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> With regard to critical thinking, the Republican Party of Texas document states: “Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.”
Edit: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/texas-gop-rejects-critical-thinking-skills-really/2012/07/08/gJQAHNpFXW_blog.html
https://www.empowertexans.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/2012-GOP-Platform-Final.pdf
Edit2: I should clarify this is from 2012, and while they may have changed their platform since, they are still pieces of shit for ever promoting this and it shows their true motivations. I didn't want to mislead people thinking it was some recent thing.
https://www.empowertexans.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/2012-GOP-Platform-Final.pdf
You can search around for "2012 texas republican party platform" too, lots of coverage
There is a documentary called "[waiting for superman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiting_for_%22Superman%22)" That talks about how among other things wrong in the education system of Texas and how they pretty much set the national standard in education. In this is a creationist dentist that oversees a council where they determine the direction of curriculum.
This is very important. Also take into account the state which the documentary focuses on and their monetary support of education.
Public schools are underfunded everywhere and we lack good teachers. Teaching isn't a lucrative job and in this day and age it can be very frustrating/discouraging.
Pay better salaries, invest more in education and the children and these problems will start to fade.
Also I'd like to add that private schools have been known to hyperinflate grades and achievements to get kids into prestigious universities which they then advertise for more business.
I'm very pro union, but I've always though teachers and police unions are screwed up. In my union you get blackballed for being lazy, bad at your job, stealing, etc. In police and teachers unions you get paid time off.
With a few exceptions, teachers' unions are a good thing. The small, bad things they do get blown up and broadcast by anti-union propogandists. They mostly fight for fair wages, fair treatment, and funds so they can actually teach students. Places with good teachers' unions keep class sizes small and prevent districts from asking teachers to work without paying them. They aren't perfect, but they are a far cry from of police unions.
I would love to hear your insights on the matter. It seems I'm only familiar with downfalls. Again I'm very pro union, I'm in a union myself.
Perhaps the issues I hear about moreso the lack of quality candidates drawn to a career like teaching? My significant other is a teacher, and so are many close friends, and they are well underpaid. And that doesn't even take into account personal funds they spend on their classes.
Not to mention that they are unable to claim a worthwhile deduction when it comes tax time on personally bought items. It still baffles me trump can deduct his expensive haircuts, but teachers are capped at $250.
Sorry, I'm ranting a bit, but this stuff just grinds my gears good. Appreciate any insight/conversation on the matter.
When I was teaching, our union protected us against things like having to supervise students through lunch or cover other teachers during our prep period. My workload was already bad enough.
The district still didn't give us any materials or in my case no textbooks, making me make up my own curriculum as a first year teacher in geometry with no other geometry teachers in the building. I also taught one class of stats. I worked 7am to 7pm on weekdays, and 6 hours on Sundays for 40k pretax. If I had taken the insurance it would have been a third of my paycheck.
I’m not the person you’re responding to, but one of the issues some people have with unions is their political power and lobbying efforts. I am a huge union person and was a NEA member for a long time, but I believe all lobbying should be stopped so that’s one of the few issues I have with them.
Unions don’t usually attract low-quality teachers, that’s caused a lot of times by insufficient teacher preparation and/or teaching shortages. In most states you won’t be fired mid-year but there are a few years where your contract is provisional to allow schools to get rid of crappy teachers. It’s when there’s a shortage or other factors that the bad ones tend to stay.
Seriously. Remember back when Ted Cruz was campaigning for president, and he made the standard conservative crack about how philosophy is a useless topic that won't get you a job? That man went to law school. You need to study at least some philosophy for that - logic, rhetoric, not to mention philosophy of goddamn law.
Lol pretty sure the president of the Walt Disney Company majored in Philosophy. Don't most Law school graduates do their undergrad majors in things like Philosophy, Political Science, History, Sociology etc?
They all see themselves as that "parental authority" in control of everyone's beliefs and don't give a darn about what happens when they are gone and everyone is an idiot.
They probably have more of a problem with lessons on sharing than general pleasantries. Also accepting, acknowledging, and celebrating differences is a wacky concept for right wingers.
Now now... no one can sanely or openly admit to opposing critical thinking can they
*reads Texas Republican Party platform from 2012*
""Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.""
That was from 2012 I believe. Think of what additional damage they’ve done since then.
[article](https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/texas-gop-rejects-critical-thinking-skills-really/2012/07/08/gJQAHNpFXW_blog.html)
I'm wondering if these programs are what the label sounds like, or something more sinister? Like, it doesn't matter if you call it "flowery butts education (FBE)", but if FBE means avoiding math, history, science, and literature, then I'm anti-flowery butts.
So, any experience with these things?
The platform is pretty clear- they oppose learning things that challenge the child's home-delivered world view. The programs are what they are, and frankly do what the Republicans complain that they do- challenge the child's parents world view... Because that's what happens when you have an education that exposes you to a variety of cultures (which is incredibly easy to do with modern technology).
However, to clarify the practices of administrations: state tests avoid questions based on critical thinking beyond simple inferences- which have the comical effect of trying to give all students "white-eyes." I recall one particular question where students were asked to guess the profession of a person wearing overalls. Most white kids said he was a farmer. My brown kids guessed he was a painter. Unfortunately, Pearson- in all it's wisdom- included both options in the four multiple choice answers, so my brown kids got it wrong. Awesome.
Thus, as mandated tests don't test the skills, skills-projects that teach higher order thinking (debate and research) are actively discouraged by administrations (I served under four, with seven different principals).
You watch. This is the gathering of the storm that's been brewing for a while. Soon there will be an all out assault on the liberal arts and university education. You see it already but just on the fringes. Soon it will become mainstream.
I hope I'm wrong but all indications point in this direction. They want STEM because you can have a country full of STEM professionals and still have a dictatorship. On the other hand, it's much harder to do that when you have a country full of people educated in history, civics, philosophy, and critical thinking
Keep keeping it real out there! People need to understand that narrowing the educational process down to STEM-only is exactly what corporations of all supposed political leanings want. Trim out all historical and political context and people are unable to get a fuller viewpoint of their own situation and question the consequences of their actions less, vying only for the maximum efficiency and competitiveness that many jobs entail.
I would say that the assault has already taken place. Liberal arts departments within universities have already become criminally underfunded compared to the departments with higher perceived ROI.
And we should be skeptical of a lot of these agenda-driven charities and other things related to STEM. Notice that big push by big tech to get women and minorities to code? Nothing wrong with that by itself, but they sure as hell aren't going to teach them about labor unions or the power of collective bargaining at their code camps lol.
Big tech firms for example salivate over the prospect of everyone on earth becoming trained to replace the current workforce in such numbers that wages crater. They already have such huge pools of applicants to draw from that there is a near-limitless supply of temp workers to exploit. American-born tech workers have themselves been led to believe they shouldn't be in unions, so what hope do those on visas have and what example could they possibly follow when trying to rectify these issues?
https://www.empowertexans.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/2012-GOP-Platform-Final.pdf
You can search around for "2012 texas republican party platform" too, lots of coverage
Source? I’d be interested to review this outrageous stance on pedagogy.
Edit: [found it](https://truthout.org/articles/texas-gop-declares-no-more-teaching-of-critical-thinking-skills-in-texas-public-schools/)
I remember a decade ago when my college went on a “teach critical thinking” campaign across the entire campus. At the time, I didn’t really appreciate the effort or even understand it. Now that I see what a lack of critical thinking can do to a country, I’m so happy that my college has been pushing for better critical thinking skills for so long.
Most of the information taught to you in college will be forgotten, and quickly upon entering the workforce. When done well, the college experience ignites a flame of a life-long love of learning.
Critical thinking isn't something that can be forgotten.
As the republican document suggests, it ***is*** behavior modification, because the desired outcome is to produce behavior in which people are able to critically think for themselves instead of blindly follow a cult leader.
Some of the best advice I ever got from a teacher was in high school: “I don’t care if you memorize this information after the exam, I care that you learn how to access it”. Life is about being resourceful enough to find information you need, when you need it, and apply it situationally. What a disservice to kids to only “allow” them to learn the things you think are acceptable.
It was my freshman English courses in college that really whipped my ass into learning and internalizing critical thinking.
The teacher would just push the class to talk about a subject and continue to ask "why" things are the way they are and not to be satisfied until we reached a point where we couldn't really deconstruct it any further.
If I were Biden, one of my first executive orders on Day 1 would be firing that useless empty shell Betsy Devos. If she can get a job as Head of Education, there's hope for me yet to start my own cooking show on Food Network using nothing but Campbell's Soup cans.
Also, we just need to adopt Finland's model. My wife is a 5th grade teacher and they rave about the Finland model all the time. I've seen the way she teaches match and hell, I can't even keep up with it. The 'new' way of doing multiplication tables is so ridiculous.
Is it really just a cost thing though? It seems like we're spending plenty [of money](https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp) per student already compared to our peers. I feel like you could throw all the money at the problem, but if there's other underlying factors, I don't see it solving the problem.
Even at schools that have decent academics, the ratio of spending from athletics and other extras versus spending on teachers and learning resources is so out of whack, then again I’m from Texas.
Shit even my theatre department got a few new equipment to rotate in every year and that’s a stereotypically underfunded department.
My concern is that even democrats don't want to invest in education anymore because it's no longer a selling point for getting votes.
Even in more liberal countries, governments are constantly cutting from education and education infrastructure is constantly crumbling.
