@Starrynight,

I kinda like your idea, but my mind typically goes to the what-ifs before I jump fully on board. The what-if that comes to mind for your proposal, is the ones benefitting from current state budget, if they saw their elected politician(s)/ state/county/city employees personally benefitting bigtime from budget cuts, would see that as corruption, hand in taxpayer pockets.

And if the budget cuts resulted in employees suddenly without jobs, but the decisionmakers personally benefitting financially from job loss among colleagues/underlings, I can just imagine some of the job losers/others not doing so well in private sector going hunting with nearest available tool capable of rectifying their sense of "fairness".

It'd be a sell job heavy lift on the part of budgetary decisionmakers to persuade people on the short end comparatively speaking, truly see the longrun benefits to their own short pockets and in the interim help develop an interim survival path for them to follow, before those people would even begin to accept shortrun huge benefits going into decisionmakers' pockets vs their own smaller pockets.

The interim survival path could be something like a job retraining program that would actually address true trade/technical skills in short supply at state or county level. I saw that happen in the 80s, early-mid 90s when the timber industry was in major decline in this part of the country. It seemed to help at least some people.

Plenty of advance notice, like a year or 2 (state bienniums for example) would be a huge help for transition, so people can mentally prepare and perhaps financially prepare for major changes coming that would affect them directly or indirectly.

I lived through such an experience years back-2 year advance notice. It created the motivation and acquisition of financial knowledge sufficient for me to hurry up and pay off my house early so I could afford to take a lower paying job if necessary and stay in the area if push came to shove, since I couldn't afford to relocate anywhere I'd want to for same quality of life and cost of living at the time (back when the pre-08 housing market was screaming ever higher).

In the end, the employer's budget crisis resolved itself while I was still selectively job hunting during the timeframe I was given to prepare, but by the time the projected job loss date arrived, I had a paid off house and had choices regardless.

Let me see if I can remember my history.

The federal government wanted to end poverty so it got involved and created more poverty.

The federal government wanted to end drug use so it got involved and drug use went up.

The federal government wanted to reduce teen pregnancy so it got involved and teen pregnancy went up.

The federal government wanted to make healthcare affordable for everyone so it got involved and the cost of healthcare went through the roof.

The federal government wanted to end terrorism so it got involved and became the biggest terrorist of all.

The federal government wanted to make college affordable...

Flap

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Here are my predictions for everyone to see:
S&P 500 at 320, DOW at 2200, Gold $300/oz, and Corn $2/bu.
No sign that housing, equities, or farmland are in a bubble- Yellen 11/14/13
Trying to leave

Gee Karl, where's the section on diversity, inclusion, and equality? Shanikwa deserves to go to college dammit!

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"The higher I go, the crookeder it gets." --Michael Corleone

The dorms where-when I went to college varied a little. Most were as Billhrny described. A few had a bathroom per two double-occupancy rooms, with a few of the rooms being single-occupancy and a couple of them housing four people. It was a common practice to try to get people that you were already friends with as roommates, and the dorm management usually tried to accommodate such requests.

There were also university-run apartments for students with families, who tended to be foreigners a lot of the time. I never saw the inside of one of those however.

@Quantum

Quote:

This WSJ piece from 2014 is paywalled, but the part you can see for free basically tells the whole story. Some students are getting student loans to pay full price and are having their borrowed money handed to other students in a non-transparent way via subsidies for more favored classes of people. The part of the article that is unreadable includes the observation that college administrators worry that if that was well-known, paying/borrowing students might object.

This is a YUGE part of the problem, not only with college, but society as a whole. Price opacity enabled by third party payers, or debt schemes.

Take away third party payers, and the scheme INSTANTLY collapses, since price feedback is restored and ability to pay is paramount (basic demand). Take away loans and the system INSTANTLY collapses because the reckoning cannot be deferred, nor sidestepped on price.

Once again, this concept fractures along racial lines. Society determined that if college is good for one, then it is good for everyone. Not everyone can cut it, so either dumb it down, or set a double standard.

