In a way. In Furman v. Georgia, the interpretation of "cruel and unusual" led to a four-part test ([1]):
- The "essential predicate" is "that a punishment must not by its severity be degrading to human dignity", especially torture.
- "A severe punishment that is obviously inflicted in wholly arbitrary fashion."
- "A severe punishment that is clearly and totally rejected throughout society."
- "A severe punishment that is patently unnecessary."
In a real way, cruel but banal is permitted under this test. For instance solitary confinement and slavery, the latter of which is expressly permitted for prisoners under the 13th amendment.
This is of course why the US penal system needs wholesale reform.
I think a lot of our current practices in the prison system fall under "cruel and unusual punishment". A large segment of Americans are obsessed with punishment and at every opportunity they push for harsher sentences and the cruel treatment for prisoners.
I don't think we can truly reform the justice system until we deal with the culture that brought us to this point. It's the cruelty of the voters that holds us back from large scale changes, and the cruelty of the employees working within the prison system that enable it at a local level.
They probably want to make sure that the women have actual medical care when delivering, rather than having a baby when nobody is around.
I still think it's pretty awful, but it may be an attempt to be less awful given the awful state of prison medical care, which is generally non-existent.
See, e.g. that guy who lost his dick to preventable cancer due to not being able to see anybody about it in time:
> They probably want to make sure that the women have actual medical care when delivering, rather than having a baby when nobody is around.
there should never be a time when someone we've locked in a cage is in need of medical care when "nobody is around". Prisons should be staffed at all times and prisoners should have ready access to adequate healthcare whenever the need arises. That may mean prisons in remote locations need more onsite medical staff, but nobody should have to go without access to medical care.
When the state takes away someone's freedom and locks them up, the state assumes responsibility for their care and their needs and it's long past time we started insisting they do their job.
Great idea in theory, but there's just not enough obstetric practice at a typical prison for a doctor to retain their skills; you can't just do it once a month, and to be accredited you have to have an available operating room on the labor and delivery floor at all times - so if you only have two OR's, you can't start a section in the second one until the first has been cleaned. And we see women who aren't prisoners who come in 6 cm dilated after an hour or so of labor and deliver within 30 minutes. 1.5 hours is a really short time to arrange medical prisoner transport and get them to a hospital.
Specialist medical care is really not that easy to do outside relatively urban areas, and people don't generally like living near prisons.
I'm not sure what the solution really is, short of a small locked ward that's attached to a real hospital where they can spend every day after 38 weeks. But that gets expensive fast.
> short of a small locked ward that's attached to a real hospital where they can spend every day after 38 weeks. But that gets expensive fast.
Yeah, I'd guess if they're too far from a hospital to be safe it'd be best to keep them at a hospital until the baby is born. They might not need an entire ward for that though. Just handcuffing them to a bed and posting a guard outside their room should be fine for most inmates. Even that won't be cheap, but it shouldn't be too often someone pregnant ends up behind bars.
The analog would be forcing him to see a specialist against his will. Another poster pointed out that the hospital said they were required to do this to protect one of the mother's health.
I don't know whether that was true, but then again, I don't know whether anything said in this story is true or not.
I'm surprised that you feel that strongly on induction of labor which is routine, very safe and used frequently. My wife was induced to help reduce the need for emergency c section.
Induction is mostly boring (you spend a long time hooked up to an IV).
My induction was invasive, uncomfortable, long, and I definitely had mixed feelings about being pressured into it by doctors. If I had NO choice in it, it would have absolutely been traumatic. Might have been boring for you but maybe ask your wife how she would have felt if she had no choice in it.
> I'm surprised that you feel that strongly on induction of labor which is routine, very safe and used frequently. My wife was induced to help reduce the need for emergency c section.
Presumably because it's being done without their consent.
> But all three women said they were told by prison medical providers they were being induced because it was a policy of the Arizona Department of Corrections for all pregnant incarcerated women, not due to their individual conditions. The women say they were given no explanation for the policy, but they believe it is being implemented to reduce liability for the prison system.
They are wards of the state which means the state is legally required to care for them to the best of it's ability.
