If you just want a job and are looking to do something theoretical, rethink your career choice.

So you're saying if I'm not independently wealthy I should know my place and not aspire above my station, and instead leave the "gentleman careers" for the nobility?

Without the resources of a college or university. Where are you going to get all the equipment for, say, science courses? This is prohibitively expensive.

Oh, you were suggesting that I pay for your "real education" while being excluded from it. Why in blazes would I?

How about people who just want a job go elsewhere?

How about people who want an exclusive "real education" pay for it themselves, rather than demand that those with jobs subsidize their hobbies while being barred from partaking in them?

We need to become much more selective about who we give loans and grants for colleges and universities.

Who's we? I am certainly not going to exclude myself and my kin from something paid with my taxes. And you already stated above you can't pay for it yourself.

Most people are unintelligent, so that's not surprising.

It is unwise to insult people you are trying to get charity from.

Because then you can ensure that they'll know exactly what they need to for their specific job, which applies even to people with pieces of paper.

Does exact match bring sufficient additional efficiency to pay itself back in a reasonable time? Apparently not, since businesses in general aren't doing so.

So does coal and nuclear. No-one wants to live near those either.

Less people have to for the same amount of power generated. Also, don't underestimate the "out of sight, out of mind" -effect - a nuclear power plant is far less conspicious than acres after acres of windmills. Finally, the complaints about windmills are typically about the appearance, noise and other actual effects while the complaints about nuclear are about highly unlikely disaster scenarios, which eventually fade from people's minds when nothing happens.

Off shore wind, far enough out that no-one can complain, is getting cheaper all the time.

You could put it mid-Atlantic and someone will complain. Everything has consequences - or at least potential consequences - and nothing whatsoever is acceptable to an enviromentalist. Or at least that's what it seems like to me.

If you are going to shoot down renewables because they are expensive or need some investment then you had better do the same with coal and nuclear, and get ready for the lights to go out.

Which seems the most likely result right now. Also, the main problem with renewables is that since efficient grid-scale storage doesn't exist nor seems likely to exist anytime soon, reaching anything approaching reliability with them requires a long-term coordinated - centrally planned, with all objections to any part of the plan overruled - rollout, which is simply not possible in a democratic, capitalistic society. By contrast, a nuclear coal or nuclear plant can be simply built and hooked into the grid by a single, if large, company.

How does that differ from our present system of government?

Those that make bad choices, and don't try deserve to be stuck where they are.

That someone made bad choices in no way entitles Mickey Dee to be effectively subsidized by tax money in their quest to give as many people as possible various horrible metabological illnesses. Minimum wage needs to be high enough that the employee doesn't need any kind of additional support, otherwise you're simply building a corporate welfare state.

Also, I'm not entirely certain what you mean by "deserving" here. Are bad - by which I presume you mean economically unsuccesfull - choices some kind of sin that needs to be punished?

An intelligent human can decide not to fuck unprotected if they can't afford to raise the consequences of their actions.

An intelligent human should also realize that a society where people can't afford to have children is doomed. A Mensa member might comprehend that it's not possible to know your economic fortunes for two decades or so it takes to rise a kid. And a once-in-a-century genius could even hypothesize it's cheaper to ensure children have a stable and safe environment to grow up in than to deal with the consequences if they don't, even after we factor in the horrendous consequence of poor single mothers not having maximally miserable lives.

Education. And education is not just so you can get a job, but so you can be a well-rounded human being and have an understanding of the universe around you.

People who just want a job should go to trade schools.

Traditionally, trade schools have been for more "hands on" jobs like a plumber or an electrician, while college has been for more theoretical ones like a geologist or a mathematician. I don't think there's ever been any institution for pure self-improvement without a goal of increasing your productivity in some way, nor am I convinced that's even a coherent concept - a tree is known by its fruits, after all.

True, and then colleges turn into poor imitations of trade schools, making it more difficult for intelligent people to find a real education.

Nothing stops you from starting a web forum for the purposes of education, like Khan academy has done, or even renting a set of physical buildings for this purpose - after all, if your goal is education rather than employability, you don't need any official accreditation. Of course you might have trouble convincing the students to pay the upkeep of such an institution, but that simply goes to show that "real education" isn't worth its price for most people.

Perhaps employers should stop requiring you to have pieces of paper so often, and actually offer job training and test their potential employees. It used to be more common, and it still happens in the better work environments.

Why provide training when that simply makes the employee more likely to get a better job elsewhere? You'd need lifelong careers to be the rule for this to make sense, and that seems unlikely to return without massive cultural shifts.

MSNBC claims to be extreme leftists, and you lap it up. Stop believing everything the television tells you, it will help.

Their memories are simply that short. That's how they forget that none of their interests have been served by their elected politicians, and proceed to re-elect them.

Here in California, however, we re-relected Jerry Brown. That's very like re-electing Marion Berry. Heh heh heh.

this is true anyway. Citibank is pure fucking evil. Sadly, they were my only choice for a lender when I got a student loan.

so just to be clear, you are in favor of oil pipelines? which commit a valdez or a deepwater every so many days or so?

FTFY. For every Warren Buffet there's a hundred fucks who won't cough up a dime unless you punch them in the gut.

And it is no different in that income is redistributed from the middle class instead of the rich.

Yes, but still... It'll be a while before we run out of ocean :)

Ocean no, shoreline yes. Especially shoreline where no one influental enough to block development happens to live. Windmills suffer considerably from NIMBY. All renewables do, due to the vast areas required by them.

Where are they going to get enough biomass? Farms aren't going to grow low value biomass instead of high value food.

Food is biomass, and according to Wikipedia, half of all food - 100 kg per person per year - is wasted. Dunno if it would be enough to cover the need, but a low-cost, low-maintenance, high-reliability gas generator could potentially have markets, at least in apartment buildings, assuming it's actually possible to build one.

Fun fact, even a datacenter in the middle of a desert can cool every piece of equipment inside via a process known as evaporative cooling; using a heat exchanger connected to an underground water tank or adequate commercial supply, the differential in humidity inside causes heat to be evaporated in the desert sun.

Another fun fact: deserts rarely have water mains or a native surplus of water.