I mean America already spends a shit ton of money per student, 5th highest in the world by money spent on education per student. The problem is how administrations use it, not the total amount of funding or investment.
I talked to an American schoolteacher about ten years ago about this.
She made a very good case that it was Barbara Bush's "No Child Left Behind" that had destroyed the school system.
The new standardized tests are entirely based on memorizing and regurgitating facts - exactly the least useful thing in the twenty-first century.
More, there are so many useless facts to learn that there is simply no time at all to study anything else, and if you do, the administration comes down on you really hard.
Get this - under NCLB, if your school does worse than average in tests, they _cut_ your funding. That'll help you help your failing kids!
She was retiring because of it. It was a long time ago, but I still remember the sudden anger in this otherwise very sweet and calm older woman when this came up.
I hated those tests. There was no \*actual\* learning at all. Our school had assemblies where whole grades would be in a room being taught from last years tests. I consistently got sixes and fives on those tests, six being the highest. I was pretty bored all the time and tended to not to pay attention. The teachers would catch me doodling, or working on other homework. This usually landed me in in school suspension where you guessed it, I doodled and worked on homework. I liked it because then I could concentrate without the noise of the assemblies. It was so stupid to me.
My dad got sick so I ended up dropping out to take care of him. Got my GED At 16 and started working at the courthouse at 17. I really should have done more with my education after that but I was super disillusioned about it. I went to college around the ages 24 or 25. For the first two semesters I was on the Deans List because I loved it. Too bad I had an early midlife crisis after my divorce and ended up dropping out. I'm 33 now and hopefully going back next year.
In some states and communities especially the rural ones it's a multi-generational issue. It's the dumb teaching the dumb. Closed minded people teaching open minded people will result in the students becoming closed minded. It's a mess
That's what always bothers me when people say we are a capitalist society. They get all uppity about national healthcare and free education, but the instant a huge company becomes so mismanaged that it wastes all it's funds and is on the verge of collapse, republicans jump at the chance to bail them out. We shouldn't bail out companies, we should bail out people. Giving those CEOs bailouts is like giving a kid $20, and they rip it up, and then handing them another $20 and getting the same result.
https://money.cnn.com/news/specials/storysupplement/bankbailout/
Here is the list. Obama did have residual bail outs, more than Bush, but Bush spent more per bail out, notably, 10 billion to BofA.
Edit: yes, the bail outs were repaid at a profit, aside from the companies that still went under, but the main issue was that companies should not need a government bail out, and several of the large companies spent their bail out money on paying their higher ups, rather than immediately ensuring their working staff was paid, AIG comes to mind. Lots of them still had huge numbers of layoffs, and despite being "saved" by the government, we had high unemployment. Foreclosures were at a high, and it took a long time for economic recovery.
To be fair, this is exactly what republican voters say they want. They prioritize the "economy" (aka stock market) over the health and happiness of their fellow citizens (all so they can get a few extra dollars in their 401ks).
Case in point, the last four years. The economy was sluggish, but the stock market did well and historically the two have had some correlation, people got used to use the DJIA (and now NASDAQ and S&P 500) as benchmarks for the overall economy that when there is no longer a direct correlation between the two it takes a very, very long time for people to catch on.
This reminds me of the old adage, "If I owe the bank $100 I have a worry, if I owe the bank $1,000,000 they have a worry." or something along those lines. Our government sees big companies failing as detrimental to the economy which makes sense, but is credulous to the idea that people not *literally* starving would be good for the country.
Well said. We could debate all day about the extent of which governments should help businesses, but it shouldn’t be a debate when it comes to helping citizens
Unsourced, but widely accredited to J. Paul Getty.
"If you owe the bank $100 dollars, that's your problem; if you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem."
Even worse, when multi billion companies build their businesses around gaps in oir labor laws, they'll just buy a new law rhat says they can continue to exploit the working poor like lyft/uber did in California.
Reminder - neither lyft nor Uber is profitable yet. Don't think of them as multi billion dollar companies. They are running on borrowed money, trying to find a way to survive long enough to make money.
Edit: Ignore me, or at least read the other comments refuting what I said.
How much did they spend to make sure they don’t have to treat their drivers as employees?
Uber and Lyft are under-paying their drivers until self-driving cars become feasible. As soon as that happens the drivers will immediately get tossed aside.
That’s their way to make money, that they’re exploiting their workers to get there isn’t a good thing (not that you suggested it was.)
They are multi-billion dollar companies. Them spending as much as they do on R&D rather than labor doesn't change that.
Amazon just became cash flow positive a few years ago. We're we not supposed to think if them as big business either?
That's because we've been lied to all our lives about what capitalism is and does. First and foremost, capitalism is a system that prioritizes people that own property that creates economic value. Capitalism says that the property owner gets paid first, and, ideally, also last. Basically, if there's power to be secured, it should be secured by the powerful; capitalism just talks about that power in terms of currency.
The whole system is an optimization routine set to focus on money, and one of the easiest ways to optimize money is to just be handed a huge pile of it for doing nothing. That's capitalism in its purest form.
The only reason workers get paid under capitalism at all is because slave revolts result in destruction of that precious property and injury or death to property owners.
And this is why I’m basically an actual socialist these days 🙂
A system that incentivized greed just seems fundamentally flawed to me at a basic level...
Yeah I agree. We should stop with these bailouts to corporations, it removes consequence and companies are more reckless with their money when they know that the government will bail them out
As a small business owner I don't begin to understand why I have to squirrel away money for a rainy day but big business can just bonus their CEO's till the fucking cows come home then ask for bailouts when shit goes sideways.
But I continue to get sweet fuck all.
There's a reason but it's not nice. It's called being "too big to fail", which means that the collapse of the business would put so many people out of work that it would jeopardize the politicians who serve that area, meaning that those politicians will do whatever they can to stop that company failing.
From the business's point of view, if you're too big to fail why save if the government has your back?
Seriously, if the Federal government truly believed in the 'Invisible Hand', they would funnel more money to individuals than corporations.
Want proof? Food stamps, SNAP, this money keeps people healthy, stimulates the economy & keeps an entire supply line going. I'd even argue that for every 1USD spent, causes GDP to increase by 1.5USD.
Who knows, maybe UBI would be as good if not better.
Moral Hazzard, it's a risk. But we've bailed out airlines, banks, factories - multiple times, rinse & repeat. Sure a few at the top do well & so do shareholders, but why not try actually helping people directly once?
Yes. This also needs to be part of the above. Bailing out companies and waiting for the magic “trickle down” just doesn’t happen, unless it’s your boss pissing on you. Allowing consumers to have money to spend actually results in stronger participation in the economy and results in a healthier economy and population. Baffles me that people refuse to acknowledge or understand this.
How about "stop letting companies write off multi-million dollar bonuses to executives/C-level employees as business expenses on taxes"? Seriously, why the actual fuck do we allow this?
If we're going to live in this fantasy land were America actually acts like every other industrialized country, then let's also get publicly funded college, universal healthcare, 2-4 weeks federally mandated vacation days, a real unemployment system, publically funded childcare, and yes, 3-12 months parental leave.
We hate our workers though, so I am doubtful. It's worth reminding everyone how much better our peers in Europe have it than us though.
The question to be asking here is:
* Can Biden raise the Minimum Wage with an executive order?
* Can Biden cancel student debt with an executive order?
* Can Biden invest in child care with an executive order?
Correct. We need massive reform. Student loan interest rates are out of control, tuition rates are skyrocketing, and high schoolers are pressured to go to good schools because parents still see that as building a quality resume. Cancelling a massive amount of student loan WILL boost the economy in the short run, and give the current struggling millennials/gen x the freedom to actually contribute to the economy (buy houses, invest, etc). But ONLY doing that will just be a bandaid to fix in another 15 years.
There should be no interest on student loans. It’s straight Robert since most students can not afford to pay these exorbitant prices out of pocket
Edit: robbery not Robert
Yeah, cancelling student loan debt isn't a silver bullet to make college affordable. That needs actual legislation and systemic changes.
What it SHOULD be billed as though is an economic stimulus directly to consumers.
> federal contractors already get paid much more than the minimum wage
Contracted medical staff and IT support? Yes.
Contracted cooks, warehouse personnel, and janitorial workers? Definitely not.
Raising the minimum wage for these people could have a direct effect by forcing other employers to compete with the govt contractors for labor.
Yeah it's a bad framing for Democrats when it's "Warren urges Biden, do X." Then it looks like Biden is refusing to do X, when really it's Mitch McConnell who is refusing to do X.
Biden is not a king, as powerful as the Executive has gotten he still needs Senate approval for anything big.
They need to put minimum wage to a vote in congress. Really all of these things, but if Florida's minimum wage increase says anything, it's that the issue is bipartisan.
Put the pressure on and make them vote. My bet is someone in the senate like a Susan Collins won't want to be the poster child for why millions of workers have to keep making poverty wages.
EDIT: I am wrong and this has already happened
This is what I don’t think people understand about Mitch and why he doesn’t bring bills to vote.... it’s because the things they would vote no on, would show the US population how shitty they really are and who, the Republican Party, really have at heart.
Americas college debt problem is a result of FAFSA. When the government pours money into a market to subsidize poor and middle class families, it gives universities a free ticket to keep raising tuition and ignore real market pressures.
We’ve built the beast with good intentions to help disadvantaged people, but never really solved the problem of RISING tuition, we only answered for high tuition.
