2016 Presidential Elections in the US

Digging a little deeper:
politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/jul/30/blog-posting/are-90-million-americans-not-working-or-looking-wo

No it's not if you go to a decent university and not some po dunk college while living at home.

I guess you are right when full welfare pays twice that.

$250k is about right. Tuition at a private school costs around $45k-$55k. If you add books, dorm/rent, food, health insurance, all the stupid fees like 'technology fee' and 'library fee' the school charges you're at an easy $60-$70k a year. I'm not even including things like car insurance, cell phone payments, going out, buying clothes, etc. into that - if you add that up it's an easy $5k more a year. For state schools you can maybe subtract $20k off the total as most state schools cost around $14k-$20k a year for tuition.
From the various sources I have read, tuition appears to go up around 7% a year. The reason why is because it simply can - more and more people are going to college and willingly put themselves into debt for life just to end up getting some worthless degree from a liberal arts college where you spent as much time learning about art, music, philosophy, etc. as you did your actual major. I can honestly say that I had 1 class that actually taught me something that I use in the real world in my career - business statistics.


Doesn't mean that the fry cooks want to be paid that much to say 'would you like fries with that.' I can understand $10 an hour, maybe even $12... but $15 is just ridiculous. When I was a department manager at Menard's (my worst job ever - I worked there only like 3-4 weeks) I was paid around $12 an hour - and I was a manager in charge of like 5 other people... The only reason why I would've made enough to live on with that wage is because I had to work 60-70 hour weeks and would've got a ton of overtime since it was cheaper for Menard's to pay a manager a ton of overtime who actually knows what he's doing than hire another worker and have to pay him an hourly wage and insurance.

The problem is, the media has turned people who are hard working, successful, and ambitious into villains. We use to celebrate and congratulate people who have attained the American dream and worked their way up so that they can buy a big nice house in the suburbs and a luxury car. Why should those people have to redistribute their own wealth that they made through hard work and give it to someone who refuses to get a job? I even see this with some people I know and it sickens me. They'll ask me to like pay for a lunch or drinks because I 'make more than them' or 'don't have any student loans to pay.' Well, that's because I worked my ass off - not my fault that you didn't. I came from a poor family and had to work twice as hard as some of the people I went to college with. Maybe if they didn't spend 4 days a week playing beer pong they'd actually have a better job than barista at Starbucks after graduating.

I was talking about tuition only, Adrian, not total cost of living. 40 to 50K tuition and fees is what the expensive ones usually charge (Stanford and Yale are at 46K for example), affordable private colleges are more in the 10 to 20K range.


About 60% of all college graduates cannot find a full-time job these days, so the worthless degree cannot be the real reason.


Nowadays, people work two or three jobs to make ends meet. Working poor rings a bell?

Should read "of all recent college graduates".

Our ruling

Bloggers and pundits have said that 90 million Americans either aren't working or aren't looking for work. That's a real number, but it includes high schoolers, college students and retirement-age Americans, leaving perhaps 20 million a better approximation. We rate the claim Mostly False.

First off, these people obviously don't know what their talking about because the U6 rate alone is 10% which would make it well over 30 mill. This is the most commonly accepted measure of unemployment among economists - bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm however, it does not include people that simply don't want to work and hence are not included in the labor force

In this link - bls.gov/web/empsit/cpseea38.htm A-38. It describes people that are ' Persons not in the labor force by desire and availability for work, age, and sex ' Below it removes people that are in school or training, are sick, etc. It does divide it by age groups but yes one of them is people over 55. It'd be easier to use if they did 55-65 which is usually what the retirement age is thought of as. Nonetheless, the people that simply 'do not want to work' is by far the largest category.

bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t01.htm here is total population

NOT IN LABOR FORCE:
Persons who are neither employed nor unemployed are not in the labor force. This category includes retired persons, students, those taking care of children or other family members, and others who are neither working nor seeking work. Information is collected on their desire for and availability for work, job search activity in the prior year, and reasons for not currently searching.

See, the issue here is that we're including people who have worked their whole lives and people who are able bodied, 30 years old, but simply don't want to get a job as 'not in labor force'

A few numbers to consider:
16 million (16 to 24 year olds that do not want a job now - note that at the bottom it has a special column that states 'in school or training')
20 million (25 to 55 year olds that do not want a job now)
31 million - amount of people unemployed according to the U6 rate of 10%

No way dude - no private school charges 10k-20k - only state schools charge that little. Even schools like Marquette and Loyola which aren't the elite universities still charge $40k in tuition alone.

Also, in addition to tuition there's a lot of fees you HAVE TO pay - books, technology fee, health insurance (required), room and board (some schools force you to live in the dorms your first year or two), and so on. Looking at just tuition is inaccurate.


