Yes, I'm sure the Halo fanboys would have hated having all the gameplay advancements from the sequels in the original game a month after it was released via mods.
The other way to read it is the legitimate concern that potential investors have when people start throwing around ideas like forcing the ILECs/cableco's to open up their networks to companies that didn't help fund the roll out of those networks.
Maybe in some alternate reality where Time Warner spends $4 billion on infrastructure and saves $300 million for profits, instead of the other way around.
That's irrelevant. Tuition costs have increased faster than direct government funding of universities have decreased.
You wish it was irrelevant. Lower taxes == less money for services, couldn't be simpler. And pointing out that education or health care costs have increased in no way shape or form changes the fact that the end-user cost would be far cheaper with more public funding.
Universities have done the rational thing, push up the price to whatever the market will bear.
Universities are state run institutions, not Wal-Mart.
And the more the government tries to increase the amount of money students can get to spend on their education the more they'll increase the price.
Simplistic nonsense with no basis in reality. Our public schools have mandatory enrollment, rising overall population, yet we haven't seen public education costs rise 50% in the last few years.
Just like the government (vie FHA, FRE, FNM, etc) increasing the amount of money people have access to for housing pushed up the price of housing to match.
And an increasing population using a finite resource (land) wouldn't have anything to do with that, no sir. But your analogy fails when applied to education, because teachers are not a finite resource. If one person in 100 is a teacher, it doesn't matter if you have 10 million people in the United States or a couple billion. You're also willfully ignoring the economics of scale, which means that costs should go down with more students, not up.
I don't see the analogy here. Are you claiming everyone over 50 has a right to free colonoscopies? Are you claiming a formal education might become unnecessary at some point?
No, I'm saying that just because something is a "key part of xyz" is no reason to continue doing it that way if a better alternative is available. Why have a scope shoved up your ass if you could get an x-ray instead? Why work 30 hours a week to support yourself while going to school AND accumulating tens of thousands of dollars in student loans if your undergraduate classes could have more public funding instead?
I don't see the connection between the marginal tax rate and tuition.
Higher tax rates == more money that the government can spend on more infrastructure and services. Lower taxes means less money for services and infrastructure. Couldn't be simpler.
How exactly does the tax rate effect tuition at Harvard or Yale or Stanford?
How exactly is that relevant when the discussion is on higher education loans, not Ivy League schools?
The other problem with your proposed solution is that currently (as of 2007, the most recent year for which I was able to find numbers)the top 1% of all income earners pay over 40% of federal income tax revenues.
...and control over 70% of the wealth. Convenient how you left that part out.
There is significant evidence that when income tax rates go up, government revenue from income tax goes down.
Significant propaganda with no basis in reality, you mean.
however, that rate is somewhere below a 40% marginal tax rate.
A low tax rate doesn't mean more efficiency, it means more greed. Which is why the CEO of Wal-Mart collects more on his paycheck every two weeks than the average Wal-Mart employee makes in a lifetime. It's why Wellpoint pays their CEO $10 million a year while they're cutting benefits to employees.
Whereas there is nothing about a 91% tax rate that limits the drive to succeed - nothing. That I wouldn't be able to own a dozen yachts, a dozen Ferrari's, a dozen mansions and a dozen private jets in no way means I wouldn't want to own a yacht, a Ferrari, a mansion, and a private jet. Because really, what does Larry Ellison do for Oracle at $200 million a year that he wouldn't do for $4 million a year?
Anyone who quotes propaganda as their main source for information is probably out of touch with reality.
Translation: presented facts that don't match your storyline are ignored. Do honestly thing that Micheal Moore isn't ready for his right wing critics? Do you honestly thing that with the planet-sized corruption in the Bush Administration, the health insurance industry, and Wall Street that he can't find material to work with that stands up to scrutiny?
Insurer denies caner treatment because patient "failed" to disclose that she had acne. Blue Cross denies payment for severe miscarrage by calling it an "elective abortion". CIGNA denied a liver transplant as being "experimental" despite liver transplants being around for 45 years.
And so on. And so on. And so on. And so on.
Phantom, you're crossing the line between willful ignorance and malicious incompetence.
College tuition has outpaced inflation for as long as I've been paying attention. That ought to be proof enough that piling on more "easy" money isn't resulting in the increased education opportunities it's supposed to.
What easy money?!?
Please don't confuse tax rate
Please don't project. A higher tax rate == more money that can be spent. Couldn't be simpler. But tax rates have been cut and balanced budget amendments passed so when states have budget shortfalls, education funding is cut.
