Six Terrible Justifications for Wasting Money on College

1) If you want to make a lot of money you need to go to college.

This is absurd, and real life experiences of tens of thousands, if not hundreds, if not millions of Americans show that this is absolutely not a given. If you want to have a decent living you need to develop marketable skills and/or find a need and fill it. If you want to be wealthy you need to be an entrepreneur, and unlike so many management classes and college programs, you cannot teach entrepreneurship. It's something you either have innately, or nurture throughout your life. What can be taught though is self reliance, which is one of the foundations of successful entrepreneurs.

2) Follow you dream.

How many temples and shrines to the demi-god of misery could be built with the number of lives broken like so much tinder that resulted from following your dream. It's okay to dream of touching the sky, but one can never live outside the realm of reality, lest you end up like broken and burned like Icarus. Even Walt Whitman worked a normal day job as a clerk.

3) College is a great experience

This is one of the fall back defenses, the Maginot line of dilettantes if you will, from where they can unleash one last barrage against the armies of prudence and reason. However, rather than being a fiercely fought defense by highly trained and skilled soldiers like the GIs in Bastogne, it is more like the cobbled together volksstrum army of children, convicts, and the infirm sent to be slaughtered against the red army. If experience is the big reason to go to college, by experience it is generally understood to mean going to a new location, most often a big city, meeting new people, and studying abroad. Then why shell out a total of $ 50,000, though it can easily balloon to over $100,000, over four, more like five, years on 'experiences' when for a fraction of the cost you could simply move to a new city, join a few clubs, and travel around the world on the cheap. Far more memorable 'experiences' could be gained if someone simply took that college tuition and toured the world for a few months.

4) If you want to be a humanistic/well rounded person/critical thinker you should get a liberal arts education.

This is the other fall back defence that is used. I mean who doesn't want to be a well rounded individual with the ability to critically think? Critical thinking is paramount to success in life so it must stand to reason then that you need a liberal arts education to succeed? Unfortunately this pretty little butterfly cannot escape the web of those who have had the misfortune to earn a liberal arts education, yet hold it with utter contempt. I am such a person. And it isn't liberal arts education that I have a problem with, or rather it wasn't liberal arts education I have a problem with, its the horribly dogmatic and insular education that passes for liberal arts today. Let this be known, I have two degrees, one is in finance, and the other is the humanities, and I will tell you know that this line is nothing more than that, a line. A liberal arts education doesn't make you a well rounded person if its nothing more an anti-capitalist socialist apologist self loathing agenda. I was forced to take a class that was little more than a Castro apologist seminar using the defense that while Castro is a dictator its America's fault because America used and abused that nation for its own end. Yes America backed up Batista, a dictator and thug in his own right, but that is no reason to give thugs like Castro, or murders like Che, a pass. And as for liberal arts education teaching you critical thinking; what a joke! Want to know how to be a critical thinker? It simply entails that question you question your ideas and beliefs and actively try to see where they are wrong. That is it, nothing more, nothing less. Socrates dissertations on critical thinking boils down to simply questioning ideas, yours and others, in an effort to eventually find the truth.

5) I studied Asian American Transgender Studies and did just fine.

This is aggravating because what is true individually doesn't mean it is true in aggregate. Just because you, who studied a degree with no real marketable skills, became a successful vice president of a multi-national doesn't mean that it was the degree that is responsible. If could very well have been that you are simply a competent individual. Take a cousin of mine for example, she studied English and ended up touring around Europe for a year or so. She continued studying, doing the normal track that one does with a degree like English, when eventually found herself in a sales position for a major video game publisher. She know manages large accounts and pulls a salary in excess of six figures. Was it the degree that did it for her? No, it was her ability to socialize with individuals and her innate competence that got her to where she was. Your degree is nothing more than a slip of paper whose value varies from industry to industry and company to company.

6) But you meet new people in college!

A variance of the experience argument. If you want to meet new people, move to a new city, join a club, or do online dating. A lot of that can be done for free even.

 

Any other poorly thought out justifications for an overpriced slip of toilet paper anyone else would like to add?

How high will retirement age go?

A mainstream media outlet ponders how high the retirement age will go given the ever decreasing economic situation of the United States and financial strength of the average American.  While the writer of the article does says that the retirement age will rise, which is like saying a rock will fall when pushed off a building, the real answer is that there will be no retirement at all; at least not in the traditional sense or for most Americans.  Most silver haired Americans will find traditional retirement an increasingly difficult option, and will either push out their careers as long as possible, or simply move on to a secondary post-career job.  Has anyone noticed, in a field traditionally dominated by high school and college age kids, the increasing age of supermarket tellers and baggers?

Now what the article also doesn't increasingly tell you, and this isn't surprising given that it is a financial periodical, is that the concept of retirement is decidedly modern.  The simple reality is that for almost the entirety of humanities existence from whatever date B.C to the early 20th century there was no retirement.  Yes many elderly individuals stopped doing physical labor, but then they often became community leaders and advisers for their villages, essentially low stress jobs where their age gave them a decided advantage.  It wasn't until the scam that is social security, and it is very much a scam like any other except it has the official seal of approval from our government, that the retirement concept came about.  Perhaps what is most galling, and one of the biggest reasons why I have a visceral hate for the social security program, is that when it was enacted the average life expectancy was less  than the date when you could start collections.  So, not only does social security take funds from those who are working and disperse them to those that don't, and some would argue that there is nothing morally wrong with this, but it also is a program that wants you to crock before you can collect.

