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One idea I like is directly funding apprenticeship. It pays for job training and classroom instruction on a per-individual basis. The jobs are in long-term care

One idea I like is directly funding apprenticeship. It pays for job training and classroom instruction on a per-individual basis. The jobs are in long-term career sectors like advanced manufacturing, shipbuilding, aviation, healthcare, and technology. Here's one example: https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/osec/osec20250923 https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/osec/osec20250923 In Georgia, the employer is reimbursed $2,500 when an apprentice starts and up to $10,000 when they finish. They can also get up to 75% of the apprentice's hourly wage covered during their initial on-the-job training.

diogenescynic 4mo ago
[flagged]
- glenpierce 4mo ago
  The reason you never hear that is because waste and fraud are very low in reality. That’s why this made the news. It’s uncommon. We should be using the government to help people and when we do, it often does a good job. Examples: Roads, libraries, fire departments, schools, safety regulations…
  - coryrc 4mo ago
    Our public transportation infrastructure literally cost 10x per mile than France or Hong Kong. That's not waste to you? For what California has spent/is spending on high-speed rail from nowhere to nowhere, China blanketed their country? Notice you also left out police. How's our spending working there?
    - windows_hater_7 4mo ago
      I’d note that China does not need democratic approval for any of its projects and thus is substantially more efficient.
      - cindyllm 4mo ago
        [dead]
      - D_Alex 4mo ago
        And what lesson should be drawn from that?
        camgunz 4mo ago
        That it's easy to build things when you oppress and enslave people.
        throwaway85825 4mo ago
        We seem to get the worst of both.
      - coryrc 4mo ago
        We don't either. It's a Democratic Republic. Our electeds could do their job.
    - dgoldstein0 4mo ago
      California high speed rail has been a mess. Which is likely in part because politics dictating routes has raised the costs and timelines substantially. On a smaller scale SF was building a new subway in 2013 that had been on the drawing board for years. I remember thinking maybe I'd ride it to work one day. Opened in 2023 or 2024, after I had moved offices twice and then went to work from home. It's not a terrible line but because it had to go to the center of our Chinatown instead of 2 blocks over, it took quite a bit longer and became the deepest subway line in the city. Several other bits of stupidity too in that project but a big piece of the delayed timeline was that tunneling in SF is hard. Plenty of other transit projects exist that have made real differences. Personally I'm a fan of the simple improvements: revised bus routes with dedicated bus lanes and improved stop & shelters, added bike lanes, etc. those sorts of projects are relatively cheap investments and while no single one is a silver bullet they add up. On a bigger scale - Caltrain's electrification was a big win. Both kinds of projects are easier than building whole new tracks or digging new tunnels. Extend and improve the existing systems. Most cities have something to start from.
      - littlexsparkee 4mo ago
        Note Atherton's delays cost Caltrain electrification 3 years and $400m IIRC https://peninsulaforeveryone.org/blog/atherton-spent-145k-to-delay-caltrain-electrification-the-rest-of-us-paid-400-million-and-waited-3-extra-years/ https://peninsulaforeveryone.org/blog/atherton-spent-145k-to...
      - coryrc 4mo ago
        > Personally I'm a fan of the simple improvements Stockholm Syndrome. Because our government is so paralyzed and ineffective, we can't even dream big anymore.
        dgoldstein0 3mo ago
        I mean I'd be a fan of a roadmap of simple improvements that contribute to a big vision. Shipping incrementally just seems to work better when possible.
    - xphos 4mo ago
