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I don't get this "100k of dept"
The school is giving me money because all my fininancial aid is too much.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
I don't get this "100k of dept"
The school is giving me money because all my fininancial aid is too much.

Thank goodness that your experience is exactly what the rest of the world's experience is!

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
I don't get this "100k of dept"
The school is giving me money because all my fininancial aid is too much.

fething facepalm.

Educate yourself: http://blogs.wsj.com/numbers/congatulations-to-class-of-2014-the-most-indebted-ever-1368/

Anecdotal evidence > statistics.

This talk about whether a philosophy major is worthwhile is starting to send this thread terminally off topic. It started as a reasonable segue, but hasn't been for a bunch of posts. Bring it back to the topic at hand or stop discussing it in this thread please.

Raising the minimum wage is just a feel good circle jerk of an action liberals like to trumpet. It cannot actually ever accomplish what proponents claim it will because,

1) Only a small portion of workers are actually minimum wage earners. So the people being directly effected is minimal.

2) It increases the costs of everything, which means prices go up for everyone without a corresponding wage increase for everyone.

3) Wage and Prices are really just opposite sides of the same coin. When wages are increased, costs follow. So the only real effect is changing the numbers, value doesn't change. Bob the min wage worker isn't going to end up with increased purchasing power when minimum wage is increased. He'll instead have either reduced hours, increased cost of living, or both.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Because those are useless apparently and no one can get a decent job with them. Nope, we can't study what we love. And it isn't like philosophy is used to help teacher people.

Yes, they are useful. But only in very small numbers.

We also do not actually need some degrees to benefit from their field. We don't need very many artists, and the things which make you a great one aren't something you can be taught.

Its similar with philosophy.

The ideal solution would be to artificially stifle the number of people allowed to declare these very niche and largely superfluous majors. Most of the people getting them would be far more useful if they went to a trade school or another degree that is actually in demand.

An ideal society would have no more than maybe a third of its population get college degrees. The rest would be a mixture between unskilled labor and skilled trade school labor.

Of those who got a college degree, the bulk would be in areas like business, science, medicine, and technology. With no more than 10% being in areas like art, philosophy, and language combined(the main purpose of these few majors would be to maintain the teacher population to give the other 90% of the graduates a well rounded education)


Someone who gets a degree that isn't in demand deserves no pity when the only available position they're qualified for pays minimum wage.

In Yee Olde Dayes, if a person worked 9 hours a day, for 6 days a week, a person [Man, in historical context] could provide a home to raise their family in. Note that "lunch break" isn't included in that 9 hours.

In Ontario, Canada, minimum wage is $11 an hour. At 54 hours of work, given time and a half after 44, a person would gross $649.00 . After deductions, take home would be about $430 per week.

My mortgage, for the smallest house in a modest neighbourhood just outside of one of the poorest neighbourhoods in London, ON, is $1100 every 4 weeks. Property taxes amount to roughly $200 per month, utilities another 200 ish... Life and property insurances cost about 400... My family doesn't have food or clothing on their backs, and I can't even afford to keep a roof over their heads. $1500 a month / 4 weeks, and my take home would be $1720. Working "longer than average" hours for 6 days a week, and I'd have just over $200 to feed, clothe, entertain, provide school supplies, maintain my property, SAVE FOR A RAINY DAY...

It's not that minimum wage is low. The industrial revolution created a society in which a man could work a long week, and be unable to provide for a family. I'm grateful that I'm not in that situation, but in the days of yore, even an uneducated cave man could have a home that he owned, with reasonably nutritious food and decent possessions if he were willing to work for it. Current minimum wage doesn't allow a person to sustain reproduction. A basic human right is denied to such a person. A guy can't just wander off into the wild, clear some forest, and make a living. It's illegal. A man without land holdings MUST be employed by someone to acquire the necessities of life. Minimum wage doesn't allow that.

Being able to afford a family isn't a fundamental right.

It wasn't back then and it isn't one now. It was just easier back then.

And when you where supporting a family, it wasnt in ideal conditions.
The war on povertyy is more like a managing problem, it can only be stifled, not eradicated. But throwing money at it and thinking "Well they are poor because they have no money, so lets give them money" Ignores Class based racism, how money is transfered from one generation to another an the very reason why they dont have money

"Class based racism"?

