Prices of things

As I mentioned in an earlier blog, it can be really helpful when you know when you're getting ripped of and I want to prevent you from being ripped off.

So I thought I'd start listing off services/items and prices that I've encountered (and I'll put in parentheses the location of those prices, since they can change dramatically from city to city).

Services:
Car

• Smog Check: $40 (including certificate). After searching around for the cheapest possible smog check I found this place in San Rafael in the Canal Area. A lot of places will advertise a price and then say +certificate, which is always about $10 extra. So for Marin I think $40 is the cheapest you'll find. Other counties are probably cheaper.
• Diagnostic (of an old car): $99. I didn't do as much research as I should have for this diagnostic, but $99 seemed to be the going rate.  They would have given me a free diagnostic if I had a new/fancy car that the computer/machine could read easily, but alas the machine could not read my car's check engine light. =(
• Oil Change: $30. Not many places in Marin County will offer an oil change for $30, but I found one. Though I wouldn't recommend it, my car fell apart shortly after, and I'm just not sure about them anymore. Plus they tried to tell me I needed to get all these things fixed and it was going to cost tons of money. I hate when mechanics do that!

Ok that's it for now. Please, please, please let me know if you have found different rates/prices for things or know something I don't about these services! 

I've been debating this rhetoric of the american dream for a while now

...and more and more people are starting to see the disconnect.

I just read an interesting article that touches upon it called "American's Don't Resent the Super-Rich Because They Think They Are Super Rich" by Kiri Blakeley (Forbes: Americans Don't Resent the Super Rich.  She introduces the topic by recalling different riots that were meant to start revolutions throughout our recent past, such as the 1992 LA Riots, pointing out that Americans will fight back against injustice.  However, when it comes to the injustice of our tax system the fight is lacking. No one will riot against the super rich not being taxed, because most people believe in the American Dream. The American Dream dictates that hard work alone will bring you success and so it is up to you to become super rich, and once you do you will be rewarded with lower taxes!

Blakeley brings up individuals such as Bill Gates of Jay Z as examples of people who worked hard and became super rich, but she also points out the resources and little bit of luck they had to help them achieve great success.  She mentions the author Malclom Gladwell who "points out over and over again that success is not just a function of hard work, brains, and dreaming big—but of privilege, timing, and often in the form of government help via loans or programs." So while the average american supports lower to no taxes for millionaires, thinking he will benefit from it someday, he is becoming poorer and poorer by not taking advantage or resources that have been proven to help others succeed. 

It seems to me that this "American Dream" is a little destructive.  Instead of valuing the community and what the community can do for the individual to succeed, it values solely the individual and his or her ability to become super rich.  And this relates directly to the whole debt/budget crisis. There is a division between people who believe in the individual and his ability to fix the economy through small business and the people who believe strong communities helping each other in time of need will fix the economy.  One believes taxes will debilitate the economy and the other believes extra taxes will bring more money to programs that are making our communities stronger.

college education - is it for everybody?

So I just read an article that I really liked in the Nation called "Should All Kids Go To College?".

I've been mulling over this idea that everybody needs to go to college for some time now and I was not seeing the sustainability. I have mentioned it in my blog in the past. You may remember my complaints about recent grads taking up receptionist jobs. Well you can check out my crazy outburst of emotion under the comments page =) I won't repeat it here!

Frustrations with College funding

Yesterday I attended a presentation by EARN called "Education Debt: the Next Bubble" and realized that we are still not getting it. Initially I was excited to go to this talk because I felt that education debt could very well be the second "housing" crisis. People taking a risk and going into huge debt to invest in their education, not knowing if the returns will actually pay off in the end. Just like with the housing crisis, people believe in being successful after their investment and being able to gain from their investment.  As we saw in the housing crisis, this is not always the case. Investing in something so widely believed as a "good" investment and worth the risk is still a RISK and therefore not guaranteed! and the statistics are staggering!

In 2008, students and their debt equaled over $550000000 for private, for-profit schools.  The average debt a student in California has is 17,000 and in Massachusetts is 24,000, both lower than a student with debt from a private school (such as USC 30,000). Have you seen many entry level jobs paying anywhere near enough to pay for your living and pay this debt off? There may be some, but there are not enough! and what about all those other jobs that don't need a college degree and pay about the same as a entry level job (at which degrees are pretty much a standard) - not because of the actual work performed, just because everyone else applying has a degree as well. But, that is a different
argument altogether!

More to come on this subject later...