"In 1969 the median salary for a male worker was $35,567 (in 2012 dollars). Today it is $33,904. So for 44 years, while wages for the top 10 percent have continued to climb, most Americans have been caught in a ”Great Stagnation,” bringing into question the whole purpose of the American capitalist economy. The notion that what benefited the establishment would benefit everyone, had been thoroughly discredited."
I don't believe this analysis (which appears to be the central point of the piece) is meaningful. What is the author trying to compare and why? A male worker in 1969 could not buy a smartphone or a flat screen television. They would pay far more for air travel. Does it really make sense to quote their salary in 2012 dollars?
I would be interested to see the price of basic necessities over time. I would imagine Walmart, etc, would have caused a fall in food prices; I am unsure of other factors.
"[We will be] completing 3 exercises from each chapter of SICP over 6 weeks, one chapter a week after the kickoff."
Firstly, my edition and the linked edition only have 5 chapters.
Secondly, it's unclear if it means those 5 sections as the chapters, or the smaller subsections (1.1, 1.2, etc).
If they mean the big chapters, then this seems way, way, too fast (with not enough exercises), and if it's the subsections then it still seems like too few exercises.
I've been doing one subchapter each week, completing at least half the exercises in each section. It's been a pretty good pace, I think, and I'd probably recommend it to people with similar amounts of free time to me. I'm coming from a maths background and have no previous CompSci experience (save a tiny bit of Python).
Although the government has recently raised the maximum tuition fees that Universities may charge (from around £3000 to around £9000 per year), this has not affected the financial provisions available to first-degree (i.e. undergrad) home students.
The government supplies student loans for both tuition fees and maintenance (i.e. living) costs, which (supposedly) only garner interest at the rate of inflation.
In addition, there is extensive means-tested financial support available from both the government and from Universities. I went to Oxford a few years ago and received full financial support. My income (in addition to the ~£3K tuition fee loan the government paid the university directly) from loans/grants was in the region of £9000, with about £5k of that being non-repayable. Although this was the maximum possible, it was hardly uncommon for people to get it, or to get some proportion of it.
There are also numerous smaller grants handed out by both the university and its constituent colleges on the basis of financial need and otherwise.
(In response to the increase in tuition fees, Michael Moritz (Sequoia Capital chairman) donated £75m to Oxford, with the express goal of keeping tuition fees low for disadvantaged students: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-18785041)
I don't believe this analysis (which appears to be the central point of the piece) is meaningful. What is the author trying to compare and why? A male worker in 1969 could not buy a smartphone or a flat screen television. They would pay far more for air travel. Does it really make sense to quote their salary in 2012 dollars?
I would be interested to see the price of basic necessities over time. I would imagine Walmart, etc, would have caused a fall in food prices; I am unsure of other factors.