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Old 12-18-2016, 10:06 AM   #3201
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The founding editor of Politico, Susan Glasser, just published a fantastic piece, "Covering Politics in a Post-Truth America," on media coverage during the 2016 election.

It's a long read, but definitely worth checking out. I can't pretend that I didn't already agree with many of the points that were made, but it had some extraordinary insight on why things are the way they are. If you can stomach a whirlwind review of the history of American journalism (and this is bare-bones shit, too, and only stuff that's relevant to current media, and only stuff that happened within Glasser's career), you'll probably enjoy reading through this.

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As this wild presidential campaign progressed, that became my ever-more nagging worry and then our collective nightmare—the fear, clearly realized, that all the flood of news and information we’ve celebrated might somehow be drowning us. So much terrific reporting and writing and digging over the years and … Trump? What happened to consequences? Reporting that matters? Sunlight, they used to tell us, was the best disinfectant for what ails our politics.
I mentioned this before I think; Trump just blazed through the barrier of "reputation" and he did it very intelligently. He lied, cheated, yelled, retweeted anti-Semitic things, made racist comments...everything about his actions was thoroughly distasteful. And it didn't matter! Because in the end, Trump was able to shrug off attacks on his reputation so easily and Hillary was still answering to something that happened in 2009, 7 years ago. Image matters., but only a certain kind of image, and not to everyone, and even then it follows unbalanced and strange rules that very few people can even begin to hope to understand.

And in the end, it turned out that journalistic integrity is not nearly what it used to be.

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"Hurrah!" cry the liberals. "We are better than conservatives! We don't even watch Fox News (because it is icky)." Weeeeeell no, not really.

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While it’s true that fears about the fragmentation of the media, the destruction of our public commons, the commodification of the news, and the death of objective reporting have been around as long as I’ve been in Washington, politics was NEVER more choose-your-own-adventure than in 2016, when entire news ecosystems for partisans existed wholly outside the reach of those who at least aim for truth. Pew found that nearly 50 percent of self-described conservatives now rely on a single news source, Fox, for political information they trust. As President Obama has famously observed, “If I watched Fox News, I wouldn’t vote for me either.” As for the liberals, they trust only that they should never watch Fox, and have MSNBC and Media Matters and the remnants of the big boys to confirm their biases. And then there are the conspiracy-peddling Breitbarts and the overtly fake-news outlets of this overwhelming new world; untethered from even the pretense of fact-based reporting, their version of the campaign got more traffic on Facebook in the race’s final weeks than all the traditional news outlets combined.
Oh, by the way, 35% of young people get their politics news from social media, which blows Fox News out of the water in terms of sketchiness and integrity and outright lies.
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Old 12-18-2016, 10:13 AM   #3202
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Shuckle View Post
Your post meant nothing, so it's kind of fitting that you accuse correcting it of meaning nothing. The simple correction that Mozz offered contains volumes more legitimate substance than what you wrote.
It's really great that you think you can ignore entire posts of mine and claim all that.

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First off, nobody is talking about the war on drugs (the discussion was about immigration and polarization).

Secondly, Nixon was barely a Republican, ideologically speaking. Similarly to Trump, he was a moderate in conservative's clothing. This is an important distinction because it also starts to explain WHY Republicans support the War on Drugs, rather than (as you insultingly suggest) some sort of Cult of Reagan.

The War on Drugs was an explicit effort to curb the voting rights of black Americans, as stated by Nixon staffers. By associating crack cocaine with black people and marijuana with hippies, the Nixon administration was able to target those (Democrat-voting) groups without repercussion. It's a trick that Republicans used to stay in power, and it worked for a long time.
The conversation was on illegal immigration and Heather made a side note to talk about the drug cartels. I just talked about the War on Drugs because I thought it was an interesting sidenote and yet another way to highlight the irony of Republicans seemingly ignoring Russian interference. But it does seem like several politicians are at least acknowledging it. Let's see if they can convince their party's President-elect.

Saying Nixon wasn't a conservative is a joke. And Reagan most certainly is; but who even knows with today's definition? Either way, both of them were Republican Presidents, and that happens to be the part that actually matters.

I am very well aware of why it was started. It bears a very strong resemblance to the GOP's current strategy of enacting voter ID laws and demanding the exact IDs minorities are less likely to have. So, I'm happy you admit that the Republican party has been using racist methods to winning elections for years and should be called out on it...


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This isn't something only Republicans can do. In the last several years, Democrats attempted to use labels like "racism" as a way to silence Republicans and maintain power. As we saw with Trump...it did not work. He was able to smash through petty things like reputation and tapped into the cultural zeitgeist directly. The Democrats kind of shot themselves in the foot with this one...calling me a "Racist" for thinking BLM is stupid, for example, does not have teeth. I can still vote. I can still discuss the election. And in the end, all you do is separate me out from the pool of people you talk to so that you form a nice little bubble of Trump voters on Twitter, for example.

So you're already wrong two for two. I'd give you a quarter point for "Republican Presidents" but you immediately throw it away by specifying Presidents who are similar to Reagan, which Nixon was not. You can't even hide behind "but he's a major player," as Snorby tries to argue, because Obama and Clinton were both major players in the War on Drugs.
Ah, so much for that.

Democrats use "racist" as a tool to call out racism. Racism like a candidate from a party who has a campaign based on "Build a wall and make Mexico pay for it!" I wouldn't necessarily call someone racist only for thinking that BLM is stupid, but claiming it's a domestic terrorism group? Hmm...getting pretty close to the line there.