We have determined that more preferred ethnic minorities need to be in college, but they can't pay for it. We cost shift (like we do in medicine) from one customer to another, and then use another institution to pay the cost in someone else's name. The beneficiary of this doesnt care, so they stay silent. The sucker doesnt know, so he doesnt care. The government makes it happen, but saddles the sucker for the rest of his life, then wants to transfer it to a larger group of suckers.

School administrators rake it in. Why not? It's free money - all in the name of equity, and they get their cut. That's one reason they LOVE diversity. Diversity means they get paid on the skim.

To add to Karl's points - price transparency in education, much like is advocated in medicine. STOP THE COST SHIFTING. If Shaniqua is paying $5K per semester, but Katelyn is paying $35K per semester, Katelyn needs to know that much of the money she is borrowing is being done on behalf of Shaniqua. If the university takes the position that Shaniqua's "scholarship" is none of Katelyn's business, and tells Katelyn that is the cost of her education, then I think there is a fraud angle on this. What is the functional difference between this and the "insured" medical rate and the "uninsured" medical rate, give that the same organization is collecting both rates for the same service?



Diversity doesnt work. Never has. Never will. Biological driven outcomes are too disparate to hide any longer. Cost transference in the name of social cohesion has run its course.

Prior to the COVID stupidity, assigning the ENTIRE cost of the DOD to White Americans, and dividing other government proportional to use, which includes medicare and SSI, Whites are still net-positive in lifetime taxes versus government consumption. Blacks are about negative 150-200K for each one (welfare, subsidies, law enforcement, prisons, and medical,). Hispanics less so, but still negative. Asians are also net positive, but I bet that breaks out differently within sub groups like Japanese vs Filipino.

The entire society is nothing more than cost shifting and price opacity. The university system is just a good case study in microcosm.

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Diversity + proximity = WAR

-They wanted camps; I want ropes.

Implement Karl's plan and 50 Percent of the colleges are in Bankruptcy within 3 years. Much like a lot of companies today the colleges are over levered as they have rebuilt and expanded themselves with new ivory towers complete with food courts and on campus banks and credit unions to hook those young vendors.

My sense is that Higher Education's Day of reckoning is on the horizon no matter what. Demographics, Debt, Cost Structure and a number of degrees that have no marketability mean that this bubble too will pop.

Second point about expanding college.

It's largely true that a single person can better himself, relative to the crowd, by having a degree.

Therefore, we would all be better off if the crowd had a degree.


I can stand up at a baseball game and get a slightly better view. If everyone stands up around me, I do not have a better view.

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Diversity + proximity = WAR

-They wanted camps; I want ropes.

FAFSA.

Anyone who has filled one out knows what this is. It's your second 1040 for the year.

You MUST list assets, not just income. The more you have worked and saved, the LESS your kid gets in federal assistance. If your older children worked to put themselves through college, and you have less debt, the more you pay.

Happened to me. The snapshot year for my daughter was the year that the airline paid out my retirement at 10c on the dollar because of CH 11, and all that was considered "income," even though I took a 90% haircut.

It's a cost shifting scheme, straight up.


A kid goes to get a loan from the school. They ask about parental income as a basis for qualification. The only exceptions are: the kid is married or over 25. It doesnt matter if the parents and kid have ZERO relationship.

What happened to that age of majority at 18 thingy?

The ENTIRE system needs to burn to ash and be rebuilt. Fee for service with complete price/fee transparency and the parents out of the loop for consideration of any scholarship.

Without price transparency, when Katelyn goes to buy a sandwich for lunch, and Shaniqua just checked out with the same sandwich, the cashier should say "Katelyn, you need to pay $17 for the sandwich because $8 subsidizes Shaniqua's sandwich she got for a $1. It's OK. Your daddy that you no longer talk to an anesthesiologist and Shaniqua's daddy is doing 20-life for Armed Robbery and Murder 1.

See how long that lasts.

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Diversity + proximity = WAR

-They wanted camps; I want ropes.

Refuse.

I made clear I would.

