Tell me why Harvard is the best!
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Anonymous
Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that. Between two equally qualified students (same GPAs, paramedic experience, whatever), the student from the most prestigious school is going to get admitted. Given that the AMA has a lock on med schools and lots of qualified kids will be turned down. It's unfair, but that's how the world works. |
Anonymous
Why the obsession with nepotism? These days, Fortune 500 companies are too busy making profits to hire someone's incompetent nephew. You're thinking about the 1950s. |
Anonymous
How do you define "stellar"? The coursework is easy. Everyone gets As or Bs at Harvard. |
Anonymous
Not really, the top student at umcp will get in over the lowest at Yale. Also studies show that ivy kids have a really hard time being at the bottom of their class and somebody has to be on the bottom. That's how it actually work. |
Anonymous
This is such BS - coming from a place of ENVY. The Doctor or Lawyer (or CEO) ends up paying hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in taxes that are essential for American society to function. This is far more important and beneficial than those who pursue "feel good" professions that would be impossible if not for the 70% of all tax revenue paid by the top 10% of earners. |
Anonymous
Your tax money is more important than the hospice worker who holds your mothers hand and wipes her tears in her dying days? |
Anonymous
If you think a country full of potential hospice workers is preferable to our country try India or the Philippines. There will always be those suited to hospice work, but what makes this country (and other developed countries) more pleasant to live in is the wealth redistributed from the select few who are capable of assisting in the creation of wealth. |
Anonymous
But we aren't comparing the top UMD student to the bottom Yale student. We're comparing a single child's relative chances at medical school coming from Yale vs. a good state school. Not sure what being unhappy about being in the bottom 50% has to do with anything. |
Anonymous
How did we get to "a country full of hospice workers?" You have clearly never had a loved one in hospice or you would know how trained and skilled and important these people are. And, by the way, hospice is a western movement. If they have hospices in India and the Philippines it would be a new phenomenon and probably only for the wealthy. I think your point is that the brown people can take care of the dying? Niiiiice. I wrote the original post quoted and I am a lawyer. And I have no interest in working for a Fortune 500 company or a major law firm. No envy there -- I had great grades in law school and a coveted clerkship, so I could have made it happen. It is completely alien to me how people can work so hard just to make money. I feel much better about working for the public interest. You can write that off as "feel good" work, but, yeah, I feel good about it. No problem there. As for taxes, we have some of the lowest rates in the world and the wealthiest people pay a far lower percentage of their income than the middle class. Remember Mitt Romney's tax rate of 13%? How many of you have a tax rate of 13%? Come whining to me when the wealthy pay their fair share. |
Anonymous
You obviously are not a tax lawyer, but just to check your knowledge base - without looking it up, what do you THINK the % of total income tax paid by the top 1%? the top 10%? PS - both my parents had hospice care as they died and I did appreciate it. I also am grateful that the doctors who cared for them chose to practice medicine and that the lawyers I use chose to practice law. |
Anonymous
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There is a difference between TOTAL taxes and the tax rate. My post referred to the tax rate. Since we have such extreme income disparity, of course a lot more TOTAL taxes come from the wealthy. I suspect Romney's 13% is still more than most of us would make in salary. But he's not paying his fair share. And this is how the income disparity grows. This creates other problems. The money does not trickle down, as such right wingers argue. It stays with the wealthy. So they get wealthier. If more people down the food chain had more money, they would actually spend it, it would circulate in the economy and grow the economy. Income disparity as extreme as ours inhibits economic growth. Also, its destabilizing to our democracy to have a few people use their extreme wealth to game the system. The more they game the system, the less everyone else trusts it and participates in it.
No thank you, I want no part of that. |
Anonymous
This is the kind of LoFo thinking that has us in the mess we are in. ENVY |
Anonymous
NP here. No, this is basic math. Why should lower income people pay higher average tax rates (when FICA taxes are included) than higher income people? Why should people with earnings from capital gains pay a 5% tax rate? THIS is the kind of thinking that has us in the mess we are in. CLASS WARFARE from above.... |
Anonymous
And what is it that you think I envy? Money? I've already explained that I had the credentials to get a high paying job if I wanted one. I don't want one. Harvard? Nope, I went to Princeton and was perfectly happy. This is your fall-back argument when you get called on confusing the tax rate with the total taxes. I must have envy.You are working awfully hard to demonstrate that big business is somehow the way to go. You should join me in the public interest world. We get to feel good about the work we do every day. You might like it. |
Anonymous
Different PP here. I'm not sure that PP is getting it, so let's draw a clear distinction between: (1) the dollar amount of taxes you pay ($10K in taxes or maybe $20K in taxes), and (2) the tax rate you pay, which is the dollar amount in #1 as a ratio to your total income ($10K in taxes out of $100K income = 10% tax rate). Signed, another Ivy grad, not Harvard, who is working in the not-for-profit sector |