If you are a prisoner and want to die of eg cancer instead of seeking treatment that is not an option generally up to you. The state will treat you, whether or not you want it.
If the prison can argue that the induction leads to meaningfully better health outcomes (and induction frequently does!) then that is the end of the matter.
Your freedom to make subpar decisions or have deeply personal choices (eg a water birth or use a birthing center) is curtailed when you are in prison.
> They are wards of the state which means the state is legally required to care for them to the best of it's ability.
The prisons aren't caring for them to the best of their ability — that's the whole problem.
See also:
> It is important to mention that inducing birth before term increases the incidence of respiratory problems in the baby (beyond the abhorrent ethical issues).
You're moving the goal posts, now. The *vast* majority of prisoners are not dangerous.
Further, the article referenced specifically mentions people being induced prior to the safe time to induce labor.
Further, further, in the context of the existing prison system and human rights violations inside prisons (and *all* humans have human rights. This isn't "freedom of speech", these are even more base than that), this is yet another monstrous example of harming people in the State's care in prisons.
The article cites 3 people, two at 39 weeks and one at 37. Term is 35 (but inducing that early isn't ideal, 37 is the earliest you want to go if you can choose).
Those are all term and all very safe.
Most prisoners are dangerous. The idea that you got busted for an 1oz of weed and went to prison isn't aligned to reality. If you are in prison (not jail) then you went through the full sentancing dance and weren't eligible for a supervised release or a program. That usually means you either keep committing crime or did serious crime. You didn't steal a bicycle.
Conflating natural delivery (where the body has decided, for whatever reason, that it is now time to deliver the child) with induction is not an appropriate comparison.
> 37 is the earliest you want to go if you can choose).
I would be willing to wager money that you are not going to find ANY obstetrician in the US who will induce at 37 weeks for no other reason than familial "choice" ("elective induction"). In fact ACOG specifically says that it should not happen without medical basis.
> The idea that you got busted for an 1oz of weed and went to prison isn't aligned to reality.
Perhaps you should read more about prison in Arizona, and of law enforcement officials like Sheriff Arpaio.
> It is grotesquely expensive, unduly punitive, discriminatory against minorities (especially against Latinos) and does little to actually keep our communities safe or cut down on recidivism.
> About 1 out of every 40 Latino men in Arizona are currently in prison. Even more are currently in the various other phases of the criminal justice system (pretrial release, jail, probation, parole, warrant status etc.). Arizona prison population is more than 40 percent Latino, but Latino’s only make up about 27 percent of our overall population.
> Our legislature is to blame for these insane prison statistics because it allows itself to be influenced by Arizona prosecutors to scuttle any prison reform initiatives. Prosecutors have a powerful lobby called Arizona Prosecuting Attorney’s Advisory Council (“APAAC”) which it uses to influence the legislative process to its own benefit. In the last few years alone, Arizona’s prosecutors have opposed bail reform, sentencing reform, and lighter drug sentences while supporting stiffer penalties for a number of offenses.
You may recognize APAAC - it's one of the sources you quoted with reference to "prison is full of dangerous and violent offenders". When I first read it it sounded like a District Attorney's campaign speech, and no wonder - it's their lobbying organization, that has opposed each and every reform bill in AZ in the last 24 years.
> You didn't steal a bicycle.
Or of an Arizona man convicted of several thefts in the space of three months from yards, sheds, all agreed by the state to be non-violent offenses, and only a couple involved entering any structure at all... his sentence? Two hundred and ninety two years. What did he steal that earned this sentence? A drill, flashlight, telescope, credit card.
Arizona also repeatedly sentences people sentences, up to life, with parole. Including plea bargains. And then it abolished the concept of parole. For nearly 300 people, this means now the state has "changed the terms of the deal or sentencing after the fact". (https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-investiga...)
Your attitude of "most of these people are dangerous criminals" is also not entirely aligned with reality.
> The vast majority of prisoners are not dangerous.
Wow, what a divergence from reality.
The vast majority of prisoners are dangerous. This myth that the US incarcerates prisoners not because we have a huge criminal class, but because we just like locking people up, is one of the most inane talking points on the left, one easily disproven with a few seconds of googling, and yet people keep repeating it.
