a-train

Elph, Let it be understood that state funded trade schools and organizations are not under attack here. UCAT is not under attack here. Also, the statement from the wiki you quoted pointed out the benefits from NOT breaking the window. The benefits you spoke of saying 'sounds good to me' are those that come through NOT breaking the window. Go back and take a look at the wiki. The idea Bastiat is pointing out is that it really does NOT matter how or what we compel people to buy or from whom they are compelled to buy it. But so long as the state does so, it is harmful to all the parties involved. It will not produce any overall positive effect for persons to be compelled to purchase an education because the purchase of educational services will not be truly market driven, just as breaking windows to stimulate spending on glass and installation. While it seems at first apparent that the glass producers and installers are doing better and are thus able to spend more money in the economy and contribute to higher tax revenues, the artificial stimulation is akin to wrapping up our engines while in neutral: there is no net gain in the end. Other businesses which may have been much more effective in providing an overall benefit to society are not being funded because of the intervention. The issue being discussed here should not be confused with the cooperation of educational entities with employers and programs designed to train current or prospective employees. What is being discussed is the issue of government mandates that require individuals to purchase educational services. What goes wrong is that these funds would have been allocated to some other purchase or project of which we will never know. What would these funds have been spent on? Has anyone even bothered to ask? We simply do not know. Perhaps these funds would have helped the victims of some disaster. Perhaps they would have been spent on education anyway. Perhaps they would have been spent in the research of a new life-saving medical procedure. We are automatically choosing door number one without looking behind door number two or any other doors for that matter. Plus, the care with which these funds are allocated is never as good as that in the hearts of those who worked so hard to earn it. FedEx was not only one example, but UPS also offers the same tuition benefit. In fact, an adult parent (male or female) can work for FedEx part time and though they only work 15 hours during a week, they are automatically paid for the minimum of 17.5 hours at a starting rate of over $12 an hour, and they are additionally given $3000 for tuition, and they receive health insurance for the whole family with no deductions after 90 days. FedEx also gives information to its employees about needed positions higher in the company which help them in making educational decisions toward advancement. This is just FedEx, one company. Bayer, for example, does very similar things, even putting students with no prior education in the field through college to work in biological, pharmacological, and other research and work. I worked in a Bayer research lab for a time and they approached me about such prospects, but my interests were otherwise. My grandfather, as great as he was, was not some marvel among his fellows. A great many of those men working right next to him had no better education or training than he had. How did these men do what they did? Take these businesses who simply tell a school what they are looking for and let tax payers fill them up with employees. Do you not see how this is welfare for that business? They don't have to pay to train their employees, they let the taxpayers do that for them. You and I are compelled to 'invest' in that business. The business takes little risk and gets all the benefits. And worse, a given individual is possibly LESS secure in his position there because there are a large number of possible replacements being trained by government mandate, a condition that may have not been otherwise without the subsidies. FedEx does the real investing. While that other company out there relies on the heavily specific nature of the training provided by government funding to lock the employee in to their business, FedEx relies on the good feelings of its employees about working with such a good company to see long-term retention. Imagine if after some major changes in an economy, a given state decides that the solution is to mandate the purchase of trench-coats. At first, the trench-coat business would boom like never before seen and the standard of living in that area would dramatically increase and job openings would be greatly enhanced. The training in the production and design of trench-coats would increase very dramatically. Perhaps an apparent economic growth would be perceived. But what would happen as the trench-coats piled high in the closets and attics around the country? They would become worthless wouldn't they? Is training for industrial labor any different? It really doesn't matter what skills these people are given, we are creating a surplus of those particular skills and thus devaluing them just like those trench-coats.Do you see the problem being pointed out here? -a-train

-a-train

I used to fret over what to tithe due to all the intricacies of accounting for my personal business until I realized that it is better to simply pay tithing each week for the amount equal to my expected annual income divided by 52 (number of weeks in a year). If at the end of the year, I find I was too low or too high, I simply increase or decrease my weekly tithes. There is no looking back and either justifying a time going without tithing or any sudden great sums to pay off tithes previously not paid. This way, I never have to wonder if I've paid my tithing. It has been a tremendous blessing on me and my family. -a-train

We shall be like Him in the sense that we shall "see Him as He is", just as He sees us as we are. Does this mean we will comprehend God? It certainly must. For God certainly comprehends us as He sees us. How can we see Him as He is and not comprehend Him? The verse says plainly that "every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as [God] is pure." No uncleanness can exist in God's Presence, else there is no need for any purification through Christ. The Blood of Christ is not only partially effective. It is sufficient to make man as pure as God. Christ's blood cleans us from not just some sin, but ALL. -a-train

