… A decades-long Republican antipathy toward the Internal Revenue Service has reached a new level of enmity with the passage of a Democratic-backed bill that gives the agency $80 billion to beef up its ability to go after tax cheats. The legislation, which Mr. Biden signed into law this week, will allow the beleaguered agency to hire more than 80,000 employees, upgrade outdated technology systems and improve its ability to respond to taxpayers.
The agency’s staff is the same size today as it was in 1970, when it processed far fewer individual tax returns. Its enforcement staff has fallen more than 30 percent since 2010, and audits of millionaires have declined more than 70 percent. As of late June, millions of taxpayers were still waiting for the agency to process their 2021 tax returns. …
… Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, a Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, warned Fox News viewers last week that the new I.R.S. agents, a small percentage of whom are allowed to carry firearms, might be coming with loaded “AK-15s” and “ready to shoot some small business person in Iowa.” …
… Still, for all the ads and rhetoric, it is not clear whether the message is resonating ahead of the midterms.
A poll conducted by the market research firm YouGov with The Economist magazine this week found that around half of Americans supported the bill that included the I.R.S. funding when they were given a brief overview of what it contained. Around one-third of the respondents opposed it. …
The open thread was meant for the discussion of off topic things. This is there rather than have the topical posts cluttered. There is a degree of abuse. I have offered both Ann and Fred a way to add a series of articles along the lines of “What was in My In-Box.” Neither wanted to do this. It is continuous copy and paste with little or no commentary by either to stimulate a discussion.
Got back from my hour walk in the desert before the sun gets high. Less than 80 this morning.
it took me a while to catch on, but Dobbs saves me the trouble of being told by NYT that I need to subscribe to see the link. it does not hurt us to read “comments” from the NYT. you can always skip what you don’t want to read.
and while you are doing that, you might want to reflect on comments by, ahem, that are mere emotive blurts.
meanwhile, one man’s “off topic” is another man’s “key to the whole thing.”
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
I often find that my own opinions, when I attempt to post them, don’t get past moderation. So, I mostly post items I think are worth reading that folks ought to know about. Feel free to ignore them, as I ignore ad hominem slights.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is warning that the GOP may not win back control of the Senate in November’s midterm elections – a cycle that typically would be favorable to the party not in power – as a political action committee linked to McConnell stages a rescue effort in the Ohio Senate race.
Asked Wednesday by reporters in Kentucky about his midterm predictions, McConnell said there’s “probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate.”
“Senate races are just different, they’re statewide, candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome,” he said, according to NBC News.
… the GOP is facing surprisingly tight Senate races in several states – even with Republican groups providing huge sums of money to aid struggling candidates. …
… a few days after President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law and as Democrats continue to bethrilled about the accomplishment, Sanders still expresses regrets about what he calls the “modest” bill that does not come close to what he wanted. …
… Sanders is sitting out this round of claps on backs ahead of November’s midterms … in a rare moment of momentum for Democrats. Holding no illusions that the work is done, the democratic socialist is holding a couple of events against corporate greed, including a rally in Boston on Sunday, and describes Republicans as totally obstructing legislation that helps working people. …
… “never let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”
The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, may have had similar advice in his head as he relentlessly corralled his 49 Democratic colleagues into passing the Inflation Reduction Act, which emerged as not just a good bill, but a great bill, as President Biden described it when he signed it on Tuesday.
Yet without trouble from one intransigent Democratic senator and a significant political misjudgment by the Biden administration, we would have had an even more consequential package.
The obstinate Democrat was, in the end, not Joe Manchin of West Virginia — who fought hard for his beliefs and his constituents in the course of signing on — but Kyrsten Sinema, the Arizona freshman who prides herself on a quirky individualism seemingly patterned on one of her predecessors, the iconoclastic Republican John McCain.
When she helped block what would have been the first increase in the federal minimum wage since 2009, she did so by mimicking Mr. McCain’s dramatic thumbs-down vote in 2017 on proposed cutbacks to the Affordable Care Act.
… it was solely Ms. Sinema’s demands that drastically weakened the tax portion of the resulting legislation.
