D. C. Bear said:

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FLBear5630 said:

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Realitybites said:

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boognish_bear said:

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BREAKING: Unemployed Americans with 4-year college degrees now make up a record 25.3% of total unemployment.

The percentage has doubled since the 2008 Financial Crisis.

This comes as over 1.9 million workers aged 25+ with at least a bachelor’s degree are now unemployed.… pic.twitter.com/HWcUZnHcu2

— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) November 24, 2025

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A hundred years of progressive politics has resulted in a massive oversupply of colleges and college degrees.

If doctors wanted to be wealthy, they would have become UPS truck drivers

This analysis only accounts for total net income, not the time value of money.

Many physician salaries are down around 40% in nominal terms since the late 1990s.



This has a lot to do with it. The health care bureaucracy is feeding at the trough to a far greater extent than in the days of a market based health care system with doctors in private practice. The end result is this, and your 15 minute appointment (12, in some places).

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Have to get rid of the health insurance industry and the current system. Also, how does the normal working guy pay for cancer treatment without health insurance? It costs about 250k for cancer treatment, chemo can by as high as 48k a year. How do you pay for that when even with good health insurance it can bankrupt you. Is the cost of treatment going to come down to carton of eggs level that people can afford? A couple of grand, so you don't go on vacation for a year or so?

All this stuff is great. How do you pay for it and how do you NOT leave millions with no hope of treatment? Or, do we let people die that can't afford it? You know, reduce the surplus population.

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Require everyone to have insurance for catastrophic events, and catastrophic events only?

More hospitals like St. Jude?

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I am a fan of St Judes. But, they receive the same mix as others.




I do not mean it as a cut on St Jude's AT ALL. My point is that the system is so integrated into every aspect or every health provider that there is no way to get to a free market system. I am not blaming the Dems or the GOP, it is a system that we have been using for almost 100 years.

Even ACA after a decade is so woven into people's lives that the "stop it and go free market" is not a realistic option. All removing subsidies does is to make 23 million people that have absolutely no say in these programs, they just rely on them pay the price.

The only way to control this Government made monster, is for the Government to regulate it. Sorry, but we are getting to Socialized Medicine at some point. It is no accident that all of Europe, Scandanavia and most of Asia is already there. There was no joyous rush to socialize, they found themselves where we are. IMO, it is taken us longer because we have more resources.

Not what this Board wants to hear, and Markwayne can yell all he wants, this path is set... I only hope it ends up being a hybrid system, but the Government is not getting out.

We kind of ran into this when looking for colleges for our kids. If your joint income is below $120,000 you're more likely to qualify for scholarships and aid.

Above that it is much less likely you're going to get much help... but the cost is still pretty staggering.

We’ve created a system where the only way to survive is to be destitute enough to qualify for aid or rich enough to ignore the cost. Everyone in the middle is being cannibalized. The rich know this and they are increasingly opting out of the shared spaces. https://t.co/AXscNg3Ur2

— Demetri Kofinas (@kofinas) November 24, 2025

boognish_bear said:

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We kind of ran into this when looking for colleges for our kids. If your joint income is below $120,000 you're more likely to qualify for scholarships and aid.

Above that it is much less likely you're going to get much help... but the cost is still pretty staggering.

We’ve created a system where the only way to survive is to be destitute enough to qualify for aid or rich enough to ignore the cost. Everyone in the middle is being cannibalized. The rich know this and they are increasingly opting out of the shared spaces. https://t.co/AXscNg3Ur2

— Demetri Kofinas (@kofinas) November 24, 2025

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Same here. The one option is to find industries that are looking for people. My son went Maritime. After he opted out of the USMMA, he went to A&M for Maritime Business. He was able to get merit scholarships that being it that program allowed. But, his degree is in Maritime logistics. I understand the health fields have programs that are good through hospitals.

Americans: pic.twitter.com/SPAFyhNsAM

— Clue Heywood (@ClueHeywood) November 19, 2025

The US middle class is disappearing:

US households with incomes greater than $150,000, adjusted for inflation, now make up a record 34% of all households, rising +29 percentage points since 1965.