Anyway, so we've established that thanks to the Republican presidents, Nixon and Reagan, the War of Drugs had become solidified policy. So if you want to define "major player" as "part of it", then sure, both of them were. I'd actually be pretty interested to see, if you have sources, if Bill was complicit in ramping it up significantly. But as far as I remember, he admitted to smoking pot on live TV, which was (hilariously and unfortunately) a pretty huge moment. Obama's definitely been a disappointment on the topic; one would have hoped he would dismantle much of it but...he hasn't. On the other hand, under his presidency marijuana has been legalized in half of the US and he has expressly told the federal police to turn a blind eye; he also passed the Fair Sentencing act. Oh, and the Republicans clearly thought Clinton wasn't doing anything about the war on drugs and wanted Bush to do far more.

So yeah, it seems pretty obvious that it was Republican Presidents who were worse when it comes to drugs. I'm particularly unsure how the fact that it was based on race seems to make this any better. And Presidents aside, it's a hell of a coincidence that blue states are by large legalizing it and red states are not. Very recently it has become a bipartisan topic, but it's foolish to pretend that the Democratic party don't by and large lean far more towards legalising marijuana than the Republican party, and also tend to be more for reducing drug sentences than them. It must be noted, though, that Tim Kaine was particularly _terrible_ at this, being against legalizing weed. Ah, well.


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Let's continue!

Current Republicans are not pushing for that war on drugs. The language of the War changed in 2008-2012, and has been redirected outwards and towards the border, culminating in Trump:



Nothing of the original War on Drugs remains. It's not semantics to say "Nixon started it" - it's basic critical analysis of history. You get a pass for not knowing this, as you are not American and did not study American history, but you can and will be faulted for ignoring any attempts to enlighten you.

As for "Russian meddling," it was revealed recently that Russian hackers attempted to breach the RNC as well, but were unable to. It's true that the Republicans came out on top (mostly due to Clinton's anti-Russia policies) and are mostly trying to ignore what happened, and Trump is obviously acting to legitimize his candidacy, but it's not like Russia's hacking exploits aren't a matter of Republican concern either.

(It's also not irony. I cannot for the life of me figure out how "The war on drugs re: immigration" and "Russian hacking" are at all connected, or why it is unexpected that Republicans support one and ignore the other. Disliking the flow of drugs over the southern border does not logically lead to being outraged at Russian cyberattacks.)
I've already talked about how current Republicans are still less proactive than current Democrats. But I'll just add here that whatever might have come out of Trump's mouth, he's picked Jeff Sessions for Attorney General. I think that speaks for itself.

The exact same article that you have linked states in its sub-headline that the attack was clearly less aggressive than the one on the DNC. The point is that Donald Trump, Republican President-elect, is refusing to admit that Russia has at all done anything wrong. In fact, he invited them on live TV to do so. And because of this, the Republican party is trying to squash this. That should be pretty fucking scary if your own President wants to ignore an attack by a foreign power. It should be even scarier if said President was found to have ties to that foreign power.

Oh, and since you don't get my train of thought, here it is: a) Reagan was a great proponent of the War on Drugs. b) Reagan was famously anti-Russia. c) Modern Republicans tend to consider Reagan an extremely good President and a role model. d) Modern Republicans tend to be more anti-drug than other parties. d) Modern Republicans seem to be ignoring Russian interference in this election.


Quote:
Finally, you make a claim that not only do Republicans worship Reagan, they "pick and choose" both from their religion and from their conservative party stance. Nothing in your entire argument backs up this claim, and I (controversially) argue that it's barely even true. It's not like all or most or even that many evangelical Republicans are sorting through the dirty laundry of the Bible and picking things they agree with (and even if they are, they are rarely, if ever, doing it consciously in an attempt to justify terrible behavior towards others).

Not only was everything in your post flat wrong, and a short paragraph lacking substance to boot, it also reveals this innate refusal to respect people who differ in opinion from you. Your argument is a recursive "Republicans are bad because they are Republicans," and it's honestly getting a little tiring - I'm fairly confident that I'm not just speaking for myself when I say that your repetitive anti-Republican posts are beginning to get stale.

I don't want this place to be an echo chamber. This is a thread for discussion and debate. You are specifically speaking in a way that turns this thread into an echo chamber by offering easy hooks to join your bandwagon on. You suckered in Snorby somehow, but that's about as far as I will allow you to get.
Hmm, evangelical Republicans don't tend to pick and choose? I find that hard to believe considering they voted for the guy who admitted to sexual assault. In fact, Christianity today denounced Trump but 80% of Evangelical Christians still voted for Trump. That's a pretty difficult argument to make.

Talking about how Evangelicals in general pick and choose would take far too long for my liking, so I'm just going to pick and choose my own Bible quote and move on:

"And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full." Matthew 6:5

Doing it unconsciously is really not an excuse.

Don't lecture me about lacking substance. The last time I put substance in my post, you and Mozz conveniently ignored all of it. If you don't have to explain your wildly outlandish comments, I sure as hell won't.

So now that we've established how my post was quite reasonable, let's continue.

Every person has this particular "sphere" around certain opinions when it comes to what they will tolerate and when they will start calling people out for complete bullshit. I will freely admit I have a much smaller sphere than most people; but it does actually exist. I have very little patience with many social issues; those who want to significantly cut Welfare, for instance. I have very little patience with people who deny climate change. I have a much larger sphere when it comes to gun control. I have a moderately sized sphere on the death penalty. I have a pretty much massive sphere on Universal Basic Income.

My posts tend to be "Republicans are evil because look here, they're being evil in so-and-so ways." You ignored my previous huge post which had a significantly huge section on everything I dislike in the Republican party. The Democratic party lies well within most of my spheres. It misses out on enough to normally make me uncomfortable, but that doesn't matter because the Republican party lies within almost none of my spheres. The only major thing I can think of is gun control, and yet even that is far more in line with the Democratic party anyway.