Yes and I have a lot of respect for these people since they are actually working and contributing to society. However, I became good at sales and got the necessary degrees, certificates, and experiences to get offered a better and better job as time went on so that I didn't have to work 2-3 jobs to make end meet and could make a living on 40-45 hours a week.


You're right - I think it's a combination of laziness, not having any previous job experience, or simply not wanting to get a low wage, $12 an hour job because they feel that it's 'beneath' them. I know a lot of college grads that end up working in retail because they couldn't get a better job. That may very well be true and it's probably because they had little to no job experience prior to graduation. Everyone has to start somewhere. Some people will simply continue to live off their parents as opposed to even starting as a barista or cell phone store clerk. It's not hard to find a job - it really isn't In Chicago at least, even if you don't have a degree you can find a job within a few days on several different websites. It's simply that people either don't feel like working for peanuts or can't get a job they feel they 'deserve' because of their bachelor's degree. Eventually, most learn the reality they they'll have to get an entry level job, especially if they don't have work experience, and work their way up.

usnews.com/education/best-colleges/the-short-list-college/articles/2015/09/09/10-private-colleges-and-universities-with-highest-lowest-sticker-prices


Of course, but most college savings plans barely cover tuition and fees. For the rest, students either have to work or the parents pay. Tuitions aren't written in stone anyway. Don't forget the huge tuition discounts!

insidehighered.com/news/2015/08/25/tuition-discounting-grows-private-colleges-and-universities

Johnny, my job is neither insecure nor in any danger of disappearing! Unlike the majority of the broad country, I belong to a rather sizable union, which is why Texans, Georgians and any number of thinking, educated Southerners get the hell out of their state and fly north, for a fighting chance to earn the (MORE than) living wage they so deserve!

I have done the math, and just mark my words; if you think education's expensive, try ignorance:-)

Merely to repeat, if you honestly don't either know or care why any number of deeply disgruntled fellow citizens reach for their gun, their knife or other weapon close at hand and go on killing sprees, you have shown yourself to be a disposable being. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem!!

Remember, THEIR concerns should be YOURS as well:-)

Attend church regularly?? None of my beeswax, only if you do and you still hold to the beliefs you've thus far espoused here on PF, then you sir, are a raving hypocrite, a Sunday Christian not worth the collection money you pay out for a private pew every week.

On the other hand, if you're not a regular church goer, then you may blithely disqualify yourself from the above remarks.

Those are very very rare examples. I'm sure you've heard of the saying 'You get what you pay for' - in this case, I can say the only two colleges out of that list I''ve even heard of was Birmingham Young and Berea college. It seemed very strange to me that a school could charge $870 a year and somehow still remain economically viable so I did a bit of more research.

I went on the schools website and discovered this: Each student receives the equivalent of a Tuition Promise Scholarship worth $24,300, or $97,200 for four years. That's right: no student pays tuition.

I thought - wow, FREE EDUCATION?! That's amazing! There has to be a catch though... and there is - Berea offers a nationally recognized labor program in which all students participate; Berea is one of seven federally recognized Work Colleges.

So it's not free... unless your time isn't valuable anyway. You participate in their labor program in exchange for tuition.

I looked up the Birmingham Young one as well and found -
'Student life centers on religion and responsibility at Brigham Young University-Provo, a school founded and supported by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also known as the Mormon church)'
and also:
' students live according to a strict honor code, which prohibits - among other things - camping with members of the opposite sex and growing a beard without a doctor's approval. Extramarital and gay sex are also prohibited. '

Well that's just great - you can't grow a beard, camp with a girl, or even get laid? No wonder they only charge $5k a year in tuition... Wow, and I thought my university was lame..

There's a good reason why these schools are so cheap - some of them may force you to work (which I don't see as a bad thing - as long as it's career related. I don't want to be in a chain gang just to get free tuition, I'd rather enter essay contents) or are indoctrination centers where growing a beard is prohibited.

So I wondered, okay well those two schools have a unique setup - what about the others?
So I picked a few at random and found the following out:

Blue Mountain College - rural, supported by the Mississippi Baptist Convention, was a women's college till it became co-ed 2005, $13 mil endowment, only 43% graduate within 6 years, 98% receive financial aid, not-for-profit,
Rust College - rural, black liberal arts college, receives support from The United Methodist Church and other black grounds, $5 mil endowment, only 32% graduate within 6 years, not-for-profit
Tougaloo College - rural, black liberal arts college, established by Christians to teach slaves, $8 mil endownment,
Park University - suburban

So I found that the majority of these schools are in rural areas, supported by a religious organization, government or ethnic group, have a extremely high acceptance rate (with the exception of Rust) of 50%+ meaning they're pretty desperate to get people in despite being almost free - (Free in the case of Berae although you have to work), have ACT scores that are totally average or even below average i.e. 18-25 (27 gets you into the 90 percentile and getting an 18 or 19 is just sad - I think you get around a 13 for just putting your name in), are smaller in student body than my high school, and have an annual revenue smaller than my dad's construction company... lame..