At the same time, the middle class has shrunk -11 percentage points, to 45%, the… pic.twitter.com/pjvqwsoCKM

— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) November 25, 2025

The Donald Trump administration has excluded nursing, physical therapy, and public health as “professional” degrees under new federal student-loan rules.

These fields will now be considered “graduate” programs, and loans will be limited to $20,500 a year, compared to… pic.twitter.com/IxfELaY5jL

— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) November 25, 2025

Good. For most nurses, the degree is an associates or bachelors level degree.

Same thing for PTs.

The MHA/MPH is not a professional degree, it's a graduate degree.

PT is an associates or bachelors degree ?

To address the growing issue of students taking on large amounts of debt, it is important to understand how the system developed. Many professional degree programs allow students to borrow very high amounts, in some cases up to $100,000 per year through federal and private loans.…

— Conservative (@Conservative1AZ) November 25, 2025

STxBear81 said:

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PT is an associates or bachelors degree ?

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I think they are DPT's these days.

They do highlight one very important fact, however.

The entire economy runs on exponentially expanding consumerism, and the moment people run out of money or decide to postpone new purchases, everything collapses because the fundamental structure was gutted long ago.

— Silksteele (@silksteele) November 26, 2025

"Gen Z isn’t ok ... the no-hire no-fire labor market, coupled with the asset headwinds of unaffordable housing and low wage growth, means the youngest entrants to the labor market could face “long-term scarring,"' per FORTUNE.

— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) November 26, 2025

boognish_bear said:

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They do highlight one very important fact, however.

The entire economy runs on exponentially expanding consumerism, and the moment people run out of money or decide to postpone new purchases, everything collapses because the fundamental structure was gutted long ago.

— Silksteele (@silksteele) November 26, 2025

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fascinating point.

C + I + G + T = GDP

For my entire life, fiscal stimulus has typically been: increasing G (via more deficit spending to stabilize the floor) combined with tax cuts to stimulate C (to generate growth in consumption), and for I to respond to the ensuing demand for consumer goods, and accepting a negative number for T (50yrs of trade deficits).

Trump admin has gone about it completely differently: decreasing G (Doge + reductions in federal payroll + reductions in entitlement spending to illegal aliens) while forcing trade deals which will more than double I for the next 2-3 years, which will drive up employment and in turn increase payroll tax collection (further reducing govt deficits) and drive up C via more paychecks and more spending. and all throughout lowering the negative number for T (by driving more production home).

The consumerism model as we have known it is dead. Trump is stimulating employment rather than spending, and getting foreign money to fund it (rather that deficit spending funded by taxpayers).

$12B “lost” because younger generations live with their parents isn’t a quirk ... it’s the logical outcome of an economy where wages trail housing, transport and food inflation.

If the base can’t form households, the cycle can’t regenerate.

— Global Markets Insights (@HarzburgCapital) November 26, 2025

D. C. Bear said:

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STxBear81 said:

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PT is an associates or bachelors degree ?

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I think they are DPT's these days.

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there are but its realatively new.. creighton in 1993 started first US doctorate level PT program

boognish_bear said:

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To address the growing issue of students taking on large amounts of debt, it is important to understand how the system developed. Many professional degree programs allow students to borrow very high amounts, in some cases up to $100,000 per year through federal and private loans.…

— Conservative (@Conservative1AZ) November 25, 2025

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This actually explains the proliferation of PhD level degrees in academia. Follow the tuition dollars.

Realitybites said:

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boognish_bear said:

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To address the growing issue of students taking on large amounts of debt, it is important to understand how the system developed. Many professional degree programs allow students to borrow very high amounts, in some cases up to $100,000 per year through federal and private loans.…

— Conservative (@Conservative1AZ) November 25, 2025

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This actually explains the proliferation of PhD level degrees in academia. Follow the tuition dollars.

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"subsidize something and you will get more of it."

The degree programs were not chasing market driven demand. They were chasing federal dollars. Degree programs thus proliferated to consume dollars exactly the same Parkinson's law dictates that the job expands to fill the time allowed. And the process was hijacked beyond the pseudo-intellectual and squarely into ideological indoctrination.

