McConnell: No Senate Republicans will back Biden on $4T (msn.com)

[loveofourlord]

So is that a yes?

Well usually investments get you something out of them. What did all that money to the rich get us? How does that compare to fixing the infrastructure and other things the States needs?

 

[loveofourlord]

And how will throwing more money at the problem be of any help?

Because there HASN"T been any money thrown at them, they are slow to repair because people like you oppose actually spending the money.

 

[Ana the Ist]

Nice! I've been thinking of taking some free political science courses online through something like MIT's open courseware. It's not quite the same as getting 1:1 feedback, but it's an okay way to learn more about a subject.

I started with computer science but got bored with how slowly the courses were progressing and I just didn't like the state university experience as a whole. I had started programming back in high school and had worked on my first online game in high school. I felt like I had more professional experience than some of my professors and wasn't interested in taking the electives that were available to me (e.g. GEO101, AKA Rocks for Jocks) I ended up transferring to a small private university, where I learned at a much faster pace and had a much better experience.

I did a bachelor of arts in multimedia and game design and I got a masters of science in game production and management (hence why both my examples above were of game studios - Activision and CDPR).

I have some criticisms of state universities. They tend to prioritize research over education and they aren't hiring the best and the brightest as their professors.

When I'm not teaching students how to make games, I'm usually actively working on games, running a game industry event, or filming YouTube videos about what's happening in the game industry.

I don't post here super often these days because I tend to be busy.

There's another poster who does something with games but he's never specified what exactly to me. It seems like you find it fulfilling. I found the science part of computer science fascinating but couldn't get into the coding.

So you're to blame for Cyberpunk!?! I knew we'd catch you eventually....

I lost potential in college due to high school being too easy for me. I graduated a year early with honors without trying. I never developed the study habits necessary for college. I simply wrote an endless string of notes and it was memorized. I didn't attend about 80-85% of my classes in college.

That, plus a general lack of direction left me with the option of pursuing what was easy (history or poli sci) or starting over. At the point I was at, I simply wanted a degree and to be done with it.

I learned stuff, turned down opportunities to intern in DC. I realized by the end I didn't want a career in politics.

Whenever I think about worthless degrees I think of several girls I met in college pursuing "forensic psychology" degrees. I would always ask what that was....and it would elicit a response from them about "profiling serial killers", crime scene analysis and other jobs that had some tv or movie analogues.

I was always the buzzkill who pointed out that only 2 or 3 guys ever actually did those things for the FBI and regular police departments really had no use for such things. What's more, is that none of them were forensic psychologists...they were clinical psychologists who had extensive backgrounds in researching criminal psychology.

I never felt like looking for the raw data.....but I always wondered how many people were working towards a degree that was built upon the idea of a fictional job.

 

[Kratzo]

There's another poster who does something with games but he's never specified what exactly to me. It seems like you find it fulfilling. I found the science part of computer science fascinating but couldn't get into the coding.

So you're to blame for Cyberpunk!?! I knew we'd catch you eventually....

I lost potential in college due to high school being too easy for me. I graduated a year early with honors without trying. I never developed the study habits necessary for college. I simply wrote an endless string of notes and it was memorized. I didn't attend about 80-85% of my classes in college.

That, plus a general lack of direction left me with the option of pursuing what was easy (history or poli sci) or starting over. At the point I was at, I simply wanted a degree and to be done with it.

I learned stuff, turned down opportunities to intern in DC. I realized by the end I didn't want a career in politics.

Although possible he was part of CDPR, his post doesn't necessarily follow that he was on it.

If you intended that comment to be fully a joke only, then carry on. If not, perhaps reading slower or learning more about the nuances of English could be beneficial.

 

[Ana the Ist]

Oh, I'm not opposed to owning private property. I advocate for people having greater ownership and control over their own lives.

I don't have a perfect solution to this problem. I haven't studied the housing problems as extensively as I've studied the exploitation of the working class.

I can pretty clearly articulate what the biggest housing problem is and suggest a direction we could go in to solve it, but I can't be specific about the minute details without doing more research.

