Anyone willing to bet on a devaluation of the dollar when all the debt bubbles burst?

[Kinser79]

(05-20-2016, 10:08 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: A few comments:

1. Working people are better off with one union card than with one credit card.  People with adequate incomes can pay cash for significant purchases. Credit cards were originally designed for people who spend money on legitimate business activities -- like travel on behalf of an employer. That is where American Express, Carte Blanche, and Diner's Club operated in the old days. A traveling salesman from Chicago checking into a motel in Louisville so that he can make a sales call in Louisville isn't going to be hurt with his credit card.

Banks used credit cards to meet the competition of finance companies. Taking an overpriced vacation on a credit card is unwise.

I agree. Of course this presupposes that said union card is worth the paper it is printed on.

As for the purpose of credit cards the original intent was for business purchases first and foremost and secondly purchases by people with the means to immediately pay off the unsecured loan. Which is what a credit card is, a purchase of a good or service via the means of an unsecured loan.

Quote:2. Education is worth borrowing for if it makes one a better or more skilled worker. Borrowing a huge amount of money to matriculate through med school makes sense because physicians earn huge incomes. Med school is difficult enough that one does not want a promising physician to waste time on paying work. Borrowing a small amount to become a hairdresser makes sense because one likely gets a job.  Getting a bachelor's degree that allows one to be a schoolteacher isn't a bad idea (the sorts of schools that have 'education' as a major are usually inexpensive. One attends the mediocre Western Michigan University, and not the great University of Chicago, to get a teaching degree. But if you attend the University of Chicago, you probably have a very good life awaiting you.

Borrowing money to get a degree is only worthwhile if with that degree you can actually do something with it. Largely this means that liberal arts degrees are worthless as are degrees in Feminist Dance Thearapy and Gender studies (the latter I think should be completely abolished). Getting a certification in education (the degree required to teach--and remember my BF is a real teacher not the fake ass substitute kind like you are) is not as expensive as some degrees but going into debt for it is generally unwise (but going into debt for anything that isn't a durable consumer good is unwise). Most school teachers are not highly paid, my bf has been teaching for over 7 years and he only makes about 5K more than myself and remember he's both union and tenured. His benefits are pretty great though and in three more years he'll have a state pension.

All of that said, having an education is not a guarantee of success. In my years on the planet I've met many people who blew a load of money on good schools and pretty much ended up just as broke as if they hadn't gone to school at all--in some cases they are worse off because they have a low paying job and also a mountain of student debt they can't evade through bankruptcy.

Quote:Attending a bad technical school and going into debt as if one were attending a great university but without financial aid is a huge blunder. Even if the blunder is profitable to some entity, it is bad social policy to promote the blunder.

Again, agreed. If the point of a technical school is to get a certification for a specific job then that should be offered through a community college which can perform the same task much more cheaply.

Quote:3. You are probably right about most people working night jobs.

No probably to it. I walked in those shoes for years. People who work overnight sleep during the day.

Quote: Some people well fit them because they do not get along well with people. Some people work at night in 24-7 businesses and would hate their jobs if those jobs if they were 9-to-5. But I see no reason to believe that people working night shifts work more hours. They do watch some television. If they are in low-end jobs and have a good reason to be in those low-end jobs (like a lack of skill and limited learning), then I can't imagine them watching recorded concerts of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.

This is only partially true. There are 24 hour businesses that require people to work overnight. There are other functions that can only be conducted efficiently when the business is closed. A prime example is my own donut shop. While there is some donut making and finishing done during the day, the primary base of the baking especially is conducted on an 8pm to 5am shift. The reason for this should be self-evident.

Those who work on stock crews and such (I've worked that too--right after I got out of the Navy) typically either don't like dealing with very many people or take the job for other reasons.

As for myself, I rather dislike working 9-5. The vast majority of people on this planet are, to put it charitably, fucking idiots.

I would say that the jobs people take is not a good indicator of their entertainment tastes. Neither is their educational attainment. Rather it is a matter of taste, and trust me the BF and I do not really share the same tastes. I have less education than him and I watch Masterpiece Theater, he does and yes he DVRs Survior and crap like that. He comes home from dealing with trying to make imbeciles less imbecilic and wants nothing more than some light entertainment whereas I get easily bored with it.

Quote:4. Television viewing and social-economic-status (SES) have a strong negative correlation. Well-educated people generally have other things to do than watch television, generally a very passive entertainment.

I'd only partially agree. Given the choice between watching television and doing anything else...it depends on what is on the television. Generally speaking there isn't anything good on anyway but I have been known to watch television. And I'm merely in the upper strata of the proletariat. That being said if there is a reasonably complex drama on I probably want to see it, I'm also quite fond of certain shows (Walking Dead, Vikings for example) as well as documentaries.

Quote:Snob? I can see through what Jerry Springer does. Bring a dysfunctional family to Chicago, let them stay a night in a nice hotel room, let them have some 'gourmet' meals, and bring the family onto the stage to implode.

That statement isn't just about your television viewing habits or tastes. You are a snob because of all the other bullshit you've posted over the years. I believe I directly called you a "pathetic self-hating proletarian" at least once before. The old forum is gone but most of us here still remember the gem posts. Perhaps you'll care to enlighten us with your fine pallet for wines, I hear Manishewitz has a fine vintage this year or do you only drink wine from a box?

Quote:5. Vocational schools with modest but attainable objectives (as in "become a pastry chef") and modest cost can do their students some good. It's the ones that make big and unsupportable promises that hurt their students and rip off the public.

Such entities usually work through community colleges which is more efficient than trying to be stand alone enterprises, generally.

Quote:6. Yes, the United States is the only advanced industrial society that treats formal education as a luxury. Maybe that reflects the heritage of the plantation order that is much of the American political heritage. Nobody needs to do much thinking to do farm labor; indeed, the more that one thinks the more likely he is to seek alternatives to being abused and exploited.

As odd as it might seem this is untrue. A great many of the State Universities used to offer very affordable educations. They also were primarily financed through taxation, donations, and of course expansive land grants. A great deal of that has been dismantled relatively recently--the 1980s to be precise. I like to think that a lot of it was Boomers with their "I got mine screw you" mentality.

Quote:Just to deal with the reality of the disappearance of scarcity as a necessary constraint upon working people Americans are going to need more formal education just to make use of free time. Leisure meant nothing when people worked seventy-hour weeks just to make farm implements.  One measure of progress is that people have gone from the 70-hour workweek to the 60-hour workweek, and on down to the 40-hour workweek of the 1930s. For political reasons we are stuck at the 40-hour workweek.

I'm not sure I agree with that. One doesn't need a degree in English to watch and understand Shakespeare. Also we are always promised more and more leisure time...I'm not seeing it. I don't think there has been a week lately I've not worked a minimum of 60 hours.

Quote:We do not need to make more schlock objects. We need to learn how to make life meaningful. Karl Marx' dream in which productivity makes material fetishes irrelevant is nigh -- even, and maybe especially in, capitalist societies.

Schlock objects will always be made, that being said, it appears that generations younger than Boomers are less interested in such which is not surprising as it was largely the Silents and GIs who demanded said objects. And this is coming from someone who has a collection of glass knicknacks. I think over all the phenomenon had a great deal to do with the Depression and the over all general scarcity of items in totality. Now that scarcity is quite rare in developed countries--not so much in underdeveloped countries.