Specifically, over President Obama’s plan to provide 2 years of free college education to students.
Now, the first objection they have is “but it’s too expensive!” Really? It was pretty much the rule in 1980. Community college was either free, or a nominal cost easily paid for by part time jobs, back then. And the United States is a much richer country now than it was then. Real GDP per capita was under $30,000 in 1980. It’s over $45,000 today (note — all in inflation-adjusted 2010 dollars). See this chart:
In other words, we’re 50% richer today than we were in 1980. The notion that we can’t afford things today that we could afford in 1980 is total bullshit. Complete and total bullshit. It isn’t that we can’t afford things today that we could afford in 1980. It’s that our ruling 1% doesn’t want us to have things today that we had in 1980 — things like inexpensive college education being one of them.
– Badtux the BS-smellin’ Penguin
One argument that can be put forth is that education is associated with a large number of positive externalities such as lower crime, better health, and so on. The government can either pay to education people or it can pay to imprison them. Personally, I rather see us teaching Shakespeare in college rather than in prison.
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Whenever there is talk about defense, NSA, or CIA spending, congress critters and their donors never ask how we are going to pay for it. But mention anything for we the people (let alone making it “free”), and the austerity hawks go apoplectic. Free education for all should be a basic right in a democracy. If we can’t have the former, we should no longer claim the latter.
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It’s all of a piece. I see a deliberate dumbification of the populace going hand in hand with making us fat, sick and poor, tying us to low paying jobs and unsupportable debt levels, and fomenting divisiveness between races, genders and age groups.
It’s this new corporate feudalism.
WASF
JzB
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In other words, our overlords don’t want us to have an education for the same reason that the masters of slaves in the antebellum South did not want their slaves to have an education — because educated slaves might start questioning their place in life and revolt.
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Tux, don’t forget the overlords have figured out that easy guns is a way to deflect criticism and keep a good portion of the population believing they are “free”. The reality is that an armed citizen is no threat to the security state we have created. A group of armed citizens is a drone target.
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At a dinner party with a high school teacher the other night, I mentioned the idea about how the U.S. power structure wants to keep people stupid so as to make them easier to control. The thought had not occurred to her. She thought it astounding. Also that it was a stupid strategy for society. I’m afraid that I came across as a paranoid nutter to her, though. Who could believe that a nation would adopt such a self-destructuve approach? Why, that’s just crazy talk!
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CP88 has it right – but the words which will be used for the drone’s target will be (alleged) terrorists, not citizens.
I sort of miss the ‘discussions’ I had with a hard (R-wing) coworker – I once mentioned “follow the money, since that is the religion of national parties”, and he had a fit. He is/was one of those praying for an uprising, so he could stand with ‘true patriots’. If we use drones ‘over there’ to take out terrorists, why can’t they be used here?
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