No increase in the egregiously low corporate income tax rate. No reversal in overly generous deductions for businesses. No rise in income tax or capital gains rates paid by the wealthy.
Wealthy individuals escaped essentially unaffected by the new legislation. Ms. Sinema even objected to closing the indefensible carried interest loophole, through which many private equity executives and some hedge fund managers pay only a 23.8 percent tax rate on gains achieved on their share of investors’ capital. …
How is that Kyrsten Sinema, Dem of Arizona, is so totally influenced by her GOP predecessor John McCain, a non-Native Arizonan, who was preceded by & mainly instructed by the legacy of one Barry Goldwater, who was.
Meanwhile in AZ, Dem senator Mark Kelly is running ahead of his Trump-endorsed GOP opponent Blake Masters by a fairly large margin, so that’s something.
If America breaks up and if history is any guide, people of our region will seek to lead their own federation.
… the Union again stands at a precipice, riven by political fault lines that are geographic as well as ideological. Eleven months ago a University of Virginia poll found 59 percent of Biden voters and 77 percent of Trump voters agreed that red and blue states should secede to form separate countries. These numbers may be even higher now that the overturning of Roe v. Wade has widened the gulf between the states and now that efforts to hold former President Donald Trump accountable to the nation’s laws have shown that many of his supporters think he should be above them.
To be clear: A breakup would be a disaster of monumental proportions. It would turn the middle swath of North America into an unstable region of feuding, mutually hostile microstates and a stage for great-power rivalries and military conflict. The successor nations would have to devise a massive range of institutions and policies on the fly, including border control, customs defense, and international diplomacy.
But if the United States should shatter, history suggests that New England or a Greater New England federation would emerge. Indeed, one has been waiting in the wings every time the Union has approached the brink. …
… in the closing months of 1803, some of the most influential political and cultural figures in New England decided that there could be only one solution: The region must secede and create a new northern confederation built on “the steady habits and Federalism of the Eastern states,” in the words of Senator William Plumer of New Hampshire.
This scheme, which was to be put into motion in 1804, was but the first in a series of Yankee contingency plans to save the American Dream by calving New England from a union believed to have lost its way. During the War of 1812, the slavery crisis of the 1840s, and the final months before the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, politicians, public intellectuals, and media commentators agitated for the creation of a new New England-led nation freed from the taint of human bondage, hereditary aristocracy, and crass frontier values.
Today the Union again stands at a precipice, riven by political fault lines that are geographic as well as ideological. Eleven months ago a University of Virginia poll found 59 percent of Biden voters and 77 percent of Trump voters agreed that red and blue states should secede to form separate countries. These numbers may be even higher now that the overturning of Roe v. Wade has widened the gulf between the states and now that efforts to hold former President Donald Trump accountable to the nation’s laws have shown that many of his supporters think he should be above them. …
It seems to me that my own Quaker ancestors had a hand in what went down in the USA, by insisting that negro slavery in America was morally abhorrent and would not be tolerated among their members. This notion became pervasive in the northern states. The wealthy class of the time, financiers & capitalists, had their own reasons for joining this belief, as did working people who resented the use of ‘free labor’ from slaves if nothing else. Thus, the Land of Liberty almost came apart.
If the northeast US breaks away, we would probably invite NY to join, and New Jersey.
Presumably also Pennsylvania, where my Quaker ancestors instigated the end to slavery in the US with the inevitable conflagration that followed. But would they accept the offer?
not instigated. maybe initiated. instigation was from NY, and a failed congressman from Illinois. not to mention a few newspaper editors who were killed for their opinions.
I don’t know that there is any “making sense” out of the war over slavery, but looking at voters today makes me realize more than i ever did before that there is no making sense of anything people do.
as for “breaking away,” that makes even less sense than it did in 1860. the problem now is that the crazies control the federal government.
The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) was the first corporate body in Britain and North America to fully condemn slavery as both ethically and religiously wrong in all circumstances. It is in Quaker records that we have some of the earliest manifestations of anti-slavery sentiment, dating from the 1600s. After the 1750s, Quakers actively engaged in attempting to sway public opinion in Britain and America against the slave trade and slavery in general. At the same time, Quakers became actively involved in the economic, educational and political well being of the formerly enslaved.