How can we be so sure that the student will be qualified to enter the workforce upon graduation? Or that there is any job awaiting him/her? Or that he/she will make a "good" wage when hired? There are many Americans with degrees working in unrelated positions because of the marketability of their degree. Engineers, lawyers, and political scientists are selling cars, insurance, or managing a retail store.A friend of mine who has nothing but a high-school diploma works for the same grocery store he started sacking at when only 14 years old. Today, almost 20 years later, at the age of 33, he makes a six-figure income in a management position and has a nice retirement in balance. His ethnicity is Latin and Native American. Not a dime of tax-payer 'investment' or any article of government regulation created this scenario for this individual of ethnic minority without any college education. Further, there are many non-union, non-state, corporate programs that accomplish very efficiently the whole process being described. Fed-Ex, for example, gives $3,000 a year in tuition in addition to their pay to part-time employees who work only 18 hours a week. Thousands of Americans get their undergraduate studies through such programs while not placing any burden on the taxpayers. Many of these are in certificate programs that allow people to go into fields such as firefighting, police work, or automotive service. Many of the schools these students attend are already vastly funded by local, county, and state taxes. The only reason they even charge the students anything is to weed out the multitude of those not serious about their education and the costs are less than $3000 a year for full-time study. The problem with education in America has always been and remains to be federal intrusion. The Washington bureaucrats are not educators and are completely out of step with market trends. They have no idea what current market demands are in education and thus are inept in supplying them. Head Start and No Child Left Behind have not proven anything but federal failure in the education of America. My grandfather having nothing but a sixth-grade education, built airplanes that bombed Japan. He new trigonometry, he owned his own business, he manufactured clothing and golf equipment, his younger brother was a Texas millionaire who built roads and owned a rock quarry with no college education at all. Meanwhile, I sat next to students who suffered severe reading difficulties in my 12th grade high-school English class. The community colleges have math programs that teach long-division to high-school graduates. Government involvement in American education has been nothing but the dumbing down of the curriculum and the awarding of diplomas/degrees to students of less and less capability. Books once wildly popular in America, best sellers of the 19th Century, are practically unreadable to high-school students today. Students turn in math homework before leaving class as they are able to hastily complete the 20 math problems at passing levels. Meanwhile the rate at which new material is covered gets slower and slower to facilitate the passing grades of those who don't even turn in their homework. What is incredible is that many Americans get a better education from google and the library than they got in school. The problem with American education at all levels is not the lack of federal funding or oversight, but the existence thereof. -a-train

What do you mean EVENTUALLY?!?!?!? Perhaps Obama?!?!? Please! The administration of George W. Bush, in the name of peace and prosperity, put a jack-hammer to the pillar of freedom in America. The chipping has already turned to an outright "war on freedom". -a-train

Racism has long been little more than a false mechanism used by subtle conspirators to stir up conflict by which they design to enrich and empower themselves for their own selfish purposes. -a-train

I find it funny how the masses are all in the know about how auto execs flew in private jets to Washington to ask for a bail-out. The auto guys are a scapegoat. They are nothing but show to give the world the impression that Washington stood up to the big bad capitalists. Meanwhile, the real enemy, the international bankers, are commencing the largest consolidation of economic power in world history and nobody seems to care. Who told the media to point out the auto guys? We should be letting everything go bankrupt and not give them one cent, MOST importantly financial institutions which sell products that they simply conjure into existence (isn't that illegal?). On the issue of gasoline, I don't think we have a nice two years of low gas prices to look forward to. The economic summit (which is nothing but a hollywood show designed to make us think the legitimate world governments are calling the shots on international finance) will provide no solutions. The REAL financiers are simply consolidating wealth and economic power. As soon as this is accomplished to their approval: bye-bye dollar, hello $5 a gallon. The word for today is: STAGFLATION. "The inflationism of the currency systems of Europe has proceeded to extraordinary lengths. The various belligerent Governments, unable, or too timid or too short-sighted to secure from loans or taxes the resources they required, have printed notes for the balance." - John Maynard Keynes (socialist economist) The Economic Consequences of the Peace 1919 -a-train

I am able to find the orignial article, but it gives no location for these plates. The googling produces little more than lds people pointing to that same article. This smells fishy. -a-train

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No matter a man's paradigm, it is classified and catalogued. If it can't be, then it is mere psychosis, which of course has been heavily classified and catalogued. -a-train

Unfortunate but true: Non-Denominationalism is a denomination. -a-train

Do you believe that Mr. Armstrong receives modern revelation? Do you believe that the spirit of man is not distinct, but one great spirit for all men? -a-train