Percentage of criminals in AZ that have committed violent felonies or are repeat felony offenders: 94.2%
of these, the number who are considered "violent offenders": 65.4%
One of the many mistakes made by people is looking only at Federal statistics (About 10% of all inmates are held by the Federal government, the rest are held by state governments). In general, many people have a very difficult time grasping federalism, and don't understand that the Federal legal code focuses on interstate offenses and other offenses that states can't handle. E.g. not things like violence or robbery, but say, embezzlement, trafficking across state lines, securities fraud, etc. The FBI/Justice Department do not get involved in most violent crime.
The next part of the deception is to look only at Federal prison statistics and say "hey, there's not a lot murderers here -- we are mostly locking people up for trafficking things across state lines!" -- and just hope that your listener is too unaware to say "wait a minute -- are you giving me federal prison statistics in a debate about crime? What is wrong with you?!"
I would also note the delicious irony that the same people who complain about "white collar crime" (e.g. property crime) being given a less stringent sentence than "blue collar crime" (e.g. violence) are the most vocal ones insisting that we shouldn't be incarcerating non-violent offenders.
You have to decide whether robbery/fraud is something that deserves a prison sentence and then be consistent -- not calling for prison for some CEO when you are in corporate-hating mode, and then demanding release of non-violent offenders when you are weeping after watching Les Miserables.
The irony of complaining about cherry picking statistics while yourself cherry picking statistics is astounding. If you combine federal and state prisons about 40% of prisoners are reported to be in prison for violent offenses (in 2019 according to statistics prepared by the Bureau of Justice Statistics). So, yes, the majority of prisoners are in fact imprisoned for non-violent offenses. But this is not the end of the story, there is no universal standard for what is considered a "violent crime" so states are free to set their own standards (often under considerable political pressure from the local legislature). Some states consider any theft involving drugs or even embezzlement as violent crimes. Beyond this, these statistics are collected and maintained by the same institutions which have a direct monetary incentive to over report violent crime in order to obtain increased funding. This is a clear conflict of interest.
But even if violent offenders were the majority, violent offenders in general are, perhaps surprisingly, less likely to reoffend. This is because the best predictors of violence in the general population are age and secondarily gender. The overwhelming amount of violent crime is committed by male adolescents and young men. While we may be fascinated with macabre cases where serial killers and other extreme offenders were released, these are outliers. We should not base policy decisions on our emotional responses to crime but on measurable outcomes.
> This myth that the US incarcerates prisoners not because we have a huge criminal class,
The US has a “huge criminal class” because of its criminalization, incarceration, and disenfranchisement (not just voting, but more general engagement in society) practices, which grew up initially as a concious, direct replacement for chattel slavery.
The size of the criminal class is not the trigger for the policy, but its objective. Initially out of racial animus and desire for commercial exploitation, including via the (now closed by federal statute despite the absence of a Constitutional prohibition, formally, though many would disagree that it is actually eliminated in practice given the nature of prison labor policies) penal servitude loophole in the 13th Amendment, but now the institutional interests of the politically powerful law enforcement—prison—industrial complex in protecting and expanding its own role is layered on top of those interests.
> Percentage of criminals in AZ that have committed violent felonies or are repeat felony offenders: 94.2%
You can be a repeat felony offender with only non-violent drug offenses to your name. Explain to us how multiple drug possession felonies makes you "dangerous" to society?
We're a few interactions into this debate. I want to clarify, are we discussing what is legal or what is morally just? Because those are far from the same. I personally would rather discuss what is morally justifiable, since that is a more important standard.
> We're a few interactions into this debate. I want to clarify, are we discussing what is legal or what is morally just? Because those are far from the same. I personally would rather discuss what is morally justifiable, since that is a more important standard.
Who's morals? Yours? His? What makes your morals better than his? Why do you think your bar for "morally just" is the correct one?
Arguing morals is pointless - it's all subjective.
The best you can do is argue whether the rules are being adhered to or not.
Second best is to argue for addition or removal of rules.
I think there are many examples in history where discussing morals was more important than discussing the letter of law. When women couldn't vote, was "what's right" or "what's legal" the more important question?
