OK, good. Now we can agree. You have finally come around to making useful and cogent observations that we all should consider. Let me make it clear that the data and facts I presented are just that and are correct as far as I can tell, and no one here has thus far shown them not to be. College today, in constant dollars, based on the real consumer inflation rate, on average, is no more expensive today than it was twenty years ago. But there are many considerations that go into determining how hard it is to pay for, and it has gotten a lot harder for some to pay for than it used to be, and possibly easier for others.. Your post, is a good one, and you have hit on some very important and key issues. I don't know that you are correct, but at least your arguments and points are worth considering. It seems the insight your post is leading us to is that this whole "Gee Whiz, look at what's happening to tuition business" is just a red herring that inadvertently covers-up important underlying issues that need to be addressed. We have a serious national affliction, our collective inability to think beyond the end of our noses.
"real consumer inflation rate" That's a perfectly good question. I have used the shadowstats.com consumer inflation rate data throughout as the better measure of the inflation rate actually experienced by consumers. I sometimes referred to it as the "real inflation rate". This rate is computed using the method the government was using in the mid 1980s (was it 1986?, see shadowstats.com for an explanation.) You are probably aware that the government has changed, several times, the method used to compute the consumer inflation rate. I believe, as do many others, that the government's current methods, whatever their merits may be, considerably underestimate the inflation experienced by typical consumers. (For example, the government now uses hedonics, they didn't used to.)
No, you still are not getting it. You can't compare tuition to ANY inflation rate especially if tuition is actually INCLUDED in that calculation. Why? Because the tuition itself is DISTORTING the data. This is why it's best to compare actual tuition rates with INCOME!!!!!!! How do you think people pay for school? With the magic college ferry? College tuition, just like housing and medical costs has to be in line with income. Otherwise the only way they can be paid for is through debt or welfare. This is not hard to understand. They do teach these concepts at these very schools we are discussing. Honestly, you have ranted about this for awhile now and I still don't even understand your point. Let's remove inflation from the argument. Let me ask you some simple questions. 1) Do you believe college is as affordable today for the middle class as it was 10 years, 25 years ago and 50 years ago? 2) Do you believe tuition costs are rising at the same rate as personal income? 3) Do you believe we have a student loan crisis? 4) Do you believe students went into the same amount of debt 25 and 50 years ago to pay for school as they are today? Let's start there.
1. I find it a amusing that first we had a marxist quoting shadow stats to support big inflation. That was a first. So now that marxist can not longer say big govt spending is not destroying middle class' standard of living. 2. We also learned that the other marxist (ricter) who has claimed we have very low inflation since he started posting here... will not challenge the shadow stats inflation rate when it used by a fellow marxist to hide working class' wealth destruction via college tuition. Leftists just seem to enjoy lie about the most obvious things. College tuition has gone up dramatically for those whose parents pay for it. College Loan programs have allowed the quoted price of tuition to go sky high as its puts workers into big debt. This works for the banks and the leftists like so many other debt programs. Debt works for bankers and taxers as they get to tax much higher priced assets.
Good post. I will say this, even today's higher cost at my old alma mater (sigh) is a lot more affordable then it was back in the 80s. I think I've been suffering through some wage inflation. ; )
Political power Historically, the political organization of many socialist states has been dominated by a single-party monopoly. Some communist governments, such as North Korea, East Germany or the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic have or had more than one political party, but all minor parties are or were required to follow the leadership of the communist party. In socialist states, the government may not tolerate criticism of policies that have already been implemented in the past or are being implemented in the present.[10] Nevertheless, communist parties have won elections and governed in the context of multi-party democracies, without seeking to establish a one-party state. Examples include San Marino, Republic of Nicaragua,[11] Moldova, Nepal (presently), Cyprus,[12] and the Indian states of Kerala, West Bengal and Tripura.[13] However, for the purposes of this article, these entities do not fall under the definition of socialist state. Objections to use of term The states ruled by communist political parties nonetheless self-identified as socialist states rather than as "communist states", because they did not consider themselves to have achieved the classless and stateless society known as communism.[14] In Marxism, communism is the final phase of history at which time the state would have "withered away"[15] and therefore "socialist state" is a contradiction in terms under premises of this theory. Current states are either in the capitalist or socialist phase of history â making the term "socialist state" preferable to many communists and Marxist theorists.[16] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_state China Cuba Laos Vietnam Non-communist states with communist majority Nepal Previous communist states Afghanistan Albania Angola Benin Bulgaria Congo-Brazzaville Czechoslovakia East Germany Hungary Ethiopia Grenada Kampuchea Mongolia Mozambique North Korea North Vietnam Poland Romania Somalia South Yemen Soviet Union Yugoslavia --- Anybody... who advocates for that type of record has to have a serious fricken screw loose. Really Ricter are you frickent nuts? That ? Communist states are only good for destroying millions of people standards of living and freedoms so that a few party elite can live like upper middle class and a handful live like our wealthiest people but also have armies. Why the hell would any advocate for a system with such horrible results? EV
I'm Marxist in the sociopolitical critique of capitalism sense, and in the emphasis on the primacy of labor. Anyway, we've been on this topic before. All pure "isms" kill, because force is required to get people to abandon common sense for the sake of purity. This is just as true of capitalism. Which is why all the world's economies are mixed economies.