wish I could rep you more than one, you deserve a dozen.
Some people think because mommy and daddy forked out a trust fund for their education that they are somehow superior to everyday ordinary people. Fact is, most people are simply passed through college without much education or challenges these days. A high percentage of people who come out of college are probably dumber then when they went in and lack common sense. They often feel now the world owes them something delivered on a silver platter because they cheated on a few exams and played politics to their liberal professors.. They pass around master's degrees today like used toilet paper, making sure the university meets their quota of graduate minorities, non-English speaking students and so on. Makes them look good to the feds, but at what expense? A poor finished product.
I don't know where you went to school, but my degree was damn difficult to complete. I'm proud of it, and I used it to get a good job. I couldn't do my job without it, so in that sense, I'm 'flaunting' it. I also 'flaunt' it to my kids in the hope that it will motivate them to do the same.
As for being dumber coming out of college than when you went in...that is by definition impossible, assuming you have a degree. You've gained knowledge, thus making you less dumb.
As for common sense...well, that is the typical anti-elitist argument. What exactly IS a person without 'common sense'?
Cheating on exams? Pandering to professors? That may be how YOU got through school, but I don't know anyone who did that. If that were my educational background, I wouldn't be 'flaunting' my degree either.
This is something that's very important to me. On one hand we have Barack Obama. Politics aside, he embodies everything that I appreciate about America. Here's a guy from modest roots, who went to top schools and held top positions. He's articulate and only the most partisan and angry among us would deny that he is very intelligent. He's someone I could tell my future son, "this is the type of person who has strived and succeeded in life".
Joe Biden is much the same way and what I really like about Biden is that he is a own to Earth guy yet he's still thoughtful(at times), educated and articulate. He's not the lofty type that many(myself NOT included) have come to abhor.
John McCain is no idiot. I know that underneath the front he's been presenting this year is a thoughtful and intelligent man. He's simply succumb to to the insidious brand of GOP populism required to motivate 'the Base.' And that genuinely disappoints me.
Sarah Palin, on the other hand, represents all that I loathe about what the GOP's image for America is. It's that populist, anti-intellectual wing that has come to dominate the GOP that makes them and their movement wholly unattractive to me.
To sum it up, I can't bother to respect anyone who doesn't believe in being educated, informed, and nuanced.
Exactly. Everyone I know, and I'm not exagerating, feels that way- especially about La Palin. Thanks.
My husband is a college professor and a conservative. We both are college educated and value education. I never believed that people don't need a college education. What I object to is acting like a college education gives you the right to believe your opinion is more important than a non-college educated person. There are intelligent college educated people and stupid college educated people. That whole article is typical stuff from the NY Times. There is a problem with colleges being overpopulated with left wing sixties rejects who are biased against conservative students, but that's another story.
I think that an educated person's opinion is more informed and more valued than one who is not. Note that I didn't say 'college educated'. There are definitely people who are not college educated who have taken the trouble to read and educate themselves. This is not a small task, and one that involves more than reading People and watching Fox News.
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