You speak as though the law is not subjective, but legal rules are ultimately subjective just like moral rules. Was the holocaust legal? Most people when faced with the holocaust think "who cares what the law was, this is morally wrong". I'm sure there's some arguments out there that the holocaust was in fact illegal, and that's a fine academic argument about the law to have, but at the end of the day the people in power did what they did, and so I guess the legality of it all wasn't that important.
Arguing morals is very important.
And so back to my point, the more interesting question is "what is morally right and how do we want to structure our society in the future?" But if one side is arguing about morals and the other side is arguing about legalities, and they don't realize they're talking about different things, then it's hard to make progress.
> Second best is to argue for addition or removal of rules.
And to answer your comment, arguing morals is pointless because there is no evidence that your morals are, in fact, any better than what you are arguing against.
None.
Arguing without evidence is pointless. You're simply saying "My opinion is better!", but in a more sophisticated manner.
Basically, you're doing the highbrow equivalent of "My God Is The Real God Only".
> Second best is to argue for addition or removal of rules.
What would we base our arguments for adding or removing rules upon? Financial incentives? Upon what will we base our assumption that financial incentives are important? Logical arguments are great, but after going down a layer or two we find there are only moral arguments. They are not pointless.
The above was going to be my first response, but then I took a step back and tried to address your argument as a whole.
I'm guessing you haven't spent much time considering moral philosophy, but even simplified toy examples, like the Trolley Problem quickly move past purely logical arguments and are firmly in the subjective realm. We won't be able to have a philosophical discussion here, but if you want I'd recommend the book "How to Be Perfect" as a relatively fun read on the subject and a good introduction.
> What would we base our arguments for adding or removing rules upon?
In practice we use a lot of things to attempt to convince a population to be for/against a law. We do it based on emotion (i.e. how much outrage/empathy/fear can be mustered on this particular crime), a sense of fairness sometimes.
But almost all the arguments using morals are poor ones - the against argument for female bodily autonomy is argued using morals, for example, and it didn't work.
Same-sex marriages weren't won by making moral arguments inasmuch the other side lost by making moral arguments.
When you see an argument based on morals, replace the word "morals" with "my god says so", because in practice that is all it is.
> if you want I'd recommend the book "How to Be Perfect" as a relatively fun read on the subject and a good introduction.
Thanks, I'll have a look for it. I'm afraid it seems that I haven't convinced you that arguing from morals is pointless, but I'm going to try one more time :-)
But, I respect your position, and it is not an uncommon one.
... so, parting thought ...
How can you continue an argument using your moral position as support, when the other party can dismiss your argument by saying that your moral position is inferior to his?
I think it's disingenuous to imply that it's impossible to separate legality from morality or ethics.
Saying "women shouldn't be forced to have medical procedures performed against their consent" is not just arguing about whose opinion is better. You are missing the forest for the trees.
> Saying "women shouldn't be forced to have medical procedures performed against their consent" is not just arguing about whose opinion is better.
Who's arguing that? I already made my position on that point clear: I think it's repugnant.
This thread (if you read back upthread) is literally only about the following sentence:
> I personally would rather discuss what is morally justifiable, since that is a more important standard.
But, while we're here anyway, I may as well ask why is the argument "women shouldn't have medical procedures performed against their consent"?
Why isn't the argument "people shouldn't have medical procedures against their consent"? Surely the notion that everyone should be treated equally is a morally superior position, so why focus on the less-moral argument?
It is important to mention that inducing birth before term increases the incidence of respiratory problems in the baby (beyond the abhorrent ethical issues).
There are legitimate reasons to need to induce labor (certainly not in every case). It’s not performed for exclusively trivial reasons like circumcision for example.
To the best of its ability would mean not inducing at 37 weeks, which _increases_ problems.
Induction at 38 weeks or below is _not_ recommended due to poorer outcomes absent a compelling reason.
The solution here is to ensure appropriate medical care, not to say "we can't and won't provide that, so this is what we're going to do, and if you don't like it, maybe you shouldn't be a criminal, and if this has negative health implications for your child, well, then, maybe it shouldn't have had a criminal for a mother".
