I think you missed the point of the parent, which is that ~1/4 of the students are dead weight at the cost of the rest of the class. It isn't "misguided" if their experience is different than yours.
If your outcome is students that are more capable at languages but less capable in virtually every other subject, is the result really "more capable and prepared students"? I'm not opposed to bilingualism but you're lying to yourself if you think this comes at zero cost to at least some students.
Of course it does. You have a naive view of wages. You do not increase minimum wages and not have wage compression elsewhere in the workforce.
Increasing the minimum wage has the most dramatic impact on increasing the demand for goods because it impacts so many people. Increasing the maximum wage has little if any impact on broader demand for goods because it impacts so few. Unless your supply chain can keep up with the demand surge through raised wages, you will see inflation, which is our situation today.
You might naively assume the solution is to introduce price controls but the general outcome of that is the economy shifting transactions to barter-based, black markets, and non-denominated currency exchange, which causes more economic upheaval as GPD and tax revenues drop. There are many examples of this in the last 100 years, Venezuela being a recent one.
> A reminder to us that psychopaths are running the world economy.
Labeling Powell/the Fed as a psychopath simply because they're turning one of the very few if not only inflation control knobs they have seems extreme.
A psychopath would have done this randomly or at an illogical time (say by raising rates at the outset of the Great Recession). Just because you don't like the outcome of a decision doesn't make the decision maker a psychopath, more so when they agree that they wish there was a better way.
> There are individuals in precarious economic positions.
This is true across all income classes, because the classes are a distribution. While I agree that those in "precarious" positions may be concentrated in the gig economy for the reasons you suggested, this argument is an insufficient rebuttal.
> The pay on DoorDash is very low, because consumers won't pay that much for food delivery.
OK, so costs go up, consumers don't participate in the market, and the gig economy collapses. Are we in a better or worse position now?
> Here's a thread on the DoorDash Reddit
Do these individuals think the picture would be more rosey if they didn't even have this work for income?
Sure, but not all databases have equal impact. Also, the relationship between an individual and the government is fundamentally different than that of a business relationship. I expect much more of my government, especially when considering if such a database is even needed.
To the parents post, litigation and firearms training are two things the NRA does well, which includes suing California over privacy issues such as this.
[2] is only "astounding" if you don't take the time to understand peoples' political philosophies, and I can probably guess your political leanings if you believe [1] causes [2] or that "poor people" can only be intrinsically motivated. I don't know any millionaires but I know plenty of people who think it's wrong for the government to confiscate wealth, who you seem to classify as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires." I'm sure some people think they'll get rich (looking at you crypto bros) but a lot of people simply think it's none of your or the governments business how much money other people have and what they do with it.
Because 100% of people don't want something is hardly "reason" to create a law and just because a majority wants something doesn't make it right. There are plenty of examples of that in history.
Is the role of government to maximize social good or individual liberty? I'd rather the latter because the examples of the former are abundant and dreadful. Anyone who thinks this isn't a race to the bottom where lawmakers trade "happiness" for votes at the cost of liberty is lying to themselves. Let's not kid ourselves, a 40 hour work week is not the same as child labor in the coal mines; such laws exist only to win votes. When will it be 20 hours a week? 16? At what point do we descend into the madness that embraced Rome where the role of government became appeasement of the populace to keep them from revolting?
>It's a symptom of a bigger problem in that U.S.A. schools and companies can terminate for arbitrary reasons.
Is this specific case really arbitrary though? Did you read the contract/terms & conditions that this individual was under? Was this termination random or on personal whim? Because it sounds like it's the result of an individual's actions in violation of an agreement between that individual and another entity.
>The U.S.A. seems culturally built upon a mentality that one should fear government, but never citizens, and consequently has developed an idea of “Free speech is only from the government.” whereas in most developed nations, freedom of opinion is a more active right that the government also attempts to safeguard from private citizens and schools.
Yes, that mentality is literally part of American culture. In the U.S., governments, unlike citizens, are granted a monopoly on the use of force so a natural distrust is not only appropriate but warranted. The government is under no obligation to defend your rights if you literally sign them away (although there are some rights which cannot be waived). You can say whatever you want, but there may be consequences depending on what you say and where you say it.
>> If you're saying f the school and f cheerleading and the goal of the cheer squad is to promote school spirit and pride... (she wasn't suspended, given detention, or kicked off the softball team) I know I would have been benched or cut if I talked about throwing a game or not trying my hardest and those statements made it back to the coach. It's not like they were monitoring social media for this.
> Luckily I can't be let go for this either.
People, including children, must learn there are consequences for what they say, particularly in a public forum (and this was effectively so). The only recourse in cases such as this is whether the response was appropriate e.g., within terms of a contract. I personally do not believe that what was said and who it was said to would warrant expulsion, but that's just an opinion, not a contract.
If your outcome is students that are more capable at languages but less capable in virtually every other subject, is the result really "more capable and prepared students"? I'm not opposed to bilingualism but you're lying to yourself if you think this comes at zero cost to at least some students.