As a manager, I can tell you that I don't look much at where a person went to school at least not for a sales related position. However, for more technical jobs, I can tell you we most likely wouldn't hire an engineer or programmer into an entry level position from a place like Blue Mountain College or Allice Lloyd College. We'd want someone from at least a place like DePaul, Marquette, Northwestern, or even state schools that are a bit cheaper but still good schools like Purdue, Iowa State, University of Wisconsin, etc.

The majority of reputable, normal (meaning they allow you to grow a beard, aren't 90% one ethnicity, and don't put their students into chain gangs) private universities cost well over $40k - in fact, there's very few that are even in the $30k-$40k range anymore.

I too feel that Hillary's "Free college tuition" may do more harm than good. On the other hand, who's out there to vote for?

It's not going to happen - MAYBE at community colleges, but not private schools unless the government does something drastic and changes FAFSA laws or something. Will it really change anything though on a grand scale? Doubt it. Americans are simply far too lazy. Most of the students that went to college, at least the ones I knew, didn't go because they wanted to learn something and have a good career, they went because their parents expected them to and used it as a time to get away from their parents' house and get drunk and high.

Instead of saving up like $10-$12k, going to community college for a year or two, learning a trade like welding or paralegal, the masses of welfare recipients would rather continue sit at home on their butt and collect welfare. They might off the couch to vote Democrat or demonstrate against whites if Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson tells them to.

Of course, like usual, the people that will suffer if college tuition does become free is the individuals that have worked hard to put themselves or their kids through college. Even if was through non-financial means but instead studying a lot and applying for grants and scholarships - that takes time too. Nonetheless, you can bet that taxes will go up as more money is spent on the people who deserve it the least. If our tax dollars should go to further support any of the individuals that are receiving government money, it should be the vets - which account for not even a full 4 million out of the over 100 million on government assistance.

Agreed! European-style socialism works best (??) in Europe, not here. We're not used to it and it winds up becoming rather like too much free(lance) time on one's hands, without the discipline and motivation required to succeed and with too great a temptation for sheer laziness.

I paid my grad school education and worked my butt off in the process!!

[/quote]
The difference is that people actually work in Europe. Also, people have a sense of shame outside of the US. For example, in Japan, if you are behind on a loan an individual follows you around with like a yellow sign or something in public and everyone knows that you're a deadbeat. That's enough to make people pay their bills on time. People simply have no shame here and it's thought of as 'cruel' to shame people into doing something or acting a certain way. In the Scandinavian countries, or even Canada, the income taxes are very high but at least you get something out of it - excellent healthcare, ultra modern infrastructure, safe neighborhoods (although that's been changing with the migrant crisis), time off for both parents when a child is born, and even in some countries like France a nanny or cleaning lady to help you around the house after a pregnancy. Good luck getting the US government to send someone to clean your house and do your laundry. Yet in Europe, that's the norm. Another issue is that the US has been separated from European style thought and culture - we truly are backwards here. We have developed our own shameless, immoral culture that for the time ever does not congratulate hard work and ambitious but rather looks at it as exploitation and greed.

[quote=Lyzko]I paid my grad school education and worked my butt off in the process!!

Congrats! I'm in the process of doing that right now. I managed to graduate with a bachelor's with $0 in student debt - never took a student loan out in my life. I am so proud of that - I honestly consider that one of the greatest accomplishments of my life. It took me 6 years to graduate, a ton of finagling, moving like every 6 months, and working jobs ranging from pizza delivery, waiter, to towards the end of my college years commodity broker. I don't regret it at all though - I got to travel a bunch in college, live in several different states and even countries, meet a ton of awesome people, and built a network I use to this day.

At first, I won't lie I was jealous of the kids that would wake up at 10, go to class till maybe 2-3 PM, playing video games till around 5 or 6, then start drinking, smoking weed, etc. My mom use to get calls all the time from the other Polish women in our parish that would mock me and they'd say things like 'Oh our son is getting straight A's at Loyola - he's graduating this year! Your son isn't in college anymore now right?' It's funny because the lady that called my mom the most out of the group of Polish gossipers, neither of her sons actually ended up graduating - both dropped out and ended up working at the family's day care center. Now these same mothers are sending me invites on facebook and linkedin, praising my accomplishments and then asking at the end if there's anyone I can talk to for their kids. I love it when they do that because then I can bring up the past and remind them when they use to call my mom out of the blue and put her in a bad mood bragging about their situation and making fun of mine.

