April 23, 2024: Dwarf Fortress 50.13 has been released.
News: February 3, 2024: The February '24 Report is up.
News: February 4, 2021: Dwarf Fortress Talk #28 has been posted.
News: November 21, 2018: A new Threetoe story has been posted.
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*Trying not to pronounce the game as Grim Dark*Great, now I have Grim Dark stuck in my head. Thanks!
Looks pretty good. Graphics are pretty good for an Alpha. But the story line seems pretty......the same.
Not all immigrants are migrant farm workers.Yes, but there are a great portion of immigrants who do. I also understand that there is a great portion that come here on work visa that pay into SS but never see a penny back. I thought that was being changed though.
we also have a fairly large number of working immigrants paying into the system.For those farmers that actually report it... I happen to know a few that did not. They'd pay the workers in cash for each day's work... and there were a lot of workers picking those tomatoes/pickles...
I finally decided to use a real wallpaper. This one suits me quite wellI love that the Umbrella corp disclaimer sort of blurs away under the start menu. It fits how I feel about lengthy disclaimers in general. They just kind of fade away as you read them..
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
I swear, the symptoms they listed would put some depression patients over the edge.
Yep, but if you continue that trend you'll run into population issues.But... the baby boomer generation has been highly productive. We are in trouble now, but because they are going to stop working.Same problem. They are not working now, their children have to cover the Social Security costs for them, they are collecting more medicare/medicaid than prior years and based on the current Social Security setup (your child pays for your care) it's a bad situation for the current taxpayer. Basically their (grand)children have to pay more than they did into the system to cover their costs which will never be recovered.
Or is it different in the US?
So... you need more children by couple (or more immigration) to have a working force big enough to pay for the retirement of the parents.
But... the baby boomer generation has been highly productive. We are in trouble now, but because they are going to stop working.Same problem. They are not working now, their children have to cover the Social Security costs for them, they are collecting more medicare/medicaid than prior years and based on the current Social Security setup (your child pays for your care) it's a bad situation for the current taxpayer. Basically their (grand)children have to pay more than they did into the system to cover their costs which will never be recovered.
Or is it different in the US?
The percentages I'm talking would not be detrimental to people forcing them to withdraw their kids. I'm talking about enough to care, but not enough to hinder.QuoteBecause I don't think that parents should be encouraged to kick out kids without understanding the impact. This is how the baby boomer problem we have happens.Except, you know, this would just result in parents having kids and not giving them an education, which has a statistical tendency to turn them into criminals or people who pop out a lot of kids and then don't give them an education. It's not that I disagree with your goals, here, but the methodology is terrible. That simple isn't the way things work. If you want the results you state, the incentives your proposing aren't going to cut it, and would, in fact, exacerbate the problem.
How can you think so? Is DF a worse game because it's free? Do we stop caring BECAUSE it's free?DF is an exception to the rule... it's very niche. It's also a very different concept. If DF vanished tomorrow, we could continue using it in the state it's in today. The same cannot be said about education.
the fact that people pay their taxes for me to live gives me a certain feeling of guilt that makes me want to progressI just wish more people thought this way...
I was thinking that the taxes would be put into a flat rate per child and parents would be responsible for a percentage of that. You wouldn't have parents on the hook for the entire bill, but encourage the parents to think twice about having that fifth child. Maybe start charging after N children? (sustain the population?) I don't know. I just think about the people who don't/can't have children that have to pay for other children to go to school. Yes, the overall benefit to society is continuation of an educated society but blindly pumping out kids has a downside and should be discouraged. I know far too many people who would be more than happy to do that.It's also why I wish that the parents "share" the cost of adding a child to the system... and why they are informed how much it costs. I don't find any issue with privatized colleges, but mainly because of the greater issues at hand (lower education.)What do you mean by share?
Right now I have added a child to the system. It's an only child, raised with a lot of attention. It has two higher-educated parents and has some money in the family to get it kickstarted. It is already showing above average prowess in intellectual and social behaviour (as expected) and will all likelyhood net our society more than it will cost. This "raising" doesn't come free, and the time that I invest I don't get paid for.
YOU should be paying ME.
Because I don't think that parents should be encouraged to kick out kids without understanding the impact. This is how the baby boomer problem we have happens.I'm talking about the education cost, not overall cost of raising a kid.The thing is, we educate children so they contribute to society when they're older. I don't see why parents should have to face that cost as well.
Yes, there was K-12 (13 years actually) but I'm talking college level. I did not pay for it with the wage I was working at the time. I paid for it later with the job I got from the education. The job during school was to pay for food, board, and some side cash for necessity.QuoteI paid for my own education. I worked a 40 hour week doing store clerk work (stock, customer service, etc.) while going to school. I was able to do that with a loan from the government, but it's entirely possible to get a degree without having rich parents.