I can't tell you how many times I have heard professors, to include business school professors, rather irritably reject the notion that they have any responsibility whatsoever to teach to socio-economic need. They insist their job is to build minds, not to prepare students for careers.

whiterock said:

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Realitybites said:

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boognish_bear said:

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To address the growing issue of students taking on large amounts of debt, it is important to understand how the system developed. Many professional degree programs allow students to borrow very high amounts, in some cases up to $100,000 per year through federal and private loans.…

— Conservative (@Conservative1AZ) November 25, 2025

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This actually explains the proliferation of PhD level degrees in academia. Follow the tuition dollars.

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"subsidize something and you will get more of it."

The degree programs were not chasing market driven demand. They were chasing federal dollars. Degree programs thus proliferated to consume dollars exactly the same Parkinson's law dictates that the job expands to fill the time allowed. And the process was hijacked beyond the pseudo-intellectual and squarely into ideological indoctrination.

I can't tell you how many times I have heard professors, to include business school professors, rather irritably reject the notion that they have any responsibility whatsoever to teach to socio-economic need. They insist their job is to build minds, not to prepare students for careers.

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You do realize that every item on that list are advanced, complex subjects.

Do you really want someone designing a bridge or rehabbing your knee with a Bachelors degree level of knowledge?

I have Meniere's Disease and have to see an Audiologist, I do not want some 2 year tech school person measuring my vestibular system.

Don't we want better trained people? Engineering Masters? Who do you think works on Advanced Tech. Look at the number of people working on AI with only Bachelors??

I don't get you guys. You praise the AI push and then say that it is great that we will no longer look at Engineering Advanced degrees as Professional. Do you think things through or just react to memes?

D. C. Bear said:

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STxBear81 said:

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PT is an associates or bachelors degree ?

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I think they are DPT's these days.

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Yeah, I want an Associates degree level tech managing my rehab from hip replacement...


There will be half of these pulled back after an Adult gets to see the list and vet it. Like DOGE, they got rid of jobs and then had to hire back.

The PT degree is Doctorate level now and will always be so you should never have anything less managing your hip or or other care

Realitybites said:

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boognish_bear said:

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To address the growing issue of students taking on large amounts of debt, it is important to understand how the system developed. Many professional degree programs allow students to borrow very high amounts, in some cases up to $100,000 per year through federal and private loans.…

— Conservative (@Conservative1AZ) November 25, 2025

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This actually explains the proliferation of PhD level degrees in academia. Follow the tuition dollars.

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Have a great nice getting her PhD next spring.

Will be looking for her first real full time job at the age of 35.

Hopes to work for the federal government.

You guessed it…..she is a super liberal.

FLBear5630 said:

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D. C. Bear said:

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STxBear81 said:

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PT is an associates or bachelors degree ?

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I think they are DPT's these days.

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Yeah, I want an Associates degree level tech managing my rehab from hip replacement...


There will be half of these pulled back after an Adult gets to see the list and vet it. Like DOGE, they got rid of jobs and then had to hire back.

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A masters level PT would be just fine. They were fine before the DPT became the standard degree. I don't know that an associates degree was ever the standard, although I haven't researched it fully. I just know masters-level used to be the standard and now it is DPT.

D. C. Bear said:

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FLBear5630 said:

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D. C. Bear said:

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STxBear81 said:

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PT is an associates or bachelors degree ?

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I think they are DPT's these days.

---

Yeah, I want an Associates degree level tech managing my rehab from hip replacement...


There will be half of these pulled back after an Adult gets to see the list and vet it. Like DOGE, they got rid of jobs and then had to hire back.

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A masters level PT would be just fine. They were fine before the DPT became the standard degree. I don't know that an associates degree was ever the standard, although I haven't researched it fully. I just know masters-level used to be the standard and now it is DPT.

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I agree, but a Masters is the Entry Level. My wife has seen it in nursing. Everyone wants to be a Nurse Anesthetist or Practitioner without working with patients before. So, there is a point.

I do know that if you look at any Engineering or Tech firm, the people working and creating the high tech have a lot of Masters and Phds.

Who knows, maybe I am wrong. Maybe we can go to Mars without any advanced education.