The earliest anti-slavery organizations in America and Britain consisted primarily of members of the Society of Friends. … Quaker involvement, often behind the scenes, in the leadership and direction of the abolitionist movement (dated) from the 1770s … (Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr PA)
• (instigate someone to do something) incite someone to do something, especially something bad: instigating men to refuse allegiance to the civil powers.
almost sounds to me like “instigated the civil war” which, as Quakers, they did not.
I do from time to time try to point out the role of “religious” people in ending slavery. but the new daze will have none of it: “religion” = bad, therefore we have to hate all religious people, not to say framers, founders, old white men, southerners, white men, old men, men. and anyone who uses “him” to refer to people of all genders and persuasions.
It may be a leap to imply that Quakers instigated the Civil War, since they are mostly pacifists, however the events they set in motion led to the Civil War. They certainly did not initiate it.
But it wasn’t Abe Lincoln or John Brown who did that anyway, it was Jefferson Davis and those who set up the Confederacy, because they believed that the federal guv’mint under Lincoln was going to free their slaves (and in the process ruin their economy). Lincoln had said, apparently, that that was not his intention, but they seceded anyway, and opened fire on Fort Sumpter, starting the war.
Schools across the country have been caught up in spirited debates over what students should learn about United States history. We talked to social studies teachers about how they run their classrooms, what they teach and why. …
you can’t teach much in “history class.” you can give kids a framework for learning “history” on their own if they want to. they will gravitate to their own favorite lies in any case. even when the school boards demand that teachers “teach” the lies the owners of the school boards want them to teach, the kids will find their own way, for better or worse.
As countries around the world seek to reduce their carbon emissions, what if there were a way they could generate significantly more power from one of the fastest-growing sources of renewable energy, without the need to buy any expensive new equipment or clear more land?
Scientists at MIT say they’ve figured out how to do just that with wind power.
After testing complicated computer models, they’ve shown that adjusting the rotor blades of turbines at a wind farm — a change that would reduce the efficiency of an individual turbine if it stood alone — can significantly increase the overall power produced by the wind farm.
Typically, wind farm operators focus on achieving the maximum efficiency of individual turbines. Each turbine has its own sensors that measure the direction and speed of the wind, enabling their blades to rotate as close to the wind as possible and capture the maximum amount of energy.
But now scientists have found that, actually, they would be better off orienting the blades of some turbines at a sub-optimal angle to the wind, so each turbine generates slightly less bumpy air, known as a turbulent wake, for turbines downwind. Changing the angle of the blades reduces how much a turbine disturbs the flow of air to those behind it, ultimately increasing their collective output. …
If existing wind farms around the world used this method, which the scientists published this month in the journal Nature Energy, the additional electricity could together power the equivalent of 3 million homes in the United States and generate nearly a billion dollars in additional revenue each year for the industry, they said.
Given that wind last year accounted for more than 9 percent of the nation’s electricity, as well as an increasing share of the overall energy portfolio of Massachusetts, squeezing more power from such renewable energy projects could make a significant difference in reducing emissions, the scientists said. …
“generating more power” is simply insanity. we could live quite well with less power. better than we are going to live after we have destroyed the planet by generating more power.
and yes, we would need to learn how to share the power we do “need” with those people who have less than they would need to to live more comfortably. that is by no means a simple problem, but actually intending to achieve it is the place to start, not building more highways, or air conditioned buildings, or drilling more oil, or burning down the rainforests to grow more hamburgers.
I doubt that generating more power is actually insane.
Doing so without producing green-house gases is essential.
Doing with less electrical power would be a great idea, if the rather over-populated world can handle it. Possibly becoming less over-populated would be beneficial, if unlikely. But eventually, the problem will take care of itself.
Meanwhile, if we are doing away with fuel-burning combustion engines, we are going to need that much more electrical power.
There are a whole lot of impoverished people in the world who are in need of better living conditions, and like the people of the Tennessee Valley a hundred years ago, need better access to electricity.