Furthermore, if this theory of yours had any basis in reality, tuition rates would both rise and fall as the number of students rises and falls relative to the overall population. But it's gone only one direction: up.
I see several hundred billion that I wouldn't count as defense spending (debt, international affairs, Homeland Security, Veteran Affairs
On what planet are those things NOT war related? Debt on the Iraq/Afghanistan wars - yup, war related. Homeland Security - do you also ask if the Pentagon qualifies as defense spending? Veterans Affairs - aren't veterans people who have served in the military?
We can indeed trade insults all day, but at the end of that day I'll still be right and you'll still be speaking out of your ass about things you don't understand.
And now you simply have to show 1) that their public education and health care is somehow causally tied to their growth in GDP
No, I don't. Not my fault that two countries with higher tax rates, more regulation, and socialized services up the wazoo debunk your entire ideology by having a better economy. If your free market Kool Aid had any basis in reality whatsoever, Norway and Sweden would be lazy, corrupt, horribly inefficient and far behind the United States.
But as usually the case, take the opposite of the wingnut viewpoint and you have reality.
2) that such a scheme is sustainable in the long-term
They've been sustained for decades. What's your point?
3) that it justifies the inherent violation of individual rights.
LOL. Yes, the inherent rights violations in having 10 weeks of vacation a year. The rights violations in suffering a serious illness or accident and knowing you will be treated and you wont lose your house. The rights violations of graduating from school without six figures in student loan debt and being able to start your own business without worrying about health insurance for yourself or your employees.
But no, by all means continue to stand up for your rights by paying 35 cents of every health care dollar (as opposed to 2 cents for Medicare) on administration costs so the CEO of Wellpoint can be worth three quarters of a billion dollars by denying you what you paid for (health care). Stick up for your rights by paying a higher tax rate than billionaire hedge fund managers, keep buying lead toys from China, keep getting laid off so the CEO responsible for your companies misfortunes can get his 15% annual pay increase. Stand proud in the knowledge that if you and John McCain go bankrupt tomorrow, you can't have a court rewrite the terms of your mortgage or student loans, but McCain will on his 11 vacation homes.
You're aspiring to be an elitist, but you're really just an ankle grabber.
Your numbers are more than an order of magnitude greater than every estimate I can find that doesn't come from a biased source, such as the GAO.
Reality has a liberal bias, bitch. I suppose you were one of those teabagging morons out protesting Obama, nevermind that he gave you the largest middle class tax cut in history.
The "system" is not broken, so long as it is left alone (ie, no govt or Fed involvement) - but it's been quite a while since that was the case.
Slight problem with your free market Kool Aid, and I'm not talking about deregulated banks that spent more money than the entire world possesses. I'm talking about the fact that Norway and Sweden spend far more on public education and health care, yet have higher per-capita GDP than the United States.
poor judgment is *why* the system is "broken", or at least it's a major contributor
Yes, and that bad judgment has a name: Reaganomics.
The go up because, as a poster upthread said, students are willing to and pay -- and borrow -- almost anything in the name of getting that precious education.
No, they go up because state and federal budgets keep getting cut, either to fund tax cuts for the wealthy or fund the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex. If we still had the 91% marginal tax rate and weren't spending over a trillion dollars a year on the military, we'd have free education, health care, and great infrastructure.
Mortgages and car loans are secured loans, where the property or car that is bought with them is pledged as collateral. This makes a big difference for the interest rates. Student loans just ain't so.
Except that student loans ARE backed, by the government. And you're also ignoring the fact that student loan debt can't be wiped out by filing for bankruptcy, as mortgages and car loans can.
For the 2009 fiscal year, the base budget of the Department of Defense rose to $518.3 billion. Adding emergency discretionary spending, supplemental spending, and stimulus spending brings the sum to $651.2 billion.[1][2] Defense-related expenditures outside of the Department of Defense constitute between $274 billion and $493 billion in additional spending, bringing the total for defense spending to between $925 billion and $1.14 trillion in 2009.[3]
Why are tuition rates so high in the US? Economics 101: Supply and demand. Everyone in the US has this delusion that they need to go to college.
I see you failed Economics 101. The problem isn't people wanting to go to school, the problem is Reaganomics. Taxes on the rich have been slashed while costs get pushed onto the middle class through other means...like the cost of secondary edcucation.