I won't fill it out and I won't sign it.

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Hi @Chilzany, I didn't really mean it as a serious proposal, because I know it will never work and wouldn't be accepted for the reasons you mentioned, among others. It simply is an unworkable idea. But I thought, if officeholders are using their office to take bribes to increase spending, what if there was some way to "bribe" them or give them an incentive to reduce spending. The Big Guy got 10% to do the wrong thing; what if he got a % to do the right thing?

No, I am afraid the system is really broken and I am doubtful of any solutions. To paraphrase a commentator I listen to, under current conditions, seeking office automatically disqualifies you from that office. In other words, the kinds of people who are interested in getting elected, are exactly the kinds of people you would not want in office -- psychopaths, narcisists, grifters, etc.

Didn't one of the Founding Fathers say something like, democracy will work until the people realize they can vote money for themselves?

@starrynight

If there isn't a punishment for spending money they shouldn't be rewarded for saving it.

Because they'll just authorize 100 billion dollars and deauthorize it two years later for a personal windfall.

I wonder if there is anyone in the senate or congress that reads Karl??? It'll make them look a lot smarter.

If the government runs a deficit there is no penalty for killing (irrespective of how) any Federal government employee or office holder for the next 12 months.

That would fix it.

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@starrynight

Quote:

Didn't one of the Founding Fathers say something like, democracy will work until the people realize they can vote money for themselves?

I dont think so. The FFs DID SAY that our constitution is only for a moral and religious people and wholly unsuitable for any other. They were also very strident on how Ebony and Ivory sitting side by side in perfect harmony is total fantasy. Lincoln wanted to repatriate the freed slaved, but then JWB got involved...

Your quote is likely sourced to an Alexander Tyler from the Univ of Edinburgh in 1787, and referred to the Athenian Republic from antiquity.

Same applies. Democracy never ends well, which is why those that set this place up scrupulously avoided it. We are living in the justification of their concern.

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Diversity + proximity = WAR

-They wanted camps; I want ropes.

FAFSA

The university where my daughter goes tried to get me to complete that as a condition for my daughter to get a scholarship she had earned. I refused and they gave her the scholarship anyway.

Flap

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Here are my predictions for everyone to see:
S&P 500 at 320, DOW at 2200, Gold $300/oz, and Corn $2/bu.
No sign that housing, equities, or farmland are in a bubble- Yellen 11/14/13
Trying to leave

I think the Brandon regime has backed themselves into a corner.

If there is any debt relief, I expect it will be limited to $10K or so. Hardly enough to pay off the $80K in debt that was incurred "earning" a degree in "Womyn's Studies under the Unequitable Patriarchy"

So I'm not sure how many votes this will net the Dems. And for every one person who is in debt, there are several others, perhaps even 10 more, who paid their college debts. I don't think they will take too kindly for being a sucker.

Also, the bigger the amount of debt relief means a bigger deficit, which means more inflation, which means more anticipated rate hikes, which means a lower stock market. This could be the straw that breaks the back of the stock market.

So could not only Brandon crash the market before the midterms (although personally I think this will happen anyway), he could also piss off everyone who paid their debts, and he could even piss off entitled voters who thought he should have paid off 100% of their debt. Let's Go Brandon!

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One reason I haven't been willing to send donations to either of the 2 universities of which I am an alum, is the screaming cost of tuition and the overbuilding/exhorbitant upgrades-replacement of still functional residential facilities as they existed back in my day. I don't agree that they have to keep up with the Jones (other schools) to attract students with frills and frippery, just adds to the tuition cost.

We had one group bathroom per wing on each floor, rooms uniformly double occupancy, small rooms with desk, twin bed and closet per person. Paired floor assistants each wing, shared larger room each wing, priviledge due to responsibility. They assigned rooms and wing occupancy predominantly based on chosen fields of study, similar or related among the assignees, not whether people actually knew each other already.

I had friends who got married during their campus years, lived in married student housing, I set foot in a couple of them. Not my cup of tea, former military housing so I was told, nothing fancy, very poorly insulated, northern wintery climate.