I am unsure of whether this comment is meant to justify arbitrary human rights abuses against prisoners on the basis of their status as such, or simply to state that prisoners' human rights are indeed commonly abused. Could you please clarify your position in this regard?
If the latter, I think you will find that it does not really need to be said. Most people around here are likely familiar with the abuses of the carceral state.
> If the prison can argue that the induction leads to meaningfully better health outcomes (and induction frequently does!) then that is the end of the matter
The prison doesn't even _have_ an argument, they're denying the truth. So even by your unbelievably-low bar, they're failing.
If you are in prison and have a serious tooth infection (and that can be fatal though rarely) then yes, the state can absolutely force you to have a root canal.
The state only has to show that the care is reasonably required for your meaningful health.
> If you are in prison and have a serious tooth infection (and that can be fatal though rarely) then yes, the state can absolutely force you to have a root canal.
This isn't really comparable; it would be like the prison forcibly removing your teeth because you may get a serious tooth infection and they don't want to be liable for that.
Well, not only are you evil, even worse: you're wrong. The only scenario in which the state can compel you to receive medical treatment while in prison is to ensure the safety of staff or other inmates (e.g. they can force a violent inmate to take anti-psychotics or force inmates to receive vaccinations to prevent the spread of disease). Otherwise, prisoners have the same rights to informed consent as you and I do.
At this point it's worth pointing out that this user has conspicuously ignored this and other replies that point out that, beyond any moral qualms, the user is woefully uninformed about the medical rights of prisoners. Dunning-Kruger strikes again.
Nothing in this contradicts what I said. Prisoners have a right to informed consent which can be removed in certain circumstances, specifically to ensure the safety of staff or other inmates. You made a much broader categorical claim that prisoners simply do not have the right to informed consent and you are wrong. For example, here is a document from Tennessee outlining the scenarios in which an inmate can and cannot refuse care: https://www.tn.gov/content/dam/tn/correction/documents/113-5...
I'd suggest doing some actual research into the relevant case law, e.g. Washington v Harper, instead of just googling until you find something that can be misinterpreted to support your position. While prison administrators have wide leeway to force treatment they are still required to show that it's necessary, either for safety reasons or because the treatment was mandated as part of the sentence of the inmate.
> receive vaccinations to prevent the spread of disease
Here, my county and the one adjacent have two Sheriffs who are twin brothers, and are vehemently anti mask, etc. (Actually, one has since lost his bid for re-election).
Their attitude to the jails under their control was to _refuse_ to allow inmates to mask, even in dorm holding cells, and to refuse to vaccinate any prisoner against COVID who was in custody.
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Actually, it will take someone actually compromising an election in a way that is unassailably and unquestionably broken. At that point the elected officials (who presumably have succeeded under the existing broken voting system) will rise up to fix the problem based on scientific evidence and their understanding of statistics.
Thankfully we can be sure that our votes have not been compromised in the past and there are no actors in the system who might benefit from avoiding looking into possible compromises.
> At that point the elected officials (who presumably have succeeded under the existing broken voting system) will rise up to fix the problem based on scientific evidence and their understanding of statistics.
What motivation do they have to fix a system that put them in office in the first place? (hint: none, there is no motivation)
Yea I know you were joking, but I was highlighting a major problem with the current system we have: the only people who can fix it tend to benefit most from having it broken in their favor.
Am I the only person on here who is bothered by the specs of the base models? For $2400 you get a 2.2 Ghz machine with a 256 GB ssd and 16 GB of Ram. That was seriously overpriced and it hasn't budged in this new release. Seems like you've got to spend well north of 3K to get a reasonable machine. That is way over the market.
The model in the review is fully loaded. Apple will charge you a cool $3200 to upgrade to that 4TB ssd mentioned in the review. Apple's habit of gouging on peripherals is not... endearing.
Also, aren't many premium laptops 4K at this point?
In 2014 I bought the top of the line MBP for $2700AUD. To get a top of the line model now it's $4100AUD. As someone who loves macOS, I'm still not gonna buy a new MBP until the price reaches some level of reasonableness. I've been seriously considering of getting a Dell and using Linux instead and I may just do so if there's no budging of the prices in the next 2-3 years.