So, I'll identify the problem:

• If people are being rendered homeless in the same place where houses are standing empty, then that system is dysfunctional because we have homes with no occupants and homeless people with no homes.
• We have enough housing in this country to house everyone. We could have 0% homelessness. Our current housing system prevents us from reaching this.
• Landlords buy property to charge other people money to live there.
• Renters pay the landlord's mortgage, plus a little extra in profit. Landlords make living in a dwelling more expensive.
• Landlords will evict renters that can't afford to pay their rent, rendering them homeless.
• Landlords can't afford the mortgages on the multiple houses they own. Landlords depend on renters to pay their mortgages for them.
• Banks will take the houses of landlords if they can't afford their mortgages.
• Renters don't buy houses because banks don't trust them to pay off a mortgage, despite them already showing that they can pay off their landlord's mortgage.
• Banks don't trust renters to pay off mortgages because the renter's wages are too low and the house prices are too high.
• Landlords push the prices of houses higher by buying multiple homes and treating them as investments to profit from.
• Employers depress workers' wages to increase their profits and extract value from their employees.
• The profit motive is central to both of these forces, and capitalism is the culprit that causes this problem and prevents its solution.

We can solve the problem of depressed wages if we shift to an economy where the workers control the means of production. This doesn't have to look like the state socialism or state communism of the last century. What I'm talking about here are worker self-directed enterprises. I'm talking about a way to structure a business so that the workers are the board of directors. There is no more employer/employee relationship. The workers of a company democratically control that company. In this system, you won't see the company lay off 200 workers to pay one employer $200 million, or a group of 5 board members voting to pay themselves $28 million to reward themselves for overworking their employees (both of which happened earlier this year).

As for the problem of landlords and rent-seeking: I don't have a great solution for that yet, but I have an idea for a direction we could move in. Landlords should not exist. If renters have a better option than paying someone else's mortgage, then they will take that better option. Landlords currently exist because it's profitable to exploit renters.

There's a lot of problems with the characterization of this issue. I'll just start with #1....

If I own the means of production (as a worker) can I sell it ?

 

[Ana the Ist]

What do you mean by "help"? Rising inflation helps some sectors and hurts others. Inflation is a fact of life.

Well this is the post where you took your psuedo moralistic stance and began preaching the virtues of a handout. This is the post where I replied with the chicken example....

You can't expect everything to just get better. If you're unemployed and living on a tight budget and a leak springs in your house, you can't just say "Oh well, I guess I'll just let it keep leaking since I it's 'too high' of a cost and I can't spend money I don't have.". You have to deal with certain things or they become far bigger problems.

That's where we are today - dealing with far bigger problems than had we dealt with them 4 years ago, or 20 years ago.

As for the economic outlook for the next 4 years, I guarantee you 100% that there will not be "hyperinflation" or disaster, at least if we implement a Biden's *,snip*

So when I referred to "help" I'm referring to the same people you're claiming to care about.

Did you forget about them already? We agree that inflation is going up, the resulting prices of basic goods is going up (and you've stopped giving imaginary guarantees it won't.

I'd ask how this situation is going to help these poor people who are losing money to the Biden administration.....but I think we both know inflation won't help them at all.

I'm all for seeing you try to justify it though....

You may begin.

 

[morningstar2651]

There's a lot of problems with the characterization of this issue. I'll just start with #1....

If I own the means of production (as a worker) can I sell it ?

I made sure to use the word "control" instead of "own" for a reason.

The workers would have control of the company through the ability to vote on the business decisions, and that control is only held by the workers at the company. You couldn't sell your vote to someone. I suppose you could accept a bribe to vote in a particular way, but I'm not sure that would be enough to get people to vote against their own interests.

It depends on how the particular company is set up. The goal with this kind of structure is the end of the employee/employer relationship - all workers are owners and all owners are workers. There are some versions of this where only workers own voting shares of the company but there is another class of non-voting shares that both workers and outside investors can buy and sell (allowing for outside investment in the company). In a system like this, investing more money into the company could return greater dividends to the people that invested more, but buying more shares doesn't give wealthier workers more votes on decisions.

 

[Ana the Ist]

I made sure to use the word "control" instead of "own" for a reason.

Well who owns it then? It doesn't magically appear out of thin air....a factory has people who buy the materials, pay someone to build it, etc.

I'm not sure why the workers would control it if they don't own it.

