Giving Things Away This Thanksgiving

We're on Bainbridge Island visiting with family for Thanksgiving.  I've been walking more than biking just because a) most roads here are either up or down or both and b) bikes get, if at all, narrow space on the side of two lane roads.  

The other day I walked past this gifting and receiving stand.  It's on a small dead end street that doesn't get much traffic, but there is a walk way that goes through to a main road.  

This one is a nice idea, but I suspect it will have little impact on recycling, but perhaps it will cause people to think about buying stuff.  

Other related efforts that seem to have a bigger impact are Freecycle and Buy Nothing.

"Freecycling is when a person passes along, for free, an unwanted item to another person who needs that item. From silverware to mobile homes, people worldwide are choosing to freecycle rather than discard. The practice frees up space in landfills and cuts down on the need to manufacture new goods. Thousands of groups dedicated to connecting people who want to give away something to people with a need are forming worldwide. Here are three steps you can take to join the freecycling movement."

And Buy Nothing.

THE BUY NOTHING PROJECT is an international network of local gift economies. Buy Nothing offers people a way to give and receive, share, lend, and express gratitude through a worldwide network of gift economies in which the true wealth is the web of connections formed between people who are real-life neighbors. We believe that communities are more resilient, sustainable, equitable, and joyful when they have functional gift economies

Both use the internet to help neighbors give away what they don't need and find things they need.

And as we celebrate Thanksgiving, with businesses salivating for Christmas sales,  it's a good time

Inflation could steal Christmas, but shoppers are finding ways around it  (Washington Post)

Jaclyn Peiser

to remember that our capitalist system is a huge Ponzi scheme which requires organizations to grow constantly and to compete for 'market share.'  People who actually have jobs that pay well mostly have way more stuff than they need.  This economic model exploits and pollutes our natural environment.  And causes the wealthy (those with 'enough' money) to often be poor in time and interpersonal relationships.

So use today to think about what you have, what you need, and what you could do without.  I think about a friend who barely earns enough to keep housed and fed, yet pays a monthly fee on a storage unit with stuff he never uses.  

Here's a post I wrote in 2007 called Not Consuming isn't just about Being Cheap. I'd note that since then I did get a cell phone.  

Labor Shortage, Law Enforcement And Teaching In Alaska

 This has been flashing at the State Troopers Headquarters at Tudor and MLK

Now Hiring State Troopers

$20,000 Hiring Bonus

Starting Salary $74,693-100,630

Apply Online Today

Here are the qualifications listed online:

The minimum qualifications for the position of State Trooper Recruit/Lateral are outlined below.

General Qualifications

• Must be a citizen (including US Nationals) of the United States of America.
• Must be 21 years of age or older* at the start of the academy .
• Must be conversant in both spoken and written English.
• Most possess a high school diploma or have passed a General Education Development (GED) test.

* There is no upper age limit; if you can pass the physical fitness test and medical screening,  you could be hired.

Driving

• Must possess a valid driver’s license issued within the United States or its Territories.
• Must be free of excessive moving violations and recent license actions (canceled, revoked, suspended, limited, or SR-22 requirement).

Drugs

Drug use/abuse is closely scrutinized and recent drug use may be cause for elimination from the hiring process, including:

• Marijuana use within the last year
• Use of illegal narcotics within the last ten years
• Manufacture/sale of illegal narcotics as an adult
• Illegal drug use while employed in a law enforcement position
• Prescription drug use without a prescription unless there was an immediate, pressing, or emergency medical circumstance to justify the use

Criminal History

• Adult criminal history is closely scrutinized and the following may be cause for elimination from the hiring process:
• Felony conduct as an adult
• Misdemeanor convictions within the last ten years
• Any conviction related to domestic violence

So a high school diploma or GED is all you need to get a starting salary of

In comparison, here's the salary schedule from the Anchorage Education Association  Contract - teachers.  This is for the 202-1022 school year.  There is a bump up each year, but the highest starting salary is $55,158 and the highest top salary is $97,238.  