Many attendees aren’t better off financially than those who have only a high school degree, at least not right away. How should applicants consider these institutions?
As the nation’s student debtors enter Month 20 of awaiting word on when or if President Biden will keep his promise to cancel some of their debt, many questions hang in the air.
How much should the federal government dismiss? Should higher-income people qualify? If everyone gets at least some relief, will future debtors expect it, too?
But here’s a question we’re not asking often enough: What should we do about the schools that left borrowers in a challenging situation to begin with? Without any changes to the higher education system and its institutions, debt will continue spiraling into the trillions of dollars. …
One thing to do is for applicants and their families to shop differently. A good place to start is studying available government data for any school you’re considering to see whether people who attended earn more than they would have if they had gone straight into the work force after high school.
At many schools, the answer is no. Three years ago, in an examination that should have received a lot more attention, the center-left think tank Third Way put all available data for all higher education institutions together. It found that at 52 percent of the schools, more than half of the enrollees were not earning more than the typical high school graduate six years after they began their studies. After 10 years, the figure was still 29 percent.
Anyone can download the school-by-school spreadsheet that Michael Itzkowitz, the author of the Third Way study, posted. I picked 28 four-year institutions to contact, focusing on those whose most recent data showed that 60 percent or fewer people were outearning a typical high school graduate six years after enrolling. …
“Poor planning on your part does not necessitate an emergency on mine.”
One often hears the above. Some find it too harsh, it seems. I took it very seriously when we had our kids. They are now way better off than we ever were, and their college was all paid for. Admittedly, those were opportune times for investing 50 years ago & might well be hard to do again. But, unless you want to depend on your state university system (and even then?) you have to reason to expect a free lunch when it comes to higher ed, IMO.
I will admit that when I was of age, I gave little if any thought to the costs of my own education, nor my family’s ability to pay for it, or how it would affect my financial well-being in the future. But my parents did. To me, I had a notion that was instilled by 12 years of public school eductors, that more education is always better than less.
if education is worth anything, it benefits the country as a whole, “successful” taxpayers should expect to pay for “higher education for all” out of their “successful” income (taxes), so that kids (and their parents) don’t have to come up with the money in front. colleges don’t have incentive to waste student time, and “unsuccessful” students are not saddled with a lifetime of debt they cannot pay.
For academic year 2021-2022, the average undergraduate tuition & fees for Massachusetts Colleges is $9,872 for in-state and $27,758 for out-of-state. …
Room & board will run you another $15K or so, however.
(It may bear repeating that, at least a few years ago, because of its endowment Harvard was the cheapest university in this area, after financial aid grants were considered if you could get in…)
As I have previously suggested. the vast bulk of the current nation-wide higher-ed debt should either be paid off with a few trillion dollar coins from the US mint, or be rolled into the US Nat’l Debt, there to remain forever.
It’s a tragically horrible amount. It should be erased. And there should be no further such lending.
are they not better off because they can’t get better jobs, or because “better jobs” no longer pay more than jobs requiring less education (or less certification)?
I do recall some years ago reading of restaurant dishwashers not getting hired because they didn’t have Literature PhDs, but that was possibly apocryphal.
not necessarily. two possibilities: not hiring “over qualified” because they quit before they even learn the job, and tend to be troublesome and lazy while they last.
2) lots over qualified people can’t get the jobs they spent 4 – 10 years studying for, because meanwhile too many other people studied for the same jobs, while the jobs became more or less obsolete.
on the other hand, people who have studied literature tend to be more intelligent (in a certain way) than those that studied “business” or even “engineering.”
business owners used to know that, hence the value of a college degree in any major. but then Harvard Business School…
I meant to say that, but lost track. When I graduated with BA the only job I could find was working in a sawmill. The guy next to me had a degree in chemical engineering, An older man I knew with a phD lost his job as college administrator for political reasons. best he could do was drive a truck until he got a civil service job…not at a high level. My X, who had a masters degree in Linguistics, got a low paying job teaching English as a second language… until she got a government job couting fish for compliance with goverment regulations on foreign owned fishing vessels. that paid pretty well.
