5771

You are mixing stuff together.

Yes, if you want to study at things where the capacity for students is lower than the number of people trying to get a spot, you’d better have awfully good grades (Psychology and all sorts of Medical school lines tend to be the most difficult). And yes, you do have to have reasonable grades in relevant subjects to get into College (or any sort of tertiary education, really). Not everyone does qualify - some people don’t have grades good enough to get in anywhere (~10% according to national statistics). That’s perfectly fine - not everyone is cut out to be a surgeon or a lawyer. But I have never - and I mean that quite literally never - heard of anyone who wished to get a tertiary education who couldn’t find a study place.

Yes - there are people who give up on becoming Doctors (or whatever else), because their grades just aren’t good enough. I fail to see the problem. There are always study lines available with slots open for students with the right qualifications, and if you aren’t good enough to get into the study of your dreams, then that study probably wasn’t the right one for you in the first place. Students are admitted to the studies they want on actual merit - not on how much money their parents spend or how fast they run or hit or dunk.

And? You can do the same in Scandinavia. You just have to go back to school (or “adult” school) again, and pass those exams you didn’t take. It’s not at all unusual for people who get turned down from their dream study one year, to take extra courses, retake the exams, and try again the next year.

Yeah, I’m pretty sure that you’re misrepresenting Warren’s plan here.

I have no idea where you got that number. Here’s are official numbers of the numbers who have a post-high school education in Sweden (43% of the population with tertiary education), Norway (35,4% of 18-24 year old studying higher education) and Denmark (sorry, no nice graphics there, but a few years ago, 45% of the year’s students were admitted to tertiary education). Note that the number for Sweden (and probably DK as well, but not the Norwegian numbers) does include people with a short 1-2 years post High School educations. If you look at just the amount of the population who have completed 3+ years of tertiary education, the number is 28% (note - that’s the overall population; if one looked only at the younger generation, who are generally better educated, I’d be surprised if the numbers aren’t closer to the >40% that is the norm in the rest of Scandinavia).

Eh? Yes - you still have to clothe and feed and house yourself, and for that you need money. And cost of living in Scandinavia is high. But student loans allow students to focus on their studies, rather than being forced to flip burgers at McDonalds in order to get through college (of course, some students choose to do that anyway, so that they have enough for nights on the town, etc, but that’s generally out of choice - not necessity).

Warren’s debt relief proposal exists because you have a debt problem in the US (22% defaulting on their student loans - expected to be 40% by 2023). Scandinavia does not have that kind of student debt problem, because the terms of loans here are better.

Which is hardly surprising. Though Greece, for instance, manages both free education and free healthcare, so I’m not sure this is the strong argument you seem to think it is.

Where do you get your numbers? The IMF numbers:
GDP per capita Norway: $74K
GDP per capita USA: $62K
GDP per capita Sweden: $53K
GDP per capita Denmark: $52K

Norway’s numbers are skewed by oil (cf. their policy of “saving” money in their oil fund means that they don’t actually use the amount of money in their budget that their GDP would seem to imply is available). But even if we include Norway into this, the average GDP of Scandinavia isn’t higher than that of the US.

[quote]
I’m not rejecting any of the reforms. I"m rejecting two claims. . “The EU is the same size as the US it has all kinds of great things”. When the reality is a rich part of Europe, aka Scandinavia has all these things, the rest of Europe has pieces of these nice things.

[quote]

So one: Scandinavia isn’t richer than the US. So no - not reality.

And no - the rest of Europe does not have pieces of these nice things - the majority of Europe has effectively the same nice things, just in a variety of different ways (something which is also true of Scandinavia, btw - how these things work in the various Scandinavian countries differs quite a lot). This is the reality: literally hundreds of millions of people, in countries that are poorer than the US, manage to have universal health care and free college education.

If you taxed billionaires, you would certainly have more money available to try and implement these nice things. That’s simple economics.

And I’m not sure who claims that would be easy. I’m certain Warren wouldn’t, if you’d step aside from soundbites and 2-minute debate answers, and sat down with her for a few hours to discuss her proposals. The lady’s been in politics for over a decade - she knows nothing is easy.

Just because something isn’t easy, doesn’t mean one shouldn’t do it. On the contrary, it is often the things that are hardest to do, which are the most worthwhile and valuable. That is as true of public policy, as it is in private enterprise.

5772

Those numbers don’t say what you think they say.

5773

The one you pointed out - Medicare for all - you did mention other polls still showed majority support even when downsides of the policy were explained. But I agree, if @triggercut knows of better quality policy polls and wouldn’t mind sharing one or two, I would read them with interest.

5774

Oh, you’re talking about the % of population that’s currently registered as a student? Just how is that a useful number?

But also, you probably really need to get all the data from the same source, so that we know they’re using the same definitions. E.g. these stats for Sweden are quite confusing since the description is talking about “upper secondary education” which is not college / university.

5775

We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

“But think of the deficit, you radical commie fool!”

5776

That’s not exactly helpful. All I’m saying is the US has a lot more college students so providing free college is more expensive for the US. I’d didn’t want to take the time to find how much is spent on average for universities. I’d be willing to be it is lot more per student in the US than in Sweden, but that gets into complicated issues like grants, private funding etc.