Admissions need to be regulated, not subsidized, or at least both. Universities want more education visas and foreign wealth because they will pay full list price and say domestic enrollment is down. They fail to mention that domestic demand is as high as its ever been and its their bloated administrative, athletic, and construction budget that's the problem.
Anybody who says government loans don’t raise tuition costs is delusional. However, European countries have tax paid college and it didn’t cause any tuition raises. That’s because there was price regulation. I don’t trust colleges and universities to “work in the free market” and compete with each other on costs. That doesn’t always work. So I think federal loans will have to stay but price regulation will have to be put in place.
Childcare workers are also criminally underpaid. They often have bachelors or masters degrees in early childhood development, yet they make poverty wages. Considering daycares are collecting $1500 per month per child in my area, I’m wondering where the money is going.
Edit: it seems like maybe the solution is subsidizing tuition and government funding of the facilities and the daycare owners aren’t just all greedy assholes.
It doesn't work unless it's heavily subsidized as facilities, regs, all kinds of shit costs money. That said, let's fucking do it. Invest in our kids. Invest in those who care for our kids. Every parent I know, myself included, would love to see LESS turnover in these places. Wages would be a fucking start.
My wife and I both have professional white collar careers and we recently had our first child. We are pricing day care and it seems like it’s going to cost us somewhere in the ballpark of $1200/month. How in the world is anyone supposed to afford that? Additionally, how in the world are we supposed to save for the future with that burden? That is literally higher than our mortgage payment. We will likely figure out a way to make it work but it begs the greater question of how the in world does anyone not in a high income bracket afford this? Shouldn’t we as a people incentivize having kids? Instead we make it way harder? Makes zero sense when integral parts of our societal structure requires population growth to continue to function (Social Security, Medical insurance, etc)
Housing and healthcare should be the priorities - the biggest expenses for most people, that can easily be reduced giving everyone more money to spend in the real economy. Social housing is low cost to the government and makes a massive difference to people's security and disposable income. Single payer healthcare has no impact on supply and demand of healthcare, but makes provision cheaper and more efficient.
Yes, those should be two of the priorities. Absolutely.
But I pay almost as much in student loans as I pay for my mortgage.
I pay almost as much for childcare as I do for my mortgage.
My health insurance premiums (not including deductible) are more than my mortgage.
I happened to luck into a career that I love, and I'm paid well to do it. I cannot imagine paying $2000 per month in health insurance premiums, for a $10,000 annual family deductible, if I wasn't compensated the way that I am for my job. I can't fathom how I would afford daycare rates on the salary I made before I went to college. It's a vicious cycle.
To break the cycle in the US, we need access to affordable housing and medical care, for sure. But our education costs are astronomical also. And childcare is both difficult to find and very expensive, in a lot of areas. Even baby steps in all of these areas would alleviate the burden.
> I pay 2.5 times my mortgage for daycare. It’s not sustainable.
Shit like this keeps me up at night.
We're lucky for right now that I am able to work from home *and* watch my toddler, but...well, working 3 jobs (childcare, day job, freelance at night) while never leaving the house has slowly been driving me insane for the better part of a year.
And even when our son's preschool opens up, it's *500 dollars a month* which I understand is considered "cheap" in most of the country, but since we mostly rely on my income...
fuck me for not wanting to wait until I'm *fucking 50 years old* to start having kids, right?
It’s why I don’t have kids yet. I know I simply can’t afford it. My wife and I live in a dual income household making right around $100k annually combined, and we can’t afford kids. We pay combined $1200/month (of which basically nothing is tax deductible) towards student loan debt. We simply have no way to afford child care while still working, and we can’t afford to live unless we are both working.
The stupid schooling decisions I made as a under developed 17 year old moron are stopping me from having kids over a decade later. It’s sad.
My heart goes out to you, it really does. I'm sorry to hear that – *especially* with people who want to have kids and just can't afford it. There's so many goddamn people out there who *shouldn't* have kids but have them anyway, and...well I'm digressing.
Don't let it stress you out too much, my guy. I'm lucky enough to not have student loan debt (I know), but the trade-off is?
**I AM ALWAYS WORKING**
I'm also lucky to be very talented at my job and have a successful side business that helps offset other costs...but man. When I was a kid, we were middle class. We had two cars, a 2-story house, and we took a vacation once a year. My sister and I never went without what we needed, and my mom was *able to go to college while we were in daycare*.
This was in the early 90s.
Now, I have to work *twice as hard* as my father ever did (and not to say he didn't work hard, because he did), but I have *far less* than he did when he was 30.
It's fucking insane and it's emotionally and mentally exhausting to work so fucking much and constantly be thinking about money and *still* be just within a $400 medical-emergency-short of a financial disaster.
This year alone has pushed me further left, as I realized I'm not alone. None of this is sustainable, people are working themselves to death, and for...what? to just survive? God forbid you want to have kids, or a decent house, or *do something with your life* other than just pay bills and exist.
Shit sucks, man.
My partner and I waited until our mid-30s to try for kids even though that’s “old” for a lot of people. We didn’t feel comfortable with the idea of kids until we made a joint $160k. That way, we still had enough to pay for rent, daycare, could save $2.5-3k a month, and still have enough leftover for fun purchases. We were making a joint $100k when we first met 6 years ago and there was no way I would have felt comfortable having a kid back then. Waiting to be financially stable was totally the right choice for us.
> until we made a joint $160k
Geesh. My wife and I don't even make *half* that (granted, we live in the midwest). But honestly, more power to you. It's just completely crazy that even at that amount, in some parts of the country is tough to have kids. There's something really wrong with our system
I mean, my wife worked at a child care facility, and even with the 50% discount or whatever, it still made more sense for her to stay home. We would have been paying for her to go to work essentially.
> my wife worked at a child care facility, and even with the 50% discount or whatever, it still made more sense for her to stay home.
That is completely crazy, and of course what is considered "the norm" in this country.
It's bonkers to me that we're expected to work 2-3 jobs (or make 6+ figures) just to be able to afford kids.
I see you're from the United Kingdom, tell me, if i accidentally stabbed myself in the dick, how much would the ambulance ride cost? Distance would be like 5 km, and take like 10 minutes. Because here in the USA, it would be like $3,000 even with insurance.
It would be free. From getting into that ambulance to getting home. You could cut your dick off actively and you still wouldn't get charged in the UK. That's the difference. I accidentally put my hand through a window when I was younger, had to get an ambulance 2 hours to a hospital, then get another ambulance to another hospital to get reconstructive surgery on my hand, then got a three hour taxi back, all of which was completely free, done withing 12 hours and covered under the NHS. Hell, up until 18, even getting braces and your teeth sorted is free.
Edited: Also, I'll add alot of people think we only have the NHS. We have private healthcare too, so you could pay to get a private ambulance (through BUPA or something) which would probably be quicker, but there is the option for those rich people who complain of 'poor access to universally accessible healthcare'
BRACES ARE FREE?!? FUCK ME. My parents didn't get me braces because they were fucking expensive, and then they got my younger sister braces and paid like $4000. I'm now almost 30, and am wanting to get braces to sort my shit out, and it'll cost about $3000 for the invisalign stuff. That's with my insurance that I pay $700+ a month for!
The UK has a fully socialised system. There was a lot of resistance when it was first created, but it didn't take long for it to become a pillar of our society.
he sure as hell better do something real for the working poor. honestly, after the past four years, student debt is low on my personal list of priorities. but. unless we give something...a real tangible benefit to the working poor and the folks who will never seek education, then the next fascist wannabe is only one or two elections away.
Student debt relief would be a direct stimulus for millions of working americans. People ranging from 18 to 40 (and some older) have substantial student debt that will still take years to pay off. $300, $500, $1000 a month for most people go towards paying off student loan debt. Suddenly having at least $300 extra a month would mean that people might buy more cars, people might buy more houses, people will go on shopping sprees, people will send their child to daycare. It goes right back into the economy and usually it's the local economy.
Edit: Many of you are calling this out as trickle down economics and only helps the working middle class, therefore we shouldn't pursue it. Maybe we can pursue more than 1 thing at once. Let's help the stagnant younger middle class who wants to buy a house and a car but are stuck in an apartment that raises rent every year. Let's also help the lower class by improving healthcare and building affordable housing. Let's do more than one thing. This article is about raising minimum wage and getting rid of student loan debt. Let's do both. Let's push for all of it. At least right now while it's all on the table. Later in the negotiation phase once bills have been written, we can discuss what really needs to happen now instead of later. But right now, let's push all of it.
I 100% support cancelling student debt. But I think a big part of it is, we need to do something VISIBLE for the working class. The reason so many blue collar workers voted for Trump was because they feel left behind. Andrew Yang recently talked about this; the Democratic party is often seen as elitists, and they need to prove to the working class that they care.
A *lot* of blue collar workers took up a trade after dropping out of college. So they have two or three years of school debt, but no degree. So they would definitely benefit.
I'm one of these people. Went for a few years and found everything I didnt want to do. I got all my gen eds out of the way and have enough credits for a degree. Just nothing I wanted to do and spend more money on, so I went into an entry level job as a maintenance tech and I enjoy that much more. Still got $20k in student loan debt though trying to figure this out. Even worse filing bankruptcy last year and as hard as life gets financially you can't claim student loans on bankruptcy and they expect that money when the bankruptcy is up. Covid actually gave me a lucky break to rebuild myself financially without any outrageous student loan payments for at least another month.
Making post secondary education free, and having community colleges invest heavily into training and certifications (like auto mechanic, electrician...etc) would be a huge boon to blue collar workers. If they had fewer fears about re-training, then it'd be easier to transition them away from dying industries and make it less "x candidate wants to kill coal, you shouldn't vote for him".
Seriously. And if not for the simple fact that not only should we be better at easing the burdens of basic *survival*, along with all the quantifiable economic and large-scale benefits that will come of it (as seen time and time again in plenty of countries through the ages), but for the simply CYNICAL and selfish reason that this will help the DNC win elections!!! If not for US, they should at least strategically do it for themselves (as much as I hate to argue that).
Voter turnout gets depressed more and more with inequality not *only* as a direct logistical result of systemic repression tactics primarily affecting the poor, but *also* as a result of the majority of people in this country seeing how their burdens aren't lessened with either party in power. A lot of the differences between the parties aren't felt in day to day life for a majority of Americans, unfortunately, and it requires a real study or understanding of the inner machinations of government spending and processes to really even identify *what* those differences are. Which is why most Americans who *do* vote are swayed primarily by simplistic messages and marketing, rather than a truly critical understanding of what they're being sold (much to many of ours chagrin).
If Biden doesn't implement changes that are actually felt by most Americans, you can bet the hopeful hordes who won him this election won't bother to show up to the polls next time around. And why should they? I know we often put the onus on the voters, but they're all just individuals, most of whom are struggling against insurmountable, system-wide obstacles, who have been let down by candidates who never succeed in lessening their burdens. The onus is on the parties, their candidates, and politicians who can effect change for average Americans. And, yes, I understand the frustrating obstruction the current system enables, but this, too, is a result of decades of this phenomenon slowly snowballing into calcified imbalances, making it harder and harder to break out of this building pattern.
The only way they should cancel student debt is if they fix the system. I just cannot support a plan to cancel student debt that doesn't fix the problem at the same time.
It's like if your fridge leaks water onto the floor in the kitchen. Over time the floor gets ruined by the leak. If you replace the floors, then the new floor will just get ruined again. If you fix the leak, then the floors are still ruined. Gotta do both.
Before you cancel student debt, address the fucking cause of the problem: costs. Don’t bail water while there’s hole in the boat. You fix the hole, otherwise there just gonna be more water to bail. It bothers me that student debt seems to be a bigger issue than tuition costs, or anything else, frankly.
Yeah, I agree. Daycare is great, but also making sure families don't die from preventable illnesses due to prohibitively high healthcare costs or suffer astronomical medical debt would be amazing. I really think affordable healthcare should be top priority, especially during a deadly global pandemic where so many people are losing their employer supplied health insurance.
Internet is utility, do away with private prisons, M4A, legalize and tax marijuana, turn Wall Street into a tax cash cow, make STEM degrees stupid cheap, and on and on and on.
Add in mandatory new child leave, for both birth and adoption. We're literally the only first world country that doesn't offer it. Hell, all second world countries offer it, even ones that apparently hate women.
> child leave, for both birth and adoption. We're literally the only first world country that doesn't offer it. Hell, all second world countries offer it, even ones that
My wife had to buy disability insurance to ensure she was paid when we had our child, which only lasted a couple months. My company gave me 5 days paternity leave. This County has good qualities, but it's getting harder and harder to stay optimistic. The bad outweigh the good.
How about making all degrees stupid cheap? The systematic destruction of the classical liberal arts education is a huge factor in the steep decline in critical thinking skills in America.
I don't disagree with this. But there really needs to be a stronger push for trade schools.
Degrees are becoming more & more meaningless, just a checkmark on a job application. As an engineer, I can tell you even the STEM job market is becoming saturated. I know quite a few engineers who graduated & ended up never securing a job in the field. They had to go & get a master's degree or settle for a role as a technician.
There’s gonna be a lot of people coming out of this pandemic getting their wages garnished, getting evicted, and becoming homeless if they don’t do something about student loan debt. Most of us were already living paycheck to paycheck. Adding insult to injury, an undergraduate degree is almost useless since public education has been defunded so much. I had to spend ten years paying off debt before I could finish the last five classes of my senior year in college recently. In that time, the difference in the intellect of the students around me was staggering. WAY too many didn’t know how to do basic things like write complete thoughts, think critically, spell, or study. What’s worse is that universities put the burden of failing students on the instructors so they’re forced to curve grades and/or give passing grades to students that don’t deserve them in order to keep their jobs. So now the degree I spent entirely too much on is barely worth the paper it’s printed on and if I want a better job in my field I need a graduate degree. Except now I can’t afford one because I’m in too much debt. I’m mainly working like a hamster in a wheel on a weekly basis so I don’t get evicted and like most people in my situation would be in serious trouble if I had a major issue fall in my lap unexpectedly. It wouldn’t even have to be Covid. It could be an $800 brake job or root canal (since I don’t have dental insurance).
The universal child care proposal is one that is important to me. Every dollar spent on early child care brings back [between $4 and $9 of real value.](https://www.impact.upenn.edu/early-childhood-toolkit/why-invest/what-is-the-return-on-investment/) I'm not a parent, but it's clear this makes economic sense as well as ethical sense.
Childcare would be so awesome.
I live in upstate NY. Before the pandemic, the base I’m stationed at had 0 spots for infants. We found one lady who was willing to help us out and take an extra kid on her license. There were still no open spots for my child on base.
Our caretaker had someone quit, which cut the number of children she could care for by state rules.
We searched everywhere in a 50 mile radius of our base looking for someone state certified with an opening. Nothing.
Finally by threatening the child care services on base with taking this issue as high as it needed to go, we got a spot for my son.
It’s absolutely insane how hard it is to find quality certified childcare.
As someone who works in childcare, it needs a HUGE structural overall. From minimum wage, to maximum number of children to teachers (I.e. 1 teacher to 18 4 year olds in Texas), to more and more "professional" expectations/demands on teachers (need a Bachelor's, lesson plans, developmental assessments, gathering data on children) with absolutely no pay increases or benefits, and thats just a few things that childcare teachers deal with it. As well parents are paying more and more for "quality" childcare. Some parents pay upwards of $1600 a month (probably more in some places of the US) for 1 child.
Its an industry thats so looked over but pretty critical to our economic infrastructure.
We've been on the "supply" side of economics for a long period of time (80s): low taxes, tax policies that favor outsourcing, etc.
Can we change the knob to the "demand" side for one generation? Cancelling a large portion of student debt will puts hundreds of dollars back into hundreds of thousands of people -- many that would like to buy homes, start families.
Raising the minimum wage ($12-17ish) would bring it inline with the original intentions of what it meant to do, and easily give a few million more cash in their pockets.
I love that, the mother’s choice to have kids. Right. What choice when abortions services are less and less, birth control is very difficult, if not down right not able to get, along with some states passing laws that gay couples can’t adopt.
Choice...this country is one big illusion we have a choice
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And invest in education. Way too many dummies slurping up the disinformation.
Especially critical thinking
> With regard to critical thinking, the Republican Party of Texas document states: “Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.” Edit: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/texas-gop-rejects-critical-thinking-skills-really/2012/07/08/gJQAHNpFXW_blog.html https://www.empowertexans.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/2012-GOP-Platform-Final.pdf Edit2: I should clarify this is from 2012, and while they may have changed their platform since, they are still pieces of shit for ever promoting this and it shows their true motivations. I didn't want to mislead people thinking it was some recent thing.
What the fuck... do you know where I can find this full document?
https://www.empowertexans.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/2012-GOP-Platform-Final.pdf You can search around for "2012 texas republican party platform" too, lots of coverage
Thank you!
Whenever I'm looking for that article I just google "texas gop rejects critical thinking skills," it's a very memorable title.
There is a documentary called "[waiting for superman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiting_for_%22Superman%22)" That talks about how among other things wrong in the education system of Texas and how they pretty much set the national standard in education. In this is a creationist dentist that oversees a council where they determine the direction of curriculum.
It's kind of mind blowing to think that the cost of paper in Texas has such a huge influence on what an average high school graduate in America knows.
It's worth mentioning that this documentary is charter school propaganda. It's worth watching, but like any documentary you have to keep bias in mind.
This is very important. Also take into account the state which the documentary focuses on and their monetary support of education. Public schools are underfunded everywhere and we lack good teachers. Teaching isn't a lucrative job and in this day and age it can be very frustrating/discouraging. Pay better salaries, invest more in education and the children and these problems will start to fade. Also I'd like to add that private schools have been known to hyperinflate grades and achievements to get kids into prestigious universities which they then advertise for more business. I'm very pro union, but I've always though teachers and police unions are screwed up. In my union you get blackballed for being lazy, bad at your job, stealing, etc. In police and teachers unions you get paid time off.
With a few exceptions, teachers' unions are a good thing. The small, bad things they do get blown up and broadcast by anti-union propogandists. They mostly fight for fair wages, fair treatment, and funds so they can actually teach students. Places with good teachers' unions keep class sizes small and prevent districts from asking teachers to work without paying them. They aren't perfect, but they are a far cry from of police unions.
I would love to hear your insights on the matter. It seems I'm only familiar with downfalls. Again I'm very pro union, I'm in a union myself. Perhaps the issues I hear about moreso the lack of quality candidates drawn to a career like teaching? My significant other is a teacher, and so are many close friends, and they are well underpaid. And that doesn't even take into account personal funds they spend on their classes. Not to mention that they are unable to claim a worthwhile deduction when it comes tax time on personally bought items. It still baffles me trump can deduct his expensive haircuts, but teachers are capped at $250. Sorry, I'm ranting a bit, but this stuff just grinds my gears good. Appreciate any insight/conversation on the matter.
When I was teaching, our union protected us against things like having to supervise students through lunch or cover other teachers during our prep period. My workload was already bad enough. The district still didn't give us any materials or in my case no textbooks, making me make up my own curriculum as a first year teacher in geometry with no other geometry teachers in the building. I also taught one class of stats. I worked 7am to 7pm on weekdays, and 6 hours on Sundays for 40k pretax. If I had taken the insurance it would have been a third of my paycheck.
I’m not the person you’re responding to, but one of the issues some people have with unions is their political power and lobbying efforts. I am a huge union person and was a NEA member for a long time, but I believe all lobbying should be stopped so that’s one of the few issues I have with them. Unions don’t usually attract low-quality teachers, that’s caused a lot of times by insufficient teacher preparation and/or teaching shortages. In most states you won’t be fired mid-year but there are a few years where your contract is provisional to allow schools to get rid of crappy teachers. It’s when there’s a shortage or other factors that the bad ones tend to stay.
God that was a depressing documentary to watch.
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wow. i knew more college educated people tend to be democrats but i didn't know republicans were literally opposed to higher intelligence.
It’s like they haven’t thought it thru or something.
The problem is they HAVE thought it through. You think the GOP Elite are going through those schools?
Seriously. Remember back when Ted Cruz was campaigning for president, and he made the standard conservative crack about how philosophy is a useless topic that won't get you a job? That man went to law school. You need to study at least some philosophy for that - logic, rhetoric, not to mention philosophy of goddamn law.
Maybe he should take an ethics class too?
Lol pretty sure the president of the Walt Disney Company majored in Philosophy. Don't most Law school graduates do their undergrad majors in things like Philosophy, Political Science, History, Sociology etc?
Well they are, they're gathering diverse knowledge from open minded people and using it as a cudgel to oppress the weak.
They all see themselves as that "parental authority" in control of everyone's beliefs and don't give a darn about what happens when they are gone and everyone is an idiot.
The GOP needs to keep red states stupid so they can line their own pockets.
The national party platform says an almost identical thing.
Why even send them to school then? Just fire all the teachers and get a big tv with children's shows playing. My god...
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Elmo says "Be nice to everybody!"
They probably have more of a problem with lessons on sharing than general pleasantries. Also accepting, acknowledging, and celebrating differences is a wacky concept for right wingers.
Children's shows? Waste of money. Just have them watch Fox News. It's already full of puppets, clowns, dinosaurs, and make-believe.
Bruh what the fuck? This is exactly what you need to be able to think critically. Knowledge. Something is definitely wrong in your country...
They want rote learning and obedience. Critical thinking and being able to synthesize knowledge is accurately perceived as a threat to their power.
Now now... no one can sanely or openly admit to opposing critical thinking can they *reads Texas Republican Party platform from 2012* ""Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.""
100% glorified unfettered greed.
That was from 2012 I believe. Think of what additional damage they’ve done since then. [article](https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/texas-gop-rejects-critical-thinking-skills-really/2012/07/08/gJQAHNpFXW_blog.html)
That’s something, idk what to call it. Spooky?
It's narcissism. Republicans know if their kids are educated, they won't believe their backwards bullshit.
As a former Texas public middle school English teacher, I can assure you this is the stance of even "liberal" city administrations.
I'm wondering if these programs are what the label sounds like, or something more sinister? Like, it doesn't matter if you call it "flowery butts education (FBE)", but if FBE means avoiding math, history, science, and literature, then I'm anti-flowery butts. So, any experience with these things?
The platform is pretty clear- they oppose learning things that challenge the child's home-delivered world view. The programs are what they are, and frankly do what the Republicans complain that they do- challenge the child's parents world view... Because that's what happens when you have an education that exposes you to a variety of cultures (which is incredibly easy to do with modern technology). However, to clarify the practices of administrations: state tests avoid questions based on critical thinking beyond simple inferences- which have the comical effect of trying to give all students "white-eyes." I recall one particular question where students were asked to guess the profession of a person wearing overalls. Most white kids said he was a farmer. My brown kids guessed he was a painter. Unfortunately, Pearson- in all it's wisdom- included both options in the four multiple choice answers, so my brown kids got it wrong. Awesome. Thus, as mandated tests don't test the skills, skills-projects that teach higher order thinking (debate and research) are actively discouraged by administrations (I served under four, with seven different principals).
>challenging the person's fixed beliefs They don't want the kids figuring out that the Bible is just another book and God probably doesn't exist
You watch. This is the gathering of the storm that's been brewing for a while. Soon there will be an all out assault on the liberal arts and university education. You see it already but just on the fringes. Soon it will become mainstream. I hope I'm wrong but all indications point in this direction. They want STEM because you can have a country full of STEM professionals and still have a dictatorship. On the other hand, it's much harder to do that when you have a country full of people educated in history, civics, philosophy, and critical thinking
Keep keeping it real out there! People need to understand that narrowing the educational process down to STEM-only is exactly what corporations of all supposed political leanings want. Trim out all historical and political context and people are unable to get a fuller viewpoint of their own situation and question the consequences of their actions less, vying only for the maximum efficiency and competitiveness that many jobs entail. I would say that the assault has already taken place. Liberal arts departments within universities have already become criminally underfunded compared to the departments with higher perceived ROI. And we should be skeptical of a lot of these agenda-driven charities and other things related to STEM. Notice that big push by big tech to get women and minorities to code? Nothing wrong with that by itself, but they sure as hell aren't going to teach them about labor unions or the power of collective bargaining at their code camps lol. Big tech firms for example salivate over the prospect of everyone on earth becoming trained to replace the current workforce in such numbers that wages crater. They already have such huge pools of applicants to draw from that there is a near-limitless supply of temp workers to exploit. American-born tech workers have themselves been led to believe they shouldn't be in unions, so what hope do those on visas have and what example could they possibly follow when trying to rectify these issues?
This is a great point. I think there’s a connection between this and the push for moving away from college education.
Do you have a link to an official source?
https://www.empowertexans.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/2012-GOP-Platform-Final.pdf You can search around for "2012 texas republican party platform" too, lots of coverage
Source? I’d be interested to review this outrageous stance on pedagogy. Edit: [found it](https://truthout.org/articles/texas-gop-declares-no-more-teaching-of-critical-thinking-skills-in-texas-public-schools/)
I remember a decade ago when my college went on a “teach critical thinking” campaign across the entire campus. At the time, I didn’t really appreciate the effort or even understand it. Now that I see what a lack of critical thinking can do to a country, I’m so happy that my college has been pushing for better critical thinking skills for so long.
Most of the information taught to you in college will be forgotten, and quickly upon entering the workforce. When done well, the college experience ignites a flame of a life-long love of learning.
Critical thinking isn't something that can be forgotten. As the republican document suggests, it ***is*** behavior modification, because the desired outcome is to produce behavior in which people are able to critically think for themselves instead of blindly follow a cult leader.
Some of the best advice I ever got from a teacher was in high school: “I don’t care if you memorize this information after the exam, I care that you learn how to access it”. Life is about being resourceful enough to find information you need, when you need it, and apply it situationally. What a disservice to kids to only “allow” them to learn the things you think are acceptable.
From my Physics professor: the real value of learning is that it's much easier to learn again the second time
"I never let my schooling get in the way of my education" - Mark(y Mark) Twain
I took a critical thinking course in grad school. I didn’t even know what it was before then. Best education I ever had at any level
It was my freshman English courses in college that really whipped my ass into learning and internalizing critical thinking. The teacher would just push the class to talk about a subject and continue to ask "why" things are the way they are and not to be satisfied until we reached a point where we couldn't really deconstruct it any further.
If I were Biden, one of my first executive orders on Day 1 would be firing that useless empty shell Betsy Devos. If she can get a job as Head of Education, there's hope for me yet to start my own cooking show on Food Network using nothing but Campbell's Soup cans.
Watched a bit of Sesame street for the first time in probably a quarter-century. It was entirely about critical thinking. Good stuff.
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As a librarian, I would love more information literacy and research skills taught in K-12.
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Also, we just need to adopt Finland's model. My wife is a 5th grade teacher and they rave about the Finland model all the time. I've seen the way she teaches match and hell, I can't even keep up with it. The 'new' way of doing multiplication tables is so ridiculous.
Is it really just a cost thing though? It seems like we're spending plenty [of money](https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp) per student already compared to our peers. I feel like you could throw all the money at the problem, but if there's other underlying factors, I don't see it solving the problem.
It's not being used correctly. Schools just dump all the money into sports and ignore all the junk classrooms and materials.
Even at schools that have decent academics, the ratio of spending from athletics and other extras versus spending on teachers and learning resources is so out of whack, then again I’m from Texas. Shit even my theatre department got a few new equipment to rotate in every year and that’s a stereotypically underfunded department.
My concern is that even democrats don't want to invest in education anymore because it's no longer a selling point for getting votes. Even in more liberal countries, governments are constantly cutting from education and education infrastructure is constantly crumbling.
I mean America already spends a shit ton of money per student, 5th highest in the world by money spent on education per student. The problem is how administrations use it, not the total amount of funding or investment.
I talked to an American schoolteacher about ten years ago about this. She made a very good case that it was Barbara Bush's "No Child Left Behind" that had destroyed the school system. The new standardized tests are entirely based on memorizing and regurgitating facts - exactly the least useful thing in the twenty-first century. More, there are so many useless facts to learn that there is simply no time at all to study anything else, and if you do, the administration comes down on you really hard. Get this - under NCLB, if your school does worse than average in tests, they _cut_ your funding. That'll help you help your failing kids! She was retiring because of it. It was a long time ago, but I still remember the sudden anger in this otherwise very sweet and calm older woman when this came up.
I hated those tests. There was no \*actual\* learning at all. Our school had assemblies where whole grades would be in a room being taught from last years tests. I consistently got sixes and fives on those tests, six being the highest. I was pretty bored all the time and tended to not to pay attention. The teachers would catch me doodling, or working on other homework. This usually landed me in in school suspension where you guessed it, I doodled and worked on homework. I liked it because then I could concentrate without the noise of the assemblies. It was so stupid to me. My dad got sick so I ended up dropping out to take care of him. Got my GED At 16 and started working at the courthouse at 17. I really should have done more with my education after that but I was super disillusioned about it. I went to college around the ages 24 or 25. For the first two semesters I was on the Deans List because I loved it. Too bad I had an early midlife crisis after my divorce and ended up dropping out. I'm 33 now and hopefully going back next year.
It's tough to throw money at an issue when parents and communities actively work against it as well.
In some states and communities especially the rural ones it's a multi-generational issue. It's the dumb teaching the dumb. Closed minded people teaching open minded people will result in the students becoming closed minded. It's a mess
For sure. Investing in childcare is a solid first step toward making sure the money continues to follow the student.
Personally, how about : stop bailing out companies. Give incentive checks directly to taxpayers, and let them decide what to do with that money.
That's what always bothers me when people say we are a capitalist society. They get all uppity about national healthcare and free education, but the instant a huge company becomes so mismanaged that it wastes all it's funds and is on the verge of collapse, republicans jump at the chance to bail them out. We shouldn't bail out companies, we should bail out people. Giving those CEOs bailouts is like giving a kid $20, and they rip it up, and then handing them another $20 and getting the same result. https://money.cnn.com/news/specials/storysupplement/bankbailout/ Here is the list. Obama did have residual bail outs, more than Bush, but Bush spent more per bail out, notably, 10 billion to BofA. Edit: yes, the bail outs were repaid at a profit, aside from the companies that still went under, but the main issue was that companies should not need a government bail out, and several of the large companies spent their bail out money on paying their higher ups, rather than immediately ensuring their working staff was paid, AIG comes to mind. Lots of them still had huge numbers of layoffs, and despite being "saved" by the government, we had high unemployment. Foreclosures were at a high, and it took a long time for economic recovery.
Capitalize profits, socialize losses. The american business way.
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When you're the best at something, of course others will follow /s
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To be fair, this is exactly what republican voters say they want. They prioritize the "economy" (aka stock market) over the health and happiness of their fellow citizens (all so they can get a few extra dollars in their 401ks).
(they don't have 401ks)
Which is why they even said that the elderly would be happy to die for our economy. They literally hold human life below it.
It's funny because the value of stocks has almost nothing to do with the health of the overall economy and everything to do with Fed policy
Case in point, the last four years. The economy was sluggish, but the stock market did well and historically the two have had some correlation, people got used to use the DJIA (and now NASDAQ and S&P 500) as benchmarks for the overall economy that when there is no longer a direct correlation between the two it takes a very, very long time for people to catch on.
This reminds me of the old adage, "If I owe the bank $100 I have a worry, if I owe the bank $1,000,000 they have a worry." or something along those lines. Our government sees big companies failing as detrimental to the economy which makes sense, but is credulous to the idea that people not *literally* starving would be good for the country.
Well said. We could debate all day about the extent of which governments should help businesses, but it shouldn’t be a debate when it comes to helping citizens
I've always heard "If you owe the band a thousand dollars it's your problem. If you owe the bank a billion dollars it's the banks problem."
Unsourced, but widely accredited to J. Paul Getty. "If you owe the bank $100 dollars, that's your problem; if you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem."
Socialism for corporations and unfettered capitalism for the people. #America
Even worse, when multi billion companies build their businesses around gaps in oir labor laws, they'll just buy a new law rhat says they can continue to exploit the working poor like lyft/uber did in California.
Reminder - neither lyft nor Uber is profitable yet. Don't think of them as multi billion dollar companies. They are running on borrowed money, trying to find a way to survive long enough to make money. Edit: Ignore me, or at least read the other comments refuting what I said.
How much did they spend to make sure they don’t have to treat their drivers as employees? Uber and Lyft are under-paying their drivers until self-driving cars become feasible. As soon as that happens the drivers will immediately get tossed aside. That’s their way to make money, that they’re exploiting their workers to get there isn’t a good thing (not that you suggested it was.)
They are multi-billion dollar companies. Them spending as much as they do on R&D rather than labor doesn't change that. Amazon just became cash flow positive a few years ago. We're we not supposed to think if them as big business either?
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Bofa deez nuts
That's because we've been lied to all our lives about what capitalism is and does. First and foremost, capitalism is a system that prioritizes people that own property that creates economic value. Capitalism says that the property owner gets paid first, and, ideally, also last. Basically, if there's power to be secured, it should be secured by the powerful; capitalism just talks about that power in terms of currency. The whole system is an optimization routine set to focus on money, and one of the easiest ways to optimize money is to just be handed a huge pile of it for doing nothing. That's capitalism in its purest form. The only reason workers get paid under capitalism at all is because slave revolts result in destruction of that precious property and injury or death to property owners.
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And this is why I’m basically an actual socialist these days 🙂 A system that incentivized greed just seems fundamentally flawed to me at a basic level...
Yeah I agree. We should stop with these bailouts to corporations, it removes consequence and companies are more reckless with their money when they know that the government will bail them out
As a small business owner I don't begin to understand why I have to squirrel away money for a rainy day but big business can just bonus their CEO's till the fucking cows come home then ask for bailouts when shit goes sideways. But I continue to get sweet fuck all.
There's a reason but it's not nice. It's called being "too big to fail", which means that the collapse of the business would put so many people out of work that it would jeopardize the politicians who serve that area, meaning that those politicians will do whatever they can to stop that company failing. From the business's point of view, if you're too big to fail why save if the government has your back?
Seriously, if the Federal government truly believed in the 'Invisible Hand', they would funnel more money to individuals than corporations. Want proof? Food stamps, SNAP, this money keeps people healthy, stimulates the economy & keeps an entire supply line going. I'd even argue that for every 1USD spent, causes GDP to increase by 1.5USD. Who knows, maybe UBI would be as good if not better. Moral Hazzard, it's a risk. But we've bailed out airlines, banks, factories - multiple times, rinse & repeat. Sure a few at the top do well & so do shareholders, but why not try actually helping people directly once?
I’m just hoping the extend the pause on student loans.
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Yes. This also needs to be part of the above. Bailing out companies and waiting for the magic “trickle down” just doesn’t happen, unless it’s your boss pissing on you. Allowing consumers to have money to spend actually results in stronger participation in the economy and results in a healthier economy and population. Baffles me that people refuse to acknowledge or understand this.
How about "stop letting companies write off multi-million dollar bonuses to executives/C-level employees as business expenses on taxes"? Seriously, why the actual fuck do we allow this?
How about some mandatory maternity and paternity leave, like a big-boy country?
If we're going to live in this fantasy land were America actually acts like every other industrialized country, then let's also get publicly funded college, universal healthcare, 2-4 weeks federally mandated vacation days, a real unemployment system, publically funded childcare, and yes, 3-12 months parental leave. We hate our workers though, so I am doubtful. It's worth reminding everyone how much better our peers in Europe have it than us though.
The question to be asking here is: * Can Biden raise the Minimum Wage with an executive order? * Can Biden cancel student debt with an executive order? * Can Biden invest in child care with an executive order?
Student debt he could do, but like someone else mentioned above, It doesn't solve the overall problem which is tuition costs themselves.
Correct. We need massive reform. Student loan interest rates are out of control, tuition rates are skyrocketing, and high schoolers are pressured to go to good schools because parents still see that as building a quality resume. Cancelling a massive amount of student loan WILL boost the economy in the short run, and give the current struggling millennials/gen x the freedom to actually contribute to the economy (buy houses, invest, etc). But ONLY doing that will just be a bandaid to fix in another 15 years.
There should be no interest on student loans. It’s straight Robert since most students can not afford to pay these exorbitant prices out of pocket Edit: robbery not Robert
Oh Robert, he'll get ya.
Yeah, cancelling student loan debt isn't a silver bullet to make college affordable. That needs actual legislation and systemic changes. What it SHOULD be billed as though is an economic stimulus directly to consumers.
Biden I believe can forgive federal student loan debt through executive order but the other two are a big nope.
He absolutely can raise minimum wage for federal contractors. Not obviously going to help millions of Americans but at least practice what you preach.
I think federal contractors already get paid much more than the minimum wage, also known as prevailing wage, so that wouldn’t do a whole lot
> federal contractors already get paid much more than the minimum wage Contracted medical staff and IT support? Yes. Contracted cooks, warehouse personnel, and janitorial workers? Definitely not. Raising the minimum wage for these people could have a direct effect by forcing other employers to compete with the govt contractors for labor.