The easier money is to get for education, the more money education is going to cost
People keep saying that without offering any reasons as to why that is the case. As opposed to the direct relation between low taxes and low public spending.
I am not interested in benefit to America, I am interested in benefit to my own wallet....and the real reason finally comes out. You haven't watched Sicko, have you? The main point of the movie wasn't the uninsured, but the people who do have good insurance. Or even more appropriately, people who think they have good insurance.
So lets say you are John Galt, a hardworking elitist who pulled himself up by his own bootstraps. You put yourself through an elite school in your field with a combination of student loans and scholarships, and now make $300,000 a year at Elitist Investment Firm. Until you get cancer or have a catastrophic accident, that is. Then you quickly find out that your supposedly great insurance policy is quick to deny treatments and you quickly hit coverage caps.
Stop cutting off your nose to spite your face.
In fact every American can afford a decent education.
On what planet is this America that you speak of? One where the cost of tuition doubles every decade or and jobs haven't been shipped overseas?
The reason that tuition is so high is because we as a society have decided that everyone should have a college education.
Correction: the reason tuition is so high is because taxes on the rich are so low, and most of what money we do have ends up in the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Complex. Bring back the 91% marginal tax rate, switch to a needs based military, and we'll have plenty of money for education, health care, and infrastructure.
Ironically, you could have spent that same time working in the field, moving up towards being an IT manager and... on top of it all, you'd have a clue about what you were doing rather than being just another idiot who graduated with no experience and an 'education' by people who don't actually do the job and probably never have.
Ah, love that Bud Lite, truck driving, never-went-to-school-redneck-Republican elitism. But as to your Concerns over experience, that's what internships and co-ops are for.
Government loans are backed by ME and MY tax dollars that I'm paying for YOU to borrow.
And you'll see that repaid when more people get better education and go on to get better, higher paying jobs - and pay more taxes so you don't have to.
Now shut your spoiled ass up, get a job, and pay your damn bills. You need a good spanking like a 3 year old until you start acting like an adult.
You need a spanking like a 3 year old who whines when he's made to share his toys.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, I'm sure the Halo fanboys would have hated having all the gameplay advancements from the sequels in the original game a month after it was released via mods.
The other way to read it is the legitimate concern that potential investors have when people start throwing around ideas like forcing the ILECs/cableco's to open up their networks to companies that didn't help fund the roll out of those networks.
Maybe in some alternate reality where Time Warner spends $4 billion on infrastructure and saves $300 million for profits, instead of the other way around.
Apple already has a rank-mounted server called the Xserve for this purpose.
For the price of one Xserve you could get 3 Mini's loaded with 10.6 Server. So if you don't need a beefcake Xeon, why not?
That's irrelevant. Tuition costs have increased faster than direct government funding of universities have decreased.
You wish it was irrelevant. Lower taxes == less money for services, couldn't be simpler. And pointing out that education or health care costs have increased in no way shape or form changes the fact that the end-user cost would be far cheaper with more public funding.
Universities have done the rational thing, push up the price to whatever the market will bear.
Universities are state run institutions, not Wal-Mart.
And the more the government tries to increase the amount of money students can get to spend on their education the more they'll increase the price.
Simplistic nonsense with no basis in reality. Our public schools have mandatory enrollment, rising overall population, yet we haven't seen public education costs rise 50% in the last few years.
Just like the government (vie FHA, FRE, FNM, etc) increasing the amount of money people have access to for housing pushed up the price of housing to match.
And an increasing population using a finite resource (land) wouldn't have anything to do with that, no sir. But your analogy fails when applied to education, because teachers are not a finite resource. If one person in 100 is a teacher, it doesn't matter if you have 10 million people in the United States or a couple billion. You're also willfully ignoring the economics of scale, which means that costs should go down with more students, not up.
I don't see the analogy here. Are you claiming everyone over 50 has a right to free colonoscopies? Are you claiming a formal education might become unnecessary at some point?
No, I'm saying that just because something is a "key part of xyz" is no reason to continue doing it that way if a better alternative is available. Why have a scope shoved up your ass if you could get an x-ray instead? Why work 30 hours a week to support yourself while going to school AND accumulating tens of thousands of dollars in student loans if your undergraduate classes could have more public funding instead?
I don't see the connection between the marginal tax rate and tuition.
Higher tax rates == more money that the government can spend on more infrastructure and services. Lower taxes means less money for services and infrastructure. Couldn't be simpler.
How exactly does the tax rate effect tuition at Harvard or Yale or Stanford?