Plain jane cafeteria served basic menu each night and lunch, no hamburger/fast food menus. If you didn't like what was on offer on a given night, go get some fast food at Taco Johns across from campus. Done in 4 years undergrad, no loans or grants, no messing around then out in working world to get experience and perspective.

Kid got a degree in English, minor in History and minor in Film. Spent a semester at Oxford - a gift from a well off relative. Learned more in that semester than she did in all the others at UGA.
The most useful skill she graduated with (she was already an excellent writer) is an exceptional grasp of excel. Yep, $40K and the best skill she walked away with was excel. At least she paid every cent back. (can't wait to see her hit the ceiling if this bullshit loan forgiveness goes through. This is a good way for the idiots to lost a giant voting block, if they even care.)
She got her current job through nepotism and hard work. The nepotism got her in the door, the hard work got her the awesome paychecks.
Big companies still look for college grads to hire. Doesn't matter the actual degree or even skill set. Her initial boss was complaining that she couldn't find any college grads that could read and write decently. Without the degree, which had dick all to do with the job she was hired for, it's doubtful she would have gotten even a chance.
I'm glad to have entered the workforce before a degree was a requirement. I'm living proof that all you really need is your head screwed on right, a strong work ethic and a moral backbone.

We need more Mike Rowes in the world. Learn a marketable skill. Pretty sure that no matter how shitty the world becomes, humanity will still need plumbers and mechanics!

Ckaminski wrote..

@starrynight

If there isn't a punishment for spending money they shouldn't be rewarded for saving it.

Because they'll just authorize 100 billion dollars and deauthorize it two years later for a personal windfall.

Yep, just what I was thinking. It would be gamed almost instantly.
See Dilbert for an example

https://dilbert.com/strip/1995-11-13

I swear he's reading tickers...

https://nitter.net/ChristinaPushaw/statu....

Sounds about right Flap.

Corporations collude with the government and pay, directly or indirectly, a share of the loot from the public, to the corrupt politicians and the bureaucracy at the highest levels.

The government uses its big stick, of laws, penalties, judiciary, law enforcement, and will now probably use even the military, to force the public to be robbed by the corporations, towards their ultimate goal of complete enslavement.

It has been happening for a long time in almost all sectors of business: banking, housing, medical, insurance, education etc. etc.. I wonder if they have spared any sector?

The public gets only lip service from the politicians for the votes but now the politicians can manage even without the votes, by stealing the elections with the help of the corporations.

And it has been happening all over the world, not just in the USA, but it is on the biggest scale here and is most destructive.

Just like in medical, insurance and many other sectors, the education costs can come down drastically, if only the government was not allowed to be corrupt or abuse the US treasury for their own political purposes, like Student Loan "forgiveness". FJB!

I'd a thought Zombie Studies would actually be useful what with there being a Plandemic on.

Quote:

My sense is that Higher Education's Day of reckoning is on the horizon no matter what. Demographics, Debt, Cost Structure and a number of degrees that have no marketability mean that this bubble too will pop.

I work in higher Ed and I can tell you that it is much closer than on the horizon. Much of higher Eds model relies on having students on campus paying rent, eating in cafeterias, etc. COVID has vastly accelerated the move to online education, which is mostly crappy BTW. Couple that with a noticeable decline in enrollment, especially in majors that dont result in decent jobs, and you have a bomb where the fuse has already gone inside the casing.

Flap

----------

Here are my predictions for everyone to see:
S&P 500 at 320, DOW at 2200, Gold $300/oz, and Corn $2/bu.
No sign that housing, equities, or farmland are in a bubble- Yellen 11/14/13
Trying to leave

When is it going to sink in all this government bullshit is resources we can use on something else. Free means they steal it from someone else. In the case of those inside government, they steal all of it. As Oliver Hardy used to say to Laurel, "It's a fine mess you got us into this time". Have there been any greater disaster than what our governments have done to education and health?

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The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.---John Kenneth Galbraith