Yes, as stupid as it sounds the trackpad is one of the things I love most about the MBP. I wish the XPS had the same reputation as it'd make it an easier sell for me.
Apple has always commanded a premium for their laptops. Yes there’s competing specs out there for less but there always have been. I paid $3k for my Retina MBP in 2012 and it still works great for me today. It was a good buy for me.
If the MBPs available don’t seem worthwhile to you, no need to get upset about it, just don’t buy one.
I've always been happy (well, happy isn't the right word -- accepting perhaps) to pay what I know is a 25-40% premium for apple computers over a roughly equivalent PC, because I know what I'm getting in terms of quality, and the software is far superior.
I'm far less accepting of a 100% price premium while I watch the advantages which caused me to love Apple have been diminished. Seemingly every move in the pro line over the last several years have been to take away things that matter to me (replaceable parts, good keyboard, physical keys).
I for one welcome Apple's premium on hardware in general. It seems to make for a company that keeps its business model based on just their hardware. This is off topic so I apologise, but I've become rather disillusioned with how many better priced companies seem to be surreptitiously inserting constant tracking into their software and hardware.
I work in the public sector, we’re not allowed to use Chinese hardware and we get a special version of Windows 10 that has had it’s tracking disabled by Microsoft and verified/reviewed by our version of the NSA.
The only smartphones we’re allowed to use are iPhones that are enrolled into our enterprise program.
I can’t tell you if that means Apple tracks you less than Lenovo or Microsoft, but you can be pretty sure that someone is tracking you if you use unmodified hardware/software.
Yep. I have a $1400 laptop and it's 4k with a 7th gen i7, 512gb ssd and the same 16gb ram. It's also 15" but relatively light. The only thing that bothers me is the single USB port meaning I need to get an extender if I want to use a mouse and anything else but then even that is an improvement over 0.
I'm not suggesting that it can directly compete with a macbook in terms of graphics or processor but it's only slightly under for less than half the price.
I'm also both an answerer and asker on SO, and I've been using the site off and on almost since the beginning. The larger issue for me (and what is just touched on in this article) is the change in character of SO as its grown over time.
In the beginning I found a number of open and interesting questions (occasionally some of these were closed as being too opinion-based or broad, which bugged me a bit as they were some of the most interesting and illuminating (granted, you could argue that that is not the intention of SO. Still, having an interesting conversation closed seemed, at the very least, excessively pedantic).
The larger issue, I think, is that most open questions now are either of the "How do I do obscure thing X in framework Y under rare condition Z" variety, or beginner "Please do my homework" or "I have a bunch of things in my array it's not printing" sorts of questions.
Not sure what the right answer is for this. And, even so, I often get good responses when I post.
> The larger issue, I think, is that most open questions now are either of the "How do I do obscure thing X in framework Y under rare condition Z" variety, or beginner "Please do my homework" or "I have a bunch of things in my array it's not printing" sorts of questions.
I think it's due to the fact that the questions "in the middle" are already answered and people find them through searching. No need to and again. Only beginners (that can't search effectively) post on SO or people having rare edge cases (for which asking in SO is a last resort).
Actually, I think the market has created this. To me it looks like universities have moved from things like subjects that represent the apex of current human knowledge (hard sciences, philosophy, literature...) to a far more vocationally focused curriculum (business, marketing, game design, hospitality...).
To me this looks like a loss of idealism and a move towards a market idea of what sorts of things make up valuable knowledge. It also seems like a real loss of something important.
There's the nugget of an interesting point in here. A lot of journalists are struggling with the difficulty of covering someone who's essentially taking advantage of the norms of evenhandedness to get a platform for outright fabrications. The funny thing is that in other forums people use this to argue exactly the opposite, that journalistic standards force people to normalize craziness by presenting it on an even platform with sanity.
But of course, in this context, this guy is just playing the refs.
The writer draws this conclusion from the fact that many newspapers are attacking Donald Trump and are therefore unfair.
It's also a bit funny to see something from the NY Post here (from NY). It is (to put it mildly) not a reliable source.
