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Jay wrote: "Canada starts legal marijuana sales Wednesday as world watches closely
“If it turns out that true research done by qualified clinicians proves that cannabis can treat anxiety better than Xanax ..."
Big Pharma has already isolated and replicated the teensy part of weed that has medicinal properties. They have produced pills that do the same thing but without the high. No doubt these pills will cause anal leakage, thoughts of suicide, and in some rare cases death.
The dispensaries can remain open for recreational users. Everyone I know with a prescription for it is all about recreational use anyway.
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If you’re not making a living wage, $20,000 in debt is devastating. --Chad Haag
Student loans (approximately $1.5 TRILLION total debt!) - It appears that the 'miracle of compound interest' added to low wages is driving some of our well-educated young people to emigrate and start over elsewhere. Even if this is just a small group, am I the only one who thinks this is a bad sign?
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He moved to a jungle in India to escape his giant student debt — and he’s not alone
If you’re not making a living wage, $20,000 in debt is devastating. --Chad Haag
Student loans (approximately..."
Unfortunately, kids can't finish their educations and figure out what happens next anymore. My generation could get away with it, at least for awhile. Perhaps secondary schools need to rethink guidance counseling, replace teachers in that role with business people or something.
Jay wrote: "He moved to a jungle in India to escape his giant student debt — and he’s not alone
If you’re not making a living wage, $20,000 in debt is devastating. --Chad Haag
Student loans (approximately..."
No, you are not the only one. It will be a long time until the balance with education and what the workforce needs will be restored. I think we are living in an industrial revolution kind of era and there will be casualties as it goes to find its own way of being. With a current generation, the baby boomers should have retired and given room for the younger generation, but that isn't clearly the case (and while they do retire, those positions they leave behind are not filled.) Maybe I should take Henry Thoreau's Walden with me and find a nice little forest for my cottage and build a trench around it?
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Figure it out anymore???? I don't think it's that simple, Joel, when the math no longer works.
"Do I want a college degree?"
"Am I willing to bet the economy will pay a living wage four years from now?"
"Am I willing to live in my parents' basement for the next ten years if it doesn't work out?"
Seriously, how many people in our generation started their careers over $100,000 in debt? There are a lot of young people in that situation due to their bachelor's degree.
A FREAKIN' BACHELOR'S DEGREE!!!!
People with professional degrees are even more at risk. According to a fairly recent Wall Street Journal article there are more than 100 people who owe more than $1 MILLION in student loans. How many people in our generation paid more than a million dollars for their education?
Something is seriously wrong when a young person can fall behind on a student loan and have their life ruined....or feel they have to emigrate and start over!
Rather than business people for guidance counselors, maybe we should rethink our education system. Perhaps, requiring states to provide a work-study program rather than drive our young people into clearly burdensome debt.
$20,000 in student loans is chump change. That is less than what a car cost. The interest rates on student loans are crazy low and deferments are endless. There are also a lot of loan forgiveness programs for working in under-served areas. The problem is no one hands you a good job after graduation. In the US everyone can go to college. You may have to go to a State University instead of Harvard, but higher education is accessible to everyone.
I am so happy to be retired. Anyone my age with ambition needs counseling. I do feel sorry for younger people who just can't seem to figure out what direction they want to go.
PS....no one files bankruptcy over student loans....can't anyway. People with super high student loan debt are the ones who went into careers where they are making over a million a year. Yep..there are careers like that....they are all medical specialists. That is the only way to go that deep in loans. Even law school is not that expensive.
At the University in Tucson a parking permit on campus is $1000 a year. That is crazy.....It is the little stuff that bothers me.
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For good or bad in the long term, the current industrial revolution has blue collar jobs being replaced by robotics, and white collar jobs being replaced by software programs.
Currently, 84% of the US economy is not industrial; it's service jobs. I don't know what form the eventual economic restructuring will take, but clearly, it won't be capitalism driving everyone into the service sector. We can't all work at Starbucks for minimum wage, can we?
