Thread: So...who here is STILL proud to be a Democrat?

Originally Posted by gunnut

WW2 - 400,000 dead American soldiers, concentration camps for American citizens because their skin color was yellowish

Korean War - 30k? 50k dead American soldiers and the war is technically still on

Vietnam - try to defend that one

In fact, all the wars America involved in over the last 100 years have been started either by a democrat or a Bush )

Democrats lead the Bushes in body count by a margin of 600K to 5k.

GN

This is too crass and beneath you...you do no credit to yourself.

Do you really mean that we should not have been involved in WW II or Korea?

You do realize that the involvement in Viet Nam began and ended in Republican Administrations, right? And that Earl Warren, who interned the the Nisei, was elected as a Republican?

Isolationism has not done us any good in the past decade.

Originally Posted by Bluesman

and be Sugar Daddy to all students that do not have independent means of going to college.

Maybe I'm a bit biased because I only recently emerged from the college world, but it seems to me that investment in college education is a practice that pays dividends in the form of higher tax receipts. I.E., it's not a money-sink.

Originally Posted by gunnut

WW2 - 400,000 dead American soldiers, concentration camps for American citizens because their skin color was yellowish

Korean War - 30k? 50k dead American soldiers and the war is technically still on

Vietnam - try to defend that one

In fact, all the wars America involved in over the last 100 years have been started either by a democrat or a Bush )

Democrats lead the Bushes in body count by a margin of 600K to 5k.

We didn't start any major 20th century wars. We intervened. WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, all interventions in ongoing conflicts.

World War II and Korea were worth the sacrifice made. Those soldiers didn't die in vain. The hugely positive results speak for themselves. Vietnam was a political conflict fought as a military endeavor. If we'd run it more like the British did during the Malayan insurgency I think it would have turned out better. It's regrettable it didn't.

Originally Posted by Ironduke

Maybe I'm a bit biased because I only recently emerged from the college world, but it seems to me that investment in college education is a practice that pays dividends in the form of higher tax receipts. I.E., it's not a money-sink.

Correct weight Ironduke. From this week's Economist (check out the link, it has a REALLY cool graph comparing benefits to the individual & taxpayer in some industrial nations - the US does very well):

Higher education and the recession: It still pays to study | The Economist

Higher education and the recession

It still pays to study
Sep 10th 2009
From The Economist print edition

Not the panacea it is billed as, but the best hope for this year’s school-leavers


THE law of supply and demand tells you that increasing the quantity of something tends to reduce its price. But not, it seems, in higher education. That is the puzzle on display in “Education at a Glance”, the annual research compendium published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a Paris-based think-tank for the industrialised world. “Every year we wonder if this will be the year that higher education starts to lose its value—and every year, there is no sign of it happening,” says Andreas Schleicher, the OECD’s chief of education research.

The newly published edition shows ever more rich-world school-leavers gaining higher qualifications: only a fifth in 1995 and almost twice that in 2007, the latest year the OECD has studied. Mr Schleicher says that there are already more graduates than he thought were needed only five years ago. Yet despite the vastly greater supply, employers still reward them well for the time and money they invest.

“Education at a Glance” is a good guide for governments wanting to copy other countries’ homework. The recession gives its findings new urgency. Since much of the cost of higher education is forgone earnings, its advantages are even clearer at a time when jobs are scarce.

The OECD’s answer is simple: the more education, the better. Taking into account tuition fees, lost earnings while studying and extra taxes paid, a male graduate is still $82,000 better off (see chart) in net present value terms than one whose education ended with the equivalent of a high-school diploma. (Women graduates benefit, but by less, since they work and earn less.) Figures show that, so far, the taxpayer has gained too, by more than $50,000 per graduate, even after subtracting the public funds that helped to pay for their studies.

Potential students are applying for university in record numbers. But supply has failed to grow in step. Cash-strapped American states are slashing public universities’ budgets. Private colleges’ endowments’ have shrivelled. That means cutting posts, salaries and aid to students.

In Britain taxpayers still pay much of the cost of undergraduate education. So universities are forbidden to “over-recruit”. This autumn they turned away 40,000 applicants whose grades would normally have got them into university. And in pretty much every country where taxpayers pay for higher education, new students will find teaching is skimpier.

A country can still waste its graduates, notes Mr Schleicher. He cites Spain, where the returns to a degree have fallen significantly in recent years. “The labour market did not adapt to utilise these new skilled workers,” he says. But some doubt the intrinsic connection between higher education and growth. Alison Wolf of King’s College London, the author of a book provocatively entitled “Does Education Matter?” says a big reason why school-leavers go to university is peer pressure. With many graduates to choose from, employers increasing turn up their noses at anyone who does not sport a degree, no matter what the job’s requirements. The result is more akin to an arms race, with everyone running to stand still, than a recipe for increasing prosperity.

A degree signals prior ability as well as the skills that have been learnt, she notes; and returns to education depend partly on a country’s labour-market structures. “Danish degrees look less valuable than American ones, but Denmark is one of the world’s most successful economies. Are Danish graduates really less skilled than American ones? Or is it that Danes tolerate lower pay differentials and higher taxes?”

For would-be students now, such debates are, literally, academic. When the jobs market finally picks up, many will be poorly placed. The young unemployed all too easily become the long-term unemployable. Make-work schemes mop up some of the jobless, but may blot a curriculum vitae. Time at university, however ill-spent, does not. So it may be worth rethinking the wisdom of ever-expanding higher education. But not this year.