OT: Berkeley

s?

Until it got shut down for being a whole lot less than "great"

Google says "social justice warrior".

People like Jim resent it when university trained professionals don't share his right-wing political views. He went to MIT but didn't get broadly educ ated, and doesn't like being confused with the people who went there and to ok full advantage of what the staff had to offer. Noam Chomsky started work ing there in 1955 ...

As I said, it's basically impossible low. Not many kids can make $50 to 70K working part-time.

Some people don't have the academic mindset, or the BS skills necessary to get some professor (or, these days, a TA) to give them a passing grade. I sort of admire people like that. It takes some combination of brilliance and whoring to get a college degree.

The US doesn't have the apprenticeship programs that a lot of countries have. The next best thing is an AA degree from a community college that actually teaches something useful. There are a few.

There are worker-guy jobs that pay well. Plumbers, electricians, truck drivers, various mechanics, industrial controls, construction, maritime, hospitality, things like that. They need training, but not a

Farming was the classic great non-degree career.

We need more accessable paths to careers like that. Now, it's a matter of luck. Universities are more and more big-bucks BS-degree mills.

Flooding the country with cheap, illegal, off-the-books labor has really damaged the working class.

Tuition was $1200 a year, the apartment was $80 a month, the Austin Healy Sprite cost under $2K, and I was making $400 a month. It worked. Nowadays, tuition might be $60K, 50 times what it was.

Well, there is a lot of manufacturing in USA. Problem is that on globalized market if labour plays important part in cost, than above Chinese pay level your product is not competitive. So you have product where labour has minimal impact on price and consequently such product bring small number of jobs.

Without Chinese competition labour intensive products would be simply too expensive and production would be small.

If USA acts in smart and determined way there may more manufacturing in USA, but it will be automatic, so number of jobs will be limited.

In general problem is that in great days USA exported a lot of industial goods -- that is unlikely to come back because due to globalization everybody have similar technology and other countries having lower living standards also have lower wages. Another factor is that we have a lot of industrial good and it is unlikely that demand will be high enough pay for large number of factory workers. Attention shifts to services, but they tend to create low paying jobs. Of course some countries do better in changing conditions. Of developed countries Germany seem to do quite well. In after WWII USA had tremendous lead compared to the rest of the world and that translated into well-being of american people. But USA now lost most of it lead and there are no reason to think that past glory will come back -- factors that helped in the past are no longer there.

This group should be renamed to s.e.politics.

Yeah, they want to keep everybody as dumb as you

The general impression is that it needs steady work and a certain amount of intelligence. There are - I'm told - US universities where the average IQ of the students is less than 100. My own experience as a low level universi ty teacher (demonstrator in practical classes) was the a shortfall on stead y work was what wrecked most of the people who ended up dropping out.

Why not? Ever tried to find a plumber?

John Larkin's idea of "something useful" may be a bit narrow.

It is capital intensive. Most of the successful ones I know about had got j obs as farm managers and married the daughter of the owner. It's not a larg e sample.

Who were last generation's illegal off-the-books immigrant labour. Those th at weren't working for the US Army in Vietnam, who did get in legally.

The US grew by immigration. What's damaged the working class recently has b een the capitalist class exporting the jobs to lower wage countries, and ch eap-skating on the funding the education of the next generation of workers.

As James Arthur points out, the US does spend a lot on education and more t han it did, but a lot more per head on rich kids than poor kids, and - beca use of the need for more highly trained workers - not as much more as it ac tually needs to.

I've yet to see a degree that certified the holder as a practitioner of rio ting or pot smoking. Krw can see all sorts things that are invisible to the rest of us, and this one looks very like one of his hallucinations

Obviously. Krw was taught what to think quite a while ago, and hasn't devia ted since.

Neither is known for giving Busby Berkley exhibitions of precision drill ei ther separately or together. Getting the Main Stream Media that well coordi nated would be a neat trick. Persuading students to fit into such an exhibi tion could only happen in krw's imagination (which does seem to be a busy p lace).

There's also the fact that - for example - the Germans have a better traine d work force, which may explain how they can export almost as much as the U S with a quarter of the population. The US has been cheap-skating on mass e ducation for a while now, and in a lot of markets their high-tech products just aren't competitive.

Too true.

Nah. It'll last. Might be very different and unpleasant, though.

I'd keep an eye on Steve Bannon, who is apparently very well-informed. very strategic (unlike Trump) and On A Mission.

In the late 50s my parents (and I) lived in the US until I was shot at in a streetcar.

They often repeat two quotes:

"Which ocean did you come over to get here [from the UK]?"

After hearing my parents had only been there 10 days, "My, don't you speak the language well".

So no, things weren't too rosy back then, either!

Hi Spehro, I wanted to ask if you know a good place to get views from the right? (The WSJ is OK, but mostly behind a paywall.) I've looked at the National Review, which seems OK, but some of their online stuff gets too slanted for me.

Maybe something from a Canadian perspective?

Re: NPR, I send 'em ~$100 a year so there's that. I realize they are mostly a bunch of liberals, but I think they try to do a balanced job of reporting.

George H.

I would consider joining the armed forces. Which branch depends on what aptitudes that you possess. And if you later decided that you wanted to go to college, the military has some programs to help you.

Dan

Are you saying that you want the richer schools to not use their money to provide need based aid and higher quality faculty?

Dan

My son (15 yo) is eyeing a STEM program in NY. If you get a STEM degree, (he wants to be an engineer (nuclear or aeronautic)) and work for four years in the state at a STEM job, then they will cover your tuition. (At a state school... now about $6.5k/yr.)

George H.

Penumbras are handy for obvious reasons when it rains, and if it's clear, you can write new laws with them.

But that was before pens-and-phones...old school.

Cheers, James Arthur

Were books all that expensive?

Cheers, James Arthur

A Schrodinger Hamiltonian? ;)

Michael

Probably. He certainly wasn't relativistic. ;)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs