On Monday, September 4, 2017 at 6:14:32 AM UTC-7, AMuzi wrote:
On 9/4/2017 12:49 AM, John B. wrote:
On Sun, 03 Sep 2017 22:06:16 -0500, Tim McNamara
wrote:

On Sun, 03 Sep 2017 13:32:48 -0500, AMuzi wrote:
Without an educated populace the gatekeepers are powerless and wishing
for an educated population is a fool's dream. And here we are.

Yep. And unfortunately there is a large percentage of the American
population who have opted to be stupid and proud of it.

I have said this before and will say it again. I have for decades
thought that a class in logic ought to be required in every high school.
In a participatory form of government- like, you know, democracy, a
basic level of non-idiocy is required for success.

Unfortunately someone decided that "education creates liberals," and
thus far too many politicians have decided to oppose competent public
education (at least here, don't know about other parts of the country).
Here I'll sound like a conservative: schools need to have standards and
accountability for behavior and educational performance, parents (or
someone in the home) need to be actively involved in their children's
scholastic life. And we need to recognize that not everyone wants to or
is able to attend college successfully, which seems to be the current
goal of Americam education policy; there should be multiple educational
tracks available to help students acquire the skills they need to be
successful.

One thing I heard from Trump a while back was having some sort of system
for apprenticeships, which Germany- probably among others- has done with
success for decades; haven't heard a peep about it since, so maybe it
fell off the radar. I think that would be a good idea. In my state we
seem intent on dismantling the trade schools because of the emphasis on
college as the be-all and end-all of education.

Apprenticeship used to be a method of learning a trade. Abraham
Lincoln, I believe, "read for the law" which was realistically an
apprenticeship program.

It eventually became a term used to describe a learning period for the
manual trades (one might call them) and then the manual trades became
obsolete. Does anyone get up in the middle of the night to knead
tomorrow's bread? Or dig a ditch by hand?

I completed an apprenticeship to be a "Machinist", although I
subsequently went to an engineering school, but I can remember as
early as the mid-late 1960's that very little work for a qualified
machinist existed. One or maybe two in a big shop and the rest were
machine operators.

I know that The Donald talked about apprenticeships, and increasing
employment, and increasing minimum salaries, and reducing costs, and,
and, but I haven't seen much progress being made.

Now there is an exercise in logic. (1) Increase wages which certainly
contributes to higher sales prices, and (2) reduce costs?


Mayor Comerade Bill in NYC says that increasing cigarette
taxes will stop smoking but increasing the minimum wage will
not stop employment.

Hey Tim McNamara - could you loan him a logic textbook?

In California they just had a perfect example - they increased wages and lost many jobs to automation. So what have the done about this? Demanded higher minimum wages.