I don't buy that thats a thing. I buy that poor tend to stay poor, but that has nothing to do with racism.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Yes, they are useful. But only in very small numbers.

That doesn't seem right; I'm not useful in any quantity.

 Ahtman wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Yes, they are useful. But only in very small numbers.

That doesn't seem right; I'm not useful in any quantity.

At the very least, anyone can go into the stew pot.

 Grey Templar wrote:
1) Only a small portion of workers are actually minimum wage earners. So the people being directly effected is minimal.

2) It increases the costs of everything, which means prices go up for everyone without a corresponding wage increase for everyone.

3) Wage and Prices are really just opposite sides of the same coin. When wages are increased, costs follow. So the only real effect is changing the numbers, value doesn't change. Bob the min wage worker isn't going to end up with increased purchasing power when minimum wage is increased. He'll instead have either reduced hours, increased cost of living, or both.

Isn't there a contradiction between #1 and the other two points? If few people are making minimum wage then how does it have such a huge effect on prices? You would think that if most employees are making above minimum wage then prices would primarily be determined by the cost of paying those above-minimum workers and not change very much. For example, if you increase the minimum wage by 25% then you aren't going to get a 25% increase in prices (unless the company just uses it as an excuse to raise prices and get more profit), so the purchasing power of the minimum wage worker does increase. The only way you'd get the kind of inflation you're talking about is if ALL wages increased simultaneously, rather than the increase closing the gap between the lowest and average wages.

The ideal solution would be to artificially stifle the number of people allowed to declare these very niche and largely superfluous majors. Most of the people getting them would be far more useful if they went to a trade school or another degree that is actually in demand.

You're assuming that "usefulness" consists entirely of how much money a degree will provide, and neglecting the value of education for its own sake. This is not a good assumption.

Being able to afford a family isn't a fundamental right.

Why shouldn't it be? Why should we have such a huge gap in wealth that large parts of society are unable to afford even basic things like having a family? It might not be a fundamental right in the same sense that not starving to death is a pretty fundamental right, but why should we consider it an acceptable situation?

 Grey Templar wrote:
I buy that poor tend to stay poor, but that has nothing to do with racism.

It has to do with racism when opposition to programs intended to help the poor (and help them get out of poverty) are opposed based on racist stereotypes about "welfare queens", "black people are lazy", etc, and racism makes it a lot easier to succeed and improve your life if you're white.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Raising the minimum wage is just a feel good circle jerk of an action liberals like to trumpet. It cannot actually ever accomplish what proponents claim it will because,

1) Only a small portion of workers are actually minimum wage earners. So the people being directly effected is minimal.

2) It increases the costs of everything, which means prices go up for everyone without a corresponding wage increase for everyone.

3) Wage and Prices are really just opposite sides of the same coin. When wages are increased, costs follow. So the only real effect is changing the numbers, value doesn't change. Bob the min wage worker isn't going to end up with increased purchasing power when minimum wage is increased. He'll instead have either reduced hours, increased cost of living, or both.

Being able to afford a family isn't a fundamental right.

"Class based racism"?

I don't buy that thats a thing. I buy that poor tend to stay poor, but that has nothing to do with racism.

EDIT: I mean seriously, you're presenting such an insane caricature of the "out of touch conservative" I can scarcely believe it's real. This is exactly the kind of thing someone would post if they were trying to make fun of your position through sarcasm, and that's something I know a thing or two about. Please oh please use the term "Bootstraps" it would so make my day.

 greatbigtree wrote:
In Yee Olde Dayes, if a person worked 9 hours a day, for 6 days a week, a person [Man, in historical context] could provide a home to raise their family in. Note that "lunch break" isn't included in that 9 hours.

In Ontario, Canada, minimum wage is $11 an hour. At 54 hours of work, given time and a half after 44, a person would gross $649.00 . After deductions, take home would be about $430 per week.

My mortgage, for the smallest house in a modest neighbourhood just outside of one of the poorest neighbourhoods in London, ON, is $1100 every 4 weeks. Property taxes amount to roughly $200 per month, utilities another 200 ish... Life and property insurances cost about 400... My family doesn't have food or clothing on their backs, and I can't even afford to keep a roof over their heads. $1500 a month / 4 weeks, and my take home would be $1720. Working "longer than average" hours for 6 days a week, and I'd have just over $200 to feed, clothe, entertain, provide school supplies, maintain my property, SAVE FOR A RAINY DAY...

