College Tuition, Health monitors and things in the news

I am going to discuss just a few items today and attempt to go into a little more depth. These articles that I am going to link to have been popping up in slightly different ways across the world media and all with a slightly similar twist. I will discuss the articles, what I have read other places and where I think they are trending.

College and Student Loans. For about the past six months I have been reading about the Student Loan bubble. We are told it is over a trillion dollars in the United States. It recently came to my attention that just about all student loans are government loans anymore. The articles that have come out in the past few months have gone a step further than saying there is a student loan bubble, they are now saying that it may not pay to go to college, that it is actually better to never go to college unless you have lots of money and don't have to take on any debt. I have also read how one politician wants to lower the interest rate paid on student loans to the same as that offered banks by the Federal Reserve (less than 1% a year). Here is the latest take from CNBC - Student Debt a 'Roadblock' for Wider Economy. We can add to this the fact that state owned schools are increasing in accepting students from out of state because they pay more.

Now personally, I have no problem with private universities allowing in foreign students; but, do I really want my state taxes for state schools to subsidize foreign students and have them refuse to let my own kids in? The Daily Beast - Elizabeth Warren Wants the Fed to Get Into the Student Loan Business. The articles that I linked to showed a definitely negative response to the idea of lowering the interest rates on student loans and even the idea of Americans bothering to attend college. So what happens if their advice is followed, fewer Americans in college in the United States, more foreign (Chinese) students and a transfer of our knowledge base to foreign countries.

Why do you think foreign students want to come to America? It is a fair question. They come here because we turn out college graduates that are at the forefront of technology when their own colleges do not. Perhaps they should tell the Chinese students not to apply to UCLA because they won't be able to get jobs here. At the same time all of this is going on, European countries and Australia are in dire need of college educated people. This trend is going to push the American that do get a college degree to look at getting jobs in foreign countries where they will be much better off and that is the intent.

Quite awhile ago I read about how in the future American professionals would be more successful if they worked in different countries. The article said that it would be the only way to get ahead, I think I wrote something about it but am not going back to look for it tonight. Now here is the really interesting thing, American colleges are not denying that Americans won't be able to get jobs and will be stuck with lots of student loans. Why not? Imagine a scenario where you have to buy Chinese goods using the Yuan or an international currency. We don't sell many products to China, maybe we could sell our education system to them for payment in Yuans so that we can buy their goods.

Next issue is wearable health monitors. I have been reading about smart phones, wristbands, invisible tattoos and all sorts of devices that will track and monitor your health. These devices will notify you and anyone else you want of your condition. Yahoo - Wired - Fitbit Flex : Wearable design with an impressive smartphone app. Sounds great; but, once again with technology we have to consider how it will be used. Lets say you had to insure someone's health and you knew they had a pre-existing condition such as diabetes or high blood pressure. You might want them to wear one so that you knew if they were taking their medications properly, you know, for their benefit. Might you consider having them wear one of these bands in order to have a lower rate for the mandatory medical insurance? You probably have a rewards card for your supermarket, did you know that Insurance companies have been buying the information about your purchases, trust me, they will want proof about how healthy you are living.

Forbes - Twitter Commits Social Suicide. Here is the short of the article, Twitter will block certain "tweets" from countries that require them to not post certain things. On the one hand this makes perfect sense because the laws in one country are different than the laws of other countries. We cannot expect all countries to allow what we allow. Still, there was another choice and that was to block the whole country from using the internet or certain sites on the internet.

Lets look at the issue backwards for a second. The United States owns and controls the backbone of the internet; but, what if China owned it? What if China had begun and controlled the internet? What if they decided what we could post on the internet and attempted to have us follow their rules, would you be comfortable with that? There are countries where 12 year olds can get married; but, in the United States it would be considered a crime. Should we block that countries wedding announcements on Twitter?

I hate to say this; but, in certain European countries it is legal to have sex with animals. Should we allow pictures of such things to be posted in a country where it is illegal? Do we have to allow animal porn in the United States just because it is legal in parts of Europe? We need to think long and carefully about imposing our beliefs on others and on determining what should be free access to all. What is political speech and what is personal speech. What is the difference between public comment, such as this blog, and personal communication or e-mails?

Yahoo - Twivo? Tech-Smart Teen Creates Program to Save You From TV Spoilers on Twitter. A teenager has created a program that will block an individual from content that they do not wish to see such as information on a television show that they don't want to know in advance. Hmmmm, perhaps we will be judged in the future by what we do and do not block from our internet. Self monitoring is so much easier to accept than governmental or commercial filtering.

Now for a complete and utter lie, lets read this from the Daily Beast - Our Swiftly Melting Deficit, Or How the U.S. is Killing It. The article claims that we are paying off our deficit and it is utter nonsense. It completely ignores the fact that our treasury bonds are bought by the Federal Reserve and focuses on foreign purchases of treasury debt. LOL. Well of course we are paying our foreign debt, we have to; but, we are also paying it by inflating our currency by purchasing the debt by the Federal Reserve. The Daily Beast has about the worst opinions that I can imagine.

I was at a party once and a young Ukranian girl, probably 25 to 3o, decided she liked me. She was incredibly beautiful and intelligent; but, I prefer women my age. She said something to me as I stood outside having a cigarette, she said that American women when asked about how they were always said that they were great and things were fine. She said things are not always great and everything is not fine. Her attitude seemed to be that life is not always good; but, that we could always seek to improve our situation. A very level headed girl. Everything is not OK with the economy and the media speaks out both sides of their mouth to tell us what they think we need to believe. Don't trust their spin on things.

FoxNews - Pentagon scrubs 3D gun plans from Internet, says designer
. You may have seen, heard or read about 3D printed plastic guns. Well, the one that came out can be made by anyone. Do you want anyone to make them? What if someone posted how to make a 3D atomic bomb and anyone could do it, would you want them to be able to use the internet to do it, to make them? Now I want you to go back to the part I wrote about controlling what countries allow to be posted on the internet. Should the United States be able to block content from terrorists that teach how to make bombs and give directions to where to place them within the United States?