We can always have discussion or debate. But refusing to accept certain facts makes for neither. The fact is that the Republican party is working against almost everything I stand for, and instead of defending it by pointing out that maybe it doesn't, you've simply told me that I can't call the Republican party "bad". That isn't a valid argument. That's closing your eyes and saying "YOU CAN'T INSULT ME FOR BEING A DICK!"

And you seem to have actually fallen to the depths of accusing me of converting(??) Snorby. Have you considered that maybe he agrees with me? Or is that also impossible for you to understand?



Quote:
We've probably covered a thousand times now that bashing The Enemy simply for belonging to the "Wrong" party is straight-up intolerance, similar in nature though not in scale to nasty prejudices like racism. It's really not reaching to make this comparison, either: people have been physically and violently attacked over their political views, particularly in this recent election with Trump's victory.

Hopefully my post does not sidestep the "substance" of your post. Or lack thereof. And hopefully now you see why we avoided tackling the meat of your post. It is distasteful. It is haggis dressed up (poorly) to look like filet mignon, and we are all trying to be polite by lightly criticizing that it should not be eaten well done and pushing it away. Here is your substantive answer: arguing that a group of people you do not belong to is universally repugnant is intolerance, and should not be respected or tolerated in a place of reasonable discussion.

You do not even bother to provide the "black friend" defense. You do not qualify your points or hide them behind excuses or personal experiences. There is naked prejudice in every post you make. And that, I can only assume, is why you were banned and I was not.

Really, how many times in this thread do I have to say "Tolerance of intolerance is itself intolerance?"

Belonging to the supposed "wrong" party implies support of at least some of their policies and positions. It also implies considering other positions that you don't support to be unimportant enough to ignore. Would you disagree with me if I said the alt-right movement is morally repugnant? Pretty similar principles.

You're quite right, I don't bring up the "black friend" excuse because I don't need to. I have enough friends of all races and nationalities from all over the world. But also, I don't think I need an excuse to think the Republican Party is morally repugnant. It keeps proving that by itself.

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Old 12-18-2016, 12:50 PM   #3203
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Tolerance of intolerance is tolerance.

If you are ever confused about this point, you can start by looking at the first word in the sentence and seeing that it is in fact the word "tolerance."

Regardless, you are now going to have to face the fact that under your definition of intolerance, our very own Talon87 is the scum of the earth. He is friends with a racist, as publicly declared last page. Is Talon a racist? I suppose, since he is now tolerating racist ideas coming from someone he knows, that he is a racist. Sorry Talon; them's the breaks.

This is not to drag Talon into a petty argument but instead to reinforce my own point: Intolerance is never, ever, ever justified. Not the LGBT discrimination of the Republicans, not the anti-Mexican rhetoric of Donald Trump, not the outright racism of the KKK or the Southern Democrats during the Civil War, none of it. And that includes you.

Tolerance of intolerance is not to agree or enable intolerance. It is simply to listen to and educate intolerance. To avoid rushes to judgment (which is intolerance itself) or attacks on character (again, intolerance) and instead seeking to understand and work with people with views or identities that differ from your own.

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Oh, and since you don't get my train of thought, here it is: a) Reagan was a great proponent of the War on Drugs. b) Reagan was famously anti-Russia. c) Modern Republicans tend to consider Reagan an extremely good President and a role model. d) Modern Republicans tend to be more anti-drug than other parties. d) Modern Republicans seem to be ignoring Russian interference in this election.
This would be a great argument, except Russia did not actually exist between 1922 and 1991, and Reagan was in office from 1981 to 1989. Unless you believe that Russia is still communist, in which case we have a lot more to talk about, your analogy just doesn't hold up.

It's mostly used to segue into the idea that "Lol evangelicals pick and choose what they want to believe." Which not all evangelicals do. It's also a little telling that you targeted Republican evangelicals which are only about 38% of the Republican voter base, and would probably be less if you refined it down specifically to white Republican evangelicals. "Ignoring facts you don't like," indeed.

Here is your source for Clinton.

I didn't accuse you of converting Snorby, I accused you of stooping low enough to smell the gravel in an attempt to gain favor for your anti-Republican bandwagoning. Potato/Potato I know, but I personally find the difference a little important. Just like the difference between Nixon, a President who enacted strict price controls, implemented affirmative action, integrated Southern schools, dramatically increased federal salaries, adjusted Social Security for inflation, and created the EPA...and Reagan.

But sure, he was a Republican, so I guess you're right, he was a horrible human being and should be considered as such.

Quote:
We can always have discussion or debate. But refusing to accept certain facts makes for neither. The fact is that the Republican party is working against almost everything I stand for, and instead of defending it by pointing out that maybe it doesn't, you've simply told me that I can't call the Republican party "bad". That isn't a valid argument. That's closing your eyes and saying "YOU CAN'T INSULT ME FOR BEING A DICK!"
Actually it is a valid argument. I'm telling you that you can't just shout at people who disagree with you and expect everyone to join in. I said it harshly, but I guess that doesn't quite work with you.

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Would you disagree with me if I said the alt-right movement is morally repugnant?
Sort of. The racial elements, absolutely. And if you ended the alt-right movement there (as most left-wing people do), I'd fully 100% agree with you that it's a terrible movement.

But it doesn't! The alt-right movement would have fizzled and died if that was all there was to it. To me, it sounds rational and ethically neutral to fear for your economic prospects if your country is experiencing a lot of immigration, especially unskilled immigration as the alt-right believes it is. (see:Mozz) And I think that's where the heart of the alt-right movement lies, which to me is not morally repugnant.

I'm backing out of the argument for now because Rangeet actually anted up and gave an explanation for why his post was substantive, and I accept that explanation. He's not any less wrong about the things I pointed out above, but he is at least wrong for reasons, which I can respect.