100 SERIES – SALARIES AND BENEFITS 105 SALARY SCHEDULE

2021-2022 Salary Schedule

Step	B00	B18	B36	B54	B72
0	53,287	55,872	58,455	61,039	65,882
1	54,698	57,282	59,865	62,448	67,283
2	56,106	58,690	61,273	63,857	68,685
3	57,516	60,099	62,682	65,266	70,087
4	58,925	61,508	64,091	66,674	71,488
5	60,333	62,917	65,501	68,085	72,892
6	61,745	64,326	66,910	69,494	74,294
7	63,153	65,737	68,320	70,901	75,697
8	64,562	67,145	69,729	72,311	77,101
9	65,970	68,554	71,137	73,722	78,501
10	67,378	69,963	72,548	75,129	79,904
11	-	71,371	73,955	76,540	81,306
12	-	72,780	75,364	77,947	82,708
13	-	-	76,773	79,357	84,109
14	-	-	78,182	80,768	85,514
15	-	-	79,591	82,175	86,915
16	-	-	-	83,584	88,318
17	-	-	-	84,993	89,718
18	-	-	-	-	91,119
19	-	-	-	-	92,520
20	-	-	-	-	93,922

 

Here are the qualification requirements for an elementary school teacher:

Job Requirements
The following are required:

1. A valid Alaska initial, professional, or master teaching certificate.
2. Evidence of content knowledge shown by:
1. a posted degree in the content area of this position; or
2. a posted minor in the content area of this position; or
3. passing Praxis Subject Assessments scores (formerly Praxis II) in the content area of this position; or
4. a certificate endorsement in the content area of this position

What's required for a teaching certificate?  There's a lot of different ones listed, but here's for someone who has never taught in Alaska:

INITIAL/PROGRAM ENROLLMENT TEACHER CERTIFICATE

To qualify for an Initial/Program Enrollment teacher certificate, an applicant must meet the following requirements:

• Has never held an Alaska teacher certificate

• Completion of a bachelor’s degree from a regionally or nationally accredited university;

• Current enrollment in an approved teacher preparation program as verified by a Program Enrollment form (docx) and official transcripts (Program must be completed within two (2) years of the issuance of the Initial certificate).
• Passing scores on an approved basic competency exam 
• Has passing scores on an approved content area exam
• Five years of experience in the subject matter that you will be teaching;

• Offered a certified teaching position by an Alaska public school district.

I've had comments in the past that argued that having a Bachelor's degree is no guarantee that someone can do the job better than someone without one.  That requiring such a degree is elitist.   I would say that depends on the kind of job you're hiring for.  And the quality of the degree one has.  

But I would argue that a good Bachelor's degree forces one to challenge one's world view, to be exposed to alternative ways of thinking about things, to develop thinking and logic skills, and to spend time working through ethical problems.

I suspect that if qualified teachers applied for and got State Trooper positions, the quality of our state law enforcement would improve greatly.  I also think that if our teacher pay scale were to be more like the trooper pay scale, we'd have better teacher applicants.  But I would also acknowledge that there are both troopers and teachers who would apply for those positions regardless of the pay, because that's what they really want to do.  In both cases, I would hope the hiring authorities make sure that the want to pursue those careers for the right reasons.  

The Rich Screw The Poor in Netflix's The Billion Dollar Code And Squid Game -

1.   Billion Dollar Code. 

It tells the story of two young, idealistic, naive German nerds in the early 90s who create a program that allows you to fly via your computer screen to any place on earth.  The story skips back and forth between the story of developing Terra View and the law suit against Google and Google Earth for appropriating their creation and violating their patent. 

I don't know how accurately the series portrays the real events, but even if it's not accurate

1. it's a good story with good characters
2. the general idea of super large corporations buying out, if not stealing, the work of others and thus taking out competition and creating huge Goliath corporations is what is happening in the world.  Just consider that over the years Google has acquired Blogger (the platform for this blog), and YouTube (where I post videos for this blog), 

Code is in German with subtitles, though I suspect you can listen to it all in English, but I didn't check. It's interesting and humbling hearing the attorneys for Terra View's creators switch back and forth between perfect German and perfect English.  

Another nice feature is that there are only four episodes.  And while they are listed in "Season 1" it essentially ended with S1E4.  

For those interested in how our economy favors the wealthy, definitely watch.  

2.  Squid Game

Netflix was pushing Squid Game and I reviewed the brief description and decided I could pass.  It sounded too violent.  But then I read a review about how it was Netflix's biggest hit ever.  So we watched Episode One. 

Way too violent.  

