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1. 

   leftwingpatriot said, 12 months ago

   Just default.
2. 

   Richard S. Russell said, 12 months ago

   Anyone ever figure out what the average income is in this country? I mean the true average — total personal income divided by 310,000,000 people.
3. 

   Buzza Wuzza said, 12 months ago

   @Richard S. Russell
   That is the problem that so many people have. The average income amount you’re looking for doesn’t exist in any real sense. There is the 1% and there is everyone else.
4. 

   John Smith said, 12 months ago

   @Richard S. Russell

   Somewhere in the area of $24,000 to $30,000, from what I have read in various places.
5. 

   gmartin997 said, 12 months ago

   And that’s why you should choose the major that will yield the greatest return for your loan dollar. The study of sterile fruit flies isn’t a high-yield career, unless Mom and Dad are carrying you.
6. 

   Paula R. Stiles said, 12 months ago

   LOL! (Ow!) LOL! (Ow!) LOL! (Ow!) So much truth there.

   @gmartin997

   Hate to break this to you, but the idea of a profitable major is a myth, right up there with how every plumber is a millionaire sucking off innocent customers. Today’s must-have major is tomorrow’s white elephant after millions of other students decide to take it. Even if you get lucky with a good job or internship, you still have to love the subject, be good at it, and work very hard to get anywhere in a profession.

   As for the “frivolous” majors…I majored in Classical Languages and I’ve scored more good jobs due to my language skills—especially the Latin—than anything else. The thing is that nobody is taking Latin because it’s not “practical,” but people still need it as a skill, so you do the (heh) math on how that affects its supply and demand.
7. 

   JusSayin said, 12 months ago

   @Richard S. Russell

   Last year it was about $50,000 for every man, woman, child, and institutionalized person in the USA. $15.1 trillion divided by about 300 million people.
8. 

   cdward said, 12 months ago

   @JusSayin

   Well, averages are pretty skewed things, aren’t they? What would it look like if you removed the top 1% from the equation?
9. 

   pjknb said, 12 months ago

   @Paula R. Stiles

   Plenty of Senior, well paid teaching jobs down under for Latin! More and more private schools returning to the classics
10. 

    Larry said, 12 months ago

    Does the Air Force still have a college program for giving them a commitment to serve? That is what I was thinking for any of my great-grand-children smart enough to go to college. Of course the oldes starts kindergarten in August so I am sure things will change.
11. 

    Doughfoot said, 12 months ago

    @Richard S. Russell

    The average is really a flawed measure in this case. If Bill Gates walks into a homeless shelter, the average income of everyone there becomes very respectable. Without changing the national income by a penny, but putting all the income into the hands of 10 million people, and taking it all away from 300 million, the average would not change at all.
    
    
    Median income is a better measure. Looking at the census figures, there are about 100,000 households in the U.S., and the median income for all households was just under $50K in 2009. The average household must have about 3 people in it. (Average works better here, there are no 1000-person households.)
    
    
    So most American households get by (or not) on less than 50K a year. With African-American households, the figure is less than 33K a year. Asians (I think) have the highest median. Of course,different ethnic groups may also have different average household sizes.
    
    
    Through most of its history, the United States was considering as the best place to be poor, offering the most opportunities to better ones condition. Until about 1850, Americans were considered by and large to be pretty equal, the nation not having the disparities of wealth and power that one saw in old aristocratic Europe. That began to change with industrialization, and the rise of the “Robber Barons” of the “Gilded Age” when inequality and wealth rose together.
    
    Modern capitalism concentrates wealth, and concentrated wealth means concentrated political power as well. Without mechanisms to redistribute wealth and break up large concentrations, equality dies and oligarchy prevails. Capitalism is, nevertheless, the best way to generate the wealth needed to support all. Too much redistribution, too artificial an equality, can actually wreck the whole machine. Not to mention that equality itself can be self-destroying trap in which liberty is squelched.
    
    So what is the proper balance between every-man-for-himself, what’s-mine-is-mine capitalism, and an everybody-is-entitled-to-an-equal-share-so-why-work-harder-or-better-than-the-next-guy communalism? That’s the big question. Just because you think the proper balance is to the left of where I think it should be does not make you a socialist. Just because you think the proper balance is to the right of where I think it should be does not make you a fascist, or the pawn of the megarich.
    
    But it is ever so much easier to call one another names that actually talk about the issue.
12. 

    Leo Autodidact said, 12 months ago

    re: last panel

    ARE there any “Full-Freight” parents left?

    When I was in it WAS still manageable (Barely!) with Full-time work in the summer and a copy of the reading list to keep your nights from being too much fun. These days, I don’t know?
13. 

    Clark Kent said, 12 months ago

    This situation is sick. Most industrialized nations do not charge their students or their parents for a college education. Everybody pays a share thru their taxes. Everybody shares in the benefits of an educated workforce. And their education systems from K-12 are fully funded without interference from the far “right”. Part of the reason they have the money is because their rich pay their fair share. Another reason is they spend much less on defence and do not presume to the the world police, nor do they invade other nations to steal their oil and minerals.
14. 

    babka said, 12 months ago

    the 1% get the front seats in the pews, doncha know.
15. 

    J. Short said, 12 months ago

    When you get out you have the equivalent of what was a high school education 60 years ago.
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