Government documents that President Donald J. Trump had accumulated were with him in roughly two dozen boxes in the White House residence. They were to go to the National Archives, but at least some ended up in Florida. …
… Many questions about the mishandling of the documents lead to Mr. Trump, who often treated the presidency as a private business. But people in his orbit also highlight the role of Mr. Meadows, who oversaw what there was of a presidential transition. Mr. Meadows assured aides that the harried packing up of the White House would follow requirements about the preservation of documents, and he said he would make efforts to ensure that the administration complied with the Presidential Records Act, according to people familiar with those conversations.
… Although the White House Counsel’s Office had told Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s last chief of staff, that the roughly two dozen boxes worth of material in the residence needed to be turned over to the archives, at least some of those boxes, including those with the Kim letters and some documents marked highly classified, were shipped to Florida. There they were stored at various points over the past 19 months in different locations inside Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s members-only club, home and office, according to several people briefed on the events. …
‘classified documents recovered from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago were ‘serious’ but may not have justified the raid’ …
(Since Trump people had told DoJ people that all classified documents had been returned, and as late as June a Trump lawyer had insisted that there were no more classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, it would seem that a search was justified to verify this. And, surprise, there classified documents were there.)
Alternative explanation: Meadows ‘forgot’ to tell Trump that he had to turn over classified documents, as part of a practice of not getting into fights with The Boss.
Ooga booga!
More Money for IRS Spurs Conspiracy Theories of ‘Shadow Army’
NY Times – August 19
Most Americans support the climate and energy legislation passed by the Senate
Where discussions go to die.
EM
What would you like me to do? Fred is good for posting articles only.
Not a lot you can do. Just a comment on my dislike of no actual discussion as the glorified chyrons go by.
EM
The open thread was meant for the discussion of off topic things. This is there rather than have the topical posts cluttered. There is a degree of abuse. I have offered both Ann and Fred a way to add a series of articles along the lines of “What was in My In-Box.” Neither wanted to do this. It is continuous copy and paste with little or no commentary by either to stimulate a discussion.
Got back from my hour walk in the desert before the sun gets high. Less than 80 this morning.
EM
it took me a while to catch on, but Dobbs saves me the trouble of being told by NYT that I need to subscribe to see the link. it does not hurt us to read “comments” from the NYT. you can always skip what you don’t want to read.
and while you are doing that, you might want to reflect on comments by, ahem, that are mere emotive blurts.
meanwhile, one man’s “off topic” is another man’s “key to the whole thing.”
Proverbs 17:28
English Standard Version
28 Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise;
when he closes his lips, he is deemed intelligent.
waal shut mah mouf.
Y’know, the links I post to articles are most often obtained from Twitter, and hopefully they work, but since I subscribe I can’t tell.
I often find that my own opinions, when I attempt to post them, don’t get past moderation. So, I mostly post items I think are worth reading that folks ought to know about. Feel free to ignore them, as I ignore ad hominem slights.
Dobbs
sounds okay to me. ink on the internet is free. i am used to getting my NYT free, reading copies left behind in the coffee shop.
easy enough to ignore, just like some “opinions.”
Mitch McConnell warns GOP may not win Senate
Washington Post via Boston Globe – August 19
As Democrats congratulate each other on climate bill, Bernie’s still not happy
Boston Globe – August 19
Thanks, Kyrsten Sinema!
the New Tax Bill Doesn’t Go Near the Wealthy
NY Times – Aug 19
How is that Kyrsten Sinema, Dem of Arizona, is so totally influenced by her GOP predecessor John McCain, a non-Native Arizonan, who was preceded by & mainly instructed by the legacy of one Barry Goldwater, who was.
Meanwhile in AZ, Dem senator Mark Kelly is running ahead of his Trump-endorsed GOP opponent Blake Masters by a fairly large margin, so that’s something.
The new United States of New England
Boston Globe – August 19
The article begins…
It seems to me that my own Quaker ancestors had a hand in what went down in the USA, by insisting that negro slavery in America was morally abhorrent and would not be tolerated among their members. This notion became pervasive in the northern states. The wealthy class of the time, financiers & capitalists, had their own reasons for joining this belief, as did working people who resented the use of ‘free labor’ from slaves if nothing else. Thus, the Land of Liberty almost came apart.