So not only do you expect to own your own house earning minimum wage, but you also expect to be able to be the sole provider for a family?

Those are perfectly real expectations, yup!

 greatbigtree wrote:

It's not that minimum wage is low. The industrial revolution created a society in which a man could work a long week, and be unable to provide for a family. I'm grateful that I'm not in that situation, but in the days of yore, even an uneducated cave man could have a home that he owned, with reasonably nutritious food and decent possessions if he were willing to work for it. Current minimum wage doesn't allow a person to sustain reproduction. A basic human right is denied to such a person. A guy can't just wander off into the wild, clear some forest, and make a living. It's illegal. A man without land holdings MUST be employed by someone to acquire the necessities of life. Minimum wage doesn't allow that.

This isn't and has never been remotely true! Unless your "uneducated cave man" already owned the land and decided to build the house using his own hands and logs that he found in the woods, the VAST majority of the population in the 18th didn't own their own homes and if someone did what you claim they did, they would be hanged for poaching in the King's lands. Also that "reasonably nutritious food" of yours:

In Europe's preindustrial and overwhelmingly agricultural society, people did not in general live long lives. While there were exceptions, by our standards, life expectancy was appallingly low for most and almost inconceivable to a modern audience living in an advanced industrial society where longevity is constantly being revised upwards. Europe's impoverished past came to an end in the nineteenth century with the advent of the agricultural and industrial revolutions. But before then, a great deal of suffering had taken place as Europe, as a whole, was plagued by a very high rate of infant mortality that significantly reduced, statistically, overall life expectancy. Clearly many of the sad deaths from the European past were tied to poor nutrition and the apparent lack of key vitamins, substances that modern researchers would consider as absolutely critical for proper cell development and amino-acid synthesis. In fact, it could probably be argued that Europe's preindustrial era was beset by a constant avitaminosis of some kind or another.

Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9502234

Your entire post is full of fallacies... Do you know what happened to a man without land holdings that wasn't employed by someone else (and a non-skilled job paid much, much less in comparative terms, often payment for those types of jobs would just consist of food for the day), before the industrial age? He would literally starve to death!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:

You're assuming that "usefulness" consists entirely of how much money a degree will provide, and neglecting the value of education for its own sake. This is not a good assumption.

Why not? Education that has no practical application in society has no value to said society so why should we subsidise it?

 Peregrine wrote:

Why shouldn't it be? Why should we have such a huge gap in wealth that large parts of society are unable to afford even basic things like having a family? It might not be a fundamental right in the same sense that not starving to death is a pretty fundamental right, but why should we consider it an acceptable situation?

Why should society subsidise the proliferation of people that don't contribute anything to it?

If an individual can't even support itself and its family then what are the chances that his descendants won't just continue the cycle? Why should society spend resources on those people?

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Because those are useless apparently and no one can get a decent job with them. Nope, we can't study what we love. And it isn't like philosophy is used to help teacher people.

You can study whatever the hell you want. You can't however expect society to support you. You gotta earn Boy!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Auto correct strikes aga in.
It not like they can be archivists, painters, teachers or a myriadifferent of other things.
But nope, you must produce something tangible for a degree to be worth something

Having an art history degree is irrelevant to if you are a good house painter. Frankly I'd rather pay Jesus $15 an hour than you. Jose crossed thousands of miles to get here and will work three times as hard as you. You'll whine and fart around all day and leave paint stains on the carpet.

Because when you need a painter, you don't call Budha, you call Jesus.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
It isnt, but to say a degree is useless just because you think it is is just asinine.
They also dont even rank among the ten lowest paying majors
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/05/13/10-lowest-paying-college-majors/

Its not useless. Its economically worthless. There's a difference.

cincydooley wrote:

 Ketara wrote:


No my friend, it's to do with realism. There aren't so many 'buggy whip' makers anymore, are there? So naturally, parents don't push for their kids to be Buggy Whip craftsmen.

And yet we have plenty of people getting Art History and philosophy degrees.......