It depends on how the particular company is set up. The goal with this kind of structure is the end of the employee/employer relationship - all workers are owners and all owners are workers. There are some versions of this where only workers own voting shares of the company but there is another class of non-voting shares that both workers and outside investors can buy and sell (allowing for outside investment in the company). In a system like this, investing more money into the company could return greater dividends to the people that invested more, but buying more shares doesn't give wealthier workers more votes on decisions.

I don't understand what the investment would go towards if not real assets of the company. If you don't own those assets, I don't see why you'd invest more...is it just buying larger percentages of the profit?

 

[TLK Valentine]

Biden's offering a compromise...

Biden Lowers Infrastructure Plan Price Tag, But 'Vast Differences' Remain With GOP

It's a start -- now it's the GOP's turn to come to the table...

 

[iluvatar5150]

So regarding that debt....here's a handy chart on Bachelor's degrees by field.

View attachment 299327

So I'd point out that decade and a half of 15% Humanities. 5% fine and performing arts. When you add behavioral and social sciences.....we're talking about a decade to 15 years of students making bad choices about 30% of all degrees.

I'm not trying to knock education....but that's not an extremely profitable degree either. The difference though is that we have a need for teachers.

It appears that we have a glut of sociologists (which don't really produce much of value) the humanities are basically worthless unless you can write a book selling nonsense to fools. Fine and performing arts are worthless unless you're that less than 1% loaded with talent.

It's not entirely the student's fault....loans offered for degrees with little to no value are widely available and they offer students a degree that requires little more than spitting out the same garbage the students are fed.

Let's say it's about a third.....maybe a quarter to a third of students flushing money down the toilet filling their heads with "knowledge" that has little to no value in reality.

Arguably, these students could have been more successful at a trade school...learning actual job skills that are more likely to lead to careers that pay an income they can live off of.

I'm sure there's myriad reasons why students enter into these financial arrangements. We can actually fix this problem though....by limiting loans for certain degrees.....or awarding scholarships to fewer students in said programs. We can take that scholarship money and invest in primary education to improve STEM field education and prepare more students for profitable career paths.

In short, I think an overhaul is necessary here. Activists don't make money. Theatre majors don't make money. I'm not saying students shouldn't be able to pursue these things...but from a taxpayer perspective, it's a bad investment. Let the students pay if they're really dedicated. We should treat these resources as investments and place our taxes where they're most likely to pay off in the realm of higher education.
.

Your avatar is a still from the film Dr. Strangelove. The book it was based on was written by a novelist. The screenplay was adapted by screenwriters. The characters were played by actors who had their costumes designed by a wardrobe department and their makeup applied by makeup artists. They act on sets designed by set designers and are filmed by photographers. The movie's soundtrack was composed by a musician and the poster to advertise it at theaters was created by an artist. For someone who believes that humanities and fine arts degrees are worthless, you appear to value and enjoy the things they learn to create.

The idea that these degrees are unprofitable is wrong. Dr. Strangelove grossed over $9 million in the domestic box office alone.

But this brings up another question: Should the purpose of education be to make you more profitable?

To pile on a bit - I’ll be the first to argue that there are a lot of arts programs that shouldn’t exist, but at the same time, the notion that all of these degrees is worthless is ludicrous. In addition to the entire film industry, there’s tv, games, music and other live events, clothing, marketing, architecture, and a variety of forms of “design” that cover everything from decorating houses to shaping power tools. It’s not just the celebrity actors or musicians who have these arts degrees - it’s also the technical staff who support them and outnumber them by a factor of hundreds if not thousands.

 

[TLK Valentine]

And here comes the counteroffer...

Senate Republicans Release $928 Billion Infrastructure Counteroffer

A group of Senate Republicans has unveiled a $928 billion infrastructure proposal to counter President Biden's plan for a nearly $2 trillion bill.

The proposal outlines a significant increase from the most recent GOP plan to spend $568 billion. The new version includes additional money for roads, bridges, water, rail and airports, but the majority of the proposed spending is part of an existing baseline plan for investments. The total new money is just $257 billion.

The shift comes days after Biden offered to lop off $550 billion from his original proposal, moving the two sides closer than they have ever been, though significant challenges remain.

 

[Arcangl86]

I wonder how the Republicans are planning to fund the $257 billion in new funding. I also find it hard to believe that there is $671 of previously appropriated money that is sitting and not being spent.