pure_ambition
If you're thinking about it - try it! An EMT class is pretty easy, fun, and doesn't take long.
I never realized that I was the type of guy who doesn't enjoy desk work until I became an EMT.
Admin bloat is a far larger problem, and so are the pharmaceutical companies which get to charge the government whatever they want to develop new drugs that often are only marginally effective.
Oddly enough, even homes that advertise RNs and a high number of staff still don't provide the care I'd want for me relatives. The only homes I've been to where the staff are genuinely great are nursing homes out in the boonies, in rural areas at least an hour outside of my city.
Then, there is the problem of the suburbs. A lot of people suggest moving to the suburbs and embracing a longer commute as the solution. The problem is, suburbs also control their own zoning laws, just like cities, and surprise - they also don't want their neighborhoods bulldozed for luxury apartments.
So the problem is essentially a power issue - who holds the power? Without the political power to make zoning changes, little new housing will be built. I don't see a solution here. So it seems that the local people embrace rent control as the best possible solution among alternatives. Viewed from that perspective, it's not so bad after all. The city's residents will feel the impacts, and if it's not working out, they will eventually repeal the law. Big deal.
I never fully understood what Pirsig meant by Quality though. I could not understand what it really was, but I didn’t need to. I got so much good out of the book. But if someone could explain better I’d love to hear.
Great literature helps you understand the world, and yourself. It helps peel back that onion.
Wrong. Most of Europe (especially Germany) is actually at a higher latitude than New England.
Sounds like you're doing the same thing. You have a set of expectations about how the world works that is not the exact same as Django's - which is true of any other tool anyone uses.
Also I want to point out that software is not made by a monolithic entity; it's made by people, and you suggest a few simple things like adding type checks and validations, which would be a wonderful opportunity to contribute! In fact, opinions such as yours are enormously helpful to the creators of software frameworks. Software doesn't build itself; if you have ideas, contribute!
Classic example: America can produce 5 cars a year and 6 apples. Japan can produce 3 cars a year and 2 apples. If America devotes its energy to making all the apples and Japan does the same for making all the cars, Japan could make 10 cars a year and America could make 9 apples - so thus, there will now be 10 cars available versus 8 and 9 apples a year versus 8. So there is more product available for everyone, true, that is an undisputed fact. But several questions remain unanswered:
What are the effects to the American people if making cars provided a lot of well-paying jobs to its working class which cannot be replaced? The answer is that many people are out of work; and they cannot go make apples because agriculture is heavily automated. They cannot all go to college because they don't have the money and student loans are very expensive.
What happens if America spends more money on importing cars from Japan than it makes from selling apples? Is there not a net drain on American wealth?
So I think classic theory about these things overlooks many important topics. It reduces a nation's health to the amount of goods that are producible between its economy and its trade partners; if more goods are produced overall then everything is better. But it does not take into account the effects of job losses or trade deficits.
Edit: Might I also add that the American economy was heavily protected by tariffs throughout almost its entire development? Tariffs were significantly higher from the 1800s to the 1900s; it is only in recent decades that they have been consistently lower. Andrew Carnegie's Carnegie Steel for example experienced tremendous benefit from high tariffs on steel; the impact of his fortune can still be seen today in almost all American libraries. While the relevance of this anecdote can be disputed, it serves a valuable purpose if it gets us to question our trade dogmas.
The first major problem is that the article presents "promised benefits" - equal to the sum of all future pension payouts, which can span as many as 50-60 years into the future - and compares them to ANNUAL state revenue; a comparison which will obviously seem ridiculous. A more accurate comparison would be expected annual payouts vs expected revenue allocated to pensions. An even more accurate comparison would be expected payouts at year X vs (contributions + (expected returns at year X * balance of pension fund at year X) + expected revenue allocated to pensions). After all, pension payouts are funded by a mix of contributions, investment returns, and any state revenues allocated for pension payouts.
Another error is that in the linked analysis where they say they looked at every state's level of underfunding, they state: "According to a recent report from the Hoover Institution, on average, public pensions (state, local and federal employee pension plans) assume that they will achieve a risk free 7.6% return on investment per year, every single year."
This seems very stupid if it were true, but it's not. The Hoover Institution paper actually states that the 7.6% figure is the return these pension funds are expecting, which is reasonable given the historical S&P 500 annual return of 11.83% (since 1928). The Hoover paper makes no mention anywhere that pensions are expecting the return to be "risk free." Furthermore, the paper makes no mention of inflation or "real" returns, and pensions are tied to nominal wages rather than real wages, so it's reasonable to assume that the 7.6% figure is NOT adjusted for inflation - but even if it were, it would be reasonable, given the historical average inflation rate since 1928 of 3%.
Moreover, the Hoover paper rests on the rather dubious assumption that "The appropriate discount rate for a guaranteed nominal pension is the rate on a government bond with a guaranteed nominal return of that same maturity, so for the average plan it would be a Treasury bond with a roughly ten-year maturity." They are saying that pensions should always value their expected returns at the 10-year treasury rate, which is absurd. The only use for using the 10-year T rate is to estimate taxpayer liabilities if everything fell apart.
The real question should be, is it reasonable to expect these returns and inflation rates going forward? I would argue that 11.83% is too high to expect, although if it encourages you to save as much as possible to maximize possible gains, so be it; but that 7.6% is much more reasonable. If I were a pension fund manager, I would expect a more conservative target like 5 or 6%, and allocate anything extra either to an "emergency pension fund" in case of years with a revenue shortfall or allocate the extra to be refunded to the taxpayers.
Sources: https://ycharts.com/indicators/sandp_500_total_return_annual
http://www.calculator.net/inflation-calculator.html?cstartin...
Thank you for your time!
Is there a reason you chose to do the bachelors program over the masters?