Adrian, no offense, but what you described in the first part of your post about a sense of shame, used to exist right here in the this country too....before Reagan essentially cancelled education (along with nearly everything else)!!!!

For the umpteenth time, I invite you, Johnny and any number of others, to watch older black-and-white Hollywood movies pre-1965 and/or quiz shows featuring average to above-average teen-age contestants discuss world events, language, science and politics with all but ZERO slang or vulgarity in their speech to witness how low we've sunk in the United States.

Why do you suggest for the umpteenth time.
I for the umpteenth time have told you that it all started when they to God out of our schools.

That was about the time when they made it a crime to spank.
Don't forget whipper snapper, I was in school in 1965 and remember the punks getting knocked on their ass when they needed it.
It worked great to cure what today is called ADHD.
Seemed to work pretty well in teaching respect and accountability.
Today if a teacher tried that they would either get shot or fired and sued.
Hells bells the kids today are so screwed up by being dumbed down in our schools they don't even know if they are a boy or girl.
Proving again that the Liberal Progressive Thinking and Political Correctness isn't working so great.
Look what it has turned our country into.
I rest my case.

Hate to admit it, Johnny, but I gradually suspect you and I are more ON the same (home-)page, than not:-)
"Spare the rod...."? Well, not all the time perhaps, but, sure, especially if the kid's about to hurt themselves or another, why the heck not???!

The way it worked at my school was that when a teacher had a student that was out of control they were sent to the gym to see the gym coach.
You bent over and grabbed your ankles and got a crack on the butt with a racket ball paddle.
Oh yeah it stung but the humiliation hurt much worse.
Then your father was called to come take you home for the rest of the day where most kids got more physical discipline by their dad for embarrassing him to come get them. (I was a model student so this is only hearsay) lol
Today it is always the teachers fault and they are disciplined.
That is why we now have police officers in our schools, shootings in our schools and no respect in our schools.
Makes it tuff for the kids that are there to learn.
Trump would have s. canned this progressive thinking and went back to things that worked.

Old saws still have some teeth left, is that sort of your point?

Yup, as a parent I can certainly see the wisdom in such......though selectively:-)

youtube.com/watch?v=duGk-73Ccb4&ebc=ANyPxKpsGFRRQ3DGl4Vgd2UzuZhLMD_wPUdFgFjjNxSfu1CuYraZG4X1Ny5hhKJ5UR2lFdSziVqE&nohtml5=False&spfreload=5

'Thing we won't say about race that are true' - Video from UK...

One of my favorite quotes "There is no prejudice in numbers"

Sound more like British yogi-bearismsLOL

This photo is doing the rounds over here in Poland. Is it true he suggested that under the right circumstances he'd like to 'date' her?

Keep it in the family!

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bigstory.ap.org/article/a636c58b5e9d4da4bb77dcce87148132/ap-gfk-poll-americans-overwhelmingly-view-trump-negatively?nc=1460251640643

There's nothing like being popular. And this is indeed nothing like being popular. I really do hope he gets the Republican nomination. The Democrat candidate may as well move straight in to the White House.

Well after all of Jon's Trump bashing, I feel inclined to post this here

youtube.com/watch?v=CABQVw9Jsec

jon wasn't bashing, he was just upset that it wasn't him sitting on the Donald's knee.
Man does that girl have some long legs. :-/
I see Bernie beat Hillary again, what is that now, the last eight out of nine States.
They said if Bernie was elected and did what he promised, it would put America in debt another 15 Trillion.

Hahahaha now that's a good one

Hahahaha now that's a good one.

The second comment so far. You have a very liberal definition of "all".

Anyone who would actually consent to physical contact with Trump has as little taste as yourself.

I really hope he wins the Republican nomination - the presidency will be a shoe in for Hillary Clinton.

How many times do you have to be told that they are not going to let that happen jon so quit your hoping.
Trump is now threatening to run as an Independent after the last GOP attack on him.

Yes as I see where Obama is now supporting her.
He just stated that Hillary's illegal e-mail server's e-mails did not jeopardize National Security which means he will not give the o.k. to have her indicted for criminal prosecution contrary to what the evidence of the investigation has concluded.
If this happens you will see the F.B.I. director and several high ranking F.B.I. investigators resign.
More egg on Obama's face.
One more reason Obama should have been impeached in his first term.
This country is screwed either way because if Trump gets elected the GOP will lose the senate for sure.
If Hillary gets elected it will be a continuation of Obama's failures.
Everything Hillary has been in charge of she has botched.
Why would anyone think as President she wouldn't do the same with the track record that she has.

hehe, I do hope Hilary wins the democrats because that's an easy win for Trump.