"but being told to act a certain way else society will view you as a failure must be damaging psychologically. It must be limiting. And it is a waste both of tax payers money and young people's time."

Do you really believe that is only limited to poor people? Holy cow man, welcome to Earth.

Do i believe it is only damaging to poor people? No.

Do i believe that the education system was designed to cater to middle class expecatations? Yes.

As it happens my solution is to look at the cause of the problem, it comes down to some fundamentals of human nature. You look at the spikes in violence among male teens in poverty stricken inner city areas, and you see a natural tendancy to compete, the same thing in better off schools, except now the competition is academic.

The difference is socially conditioned values.

Humans will compete for status, and currently status is associated tigthly with income - however income inequality has left an underclass who don't see the point in competing; who presumably see the sustem as being rigged against them, and thus reject it. They still compete with their peers, in the only way they see as valid (female teens have a similar spoke in sexual activity)

We can break this strong link between income and status by creating a universal basic income; more than that we can build communities where people gain a sense of belonging and feel they can acomplish something (and gain status and respect within) which are driven by voluntary contribution of the members.

But creating communities is not something you can solve with top down dictate (like the communists tried) you need bottom up organisation (actually, the kind of grass roots efforts which bernie sanders is driving his campaign with) Government needs to createthe environment where people can thrive. And then let the people get around to deciding how that thriving looks.

The education system in particular should be reformed with a combination of independent learning and student chosen topics. Teachers are not the font of all knowledge, and should be seen as guides, motivators, and experts in how to learn - not subjects. We have the technology, we have the likes of KhanAcademy, and tonnes of educational resources available for free on youtube; the old system is obsolete. Students should want to learn, and the older cirruculum was designed without knowledge of what the future holds. Kids should be given more reaponcibility for their learning, and more power, so that they love it. Healthy competition should be encouraged, without the associated 'failure' in the eyes of society (a society which doesn't have a clue what skills will be needed in the rapidly changing future, which doesn't teach programming or social skills, despite these being two of the most important in the economy...)

That would be where i would start at least.

And yes, my ideas may seem radical. Though i have experience in education, and have seen what happens when you introduce an 'alternative' less academic curriculum - one which focuses on trades and skills.

People still see it as a waste of time, whether because teachers see it as the fall back alternative - because of their middle class views. Or because it generally leads to lower paid jobs - and thus lower status in society. Or some combination of these and other factors...

Actually, besides the universal income, our ideas are very close.

I would never be for a universal income. I witnessed how that worked first hand when I was in Lenningrad in the late 80s. People would not accept Russian money for goods I wanted to buy; they only wanted clothes and other things that they could use to barter because their money had become worthless.

I dropped out of college after two semesters to take an apprenticeship at an artisan bread bakery, so I know exactly what your saying. Damn near everyone I knew thought I was an idiot, and told me as much to my face.

I don't know much about the soviet union, having never lived there... but my understanding was that they didn't have a free market. That the Soviet ruble could only be used for certain goods, and that many products were limited by rationing.

Thus the ruble didn't function as a currency. You'd have factory workers who would work overtime to produce goods which were not counted towards their quota, and then would sell them on the black market for gold...

I've been playing a lot of eve recently, and thinking about how currencies/markets work. They use ISK as the currency, but even without it there would be markets. People would invent the currency they wanted. Also, the game creates markets to allow different people play differently, and then trade with each other so they 'dont have to do the boring stuff' and the value of the boring stuff is determined by the supply/demand of the market...

How and ever, we know from psychology that happiness and income do not directly coorelate. People are unhappy in poverty, and more income does indeed increase happiness up to some threshold. Beyond that more income doesn't equate to more happiness. But our society acts like more income equals more status.

This is the relationship i want to break. People invent their own currencies when you take them away. Whether that is gold in the soviet case, or PLEX in eve's case. If people can't use income to determine their status, then they will invent some other system...

i can imagine that being an artisan bread baker could be very rewarding, physical labour releases endorphins, and being proud of your productivity is associated with higher life satisfaction... but society and their status rules. (the best example is how offended people get when a low status (homeless) person tries to give them money- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZvYvOkqxA8 )

So, they primary reason i want to see a basic income, is that basic level of happiness which can be achieved by removing poverty. How to encourage competition/cooperation on fulfilment after that is probably a more difficult issue, but i don't know that we should prescribe it.

oh yeah, i meant to ask you more about your experiences in Lenningrad; what made people not accept money? What did they accept instead? How can we avoid this elsewhere?

8 years after I first watched this short satirical video mocking the 2008 US election, it's like almost nothing's changed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adc3MSS5Ydc

enjoy :)

@orthaic: I think it is important to change our education system. It is already happening to some degree with the charter school movement. But the U.S. federal government has limited control over education. That has always been left to the states--and it still is (I'm looking at you Common Core haters).

The most important "system" that needs fixing is our federal TAX system. Nothing else matters. Really. Our government doesn't have the income it needs to provide the services its citizens lawfully require and demand.