What I dislike and have a personal beef with is when people are told what to believe, and then try to argue that they came up with those beliefs on their own. I think there's a lot of left-slanted propaganda, outright propaganda, that gets greedily bought up by many liberals today. Fake news isn't just a problem that conservatives face! And the thing that would make me happy is not "I agree with you Shuckle, I think you are right about everything," but instead "I evaluated the information available from multiple sources, evaluated for bias, and came to this conclusion based both on the information and on my own personal political beliefs.

PHRASES THAT MAKE SHUCKLE HAPPY:
  • As a liberal-leaning person, I believe...
  • I prefer the Democrats' approach over the Republicans'/I don't like the Republicans' approach because...
  • Although I usually vote Democrat, I think this Republican candidate is alright because...
  • I really enjoy that this Democrat is doing this because I agree with their stance that...
  • I'm not a fan of this because I personally believe that...

PHRASES THAT MAKE SHUCKLE ANGRY:
  • Republicans are horrible because...
  • All Republicans...
  • I hate Republicans because...
  • Democrats aren't perfect but Republicans are worse.
  • Republicans are racist because...
  • Republicans are evil because...

Like, Christ! Is it really that hard to say that Republicans can occasionally do things right, or that their opinions can be reasonable/well-intentioned, or that Democrats have the wrong ideas about some things? (You frequently try to say the last one, but I never really see anyone actually back up that statement with evidence or arguments or anything.)

I don't have a problem with you stating your opinion. I don't have a problem with you existing on the political spectrum. In fact, I celebrate it! I've come pretty close to creating a Political Spectrum thread a few times where people can talk about world events without bringing political parties into it. Just talking about whether some event or policy is good or bad, in your view. Beautiful. But that's what this thread should be, imo.

What I have a problem with is attacks on groups you don't belong to. I am firm on this point. I don't like when it happens. I don't like what it means. I don't like the language you use to say it. I don't like how it alienates people with legitimate political opinions. Stop it.

Please, try and keep me happy here.
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Old 12-18-2016, 01:02 PM   #3204
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Really gonna suggest we change the topic here: this is going nowhere and there is definitely something else we can talk about besides this.
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Old 12-18-2016, 01:38 PM   #3205
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I'd like to talk about gentrification, really.

It sort of highlights what I feel is a massive hypocrisy in liberal strongholds that are undergoing the most rapid gentrification, like Oakland. On the one hand, the white people moving in claim they're supportive of civil rights when their economic activities are actually driving minorities into hoods and ghettos where access to a better life is increasing more restrictive.

In that sense, gentrification is far more destructive for minorities than white flight ever was.
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Old 12-18-2016, 01:43 PM   #3206
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That's not a topic I'm really familiar with, mind giving some information?
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Old 12-18-2016, 02:03 PM   #3207
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I think the basic concept is this: We're gonna make these places a lot nicer and less shitty to live in. Hell, we're gonna make them so nice that the people who live there now can no longer afford to!
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Old 12-18-2016, 02:05 PM   #3208
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Tolerance is an interesting philosophical topic. (I don't wish to discuss it here. I merely wish to state that I find it to be an interesting topic for research and introspection.)

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Originally Posted by Doppleganger View Post
I'd like to talk about gentrification, really.
This is something I'm so unfamiliar with as to have to re-look up the definition of the word every time it's brought up. It's not a hot button issue for me or for where I live. And while I'm sure it's happening somewhere in Indiana even as we speak, I don't think it presents the same sort of problems you speak of for California.

Taking but one example: rent. If the landlord attempts to raise rent above what is supported by the local economy, it just doesn't work. This happened with my own apartment complex, which came under new ownership last year. The new landlord wanted to raise rent by $150. Most tenants here can barely afford to pay the then-current rent, never mind a rent that's $150 higher. The landlord threatened evictions and claimed a long list of people waiting to move in. A few older tenants left, spurred to action by these threats ... And the rest who stayed behind, saw their rent stay put. It took a few months for all the vacated rooms to be filled, and I have little doubt that the new tenants living in those rooms pay roughly what the rest of us pay and have payed for years.

This is to say, gentrification can only work when there is a real influx of money into a local economy. If it's just "white people" bringing their "white people music" and their "white people way of life," it isn't going to mean shit for rent and local prices. There has to be real, actual money brought with these white people. Or Chinese people. Or Indian people. Or whomever it is that's coming in with boatloads of cash.

Apparently you have that in NoCal, with wealthy white people moving into ghetto Oakland.

Here in Indiana, no affluent white people are moving into Gary.

And there are plenty of cities and suburbs to go around for the poorest 75% to call home. Poor Hoosiers don't have to feel like the walls are closing in on them. It would be decades before the poor were priced out of living in Lafayette, and if that day did come I'm sure there would be other places within the state to which they could relocate.

I'm not even sure that most poor Hoosiers work. Many do, but I think the majority live off of SSI, Welfare, etc. And if all you do is stay at home watching TV and collecting pensions, what difference does it make whether you live in a city of population 100,000, a town of population 5,000, or a farming village of population 300? It doesn't. It makes absolutely no difference.
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Old 12-18-2016, 02:05 PM   #3209
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Gentrification is basically like the reverse of white flight.

In the 1950's, both rich and blue collar white folks moved out of the inner cities and to the suburbs. They could maintain a country life because cars enabled them to commute back to the cities.

Gentrification is the opposite of that. Rich only white folks move back into the inner city, for one reason or another (joining a culture, wanting access to public transit, city services, etc.) driving up housing and cost of living prices, often at the expense of minorities. Minorities (and, really, blue collar whites) also lose access to easy entry jobs, as those jobs are either replaced by the children of the whites who move in, or they jobs are eliminated in favour of work requiring education/expertise.

