Originally posted by LPFabulous
I’m glad that they’re racist southerners rather than just racists… who’s being derogatory now?
Well I was trying to be more specific since not all racists hate black people. There’s plenty of racist black people who hate white or asian people, or whatever. I felt the term racist was too non-specific so I used a stereotype to make my point. Meh. So lemme rephrase. Racists who hate black people would disagree with you on that point.
Originally posted by LPFabulous
Dude, it isn’t just because I disagree with them because I feel like it. It’s that I don’t see any good reason to think that people who believe some of these things are sane or rational.
Hahahaha, now that’s just plain closed minded. I disagree with these people so they must be insane. Well there’s also these guys that believe an invisible man in the sky watches them and knows everything they’re going to do before they do it. Talk about a bunch of loons!
Originally posted by LPFabulous
Way to argue for your contention… By the way, I still think you’re wrong. Being impartial/objective would require you not to be a person, not to have desires, emotions, reactions, or an environment. When you can somehow get outside of everything that makes you who you are, then you can talk to me about impartiality.
I was making an attempt at humor there, guess you missed it… Oh well, it wasn’t very good anyway, not that I have much competition. It is impossible to THINK in an impartial way since you already have your opinions formed in your mind, but it’s possible to SPEAK in an impartial way. You just need to try to cover both sides of an argument without intentionally making one side look better or worse than another. Maybe it’s impossible for you to do so, but it’s not impossible.
Originally posted by LPFabulous
When I say “just fine,” I don’t mean just surviving. My cousin and her new husband (neither college-educated) just bought a house. They have good jobs and enough money to be happy. If the cost of living is too high in California, then move.
What exactly do they do? Either way, please do not go implying that college is a waste of time, that’s just foolishness. Whether or not they went to college, I’m sure they had some sort of training for their jobs, or they started very low and slowly worked their way up. For 90% of the good paying jobs, you need a college education. And even for those other jobs that don’t require college, don’t pay as much as a good college education can get you. Also, if I could afford to move to a different state, I still wouldn’t. The cost of living in California may be higher than some other states, but it also has more opporunities for awesome jobs that pay very well than other states. I think I’ll tough it out untill my college schooling is over and then get one of them Awesome Jobs ™.
Originally posted by LPFabulous
First of all, no she didn’t. Nurses don’t go to med school - they go to nursing school. It’s different. Second, I wasn’t counting her as one of my parents because I don’t live with her. My mother and stepfather are not college-educated, and I have a house and cats and dogs and food and videogames and satellite TV and all those things a boy could want.
Yada yada yada, same difference. A medical training school of some sort, let’s not be critical of the details. And what if I want more than all the things a boy could want? What if I want two cars, some property with horses, and maybe a boat? Well I’m more likely to get those with a college education and a dregree in something that sounds impressive. If it comes down to an employer to hire one person out of two canidates with similar qualifications, 99% of the time they will chose the guy with the college degree over the high school grad.
Originally posted by LPFabulous
Usually, they’re called “grants” and are based on the fact that you don’t have any money, which is the ludicrous part. Though they’re justifiable in the sense that I’m fully prepared to allow (morally) people to accept an amount up to the amount they (or their parents) pay in income taxes. They’re owed that much.
Actually, grants and scholarships are not quite the same thing. Grants are granted to you if you have low enough income or high enough expenses to meet certain criteria that the federal and state goverments set. A scholarship is a sum of money awarded for things like outstanding abailities (football scholarship) or outstanding academic achievements. There are also hundreds of private insttutions that give out scholarships for weird things like being a latino woman ages 22-31 who have lung cancer or something like that. I was getting a federal pel grant for a while, but it wasn’t much and didn’t help much for initial expenses since I didn’t get the first check untill 30-45 days after the semester starts. It certainly wouldn’t have paid for health insurance… And I’m glad that you will allow me to get these grants, that’s so nice of you.
Originally posted by LPFabulous
Again, all of this looks like a choice and you still haven’t convinced me that the state needs to bail you out of a choice you made all by yourself.
Look, I had few other choices than go to college. Arround where I live at least there are two different types of employment. One type is the part time fast-food type places where they pay you minimum wage and then make you work the maximum amount possible without considering you full time. Full time workers in these situations get benifits packages, like health care and dental, while the riff raff part time get minimum wage and nothing else. The other type is the managerial full-time workers that get the benifits, but absolutely require at least an associates degree in business or something. Maybe if you have years of experience in the field they hire for for these high paying jobs, they might hire you, but of course you won’t get hired and gain the experience unless you have a college degree. There are few jobs arround here that will allow you to start at the bottom and be trained for the higher position as you go. The only thing remotely close like that is unpaid internships and those are not plentiful.
Originally posted by LPFabulous
The state has guns, which it uses to enforce its laws.
Yep, they do. They don’t however point them at doctors who don’t want to treat people when they government pays the bill. There is no law that says doctors can’t quit or work elsewhere. If doctors don’t want to treat somone for how their bills are paid, they get fired, no guns involved.
Originally posted by LPFabulous
I’m glad we can just state that federal regulation became necessary without really looking at the alternatives… which I’d like to do seeing as how federal regulation has so totally fucked the system up.
The system can be fucked up with and without government regulation. The key however is to controll it well so it doesn’t get fucked up in the first place. If the state government wasn’t so short sighted, it would have built more power plants for the increasing demand. The whole thing about not being able to build more power plants because of environmental concerns is a little rediculous. I guess that’s one thing that I disagree with “liberals” on. Environmentalists to be more specific, who don’t see that it’s a bad idea to rely too much on importing anything.
Originally posted by LPFabulous
Given democracy, I agree… but I’m not sure why you feel the need to try to convince me of that.
I’m not trying to convince you of that, I was just mentioning it’s there as an option.
Originally posted by LPFabulous
Actually, Republicans just don’t tend to take such a poor view of consumers as Democrats (I’m using these party designations sweepingly and unfairly) do. For the most part, the idea of Democratic regulation implicitly seems to involve the notion that consumers are either too stupid or too lazy to make reasonable choices on their own. In many cases, I’d even go so far as to say it’s moral - a lot of “liberals” don’t seem to think that people should be held responsible for their decisions - hence, abortion. I think (because this is my point of view) that Republicans tend to assume that consumers aren’t just a bunch of ninnies who need a benevolent dictator keeping them in line. The reason they tend to favor businesses (though what I think is more accurate is that they just oppose special privileges for consumers - similar to the way their opposition to things like affirmative action is entirely negative) is that they trust the market to make things okay, which it usually does.
It’s not that people are lazy or stupid that they get into situations where they can’t afford to take care of themselves. You have a strange notion of poor people. Most of the time poor people just have limited options on ways to improve their quality of living and get higher income. Options that seem easy decisions to those who make more money are often alot harder for the poor. They often have to make big sacrafices or take big risks that wouldn’t seem so risky or so big a sacrafice if only they had more to risk. Yes there are alternatives that could very well earn you better pay, but at what cost? Is it worth the risk? Say a poor person get a job offer, but he’d have to relocate to an entirely different state or country. What if he gets laid off after he moves? What if he doesn’t get paid enough? What would be the impact on his family? Sometimes the risks are just too much. Not everyone can do this sort of thing, even if they are poor and are left with the alternative of staying poor.