We can provide a free post-secondary education to all who need it, and we should. (healthcare, economic)
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Two economically ignorant things happening with this "plan"...
1) The vast majority of the wealth held by the richest Americans is in the form of stock ownership, and their net worth at any given time is the value those stocks are worth at any given time. So the whole "take it away and invest it" thing is absurd, because what you would be taking away is already being invested and earning money.
Goes like this - Billionaire_01 has $10 billion in net worth, and $9 billion of that is stocks, investments, etc that are all earning 10% average across the portfolio. Your "plan" confiscates that wealth for 5 years to earn 10% annually. Basically, your plan amounts to outlawing people earning interest on their investments for 5 years, and taking the theoretical value of the now illegal interest and dumping that into post-secondary education.
2) Price/value/wage is set by supply and demand. If you make sure everyone gets some sort of post-secondary certification, be it bachelors degree, trade school cert, whatever...you vastly increase the supply....without changing the demand. Guess what happens to the value of the now ubiquitous degrees/certs? They become the new high school diploma and you depress wages across the board for degreed/certified/licensed individuals.
So besides outlawing earned interest, crashing the stock market and making college degrees and professional licenses increasingly worthless...uhm...good plan?
Thank you! This is the best post in the thread. I appreciate the schooling. You're smart. And not hostile-sounding, which I do appreciate.
Why not simply nationalize all universities and trade schools and make it the next step in public education? Have DoED tell the Fed to "print" the money to pay for it, since it is all electronic GL entries that are tangibly meaningless anyway?
Why do the rich have to be punished by outlawing interest? Why does the stock market have to suffer a 5 year meltdown?
Why can't the government simply tell universities and trade schools to give away their product for free, minus operating costs?
Why not go back to before the government got into the guaranteed loan business, look at average tuitions, then add 2% annually and use imperial federal decree to fix tuition rates?
Low risk investments don't easily earn 10% a year, especially when we are at the top of a Fed induced bubble.
Aldo the stats are misleading as (1) you are measuring billionaire growth from the bottom of the stock collapse and (2) billionaires don't own that in cash.
Their stocks in the company is the bulk of their wealth. If you "borrow" those stocks to put in safe investments you'd have to sell their stocks and they'd no longer control their own company.
It is true that there is still a massive bias in favor of people with college degrees. It just doesn't make any sense. There is a very good chance that the person that will do the best job for you will not have a college diploma. Wanna find a scary-good IT guy? Many of the smartest IT wizards I've ever seen are high school dropouts. They just got bored with high school and moved on to bigger and better things. There is a growing and vast untapped pool of highly competent people who have only one downside in common: No college degree. Sooner or later, more and more businesses will start tapping into that. Fun fact: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Larry Ellison all have one thing in common. None of them has a college degree.
True. Maybe a college education will become obsolete.
Quote:
Originally Posted by godofthunder9010
Yeah you can't live in the real world for long without seeing plenty of nepotism, cronyism and "we've been close friends of his/her family forever! Of course you're hired as senior manager!" There's all sorts of stupid and wrongheaded hirings that happen.
Why not simply nationalize all universities and trade schools and make it the next step in public education? Have DoED tell the Fed to "print" the money to pay for it, since it is all electronic GL entries that are tangibly meaningless anyway?
Interesting take--I like it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Volobjectitarian
Why can't the government simply tell universities and trade schools to give away their product for free, minus operating costs?
Why not go back to before the government got into the guaranteed loan business, look at average tuitions, then add 2% annually and use imperial federal decree to fix tuition rates?
Im still waiting on this. You're entire premise is based on this. Since you make it sound so easy, show me where one can make a low risk investment to easily earn 10%.
The average gain for the past hundred years has been 10% annually on the stock market.
Yes, I can be arrogant and presumptuous sometimes. But this is all hypothetical, as I stated--a thought experiment.
I'm aware that most Americans drive to work. Poor urban planning has made it necessary. And if they can get a better job, they can more likely afford the expense of maintaining a vehicle.
Not everyone can join the military. Or work at Walmart or Amazon or Chick Fil-A.
Thanks for your replies.
You're equally dismissive and my examples were never meant to be all inclusive, they are a cross section of lower wage jobs.
The world isn't just urban... there a lot more to America, than cities. The question I presented in the context of your posting is, if college is required for employment and you wish that be paid for, why stop there? after all, 80% need vehicles to commute. That's a fact. While your own posting said 36% need an BA. Where's the greater need? and how will those 'students' get to school?
Right.... that's the fundamental misunderstanding I was referring to.
And you didn't address it. At all.
Sorry but to get to step 2, you have to get past step 1. You can't do that, therefore, your entire premise is invalid.
I love thought experiments. I've tried launching a few on here, but most people don't seem to have the attention span or depth to participate. The thing about thought experiments, though, is that they have to be plausible to have any value. You're talking about unicorns and leprechauns and acting like they could be some kind of solution to anything.
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