In Sunnyvale, for example, the future is you will buy your groceries online on Amazon, and have them delivered to your condo via drone. The area is no longer supportive of grocery stores, and nobody could survive in the area even commuting on a grocery store salary.

Boston is a good example of a city with rampant gentrification. Granted, a lot of the residents are students with high student loan debt, but the loaned money allows for a higher (temporary) standard of living, and once the student moves out a new debt-ridden one will just move in.
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Old 12-18-2016, 02:28 PM   #3210
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
Taking but one example: rent. If the landlord attempts to raise rent above what is supported by the local economy, it just doesn't work. This happened with my own apartment complex, which came under new ownership last year. The new landlord wanted to raise rent by $150. Most tenants here can barely afford to pay the then-current rent, never mind a rent that's $150 higher. The landlord threatened evictions and claimed a long list of people waiting to move in. A few older tenants left, spurred to action by these threats ... And the rest who stayed behind, saw their rent stay put. It took a few months for all the vacated rooms to be filled, and I have little doubt that the new tenants living in those rooms pay roughly what the rest of us pay and have payed for years.
Rent is one of the last economic indicators to respond to gentification. The first and necessary step is an appreciation in property values. Cities have a vested interested in reassessing values for property tax purposes, and under the effects of gentrification neighbourhoods can skyrocket in value pretty suddenly.

My "adoptive" grandmother's house in Walnut Creek, sold for $2M in 2004, is worth five times that today, and Walnut Creek is hardly one of the Bay Area's premier areas. But the old World War II veterans who were her neighbours have since died, and tech startup millionaires moved in next door.

Most of the older landlords are gone anyway. It's hard to pass up someone who goes up to your low-income property and offers to buy it for $4M. They then bulldoze it, erect a high-rise or condo, and repave the area to make it more car friendly. Meanwhile, the city opens a BART shuttle station nearby, repaves the road and adds a sidewalk and playground.

Then, do rents increase.

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Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
This is to say, gentrification can only work when there is a real influx of money into a local economy. If it's just "white people" bringing their "white people music" and their "white people way of life," it isn't going to mean shit for rent and local prices. There has to be real, actual money brought with these white people. Or Chinese people. Or Indian people. Or whomever it is that's coming in with boatloads of cash.
That's why I blame college kids who take out loans, live a luxurious indebted life and then complain about their loans after college and vote for Bernie Sanders to void them. They're creating a sort of ephemeral gentrification by colonizing certain areas with debt, which only benefits the rich people living there. The non-rich benefit only until they die, then their property values increase and rich people move in.

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Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
Apparently you have that in NoCal, with wealthy white people moving into ghetto Oakland.
It's happening primarily because prices are SO OUTRAGEOUS in places like Cupertino, people have to suck up living in the worst city in the Bay, Oakland. But the act of moving there causes gentrification, too.

Did you know that all but one of the San Francisco Giants baseball players (who have hundreds of millions of dollars) live in Oakland during the baseball season? One, Hunter Pence, lives in a high rise, but it costs him something like $1M every year in rent.

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Here in Indiana, no affluent white people are moving into Gary.

And there are plenty of cities and suburbs to go around for the poorest 75% to call home. Poor Hoosiers don't have to feel like the walls are closing in on them. It would be decades before the poor were priced out of living in Lafayette, and if that day did come I'm sure there would be other places within the state to which they could relocate.

I'm not even sure that most poor Hoosiers work. Many do, but I think the majority live off of SSI, Welfare, etc. And if all you do is stay at home watching TV and collecting pensions, what difference does it make whether you live in a city of population 100,000, a town of population 5,000, or a farming village of population 300? It doesn't. It makes absolutely no difference.
The main areas are Seattle, San Francisco, New York City, Boston, Atlanta, Minneapolis. Tech start-ups, hipster culture, liberal culture, strong public services are the main draws there, in a way I wouldn't expect Indiana to compete with right now.

I can't explain Minneapolis myself. Why people would willingly move up to deal with the winters here is beyond me.
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Old 12-18-2016, 11:58 PM   #3211
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My friend actually goes to school in Philadelphia and is part of a Christian youth group. I forget exactly when but after a high profile police shooting of an unarmed black man, people from some of the Christian fellowships on campus went out to talk to people to try and figure out what some were thinking/feeling. He told me of one man who had a different view on gentrification than most.

"There was this one dude I talked to who surprised me by saying that he doesn't mind gentrification because he thinks it motivates people to do better in life. He said he grew up thinking guns and drugs were the only way to make money and that after he got out of jail he changed his life (he actually was a Muslim). But basically he felt (university name) was showing kids in the neighborhood another possibility, that they could go to school there instead of staying in the trap."

My friend and I both think that in theory something like this could inspire people to work hard and do well in school so that they could go to college. However, the fact that inner city schools are notoriously bad really holds people back from seeing it that way. In addition, for someone who does well in school despite being from the inner city, it's incredibly difficult for them to afford college. If the schools were better and college wasn't so expensive, maybe gentrification wouldn't be so bad. But because of the current situation in Philadelphia (and many other places) it does more harm than good in my opinion.

Sharing because I had never really thought about gentrification the way the man that my friend interviewed thought about it. It's an interesting take, but I think it doesn't really hold up in most scenarios because of the state of public education and the cost of college.
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Old 12-19-2016, 12:12 AM   #3212
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My friend actually goes to school in Philadelphia and is part of a Christian youth group. I forget exactly when but after a high profile police shooting of an unarmed black man, people from some of the Christian fellowships on campus went out to talk to people to try and figure out what some were thinking/feeling. He told me of one man who had a different view on gentrification than most.

