Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Link the Dollar's Value to this College Class List

In Garage Logic, a popular radio show here in the Twin Cities, the host Joe Soucheray likes to link things to one another. It is a sociological version of "for every force there is an equal and opposite force." Therefore one thing will inevitably affect the other.

However, in economics, just like a car engine starting, there are many different individual actions and movements of car parts that occur between turning the key on and the engine actually igniting. So to the layperson, they may not understand why increasing property taxes may turn Minneapolis into a cold Detroit because they don't understand how higher property taxes, lower property values, lower profits and drive capital and labor away.

So I shall test all you junior, deputy and aspiring economics. Link this:



to the value of the dollar.

Many thanks to Elizabeth for the link!

5 comments:

daniel_ream said...

Oh, that's easy: when your post-secondary students are so dim that they need courses like this, your nation hasn't a freaking prayer of producing anything of value for the dollar to rest on.

I think the ones they allow credit for do have a purpose, though I still wouldn't give credit for them. I took a study skills workshop in first year university and it helped immensely, but I don't think it should have counted towards anything. I was rectifying a deficiency in my own work habits, not learning engineering.

Dave said...

Defending these "easy" grammar classes. I remember going back to school 10 years after I graduated high school and realized almost everything I learned of English grammar was way gone. I decided the best (and smartest) thing was for me to start all over in the lowest grammar class being offered. Note: I restarted in a community college.

codemonkey said...

As someone who took courses at TCC years ago (to get transfer credits cheap to go to a good 4 year college) I never took these remedial type course. If they start w/ a zero, they don't count as credits toward a degree.

Sadly, they are necessary because the elementary and high schools often turn out semi-literate, innumerate grads, and they need to make up the deficit somehow when they decide they are ready for a read education.

Elizabeth said...

Gern geschehen! I like how you named the pic file "cripes". LOL.

Anonymous said...

One more example of the dumbing down of the the USA and the near total failure of the US educational system.

Technically if you totally ignore the educational system's impacts upon students' abilities and the adverse impact on the taxpayer, our schools are doing a wonderful job for the teachers, their unions and the Democratic Party, but that's a topic for another post.

It could be worse, they could actually give credit for those "developmental classes".

My wife taught an introductory course at a community college and made the mistake of giving an essay question. The papers were virtually unreadable - miserable spelling, grammar and punctuation, but as bad as that was, the worst thing was the inability to develop an cogent and logical thought.