ikol

Has anyone figured out whom to blame since I've been gone?

This could, of course, be true. But at the same time, unless you have evidence to prove otherwise, we don't know if he is truly mentally ill, and if so, the severity of his illness, his level of competence, etc. It has been reported that he used drugs, they too could be responisble for his erratic behaviour. He certainly proved that he was lucid enough to purchase a gun, and plan his assination attempt in advance - by perhaps as many as three years.

So since we don't know for sure that he was mentally ill, we should assume it was Glen Beck and Sarah Palin's fault in the meantime?

Yeah, I can't believe how many people in my med school class (where average student debt is ~$125,000) rushed into buying a house as soon as they graduated.

I'm starting to like you, ikol. Good points all, but I didn't want to quote all of it - except for this part.

 

You need to be in pretty good physical and mental condition at 75 to be working, which unfortunately is a trait of the upper/middle class that the working class can't really share. My lady's ma works in a pretty physical capacity right now, and she won't physically be able to do her job (or any other that invovles any thing more than sitting and smiling) past her mid-60s. Other factors prohibit her from working a desk job. She'll probably live for a good long while past that, though.

 

If you're going to raise the retirement age, you'd better be prepared to dole out more disability payments for people who really can't work.

The retirement age will have to be raised gradually, so people can adjust their saving and spending patterns accordingly. Personally, I at least plan to be semi-retired by my early 60s if I can afford to save enough. People currently in their 50s and 60s have always operated on the assumption that they'll get benefits when they're 65, so they can't be expected to wait till they're 75. Anyone currently entering the job market with that assumption is a fool. And the disability system needs serious reform. Doctors, not bureaucrats need to be deciding who qualifies.

that is simple, you're right. trouble is no young person can afford to "buy" a house - they have to take out mortages. for them to be able to "buy" a house, when they can afford it, the housing prices would have to fall to a level that actually reflects their worth. this would mean that the people who "own" (although in the current climate - they don't "own" they are still mortaged) these first time homes would be lossing out on what they bought/mortaged the property for, and what that new market value would be. this will have a knock on effect to the next rung of the property ladder, and so on and so on.

 

i'm not entirely sure why you don't understand this.

 

i mean, for me, i'd love to see what you're saying happen, because it really is the only sensible way to go. but, it would mean a massive global economic collapse - so i don't think many people want to go down that route at the moment.

I don't think you're getting my point. By "buy" I meant "take out a mortgage". I thought it was a given that very few people pay the full amount up front. My point was that it might be a good idea to rent a house or apartment while you pay off your student debt instead of taking on a mortgage at the same time. Is your argument that not enough people would own houses/apartment complexes to rent them out if that were the case?

No.

You crossed a line and made a personal attack/reference. This wasn't personal until you did your usual shit and made it so.

Dude, lighten up. A caveman from an annoying commercial is arguing politics with a cat in a Santa hat. Nothing should be taken too seriously in that situation.

who in your model of the property ladder are these young people renting from? someone has to own the house. if all the young people rent then the property ladder will collapse as you need first time buyers to buy off of you for you to go up the scale, and so on and so on. remove a rung and it doesn't work. buying to let is obviously the first thing that suffers because owning 2 or more houses becomes a major problem as house prices fall - so when you're left with your one house it becomes a bit diffcult to rent it out to someone else, unless you're happy to camp out in the garden.

It's pretty simple. If you can afford the debt that comes with buying a house, go ahead and buy one. If you're tens-hundreds of thousands of dollars (or pounds, euros, etc.) in student debt, rent until you pay off that debt. The younger people are renting from older people that have paid off their debt. And apartments are always an option.

OK, sorry, I've steered this off topic toward domestic concerns. This is supposed to be about Europe. But what's happening there is pertinent to our own predicament. And so I'll reply.

 

No one said Congress doesn't need a good kick in the pants. And yes, we should cut lots from the budget (starting with the military). Cutting back on wasteful spending should be our number one budgetary priority. But we still need higher taxes, especially with the state of the country's infrastructure. The bridge collapse in the Twin Cities was a warning shot, as was the 2003 blackout across the northeast. We built a new bridge and we slapped a Band-Aid on the power grid, but we didn't do much to address the desperate condition of the infrastructure across the nation. Things will get much, much worse unless we stop the tax-cutting madness and make a serious commitment to repairing the infrastructure -- a process that could virtually end unemployment, at least in the short term.