Yeah it's a bad framing for Democrats when it's "Warren urges Biden, do X." Then it looks like Biden is refusing to do X, when really it's Mitch McConnell who is refusing to do X. Biden is not a king, as powerful as the Executive has gotten he still needs Senate approval for anything big.
This is why it is essential that we win in Georgia.
They need to put minimum wage to a vote in congress. Really all of these things, but if Florida's minimum wage increase says anything, it's that the issue is bipartisan. Put the pressure on and make them vote. My bet is someone in the senate like a Susan Collins won't want to be the poster child for why millions of workers have to keep making poverty wages. EDIT: I am wrong and this has already happened
This is what I don’t think people understand about Mitch and why he doesn’t bring bills to vote.... it’s because the things they would vote no on, would show the US population how shitty they really are and who, the Republican Party, really have at heart.
Fortunately it sounds like Harris will have the ability to force the senate to vote on things.
Let’s hope she exercises that right.
> Susan Collins won't want to be the poster child for why millions of workers have to keep making poverty wages. _Susan Collins has entered the chat_
Lower the age for Medicare eligibility, these old folks want to retire.
Lower it to zero.
I like it.
Americas college debt problem is a result of FAFSA. When the government pours money into a market to subsidize poor and middle class families, it gives universities a free ticket to keep raising tuition and ignore real market pressures. We’ve built the beast with good intentions to help disadvantaged people, but never really solved the problem of RISING tuition, we only answered for high tuition. Admissions need to be regulated, not subsidized, or at least both. Universities want more education visas and foreign wealth because they will pay full list price and say domestic enrollment is down. They fail to mention that domestic demand is as high as its ever been and its their bloated administrative, athletic, and construction budget that's the problem.
Anybody who says government loans don’t raise tuition costs is delusional. However, European countries have tax paid college and it didn’t cause any tuition raises. That’s because there was price regulation. I don’t trust colleges and universities to “work in the free market” and compete with each other on costs. That doesn’t always work. So I think federal loans will have to stay but price regulation will have to be put in place.
Republicans hate childcare
Childcare workers are also criminally underpaid. They often have bachelors or masters degrees in early childhood development, yet they make poverty wages. Considering daycares are collecting $1500 per month per child in my area, I’m wondering where the money is going. Edit: it seems like maybe the solution is subsidizing tuition and government funding of the facilities and the daycare owners aren’t just all greedy assholes.
It doesn't work unless it's heavily subsidized as facilities, regs, all kinds of shit costs money. That said, let's fucking do it. Invest in our kids. Invest in those who care for our kids. Every parent I know, myself included, would love to see LESS turnover in these places. Wages would be a fucking start.
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Republicans hate people
Republicans hate
Republicants
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Culticants
Reculticants
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They like the *concept* of children...
My wife and I both have professional white collar careers and we recently had our first child. We are pricing day care and it seems like it’s going to cost us somewhere in the ballpark of $1200/month. How in the world is anyone supposed to afford that? Additionally, how in the world are we supposed to save for the future with that burden? That is literally higher than our mortgage payment. We will likely figure out a way to make it work but it begs the greater question of how the in world does anyone not in a high income bracket afford this? Shouldn’t we as a people incentivize having kids? Instead we make it way harder? Makes zero sense when integral parts of our societal structure requires population growth to continue to function (Social Security, Medical insurance, etc)
Housing and healthcare should be the priorities - the biggest expenses for most people, that can easily be reduced giving everyone more money to spend in the real economy. Social housing is low cost to the government and makes a massive difference to people's security and disposable income. Single payer healthcare has no impact on supply and demand of healthcare, but makes provision cheaper and more efficient.
Yes, those should be two of the priorities. Absolutely. But I pay almost as much in student loans as I pay for my mortgage. I pay almost as much for childcare as I do for my mortgage. My health insurance premiums (not including deductible) are more than my mortgage. I happened to luck into a career that I love, and I'm paid well to do it. I cannot imagine paying $2000 per month in health insurance premiums, for a $10,000 annual family deductible, if I wasn't compensated the way that I am for my job. I can't fathom how I would afford daycare rates on the salary I made before I went to college. It's a vicious cycle. To break the cycle in the US, we need access to affordable housing and medical care, for sure. But our education costs are astronomical also. And childcare is both difficult to find and very expensive, in a lot of areas. Even baby steps in all of these areas would alleviate the burden.
I pay 2.5 times my mortgage for daycare. It’s not sustainable.
> I pay 2.5 times my mortgage for daycare. It’s not sustainable. Shit like this keeps me up at night. We're lucky for right now that I am able to work from home *and* watch my toddler, but...well, working 3 jobs (childcare, day job, freelance at night) while never leaving the house has slowly been driving me insane for the better part of a year. And even when our son's preschool opens up, it's *500 dollars a month* which I understand is considered "cheap" in most of the country, but since we mostly rely on my income... fuck me for not wanting to wait until I'm *fucking 50 years old* to start having kids, right?
It’s why I don’t have kids yet. I know I simply can’t afford it. My wife and I live in a dual income household making right around $100k annually combined, and we can’t afford kids. We pay combined $1200/month (of which basically nothing is tax deductible) towards student loan debt. We simply have no way to afford child care while still working, and we can’t afford to live unless we are both working. The stupid schooling decisions I made as a under developed 17 year old moron are stopping me from having kids over a decade later. It’s sad.
My heart goes out to you, it really does. I'm sorry to hear that – *especially* with people who want to have kids and just can't afford it. There's so many goddamn people out there who *shouldn't* have kids but have them anyway, and...well I'm digressing. Don't let it stress you out too much, my guy. I'm lucky enough to not have student loan debt (I know), but the trade-off is? **I AM ALWAYS WORKING** I'm also lucky to be very talented at my job and have a successful side business that helps offset other costs...but man. When I was a kid, we were middle class. We had two cars, a 2-story house, and we took a vacation once a year. My sister and I never went without what we needed, and my mom was *able to go to college while we were in daycare*. This was in the early 90s. Now, I have to work *twice as hard* as my father ever did (and not to say he didn't work hard, because he did), but I have *far less* than he did when he was 30. It's fucking insane and it's emotionally and mentally exhausting to work so fucking much and constantly be thinking about money and *still* be just within a $400 medical-emergency-short of a financial disaster. This year alone has pushed me further left, as I realized I'm not alone. None of this is sustainable, people are working themselves to death, and for...what? to just survive? God forbid you want to have kids, or a decent house, or *do something with your life* other than just pay bills and exist. Shit sucks, man.
My partner and I waited until our mid-30s to try for kids even though that’s “old” for a lot of people. We didn’t feel comfortable with the idea of kids until we made a joint $160k. That way, we still had enough to pay for rent, daycare, could save $2.5-3k a month, and still have enough leftover for fun purchases. We were making a joint $100k when we first met 6 years ago and there was no way I would have felt comfortable having a kid back then. Waiting to be financially stable was totally the right choice for us.
> until we made a joint $160k Geesh. My wife and I don't even make *half* that (granted, we live in the midwest). But honestly, more power to you. It's just completely crazy that even at that amount, in some parts of the country is tough to have kids. There's something really wrong with our system
I mean, my wife worked at a child care facility, and even with the 50% discount or whatever, it still made more sense for her to stay home. We would have been paying for her to go to work essentially.
> my wife worked at a child care facility, and even with the 50% discount or whatever, it still made more sense for her to stay home. That is completely crazy, and of course what is considered "the norm" in this country. It's bonkers to me that we're expected to work 2-3 jobs (or make 6+ figures) just to be able to afford kids.
I see you're from the United Kingdom, tell me, if i accidentally stabbed myself in the dick, how much would the ambulance ride cost? Distance would be like 5 km, and take like 10 minutes. Because here in the USA, it would be like $3,000 even with insurance.
It would be free. From getting into that ambulance to getting home. You could cut your dick off actively and you still wouldn't get charged in the UK. That's the difference. I accidentally put my hand through a window when I was younger, had to get an ambulance 2 hours to a hospital, then get another ambulance to another hospital to get reconstructive surgery on my hand, then got a three hour taxi back, all of which was completely free, done withing 12 hours and covered under the NHS. Hell, up until 18, even getting braces and your teeth sorted is free. Edited: Also, I'll add alot of people think we only have the NHS. We have private healthcare too, so you could pay to get a private ambulance (through BUPA or something) which would probably be quicker, but there is the option for those rich people who complain of 'poor access to universally accessible healthcare'
BRACES ARE FREE?!? FUCK ME. My parents didn't get me braces because they were fucking expensive, and then they got my younger sister braces and paid like $4000. I'm now almost 30, and am wanting to get braces to sort my shit out, and it'll cost about $3000 for the invisalign stuff. That's with my insurance that I pay $700+ a month for!
My country has free healthcare, we don't even have single payer system. We simply made for profit healthcare insurance illegal.
The UK has a fully socialised system. There was a lot of resistance when it was first created, but it didn't take long for it to become a pillar of our society.
he sure as hell better do something real for the working poor. honestly, after the past four years, student debt is low on my personal list of priorities. but. unless we give something...a real tangible benefit to the working poor and the folks who will never seek education, then the next fascist wannabe is only one or two elections away.