Then I read another review that talked about how it was a critique of capitalism, particularly in South Korea.  How people in debt are offered an opportunity to play a game and potentially win billions of won.  The players get picked up in vans, put to sleep, and driven to a secret island. 

We decided to give it another try.  What I've said above shouldn't spoil any of it for you. All that happened in the beginning of Episode One.  

But it is a very loose commentary on poverty and debt in South Korea which, along with Yuh-Jung Youn's Academy Award winning film Parasite, have revised my sense of how things are actually going for people in South Korea.  In this series - there are nine episodes in season one and enough loose ends that a second season is inevitable - there is lots of violence and a very clear contrast between the very rich and those who keep falling behind economically.  

I don't know that I would recommend Squid Game.  It's interesting, good film making with good visuals and good acting.  But there's also enough blood to fill a Blood Bank.  And some good twists and turns.  

"Neoclassical economics is a hell of a drug."

The kind of economics taught in intro courses - micro and macro - always seemed to me to be missing a lot.  Like how many truly rational decisions do humans make every day?  It always seemed like a ponzi scheme where you have to keep finding more and more people to buy your product/service. Standing steady is falling behind.  And there was the vast destruction of earth to find and exploit and transport the raw materials needed in production.  And the faith in the bizarre scientific formula:  The Invisible Hand.  And the total lack of ethics as a consideration.  

Then, slowly, within economics itself came people challenging the orthodoxy.  Experimental economics set up actual empirical tests of the previously sacred mantras of market economics.  Then behavioral economics started looking at human economic behavior more carefully.   

That, plus watching the price of text books go up and up and up, made this tweet resonate with me.

Neoclassical economics is a hell of a drug. It has no theory of prices, no account of inflation, and its models all presume the existence of a perfectly rational "homo economicus" who is a "utility maximizer" with perfect information.

1/ pic.twitter.com/A5PhehydHM

— Cory Doctorow (@doctorow) October 18, 2021

[Click on the Tweet Image to get to the whole thread]

There's a whole thread there that's worth  reading.  It links to a free online textbook called The Economy.  Here's the beginning of the Table of Contents:

Sorry it's not clearer.  But you can go to the book yourself.

Supreme Court Conservatives Seem Ready To Break NCAA Control Over Student Athlete Pay. Why?

 Background 

If the conservatives on the Supreme Court have been consistent about anything, it's been in support of big business.   Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, at the Amy Barrett confirmation hearings, argued that while everyone focused on abortion and LGBT issues before the court, the real impact of packing of the court with conservative judges was to set up a court that unabashedly sided with big business.  Whitehouse cited 80 cases that were decided by 5-4 rulings along partisan lines.  These cases had four themes important to large corporations:

• Unlimited Dark Money - that allows the wealthy and corporations (yes those do overlap) to control legislatures that make the rules and even to get people appointed as head of federal agencies that regulate them.  Citizen United is the key decision here, but there are many others
• Knock the Civil Jury Down - The powerful can't control civil juries like they can control Congress.
• Weaken Regulatory Agencies - particularly pollutors to weaken their independence and strength
• Voter Suppression and Gerrymandering - making it harder for citizens  to vote for candidates who might vote against big business' interests - Shelby County decision on no factual record against overwhelming support on the other side, that knocked out voter suppression protections and a bunch of states started suppressing the vote.  Same on gerrymandering.  

*You can see the Whitehouse presentation in the Senate below and I recommend that you listen to it.  Whitehouse puts a lot of puzzle pieces together that help us understand the conservative goals of getting Heritage Foundation trained judges onto the court.  Here's another Whitehouse report on partisan decisions at the Supreme Court which divides the cases a little differently.  

Conservatives Question NCAA Lawyers

So I was surprised to see that in the Supreme Court case National Collegiate Athletic Association v. Alston**, the conservative judges were asking the NCAA lawyers some tough questions.  After all this is about a large monopolistic organization exploiting student athletes for big money.  It would seem a natural for the Supreme Court's conservatives to be protecting the NCAA.  But no.  From the LA Times:

"Justice Clarence Thomas said it was “odd” that the salaries of college coaches have “ballooned,” but that did not destroy the aura of amateur competition between colleges and universities.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said the case showed “colleges with powerhouse football and basketball programs are really exploiting the students that they recruit.” Most athletes work very hard on their sports, have little time for studies and often do not graduate. “They are recruited, used and cast aside,” he said.

Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh said he, too, was concerned about the “exploitation of athletes.” This looks like a system “where schools are conspiring with their competitors to pay their workers nothing,” he said, likening the situation to a classic antitrust violation in the business world."

But on further consideration, the NCAA is not exactly a for-profit corporation like Pepsi.  On its home page it tells us:

The National Collegiate Athletic Association is a membership-driven organization dedicated to safeguarding the well-being of student-athletes and equipping them with the skills to succeed on the playing field, in the classroom and throughout life.

We support learning through sports by integrating athletics and higher education to enrich the college experience of student-athletes. NCAA members – mostly colleges and universities, but also conferences and affiliated groups – work together to create the framework of rules for fair and safe competition.

Those rules are administered by NCAA national office staff, which also organizes national championships and provides other resources to support student-athletes and the schools they attend. The NCAA membership and national office work together to help nearly half a million student-athletes develop their leadership, confidence, discipline and teamwork through college sports.

NCAA Core Values    [bold added]

I've left the link to the Core Values there, because it goes to a page that doesn't really mention core values other than being dedicated to to "the well-being and life-long success of student athletes."  Most of it is about who all the members are.  

Also, notice that their sole emphasis is on the welfare of student athletes.  Absolutely no mention of money.

So Why Are The Conservatives Asking the NCAA Hard Questions  

My initial guess - and that's all it is - stems from one of the themes conservatives keep repeating about how universities and colleges are elite institutions full of socialist professors that indoctrinate students in liberal ideology.  (Of course the only colleges that fit that sort of ideological laboratory stereotype are the far right Christian colleges like Liberty University.]   

The NCAA generated close to a billion dollars just from the NCAA basketball playoffs.  They claim that most of that goes to the colleges and universities  From CBS Sports:

"The NCAA Tournament remains the lifeblood of the association's 1,268 members. It is the primary source of the NCAA's income. That $800 million in annual tournament revenue is 72% of the NCAA's $1.1 billion annual total. Last year, $600 million of that $800 million was scheduled to flow back to the schools.

That revenue fills athletic department coffers, provides operating capital for conference offices and provides funds directly to athletes in need."

But does this money help support universities or even cover the costs of college sports?  Best Colleges says no.

"By any measure, college sports are a big business — but that doesn't mean universities are getting rich off athletics. The reality is that most sports programs operate in the red. If the time comes when colleges have to pay athletes to participate, then the financial picture will change even more dramatically."

Some of the largest college sports programs, the ones that get the most back from the NCAA - see the Best Colleges link above for the top 20 and how much they make - might make a profit.  Or maybe not.  It's not clear.  My quick search for information on this leads me to believe that most of the stories are based on information from the NCAA.  I didn't find any in-depth independent studies. But I also didn't look too hard.

So maybe my hypothesis about the conservatives on the Supreme Court is wrong.  Maybe they're big sports fans and so they have more empathy for college athletes than they do for average employees.  Maybe they see the NCAA not as a corporation (it isn't one) but as a cooperative of universities.  Then my hypothesis may be right.  Or maybe they think the universities make more money from sports than they actually do.  That sports help pay for political science programs and affirmative action scholarships.  

Just raising a possibility.  I really don't know what paying college athletes would mean.  The biggest winners, probably, would be the majority of college athletes who will never go on to be highly paid professional players.  

But it's clear that monopolies concentrate power and concentrated power attracts those who want power.  Breaking things up will bring change and quite probably good change.  When they broke up ATT in 1984, we got a revolution in telephone technology.  (I bet some readers don't even know about ATT being a giant phone monopoly that merely leased black dial up phones to every home.)

And if the Supreme Court finds this monopoly problematic, maybe they'll have to take a fresh look at other concentrations of power.  That would be the best consequence.

* Here's the video of Sen. Whitehouse at the Barrett hearings.  He really does a great job of bringing together a number of threads.  

**Shawne Alston was a running back for West Virginia University.

White Privilege, Underprivilege, and White Supremecy

 We hear a lot about 'privilege' these days.  Whites, particularly males, deny they have any special privileges.  Blacks and other people of color insist whites do have privilege.  This use of the term seems to be of recent currency, though for some white folks, the first introduction to the term 'white privilege' came in 1989 in Peggy McIntosh's article, White Privilege:  Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.  She brought the point home by asking people to answer 26 questions such as:

13. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.

14. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.

15. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.

But I'd like to point out that white folks unconsciously acknowledged the idea of privilege (if not exactly white privilege) well before that. As we looked for more delicate terms for 'poor' we hit upon "underprivileged."

"Synonyms of underprivileged

Find synonyms for:  

Adjective

1. underprivileged (vs. privileged), deprived, disadvantaged, underclass(prenominal), poor, unfortunate

usage: lacking the rights and advantages of other members of society"

Jeff Kunnerth wrote in the  Orlando Sun in 1989:

Euphemisms have eliminated old people from America, a place now populated by "senior citizens." They have done away with the poor, retarded and ambitious, replacing them with the "underprivileged," the "mentally handicapped" and the "upwardly mobile."

 And people in the US tended to think of blacks as poor, so underprivileged has a racial tinge too.

Writing in 2009, Marcus Bell, in  Reflections of Whiteness: The Origins, Progression, and Maintenance of White, writes:  

"Today there is a term used to describe people who are at the bottom of the socio- economic spectrum. The term is “underprivileged.” This can be applied to poor people, minorities, women, or any group of people who are now, and have historically been exploited or discriminated against. Paraphrasing Tim Wise (2004), the passive voice of the term underprivileged implies that no one did anything. “It’s as if one day someone said ‘here is privilege and I’ll be damned, there you are under it’” (p. 36). This addresses the overall structure of American society as it pertains to race. Speaking socially, culturally, politically, and economically, America was initially shaped and flourished under the banner of white supremacy. As a result, America has established generally accepted “race neutral” policies that inherently advantage whites but are not considered racist because these policies do not specifically mention race."

So, the term "underprivileged" has been around a long time and has been used as a euphemism of poor.

As Bell writes, the term doesn't mention race. It just implies people who did not get all the 'privileges.'  Who then, gets the privileges?  

The implication - since this is about being poor - is people who aren't poor.  The term, again, following Bell, doesn't mention social, economic, and political structures that keep the poor 'underprivileged.'  It's a step up from the belief that the poor are poor because they are simply lazy and don't want to work, but not by much.  It still implies that fixing the problem means fixing the individuals by providing them something that will allow them to get out of poverty.  

This is a long introduction to the idea that the term "White Privilege" doesn't ring true to many whites.  

First, because 'underprivileged' means to them neutral (race-less) poverty.  Privilege, in reverse, is not something you get because of race, but by having enough money. 

Second, whites, particularly blue collar males, in the US have seen their economic status slip over the years.  Unions that protected them have been badly weakened.  Blue collar jobs have been sent overseas or lost to automation. Pensions have evolved from defined benefit to defined contribution, or disappeared altogether. Health insurance tied to jobs disappeared with the jobs. Minimum wage has been stagnant while maximum wage seems to be limitless for the few.  Though, Republicans have blamed the change in economic security on others - particularly immigrants - who are willing to work their jobs for less money.

So, when people talk about White Privilege, these folks don't see any privilege attached to being white.  They see it attached to not being poor. And as their own economic situation worsens, they feel more and more that they themselves are underprivileged.  So their whiteness gives them no special privileges.  They don't see that their whiteness gives them a privileges compared to blacks in their same economic situation.  

And while it's true that a larger percentage of blacks and other POC are poor than whites, whites still make up the largest number of poor people of any ethnic group.

And, of course, this doesn't account for the whites who still are economically comfortable.  What they can see, though, is that today they are competing for jobs with women and POC.  In the 50s and 60s this was pretty much NOT the case.  Women were to stay home and take care of the kids, and POC were simply not  given access to the better jobs.  These are people whose power was taken for granted.  And with the idea of the work ethic part of the mythos of the United States, those who succeeded understood it was because of their own superiority and hard work, not the fact that women and blacks were not in the competition.  

The ironic part of all this is that we now 'see' whiteness.  White people conscious now, in a way they weren't 40 years ago, that they belong to a group called white.  Sure, they knew that in the past, but then it was conflated with American.  Now, lots of people who are not white, are also claiming their equal rights as Americans.  

I think it's the losing of privilege that is freaking whites out.  And their resistance, in part, stems from still being in denial that their relative good life in the past was due, not to their own merit, but to their own privilege compared to people of color.  