FLBear5630 said:

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D. C. Bear said:

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FLBear5630 said:

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D. C. Bear said:

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STxBear81 said:

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PT is an associates or bachelors degree ?

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I think they are DPT's these days.

---

Yeah, I want an Associates degree level tech managing my rehab from hip replacement...


There will be half of these pulled back after an Adult gets to see the list and vet it. Like DOGE, they got rid of jobs and then had to hire back.

---

A masters level PT would be just fine. They were fine before the DPT became the standard degree. I don't know that an associates degree was ever the standard, although I haven't researched it fully. I just know masters-level used to be the standard and now it is DPT.

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I agree, but a Masters is the Entry Level. My wife has seen it in nursing. Everyone wants to be a Nurse Anesthetist or Practitioner without working with patients before. So, there is a point.

I do know that if you look at any Engineering or Tech firm, the people working and creating the high tech have a lot of Masters and Phds.

Who knows, maybe I am wrong. Maybe we can go to Mars without any advanced education.

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Of course we need advanced education. According to a quick Google search, the first entry-level DPT was created in 1993. The Doctor of Physical therapy became required for practice in the US in 2016.

My point is that physical therapists were good at physical therapy before 2016. A DPT is a three-year degree. In the right program, you can get it six years out of high school.

Isn't every new PT grad entry level ? They have to start somewhere. They usually have a minimum 32-36 week clinical affiliations built into the degree but their first job is entry level

FLBear5630 said:

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D. C. Bear said:

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FLBear5630 said:

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D. C. Bear said:

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STxBear81 said:

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PT is an associates or bachelors degree ?

---

I think they are DPT's these days.

---

Yeah, I want an Associates degree level tech managing my rehab from hip replacement...


There will be half of these pulled back after an Adult gets to see the list and vet it. Like DOGE, they got rid of jobs and then had to hire back.

---

A masters level PT would be just fine. They were fine before the DPT became the standard degree. I don't know that an associates degree was ever the standard, although I haven't researched it fully. I just know masters-level used to be the standard and now it is DPT.

---

I agree, but a Masters is the Entry Level. My wife has seen it in nursing. Everyone wants to be a Nurse Anesthetist or Practitioner without working with patients before. So, there is a point.

I do know that if you look at any Engineering or Tech firm, the people working and creating the high tech have a lot of Masters and Phds.

Who knows, maybe I am wrong. Maybe we can go to Mars without any advanced education.

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I take your point FLBear, but the fact remains that universities and colleges have deformed into mostly useless money grabbing boondoggles.

Many have expanded size and scope from their original mission, and provide little if any help for graduates needing to find work. People are starting to question the value of those degrees, and that includes a growing number of employers. Where I work, there is a lot more interest in relevant experience and skills than degrees, and the reputation of a school is increasingly only relevant in academia.

There is an unavoidable contraction in university enrollment coming, and most universities are not ready for it.

Insurance premiums for homes have surged 48% since 2020, outpacing the 3.8% rise in household incomes, per Zillow.

— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) November 28, 2025

AMAZON LAYOFFS HIT NEARLY 2,000 ENGINEERS

Amazon's latest round of job cuts has reached deep into its technical ranks, eliminating nearly 2,000 engineering roles and signaling a sharper reset of the company's ambitions in key growth areas. The reductions, which hit teams working… pic.twitter.com/ZFiWZKlqZ4

— FXHedge (@Fxhedgers) November 28, 2025

JUST IN: 🇺🇸 Online US Black Friday sales reached a record $11.8 billion, up 9.1% from last year.

— Watcher.Guru (@WatcherGuru) November 29, 2025

FLBear5630 said:

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D. C. Bear said:

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FLBear5630 said:

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D. C. Bear said:

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STxBear81 said:

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PT is an associates or bachelors degree ?

---

I think they are DPT's these days.

---

Yeah, I want an Associates degree level tech managing my rehab from hip replacement...


There will be half of these pulled back after an Adult gets to see the list and vet it. Like DOGE, they got rid of jobs and then had to hire back.

---

A masters level PT would be just fine. They were fine before the DPT became the standard degree. I don't know that an associates degree was ever the standard, although I haven't researched it fully. I just know masters-level used to be the standard and now it is DPT.

