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income inequality debate

Believe that if you like. The problem is that you have no examples of successful nongovernment pure capitalist education systems, while I can name several countries with world class highly affordable government run higher education systems. My argument is empirical, yours is faith based.
 
Deacon923 said:
most college professors haven't had a raise in real terms in the past 20 years, just like all other middle class Americans. The administrators, however, are another story altogether. Anybody that knows anything about college knows that tuition inflation is not funding professor salaries, it's funding lavish dorms, student fitness centers, more and more student service employees, and ever-increasing administrative bloat.
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So at what point do the professors tell the administrators that one or the other has got to go?
 
I can function just fine without the single moms. Presumably the universities can't function without the professors. Though maybe that is an incorrect assumption.
 
Deacon923 said:
Believe that if you like. The problem is that you have no examples of successful nongovernment pure capitalist education systems, while I can name several countries with world class highly affordable government run higher education systems. My argument is empirical, yours is faith based.
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The U.S. did well before wholesale government intervention in education and could do well again in higher Ed at a cheaper cost if government would leave higher Ed alone. What countries have better higher Ed than the U.S.? It seems like everybody wants to come here for their advanced training. It was especially true before gov took over, back when even WFU was affordable.

I doubt that the U.S. will ever go back in time but I also doubt that we are going to look like Europe or India or wherever else you think had such great educational opportunities. If the gov had stayed out we would now have even better opportunities at much lower cost.
 
What are you even talking about? The University of North Carolina was founded in 1789. The land-grant acts that created NC State and many, many other state schools were in 1862. The federal government has been guaranteeing student loans since 1965 and started paying for college for GIs right after WWII. "If the gov had stayed out" we would barely even have a higher education system in this country. I mean, if you're going to post about government policy you should learn something about what government actually does and the history thereof.
 
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I am talking about the intervention of the government into private higher education which has accelerated in recent years. There are lot of private schools (Ivys, Vanderbilt, Duke, Rice, Chicago just to name a very few) that did very well without huge government intervention. UNC and UVA and their ilk with huge endowments should not use taxpayer's money to give well-to-do students a big subsidy and build more monuments to themselves. These schools could do very well by footing their own bills. Now with the taxpayer guaranteeing loans, things are only going to get more expensive.

http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/education/higher-education-subsidies
 
2&2 Slider To Leyritz said:
I can function just fine without the single moms. Presumably the universities can't function without the professors. Though maybe that is an incorrect assumption.
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They're trying. That's part of the online education movement and the predominance of adjunct and grad student instructors. How to teach the most students and get the most tuition dollars with the cheapest instruction.
 
tjcmd said:
I am talking about the intervention of the government into private higher education which has accelerated in recent years. There are lot of private schools (Ivys, Vanderbilt, Duke, Rice, Chicago just to name a very few) that did very well without huge government intervention. UNC and UVA and their ilk with huge endowments should not use taxpayer's money to give well-to-do students a big subsidy and build more monuments to themselves. These schools could do very well by footing their own bills. Now with the taxpayer guaranteeing loans, things are only going to get more expensive.

http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/education/higher-education-subsidies
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Again, the taxpayer has been subsidizing loans since 1962. It's not clear to me that federal support, or total state, local, and federal support, has grown at a pace that outstrips population growth. It's even less clear to me that such support has grown at a rate that outstrips the need for more education in a global economy.

Regardless, the take of the american enterprise institute notwithstanding, every civilized country in the world recognizes that an educated population is a public good, just like a healthy population is a public good. They subsidize education at a higher percentage of GDP in way that is more affordable for their populations. As a result, they tend to achieve greater mobility and equality.

Now I will certainly agree that the current american method of higher education support through student loans is dumb. Possibly the only thing dumber than the current system would be abdicating the government's very important role in educating the population, and ceding the field of innovation to our global competitors.
 
TownieDeac said:
Growing income inequality is a sign of market capitalism working properly. We do need more socialism, more collectivism, more policies aimed at leveling the playing field. When people old enough to remember the Cold War aren't the ones pulling the strings anymore, we won't all be terrified of COMMUNISM and SOCIALISM and we may be able to speak in more real terms about ills of contemporary American society. The boogeymen of tjcmd and jh's day aren't threats anymore. It's the best time since the era of the robber baron to be a well-earning American male, so it's quite obvious why jh and tj want to protect their rights. Sooner or later, however, the scales will tip the other direction. Demographics already work against them. We just need policy to reflect that.
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I think the political economy here is backwards. Existence of USSR was good for western workers.
 
tjcmd said:
I am talking about the intervention of the government into private higher education which has accelerated in recent years. There are lot of private schools (Ivys, Vanderbilt, Duke, Rice, Chicago just to name a very few) that did very well without huge government intervention. UNC and UVA and their ilk with huge endowments should not use taxpayer's money to give well-to-do students a big subsidy and build more monuments to themselves. These schools could do very well by footing their own bills. Now with the taxpayer guaranteeing loans, things are only going to get more expensive.

http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/education/higher-education-subsidies
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Im not clicking on that link, lest I infect my PC.

I thikn what you dont understand is that other economies understand that it is cheaper in the long run to educate the population and keep them healthy. Cheaper, as in, you pay less in the long run.
 
Deacon923 said:
What are you even talking about? The University of North Carolina was founded in 1789. The land-grant acts that created NC State and many, many other state schools were in 1862. The federal government has been guaranteeing student loans since 1965 and started paying for college for GIs right after WWII. "If the gov had stayed out" we would barely even have a higher education system in this country. I mean, if you're going to post about government policy you should learn something about what government actually does and the history thereof.
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Beat Clemson at home that year and well, every year, since.
 
Much as I like The Economist, I was disappointed by this piece of analysis by the editors. http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21621800-digital-revolution-bringing-sweeping-change-labour-markets-both-rich-and-poor?spc=scode&spv=xm&ah=9d7f7ab945510a56fa6d37c30b6f1709

The gist: They concede that the digital revolution has led to reduced opportunity and big income inequality, and project that the problem will get worse in the future. Having argued that there is a big problem with wealth accruing to a small group of elites and not trickling down to the rest of humanity, they then pretend that the solution is to close a few tax loopholes and increase the EITC, and throw in some housing and transport subsidies to make it easier for the drones to clean the houses of the elite.

It's going to take a lot more than that.
 
I haven't seen a reasonable explanation of how deregulation didn't make existing inequality worse much less how deregulation is going to fix it.
 
Depends on the kind of deregulation. There are a lot of licensing regimes that are just silly, serving only to protect incumbents and not the consumer, and keep people from starting their own businesses. Taxi monopolies and cosmetology licenses are two of the best examples. These kind of things increase inequality and concentrate wealth.

Some types of regulation keep prices artificially high to protect monopolists. The deregulation of airlines is what allows you to buy a $65 ticket on Southwest. That was simply unheard of before deregulation.
 
Right. That's not the type of deregulation Americans generally talk about.
 
http://www.vox.com/2014/10/7/6921153/buybacks-dividends

"CEOs have increased the proportion of cash flow allocated to stock buybacks to more than 30 percent, almost double where it was in 2002, data from Barclays show. During the same period, the portion used for capital spending has fallen to about 40 percent from more than 50 percent. The reluctance to raise capital investment has left companies with the oldest plants and equipment in almost 60 years. The average age of fixed assets reached 22 years in 2013, the highest level since 1956, according to annual data compiled by the Commerce Department."
 
Can somebody explain how Obama is to blame for that?
 
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