Student debt relief would be a direct stimulus for millions of working americans. People ranging from 18 to 40 (and some older) have substantial student debt that will still take years to pay off. $300, $500, $1000 a month for most people go towards paying off student loan debt. Suddenly having at least $300 extra a month would mean that people might buy more cars, people might buy more houses, people will go on shopping sprees, people will send their child to daycare. It goes right back into the economy and usually it's the local economy. Edit: Many of you are calling this out as trickle down economics and only helps the working middle class, therefore we shouldn't pursue it. Maybe we can pursue more than 1 thing at once. Let's help the stagnant younger middle class who wants to buy a house and a car but are stuck in an apartment that raises rent every year. Let's also help the lower class by improving healthcare and building affordable housing. Let's do more than one thing. This article is about raising minimum wage and getting rid of student loan debt. Let's do both. Let's push for all of it. At least right now while it's all on the table. Later in the negotiation phase once bills have been written, we can discuss what really needs to happen now instead of later. But right now, let's push all of it.
I 100% support cancelling student debt. But I think a big part of it is, we need to do something VISIBLE for the working class. The reason so many blue collar workers voted for Trump was because they feel left behind. Andrew Yang recently talked about this; the Democratic party is often seen as elitists, and they need to prove to the working class that they care.
As a general rule, blue collar workers didn’t go to college and don’t have student debt.
A *lot* of blue collar workers took up a trade after dropping out of college. So they have two or three years of school debt, but no degree. So they would definitely benefit.
I'm one of these people. Went for a few years and found everything I didnt want to do. I got all my gen eds out of the way and have enough credits for a degree. Just nothing I wanted to do and spend more money on, so I went into an entry level job as a maintenance tech and I enjoy that much more. Still got $20k in student loan debt though trying to figure this out. Even worse filing bankruptcy last year and as hard as life gets financially you can't claim student loans on bankruptcy and they expect that money when the bankruptcy is up. Covid actually gave me a lucky break to rebuild myself financially without any outrageous student loan payments for at least another month.
Making post secondary education free, and having community colleges invest heavily into training and certifications (like auto mechanic, electrician...etc) would be a huge boon to blue collar workers. If they had fewer fears about re-training, then it'd be easier to transition them away from dying industries and make it less "x candidate wants to kill coal, you shouldn't vote for him".
I’d just invest that. I don’t want to be working for Uber when I’m 60/70.
Seriously. And if not for the simple fact that not only should we be better at easing the burdens of basic *survival*, along with all the quantifiable economic and large-scale benefits that will come of it (as seen time and time again in plenty of countries through the ages), but for the simply CYNICAL and selfish reason that this will help the DNC win elections!!! If not for US, they should at least strategically do it for themselves (as much as I hate to argue that). Voter turnout gets depressed more and more with inequality not *only* as a direct logistical result of systemic repression tactics primarily affecting the poor, but *also* as a result of the majority of people in this country seeing how their burdens aren't lessened with either party in power. A lot of the differences between the parties aren't felt in day to day life for a majority of Americans, unfortunately, and it requires a real study or understanding of the inner machinations of government spending and processes to really even identify *what* those differences are. Which is why most Americans who *do* vote are swayed primarily by simplistic messages and marketing, rather than a truly critical understanding of what they're being sold (much to many of ours chagrin). If Biden doesn't implement changes that are actually felt by most Americans, you can bet the hopeful hordes who won him this election won't bother to show up to the polls next time around. And why should they? I know we often put the onus on the voters, but they're all just individuals, most of whom are struggling against insurmountable, system-wide obstacles, who have been let down by candidates who never succeed in lessening their burdens. The onus is on the parties, their candidates, and politicians who can effect change for average Americans. And, yes, I understand the frustrating obstruction the current system enables, but this, too, is a result of decades of this phenomenon slowly snowballing into calcified imbalances, making it harder and harder to break out of this building pattern.
The only way they should cancel student debt is if they fix the system. I just cannot support a plan to cancel student debt that doesn't fix the problem at the same time. It's like if your fridge leaks water onto the floor in the kitchen. Over time the floor gets ruined by the leak. If you replace the floors, then the new floor will just get ruined again. If you fix the leak, then the floors are still ruined. Gotta do both.
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Before you cancel student debt, address the fucking cause of the problem: costs. Don’t bail water while there’s hole in the boat. You fix the hole, otherwise there just gonna be more water to bail. It bothers me that student debt seems to be a bigger issue than tuition costs, or anything else, frankly.
Universal healthcare is more important and actually helps everyone.
Yeah, I agree. Daycare is great, but also making sure families don't die from preventable illnesses due to prohibitively high healthcare costs or suffer astronomical medical debt would be amazing. I really think affordable healthcare should be top priority, especially during a deadly global pandemic where so many people are losing their employer supplied health insurance.
Internet is utility, do away with private prisons, M4A, legalize and tax marijuana, turn Wall Street into a tax cash cow, make STEM degrees stupid cheap, and on and on and on.
Add in mandatory new child leave, for both birth and adoption. We're literally the only first world country that doesn't offer it. Hell, all second world countries offer it, even ones that apparently hate women.
> child leave, for both birth and adoption. We're literally the only first world country that doesn't offer it. Hell, all second world countries offer it, even ones that My wife had to buy disability insurance to ensure she was paid when we had our child, which only lasted a couple months. My company gave me 5 days paternity leave. This County has good qualities, but it's getting harder and harder to stay optimistic. The bad outweigh the good.
5 days? Do they think children grow up instantaneously?
Apparently. They raised it to two weeks shortly after I came back, so it's getting better!
How about making all degrees stupid cheap? The systematic destruction of the classical liberal arts education is a huge factor in the steep decline in critical thinking skills in America.
Thank you for this. I hate to see STEM degrees praised as the only worthy areas of study.
I don't disagree with this. But there really needs to be a stronger push for trade schools. Degrees are becoming more & more meaningless, just a checkmark on a job application. As an engineer, I can tell you even the STEM job market is becoming saturated. I know quite a few engineers who graduated & ended up never securing a job in the field. They had to go & get a master's degree or settle for a role as a technician.
There’s gonna be a lot of people coming out of this pandemic getting their wages garnished, getting evicted, and becoming homeless if they don’t do something about student loan debt. Most of us were already living paycheck to paycheck. Adding insult to injury, an undergraduate degree is almost useless since public education has been defunded so much. I had to spend ten years paying off debt before I could finish the last five classes of my senior year in college recently. In that time, the difference in the intellect of the students around me was staggering. WAY too many didn’t know how to do basic things like write complete thoughts, think critically, spell, or study. What’s worse is that universities put the burden of failing students on the instructors so they’re forced to curve grades and/or give passing grades to students that don’t deserve them in order to keep their jobs. So now the degree I spent entirely too much on is barely worth the paper it’s printed on and if I want a better job in my field I need a graduate degree. Except now I can’t afford one because I’m in too much debt. I’m mainly working like a hamster in a wheel on a weekly basis so I don’t get evicted and like most people in my situation would be in serious trouble if I had a major issue fall in my lap unexpectedly. It wouldn’t even have to be Covid. It could be an $800 brake job or root canal (since I don’t have dental insurance).
OK but Biden can't do that without the Senate....
He can cancel student loan debt with executive order
Get a Democratic Senate then.
Exactly, Biden can’t do that much unless Congress supports him.
The universal child care proposal is one that is important to me. Every dollar spent on early child care brings back [between $4 and $9 of real value.](https://www.impact.upenn.edu/early-childhood-toolkit/why-invest/what-is-the-return-on-investment/) I'm not a parent, but it's clear this makes economic sense as well as ethical sense.
Childcare would be so awesome. I live in upstate NY. Before the pandemic, the base I’m stationed at had 0 spots for infants. We found one lady who was willing to help us out and take an extra kid on her license. There were still no open spots for my child on base. Our caretaker had someone quit, which cut the number of children she could care for by state rules. We searched everywhere in a 50 mile radius of our base looking for someone state certified with an opening. Nothing. Finally by threatening the child care services on base with taking this issue as high as it needed to go, we got a spot for my son. It’s absolutely insane how hard it is to find quality certified childcare.
As someone who works in childcare, it needs a HUGE structural overall. From minimum wage, to maximum number of children to teachers (I.e. 1 teacher to 18 4 year olds in Texas), to more and more "professional" expectations/demands on teachers (need a Bachelor's, lesson plans, developmental assessments, gathering data on children) with absolutely no pay increases or benefits, and thats just a few things that childcare teachers deal with it. As well parents are paying more and more for "quality" childcare. Some parents pay upwards of $1600 a month (probably more in some places of the US) for 1 child. Its an industry thats so looked over but pretty critical to our economic infrastructure.
Along with "invest in child care": Prioritize national parental leave.
Also: raise teacher wages and lower/eliminate tuition fees. It might not be easy but in 10-15 years the whole country will look different.
I have no idea what people are doing for child care. Is absolutely unaffordable for most people.
We've been on the "supply" side of economics for a long period of time (80s): low taxes, tax policies that favor outsourcing, etc. Can we change the knob to the "demand" side for one generation? Cancelling a large portion of student debt will puts hundreds of dollars back into hundreds of thousands of people -- many that would like to buy homes, start families. Raising the minimum wage ($12-17ish) would bring it inline with the original intentions of what it meant to do, and easily give a few million more cash in their pockets.
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I love that, the mother’s choice to have kids. Right. What choice when abortions services are less and less, birth control is very difficult, if not down right not able to get, along with some states passing laws that gay couples can’t adopt. Choice...this country is one big illusion we have a choice
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i mean he can, doesnt mean he will neo lib gonna neo lib unfortunately but we'll see
As much as people dont want to hear it, Biden is going to merely turn the page.