The true nature of social security should be readily apparent to anyone who spends  a moment to think about that.  The fact that the program was based by congress, who full well knew the age of collection was greater than the what many Americans could be expected to live too, should expose the program as nothing more than a money grab to fund government coffers.  And yes I am aware that the average life expectancy is a rolling metric with it increasing as an individual ages.  But one must keep in mind that workplace deaths were far higher then than they are today.  Your chances dying on the job, and therefore never acquiring your promised social security as promised, was much higher than it is today.

Now, many of us millenials and generation xers complain about how the baby boomers are going to leech us dry in order to fund their retirements.  But unfortunately for the boomers the current administration has eaten up the rest of the pie that the boomers could have consumed themselves.  If it were not for the stimulus program that massive increase in Federal debt would have been accrued by the boomers as they retired and drew on their government promised retirement checks.  The fact that we are now at, or exceeding, 100% debt levels has made accruing any additional debt that much more difficult.  Yes our debt will continue to increase, perhaps the next financial crisis, but the outcry from fiscally minded individuals will become greater, moreover, as millenials and xers start moving into positions of power the boomers will have greater difficulty accruing debt?

And that is why the boomers, along with millenials and xers, will probably never retire.  Modern retirement could only exist while the younger generations were willing to pay for it.  Boomers were willing to pay for the greatest and silent generations, however, millenials and xers will be much more resistant to the idea.  After all the youth has already seen much of their future earning potential cannibalized, why would we want to lose what we have left to a generation that could have, if they had exercised economic and financial wisdom, never needed social security in the first place?  So to summerize, there will be no retirement.

Stratfor: Japan and China's Battle For the Pacific

Another good article from Stratfor concerning the increasing number of disputes between Japan and China over ownership of islands in the East China sea.  But perhaps the most fascinating part is the shortest.  Everyone is fully aware of the dispute between the two nations.  However, what many don't realize is that since the 1930s the US has been alternating support for which ever party is considered weaker. From the 1930s to the end of World War II that was China.  Once the nationalists in China were defeated, and moved to Taiwan, the US spent time and resources strengthening Japan to counter the communist power bloc.  Currently, the US is trying to maintain a balance between a rising but internally fracturing China and a slumped but internally cohesive Japan.

 While the US doesn't want outright conflict between the two nations; it does want to make sure no one power can become strong enough to become a regional hegemon.  The US is the top dog in the pacific and it intends to remain so.  Ultimately US interests and positioning determines the actions of our government. With the economic and social situation starting to deteriorate in China the US may slowly become more conciliatory towards China; eventually. There is a chance that China may lose control of its state encourage protests and the resulting chaos could result in a more militarily bellicose nation.  China doesn't want to risk its trade relationships, but before the health of the nation comes the primacy of the party.

Either way, expect to see Washington becoming more involved in these types of disputes.  The US is slowly reengaging the western pacific, which is a reintroduction of our foreign policy focus shift since the end of the cold war that was temporarily halted due to 9/11. Along with the introduction of China's first carrier into active service, though it still does not compare to a US Navy carrier, and the that region of the world will become more tense.  Both the US and China are ultimately playing a chess game to determine who will be the hegemon in the pacific. The US has the advantage currently, an advantage I expect them to maintain, however, things could move in unexpected ways.

Media Slowly Waking Up to College Bubble

The media is starting to waken up to the college bubble that will soon explode in America.   Now the realization that it is the government, for using college attendance as a means for vote buying, and colleges, foisting certificates in worthlessness, still hasn't dawned on them. The author blames private lending institutions and the fact that there is not more government oversight.  I can't say I entirely disagree since allowing student loans to be dischargeable after so many years would restore some sort of monetary balance.

As it stands now the media, and most Americans, will see this simply as a lending bubble.  They aren't wrong, however, as is all too often the case, they fail to see the college lending bubble is simply a manifestation of a deeper problem. That problem being the degradation of traditional college education for the sake of votes, college administrations, and teachers who teach classes on the sexual habits of aboriginal peoples.  The college lending bubble only exists because it is politically unpopular to take an honest look at the value of most college degrees and college in general in the age of free information.

More Data Showing That Texas is Beating California

According to the Milking Institute, 4 of the top 5 economically performing large MSAs (Metropolitan Statistical Areas) are all in Texas. California on the other hand only has 1 MSA in the top fifty, Bakersfield. Not only does California do rather poorly but New York and Illinois come up short to Texas as well. Illinois only has 2 MSAs in the top 100 economically performing areas while New York can at least claim 5 large MSAs in the top 100.

 Now it isn't surprising that Texas is doing better than California since their populations are not too far apart and considering that Texas isn't trying to run their state into the ground. I also don't want it to look like this is simply blue state bashing because even though there are plenty of blue states that are sucking fumes, there are some performing pretty well.  Just look at Washington, which is considered a blue state, but outside of the Seattle area it is had a healthy red core.  Washington, a state with about 20% of the population of California boasts 1 MSA (the  Tri-Cities as it is known in Washington) in the top 25, which California doesn't have, and another in the top 50, which California also doesn't have.

Clearly California, and Illinois for that matter, are doing something wrong. Yes Chicago is clean, on the north side at least, and is bustling; though the city has hemorrhaged about a third of its population form its peak almost 50 years ago, but its easy to confuse the health of a single city with that of a state or larger body.  The Soviets, and now the Chinese and many other developing nations, did this well. Construct gleaming modern metropolises that give the appearance of a healthy and vibrant state; all the while the countryside sits in near abject poverty.  I haven't been to the suburbs of Illinois but I have seen them in California around LA, and let me tell you, it isn't pretty.

 

It should also be interesting to note that of all the states I have thought about moving too outside of my own, New Hampshire, Texas, North Carolina, Colorado and the like, all seem to be doing pretty well according to the milkeninstitute.