How exactly is that relevant when the discussion is on higher education loans, not Ivy League schools?
The other problem with your proposed solution is that currently (as of 2007, the most recent year for which I was able to find numbers)the top 1% of all income earners pay over 40% of federal income tax revenues.
...and control over 70% of the wealth. Convenient how you left that part out.
There is significant evidence that when income tax rates go up, government revenue from income tax goes down.
Significant propaganda with no basis in reality, you mean.
however, that rate is somewhere below a 40% marginal tax rate.
A low tax rate doesn't mean more efficiency, it means more greed. Which is why the CEO of Wal-Mart collects more on his paycheck every two weeks than the average Wal-Mart employee makes in a lifetime. It's why Wellpoint pays their CEO $10 million a year while they're cutting benefits to employees.
Whereas there is nothing about a 91% tax rate that limits the drive to succeed - nothing. That I wouldn't be able to own a dozen yachts, a dozen Ferrari's, a dozen mansions and a dozen private jets in no way means I wouldn't want to own a yacht, a Ferrari, a mansion, and a private jet. Because really, what does Larry Ellison do for Oracle at $200 million a year that he wouldn't do for $4 million a year?
Anyone who quotes propaganda as their main source for information is probably out of touch with reality.
Translation: presented facts that don't match your storyline are ignored. Do honestly thing that Micheal Moore isn't ready for his right wing critics? Do you honestly thing that with the planet-sized corruption in the Bush Administration, the health insurance industry, and Wall Street that he can't find material to work with that stands up to scrutiny?
Insurer denies caner treatment because patient "failed" to disclose that she had acne.
Blue Cross denies payment for severe miscarrage by calling it an "elective abortion".
CIGNA denied a liver transplant as being "experimental" despite liver transplants being around for 45 years.
And so on. And so on. And so on. And so on.
Phantom, you're crossing the line between willful ignorance and malicious incompetence.
Did you read the rest of the paragraph?
Do you think that changes anything?
College tuition has outpaced inflation for as long as I've been paying attention. That ought to be proof enough that piling on more "easy" money isn't resulting in the increased education opportunities it's supposed to.
What easy money?!?
Please don't confuse tax rate
Please don't project. A higher tax rate == more money that can be spent. Couldn't be simpler. But tax rates have been cut and balanced budget amendments passed so when states have budget shortfalls, education funding is cut.
Furthermore, if this theory of yours had any basis in reality, tuition rates would both rise and fall as the number of students rises and falls relative to the overall population. But it's gone only one direction: up.
I see several hundred billion that I wouldn't count as defense spending (debt, international affairs, Homeland Security, Veteran Affairs
On what planet are those things NOT war related? Debt on the Iraq/Afghanistan wars - yup, war related. Homeland Security - do you also ask if the Pentagon qualifies as defense spending? Veterans Affairs - aren't veterans people who have served in the military?
We can indeed trade insults all day, but at the end of that day I'll still be right and you'll still be speaking out of your ass about things you don't understand.
And now you simply have to show 1) that their public education and health care is somehow causally tied to their growth in GDP
No, I don't. Not my fault that two countries with higher tax rates, more regulation, and socialized services up the wazoo debunk your entire ideology by having a better economy. If your free market Kool Aid had any basis in reality whatsoever, Norway and Sweden would be lazy, corrupt, horribly inefficient and far behind the United States.
But as usually the case, take the opposite of the wingnut viewpoint and you have reality.
2) that such a scheme is sustainable in the long-term
They've been sustained for decades. What's your point?
3) that it justifies the inherent violation of individual rights.
LOL. Yes, the inherent rights violations in having 10 weeks of vacation a year. The rights violations in suffering a serious illness or accident and knowing you will be treated and you wont lose your house. The rights violations of graduating from school without six figures in student loan debt and being able to start your own business without worrying about health insurance for yourself or your employees.
But no, by all means continue to stand up for your rights by paying 35 cents of every health care dollar (as opposed to 2 cents for Medicare) on administration costs so the CEO of Wellpoint can be worth three quarters of a billion dollars by denying you what you paid for (health care). Stick up for your rights by paying a higher tax rate than billionaire hedge fund managers, keep buying lead toys from China, keep getting laid off so the CEO responsible for your companies misfortunes can get his 15% annual pay increase. Stand proud in the knowledge that if you and John McCain go bankrupt tomorrow, you can't have a court rewrite the terms of your mortgage or student loans, but McCain will on his 11 vacation homes.
