A discussion of the election results today.

[samsmart]

Perhaps its something for another thread at a later time but I liked a generalized idea that I think it was either Huckabee or McCain put forth during the primaries of the presidential election. The short of it was using welfare money to invest in training environments where basic trades and skills are taught in hopes of helping people transition into a job, even if its relatively menial, by giving them actual skills rather than simply giving them money. Its something that struck me as an interesting third way rather than simply staying the course or cutting completely.

Well, instead of that being a part of welfare reform, I'd like to see that as part of educational reform.

I was going to bring this up in a thread about issues described in "Capitalism: A Love Story." One of those issues was the costs of getting trained and educated in the U.S. for a professional technical career versus the income most acquire while in that career field. Essentially, in the U.S. today it costs more to train a person in an occupation than they generally earn.

This, to me, doesn't make sense at all and something really needs to be done about it. And it's not a conservative issue or a liberal issue. I think this, hands down, is one of those few things that's a common sense issue.

I mean the way the U.S. works right now is that a person can go into debt on student loans in order to graduate from college or university with a 4-year degree without the guarantee of a job in that field that will allow them to easily pay off their loans; however, a guy can start out as a janitor, make minimum wage, live in a cheap ghetto apartment, and slowly save up money $50 at a time, and eventually have a good nest egg.

So in terms of real money, a poor minimum wage worker can work his low-skill job and save more money than a college trained professional. That absolutely makes no sense to me and is so counter-intuitive as to border on insanity.