Unfortunately that same diploma is becoming increasingly essential for any employment all the way down to gas station attendant. If I had kids I would highly encourage them to find a trade and go to a trade school. Find a job that pays just well enough to do the things you actually want to do while giving you enough free time to do them.

Most teachers I have had substantial interaction with do not repeat the same thing over and over every year. Each time they teach a class, their presentation becomes more refined. In addition, they answer questions and clarify concepts on the fly at the very moment that the questions and content are at the front of the student's attention. That has a substantial value over a video lecture or reading books.

The point is that lack of money is not the problem. Priority of the school board and administration maybe, but not lack of money. At least in many cases. Every school district is a bit different.

The question is, are you going to need to spend another hour on the phone in a year threatening to cancel your service when your rate goes up $8 a month just so that they keep you at $90 a month? Even when clearly they were making enough money at that rate if they were willing to change it back?

I don't see this being a reason given the vast sum of money being spent on technology for the classroom.

To be fair, it would be next to impossible to have a free market on cable TV. Distribution is the first big problem that is frequently discussed here. I don't want a ton of cable companies running their lines in front of my house. One I'd more than enough. Also, there is likely a very big cost of operation barrier since every new competitor needs to drop a huge investment in infrastructure to grab a fraction of the already saturated market. Sure there are cases where governments have explicitly stopped local governments from installing a competing service, but this is not common.

But the bigger problem now is the whole industry model. No ala cart pricing, and limited streaming. This spits in the face of market realities. I can't stomach paying for sports channels I will never watch and consider blocking in my household. Not to mention all the other trash channels I never watch. I am happy to pay a premium for only the channels I want, but this is not an option. On top of that, I want to watch what I want to watch when I want to watch it. This is why I ditched cable for a combination of roku, Amazon Prime, and Netflix. I am happy to pay for the shows I want to watch on Amazon Prime. I watch more TV than ever before and I pay a lot less for it.

For a service that I used only a handful of times a week, the straw the brolemthe camel's back for me was the automatic rate increase every year until you call to complain. That's just abusive and degrading. I don't want to haggle for my service. Offer me a price that is fair to both of us and make it the same for all customers with the same service. Allowing me to haggle just means you don't value my time.

How so? A net loss to the consumer sure. But to society? That's a stretch. You would need to assess the supplier chain to find out where all of that money ends up to make that determination. You can bet if you buy foreign made panels, almost all of that money is leaving society. If you're paying a premium for locally made panels, I would at least be willing to take the gamble that the majority of that money stays within our society.

Yeah, just look at all those technicians sitting around in a back room. I think you're mistaking the unibody assemby as representing the assembly of the entire car. It's standard for that to be mostly automated because of all the welding. But after it's painted, assembly is still mostly a well choreographed manual exercise. It just doesn't look as sexy on TV because people don't appreciate the organizational precision involved.

More like we're just at the end of our rope. At some point, when your neighbor won't stop peaking in your house, you either completely wall yourself off from the world or you say screw it and walk around in your skivvies all day and say 'enjoy the show'. At least in the later you don't have to lose out.

Really? My conclusion is that I should just leave this absurd place and go home where people are a touch more reasonable on the whole.

I don't know if that is true or not. Since I moved to Southern California, it has occurred to me that if I had a kid, I don't know what kind of menial summer job they could get. The things I used to do are just not options for a kid here. Cut grass? That is already dominated by day laborers and professional get ups. Flip burgers? I do see some younger people doing that but it appears to be far more dominated by adults than where I grew up. Paper delivery routes are done by adults. Hell even picking up dog poop is a job for the career man out here. There does not seem to be much left for a young teenager.

I mean, the reason I buy such a company is because it works and because keeping up with our economic system essentially depends upon participating in the system. It's lower risk gambling. The few companies I have invested in that pay good dividends always give me bigger headaches come tax time than its worth.

Not true. My car has tangible value. My house has tangible value. My furniture has tangible value. My stocks do not have tangible value except for the dividends they pay me. Cash is the only value I receive from a stock, and if its not coming from the company, the company is not actually creating value for me. The value becomes more like a collectable.

Cash can buy me tangible value. I have to trade stocks for cash before they can be used to buy tangible value.

That implies that stock value is directly related to the real value of a company. It is not. As a former 3D FX shareholder, I can guarantee you it is not.

These days it is often far dumber than that. Unless a company is paying a dividend, the only value you have is what someone else is willing to pay for it. In the age of worshiping the Almighty Growth, dividend payouts are more scarce than they once were and you can't expect a fledgling company will ever pay out. Stocks like that are little more than trading cards. It's just a popularity contest slightly regulated by supply. Actual earnings reports in these cases are only meaningful in the sense that people make buying decisions based on them, but with them having no direct impact on actual value.