It can actually be worse than this when you consider all of this is effectively under the table, so they can avoid reporting it for taxes. Furthermore, they can say they have no job so in our increasingly socialist countries they can get free healthcare, and in the U.S. they likely get some good amount of Food Stamps and cash. Some of them may avoid such programs, others may embrace it completely, and they likely live quite well.
Yet none of that was free. Everyone else paid for it. The government cannot offer FREE services, they don't produce anything, but waste, rules, and war, so the only people that can pay for it are those paying taxes whether as income tax, property tax, or sales taxes.
Oha? I thought you would say it people gave them money out of their own free will (to feel better themselves of all reasons), so everything is ok.
I doubt that anyone offered work for food or asked of they were homeless, so it is not even a swindle.
I like to compare things, so:
In Germany everyone is entitled to help. So you rarely see homeless people and for most of them you not only see that they are homeless but also what their main problem is - alcohol or worse.
And then there is the sort where you don't see it, but again, since everybody can get help it is your choice if you give, you don't need to feel bad if you don't.
That's the thing you don't SEE homeless much here either. They type she was referring to that swindle people are typically panhandling. They will go with signs and sit near a busy intersection somewhere. There are not a ton of them.
Those that are there often are there for your "alcohol or worse" type of situation. I know because I have an uncle who does that. He's one of the worst alcoholics I've ever encountered.
Yet short of going and asking for VERIFICATION (which you won't get) when you are in your car trying to drive past it becomes an exchange based upon a very brief period of time so they can capitalize on that.
Sometimes their sign, demenor, etc can be quite moving and people will want to help.
There has actually been a documentary on this before where there are people making $60K+ per year doing this. The problem is due to passing in a car at an intersection, there really is no time for verification.
The best ways to verify are if you see a sign that says "will work for food", offer them some work. The fakes will generally refuse such an offer no matter the work you offer.
We do have neighborhoods with a lot of homeless people usually somewhere near the dense city locations, and sometimes they are there for purely voluntary reasons. Other times they may not be. It is hard to say again without getting the persons story and they are often very reserved about that. It also sometimes is mental illness related. Since we do tend to subsidize a lot of things in the U.S. as well it is not as though some entity could not make good money helping those people. It is not always so clear cut.
I never thought about that.
Haha! This is a great topic to disagree on! I believe you cannot put a price on education, because knowledge is public property. Thus all knowledge should be accessible for free! Oh and you can google yourself to the knowledge degree of a BA, but without the approval of an institution it becomes worth much less.
College is free in Germany btw :^)
Do they pay the professors? If they do then the money comes from somewhere. Do they pay their electric bills? Same thing.
Most likely the government.
Government's do not produce money, they take it from the citizens typically in some form of taxation. It is therefore NOT Free. It is just divided up across the citizenry and paid for with taxes.
If this is not the case I'll be curious to hear how they make it free.
EDIT: Taxes and FREE are not the same thing. I know of no way the government gives anything for "free" that isn't paid for with taxes.
ofc it's paid with taxes. We need to have more of our taxes go into education! Our universities look ugly. Filled with smart people, but they look like sh*t. Unless it's for the medical students.
Btw I think I realized why I dont see that many american exchange students. You need latin or old greek for many studies, like philosphy. I mean I still had none of both and sat in the same courses as full blown philosophers, but that is a story on its own.
Juristic you need Latin. Medicin you need Latin. I think you can try to learn into during your first semesters but thats rough. Oh and pharmaceutical vocabular it is not worth to break my no hard curses on Steemit over it but I almost did :D.
Anyways yes we pay for it and for wholistic reasons: you have to pay about 250€ for every state university, which are most, but you get a ticket for all public transports for the semester and other benefits. Some people stay student just because benefits outweight cost.
We have massive funds going into education actually they've been increasing. Education is gone down. Unfortunately the amount of money spent is no guarantee of better results. Our results are actually worse due to the waste and where the money is spent. This is especially true of higher education. Guaranteed student loans have lead to prices of books, college, etc to skyrocket and leave people in debt in some cases for their life. It has also resulted in some sub-standard universities that are charging large fees to get that guaranteed paycheck.
mhh, I actually do not think that the current problem is state vs private school. I think learning, education and subsequently the way we will do our jobs will change. A change we should push for, but I think it is just a matter of time tbh.
There is also a controversal mechanic in place to avoid massive depts of students in Germany. The 10.000€ Bafög cap. Bafög is a loan given out to students and apprentices by the state. If your loan exceeds 10.000€ you will still only have to pay 10.000€ back. I am not a big fan of that rule, because you can profit from taking a loan, but regarding student debts it is a good mechanism to prevent a downwards spiral in debt.
The main problem, I see, is our society and how learning, teachers and education are perceived. And to be honest, I got no clue how to change that. Well other than giving pupils and students more freedom in their school life.
This is not true in the U.S. We've been increasingly spending more and getting less and less quality. The system knows it is guaranteed a paycheck, so they focus on making sure as with any budget that they get the maximum amount the guarantee permits. We also have tons of schools popping up to tap into this guaranteed money and offering very poor quality.
yeah, I have a big problem with how "state institutions" are managed in general, I would guess we agree on that. It needs to change. I'm just not convinced privatizing everything will solve that problem.
I think the very concept of having to squeeze me in a building with thousands of others is preposterous, when I could watch the lesson at home and get all the material sent to my PC. There should have been a major change in how we learn 10 years ago already.
To be fair, I once watched a really cool online Harvard class on computer scienes, it was like an introduction to basic programming, it was pretty well made, but I didnt finish it ^^*. Im a lazy fool
There are many fields that if you have the passion and self motivation to learn that I think is actually dumb to go to college for them.
Why? Because, as you indicated it is all out there easily available on the internet to learn. In fact you can learn it faster, and there is a good chance you might be more cutting edge than most college classes.
If you are not self motivated or lack the discipline to force yourself to do this then it can be a challenge. That is why it is so important to find some interest that you are passionate about and enjoy.
College courses that let you train on equipment you otherwise would not have access to or be able to afford are the types of courses I think it is still worth taking. Most other ones in this day and age and the level of access to information we have I believe are a waste.