"......father presented me with a horse, not saddle ready, and i was to feed and train and and clean as part of the "responsibility" of ownership."

Your father must have known my father!!!!

Same deal.....a yearling not saddle ready, to feed, train and clean and I was 13.................at 16, cars and girls became priority and I was required to self-finance..................

One might add "horse sense".

Exactly. Then they take whatever isn't bolted down, and some that is.

How will it make me appear to be better than the productive people that I envy?

LOL! Guys have used math to discuss "romantic relationships" since forever :)

In addition to that -

We use counting numbers to help define and celebrate relationships - how long you've been together, anniversaries

We use proportionality - anything the other person does that is annoying will become increasingly more so as time goes on.

We use probability - the more casual relationships a person has the more that person is increasing his or her health risks.

We use stats - Have I gone out with enough people to know this person is the one? Have I done enough as a single person to finally settle down? Have we done enough as a couple to finally have children? (children usher in learning the difference between geometric progression and exponential growth :)

...and so forth and so on.

Simple, basic math is used all the time, constantly for everything. :)

Exactly. The reference value for most things today is what can I get for it, how will it entertain me or how will it help me steal from everyone else...

All goes back to the discussion Heinlein had on value in Starship Troopers. Value can be a realative as well as an absolute, depending on how you apply it and reference it. In this case, people think a college degree implies a good job and income, but when you are a lunkhead to start and a lunkhead to finish, you still will not have a job in the end. That makes the college degree valueless, except as a fantasy. The graduates today I see in high tech are dumber than dirt and have no problem solving skills, except to see what other part of the system they can blame. Yet they have Masters and Phds.

Liberals are confronted with a terrible choice, Sanders or Clinton. It is the choice between a fool and a criminal. "May you live in interesting times."

Romantic relationships? ;^)

"Some people I know who like Sanders are somewhere between capable and brilliant at math"
Problem of math as applied to reality perhaps?
It isn't rocket science. Takes less ability than filling out income tax forms to see the economic flaws in Sanders statements. He is economically insane.

To me, everything is math.

Planning one's time, budgeting, driving, one has to weigh odds when making decisions and if you're shooting a game of pool, you need to be able to figure out the angles!

What isn't math? What do you do that doesn't require some sort of math?

Convenience is killing thinking and promoting mental laziness.

I had a similar upbringing. My businessman father presented me with a horse, not saddle ready, and i was to feed and train and and clean as part of the "responsibility" of ownership. I was 13. At 16, as part of having a car, a part-time job was part of paying insurance. It all taught not only responsibility, but math, in the sense of how to use it to survive.
One local print reporter, age 20, said that her age group should vote for "charisma and hope" - no reality there. She also said she wanted time from work so she could "drink", and no husband, but possible future children to be "adopted from other countries -a rainbow group." She said Obama's election was "the best day of my life". I fear she peaks for that age group. No ability to reason whatsoever!

Mandated government schooling has led to this result. If we want to focus on the one crucial thing that could restore freedom and prosperity, it should be to return responsibility for education to the parents and local communities.

Don't forget, go shopping and don't worry about your debt.

Not to mention responsibility and discipline of reality.

Improved by horses!

"The young people I have met who own horses (and have not given up or been supported by parents who rescue them out of difficulties) are level-headed and productive, or have their eyes set on productivity."

I am one of those who in early adolescence first had one horse, then two (and a Dalmatian to go with them). My dad laid down these rules: 1)their wellbeing was MY responsibility (and woe unto me if I did not meet it); 2) my school grades to be 3.0 or better (repeat "woe"); 3) my assigned family chores were to be fulfilled without fail (same "woe" again); 4) I was to WORK for my $$$$.........cleaning out horse stalls for other horse owners in our community (that "woe" came with the work!).

Consequence: I learned very solidly that one's life is supported by WORK, first mental, then physical; I went to an excellent college that taught rational, critical thinking as a fundamental to begin learning after graduation (!!!); built a successful career in organizational management; in my late twenties recognized the sanity of Objectivism and spent the next many decades studying and applying it (and learning from my applicative errors).............and will continue until end of life.

Sorry. I think we may be expressing the same things in different ways.

Eat, reproduce, and vote for the politician promising the most freebies.

Math is all about facts, and the Millennials have been taught that facts are malleable, while feelings are immutable. I have had a number of young people respond to my statements with "But those are YOUR facts!" They've grown up in the environment of "It all depends on what the meaning of IS is," where lies and deception are an acceptable element of life, and truth is in the eyes of the beholder.

To this new generation, it's more important what feelings are expressed, and with what apparent sincerity, than if a statement is supported with logical argument and researchable facts. They can't determine the value of statements, or who they should trust, favoring sources like blog writers who share their feelings, rather than carefully validated collections of data.

The purer elements of education, like the sciences, have been polluted by an excess of social training. In an attempt to replace parental and community rules of behavior with more universal concepts of "social justice," the elements of purposeful ignorance have been instilled, malice aforethought.

My 17 year old grandson, (soon to be 18), is Trump all the way. He says Trump is the only one running that he trusts. I do not necessarily agree with him, but my point is that I think a lot of millenials are for Trump too.

You have "lost" me. Are you asking what you believe is an unanswerable question?

I've looked at something a bit different... Horse ownership. Every child who says "I wanna pony" is considering taking on an awesome responsibility. Some of them "get it" and a few of those people actually get a horse.

The young people I have met who own horses (and have not given up or been supported by parents who rescue them out of difficulties) are level-headed and productive, or have their eyes set on productivity.

One fellow I encountered when substituting English class about ten years ago told me, "I'm going to be a farmer, like my dad." Well, he didn't quite hit that target. Instead he now owns hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment and hauls around agricultural equipment for other farmers. Ten years from high-school senior to wealthy.

I wonder how many welfare-type people he supports? I wonder if he even cares, or if instead he is so busy running his business?

He may or may not have had horses or other farm animals, but he learned how to work land and then how to get out of doing all the back-breaking work by himself. I'm certain that he learned his mathematics, but whether from school or not, I don't know. My impression of his schoolwork, the one day I met him, was that he was merely marking time until he could go out and work. Not "get a job" but WORK.

Sanders' math doesnt even make sense. He throws around "trillions" like its a few dollars. What he should be is a botanist- to figure out how to make a money tree grow without any work.

Chicken or egg?
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