And some are coming out from hiding and declaring publicly the supremacy of whiteness.  

Education Level And Elitism

Although most people would like to have the benefits of the elite line boarding an airplane and other perks of wealth, conservatives have been labeling people as  'elitist' people due to their college educations.  Scientists and doctors especially right now are dismissed as elitists if they say that people should wear masks to avoid spreading COVID-19 or if they say that climate change is real.  

On the other hand when people say that we should be focused on economic inequality instead of race, conservatives cry "Class warfare."  This is just another example of how Conservatives are totally inconsistent in terms of content.  Their only consistency now is their focus on winning by any means necessary.  Even by overturning a democratic election.  

A couple of posts back I had the elitist label thrown at me by two regular readers because I suggested that college graduates were harder to fool than non-college graduates.  I'm responding here, in a new post, rather than in the comment section, because I can put an image here and I can't do that in a comment.  Here's what I wrote at the end of a post on Denialism:

"Also, remember, only 35% of US adults has a bachelors degree or more education.  The chart below is from Wikipedia.  That does affect how susceptible people are to the arguments of organized deniers."  

[Including this chart below]

Education	Age 25 and over	Age 25-30
High school diploma or GED	89.80%	92.95%
Some college	61.28%	66.34%
Associate and/or bachelor's degree	45.16%	46.72%
Bachelor's degree	34.98%	36.98%
Master's and/or doctorate and/or professional degree	13.04%	9.01%
Doctorate and/or professional degree	3.47%	2.02%
Doctorate	2.03%	1.12%

Jacob responded (in part):

"Steve so often writes of his concerns that we should all be scholars in life, but I am one of those folk who never could sit still for college study. I'm one of his 'stupid' people who don't have a college degree (as evidenced in his chart and its implication to thinking things through).

It shows a sort of prejudice that I, not being a Trump supporter, still feel from folk who think themselves better for having achieved. I read. I write. I think. But I don't have an institutional degree.

And I'm thought worse for it, in what work I can do; in what people think of me; of what people assume my ability to think at all. No wonder too many Trumpers think of the 'other' side as being elitist."

And Oliver wrote:

"Steve, these people I would wager do not have degrees ,Carpenter.

Carpet installer .Electrician .Heavy equipment operator (or anyone in the construction trades) .Insulation installer .Landscaper .Painter. Plumber, auto mechanic but might possess a few smarts. I would take anyone of them over a room full of Fine Arts majors or anyone who's degree ends with the word 'studies'. 

Oliver "

A writer recently reminded me that once you put something on paper, it is no longer yours.  People take it and interpret it as they want.  So let's consider this a discussion.

I DID NOT say that all people who go to college are smarter or less likely to be conned than all people who do not go to college.  I never would say that.  

But I would say this: People who go to college get exposed to ideas they would not likely have been exposed to, and they are challenged by classmates and teachers to defend their own ideas and explore the ideas of others in a more disciplined way than most people who do not go to college.  There are lots of caveats.  The abilities of one's classmates.  The abilities and dedication of one's teachers.  Other influences in one's life that might hone these skills without college.

And as I wrote the words quoted above, I was thinking about the statistics I'd seen about college educated and non-college educated voters - particularly whites, particularly white males.  Those statistics support what I was suggesting - that more (not all) non-college educated voters were likely to vote for Trump.  

From a November 12 Brookings Institute Report:

This chart looks at the changing gap between Trump and Clinton and Trump and Biden voters in different categories.  In both 2016 and 2020 the non-college women, and to a greater extent, the non-college men voted at much higher rates for Trump than for the Democrat.  

To have a 48% gap between non-college educated men who voted for Trump and Clinton in 2016, you need 74% voting for Trump and 26% voting for Clinton.*  So after I copied the Denialist strategies that are designed to con people into believing things that aren't true, I was merely pointing out, afterward, that only 35% of the US population had a bachelor's degree.  

*Third party candidates probably skew the numbers a little, but it's still a big deal.  

And the data on how college educated men and non-college men voters marked their ballots sure looks like it supports the implication I made.  You could argue that these non-college men weren't conned and that they simply prefer a sexist, racist, lying, law breaker as president.  

I'd counter by saying that a college education would have exposed them to how sexism and racism actually hurt our economy and the value of the rule of law.  That wouldn't have changed all their votes - there were still a lot of white males with college educations who voted for Trump - but it would have changed many of them.  