"There was this one dude I talked to who surprised me by saying that he doesn't mind gentrification because he thinks it motivates people to do better in life. He said he grew up thinking guns and drugs were the only way to make money and that after he got out of jail he changed his life (he actually was a Muslim). But basically he felt (university name) was showing kids in the neighborhood another possibility, that they could go to school there instead of staying in the trap."

My friend and I both think that in theory something like this could inspire people to work hard and do well in school so that they could go to college. However, the fact that inner city schools are notoriously bad really holds people back from seeing it that way. In addition, for someone who does well in school despite being from the inner city, it's incredibly difficult for them to afford college. If the schools were better and college wasn't so expensive, maybe gentrification wouldn't be so bad. But because of the current situation in Philadelphia (and many other places) it does more harm than good in my opinion.

Sharing because I had never really thought about gentrification the way the man that my friend interviewed thought about it. It's an interesting take, but I think it doesn't really hold up in most scenarios because of the state of public education and the cost of college.
If everyone could get X, then X wouldn't help you escape squalor.

Here, X can be a college diploma. But really, X can be anything, anything at all. The fundamental problem inherent to the system is that not all places of living are equivalent -- some are better than others, and some of the worst ones are not just relatively but are absolutely awful -- and that in the fight to the top there are always going to be losers left to populate the bottom.

While the old man's take is refreshingly optimistic, it doesn't hold as time passes, more and more people get college degrees, and the value of a college degree depreciates. By way of analogy, one might say that a woman as beautiful as Beyoncé can escape the ghetto thanks to her fine looks or that a man as powerful as Shaq can escape the ghetto thanks to his athletic build. But in a world where everyone can look like Beyoncé in under an hour for only $5 or in a world where anyone can become as tall and muscular as Shaquille O'Neal for only $100 in a one-time dose of pills, those features too would lose their potency for helping the children of the ghetto to escape. A beautiful woman can make it because not everyone is pretty. An athlete can make it because not everyone is strong.

Our ghetto problem vanishes if we can solve the scarcity problem. If we can make it so that everyone is able to live as well as UPN's richest, then no matter how relatively "poor" you might be in the new world order, you would objectively be rich and well off. UPN's richest cannot be said to live in anything approximating a ghetto. If everyone lived as well as UPN's richest lived, ate as well as UPN's richest ate, there would be no need to outsmart, outsex, outplay, or outperform anyone else.

But by that same token, competition drives innovation. Or, as the old saying goes, "Necessity is the mother of invention." So perhaps, then, it might be fair to say ... we need squalor in order to advance. When everyone is happy, when everyone is satisfied, progress grinds to a halt. The wheels of progress are greased with malcontent.
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Old 12-19-2016, 09:29 AM   #3213
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I live right outside of DC, which has had plenty of exhaustive studies conducted over the years.

Really, gentrification is not "destructive" to minorities. That kind of ignores the actual causes and effects of gentrification.

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This is to say, gentrification can only work when there is a real influx of money into a local economy. If it's just "white people" bringing their "white people music" and their "white people way of life," it isn't going to mean shit for rent and local prices. There has to be real, actual money brought with these white people. Or Chinese people. Or Indian people. Or whomever it is that's coming in with boatloads of cash.
Basically, the reason gentrification is a "threat" to minorities is that, unlike in Phoopes' anecdote, people living in an area do not benefit from wealthy people flowing into that area. This isn't a difficult or outlandish concept, but it's a little hard for people to wrap their heads around sometimes because it's easy to see areas improve as money flows in, or crumble as money flows out. Gentrification doesn't improve people's economic status, it just shuffles it.

In other countries, especially first world countries, this can be a lot harder to notice, but America is strikingly diverse and is also stratified, with various racial groups occupying very different positions on the economic totem pole. (Since race is a made-up concept that is really only taken seriously in America:

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In the 2006 census, Canadians could identify as being of one or more ethnicities. Percentages therefore add up to more than 100%. The most common response was 'Canadian'. As data is completely self-reported, and reporting individuals may have varying definitions of "Ethnic origin" (or may not know their ethnic origin), these figures should not be considered an exact record of the relative prevalence of different ethno-cultural ancestries but rather how Canadians self-identify.
you can't really compare it to other countries. But I'm willing to bet that we count as the most racially diverse country in terms of heritage, by a long shot, due to the nature of the country as a nation of immigrants.)

So in reality, gentrification is more or less neutral to minorities. It's not like it's specifically harming their prospects...but we need to stop thinking of it in the same way Phoopes' guy does. It's not some glimmer of hope on the horizon. Gilded Age imagery describes it better than I ever could:

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I lived at West Egg, the—well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them. [...] Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom Buchanans. Daisy was my second cousin once removed, and I'd known Tom in college. And just after the war I spent two days with them in Chicago.
To the poor displaced communities, wealth is not an inspiration or a breath of hope, it's an unattainable and confusing ideal. And that's really the takeaway for me here: You can't "fix" a place just by adding money to it. You can:
  • Go the Magic Johnson route, and create business opportunities in poor communities that will (as Talon said) increase the standard of living for those communities without artificially pumping in dollars
  • Go the Democratic Party route, and introduce social safety nets, unions, etc. to break up the clogs in the money flow and allow money to enter the lower echelons of society

The problem with the Magic Johnson route, as Mozz will probably tell you more eloquently than I ever could, is that it's a massive risk. Why would anyone sane ever decide to offer poor people services? Poor people do not have money! It's right there in the word "poor!" If you want to make money, you practically have to be either predatory or bankrupt. So you end up with fewer and fewer businesses willing to cater to poor communities.

The problem with the Democratic Party route is that there is resistance to it. Many middle class or lower-class working people work really hard to sustain their minimum standard of living, and unless these programs specifically allow those people's situations to improve, it just feels to them like poor people are being rewarded for not working. That's a concern that needs to be addressed, whether you think so or not.