I have nothing but admiration for the writers hard work, and I (as a Bernie fan) want to strongly object to it. I think my objections and his mirror the political divide in this country - the left wants a more compassionate world, the right sees the desire for redistribution as lazy people wanting to take from the people who've actually earned. While there's a bit of truth in both viewpoints, I'd ask him to consider :
- because he had to go through this experience, should everybody? would it be better if we had, say, government-paid college? more opportunity? maybe he could have studied something he wanted?
- do we really want a society where you pretty much have to choose between entrepreneurship or starvation? No poets? physicist? Teachers?
- college is far less affordable now then when he or I went to school (didn't read the cite at the end, sorry, but the fact is there regardless of who's responsible)
- Our society has unquestionably become more economically savage in the last few decades. Out of work? good luck on your health care, sucker. Do we really want a society where everybody has to give up everything to strive to be wealthy because that's the only safe harbor?
College is probably a lot more expensive than it needs to be -- do we really want to pick up that inflated bill? There has to be a better solution. I only went to college to get away from my parents (and party) for four years. I probably didn't need the excessive campus and amenities.
College costs are decided by the market, and right now there is no shortage of those who can get their hands on loans, and there is not much limit to the size of loans they can get, so prices have to go up until supply and demand hit equilibrium.
So it absolutely does need to be expensive, because scarce resources such as an education have an inverse relationship between degree value and number of degree holders. Otherwise it will be soon enough that our advanced engineering degrees are worth much less than before. Software Engineering average salary doesn't even keep up with inflation any more so in my opinion we are already seeing these effects.
Also I would argue a lot of the worthless degrees we see today are worthless due to both the volume of the holders of those degrees as well as the fact that they are premised on a field which doesn't have much practical value but if they were scarce they would be worth much more in the job market.
Multiple things here. I don't think such statements are terribly helpful, as they'll won't persuade Bernie's fans: some believe in fairness as "just desserts" while others believe in fairness as equality (usually a mix of equality of opportunity and equality of outcome).
Note, however, that's why Bernie is careful to use multiple messages: a more equalitarian message for some, "we aren't getting just desserts, because the system is rigged" for others -- a statement that happens to resonate with Charles Koch (often a negative focal point of Bernie's campaign), https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-koch-this-is...
It does seem to work, as Sanders captures some voters that consider liberty as an important moral consideration (perhaps he's the straw that broke the back of Rand Paul's campaign?): http://righteousmind.com/presidentialprimaries/, surprisingly (or not so surprisingly, as most agree that his legislative program will fail, yet his views on other issues are more liberty-friendly than HRC's).
It's not clear if the author directly addresses Bernie's (and Charles Koch's point): corporate welfare does exist and not everyone amongst the wealthiest is technical entrepreneur; individual hard work won't end subsidies for energy-extraction and farming industries, nor will it improve the criminal justice system. The author focuses on how the "rigging" affected by existing wealth is something one can outcome (yet, a male protestant could overcome a non-noble birth in 18th century England: it doesn't automatically follow that there was no merit in newly formed US abolishing titles of nobility at independence.) A more fruitful approach would be to make the case that Bernie's policies would A) significantly increase regulatory capture B) relative to other candidates, fail to improve ability of the audience (and who is the audience for the article?) to get ahead by virtue of hard work, thrift, and through existing products thereof.
On the other hand, there's something to be said about T.S. Elliot's observation that if were indeed to have [what most believed to be] a meritocracy, the the well off would have much less "noblesse privilege", attributing others misfortunes to personal moral failure. Yet people aren't blank slates: presently the markets tend to reward personality traits such as intelligence, conscientiousness, empathy, and (at least outside of our own field!) extraversion; while none of those traits are wholly innate and immutable, one usually isn't at liberty to make themselves as arbitrarily smart/personable/hard-working (yet, I suspect this knowledge wouldn't alter people's existing views in regards to whether or not a theoretical meritocracy would be fair or desirable..)
(For the record, I am not a fan of many of Sander's policy proposals -- despite being less repelled by him than by other candidates likely to make it to the general election -- for reasons that are pointless to go in to here, but if I didn't already hold that opinion, the article wouldn't change change my mind.)
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