      I mean building infrastructure is literally done by private groups the government hires not the government itself. Infantalizing the government as unable to do anything is the biggest myth of the 20th century. When the government did build the roads for the interstate high system they were much cheaper. They cut through any possible regulations and just built them. If government is slow its because we have regulated government to be slow because people would get tremendous power and than plow over large African American communities with roads and rail roads. Its very well documented the speed and brutality that government can move with. All this to say the government can be fast and efficient mostly because we have an almost infinite number of examples in the US of it doing it.
      - coryrc 4mo ago
        > because we have an almost infinite number of examples in the US of it doing it. ... before the 1970s. Nothing this millennium, or even the last quarter of the 20th century. It's been, at minimum, 50 years since we've cost-effectively built anything at scale.
    - expedition32 4mo ago
      The police in America is amongst the best in the world. They do a good job keeping people in line projecting authority and terror.
  - coryrc 4mo ago
    And another, our recidivism rates are much higher than comparable countries. Is that how we do a "good job" helping people?
  - roenxi 4mo ago
    > The reason you never hear that is because waste and fraud are very low in reality. That’s why this made the news. It’s uncommon. Fraud might be relatively rare, but we hear about waste constantly and it isn't newsworthy because a high level of waste is expected from a government operation. If it wasn't then there would be good results by putting things under government control, rather than the more realistic outcome of a politically controlled market oscillating erratically between gluts and shortages depending on who won a popularity contest this year. To be newsworthy political waste generally has to be competitive with wartime levels of destruction. Things like a 2 billion dollars going down the tubes with basically nothing to show for it. Which is similar to the cost/benefit to the US of a day of wild flailing in Iran, US assaults typically run at around a billion dollars per day. If it is less damaging than that then there isn't much point bringing it up because there are bigger fish to fry.
- ZenoArrow 4mo ago
  > I'd rather they just lower our taxes and quit squandering our money on these programs that never work. Would you support cutting military spending? It's a lot higher than other countries.
  - WalterBright 4mo ago
    > It's a lot higher than other countries. That's because the US also defends the free world. Besides, not spending enough on the military can get very, very expensive.
    - deaux 4mo ago
      > That's because the US also defends the free world. The US invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Iraq have sure helped defend the free world. How many trillions went into those combined? Fantastic return per $ of "free world defense".
      - paulddraper 4mo ago
        Don’t forget Ukraine!
        deaux 4mo ago
        Unfortunately Ukraine too is a rounding error compared to the invasions. It's negligible compared to Afghanistan on its own, let alone if you include Iraq.
      - WalterBright 4mo ago
        Consider all the US bases in Europe, there to defend Europe against Russia. And the bases in the Pacific and Japan. Greenland, too! When I lived in Germany in the 70s, we were driving on the Autobahn one day, and I saw a jet hedgehopping at full blast over the countryside. I asked my dad what was going on, and why didn't the Germans complain about it. (Hedgehopping is how you avoid radar detection.) He replied that the Germans didn't particularly like it, but they understood the reason for it. We were in Wiesbaden because my dad worked on the US base and their job was to ensure that there wasn't going to be nuclear combat toe to toe with the Russkies. Later on, we lived near Luke AFB in Arizona, where Luftwaffe pilots were trained. I'd ride my bike out to the flight line and watch those glorious F-104s blast off with their afterburners lit up.
SecretDreams 4mo ago
> One idea I like is directly funding apprenticeship. It pays for job training and classroom instruction on a per-individual basis. The jobs are in long-term career sectors like advanced manufacturing, shipbuilding, aviation, healthcare, and technology. This is basically what grad school does too. I'm into funding education further any day of the week. For higher education, I'd only add a string attached like "must practice trade in state that funded you if job is available for x years or must pay back funding pro rated".
winrid 4mo ago
You mean what companies used to do before we decided to import cheap labor instead?

