The sorry state of 'murrican education.

[Phox]

Personally, I'm still waiting on Captain Trips. C'mon, military-industrial complex! Do us a solid and fuck up with a supervirus! That'd be real horrorshow. 

[Drunken Monkey Cabal]

OK let me try and attempt to clarify

The financial world isn't one I'm particularly familiar with,  I probably should have found that thread before asking stupid questions, but having a giant discussion about finances was never what I originally intended. Returning to my original point.

My original response in regards to apathy, whilst it related to education, it was also a comment more on what appears to me as more of a systemic problem within certain areas of population that I've met. The people who I was referring to are apathetic about their future in general. They have no dreams, no goals, other than to "Buy Product X" or "Just get drunk and party and have a good time and stuff"
I'm sorry if it came out as if I was suggesting that you required education in order to achieve a job. The point I was trying to make was that very few worthwhile things just fall in your lap, you generally are going to have to work for them, be this being an astronaut, a vet or a world famous porn star.
So there is little they need to do in order to achieve any of the 'goals' that they have in life. So these were the people who fucked around in school, as for them what was the point being there.
The point of there being no work at the minute or education not being the cure all are both valid, and I wasn't disagreeing with either.
The opinion I was trying to get across was that my old high school was full of people like this during the 'economic boom' (or at least the growth of the last 10 years), and will continue afterwards if/when the economy recovers. These people will still have no aspirations. Therefore they and their descendants will still fuck around in school ruining theirs and others education. My comment towards death/famine/war was that it seems for many people they only get up and do anything when some form of competition/Impending disaster/ something that TV/Booze cannot hide suddenly occurs. As for culling the kids, I'm pretty sure that wasn't what I meant.

I am awfully certain that somewhere in the OP I crammed the idea that people are hopelessly fucked because the educational system is fucked because of The Man's greasy fingers. Even in good educational systems there are lazy kids, but most kids want to learn and get nasty when you don't give them what their brains want, and a lot of them are good at smelling bullshit. It's a system that perpetuates and ingrains their apathy.

You know, you'd figure it would be difficult to focus on getting exceptional grades for a future career when famine/disease/war/purges fuck your families' shit up rather than the other way around.

I disagree. A lot of people I went to school with did not want to learn, were lazy and considered that they knew all the needed to know to survive in life. As such regardless of the standard, or how it was delivered, they did not care. This lead them to apathy I was talking about above. And this apathy as I suggested before, seems to me as a social issue. In that these people are not given any aspirations or drive by their parents. they then have Kids and repeat. Worse is that due to lack of inspiration from any one growing up (none from parents, and did not listen to teachers, so leaves few adults in their growing up period), they become afraid of failure so they do not try. I wasn't stating a solution, just as to what my opinion of what is wrong with the current education system is. Which is something that I don't think is anyway the government's fault. All the government should be responsible is to provide the environment for people to learn/better them selves. In the 'Take a horse to water' analogy. 
From my experience, it was that there are many people exist who have no dreams and would rather drink and fuck, rather than try at something, possibly fail and have try again and eventually succeed, and its these people who I think are a main cause in lower educational standards.
But maybe I'm just missing the point, or repeating what's already been said before but in just a different way. 


Moving back onto my financial point. I Tried reading for a change, and there are still things I don't understand. I mean I get what happened, but not so sure on what could happen in the future.

So lets say the global economy collapses. Banks goes bust, Governments default. This has happened before no? The UK has done it before in the past.
My question was, what is the point at which things bottom out. I read references to Japan's Lost decade, where things just halted to virtually zero percent interest. Which is near to what the UK is experiencing now, so does that mean we can expect a similar scenario, of slow growth of x years before recovery? where things just tick over?
Will the government austerity measures designed to cut the deficit affect this in any way? I mean I thought the whole point of reducing the deficit would be to reduce the tax wasted on debt interest, meaning that money can then be used for actual useful things, stimulating the economy with new jobs right?
and whilst I understand that continuing cutting jobs will lead to the point where no more cuts can be made to reduce the deficit, What I don't understand is how the basic fact that people in jobs need to spend their money on something (food at least), therefore spawning more jobs, and so on. How will this not lead to a recovery or some sort of recovery?
Say analogous to a biodiversity model where in the predator/prey relationship fluctuates by modifying one of the variables, an equilibrium point will always be reached (ignoring an external cataclysm). so surely at some point whilst the economy is still declining, it will reach equilibrium point somewhere, yes? Where the number of money input into the economy supports a certain amount of jobs plus the taxes etc. But is the reason we are so 'fucked' is that the current financial climate may cause this equilibrium point to exist at such a level that growth will be nigh on impossible unless an external factor is added?

     

If you don't feel like answer what some of you may consider stupid, I would at least appreciate some decent links that point me in the right direction, say a decent idiots guide to economics or something?

[Doktor Howl]

My original response in regards to apathy, whilst it related to education, it was also a comment more on what appears to me as more of a systemic problem within certain areas of population that I've met. The people who I was referring to are apathetic about their future in general. They have no dreams, no goals, other than to "Buy Product X" or "Just get drunk and party and have a good time and stuff"

That's because goals are foolish for 95% of them.  There's nothing to BE.