You were in the trash for some reason. I did not place you there
If the northeast US breaks away, we would probably invite NY to join, and New Jersey.
Presumably also Pennsylvania, where my Quaker ancestors instigated the end to slavery in the US with the inevitable conflagration that followed. But would they accept the offer?
not instigated. maybe initiated. instigation was from NY, and a failed congressman from Illinois. not to mention a few newspaper editors who were killed for their opinions.
I don’t know that there is any “making sense” out of the war over slavery, but looking at voters today makes me realize more than i ever did before that there is no making sense of anything people do.
as for “breaking away,” that makes even less sense than it did in 1860. the problem now is that the crazies control the federal government.
The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) was the first corporate body in Britain and North America to fully condemn slavery as both ethically and religiously wrong in all circumstances. It is in Quaker records that we have some of the earliest manifestations of anti-slavery sentiment, dating from the 1600s. After the 1750s, Quakers actively engaged in attempting to sway public opinion in Britain and America against the slave trade and slavery in general. At the same time, Quakers became actively involved in the economic, educational and political well being of the formerly enslaved.
The earliest anti-slavery organizations in America and Britain consisted primarily of members of the Society of Friends. … Quaker involvement, often behind the scenes, in the leadership and direction of the abolitionist movement (dated) from the 1770s … (Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr PA)
Pennsylvania abolished slavery in 1780.
Fred
I will concede the importance of the Friends. But
• (instigate someone to do something) incite someone to do something, especially something bad: instigating men to refuse allegiance to the civil powers.
almost sounds to me like “instigated the civil war” which, as Quakers, they did not.
I do from time to time try to point out the role of “religious” people in ending slavery. but the new daze will have none of it: “religion” = bad, therefore we have to hate all religious people, not to say framers, founders, old white men, southerners, white men, old men, men. and anyone who uses “him” to refer to people of all genders and persuasions.
It may be a leap to imply that Quakers instigated the Civil War, since they are mostly pacifists, however the events they set in motion led to the Civil War. They certainly did not initiate it.
But it wasn’t Abe Lincoln or John Brown who did that anyway, it was Jefferson Davis and those who set up the Confederacy, because they believed that the federal guv’mint under Lincoln was going to free their slaves (and in the process ruin their economy). Lincoln had said, apparently, that that was not his intention, but they seceded anyway, and opened fire on Fort Sumpter, starting the war.
‘oo started the civil war?
Preston Brooks
TITLECongressman
WAR & AFFILIATIONCivil War / Confederate27, 1857
What’s Actually Being Taught in History Class
NY Times – August 17
(An audio-visual presentation.)
you can’t teach much in “history class.” you can give kids a framework for learning “history” on their own if they want to. they will gravitate to their own favorite lies in any case. even when the school boards demand that teachers “teach” the lies the owners of the school boards want them to teach, the kids will find their own way, for better or worse.
MIT scientists say they have found a way to increase the energy output of wind farms
Boston Globe – August 19
The link above (to a Nature Energy article) is for a free copy of this article
Nature Energy – August 11, 2022
Collective wind farm operation based on a predictive model increases utility-scale energy production
“In the journal Nature Energy”
Use this one instead
A new method boosts wind farms’ energy output, without new equipment
MIT News – August 11
(MIT news often finds its way into the Boston Globe. Go figure!)
Fred
thanks for this.
“generating more power” is simply insanity. we could live quite well with less power. better than we are going to live after we have destroyed the planet by generating more power.
and yes, we would need to learn how to share the power we do “need” with those people who have less than they would need to to live more comfortably. that is by no means a simple problem, but actually intending to achieve it is the place to start, not building more highways, or air conditioned buildings, or drilling more oil, or burning down the rainforests to grow more hamburgers.
I doubt that generating more power is actually insane.
Doing so without producing green-house gases is essential.
Doing with less electrical power would be a great idea, if the rather over-populated world can handle it. Possibly becoming less over-populated would be beneficial, if unlikely. But eventually, the problem will take care of itself.
