MikeJ
5831
You are right. Everyone should get a PhD. Multiple PhDs!
This, from Yglesias, really sums up the Mayor Pete story for me:
Pete is basically white-bread-and-mayonnaise center-right Democratic politics. He’d surely be better than Trump, but why would anyone actually want him as the nominee?
KevinC
5833
Because he’s an amazing communicator who shows genuine empathy and has given very thoughtful answers to almost every question asked. I’d be very happy with him as the nominee.
Yes this. I totally ♡ the Buttiman.
ShivaX
5835
He’s also smart and thinks through things.
Timex
5836
There isn’t any shame in learning a trade. Plumbers and electricians make very good wage, despite not having college educations.
Isn’t this the wrong way of thinking, though? It’s not a matter of how much education someone gets, but what opportunity is available to those at each level. Right now, you’re basically stuck in poverty if you don’t get through high school, and stuck at lower-middle-class level if you don’t do college or a trade school. (Yes, I know there are exceptions, but this is true for the vast majority.) If we want college/trade schools to matter less so that people have the option to skip it (or even high school, though I know that’s not a serious suggestion), then we need to give people opportunity at those lower skill/education levels.
So either we need to put some rules in place that force the economy to provide opportunity to lower skill/education levels, or we need to give access to that education to everyone. The former warps the economy in ways I don’t like, so I’m much more in favor of the latter. And “giving access” doesn’t just mean making it cheaper, it also means figuring out ways that those people who don’t do well in traditional classrooms can access higher education.
You hear presidential candidates giving lip service to this access concept. They’ll occasionally say things about trade schools, or community college. But I think we need something that’s more of a paradigm shift. Maybe that’s something like the German apprenticeship model, or creating a federal-level service corps that everyone does for a year or two right after high school to instill basic post-secondary skills (and provide some public service at the same time). I don’t hear a lot of transformational ideas in this area right now, which is unfortunate.
Dunno either, but to cite another Bloomberg story he has friends of dubious merit in high places in the tech world: Mark Zuckerberg Has Quietly Recommended Campaign Hires to Pete Buttigieg
Buttigieg was an investment banker, so he’s part of the club and you don’t have to worry too much about people taking your stuff. In that way he’s a nice fallback in case Biden completely flames out.
Standard caveat: I would prefer 1000 years of the center-ish Buttigieg presidency to another month of the current Republican president.
Me, too, but I’m just not going to get enthusiastic about the Dems nominating one of the most conservative of their choices here. Policy-wise, he seems like Biden to me. And there’s a whiff of Biden’s claim to be able to work with the other side on his whole ‘Mid-western roots and values’ story.
KevinC
5842
He also may or may not be Batman.
Lol. From his wiki:
After earning his Oxford degree, Buttigieg became a consultant at the Chicago office of McKinsey & Company,[32]
Timex
5844
That’s not an investment bank, dude.
Oh sorry I just group all those people together.
Timex
5846
People who work for… corporations?
It’s a management consulting company, and he worked on energy, economic development and logistics while he was there. That’s actually good stuff for a political leader to have management experience in.
More the big finance wing of the Democratic Party. It’s ok, I’m not saying that they need to be the first up against the wall. I’m just saying they tend to have an outlook and set of life experiences that make them reluctant to embrace significant change.
He’s Biden in some ways, but he also wants to really remake the system in fundamental ways. Basically, he wants conservatives and liberals to get a long because the structural incentives have shifted so that they can, while Biden wants Democrats and Republicans to work together because they go out for beers and smile and nod at each other’s racism.
I never said there was shame in it, but not everyone wants to be in a skilled trade either. And most importantly, forcing people to choose between locking in a single trade or learning general skills that will help in all trades is bad. If they don’t do well in a classroom, then education needs to improve. Education won’t improve if you tell everyone who “doesn’t do well” that it isn’t really for them.
This is no less fantastic (not in a good way) a view than Biden’s view about why they can get along. They want different things.
Matt_W
5850
Right. I’m trying to figure out which structural incentives would convince conservatives that:
- Pluralism of faith, political ideology, and social situation is ok, and even preferred in a society.
- Democracy is good, even if their preferred policies aren’t the result.
