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Originally Posted by Jammer
...but if your going to rag on a man with a measly Harvard degree...
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You missed the point I was trying to make. What I'm ragging about is not "Harvard degree", but "law school". Law just does not take that much intelligence, it requires a decent memory and, above all else, the ability to BS people, to persuade them that reality is what you want them to believe, rather than what the facts show it to be. Indeed, I'd argue that law is the diametric opposite of engineering & the sciences. In those fields you must work hard either to discover the truth of nature - science - or use those truths - engineering - to build things that work.
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However you can not teach a dog new tricks
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In fact, you can - and I have. Though I never knew her exact age, I got Harlie when she was at least middle-aged. She'd apparently had a rather deprived life, at least when it came to play - she didn't know what balls were, or how to swim, or any of a number of things. But she learned. She learned how to chase balls by watching the neighbors' dogs playing, then joining in. Learned to swim by seeing me swim out into the lake, and deciding I needed rescuing.
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Many of us just want a job, we do not all have the brains to get these degrees you speak of. Surely you can understand that the average American just can not get these degrees you speak of, especially at middle age and older.
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No, I don't really understand that. First, to get a job, you have to have some sort of skill that people want. Acquiring that skill may not require a degree program - my neighbors' kid makes good money without a degree, first as an electric lineman, nowadays installing wind turbines - but it does require some conscious effort.
Second, as long as Alzheimer's hasn't set in, you can still learn. The problem with many Americans these days is that they're in the position of a lifelong couch potato who's told he has to get up and run a marathon today. They've been told all their lives that "it's cool to be dumb", that people who actually like learning & doing things that require mental effort are nothing but geeks and nerds. Minds, like bodies, require exercise or they get flabby and out of shape.