We fly high, no lie, you know this (Ballin'!) Excellent article on our 1.1 trillion budget deficit in 2019!

https://www.thebalance.com/u-s-federal-budget-breakdown-3305789

some highlights:

we got a 20 trillion economy with us govt generating about 3.5 trillion.

we spend about 4.5 trillion for a trillion deficit. lemme break it down:

1 trillion on social security. 1 trillion on medicare and medicaid.

700b in interest at an average rate of 3.5% on 20 trillion debt. every 100 bps change is 200b in cost.

700b for military.

so we spend an additional trillion on everything else.

what to do? what to cut? lets get discusted

There are a few really easy ways to improve the deficit imo:

  1. Reduce military spending - the US could shave 300 billion dollars off of military expenditures and still spend twice as much as the #2 country.

  2. Increase taxes – undoing the bush tax cuts and the trump tax cuts, that’s another 500B a year.

  3. Medicare for all (with a corresponding tax to offset the added expense) would also help reduce the total spending on healthcare.

Why even try to reduce the deficit? Everyone else is up to their eyeballs in debt as well. But ‘Merica can print them dollars. Print baby print and let the rest of the world pay US’ debt. #MAGA

I believe in gov’t subsidized higher ed. Obviously there would be more bills to be paid in the short term but in the long term it would generate significant growth. Right now the US is losing a shitload of potential in that part of population who doesn’t go to college because of its insane cost.

Agreed – might also decrease the price in private schools as well. I can see fewer people be willing to pay 50k a year when they can pay 0-5k and go to a state school.

community college should be free.

trade schools should be free or with subsidy.

Free tuition at state schools would destroy their quality relative to private schools. Let’s say CA budget approves $40k in yearly spending for UC Berkeley tuition, and the university cannot charge more than that (because it’s free to students). Harvard then spends that same amount, and charges students an additional $15k for better teaching and facilities, totaling $55k. Berkeley has no mechanism now to raise spending and match Harvard. So either CA has to index its education budget to private schools (a bad idea overall), or cap spending and likely quality. Free tuition would only increase inequality by sending rich kids to increasingly dominant private universities. That’s why such a model is seldom implemented anywhere.

im with igor. im for free school! we just need to train them in more value added jobs.

what you pay does not determine the value of your education.

most of the shit that we learn in college is useless anyways. its just a screener

also technically. harvard can easily make it free for students. they got a 45b net worth vs an operating budget of 4.5b.

I don’t think Harvard needs to offer more free tuition when people are practically begging to be admitted from all over the world…

I do think something needs to be done about moving students into fields that offer strong employment. First, schools should publish employment statistics on each program they offer. Second, schools should underwrite their own student debt, so they will have incentive to support student outcomes.

More college enrollment is not an issue. At the current lower threshold, marginal students have questionable chances of being employed in the field they studied anyway. These marginal students should instead be taught job skills, like auto mechanic, plumber, fitness trainer, and so on.

That’s exactly how it’s working now.

https://nordic.businessinsider.com/elite-colleges-top-1-vs-bottom-50-equality-of-opportunity-project-2017-1/

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/08/universities-inequality-fighters/538566/

I think we all agree that the top tier schools are mostly made up of rich students, or you can use the above articles.

We can see it in Europe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Germany#Tuition_fees

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_France#Tuition_costs

https://www.mastersportal.com/articles/1042/tuition-free-universities-in-finland-norway-and-germany-in-2019.html

The issue is that you assume students will swarm to mediocre private schools and willingly pay more, rather than private schools needing to lower costs (and tuition) to attract students. Empirically, this isn’t the case.

I did not say inequality did not currently exist. Inequality will get worse under this new system.

I anticipated that someone might point to some European countries with free tuition. Quality has already been compromised by resource constraints. How many German universities are ranked in the world top 30 or 50? Meanwhile, elite US institutions wipe the floor with everyone else, precisely because they have freedom to manage their resources.

“The issue is that you assume students will swarm to mediocre private schools and willingly pay more, rather than private schools needing to lower costs (and tuition) to attract students. Empirically, this isn’t the case.”

I made no such assumption. I said that elite universities in the US will become even more exclusive and competitive, as good public universities will be handicapped in terms of spending.

quite honestly i dont even know why we’re fighting over free tutition. it definitely has a higher roi than social security and medicare.

we are literally spending 2 trillion dollars to pay for the bills of those no logner productive. thats more insane than trying to teach another person philosophy and expanding his critical thought for the rest of his life.

we spend another 700b on a military that isnt pillaging anything.

Getting handicapped in terms of spending is good. The cost of colleges are increasing too quickly.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/camilomaldonado/2018/07/24/price-of-college-increasing-almost-8-times-faster-than-wages/#483c874066c1

This is resulting in trillions of dollars of student loan debt – which I think we all can agree will become an issue in 10-30 years.

Colleges should have to spend less. Your worst case scenario is that Harvard becomes more elitist (as opposed to now) Public universities will have to figure out how to have fewer administrators and less bullshit, but still have to compete with other schools on education.

Elite US schools will always be the best in both regardless of free public tuition. The difference is on the mediocre private schools that charge 40k a year. Those won’t be able to succeed, and I’m fine with those failing.

personally i dont think college is all that useful. would not care if my kids dont go to college as long as they got money in the bank and ask shawty’s what they drank! - my senior year quote!

Mike Jones’ Shiela on college!

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/02/sheila-bair-is-college-really-worth-it.html

It is commonly said that a college degree will generate more than $1 million in additional income during a graduate’s lifetime. Indeed, that seductive statistic can even be found on the Department of Education’s website. Unfortunately, I fear many students and their families have borrowed heavily, lured by this seven-figure “college premium.”

Yet this premium is an average and varies widely by the choice of major. Capturing the premium depends on students graduating, and less than 60 percent do so, leaving many with the worst of both worlds: debt and no degree. In addition, it represents enhanced income, not wealth, and the wealth premium college graduates used to enjoy has seriously eroded, presumably due in part to student debt obligations interfering with their ability to save and invest.

A decade after unaffordable mortgage borrowing brought our economy to its knees, we face a new kind of crisis, as student debt now exceeds $1.5 trillion, with nearly 40 percent of borrowers expected to default by 2023. We are putting a terrible financial burden on our young people and hurting the economy more broadly as loan payments curb student borrowers’ ability to engage in other economic activity such as buying a home or starting a business.

Most college degrees will produce a solid income premium. On the other hand, the average cost of a four-year degree at a private college is about $160,000. Investing that money at 5 percent over a 40-year career would also yield well over $1 million.

in addition wsj article where dems suggest a tax on unrealized gains. if they do this double taxation will be a serious issue.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/top-democrat-proposes-annual-tax-on-unrealized-capital-gains-11554217383

This mark-to-market tax concept, long discussed by academics and rarely alive in the political sphere, could raise substantial money. A similar proposal from Eric Toder of the Urban Institute and Alan Viard of the American Enterprise Institute would generate an estimated $125 billion in 2025 alone, according to their 2016 paper. That plan was focused on publicly traded assets and applied a different rule to closely held businesses.

Under the plan, the wealthiest sliver of households would pay the bulk of new taxes. Among households making more than $10 million in adjusted gross income in 2016, capital gains accounted for 46.4% of income, compared with 0.7% of income for households making less than $100,000 annually, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

For example, consider someone who bought $1 million of stock in 2002 that is now worth $10 million and doesn’t pay dividends. Under current law, the investor would have paid no income taxes on that $9 million gain and would pay none if the stock is left to an heir.