Trickle down economics has failed. Starve the beast has failed. Ted Cruz and the Koch brothers are hell-bent to destroy any and all forms of government and replace it with a corporatist dystopia controlled by the wealthy elites. Libertarians might think this is what they want, but the end result will be unchecked power responsive to shareholders and owners *ONLY*. Look at how their grand experiment in Kansas has failed miserably. Look how they have destroyed one of the model school systems for the country in North Carolina. THAT VISION OF THE FUTURE IS BAD FOR AMERICA.

Back to taxes and income, I whole-heartedly agree that we need to work on getting more money into the hands of those who use it immediately for daily expenses. The Earned Income Tax Credit is amazing for that. It needs to be expanded as much as possible.

We also need to cap deductions at a hard dollar amount rather than a percentage of income. The ultra wealthy can deduct more by spending more. That is patently unfair.

But most importantly, the tax rate between long-term capital gains and earned income needs to be relinked. It is immoral that they are separate. It creates a system where those who "own" become a "rentier" class and don't have to do a thing for their money. Capital is set aside as "better" than labor, and woe betide those who are on the wrong side of that equation. This is why income and wealth inequality has skyrocketed since the 80s when the tax rates were decoupled.

Working becomes something only fools will do because it is impossible to keep up with the growth of capital being taxed at a higher rate. What incentive is there to succeed when "normal" people can't even keep up because they have been kneecapped by the tax system?

"The Earned Income Tax Credit is amazing for that. It needs to be expanded as much as possible." is that a form of reverse taxation? i've seen some issues with systems in place which discourage labour, and create poverty traps... (compared to basic income)

@JECE: "What's friendly about Iowa's demography?"

Iowa is as white as a state gets. For now, Hillary has the advantage in non-white demos. Very liberal/liberal/moderate breakdown may also be an issue, but I haven't seen the national data on that so I can't say whether Iowa is different from the norm.

The tl;dr explanation of the EITC is that low-income earners get an extra tax credit which reduces their tax burden even more than normal. It often results in a tax refund as well. It isn't quite a negative income tax though because it does require some work/income to become effective, but that's the incentive to join the labor force.

Lethologica: Even though Bernie is white, he had virtually no name recognition in Iowa when the race started. He is similarly building name recognition among minorities. You're just buying into arguments designed to dismiss Bernie's candidacy. Given the results in Iowa, the polls in New Hampshire and how quickly Bernie has climbed from obscurity in the national polls, the arguments for dismissing Berne are getting quite desperate. This is the candidate who has the most campaign contributions in electoral history!

ora: I never lived in the Soviet Union. I spent two summers in Finland visiting friends, and part of those stays included visiting with friends of theirs in Lenningrad. That I was wearing American style goods was the greatest reason why people didn't want my money. The value of my belongings on the black market was worth more than any amount of Rubles I would have paid them. But, outside of certain services and goods, as you mentioned, Rubles were worthless to Russians too.

You make a good point about the people who would work overtime and take the excess products to sell on the black market, but the other thing they did was not really care about what they were making during regular hours. When the government permitted the husband of the couple I was staying with to buy a car, it broke down five miles outside of the factory. Things like that were not uncommon at all.

Really, Russia had two markets back then. The government's socialist economy, and the capitalist (black) market that people used to secure all the things the government decided they didn't need.

In '08, 2% more black voters voted than in the previous elections, and 95% of them voted for Obama. I don't really care about the hows and whys, people are allowed to vote for who they want for any reason, but that's what put him over the top. If you think Sanders will pull those kinds of numbers, please pass what you're smoking.

The question isn't whether Sanders will pull those kind of numbers, it is whether Hillary will pull them and get them to the polls.

I think with the advantage Hillary has with women, she'll only need to split those votes to beat Sanders.

@JECE: You're dumping me in a box labeled "media sheep" instead of paying attention to things I write, such as "for now". Thanks for projecting emotions onto me, though.

The most heartbreaking poll for Hillary is that 84% of women under 30 support Bernie. So much for young women being inspired by the first potential female president.

Liars figure and figures lie. I'll believe those numbers when they show up on election night.

I'm not saying the liar thing about you y2, just in general.

Polls are polls, they don't tell the full truth by any means but they aren't completely useless.

Hillary doesn't have young women's votes for the same reason she doesn't hve young men. Not that i've asked, but i presume that is because the young want a new voice, they see the status quo as corrupt and are ready to see socialism in the US.

Hillary wants to be the first woman elected president, but she has allied herself with the powers that ot her husband elected. And women are no different than any other demographic, that is, diverse.

Oklahoma (typically closed primary state) Democrats have opened primaries up to independents, so I'll be voting Bernie when that comes around :)

Also, Oklahomans don't really trust Hillary anyway, so that might actually end up being a deathblow to her in this state, considering there's a lot of what Bernie says that appeals to Independents a lot more than the Hillary party-line statements.

To be fair to the Clintons, changing your tune for every different audience isn't really lying until you have to decide which tune is the right one. And, even then, most people aren't ever really listening properly, or are by that too mesmerised by your playing to pay attention to the changing sound.

Hm. I'm going to get that into my next short story. That was poetic.

*by that point

Urgh.

#feelthebern = Bernie Sanders

#feelthebum = Bill Cosby

I dozed off to the news, listening to a story about a large beast that mauled a Scottish man to death, and presumed it was Donald Trump, until I saw the video of an elephant.

Good job OK Democrats for opening up primaries to "independents".