---

I agree, but a Masters is the Entry Level. My wife has seen it in nursing. Everyone wants to be a Nurse Anesthetist or Practitioner without working with patients before. So, there is a point.

I do know that if you look at any Engineering or Tech firm, the people working and creating the high tech have a lot of Masters and Phds.

Who knows, maybe I am wrong. Maybe we can go to Mars without any advanced education.

---

From my limited experience with the subject…….( got a nephew by marriage that has a DPT ) …..I believe your comments are fundamentally correct .

Scott Bessent: "Expect more jobs, higher real incomes, and strong, non-inflationary growth in 2026, along with larger refunds in the first quarter." pic.twitter.com/jFaMbptl53

— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) November 29, 2025

FLBear5630 said:

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whiterock said:

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Realitybites said:

---

boognish_bear said:

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To address the growing issue of students taking on large amounts of debt, it is important to understand how the system developed. Many professional degree programs allow students to borrow very high amounts, in some cases up to $100,000 per year through federal and private loans.…

— Conservative (@Conservative1AZ) November 25, 2025

---

This actually explains the proliferation of PhD level degrees in academia. Follow the tuition dollars.

---

"subsidize something and you will get more of it."

The degree programs were not chasing market driven demand. They were chasing federal dollars. Degree programs thus proliferated to consume dollars exactly the same Parkinson's law dictates that the job expands to fill the time allowed. And the process was hijacked beyond the pseudo-intellectual and squarely into ideological indoctrination.

I can't tell you how many times I have heard professors, to include business school professors, rather irritably reject the notion that they have any responsibility whatsoever to teach to socio-economic need. They insist their job is to build minds, not to prepare students for careers.

---

You do realize that every item on that list are advanced, complex subjects.

Do you really want someone designing a bridge or rehabbing your knee with a Bachelors degree level of knowledge?

I have Meniere's Disease and have to see an Audiologist, I do not want some 2 year tech school person measuring my vestibular system.

Don't we want better trained people? Engineering Masters? Who do you think works on Advanced Tech. Look at the number of people working on AI with only Bachelors??

I don't get you guys. You praise the AI push and then say that it is great that we will no longer look at Engineering Advanced degrees as Professional. Do you think things through or just react to memes?

---

You must be responding to someone else.

A major reason we have so many unemployed kids with hundreds of thousands of dollars of students is because universities invented so many useless degrees, particularly in the social sciences to create ever more pathways for kids to use student loans available on demand. The academic side of the university is saying "we know what your kids need from a university education, and we are the experts on that, so quit pointing to data and markets and the debt/unemployment of our graduates and leave us the hell alone."

The premise is that a college degree makes one more valuable to society.
Is it working out that way? (nope)
The arrogance of the intelligentsia is a major reason why.

Buy Now, Pay Later usage surged this Black Friday, rising 9% overall, with adoption especially strong among younger consumers: 41% of shoppers aged 16–24 used BNPL, and younger millennials increased their usage by an astonishing 87% compared with last year.

Higher-income…

— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) December 1, 2025

peeps be spendin' and ****, b***ches.

- uncle fred*

D!

* chief macroeconomist UFRI

{ sipping coffee }

X I C G D M J** n'****.........

** Javelina

Oldbear83 said:

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FLBear5630 said:

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D. C. Bear said:

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FLBear5630 said:

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D. C. Bear said:

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STxBear81 said:

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PT is an associates or bachelors de....

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I do know that if you look at any Engi...hout any advanced education.

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I take your point FLBear, but the fact remains that universities and colleges have deformed into mostly useless money grabbing boondoggles.

Many have expanded size and scope from their original mission, and provide little if any help for graduates needing to find work. People are starting to question the value of those degrees, and that includes a growing number of employers. Where I work, there is a lot more interest in relevant experience and skills than degrees, and the reputation of a school is increasingly only relevant in academia.

There is an unavoidable contraction in university enrollment coming, and most universities are not ready for it.

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OldDaleWanKinboie............

yes, there a few academic programs that make sense - a lot of sense - economically -

the rest are very expensive indoctrination camps / adult day care.

- uncle fred

D!