I'm not sure if you've spent much time with young people today. A lot of them would love to do this, but it simply isn't an option - I don't know anyone under 21 who's found a full time 40 hour a week job that would pay for their education, which is getting more expensive every year. I'm also assuming you had a relatively good FREE education for the twelve years before that, am I right?
In the USA there are pockets of good or outstanding educational practice that are not being shared, developed and implemented across a unified system as it is in the UK (this I have first hand professional experience of). As a result the education system in the USA has been relativley stable and consistent (more a model of consolidation, with standards based grading currently breaking through, possibly the first really big thing to happen in 20 years), whereas in the UK we have had structures similar to standards based grading for over a decade, implemented over the whole model due to a more centralized approach, where ideas of best practice are constantly being reviewed, updated, shared and developed at all levels of the system. Very similar is done in Canada and Australia, and large parts of the EU, but much less so in the USA, partly due to a question of scale (Michigan is one state that I know first hand is moving to establish networks to share good practice, but it appears to be alone in this regard), and partly due to the organisational model in place in the USA not suiting such collaboration. This rant isnt to say which system is best at producing well educated students, as the biggest factor in this is skilled teachers with time to do a good job (which has suffered badly in the UK since Thatcher due to innovation overload as a result of the political meddling - if interested I strongly reccomend looking into the work of Dylan William, Bob Compton (his film one million mins is very interesting), David Hargreaves and Yhong Zao), but that the system in the USA is held back by its structure. Removing the barriers presented by local boards and taking a centralized approach could save plenty of cash through saving people re-inventing the wheel constantly for different regions - an idea currently being run with on a small scale in the UK and being called "School Families". I will curtail this rant here as I have written more than one thesis on international aspects of education and dont wanna go on forever!I would say that you mentioned the problem but came to another conclusion. Under the current system, the good school should be sharing their success methods. I wouldn't say that consolidating all the schools under one umbrella is needed as much as the Federal Board of Education needs to be "taking" the ideas and methods from the most successful school and passing them out to the less successful ones. Kind of like someone watching over a box of ants and telling them all what's working and what's not.
In fact, it's a hell of a lot better for the good students to not have to pay, since they don't have to waste time with a job just to stay alive. One of the bigger reasons rich families stay rich is their kids can focus on their studies instead of spending their early years doing menial work.
The issue of fixed percentage university education is that it means a very different thing for poor families vs. rich ones. The families living paycheck to paycheck still won't have any ability to pay the fees.I paid for my own education. I worked a 40 hour week doing store clerk work (stock, customer service, etc.) while going to school. I was able to do that with a loan from the government, but it's entirely possible to get a degree without having rich parents.
I think some people actually just don't understand the idea that roads and so on cost money and are maintained by the state. My step-grandmother-from-Nazi-Germany often complains about having to pay taxes, and my mom has to keep explaining all the crap she gets out of them. Way, way more than she ever pays in...I wonder if a nice clear budget pamphlet handed to residents would help the that perception.
It's just what your priority is: Fairness or excellence. Do you want to treat your people humanely or fair, or do you want to be the Best Country In The World?That's a valid point. It's the basis for many arguments against socialism. It's also why I wish that the parents "share" the cost of adding a child to the system... and why they are informed how much it costs. I don't find any issue with privatized colleges, but mainly because of the greater issues at hand (lower education.)
Really?I think that's because the lower education system levels have slipped. If college levels stayed progressively hard, kids would be at a serious disadvantage in college. So the colleges start giving out Math 101 classes to compensate... taking away their ability to teach higher education later.
Because some of the European teachers here often lament how dumb we Americans have gotten, and how our top students are 80% of what they once were. And I've had conversations with European graduate students who talk about how Americans have no grounding in culture, the arts, a wide range of studies, blah blah blah blah.
I'm talking about the education cost, not overall cost of raising a kid.Andir, I'm pretty sure there are plenty of costs involved in raising a child already. Such as feeding, clothing and housing them.
*cough*
Yeah, this too.
I may have totally misunderstood you,It's alright, it was an extreme example as noted with the:
That's an extreme example, but the logic could apply to any number of social programs.That's why I like the idea of funding by student (edit: in Ohio)... but I wish there was a way to make parents realize what costs are involved (they pay a percentage?) It's a divide between my libertarian and my "basic necessity" self. I've been trying to contemplate what the US would be like if we took some of that war money and spent it actually reforming the education system.