diogenescynic 4mo ago

[flagged]

glenpierce 4mo ago
The reason you never hear that is because waste and fraud are very low in reality. That’s why this made the news. It’s uncommon. We should be using the government to help people and when we do, it often does a good job. Examples: Roads, libraries, fire departments, schools, safety regulations…
- coryrc 4mo ago
  Our public transportation infrastructure literally cost 10x per mile than France or Hong Kong. That's not waste to you? For what California has spent/is spending on high-speed rail from nowhere to nowhere, China blanketed their country? Notice you also left out police. How's our spending working there?
  - windows_hater_7 4mo ago
    I’d note that China does not need democratic approval for any of its projects and thus is substantially more efficient.
    - cindyllm 4mo ago
      [dead]
    - D_Alex 4mo ago
      And what lesson should be drawn from that?
      - camgunz 4mo ago
        That it's easy to build things when you oppress and enslave people.
        throwaway85825 4mo ago
        We seem to get the worst of both.
    - coryrc 4mo ago
      We don't either. It's a Democratic Republic. Our electeds could do their job.
  - dgoldstein0 4mo ago
    California high speed rail has been a mess. Which is likely in part because politics dictating routes has raised the costs and timelines substantially. On a smaller scale SF was building a new subway in 2013 that had been on the drawing board for years. I remember thinking maybe I'd ride it to work one day. Opened in 2023 or 2024, after I had moved offices twice and then went to work from home. It's not a terrible line but because it had to go to the center of our Chinatown instead of 2 blocks over, it took quite a bit longer and became the deepest subway line in the city. Several other bits of stupidity too in that project but a big piece of the delayed timeline was that tunneling in SF is hard. Plenty of other transit projects exist that have made real differences. Personally I'm a fan of the simple improvements: revised bus routes with dedicated bus lanes and improved stop & shelters, added bike lanes, etc. those sorts of projects are relatively cheap investments and while no single one is a silver bullet they add up. On a bigger scale - Caltrain's electrification was a big win. Both kinds of projects are easier than building whole new tracks or digging new tunnels. Extend and improve the existing systems. Most cities have something to start from.
    - littlexsparkee 4mo ago
      Note Atherton's delays cost Caltrain electrification 3 years and $400m IIRC https://peninsulaforeveryone.org/blog/atherton-spent-145k-to-delay-caltrain-electrification-the-rest-of-us-paid-400-million-and-waited-3-extra-years/ https://peninsulaforeveryone.org/blog/atherton-spent-145k-to...
    - coryrc 4mo ago
      > Personally I'm a fan of the simple improvements Stockholm Syndrome. Because our government is so paralyzed and ineffective, we can't even dream big anymore.
      - dgoldstein0 3mo ago
        I mean I'd be a fan of a roadmap of simple improvements that contribute to a big vision. Shipping incrementally just seems to work better when possible.
  - xphos 4mo ago
    I mean building infrastructure is literally done by private groups the government hires not the government itself. Infantalizing the government as unable to do anything is the biggest myth of the 20th century. When the government did build the roads for the interstate high system they were much cheaper. They cut through any possible regulations and just built them. If government is slow its because we have regulated government to be slow because people would get tremendous power and than plow over large African American communities with roads and rail roads. Its very well documented the speed and brutality that government can move with. All this to say the government can be fast and efficient mostly because we have an almost infinite number of examples in the US of it doing it.
    - coryrc 4mo ago
      > because we have an almost infinite number of examples in the US of it doing it. ... before the 1970s. Nothing this millennium, or even the last quarter of the 20th century. It's been, at minimum, 50 years since we've cost-effectively built anything at scale.
  - expedition32 4mo ago
    The police in America is amongst the best in the world. They do a good job keeping people in line projecting authority and terror.
- coryrc 4mo ago
  And another, our recidivism rates are much higher than comparable countries. Is that how we do a "good job" helping people?
- roenxi 4mo ago
  > The reason you never hear that is because waste and fraud are very low in reality. That’s why this made the news. It’s uncommon. Fraud might be relatively rare, but we hear about waste constantly and it isn't newsworthy because a high level of waste is expected from a government operation. If it wasn't then there would be good results by putting things under government control, rather than the more realistic outcome of a politically controlled market oscillating erratically between gluts and shortages depending on who won a popularity contest this year. To be newsworthy political waste generally has to be competitive with wartime levels of destruction. Things like a 2 billion dollars going down the tubes with basically nothing to show for it. Which is similar to the cost/benefit to the US of a day of wild flailing in Iran, US assaults typically run at around a billion dollars per day. If it is less damaging than that then there isn't much point bringing it up because there are bigger fish to fry.
ZenoArrow 4mo ago
> I'd rather they just lower our taxes and quit squandering our money on these programs that never work. Would you support cutting military spending? It's a lot higher than other countries.
- WalterBright 4mo ago
  > It's a lot higher than other countries. That's because the US also defends the free world. Besides, not spending enough on the military can get very, very expensive.
  - deaux 4mo ago
    > That's because the US also defends the free world. The US invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Iraq have sure helped defend the free world. How many trillions went into those combined? Fantastic return per $ of "free world defense".
    - paulddraper 4mo ago
      Don’t forget Ukraine!
      - deaux 4mo ago
        Unfortunately Ukraine too is a rounding error compared to the invasions. It's negligible compared to Afghanistan on its own, let alone if you include Iraq.
    - WalterBright 4mo ago
      Consider all the US bases in Europe, there to defend Europe against Russia. And the bases in the Pacific and Japan. Greenland, too! When I lived in Germany in the 70s, we were driving on the Autobahn one day, and I saw a jet hedgehopping at full blast over the countryside. I asked my dad what was going on, and why didn't the Germans complain about it. (Hedgehopping is how you avoid radar detection.) He replied that the Germans didn't particularly like it, but they understood the reason for it. We were in Wiesbaden because my dad worked on the US base and their job was to ensure that there wasn't going to be nuclear combat toe to toe with the Russkies. Later on, we lived near Luke AFB in Arizona, where Luftwaffe pilots were trained. I'd ride my bike out to the flight line and watch those glorious F-104s blast off with their afterburners lit up.

SecretDreams 4mo ago

> One idea I like is directly funding apprenticeship. It pays for job training and classroom instruction on a per-individual basis. The jobs are in long-term career sectors like advanced manufacturing, shipbuilding, aviation, healthcare, and technology. This is basically what grad school does too. I'm into funding education further any day of the week. For higher education, I'd only add a string attached like "must practice trade in state that funded you if job is available for x years or must pay back funding pro rated".

winrid 4mo ago

You mean what companies used to do before we decided to import cheap labor instead?