We bought a house recently where the sellers left behind the fridge. The fridge had a handful of broken plastic shelves: things like broken clips and cracked frames. I thought it would be cheap to repair.
Wrong. Fixing every broken item (~15 in all) would have cost over $400. Just for some plastic.
If I've learned anything from watching "Idiots in Cars" videos on Reddit, it's that you can go from "driving normally" to "in an accident" much faster than you think. Most people have very little experience reacting to imminent accidents on the road. Overall that's a good thing, but it certainly seems naive to think that simply being an attentive driver is enough to keep you out of accidents.
I noticed that many artists that I like put out albums in 2021, but far fewer have put out albums in 2022, even accounting for the year only being half over. I think this is partially due to the pandemic: with artists unable to tour, many took the time to release new music. That music largely came out in 2021. Now in 2022 they are touring to promote the new music rather than releasing new content.
Seems like we're seeing this pattern across the board in the economy: shortages of labor, and salaries aren't increasing enough to lure people in. Are employers unable to raise salaries, or are they unwilling? If they are unable, where does this leave us if no one can afford the price of labor? If they are unwilling, is this just a game of chicken to see who blinks first between employees and employers?
This page really drills into you how pathetic this settlement is. Less than $3 per affected person for something that affects over a hundred million people.
And as if to rub salt in the wound:
> 3. I don’t want Equifax to have my data. What can I do?
> Equifax is one of three national credit bureaus. These companies collect information about your credit history, such as how many credit cards you have, how much money you owe, and how you pay your bills. Each company creates a credit report about you, and then sells this report to businesses who are deciding whether to give you credit. You cannot opt out of this data collection. However, you can review your credit report for free and freeze your credit.
If you finance the car and invest your money in something with a rate of return higher than the interest rate, you'd end up with more money than paying cash.
...though of course many who finance cars aren't choosing to do that. The car you drive is both a status symbol and a personal luxury. I think many people would rather take on debt than get a vehicle they could only pay cash for.
I think that falls back to (A) in my original post. You certainly don't need a Master's in pure mathematics to teach 3rd graders how to add fractions, but you probably do want to understand what teaching techniques are effective for children that age.
I definitely think teachers need (A) understanding of effective teaching methods and learning development and (B) a deep understanding of their subject.
Both are important at all ages, but (A) seems more important at younger ages, where you need to know how to engage children. Kids are also more impressionable. (B) seems more important in middle school and high school. You wouldn't, for example, want someone who doesn't have a background in math to teach calculus.
A 4 year degree certainly isn't a perfect way to impart teaching competence, but it does set a threshold for the experience that a new teacher has. I'd expect more teachers at the back end of the bell curve if you remove the degree requirement.
Thus continues the downward spiral. If you remove the college degree requirement, you can lower the salary even further for teachers. Combined with Arizona's move towards school vouchers, it's hard to see a positive future for their public education system.
- Low pay. For STEM fields, you can easily make far more in industry.
- Decreasing resources and investment from the community.
- Decreasing freedom in what you teach and how you choose to teach it.
- Half of parents see you as a babysitter, and the other half sees you as the only obstacle between their child and Harvard.
- High scrutiny of your actions. What you do outside of working hours can affect your job (e.g. having a drink at a bar or posting on Facebook). In our polarized society, anything that's slightly political could cost you your career.
- If you're male, expect heavier scrutiny. People will always suspect that you could be a child predator.
- Fear of school shootings.
EDIT:
And I almost forgot:
- A society where somewhere between 20-50% of people are skeptical of your value and unhappy with your profession today.
I always say that people only choose public transit over driving when it's (A) cheaper, (B) faster, OR (C) more practical. And ideally it needs to be two or even three of those.
In the US, it's pretty rare that any of those three are ever satisfied outside of major urban cores.
For me, often the amount of time I've hung on to the item becomes the reason I keep it longer, rather than the item itself. "Oh wow I've had this trinket since the 5th grade. It's not really significant to me anymore, but it feels a little sad to get rid of it now."
To me this reflects the large variety and volume of content out there today. As the amount of content grows, people with less mainstream tastes spread out their consumption, but people with more mainstream tastes stick with popular choices.
For example, music. Let's say 50% of people like mainstream music and the rest have more obscure preferences. In the past, when music was harder to access, you might be exposed to 100 artists. Now, you might be exposed to over 1,000. The 50% who like more obscure music used to spread their listening out over 100, but now it's spread out over 1,000. Those who like mainstream music still mostly listen to the top 100 or so. The end result is that the top 100 is more solid than before, even though music is diversifying.
For multiplicities, I see a snowball effect: each subsequent release in a multiplicity adds more people to the snowball. As long as the quality is good enough -- and people who enjoy mainstream content arguably have a lower bar -- the audience grows with each release. I think this effect, combined with the author's "proliferation" theory and major producers wanting to make safe investments, explains the dominance of multiplicities.
True, but if a company wants to restrict something and cites productivity as the reason, I would hope they could provide concrete evidence. Most of the publicly stated reasons against remote work/WFH seem to be qualitative and only reflect the values of executives.
I can't comment on the recent issues, but it's always been a peeve of mine that the express lanes operate even when it's not in the main commute direction at the time.
For example, the 680 lanes operate M-F, 5am-8pm. But northbound traffic in the morning isn't that bad, nor is southbound traffic in the evening. Almost no one would pay to use the express lane at these times, so you wind up with a lane that's almost completely empty and makes traffic denser in the other lanes.