Philosophy is a reasonably useful degree, insomuch as it teaches flexibility of thought. Let's be honest, any humanities based degree , from english literature to early modern history, has relatively few real world job applications. The graduates themselves tend to be prized though, because of the transferable skills that are picked up during the course of the degree. The degrees themselves are useful qualifications when chasing generic white collar jobs.

That is of course, assuming they have a good humanities degree from a decent university. If you went to Joe McSloan's local Degree Parlour to get your degree in Art History, you aren't going anywhere with it. Which is kind of the problem right now over here in the UK. The targeted goal of the last government was to get 50% of young people through and into University, and such a high number of graduates is unsustainable. You tend to find that your employability slots into tiers:

Oxbridge 1st:- Auto-employ more or less anywhere.
Russell Group 1st/Oxbridge upper second class:- Fits in nicely on any good graduate scheme for the big companies.
Russell Group upper second class/Plate Glass 1st:- Can get in on the good graduate schemes with a little hard work, can get into the 'meh' graduate schemes without too much effort.
[i]Plate Glass upper second class/1st from any remaining lower ranked university down to the sixties:- Can get into the 'meh' graduate schemes with a little hard work
All remaining lower ranked Universities at 2:1's (or even 1sts for the worst ones):- A struggle to get into the 'meh' graduate schemes.

(I know there are some few excellent Uni's that aren't technically Plate Glass or Russell Group - like Bath- but those are few, and I'm not including them due to keeping things simple)


As things stand, we have over 120 institutions here in the UK. If you got that Philosophy or Art History degree down to the 4th tier of the little chart I made there, you'll be fine employability wise. You're just as employable as if you took an engineering course. But when you get past that top thirty/forty institutions, and you start seeing people with 2:2 degrees in Philosophy from the University of Bolton, then it becomes worthless.

But that is an issue with the number of graduates and low quality Universities available, not the inherent employability qualities of the degree subject itself. Which is another topic altogether, really.

As things stand, we have over 120 institutions here in the UK. If you got that Philosophy or Art History degree down to the 4th tier of the little chart I made there, you'll be fine employability wise. You're just as employable as if you took an engineering course. But when you get past that top thirty/forty institutions, and you start seeing people with 2:2 degrees in Philosophy from the University of Bolton, then it becomes worthless.

Or is it what you're really saying is if you get into those schools you get a job, regardless of what you take.
Networks and alumnis matter.

 Frazzled wrote:

As things stand, we have over 120 institutions here in the UK. If you got that Philosophy or Art History degree down to the 4th tier of the little chart I made there, you'll be fine employability wise. You're just as employable as if you took an engineering course. But when you get past that top thirty/forty institutions, and you start seeing people with 2:2 degrees in Philosophy from the University of Bolton, then it becomes worthless.

Or is it what you're really saying is if you get into those schools you get a job, regardless of what you take.
Networks and alumnis matter.

Alumnus and on-site networking isn't really so much a thing here beyond Oxbridge.

What you tend to find is that there's a very heavy corporate investment at the upper echelons (i.e., the Russell Group and equivalent quality), where the students have many opportunities presented to them. There are open days, small training courses, presentations, and help getting placements in the holidays. All the big companies, from the banks, to the big consultancy firms flood the places with their literature (when my girlfriend was the University of Warwick, it was literally left in their bedrooms upon arriving).

Meanwhile, at the Plate Glass and equivalents, the names are well enough respected, and the regard for the quality of their education and entrance standards is such that even without any real networking or professional affiliation, the degrees are inherently worthwhile.

Most of the Ex-Polytechnics though, simply don't have that level of respectability. When you accept people who got D's at A Level for degree courses, why should businesses look at your graduates when there are so many from far more discerning and competitive institutions? The oversupply simply enables them to weed out the lower echelon of candidates by University name alone.

I'd consider that networking and alumnis. Its the same thing for the IVY Leagues here. Go to one and their vast network will find you a job, whether you are worthy or not.

Outside of those you have to achieve to earn.

 cincydooley wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Y'know...We have been down this endless rabbit hole before.
I got some vodka waiting for me and a midterm tommorow

The one where you don't know what you're talking about?

Is that the one?

Just want to be clear we're talking about the same rabbit hole.

Guys, c'mon, don't go down rabbit holes you're not equipped for it, that's totally a job for a dachshund.

