Old fashion or new fashion, teachers' teaching styles are not the problem. The problem is that while they still teach facts, the often discourage actually thinking. The incessant attacks by both parties upon the idea that children can think are making it so that by the time they are out of school, they can't think.

Twenty years ago the idea that having an obviously-fake gun in school would get you in trouble, let alone kicked out or arrested, would be considered completely ludicrous. Be it anti-gun, anti-evolution, anti-whatever, schools have shifted their focus from teaching kids critical thinking and teaching them to question the world around them. Now they teach toeing the line, doing what they're told, and never questioning authority. Zero-tolerance policies are at the apex of this trend; it institutionalizes the concept of not thinking when a situation comes up, but instead doing exactly what you have been told to do. When you tell children that even teachers and school administrators are not allowed to use their judgment, why would kids ever think they should? Add to this the terror-inducing effects of zero-tolerance policies (i.e. "If someone would use a nerf gun, they'd probably also shoot you with a real one!"), and you reinforce the idea that you need to be terrified of everything, and trying to use your own judgment is a bad idea.

You want to improve things, it's not by going back to old teaching methods, it's by allowing teachers to teach thinking again and not by forcing them to be pawns in the organized "sheltering of young minds" that the administrations seem to be all too happy to go along with.

Inner-city poor typically require none of those. The first five they often don't use or can't afford, and the last one (alcohol) is easy to get without an ID even when you're under-age. Once you start looking 21+, it's even easier.

And, while voter fraud does exist, studies have found that in recent decades fake people showing up to vote has a negligible impact - the real fraud happening are issues of mass tampering (such as changing computer voting records, incorrectly flagging thousands of people as non-voting felons, "losing" boxes full of ballots, etc.) Rather than preventing vote fraud, the ID requirements are must more often used for voter intimidation. More information here.

True, but your three points are hardly what show if a company shows you respect or not - every business I've worked at had those three policies in place, and my experiences with them were widely different. (a) is just the standard term for the department; (b) is usually only used in the case of gross negligence or criminal activity; and (c) is only vaguely expected by any employer (really, it's more of a don't-screw-your-coworkers guideline).

A company doesn't show it respects you or not by whether or not they adhere to that type of stuff, but by how they choose to wield their power over you, and how they deal with you on a day-to-day basis. If they are truthful, listen to your concerns, and are reasonably flexible with schedules when problems come up, I find that far more of an indicator of if they respect and value you as an employee than what they call the HR department.

"Stand in line"? What is this, the 1900's? Most states let you file it all online. As for what you get - it will only be "a pittance" if your payrate was "a pittance". Typically, your benefits will be based on your previous payrate, so if you were being payed well, your UI checks will be good money (especially for doing nothing but filing a few forms). (Locally, the rate is 62-65% of your normal weekly pay, so if you'd been getting $1000/week, your UI would be ~ $620/week. Hardly a "pittance".)

30 years ago? That was the 80's, the years of trickle-down economics, and the start of rampant fuck-the-employees-for-a-quick-buck trends and the lead-up to our current financial and employment clusterfuck. I think you meant 130 years ago.

You'll have a hard time getting hired mostly because everybody who has a job there is unlikely to leave anytime soon.

That depends on how soon after the training you jump ship. If you complete the training and immediately go elsewhere, yeah - they'll assume you were taking advantage of them. If you worked for a couple of years before jumping ship, that just means you felt underpaid or under-appreciated, or got offered a much better position elsewhere, which are the normal, more benign reasons for leaving.

That's because customers are a company asset, and quite often the most important one. Taking a company's customers with you when you leave is more harmful than if you walked out with a half the office equipment under your coat. Theft of property is single-instance harm (and often insured) - theft of a customer is a straight loss that keeps recurring every time that customer would have bought something.

The voter ID bill discourages the poor from voting, thus benefiting the rich. The Affordable Care Act benefits the poor more than the rich. Simple vs. complex isn't the issue here.

Yes, iDid.

The reason why is because you're not going to dive 30 minutes out of your way to get a $20 extension cord, let alone a $5 hammer/wrench/screwdriver. Add in the fact that going back can make you late for the next appointment you have, and it's pretty much just not going to happen.

Not if you have a slam-dunk. In that case you file it in small claims court - small claims courts often expect you to represent yourself since it is for small amounts of money, and expect the court time taken to be proportionately small. The odds of the other company even spending the money to send out a lawyer for something they're sure to lose is minimal, and if a lawyer tried to drag a small claims fight out with trivial crap the judge would typically bitch-slap them for it, especially when you've got the court transcript of them losing a near-identical case under a near-identical situation.

I see what you did there.

That depends on what state you're in, how long you work, how long you are allowed for a break, and if you're allowed to leave during your break.

I once got a large extra paycheck from a job I worked at because they were found to be violating this (we got one 30 minute break when working 7+ hour shifts - the state law said anything under 1 hour of breaktime in such a shift requires the breaks to be paid). AFAIK nobody actually sued them over it - it got brought to their attention and they sent out the checks to head off any litigation.

Actually it'll be much easier for you to bring your suit in that case - you simply look up the records of the previous suit and copy/paste into your own. Make sure you bring up that the company was ruled against in the previous, near-identical case, and the court time will be pretty low - courts base most of their decisions on previous court cases, so you're about 99% likely to win.

Because of this, if a company loses a case like this, you can just send them a letter telling them you were screwed over the exact same way, and are willing to settle for the same terms as the previous case, and most companies will accept it in exchange for a waiver and an NDA.

Because 90% of women carry purses. Most women's clothing don't have usable pockets, so they need the purses. A ban would unfairly affect women more than men, and would result in another lawsuit.

Also, if the store has any kind of dress code or uniforms, there's a good chance that many of the employees bring a change of clothes with them so they don't have to go straight home after work to change (and, to a lesser degree, go straight to work from home in the morning). Bringing your change of clothes in a bag is both vastly more convenient, and also required to protect said clothes from any bad weather.