There's probably other routes but I was never taught them so!
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Old 12-19-2016, 11:36 AM   #3214
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Just because I saw something that irked me, a lot of "college" (University to me) kids who take out loans do so because they need those loans to access higher education and otherwise would be blocked out of it due to extortionate prices.

They don't do it to access a temporarily "luxurious" life. I'm not sure what it's like from an American viewpoint, but living of these loans is fucking hard man. That's from the experience of someone who tends to be quite conservative with money too.
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Old 12-19-2016, 11:56 AM   #3215
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Just because I saw something that irked me, a lot of "college" (University to me) kids who take out loans do so because they need those loans to access higher education and otherwise would be blocked out of it due to extortionate prices.

They don't do it to access a temporarily "luxurious" life. I'm not sure what it's like from an American viewpoint, but living of these loans is fucking hard man. That's from the experience of someone who tends to be quite conservative with money too.
1) College is insanely overpriced in America
2) Non-college career paths are incredibly undervalued
3) A great deal of college degrees are -EV nonsense that are incredible wastes of time, money, and energy
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Old 12-19-2016, 12:33 PM   #3216
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Just because I saw something that irked me, a lot of "college" (University to me) kids who take out loans do so because they need those loans to access higher education and otherwise would be blocked out of it due to extortionate prices.

They don't do it to access a temporarily "luxurious" life. I'm not sure what it's like from an American viewpoint, but living of these loans is fucking hard man. That's from the experience of someone who tends to be quite conservative with money too.
Honestly Dopple isn't accurate here. College students who take out loans don't get gentrified at all whatsoever. I probably should have mentioned this. College students who take out loans live in dorms. College students who go to school on Daddy's trust fund live in fancy apartments. It's normal gentrification, there's nothing special about college expenses.

Like, does Dopple really think that most university students would just die if they had to live (ugh) ON CAMPUS? Noway, no, we obviously use our student loans to finance our yacht parties as well as our education.

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1) College is insanely overpriced in America
2) Non-college career paths are incredibly undervalued
3) A great deal of college degrees are -EV nonsense that are incredible wastes of time, money, and energy
Yes, yes, no. Pretty much every college degree can be leveraged to find some respectable job pathway, even liberal arts majors like English or History. Analysts, editors, HR reps, managers, market specialists, and PR reps usually come from liberal arts backgrounds, and they're far from useless or underpaid. No, in terms of salary they aren't business administration and they aren't STEM, but not everyone is GOOD at those things. It's not fair to say "Don't take an English degree, you'll make more money in BusA" when in reality they won't make money in BusA because it takes a certain kind of person to do well in business.

Any money is better than no money, and it's better to have an English degree and get a job as a newspaper editor than to fail out of school and end up with no Business Administration degree and $40k in debt.

And in reality, variance for English major salaries is large right now. English majors from Harvard earn 6 figures on average. And it's not like English degrees aren't useful for teaching critical thinking, which is absolutely a skill and a rare one to boot.
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Old 12-19-2016, 01:49 PM   #3217
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While those points are absolutely true Shuckle, American college is SO overpriced that in the long term it might even be better to go for a job with less salary and no degree than gamble getting a (slightly) better paying job with a degree because in the long run you total more money that way. This does not include fields like STEM though.
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Shouldn’t the Hoff be doing something if he’s still around? I have strict rules about leaving the pool, and I’m sure vanishing the pool out of existence breaks those rules in some way :P
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Old 12-19-2016, 02:29 PM   #3218
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While those points are absolutely true Shuckle, American college is SO overpriced that in the long term it might even be better to go for a job with less salary and no degree than gamble getting a (slightly) better paying job with a degree because in the long run you total more money that way. This does not include fields like STEM though.
College is a service rendered, not an investment. You can be rightfully upset that a French class is overpriced, but you can't be angry at the French tutor simply because you couldn't secure a date with that French exchange student you had eyes for. I'm only going to be upset if I don't know French.

A date with one French student is fine. I'd still be happy if I had a date with ANYONE, even if they don't speak French. But I can use that French language skill for other things. I could translate for side work. I could make friends from France or Canada or Senegal. I could travel to those places. I could read Voltaire in the original French. Even if the service provided is pricey, I can't judge its worth off of its ability to make me money.

I'm just as mad as you at the fact that college costs are rising, but it doesn't mean I'm going to think some degrees aren't worth getting anymore. Degrees aren't worthless just because the numbers don't add up right. Nobody is going to argue that education and medical degrees are worthless.
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Old 12-19-2016, 02:31 PM   #3219
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College isn't an investment? Uh...
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Old 12-19-2016, 02:58 PM   #3220
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College isn't an investment? Uh...
If you're going into finance, you can comfortably think of it as an investment.

If you're not, it's counterproductive to think of it that way. Even in STEM, which is THE highest-return degree, I see more people who are just interested in engineering than people who are just in it for the money.

And even then, I mostly see people switching from, say, Comp-E to Biotech because the money is better. It's not like prospective English or Business students are going into STEM for the money.

Even then, people go to business degrees to learn more about business. People go into Biotech to learn more about Biotech.

Yes, college is technically an investment in that you pay now and get more money off it later. But it's not JUST an investment, and you shouldn't choose your major solely based off of what kind of return it will give you.
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Old 12-19-2016, 03:36 PM   #3221
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>on campus

idk how it is most places but I'm a sophomore at my school. All freshmen are required to live on campus the first year (unless you commute). I moved into an apartment this year because we did the math and it's a lot cheaper to live in an apartment than it was to live on campus. Depending on the place, I've heard rent as cheap as $400 per month and as much as $1000 per month. Mine is $550 per month so I'm not in the lowest of the low, I actually really like my apartment and think it's quite nice. Better than the dorm room. So in my situation I think I made an upgrade from on campus living, and it's cheaper too. I'd be interested to hear how it is in other areas.
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Old 12-19-2016, 03:52 PM   #3222
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If you're going into finance, you can comfortably think of it as an investment.

