US Budget BasicsFollow

Have you ever considered you confuse cause and effect and beliefs with knowledge. Perhaps it's as simple as professors weeding out students that just don't get it.

To use someone else's example around here:

Gbaji math theory proves that 2+3=23. More traditional math theory proves that 2+3=5. Hardly any students that adhere to the Gbaji math theory are accepted into math grad school. Why are they not accepted?

lulz

I wasn't making an argument, I was acknowledging Gbaji's right to his argument however flawed and factually inaccurate it may be. I pointed out the inaccuracies of his argument immediately before admitting that he was welcome to those flawed arguments.

Was your "case" that I'm exposing the errors in Gbaji's arguments and being nice enough to let him keep them anyway? Thanks for the support :)

The Moody's analyst is probably way out of touch with the price of a Big Gulp.

I don't know how he's doing it, but Joph is somehow getting gbaji and varus to argue that it's better to not be educated.

And where do you get your facts?

Also, since you hate public school and anyone that goes to college is a rabid liberal, what do you propose for schooling?

Not familiar with them. I only know of the ones who saved the economy from falling further.

Oh, not me. Just those "experts" you refuse to listen to because then you wouldn't be able to cry and cry and cry about mean ole Obama.

What did that have to do with the success of the stimulus?

You realize that research is based on observations in the real world? That's the entire foundation of it-- it's why it's science and not opinion. Many researchers don't start off as researchers, either-- they gain "real-world" (as opposed to fake-world?) experience as they work their way through school. Many of them pursue their degrees later in life, and have far more real-world experience than you to be sure. They fought in wars and worked in fields and everything else.

Yet consistently the research finds one thing-- our first-person, anecdotal experiences, upon which we base our worldviews, are often WRONG. And that's why anecdotes and first person experiences and perceptions mean very little on their own. That's why we do the research in the first place. If the "common sense" values and lessons we learned about from our ancestors on things like raising children, handling criminals, promoting public health, etc., were actually exactly right-- if our "real-world" experiences and gut intuition were very reliable-- we wouldn't bother to do research.

But this kind of anti-intellectualism by the uneducated shines bright as an example of sour grapes. Glenn Beck is a smart guy, right? I mean, I don't agree with him politically, but there are plenty of people whom I disagree with on politics while recognizing that they're smart people. Actually, the first time I watched Beck, after about 20 minutes I said, "This guy's a complete idiot. There's no way he graduated from college, not even with a bachelor's." I googled him, and no surprise, I was right. Wait, he didn't go to college, and he thinks college is a tool of the liberals who disagree with him?

I was a conservative when I entered college. My first semester I wrote an essay defending the pro-life movement (I chose the topic). I got an A, from a professor who didn't agree with my position at all. Never at any point was I or anyone else, not in any class, even political science and history classes where there were plenty of opportunities to insert political opinion, discouraged for my political beliefs in any way. I know conservative students getting advanced degrees. We talk about legislation and policy all the time, but at no point does political affiliation even become salient. We're too busy talking about specific problems and specific solutions than to talk about wider political ideology. A solution works or it doesn't work, ideology be damned. Just the other day, I offered a solution that involved increased government intervention, and it was pointed out by liberals and conservatives alike, that it would pose too many conflicting interests, and they were right. That's pretty much par the course for the graduate level. There's none of this bandying about like it's us against them. Professionalism is expected.

Wish we could expect the same from our Congressmen.

You do understand that there are a lot of people out there who find that this is precisely the problem, right? The "human cost" of failing businesses in the short term may have been high, but the "human cost" of not trimming those dead or dying companies long term may be much higher. Allowing certain sectors to fail and be replaced with healthier businesses would, in time, be more beneficial for the economy as a whole than propping up failing organizations and preserving the votes of the employees.