You should talk to some people with kids then. I can't find the source, but I think the US national average is something like $1500/month for <40 hour/wk daycare. That doesn't account for child-to-sitter ratio differences, or cost of living differences either.
A few different friends around the country, not in big cities, have cited >$5K/month as the cheapest they can find for full time daycare.
It's significant enough that families with multiple children are often cited as being unable to have both parents with careers, because the cost of childcare far exceeds what one of them can make in their career.
To be fair, this makes some sense, you're effectively paying for a portion of a child care professionals career, plus the shared overhead for facilities and supplies. If you have a decent (<8 children per professional) ratio and have 2-3 kids needing daycare, you're paying for 25-30% of someone's direct salary, plus overhead. Very few people make so much more than a trained professional that they could afford to shell out that much.
It's actually cheaper now. the numbers I quote were from when my children were in barnehage many years ago. But remember that is the maximum one would pay, it's graduated according to your income. The rule now is not more than 6% of household income and not more than about 130 USD per month. Also remember that this is eight or more hours per day five days a week in a facility that doesn't only look after your children but also teaches them how to be independent, resilient, social, etc.
Could you get private child care for 300 USD per month?
It is the opposite of a steelman to you. It is a matter of perspective in that if a person finds a leap forward in the consolidation of power and wealth to be abhorrent or illogical, then the act of pointing out that that is happening is itself abhorrent or illogical.
Unemployment lowering wages isn’t up for debate, cash-rich folks buying at the bottom of the market is not imaginary, and no one is trying to make the point that the tariffs somehow appeared emergently like weeds in the grass — we all agree that they are being imposed intentionally by people. There is no part of what was written there that is trivial to disprove.
Why do you think it's a good idea to buy olive oil from Tunisia instead of from California? Are you aware of how much CO2 is released to ship a trivial commodity across the atlantic ocean?
Just a guess as he said his favorite olive oil so could it be one tastes better? I imagine like many other things taste can be effected by the region it is grown in.
As for your other point in a perfect world we would all care about global climate change but many are not going to eat something they don’t like to do their part. But really cargo ships are small fish in such a big problem. Ban private jets or cruise ships would be way more beneficial.
Help me understand your viewpoint here - is the assumption that an entire ship is dedicated to shipping trivial commodities and the cargo isn't co-mingled with anything else? At the same time, what isn't counted as a "trivial commodity", and should ships _only_ be used for those items?
It just seems like the only things we should be importing from across the globe are things that absolutely cannot be produced domestically. For example, I've heard that coffee beans only grow in certain climates, so that would be a commodity that makes sense to import.
Pretty much everything else, including this supposed Tunisian olive oil, just sound like luxury goods to me, and should be priced accordingly.
GHG emissions from boat transport are actually a very low % of the total GHG emissions from producing that food. Moving it across the country on a truck would certainly produce more emissions than shipping it by boat from abroad.
> Formal education just works better for some of us than video tutorials or self-paced learning
I don’t agree with this at all. Anecdotally, the autodidacts I’ve met are way more knowledgeable about subjects they’re passionate about compared to those who received a formal education for it. This applies to both computer science, but also psychology majors who I’ve met who can’t even tell me the difference between Freud and Jung.
Are you actually saying that nobody exists who learns better when taught in the best ways we currently know how to teach, and in the way all formal education currently works? That everyone is better off teaching themselves with no help?
You are disagreeing if and only if this is what you are saying.
I mean, you can disagree with it based on your anecdata, but mine backs up my assertion which is why I made (and qualified) it the way I did. I specifically thrive in live sessions with an instructor knowledgeable on the material who can provide direct feedback, and I am not the only one. "Works better" is a qualifier on the effectiveness of the education on an individual, not the effectiveness of it on all individuals.
The key to learning accessibility is flexibility. Some thrive on self-study, some thrive on video tutorials, some thrive on audio lectures and others in live exercises. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if this also applied to specific topics: fundamentals of cooking might be better via live instruction, while iterating on a recipe is often fine with self-study or video tutorials.
The point is the flexibility, to allow people to learn in a way that's best for them, so they're more likely to continue learning throughout their lives.
Over the past 40 years I've become aware of a LOT of people who had difficulty staying engaged in self-paced learning sessions, especially pre-recorded. Without the dynamics -- questions and interactions -- that other students can pose (or you can pose), it's tough to maintain your attention for a solid 50 or 90 minutes. Not that all courses must be in-person, but I'd there to be a mix, with more in-person opportunities for course material that needs Q&A and interaction and examples, like courses heavy in math or theory, or recitation sections.
