I Pit Lack of Finacial Aid for my Kid's College Education!

[curlcoat]

@Zeriel

As much as I trust that government can disburse funds accurately and with a minimum of fuss, I don’t necessarily trust ANYONE to fully predict the job market enough to subsidize the correct mix of degrees.

I think you trust the government too much…

There are conservative economists (notably Milton Friedman) who would say that it’s possible and desirable for the government to provide a lower-middle-class life to everyone (see his negative income tax proposal).

When I have time I’ll look that up - does he have any suggestions one what to do about those who choose not to work?

I don’t think illegals are really germane, either. I’m not one for asylum, and I’m heavily in favor of coming down hard on people who hire illegals (since everything from prohibition to the war on drugs have proven that you can’t stop illegal things coming in, you have to cut off demand).

Illegals are germane because they use resources and don’t pay back into the system. It may be the reason why California is in so much financial trouble, I don’t know because I don’t know the numbers on the percentage of “legals” who are doing the same thing.

One of the reasons I’m in favor of more Federal policies in the US for things like this–the US has a fairly unique combination of state government power and wildly diverse incomes and population densities, and they make state-based solutions come out as unfair much of the time due to what are essentially historical accidents of borders.

Then, pointing out how Germany does things doesn’t really apply here, yes?

Both fruitful places for regulation, IMHO.

Or at least a good hard look at them anyway.

It is likely geographically dependent. I’m quite a bit younger than you, and less than a third of my graduating class in high school went to college (in 1997). Only a small percentage of them are welfare bums, about the national average–most of them are making a fairly decent rural living, and to be honest many of them have nearly as high an overall standard of living than my college-educated self just due to cost-of-living differences (mostly in housing). Almost no one, myself included, got much parental help–I scrambled for scholarships since 75% of my college fund got sunk into dad’s business to get it through a rough patch. I lucked out in that I got enough scholarships for it to not matter, but even in 1997 the $1500/semester merit scholarship I got from PSU covered more than half my tuition.

The point I was making was not the percentage that went to college, but that those who went did so because their parents had saved up the money for them to do so. Which your parents also did, but unfortunately had to use it for a crisis. What happened between 1997 and now that makes it (apparently) a taxpayer responsibility rather than a parental one to provide college funds?

The problem with that is creating perverse incentives, IMHO. Right now, the government has decided (not without reason) that subsidizing children via tax credits is in our collective best interest, and spreading the cost of education over the citizens of each school district via property taxes reflects the fact that most of our country’s jobs require a high school or vocational education. Given that, and given that more and more of our country’s jobs require a college degree, it seems a logical extension of existing policies that have worked for a long time to extend those subsidies to college.

Not to me. College may be required for more jobs but not near enough to justify the cost to the taxpayer. Add in that many college degrees are essentially worthless in the job market, plus the number of kids that never graduate, plus the number of women (yes, I’m going to say it) who waste a college degree on being a SAHM. Then there is the growing problem that our government subsidized K-12 schools are more and more merely glorified babysitting. I have enough of a problem that I have to pay inflated property taxes for our local schools, but at least most of those graduates can read and write and more or less function in society. However, if you or your offspring want to get a good job, that should be your responsibility, not mine, to at least try to pay for higher education.

As said above: an educated populace is in the best interests of everyone, because our economy is increasingly technically oriented. Because a more educated populace eventually results in a larger overall GDP and larger overall tax base, educating those kids is ultimately of benefit to you.

We’ll still need plumbers, key punchers, gardeners, etc. You want your children to have a better job than that, you pay for it. You want a larger overall GDP and tax base, work on getting more people off their butts and into the job force. You want a better educated populace, do something about our public schools - begin with getting rid of No Child Left Behind.

It would appear that my state’s income tax is about 1/3 of yours. I’d happily pay the 10% I’d be paying in CA if it meant returning/increasing the state subsidies to higher education and maybe getting a decent goddamn public single-payer health plan going.

Except, it doesn’t mean any of that. CA is a perfect example of a major waste of taxpayer funds.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but I live in PA. I get to watch the fruits of excessively conservative spending policies every time I drive (the roads are horribly under-maintained here, due to budget cuts), every time I smell the (coal-tinged) air, every time I see another news article about pollution due to inadequate funding at the state environmental protection agency…and seeing a 10% tuition hike at the state schools along with thousands of high-paying university jobs lost to save a pitiful 2.4% of the state general fund budget. You bet your ass I’d take the tax hike to keep those jobs in this state–hell, every single job I’ve had has been at one spinoff company or another from Penn State’s research programs. In the long run, it makes sense.

Well, tax hikes haven’t kept jobs in CA - they are driving them away. We also have under-maintained roads, pollution and I think? a higher population density. Apparently raising taxes doesn’t fix the things you think it will.