The arguments are no longer ambiguous. Our democracy is actually a plutocracy. Our society is stratifying into a rich and a poor, and continuing to shrink the middle class in the US and many Western countries. The wealthiest 1% now own more than 50% of the world's resources (Global Wealth Report by the Credit Suisse Research Institute). In this climate, how can you fault people for demanding so-called "socialist" social programs when capitalism has so clearly abandoned or economically burdened the majority of citizens.
The "common good" politically and economically is failing for all but a few. I don't have a clear answer, so perhaps I can borrow your spare copy of Walden.
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It's really not that clear cut, Brena. Student loan problems are now headline news because we're putting the financial screws to an entire generation.
According to the College Board, the average cost of tuition and fees for the 2017–2018 school year was $34,740 at private colleges, $9,970 for state residents at public colleges, and $25,620 for out-of-state residents attending public universities.
Add on room and board, fees and text books and you can easily double or possibly triple those figures.
If you're from a poor family or have credit issues, college is not so easily accessible in the US. How many times have you heard someone talk about the first person in their family to attend college?
"$20,000 is chump change" only if you have it.
Also, investigate those programs that provide loan deferments or forgiveness... They're very difficult to qualify for, even if you're unemployed, and they come with their own burdens.
People in our generation did not start out owing decades worth of debt.
Jay wrote: "K.A. wrote: "No, you are not the only one. It will be a long time until the balance with education and what the workforce needs will be restored. I think we are living in an industrial revolution k..."I agree with you. But we don't all have to work at Starbucks, for minimum wage, there is still going to be input jobs with minimum wage. The problem is that currently, those inputs people put online are thought as a free game, and those who contribute on software don't get what they deserve. Jaron Lanier talked about that one way out of it might be if we were paid by karma points based on our contribution. He mentioned, for example, those who add grammatically correct sentences on software do it for free as algorithms take those corrections without their knowledge and without companies having to pay for their original contributors. Or say like Instagram, only a few original contributors make money out of it, but the company itself makes tons of the free content we put there without which it couldn't survive. There might be a change there how we make our money. This everything is free and sponsored by ads and force-fed by ads won't be a sustainable way to organize a society.
And yes, I agree with you on plutocracy as well. The divide between the rich and the poor has gone wider. The change has been rapid, and if I remember correctly, this started to happen after the seventies. The wage difference between the company owner and the worker wasn't that big compared to what it is now. And if I remember correctly, the sums, the average yearly pay has dropped from 45k to 35k while the company owner's or CEO's has gone from 150k to millions when you add in their additional bonuses. Now add in the fact that the need for the workforce is shrinking, and we can see why the middle class will be gone. The middle class that so many economic theories find important for the national economy and health (if we base it on annual growth.)
So yes, you can borrow my spare copy of Walden.
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Tucson is totally a town where biking year round is not only possible, but pleasant. No reason to have a parking permit.
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Interesting. The University of CA is well above the average for public colleges. At UCSD where our younger son goes, tuition is just over $14,000/year, and then you do have to live. Room and board on campus is another 14K.
Rebecca wrote: "Brena wrote: "At the University in Tucson a parking permit on campus is $1000 a year. That is crazy.....It is the little stuff that bothers me."Tucson is totally a town where biking year round is..."
A lot of students ride bicycles and around the University they have areas where you have to back in to park cars so as not to mow them down. Tucson is too sprawled out for walking, and riding a bicycle is super dangerous on streets.
My daughter shared a dorm room with 5 other girls at Georgetown, and it cost $500 a week for each of them. She got lucky and her department picked up the tab after the first month. She got a bachelors and 2 masters degrees with very little debt. I did the same thing. Grants...scholarships...work study....part time jobs (I am so thankful those days are long behind me...and my kids.)
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The costs are outrageous, for certain, Brena.
