Granted Energy = Money but there was a different mind set then. I went to a state college in Texas 1950-1952 and room, board, books and tuition cost my parents less than $2500 for two years but anything else I had to work and buy for myself. I had a part time job in our massive dormitory where I lived that paid 50 cents/hr and on that less than $7 per week I had a good life. There were certainly no frills and I spent most of my time studying engineering subjects. BTW: My prewar Nash 600 got something over 25 mpg but the battery was shot and I had to park on a hill or have lots of pushers. Pushers had a different meaning then. I immagine the population has doubled since then and twice the people living on essentially the same amount of resources or less is at least part of the price increases. I haven't visited anyone going to college but I would immagine their living a lot better than we did with two men to a ~130 sq/ft room. Two beds, two desks, two chairs and two wall lockers in each room.

Wrong. Energy = money,
but money doesn't = money.

Energy is depleting and going up in value. Money is not depleting, and at some point will go down in value. Now credit = money,
but credit is depleting and therefore, for the moment, increasing the value of money. But if you print enough money, then you can stop credit from depleting since everyone gets paid off, in depleted money.

Understand?

The solution to the whole problem is quite simple: just print more energy.

I think we will probably have to go back to more of an apprentice system. Graduate high school, maybe go to a two-year program, then apprentice and get on the job training.

Is there any real reason why people can't learn to do stuff as apprentices? It may make you less mobile, e.g. if the company apprentices you for X years, they may demand X years of service from you.

Most of what I know how to do at my job, I learned by doing my job. It would help if people had reading, writing, math and critical thinking done by the end of High School.

Leanan,

I kind of agree with you, but I wonder what timescale you are thinking of?

One could decide to give a higher priority to funding education, at least in theory, but this would require a re-think or debate about how and where we use society's resources.

It's striking how expensive higher education has become in the United States and this is not a positive development. The cost has rocketed in recent years. If I remember correctly, over the last couple of decades college has increased on average by over 400% far outstripping healthcare which has "only" more than doubled!

The second point about the costs to society of supporting an elite class is problematic. It depends on how one defines an elite. Priests, doctors, scientists, teachers, musicians, writers aren't really the elite. We can easily afford them. However, the "elite" we really can't afford, the elite that matters, is the capitalist class. They are not only extraordinarily expensive they are also almost totally redundent, having outstayed their historic sell-by date by decades. We don't need them anymore. The top 1% of the US population squeezes out and controls over 40% of the wealth of America. The top 3% getting on for 75% of societies wealth. These are extraordinary levels of structural inequality, like a blight on the entire country.

These people, with lavish lifestyles supported by a giant social pyramid of poor and ordinary working people earning tiny fractions of their incomes are also incredibly powerful politically as well as economically. In reality virtually the entire country is organised for their benefit, as the distribution of wealth shows, and it's their narrow, selfish and entrenched interests that shape society. Yes, they are a burden, but a burden we no longer need to carry on our backs like beasts.

We all, the vast majority of ordinary Americans, people who work for a living, not the financial aristocracy, has a harsh but simple choice for the future. Either we get rid of the elite or they will get rid of us, one way or another. They lead and rule the country and they are leading us over a cliff. The elite won't disappear, the rest of us will first. The elite controls the apparatus of the State giving them enormous power, coercive power which they will use to maintain their lifestyles and position at the very pinacle of the social pyramid.

Because there are going to be so many poor people relative to the tiny minority at the top, it'll be a long time, I would contend, before their numbers will drop significantly, compared to the great mass of the population that'll be hit hardest by the coming Great Depression.

Whether it's priests, doctors, kings, or scientists...they're a burden on society. Perhaps a useful burden, but a burden nonetheless.

Any chance we could start by eliminating the priests and the kings first?