If you're not, it's counterproductive to think of it that way. Even in STEM, which is THE highest-return degree, I see more people who are just interested in engineering than people who are just in it for the money.

And even then, I mostly see people switching from, say, Comp-E to Biotech because the money is better. It's not like prospective English or Business students are going into STEM for the money.

Even then, people go to business degrees to learn more about business. People go into Biotech to learn more about Biotech.

Yes, college is technically an investment in that you pay now and get more money off it later. But it's not JUST an investment, and you shouldn't choose your major solely based off of what kind of return it will give you.
This is the complete opposite of my experience and those of people I know.
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Old 12-19-2016, 05:00 PM   #3223
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College is a service rendered, not an investment. You can be rightfully upset that a French class is overpriced, but you can't be angry at the French tutor simply because you couldn't secure a date with that French exchange student you had eyes for. I'm only going to be upset if I don't know French.

A date with one French student is fine. I'd still be happy if I had a date with ANYONE, even if they don't speak French. But I can use that French language skill for other things. I could translate for side work. I could make friends from France or Canada or Senegal. I could travel to those places. I could read Voltaire in the original French. Even if the service provided is pricey, I can't judge its worth off of its ability to make me money.

I'm just as mad as you at the fact that college costs are rising, but it doesn't mean I'm going to think some degrees aren't worth getting anymore. Degrees aren't worthless just because the numbers don't add up right. Nobody is going to argue that education and medical degrees are worthless.
The thing is Shuckle that for a lot of people getting into college is a way to get a well paying job, if their chosen college course doesn't repay in a job which pays enough to pay of the massive debt you're guaranteed to get, why bother with college. Now as I said, there are fields in which it does work like STEM.

But unless you want to LEARN stuff just for yourself and no other reason instead of wanting a DIPLOMA so you can get better job interviews, it's often not worth it since the amount of money paid doesn't corrolate well to the salary increase of your job. There have been multiple cases of people realising later on that they would have been better off flipping burgers for a career because of their student debt.

College is supposed to be an investment, in practise lately it's becoming more and more an expensive hobby.
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Old 12-19-2016, 06:11 PM   #3224
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In the experience of myself and my close friends, certification (I'll provide various examples below) is counting for a lot more in the American 21st century than any college degree.
  • friend took actuarial exams for roughly six years after college, each time to unlock a new level in the actuarial job market. Today he's certified as high as one can possibly go, brilliant man, and is one of the highest-paid men I know.
  • friend's friend was told by Subaru here in Lafayette that if she wanted to be hired on as a translator she'd need to sit the JLPT Level N2; she did so; she passed; and she got hired as a translator
  • friend joined a Fortune 500 company out of college working as an IT guy. As time went on, he found himself naturally moving up the managerial ladder rather than the IT one. Stalled out. Realized he needed to take some management tests to get such-and-such certifications. (CPM, I think one was? ) He took one test several years ago, passed, took a second test about a year ago, passed. His salary prospectives instantly doubled.
  • different friend had a Purdue degree in electrical engineering, but got a job out of college in IT instead because of how gifted he was in computer science. His resume was already pages long with stuff he could do, none of it really having anything to do with his time at Purdue. Worked at the company he worked at for about eight years. Recently decided to leave. Hasn't taken any certification exams (the only exception on this list), but because of all the workplace experience he gained over the last eight years, his resume became so powerful that his salary cap, like my other friend, doubled. He got a new job and literally makes 2x what he was previously making. And what he was previously making is still more than most Purdue University STEM graduates make.
All of these four examples went to university and have college degrees. None of these four made use of their degrees out of college nor are making use of them now. (Actuary friend was a history major, for example.)

If you can show a prospective employer that you are licensed to teach / practice medicine / practice law, it means a lot more than a diploma. (Even if, for all three of those fields, college degrees have typically gone hand-in-hand with procuring such licenses.) Not all states require a teaching degree to get a teaching license. A small number of states (I believe California is one such state) don't require lawyers to go to law school, much less college: if you can intern under a judge for so many years and the judge vouches for you and teaches you all he knows, you can sit the bar and try to get your license to practice law. (We found this out here on UPN some years back when we were having fun with law school exam questions. Remember?) Medicine's about the only licensure I can think of that is firmly locked behind the university (and medical school / nursing school) paywall, but aside from it ...

Accreditation is only as good as the value your prospective employers place in it. The problem faced by many 21st century Americans from middle and upper class origins is, a college degree just isn't worth what it used to be. It used to be that you showed you graduated from a decent school and you waltzed right into a job. Nowadays, you have people graduating from prestigious programs who find themselves unemployed or else working jobs associated with the unskilled and uneducated.

You must pave the road to your own success. That's what I find the older I get. It's not new information, but it rings louder and truer with each passing year.
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Old 12-19-2016, 06:18 PM   #3225
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This is the complete opposite of my experience and those of people I know.
So I don't know exactly what it is you do for a living but;

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From someone who actually works on Wall St.
Given we meet so much of our social circles through work, I suspect there's a fairly large element of self-selection for "views most things in terms of how much money they'll eventually make from it" amongst people you know :p

Idk a whole lot about educational trends in the US. From a UK perspective, university is increasingly the norm rather than the exception with the result that more and more people are doing it as the default option rather than as an active decision to pursue something. Our student loan structures are much less punishing than yours though, seeing as if we earn below a certain threshold we don't have to be paying anything back at all and anything we haven't paid back after 30 years gets written off entirely.
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