Let's see...
$500 a week each X 5 girls = $2500 per week
$2500 X 4.3 weeks per month = $10,750 per month
...FOR A FREAKIN' DORM ROOM!!!
Imagine the house in a fabulous neighborhood that you could BUY for a near $11K a month mortgage. At current interest rates, you could carry the mortgage on a $2.2 million property.
Was that dorm room as nice as a $2.2 million home?
Just out of curiosity, what did the university charge to let you pitch a tent on the dean's lawn?
For students who are not lucky enough to find grant and scholarship money, there is often very little justification for much of the debt they must carry...other than, what the market will bear. And with our younger generation carrying over a trillion and a half dollars in debt at the very beginning of their careers, and the interest compounding, this bear must be lame, slightly deaf, and blind in at least one eye, because a system that financially burdens (or destroys) an entire generation sure as hell can't be called healthy.
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Rebecca wrote: "As someone who has ridden in downtown SF, and also some around Tucson, I can't say I think the latter is "super dangerous." I will admit it doesn't seem to be a town that's figured out yet how to o..."It is dangerous in Tucson to be a pedestrian. I moved to Arizona from California where pedestrians have the right of way. Between old people who shouldn't be driving and the just plain crazies...Tucson has a lot of issues with traffic accidents. One of the major roads near my house has a bicycle fatality at least six times a year. There are a cluster of bicycles around the University, but I rarely see anyone on bicycles outside that area. I am fortunate to live near a river trail for bicyclist and walkers, and I use it everyday.
The city has been trying to address this for many years. They finally got rid of the suicide lanes. Do you remember those? The center turn lane became a traffic lane (west in the morning and east in the evening) during rush hours and no left turns were allowed during those times.
Jay wrote: "Brena wrote: "...My daughter shared a dorm room with 5 other girls at Georgetown, and it cost $500 a week for each of them..."The costs are outrageous, for certain, Brena.
Let's see...
$500 a w..."
It is interesting what universities do to address housing issues. Berkeley had a big problem with that, and their solution was to admit a lot of Asians because they were comfortable packed tightly into apartments. My favorite is the student who was living in a Goodwill donation box. Some people just need their own space.
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Rebecca wrote: "I'm concerned about this for next year, when our younger son has to move off campus. UCSD was probably built kind of in the sticks, but now it's in the middle of La Jolla--a pretty high-rent area. ..."I lived in Ventura and commuted to UCSB, Northridge, and UCLA. It was a hassle. I had 2 children and owned a home...so not much choice.
I know several people who live in San Diego, and many working adults rent rooms in houses because the rents are insane. My daughter did that when she went to UCDavis. She had really positive experiences.
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Yeah, our kid expects to do some serious sharing, though he really wants a private room, and I can't blame him (I didn't do well with roommates, so I sympathize, and his experience last year was poor enough that we sprung for a single for him this year). In some ways, our best bet might be for us to invest in a condo and let him rent rooms to a couple of other students to help defray the costs.
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If we look back in our history, healthcare was not beyond the means of most people until medicine became a business instead of a vocation.
Now...
A Search For New Ways To Pay For Drugs That Cost A Mint
Researchers expect that three dozen new drugs will come on the market over the next few years with astronomical prices — some likely topping a million dollars per patient. ...The drugmaker Novartis has told investors it might be able to charge $4 million to $5 million for one of its potential products, a treatment for a rare disease called spinal muscular atrophy. ...Hundreds more ultra-expensive therapies are under development.
Is our society now willing to accept a formalized financial triage?
Is it right to ask people to pay a multi-million dollar mortgage just to stay alive?
Is there a social or moral question here, or is it just the ultimate attainment of capitalism -- turning each breath we take into a profit center?
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Jay's inner voice: Why do you post these damn conundrums?
Jay: Relax. I haven't gotten a single reply, but it's only been a little while.
Jay's inner voice: A full day, you mean.
Jay: Hush!
Jay's inner voice: You should have posted a funny meme or cartoon.
Jay: I do that, too, but I'm genuinely curious to hear what other people think. It improves one's thinking to listen to other opinions. Particularly on conundrums.
Jay's inner voice: But this is the humor club. This is the wrong place to look for thoughtful opinions.
Jay: UTTER NONSENSE! Funny people may have better opinions than most people. It takes both thought and insight to be funny. In fact, successful comedians are some of the most intelligent people on the planet. Rowan Atkinson has a Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering. John Cleese has a Law Degree and three honorary Ph.D.'s. And Ricky Gervais has a degree in philosophy from the University College, London.
Jay's inner voice: They're all British.
Jay: Okay, give me a minute on this one.
Jay wrote: "Jay wrote: "Is there a social or moral question here, or is it just the ultimate attainment of capitalism -- turning each breath we take into a profit center?..."Jay's inner voice: Why do you pos..."
Many American comedians are well educated including Bill Maher-Cornell, Conan O'Brien and Lisa Lampanelli-Harvard, Lewis Black and Demetri Martin-Yale.
The problem is that the ills of the world have been explored ad nauseam, and the challenge is finding the humor in the horror and a fresh approach.
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Thanks so much for your reply which actually addresses my question. I'd almost given up hope.
Numerous pharmaceutical companies were clients of mine for many years.
My impression: Frankly, they have no interest in curing anything --- there's not enough money in cures. However, if a drug can control a disease, there are huge profits involved in getting you to pay $5 or more (possibly MUCH more) a day for the rest of your life.
One pharma employee told me point blank, "If they found a cure for something around here, that research would disappear so fast your eyeballs would spin."
The HUGE disparity between drug prices in the US vs. drug prices overseas is also well documented. Fortunately, the generally sociopathic CEO's of pharmaceutical companies have an excellent PR department coming up with explanations as to why a pill that costs fifteen cents in the rest of the world, costs $75 in the US. As far as I can tell, the primary reason is that we let them get away with that BS.
Also, the hemophilia patient noted in the article was paying $800,000 a year to stay alive. How are these costs justified? ...Someone who requires daily medication to maintain life should be given that medication at cost. Pricing such drugs at what the market will bear leaves the ultimate Sword of Damocles hanging over these poor peoples heads. For many, this is indeed a financial triage.
As to your comment, "...I think that the pharmaceutical industry is morally corrupt, and I have no idea what we do about it...", I would suggest one possible and very simple cure: Make political campaign contributions from healthcare-related industries illegal, then let's see what the congressional committees' investigations determine about how to lower healthcare costs.
What do you think?
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I agree. The United States is the ONLY developed country without universal healthcare. The private sector has failed to get the job done and inflated costs beyond all reason. However, giving people an affordable government healthcare option will bring down the Wrath of God, a Zombie Apocalypse, very possibly an Alien Invasion, Floods, Plagues, Locusts, Dogs and Cats living together, Visits from one's In-Laws...
...basically, all the stuff that would require you to have healthcare.
Oh, the irony!
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Brexit is on again, off again, don't-know-again, we-might-see-next-Tuesday again. What is going on over there????
Sincerely,
Just Curious
Here's an infographic issued by the EU to explain how the EU works. I think it's helpful.
Jay wrote: "Dear British HC Members,Brexit is on again, off again, don't-know-again, we-might-see-next-Tuesday again. What is going on over there???? "
Yes. Precisely.
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"
So . . . the UK was only being crapped on a little bit. Why leave?
Melki wrote: "Ken wrote: "Here's an infographic issued by the EU to explain how the EU works. I think it's helpful."So . . . the UK was only being crapped on a little bit. Why leave?"
I can only guess that 45 years of being crapped on turned out to be more crap than was bearable.
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Good eye, Rebecca. Actually, I moved it to the 'How Will You Die' thread. With the corpse and all, it seemed more appropriate.
