Universities are just an extension of fascist-corporate America. The exist solely to do research for corporations that benefit corporations and to dumb-down the students to make them into good little automatons for Corporate America. IMO you'd be better off not getting an "education". I didn't have any government loans BTW.

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. -Mark Twain

It's not just that. Perhaps shipping supplies to China and then back to the US in order to sell it is bad on the environment, but this is a very limited view on what puts more CO2 in the ozone. What about that house that everyone will be building instead of a tall building? What about that piece of swamp land that is now a sub-division? What about driving around in a car so we can get anywhere? What about heating that individual home? What about building a heater for each and individual household instead of one large one for the complex? The pipes that would have to run across the country to get water to places? The upkeep of the pipes? The list goes on... There's something to be said about having more localized production, but it's whole nuther thing to eliminate cities.

I'm not talking about University.

I am having a difficult time finding information on welfare spending. And by welfare, I mean the program that hands out money and food stamps to the unemployed. If anyone has any info on this, I would appreciate it.

The only thing I can find is $367 billion.

Just because I said to live in a small village doesn't mean that everyone has to live in a huge separate mansions. They would be similar to cities but on a much much smaller scale. The majority would be located around existing water sources. Secondly you can build all the houses out of the renewable materials and design to it to fit into the environment instead of fuck it up. As for transportation we should have had a Manhattan style project for a new energy source long ago, but as I've said before corporations are standing in the way of that. We should also have underground mag trains linking major areas. All of this is possible today but corporations and the elite are standing in the way.

How do you want to get this done without education, research, or a government? I'm not sure if corporations are standing in the way of it. People are standing in the way of it. Companies want to make money, as long as they can make money, they'll do what they're doing. As long as we keep driving our cars, they'll sell us gas and as long as the supermarket is 40 min. walking distance from the nearest home, we'll be driving our cars. And as long as the American people want a four bedroom house, with a white picketed fence and a large back yard so Spike can run around in it, the nearest supermarket will be a 40 min. walk away. Until one of these days when people realize we can't have everything in this world and the next world over, I think it's very hard to change the shape of modern day corporations.

I think we need education but not in the state it's in today. Today's schooling kills the natural curiosity of the student and their will to learn. Students are taught to memorize answers for tests and not actual critical thinking and reasoning skills. I could have condensed all four years of my high school into two and learned a whole lot more and been whole lot better off.

I didn't say to get rid of all government, but to invert it. The most power should rest with the local government and the least power should rest with the Federal government. Nowadays it's reversed. The Federal government's only tasks should be to coin money and protect the country from outside threats. We need to go back to what the founding fathers envisioned.

So how do you plan on teaching critical thinking and reasoning skills to 40 kids all at once? There are not enough teachers for the one on one treatment students need to learn everything they need to learn. So they are doing the best we can with what we have.

And I do not want to go back to "what the founding fathers envisioned". For the longest time, America was a third world country.

Pro Life, Anti Death Penalty, Pro Guns. No opinion about gay rights. I am for government over sight in some finance and business, but it needs to be consistant and not overbearing. More about keeping people honest. i think white collar crime needs harsher punishment. And that aid like WIC and Limited Unemployment is a good thing. In some eastern states, its too much civil welfare.

I should clarify, I was talking about federal government control.

You can't have a manhattan project without the federal government stepping in to our everyday lives. I'm not say that the government should become big brothers and watch over our every move. But much of the anyway environment related stuff has to come from the government, people are not "considerate" enough to think of anyone else but ourselves. And I agree with you about the education stuff, I must say that has more to do with individual school. I think my school did foster critical thinking and reasoning skills, as well as some of my friends. I guess if you get stuck with a sucky school with sucky teachers, tough luck?

As for me, I'm for state's rights and self-reliance.

The Fed is for national defense, partial infrastructure, and taxation with equitable payout.

Huh?

Yeah, that's why people are flocking to Vietnam, most of Africa, and eastern Europe.

We were isolationists but we weren't third world. I have never read any accounts where historians refer to the U.S. as "third world".

I think he meant that pre-industrial revolution, we were like a "third world country", not that we actually were at that time.

But HDR was such a moocher in real life.