I’m using different data set than you, for example I show a US GDP capita at $59.5. My point was Scandinavia has similar (maybe not higher) than a rich state like California, not a poor state like Mississippi

We’ll just agree to disagree on the quality of Greece, Romania etc health care and other social-service. It also not like not having insurance prevents American from getting health care. If you are sick and you go to hospital or call 911. You get treated, in many cases you can get treatments that cost hundreds of thousand even a million dollars, and not end up paying anything. The focus on health insurance and not health care is one of my many issues with Sanders and Warren’s plans.

5777

This is…profoundly ignorant. Here’s a thought experiment: if this were true, why would anyone in America pay for health insurance?

5778

This is an insane right wing talking point that would sound right coming out of Rand Paul’s mouth. You only get “free” healthcare in the US if you are about to die. Otherwise you get turned away everywhere but specific free clinics, that again only do certain things.

And of course your care isn’t free at all. We all pay for it anyway.

Nobody in the US walks into a hospital, gets millions of dollars in healthcare without insurance, and walks away without a care in the world. If they have money they are now bankrupt, and if they don’t, they’re probably homeless and have lots of other shit to deal with.

5779

I mean, this is the dishonesty behind the whole how will we pay for it challenge. ‘We’ already pay for every bit of health care that happens in the country. We, collectively, pay for it. Changing the accounting so that the money to pay for it flows through the federal government won’t cause it to cost more. If anything, it will cause it to cost less, because of the bargaining power of a single payer, because of consolidation of administration, because of elimination of insurance profit from the model.

Now, what might cost more is that some people who simply do without health care — because they can’t pay for it — might actually use some. But in the case of these costs, the how will we pay for it crowd are really saying they should fucking do without.

5780

It is more expensive for the US to provide college education than other countries, because we encourage people to college who frankly shouldn’t be going. Consequently, we have too many colleges students, with only marginally higher number of degrees. Even if Warren’s place didn’t cost the taxpayer any money, I’d oppose it. Free college will encourage more marginal students who shouldn’t be going to college to give it a shot, instead of finding vocational training/internship that would be more valuable to them.

5781

Sounds pretty elitist.

If we funded k through 12 better, more people would succeed in College.

But, that would mean more people paying taxes, which I guess would be a bad thing for the wealthy among us.

5782

Which they won’t care about if it presents them with a(n even) more uncertain future with horrible wages. If only there was some sort of New Deal job guarantee being proposed…

5783

This struck me as an odd exchange

5784

Tulsi is very odd. I think it is both disrespectful and foolish to call her a Russian asset though.

I think it is disrespectful because she is a soldier and congresswoman, and by all indications she is still an idealist, who genuinely beliefs that what she advocates will make the country a better place.

I’m pretty sure she falls into the useful idiot category. Somebody who has embraced propaganda by an organization that is the enemy to the US and our values.

It is foolish because by calling her Putin puppet, Russia asset etc. we are lumping her into the same category as Donald Trump and his cronies. I know there is no proof but I’d find it virtually impossible to distinction between the actions of Donald Trump, and someone who was actively working for Putin.

5785

What do folks in Hawaii make of her?

5786

You’re a smart enough guy to know that using GDP per capita like that is an abuse upon statistics.

Real talk, I make about 8-10x what my colleagues who live in India make. But I am certainly not 10x better off. Per capita GDP has very little correlation to internal costs, and saying that country X has lower GDP so can’t possibly do thing is absurd on the face.

What it does mean is the cost of certain types of goods is higher. For example consumer electronics. The cost of those for us is relatively lower Than for India. But food, housing, and transport costs there are astronomically lower. So GDP doesn’t give an accurate reflection. If the local costs are lower (such as labor costs) services are relatively lower. What is important to look at would be more the % GDP cost of items.

5787

Before her Presidential run, she was very popular, winning a very competitive primary against the former Mayor of Honolulu Since then she has crushed her token primary opposition and the Republicans who’ve run against her getting 70-80% of the vote.

Since her Presidential run she has had surprisingly little news coverage. Hillary’s comments got a short segment n the TV news. On social media it is decidedly mixed. I think most of my friends think she is embarrassing herself. There is an core group of local supporters, but Hawaii is very establishment oriented Blue State. Senator Dan Inouye almost succeeded in getting his picks elected from his death bed and beyond. So her fights with the establishment don’t go down well, but there hasn’t be a lot of active criticism.

5788

Still not a denial.

5789

This is quite elitist. Public colleges cost about $70 billion a year right now, less than 0.5% of GDP. We can afford it - we just lowered taxes on the rich by more than that in 2017.

Why are you comparing the GDP of Mississippi to Scandinavia in the first place? All that says is that we shouldn’t force Mississippi to pay for universal healthcare and college by itself. But we give them lots of money that comes from the rich states, so the overall US per capita GDP is the more relevant number. If the argument against it is that states like Mississippi need to get more money to pay for it, that seems like a pretty straightforward compromise…

5790

More dirt on Tulsi, copied from Reddit -

Here are some things people need to know about Tulsi Gabbard: