Fixing a broken window and academic achievement are two very different things. You're only taking into account the monetary value of the education, and not where it will lead you going forward. If your passion is in a field where a college degree is required (doctor, architect, lawyer, etc.), and you know this is something you'll genuinely enjoy doing as a career, most say it's worth it. As is everything you must sacrifice in order to get to where you want to be in life. Jobs that don't require a degree still require substantial sacrifice in terms of effort and time put into your field. You need to take into account factors other than the dollar amount college costs to determine if it's "worth" the money. The only answer is that it depends on the person, what they want to go to college for, and how passionate they are in that field of study. Someone with a passion for business may not value a medical doctorate with a concentration in anesthesiology any more than a 2 year community college associates in general studies. Value is subjective in the society we currently sustain.
So you would've accepted "both are bad" as an answer to your initual question? I'm assuming no, but feel free to object.
That's touching more on education reform; which I agree America severely needs. Although sneakers wouldn't fall under my idea because I don't see how choice of sneaker alters your health. This is only a matter of making unhealthy things more expensive by means of taxing which would be used to fund the costs associated by those unhealthy habits that fall on the rest of society.
Every statistic I find says the homeless population is made up of no more than 22% veterans. Do you have a source for the figure you threw out?
This argument fails pretty badly for a number of reasons. The definition of natural resources is: materials or substances such as minerals, forests, water, and fertile land that occur in nature and can be used for economic gain.. They are things that do indeed exist, the post just tries to say that since we're the ones that use them, only our "ingenuity" exists. This can then be said about any component/product relationship. A cake doesn't bake itself, so are ingredients nonexistant? A computer doesn't build itself, so circuitry's nonexistant? I get what the post intends to say, but saying they flat out "don't exist" just contradicts the very definition and can be replaced by too many things for the arument to make sense. We call that one Reductio ad Absurdum.
What I look for is their critical thinking skills and how well they can adapt to a situation. Good training for this is to just sit down with them one-on-one "interview" style and just have a conversation about a random topic; then a few minutes in completely change the topic and see how well they keep up, minding how engaged they are and how coherent their answers to any questions you ask are.
You can train anyone to follow a few procedures and go through the motions; but the ones you want are the ones that can hold their own when things go south, because they always do at some point.
The OP mentioned this was targetting youth unemployment. Most of these jobs would be entry level at best, so qualifications are out of the window for the most part aside from whatever volunteer work and high school club they could squeeze out onto a resume. The title is also what skills should employers look for. I work at a drug store and our manager hires who he feels does best at the interviews, and we've had 9 people turnover within a month this year alone(I believe my manager's an idiot with no business managing a store but that's for another day). I asked him to let me interview a few and the one he allowed me to hire on is moving up pretty soon. I made sure to make the interviews fairly lengthy to allow them time to A) get used to me and B) burn through all their pre-written interview bullshit and get to their actual personalities. The key is getting to know what kind of person they actually are; not what they can spend upwards of hours of practicing and preparing for what they think will be a 10 minute in and out interview.
Shallow interviews let the shallow people shine.
Please stay on topic if you wish to remain in my debates as well, thanks.
I don't agree with anything that impairs cognitive function at all. In my perfect society, there is no alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, marijuana, junk food; none of it has a place in an advancing, developed society.
To your point on oil and coal, yes absolutely. Both are completely outdated sources of energy, and there should be substantially more investment and advancement in clean, renewable energy. You're straying from the point to attack what I'm guessing are your assumptions on my stance on other topics? And the part about PP looks more like a rant that I don't even understand the point of. Neither of which do I see as relevant, so stay on topic if you wish to remain in my debates.
A system such as this would push especially the poor to not buy into those habits. Buying simple ingredients in bulk and cooking at home is actually cheaper than filling up on "the dollar menu". The missing element is drive, and effort. Allowing the poor to stay poor will do nothing but hinder our advancement as a society.
Keep in mind many of these costs aren't on the unhealthy person alone. About half of the $300 billion from smoking is actually from the effects of second-hand smoke. And employers lose around $4 billion yearly from job absenteeism due to obese workers.