Meanwhile, if we are doing away with fuel-burning combustion engines, we are going to need that much more electrical power.
Fred
that’s what makes it insane. We can’t imagine doing without it. Like an alcoholic.
There are a whole lot of impoverished people in the world who are in need of better living conditions, and like the people of the Tennessee Valley a hundred years ago, need better access to electricity.
Some Colleges Don’t Produce Big Earners. Are They Worth It?
NY Times – August 20
“Poor planning on your part does not necessitate an emergency on mine.”
One often hears the above. Some find it too harsh, it seems. I took it very seriously when we had our kids. They are now way better off than we ever were, and their college was all paid for. Admittedly, those were opportune times for investing 50 years ago & might well be hard to do again. But, unless you want to depend on your state university system (and even then?) you have to reason to expect a free lunch when it comes to higher ed, IMO.
I will admit that when I was of age, I gave little if any thought to the costs of my own education, nor my family’s ability to pay for it, or how it would affect my financial well-being in the future. But my parents did. To me, I had a notion that was instilled by 12 years of public school eductors, that more education is always better than less.
Err, ‘you have NO reason to expect a free lunch when it comes to higher ed…’
Dobbs
if education is worth anything, it benefits the country as a whole, “successful” taxpayers should expect to pay for “higher education for all” out of their “successful” income (taxes), so that kids (and their parents) don’t have to come up with the money in front. colleges don’t have incentive to waste student time, and “unsuccessful” students are not saddled with a lifetime of debt they cannot pay.
Average In-State vs. Out-of-State Tuition
In the United States, public 4-year undergraduate degrees have an average out-of-state tuition of $26,382 vs. $9,212 for the same degree in-state.
Vermont is the state with the highest average in-state tuition among four-year institutions: $16,604.
Florida is the state with the lowest average in-state tuition among four year institutions: $4,443.
Vermont has the highest average out-of-state tuition among four-year institutions: $39,947.
Florida has the lowest average out-of-state tuition among four-year institutions: $18,456. …
2022 Tuition Comparison Between Massachusetts Colleges
For academic year 2021-2022, the average undergraduate tuition & fees for Massachusetts Colleges is $9,872 for in-state and $27,758 for out-of-state. …
Room & board will run you another $15K or so, however.
(It may bear repeating that, at least a few years ago, because of its endowment Harvard was the cheapest university in this area, after financial aid grants were considered if you could get in…)
However…
As I have previously suggested. the vast bulk of the current nation-wide higher-ed debt should either be paid off with a few trillion dollar coins from the US mint, or be rolled into the US Nat’l Debt, there to remain forever.
It’s a tragically horrible amount. It should be erased. And there should be no further such lending.
Dobbs
are they not better off because they can’t get better jobs, or because “better jobs” no longer pay more than jobs requiring less education (or less certification)?
I do recall some years ago reading of restaurant dishwashers not getting hired because they didn’t have Literature PhDs, but that was possibly apocryphal.
not necessarily. two possibilities: not hiring “over qualified” because they quit before they even learn the job, and tend to be troublesome and lazy while they last.
2) lots over qualified people can’t get the jobs they spent 4 – 10 years studying for, because meanwhile too many other people studied for the same jobs, while the jobs became more or less obsolete.
on the other hand, people who have studied literature tend to be more intelligent (in a certain way) than those that studied “business” or even “engineering.”
business owners used to know that, hence the value of a college degree in any major. but then Harvard Business School…
In the instances cited, potential dishwasher candidates were not hired because all the other dishwashers already had PhDs, supposedly.
They were not overqualified, the applicants were underqualified.
Fred
I meant to say that, but lost track. When I graduated with BA the only job I could find was working in a sawmill. The guy next to me had a degree in chemical engineering, An older man I knew with a phD lost his job as college administrator for political reasons. best he could do was drive a truck until he got a civil service job…not at a high level. My X, who had a masters degree in Linguistics, got a low paying job teaching English as a second language… until she got a government job couting fish for compliance with goverment regulations on foreign owned fishing vessels. that paid pretty well.
The Final Days of the Trump White House: Chaos and Scattered Papers
NY Times – Aug 20