You're aspiring to be an elitist, but you're really just an ankle grabber.
Does anything that come out of your mouth have any relation to reality?
Your numbers are more than an order of magnitude greater than every estimate I can find that doesn't come from a biased source, such as the GAO.
Reality has a liberal bias, bitch. I suppose you were one of those teabagging morons out protesting Obama, nevermind that he gave you the largest middle class tax cut in history.
The "system" is not broken, so long as it is left alone (ie, no govt or Fed involvement) - but it's been quite a while since that was the case.
Slight problem with your free market Kool Aid, and I'm not talking about deregulated banks that spent more money than the entire world possesses. I'm talking about the fact that Norway and Sweden spend far more on public education and health care, yet have higher per-capita GDP than the United States.
poor judgment is *why* the system is "broken", or at least it's a major contributor
Yes, and that bad judgment has a name: Reaganomics.
The go up because, as a poster upthread said, students are willing to and pay -- and borrow -- almost anything in the name of getting that precious education.
No, they go up because state and federal budgets keep getting cut, either to fund tax cuts for the wealthy or fund the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex. If we still had the 91% marginal tax rate and weren't spending over a trillion dollars a year on the military, we'd have free education, health care, and great infrastructure.
It's precisely the solution - sink or swim elitism
Fixed that for you.
Mortgages and car loans are secured loans, where the property or car that is bought with them is pledged as collateral. This makes a big difference for the interest rates. Student loans just ain't so.
Except that student loans ARE backed, by the government. And you're also ignoring the fact that student loan debt can't be wiped out by filing for bankruptcy, as mortgages and car loans can.
If the government pitched in $5,000 to everyone who attended college, colleges would simply increase tuition by exactly $5,000.
Made up bullshit with no basis in reality.
Nobody has military spending that high.
Is our children learning of the United States?:
Why are tuition rates so high in the US? Economics 101: Supply and demand. Everyone in the US has this delusion that they need to go to college.
I see you failed Economics 101. The problem isn't people wanting to go to school, the problem is Reaganomics. Taxes on the rich have been slashed while costs get pushed onto the middle class through other means...like the cost of secondary edcucation.
The easier money is to get for education, the more money education is going to cost
People keep saying that without offering any reasons as to why that is the case. As opposed to the direct relation between low taxes and low public spending.
I am not interested in benefit to America, I am interested in benefit to my own wallet. ...and the real reason finally comes out. You haven't watched Sicko, have you? The main point of the movie wasn't the uninsured, but the people who do have good insurance. Or even more appropriately, people who think they have good insurance.
So lets say you are John Galt, a hardworking elitist who pulled himself up by his own bootstraps. You put yourself through an elite school in your field with a combination of student loans and scholarships, and now make $300,000 a year at Elitist Investment Firm. Until you get cancer or have a catastrophic accident, that is. Then you quickly find out that your supposedly great insurance policy is quick to deny treatments and you quickly hit coverage caps.
Stop cutting off your nose to spite your face.
In fact every American can afford a decent education.
On what planet is this America that you speak of? One where the cost of tuition doubles every decade or and jobs haven't been shipped overseas?
Spoken like someone who wants to think with someone elses pocket.
Spoken like you can't read. The point is that something that benefits all of society should be paid for by society. Clear as day.
Pay your own damn bills.
Stop being so self-centered.
The reason that tuition is so high is because we as a society have decided that everyone should have a college education.
Correction: the reason tuition is so high is because taxes on the rich are so low, and most of what money we do have ends up in the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Complex. Bring back the 91% marginal tax rate, switch to a needs based military, and we'll have plenty of money for education, health care, and infrastructure.
Ironically, you could have spent that same time working in the field, moving up towards being an IT manager and ... on top of it all, you'd have a clue about what you were doing rather than being just another idiot who graduated with no experience and an 'education' by people who don't actually do the job and probably never have.
Ah, love that Bud Lite, truck driving, never-went-to-school-redneck-Republican elitism. But as to your Concerns over experience, that's what internships and co-ops are for.
Government loans are backed by ME and MY tax dollars that I'm paying for YOU to borrow.
And you'll see that repaid when more people get better education and go on to get better, higher paying jobs - and pay more taxes so you don't have to.
Now shut your spoiled ass up, get a job, and pay your damn bills. You need a good spanking like a 3 year old until you start acting like an adult.
You need a spanking like a 3 year old who whines when he's made to share his toys.