Why do you care what pronouns someone uses? And why is someone's DNA any of your business?

Look around a little bit, I'm sure you'll find one nearby with openings. For example, just a rudimentary search, I found openings at a welding program in a big city: https://www.pcc.edu/programs/w...

The average annual salary (not starting), is $54,000. Hardly enough to live a good life in Portland.

And high enrollment in programs will depress salaries as employers won't have to pay as much to recruit good talent.

The claim was they were "making great money." A job that doesn't allow you to raise a family is not "great money." Maybe there will be raises along the way, but no promises.

Well, it depends on how you track spending over time and how you adjust for inflation. In many states, state spending on higher education is either down or flat once you adjust for inflation. And costs, particularly health insurance, have risen much faster than inflation, so even maintaining services at the same level means you'll have to find more money elsewhere (usually tuition and fees). Public institutions are increasingly called to do things outside of teaching classes in their states, such as extension programs, services for K-12 students & teachers, state research priorities, etc. all while maintaining old buildings that like to fall down and running world-class minor league athletic programs.

The majority of costs for colleges / universities are personnel costs. Health insurance costs have gone through the roof. Students' expectations for amenities continues to rise, and the vote with their feet. Frankly, most students are not that cost sensitive and will often pick a more expensive place with more amenities than a slightly cheaper place with less.

Nope. Sorry. At least around here, trade schools have plenty of openings. You can Sign Up to Start Right Now!

And trade schools are required to post the median salaries of their recent graduates in all of the trades. Pretty much all of the major trades - including plumbing - have starting salaries that would put a family of 4 right near the federal poverty level for this area.

Do you want to have educated neighbors? Who you can hire for your business? Who are employable and contribute to the economy? Who can carefully evaluate data and make thoughtful decisions when voting? Who will take care of you when you are old and cannot wipe your own butt?

Then yes to any of these, then it makes sense that everyone should contribute toward the cost of good quality public schools.

Wow, it's like a whole new world out here! So sunny and so much space to move my arms.

I was a long-time PC user and my first smartphone was an Android (I held onto my flip phone for a long time, so it wasn't an early-adopter Android model). I loved that I could open up my PC and add new memory, change the hard drive, put in additional Blu-ray burners and bays, etc. without buying a new machine. I still have a PC tower that runs Windows 10 that I bought in 2012 that still surfs the web, opens email, burns Blu-rays, and will run some old versions of Office (mostly just Word, Excel, and PP, but what else do you need?), and over the years I've installed additional RAM, put in a new, faster SSD hard drive, and added two disk burners.

But I got tired of Google and Microsoft invading my privacy, targeting and pushing ads in my face all the time, pushing features I didn't want into Windows that were designed to push more ads on me and force me to use features I don't want, and when you compare the Apple products with the top-end PCs and phones, the pricing isn't much different. I don't game, so don't care about that, and the devices all work together easily and seamlessly, and hardly ever does Apple invade my privacy or push intrusive ads in my face. Their stuff is durable (though non-upgradable), which I haven't always had the same luck with competitors.

Now help me find some tape for my glasses.

I wrote this from a locker, you insensitive dolt! (And my underwear is pre-wedgied, so take that!)

To each their own, but you can have my iPhone when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.

To be honest, I don't know enough about what Samsung offers in the phone area, but their appliances are total and complete garbage, and I'm no fan of their "smart" monitors or TVs, either.

I am glad there are competitors in the market that offer a compelling alternative, though. It's never good for an area to be dominated by one player, and it's good for Apple (and Samsung) to have healthy competition.

Sure, vouchers expand choice unless your student has a disability or is poor.
But rich already had choice since they could simply move to wherever they wanted or could pay whatever fee the private schools charged, and could bribe - sorry, donate - to the school if the student didn't have the right credentials to get in.

As a result, vouchers do very little for choice (the vast majority of voucher recipients in Iowa, for example, were already attending private schools before the voucher program), and are essentially another handout for the rich.

WW2 could have been prevented, but the march toward war was inevitable once Hitler stole complete power. That is to say, I don't think it is too late to avoid a global war, but we certainly have to work hard to ensure we don't result in a global war. Trump seems content to let the world be more and more dominated by three global powers - the U.S., Russia, and China (and maybe the EU as a 4th, but time will tell). They don't seem to much care about South America or Africa, except perhaps the Middle East.
I agree that banning all trade between the U.S. and China would be a disaster, particularly because we import huge amounts of goods and materials from China. BUT, that also does not mean that U.S. companies have to sell the Chinese government (custom-made?) surveillance cameras, software, databases, and other technologies they know will be used to subjugate and punish the Chinese people.

Publicly held companies are NOT required to do business with any government that comes knocking, and in some instances are explicitly forbidden from selling items to certain governments by U.S. law.

That sounds like a great strategy! It's not realistic at that level for most people. $4,000 per month, or $48,000 per year (with at least a portion of that after-tax), is not too far below the median HOUSEHOLD income in some states (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/release/tables?eid=259515&rid=249) (Mississippi, for example, is at $55,000!). Congrats to you for not spending it all, as I would probably do :)

That's great that you have a good insurance plan and that your employer picks up so much of it. My point is that, were you to retire, you would be paying much more than $4,000 per year for health insurance because currently your employer pays 80-ish % of it. So if you wanted to retire and maintain that same level of insurance coverage, it would require much more in annual spending (and probably even more than that, as some plans are age- and risk-based, once you get out of a group insurance, and they often have even higher premiums by age and risk category).

Similarly, for children, you are correct, you are not required to provide health insurance for them. But, again, if you want to maintain a similar standard of living to what you have now when you retire, you have to factor in the true costs of all of those elements. Clearly you can reduce the amount you need for retirement by downsizing and living a more frugal lifestyle, and whether that includes booting your children off their health insurance is up to you!