 

I have no problem with the concept of "small government," but many of those who expend the most energy extolling its virtues seem to have only one idea in how to bring it about: cut taxes. That's their answer to every problem. Problems with excessive earmarks? Cut taxes. Don't do anything serious to address the source of the problem (campaign rhetoric is one thing; taking action is quite another, as we're seeing right now in the U.S. Congress). Nope, just cut taxes and hope that changes behavior in Washington (not to mention the state legislatures). Instead, cutting taxes does little to curtail pork-barrel spending, but it has a devastating effect on vital government services, notably the maintenance and improvement of the nation's infrastructure and the education of the nation's children.

 

Pork-barrel spending isn't a Democratic or Republican vice -- it's business as usual for both parties. You might say it's one of the last remaining examples of bipartisanship. But starving the government of tax revenue is not the way to fix the problem, because the more you reduce revenues, the more that wasteful spending crowds out the spending that the nation and its citizens truly need. Instead we continue our wasteful ways but deny funding to the kinds of projects that even the most anti-government libertarians would support.

 

Considering the infrastructure meltdown that we're facing, it's simply not enough to merely cut wasteful spending. We need to drastically increase tax revenues while simultaneously tackling the problem of wasteful spending (earmarks, unnecessary military appropriations, etc.). That includes a crackdown on tax avoidance, especially aimed at corporations. It means NOT extending the Bush-era tax cuts (oops, too late). Ideally, it should lead to an overhaul of the tax code that simplifies it for all taxpayers, placing less emphasis on income and payroll taxes and more on consumption taxes (such as the VAT used in many other countries). But make no mistake, unless we get serious about stripping wasteful spending out of government (good luck with that) -- and even if we do -- revenues must increase to provide us with the necessary ammunition to deal with the impending infrastructure catastrophe, and that means higher taxes in some form.

Good points, and I mostly agree with you. However, wasteful spending is not the problem. It's the routine stuff (Social Security, Medicare, and defense) that's the problem. Taxes should probably be raised for the time being, but only so that we don't go bankrupt before spending cuts take effect and only if you raise taxes for everyone. We can't sustain a system in which the majority essentially votes to take money from the minority. People need to realize that SS/Medicare were meant to be safety nets, not entitlements. You're not putting money away so you can retire at 65. You're insuring yourself against the possibility that you might live past the age at which you can support yourself, which means the retirement age has to go up to at least 75.

Education can be made to be universally available at a cost of zero. It is being done.

If education can have zero cost, why are there budget issues?

I see this as a good thing, far better than having education available to a small, rich elite. The fact that a government has to take a difficult decision in the direction of the latter is unfortunate. The fact that you seem to be saying they should be running in that direction as fast as they can is, in my humble opinion, the most absurd thing about this discussion.

Perhaps there's some middle ground between universally "free" higher education and only Bill Gates' kids get college degrees: for example, the system we have here where you have state colleges with lower tuition and plenty of scholarships available.

What about when democracy itself is at stake? Are the activists/rioters here guilty of "douchebaggery?"

Certainly less so than people protesting that they might have to pay a little more for their tuition.

in england it's actually about increased tuition fees. when i went it was means tested, and most people still had to pay something towards that cost. then obviously you had to take out a student loan to pay for your daily living. coming out of university and taking out a mortage to get on the property ladder for an over-priced house, whilst being saddled with a university debt is simply crippling - it's clearly a big contributing factor to this culture of credit & debt, and it's very very hard to get out of.

Do they not have renting in England?

The rioting is absurd, and will always be absurd.

 

The issue itself is less absurd. I mean, this is a value of between $32,000-$100,000, right? It's not that different from the social security dilemma we're facing here, except that it comes at the beginning (more or less) of one's life than at the end. I have a feeling that their taxes are not being decreased for this, even though their taxes formerly subsidized the education. So they'll still pay insanely high taxes but also be saddled with student debt, which kinda sucks. Kind of like I'm paying into social security and I have a better chance of getting a lap dance from John Lennon than I do ever seeing a social security check with my name on it.

The issue is less absurd, but only a little. First of all, a college education can be a valuable thing, but it's not something that everyone needs or wants. It's certainly not something that someone else owes you. People are willing to take out loans >$100,000 to pay for a house, but it's somehow unreasonable that they borrow money to pay for their future? And we're not even talking about them suddenly having to pay for their entire education but just a small portion. That's what happens when the government promises more than it can fund. Eventually cuts have to be made.

The more I think about it, the more absurd this rioting seems. Their education is being paid for only almost entirely by others (presumably, even if they spend 7 1/2 years getting a major in masturbatory studies) and they're actually protesting the fact that they're not getting a completely free ride. It would be like someone gave you a suitcase full of money on the condition that you pay $100 for the actual case, and you respond by taking the suitcase and throwing rocks at his kids.

And yes we have math. In fact the math scores of kids coming out of schools here kick the ass right off the math scores of kids in American high schools.

Well my math scores kick all of their asses, so I should get to make the budget.

