On Thu, 5 Jan 2012 15:44:03 -0500, "Existential Angst"
wrote:

"The Daring Dufas" wrote in message
...
On 1/5/2012 9:20 AM, Stormin Mormon wrote:
I talked to an appliance repair lady who thinks the economy
is picking up.

I think she said that when it's really dead, people do wtihout.
If the laundry is broken, they take wet clothes to the laundro-
mat to dry, or wash them and take em home wet.

Moderate economy, people repair stuff. (home repair).

Good economy, people buy new.

I'm not sure where we are, now, but I'm really struggling.
Me, I think the economy is still bad. Not many people
repairing. I talked to a contractor (retired), yesterday.
He says the economy is so bad, that builders have gone
into remodelling, to keep the cash flow.


The contents of pawn shops are another good economic indicator. ^_^

YET, college enrollment sets new records every year. WTF????

Don't know how the stats are compiled tho -- if they include ivy,
public/private, on-line, and these dinky for-profit ripoffs that
proliferate/advertise all over.

If the stats are "legit", I find this surprising. They say unemployed
people "go back to school", but I wonder if that's really true or part of
the current stats. visavis "retraining".
I'd like the stats on high-schoolers going to legit 4 year schools, and sep
stats for junior colleges. And trade schools.

Personally, I think 4 year colleges are highly over-rated, except as the
"entre" they provide for having that piece of paper -- whose value varies
tremendously with the school, ivy obviously being the better entre.

But still, something of a benchmark, for, well, something.....

You can find the stats you're looking for with a little googling.

Keep this in mind: The unemployment rate for people holding a BA or BS
is roughly half that for people who don't have either. For recent
graduates, the contrast is more extreme.

If you're a kid graduating from high school, and you have a choice of
having a job and having to pay off loans or not having a job, and no
way to pay for anything, a lot of them will go for the job and the
loans. So would I.

And for those who say "I'll be 35 before I pay off those college
loans," my response is, "You're going to be 35 anyway."

I'd rather be a 24-year-old econometrics research assistant at a major
think-tank, in grad school and still piling up loans, than asking
people if they want fries with that. The former is my son.

--
Ed Huntress