Maternity leave

[KrazyHorse]

If it is a rare thing because only those who work the hardest/etc can get there, demand won't come.

Jon, there is NO SHARP CUTOFF

Somebody who makes 60k can afford nicer things than somebody who makes 40k. He doesn't have to make a million ****ing dollars a year to want a bigger TV or a better car.

[Kuciwalker]

a) You SHOULD pay for your own damn education. You're going to earn a lot more money than you would have otherwise.

You'll also pay more in future taxes.

[KrazyHorse]

Anyway, I'm ****ing off from this conversation. It's obvious that you don't want to think analytically about this.

[KrazyHorse]

You'll also pay more in future taxes.

Read point b. Should have put them in the same sentence.

[Kuciwalker]

I don't see why, if $X investment in the education of some individual will result in $Y > X expected gain in future taxes, it's a bad idea for the government to make that investment.

All you want to do is shift the risk from the government to the individual, but while I see arguments on both sides re: that, I don't see one that totally refutes the other.

[Jon Miller]

History shows that we are not above it.

Look at how productivity has increased relative to population for all nations that aren't screwing themselves.

Jon, you're honestly being really dumb here.

The "ideal" population changes with current technological level. 60 million people in Britain would have been FAR too many in the 14th century. There would have been mass starvation. Technological/organizational progress as well as capital deepening INCREASES the ideal population level, as well as INCREASING the productivity per person.

You can't simply look at a graph of the population of Britain and a graph of the GDP per capita and say "look! they're both increasing! more people = more productivity!"

I'm starting to be worried about your capacity to think analytically about this.

The solutions are developed precisely because there is the population and the need to develop them.

If there was population lacking, then the people wouldn't be born and available to advance the technology (We already discussed this), they would have to be working to provide food or something if they were born.

Additionally, if there wasn't the population, then there would be no problems to be solved, and so no one (or few) would be working to solve them and so that push towards technological advancement wouldn't be occurring.

If there wasn't thought to be a need for people working on new energy sources, people wouldn't be working on new energy sources, they would be working somewhere else. New energy sources than wouldn't be produced, and the future wealth and production per population wouldn't occur.

Let's think back to before industrialization. Why did industrialization occur? Because there was a demand for more and more goods. Because of this, people had to think of new techniques to produce them, and so the industrial revolution. If there had never been the demand of more and more goods, if there hadn't been the problem of too much population for the current technologies, there would have been no reason to innovate. And we would still be at the production per person level of the renassance rather than of the information age.

Additionally, most of the increases in production in the last 40 years haven't come at the cost of materials at all. It has been increases in services and software and the like. Someone, like you argue the people in the finance industry, can be hugely productive while not producing one material thing.

How are you then arguing that we are past our limits of material goods when we haven't been in the past and our current new avenues of productivity aren't even heavily dependent on physical resources?

JM

[notyoueither]

A natural condition which is a choice.

A lot of men choose to engage in risky behaviour, like motor sports, alpine skiing, and ice hockey. Should we deny them employment insurance when they break a leg badly and have to be off work for six months?

[Jon Miller]

If it is a rare thing because only those who work the hardest/etc can get there, demand won't come.

Jon, there is NO SHARP CUTOFF

Somebody who makes 60k can afford nicer things than somebody who makes 40k. He doesn't have to make a million ****ing dollars a year to want a bigger TV or a better car.

If there are few people, there isn't the demand for people to produce luxury goods at that level. There is a threshold before production becomes worth it.

JM

[KrazyHorse]

I don't see why, if $X investment in the education of some individual will result in $Y > X expected gain in future taxes, it's a bad idea for the government to make that investment.

Care to provide evidence that this is the case?

Particularly, care to provide evidence that the last MARGINAL dollar of public education funding provides more than a dollar in expected present value of tax revenue?

[Kuciwalker]

Care to provide evidence that this is the case?

Particularly, care to provide evidence that the last MARGINAL dollar of public education funding provides more than a dollar in expected present value of tax revenue?

I don't have any. Do you have evidence that it's not? Until we have some sort of estimate in either direction, neither side can make a strong argument.

[Jon Miller]

So I will end up owing a fair bit more than 280k, and will have to pay interest on it afterwards, I don't think I would be able to make the ranks of the wealthy club (using the DanS method) without luck even with ability/saving as much as possible if this is the case.

Then your education was useless. If you can't turn a PhD in physics into more than 280k present value lifetime earnings then you've wasted it.

I can, I am saying that I can't use it to become wealthy (several million $$) beyond the total cost of my education, considering that I will have to be paying interest/etc on the loans.

JM

[Jon Miller]

Also, note that if the overall economy is smaller, then there is less opportunities to make money. You can't say there will be the same return on other jobs when there are less people with money to buy things.

So by dropping the total nation product, the average marginal income of everyone else will drop due to scales/etc. More than just the marginal income of the indvidual needs to be considered.

JM

[Jon Miller]

c) I have no idea what world you live in, but public school teachers basically CAN'T fail kids

Professors can though.

JM

[KrazyHorse]

I don't have any. Do you have evidence that it's not? Until we have some sort of estimate in either direction, neither side can make a strong argument.

http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2005/02/welfare_states_.html

[KrazyHorse]

Professors can though.

JM

Professors are ALREADY dependent on tuition from students.