Do I think everyone should go to college?  Not really.  People have different aptitudes and learning styles.  Many like Jay simply can't sit still and do the kinds of assignments most colleges require.  But I do believe that in a constitutional democracy, we all need to understand that constitution because it is essentially the "user agreement"  with the ground rules that we all, tacitly, have agreed to.  It's the one thing that all United States citizens and residents have in common.  

And I've written about my thoughts on alternative ways to get this knowledge to people who have talents in areas other than academic studies.  Here's from a post I wrote during a University of Alaska president search on the clash between the business culture of many on the board of regents and the academic culture of universities.  

"It is precisely this conflict between the business model's use of instrumental rationality and traditional academic use of the substantive rationality model - in this case scholarship and learning and truth and even the meaning of life - that is raging around universities everywhere.   Faculty are told to be more productive, which translated first into "more students per class" which would mean less expenditure for each tuition dollar.  It assumes a large lecture model as the ideal, the larger the better.  In fact, why not just do internet courses with thousands of students?  For certain students learning certain topics, this can work.  But this model ignores the possibility that education (as opposed to training) is about self examination, about learning to think critically, about exploring the moral implications of one's actions, about learning to write and learning to recognize the legitimacy of others' knowledge.  It ignores that this kind of learning  requires an intense interaction between a student and a teacher, among students, and among a teacher and a group of students.  The value of that interaction is diluted as more students are added beyond an ideal size. You can get a certain amount from reading a book.  You learn even more from discussing it with others.

Universities are being asked to do too many things

There are lots of things problematic with large modern universities.  For one thing, we decided, as a nation, that everyone needed a college degree, because that is the ticket to earning more money over one's lifetime.  (See how that technical rationality gets into everything, making, in this case, the purpose of a college degree, earning more money?)   A degree rather than an education has become the goal of many students.   Some online schools offer those degrees,  quickly, while the student works full time.  Just send in your money.  There are good online programs that serve students who otherwise couldn't get an education.  And there are schools that essentially sell degrees.

I do think that everyone would be better off learning to do the things I listed above - gaining self knowledge, critical and ethical thinking abilities, etc. - but I  know that not everyone has the aptitude or interest to pursue traditional college level academic studies.  There are lots of other important skills that society needs, but most have been sacrificed in K-12 to focus everyone into a college (translation:  academic, STEM, etc.) track.  We don't have tracks for less academic but still important vocational education which could also be more than technical training.  They could also include self awareness, critical and ethical thinking, but in areas that involve building, growing, and creating in more tangible disciplines than in academic disciplines.  Skilled craftsmen used to have a reasonable status in life and learning one's craft well involves learning the various sciences related to it as well as the social and political and economic realms in which a craftsperson lives.  Why not use carpentry or culinary arts or music or electrical work, or health care as the focus rather than history or math or political science?  Then bring in the other fields as they relate to one's focus.  Carpenters, nurses, cooks all need to know chemistry and biology.  Understanding the humanities, ethics, history, and government are also valuable to a craftsperson making a living.   People with different aptitudes would learn what they need much more easily when it's tied to doing what they really want to do, rather than some isolated, abstract academic subject. 

But we've created an educational monster that forces everyone into an academic track starting in first grade.  And if you aren't ready to read or add and subtract when the curriculum guide says you should be,  you acquire a negative label like  'slow learner' and you (and others) start seeing you as less capable than everyone else.  School becomes increasingly oppressive as you're forced to perform in areas you don't like and aren't particularly good at."

So, no, Oliver, I wasn't demeaning carpet installers.  I was thinking the ideas in the quoted paragraphs above.  That the way education is structured, people without academic skills, are much less likely (not "unable") to acquire a well thought out set of problem solving skills, and an understanding of the political, economic, psychological and other contexts that are needed for negotiating the complex issues of our day.  And the system we have doesn't insure college grads have it as well as they should either.  

I was just saying those without college degrees are more susceptible to a con artist like Trump and more likely to vote for him.  And the numbers seem to support that conclusion.   

The challenge we have is to get that ideal education system that allows people to find the educational tracks that most appeal to their subject interest and learning style.  

Now if you have some facts I've missed, not just opinion, to counter what I've said, please present them.