Why? Why is He the King of real kings, the Lord of real lords, but not the God of real gods? What is a god? And what is God? Is He not a man raised to immortality? Did He not come forth from the womb of woman and grow from infancy to manhood as any other? Did He not suffer the pains of human mortality? Was He not perceived to be so plainly human that his own people rejected Him in Nazereth? Did He not eat and drink and work as any other man? Did He not die and come forth from the grave in a glorious resurrection? Did He not eat with the apostles after He was so raised from the grave? Did they not feel the flesh and bone of His literal physical body? Does He not sit enthroned in yonder heavens in glory and immortality? What is the great difference between His species and ours? Some have imagined that He only took up the form of man in an effort to communicate with us. These suggest that this form is not His natural shape or image. Why then does the scripture say that man was made in the image of God? This must mean that God has an image and that it is the image of man. All of these efforts to mystify and glorify God in some philosphical mind trick are foolishness. The scriptures are plain. Do not believe these philosophers and their extra-biblical theories. The LDS belief in the raising of man to the throne of God is not extra-biblical. It is explicitly biblical. And the revelations from Jesus Christ to Joseph Smith only confirmed what was already written. Satan is a cunning and crafty lier. His first and foremost work is to deny God and to deny man's ability to approach God. He wants us to deny our Heavenly Heritage. He wants us to doubt the literal corporeal nature of God. He wants us to deny the blessings of God which he will never receive. That is his very work. The scriptures are certain on the notion that man is God's offspring whose ultimate capabilities are only fulfilled in ascending to God's throne to sit in it with Him. -a-train

So if then through the Blood of Jesus and by adoption the children of men are become the sons of God, heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ, sitting in the throne of God with Him and crowned with the glory, the purity, the perfection, and the very appearance of God, what is left for us to deny?If it is nothing more than the word "god", you can have it. What does a man raised to such an exalted status require of this faulty collection of but three english letters? Indeed, it is not the Mormons who so often mention this blessed state "godhood", but it is most often referred to by them as "exaltation" which is indeed the word of Jesus when speaking of the very subject of the order of His Kingship over His Kingdom. For He said: "And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted." (Matt. 23:12) Call the missionaries, get with your LDS friends and stop kicking the pricks. Take the discussions and read the Book of Mormon. Learn of the truthfulness of the Restored Gospel and enjoy it. This message is not one of rejection, but a call to come forth. -a-train

Would you say the same of the lords over which He is LORD? Going outside that verse, what of the kings over which He is King? -a-train

Do you not believe that we shall be the sons of God, that we shall be like Him, that we shall be as pure as He is? -a-train

Who are the gods that the LORD God is God of? -a-train

What we cannot neglect to remember is why we follow a given prophet in the first place: because God told us to. We don't follow the prophet simply because we have an arbitrary desire to follow someone. We follow the prophet because the LORD by His Spirit has told us directly that this man is a prophet and his counsel is the LORD's. -a-train

The question posed to our LORD was "according to the law of Moses". The answer was likewise. Under the law of Moses, the parties will not be married beyond death. It is only by the higher law that eternal marriage is made possible. The fact that the question was raised shows that it was believed that couples would stay married beyond the grave and into the next world. Adam and Eve were married before the fall. How long were they supposed to live in the garden without partaking of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil? If they had obeyed, would they be dead? Would they not still be married? Also, will Adam and Eve not be raised again from the grave and be restored in all things? If not, are they redeemed from the fall? If Jesus can save their bodies, their spirits, their status as the first parents of this earth, how is it that He cannot save their marriage? Jesus told the Jews that they don't understand the scriptures. It was their misunderstanding of the law he was pointing out, not their misunderstanding of the resurrection. -a-train

Tithe no matter what. Cut all expenses necessary to live within your means. -a-train

The child has a right to life. The father has parental rights. -a-train

I would not file for bankruptcy, but I would stop paying on credit lines. Simply contact them and tell them your situation. Go to your bishop and tell him what is going on. Make sure you are paying a full tithe no matter what. -a-train

Concur. -a-train

Why does God want a planet with human beings on it and everything from elephants to rats? Why does God want anything?I'll say a word on the matter. I hear constantly that God creates all these things so that he can be worshipped by them, served by them. What service can man do to God? NOTHING. Our worship, our righteousness is filthiness to Him. "But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away." (Isaiah 64:6) It is Satan that wants our worship. For he tempts saying: "All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me." (Matt 4:9) Tis all counterfeit. The LORD God needs nothing of us. In our worship of Him we do nothing but receive. He is not served by all, but He is the servant of all. "Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many." (Matt 20:28) Now if indeed the great work of God is not to be served, but to serve, what then does He do in His service? He came to give man immortality and eternal life. The Saviour prayed saying: "Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee: As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him. And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." (John 17:2-3) How will Jesus glorify the Father? By giving eternal life to man. How then will we glorify the Father? By taking up eternal life and serving others. What will we do on our thrones? Why, the same thing God does: service to others. -a-train