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Good eye, Rebecca. Actually, I moved it to the 'How Will You Di..."
Ah. You certainly managed to make me deeply puzzled.
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In the spirit of the holiday season, the HC has gifts for all its so dearly cherished members.
For the Ladies:
And for the Gents...The Usual Buffet:
(Please, pick only one, Mr. Greedy!)
MERRY, MERRY!!!!!!!!
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I rarely recommend...
Okay, that's BS! I tend to be lavish in bestowing, with all due modesty, what I call 'my incredibly erudite opinions.'
However...
If you haven't read this opinion by The New York Times Editorial Board...
(The editorial board represents the opinions of the board, its editor and the publisher. It is separate from the newsroom and the Op-Ed section.)
...then you're missing one of the best evaluations of the current government shutdown. Perhaps, the best.
Trump’s Shutdown Is Not About Border Security
Perhaps most telling about this manufactured crisis: The Trump "administration has spent less than 10 percent of what Congress has [already] allocated in the past year." for border security.
Ninety percent of the cash still in the coffers... So much for the we're-all-doomed "crisis" at the border.
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I think I just found the world's largest dust bunny under my bed, and I'm fairly certain that it ate my other flip-flop.
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Chocolate is a much better alternative in calming persistent cough, according to a scientist from the University of Hull. ...Alyn Morice, who is also a founding member of the International Society for the Study of Cough, said new research has shown that chocolate-based medication is more effective than linctus, and "the evidence is actually as solid as a bar of Fruit of Nut."
I feel a cold coming on. Please, pass me your Snickers bar.
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50 Times Libraries Surprised Everyone With Their Creativity And Sense Of Humor (New Pics)
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50 Times Libraries Surprised Everyone With Their Creativity And Sense Of Humor (New Pics)
"
Awesome ideas, though budget-wise, most of them our out of my library's reach. I like the idea of loaning cake pans, but I shudder to think of the condition they would be in when (and if) they are returned.
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Oven cleaning spray (odor-free recommended); wait an hour; rinse and give a quick scrub. You'll rarely have to give a pan a second spray. Works great, and pans last forever.
However, I don't use non-stick pans. That might be another story.
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Put yourself in the shoes of a BBC reporter. If you had to waste a full day of your valuable time getting through airport security (Knowing full well they're ALL trained to do a body cavity search.) and flying across "The Pond" with nothing but a bag of stale peanuts and an in-flight bartender who only accepts exact change and cuts you off after your second drink... Even if you're somehow blessed and don't end up sitting for six hours next to the 'Haven't-showered-in-a-week Anti-Christ,' wouldn't you be trying to get the story right the first time????
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I think I just found the world's largest dust bunny under my bed, and I'm fairly certain that it ate my other flip-flop."
I discovered whole civilizations of dust bunnies when we moved. Behind the books AND under the bed.
The Humour Club
Books mentioned in this topic
The Book of Heroic Failures (other topics)Fox in Socks (other topics)
Green Eggs and Ham (other topics)
Fox in Socks (other topics)
Fox in Socks (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Katherine May (other topics)Richard Osman (other topics)
David Sedaris (other topics)
Christopher Moore (other topics)
Christopher Buckley (other topics)
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“If it turns out that true research done by qualified clinicians proves that cannabis can treat anxiety better than Xanax or relieves pain better than Advil, think about the implications of that," Lustig said. "People have largely focused on this being as a recreational product, (but) that’s where this market could go haywire and just blow the top off of this being seen as just an alcohol or tobacco replacement product.”
In general, I really don't care if marijuana gets legalized or not here in the US. However, pharmaceutical use certainly explains the increase in marijuana use by retirees. And I must admit that I am tickled by anything that threatens to put a bit of a bite on our congressional-lobby-protected, ridiculously-pricey pharmaceutical industry, which would gladly price-gouge its own mother if it had one.