What we have, which enables these sort of things, is taxes.

But not enough of them apparently.

Why not? (Except that retirement-at-50 thing ... slackers.)

And the 35 hour work week.

There's nothing wrong with constructing your society to offer such things. It works in Denmark (for example). Taxation is higher to pay for it all, naturally, but in the end the people who live in such societies vastly prefer them to our model (and I would too). And they feel no lack of "freedom," despite living in what many Americans would consider a socialist society.

Yeah, but Denmark is kinda rotten. There's also less rioting here.

well actually, no. we have MATHS. see, we put an S on the end of it. so, in answer to your question - no we don't have math.

How do you even say that without sounding like you have a lisp?

ikol, do you get nervous when you go to all-expenses-paid resorts?

I'm too busy working to do that!

anyway, surely pissing outside your own window is far worse than any rioting?!

Maybe there were rioters outside his window.

The University of Minnesota, in an attempt to raise its national reputation, is refusing more and more in-state applicants. Only the best kids in Minnesota consider it a done-deal or a fallback school anymore. It's fucking ridiculous - the state is showing no interest in actually educating its residents in favor of boosting the school's reputation, which they say will "add value" to the degrees that none of its state's residents can really get in the first place.

 

That, and it's hardly a value anymore. In-state tuition is $12,000, not counting cost of living or mandatory "student fees" that end up in the thousands. My girlfriend will leave her state school education with a new car or two in debt - and she received tons of aid.

Wow, that is pretty shitty. I think tutition here was like $8000 when I went (it's probably gone up a little since then), and you probably wouldn't pay any tuition if your high school GPA was above 3.5.

Where I live higher education is free. I happen to think that is admirable. Progress is possible, but not unless people are prepared to push for it. Though I do not agree with their means, the goal is a good one.

So everyone is entitled to free healthcare, a free college degree, a 35 hour work week, and retirement at 50? Do they not have math in Europe?

In Los Estados Unidos, it's not so much about education being so expensive that most people can't get one. It's about how much debt a college grad is saddled with once they get their sheepskin and how that affects their future choices in life.

True, though a lot of that has to do with people's choices in schools. If you choose a private or out of state college, it's gonna cost a lot more. I don't know how it is in other states, but here you can at least get tuition fully paid just for having decent grades and test scores (and there are lots of full ride scholarships if your numbers are a little better).

Am I to understand that you are both in favour of the skyrocketing costs of higher education? If this makes any sense, it is none that I can see. If it is the rich you are against, what better way is there to ensure their elitist status than denying higher education to the middle classes by pricing them out of it?

 

Or maybe it is activism itseld you are against?

Given that they are holding signs demanding free education, I would say they want a little more than reasonable fees. But mostly I'm just against douchebaggery.

I think it's probably the rioting rather than the activism they are against.

Nothing says "we have reasonable demands" like destroying private property.

We also know that they're douchebags. What class of douchebags, however, is left to speculation.

I love being able to keep the house below 70.

You people have really tainted this thread.

Is it because it comes with a free apostrophe?

Nah, that's just icing on the taint.

Oh Ikol, you've such a sensitive taint.

My taint cries whenever I listen to Wilco (the album).

I bet the next Wilco album will tickle my taint.

Yes, this story has been kicking around since Year One came into theatres in 2009 and stunk the joint out. The movie that is.

Anyways, the idea of putting the old Ghostbusters in the background while the new recruits come into the story has also been described by every movie site.

Now, the other rumor is that Oscar (Sigourney Weaver's son from Ghostbusters 2) is supposed to be the main character out of the new recruits.

Why do I constantly see Michael Cera in this role? (hopefully they get a bit more creative than that)

The other twist is that Oscar may or may not be the son of Peter Venkman.

And on top of that the main plot has been rumored to hinge on the death of Peter Venkman and his ghost moving the story forward.

This may have been why Bill Murray hated the idea of coming back as a dead character, so maybe this has changed.

I thought it was the other way around, and Bill Murray only wanted to do it if he was killed off and came back as a ghost.

How about sideways glancing? Does that work?

So you're saying that we're all fucked.

From the inside out!

I have heard people say that, but it's usually not in the context of trying to make it through a work day. And it's usually never in the morning.

 

That's another thing that bothers me: ingesting coffee when you wake up on an empty stomach and having nothing to eat with it. The damage that it does to the esophagus and stomach is bad enough with food to go with it.

I hate to break it to you, but even your caffeine-deprived stomach is full of a corrosive substance that, if left unchecked, is capable of perforating your stomach or causing cancer.

If I retain you with a guaranteed 10 ass-kissing posts per month, will you be my VC attending physician?

As long as you don't take any of my medical advice seriously.