"Hipsters on Food Stamps" or lies we tell kids about College and Society

[Montmorency]

with all the problems and stress I'm already facing I'm choosing to not add more

On the other hand, perhaps it's a choice between more work now, less problems later, and less work now, more problems later: civic engagement, that is.

Of course, instant gratification is always the best bet: hopefully one will be dead by the time it's not.

[Greyblades]

Again

I wouldnt know what to do if I did care, and the news makes me think noone does.

We might as well spend the time developing time travel seeing how clear the starting point isn't.

[Husar]

The solution is a balanced, rational population that takes a serious interest in their civic duties. We can't blame the rich for doing what they've always done. This is an era where ignorance should be eradicated, and yet...

This is a very good point. However, there is the problem that the "poor" have to coordinate a lot more than the rich to make an impact, e.g. if one person boycots a company the impact is usually negligible. And this feeling of not being able to make an impact demoralizes them. Doesn't help that, as TinCow said, a large part of the "poor" support the rich and the system that made them rich because they selfishly want to get there themselves. Studies have shown that people, if given the choice of 200$ for them and the other guy or 150$ for them and 100$ for the other guy, would choose option two because it sets them above the other guy. We do get good education but part of the education is that we're told, at least I was, that we all have to compete with eachother and the rest of the world (globalization) about the same few jobs. Poor people cannot turn down badly paid jobs because they are forced to take them or lose everything, the market is incredibly one-sided and people are pretty egoistic at the moment. People are even critical of the EU and would rather just have local governments despite the EU being the only thing that actually reigns in on huge multinational corporations. Corporations that can bend the market as they wish, that can just run to other governments which opportunistically offer them better conditions and cheaper "slaves". There really wouldn't be that many issues with corporations if the peasants were to stop threatening eachother over petty ideas such as lines we call borders because for corporations they hardly exist anymore (except if they can use them to their advantage) and that is why they are superior over the little man. Another way to explain it would also be the greek crisis that may not have happened had the EU been more fiscally united, integrated and standardized for a longer time.
As for people 200 years ago who worked 80 hours a week and would think 50 are lazy, they also paid a high price for doing and thinking that, most of them never became as old as we do now.
And then I wanted to support the idea that not all rich people are evil, compare Depardieu and Bill Gates. One runs to Russia, calling it a great democracy, the other invests 95% or so of his huuuuuge fortune into helping the poor. In this respect it's also worth noting that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs never really hated eachother, yet their customers do. It shows a fundamentally different approach to life and business IMO, people create enemies yet again and the rich guys just used that to sell them more stuff (think of the Apple ads with the PC). The problem aren't just the rich people, even though I agree that noone really needs to become that rich in the first place.

Humans are flawed I guess, I wonder whether I'm the first to have that thought.

[Idaho]

The solution is a balanced, rational population that takes a serious interest in their civic duties. We can't blame the rich for doing what they've always done. This is an era where ignorance should be eradicated, and yet...

The first priority must be to provide universal, high quality education.

[Strike For The South]

The first priority must be to provide universal, high quality education.

Education is for people who believe in evolution

[Idaho]

You don't believe in theories. You use them or disprove them..

[Strike For The South]

You don't believe in theories. You use them or disprove them..

Semantics, once again, a game for liberals.

[Idaho]

Semantics, once again, a game for liberals.

Yeah, the precise meaning of words never matters. Especially not in law, religion or politics.

[Greyblades]

It is rather important, I just sat through a debate on whether or not madness counts as a mental illness, the debatees were unable to decide on a single definition of madness for the entire hour.