Prestor Jon wrote:

 cincydooley wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Y'know...We have been down this endless rabbit hole before.
I got some vodka waiting for me and a midterm tommorow

The one where you don't know what you're talking about?

Is that the one?

Just want to be clear we're talking about the same rabbit hole.

Guys, c'mon, don't go down rabbit holes you're not equipped for it, that's totally a job for a dachshund.

This is an excellent point. I believe our Shiba is also intended as a hole hunter, but not sure.

Prestor Jon wrote:

 cincydooley wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Y'know...We have been down this endless rabbit hole before.
I got some vodka waiting for me and a midterm tommorow

The one where you don't know what you're talking about?

Is that the one?

Just want to be clear we're talking about the same rabbit hole.

Guys, c'mon, don't go down rabbit holes you're not equipped for it, that's totally a job for a dachshund.

no, it's the hole where you conStanly berate college degrees you dont think are worthy. Like how you constantly insult Sociology

Prestor Jon wrote:

 cincydooley wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Y'know...We have been down this endless rabbit hole before.
I got some vodka waiting for me and a midterm tommorow

The one where you don't know what you're talking about?

Is that the one?

Just want to be clear we're talking about the same rabbit hole.

Guys, c'mon, don't go down rabbit holes you're not equipped for it, that's totally a job for a dachshund.

Its llike someone called my name

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

no, it's the hole where you conStanly berate college degrees you dont think are worthy. Like how you constantly insult Sociology

There really is no need for that really... Sociology already insults itself enough as it is!

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

no, it's the hole where you conStanly berate college degrees you dont think are worthy. Like how you constantly insult Sociology

Now you're just making stuff up.

My sister-in-law is a social worker. My Mother-in-Law is a social worker. My wife is a teacher. I was a teacher. My aunt is a teacher. One cousin is a guidance counselor. Another is a Special Needs educator.

I've never, nor will I ever, insult service professions.

But please, keep making things up. It makes my day!

You seem to get sociology mixed up with social work. You have said before sociology is a useless degree

 Peregrine wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
1) Only a small portion of workers are actually minimum wage earners. So the people being directly effected is minimal.

2) It increases the costs of everything, which means prices go up for everyone without a corresponding wage increase for everyone.

3) Wage and Prices are really just opposite sides of the same coin. When wages are increased, costs follow. So the only real effect is changing the numbers, value doesn't change. Bob the min wage worker isn't going to end up with increased purchasing power when minimum wage is increased. He'll instead have either reduced hours, increased cost of living, or both.

Isn't there a contradiction between #1 and the other two points? If few people are making minimum wage then how does it have such a huge effect on prices? You would think that if most employees are making above minimum wage then prices would primarily be determined by the cost of paying those above-minimum workers and not change very much. For example, if you increase the minimum wage by 25% then you aren't going to get a 25% increase in prices (unless the company just uses it as an excuse to raise prices and get more profit), so the purchasing power of the minimum wage worker does increase. The only way you'd get the kind of inflation you're talking about is if ALL wages increased simultaneously, rather than the increase closing the gap between the lowest and average wages.

The ideal solution would be to artificially stifle the number of people allowed to declare these very niche and largely superfluous majors. Most of the people getting them would be far more useful if they went to a trade school or another degree that is actually in demand.

You're assuming that "usefulness" consists entirely of how much money a degree will provide, and neglecting the value of education for its own sake. This is not a good assumption.

1) no its not a contradiction. This is because everyone relies on services and products that are supported by minimum wage labor. Nothing works in isolation. And people whose wages did not increase actually lose purchasing power, because their wage doesn't increase but costs are.

2) education only has value if it provides something for society. Education for educations sake doesn't provide society anything except someonewho has received a product of society, but isn't producing an equivalent use. Another art major who will never use his degree just wasted a higher education slot someone else could have used. If only 1 in 10 recepiants of a degree use that degree, 9 out of 10 should have not received it.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
You seem to get sociology mixed up with social work. You have said before sociology is a useless degree

I'm not mixing anything up. Pretty much the only practical fields one can get into with a sociology degree is social work/social services.

And I've said if you're going to get that degree, you better not be taking loans out for it, because the ROI on a sociology degree is one of the worst out there.

Or you could go into research like me. Social work isn't the only option.